the notorious mrs. ebbsmith by arthur wing pinero the persons of the play agnes lucas cleeve sybil cleeve sir sandford cleeve duke of st. olpherts gertrude thorpe rev. amos winterfield sir george brodrick dr. kirke fortune antonio poppi nella hephzibah the scene is laid in venice--first at the palazzo arconati, a lodging house on the grand canal; afterwards in an apartment in the campo s. bartolomeo. it is easter-tide, a week passing between the events of the first and second acts. the first act the scene is a room in the palazzo arconati, on the grand canal, venice. the room itself is beautiful in its decayed grandeur, but the furnishings and hangings are either tawdry and meretricious or avowedly modern. the three windows at the back open on to a narrow covered balcony, or loggia, and through them can be seen the west side of the canal. between recessed double doors on either side of the room is a fireplace out of use and a marble mantelpiece, but a tiled stove is used for a wood fire. breakfast things are laid on the table. the sun streams into the room. [antonio poppi and nella, two venetian servants, with a touch of the picturesque in their attire, are engaged in clearing the breakfast-table.] nella. [turning her head.] ascolta! (listen!) antonio. una gondola allo scalo. (a gondala at our steps.)[they open the centre-window, go out on to the balcony, and look down below.] la signora thorpe. (the signora thorpe.) nello. con suo fratello. (with her brother.) antonio. [calling.] buon di, signor winterfield! iddio la benedica! [good day, signor winterfield! the blessing of god be upon you!] nella. [calling.] buon di, signora! la madonna passista! (good day, signora! may the virgin have you in her keeping!) antonio. [returning to the room.] noi siamo in ritardo di tutto questa mattina. (we are behindhand with everything this morning.) nella. [following him.] e vero. (that is true.) antonio. [bustling about.] la stufa! (the stove!) nella. [throwing wood into the stove.] che tua sia benedetta per rammentarmelo! questi inglesi non si contentono del sole. (bless you for remembering it. these english are not content with the sun.) [leaving only a vase of flowers upon the table, they hurry out with the breakfast things. at the same moment, fortune, a manservant, enters, showing in mrs. thorpe and the rev. amos winterfield. gertrude thorpe is a pretty, frank-looking young woman of about seven and twenty. she is in mourning, and has sorrowful eyes and a complexion that is too delicate, but natural cheerfulness and brightness are seen through all. amos is about forty--big, burly, gruff; he is untidily dressed, and has a pipe in his hand. fortune is carrying a pair of freshly-cleaned tan-coloured boots upon boot-trees.] gertrude. now, fortune, you ought to have told us downstairs that dr. kirke is with mrs. cleeve. amos. come away, gerty. mrs. cleeve can't want to be bored with us just now. fortune. mrs. cleeve give 'er ordares she is always to be bored wiz madame thorpe and mr. winterfield. amos. ha, ha! gertrude. [smiling.] fortune! fortune. besides, ze doctares vill go in 'alf a minute, you see. gertrude. doctors! amos. what, is there another doctor with dr. kirke? fortune. ze great physician, sir brodrick. gertrude. sir george brodrick? amos! amos. doesn't mr. cleeve feel so well? fortune. oh, yes. but mrs. cleeve 'appen to read in a newspapare zat sir george brodrick vas in florence for ze paque--ze eastare. sir brodrick vas mr. cleeve's doctor in london, mrs. cleeve tell me, so'e is acquainted wiz mr. cleeve's inside. amos. ho, ho! gertrude. mr. cleeve's constitution, fortune. fortune. excuse, madame. zerefore mrs. cleeve she telegraph for sir brodrick to come to venise. amos. to consult with dr. kirke, i suppose. fortune. [listening.] 'ere is ze doctares. [dr. kirke enters, followed by sir george brodrick. kirke is a shabby, snuff-taking old gentleman--blunt but kind; sir george, on the contrary, is scrupulously neat in his dress, and has a suave, professional manner. fortune withdraws] kirke. good morning, mr. winterfield. [to gertrude.] how do you do, my dear? you're getting some colour into your pretty face, i'm glad to see. [to sir george.] mr. winterfield--sir george brodrick. [sir george and amos shake hands.] kirke. [to sir george.] mrs. thorpe. [sir george shakes hands with gertrude.] sir george and i started life together in london years ago; now he finds me here in venice. well we can't all win the race--eh? sir george. my dear old friend! [to gertrude.] mr cleeve has been telling me, mrs. thorpe, how exceedingly kind you and your brother have been to him during his illness. gertrude. oh, mr. cleeve exaggerates our little services. amos. i've done nothing. gertrude. nor i. dr. kirke. now, my dear! gertrude. dr kirke, you weren't in florence with us; you're only a tale-bearer. dr. kirke. well, i've excellent authority for my story of a young woman who volunteered to share the nursing of an invalid at a time when she herself stood greatly in need of being nursed. gertrude. nonsense! [to sir george.] you know, amos--my big brother over there--amos and i struck up an acquaintance with mr. and mrs. cleeve at florence, at the hotel d'italie, and occasionally one of us would give mr cleeve his dose while poor mrs. cleeve took a little rest or drive--but positively that's all. dr kirke. you don't tell us-- gertrude. i've nothing more to tell, except that i'm awfully fond of mrs. cleeve-- amos. oh, if you once get my sister on the subject of mrs. cleeve-- [taking up a newspaper.] gertrude. [to sir george.] yes, i always say that if i were a man searching for a wife, i should be inclined to base my ideal on mrs. cleeve. sir george. [edging away towards kirke, with a surprised uncomfortable smile.] eh? really? gertrude. you conceive a different ideal, sir george? sir george. oh--well-- gertrude. well, sir george? amos. perhaps sir george has heard that mrs. cleeve holds regrettable opinions on some points. if so, he may feel surprised that a parson's sister-- gertrude. oh, i don't share all mrs. cleeve's views, or sympathise with them, of course. but they succeed only in making me sad and sorry. mrs. cleeve's opinions don't stop me from loving the gentle, sweet woman; admiring her for her patient, absorbing devotion to her husband; wondering at the beautiful stillness with which she seems to glide through life--! amos. [putting down the newspaper, to sir george and kirke.] i told you so! [to gertrude.] gertrude, i'm sure sir george and dr. kirke want to be left together for a few minutes. gertrude. [going up to the window.] i'll sun myself on the balcony. amos. and i'll go and buy some tobacco. [to gertrude.] don't be long, gerty. [nodding to sir george and kirke] good morning. [they return his nod; and he goes out.] gertrude. [on the balcony.] dr. kirke, i've heard what doctors' consultations consist of. after looking at the pictures, you talk about whist. [she closes the windows and sits outside.] kirke. [producing his snuff-box.] ha, ha! sir george. why this lady and her brother evidently haven't any suspicion of the actual truth, my dear kirke! kirke. [taking snuff.] not the slightest. sir george. the woman made a point of being extremely explicit with you, you tell me? kirke. yes, she was plain enough with me. at our first meeting, she said: "doctor, i want you to know so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so." sir george. really? well it certainly isn't fair of cleeve and his-- his associate to trick decent people like mrs thorpe and her brother. good gracious, the brother is a clergyman too! kirke. the rector of some dull hole in the north of england. sir george. really! kirke. a bachelor; this mrs thorpe keeps house for him. she's a widow. sir george. really? kirke. widow of a captain in the army. poor thing! she's lately lost her only child and can't get over it. sir george. indeed, really, really? . . . but about cleeve, now--he had roman fever of rather a severe type? kirke. in november. and then that fool of a bickerstaff at rome allowed the woman to move him to florence too soon, and there he had a relapse. however, when she brought him on here the man was practically well. sir george. the difficulty being to convince him of the fact, eh? a highly-strung, emotional creature? kirke. you've hit him. sir george. i've known him from his childhood. are you still giving him anything? kirke. a little quinine, to humour him. sir george. exactly. [looking at his watch.] where is she? where is she? i've promised to take my wife shopping in the merceria this morning. by the bye, kirke--i must talk scandal, i find--this is rather an odd circumstance. whom do you think i got a bow from as i passed through the hall of the danieli last night? [kirke grunts and shakes his head.] the duke of st olpherts. kirke. [taking snuff.] ah! i suppose you're in with a lot of swells now, brodrick. sir george. no, no; you don't understand me. the duke is this young fellow's uncle by marriage. his grace married a sister of lady cleeve's --of cleeve's mother, you know. kirke. oh! this looks as if the family are trying to put a finger in the pie. sir george. the duke may be here by mere chance. still, as you say, it does look--[lowering his voice as kirke eyes an opening door.] who's that? kirke. the woman. [agnes enters. she moves firmly but noiselessly--a placid woman, with a sweet, low voice. her dress is plain to the verge of coarseness; her face, which has little colour, is, at the first glance almost wholly unattractive.] agnes. [looking from one to the other.] i thought you would send for me, perhaps. [to sir george.] what do you say about him? kirke. one moment. [pointing to the balcony.] mrs. thorpe-- agnes. excuse me. [she goes to the window and opens it.] gertrude. oh, mrs cleeve! [entering the room.] am i in the way? agnes. you are never that, my dear. run along to my room; i'll call you in a minute or two. [gertrude nods, and goes to the door.] take off you hat and sit with me for a while. gertrude. i'll stay for a bit, but this hat doesn't take off. [she goes out] agnes. [to sir george and kirke.] yes? sir george. we are glad to be able to give a most favourable report. i may say that mr cleeve has never appeared to be in better health. agnes. [drawing a deep breath.] he will be very much cheered by what you say. sir george. [bowing stiffly.] i'm glad-- agnes. his illness left him with a morbid, irrational impression that he would never be his former self again. sir george. a nervous man recovering from a scare. i've helped remove that impression i believe. agnes. thank you. we have a troublesome, perhaps a hard time before us; we both need all our health and spirits. [turning her head, listening.] lucas? [lucas enters the room. he is a handsome, intellectual-looking young man of about eight-and-twenty.] lucas. [to agnes, excitedly.] have you heard what they say of me? agnes. [smiling.] yes. lucas. how good of you, sir george, to break up your little holiday for the sake of an anxious, fidgety fellow. [to agnes.] isn't it? agnes. sir george has rendered us a great service. lucas. [going to kirke, brightly.] yes, and proved how ungrateful i've been to you, doctor. kirke. don't apologise. people who don't know when they're well are the mainstay of my profession. [offering snuff-box.] here--[lucas takes a pinch of snuff, laughingly.] agnes. [in a low voice to sir george.] he has been terribly hipped at times. [taking up the vase of flowers from the table.] your visit will have made him another man. [she goes to a table, puts down the vase upon the tray, and commences to cut and arrange the fresh flowers she finds there.] lucas. [seeing that agnes is out of hearing.] excuse me, kirke--just for one moment. [to sir george.] sir george--[kirke joins agnes.] you still go frequently to great cumberland place? sir george. your mother's gout has been rather stubborn lately. lucas. very likely she and my brother sandford will get to hear of your visit to me here; in that case you'll be questioned pretty closely, naturally. sir george. my position is certainly a little delicate. lucas. oh you may be perfectly open with my people as to my present mode of life. only--[he motions sir george to be seated; they sit facing each other.] only i want you hear me declare again plainly [looking towards agnes] that but for the care and devotion of that good woman over there, but for the solace of that woman's companionship, i should have been dead months ago--i should have died raving in my awful bedroom on the ground floor of that foul roman hotel. malarial fever, of course! doctors don't admit--do they?--that it's possible for strong men to die of miserable marriages. and yet i was dying in rome, i truly believe, from my bitter, crushing disappointment, from the consciousness of my wretched, irretrievable--[fortune enters, carrying lucas' hat, gloves, overcoat, and silk wrap, and upon a salver, a bottle of medicine and a glass.] lucas. [sharply.] qu'y a-t-il, fortune? fortune. sir, you have an appointment. lucas. [rising.] at the danieli at eleven. is it so late? [fortune places the things upon the table. lucas puts the wrap around his throat; agnes goes to him and arranges it for him solicitously.] sir george. [rising.] i have to meet lady brodrick at the piazzetta. let me take you in my gondola. lucas. thanks--delighted. agnes. [to sir george.] i would rather lucas went in the house gondola; i know its cushions are dry. may he take you to the piazetta? sir george. [a little stiffly.] certainly. agnes. [to fortune.] mettez les coussins dans la gondole. fortune. bien, madame. [fortune goes out. agnes begins to measure a dose of medicine.] sir george. [to agnes.] er--i--ah-- lucas. [putting on his gloves.] agnes, sir george-- agnes. [turning to sir george, the bottle and glass in her hands.] yes? sir george. [constrainedly.] we always make a point of acknowledging the importance of nursing as an aid to medical treatment. i--i am sure mr. cleeve owes you much in that respect. agnes. thank you. sir george. [to lucas.] i have to discharge my gondola; you'll find me at the steps, cleeve. [agnes shifts the medicine bottle from one hand to the other so that her right hand may be free, but sir george simply bows in a formal way and moves towards the door.] you are coming with us, kirke? kirke. yes. sir george. do you mind seeing that i'm not robbed by my gondolier? [he goes out.] agnes. [giving the medicine to lucas, undisturbed.] here, dear. kirke. [to agnes.] may i pop in tonight for my game of chess? agnes. do, doctor; i shall be very pleased. kirke. [shaking her hand in a marked way.] thank you. [he follows sir george.] agnes. [looking after him.] liberal little man. [she has lucas' overcoat in her hand: a small pen-and-ink drawing of a woman's hand drops from one of the pockets. they pick it up together.] agnes. isn't that the sketch you made of me in florence? lucas. [replacing it in the coat-pocket.] yes. agnes. you are carrying it about with you? lucas. i slipped it into my pocket, thinking it might interest the duke. agnes. [assisting him with his overcoat.] surely i am too obnoxious in the abstract for your uncle to entertain such a detail as a portrait. lucas. it struck me that it might serve to correct certain preconceived notions of my people's. agnes. images of a beautiful temptress with peach-blossomed cheeks and stained hair? lucas. that's what i mean; they suspect a decline of taste on my part, of that sort. good-bye, dear. agnes. is this mission of the duke of st olpherts the final attempt to part us, i wonder? [angrily, her voice hardening.] why should they harass and disturb you as they do? lucas. [kissing her.] nothing disturbs me now that i know i and strong and well. besides, everybody will soon tire of being shocked. even conventional morality must grow breathless in the chase. [he leaves her. she opens the other door and calls.] agnes. mrs. thorpe! i'm alone now. [she goes on to the balcony, through the centre window, and looks down below. gertrude enters, and joins her on the balcony.] gertrude. how well your husband is looking! agnes. sir george brodrick pronounces him quite recovered. gertrude. isn't that splendid! [waving her hand and calling.] buon giorno, signor cleeve! come molto meglio voi state! [leaving the balcony, laughing.] ha, ha! my italian! [agnes waves finally to the gondola below, returns to the room, and slips her arm through gertrude's.] agnes. two whole days since i've seen you. gertrude. they've been two of my bad days, dear. agnes. [looking into her face.] all right now? gertrude. oh, "god's in his heaven" this morning! when the sun's out i feel that my little boy's bed in ketherick cemetery is warm and cosy. agnes. [patting gertrude's hand] ah!-- gertrude. the weather's the same all over europe, according to the papers. do you think it's really going to last? to me these chilly, showery nights are terrible. you know, i still tuck my child up at night-time; still have my last peep at him before going to my own bed; and it is awful to listen to these cold rains--drip, drip, upon that little green coverlet of his! [she goes and stands by the window silently.] agnes. this isn't strong of you, dear mrs. thorpe. you mustn't--you mustn't. [agnes brings the tray with the cut flowers to the nearer table; calmly and methodically she resumes trimming the stalks.] getrude. you're quite right. that's over. now, then, i'm going to gabble for five minutes gaily. [settling herself comfortably in an armchair.] what jolly flowers you've got there! what have you been doing with yourself? amos took me to the caffe quadri yesterday to late breakfast, to cheer me up. oh, i've something to say to you! at the caffe, at the next table to ours, there were three english people--two men and a girl--home from india, i gathered. one of the men was looking out of the window, quizzing the folks walking in the piazza, and suddenly he caught sight of your husband. [agnes' hands pause in their work.] "i do believe that's lucas cleeve," he said. and then the girl had a peep, and said "certainly it is." and the man said: "i must find out where he's stopping; if minerva is with him, you must call." "who's minerva?" said the second man. "minerva is mrs. lucas cleeve," the girl said, "it's a pet name--he married a chum of mine, a daughter of sir john steyning's a year or so after i went out." excuse me, dear. do these people really know you and your husband, or were they talking nonsense? [agnes takes the vase of faded flowers, goes onto the balcony, and empties the contents of the vase into the canal. then she stands by the window, her back towards gertrude.] agnes. no, they evidently know mr. cleeve. gertrude. your husband never calls you by that pet-name of yours. why is it you haven't told me you're a daughter of admiral steyning's? agnes. mrs thorpe-- gertrude. [warmly.] oh, i must say what i mean! i have often pulled myself up short in my gossips with you, conscious of a sort of wall between us. [agnes comes slowly from the window.] somehow, i feel now that you haven't in the least made a friend of me. i'm hurt. st's stupid of me; i can't help it. agnes. [after a moment's pause.] i am not the lady these people were speaking of yesterday. gertrude. not--? agnes. mr. cleeve is no longer with his wife; he has left her. gertrude. left--his wife! agnes. like yourself, i am a widow. i don't know whether you've ever heard my name--ebbsmith. [gertrude stares at her blankly.] i beg your pardon sincerely. i never meant to conceal my true position; such a course is opposed to every true principle of mind. but i grew so attached to you in florence and--well, it was contemptibly weak; i'll never do such a thing again. [she goes back to the table and commences to refill the vase with the fresh flowers.] gertrude. when you say that mr. cleeve has left his wife, i suppose you mean to tell me that you have taken her place? agnes. yes, i mean that. [gertrude rises and walks to the door.] gertrude [at the door.] you knew that i could not speak to you after hearing this? agnes. i thought it almost certain that you would not. [after a moment's irresolution, gertrude returns, and stands by the settee.] gertrude. i can hardly believe you. agnes. i should like you to hear more than just the bare fact. getrude. [drumming on the back of the settee.] why don't you tell me more? agnes. you were going, you know. gertrude. [sitting.] i won't go quite like that. please tell me. agnes. [calmly.] well--did you ever read of john thorold--"jack thorold, the demagogue?" [gertrude shakes her head.] i daresay not. john thorold, once a schoolmaster, was my father. in my time he used to write for the two or three, so-called, inflammatory journals, and hold forth in small lecture-halls, occasionally even from the top of a wooden stool in the park, upon trade and labour questions, division of wealth, and the rest of it. he believed in nothing that people who go to church are credited with believing in, mrs. thorpe; his scheme for the readjustment of things was force; his pet doctrine, the ultimate healthy healing that follows the surgery of revolution. but to me he was the gentlest creature imaginable; and i was very fond of him, in spite of his--as i then thought--strange ideas. strange ideas! ha! many of 'em luckily don't sound quite so irrational today! gertrude. [under her breath.] oh! agnes. my home was a wretched one. if dad was violent out of the house, mother was violent enough in it; with her it was rage, sulk, storm, from morning till night; till one day father turned a deaf ear to mother and died in his bed. that was my first intimate experience of the horrible curse that falls upon so many. gertrude. curse? agnes. the curse of unhappy marriage. though really i'd looked on little else all my life. most of our married friends were cursed in a like way; and i remember taking an oath, when i was a mere child, that nothing should ever push me over into the choked-up, seething pit. fool! when i was nineteen i was gazing like a pet sheep into a man's eyes; and one morning i was married, at st. andrew's church in holborn, to mr. ebbsmith, a barrister. gertrude. in church? agnes. yes, in church--in church. in spite of father's unbelief and mother's indifference, at the time i married i was as simple--ay, in my heart, as devout--as any girl in a parsonage. the other thing hadn't soaked into me. whenever i could escape from our stifling rooms at home, and slam the front door behind me, the air blew away uncertainty and scepticism; i seemed only to have to take a long, deep breath to be full of hope and faith. and it was like this till that man married me. gertrude. of course, i guess your marriage was an unfortunate one. agnes. it lasted eight years. for about twelve months he treated me like a woman in a harem, for the rest of the time like a beast of burden. oh! when i think of it! [wiping her brow with her handkerchief.] phew! gertrude. it changed you? agnes. oh, yes, it changed me. gertrude. you spoke of yourself just now as a widow. he's dead? agnes. he died on our wedding day--the eighth anniversary. gertrude. you were free then--free to begin again. agnes. eh? [looking at gertrude.] yes; but you don't begin to believe all over again. [she gathers up the stalks of the flowers from the tray, and, kneeling, crams them into the stove.] however, this is an old story. i'm thirty-three now. gertrude. [hesitatingly.] you and mr. cleeve--? agnes. we've known each other since last november--no longer. six years of my life unaccounted for, eh? well, for a couple of years or so i was lecturing. gertrude. lecturing? agnes. ah, i'd become an out-and-out child of my father by that time-- spouting, perhaps you'd call it, standing on the identical little platforms he used to speak from, lashing abuses with my tongue as he had done. oh, and i was fond, too, of warning women. gertrude. against what? agnes. falling into the pit. gertrude. marriage? agnes. the chocked-up, seething pit--until i found my bones almost through my skin and my voice too weak to travel across a room. gertrude. from what cause? agnes. starvation, my dear. so, after lying in a hospital for a month or two, i took up nursing for a living. last november i was sent for by dr. bickerstaff to go through to rome to look after a young man who'd broken down there, and who declined to send for his friends. my patient was mr. cleeve--[taking up the tray]--and that's where his fortunes join mine. [she crosses the room, and puts the tray upon the cabinet.] gertrude. and yet, judging from what that girl said yesterday, mr. cleeve married quite recently? agnes. less than three years ago. men don't suffer as patiently as women. in many respects his marriage story is my own, reversed--the man in place of the woman. i endured my hell, though; he broke the gates of his. gertrude. i have often seen mr. cleeve's name in the papers. his future promised to be brilliant, didn't it? agnes. [tidying the table, folding the newspapers, &c.] there's a great career for him still. gertrude. in parliament--now? agnes. no, he abandons that, and devotes himself to writing. we shall write much together, urging our views on this subject of marriage. we shall have to be poor, i expect, but we shall be content. gertrude. content! agnes. quite content. don't judge us by my one piece of cowardly folly in keeping the truth from you, mrs. thorpe, indeed, it's our great plan to live the life we have mapped out for ourselves, fearlessly, openly; faithful to each other, helpful to each other, so long as we remain together. gertrude. but tell me--you don't know how i--how i have liked you!-- tell me, if mr. cleeve's wife divorces him, he will marry you? agnes. no. gertrude. no! agnes. no. i haven't made you quite understand--lucas and i don't desire to marry, in your sense. gertrude. but you are devoted to each other! agnes. thoroughly. gertrude. what, is that the meaning of "for as long as you are together?" you would go your different ways if ever you found that one of you was making the other unhappy? agnes. i do mean that. we remain together only to help, to heal, to console. why should men and women be so eager to grant to each other the power of wasting life? that is what marriage gives--the right to destroy years and years of life. and the right, once given, it attracts --attracts! we have both suffered from it. so many rich years out of my life have been squandered by it. and out of his life, so much force, energy--spent in battling with the shrew, the termagant he has now fled from; strength never to be replenished, never to be repaid--all wasted, wasted! gertrude. your legal marriage with him might not bring further miseries. agnes. too late! we have done with marriage; we distrust it. we are not now among those who regard marriage as indispensable to union. we have done with it! gertrude. [advancing to her.] you know that it would be impossible for me, if i would do so, to deceive my brother as to all this. agnes. why, of course, dear. gertrude. [looking at her watch.] amos must be wondering-- agnes. run away, then. [gertrude crosses quickly to the door.] gertrude [retracing a step or two.] shall i see you--? oh! agnes. [shaking her head.] ah! gertrude. [going to her, constrainedly.] when amos and i have talked this over, perhaps--perhaps-- agnes. no, i fear not. come, my dear friend--[with a smile]--give me a shake of the hand. gertrude. [taking her hand.] what you've told me is dreadful. [looking into agnes' face.] and yet you're not a wicked woman! [kissing agnes.] in case we don't meet again. [the women separate quickly, looking towards the door, as lucas enters.] lucas. [shaking hands with gertrude.] how do you do, mrs thorpe? i've just had a wave of the hand from your brother. gertrude. where is he? lucas. on his back in a gondola, a pipe in his mouth as usual, gazing skywards. [going on to the balcony.] he's within hail. [gertrude goes quickly to the door, followed by agnes.] there! by the palazzo sforza. [he re-enters the room; gertrude has disappeared. he is going towards the door.] let me get hold of him, mrs. thorpe. agnes. [standing before lucas, quietly] she knows, lucas, dear. lucas. does she? agnes. she overheard some gossip at the caffe quadri yesterday, and began questioning me; so i told her. lucas. [taking off his coat.] adieu to them, then--eh? agnes. [assisting him.] adieu. lucas. i intended to write to the brother directly they had left venice, to explain. agnes. your describing me as "mrs. cleeve" at the hotel in florence helped to lead us into this; after we move from here i must always be, frankly, "mrs. ebbsmith." lucas. these were decent people. you and she had formed quite an attachment? agnes. yes. [she places his coat, &c. on a chair, then fetches her work-basket from the cabinet.] lucas. there's something of the man in your nature, agnes. agnes. i've anathematised my womanhood often enough. [she sits at the table, taking out her work composedly.] lucas. not that every man possesses the power you have acquired--the power of going through life with compressed lips. agnes. [looking up, smiling.] a propos? lucas. these people--this woman you've been so fond of. you see them shrink away with the utmost composure. agnes. [threading a needle.] you forget, dear, that you and i have prepared ourselves for a good deal of this sort of thing. lucas. certainly, but at the moment-- agnes. one must take care that the regret lasts no longer than a moment. have you seen your uncle? lucas. a glimpse. he hadn't long risen. agnes. he adds sluggishness to other vices, then? lucas. [lighting a cigarette.] he greeted me through six inches of open door. his toilet has its mysteries. agnes. a stormy interview? lucas. the reverse. he grasped my hand warmly, declared i looked the picture of health, and said it was evident i had been most admirably nursed. agnes. [frowning.] that's a strange utterance. but he's an eccentric, isn't he? lucas. no man has ever been quite satisfied as to whether his oddities are ingrained or affected. agnes. no man. what about women? lucas. ho! they have had opportunities of closer observation. agnes. hah! and they report--? lucas. nothing. they become curiously reticent. agnes. [scornfully, as she is cutting a thread.] these noblemen! lucas. [taking a packet of letters from his pocket.] finally, he presented me with these, expressed a hope that he'd see much of me during the week, and dismissed me with a fervent god bless you! agnes. [surprised.] he remains here, then? lucas. it seems so. agnes. what are those, dear? lucas. the duke has made himself the bearer of some letters, from friends. i've only glanced at them: reproaches--appeals-- agnes. yes, i understand. [he sits looking through the letters impatiently, then tearing them up and throwing the pieces upon the table.] lucas. lord warminster--my godfather: "my dear boy, for god's sake--!" [tearing up the letter and reading another.] sir charles littlecote: "your brilliant future . . . blasted . . ." [another letter.] lord froom: "promise of a useful political career unfulfilled . . . cannot an old friend . . . ?" [another letter.] edith heytesbury. i didn't notice a woman had honoured me. [in an undertone.] edie--![slipping the letter into his pocket and opening another.] jack brophy: "your great career--" major leete: "your career--" [destroying the rest of the letters without reading them.] my career! my career! that's the chorus, evidently. well, there goes my career! [she lays her work aside and goes to him.] agnes. your career? [pointing to the destroyed letters.] true that one is over. but there's the other, you know--ours. lucas. [touching her hand.] yes, yes, still, it's just a little saddening, the saying good-bye--[disturbing the scraps of paper]--to all this. agnes. saddening, dear? why, this political career of yours--think what it would have been at best? accident of birth sent you to the wrong side of the house; influence of family would always have kept you there. lucas. [partly to himself.] but i made my mark. i did make my mark. agnes. supporting the party that retards; the party that preserves for the rich, palters with the poor. [pointing to the letters again.] oh, there's not much to mourn for there! lucas. still, it was--success. agnes. success! lucas. i was talked about, written about, as a coming man--the coming man! agnes. how many "coming men" has one known? where on earth do they all go to? lucas. ah, yes, but i allowed for the failure, and carefully set myself to discover the causes of them. and, as i put my fingers upon the causes and examined them, i congratulated myself and said "well, i haven't that weak point in my armour, or that;" and agnes, at last i was fool enough to imagine i had no weak point, none whatever. agnes. it was weak enough to believe that. lucas. i couldn't foresee that i was doomed to pay the price all nervous men pay for success; that the greater my success became, the more cancer-like grew the fear of never being able to continue it, to excel it; that the triumph of today was always to be the torture of tomorrow! oh, agnes, the agony of success to a nervous, sensitive man; the dismal apprehension that fills his life and gives each victory a voice to cry out "hear, hear! bravo, bravo, bravo! but this is to be your last--you'll never overtop it!" ha, yes! i soon found out the weak spot in my armour--the need of constant encouragement, constant reminder of my powers; [taking her hand] the need of that subtle sympathy which a sacrificing, unselfish woman alone possesses the secret of. [rising.] well, my very weakness might have been a source of greatness if, three years ago, it had been to such a woman that i had bound myself--a woman of your disposition; instead of to--! ah! [she lays her hand upon his arm soothingly.] lucas. yes, yes. [taking her in his arms.] i know i have such a companion now. agnes. yes--now-- lucas. you must be everything to me, agnes--a double faculty, as it were. when my confidence in myself is shaken, you must try to keep the consciousness of my poor powers alive in me. agnes. i shall not fail you in that, lucas. lucas. and yet, whenever disturbing recollections come uppermost; when i catch myself mourning for those lost opportunities of mine; it is your love that must grant me oblivion--[kissing her upon the lips]-- your love! [she makes no response, and after a pause gently releases herself and retreats a step or two.] lucas. [his eyes following her.] agnes, you seem to me to be changing towards me, growing colder to me. at times you seem positively to shrink from me. i don't understand it. yesterday i thought i saw you look at me as if i--frightened you! agnes. lucas--lucas dear, for some weeks, now, i've wanted to say this to you. lucas. what? agnes. don't you think that such a union as ours would be much braver, much more truly courageous, if it could but be--be-- lucas. if it could but be--what? agnes. [averting her eyes.] devoid of passion, if passion had no share in it. lucas. surely this comes a little late, agnes, between you and me. agnes. [leaning upon the back of a chair, staring before her and speaking in a low, steady voice.] what has been was inevitable, i suppose. still, we have hardly yet set foot upon the path we've agreed to follow. it is not too late for us, in our own lives, to pit the highest interpretation upon that word--love. think of the inner sustaining power it would give us! [more forcibly.] we agree to go through the world together, preaching the lesson taught us by our experiences. we cry out to all people, "look at us! man and woman who are in the bondage of neither law nor ritual! linked simply by mutual trust! man and wife, but something better than man and wife! friends, but even something better than friends!" i say there is that which is noble, finely defiant, in the future we have mapped out for ourselves, if only--if only-- lucas. yes? agnes. [turning from him.] if only it could be free from passion! lucas. [in a low voice.] yes, but--is that possible? agnes. [in the same tone, watching him askance, a frightened look in her eyes.] why not? lucas. young man and woman . . . you and love . . . ? scarcely upon this earth, my dear agnes, such a life as you have pictured. agnes. i say it can be, it can be--! [fortune enters, carrying a letter upon a salver, and a beautiful bouquet of white flowers. he hands the note to lucas.] lucas. [taking the note, glancing at agnes.] eh! [to fortune, pointing to the bouquet.] qu'avez-vous la? fortune. ah, excuse. [presenting the bouquet to agnes.] wiz compliment. [agnes takes the bouquet wonderingly.] tell madame ze duke of st olphert bring it in person, 'e says. lucas. [opening the note.] est-il parti? fortune. 'e did not get out of 'is gondola. lucas. bien. [fortune withdraws. reading the note aloud.] "while brushing my hair, my dear boy, i became possessed of a strong desire to meet the lady with whom you are now improving the shining hour. why the devil shouldn't i, if i want to. without prejudice, as my lawyer says, let me turn up this afternoon and chat pleasantly to her of shakespeare, also the musical glasses. pray hand her this flag of truce --i mean my poor bunch of flowers--and believe me yours, with a touch of gout, st. olpherts." [indignantly crushing the note.] ah! agnes. [frowning at the flowers.] a taste of the oddities, i suppose? lucas. he is simply making sport of us. [going on to the balcony, and looking out.] there he is. damn that smile of his! agnes. where? [she joins him.] lucas. with the two gondoliers. agnes. why--that's a beautiful face! how strange! lucas. [drawing her back into the room.] come away. he is looking up at us. agnes. are you sure he sees us? lucas. he did. agnes. he will want an answer--[she deliberately flings the bouquet over the balcony into the canal, then returns to the table and picks up her work.] lucas. [looking out again cautiously.] he throws his head back and laughs heartily. [re-entering the room.] oh, of course, his policy is to attempt to laugh me out of my resolves. they send him here merely to laugh at me, agnes, to laugh at me--[coming to agnes angrily.] laugh at me! agnes. he must be a man of small resources. [threading her needle.] it is so easy to mock. end of the first act the second act the scene is the same as that of the previous act. through the windows some mastheads and flapping sails are seen in the distance. the light is that of late afternoon. agnes, very plainly dressed, is sitting at the table, industriously copying from a manuscript. after a moment or two, antonio and nella enter the room, carrying a dressmaker's box, which is corded and labelled. nella. e permess, signora (permit us, signora.) antonio. uno scatolone per la signora (am enormous box for the signora.) agnes. [turning her head.] eh? nella. e venuto colla ferrovia--(it has come by the railway--) antonio. [consulting the label.] da'firenze. (from florence.) agnes. by railway, from florence? nella [reading from the label.] "emilia bardini, via rondinelli." agnes. bardini? that's the dressmaker. there must be some mistake. non e per me, nella. (it isn't for me, nella.) [antonio and nella carry the box to her animatedly.] nella. ma guardi, signora! (but look, signora!) antonio. alla signora cleeve! nella. e poi abbiamo pagato il porto della ferrovia. (besides, we have paid the railway dues upon it.) agnes. [collecting her sheets of paper.] hush, hush! don't trouble me just now. mettez-la n'importe ou. [they place the box upon another table.] nella. la corda intaccherebbe la forbice della signora. vuole che antonio la tagli. (the cord would blunt the signora's scissors. shall antonio cut the cord?) agnes. [pinning her sheets of paper together.] i'll see about it bye and bye. laissez-moi! nella. [softly to antonio.] taglia, taglia! (cut, cut!) [antonio cuts the cord, whereupon nella utters a little scream.] agnes. [turning, startled.] what is it? nella. [pushing antonio away.] questo stupido non ha caoito la signora e ha tagliata la corda. (the stupid fellow misunderstood the signora, and has severed the cord.) agnes. [rising.] it doesn't matter. be quiet! nella. [removing the lid from the box angrily.] ed ecco la scatola aperta contro voglia della signora! (and now here is the box open against the signora's wish) [inquisitively pushing aside the paper which covers the contents of the box.] o dio! si vede tutto quel che vi e! (o god! and all the contents exposed!) [when the paper is removed, some beautiful material trimmed with lace, &c., is seen.] nella. guardi, guardi, signora! (signora, look, look!) [agnes examines the contents of the box with a puzzled air.] oh, che bellezza! (how beautiful!) antonio. [to nella.] il padrone. (the master.) [nella curtsies to lucas, then withdraws with antonio.] agnes. lucas, the dressmaker in the via rondinelli at florence--the woman who ran up the little gown i have on now-- lucas. [with a smile] what of her? agnes. this has just come from her. phuh! what does she mean by sending that showy thing to me? lucas. it is my gift to you. agnes. [producing enough of the contents of the box to reveal a very handsome dress.] this! lucas. i knew bardini had your measurements; i wrote to her, instructing her to make that. i remember lady heytesbury in something similar last season. agnes. [examining the dress.] a mere strap for the sleeve, and sufficiently decolletee, i should imagine. lucas. my dear agnes, i can't understand your reason fro trying to make yourself a plain-looking woman when nature intended you for a pretty one. agnes. pretty! lucas. [looking hard at her.] you are pretty. agnes. oh, as a girl i may have been--[disdainfully]--pretty. what good did it do anybody? [fingering the dress with aversion.] and when would you have me hang this on my bones? lucas. oh, when we are dining, or-- agnes. dining in a public place? lucas. why not look your best in a public place? agnes. look my best? you know, i don't think of this sort of garment in connection with our companionship, lucas. lucas. it is not an extraordinary garment for a lady. agnes. rustle of silk, glare of arms and throat--they belong, to my mind, to such a very different order of things from that we have set up. lucas. shall i appear before you in ill-made clothes, clumsy boots-- agnes. why? we are just as we have always been, since we've been together. i don't tell you that your appearance is beginning to offend. lucas. offend! agnes, you--you pain me. i simply fail to understand why you should allow our mode of life to condemn you to perpetual slovenliness. agnes. slovenliness! lucas. no, no, shabbiness. agnes. [looking down upon the dress she is wearing.] shabbiness! lucas. [with a laugh.] forgive me, dear; i'm forgetting you are wearing a comparatively new afternoon-gown. agnes. at any rate, i'll make this brighter tomorrow with some trimmings willingly. [pointing to the dressmaker's box.] then you won't insist on my decking myself out in rags of that kind--eh! there's something in the idea--i needn't explain. lucas. [fretfully.] insist! i'll not urge you again. [pointing to the box.] get rid of it somehow. are you copying that manuscript of mine? agnes. i had just finished it. lucas. already! [taking up her copy.] how beautifully you write! [going to her eagerly.] what do you think of my essay? agnes. it bristles with truth; it is vital. lucas. my method of treating it? agnes. hardly a word out of place. lucas [chilled.] hardly a word? agnes. not a word, in fact. lucas. no, dear, i daresay your "hardly" is nearer the mark. agnes. i assure you it is brilliant, lucas. lucas. what a wretch i am ever to find the smallest fault in you! shall we dine out tonight? agnes. as you wish, dear. lucas. at the grunwald? [he goes to the table to pick up his manuscript; when his back is turned she looks at her watch quickly.] we'll solemnly toast this, shall we, in montefiascone? agnes. [eyeing him askance.] you are going out for your chocolate this afternoon as usual, i suppose? lucas. yes, but i'll look through your copy first, so that i can slip it into the post at once. you are not coming out? agnes. not till dinner-time. lucas. [kissing her on the forehead.] i talked over the points of this --[tapping the manuscript]--with a man this morning; he praised some of the phrases warmly. agnes. a man? [in an altered tone.] the duke? lucas. er--yes. agnes. [with assumed indifference, replacing the lid on the dressmaker's box.] you have seen him again today, then? lucas. we strolled about together for half an hour on the piazza. agnes. [replacing the cord round the box.] you--you don't dislike him as much as you did? lucas. he's someone to chat to. i suppose one gets accustomed even to a man one dislikes. agnes. [almost inaudibly.] i suppose so. lucas. as a matter of fact, he has the reputation of being rather a pleasant companion; though i--i confess--i--i don't find him very entertaining. [he goes out. she stands staring at the door through which he has disappeared. there is a knock at the opposite door.] agnes. [rousing herself.] fortune! [raising her voice.] fortune! [the door opens, and gertrude enters hurriedly.] gertrude. fortune is complacently smoking a cigarette in the campo. agnes. mrs. thorpe! gertrude. [breathlessly.] mr cleeve is out, i conclude? agnes. no. he is later than usual going out this afternoon. gertrude. [irresolutely.] i don't think i'll wait, then. agnes. but do tell me: you have been crossing the streets to avoid me during the past week; what has made you come to see me now? gertrude. i would come. i've given poor amos the slip; he believes i am buying beads for the ketherick school-children. agnes. [shaking her head.] ah, mrs. thorpe!-- gertrude. of course, it's perfectly brutal to be underhanded. but we're leaving for home tomorrow; i couldn't resist it. agnes. [coldly.] perhaps i'm very ungracious-- gertrude. [taking agnes' hand.] the fact is, mrs. cleeve--oh, what do you wish me to call you? agnes. [withdrawing her hand.] well--you're off tomorrow. agnes will do. getrude. thank you. the fact is, it's been a bad week with me-- restless, fanciful. and i haven't been able to get you out of my head. agnes. i'm sorry. gertrude. your story, your present life; you, yourself--such a contradiction to what you profess! well, it all has a sort of fascination for me. agnes. my dear, you're simply not sleeping again. [turning away.] you'd better go back to the ammonia kirke prescribed for you. gertrude. [taking a card from her purse, with a little, light laugh.] you want to physic me, do you, after worrying my poor brain as you've done? [going to her.] "the rectory, daleham, ketherick moor." yorkshire, you know. there can be no great harm in your writing to me sometimes. agnes [refusing the card.] no; under the circumstances i can't promise that. gertrude. [wistfully.] very well. agnes. [facing her.] oh, can't you understand that it can only be-- disturbing to both of us for an impulsive, emotional creature like yourself to keep up acquaintanceship with a woman who takes life as i do? we'll drop each other, leave each other alone. [she walks away, and stands leaning upon the stove, her back towards gertrude.] gertrude. [replacing the card in her purse.] as you please. picture me, sometimes, in that big, hollow shell of a rectory at ketherick, strolling about my poor dead little chap's empty room. agnes. [under her breath.] oh! gertrude. [turning to go.] god bless you. agnes. gertrude! [with altered manner.] you--you have the trick of making me lonely also. [going to gertrude, taking her hands and fondling them.] i'm tired of talking to the walls! and your blood is warm to me! shall i tell you, or not--or not? gertrude. do tell me. agnes. there is a man here, in venice, who is torturing me--flaying me alive. gertrude. torturing you? agnes. he came here about a week ago; he is trying to separate us. gertrude. you and mr. cleeve? agnes. yes. gertrude. you are afraid he will succeed? agnes. succeed! what nonsense you talk! gertrude. what upsets you, then? agnes. after all, it's difficult to explain--the feeling is so indefinite. it's like--something in the air. this man is influencing us both oddly. lucas is as near illness again as possible; i can hear his nerves vibrating. and i--you know what a fish-like thing i am as a rule--just look at me now, as i'm speaking to you. gertrude. but don't you and mr. cleeve--talk to each other? agnes. as children do when the lights are put out--of everything but what's uppermost in their minds. gertrude. you have met the man? agnes. i intend to meet him. gertrude. who is he? agnes. a relation of lucas's--the duke of st. olpherts gertrude. he has right on his side, then? agnes. if you choose to think so. gertrude. supposing he does succeed in taking mr. cleeve away from you? agnes. [staring at gertrude.] what, now, do you mean? gertrude. yes. [there is a brief pause; then agnes walks across the room, wiping her brow with her handkerchief.] agnes. i tell you, that idea's--preposterous. gertrude. oh, i can't understand you. agnes. you'll respect my confidence? gertrude. agnes! agnes. [sitting.] well, i fancy this man's presence here has simply started me thinking of a time--oh, it may never come!--a time when i may cease to be--necessary to mr. cleeve. do you understand? gertrude. i remember what you told me of your being prepared to grant each other freedom if-- agnes. yes, yes; and for the past few days this idea has filled me with a fear of the most humiliating kind. gertrude. what fear? agnes. the fear lest, after all my beliefs and protestations, i should eventually find myself loving lucas in the helpless, common way of women-- gertrude. [under her breath.] i see. agnes. the dread that the moment may arrive some day when should it be required of me, i shan't feel myself able to give him up easily. [her head drooping, uttering a low moan.] oh!-- [lucas, dressed for going out, enters, carrying agnes's copy of his manuscript, rolled and addressed for the post. agnes rises.] agnes. [to lucas.] mrs. thorpe starts for home tomorrow; she has called to say good-bye. lucas. [to gertrude.] it is very kind. is your brother quite well? gertrude. [embarrassed.] thanks: quite. lucas. [smiling.] i believe i have added to his experience of the obscure corners of venice during the past week. gertrude. i--i don't--why? lucas. by so frequently putting him to the inconvenience of avoiding me. gertrude. oh, mr. cleeve, we--i--i-- lucas. please tell your brother that i asked after him. gertrude. i--i can't; he--doesn't know i've--i've-- lucas. ah! really? [with a bow.] good-bye. [he goes out, agnes accompanying him to the door.] gertrude. [to herself.] brute! [to agnes.] oh, i suppose mr. cleeve has made me look precisely as i feel. agnes. how? gertrude. like people deserve to feel who do godly, mean things. [fortune appears.] fortune. [to agnes, significantly.] mr. cleeve 'as jus' gone out. agnes. vous savez, n'est-ce pas? fortune. [glancing at gertrude.] but madame is now engage. gertrude. [to agnes.] oh, i am going. agnes. [to gertrude.] wait. [softly to her.] i want you to hear this little comedy. fortune shall repeat my instructions. [to fortune.] les ordres que je vous ai donnes, repetez-les. fortune. [speaking in an undertone.] on ze left 'and side of ze campo-- agnes. non, non--tout haut. fortune. [aloud, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.] on ze left 'and side of ze campo-- agnes. yes. fortune. in one of ze doorways between fiorentini's and ze leetle lamp-shop--ze--ze--h'm--ze person. agnes. precisely. depechez-vous. [fortune bows and retires.] fortune flatters himself he is engaged in some horrid intrigue. you guess whom i am expecting? gertrude. the duke? agnes. [ringing a bell.] i've written to him asking him to call upon me this afternoon while lucas is at florian's. [referring to her watch.] he is to kick his heels about the campo till i let him know i am alone. gertrude. will he obey you? agnes. a week ago he was curious to see the sort of animal i am. if he holds off now, i'll hit upon some other plan. i will come to close quarters with him, if only for five minutes. gertrude. good-bye. [they embrace, then walk together to the door.] you still refuse my address? agnes. you bat! didn't you see me make a note of it? gertrude. you! agnes. [her hand on her heart.] here. gertrude. [gratefully.] ah! [she goes out.] agnes. [at the open door.] gertrude! gertrude. [outside.] yes? agnes. [in a low voice.] remember, in my thoughts i pace that lonely little room of yours with you. [as if to stop gertrude from re-entering.] hush! no, no. [she closes the door sharply. nella appears.] agnes. [pointing to the box on the table.] portez ce carton dans ma chambre. nella. [trying to peep into the box as she carries it.] signora, se ella si mettesse questo magnifico abito! oh! quanto sarebbe piu bella! (signora, if you were to wear this magnificent dress, oh how much more beautiful you would be!) agnes. sssh! sssh! [nella goes out. fortune enters.] eh, bien? [fortune glances over his shoulder. the duke of st. olpherts enters; the wreck of a very handsome man, with delicate features, a polished manner, and a smooth, weary voice. he limps, walking with the aid of a cane. fortune retires.] agnes. duke of st. olpherts? st. olpherts. [bowing.] mrs. ebbsmith? agnes. mr. cleeve would have opposed this rather out-of-the-way proceeding of mine. he doesn't know i have asked you to call on me today. st. olpherts. so i conclude. it gives our meeting a pleasant air of adventure. agnes. i shall tell him directly he returns. st. olpherts. [gallantly.] and destroy a cherished secret. agnes. you are an invalid. [motioning him to be seated.] pray don't stand. [sitting.] your grace is a man who takes life lightly. it will relieve you to hear that i wish to keep sentiment out of any business we have together. st. olpherts. i believe i haven't the reputation of being a sentimental man. [seating himself.] you send for me, mrs. ebbsmith-- agnes. to tell you i have come to regard the suggestion you were good enough to make a week ago-- st. olpherts. suggestion? agnes. shakespeare, the musical glasses, you know-- st. olpherts. oh, yes. ha! ha! agnes. i've come to think it a reasonable one. at the moment i considered it a gross impertinence. st. olpherts. written requests are so dependent on a sympathetic reader. agnes. that meeting might have saved you time and trouble. st. olpherts. i grudge neither. agnes. it might perhaps have shown your grace that your view of life is too narrow; that your method of dealing with its problems wants variety; that, in point of fact, your employment upon your present mission is distinctly inappropriate. our meeting today may serve the same purpose. st. olpherts. my view of life? agnes. that all men and women may safely be judged by the standards of the casino and the dancing-garden. st. olpherts. i have found those standards not altogether untrustworthy. my method--? agnes. to scoff, to sneer, to ridicule. st. olpherts. ah! and how much is there, my dear mrs. ebbsmith, belonging to humanity that survives being laughed at? agnes. more than you credit, duke. for example, i--i think it possible you may not succeed in grinning away the compact between mr. cleeve and myself? st. olpherts. compact? agnes. between serious man and woman. st. olpherts. serious woman. agnes. ah! at least you must see that--serious woman. [rising, facing him.] you can't fail to realise, even from this slight personal knowledge of me, that you are not dealing just now with some poor, feeble ballet-girl. st. olpherts. but how well you put it! [rising.] and how frank of you to furnish, as it were, a plan of the fortifications to the--the-- agnes. why do you stick at "enemy"? st. olpherts. it's not the word. opponent! for the moment, perhaps, opponent. i am never an enemy, i hope, where your sex is concerned. agnes. no, i am aware that you are not over-nice in the bestowal of your patronage--where my sex is concerned. st. olpherts. you regard my appearance in an affair of morals as a quaint one? agnes. your grace is beginning to know me. st. olpherts. dear lady, you take pride, i hear, in belonging to--the people. you would delight me amazingly by giving me an inkling of the popular notion of my career. agnes. [walking away.] excuse me. st. olpherts. [following her.] please! it would be instructive, perhaps chastening. i entreat. agnes. no. st olpherts. you are letting sentiment intrude itself. [sitting, in pain.] i challenge you. agnes. at eton you were curiously precocious. the head-master, referring to your aptitude with books, prophesied a brilliant future for you; your tutor, alarmed by your attachment to a certain cottage at ascot which was minus a host, thanked his stars to be rid of you. at oxford you closed all books, except, of course, betting-books. st. olpherts. i detected the tendency of the age--scholarship for the masses. i considered it my turn to be merely intuitively intelligent. agnes. you left oxford a gambler and a spendthrift. a year or two in town established you as an amiable, undisguised debauchee. the rest is modern history. st. olpherts. complete your sketch. don't stop at the--rude outline. agnes. your affairs falling into disorder, you promptly married a wealthy woman--the poor, rich lady who has for some years honoured you by being your duchess at a distance. this burlesque of a marriage helped to reassure your friends, and actually obtained for you an ornamental appointment for which an over-taxed nation provides a handsome stipend. but, to sum up, you must always remain an irritating source of uneasiness to your own order, as, luckily, you will always be a sharp-edged weapon in the hands of mine. st. olpherts. [with a polite smile.] yours! ah, to that small, unruly section to which i understand you particularly attach yourself. to the-- agnes. [with changed manner, flashing eyes, harsh voice, and violent gestures.] the sufferers, the toilers; that great crowd of old and young--old and young stamped by excessive labour and privation all of one pattern--whose backs bend under burdens, whose bones ache and grow awry, whose skins, in youth and in age, are wrinkled and yellow; those from whom a fair share of the earth's space and of the light of day is withheld. [looking down at him fiercely.] the half-starved who are bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel to watch gay processions in which you and your kind are borne high. those who would strip the robes from a dummy aristocracy and cast the broken dolls into the limbo of a nation's discarded toys. those who--mark me!--are already upon the highway, marching, marching; whose time is coming as surely as yours is going! st. olpherts. [clapping his hands gently.] bravo! bravo! really a flash of the old fire. admirable! [she walks away to the window with an impatient exclamation.] your present affaire du coeur does not wholly absorb you, then, mrs. ebbsmith. even now the murmurings of love have not entirely superseded the thunderous denunciations of--h'm--you once bore a nickname, my dear. agnes. [turning sharply.] ho! so you've heard that, have you? st. olpherts. oh, yes. agnes. mad--agnes? [he bows deprecatingly.] we appear to have studied each other's history pretty closely. st. olpherts. dear lady, this is not the first time the same roof has covered us. agnes. no? st. olpherts. five years ago, on a broiling night in july, i joined a party of men who made an excursion from a club-house in st james's street to the unsavoury district of st. luke's. agnes. oh, yes. st. olpherts. a depressin' building; the iron hall, barker street--no--carter street. agnes. precisely. st. olpherts. we took our places amongst a handful of frowsy folks who cracked nuts and blasphemed. on the platform stood a gaunt, white-faced young lady resolutely engaged in making up by extravagance of gesture for the deficiencies of an exhausted voice. "there," said one of my companions, "that is the notorious mrs. ebbsmith." upon which a person near us, whom i judged from his air of leaden laziness to be a british working man, blurted out, "notorious mrs. ebbsmith! mad agnes! that's the name her sanguinary friends give her--mad agnes!" at that moment the eye of the panting oratress caught mine for an instant, and you and i first met. agnes. [passing her hand across her brow, thoughtfully.] mad--agnes . . . [to him, with a grim smile.] we have both been criticised, in our time, pretty sharply, eh, duke? st. olpherts. yes. let that reflection make you more charitable to a poor peer. [a knock at the door.] agnes. entrez! [fortune and antonio enter, antonio carrying tea, &c., upon a tray.] agnes. [to st. olpherts.] you drink tea--fellow sufferer? [he signifies assent. fortune places the tray on the table, then withdraws with antonio. agnes pours out tea.] st. olpherts. [producing a little box from his waistcoat pocket.] no milk, dear lady. and may i be allowed--saccharine? [she hands him his cup of tea; their eyes meet.] agnes. [scornfully.] tell me now--really--why do the cleeves send a rip like you to do their serious work? st. olpherts. [laughing heartily.] ha, ha, ha! rip! ha, ha! poor solemn family! oh, set a thief to catch a thief, you know. that, i presume, is their motive. agnes. [pausing in the act of pouring out, and staring at him.] what do you mean? st olpherts. [sipping his tea.] set a thief to catch a thief. and by deduction, set one sensualist--who, after all, doesn't take the trouble to deceive himself--to rescue another who does. agnes. if i understand you, that is an insinuation against mr. cleeve. st. olpherts. insinuation!-- agnes. [looking at him fixedly.] make yourself clearer. st. olpherts. you have accused me, mrs. ebbsmith, of narrowness of outlook. in the present instance, dear lady, it is your judgement which is at fault. agnes. mine? st. olpherts. it is not i who fall into the error of confounding you with the designing danseuse of commerce; it is, strangely enough, you who have failed in your estimate of mr. lucas cleeve. agnes. what is my estimate? st. olpherts. i pay you the compliment of believing that you have looked upon my nephew as a talented young gentleman whose future was seriously threatened by domestic disorder; a young man of a certain courage and independence, with a share of the brain and spirit of those terrible human pests called reformers; the one gentleman, in fact, most likely to aid you in advancing your vivacious social and political tenets. you have such thoughts in your mind? agnes. i can't deny it. st. olpherts. ah! but what is the real, the actual lucas cleeve? agnes. well--what is the real lucas cleeve? st olpherts. poor dear fellow! i'll tell you. [going to the table to deposit his cup there; while she watches him, her hand tightly clasped, a frightened look in her eyes.] the real lucas cleeve. [coming back to her.] an egoist. an egoist. agnes. an egoist, yes. st. olpherts. possessing ambition without patience, self-esteem without self-confidence. agnes. well? st. olpherts. afflicted with a desperate craving for the opium-like drug, adulation; persistently seeking the society of those whose white, pink-tipped fingers fill the pernicious pipe most deftly and delicately. eh? agnes. i didn't--pray, go on. st. olpherts. ha! i remember they looked to his marriage to check his dangerous fancy for the flutter of lace, the purr of pretty women. and now, here, he is--loose again. agnes. [suffering.] oh!-- st. olpherts. in short, in intellect still nothing but a callow boy; in body, nervous, bloodless, hysterical; in morals--an epicure. agnes. have done! have done! st. olpherts. "epicure" offends you. a vain woman would find consolation in the word. agnes. enough of it! enough! enough! [she turns away, beating her hands together. the light in the room has gradually become subdued; the warm tinge of sunset now colours the scene outside the window.] st. olpherts. [with a shrug of his shoulders.] the real lucas cleeve. agnes. no, no! untrue, untrue! [lucas enters. the three remain silent for a moment.] the duke of st. olpherts calls in answer to a letter i wrote to him yesterday. i wanted to make his acquaintance. [she goes out.] lucas. [after a brief pause.] by a lucky accident the tables were crowded at florian's; i might have missed the chance of welcoming you. in god's name, duke, why must you come here? st. olpherts. [fumbling in his pocket for a note.] in god's name? you bring the orthodoxy into this queer firm, then, lucas? [handing the note to lucas.] a peremptory summons. lucas. you need not have obeyed it. [st. olpherts takes a cigarette from his case and limps away.] i looked about for you just now. i wanted to see you. st. olpherts. how fortunate-- lucas. to tell you that this persecution must come to an end. it has made me desperately wretched for a whole week. st. olpherts. persecution? lucas. temptation. st. olpherts. dear lucas, the process of inducing a man to return to his wife isn't generally described as temptation. lucas. ah, i won't hear another word of that proposal. [st. olpherts shrugs his shoulders.] i say my people are offering me, through you, a deliberate temptation to be a traitor. to which of these two women--my wife or--[pointing to the door]--to her--am i really bound now? it may be regrettable, scandalous, but the common rules of right and wrong have ceased to apply here. finally, duke--and this is my message--i intend to keep faith with the woman who sat by my bedside in rome, the woman to whom i shouted my miserable story in my delirium, the woman whose calm, resolute voice healed me, hardened me, renewed in me the desire to live. st. olpherts. ah! oh, these modern nurses, in their greys, or browns, and snowy bibs! they have much to answer for, dear lucas. lucas. no, no! why will you persist, all of you, in regarding this as a mere morbid infatuation, bred in the fumes of pastilles? it isn't so! laugh, if you care to; but this is a meeting of affinities, of the solitary man and the truly sympathetic woman. st. olpherts. and oh--oh these sympathetic women! lucas. no! oh, the unsympathetic women! there you have the cause of half the world's misery. the unsympathetic women--you should have loved one of them. st. olpherts. i dare say i've done that in my time. lucas. love one of these women--i know!--worship here, yield yourself to the intoxicating day-dreams that make the grimy world sweeter than any heaven ever imagined. how you heart leaps with gratitude for your good fortune! how compassionately you regard your unblest fellow men! what may you not accomplish with such a mate beside you; how high will be your aims, how paltry every obstacle that bars your way to them; how sweet is to be the labour, how divine the rest! then--you marry her. marry her, and in six months, if you've pluck enough to do it, lag behind your shooting party and blow your brains out, by accident, at the edge of a turnip-field. you have found out by that time all that there is to look for--the daily diminishing interest in your doings, the poorly assumed attention as you attempt to talk over some plan for the future; then the yawn, and by degrees, the covert sneer, the little sarcasm, and finally, the frank, open stare of boredom. ah, duke, when you all carry out your repressive legislation against women of evil lives, don't fail to include in your schedule the unsympathetic wives. they are the women whose victims show the sorriest scars; they are the really "bad women" of the world: all the others are snow-white in comparison! st. olpherts. yes, you've got a good deal of this in that capital essay you quoted from this morning. dear fellow, i admit your home discomforts; but to jump out of the frying pan into this confounded-- what does she call it?--compact! lucas. compact? st. olpherts. a vague reference, as i understand, to your joint crusade against the blessed institution of marriage. lucas. [an alteration in his manner.] oh--ho, that idea! what--what has she been saying to you? st. olpherts. incidentally she pitched into me, dear lucas; she attacked my moral character. you must have been telling tales. lucas. oh, i--i hope not. of course, we-- st. olpherts. yes, yes--a little family gossip, to pass the time while she has been dressing her hair or--by the bye, she doesn't appear to spend much time in dressing her hair. lucas. [biting his lip.] really? st. olpherts. then she denounced the gilded aristocracy generally. our day is over; we're broken wooden dolls, and are going to be chucked. the old tune; but i enjoyed the novelty of being so near the instrument. i assure you, dear fellow, i was within three feet of her when she deliberately trafalgar squared me. lucas. [with an uneasy laugh.] you're the red rag, duke. this spirit of revolt in her--it's ludicrously extravagant; but it will die out in time, when she has become used to being happy and cared for--[partly to himself, with clenched hands]--yes, cared for. st. olpherts. die out? bred in the bone, dear lucas. lucas. on some topics she's a mere echo of her father, if you mean that? st. olpherts. the father--one of those public park vermin, eh? lucas. dead years ago. st. olpherts. i once heard her bellowing in a dirty little shed in st. luke's. i told you? lucas. yes, you've told me. st. olpherts. i sat there again, it seemed, this afternoon. the orator not quite so lean, perhaps--a little less witch-like; but-- lucas. she was actually in want of food in those days! poor girl! [partly to himself.] i mean to remind myself of that constantly. poor girl! st. olpherts. girl! let me see--you're considerably her junior? lucas. no, no; a few months, perhaps. st. olpherts. oh, come! lucas. well, years--two or three. st. olpherts. the voice remains rather raucous. lucas. by god, the voice is sweet! st. olpherts. well--considering the wear and tear. really, my dear fellow, i do believe this--i do believe that if you gowned her respectably-- lucas. [impulsively.] yes, yes, i say so. i tell her that. st. olpherts. [with a smile.] do you? that's odd, now. lucas. what a topic. poor agnes's dress! st. olpherts. your taste used to be rather aesthetic. even your own wife is one of the smartest women in london. lucas. ha, well i must contrive to smother these aesthetic tastes of mine. st. olpherts. it's a pity that other people will retain their sense of the incongruous. lucas. [snapping his fingers.] other people!-- st. olpherts. the public. lucas. the public? st. olpherts. come, you know well enough that unostentatious immodesty is no part of your partner's programme. of course, you will find yourself by-and-bye in a sort of perpetual parade with your crack-brained visionary-- lucas. you shall not speak of her so! you shall not. st. olpherts. [unconcernedly.] each of you bearing a pole of the soiled banner of free union. free union for the people! ho, my dear lucas! lucas. good heavens, duke, do you imagine, now that i am in sound health and mind again, that i don't see the hideous absurdity of these views of hers? st. olpherts. then why the deuce don't you listen a little more patiently to my views? lucas. no, no. i tell you i intend to keep faith with her, as far as i am able. she's so earnest, so pitiably earnest. if i broke faith with her entirely, it would be too damnably cowardly. st. olpherts. cowardly! lucas. [pacing the room agitatedly.] besides, we shall do well together, after all, i believe--she and i. in the end we shall make concessions to each other and settle down, somewhere abroad, peacefully. st. olpherts. ha! and they called you a coming man at one time, didn't they? lucas. oh, i--i shall make as fine a career with my pen as that other career would have been. at any rate, i ask you to leave me to it all-- to leave me! [fortune enters. the shades of evening have now deepened; the glow of sunset comes into the room.] fortune. i beg your pardon, sir. lucas. well? fortune. it is pas' ze time for you to dress for dinner. lucas. i'll come. [fortune goes out.] st. olpherts. when do we next meet, dear fellow? lucas. no, no--please not again. [nella enters, excitedly.] nella [ speaking over her shoulder.] si, signora; ecco il signore. (yes, signora; her is the signor.) [to cleeve.] scusi, signore. quando la vendra come e cara--! (pardon, signor, when you see her you'll see how sweet she looks--!) [agnes's voice is heard.] agnes. [outside.] am i keeping you waiting, lucas? [she enters, handsomely gowned, her throat and arms bare, the fashion of her hair roughly altered. she stops abruptly upon seeing st. olpherts; a strange light comes into her eyes; her voice, manner, bearing, all express triumph. the two men stare at her blankly. she appears to be a beautiful woman.] agnes. [to nella.] un petit chale noir tricote--cher-chez-le. [nella withdraws.] ah, you're not dressed, lucas dear. lucas. what--what time is it? [he goes towards the door, still staring at agnes.] st. olpherts. [looking at her, and speaking in an altered tone.] i fear my gossiping has delayed him. you--you dine out? agnes. at the grunwald. why don't you join us? [turning to lucas, lightly.] persuade him, lucas. [lucas pauses at the door.] st. olpherts. er--impossible. some--friends of mine may arrive tonight. [lucas goes out.] i am more than sorry. agnes. [mockingly.] really? you are sure you are not shy of being seen with a notorious woman? st. olpherts. my dear mrs. ebbsmith--! agnes. no, i forget--that would be unlike you. mad people scare you, perhaps? st. olpherts. ha, ha! don't be too rough. agnes. come, duke, confess--isn't there more sanity in me than you suspected? st. olpherts. [in a low voice, eyeing her.] much more. i think you are very clever. [lucas quietly re-enters the room; he halts upon seeing that st. olpherts still lingers.] st. olpherts. [with a wave of the hand to lucas.] just off, dear fellow. [he offers his hand to agnes; she quickly places hers behind her back.] you--you are charming. [he walks to the door, then looks round at the pair.] au'voir! [st. olpherts goes out.] agnes. au'voir! [her hand drooping suddenly, her voice hard and dull.] you had better take me to fulici's before we dine, and buy me some gloves. lucas. [coming to her, and seizing her hand.] agnes dear! agnes. [releasing herself and sitting with a heavy, almost sullen, look upon her face.] are you satisfied? lucas. [by her side.] you have delighted me! how sweet you look-- agnes. ah--! lucas. you shall have twenty new gowns now; you shall see the women envying you, the men envying me. ah, ha! fifty new gowns! you will wear them? agnes. yes. lucas. why, what has brought about this change in you? agnes. what! lucas. what? agnes. i know. lucas. you know? agnes. exactly how you regard me. lucas. i don't understand you. agnes. listen. long ago, in florence, i began to suspect that we had made a mistake, lucas. even there i began to suspect that your nature was not one to allow you to go through life sternly, severely, looking upon me more and more each day as a fellow worker and less and less as --a woman. i suspected this--oh, proved it!--but still made myself believe that this companionship of ours would gradually become, in a sense, colder--more temperate, more impassive. [beating her brow.] never! never! oh, a few minutes ago this man, who means to part us if he can, drew your character, disposition, in a dozen words. lucas. you believe him! you credit what he says of me! agnes. i declared it to be untrue. oh, but-- lucas. but--but-- agnes. [rising, seizing his arm.] the picture he paints of you is not wholly a false one. sssh! lucas. hark! attend to me! i resign myself to it all! dear, i must resign myself to it! lucas. resign yourself? has life with me become so distasteful? agnes. has it? think! why, when i realised the actual terms of our companionship--why didn't i go on my own way stoically? why don't i go at this very moment? lucas. you really love me, do you mean--as simple, tender women are content to love? [she looks at him, nods slowly, then turns away and droops over the table. he raises her, and takes her in his arms.] my dear girl! my dear, cold, warm-hearted girl! ha! you couldn't bear to see me packed up in one of the duke's travelling boxes and borne back to london--eh! [she shakes her head; her lips form the word "no".] no fear of that, my--my sweetheart! agnes. [gently pushing him from her.] quick--dress--take me out. lucas. you are shivering--get your thickest wrap. agnes. that heavy brown cloak of mine? lucas. yes. agnes. it's an old friend, but--dreadfully shabby. you will be ashamed of me again. lucas. ashamed--! agnes. i'll write to bardini about a new one tomorrow. i won't oppose you--i won't repel you any more. lucas. repel me! i only urged you to reveal yourself as what you are-- a beautiful woman. agnes. ah! am i--that? lucas. [kissing her.] beautiful--beautiful! agnes. [with a gesture of abandonment.] i'm--glad. [she leaves him and goes out. he looks after her for a moment thoughtfully, then suddenly passes his hands across his brow and opens his arms widely as if casting a burden from him.] lucas. oh!--oh! [turning away alertly.] fortune-- end of the second act the third act [the scene is the same as before, but it is evening, and the lamps are lighted within the room, while outside it is bright moonlight.] [agnes, dressed as at the end of the preceding act, is lying upon the settee propped up by pillows. a pretty silk shawl, with which she plays restlessly, is over her shoulders. her face is pale, but her eyes glitter, and her voice has a bright ring in it. kirke is seated at a table writing. gertrude, without hat or mantle, is standing behind the settee, looking down smilingly upon agnes.] kirke. [writing.] h'm--[to agnes.] are you often guilty of this sort of thing? agnes. [laughing.] i've never fainted before in my life; i don't mean to do so again. kirke. [writing.] should you alter your mind about that, do select a suitable spot on the next occasion. what was it your head came against? gertrude. a wooden chest, mr. cleeve thinks. agnes. with beautiful, rusty, iron clamps. [putting her hand to her head, and addressing gertrude.] the price of vanity. kirke. vanity? agnes. lucas was to take me out to dinner. while i was waiting for him to dress i must needs stand and survey my full length in a mirror. kirke. [glancing at her.] a very excusable proceeding. agnes. suddenly the room sank and left me--so the feeling was--in the air. kirke. well, most women can manage to look in their pier-glasses without swooning--eh, mrs thorpe? gertrude. [smiling.] how should i know doctor? kirke. [blotting his writing.] there. how goes the time? gertrude. half past eight. kirke. i'll leave this prescription at mantovani's myself. i can get it made up to-night. agnes. [taking the prescription out of his hand playfully.] let me look. kirke. [protesting.] now, now! agnes. [reading the prescription.] ha, ha! after all, what humbugs doctors are! kirke. you've never heard me deny it. agnes. [returning the prescription to him.] but i'll swallow it--for the dignity of my old profession. [she reaches out her hand to take a cigarette.] kirke. don't smoke too many of those things. agnes. they never harm me. it's a survival of the time in my life when the cupboard was always empty. [striking a match.] only it had to be stronger tobacco in those days, i can tell you. [she lights her cigarette. gertrude is assisting kirke with his overcoat. lucas enters, in evening dress, looking younger, almost boyish.] lucas. [brightly.] well? kirke. she's to have a cup of good bouillon--mrs. thorpe is going to look after that--and anything else she fancies. she's alright. [shaking hands with agnes.] the excitement of putting on that pretty frock--[agnes gives a hard little laugh. shaking hands with lucas.] i'll look in tomorrow. [turning to gertrude.] oh, just a word with you, nurse. [lucas has been bending over agnes affectionately; he now sits by her, and they talk in undertones; he lights a cigarette from hers.] kirke. [to gertrude.] there's many a true word, et cetera. gertrude. excitement? kirke. yes, and that smart gown's connected with it too. gertrude. it is extraordinary to see her like this. kirke. not the same woman. gertrude. no, nor is he quite the same man. kirke. how long can you remain with her? gertrude. till eleven--if you will let my brother know where i am. kirke. what, doesn't he know? gertrude. i simply sent word, about an hour ago, that i shouldn't be back to dinner. kirke. very well. gertrude. look here! i'll get you to tell him the truth. kirke. the truth--oh? gertrude. i called here this afternoon, unknown to amos, to bid her good-bye. then i pottered about, rather miserably, spending money. coming out of naya's, the photographer's, i tumbled over mr. cleeve, who had been looking for you, and he begged me to come round here again after i had done my shopping. kirke. i understand. gertrude. doctor, have you ever seen amos look dreadfully stern and knit about the brows--like a bishop who is put out? kirke. no. gertrude. then you will. kirke. well, this is a pretty task--! [he goes out. gertrude comes to agnes. lucas rises.] gertrude. i am going down into the kitchen to see what these people can do in the way of strong soup. lucas. you are exceedingly good to us, mrs. thorpe. i can't tell you how ashamed i am of my bearishness this afternoon. gertrude. [arranging the shawl about agnes's shoulders.] hush, please! agnes. are you looking at my shawl? lucas brought it in with him, as a reward for my coming out of that stupid faint. i--i have always refused to be--spoilt in this way, but now--now-- lucas. [breaking in deliberately.] pretty work upon it, is there not, mrs. thorpe? gertrude. charming. [going to the door, which lucas opens for her.] thank you.[she passes out. agnes rises.] lucas. oh, my dear girl--! agnes. [throwing her cigarette under the stove.] i'm quite myself again, lucas dear. watch me--look! [walking firmly.] lucas. no trembling? agnes. not a flutter. [watching her open hand.] my hand is absolutely steady. [he takes her hand and kisses it upon the palm.] ah!-- lucas. [looking at her hand.] no, it is shaking. agnes. yes, when you--when you--oh, lucas!--[she sinks into a chair, turning her back upon him, and covering her face with her hands; her shoulders heaving.] lucas. [going to her.] agnes dear! agnes. [taking out her handkerchief.] let me--let me-- lucas. [bending over her.] i've never seen you-- agnes. no, i've never been a crying woman. but some great change has befallen me, i believe. what is it? that swoon--it wasn't mere faintness, giddiness; it was this change coming over me! lucas. you are not unhappy? agnes. [wiping her eyes.] no, i--i don't think i am. isn't that strange? lucas. my dearest, i'm happy to hear you say that, for you've made me very happy. agnes. because i-- lucas. because you love me--naturally, that's one great reason. agnes. i have always loved you. lucas. but never so utterly, so absorbingly, as you confess you do now. do you fully realise what your confession does? it strikes off the shackles from me, from us--sets us free. [with a gesture of freedom.] oh, my dear agnes, free! agnes. [staring at him.] free? lucas. free from the burden of that crazy plan of ours of trumpeting our relations to the world. forgive me--crazy is the only word for it. thank heaven, we've at last admitted to each other that we're ordinary man and woman! of course, i was ill--off my head. i didn't know what i was entering upon. and you, dear--living a pleasureless life, letting your thoughts dwell constantly on old troubles; that is how cranks are made. now that i'm strong again, body and mind, i can protect you, keep you right. ha, ha! what were we to pose as? examples of independent thought and action! [laughing.] oh my darling, well be independent in thought and action still; but we won't make examples of ourselves--eh? agnes. [who has been watching him with wide-open eyes.] do you mean that all idea of our writing together, working together, defending our position, and the position of such as ourselves, before the world, is to be abandoned? lucas. why, of course. agnes. i--i didn't mean quite that. lucas. oh, come, come! we'll furl what my uncle calls the banner of free union finally. [going to her and kissing her hair lightly.] for the future, mere man and woman. [pacing the room excitedly.] the future! i've settled everything already. the work shall fall wholly on my shoulders. my poor girl, you shall enjoy a little rest and pleasure. agnes. [in a low voice.] rest and pleasure-- lucas. we'll remain abroad. one can live unobserved abroad, without actually hiding. [she rises slowly.] we'll find an ideal retreat. no more english tourists prying around us! and there, in some beautiful spot, alone except for your company, i'll work! [as he paces the room, she walks slowly to and fro, listening, staring before her.] i'll work. my new career! i'll write under a nom de plume. my books, agnes, shall never ride to popularity on the back of a scandal. our life! the mornings i must spend by myself, of course, shut up in my room. in the afternoon we will walk together. after dinner you shall hear what i've written in the morning; and then a few turns round our pretty garden, a glance at the stars with my arms round your waist--[she stops abruptly, a look of horror on her face]--while you whisper to me words of tenderness, words of--[there is the distant sound of music from mandolin and guitar.] ah! [to agnes.] keep your shawl over your shoulders. [opening the window, and stepping out; the music becoming louder.] some mandolinisti in a gondola. [listening at the window, his head turned from her.] how pretty, agnes! now, don't those mere sounds, in such surroundings, give you a sensation of hatred for revolt and turmoil! don't they conjure up alluringly pictures of peace and pleasure, of golden days and star-lit nights--pictures of beauty and love? agnes. [sitting on the settee, staring before her, speaking to herself.] my marriage--the early days of my marriage--all over again! lucas. [turning to her.] eh? [closing the window and coming to her, as the music dies away.] tell me that those sounds thrill you. agnes. lucas-- lucas. [sitting beside her.] yes? agnes. for the first few months of my marriage--[breaking off abruptly and looking into his face wonderingly.] why, how young you seem to have become; you look quite boyish! lucas. [laughing.] i believe that this return of our senses will make us both young again. agnes. both? [with a little shudder.] you know, i'm older than you. lucas. tsch! agnes. [passing her hand through his hair.] yes, i shall feel that now. [stroking his brow tenderly.] well--so it has come to this. lucas. i declare that you have colour in your cheeks already. agnes. the return of my senses? lucas. my dear agnes, we've both been to the verge of madness, you and i--driven there by our troubles. [taking her hand.] let us agree, in so many words, that we have completely recovered. shall we? agnes. perhaps mine is a more obstinate case. my enemies called me mad years ago. lucas. [with a wave of the hand.] ah, but the future, the future. no more thoughts of reforming unequal laws from public platforms, no more shrieking in obscure magazines. no more beating of bare knuckles against stone walls. come, say it! agnes. [with an effort.] go on. lucas. [looking before him--partly to himself, his voice hardening.] i'll never be mad again--never. [thrusting his head back.] by heavens! [to her, in an altered tone.] you don't say it. agnes. [after a pause.] i--i will never be mad again. lucas. [triumphantly.] hah! ha, ha! [she deliberately removes the shawl from her shoulders, and, putting her arms round his neck, draws him to her.] ah, my dear girl! agnes. [in a whisper, with her head on his breast.] lucas. lucas. yes? agnes. isn't this madness? lucas. i don't think so. agnes. oh! oh! oh! i believe, to be a woman is to be mad. lucas. no, to be a woman trying not to be a woman--that is to be mad. [she draws a long, deep breath, then, sitting away from him, resumes her shawl mechanically.] agnes. now, you promised me to run out to the capello nero to get a little food. lucas. oh, i'd rather-- agnes. [rising.] dearest, you need it. lucas. [rising.] well--fortune shall fetch my hat and coat. agnes. fortune! are you going to take all my work from me? [she is walking towards the door; the sound of his voice stops her.] lucas. agnes! [she returns.] a thousand thoughts have rushed through my brain this last hour or two. i've been thinking--my wife-- agnes. yes? lucas. my wife--she will soon get tired of her present position. if, by-and-bye, there should be a divorce, there would be nothing to prevent our marrying. agnes. our--marrying! lucas. [sitting, not looking at her, as if discussing the matter with himself.] it might be to my advantage to settle again in london some day. after all, scandals quickly lose their keen edge. what would you say? agnes. marriage-- lucas. ah, remember, we're rational beings for the future. however, we needn't talk about it now. agnes. no. lucas. still, i assume you wouldn't oppose it. you would marry me if i wished it? agnes. [in a low voice.] yes. lucas. that's a sensible girl! by jove, i am hungry! [he lights a cigarette as she walks slowly to the door, then throws himself idly back on the settee.] agnes. [to herself, in a whisper.] my old life--my old life coming all over again! [she goes out. he lies watching the wreaths of tobacco smoke. after a moment or two fortune enters, closing the door carefully behind him.] lucas. eh? fortune. [after a glance round, dropping his voice.] ze duke of st. olphert 'e say 'e vould like to speak a meenit alone. [lucas rises, with a muttered exclamation of annoyance.] lucas. priez monsieur le duc d'entrer. [fortune goes to the door and opens it. the duke of st. olpherts enters; he is in evening dress. fortune retires.] st. olpherts. quite alone? lucas. for the moment. st. olpherts. my excuse to mrs. ebbsmith for not dining at the grunwald --it was a perfectly legitimate one, dear lucas. i really was expecting visitors. lucas. [wonderingly.] yes? st. olpherts. [with a little cough and a drawn face.] oh, i am not so well tonight. damn these people for troubling me! damn 'em for keeping me hopping about! damn 'em for every shoot i feel in my leg. visitors from england--they've arrived. lucas. but what--? st. olpherts. i shall die of gout some day, lucas. er--your wife is here. lucas. sybil! st. olpherts. she's come through with your brother. sandford's a worse prig than ever--and i'm in shockin' pain. lucas. this--this is your doing? st. olpherts. yes. damn you, don't keep me standing! [agnes enters with lucas's hat and coat. she stops abruptly on seeing st. olpherts.] st. olpherts. [by the settee--playfully, through his pain] ah, my dear mrs. ebbsmith, how can you have the heart to deceive an invalid, a poor wretch who begs you--[sitting on the settee] to allow him to sit down for a moment? [agnes deposits the hat and coat.] agnes. deceive--? st. olpherts. my friends arrive, i dine scrappily with them, and hurry to the grunwald thinking to catch you over your zabajone. dear lady, you haven't been near the grunwald. agnes. your women faint sometimes, don't they? st. olpherts. my--? [in pain.] oh, what do you mean? agnes. the women in your class of life? st. olpherts. faint? oh yes, when there's occasion for it. agnes. i'm hopelessly low-born; i fainted involuntarily. st. olpherts. [moving closer to her.] oh, my dear, pray forgive me. you've recovered? [she nods.] indisposition agrees with you, evidently. your colouring tonight is charming. [coughing.] you are--delightful-- to--look at. [gertrude enters, carrying a tray on which are a bowl of soup, a small decanter of wine, and accessories. she looks at st. olpherts unconcernedly, then turns away and places the tray on a table.] st. olpherts. [quietly to agnes.] not a servant? agnes, oh, no. st. olpherts. [rising promptly.] good god! i beg your pardon. a friend? agnes. yes. st. olpherts. [looking at gertrude, critically.] very nice. [still looking at gertrude, but speaking to agnes in undertones.] married or--? [turning to agnes.] married or--? gertrude. [to lucas, looking around.] it is draughty at this table. lucas. [going to the table near the settee, and collecting the writing materials.] here--[agnes joins gertrude.] st. olpherts. [quietly to lucas.] lucas--[lucas goes to him.] who's that gal? lucas. [to st. olpherts.] an hotel acquaintance we made in florence-- mrs thorpe. st. olpherts. where's the husband? lucas. a widow. st. olpherts. you might--[gertrude advances with the tray.] lucas. mrs. thorpe, the duke of st. olpherts wishes to be introduced to you. [gertrude inclines her head to the duke. lucas places the writing materials on another table.] st. olpherts. [limping up to gertrude and handling the tray.] i beg to be allowed to help you. [at the table.] the tray here? gertrude. thank you. st. olpherts. oh, how clumsy i am! we think it so gracious of you to look after our poor friend here who is not quite herself today. [to agnes.] come along, dear lady--everything is prepared for you. [to gertrude.] you are here with--your mother, i understand. gertrude. my brother. st. olpherts. brother. now do tell me whether you find your--your little hotel comfortable. gertrude. [looking at him steadily.] we don't stay at one. st. olpherts. apartments? gertrude. yes. st. olpherts. do you know, dear mrs. thorpe, i have always had the very strongest desire to live in lodgings in venice? gertrude. you should gratify it. our quarters are rather humble; we are in the campo san bartolomeo. st. olpherts. but how delightful! gertrude. why not come and see our rooms? st. olpherts. [bowing.] my dear young lady! [producing a pencil and writing upon his shirt-cuff.] campo san bartolomeo-- gertrude. five--four--nought--two st. olpherts. [writing.] five--four--nought--two. tomorrow afternoon? [she inclines her head.] four o'clock? gertrude. yes; that would give the people ample time to tidy and clear up after us. st. olpherts. after you--? gertrude. after our departure. my brother and i leave early tomorrow morning. st. olpherts. [after a brief pause, imperturbably.] a thousand thanks. may i impose myself so far upon you as to ask you to tell your landlord to expect me? [taking up his hat and stick.] we are allowing this soup to get cold. [joining lucas.] dear lucas, you have something to say to me--? lucas. [opening the door.] come into my room. [they go out. the two women look at each other significantly.] agnes. you're a splendid woman. gertrude. that's rather a bad man, i think. now, dear--[she places agnes on the settee, and sets the soup, &c., before her. agnes eats.] gertrude. [watching her closely.] so you have succeeded in coming to close quarters, as you expressed it, with him. agnes. [taciturnly.] yes. gertrude. his second visit here today, i gather. agnes. yes. gertrude. his attitude towards you--his presence here under any circumstances--it's all rather queer. agnes. his code of behaviour is peculiarly his own. gertrude. however, you are easier in your mind? agnes. [quietly, but with intensity.] i shall defeat him. i shall defeat him. gertrude. defeat him? you will succeed in holding mr. cleeve, you mean? agnes. oh, if you put it in that way-- gertrude. oh, come, i remember all you told me this afternoon. [with disdain.] so it has already arrived, then, at a simple struggle to hold mr. cleeve? [there is a pause. agnes, without answering, stretches out her hand to the wine. her hand shakes--she withdraws it helplessly.] gertrude. what do you want--wine? [agnes nods. gertrude pours out wine and gives her the glass. agnes drains it eagerly and replaces it.] gertrude. agnes-- agnes. yes? gertrude. you are dressed very beautifully. agnes. do you think so? gertrude. don't you know it? who made you that gown? agnes. bardini. gertrude. i shouldn't have credited the little woman with such excellent ideas. agnes. oh, lucas gave her the idea when he--when he-- gertrude. when he ordered it? agnes. yes. gertrude. oh, the whole thing came as a surprise to you? agnes. er--quite. gertrude. i noticed the box this afternoon when i called. agnes. mr. cleeve wishes me to appear more like--more like-- gertrude. an ordinary smart woman. [contemptuously.] well, you ought to find no difficulty in managing that. you can make yourself very charming, it appears. [agnes again reaches out a hand towards the wine. gertrude pours a very little wine into the wine-glass and takes up the glass; agnes holds out her hand to receive it.] gertrude. do you mind my drinking from your glass? agnes. [staring at her.] no. [gertrude empties the glass and then places it, in a marked way, on the side of the table farthest from agnes.] gertrude. [with a little shudder.] ugh! ugh! [agnes moves away from gertrude, to the end of the settee, her head bowed, her hands clenched.] i have something to propose. come home with me tomorrow. agnes. [after a pause, raising her head.] home--? gertrude. ketherick. the very spot for a woman who wants to shut out things. miles and miles of wild moorland! for company, purple heath and moss-covered granite, in summer; in winter, the moor-fowl and the snow glistening on top of the crags. oh, and for open-air music, our little church owns the sweetest little peal of bells--! [agnes rises, disturbed.] ah, i can't promise you their silence! indeed, i'm very much afraid that on a still sunday you can even hear the sound of the organ quite a long distance off. i am the organist when i'm at home. that's ketherick. will you come? [the distant tinkling of mandolin and guitar is again heard.] agnes. listen to that. the mandolinisti! you talk of the sound of your church organ, and i hear his music. gertrude. his music? agnes. the music he is fond of; the music that gives him the thoughts that please him, soothe him. gertrude. [listening--humming the words of the air, contemptuously: "bell'amore deh! porgi l'orecchio, ad un canto che parte del cuore . . ."] love-music! agnes. [in a low voice, staring upon the ground.] yes, love music. [the door leading from lucas's room opens, and st. olpherts and lucas are heard talking. gertrude hastily goes out. kucas enters; the boyishness of manner has left him--he is pale and excited.] agnes. what is the matter? lucas. my wife is revealing quite a novel phase of character. agnes. your wife--? lucas. the submissive mood. it's right that you should be told, agnes. she is here, at the danieli, with my brother sandford. [st. olpherts enters slowly.] yes, positively! it appears that she has lent herself to a scheme of sandford's--[glancing at st. olpherts]--and of--and-- st. olpherts. of sandford's. lucas. [to agnes.] a plan of reconciliation. [to st. olpherts.] tell sybil that the submissive mood comes too late, by a year or so! [he paces to and fro. agnes sits, with an expressionless face.] agnes.[quietly, to st. olpherts.] the "friends" you were expecting, duke? st. olpherts. [meekly.] yes. [she smiles at him scornfully.] lucas. agnes dear, you and i leave here early tomorrow. agnes. very well, lucas. lucas. [to st. olpherts.] duke, will you be the bearer of a note from me to sandford? st. olpherts. certainly. lucas. [going to the door of his room.] i'll write it at once. st. olpherts. [raising his voice.] you won't see sandford, then, dear lucas, for a moment or two? lucas. no, no; pray excuse me. [he goes out. st. olpherts advances to agnes. the sound of the music dies away.] st. olpherts. [slipping his coat off and throwing it upon the head of the settee.] upon my soul, i think you've routed us! agnes. yes. st. olpherts. [sitting, breaking into a laugh.] ha, ha! he, he, he! sir sandford and mrs. cleeve will be so angry. such a devil of a journey for nothing! ho! [coughing.] ho, ho, ho! agnes. this was to be your grand coup. st. olpherts. i admit it--i have been keeping this in reserve. agnes. i see. a further term of cat-and-dog life for lucas and this lady--but it would have served to dispose of me, you fondly imagined. i see. st. olpherts. i knew your hold on him was weakening. [she looks at him.] you knew it too. [she looks away.] he was beginning to find out that a dowdy demagogue is not the cheeriest person to live with. i repeat, you're a dooced clever woman, my dear. [she rises, with an impatient shake of her body, and walks past him, he following her with his eyes.] and a handsome one, into the bargain. agnes. tsch! st. olpherts. tell me, when did you make up your mind to transform yourself? agnes. suddenly, after our interview this afternoon; after what you said-- st. olpherts. oh--! agnes. [with a little shiver.] an impulse. st. olpherts. impulse doesn't account for the possession of those gorgeous trappings. agnes. these rags? a surprise gift from lucas, today. st. olpherts. really, my dear, i believe i've helped to bring about my own defeat. [laughing softly.] ho, ho, ho! how disgusted the cleeve family will be! ha, ha! [testily.] come, why don't you smile--laugh? you can afford to do so! show your pretty white teeth! laugh! agnes. [hysterically.] ha, ha, ha! ha! st. olpherts. that's better! [pushing the cigarette-box towards him, she takes a cigarette and places it between her lips. he also takes a cigarette gaily. they smoke--she standing, with an elbow resting upon the top of the stove, looking down upon him.] st. olpherts. [as he lights his cigarette.] this isn't explosive, i hope? no nitric and sulphuric acid, with glycerine--eh? [eyeing her wonderingly and admiringly.] by jove! which is you--the shabby, shapeless rebel who entertained me this afternoon or--[kissing the tips of his fingers to her]--or that? agnes. this--this. [seating herself, slowly and thoughtfully, facing the stove, her back turned to him.] my sex has found me out. st. olpherts. ha! tsch! [between his teeth.] damn it, for your sake i almost wish lucas was a different sort of feller! agnes. [partly to herself, with intensity.] nothing matters now--not even that. he's mine. he would have died but for me. i gave him life. he is my child, my husband, my lover, my bread, my daylight--all-- everything. mine! mine! st. olpherts. [rising and limping over to her.] good luck, my girl. agnes. thanks! st. olpherts. i'm rather sorry for you. this sort of triumph is short-lived, you know. agnes. [turning to him.] i know. but i shall fight for every moment that prolongs it. this is my hour. st. olpherts. your hour--? agnes. there's only one hour in a woman's life. st. olpherts. one--? agnes. one supreme hour. her poor life is like the arch of a crescent; so many years lead up to that hour, so many weary years decline from it. no matter what she may strive for, there is a moment when circumstance taps her upon the shoulder and says "woman, this hour is the best that earth has to spare you." it may come to her in calm or in temper, lighted by a steady radiance or by the glitter of evil stars; but however it comes, be it good or evil, it is her hour--let her dwell upon every second of it! st. olpherts. and this little victory of yours--the possession of this man; you think this is the best that earth can spare you? [she nods slowly and deliberately, with fixed eyes.] dear me, how amusin' you women are! and in your dowdy days you had ambitions? [she looks at him suddenly.] they were of a queer, gunpowder-and-faggot sort--but they were ambitions. agnes. [starting up.] oh--! [putting her hands to her brows.] oh--! [facing him.] yes, yes! you're right! once, long ago, i hoped that my hour would be very different from this. ambitions! i have seen myself, standing, humbly-clad, looking down upon a dense, swaying crowd--a scarlet flag for my background. i have seen the responsive look upon thousands of white, eager, hungry faces, and i've heard the great hoarse shout of welcome as i have seized my flag and hurried down amongst the people--to be given a place among their leaders! i! with the leaders, the leaders! yes, that is what i once hoped would be my hour! [her voice sinking.] but this is my hour. st. olpherts. well, my dear, when it's over, you'll have the satisfaction of counting the departing footsteps of a ruined man. agnes. ruined--! st. olpherts. yes, there's great compensation in that--for women. agnes. [sitting.] why do you suggest he'll be ruined through me? [uneasily.] at any rate, he'd ended his old career before we met. st. olpherts. pardon me; it's not now too late for him to resume that career. the threads are not quite broken yet. agnes. oh, the scandal in london-- st. olpherts. would be dispelled by this sham reconciliation with his wife. agnes. [looking at him.] sham--? st. olpherts. why, of course. all we desired to arrange was that for the future their household should be conducted strictly a la mode. agnes. a la mode? st. olpherts. [behind the settee, looking down upon her.] mr. cleeve in one quarter of the house, mrs. cleeve in another. agnes. oh, yes. st. olpherts. a proper aspect to the world, combined with freedom on both sides. it's a more decorous system than the aggressive free union you once advocated; and it's much in vogue at my end of town. agnes. your plan was a little more subtle than i gave you credit for. this was to be your method of getting rid of me! st. olpherts. no, no. don't you understand? with regard to yourself, we could have arrived at a compromise. agnes. a compromise? st. olpherts. it would have made us quite happy to see you placed upon a--upon a somewhat different footing. agnes. what kind of--footing? st. olpherts. the suburban villa, the little garden, a couple of discreet servants--everything a la mode. [there is a brief pause. the she rises and walks across the room, outwardly calm but twisting her hands.] agnes. well, you've had mr. cleeve's answer to that. st. olpherts. yes. agnes. which finally disposes of the whole matter--disposes of it-- st. olpherts. completely. [struck by an idea.] unless you-- agnes. [turning to him.] unless i-- st. olpherts. unless you-- agnes. [after a moment's pause.] what did lucas say to you when you--? st. olpherts. he said he knew you'd never make that sacrifice for him. [she pulls herself up rigidly.] so he declined to pain you by asking you to do it. agnes. [crossing swiftly to the settee, and speaking straight into his face.] that's a lie! st. olpherts. keep your temper, my dear. agnes. [passionately.] his love may not last--it won't!--but at this moment he loves me better than that! he wouldn't make a mere light thing of me! st. olpherts. wouldn't he? you try him! agnes. what! st. olpherts. you put him to the test! agnes. [with her hands to her brows.] oh--! st. olpherts. no, no--don't! agnes. [faintly.] why? st. olpherts. i like you. damn him--you deserve to live your hour! [lucas enters with a letter in his hand. agnes sits.] lucas. [giving st. olpherts the letter.] thanks. [st. olpherts pockets the letter and picks up his cloak, lucas assisting him.] agnes. [outwardly calm.] oh--lucas-- lucas. yes? agnes. the duke has been--has been--telling me-- lucas. what, dear? agnes. the sort of arrangement proposed for your going back to london. lucas. oh, my brother's brilliant idea! agnes. acquiesced in by your wife. [st. olpherts strolls away from them.] lucas. certainly; as i anticipated, she has become intensely dissatisfied with her position. agnes. and it would be quite possible, it seems, for you to resume your old career? lucas. just barely possible--well, for the moment, quite possible. agnes. quite possible. lucas. i haven't, formally, made a sign to my political friends yet. it's a task one leaves to the last. i shall do so now--at once. my people have been busying themselves, it appears, in reporting that i shall return to london directly my health is fully re-established. agnes. in the hope--? oh, yes. lucas. hoping they'd be able to separate us before it was too--too late. agnes. which hope they've now relinquished? lucas. apparently. agnes. they're prepared to accept a--a compromise, i hear? lucas. ha!--yes. agnes. a compromise in my favour? lucas. [hesitatingly.] they suggest-- agnes. yes, yes, i know. [looking at him searchingly.] after all, your old career was--a success. you made your mark, as you were saying the other day. you did make your mark. [he walks up and down restlessly, abstractedly, her eyes following him.] you were generally spoken of, accepted, as a coming man. the coming man, often, wasn't it? lucas. [with an impatient wave of the hand.] that doesn't matter! agnes. and now you are giving it up--giving it all up. [he sits on the settee, resting his elbow on his knee, pushing his hand through his hair.] lucas. but--but you believe i shall succeed equally well in this new career of mine? agnes. [stonily.] there's the risk, you must remember. lucas. obviously, there's the risk. why do you say all this to me now? agnes. because now is the opportunity to--to go back. lucas. [scornfully.] opportunity--? agnes. an excellent one. you're so strong and well now. lucas. thanks to you. agnes. [staring before her.] well--i did nurse you carefully, didn't i? lucas. but i don't understand you. you are surely not proposing to--to --break with me? agnes. no--i--i--i was only thinking that you--you might see something in this suggestion of a compromise. [lucas glances at st. olpherts, whose back is turned to them. st. olpherts instinctively looks round, then goes and sits by the window.] lucas. [looking at her searchingly.] well, but--you--? agnes. [with assumed indifference.] oh, i-- lucas. you? agnes. lucas, don't--don't make me paramount. [he moves to the end of the settee, showing by a look that he desires her to sit by him. after a moment's hesitation she takes her place beside him.] lucas. [in an undertone.] i do make you paramount. i do. my dear girl, under any circumstances you would still be everything to me--always. [she nods with a vacant look.] there would have to be this pretence of an establishment of mine--that would have to be faced; the whited sepulchre, the mockery of dinners and receptions and so on. but it would be to you i should fly for sympathy, encouragement, rest. agnes. even if you were ill again-- lucas. even then, if it were practicable--if it could be--if it-- agnes. [looking him in the face.] well--? lucas. [avoiding her gaze.] yes, dear? agnes. what do you say, then, to asking the duke to give you back that letter to your brother? lucas. it wouldn't settle matters, simply destroying that letter. sandford begs me to go round to the danieli tonight, to--to-- agnes. to see him? [lucas nods.] and her? [he shrugs his shoulders.] at what time? was any time specified? lucas. half-past nine. agnes. i--i haven't my watch on. lucas. [referring to his watch.] nine twenty-five. agnes. you can almost manage it--if you'd like to go. lucas. oh, let them wait a few minutes for me; that won't hurt them. agnes. [dazed.] let me see--i did fetch your hat and coat--[she rises and walks mechanically, stumbling against a chair. lucas looks up, alarmed; st. olpherts rises.] agnes. [replacing the chair.] it's all right; i didn't notice this. [bringing lucas's hat and coat, and assisting him with the latter.] how long will you be? lucas. not more than half an hour. an hour at the outside. agnes. [arranging his neck handkerchief.] keep this so. lucas. er--if--if i--if we-- agnes. the duke is waiting. [lucas turns away, and joins st. olpherts.] lucas. [to him, in a low voice.] i am going back to the hotel with you. st. olpherts. oh, are you? [the door opens and fortune enters, followed by amos winterfield. fortune retires.] amos. [to lucas, sternly.] is my sister still here, may i ask? [lucas looks to agnes interrogatively. she inclines her head.] amos. i should like her to know that i am waiting for her. [agnes goes out.] lucas. [to amos.] pray excuse me. [amos draws back. st. olpherts passes out. at the door, lucas pauses, and bows slightly to amos, who returns his bow in the same fashion; then lucas follows st. olpherts. gertrude enters, wearing her hat and mantle. agnes follows; her movements are unsteady, and there is a wild look in her eyes.] gertrude. you've come to fetch me, amos? [he assents by a nod.] amos. [to agnes.] i'm sorry to learn from dr. kirke that you've been ill. i hope you're better. agnes. [turning away, gertrude watching her.] thank you, i am quite well. amos. [gruffly.] are you ready, gertrude? gertrude. no, dear, not yet. i want you to help me. amos. in what way? gertrude. i want you to join me in persuading mrs. ebbsmith--my friend, mrs. ebbsmith--to come to ketherick with me. amos. my dear sister--! gertrude. [firmly.] please, amos! agnes. stop a moment! mr. winterfield, your sister doesn't in the least understand how matters are with me. i am returning to england, but with mr. cleeve. [recklessly.] oh, you'd hear of it eventually! he is reconciled to his wife. gertrude. oh--! then, surely, you--! agnes. no. the reconciliation goes no further than mere outward appearances. he relies upon me as much as ever. [beating her hands together passionately.] he can't spare me--can't spare me! amos. [in a low voice to gertrude.] are you satisfied? gertrude. i suspected something of the kind. [going to agnes, gripping her wrist tightly.] pull yourself out of the mud! get up out of the mud! agnes. i have no will to--no desire to! gertrude. you mad thing! agnes. [releasing herself, facing gertrude and amos.] you're only breaking in upon my hour. gertrude. your hour--? agnes. [waving them away.] i ask you to go--to go! [gertrude returns to amos.] amos. my dear gertrude, you see what our position is here. if mrs. ebbsmith asks for our help it is our duty to give it. gertrude. it is especially my duty, amos. amos. and i should have thought it especially mine. however, mrs. ebbsmith appears to firmly decline our help. and at this point, i confess, i would rather you left it--you, at least. gertrude. you would rather i left it--i, the virtuous, unsoiled woman! yes, i am a virtuous woman, amos; and it strikes you as odd, i suppose, my insisting upon friendship with her. but look here, both of you. i'll tell you a secret. you never knew it, amos my dear. i never allowed anybody to suspect it-- amos. never knew what? gertrude. the sort of married life mine was. it didn't last long, but it was dreadful, almost intolerable. amos. gertrude! gertrude. after the first few weeks--weeks, not months!--after the first few weeks of it, my husband treated me as cruelly--[turning to agnes]--just as cruelly, i do believe, as your husband treated you. [amos makes a movement, showing astonishment.] wait! now then! there was another man--one i loved--one i couldn't help loving! i could have found release with him, perhaps happiness of a kind. i resisted, came through it. they're dead--the two are dead! and here i am, a virtuous, reputable woman; saved by the blessed mercy of heaven! there, you are not surprised any longer, amos! [pointing to agnes.] "my friend, mrs ebbsmith!" [bursting into tears.] oh! oh, if my little boy had been spared to me, he should have grown up tender to women--tender to women! he should, he should--! [she sits upon the settee, weeping . . . there is a short silence.] amos. mrs. ebbsmith, when i came here tonight i was angry with gertrude --not altogether, i hope, for being in your company. but i was certainly angry with her for visiting you without my knowledge. i think i sometimes forget that she is eight-and-twenty, not eighteen. well, now i offer to delay our journey home for a few days, if you hold out the faintest hope that her companionship is likely to aid you in any way. [agnes, standing motionless, makes no response. amos crosses to her, and as he passes gertrude, he lets his hand drop over her shoulder; she clasps it, then rises and moves to a chair, where she sits, crying silently.] amos. [by agnes' side--in a low voice.] you heard what she said. saved by the mercy of heaven. agnes. yes, but she can feel that. amos. you felt so once. agnes. once--? amos. you have, in years gone by, asked for help on your knees. agnes. it never came. amos. repeat your cry! agnes. there would be no answer. amos. repeat it! agnes. [turning upon him.] if miracles could happen! if "help", as you term it, did come! do you know what "help" would mean to me? amos. what--? agnes. it would take the last crumb from me! amos. this man's--protection? agnes. [defiantly.] yes amos. oh, mrs. ebbsmith--! agnes. [pointing to the door.] well, i've asked you both to leave me, haven't i! [pointing at gertrude, who has risen.] the man she loves is dead and gone! she can moralise--! [sitting, beating upon the settee with her hands.] leave me! [amos joins gertrude.] gertrude. we'll go, amos. [he takes from his pocket a small leather-bound book; the cover is well-worn and shabby.] amos. [writing upon the fly-leaf of the book with a pencil.] i am writing our address here, mrs. ebbsmith. agnes. [in a hard voice.] i already have it. [gertrude glances at the book over amos's shoulder, and looks at him wonderingly.] amos. [laying the book on the settee by agnes' side.] you might forget it. [she stares at the book, with knitted brows, for a moment, then stretches out her hand and opens it.] agnes. [withdrawing her hand sharply.] no--i don't accept your gift. amos. the address of two friends is upon the fly-leaf. agnes. i thank both of you; but you shall never be troubled again by me. [rising, pointing to the book.] take that away! [sitting facing the stove, the door of which she opens, replenishing the fire--excitedly.] mr. cleeve may be back soon; it would be disagreeable to you all to meet again. [gertrude gently pushes amos aside, and picking up the book from the settee, places it upon the table.] gertrude. [to agnes, pointing to the book.] this frightens you. simple print and paper, so you pretend to regard it; but it frightens you. [with a quick movement, agnes twists her chair round and faces gertrude fiercely.] i called you a mad thing just now. a week ago i did think you half-mad--a poor, ill-used creature, a visionary, a moral woman living immorally; yet, in spite of all, a woman to be loved and pitied. but now i'm beginning to think you're only frail--wanton. oh, you're not so mad as not to know you're wicked! [tapping the book forcibly.] and so this frightens you. agnes. you're right! wanton! that's what i've become! and i'm in my right senses, as you say. i suppose i was mad once for a little time, years ago. and do you know what drove me so? [striking the book with her fist.] it was that--that! gertrude. that! agnes. i'd trusted in it, clung to it, and it failed me. never once did it stop my ears to the sounds of a curse; when i was beaten it didn't make the blows a whit lighter; it never healed my bruised flesh, my bruised spirit! yes, that drove me distracted for a while; but i'm sane now--now it is you that are mad, mad to believe! you foolish people, not to know [beating her breast and forehead]--that hell or heaven is here and here! [pointing to the book.] take it! [gertrude turns away and joins amos, and they walk quickly to the door.] agnes. [frantically.] i'll not endure the sight of it--! [as they reach the door, gertrude looks back and sees agnes hurl the book into the fire. they go out. agnes starts to her feet and stands motionless for a moment, her head bent, her fingers twisted in her hair. then she raises her head; the expression of her face has changed to a look of fright and horror. uttering a loud cry, she hastens to the stove, and, thrusting her hand into the fire, drags out the book. gertrude and amos re-enter quickly in alarm.] gertrude. agnes--! [they stand looking at agnes, who is kneeling upon the ground, clutching the charred book.] end of the third act the fourth act [the scene is an apartment in the campo san bartolomeo. the walls are of plaster; the ceiling is frescoed in cheap modern italian fashion. at the end of the room is a door leading to agnes's bedroom; to the left is an exit onto a landing, while a nearer door, on the same side, opens into another room. the furniture and the few objects attached to the walls are characteristic of a moderate-priced venetian lodging. placed about the room, however, are photographs in pretty fanes and knick-knacks personal to gertrude, and a travelling-trunk and bag are also to be seen. the shutters of the two nearer windows are closed; a broad stream of moonlight, coming through the further window, floods the upper part of the room.] [hephzibah, a grey-haired north-country woman dressed as a lady's maid, is collecting the knick-knacks and placing them in the travelling bag. after a moment or two, gertrude enters by the further door.] gertrude. [at the partly closed door, speaking into the further room.] i'll come back to you in a little while, agnes. [closing the door, and addressing hephzibah.] how are you getting on, heppy? hephzibah. a'reet, miss gerty. i'm puttin' together a' the sma' knick-knacks, to lay them wi' the claes i' th' trunks. gertrude. [taking some photographs from the table and bringing them to hephzibah.] we leave here at a quarter to eight in the morning; not a minute later. hephzibah. aye. will there be much to pack for mistress cleeve? gertrude. nothing at all. besides her hand-bag, she has only the one box. hephzibah. [pointing to the trunk.] nay, nobbut that thing! gertrude. yes, nobbut that. i packed that for her at the palazzo. hephzibah. eh, it won't gi' us ower much trouble to maid mistress cleeve when we get her hame. gertrude. heppy, we are not going to call--my friend--"mrs cleeve." hephzibah. nay! what will thee call her? gertrude. i'll tell you--by-and-bye. remember, she must never, never be reminded of the name. hephzibah. aye, i'll be maist carefu'. poor leddy! after the way she treated that husband o' hers in florence neet and day, neet and day! gertrude. the world's full of unhappiness, heppy. hephzibah. the world's full of husbands. i canna' bide them. they're true enough when they're ailin'--but a lass can't keep her jo always sick. hey, miss gerty! do forgi'e your auld heppy! gertrude. for what? hephzibah. why, your own man, so i've heered, ne'er had as much as a bit headache till he caught his fever and died o't. gertrude. no, i never knew captain thorpe to complain of an ache or a pain. hephzibah. and he was a rare, bonny husband to thee, if a tales be true. gertrude. yes, heppy. [listening, startled.] who's this? hephzibah. [going and looking.] maister amos. [amos enters briskly.] amos. [to gertrude.] how is she? gertrude. [assisting him to remove his overcoat.] more as she used to be--so still, so gentle. she's reading. amos. [looking at her significantly.] reading? gertrude. reading. [he sits, humming a tune, while heppy takes off his shoes and gives him his slippers.] hephzibah. eh, maister amos, it's good to see thee sae gladsome. amos. home, heppy, home! hephzibah. aye, hame! amos. with our savings! hephzibah. with our savings! hephzibah. thy savings--! amos. tsch! get on with your packing. [hephzibah goes out, carrying the travelling-bag and amos's shoes. he exchanges the coat he is wearing for a shabby little black jacket which gertrude brings him.] gertrude. [filling amos's pipe.] well, dear! go on! amos. well, i've seen them. gertrude. them-- amos. the duke and sir sandford cleeve. gertrude. at the hotel. amos. i found them sitting together in the hall, smoking, listening to some music. gertrude. quite contented with the arrangement they believed they had brought about. amos. apparently so. especially the baronet--a poor, cadaverous creature. gertrude. where was mr. cleeve? amos. he had been there, had an interview with his wife, and departed. gertrude. then by this time he has discovered that mrs. ebbsmith has left him? amos. i suppose so. gertrude. well, well! the duke and the cadaverous baronet? amos. oh, i told them that i considered it my duty to let them know that the position of affairs had suddenly become altered--[she puts the pipe in his mouth, and strikes a match.]--that, in point of fact, mrs. ebbsmith had ceased to be an element in their scheme for re-establishing mr. cleeve's household. gertrude. [holding a light to his pipe.] did they inquire as to her movements? amos. the duke did--guessed we had taken her. gertrude. what did they say to that? amos. the baronet asked me whether i was the chaplain of a home for [angrily]--ah! gertrude. brute! and then? amos. then they suggested that i ought hardly to leave them to make the necessary explanation to their relative, mr. lucas cleeve. gertrude. yes--well? amos. i replied that i fervently hoped i should never set eyes on their relative again. gertrude [gleefully.] ha! amos. but that mrs. ebbsmith had left a letter behind her at the palazzo arconati, addressed to that gentleman, which i presume contained so full an explanation as he could desire. gertrude. oh, amos--! amos. eh? gertrude. you're mistaken there, dear; there was no letter. amos. no letter--? gertrude. simply four shakily-written words. amos. only four words! gertrude. "my--hour-is-over." [hephzibah enters with a card on a little tray. gertrude reads the card and utters an exclamation.] gertrude. [taking the card and speaking under her breath.] amos! [he goes to her; they stare at the card together.] amos. [to hephzibah.] certainly! [hephzibah goes out, then returns with the duke of st. olpherts, and retires. st. olpherts bows graciously to gertrude and more formally to amos.] amos. pray, sit down. [st. olpherts seats himself on the settee.] st. olpherts. oh, my dear sir!--if i may use such an expression in your presence--here is the devil to pay! amos. [to st. olpherts.] you don't mind my pipe. [st. olpherts waves a hand pleasantly.] and i don't mind your expression--[sitting by the table]--the devil to pay? st. olpherts. this, i daresay well intentioned, interference of yours has brought about some very unpleasant results. mr. cleeve returns to the palazzo arconati and find that mrs. ebbsmith has flown. amos. that result, at least, was inevitable. st. olpherts. whereupon he hurries back to the danieli and denounces us all for a set of conspirators. amos. your grace doesn't complain of the injustice of that charge? st. olpherts. [smilingly.] no, no, i don't complain. but the brother-- the wife! just when they imagined they had bagged the truant--there's the sting! gertrude. oh, then mr. cleeve now refuses to carry out his part of the shameful arrangement? st. olpherts. absolutely. [rising, taking a chair, and placing it by the settee.] come into this, dear mrs. thorn--! amos. thorpe. st. olpherts. come into this! [sitting again.] you understand the sort of man we have to deal with in mr. cleeve. gertrude. [sitting.] a man who prizes a woman when he has lost her. st. olpherts. precisely. gertrude. men don't relish, i suppose, being cast off by women. st. olpherts. it's an inversion of the picturesque; the male abandoned is not a pathetic figure. at any rate, our poor lucas is now raving fidelity to mrs. ebbsmith. gertrude. [indignantly.] ah--! st. olpherts. if you please, he cannot, will not, exist without her. reputation, fame, fortune are nothing weighed against--mrs. ebbsmith. and we may go to perdition, so that he recovers--mrs. ebbsmith. amos. well--to be plain--you're not asking us to sympathise with mrs. cleeve and her brother-in-law over their defeat? st. olpherts. certainly not. all i ask, mr. winterfield, is that you will raise no obstacle to a meeting between mr. cleeve and--and-- gertrude. no! [st. olpherts signifies assent; gertrude makes a movement.] st. olpherts. [to her.] don't go. amos. the object of such a meeting? st. olpherts. mrs. cleeve desires to make a direct, personal appeal to mrs. ebbsmith. gertrude. oh, what kind of woman can this mrs. cleeve be? st. olpherts. a woman of character, who sets herself to accomplish a certain task-- gertrude. character! amos. hush, gerty! st. olpherts. and who gathers her skirts tightly around her and tip-toes gently into the mire. amos. to put it clearly: in order to get her unfaithful husband back to london, mrs. cleeve would deliberately employ this weak, unhappy woman as a lure. st. olpherts. perhaps mrs. cleeve is an unhappy woman. gertrude. what work for a wife! st. olpherts. wife--nonsense! she is only married to cleeve. amos. [walking up and down.] it is proposed that this meeting should take place--when? st. olpherts. i have brought sir sandford and mrs. cleeve with me. [pointing towards the outer door.] they are-- amos. if i decline? st. olpherts. it's known you leave for milan at a quarter to nine in the morning; there might be some sort of foolish, inconvenient scene at the station. amos. surely your grace--? st. olpherts. oh, no, i shall be in bed at that hour. i mean, between the women, perhaps--and mr. cleeve. come, come, sir, you can't abduct mrs. ebbsmith--nor can we. nor must you gag her. [amos appears angry and perplexed.] pray be reasonable. let her speak out for herself-- here, finally--and settle the business. come, sir, come! amos. [going to gertrude and speaking in a low voice.] ask her. [gertrude goes out.] cleeve! where is he while this poor creature's body and soul are being played for? you have told him she is with us? st. olpherts. no, i haven't. amos. he must suspect it. st. olpherts. well, candidly, mr. winterfield, mr. cleeve is just now employed in looking for mrs. ebbsmith elsewhere. amos. elsewhere? st. olpherts. sir sandford recognised that, in his brother's present mood, the young man's presence might be prejudicial to the success of these delicate negotiations. amos. so some lie has been told him, to keep him out of the way? st. olpherts. now, mr. winterfield--! amos. good heavens! duke--forgive me for my roughness--you appear to be fouling your hands, all of you, with some relish! st. olpherts. i must trouble you to address remarks of that nature to sir sandford cleeve. i am no longer a prime mover in the affair. i am simply standing by. amos. but how can you "stand by"? st. olpherts. confound it, sir, if you will trouble yourself to rescue people, there is a man to be rescued here as well as a woman; a man, by the way, who is a--a sort of relative of mine. amos. the woman first! st. olpherts. not always. you can rescue this woman in a few weeks' time; it can make no difference. amos. [indignantly.] ah--! st. olpherts. oh, you are angry! amos. i beg your pardon. one word. i assure your grace that i truly believe this wretched woman is at a fatal crisis in her life. i believe that if i lose her now there is every chance of her slipping back into a misery and despair out of which it will be impossible to drag her. oh, i'll be perfectly open with you. at this moment we--my sister and i--are not perfectly sure of her. her affection for this man may still induce her to sacrifice herself utterly for him; she is still in danger of falling to the lowest depth a woman can attain. come, duke, don't help these people. and don't "stand by!" help me and my sister. for god's sake! st. olpherts. my good mr. winterfield, believe me or not, i--i positively like this woman. amos. [gladly.] ah! st. olpherts. she attracts me curiously. and if she wanted assistance-- amos. doesn't she? st. olpherts. money-- amos. no, no. st. olpherts. she should have it. but as for the rest--well-- amos. well? st. olpherts. well sir, you must understand me. it is a failing of mine; i can't approach women--i never could--in the missionary spirit. [gertrude re-enters; the men turn to face her.] amos. [to gertrude.] will she--? gertrude. yes. [st. olpherts limps out of the room, bowing to gertrude as he passes.] oh, amos! amos. are we to lose the poor soul after all, gerty? gertrude. i--i can't think so. oh! but i'm afraid. [st. olpherts returns, and sir sandford cleeve enters with sybil cleeve. sandford is a long, lean, old-young man with a pinched face. sybil is a stately, handsome young woman, beautifully gowned and thickly veiled.] st. olpherts. mrs thorpe--mr winterfield. [sybil and sandford bow distantly to gertrude and amos.] amos. [to sandford and sybil, indicating the settee.] will you--? [sybil sits on the settee; sandford takes the chair beside her.] gertrude--[gertrude goes out.] sir sandford. [pompously.] mr winterfield, i find myself engaged on a peculiarly distasteful task. amos. i have no hope, sir sandford, that you will not have strength to discharge it. sir sandford. we shall object to loftiness of attitude on your part, sir. you would do well to reflect that we are seeking to restore a young man to a useful and honourable career. amos. you are using very honourable means, sir sandford. sir sandford. i shall protest against any perversion of words, mr. winterfield-- [the door of the further room opens, and gertrude comes in, then agnes. the latter is in a rusty, ill-fitting, black, stuff, dress; her hair is tightly drawn from her brows; her face is haggard, her eyes are red and sunken. a strip of linen binds her right hand.] st. olpherts. [speaking into sybil's ear.] the lean witch again! the witch of the iron hall at st. luke's. sybil. [in a whisper.] is that the woman? st. olpherts. you see only one of 'em--there are two there. [sandford rises as agnes comes slowly forward accompanied by gertrude. amos joins gertrude; and they go together into the adjoining room, gertrude giving agnes an appealing look.] sir sandford. [to agnes.] i--i am mr. lucas cleeve's brother--[with a motion of the hand towards sybil]--this is--this is-- [he swallows the rest of the announcement and retires to the back of the room, where he stands before the stove. st. olpherts strolls away and disappears.] sybil. [to agnes, in a hard, dry, disdainful voice.] i beg that you will sit down. [agnes sits mechanically, with an expressionless face.] i--i don't need to be told that this is a very--a very unwomanly proceeding on my part. sir sandford. i can't regard it in that light, under the peculiar circumstances. sybil. i'd rather you wouldn't interrupt me, sandford. [to agnes.] but the peculiar circumstances, to borrow my brother-in-law's phrase, are not such as to develop sweetness and modesty, i suppose. sir sandford. again i say you wrong yourself there, sybil-- sybil. [impatiently.] oh, please let me wrong myself, for a change. [to agnes.] when my husband left me, and i heard of his association with you, i felt sure that his vanity would soon make an openly irregular life intolerable to him. vanity is the cause of a great deal of virtue in men; the vainest are those who like to be thought respectable. sir sandford. really, i must protest-- sybil. but lady cleeve--the mother--and the rest of the family have not had the patience to wait for the fulfilment of my prophecy. and so i have been forced to undertake this journey. sir sandford. i demur to the expression "forced", sybil-- sybil. cannot we be left alone? surely--! [sandford bows stiffly and moves away, following st. olpherts.] however, there's this to be said for them, poor people--whatever is done to save my husband's prospects in life must be done now. it is no longer possible to play fast and loose with friends and supporters--to say nothing of enemies. his future now rests upon a matter of days--hours almost. [rising and walking about agitatedly.] that is why i am sent here--well, why i am here. agnes. [in a low, quavering voice.] what is it you are all asking me to do now? sybil. we are asking you to continue to--to exert your influence over him for a little while longer. agnes. [rising unsteadily.] ah--! [she makes a movement to go, falters, and irresolutely sits again.] my influence--mine! sybil. [with a stamp of the foot.] you wouldn't underrate your power if you had seen him, heard him, about an hour ago--[mockingly] after he had discovered his bereavement. agnes. he will soon forget me. sybil. yes--if you don't forsake him. agnes. i am going to england, into yorkshire; according to your showing, that should draw him back. sybil. oh, i've no doubt that we shall hear of him--in yorkshire! you'll find him dangling about your skirts--in yorkshire! agnes. and he will find that i am determined--strong. sybil. ultimately he will tire, of course. but when? and what assurance have we that he returns to us when he has wearied of pursuing you? besides, don't i tell you that we must make sure of him now? it's of no use his begging us, in a month's time, to patch up home and reputation. it must be now--and you can end our suspense. come, hideous as it sounds, this is not much to ask. agnes. [shrinking from her.] oh--! sybil. oh, don't regard me as the wife! that's an unnecessary sentiment, i pledge you my word. it's a little late in the day, too, for such considerations. so, come, help us! agnes. i will not. sybil. he has an old mother-- agnes. poor woman! sybil. and remember, you took him away--! agnes. i! sybil. practically you did--with your tender nursing and sweet compassion. isn't it straining a point--to shirk bringing him back? agnes. [rising.] i did not take him from you. you--you sent him to me. sybil. ho, yes! that tale has been dinned into your ears often enough, i can quite believe. i sent him to you--my coldness, heartlessness, selfishness sent him to you. the unsympathetic wife--eh? yes, but you didn't put yourself to the trouble of asking for my version of the story before you mingled your woes with his. [agnes faces her suddenly.] you know him now. have i been altogether to blame, do you still think? unsympathetic! because i've so often had to tighten my lips, and stare blankly over his shoulder, to stop myself crying out in weariness of his vanity and pettiness? cruel! because, occasionally, patience becomes exhausted at the mere contemplation of a man so self-absorbed? why, you married miserably, the duke of st. olpherts tells us! before you made yourself my husband's champion and protector, why didn't you let your experience speak a word for me? [agnes quickly turns away and sits upon the settee, her hands to her brow.] however, i didn't come here to revile you. [standing by her.] they say that you're a strange woman--not the sort of woman one generally finds doing such things as you have done; a woman with odd ideas. i hear--oh, i'm willing to believe it!--that there's good in you. [agnes breaks into a low peal of hysterical laughter.] agnes. who tells you--that? sybil. the duke. agnes. ha, ha, ha! a character--from him! ha, ha, ha! sybil. [her voice and manner softening.] well, if there is pity in you, help us to get my husband back to london, to his friends, to his old ambitions. agnes. ha, ha, ha, ha! your husband! sybil. the word slips out. i swear to you that he and i can never be more to each other than companion figures in a masquerade. the same roof may cover us; but between two wings of a house, as you may know, there often stretches a wide desert. i despise him; he hates me. [walking away, her voice breaking.] only--i did love him once . . . i don't want to see him utterly thrown away--wasted . . . i don't quite want to see that . . . [agnes rises and approaches sybil, fearfully.] agnes. [in a whisper.] lift your veil for a moment. [sybil raises her veil.] tears--tears--[with a deep groan]--oh--! [sybil turns away.] i --i'll do it . . . i'll go back to the palazzo . . . at once . . . [sybil draws herself up suddenly.] i've wronged you! wronged you! o god! o god! [she totters away and goes into her bedroom. for a moment or two sybil stands still, a look of horror and repulsion upon her face. then she turns and goes towards the outer door.] sybil. [calling.] sandford! sandford! [sir sandford cleeve and the duke of st. olpherts enter.] sir sandford. [to sybil.] well--? sybil. she is going back to the palazzo. sir sandford. you mean that she consents to--? sybil. [stamping her foot.] i mean that she will go back to the palazzo. [sitting and leaning her head upon her hands.] oh! oh! sir sandford. need we wait any longer, then? sybil. these people--these people who are befriending her! tell them. sir sandford. really, it can hardly be necessary to consult-- sybil. [fiercely.] i will have them told! i will have them told! [sandford goes to the door of the adjoining room and knocks, returning to sybil as gertrude and amos enter. sybil draws down her veil.] gertrude. [looking round.] mrs. ebbsmith--? mrs. ebbsmith--! sir sandford. er--many matters have been discussed with mrs. ebbsmith. undoubtedly, she has, for the moment, considerable influence over my brother. she has consented to exert it, to induce him to return at once to london. amos. i think i understand you! [agnes appears at the door of her room dressed in bonnet and cloak.] gertrude. agnes--! [agnes comes forward, stretches out her hand to gertrude, and throws herself upon the settee.] sybil. [to sandford, clutching his arm.] take me away. [they turn to go.] gertrude. [to sybil.] mrs cleeve--! [looking down upon agnes.] mrs. cleeve, we--my brother and i--hoped to save this woman. she was worth saving. you have utterly destroyed her. [sybil makes no answer, but walks slowly away with sandford, then stops and turns abruptly.] sybil. [with a gasp.] oh--! no--i will not accept the services of this wretched woman. i loathe myself for what i have done. [coming to agnes.] look up! look at me! [proudly--lifting her veil.] i decline your help--i decline it. [to gertrude and amos.] you hear me--you-- and you? i unsay all that i've said to her. it's too degrading. i will not have such an act upon my conscience. [to agnes.] understand me! if you rejoin this man i shall consider it a fresh outrage upon me. i hope you will keep with your friends. [gertrude holds out her hand to sybil; sybil touches it distantly.] agnes. [clutching at sybil's skirts.] forgive me! forgive--! sybil. [retreating.] ah, please--! [turning and confronting sandford.] tell your mother i have failed. i am not going back to england. [lucas enters quickly; he and sybil come face to face. they stand looking at each other for a moment, then she sweeps past him and goes out. sandford follows her.] lucas. [coming to agnes.] agnes--[to agnes, in rapid, earnest undertones.] they sent me to the railway station; my brother told me you were likely to leave for milan tonight. i ought to have guessed sooner that you were in the hands of this meddling parson and his sister. why has my wife been here--? agnes. [in a low voice, rocking herself gently to and fro.] you wife-- your wife--! lucas. and the others? what scheme is afoot now? why have you left me? why didn't you tell me outright that i was putting you to too severe a test? you tempted me, you led me on, to propose that i should patch up my life in that way. [she rises, with an expressionless face.] but it has had one good result. i know now how much i depend on you. oh, i have had it all out with myself, pacing up and down that cursed railway station. [laying his hand upon her arm and speaking into her ear.] i don't deceive myself any longer. agnes, this is the great cause of the unhappiness i've experienced of late years--i'm not fit for the fight and press of life. i wear no armour; i am too horribly sensitive. my skin bleeds at a touch; even flatter wounds me. oh, the wretchedness of it! but you can be strong--at your weakest, there is a certain strength in you. with you, in time, i feel i shall grow stronger. only i must withdraw from the struggle for a while; you must take me out of it and let me rest--recover breath, as it were. come! forgive me for having treated you ungratefully, almost treacherously. tomorrow we shall begin our search for our new home. agnes! agnes. i have already found a home. lucas. apart from me, you mean? agnes. apart from you. lucas. no, no. you'll not do that! agnes. lucas, this evening, two or three hours ago, you planned out the life we were to lead in the future. we had done with "madness", if you remember; henceforth we were to be "mere man and woman." lucas. you agreed-- agnes. then. but we hadn't looked at each other clearly then, as mere man and woman. you, the man--what are you? you've confessed-- lucas. i lack strength; i shall gain it. agnes. never from me--never from me. for what am i? untrue to myself, as you are untrue to yourself; false to others, as you are false to others; passionate, unstable, like yourself; like yourself, a coward. i --i was to lead women! i was to show them, in your company, how laws-- laws made and laws that are natural--may be set aside or slighted; how men and woman may live independent and noble lives without rule, guidance or sacrament. i was to be the example--the figure set up for others to observe and imitate. but the figure was made of wax--it fell awry at the first hot breath that touched it! you and i! what a partnership it has been! how base, and gross, and wicked, almost from the very beginning! we know each other now thoroughly--how base and wicked it would remain! no, go your way, lucas, and let me go mine. lucas. where--where are you going? agnes. to ketherick--to think. [wringing her hands.] ah! i have to think, too, now, of the woman i have wronged. lucas. wronged? agnes. your wife; the woman i have wronged, who came here tonight, and --spared me. oh, go! lucas. not like this, agnes! not like this! agnes. [appealingly.] gertrude! [lucas looks round--first at gertrude then at amos--and, with a hard smile upon his face, turns to go. suddenly agnes touches his sleeve.] lucas, when you have learnt to pray again, i will remember you, every day of my life. lucas. [staring at her.] pray! . . . you! . . . [she inclines her head twice, slowly; without another word he walks away and goes out. agnes sinks upon the settee; amos and gertrude remain, stiffly and silently, in the attitude of people who are waiting for the departure of a disagreeable person.] st. olpherts. [after watching lucas's departure.] now i wonder whether, if he hurried to his wife at this moment, repentant, and begged her to relent--i wonder whether--whether she would--whether--[looking at amos and gertrude, a little disconcerted]--i beg your pardon--you're not interested? amos. frankly, we are not. st. olpherts. no; other people's affairs are tedious. [producing his gloves.] well! a week in venice--and the weather has been delightful. [shaking hands with gertrude, whose expression remains unchanged.] a pleasant journey! [going to agnes, offering his hand.] mrs. ebbsmith--? [she lifts her maimed hand.] ah! an accident? [she nods wearily.] i'm sorry . . . i . . . [he turns away and goes out, bowing to amos as he passes.] waste: a tragedy, in four acts, by granville barker london: sidgwick & jackson, ltd. adam street, adelphi. mcmix. _entered at the library of congress, washington, u.s.a. all rights reserved._ waste - waste at shapters, george farrant's house in hertfordshire. ten o'clock on a sunday evening in summer. _facing you at her piano by the window, from which she is protected by a little screen, sits_ mrs. farrant; _a woman of the interesting age, clear-eyed and all her face serene, except for a little pucker of the brows which shows a puzzled mind upon some important matters. to become almost an ideal hostess has been her achievement; and in her own home, as now, this grace is written upon every movement. her eyes pass over the head of a girl, sitting in a low chair by a little table, with the shaded lamplight falling on her face. this is_ lucy davenport; _twenty-three, undefeated in anything as yet and so unsoftened. the book on her lap is closed, for she has been listening to the music. it is possibly some german philosopher, whom she reads with a critical appreciation of his shortcomings. on the sofa near her lounges_ mrs. o'connell; _a charming woman, if by charming you understand a woman who converts every quality she possesses into a means of attraction, and has no use for any others. on the sofa opposite sits_ miss trebell. _in a few years, when her hair is quite grey, she will assume as by right the dignity of an old maid. between these two in a low armchair is_ lady davenport. _she has attained to many dignities. mother and grandmother, she has brought into the world and nourished not merely life but character. a wonderful face she has, full of proud memories and fearless of the future. behind her, on a sofa between the windows, is_ walter kent. _he is just what the average english father would like his son to be. you can see the light shooting out through the windows and mixing with moonshine upon a smooth lawn. on your left is a door. there are many books in the room, hardly any pictures, a statuette perhaps. the owner evidently sets beauty of form before beauty of colour. it is a woman's room and it has a certain delicate austerity. by the time you have observed everything_ mrs. farrant _has played chopin's prelude opus , number from beginning to end._ lady davenport. thank you, my dear julia. walter kent. [_protesting._] no more? mrs. farrant. i won't play for a moment longer than i feel musical. miss trebell. do you think it right, julia, to finish with that after an hour's bach? mrs. farrant. i suddenly came over chopinesque, fanny; ... what's your objection? [_as she sits by her._] frances trebell. what ... when bach has raised me to the heights of unselfishness! amy o'connell. [_grimacing sweetly, her eyes only half lifted._] does he? i'm glad that i don't understand him. frances trebell. [_putting mere prettiness in its place._] one may prefer chopin when one is young. amy o'connell. and is that a reproach or a compliment? walter kent. [_boldly._] i do. frances trebell. or a man may ... unless he's a philosopher. lady davenport. [_to the rescue._] miss trebell, you're very hard on mere humanity. frances trebell. [_completing the reproof._] that's my wretched training as a schoolmistress, lady davenport ... one grew to fear it above all things. lucy davenport. [_throwing in the monosyllable with sharp youthful enquiry._] why? frances trebell. there were no text books on the subject. mrs. farrant. [_smiling at her friend._] yes, fanny ... i think you escaped to look after your brother only just in time. frances trebell. in another year i might have been head-mistress, which commits you to approve of the system for ever. lady davenport. [_shaking her wise head._] i've watched the education fever take england.... frances trebell. if i hadn't stopped teaching things i didn't understand...! amy o'connell. [_not without mischief._] and what was the effect on the pupils? lucy davenport. i can tell you that. amy o'connell. frances never taught you. lucy davenport. no, i wish she had. but i was at her sort of a school before i went to newnham. i know. frances trebell. [_very distastefully._] up-to-date, it was described as. lucy davenport. well, it was like a merry-go-round at top speed. you felt things wouldn't look a bit like that when you came to a standstill. amy o'connell. and they don't? lucy davenport. [_with great decision._] not a bit. amy o'connell. [_in her velvet tone._] i was taught the whole duty of woman by a parson-uncle who disbelieved in his church. walter kent. when a man at jude's was going to take orders.... amy o'connell. jude's? walter kent. at oxford. the dons went very gingerly with him over bits of science and history. [_this wakes a fruitful thought in_ julia farrant's _brain._] mrs. farrant. mamma, have you ever discussed so-called anti-christian science with lord charles? frances trebell ... cantelupe? mrs. farrant. yes. it was over appointing a teacher for the schools down here ... he was staying with us. the vicar's his fervent disciple. however, we were consulted. lucy davenport. didn't lord charles want you to send the boys there till they were ready for harrow? mrs. farrant. yes. frances trebell. quite the last thing in toryism! mrs. farrant. mamma made george say we were too _nouveau riche_ to risk it. lady davenport. [_as she laughs._] i couldn't resist that. mrs. farrant. [_catching something of her subject's dry driving manner._] lord charles takes the superior line and says ... that with his consent the church may teach the unalterable truth in scientific language or legendary, whichever is easier understanded of the people. lady davenport. is it the prospect of disestablishment suddenly makes him so accommodating? frances trebell. [_with large contempt._] he needn't be. the majority of people believe the world was made in an english week. lucy davenport. oh, no! frances trebell. no bishop dare deny it. mrs. farrant. [_from the heights of experience._] dear lucy, do you seriously think that the english spirit--the nerve that runs down the backbone--is disturbed by new theology ... or new anything? lady davenport. [_enjoying her epigram._] what a waste of persecution history shows us! walter kent _now captures the conversation with a very young politician's fervour._ walter kent. once they're disestablished they must make up their minds what they do believe. lady davenport. i presume lord charles thinks it'll hand the church over to him and his ... dare i say 'sect'? walter kent. won't it? he knows what he wants. mrs. farrant. [_subtly._] there's the election to come yet. walter kent. but now both parties are pledged to a bill of some sort. mrs. farrant. political prophecies have a knack of not coming true; but, d'you know, cyril horsham warned me to watch this position developing ... nearly four years ago. frances trebell. sitting on the opposition bench sharpens the eye-sight. walter kent. [_ironically._] has he been pleased with the prospect? mrs. farrant. [_with perfect diplomacy_] if the church must be disestablished ... better done by its friends than its enemies. frances trebell. still i don't gather he's pleased with his dear cousin charles's conduct. mrs. farrant. [_shrugging._] oh, lately, lord charles has never concealed his tactics. frances trebell. and that speech at leeds was the crowning move i suppose; just asking the nonconformists to bring things to a head? mrs. farrant. [_judicially._] i think that was precipitate. walter kent. [_giving them_ lord charles's _oratory._] gentlemen, in these latter days of radical opportunism!--you know, i was there ... sitting next to an old gentleman who shouted "jesuit." frances trebell. but supposing mallaby and the nonconformists hadn't been able to force the liberals' hand? mrs. farrant. [_speaking as of inferior beings._] why, they were glad of any cry going to the country! frances trebell. [_as she considers this._] yes ... and lord charles would still have had as good a chance of forcing lord horsham's. it has been clever tactics. lucy davenport. [_who has been listening, sharp-eyed._] contrariwise, he wouldn't have liked a radical bill though, would he? walter kent. [_with aplomb._] he knew he was safe from that. the government must have dissolved before christmas anyway ... and the swing of the pendulum's a sure thing. mrs. farrant. [_with her smile._] it's never a sure thing. walter kent. oh, mrs. farrant, look how unpopular the liberals are. frances trebell. what made them bring in resolutions? walter kent. [_overflowing with knowledge of the subject._] i was told mallaby insisted on their showing they meant business. i thought he was being too clever ... and it turns out he was. tommy luxmore told me there was a fearful row in the cabinet about it. but on their last legs, you know, it didn't seem to matter, i suppose. even then, if prothero had mustered up an ounce of tact ... i believe they could have pulled them through.... frances trebell. not the spoliation one. walter kent. well, mr. trebell dished that! frances trebell. henry says his speech didn't turn a vote. mrs. farrant. [_with charming irony._] how disinterested of him! walter kent. [_enthusiastic._] that speech did if ever a speech did. frances trebell. is there any record of a speech that ever did? he just carried his own little following with him. mrs. farrant. but the crux of the whole matter is and has always been ... what's to be done with the church's money. lucy davenport. [_visualising sovereigns._] a hundred millions or so ... think of it! frances trebell. there has been from the start a good deal of anti-nonconformist feeling against applying the money to secular uses. mrs. farrant. [_deprecating false modesty, on anyone's behalf._] oh, of course the speech turned votes ... twenty of them at least. lucy davenport. [_determined on information._] then i was told lord horsham had tried to come to an understanding himself with the nonconformists about disestablishment--oh--a long time ago ... over the education bill. frances trebell. is that true, julia? mrs. farrant. how should i know? frances trebell. [_with some mischief_] you might. mrs. farrant. [_weighing her words._] i don't think it would have been altogether wise to make advances. they'd have asked more than a conservative government could possibly persuade the church to give up. walter kent. i don't see that horsham's much better off now. he only turned the radicals out on the spoliation question by the help of trebell. and so far ... i mean, till this election is over trebell counts still as one of them, doesn't he, miss trebell? oh ... perhaps he doesn't. frances trebell. he'll tell you he never has counted as one of them. mrs. farrant. no doubt lord charles would sooner have done without his help. and that's why i didn't ask the gentle jesuit this week-end if anyone wants to know. walter kent. [_stupent at this lack of party spirit._] what ... he'd rather have had the liberals go to the country undefeated! mrs. farrant. [_with finesse._] the election may bring us back independent of mr. trebell and anything he stands for. walter kent. [_sharply._] but you asked lord horsham to meet him. mrs. farrant. [_with still more finesse._] i had my reasons. votes aren't everything. lady davenport _has been listening with rather a doubtful smile; she now caps the discussion._ lady davenport. i'm relieved to hear you say so, my dear julia. on the other hand democracy seems to have brought itself to a pretty pass. here's a measure, which the country as a whole neither demands nor approves of, will certainly be carried, you tell me, because a minority on each side is determined it shall be ... for totally different reasons. mrs. farrant. [_shrugging again._] it isn't our business to prevent popular government looking foolish, mamma. lady davenport. is that tory cynicism or feminine? _at this moment_ george farrant _comes through the window; a good natured man of forty-five. he would tell you that he was educated at eton and oxford. but the knowledge which saves his life comes from the thrusting upon him of authority and experience; ranging from the management of an estate which he inherited at twenty-four, through the chairmanship of a newspaper syndicate, through a successful marriage, to a minor post in the last tory cabinet and the prospect of one in the near-coming next. thanks to his agents, editors, permanent officials, and his own common sense, he always acquits himself creditably. he comes to his wife's side and waits for a pause in the conversation._ lady davenport. i remember mr. disraeli once said to me ... clever women are as dangerous to the state as dynamite. frances trebell. [_not to be impressed by disraeli._] well, lady davenport, if men will leave our intellects lying loose about.... farrant. blackborough's going, julia. mrs. farrant. yes, george. lady davenport. [_concluding her little apologue to_ miss trebell.] yes, my dear, but power without responsibility isn't good for the character that wields it either. [_there follows_ farrant _through the window a man of fifty. he has about him that unmistakeable air of acquired wealth and power which distinguishes many jews and has therefore come to be regarded as a solely jewish characteristic. he speaks always with that swift decision which betokens a narrowed view. this is_ russell blackborough; _manufacturer, politician ... statesman, his own side calls him._] blackborough. [_to his hostess._] if i start now, they tell me, i shall get home before the moon goes down. i'm sorry i must get back to-night. it's been a most delightful week-end. mrs. farrant. [_gracefully giving him a good-bye hand._] and a successful one, i hope. farrant. we talked education for half an hour. mrs. farrant. [_her eyebrows lifting a shade._] education! farrant. then trebell went away to work. blackborough. i've missed the music, i fear. mrs. farrant. but it's been bach. blackborough. no chopin? mrs. farrant. for a minute only. blackborough. why don't these new italian men write things for the piano! good-night, lady davenport. lady davenport. [_as he bows over her hand._] and what has education to do with it? blackborough. [_non-committal himself._] perhaps it was a subject that compromised nobody. lady davenport. do you think my daughter has been wasting her time and her tact? farrant. [_clapping him on the shoulder._] blackborough's frankly flabbergasted at the publicity of this intrigue. mrs. farrant. intrigue! mr. trebell walked across the house ... actually into your arms. blackborough. [_with a certain dubious grimness._] well ... we've had some very interesting talks since. and his views upon education are quite ... utopian. good bye, miss trebell. frances trebell. good-bye. mrs. farrant. i wouldn't be so haughty till after the election, if i were you, mr. blackborough. blackborough. [_indifferently._] oh, i'm glad he's with us on the church question ... so far. mrs. farrant. so far as you've made up your minds? the electoral cat will jump soon. blackborough. [_a little beaten by such polite cynicism._] well ... our conservative principles! after all we know what they are. good-night, mrs. o'connell. amy o'connell. good-night. farrant. your neuralgia better? amy o'connell. by fits and starts. farrant. [_robustly._] come and play billiards. horsham and maconochie started a game. they can neither of them play. we left them working out a theory of angles on bits of paper. walter kent. professor maconochie lured me on to golf yesterday. he doesn't suffer from theories about that. blackborough. [_with approval._] started life as a caddie. walter kent. [_pulling a wry face._] so he told me after the first hole. blackborough. what's this, kent, about trebell's making you his secretary? walter kent. he thinks he'll have me. blackborough. [_almost reprovingly._] no question of politics? farrant. more intrigue, blackborough. walter kent. [_with disarming candour._] the truth is, you see, i haven't any as yet. i was socialist at oxford ... but of course that doesn't count. i think i'd better learn my job under the best man i can find ... and who'll have me. blackborough. [_gravely._] what does your father say? walter kent. oh, as long as jack will inherit the property in a tory spirit! my father thinks it my wild oats. _a footman has come in._ the footman. your car is round, sir. blackborough. ah! good-night, miss davenport. good-bye again, mrs. farrant ... a charming week-end. _he makes a business-like departure_, farrant _follows him._ the footman. a telephone message from dr. wedgecroft, ma'am. his thanks; they stopped the express for him at hitchin and he has reached london quite safely. mrs. farrant. thank you. [_the footman goes out._ mrs. farrant _exhales delicately as if the air were a little refined by_ blackborough's _removal._] mrs. farrant. mr. blackborough and his patent turbines and his gas engines and what not are the motive power of our party nowadays, fanny. frances trebell. yes, you claim to be steering plutocracy. do you never wonder if it isn't steering you? mrs. o'connell, _growing restless, has wandered round the room picking at the books in their cases._ amy o'connell. i always like your books, julia. it's an intellectual distinction to know someone who has read them. mrs. farrant. that's the communion i choose. frances trebell. aristocrat ... fastidious aristocrat. mrs. farrant. no, now. learning's a great leveller. frances trebell. but julia ... books are quite unreal. d'you think life is a bit like them? mrs. farrant. they bring me into touch with ... oh, there's nothing more deadening than to be boxed into a set in society! speak to a woman outside it ... she doesn't understand your language. frances trebell. and do you think by prattling hegel with gilbert wedgecroft when he comes to physic you-- mrs. farrant. [_joyously._] excellent physic that is. he never leaves a prescription. lady davenport. don't you think an aristocracy of brains is the best aristocracy, miss trebell? frances trebell. [_with a little more bitterness than the abstraction of the subject demands._] i'm sure it is just as out of touch with humanity as any other ... more so, perhaps. if i were a country i wouldn't be governed by arid intellects. mrs. farrant. manners, frances. frances trebell. i'm one myself and i know. they're either dead or dangerous. george farrant _comes back and goes straight to_ mrs. o'connell. farrant. [_still robustly._] billiards, mrs. o'connell. amy o'connell. [_declining sweetly._] i think not. farrant. billiards, lucy? lucy davenport. [_as robust as he._] yes, uncle george. you shall mark while walter gives me twenty-five and i beat him. walter kent. [_with a none-of-your-impudence air._] i'll give you ten yards start and race you to the billiard room. lucy davenport. will you wear my skirt? oh ... grandmamma's thinking me vulgar. lady davenport. [_without prejudice._] why, my dear, freedom of limb is worth having ... and perhaps it fits better with freedom of tongue. farrant. [_in the proper avuncular tone._] i'll play you both ... and i'd race you both if you weren't so disgracefully young. amy o'connell _has reached an open window._ amy o'connell. i shall go for a walk with my neuralgia. mrs. farrant. poor thing! amy o'connell. the moon's good for it. lucy davenport. shall you come, aunt julia? mrs. farrant. [_in flat protest._] no, i will not sit up while you play billiards. mrs. o'connell _goes out through the one window, stands for a moment, wistfully romantic, gazing at_ kent _are standing at the other, looking across the lawn._ farrant. horsham still arguing with maconochie. they're got to botany now. walter kent. demonstrating something with a ... what's that thing? walter _goes out._ farrant. [_with a throw of his head towards the distant_ horsham.] he was so bored with our politics ... having to give his opinion too. we could just hear your piano. _and he follows_ walter. mrs. farrant. take amy o'connell that lace thing, will you, lucy? lucy davenport. [_her tone expressing quite wonderfully her sentiments towards the owner._] don't you think she'd sooner catch cold? _she catches it up and follows the two men; then after looking round impatiently, swings off in the direction_ mrs. o'connell _took. the three women now left together are at their ease._ frances trebell. did you expect mr. blackborough to get on well with henry? mrs. farrant. he has become a millionaire by appreciating clever men when he met them. lady davenport. yes, julia, but his political conscience is comparatively new-born. mrs. farrant. well, mamma, can we do without mr. trebell? lady davenport. everyone seems to think you'll come back with something of a majority. mrs. farrant. [_a little impatient._] what's the good of that? the bill can't be brought into the lords ... and who's going to take disestablishment through the commons for us? not eustace fowler ... not mr. blackborough ... not lord charles ... not george! lady davenport. [_warningly._] not all your brilliance as a hostess will keep mr. trebell in a tory cabinet. mrs. farrant. [_with wilful avoidance of the point._] cyril horsham is only too glad. lady davenport. because you tell him he ought to be. frances trebell. [_coming to the rescue._] there is this. henry has never exactly called himself a liberal. he really is elected independently. mrs. farrant. i wonder will all the garden-cities become pocket-boroughs. frances trebell. i think he has made a mistake. mrs. farrant. it makes things easier now ... his having kept his freedom. frances trebell. i think it's a mistake to stand outside a system. there's an inhumanity in that amount of detachment ... mrs. farrant. [_brilliantly._] i think a statesman may be a little inhuman. lady davenport. [_with keenness._] do you mean superhuman? it's not the same thing, you know. mrs. farrant. i know. lady davenport. most people don't know. mrs. farrant. [_proceeding with her cynicism._] humanity achieves ... what? housekeeping and children. frances trebell. as far as a woman's concerned. mrs. farrant. [_a little mockingly._] now, mamma, say that is as far as a woman's concerned. lady davenport. my dear, you know i don't think so. mrs. farrant. we may none of us think so. but there's our position ... bread and butter and a certain satisfaction until ... oh, mamma, i wish i were like you ... beyond all the passions of life. lady davenport. [_with great vitality._] i'm nothing of the sort. it's my egoism's dead ... that's an intimation of mortality. mrs. farrant. i accept the snub. but i wonder what i'm to do with myself for the next thirty years. frances trebell. help lord horsham to govern the country. julia farrant _gives a little laugh and takes up the subject this time._ mrs. farrant. mamma ... how many people, do you think, believe that cyril's _grande passion_ for me takes that form? lady davenport. everyone who knows cyril and most people who know you. mrs. farrant. otherwise i seem to have fulfilled my mission in life. the boys are old enough to go to school. george and i have become happily unconscious of each other. frances trebell. [_with sudden energy of mind._] till i was forty i never realised the fact that most women must express themselves through men. mrs. farrant. [_looking at_ frances _a little curiously._] didn't your instinct lead you to marry ... or did you fight against it? frances trebell. i don't know. perhaps i had no vitality to spare. lady davenport. that boy is a long time proposing to lucy. _this effectually startles the other two from their conversational reverie._ mrs. farrant. walter? i'm not sure that he means to. she means to marry him if he does. frances trebell. has she told you so? mrs. farrant. no. i judge by her business-like interest in his welfare. frances trebell. he's beginning to feel the responsibility of manhood ... doesn't know whether to be frightened or proud of it. lady davenport. it's a pretty thing to watch young people mating. when they're older and marry from disappointment or deliberate choice, thinking themselves so worldly-wise.... mrs. farrant, [_back to her politely cynical mood._] well ... then at least they don't develop their differences at the same fire-side, regretting the happy time when neither possessed any character at all. lady davenport. [_giving a final douche of common sense._] my dear, any two reasonable people ought to be able to live together. frances trebell. granted three sitting rooms. that'll be the next middle-class political cry ... when women are heard. mrs. farrant. [_suddenly as practical as her mother._] walter's lucky ... lucy won't stand any nonsense. she'll have him in the cabinet by the time he's fifty. lady davenport. and are you the power behind your brother, miss trebell? frances trebell. [_gravely._] he ignores women. i've forced enough good manners on him to disguise the fact decently. his affections are two generations ahead. mrs. farrant. people like him in an odd sort of way. frances trebell. that's just respect for work done ... one can't escape from it. _there is a slight pause in their talk. by some not very devious route_ mrs. farrant's _mind travels to the next subject._ mrs. farrant. fanny ... how fond are you of amy o'connell? frances trebell. she says we're great friends. mrs. farrant. she says that of me. frances trebell. it's a pity about her husband. mrs. farrant. [_almost provokingly._] what about him? frances trebell. it seems to be understood that he treats her badly. lady davenport. [_a little malicious._] is there any particular reason he should treat her well? frances trebell. don't you like her, lady davenport? lady davenport. [_dealing out justice._] i find her quite charming to look at and talk to ... but why shouldn't justin o'connell live in ireland for all that? i'm going to bed, julia. _she collects her belongings and gets up._ mrs. farrant. i must look in at the billiard room. frances trebell. i won't come, julia. mrs. farrant. what's your brother working at? frances trebell. i don't know. something we shan't hear of for a year, perhaps. mrs. farrant. on the church business, i daresay. frances trebell. did you hear lord horsham at dinner on the lack of dignity in an irreligious state? mrs. farrant. poor cyril ... he'll have to find a way round that opinion of his now. frances trebell. does he like leading his party? mrs. farrant. [_after due consideration._] it's an intellectual exercise. he's the right man, fanny. you see it isn't a party in the active sense at all, except now and then when it's captured by someone with an axe to grind. frances trebell. [_humorously._] such as my brother. mrs. farrant. [_as humorous._] such as your brother. it expresses the thought of the men who aren't taken in by the claptrap of progress. frances trebell. sometimes they've a queer way of expressing their love for the people of england. mrs. farrant. but one must use democracy. wellington wouldn't ... disraeli did. lady davenport. [_at the door._] good-night, miss trebell. frances trebell. i'm coming ... it's past eleven. mrs. farrant. [_at the window._] what a gorgeous night! i'll come in and kiss you, mamma. frances _follows_ lady davenport _and_ mrs. farrant _starts across the lawn to the billiard room.... an hour later you can see no change in the room except that only one lamp is alight on the table in the middle._ amy o'connell _and_ henry trebell _walk past one window and stay for a moment in the light of the other. her wrap is about her shoulders. he stands looking down at her._ amy o'connell. there goes the moon ... it's quieter than ever now. [_she comes in._] is it very late? trebell. [_as he follows._] half-past twelve. trebell _is hard-bitten, brainy, forty-five and very sure of himself. he has a cold keen eye, which rather belies a sensitive mouth; hands which can grip, and a figure that is austere._ amy o'connell. i ought to be in bed. i suppose everyone has gone. trebell. early trains to-morrow. the billiard room lights are out. amy o'connell. the walk has just tired me comfortably. trebell. sit down. [_she sits by the table. he sits by her and says with the air of a certain buyer at a market._] you're very pretty. amy o'connell. as well here as by moonlight? can't you see any wrinkles? trebell. one or two ... under the eyes. but they give character and bring you nearer my age. yes, nature hit on the right curve in making you. _she stretches herself, cat-like._ amy o'connell. praise is the greatest of luxuries, isn't it, henry? ... henry ... [_she caresses the name._] trebell. quite right ... henry. amy o'connell. henry ... trebell. trebell. having formally taken possession of my name.... amy o'connell. i'll go to bed. _his eyes have never moved from her. now she breaks the contact and goes towards the door._ trebell. i wouldn't ... my spare time for love making is so limited. _she turns back, quite at ease, her eyes challenging him._ amy o'connell. that's the first offensive thing you've said. trebell. why offensive? amy o'connell. i may flirt. making love's another matter. trebell. sit down and explain the difference ... mrs. o'connell. _she sits down._ amy o'connell. quite so. 'mrs. o'connell'. that's the difference. trebell. [_provokingly._] but i doubt if i'm interested in the fact that your husband doesn't understand you and that your marriage was a mistake ... and how hard you find it to be strong. amy o'connell. [_kindly._] i'm not quite a fool though you think so on a three months' acquaintance. but tell me this ... what education besides marriage does a woman get? trebell. [_his head lifting quickly._] education.... amy o'connell. don't be business-like. trebell. i beg your pardon. amy o'connell. do you think the things you like to have taught in schools are any use to one when one comes to deal with you? trebell. [_after a little scrutiny of her-face._] well, if marriage is only the means to an end ... what's the end? not flirtation. amy o'connell. [_with an air of self-revelation._] i don't know. to keep one's place in the world, i suppose, one's self-respect and a sense of humour. trebell. is that difficult? amy o'connell. to get what i want, without paying more than it's worth to me....? trebell. never to be reckless. amy o'connell. [_with a side-glance._] one isn't so often tempted. trebell. in fact ... to flirt with life generally. now, what made your husband marry you? amy o'connell. [_dealing with the impertinence in her own fashion._] what would make you marry me? don't say: nothing on earth. trebell. [_speaking apparently of someone else._] a prolonged fit of idleness might make me marry ... a clever woman. but i've never been idle for more than a week. and i've never met a clever woman ... worth calling a woman. amy o'connell. [_bringing their talk back to herself, and fastidiously._] justin has all the natural instincts. trebell. he's roman catholic, isn't he? amy o'connell. so am i ... by profession. trebell. it's a poor religion unless you really believe in it. amy o'connell. [_appealing to him._] if i were to live at linaskea and have as many children as god sent, i should manage to make justin pretty miserable! and what would be left of me at all i should like to know? trebell. so justin lives at linaskea alone? amy o'connell. i'm told now there's a pretty housemaid ... [_she shrugs._] trebell. does he drink too? amy o'connell. oh, no. you'd like justin, i daresay. he's clever. the thirteenth century's what he knows about. he has done a book on its statutes ... has been doing another. trebell. and after an evening's hard work i find you here ready to flirt with. amy o'connell. what have you been working at? trebell. a twentieth century statute perhaps. that's not any concern of yours either. _she does not follow his thought._ amy o'connell. no, i prefer you in your unprofessional moments. trebell. real flattery. i didn't know i had any. amy o'connell. that's why you should flirt with me ... henry ... to cultivate them. i'm afraid you lack imagination. trebell. one must choose something to lack in this life. amy o'connell. not develop your nature to its utmost capacity. trebell. and then? amy o'connell. well, if that's not an end in itself ... [_with a touch of romantic piety._] i suppose there's the hereafter. trebell. [_grimly material._] what, more developing! i watch people wasting time on themselves with amazement ... i refuse to look forward to wasting eternity. amy o'connell. [_shaking her head._] you are very self-satisfied. trebell. not more so than any machine that runs smoothly. and i hope not self-conscious. amy o'connell. [_rather attractively treating him as a child._] it would do you good to fall really desperately in love with me ... to give me the power to make you unhappy. _he suddenly becomes very definite._ trebell. at twenty-three i engaged myself to be married to a charming and virtuous fool. i broke it off. amy o'connell. did she mind much? trebell. we both minded. but i had ideals of womanhood that i wouldn't sacrifice to any human being. then i fell in with a woman who seduced me, and for a whole year led me the life of a french novel ... played about with my emotion as i had tortured that other poor girl's brains. education you'd call it in the one case as i called it in the other. what a waste of time! amy o'connell. and what has become of your ideal? trebell. [_relapsing to his former mood._] it's no longer a personal matter. amy o'connell. [_with coquetry._] you're not interested in my character? trebell. oh, yes, i am ... up to kissing point. _she does not shrink, but speaks with just a shade of contempt._ amy o'connell. you get that far more easily than a woman. that's one of my grudges against men. why can't women take love-affairs so lightly? trebell. there are reasons. but make a good beginning with this one. kiss me at once. _he leans towards her. she considers him quite calmly._ amy o'connell. no. trebell. when will you, then? amy o'connell. when i can't help myself ... if that time ever comes. trebell. [_accepting the postponement in a business-like spirit._] well ... i'm an impatient man. amy o'connell. [_confessing engagingly._] i made up my mind to bring you within arms' length of me when we'd met at lady percival's. do you remember? [_his face shows no sign of it._] it was the day after your speech on the budget. trebell. then i remember. but i haven't observed the process. amy o'connell. [_subtly._] your sister grew to like me very soon. that's all the cunning there has been. trebell. the rest is just mutual attraction? amy o'connell. and opportunities. trebell. such as this. _at the drop of their voices they become conscious of the silent house._ amy o'connell. do you really think everyone has gone to bed? trebell. [_disregardful._] and what is it makes my pressing attentions endurable ... if one may ask? amy o'connell. some spiritual need or other, i suppose, which makes me risk unhappiness ... in fact, welcome it. trebell. [_with great briskness._] your present need is a good shaking.... i seriously mean that. you get to attach importance to these shades of emotion. a slight physical shock would settle them all. that's why i asked you to kiss me just now. amy o'connell. you haven't very nice ideas, have you? trebell. there are three facts in life that call up emotion ... birth, death, and the desire for children. the niceties are shams. amy o'connell. then why do you want to kiss me? trebell. i don't ... seriously. but i shall in a minute just to finish the argument. too much diplomacy always ends in a fight. amy o'connell. and if i don't fight ... it'd be no fun for you, i suppose? trebell. you would get that much good out of me. for it's my point of honour ... to leave nothing i touch as i find it. _he is very close to her._ amy o'connell. you're frightening me a little ... trebell. come and look at the stars again. come along. amy o'connell. give me my wrap ... [_he takes it up, but holds it._] well, put it on me. [_he puts it round her, but does not withdraw his arms._] be careful, the stars are looking at you. trebell. no, they can't see so far as we can. that's the proper creed. amy o'connell. [_softly, almost shyly._] henry. trebell. [_bending closer to her._] yes, pretty thing. amy o'connell. is this what you call being in love? _he looks up and listens._ trebell. here's somebody coming. amy o'connell. oh!... trebell. what does it matter? amy o'connell. i'm untidy or something.... _she slips out, for they are close to the window. the_ footman _enters, stops suddenly._ the footman. i beg your pardon, sir. i thought everyone had gone. trebell. i've just been for a walk. i'll lock up if you like. the footman. i can easily wait up, sir. trebell. [_at the window._] i wouldn't. what do you do ... just slide the bolt? the footman. that's all, sir. trebell. i see. good-night. the footman. good-night, sir. _he goes._ trebell's _demeanour suddenly changes, becomes alert, with the alertness of a man doing something in secret. he leans out of the window and whispers._ trebell. amy! _there is no answer, so he gently steps out. for a moment the room is empty and there is silence. then_ amy _has flown from him into the safety of lights. she is flushed, trembling, but rather ecstatic, and her voice has lost all affectation now._ amy o'connell. oh ... oh ... you shouldn't have kissed me like that! trebell _stands in the window-way; a light in his eyes, and speaks low but commandingly._ trebell. come here. _instinctively she moves towards him. they speak in whispers._ amy o'connell. he was locking up. trebell. i've sent him to bed. amy o'connell. he won't go. trebell. never mind him. amy o'connell. we're standing full in the light ... anyone could see us. trebell. [_with fierce egotism._] think of me ... not of anyone else. [_he draws her from the window; then does not let her go._] may i kiss you again? amy o'connell. [_her eyes closed._] yes. _he kisses her. she stiffens in his arms; then laughs almost joyously, and is commonplace._ amy o'connell. well ... let me get my breath. trebell. [_letting her stand free._] now ... go along. _obediently she turns to the door, but sinks on the nearest chair._ amy o'connell. in a minute, i'm a little faint. [_he goes to her quickly._] no, it's nothing. trebell. come into the air again. [_then half seriously._] i'll race you across the lawn. amy o'connell. [_still breathless and a little hysterical._] thank you! trebell. shall i carry you? amy o'connell. don't be silly. [_she recovers her self-possession, gets up and goes to the window, then looks back at him and says very beautifully._] but the night's beautiful, isn't it? _he has her in his arms again, more firmly this time._ trebell. make it so. amy o'connell. [_struggling ... with herself_] oh, why do you rouse me like this? trebell. because i want you. amy o'connell. want me to...? trebell. want you to ... kiss me just once. amy o'connell. [_yielding._] if i do ... don't let me go mad, will you? trebell. perhaps. [_he bends over her, her head drops back._] now. amy o'connell. yes! _she kisses him on the mouth. then he would release her, but suddenly she clings again._ oh ... don't let me go. trebell. [_with fierce pride of possession._] not yet. _she is fragile beside him. he lifts her in his arms and carries her out into the darkness._ the second act trebell's house in queen anne street, london. eleven o'clock on an october morning. trebell's _working room is remarkable chiefly for the love of sunlight it evidences in its owner. the walls are white; the window which faces you is bare of all but the necessary curtains. indeed, lack of draperies testifies also to his horror of dust. there faces you besides a double door; when it is opened another door is seen. when that is opened you discover a writing table, and beyond can discern a book-case filled with heavy volumes--law reports perhaps. the little room beyond is, so to speak, an under-study. between the two rooms a window, again barely curtained, throws light down the staircase. but in the big room, while the books are many the choice of them is catholic; and the book-cases are low, running along the wall. there is an armchair before the bright fire, which is on your right. there is a sofa. and in the middle of the room is an enormous double writing table piled tidily with much appropriate impedimenta, blue books and pamphlets and with an especial heap of unopened letters and parcels. at the table sits_ trebell _himself, in good health and spirits, but eyeing askance the work to which he has evidently just returned. his sister looks in on him. she is dressed to go out and has a housekeeping air._ frances. are you busy, henry? trebell. more or less. come in. frances. you'll dine at home? trebell. anyone coming? frances. julia farrant and lucy have run up to town, i think. i thought of going round and asking them to come in ... but perhaps your young man will be going there. amy o'connell said something vague about our going to charles street ... but she may be out of town by now. trebell. well ... i'll be in anyhow. frances. [_going to the window as she buttons her gloves._] were you on deck early this morning? it must have been lovely. trebell. no, i turned in before we got out of le havre. i left kent on deck and found him there at six. frances. i don't think autumn means to come at all this year ... it'll be winter one morning. september has been like a hive of bees, busy and drowsy. by the way, cousin mary has another baby ... a girl. trebell. [_indifferent to the information._] that's the fourth. frances. fifth. they asked me down for the christening ... but i really couldn't. trebell. september's the month for tuscany. the car chose to break down one morning just as we were starting north again; so we climbed one of the little hills and sat for a couple of hours, while i composed a fifteenth century electioneering speech to the citizens of siena. frances. [_with a half smile._] have you a vein of romance for holiday time? trebell. [_dispersing the suggestion._] not at all romantic ... nothing but figures and fiscal questions. that was the hardest commercial civilisation there has been, though you only think of its art and its murders now. frances. the papers on both sides have been very full of you ... saying you hold the moral balance ... or denying it. trebell. an interviewer caught me at basle. i offered to discuss the state of the swiss navy. frances. was that before lord horsham wrote to you? trebell. yes, his letter came to innsbruck. he "expressed" it somehow. why ... it isn't known that he will definitely ask me to join? frances. the whitehall had a leader before the elections were well over to say that he must ... but, of course, that was mr. farrant. trebell. [_knowingly._] mrs. farrant. i saw it in paris ... it just caught me up. frances. the times is very shy over the whole question ... has a letter from a fresh bishop every day ... doesn't talk of you very kindly yet. trebell. tampering with the establishment, even cantelupe's way, will be a pill to the real old tory right to the bitter end. walter kent _comes in, very fresh and happy-looking. a young man started in life._ trebell _hails him._ trebell. hullo ... you've not been long getting shaved. kent. how do you do, miss trebell? lucy turned me out. frances. my congratulations. i've not seen you since i heard the news. kent. [_glad and unembarrassed._] thank you. i do deserve them, don't i? mrs. farrant didn't come down ... she left us to breakfast together. but i've a message for you ... her love and she is in town. i went and saw lord charles, sir. he will come to you and be here at half past seven. trebell. look at these. _he smacks on the back, so to speak, the pile of parcels and letters._ kent. oh, lord! ... i'd better start on them. frances. [_continuing in her smooth oldmaidish manner._] thank you for getting engaged just before you went off with henry ... it has given me my only news of him, through lucy and your postcards. trebell. oh, what about wedgecroft? kent. i think it was he spun up just as i'd been let in. trebell. oh, well ... [_and he rings at the telephone which is on his table._] kent. [_confiding in_ miss trebell.] we're a common sense couple, aren't we? i offered to ask to stay behind but she.... simpson, _the maid, comes in._ simpson. dr. wedgecroft, sir. wedgecroft _is on her heels. if you have an eye for essentials you may tell at once that he is a doctor, but if you only notice externals you will take him, for anything else. he is over forty and in perfect health of body and spirit. his enthusiasms are his vitality and he has too many of them ever to lose one. he squeezes_ miss trebell's _hand with an air of fearless affection which is another of his characteristics and not the least loveable._ wedgecroft. how are you? frances. i'm very well, thanks. wedgecroft. [_to_ trebell, _as they shake hands._] you're looking fit. trebell. [_with tremendous emphasis._] i am! wedgecroft. you've got the motor eye though. trebell. full of dust? wedgecroft. look at kent's. [_he takes_ walter's _arm._] it's a slight but serious contraction of the pupil ... which i charge fifty guineas to cure. frances. it's the eye of faith in you and your homeopathic doses. don't you interfere with it. frances trebell, _housekeeper, goes out._ kent _has seized on the letters and is carrying them to his room._ kent. this looks like popularity and the great heart of the people, doesn't it? wedgecroft. trebell, you're not ill, and i've work to do. trebell. i want ten minutes. keep anybody out, kent. kent. i'll switch that speaking tube arrangement to my room. trebell, _overflowing with vitality, starts to face the floor._ trebell. i've seen the last of pump court, gilbert. wedgecroft. the bar ought to give you a testimonial ... to the man who not only could retire on twenty years' briefs, but has. trebell. fifteen. but i bled the city sharks with a good conscience ... quite freely. wedgecroft. [_with a pretence at grumbling._] i wish i could retire. trebell. no you don't. doctoring's a priestcraft ... you've taken vows. wedgecroft. then why don't you establish _our_ church instead of ... trebell. yes, my friend ... but you're a heretic. i'd have to give the medical council power to burn you at the stake. kent. [_with the book packages._] parcel from the s.p.c.k., sir. trebell. i know.... disestablishment a crime against god; sermon preached by the vicar of something parva in eighteen seventy three. i hope you're aware it's your duty to read all those. kent. suppose they convert me? lucy wanted to know if she could see you. trebell. [_his eyebrows up._] yes, i'll call at mrs. farrant's. oh, wait. aren't they coming to dinner? kent. to-night? no, i think they go back to shapters by the five o'clock. i told her she might come round about twelve on the chance. trebell. yes ... if cantelupe's punctual ... i'd sooner not have too long with him. kent. all right, then. _he goes, shutting the door; then you hear the door of his room shut too. the two friends face each other, glad of a talk._ trebell. well? wedgecroft. well ... you'll never do it. trebell. yes, i shall. wedgecroft. you can't carry any bill to be a credit to you with the coming tory cabinet on your back. you know the government is cursing you with its dying breath. trebell. [_rubbing his hands._] of course. they've been beaten out of the house and in now. i suppose they will meet parliament. wedgecroft. they must, i think. it's over a month since-- trebell. [_his thoughts running quickly._] there'll only be a nominal majority of sixteen against them. the labour lot are committed on their side ... and now that the irish have gone-- wedgecroft. but they'll be beaten on the address first go. trebell. yes ... horsham hasn't any doubt of it. wedgecroft. he'll be in office within a week of the king's speech. trebell. [_with another access of energy._] i'll pull the bill that's in my head through a horsham cabinet and the house. then i'll leave them ... they'll go to the country-- wedgecroft. you know percival's pledge about that at bristol wasn't very definite. trebell. horsham means to. wedgecroft. [_with friendly contempt._] oh, horsham! trebell. anyway, it's about percival i want you. how ill is he? wedgecroft. not very. trebell. is he going to die? wedgecroft. well, i'm attending him. trebell. [_pinked._] yes ... that's a good answer. how does he stomach me in prospect as a colleague, so far? wedgecroft. sir, professional etiquette forbids me to disclose what a patient may confess in the sweat of his agony. trebell. he'll be chancellor again and lead the house. wedgecroft. why not? he only grumbles that he's getting old. trebell. [_thinking busily again._] the difficulty is i shall have to stay through one budget with them. he'll have a surplus ... well, it looks like it ... and my only way of agreeing with him will be to collar it. wedgecroft. but ... good heavens! ... you'll have a hundred million or so to give away when you've disendowed. trebell. not to give away. i'll sell every penny. wedgecroft. [_with an incredulous grin._] you're not going back to extending old-age pensions after turning the unfortunate liberals out on it, are you? trebell. no, no ... none of your half crown measures. they can wait to round off their solution of that till they've the courage to make one big bite of it. wedgecroft. we shan't see the day. trebell. [_lifting the subject off its feet._] not if i come out of the cabinet and preach revolution? wedgecroft. or will they make a tory of you? trebell. [_acknowledging that stroke with a return grin._] it'll be said they have when the bill is out. wedgecroft. it's said so already. trebell. who knows a radical bill when he sees it! wedgecroft. i'm not pleased you have to be running a tilt against the party system. [_he becomes a little dubious._] my friend ... it's a nasty windmill. oh, you've not seen that article in the nation on politics and society ... it's written at mrs. farrant and lady lurgashall and that set. they hint that the tories would never have had you if it hadn't been for this bad habit of opposite party men meeting each other. trebell. [_unimpressed._] excellent habit! what we really want in this country is a coalition of all the shibboleths with the rest of us in opposition ... for five years only. wedgecroft. [_smiling generously._] well, it's a sensation to see you become arbiter. the tories are owning they can't do without you. percival likes you personally ... townsend don't matter ... cantelupe you buy with a price, i suppose ... farrant you can put in your pocket. i tell you i think the man you may run up against is blackborough. trebell. no, all he wants is to be let look big ... and to have an idea given him when he's going to make a speech, which isn't often. wedgecroft. otherwise ... i suppose ... now i may go down to history as having been in your confidence. i'm very glad you've arrived. trebell. [_with great seriousness._] i've sharpened myself as a weapon to this purpose. wedgecroft. [_kindly._] and you're sure of yourself, aren't you? trebell. [_turning his wrist._] try. wedgecroft. [_slipping his doctor's fingers over the the pulse._] seventy, i should say. trebell. i promise you it hasn't varied a beat these three big months. wedgecroft. well, i wish it had. perfect balance is most easily lost. how do you know you've the power of recovery? ... and it's that gets one up in the morning day by day. trebell. is it? my brain works steadily on ... hasn't failed me yet. i keep it well fed. [_he breathes deeply._] but i'm not sure one shouldn't have been away from england for five years instead of five weeks ... to come back to a job like this with a fresh mind. d'you know why really i went back on the liberals over this question? not because they wanted the church money for their pensions ... but because all they can see in disestablishment is destruction. any fool can destroy! i'm not going to let a power like the church get loose from the state. a thirteen hundred years, tradition of service ... and all they can think of is to cut it adrift! wedgecroft. i think the church is moribund. trebell. oh, yes, of course you do ... you sentimental agnostic anarchist. nonsense! the supernatural's a bit blown upon ... till we re-discover what it means. but it's not essential. nor is the christian doctrine. put a jesuit in a corner and shut the door and he'll own that. no ... the tradition of self-sacrifice and fellowship in service for its own sake ... that's the spirit we've to capture and keep. wedgecroft. [_really struck._] a secular church! trebell. [_with reasoning in his tone._] well ... why not? listen here. in drafting an act of parliament one must alternately imagine oneself god almighty and the most ignorant prejudiced little blighter who will be affected by what's passed. god says: let's have done with heaven and hell ... it's the earth that shan't pass away. why not turn all those theology mongers into doctors or schoolmasters? wedgecroft. as to doctors-- trebell. quite so, you naturally prejudiced blighter. that priestcraft don't need re-inforcing. wedgecroft. it needs recognition. trebell. what! it's the only thing most people believe in. talk about superstition! however, there's more life in you. therefore it's to be schoolmasters. wedgecroft. how? trebell. listen again, young man. in the youth of the world, when priests were the teachers of men.... wedgecroft. [_not to be preached at._] and physicians of men. trebell. shut up. wedgecroft. if there's any real reform going, i want my profession made into a state department. i won't shut up for less. trebell. [_putting this aside with one finger._] i'll deal with you later. there's still youth in the world in another sense; but the priests haven't found out the difference yet, so they're wasting most of their time. wedgecroft. religious education won't do now-a-days. trebell. what's now-a-days? you're very dull, gilbert. wedgecroft. i'm not duller than the people who will have to understand your scheme. trebell. they won't understand it. i shan't explain to them that education _is_ religion, and that those who deal in it are priests without any laying on of hands. wedgecroft. no matter what they teach? trebell. no ... the matter is how they teach it. i see schools in the future, gilbert, not built next to the church, but on the site of the church. wedgecroft. do you think the world is grown up enough to do without dogma? trebell. yes, i do. wedgecroft. what!... and am i to write my prescriptions in english? trebell. yes, you are. wedgecroft. lord save us! i never thought to find you a visionary. trebell. isn't it absurd to think that in a hundred years we shall be giving our best brains and the price of them not to training grown men into the discipline of destruction ... not even to curing the ills which we might be preventing ... but to teaching our children. there's nothing else to be done ... nothing else matters. but it's work for a priesthood. wedgecroft. [_affected; not quite convinced._] do you think you can buy a tradition and transmute it? trebell. don't mock at money. wedgecroft. i never have. trebell. but you speak of it as an end not as a means. that's unfair. wedgecroft. i speaks as i finds. trebell. i'll buy the church, not with money, but with the promise of new life. [_a certain rather gleeful cunning comes over him._] it'll only look like a dose of reaction at first ... sectarian training colleges endowed to the hilt. wedgecroft. what'll the nonconformists say? trebell. bribe them with the means of equal efficiency. the crux of the whole matter will be in the statutes. i'll force on those colleges. wedgecroft. they'll want dogma. trebell. dogma's not a bad thing if you've power to adapt it occasionally. wedgecroft. instead of spending your brains in explaining it. yes, i agree. trebell. [_with full voice._] but in the creed i'll lay down as unalterable there shall be neither jew nor greek.... what do you think of st. paul, gilbert? wedgecroft. i'd make him the head of a college. trebell. i'll make the devil himself head of a college, if he'll undertake to teach honestly all he knows. wedgecroft. and he'll conjure up comte and robespierre for you to assist in this little _rechauffée_ of their schemes. trebell. hullo! comte i knew about. have i stolen from robespierre too? wedgecroft. [_giving out the epigram with an air._] property to him who can make the best use of it. trebell. and then what we must do is to give the children power over their teachers? _now he is comically enigmatic._ wedgecroft _echoes him._ wedgecroft. and what exactly do you mean by that? trebell. [_serious again._] how positive a pedagogue would you be if you had to prove your cases and justify your creed every century or so to the pupils who had learnt just a little more than you could teach them? give power to the future, my friend ... not to the past. give responsibility ... even if you give it for your own discredit. what's beneath trust deeds and last wills and testaments, and even acts of parliament and official creeds? fear of the verdict of the next generation ... fear of looking foolish in their eyes. ah, we ... doing our best now ... must be ready for every sort of death. and to provide the means of change and disregard of the past is a secret of statesmanship. presume that the world will come to an end every thirty years if it's not reconstructed. therefore give responsibility ... give responsibility ... give the children power. wedgecroft. [_disposed to whistle._] those statutes will want some framing. trebell. [_relapsing to a chuckle._] there's an incidental change to foresee. disappearance of the parson into the schoolmaster ... and the archdeacon into the inspector ... and the bishop into--i rather hope he'll stick to his mitre, gilbert. wedgecroft. some ruskin will arise and make him. trebell. [_as he paces the room and the walls of it fade away to him._] what a church could be made of the best brains in england, sworn only to learn all they could teach what they knew without fear of the future or favour to the past ... sworn upon their honour as seekers after truth, knowingly to tell no child a lie. it will come. wedgecroft. a priesthood of women too? there's the tradition of service with them. trebell. [_with the sourest look yet on his face._] slavery ... not quite the same thing. and the paradox of such slavery is that they're your only tyrants. [_at this moment the bell of the telephone upon the table rings. he goes to it talking the while._] one has to be very optimistic not to advocate the harem. that's simple and wholesome.... yes? kent _comes in._ kent. does it work? trebell. [_slamming down the receiver._] you and your new toy! what is it? kent. i'm not sure about the plugs of it ... i thought i'd got them wrong. mrs. o'connell has come to see miss trebell, who is out, and she says will we ask you if any message has been left for her. trebell. no. oh, about dinner? well, she's round at mrs. farrant's. kent. i'll ring them up. _he goes back into his room to do so leaving_ trebell's _door open. the two continue their talk._ trebell. my difficulties will be with percival. wedgecroft. not over the church. trebell. you see i must discover how keen he'd be on settling the education quarrel, once and for all ... what there is left of it. wedgecroft. he's not sectarian. trebell. it'll cost him his surplus. when'll he be up and about? wedgecroft. not for a week or more. trebell. [_knitting his brow._] and i've to deal with cantelupe. curious beggar, gilbert. wedgecroft. not my sort. he'll want some dealing with over your bill as introduced to me. trebell. i've not cross-examined company promoters for ten years without learning how to do business with a professional high churchman. wedgecroft. providence limited ... eh? _they are interrupted by_ mrs. o'connell's _appearance in the doorway. she is rather pale, very calm; but there is pain in her eyes and her voice is unnaturally steady._ amy. your maid told me to come up and i'm interrupting business.... i thought she was wrong. trebell. [_with no trace of self-consciousness._] well ... how are you, after this long time? amy. how do you do? [_then she sees_ wedgecroft _and has to control a shrinking from him._] oh! wedgecroft. how are you, mrs. o'connell? trebell. kent is telephoning to frances. he knows where she is. amy. how are you, dr. wedgecroft? [_then to_ trebell.] did you have a good holiday? london pulls one to pieces wretchedly. i shall give up living here at all. wedgecroft. you look very well. amy. do i! trebell. a very good holiday. sit down ... he won't be a minute. _she sits on the nearest chair._ amy. you're not ill ... interviewing a doctor? trebell. the one thing wedgecroft's no good at is doctoring. he keeps me well by sheer moral suasion. kent _comes out of his room and is off downstairs._ trebell _calls to him._ trebell. mrs. o'connell's here. kent. oh! [_he comes back and into the room._] miss trebell hasn't got there yet. wedgecroft _has suddenly looked at his watch._ wedgecroft. i must fly. good bye, mrs. o'connell. amy. [_putting her hand, constrained by its glove, into his open hand._] i am always a little afraid of you. wedgecroft. that isn't the feeling a doctor wants to inspire. kent. [_to_ trebell.] david evans-- trebell. evans? kent. the reverend one ... is downstairs and wants to see you. wedgecroft. [_as he comes to them._] hampstead road tabernacle ... oh, the mammon of righteousness! trebell. shut up! how long have i before lord charles--? kent. only ten minutes. mrs. o'connell _goes to sit at the big table, and apparently idly takes a sheet of paper to scribble on._ trebell. [_half thinking, half questioning._] he's a man i can say nothing to politely. wedgecroft. i'm off to percival's now. then i've another case and i'm due back at twelve. if there's anything helpful to say i'll look in again for two minutes ... not more. trebell. you're a good man. wedgecroft. [_as he goes._] congratulations, kent. kent. [_taking him to the stairs._] thank you very much. amy. [_beckoning with her eyes._] what's this, mr. trebell? trebell. eh? i beg your pardon. _he goes behind her and reads over her shoulder what she has written._ kent _comes back._ kent. shall i bring him up here? trebell _looks up and for a moment stares at his secretary rather sharply, then speaks in a matter-of-fact voice._ trebell. see him yourself, downstairs. talk to him for five minutes ... find out what he wants. tell him it will be as well for the next week or two if he can say he hasn't seen me. kent. yes. _he goes._ trebell _follows him to the door which he shuts. then he turns to face_ amy, _who is tearing up the paper she wrote on._ trebell. what is it? amy. [_her steady voice breaking, her carefully calculated control giving way._] oh henry ... henry! trebell. are you in trouble? amy. you'll hate me, but ... oh, it's brutal of you to have been away so long. trebell. is it with your husband? amy. perhaps. oh, come nearer to me ... do. trebell. [_coming nearer without haste or excitement._] well? [_her eyes are closed._] my dear girl, i'm too busy for love-making now. if there are any facts to be faced, let me have them ... quite quickly. _she looks up at him for a moment; then speaks swiftly and sharply as one speaks of disaster._ amy. there's a danger of my having a child ... your child ... some time in april. that's all. trebell. [_a sceptic who has seen a vision._] oh ... it's impossible. amy. [_flashing at him, revengefully._] why? trebell. [_brought to his mundane self_] well ... are you sure? amy. [_in sudden agony._] d'you think i want it to be true? d'you think i--? you don't know what it is to have a thing happening in spite of you. trebell. [_his face set in thought._] where have you been since we met? amy. not to ireland ... i haven't seen justin for a year. trebell. all the easier for you not to see him for another year. amy. that wasn't what you meant. trebell. it wasn't ... but never mind. _they are silent for a moment ... miles apart ... then she speaks dully._ amy. we do hate each other ... don't we! trebell. nonsense. let's think of what matters. amy. [_aimlessly._] i went to a man at dover ... picked him out of the directory ... didn't give my own name ... pretended i was off abroad. he was a kind old thing ... said it was all most satisfactory. oh, my god! trebell. [_he goes to bend over her kindly._] yes, you've had a torturing month or two. that's been wrong, i'm sorry. amy. even now i have to keep telling myself that it's so ... otherwise i couldn't understand it. any more than one really believes one will ever die ... one doesn't believe that, you know. trebell. [_on the edge of a sensation that is new to him._] i am told that a man begins to feel unimportant from this moment forward. perhaps it's true. amy. what has it to do with you anyhow? we don't belong to each other. how long were we together that night? half an hour! you didn't seem to care a bit until after you'd kissed me and ... this is an absurd consequence. trebell. nature's a tyrant. amy. oh, it's my punishment ... i see that well enough ... for thinking myself so clever ... forgetting my duty and religion ... not going to confession, i mean. [_then hysterically._] god can make you believe in him when he likes, can't he? trebell. [_with comfortable strength._] my dear girl, this needs your pluck. [_and he sits by her._] all we have to do is to prevent it being found out. amy. yes ... the scandal would smash you, wouldn't it? trebell. there isn't going to be any scandal. amy. no ... if we're careful. you'll tell me what to do, won't you? oh, it's a relief to be able to talk about it. trebell. for one thing, you must take care of yourself and stop worrying. _it soothes her to feel that he is concerned; but it is not enough to be soothed._ amy. yes, i wouldn't like to have been the means of smashing you, henry ... especially as you don't care for me. trebell. i intend to care for you. amy. love me, i mean. i wish you did ... a little; then perhaps i shouldn't feel so degraded. trebell. [_a shade impatiently, a shade contemptuously_] i can say i love you if that'll make things easier. amy. [_more helpless than ever._] if you'd said it at first i should be taking it for granted ... though it wouldn't be any more true, i daresay, than now ... when i should know you weren't telling the truth. trebell. then i'd do without so much confusion. amy. don't be so heartless. trebell. [_as he leaves her._] we seem to be attaching importance to such different things. amy. [_shrill even at a momentary desertion._] what do you mean? i want affection now just as i want food. i can't do without it ... i can't reason things out as you can. d'you think i haven't tried? [_then in sudden rebellion._] oh, the physical curse of being a woman ... no better than any savage in this condition ... worse off than an animal. it's unfair. trebell. never mind ... you're here now to hand me half the responsibility, aren't you? amy. as if i could! if i have to lie through the night simply shaking with bodily fear much longer ... i believe i shall go mad. _this aspect of the matter is meaningless to him. he returns to the practical issue._ trebell. there's nobody that need be suspecting, is there? amy. my maid sees i'm ill and worried and makes remarks ... only to me so far. don't i look a wreck? i nearly ran away when i saw dr. wedgecroft ... some of these men are so clever. trebell. [_calculating._] someone will have to be trusted. amy. [_burrowing into her little tortured self again._] and i ought to feel as if i had done justin a great wrong ... but i don't. i hate you now; now and then. i was being myself. you've brought me down. i feel worthless. _the last word strikes him. he stares at her._ trebell. do you? amy. [_pleadingly._] there's only one thing i'd like you to tell me, henry ... it isn't much. that night we were together ... it was for a moment different to everything that has ever been in your life before, wasn't it? trebell. [_collecting himself as if to explain to a child._] i must make you understand ... i must get you to realise that for a little time to come you're above the law ... above even the shortcomings and contradictions of a man's affection. amy. but let us have one beautiful memory to share. trebell. [_determined she shall face the cold logic of her position._] listen. i look back on that night as one looks back on a fit of drunkenness. amy. [_neither understanding nor wishing to; only shocked and hurt._] you beast. trebell. [_with bitter sarcasm._] no, don't say that. won't it comfort you to think of drunkenness as a beautiful thing? there are precedents enough ... classic ones. amy. you mean i might have been any other woman. trebell. [_quite inexorable._] wouldn't any other woman have served the purpose ... and is it less of a purpose because we didn't know we had it? does my unworthiness then ... if you like to call it so ... make you unworthy now? i must make you see that it doesn't. amy. [_petulantly hammering at her idée fixe._] but you didn't love me ... and you don't love me. trebell. [_keeping his patience._] no ... only within the last five minutes have i really taken the smallest interest in you. and now i believe i'm half jealous. can you understand that? you've been talking a lot of nonsense about your emotions and your immortal soul. don't you see it's only now that you've become a person of some importance to the world ... and why? amy. [_losing her patience, childishly._] what do you mean by the world? you don't seem to have any personal feelings at all. it's horrible you should have thought of me like that. there has been no other man than you that i would have let come anywhere near me ... not for more than a year. _he realises that she will never understand._ trebell. my dear girl, i'm sorry to be brutal. does it matter so much to you that i should have wished to be the father of your child? amy. [_ungracious but pacified by his change of tone._] it doesn't matter now. trebell. [_friendly still._] on principle i don't make promises. but i think i can promise you that if you keep your head and will keep your health, this shall all be made as easy for you as if everyone could know. and let's think what the child may mean to you ... just the fact of his birth. nothing to me, of course! perhaps that accounts for the touch of jealousy. i've forfeited my rights because i hadn't honourable intentions. you can't forfeit yours. even if you never see him and he has to grow up among strangers ... just to have had a child must make a difference to you. of course, it may be a girl. i wonder. _as he wanders on so optimistically she stares at him and her face changes. she realises...._ amy. do you expect me to go through with this? henry! ... i'd sooner kill myself. _there is silence between them. he looks at her as one looks at some unnatural thing. then after a moment he speaks, very coldly._ trebell. oh ... indeed. don't get foolish ideas into your head. you've no choice now ... no reasonable choice. amy. [_driven to bay; her last friend an enemy._] i won't go through with it. trebell. it hasn't been so much the fear of scandal then-- amy. that wouldn't break my heart. you'd marry me, wouldn't you? we could go away somewhere. i could be very fond of you, henry. trebell. [_marvelling at these tangents._] marry you! i should murder you in a week. _this sounds only brutal to her; she lets herself be shamed._ amy. you've no more use for me than the use you've made of me. trebell. [_logical again._] won't you realise that there's a third party to our discussion ... that i'm of no importance beside him and you of very little. think of the child. amy _blazes into desperate rebellion._ amy. there's no child because i haven't chosen there shall be and there shan't be because i don't choose. you'd have me first your plaything and then nature's, would you? trebell. [_a little abashed._] come now, you knew what you were about. amy. [_thinking of those moments._] did i? i found myself wanting you, belonging to you suddenly. i didn't stop to think and explain. but are we never to be happy and irresponsible ... never for a moment? trebell. well ... one can't pick and choose consequences. amy. your choices in life have made you what you want to be, haven't they? leave me mine. trebell. but it's too late to argue like that. amy. if it is, i'd better jump into the thames. i've thought of it. _he considers how best to make a last effort to bring her to her senses. he sits by her._ trebell. amy ... if you were my wife-- amy. [_unresponsive to him now._] i was justin's wife, and i went away from him sooner than bear him children. had i the right to choose or had i not? trebell. [_taking another path._] shall i tell you something i believe? if we were left to choose, we should stand for ever deciding whether to start with the right foot or the left. we blunder into the best things in life. then comes the test ... have we faith enough to go on ... to go through with the unknown thing? amy. [_so bored by these metaphysics._] faith in what? trebell. our vitality. i don't give a fig for beauty, happiness, or brains. all i ask of myself is ... can i pay fate on demand? amy. yes ... in imagination. but i've got physical facts to face. _but he has her attention now and pursues the advantage._ trebell. very well then ... let the meaning of them go. look forward simply to a troublesome illness. in a little while you can go abroad quietly and wait patiently. we're not fools and we needn't find fools to trust in. then come back to england.... amy. and forget. that seems simple enough, doesn't it? trebell. if you don't want the child let it be mine ... not yours. amy. [_wondering suddenly at this bond between them._] yours! what would you do with it? trebell. [_matter-of-fact._] provide for it, of course. amy. never see it, perhaps. trebell. perhaps not. if there were anything to be gained ... for the child. i'll see that he has his chance as a human being. amy. how hopeful! [_now her voice drops. she is looking back, perhaps at a past self._] if you loved me ... perhaps i might learn to love the thought of your child. trebell. [_as if half his life depended on her answer._] is that true? amy. [_irritably._] why are you picking me to pieces? i think that is true. if you had been loving me for a long, long time--[_the agony rushes back on her._] but now i'm only afraid. you might have some pity for me ... i'm so afraid. trebell. [_touched._] indeed ... indeed, i'll take what share of this i can. _she shrinks from him unforgivingly._ amy. no, let me alone. i'm nothing to you. i'm a sick beast in danger of my life, that's all ... cancerous! _he is roused for the first time, roused to horror and protest._ trebell. oh, you unhappy woman! ... if life is like death to you.... amy. [_turning on him._] don't lecture me! if you're so clever put a stop to this horror. or you might at least say you're sorry. trebell. sorry! [_the bell on the table rings jarringly._] cantelupe! _he goes to the telephone. she gets up cold and collected, steadied merely by the unexpected sound._ amy. i mustn't keep you from governing the country. i'm sure you'll do it very well. trebell. [_at the telephone._] yes, bring him up, of course ... isn't mr. kent there? [_then to her._] i may be ten minutes with him or half an hour. wait and we'll come to a conclusion. kent _comes in, an open letter in his hand._ kent. this note, sir. had i better go round myself and see him? trebell. [_as he takes the note._] cantelupe's come. kent. [_glancing at the telephone._] oh, has he! trebell. [_as he reads._] yes i think you had. kent. evans was very serious. _he goes back into his room._ amy _moves swiftly to where_ trebell _is standing and whispers._ amy. won't you tell me whom to go to? trebell. no. amy. oh, really ... what unpractical sentimental children you men are! you and your consciences ... you and your laws. you drive us to distraction and sometimes to death by your stupidities. poor women--! _the maid comes in to announce_ lord charles cantelupe, _who follows her._ cantelupe _is forty, unathletic, and a gentleman in the best and worst sense of the word. he moves always with a caution which may betray his belief in the personality of the devil. he speaks cautiously too, and as if not he but something inside him were speaking. one feels that before strangers he would not if he could help it move or speak at all. a pale face: the mouth would be hardened by fanaticism were it not for the elements of christianity in his religion: and he has the limpid eye of the enthusiast._ trebell. glad to see you. you know mrs o'connell. cantelupe _bows in silence._ amy. we have met. _she offers her hand. he silently takes it and drops it._ trebell. then you'll wait for frances. amy. is it worth while? kent _with his hat on leaves his room and goes downstairs._ trebell. have you anything better to do? amy. there's somewhere i can go. but i mustn't keep you chatting of my affairs. lord charles is impatient to disestablish the church. cantelupe. [_unable to escape a remark._] forgive me, since that is also your affair. amy. oh ... but i was received at the oratory when i was married. cantelupe. [_with contrition._] i beg your pardon. _then he makes for the other side of the room_, trebell _and_ mrs. o'connell _stroll to the door, their eyes full of meaning._ amy. i think i'll go on to this place that i've heard of. if i wait ... for your sister ... she may disappoint me again. trebell. wait. kent's _room is vacant._ amy. well ... in here? trebell. if you like law-books. amy. i haven't been much of an interruption now, have i? trebell. please wait. amy. thank you. trebell _shuts her in, for a moment seems inclined to lock her in, but he comes back into his own room and faces_ cantelupe, _who having primed and trained himself on his subject like a gun, fires off a speech, without haste, but also apparently without taking breath._ cantelupe. i was extremely thankful, mr. trebell, to hear last week from horsham that you will see your way to join his cabinet and undertake the disestablishment bill in the house of commons. any measure of mine, i have always been convinced, would be too much under the suspicion of blindly favouring church interests to command the allegiance of that heterogeneous mass of thought ... in some cases, alas, of free thought ... which now-a-days composes the conservative party. i am more than content to exercise what influence i may from a seat in the cabinet which will authorise the bill. trebell. yes. that chair's comfortable. cantelupe _takes another._ cantelupe. horsham forwarded to me your memorandum upon the conditions you held necessary and i incline to think i may accept them in principle on behalf of those who honour me with their confidences. _he fishes some papers from his pocket._ trebell _sits squarely at his table to grapple with the matter._ trebell. horsham told me you did accept them ... it's on that i'm joining. cantelupe. yes ... in principle. trebell. well ... we couldn't carry a bill you disapproved of, could we? cantelupe. [_with finesse._] i hope not. trebell. [_a little dangerously._] and i have no intention of being made the scapegoat of a wrecked tory compromise with the nonconformists. cantelupe. [_calmly ignoring the suggestion._] so far as i am concerned i meet the nonconformists on their own ground ... that religion had better be free from all compromise with the state. trebell. quite so ... if you're set free you'll look after yourselves. my discovery must be what to do with the men who think more of the state than their church ... the majority of parsons, don't you think? ... if the question's really put and they can be made to understand it. cantelupe. [_with sincere disdain._] there are more profitable professions. trebell. and less. will you allow me that it is statecraft to make a profession profitable? cantelupe _picks up his papers, avoiding theoretical discussion._ cantelupe. well now ... will you explain to me this project for endowing education with your surplus? trebell. putting appropriation, the buildings and the representation question on one side for the moment? cantelupe. candidly, i have yet to master your figures.... trebell. the roughest figures so far. cantelupe. still i have yet to master them on the first two points. trebell. [_firmly premising._] we agree that this is not diverting church money to actually secular uses. cantelupe. [_as he peeps from under his eyelids._] i can conceive that it might not be. you know that we hold education to be a church function. but.... trebell. can you accept thoroughly now the secular solution for all primary schools? cantelupe. haven't we always preferred it to the undenominational? are there to be facilities for _any_ of the teachers giving dogmatic instruction? trebell. i note your emphasis on any. i think we can put the burden of that decision on local authorities. let us come to the question of training colleges for your teachers. it's on that i want to make my bargain. cantelupe. [_alert and cautious._] you want to endow colleges? trebell. heavily. cantelupe. under public control? trebell. church colleges under church control. cantelupe. there'd be others? trebell. to preserve the necessary balance in the schools. cantelupe. not founded with church money? trebell. think of the grants in aid that will be released. i must ask the treasury for a further lump sum and with that there may be sufficient for secular colleges ... if you can agree with me upon the statutes of those over which you'd otherwise have free control. trebell _is weighing his words._ cantelupe. "you" meaning, for instance ... what authorities in the church? trebell. bishops, i suppose ... and others, [cantelupe _permits himself to smile._] on that point i shall be weakness itself and ... may i suggest ... your seat in the cabinet will give you some control. cantelupe. statutes? trebell. to be framed in the best interests of educational efficiency. cantelupe. [_finding an opening._] i doubt if we agree upon the meaning to be attached to that term. trebell. [_forcing the issue._] what meaning do you attach to it? cantelupe. [_smiling again._] i have hardly a sympathetic listener. trebell. you have an unprejudiced one ... the best you can hope for. i was not educated myself. i learnt certain things that i desired to know ... from reading my first book--don quixote it was--to mastering company law. you see, as a man without formulas either for education or religion, i am perhaps peculiarly fitted to settle the double question. i have no grudges ... no revenge to take. cantelupe. [_suddenly congenial._] shelton's translation of don quixote i hope ... the modern ones have no flavour. and you took all the adventures as seriously as the don did? trebell. [_not expecting this._] i forget. cantelupe. it's the finer attitude ... the child's attitude. and it would enable you immediately to comprehend mine towards an education consisting merely of practical knowledge. the life of faith is still the happy one. what is more crushingly finite than knowledge? moral discipline is a nation's only safety. how much of your science tends in support of the great spiritual doctrine of sacrifice! trebell _returns to his subject as forceful as ever._ trebell. the church has assimilated much in her time. do you think it wise to leave agnostic science at the side of the plate? i think, you know, that this craving for common knowledge is a new birth in the mind of man; and if your church won't recognise that soon, by so much will she be losing her grip for ever over men's minds. what's the test of godliness, but your power to receive the new idea in whatever form it comes and give it life? it is blasphemy to pick and choose your good. [_for a moment his thoughts seem to be elsewhere._] that's an unhappy man or woman or nation ... i know it if it has only come to me this minute ... and i don't care what their brains or their riches or their beauty or any of their triumph may be ... they're unhappy and useless if they can't tell life from death. cantelupe. [_interested in the digression_] remember that the church's claim has ever been to know that difference. trebell. [_fastening to his subject again._] my point is this: a man's demand to know the exact structure of a fly's wing, and his assertion that it degrades any child in the street not to know such a thing, is a religious revival ... a token of spiritual hunger. what else can it be? and we commercialise our teaching! cantelupe. i wouldn't have it so. trebell. then i'm offering you the foundation of a new order of men and women who'll serve god by teaching his children. now shall we finish the conversation in prose? cantelupe. [_not to be put down._] what is the prose for god? trebell. [_not to be put down either._] that's what we irreligious people are giving our lives to discover. [_he plunges into detail._] i'm proposing to found about seventy-two new colleges, and of course, to bring the ones there are up to the new standard. then we must gradually revise all teaching salaries in government schools ... to a scale i have in mind. then the course must be compulsory and the training time doubled-- cantelupe. doubled! four years? trebell. well, a minimum of three ... a university course. remember we're turning a trade into a calling. cantelupe. there's more to that than taking a degree. trebell. i think so. you've fought for years for your tests and your atmosphere with plain business men not able to understand such lunacy. quite right ... atmosphere's all that matters. if one and one don't make two by god's grace.... cantelupe. poetry again! trebell. i beg your pardon. well ... you've no further proof. if you can't plant your thumb on the earth and your little finger on the pole star you know nothing of distances. we must do away with text-book teachers. cantelupe _is opening out a little in spite of himself._ cantelupe. i'm waiting for our opinions to differ. trebell. [_businesslike again._] i'll send you a draft of the statutes i propose within a week. meanwhile shall i put the offer this way. if i accept your tests will you accept mine? cantelupe. what are yours? trebell. i believe if one provides for efficiency one provides for the best part of truth ... honesty of statement. i shall hope for a little more elasticity in your dogmas than becket or cranmer or laud would have allowed. when you've a chance to re-formulate the reasons of your faith for the benefit of men teaching mathematics and science and history and political economy, you won't neglect to answer or allow for criticisms and doubts. i don't see why ... in spite of all the evidence to the contrary ... such a thing as progress in a definite religious faith is impossible. cantelupe. progress is a soiled word. [_and now he weighs his words._] i shall be very glad to accept on the church's behalf control of the teaching of teachers in these colleges. trebell. good. i want the best men. cantelupe. you are surprisingly inexperienced if you think that creeds can ever become mere forms except to those who have none. trebell. but teaching--true teaching--is learning, and the wish to know is going to prevail against any creed ... so i think. i wish you cared as little for the form in which a truth is told as i do. on the whole, you see, i think i shall manage to plant your theology in such soil this spring that the garden will be fruitful. on the whole i'm a believer in churches of all sorts and their usefulness to the state. your present use is out-worn. have i found you in this the beginnings of a new one? cantelupe. the church says: thank you, it is a very old one. trebell. [_winding up the interview._] to be sure, for practical politics our talk can be whittled down to your accepting the secular solution for primary schools, if you're given these colleges under such statutes as you and i shall agree upon. cantelupe. and the country will accept. trebell. the country will accept any measure if there's enough money in it to bribe all parties fairly. cantelupe. you expect very little of the constancy of my church to her faith, mr. trebell. trebell. i have only one belief myself. that is in human progress--yes, progress--over many obstacles and by many means. i have no ideals. i believe it is statesmanlike to use all the energy you find ... turning it into the nearest channel that points forward. cantelupe. forward to what? trebell. i don't know ... and my caring doesn't matter. we do know ... and if we deny it it's only to be encouraged by contradiction ... that the movement is forward and with some gathering purpose. i'm friends with any fellow traveller. cantelupe _has been considering him very curiously. now he gets up to go._ cantelupe. i should like to continue our talk when i've studied your draft of the statutes. of course the political position is favourable to a far more comprehensive bill than we had ever looked for ... and you've the advantage now of having held yourself very free from party ties. in fact not only will you give us the bill we shall most care to accept, but i don't know what other man would give us a bill we and the other side could accept at all. trebell. i can let you have more appropriation figures by friday. the details of the fabrics scheme will take a little longer. cantelupe. in a way there's no such hurry. we're not in office yet. trebell. when i'm building with figures i like to give the foundations time to settle. otherwise they are the inexactest things. cantelupe. [_smiling to him for the first time._] we shall have you finding faith the only solvent of all problems some day. trebell. i hope my mind is not afraid ... even of the christian religion. cantelupe. i am sure that the needs of the human soul ... be it dressed up in whatever knowledge ... do not alter from age to age.... _he opens the door to find_ wedgecroft _standing outside, watch in hand._ trebell. hullo ... waiting? wedgecroft. i was giving you two minutes by my watch. how are you, cantelupe? cantelupe, _with a gesture which might be mistaken for a bow, folds himself up._ trebell. shall i bring you the figures on friday ... that might save time. cantelupe, _by taking a deeper fold in himself seems to assent._ trebell. will the afternoon do? kent shall fix the hour. cantelupe. [_with an effort._] kent? trebell. my secretary. cantelupe. friday. any hour before five. i know my way. _the three phrases having meant three separate efforts,_ cantelupe _escapes._ wedgecroft _has walked to the table, his brows a little puckered. now_ trebell _notices that_ kent's _door is open; he goes quickly into the room and finds it empty. then he stands for a moment irritable and undecided before returning._ trebell. been here long? wedgecroft. five minutes ... more, i suppose. trebell. mrs. o'connell gone? wedgecroft. to her dressmaker's. trebell. frances forgot she was coming and went out. wedgecroft. pretty little fool of a woman! d'you know her husband? trebell. no. wedgecroft. says she's been in ireland with him since we met at shapters. he has trouble with his tenantry. trebell. won't he sell or won't they purchase? wedgecroft. curious chap. a don at balliol when i first knew him. warped of late years ... perhaps by his marriage. trebell. [_dismissing that subject._] well ... how's percival? wedgecroft. better this morning. i told him i'd seen you ... and in a little calculated burst of confidence what i'd reason to think you were after. he said you and he could get on though you differed on every point; but he didn't see how you'd pull with such a blasted weak-kneed lot as the rest of the horsham's cabinet would be. he'll be up in a week or ten days. trebell. can i see him? wedgecroft. you might. i admire the old man ... the way he sticks to his party, though they misrepresent now most things he believes in! trebell. what a damnable state to arrive at ... doubly damned by the fact you admire it. wedgecroft. and to think that at this time of day you should need instructing in the ethics of party government. but i'll have to do it. trebell. not now. i've been at ethics with cantelupe. wedgecroft. certainly not now. what about my man with the stomach-ache at twelve o'clock sharp! good-bye. _he is gone,_ trebell _battles with uneasiness and at last mutters._ "oh ... why didn't she wait?" _then the telephone bell rings. he goes quickly as if it were an answer to his anxiety._ "yes?" _of course, it isn't.._ "yes." _he paces the room, impatient, wondering what to do. the maid comes in to announce_ miss davenport. lucy _follows her. she has gained lately perhaps a little of the joy which was lacking and at least she brings now into this room a breath of very wholesome womanhood._ lucy. it's very good of you to let me come; i'm not going to keep you more than three minutes. trebell. sit down. _only women unused to busy men would call him rude._ lucy. what i want to say is ... don't mind my being engaged to walter. it shan't interfere with his work for you. if you want a proof that it shan't ... it was i got aunt julia to ask you to take him.... though he didn't know ... so don't tell him that. trebell. you weren't engaged then. lucy. i ... thought that we might be. trebell. [_with cynical humour._] which i'm not to tell him either? lucy. oh, that wouldn't matter. trebell. [_with decision._] i'll make sure you don't interfere. lucy. [_deliberately ... not to be treated as a child._] you couldn't, you know, if i wanted to. trebell. why, is walter a fool? lucy. he's very fond of me, if that's what you mean? trebell _looks at her for the first time and changes his tone a little._ trebell. if it was what i meant ... i'm disposed to withdraw the suggestion. lucy. and, because i'm fond of his work as well, i shan't therefore ask him to tell me things ... secrets. trebell. [_reverting to his humour._] it'll be when you're a year or two married that danger may occur ... in his desperate effort to make conversation. lucy _considers this and him quite seriously._ lucy. you're rather hard on women, aren't you ... just because they don't have the chances men do. trebell. do you want the chances? lucy. i think i'm as clever as most men i meet, though i know less, of course. trebell. perhaps i should have offered you the secretaryship instead. lucy. [_readily._] don't you think i'm taking it in a way ... by marrying walter? that's fanciful of course. but marriage is a very general and complete sort of partnership, isn't it? at least, i'd like to make mine so. trebell. he'll be more under your thumb in some things if you leave him free in others. _she receives the sarcasm in all seriousness and then speaks to him as she would to a child._ lucy. oh ... i'm not explaining what i mean quite well perhaps. walter has been everywhere and done everything. he speaks three languages ... which all makes him an ideal private secretary. trebell. quite. lucy. do you think he'd develop into anything else ... but for me? trebell. so i have provided just a first step, have i? lucy. [_with real enthusiasm._] oh, mr. trebell, it's a great thing for us. there isn't anyone worth working under but you. you'll make him think and give him ideas instead of expecting them from him. but just for that reason he'd get so attached to you and be quite content to grow old in your shadow ... if it wasn't for me. trebell. true ... i should encourage him in nothingness. what's more, i want extra brains and hands. it's not altogether a pleasant thing, is it ... the selfishness of the hard worked man? lucy. if you don't grudge your own strength, why should you be tender of other people's? _he looks at her curiously._ trebell. your ambition is making for only second-hand satisfaction though. lucy. what's a woman to do? she must work through men, mustn't she? trebell. i'm told that's degrading ... the influencing of husbands and brothers and sons. lucy. [_only half humorously._] but what else is one to do with them? of course, i've enough money to live on ... so i could take up some woman's profession ... what are you smiling at? trebell. [_who has smiled very broadly._] as you don't mean to ... don't stop while i tell you. lucy. but i'd sooner get married. i want to have children. [_the words catch him and hold him. he looks at her reverently this time. she remembers she has transgressed convention; then, remembering that it is only convention, proceeds quite simply._] i hope we shall have children. trebell. i hope so. lucy. thank you. that's the first kind thing you've said. trebell. oh ... you can do without compliments, can't you? _she considers for a moment._ lucy. why have you been talking to me as if i were someone else? trebell. [_startled._] who else? lucy. no one particular. but you've shaken a moral fist so to speak. i don't think i provoked it. trebell. it's a bad parliamentary habit. i apologise. _she gets up to go._ lucy. now i shan't keep you longer ... you're always busy. you've been so easy to talk to. thank you very much. trebell. why ... i wonder? lucy. i knew you would be or i shouldn't have come. you think life's an important thing, don't you? that's priggish, isn't it? good-bye. we're coming to dinner ... aunt julia and i. miss trebell arrived to ask us just as i left. trebell. i'll see you down. lucy. what waste of time for you. i know how the door opens. _as she goes out_ walter kent _is on the way to his room. the two nod to each other like old friends._ trebell _turns away with something of a sigh._ kent. just come? lucy. just going. kent. i'll see you at dinner. lucy. oh, are you to be here? ... that's nice. lucy _departs as purposefully as she came._ kent _hurries to_ trebell, _whose thoughts are away again by now._ kent. i haven't been long there and back, have i? the bishop gave me these letters for you. he hasn't answered the last ... but i've his notes of what he means to say. he'd like them back to-night. he was just going out. i've one or two notes of what evans said. bit of a charlatan, don't you think? trebell. evans? kent. well, he talked of his flock. there are quite fifteen letters you'll have to deal with yourself, i'm afraid. trebell _stares at him: then, apparently, making up his mind...._ trebell. ring up a messenger, will you ... i must write a note and send it. kent. will you dictate? trebell. i shall have done it while you're ringing ... it's only a personal matter. then we'll start work. kent _goes into his room and tackles the telephone there._ trebell _sits down to write the note, his face very set and anxious._ the third act at lord horsham's house in queen anne's gate, in the evening, a week later. _if rooms express their owners' character, the grey and black of_ lord horsham's _drawing room, the faded brocade of its furniture, reveal him as a man of delicate taste and somewhat thin intellectuality. he stands now before a noiseless fire, contemplating with a troubled eye either the pattern of the old french carpet, or the black double doors of the library opposite, or the moulding on the adams ceiling, which the flicker of all the candles casts into deeper relief. his grey hair and black clothes would melt into the decoration of his room, were the figure not rescued from such oblivion by the british white glaze of his shirt front and--to a sympathetic eye--by the loveable perceptive face of the man. sometimes he looks at the sofa in front of him, on which sits_ wedgecroft, _still in the frock coat of a busy day, depressed and irritable. with his back to them, on a sofa with its back to them, is_ george farrant, _planted with his knees apart, his hands clasped, his head bent; very glum. and sometimes_ horsham _glances at the door, as if waiting for it to open. then his gaze will travel back, up the long shiny black piano, with a volume of the well tempered clavichord open on its desk, to where_ cantelupe _is perched uncomfortably on the bench; paler than ever; more self-contained than ever, looking, to one who knows him as well as horsham does, a little dangerous. so he returns to contemplation of the ceiling or the carpet. they wait there as men wait who have said all they want to say upon an unpleasant subject and yet cannot dismiss it. at last_ farrant _breaks the silence._ farrant. what time did you ask him to come, horsham? horsham. eh ... o'connell? i didn't ask him directly. what time did you say, wedgecroft? wedgecroft. any time after half past ten, i told him. farrant. [_grumbling._] it's a quarter to eleven. doesn't blackborough mean to turn up at all? horsham. he was out of town ... my note had to be sent after him. i couldn't wire, you see. farrant. no. cantelupe. it was by the merest chance your man caught me, cyril. i was taking the ten fifteen to tonbridge and happened to go to james street first for some papers. _the conversation flags again._ cantelupe. but since mrs. o'connell is dead what is the excuse for a scandal? _at this unpleasant dig into the subject of their thoughts the three other men stir uncomfortably._ horsham. because the inquest is unavoidable ... apparently. wedgecroft. [_suddenly letting fly._] i declare i'd i'd have risked penal servitude and given a certificate, but just before the end o'connell would call in old fielding andrews, who has moral scruples about everything--it's his trademark--and of course about this...! farrant. was he told of the whole business? wedgecroft. no ... o'connell kept things up before him. well ... the woman was dying. horsham. couldn't you have kept the true state of the case from sir fielding? wedgecroft. and been suspected of the malpractice myself if he'd found it out? ... which he would have done ... he's no fool. well ... i thought of trying that.... farrant. my dear wedgecroft ... how grossly quixotic! you have a duty to yourself. horsham. [_rescuing the conversation from unpleasantness._] i'm afraid i feel that our position to-night is most irregular, wedgecroft. wedgecroft. still if you can make o'connell see reason. and if you all can't.... [_he frowns at the alternative._] cantelupe. didn't you say she came to you first of all? wedgecroft. i met her one morning at trebell's. farrant. actually _at_ trebell's! wedgecroft. the day he came back from abroad. farrant. oh! no one seems to have noticed them together much at any time. my wife ... no matter! wedgecroft. she tackled me as a doctor with one part of her trouble ... added she'd been with o'connell in ireland, which of course it turns out wasn't true ... asked me to help her. i had to say i couldn't. horsham. [_echoing rather than querying._] you couldn't. farrant. [_shocked._] my dear horsham! wedgecroft. well, if she'd told me the truth!... no, anyhow i couldn't. i'm sure there was no excuse. one can't run these risks. farrant. quite right, quite right. wedgecroft. there are men who do on one pretext or another. farrant. [_not too shocked to be curious._] are there really? wedgecroft. oh yes, men well known ... in other directions. i could give you four addresses ... but of course i wasn't going to give her one. though there again ... if she'd told me the whole truth!... my god, women are such fools! and they prefer quackery ... look at the decent doctors they simply turn into charlatans. though, there again, that all comes of letting a trade work mysteriously under the thumb of a benighted oligarchy ... which is beside the question. but one day i'll make you sit up on the subject of the medical council, horsham. horsham _assumes an impenetrable air of statesmanship._ horsham. i know. very interesting ... very important ... very difficult to alter the status quo. wedgecroft. then the poor little liar said she'd go off to an appointment with her dressmaker; and i heard nothing more till she sent for me a week later, and i found her almost too ill to speak. even then she didn't tell me the truth! so, when o'connell arrived, of course i spoke to him quite openly and all he told me in reply was that it wouldn't have been his child. farrant. poor devil! wedgecroft. o'connell? farrant. yes, of course. wedgecroft. i wonder. perhaps she didn't realize he'd been sent for ... or felt then she was dying and didn't care ... or lost her head. i don't know. farrant. such a pretty little woman! wedgecroft. if i could have made him out and dealt with him, of course, i shouldn't have come to you. farrant's known him even longer than i have. farrant. i was with him at harrow. wedgecroft. so i went to farrant first. _that part of the subject drops._ cantelupe, _who has not moved, strikes in again._ cantelupe. how was trebell's guilt discovered? farrant. he wrote her one letter which she didn't destroy. o'connell found it. wedgecroft. picked it up from her desk ... it wasn't even locked up. farrant. not twenty words in it ... quite enough though. horsham. his habit of being explicit ... of writing things down ... i know! _he shakes his head, deprecating all rashness. there is another pause._ farrant, _getting up to pace about, breaks it._ farrant. look here, wedgecroft, one thing is worrying me. had trebell any foreknowledge of what she did and the risk she was running and could he have stopped it? wedgecroft. [_almost ill-temperedly._] how could he have stopped it? farrant. because ... well, i'm not a casuist ... but i know by instinct when i'm up against the wrong thing to do; and if he can't be cleared on that point i won't lift a finger to save him. horsham. [_with nice judgment._] in using the term any foreknowledge, farrant, you may be more severe on him than you wish to be. farrant, _unappreciative, continues._ farrant. otherwise ... well, we must admit, cantelupe, that if it hadn't been for the particular consequence of this it wouldn't be anything to be so mightily shocked about. cantelupe. i disagree. farrant. my dear fellow, it's our business to make laws and we know the difference of saying in one of 'em you may or you must. who ever proposed to insist on pillorying every case of spasmodic adultery? one would never have done! some of these attachments do more harm ... to the third party, i mean ... some less. but it's only when a menage becomes socially impossible that a sensible man will interfere. [_he adds quite unnecessarily._] i'm speaking quite impersonally, of course. cantelupe. [_as coldly as ever._] trebell is morally responsible for every consequence of the original sin. wedgecroft. that is a hard saying. farrant. [_continuing his own remarks quite independently._] and i put aside the possibility that he deliberately helped her to her death to save a scandal because i don't believe it is a possibility. but if that were so i'd lift my finger to help him to his. i'd see him hanged with pleasure. wedgecroft. [_settling this part of the matter._] well, farrant, to all intents and purposes he didn't know and he'd have stopped it if he could. farrant. yes, i believe that. but what makes you so sure? wedgecroft. i asked him and he told me. farrant. that's no proof. wedgecroft. you read the letter that he sent her ... unless you think it was written as a blind. farrant. oh ... to be sure ... yes. i might have thought of that. _he settles down again. again no one has anything to say._ cantelupe. what is to be said to mr. o'connell when he comes? horsham. yes ... what exactly do you propose we shall say to o'connell, wedgecroft? wedgecroft. get him to open his oyster of a mind and.... farrant. so it is and his face like a stone wall yesterday. absolutely refused to discuss the matter with me! cantelupe. may i ask, cyril, why are we concerning ourselves with this wickedness at all? horsham. just at this moment when we have official weight without official responsibility, charles.... wedgecroft. i wish i could have let percival out of bed, but these first touches of autumn are dangerous to a convalescent of his age. horsham. but you saw him, farrant ... and he gave you his opinion, didn't he? farrant. last night ... yes. horsham. i suppose it's a pity blackborough hasn't turned up. farrant. never mind him. horsham. he gets people to agree with him. that's a gift. farrant. wedgecroft, what is the utmost o'connell will be called upon to do for us ... for trebell? wedgecroft. probably only to hold his tongue at the inquest to-morrow. as far as i know there's no one but her maid to prove that mrs. o'connell didn't meet her husband some time in the summer. he'll be called upon to tell a lie or two by implication. farrant. cantelupe ... what does perjury to that extent mean to a roman catholic? cantelupe's _face melts into an expression of mild amazement._ cantelupe. your asking such a question shows that you would not understand my answer to it. farrant. [_leaving the fellow to his subtleties._] well, what about the maid? wedgecroft. she may suspect facts but not names, i think. why should they question her on such a point if o'connell says nothing? horsham. he's really very late. i told ... [_he stops._] charles, i've forgotten that man's name again. cantelupe. edmunds, you said it was. horsham. edmunds. everybody's down at lympne ... i've been left with a new man here and i don't know his name. [_he is very pathetic._] i told him to put o'connell in the library there. i thought that either farrant or i might perhaps see him first and-- _at this moment_ edmunds _comes in, and, with that air of discreet tact which he considers befits the establishment of a prime minister, announces_, "mr. o'connell, my lord." _as_ o'connell _follows him_, horsham _can only try not to look too disconcerted._ o'connell, _in his tightly buttoned frock coat, with his shaven face and close-cropped iron grey hair, might be mistaken for a catholic priest; except that he has not also acquired the easy cheerfulness which professional familiarity with the mysteries of that religion seems to give. for the moment, at least, his features are so impassive that they may tell either of the deepest grief or the purest indifference; or it may be, merely of reticence on entering a stranger's room. he only bows towards_ horsham's _half-proffered hand. with instinctive respect for the situation of this tragically made widower the men have risen and stand in various uneasy attitudes._ horsham. oh ... how do you do? let me see ... do you know my cousin charles cantelupe? yes ... we were expecting russell blackborough. sir henry percival is ill. do sit down. o'connell _takes the nearest chair and gradually the others settle themselves_; farrant _seeking an obscure corner. but there follows an uncomfortable silence, which_ o'connell _at last breaks._ o'connell. you have sent for me, lord horsham? horsham. i hope that by my message i conveyed no impression of sending for you. o'connell. i am always in some doubt as to by what person or persons in or out of power this country is governed. but from all i hear you are at the present moment approximately entitled to send for me. _the level music of his irish tongue seems to give finer edge to his sarcasm._ horsham. well, mr. o'connell ... you know our request before we make it. o'connell. yes, i understand that if the fact of mr. trebell's adultery with my wife were made as public as its consequences to her must be to-morrow, public opinion would make it difficult for you to include him in your cabinet. horsham. therefore we ask you ... though we have no right to ask you ... to consider the particular circumstances and forget the man in the statesman, mr. o'connell. o'connell. my wife is dead. what have i to do at all with mr. trebell as a man? as a statesman i am in any case uninterested in him. _upon this throwing of cold water_, edmunds _returns to mention even more discreetly...._ edmunds. mr. blackborough is in the library, my lord. horsham. [_patiently impatient._] no, no ... here. wedgecroft. let me go. horsham. [_to the injured_ edmunds.] wait ... wait. wedgecroft. i'll put him _au fait._ i shan't come back. horsham. [_gratefully._] yes, yes. [_then to_ edmunds _who is waiting with perfect dignity._] yes ... yes ... yes. edmunds _departs and_ wedgecroft _makes for the library door, glad to escape._ o'connell. if you are not busy at this hour, wedgecroft, i should be grateful if you'd wait for me. i shall keep you, i think, but a very few minutes. wedgecroft. [_in his most matter-of-fact tone._] all right, o'connell. _he goes into the library._ cantelupe. don't you think, cyril, it would be wiser to prevent your man coming into the room at all while we're discussing this? horsham. [_collecting his scattered tact._] yes, i thought i had arranged that he shouldn't. i'm very sorry. he's a fool. however, there's no one else to come. once more, mr. o'connell.... [_he frames no sentence._] o'connell. i am all attention, lord horsham. cantelupe _with a self-denying effort has risen to his feet._ cantelupe. mr. o'connell i remain here almost against my will. i cannot think quite calmly about this double and doubly heinous sin. don't listen to us while we make light of it. if we think of it as a political bother and ask you to smooth it away ... i am ashamed. but i believe i may not be wrong if i put it to you that, looking to the future and for the sake of your own christian dignity, it may become you to be merciful. and i pray too ... i think we may believe ... that mr. trebell is feeling need of your forgiveness. i have no more to say. [_he sits down again._] o'connell. it may be. i have never met mr. trebell. horsham. i tell you, mr. o'connell, putting aside party, that your country has need of this man just at this time. _they hang upon_ o'connell's _reply. it comes with deliberation._ o'connell. i suppose my point of view must be an unusual one. i notice, at least, that twenty four hours and more has not enabled farrant to grasp it. farrant. for god's sake, o'connell, don't be so cold-blooded. you have the life or death of a man's reputation to decide on. o'connell. [_with a cold flash of contempt._] that's a petty enough thing now-a-days it seems to me. there are so many clever men ... and they are all so alike ... surely one will not be missed. cantelupe. don't you think that is only sarcasm, mr. o'connell? _the voice is so gently reproving that_ o'connell _must turn to him._ o'connell. will you please to make allowance, lord charles, for a mediaeval scholar's contempt of modern government? you at least will partly understand his horror as a catholic at the modern superstitions in favour of popular opinion and control which it encourages. you see, lord horsham, i am not a party man, only a little less enthusiastic for the opposite cries than for his own. you appealed very strangely to my feelings of patriotism for this country; but you see even my own is--in the twentieth century--foreign to me. from my point of view neither mr. trebell, nor you, nor the men you have just defeated, nor any discoverable man or body of men will make laws which matter ... or differ in the slightest. you are all part of your age and you all voice--though in separate keys, or even tunes they may be--only the greed and follies of your age. that you should do this and nothing more is, of course, the democratic ideal. you will forgive my thinking tenderly of the statesmanship of the first edward. _the library door opens and_ russell blackborough _comes in. he has on evening clothes, complicated by a long silk comforter and the motoring cap which he carries._ horsham. you know russell blackborough. o'connell. i think not. blackborough. how d'you do? o'connell _having bowed_, blackborough _having nodded, the two men sit down_, blackborough _with an air of great attention_, o'connell _to continue his interrupted speech._ o'connell. and you are as far from me in your code of personal morals as in your politics. in neither do you seem to realise that such a thing as passion can exist. no doubt you use the words love and hatred; but do you know that love and hatred for principles or persons should come from beyond a man? i notice you speak of forgiveness as if it were a penny in my pocket. you have been endeavouring for these two days to rouse me from my indifference towards mr. trebell. perhaps you are on the point of succeeding ... but i do not know what you may rouse. horsham. i understand. we are much in agreement, mr. o'connell. what can a man be--who has any pretensions to philosophy--but helplessly indifferent to the thousands of his fellow creatures whose fates are intertwined with his? o'connell. i am glad that you understand. but, again ... have i been wrong to shrink from personal relations with mr. trebell? hatred is as sacred a responsibility as love. and you will not agree with me when i say that punishment can be the salvation of a man's soul. farrant. [_with aggressive common sense._] look here. o'connell, if you're indifferent it doesn't hurt you to let him off. and if you hate him...! well, one shouldn't hate people ... there's no room for it in this world. cantelupe. [_quietly as ever._] we have some authority for thinking that the punishment of a secret sin is awarded by god secretly. o'connell. we have very poor authority, sir, for using god's name merely to fill up the gaps in an argument, though we may thus have our way easily with men who fear god more than they know him. i am not one of those. yes, farrant, you and your like have left little room in this world except for the dusty roads on which i notice you beginning once more to travel. the rule of them is the same for all, is it not ... from the tramp and the labourer to the plutocrat in his car? this is the age of equality; and it's a fine practical equality ... the equality of the road. but you've fenced the fields of human joy and turned the very hillsides into hoardings, commercial opportunity is painted on them, i think. farrant. [_not to be impressed._] perhaps it is o'connell. my father made his money out of newspapers and i ride in a motor car and you came from holyhead by train. what has all that to do with it? why can't you make up your mind? you know in this sort of case one talks a lot ... and then does the usual thing. you must let trebell off and that's all about it. o'connell. indeed. and do they still think it worth while to administer an oath to your witnesses? _he is interrupted by the flinging open of the door and the triumphant right-this-time-anyhow voice in which_ edmunds _announces_ "mr. trebell, my lord." _the general consternation expresses itself through_ horsham, _who complains aloud and unreservedly._ horsham. good god.... no! charles, i must give him notice at once ... he'll have to go. [_he apologises to the company._] i beg your pardon. _by this time_ trebell _is in the room and has discovered the stranger, who stands to face him without emotion or anger_, blackborough's _face wears the grimmest of smiles_, cantelupe _is sorry_, farrant _recovers from the fit of choking which seemed imminent and_ edmunds, _dimly perceiving by now some fly in the perfect amber of his conduct, departs. the two men still face each other_, farrant _is prepared to separate them should they come to blows, and indeed is advancing in that anticipation when_ o'connell _speaks._ o'connell. i am justin o'connell. trebell. i guess that. o'connell. there's a dead woman between us, mr. trebell. _a tremor sweeps over_ trebell; _then he speaks simply._ trebell. i wish she had not died. o'connell. i am called upon by your friends to save you from the consequences of her death. what have you to say about that? trebell. i have been wondering what sort of expression the last of your care for her would find ... but not much. my wonder is at the power over me that has been given to something i despised. _only_ o'connell _grasps his meaning. but he, stirred for the first time and to his very depths, drives it home._ o'connell. yes.... if i wanted revenge i have it. she was a worthless woman. first my life and now yours! dead because she was afraid to bear your child, isn't she? trebell. [_in agony._] i'd have helped that if i could. o'connell. not the shame ... not the wrong she had done me ... but just fear--fear of the burden of her woman-hood. and because of her my children are bastards and cannot inherit my name. and i must live in sin against my church, as--god help me--i can't against my nature. what are men to do when this is how women use the freedom we have given them? is the curse of barrenness to be nothing to a man? and that's the death in life to which you gentlemen with your fine civilisation are bringing us. i think we are brothers in misfortune, mr. trebell. trebell. [_far from responding._] not at all, sir. if you wanted children you did the next best thing when she left you. my own problem is neither so simple nor is it yet anyone's business but my own. i apologise for alluding to it. horsham _takes advantage of the silence that follows._ horsham. shall we.... o'connell. [_measuring_ trebell _with his eyes._] and by which shall i help you to a solution ... telling lies or the truth to-morrow? trebell. [_roughly, almost insolently._] if you want my advice ... i should do the thing that comes more easily to you, or that will content you most. if you haven't yet made up your mind as to the relative importance of my work and your conscience, it's too late to begin now. nothing you may do can affect me. horsham. _[fluttering fearfully into this strange dispute._] o'connell ... if you and i were to join wedgecroft.... o'connell. you value your work more than anything else in the world? trebell. have i anything else in the world? o'connell. have you not? [_with grim ambiguity._] then i am sorry for you, mr. trebell. [_having said all he had to say, he notices_ horsham.] yes, lord horsham, by all means.... _then_ horsham _opens the library door and sees him safely through. he passes_ trebell _without any salutation, nor does_ trebell _turn after him; but when_ horsham _also is in the library and the door is closed, comments viciously._ trebell. the man's a sentimentalist ... like all men who live alone or shut away. [_then surveying his three glum companions, bursts out._] well...? we can stop thinking of this dead woman, can't we? it's a waste of time. farrant. trebell, what did you want to come here for? trebell. because you thought i wouldn't. i knew you'd be sitting round, incompetent with distress, calculating to a nicety the force of a scandal.... blackborough. [_with the firmest of touches._] horsham has called some of us here to discuss the situation. i am considering my opinion. trebell. you are not, blackborough. you haven't recovered yet from the shock of your manly feelings. oh, cheer up. you know we're an adulterous and sterile generation. why should you cry out at a proof now and then of what's always in the hearts of most of us? farrant. [_plaintively._] now, for god's sake, trebell ... o'connell has been going on like that. trebell. well then ... think of what matters. blackborough. of you and your reputation in fact. farrant. [_kindly._] why do you pretend to be callous? _he strokes_ trebell's _shoulder, who shakes him off impatiently._ trebell. do you all mean to out-face the british lion with me after to-morrow ... dare to be daniels? blackborough. bravado won't carry this off. trebell. blackborough ... it would immortalize you. i'll stand up in my place in the house of commons and tell everything that has befallen soberly and seriously. why should i flinch? farrant. my dear trebell, if your name comes out at the inquest-- trebell. if it does!... whose has been the real offence against society ... hers or mine? it's i who am most offended ... if i choose to think so. blackborough. you seem to forget the adultery. trebell. isn't death divorce enough for her? and ... oh, wasn't i right?... what do you start thinking of once the shock's over? punishment ... revenge ... uselessness ... waste of me. farrant. [_with finality._] if your name comes out at the inquest, to talk of anything but retirement from public life is perfect lunacy ... and you know it. horsham _comes back from the passage. he is a little distracted; then the more so at finding himself again in a highly-charged atmosphere._ horsham. he's gone off with wedgecroft. trebell. [_including_ horsham _now in his appeal._] does anyone think he knows me now to be a worse man ... less fit, less able ... than he did a week ago? _from the piano-stool comes_ cantelupe's _quiet voice._ cantelupe. yes, trebell ... i do. trebell _wheels round at this and ceases all bluster._ trebell. on what grounds? cantelupe. unarguable ones. horsham. [_finding refuge again in his mantelpiece._] you know, he has gone off without giving me his promise. farrant. that's your own fault, trebell. horsham. the fool says i didn't give him explicit instructions. farrant. what fool? horsham. that man ... [_the name fails him._] ... my new man. one of those touches of fate's little finger, really. _he begins to consult the ceiling and the carpet once more._ trebell _tackles_ cantelupe _with gravity._ trebell. i have only a logical mind, cantelupe. i know that to make myself a capable man i've purged myself of all the sins ... i never was idle enough to commit. i know that if your god didn't make use of men, sins and all ... what would ever be done in the world? that one natural action, which the slight shifting of a social law could have made as negligible as eating a meal, can make me incapable ... takes the linch-pin out of one's brain, doesn't it? horsham. trebell, we've been doing our best to get you out of this mess. your remarks to o'connell weren't of any assistance, and.... cantelupe _stands up, so momentously that_ horsham's _gentle flow of speech dries up._ cantelupe. perhaps i had better say at once that, whatever hushing up you may succeed in, it will be impossible for me to sit in a cabinet with mr. trebell. _it takes even_ farrant _a good half minute to recover his power of speech on this new issue._ farrant. what perfect nonsense, cantelupe! i hope you don't mean that. blackborough. complication number one, horsham. farrant. [_working up his protest._] why on earth not? you really mustn't drag your personal feelings and prejudices into important matters like this ... matters of state. cantelupe. i think i have no choice, when trebell stands convicted of a mortal sin, of which he has not even repented. trebell. [_with bitterest cynicism._] dictate any form of repentance you like ... my signature is yours. cantelupe. is this a matter for intellectual jugglery? trebell. [_his defence failing at last._] i offered to face the scandal from my place in the house. that was mad, wasn't it.... blackborough--_his course mapped out--changes the tone of the discussion._ blackborough. horsham, i hope trebell will believe i have no personal feelings in this matter, but we may as well face the fact even now that o'connell holding his tongue to-morrow won't stop gossip in the house, club gossip, gossip in drawing rooms. what do the radicals really care so long as a scandal doesn't get into the papers! there's an inner circle with its eye on us. farrant. well, what does that care as long as scandal's its own copyright? do you know, my dear father refused a peerage because he felt it meant putting blinkers on his best newspaper. blackborough. [_a little subtly._] still ... now you and horsham are cousins, aren't you? farrant. [_off the track and explanatory._] no, no ... my wife's mother.... blackborough. i'm inaccurate, for i'm not one of the family circle myself. my money gets me here and any skill i've used in making it. it wouldn't keep me at a pinch. and trebell ... [_he speaks through his teeth._] ... do you think your accession to power in the party is popular at the best? who is going to put out a finger to make it less awkward for horsham to stick to you if there's a chance of your going under? trebell _smiles at some mental picture he is making._ trebell. can your cousins and aunts make it so awkward for you, horsham? horsham. [_repaying humour with humour._] i bear up against their affectionate attentions. trebell. but i quite understand how uncongenial i may be. what made you take up with me at all? farrant. your brains, trebell. trebell. he should have enquired into my character first, shouldn't he, cantelupe? cantelupe. [_with crushing sincerity._] yes. trebell. oh, the old unnecessary choice ... wisdom or virtue. we all think we must make it ... and we all discover we can't. but if you've to choose between cantelupe and me, horsham, i quite see you've no choice. horsham _now takes the field, using his own weapons._ horsham. charles, it seems to me that we are somewhat in the position of men who have overheard a private conversation. do you feel justified in making public use of it? cantelupe. it is not i who am judge. god knows i would not sit in judgment upon anyone. trebell. cantelupe, i'll take your personal judgment if you can give it me. farrant. good lord, cantelupe, didn't you sit in a cabinet with ... well, we're not here to rake up old scandals. blackborough. i am concerned with the practical issue. horsham. we know, blackborough. [_having quelled the interruption he proceeds._] charles, you spoke, i think, of a mortal sin. cantelupe. in spite of your lifted eyebrows at the childishness of the word. horsham. theoretically, we must all wish to guide ourselves by eternal truths. but you would admit, wouldn't you, that we can only deal with temporal things? cantelupe. [_writhing slightly under the sceptical cross-examination._] there are divine laws laid down for our guidance ... i admit no disbelief in them. horsham. do they place any time-limit to the effect of a mortal sin? if this affair were twenty years old would you do as you are doing? can you forecast the opinion you will have of it six months hence? cantelupe. [_positively._] yes. horsham. can you? nevertheless i wish you had postponed your decision even till to-morrow. _having made his point he looks round almost for approval._ blackborough. what had percival to say on the subject, farrant? farrant. i was only to make use of his opinion under certain circumstances. blackborough. so it isn't favourable to your remaining with us, mr. trebell. farrant. [_indignantly emerging from the trap._] i never said that. _now_ trebell _gives the matter another turn, very forcefully._ trebell. horsham ... i don't bow politely and stand aside at this juncture as a gentleman should, because i want to know how the work's to be done if i leave you what i was to do. blackborough. are we so incompetent? trebell. i daresay not. i want to know ... that's all. cantelupe. please understand, mr. trebell, that i have in no way altered my good opinion of your proposals. blackborough. well, i beg to remind you, horsham, that from the first i've reserved myself liberty to criticise fundamental points in the scheme. horsham. [_pacifically._] quite so ... quite so. blackborough. that nonsensical new standard of teachers' salaries for one thing ... you'd never pass it. horsham. quite easily. it's an administrative point, so leave the legislation vague. then, as the appropriation money falls in, the qualifications rise and the salaries rise. no one will object because no one will appreciate it but administrators past or future ... and they never cavil at money. [_he remains lost in the beauty of this prospect._] trebell. will you take charge of the bill, blackborough? blackborough. are you serious? horsham. [_brought to earth._] oh no! [_he corrects himself smiling._] i mean, my dear blackborough, why not stick to the colonies? blackborough. you see, trebell, there's still the possibility that o'connell may finally spike your gun to-morrow. you realise that, don't you? trebell. thank you. i quite realise that. cantelupe. can nothing further be done? blackborough. weren't we doing our best? horsham. yes ... if we were bending our thoughts to that difficulty now.... trebell. [_hardly._] may i ask you to interfere on my behalf no further? farrant. my dear trebell! trebell. i assure you that i am interested in the disestablishment bill. _so they turn readily enough from the more uncomfortable part of their subject._ blackborough. well ... here's farrant. farrant. i'm no good. give me agriculture. blackborough. pity you're in the lords, horsham. trebell. horsham, i'll devil for any man you choose to name ... feed him sentence by sentence.... horsham. that's impossible. trebell. well, what's to become of my bill? i want to know. blackborough. [_casting his care on providence._] we shall manage somehow. why, if you had died suddenly ... or let us say, never been born.... trebell. then, blackborough ... speaking as a dying man ... if you go back on the integrity of this scheme, i'll haunt you. [_having said this with some finality, he turns his back._] cantelupe. cyril, i agree with what trebell is saying. whatever happens there must be no tampering with the comprehensiveness of the scheme. remember you are in the hands of the extremists ... on both sides. i won't support a compromise on one ... nor will they on the other. horsham. well, i'll confess to you candidly, trebell, that i don't know of any man available for this piece of work but you. trebell. then i should say it would be almost a relief to you if o'connell tells on me to-morrow. farrant. we seem to have got off that subject altogether. [_there comes a portentous tap at the door._] good lord!... i'm getting jumpy. horsham. excuse me. _a note is handed to him through the half opened door; and obviously it is at_ edmunds _whom he frowns. then he returns fidgetting for his glasses._ oh, it turns out ... i'm so sorry you were blundered in here, trebell ... this man ... what's his name ... edwards ... had been reading the papers and thought it was a cabinet council ... seemed proud of himself. this is from wedgecroft ... scribbled in a messenger office. i never can read his writing ... it's like prescriptions. can you? _it has gradually dawned on the three men and then on_ trebell _what this note may have in it._ farrant _hand even trembles a little as he takes it. he gathers the meaning himself and looks at the others with a smile before he reads the few words aloud._ farrant. "all right. he has promised." blackborough. o'connell? farrant. thank god. [_he turns enthusiastically to_ trebell _who stands rigid._] my dear fellow ... i hope you know how glad i am. cantelupe. i am very glad. blackborough. of course we're all very glad indeed, trebell ... very glad we persuaded him. farrant. that's dead and buried now, isn't it? trebell _moves away from them all and leaves them wondering. when he turns round his face is as hard as ever; his voice, if possible, harder._ trebell. but, horsham, returning to the more important question ... you've taken trouble, and o'connell's to perjure himself for nothing if you still can't get me into your child's puzzle ... to make the pretty picture that a cabinet should be. horsham _looks at_ blackborough _and scents danger._ horsham. we shall all be glad, i am sure, to postpone any further discussion.... trebell. i shall not. blackborough. [_encouragingly._] quite so, trebell. we're on the subject, and it won't discount our pleasure that you're out of this mess, to continue it. this habit of putting off the hour of disagreement is ... well, horsham, it's contrary to my business instincts. trebell. if one time's as good as another for you ... this moment is better than most for me. horsham. [_a little irritated at the wantonness of this dispute._] there is nothing before us on which we are capable of coming to any decision ... in a technical sense. blackborough. that's a quibble. [_poor_ horsham _gasps._] i'm not going to pretend either now or in a month's time that i think trebell anything but a most dangerous acquisition to the party. i pay you a compliment in that, trebell. now, horsham proposes that we should go to the country when disestablishment's through. horsham. it's the condition of nonconformist support. blackborough. one condition. then you'd leave us, trebell? horsham. i hope not. blackborough. and carry with you the credit of our one big measure. consider the effect upon our reputation with the country. farrant. [_waking to_ blackborough's _line of action._] why on earth should you leave us, trebell? you've hardly been a liberal, even in name. blackborough. [_vigorously making his point._] then what would be the conditions of your remaining? you're not a party man, trebell. you haven't the true party feeling. you are to be bought. of course you take your price in measures, not in money. but you are preeminently a man of ideas ... an expert. and a man of ideas is often a grave embarrassment to a government. horsham. and vice-versa ... vice-versa! trebell. [_facing_ blackborough _across the room._] do i understand that you for the good of the tory party ... just as cantelupe for the good of his soul ... will refuse to sit in a cabinet with me. blackborough. [_unembarrassed._] i don't commit myself to saying that. cantelupe. no, trebell ... it's that i must believe your work could not prosper ... in god's way. trebell _softens to his sincerity._ trebell. cantelupe, i quite understand. you may be right ... it's a very interesting question. blackborough, i take it that you object first of all to the scheme that i'm bringing you. blackborough. i object to those parts of it which i don't think you'll get through the house. farrant. [_feeling that he must take part._] for instance? blackborough. i've given you one already. cantelupe. [_his eye on_ blackborough.] understand there are things in that scheme we must stand or fall by. _suddenly_ trebell _makes for the door_, horsham _gets up concernedly._ trebell. horsham, make up your mind to-night whether you can do with me or not. i have to see percival again to-morrow ... we cut short our argument at the important point. good-bye ... don't come down. will you decide to-night? horsham. i have made up my own mind. trebell. is that sufficient? horsham. a collective decision is a matter of development. trebell. well, i shall expect to hear. horsham. by hurrying one only reaches a rash conclusion. trebell. then be rash for once and take the consequences. good-night. _he is gone before_ horsham _can compose another epigram._ blackborough. [_deprecating such conduct._] lost his temper! farrant. [_ruffling considerably._] horsham, if trebell is to be hounded out of your cabinet ... he won't go alone. horsham. [_bitter-sweet._] my dear farrant ... i have yet to form my cabinet. cantelupe. you are forming it to carry disestablishment, are you not, cyril? therefore you will form it in the best interests of the best scheme possible. horsham. trebell was and is the best man i know of for the purpose. i'm a little weary of saying that. _he folds his arms and awaits further developments. after a moment_ cantelupe _gets up as if to address a meeting._ cantelupe. then if you would prefer not to include me ... i shall feel justified in giving independent support to a scheme i have great faith in. [_and he sits down again._] blackborough. [_impatiently._] my dear cantelupe, if you think horsham can form a disestablishment cabinet to include trebell and exclude you, you're vastly mistaken. i for one.... farrant. but do both of you consider how valuable, how vital trebell is to us just at this moment? the radicals trust him.... blackborough. they hate him. horsham. [_elucidating._] their front bench hates him because he turned them out. the rest of them hate their front bench. after six years of office, who wouldn't? blackborough. that's true. farrant. oh, of course, we must stick to trebell, blackborough. blackborough _is silent; so_ horsham _turns his attention to his cousin._ horsham. well, charles, i won't ask you for a decision now. i know how hard it is to accept the dictates of other men's consciences ... but a necessary condition of all political work; believe me. cantelupe. [_uneasily._] you can form your cabinet without me, cyril. _at this_ blackborough _charges down on them, so to speak._ blackborough. no, i tell you, i'm damned if he can. leaving the whole high church party to blackmail all they can out of us and vote how they like! here ... i've got my yorkshire people to think of. i can bargain for them with you in a cabinet ... not if you've the pull of being out of it. horsham. [_with charming insinuation._] and have you calculated, blackborough, what may become of us if trebell has the pull of being out of it? blackborough _makes a face._ blackborough. yes ... i suppose he might turn nasty. farrant. i should hope he would. blackborough.[_tackling_ farrant _with great ease._] i should hope he would consider the matter not from the personal, but from the political point of view ... as i am trying to do. horsham. [_tasting his epigram with enjoyment._] introspection is the only bar to such an honourable endeavour, [blackborough _gapes._] you don't suffer from that as--for instance--charles here, does. blackborough. [_pugnaciously._] d'you mean i'm just pretending not to attack him personally? horsham. [_safe on his own ground._] it's only a curious metaphysical point. have you never noticed your distaste for the colour of a man's hair translate itself ultimately into an objection to his religious opinions ... or what not? i am sure--for instance--i could trace charles's scruples about sitting in a cabinet with trebell back to a sort of academic reverence for women generally which he possesses. i am sure i could ... if he were not probably now doing it himself. but this does not make the scruples less real, less religious, or less political. we must be humanly biased in expression ... or not express ourselves. blackborough. [_whose thoughts have wandered._] the man's less of a danger than he was ... i mean he'll be alone. the liberals won't have him back. he smashed his following there to come over to us. farrant. [_giving a further meaning to this._] yes, blackborough, he did. blackborough. to gain his own ends! oh, my dear horsham, can't you see that if o'connell had blabbed to-morrow it really would have been a blessing in disguise? i don't pretend to cantelupe's standard ... but there must be something radically wrong with a man who could get himself into such a mess as that ... now mustn't there? ah! ... you have a fatal partiality for clever people. i tell you ... though this might be patched up ... trebell would fail us in some other way before we were six months older. _this speech has its effect; but_ horsham _looks at him a little sternly._ horsham. and am i to conclude that you don't want charles to change his mind? blackborough. [_on another tack._] farrant has not yet allowed us to hear percival's opinion. farrant _looks rather alarmed._ farrant. it has very little reference to the scandal. blackborough. as that is at an end ... all the more reason we should hear it. horsham. [_ranging himself with_ farrant.] i called this quite informal meeting, blackborough, only to dispose of the scandal, if possible. blackborough. well, of course, if farrant chooses to insult percival so gratuitously by burking his message to us.... _there is an unspoken threat in this_, horsham _sees it and without disguising his irritation...._ horsham. let us have it, farrant. farrant. [_with a sort of puzzled discontent._] well ... i never got to telling him of the o'connell affair at all. he started talking to me ... saying that he couldn't for a moment agree to trebell's proposals for the finance of his bill ... i couldn't get a word in edgeways. then his wife came up.... horsham _takes something in this so seriously that he actually interrupts._ horsham. does he definitely disagree? what is his point? farrant. he says disestablishment's a bad enough speculation for the party as it is. blackborough. it is inevitable. farrant. he sees that. but then he says ... to go to the country again having bolstered up education and quarrelled with everybody will be bad enough ... to go having spent fifty millions on it will dish us all for our lifetimes. horsham. what does he propose? farrant. he'll offer to draft another bill and take it through himself. he says ... do as many good turns as we can with the money ... don't put it all on one horse. blackborough. he's your man, horsham. that's one difficulty settled. horsham's _thoughts are evidently beyond_ blackborough, _beyond the absent_ percival _even._ horsham. oh ... any of us could carry that sort of a bill. cantelupe _has heard this last passage with nothing less than horror and pale anger, which he contains no longer._ cantelupe. i won't have this. i won't have this opportunity frittered away for party purposes. blackborough. [_expostulating reasonably._] my dear cantelupe ... you'll get whatever you think it right for the church to have. you carry a solid thirty eight votes with you. horsham's _smooth voice intervenes. he speaks with finesse._ horsham. percival, as an old campaigner, expresses himself very roughly. the point is, that we are after all only the trustees of the party. if we know that a certain step will decimate it ... clearly we have no right to take the step. cantelupe. [_glowing to white heat._] is this a time to count the consequences to ourselves? horsham. [_unkindly._] by your action this evening, charles, you evidently think not. [_he salves the wound._] no matter, i agree with you ... the bill should be a comprehensive one, whoever brings it in. blackborough. [_not without enjoyment of the situation._] whoever brings it in will have to knuckle under to percival over its finance. farrant. trebell won't do that. i warned percival. horsham. then what did he say? farrant. he only swore. horsham _suddenly becomes peevish._ horsham. i think, farrant, you should have given me this message before. farrant. my dear horsham, what had it to do with our request to o'connell? horsham. [_scolding the company generally._] well then, i wish he hadn't sent it. i wish we were not discussing these points at all. the proper time for them is at a cabinet meeting. and when we have actually assumed the responsibilities of government ... then threats of resignation are not things to be played about with. farrant. did you expect percival's objection to the finance of the scheme? horsham. perhaps ... perhaps. i knew trebell was to see him last tuesday. i expect everybody's objections to any parts of every scheme to come at a time when i am in a proper position to reconcile them ... not now. _having vented his grievances he sits down to recover._ blackborough _takes advantage of the ensuing pause._ blackborough. it isn't so easy for me to speak against trebell, since he evidently dislikes me personally as much as i dislike him ... but i'm sure i'm doing my duty. horsham ... here you have cantelupe who won't stand in with the man, and percival who won't stand in with his measure, while i would sooner stand in with neither. isn't it better to face the situation now than take trouble to form the most makeshift of cabinets, and if that doesn't go to pieces, be voted down in the house by your own party? _there is an oppressive silence,_ horsham _is sulky. the matter is beyond_ farrant. cantelupe _whose agonies have expressed themselves in slight writhings, at last, with an effort, writhes himself to his feet._ cantelupe. i think i am prepared to reconsider my decision. farrant. that's all right then! _he looks round wonderingly for the rest of the chorus to find that neither_ blackborough _nor_ horsham _have stirred._ blackborough. [_stealthily._] is it, horsham? horsham. [_sotto voce._] why did you ever make it? blackborough _leaves him for_ cantelupe. blackborough. you're afraid for the integrity of the bill. cantelupe. it must be comprehensive ... that's vital. blackborough. [_very forcefully._] i give you my word to support its integrity, if you'll keep with me in persuading horsham that the inclusion of trebell in his cabinet will be a blow to the whole conservative cause. horsham, i implore you not to pursue this short-sighted policy. all parties have made up their minds to disestablishment ... surely nothing should be easier than to frame a bill which will please all parties. farrant. [_at last perceiving the drift of all this._] but good lord, blackborough ... now cantelupe has come round and will stand in ... blackborough. that's no longer the point. and what's all this nonsense about going to the country again next year? horsham. [_mildly._] after consulting me percival said at bristol.... blackborough. [_quite unchecked._] i know. but if we pursue a thoroughly safe policy and the bye-elections go right ... there need be no vote of censure carried for three or four years. the radicals want a rest with the country and they know it. and one has no right, what's more, to go wantonly plunging the country into the expenses of these constant general elections. it ruins trade. farrant. [_forlornly sticking to his point._] what has all this to do with trebell? horsham. [_thoughtfully._] farrant, beyond what you've told us, percival didn't recommend me to throw him over. farrant. no, he didn't ... that is, he didn't exactly. horsham. well ... he didn't? farrant. i'm trying to be accurate! [_obviously their nerves are now on edge._] he said we should find him tough to assimilate--as he warned you. horsham _with knit brows, loses himself in thought again,_ blackborough _quietly turns his attention to_ farrant. blackborough. farrant, you don't seriously think that ... outside his undoubted capabilities ... trebell is an acquisition to the party? farrant. [_unwillingly._] perhaps not. but if you're going to chuck a man ... don't chuck him when he's down. blackborough. he's no longer down. we've got him o'connell's promise and jolly grateful he ought to be. i think the least we can do is to keep our minds clear between trebell's advantage and the party's. cantelupe. [_from the distant music-stool._] and the party's and the country's. blackborough. [_countering quite deftly._] cantelupe, either we think it best for the country to have our party in power or we don't. farrant. [_in judicious temper._] certainly, i don't feel our responsibility towards him is what it was ten minutes ago. the man has other careers besides his political one. blackborough. [_ready to praise._] clever as paint at the bar--best company lawyer we've got. cantelupe. it is not what he loses, i think ... but what we lose in losing him. _he says this so earnestly that_ horsham _pays attention._ horsham. no, my dear charles, let us be practical. if his position with us is to be made impossible it is better that he shouldn't assume it. blackborough. [_soft and friendly._] how far are you actually pledged to him? horsham _looks up with the most ingenuous of smiles._ horsham. that's always such a difficult sort of point to determine, isn't it? he thinks he is to join us. but i've not yet been commanded to form a cabinet. if neither you--nor percival--nor perhaps others will work with him ... what am i to do? [_he appeals to them generally to justify this attitude._] blackborough. he no longer thinks he's to join us ... it's the question he left us to decide. _he leaves_ horsham, _whose perplexity is diminishing._ farrant _makes an effort._ farrant. but the scandal won't weaken his position with us now. there won't be any scandal ... there won't, blackborough. horsham. there may be. though, i take it we're all guiltless of having mentioned the matter. blackborough. [_very detached._] i've only known of it since i came into this house ... but i shall not mention it. farrant. oh, i'm afraid my wife knows. [_he adds hastily._] my fault ... my fault entirely. blackborough. i tell you rumour's electric. horsham _has turned to_ farrant _with a sweet smile and with the air of a man about to be relieved of all responsibility._ horsham. what does she say? farrant. [_as one speaks of a nice woman._] she was horrified. horsham. of course. [_once more he finds refuge and comfort on the hearthrug, to say, after a moment, with fine resignation._] i suppose i must let him go. cantelupe. [_on his feet again._] cyril! horsham. yes, charles? _with this query he turns an accusing eye on_ cantelupe, _who is silenced._ blackborough. have you made up your mind to that? farrant. [_in great distress._] you're wrong, horsham. [_then in greater._] that is ... i think you're wrong. horsham. i'd sooner not let him know to-night. blackborough. but he asked you to. horsham. [_all show of resistance gone._] did he? then i suppose i must. [_he sighs deeply._] blackborough. then i'll get back to aylesbury. _he picks up his motor-cap from the table and settles it on his head with immense aplomb._ horsham. so late? blackborough. really one can get along quicker at night if one knows the road. you're in town, aren't you, farrant? shall i drop you at grosvenor square? farrant. [_ungraciously._] thank you. blackborough. [_with a conqueror's geniality._] i don't mind telling you now, horsham, that ever since we met at shapters i've been wondering how you'd escape from this association with trebell. thought he was being very clever when he crossed the house to us! it's needed a special providence. you'd never have got a cabinet together to include him. horsham. [_with much intention._] no. farrant. [_miserably.]_ yes, i suppose that intrigue was a mistake from the beginning. blackborough. well, good-night. [_as he turns to go he finds_ cantelupe _upright, staring very sternly at him._] good-night, cantelupe. cantelupe. from what motives have we thrown trebell over? blackborough. never mind the motives if the move is the right one. [_then he nods at_ horsham.] i shall be up again next week if you want me. _and he flourishes out of the room; a man who has done a good hour's work_, farrant, _who has been mooning depressedly around, now backs towards the door._ farrant. in one way, of course, trebell won't care a damn. i mean, he knows as well as we do that office isn't worth having ... he has never been a place-hunter. on the other hand ... what with one thing and the other ... blackborough is a sensible fellow. i suppose it can't be helped. horsham. blackborough will tell you so. good-night. _so_ farrant _departs, leaving the two cousins together._ cantelupe _has not moved and now faces_ horsham _just as accusingly._ cantelupe. cyril, this is tragic. horsham. [_more to himself than in answer._] yes ... most annoying. cantelupe. lucifer, son of the morning! why is it always the highest who fall? horsham _shies fastidiously at this touch of poetry._ horsham. no, my dear charles, let us above all things keep our mental balance. trebell is a most capable fellow. i'd set my heart on having him with me ... he'll be most awkward to deal with in opposition. but we shall survive his loss and so would the country. cantelupe. [_desperately._] cyril, promise me there shall be no compromise over this measure. horsham. [_charmingly candid._] no ... no unnecessary compromise, i promise you. cantelupe. [_with a sigh._] if we had done what we have done to-night in the right spirit! blackborough was almost vindictive. horsham. [_smiling without amusement._] didn't you keep thinking ... i did ... of that affair of his with mrs. parkington ... years ago? cantelupe. there was never any proof of it. horsham. no ... he bought off the husband. cantelupe. [_uneasily._] his objections to trebell were--political. horsham. yours weren't. cantelupe. [_more uneasily still._] i withdrew mine. horsham. [_with elderly reproof._] i don't think, charles, you have the least conception of what a nicely balanced machine a cabinet is. cantelupe. [_imploring comfort._] but should we have held together through trebell's bill? horsham. [_a little impatient._] perhaps not. but once i had them all round a table ... trebell is very keen on office for all his independent airs ... he and percival could have argued the thing out. however, it's too late now. cantelupe. is it? _for a moment_ horsham _is tempted to indulge in the luxury of changing his mind; but he puts satan behind him with a shake of the head._ horsham. well, you see ... percival i can't do without. now that blackborough knows of his objections to the finance he'd go to him and take chisholm and offer to back them up. i know he would ... he didn't take farrant away with him for nothing. [_then he flashes out rather shrilly._] it's trebell's own fault. he ought not to have committed himself definitely to any scheme until he was safely in office. i warned him about percival ... i warned him not to be explicit. one cannot work with men who will make up their minds prematurely. no, i shall not change my mind. i shall write to him. _he goes firmly to his writing desk leaving_ cantelupe _forlorn._ cantelupe. what about a messenger? horsham. not at this time of night. i'll post it. cantelupe. i'll post it as i go. _he seeks comfort again in the piano and this time starts to play, with one finger and some hesitation, the first bars of a bach fugue_, horsham's _pen-nib is disappointing him and the letter is not easy to phrase._ horsham. but i hate coming to immediate decisions. the administrative part of my brain always tires after half an hour. does yours, charles? cantelupe. what do you think trebell will do now? horsham. [_a little grimly._] punish us all he can. _on reaching the second voice in the fugue_ cantelupe's _virtuosity breaks down._ cantelupe. all that ability turned to destructiveness ... what a pity! that's the paradox of human activities.... _suddenly_ horsham _looks up and his face is lighted with a seraphic smile._ horsham. charles ... i wish we could do without blackborough. cantelupe. [_struck with the idea._] well ... why not? horsham. yes ... i must think about it. [_they both get up, cheered considerably._] you won't forget this, will you? cantelupe. [_the letter in_ horsham's _hand accusing him._] no ... no. i don't think i have been the cause of your dropping trebell, have i? horsham, _rid of the letter, is rid of responsibility and his charming equable self again. he comforts his cousin paternally._ horsham. i don't think so. the split would have come when blackborough checkmated my forming a cabinet. it would have pleased him to do that ... and he could have, over trebell. but now that question's out of the way ... you won't get such a bad measure with trebell in opposition. he'll frighten us into keeping it up to the mark, so to speak. cantelupe. [_a little comforted._] but i shall miss one or two of those ideas ... horsham. [_so pleasantly sceptical._] do you think they'd have outlasted the second reading? dullness in the country one expects. dullness in the house one can cope with. but do you know, i have never sat in a cabinet yet that didn't greet anything like a new idea in chilling silence. cantelupe. well, i should regret to have caused you trouble, cyril. horsham. [_his hand on the other's shoulder._] oh ... we don't take politics so much to heart as that, i hope. cantelupe. [_with sweet gravity._] i take politics very much to heart. yes, i know what you mean ... but that's the sort of remark that makes people call you cynical. [horsham _smiles as if at a compliment and starts with_ cantelupe _towards the door._ cantelupe, _who would not hurt his feelings, changes the subject._] by the bye, i'm glad we met this evening! do you hear aunt mary wants to sell the burford holbein? can she? horsham. [_taking as keen, but no keener, an interest in this than in the difficulty he has just surmounted._] yes, by the will she can, but she mustn't. dear me, i thought i'd put a stop to that foolishness. well now, we must take that matter up very seriously ... _they go out talking arm in arm._ the fourth act at trebell's again; later, the same evening. _his room is in darkness but for the flicker the fire makes and the streaks of moonlight between the curtains. the door is open, though, and you see the light of the lamp on the stairs. you hear his footstep too. on his way he stops to draw back the the curtains of the passage-way window; the moonlight makes his face look very pale. then he serves the curtains of his own window the same; flings it open, moreover, and stands looking out. something below draws his attention. after leaning over the balcony with a short_ "hullo" _he goes quickly downstairs again. in a minute_ wedgecroft _comes up._ trebell _follows, pausing by the door a moment to light up the room._ wedgecroft _is radiant._ trebell. [_with a twist of his mouth._] promised, has he? wedgecroft. suddenly broke out as we walked along, that he liked the look of you and that men must stand by one another nowadays against these women. then he said good-night and walked away. trebell. back to ireland and the thirteenth century. wedgecroft. after to-morrow. trebell. [_taking all the meaning of to-morrow._] yes. are you in for perjury, too? wedgecroft. [_his thankfulness checked a little._] no ... not exactly. trebell _walks away from him._ trebell. it's a pity the truth isn't to be told, i think. i suppose the verdict will be murder. wedgecroft. they won't catch the man. trebell. you don't mean ... me. wedgecroft. no, no ... my dear fellow. trebell. you might, you know. but nobody seems to see this thing as i see it. if i were on that jury i'd say murder too and accuse ... so many circumstances, gilbert, that we should go home ... and look in the cupboards. what a lumber of opinions we inherit and keep! wedgecroft. [_humouring him._] ought we to burn the house down? trebell. rules and regulations for the preservation of rubbish are the laws of england ... and i was adding to their number. wedgecroft. and so you shall ... to the applause of a grateful country. trebell. [_studying his friend's kindly encouraging face._] gilbert, it is not so much that you're an incorrigible optimist ... but why do you subdue your mind to flatter people into cheerfulness? wedgecroft. i'm a doctor, my friend. trebell. you're a part of our tendency to keep things alive by hook or by crook ... not a spark but must be carefully blown upon. the world's old and tired; it dreads extinction. i think i disapprove ... i think i've more faith. wedgecroft. [_scolding him._] nonsense ... you've the instinct to preserve your life as everyone else has ... and i'm here to show you how. trebell. [_beyond the reach of his kindness._] i assure you that these two days while you've been fussing around o'connell--bless your kind heart--i've been waiting events, indifferent enough to understand his indifference. wedgecroft. not indifferent. trebell. lifeless enough already, then. [_suddenly a thought strikes him._] d'you think it was horsham and his little committee persuaded o'connell? wedgecroft. on the contrary. trebell. so you need not have let them into the secret? wedgecroft. no. trebell. think of that. _he almost laughs; but_ wedgecroft _goes on quite innocently._ wedgecroft. yes ... i'm sorry. trebell. upsetting their moral digestion for nothing. wedgecroft. but when o'connell wouldn't listen to us we had to rope in the important people. trebell. with their united wisdom. [_then he breaks away again into great bitterness._] no ... what do they make of this woman's death? i saw them in that room, gilbert, like men seen through the wrong end of a telescope. d'you think if the little affair with nature ... her offence and mine against the conveniences of civilization ... had ended in my death too ... then they'd have stopped to wonder at the misuse and waste of the only force there is in the world ... come to think of it, there is no other ... than this desire for expression ... in words ... or through children. would they have thought of that and stopped whispering about the scandal? _through this_ wedgecroft _has watched him very gravely._ wedgecroft. trebell ... if the inquest to-morrow had put you out of action ... trebell. should i have grown a beard and travelled abroad and after ten years timidly tried to climb my way back into politics? when public opinion takes its heel from your face it keeps it for your finger-tips. after twenty years to be forgiven by your more broad-minded friends and tolerated as a dotard by a new generation.... wedgecroft. nonsense. what age are you now ... forty-six ... forty-seven? trebell. well ... let's instance a good man. gladstone had done his best work by sixty-five. then he began to be popular. think of his last years of oratory. _he has gone to his table and now very methodically starts to tidy his papers,_ wedgecroft _still watching him._ wedgecroft. you'd have had to thank heaven for a little that there were more lives than one to lead. trebell. that's another of your faults, gilbert ... it's a comfort just now to enumerate them. you're an anarchist ... a kingdom to yourself. you make little treaties with truth and with beauty, and what can disturb you? i'm a part of the machine i believe in. if my life as i've made it is to be cut short ... the rest of me shall walk out of the world and slam the door ... with the noise of a pistol shot. wedgecroft. [_concealing some uneasiness._] then i'm glad it's not to be cut short. you and your cabinet rank and your disestablishment bill! trebell _starts to enjoy his secret._ trebell. yes ... our minds have been much relieved within the last half hour, haven't they? wedgecroft. i scribbled horsham a note in a messenger office and sent it as soon as o'connell had left me. trebell. he'd be glad to get that. wedgecroft. he has been most kind about the whole thing. trebell. oh, he means well. wedgecroft. [_following up his fancied advantage._] but, my friend ... suicide whilst of unsound mind would never have done.... the hackneyed verdict hits the truth, you know. trebell. you think so? wedgecroft. i don't say there aren't excuses enough in this miserable world, but fundamentally ... no sane person will destroy life. trebell. [_his thoughts shifting their plane._] was she so very mad? i'm not thinking of her own death. wedgecroft. don't brood, trebell. your mind isn't healthy yet about her and-- trebell. and my child. _even_ wedgecroft's _kindness is at fault before the solemnity of this._ wedgecroft. is that how you're thinking of it? trebell. how else? it's very inexplicable ... this sense of fatherhood. [_the eyes of his mind travel down--what vista of possibilities. then he shakes himself free._] let's drop the subject. to finish the list of shortcomings, you're a bit of an artist too ... therefore i don't think you'll understand. wedgecroft. [_successfully decoyed into argument._] surely an artist is a man who understands. trebell. everything about life, but not life itself. that's where art fails a man. wedgecroft. that's where everything but living fails a man. [_drifting into introspection himself._] yes, it's true. i can talk cleverly and i've written a book ... but i'm barren. [_then the healthy mind re-asserts itself._] no, it's not true. our thoughts are children ... and marry and intermarry. and we're peopling the world ... not badly. trebell. well ... either life is too little a thing to matter or it's so big that such specks of it as we may be are of no account. these are two points of view. and then one has to consider if death can't be sometimes the last use made of life. _there is a tone of menace in this which recalls_ wedgecroft _to the present trouble._ wedgecroft. i doubt the virtue of sacrifice ... or the use of it. trebell. how else could i tell horsham that my work matters? does he think so now?... not he. wedgecroft. you mean if they'd had to throw you over? _once again_ trebell _looks up with that secretive smile._ trebell. yes ... if they'd had to. wedgecroft. [_unreasonably nervous, so he thinks._] my dear fellow, horsham would have thought it was the shame and disgrace if you'd shot yourself after the inquest. that's the proper sentimental thing for you so-called strong men to do on like occasions. why, if your name were to come out to-morrow, your best meaning friends would be sending you pistols by post, requesting you to use them like a gentleman. horsham would grieve over ten dinner-tables in succession and then return to his philosophy. one really mustn't waste a life trying to shock polite politicians. there'd even be a suspicion of swagger in it. trebell. quite so ... the bomb that's thrown at their feet must be something otherwise worthless. frances _comes in quickly, evidently in search of her brother. though she has not been crying, her eyes are wide with grief._ frances. oh, henry ... i'm so glad you're still up. [_she notices_ wedgecroft.] how d'you do, doctor? trebell. [_doubling his mask of indifference._] meistersinger's over early. frances. is it? trebell. not much past twelve yet. frances. [_the little gibe lost on her._] it was tristan to-night. i'm quite upset. i heard just as i was coming away ... amy o'connell's dead. [_both men hold their breath._ trebell _is the first to find control of his and give the cue._] trebell. yes ... wedgecroft has just told me. frances. she was only taken ill last week ... it's so extraordinary. [_she remembers the doctor._] oh ... have you been attending her? wedgecroft. yes. frances. i hear there's to be an inquest. wedgecroft. yes. frances. but what has been the matter? trebell. [_sharply forestalling any answer._] you'll know to-morrow. frances. [_the little snub almost bewildering her._] anything private? i mean.... trebell. no ... i'll tell you. don't make gilbert repeat a story twice.... he's tired with a good day's work. wedgecroft. yes ... i'll be getting away. frances _never heeds this flash of a further meaning between the two men._ frances. and i meant to have gone to see her to-day. was the end very sudden? did her husband arrive in time? wedgecroft. yes. frances. they didn't get on ... he'll be frightfully upset. trebell _resists a hideous temptation to laugh._ wedgecroft. good night, trebell. trebell. good night, gilbert. many thanks. _there is enough of a caress in_ trebell's _tone to turn_ frances _towards their friend, a little remorseful for treating him so casually, now as always._ frances. he's always thanking you. you're always doing things for him. wedgecroft. good night. [_seeing the tears in her eyes._] oh, don't grieve. frances. one shouldn't be sorry when people die, i know. but she liked me more than i liked her ... [_this time_ trebell _does laugh, silently._] ... so i somehow feel in her debt and unable to pay now. trebell. [_an edge on his voice._] yes ... people keep on dying at all sorts of ages, in all sorts of ways. but we seem never to get used to it ... narrow-minded as we are. wedgecroft. don't you talk nonsense. trebell. [_one note sharper yet._] one should occasionally test one's sanity by doing so. if we lived in the logical world we like to believe in, i could also prove that black was white. as it is ... there are more ways of killing a cat than hanging it. wedgecroft. had i better give you a sleeping draught? frances. are you doctoring him for once? henry, have you at last managed to overwork yourself? trebell. no ... i started the evening by a charming little dinner at the van meyer's ... sat next to miss grace cutler, who is writing a _vie intime_ of louis quinze and engaged me with anecdotes of the same. frances. a champion of her sex, whom i do not like. wedgecroft. she's writing such a book to prove that women are equal to anything. _he goes towards the door and_ frances _goes with him._ trebell _never turns his head._ trebell. i shall not come and open the door for you ... but mind you shut it. frances _comes back._ frances. henry ... this is dreadful about that poor little woman. trebell. an unwelcome baby was arriving. she got some quack to kill her. _these exact words are like a blow in the face to her, from which, being a woman of brave common sense, she does not shrink._ trebell. what do you say to that? _she walks away from him, thinking painfully._ frances. she had never had a child. there's the common-place thing to say.... ungrateful little fool! but.... trebell. if you had been in her place? frances. [_subtly._] i have never made the mistake of marrying. she grew frightened, i suppose. not just physically frightened. how can a man understand? trebell. the fear of life ... do you think it was ... which is the beginning of all evil? frances. a woman must choose what her interpretation of life is to be ... as a man must too in his way ... as you and i have chosen, henry. trebell. [_asking from real interest in her._] was yours a deliberate choice and do you never regret it? frances. [_very simply and clearly._] perhaps one does nothing quite deliberately and for a definite reason. my state has its compensations ... if one doesn't value them too highly. i've travelled in thought over all this question. you mustn't blame a woman for wishing not to bear children. but ... well, if one doesn't like the fruit one mustn't cultivate the flower. and i suppose that saying condemns poor amy ... condemned her to death ... [_then her face hardens as she concentrates her meaning._] and brands most men as ... let's unsentimentally call it illogical, doesn't it? _he takes the thrust in silence._ trebell. did you notice the light in my window as you came in? frances. yes ... in both as i got out of the cab. do you want the curtains drawn back? trebell. yes ... don't touch them. _he has thrown himself into his chair by the fire. she lapses into thought again._ frances. poor little woman. trebell. [_in deep anger._] well, if women will be little and poor.... _she goes to him and slips an arm over his shoulder._ frances. what is it you're worried about ... if a mere sister may ask? trebell. [_into the fire._] i want to think. i haven't thought for years. frances. why, you have done nothing else. trebell. i've been working out problems in legal and political algebra. frances. you want to think of yourself. trebell. yes. frances. [_gentle and ironic._] have you ever, for one moment, thought in that sense of anyone else? trebell. is that a complaint? frances. the first in ten years' housekeeping. trebell. no, i never have ... but i've never thought selfishly either. frances. that's a paradox i don't quite understand. trebell. until women do they'll remain where they are ... and what they are. frances. oh, i know you hate us. trebell. yes, dear sister, i'm afraid i do. and i hate your influence on men ... compromise, tenderness, pity, lack of purpose. women don't know the values of things, not even their own value. _for a moment she studies him, wonderingly._ frances. i'll take up the counter-accusation to-morrow. now i'm tired and i'm going to bed. if i may insult you by mothering you, so should you. you look tired and i've seldom seen you. trebell. i'm waiting up for a message. frances. so late? trebell. it's a matter of life and death. frances. are you joking? trebell. yes. if you want to spoil me find me a book to read. frances. what will you have? trebell. huckleberry finn. it's on a top shelf towards the end somewhere ... or should be. _she finds the book. on her way back with it she stops and shivers._ frances. i don't think i shall sleep to-night. poor amy o'connell! trebell. [_curiously._] are you afraid of death? frances. [_with humorous stoicism._] it will be the end of me, perhaps. _she gives him the book, with its red cover; the ' edition, a boy's friend evidently. he fingers it familiarly._ trebell. thank you. mark twain's a jolly fellow. he has courage ... comic courage. that's what's wanted. nothing stands against it. you be-little yourself by laughing ... then all this world and the last and the next grow little too ... and so you grow great again. switch off some light, will you? frances. [_clicking off all but his reading lamp._] so? trebell. thanks. good night, frankie. _she turns at the door, with a glad smile._ frances. good night. when did you last use that nursery name? _then she goes, leaving him still fingering the book, but looking into the fire and far beyond. behind him through the open window one sees how cold and clear the night is._ * * * * * _at eight in the morning he is still here. his lamp is out, the fire is out and the book laid aside. the white morning light penetrates every crevice of the room and shows every line on_ trebell's _face. the spirit of the man is strained past all reason. the door opens suddenly and_ frances _comes in, troubled, nervous. interrupted in her dressing, she has put on some wrap or other._ frances. henry ... simpson says you've not been to bed all night. _he turns his head and says with inappropriate politeness_-- trebell. no. good morning. frances. oh, my dear ... what is wrong? trebell. the message hasn't come ... and i've been thinking. frances. why don't you tell me? [_he turns his head away._] i think you haven't the right to torture me. trebell. your sympathy would only blind me towards the facts i want to face. simpson, _the maid, undisturbed in her routine, brings in the morning's letters._ frances _rounds on her irritably._ frances. what is it, simpson? maid. the letters, ma'am. trebell _is on his feet at that._ trebell. ah ... i want them. frances. [_taking the letters composedly enough._] thank you. simpson _departs and_ trebell _comes to her for his letters. she looks at him with baffled affection._ frances. can i do nothing? oh, henry! trebell. help me to open my letters. frances. don't you leave them to mr. kent? trebell. not this morning. frances. but there are so many. trebell. [_for the first time lifting his voice from its dull monotony._] what a busy man i was. frances. henry ... you're a little mad. trebell. do you find me so? that's interesting. frances. [_with the ghost of a smile._] well ... maddening. _by this time he is sitting at his table; she near him watching closely. they halve the considerable post and start to open it._ trebell. we arrange them in three piles ... personal ... political ... and preposterous. frances. this is an invitation ... the anglican league. trebell. i can't go. _she looks sideways at him, as he goes on mechanically tearing the envelopes._ frances. i heard you come upstairs about two o'clock. trebell. that was to dip my head in water. then i made an instinctive attempt to go to bed ... got my tie off even. frances. [_her anxiety breaking out._] if you'd tell me that you're only ill.... trebell. [_forbiddingly commonplace._] what's that letter? don't fuss ... and remember that abnormal conduct is sometimes quite rational. frances _returns to her task with misty eyes._ frances. it's from somebody whose son can't get into something. trebell. the third heap ... kent's ... the preposterous. [_talking on with steady monotony._] but i saw it would not do to interrupt that logical train of thought which reached definition about half past six. i had then been gleaning until you came in. frances. [_turning the neat little note in her hand._] this is from lord horsham. he writes his name small at the bottom of the envelope. trebell. [_without a tremor._] ah ... give it me. _he opens this as he has opened the others, carefully putting the envelope to one side._ frances _has ceased for the moment to watch him._ frances. that's cousin robert's handwriting. [_she puts a square envelope at his hand._] is a letter marked private from the education office political or personal? _by this he has read_ horsham's _letter twice. so he tears it up and speaks very coldly._ trebell. either. it doesn't matter. _in the silence her fears return._ frances. henry, it's a foolish idea ... i suppose i have it because i hardly slept for thinking of her. your trouble is nothing to do with amy o'connell, is it? trebell. [_his voice strangled in his throat._] her child should have been my child too. frances. [_her eyes open, the whole landscape of her mind suddenly clear._] oh, i ... no, i didn't think so ... but.... trebell. [_dealing his second blow as remorselessly as dealt to him._] also i'm not joining the new cabinet, my dear sister. frances. [_her thoughts rushing now to the present--the future._] not! because of...? do people know? will they...? you didn't...? _as mechanically as ever he has taken up_ cousin robert's _letter and, in some sense, read it. now he recapitulates, meaninglessly, that his voice may just deaden her pain and his own._ trebell. robert says ... that we've not been to see them for some time ... but that now i'm a greater man than ever i must be very busy. the vicarage has been painted and papered throughout and looks much fresher. mary sends you her love and hopes you have no return of the rheumatism. and he would like to send me the proof sheets of his critical commentary on first timothy ... for my alien eye might possibly detect some logical lapses. need he repeat to me his thankfulness at my new attitude upon disestablishment ... or assure me again that i have his prayers. could we not go and stay there only for a few days? possibly his opinion-- _she has borne this cruel kindness as long as she can and she breaks out...._ frances. oh ... don't ... don't! _he falls from his seeming callousness to the very blankness of despair._ trebell. no, we'll leave that ... and the rest ... and everything. _her agony passes._ frances. what do you mean to do? trebell. there's to be no public scandal. frances. why has lord horsham thrown you over then ... or hasn't that anything to do with it? trebell. it has to do with it. frances. [_lifting her voice; some tone returning to it._] unconsciously ... i've known for years that this sort of thing might happen to you. trebell. why? frances. power over men and women and contempt for them! do you think they don't take their revenge sooner or later? trebell. much good may it do them! frances. human nature turns against you ... by instinct ... in self-defence. trebell. and my own human-nature! frances. [_shocked into great pity, by his half articulate pain._] yes ... you must have loved her, henry ... in some odd way. i'm sorry for you both. trebell. i'm hating her now ... as a man can only hate his own silliest vices. frances. [_flashing into defence._] that's wrong of you. if you thought of her only as a pretty little fool.... bearing your child ... all her womanly life belonged to you ... and for that time there was no other sort of life in her. so she became what you thought her. trebell. that's not true. frances. it's true enough ... it's true of men towards women. you can't think of them through generations as one thing and then suddenly find them another. trebell. [_hammering at his fixed idea._] she should have brought that child into the world. frances. you didn't love her enough! trebell. i didn't love her at all. frances. then why should she value your gift? trebell. for its own sake. frances. [_turning away._] it's hopeless ... you don't understand. trebell. [_helpless; almost like a deserted child._] i've been trying to ... all through the night. frances. [_turning back enlightened a little._] that's more the trouble then than the cabinet question? _he shakes himself to his feet and begins to pace the room; his keenness coming back to him, his brow knitting again with the delight of thought._ trebell. oh ... as to me against the world ... i'm fortified with comic courage. [_then turning on her like any examining professor._] now which do you believe ... that man is the reformer, or that the time brings forth such men as it needs and lobster-like can grow another claw? frances. [_watching this new mood carefully._] i believe that you'll be missed from lord horsham's cabinet. trebell. the hand-made statesman and his hand-made measure! they were out of place in that pretty tory garden. those men are the natural growth of the time. am i? frances. just as much. and wasn't your bill going to be such a good piece of work? that can't be thrown away ... wasted. trebell. can one impose a clever idea upon men and women? i wonder. frances. that rather begs the question of your very existence, doesn't it? _he comes to a standstill._ trebell. i know. _his voice shows her that meaning in her words and beyond it a threat. she goes to him, suddenly shaking with fear._ frances. henry, i didn't mean that. trebell. you think i've a mind to put an end to that same? frances. [_belittling her fright._] no ... for how unreasonable.... trebell. in view of my promising past. i've stood for success, fanny; i still stand for success. i could still do more outside the cabinet than the rest of them, inside, will do. but suddenly i've a feeling the work would be barren. [_his eyes shift beyond her; beyond the room._] what is it in your thoughts and actions which makes them bear fruit? something that the roughest peasant may have in common with the best of us intellectual men ... something that a dog might have. it isn't successful cleverness. _she stands ... his trouble beyond her reach._ frances. come now ... you've done very well with your life. trebell. do you know how empty i feel of all virtue at this moment? _he leaves her. she must bring him back to the plane on which she can help him._ frances. we must think what's best to be done ... now ... and for the future. trebell. why, i could go on earning useless money at the bar ... think how nice that would be. i could blackmail the next judgeship out of horsham. i think i could even smash his disestablishment bill ... and perhaps get into the next liberal cabinet and start my own all over again, with necessary modifications. i shan't do any such things. frances. no one knows about you and poor amy? trebell. half a dozen friends. shall i offer to give evidence at the inquest this morning? frances. [_with a little shiver._] they'll say bad enough things about her without your blackening her good name. _without warning, his anger and anguish break out again._ trebell. all she had ... all there is left of her! she was a nothingness ... silly ... vain. and i gave her this power over me! _he is beaten, exhausted. now she goes to him, motherlike._ frances. my dear, listen to me for a little. consider that as a sorrow and put it behind you. and think now ... whatever love there may be between us has neither hatred nor jealousy in it, has it, henry? since i'm not a mistress or a friend but just the likest fellow-creature to you ... perhaps. trebell. [_putting out his hand for hers._] yes, my sister. what i've wanted to feel for vague humanity has been what i should have felt for you ... if you'd ever made a single demand on me. _she puts her arms round him; able to speak._ frances. let's go away somewhere ... i'll make demands. i need refreshing as much as you. my joy of life has been withered in me ... oh, for a long time now. we must kiss the earth again ... take interest in common things, common people. there's so much of the world we don't know. there's air to breathe everywhere. think of the flowers in a tyrol valley in the early spring. one can walk for days, not hurrying, as soon as the passes are open. and the people are kind. there's italy ... there's russia full of simple folk. when we've learned to be friends with them we shall both feel so much better. trebell. [_shaking his head, unmoved._] my dear sister ... i should be bored to death. the life contemplative and peripatetic would literally bore me into a living death. frances. [_letting it be a fairy tale._] is your mother the wide world nothing to you? can't you open your heart like a child again? trebell. no, neither to the beauty of nature nor the particular human animals that are always called a part of it. i don't even see them with your eyes. i'm a son of the anger of man at men's foolishness, and unless i've that to feed upon...! [_now he looks at her, as if for the first time wanting to explain himself, and his voice changes._] don't you know that when a man cuts himself shaving, he swears? when he loses a seat in the cabinet he turns inward for comfort ... and if he only finds there a spirit which should have been born, but is dead ... what's to be done then? frances. [_in a whisper._] you mustn't think of that woman.... trebell. i've reasoned my way through life.... frances. i see how awful it is to have the double blow fall. trebell. [_the wave of his agony rising again._] but here's something in me which no knowledge touches ... some feeling ... some power which should be the beginning of new strength. but it has been killed in me unborn before i had learnt to understand ... and that's killing me. frances. [_crying out._] why ... why did no woman teach you to be gentle? why did you never believe in any woman? perhaps even i am to blame.... trebell. the little fool, the little fool ... why did she kill my child? what did it matter what i thought her? we were committed together to that one thing. do you think i didn't know that i was heartless and that she was socially in the wrong? but what did nature care for that? and nature has broken us. frances. [_clinging to him as he beats the air._] not you. she's dead, poor girl ... but not you. trebell. yes ... that's the mystery no one need believe till he has dipped in it. the man bears the child in his soul as the woman carries it in her body. _there is silence between them, till she speaks low and tonelessly, never loosing his hand._ frances. henry, i want your promise that you'll go on living till ... till.... trebell. don't cry, fanny, that's very foolish. frances. till you've learnt to look at all this calmly. then i can trust you. trebell _smiles, not at all grimly._ trebell. but, you see, it would give horsham and blackborough such a shock if i shot myself ... it would make them think about things. frances. [_with one catch of wretched laughter._] oh, my dear, if shooting's wanted ... shoot them. or i'll do it for you. _he sits in his chair just from weariness. she stands by him, her hand still grasping his._ trebell. you see, fanny, as i said to gilbert last night ... our lives are our own and yet not our own. we understand living for others and dying for others. the first is easy ... it's a way out of boredom. to make the second popular we had to invent a belief in personal resurrection. do you think we shall ever understand dying in the sure and certain hope that it really doesn't matter ... that god is infinitely economical and wastes perhaps less of the power in us after our death than men do while we live? frances. i want your promise, henry. trebell. you know i never make promises ... it's taking oneself too seriously. unless indeed one has the comic courage to break them too. i've upset you very much with my troubles. don't you think you'd better go and finish dressing? [_she doesn't move._] my dear ... you don't propose to hold my right hand so safely for years to come. even so, i still could jump out of a window. frances. i'll trust you, henry. _she looks into his eyes and he does not flinch. then, with a final grip she leaves him. when she is at the door he speaks more gently than ever._ trebell. your own life is sufficient unto itself, isn't it? frances. oh yes. i can be pleasant to talk to and give good advice through the years that remain. [_instinctively she rectifies some little untidiness in the room._] what fools they are to think they can run that government without you! trebell. horsham will do his best. [_then, as for the second time she reaches the door._] don't take away my razors, will you? i only use them for shaving. frances. [_almost blushing._] i half meant to ... i'm sorry. after all, henry, just because they are forgetting in personal feelings what's best for the country ... it's your duty not to. you'll stand by and do what you can, won't you? trebell. [_his queer smile returning, in contrast to her seriousness._] disestablishment. it's a very interesting problem. i must think it out. frances. [_really puzzled._] what do you mean? _he gets up with a quick movement of strange strength, and faces her. his smile changes into a graver gladness._ trebell. something has happened ... in spite of me. my heart's clean again. i'm ready for fresh adventures. frances. [_with a nod and answering gladness._] that's right. _so she leaves him, her mind at rest. for a minute he does not move. when his gaze narrows it falls on the heaps of letters. he carries them carefully into_ walter kent's _room and arranges them as carefully on his table. on his way out he stops for a moment; then with a sudden movement bangs the door._ * * * * * _two hours later the room has been put in order. it is even more full of light and the shadows are harder than usual. the doors are open, showing you_ kent's _door still closed. at the big writing table in_ trebell's _chair sits_ wedgecroft, _pale and grave, intent on finishing a letter._ frances _comes to find him. for a moment she leans on the table silently, her eyes half closed. you would say a broken woman. when she speaks it is swiftly, but tonelessly._ frances. lord horsham is in the drawing room ... and i can't see him, i really can't. he has come to say he is sorry ... and i should tell him that it is his fault, partly. i know i should ... and i don't want to. won't you go in? what are you writing? wedgecroft, _with his physicianly pre-occupation, can attend, understand, sympathise, without looking up at her._ wedgecroft. never mind. a necessary note ... to the coroner's office. yes, i'll see horsham. frances. i've managed to get the pistol out of his hand. was that wrong ... oughtn't i to have touched it? wedgecroft. of course you oughtn't. you must stay away from the room. i'd better have locked the door. frances. [_pitifully._] i'm sorry ... but i couldn't bear to see the pistol in his hand. i won't go back. after all he's not there in the room, is he? but how long do you think the spirit stays near the body ... how long? when people die gently of age or weakness.... but when the spirit and body are so strong and knit together and all alive as his.... wedgecroft. [_his hand on hers._] hush ... hush. frances. his face is very eager ... as if it still could speak. i know that. mrs. farrant _comes through the open doorway._ frances _hears her steps and turning falls into her outstretched arms to cry there._ frances. oh, julia! mrs. farrant. oh my dear fanny! i came with cyril horsham ... i don't think simpson even saw me. frances. i can't go in and talk to him. mrs. farrant. he'll understand. but i heard you come in here.... wedgecroft. i'll tell horsham. _he has finished and addressed his letter, so he goes out with it._ frances _lifts her head. these two are in accord and can speak their feelings without disguise or preparation._ frances. julia, julia ... isn't it unbelievable? mrs. farrant. i'd give ... oh, what wouldn't i give to have it undone! frances. i knew he meant to ... and yet i thought i had his promise. if he really meant to ... i couldn't have stopped it, could i? mrs. farrant. walter sent to tell me and i sent round to.... frances. walter came soon after, i think. julia, i was in my room ... it was nearly breakfast time ... when i heard the shot. oh ... don't you think it was cruel of him? mrs. farrant. he had a right to. we must remember that. frances. you say that easily of my brother ... you wouldn't say it of your husband. _they are apart by this_, julia farrant _goes to her gently._ mrs. farrant. fanny ... will it leave you so very lonely? frances. yes ... lonelier than you can ever be. you have children. i'm just beginning to realise.... mrs. farrant. [_leading her from the mere selfishness of sorrow._] there's loneliness of the spirit, too. frances. ah, but once you've tasted the common joys of life ... once you've proved all your rights as a man or a woman.... mrs. farrant. then there are subtler things to miss. as well be alone like you, or dead like him, without them ... i sometimes think. frances. [_responsive, lifted from egoism, reading her friend's mind._] you demand much. mrs. farrant. i wish that he had demanded much of any woman. frances. you know how this misery began? that poor little wretch ... she's lying dead too. they're both dead together now. do you think they've met...? julia _grips both her hands and speaks very steadily to help her friend back to self control._ mrs. farrant. george told me as soon as he was told. i tried to make him understand my opinion, but he thought i was only shocked. frances. i was sorry for her. now i can't forgive her either. mrs. farrant. [_angry, remorseful, rebellious._] when will men learn to know one woman from another? frances. [_with answering bitterness._] when will all women care to be one thing rather than the other? _they are stopped by the sound of the opening of_ kent's _door._ walter _comes from his room, some papers from his table held listlessly in one hand. he is crying, undisguisedly, with a child's grief._ kent. oh ... am i in your way...? frances. i didn't know you were still here, walter. kent. i've been going through the letters as usual. i don't know why, i'm sure. they won't have to be answered now ... will they? wedgecroft _comes back, grave and tense._ wedgecroft. horsham has gone. he thought perhaps you'd be staying with miss trebell for a bit. mrs. farrant. yes, i shall be. wedgecroft. i must go too ... it's nearly eleven. frances. to the other inquest? _this stirs her two listeners to something of a shudder._ wedgecroft. yes. mrs. farrant. [_in a low voice._] it will make no difference now ... i mean ... still nothing need come out? we needn't know why he ... why he did it. wedgecroft. when he talked to me last night, and i didn't know what he was talking of.... frances. he was waiting this morning for lord horsham's note.... mrs. farrant. [_in real alarm._] oh, it wasn't because of the cabinet trouble ... you must persuade cyril horsham of that. you haven't told him ... he's so dreadfully upset as it is. i've been swearing it had nothing to do with that. wedgecroft. [_cutting her short, bitingly._] has a time ever come to you when it was easier to die than to go on living? oh ... i told lord horsham just what i thought. _he leaves them, his men grief unexpressed._ frances. [_listlessly._] does it matter why? mrs. farrant. need there be more suffering and reproaches? it's not as if even grief would do any good. [_suddenly with nervous caution._] walter, you don't know, do you? walter _throws up his tear-marked face and a man's anger banishes the boyish grief._ walter. no, i don't know why he did it ... and i don't care. and grief is no use. i'm angry ... just angry at the waste of a good man. look at the work undone ... think of it! who is to do it! oh ... the waste...! the return of the native by thomas hardy contents author's preface book first: the three women i. a face on which time makes but little impression ii. humanity appears upon the scene, hand in hand with trouble iii. the custom of the country iv. the halt on the turnpike road v. perplexity among honest people vi. the figure against the sky vii. queen of night viii. those who are found where there is said to be nobody ix. love leads a shrewd man into strategy x. a desperate attempt at persuasion xi. the dishonesty of an honest woman book second: the arrival i. tidings of the comer ii. the people at blooms-end make ready iii. how a little sound produced a great dream iv. eustacia is led on to an adventure v. through the moonlight vi. the two stand face to face vii. a coalition between beauty and oddness viii. firmness is discovered in a gentle heart book third: the fascination i. "my mind to me a kingdom is" ii. the new course causes disappointment iii. the first act in a timeworn drama iv. an hour of bliss and many hours of sadness v. sharp words are spoken, and a crisis ensues vi. yeobright goes, and the breach is complete vii. the morning and the evening of a day viii. a new force disturbs the current book fourth: the closed door i. the rencounter by the pool ii. he is set upon by adversities; but he sings a song iii. she goes out to battle against depression iv. rough coercion is employed v. the journey across the heath vi. a conjuncture, and its result upon the pedestrian vii. the tragic meeting of two old friends viii. eustacia hears of good fortune, and beholds evil book fifth: the discovery i. "wherefore is light given to him that is in misery" ii. a lurid light breaks in upon a darkened understanding iii. eustacia dresses herself on a black morning iv. the ministrations of a half-forgotten one v. an old move inadvertently repeated vi. thomasin argues with her cousin, and he writes a letter vii. the night of the sixth of november viii. rain, darkness, and anxious wanderers ix. sights and sounds draw the wanderers together book sixth: aftercourses i. the inevitable movement onward ii. thomasin walks in a green place by the roman road iii. the serious discourse of clym with his cousin iv. cheerfulness again asserts itself at blooms-end, and clym finds his vocation "to sorrow i bade good morrow, and thought to leave her far away behind; but cheerly, cheerly, she loves me dearly; she is so constant to me, and so kind. i would deceive her, and so leave her, but ah! she is so constant and so kind." author's preface the date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred may be set down as between and , when the old watering-place herein called "budmouth" still retained sufficient afterglow from its georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing attractiveness to the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland. under the general name of "egdon heath," which has been given to the sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with varying degrees of success, or planted to woodland. it is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose south-western quarter is here described, may be the heath of that traditionary king of wessex--lear. july postscript to prevent disappointment to searchers for scenery it should be added that though the action of the narrative is supposed to proceed in the central and most secluded part of the heaths united into one whole, as above described, certain topographical features resembling those delineated really lie on the margin of the waste, several miles to the westward of the centre. in some other respects also there has been a bringing together of scattered characteristics. the first edition of this novel was published in three volumes in . april t. h. book first the three women i a face on which time makes but little impression a saturday afternoon in november was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as egdon heath embrowned itself moment by moment. overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor. the heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. in such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. the distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. the face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread. in fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. it could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. the spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. the sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. and so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half-way. the place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. every night its titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis--the final overthrow. it was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. twilight combined with the scenery of egdon heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. the qualifications which frequently invest the façade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the façade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting. fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! men have oftener suffered from the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. haggard egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair. indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. the new vale of tempe may be a gaunt waste in thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young. the time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. and ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of south europe are to him now; and heidelberg and baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the alps to the sand-dunes of scheveningen. the most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on egdon: he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. then egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this. it was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. as with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. it had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities. this obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in domesday. its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"bruaria." then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "turbaria bruaria"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating to the district. "overgrown with heth and mosse," says leland of the same dark sweep of country. here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. the untameable, ishmaelitish thing that egdon now was it always had been. civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. in its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. a person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. we seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive. to recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible new. the great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. who can say of a particular sea that it is old? distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. the sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet egdon remained. those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. with the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance--even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change. the above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another. in many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great western road of the romans, the via iceniana, or ikenild street, hard by. on the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever. ii humanity appears upon the scene, hand in hand with trouble along the road walked an old man. he was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. he wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face. in his hand was a silver-headed walking-stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval. one would have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other. before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white. it was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away on the furthest horizon. the old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract that he had yet to traverse. at length he discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was journeying. it was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. its rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly. when he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. the driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. one dye of that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands. he was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it permeated him. the old man knew the meaning of this. the traveller with the cart was a reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. he was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. he is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail. the decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. the reddleman turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones. he was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour. his eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. he had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. his lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. he was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade. it showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. a certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree. the natural query of an observer would have been, why should such a promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular occupation? after replying to the old man's greeting he showed no inclination to continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed to desire company. there were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. they were small, hardy animals, of a breed between galloway and exmoor, and were known as "heath-croppers" here. now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally left his companion's side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into its interior through a small window. the look was always anxious. he would then return to the old man, who made another remark about the state of the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. the silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself. possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, had it not been for the reddleman's visits to his van. when he returned from his fifth time of looking in the old man said, "you have something inside there besides your load?" "yes." "somebody who wants looking after?" "yes." not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. the reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came away again. "you have a child there, my man?" "no, sir, i have a woman." "the deuce you have! why did she cry out?" "oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling, she's uneasy, and keeps dreaming." "a young woman?" "yes, a young woman." "that would have interested me forty years ago. perhaps she's your wife?" "my wife!" said the other bitterly. "she's above mating with such as i. but there's no reason why i should tell you about that." "that's true. and there's no reason why you should not. what harm can i do to you or to her?" the reddleman looked in the old man's face. "well, sir," he said at last, "i knew her before today, though perhaps it would have been better if i had not. but she's nothing to me, and i am nothing to her; and she wouldn't have been in my van if any better carriage had been there to take her." "where, may i ask?" "at anglebury." "i know the town well. what was she doing there?" "oh, not much--to gossip about. however, she's tired to death now, and not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless. she dropped off into a nap about an hour ago, and 'twill do her good." "a nice-looking girl, no doubt?" "you would say so." the other traveller turned his eyes with interest towards the van window, and, without withdrawing them, said, "i presume i might look in upon her?" "no," said the reddleman abruptly. "it is getting too dark for you to see much of her; and, more than that, i have no right to allow you. thank god she sleeps so well: i hope she won't wake till she's home." "who is she? one of the neighbourhood?" "'tis no matter who, excuse me." "it is not that girl of blooms-end, who has been talked about more or less lately? if so, i know her; and i can guess what has happened." "'tis no matter... now, sir, i am sorry to say that we shall soon have to part company. my ponies are tired, and i have further to go, and i am going to rest them under this bank for an hour." the elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, "good night." the old man replied, and proceeded on his way as before. the reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the road and became absorbed in the thickening films of night. he then took some hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwing a portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he laid on the ground beside his vehicle. upon this he sat down, leaning his back against the wheel. from the interior a low soft breathing came to his ear. it appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the scene, as if considering the next step that he should take. to do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to be a duty in the egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for there was that in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness. it was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene. this was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. a condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered by understatement and reserve. the scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascents from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. it embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other, till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light sky. the traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. it was a barrow. this bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained. although from the vale it appeared but as a wart on an atlantean brow, its actual bulk was great. it formed the pole and axis of this heathery world. as the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that its summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, was surmounted by something higher. it rose from the semi-globular mound like a spike from a helmet. the first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the celts who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. it seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race. there the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe. such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give to the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious justification of their outline. without it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied. the scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to unity. looking at this or that member of the group was not observing a complete thing, but a fraction of a thing. the form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a strange phenomenon. immobility being the chief characteristic of that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of immobility in any quarter suggested confusion. yet that is what happened. the figure perceptibly gave up its fixity, shifted a step or two, and turned round. as if alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished. the movement had been sufficient to show more clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's. the reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. with her dropping out of sight on the right side, a new-comer, bearing a burden, protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on the top. a second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures. the only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither for another object than theirs. the imagination of the observer clung by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing than these new-comers, and unconsciously regarded them as intruders. but they remained, and established themselves; and the lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely to return. iii the custom of the country had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow, he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the neighbouring hamlets. each, as he ascended the barrow, had been heavily laden with furze-faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily--two in front and two behind. they came from a part of the heath a quarter of a mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a product. every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying the faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown them down. the party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of sheep; that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind. the loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as rainbarrow for many miles round. some made themselves busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. others, again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly obliterated by shade. in the valleys of the heath nothing save its own wild face was visible at any time of day; but this spot commanded a horizon enclosing a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond the heath country. none of its features could be seen now, but the whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness. while the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. they were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale strawlike beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. some were maenades, with winy faces and blown hair. these tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed. the first tall flame from rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind. the cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human circle--now increased by other stragglers, male and female--with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. it showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. in the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. there had been no obliteration, because there had been no tending. it seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches below. the heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence. occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to replies of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. then the whole black phenomenon beneath represented limbo as viewed from the brink by the sublime florentine in his vision, and the muttered articulations of the wind in the hollows were as complaints and petitions from the "souls of mighty worth" suspended therein. it was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. the ashes of the original british pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. the flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. festival fires to thor and woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled druidical rites and saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about gunpowder plot. moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout nature. it indicates a spontaneous, promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, let there be light. the brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon the skin and clothes of the persons standing round caused their lineaments and general contours to be drawn with dureresque vigour and dash. yet the permanent moral expression of each face it was impossible to discover, for as the nimble flames towered, nodded, and swooped through the surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. all was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. shadowy eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into pits of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ray. nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings; things with no particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects, such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried, were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. those whom nature had depicted as merely quaint became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for all was in extremity. hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human countenance. he stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. with a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. the beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. with his stick in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue-- "the king´ call'd down´ his no-bles all´, by one´, by two´, by three´; earl mar´-shal, i'll´ go shrive´-the queen´, and thou´ shalt wend´ with me´. "a boon´, a boon´, quoth earl´ mar-shal´, and fell´ on his bend´-ded knee´, that what´-so-e'er´ the queen´ shall say´, no harm´ there-of´ may be´." want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have attached to him. "a fair stave, grandfer cantle; but i am afeard 'tis too much for the mouldy weasand of such a old man as you," he said to the wrinkled reveller. "dostn't wish th' wast three sixes again, grandfer, as you was when you first learnt to sing it?" "hey?" said grandfer cantle, stopping in his dance. "dostn't wish wast young again, i say? there's a hole in thy poor bellows nowadays seemingly." "but there's good art in me? if i couldn't make a little wind go a long ways i should seem no younger than the most aged man, should i, timothy?" "and how about the new-married folks down there at the quiet woman inn?" the other inquired, pointing towards a dim light in the direction of the distant highway, but considerably apart from where the reddleman was at that moment resting. "what's the rights of the matter about 'em? you ought to know, being an understanding man." "but a little rakish, hey? i own to it. master cantle is that, or he's nothing. yet 'tis a gay fault, neighbour fairway, that age will cure." "i heard that they were coming home to-night. by this time they must have come. what besides?" "the next thing is for us to go and wish 'em joy, i suppose?" "well, no." "no? now, i thought we must. _i_ must, or 'twould be very unlike me--the first in every spree that's going! "do thou´ put on´ a fri´-ar's coat´, and i'll´ put on´ a-no´-ther, and we´ will to´ queen ele´anor go´, like fri´ar and´ his bro´ther. "i met mis'ess yeobright, the young bride's aunt, last night, and she told me that her son clym was coming home a' christmas. wonderful clever, 'a believe--ah, i should like to have all that's under that young man's hair. well, then, i spoke to her in my well-known merry way, and she said, 'o that what's shaped so venerable should talk like a fool!'--that's what she said to me. i don't care for her, be jowned if i do, and so i told her. 'be jowned if i care for 'ee,' i said. i had her there--hey?" "i rather think she had you," said fairway. "no," said grandfer cantle, his countenance slightly flagging. "'tisn't so bad as that with me?" "seemingly 'tis; however, is it because of the wedding that clym is coming home a' christmas--to make a new arrangement because his mother is now left in the house alone?" "yes, yes--that's it. but, timothy, hearken to me," said the grandfer earnestly. "though known as such a joker, i be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and i am serious now. i can tell 'ee lots about the married couple. yes, this morning at six o'clock they went up the country to do the job, and neither vell nor mark have been seen of 'em since, though i reckon that this afternoon has brought 'em home again man and woman--wife, that is. isn't it spoke like a man, timothy, and wasn't mis'ess yeobright wrong about me?" "yes, it will do. i didn't know the two had walked together since last fall, when her aunt forbad the banns. how long has this new set-to been mangling then? do you know, humphrey?" "yes, how long?" said grandfer cantle smartly, likewise turning to humphrey. "i ask that question." "ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might have the man after all," replied humphrey, without removing his eyes from the fire. he was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the philistine's greaves of brass. "that's why they went away to be married, i count. you see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch and forbidding the banns 'twould have made mis'ess yeobright seem foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if she'd never gainsaid it." "exactly--seem foolish-like; and that's very bad for the poor things that be so, though i only guess as much, to be sure," said grandfer cantle, still strenuously preserving a sensible bearing and mien. "ah, well, i was at church that day," said fairway, "which was a very curious thing to happen." "if 'twasn't my name's simple," said the grandfer emphatically. "i ha'n't been there to-year; and now the winter is a-coming on i won't say i shall." "i ha'n't been these three years," said humphrey; "for i'm so dead sleepy of a sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get there; and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that i bide at home and don't go at all." "i not only happened to be there," said fairway, with a fresh collection of emphasis, "but i was sitting in the same pew as mis'ess yeobright. and though you may not see it as such, it fairly made my blood run cold to hear her. yes, it is a curious thing; but it made my blood run cold, for i was close at her elbow." the speaker looked round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive moderation. "'tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there," said a woman behind. "'ye are to declare it,' was the parson's words," fairway continued. "and then up stood a woman at my side--a-touching of me. 'well, be damned if there isn't mis'ess yeobright a-standing up,' i said to myself. yes, neighbours, though i was in the temple of prayer that's what i said. 'tis against my conscience to curse and swear in company, and i hope any woman here will overlook it. still what i did say i did say, and 'twould be a lie if i didn't own it." "so 'twould, neighbour fairway." "'be damned if there isn't mis'ess yeobright a-standing up,' i said," the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word with the same passionless severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with the iteration. "and the next thing i heard was, 'i forbid the banns,' from her. 'i'll speak to you after the service,' said the parson, in quite a homely way--yes, turning all at once into a common man no holier than you or i. ah, her face was pale! maybe you can call to mind that monument in weatherbury church--the cross-legged soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the school-children? well, he would about have matched that woman's face, when she said, 'i forbid the banns.'" the audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks into the fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to give themselves time to weigh the moral of the story. "i'm sure when i heard they'd been forbid i felt as glad as if anybody had gied me sixpence," said an earnest voice--that of olly dowden, a woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. her nature was to be civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting her remain alive. "and now the maid have married him just the same," said humphrey. "after that mis'ess yeobright came round and was quite agreeable," fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show that his words were no appendage to humphrey's, but the result of independent reflection. "supposing they were ashamed, i don't see why they shouldn't have done it here-right," said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned. "'tis well to call the neighbours together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. i don't care for close ways." "ah, now, you'd hardly believe it, but i don't care for gay weddings," said timothy fairway, his eyes again travelling round. "i hardly blame thomasin yeobright and neighbour wildeve for doing it quiet, if i must own it. a wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour; and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty." "true. once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth your victuals." "you be bound to dance at christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. at christenings folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or second chiel. and this is not naming the songs you've got to sing... for my part i like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. you've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. and it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes." "nine folks out of ten would own 'twas going too far to dance then, i suppose?" suggested grandfer cantle. "'tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at after the mug have been round a few times." "well, i can't understand a quiet lady-like little body like tamsin yeobright caring to be married in such a mean way," said susan nunsuch, the wide woman, who preferred the original subject. "'tis worse than the poorest do. and i shouldn't have cared about the man, though some may say he's good-looking." "to give him his due he's a clever, learned fellow in his way--a'most as clever as clym yeobright used to be. he was brought up to better things than keeping the quiet woman. an engineer--that's what the man was, as we know; but he threw away his chance, and so 'a took a public house to live. his learning was no use to him at all." "very often the case," said olly, the besom-maker. "and yet how people do strive after it and get it! the class of folk that couldn't use to make a round o to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do i say?--why, almost without a desk to lean their stomachs and elbows upon." "true: 'tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to," said humphrey. "why, afore i went a soldier in the bang-up locals (as we was called), in the year four," chimed in grandfer cantle brightly, "i didn't know no more what the world was like than the commonest man among ye. and now, jown it all, i won't say what i bain't fit for, hey?" "couldst sign the book, no doubt," said fairway, "if wast young enough to join hands with a woman again, like wildeve and mis'ess tamsin, which is more than humph there could do, for he follows his father in learning. ah, humph, well i can mind when i was married how i zid thy father's mark staring me in the face as i went to put down my name. he and your mother were the couple married just afore we were and there stood they father's cross with arms stretched out like a great banging scarecrow. what a terrible black cross that was--thy father's very likeness in en! to save my soul i couldn't help laughing when i zid en, though all the time i was as hot as dog-days, what with the marrying, and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with jack changley and a lot more chaps grinning at me through church window. but the next moment a strawmote would have knocked me down, for i called to mind that if thy father and mother had had high words once, they'd been at it twenty times since they'd been man and wife, and i zid myself as the next poor stunpoll to get into the same mess... ah--well, what a day 'twas!" "wildeve is older than tamsin yeobright by a goodfew summers. a pretty maid too she is. a young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her smock for a man like that." the speaker, a peat or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labour; and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire. "a hundred maidens would have had him if he'd asked 'em," said the wide woman. "didst ever know a man, neighbour, that no woman at all would marry?" inquired humphrey. "i never did," said the turf-cutter. "nor i," said another. "nor i," said grandfer cantle. "well, now, i did once," said timothy fairway, adding more firmness to one of his legs. "i did know of such a man. but only once, mind." he gave his throat a thorough rake round, as if it were the duty of every person not to be mistaken through thickness of voice. "yes, i knew of such a man," he said. "and what ghastly gallicrow might the poor fellow have been like, master fairway?" asked the turf-cutter. "well, 'a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor a blind man. what 'a was i don't say." "is he known in these parts?" said olly dowden. "hardly," said timothy; "but i name no name... come, keep the fire up there, youngsters." "whatever is christian cantle's teeth a-chattering for?" said a boy from amid the smoke and shades on the other side of the blaze. "be ye a-cold, christian?" a thin jibbering voice was heard to reply, "no, not at all." "come forward, christian, and show yourself. i didn't know you were here," said fairway, with a humane look across towards that quarter. thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no shoulders, and a great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond his clothes, advanced a step or two by his own will, and was pushed by the will of others half a dozen steps more. he was grandfer cantle's youngest son. "what be ye quaking for, christian?" said the turf-cutter kindly. "i'm the man." "what man?" "the man no woman will marry." "the deuce you be!" said timothy fairway, enlarging his gaze to cover christian's whole surface and a great deal more; grandfer cantle meanwhile staring as a hen stares at the duck she has hatched. "yes, i be he; and it makes me afeard," said christian. "d'ye think 'twill hurt me? i shall always say i don't care, and swear to it, though i do care all the while." "well, be damned if this isn't the queerest start ever i know'd," said mr. fairway. "i didn't mean you at all. there's another in the country, then! why did ye reveal yer misfortune, christian?" "'twas to be if 'twas, i suppose. i can't help it, can i?" he turned upon them his painfully circular eyes, surrounded by concentric lines like targets. "no, that's true. but 'tis a melancholy thing, and my blood ran cold when you spoke, for i felt there were two poor fellows where i had thought only one. 'tis a sad thing for ye, christian. how'st know the women won't hae thee?" "i've asked 'em." "sure i should never have thought you had the face. well, and what did the last one say to ye? nothing that can't be got over, perhaps, after all?" "'get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' was the woman's words to me." "not encouraging, i own," said fairway. "'get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' is rather a hard way of saying no. but even that might be overcome by time and patience, so as to let a few grey hairs show themselves in the hussy's head. how old be you, christian?" "thirty-one last tatie-digging, mister fairway." "not a boy--not a boy. still there's hope yet." "that's my age by baptism, because that's put down in the great book of the judgment that they keep in church vestry; but mother told me i was born some time afore i was christened." "ah!" "but she couldn't tell when, to save her life, except that there was no moon." "no moon: that's bad. hey, neighbours, that's bad for him!" "yes, 'tis bad," said grandfer cantle, shaking his head. "mother know'd 'twas no moon, for she asked another woman that had an almanac, as she did whenever a boy was born to her, because of the saying, 'no moon, no man,' which made her afeard every man-child she had. do ye really think it serious, mister fairway, that there was no moon?" "yes; 'no moon, no man.' 'tis one of the truest sayings ever spit out. the boy never comes to anything that's born at new moon. a bad job for thee, christian, that you should have showed your nose then of all days in the month." "i suppose the moon was terrible full when you were born?" said christian, with a look of hopeless admiration at fairway. "well, 'a was not new," mr. fairway replied, with a disinterested gaze. "i'd sooner go without drink at lammas-tide than be a man of no moon," continued christian, in the same shattered recitative. "'tis said i be only the rames of a man, and no good for my race at all; and i suppose that's the cause o't." "ay," said grandfer cantle, somewhat subdued in spirit; "and yet his mother cried for scores of hours when 'a was a boy, for fear he should outgrow hisself and go for a soldier." "well, there's many just as bad as he." said fairway. "wethers must live their time as well as other sheep, poor soul." "so perhaps i shall rub on? ought i to be afeared o' nights, master fairway?" "you'll have to lie alone all your life; and 'tis not to married couples but to single sleepers that a ghost shows himself when 'a do come. one has been seen lately, too. a very strange one." "no--don't talk about it if 'tis agreeable of ye not to! 'twill make my skin crawl when i think of it in bed alone. but you will--ah, you will, i know, timothy; and i shall dream all night o't! a very strange one? what sort of a spirit did ye mean when ye said, a very strange one, timothy?--no, no--don't tell me." "i don't half believe in spirits myself. but i think it ghostly enough--what i was told. 'twas a little boy that zid it." "what was it like?--no, don't--" "a red one. yes, most ghosts be white; but this is as if it had been dipped in blood." christian drew a deep breath without letting it expand his body, and humphrey said, "where has it been seen?" "not exactly here; but in this same heth. but 'tisn't a thing to talk about. what do ye say," continued fairway in brisker tones, and turning upon them as if the idea had not been grandfer cantle's--"what do you say to giving the new man and wife a bit of a song to-night afore we go to bed--being their wedding-day? when folks are just married 'tis as well to look glad o't, since looking sorry won't unjoin 'em. i am no drinker, as we know, but when the womenfolk and youngsters have gone home we can drop down across to the quiet woman, and strike up a ballet in front of the married folks' door. 'twill please the young wife, and that's what i should like to do, for many's the skinful i've had at her hands when she lived with her aunt at blooms-end." "hey? and so we will!" said grandfer cantle, turning so briskly that his copper seals swung extravagantly. "i'm as dry as a kex with biding up here in the wind, and i haven't seen the colour of drink since nammet-time today. 'tis said that the last brew at the woman is very pretty drinking. and, neighbours, if we should be a little late in the finishing, why, tomorrow's sunday, and we can sleep it off?" "grandfer cantle! you take things very careless for an old man," said the wide woman. "i take things careless; i do--too careless to please the women! klk! i'll sing the 'jovial crew,' or any other song, when a weak old man would cry his eyes out. jown it; i am up for anything. "the king´ look'd o´ver his left´ shoul-der´, and a grim´ look look´-ed hee´, earl mar´-shal, he said´, but for´ my oath´ or hang´-ed thou´ shouldst bee´." "well, that's what we'll do," said fairway. "we'll give 'em a song, an' it please the lord. what's the good of thomasin's cousin clym a-coming home after the deed's done? he should have come afore, if so be he wanted to stop it, and marry her himself." "perhaps he's coming to bide with his mother a little time, as she must feel lonely now the maid's gone." "now, 'tis very odd, but i never feel lonely--no, not at all," said grandfer cantle. "i am as brave in the night-time as a' admiral!" the bonfire was by this time beginning to sink low, for the fuel had not been of that substantial sort which can support a blaze long. most of the other fires within the wide horizon were also dwindling weak. attentive observation of their brightness, colour, and length of existence would have revealed the quality of the material burnt, and through that, to some extent the natural produce of the district in which each bonfire was situate. the clear, kingly effulgence that had characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze country like their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass showed the lightest of fuel--straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from arable land. the most enduring of all--steady unaltering eyes like planets--signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and stout billets. fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance. the great ones had perished, but these remained. they occupied the remotest visible positions--sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and plantation districts to the north, where the soil was different, and heath foreign and strange. save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole shining throng. it lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of the little window in the vale below. its nearness was such that, notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended theirs. this quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but no change was perceptible here. "to be sure, how near that fire is!" said fairway. "seemingly. i can see a fellow of some sort walking round it. little and good must be said of that fire, surely." "i can throw a stone there," said the boy. "and so can i!" said grandfer cantle. "no, no, you can't, my sonnies. that fire is not much less than a mile off, for all that 'a seems so near." "'tis in the heath, but not furze," said the turf-cutter. "'tis cleft-wood, that's what 'tis," said timothy fairway. "nothing would burn like that except clean timber. and 'tis on the knap afore the old captain's house at mistover. such a queer mortal as that man is! to have a little fire inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody else may enjoy it or come anigh it! and what a zany an old chap must be, to light a bonfire when there's no youngsters to please." "cap'n vye has been for a long walk to-day, and is quite tired out," said grandfer cantle, "so 'tisn't likely to be he." "and he would hardly afford good fuel like that," said the wide woman. "then it must be his grand-daughter," said fairway. "not that a body of her age can want a fire much." "she is very strange in her ways, living up there by herself, and such things please her," said susan. "she's a well-favoured maid enough," said humphrey the furze-cutter; "especially when she's got one of her dandy gowns on." "that's true," said fairway. "well, let her bonfire burn an't will. ours is well-nigh out by the look o't." "how dark 'tis now the fire's gone down!" said christian cantle, looking behind him with his hare eyes. "don't ye think we'd better get home-along, neighbours? the heth isn't haunted, i know; but we'd better get home... ah, what was that?" "only the wind," said the turf-cutter. "i don't think fifth-of-novembers ought to be kept up by night except in towns. it should be by day in outstep, ill-accounted places like this!" "nonsense, christian. lift up your spirits like a man! susy, dear, you and i will have a jig--hey, my honey?--before 'tis quite too dark to see how well-favoured you be still, though so many summers have passed since your husband, a son of a witch, snapped you up from me." this was addressed to susan nunsuch; and the next circumstance of which the beholders were conscious was a vision of the matron's broad form whisking off towards the space whereon the fire had been kindled. she was lifted bodily by mr. fairway's arm, which had been flung round her waist before she had become aware of his intention. the site of the fire was now merely a circle of ashes flecked with red embers and sparks, the furze having burnt completely away. once within the circle he whirled her round and round in a dance. she was a woman noisily constructed; in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather and in dry, to preserve her boots from wear; and when fairway began to jump about with her, the clicking of the pattens, the creaking of the stays, and her screams of surprise, formed a very audible concert. "i'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!" said mrs. nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "my ankles were all in a fever before, from walking through that prickly furze, and now you must make 'em worse with these vlankers!" the vagary of timothy fairway was infectious. the turf-cutter seized old olly dowden, and, somewhat more gently, poussetted with her likewise. the young men were not slow to imitate the example of their elders, and seized the maids; grandfer cantle and his stick jigged in the form of a three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute all that could be seen on rainbarrow was a whirling of dark shapes amid a boiling confusion of sparks, which leapt around the dancers as high as their waists. the chief noises were women's shrill cries, men's laughter, susan's stays and pattens, olly dowden's "heu-heu-heu!" and the strumming of the wind upon the furze-bushes, which formed a kind of tune to the demoniac measure they trod. christian alone stood aloof, uneasily rocking himself as he murmured, "they ought not to do it--how the vlankers do fly! 'tis tempting the wicked one, 'tis." "what was that?" said one of the lads, stopping. "ah--where?" said christian, hastily closing up to the rest. the dancers all lessened their speed. "'twas behind you, christian, that i heard it--down there." "yes--'tis behind me!" christian said. "matthew, mark, luke, and john, bless the bed that i lie on; four angels guard--" "hold your tongue. what is it?" said fairway. "hoi-i-i-i!" cried a voice from the darkness. "halloo-o-o-o!" said fairway. "is there any cart track up across here to mis'ess yeobright's, of blooms-end?" came to them in the same voice, as a long, slim indistinct figure approached the barrow. "ought we not to run home as hard as we can, neighbours, as 'tis getting late?" said christian. "not run away from one another, you know; run close together, i mean." "scrape up a few stray locks of furze, and make a blaze, so that we can see who the man is," said fairway. when the flame arose it revealed a young man in tight raiment, and red from top to toe. "is there a track across here to mis'ess yeobright's house?" he repeated. "ay--keep along the path down there." "i mean a way two horses and a van can travel over?" "well, yes; you can get up the vale below here with time. the track is rough, but if you've got a light your horses may pick along wi' care. have ye brought your cart far up, neighbour reddleman?" "i've left it in the bottom, about half a mile back. i stepped on in front to make sure of the way, as 'tis night-time, and i han't been here for so long." "oh, well, you can get up," said fairway. "what a turn it did give me when i saw him!" he added to the whole group, the reddleman included. "lord's sake, i thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble us? no slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain't bad-looking in the groundwork, though the finish is queer. my meaning is just to say how curious i felt. i half thought it 'twas the devil or the red ghost the boy told of." "it gied me a turn likewise," said susan nunsuch, "for i had a dream last night of a death's head." "don't ye talk o't no more," said christian. "if he had handkerchief over his head he'd look for all the world like the devil in the picture of the temptation." "well, thank you for telling me," said the young reddleman, smiling faintly. "and good night t'ye all." he withdrew from their sight down the barrow. "i fancy i've seen that young man's face before," said humphrey. "but where, or how, or what his name is, i don't know." the reddleman had not been gone more than a few minutes when another person approached the partially revived bonfire. it proved to be a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel. her face, encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely, and without half-lights, like a cameo. she was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features of the type usually found where perspicacity is the chief quality enthroned within. at moments she seemed to be regarding issues from a nebo denied to others around. she had something of an estranged mien; the solitude exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that had risen from it. the air with which she looked at the heathmen betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what might be their opinions of her for walking in that lonely spot at such an hour, this indirectly implying that in some respect or other they were not up to her level. the explanation lay in the fact that though her husband had been a small farmer she herself was a curate's daughter, who had once dreamt of doing better things. persons with any weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits; and the matron who entered now upon the scene could, and usually did, bring her own tone into a company. her normal manner among the heathfolk had that reticence which results from the consciousness of superior communicative power. but the effect of coming into society and light after lonely wandering in darkness is a sociability in the comer above its usual pitch, expressed in the features even more than in words. "why, 'tis mis'ess yeobright," said fairway. "mis'ess yeobright, not ten minutes ago a man was here asking for you--a reddleman." "what did he want?" said she. "he didn't tell us." "something to sell, i suppose; what it can be i am at a loss to understand." "i am glad to hear that your son mr. clym is coming home at christmas, ma'am," said sam, the turf-cutter. "what a dog he used to be for bonfires!" "yes. i believe he is coming," she said. "he must be a fine fellow by this time," said fairway. "he is a man now," she replied quietly. "'tis very lonesome for 'ee in the heth tonight, mis'ess," said christian, coming from the seclusion he had hitherto maintained. "mind you don't get lost. egdon heth is a bad place to get lost in, and the winds do huffle queerer tonight than ever i heard 'em afore. them that know egdon best have been pixy-led here at times." "is that you, christian?" said mrs. yeobright. "what made you hide away from me?" "'twas that i didn't know you in this light, mis'ess; and being a man of the mournfullest make, i was scared a little, that's all. oftentimes if you could see how terrible down i get in my mind, 'twould make 'ee quite nervous for fear i should die by my hand." "you don't take after your father," said mrs. yeobright, looking towards the fire, where grandfer cantle, with some want of originality, was dancing by himself among the sparks, as the others had done before. "now, grandfer," said timothy fairway, "we are ashamed of ye. a reverent old patriarch man as you be--seventy if a day--to go hornpiping like that by yourself!" "a harrowing old man, mis'ess yeobright," said christian despondingly. "i wouldn't live with him a week, so playward as he is, if i could get away." "'twould be more seemly in ye to stand still and welcome mis'ess yeobright, and you the venerablest here, grandfer cantle," said the besom-woman. "faith, and so it would," said the reveller checking himself repentantly. "i've such a bad memory, mis'ess yeobright, that i forget how i'm looked up to by the rest of 'em. my spirits must be wonderful good, you'll say? but not always. 'tis a weight upon a man to be looked up to as commander, and i often feel it." "i am sorry to stop the talk," said mrs. yeobright. "but i must be leaving you now. i was passing down the anglebury road, towards my niece's new home, who is returning tonight with her husband; and seeing the bonfire and hearing olly's voice among the rest i came up here to learn what was going on. i should like her to walk with me, as her way is mine." "ay, sure, ma'am, i'm just thinking of moving," said olly. "why, you'll be safe to meet the reddleman that i told ye of," said fairway. "he's only gone back to get his van. we heard that your niece and her husband were coming straight home as soon as they were married, and we are going down there shortly, to give 'em a song o' welcome." "thank you indeed," said mrs. yeobright. "but we shall take a shorter cut through the furze than you can go with long clothes; so we won't trouble you to wait." "very well--are you ready, olly?" "yes, ma'am. and there's a light shining from your niece's window, see. it will help to keep us in the path." she indicated the faint light at the bottom of the valley which fairway had pointed out; and the two women descended the tumulus. iv the halt on the turnpike road down, downward they went, and yet further down--their descent at each step seeming to outmeasure their advance. their skirts were scratched noisily by the furze, their shoulders brushed by the ferns, which, though dead and dry, stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter weather having as yet arrived to beat them down. their tartarean situation might by some have been called an imprudent one for two unattended women. but these shaggy recesses were at all seasons a familiar surrounding to olly and mrs. yeobright; and the addition of darkness lends no frightfulness to the face of a friend. "and so tamsin has married him at last," said olly, when the incline had become so much less steep that their footsteps no longer required undivided attention. mrs. yeobright answered slowly, "yes: at last." "how you will miss her--living with 'ee as a daughter, as she always have." "i do miss her." olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely, was saved by her very simplicity from rendering them offensive. questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with impunity. this accounted for mrs. yeobright's acquiescence in the revival of an evidently sore subject. "i was quite strook to hear you'd agreed to it, ma'am, that i was," continued the besom-maker. "you were not more struck by it than i should have been last year this time, olly. there are a good many sides to that wedding. i could not tell you all of them, even if i tried." "i felt myself that he was hardly solid-going enough to mate with your family. keeping an inn--what is it? but 'a's clever, that's true, and they say he was an engineering gentleman once, but has come down by being too outwardly given." "i saw that, upon the whole, it would be better she should marry where she wished." "poor little thing, her feelings got the better of her, no doubt. 'tis nature. well, they may call him what they will--he've several acres of heth-ground broke up here, besides the public house, and the heth-croppers, and his manners be quite like a gentleman's. and what's done cannot be undone." "it cannot," said mrs. yeobright. "see, here's the waggon-track at last. now we shall get along better." the wedding subject was no further dwelt upon; and soon a faint diverging path was reached, where they parted company, olly first begging her companion to remind mr. wildeve that he had not sent her sick husband the bottle of wine promised on the occasion of his marriage. the besom-maker turned to the left towards her own house, behind a spur of the hill, and mrs. yeobright followed the straight track, which further on joined the highway by the quiet woman inn, whither she supposed her niece to have returned with wildeve from their wedding at anglebury that day. she first reached wildeve's patch, as it was called, a plot of land redeemed from the heath, and after long and laborious years brought into cultivation. the man who had discovered that it could be tilled died of the labour; the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilizing it. wildeve came like amerigo vespucci, and received the honours due to those who had gone before. when mrs. yeobright had drawn near to the inn, and was about to enter, she saw a horse and vehicle some two hundred yards beyond it, coming towards her, a man walking alongside with a lantern in his hand. it was soon evident that this was the reddleman who had inquired for her. instead of entering the inn at once, she walked by it and towards the van. the conveyance came close, and the man was about to pass her with little notice, when she turned to him and said, "i think you have been inquiring for me? i am mrs. yeobright of blooms-end." the reddleman started, and held up his finger. he stopped the horses, and beckoned to her to withdraw with him a few yards aside, which she did, wondering. "you don't know me, ma'am, i suppose?" he said. "i do not," said she. "why, yes, i do! you are young venn--your father was a dairyman somewhere here?" "yes; and i knew your niece, miss tamsin, a little. i have something bad to tell you." "about her--no! she has just come home, i believe, with her husband. they arranged to return this afternoon--to the inn beyond here." "she's not there." "how do you know?" "because she's here. she's in my van," he added slowly. "what new trouble has come?" murmured mrs. yeobright, putting her hand over her eyes. "i can't explain much, ma'am. all i know is that, as i was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of anglebury, i heard something trotting after me like a doe, and looking round there she was, white as death itself. 'oh, diggory venn!' she said, 'i thought 'twas you: will you help me? i am in trouble.'" "how did she know your christian name?" said mrs. yeobright doubtingly. "i had met her as a lad before i went away in this trade. she asked then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a faint. i picked her up and put her in, and there she has been ever since. she has cried a good deal, but she has hardly spoke; all she has told me being that she was to have been married this morning. i tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't; and at last she fell asleep." "let me see her at once," said mrs. yeobright, hastening towards the van. the reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping up first, assisted mrs. yeobright to mount beside him. on the door being opened she perceived at the end of the van an extemporized couch, around which was hung apparently all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to keep the occupant of the little couch from contact with the red materials of his trade. a young girl lay thereon, covered with a cloak. she was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon her features. a fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. it was between pretty and beautiful. though her eyes were closed, one could easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around. the groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now lay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. the grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine. the scarlet of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient colour of her cheek. the lips frequently parted, with a murmur of words. she seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal--to require viewing through rhyme and harmony. one thing at least was obvious: she was not made to be looked at thus. the reddleman had appeared conscious of as much, and, while mrs. yeobright looked in upon her, he cast his eyes aside with a delicacy which well became him. the sleeper apparently thought so too, for the next moment she opened her own. the lips then parted with something of anticipation, something more of doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions of thoughts, as signalled by the changes on her face, were exhibited by the light to the utmost nicety. an ingenuous, transparent life was disclosed, as if the flow of her existence could be seen passing within her. she understood the scene in a moment. "o yes, it is i, aunt," she cried. "i know how frightened you are, and how you cannot believe it; but all the same, it is i who have come home like this!" "tamsin, tamsin!" said mrs. yeobright, stooping over the young woman and kissing her. "o my dear girl!" thomasin was now on the verge of a sob, but by an unexpected self-command she uttered no sound. with a gentle panting breath she sat upright. "i did not expect to see you in this state, any more than you me," she went on quickly. "where am i, aunt?" "nearly home, my dear. in egdon bottom. what dreadful thing is it?" "i'll tell you in a moment. so near, are we? then i will get out and walk. i want to go home by the path." "but this kind man who has done so much will, i am sure, take you right on to my house?" said the aunt, turning to the reddleman, who had withdrawn from the front of the van on the awakening of the girl, and stood in the road. "why should you think it necessary to ask me? i will, of course," said he. "he is indeed kind," murmured thomasin. "i was once acquainted with him, aunt, and when i saw him today i thought i should prefer his van to any conveyance of a stranger. but i'll walk now. reddleman, stop the horses, please." the man regarded her with tender reluctance, but stopped them. aunt and niece then descended from the van, mrs. yeobright saying to its owner, "i quite recognize you now. what made you change from the nice business your father left you?" "well, i did," he said, and looked at thomasin, who blushed a little. "then you'll not be wanting me any more to-night, ma'am?" mrs. yeobright glanced around at the dark sky, at the hills, at the perishing bonfires, and at the lighted window of the inn they had neared. "i think not," she said, "since thomasin wishes to walk. we can soon run up the path and reach home: we know it well." and after a few further words they parted, the reddleman moving onwards with his van, and the two women remaining standing in the road. as soon as the vehicle and its driver had withdrawn so far as to be beyond all possible reach of her voice, mrs. yeobright turned to her niece. "now, thomasin," she said sternly, "what's the meaning of this disgraceful performance?" v perplexity among honest people thomasin looked as if quite overcome by her aunt's change of manner. "it means just what it seems to mean: i am--not married," she replied faintly. "excuse me--for humiliating you, aunt, by this mishap: i am sorry for it. but i cannot help it." "me? think of yourself first." "it was nobody's fault. when we got there the parson wouldn't marry us because of some trifling irregularity in the license." "what irregularity?" "i don't know. mr. wildeve can explain. i did not think when i went away this morning that i should come back like this." it being dark, thomasin allowed her emotion to escape her by the silent way of tears, which could roll down her cheek unseen. "i could almost say that it serves you right--if i did not feel that you don't deserve it," continued mrs. yeobright, who, possessing two distinct moods in close contiguity, a gentle mood and an angry, flew from one to the other without the least warning. "remember, thomasin, this business was none of my seeking; from the very first, when you began to feel foolish about that man, i warned you he would not make you happy. i felt it so strongly that i did what i would never have believed myself capable of doing--stood up in the church, and made myself the public talk for weeks. but having once consented, i don't submit to these fancies without good reason. marry him you must after this." "do you think i wish to do otherwise for one moment?" said thomasin, with a heavy sigh. "i know how wrong it was of me to love him, but don't pain me by talking like that, aunt! you would not have had me stay there with him, would you?--and your house is the only home i have to return to. he says we can be married in a day or two." "i wish he had never seen you." "very well; then i will be the miserablest woman in the world, and not let him see me again. no, i won't have him!" "it is too late to speak so. come with me. i am going to the inn to see if he has returned. of course i shall get to the bottom of this story at once. mr. wildeve must not suppose he can play tricks upon me, or any belonging to me." "it was not that. the license was wrong, and he couldn't get another the same day. he will tell you in a moment how it was, if he comes." "why didn't he bring you back?" "that was me!" again sobbed thomasin. "when i found we could not be married i didn't like to come back with him, and i was very ill. then i saw diggory venn, and was glad to get him to take me home. i cannot explain it any better, and you must be angry with me if you will." "i shall see about that," said mrs. yeobright; and they turned towards the inn, known in the neighbourhood as the quiet woman, the sign of which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her arm, beneath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known to frequenters of the inn:-- since the woman's quiet let no man breed a riot. the front of the house was towards the heath and rainbarrow, whose dark shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. upon the door was a neglected brass plate, bearing the unexpected inscription, "mr. wildeve, engineer"--a useless yet cherished relic from the time when he had been started in that profession in an office at budmouth by those who had hoped much from him, and had been disappointed. the garden was at the back, and behind this ran a still deep stream, forming the margin of the heath in that direction, meadow-land appearing beyond the stream. but the thick obscurity permitted only skylines to be visible of any scene at present. the water at the back of the house could be heard, idly spinning whirpools in its creep between the rows of dry feather-headed reeds which formed a stockade along each bank. their presence was denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly, produced by their rubbing against each other in the slow wind. the window, whence the candlelight had shone up the vale to the eyes of the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but the sill lay too high for a pedestrian on the outside to look over it into the room. a vast shadow, in which could be dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted half the ceiling. "he seems to be at home," said mrs. yeobright. "must i come in, too, aunt?" asked thomasin faintly. "i suppose not; it would be wrong." "you must come, certainly--to confront him, so that he may make no false representations to me. we shall not be five minutes in the house, and then we'll walk home." entering the open passage she tapped at the door of the private parlour, unfastened it, and looked in. the back and shoulders of a man came between mrs. yeobright's eyes and the fire. wildeve, whose form it was, immediately turned, arose, and advanced to meet his visitors. he was quite a young man, and of the two properties, form and motion, the latter first attracted the eye in him. the grace of his movement was singular: it was the pantomimic expression of a lady-killing career. next came into notice the more material qualities, among which was a profuse crop of hair impending over the top of his face, lending to his forehead the high-cornered outline of an early gothic shield; and a neck which was smooth and round as a cylinder. the lower half of his figure was of light build. altogether he was one in whom no man would have seen anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen anything to dislike. he discerned the young girl's form in the passage, and said, "thomasin, then, has reached home. how could you leave me in that way, darling?" and turning to mrs. yeobright: "it was useless to argue with her. she would go, and go alone." "but what's the meaning of it all?" demanded mrs. yeobright haughtily. "take a seat," said wildeve, placing chairs for the two women. "well, it was a very stupid mistake, but such mistakes will happen. the license was useless at anglebury. it was made out for budmouth, but as i didn't read it i wasn't aware of that." "but you had been staying at anglebury?" "no. i had been at budmouth--till two days ago--and that was where i had intended to take her; but when i came to fetch her we decided upon anglebury, forgetting that a new license would be necessary. there was not time to get to budmouth afterwards." "i think you are very much to blame," said mrs. yeobright. "it was quite my fault we chose anglebury," thomasin pleaded. "i proposed it because i was not known there." "i know so well that i am to blame that you need not remind me of it," replied wildeve shortly. "such things don't happen for nothing," said the aunt. "it is a great slight to me and my family; and when it gets known there will be a very unpleasant time for us. how can she look her friends in the face tomorrow? it is a very great injury, and one i cannot easily forgive. it may even reflect on her character." "nonsense," said wildeve. thomasin's large eyes had flown from the face of one to the face of the other during this discussion, and she now said anxiously, "will you allow me, aunt, to talk it over alone with damon for five minutes? will you, damon?" "certainly, dear," said wildeve, "if your aunt will excuse us." he led her into an adjoining room, leaving mrs. yeobright by the fire. as soon as they were alone, and the door closed, thomasin said, turning up her pale, tearful face to him, "it is killing me, this, damon! i did not mean to part from you in anger at anglebury this morning; but i was frightened, and hardly knew what i said. i've not let aunt know how much i have suffered to-day; and it is so hard to command my face and voice, and to smile as if it were a slight thing to me; but i try to do so, that she may not be still more indignant with you. i know you could not help it, dear, whatever aunt may think." "she is very unpleasant." "yes," thomasin murmured, "and i suppose i seem so now... damon, what do you mean to do about me?" "do about you?" "yes. those who don't like you whisper things which at moments make me doubt you. we mean to marry, i suppose, don't we?" "of course we do. we have only to go to budmouth on monday, and we marry at once." "then do let us go!--o damon, what you make me say!" she hid her face in her handkerchief. "here am i asking you to marry me, when by rights you ought to be on your knees imploring me, your cruel mistress, not to refuse you, and saying it would break your heart if i did. i used to think it would be pretty and sweet like that; but how different!" "yes, real life is never at all like that." "but i don't care personally if it never takes place," she added with a little dignity; "no, i can live without you. it is aunt i think of. she is so proud, and thinks so much of her family respectability, that she will be cut down with mortification if this story should get abroad before--it is done. my cousin clym, too, will be much wounded." "then he will be very unreasonable. in fact, you are all rather unreasonable." thomasin coloured a little, and not with love. but whatever the momentary feeling which caused that flush in her, it went as it came, and she humbly said, "i never mean to be, if i can help it. i merely feel that you have my aunt to some extent in your power at last." "as a matter of justice it is almost due to me," said wildeve. "think what i have gone through to win her consent; the insult that it is to any man to have the banns forbidden: the double insult to a man unlucky enough to be cursed with sensitiveness, and blue demons, and heaven knows what, as i am. i can never forget those banns. a harsher man would rejoice now in the power i have of turning upon your aunt by going no further in the business." she looked wistfully at him with her sorrowful eyes as he said those words, and her aspect showed that more than one person in the room could deplore the possession of sensitiveness. seeing that she was really suffering he seemed disturbed and added, "this is merely a reflection you know. i have not the least intention to refuse to complete the marriage, tamsie mine--i could not bear it." "you could not, i know!" said the fair girl, brightening. "you, who cannot bear the sight of pain in even an insect, or any disagreeable sound, or unpleasant smell even, will not long cause pain to me and mine." "i will not, if i can help it." "your hand upon it, damon." he carelessly gave her his hand. "ah, by my crown, what's that?" he said suddenly. there fell upon their ears the sound of numerous voices singing in front of the house. among these, two made themselves prominent by their peculiarity: one was a very strong bass, the other a wheezy thin piping. thomasin recognized them as belonging to timothy fairway and grandfer cantle respectively. "what does it mean--it is not skimmity-riding, i hope?" she said, with a frightened gaze at wildeve. "of course not; no, it is that the heath-folk have come to sing to us a welcome. this is intolerable!" he began pacing about, the men outside singing cheerily-- "he told´ her that she´ was the joy´ of his life´. and if´ she'd con-sent´ he would make her his wife´; she could´ not refuse´ him; to church´ so they went´, young will was forgot´, and young sue´ was content´; and then´ was she kiss'd´ and set down´ on his knee´, no man´ in the world´ was so lov´-ing as he´!" mrs. yeobright burst in from the outer room. "thomasin, thomasin!" she said, looking indignantly at wildeve; "here's a pretty exposure! let us escape at once. come!" it was, however, too late to get away by the passage. a rugged knocking had begun upon the door of the front room. wildeve, who had gone to the window, came back. "stop!" he said imperiously, putting his hand upon mrs. yeobright's arm. "we are regularly besieged. there are fifty of them out there if there's one. you stay in this room with thomasin; i'll go out and face them. you must stay now, for my sake, till they are gone, so that it may seem as if all was right. come, tamsie dear, don't go making a scene--we must marry after this; that you can see as well as i. sit still, that's all--and don't speak much. i'll manage them. blundering fools!" he pressed the agitated girl into a seat, returned to the outer room and opened the door. immediately outside, in the passage, appeared grandfer cantle singing in concert with those still standing in front of the house. he came into the room and nodded abstractedly to wildeve, his lips still parted, and his features excruciatingly strained in the emission of the chorus. this being ended, he said heartily, "here's welcome to the newmade couple, and god bless 'em!" "thank you," said wildeve, with dry resentment, his face as gloomy as a thunderstorm. at the grandfer's heels now came the rest of the group, which included fairway, christian, sam the turf-cutter, humphrey, and a dozen others. all smiled upon wildeve, and upon his tables and chairs likewise, from a general sense of friendliness towards the articles as well as towards their owner. "we be not here afore mrs. yeobright after all," said fairway, recognizing the matron's bonnet through the glass partition which divided the public apartment they had entered from the room where the women sat. "we struck down across, d'ye see, mr. wildeve, and she went round by the path." "and i see the young bride's little head!" said grandfer, peeping in the same direction, and discerning thomasin, who was waiting beside her aunt in a miserable and awkward way. "not quite settled in yet--well, well, there's plenty of time." wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters at once. "that's a drop of the right sort, i can see," said grandfer cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it. "yes," said wildeve, "'tis some old mead. i hope you will like it." "o ay!" replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. "there isn't a prettier drink under the sun." "i'll take my oath there isn't," added grandfer cantle. "all that can be said against mead is that 'tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a man a good while. but tomorrow's sunday, thank god." "i feel'd for all the world like some bold soldier after i had had some once," said christian. "you shall feel so again," said wildeve, with condescension, "cups or glasses, gentlemen?" "well, if you don't mind, we'll have the beaker, and pass 'en round; 'tis better than heling it out in dribbles." "jown the slippery glasses," said grandfer cantle. "what's the good of a thing that you can't put down in the ashes to warm, hey, neighbours; that's what i ask?" "right, grandfer," said sam; and the mead then circulated. "well," said timothy fairway, feeling demands upon his praise in some form or other, "'tis a worthy thing to be married, mr. wildeve; and the woman you've got is a dimant, so says i. yes," he continued, to grandfer cantle, raising his voice so as to be heard through the partition, "her father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was as good a feller as ever lived. he always had his great indignation ready against anything underhand." "is that very dangerous?" said christian. "and there were few in these parts that were upsides with him," said sam. "whenever a club walked he'd play the clarinet in the band that marched before 'em as if he'd never touched anything but a clarinet all his life. and then, when they got to church door he'd throw down the clarinet, mount the gallery, snatch up the bass-viol, and rozum away as if he'd never played anything but a bass-viol. folk would say--folk that knowed what a true stave was--'surely, surely that's never the same man that i saw handling the clarinet so masterly by now!" "i can mind it," said the furze-cutter. "'twas a wonderful thing that one body could hold it all and never mix the fingering." "there was kingsbere church likewise," fairway recommenced, as one opening a new vein of the same mine of interest. wildeve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and glanced through the partition at the prisoners. "he used to walk over there of a sunday afternoon to visit his old acquaintance andrew brown, the first clarinet there; a good man enough, but rather screechy in his music, if you can mind?" "'a was." "and neighbour yeobright would take andrey's place for some part of the service, to let andrey have a bit of a nap, as any friend would naturally do." "as any friend would," said grandfer cantle, the other listeners expressing the same accord by the shorter way of nodding their heads. "no sooner was andrey asleep and the first whiff of neighbour yeobright's wind had got inside andrey's clarinet than everyone in church feeled in a moment there was a great soul among 'em. all heads would turn, and they'd say, 'ah, i thought 'twas he!' one sunday i can well mind--a bass-viol day that time, and yeobright had brought his own. 'twas the hundred-and-thirty-third to 'lydia'; and when they'd come to 'ran down his beard and o'er his robes its costly moisture shed,' neighbour yeobright, who had just warmed to his work, drove his bow into them strings that glorious grand that he e'en a'most sawed the bass-viol into two pieces. every winder in church rattled as if 'twere a thunderstorm. old pa'son williams lifted his hands in his great holy surplice as natural as if he'd been in common clothes, and seemed to say to hisself, 'o for such a man in our parish!' but not a soul in kingsbere could hold a candle to yeobright." "was it quite safe when the winder shook?" christian inquired. he received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration of the performance described. as with farinelli's singing before the princesses, sheridan's renowned begum speech, and other such examples, the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested the deceased mr. yeobright's _tour de force_ on that memorable afternoon with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been possible, might considerably have shorn down. "he was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the prime of life," said humphrey. "ah, well: he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. at that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at greenhill fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid, hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens, for 'a was a good runner afore she got so heavy. when she came home i said--we were then just beginning to walk together--'what have ye got, my honey?' 'i've won--well, i've won--a gown-piece,' says she, her colours coming up in a moment. 'tis a smock for a crown, i thought; and so it turned out. ay, when i think what she'll say to me now without a mossel of red in her face, it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little thing then... however, then she went on, and that's what made me bring up the story. 'well, whatever clothes i've won, white or figured, for eyes to see or for eyes not to see' ('a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in those days), 'i'd sooner have lost it than have seen what i have. poor mr. yeobright was took bad directly he reached the fair ground, and was forced to go home again.' that was the last time he ever went out of the parish." "'a faltered on from one day to another, and then we heard he was gone." "d'ye think he had great pain when 'a died?" said christian. "o no: quite different. nor any pain of mind. he was lucky enough to be god a'mighty's own man." "and other folk--d'ye think 'twill be much pain to 'em, mister fairway?" "that depends on whether they be afeard." "i bain't afeard at all, i thank god!" said christian strenuously. "i'm glad i bain't, for then 'twon't pain me... i don't think i be afeard--or if i be i can't help it, and i don't deserve to suffer. i wish i was not afeard at all!" there was a solemn silence, and looking from the window, which was unshuttered and unblinded, timothy said, "well, what a fess little bonfire that one is, out by cap'n vye's! 'tis burning just the same now as ever, upon my life." all glances went through the window, and nobody noticed that wildeve disguised a brief, telltale look. far away up the sombre valley of heath, and to the right of rainbarrow, could indeed be seen the light, small, but steady and persistent as before. "it was lighted before ours was," fairway continued; "and yet every one in the country round is out afore 'n." "perhaps there's meaning in it!" murmured christian. "how meaning?" said wildeve sharply. christian was too scattered to reply, and timothy helped him. "he means, sir, that the lonesome dark-eyed creature up there that some say is a witch--ever i should call a fine young woman such a name--is always up to some odd conceit or other; and so perhaps 'tis she." "i'd be very glad to ask her in wedlock, if she'd hae me, and take the risk of her wild dark eyes ill-wishing me," said grandfer cantle staunchly. "don't ye say it, father!" implored christian. "well, be dazed if he who do marry the maid won't hae an uncommon picture for his best parlour," said fairway in a liquid tone, placing down the cup of mead at the end of a good pull. "and a partner as deep as the north star," said sam, taking up the cup and finishing the little that remained. "well, really, now i think we must be moving," said humphrey, observing the emptiness of the vessel. "but we'll gie 'em another song?" said grandfer cantle. "i'm as full of notes as a bird!" "thank you, grandfer," said wildeve. "but we will not trouble you now. some other day must do for that--when i have a party." "be jown'd if i don't learn ten new songs for't, or i won't learn a line!" said grandfer cantle. "and you may be sure i won't disappoint ye by biding away, mr. wildeve." "i quite believe you," said that gentleman. all then took their leave, wishing their entertainer long life and happiness as a married man, with recapitulations which occupied some time. wildeve attended them to the door, beyond which the deep-dyed upward stretch of heath stood awaiting them, an amplitude of darkness reigning from their feet almost to the zenith, where a definite form first became visible in the lowering forehead of rainbarrow. diving into the dense obscurity in a line headed by sam the turf-cutter, they pursued their trackless way home. when the scratching of the furze against their leggings had fainted upon the ear, wildeve returned to the room where he had left thomasin and her aunt. the women were gone. they could only have left the house in one way, by the back window; and this was open. wildeve laughed to himself, remained a moment thinking, and idly returned to the front room. here his glance fell upon a bottle of wine which stood on the mantelpiece. "ah--old dowden!" he murmured; and going to the kitchen door shouted, "is anybody here who can take something to old dowden?" there was no reply. the room was empty, the lad who acted as his factotum having gone to bed. wildeve came back put on his hat, took the bottle, and left the house, turning the key in the door, for there was no guest at the inn tonight. as soon as he was on the road the little bonfire on mistover knap again met his eye. "still waiting, are you, my lady?" he murmured. however, he did not proceed that way just then; but leaving the hill to the left of him, he stumbled over a rutted road that brought him to a cottage which, like all other habitations on the heath at this hour, was only saved from being visible by a faint shine from its bedroom window. this house was the home of olly dowden, the besom-maker, and he entered. the lower room was in darkness; but by feeling his way he found a table, whereon he placed the bottle, and a minute later emerged again upon the heath. he stood and looked north-east at the undying little fire--high up above him, though not so high as rainbarrow. we have been told what happens when a woman deliberates; and the epigram is not always terminable with woman, provided that one be in the case, and that a fair one. wildeve stood, and stood longer, and breathed perplexedly, and then said to himself with resignation, "yes--by heaven, i must go to her, i suppose!" instead of turning in the direction of home he pressed on rapidly by a path under rainbarrow towards what was evidently a signal light. vi the figure against the sky when the whole egdon concourse had left the site of the bonfire to its accustomed loneliness, a closely wrapped female figure approached the barrow from that quarter of the heath in which the little fire lay. had the reddleman been watching he might have recognized her as the woman who had first stood there so singularly, and vanished at the approach of strangers. she ascended to her old position at the top, where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living eyes in the corpse of day. there she stood still, around her stretching the vast night atmosphere, whose incomplete darkness in comparison with the total darkness of the heath below it might have represented a venial beside a mortal sin. that she was tall and straight in build, that she was lady-like in her movements, was all that could be learnt of her just now, her form being wrapped in a shawl folded in the old cornerwise fashion, and her head in a large kerchief, a protection not superfluous at this hour and place. her back was towards the wind, which blew from the north-west; but whether she had avoided that aspect because of the chilly gusts which played about her exceptional position, or because her interest lay in the south-east, did not at first appear. her reason for standing so dead still as the pivot of this circle of heath-country was just as obscure. her extraordinary fixity, her conspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things an utter absence of fear. a tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which made caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind of landscape and weather which leads travellers from the south to describe our island as homer's cimmerian land, was not, on the face of it, friendly to women. it might reasonably have been supposed that she was listening to the wind, which rose somewhat as the night advanced, and laid hold of the attention. the wind, indeed, seemed made for the scene, as the scene seemed made for the hour. part of its tone was quite special; what was heard there could be heard nowhere else. gusts in innumerable series followed each other from the north-west, and when each one of them raced past the sound of its progress resolved into three. treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be found therein. the general ricochet of the whole over pits and prominences had the gravest pitch of the chime. next there could be heard the baritone buzz of a holly tree. below these in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voice strove hard at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local sound alluded to. thinner and less immediately traceable than the other two, it was far more impressive than either. in it lay what may be called the linguistic peculiarity of the heath; and being audible nowhere on earth off a heath, it afforded a shadow of reason for the woman's tenseness, which continued as unbroken as ever. throughout the blowing of these plaintive november winds that note bore a great resemblance to the ruins of human song which remain to the throat of fourscore and ten. it was a worn whisper, dry and papery, and it brushed so distinctly across the ear that, by the accustomed, the material minutiae in which it originated could be realized as by touch. it was the united products of infinitesimal vegetable causes, and these were neither stems, leaves, fruit, blades, prickles, lichen, nor moss. they were the mummied heath-bells of the past summer, originally tender and purple, now washed colourless by michaelmas rains, and dried to dead skins by october suns. so low was an individual sound from these that a combination of hundreds only just emerged from silence, and the myriads of the whole declivity reached the woman's ear but as a shrivelled and intermittent recitative. yet scarcely a single accent among the many afloat to-night could have such power to impress a listener with thoughts of its origin. one inwardly saw the infinity of those combined multitudes; and perceived that each of the tiny trumpets was seized on, entered, scoured and emerged from by the wind as thoroughly as if it were as vast as a crater. "the spirit moved them." a meaning of the phrase forced itself upon the attention; and an emotional listener's fetichistic mood might have ended in one of more advanced quality. it was not, after all, that the left-hand expanse of old blooms spoke, or the right-hand, or those of the slope in front; but it was the single person of something else speaking through each at once. suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally into the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be distinguished. the bluffs, and the bushes, and the heather-bells had broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her articulation was but as another phrase of the same discourse as theirs. thrown out on the winds it became twined in with them, and with them it flew away. what she uttered was a lengthened sighing, apparently at something in her mind which had led to her presence here. there was a spasmodic abandonment about it as if, in allowing herself to utter the sound. the woman's brain had authorized what it could not regulate. one point was evident in this; that she had been existing in a suppressed state, and not in one of languor, or stagnation. far away down the valley the faint shine from the window of the inn still lasted on; and a few additional moments proved that the window, or what was within it, had more to do with the woman's sigh than had either her own actions or the scene immediately around. she lifted her left hand, which held a closed telescope. this she rapidly extended, as if she were well accustomed to the operation, and raising it to her eye directed it towards the light beaming from the inn. the handkerchief which had hooded her head was now a little thrown back, her face being somewhat elevated. a profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side shadows from the features of sappho and mrs. siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both. this, however, was mere superficiality. in respect of character a face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses only in its changes. so much is this the case that what is called the play of the features often helps more in understanding a man or woman than the earnest labours of all the other members together. thus the night revealed little of her whose form it was embracing, for the mobile parts of her countenance could not be seen. at last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the telescope, and turned to the decaying embers. from these no appreciable beams now radiated, except when a more than usually smart gust brushed over their faces and raised a fitful glow which came and went like the blush of a girl. she stooped over the silent circle, and selecting from the brands a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal at its end, brought it to where she had been standing before. she held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal with her mouth at the same time; till it faintly illuminated the sod, and revealed a small object, which turned out to be an hourglass, though she wore a watch. she blew long enough to show that the sand had all slipped through. "ah!" she said, as if surprised. the light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentary irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. that consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still enveloped. she threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under her arm, and moved on. along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed. those who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at midnight. the whole secret of following these incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to show a turnpike-road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden spots. to a walker practised in such places a difference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the thickest boot or shoe. the solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of the windy tune still played on the dead heath-bells. she did not turn her head to look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. they were about a score of the small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. they roamed at large on the undulations of egdon, but in numbers too few to detract much from the solitude. the pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her abstraction was afforded by a trivial incident. a bramble caught hold of her skirt, and checked her progress. instead of putting it off and hastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood passively still. when she began to extricate herself it was by turning round and round, and so unwinding the prickly switch. she was in a desponding reverie. her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which had drawn the attention of the men on rainbarrow and of wildeve in the valley below. a faint illumination from its rays began to glow upon her face, and the fire soon revealed itself to be lit, not on the level ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, at the junction of two converging bank fences. outside was a ditch, dry except immediately under the fire, where there was a large pool, bearded all round by heather and rushes. in the smooth water of the pool the fire appeared upside down. the banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formed by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top, like impaled heads above a city wall. a white mast, fitted up with spars and other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against the dark clouds whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it. altogether the scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon which had been kindled a beacon fire. nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved above the bank from behind, and vanished again. this was a small human hand, in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire; but for all that could be seen the hand, like that which troubled belshazzar, was there alone. occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped with a hiss into the pool. at one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled any one who wished to do so to mount the bank; which the woman did. within was a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of having once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and were reasserting their old supremacy. further ahead were dimly visible an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings, backed by a clump of firs. the young lady--for youth had revealed its presence in her buoyant bound up the bank--walked along the top instead of descending inside, and came to the corner where the fire was burning. one reason for the permanence of the blaze was now manifest: the fuel consisted of hard pieces of wood, cleft and sawn--the knotty boles of old thorn trees which grew in twos and threes about the hillsides. a yet unconsumed pile of these lay in the inner angle of the bank; and from this corner the upturned face of a little boy greeted her eyes. he was dilatorily throwing up a piece of wood into the fire every now and then, a business which seemed to have engaged him a considerable part of the evening, for his face was somewhat weary. "i am glad you have come, miss eustacia," he said, with a sigh of relief. "i don't like biding by myself." "nonsense. i have only been a little way for a walk. i have been gone only twenty minutes." "it seemed long," murmured the sad boy. "and you have been so many times." "why, i thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. are you not much obliged to me for making you one?" "yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me." "i suppose nobody has come while i've been away?" "nobody except your grandfather: he looked out of doors once for 'ee. i told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the other bonfires." "a good boy." "i think i hear him coming again, miss." an old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the direction of the homestead. he was the same who had overtaken the reddleman on the road that afternoon. he looked wistfully to the top of the bank at the woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired, showed like parian from his parted lips. "when are you coming indoors, eustacia?" he asked. "'tis almost bedtime. i've been home these two hours, and am tired out. surely 'tis somewhat childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long, and wasting such fuel. my precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing, that i laid by on purpose for christmas--you have burnt 'em nearly all!" "i promised johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go out just yet," said eustacia, in a way which told at once that she was absolute queen here. "grandfather, you go in to bed. i shall follow you soon. you like the fire, don't you, johnny?" the boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, "i don't think i want it any longer." her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear the boy's reply. as soon as the white-haired man had vanished she said in a tone of pique to the child, "ungrateful little boy, how can you contradict me? never shall you have a bonfire again unless you keep it up now. come, tell me you like to do things for me, and don't deny it." the repressed child said, "yes, i do, miss," and continued to stir the fire perfunctorily. "stay a little longer and i will give you a crooked six-pence," said eustacia, more gently. "put in one piece of wood every two or three minutes, but not too much at once. i am going to walk along the ridge a little longer, but i shall keep on coming to you. and if you hear a frog jump into the pond with a flounce like a stone thrown in, be sure you run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain." "yes, eustacia." "miss vye, sir." "miss vy--stacia." "that will do. now put in one stick more." the little slave went on feeding the fire as before. he seemed a mere automaton, galvanized into moving and speaking by the wayward eustacia's will. he might have been the brass statue which albertus magnus is said to have animated just so far as to make it chatter, and move, and be his servant. before going on her walk again the young girl stood still on the bank for a few instants and listened. it was to the full as lonely a place as rainbarrow, though at rather a lower level; and it was more sheltered from wind and weather on account of the few firs to the north. the bank which enclosed the homestead, and protected it from the lawless state of the world without, was formed of thick square clods, dug from the ditch on the outside, and built up with a slight batter or incline, which forms no slight defense where hedges will not grow because of the wind and the wilderness, and where wall materials are unattainable. otherwise the situation was quite open, commanding the whole length of the valley which reached to the river behind wildeve's house. high above this to the right, and much nearer thitherward than the quiet woman inn, the blurred contour of rainbarrow obstructed the sky. after her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines a gesture of impatience escaped eustacia. she vented petulant words every now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. descending from her perch she again sauntered off towards rainbarrow, though this time she did not go the whole way. twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes and each time she said-- "not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?" "no, miss eustacia," the child replied. "well," she said at last, "i shall soon be going in, and then i will give you the crooked sixpence, and let you go home." "thank'ee, miss eustacia," said the tired stoker, breathing more easily. and eustacia again strolled away from the fire, but this time not towards rainbarrow. she skirted the bank and went round to the wicket before the house, where she stood motionless, looking at the scene. fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks, with the fire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the fire one stick at a time, just as before, the figure of the little child. she idly watched him as he occasionally climbed up in the nook of the bank and stood beside the brands. the wind blew the smoke, and the child's hair, and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; the breeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up straight. while eustacia looked on from this distance the boy's form visibly started: he slid down the bank and ran across towards the white gate. "well?" said eustacia. "a hop-frog have jumped into the pond. yes, i heard 'en!" "then it is going to rain, and you had better go home. you will not be afraid?" she spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into her throat at the boy's words. "no, because i shall hae the crooked sixpence." "yes, here it is. now run as fast as you can--not that way--through the garden here. no other boy in the heath has had such a bonfire as yours." the boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing, marched away into the shadows with alacrity. when he was gone eustacia, leaving her telescope and hour-glass by the gate, brushed forward from the wicket towards the angle of the bank, under the fire. here, screened by the outwork, she waited. in a few moments a splash was audible from the pond outside. had the child been there he would have said that a second frog had jumped in; but by most people the sound would have been likened to the fall of a stone into the water. eustacia stepped upon the bank. "yes?" she said, and held her breath. thereupon the contour of a man became dimly visible against the low-reaching sky over the valley, beyond the outer margin of the pool. he came round it and leapt upon the bank beside her. a low laugh escaped her--the third utterance which the girl had indulged in tonight. the first, when she stood upon rainbarrow, had expressed anxiety; the second, on the ridge, had expressed impatience; the present was one of triumphant pleasure. she let her joyous eyes rest upon him without speaking, as upon some wondrous thing she had created out of chaos. "i have come," said the man, who was wildeve. "you give me no peace. why do you not leave me alone? i have seen your bonfire all the evening." the words were not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes. at this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl seemed to repress herself also. "of course you have seen my fire," she answered with languid calmness, artificially maintained. "why shouldn't i have a bonfire on the fifth of november, like other denizens of the heath?" "i knew it was meant for me." "how did you know it? i have had no word with you since you--you chose her, and walked about with her, and deserted me entirely, as if i had never been yours life and soul so irretrievably!" "eustacia! could i forget that last autumn at this same day of the month and at this same place you lighted exactly such a fire as a signal for me to come and see you? why should there have been a bonfire again by captain vye's house if not for the same purpose?" "yes, yes--i own it," she cried under her breath, with a drowsy fervour of manner and tone which was quite peculiar to her. "don't begin speaking to me as you did, damon; you will drive me to say words i would not wish to say to you. i had given you up, and resolved not to think of you any more; and then i heard the news, and i came out and got the fire ready because i thought that you had been faithful to me." "what have you heard to make you think that?" said wildeve, astonished. "that you did not marry her!" she murmured exultingly. "and i knew it was because you loved me best, and couldn't do it... damon, you have been cruel to me to go away, and i have said i would never forgive you. i do not think i can forgive you entirely, even now--it is too much for a woman of any spirit to quite overlook." "if i had known you wished to call me up here only to reproach me, i wouldn't have come." "but i don't mind it, and i do forgive you now that you have not married her, and have come back to me!" "who told you that i had not married her?" "my grandfather. he took a long walk today, and as he was coming home he overtook some person who told him of a broken-off wedding: he thought it might be yours, and i knew it was." "does anybody else know?" "i suppose not. now damon, do you see why i lit my signal fire? you did not think i would have lit it if i had imagined you to have become the husband of this woman. it is insulting my pride to suppose that." wildeve was silent; it was evident that he had supposed as much. "did you indeed think i believed you were married?" she again demanded earnestly. "then you wronged me; and upon my life and heart i can hardly bear to recognize that you have such ill thoughts of me! damon, you are not worthy of me: i see it, and yet i love you. never mind, let it go--i must bear your mean opinion as best i may... it is true, is it not," she added with ill-concealed anxiety, on his making no demonstration, "that you could not bring yourself to give me up, and are still going to love me best of all?" "yes; or why should i have come?" he said touchily. "not that fidelity will be any great merit in me after your kind speech about my unworthiness, which should have been said by myself if by anybody, and comes with an ill grace from you. however, the curse of inflammability is upon me, and i must live under it, and take any snub from a woman. it has brought me down from engineering to innkeeping: what lower stage it has in store for me i have yet to learn." he continued to look upon her gloomily. she seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so that the firelight shone full upon her face and throat, said with a smile, "have you seen anything better than that in your travels?" eustacia was not one to commit herself to such a position without good ground. he said quietly, "no." "not even on the shoulders of thomasin?" "thomasin is a pleasing and innocent woman." "that's nothing to do with it," she cried with quick passionateness. "we will leave her out; there are only you and me now to think of." after a long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth: "must i go on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and own that no words can express how gloomy i have been because of that dreadful belief i held till two hours ago--that you had quite deserted me?" "i am sorry i caused you that pain." "but perhaps it is not wholly because of you that i get gloomy," she archly added. "it is in my nature to feel like that. it was born in my blood, i suppose." "hypochondriasis." "or else it was coming into this wild heath. i was happy enough at budmouth. o the times, o the days at budmouth! but egdon will be brighter again now." "i hope it will," said wildeve moodily. "do you know the consequence of this recall to me, my old darling? i shall come to see you again as before, at rainbarrow." "of course you will." "and yet i declare that until i got here tonight i intended, after this one good-bye, never to meet you again." "i don't thank you for that," she said, turning away, while indignation spread through her like subterranean heat. "you may come again to rainbarrow if you like, but you won't see me; and you may call, but i shall not listen; and you may tempt me, but i won't give myself to you any more." "you have said as much before, sweet; but such natures as yours don't so easily adhere to their words. neither, for the matter of that, do such natures as mine." "this is the pleasure i have won by my trouble," she whispered bitterly. "why did i try to recall you? damon, a strange warring takes place in my mind occasionally. i think when i become calm after your woundings, 'do i embrace a cloud of common fog after all?' you are a chameleon, and now you are at your worst colour. go home, or i shall hate you!" he looked absently towards rainbarrow while one might have counted twenty, and said, as if he did not much mind all this, "yes, i will go home. do you mean to see me again?" "if you own to me that the wedding is broken off because you love me best." "i don't think it would be good policy," said wildeve, smiling. "you would get to know the extent of your power too clearly." "but tell me!" "you know." "where is she now?" "i don't know. i prefer not to speak of her to you. i have not yet married her; i have come in obedience to your call. that is enough." "i merely lit that fire because i was dull, and thought i would get a little excitement by calling you up and triumphing over you as the witch of endor called up samuel. i determined you should come; and you have come! i have shown my power. a mile and half hither, and a mile and half back again to your home--three miles in the dark for me. have i not shown my power?" he shook his head at her. "i know you too well, my eustacia; i know you too well. there isn't a note in you which i don't know; and that hot little bosom couldn't play such a coldblooded trick to save its life. i saw a woman on rainbarrow at dusk looking down towards my house. i think i drew out you before you drew out me." the revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in wildeve now; and he leant forward as if about to put his face towards her cheek. "o no," she said, intractably moving to the other side of the decayed fire. "what did you mean by that?" "perhaps i may kiss your hand?" "no, you may not." "then i may shake your hand?" "no." "then i wish you good night without caring for either. good-bye, good-bye." she returned no answer, and with the bow of a dancing-master he vanished on the other side of the pool as he had come. eustacia sighed: it was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh which shook her like a shiver. whenever a flash of reason darted like an electric light upon her lover--as it sometimes would--and showed his imperfections, she shivered thus. but it was over in a second, and she loved on. she knew that he trifled with her; but she loved on. she scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and up to her bedroom without a light. amid the rustles which denoted her to be undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths frequently came; and the same kind of shudder occasionally moved through her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her bed asleep. vii queen of night eustacia vye was the raw material of a divinity. on olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. she had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. there would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now. she was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud. to see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow: it closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow. her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper could always be softened by stroking them down. when her hair was brushed she would instantly sink into stillness and look like the sphinx. if, in passing under one of the egdon banks, any of its thick skeins were caught, as they sometimes were, by a prickly tuft of the large _ulex europaeus_--which will act as a sort of hairbrush--she would go back a few steps, and pass against it a second time. she had pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries, and their light, as it came and went, and came again, was partially hampered by their oppressive lids and lashes; and of these the under lid was much fuller than it usually is with english women. this enabled her to indulge in reverie without seeming to do so: she might have been believed capable of sleeping without closing them up. assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of eustacia's soul to be flame-like. the sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression. the mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver than to kiss. some might have added, less to kiss than to curl. viewed sideways, the closing-line of her lips formed, with almost geometric precision, the curve so well known in the arts of design as the cima-recta, or ogee. the sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim egdon was quite an apparition. it was felt at once that the mouth did not come over from sleswig with a band of saxon pirates whose lips met like the two halves of a muffin. one had fancied that such lip-curves were mostly lurking underground in the south as fragments of forgotten marbles. so fine were the lines of her lips that, though full, each corner of her mouth was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. this keenness of corner was only blunted when she was given over to sudden fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment which she knew too well for her years. her presence brought memories of such things as bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in "athalie"; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. in a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. the new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of artemis, athena, or hera respectively, with as close an approximation to the antique as that which passes muster on many respected canvases. but celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward egdon. her power was limited, and the consciousness of this limitation had biassed her development. egdon was her hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her. a true tartarean dignity sat upon her brow, and not factitiously or with marks of constraint, for it had grown in her with years. across the upper part of her head she wore a thin fillet of black velvet, restraining the luxuriance of her shady hair, in a way which added much to this class of majesty by irregularly clouding her forehead. "nothing can embellish a beautiful face more than a narrow band drawn over the brow," says richter. some of the neighbouring girls wore coloured ribbon for the same purpose, and sported metallic ornaments elsewhere; but if anyone suggested coloured ribbon and metallic ornaments to eustacia vye she laughed and went on. why did a woman of this sort live on egdon heath? budmouth was her native place, a fashionable seaside resort at that date. she was the daughter of the bandmaster of a regiment which had been quartered there--a corfiote by birth, and a fine musician--who met his future wife during her trip thither with her father the captain, a man of good family. the marriage was scarcely in accord with the old man's wishes, for the bandmaster's pockets were as light as his occupation. but the musician did his best; adopted his wife's name, made england permanently his home, took great trouble with his child's education, the expenses of which were defrayed by the grandfather, and throve as the chief local musician till her mother's death, when he left off thriving, drank, and died also. the girl was left to the care of her grandfather, who, since three of his ribs became broken in a shipwreck, had lived in this airy perch on egdon, a spot which had taken his fancy because the house was to be had for next to nothing, and because a remote blue tinge on the horizon between the hills, visible from the cottage door, was traditionally believed to be the english channel. she hated the change; she felt like one banished; but here she was forced to abide. thus it happened that in eustacia's brain were juxtaposed the strangest assortment of ideas, from old time and from new. there was no middle distance in her perspective: romantic recollections of sunny afternoons on an esplanade, with military bands, officers, and gallants around, stood like gilded letters upon the dark tablet of surrounding egdon. every bizarre effect that could result from the random intertwining of watering-place glitter with the grand solemnity of a heath, was to be found in her. seeing nothing of human life now, she imagined all the more of what she had seen. where did her dignity come from? by a latent vein from alcinous' line, her father hailing from phaeacia's isle?--or from fitzalan and de vere, her maternal grandfather having had a cousin in the peerage? perhaps it was the gift of heaven--a happy convergence of natural laws. among other things opportunity had of late years been denied her of learning to be undignified, for she lived lonely. isolation on a heath renders vulgarity well-nigh impossible. it would have been as easy for the heath-ponies, bats, and snakes to be vulgar as for her. a narrow life in budmouth might have completely demeaned her. the only way to look queenly without realms or hearts to queen it over is to look as if you had lost them; and eustacia did that to a triumph. in the captain's cottage she could suggest mansions she had never seen. perhaps that was because she frequented a vaster mansion than any of them, the open hills. like the summer condition of the place around her, she was an embodiment of the phrase "a populous solitude"--apparently so listless, void, and quiet, she was really busy and full. to be loved to madness--such was her great desire. love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. and she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover. she could show a most reproachful look at times, but it was directed less against human beings than against certain creatures of her mind, the chief of these being destiny, through whose interference she dimly fancied it arose that love alighted only on gliding youth--that any love she might win would sink simultaneously with the sand in the glass. she thought of it with an ever-growing consciousness of cruelty, which tended to breed actions of reckless unconventionality, framed to snatch a year's, a week's, even an hour's passion from anywhere while it could be won. through want of it she had sung without being merry, possessed without enjoying, outshone without triumphing. her loneliness deepened her desire. on egdon, coldest and meanest kisses were at famine prices; and where was a mouth matching hers to be found? fidelity in love for fidelity's sake had less attraction for her than for most women: fidelity because of love's grip had much. a blaze of love, and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years. on this head she knew by prevision what most women learn only by experience: she had mentally walked round love, told the towers thereof, considered its palaces, and concluded that love was but a doleful joy. yet she desired it, as one in a desert would be thankful for brackish water. she often repeated her prayers; not at particular times, but, like the unaffectedly devout, when she desired to pray. her prayer was always spontaneous, and often ran thus, "o deliver my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness; send me great love from somewhere, else i shall die." her high gods were william the conqueror, strafford, and napoleon buonaparte, as they had appeared in the lady's history used at the establishment in which she was educated. had she been a mother she would have christened her boys such names as saul or sisera in preference to jacob or david, neither of whom she admired. at school she had used to side with the philistines in several battles, and had wondered if pontius pilate were as handsome as he was frank and fair. thus she was a girl of some forwardness of mind, indeed, weighed in relation to her situation among the very rearward of thinkers, very original. her instincts towards social non-comformity were at the root of this. in the matter of holidays, her mood was that of horses who, when turned out to grass, enjoy looking upon their kind at work on the highway. she only valued rest to herself when it came in the midst of other people's labour. hence she hated sundays when all was at rest, and often said they would be the death of her. to see the heathmen in their sunday condition, that is, with their hands in their pockets, their boots newly oiled, and not laced up (a particularly sunday sign), walking leisurely among the turves and furze-faggots they had cut during the week, and kicking them critically as if their use were unknown, was a fearful heaviness to her. to relieve the tedium of this untimely day she would overhaul the cupboards containing her grandfather's old charts and other rubbish, humming saturday-night ballads of the country people the while. but on saturday nights she would frequently sing a psalm, and it was always on a week-day that she read the bible, that she might be unoppressed with a sense of doing her duty. such views of life were to some extent the natural begettings of her situation upon her nature. to dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. the subtle beauties of the heath were lost to eustacia; she only caught its vapours. an environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine. eustacia had got beyond the vision of some marriage of inexpressible glory; yet, though her emotions were in full vigour, she cared for no meaner union. thus we see her in a strange state of isolation. to have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise. but, if congenial to philosophy, it is apt to be dangerous to the commonwealth. in a world where doing means marrying, and the commonwealth is one of hearts and hands, the same peril attends the condition. and so we see our eustacia--for at times she was not altogether unlovable--arriving at that stage of enlightenment which feels that nothing is worth while, and filling up the spare hours of her existence by idealizing wildeve for want of a better object. this was the sole reason of his ascendency: she knew it herself. at moments her pride rebelled against her passion for him, and she even had longed to be free. but there was only one circumstance which could dislodge him, and that was the advent of a greater man. for the rest, she suffered much from depression of spirits, and took slow walks to recover them, in which she carried her grandfather's telescope and her grandmother's hourglass--the latter because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from watching a material representation of time's gradual glide away. she seldom schemed, but when she did scheme, her plans showed rather the comprehensive strategy of a general than the small arts called womanish, though she could utter oracles of delphian ambiguity when she did not choose to be direct. in heaven she will probably sit between the héloïses and the cleopatras. viii those who are found where there is said to be nobody as soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire he clasped the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if thereby to fortify his courage, and began to run. there was really little danger in allowing a child to go home alone on this part of egdon heath. the distance to the boy's house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part of the small hamlet of mistover knap: the third and only remaining house was that of captain vye and eustacia, which stood quite away from the small cottages, and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly populated slopes. he ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in an old voice a little song about a sailor-boy and a fair one, and bright gold in store. in the middle of this the child stopped: from a pit under the hill ahead of him shone a light, whence proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise. only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy. the shrivelled voice of the heath did not alarm him, for that was familiar. the thorn-bushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples. lights were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of all of them was different from this. discretion rather than terror prompted the boy to turn back instead of passing the light, with a view of asking miss eustacia vye to let her servant accompany him home. when the boy had reascended to the top of the valley he found the fire to be still burning on the bank, though lower than before. beside it, instead of eustacia's solitary form, he saw two persons, the second being a man. the boy crept along under the bank to ascertain from the nature of the proceedings if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a creature as miss eustacia on his poor trivial account. after listening under the bank for some minutes to the talk he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner and began to withdraw as silently as he had come. that he did not, upon the whole, think it advisable to interrupt her conversation with wildeve, without being prepared to bear the whole weight of her displeasure, was obvious. here was a scyllaeo-charybdean position for a poor boy. pausing when again safe from discovery, he finally decided to face the pit phenomenon as the lesser evil. with a heavy sigh he retraced the slope, and followed the path he had followed before. the light had gone, the rising dust had disappeared--he hoped for ever. he marched resolutely along, and found nothing to alarm him till, coming within a few yards of the sandpit, he heard a slight noise in front, which led him to halt. the halt was but momentary, for the noise resolved itself into the steady bites of two animals grazing. "two he'th-croppers down here," he said aloud. "i have never known 'em come down so far afore." the animals were in the direct line of his path, but that the child thought little of; he had played round the fetlocks of horses from his infancy. on coming nearer, however, the boy was somewhat surprised to find that the little creatures did not run off, and that each wore a clog, to prevent his going astray; this signified that they had been broken in. he could now see the interior of the pit, which, being in the side of the hill, had a level entrance. in the innermost corner the square outline of a van appeared, with its back towards him. a light came from the interior, and threw a moving shadow upon the vertical face of gravel at the further side of the pit into which the vehicle faced. the child assumed that this was the cart of a gipsy, and his dread of those wanderers reached but to that mild pitch which titillates rather than pains. only a few inches of mud wall kept him and his family from being gipsies themselves. he skirted the gravel-pit at a respectful distance, ascended the slope, and came forward upon the brow, in order to look into the open door of the van and see the original of the shadow. the picture alarmed the boy. by a little stove inside the van sat a figure red from head to heels--the man who had been thomasin's friend. he was darning a stocking, which was red like the rest of him. moreover, as he darned he smoked a pipe, the stem and bowl of which were red also. at this moment one of the heath-croppers feeding in the outer shadows was audibly shaking off the clog attached to its foot. aroused by the sound the reddleman laid down his stocking, lit a lantern which hung beside him, and came out from the van. in sticking up the candle he lifted the lantern to his face, and the light shone into the whites of his eyes and upon his ivory teeth, which, in contrast with the red surrounding, lent him a startling aspect enough to the gaze of a juvenile. the boy knew too well for his peace of mind upon whose lair he had lighted. uglier persons than gipsies were known to cross egdon at times, and a reddleman was one of them. "how i wish 'twas only a gipsy!" he murmured. the man was by this time coming back from the horses. in his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. the heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. the boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the very foot of the man. the red man opened the lantern and turned it upon the figure of the prostrate boy. "who be ye?" he said. "johnny nunsuch, master!" "what were you doing up there?" "i don't know." "watching me, i suppose?" "yes, master." "what did you watch me for?" "because i was coming home from miss vye's bonfire." "beest hurt?" "no." "why, yes, you be: your hand is bleeding. come under my tilt and let me tie it up." "please let me look for my sixpence." "how did you come by that?" "miss vye gied it to me for keeping up her bonfire." the sixpence was found, and the man went to the van, the boy behind, almost holding his breath. the man took a piece of rag from a satchel containing sewing materials, tore off a strip, which, like everything else, was tinged red, and proceeded to bind up the wound. "my eyes have got foggy-like--please may i sit down, master?" said the boy. "to be sure, poor chap. 'tis enough to make you feel fainty. sit on that bundle." the man finished tying up the gash, and the boy said, "i think i'll go home now, master." "you are rather afraid of me. do you know what i be?" the child surveyed his vermilion figure up and down with much misgiving and finally said, "yes." "well, what?" "the reddleman!" he faltered. "yes, that's what i be. though there's more than one. you little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all." "is there? you won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'tis said that the reddleman will sometimes." "nonsense. all that reddlemen do is sell reddle. you see all these bags at the back of my cart? they are not full of little boys--only full of red stuff." "was you born a reddleman?" "no, i took to it. i should be as white as you if i were to give up the trade--that is, i should be white in time--perhaps six months: not at first, because 'tis grow'd into my skin and won't wash out. now, you'll never be afraid of a reddleman again, will ye?" "no, never. willy orchard said he seed a red ghost here t'other day--perhaps that was you?" "i was here t'other day." "were you making that dusty light i saw by now?" "oh yes: i was beating out some bags. and have you had a good bonfire up there? i saw the light. why did miss vye want a bonfire so bad that she should give you sixpence to keep it up?" "i don't know. i was tired, but she made me bide and keep up the fire just the same, while she kept going up across rainbarrow way." "and how long did that last?" "until a hopfrog jumped into the pond." the reddleman suddenly ceased to talk idly. "a hopfrog?" he inquired. "hopfrogs don't jump into ponds this time of year." "they do, for i heard one." "certain-sure?" "yes. she told me afore that i should hear'n; and so i did. they say she's clever and deep, and perhaps she charmed 'en to come." "and what then?" "then i came down here, and i was afeard, and i went back; but i didn't like to speak to her, because of the gentleman, and i came on here again." "a gentleman--ah! what did she say to him, my man?" "told him she supposed he had not married the other woman because he liked his old sweetheart best; and things like that." "what did the gentleman say to her, my sonny?" "he only said he did like her best, and how he was coming to see her again under rainbarrow o' nights." "ha!" cried the reddleman, slapping his hand against the side of his van so that the whole fabric shook under the blow. "that's the secret o't!" the little boy jumped clean from the stool. "my man, don't you be afraid," said the dealer in red, suddenly becoming gentle. "i forgot you were here. that's only a curious way reddlemen have of going mad for a moment; but they don't hurt anybody. and what did the lady say then?" "i can't mind. please, master reddleman, may i go home-along now?" "ay, to be sure you may. i'll go a bit of ways with you." he conducted the boy out of the gravel-pit and into the path leading to his mother's cottage. when the little figure had vanished in the darkness the reddleman returned, resumed his seat by the fire, and proceeded to darn again. ix love leads a shrewd man into strategy reddlemen of the old school are now but seldom seen. since the introduction of railways wessex farmers have managed to do without these mephistophelian visitants, and the bright pigment so largely used by shepherds in preparing sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes. even those who yet survive are losing the poetry of existence which characterized them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular camping out from month to month, except in the depth of winter, a peregrination among farms which could be counted by the hundred, and in spite of this arab existence the preservation of that respectability which is insured by the never-failing production of a well-lined purse. reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of cain, any person who has handled it half an hour. a child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life. that blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began. "the reddleman is coming for you!" had been the formulated threat of wessex mothers for many generations. he was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. and now the reddleman has in his turn followed buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled by modern inventions. the reddleman lived like a gipsy; but gipsies he scorned. he was about as thriving as travelling basket and mat makers; but he had nothing to do with them. he was more decently born and brought up than the cattle-drovers who passed and repassed him in his wanderings; but they merely nodded to him. his stock was more valuable than that of pedlars; but they did not think so, and passed his cart with eyes straight ahead. he was such an unnatural colour to look at that the men of round-abouts and wax-work shows seemed gentlemen beside him; but he considered them low company, and remained aloof. among all these squatters and folks of the road the reddleman continually found himself; yet he was not of them. his occupation tended to isolate him, and isolated he was mostly seen to be. it was sometimes suggested that reddlemen were criminals for whose misdeeds other men had wrongfully suffered: that in escaping the law they had not escaped their own consciences, and had taken to the trade as a lifelong penance. else why should they have chosen it? in the present case such a question would have been particularly apposite. the reddleman who had entered egdon that afternoon was an instance of the pleasing being wasted to form the ground-work of the singular, when an ugly foundation would have done just as well for that purpose. the one point that was forbidding about this reddleman was his colour. freed from that he would have been as agreeable a specimen of rustic manhood as one would often see. a keen observer might have been inclined to think--which was, indeed, partly the truth--that he had relinquished his proper station in life for want of interest in it. moreover, after looking at him one would have hazarded the guess that good-nature, and an acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft, formed the frame-work of his character. while he darned the stocking his face became rigid with thought. softer expressions followed this, and then again recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during his drive along the highway that afternoon. presently his needle stopped. he laid down the stocking, arose from his seat, and took a leather pouch from a hook in the corner of the van. this contained among other articles a brown-paper packet, which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed a good many times. he sat down on a three-legged milking stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and spread it open. the writing had originally been traced on white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge from the accident of its situation; and the black strokes of writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge against a vermilion sunset. the letter bore a date some two years previous to that time, and was signed "thomasin yeobright." it ran as follows:-- dear diggory venn,--the question you put when you overtook me coming home from pond-close gave me such a surprise that i am afraid i did not make you exactly understand what i meant. of course, if my aunt had not met me i could have explained all then at once, but as it was there was no chance. i have been quite uneasy since, as you know i do not wish to pain you, yet i fear i shall be doing so now in contradicting what i seemed to say then. i cannot, diggory, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweetheart. i could not, indeed, diggory. i hope you will not much mind my saying this, and feel in a great pain. it makes me very sad when i think it may, for i like you very much, and i always put you next to my cousin clym in my mind. there are so many reasons why we cannot be married that i can hardly name them all in a letter. i did not in the least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing when you followed me, because i had never thought of you in the sense of a lover at all. you must not becall me for laughing when you spoke; you mistook when you thought i laughed at you as a foolish man. i laughed because the idea was so odd, and not at you at all. the great reason with my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that i do not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife. it is not as you think, that i have another in my mind, for i do not encourage anybody, and never have in my life. another reason is my aunt. she would not, i know, agree to it, even if i wished to have you. she likes you very well, but she will want me to look a little higher than a small dairy-farmer, and marry a professional man. i hope you will not set your heart against me for writing plainly, but i felt you might try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet. i shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious for your well-doing. i send this by jane orchard's little maid, --and remain diggory, your faithful friend, thomasin yeobright to mr. venn, dairy-farmer since the arrival of that letter, on a certain autumn morning long ago, the reddleman and thomasin had not met till today. during the interval he had shifted his position even further from hers than it had originally been, by adopting the reddle trade; though he was really in very good circumstances still. indeed, seeing that his expenditure was only one-fourth of his income, he might have been called a prosperous man. rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees; and the business to which he had cynically devoted himself was in many ways congenial to venn. but his wanderings, by mere stress of old emotions, had frequently taken an egdon direction, though he never intruded upon her who attracted him thither. to be in thomasin's heath, and near her, yet unseen, was the one ewe-lamb of pleasure left to him. then came the incident of that day, and the reddleman, still loving her well, was excited by this accidental service to her at a critical juncture to vow an active devotion to her cause, instead of, as hitherto, sighing and holding aloof. after what had happened, it was impossible that he should not doubt the honesty of wildeve's intentions. but her hope was apparently centred upon him; and dismissing his regrets venn determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen way. that this way was, of all others, the most distressing to himself, was awkward enough; but the reddleman's love was generous. his first active step in watching over thomasin's interests was taken about seven o'clock the next evening, and was dictated by the news which he had learnt from the sad boy. that eustacia was somehow the cause of wildeve's carelessness in relation to the marriage had at once been venn's conclusion on hearing of the secret meeting between them. it did not occur to his mind that eustacia's love-signal to wildeve was the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her grandfather had brought home. his instinct was to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an antecedent obstacle to thomasin's happiness. during the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of thomasin; but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this. he had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected a nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain, which seemed to mean that his stay there was to be a comparatively extended one. after this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly-bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from rainbarrow. he watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain. nobody except himself came near the spot that night. but the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman. he had stood in the shoes of tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they would give cause for alarm. the same hour the next evening found him again at the same place; but eustacia and wildeve, the expected trysters, did not appear. he pursued precisely the same course yet four nights longer, and without success. but on the next, being the day-week of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape floating along the ridge and the outline of a young man ascending from the valley. they met in the little ditch encircling the tumulus--the original excavation from which it had been thrown up by the ancient british people. the reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to thomasin, was aroused to strategy in a moment. he instantly left the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees. when he had got as close as he might safely venture without discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conversation of the trysting pair could not be overheard. near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas strewn with large turves, which lay edgeways and upside down awaiting removal by timothy fairway, previous to the winter weather. he took two of these as he lay, and dragged them over him till one covered his head and shoulders, the other his back and legs. the reddleman would now have been quite invisible, even by daylight; the turves, standing upon him with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if they were growing. he crept along again, and the turves upon his back crept with him. had he approached without any covering the chances are that he would not have been perceived in the dusk; approaching thus, it was as though he burrowed underground. in this manner he came quite close to where the two were standing. "wish to consult me on the matter?" reached his ears in the rich, impetuous accents of eustacia vye. "consult me? it is an indignity to me to talk so: i won't bear it any longer!" she began weeping. "i have loved you, and have shown you that i loved you, much to my regret; and yet you can come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult with me whether it would not be better to marry thomasin. better--of course it would be. marry her: she is nearer to your own position in life than i am!" "yes, yes; that's very well," said wildeve peremptorily. "but we must look at things as they are. whatever blame may attach to me for having brought it about, thomasin's position is at present much worse than yours. i simply tell you that i am in a strait." "but you shall not tell me! you must see that it is only harassing me. damon, you have not acted well; you have sunk in my opinion. you have not valued my courtesy--the courtesy of a lady in loving you--who used to think of far more ambitious things. but it was thomasin's fault. she won you away from me, and she deserves to suffer for it. where is she staying now? not that i care, nor where i am myself. ah, if i were dead and gone how glad she would be! where is she, i ask?" "thomasin is now staying at her aunt's shut up in a bedroom, and keeping out of everybody's sight," he said indifferently. "i don't think you care much about her even now," said eustacia with sudden joyousness: "for if you did you wouldn't talk so coolly about her. do you talk so coolly to her about me? ah, i expect you do! why did you originally go away from me? i don't think i can ever forgive you, except on one condition, that whenever you desert me, you come back again, sorry that you served me so." "i never wish to desert you." "i do not thank you for that. i should hate it to be all smooth. indeed, i think i like you to desert me a little once now and then. love is the dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. o, it is a shame to say so; but it is true!" she indulged in a little laugh. "my low spirits begin at the very idea. don't you offer me tame love, or away you go!" "i wish tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little woman," said wildeve, "so that i could be faithful to you without injuring a worthy person. it is i who am the sinner after all; i am not worth the little finger of either of you." "but you must not sacrifice yourself to her from any sense of justice," replied eustacia quickly. "if you do not love her it is the most merciful thing in the long run to leave her as she is. that's always the best way. there, now i have been unwomanly, i suppose. when you have left me i am always angry with myself for things that i have said to you." wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. the pause was filled up by the intonation of a pollard thorn a little way to windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as through a strainer. it was as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth. she continued, half sorrowfully, "since meeting you last, it has occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not for love of me you did not marry her. tell me, damon: i'll try to bear it. had i nothing whatever to do with the matter?" "do you press me to tell?" "yes, i must know. i see i have been too ready to believe in my own power." "well, the immediate reason was that the license would not do for the place, and before i could get another she ran away. up to that point you had nothing to do with it. since then her aunt has spoken to me in a tone which i don't at all like." "yes, yes! i am nothing in it--i am nothing in it. you only trifle with me. heaven, what can i, eustacia vye, be made of to think so much of you!" "nonsense; do not be so passionate... eustacia, how we roved among these bushes last year, when the hot days had got cool, and the shades of the hills kept us almost invisible in the hollows!" she remained in moody silence till she said, "yes; and how i used to laugh at you for daring to look up to me! but you have well made me suffer for that since." "yes, you served me cruelly enough until i thought i had found some one fairer than you. a blessed find for me, eustacia." "do you still think you found somebody fairer?" "sometimes i do, sometimes i don't. the scales are balanced so nicely that a feather would turn them." "but don't you really care whether i meet you or whether i don't?" she said slowly. "i care a little, but not enough to break my rest," replied the young man languidly. "no, all that's past. i find there are two flowers where i thought there was only one. perhaps there are three, or four, or any number as good as the first... mine is a curious fate. who would have thought that all this could happen to me?" she interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love or anger seemed an equally possible issue, "do you love me now?" "who can say?" "tell me; i will know it!" "i do, and i do not," said he mischievously. "that is, i have my times and my seasons. one moment you are too tall, another moment you are too do-nothing, another too melancholy, another too dark, another i don't know what, except--that you are not the whole world to me that you used to be, my dear. but you are a pleasant lady to know, and nice to meet, and i dare say as sweet as ever--almost." eustacia was silent, and she turned from him, till she said, in a voice of suspended mightiness, "i am for a walk, and this is my way." "well, i can do worse than follow you." "you know you can't do otherwise, for all your moods and changes!" she answered defiantly. "say what you will; try as you may; keep away from me all that you can--you will never forget me. you will love me all your life long. you would jump to marry me!" "so i would!" said wildeve. "such strange thoughts as i've had from time to time, eustacia; and they come to me this moment. you hate the heath as much as ever; that i know." "i do," she murmured deeply. "'tis my cross, my shame, and will be my death!" "i abhor it too," said he. "how mournfully the wind blows round us now!" she did not answer. its tone was indeed solemn and pervasive. compound utterances addressed themselves to their senses, and it was possible to view by ear the features of the neighbourhood. acoustic pictures were returned from the darkened scenery; they could hear where the tracts of heather began and ended; where the furze was growing stalky and tall; where it had been recently cut; in what direction the fir-clump lay, and how near was the pit in which the hollies grew; for these differing features had their voices no less than their shapes and colours. "god, how lonely it is!" resumed wildeve. "what are picturesque ravines and mists to us who see nothing else? why should we stay here? will you go with me to america? i have kindred in wisconsin." "that wants consideration." "it seems impossible to do well here, unless one were a wild bird or a landscape-painter. well?" "give me time," she softly said, taking his hand. "america is so far away. are you going to walk with me a little way?" as eustacia uttered the latter words she retired from the base of the barrow, and wildeve followed her, so that the reddleman could hear no more. he lifted the turves and arose. their black figures sank and disappeared from against the sky. they were as two horns which the sluggish heath had put forth from its crown, like a mollusc, and had now again drawn in. the reddleman's walk across the vale, and over into the next where his cart lay, was not sprightly for a slim young fellow of twenty-four. his spirit was perturbed to aching. the breezes that blew around his mouth in that walk carried off upon them the accents of a commination. he entered the van, where there was a fire in a stove. without lighting his candle he sat down at once on the three-legged stool, and pondered on what he had seen and heard touching that still loved-one of his. he uttered a sound which was neither sigh nor sob, but was even more indicative than either of a troubled mind. "my tamsie," he whispered heavily. "what can be done? yes, i will see that eustacia vye." x a desperate attempt at persuasion the next morning, at the time when the height of the sun appeared very insignificant from any part of the heath as compared with the altitude of rainbarrow, and when all the little hills in the lower levels were like an archipelago in a fog-formed aegean, the reddleman came from the brambled nook which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the slopes of mistover knap. though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen round eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to converge upon a passer-by. feathered species sojourned here in hiding which would have created wonder if found elsewhere. a bustard haunted the spot, and not many years before this five and twenty might have been seen in egdon at one time. marsh-harriers looked up from the valley by wildeve's. a cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in england; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the african truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to enter egdon no more. a traveller who should walk and observe any of these visitants as venn observed them now could feel himself to be in direct communication with regions unknown to man. here in front of him was a wild mallard--just arrived from the home of the north wind. the creature brought within him an amplitude of northern knowledge. glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering auroral effects, polaris in the zenith, franklin underfoot,--the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. but the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade of memories. venn passed on through these towards the house of the isolated beauty who lived up among them and despised them. the day was sunday; but as going to church, except to be married or buried, was exceptional at egdon, this made little difference. he had determined upon the bold stroke of asking for an interview with miss vye--to attack her position as thomasin's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. the great frederick making war on the beautiful archduchess, napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful queen of prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the reddleman was, in his peculiar way, in planning the displacement of eustacia. to call at the captain's cottage was always more or less an undertaking for the inferior inhabitants. though occasionally chatty, his moods were erratic, and nobody could be certain how he would behave at any particular moment. eustacia was reserved, and lived very much to herself. except the daughter of one of the cotters, who was their servant, and a lad who worked in the garden and stable, scarcely anyone but themselves ever entered the house. they were the only genteel people of the district except the yeobrights, and though far from rich, they did not feel that necessity for preserving a friendly face towards every man, bird, and beast which influenced their poorer neighbours. when the reddleman entered the garden the old man was looking through his glass at the stain of blue sea in the distant landscape, the little anchors on his buttons twinkling in the sun. he recognized venn as his companion on the highway, but made no remark on that circumstance, merely saying, "ah, reddleman--you here? have a glass of grog?" venn declined, on the plea of it being too early, and stated that his business was with miss vye. the captain surveyed him from cap to waistcoat and from waistcoat to leggings for a few moments, and finally asked him to go indoors. miss vye was not to be seen by anybody just then; and the reddleman waited in the window-bench of the kitchen, his hands hanging across his divergent knees, and his cap hanging from his hands. "i suppose the young lady is not up yet?" he presently said to the servant. "not quite yet. folks never call upon ladies at this time of day." "then i'll step outside," said venn. "if she is willing to see me, will she please send out word, and i'll come in." the reddleman left the house and loitered on the hill adjoining. a considerable time elapsed, and no request for his presence was brought. he was beginning to think that his scheme had failed, when he beheld the form of eustacia herself coming leisurely towards him. a sense of novelty in giving audience to that singular figure had been sufficient to draw her forth. she seemed to feel, after a bare look at diggory venn, that the man had come on a strange errand, and that he was not so mean as she had thought him; for her close approach did not cause him to writhe uneasily, or shift his feet, or show any of those little signs which escape an ingenuous rustic at the advent of the uncommon in womankind. on his inquiring if he might have a conversation with her she replied, "yes, walk beside me," and continued to move on. before they had gone far it occurred to the perspicacious reddleman that he would have acted more wisely by appearing less unimpressionable, and he resolved to correct the error as soon as he could find opportunity. "i have made so bold, miss, as to step across and tell you some strange news which has come to my ears about that man." "ah! what man?" he jerked his elbow to the south-east--the direction of the quiet woman. eustacia turned quickly to him. "do you mean mr. wildeve?" "yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and i have come to let you know of it, because i believe you might have power to drive it away." "i? what is the trouble?" "it is quite a secret. it is that he may refuse to marry thomasin yeobright after all." eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her part in such a drama as this. she replied coldly, "i do not wish to listen to this, and you must not expect me to interfere." "but, miss, you will hear one word?" "i cannot. i am not interested in the marriage, and even if i were i could not compel mr. wildeve to do my bidding." "as the only lady on the heath i think you might," said venn with subtle indirectness. "this is how the case stands. mr. wildeve would marry thomasin at once, and make all matters smooth, if so be there were not another woman in the case. this other woman is some person he has picked up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, i believe. he will never marry her, and yet through her he may never marry the woman who loves him dearly. now, if you, miss, who have so much sway over us men-folk, were to insist that he should treat your young neighbour tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman, he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery." "ah, my life!" said eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire. "you think too much of my influence over men-folk indeed, reddleman. if i had such a power as you imagine i would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been kind to me--which thomasin yeobright has not particularly, to my knowledge." "can it be that you really don't know of it--how much she had always thought of you?" "i have never heard a word of it. although we live only two miles apart i have never been inside her aunt's house in my life." the superciliousness that lurked in her manner told venn that thus far he had utterly failed. he inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to unmask his second argument. "well, leaving that out of the question, 'tis in your power, i assure you, miss vye, to do a great deal of good to another woman." she shook her head. "your comeliness is law with mr. wildeve. it is law with all men who see 'ee. they say, 'this well-favoured lady coming--what's her name? how handsome!' handsomer than thomasin yeobright," the reddleman persisted, saying to himself, "god forgive a rascal for lying!" and she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so. there was a certain obscurity in eustacia's beauty, and venn's eye was not trained. in her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling splendour. eustacia could not help replying, though conscious that she endangered her dignity thereby. "many women are lovelier than thomasin," she said, "so not much attaches to that." the reddleman suffered the wound and went on: "he is a man who notices the looks of women, and you could twist him to your will like withywind, if you only had the mind." "surely what she cannot do who has been so much with him i cannot do living up here away from him." the reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. "miss vye!" he said. "why do you say that--as if you doubted me?" she spoke faintly, and her breathing was quick. "the idea of your speaking in that tone to me!" she added, with a forced smile of hauteur. "what could have been in your mind to lead you to speak like that?" "miss vye, why should you make believe that you don't know this man?--i know why, certainly. he is beneath you, and you are ashamed." "you are mistaken. what do you mean?" the reddleman had decided to play the card of truth. "i was at the meeting by rainbarrow last night and heard every word," he said. "the woman that stands between wildeve and thomasin is yourself." it was a disconcerting lift of the curtain, and the mortification of candaules' wife glowed in her. the moment had arrived when her lip would tremble in spite of herself, and when the gasp could no longer be kept down. "i am unwell," she said hurriedly. "no--it is not that--i am not in a humour to hear you further. leave me, please." "i must speak, miss vye, in spite of paining you. what i would put before you is this. however it may come about--whether she is to blame, or you--her case is without doubt worse than yours. your giving up mr. wildeve will be a real advantage to you, for how could you marry him? now she cannot get off so easily--everybody will blame her if she loses him. then i ask you--not because her right is best, but because her situation is worst--to give him up to her." "no--i won't, i won't!" she said impetuously, quite forgetful of her previous manner towards the reddleman as an underling. "nobody has ever been served so! it was going on well--i will not be beaten down--by an inferior woman like her. it is very well for you to come and plead for her, but is she not herself the cause of all her own trouble? am i not to show favour to any person i may choose without asking permission of a parcel of cottagers? she has come between me and my inclination, and now that she finds herself rightly punished she gets you to plead for her!" "indeed," said venn earnestly, "she knows nothing whatever about it. it is only i who ask you to give him up. it will be better for her and you both. people will say bad things if they find out that a lady secretly meets a man who has ill-used another woman." "i have not injured her--he was mine before he was hers! he came back--because--because he liked me best!" she said wildly. "but i lose all self-respect in talking to you. what am i giving way to!" "i can keep secrets," said venn gently. "you need not fear. i am the only man who knows of your meetings with him. there is but one thing more to speak of, and then i will be gone. i heard you say to him that you hated living here--that egdon heath was a jail to you." "i did say so. there is a sort of beauty in the scenery, i know; but it is a jail to me. the man you mention does not save me from that feeling, though he lives here. i should have cared nothing for him had there been a better person near." the reddleman looked hopeful; after these words from her his third attempt seemed promising. "as we have now opened our minds a bit, miss," he said, "i'll tell you what i have got to propose. since i have taken to the reddle trade i travel a good deal, as you know." she inclined her head, and swept round so that her eyes rested in the misty vale beneath them. "and in my travels i go near budmouth. now budmouth is a wonderful place--wonderful--a great salt sheening sea bending into the land like a bow--thousands of gentlepeople walking up and down--bands of music playing--officers by sea and officers by land walking among the rest--out of every ten folks you meet nine of 'em in love." "i know it," she said disdainfully. "i know budmouth better than you. i was born there. my father came to be a military musician there from abroad. ah, my soul, budmouth! i wish i was there now." the reddleman was surprised to see how a slow fire could blaze on occasion. "if you were, miss," he replied, "in a week's time you would think no more of wildeve than of one of those he'th-croppers that we see yond. now, i could get you there." "how?" said eustacia, with intense curiosity in her heavy eyes. "my uncle has been for five and twenty years the trusty man of a rich widow-lady who has a beautiful house facing the sea. this lady has become old and lame, and she wants a young company-keeper to read and sing to her, but can't get one to her mind to save her life, though she've advertised in the papers, and tried half a dozen. she would jump to get you, and uncle would make it all easy." "i should have to work, perhaps?" "no, not real work: you'd have a little to do, such as reading and that. you would not be wanted till new year's day." "i knew it meant work," she said, drooping to languor again. "i confess there would be a trifle to do in the way of amusing her; but though idle people might call it work, working people would call it play. think of the company and the life you'd lead, miss; the gaiety you'd see, and the gentleman you'd marry. my uncle is to inquire for a trustworthy young lady from the country, as she don't like town girls." "it is to wear myself out to please her! and i won't go. o, if i could live in a gay town as a lady should, and go my own ways, and do my own doings, i'd give the wrinkled half of my life! yes, reddleman, that would i." "help me to get thomasin happy, miss, and the chance shall be yours," urged her companion. "chance--'tis no chance," she said proudly. "what can a poor man like you offer me, indeed?--i am going indoors. i have nothing more to say. don't your horses want feeding, or your reddlebags want mending, or don't you want to find buyers for your goods, that you stay idling here like this?" venn spoke not another word. with his hands behind him he turned away, that she might not see the hopeless disappointment in his face. the mental clearness and power he had found in this lonely girl had indeed filled his manner with misgiving even from the first few minutes of close quarters with her. her youth and situation had led him to expect a simplicity quite at the beck of his method. but a system of inducement which might have carried weaker country lasses along with it had merely repelled eustacia. as a rule, the word budmouth meant fascination on egdon. that royal port and watering place, if truly mirrored in the minds of the heath-folk, must have combined, in a charming and indescribable manner, a carthaginian bustle of building with tarentine luxuriousness and baian health and beauty. eustacia felt little less extravagantly about the place; but she would not sink her independence to get there. when diggory venn had gone quite away, eustacia walked to the bank and looked down the wild and picturesque vale towards the sun, which was also in the direction of wildeve's. the mist had now so far collapsed that the tips of the trees and bushes around his house could just be discerned, as if boring upwards through a vast white cobweb which cloaked them from the day. there was no doubt that her mind was inclined thitherward; indefinitely, fancifully--twining and untwining about him as the single object within her horizon on which dreams might crystallize. the man who had begun by being merely her amusement, and would never have been more than her hobby but for his skill in deserting her at the right moments, was now again her desire. cessation in his love-making had revivified her love. such feeling as eustacia had idly given to wildeve was dammed into a flood by thomasin. she had used to tease wildeve, but that was before another had favoured him. often a drop of irony into an indifferent situation renders the whole piquant. "i will never give him up--never!" she said impetuously. the reddleman's hint that rumour might show her to disadvantage had no permanent terror for eustacia. she was as unconcerned at that contingency as a goddess at a lack of linen. this did not originate in inherent shamelessness, but in her living too far from the world to feel the impact of public opinion. zenobia in the desert could hardly have cared what was said about her at rome. as far as social ethics were concerned eustacia approached the savage state, though in emotion she was all the while an epicure. she had advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, yet had hardly crossed the threshold of conventionality. xi the dishonesty of an honest woman the reddleman had left eustacia's presence with desponding views on thomasin's future happiness; but he was awakened to the fact that one other channel remained untried by seeing, as he followed the way to his van, the form of mrs. yeobright slowly walking towards the quiet woman. he went across to her; and could almost perceive in her anxious face that this journey of hers to wildeve was undertaken with the same object as his own to eustacia. she did not conceal the fact. "then," said the reddleman, "you may as well leave it alone, mrs. yeobright." "i half think so myself," she said. "but nothing else remains to be done besides pressing the question upon him." "i should like to say a word first," said venn firmly. "mr. wildeve is not the only man who has asked thomasin to marry him; and why should not another have a chance? mrs. yeobright, i should be glad to marry your niece, and would have done it any time these last two years. there, now it is out, and i have never told anybody before but herself." mrs. yeobright was not demonstrative, but her eyes involuntarily glanced towards his singular though shapely figure. "looks are not everything," said the reddleman, noticing the glance. "there's many a calling that don't bring in so much as mine, if it comes to money; and perhaps i am not so much worse off than wildeve. there is nobody so poor as these professional fellows who have failed; and if you shouldn't like my redness--well, i am not red by birth, you know; i only took to this business for a freak; and i might turn my hand to something else in good time." "i am much obliged to you for your interest in my niece; but i fear there would be objections. more than that, she is devoted to this man." "true; or i shouldn't have done what i have this morning." "otherwise there would be no pain in the case, and you would not see me going to his house now. what was thomasin's answer when you told her of your feelings?" "she wrote that you would object to me; and other things." "she was in a measure right. you must not take this unkindly: i merely state it as a truth. you have been good to her, and we do not forget it. but as she was unwilling on her own account to be your wife, that settles the point without my wishes being concerned." "yes. but there is a difference between then and now, ma'am. she is distressed now, and i have thought that if you were to talk to her about me, and think favourably of me yourself, there might be a chance of winning her round, and getting her quite independent of this wildeve's backward and forward play, and his not knowing whether he'll have her or no." mrs. yeobright shook her head. "thomasin thinks, and i think with her, that she ought to be wildeve's wife, if she means to appear before the world without a slur upon her name. if they marry soon, everybody will believe that an accident did really prevent the wedding. if not, it may cast a shade upon her character--at any rate make her ridiculous. in short, if it is anyhow possible they must marry now." "i thought that till half an hour ago. but, after all, why should her going off with him to anglebury for a few hours do her any harm? anybody who knows how pure she is will feel any such thought to be quite unjust. i have been trying this morning to help on this marriage with wildeve--yes, i, ma'am--in the belief that i ought to do it, because she was so wrapped up in him. but i much question if i was right, after all. however, nothing came of it. and now i offer myself." mrs. yeobright appeared disinclined to enter further into the question. "i fear i must go on," she said. "i do not see that anything else can be done." and she went on. but though this conversation did not divert thomasin's aunt from her purposed interview with wildeve, it made a considerable difference in her mode of conducting that interview. she thanked god for the weapon which the reddleman had put into her hands. wildeve was at home when she reached the inn. he showed her silently into the parlour, and closed the door. mrs. yeobright began-- "i have thought it my duty to call today. a new proposal has been made to me, which has rather astonished me. it will affect thomasin greatly; and i have decided that it should at least be mentioned to you." "yes? what is it?" he said civilly. "it is, of course, in reference to her future. you may not be aware that another man has shown himself anxious to marry thomasin. now, though i have not encouraged him yet, i cannot conscientiously refuse him a chance any longer. i don't wish to be short with you; but i must be fair to him and to her." "who is the man?" said wildeve with surprise. "one who has been in love with her longer than she has with you. he proposed to her two years ago. at that time she refused him." "well?" "he has seen her lately, and has asked me for permission to pay his addresses to her. she may not refuse him twice." "what is his name?" mrs. yeobright declined to say. "he is a man thomasin likes," she added, "and one whose constancy she respects at least. it seems to me that what she refused then she would be glad to get now. she is much annoyed at her awkward position." "she never once told me of this old lover." "the gentlest women are not such fools as to show every card." "well, if she wants him i suppose she must have him." "it is easy enough to say that; but you don't see the difficulty. he wants her much more than she wants him; and before i can encourage anything of the sort i must have a clear understanding from you that you will not interfere to injure an arrangement which i promote in the belief that it is for the best. suppose, when they are engaged, and everything is smoothly arranged for their marriage, that you should step between them and renew your suit? you might not win her back, but you might cause much unhappiness." "of course i should do no such thing," said wildeve "but they are not engaged yet. how do you know that thomasin would accept him?" "that's a question i have carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. i flatter myself that i have some influence over her. she is pliable, and i can be strong in my recommendations of him." "and in your disparagement of me at the same time." "well, you may depend upon my not praising you," she said drily. "and if this seems like manoeuvring, you must remember that her position is peculiar, and that she has been hardly used. i shall also be helped in making the match by her own desire to escape from the humiliation of her present state; and a woman's pride in these cases will lead her a very great way. a little managing may be required to bring her round; but i am equal to that, provided that you agree to the one thing indispensable; that is, to make a distinct declaration that she is to think no more of you as a possible husband. that will pique her into accepting him." "i can hardly say that just now, mrs. yeobright. it is so sudden." "and so my whole plan is interfered with! it is very inconvenient that you refuse to help my family even to the small extent of saying distinctly you will have nothing to do with us." wildeve reflected uncomfortably. "i confess i was not prepared for this," he said. "of course i'll give her up if you wish, if it is necessary. but i thought i might be her husband." "we have heard that before." "now, mrs. yeobright, don't let us disagree. give me a fair time. i don't want to stand in the way of any better chance she may have; only i wish you had let me know earlier. i will write to you or call in a day or two. will that suffice?" "yes," she replied, "provided you promise not to communicate with thomasin without my knowledge." "i promise that," he said. and the interview then terminated, mrs. yeobright returning homeward as she had come. by far the greatest effect of her simple strategy on that day was, as often happens, in a quarter quite outside her view when arranging it. in the first place, her visit sent wildeve the same evening after dark to eustacia's house at mistover. at this hour the lonely dwelling was closely blinded and shuttered from the chill and darkness without. wildeve's clandestine plan with her was to take a little gravel in his hand and hold it to the crevice at the top of the window shutter, which was on the outside, so that it should fall with a gentle rustle, resembling that of a mouse, between shutter and glass. this precaution in attracting her attention was to avoid arousing the suspicions of her grandfather. the soft words, "i hear; wait for me," in eustacia's voice from within told him that she was alone. he waited in his customary manner by walking round the enclosure and idling by the pool, for wildeve was never asked into the house by his proud though condescending mistress. she showed no sign of coming out in a hurry. the time wore on, and he began to grow impatient. in the course of twenty minutes she appeared from round the corner, and advanced as if merely taking an airing. "you would not have kept me so long had you known what i come about," he said with bitterness. "still, you are worth waiting for." "what has happened?" said eustacia. "i did not know you were in trouble. i too am gloomy enough." "i am not in trouble," said he. "it is merely that affairs have come to a head, and i must take a clear course." "what course is that?" she asked with attentive interest. "and can you forget so soon what i proposed to you the other night? why, take you from this place, and carry you away with me abroad." "i have not forgotten. but why have you come so unexpectedly to repeat the question, when you only promised to come next saturday? i thought i was to have plenty of time to consider." "yes, but the situation is different now." "explain to me." "i don't want to explain, for i may pain you." "but i must know the reason of this hurry." "it is simply my ardour, dear eustacia. everything is smooth now." "then why are you so ruffled?" "i am not aware of it. all is as it should be. mrs. yeobright--but she is nothing to us." "ah, i knew she had something to do with it! come, i don't like reserve." "no--she has nothing. she only says she wishes me to give up thomasin because another man is anxious to marry her. the woman, now she no longer needs me, actually shows off!" wildeve's vexation had escaped him in spite of himself. eustacia was silent a long while. "you are in the awkward position of an official who is no longer wanted," she said in a changed tone. "it seems so. but i have not yet seen thomasin." "and that irritates you. don't deny it, damon. you are actually nettled by this slight from an unexpected quarter." "well?" "and you come to get me because you cannot get her. this is certainly a new position altogether. i am to be a stop-gap." "please remember that i proposed the same thing the other day." eustacia again remained in a sort of stupefied silence. what curious feeling was this coming over her? was it really possible that her interest in wildeve had been so entirely the result of antagonism that the glory and the dream departed from the man with the first sound that he was no longer coveted by her rival? she was, then, secure of him at last. thomasin no longer required him. what a humiliating victory! he loved her best, she thought; and yet--dared she to murmur such treacherous criticism ever so softly?--what was the man worth whom a woman inferior to herself did not value? the sentiment which lurks more or less in all animate nature--that of not desiring the undesired of others--was lively as a passion in the super-subtle, epicurean heart of eustacia. her social superiority over him, which hitherto had scarcely ever impressed her, became unpleasantly insistent, and for the first time she felt that she had stooped in loving him. "well, darling, you agree?" said wildeve. "if it could be london, or even budmouth, instead of america," she murmured languidly. "well, i will think. it is too great a thing for me to decide offhand. i wish i hated the heath less--or loved you more." "you can be painfully frank. you loved me a month ago warmly enough to go anywhere with me." "and you loved thomasin." "yes, perhaps that was where the reason lay," he returned, with almost a sneer. "i don't hate her now." "exactly. the only thing is that you can no longer get her." "come--no taunts, eustacia, or we shall quarrel. if you don't agree to go with me, and agree shortly, i shall go by myself." "or try thomasin again. damon, how strange it seems that you could have married her or me indifferently, and only have come to me because i am--cheapest! yes, yes--it is true. there was a time when i should have exclaimed against a man of that sort, and been quite wild; but it is all past now." "will you go, dearest? come secretly with me to bristol, marry me, and turn our backs upon this dog-hole of england for ever? say yes." "i want to get away from here at almost any cost," she said with weariness, "but i don't like to go with you. give me more time to decide." "i have already," said wildeve. "well, i give you one more week." "a little longer, so that i may tell you decisively. i have to consider so many things. fancy thomasin being anxious to get rid of you! i cannot forget it." "never mind that. say monday week. i will be here precisely at this time." "let it be at rainbarrow," said she. "this is too near home; my grandfather may be walking out." "thank you, dear. on monday week at this time i will be at the barrow. till then good-bye." "good-bye. no, no, you must not touch me now. shaking hands is enough till i have made up my mind." eustacia watched his shadowy form till it had disappeared. she placed her hand to her forehead and breathed heavily; and then her rich, romantic lips parted under that homely impulse--a yawn. she was immediately angry at having betrayed even to herself the possible evanescence of her passion for him. she could not admit at once that she might have overestimated wildeve, for to perceive his mediocrity now was to admit her own great folly heretofore. and the discovery that she was the owner of a disposition so purely that of the dog in the manger had something in it which at first made her ashamed. the fruit of mrs. yeobright's diplomacy was indeed remarkable, though not as yet of the kind she had anticipated. it had appreciably influenced wildeve, but it was influencing eustacia far more. her lover was no longer to her an exciting man whom many women strove for, and herself could only retain by striving with them. he was a superfluity. she went indoors in that peculiar state of misery which is not exactly grief, and which especially attends the dawnings of reason in the latter days of an ill-judged, transient love. to be conscious that the end of the dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end. her grandfather had returned, and was busily engaged in pouring some gallons of newly arrived rum into the square bottles of his square cellaret. whenever these home supplies were exhausted he would go to the quiet woman, and, standing with his back to the fire, grog in hand, tell remarkable stories of how he had lived seven years under the water-line of his ship, and other naval wonders, to the natives, who hoped too earnestly for a treat of ale from the teller to exhibit any doubts of his truth. he had been there this evening. "i suppose you have heard the egdon news, eustacia?" he said, without looking up from the bottles. "the men have been talking about it at the woman as if it were of national importance." "i have heard none," she said. "young clym yeobright, as they call him, is coming home next week to spend christmas with his mother. he is a fine fellow by this time, it seems. i suppose you remember him?" "i never saw him in my life." "ah, true; he left before you came here. i well remember him as a promising boy." "where has he been living all these years?" "in that rookery of pomp and vanity, paris, i believe." book second the arrival i tidings of the comer on fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certain ephemeral operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling way, the majestic calm of egdon heath. they were activities which, beside those of a town, a village, or even a farm, would have appeared as the ferment of stagnation merely, a creeping of the flesh of somnolence. but here, away from comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which mere walking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man could imagine himself to be adam without the least difficulty, they attracted the attention of every bird within eyeshot, every reptile not yet asleep, and set the surrounding rabbits curiously watching from hillocks at a safe distance. the performance was that of bringing together and building into a stack the furze-faggots which humphrey had been cutting for the captain's use during the foregoing fine days. the stack was at the end of the dwelling, and the men engaged in building it were humphrey and sam, the old man looking on. it was a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. in the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset had receded from north-west to south-west; but egdon had hardly heeded the change. eustacia was indoors in the dining-room, which was really more like a kitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chimney-corner. the air was still, and while she lingered a moment here alone sounds of voices in conversation came to her ears directly down the chimney. she entered the recess, and, listening, looked up the old irregular shaft, with its cavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on its way to the square bit of sky at the top, from which the daylight struck down with a pallid glare upon the tatters of soot draping the flue as seaweed drapes a rocky fissure. she remembered: the furze-stack was not far from the chimney, and the voices were those of the workers. her grandfather joined in the conversation. "that lad ought never to have left home. his father's occupation would have suited him best, and the boy should have followed on. i don't believe in these new moves in families. my father was a sailor, so was i, and so should my son have been if i had had one." "the place he's been living at is paris," said humphrey, "and they tell me 'tis where the king's head was cut off years ago. my poor mother used to tell me about that business. 'hummy,' she used to say, 'i was a young maid then, and as i was at home ironing mother's caps one afternoon the parson came in and said, "they've cut the king's head off, jane; and what 'twill be next god knows."'" "a good many of us knew as well as he before long," said the captain, chuckling. "i lived seven years under water on account of it in my boyhood--in that damned surgery of the _triumph_, seeing men brought down to the cockpit with their legs and arms blown to jericho... and so the young man has settled in paris. manager to a diamond merchant, or some such thing, is he not?" "yes, sir, that's it. 'tis a blazing great business that he belongs to, so i've heard his mother say--like a king's palace, as far as diments go." "i can well mind when he left home," said sam. "'tis a good thing for the feller," said humphrey. "a sight of times better to be selling diments than nobbling about here." "it must cost a good few shillings to deal at such a place." "a good few indeed, my man," replied the captain. "yes, you may make away with a deal of money and be neither drunkard nor glutton." "they say, too, that clym yeobright is become a real perusing man, with the strangest notions about things. there, that's because he went to school early, such as the school was." "strange notions, has he?" said the old man. "ah, there's too much of that sending to school in these days! it only does harm. every gatepost and barn's door you come to is sure to have some bad word or other chalked upon it by the young rascals: a woman can hardly pass for shame some times. if they'd never been taught how to write they wouldn't have been able to scribble such villainy. their fathers couldn't do it, and the country was all the better for it." "now, i should think, cap'n, that miss eustacia had about as much in her head that comes from books as anybody about here?" "perhaps if miss eustacia, too, had less romantic nonsense in her head it would be better for her," said the captain shortly; after which he walked away. "i say, sam," observed humphrey when the old man was gone, "she and clym yeobright would make a very pretty pigeon-pair--hey? if they wouldn't i'll be dazed! both of one mind about niceties for certain, and learned in print, and always thinking about high doctrine--there couldn't be a better couple if they were made o' purpose. clym's family is as good as hers. his father was a farmer, that's true; but his mother was a sort of lady, as we know. nothing would please me better than to see them two man and wife." "they'd look very natty, arm-in-crook together, and their best clothes on, whether or no, if he's at all the well-favoured fellow he used to be." "they would, humphrey. well, i should like to see the chap terrible much after so many years. if i knew for certain when he was coming i'd stroll out three or four miles to meet him and help carry anything for'n; though i suppose he's altered from the boy he was. they say he can talk french as fast as a maid can eat blackberries; and if so, depend upon it we who have stayed at home shall seem no more than scroff in his eyes." "coming across the water to budmouth by steamer, isn't he?" "yes; but how he's coming from budmouth i don't know." "that's a bad trouble about his cousin thomasin. i wonder such a nice-notioned fellow as clym likes to come home into it. what a nunnywatch we were in, to be sure, when we heard they weren't married at all, after singing to 'em as man and wife that night! be dazed if i should like a relation of mine to have been made such a fool of by a man. it makes the family look small." "yes. poor maid, her heart has ached enough about it. her health is suffering from it, i hear, for she will bide entirely indoors. we never see her out now, scampering over the furze with a face as red as a rose, as she used to do." "i've heard she wouldn't have wildeve now if he asked her." "you have? 'tis news to me." while the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus eustacia's face gradually bent to the hearth in a profound reverie, her toe unconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay burning at her feet. the subject of their discourse had been keenly interesting to her. a young and clever man was coming into that lonely heath from, of all contrasting places in the world, paris. it was like a man coming from heaven. more singular still, the heathmen had instinctively coupled her and this man together in their minds as a pair born for each other. that five minutes of overhearing furnished eustacia with visions enough to fill the whole blank afternoon. such sudden alternations from mental vacuity do sometimes occur thus quietly. she could never have believed in the morning that her colourless inner world would before night become as animated as water under a microscope, and that without the arrival of a single visitor. the words of sam and humphrey on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her mind the effect of the invading bard's prelude in the "castle of indolence," at which myriads of imprisoned shapes arose where had previously appeared the stillness of a void. involved in these imaginings she knew nothing of time. when she became conscious of externals it was dusk. the furze-rick was finished; the men had gone home. eustacia went upstairs, thinking that she would take a walk at this her usual time; and she determined that her walk should be in the direction of blooms-end, the birthplace of young yeobright and the present home of his mother. she had no reason for walking elsewhere, and why should she not go that way? the scene of a day-dream is sufficient for a pilgrimage at nineteen. to look at the palings before the yeobrights' house had the dignity of a necessary performance. strange that such a piece of idling should have seemed an important errand. she put on her bonnet, and, leaving the house, descended the hill on the side towards blooms-end, where she walked slowly along the valley for a distance of a mile and a half. this brought her to a spot in which the green bottom of the dale began to widen, the furze bushes to recede yet further from the path on each side, till they were diminished to an isolated one here and there by the increasing fertility of the soil. beyond the irregular carpet of grass was a row of white palings, which marked the verge of the heath in this latitude. they showed upon the dusky scene that they bordered as distinctly as white lace on velvet. behind the white palings was a little garden; behind the garden an old, irregular, thatched house, facing the heath, and commanding a full view of the valley. this was the obscure, removed spot to which was about to return a man whose latter life had been passed in the french capital--the centre and vortex of the fashionable world. ii the people at blooms-end make ready all that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of eustacia's ruminations created a bustle of preparation at blooms-end. thomasin had been persuaded by her aunt, and by an instinctive impulse of loyalty towards her cousin clym, to bestir herself on his account with an alacrity unusual in her during these most sorrowful days of her life. at the time that eustacia was listening to the rickmakers' conversation on clym's return, thomasin was climbing into a loft over her aunt's fuel-house, where the store-apples were kept, to search out the best and largest of them for the coming holiday-time. the loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which the pigeons crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; and from this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figure of the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the soft brown fern, which, from its abundance, was used on egdon in packing away stores of all kinds. the pigeons were flying about her head with the greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visible above the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as she stood half-way up the ladder, looking at a spot into which she was not climber enough to venture. "now a few russets, tamsin. he used to like them almost as well as ribstones." thomasin turned and rolled aside the fern from another nook, where more mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell. before picking them out she stopped a moment. "dear clym, i wonder how your face looks now?" she said, gazing abstractedly at the pigeon-hole, which admitted the sunlight so directly upon her brown hair and transparent tissues that it almost seemed to shine through her. "if he could have been dear to you in another way," said mrs. yeobright from the ladder, "this might have been a happy meeting." "is there any use in saying what can do no good, aunt?" "yes," said her aunt, with some warmth. "to thoroughly fill the air with the past misfortune, so that other girls may take warning and keep clear of it." thomasin lowered her face to the apples again. "i am a warning to others, just as thieves and drunkards and gamblers are," she said in a low voice. "what a class to belong to! do i really belong to them? 'tis absurd! yet why, aunt, does everybody keep on making me think that i do, by the way they behave towards me? why don't people judge me by my acts? now, look at me as i kneel here, picking up these apples--do i look like a lost woman?... i wish all good women were as good as i!" she added vehemently. "strangers don't see you as i do," said mrs. yeobright; "they judge from false report. well, it is a silly job, and i am partly to blame." "how quickly a rash thing can be done!" replied the girl. her lips were quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes that she could hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continued industriously searching to hide her weakness. "as soon as you have finished getting the apples," her aunt said, descending the ladder, "come down, and we'll go for the holly. there is nobody on the heath this afternoon, and you need not fear being stared at. we must get some berries, or clym will never believe in our preparations." thomasin came down when the apples were collected, and together they went through the white palings to the heath beyond. the open hills were airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it often appears on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illumination independently toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffroned light was imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay still remoter scenes wrapped in frigid grey. they reached the place where the hollies grew, which was in a conical pit, so that the tops of the trees were not much above the general level of the ground. thomasin stepped up into a fork of one of the bushes, as she had done under happier circumstances on many similar occasions, and with a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off the heavily-berried boughs. "don't scratch your face," said her aunt, who stood at the edge of the pit, regarding the girl as she held on amid the glistening green and scarlet masses of the tree. "will you walk with me to meet him this evening?" "i should like to. else it would seem as if i had forgotten him," said thomasin, tossing out a bough. "not that that would matter much; i belong to one man; nothing can alter that. and that man i must marry, for my pride's sake." "i am afraid--" began mrs. yeobright. "ah, you think, 'that weak girl--how is she going to get a man to marry her when she chooses?' but let me tell you one thing, aunt: mr. wildeve is not a profligate man, any more than i am an improper woman. he has an unfortunate manner, and doesn't try to make people like him if they don't wish to do it of their own accord." "thomasin," said mrs. yeobright quietly, fixing her eye upon her niece, "do you think you deceive me in your defence of mr. wildeve?" "how do you mean?" "i have long had a suspicion that your love for him has changed its colour since you have found him not to be the saint you thought him, and that you act a part to me." "he wished to marry me, and i wish to marry him." "now, i put it to you: would you at this present moment agree to be his wife if that had not happened to entangle you with him?" thomasin looked into the tree and appeared much disturbed. "aunt," she said presently, "i have, i think, a right to refuse to answer that question." "yes, you have." "you may think what you choose. i have never implied to you by word or deed that i have grown to think otherwise of him, and i never will. and i shall marry him." "well, wait till he repeats his offer. i think he may do it, now that he knows--something i told him. i don't for a moment dispute that it is the most proper thing for you to marry him. much as i have objected to him in bygone days, i agree with you now, you may be sure. it is the only way out of a false position, and a very galling one." "what did you tell him?" "that he was standing in the way of another lover of yours." "aunt," said thomasin, with round eyes, "what do you mean?" "don't be alarmed; it was my duty. i can say no more about it now, but when it is over i will tell you exactly what i said, and why i said it." thomasin was perforce content. "and you will keep the secret of my would-be marriage from clym for the present?" she next asked. "i have given my word to. but what is the use of it? he must soon know what has happened. a mere look at your face will show him that something is wrong." thomasin turned and regarded her aunt from the tree. "now, hearken to me," she said, her delicate voice expanding into firmness by a force which was other than physical. "tell him nothing. if he finds out that i am not worthy to be his cousin, let him. but, since he loved me once, we will not pain him by telling him my trouble too soon. the air is full of the story, i know; but gossips will not dare to speak of it to him for the first few days. his closeness to me is the very thing that will hinder the tale from reaching him early. if i am not made safe from sneers in a week or two i will tell him myself." the earnestness with which thomasin spoke prevented further objections. her aunt simply said, "very well. he should by rights have been told at the time that the wedding was going to be. he will never forgive you for your secrecy." "yes, he will, when he knows it was because i wished to spare him, and that i did not expect him home so soon. and you must not let me stand in the way of your christmas party. putting it off would only make matters worse." "of course i shall not. i do not wish to show myself beaten before all egdon, and the sport of a man like wildeve. we have enough berries now, i think, and we had better take them home. by the time we have decked the house with this and hung up the mistletoe, we must think of starting to meet him." thomasin came out of the tree, shook from her hair and dress the loose berries which had fallen thereon, and went down the hill with her aunt, each woman bearing half the gathered boughs. it was now nearly four o'clock, and the sunlight was leaving the vales. when the west grew red the two relatives came again from the house and plunged into the heath in a different direction from the first, towards a point in the distant highway along which the expected man was to return. iii how a little sound produced a great dream eustacia stood just within the heath, straining her eyes in the direction of mrs. yeobright's house and premises. no light, sound, or movement was perceptible there. the evening was chilly; the spot was dark and lonely. she inferred that the guest had not yet come; and after lingering ten or fifteen minutes she turned again towards home. she had not far retraced her steps when sounds in front of her betokened the approach of persons in conversation along the same path. soon their heads became visible against the sky. they were walking slowly; and though it was too dark for much discovery of character from aspect, the gait of them showed that they were not workers on the heath. eustacia stepped a little out of the foot-track to let them pass. they were two women and a man; and the voices of the women were those of mrs. yeobright and thomasin. they went by her, and at the moment of passing appeared to discern her dusky form. there came to her ears in a masculine voice, "good night!" she murmured a reply, glided by them, and turned round. she could not, for a moment, believe that chance, unrequested, had brought into her presence the soul of the house she had gone to inspect, the man without whom her inspection would not have been thought of. she strained her eyes to see them, but was unable. such was her intentness, however, that it seemed as if her ears were performing the functions of seeing as well as hearing. this extension of power can almost be believed in at such moments. the deaf dr. kitto was probably under the influence of a parallel fancy when he described his body as having become, by long endeavour, so sensitive to vibrations that he had gained the power of perceiving by it as by ears. she could follow every word that the ramblers uttered. they were talking no secrets. they were merely indulging in the ordinary vivacious chat of relatives who have long been parted in person though not in soul. but it was not to the words that eustacia listened; she could not even have recalled, a few minutes later, what the words were. it was to the alternating voice that gave out about one-tenth of them--the voice that had wished her good night. sometimes this throat uttered yes, sometimes it uttered no; sometimes it made inquiries about a timeworn denizen of the place. once it surprised her notions by remarking upon the friendliness and geniality written in the faces of the hills around. the three voices passed on, and decayed and died out upon her ear. thus much had been granted her; and all besides withheld. no event could have been more exciting. during the greater part of the afternoon she had been entrancing herself by imagining the fascination which must attend a man come direct from beautiful paris--laden with its atmosphere, familiar with its charms. and this man had greeted her. with the departure of the figures the profuse articulations of the women wasted away from her memory; but the accents of the other stayed on. was there anything in the voice of mrs. yeobright's son--for clym it was--startling as a sound? no; it was simply comprehensive. all emotional things were possible to the speaker of that "good night." eustacia's imagination supplied the rest--except the solution to one riddle. what could the tastes of that man be who saw friendliness and geniality in these shaggy hills? on such occasions as this a thousand ideas pass through a highly charged woman's head; and they indicate themselves on her face; but the changes, though actual, are minute. eustacia's features went through a rhythmical succession of them. she glowed; remembering the mendacity of the imagination, she flagged; then she freshened; then she fired; then she cooled again. it was a cycle of aspects, produced by a cycle of visions. eustacia entered her own house; she was excited. her grandfather was enjoying himself over the fire, raking about the ashes and exposing the red-hot surface of the turves, so that their lurid glare irradiated the chimney-corner with the hues of a furnace. "why is it that we are never friendly with the yeobrights?" she said, coming forward and stretching her soft hands over the warmth. "i wish we were. they seem to be very nice people." "be hanged if i know why," said the captain. "i liked the old man well enough, though he was as rough as a hedge. but you would never have cared to go there, even if you might have, i am well sure." "why shouldn't i?" "your town tastes would find them far too countrified. they sit in the kitchen, drink mead and elderwine, and sand the floor to keep it clean. a sensible way of life; but would you like it?" "i thought mrs. yeobright was a ladylike woman? a curate's daughter, was she not?" "yes; but she was obliged to live as her husband did; and i suppose she has taken kindly to it by this time. ah, i recollect that i once accidentally offended her, and i have never seen her since." that night was an eventful one to eustacia's brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot. she dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from nebuchadnezzar to the swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one. such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in eustacia's situation before. it had as many ramifications as the cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in june, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation. to queen scheherazade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just returned from all the courts of europe it might have seemed not more than interesting. but amid the circumstances of eustacia's life it was as wonderful as a dream could be. there was, however, gradually evolved from its transformation scenes a less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action. she was dancing to wondrous music, and her partner was the man in silver armour who had accompanied her through the previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being closed. the mazes of the dance were ecstatic. soft whispering came into her ear from under the radiant helmet, and she felt like a woman in paradise. suddenly these two wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere beneath into an iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows. "it must be here," said the voice by her side, and blushingly looking up she saw him removing his casque to kiss her. at that moment there was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into fragments like a pack of cards. she cried aloud. "o that i had seen his face!" eustacia awoke. the cracking had been that of the window shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening to let in the day, now slowly increasing to nature's meagre allowance at this sickly time of the year. "o that i had seen his face!" she said again. "'twas meant for mr. yeobright!" when she became cooler she perceived that many of the phases of the dream had naturally arisen out of the images and fancies of the day before. but this detracted little from its interest, which lay in the excellent fuel it provided for newly kindled fervour. she was at the modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called "having a fancy for." it occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will. the perfervid woman was by this time half in love with a vision. the fantastic nature of her passion, which lowered her as an intellect, raised her as a soul. if she had had a little more self-control she would have attenuated the emotion to nothing by sheer reasoning, and so have killed it off. if she had had a little less pride she might have gone and circumambulated the yeobrights' premises at blooms-end at any maidenly sacrifice until she had seen him. but eustacia did neither of these things. she acted as the most exemplary might have acted, being so influenced; she took an airing twice or thrice a day upon the egdon hills, and kept her eyes employed. the first occasion passed, and he did not come that way. she promenaded a second time, and was again the sole wanderer there. the third time there was a dense fog; she looked around, but without much hope. even if he had been walking within twenty yards of her she could not have seen him. at the fourth attempt to encounter him it began to rain in torrents, and she turned back. the fifth sally was in the afternoon: it was fine, and she remained out long, walking to the very top of the valley in which blooms-end lay. she saw the white paling about half a mile off; but he did not appear. it was almost with heart-sickness that she came home and with a sense of shame at her weakness. she resolved to look for the man from paris no more. but providence is nothing if not coquettish; and no sooner had eustacia formed this resolve than the opportunity came which, while sought, had been entirely withholden. iv eustacia is led on to an adventure in the evening of this last day of expectation, which was the twenty-third of december, eustacia was at home alone. she had passed the recent hour in lamenting over a rumour newly come to her ears--that yeobright's visit to his mother was to be of short duration, and would end some time the next week. "naturally," she said to herself. a man in the full swing of his activities in a gay city could not afford to linger long on egdon heath. that she would behold face to face the owner of the awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs of his mother's house like a robin, to do which was difficult and unseemly. the customary expedient of provincial girls and men in such circumstances is churchgoing. in an ordinary village or country town one can safely calculate that, either on christmas-day or the sunday contiguous, any native home for the holidays, who has not through age or _ennui_ lost the appetite for seeing and being seen, will turn up in some pew or other, shining with hope, self-consciousness, and new clothes. thus the congregation on christmas morning is mostly a tussaud collection of celebrities who have been born in the neighbourhood. hither the mistress, left neglected at home all the year, can steal and observe the development of the returned lover who has forgotten her, and think as she watches him over her prayer-book that he may throb with a renewed fidelity when novelties have lost their charm. and hither a comparatively recent settler like eustacia may betake herself to scrutinize the person of a native son who left home before her advent upon the scene, and consider if the friendship of his parents be worth cultivating during his next absence in order to secure a knowledge of him on his next return. but these tender schemes were not feasible among the scattered inhabitants of egdon heath. in name they were parishioners, but virtually they belonged to no parish at all. people who came to these few isolated houses to keep christmas with their friends remained in their friends' chimney-corners drinking mead and other comforting liquors till they left again for good and all. rain, snow, ice, mud everywhere around, they did not care to trudge two or three miles to sit wet-footed and splashed to the nape of their necks among those who, though in some measure neighbours, lived close to the church, and entered it clean and dry. eustacia knew it was ten to one that clym yeobright would go to no church at all during his few days of leave, and that it would be a waste of labour for her to go driving the pony and gig over a bad road in hope to see him there. it was dusk, and she was sitting by the fire in the dining-room or hall, which they occupied at this time of the year in preference to the parlour, because of its large hearth, constructed for turf-fires, a fuel the captain was partial to in the winter season. the only visible articles in the room were those on the window-sill, which showed their shapes against the low sky: the middle article being the old hourglass, and the other two a pair of ancient british urns which had been dug from a barrow near, and were used as flower-pots for two razor-leaved cactuses. somebody knocked at the door. the servant was out; so was her grandfather. the person, after waiting a minute, came in and tapped at the door of the room. "who's there?" said eustacia. "please, cap'n vye, will you let us--" eustacia arose and went to the door. "i cannot allow you to come in so boldly. you should have waited." "the cap'n said i might come in without any fuss," was answered in a lad's pleasant voice. "oh, did he?" said eustacia more gently. "what do you want, charley?" "please will your grandfather lend us his fuel-house to try over our parts in, tonight at seven o'clock?" "what, are you one of the egdon mummers for this year?" "yes, miss. the cap'n used to let the old mummers practise here." "i know it. yes, you may use the fuel-house if you like," said eustacia languidly. the choice of captain vye's fuel-house as the scene of rehearsal was dictated by the fact that his dwelling was nearly in the centre of the heath. the fuel-house was as roomy as a barn, and was a most desirable place for such a purpose. the lads who formed the company of players lived at different scattered points around, and by meeting in this spot the distances to be traversed by all the comers would be about equally proportioned. for mummers and mumming eustacia had the greatest contempt. the mummers themselves were not afflicted with any such feeling for their art, though at the same time they were not enthusiastic. a traditional pastime is to be distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking feature than in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and fervour, the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of stir which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so perfunctorily should be kept up at all. like balaam and other unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their allotted parts whether they will or no. this unweeting manner of performance is the true ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival may be known from a spurious reproduction. the piece was the well-known play of "saint george," and all who were behind the scenes assisted in the preparations, including the women of each household. without the cooperation of sisters and sweethearts the dresses were likely to be a failure; but on the other hand, this class of assistance was not without its drawbacks. the girls could never be brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the armour; they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. gorget, gusset, basinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps of fluttering colour. it might be that joe, who fought on the side of christendom, had a sweetheart, and that jim, who fought on the side of the moslem, had one likewise. during the making of the costumes it would come to the knowledge of joe's sweetheart that jim's was putting brilliant silk scallops at the bottom of her lover's surcoat, in addition to the ribbons of the visor, the bars of which, being invariably formed of coloured strips about half an inch wide hanging before the face, were mostly of that material. joe's sweetheart straightway placed brilliant silk on the scallops of the hem in question, and, going a little further, added ribbon tufts to the shoulder pieces. jim's, not to be outdone, would affix bows and rosettes everywhere. the result was that in the end the valiant soldier, of the christian army, was distinguished by no peculiarity of accoutrement from the turkish knight; and what was worse, on a casual view saint george himself might be mistaken for his deadly enemy, the saracen. the guisers themselves, though inwardly regretting this confusion of persons, could not afford to offend those by whose assistance they so largely profited, and the innovations were allowed to stand. there was, it is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity. the leech or doctor preserved his character intact: his darker habiliments, peculiar hat, and the bottle of physic slung under his arm, could never be mistaken. and the same might be said of the conventional figure of father christmas, with his gigantic club, an older man, who accompanied the band as general protector in long night journeys from parish to parish, and was bearer of the purse. seven o'clock, the hour of the rehearsal, came round, and in a short time eustacia could hear voices in the fuel-house. to dissipate in some trifling measure her abiding sense of the murkiness of human life she went to the "linhay" or lean-to-shed, which formed the root-store of their dwelling and abutted on the fuel-house. here was a small rough hole in the mud wall, originally made for pigeons, through which the interior of the next shed could be viewed. a light came from it now; and eustacia stepped upon a stool to look in upon the scene. on a ledge in the fuel-house stood three tall rush-lights and by the light of them seven or eight lads were marching about, haranguing, and confusing each other, in endeavours to perfect themselves in the play. humphrey and sam, the furze and turf cutters, were there looking on, so also was timothy fairway, who leant against the wall and prompted the boys from memory, interspersing among the set words remarks and anecdotes of the superior days when he and others were the egdon mummers-elect that these lads were now. "well, ye be as well up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "not that such mumming would have passed in our time. harry as the saracen should strut a bit more, and john needn't holler his inside out. beyond that perhaps you'll do. have you got all your clothes ready?" "we shall by monday." "your first outing will be monday night, i suppose?" "yes. at mrs. yeobright's." "oh, mrs. yeobright's. what makes her want to see ye? i should think a middle-aged woman was tired of mumming." "she's got up a bit of a party, because 'tis the first christmas that her son clym has been home for a long time." "to be sure, to be sure--her party! i am going myself. i almost forgot it, upon my life." eustacia's face flagged. there was to be a party at the yeobrights'; she, naturally, had nothing to do with it. she was a stranger to all such local gatherings, and had always held them as scarcely appertaining to her sphere. but had she been going, what an opportunity would have been afforded her of seeing the man whose influence was penetrating her like summer sun! to increase that influence was coveted excitement; to cast it off might be to regain serenity; to leave it as it stood was tantalizing. the lads and men prepared to leave the premises, and eustacia returned to her fireside. she was immersed in thought, but not for long. in a few minutes the lad charley, who had come to ask permission to use the place, returned with the key to the kitchen. eustacia heard him, and opening the door into the passage said, "charley, come here." the lad was surprised. he entered the front room not without blushing; for he, like many, had felt the power of this girl's face and form. she pointed to a seat by the fire, and entered the other side of the chimney-corner herself. it could be seen in her face that whatever motive she might have had in asking the youth indoors would soon appear. "which part do you play, charley--the turkish knight, do you not?" inquired the beauty, looking across the smoke of the fire to him on the other side. "yes, miss, the turkish knight," he replied diffidently. "is yours a long part?" "nine speeches, about." "can you repeat them to me? if so i should like to hear them." the lad smiled into the glowing turf and began-- "here come i, a turkish knight, who learnt in turkish land to fight," continuing the discourse throughout the scenes to the concluding catastrophe of his fall by the hand of saint george. eustacia had occasionally heard the part recited before. when the lad ended she began, precisely in the same words, and ranted on without hitch or divergence till she too reached the end. it was the same thing, yet how different. like in form, it had the added softness and finish of a raffaelle after perugino, which, while faithfully reproducing the original subject, entirely distances the original art. charley's eyes rounded with surprise. "well, you be a clever lady!" he said, in admiration. "i've been three weeks learning mine." "i have heard it before," she quietly observed. "now, would you do anything to please me, charley?" "i'd do a good deal, miss." "would you let me play your part for one night?" "oh, miss! but your woman's gown--you couldn't." "i can get boy's clothes--at least all that would be wanted besides the mumming dress. what should i have to give you to lend me your things, to let me take your place for an hour or two on monday night, and on no account to say a word about who or what i am? you would, of course, have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say that somebody--a cousin of miss vye's--would act for you. the other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives, so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, i should not mind. now, what must i give you to agree to this? half a crown?" the youth shook his head "five shillings?" he shook his head again. "money won't do it," he said, brushing the iron head of the fire-dog with the hollow of his hand. "what will, then, charley?" said eustacia in a disappointed tone. "you know what you forbade me at the maypoling, miss," murmured the lad, without looking at her, and still stroking the firedog's head. "yes," said eustacia, with a little more hauteur. "you wanted to join hands with me in the ring, if i recollect?" "half an hour of that, and i'll agree, miss." eustacia regarded the youth steadfastly. he was three years younger than herself, but apparently not backward for his age. "half an hour of what?" she said, though she guessed what. "holding your hand in mine." she was silent. "make it a quarter of an hour," she said. "yes, miss eustacia--i will, if i may kiss it too. a quarter of an hour. and i'll swear to do the best i can to let you take my place without anybody knowing. don't you think somebody might know your tongue, miss?" "it is possible. but i will put a pebble in my mouth to make is less likely. very well; you shall be allowed to have my hand as soon as you bring the dress and your sword and staff. i don't want you any longer now." charley departed, and eustacia felt more and more interest in life. here was something to do: here was some one to see, and a charmingly adventurous way to see him. "ah," she said to herself, "want of an object to live for--that's all is the matter with me!" eustacia's manner was as a rule of a slumberous sort, her passions being of the massive rather than the vivacious kind. but when aroused she would make a dash which, just for the time, was not unlike the move of a naturally lively person. on the question of recognition she was somewhat indifferent. by the acting lads themselves she was not likely to be known. with the guests who might be assembled she was hardly so secure. yet detection, after all, would be no such dreadful thing. the fact only could be detected, her true motive never. it would be instantly set down as the passing freak of a girl whose ways were already considered singular. that she was doing for an earnest reason what would most naturally be done in jest was at any rate a safe secret. the next evening eustacia stood punctually at the fuel-house door, waiting for the dusk which was to bring charley with the trappings. her grandfather was at home tonight, and she would be unable to ask her confederate indoors. he appeared on the dark ridge of heathland, like a fly on a negro, bearing the articles with him, and came up breathless with his walk. "here are the things," he whispered, placing them upon the threshold. "and now, miss eustacia--" "the payment. it is quite ready. i am as good as my word." she leant against the door-post, and gave him her hand. charley took it in both his own with a tenderness beyond description, unless it was like that of a child holding a captured sparrow. "why, there's a glove on it!" he said in a deprecating way. "i have been walking," she observed. "but, miss!" "well--it is hardly fair." she pulled off the glove, and gave him her bare hand. they stood together minute after minute, without further speech, each looking at the blackening scene, and each thinking his and her own thoughts. "i think i won't use it all up tonight," said charley devotedly, when six or eight minutes had been passed by him caressing her hand. "may i have the other few minutes another time?" "as you like," said she without the least emotion. "but it must be over in a week. now, there is only one thing i want you to do: to wait while i put on the dress, and then to see if i do my part properly. but let me look first indoors." she vanished for a minute or two, and went in. her grandfather was safely asleep in his chair. "now, then," she said, on returning, "walk down the garden a little way, and when i am ready i'll call you." charley walked and waited, and presently heard a soft whistle. he returned to the fuel-house door. "did you whistle, miss vye?" "yes; come in," reached him in eustacia's voice from a back quarter. "i must not strike a light till the door is shut, or it may be seen shining. push your hat into the hole through to the wash-house, if you can feel your way across." charley did as commanded, and she struck the light, revealing herself to be changed in sex, brilliant in colours, and armed from top to toe. perhaps she quailed a little under charley's vigorous gaze, but whether any shyness at her male attire appeared upon her countenance could not be seen by reason of the strips of ribbon which used to cover the face in mumming costumes, representing the barred visor of the mediaeval helmet. "it fits pretty well," she said, looking down at the white overalls, "except that the tunic, or whatever you call it, is long in the sleeve. the bottom of the overalls i can turn up inside. now pay attention." eustacia then proceeded in her delivery, striking the sword against the staff or lance at the minatory phrases, in the orthodox mumming manner, and strutting up and down. charley seasoned his admiration with criticism of the gentlest kind, for the touch of eustacia's hand yet remained with him. "and now for your excuse to the others," she said. "where do you meet before you go to mrs. yeobright's?" "we thought of meeting here, miss, if you have nothing to say against it. at eight o'clock, so as to get there by nine." "yes. well, you of course must not appear. i will march in about five minutes late, ready-dressed, and tell them that you can't come. i have decided that the best plan will be for you to be sent somewhere by me, to make a real thing of the excuse. our two heath-croppers are in the habit of straying into the meads, and tomorrow evening you can go and see if they are gone there. i'll manage the rest. now you may leave me." "yes, miss. but i think i'll have one minute more of what i am owed, if you don't mind." eustacia gave him her hand as before. "one minute," she said, and counted on till she reached seven or eight minutes. hand and person she then withdrew to a distance of several feet, and recovered some of her old dignity. the contract completed, she raised between them a barrier impenetrable as a wall. "there, 'tis all gone; and i didn't mean quite all," he said, with a sigh. "you had good measure," said she, turning away. "yes, miss. well, 'tis over, and now i'll get home-along." v through the moonlight the next evening the mummers were assembled in the same spot, awaiting the entrance of the turkish knight. "twenty minutes after eight by the quiet woman, and charley not come." "ten minutes past by blooms-end." "it wants ten minutes to, by grandfer cantle's watch." "and 'tis five minutes past by the captain's clock." on egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. the time at any moment was a number of varying doctrines professed by the different hamlets, some of them having originally grown up from a common root, and then become divided by secession, some having been alien from the beginning. west egdon believed in blooms-end time, east egdon in the time of the quiet woman inn. grandfer cantle's watch had numbered many followers in years gone by, but since he had grown older faiths were shaken. thus, the mummers having gathered hither from scattered points each came with his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a little longer as a compromise. eustacia had watched the assemblage through the hole; and seeing that now was the proper moment to enter, she went from the "linhay" and boldly pulled the bobbin of the fuel-house door. her grandfather was safe at the quiet woman. "here's charley at last! how late you be, charley." "'tis not charley," said the turkish knight from within his visor. "'tis a cousin of miss vye's, come to take charley's place from curiosity. he was obliged to go and look for the heath-croppers that have got into the meads, and i agreed to take his place, as he knew he couldn't come back here again tonight. i know the part as well as he." her graceful gait, elegant figure, and dignified manner in general won the mummers to the opinion that they had gained by the exchange, if the newcomer were perfect in his part. "it don't matter--if you be not too young," said saint george. eustacia's voice had sounded somewhat more juvenile and fluty than charley's. "i know every word of it, i tell you," said eustacia decisively. dash being all that was required to carry her triumphantly through, she adopted as much as was necessary. "go ahead, lads, with the try-over. i'll challenge any of you to find a mistake in me." the play was hastily rehearsed, whereupon the other mummers were delighted with the new knight. they extinguished the candles at half-past eight, and set out upon the heath in the direction of mrs. yeobright's house at bloom's-end. there was a slight hoar-frost that night, and the moon, though not more than half full, threw a spirited and enticing brightness upon the fantastic figures of the mumming band, whose plumes and ribbons rustled in their walk like autumn leaves. their path was not over rainbarrow now, but down a valley which left that ancient elevation a little to the east. the bottom of the vale was green to a width of ten yards or thereabouts, and the shining facets of frost upon the blades of grass seemed to move on with the shadows of those they surrounded. the masses of furze and heath to the right and left were dark as ever; a mere half-moon was powerless to silver such sable features as theirs. half-an-hour of walking and talking brought them to the spot in the valley where the grass riband widened and led down to the front of the house. at sight of the place eustacia, who had felt a few passing doubts during her walk with the youths, again was glad that the adventure had been undertaken. she had come out to see a man who might possibly have the power to deliver her soul from a most deadly oppression. what was wildeve? interesting, but inadequate. perhaps she would see a sufficient hero tonight. as they drew nearer to the front of the house the mummers became aware that music and dancing were briskly flourishing within. every now and then a long low note from the serpent, which was the chief wind instrument played at these times, advanced further into the heath than the thin treble part, and reached their ears alone; and next a more than usually loud tread from a dancer would come the same way. with nearer approach these fragmentary sounds became pieced together, and were found to be the salient points of the tune called "nancy's fancy." he was there, of course. who was she that he danced with? perhaps some unknown woman, far beneath herself in culture, was by that most subtle of lures sealing his fate this very instant. to dance with a man is to concentrate a twelve-month's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. to pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. she would see how his heart lay by keen observation of them all. the enterprising lady followed the mumming company through the gate in the white paling, and stood before the open porch. the house was encrusted with heavy thatchings, which dropped between the upper windows; the front, upon which the moonbeams directly played, had originally been white; but a huge pyracanth now darkened the greater portion. it became at once evident that the dance was proceeding immediately within the surface of the door, no apartment intervening. the brushing of skirts and elbows, sometimes the bumping of shoulders, could be heard against the very panels. eustacia, though living within two miles of the place, had never seen the interior of this quaint old habitation. between captain vye and the yeobrights there had never existed much acquaintance, the former having come as a stranger and purchased the long-empty house at mistover knap not long before the death of mrs. yeobright's husband; and with that event and the departure of her son such friendship as had grown up became quite broken off. "is there no passage inside the door, then?" asked eustacia as they stood within the porch. "no," said the lad who played the saracen. "the door opens right upon the front sitting-room, where the spree's going on." "so that we cannot open the door without stopping the dance." "that's it. here we must bide till they have done, for they always bolt the back door after dark." "they won't be much longer," said father christmas. this assertion, however, was hardly borne out by the event. again the instruments ended the tune; again they recommenced with as much fire and pathos as if it were the first strain. the air was now that one without any particular beginning, middle, or end, which perhaps, among all the dances which throng an inspired fiddler's fancy, best conveys the idea of the interminable--the celebrated "devil's dream." the fury of personal movement that was kindled by the fury of the notes could be approximately imagined by these outsiders under the moon, from the occasional kicks of toes and heels against the door, whenever the whirl round had been of more than customary velocity. the first five minutes of listening was interesting enough to the mummers. the five minutes extended to ten minutes, and these to a quarter of an hour; but no signs of ceasing were audible in the lively dream. the bumping against the door, the laughter, the stamping, were all as vigorous as ever, and the pleasure in being outside lessened considerably. "why does mrs. yeobright give parties of this sort?" eustacia asked, a little surprised to hear merriment so pronounced. "it is not one of her bettermost parlour-parties. she's asked the plain neighbours and workpeople without drawing any lines, just to give 'em a good supper and such like. her son and she wait upon the folks." "i see," said eustacia. "'tis the last strain, i think," said saint george, with his ear to the panel. "a young man and woman have just swung into this corner, and he's saying to her, 'ah, the pity; 'tis over for us this time, my own.'" "thank god!" said the turkish knight, stamping, and taking from the wall the conventional lance that each of the mummers carried. her boots being thinner than those of the young men, the hoar had damped her feet and made them cold. "upon my song 'tis another ten minutes for us," said the valiant soldier, looking through the keyhole as the tune modulated into another without stopping. "grandfer cantle is standing in this corner, waiting his turn." "'twon't be long; 'tis a six-handed reel," said the doctor. "why not go in, dancing or no? they sent for us," said the saracen. "certainly not," said eustacia authoritatively, as she paced smartly up and down from door to gate to warm herself. "we should burst into the middle of them and stop the dance, and that would be unmannerly." "he thinks himself somebody because he has had a bit more schooling than we," said the doctor. "you may go to the deuce!" said eustacia. there was a whispered conversation between three or four of them, and one turned to her. "will you tell us one thing?" he said, not without gentleness. "be you miss vye? we think you must be." "you may think what you like," said eustacia slowly. "but honourable lads will not tell tales upon a lady." "we'll say nothing, miss. that's upon our honour." "thank you," she replied. at this moment the fiddles finished off with a screech, and the serpent emitted a last note that nearly lifted the roof. when, from the comparative quiet within, the mummers judged that the dancers had taken their seats, father christmas advanced, lifted the latch, and put his head inside the door. "ah, the mummers, the mummers!" cried several guests at once. "clear a space for the mummers." hump-backed father christmas then made a complete entry, swinging his huge club, and in a general way clearing the stage for the actors proper, while he informed the company in smart verse that he was come, welcome or welcome not; concluding his speech with "make room, make room, my gallant boys, and give us space to rhyme; we've come to show saint george's play, upon this christmas time." the guests were now arranging themselves at one end of the room, the fiddler was mending a string, the serpent-player was emptying his mouthpiece, and the play began. first of those outside the valiant soldier entered, in the interest of saint george-- "here come i, the valiant soldier; slasher is my name;" and so on. this speech concluded with a challenge to the infidel, at the end of which it was eustacia's duty to enter as the turkish knight. she, with the rest who were not yet on, had hitherto remained in the moonlight which streamed under the porch. with no apparent effort or backwardness she came in, beginning-- "here come i, a turkish knight, who learnt in turkish land to fight; i'll fight this man with courage bold: if his blood's hot i'll make it cold!" during her declamation eustacia held her head erect, and spoke as roughly as she could, feeling pretty secure from observation. but the concentration upon her part necessary to prevent discovery, the newness of the scene, the shine of the candles, and the confusing effect upon her vision of the ribboned visor which hid her features, left her absolutely unable to perceive who were present as spectators. on the further side of a table bearing candles she could faintly discern faces, and that was all. meanwhile jim starks as the valiant soldier had come forward, and, with a glare upon the turk, replied-- "if, then, thou art that turkish knight, draw out thy sword, and let us fight!" and fight they did; the issue of the combat being that the valiant soldier was slain by a preternaturally inadequate thrust from eustacia, jim, in his ardour for genuine histrionic art, coming down like a log upon the stone floor with force enough to dislocate his shoulder. then, after more words from the turkish knight, rather too faintly delivered, and statements that he'd fight saint george and all his crew, saint george himself magnificently entered with the well-known flourish-- "here come i, saint george, the valiant man, with naked sword and spear in hand, who fought the dragon and brought him to the slaughter, and by this won fair sabra, the king of egypt's daughter; what mortal man would dare to stand before me with my sword in hand?" this was the lad who had first recognized eustacia; and when she now, as the turk, replied with suitable defiance, and at once began the combat, the young fellow took especial care to use his sword as gently as possible. being wounded, the knight fell upon one knee, according to the direction. the doctor now entered, restored the knight by giving him a draught from the bottle which he carried, and the fight was again resumed, the turk sinking by degrees until quite overcome--dying as hard in this venerable drama as he is said to do at the present day. this gradual sinking to the earth was, in fact, one reason why eustacia had thought that the part of the turkish knight, though not the shortest, would suit her best. a direct fall from upright to horizontal, which was the end of the other fighting characters, was not an elegant or decorous part for a girl. but it was easy to die like a turk, by a dogged decline. eustacia was now among the number of the slain, though not on the floor, for she had managed to sink into a sloping position against the clock-case, so that her head was well elevated. the play proceeded between saint george, the saracen, the doctor, and father christmas; and eustacia, having no more to do, for the first time found leisure to observe the scene round, and to search for the form that had drawn her hither. vi the two stand face to face the room had been arranged with a view to the dancing, the large oak table having been moved back till it stood as a breastwork to the fireplace. at each end, behind, and in the chimney-corner were grouped the guests, many of them being warm-faced and panting, among whom eustacia cursorily recognized some well-to-do persons from beyond the heath. thomasin, as she had expected, was not visible, and eustacia recollected that a light had shone from an upper window when they were outside--the window, probably, of thomasin's room. a nose, chin, hands, knees, and toes projected from the seat within the chimney opening, which members she found to unite in the person of grandfer cantle, mrs. yeobright's occasional assistant in the garden, and therefore one of the invited. the smoke went up from an etna of peat in front of him, played round the notches of the chimney-crook, struck against the saltbox, and got lost among the flitches. another part of the room soon riveted her gaze. at the other side of the chimney stood the settle, which is the necessary supplement to a fire so open that nothing less than a strong breeze will carry up the smoke. it is, to the hearths of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces, what the east belt of trees is to the exposed country estate, or the north wall to the garden. outside the settle candles gutter, locks of hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. inside is paradise. not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sitters' backs are as warm as their faces, and songs and old tales are drawn from the occupants by the comfortable heat, like fruit from melon plants in a frame. it was, however, not with those who sat in the settle that eustacia was concerned. a face showed itself with marked distinctness against the dark-tanned wood of the upper part. the owner, who was leaning against the settle's outer end, was clement yeobright, or clym, as he was called here; she knew it could be nobody else. the spectacle constituted an area of two feet in rembrandt's intensest manner. a strange power in the lounger's appearance lay in the fact that, though his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware of his face. to one of middle age the countenance was that of a young man, though a youth might hardly have seen any necessity for the term of immaturity. but it was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so many years as its age than of so much experience as its store. the number of their years may have adequately summed up jared, mahalaleel, and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern man is to be measured by the intensity of his history. the face was well shaped, even excellently. but the mind within was beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon to trace its idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. the beauty here visible would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought, which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could harm. had heaven preserved yeobright from a wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, "a handsome man." had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, "a thoughtful man." but an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated his look as singular. hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him. his countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. without being thought-worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of the four or five years of endeavour which follow the close of placid pupilage. he already showed that thought is a disease of flesh, and indirectly bore evidence that ideal physical beauty is incompatible with emotional development and a full recognition of the coil of things. mental luminousness must be fed with the oil of life, even though there is already a physical need for it; and the pitiful sight of two demands on one supply was just showing itself here. when standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been instinctive with these in critically observing yeobright. as for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression from without, and not quite succeeding. the look suggested isolation, but it revealed something more. as is usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within an ephemeral human carcase shone out of him like a ray. the effect upon eustacia was palpable. the extraordinary pitch of excitement that she had reached beforehand would, indeed, have caused her to be influenced by the most commonplace man. she was troubled at yeobright's presence. the remainder of the play ended: the saracen's head was cut off, and saint george stood as victor. nobody commented, any more than they would have commented on the fact of mushrooms coming in autumn or snowdrops in spring. they took the piece as phlegmatically as did the actors themselves. it was a phase of cheerfulness which was, as a matter of course, to be passed through every christmas; and there was no more to be said. they sang the plaintive chant which follows the play, during which all the dead men rise to their feet in a silent and awful manner, like the ghosts of napoleon's soldiers in the midnight review. afterwards the door opened, and fairway appeared on the threshold, accompanied by christian and another. they had been waiting outside for the conclusion of the play, as the players had waited for the conclusion of the dance. "come in, come in," said mrs. yeobright; and clym went forward to welcome them. "how is it you are so late? grandfer cantle has been here ever so long, and we thought you'd have come with him, as you live so near one another." "well, i should have come earlier," mr. fairway said, and paused to look along the beam of the ceiling for a nail to hang his hat on; but, finding his accustomed one to be occupied by the mistletoe, and all the nails in the walls to be burdened with bunches of holly, he at last relieved himself of the hat by ticklishly balancing it between the candlebox and the head of the clock-case. "i should have come earlier, ma'am," he resumed, with a more composed air, "but i know what parties be, and how there's none too much room in folks' houses at such times, so i thought i wouldn't come till you'd got settled a bit." "and i thought so too, mrs. yeobright," said christian earnestly, "but father there was so eager that he had no manners at all, and left home almost afore 'twas dark. i told him 'twas barely decent in a' old man to come so oversoon; but words be wind." "klk! i wasn't going to bide waiting about, till half the game was over! i'm as light as a kite when anything's going on!" crowed grandfer cantle from the chimney-seat. fairway had meanwhile concluded a critical gaze at yeobright. "now, you may not believe it," he said to the rest of the room, "but i should never have knowed this gentleman if i had met him anywhere off his own he'th--he's altered so much." "you too have altered, and for the better, i think timothy," said yeobright, surveying the firm figure of fairway. "master yeobright, look me over too. i have altered for the better, haven't i, hey?" said grandfer cantle, rising and placing himself something above half a foot from clym's eye, to induce the most searching criticism. "to be sure we will," said fairway, taking the candle and moving it over the surface of the grandfer's countenance, the subject of his scrutiny irradiating himself with light and pleasant smiles, and giving himself jerks of juvenility. "you haven't changed much," said yeobright. "if there's any difference, grandfer is younger," appended fairway decisively. "and yet not my own doing, and i feel no pride in it," said the pleased ancient. "but i can't be cured of my vagaries; them i plead guilty to. yes, master cantle always was that, as we know. but i am nothing by the side of you, mister clym." "nor any o' us," said humphrey, in a low rich tone of admiration, not intended to reach anybody's ears. "really, there would have been nobody here who could have stood as decent second to him, or even third, if i hadn't been a soldier in the bang-up locals (as we was called for our smartness)," said grandfer cantle. "and even as 'tis we all look a little scammish beside him. but in the year four 'twas said there wasn't a finer figure in the whole south wessex than i, as i looked when dashing past the shop-winders with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' budmouth because it was thoughted that boney had landed round the point. there was i, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! yes, neighbours, i was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. you ought to have seen me in four!" "'tis his mother's side where master clym's figure comes from, bless ye," said timothy. "i know'd her brothers well. longer coffins were never made in the whole country of south wessex, and 'tis said that poor george's knees were crumpled up a little e'en as 'twas." "coffins, where?" inquired christian, drawing nearer. "have the ghost of one appeared to anybody, master fairway?" "no, no. don't let your mind so mislead your ears, christian; and be a man," said timothy reproachfully. "i will." said christian. "but now i think o't my shadder last night seemed just the shape of a coffin. what is it a sign of when your shade's like a coffin, neighbours? it can't be nothing to be afeared of, i suppose?" "afeared, no!" said the grandfer. "faith, i was never afeard of nothing except boney, or i shouldn't ha' been the soldier i was. yes, 'tis a thousand pities you didn't see me in four!" by this time the mummers were preparing to leave; but mrs. yeobright stopped them by asking them to sit down and have a little supper. to this invitation father christmas, in the name of them all, readily agreed. eustacia was happy in the opportunity of staying a little longer. the cold and frosty night without was doubly frigid to her. but the lingering was not without its difficulties. mrs. yeobright, for want of room in the larger apartment, placed a bench for the mummers half-way through the pantry door, which opened from the sitting-room. here they seated themselves in a row, the door being left open: thus they were still virtually in the same apartment. mrs. yeobright now murmured a few words to her son, who crossed the room to the pantry-door, striking his head against the mistletoe as he passed, and brought the mummers beef and bread, cake pastry, mead, and elder-wine, the waiting being done by him and his mother, that the little maid-servant might sit as guest. the mummers doffed their helmets, and began to eat and drink. "but you will surely have some?" said clym to the turkish knight, as he stood before that warrior, tray in hand. she had refused, and still sat covered, only the sparkle of her eyes being visible between the ribbons which covered her face. "none, thank you," replied eustacia. "he's quite a youngster," said the saracen apologetically, "and you must excuse him. he's not one of the old set, but have jined us because t'other couldn't come." "but he will take something?" persisted yeobright. "try a glass of mead or elder-wine." "yes, you had better try that," said the saracen. "it will keep the cold out going home-along." though eustacia could not eat without uncovering her face she could drink easily enough beneath her disguise. the elder-wine was accordingly accepted, and the glass vanished inside the ribbons. at moments during this performance eustacia was half in doubt about the security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. a series of attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescribably. she had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of wildeve. believing that she must love him in spite of herself, she had been influenced after the fashion of the second lord lyttleton and other persons, who have dreamed that they were to die on a certain day, and by stress of a morbid imagination have actually brought about that event. once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done. did anything at this moment suggest to yeobright the sex of the creature whom that fantastic guise inclosed, how extended was her scope both in feeling and in making others feel, and how far her compass transcended that of her companions in the band? when the disguised queen of love appeared before aeneas a preternatural perfume accompanied her presence and betrayed her quality. if such a mysterious emanation ever was projected by the emotions of an earthly woman upon their object, it must have signified eustacia's presence to yeobright now. he looked at her wistfully, then seemed to fall into a reverie, as if he were forgetting what he observed. the momentary situation ended, he passed on, and eustacia sipped her wine without knowing what she drank. the man for whom she had predetermined to nourish a passion went into the small room, and across it to the further extremity. the mummers, as has been stated, were seated on a bench, one end of which extended into the small apartment, or pantry, for want of space in the outer room. eustacia, partly from shyness, had chosen the midmost seat, which thus commanded a view of the interior of the pantry as well as the room containing the guests. when clym passed down the pantry her eyes followed him in the gloom which prevailed there. at the remote end was a door which, just as he was about to open it for himself, was opened by somebody within; and light streamed forth. the person was thomasin, with a candle, looking anxious, pale, and interesting. yeobright appeared glad to see her, and pressed her hand. "that's right, tamsie," he said heartily, as though recalled to himself by the sight of her, "you have decided to come down. i am glad of it." "hush--no, no," she said quickly. "i only came to speak to you." "but why not join us?" "i cannot. at least i would rather not. i am not well enough, and we shall have plenty of time together now you are going to be home a good long holiday." "it isn't nearly so pleasant without you. are you really ill?" "just a little, my old cousin--here," she said, playfully sweeping her hand across her heart. "ah, mother should have asked somebody else to be present tonight, perhaps?" "o no, indeed. i merely stepped down, clym, to ask you--" here he followed her through the doorway into the private room beyond, and, the door closing, eustacia and the mummer who sat next to her, the only other witness of the performance, saw and heard no more. the heat flew to eustacia's head and cheeks. she instantly guessed that clym, having been home only these two or three days, had not as yet been made acquainted with thomasin's painful situation with regard to wildeve; and seeing her living there just as she had been living before he left home, he naturally suspected nothing. eustacia felt a wild jealousy of thomasin on the instant. though thomasin might possibly have tender sentiments towards another man as yet, how long could they be expected to last when she was shut up here with this interesting and travelled cousin of hers? there was no knowing what affection might not soon break out between the two, so constantly in each other's society, and not a distracting object near. clym's boyish love for her might have languished, but it might easily be revived again. eustacia was nettled by her own contrivances. what a sheer waste of herself to be dressed thus while another was shining to advantage! had she known the full effect of the encounter she would have moved heaven and earth to get here in a natural manner. the power of her face all lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her; she had a sense of the doom of echo. "nobody here respects me," she said. she had overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she would be treated as a boy. the slight, though of her own causing, and self-explanatory, she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so sensitive had the situation made her. women have done much for themselves in histrionic dress. to look far below those who, like a certain fair personator of polly peachum early in the last century, and another of lydia languish early in this, have won not only love but ducal coronets into the bargain, whole shoals of them have reached to the initial satisfaction of getting love almost whence they would. but the turkish knight was denied even the chance of achieving this by the fluttering ribbons which she dared not brush aside. yeobright returned to the room without his cousin. when within two or three feet of eustacia he stopped, as if again arrested by a thought. he was gazing at her. she looked another way, disconcerted, and wondered how long this purgatory was to last. after lingering a few seconds he passed on again. to court their own discomfiture by love is a common instinct with certain perfervid women. conflicting sensations of love, fear, and shame reduced eustacia to a state of the utmost uneasiness. to escape was her great and immediate desire. the other mummers appeared to be in no hurry to leave; and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her that she preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to the door as imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped out. the calm, lone scene reassured her. she went forward to the palings and leant over them, looking at the moon. she had stood thus but a little time when the door again opened. expecting to see the remainder of the band eustacia turned; but no--clym yeobright came out as softly as she had done, and closed the door behind him. he advanced and stood beside her. "i have an odd opinion," he said, "and should like to ask you a question. are you a woman--or am i wrong?" "i am a woman." his eyes lingered on her with great interest. "do girls often play as mummers now? they never used to." "they don't now." "why did you?" "to get excitement and shake off depression," she said in low tones. "what depressed you?" "life." "that's a cause of depression a good many have to put up with." "yes." a long silence. "and do you find excitement?" asked clym at last. "at this moment, perhaps." "then you are vexed at being discovered?" "yes; though i thought i might be." "i would gladly have asked you to our party had i known you wished to come. have i ever been acquainted with you in my youth?" "never." "won't you come in again, and stay as long as you like?" "no. i wish not to be further recognized." "well, you are safe with me." after remaining in thought a minute he added gently, "i will not intrude upon you longer. it is a strange way of meeting, and i will not ask why i find a cultivated woman playing such a part as this." she did not volunteer the reason which he seemed to hope for, and he wished her good night, going thence round to the back of the house, where he walked up and down by himself for some time before re-entering. eustacia, warmed with an inner fire, could not wait for her companions after this. she flung back the ribbons from her face, opened the gate, and at once struck into the heath. she did not hasten along. her grandfather was in bed at this hour, for she so frequently walked upon the hills on moonlight nights that he took no notice of her comings and goings, and, enjoying himself in his own way, left her to do likewise. a more important subject than that of getting indoors now engrossed her. yeobright, if he had the least curiosity, would infallibly discover her name. what then? she first felt a sort of exultation at the way in which the adventure had terminated, even though at moments between her exultations she was abashed and blushful. then this consideration recurred to chill her: what was the use of her exploit? she was at present a total stranger to the yeobright family. the unreasonable nimbus of romance with which she had encircled that man might be her misery. how could she allow herself to become so infatuated with a stranger? and to fill the cup of her sorrow there would be thomasin, living day after day in inflammable proximity to him; for she had just learnt that, contrary to her first belief, he was going to stay at home some considerable time. she reached the wicket at mistover knap, but before opening it she turned and faced the heath once more. the form of rainbarrow stood above the hills, and the moon stood above rainbarrow. the air was charged with silence and frost. the scene reminded eustacia of a circumstance which till that moment she had totally forgotten. she had promised to meet wildeve by the barrow this very night at eight, to give a final answer to his pleading for an elopement. she herself had fixed the evening and the hour. he had probably come to the spot, waited there in the cold, and been greatly disappointed. "well, so much the better: it did not hurt him," she said serenely. wildeve had at present the rayless outline of the sun through smoked glass, and she could say such things as that with the greatest facility. she remained deeply pondering; and thomasin's winning manner towards her cousin arose again upon eustacia's mind. "o that she had been married to damon before this!" she said. "and she would if it hadn't been for me! if i had only known--if i had only known!" eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and, sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder, entered the shadow of the roof. she threw off her trappings in the out-house, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber. vii a coalition between beauty and oddness the old captain's prevailing indifference to his granddaughter's movements left her free as a bird to follow her own courses; but it so happened that he did take upon himself the next morning to ask her why she had walked out so late. "only in search of events, grandfather," she said, looking out of the window with that drowsy latency of manner which discovered so much force behind it whenever the trigger was pressed. "search of events--one would think you were one of the bucks i knew at one-and-twenty." "it is so lonely here." "so much the better. if i were living in a town my whole time would be taken up in looking after you. i fully expected you would have been home when i returned from the woman." "i won't conceal what i did. i wanted an adventure, and i went with the mummers. i played the part of the turkish knight." "no, never? ha, ha! good gad! i didn't expect it of you, eustacia." "it was my first performance, and it certainly will be my last. now i have told you--and remember it is a secret." "of course. but, eustacia, you never did--ha! ha! dammy, how 'twould have pleased me forty years ago! but remember, no more of it, my girl. you may walk on the heath night or day, as you choose, so that you don't bother me; but no figuring in breeches again." "you need have no fear for me, grandpapa." here the conversation ceased, eustacia's moral training never exceeding in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if it ever became profitable to good works, would be a result not dear at the price. but her thoughts soon strayed far from her own personality; and, full of a passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her, restless as ahasuerus the jew. she was about half a mile from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a little way in advance--dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight and she guessed it to signify diggory venn. when the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock of reddle during the last month had inquired where venn was to be found, people replied, "on egdon heath." day after day the answer was the same. now, since egdon was populated with heath-croppers and furze-cutters rather than with sheep and shepherds, and the downs where most of the latter were to be found lay some to the north, some to the west of egdon, his reason for camping about there like israel in zin was not apparent. the position was central and occasionally desirable. but the sale of reddle was not diggory's primary object in remaining on the heath, particularly at so late a period of the year, when most travellers of his class had gone into winter quarters. eustacia looked at the lonely man. wildeve had told her at their last meeting that venn had been thrust forward by mrs. yeobright as one ready and anxious to take his place as thomasin's betrothed. his figure was perfect, his face young and well outlined, his eyes bright, his intelligence keen, and his position one which he could readily better if he chose. but in spite of possibilities it was not likely that thomasin would accept this ishmaelitish creature while she had a cousin like yeobright at her elbow, and wildeve at the same time not absolutely indifferent. eustacia was not long in guessing that poor mrs. yeobright, in her anxiety for her niece's future, had mentioned this lover to stimulate the zeal of the other. eustacia was on the side of the yeobrights now, and entered into the spirit of the aunt's desire. "good morning, miss," said the reddleman, taking off his cap of hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill-will from recollection of their last meeting. "good morning, reddleman," she said, hardly troubling to lift her heavily shaded eyes to his. "i did not know you were so near. is your van here too?" venn moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense brake of purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast dimensions as almost to form a dell. brambles, though churlish when handled, are kindly shelter in early winter, being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their leaves. the roof and chimney of venn's caravan showed behind the tracery and tangles of the brake. "you remain near this part?" she asked with more interest. "yes, i have business here." "not altogether the selling of reddle?" "it has nothing to do with that." "it has to do with miss yeobright?" her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, "yes, miss; it is on account of her." "on account of your approaching marriage with her?" venn flushed through his stain. "don't make sport of me, miss vye," he said. "it isn't true?" "certainly not." she was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere _pis aller_ in mrs. yeobright's mind; one, moreover, who had not even been informed of his promotion to that lowly standing. "it was a mere notion of mine," she said quietly; and was about to pass by without further speech, when, looking round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to the top where she stood. owing to the necessary windings of his course his back was at present towards them. she glanced quickly round; to escape that man there was only one way. turning to venn, she said, "would you allow me to rest a few minutes in your van? the banks are damp for sitting on." "certainly, miss; i'll make a place for you." she followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled dwelling, into which venn mounted, placing the three-legged stool just within the door. "that is the best i can do for you," he said, stepping down and retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of his pipe as he walked up and down. eustacia bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool, ensconced from view on the side towards the trackway. soon she heard the brushing of other feet than the reddleman's, a not very friendly "good day" uttered by two men in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the footfall of one of them in a direction onwards. eustacia stretched her neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why. it was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in its composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more. when eustacia descended to proceed on her way the reddleman came near. "that was mr. wildeve who passed, miss," he said slowly, and expressed by his face that he expected her to feel vexed at having been sitting unseen. "yes, i saw him coming up the hill," replied eustacia. "why should you tell me that?" it was a bold question, considering the reddleman's knowledge of her past love; but her undemonstrative manner had power to repress the opinions of those she treated as remote from her. "i am glad to hear that you can ask it," said the reddleman bluntly. "and, now i think of it, it agrees with what i saw last night." "ah--what was that?" eustacia wished to leave him, but wished to know. "mr. wildeve stayed at rainbarrow a long time waiting for a lady who didn't come." "you waited too, it seems?" "yes, i always do. i was glad to see him disappointed. he will be there again tonight." "to be again disappointed. the truth is, reddleman, that that lady, so far from wishing to stand in the way of thomasin's marriage with mr. wildeve, would be very glad to promote it." venn felt much astonishment at this avowal, though he did not show it clearly; that exhibition may greet remarks which are one remove from expectation, but it is usually withheld in complicated cases of two removes and upwards. "indeed, miss," he replied. "how do you know that mr. wildeve will come to rainbarrow again tonight?" she asked. "i heard him say to himself that he would. he's in a regular temper." eustacia looked for a moment what she felt, and she murmured, lifting her deep dark eyes anxiously to his, "i wish i knew what to do. i don't want to be uncivil to him; but i don't wish to see him again; and i have some few little things to return to him." "if you choose to send 'em by me, miss, and a note to tell him that you wish to say no more to him, i'll take it for you quite privately. that would be the most straightforward way of letting him know your mind." "very well," said eustacia. "come towards my house, and i will bring it out to you." she went on, and as the path was an infinitely small parting in the shaggy locks of the heath, the reddleman followed exactly in her trail. she saw from a distance that the captain was on the bank sweeping the horizon with his telescope; and bidding venn to wait where he stood she entered the house alone. in ten minutes she returned with a parcel and a note, and said, in placing them in his hand, "why are you so ready to take these for me?" "can you ask that?" "i suppose you think to serve thomasin in some way by it. are you as anxious as ever to help on her marriage?" venn was a little moved. "i would sooner have married her myself," he said in a low voice. "but what i feel is that if she cannot be happy without him i will do my duty in helping her to get him, as a man ought." eustacia looked curiously at the singular man who spoke thus. what a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion, and sometimes its only one! the reddleman's disinterestedness was so well deserving of respect that it overshot respect by being barely comprehended; and she almost thought it absurd. "then we are both of one mind at last," she said. "yes," replied venn gloomily. "but if you would tell me, miss, why you take such an interest in her, i should be easier. it is so sudden and strange." eustacia appeared at a loss. "i cannot tell you that, reddleman," she said coldly. venn said no more. he pocketed the letter, and, bowing to eustacia, went away. rainbarrow had again become blended with night when wildeve ascended the long acclivity at its base. on his reaching the top a shape grew up from the earth immediately behind him. it was that of eustacia's emissary. he slapped wildeve on the shoulder. the feverish young innkeeper and ex-engineer started like satan at the touch of ithuriel's spear. "the meeting is always at eight o'clock, at this place," said venn, "and here we are--we three." "we three?" said wildeve, looking quickly round. "yes; you, and i, and she. this is she." he held up the letter and parcel. wildeve took them wonderingly. "i don't quite see what this means," he said. "how do you come here? there must be some mistake." "it will be cleared from your mind when you have read the letter. lanterns for one." the reddleman struck a light, kindled an inch of tallow-candle which he had brought, and sheltered it with his cap. "who are you?" said wildeve, discerning by the candlelight an obscure rubicundity of person in his companion. "you are the reddleman i saw on the hill this morning--why, you are the man who--" "please read the letter." "if you had come from the other one i shouldn't have been surprised," murmured wildeve as he opened the letter and read. his face grew serious. to mr. wildeve. after some thought i have decided once and for all that we must hold no further communication. the more i consider the matter the more i am convinced that there must be an end to our acquaintance. had you been uniformly faithful to me throughout these two years you might now have some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly consider what i bore during the period of your desertion, and how i passively put up with your courtship of another without once interfering, you will, i think, own that i have a right to consult my own feelings when you come back to me again. that these are not what they were towards you may, perhaps, be a fault in me, but it is one which you can scarcely reproach me for when you remember how you left me for thomasin. the little articles you gave me in the early part of our friendship are returned by the bearer of this letter. they should rightly have been sent back when i first heard of your engagement to her. eustacia by the time that wildeve reached her name the blankness with which he had read the first half of the letter intensified to mortification. "i am made a great fool of, one way and another," he said pettishly. "do you know what is in this letter?" the reddleman hummed a tune. "can't you answer me?" asked wildeve warmly. "ru-um-tum-tum," sang the reddleman. wildeve stood looking on the ground beside venn's feet, till he allowed his eyes to travel upwards over diggory's form, as illuminated by the candle, to his head and face. "ha-ha! well, i suppose i deserve it, considering how i have played with them both," he said at last, as much to himself as to venn. "but of all the odd things that ever i knew, the oddest is that you should so run counter to your own interests as to bring this to me." "my interests?" "certainly. 'twas your interest not to do anything which would send me courting thomasin again, now she has accepted you--or something like it. mrs. yeobright says you are to marry her. 'tisn't true, then?" "good lord! i heard of this before, but didn't believe it. when did she say so?" wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done. "i don't believe it now," cried venn. "ru-um-tum-tum," sang wildeve. "o lord--how we can imitate!" said venn contemptuously. "i'll have this out. i'll go straight to her." diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, wildeve's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. when the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, wildeve himself descended and plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale. to lose the two women--he who had been the well-beloved of both--was too ironical an issue to be endured. he could only decently save himself by thomasin; and once he became her husband, eustacia's repentance, he thought, would set in for a long and bitter term. it was no wonder that wildeve, ignorant of the new man at the back of the scene, should have supposed eustacia to be playing a part. to believe that the letter was not the result of some momentary pique, to infer that she really gave him up to thomasin, would have required previous knowledge of her transfiguration by that man's influence. who was to know that she had grown generous in the greediness of a new passion, that in coveting one cousin she was dealing liberally with another, that in her eagerness to appropriate she gave way? full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart of the proud girl, wildeve went his way. meanwhile diggory venn had returned to his van, where he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove. a new vista was opened up to him. but, however promising mrs. yeobright's views of him might be as a candidate for her niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour of thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild mode of life. in this he saw little difficulty. he could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing thomasin and detailing his plan. he speedily plunged himself into toilet operations, pulled a suit of cloth clothes from a box, and in about twenty minutes stood before the van-lantern as a reddleman in nothing but his face, the vermilion shades of which were not to be removed in a day. closing the door and fastening it with a padlock, venn set off towards blooms-end. he had reached the white palings and laid his hand upon the gate when the door of the house opened, and quickly closed again. a female form had glided in. at the same time a man, who had seemingly been standing with the woman in the porch, came forward from the house till he was face to face with venn. it was wildeve again. "man alive, you've been quick at it," said diggory sarcastically. "and you slow, as you will find," said wildeve. "and," lowering his voice, "you may as well go back again now. i've claimed her, and got her. good night, reddleman!" thereupon wildeve walked away. venn's heart sank within him, though it had not risen unduly high. he stood leaning over the palings in an indecisive mood for nearly a quarter of an hour. then he went up the garden path, knocked, and asked for mrs. yeobright. instead of requesting him to enter she came to the porch. a discourse was carried on between them in low measured tones for the space of ten minutes or more. at the end of the time mrs. yeobright went in, and venn sadly retraced his steps into the heath. when he had again regained his van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face at once began to pull off his best clothes, till in the course of a few minutes he reappeared as the confirmed and irretrievable reddleman that he had seemed before. viii firmness is discovered in a gentle heart on that evening the interior of blooms-end, though cosy and comfortable, had been rather silent. clym yeobright was not at home. since the christmas party he had gone on a few days' visit to a friend about ten miles off. the shadowy form seen by venn to part from wildeve in the porch, and quickly withdraw into the house, was thomasin's. on entering she threw down a cloak which had been carelessly wrapped round her, and came forward to the light, where mrs. yeobright sat at her work-table, drawn up within the settle, so that part of it projected into the chimney-corner. "i don't like your going out after dark alone, tamsin," said her aunt quietly, without looking up from her work. "i have only been just outside the door." "well?" inquired mrs. yeobright, struck by a change in the tone of thomasin's voice, and observing her. thomasin's cheek was flushed to a pitch far beyond that which it had reached before her troubles, and her eyes glittered. "it was he who knocked," she said. "i thought as much." "he wishes the marriage to be at once." "indeed! what--is he anxious?" mrs. yeobright directed a searching look upon her niece. "why did not mr. wildeve come in?" "he did not wish to. you are not friends with him, he says. he would like the wedding to be the day after tomorrow, quite privately; at the church of his parish--not at ours." "oh! and what did you say?" "i agreed to it," thomasin answered firmly. "i am a practical woman now. i don't believe in hearts at all. i would marry him under any circumstances since--since clym's letter." a letter was lying on mrs. yeobright's work-basket, and at thomasin's word her aunt reopened it, and silently read for the tenth time that day:-- what is the meaning of this silly story that people are circulating about thomasin and mr. wildeve? i should call such a scandal humiliating if there was the least chance of its being true. how could such a gross falsehood have arisen? it is said that one should go abroad to hear news of home, and i appear to have done it. of course i contradict the tale everywhere; but it is very vexing, and i wonder how it could have originated. it is too ridiculous that such a girl as thomasin could so mortify us as to get jilted on the wedding-day. what has she done? "yes," mrs. yeobright said sadly, putting down the letter. "if you think you can marry him, do so. and since mr. wildeve wishes it to be unceremonious, let it be that too. i can do nothing. it is all in your own hands now. my power over your welfare came to an end when you left this house to go with him to anglebury." she continued, half in bitterness, "i may almost ask, why do you consult me in the matter at all? if you had gone and married him without saying a word to me, i could hardly have been angry--simply because, poor girl, you can't do a better thing." "don't say that and dishearten me." "you are right: i will not." "i do not plead for him, aunt. human nature is weak, and i am not a blind woman to insist that he is perfect. i did think so, but i don't now. but i know my course, and you know that i know it. i hope for the best." "and so do i, and we will both continue to," said mrs. yeobright, rising and kissing her. "then the wedding, if it comes off, will be on the morning of the very day clym comes home?" "yes. i decided that it ought to be over before he came. after that you can look him in the face, and so can i. our concealments will matter nothing." mrs. yeobright moved her head in thoughtful assent, and presently said, "do you wish me to give you away? i am willing to undertake that, you know, if you wish, as i was last time. after once forbidding the banns i think i can do no less." "i don't think i will ask you to come," said thomasin reluctantly, but with decision. "it would be unpleasant, i am almost sure. better let there be only strangers present, and none of my relations at all. i would rather have it so. i do not wish to do anything which may touch your credit, and i feel that i should be uncomfortable if you were there, after what has passed. i am only your niece, and there is no necessity why you should concern yourself more about me." "well, he has beaten us," her aunt said. "it really seems as if he had been playing with you in this way in revenge for my humbling him as i did by standing up against him at first." "o no, aunt," murmured thomasin. they said no more on the subject then. diggory venn's knock came soon after; and mrs. yeobright, on returning from her interview with him in the porch, carelessly observed, "another lover has come to ask for you." "no?" "yes, that queer young man venn." "asks to pay his addresses to me?" "yes; and i told him he was too late." thomasin looked silently into the candle-flame. "poor diggory!" she said, and then aroused herself to other things. the next day was passed in mere mechanical deeds of preparation, both the women being anxious to immerse themselves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation. some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew for thomasin, and remarks on domestic details were frequently made, so as to obscure any inner misgivings about her future as wildeve's wife. the appointed morning came. the arrangement with wildeve was that he should meet her at the church to guard against any unpleasant curiosity which might have affected them had they been seen walking off together in the usual country way. aunt and niece stood together in the bedroom where the bride was dressing. the sun, where it could catch it, made a mirror of thomasin's hair, which she always wore braided. it was braided according to a calendric system: the more important the day the more numerous the strands in the braid. on ordinary working-days she braided it in threes; on ordinary sundays in fours; at may-polings, gipsyings, and the like, she braided it in fives. years ago she had said that when she married she would braid it in sevens. she had braided it in sevens today. "i have been thinking that i will wear my blue silk after all," she said. "it is my wedding day, even though there may be something sad about the time. i mean," she added, anxious to correct any wrong impression, "not sad in itself, but in its having had great disappointment and trouble before it." mrs. yeobright breathed in a way which might have been called a sigh. "i almost wish clym had been at home," she said. "of course you chose the time because of his absence." "partly. i have felt that i acted unfairly to him in not telling him all; but, as it was done not to grieve him, i thought i would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story when the sky was clear." "you are a practical little woman," said mrs. yeobright, smiling. "i wish you and he--no, i don't wish anything. there, it is nine o'clock," she interrupted, hearing a whizz and a dinging downstairs. "i told damon i would leave at nine," said thomasin, hastening out of the room. her aunt followed. when thomasin was going up the little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, mrs. yeobright looked reluctantly at her, and said, "it is a shame to let you go alone." "it is necessary," said thomasin. "at any rate," added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, "i shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me. if clym has returned by that time he will perhaps come too. i wish to show mr. wildeve that i bear him no ill-will. let the past be forgotten. well, god bless you! there, i don't believe in old superstitions, but i'll do it." she threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again. a few steps further, and she looked back. "did you call me, aunt?" she tremulously inquired. "good-bye!" moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon mrs. yeobright's worn, wet face, she ran back, when her aunt came forward, and they met again. "o--tamsie," said the elder, weeping, "i don't like to let you go." "i--i--am--" thomasin began, giving way likewise. but, quelling her grief, she said "good-bye!" again and went on. then mrs. yeobright saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley--a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope. but the worst feature in the case was one which did not appear in the landscape; it was the man. the hour chosen for the ceremony by thomasin and wildeve had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness of meeting her cousin clym, who was returning the same morning. to own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved. it was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident. she had not been gone from blooms-end more than half an hour when yeobright came by the meads from the other direction and entered the house. "i had an early breakfast," he said to his mother after greeting her. "now i could eat a little more." they sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that thomasin had not yet come downstairs, "what's this i have heard about thomasin and mr. wildeve?" "it is true in many points," said mrs. yeobright quietly; "but it is all right now, i hope." she looked at the clock. "true?" "thomasin is gone to him today." clym pushed away his breakfast. "then there is a scandal of some sort, and that's what's the matter with thomasin. was it this that made her ill?" "yes. not a scandal: a misfortune. i will tell you all about it, clym. you must not be angry, but you must listen, and you'll find that what we have done has been done for the best." she then told him the circumstances. all that he had known of the affair before he returned from paris was that there had existed an attachment between thomasin and wildeve, which his mother had at first discountenanced, but had since, owing to the arguments of thomasin, looked upon in a little more favourable light. when she, therefore, proceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled. "and she determined that the wedding should be over before you came back," said mrs. yeobright, "that there might be no chance of her meeting you, and having a very painful time of it. that's why she has gone to him; they have arranged to be married this morning." "but i can't understand it," said yeobright, rising. "'tis so unlike her. i can see why you did not write to me after her unfortunate return home. but why didn't you let me know when the wedding was going to be--the first time?" "well, i felt vexed with her just then. she seemed to me to be obstinate; and when i found that you were nothing in her mind i vowed that she should be nothing in yours. i felt that she was only my niece after all; i told her she might marry, but that i should take no interest in it, and should not bother you about it either." "it wouldn't have been bothering me. mother, you did wrong." "i thought it might disturb you in your business, and that you might throw up your situation, or injure your prospects in some way because of it, so i said nothing. of course, if they had married at that time in a proper manner, i should have told you at once." "tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!" "yes. unless some accident happens again, as it did the first time. it may, considering he's the same man." "yes, and i believe it will. was it right to let her go? suppose wildeve is really a bad fellow?" "then he won't come, and she'll come home again." "you should have looked more into it." "it is useless to say that," his mother answered with an impatient look of sorrow. "you don't know how bad it has been here with us all these weeks, clym. you don't know what a mortification anything of that sort is to a woman. you don't know the sleepless nights we've had in this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed between us since that fifth of november. i hope never to pass seven such weeks again. tamsin has not gone outside the door, and i have been ashamed to look anybody in the face; and now you blame me for letting her do the only thing that can be done to set that trouble straight." "no," he said slowly. "upon the whole i don't blame you. but just consider how sudden it seems to me. here was i, knowing nothing; and then i am told all at once that tamsie is gone to be married. well, i suppose there was nothing better to do. do you know, mother," he continued after a moment or two, looking suddenly interested in his own past history, "i once thought of tamsin as a sweetheart? yes, i did. how odd boys are! and when i came home and saw her this time she seemed so much more affectionate than usual, that i was quite reminded of those days, particularly on the night of the party, when she was unwell. we had the party just the same--was not that rather cruel to her?" "it made no difference. i had arranged to give one, and it was not worth while to make more gloom than necessary. to begin by shutting ourselves up and telling you of tamsin's misfortunes would have been a poor sort of welcome." clym remained thinking. "i almost wish you had not had that party," he said; "and for other reasons. but i will tell you in a day or two. we must think of tamsin now." they lapsed into silence. "i'll tell you what," said yeobright again, in a tone which showed some slumbering feeling still. "i don't think it kind to tamsin to let her be married like this, and neither of us there to keep up her spirits or care a bit about her. she hasn't disgraced herself, or done anything to deserve that. it is bad enough that the wedding should be so hurried and unceremonious, without our keeping away from it in addition. upon my soul, 'tis almost a shame. i'll go." "it is over by this time," said his mother with a sigh; "unless they were late, or he--" "then i shall be soon enough to see them come out. i don't quite like your keeping me in ignorance, mother, after all. really, i half hope he has failed to meet her!" "and ruined her character?" "nonsense: that wouldn't ruin thomasin." he took up his hat and hastily left the house. mrs. yeobright looked rather unhappy, and sat still, deep in thought. but she was not long left alone. a few minutes later clym came back again, and in his company came diggory venn. "i find there isn't time for me to get there," said clym. "is she married?" mrs. yeobright inquired, turning to the reddleman a face in which a strange strife of wishes, for and against, was apparent. venn bowed. "she is, ma'am." "how strange it sounds," murmured clym. "and he didn't disappoint her this time?" said mrs. yeobright. "he did not. and there is now no slight on her name. i was hastening ath'art to tell you at once, as i saw you were not there." "how came you to be there? how did you know it?" she asked. "i have been in that neighbourhood for some time, and i saw them go in," said the reddleman. "wildeve came up to the door, punctual as the clock. i didn't expect it of him." he did not add, as he might have added, that how he came to be in that neighbourhood was not by accident; that, since wildeve's resumption of his right to thomasin, venn, with the thoroughness which was part of his character, had determined to see the end of the episode. "who was there?" said mrs. yeobright. "nobody hardly. i stood right out of the way, and she did not see me." the reddleman spoke huskily, and looked into the garden. "who gave her away?" "miss vye." "how very remarkable! miss vye! it is to be considered an honour, i suppose?" "who's miss vye?" said clym. "captain vye's granddaughter, of mistover knap." "a proud girl from budmouth," said mrs. yeobright. "one not much to my liking. people say she's a witch, but of course that's absurd." the reddleman kept to himself his acquaintance with that fair personage, and also that eustacia was there because he went to fetch her, in accordance with a promise he had given as soon as he learnt that the marriage was to take place. he merely said, in continuation of the story-- "i was sitting on the churchyard wall when they came up, one from one way, the other from the other; and miss vye was walking thereabouts, looking at the head-stones. as soon as they had gone in i went to the door, feeling i should like to see it, as i knew her so well. i pulled off my boots because they were so noisy, and went up into the gallery. i saw then that the parson and clerk were already there." "how came miss vye to have anything to do with it, if she was only on a walk that way?" "because there was nobody else. she had gone into the church just before me, not into the gallery. the parson looked round before beginning, and as she was the only one near he beckoned to her, and she went up to the rails. after that, when it came to signing the book, she pushed up her veil and signed; and tamsin seemed to thank her for her kindness." the reddleman told the tale thoughtfully, for there lingered upon his vision the changing colour of wildeve, when eustacia lifted the thick veil which had concealed her from recognition and looked calmly into his face. "and then," said diggory sadly, "i came away, for her history as tamsin yeobright was over." "i offered to go," said mrs. yeobright regretfully. "but she said it was not necessary." "well, it is no matter," said the reddleman. "the thing is done at last as it was meant to be at first, and god send her happiness. now i'll wish you good morning." he placed his cap on his head and went out. from that instant of leaving mrs. yeobright's door, the reddleman was seen no more in or about egdon heath for a space of many months. he vanished entirely. the nook among the brambles where his van had been standing was as vacant as ever the next morning, and scarcely a sign remained to show that he had been there, excepting a few straws, and a little redness on the turf, which was washed away by the next storm of rain. the report that diggory had brought of the wedding, correct as far as it went, was deficient in one significant particular, which had escaped him through his being at some distance back in the church. when thomasin was tremblingly engaged in signing her name wildeve had flung towards eustacia a glance that said plainly, "i have punished you now." she had replied in a low tone--and he little thought how truly--"you mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your wife today." book third the fascination i "my mind to me a kingdom is" in clym yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance of the future. should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its pheidias may produce such faces. the view of life as a thing to be put up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early civilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted as a new artistic departure. people already feel that a man who lives without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type. physically beautiful men--the glory of the race when it was young--are almost an anachronism now; and we may wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may not be an anachronism likewise. the truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries has permanently displaced the hellenic idea of life, or whatever it may be called. what the greeks only suspected we know well; what their aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. that old-fashioned revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is in by their operation. the lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this new recognition will probably be akin to those of yeobright. the observer's eye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as a page; not by what it was, but by what it recorded. his features were attractive in the light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically common become attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple become interesting in writing. he had been a lad of whom something was expected. beyond this all had been chaos. that he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. the only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born. hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen, the listener said, "ah, clym yeobright: what is he doing now?" when the instinctive question about a person is, what is he doing? it is felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. there is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity, good or bad. the devout hope is that he is doing well. the secret faith is that he is making a mess of it. half a dozen comfortable marketmen, who were habitual callers at the quiet woman as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the topic. in fact, though they were not egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while they sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window. clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly anybody could look upon it without thinking of him. so the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative. the fact was that yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extent before he left home. "it is bad when your fame outruns your means," said the spanish jesuit gracian. at the age of six he had asked a scripture riddle: "who was the first man known to wear breeches?" and applause had resounded from the very verge of the heath. at seven he painted the battle of waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and black-currant juice, in the absence of water-colours. by the time he reached twelve he had in this manner been heard of as artist and scholar for at least two miles round. an individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in the time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to travel six or eight hundred, must of necessity have something in him. possibly clym's fame, like homer's, owed something to the accidents of his situation; nevertheless famous he was. he grew up and was helped out in life. that waggery of fate which started clive as a writing clerk, gay as a linen-draper, keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory. the details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessary to give. at the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had kindly undertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form of sending him to budmouth. yeobright did not wish to go there, but it was the only feasible opening. thence he went to london; and thence, shortly after, to paris, where he had remained till now. something being expected of him, he had not been at home many days before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to arise in the heath. the natural term of a holiday had passed, yet he still remained. on the sunday morning following the week of thomasin's marriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cutting before fairway's house. here the local barbering was always done at this hour on this day, to be followed by the great sunday wash of the inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great sunday dressing an hour later. on egdon heath sunday proper did not begin till dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen of the day. these sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by fairway; the victim sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, and the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair as they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight to the four quarters of the heavens. summer and winter the scene was the same, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the stool was shifted a few feet round the corner. to complain of cold in sitting out of doors, hatless and coatless, while fairway told true stories between the cuts of the scissors, would have been to pronounce yourself no man at once. to flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face at the small stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or at scarifications of the neck by the comb, would have been thought a gross breach of good manners, considering that fairway did it all for nothing. a bleeding about the poll on sunday afternoons was amply accounted for by the explanation. "i have had my hair cut, you know." the conversation on yeobright had been started by a distant view of the young man rambling leisurely across the heath before them. "a man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three weeks for nothing," said fairway. "he's got some project in's head--depend upon that." "well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here," said sam. "i don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he had not been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the lord in heaven knows." before many more surmises could be indulged in yeobright had come near; and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them. marching up, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he said, without introduction, "now, folks, let me guess what you have been talking about." "ay, sure, if you will," said sam. "about me." "now, it is a thing i shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise," said fairway in a tone of integrity; "but since you have named it, master yeobright, i'll own that we was talking about 'ee. we were wondering what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made such a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade--now, that's the truth o't." "i'll tell you," said yeobright, with unexpected earnestness. "i am not sorry to have the opportunity. i've come home because, all things considered, i can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else. but i have only lately found this out. when i first got away from home i thought this place was not worth troubling about. i thought our life here was contemptible. to oil your boots instead of blacking them, to dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush: was there ever anything more ridiculous? i said." "so 'tis; so 'tis!" "no, no--you are wrong; it isn't." "beg your pardon, we thought that was your maning?" "well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. i found that i was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common with myself. i was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for another sort of life, which was not better than the life i had known before. it was simply different." "true; a sight different," said fairway. "yes, paris must be a taking place," said humphrey. "grand shop-winders, trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all winds and weathers--" "but you mistake me," pleaded clym. "all this was very depressing. but not so depressing as something i next perceived--that my business was the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man could be put to. that decided me: i would give it up and try to follow some rational occupation among the people i knew best, and to whom i could be of most use. i have come home; and this is how i mean to carry out my plan. i shall keep a school as near to egdon as possible, so as to be able to walk over here and have a night-school in my mother's house. but i must study a little at first, to get properly qualified. now, neighbours, i must go." and clym resumed his walk across the heath. "he'll never carry it out in the world," said fairway. "in a few weeks he'll learn to see things otherwise." "'tis good-hearted of the young man," said another. "but, for my part, i think he had better mind his business." ii the new course causes disappointment yeobright loved his kind. he had a conviction that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence. he wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather than individuals at the expense of the class. what was more, he was ready at once to be the first unit sacrificed. in passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those stages is almost sure to be worldly advance. we can hardly imagine bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining social aims as the transitional phase. yeobright's local peculiarity was that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living--nay, wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness with clowns. he was a john the baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentance for his text. mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was in many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date. much of this development he may have owed to his studious life in paris, where he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at the time. in consequence of this relatively advanced position, yeobright might have been called unfortunate. the rural world was not ripe for him. a man should be only partially before his time: to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. had philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an alexander. in the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the capacity to handle things. successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. a man who advocates aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only likely to be understood by a class to which social effort has become a stale matter. to argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accustomed. yeobright preaching to the egdon eremites that they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness without going through the process of enriching themselves, was not unlike arguing to ancient chaldeans that in ascending from earth to the pure empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into the intervening heaven of ether. was yeobright's mind well-proportioned? no. a well-proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity. it produces the poetry of rogers, the paintings of west, the statecraft of north, the spiritual guidance of tomline; enabling its possessors to find their way to wealth, to wind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to die comfortably in their beds, and to get the decent monument which, in many cases, they deserve. it never would have allowed yeobright to do such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to benefit his fellow-creatures. he walked along towards home without attending to paths. if anyone knew the heath well it was clym. he was permeated with its scenes, with its substance, and with its odours. he might be said to be its product. his eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all the first images of his memory were mingled; his estimate of life had been coloured by it: his toys had been the flint knives and arrow-heads which he found there, wondering why stones should "grow" to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze; his animal kingdom, the snakes and croppers; his society, its human haunters. take all the varying hates felt by eustacia vye towards the heath, and translate them into loves, and you have the heart of clym. he gazed upon the wide prospect as he walked, and was glad. to many persons this egdon was a place which had slipped out of its century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this. it was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. how could this be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadows watered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they looked like silver gridirons? the farmer, in his ride, who could smile at artificial grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh with sadness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant upland of heath nothing better than a frown. but as for yeobright, when he looked from the heights on his way he could not help indulging in a barbarous satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attempts at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting themselves. he descended into the valley, and soon reached his home at blooms-end. his mother was snipping dead leaves from the window-plants. she looked up at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long stay with her; her face had worn that look for several days. he could perceive that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting group amounted in his mother to concern. but she had asked no question with her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that he was not going to leave her soon. her silence besought an explanation of him more loudly than words. "i am not going back to paris again, mother," he said. "at least, in my old capacity. i have given up the business." mrs. yeobright turned in pained surprise. "i thought something was amiss, because of the boxes. i wonder you did not tell me sooner." "i ought to have done it. but i have been in doubt whether you would be pleased with my plan. i was not quite clear on a few points myself. i am going to take an entirely new course." "i am astonished, clym. how can you want to do better than you've been doing?" "very easily. but i shall not do better in the way you mean; i suppose it will be called doing worse. but i hate that business of mine, and i want to do some worthy thing before i die. as a schoolmaster i think to do it--a school-master to the poor and ignorant, to teach them what nobody else will." "after all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and when there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence, you say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. your fancies will be your ruin, clym." mrs. yeobright spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the words was but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. he did not answer. there was in his face that hopelessness of being understood which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument. no more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. his mother then began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "it disturbs me, clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughts as those. i hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in the world by your own free choice. of course, i have always supposed you were going to push straight on, as other men do--all who deserve the name--when they have been put in a good way of doing well." "i cannot help it," said clym, in a troubled tone. "mother, i hate the flashy business. talk about men who deserve the name, can any man deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach them how to breast the misery they are born to? i get up every morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as st. paul says, and yet there am i, trafficking in glittering splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest vanities--i, who have health and strength enough for anything. i have been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and the end is that i cannot do it any more." "why can't you do it as well as others?" "i don't know, except that there are many things other people care for which i don't; and that's partly why i think i ought to do this. for one thing, my body does not require much of me. i cannot enjoy delicacies; good things are wasted upon me. well, i ought to turn that defect to advantage, and by being able to do without what other people require i can spend what such things cost upon anybody else." now, yeobright, having inherited some of these very instincts from the woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in her through her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she might for his good. she spoke with less assurance. "and yet you might have been a wealthy man if you had only persevered. manager to that large diamond establishment--what better can a man wish for? what a post of trust and respect! i suppose you will be like your father; like him, you are getting weary of doing well." "no," said her son, "i am not weary of that, though i am weary of what you mean by it. mother, what is doing well?" mrs. yeobright was far too thoughtful a woman to be content with ready definitions, and, like the "what is wisdom?" of plato's socrates, and the "what is truth?" of pontius pilate, yeobright's burning question received no answer. the silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a tap at the door, and its opening. christian cantle appeared in the room in his sunday clothes. it was the custom on egdon to begin the preface to a story before absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of the narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face. christian had been saying to them while the door was leaving its latch, "to think that i, who go from home but once in a while, and hardly then, should have been there this morning!" "'tis news you have brought us, then, christian?" said mrs. yeobright. "ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o' day; for, says i, 'i must go and tell 'em, though they won't have half done dinner.' i assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. do ye think any harm will come o't?" "well--what?" "this morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa'son said, 'let us pray.' 'well,' thinks i, 'one may as well kneel as stand'; so down i went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing to oblige the man as i. we hadn't been hard at it for more than a minute when a most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just gied up their heart's blood. all the folk jumped up and then we found that susan nunsuch had pricked miss vye with a long stocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could get the young lady to church, where she don't come very often. she've waited for this chance for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the bewitching of susan's children that has been carried on so long. sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon as she could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my lady's arm." "good heaven, how horrid!" said mrs. yeobright. "sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as i was afeard there might be some tumult among us, i got behind the bass-viol and didn't see no more. but they carried her out into the air, 'tis said; but when they looked round for sue she was gone. what a scream that girl gied, poor thing! there were the pa'son in his surplice holding up his hand and saying, 'sit down, my good people, sit down!' but the deuce a bit would they sit down. o, and what d'ye think i found out, mrs. yeobright? the pa'son wears a suit of clothes under his surplice!--i could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm." "'tis a cruel thing," said yeobright. "yes," said his mother. "the nation ought to look into it," said christian. "here's humphrey coming, i think." in came humphrey. "well, have ye heard the news? but i see you have. 'tis a very strange thing that whenever one of egdon folk goes to church some rum job or other is sure to be doing. the last time one of us was there was when neighbour fairway went in the fall; and that was the day you forbad the banns, mrs. yeobright." "has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?" said clym. "they say she got better, and went home very well. and now i've told it i must be moving homeward myself." "and i," said humphrey. "truly now we shall see if there's anything in what folks say about her." when they were gone into the heath again yeobright said quietly to his mother, "do you think i have turned teacher too soon?" "it is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, and all such men," she replied. "but it is right, too, that i should try to lift you out of this life into something richer, and that you should not come back again, and be as if i had not tried at all." later in the day sam, the turf-cutter, entered. "i've come a-borrowing, mrs. yeobright. i suppose you have heard what's been happening to the beauty on the hill?" "yes, sam: half a dozen have been telling us." "beauty?" said clym. "yes, tolerably well-favoured," sam replied. "lord! all the country owns that 'tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a woman should have come to live up there." "dark or fair?" "now, though i've seen her twenty times, that's a thing i cannot call to mind." "darker than tamsin," murmured mrs. yeobright. "a woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say." "she is melancholy, then?" inquired clym. "she mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the people." "is she a young lady inclined for adventures?" "not to my knowledge." "doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some sort of excitement in this lonely place?" "no." "mumming, for instance?" "no. her notions be different. i should rather say her thoughts were far away from here, with lords and ladies she'll never know, and mansions she'll never see again." observing that clym appeared singularly interested mrs. yeobright said rather uneasily to sam, "you see more in her than most of us do. miss vye is to my mind too idle to be charming. i have never heard that she is of any use to herself or to other people. good girls don't get treated as witches even on egdon." "nonsense--that proves nothing either way," said yeobright. "well, of course i don't understand such niceties," said sam, withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument; "and what she is we must wait for time to tell us. the business that i have really called about is this, to borrow the longest and strongest rope you have. the captain's bucket has dropped into the well, and they are in want of water; and as all the chaps are at home today we think we can get it out for him. we have three cart-ropes already, but they won't reach to the bottom." mrs. yeobright told him that he might have whatever ropes he could find in the outhouse, and sam went out to search. when he passed by the door clym joined him, and accompanied him to the gate. "is this young witch-lady going to stay long at mistover?" he asked. "i should say so." "what a cruel shame to ill-use her, she must have suffered greatly--more in mind than in body." "'twas a graceless trick--such a handsome girl, too. you ought to see her, mr. yeobright, being a young man come from far, and with a little more to show for your years than most of us." "do you think she would like to teach children?" said clym. sam shook his head. "quite a different sort of body from that, i reckon." "o, it was merely something which occurred to me. it would of course be necessary to see her and talk it over--not an easy thing, by the way, for my family and hers are not very friendly." "i'll tell you how you mid see her, mr. yeobright," said sam. "we are going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house, and you could lend a hand. there's five or six coming, but the well is deep, and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape. she's sure to be walking round." "i'll think of it," said yeobright; and they parted. he thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said about eustacia inside the house at that time. whether this romantic martyr to superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem. iii the first act in a timeworn drama the afternoon was fine, and yeobright walked on the heath for an hour with his mother. when they reached the lofty ridge which divided the valley of blooms-end from the adjoining valley they stood still and looked round. the quiet woman inn was visible on the low margin of the heath in one direction, and afar on the other hand rose mistover knap. "you mean to call on thomasin?" he inquired. "yes. but you need not come this time," said his mother. "in that case i'll branch off here, mother. i am going to mistover." mrs. yeobright turned to him inquiringly. "i am going to help them get the bucket out of the captain's well," he continued. "as it is so very deep i may be useful. and i should like to see this miss vye--not so much for her good looks as for another reason." "must you go?" his mother asked. "i thought to." and they parted. "there is no help for it," murmured clym's mother gloomily as he withdrew. "they are sure to see each other. i wish sam would carry his news to other houses than mine." clym's retreating figure got smaller and smaller as it rose and fell over the hillocks on his way. "he is tender-hearted," said mrs. yeobright to herself while she watched him; "otherwise it would matter little. how he's going on!" he was, indeed, walking with a will over the furze, as straight as a line, as if his life depended upon it. his mother drew a long breath, and, abandoning the visit to thomasin, turned back. the evening films began to make nebulous pictures of the valleys, but the high lands still were raked by the declining rays of the winter sun, which glanced on clym as he walked forward, eyed by every rabbit and fieldfare around, a long shadow advancing in front of him. on drawing near to the furze-covered bank and ditch which fortified the captain's dwelling he could hear voices within, signifying that operations had been already begun. at the side-entrance gate he stopped and looked over. half a dozen able-bodied men were standing in a line from the well-mouth, holding a rope which passed over the well-roller into the depths below. fairway, with a piece of smaller rope round his body, made fast to one of the standards, to guard against accidents, was leaning over the opening, his right hand clasping the vertical rope that descended into the well. "now, silence, folks," said fairway. the talking ceased, and fairway gave a circular motion to the rope, as if he were stirring batter. at the end of a minute a dull splashing reverberated from the bottom of the well; the helical twist he had imparted to the rope had reached the grapnel below. "haul!" said fairway; and the men who held the rope began to gather it over the wheel. "i think we've got sommat," said one of the haulers-in. "then pull steady," said fairway. they gathered up more and more, till a regular dripping into the well could be heard below. it grew smarter with the increasing height of the bucket, and presently a hundred and fifty feet of rope had been pulled in. fairway then lit a lantern, tied it to another cord, and began lowering it into the well beside the first. clym came forward and looked down. strange humid leaves, which knew nothing of the seasons of the year, and quaint-natured mosses were revealed on the wellside as the lantern descended; till its rays fell upon a confused mass of rope and bucket dangling in the dank, dark air. "we've only got en by the edge of the hoop--steady, for god's sake!" said fairway. they pulled with the greatest gentleness, till the wet bucket appeared about two yards below them, like a dead friend come to earth again. three or four hands were stretched out, then jerk went the rope, whizz went the wheel, the two foremost haulers fell backward, the beating of a falling body was heard, receding down the sides of the well, and a thunderous uproar arose at the bottom. the bucket was gone again. "damn the bucket!" said fairway. "lower again," said sam. "i'm as stiff as a ram's horn stooping so long," said fairway, standing up and stretching himself till his joints creaked. "rest a few minutes, timothy," said yeobright. "i'll take your place." the grapnel was again lowered. its smart impact upon the distant water reached their ears like a kiss, whereupon yeobright knelt down, and leaning over the well began dragging the grapnel round and round as fairway had done. "tie a rope round him--it is dangerous!" cried a soft and anxious voice somewhere above them. everybody turned. the speaker was a woman, gazing down upon the group from an upper window, whose panes blazed in the ruddy glare from the west. her lips were parted and she appeared for the moment to forget where she was. the rope was accordingly tied round his waist, and the work proceeded. at the next haul the weight was not heavy, and it was discovered that they had only secured a coil of the rope detached from the bucket. the tangled mass was thrown into the background. humphrey took yeobright's place, and the grapnel was lowered again. yeobright retired to the heap of recovered rope in a meditative mood. of the identity between the lady's voice and that of the melancholy mummer he had not a moment's doubt. "how thoughtful of her!" he said to himself. eustacia, who had reddened when she perceived the effect of her exclamation upon the group below, was no longer to be seen at the window, though yeobright scanned it wistfully. while he stood there the men at the well succeeded in getting up the bucket without a mishap. one of them went to inquire for the captain, to learn what orders he wished to give for mending the well-tackle. the captain proved to be away from home, and eustacia appeared at the door and came out. she had lapsed into an easy and dignified calm, far removed from the intensity of life in her words of solicitude for clym's safety. "will it be possible to draw water here tonight?" she inquired. "no, miss; the bottom of the bucket is clean knocked out. and as we can do no more now we'll leave off, and come again tomorrow morning." "no water," she murmured, turning away. "i can send you up some from blooms-end," said clym, coming forward and raising his hat as the men retired. yeobright and eustacia looked at each other for one instant, as if each had in mind those few moments during which a certain moonlight scene was common to both. with the glance the calm fixity of her features sublimed itself to an expression of refinement and warmth: it was like garish noon rising to the dignity of sunset in a couple of seconds. "thank you; it will hardly be necessary," she replied. "but if you have no water?" "well, it is what i call no water," she said, blushing, and lifting her long-lashed eyelids as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. "but my grandfather calls it water enough. i'll show you what i mean." she moved away a few yards, and clym followed. when she reached the corner of the enclosure, where the steps were formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement towards the well. it incidentally showed that her apparent languor did not arise from lack of force. clym ascended behind her, and noticed a circular burnt patch at the top of the bank. "ashes?" he said. "yes," said eustacia. "we had a little bonfire here last fifth of november, and those are the marks of it." on that spot had stood the fire she had kindled to attract wildeve. "that's the only kind of water we have," she continued, tossing a stone into the pool, which lay on the outside of the bank like the white of an eye without its pupil. the stone fell with a flounce, but no wildeve appeared on the other side, as on a previous occasion there. "my grandfather says he lived for more than twenty years at sea on water twice as bad as that," she went on, "and considers it quite good enough for us here on an emergency." "well, as a matter of fact there are no impurities in the water of these pools at this time of the year. it has only just rained into them." she shook her head. "i am managing to exist in a wilderness, but i cannot drink from a pond," she said. clym looked towards the well, which was now deserted, the men having gone home. "it is a long way to send for spring-water," he said, after a silence. "but since you don't like this in the pond, i'll try to get you some myself." he went back to the well. "yes, i think i could do it by tying on this pail." "but, since i would not trouble the men to get it, i cannot in conscience let you." "i don't mind the trouble at all." he made fast the pail to the long coil of rope, put it over the wheel, and allowed it to descend by letting the rope slip through his hands. before it had gone far, however, he checked it. "i must make fast the end first, or we may lose the whole," he said to eustacia, who had drawn near. "could you hold this a moment, while i do it--or shall i call your servant?" "i can hold it," said eustacia; and he placed the rope in her hands, going then to search for the end. "i suppose i may let it slip down?" she inquired. "i would advise you not to let it go far," said clym. "it will get much heavier, you will find." however, eustacia had begun to pay out. while he was tying she cried, "i cannot stop it!" clym ran to her side, and found he could only check the rope by twisting the loose part round the upright post, when it stopped with a jerk. "has it hurt you?" "yes," she replied. "very much?" "no; i think not." she opened her hands. one of them was bleeding; the rope had dragged off the skin. eustacia wrapped it in her handkerchief. "you should have let go," said yeobright. "why didn't you?" "you said i was to hold on... this is the second time i have been wounded today." "ah, yes; i have heard of it. i blush for my native egdon. was it a serious injury you received in church, miss vye?" there was such an abundance of sympathy in clym's tone that eustacia slowly drew up her sleeve and disclosed her round white arm. a bright red spot appeared on its smooth surface, like a ruby on parian marble. "there it is," she said, putting her finger against the spot. "it was dastardly of the woman," said clym. "will not captain vye get her punished?" "he is gone from home on that very business. i did not know that i had such a magic reputation." "and you fainted?" said clym, looking at the scarlet little puncture as if he would like to kiss it and make it well. "yes, it frightened me. i had not been to church for a long time. and now i shall not go again for ever so long--perhaps never. i cannot face their eyes after this. don't you think it dreadfully humiliating? i wished i was dead for hours after, but i don't mind now." "i have come to clean away these cobwebs," said yeobright. "would you like to help me--by high-class teaching? we might benefit them much." "i don't quite feel anxious to. i have not much love for my fellow-creatures. sometimes i quite hate them." "still i think that if you were to hear my scheme you might take an interest in it. there is no use in hating people--if you hate anything, you should hate what produced them." "do you mean nature? i hate her already. but i shall be glad to hear your scheme at any time." the situation had now worked itself out, and the next natural thing was for them to part. clym knew this well enough, and eustacia made a move of conclusion; yet he looked at her as if he had one word more to say. perhaps if he had not lived in paris it would never have been uttered. "we have met before," he said, regarding her with rather more interest than was necessary. "i do not own it," said eustacia, with a repressed, still look. "but i may think what i like." "yes." "you are lonely here." "i cannot endure the heath, except in its purple season. the heath is a cruel taskmaster to me." "can you say so?" he asked. "to my mind it is most exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. i would rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world." "it is well enough for artists; but i never would learn to draw." "and there is a very curious druidical stone just out there." he threw a pebble in the direction signified. "do you often go to see it?" "i was not even aware there existed any such curious druidical stone. i am aware that there are boulevards in paris." yeobright looked thoughtfully on the ground. "that means much," he said. "it does indeed," said eustacia. "i remember when i had the same longing for town bustle. five years of a great city would be a perfect cure for that." "heaven send me such a cure! now, mr. yeobright, i will go indoors and plaster my wounded hand." they separated, and eustacia vanished in the increasing shade. she seemed full of many things. her past was a blank, her life had begun. the effect upon clym of this meeting he did not fully discover till some time after. during his walk home his most intelligible sensation was that his scheme had somehow become glorified. a beautiful woman had been intertwined with it. on reaching the house he went up to the room which was to be made his study, and occupied himself during the evening in unpacking his books from the boxes and arranging them on shelves. from another box he drew a lamp and a can of oil. he trimmed the lamp, arranged his table, and said, "now, i am ready to begin." he rose early the next morning, read two hours before breakfast by the light of his lamp--read all the morning, all the afternoon. just when the sun was going down his eyes felt weary, and he leant back in his chair. his room overlooked the front of the premises and the valley of the heath beyond. the lowest beams of the winter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings, across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale, where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding treetops stretched forth in long dark prongs. having been seated at work all day, he decided to take a turn upon the hills before it got dark; and, going out forthwith, he struck across the heath towards mistover. it was an hour and a half later when he again appeared at the garden gate. the shutters of the house were closed, and christian cantle, who had been wheeling manure about the garden all day, had gone home. on entering he found that his mother, after waiting a long time for him, had finished her meal. "where have you been, clym?" she immediately said. "why didn't you tell me that you were going away at this time?" "i have been on the heath." "you'll meet eustacia vye if you go up there." clym paused a minute. "yes, i met her this evening," he said, as though it were spoken under the sheer necessity of preserving honesty. "i wondered if you had." "it was no appointment." "no; such meetings never are." "but you are not angry, mother?" "i can hardly say that i am not. angry? no. but when i consider the usual nature of the drag which causes men of promise to disappoint the world i feel uneasy." "you deserve credit for the feeling, mother. but i can assure you that you need not be disturbed by it on my account." "when i think of you and your new crotchets," said mrs. yeobright, with some emphasis, "i naturally don't feel so comfortable as i did a twelvemonth ago. it is incredible to me that a man accustomed to the attractive women of paris and elsewhere should be so easily worked upon by a girl in a heath. you could just as well have walked another way." "i had been studying all day." "well, yes," she added more hopefully, "i have been thinking that you might get on as a schoolmaster, and rise that way, since you really are determined to hate the course you were pursuing." yeobright was unwilling to disturb this idea, though his scheme was far enough removed from one wherein the education of youth should be made a mere channel of social ascent. he had no desires of that sort. he had reached the stage in a young man's life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. in france it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in england we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be. the love between the young man and his mother was strangely invisible now. of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. in its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful. it was so with these. had conversations between them been overheard, people would have said, "how cold they are to each other!" his theory and his wishes about devoting his future to teaching had made an impression on mrs. yeobright. indeed, how could it be otherwise when he was a part of her--when their discourses were as if carried on between the right and the left hands of the same body? he had despaired of reaching her by argument; and it was almost as a discovery to him that he could reach her by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to yells. strangely enough he began to feel now that it would not be so hard to persuade her who was his best friend that comparative poverty was essentially the higher course for him, as to reconcile to his feelings the act of persuading her. from every provident point of view his mother was so undoubtedly right, that he was not without a sickness of heart in finding he could shake her. she had a singular insight into life, considering that she had never mixed with it. there are instances of persons who, without clear ideas of the things they criticize, have yet had clear ideas of the relations of those things. blacklock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; professor sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. in the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. we call it intuition. what was the great world to mrs. yeobright? a multitude whose tendencies could be perceived, though not its essences. communities were seen by her as from a distance; she saw them as we see the throngs which cover the canvases of sallaert, van alsloot, and others of that school--vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in definite directions, but whose features are indistinguishable by the very comprehensiveness of the view. one could see that, as far as it had gone, her life was very complete on its reflective side. the philosophy of her nature, and its limitation by circumstances, was almost written in her movements. they had a majestic foundation, though they were far from being majestic; and they had a groundwork of assurance, but they were not assured. as her once elastic walk had become deadened by time, so had her natural pride of life been hindered in its blooming by her necessities. the next slight touch in the shaping of clym's destiny occurred a few days after. a barrow was opened on the heath, and yeobright attended the operation, remaining away from his study during several hours. in the afternoon christian returned from a journey in the same direction, and mrs. yeobright questioned him. "they have dug a hole, and they have found things like flowerpots upside down, mis'ess yeobright; and inside these be real charnel bones. they have carried 'em off to men's houses; but i shouldn't like to sleep where they will bide. dead folks have been known to come and claim their own. mr. yeobright had got one pot of the bones, and was going to bring 'em home--real skellington bones--but 'twas ordered otherwise. you'll be relieved to hear that he gave away his pot and all, on second thoughts; and a blessed thing for ye, mis'ess yeobright, considering the wind o' nights." "gave it away?" "yes. to miss vye. she has a cannibal taste for such churchyard furniture seemingly." "miss vye was there too?" "ay, 'a b'lieve she was." when clym came home, which was shortly after, his mother said, in a curious tone, "the urn you had meant for me you gave away." yeobright made no reply; the current of her feeling was too pronounced to admit it. the early weeks of the year passed on. yeobright certainly studied at home, but he also walked much abroad, and the direction of his walk was always towards some point of a line between mistover and rainbarrow. the month of march arrived, and the heath showed its first signs of awakening from winter trance. the awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness. the pool outside the bank by eustacia's dwelling, which seemed as dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and made noises in his observation, would gradually disclose a state of great animation when silently watched awhile. a timid animal world had come to life for the season. little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of a gong. on an evening such as this yeobright descended into the blooms-end valley from beside that very pool, where he had been standing with another person quite silently and quite long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in nature; yet he had not heard it. his walk was rapid as he came down, and he went with a springy tread. before entering upon his mother's premises he stopped and breathed. the light which shone forth on him from the window revealed that his face was flushed and his eye bright. what it did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there. the abiding presence of this impress was so real that he hardly dared to enter the house, for it seemed as if his mother might say, "what red spot is that glowing upon your mouth so vividly?" but he entered soon after. the tea was ready, and he sat down opposite his mother. she did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat. his mother's taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care. he knew why she said so little, but he could not remove the cause of her bearing towards him. these half-silent sittings were far from uncommon with them now. at last yeobright made a beginning of what was intended to strike at the whole root of the matter. "five days have we sat like this at meals with scarcely a word. what's the use of it, mother?" "none," said she, in a heart-swollen tone. "but there is only too good a reason." "not when you know all. i have been wanting to speak about this, and i am glad the subject is begun. the reason, of course, is eustacia vye. well, i confess i have seen her lately, and have seen her a good many times." "yes, yes; and i know what that amounts to. it troubles me, clym. you are wasting your life here; and it is solely on account of her. if it had not been for that woman you would never have entertained this teaching scheme at all." clym looked hard at his mother. "you know that is not it," he said. "well, i know you had decided to attempt it before you saw her; but that would have ended in intentions. it was very well to talk of, but ridiculous to put in practice. i fully expected that in the course of a month or two you would have seen the folly of such self-sacrifice, and would have been by this time back again to paris in some business or other. i can understand objections to the diamond trade--i really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life of a man like you even though it might have made you a millionaire. but now i see how mistaken you are about this girl i doubt if you could be correct about other things." "how am i mistaken in her?" "she is lazy and dissatisfied. but that is not all of it. supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?" "well, there are practical reasons," clym began, and then almost broke off under an overpowering sense of the weight of argument which could be brought against his statement. "if i take a school an educated woman would be invaluable as a help to me." "what! you really mean to marry her?" "it would be premature to state that plainly. but consider what obvious advantages there would be in doing it. she--" "don't suppose she has any money. she hasn't a farthing." "she is excellently educated, and would make a good matron in a boarding-school. i candidly own that i have modified my views a little, in deference to you; and it should satisfy you. i no longer adhere to my intention of giving with my own mouth rudimentary education to the lowest class. i can do better. i can establish a good private school for farmers' sons, and without stopping the school i can manage to pass examinations. by this means, and by the assistance of a wife like her--" "oh, clym!" "i shall ultimately, i hope, be at the head of one of the best schools in the county." yeobright had enunciated the word "her" with a fervour which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indiscreet. hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could, in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that ill-timed betrayal of feeling for a new woman. "you are blinded, clym," she said warmly. "it was a bad day for you when you first set eyes on her. and your scheme is merely a castle in the air built on purpose to justify this folly which has seized you, and to salve your conscience on the irrational situation you are in." "mother, that's not true," he firmly answered. "can you maintain that i sit and tell untruths, when all i wish to do is to save you from sorrow? for shame, clym! but it is all through that woman--a hussy!" clym reddened like fire and rose. he placed his hand upon his mother's shoulder and said, in a tone which hung strangely between entreaty and command, "i won't hear it. i may be led to answer you in a way which we shall both regret." his mother parted her lips to begin some other vehement truth, but on looking at him she saw that in his face which led her to leave the words unsaid. yeobright walked once or twice across the room, and then suddenly went out of the house. it was eleven o'clock when he came in, though he had not been further than the precincts of the garden. his mother was gone to bed. a light was left burning on the table, and supper was spread. without stopping for any food he secured the doors and went upstairs. iv an hour of bliss and many hours of sadness the next day was gloomy enough at blooms-end. yeobright remained in his study, sitting over the open books; but the work of those hours was miserably scant. determined that there should be nothing in his conduct towards his mother resembling sullenness, he had occasionally spoken to her on passing matters, and would take no notice of the brevity of her replies. with the same resolve to keep up a show of conversation he said, about seven o'clock in the evening, "there's an eclipse of the moon tonight. i am going out to see it." and, putting on his overcoat, he left her. the low moon was not as yet visible from the front of the house, and yeobright climbed out of the valley until he stood in the full flood of her light. but even now he walked on, and his steps were in the direction of rainbarrow. in half an hour he stood at the top. the sky was clear from verge to verge, and the moon flung her rays over the whole heath, but without sensibly lighting it, except where paths and water-courses had laid bare the white flints and glistening quartz sand, which made streaks upon the general shade. after standing awhile he stooped and felt the heather. it was dry, and he flung himself down upon the barrow, his face towards the moon, which depicted a small image of herself in each of his eyes. he had often come up here without stating his purpose to his mother; but this was the first time that he had been ostensibly frank as to his purpose while really concealing it. it was a moral situation which, three months earlier, he could hardly have credited of himself. in returning to labour in this sequestered spot he had anticipated an escape from the chafing of social necessities; yet behold they were here also. more than ever he longed to be in some world where personal ambition was not the only recognized form of progress--such, perhaps, as might have been the case at some time or other in the silvery globe then shining upon him. his eye travelled over the length and breadth of that distant country--over the bay of rainbows, the sombre sea of crises, the ocean of storms, the lake of dreams, the vast walled plains, and the wondrous ring mountains--till he almost felt himself to be voyaging bodily through its wild scenes, standing on its hollow hills, traversing its deserts, descending its vales and old sea bottoms, or mounting to the edges of its craters. while he watched the far-removed landscape a tawny stain grew into being on the lower verge: the eclipse had begun. this marked a preconcerted moment: for the remote celestial phenomenon had been pressed into sublunary service as a lover's signal. yeobright's mind flew back to earth at the sight; he arose, shook himself and listened. minute after minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed, and the shadow on the moon perceptibly widened. he heard a rustling on his left hand, a cloaked figure with an upturned face appeared at the base of the barrow, and clym descended. in a moment the figure was in his arms, and his lips upon hers. "my eustacia!" "clym, dearest!" such a situation had less than three months brought forth. they remained long without a single utterance, for no language could reach the level of their condition: words were as the rusty implements of a by-gone barbarous epoch, and only to be occasionally tolerated. "i began to wonder why you did not come," said yeobright, when she had withdrawn a little from his embrace. "you said ten minutes after the first mark of shade on the edge of the moon, and that's what it is now." "well, let us only think that here we are." then, holding each other's hand, they were again silent, and the shadow on the moon's disc grew a little larger. "has it seemed long since you last saw me?" she asked. "it has seemed sad." "and not long? that's because you occupy yourself, and so blind yourself to my absence. to me, who can do nothing, it has been like living under stagnant water." "i would rather bear tediousness, dear, than have time made short by such means as have shortened mine." "in what way is that? you have been thinking you wished you did not love me." "how can a man wish that, and yet love on? no, eustacia." "men can, women cannot." "well, whatever i may have thought, one thing is certain--i do love you--past all compass and description. i love you to oppressiveness--i, who have never before felt more than a pleasant passing fancy for any woman i have ever seen. let me look right into your moonlit face and dwell on every line and curve in it! only a few hair-breadths make the difference between this face and faces i have seen many times before i knew you; yet what a difference--the difference between everything and nothing at all. one touch on that mouth again! there, and there, and there. your eyes seem heavy, eustacia." "no, it is my general way of looking. i think it arises from my feeling sometimes an agonizing pity for myself that i ever was born." "you don't feel it now?" "no. yet i know that we shall not love like this always. nothing can ensure the continuance of love. it will evaporate like a spirit, and so i feel full of fears." "you need not." "ah, you don't know. you have seen more than i, and have been into cities and among people that i have only heard of, and have lived more years than i; but yet i am older at this than you. i loved another man once, and now i love you." "in god's mercy don't talk so, eustacia!" "but i do not think i shall be the one who wearies first. it will, i fear, end in this way: your mother will find out that you meet me, and she will influence you against me!" "that can never be. she knows of these meetings already." "and she speaks against me?" "i will not say." "there, go away! obey her. i shall ruin you. it is foolish of you to meet me like this. kiss me, and go away for ever. for ever--do you hear?--for ever!" "not i." "it is your only chance. many a man's love has been a curse to him." "you are desperate, full of fancies, and wilful; and you misunderstand. i have an additional reason for seeing you tonight besides love of you. for though, unlike you, i feel our affection may be eternal, i feel with you in this, that our present mode of existence cannot last." "oh! 'tis your mother. yes, that's it! i knew it." "never mind what it is. believe this, i cannot let myself lose you. i must have you always with me. this very evening i do not like to let you go. there is only one cure for this anxiety, dearest--you must be my wife." she started: then endeavoured to say calmly, "cynics say that cures the anxiety by curing the love." "but you must answer me. shall i claim you some day--i don't mean at once?" "i must think," eustacia murmured. "at present speak of paris to me. is there any place like it on earth?" "it is very beautiful. but will you be mine?" "i will be nobody else's in the world--does that satisfy you?" "yes, for the present." "now tell me of the tuileries, and the louvre," she continued evasively. "i hate talking of paris! well, i remember one sunny room in the louvre which would make a fitting place for you to live in--the galerie d'apollon. its windows are mainly east; and in the early morning, when the sun is bright, the whole apartment is in a perfect blaze of splendour. the rays bristle and dart from the encrustations of gilding to the magnificent inlaid coffers, from the coffers to the gold and silver plate, from the plate to the jewels and precious stones, from these to the enamels, till there is a perfect network of light which quite dazzles the eye. but now, about our marriage--" "and versailles--the king's gallery is some such gorgeous room, is it not?" "yes. but what's the use of talking of gorgeous rooms? by the way, the little trianon would suit us beautifully to live in, and you might walk in the gardens in the moonlight and think you were in some english shrubbery; it is laid out in english fashion." "i should hate to think that!" "then you could keep to the lawn in front of the grand palace. all about there you would doubtless feel in a world of historical romance." he went on, since it was all new to her, and described fontainebleau, st. cloud, the bois, and many other familiar haunts of the parisians; till she said-- "when used you to go to these places?" "on sundays." "ah, yes. i dislike english sundays. how i should chime in with their manners over there! dear clym, you'll go back again?" clym shook his head, and looked at the eclipse. "if you'll go back again i'll--be something," she said tenderly, putting her head near his breast. "if you'll agree i'll give my promise, without making you wait a minute longer." "how extraordinary that you and my mother should be of one mind about this!" said yeobright. "i have vowed not to go back, eustacia. it is not the place i dislike; it is the occupation." "but you can go in some other capacity." "no. besides, it would interfere with my scheme. don't press that, eustacia. will you marry me?" "i cannot tell." "now--never mind paris; it is no better than other spots. promise, sweet!" "you will never adhere to your education plan, i am quite sure; and then it will be all right for me; and so i promise to be yours for ever and ever." clym brought her face towards his by a gentle pressure of the hand, and kissed her. "ah! but you don't know what you have got in me," she said. "sometimes i think there is not that in eustacia vye which will make a good homespun wife. well, let it go--see how our time is slipping, slipping, slipping!" she pointed towards the half eclipsed moon. "you are too mournful." "no. only i dread to think of anything beyond the present. what is, we know. we are together now, and it is unknown how long we shall be so; the unknown always fills my mind with terrible possibilities, even when i may reasonably expect it to be cheerful... clym, the eclipsed moonlight shines upon your face with a strange foreign colour, and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold. that means that you should be doing better things than this." "you are ambitious, eustacia--no, not exactly ambitious, luxurious. i ought to be of the same vein, to make you happy, i suppose. and yet, far from that, i could live and die in a hermitage here, with proper work to do." there was that in his tone which implied distrust of his position as a solicitous lover, a doubt if he were acting fairly towards one whose tastes touched his own only at rare and infrequent points. she saw his meaning, and whispered, in a low, full accent of eager assurance "don't mistake me, clym: though i should like paris, i love you for yourself alone. to be your wife and live in paris would be heaven to me; but i would rather live with you in a hermitage here than not be yours at all. it is gain to me either way, and very great gain. there's my too candid confession." "spoken like a woman. and now i must soon leave you. i'll walk with you towards your house." "but must you go home yet?" she asked. "yes, the sand has nearly slipped away, i see, and the eclipse is creeping on more and more. don't go yet! stop till the hour has run itself out; then i will not press you any more. you will go home and sleep well; i keep sighing in my sleep! do you ever dream of me?" "i cannot recollect a clear dream of you." "i see your face in every scene of my dreams, and hear your voice in every sound. i wish i did not. it is too much what i feel. they say such love never lasts. but it must! and yet once, i remember, i saw an officer of the hussars ride down the street at budmouth, and though he was a total stranger and never spoke to me, i loved him till i thought i should really die of love--but i didn't die, and at last i left off caring for him. how terrible it would be if a time should come when i could not love you, my clym!" "please don't say such reckless things. when we see such a time at hand we will say, 'i have outlived my faith and purpose,' and die. there, the hour has expired: now let us walk on." hand in hand they went along the path towards mistover. when they were near the house he said, "it is too late for me to see your grandfather tonight. do you think he will object to it?" "i will speak to him. i am so accustomed to be my own mistress that it did not occur to me that we should have to ask him." then they lingeringly separated, and clym descended towards blooms-end. and as he walked further and further from the charmed atmosphere of his olympian girl his face grew sad with a new sort of sadness. a perception of the dilemma in which his love had placed him came back in full force. in spite of eustacia's apparent willingness to wait through the period of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established in his new pursuit, he could not but perceive at moments that she loved him rather as a visitant from a gay world to which she rightly belonged than as a man with a purpose opposed to that recent past of his which so interested her. often at their meetings a word or a sigh escaped her. it meant that, though she made no conditions as to his return to the french capital, this was what she secretly longed for in the event of marriage; and it robbed him of many an otherwise pleasant hour. along with that came the widening breach between himself and his mother. whenever any little occurrence had brought into more prominence than usual the disappointment that he was causing her it had sent him on lone and moody walks; or he was kept awake a great part of the night by the turmoil of spirit which such a recognition created. if mrs. yeobright could only have been led to see what a sound and worthy purpose this purpose of his was and how little it was being affected by his devotions to eustacia, how differently would she regard him! thus as his sight grew accustomed to the first blinding halo kindled about him by love and beauty, yeobright began to perceive what a strait he was in. sometimes he wished that he had never known eustacia, immediately to retract the wish as brutal. three antagonistic growths had to be kept alive: his mother's trust in him, his plan for becoming a teacher, and eustacia's happiness. his fervid nature could not afford to relinquish one of these, though two of the three were as many as he could hope to preserve. though his love was as chaste as that of petrarch for his laura, it had made fetters of what previously was only a difficulty. a position which was not too simple when he stood wholehearted had become indescribably complicated by the addition of eustacia. just when his mother was beginning to tolerate one scheme he had introduced another still bitterer than the first, and the combination was more than she could bear. v sharp words are spoken, and a crisis ensues when yeobright was not with eustacia he was sitting slavishly over his books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. these meetings were carried on with the greatest secrecy. one afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to thomasin. he could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had happened. "i have been told an incomprehensible thing," she said mournfully. "the captain has let out at the woman that you and eustacia vye are engaged to be married." "we are," said yeobright. "but it may not be yet for a very long time." "i should hardly think it would be yet for a very long time! you will take her to paris, i suppose?" she spoke with weary hopelessness. "i am not going back to paris." "what will you do with a wife, then?" "keep a school in budmouth, as i have told you." "that's incredible! the place is overrun with schoolmasters. you have no special qualifications. what possible chance is there for such as you?" "there is no chance of getting rich. but with my system of education, which is as new as it is true, i shall do a great deal of good to my fellow-creatures." "dreams, dreams! if there had been any system left to be invented they would have found it out at the universities long before this time." "never, mother. they cannot find it out, because their teachers don't come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that is, those who have had no preliminary training. my plan is one for instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins." "i might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would have been bad enough; but being--" "she is a good girl." "so you think. a corfu bandmaster's daughter! what has her life been? her surname even is not her true one." "she is captain vye's granddaughter, and her father merely took her mother's name. and she is a lady by instinct." "they call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain." "he was in the royal navy!" "no doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. why doesn't he look after her? no lady would rove about the heath at all hours of the day and night as she does. but that's not all of it. there was something queer between her and thomasin's husband at one time--i am as sure of it as that i stand here." "eustacia has told me. he did pay her a little attention a year ago; but there's no harm in that. i like her all the better." "clym," said his mother with firmness, "i have no proofs against her, unfortunately. but if she makes you a good wife, there has never been a bad one." "believe me, you are almost exasperating," said yeobright vehemently. "and this very day i had intended to arrange a meeting between you. but you give me no peace; you try to thwart my wishes in everything." "i hate the thought of any son of mine marrying badly! i wish i had never lived to see this; it is too much for me--it is more than i dreamt!" she turned to the window. her breath was coming quickly, and her lips were pale, parted, and trembling. "mother," said clym, "whatever you do, you will always be dear to me--that you know. but one thing i have a right to say, which is, that at my age i am old enough to know what is best for me." mrs. yeobright remained for some time silent and shaken, as if she could say no more. then she replied, "best? is it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? don't you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you? you give up your whole thought--you set your whole soul--to please a woman." "i do. and that woman is you." "how can you treat me so flippantly!" said his mother, turning again to him with a tearful look. "you are unnatural, clym, and i did not expect it." "very likely," said he cheerlessly. "you did not know the measure you were going to mete me, and therefore did not know the measure that would be returned to you again." "you answer me; you think only of her. you stick to her in all things." "that proves her to be worthy. i have never yet supported what is bad. and i do not care only for her. i care for you and for myself, and for anything that is good. when a woman once dislikes another she is merciless!" "o clym! please don't go setting down as my fault what is your obstinate wrong-headedness. if you wished to connect yourself with an unworthy person why did you come home here to do it? why didn't you do it in paris?--it is more the fashion there. you have come only to distress me, a lonely woman, and shorten my days! i wish that you would bestow your presence where you bestow your love!" clym said huskily, "you are my mother. i will say no more--beyond this, that i beg your pardon for having thought this my home. i will no longer inflict myself upon you; i'll go." and he went out with tears in his eyes. it was a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer, and the moist hollows of the heath had passed from their brown to their green stage. yeobright walked to the edge of the basin which extended down from mistover and rainbarrow. by this time he was calm, and he looked over the landscape. in the minor valleys, between the hillocks which diversified the contour of the vale, the fresh young ferns were luxuriantly growing up, ultimately to reach a height of five or six feet. he descended a little way, flung himself down in a spot where a path emerged from one of the small hollows, and waited. hither it was that he had promised eustacia to bring his mother this afternoon, that they might meet and be friends. his attempt had utterly failed. he was in a nest of vivid green. the ferny vegetation round him, though so abundant, was quite uniform: it was a grove of machine-made foliage, a world of green triangles with saw-edges, and not a single flower. the air was warm with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness was unbroken. lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living things to be beheld. the scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants were few, and of the fern kind; when there was neither bud nor blossom, nothing but a monotonous extent of leafage, amid which no bird sang. when he had reclined for some considerable time, gloomily pondering, he discerned above the ferns a drawn bonnet of white silk approaching from the left, and yeobright knew directly that it covered the head of her he loved. his heart awoke from its apathy to a warm excitement, and, jumping to his feet, he said aloud, "i knew she was sure to come." she vanished in a hollow for a few moments, and then her whole form unfolded itself from the brake. "only you here?" she exclaimed, with a disappointed air, whose hollowness was proved by her rising redness and her half-guilty low laugh. "where is mrs. yeobright?" "she has not come," he replied in a subdued tone. "i wish i had known that you would be here alone," she said seriously, "and that we were going to have such an idle, pleasant time as this. pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it. i have not thought once today of having you all to myself this afternoon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone." "it is indeed." "poor clym!" she continued, looking tenderly into his face. "you are sad. something has happened at your home. never mind what is--let us only look at what seems." "but, darling, what shall we do?" said he. "still go on as we do now--just live on from meeting to meeting, never minding about another day. you, i know, are always thinking of that--i can see you are. but you must not--will you, dear clym?" "you are just like all women. they are ever content to build their lives on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would fain make a globe to suit them. listen to this, eustacia. there is a subject i have determined to put off no longer. your sentiment on the wisdom of _carpe diem_ does not impress me today. our present mode of life must shortly be brought to an end." "it is your mother!" "it is. i love you none the less in telling you; it is only right you should know." "i have feared my bliss," she said, with the merest motion of her lips. "it has been too intense and consuming." "there is hope yet. there are forty years of work in me yet, and why should you despair? i am only at an awkward turning. i wish people wouldn't be so ready to think that there is no progress without uniformity." "ah--your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it. well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that fate loves to indulge in. i have heard of people, who, upon coming suddenly into happiness, have died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy it. i felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but i shall be spared it now. let us walk on." clym took the hand which was already bared for him--it was a favourite way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand--and led her through the ferns. they formed a very comely picture of love at full flush, as they walked along the valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down on their right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as poplar trees, far out across the furze and fern. eustacia went with her head thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and voluptuous air of triumph pervading her eyes at having won by her own unaided self a man who was her perfect complement in attainment, appearance, and age. on the young man's part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him from paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its original proportions. they wandered onward till they reached the nether margin of the heath, where it became marshy and merged in moorland. "i must part from you here, clym," said eustacia. they stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell. everything before them was on a perfect level. the sun, resting on the horizon line, streamed across the ground from between copper-coloured and lilac clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft green. all dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread by a purple haze, against which groups of wailing gnats shone out, rising upwards and dancing about like sparks of fire. "o! this leaving you is too hard to bear!" exclaimed eustacia in a sudden whisper of anguish. "your mother will influence you too much; i shall not be judged fairly, it will get afloat that i am not a good girl, and the witch story will be added to make me blacker!" "they cannot. nobody dares to speak disrespectfully of you or of me." "oh how i wish i was sure of never losing you--that you could not be able to desert me anyhow!" clym stood silent a moment. his feelings were high, the moment was passionate, and he cut the knot. "you shall be sure of me, darling," he said, folding her in his arms. "we will be married at once." "o clym!" "do you agree to it?" "if--if we can." "we certainly can, both being of full age. and i have not followed my occupation all these years without having accumulated money; and if you will agree to live in a tiny cottage somewhere on the heath, until i take a house in budmouth for the school, we can do it at a very little expense." "how long shall we have to live in the tiny cottage, clym?" "about six months. at the end of that time i shall have finished my reading--yes, we will do it, and this heartaching will be over. we shall, of course, live in absolute seclusion, and our married life will only begin to outward view when we take the house in budmouth, where i have already addressed a letter on the matter. would your grandfather allow you?" "i think he would--on the understanding that it should not last longer than six months." "i will guarantee that, if no misfortune happens." "if no misfortune happens," she repeated slowly. "which is not likely. dearest, fix the exact day." and then they consulted on the question, and the day was chosen. it was to be a fortnight from that time. this was the end of their talk, and eustacia left him. clym watched her as she retired towards the sun. the luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. as he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the poorest blade. there was something in its oppressive horizontality which too much reminded him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a single living thing under the sun. eustacia was now no longer the goddess but the woman to him, a being to fight for, support, help, be maligned for. now that he had reached a cooler moment he would have preferred a less hasty marriage; but the card was laid, and he determined to abide by the game. whether eustacia was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly to love long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly a ready way of proving. vi yeobright goes, and the breach is complete all that evening smart sounds denoting an active packing up came from yeobright's room to the ears of his mother downstairs. next morning he departed from the house and again proceeded across the heath. a long day's march was before him, his object being to secure a dwelling to which he might take eustacia when she became his wife. such a house, small, secluded, and with its windows boarded up, he had casually observed a month earlier, about two miles beyond the village of east egdon, and six miles distant altogether; and thither he directed his steps today. the weather was far different from that of the evening before. the yellow and vapoury sunset which had wrapped up eustacia from his parting gaze had presaged change. it was one of those not infrequent days of an english june which are as wet and boisterous as november. the cold clouds hastened on in a body, as if painted on a moving slide. vapours from other continents arrived upon the wind, which curled and parted round him as he walked on. at length clym reached the margin of a fir and beech plantation that had been enclosed from heath land in the year of his birth. here the trees, laden heavily with their new and humid leaves, were now suffering more damage than during the highest winds of winter, when the boughs are especially disencumbered to do battle with the storm. the wet young beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings, and harsh lacerations, from which the wasting sap would bleed for many a day to come, and which would leave scars visible till the day of their burning. each stem was wrenched at the root, where it moved like a bone in its socket, and at every onset of the gale convulsive sounds came from the branches, as if pain were felt. in a neighbouring brake a finch was trying to sing; but the wind blew under his feathers till they stood on end, twisted round his little tail, and made him give up his song. yet a few yards to yeobright's left, on the open heath, how ineffectively gnashed the storm! those gusts which tore the trees merely waved the furze and heather in a light caress. egdon was made for such times as these. yeobright reached the empty house about mid-day. it was almost as lonely as that of eustacia's grandfather, but the fact that it stood near a heath was disguised by a belt of firs which almost enclosed the premises. he journeyed on about a mile further to the village in which the owner lived, and, returning with him to the house, arrangements were completed, and the man undertook that one room at least should be ready for occupation the next day. clym's intention was to live there alone until eustacia should join him on their wedding day. then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the drizzle that had so greatly transformed the scene. the ferns, among which he had lain in comfort yesterday, were dripping moisture from every frond, wetting his legs through as he brushed past; and the fur of the rabbits leaping before him was clotted into dark locks by the same watery surrounding. he reached home damp and weary enough after his ten-mile walk. it had hardly been a propitious beginning, but he had chosen his course, and would show no swerving. the evening and the following morning were spent in concluding arrangements for his departure. to stay at home a minute longer than necessary after having once come to his determination would be, he felt, only to give new pain to his mother by some word, look, or deed. he had hired a conveyance and sent off his goods by two o'clock that day. the next step was to get some furniture, which, after serving for temporary use in the cottage, would be available for the house at budmouth when increased by goods of a better description. a mart extensive enough for the purpose existed at anglebury, some miles beyond the spot chosen for his residence, and there he resolved to pass the coming night. it now only remained to wish his mother good-bye. she was sitting by the window as usual when he came downstairs. "mother, i am going to leave you," he said, holding out his hand. "i thought you were, by your packing," replied mrs. yeobright in a voice from which every particle of emotion was painfully excluded. "and you will part friends with me?" "certainly, clym." "i am going to be married on the twenty-fifth." "i thought you were going to be married." "and then--and then you must come and see us. you will understand me better after that, and our situation will not be so wretched as it is now." "i do not think it likely i shall come to see you." "then it will not be my fault or eustacia's, mother. good-bye!" he kissed her cheek, and departed in great misery, which was several hours in lessening itself to a controllable level. the position had been such that nothing more could be said without, in the first place, breaking down a barrier; and that was not to be done. no sooner had yeobright gone from his mother's house than her face changed its rigid aspect for one of blank despair. after a while she wept, and her tears brought some relief. during the rest of the day she did nothing but walk up and down the garden path in a state bordering on stupefaction. night came, and with it but little rest. the next day, with an instinct to do something which should reduce prostration to mournfulness, she went to her son's room, and with her own hands arranged it in order, for an imaginary time when he should return again. she gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed, for they no longer charmed her. it was a great relief when, early in the afternoon, thomasin paid her an unexpected visit. this was not the first meeting between the relatives since thomasin's marriage; and past blunders having been in a rough way rectified, they could always greet each other with pleasure and ease. the oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. it illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. in her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered creatures who lived around her home. all similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. there was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. when she was musing she was a kestrel, which hangs in the air by an invisible motion of its wings. when she was in a high wind her light body was blown against trees and banks like a heron's. when she was frightened she darted noiselessly like a kingfisher. when she was serene she skimmed like a swallow, and that is how she was moving now. "you are looking very blithe, upon my word, tamsie," said mrs. yeobright, with a sad smile. "how is damon?" "he is very well." "is he kind to you, thomasin?" and mrs. yeobright observed her narrowly. "pretty fairly." "is that honestly said?" "yes, aunt. i would tell you if he were unkind." she added, blushing, and with hesitation, "he--i don't know if i ought to complain to you about this, but i am not quite sure what to do. i want some money, you know, aunt--some to buy little things for myself--and he doesn't give me any. i don't like to ask him; and yet, perhaps, he doesn't give it me because he doesn't know. ought i to mention it to him, aunt?" "of course you ought. have you never said a word on the matter?" "you see, i had some of my own," said thomasin evasively, "and i have not wanted any of his until lately. i did just say something about it last week; but he seems--not to remember." "he must be made to remember. you are aware that i have a little box full of spade-guineas, which your uncle put into my hands to divide between yourself and clym whenever i chose. perhaps the time has come when it should be done. they can be turned into sovereigns at any moment." "i think i should like to have my share--that is, if you don't mind." "you shall, if necessary. but it is only proper that you should first tell your husband distinctly that you are without any, and see what he will do." "very well, i will... aunt, i have heard about clym. i know you are in trouble about him, and that's why i have come." mrs. yeobright turned away, and her features worked in her attempt to conceal her feelings. then she ceased to make any attempt, and said, weeping, "o thomasin, do you think he hates me? how can he bear to grieve me so, when i have lived only for him through all these years?" "hate you--no," said thomasin soothingly. "it is only that he loves her too well. look at it quietly--do. it is not so very bad of him. do you know, i thought it not the worst match he could have made. miss vye's family is a good one on her mother's side; and her father was a romantic wanderer--a sort of greek ulysses." "it is no use, thomasin; it is no use. your intention is good; but i will not trouble you to argue. i have gone through the whole that can be said on either side times, and many times. clym and i have not parted in anger; we have parted in a worse way. it is not a passionate quarrel that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and persistence in going wrong that he has shown. o thomasin, he was so good as a little boy--so tender and kind!" "he was, i know." "i did not think one whom i called mine would grow up to treat me like this. he spoke to me as if i opposed him to injure him. as though i could wish him ill!" "there are worse women in the world than eustacia vye." "there are too many better; that's the agony of it. it was she, thomasin, and she only, who led your husband to act as he did: i would swear it!" "no," said thomasin eagerly. "it was before he knew me that he thought of her, and it was nothing but a mere flirtation." "very well; we will let it be so. there is little use in unravelling that now. sons must be blind if they will. why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close? clym must do as he will--he is nothing more to me. and this is maternity--to give one's best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised!" "you are too unyielding. think how many mothers there are whose sons have brought them to public shame by real crimes before you feel so deeply a case like this." "thomasin, don't lecture me--i can't have it. it is the excess above what we expect that makes the force of the blow, and that may not be greater in their case than in mine: they may have foreseen the worst... i am wrongly made, thomasin," she added, with a mournful smile. "some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. but i always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd creature--i had not the compass of heart nor the enterprise for that. just as forlorn and stupefied as i was when my husband's spirit flew away i have sat ever since--never attempting to mend matters at all. i was comparatively a young woman then, and i might have had another family by this time, and have been comforted by them for the failure of this one son." "it is more noble in you that you did not." "the more noble, the less wise." "forget it, and be soothed, dear aunt. and i shall not leave you alone for long. i shall come and see you every day." and for one week thomasin literally fulfilled her word. she endeavoured to make light of the wedding; and brought news of the preparations, and that she was invited to be present. the next week she was rather unwell, and did not appear. nothing had as yet been done about the guineas, for thomasin feared to address her husband again on the subject, and mrs. yeobright had insisted upon this. one day just before this time wildeve was standing at the door of the quiet woman. in addition to the upward path through the heath to rainbarrow and mistover, there was a road which branched from the highway a short distance below the inn, and ascended to mistover by a circuitous and easy incline. this was the only route on that side for vehicles to the captain's retreat. a light cart from the nearest town descended the road, and the lad who was driving pulled up in front of the inn for something to drink. "you come from mistover?" said wildeve. "yes. they are taking in good things up there. going to be a wedding." and the driver buried his face in his mug. wildeve had not received an inkling of the fact before, and a sudden expression of pain overspread his face. he turned for a moment into the passage to hide it. then he came back again. "do you mean miss vye?" he said. "how is it--that she can be married so soon?" "by the will of god and a ready young man, i suppose." "you don't mean mr. yeobright?" "yes. he has been creeping about with her all the spring." "i suppose--she was immensely taken with him?" "she is crazy about him, so their general servant of all work tells me. and that lad charley that looks after the horse is all in a daze about it. the stun-poll has got fondlike of her." "is she lively--is she glad? going to be married so soon--well!" "it isn't so very soon." "no; not so very soon." wildeve went indoors to the empty room, a curious heartache within him. he rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece and his face upon his hand. when thomasin entered the room he did not tell her of what he had heard. the old longing for eustacia had reappeared in his soul; and it was mainly because he had discovered that it was another man's intention to possess her. to be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was wildeve's nature always. this is the true mark of the man of sentiment. though wildeve's fevered feeling had not been elaborated to real poetical compass, it was of the standard sort. he might have been called the rousseau of egdon. vii the morning and the evening of a day the wedding morning came. nobody would have imagined from appearances that blooms-end had any interest in mistover that day. a solemn stillness prevailed around the house of clym's mother, and there was no more animation indoors. mrs. yeobright, who had declined to attend the ceremony, sat by the breakfast table in the old room which communicated immediately with the porch, her eyes listlessly directed towards the open door. it was the room in which, six months earlier, the merry christmas party had met, to which eustacia came secretly and as a stranger. the only living thing that entered now was a sparrow; and seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly round the room, endeavoured to go out by the window, and fluttered among the pot-flowers. this roused the lonely sitter, who got up, released the bird, and went to the door. she was expecting thomasin, who had written the night before to state that the time had come when she would wish to have the money, and that she would if possible call this day. yet thomasin occupied mrs. yeobright's thoughts but slightly as she looked up the valley of the heath, alive with butterflies, and with grasshoppers whose husky noises on every side formed a whispered chorus. a domestic drama, for which the preparations were now being made a mile or two off, was but little less vividly present to her eyes than if enacted before her. she tried to dismiss the vision, and walked about the garden plot; but her eyes ever and anon sought out the direction of the parish church to which mistover belonged, and her excited fancy clove the hills which divided the building from her eyes. the morning wore away. eleven o'clock struck: could it be that the wedding was then in progress? it must be so. she went on imagining the scene at the church, which he had by this time approached with his bride. she pictured the little group of children by the gate as the pony-carriage drove up in which, as thomasin had learnt, they were going to perform the short journey. then she saw them enter and proceed to the chancel and kneel; and the service seemed to go on. she covered her face with her hands. "o, it is a mistake!" she groaned. "and he will rue it some day, and think of me!" while she remained thus, overcome by her forebodings, the old clock indoors whizzed forth twelve strokes. soon after, faint sounds floated to her ear from afar over the hills. the breeze came from that quarter, and it had brought with it the notes of distant bells, gaily starting off in a peal: one, two, three, four, five. the ringers at east egdon were announcing the nuptials of eustacia and her son. "then it is over," she murmured. "well, well! and life too will be over soon. and why should i go on scalding my face like this? cry about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the whole piece. and yet we say, 'a time to laugh!'" towards evening wildeve came. since thomasin's marriage mrs. yeobright had shown towards him that grim friendliness which at last arises in all such cases of undesired affinity. the vision of what ought to have been is thrown aside in sheer weariness, and browbeaten human endeavour listlessly makes the best of the fact that is. wildeve, to do him justice, had behaved very courteously to his wife's aunt; and it was with no surprise that she saw him enter now. "thomasin has not been able to come, as she promised to do," he replied to her inquiry, which had been anxious, for she knew that her niece was badly in want of money. "the captain came down last night and personally pressed her to join them today. so, not to be unpleasant, she determined to go. they fetched her in the pony-chaise, and are going to bring her back." "then it is done," said mrs. yeobright. "have they gone to their new home?" "i don't know. i have had no news from mistover since thomasin left to go." "you did not go with her?" said she, as if there might be good reasons why. "i could not," said wildeve, reddening slightly. "we could not both leave the house; it was rather a busy morning, on account of anglebury great market. i believe you have something to give to thomasin? if you like, i will take it." mrs. yeobright hesitated, and wondered if wildeve knew what the something was. "did she tell you of this?" she inquired. "not particularly. she casually dropped a remark about having arranged to fetch some article or other." "it is hardly necessary to send it. she can have it whenever she chooses to come." "that won't be yet. in the present state of her health she must not go on walking so much as she has done." he added, with a faint twang of sarcasm, "what wonderful thing is it that i cannot be trusted to take?" "nothing worth troubling you with." "one would think you doubted my honesty," he said, with a laugh, though his colour rose in a quick resentfulness frequent with him. "you need think no such thing," said she drily. "it is simply that i, in common with the rest of the world, feel that there are certain things which had better be done by certain people than by others." "as you like, as you like," said wildeve laconically. "it is not worth arguing about. well, i think i must turn homeward again, as the inn must not be left long in charge of the lad and the maid only." he went his way, his farewell being scarcely so courteous as his greeting. but mrs. yeobright knew him thoroughly by this time, and took little notice of his manner, good or bad. when wildeve was gone mrs. yeobright stood and considered what would be the best course to adopt with regard to the guineas, which she had not liked to entrust to wildeve. it was hardly credible that thomasin had told him to ask for them, when the necessity for them had arisen from the difficulty of obtaining money at his hands. at the same time thomasin really wanted them, and might be unable to come to blooms-end for another week at least. to take or send the money to her at the inn would be impolite, since wildeve would pretty surely be present, or would discover the transaction; and if, as her aunt suspected, he treated her less kindly than she deserved to be treated, he might then get the whole sum out of her gentle hands. but on this particular evening thomasin was at mistover, and anything might be conveyed to her there without the knowledge of her husband. upon the whole the opportunity was worth taking advantage of. her son, too, was there, and was now married. there could be no more proper moment to render him his share of the money than the present. and the chance that would be afforded her, by sending him this gift, of showing how far she was from bearing him ill-will, cheered the sad mother's heart. she went upstairs and took from a locked drawer a little box, out of which she poured a hoard of broad unworn guineas that had lain there many a year. there were a hundred in all, and she divided them into two heaps, fifty in each. tying up these in small canvas bags, she went down to the garden and called to christian cantle, who was loitering about in hope of a supper which was not really owed him. mrs. yeobright gave him the moneybags, charged him to go to mistover, and on no account to deliver them into any one's hands save her son's and thomasin's. on further thought she deemed it advisable to tell christian precisely what the two bags contained, that he might be fully impressed with their importance. christian pocketed the money-bags, promised the greatest carefulness, and set out on his way. "you need not hurry," said mrs. yeobright. "it will be better not to get there till after dusk, and then nobody will notice you. come back here to supper, if it is not too late." it was nearly nine o'clock when he began to ascend the vale towards mistover; but the long days of summer being at their climax, the first obscurity of evening had only just begun to tan the landscape. at this point of his journey christian heard voices, and found that they proceeded from a company of men and women who were traversing a hollow ahead of him, the tops only of their heads being visible. he paused and thought of the money he carried. it was almost too early even for christian seriously to fear robbery; nevertheless he took a precaution which ever since his boyhood he had adopted whenever he carried more than two or three shillings upon his person--a precaution somewhat like that of the owner of the pitt diamond when filled with similar misgivings. he took off his boots, untied the guineas, and emptied the contents of one little bag into the right boot, and of the other into the left, spreading them as flatly as possible over the bottom of each, which was really a spacious coffer by no means limited to the size of the foot. pulling them on again and lacing them to the very top, he proceeded on his way, more easy in his head than under his soles. his path converged towards that of the noisy company, and on coming nearer he found to his relief that they were several egdon people whom he knew very well, while with them walked fairway, of blooms-end. "what! christian going too?" said fairway as soon as he recognized the newcomer. "you've got no young woman nor wife to your name to gie a gown-piece to, i'm sure." "what d'ye mean?" said christian. "why, the raffle. the one we go to every year. going to the raffle as well as ourselves?" "never knew a word o't. is it like cudgel-playing or other sportful forms of bloodshed? i don't want to go, thank you, mister fairway, and no offence." "christian don't know the fun o't, and 'twould be a fine sight for him," said a buxom woman. "there's no danger at all, christian. every man puts in a shilling apiece, and one wins a gown-piece for his wife or sweetheart if he's got one." "well, as that's not my fortune there's no meaning in it to me. but i should like to see the fun, if there's nothing of the black art in it, and if a man may look on without cost or getting into any dangerous wrangle?" "there will be no uproar at all," said timothy. "sure, christian, if you'd like to come we'll see there's no harm done." "and no ba'dy gaieties, i suppose? you see, neighbours, if so, it would be setting father a bad example, as he is so light moral'd. but a gown-piece for a shilling, and no black art--'tis worth looking in to see, and it wouldn't hinder me half an hour. yes, i'll come, if you'll step a little way towards mistover with me afterwards, supposing night should have closed in, and nobody else is going that way?" one or two promised; and christian, diverging from his direct path, turned round to the right with his companions towards the quiet woman. when they entered the large common room of the inn they found assembled there about ten men from among the neighbouring population, and the group was increased by the new contingent to double that number. most of them were sitting round the room in seats divided by wooden elbows like those of crude cathedral stalls, which were carved with the initials of many an illustrious drunkard of former times who had passed his days and his nights between them, and now lay as an alcoholic cinder in the nearest churchyard. among the cups on the long table before the sitters lay an open parcel of light drapery--the gown-piece, as it was called--which was to be raffled for. wildeve was standing with his back to the fireplace smoking a cigar; and the promoter of the raffle, a packman from a distant town, was expatiating upon the value of the fabric as material for a summer dress. "now, gentlemen," he continued, as the newcomers drew up to the table, "there's five have entered, and we want four more to make up the number. i think, by the faces of those gentlemen who have just come in, that they are shrewd enough to take advantage of this rare opportunity of beautifying their ladies at a very trifling expense." fairway, sam, and another placed their shillings on the table, and the man turned to christian. "no, sir," said christian, drawing back, with a quick gaze of misgiving. "i am only a poor chap come to look on, an it please ye, sir. i don't so much as know how you do it. if so be i was sure of getting it i would put down the shilling; but i couldn't otherwise." "i think you might almost be sure," said the pedlar. "in fact, now i look into your face, even if i can't say you are sure to win, i can say that i never saw anything look more like winning in my life." "you'll anyhow have the same chance as the rest of us," said sam. "and the extra luck of being the last comer," said another. "and i was born wi' a caul, and perhaps can be no more ruined than drowned?" christian added, beginning to give way. ultimately christian laid down his shilling, the raffle began, and the dice went round. when it came to christian's turn he took the box with a trembling hand, shook it fearfully, and threw a pair-royal. three of the others had thrown common low pairs, and all the rest mere points. "the gentleman looked like winning, as i said," observed the chapman blandly. "take it, sir; the article is yours." "haw-haw-haw!" said fairway. "i'm damned if this isn't the quarest start that ever i knowed!" "mine?" asked christian, with a vacant stare from his target eyes. "i--i haven't got neither maid, wife, nor widder belonging to me at all, and i'm afeard it will make me laughed at to ha'e it, master traveller. what with being curious to join in i never thought of that! what shall i do wi' a woman's clothes in my bedroom, and not lose my decency!" "keep 'em, to be sure," said fairway, "if it is only for luck. perhaps 'twill tempt some woman that thy poor carcase had no power over when standing empty-handed." "keep it, certainly," said wildeve, who had idly watched the scene from a distance. the table was then cleared of the articles, and the men began to drink. "well, to be sure!" said christian, half to himself. "to think i should have been born so lucky as this, and not have found it out until now! what curious creatures these dice be--powerful rulers of us all, and yet at my command! i am sure i never need be afeared of anything after this." he handled the dice fondly one by one. "why, sir," he said in a confidential whisper to wildeve, who was near his left hand, "if i could only use this power that's in me of multiplying money i might do some good to a near relation of yours, seeing what i've got about me of hers--eh?" he tapped one of his money-laden boots upon the floor. "what do you mean?" said wildeve. "that's a secret. well, i must be going now." he looked anxiously towards fairway. "where are you going?" wildeve asked. "to mistover knap. i have to see mrs. thomasin there--that's all." "i am going there, too, to fetch mrs. wildeve. we can walk together." wildeve became lost in thought, and a look of inward illumination came into his eyes. it was money for his wife that mrs. yeobright could not trust him with. "yet she could trust this fellow," he said to himself. "why doesn't that which belongs to the wife belong to the husband too?" he called to the pot-boy to bring him his hat, and said, "now, christian, i am ready." "mr. wildeve," said christian timidly, as he turned to leave the room, "would you mind lending me them wonderful little things that carry my luck inside 'em, that i might practise a bit by myself, you know?" he looked wistfully at the dice and box lying on the mantlepiece. "certainly," said wildeve carelessly. "they were only cut out by some lad with his knife, and are worth nothing." and christian went back and privately pocketed them. wildeve opened the door and looked out. the night was warm and cloudy. "by gad! 'tis dark," he continued. "but i suppose we shall find our way." "if we should lose the path it might be awkward," said christian. "a lantern is the only shield that will make it safe for us." "let's have a lantern by all means." the stable lantern was fetched and lighted. christian took up his gownpiece, and the two set out to ascend the hill. within the room the men fell into chat till their attention was for a moment drawn to the chimney-corner. this was large, and, in addition to its proper recess, contained within its jambs, like many on egdon, a receding seat, so that a person might sit there absolutely unobserved, provided there was no fire to light him up, as was the case now and throughout the summer. from the niche a single object protruded into the light from the candles on the table. it was a clay pipe, and its colour was reddish. the men had been attracted to this object by a voice behind the pipe asking for a light. "upon my life, it fairly startled me when the man spoke!" said fairway, handing a candle. "oh--'tis the reddleman! you've kept a quiet tongue, young man." "yes, i had nothing to say," observed venn. in a few minutes he arose and wished the company good night. meanwhile wildeve and christian had plunged into the heath. it was a stagnant, warm, and misty night, full of all the heavy perfumes of new vegetation not yet dried by hot sun, and among these particularly the scent of the fern. the lantern, dangling from christian's hand, brushed the feathery fronds in passing by, disturbing moths and other winged insects, which flew out and alighted upon its horny panes. "so you have money to carry to mrs. wildeve?" said christian's companion, after a silence. "don't you think it very odd that it shouldn't be given to me?" "as man and wife be one flesh, 'twould have been all the same, i should think," said christian. "but my strict documents was, to give the money into mrs. wildeve's hand--and 'tis well to do things right." "no doubt," said wildeve. any person who had known the circumstances might have perceived that wildeve was mortified by the discovery that the matter in transit was money, and not, as he had supposed when at blooms-end, some fancy nick-nack which only interested the two women themselves. mrs. yeobright's refusal implied that his honour was not considered to be of sufficiently good quality to make him a safer bearer of his wife's property. "how very warm it is tonight, christian!" he said, panting, when they were nearly under rainbarrow. "let us sit down for a few minutes, for heaven's sake." wildeve flung himself down on the soft ferns; and christian, placing the lantern and parcel on the ground, perched himself in a cramped position hard by, his knees almost touching his chin. he presently thrust one hand into his coat-pocket and began shaking it about. "what are you rattling in there?" said wildeve. "only the dice, sir," said christian, quickly withdrawing his hand. "what magical machines these little things be, mr. wildeve! 'tis a game i should never get tired of. would you mind my taking 'em out and looking at 'em for a minute, to see how they are made? i didn't like to look close before the other men, for fear they should think it bad manners in me." christian took them out and examined them in the hollow of his hand by the lantern light. "that these little things should carry such luck, and such charm, and such a spell, and such power in 'em, passes all i ever heard or zeed," he went on, with a fascinated gaze at the dice, which, as is frequently the case in country places, were made of wood, the points being burnt upon each face with the end of a wire. "they are a great deal in a small compass, you think?" "yes. do ye suppose they really be the devil's playthings, mr. wildeve? if so, 'tis no good sign that i be such a lucky man." "you ought to win some money, now that you've got them. any woman would marry you then. now is your time, christian, and i would recommend you not to let it slip. some men are born to luck, some are not. i belong to the latter class." "did you ever know anybody who was born to it besides myself?" "o yes. i once heard of an italian, who sat down at a gaming table with only a louis (that's a foreign sovereign) in his pocket. he played on for twenty-four hours, and won ten thousand pounds, stripping the bank he had played against. then there was another man who had lost a thousand pounds, and went to the broker's next day to sell stock, that he might pay the debt. the man to whom he owed the money went with him in a hackney-coach; and to pass the time they tossed who should pay the fare. the ruined man won, and the other was tempted to continue the game, and they played all the way. when the coachman stopped he was told to drive home again: the whole thousand pounds had been won back by the man who was going to sell." "ha--ha--splendid!" exclaimed christian. "go on--go on!" "then there was a man of london, who was only a waiter at white's clubhouse. he began playing first half-crown stakes, and then higher and higher, till he became very rich, got an appointment in india, and rose to be governor of madras. his daughter married a member of parliament, and the bishop of carlisle stood godfather to one of the children." "wonderful! wonderful!" "and once there was a young man in america who gambled till he had lost his last dollar. he staked his watch and chain, and lost as before; staked his umbrella, lost again; staked his hat, lost again; staked his coat and stood in his shirt-sleeve; lost again. began taking off his breeches, and then a looker-on gave him a trifle for his pluck. with this he won. won back his coat, won back his hat, won back his umbrella, his watch, his money, and went out of the door a rich man." "oh, 'tis too good--it takes away my breath! mr. wildeve, i think i will try another shilling with you, as i am one of that sort; no danger can come o't, and you can afford to lose." "very well," said wildeve, rising. searching about with the lantern, he found a large flat stone, which he placed between himself and christian, and sat down again. the lantern was opened to give more light, and it's rays directed upon the stone. christian put down a shilling, wildeve another, and each threw. christian won. they played for two, christian won again. "let us try four," said wildeve. they played for four. this time the stakes were won by wildeve. "ah, those little accidents will, of course, sometimes happen, to the luckiest man," he observed. "and now i have no more money!" explained christian excitedly. "and yet, if i could go on, i should get it back again, and more. i wish this was mine." he struck his boot upon the ground, so that the guineas chinked within. "what! you have not put mrs. wildeve's money there?" "yes. 'tis for safety. is it any harm to raffle with a married lady's money when, if i win, i shall only keep my winnings, and give her her own all the same; and if t'other man wins, her money will go to the lawful owner?" "none at all." wildeve had been brooding ever since they started on the mean estimation in which he was held by his wife's friends; and it cut his heart severely. as the minutes passed he had gradually drifted into a revengeful intention without knowing the precise moment of forming it. this was to teach mrs. yeobright a lesson, as he considered it to be; in other words, to show her if he could, that her niece's husband was the proper guardian of her niece's money. "well, here goes!" said christian, beginning to unlace one boot. "i shall dream of it nights and nights, i suppose; but i shall always swear my flesh don't crawl when i think o't!" he thrust his hand into the boot and withdrew one of poor thomasin's precious guineas, piping hot. wildeve had already placed a sovereign on the stone. the game was then resumed. wildeve won first, and christian ventured another, winning himself this time. the game fluctuated, but the average was in wildeve's favour. both men became so absorbed in the game that they took no heed of anything but the pigmy objects immediately beneath their eyes, the flat stone, the open lantern, the dice, and the few illuminated fern-leaves which lay under the light, were the whole world to them. at length christian lost rapidly; and presently, to his horror, the whole fifty guineas belonging to thomasin had been handed over to his adversary. "i don't care--i don't care!" he moaned, and desperately set about untying his left boot to get at the other fifty. "the devil will toss me into the flames on his three-pronged fork for this night's work, i know! but perhaps i shall win yet, and then i'll get a wife to sit up with me o' nights, and i won't be afeard, i won't! here's another for'ee, my man!" he slapped another guinea down upon the stone, and the dice-box was rattled again. time passed on. wildeve began to be as excited as christian himself. when commencing the game his intention had been nothing further than a bitter practical joke on mrs. yeobright. to win the money, fairly or otherwise, and to hand it contemptuously to thomasin in her aunt's presence, had been the dim outline of his purpose. but men are drawn from their intentions even in the course of carrying them out, and it was extremely doubtful, by the time the twentieth guinea had been reached, whether wildeve was conscious of any other intention than that of winning for his own personal benefit. moreover, he was now no longer gambling for his wife's money, but for yeobright's; though of this fact christian, in his apprehensiveness, did not inform him till afterwards. it was nearly eleven o'clock, when, with almost a shriek, christian placed yeobright's last gleaming guinea upon the stone. in thirty seconds it had gone the way of its companions. christian turned and flung himself on the ferns in a convulsion of remorse, "o, what shall i do with my wretched self?" he groaned. "what shall i do? will any good heaven hae mercy upon my wicked soul?" "do? live on just the same." "i won't live on just the same! i'll die! i say you are a--a--" "a man sharper than my neighbour." "yes, a man sharper than my neighbour; a regular sharper!" "poor chips-in-porridge, you are very unmannerly." "i don't know about that! and i say you be unmannerly! you've got money that isn't your own. half the guineas are poor mr. clym's." "how's that?" "because i had to gie fifty of 'em to him. mrs. yeobright said so." "oh?... well, 'twould have been more graceful of her to have given them to his wife eustacia. but they are in my hands now." christian pulled on his boots, and with heavy breathings, which could be heard to some distance, dragged his limbs together, arose, and tottered away out of sight. wildeve set about shutting the lantern to return to the house, for he deemed it too late to go to mistover to meet his wife, who was to be driven home in the captain's four-wheel. while he was closing the little horn door a figure rose from behind a neighbouring bush and came forward into the lantern light. it was the reddleman approaching. viii a new force disturbs the current wildeve stared. venn looked coolly towards wildeve, and, without a word being spoken, he deliberately sat himself down where christian had been seated, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a sovereign, and laid it on the stone. "you have been watching us from behind that bush?" said wildeve. the reddleman nodded. "down with your stake," he said. "or haven't you pluck enough to go on?" now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much more easily begun with full pockets than left off with the same; and though wildeve in a cooler temper might have prudently declined this invitation, the excitement of his recent success carried him completely away. he placed one of the guineas on a slab beside the reddleman's sovereign. "mine is a guinea," he said. "a guinea that's not your own," said venn sarcastically. "it is my own," answered wildeve haughtily. "it is my wife's, and what is hers is mine." "very well; let's make a beginning." he shook the box, and threw eight, ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to twenty-seven. this encouraged wildeve. he took the box; and his three casts amounted to forty-five. down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against his first one which wildeve laid. this time wildeve threw fifty-one points, but no pair. the reddleman looked grim, threw a raffle of aces, and pocketed the stakes. "here you are again," said wildeve contemptuously. "double the stakes." he laid two of thomasin's guineas, and the reddleman his two pounds. venn won again. new stakes were laid on the stone, and the gamblers proceeded as before. wildeve was a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginning to tell upon his temper. he writhed, fumed, shifted his seat; and the beating of his heart was almost audible. venn sat with lips impassively closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles; he scarcely appeared to breathe. he might have been an arab, or an automaton; he would have been like a red sandstone statue but for the motion of his arm with the dice-box. the game fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in favour of the other, without any great advantage on the side of either. nearly twenty minutes were passed thus. the light of the candle had by this time attracted heathflies, moths, and other winged creatures of night, which floated round the lantern, flew into the flame, or beat about the faces of the two players. but neither of the men paid much attention to these things, their eyes being concentrated upon the little flat stone, which to them was an arena vast and important as a battlefield. by this time a change had come over the game; the reddleman won continually. at length sixty guineas--thomasin's fifty, and ten of clym's--had passed into his hands. wildeve was reckless, frantic, exasperated. "'won back his coat,'" said venn slily. another throw, and the money went the same way. "'won back his hat,'" continued venn. "oh, oh!" said wildeve. "'won back his watch, won back his money, and went out of the door a rich man,'" added venn sentence by sentence, as stake after stake passed over to him. "five more!" shouted wildeve, dashing down the money. "and three casts be hanged--one shall decide." the red automaton opposite lapsed into silence, nodded, and followed his example. wildeve rattled the box, and threw a pair of sixes and five points. he clapped his hands; "i have done it this time--hurrah!" "there are two playing, and only one has thrown," said the reddleman, quietly bringing down the box. the eyes of each were then so intently converged upon the stone that one could fancy their beams were visible, like rays in a fog. venn lifted the box, and behold a triplet of sixes was disclosed. wildeve was full of fury. while the reddleman was grasping the stakes wildeve seized the dice and hurled them, box and all, into the darkness, uttering a fearful imprecation. then he arose and began stamping up and down like a madman. "it is all over, then?" said venn. "no, no!" cried wildeve. "i mean to have another chance yet. i must!" "but, my good man, what have you done with the dice?" "i threw them away--it was a momentary irritation. what a fool i am! here--come and help me to look for them--we must find them again." wildeve snatched up the lantern and began anxiously prowling among the furze and fern. "you are not likely to find them there," said venn, following. "what did you do such a crazy thing as that for? here's the box. the dice can't be far off." wildeve turned the light eagerly upon the spot where venn had found the box, and mauled the herbage right and left. in the course of a few minutes one of the dice was found. they searched on for some time, but no other was to be seen. "never mind," said wildeve; "let's play with one." "agreed," said venn. down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea stakes; and the play went on smartly. but fortune had unmistakably fallen in love with the reddleman tonight. he won steadily, till he was the owner of fourteen more of the gold pieces. seventy-nine of the hundred guineas were his, wildeve possessing only twenty-one. the aspect of the two opponents was now singular. apart from motions, a complete diorama of the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes. a diminutive candle-flame was mirrored in each pupil, and it would have been possible to distinguish therein between the moods of hope and the moods of abandonment, even as regards the reddleman, though his facial muscles betrayed nothing at all. wildeve played on with the recklessness of despair. "what's that?" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle; and they both looked up. they were surrounded by dusky forms between four and five feet high, standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern. a moment's inspection revealed that the encircling figures were heath-croppers, their heads being all towards the players, at whom they gazed intently. "hoosh!" said wildeve, and the whole forty or fifty animals at once turned and galloped away. play was again resumed. ten minutes passed away. then a large death's head moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. wildeve had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast; and now it was impossible. "what the infernal!" he shrieked. "now, what shall we do? perhaps i have thrown six--have you any matches?" "none," said venn. "christian had some--i wonder where he is. christian!" but there was no reply to wildeve's shout, save a mournful whining from the herons which were nesting lower down the vale. both men looked blankly round without rising. as their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among the grass and fern. these lights dotted the hillside like stars of a low magnitude. "ah--glowworms," said wildeve. "wait a minute. we can continue the game." venn sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he had gathered thirteen glowworms--as many as he could find in a space of four or five minutes--upon a foxglove leaf which he pulled for the purpose. the reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his adversary return with these. "determined to go on, then?" he said drily. "i always am!" said wildeve angrily. and shaking the glowworms from the leaf he ranged them with a trembling hand in a circle on the stone, leaving a space in the middle for the descent of the dice-box, over which the thirteen tiny lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. the game was again renewed. it happened to be that season of the year at which glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possible on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two or three. the incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment was great. amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which they sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless players. wildeve had lifted the box as soon as the lights were obtained, and the solitary die proclaimed that the game was still against him. "i won't play any more--you've been tampering with the dice," he shouted. "how--when they were your own?" said the reddleman. "we'll change the game: the lowest point shall win the stake--it may cut off my ill luck. do you refuse?" "no--go on," said venn. "o, there they are again--damn them!" cried wildeve, looking up. the heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering what mankind and candle-light could have to do in these haunts at this untoward hour. "what a plague those creatures are--staring at me so!" he said, and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued as before. wildeve had now ten guineas left; and each laid five. wildeve threw three points; venn two, and raked in the coins. the other seized the die, and clenched his teeth upon it in sheer rage, as if he would bite it in pieces. "never give in--here are my last five!" he cried, throwing them down. "hang the glowworms--they are going out. why don't you burn, you little fools? stir them up with a thorn." he probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled them over, till the bright side of their tails was upwards. "there's light enough. throw on," said venn. wildeve brought down the box within the shining circle and looked eagerly. he had thrown ace. "well done!--i said it would turn, and it has turned." venn said nothing; but his hand shook slightly. he threw ace also. "o!" said wildeve. "curse me!" the die smacked the stone a second time. it was ace again. venn looked gloomy, threw: the die was seen to be lying in two pieces, the cleft sides uppermost. "i've thrown nothing at all," he said. "serves me right--i split the die with my teeth. here--take your money. blank is less than one." "i don't wish it." "take it, i say--you've won it!" and wildeve threw the stakes against the reddleman's chest. venn gathered them up, arose, and withdrew from the hollow, wildeve sitting stupefied. when he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the extinguished lantern in his hand, went towards the high-road. on reaching it he stood still. the silence of night pervaded the whole heath except in one direction; and that was towards mistover. there he could hear the noise of light wheels, and presently saw two carriage-lamps descending the hill. wildeve screened himself under a bush and waited. the vehicle came on and passed before him. it was a hired carriage, and behind the coachman were two persons whom he knew well. there sat eustacia and yeobright, the arm of the latter being round her waist. they turned the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary home which clym had hired and furnished, about five miles to the eastward. wildeve forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his lost love, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in geometrical progression with each new incident that reminded him of their hopeless division. brimming with the subtilized misery that he was capable of feeling, he followed the opposite way towards the inn. about the same moment that wildeve stepped into the highway venn also had reached it at a point a hundred yards further on; and he, hearing the same wheels, likewise waited till the carriage should come up. when he saw who sat therein he seemed to be disappointed. reflecting a minute or two, during which interval the carriage rolled on, he crossed the road, and took a short cut through the furze and heath to a point where the turnpike-road bent round in ascending a hill. he was now again in front of the carriage, which presently came up at a walking pace. venn stepped forward and showed himself. eustacia started when the lamp shone upon him, and clym's arm was involuntarily withdrawn from her waist. he said, "what, diggory? you are having a lonely walk." "yes--i beg your pardon for stopping you," said venn. "but i am waiting about for mrs. wildeve: i have something to give her from mrs. yeobright. can you tell me if she's gone home from the party yet?" "no. but she will be leaving soon. you may possibly meet her at the corner." venn made a farewell obeisance, and walked back to his former position, where the by-road from mistover joined the highway. here he remained fixed for nearly half an hour, and then another pair of lights came down the hill. it was the old-fashioned wheeled nondescript belonging to the captain, and thomasin sat in it alone, driven by charley. the reddleman came up as they slowly turned the corner. "i beg pardon for stopping you, mrs. wildeve," he said. "but i have something to give you privately from mrs. yeobright." he handed a small parcel; it consisted of the hundred guineas he had just won, roughly twisted up in a piece of paper. thomasin recovered from her surprise, and took the packet. "that's all, ma'am--i wish you good night," he said, and vanished from her view. thus venn, in his anxiety to rectify matters, had placed in thomasin's hands not only the fifty guineas which rightly belonged to her, but also the fifty intended for her cousin clym. his mistake had been based upon wildeve's words at the opening of the game, when he indignantly denied that the guinea was not his own. it had not been comprehended by the reddleman that at half-way through the performance the game was continued with the money of another person; and it was an error which afterwards helped to cause more misfortune than treble the loss in money value could have done. the night was now somewhat advanced; and venn plunged deeper into the heath, till he came to a ravine where his van was standing--a spot not more than two hundred yards from the site of the gambling bout. he entered this movable home of his, lit his lantern, and, before closing his door for the night, stood reflecting on the circumstances of the preceding hours. while he stood the dawn grew visible in the north-east quarter of the heavens, which, the clouds having cleared off, was bright with a soft sheen at this midsummer time, though it was only between one and two o'clock. venn, thoroughly weary, then shut his door and flung himself down to sleep. book fourth the closed door i the rencounter by the pool the july sun shone over egdon and fired its crimson heather to scarlet. it was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. this flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heathbells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period, representing night. clym and eustacia, in their little house at alderworth, beyond east egdon, were living on with a monotony which was delightful to them. the heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. they were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. when it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. they were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one. the absolute solitude in which they lived intensified their reciprocal thoughts; yet some might have said that it had the disadvantage of consuming their mutual affections at a fearfully prodigal rate. yeobright did not fear for his own part; but recollection of eustacia's old speech about the evanescence of love, now apparently forgotten by her, sometimes caused him to ask himself a question; and he recoiled at the thought that the quality of finiteness was not foreign to eden. when three or four weeks had been passed thus, yeobright resumed his reading in earnest. to make up for lost time he studied indefatigably, for he wished to enter his new profession with the least possible delay. now, eustacia's dream had always been that, once married to clym, she would have the power of inducing him to return to paris. he had carefully withheld all promise to do so; but would he be proof against her coaxing and argument? she had calculated to such a degree on the probability of success that she had represented paris, and not budmouth, to her grandfather as in all likelihood their future home. her hopes were bound up in this dream. in the quiet days since their marriage, when yeobright had been poring over her lips, her eyes, and the lines of her face, she had mused and mused on the subject, even while in the act of returning his gaze; and now the sight of the books, indicating a future which was antagonistic to her dream, struck her with a positively painful jar. she was hoping for the time when, as the mistress of some pretty establishment, however small, near a parisian boulevard, she would be passing her days on the skirts at least of the gay world, and catching stray wafts from those town pleasures she was so well fitted to enjoy. yet yeobright was as firm in the contrary intention as if the tendency of marriage were rather to develop the fantasies of young philanthropy than to sweep them away. her anxiety reached a high pitch; but there was something in clym's undeviating manner which made her hesitate before sounding him on the subject. at this point in their experience, however, an incident helped her. it occurred one evening about six weeks after their union, and arose entirely out of the unconscious misapplication of venn of the fifty guineas intended for yeobright. a day or two after the receipt of the money thomasin had sent a note to her aunt to thank her. she had been surprised at the largeness of the amount; but as no sum had ever been mentioned she set that down to her late uncle's generosity. she had been strictly charged by her aunt to say nothing to her husband of this gift; and wildeve, as was natural enough, had not brought himself to mention to his wife a single particular of the midnight scene in the heath. christian's terror, in like manner, had tied his tongue on the share he took in that proceeding; and hoping that by some means or other the money had gone to its proper destination, he simply asserted as much, without giving details. therefore, when a week or two had passed away, mrs. yeobright began to wonder why she never heard from her son of the receipt of the present; and to add gloom to her perplexity came the possibility that resentment might be the cause of his silence. she could hardly believe as much, but why did he not write? she questioned christian, and the confusion in his answers would at once have led her to believe that something was wrong, had not one-half of his story been corroborated by thomasin's note. mrs. yeobright was in this state of uncertainty when she was informed one morning that her son's wife was visiting her grandfather at mistover. she determined to walk up the hill, see eustacia, and ascertain from her daughter-in-law's lips whether the family guineas, which were to mrs. yeobright what family jewels are to wealthier dowagers, had miscarried or not. when christian learnt where she was going his concern reached its height. at the moment of her departure he could prevaricate no longer, and, confessing to the gambling, told her the truth as far as he knew it--that the guineas had been won by wildeve. "what, is he going to keep them?" mrs. yeobright cried. "i hope and trust not!" moaned christian. "he's a good man, and perhaps will do right things. he said you ought to have gied mr. clym's share to eustacia, and that's perhaps what he'll do himself." to mrs. yeobright, as soon as she could calmly reflect, there was much likelihood in this, for she could hardly believe that wildeve would really appropriate money belonging to her son. the intermediate course of giving it to eustacia was the sort of thing to please wildeve's fancy. but it filled the mother with anger none the less. that wildeve should have got command of the guineas after all, and should rearrange the disposal of them, placing clym's share in clym's wife's hands, because she had been his own sweetheart, and might be so still, was as irritating a pain as any that mrs. yeobright had ever borne. she instantly dismissed the wretched christian from her employ for his conduct in the affair; but, feeling quite helpless and unable to do without him, told him afterwards that he might stay a little longer if he chose. then she hastened off to eustacia, moved by a much less promising emotion towards her daughter-in-law than she had felt half an hour earlier, when planning her journey. at that time it was to inquire in a friendly spirit if there had been any accidental loss; now it was to ask plainly if wildeve had privately given her money which had been intended as a sacred gift to clym. she started at two o'clock, and her meeting with eustacia was hastened by the appearance of the young lady beside the pool and bank which bordered her grandfather's premises, where she stood surveying the scene, and perhaps thinking of the romantic enactments it had witnessed in past days. when mrs. yeobright approached, eustacia surveyed her with the calm stare of a stranger. the mother-in-law was the first to speak. "i was coming to see you," she said. "indeed!" said eustacia with surprise, for mrs. yeobright, much to the girl's mortification, had refused to be present at the wedding. "i did not at all expect you." "i was coming on business only," said the visitor, more coldly than at first. "will you excuse my asking this--have you received a gift from thomasin's husband?" "a gift?" "i mean money!" "what--i myself?" "well, i meant yourself, privately--though i was not going to put it in that way." "money from mr. wildeve? no--never! madam, what do you mean by that?" eustacia fired up all too quickly, for her own consciousness of the old attachment between herself and wildeve led her to jump to the conclusion that mrs. yeobright also knew of it, and might have come to accuse her of receiving dishonourable presents from him now. "i simply ask the question," said mrs. yeobright. "i have been--" "you ought to have better opinions of me--i feared you were against me from the first!" exclaimed eustacia. "no. i was simply for clym," replied mrs. yeobright, with too much emphasis in her earnestness. "it is the instinct of everyone to look after their own." "how can you imply that he required guarding against me?" cried eustacia, passionate tears in her eyes. "i have not injured him by marrying him! what sin have i done that you should think so ill of me? you had no right to speak against me to him when i have never wronged you." "i only did what was fair under the circumstances," said mrs. yeobright more softly. "i would rather not have gone into this question at present, but you compel me. i am not ashamed to tell you the honest truth. i was firmly convinced that he ought not to marry you--therefore i tried to dissuade him by all the means in my power. but it is done now, and i have no idea of complaining any more. i am ready to welcome you." "ah, yes, it is very well to see things in that business point of view," murmured eustacia with a smothered fire of feeling. "but why should you think there is anything between me and mr. wildeve? i have a spirit as well as you. i am indignant; and so would any woman be. it was a condescension in me to be clym's wife, and not a manoeuvre, let me remind you; and therefore i will not be treated as a schemer whom it becomes necessary to bear with because she has crept into the family." "oh!" said mrs. yeobright, vainly endeavouring to control her anger. "i have never heard anything to show that my son's lineage is not as good as the vyes'--perhaps better. it is amusing to hear you talk of condescension." "it was condescension, nevertheless," said eustacia vehemently. "and if i had known then what i know now, that i should be living in this wild heath a month after my marriage, i--i should have thought twice before agreeing." "it would be better not to say that; it might not sound truthful. i am not aware that any deception was used on his part--i know there was not--whatever might have been the case on the other side." "this is too exasperating!" answered the younger woman huskily, her face crimsoning, and her eyes darting light. "how can you dare to speak to me like that? i insist upon repeating to you that had i known that my life would from my marriage up to this time have been as it is, i should have said no. i don't complain. i have never uttered a sound of such a thing to him; but it is true. i hope therefore that in the future you will be silent on my eagerness. if you injure me now you injure yourself." "injure you? do you think i am an evil-disposed person?" "you injured me before my marriage, and you have now suspected me of secretly favouring another man for money!" "i could not help what i thought. but i have never spoken of you outside my house." "you spoke of me within it, to clym, and you could not do worse." "i did my duty." "and i'll do mine." "a part of which will possibly be to set him against his mother. it is always so. but why should i not bear it as others have borne it before me!" "i understand you," said eustacia, breathless with emotion. "you think me capable of every bad thing. who can be worse than a wife who encourages a lover, and poisons her husband's mind against his relative? yet that is now the character given to me. will you not come and drag him out of my hands?" mrs. yeobright gave back heat for heat. "don't rage at me, madam! it ill becomes your beauty, and i am not worth the injury you may do it on my account, i assure you. i am only a poor old woman who has lost a son." "if you had treated me honourably you would have had him still." eustacia said, while scalding tears trickled from her eyes. "you have brought yourself to folly; you have caused a division which can never be healed!" "i have done nothing. this audacity from a young woman is more than i can bear." "it was asked for; you have suspected me, and you have made me speak of my husband in a way i would not have done. you will let him know that i have spoken thus, and it will cause misery between us. will you go away from me? you are no friend!" "i will go when i have spoken a word. if anyone says i have come here to question you without good grounds for it, that person speaks untruly. if anyone says that i attempted to stop your marriage by any but honest means, that person, too, does not speak the truth. i have fallen on an evil time; god has been unjust to me in letting you insult me! probably my son's happiness does not lie on this side of the grave, for he is a foolish man who neglects the advice of his parent. you, eustacia, stand on the edge of a precipice without knowing it. only show my son one-half the temper you have shown me today--and you may before long--and you will find that though he is as gentle as a child with you now, he can be as hard as steel!" the excited mother then withdrew, and eustacia, panting, stood looking into the pool. ii he is set upon by adversities; but he sings a song the result of that unpropitious interview was that eustacia, instead of passing the afternoon with her grandfather, hastily returned home to clym, where she arrived three hours earlier than she had been expected. she came indoors with her face flushed, and her eyes still showing traces of her recent excitement. yeobright looked up astonished; he had never seen her in any way approaching to that state before. she passed him by, and would have gone upstairs unnoticed, but clym was so concerned that he immediately followed her. "what is the matter, eustacia?" he said. she was standing on the hearthrug in the bedroom, looking upon the floor, her hands clasped in front of her, her bonnet yet unremoved. for a moment she did not answer; and then she replied in a low voice-- "i have seen your mother; and i will never see her again!" a weight fell like a stone upon clym. that same morning, when eustacia had arranged to go and see her grandfather, clym had expressed a wish that she would drive down to blooms-end and inquire for her mother-in-law, or adopt any other means she might think fit to bring about a reconciliation. she had set out gaily; and he had hoped for much. "why is this?" he asked. "i cannot tell--i cannot remember. i met your mother. and i will never meet her again." "why?" "what do i know about mr. wildeve now? i won't have wicked opinions passed on me by anybody. o! it was too humiliating to be asked if i had received any money from him, or encouraged him, or something of the sort--i don't exactly know what!" "how could she have asked you that?" "she did." "then there must have been some meaning in it. what did my mother say besides?" "i don't know what she said, except in so far as this, that we both said words which can never be forgiven!" "oh, there must be some misapprehension. whose fault was it that her meaning was not made clear?" "i would rather not say. it may have been the fault of the circumstances, which were awkward at the very least. o clym--i cannot help expressing it--this is an unpleasant position that you have placed me in. but you must improve it--yes, say you will--for i hate it all now! yes, take me to paris, and go on with your old occupation, clym! i don't mind how humbly we live there at first, if it can only be paris, and not egdon heath." "but i have quite given up that idea," said yeobright, with surprise. "surely i never led you to expect such a thing?" "i own it. yet there are thoughts which cannot be kept out of mind, and that one was mine. must i not have a voice in the matter, now i am your wife and the sharer of your doom?" "well, there are things which are placed beyond the pale of discussion; and i thought this was specially so, and by mutual agreement." "clym, i am unhappy at what i hear," she said in a low voice; and her eyes drooped, and she turned away. this indication of an unexpected mine of hope in eustacia's bosom disconcerted her husband. it was the first time that he had confronted the fact of the indirectness of a woman's movement towards her desire. but his intention was unshaken, though he loved eustacia well. all the effect that her remark had upon him was a resolve to chain himself more closely than ever to his books, so as to be the sooner enabled to appeal to substantial results from another course in arguing against her whim. next day the mystery of the guineas was explained. thomasin paid them a hurried visit, and clym's share was delivered up to him by her own hands. eustacia was not present at the time. "then this is what my mother meant," exclaimed clym. "thomasin, do you know that they have had a bitter quarrel?" there was a little more reticence now than formerly in thomasin's manner towards her cousin. it is the effect of marriage to engender in several directions some of the reserve it annihilates in one. "your mother told me," she said quietly. "she came back to my house after seeing eustacia." "the worst thing i dreaded has come to pass. was mother much disturbed when she came to you, thomasin?" "yes." "very much indeed?" "yes." clym leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate, and covered his eyes with his hand. "don't trouble about it, clym. they may get to be friends." he shook his head. "not two people with inflammable natures like theirs. well, what must be will be." "one thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost." "i would rather have lost them twice over than have had this happen." amid these jarring events yeobright felt one thing to be indispensable--that he should speedily make some show of progress in his scholastic plans. with this view he read far into the small hours during many nights. one morning, after a severer strain than usual, he awoke with a strange sensation in his eyes. the sun was shining directly upon the window-blind, and at his first glance thitherward a sharp pain obliged him to close his eyelids quickly. at every new attempt to look about him the same morbid sensibility to light was manifested, and excoriating tears ran down his cheeks. he was obliged to tie a bandage over his brow while dressing; and during the day it could not be abandoned. eustacia was thoroughly alarmed. on finding that the case was no better the next morning they decided to send to anglebury for a surgeon. towards evening he arrived, and pronounced the disease to be acute inflammation induced by clym's night studies, continued in spite of a cold previously caught, which had weakened his eyes for the time. fretting with impatience at this interruption to a task he was so anxious to hasten, clym was transformed into an invalid. he was shut up in a room from which all light was excluded, and his condition would have been one of absolute misery had not eustacia read to him by the glimmer of a shaded lamp. he hoped that the worst would soon be over; but at the surgeon's third visit he learnt to his dismay that although he might venture out of doors with shaded eyes in the course of a month, all thought of pursuing his work, or of reading print of any description, would have to be given up for a long time to come. one week and another week wore on, and nothing seemed to lighten the gloom of the young couple. dreadful imaginings occurred to eustacia, but she carefully refrained from uttering them to her husband. suppose he should become blind, or, at all events, never recover sufficient strength of sight to engage in an occupation which would be congenial to her feelings, and conduce to her removal from this lonely dwelling among the hills? that dream of beautiful paris was not likely to cohere into substance in the presence of this misfortune. as day after day passed by, and he got no better, her mind ran more and more in this mournful groove, and she would go away from him into the garden and weep despairing tears. yeobright thought he would send for his mother; and then he thought he would not. knowledge of his state could only make her the more unhappy; and the seclusion of their life was such that she would hardly be likely to learn the news except through a special messenger. endeavouring to take the trouble as philosophically as possible, he waited on till the third week had arrived, when he went into the open air for the first time since the attack. the surgeon visited him again at this stage, and clym urged him to express a distinct opinion. the young man learnt with added surprise that the date at which he might expect to resume his labours was as uncertain as ever, his eyes being in that peculiar state which, though affording him sight enough for walking about, would not admit of their being strained upon any definite object without incurring the risk of reproducing ophthalmia in its acute form. clym was very grave at the intelligence, but not despairing. a quiet firmness, and even cheerfulness, took possession of him. he was not to be blind; that was enough. to be doomed to behold the world through smoked glass for an indefinite period was bad enough, and fatal to any kind of advance; but yeobright was an absolute stoic in the face of mishaps which only affected his social standing; and, apart from eustacia, the humblest walk of life would satisfy him if it could be made to work in with some form of his culture scheme. to keep a cottage night-school was one such form; and his affliction did not master his spirit as it might otherwise have done. he walked through the warm sun westward into those tracts of egdon with which he was best acquainted, being those lying nearer to his old home. he saw before him in one of the valleys the gleaming of whetted iron, and advancing, dimly perceived that the shine came from the tool of a man who was cutting furze. the worker recognized clym, and yeobright learnt from the voice that the speaker was humphrey. humphrey expressed his sorrow at clym's condition, and added; "now, if yours was low-class work like mine, you could go on with it just the same." "yes, i could," said yeobright musingly. "how much do you get for cutting these faggots?" "half-a-crown a hundred, and in these long days i can live very well on the wages." during the whole of yeobright's walk home to alderworth he was lost in reflections which were not of an unpleasant kind. on his coming up to the house eustacia spoke to him from the open window, and he went across to her. "darling," he said, "i am much happier. and if my mother were reconciled to me and to you i should, i think, be happy quite." "i fear that will never be," she said, looking afar with her beautiful stormy eyes. "how can you say 'i am happier,' and nothing changed?" "it arises from my having at last discovered something i can do, and get a living at, in this time of misfortune." "yes?" "i am going to be a furze and turf-cutter." "no, clym!" she said, the slight hopefulness previously apparent in her face going off again, and leaving her worse than before. "surely i shall. is it not very unwise in us to go on spending the little money we've got when i can keep down expenditure by an honest occupation? the outdoor exercise will do me good, and who knows but that in a few months i shall be able to go on with my reading again?" "but my grandfather offers to assist us, if we require assistance." "we don't require it. if i go furze-cutting we shall be fairly well off." "in comparison with slaves, and the israelites in egypt, and such people!" a bitter tear rolled down eustacia's face, which he did not see. there had been _nonchalance_ in his tone, showing her that he felt no absolute grief at a consummation which to her was a positive horror. the very next day yeobright went to humphrey's cottage, and borrowed of him leggings, gloves, a whet-stone, and a hook, to use till he should be able to purchase some for himself. then he sallied forth with his new fellow-labourer and old acquaintance, and selecting a spot where the furze grew thickest he struck the first blow in his adopted calling. his sight, like the wings in "rasselas," though useless to him for his grand purpose, sufficed for this strait, and he found that when a little practice should have hardened his palms against blistering he would be able to work with ease. day after day he rose with the sun, buckled on his leggings, and went off to the rendezvous with humphrey. his custom was to work from four o'clock in the morning till noon; then, when the heat of the day was at its highest, to go home and sleep for an hour or two; afterwards coming out again and working till dusk at nine. this man from paris was now so disguised by his leather accoutrements, and by the goggles he was obliged to wear over his eyes, that his closest friend might have passed by without recognizing him. he was a brown spot in the midst of an expanse of olive-green gorse, and nothing more. though frequently depressed in spirit when not actually at work, owing to thoughts of eustacia's position and his mother's estrangement, when in the full swing of labour he was cheerfully disposed and calm. his daily life was of a curious microscopic sort, his whole world being limited to a circuit of a few feet from his person. his familiars were creeping and winged things, and they seemed to enroll him in their band. bees hummed around his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. the strange amber-coloured butterflies which egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up and down. tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskilful acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. in and out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. litters of young rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen. none of them feared him. the monotony of his occupation soothed him, and was in itself a pleasure. a forced limitation of effort offered a justification of homely courses to an unambitious man, whose conscience would hardly have allowed him to remain in such obscurity while his powers were unimpeded. hence yeobright sometimes sang to himself, and when obliged to accompany humphrey in search of brambles for faggot-bonds he would amuse his companion with sketches of parisian life and character, and so while away the time. on one of these warm afternoons eustacia walked out alone in the direction of yeobright's place of work. he was busily chopping away at the furze, a long row of faggots which stretched downward from his position representing the labour of the day. he did not observe her approach, and she stood close to him, and heard his undercurrent of song. it shocked her. to see him there, a poor afflicted man, earning money by the sweat of his brow, had at first moved her to tears; but to hear him sing and not at all rebel against an occupation which, however satisfactory to himself, was degrading to her, as an educated lady-wife, wounded her through. unconscious of her presence, he still went on singing:-- "le point du jour À nos bosquets rend toute leur parure; flore est plus belle à son retour; l'oiseau reprend doux chant d'amour; tout célèbre dans la nature le point du jour. "le point du jour cause parfois, cause douleur extrême; que l'espace des nuits est court pour le berger brûlant d'amour, forcé de quitter ce qu'il aime au point du jour!" it was bitterly plain to eustacia that he did not care much about social failure; and the proud fair woman bowed her head and wept in sick despair at thought of the blasting effect upon her own life of that mood and condition in him. then she came forward. "i would starve rather than do it!" she exclaimed vehemently. "and you can sing! i will go and live with my grandfather again!" "eustacia! i did not see you, though i noticed something moving," he said gently. he came forward, pulled off his huge leather glove, and took her hand. "why do you speak in such a strange way? it is only a little old song which struck my fancy when i was in paris, and now just applies to my life with you. has your love for me all died, then, because my appearance is no longer that of a fine gentleman?" "dearest, you must not question me unpleasantly, or it may make me not love you." "do you believe it possible that i would run the risk of doing that?" "well, you follow out your own ideas, and won't give in to mine when i wish you to leave off this shameful labour. is there anything you dislike in me that you act so contrarily to my wishes? i am your wife, and why will you not listen? yes, i am your wife indeed!" "i know what that tone means." "what tone?" "the tone in which you said, 'your wife indeed.' it meant, 'your wife, worse luck.'" "it is hard in you to probe me with that remark. a woman may have reason, though she is not without heart, and if i felt 'worse luck,' it was no ignoble feeling--it was only too natural. there, you see that at any rate i do not attempt untruths. do you remember how, before we were married, i warned you that i had not good wifely qualities?" "you mock me to say that now. on that point at least the only noble course would be to hold your tongue, for you are still queen of me, eustacia, though i may no longer be king of you." "you are my husband. does not that content you?" "not unless you are my wife without regret." "i cannot answer you. i remember saying that i should be a serious matter on your hands." "yes, i saw that." "then you were too quick to see! no true lover would have seen any such thing; you are too severe upon me, clym--i don't like your speaking so at all." "well, i married you in spite of it, and don't regret doing so. how cold you seem this afternoon! and yet i used to think there never was a warmer heart than yours." "yes, i fear we are cooling--i see it as well as you," she sighed mournfully. "and how madly we loved two months ago! you were never tired of contemplating me, nor i of contemplating you. who could have thought then that by this time my eyes would not seem so very bright to yours, nor your lips so very sweet to mine? two months--is it possible? yes, 'tis too true!" "you sigh, dear, as if you were sorry for it; and that's a hopeful sign." "no. i don't sigh for that. there are other things for me to sigh for, or any other woman in my place." "that your chances in life are ruined by marrying in haste an unfortunate man?" "why will you force me, clym, to say bitter things? i deserve pity as much as you. as much?--i think i deserve it more. for you can sing! it would be a strange hour which should catch me singing under such a cloud as this! believe me, sweet, i could weep to a degree that would astonish and confound such an elastic mind as yours. even had you felt careless about your own affliction, you might have refrained from singing out of sheer pity for mine. god! if i were a man in such a position i would curse rather than sing." yeobright placed his hand upon her arm. "now, don't you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that i cannot rebel, in high promethean fashion, against the gods and fate as well as you. i have felt more steam and smoke of that sort than you have ever heard of. but the more i see of life the more do i perceive that there is nothing particularly great in its greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small in mine of furze-cutting. if i feel that the greatest blessings vouchsafed to us are not very valuable, how can i feel it to be any great hardship when they are taken away? so i sing to pass the time. have you indeed lost all tenderness for me, that you begrudge me a few cheerful moments?" "i have still some tenderness left for you." "your words have no longer their old flavour. and so love dies with good fortune!" "i cannot listen to this, clym--it will end bitterly," she said in a broken voice. "i will go home." iii she goes out to battle against depression a few days later, before the month of august had expired, eustacia and yeobright sat together at their early dinner. eustacia's manner had become of late almost apathetic. there was a forlorn look about her beautiful eyes which, whether she deserved it or not, would have excited pity in the breast of anyone who had known her during the full flush of her love for clym. the feelings of husband and wife varied, in some measure, inversely with their positions. clym, the afflicted man, was cheerful; and he even tried to comfort her, who had never felt a moment of physical suffering in her whole life. "come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again. some day perhaps i shall see as well as ever. and i solemnly promise that i'll leave off cutting furze as soon as i have the power to do anything better. you cannot seriously wish me to stay idling at home all day?" "but it is so dreadful--a furze-cutter! and you a man who have lived about the world, and speak french, and german, and who are fit for what is so much better than this." "i suppose when you first saw me and heard about me i was wrapped in a sort of golden halo to your eyes--a man who knew glorious things, and had mixed in brilliant scenes--in short, an adorable, delightful, distracting hero?" "yes," she said, sobbing. "and now i am a poor fellow in brown leather." "don't taunt me. but enough of this. i will not be depressed any more. i am going from home this afternoon, unless you greatly object. there is to be a village picnic--a gipsying, they call it--at east egdon, and i shall go." "to dance?" "why not? you can sing." "well, well, as you will. must i come to fetch you?" "if you return soon enough from your work. but do not inconvenience yourself about it. i know the way home, and the heath has no terror for me." "and can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all the way to a village festival in search of it?" "now, you don't like my going alone! clym, you are not jealous?" "no. but i would come with you if it could give you any pleasure; though, as things stand, perhaps you have too much of me already. still, i somehow wish that you did not want to go. yes, perhaps i am jealous; and who could be jealous with more reason than i, a half-blind man, over such a woman as you?" "don't think like it. let me go, and don't take all my spirits away!" "i would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. go and do whatever you like. who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? you have all my heart yet, i believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag upon you, i owe you thanks. yes, go alone and shine. as for me, i will stick to my doom. at that kind of meeting people would shun me. my hook and gloves are like the st. lazarus rattle of the leper, warning the world to get out of the way of a sight that would sadden them." he kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out. when he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to herself, "two wasted lives--his and mine. and i am come to this! will it drive me out of my mind?" she cast about for any possible course which offered the least improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. she imagined how all those budmouth ones who should learn what had become of her would say, "look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!" to eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of heaven should go much further. suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, "but i'll shake it off. yes, i will shake it off! no one shall know my suffering. i'll be bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and i'll laugh in derision. and i'll begin by going to this dance on the green." she ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous care. to an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost seem reasonable. the gloomy corner into which accident as much as indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the supreme power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than a blessing. it was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready for her walk. there was material enough in the picture for twenty new conquests. the rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when she sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her outdoor attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it, devoid of harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its environment as from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation between flesh and clothes. the heat of the day had scarcely declined as yet, and she went along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there being ample time for her idle expedition. tall ferns buried her in their leafage whenever her path lay through them, which now formed miniature forests, though not one stem of them would remain to bud the next year. the site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawn-like oases which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux of the heath district. the brakes of furze and fern terminated abruptly round the margin, and the grass was unbroken. a green cattle-track skirted the spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern, and this path eustacia followed, in order to reconnoitre the group before joining it. the lusty notes of the east egdon band had directed her unerringly, and she now beheld the musicians themselves, sitting in a blue waggon with red wheels scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to which boughs and flowers were tied. in front of this was the grand central dance of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked by minor dances of inferior individuals whose gyrations were not always in strict keeping with the tune. the young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with a flush on their faces footed it to the girls, who, with the excitement and the exercise, blushed deeper than the pink of their numerous ribbons. fair ones with long curls, fair ones with short curls, fair ones with love-locks, fair ones with braids, flew round and round; and a beholder might well have wondered how such a prepossessing set of young women of like size, age, and disposition, could have been collected together where there were only one or two villages to choose from. in the background was one happy man dancing by himself, with closed eyes, totally oblivious of all the rest. a fire was burning under a pollard thorn a few paces off, over which three kettles hung in a row. hard by was a table where elderly dames prepared tea, but eustacia looked among them in vain for the cattle-dealer's wife who had suggested that she should come, and had promised to obtain a courteous welcome for her. this unexpected absence of the only local resident whom eustacia knew considerably damaged her scheme for an afternoon of reckless gaiety. joining in became a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were she to advance, cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea and make much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowledge to themselves. having watched the company through the figures of two dances, she decided to walk a little further, to a cottage where she might get some refreshment, and then return homeward in the shady time of evening. this she did; and by the time that she retraced her steps towards the scene of the gipsying, which it was necessary to repass on her way to alderworth, the sun was going down. the air was now so still that she could hear the band afar off, and it seemed to be playing with more spirit, if that were possible, than when she had come away. on reaching the hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little difference either to eustacia or to the revellers, for a round yellow moon was rising before her, though its rays had not yet outmastered those from the west. the dance was going on just the same, but strangers had arrived and formed a ring around the figure, so that eustacia could stand among these without a chance of being recognized. a whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. the forty hearts of those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months before, they had come together in similar jollity. for the time paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they adored none other than themselves. how many of those impassioned but temporary embraces were destined to become perpetual was possibly the wonder of some of those who indulged in them, as well as of eustacia who looked on. she began to envy those pirouetters, to hunger for the hope and happiness which the fascination of the dance seemed to engender within them. desperately fond of dancing herself, one of eustacia's expectations of paris had been the opportunity it might afford her of indulgence in this favourite pastime. unhappily, that expectation was now extinct within her for ever. whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluctuating in the increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her name whispered by a voice over her shoulder. turning in surprise, she beheld at her elbow one whose presence instantly caused her to flush to the temples. it was wildeve. till this moment he had not met her eye since the morning of his marriage, when she had been loitering in the church, and had startled him by lifting her veil and coming forward to sign the register as witness. yet why the sight of him should have instigated that sudden rush of blood she could not tell. before she could speak he whispered, "do you like dancing as much as ever?" "i think i do," she replied in a low voice. "will you dance with me?" "it would be a great change for me; but will it not seem strange?" "what strangeness can there be in relations dancing together?" "ah--yes, relations. perhaps none." "still, if you don't like to be seen, pull down your veil; though there is not much risk of being known by this light. lots of strangers are here." she did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that she accepted his offer. wildeve gave her his arm and took her down on the outside of the ring to the bottom of the dance, which they entered. in two minutes more they were involved in the figure and began working their way upwards to the top. till they had advanced halfway thither eustacia wished more than once that she had not yielded to his request; from the middle to the top she felt that, since she had come out to seek pleasure, she was only doing a natural thing to obtain it. fairly launched into the ceaseless glides and whirls which their new position as top couple opened up to them, eustacia's pulses began to move too quickly for long rumination of any kind. through the length of five-and-twenty couples they threaded their giddy way, and a new vitality entered her form. the pale ray of evening lent a fascination to the experience. there is a certain degree and tone of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. all the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but eustacia most of all. the grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table. the air became quite still, the flag above the waggon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and french horn gleamed out like huge eyes from the shade of their figures. the pretty dresses of the maids lost their subtler day colours and showed more or less of a misty white. eustacia floated round and round on wildeve's arm, her face rapt and statuesque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten her features, which were left empty and quiescent, as they always are when feeling goes beyond their register. how near she was to wildeve! it was terrible to think of. she could feel his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. how badly she had treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. the enchantment of the dance surprised her. a clear line of difference divided like a tangible fence her experience within this maze of motion from her experience without it. her beginning to dance had been like a change of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped in arctic frigidity by comparison with the tropical sensations here. she had entered the dance from the troubled hours of her late life as one might enter a brilliant chamber after a night walk in a wood. wildeve by himself would have been merely an agitation; wildeve added to the dance, and the moonlight, and the secrecy, began to be a delight. whether his personality supplied the greater part of this sweetly compounded feeling, or whether the dance and the scene weighed the more therein, was a nice point upon which eustacia herself was entirely in a cloud. people began to say "who are they?" but no invidious inquiries were made. had eustacia mingled with the other girls in their ordinary daily walks the case would have been different: here she was not inconvenienced by excessive inspection, for all were wrought to their brightest grace by the occasion. like the planet mercury surrounded by the lustre of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without much notice in the temporary glory of the situation. as for wildeve, his feelings are easy to guess. obstacles were a ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment in a delirium of exquisite misery. to clasp as his for five minutes what was another man's through all the rest of the year was a kind of thing he of all men could appreciate. he had long since begun to sigh again for eustacia; indeed, it may be asserted that signing the marriage register with thomasin was the natural signal to his heart to return to its first quarters, and that the extra complication of eustacia's marriage was the one addition required to make that return compulsory. thus, for different reasons, what was to the rest an exhilarating movement was to these two a riding upon the whirlwind. the dance had come like an irresistible attack upon whatever sense of social order there was in their minds, to drive them back into old paths which were now doubly irregular. through three dances in succession they spun their way; and then, fatigued with the incessant motion, eustacia turned to quit the circle in which she had already remained too long. wildeve led her to a grassy mound a few yards distant, where she sat down, her partner standing beside her. from the time that he addressed her at the beginning of the dance till now they had not exchanged a word. "the dance and the walking have tired you?" he said tenderly. "no; not greatly." "it is strange that we should have met here of all places, after missing each other so long." "we have missed because we tried to miss, i suppose." "yes. but you began that proceeding--by breaking a promise." "it is scarcely worth while to talk of that now. we have formed other ties since then--you no less than i." "i am sorry to hear that your husband is ill." "he is not ill--only incapacitated." "yes: that is what i mean. i sincerely sympathize with you in your trouble. fate has treated you cruelly." she was silent awhile. "have you heard that he has chosen to work as a furze-cutter?" she said in a low, mournful voice. "it has been mentioned to me," answered wildeve hesitatingly. "but i hardly believed it." "it is true. what do you think of me as a furze-cutter's wife?" "i think the same as ever of you, eustacia. nothing of that sort can degrade you: you ennoble the occupation of your husband." "i wish i could feel it." "is there any chance of mr. yeobright getting better?" "he thinks so. i doubt it." "i was quite surprised to hear that he had taken a cottage. i thought, in common with other people, that he would have taken you off to a home in paris immediately after you had married him. 'what a gay, bright future she has before her!' i thought. he will, i suppose, return there with you, if his sight gets strong again?" observing that she did not reply he regarded her more closely. she was almost weeping. images of a future never to be enjoyed, the revived sense of her bitter disappointment, the picture of the neighbours' suspended ridicule which was raised by wildeve's words, had been too much for proud eustacia's equanimity. wildeve could hardly control his own too forward feelings when he saw her silent perturbation. but he affected not to notice this, and she soon recovered her calmness. "you do not intend to walk home by yourself?" he asked. "o yes," said eustacia. "what could hurt me on this heath, who have nothing?" "by diverging a little i can make my way home the same as yours. i shall be glad to keep you company as far as throope corner." seeing that eustacia sat on in hesitation he added, "perhaps you think it unwise to be seen in the same road with me after the events of last summer?" "indeed i think no such thing," she said haughtily. "i shall accept whose company i choose, for all that may be said by the miserable inhabitants of egdon." "then let us walk on--if you are ready. our nearest way is towards that holly-bush with the dark shadow that you see down there." eustacia arose, and walked beside him in the direction signified, brushing her way over the damping heath and fern, and followed by the strains of the merrymakers, who still kept up the dance. the moon had now waxed bright and silvery, but the heath was proof against such illumination, and there was to be observed the striking scene of a dark, rayless tract of country under an atmosphere charged from its zenith to its extremities with whitest light. to an eye above them their two faces would have appeared amid the expanse like two pearls on a table of ebony. on this account the irregularities of the path were not visible, and wildeve occasionally stumbled; whilst eustacia found it necessary to perform some graceful feats of balancing whenever a small tuft of heather or root of furze protruded itself through the grass of the narrow track and entangled her feet. at these junctures in her progress a hand was invariably stretched forward to steady her, holding her firmly until smooth ground was again reached, when the hand was again withdrawn to a respectful distance. they performed the journey for the most part in silence, and drew near to throope corner, a few hundred yards from which a short path branched away to eustacia's house. by degrees they discerned coming towards them a pair of human figures, apparently of the male sex. when they came a little nearer eustacia broke the silence by saying, "one of those men is my husband. he promised to come to meet me." "and the other is my greatest enemy," said wildeve. "it looks like diggory venn." "that is the man." "it is an awkward meeting," said she; "but such is my fortune. he knows too much about me, unless he could know more, and so prove to himself that what he now knows counts for nothing. well, let it be: you must deliver me up to them." "you will think twice before you direct me to do that. here is a man who has not forgotten an item in our meetings at rainbarrow: he is in company with your husband. which of them, seeing us together here, will believe that our meeting and dancing at the gipsy-party was by chance?" "very well," she whispered gloomily. "leave me before they come up." wildeve bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across the fern and furze, eustacia slowly walking on. in two or three minutes she met her husband and his companion. "my journey ends here for tonight, reddleman," said yeobright as soon as he perceived her. "i turn back with this lady. good night." "good night, mr. yeobright," said venn. "i hope to see you better soon." the moonlight shone directly upon venn's face as he spoke, and revealed all its lines to eustacia. he was looking suspiciously at her. that venn's keen eye had discerned what yeobright's feeble vision had not--a man in the act of withdrawing from eustacia's side--was within the limits of the probable. if eustacia had been able to follow the reddleman she would soon have found striking confirmation of her thought. no sooner had clym given her his arm and led her off the scene than the reddleman turned back from the beaten track towards east egdon, whither he had been strolling merely to accompany clym in his walk, diggory's van being again in the neighbourhood. stretching out his long legs, he crossed the pathless portion of the heath somewhat in the direction which wildeve had taken. only a man accustomed to nocturnal rambles could at this hour have descended those shaggy slopes with venn's velocity without falling headlong into a pit, or snapping off his leg by jamming his foot into some rabbit burrow. but venn went on without much inconvenience to himself, and the course of his scamper was towards the quiet woman inn. this place he reached in about half an hour, and he was well aware that no person who had been near throope corner when he started could have got down here before him. the lonely inn was not yet closed, though scarcely an individual was there, the business done being chiefly with travellers who passed the inn on long journeys, and these had now gone on their way. venn went to the public room, called for a mug of ale, and inquired of the maid in an indifferent tone if mr. wildeve was at home. thomasin sat in an inner room and heard venn's voice. when customers were present she seldom showed herself, owing to her inherent dislike for the business; but perceiving that no one else was there tonight she came out. "he is not at home yet, diggory," she said pleasantly. "but i expected him sooner. he has been to east egdon to buy a horse." "did he wear a light wideawake?" "yes." "then i saw him at throope corner, leading one home," said venn drily. "a beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night. he will soon be here, no doubt." rising and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet face of thomasin, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, "mr. wildeve seems to be often away at this time." "o yes," cried thomasin in what was intended to be a tone of gaiety. "husbands will play the truant, you know. i wish you could tell me of some secret plan that would help me to keep him home at my will in the evenings." "i will consider if i know of one," replied venn in that same light tone which meant no lightness. and then he bowed in a manner of his own invention and moved to go. thomasin offered him her hand; and without a sigh, though with food for many, the reddleman went out. when wildeve returned, a quarter of an hour later, thomasin said simply, and in the abashed manner usual with her now, "where is the horse, damon?" "o, i have not bought it, after all. the man asks too much." "but somebody saw you at throope corner leading it home--a beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night." "ah!" said wildeve, fixing his eyes upon her; "who told you that?" "venn the reddleman." the expression of wildeve's face became curiously condensed. "that is a mistake--it must have been some one else," he said slowly and testily, for he perceived that venn's countermoves had begun again. iv rough coercion is employed those words of thomasin, which seemed so little, but meant so much, remained in the ears of diggory venn: "help me to keep him home in the evenings." on this occasion venn had arrived on egdon heath only to cross to the other side: he had no further connection with the interests of the yeobright family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. yet he suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of manoeuvring on thomasin's account. he sat in his van and considered. from thomasin's words and manner he had plainly gathered that wildeve neglected her. for whom could he neglect her if not for eustacia? yet it was scarcely credible that things had come to such a head as to indicate that eustacia systematically encouraged him. venn resolved to reconnoitre somewhat carefully the lonely road which led along the vale from wildeve's dwelling to clym's house at alderworth. at this time, as had been seen, wildeve was quite innocent of any predetermined act of intrigue, and except at the dance on the green he had not once met eustacia since her marriage. but that the spirit of intrigue was in him had been shown by a recent romantic habit of his: a habit of going out after dark and strolling towards alderworth, there looking at the moon and stars, looking at eustacia's house, and walking back at leisure. accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival, the reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over the front gate of clym's garden, sigh, and turn to go back again. it was plain that wildeve's intrigue was rather ideal than real. venn retreated before him down the hill to a place where the path was merely a deep groove between the heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a few minutes, and retired. when wildeve came on to that spot his ankle was caught by something, and he fell headlong. as soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and listened. there was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. feeling about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on with tolerable quickness. on reaching home he found the cord to be of a reddish colour. it was just what he had expected. although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to physical fear, the species of _coup-de-jarnac_ from one he knew too well troubled the mind of wildeve. but his movements were unaltered thereby. a night or two later he again went along the vale to alderworth, taking the precaution of keeping out of any path. the sense that he was watched, that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes, added piquancy to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long as the danger was of no fearful sort. he imagined that venn and mrs. yeobright were in league, and felt that there was a certain legitimacy in combating such a coalition. the heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted: and wildeve, after looking over eustacia's garden gate for some little time, with a cigar in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. he could see into the room, and eustacia was sitting there alone. wildeve contemplated her for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly, whereupon moths flew out alarmed. securing one, he returned to the window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. the moth made towards the candle upon eustacia's table, hovered round it two or three times, and flew into the flame. eustacia started up. this had been a well-known signal in old times when wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to mistover. she at once knew that wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her husband came in from upstairs. eustacia's face burnt crimson at the unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that it too frequently lacked. "you have a very high colour, dearest," said yeobright, when he came close enough to see it. "your appearance would be no worse if it were always so." "i am warm," said eustacia. "i think i will go into the air for a few minutes." "shall i go with you?" "o no. i am only going to the gate." she arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping began upon the front door. "i'll go--i'll go," said eustacia in an unusually quick tone for her; and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown; but nothing appeared there. "you had better not at this time of the evening," he said. clym stepped before her into the passage, and eustacia waited, her somnolent manner covering her inner heat and agitation. she listened, and clym opened the door. no words were uttered outside, and presently he closed it and came back, saying, "nobody was there. i wonder what that could have meant?" he was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation offered itself, and eustacia said nothing, the additional fact that she knew of only adding more mystery to the performance. meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved eustacia from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least. while wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had come behind him up to the gate. this man, who carried a gun in his hand, looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner and over the hedge. "damn him!" said wildeve. "he has been watching me again." as his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. half-way down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. when wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent gunshots fell among the leaves around him. there was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun's discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. this attack was a more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before wildeve recovered his equanimity. a new and most unpleasant system of menace had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm. wildeve had looked upon venn's first attempt as a species of horse-play, which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the perilous. had wildeve known how thoroughly in earnest venn had become he might have been still more alarmed. the reddleman had been almost exasperated by the sight of wildeve outside clym's house, and he was prepared to go to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. the doubtful legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of venn. it troubles few such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted. from the impeachment of strafford to farmer lynch's short way with the scamps of virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are mockeries of law. about half a mile below clym's secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of alderworth, and wildeve went straight to the constable's cottage. almost the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable's truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the means to his purpose. on inquiry, however, of the constable's wife he learnt that the constable was not at home. wildeve said he would wait. the minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive. wildeve cooled down from his state of high indignation to a restless dissatisfaction with himself, the scene, the constable's wife, and the whole set of circumstances. he arose and left the house. altogether, the experience of that evening had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on misdirected tenderness, and wildeve was in no mood to ramble again to alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance from eustacia. thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in his rude contrivances for keeping down wildeve's inclination to rove in the evening. he had nipped in the bud the possible meeting between eustacia and her old lover this very night. but he had not anticipated that the tendency of his action would be to divert wildeve's movement rather than to stop it. the gambling with the guineas had not conduced to make him a welcome guest to clym; but to call upon his wife's relative was natural, and he was determined to see eustacia. it was necessary to choose some less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night. "since it is unsafe to go in the evening," he said, "i'll go by day." meanwhile venn had left the heath and gone to call upon mrs. yeobright, with whom he had been on friendly terms since she had learnt what a providential countermove he had made towards the restitution of the family guineas. she wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no objection to see him. he gave her a full account of clym's affliction, and of the state in which he was living; then, referring to thomasin, touched gently upon the apparent sadness of her days. "now, ma'am, depend upon it," he said, "you couldn't do a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at first." "both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; therefore i have no interest in their households. their troubles are of their own making." mrs. yeobright tried to speak severely; but the account of her son's state had moved her more than she cared to show. "your visits would make wildeve walk straighter than he is inclined to do, and might prevent unhappiness down the heath." "what do you mean?" "i saw something tonight out there which i didn't like at all. i wish your son's house and mr. wildeve's were a hundred miles apart instead of four or five." "then there was an understanding between him and clym's wife when he made a fool of thomasin!" "we'll hope there's no understanding now." "and our hope will probably be very vain. o clym! o thomasin!" "there's no harm done yet. in fact, i've persuaded wildeve to mind his own business." "how?" "o, not by talking--by a plan of mine called the silent system." "i hope you'll succeed." "i shall if you help me by calling and making friends with your son. you'll have a chance then of using your eyes." "well, since it has come to this," said mrs. yeobright sadly, "i will own to you, reddleman, that i thought of going. i should be much happier if we were reconciled. the marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut short, and i should wish to die in peace. he is my only son; and since sons are made of such stuff i am not sorry i have no other. as for thomasin, i never expected much from her; and she has not disappointed me. but i forgave her long ago; and i forgive him now. i'll go." at this very time of the reddleman's conversation with mrs. yeobright at blooms-end another conversation on the same subject was languidly proceeding at alderworth. all the day clym had borne himself as if his mind were too full of its own matter to allow him to care about outward things, and his words now showed what had occupied his thoughts. it was just after the mysterious knocking that he began the theme. "since i have been away today, eustacia, i have considered that something must be done to heal up this ghastly breach between my dear mother and myself. it troubles me." "what do you propose to do?" said eustacia abstractedly, for she could not clear away from her the excitement caused by wildeve's recent manoeuvre for an interview. "you seem to take a very mild interest in what i propose, little or much," said clym, with tolerable warmth. "you mistake me," she answered, reviving at his reproach. "i am only thinking." "what of?" "partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt up in the wick of the candle," she said slowly. "but you know i always take an interest in what you say." "very well, dear. then i think i must go and call upon her."... he went on with tender feeling: "it is a thing i am not at all too proud to do, and only a fear that i might irritate her has kept me away so long. but i must do something. it is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go on." "what have you to blame yourself about?" "she is getting old, and her life is lonely, and i am her only son." "she has thomasin." "thomasin is not her daughter; and if she were that would not excuse me. but this is beside the point. i have made up my mind to go to her, and all i wish to ask you is whether you will do your best to help me--that is, forget the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled, meet her half-way by welcoming her to our house, or by accepting a welcome to hers?" at first eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do anything on the whole globe than what he suggested. but the lines of her mouth softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened; and she said, "i will put nothing in your way; but after what has passed it is asking too much that i go and make advances." "you never distinctly told me what did pass between you." "i could not do it then, nor can i now. sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that may be the case here." she paused a few moments, and added, "if you had never returned to your native place, clym, what a blessing it would have been for you!... it has altered the destinies of--" "three people." "five," eustacia thought; but she kept that in. v the journey across the heath thursday, the thirty-first of august, was one of a series of days during which snug houses were stifling, and when cool draughts were treats; when cracks appeared in clayey gardens, and were called "earthquakes" by apprehensive children; when loose spokes were discovered in the wheels of carts and carriages; and when stinging insects haunted the air, the earth, and every drop of water that was to be found. in mrs. yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind flagged by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at eleven; and even stiff cabbages were limp by noon. it was about eleven o'clock on this day that mrs. yeobright started across the heath towards her son's house, to do her best in getting reconciled with him and eustacia, in conformity with her words to the reddleman. she had hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the heat of the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found that this was not to be done. the sun had branded the whole heath with his mark, even the purple heath-flowers having put on a brownness under the dry blazes of the few preceding days. every valley was filled with air like that of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of the winter water-courses, which formed summer paths, had undergone a species of incineration since the drought had set in. in cool, fresh weather mrs. yeobright would have found no inconvenience in walking to alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age; and at the end of the third mile she wished that she had hired fairway to drive her a portion at least of the distance. but from the point at which she had arrived it was as easy to reach clym's house as to get home again. so she went on, the air around her pulsating silently, and oppressing the earth with lassitude. she looked at the sky overhead, and saw that the sapphirine hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a metallic violet. occasionally she came to a spot where independent worlds of ephemerons were passing their time in mad carousal, some in the air, some on the hot ground and vegetation, some in the tepid and stringy water of a nearly dried pool. all the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous mud amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscure creatures could be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing with enjoyment. being a woman not disinclined to philosophize she sometimes sat down under her umbrella to rest and to watch their happiness, for a certain hopefulness as to the result of her visit gave ease to her mind, and between important thoughts left it free to dwell on any infinitesimal matter which caught her eyes. mrs. yeobright had never before been to her son's house, and its exact position was unknown to her. she tried one ascending path and another, and found that they led her astray. retracing her steps, she came again to an open level, where she perceived at a distance a man at work. she went towards him and inquired the way. the labourer pointed out the direction, and added, "do you see that furze-cutter, ma'am, going up that footpath yond?" mrs. yeobright strained her eyes, and at last said that she did perceive him. "well, if you follow him you can make no mistake. he's going to the same place, ma'am." she followed the figure indicated. he appeared of a russet hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around him than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on. his progress when actually walking was more rapid than mrs. yeobright's; but she was enabled to keep at an equable distance from him by his habit of stopping whenever he came to a brake of brambles, where he paused awhile. on coming in her turn to each of these spots she found half a dozen long limp brambles which he had cut from the bush during his halt and laid out straight beside the path. they were evidently intended for furze-faggot bonds which he meant to collect on his return. the silent being who thus occupied himself seemed to be of no more account in life than an insect. he appeared as a mere parasite of the heath, fretting its surface in his daily labour as a moth frets a garment, entirely engrossed with its products, having no knowledge of anything in the world but fern, furze, heath, lichens, and moss. the furze-cutter was so absorbed in the business of his journey that he never turned his head; and his leather-legged and gauntleted form at length became to her as nothing more than a moving handpost to show her the way. suddenly she was attracted to his individuality by observing peculiarities in his walk. it was a gait she had seen somewhere before; and the gait revealed the man to her, as the gait of ahimaaz in the distant plain made him known to the watchman of the king. "his walk is exactly as my husband's used to be," she said; and then the thought burst upon her that the furze-cutter was her son. she was scarcely able to familiarize herself with this strange reality. she had been told that clym was in the habit of cutting furze, but she had supposed that he occupied himself with the labour only at odd times, by way of useful pastime; yet she now beheld him as a furze-cutter and nothing more--wearing the regulation dress of the craft, and thinking the regulation thoughts, to judge by his motions. planning a dozen hasty schemes for at once preserving him and eustacia from this mode of life she throbbingly followed the way, and saw him enter his own door. at one side of clym's house was a knoll, and on the top of the knoll a clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the sky that their foliage from a distance appeared as a black spot in the air above the crown of the hill. on reaching this place mrs. yeobright felt distressingly agitated, weary, and unwell. she ascended, and sat down under their shade to recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground with eustacia, so as not to irritate a woman underneath whose apparent indolence lurked passions even stronger and more active than her own. the trees beneath which she sat were singularly battered, rude, and wild, and for a few minutes mrs. yeobright dismissed thoughts of her own storm-broken and exhausted state to contemplate theirs. not a bough in the nine trees which composed the group but was splintered, lopped, and distorted by the fierce weather that there held them at its mercy whenever it prevailed. some were blasted and split as if by lightning, black stains as from fire marking their sides, while the ground at their feet was strewn with dead fir-needles and heaps of cones blown down in the gales of past years. the place was called the devil's bellows, and it was only necessary to come there on a march or november night to discover the forcible reasons for that name. on the present heated afternoon, when no perceptible wind was blowing, the trees kept up a perpetual moan which one could hardly believe to be caused by the air. here she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could summon resolution to go down to the door, her courage being lowered to zero by her physical lassitude. to any other person than a mother it might have seemed a little humiliating that she, the elder of the two women, should be the first to make advances. but mrs. yeobright had well considered all that, and she only thought how best to make her visit appear to eustacia not abject but wise. from her elevated position the exhausted woman could perceive the roof of the house below, and the garden and the whole enclosure of the little domicile. and now, at the moment of rising, she saw a second man approaching the gate. his manner was peculiar, hesitating, and not that of a person come on business or by invitation. he surveyed the house with interest, and then walked round and scanned the outer boundary of the garden, as one might have done had it been the birthplace of shakespeare, the prison of mary stuart, or the château of hougomont. after passing round and again reaching the gate he went in. mrs. yeobright was vexed at this, having reckoned on finding her son and his wife by themselves; but a moment's thought showed her that the presence of an acquaintance would take off the awkwardness of her first appearance in the house, by confining the talk to general matters until she had begun to feel comfortable with them. she came down the hill to the gate, and looked into the hot garden. there lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds, rugs, and carpets were unendurable. the leaves of the hollyhocks hung like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. a small apple tree, of the sort called ratheripe, grew just inside the gate, the only one which throve in the garden, by reason of the lightness of the soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground beneath were wasps rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping about the little caves in each fruit which they had eaten out before stupefied by its sweetness. by the door lay clym's furze-hook and the last handful of faggot-bonds she had seen him gather; they had plainly been thrown down there as he entered the house. vi a conjuncture, and its result upon the pedestrian wildeve, as has been stated, was determined to visit eustacia boldly, by day, and on the easy terms of a relation, since the reddleman had spied out and spoilt his walks to her by night. the spell that she had thrown over him in the moonlight dance made it impossible for a man having no strong puritanic force within him to keep away altogether. he merely calculated on meeting her and her husband in an ordinary manner, chatting a little while, and leaving again. every outward sign was to be conventional; but the one great fact would be there to satisfy him: he would see her. he did not even desire clym's absence, since it was just possible that eustacia might resent any situation which could compromise her dignity as a wife, whatever the state of her heart towards him. women were often so. he went accordingly; and it happened that the time of his arrival coincided with that of mrs. yeobright's pause on the hill near the house. when he had looked round the premises in the manner she had noticed he went and knocked at the door. there was a few minutes' interval, and then the key turned in the lock, the door opened, and eustacia herself confronted him. nobody could have imagined from her bearing now that here stood the woman who had joined with him in the impassioned dance of the week before, unless indeed he could have penetrated below the surface and gauged the real depth of that still stream. "i hope you reached home safely?" said wildeve. "o yes," she carelessly returned. "and were you not tired the next day? i feared you might be." "i was rather. you need not speak low--nobody will overhear us. my small servant is gone on an errand to the village." "then clym is not at home?" "yes, he is." "o! i thought that perhaps you had locked the door because you were alone and were afraid of tramps." "no--here is my husband." they had been standing in the entry. closing the front door and turning the key, as before, she threw open the door of the adjoining room and asked him to walk in. wildeve entered, the room appearing to be empty; but as soon as he had advanced a few steps he started. on the hearth rug lay clym asleep. beside him were the leggings, thick boots, leather gloves, and sleeve-waistcoat in which he worked. "you may go in; you will not disturb him," she said, following behind. "my reason for fastening the door is that he may not be intruded upon by any chance comer while lying here, if i should be in the garden or upstairs." "why is he sleeping there?" said wildeve in low tones. "he is very weary. he went out at half-past four this morning, and has been working ever since. he cuts furze because it is the only thing he can do that does not put any strain upon his poor eyes." the contrast between the sleeper's appearance and wildeve's at this moment was painfully apparent to eustacia, wildeve being elegantly dressed in a new summer suit and light hat; and she continued: "ah! you don't know how differently he appeared when i first met him, though it is such a little while ago. his hands were as white and soft as mine; and look at them now, how rough and brown they are! his complexion is by nature fair, and that rusty look he has now, all of a colour with his leather clothes, is caused by the burning of the sun." "why does he go out at all?" wildeve whispered. "because he hates to be idle; though what he earns doesn't add much to our exchequer. however, he says that when people are living upon their capital they must keep down current expenses by turning a penny where they can." "the fates have not been kind to you, eustacia yeobright." "i have nothing to thank them for." "nor has he--except for their one great gift to him." "what's that?" wildeve looked her in the eyes. eustacia blushed for the first time that day. "well, i am a questionable gift," she said quietly. "i thought you meant the gift of content--which he has, and i have not." "i can understand content in such a case--though how the outward situation can attract him puzzles me." "that's because you don't know him. he's an enthusiast about ideas, and careless about outward things. he often reminds me of the apostle paul." "i am glad to hear that he's so grand in character as that." "yes; but the worst of it is that though paul was excellent as a man in the bible he would hardly have done in real life." their voices had instinctively dropped lower, though at first they had taken no particular care to avoid awakening clym. "well, if that means that your marriage is a misfortune to you, you know who is to blame," said wildeve. "the marriage is no misfortune in itself," she retorted with some little petulance. "it is simply the accident which has happened since that has been the cause of my ruin. i have certainly got thistles for figs in a worldly sense, but how could i tell what time would bring forth?" "sometimes, eustacia, i think it is a judgment upon you. you rightly belonged to me, you know; and i had no idea of losing you." "no, it was not my fault! two could not belong to you; and remember that, before i was aware, you turned aside to another woman. it was cruel levity in you to do that. i never dreamt of playing such a game on my side till you began it on yours." "i meant nothing by it," replied wildeve. "it was a mere interlude. men are given to the trick of having a passing fancy for somebody else in the midst of a permanent love, which reasserts itself afterwards just as before. on account of your rebellious manner to me i was tempted to go further than i should have done; and when you still would keep playing the same tantalizing part i went further still, and married her." turning and looking again at the unconscious form of clym, he murmured, "i am afraid that you don't value your prize, clym... he ought to be happier than i in one thing at least. he may know what it is to come down in the world, and to be afflicted with a great personal calamity; but he probably doesn't know what it is to lose the woman he loved." "he is not ungrateful for winning her," whispered eustacia, "and in that respect he is a good man. many women would go far for such a husband. but do i desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life--music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that are going on in the great arteries of the world? that was the shape of my youthful dream; but i did not get it. yet i thought i saw the way to it in my clym." "and you only married him on that account?" "there you mistake me. i married him because i loved him, but i won't say that i didn't love him partly because i thought i saw a promise of that life in him." "you have dropped into your old mournful key." "but i am not going to be depressed," she cried perversely. "i began a new system by going to that dance, and i mean to stick to it. clym can sing merrily; why should not i?" wildeve looked thoughtfully at her. "it is easier to say you will sing than to do it; though if i could i would encourage you in your attempt. but as life means nothing to me, without one thing which is now impossible, you will forgive me for not being able to encourage you." "damon, what is the matter with you, that you speak like that?" she asked, raising her deep shady eyes to his. "that's a thing i shall never tell plainly; and perhaps if i try to tell you in riddles you will not care to guess them." eustacia remained silent for a minute, and she said, "we are in a strange relationship today. you mince matters to an uncommon nicety. you mean, damon, that you still love me. well, that gives me sorrow, for i am not made so entirely happy by my marriage that i am willing to spurn you for the information, as i ought to do. but we have said too much about this. do you mean to wait until my husband is awake?" "i thought to speak to him; but it is unnecessary. eustacia, if i offend you by not forgetting you, you are right to mention it; but do not talk of spurning." she did not reply, and they stood looking musingly at clym as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the result of physical labour carried on in circumstances that wake no nervous fear. "god, how i envy him that sweet sleep!" said wildeve. "i have not slept like that since i was a boy--years and years ago." while they thus watched him a click at the gate was audible, and a knock came to the door. eustacia went to a window and looked out. her countenance changed. first she became crimson, and then the red subsided till it even partially left her lips. "shall i go away?" said wildeve, standing up. "i hardly know." "who is it?" "mrs. yeobright. o, what she said to me that day! i cannot understand this visit--what does she mean? and she suspects that past time of ours." "i am in your hands. if you think she had better not see me here i'll go into the next room." "well, yes: go." wildeve at once withdrew; but before he had been half a minute in the adjoining apartment eustacia came after him. "no," she said, "we won't have any of this. if she comes in she must see you--and think if she likes there's something wrong! but how can i open the door to her, when she dislikes me--wishes to see not me, but her son? i won't open the door!" mrs. yeobright knocked again more loudly. "her knocking will, in all likelihood, awaken him," continued eustacia, "and then he will let her in himself. ah--listen." they could hear clym moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word "mother." "yes--he is awake--he will go to the door," she said, with a breath of relief. "come this way. i have a bad name with her, and you must not be seen. thus i am obliged to act by stealth, not because i do ill, but because others are pleased to say so." by this time she had taken him to the back door, which was open, disclosing a path leading down the garden. "now, one word, damon," she remarked as he stepped forth. "this is your first visit here; let it be your last. we have been hot lovers in our time, but it won't do now. good-bye." "good-bye," said wildeve. "i have had all i came for, and i am satisfied." "what was it?" "a sight of you. upon my eternal honour i came for no more." wildeve kissed his hand to the beautiful girl he addressed, and passed into the garden, where she watched him down the path, over the stile at the end, and into the ferns outside, which brushed his hips as he went along till he became lost in their thickets. when he had quite gone she slowly turned, and directed her attention to the interior of the house. but it was possible that her presence might not be desired by clym and his mother at this moment of their first meeting, or that it would be superfluous. at all events, she was in no hurry to meet mrs. yeobright. she resolved to wait till clym came to look for her, and glided back into the garden. here she idly occupied herself for a few minutes, till finding no notice was taken of her she retraced her steps through the house to the front, where she listened for voices in the parlour. but hearing none she opened the door and went in. to her astonishment clym lay precisely as wildeve and herself had left him, his sleep apparently unbroken. he had been disturbed and made to dream and murmur by the knocking, but he had not awakened. eustacia hastened to the door, and in spite of her reluctance to open it to a woman who had spoken of her so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out. nobody was to be seen. there, by the scraper, lay clym's hook and the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home; in front of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing slightly ajar; and, beyond, the great valley of purple heath thrilling silently in the sun. mrs. yeobright was gone. clym's mother was at this time following a path which lay hidden from eustacia by a shoulder of the hill. her walk thither from the garden gate had been hasty and determined, as of a woman who was now no less anxious to escape from the scene than she had previously been to enter it. her eyes were fixed on the ground; within her two sights were graven--that of clym's hook and brambles at the door, and that of a woman's face at a window. her lips trembled, becoming unnaturally thin as she murmured, "'tis too much--clym, how can he bear to do it! he is at home; and yet he lets her shut the door against me!" in her anxiety to get out of the direct view of the house she had diverged from the straightest path homeward, and while looking about to regain it she came upon a little boy gathering whortleberries in a hollow. the boy was johnny nunsuch, who had been eustacia's stoker at the bonfire, and, with the tendency of a minute body to gravitate towards a greater, he began hovering round mrs. yeobright as soon as she appeared, and trotted on beside her without perceptible consciousness of his act. mrs. yeobright spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep. "'tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there till evening." "i shall," said her small companion. "i am going to play marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o'clock, because father comes home. does your father come home at six too?" "no, he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody." "what have made you so down? have you seen a ooser?" "i have seen what's worse--a woman's face looking at me through a window-pane." "is that a bad sight?" "yes. it is always a bad sight to see a woman looking out at a weary wayfarer and not letting her in." "once when i went to throope great pond to catch effets i seed myself looking up at myself, and i was frightened and jumped back like anything." ..."if they had only shown signs of meeting my advances half-way how well it might have been done! but there is no chance. shut out! she must have set him against me. can there be beautiful bodies without hearts inside? i think so. i would not have done it against a neighbour's cat on such a fiery day as this!" "what is it you say?" "never again--never! not even if they send for me!" "you must be a very curious woman to talk like that." "o no, not at all," she said, returning to the boy's prattle. "most people who grow up and have children talk as i do. when you grow up your mother will talk as i do too." "i hope she won't; because 'tis very bad to talk nonsense." "yes, child; it is nonsense, i suppose. are you not nearly spent with the heat?" "yes. but not so much as you be." "how do you know?" "your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-down-like." "ah, i am exhausted from inside." "why do you, every time you take a step, go like this?" the child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp of an invalid. "because i have a burden which is more than i can bear." the little boy remained silently pondering, and they tottered on side by side until more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when mrs. yeobright, whose weakness plainly increased, said to him, "i must sit down here to rest." when she had seated herself he looked long in her face and said, "how funny you draw your breath--like a lamb when you drive him till he's nearly done for. do you always draw your breath like that?" "not always." her voice was now so low as to be scarcely above a whisper. "you will go to sleep there, i suppose, won't you? you have shut your eyes already." "no. i shall not sleep much till--another day, and then i hope to have a long, long one--very long. now can you tell me if rimsmoor pond is dry this summer?" "rimsmoor pond is, but oker's pool isn't, because he is deep, and is never dry--'tis just over there." "is the water clear?" "yes, middling--except where the heath-croppers walk into it." "then, take this, and go as fast as you can, and dip me up the clearest you can find. i am very faint." she drew from the small willow reticule that she carried in her hand an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle; it was one of half a dozen of the same sort lying in the reticule, which she had preserved ever since her childhood, and had brought with her today as a small present for clym and eustacia. the boy started on his errand, and soon came back with the water, such as it was. mrs. yeobright attempted to drink, but it was so warm as to give her nausea, and she threw it away. afterwards she still remained sitting, with her eyes closed. the boy waited, played near her, caught several of the little brown butterflies which abounded, and then said as he waited again, "i like going on better than biding still. will you soon start again?" "i don't know." "i wish i might go on by myself," he resumed, fearing, apparently, that he was to be pressed into some unpleasant service. "do you want me any more, please?" mrs. yeobright made no reply. "what shall i tell mother?" the boy continued. "tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son." before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful glance, as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsaking her thus. he gazed into her face in a vague, wondering manner, like that of one examining some strange old manuscript the key to whose characters is undiscoverable. he was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult quarters hitherto deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond him to decide. he lowered his eyes and went on without another word. before he had gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except that she was a woman who had sat down to rest. mrs. yeobright's exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with long breaks between. the sun had now got far to the west of south and stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand in hand, waiting to consume her. with the departure of the boy all visible animation disappeared from the landscape, though the intermittent husky notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of furze were enough to show that amid the prostration of the larger animal species an unseen insect world was busy in all the fullness of life. in two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole distance from alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of shepherd's-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the perfumed mat it formed there. in front of her a colony of ants had established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a never-ending and heavy-laden throng. to look down upon them was like observing a city street from the top of a tower. she remembered that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same spot--doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these which walked there now. she leant back to obtain more thorough rest, and the soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her eyes as the thyme was to her head. while she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. he had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs, and his breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. up in the zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned; and she wished that she could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then. but, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should soon cease to ruminate upon her own condition. had the track of her next thought been marked by a streak in the air, like the path of a meteor, it would have shown a direction contrary to the heron's, and have descended to the eastward upon the roof of clym's house. vii the tragic meeting of two old friends he in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and looked around. eustacia was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though she held a book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time. "well, indeed!" said clym, brushing his eyes with his hands. "how soundly i have slept! i have had such a tremendous dream, too: one i shall never forget." "i thought you had been dreaming," said she. "yes. it was about my mother. i dreamt that i took you to her house to make up differences, and when we got there we couldn't get in, though she kept on crying to us for help. however, dreams are dreams. what o'clock is it, eustacia?" "half-past two." "so late, is it? i didn't mean to stay so long. by the time i have had something to eat it will be after three." "ann is not come back from the village, and i thought i would let you sleep on till she returned." clym went to the window and looked out. presently he said, musingly, "week after week passes, and yet mother does not come. i thought i should have heard something from her long before this." misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course of expression in eustacia's dark eyes. she was face to face with a monstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of it by postponement. "i must certainly go to blooms-end soon," he continued, "and i think i had better go alone." he picked up his leggings and gloves, threw them down again, and added, "as dinner will be so late today i will not go back to the heath, but work in the garden till the evening, and then, when it will be cooler, i will walk to blooms-end. i am quite sure that if i make a little advance mother will be willing to forget all. it will be rather late before i can get home, as i shall not be able to do the distance either way in less than an hour and a half. but you will not mind for one evening, dear? what are you thinking of to make you look so abstracted?" "i cannot tell you," she said heavily. "i wish we didn't live here, clym. the world seems all wrong in this place." "well--if we make it so. i wonder if thomasin has been to blooms-end lately. i hope so. but probably not, as she is, i believe, expecting to be confined in a month or so. i wish i had thought of that before. poor mother must indeed be very lonely." "i don't like you going tonight." "why not tonight?" "something may be said which will terribly injure me." "my mother is not vindictive," said clym, his colour faintly rising. "but i wish you would not go," eustacia repeated in a low tone. "if you agree not to go tonight i promise to go by myself to her house tomorrow, and make it up with her, and wait till you fetch me." "why do you want to do that at this particular time, when at every previous time that i have proposed it you have refused?" "i cannot explain further than that i should like to see her alone before you go," she answered, with an impatient move of her head, and looking at him with an anxiety more frequently seen upon those of a sanguine temperament than upon such as herself. "well, it is very odd that just when i had decided to go myself you should want to do what i proposed long ago. if i wait for you to go tomorrow another day will be lost; and i know i shall be unable to rest another night without having been. i want to get this settled, and will. you must visit her afterwards: it will be all the same." "i could even go with you now?" "you could scarcely walk there and back without a longer rest than i shall take. no, not tonight, eustacia." "let it be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way of one who, though willing to ward off evil consequences by a mild effort, would let events fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to direct them. clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor stole over eustacia for the remainder of the afternoon, which her husband attributed to the heat of the weather. in the evening he set out on the journey. although the heat of summer was yet intense the days had considerably shortened, and before he had advanced a mile on his way all the heath purples, browns, and greens had merged in a uniform dress without airiness or graduation, and broken only by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz sand showed the entrance to a rabbit-burrow, or where the white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. in almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a night-hawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginning to whirr again. at each brushing of clym's feet white miller-moths flew into the air just high enough to catch upon their dusty wings the mellowed light from the west, which now shone across the depressions and levels of the ground without falling thereon to light them up. yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all would soon be well. three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfume was wafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment to inhale the familiar scent. it was the place at which, four hours earlier, his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered with shepherd's-thyme. while he stood a sound between a breathing and a moan suddenly reached his ears. he looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared there save the verge of the hillock stretching against the sky in an unbroken line. he moved a few steps in that direction, and now he perceived a recumbent figure almost close at his feet. among the different possibilities as to the person's individuality there did not for a moment occur to yeobright that it might be one of his own family. sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out of doors at these times, to save a long journey homeward and back again; but clym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the form was feminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave. but he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother till he stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes. his breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguish which would have escaped him died upon his lips. during the momentary interval that elapsed before he became conscious that something must be done all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and his mother were as when he was a child with her many years ago on this heath at hours similar to the present. then he awoke to activity; and bending yet lower he found that she still breathed, and that her breath though feeble was regular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp. "o, what is it! mother, are you very ill--you are not dying?" he cried, pressing his lips to her face. "i am your clym. how did you come here? what does it all mean?" at that moment the chasm in their lives which his love for eustacia had caused was not remembered by yeobright, and to him the present joined continuously with that friendly past that had been their experience before the division. she moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; and then clym strove to consider how best to move her, as it would be necessary to get her away from the spot before the dews were intense. he was able-bodied, and his mother was thin. he clasped his arms round her, lifted her a little, and said, "does that hurt you?" she shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace, went onward with his load. the air was now completely cool; but whenever he passed over a sandy patch of ground uncarpeted with vegetation there was reflected from its surface into his face the heat which it had imbibed during the day. at the beginning of his undertaking he had thought but little of the distance which yet would have to be traversed before blooms-end could be reached; but though he had slept that afternoon he soon began to feel the weight of his burden. thus he proceeded, like aeneas with his father; the bats circling round his head, nightjars flapping their wings within a yard of his face, and not a human being within call. while he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother exhibited signs of restlessness under the constraint of being borne along, as if his arms were irksome to her. he lowered her upon his knees and looked around. the point they had now reached, though far from any road, was not more than a mile from the blooms-end cottages occupied by fairway, sam, humphrey, and the cantles. moreover, fifty yards off stood a hut, built of clods and covered with thin turves, but now entirely disused. the simple outline of the lonely shed was visible, and thither he determined to direct his steps. as soon as he arrived he laid her down carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an armful of the dryest fern. spreading this within the shed, which was entirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon; then he ran with all his might towards the dwelling of fairway. nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the broken breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began to animate the line between heath and sky. in a few moments clym arrived with fairway, humphrey, and susan nunsuch; olly dowden, who had chanced to be at fairway's, christian and grandfer cantle following helter-skelter behind. they had brought a lantern and matches, water, a pillow, and a few other articles which had occurred to their minds in the hurry of the moment. sam had been despatched back again for brandy, and a boy brought fairway's pony, upon which he rode off to the nearest medical man, with directions to call at wildeve's on his way, and inform thomasin that her aunt was unwell. sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered by the light of the lantern; after which she became sufficiently conscious to signify by signs that something was wrong with her foot. olly dowden at length understood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated. it was swollen and red. even as they watched the red began to assume a more livid colour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller than a pea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere. "i know what it is," cried sam. "she has been stung by an adder!" "yes," said clym instantly. "i remember when i was a child seeing just such a bite. o, my poor mother!" "it was my father who was bit," said sam. "and there's only one way to cure it. you must rub the place with the fat of other adders, and the only way to get that is by frying them. that's what they did for him." "'tis an old remedy," said clym distrustfully, "and i have doubts about it. but we can do nothing else till the doctor comes." "'tis a sure cure," said olly dowden, with emphasis. "i've used it when i used to go out nursing." "then we must pray for daylight, to catch them," said clym gloomily. "i will see what i can do," said sam. he took a green hazel which he had used as a walking-stick, split it at the end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his hand went out into the heath. clym had by this time lit a small fire, and despatched susan nunsuch for a frying-pan. before she had returned sam came in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in the cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging dead across it. "i have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be," said sam. "these limp ones are two i killed today at work; but as they don't die till the sun goes down they can't be very stale meat." the live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinister look in its small black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet pattern on its back seemed to intensify with indignation. mrs. yeobright saw the creature, and the creature saw her: she quivered throughout, and averted her eyes. "look at that," murmured christian cantle. "neighbours, how do we know but that something of the old serpent in god's garden, that gied the apple to the young woman with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakes still? look at his eye--for all the world like a villainous sort of black currant. 'tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us! there's folks in heath who've been overlooked already. i will never kill another adder as long as i live." "well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't help it," said grandfer cantle. "'twould have saved me many a brave danger in my time." "i fancy i heard something outside the shed," said christian. "i wish troubles would come in the daytime, for then a man could show his courage, and hardly beg for mercy of the most broomstick old woman he should see, if he was a brave man, and able to run out of her sight!" "even such an ignorant fellow as i should know better than do that," said sam. "well, there's calamities where we least expect it, whether or no. neighbours, if mrs. yeobright were to die, d'ye think we should be took up and tried for the manslaughter of a woman?" "no, they couldn't bring it in as that," said sam, "unless they could prove we had been poachers at some time of our lives. but she'll fetch round." "now, if i had been stung by ten adders i should hardly have lost a day's work for't," said grandfer cantle. "such is my spirit when i am on my mettle. but perhaps 'tis natural in a man trained for war. yes, i've gone through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me after i joined the locals in four." he shook his head and smiled at a mental picture of himself in uniform. "i was always first in the most galliantest scrapes in my younger days!" "i suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest fool afore," said fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing it with his breath. "d'ye think so, timothy?" said grandfer cantle, coming forward to fairway's side with sudden depression in his face. "then a man may feel for years that he is good solid company, and be wrong about himself after all?" "never mind that question, grandfer. stir your stumps and get some more sticks. 'tis very nonsense of an old man to prattle so when life and death's in mangling." "yes, yes," said grandfer cantle, with melancholy conviction. "well, this is a bad night altogether for them that have done well in their time; and if i were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor-viol, i shouldn't have the heart to play tunes upon 'em now." susan now arrived with the frying-pan, when the live adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off. the remainders, being cut into lengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling over the fire. soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the carcases, whereupon clym dipped the corner of his handkerchief into the liquid and anointed the wound. viii eustacia hears of good fortune, and beholds evil in the meantime eustacia, left alone in her cottage at alderworth, had become considerably depressed by the posture of affairs. the consequences which might result from clym's discovery that his mother had been turned from his door that day were likely to be disagreeable, and this was a quality in events which she hated as much as the dreadful. to be left to pass the evening by herself was irksome to her at any time, and this evening it was more irksome than usual by reason of the excitements of the past hours. the two visits had stirred her into restlessness. she was not wrought to any great pitch of uneasiness by the probability of appearing in an ill light in the discussion between clym and his mother, but she was wrought to vexation; and her slumbering activities were quickened to the extent of wishing that she had opened the door. she had certainly believed that clym was awake, and the excuse would be an honest one as far as it went; but nothing could save her from censure in refusing to answer at the first knock. yet, instead of blaming herself for the issue she laid the fault upon the shoulders of some indistinct, colossal prince of the world, who had framed her situation and ruled her lot. at this time of the year it was pleasanter to walk by night than by day, and when clym had been absent about an hour she suddenly resolved to go out in the direction of blooms-end, on the chance of meeting him on his return. when she reached the garden gate she heard wheels approaching, and looking round beheld her grandfather coming up in his car. "i can't stay a minute, thank ye," he answered to her greeting. "i am driving to east egdon; but i came round here just to tell you the news. perhaps you have heard--about mr. wildeve's fortune?" "no," said eustacia blankly. "well, he has come into a fortune of eleven thousand pounds--uncle died in canada, just after hearing that all his family, whom he was sending home, had gone to the bottom in the _cassiopeia_; so wildeve has come into everything, without in the least expecting it." eustacia stood motionless awhile. "how long has he known of this?" she asked. "well, it was known to him this morning early, for i knew it at ten o'clock, when charley came back. now, he is what i call a lucky man. what a fool you were, eustacia!" "in what way?" she said, lifting her eyes in apparent calmness. "why, in not sticking to him when you had him." "had him, indeed!" "i did not know there had ever been anything between you till lately; and, faith, i should have been hot and strong against it if i had known; but since it seems that there was some sniffing between ye, why the deuce didn't you stick to him?" eustacia made no reply, but she looked as if she could say as much upon that subject as he if she chose. "and how is your poor purblind husband?" continued the old man. "not a bad fellow either, as far as he goes." "he is quite well." "it is a good thing for his cousin what-d'ye-call-her? by george, you ought to have been in that galley, my girl! now i must drive on. do you want any assistance? what's mine is yours, you know." "thank you, grandfather, we are not in want at present," she said coldly. "clym cuts furze, but he does it mostly as a useful pastime, because he can do nothing else." "he is paid for his pastime, isn't he? three shillings a hundred, i heard." "clym has money," she said, colouring, "but he likes to earn a little." "very well; good night." and the captain drove on. when her grandfather was gone eustacia went on her way mechanically; but her thoughts were no longer concerning her mother-in-law and clym. wildeve, notwithstanding his complaints against his fate, had been seized upon by destiny and placed in the sunshine once more. eleven thousand pounds! from every egdon point of view he was a rich man. in eustacia's eyes, too, it was an ample sum--one sufficient to supply those wants of hers which had been stigmatized by clym in his more austere moods as vain and luxurious. though she was no lover of money she loved what money could bring; and the new accessories she imagined around him clothed wildeve with a great deal of interest. she recollected now how quietly well-dressed he had been that morning: he had probably put on his newest suit, regardless of damage by briars and thorns. and then she thought of his manner towards herself. "o i see it, i see it," she said. "how much he wishes he had me now, that he might give me all i desire!" in recalling the details of his glances and words--at the time scarcely regarded--it became plain to her how greatly they had been dictated by his knowledge of this new event. "had he been a man to bear a jilt ill-will he would have told me of his good fortune in crowing tones; instead of doing that he mentioned not a word, in deference to my misfortunes, and merely implied that he loved me still, as one superior to him." wildeve's silence that day on what had happened to him was just the kind of behaviour calculated to make an impression on such a woman. those delicate touches of good taste were, in fact, one of the strong points in his demeanour towards the other sex. the peculiarity of wildeve was that, while at one time passionate, upbraiding, and resentful towards a woman, at another he would treat her with such unparalleled grace as to make previous neglect appear as no discourtesy, injury as no insult, interference as a delicate attention, and the ruin of her honour as excess of chivalry. this man, whose admiration today eustacia had disregarded, whose good wishes she had scarcely taken the trouble to accept, whom she had shown out of the house by the back door, was the possessor of eleven thousand pounds--a man of fair professional education, and one who had served his articles with a civil engineer. so intent was eustacia upon wildeve's fortunes that she forgot how much closer to her own course were those of clym; and instead of walking on to meet him at once she sat down upon a stone. she was disturbed in her reverie by a voice behind, and turning her head beheld the old lover and fortunate inheritor of wealth immediately beside her. she remained sitting, though the fluctuation in her look might have told any man who knew her so well as wildeve that she was thinking of him. "how did you come here?" she said in her clear low tone. "i thought you were at home." "i went on to the village after leaving your garden; and now i have come back again: that's all. which way are you walking, may i ask?" she waved her hand in the direction of blooms-end. "i am going to meet my husband. i think i may possibly have got into trouble whilst you were with me today." "how could that be?" "by not letting in mrs. yeobright." "i hope that visit of mine did you no harm." "none. it was not your fault," she said quietly. by this time she had risen; and they involuntarily sauntered on together, without speaking, for two or three minutes; when eustacia broke silence by saying, "i assume i must congratulate you." "on what? o yes; on my eleven thousand pounds, you mean. well, since i didn't get something else, i must be content with getting that." "you seem very indifferent about it. why didn't you tell me today when you came?" she said in the tone of a neglected person. "i heard of it quite by accident." "i did mean to tell you," said wildeve. "but i--well, i will speak frankly--i did not like to mention it when i saw, eustacia, that your star was not high. the sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would be greatly out of place. yet, as you stood there beside him, i could not help feeling too that in many respects he was a richer man than i." at this eustacia said, with slumbering mischievousness, "what, would you exchange with him--your fortune for me?" "i certainly would," said wildeve. "as we are imagining what is impossible and absurd, suppose we change the subject?" "very well; and i will tell you of my plans for the future, if you care to hear them. i shall permanently invest nine thousand pounds, keep one thousand as ready money, and with the remaining thousand travel for a year or so." "travel? what a bright idea! where will you go to?" "from here to paris, where i shall pass the winter and spring. then i shall go to italy, greece, egypt, and palestine, before the hot weather comes on. in the summer i shall go to america; and then, by a plan not yet settled, i shall go to australia and round to india. by that time i shall have begun to have had enough of it. then i shall probably come back to paris again, and there i shall stay as long as i can afford to." "back to paris again," she murmured in a voice that was nearly a sigh. she had never once told wildeve of the parisian desires which clym's description had sown in her; yet here was he involuntarily in a position to gratify them. "you think a good deal of paris?" she added. "yes. in my opinion it is the central beauty-spot of the world." "and in mine! and thomasin will go with you?" "yes, if she cares to. she may prefer to stay at home." "so you will be going about, and i shall be staying here!" "i suppose you will. but we know whose fault that is." "i am not blaming you," she said quickly. "oh, i thought you were. if ever you should be inclined to blame me, think of a certain evening by rainbarrow, when you promised to meet me and did not. you sent me a letter; and my heart ached to read that as i hope yours never will. that was one point of divergence. i then did something in haste... but she is a good woman, and i will say no more." "i know that the blame was on my side that time," said eustacia. "but it had not always been so. however, it is my misfortune to be too sudden in feeling. o, damon, don't reproach me any more--i can't bear that." they went on silently for a distance of two or three miles, when eustacia said suddenly, "haven't you come out of your way, mr. wildeve?" "my way is anywhere tonight. i will go with you as far as the hill on which we can see blooms-end, as it is getting late for you to be alone." "don't trouble. i am not obliged to be out at all. i think i would rather you did not accompany me further. this sort of thing would have an odd look if known." "very well, i will leave you." he took her hand unexpectedly, and kissed it--for the first time since her marriage. "what light is that on the hill?" he added, as it were to hide the caress. she looked, and saw a flickering firelight proceeding from the open side of a hovel a little way before them. the hovel, which she had hitherto always found empty, seemed to be inhabited now. "since you have come so far," said eustacia, "will you see me safely past that hut? i thought i should have met clym somewhere about here, but as he doesn't appear i will hasten on and get to blooms-end before he leaves." they advanced to the turf-shed, and when they got near it the firelight and the lantern inside showed distinctly enough the form of a woman reclining on a bed of fern, a group of heath men and women standing around her. eustacia did not recognize mrs. yeobright in the reclining figure, nor clym as one of the standers-by till she came close. then she quickly pressed her hand upon wildeve's arm and signified to him to come back from the open side of the shed into the shadow. "it is my husband and his mother," she whispered in an agitated voice. "what can it mean? will you step forward and tell me?" wildeve left her side and went to the back wall of the hut. presently eustacia perceived that he was beckoning to her, and she advanced and joined him. "it is a serious case," said wildeve. from their position they could hear what was proceeding inside. "i cannot think where she could have been going," said clym to some one. "she had evidently walked a long way, but even when she was able to speak just now she would not tell me where. what do you really think of her?" "there is a great deal to fear," was gravely answered, in a voice which eustacia recognized as that of the only surgeon in the district. "she has suffered somewhat from the bite of the adder; but it is exhaustion which has overpowered her. my impression is that her walk must have been exceptionally long." "i used to tell her not to overwalk herself this weather," said clym, with distress. "do you think we did well in using the adder's fat?" "well, it is a very ancient remedy--the old remedy of the viper-catchers, i believe," replied the doctor. "it is mentioned as an infallible ointment by hoffman, mead, and i think the abbé fontana. undoubtedly it was as good a thing as you could do; though i question if some other oils would not have been equally efficacious." "come here, come here!" was then rapidly said in anxious female tones; and clym and the doctor could be heard rushing forward from the back part of the shed to where mrs. yeobright lay. "oh, what is it?" whispered eustacia. "'twas thomasin who spoke," said wildeve. "then they have fetched her. i wonder if i had better go in--yet it might do harm." for a long time there was utter silence among the group within; and it was broken at last by clym saying, in an agonized voice, "o doctor, what does it mean?" the doctor did not reply at once; ultimately he said, "she is sinking fast. her heart was previously affected, and physical exhaustion has dealt the finishing blow." then there was a weeping of women, then waiting, then hushed exclamations, then a strange gasping sound, then a painful stillness. "it is all over," said the doctor. further back in the hut the cotters whispered, "mrs. yeobright is dead." almost at the same moment the two watchers observed the form of a small old-fashioned child entering at the open side of the shed. susan nunsuch, whose boy it was, went forward to the opening and silently beckoned to him to go back. "i've got something to tell 'ee, mother," he cried in a shrill tone. "that woman asleep there walked along with me today; and she said i was to say that i had seed her, and she was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son, and then i came on home." a confused sob as from a man was heard within, upon which eustacia gasped faintly, "that's clym--i must go to him--yet dare i do it? no: come away!" when they had withdrawn from the neighbourhood of the shed she said huskily, "i am to blame for this. there is evil in store for me." "was she not admitted to your house after all?" wildeve inquired. "no; and that's where it all lies! oh, what shall i do! i shall not intrude upon them: i shall go straight home. damon, good-bye! i cannot speak to you any more now." they parted company; and when eustacia had reached the next hill she looked back. a melancholy procession was wending its way by the light of the lantern from the hut towards blooms-end. wildeve was nowhere to be seen. book fifth the discovery i "wherefore is light given to him that is in misery" one evening, about three weeks after the funeral of mrs. yeobright, when the silver face of the moon sent a bundle of beams directly upon the floor of clym's house at alderworth, a woman came forth from within. she reclined over the garden gate as if to refresh herself awhile. the pale lunar touches which make beauties of hags lent divinity to this face, already beautiful. she had not long been there when a man came up the road and with some hesitation said to her, "how is he tonight, ma'am, if you please?" "he is better, though still very unwell, humphrey," replied eustacia. "is he light-headed, ma'am?" "no. he is quite sensible now." "do he rave about his mother just the same, poor fellow?" continued humphrey. "just as much, though not quite so wildly," she said in a low voice. "it was very unfortunate, ma'am, that the boy johnny should ever ha' told him his mother's dying words, about her being broken-hearted and cast off by her son. 'twas enough to upset any man alive." eustacia made no reply beyond that of a slight catch in her breath, as of one who fain would speak but could not; and humphrey, declining her invitation to come in, went away. eustacia turned, entered the house, and ascended to the front bedroom, where a shaded light was burning. in the bed lay clym, pale, haggard, wide awake, tossing to one side and to the other, his eyes lit by a hot light, as if the fire in their pupils were burning up their substance. "is it you, eustacia?" he said as she sat down. "yes, clym. i have been down to the gate. the moon is shining beautifully, and there is not a leaf stirring." "shining, is it? what's the moon to a man like me? let it shine--let anything be, so that i never see another day!... eustacia, i don't know where to look: my thoughts go through me like swords. o, if any man wants to make himself immortal by painting a picture of wretchedness, let him come here!" "why do you say so?" "i cannot help feeling that i did my best to kill her." "no, clym." "yes, it was so; it is useless to excuse me! my conduct to her was too hideous--i made no advances; and she could not bring herself to forgive me. now she is dead! if i had only shown myself willing to make it up with her sooner, and we had been friends, and then she had died, it wouldn't be so hard to bear. but i never went near her house, so she never came near mine, and didn't know how welcome she would have been--that's what troubles me. she did not know i was going to her house that very night, for she was too insensible to understand me. if she had only come to see me! i longed that she would. but it was not to be." there escaped from eustacia one of those shivering sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast. she had not yet told. but yeobright was too deeply absorbed in the ramblings incidental to his remorseful state to notice her. during his illness he had been continually talking thus. despair had been added to his original grief by the unfortunate disclosure of the boy who had received the last words of mrs. yeobright--words too bitterly uttered in an hour of misapprehension. then his distress had overwhelmed him, and he longed for death as a field labourer longs for the shade. it was the pitiful sight of a man standing in the very focus of sorrow. he continually bewailed his tardy journey to his mother's house, because it was an error which could never be rectified, and insisted that he must have been horribly perverted by some fiend not to have thought before that it was his duty to go to her, since she did not come to him. he would ask eustacia to agree with him in his self-condemnation; and when she, seared inwardly by a secret she dared not tell, declared that she could not give an opinion, he would say, "that's because you didn't know my mother's nature. she was always ready to forgive if asked to do so; but i seemed to her to be as an obstinate child, and that made her unyielding. yet not unyielding: she was proud and reserved, no more... yes, i can understand why she held out against me so long. she was waiting for me. i dare say she said a hundred times in her sorrow, 'what a return he makes for all the sacrifices i have made for him!' i never went to her! when i set out to visit her it was too late. to think of that is nearly intolerable!" sometimes his condition had been one of utter remorse, unsoftened by a single tear of pure sorrow: and then he writhed as he lay, fevered far more by thought than by physical ills. "if i could only get one assurance that she did not die in a belief that i was resentful," he said one day when in this mood, "it would be better to think of than a hope of heaven. but that i cannot do." "you give yourself up too much to this wearying despair," said eustacia. "other men's mothers have died." "that doesn't make the loss of mine less. yet it is less the loss than the circumstances of the loss. i sinned against her, and on that account there is no light for me." "she sinned against you, i think." "no, she did not. i committed the guilt; and may the whole burden be upon my head!" "i think you might consider twice before you say that," eustacia replied. "single men have, no doubt, a right to curse themselves as much as they please; but men with wives involve two in the doom they pray down." "i am in too sorry a state to understand what you are refining on," said the wretched man. "day and night shout at me, 'you have helped to kill her.' but in loathing myself i may, i own, be unjust to you, my poor wife. forgive me for it, eustacia, for i scarcely know what i do." eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her husband in such a state as this, which had become as dreadful to her as the trial scene was to judas iscariot. it brought before her eyes the spectre of a worn-out woman knocking at a door which she would not open; and she shrank from contemplating it. yet it was better for yeobright himself when he spoke openly of his sharp regret, for in silence he endured infinitely more, and would sometimes remain so long in a tense, brooding mood, consuming himself by the gnawing of his thought, that it was imperatively necessary to make him talk aloud, that his grief might in some degree expend itself in the effort. eustacia had not been long indoors after her look at the moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house, and thomasin was announced by the woman downstairs. "ah, thomasin! thank you for coming tonight," said clym when she entered the room. "here am i, you see. such a wretched spectacle am i, that i shrink from being seen by a single friend, and almost from you." "you must not shrink from me, dear clym," said thomasin earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came to a sufferer like fresh air into a black hole. "nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away. i have been here before, but you don't remember it." "yes, i do; i am not delirious, thomasin, nor have i been so at all. don't you believe that if they say so. i am only in great misery at what i have done: and that, with the weakness, makes me seem mad. but it has not upset my reason. do you think i should remember all about my mother's death if i were out of my mind? no such good luck. two months and a half, thomasin, the last of her life, did my poor mother live alone, distracted and mourning because of me; yet she was unvisited by me, though i was living only six miles off. two months and a half--seventy-five days did the sun rise and set upon her in that deserted state which a dog didn't deserve! poor people who had nothing in common with her would have cared for her, and visited her had they known her sickness and loneliness; but i, who should have been all to her, stayed away like a cur. if there is any justice in god let him kill me now. he has nearly blinded me, but that is not enough. if he would only strike me with more pain i would believe in him for ever!" "hush, hush! o, pray, clym, don't, don't say it!" implored thomasin, affrighted into sobs and tears; while eustacia, at the other side of the room, though her pale face remained calm, writhed in her chair. clym went on without heeding his cousin. "but i am not worth receiving further proof even of heaven's reprobation. do you think, thomasin, that she knew me--that she did not die in that horrid mistaken notion about my not forgiving her, which i can't tell you how she acquired? if you could only assure me of that! do you think so, eustacia? do speak to me." "i think i can assure you that she knew better at last," said thomasin. the pallid eustacia said nothing. "why didn't she come to my house? i would have taken her in and showed her how i loved her in spite of all. but she never came; and i didn't go to her, and she died on the heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to help her till it was too late. if you could have seen her, thomasin, as i saw her--a poor dying woman, lying in the dark upon the bare ground, moaning, nobody near, believing she was utterly deserted by all the world, it would have moved you to anguish, it would have moved a brute. and this poor woman my mother! no wonder she said to the child, 'you have seen a broken-hearted woman.' what a state she must have been brought to, to say that! and who can have done it but i? it is too dreadful to think of, and i wish i could be punished more heavily than i am. how long was i what they called out of my senses?" "a week, i think." "and then i became calm." "yes, for four days." "and now i have left off being calm." "but try to be quiet: please do, and you will soon be strong. if you could remove that impression from your mind--" "yes, yes," he said impatiently. "but i don't want to get strong. what's the use of my getting well? it would be better for me if i die, and it would certainly be better for eustacia. is eustacia there?" "yes." "it would be better for you, eustacia, if i were to die?" "don't press such a question, dear clym." "well, it really is but a shadowy supposition; for unfortunately i am going to live. i feel myself getting better. thomasin, how long are you going to stay at the inn, now that all this money has come to your husband?" "another month or two, probably; until my illness is over. we cannot get off till then. i think it will be a month or more." "yes, yes. of course. ah, cousin tamsie, you will get over your trouble--one little month will take you through it, and bring something to console you; but i shall never get over mine, and no consolation will come!" "clym, you are unjust to yourself. depend upon it, aunt thought kindly of you. i know that, if she had lived, you would have been reconciled with her." "but she didn't come to see me, though i asked her, before i married, if she would come. had she come, or had i gone there, she would never have died saying, 'i am a broken-hearted woman, cast off by my son.' my door has always been open to her--a welcome here has always awaited her. but that she never came to see." "you had better not talk any more now, clym," said eustacia faintly from the other part of the room, for the scene was growing intolerable to her. "let me talk to you instead for the little time i shall be here," thomasin said soothingly. "consider what a one-sided way you have of looking at the matter, clym. when she said that to the little boy you had not found her and taken her into your arms; and it might have been uttered in a moment of bitterness. it was rather like aunt to say things in haste. she sometimes used to speak so to me. though she did not come i am convinced that she thought of coming to see you. do you suppose a man's mother could live two or three months without one forgiving thought? she forgave me; and why should she not have forgiven you?" "you laboured to win her round; i did nothing. i, who was going to teach people the higher secrets of happiness, did not know how to keep out of that gross misery which the most untaught are wise enough to avoid." "how did you get here tonight, thomasin?" said eustacia. "damon set me down at the end of the lane. he has driven into east egdon on business, and he will come and pick me up by-and-by." accordingly they soon after heard the noise of wheels. wildeve had come, and was waiting outside with his horse and gig. "send out and tell him i will be down in two minutes," said thomasin. "i will run down myself," said eustacia. she went down. wildeve had alighted, and was standing before the horse's head when eustacia opened the door. he did not turn for a moment, thinking the comer thomasin. then he looked, started ever so little, and said one word: "well?" "i have not yet told him," she replied in a whisper. "then don't do so till he is well--it will be fatal. you are ill yourself." "i am wretched... o damon," she said, bursting into tears, "i--i can't tell you how unhappy i am! i can hardly bear this. i can tell nobody of my trouble--nobody knows of it but you." "poor girl!" said wildeve, visibly affected at her distress, and at last led on so far as to take her hand. "it is hard, when you have done nothing to deserve it, that you should have got involved in such a web as this. you were not made for these sad scenes. i am to blame most. if i could only have saved you from it all!" "but, damon, please pray tell me what i must do? to sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach himself as being the cause of her death, and to know that i am the sinner, if any human being is at all, drives me into cold despair. i don't know what to do. should i tell him or should i not tell him? i always am asking myself that. o, i want to tell him; and yet i am afraid. if he find it out he must surely kill me, for nothing else will be in proportion to his feelings now. 'beware the fury of a patient man' sounds day by day in my ears as i watch him." "well, wait till he is better, and trust to chance. and when you tell, you must only tell part--for his own sake." "which part should i keep back?" wildeve paused. "that i was in the house at the time," he said in a low tone. "yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered. how much easier are hasty actions than speeches that will excuse them!" "if he were only to die--" wildeve murmured. "do not think of it! i would not buy hope of immunity by so cowardly a desire even if i hated him. now i am going up to him again. thomasin bade me tell you she would be down in a few minutes. good-bye." she returned, and thomasin soon appeared. when she was seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was turning to go off, wildeve lifted his eyes to the bedroom windows. looking from one of them he could discern a pale, tragic face watching him drive away. it was eustacia's. ii a lurid light breaks in upon a darkened understanding clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. his strength returned, and a month after the visit of thomasin he might have been seen walking about the garden. endurance and despair, equanimity and gloom, the tints of health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdly in his face. he was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past that related to his mother; and though eustacia knew that he was thinking of it none the less, she was only too glad to escape the topic ever to bring it up anew. when his mind had been weaker his heart had led him to speak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank into taciturnity. one evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedly spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner of the house and came up to him. "christian, isn't it?" said clym. "i am glad you have found me out. i shall soon want you to go to blooms-end and assist me in putting the house in order. i suppose it is all locked up as i left it?" "yes, mister clym." "have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?" "yes, without a drop o' rain, thank god. but i was coming to tell 'ee of something else which is quite different from what we have lately had in the family. i am sent by the rich gentleman at the woman, that we used to call the landlord, to tell 'ee that mrs. wildeve is doing well of a girl, which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon, or a few minutes more or less; and 'tis said that expecting of this increase is what have kept 'em there since they came into their money." "and she is getting on well, you say?" "yes, sir. only mr. wildeve is twanky because 'tisn't a boy--that's what they say in the kitchen, but i was not supposed to notice that." "christian, now listen to me." "yes, sure, mr. yeobright." "did you see my mother the day before she died?" "no, i did not." yeobright's face expressed disappointment. "but i zeed her the morning of the same day she died." clym's look lighted up. "that's nearer still to my meaning," he said. "yes, i know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'i be going to see him, christian; so i shall not want any vegetables brought in for dinner.'" "see whom?" "see you. she was going to your house, you understand." yeobright regarded christian with intense surprise. "why did you never mention this?" he said. "are you sure it was my house she was coming to?" "o yes. i didn't mention it because i've never zeed you lately. and as she didn't get there it was all nought, and nothing to tell." "and i have been wondering why she should have walked in the heath on that hot day! well, did she say what she was coming for? it is a thing, christian, i am very anxious to know." "yes, mister clym. she didn't say it to me, though i think she did to one here and there." "do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?" "there is one man, please, sir, but i hope you won't mention my name to him, as i have seen him in strange places, particular in dreams. one night last summer he glared at me like famine and sword, and it made me feel so low that i didn't comb out my few hairs for two days. he was standing, as it might be, mister yeobright, in the middle of the path to mistover, and your mother came up, looking as pale--" "yes, when was that?" "last summer, in my dream." "pooh! who's the man?" "diggory, the reddleman. he called upon her and sat with her the evening before she set out to see you. i hadn't gone home from work when he came up to the gate." "i must see venn--i wish i had known it before," said clym anxiously. "i wonder why he has not come to tell me?" "he went out of egdon heath the next day, so would not be likely to know you wanted him." "christian," said clym, "you must go and find venn. i am otherwise engaged, or i would go myself. find him at once, and tell him i want to speak to him." "i am a good hand at hunting up folk by day," said christian, looking dubiously round at the declining light; "but as to nighttime, never is such a bad hand as i, mister yeobright." "search the heath when you will, so that you bring him soon. bring him tomorrow, if you can." christian then departed. the morrow came, but no venn. in the evening christian arrived, looking very weary. he had been searching all day, and had heard nothing of the reddleman. "inquire as much as you can tomorrow without neglecting your work," said yeobright. "don't come again till you have found him." the next day yeobright set out for the old house at blooms-end, which, with the garden, was now his own. his severe illness had hindered all preparations for his removal thither; but it had become necessary that he should go and overlook its contents, as administrator to his mother's little property; for which purpose he decided to pass the next night on the premises. he journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in the slow walk of one who has been awakened from a stupefying sleep. it was early afternoon when he reached the valley. the expression of the place, the tone of the hour, were precisely those of many such occasions in days gone by; and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusion that she, who was there no longer, would come out to welcome him. the garden gate was locked and the shutters were closed, just as he himself had left them on the evening after the funeral. he unlocked the gate, and found that a spider had already constructed a large web, tying the door to the lintel, on the supposition that it was never to be opened again. when he had entered the house and flung back the shutters he set about his task of overhauling the cupboards and closets, burning papers, and considering how best to arrange the place for eustacia's reception, until such time as he might be in a position to carry out his long-delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive. as he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined for the alterations which would have to be made in the time-honoured furnishing of his parents and grandparents, to suit eustacia's modern ideas. the gaunt oak-cased clock, with the picture of the ascension on the door-panel and the miraculous draught of fishes on the base; his grandmother's corner cupboard with the glass door, through which the spotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea-trays; the hanging fountain with the brass tap--whither would these venerable articles have to be banished? he noticed that the flowers in the window had died for want of water, and he placed them out upon the ledge, that they might be taken away. while thus engaged he heard footsteps on the gravel without, and somebody knocked at the door. yeobright opened it, and venn was standing before him. "good morning," said the reddleman. "is mrs. yeobright at home?" yeobright looked upon the ground. "then you have not seen christian or any of the egdon folks?" he said. "no. i have only just returned after a long stay away. i called here the day before i left." "and you have heard nothing?" "nothing." "my mother is--dead." "dead!" said venn mechanically. "her home now is where i shouldn't mind having mine." venn regarded him, and then said, "if i didn't see your face i could never believe your words. have you been ill?" "i had an illness." "well, the change! when i parted from her a month ago everything seemed to say that she was going to begin a new life." "and what seemed came true." "you say right, no doubt. trouble has taught you a deeper vein of talk than mine. all i meant was regarding her life here. she has died too soon." "perhaps through my living too long. i have had a bitter experience on that score this last month, diggory. but come in; i have been wanting to see you." he conducted the reddleman into the large room where the dancing had taken place the previous christmas; and they sat down in the settle together. "there's the cold fireplace, you see," said clym. "when that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! little has been changed here yet. i can do nothing. my life creeps like a snail." "how came she to die?" said venn. yeobright gave him some particulars of her illness and death, and continued: "after this no kind of pain will ever seem more than an indisposition to me.--i began saying that i wanted to ask you something, but i stray from subjects like a drunken man. i am anxious to know what my mother said to you when she last saw you. you talked with her a long time, i think?" "i talked with her more than half an hour." "about me?" "yes. and it must have been on account of what we said that she was on the heath. without question she was coming to see you." "but why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly against me? there's the mystery." "yet i know she quite forgave 'ee." "but, diggory--would a woman, who had quite forgiven her son, say, when she felt herself ill on the way to his house, that she was broken-hearted because of his ill-usage? never!" "what i know is that she didn't blame you at all. she blamed herself for what had happened, only herself. i had it from her own lips." "you had it from her lips that i had not ill-treated her; and at the same time another had it from her lips that i had ill-treated her? my mother was no impulsive woman who changed her opinion every hour without reason. how can it be, venn, that she should have told such different stories in close succession?" "i cannot say. it is certainly odd, when she had forgiven you, and had forgiven your wife, and was going to see ye on purpose to make friends." "if there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this incomprehensible thing!... diggory, if we, who remain alive, were only allowed to hold conversation with the dead--just once, a bare minute, even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison--what we might learn! how many who now ride smiling would hide their heads! and this mystery--i should then be at the bottom of it at once. but the grave has for ever shut her in; and how shall it be found out now?" no reply was returned by his companion, since none could be given; and when venn left, a few minutes later, clym had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude. he continued in the same state all the afternoon. a bed was made up for him in the same house by a neighbour, that he might not have to return again the next day; and when he retired to rest in the deserted place it was only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the same thoughts. how to discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed a query of more importance than highest problems of the living. there was housed in his memory a vivid picture of the face of a little boy as he entered the hovel where clym's mother lay. the round eyes, eager gaze, the piping voice which enunciated the words, had operated like stilettos on his brain. a visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. to probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. there was nothing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss of undiscoverable things. it was about daybreak when he had reached this decision, and he at once arose. he locked up the house and went out into the green patch which merged in heather further on. in front of the white garden-palings the path branched into three like a broad-arrow. the road to the right led to the quiet woman and its neighbourhood; the middle track led to mistover knap; the left-hand track led over the hill to another part of mistover, where the child lived. on inclining into the latter path yeobright felt a creeping chilliness, familiar enough to most people, and probably caused by the unsunned morning air. in after days he thought of it as a thing of singular significance. when yeobright reached the cottage of susan nunsuch, the mother of the boy he sought, he found that the inmates were not yet astir. but in upland hamlets the transition from a-bed to abroad is surprisingly swift and easy. there no dense partition of yawns and toilets divides humanity by night from humanity by day. yeobright tapped at the upper window-sill, which he could reach with his walking-stick; and in three or four minutes the woman came down. it was not till this moment that clym recollected her to be the person who had behaved so barbarously to eustacia. it partly explained the insuavity with which the woman greeted him. moreover, the boy had been ailing again; and susan now, as ever since the night when he had been pressed into eustacia's service at the bonfire, attributed his indispositions to eustacia's influence as a witch. it was one of those sentiments which lurk like moles underneath the visible surface of manners, and may have been kept alive by eustacia's entreaty to the captain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute susan for the pricking in church, to let the matter drop; which he accordingly had done. yeobright overcame his repugnance, for susan had at least borne his mother no ill-will. he asked kindly for the boy; but her manner did not improve. "i wish to see him," continued yeobright, with some hesitation; "to ask him if he remembers anything more of his walk with my mother than what he has previously told." she regarded him in a peculiar and criticizing manner. to anybody but a half-blind man it would have said, "you want another of the knocks which have already laid you so low." she called the boy downstairs, asked clym to sit down on a stool, and continued, "now, johnny, tell mr. yeobright anything you can call to mind." "you have not forgotten how you walked with the poor lady on that hot day?" said clym. "no," said the boy. "and what she said to you?" the boy repeated the exact words he had used on entering the hut. yeobright rested his elbow on the table and shaded his face with his hand; and the mother looked as if she wondered how a man could want more of what had stung him so deeply. "she was going to alderworth when you first met her?" "no; she was coming away." "that can't be." "yes; she walked along with me. i was coming away too." "then where did you first see her?" "at your house." "attend, and speak the truth!" said clym sternly. "yes, sir; at your house was where i seed her first." clym started up, and susan smiled in an expectant way which did not embellish her face; it seemed to mean, "something sinister is coming!" "what did she do at my house?" "she went and sat under the trees at the devil's bellows." "good god! this is all news to me!" "you never told me this before?" said susan. "no, mother; because i didn't like to tell 'ee i had been so far. i was picking black-hearts, and went further than i meant." "what did she do then?" said yeobright. "looked at a man who came up and went into your house." "that was myself--a furze-cutter, with brambles in his hand." "no; 'twas not you. 'twas a gentleman. you had gone in afore." "who was he?" "i don't know." "now tell me what happened next." "the poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the lady with black hair looked out of the side window at her." the boy's mother turned to clym and said, "this is something you didn't expect?" yeobright took no more notice of her than if he had been of stone. "go on, go on," he said hoarsely to the boy. "and when she saw the young lady look out of the window the old lady knocked again; and when nobody came she took up the furze-hook and looked at it, and put it down again, and then she looked at the faggot-bonds; and then she went away, and walked across to me, and blowed her breath very hard, like this. we walked on together, she and i, and i talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much, because she couldn't blow her breath." "o!" murmured clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head. "let's have more," he said. "she couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her face was, o so queer!" "how was her face?" "like yours is now." the woman looked at yeobright, and beheld him colourless, in a cold sweat. "isn't there meaning in it?" she said stealthily. "what do you think of her now?" "silence!" said clym fiercely. and, turning to the boy, "and then you left her to die?" "no," said the woman, quickly and angrily. "he did not leave her to die! she sent him away. whoever says he forsook her says what's not true." "trouble no more about that," answered clym, with a quivering mouth. "what he did is a trifle in comparison with what he saw. door kept shut, did you say? kept shut, she looking out of window? good heart of god!--what does it mean?" the child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner. "he said so," answered the mother, "and johnny's a god-fearing boy and tells no lies." "'cast off by my son!' no, by my best life, dear mother, it is not so! but by your son's, your son's--may all murderesses get the torment they deserve!" with these words yeobright went forth from the little dwelling. the pupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness, were vaguely lit with an icy shine; his mouth had passed into the phase more or less imaginatively rendered in studies of oedipus. the strangest deeds were possible to his mood. but they were not possible to his situation. instead of there being before him the pale face of eustacia, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man. iii eustacia dresses herself on a black morning a consciousness of a vast impassivity in all which lay around him took possession even of yeobright in his wild walk towards alderworth. he had once before felt in his own person this overpowering of the fervid by the inanimate; but then it had tended to enervate a passion far sweeter than that which at present pervaded him. it was once when he stood parting from eustacia in the moist still levels beyond the hills. but dismissing all this he went onward home, and came to the front of his house. the blinds of eustacia's bedroom were still closely drawn, for she was no early riser. all the life visible was in the shape of a solitary thrush cracking a small snail upon the door-stone for his breakfast, and his tapping seemed a loud noise in the general silence which prevailed; but on going to the door clym found it unfastened, the young girl who attended upon eustacia being astir in the back part of the premises. yeobright entered and went straight to his wife's room. the noise of his arrival must have aroused her, for when he opened the door she was standing before the looking-glass in her night-dress, the ends of her hair gathered into one hand, with which she was coiling the whole mass round her head, previous to beginning toilette operations. she was not a woman given to speaking first at a meeting, and she allowed clym to walk across in silence, without turning her head. he came behind her, and she saw his face in the glass. it was ashy, haggard, and terrible. instead of starting towards him in sorrowful surprise, as even eustacia, undemonstrative wife as she was, would have done in days before she burdened herself with a secret, she remained motionless, looking at him in the glass. and while she looked the carmine flush with which warmth and sound sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck dissolved from view, and the deathlike pallor in his face flew across into hers. he was close enough to see this, and the sight instigated his tongue. "you know what is the matter," he said huskily. "i see it in your face." her hand relinquished the rope of hair and dropped to her side, and the pile of tresses, no longer supported, fell from the crown of her head about her shoulders and over the white night-gown. she made no reply. "speak to me," said yeobright peremptorily. the blanching process did not cease in her, and her lips now became as white as her face. she turned to him and said, "yes, clym, i'll speak to you. why do you return so early? can i do anything for you?" "yes, you can listen to me. it seems that my wife is not very well?" "why?" "your face, my dear; your face. or perhaps it is the pale morning light which takes your colour away? now i am going to reveal a secret to you. ha-ha!" "o, that is ghastly!" "what?" "your laugh." "there's reason for ghastliness. eustacia, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!" she started back from the dressing-table, retreated a few steps from him, and looked him in the face. "ah! you think to frighten me," she said, with a slight laugh. "is it worth while? i am undefended, and alone." "how extraordinary!" "what do you mean?" "as there is ample time i will tell you, though you know well enough. i mean that it is extraordinary that you should be alone in my absence. tell me, now, where is he who was with you on the afternoon of the thirty-first of august? under the bed? up the chimney?" a shudder overcame her and shook the light fabric of her night-dress throughout. "i do not remember dates so exactly," she said. "i cannot recollect that anybody was with me besides yourself." "the day i mean," said yeobright, his voice growing louder and harsher, "was the day you shut the door against my mother and killed her. o, it is too much--too bad!" he leant over the footpiece of the bedstead for a few moments, with his back towards her; then rising again: "tell me, tell me! tell me--do you hear?" he cried, rushing up to her and seizing her by the loose folds of her sleeve. the superstratum of timidity which often overlies those who are daring and defiant at heart had been passed through, and the mettlesome substance of the woman was reached. the red blood inundated her face, previously so pale. "what are you going to do?" she said in a low voice, regarding him with a proud smile. "you will not alarm me by holding on so; but it would be a pity to tear my sleeve." instead of letting go he drew her closer to him. "tell me the particulars of--my mother's death," he said in a hard, panting whisper; "or--i'll--i'll--" "clym," she answered slowly, "do you think you dare do anything to me that i dare not bear? but before you strike me listen. you will get nothing from me by a blow, even though it should kill me, as it probably will. but perhaps you do not wish me to speak--killing may be all you mean?" "kill you! do you expect it?" "i do." "why?" "no less degree of rage against me will match your previous grief for her." "phew--i shall not kill you," he said contemptuously, as if under a sudden change of purpose. "i did think of it; but--i shall not. that would be making a martyr of you, and sending you to where she is; and i would keep you away from her till the universe come to an end, if i could." "i almost wish you would kill me," said she with gloomy bitterness. "it is with no strong desire, i assure you, that i play the part i have lately played on earth. you are no blessing, my husband." "you shut the door--you looked out of the window upon her--you had a man in the house with you--you sent her away to die. the inhumanity--the treachery--i will not touch you--stand away from me--and confess every word!" "never! i'll hold my tongue like the very death that i don't mind meeting, even though i can clear myself of half you believe by speaking. yes. i will! who of any dignity would take the trouble to clear cobwebs from a wild man's mind after such language as this? no; let him go on, and think his narrow thoughts, and run his head into the mire. i have other cares." "'tis too much--but i must spare you." "poor charity." "by my wretched soul you sting me, eustacia! i can keep it up, and hotly too. now, then, madam, tell me his name!" "never, i am resolved." "how often does he write to you? where does he put his letters--when does he meet you? ah, his letters! do you tell me his name?" "i do not." "then i'll find it myself." his eyes had fallen upon a small desk that stood near, on which she was accustomed to write her letters. he went to it. it was locked. "unlock this!" "you have no right to say it. that's mine." without another word he seized the desk and dashed it to the floor. the hinge burst open, and a number of letters tumbled out. "stay!" said eustacia, stepping before him with more excitement than she had hitherto shown. "come, come! stand away! i must see them." she looked at the letters as they lay, checked her feeling, and moved indifferently aside; when he gathered them up, and examined them. by no stretch of meaning could any but a harmless construction be placed upon a single one of the letters themselves. the solitary exception was an empty envelope directed to her, and the handwriting was wildeve's. yeobright held it up. eustacia was doggedly silent. "can you read, madam? look at this envelope. doubtless we shall find more soon, and what was inside them. i shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain trade my lady is." "do you say it to me--do you?" she gasped. he searched further, but found nothing more. "what was in this letter?" he said. "ask the writer. am i your hound that you should talk to me in this way?" "do you brave me? do you stand me out, mistress? answer. don't look at me with those eyes as if you would bewitch me again! sooner than that i die. you refuse to answer?" "i wouldn't tell you after this, if i were as innocent as the sweetest babe in heaven!" "which you are not." "certainly i am not absolutely," she replied. "i have not done what you suppose; but if to have done no harm at all is the only innocence recognized, i am beyond forgiveness. but i require no help from your conscience." "you can resist, and resist again! instead of hating you i could, i think, mourn for and pity you, if you were contrite, and would confess all. forgive you i never can. i don't speak of your lover--i will give you the benefit of the doubt in that matter, for it only affects me personally. but the other: had you half-killed me, had it been that you wilfully took the sight away from these feeble eyes of mine, i could have forgiven you. but that's too much for nature!" "say no more. i will do without your pity. but i would have saved you from uttering what you will regret." "i am going away now. i shall leave you." "you need not go, as i am going myself. you will keep just as far away from me by staying here." "call her to mind--think of her--what goodness there was in her: it showed in every line of her face! most women, even when but slightly annoyed, show a flicker of evil in some curl of the mouth or some corner of the cheek; but as for her, never in her angriest moments was there anything malicious in her look. she was angered quickly, but she forgave just as readily, and underneath her pride there was the meekness of a child. what came of it?--what cared you? you hated her just as she was learning to love you. o! couldn't you see what was best for you, but must bring a curse upon me, and agony and death upon her, by doing that cruel deed! what was the fellow's name who was keeping you company and causing you to add cruelty to her to your wrong to me? was it wildeve? was it poor thomasin's husband? heaven, what wickedness! lost your voice, have you? it is natural after detection of that most noble trick... eustacia, didn't any tender thought of your own mother lead you to think of being gentle to mine at such a time of weariness? did not one grain of pity enter your heart as she turned away? think what a vast opportunity was then lost of beginning a forgiving and honest course. why did not you kick him out, and let her in, and say i'll be an honest wife and a noble woman from this hour? had i told you to go and quench eternally our last flickering chance of happiness here you could have done no worse. well, she's asleep now; and have you a hundred gallants, neither they nor you can insult her any more." "you exaggerate fearfully," she said in a faint, weary voice; "but i cannot enter into my defence--it is not worth doing. you are nothing to me in future, and the past side of the story may as well remain untold. i have lost all through you, but i have not complained. your blunders and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you, but they have been a wrong to me. all persons of refinement have been scared away from me since i sank into the mire of marriage. is this your cherishing--to put me into a hut like this, and keep me like the wife of a hind? you deceived me--not by words, but by appearances, which are less seen through than words. but the place will serve as well as any other--as somewhere to pass from--into my grave." her words were smothered in her throat, and her head drooped down. "i don't know what you mean by that. am i the cause of your sin?" (eustacia made a trembling motion towards him.) "what, you can begin to shed tears and offer me your hand? good god! can you? no, not i. i'll not commit the fault of taking that." (the hand she had offered dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.) "well, yes, i'll take it, if only for the sake of my own foolish kisses that were wasted there before i knew what i cherished. how bewitched i was! how could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?" "o, o, o!" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking with sobs which choked her, she sank upon her knees. "o, will you have done! o, you are too relentless--there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! i have held out long--but you crush me down. i beg for mercy--i cannot bear this any longer--it is inhuman to go further with this! if i had--killed your--mother with my own hand--i should not deserve such a scourging to the bone as this. o, o! god have mercy upon a miserable woman!... you have beaten me in this game--i beg you to stay your hand in pity!... i confess that i--wilfully did not undo the door the first time she knocked--but--i--should have unfastened it the second--if i had not thought you had gone to do it yourself. when i found you had not i opened it, but she was gone. that's the extent of my crime--towards her. best natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?--i think they do. now i will leave you--for ever and ever!" "tell all, and i will pity you. was the man in the house with you wildeve?" "i cannot tell," she said desperately through her sobbing. "don't insist further--i cannot tell. i am going from this house. we cannot both stay here." "you need not go: i will go. you can stay here." "no, i will dress, and then i will go." "where?" "where i came from, or elsewhere." she hastily dressed herself, yeobright moodily walking up and down the room the whole of the time. at last all her things were on. her little hands quivered so violently as she held them to her chin to fasten her bonnet that she could not tie the strings, and after a few moments she relinquished the attempt. seeing this he moved forward and said, "let me tie them." she assented in silence, and lifted her chin. for once at least in her life she was totally oblivious of the charm of her attitude. but he was not, and he turned his eyes aside, that he might not be tempted to softness. the strings were tied; she turned from him. "do you still prefer going away yourself to my leaving you?" he inquired again. "i do." "very well--let it be. and when you will confess to the man i may pity you." she flung her shawl about her and went downstairs, leaving him standing in the room. eustacia had not long been gone when there came a knock at the door of the bedroom; and yeobright said, "well?" it was the servant; and she replied, "somebody from mrs. wildeve's have called to tell 'ee that the mis'ess and the baby are getting on wonderful well, and the baby's name is to be eustacia clementine." and the girl retired. "what a mockery!" said clym. "this unhappy marriage of mine to be perpetuated in that child's name!" iv the ministrations of a half-forgotten one eustacia's journey was at first as vague in direction as that of thistledown on the wind. she did not know what to do. she wished it had been night instead of morning, that she might at least have borne her misery without the possibility of being seen. tracing mile after mile along between the dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs, she at length turned her steps towards her grandfather's house. she found the front door closed and locked. mechanically she went round to the end where the stable was, and on looking in at the stable-door she saw charley standing within. "captain vye is not at home?" she said. "no, ma'am," said the lad in a flutter of feeling; "he's gone to weatherbury, and won't be home till night. and the servant is gone home for a holiday. so the house is locked up." eustacia's face was not visible to charley as she stood at the doorway, her back being to the sky, and the stable but indifferently lighted; but the wildness of her manner arrested his attention. she turned and walked away across the enclosure to the gate, and was hidden by the bank. when she had disappeared charley, with misgiving in his eyes, slowly came from the stable door, and going to another point in the bank he looked over. eustacia was leaning against it on the outside, her face covered with her hands, and her head pressing the dewy heather which bearded the bank's outer side. she appeared to be utterly indifferent to the circumstance that her bonnet, hair, and garments were becoming wet and disarranged by the moisture of her cold, harsh pillow. clearly something was wrong. charley had always regarded eustacia as eustacia had regarded clym when she first beheld him--as a romantic and sweet vision, scarcely incarnate. he had been so shut off from her by the dignity of her look and the pride of her speech, except at that one blissful interval when he was allowed to hold her hand, that he had hardly deemed her a woman, wingless and earthly, subject to household conditions and domestic jars. the inner details of her life he had only conjectured. she had been a lovely wonder, predestined to an orbit in which the whole of his own was but a point; and this sight of her leaning like a helpless, despairing creature against a wild wet bank filled him with an amazed horror. he could no longer remain where he was. leaping over, he came up, touched her with his finger, and said tenderly, "you are poorly, ma'am. what can i do?" eustacia started up, and said, "ah, charley--you have followed me. you did not think when i left home in the summer that i should come back like this!" "i did not, dear ma'am. can i help you now?" "i am afraid not. i wish i could get into the house. i feel giddy--that's all." "lean on my arm, ma'am, till we get to the porch, and i will try to open the door." he supported her to the porch, and there depositing her on a seat hastened to the back, climbed to a window by the help of a ladder, and descending inside opened the door. next he assisted her into the room, where there was an old-fashioned horsehair settee as large as a donkey-waggon. she lay down here, and charley covered her with a cloak he found in the hall. "shall i get you something to eat and drink?" he said. "if you please, charley. but i suppose there is no fire?" "i can light it, ma'am." he vanished, and she heard a splitting of wood and a blowing of bellows; and presently he returned, saying, "i have lighted a fire in the kitchen, and now i'll light one here." he lit the fire, eustacia dreamily observing him from her couch. when it was blazing up he said, "shall i wheel you round in front of it, ma'am, as the morning is chilly?" "yes, if you like." "shall i go and bring the victuals now?" "yes, do," she murmured languidly. when he had gone, and the dull sounds occasionally reached her ears of his movements in the kitchen, she forgot where she was, and had for a moment to consider by an effort what the sounds meant. after an interval which seemed short to her whose thoughts were elsewhere, he came in with a tray on which steamed tea and toast, though it was nearly lunch-time. "place it on the table," she said. "i shall be ready soon." he did so, and retired to the door; when, however, he perceived that she did not move he came back a few steps. "let me hold it to you, if you don't wish to get up," said charley. he brought the tray to the front of the couch, where he knelt down, adding, "i will hold it for you." eustacia sat up and poured out a cup of tea. "you are very kind to me, charley," she murmured as she sipped. "well, i ought to be," said he diffidently, taking great trouble not to rest his eyes upon her, though this was their only natural position, eustacia being immediately before him. "you have been kind to me." "how have i?" said eustacia. "you let me hold your hand when you were a maiden at home." "ah, so i did. why did i do that? my mind is lost--it had to do with the mumming, had it not?" "yes, you wanted to go in my place." "i remember. i do indeed remember--too well!" she again became utterly downcast; and charley, seeing that she was not going to eat or drink any more, took away the tray. afterwards he occasionally came in to see if the fire was burning, to ask her if she wanted anything, to tell her that the wind had shifted from south to west, to ask her if she would like him to gather her some blackberries; to all which inquiries she replied in the negative or with indifference. she remained on the settee some time longer, when she aroused herself and went upstairs. the room in which she had formerly slept still remained much as she had left it, and the recollection that this forced upon her of her own greatly changed and infinitely worsened situation again set on her face the undetermined and formless misery which it had worn on her first arrival. she peeped into her grandfather's room, through which the fresh autumn air was blowing from the open window. her eye was arrested by what was a familiar sight enough, though it broke upon her now with a new significance. it was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her grandfather's bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a precaution against possible burglars, the house being very lonely. eustacia regarded them long, as if they were the page of a book in which she read a new and a strange matter. quickly, like one afraid of herself, she returned downstairs and stood in deep thought. "if i could only do it!" she said. "it would be doing much good to myself and all connected with me, and no harm to a single one." the idea seemed to gather force within her, and she remained in a fixed attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain finality was expressed in her gaze, and no longer the blankness of indecision. she turned and went up the second time--softly and stealthily now--and entered her grandfather's room, her eyes at once seeking the head of the bed. the pistols were gone. the instant quashing of her purpose by their absence affected her brain as a sudden vacuum affects the body: she nearly fainted. who had done this? there was only one person on the premises besides herself. eustacia involuntarily turned to the open window which overlooked the garden as far as the bank that bounded it. on the summit of the latter stood charley, sufficiently elevated by its height to see into the room. his gaze was directed eagerly and solicitously upon her. she went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him. "you have taken them away?" "yes, ma'am." "why did you do it?" "i saw you looking at them too long." "what has that to do with it?" "you have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you did not want to live." "well?" "and i could not bear to leave them in your way. there was meaning in your look at them." "where are they now?" "locked up." "where?" "in the stable." "give them to me." "no, ma'am." "you refuse?" "i do. i care too much for you to give 'em up." she turned aside, her face for the first time softening from the stony immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of her mouth resuming something of that delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments of despair. at last she confronted him again. "why should i not die if i wish?" she said tremulously. "i have made a bad bargain with life, and i am weary of it--weary. and now you have hindered my escape. o, why did you, charley! what makes death painful except the thought of others' grief?--and that is absent in my case, for not a sigh would follow me!" "ah, it is trouble that has done this! i wish in my very soul that he who brought it about might die and rot, even if 'tis transportation to say it!" "charley, no more of that. what do you mean to do about this you have seen?" "keep it close as night, if you promise not to think of it again." "you need not fear. the moment has passed. i promise." she then went away, entered the house, and lay down. later in the afternoon her grandfather returned. he was about to question her categorically; but on looking at her he withheld his words. "yes, it is too bad to talk of," she slowly returned in answer to his glance. "can my old room be got ready for me tonight, grandfather? i shall want to occupy it again." he did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left her husband, but ordered the room to be prepared. v an old move inadvertently repeated charley's attentions to his former mistress were unbounded. the only solace to his own trouble lay in his attempts to relieve hers. hour after hour he considered her wants: he thought of her presence there with a sort of gratitude, and, while uttering imprecations on the cause of her unhappiness, in some measure blessed the result. perhaps she would always remain there, he thought, and then he would be as happy as he had been before. his dread was lest she should think fit to return to alderworth, and in that dread his eyes, with all the inquisitiveness of affection, frequently sought her face when she was not observing him, as he would have watched the head of a stockdove to learn if it contemplated flight. having once really succoured her, and possibly preserved her from the rashest of acts, he mentally assumed in addition a guardian's responsibility for her welfare. for this reason he busily endeavoured to provide her with pleasant distractions, bringing home curious objects which he found in the heath, such as white trumpet-shaped mosses, red-headed lichens, stone arrow-heads used by the old tribes on egdon, and faceted crystals from the hollows of flints. these he deposited on the premises in such positions that she should see them as if by accident. a week passed, eustacia never going out of the house. then she walked into the enclosed plot and looked through her grandfather's spy-glass, as she had been in the habit of doing before her marriage. one day she saw, at a place where the high-road crossed the distant valley, a heavily laden waggon passing along. it was piled with household furniture. she looked again and again, and recognized it to be her own. in the evening her grandfather came indoors with a rumour that yeobright had removed that day from alderworth to the old house at blooms-end. on another occasion when reconnoitring thus she beheld two female figures walking in the vale. the day was fine and clear; and the persons not being more than half a mile off she could see their every detail with the telescope. the woman walking in front carried a white bundle in her arms, from one end of which hung a long appendage of drapery; and when the walkers turned, so that the sun fell more directly upon them, eustacia could see that the object was a baby. she called charley, and asked him if he knew who they were, though she well guessed. "mrs. wildeve and the nurse-girl," said charley. "the nurse is carrying the baby?" said eustacia. "no, 'tis mrs. wildeve carrying that," he answered, "and the nurse walks behind carrying nothing." the lad was in good spirits that day, for the fifth of november had again come round, and he was planning yet another scheme to divert her from her too absorbing thoughts. for two successive years his mistress had seemed to take pleasure in lighting a bonfire on the bank overlooking the valley; but this year she had apparently quite forgotten the day and the customary deed. he was careful not to remind her, and went on with his secret preparations for a cheerful surprise, the more zealously that he had been absent last time and unable to assist. at every vacant minute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view. the evening came, and eustacia was still seemingly unconscious of the anniversary. she had gone indoors after her survey through the glass, and had not been visible since. as soon as it was quite dark charley began to build the bonfire, choosing precisely that spot on the bank which eustacia had chosen at previous times. when all the surrounding bonfires had burst into existence charley kindled his, and arranged its fuel so that it should not require tending for some time. he then went back to the house, and lingered round the door and windows till she should by some means or other learn of his achievement and come out to witness it. but the shutters were closed, the door remained shut, and no heed whatever seemed to be taken of his performance. not liking to call her he went back and replenished the fire, continuing to do this for more than half an hour. it was not till his stock of fuel had greatly diminished that he went to the back door and sent in to beg that mrs. yeobright would open the window-shutters and see the sight outside. eustacia, who had been sitting listlessly in the parlour, started up at the intelligence and flung open the shutters. facing her on the bank blazed the fire, which at once sent a ruddy glare into the room where she was, and overpowered the candles. "well done, charley!" said captain vye from the chimney-corner. "but i hope it is not my wood that he's burning... ah, it was this time last year that i met with that man venn, bringing home thomasin yeobright--to be sure it was! well, who would have thought that girl's troubles would have ended so well? what a snipe you were in that matter, eustacia! has your husband written to you yet?" "no," said eustacia, looking vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. she could see charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire might call up. she left the room, put on her garden-bonnet and cloak, and went out. reaching the bank, she looked over with a wild curiosity and misgiving, when charley said to her, with a pleased sense of himself, "i made it o' purpose for you, ma'am." "thank you," she said hastily. "but i wish you to put it out now." "it will soon burn down," said charley, rather disappointed. "is it not a pity to knock it out?" "i don't know," she musingly answered. they stood in silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames, till charley, perceiving that she did not want to talk to him, moved reluctantly away. eustacia remained within the bank looking at the fire, intending to go indoors, yet lingering still. had she not by her situation been inclined to hold in indifference all things honoured of the gods and of men she would probably have come away. but her state was so hopeless that she could play with it. to have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won: and eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for heaven this woman eustacia was. while she stood she heard a sound. it was the splash of a stone in the pond. had eustacia received the stone full in the bosom her heart could not have given a more decided thump. she had thought of the possibility of such a signal in answer to that which had been unwittingly given by charley; but she had not expected it yet. how prompt wildeve was! yet how could he think her capable of deliberately wishing to renew their assignations now? an impulse to leave the spot, a desire to stay, struggled within her; and the desire held its own. more than that it did not do, for she refrained even from ascending the bank and looking over. she remained motionless, not disturbing a muscle of her face or raising her eyes; for were she to turn up her face the fire on the bank would shine upon it, and wildeve might be looking down. there was a second splash into the pond. why did he stay so long without advancing and looking over? curiosity had its way: she ascended one or two of the earth-steps in the bank and glanced out. wildeve was before her. he had come forward after throwing the last pebble, and the fire now shone into each of their faces from the bank stretching breast-high between them. "i did not light it!" cried eustacia quickly. "it was lit without my knowledge. don't, don't come over to me!" "why have you been living here all these days without telling me? you have left your home. i fear i am something to blame for this?" "i did not let in his mother; that's how it is!" "you do not deserve what you have got, eustacia; you are in great misery; i see it in your eyes, your mouth, and all over you. my poor, poor girl!" he stepped over the bank. "you are beyond everything unhappy!" "no, no; not exactly--" "it has been pushed too far--it is killing you: i do think it!" her usually quiet breathing had grown quicker with his words. "i--i--" she began, and then burst into quivering sobs, shaken to the very heart by the unexpected voice of pity--a sentiment whose existence in relation to herself she had almost forgotten. this outbreak of weeping took eustacia herself so much by surprise that she could not leave off, and she turned aside from him in some shame, though turning hid nothing from him. she sobbed on desperately; then the outpour lessened, and she became quieter. wildeve had resisted the impulse to clasp her, and stood without speaking. "are you not ashamed of me, who used never to be a crying animal?" she asked in a weak whisper as she wiped her eyes. "why didn't you go away? i wish you had not seen quite all that; it reveals too much by half." "you might have wished it, because it makes me as sad as you," he said with emotion and deference. "as for revealing--the word is impossible between us two." "i did not send for you--don't forget it, damon; i am in pain, but i did not send for you! as a wife, at least, i've been straight." "never mind--i came. o, eustacia, forgive me for the harm i have done you in these two past years! i see more and more that i have been your ruin." "not you. this place i live in." "ah, your generosity may naturally make you say that. but i am the culprit. i should either have done more or nothing at all." "in what way?" "i ought never to have hunted you out, or, having done it, i ought to have persisted in retaining you. but of course i have no right to talk of that now. i will only ask this: can i do anything for you? is there anything on the face of the earth that a man can do to make you happier than you are at present? if there is, i will do it. you may command me, eustacia, to the limit of my influence; and don't forget that i am richer now. surely something can be done to save you from this! such a rare plant in such a wild place it grieves me to see. do you want anything bought? do you want to go anywhere? do you want to escape the place altogether? only say it, and i'll do anything to put an end to those tears, which but for me would never have been at all." "we are each married to another person," she said faintly; "and assistance from you would have an evil sound--after--after--" "well, there's no preventing slanderers from having their fill at any time; but you need not be afraid. whatever i may feel i promise you on my word of honour never to speak to you about--or act upon--until you say i may. i know my duty to thomasin quite as well as i know my duty to you as a woman unfairly treated. what shall i assist you in?" "in getting away from here." "where do you wish to go to?" "i have a place in my mind. if you could help me as far as budmouth i can do all the rest. steamers sail from there across the channel, and so i can get to paris, where i want to be. yes," she pleaded earnestly, "help me to get to budmouth harbour without my grandfather's or my husband's knowledge, and i can do all the rest." "will it be safe to leave you there alone?" "yes, yes. i know budmouth well." "shall i go with you? i am rich now." she was silent. "say yes, sweet!" she was silent still. "well, let me know when you wish to go. we shall be at our present house till december; after that we remove to casterbridge. command me in anything till that time." "i will think of this," she said hurriedly. "whether i can honestly make use of you as a friend, or must close with you as a lover--that is what i must ask myself. if i wish to go and decide to accept your company i will signal to you some evening at eight o'clock punctually, and this will mean that you are to be ready with a horse and trap at twelve o'clock the same night to drive me to budmouth harbour in time for the morning boat." "i will look out every night at eight, and no signal shall escape me." "now please go away. if i decide on this escape i can only meet you once more unless--i cannot go without you. go--i cannot bear it longer. go--go!" wildeve slowly went up the steps and descended into the darkness on the other side; and as he walked he glanced back, till the bank blotted out her form from his further view. vi thomasin argues with her cousin, and he writes a letter yeobright was at this time at blooms-end, hoping that eustacia would return to him. the removal of furniture had been accomplished only that day, though clym had lived in the old house for more than a week. he had spent the time in working about the premises, sweeping leaves from the garden-paths, cutting dead stalks from the flower-beds, and nailing up creepers which had been displaced by the autumn winds. he took no particular pleasure in these deeds, but they formed a screen between himself and despair. moreover, it had become a religion with him to preserve in good condition all that had lapsed from his mother's hands to his own. during these operations he was constantly on the watch for eustacia. that there should be no mistake about her knowing where to find him he had ordered a notice board to be affixed to the garden gate at alderworth, signifying in white letters whither he had removed. when a leaf floated to the earth he turned his head, thinking it might be her footfall. a bird searching for worms in the mould of the flower-beds sounded like her hand on the latch of the gate; and at dusk, when soft, strange ventriloquisms came from holes in the ground, hollow stalks, curled dead leaves, and other crannies wherein breezes, worms, and insects can work their will, he fancied that they were eustacia, standing without and breathing wishes of reconciliation. up to this hour he had persevered in his resolve not to invite her back. at the same time the severity with which he had treated her lulled the sharpness of his regret for his mother, and awoke some of his old solicitude for his mother's supplanter. harsh feelings produce harsh usage, and this by reaction quenches the sentiments that gave it birth. the more he reflected the more he softened. but to look upon his wife as innocence in distress was impossible, though he could ask himself whether he had given her quite time enough--if he had not come a little too suddenly upon her on that sombre morning. now that the first flush of his anger had paled he was disinclined to ascribe to her more than an indiscreet friendship with wildeve, for there had not appeared in her manner the signs of dishonour. and this once admitted, an absolutely dark interpretation of her act towards his mother was no longer forced upon him. on the evening of the fifth november his thoughts of eustacia were intense. echoes from those past times when they had exchanged tender words all the day long came like the diffused murmur of a seashore left miles behind. "surely," he said, "she might have brought herself to communicate with me before now, and confess honestly what wildeve was to her." instead of remaining at home that night he determined to go and see thomasin and her husband. if he found opportunity he would allude to the cause of the separation between eustacia and himself, keeping silence, however, on the fact that there was a third person in his house when his mother was turned away. if it proved that wildeve was innocently there he would doubtless openly mention it. if he were there with unjust intentions wildeve, being a man of quick feeling, might possibly say something to reveal the extent to which eustacia was compromised. but on reaching his cousin's house he found that only thomasin was at home, wildeve being at that time on his way towards the bonfire innocently lit by charley at mistover. thomasin then, as always, was glad to see clym, and took him to inspect the sleeping baby, carefully screening the candlelight from the infant's eyes with her hand. "tamsin, have you heard that eustacia is not with me now?" he said when they had sat down again. "no," said thomasin, alarmed. "and not that i have left alderworth?" "no. i never hear tidings from alderworth unless you bring them. what is the matter?" clym in a disturbed voice related to her his visit to susan nunsuch's boy, the revelation he had made, and what had resulted from his charging eustacia with having wilfully and heartlessly done the deed. he suppressed all mention of wildeve's presence with her. "all this, and i not knowing it!" murmured thomasin in an awestruck tone. "terrible! what could have made her--o, eustacia! and when you found it out you went in hot haste to her? were you too cruel?--or is she really so wicked as she seems?" "can a man be too cruel to his mother's enemy?" "i can fancy so." "very well, then--i'll admit that he can. but now what is to be done?" "make it up again--if a quarrel so deadly can ever be made up. i almost wish you had not told me. but do try to be reconciled. there are ways, after all, if you both wish to." "i don't know that we do both wish to make it up," said clym. "if she had wished it, would she not have sent to me by this time?" "you seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her." "true; but i have been tossed to and fro in doubt if i ought, after such strong provocation. to see me now, thomasin, gives you no idea of what i have been; of what depths i have descended to in these few last days. o, it was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that! can i ever forget it, or even agree to see her again?" "she might not have known that anything serious would come of it, and perhaps she did not mean to keep aunt out altogether." "she says herself that she did not. but the fact remains that keep her out she did." "believe her sorry, and send for her." "how if she will not come?" "it will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit to nourish enmity. but i do not think that for a moment." "i will do this. i will wait for a day or two longer--not longer than two days certainly; and if she does not send to me in that time i will indeed send to her. i thought to have seen wildeve here tonight. is he from home?" thomasin blushed a little. "no," she said. "he is merely gone out for a walk." "why didn't he take you with him? the evening is fine. you want fresh air as well as he." "oh, i don't care for going anywhere; besides, there is baby." "yes, yes. well, i have been thinking whether i should not consult your husband about this as well as you," said clym steadily. "i fancy i would not," she quickly answered. "it can do no good." her cousin looked her in the face. no doubt thomasin was ignorant that her husband had any share in the events of that tragic afternoon; but her countenance seemed to signify that she concealed some suspicion or thought of the reputed tender relations between wildeve and eustacia in days gone by. clym, however, could make nothing of it, and he rose to depart, more in doubt than when he came. "you will write to her in a day or two?" said the young woman earnestly. "i do so hope the wretched separation may come to an end." "i will," said clym; "i don't rejoice in my present state at all." and he left her and climbed over the hill to blooms-end. before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following letter:-- my dear eustacia,--i must obey my heart without consulting my reason too closely. will you come back to me? do so, and the past shall never be mentioned. i was too severe; but o, eustacia, the provocation! you don't know, you never will know, what those words of anger cost me which you drew down upon yourself. all that an honest man can promise you i promise now, which is that from me you shall never suffer anything on this score again. after all the vows we have made, eustacia, i think we had better pass the remainder of our lives in trying to keep them. come to me, then, even if you reproach me. i have thought of your sufferings that morning on which i parted from you; i know they were genuine, and they are as much as you ought to bear. our love must still continue. such hearts as ours would never have been given us but to be concerned with each other. i could not ask you back at first, eustacia, for i was unable to persuade myself that he who was with you was not there as a lover. but if you will come and explain distracting appearances i do not question that you can show your honesty to me. why have you not come before? do you think i will not listen to you? surely not, when you remember the kisses and vows we exchanged under the summer moon. return then, and you shall be warmly welcomed. i can no longer think of you to your prejudice--i am but too much absorbed in justifying you.--your husband as ever, clym. "there," he said, as he laid it in his desk, "that's a good thing done. if she does not come before tomorrow night i will send it to her." meanwhile, at the house he had just left thomasin sat sighing uneasily. fidelity to her husband had that evening induced her to conceal all suspicion that wildeve's interest in eustacia had not ended with his marriage. but she knew nothing positive; and though clym was her well-beloved cousin there was one nearer to her still. when, a little later, wildeve returned from his walk to mistover, thomasin said, "damon, where have you been? i was getting quite frightened, and thought you had fallen into the river. i dislike being in the house by myself." "frightened?" he said, touching her cheek as if she were some domestic animal. "why, i thought nothing could frighten you. it is that you are getting proud, i am sure, and don't like living here since we have risen above our business. well, it is a tedious matter, this getting a new house; but i couldn't have set about it sooner, unless our ten thousand pounds had been a hundred thousand, when we could have afforded to despise caution." "no--i don't mind waiting--i would rather stay here twelve months longer than run any risk with baby. but i don't like your vanishing so in the evenings. there's something on your mind--i know there is, damon. you go about so gloomily, and look at the heath as if it were somebody's gaol instead of a nice wild place to walk in." he looked towards her with pitying surprise. "what, do you like egdon heath?" he said. "i like what i was born near to; i admire its grim old face." "pooh, my dear. you don't know what you like." "i am sure i do. there's only one thing unpleasant about egdon." "what's that?" "you never take me with you when you walk there. why do you wander so much in it yourself if you so dislike it?" the inquiry, though a simple one, was plainly disconcerting, and he sat down before replying. "i don't think you often see me there. give an instance." "i will," she answered triumphantly. "when you went out this evening i thought that as baby was asleep i would see where you were going to so mysteriously without telling me. so i ran out and followed behind you. you stopped at the place where the road forks, looked round at the bonfires, and then said, 'damn it, i'll go!' and you went quickly up the left-hand road. then i stood and watched you." wildeve frowned, afterwards saying, with a forced smile, "well, what wonderful discovery did you make?" "there--now you are angry, and we won't talk of this any more." she went across to him, sat on a footstool, and looked up in his face. "nonsense!" he said, "that's how you always back out. we will go on with it now we have begun. what did you next see? i particularly want to know." "don't be like that, damon!" she murmured. "i didn't see anything. you vanished out of sight, and then i looked round at the bonfires and came in." "perhaps this is not the only time you have dogged my steps. are you trying to find out something bad about me?" "not at all! i have never done such a thing before, and i shouldn't have done it now if words had not sometimes been dropped about you." "what do you mean?" he impatiently asked. "they say--they say you used to go to alderworth in the evenings, and it puts into my mind what i have heard about--" wildeve turned angrily and stood up in front of her. "now," he said, flourishing his hand in the air, "just out with it, madam! i demand to know what remarks you have heard." "well, i heard that you used to be very fond of eustacia--nothing more than that, though dropped in a bit-by-bit way. you ought not to be angry!" he observed that her eyes were brimming with tears. "well," he said, "there is nothing new in that, and of course i don't mean to be rough towards you, so you need not cry. now, don't let us speak of the subject any more." and no more was said, thomasin being glad enough of a reason for not mentioning clym's visit to her that evening, and his story. vii the night of the sixth of november having resolved on flight eustacia at times seemed anxious that something should happen to thwart her own intention. the only event that could really change her position was the appearance of clym. the glory which had encircled him as her lover was departed now; yet some good simple quality of his would occasionally return to her memory and stir a momentary throb of hope that he would again present himself before her. but calmly considered it was not likely that such a severance as now existed would ever close up: she would have to live on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place. she had used to think of the heath alone as an uncongenial spot to be in; she felt it now of the whole world. towards evening on the sixth her determination to go away again revived. about four o'clock she packed up anew the few small articles she had brought in her flight from alderworth, and also some belonging to her which had been left here: the whole formed a bundle not too large to be carried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two. the scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied downwards from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with the increase of night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there was no rain. eustacia could not rest indoors, having nothing more to do, and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the house she was soon to leave. in these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of susan nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather's. the door was ajar, and a riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without. as eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria--a creature of light surrounded by an area of darkness: the moment passed, and she was absorbed in night again. a woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and recognized her in that momentary irradiation. this was susan herself, occupied in preparing a posset for her little boy, who, often ailing, was now seriously unwell. susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure, and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent way. at eight o'clock, the hour at which eustacia had promised to signal wildeve if ever she signalled at all, she looked around the premises to learn if the coast was clear, went to the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed bough of that fuel. this she carried to the corner of the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters were all closed, she struck a light, and kindled the furze. when it was thoroughly ablaze eustacia took it by the stem and waved it in the air above her head till it had burned itself out. she was gratified, if gratification were possible to such a mood, by seeing a similar light in the vicinity of wildeve's residence a minute or two later. having agreed to keep watch at this hour every night, in case she should require assistance, this promptness proved how strictly he had held to his word. four hours after the present time, that is, at midnight, he was to be ready to drive her to budmouth, as prearranged. eustacia returned to the house. supper having been got over she retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for the time to go by. the night being dark and threatening, captain vye had not strolled out to gossip in any cottage or to call at the inn, as was sometimes his custom on these long autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone downstairs. about ten o'clock there was a knock at the door. when the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell upon the form of fairway. "i was a-forced to go to lower mistover tonight," he said, "and mr. yeobright asked me to leave this here on my way; but, faith, i put it in the lining of my hat, and thought no more about it till i got back and was hasping my gate before going to bed. so i have run back with it at once." he handed in a letter and went his way. the girl brought it to the captain, who found that it was directed to eustacia. he turned it over and over, and fancied that the writing was her husband's, though he could not be sure. however, he decided to let her have it at once if possible, and took it upstairs for that purpose; but on reaching the door of her room and looking in at the keyhole he found there was no light within, the fact being that eustacia, without undressing, had flung herself upon the bed, to rest and gather a little strength for her coming journey. her grandfather concluded from what he saw that he ought not to disturb her; and descending again to the parlour he placed the letter on the mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning. at eleven o'clock he went to bed himself, smoked for some time in his bedroom, put out his light at half-past eleven, and then, as was his invariable custom, pulled up the blind before getting into bed, that he might see which way the wind blew on opening his eyes in the morning, his bedroom window commanding a view of the flagstaff and vane. just as he had lain down he was surprised to observe the white pole of the staff flash into existence like a streak of phosphorus drawn downwards across the shade of night without. only one explanation met this--a light had been suddenly thrown upon the pole from the direction of the house. as everybody had retired to rest the old man felt it necessary to get out of bed, open the window softly, and look to the right and left. eustacia's bedroom was lighted up, and it was the shine from her window which had lighted the pole. wondering what had aroused her, he remained undecided at the window, and was thinking of fetching the letter to slip it under her door, when he heard a slight brushing of garments on the partition dividing his room from the passage. the captain concluded that eustacia, feeling wakeful, had gone for a book, and would have dismissed the matter as unimportant if he had not also heard her distinctly weeping as she passed. "she is thinking of that husband of hers," he said to himself. "ah, the silly goose! she had no business to marry him. i wonder if that letter is really his?" he arose, threw his boat-cloak round him, opened the door, and said, "eustacia!" there was no answer. "eustacia!" he repeated louder, "there is a letter on the mantelpiece for you." but no response was made to this statement save an imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops of rain upon the windows. he went on to the landing, and stood waiting nearly five minutes. still she did not return. he went back for a light, and prepared to follow her; but first he looked into her bedroom. there, on the outside of the quilt, was the impression of her form, showing that the bed had not been opened; and, what was more significant, she had not taken her candlestick downstairs. he was now thoroughly alarmed; and hastily putting on his clothes he descended to the front door, which he himself had bolted and locked. it was now unfastened. there was no longer any doubt that eustacia had left the house at this midnight hour; and whither could she have gone? to follow her was almost impossible. had the dwelling stood in an ordinary road, two persons setting out, one in each direction, might have made sure of overtaking her; but it was a hopeless task to seek for anybody on a heath in the dark, the practicable directions for flight across it from any point being as numerous as the meridians radiating from the pole. perplexed what to do, he looked into the parlour, and was vexed to find that the letter still lay there untouched. at half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent, eustacia had lighted her candle, put on some warm outer wrappings, taken her bag in her hand, and, extinguishing the light again, descended the staircase. when she got into the outer air she found that it had begun to rain, and as she stood pausing at the door it increased, threatening to come on heavily. but having committed herself to this line of action there was no retreating for bad weather. even the receipt of clym's letter would not have stopped her now. the gloom of the night was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. the spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning in the cottage of susan nunsuch. eustacia opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure by the steps over the bank, after which she was beyond all danger of being perceived. skirting the pool, she followed the path towards rainbarrow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze-roots, tufts of rushes, or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay scattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some colossal animal. the moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rain to the degree of extinction. it was a night which led the traveller's thoughts instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster in the chronicles of the world, on all that is terrible and dark in history and legend--the last plague of egypt, the destruction of sennacherib's host, the agony in gethsemane. eustacia at length reached rainbarrow, and stood still there to think. never was harmony more perfect than that between the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world without. a sudden recollection had flashed on her this moment: she had not money enough for undertaking a long journey. amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her unpractical mind had not dwelt on the necessity of being well-provided, and now that she thoroughly realized the condition she sighed bitterly and ceased to stand erect, gradually crouching down under the umbrella as if she were drawn into the barrow by a hand from beneath. could it be that she was to remain a captive still? money: she had never felt its value before. even to efface herself from the country means were required. to ask wildeve for pecuniary aid without allowing him to accompany her was impossible to a woman with a shadow of pride left in her; to fly as his mistress--and she knew that he loved her--was of the nature of humiliation. anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her, not so much on account of her exposure to weather, and isolation from all of humanity except the mouldered remains inside the tumulus; but for that other form of misery which was denoted by the slightly rocking movement that her feelings imparted to her person. extreme unhappiness weighed visibly upon her. between the drippings of the rain from her umbrella to her mantle, from her mantle to the heather, from the heather to the earth, very similar sounds could be heard coming from her lips; and the tearfulness of the outer scene was repeated upon her face. the wings of her soul were broken by the cruel obstructiveness of all about her; and even had she seen herself in a promising way of getting to budmouth, entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port, she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully malignant were other things. she uttered words aloud. when a woman in such a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon herself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something grievous the matter. "can i go, can i go?" she moaned. "he's not great enough for me to give myself to--he does not suffice for my desire!... if he had been a saul or a buonaparte--ah! but to break my marriage vow for him--it is too poor a luxury!... and i have no money to go alone! and if i could, what comfort to me? i must drag on next year, as i have dragged on this year, and the year after that as before. how i have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me!... i do not deserve my lot!" she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. "o, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! i was capable of much; but i have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! o, how hard it is of heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all!" the distant light which eustacia had cursorily observed in leaving the house came, as she had divined, from the cottage window of susan nunsuch. what eustacia did not divine was the occupation of the woman within at that moment. susan's sight of her passing figure earlier in the evening, not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation, "mother, i do feel so bad!" persuaded the matron that an evil influence was certainly exercised by eustacia's propinquity. on this account susan did not go to bed as soon as the evening's work was over, as she would have done at ordinary times. to counteract the malign spell which she imagined poor eustacia to be working, the boy's mother busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition, calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation on any human being against whom it was directed. it was a practice well known on egdon at that date, and one that is not quite extinct at the present day. she passed with her candle into an inner room, where, among other utensils, were two large brown pans, containing together perhaps a hundredweight of liquid honey, the produce of the bees during the foregoing summer. on a shelf over the pans was a smooth and solid yellow mass of a hemispherical form, consisting of beeswax from the same take of honey. susan took down the lump, and cutting off several thin slices, heaped them in an iron ladle, with which she returned to the living-room, and placed the vessel in the hot ashes of the fireplace. as soon as the wax had softened to the plasticity of dough she kneaded the pieces together. and now her face became more intent. she began moulding the wax; and it was evident from her manner of manipulation that she was endeavouring to give it some preconceived form. the form was human. by warming and kneading, cutting and twisting, dismembering and re-joining the incipient image she had in about a quarter of an hour produced a shape which tolerably well resembled a woman, and was about six inches high. she laid it on the table to get cold and hard. meanwhile she took the candle and went upstairs to where the little boy was lying. "did you notice, my dear, what mrs. eustacia wore this afternoon besides the dark dress?" "a red ribbon round her neck." "anything else?" "no--except sandal-shoes." "a red ribbon and sandal-shoes," she said to herself. mrs. nunsuch went and searched till she found a fragment of the narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs and tied round the neck of the image. then fetching ink and a quill from the rickety bureau by the window, she blackened the feet of the image to the extent presumably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot marked cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandal-strings of those days. finally she tied a bit of black thread round the upper part of the head, in faint resemblance to a snood worn for confining the hair. susan held the object at arm's length and contemplated it with a satisfaction in which there was no smile. to anybody acquainted with the inhabitants of egdon heath the image would have suggested eustacia yeobright. from her work-basket in the window-seat the woman took a paper of pins, of the old long and yellow sort whose heads were disposed to come off at their first usage. these she began to thrust into the image in all directions, with apparently excruciating energy. probably as many as fifty were thus inserted, some into the head of the wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some upwards through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely permeated with pins. she turned to the fire. it had been of turf; and though the high heap of ashes which turf fires produce was somewhat dark and dead on the outside, upon raking it abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow of red heat. she took a few pieces of fresh turf from the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which the fire brightened. seizing with the tongs the image that she had made of eustacia, she held it in the heat, and watched it as it began to waste slowly away. and while she stood thus engaged there came from between her lips a murmur of words. it was a strange jargon--the lord's prayer repeated backwards--the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably diminished. as the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure ate still further into its substance. a pin occasionally dropped with the wax, and the embers heated it red as it lay. viii rain, darkness, and anxious wanderers while the effigy of eustacia was melting to nothing, and the fair woman herself was standing on rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one so young, yeobright sat lonely at blooms-end. he had fulfilled his word to thomasin by sending off fairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience for some sound or signal of her return. were eustacia still at mistover the very least he expected was that she would send him back a reply tonight by the same hand; though, to leave all to her inclination, he had cautioned fairway not to ask for an answer. if one were handed to him he was to bring it immediately; if not, he was to go straight home without troubling to come round to blooms-end again that night. but secretly clym had a more pleasing hope. eustacia might possibly decline to use her pen--it was rather her way to work silently--and surprise him by appearing at his door. how fully her mind was made up to do otherwise he did not know. to clym's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the evening advanced. the wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings like peas against the panes. he walked restlessly about the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements and crevices, and pressing together the lead-work of the quarries where it had become loosened from the glass. it was one of those nights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen, when ancient stains on the ceilings of decayed manor houses are renewed and enlarged from the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet. the little gate in the palings before his dwelling continually opened and clicked together again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody was there; it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in on their way to visit him. between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither fairway nor anybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and despite his anxieties soon fell asleep. his sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after. clym arose and looked out of the window. rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour. it was too dark to see anything at all. "who's there?" he cried. light footsteps shifted their position in the porch, and he could just distinguish in a plaintive female voice the words, "o clym, come down and let me in!" he flushed hot with agitation. "surely it is eustacia!" he murmured. if so, she had indeed come to him unawares. he hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down. on his flinging open the door the rays of the candle fell upon a woman closely wrapped up, who at once came forward. "thomasin!" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of disappointment. "it is thomasin, and on such a night as this! o, where is eustacia?" thomasin it was, wet, frightened, and panting. "eustacia? i don't know, clym; but i can think," she said with much perturbation. "let me come in and rest--i will explain this. there is a great trouble brewing--my husband and eustacia!" "what, what?" "i think my husband is going to leave me or do something dreadful--i don't know what--clym, will you go and see? i have nobody to help me but you! eustacia has not yet come home?" "no." she went on breathlessly: "then they are going to run off together! he came indoors tonight about eight o'clock and said in an off-hand way, 'tamsie, i have just found that i must go a journey.' 'when?' i said. 'tonight,' he said. 'where?' i asked him. 'i cannot tell you at present,' he said; 'i shall be back again tomorrow.' he then went and busied himself in looking up his things, and took no notice of me at all. i expected to see him start, but he did not, and then it came to be ten o'clock, when he said, 'you had better go to bed.' i didn't know what to do, and i went to bed. i believe he thought i fell asleep, for half an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak chest we keep money in when we have much in the house and took out a roll of something which i believe was bank-notes, though i was not aware that he had 'em there. these he must have got from the bank when he went there the other day. what does he want bank-notes for, if he is only going off for a day? when he had gone down i thought of eustacia, and how he had met her the night before--i know he did meet her, clym, for i followed him part of the way; but i did not like to tell you when you called, and so make you think ill of him, as i did not think it was so serious. then i could not stay in bed; i got up and dressed myself, and when i heard him out in the stable i thought i would come and tell you. so i came downstairs without any noise and slipped out." "then he was not absolutely gone when you left?" "no. will you, dear cousin clym, go and try to persuade him not to go? he takes no notice of what i say, and puts me off with the story of his going on a journey, and will be home tomorrow, and all that; but i don't believe it. i think you could influence him." "i'll go," said clym. "o, eustacia!" thomasin carried in her arms a large bundle; and having by this time seated herself she began to unroll it, when a baby appeared as the kernel to the husks--dry, warm, and unconscious of travel or rough weather. thomasin briefly kissed the baby, and then found time to begin crying as she said, "i brought baby, for i was afraid what might happen to her. i suppose it will be her death, but i couldn't leave her with rachel!" clym hastily put together the logs on the hearth, raked abroad the embers, which were scarcely yet extinct, and blew up a flame with the bellows. "dry yourself," he said. "i'll go and get some more wood." "no, no--don't stay for that. i'll make up the fire. will you go at once--please will you?" yeobright ran upstairs to finish dressing himself. while he was gone another rapping came to the door. this time there was no delusion that it might be eustacia's: the footsteps just preceding it had been heavy and slow. yeobright thinking it might possibly be fairway with a note in answer, descended again and opened the door. "captain vye?" he said to a dripping figure. "is my granddaughter here?" said the captain. "no." "then where is she?". "i don't know." "but you ought to know--you are her husband." "only in name apparently," said clym with rising excitement. "i believe she means to elope tonight with wildeve. i am just going to look to it." "well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour ago. who's sitting there?" "my cousin thomasin." the captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her. "i only hope it is no worse than an elopement," he said. "worse? what's worse than the worst a wife can do?" "well, i have been told a strange tale. before starting in search of her i called up charley, my stable lad. i missed my pistols the other day." "pistols?" "he said at the time that he took them down to clean. he has now owned that he took them because he saw eustacia looking curiously at them; and she afterwards owned to him that she was thinking of taking her life, but bound him to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thing again. i hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind; and people who think of that sort of thing once think of it again." "where are the pistols?" "safely locked up. o no, she won't touch them again. but there are more ways of letting out life than through a bullet-hole. what did you quarrel about so bitterly with her to drive her to all this? you must have treated her badly indeed. well, i was always against the marriage, and i was right." "are you going with me?" said yeobright, paying no attention to the captain's latter remark. "if so i can tell you what we quarrelled about as we walk along." "where to?" "to wildeve's--that was her destination, depend upon it." thomasin here broke in, still weeping: "he said he was only going on a sudden short journey; but if so why did he want so much money? o, clym, what do you think will happen? i am afraid that you, my poor baby, will soon have no father left to you!" "i am off now," said yeobright, stepping into the porch. "i would fain go with 'ee," said the old man doubtfully. "but i begin to be afraid that my legs will hardly carry me there such a night as this. i am not so young as i was. if they are interrupted in their flight she will be sure to come back to me, and i ought to be at the house to receive her. but be it as 'twill i can't walk to the quiet woman, and that's an end on't. i'll go straight home." "it will perhaps be best," said clym. "thomasin, dry yourself, and be as comfortable as you can." with this he closed the door upon her, and left the house in company with captain vye, who parted from him outside the gate, taking the middle path, which led to mistover. clym crossed by the right-hand track towards the inn. thomasin, being left alone, took off some of her wet garments, carried the baby upstairs to clym's bed, and then came down to the sitting-room again, where she made a larger fire, and began drying herself. the fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped at the window-panes and breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy. but the least part of thomasin was in the house, for her heart being at ease about the little girl upstairs she was mentally following clym on his journey. having indulged in this imaginary peregrination for some considerable interval, she became impressed with a sense of the intolerable slowness of time. but she sat on. the moment then came when she could scarcely sit longer; and it was like a satire on her patience to remember that clym could hardly have reached the inn as yet. at last she went to the baby's bedside. the child was sleeping soundly; but her imagination of possibly disastrous events at her home, the predominance within her of the unseen over the seen, agitated her beyond endurance. she could not refrain from going down and opening the door. the rain still continued, the candlelight falling upon the nearest drops and making glistening darts of them as they descended across the throng of invisible ones behind. to plunge into that medium was to plunge into water slightly diluted with air. but the difficulty of returning to her house at this moment made her all the more desirous of doing so: anything was better than suspense. "i have come here well enough," she said, "and why shouldn't i go back again? it is a mistake for me to be away." she hastily fetched the infant, wrapped it up, cloaked herself as before, and shoveling the ashes over the fire, to prevent accidents, went into the open air. pausing first to put the door key in its old place behind the shutter, she resolutely turned her face to the confronting pile of firmamental darkness beyond the palings, and stepped into its midst. but thomasin's imagination being so actively engaged elsewhere, the night and the weather had for her no terror beyond that of their actual discomfort and difficulty. she was soon ascending blooms-end valley and traversing the undulations on the side of the hill. the noise of the wind over the heath was shrill, and as if it whistled for joy at finding a night so congenial as this. sometimes the path led her to hollows between thickets of tall and dripping bracken, dead, though not yet prostrate, which enclosed her like a pool. when they were more than usually tall she lifted the baby to the top of her head, that it might be out of the reach of their drenching fronds. on higher ground, where the wind was brisk and sustained, the rain flew in a level flight without sensible descent, so that it was beyond all power to imagine the remoteness of the point at which it left the bosoms of the clouds. here self-defence was impossible, and individual drops stuck into her like the arrows into saint sebastian. she was enabled to avoid puddles by the nebulous paleness which signified their presence, though beside anything less dark than the heath they themselves would have appeared as blackness. yet in spite of all this thomasin was not sorry that she had started. to her there were not, as to eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. the drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. at this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, lose the path without care, and possibly catch cold. if the path is well known the difficulty at such times of keeping therein is not altogether great, from its familiar feel to the feet; but once lost it is irrecoverable. owing to her baby, who somewhat impeded thomasin's view forward and distracted her mind, she did at last lose the track. this mishap occurred when she was descending an open slope about two-thirds home. instead of attempting, by wandering hither and thither, the hopeless task of finding such a mere thread, she went straight on, trusting for guidance to her general knowledge of the contours, which was scarcely surpassed by clym's or by that of the heath-croppers themselves. at length thomasin reached a hollow and began to discern through the rain a faint blotted radiance, which presently assumed the oblong form of an open door. she knew that no house stood hereabouts, and was soon aware of the nature of the door by its height above the ground. "why, it is diggory venn's van, surely!" she said. a certain secluded spot near rainbarrow was, she knew, often venn's chosen centre when staying in this neighbourhood; and she guessed at once that she had stumbled upon this mysterious retreat. the question arose in her mind whether or not she should ask him to guide her into the path. in her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would appeal to him, notwithstanding the strangeness of appearing before his eyes at this place and season. but when, in pursuance of this resolve, thomasin reached the van and looked in she found it to be untenanted; though there was no doubt that it was the reddleman's. the fire was burning in the stove, the lantern hung from the nail. round the doorway the floor was merely sprinkled with rain, and not saturated, which told her that the door had not long been opened. while she stood uncertainly looking in thomasin heard a footstep advancing from the darkness behind her, and turning, beheld the well-known form in corduroy, lurid from head to foot, the lantern beams falling upon him through an intervening gauze of raindrops. "i thought you went down the slope," he said, without noticing her face. "how do you come back here again?" "diggory?" said thomasin faintly. "who are you?" said venn, still unperceiving. "and why were you crying so just now?" "o, diggory! don't you know me?" said she. "but of course you don't, wrapped up like this. what do you mean? i have not been crying here, and i have not been here before." venn then came nearer till he could see the illuminated side of her form. "mrs. wildeve!" he exclaimed, starting. "what a time for us to meet! and the baby too! what dreadful thing can have brought you out on such a night as this?" she could not immediately answer; and without asking her permission he hopped into his van, took her by the arm, and drew her up after him. "what is it?" he continued when they stood within. "i have lost my way coming from blooms-end, and i am in a great hurry to get home. please show me as quickly as you can! it is so silly of me not to know egdon better, and i cannot think how i came to lose the path. show me quickly, diggory, please." "yes, of course. i will go with 'ee. but you came to me before this, mrs. wildeve?" "i only came this minute." "that's strange. i was lying down here asleep about five minutes ago, with the door shut to keep out the weather, when the brushing of a woman's clothes over the heath-bushes just outside woke me up (for i don't sleep heavy), and at the same time i heard a sobbing or crying from the same woman. i opened my door and held out my lantern, and just as far as the light would reach i saw a woman: she turned her head when the light sheened on her, and then hurried on downhill. i hung up the lantern, and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her a few steps, but i could see nothing of her any more. that was where i had been when you came up; and when i saw you i thought you were the same one." "perhaps it was one of the heath-folk going home?" "no, it couldn't be. 'tis too late. the noise of her gown over the he'th was of a whistling sort that nothing but silk will make." "it wasn't i, then. my dress is not silk, you see... are we anywhere in a line between mistover and the inn?" "well, yes; not far out." "ah, i wonder if it was she! diggory, i must go at once!" she jumped down from the van before he was aware, when venn unhooked the lantern and leaped down after her. "i'll take the baby, ma'am," he said. "you must be tired out by the weight." thomasin hesitated a moment, and then delivered the baby into venn's hands. "don't squeeze her, diggory," she said, "or hurt her little arm; and keep the cloak close over her like this, so that the rain may not drop in her face." "i will," said venn earnestly. "as if i could hurt anything belonging to you!" "i only meant accidentally," said thomasin. "the baby is dry enough, but you are pretty wet," said the reddleman when, in closing the door of his cart to padlock it, he noticed on the floor a ring of water drops where her cloak had hung from her. thomasin followed him as he wound right and left to avoid the larger bushes, stopping occasionally and covering the lantern, while he looked over his shoulder to gain some idea of the position of rainbarrow above them, which it was necessary to keep directly behind their backs to preserve a proper course. "you are sure the rain does not fall upon baby?" "quite sure. may i ask how old he is, ma'am?" "he!" said thomasin reproachfully. "anybody can see better than that in a moment. she is nearly two months old. how far is it now to the inn?" "a little over a quarter of a mile." "will you walk a little faster?" "i was afraid you could not keep up." "i am very anxious to get there. ah, there is a light from the window!" "'tis not from the window. that's a gig-lamp, to the best of my belief." "o!" said thomasin in despair. "i wish i had been there sooner--give me the baby, diggory--you can go back now." "i must go all the way," said venn. "there is a quag between us and that light, and you will walk into it up to your neck unless i take you round." "but the light is at the inn, and there is no quag in front of that." "no, the light is below the inn some two or three hundred yards." "never mind," said thomasin hurriedly. "go towards the light, and not towards the inn." "yes," answered venn, swerving round in obedience; and, after a pause, "i wish you would tell me what this great trouble is. i think you have proved that i can be trusted." "there are some things that cannot be--cannot be told to--" and then her heart rose into her throat, and she could say no more. ix sights and sounds draw the wanderers together having seen eustacia's signal from the hill at eight o'clock, wildeve immediately prepared to assist her in her flight, and, as he hoped, accompany her. he was somewhat perturbed, and his manner of informing thomasin that he was going on a journey was in itself sufficient to rouse her suspicions. when she had gone to bed he collected the few articles he would require, and went upstairs to the money-chest, whence he took a tolerably bountiful sum in notes, which had been advanced to him on the property he was so soon to have in possession, to defray expenses incidental to the removal. he then went to the stable and coach-house to assure himself that the horse, gig, and harness were in a fit condition for a long drive. nearly half an hour was spent thus, and on returning to the house wildeve had no thought of thomasin being anywhere but in bed. he had told the stable-lad not to stay up, leading the boy to understand that his departure would be at three or four in the morning; for this, though an exceptional hour, was less strange than midnight, the time actually agreed on, the packet from budmouth sailing between one and two. at last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait. by no effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits which he had experienced ever since his last meeting with eustacia, but he hoped there was that in his situation which money could cure. he had persuaded himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle wife by settling on her the half of his property, and with chivalrous devotion towards another and greater woman by sharing her fate, was possible. and though he meant to adhere to eustacia's instructions to the letter, to deposit her where she wished and to leave her, should that be her will, the spell that she had cast over him intensified, and his heart was beating fast in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face of a mutual wish that they should throw in their lot together. he would not allow himself to dwell long upon these conjectures, maxims, and hopes, and at twenty minutes to twelve he again went softly to the stable, harnessed the horse, and lit the lamps; whence, taking the horse by the head, he led him with the covered car out of the yard to a spot by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the inn. here wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a high bank that had been cast up at this place. along the surface of the road where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and clicked together before the wind, which, leaving them in heaps, plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes into darkness. only one sound rose above this din of weather, and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction. he lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the midnight hour must have struck. a very strong doubt had arisen in his mind if eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather; yet knowing her nature he felt that she might. "poor thing! 'tis like her ill-luck," he murmured. at length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch. to his surprise it was nearly a quarter past midnight. he now wished that he had driven up the circuitous road to mistover, a plan not adopted because of the enormous length of the route in proportion to that of the pedestrian's path down the open hillside, and the consequent increase of labour for the horse. at this moment a footstep approached; but the light of the lamps being in a different direction the comer was not visible. the step paused, then came on again. "eustacia?" said wildeve. the person came forward, and the light fell upon the form of clym, glistening with wet, whom wildeve immediately recognized; but wildeve, who stood behind the lamp, was not at once recognized by yeobright. he stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could have anything to do with the flight of his wife or not. the sight of yeobright at once banished wildeve's sober feelings, who saw him again as the deadly rival from whom eustacia was to be kept at all hazards. hence wildeve did not speak, in the hope that clym would pass by without particular inquiry. while they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible above the storm and wind. its origin was unmistakable--it was the fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir. both started. "good god! can it be she?" said clym. "why should it be she?" said wildeve, in his alarm forgetting that he had hitherto screened himself. "ah!--that's you, you traitor, is it?" cried yeobright. "why should it be she? because last week she would have put an end to her life if she had been able. she ought to have been watched! take one of the lamps and come with me." yeobright seized the one on his side and hastened on; wildeve did not wait to unfasten the other, but followed at once along the meadow-track to the weir, a little in the rear of clym. shadwater weir had at its foot a large circular pool, fifty feet in diameter, into which the water flowed through ten huge hatches, raised and lowered by a winch and cogs in the ordinary manner. the sides of the pool were of masonry, to prevent the water from washing away the bank; but the force of the stream in winter was sometimes such as to undermine the retaining wall and precipitate it into the hole. clym reached the hatches, the framework of which was shaken to its foundations by the velocity of the current. nothing but the froth of the waves could be discerned in the pool below. he got upon the plank bridge over the race, and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off, crossed to the other side of the river. there he leant over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the returning current. wildeve meanwhile had arrived on the former side, and the light from yeobright's lamp shed a flecked and agitated radiance across the weir pool, revealing to the ex-engineer the tumbling courses of the currents from the hatches above. across this gashed and puckered mirror a dark body was slowly borne by one of the backward currents. "o, my darling!" exclaimed wildeve in an agonized voice; and, without showing sufficient presence of mind even to throw off his greatcoat, he leaped into the boiling caldron. yeobright could now also discern the floating body, though but indistinctly; and imagining from wildeve's plunge that there was life to be saved he was about to leap after. bethinking himself of a wiser plan he placed the lamp against a post to make it stand upright, and running round to the lower part of the pool, where there was no wall, he sprang in and boldly waded upwards towards the deeper portion. here he was taken off his legs, and in swimming was carried round into the centre of the basin, where he perceived wildeve struggling. while these hasty actions were in progress here, venn and thomasin had been toiling through the lower corner of the heath in the direction of the light. they had not been near enough to the river to hear the plunge, but they saw the removal of the carriage-lamp, and watched its motion into the mead. as soon as they reached the car and horse venn guessed that something new was amiss, and hastened to follow in the course of the moving light. venn walked faster than thomasin, and came to the weir alone. the lamp placed against the post by clym still shone across the water, and the reddleman observed something floating motionless. being encumbered with the infant, he ran back to meet thomasin. "take the baby, please, mrs. wildeve," he said hastily. "run home with her, call the stable-lad, and make him send down to me any men who may be living near. somebody has fallen into the weir." thomasin took the child and ran. when she came to the covered car the horse, though fresh from the stable, was standing perfectly still, as if conscious of misfortune. she saw for the first time whose it was. she nearly fainted, and would have been unable to proceed another step but that the necessity of preserving the little girl from harm nerved her to an amazing self-control. in this agony of suspense she entered the house, put the baby in a place of safety, woke the lad and the female domestic, and ran out to give the alarm at the nearest cottage. diggory, having returned to the brink of the pool, observed that the small upper hatches or floats were withdrawn. he found one of these lying upon the grass, and taking it under one arm, and with his lantern in his hand, entered at the bottom of the pool as clym had done. as soon as he began to be in deep water he flung himself across the hatch; thus supported he was able to keep afloat as long as he chose, holding the lantern aloft with his disengaged hand. propelled by his feet he steered round and round the pool, ascending each time by one of the back streams and descending in the middle of the current. at first he could see nothing. then amidst the glistening of the whirlpools and the white clots of foam he distinguished a woman's bonnet floating alone. his search was now under the left wall, when something came to the surface almost close beside him. it was not, as he had expected, a woman, but a man. the reddleman put the ring of the lantern between his teeth, seized the floating man by the collar, and, holding on to the hatch with his remaining arm, struck out into the strongest race, by which the unconscious man, the hatch, and himself were carried down the stream. as soon as venn found his feet dragging over the pebbles of the shallower part below he secured his footing and waded towards the brink. there, where the water stood at about the height of his waist, he flung away the hatch, and attempted to drag forth the man. this was a matter of great difficulty, and he found as the reason that the legs of the unfortunate stranger were tightly embraced by the arms of another man, who had hitherto been entirely beneath the surface. at this moment his heart bounded to hear footsteps running towards him, and two men, roused by thomasin, appeared at the brink above. they ran to where venn was, and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned persons, separating them, and laying them out upon the grass. venn turned the light upon their faces. the one who had been uppermost was yeobright; he who had been completely submerged was wildeve. "now we must search the hole again," said venn. "a woman is in there somewhere. get a pole." one of the men went to the foot-bridge and tore off the handrail. the reddleman and the two others then entered the water together from below as before, and with their united force probed the pool forwards to where it sloped down to its central depth. venn was not mistaken in supposing that any person who had sunk for the last time would be washed down to this point, for when they had examined to about half-way across something impeded their thrust. "pull it forward," said venn, and they raked it in with the pole till it was close to their feet. venn vanished under the stream, and came up with an armful of wet drapery enclosing a woman's cold form, which was all that remained of the desperate eustacia. when they reached the bank there stood thomasin, in a stress of grief, bending over the two unconscious ones who already lay there. the horse and cart were brought to the nearest point in the road, and it was the work of a few minutes only to place the three in the vehicle. venn led on the horse, supporting thomasin upon his arm, and the two men followed, till they reached the inn. the woman who had been shaken out of her sleep by thomasin had hastily dressed herself and lighted a fire, the other servant being left to snore on in peace at the back of the house. the insensible forms of eustacia, clym, and wildeve were then brought in and laid on the carpet, with their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as could be thought of were adopted at once, the stableman being in the meantime sent for a doctor. but there seemed to be not a whiff of life left in either of the bodies. then thomasin, whose stupor of grief had been thrust off awhile by frantic action, applied a bottle of hartshorn to clym's nostrils, having tried it in vain upon the othertwo. he sighed. "clym's alive!" she exclaimed. he soon breathed distinctly, and again and again did she attempt to revive her husband by the same means; but wildeve gave no sign. there was too much reason to think that he and eustacia both were for ever beyond the reach of stimulating perfumes. their exertions did not relax till the doctor arrived, when one by one, the senseless three were taken upstairs and put into warm beds. venn soon felt himself relieved from further attendance, and went to the door, scarcely able yet to realize the strange catastrophe that had befallen the family in which he took so great an interest. thomasin surely would be broken down by the sudden and overwhelming nature of this event. no firm and sensible mrs. yeobright lived now to support the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an unimpassioned spectator might think of her loss of such a husband as wildeve, there could be no doubt that for the moment she was distracted and horrified by the blow. as for himself, not being privileged to go to her and comfort her, he saw no reason for waiting longer in a house where he remained only as a stranger. he returned across the heath to his van. the fire was not yet out, and everything remained as he had left it. venn now bethought himself of his clothes, which were saturated with water to the weight of lead. he changed them, spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep. but it was more than he could do to rest here while excited by a vivid imagination of the turmoil they were in at the house he had quitted, and, blaming himself for coming away, he dressed in another suit, locked up the door, and again hastened across to the inn. rain was still falling heavily when he entered the kitchen. a bright fire was shining from the hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom was olly dowden. "well, how is it going on now?" said venn in a whisper. "mr. yeobright is better; but mrs. yeobright and mr. wildeve are dead and cold. the doctor says they were quite gone before they were out of the water." "ah! i thought as much when i hauled 'em up. and mrs. wildeve?" "she is as well as can be expected. the doctor had her put between blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the river, poor young thing. you don't seem very dry, reddleman." "oh, 'tis not much. i have changed my things. this is only a little dampness i've got coming through the rain again." "stand by the fire. mis'ess says you be to have whatever you want, and she was sorry when she was told that you'd gone away." venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an absent mood. the steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs. two were corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow. the last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace was when the raffle was in progress; when wildeve was alive and well; thomasin active and smiling in the next room; yeobright and eustacia just made husband and wife, and mrs. yeobright living at blooms-end. it had seemed at that time that the then position of affairs was good for at least twenty years to come. yet, of all the circle, he himself was the only one whose situation had not materially changed. while he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs. it was the nurse, who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper. the woman was so engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw venn. she took from a cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace, tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line. "what be they?" said venn. "poor master's bank-notes," she answered. "they were found in his pocket when they undressed him." "then he was not coming back again for some time?" said venn. "that we shall never know," said she. venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under this roof. as nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not remain. so he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row of bank-notes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout. then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together, carried the handful upstairs. presently the doctor appeared from above with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his gloves, went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon the road. at four o'clock there was a gentle knock at the door. it was from charley, who had been sent by captain vye to inquire if anything had been heard of eustacia. the girl who admitted him looked in his face as if she did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to where venn was seated, saying to the reddleman, "will you tell him, please?" venn told. charley's only utterance was a feeble, indistinct sound. he stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, "i shall see her once more?" "i dare say you may see her," said diggory gravely. "but hadn't you better run and tell captain vye?" "yes, yes. only i do hope i shall see her just once again." "you shall," said a low voice behind; and starting round they beheld by the dim light a thin, pallid, almost spectral form, wrapped in a blanket, and looking like lazarus coming from the tomb. it was yeobright. neither venn nor charley spoke, and clym continued, "you shall see her. there will be time enough to tell the captain when it gets daylight. you would like to see her too--would you not, diggory? she looks very beautiful now." venn assented by rising to his feet, and with charley he followed clym to the foot of the staircase, where he took off his boots; charley did the same. they followed yeobright upstairs to the landing, where there was a candle burning, which yeobright took in his hand, and with it led the way into an adjoining room. here he went to the bedside and folded back the sheet. they stood silently looking upon eustacia, who, as she lay there still in death, eclipsed all her living phases. pallor did not include all the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was almost light. the expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant, as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking. eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between fervour and resignation. her black hair was looser now than either of them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest. the stateliness of look which had been almost too marked for a dweller in a country domicile had at last found an artistically happy background. nobody spoke, till at length clym covered her and turned aside. "now come here," he said. they went to a recess in the same room, and there, on a smaller bed, lay another figure--wildeve. less repose was visible in his face than in eustacia's, but the same luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the least sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that he was born for a higher destiny than this. the only sign upon him of his recent struggle for life was in his finger-tips, which were worn and sacrificed in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face of the weir-wall. yeobright's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so few syllables since his reappearance, that venn imagined him resigned. it was only when they had left the room and stood upon the landing that the true state of his mind was apparent. here he said, with a wild smile, inclining his head towards the chamber in which eustacia lay, "she is the second woman i have killed this year. i was a great cause of my mother's death, and i am the chief cause of hers." "how?" said venn. "i spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house. i did not invite her back till it was too late. it is i who ought to have drowned myself. it would have been a charity to the living had the river overwhelmed me and borne her up. but i cannot die. those who ought to have lived lie dead; and here am i alive!" "but you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way," said venn. "you may as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder by the child, for without the parents the child would never have been begot." "yes, venn, that is very true; but you don't know all the circumstances. if it had pleased god to put an end to me it would have been a good thing for all. but i am getting used to the horror of my existence. they say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with it. surely that time will soon come to me!" "your aim has always been good," said venn. "why should you say such desperate things?" "no, they are not desperate. they are only hopeless; and my great regret is that for what i have done no man or law can punish me!" book sixth aftercourses i the inevitable movement onward the story of the deaths of eustacia and wildeve was told throughout egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. all the known incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and modified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance to the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues. yet, upon the whole, neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death. misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay. on those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different. strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of one more; but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginings amount to appreciable preparation for it. the very suddenness of her bereavement dulled, to some extent, thomasin's feelings; yet, irrationally enough, a consciousness that the husband she had lost ought to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning at all. on the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off the dead husband in his young wife's eyes, and to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow. but the horrors of the unknown had passed. vague misgivings about her future as a deserted wife were at an end. the worst had once been matter of trembling conjecture; it was now matter of reason only, a limited badness. her chief interest, the little eustacia, still remained. there was humility in her grief, no defiance in her attitude; and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to be stilled. could thomasin's mournfulness now and eustacia's serenity during life have been reduced to common measure, they would have touched the same mark nearly. but thomasin's former brightness made shadow of that which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself. the spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day. outward events flattered thomasin not a little. wildeve had died intestate, and she and the child were his only relatives. when administration had been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue of her husband's uncle's property had come into her hands, it was found that the sum waiting to be invested for her own and the child's benefit was little less than ten thousand pounds. where should she live? the obvious place was blooms-end. the old rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of a frigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-case she brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobs on its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as the rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared to her by every early recollection. clym very gladly admitted her as a tenant, confining his own existence to two rooms at the top of the back staircase, where he lived on quietly, shut off from thomasin and the three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now that she was a mistress of money, going his own ways, and thinking his own thoughts. his sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance; and yet the alteration was chiefly within. it might have been said that he had a wrinkled mind. he had no enemies, and he could get nobody to reproach him, which was why he so bitterly reproached himself. he did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune, so far as to say that to be born is a palpable dilemma, and that instead of men aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate how to retreat out of it without shame. but that he and his had been sarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such irons thrust into their souls he did not maintain long. it is usually so, except with the sternest of men. human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a first cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears. thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in his presence, he found relief in a direction of his own choosing when left to himself. for a man of his habits the house and the hundred and twenty pounds a year which he had inherited from his mother were enough to supply all worldly needs. resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but upon the proportion of spendings to takings. he frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its tale. his imagination would then people the spot with its ancient inhabitants: forgotten celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection. those of the dyed barbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparison with those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper beside writers on parchment. their records had perished long ago by the plough, while the works of these remained. yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics. it reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution of immortality. winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and sparkling starlight. the year previous thomasin had hardly been conscious of the season's advance; this year she laid her heart open to external influences of every kind. the life of this sweet cousin, her baby, and her servants, came to clym's senses only in the form of sounds through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight noises from the other part of the house that he almost could witness the scenes they signified. a faint beat of half-seconds conjured up thomasin rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raised the picture of humphrey's, fairway's, or sam's heavy feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a gay tune in a high key, betokened a visit from grandfer cantle; a sudden break-off in the grandfer's utterances implied the application to his lips of a mug of small beer, a bustling and slamming of doors meant starting to go to market; for thomasin, in spite of her added scope of gentility, led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save every possible pound for her little daughter. one summer day clym was in the garden, immediately outside the parlour window, which was as usual open. he was looking at the pot-flowers on the sill; they had been revived and restored by thomasin to the state in which his mother had left them. he heard a slight scream from thomasin, who was sitting inside the room. "o, how you frightened me!" she said to some one who had entered. "i thought you were the ghost of yourself." clym was curious enough to advance a little further and look in at the window. to his astonishment there stood within the room diggory venn, no longer a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues of an ordinary christian countenance, white shirt-front, light flowered waistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat. nothing in this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its great difference from what he had formerly been. red, and all approach to red, was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him; for what is there that persons just out of harness dread so much as reminders of the trade which has enriched them? yeobright went round to the door and entered. "i was so alarmed!" said thomasin, smiling from one to the other. "i couldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! it seemed supernatural." "i gave up dealing in reddle last christmas," said venn. "it was a profitable trade, and i found that by that time i had made enough to take the dairy of fifty cows that my father had in his lifetime. i always thought of getting to that place again if i changed at all, and now i am there." "how did you manage to become white, diggory?" thomasin asked. "i turned so by degrees, ma'am." "you look much better than ever you did before." venn appeared confused; and thomasin, seeing how inadvertently she had spoken to a man who might possibly have tender feelings for her still, blushed a little. clym saw nothing of this, and added good-humouredly-- "what shall we have to frighten thomasin's baby with, now you have become a human being again?" "sit down, diggory," said thomasin, "and stay to tea." venn moved as if he would retire to the kitchen, when thomasin said with pleasant pertness as she went on with some sewing, "of course you must sit down here. and where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, mr. venn?" "at stickleford--about two miles to the right of alderworth, ma'am, where the meads begin. i have thought that if mr. yeobright would like to pay me a visit sometimes he shouldn't stay away for want of asking. i'll not bide to tea this afternoon, thank'ee, for i've got something on hand that must be settled. 'tis maypole-day tomorrow, and the shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your neighbours here to have a pole just outside your palings in the heath, as it is a nice green place." venn waved his elbow towards the patch in front of the house. "i have been talking to fairway about it," he continued, "and i said to him that before we put up the pole it would be as well to ask mrs. wildeve." "i can say nothing against it," she answered. "our property does not reach an inch further than the white palings." "but you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy round a stick, under your very nose?" "i shall have no objection at all." venn soon after went away, and in the evening yeobright strolled as far as fairway's cottage. it was a lovely may sunset, and the birch trees which grew on this margin of the vast egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as amber. beside fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the road, and here were now collected all the young people from within a radius of a couple of miles. the pole lay with one end supported on a trestle, and women were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwards with wildflowers. the instincts of merry england lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on egdon. indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine. yeobright did not interrupt the preparations, and went home again. the next morning, when thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the maypole in the middle of the green, its top cutting into the sky. it had sprung up in the night, or rather early morning, like jack's bean-stalk. she opened the casement to get a better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. the sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. at the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of maybloom; then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins, daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached. thomasin noticed all these, and was delighted that the may revel was to be so near. when afternoon came people began to gather on the green, and yeobright was interested enough to look out upon them from the open window of his room. soon after this thomasin walked out from the door immediately below and turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. she was dressed more gaily than yeobright had ever seen her dressed since the time of wildeve's death, eighteen months before; since the day of her marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such advantage. "how pretty you look today, thomasin!" he said. "is it because of the maypole?" "not altogether." and then she blushed and dropped her eyes, which he did not specially observe, though her manner seemed to him to be rather peculiar, considering that she was only addressing himself. could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to please him? he recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last few weeks, when they had often been working together in the garden, just as they had formerly done when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye. what if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative as it had formerly been? to yeobright any possibility of this sort was a serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought of it. every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during eustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave with her. his passion for her had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough on hand for another fire of that sort, as may happen with more boyish loves. even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird. he was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic brass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock, with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house, he withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden, through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. he could not bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had tried hard. nothing was seen of him for four hours. when he came back by the same path it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. the boisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did from behind, he could not see if the may party had all gone till he had passed through thomasin's division of the house to the front door. thomasin was standing within the porch alone. she looked at him reproachfully. "you went away just when it began, clym," she said. "yes. i felt i could not join in. you went out with them, of course?" "no, i did not." "you appeared to be dressed on purpose." "yes, but i could not go out alone; so many people were there. one is there now." yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch beyond the paling, and near the black form of the maypole he discerned a shadowy figure, sauntering idly up and down. "who is it?" he said. "mr. venn," said thomasin. "you might have asked him to come in, i think, tamsie. he has been very kind to you first and last." "i will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse, went through the wicket to where venn stood under the maypole. "it is mr. venn, i think?" she inquired. venn started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he was--and said, "yes." "will you come in?" "i am afraid that i--" "i have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the very best of the girls for your partners. is it that you won't come in because you wish to stand here, and think over the past hours of enjoyment?" "well, that's partly it," said mr. venn, with ostentatious sentiment. "but the main reason why i am biding here like this is that i want to wait till the moon rises." "to see how pretty the maypole looks in the moonlight?" "no. to look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens." thomasin was speechless with surprise. that a man who had to walk some four or five miles to his home should wait here for such a reason pointed to only one conclusion: the man must be amazingly interested in that glove's owner. "were you dancing with her, diggory?" she asked, in a voice which revealed that he had made himself considerably more interesting to her by this disclosure. "no," he sighed. "and you will not come in, then?" "not tonight, thank you, ma'am." "shall i lend you a lantern to look for the young person's glove, mr. venn?" "o no; it is not necessary, mrs. wildeve, thank you. the moon will rise in a few minutes." thomasin went back to the porch. "is he coming in?" said clym, who had been waiting where she had left him. "he would rather not tonight," she said, and then passed by him into the house; whereupon clym too retired to his own rooms. when clym was gone thomasin crept upstairs in the dark, and, just listening by the cot, to assure herself that the child was asleep, she went to the window, gently lifted the corner of the white curtain, and looked out. venn was still there. she watched the growth of the faint radiance appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, till presently the edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley with light. diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he was moving about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning the grass for the precious missing article, walking in zigzags right and left till he should have passed over every foot of the ground. "how very ridiculous!" thomasin murmured to herself, in a tone which was intended to be satirical. "to think that a man should be so silly as to go mooning about like that for a girl's glove! a respectable dairyman, too, and a man of money as he is now. what a pity!" at last venn appeared to find it; whereupon he stood up and raised it to his lips. then placing it in his breast-pocket--the nearest receptacle to a man's heart permitted by modern raiment--he ascended the valley in a mathematically direct line towards his distant home in the meadows. ii thomasin walks in a green place by the roman road clym saw little of thomasin for several days after this; and when they met she was more silent than usual. at length he asked her what she was thinking of so intently. "i am thoroughly perplexed," she said candidly. "i cannot for my life think who it is that diggory venn is so much in love with. none of the girls at the maypole were good enough for him, and yet she must have been there." clym tried to imagine venn's choice for a moment; but ceasing to be interested in the question he went on again with his gardening. no clearing up of the mystery was granted her for some time. but one afternoon thomasin was upstairs getting ready for a walk, when she had occasion to come to the landing and call "rachel." rachel was a girl about thirteen, who carried the baby out for airings; and she came upstairs at the call. "have you seen one of my last new gloves about the house, rachel?" inquired thomasin. "it is the fellow to this one." rachel did not reply. "why don't you answer?" said her mistress. "i think it is lost, ma'am." "lost? who lost it? i have never worn them but once." rachel appeared as one dreadfully troubled, and at last began to cry. "please, ma'am, on the day of the maypole i had none to wear, and i seed yours on the table, and i thought i would borrow 'em. i did not mean to hurt 'em at all, but one of them got lost. somebody gave me some money to buy another pair for you, but i have not been able to go anywhere to get 'em." "who's somebody?" "mr. venn." "did he know it was my glove?" "yes. i told him." thomasin was so surprised by the explanation that she quite forgot to lecture the girl, who glided silently away. thomasin did not move further than to turn her eyes upon the grass-plat where the maypole had stood. she remained thinking, then said to herself that she would not go out that afternoon, but would work hard at the baby's unfinished lovely plaid frock, cut on the cross in the newest fashion. how she managed to work hard, and yet do no more than she had done at the end of two hours, would have been a mystery to anyone not aware that the recent incident was of a kind likely to divert her industry from a manual to a mental channel. next day she went her ways as usual, and continued her custom of walking in the heath with no other companion than little eustacia, now of the age when it is a matter of doubt with such characters whether they are intended to walk through the world on their hands or on their feet; so that they get into painful complications by trying both. it was very pleasant to thomasin, when she had carried the child to some lonely place, to give her a little private practice on the green turf and shepherd's-thyme, which formed a soft mat to fall headlong upon when equilibrium was lost. once, when engaged in this system of training, and stooping to remove bits of stick, fern-stalks, and other such fragments from the child's path, that the journey might not be brought to an untimely end by some insuperable barrier a quarter of an inch high, she was alarmed by discovering that a man on horseback was almost close beside her, the soft natural carpet having muffled the horse's tread. the rider, who was venn, waved his hat in the air and bowed gallantly. "diggory, give me my glove," said thomasin, whose manner it was under any circumstances to plunge into the midst of a subject which engrossed her. venn immediately dismounted, put his hand in his breastpocket, and handed the glove. "thank you. it was very good of you to take care of it." "it is very good of you to say so." "o no. i was quite glad to find you had it. everybody gets so indifferent that i was surprised to know you thought of me." "if you had remembered what i was once you wouldn't have been surprised." "ah, no," she said quickly. "but men of your character are mostly so independent." "what is my character?" he asked. "i don't exactly know," said thomasin simply, "except it is to cover up your feelings under a practical manner, and only to show them when you are alone." "ah, how do you know that?" said venn strategically. "because," said she, stopping to put the little girl, who had managed to get herself upside down, right end up again, "because i do." "you mustn't judge by folks in general," said venn. "still i don't know much what feelings are now-a-days. i have got so mixed up with business of one sort and t'other that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour like. yes, i am given up body and soul to the making of money. money is all my dream." "o diggory, how wicked!" said thomasin reproachfully, and looking at him in exact balance between taking his words seriously and judging them as said to tease her. "yes, 'tis rather a rum course," said venn, in the bland tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome. "you, who used to be so nice!" "well, that's an argument i rather like, because what a man has once been he may be again." thomasin blushed. "except that it is rather harder now," venn continued. "why?" she asked. "because you be richer than you were at that time." "o no--not much. i have made it nearly all over to the baby, as it was my duty to do, except just enough to live on." "i am rather glad of that," said venn softly, and regarding her from the corner of his eye, "for it makes it easier for us to be friendly." thomasin blushed again, and, when a few more words had been said of a not unpleasing kind, venn mounted his horse and rode on. this conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath near the old roman road, a place much frequented by thomasin. and it might have been observed that she did not in future walk that way less often from having met venn there now. whether or not venn abstained from riding thither because he had met thomasin in the same place might easily have been guessed from her proceedings about two months later in the same year. iii the serious discourse of clym with his cousin throughout this period yeobright had more or less pondered on his duty to his cousin thomasin. he could not help feeling that it would be a pitiful waste of sweet material if the tender-natured thing should be doomed from this early stage of her life onwards to dribble away her winsome qualities on lonely gorse and fern. but he felt this as an economist merely, and not as a lover. his passion for eustacia had been a sort of conserve of his whole life, and he had nothing more of that supreme quality left to bestow. so far the obvious thing was not to entertain any idea of marriage with thomasin, even to oblige her. but this was not all. years ago there had been in his mother's mind a great fancy about thomasin and himself. it had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had always been a favourite dream. that they should be man and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither were endangered thereby, was the fancy in question. so that what course save one was there now left for any son who reverenced his mother's memory as yeobright did? it is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents, which might have been dispersed by half an hour's conversation during their lives, becomes sublimated by their deaths into a fiat the most absolute, with such results to conscientious children as those parents, had they lived, would have been the first to decry. had only yeobright's own future been involved he would have proposed to thomasin with a ready heart. he had nothing to lose by carrying out a dead mother's hope. but he dreaded to contemplate thomasin wedded to the mere corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be. he had but three activities alive in him. one was his almost daily walk to the little graveyard wherein his mother lay; another, his just as frequent visits by night to the more distant enclosure, which numbered his eustacia among its dead; the third was self-preparation for a vocation which alone seemed likely to satisfy his cravings--that of an itinerant preacher of the eleventh commandment. it was difficult to believe that thomasin would be cheered by a husband with such tendencies as these. yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for herself. it was even with a pleasant sense of doing his duty that he went downstairs to her one evening for this purpose, when the sun was printing on the valley the same long shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times out of number while his mother lived. thomasin was not in her room, and he found her in the front garden. "i have long been wanting, thomasin," he began, "to say something about a matter that concerns both our futures." "and you are going to say it now?" she remarked quickly, colouring as she met his gaze. "do stop a minute, clym, and let me speak first, for oddly enough, i have been wanting to say something to you." "by all means say on, tamsie." "i suppose nobody can overhear us?" she went on, casting her eyes around and lowering her voice. "well, first you will promise me this--that you won't be angry and call me anything harsh if you disagree with what i propose?" yeobright promised, and she continued: "what i want is your advice, for you are my relation--i mean, a sort of guardian to me--aren't you, clym?" "well, yes, i suppose i am; a sort of guardian. in fact, i am, of course," he said, altogether perplexed as to her drift. "i am thinking of marrying," she then observed blandly. "but i shall not marry unless you assure me that you approve of such a step. why don't you speak?" "i was taken rather by surprise. but, nevertheless, i am very glad to hear such news. i shall approve, of course, dear tamsie. who can it be? i am quite at a loss to guess. no i am not--'tis the old doctor!--not that i mean to call him old, for he is not very old after all. ah--i noticed when he attended you last time!" "no, no," she said hastily. "'tis mr. venn." clym's face suddenly became grave. "there, now, you don't like him, and i wish i hadn't mentioned him!" she exclaimed almost petulantly. "and i shouldn't have done it, either, only he keeps on bothering me so till i don't know what to do!" clym looked at the heath. "i like venn well enough," he answered at last. "he is a very honest and at the same time astute man. he is clever too, as is proved by his having got you to favour him. but really, thomasin, he is not quite--" "gentleman enough for me? that is just what i feel. i am sorry now that i asked you, and i won't think any more of him. at the same time i must marry him if i marry anybody--that i will say!" "i don't see that," said clym, carefully concealing every clue to his own interrupted intention, which she plainly had not guessed. "you might marry a professional man, or somebody of that sort, by going into the town to live and forming acquaintances there." "i am not fit for town life--so very rural and silly as i always have been. do not you yourself notice my countrified ways?" "well, when i came home from paris i did, a little; but i don't now." "that's because you have got countrified too. o, i couldn't live in a street for the world! egdon is a ridiculous old place; but i have got used to it, and i couldn't be happy anywhere else at all." "neither could i," said clym. "then how could you say that i should marry some town man? i am sure, say what you will, that i must marry diggory, if i marry at all. he has been kinder to me than anybody else, and has helped me in many ways that i don't know of!" thomasin almost pouted now. "yes, he has," said clym in a neutral tone. "well, i wish with all my heart that i could say, marry him. but i cannot forget what my mother thought on that matter, and it goes rather against me not to respect her opinion. there is too much reason why we should do the little we can to respect it now." "very well, then," sighed thomasin. "i will say no more." "but you are not bound to obey my wishes. i merely say what i think." "o no--i don't want to be rebellious in that way," she said sadly. "i had no business to think of him--i ought to have thought of my family. what dreadfully bad impulses there are in me!" her lips trembled, and she turned away to hide a tear. clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste, was in a measure relieved to find that at any rate the marriage question in relation to himself was shelved. through several succeeding days he saw her at different times from the window of his room moping disconsolately about the garden. he was half angry with her for choosing venn; then he was grieved at having put himself in the way of venn's happiness, who was, after all, as honest and persevering a young fellow as any on egdon, since he had turned over a new leaf. in short, clym did not know what to do. when next they met she said abruptly, "he is much more respectable now than he was then!" "who? o yes--diggory venn." "aunt only objected because he was a reddleman." "well, thomasin, perhaps i don't know all the particulars of my mother's wish. so you had better use your own discretion." "you will always feel that i slighted your mother's memory." "no, i will not. i shall think you are convinced that, had she seen diggory in his present position, she would have considered him a fitting husband for you. now, that's my real feeling. don't consult me any more, but do as you like, thomasin. i shall be content." it is to be supposed that thomasin was convinced; for a few days after this, when clym strayed into a part of the heath that he had not lately visited, humphrey, who was at work there, said to him, "i am glad to see that mrs. wildeve and venn have made it up again, seemingly." "have they?" said clym abstractedly. "yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she walks out on fine days with the chiel. but, mr. yeobright, i can't help feeling that your cousin ought to have married you. 'tis a pity to make two chimley-corners where there need be only one. you could get her away from him now, 'tis my belief, if you were only to set about it." "how can i have the conscience to marry after having driven two women to their deaths? don't think such a thing, humphrey. after my experience i should consider it too much of a burlesque to go to church and take a wife. in the words of job, 'i have made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should i think upon a maid?'" "no, mr. clym, don't fancy that about driving two women to their deaths. you shouldn't say it." "well, we'll leave that out," said yeobright. "but anyhow god has set a mark upon me which wouldn't look well in a lovemaking scene. i have two ideas in my head, and no others. i am going to keep a night-school; and i am going to turn preacher. what have you got to say to that, humphrey?" "i'll come and hear 'ee with all my heart." "thanks. 'tis all i wish." as clym descended into the valley thomasin came down by the other path, and met him at the gate. "what do you think i have to tell you, clym?" she said, looking archly over her shoulder at him. "i can guess," he replied. she scrutinized his face. "yes, you guess right. it is going to be after all. he thinks i may as well make up my mind, and i have got to think so too. it is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you don't object." "do what you think right, dear. i am only too glad that you see your way clear to happiness again. my sex owes you every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by." iv cheerfulness again asserts itself at blooms-end, and clym finds his vocation anybody who had passed through blooms-end about eleven o'clock on the morning fixed for the wedding would have found that, while yeobright's house was comparatively quiet, sounds denoting great activity came from the dwelling of his nearest neighbour, timothy fairway. it was chiefly a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither over the sanded floor within. one man only was visible outside, and he seemed to be later at an appointment than he had intended to be, for he hastened up to the door, lifted the latch, and walked in without ceremony. the scene within was not quite the customary one. standing about the room was the little knot of men who formed the chief part of the egdon coterie, there being present fairway himself, grandfer cantle, humphrey, christian, and one or two turf-cutters. it was a warm day, and the men were as a matter of course in their shirtsleeves, except christian, who had always a nervous fear of parting with a scrap of his clothing when in anybody's house but his own. across the stout oak table in the middle of the room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which grandfer cantle held down on one side, and humphrey on the other, while fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump, his face being damp and creased with the effort of the labour. "waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the newcomer. "yes, sam," said grandfer cantle, as a man too busy to waste words. "shall i stretch this corner a shade tighter, timothy?" fairway replied, and the waxing went on with unabated vigour. "'tis going to be a good bed, by the look o't," continued sam, after an interval of silence. "who may it be for?" "'tis a present for the new folks that's going to set up housekeeping," said christian, who stood helpless and overcome by the majesty of the proceedings. "ah, to be sure; and a valuable one, 'a b'lieve." "beds be dear to fokes that don't keep geese, bain't they, mister fairway?" said christian, as to an omniscient being. "yes," said the furze-dealer, standing up, giving his forehead a thorough mopping, and handing the beeswax to humphrey, who succeeded at the rubbing forthwith. "not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well to show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing vagary of their lives. i set up both my own daughters in one when they was married, and there have been feathers enough for another in the house the last twelve months. now then, neighbours, i think we have laid on enough wax. grandfer cantle, you turn the tick the right way outwards, and then i'll begin to shake in the feathers." when the bed was in proper trim fairway and christian brought forward vast paper bags, stuffed to the full, but light as balloons, and began to turn the contents of each into the receptacle just prepared. as bag after bag was emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers floated about the room in increasing quantity till, through a mishap of christian's, who shook the contents of one bag outside the tick, the atmosphere of the room became dense with gigantic flakes, which descended upon the workers like a windless snowstorm. "i never saw such a clumsy chap as you, christian," said grandfer cantle severely. "you might have been the son of a man that's never been outside blooms-end in his life for all the wit you have. really all the soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nater of the son. as far as that chiel christian is concerned i might as well have stayed at home and seed nothing, like all the rest of ye here. though, as far as myself is concerned, a dashing spirit has counted for sommat, to be sure!" "don't ye let me down so, father; i feel no bigger than a ninepin after it. i've made but a bruckle hit, i'm afeard." "come, come. never pitch yerself in such a low key as that, christian; you should try more," said fairway. "yes, you should try more," echoed the grandfer with insistence, as if he had been the first to make the suggestion. "in common conscience every man ought either to marry or go for a soldier. 'tis a scandal to the nation to do neither one nor t'other. i did both, thank god! neither to raise men nor to lay 'em low--that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed." "i never had the nerve to stand fire," faltered christian. "but as to marrying, i own i've asked here and there, though without much fruit from it. yes, there's some house or other that might have had a man for a master--such as he is--that's now ruled by a woman alone. still it might have been awkward if i had found her; for, d'ye see, neighbours, there'd have been nobody left at home to keep down father's spirits to the decent pitch that becomes a old man." "and you've your work cut out to do that, my son," said grandfer cantle smartly. "i wish that the dread of infirmities was not so strong in me!--i'd start the very first thing tomorrow to see the world over again! but seventy-one, though nothing at home, is a high figure for a rover... ay, seventy-one, last candlemasday. gad, i'd sooner have it in guineas than in years!" and the old man sighed. "don't you be mournful, grandfer," said fairway. "empt some more feathers into the bed-tick, and keep up yer heart. though rather lean in the stalks you be a green-leaved old man still. there's time enough left to ye yet to fill whole chronicles." "begad, i'll go to 'em, timothy--to the married pair!" said granfer cantle in an encouraged voice, and starting round briskly. "i'll go to 'em tonight and sing a wedding song, hey? 'tis like me to do so, you know; and they'd see it as such. my 'down in cupid's gardens' was well liked in four; still, i've got others as good, and even better. what do you say to my she cal´-led to´ her love´ from the lat´-tice a-bove, 'o come in´ from the fog´-gy fog´-gy dew´.' "'twould please 'em well at such a time! really, now i come to think of it, i haven't turned my tongue in my head to the shape of a real good song since old midsummer night, when we had the 'barley mow' at the woman; and 'tis a pity to neglect your strong point where there's few that have the compass for such things!" "so 'tis, so 'tis," said fairway. "now gie the bed a shake down. we've put in seventy pound of best feathers, and i think that's as many as the tick will fairly hold. a bit and a drap wouldn't be amiss now, i reckon. christian, maul down the victuals from corner-cupboard if canst reach, man, and i'll draw a drap o' sommat to wet it with." they sat down to a lunch in the midst of their work, feathers around, above, and below them; the original owners of which occasionally came to the open door and cackled begrudgingly at sight of such a quantity of their old clothes. "upon my soul i shall be chokt," said fairway when, having extracted a feather from his mouth, he found several others floating on the mug as it was handed round. "i've swallered several; and one had a tolerable quill," said sam placidly from the corner. "hullo--what's that--wheels i hear coming?" grandfer cantle exclaimed, jumping up and hastening to the door. "why, 'tis they back again: i didn't expect 'em yet this half-hour. to be sure, how quick marrying can be done when you are in the mind for't!" "o yes, it can soon be done," said fairway, as if something should be added to make the statement complete. he arose and followed the grandfer, and the rest also went to the door. in a moment an open fly was driven past, in which sat venn and mrs. venn, yeobright, and a grand relative of venn's who had come from budmouth for the occasion. the fly had been hired at the nearest town, regardless of distance and cost, there being nothing on egdon heath, in venn's opinion, dignified enough for such an event when such a woman as thomasin was the bride; and the church was too remote for a walking bridal-party. as the fly passed the group which had run out from the homestead they shouted "hurrah!" and waved their hands; feathers and down floating from their hair, their sleeves, and the folds of their garments at every motion, and grandfer cantle's seals dancing merrily in the sunlight as he twirled himself about. the driver of the fly turned a supercilious gaze upon them; he even treated the wedded pair themselves with something like condescension; for in what other state than heathen could people, rich or poor, exist who were doomed to abide in such a world's end as egdon? thomasin showed no such superiority to the group at the door, fluttering her hand as quickly as a bird's wing towards them, and asking diggory, with tears in her eyes, if they ought not to alight and speak to these kind neighbours. venn, however, suggested that, as they were all coming to the house in the evening, this was hardly necessary. after this excitement the saluting party returned to their occupation, and the stuffing and sewing were soon afterwards finished, when fairway harnessed a horse, wrapped up the cumbrous present, and drove off with it in the cart to venn's house at stickleford. yeobright, having filled the office at the wedding service which naturally fell to his hands, and afterwards returned to the house with the husband and wife, was indisposed to take part in the feasting and dancing that wound up the evening. thomasin was disappointed. "i wish i could be there without dashing your spirits," he said. "but i might be too much like the skull at the banquet." "no, no." "well, dear, apart from that, if you would excuse me, i should be glad. i know it seems unkind; but, dear thomasin, i fear i should not be happy in the company--there, that's the truth of it. i shall always be coming to see you at your new home, you know, so that my absence now will not matter." "then i give in. do whatever will be most comfortable to yourself." clym retired to his lodging at the housetop much relieved, and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to initiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme that had originally brought him hither, and that he had so long kept in view under various modifications, and through evil and good report. he had tested and weighed his convictions again and again, and saw no reason to alter them, though he had considerably lessened his plan. his eyesight, by long humouring in his native air, had grown stronger, but not sufficiently strong to warrant his attempting his extensive educational project. yet he did not repine: there was still more than enough of an unambitious sort to tax all his energies and occupy all his hours. evening drew on, and sounds of life and movement in the lower part of the domicile became more pronounced, the gate in the palings clicking incessantly. the party was to be an early one, and all the guests were assembled long before it was dark. yeobright went down the back staircase and into the heath by another path than that in front, intending to walk in the open air till the party was over, when he would return to wish thomasin and her husband good-bye as they departed. his steps were insensibly bent towards mistover by the path that he had followed on that terrible morning when he learnt the strange news from susan's boy. he did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to an eminence, whence he could see over the whole quarter that had once been eustacia's home. while he stood observing the darkening scene somebody came up. clym, seeing him but dimly, would have let him pass silently, had not the pedestrian, who was charley, recognized the young man and spoken to him. "charley, i have not seen you for a length of time," said yeobright. "do you often walk this way?" "no," the lad replied. "i don't often come outside the bank." "you were not at the maypole." "no," said charley, in the same listless tone. "i don't care for that sort of thing now." "you rather liked miss eustacia, didn't you?" yeobright gently asked. eustacia had frequently told him of charley's romantic attachment. "yes, very much. ah, i wish--" "yes?" "i wish, mr. yeobright, you could give me something to keep that once belonged to her--if you don't mind." "i shall be very happy to. it will give me very great pleasure, charley. let me think what i have of hers that you would like. but come with me to the house, and i'll see." they walked towards blooms-end together. when they reached the front it was dark, and the shutters were closed, so that nothing of the interior could be seen. "come round this way," said clym. "my entrance is at the back for the present." the two went round and ascended the crooked stair in darkness till clym's sitting-room on the upper floor was reached, where he lit a candle, charley entering gently behind. yeobright searched his desk, and taking out a sheet of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three undulating locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like black streams. from these he selected one, wrapped it up, and gave it to the lad, whose eyes had filled with tears. he kissed the packet, put it in his pocket, and said in a voice of emotion, "o, mr. clym, how good you are to me!" "i will go a little way with you," said clym. and amid the noise of merriment from below they descended. their path to the front led them close to a little side-window, whence the rays of candles streamed across the shrubs. the window, being screened from general observation by the bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person in this private nook could see all that was going on within the room which contained the wedding-guests, except in so far as vision was hindered by the green antiquity of the panes. "charley, what are they doing?" said clym. "my sight is weaker again tonight, and the glass of this window is not good." charley wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement. "mr. venn is asking christian cantle to sing," he replied, "and christian is moving about in his chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has struck up a stave instead of him." "yes, i can hear the old man's voice," said clym. "so there's to be no dancing, i suppose. and is thomasin in the room? i see something moving in front of the candles that resembles her shape, i think." "yes. she do seem happy. she is red in the face, and laughing at something fairway has said to her. o my!" "what noise was that?" said clym. "mr. venn is so tall that he knocked his head against the beam in gieing a skip as he passed under. mrs. venn has run up quite frightened and now she's put her hand to his head to feel if there's a lump. and now they be all laughing again as if nothing had happened." "do any of them seem to care about my not being there?" clym asked. "no, not a bit in the world. now they are all holding up their glasses and drinking somebody's health." "i wonder if it is mine?" "no, 'tis mr. and mrs. venn's, because he is making a hearty sort of speech. there--now mrs. venn has got up, and is going away to put on her things, i think." "well, they haven't concerned themselves about me, and it is quite right they should not. it is all as it should be, and thomasin at least is happy. we will not stay any longer now, as they will soon be coming out to go home." he accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home, and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an hour later, found venn and thomasin ready to start, all the guests having departed in his absence. the wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which venn's head milker and handy man had driven from stickleford to fetch them in; little eustacia and the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap behind; and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of a body-servant of the last century. "now we leave you in absolute possession of your own house again," said thomasin as she bent down to wish her cousin good night. "it will be rather lonely for you, clym, after the hubbub we have been making." "o, that's no inconvenience," said clym, smiling rather sadly. and then the party drove off and vanished in the night shades, and yeobright entered the house. the ticking of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for not a soul remained; christian, who acted as cook, valet, and gardener to clym, sleeping at his father's house. yeobright sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in thought a long time. his mother's old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers. but to clym she was almost a presence there, now as always. whatever she was in other people's memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness for eustacia could not obscure. but his heart was heavy; that mother had not crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart. and events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of her care. he should have heeded her for eustacia's sake even more than for his own. "it was all my fault," he whispered. "o, my mother, my mother! would to god that i could live my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me!" on the sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was to be seen on rainbarrow. from a distance there simply appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top of the tumulus, just as eustacia had stood on that lonely summit some two years and a half before. but now it was fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and early afternoon instead of dull twilight. those who ascended to the immediate neighbourhood of the barrow perceived that the erect form in the centre, piercing the sky, was not really alone. round him upon the slopes of the barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining or sitting at their ease. they listened to the words of the man in their midst, who was preaching, while they abstractedly pulled heather, stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down the slope. this was the first of a series of moral lectures or sermons on the mount, which were to be delivered from the same place every sunday afternoon as long as the fine weather lasted. the commanding elevation of rainbarrow had been chosen for two reasons: first, that it occupied a central position among the remote cottages around; secondly, that the preacher thereon could be seen from all adjacent points as soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him being thus a convenient signal to those stragglers who wished to draw near. the speaker was bareheaded, and the breeze at each waft gently lifted and lowered his hair, somewhat too thin for a man of his years, these still numbering less than thirty-three. he wore a shade over his eyes, and his face was pensive and lined; but, though these bodily features were marked with decay there was no defect in the tones of his voice, which were rich, musical, and stirring. he stated that his discourses to people were to be sometimes secular, and sometimes religious, but never dogmatic; and that his texts would be taken from all kinds of books. this afternoon the words were as follows:-- "'and the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand. then she said, i desire one small petition of thee; i pray thee say me not nay. and the king said unto her, ask, on, my mother: for i will not say thee nay.'" yeobright had, in fact, found his vocation in the career of an itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally unimpeachable subjects; and from this day he laboured incessantly in that office, speaking not only in simple language on rainbarrow and in the hamlets round, but in a more cultivated strain elsewhere--from the steps and porticoes of town-halls, from market-crosses, from conduits, on esplanades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges, in barns and outhouses, and all other such places in the neighbouring wessex towns and villages. he left alone creeds and systems of philosophy, finding enough and more than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions common to all good men. some believed him, and some believed not; some said that his words were commonplace, others complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do anything else. but everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his life had become generally known. proofreading team. html version by al haines. vendetta a story of one forgotten by marie corelli author of "ardath," "thelma," "a romance of two worlds," "wormwood," etc., etc. preface lest those who read the following pages should deem this story at all improbable, it is perhaps necessary to say that its chief incidents are founded on an actual occurrence which took place in naples during the last scathing visitation of the cholera in . we know well enough, by the chronicle of daily journalism, that the infidelity of wives is, most unhappily, becoming common--far too common for the peace and good repute of society. not so common is an outraged husband's vengeance--not often dare he take the law into his own hands--for in england, at least, such boldness on his part would doubtless be deemed a worse crime than that by which he personally is doomed to suffer. but in italy things are on a different footing--the verbosity and red-tape of the law, and the hesitating verdict of special juries, are not there considered sufficiently efficacious to soothe a man's damaged honor and ruined name. and thus--whether right or wrong--it often happens that strange and awful deeds are perpetrated--deeds of which the world in general hears nothing, and which, when brought to light at last, are received with surprise and incredulity. yet the romances planned by the brain of the novelist or dramatist are poor in comparison with the romances of real life--life wrongly termed commonplace, but which, in fact, teems with tragedies as great and dark and soul-torturing as any devised by sophocles or shakespeare. nothing is more strange than truth--nothing, at times, more terrible! marie corelli. august, . vendetta! chapter i. i, who write this, am a dead man. dead legally--dead by absolute proofs--dead and buried! ask for me in my native city and they will tell you i was one of the victims of the cholera that ravaged naples in , and that my mortal remains lie moldering in the funeral vault of my ancestors. yet--i live! i feel the warm blood coursing through my veins--the blood of thirty summers--the prime of early manhood invigorates me, and makes these eyes of mine keen and bright--these muscles strong as iron--this hand powerful of grip--this well-knit form erect and proud of bearing. yes!--i am alive, though declared to be dead; alive in the fullness of manly force--and even sorrow has left few distinguishing marks upon me, save one. my hair, once ebony-black, is white as a wreath of alpine snow, though its clustering curls are thick as ever. "a constitutional inheritance?" asks one physician, observing my frosted locks. "a sudden shock?" suggests another. "exposure to intense heat?" hints a third. i answer none of them. i did so once. i told my story to a man i met by chance--one renowned for medical skill and kindliness. he heard me to the end in evident incredulity and alarm, and hinted at the possibility of madness. since then i have never spoken. but now i write. i am far from all persecution--i can set down the truth fearlessly. i can dip the pen in my own blood if i choose, and none shall gainsay me! for the green silence of a vast south american forest encompasses me--the grand and stately silence of a virginal nature, almost unbroken by the ruthless step of man's civilization--a haven of perfect calm, delicately disturbed by the fluttering wings and soft voices of birds, and the gentle or stormy murmur of the freeborn winds of heaven. within this charmed circle of rest i dwell--here i lift up my overburdened heart like a brimming chalice, and empty it on the ground, to the last drop of gall contained therein. the world shall know my history. dead, and yet living! how can that be?--you ask. ah, my friends! if you seek to be rid of your dead relations for a certainty, you should have their bodies cremated. otherwise there is no knowing what may happen! cremation is the best way--the only way. it is clean, and safe. why should there be any prejudice against it? surely it is better to give the remains of what we loved (or pretended to love) to cleansing fire and pure air than to lay them in a cold vault of stone, or down, down in the wet and clinging earth. for loathly things are hidden deep in the mold--things, foul and all unnameable--long worms--slimy creatures with blind eyes and useless wings--abortions and deformities of the insect tribe born of poisonous vapor--creatures the very sight of which would drive you, oh, delicate woman, into a fit of hysteria, and would provoke even you, oh, strong man, to a shudder of repulsion! but there is a worse thing than these merely physical horrors which come of so-called christian burial--that is, the terrible uncertainty. what, if after we have lowered the narrow strong box containing our dear deceased relation into its vault or hollow in the ground--what, if after we have worn a seemly garb of woe, and tortured our faces into the fitting expression of gentle and patient melancholy--what, i say, if after all the reasonable precautions taken to insure safety, they should actually prove insufficient? what--if the prison to which we have consigned the deeply regretted one should not have such close doors as we fondly imagined? what, if the stout coffin should be wrenched apart by fierce and frenzied fingers--what, if our late dear friend should not be dead, but should, like lazarus of old, come forth to challenge our affection anew? should we not grieve sorely that we had failed to avail ourselves of the secure and classical method of cremation? especially if we had benefited by worldly goods or money left to us by the so deservedly lamented! for we are self-deceiving hypocrites--few of us are really sorry for the dead--few of us remember them with any real tenderness or affection. and yet god knows! they may need more pity than we dream of! but let me to my task. i, fabio romani, lately deceased, am about to chronicle the events of one short year--a year in which was compressed the agony of a long and tortured life-time! one little year!--one sharp thrust from the dagger of time! it pierced my heart--the wound still gapes and bleeds, and every drop of blood is tainted as it falls! one suffering, common to many, i have never known--that is--poverty. i was born rich. when my father, count filippo romani, died, leaving me, then a lad of seventeen, sole heir to his enormous possessions--sole head of his powerful house--there were many candid friends who, with their usual kindness, prophesied the worst things of my future. nay, there were even some who looked forward to my physical and mental destruction with a certain degree of malignant expectation--and they were estimable persons too. they were respectably connected--their words carried weight--and for a time i was an object of their maliciously pious fears. i was destined, according to their calculations, to be a gambler, a spendthrift, a drunkard, an incurable roue of the most abandoned character. yet, strange to say, i became none of these things. though a neapolitan, with all the fiery passions and hot blood of my race, i had an innate scorn for the contemptible vices and low desires of the unthinking vulgar. gambling seemed to me a delirious folly--drink, a destroyer of health and reason--and licentious extravagance an outrage on the poor. i chose my own way of life--a middle course between simplicity and luxury--a judicious mingling of home-like peace with the gayety of sympathetic social intercourse--an even tenor of intelligent existence which neither exhausted the mind nor injured the body. i dwelt in my father's villa--a miniature palace of white marble, situated on a wooded height overlooking the bay of naples. my pleasure-grounds were fringed with fragrant groves of orange and myrtle, where hundreds of full-voiced nightingales warbled their love-melodies to the golden moon. sparkling fountains rose and fell in huge stone basins carved with many a quaint design, and their cool murmurous splash refreshed the burning silence of the hottest summer air. in this retreat i lived at peace for some happy years, surrounded by books and pictures, and visited frequently by friends--young men whose tastes were more or less like my own, and who were capable of equally appreciating the merits of an antique volume, or the flavor of a rare vintage. of women i saw little or nothing. truth to tell, i instinctively avoided them. parents with marriageable daughters invited me frequently to their houses, but these invitations i generally refused. my best books warned me against feminine society--and i believed and accepted the warning. this tendency of mine exposed me to the ridicule of those among my companions who were amorously inclined, but their gay jests at what they termed my "weakness" never affected me. i trusted in friendship rather than love, and i had a friend--one for whom at that time i would gladly have laid down my life--one who inspired me with the most profound attachment. he, guido ferrari, also joined occasionally with others in the good-natured mockery i brought down upon myself by my shrinking dislike of women. "fie on thee, fabio!" he would cry. "thou wilt not taste life till thou hast sipped the nectar from a pair of rose-red lips--thou shalt not guess the riddle of the stars till thou hast gazed deep down into the fathomless glory of a maiden's eyes--thou canst not know delight till thou hast clasped eager arms round a coy waist and heard the beating of a passionate heart against thine own! a truce to thy musty volumes! believe it, those ancient and sorrowful philosophers had no manhood in them--their blood was water--and their slanders against women were but the pettish utterances of their own deserved disappointments. those who miss the chief prize of life would fain persuade others that it is not worth having. what, man! thou, with a ready wit, a glancing eye, a gay smile, a supple form, thou wilt not enter the lists of love? what says voltaire of the blind god? "'qui que tu sois voila ton maitre, il fut--il est--ou il doit etre!'" when my friend spoke thus i smiled, but answered nothing. his arguments failed to convince me. yet i loved to hear him talk--his voice was mellow as the note of a thrush, and his eyes had an eloquence greater than all speech. i loved him--god knows! unselfishly, sincerely--with that rare tenderness sometimes felt by schoolboys for one another, but seldom experienced by grown men. i was happy in his society, as he, indeed, appeared to be in mine. we passed most of our time together, he, like myself, having been bereaved of his parents in early youth, and therefore left to shape out his own course of life as suited his particular fancy. he chose art as a profession, and, though a fairly successful painter, was as poor as i was rich. i remedied this neglect of fortune for him in various ways with due forethought and delicacy--and gave him as many commissions as i possibly could without rousing his suspicion or wounding his pride. for he possessed a strong attraction for me--we had much the same tastes, we shared the same sympathies, in short, i desired nothing better than his confidence and companionship. in this world no one, however harmless, is allowed to continue happy. fate--or caprice--cannot endure to see us monotonously at rest. something perfectly trivial--a look, a word, a touch, and lo! a long chain of old associations is broken asunder, and the peace we deemed so deep and lasting is finally interrupted. this change came to me, as surely as it comes to all. one day--how well i remember it!--one sultry evening toward the end of may, , i was in naples. i had passed the afternoon in my yacht, idly and slowly sailing over the bay, availing myself of what little wind there was. guido's absence (he had gone to rome on a visit of some weeks' duration) rendered me somewhat of a solitary, and as my light craft ran into harbor, i found myself in a pensive, half-uncertain mood, which brought with it its own depression. the few sailors who manned my vessel dispersed right and left as soon as they were landed--each to his own favorite haunts of pleasure or dissipation--but i was in no humor to be easily amused. though i had plenty of acquaintance in the city, i cared little for such entertainment as they could offer me. as i strolled along through one of the principal streets, considering whether or not i should return on foot to my own dwelling on the heights, i heard a sound of singing, and perceived in the distance a glimmer of white robes. it was the month of mary, and i at once concluded that this must be an approaching procession of the virgin. half in idleness, half in curiosity, i stood still and waited. the singing voices came nearer and nearer--i saw the priests, the acolytes, the swinging gold censers heavy with fragrance, the flaring candles, the snowy veils of children and girls--and then all suddenly the picturesque beauty of the scene danced before my eyes in a whirling blur of brilliancy and color from which looked forth--one face! one face beaming out like a star from a cloud of amber tresses--one face of rose-tinted, childlike loveliness--a loveliness absolutely perfect, lighted up by two luminous eyes, large and black as night--one face in which the small, curved mouth smiled half provokingly, half sweetly! i gazed and gazed again, dazzled and excited, beauty makes such fools of us all! this was a woman--one of the sex i mistrusted and avoided--a woman in the earliest spring of her youth, a girl of fifteen or sixteen at the utmost. her veil had been thrown back by accident or design, and for one brief moment i drank in that soul-tempting glance, that witch-like smile! the procession passed--the vision faded--but in that breath of time one epoch of my life had closed forever, and another had begun! * * * * * of course i married her. we neapolitans lose no time in such matters. we are not prudent. unlike the calm blood of englishmen, ours rushes swiftly through our veins--it is warm as wine and sunlight, and needs no fictitious stimulant. we love, we desire, we possess; and then? we tire, you say? these southern races are so fickle! all wrong--we are less tired than you deem. and do not englishmen tire? have they no secret ennui at times when sitting in the chimney nook of "home, sweet home," with their fat wives and ever-spreading families? truly, yes! but they are too cautious to say so. i need not relate the story of my courtship--it was brief and sweet as a song sung perfectly. there were no obstacles. the girl i sought was the only daughter of a ruined florentine noble of dissolute character, who gained a bare subsistence by frequenting the gaming-tables. his child had been brought up in a convent renowned for strict discipline--she knew nothing of the world. she was, he assured me, with maudlin tears in his eyes, "as innocent as a flower on the altar of the madonna." i believed him--for what could this lovely, youthful, low-voiced maiden know of even the shadow of evil? i was eager to gather so fair a lily for my own proud wearing--and her father gladly gave her to me, no doubt inwardly congratulating himself on the wealthy match that had fallen to the lot of his dowerless daughter. we were married at the end of june, and guido ferrari graced our bridal with his handsome and gallant presence. "by the body of bacchus!" he exclaimed to me when the nuptial ceremony was over, "thou hast profited by my teaching, fabio! a quiet rogue is often most cunning! thou hast rifled the casket of venus, and stolen her fairest jewel--thou hast secured the loveliest maiden in the two sicilies!" i pressed his hand, and a touch of remorse stole over me, for he was no longer first in my affection. almost i regretted it--yes, on my very wedding-morn i looked back to the old days--old now though so recent--and sighed to think they were ended. i glanced at nina, my wife. it was enough! her beauty dazzled and overcame me. the melting languor of her large limpid eyes stole into my veins--i forgot all but her. i was in that high delirium of passion in which love, and love only, seems the keynote of creation. i touched the topmost peak of the height of joy--the days were feasts of fairy-land, the nights dreams of rapture! no; i never tired! my wife's beauty never palled upon me; she grew fairer with each day of possession. i never saw her otherwise than attractive, and within a few months she had probed all the depths of my nature. she discovered how certain sweet looks of hers could draw me to her side, a willing and devoted slave; she measured my weakness with her own power; she knew--what did she not know? i torture myself with these foolish memories. all men past the age of twenty have learned somewhat of the tricks of women--the pretty playful nothings that weaken the will and sap the force of the strongest hero. she loved me? oh, yes, i suppose so! looking back on those days, i can frankly say i believe she loved me--as nine hundred wives out of a thousand love their husbands, namely--for what they can get. and i grudged her nothing. if i chose to idolize her, and raise her to the stature of an angel when she was but on the low level of mere womanhood, that was my folly, not her fault. we kept open house. our villa was a place of rendezvous for the leading members of the best society in and around naples. my wife was universally admired; her lovely face and graceful manners were themes of conversation throughout the whole neighborhood. guido ferrari, my friend, was one of those who were loudest in her praise, and the chivalrous homage he displayed toward her doubly endeared him to me. i trusted him as a brother; he came and went as pleased him; he brought nina gifts of flowers and fanciful trifles adapted to her taste, and treated her with fraternal and delicate kindness. i deemed my happiness perfect--with love, wealth, and friendship, what more could a man desire? yet another drop of honey was added to my cup of sweetness. on the first morning of may, , our child was born--a girl-babe, fair as one of the white anemones which at that season grew thickly in the woods surrounding our home. they brought the little one to me in the shaded veranda where i sat at breakfast with guido--a tiny, almost shapeless bundle, wrapped in soft cashmere and old lace. i took the fragile thing in my arms with a tender reverence; it opened its eyes; they were large and dark like nina's, and the light of a recent heaven seemed still to linger in their pure depths. i kissed the little face; guido did the same; and those clear, quiet eyes regarded us both with a strange half-inquiring solemnity. a bird perched on a bough of jasmine broke into a low, sweet song, the soft wind blew and scattered the petals of a white rose at our feet. i gave the infant back to the nurse, who waited to receive it, and said, with a smile, "tell my wife we have welcomed her may-blossom." guido laid his hand on my shoulder as the servant retired; his face was unusually pale. "thou art a good fellow, fabio!" he said, abruptly. "indeed! how so?" i asked, half laughingly; "i am no better than other men." "you are less suspicious than the majority," he returned, turning away from me and playing idly with a spray of clematis that trailed on one of the pillars of the veranda. i glanced at him in surprise. "what do you mean, amico? have i reason to suspect any one?" he laughed and resumed his seat at the breakfast-table. "why, no!" he answered, with a frank look. "but in naples the air is pregnant with suspicion--jealousy's dagger is ever ready to strike, justly or unjustly--the very children are learned in the ways of vice. penitents confess to priests who are worse than penitents, and by heaven! in such a state of society, where conjugal fidelity is a farce"--he paused a moment, and then went on--"is it not wonderful to know a man like you, fabio? a man happy in home affections, without a cloud on the sky of his confidence?" "i have no cause for distrust," i said. "nina is as innocent as the little child of whom she is to-day the mother." "true!" exclaimed ferrari. "perfectly true!" and he looked me full in the eyes, with a smile. "white as the virgin snow on the summit of mont blanc--purer than the flawless diamond--and unapproachable as the furthest star! is it not so?" i assented with a certain gravity; something in his manner puzzled me. our conversation soon turned on different topics, and i thought no more of the matter. but a time came--and that speedily--when i had stern reason to remember every word he had uttered. chapter ii. every one knows what kind of summer we had in naples in . the newspapers of all lands teemed with the story of its horrors. the cholera walked abroad like a destroying demon; under its withering touch scores of people, young and old, dropped down in the streets to die. the fell disease, born of dirt and criminal neglect of sanitary precautions, gained on the city with awful rapidity, and worse even than the plague was the unreasoning but universal panic. the never-to-be-forgotten heroism of king humbert had its effect on the more educated classes, but among the low neapolitan populace, abject fear, vulgar superstition, and utter selfishness reigned supreme. one case may serve as an example of many others. a fisherman, well known in the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized, while working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. he was carried to his mother's house. the old woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking in the situation at once, she shut and barricaded her door. "santissima madonna!" she yelled, shrilly, through a half-opened window. "leave him in the street, the abandoned, miserable one! the ungrateful pig! he would bring the plague to his own hard-working, honest mother! holy joseph! who would have children? leave him in the street, i tell you!" it was useless to expostulate with this feminine scarecrow; her son was, happily for himself, unconscious, and after some more wrangling he was laid down on her doorstep, where he shortly afterward expired, his body being afterward carted away like so much rubbish by the beccamorti. the heat in the city was intense. the sky was a burning dome of brilliancy, the bay was still as a glittering sheet of glass. a thin column of smoke issuing from the crater of vesuvius increased the impression of an all-pervading, though imperceptible ring of fire, that seemed to surround the place. no birds sung save in the late evening, when the nightingales in my gardens broke out in a bubbling torrent of melody, half joyous, half melancholy. up on that wooded height where i dwelt it was comparatively cool. i took all precautions necessary to prevent the contagion from attacking our household; in fact, i would have left the neighborhood altogether, had i not known that hasty flight from an infected district often carries with it the possibility of closer contact with the disease. my wife, besides, was not nervous--i think very beautiful women seldom are. their superb vanity is an excellent shield to repel pestilence; it does away with the principal element of danger--fear. as for our stella, a toddling mite of two years old, she was a healthy child, for whom neither her mother nor myself entertained the least anxiety. guido ferrari came and stayed with us, and while the cholera, like a sharp scythe put into a field of ripe corn, mowed down the dirt-loving neapolitans by hundreds, we three, with a small retinue of servants, none of whom were ever permitted to visit the city, lived on farinaceous food and distilled water, bathed regularly, rose and retired early, and enjoyed the most perfect health. among her many other attractions my wife was gifted with a beautiful and well-trained voice. she sung with exquisite expression, and many an evening when guido and myself sat smoking in the garden, after little stella had gone to bed, nina would ravish our ears with the music of her nightingale notes, singing song after song, quaint stornelli and ritornelli--songs of the people, full of wild and passionate beauty. in these guido would often join her, his full barytone chiming in with her delicate and clear soprano as deliciously as the fall of a fountain with the trill of a bird. i can hear those two voices now; their united melody still rings mockingly in my ears; the heavy perfume of orange-blossom, mingled with myrtle, floats toward me on the air; the yellow moon burns round and full in the dense blue sky, like the king of thule's goblet of gold flung into a deep sea, and again i behold those two heads leaning together, the one fair, the other dark; my wife, my friend--those two whose lives were a million times dearer to me than my own. ah! they were happy days--days of self-delusion always are. we are never grateful enough to the candid persons who wake us from our dream--yet such are in truth our best friends, could we but realize it. august was the most terrible of all the summer months in naples. the cholera increased with frightful steadiness, and the people seemed to be literally mad with terror. some of them, seized with a wild spirit of defiance, plunged into orgies of vice and intemperance with a reckless disregard of consequences. one of these frantic revels took place at a well-known cafe. eight young men, accompanied by eight girls of remarkable beauty, arrived, and ordered a private room, where they were served with a sumptuous repast. at its close one of the party raised his glass and proposed, "success to the cholera!" the toast was received with riotous shouts of applause, and all drank it with delirious laughter. that very night every one of the revelers died in horrible agony; their bodies, as usual, were thrust into flimsy coffins and buried one on top of another in a hole hastily dug for the purpose. dismal stories like these reached us every day, but we were not morbidly impressed by them. stella was a living charm against pestilence; her innocent playfulness and prattle kept us amused and employed, and surrounded us with an atmosphere that was physically and mentally wholesome. one morning--one of the very hottest mornings of that scorching month--i woke at an earlier hour than usual. a suggestion of possible coolness in the air tempted me to rise and stroll through the garden. my wife slept soundly at my side. i dressed softly, without disturbing her. as i was about to leave the room some instinct made me turn back to look at her once more. how lovely she was! she smiled in her sleep! my heart beat as i gazed--she had been mine for three years--mine only!--and my passionate admiration and love of her had increased in proportion to that length of time. i raised one of the scattered golden locks that lay shining like a sunbeam on the pillow, and kissed it tenderly. then--all unconscious of my fate--i left her. a faint breeze greeted me as i sauntered slowly along the garden walks--a breath of wind scarce strong enough to flutter the leaves, yet it had a salt savor in it that was refreshing after the tropical heat of the past night. i was at that time absorbed in the study of plato, and as i walked, my mind occupied itself with many high problems and deep questions suggested by that great teacher. lost in a train of profound yet pleasant thought, i strayed on further than i intended, and found myself at last in a by-path, long disused by our household--a winding footway leading downward in the direction of the harbor. it was shady and cool, and i followed the road almost unconsciously, till i caught a glimpse of masts and white sails gleaming through the leafage of the overarching trees. i was then about to retrace my steps, when i was startled by a sudden sound. it was a low moan of intense pain--a smothered cry that seemed to be wrung from some animal in torture. i turned in the direction whence it came, and saw, lying face downward on the grass, a boy--a little fruit-seller of eleven or twelve years of age. his basket of wares stood beside him, a tempting pile of peaches, grapes, pomegranates, and melons--lovely but dangerous eating in cholera times. i touched the lad on the shoulder. "what ails you?" i asked. he twisted himself convulsively and turned his face toward me--a beautiful face, though livid with anguish. "the plague, signor!" he moaned; "the plague! keep away from me, for the love of god! i am dying!" i hesitated. for myself i had no fear. but my wife--my child--for their sakes it was necessary to be prudent. yet i could not leave this poor boy unassisted. i resolved to go to the harbor in search of medical aid. with this idea in my mind i spoke cheerfully. "courage, my boy," i said; "do not lose heart! all illness is not the plague. rest here till i return; i am going to fetch a doctor." the little fellow looked at me with wondering, pathetic eyes, and tried to smile. he pointed to his throat, and made an effort to speak, but vainly. then he crouched down in the grass and writhed in torture like a hunted animal wounded to the death. i left him and walked on rapidly; reaching the harbor, where the heat was sulphurous and intense, i found a few scared-looking men standing aimlessly about, to whom i explained the boy's case, and appealed for assistance. they all hung back--none of them would accompany me, not even for the gold i offered. cursing their cowardice, i hurried on in search of a physician, and found one at last, a sallow frenchman, who listened with obvious reluctance to my account of the condition in which i had left the little fruit-seller, and at the end shook his head decisively, and refused to move. "he is as good as dead," he observed, with cold brevity. "better call at the house of the miserecordia; the brethren will fetch his body." "what!" i cried; "you will not try if you can save him?" the frenchman bowed with satirical suavity. "monsieur must pardon me! my own health would be seriously endangered by touching a cholera corpse. allow me to wish monsieur the good-day!" and he disappeared, shutting his door in my face. i was thoroughly exasperated, and though the heat and the fetid odor of the sun-baked streets made me feel faint and sick, i forgot all danger for myself as i stood in the plague-stricken city, wondering what i should do next to obtain succor. a grave, kind voice saluted my ear. "you seek aid, my son?" i looked up. a tall monk, whose cowl partly concealed his pale, but resolute features, stood at my side--one of those heroes who, for the love of christ, came forth at that terrible time and faced the pestilence fearlessly, where the blatant boasters of no-religion scurried away like frightened hares from the very scent of danger. i greeted him with an obeisance, and explained my errand. "i will go at once," he said, with an accent of pity in his voice. "but i fear the worst. i have remedies with me; i may not be too late." "i will accompany you," i said, eagerly. "one would not let a dog die unaided; much less this poor lad, who seems friendless." the monk looked at me attentively as we walked on together. "you are not residing in naples?" he asked. i gave him my name, which he knew by repute, and described the position of my villa. "up on that height we enjoy perfect health," i added. "i cannot understand the panic that prevails in the city. the plague is fostered by such cowardice." "of course!" he answered, calmly. "but what will you? the people here love pleasure. their hearts are set solely on this life. when death, common to all, enters their midst, they are like babes scared by a dark shadow. religion itself"--here he sighed deeply--"has no hold upon them." "but you, my father," i began, and stopped abruptly, conscious of a sharp throbbing pain in my temples. "i," he answered, gravely, "am the servant of christ. as such, the plague has no terrors for me. unworthy as i am, for my master's sake i am ready--nay, willing--to face all deaths." he spoke firmly, yet without arrogance. i looked at him in a certain admiration, and was about to speak, when a curious dizziness overcame me, and i caught at his arm to save myself from falling. the street rocked like a ship at sea, and the skies whirled round me in circles of blue fire. the feeling slowly passed, and i heard the monk's voice, as though it were a long way off, asking me anxiously what was the matter. i forced a smile. "it is the heat, i think," i said, in feeble tones like those of a very aged man. "i am faint--giddy. you had best leave me here--see to the boy. oh, my god!" this last exclamation was wrung out of me by sheer anguish. my limbs refused to support me, and a pang, cold and bitter as though naked steel had been thrust through my body, caused me to sink down upon the pavement in a kind of convulsion. the tall and sinewy monk, without a moment's hesitation, dragged me up and half carried, half led me into a kind of auberge, or restaurant for the poorer classes. here he placed me in a recumbent position on one of the wooden benches, and called up the proprietor of the place, a man to whom he seemed to be well known. though suffering acutely i was conscious, and could hear and see everything that passed. "attend to him well, pietro--it is the rich count fabio romani. thou wilt not lose by thy pains. i will return within an hour." "the count romani! santissima madonna! he has caught the plague!" "thou fool!" exclaimed the monk, fiercely. "how canst thou tell? a stroke of the sun is not the plague, thou coward! see to him, or by st. peter and the keys there shall be no place for thee in heaven!" the trembling innkeeper looked terrified at this menace, and submissively approached me with pillows, which he placed under my head. the monk, meanwhile, held a glass to my lips containing some medicinal mixture, which i swallowed mechanically. "rest here, my son," he said, addressing me in soothing tones. "these people are good-natured. i will but hasten to the boy for whom you sought assistance--in less than an hour i will be with you again." i laid a detaining hand on his arm. "stay," i murmured, feebly, "let me know the worst. is this the plague?" "i hope not!" he replied, compassionately. "but what if it be? you are young and strong enough to fight against it without fear." "i have no fear," i said. "but, father, promise me one thing--send no word of my illness to my wife--swear it! even if i am unconscious--dead--swear that i shall not be taken to the villa. swear it! i cannot rest till i have your word." "i swear it most willingly, my son," he answered, solemnly. "by all i hold sacred, i will respect your wishes." i was infinitely relieved--the safety of those i loved was assured--and i thanked him by a mute gesture. i was too weak to say more. he disappeared, and my brain wandered into a chaos of strange fancies. let me try to revolve these delusions. i plainly see the interior of the common room where i lie. there is the timid innkeeper--he polishes his glasses and bottles, casting ever and anon a scared glance in my direction. groups of men look in at the door, and, seeing me, hurry away. i observe all this--i know where i am--yet i am also climbing the steep passes of an alpine gorge--the cold snow is at my feet--i hear the rush and roar of a thousand torrents. a crimson cloud floats above the summit of a white glacier--it parts asunder gradually, and in its bright center a face smiles forth! "nina! my love, my wife, my soul!" i cry aloud. i stretch out my arms--i clasp her!--bah! it is this good rogue of an innkeeper who holds me in his musty embrace! i struggle with him fiercely--pantingly. "fool!" i shriek in his ear. "let me go to her--her lips pout for kisses--let me go!" another man advances and seizes me; he and the innkeeper force me back on the pillows--they overcome me, and the utter incapacity of a terrible exhaustion steals away my strength. i cease to struggle. pietro and his assistant look down upon me. "e morto!" they whisper one to the other. i hear them and smile. dead? not i! the scorching sunlight streams through the open door of the inn--the thirsty flies buzz with persistent loudness--some voices are singing "la fata di amalfi"--i can distinguish the words-- "chiagnaro la mia sventura si non tuorne chiu, rosella! tu d' amalfi la chiu bella, tu na fata si pe me! viene, vie, regina mie, viene curre a chisto core, ca non c'e non c'e sciore, non c'e stella comm'a te!" [footnote: a popular song in the neapolitan dialect.] that is a true song, nina mia! "non c'e stella comm' a te!" what did guido say? "purer than the flawless diamond--unapproachable as the furthest star!" that foolish pietro still polishes his wine-bottles. i see him--his meek round face is greasy with heat and dust; but i cannot understand how he comes to be here at all, for i am on the banks of a tropical river where huge palms grow wild, and drowsy alligators lie asleep in the sun. their large jaws are open--their small eyes glitter greenly. a light boat glides over the silent water--in it i behold the erect lithe figure of an indian. his features are strangely similar to those of guido. he draws a long thin shining blade of steel as he approaches. brave fellow!--he means to attack single-handed the cruel creatures who lie in wait for him on the sultry shore. he springs to land--i watch him with a weird fascination. he passes the alligators--he seems not to be aware of their presence--he comes with swift, unhesitating step to me--it is i whom he seeks--it is in my heart that he plunges the cold steel dagger, and draws it out again dripping with blood! once--twice--thrice!--and yet i cannot die! i writhe--i moan in bitter anguish! then something dark comes between me and the glaring sun--something cool and shadowy, against which i fling myself despairingly. two dark eyes look steadily into mine, and a voice speaks: "be calm, my son, be calm. commend thyself to christ!" it is my friend the monk. i recognize him gladly. he has returned from his errand of mercy. though i can scarcely speak, i hear myself asking for news of the boy. the holy man crosses himself devoutly. "may his young soul rest in peace! i found him dead." i am dreamily astonished at this. dead--so soon! i cannot understand it; and i drift off again into a state of confused imaginings. as i look back now to that time, i find i have no specially distinct recollection of what afterward happened to me. i know i suffered intense, intolerable pain--that i was literally tortured on a rack of excruciating anguish--and that through all the delirium of my senses i heard a muffled, melancholy sound like a chant or prayer. i have an idea that i also heard the tinkle of the bell that accompanies the host, but my brain reeled more wildly with each moment, and i cannot be certain of this. i remember shrieking out after what seemed an eternity of pain, "not to the villa! no, no, not there! you shall not take me--my curse on him who disobeys me!" i remember then a fearful sensation, as of being dragged into a deep whirlpool, from whence i stretched up appealing hands and eyes to the monk who stood above me--i caught a drowning glimpse of a silver crucifix glittering before my gaze, and at last, with one loud cry for help, i sunk--down--down! into an abyss of black night and nothingness! chapter iii. there followed a long drowsy time of stillness and shadow. i seemed to have fallen in some deep well of delicious oblivion and obscurity. dream-like images still flitted before my fancy--these were at first undefinable, but after awhile they took more certain shapes. strange fluttering creatures hovered about me--lonely eyes stared at me from a visible deep gloom; long white bony fingers grasping at nothing made signs to me of warning or menace. then--very gradually, there dawned upon my sense of vision a cloudy red mist like a stormy sunset, and from the middle of the blood-like haze a huge black hand descended toward me. it pounced upon my chest--it grasped my throat in its monstrous clutch, and held me down with a weight of iron. i struggled violently--i strove to cry out, but that terrific pressure took from me all power of utterance. i twisted myself to right and left in an endeavor to escape--but my tyrant of the sable hand had bound me in on all sides. yet i continued to wrestle with the cruel opposing force that strove to overwhelm me--little by little--inch by inch--so! at last! one more struggle--victory! i woke! merciful god! where was i? in what horrible atmosphere--in what dense darkness? slowly, as my senses returned to me, i remembered my recent illness. the monk--the man pietro--where were they? what had they done to me? by degrees, i realized that i was lying straight down upon my back--the couch was surely very hard? why had they taken the pillows from under my head? a pricking sensation darted through my veins--i felt my own hands curiously--they were warm, and my pulse beat strongly, though fitfully. but what was this that hindered my breathing? air--air! i must have air! i put up my hands--horror! they struck against a hard opposing substance above me. quick as lightning then the truth flashed upon my mind! i had been buried--buried alive; this wooden prison that inclosed me was a coffin! a frenzy surpassing that of an infuriated tiger took swift possession of me--with hands and nails i tore and scratched at the accursed boards--with all the force of my shoulders and arms i toiled to wrench open the closed lid! my efforts were fruitless! i grew more ferociously mad with rage and terror. how easy were all deaths compared to one like this! i was suffocating--i felt my eyes start from their sockets--blood sprung from my mouth and nostrils--and icy drops of sweat trickled from my forehead. i paused, gasping for breath. then, suddenly nerving myself for one more wild effort, i hurled my limbs with all the force of agony and desperation against one side of my narrow prison. it cracked--it split asunder!--and then--a new and horrid fear beset me, and i crouched back, panting heavily. if--if i were buried in the ground--so ran my ghastly thoughts--of what use to break open the coffin and let in the mold--the damp wormy mold, rich with the bones of the dead--the penetrating mold that would choke up my mouth and eyes, and seal me into silence forever! my mind quailed at this idea--my brain tottered on the verge of madness! i laughed--think of it!--and my laugh sounded in my ears like the last rattle in the throat of a dying man. but i could breathe more easily--even in the stupefaction of my fears--i was conscious of air. yes!--the blessed air had rushed in somehow. revived and encouraged as i recognized this fact, i felt with both hands till i found the crevice i had made, and then with frantic haste and strength i pulled and dragged at the wood, till suddenly the whole side of the coffin gave way, and i was able to force up the lid. i stretched out my arms--no weight of earth impeded their movements--i felt nothing but air--empty air. yielding to my first strong impulse, i leaped out of the hateful box, and fell--fell some little distance, bruising my hands and knees on what seemed to be a stone pavement. something weighty fell also, with a dull crashing thud close to me. the darkness was impenetrable. but there was breathing room, and the atmosphere was cool and refreshing. with some pain and difficulty i raised myself to a sitting position where i had fallen. my limbs were stiff and cramped as well as wounded, and i shivered as with strong ague. but my senses were clear--the tangled chain of my disordered thoughts became even and connected--my previous mad excitement gradually calmed, and i began to consider my condition. i had certainly been buried alive--there was no doubt of that. intense pain had, i suppose, resolved itself into a long trance of unconsciousness--the people of the inn where i had been taken ill had at once believed me to be dead of cholera, and with the panic-stricken, indecent haste common in all italy, especially at a time of plague, had thrust me into one of those flimsy coffins which were then being manufactured by scores in naples--mere shells of thin deal, nailed together with clumsy hurry and fear. but how i blessed their wretched construction! had i been laid in a stronger casket, who knows if even the most desperate frenzy of my strength might not have proved unavailing! i shuddered at the thought. yet the question remained--where was i? i reviewed my case from all points, and for some time could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. stay, though! i remembered that i had told the monk my name; he knew that i was the only descendant of the rich romani family. what followed? why, naturally, the good father had only done what his duty called upon him to do. he had seen me laid in the vault of my ancestors--the great romani vault that had never been opened since my father's body was carried to its last resting-place with all the solemn pomp and magnificence of a wealthy nobleman's funeral obsequies. the more i thought of this the more probable it seemed. the romani vault! its forbidding gloom had terrified me as a lad when i followed my father's coffin to the stone niche assigned to it, and i had turned my eyes away in shuddering pain when i was told to look at the heavy oaken casket hung with tattered velvet and ornamented with tarnished silver, which contained all that was left of my mother, who died young. i had felt sick and faint and cold, and had only recovered myself when i stood out again in the free air with the blue dome of heaven high above me. and now i was shut in the same vault--a prisoner--with what hope of escape? i reflected. the entrance to the vault, i remembered, was barred by a heavy door of closely twisted iron--from thence a flight of steep steps led downward--downward to where in all probability i now was. suppose i could in the dense darkness feel my way to those steps and climb up to that door--of what avail? it was locked--nay, barred--and as it was situated in a remote part of the burial-ground, there was no likelihood of even the keeper of the cemetery passing by it for days--perhaps not for weeks. then must i starve? or die of thirst? tortured by these imaginings, i rose up from the pavement and stood erect. my feet were bare, and the cold stone on which i stood chilled me to the marrow. it was fortunate for me, i thought, that they had buried me as a cholera corpse--they had left me half-clothed for fear of infection. that is, i had my flannel shirt on and my usual walking trousers. something there was, too, round my neck; i felt it, and as i did so a flood of sweet and sorrowful memories rushed over me. it was a slight gold chain, and on it hung a locket containing the portraits of my wife and child. i drew it out in the darkness; i covered it with passionate kisses and tears--the first i had shed since my death--like trance-tears scalding and bitter welled into my eyes. life was worth living while nina's smile lightened the world! i resolved to fight for existence, no matter what dire horrors should be yet in store for me. nina--my love--my beautiful one! her face gleamed out upon me in the pestilent gloom of the charnel-house; her eyes beckoned me--her young faithful eyes that were now, i felt sure, drowned in weeping for my supposed death. i seemed to see my tender-hearted darling sobbing alone in the empty silence of the room that had witnessed a thousand embraces between herself and me; her lovely hair disheveled; her sweet face pale and haggard with the bitterness of grief! baby stella, too, no doubt she would wonder, poor innocent! why i did not come to swing her as usual under the orange boughs. and guido--brave and true friend! i thought of him with tenderness. i felt i knew how deep and lasting would be his honest regret for my loss. oh, i would leave no means of escape untried; i would find some way out of this grim vault! how overjoyed they would all be to see me again--to know that i was not dead after all! what a welcome i should receive! how nina would nestle into my arms; how my little child would cling to me; how guido would clasp me by the hand! i smiled as i pictured the scene of rejoicing at the dear old villa--the happy home sanctified by perfect friendship and faithful love! a deep hollow sound booming suddenly on my ears startled me--one! two! three! i counted the strokes up to twelve. it was some church bell tolling the hour. my pleasing fancies dispersed--i again faced the drear reality of my position. twelve o'clock! midday or midnight? i could not tell. i began to calculate. it was early morning when i had been taken ill--not much past eight when i had met the monk and sought his assistance for the poor little fruit-seller who had after all perished alone in his sufferings. now supposing my illness had lasted some hours, i might have fallen into a trance--died--as those around me had thought, somewhere about noon. in that case they would certainly have buried me with as little delay as possible--before sunset at all events. thinking these points over one by one, i came to the conclusion that the bell i had just heard must have struck midnight--the midnight of the very day of my burial. i shivered; a kind of nervous dread stole over me. i have always been physically courageous, but at the same time, in spite of my education, i am somewhat superstitious--what neapolitan is not? it runs in the southern blood. and there was something unutterably fearful in the sound of that midnight bell clanging harshly on the ears of a man pent up alive in a funeral vault with the decaying bodies of his ancestors close within reach of his hand! i tried to conquer my feelings--to summon up my fortitude. i endeavored to reason out the best method of escape. i resolved to feel my way, if possible, to the steps of the vault, and with this idea in my mind i put out my hands and began to move along slowly and with the utmost care. what was that? i stopped; i listened; the blood curdled in my veins! a shrill cry, piercing, prolonged, and melancholy, echoed through the hollow arches of my tomb. a cold perspiration broke out all over my body--my heart beat so loudly that i could hear it thumping against my ribs. again--again--that weird shriek, followed by a whir and flap of wings. i breathed again. "it is an owl," i said to myself, ashamed of my fears; "a poor innocent bird--a companion and watcher of the dead, and therefore its voice is full of sorrowful lamentation--but it is harmless," and i crept on with increased caution. suddenly out of the dense darkness there stared two large yellow eyes, glittering with fiendish hunger and cruelty. for a moment i was startled, and stepped back; the creature flew at me with the ferocity of a tiger-cat! i fought with the horrible thing in all directions; it wheeled round my head, it pounced toward my face, it beat me with its large wings--wings that i could feel but not see; the yellow eyes alone shone in the thick gloom like the eyes of some vindictive demon! i struck at it right and left--the revolting combat lasted some moments--i grew sick and dizzy, yet i battled on recklessly. at last, thank heaven! the huge owl was vanquished; it fluttered backward and downward, apparently exhausted, giving one wild screech of baffled fury, as its lamp-like eyes disappeared in the darkness. breathless, but not subdued--every nerve in my body quivering with excitement--i pursued my way, as i thought, toward the stone staircase feeling the air with my outstretched hands as i groped along. in a little while i met with an obstruction--it was hard and cold--a stone wall, surely? i felt it up and down and found a hollow in it--was this the first step of the stair? i wondered; it seemed very high. i touched it cautiously--suddenly i came in contact with something soft and clammy to the touch like moss or wet velvet. fingering this with a kind of repulsion, i soon traced out the oblong shape of a coffin. curiously enough, i was not affected much by the discovery. i found myself monotonously counting the bits of raised metal which served, as i judged, for its ornamentation. eight bits lengthwise--and the soft wet stuff between--four bits across; then a pang shot through me, and i drew my hand away quickly, as i considered--whose coffin was this? my father's? or was i thus plucking, like a man in delirium, at the fragments of velvet on that cumbrous oaken casket wherein lay the sacred ashes of my mother's perished beauty? i roused myself from the apathy into which i had fallen. all the pains i had taken to find my way through the vault were wasted; i was lost in the profound gloom, and knew not where to turn. the horror of my situation presented itself to me with redoubled force. i began to be tormented with thirst. i fell on my knees and groaned aloud. "god of infinite mercy!" i cried. "saviour of the world! by the souls of the sacred dead whom thou hast in thy holy keeping, have pity upon me! oh, my mother! if indeed thine earthly remains are near me--think of me, sweet angel in that heaven where thy spirit dwells at rest--plead for me and save me, or let me die now and be tortured no more!" i uttered these words aloud, and the sound of my wailing voice ringing through the somber arches of the vault was strange and full of fantastic terror to my own ears. i knew that were my agony much further prolonged i should go mad. and i dared not picture to myself the frightful things which a maniac might be capable of, shut up in such a place of death and darkness, with moldering corpses for companions! i remained on my knees, my face buried in my hands. i forced myself into comparative calmness, and strove to preserve the equilibrium of my distracted mind. hush! what exquisite far-off floating voice of cheer was that? i raised my head and listened, entranced! "jug, jug, jug! lodola, lodola! trill-lil-lil! sweet, sweet, sweet!" it was a nightingale. familiar, delicious, angel-throated bird! how i blessed thee in that dark hour of despair! how i praised god for thine innocent existence! how i sprung up and laughed and wept for joy, as, all unconscious of me, thou didst shake out a shower of pearly warblings on the breast of the soothed air! heavenly messenger of consolation!--even now i think of thee with tenderness--for thy sweet sake all birds possess me as their worshiper; humanity has grown hideous in my sight, but the singing-life of the woods and hills--how pure, how fresh!--the nearest thing to happiness on this side heaven! a rush of strength and courage invigorated me. a new idea entered my brain. i determined to follow the voice of the nightingale. it sung on sweetly, encouragingly--and i began afresh my journeyings through the darkness. i fancied that the bird was perched on one of the trees outside the entrance of the vault, and that if i tried to get within closer hearing of its voice, i should most likely be thus guided to the very staircase i had been so painfully seeking. i stumbled along slowly. i felt feeble, and my limbs shook under me. this time nothing impeded my progress; the nightingale's liquid notes floated nearer and nearer, and hope, almost exhausted, sprung up again in my heart. i was scarcely conscious of my own movements. i seemed to be drawn along like one in a dream by the golden thread of the bird's sweet singing. all at once i caught my foot against a stone and fell forward with some force, but i felt no pain--my limbs were too numb to be sensible of any fresh suffering. i raised my heavy, aching eyes in the darkness; as i did so i uttered an exclamation of thanksgiving. a slender stream of moonlight, no thicker than the stem of an arrow, slanted downward toward me, and showed me that i had at last reached the spot i sought--in fact, i had fallen upon the lowest step of the stone stairway. i could not distinguish the entrance door of the vault, but i knew that it must be at the summit of the steep ascent. i was too weary to move further just then. i lay still where i was, staring at the solitary moon-ray, and listening to the nightingale, whose rapturous melodies now rang out upon my ears with full distinctness. one! the harsh-toned bell i had heard before clanged forth the hour. it would soon be morning; i resolved to rest till then. utterly worn out in body and mind, i laid down my head upon the cold stones as readily as if they had been the softest cushions, and in a few moments forgot all my miseries in a profound sleep. * * * * * i must have slumbered for some time, when i was suddenly awakened by a suffocating sensation of faintness and nausea, accompanied by a sharp pain on my neck as though some creatures were stinging me. i put my hand up to the place--god! shall i ever forget the feel of the thing my trembling fingers closed upon! it was fastened in my flesh--a winged, clammy, breathing horror! it clung to me with a loathly persistency that nearly drove me frantic, and wild with disgust and terror i screamed aloud! i closed both hands convulsively upon its fat, soft body--i literally tore it from my flesh and flung it as far back as i could into the interior blackness of the vault. for a time i believe i was indeed mad--the echoes rang with the piercing shrieks i could not restrain! silent at last through sheer exhaustion i glared about me. the moonbeam had vanished, in its place lay a shaft of pale gray light, by which i could easily distinguish the whole length of the staircase and the closed gateway at its summit. i rushed up the ascent with the feverish haste of a madman--i grasped the iron grating with both hands and shook it fiercely. it was firm as a rock, locked fast. i called for help. utter silence answered me. i peered through the closely twisted bars. i saw the grass, the drooping boughs of trees, and straight before my line of vision a little piece of the blessed sky, opal tinted and faintly blushing with the consciousness of the approaching sunrise. i drank in the sweet fresh air, a long trailing branch of the wild grape vine hung near me; its leaves were covered thickly with dew. i squeezed one hand through the grating and gathered a few of these green morsels of coolness--i ate them greedily. they seemed to me more delicious than any thing i had ever tasted, they relieved the burning fever of my parched throat and tongue. the glimpse of the trees and sky soothed and calmed me. there was a gentle twittering of awaking birds, my nightingale had ceased singing. i began to recover slowly from my nervous terrors, and leaning against the gloomy arch of my charnel house i took courage to glance backward down the steep stairway up which i had sprung with such furious precipitation. something white lay in a corner on the seventh step from the top. curious to see what it was, i descended cautiously and with some reluctance; it was the half of a thick waxen taper, such as are used in the catholic ritual at the burial of the dead. no doubt it had been thrown down there by some careless acolyte, to save himself the trouble of carrying it after the service had ended. i looked at it meditatively. if i only had a light! i plunged my hands half abstractedly into the pockets of my trousers--something jingled! truly they had buried me in haste. my purse, a small bunch of keys, my card-case--one by one i drew them out and examined them surprisedly--they looked so familiar, and withal so strange! i searched again; and this time found something of real value to one in my condition--a small box of wax vestas. now, had they left me my cigar-case? no, that was gone. it was a valuable silver one--no doubt the monk, who attended my supposed last moments, had taken it, together with my watch and chain, to my wife. well, i could not smoke, but i could strike a light. and there was the funeral taper ready for use. the sun had not yet risen. i must certainly wait till broad day before i could hope to attract by my shouts any stray person who might pass through the cemetery. meanwhile, a fantastic idea suggested itself. i would go and look at my own coffin! why not? it would be a novel experience. the sense of fear had entirely deserted me; the possession of that box of matches was sufficient to endow me with absolute hardihood. i picked up the church-candle and lighted it; it gave at first a feeble flicker, but afterward burned with a clear and steady flame. shading it with one hand from the draught, i gave a parting glance at the fair daylight that peeped smilingly in through my prison door, and then went down--down again into the dismal place where i had passed the night in such indescribable agony. chapter iv. numbers of lizards glided away from my feet as i descended the steps, and when the flare of my torch penetrated the darkness i heard a scurrying of wings mingled with various hissing sounds and wild cries. i knew now--none better--what weird and abominable things had habitation in this storehouse of the dead, but i felt i could defy them all, armed with the light i carried. the way that had seemed so long in the dense gloom was brief and easy, and i soon found myself at the scene of my unexpected awakening from sleep. the actual body of the vault was square-shaped, like a small room inclosed within high walls--walls which were scooped out in various places so as to form niches in which the narrow caskets containing the bones of all the departed members of the romani family were placed one above the other like so many bales of goods arranged evenly on the shelves of an ordinary warehouse. i held the candle high above my head and looked about me with a morbid interest. i soon perceived what i sought--my own coffin. there it was in a niche some five feet from the ground, its splintered portions bearing decided witness to the dreadful struggle i had made to obtain my freedom. i advanced and examined it closely. it was a frail shell enough--unlined, unornamented--a wretched sample of the undertaker's art, though god knows _i_ had no fault to find with its workmanship, nor with the haste of him who fashioned it. something shone at the bottom of it--it was a crucifix of ebony and silver. that good monk again! his conscience had not allowed him to see me buried without this sacred symbol; he had perhaps laid it on my breast as the last service he could render me; it had fallen from thence, no doubt, when i had wrenched my way through the boards that inclosed me. i took it and kissed it reverently--i resolved that if ever i met the holy father again, i would tell him my story, and, as a proof of its truth, restore to him this cross, which he would be sure to recognize. had they put my name on the coffin-lid? i wondered. yes, there it was--painted on the wood in coarse, black letters, "fabio romani"--then followed the date of my birth; then a short latin inscription, stating that i had died of cholera on august , . that was yesterday--only yesterday! i seemed to have lived a century since then. i turned to look at my father's resting-place. the velvet on his coffin hung from its sides in moldering remnants--but it was not so utterly damp-destroyed and worm-eaten as the soaked and indistinguishable material that still clung to the massive oaken chest in the next niche, where she lay--she from whose tender arms i had received my first embrace--she in whose loving eyes i had first beheld the world! i knew by a sort of instinct that it must have been with the frayed fragments on her coffin that my fingers had idly played in the darkness. i counted as before the bits of metal--eight bits length-wise, and four bits across--and on my father's close casket there were ten silver plates lengthwise and five across. my poor little mother! i thought of her picture--it hung in my library at home; the picture of a young, smiling, dark-haired beauty, whose delicate tint was as that of a peach ripening in the summer sun. all that loveliness had decayed into--what? i shuddered involuntarily--then i knelt humbly before those two sad hollows in the cold stone, and implored the blessing of the dead and gone beloved ones to whom, while they lived, my welfare had been dear. while i occupied this kneeling position the flame of my torch fell directly on some small object that glittered with remarkable luster. i went to examine it; it was a jeweled pendant composed of one large pear-shaped pearl, set round with fine rose brilliants! surprised at this discovery, i looked about to see where such a valuable gem could possibly have come from. i then noticed an unusually large coffin lying sideways on the ground; it appeared as if it had fallen suddenly and with force, for a number of loose stones and mortar were sprinkled near it. holding the light close to the ground, i observed that a niche exactly below the one in which _i_ had been laid was empty, and that a considerable portion of the wall there was broken away. i then remembered that when i had sprung so desperately out of my narrow box i had heard something fall with a crash beside me. this was the thing, then--this long coffin, big enough to contain a man seven feet high and broad in proportion. what gigantic ancestor had i irreverently dislodged?--and was it from a skeleton throat that the rare jewel which i held in my hand had been accidentally shaken? my curiosity was excited, and i bent close to examine the lid of this funeral chest. there was no name on it--no mark of any sort, save one--a dagger roughly painted in red. here was a mystery! i resolved to penetrate it. i set up my candle in a little crevice of one of the empty niches, and laid the pearl and diamond pendant beside it, thus disembarrassing myself of all incumbrance. the huge coffin lay on its side, as i have said; its uppermost corner was splintered; i applied both hands to the work of breaking further asunder these already split portions. as i did so a leathern pouch or bag rolled out and fell at my feet. i picked it up and opened it--it was full of gold pieces! more excited than ever, i seized a large pointed stone, and by the aid of this extemporized instrument, together with the force of my own arms, hands, and feet, i managed, after some ten minutes' hard labor, to break open the mysterious casket. when i had accomplished this deed i stared at the result like a man stupefied. no moldering horror met my gaze--no blanched or decaying bones; no grinning skull mocked me with its hollow eye-sockets. i looked upon a treasure worthy of an emperor's envy! the big coffin was literally lined and packed with incalculable wealth. fifty large leathern bags tied with coarse cord lay uppermost; more than half of these were crammed with gold coins, the rest were full of priceless gems--necklaces, tiaras, bracelets, watches, chains, and other articles of feminine adornment were mingled with loose precious stones--diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and opals, some of unusual size and luster, some uncut, and some all ready for the jeweler's setting. beneath these bags were packed a number of pieces of silk, velvet, and cloth of gold, each piece being wrapped by itself in a sort of oil-skin, strongly perfumed with camphor and other spices. there were also three lengths of old lace, fine as gossamer, of matchless artistic design, in perfect condition. among these materials lay two large trays of solid gold workmanship, most exquisitely engraved and ornamented, also four gold drinking-cups, of quaint and massive construction. other valuables and curious trifles there were, such as an ivory statuette of psyche on a silver pedestal, a waistband of coins linked together, a painted fan with a handle set in amber and turquois, a fine steel dagger in a jeweled sheath, and a mirror framed in old pearls. last, but not least, at the very bottom of the chest lay rolls upon rolls of paper money amounting to some millions of francs--in all far surpassing what i had myself formerly enjoyed from my own revenues. i plunged my hands deep in the leathern bags; i fingered the rich materials; all this treasure was mine! i had found it in my own burial vault! i had surely the right to consider it as my property? i began to consider--how could it have been placed there without my knowledge? the answer to this question occurred to me at once. brigands! of course!--what a fool i was not to have thought of them before; the dagger painted on the lid of the chest should have guided me to the solution of the mystery. a red dagger was the recognized sign-manual of a bold and dangerous brigand named carmelo neri, who, with his reckless gang, haunted the vicinity of palermo. "so!" i thought, "this is one of your bright ideas, my cut-throat carmelo! cunning rogue! you calculated well--you thought that none would disturb the dead, much less break open a coffin in search of gold. admirably planned, my carmelo! but this time you must play a losing game! a supposed dead man coming to life again deserves something for his trouble, and i should be a fool not to accept the goods the gods and the robbers provide. an ill-gotten hoard of wealth, no doubt; but better in my hands than in yours friend carmelo!" and i meditated for some minutes on this strange affair. if, indeed--and i saw no reason to doubt it--i had chanced to find some of the spoils of the redoubtable neri, this great chest must have been brought over by sea from palermo. probably four stout rascals had carried the supposed coffin in a mock solemn procession, under the pretense of its containing the body of a comrade. these thieves have a high sense of humor. yet the question remained to be solved--how had they gained access to my ancestral vault, unless by means of a false key? all at once i was left in darkness. my candle went out as though blown upon by a gust of air. i had my matches, and of course could easily light it again, but i was puzzled to imagine the cause of its sudden extinction. i looked about me in the temporary gloom and saw, to my surprise, a ray of light proceeding from a corner of the very niche where i had fixed the candle between two stones. i approached and put my hand to the place; a strong draught blew through a hole large enough to admit the passage of three fingers. i quickly relighted my torch, and examining this hole and the back of the niche attentively, found that four blocks of granite in the wall had been removed and their places supplied by thick square logs cut from the trunks of trees. these logs were quite loosely fitted. i took them out easily one by one, and then came upon a close pile of brushwood. as i gradually cleared this away a large aperture disclosed itself wide enough for any man to pass through without trouble. my heart beat with the rapture of expected liberty; i clambered up--i looked--thank god! i saw the landscape--the sky! in two minutes i stood outside the vault on the soft grass, with the high arch of heaven above me, and the broad bay of naples glittering deliciously before my eyes! i clapped my hands and shouted for pure joy! i was free! free to return to life, to love, to the arms of my beautiful nina--free to resume the pleasant course of existence on the gladsome earth--free to forget, if i could, the gloomy horrors of my premature burial. if carmelo neri had heard the blessings i heaped upon his head--he would for once have deemed himself a saint rather than a brigand. what did i not owe to the glorious ruffian! fortune and freedom! for it was evident that this secret passage into the romani vault had been cunningly contrived by himself or his followers for their own private purposes. seldom has any man been more grateful to his best benefactor than i was to the famous thief upon whose grim head, as i knew, a price had been set for many months. the poor wretch was in hiding. well! the authorities should get no aid from me, i resolved; even if i were to discover his whereabouts. why should i betray him? he had unconsciously done more for me than my best friend. nay, what friends will you find at all in the world when you need substantial good? few, or none. touch the purse--test the heart! what castles in the air i built as i stood rejoicing in the morning light and my newly acquired liberty--what dreams of perfect happiness flitted radiantly before my fancy! nina and i would love each other more fondly than before, i thought--our separation had been brief, but terrible--and the idea of what it might have been would endear us to one another with tenfold fervor. and little stella! why--this very evening i would swing her again under the orange boughs and listen to her sweet shrill laughter! this very evening i would clasp guido's hand in a gladness too great for words! this very night my wife's fair head would lie pillowed on my breast in an ecstatic silence broken only by the music of kisses. ah! my brain grew dizzy with the joyful visions that crowded thickly and dazzlingly upon me! the sun had risen--his long straight beams, like golden spears, touched the tops of the green trees, and roused little flashes as of red and blue fire on the shining surface of the bay. i heard the rippling of water and the measured soft dash of oars; and somewhere from a distant boat the mellifluous voice of a sailor sung a verse of the popular ritornello-- "sciore d'amenta sta parolella mia tieul' ammento zompa llari llira! sciore limone! le voglio fa mori de passione zompa llari llira!" [footnote: neapolitan dialect] i smiled--"mori de passione!" nina and i would know the meaning of those sweet words when the moon rose and the nightingales sung their love-songs to the dreaming flowers! full of these happy fancies, i inhaled the pure morning air for some minutes, and then re-entered the vault. chapter v. the first thing i did was to repack all the treasures i had discovered. this work was easily accomplished. for the present i contented myself with taking two of the leathern bags for my own use, one full of gold pieces, the other of jewels. the chest had been strongly made, and was not much injured by being forced open. i closed its lid as tightly as possible, and dragged it to a remote and dark corner of the vault, where i placed three heavy stones upon it. i then took the two leathern pouches i had selected, and stuffed one in each of the pockets of my trousers. the action reminded me of the scantiness of attire in which i stood arrayed. could i be seen in the public roads in such a plight? i examined my purse, which, as i before stated, had been left to me, together with my keys and card-case, by the terrified persons who had huddled me into my coffin with such scant ceremony. it contained two twenty-franc pieces and some loose silver. enough to buy a decent costume of some sort. but where could i make the purchase, and how? must i wait till evening and slink out of this charnel-house like the ghost of a wretched criminal? no! come what would, i made up my mind not to linger a moment longer in the vault. the swarms of beggars that infest naples exhibit themselves in every condition of rags, dirt, and misery; at the very worst i could only be taken for one of them. and whatever difficulties i might encounter, no matter!--they would soon be over. satisfied that i had placed the brigand coffin in a safe position, i secured the pearl and diamond pendant i had first found, to the chain round my neck. i intended this ornament as a gift for my wife. then, once more climbing through the aperture, i closed it completely with the logs and brushwood as it was before, and examining it narrowly from the outside, i saw that it was utterly impossible to discern the smallest hint of any entrance to a subterranean passage, so well and cunningly had it been contrived. now, nothing more remained for me to do but to make the best of my way to the city, there to declare my identity, obtain food and clothes, and then to hasten with all possible speed to my own residence. standing on a little hillock, i looked about me to see which direction i should take. the cemetery was situated on the outskirts of naples--naples itself lay on my left hand. i perceived a sloping road winding in that direction, and judged that if i followed it it would lead me to the city suburbs. without further hesitation i commenced my walk. it was now full day. my bare feet sunk deep in the dust that was hot as desert sand--the blazing sun beat down fiercely on my uncovered head, but i felt none of these discomforts; my heart was too full of gladness. i could have sung aloud for delight as i stepped swiftly along toward home--and nina! i was aware of a great weakness in my limbs--my eyes and head ached with the strong dazzling light; occasionally, too, an icy shiver ran through me that made my teeth chatter. but i recognized these symptoms as the after effects of my so nearly fatal illness, and i paid no heed to them. a few weeks' rest under my wife's loving care, and i knew i should be as well as ever. i stepped on bravely. for some time i met no one, but at last i overtook a small cart laden with freshly gathered grapes. the driver lay on his seat asleep; his pony meanwhile cropped the green herbage by the roadside, and every now and then shook the jingling bells on his harness as though expressing the satisfaction he felt at being left to his own devices. the piled-up grapes looked tempting, and i was both hungry and thirsty. i laid a hand on the sleeping man's shoulder; he awoke with a start. seeing me, his face assumed an expression of the wildest terror; he jumped from his cart and sunk down on his knees in the dust, imploring me by the madonna, st. joseph, and all the saints to spare his life. i laughed; his fears seemed to me ludicrous. surely there was nothing alarming about me beyond my paucity of clothing. "get up, man!" i said. "i want nothing of you but a few grapes, and for them i will pay." and i held out to him a couple of francs. he rose from the dust, still trembling and eying me askance with evident suspicion, took several bunches of the purple fruit, and gave them to me without saying a word. then, pocketing the money i proffered, he sprung into his cart, and lashing his pony till the unfortunate animal plunged and reared with pain and fury, rattled off down the road at such a break-neck speed that i saw nothing but a whirling blot of wheels disappearing in the distance. i was amused at the absurdity of this man's terror. what did he take me for, i wondered? a ghost or a brigand? i ate my grapes leisurely as i walked along--they were deliciously cool and refreshing--food and wine in one. i met several other persons as i neared the city, market people and venders of ices--but they took no note of me--in fact, i avoided them all as much as possible. on reaching the suburbs i turned into the first street i saw that seemed likely to contain a few shops. it was close and dark and foul-smelling, but i had not gone far down it when i came upon the sort of place i sought--a wretched tumble-down hovel, with a partly broken window, through which a shabby array of second-hand garments were to be dimly perceived, strung up for show on pieces of coarse twine. it was one of those dirty dens where sailors, returning from long voyages, frequently go to dispose of the various trifles they have picked up in foreign countries, so that among the forlorn specimens of second-hand wearing apparel many quaint and curious objects were to be seen, such as shells, branches of rough coral, strings of beads, cups and dishes carved out of cocoa-nut, dried gourds, horns of animals, fans, stuffed parakeets, and old coins--while a grotesque wooden idol peered hideously forth from between the stretched-out portions of a pair of old nankeen trousers, as though surveying the miscellaneous collection in idiotic amazement. an aged man sat smoking at the open door of this promising habitation--a true specimen of a neapolitan grown old. the skin of his face was like a piece of brown parchment scored all over with deep furrows and wrinkles, as though time, disapproving of the history he had himself penned upon it, had scratched over and blotted out all records, so that no one should henceforth be able to read what had once been clear writing. the only animation left in him seemed to have concentrated itself in his eyes, which were black and bead-like, and roved hither and thither with a glance of ever-restless and ever-suspicious inquiry. he saw me coming toward him, but he pretended to be absorbed in a profound study of the patch of blue sky that gleamed between the closely leaning houses of the narrow street. i accosted him--and he brought his gaze swiftly down to my level, and stared at me with keen inquisitiveness. "i have had a long tramp," i said, briefly, for he was not the kind of man to whom i could explain my recent terrible adventure, "and i have lost some of my clothes by an accident on the way. can you sell me a suit? anything will do--i am not particular." the old man took his pipe from his mouth. "do you fear the plague?" he asked. "i have just recovered from an attack of it," i replied, coolly. he looked at me attentively from head to foot, and then broke into a low chuckling laugh. "ha! ha!" he muttered, half to himself, half to me. "good--good! here is one like myself--not afraid--not afraid! we are not cowards. we do not find fault with the blessed saints--they send the plague. the beautiful plague!--i love it! i buy all the clothes i can get that are taken from the corpses--they are nearly always excellent clothes. i never clean them--i sell them again at once--yes--yes! why not? the people must die--the sooner the better! i help the good god as much as i can." and the old blasphemer crossed himself devoutly. i looked down upon him from where i stood drawn up to my full height, with a glance of disgust. he filled me with something of the same repulsion i had felt when i touched the unnameable thing that fastened on my neck while i slept in the vault. "come!" i said, somewhat roughly, "will you sell me a suit or no?" "yes, yes!" and he rose stiffly from his seat; he was very short of stature, and so bent with age and infirmity that he looked more like the crooked bough of a tree than a man, as he hobbled before me into his dark shop. "come inside, come inside! take your choice; there is enough here to suit all tastes. see now, what would you? behold here the dress of a gentleman, ah! what beautiful cloth, what strong wool! english make? yes, yes! he was english that wore it; a big, strong milord, that drank beer and brandy like water--and rich--just heaven!--how rich! but the plague took him; he died cursing god, and calling bravely for more brandy. ha, ha! a fine death--a splendid death! his landlord sold me his clothes for three francs--one, two, three--but you must give me six; that is fair profit, is it not? and i am old and poor. i must make something to live upon." i threw aside the tweed suit he displayed for my inspection. "nay," i said, "i care nothing for the plague, but find me something better than the cast-off clothing of a brandy-soaked englishman. i would rather wear the motley garb of a fellow who played the fool in carnival." the old dealer laughed with a crackling sound in his withered throat, like the rattling of stones in a tin pot. "good, good!" he croaked. "i like that, i like that! thou art old, but thou art merry. that pleases me; one should laugh always. why not? death laughs; you never see a solemn skull; it laughs always!" and he plunged his long lean fingers into a deep drawer full of miscellaneous garments, mumbling to himself all the while. i stood beside him in silence, pondering on his words, "thou art old, but merry." what did he mean by calling me old? he must be blind, i thought, or in his dotage. suddenly he looked up. "talking of the plague," he said, "it is not always wise. it did a foolish thing yesterday--a very foolish thing. it took one of the richest men in the neighborhood, young too, strong and brave; looked as if he would never die. the plague touched him in the morning--before sunset he was nailed up and put down in his big family vault--a cold lodging, and less handsomely furnished than his grand marble villa on the heights yonder. when i heard the news i told the madonna she was wicked. oh, yes! i rated her soundly; she is a woman, and capricious; a good scolding brings her to reason. look you! i am a friend to god and the plague, but they both did a stupid thing when they took count fabio romani." i started, but quickly controlled myself into an appearance of indifference. "indeed!" i said, carelessly. "and pray who was he that he should not deserve to die as well as other people?" the old man raised himself from his stooping attitude, and stared at me with his keen black eyes. "who was he? who was he?" he cried, in a shrill tone. "oh, he! one can see you know nothing of naples. you have not heard of the rich romani? see you, i wished him to live. he was clever and bold, but i did not grudge him that--no, he was good to the poor; he gave away hundreds of francs in charity. i have seen him often--i saw him married." and here his parchment face screwed itself into an expression of the most malignant cruelty. "pah! i hate his wife--a fair, soft thing, like a white snake! i used to watch them both from the corners of the streets as they drove along in their fine carriage, and i wondered how it would all end, whether he or she would gain the victory first. i wanted him to win; i would have helped him to kill her, yes! but the saints have made a mistake this time, for he is dead, and that she-devil has all. oh, yes! god and the plague have done a foolish thing for once." i listened to the old wretch with deepening aversion, yet with some curiosity too. why should he hate my wife? i thought, unless, indeed, he hated all youth and beauty, as was probably the case. and if he had seen me as often as he averred he must know me by sight. how was it then that he did not recognize me now? following out this thought, i said aloud: "what sort of looking man was this count romani? you say he was handsome--was he tall or short--dark or fair?" putting back his straggling gray locks from his forehead, the dealer stretched out a yellow, claw-like hand, as though pointing to some distant vision. "a beautiful man!" he exclaimed; "a man good for the eyes to see! as straight as you are!--as tall as you are!--as broad as you are! but your eyes are sunken and dim--his were full and large and sparkling. your face is drawn and pale--his was of a clear olive tint, round and flushed with health; and his hair was glossy black--ah! as jet-black, my friend, as yours is snow-white!" i recoiled from these last words in a sort of terror; they were like an electric shock! was i indeed so changed? was it possible that the horrors of a night in the vault had made such a dire impression upon me? my hair white?--mine! i could hardly believe it. if so, perhaps nina would not recognize me--she might be terrified at my aspect--guido himself might have doubts of my identity. though, for that matter, i could easily prove myself to be indeed fabio romani--even if i had to show the vault and my own sundered coffin. while i revolved all this in my mind the old man, unconscious of my emotion, went on with his mumbling chatter. "ah, yes, yes! he was a fine fellow--a strong fellow. i used to rejoice that he was so strong. he could have taken the little throat of his wife between finger and thumb and nipped it--so! and she would have told no more lies. i wanted him to do it--i waited for it. he would have done it surely, had he lived. that is why i am sorry he died." mastering my feelings by a violent effort, i forced myself to speak calmly to this malignant old brute. "why do you hate the countess romani so much?" i asked him with sternness. "has she done you any harm?" he straightened himself as much as he was able and looked me full in the eyes. "see you!" he answered, with a sort of leering laugh about the corners of his wicked mouth. "i will tell you why i hate her--yes--i will tell you, because you are a man and strong. i like strong men--they are sometimes fooled by women, it is true--but then they can take revenge. i was strong myself once. and you--you are old--but you love a jest--you will understand. the romani woman has done me no harm. she laughed--once. that was when her horses knocked me down in the street. i was hurt--but i saw her red lips widen and her white teeth glitter--she has a baby smile--the people will tell you--so innocent! i was picked up--her carriage drove on--her husband was not with her--he would have acted differently. but it is no matter--i tell you she laughed--and then i saw at once the likeness." "the likeness!" i exclaimed impatiently, for his story annoyed me. "what likeness?" "between her and my wife," the dealer replied, fixing his cruel eyes upon me with increasing intensity of regard. "oh, yes! i know what love is. i know too that god had very little to do with the making of women. it was a long time before even he could find the madonna. yes--yes, i know! i tell you i married a thing as beautiful as a morning in spring-time--with a little head that seemed to droop like a flower under its weight of sunbeam hair--and eyes! ah--like those of a tiny child when it looks up and asks you for kisses. i was absent once--i returned and found her sleeping tranquilly--yes! on the breast of a black-browed street-singer from venice--a handsome lad enough and brave as a young lion. he saw me and sprung at my throat--i held him down and knelt upon his chest--she woke and gazed upon us, too terrified to speak or scream--she only shivered and made a little moaning sound like that of a spoiled baby. i looked down into her prostrate lover's eyes and smiled. 'i will not hurt you,' i said. 'had she not consented, you could not have gained the victory. all i ask of you is to remain here for a few moments longer.' he stared, but was mute. i bound him hand and foot so that he could not stir. then i took my knife and went to her. her blue eyes glared wide--imploringly she turned them upon me--and ever she wrung her small hands and shivered and moaned. i plunged the keen bright blade deep through her soft white flesh--her lover cried out in agony--her heart's blood welled up in a crimson tide, staining with a bright hue the white garments she wore; she flung up her arms--she sank back on her pillows--dead. i drew the knife from her body, and with it cut the bonds of the venetian boy. i then gave it to him. "'take it as a remembrance of her,' i said. 'in a month she would have betrayed you as she betrayed me.'" "he raged like a madman. he rushed out and called the gendarmes. of course i was tried for murder--but it was not murder--it was justice. the judge found extenuating circumstances. naturally! he had a wife of his own. he understood my case. now you know why i hate that dainty jeweled woman up at the villa romani. she is just like that other one--that creature i slew--she has just the same slow smile and the same child-like eyes. i tell you again, i am sorry her husband is dead--it vexes me sorely to think of it. for he would have killed her in time--yes!--of that i am quite sure!" chapter vi. i listened to his narrative with a pained feeling at my heart, and a shuddering sensation as of icy cold ran through my veins. why, i had fancied that all who beheld nina must, perforce, love and admire her. true, when this old man was accidentally knocked down by her horses (a circumstance she had never mentioned to me), it was careless of her not to stop and make inquiry as to the extent of his injuries, but she was young and thoughtless; she could not be intentionally heartless. i was horrified to think that she should have made such an enemy as even this aged and poverty-stricken wretch; but i said nothing. i had no wish to betray myself. he waited for me to speak and grew impatient at my silence. "say now, my friend!" he queried, with a sort of childish eagerness, "did i not take a good vengeance? god himself could not have done better!" "i think your wife deserved her fate," i said, curtly, "but i cannot say i admire you for being her murderer." he turned upon me rapidly, throwing both hands above his head with a frantic gesticulation. his voice rose to a kind of muffled shriek. "murderer you call me--ha! ha! that is good. no, no! she murdered me! i tell you i died when i saw her asleep in her lover's arms--she killed me at one blow. a devil rose up in my body and took swift revenge; that devil is in me now, a brave devil, a strong devil! that is why i do not fear the plague; the devil in me frightens away death. some day it will leave me"--here his smothered yell sunk gradually to a feeble, weary tone; "yes, it will leave me and i shall find a dark place where i can sleep; i do not sleep much now." he eyed me half wistfully. "you see," he explained, almost gently, "my memory is very good, and when one thinks of many things one cannot sleep. it is many years ago, but every night i see her; she comes to me wringing her little white hands, her blue eyes stare, i hear short moans of terror. every night, every night!" he paused, and passed his hands in a bewildered way across his forehead. then, like a man suddenly waking from sleep, he stared as though he saw me now for the first time, and broke into a low chuckling laugh. "what a thing, what a thing it is, the memory!" he muttered. "strange--strange! see, i remembered all that, and forgot you! but i know what you want--a suit of clothes--yes, you need them badly, and i also need the money for them. ha, ha! and you will not have the fine coat of milord inglese! no, no! i understand. i will find you something--patience, patience!" and he began to grope among a number of things that were thrown in a confused heap at the back of the shop. while in this attitude he looked so gaunt and grim that he reminded me of an aged vulture stooping over carrion, and yet there was something pitiable about him too. in a way i was sorry for him; a poor half-witted wretch, whose life had been full of such gall and wormwood. what a different fate was his to mine, i thought. _i_ had endured but one short night of agony; how trifling it seemed compared to his hourly remorse and suffering! he hated nina for an act of thoughtlessness; well, no doubt she was not the only woman whose existence annoyed him; it was most probably that he was at enmity with all women. i watched him pityingly as he searched among the worn-out garments which were his stock-in-trade, and wondered why death, so active in smiting down the strongest in the city, should have thus cruelly passed by this forlorn wreck of human misery, for whom the grave would have surely been a most welcome release and rest. he turned round at last with an exulting gesture. "i have found it!" he exclaimed. "the very thing to suit you. you are perhaps a coral-fisher? you will like a fisherman's dress. here is one, red sash, cap and all, in beautiful condition! he that wore it was about your height it will fit you as well as it fitted him, and, look you! the plague is not in it, the sea has soaked through and through it; it smells of the sand and weed." he spread out the rough garb before me. i glanced at it carelessly. "did the former wearer kill his wife?" i asked, with a slight smile. the old rag-picker shook his head and made a sign with his outspread fingers expressive of contempt. "not he!--he was a fool--he killed himself." "how was that? by accident or design?" "che! che! he knew very well what he was doing. it happened only two months since. it was for the sake of a black-eyed jade, she lives and laughs all day long up at sorrento. he had been on a long voyage, he brought her pearls for her throat and coral pins for her hair. she had promised to marry him. he had just landed, he met her on the quay, he offered her the pearl and coral trinkets. she threw them back and told him she was tired of him. just that--nothing more. he tried to soften her; she raged at him like a tiger-cat. yes, i was one of the little crowd that stood round them on the quay, i saw it all. her black eyes flashed, she stamped and bit her lips at him, her full bosom heaved as though it would burst her laced bodice. she was only a market-girl, but she gave herself the airs of a queen. 'i am tired of you!' she said to him. 'go! i wish to see you no more.' he was tall and well-made, a powerful fellow; but he staggered, his face grew pale, his lips quivered. he bent his head a little--turned--and before any hand could stop him he sprung from the edge of the quay into the waves, they closed over his head, for he did not try to swim; he just sunk down, down, like a stone. next day his body came ashore, and i bought his clothes for two francs; you shall have them for four." "and what became of the girl?" i asked. "oh, she! she laughs all day long, as i told you. she has a new lover every week. what should she care?" i drew out my purse. "i will take this suit," i said. "you ask four francs, here are six, but for the extra two you must show me some private corner where i can dress." "yes, yes. but certainly!" and the old fellow trembled all over with avaricious eagerness as i counted the silver pieces into his withered palm. "anything to oblige a generous stranger! there is the place i sleep in; it is not much, but there is a mirror--her mirror--the only thing i keep of hers; come this way, come this way!" and stumbling hastily along, almost falling over the disordered bundles of clothing that lay about in all directions, he opened a little door that seemed to be cut in the wall, and led me into a kind of close cupboard, smelling most vilely, and furnished with a miserable pallet bed and one broken chair. a small square pane of glass admitted light enough to see all that there was to be seen, and close to this extemporized window hung the mirror alluded to, a beautiful thing set in silver of antique workmanship, the costliness of which i at once recognized, though into the glass itself i dared not for the moment look. the old man showed me with some pride that the door to this narrow den of his locked from within. "i made the lock and key, and fitted it all myself," he said. "look how neat and strong! yes; i was clever once at all that work--it was my trade--till that morning when i found her with the singer from venice; then i forgot all i used to know--it went away somehow, i could never understand why. here is the fisherman's suit; you can take your time to put it on; fasten the door; the room is at your service." and he nodded several times in a manner that was meant to be friendly, and left me. i followed his advice at once and locked myself in. then i stepped steadily to the mirror hanging on the wall, and looked at my own reflection. a bitter pang shot through me. the dealer's sight was good, he had said truly. i was old! if twenty years of suffering had passed over my head, they could hardly have changed me more terribly. my illness had thinned my face and marked it with deep lines of pain; my eyes had retreated far back into my head, while a certain wildness of expression in them bore witness to the terrors i had suffered in the vault, and to crown all, my hair was indeed perfectly white. i understood now the alarm of the man who had sold me grapes on the highway that morning; my appearance was strange enough to startle any one. indeed, i scarcely recognized myself. would my wife, would guido recognize me? almost i doubted it. this thought was so painful to me that the tears sprung to my eyes. i brushed them away in haste. "fy on thee, fabio! be a man!" i said, addressing myself angrily. "of what matter after all whether hairs are black or white? what matter how the face changes, so long as the heart is true? for a moment, perhaps, thy love may grow pale at sight of thee; but when she knows of thy sufferings, wilt thou not be dearer to her than ever? will not one of her soft embraces recompense thee for all thy past anguish, and suffice to make thee young again?" and thus encouraging my sinking spirits, i quickly arrayed myself in the neapolitan coral-fisher's garb. the trousers were very loose, and were provided with two long deep pockets, convenient receptacles, which easily contained the leathern bags of gold and jewels i had taken from the brigand's coffin. when my hasty toilet was completed i took another glance at the mirror, this time with a half smile. true, i was greatly altered; but after all i did not look so bad. the fisherman's picturesque costume became me well; the scarlet cap sat jauntily on the snow-white curls that clustered so thickly over my forehead, and the consciousness i had of approaching happiness sent a little of the old fearless luster back into my sunken eyes. besides, i knew i should not always have this care-worn and wasted appearance; rest, and perhaps a change of air, would infallibly restore the roundness to my face and the freshness to my complexion; even my white locks might return to their pristine color, such things had been; and supposing they remained white? well!--there were many who would admire the peculiar contrast between a young man's face and an old man's hair. having finished dressing, i unlocked the door of the stuffy little cabin and called the old rag-picker. he came shuffling along with his head bent, but raising his eyes as he approached me, he threw up his hands in astonishment, exclaiming, "santissima madonna! but you are a fine man--a fine man! eh, eh! holy joseph! what height and breadth! a pity--a pity you are old; you must have been strong when you were young!" half in joke, and half to humor him in his fancy for mere muscular force, i rolled up the sleeve of my jacket to the shoulder, saying, lightly, "oh, as for being strong! there is plenty of strength in me still, you see." he stared; laid his yellow fingers on my bared arm with a kind of ghoul-like interest and wonder, and felt the muscles of it with childish, almost maudlin admiration. "beautiful, beautiful!" he mumbled. "like iron--just think of it! yes, yes. you could kill anything easily. ah! i used to be like that once. i was clever at sword-play. i could, with well-tempered steel, cut asunder a seven-times-folded piece of silk at one blow without fraying out a thread. yes, as neatly as one cuts butter! you could do that too if you liked. it all lies in the arm--the brave arm that kills at a single stroke." and he gazed at me intently with his small blear eyes as though anxious to know more of my character and temperament. i turned abruptly from him, and called his attention to my own discarded garments. "see," i said, carelessly; "you can have these, though they are not of much value. and, stay, here are another three francs for some socks and shoes, which i dare say you can find to suit me." he clasped his hands ecstatically, and poured out a torrent of thanks and praises for this additional and unexpected sum, and protesting by all the saints that he and the entire contents of his shop were at the service of so generous a stranger, he at once produced the articles i asked for. i put them on--and then stood up thoroughly equipped and ready to make my way back to my own home when i chose. but i had resolved on one thing. seeing that i was so greatly changed, i determined not to go to the villa romani by daylight, lest i should startle my wife too suddenly. women are delicate; my unexpected appearance might give her a nervous shock which perhaps would have serious results. i would wait till the sun had set, and then go up to the house by a back way i knew of, and try to get speech with one of the servants. i might even meet my friend guido ferrari, and he would break the joyful news of my return from death to nina by degrees, and also prepare her for my altered looks. while these thoughts flitted rapidly through my brain, the old ragpicker stood near me with his head on one side like a meditative raven, and regarded me intently. "are you going far?" he asked at last, with a kind of timidity. "yes," i answered him, abruptly; "very far." he laid a detaining hand on my sleeve, and his eyes glittered--with a malignant expression. "tell me," he muttered, eagerly, "tell me--i will keep the secret. are you going to a woman?" i looked down upon him, half in disdain, half in amusement. "yes!" i said, quietly, "i am going to a woman." he broke into silent laughter--hideous laughter that contorted his visage and twisted his body in convulsive writhings. i glanced at him in disgust, and shaking off his hand from my arm, i made my way to the door of the shop. he hobbled quickly after me, wiping away the moisture that his inward merriment had brought into his eyes. "going to a woman!" he croaked. "ha, ha! you are not the first, nor will you be the last, that has gone so! going to a woman! that is well--that is good! go to her, go! you are strong, you have a brave arm! go to her, find her out, and--kill her! yes, yes--you will be able to do it easily--quite easily! go and kill her." he stood at his low door mouthing and pointing, his stunted figure and evil face reminding me of one of heinrich heine's dwarf devils who are depicted as piling fire on the heads of the saints. i bade him "good day" in an indifferent tone, but he made me no answer. i walked slowly away. looking back once i saw him still standing on the threshold of his wretched dwelling, his wicked mouth working itself into all manner of grimaces, while with his crooked fingers he made signs in the air as if he caught an invisible something and throttled it. i went on down the street and out of it into the broader thoroughfares, with his last words ringing in my ears, "go and kill her!" chapter vii. that day seemed very long to me i wandered aimlessly about the city, seeing few faces that i knew, for the wealthier inhabitants, afraid of the cholera, had either left the place together or remained closely shut within their own houses. everywhere i went something bore witness to the terrible ravages of the plague. at almost every corner i met a funeral procession. once i came upon a group of men who were standing in an open door way packing a dead body into a coffin too small for it. there was something truly revolting in the way they doubled up the arms and legs and squeezed in the shoulders of the deceased man--one could hear the bones crack. i watched the brutal proceedings for a minute or so, and then i said aloud: "you had better make sure he is quite dead." the beccamorti looked at me in surprise; one laughed grimly and swore. "by the body of god, if i thought he were not i would twist his accursed neck for him! but the cholera never fails, he is dead for certain--see!" and he knocked the head of the corpse to and fro against the sides of the coffin with no more compunction than if it had been a block of wood. sickened at the sight, i turned away and said no more. on reaching one of the more important thoroughfares i perceived several knots of people collected, who glanced at one another with eager yet shamed faces, and spoke in low voices. a whisper reached my ears, "the king! the king!" all heads were turned in one direction; i paused and looked also. walking at a leisurely pace, accompanied by a few gentlemen of earnest mien and grave deportment, i saw the fearless monarch, humbert of italy--he whom his subjects delight to honor. he was making a round of visits to all the vilest holes and corners of the city, where the plague raged most terribly--he had not so much as a cigarette in his mouth to ward off infection. he walked with the easy and assured step of a hero; his face was somewhat sad, as though the sufferings of his people had pressed heavily upon his sympathetic heart. i bared my head reverently as he passed, his keen kind eyes lighted on me with a smile. "a subject for a painting, yon white-haired fisherman!" i heard him say to one of his attendants. almost i betrayed myself. i was on the point of springing forward and throwing myself at his feet to tell him my story. it seemed to me both cruel and unnatural that he, my beloved sovereign, should pass me without recognition--me, to whom he had spoken so often and so cordially. for when i visited rome, as i was accustomed to do annually, there were few more welcome guests at the balls of the quirinal palace than count fabio romani. i began to wonder stupidly who fabio romani was; the gay gallant known as such seemed no longer to have any existence--a "white-haired fisherman" usurped his place. but though i thought these things i refrained from addressing the king. some impulse, however, led me to follow him at a respectful distance, as did also many others. his majesty strolled through the most pestilential streets with as much unconcern as though he were taking his pleasure in a garden of roses; he stepped quietly into the dirtiest hovels where lay both dead and dying; he spoke words of kindly encouragement to the grief-stricken and terrified mourners, who stared through their tears at the monarch with astonishment and gratitude; silver and gold were gently dropped into the hands of the suffering poor, and the very pressing cases received the royal benefactor's personal attention and immediate relief. mothers with infants in their arms knelt to implore the king's blessing--which to pacify them he gave with a modest hesitation, as though he thought himself unworthy, and yet with a parental tenderness that was infinitely touching. one wild-eyed, black-haired girl flung herself down on the ground right in the king's path; she kissed his feet, and then sprung erect with a gesture of triumph. "i am saved!" she cried; "the plague cannot walk in the same road with the king!" humbert smiled, and regarded her somewhat as an indulgent father might regard a spoiled daughter; but he said nothing, and passed on. a cluster of men and women standing at the open door of one of the poorest-looking houses in the street next attracted the monarch's attention. there was some noisy argument going on; two or three beccamorti were loudly discussing together and swearing profusely--some women were crying bitterly, and in the center of the excited group a coffin stood on end as though waiting for an occupant. one of the gentlemen in attendance on the king preceded him and announced his approach, whereupon the loud clamor of tongues ceased, the men bared their heads, and the women checked their sobs. "what is wrong here, my friends?" the monarch asked with exceeding gentleness. there was silence for a moment; the beccamorti looked sullen and ashamed. then one of the women, with a fat good-natured face and eyes rimmed redly round with weeping, elbowed her way through the little throng to the front and spoke. "may the holy virgin and saints bless your majesty!" she cried, in shrill accents. "and as for what is wrong, it would soon be right if those shameless pigs," pointing to the beccamorti, "would let us alone. they would kill a man rather than wait an hour--one little hour! the girl is dead, your majesty--and giovanni, poor lad! will not leave her; he has his two arms round her tight--holy virgin!--think of it! and she a cholera corpse--and do what we can, he will not be parted from her, and they seek her body for the burial. and if we force him away, poverino, he will lose his head for certain. one little hour, your majesty, just one, and the reverend father will come and persuade giovanni better than we can." the king raised his hand with a slight gesture of command--the little crowd parted before him--and he entered the miserable dwelling wherein lay the corpse that was the cause of all the argument. his attendants followed; i, too, availed myself of a corner in the doorway. the scene disclosed was so terribly pathetic that few could look upon it without emotion--humbert of italy himself uncovered his head and stood silent. on a poor pallet bed lay the fair body of a girl in her first youth, her tender loveliness as yet untouched even by the disfiguring marks of the death that had overtaken her. one would have thought she slept, had it not been for the rigidity of her stiffened limbs, and the wax-like pallor of her face and hands. right across her form, almost covering it from view, a man lay prone, as though he had fallen there lifeless--indeed he might have been dead also for any sign he showed to the contrary. his arms were closed firmly round the girl's corpse--his face was hidden from view on the cold breast that would no more respond to the warmth of his caresses. a straight beam of sunlight shot like a golden spear into the dark little room and lighted up the whole scene--the prostrate figures on the bed--the erect form of the compassionate king, and the grave and anxious faces of the little crowd of people who stood around him. "see! that is the way he has been ever since last night when she died," whispered the woman who had before spoken; "and his hands are clinched round her like iron--one cannot move a finger!" the king advanced. he touched the shoulder of the unhappy lover. his voice, modulated to an exquisite softness, struck on the ears of the listeners like a note of cheerful music. "figlio mio!" there was no answer. the women, touched by the simple endearing words of the monarch, began to sob though gently, and even the men brushed a few drops from their eyes. again the king spoke. "figlio mio! i am your king. have you no greeting for me?" the man raised his head from its pillow on the breast of the beloved corpse and stared vacantly at the royal speaker. his haggard face, tangled hair, and wild eyes gave him the appearance of one who had long wandered in a labyrinth of frightful visions from which there was no escape but self-murder. "your hand, my son!" resumed the king in a tone of soldier-like authority. very slowly--very reluctantly--as though he were forced to the action by some strange magnetic influence which he had no power to withstand, he loosened his right arm from the dead form it clasped so pertinaciously, and stretched forth the hand as commanded. humbert caught it firmly within his own and held it fast--then looking the poor fellow full in the face, he said with grave steadiness and simplicity, "there is no death in love, my friend!" the young man's eyes met his--his set mouth softened--and wresting his hand passionately from that of the king, he broke into a passion of weeping. humbert at once placed a protecting arm around him, and with the assistance of one of his attendants raised him from the bed, and led him unresistingly away, as passively obedient as a child, though sobbing convulsively as he went. the rush of tears had saved his reason, and most probably his life. a murmur of enthusiastic applause greeted the good king as he passed through the little throng of persons who had witnessed what had taken place. acknowledging it with a quiet unaffected bow, he left the house, and signed to the beccamorti, who still waited outside, that they were now free to perform their melancholy office. he then went on his way attended by more heart-felt blessings and praises than ever fell to the lot of the proudest conqueror returning with the spoils of a hundred battles. i looked after his retreating figure till i could see it no more--i felt that i had grown stronger for the mere presence of a hero--a man who indeed was "every inch a king." i am a royalist--yes. governed by such a sovereign, few men of calm reason would be otherwise. but royalist though i am, i would assist in bringing about the dethronement and death of a mean tyrant, were he crowned king a hundred times over! few monarchs are like humbert of italy--even now my heart warms when i think of him--in all the distraction of my sufferings, his figure stands out like a supreme embodied beneficent force surrounded by the clear light of unselfish goodness--a light in which italia suns her fair face and smiles again with the old sweet smile of her happiest days of high achievement--days in which her children were great, simply because they were earnest. the fault of all modern labor lies in the fact that there is no heart in anything we do--we seldom love our work for work's sake--we perform it solely for what we can get by it. therein lies the secret of failure. friends will scarcely serve each other unless they can also serve their own interests--true, there are exceptions to this rule, but they are deemed fools for their pains. as soon as the king disappeared i also left the scene of the foregoing incident. i had a fancy to visit the little restaurant where i had been taken ill, and after some trouble i found it. the door stood open. i saw the fat landlord, pietro, polishing his glasses as though he had never left off; and there in the same corner was the very wooden bench on which i had lain--where i had--as was generally supposed--died. i stepped in. the landlord looked up and bade me good-day. i returned his salutation, and ordered some coffee and rolls of bread. seating myself carelessly at one of the little tables i turned over the newspaper, while he bustled about in haste to serve me. as he dusted and rubbed up a cup and saucer for my use, he said, briskly, "you have had a long voyage, amico? and successful fishing?" for a moment i was confused and knew not what to answer, but gathering my wits together i smiled and answered readily in the affirmative. "and you?" i said, gayly. "how goes the cholera?" the landlord shook his head dolefully. "holy joseph! do not speak of it. the people die like flies in a honey-pot. only yesterday--body of bacchus!--who would have thought it?" and he sighed deeply as he poured out the steaming coffee, and shook his head more sorrowfully than before. "why, what happened yesterday?" i asked, though i knew perfectly well what he was going to say; "i am a stranger in naples, and empty of news." the perspiring pietro laid a fat thumb on the marble top of the table, and with it traced a pattern meditatively. "you never heard of the rich count romani?" he inquired. i made a sign in the negative, and bent my face over my coffee-cup. "ah, well!" he went on with a half groan, "it does not matter--there is no count romani any more. it is all gone--finished! but he was rich--as rich as the king, they say--yet see how low the saints brought him! fra cipriano of the benedictines carried him in here yesterday morning--he was struck by the plague--in five hours he was dead," here the landlord caught a mosquito and killed it--"ah! as dead as that zinzara! yes, he lay dead on that very wooden bench opposite to you. they buried him before sunset. it is like a bad dream!" i affected to be deeply engrossed with the cutting and spreading of my roll and butter. "i see nothing particular about it," i said, indifferently. "that he was rich is nothing--rich and poor must die alike." "and that is true, very true," assented pietro, with another groan, "for not all his property could save the blessed cipriano." i started, but quickly controlled myself. "what do you mean?" i asked, as carelessly as i could. "are you talking of some saint?" "well, if he were not canonized he deserves to be," replied the landlord; "i speak of the holy benedictine father who brought hither the count romani in a dying condition. ah i little he knew how soon the good god would call him himself!" i felt a sickening sensation at my heart. "is he dead?" i exclaimed. "dead as the martyrs!" answered pietro. "he caught the plague, i suppose, from the count, for he was bending over him to the last. ay, and he sprinkled holy water over the corpse, and laid his own crucifix upon it in the coffin. then up he went to the villa romani, taking with him the count's trinkets, his watch, ring, and cigar-case--and nothing would satisfy him but that he should deliver them himself to the young contessa, telling her how her husband died." my poor nina!--i thought. "was she much grieved?" i inquired, with a vague curiosity. "how do i know?" said the landlord, shrugging his bulky shoulders. "the reverend father said nothing, save that she swooned away. but what of that? women swoon at everything--from a mouse to a corpse. as i said, the good cipriano attended the count's burial--and he had scarce returned from it when he was seized with the illness. and this morning he died at the monastery--may his soul rest in peace! i heard the news only an hour ago. ah! he was a holy man! he has promised me a warm corner in paradise, and i know he will keep his word as truly as st. peter himself." i pushed away the rest of my meal untasted. the food choked me. i could have shed tears for the noble, patient life thus self-sacrificed. one hero the less in this world of unheroic, uninspired persons! i sat silent, lost in sorrowful thought. the landlord looked at me curiously. "the coffee does not please you?" he said at last. "you have no appetite?" i forced a smile. "nay--your words would take the edge off the keenest appetite ever born of the breath of the sea. truly naples affords but sorry entertainment to a stranger; is there naught to hear but stories of the dying and the dead?" pietro put on an air that was almost apologetic. "well, truly!" he answered, resignedly--"very little else. but what would you, amico? it is the plague and the will of god." as he said the last words my gaze was caught and riveted by the figure of a man strolling leisurely past the door of the cafe. it was guido ferrari--my friend! i would have rushed out to speak to him--but something in his look and manner checked the impulse as it rose in me. he was walking very slowly, smoking a cigar as he went; there was a smile on his face, and in his coat he wore a freshly-gathered rose la gloire de france, similar to those that grew in such profusion on the upper terrace of my villa. i stared at him as he passed--my feelings underwent a kind of shock. he looked perfectly happy and tranquil, happier indeed than ever i remembered to have seen him, and yet--and yet, according to his knowledge, i, his best friend, had died only yesterday! with this sorrow fresh upon him, he could smile like a man going to a festa, and wear a coral-pink rose, which surely was no sign of mourning! for one moment i felt hurt, the next, i laughed at my own sensitiveness. after all, what of the smile, what of the rose! a man could not always be answerable for the expression of his countenance, and as for the flower, he might have gathered it en passent, without thinking, or what was still more likely, the child stella might have given it to him, in which case he would have worn it to please her. he displayed no badge of mourning? true!--but then consider--i had only died yesterday! there had been no time to procure all those outward appurtenances of woe which social customs rendered necessary, but which were no infallible sign of the heart's sincerity. satisfied with my own self-reasoning i made no attempt to follow guido in his walk--i let him go on his way unconscious of my existence. i would wait, i thought, till the evening--then everything would be explained. i turned to the landlord. "how much to pay?" i asked. "what you will, amico" he replied--"i am never hard on the fisher folk--but times are bad, or you would be welcome to a breakfast for nothing. many and many a day have i done as much for men of your craft, and the blessed cipriano who is gone used to say that st. peter would remember me for it. it is true the madonna gives a special blessing if one looks after the fishers, because all the holy apostles were of the trade; and i would be loth to lose her protection--yet--" i laughed and tossed him a franc. he pocketed it at once and his eyes twinkled. "though you have not taken half a franc's worth," he admitted, with an honesty very unusual in a neapolitan--"but the saints will make it up to you, never fear!" "i am sure of that!" i said, gayly. "addio, my friend! prosperity to you and our lady's favor!" this salutation, which i knew to be a common one with sicilian mariners, the good pietro responded to with amiable heartiness, wishing me luck on my next voyage. he then betook himself anew to the polishing of his glasses--and i passed the rest of the day in strolling about the least frequented streets of the city, and longing impatiently for the crimson glory of the sunset, which, like a wide flag of triumph, was to be the signal of my safe return to love and happiness. chapter viii. it came at last, the blessed, the longed-for evening. a soft breeze sprung up, cooling the burning air after the heat of the day, and bringing with it the odors of a thousand flowers. a regal glory of shifting colors blazed on the breast of heaven--the bay, motionless as a mirror, reflected all the splendid tints with a sheeny luster that redoubled their magnificence. pricked in every vein by the stinging of my own desires, i yet restrained myself; i waited till the sun sunk below the glassy waters--till the pomp and glow attending its departure had paled into those dim, ethereal hues which are like delicate draperies fallen from the flying forms of angels--till the yellow rim of the round full moon rose languidly on the edge of the horizon--and then keeping back my eagerness no longer, i took the well-known road ascending to the villa romani. my heart beat high--my limbs trembled with excitement--my steps were impatient and precipitate--never had the way seemed so long. at last i reached the great gate-way--it was locked fast--its sculptured lions looked upon me frowningly. i heard the splash and tinkle of the fountains within, the scents of the roses and myrtle were wafted toward me with every breath i drew. home at last! i smiled--my whole frame quivered with expectancy and delight. it was not my intention to seek admission by the principal entrance--i contented myself with one long, loving look, and turned to the left, where there was a small private gate leading into an avenue of ilex and pine, interspersed with orange-trees. this was a favorite walk of mine, partly on account of its pleasant shade even in the hottest noon--partly because it was seldom frequented by any member of the household save myself. guido occasionally took a turn with me there, but i was more often alone, and i was fond of pacing up and down in the shadow of the trees, reading some favorite book, or giving myself up to the dolce far niente of my own imaginings. the avenue led round to the back of the villa, and as i now entered it, i thought i would approach the house cautiously by this means and get private speech with assunta, the nurse who had charge of little stella, and who was moreover an old and tried family servant, in whose arms my mother had breathed her last. the dark trees rustled solemnly as i stepped quickly yet softly along the familiar moss-grown path. the place was very still--sometimes the nightingales broke into a bubbling torrent of melody, and then were suddenly silent, as though overawed by the shadows of the heavy interlacing boughs, through which the moonlight flickered, casting strange and fantastic patterns on the ground. a cloud of lucciole broke from a thicket of laurel, and sparkled in the air like gems loosened from a queen's crown. faint odors floated about me, shaken from orange boughs and trailing branches of white jasmine. i hastened on, my spirits rising higher the nearer i approached my destination. i was full of sweet anticipation and passionate longing--i yearned to clasp my beloved nina in my arms--to see her lovely lustrous eyes looking fondly into mine--i was eager to shake guido by the hand--and as for stella, i knew the child would be in bed at that hour, but still, i thought, i must have her wakened to see me. i felt that my happiness would not be complete till i had kissed her little cherub face, and caressed those clustering curls of hers that were like spun gold. hush--hush! what was that? i stopped in my rapid progress as though suddenly checked by an invisible hand. i listened with strained ears. that sound--was it not a rippling peal of gay sweet laughter? a shiver shook me from head to foot. it was my wife's laugh--i knew the silvery chime of it well! my heart sunk coldly--i paused irresolute. she could laugh then like that, while she thought me lying dead--dead and out of her reach forever! all at once i perceived the glimmer of a white robe through the trees; obeying my own impulse, i stepped softly aside--i hid behind a dense screen of foliage through which i could see without being seen. the clear laugh rang out once again on the stillness--its brightness pierced my brain like a sharp sword! she was happy--she was even merry--she wandered here in the moonlight joyous-hearted, while i--i had expected to find her close shut within her room, or else kneeling before the mater dolorosa in the little chapel, praying for my soul's rest, and mingling her prayers with her tears! yes--i had expected this--we men are such fools when we love women! suddenly a terrible thought struck me. had she gone mad? had the shock and grief of my so unexpected death turned her delicate brain? was she roaming about, poor child, like ophelia, knowing not whither she went, and was her apparent gayety the fantastic mirth of a disordered brain? i shuddered at the idea--and bending slightly apart the boughs behind which i was secreted, i looked out anxiously. two figures were slowly approaching--my wife and my friend, guido ferrari. well--there was nothing in that--it was as it should be--was not guido as my brother? it was almost his duty to console and cheer nina as much as lay in his power. but stay! stay! did i see aright--was she simply leaning on his arm for support--or--a fierce oath, that was almost a cry of torture, broke from my lips! oh, would to god i had died! would to god i had never broken open the coffin in which i lay at peace! what was death--what were the horrors of the vault--what was anything i had suffered to the anguish that racked me now? the memory of it to this day burns in my brain like inextinguishable fire, and my hand involuntarily clinches itself in an effort to beat back the furious bitterness of that moment! i know not how i restrained the murderous ferocity that awoke within me--how i forced myself to remain motionless and silent in my hiding-place. but i did. i watched the miserable comedy out to its end. i looked dumbly on at my own betrayal! i saw my honor stabbed to the death by those whom i most trusted, and yet i gave no sign! they--guido ferrari and my wife--came so close to my hiding-place that i could note every gesture and hear every word they uttered. they paused within three steps of me--his arm encircled her waist--hers was thrown carelessly around his neck--her head rested on his shoulder. even so had she walked with me a thousand times! she was dressed in pure white save for one spot of deep color near her heart--a red rose, as red as blood. it was pinned there with a diamond pin that flashed in the moonlight. i thought wildly, that instead of that rose, there should be blood indeed--instead of a diamond pin there should be the good steel of a straight dagger! but i had no weapon--i stared at her, dry-eyed and mute. she looked lovely--exquisitely lovely! no trace of grief marred the fairness of her face--her eyes were as languidly limpid and tender as ever--her lips were parted in the child-like smile that was so sweet--so innocently trustful! she spoke--ah, heaven! the old bewitching music of her low voice made my heart leap and my brain reel. "you foolish guido!" she said, in dreamily amused accents. "what would have happened, i wonder, if fabio had not died so opportunely." i waited eagerly for the answer. guido laughed lightly. "he would never have discovered anything. you were too clever for him, piccinina! besides, his conceit saved him--he had so good an opinion of himself that he would not have deemed it possible for you to care for any other man." my wife--flawless diamond-pearl of pure womanhood!--sighed half restlessly. "i am glad he is dead!" she murmured; "but, guido mio, you are imprudent. you cannot visit me now so often--the servants will talk! then i must go into mourning for at least six months--and there are many other things to consider." guide's hand played with the jeweled necklace she wore--he bent and kissed the place where its central pendant rested. again--again, good sir, i pray you! let no faint scruples interfere with your rightful enjoyment! cover the white flesh with caresses--it is public property! a dozen kisses more or less will not signify! so i madly thought as i crouched among the trees--the tigerish wrath within me making the blood beat in my head like a hundred hammer-strokes. "nay then, my love," he replied to her, "it is almost a pity fabio is dead! while he lived he played an excellent part as a screen--he was an unconscious, but veritable duenna of propriety for both of us, as no one else could be!" the boughs that covered me creaked and rustled. my wife started, and looked uneasily round her. "hush!" she said, nervously. "he was buried only yesterday--and they say there are ghosts sometimes. this avenue, too--i wish we had not come here--it was his favorite walk. besides," she added, with a slight accent of regret, "after all he was the father of my child--you must think of that." "by heaven!" exclaimed guido, fiercely, "do i not think of it? ay--and i curse him for every kiss he stole from your lips!" i listened half stupefied. here was a new phase of the marriage law! husbands were thieves then--they "stole" kisses; only lovers were honest in their embraces! oh, my dear friend--my more than brother--how near you were to death at that moment! had you but seen my face peering pallidly through the dusky leaves--could you have known the force of the fury pent up within me--you would not have valued your life at one baiocco! "why did you marry him?" he asked, after a little pause, during which he toyed with the fair curls that floated against his breast. she looked up with a little mutinous pout, and shrugged her shoulders. "why? because i was tired of the convent, and all the stupid, solemn ways of the nuns; also because he was rich, and i was horribly poor. i cannot bear to be poor! then he loved me"--here her eyes glimmered with malicious triumph--"yes--he was mad for me--and--" "you loved him?" demanded guido, almost fiercely. "ma che!" she answered, with an expressive gesture. "i suppose i did--for a week or two. as much as one ever loves a husband! what does one marry for at all? for convenience--money--position--he gave me these things, as you know." "you will gain nothing by marrying me, then," he said, jealously. she laughed, and laid her little white hand, glittering with rings, lightly against his lips. "of course not! besides--have i said i will marry you? you are very agreeable as a lover--but otherwise--i am not sure! and i am free now--i can do as i like; i want to enjoy my liberty, and--" she was not allowed to complete her sentence, for ferrari snatched her close to his breast and held her there as in a vise. his face was aflame with passion. "look you, nina," he said, hoarsely, "you shall not fool me, by heaven! you shall not! i have endured enough at your hands, god knows! when i saw you for the first time on the day of your marriage with that poor fool, fabio--i loved you, madly--ay, wickedly as i then thought, but not for the sin of it did i repent. i knew you were woman, not angel, and i waited my time. it came--i sought you--i told you my story of love ere three months of wedded life had passed over your head. i found you willing--ready--nay, eager to hear me! you led me on; you know you did! you tempted me by touch, word and look; you gave me all i sought! why try to excuse it now? you are as much my wife as ever you were fabio's--nay--you are more so, for you love me--at least you say so--and though you lied to your husband, you dare not lie to me. i tell you, you dare not! i never pitied fabio, never--he was too easily duped, and a married man has no right to be otherwise than suspicious and ever on his guard; if he relaxes in his vigilance he has only himself to blame when his honor is flung like a ball from hand to hand, as one plays with a child's toy. i repeat to you, nina, you are mine, and i swear you shall never escape me!" the impetuous words coursed rapidly from his lips, and his deep musical voice had a defiant ring as it fell on the stillness of the evening air. i smiled bitterly as i heard! she struggled in his arms half angrily. "let me go," she said. "you are rough, you hurt me!" he released her instantly. the violence of his embrace had crushed the rose she wore, and its crimson leaves fluttered slowly down one by one on the ground at her feet. her eyes flashed resentfully, and an impatient frown contracted her fair level brows. she looked away from him in silence, the silence of a cold disdain. something in her attitude pained him, for he sprung forward and caught her hand, covering it with kisses. "forgive me, carina mia" he cried, repentantly. "i did not mean to reproach you. you cannot help being beautiful--it is the fault of god or the devil that you are so, and that your beauty maddens me! you are the heart of my heart, the soul of my soul! oh, nina mia, let us not waste words in useless anger. think of it, we are free--free! free to make life a long dream of delight--delight more perfect than angels can know! the greatest blessing that could have befallen us is the death of fabio, and now that we are all in all to each other, do not harden yourself against me! nina, be gentle with me--of all things in the world, surely love is best!" she smiled, with the pretty superior smile of a young empress pardoning a recreant subject, and suffered him to draw her again, but with more gentleness, into his embrace. she put up her lips to meet his--i looked on like a man in a dream! i saw them cling together--each kiss they exchanged was a fresh stab to my tortured soul. "you are so foolish, guido mio" she pouted, passing her little jeweled fingers through his clustering hair with a light caress--"so impetuous--so jealous! i have told you over and over again that i love you! do you not remember that night when fabio sat out on the balcony reading his plato, poor fellow!"--here she laughed musically--"and we were trying over some songs in the drawing--room--did i not say then that i loved you best of any one in the world? you know i did! you ought to be satisfied!" guido smiled, and stroked her shining golden curls. "i am satisfied," he said, without any trace of his former heated impatience--"perfectly satisfied. but do not expect to find love without jealousy. fabio was never jealous--i know--he trusted you too implicitly--he was nothing of a lover, believe me! he thought more of himself than of you. a man who will go away for days at a time on solitary yachting and rambling excursions, leaving his wife to her own devices--a man who reads plato in preference to looking after her, decides his own fate, and deserves to be ranked with those so-called wise but most ignorant philosophers to whom woman has always remained an unguessed riddle. as for me--i am jealous of the ground you tread upon--of the air that touches you--i was jealous of fabio while he lived--and--by heaven!"--his eyes darkened with a somber wrath--"if any other man dared now to dispute your love with me i would not rest till his body had served my sword as a sheath!" nina raised her head from his breast with an air of petulant weariness. "again!" she murmured, reproachfully, "you are going to be angry again!" he kissed her. "not i, sweet one! i will be as gentle as you wish, so long as you love me and only me. come--this avenue is damp and chilly for you--shall we go in?" my wife--nay, i should say our wife, as we had both shared her impartial favors--assented. with arms interlaced and walking slowly, they began to retrace their steps toward the house. once they paused. "do you hear the nightingales?" asked guido. hear them! who could not hear them? a shower of melody rained from the trees on every side--the pure, sweet, passionate tones pierced the ear like the repeated chime of little golden bells--the beautiful, the tender, the god-inspired birds sung their love-stories simply and with perfect rapture--love-stories untainted by hypocrisy--unsullied by crime--different, ah! so very different from the love-stories of selfish humanity! the exquisite poetic idyl of a bird's life and love--is it not a thing to put us inferior creatures to shame--for are we ever as true to our vows as the lark to his mate?--are we as sincere in our thanksgivings for the sunlight as the merry robin who sings as blithely in the winter snow as in the flower-filled mornings of spring? nay--not we! our existence is but one long impotent protest against god, combined with an insatiate desire to get the better of one another in the struggle for base coin! nina listened--and shivered, drawing her light scarf more closely about her shoulders. "i hate them," she said, pettishly; "their noise is enough to pierce one's ears. and he used to be so fond of them! he used to sing--what was it? 'ti salute, rosignuolo, nel tuo duolo, il saluto! sei l'amante della rosa che morendo si fa sposa!'" her rich voice rippled out on the air, rivaling the songs of the nightingales themselves. she broke off with a little laugh-- "poor fabio! there was always a false note somewhere when he sung. come, guido!" and they paced on quietly, as though their consciences were clean--as though no just retribution dogged their steps--as though no shadow of a terrible vengeance loomed in the heaven of their pilfered happiness! i watched them steadily as they disappeared in the distance--i stretched my head eagerly out from between the dark boughs and gazed after their retreating figures till the last glimmer of my wife's white robe had vanished behind the thick foliage. they were gone--they would return no more that night. i sprung out from my hiding-place. i stood on the spot where they had stood. i tried to bring home to myself the actual truth of what i had witnessed. my brain whirled--circles of light swam giddily before me in the air--the moon looked blood-red. the solid earth seemed unsteady beneath my feet--almost i doubted whether i was indeed alive, or whether i was not rather the wretched ghost of my past self, doomed to return from the grave to look helplessly upon the loss and ruin of all the fair, once precious things of by-gone days. the splendid universe around me seemed no more upheld by the hand of god--no more a majestic marvel; it was to me but an inflated bubble of emptiness--a mere ball for devils to kick and spurn through space! of what avail these twinkling stars--these stately leaf-laden trees--these cups of fragrance we know as flowers--this round wonder of the eyes called nature? of what avail was god himself, i widely mused, since even he could not keep one woman true? she whom i loved--she as delicate of form, as angel-like in face as the child-bride of christ, st. agnes--she, even she was--what? a thing lower than the beasts, a thing as vile as the vilest wretch in female form that sells herself for a gold piece--a thing--great heaven!--for all men to despise and make light of--for the finger of scorn to point out--for the foul hissing tongue of scandal to mock at! this creature was my wife--the mother of my child--she had cast mud on her soul by her own free will and choice--she had selected evil as her good--she had crowned herself with shame willingly, nay--joyfully; she had preferred it to honor. what should be done? i tortured myself occasionally with this question. i stared blankly on the ground--would some demon spring from it and give me the answer i sought? what should be done with her--with him, my treacherous friend, my smiling betrayer? suddenly my eyes lighted on the fallen rose-leaves--those that had dropped when guido's embrace had crushed the flower she wore. there they lay on the path, curled softly at the edges like little crimson shells. i stooped and picked them up--i placed them all in the hollow of my hand and looked at them. they had a sweet odor--almost i kissed them--nay, nay, i could not--they had too recently lain on the breast of an embodied lie! yes; she was that, a lie, a living, lovely, but accursed lie! "go and kill her." stay! where had i heard that? painfully i considered, and at last remembered--and then i thought moodily that the starved and miserable rag-picker was more of a man than i. he had taken his revenge at once; while i, like a fool, had let occasion slip. yes, but not forever! there were different ways of vengeance; one must decide the best, the keenest way--and, above all, the way that shall inflict the longest, the cruelest agony upon those by whom honor is wronged. true--it would be sweet to slay sin in the act of sinning, but then--must a romani brand himself as a murderer in the sight of men? not so; there were other means--other roads, leading to the same end if the tired brain could only plan them out. slowly i dragged my aching limbs to the fallen trunk of a tree and sat down, still holding the dying rose-leaves in my clinched palm. there was a surging noise in my ears--my mouth tasted of blood, my lips were parched and burning as with fever. "a white-haired fisherman." that was me! the king had said so. mechanically i looked down at the clothes i wore--the former property of a suicide. "he was a fool," the vender of them had said, "he killed himself." yes, there was no doubt of it--he was a fool. i would not follow his example, or at least not yet. i had something to do first--something that must be done if i could only see my way clear to it. yes--if i could only see my way and follow it straightly, resolutely, remorselessly! my thoughts were confused, like the thoughts of a fever-stricken man in delirium--the scent of the rose-leaves i held sickened me strangely--yet i would not throw them from me; no, i would keep them to remind me of the embraces i had witnessed! i felt for my purse! i found and opened it, and placed the withering red petals carefully within it. as i slipped it again in my pocket i remembered the two leathern pouches i carried--the one filled with gold, the other with the jewels i had intended for--her. my adventures in the vault recurred to me; i smiled as i recollected the dire struggle i had made for life and liberty. life and liberty!--of what use were they to me now, save for one thing--revenge? i was not wanted; i was not expected back to refill my former place on earth--the large fortune i had possessed was now my wife's by the decree of my own last will and testament, which she would have no difficulty in proving. but still, wealth was mine--the hidden stores of the brigands were sufficient to make any man more than rich for the term of his natural life. as i considered this, a sort of dull pleasure throbbed in my veins. money! anything could be done for money--gold would purchase even vengeance. but what sort of vengeance? such a one as i sought must be unique--refined, relentless, and complete. i pondered deeply. the evening wind blew freshly up from the sea; the leaves of the swaying trees whispered mysteriously together; the nightingales warbled on with untired sweetness; and the moon, like the round shield of an angel warrior, shone brightly against the dense blue background of the sky. heedless of the passing of hours, i sat still, lost in a bewildered reverie. "there was always a false note somewhere when he sung!" so she had said, laughing that little laugh of hers as cold and sharp as the clash of steel. true, true; by all the majesty of heaven, most true! there was indeed a false note--jarring, not so much the voice as the music of life itself. there is stuff in all of us that will weave, as we desire it, into a web of stately or simple harmony; but let the meteor-like brilliancy of a woman's smile--a woman's touch--a woman's lie--intermingle itself with the strain, and lo! the false note is struck, discord declares itself, and god himself, the great composer, can do nothing in this life to restore the old calm tune of peaceful, unspoiled days! so i have found; so all of you must find, long before you and sorrow grow old together. "a white-haired fisherman!" the words of the king repeated themselves over and over again in my tortured brain. yes--i was greatly changed, i looked worn and old--no one would recognize me for my former self. all at once, with this thought, an idea occurred to me--a plan of vengeance, so bold, so new, and withal so terrible, that i started from my seat as though stung by an adder. i paced up and down restlessly, with this lurid light of fearful revenge pouring in on every nook and cranny of my darkened mind. from whence had come this daring scheme? what devil, or rather what angel of retribution, had whispered it to my soul? dimly i wondered--but amid all my wonder i began practically to arrange the details of my plot. i calculated every small circumstance that was likely to occur in the process of carrying it out. my stupefied senses became aroused from the lethargy of despair, and stood up like soldiers on the alert armed to the teeth. past love, pity, pardon, patience--pooh! what were all these resources of the world's weakness to me? what was it to me that the bleeding christ forgave his enemies in death? he never loved a woman! strength and resolution returned to me. let common sailors and rag-pickers resort to murder and suicide as fit outlets for their unreasoning brute wrath when wronged; but as for me, why should i blot my family scutcheon with a merely vulgar crime? nay, the vengeance of a romani must be taken with assured calmness and easy deliberation--no haste, no plebeian fury, no effeminate fuss, no excitement. i walked up and down slowly, meditating on every point of the bitter drama in which i had resolved to enact the chief part, from the rise to the fall of the black curtain. the mists cleared from my brain--i breathed more easily--my nerves steadied themselves by degrees--the prospect of what i purposed doing satisfied me and calmed the fever in my blood. i became perfectly cool and collected. i indulged in no more futile regrets for the past--why should i mourn the loss of a love i never possessed? it was not as if they had waited till my supposed sudden death--no! within three months of my marriage they had fooled me; for three whole years they had indulged in their criminal amour, while i, blind dreamer, had suspected nothing. now i knew the extent of my injury; i was a man bitterly wronged, vilely duped. justice, reason, and self-respect demanded that i should punish to the utmost the miserable tricksters who had played me false. the passionate tenderness i had felt for my wife was gone--i plucked it from my heart as i would have torn a thorn from my flesh--i flung it from me with disgust as i had flung away the unseen reptile that had fastened on my neck in the vault. the deep warm friendship of years i had felt for guido ferrari froze to its very foundations--and in its place there rose up, not hate, but pitiless, immeasurable contempt. a stern disdain of myself also awoke in me, as i remembered the unreasoning joy with which, i had hastened--as i thought--home, full of eager anticipation and romeo-like ardor. an idiot leaping merrily to his death over a mountain chasm was not more fool than i! but the dream was over--the delusion of my life was passed. i was strong to avenge--i would be swift to accomplish. so, darkly musing for an hour or more, i decided on the course i had to pursue, and to make the decision final i drew from my breast the crucifix that the dead monk cipriano had laid with me in my coffin, and kissing it, i raised it aloft, and swore by that sacred symbol never to relent, never to relax, never to rest, till i had brought my vow of just vengeance to its utmost fulfillment. the stars, calm witnesses of my oath, eyed me earnestly from their judgment thrones in the quiet sky--there was a brief pause in the singing of the nightingales, as though they too listened--the wind sighed plaintively, and scattered a shower of jasmine blossoms like snow at my feet. even so, i thought, fall the last leaves of my white days--days of pleasure, days of sweet illusion, days of dear remembrance; even so let them wither and perish utterly forever! for from henceforth my life must be something other than a mere garland of flowers--it must be a chain of finely tempered steel, hard, cold, and unbreakable--formed into links strong enough to wind round and round two false lives and imprison them so closely as to leave no means of escape. this was what must be done--and i resolved to do it. with a firm, quiet step i turned to leave the avenue. i opened the little private wicket, and passed into the dusty road. a clanging noise caused me to look up as i went by the principal entrance of the villa romani. a man servant--my own man-servant by the by--was barring the great gates for the night. i listened as he slid the bolts into their places, and turned the key. i remembered that those gates had been thoroughly fastened before, when i came up the road from naples--why then had they been opened since? to let out a visitor? of course! i smiled grimly at my wife's cunning! she evidently knew what she was about. appearances must be kept up--the signor ferrari must be decorously shown out by a servant at the chief entrance of the house. naturally!--all very unsuspicious-looking and quite in keeping with the proprieties! guido had just left her then? i walked steadily, without hurrying my pace, down the hill toward the city, and on the way i overtook him. he was strolling lazily along, smoking as usual, and he held a spray of stephanotis in his hand--well i knew who had given it to him! i passed him--he glanced up carelessly, his handsome face clearly visible in the bright moonlight--but there was nothing about a common fisherman to attract his attention--his look only rested upon me for a second and was withdrawn immediately. an insane desire possessed me to turn upon him--to spring at his throat--to wrestle with him and throw him in the dust at my feet--to spit at him and trample upon him--but i repressed those fierce and dangerous emotions. i had a better game to play--i had an exquisite torture in store for him, compared to which a hand-to-hand fight was mere vulgar fooling. vengeance ought to ripen slowly in the strong heat of intense wrath, till of itself it falls--hastily snatched before its time it is like unmellowed fruit, sour and ungrateful to the palate. so i let my dear friend--my wife's consoler--saunter on his heedless way without interference--i passed, leaving him to indulge in amorous musings to his false heart's content. i entered naples, and found a night's lodging at one of the usual resorts for men of my supposed craft, and, strange to say, i slept soundly and dreamlessly. recent illness, fatigue, fear, and sorrow, all aided to throw me like an exhausted child upon the quiet bosom of slumber, but perhaps the most powerfully soothing opiate to my brain was the consciousness i had of a practical plan of retribution--more terrible perhaps than any human creature had yet devised, so far as i knew. unchristian you call me? i tell you again, christ never loved a woman! had he done so, he would have left us some special code of justice. chapter ix. i rose very early the next morning--i was more than ever strengthened in my resolutions of the past night--my projects were entirely formed, and nothing remained now but for me to carry them out. unobserved of any one i took my way again to the vault. i carried with me a small lantern, a hammer, and some strong nails. arrived at the cemetery i looked carefully everywhere about me, lest some stray mourner or curious stranger might possibly be in the neighborhood. not a soul was in sight. making use of the secret passage, i soon found myself on the scene of my recent terrors and sufferings, all of which seemed now so slight in comparison with the mental torture of my present condition. i went straight to the spot where i had left the coffined treasure--i possessed myself of all the rolls of paper money, and disposed them in various small packages about my person and in the lining of my clothes till, as i stood, i was worth many thousand of francs. then with the help of the tools i had brought, i mended the huge chest in the split places where i had forced it open, and nailed it up fast so that it looked as if it had never been touched. i lost no time over my task, for i was in haste. it was my intention to leave naples for a fortnight or more, and i purposed taking my departure that very day. before leaving the vault i glanced at the coffin i myself had occupied. should i mend that and nail it up as though my body were still inside? no--better leave it as it was--roughly broken open--it would serve my purpose better so. as soon as i had finished all i had to do, i clambered through the private passage, closing it after me with extra care and caution, and then i betook myself directly to the molo. on making inquiries among the sailors who were gathered there, i heard that a small coasting brig was on the point of leaving for palermo. palermo would suit me as well as any other place; i sought out the captain of the vessel. he was a brown-faced, merry-eyed mariner--he showed his glittering white teeth in the most amiable of smiles when i expressed my desire to take passage with him, and consented to the arrangement at once for a sum which i thought extremely moderate, but which i afterward discovered to be about treble his rightful due. but the handsome rogue cheated me with such grace and exquisite courtesy, that i would scarcely have had him act otherwise than he did. i hear a good deal of the "plain blunt honesty" of the english. i dare say there is some truth in it, but for my own part i would rather be cheated by a friendly fellow who gives you a cheery word and a bright look than receive exact value for my money from the "plain blunt" boor who seldom has the common politeness to wish you a good-day. we got under way at about nine o'clock--the morning was bright, and the air, for naples, was almost cool. the water rippling against the sides of our little vessel had a gurgling, chatty murmur, as though it were talking vivaciously of all the pleasant things it experienced between the rising and the setting of the sun; of the corals and trailing sea-weed that grew in its blue depths, of the lithe glittering fish that darted hither and thither between its little waves, of the delicate shells in which dwelt still more delicate inhabitants, fantastic small creatures as fine as filmy lace, that peeped from the white and pink doors of their transparent habitations, and looked as enjoyingly on the shimmering blue-green of their ever-moving element as we look on the vast dome of our sky, bespangled thickly with stars. of all these things, and many more as strange and sweet, the gossiping water babbled unceasingly; it had even something to say to me concerning woman and woman's love. it told me gleefully how many fair female bodies it had seen sunk in the cold embrace of the conquering sea, bodies, dainty and soft as the sylphs of a poet's dream, yet which, despite their exquisite beauty, had been flung to and fro in cruel sport by the raging billows, and tossed among pebbles for the monsters of the deep to feed upon. as i sat idly on the vessel's edge and looked down, down into the clear mediterranean, brilliantly blue as a lake of melted sapphires, i fancied i could see her the delilah of my life, lying prone on the golden sand, her rich hair floating straightly around her like yellow weed, her hands clinched in the death agony, her laughing lips blue with the piercing chilliness of the washing tide--powerless to move or smile again. she would look well so, i thought--better to my mind than she looked in the arms of her lover last night. i fell into a train of profound meditation--a touch on my shoulder startled me. i looked up, the captain of the brig stood beside me. he smiled and held out a cigarette. "the signor will smoke?" he said courteously. i accepted the little roll of fragrant havanna half mechanically. "why do you call me signor?" i inquired brusquely. "i am a coral-fisher." the little man shrugged his shoulders and bowed deferentially, yet with the smile still dancing gayly in his eyes and dimpling his olive cheeks. "oh, certainly! as the signor pleases--ma--" and he ended with another expressive shrug and bow. i looked at him fixedly. "what do you mean?" i asked with some sternness. with that birdlike lightness and swiftness which were part of his manner, the sicilian skipper bent forward and laid a brown finger on my wrist. "scusa, vi prego! but the hands are not those of a fisher of coral." i glanced down at them. true enough, their smoothness and pliant shape betrayed my disguise--the gay little captain was sharp-witted enough to note the contrast between them and the rough garb i wore, though no one else with whom i had come in contact had been as keen of observation as he. at first i was slightly embarrassed by his remark--but after a moment's pause i met his gaze frankly, and lighting my cigarette i said, carelessly: "ebbene! and what then, my friend?" he made a deprecatory gesture with his hands. "nay, nay, nothing--but only this. the signor must understand he is perfectly safe with me. my tongue is discreet--i talk of things only that concern myself. the signor has good reasons for what he does--of that i am sure. he has suffered; it is enough to look in his face to see that. ah, dio if there are so many sorrows in life; there is love," he enumerated rapidly on his fingers--"there is revenge--there are quarrels--there is loss of money; any of these will drive a man from place to place at all hours and in all weathers. yes; it is so, indeed--i know it! the signor has trusted himself in my boat--i desire to assure him of my best services." and he raised his red cap with so charming a candor that in my lonely and morose condition i was touched to the heart. silently i extended my hand--he caught it with an air in which respect, sympathy, and entire friendliness were mingled. and yet he overcharged me for my passage, you exclaim! ay--but he would not have made me the object of impertinent curiosity for twenty times the money! you cannot understand the existence of such conflicting elements in the italian character? no--i dare say not. the tendency of the calculating northerner under the same circumstances would have been to make as much out of me as possible by means of various small and contemptible items, and then to go with broadly honest countenance to the nearest police-station and describe my suspicious appearance and manner, thus exposing me to fresh expense besides personal annoyance. with the rare tact that distinguishes the southern races the captain changed the conversation by a reference to the tobacco we were both enjoying. "it is good, is it not?" he asked. "excellent!" i answered, as indeed it was. his white teeth glittered in a smile of amusement. "it should be of the finest quality--for it is a present from one who will smoke nothing but the choice brands. ah, dio! what a fine gentleman spoiled is carmelo neri!" i could not repress a slight start of surprise. what caprice of fate associated me with this famous brigand? i was actually smoking his tobacco, and i owed all my present wealth to his stolen treasures secreted in my family vault! "you know the man, then?" i inquired with some curiosity. "know him? as well as i know myself. let me see, it is two months--yes--two months to-day since he was with me on board this very vessel. it happened in this way--i was at gaeta--he came to me and told me the gendarmes were after him. he offered me more gold than i ever had in my life to take him to termini, from whence he could get to one of his hiding-places in the montemaggiore. he brought teresa with him; he found me alone on the brig, my men had gone ashore. he said, 'take us to termini and i will give you so much; refuse and i will slit your throat.' ha! ha! ha! that was good. i laughed at him. i put a chair for teresa on deck, and gave her some big peaches. i said, 'see, my carmelo! what use is there in threats? you will not kill me, and i shall not betray you. you are a thief, and a bad thief--by all the saints you are--but i dare say you would not be much worse than the hotel-keepers, if you could only keep your hand off your knife.' (for you know, signor, if you once enter a hotel you must pay almost a ransom before you can get out again!) yes--and i reasoned with carmelo in this manner: i told him, 'i do not want a large fortune for carrying you and teresa across to termini--pay me the just passage and we shall part friends, if only for teresa's sake.' well, he was surprised. he smiled that dark smile of his, which may mean gratitude or murder. he looked at teresa. she sprung up from her seat, and let her peaches fall from her lap on the deck. she put her little hands on mine--the tears were in her pretty blue eyes. 'you are a good man,' she said. 'some woman must love you very much!' yes--she said that. and she was right. our lady be praised for it!" and his dark eyes glanced upward with a devout gesture of thanksgiving. i looked at him with a sort of jealous hunger gnawing at my heart. here was another self deluded fool--a fond wretch feasting on the unsubstantial food of a pleasant dream--a poor dupe who believed in the truth of woman! "you are a happy man," i said with a forced smile; "you have a guiding star for your life as well as for your boat--a woman that loves you and is faithful? is it so?" he answered me directly and simply, raising his cap slightly as he did so. "yes, signor--my mother." i was deeply touched by his naive and unexpected reply--more deeply than i cared to show. a bitter regret stirred in my soul--why, oh, why had my mother died so young! why had i never known the sacred joy that seemed to vibrate through the frame, and sparkle in the eyes of this common sailor! why must i be forever alone, with a curse of a woman's lie on my life, weighing me down to the dust and ashes of a desolate despair! something in my face must have spoken my thoughts, for the captain said, gently: "the signor has no mother?" "she died when i was but a child," i answered, briefly. the sicilian puffed lightly at his cigarette in silence--the silence of an evident compassion. to relieve him of his friendly embarrassment, i said: "you spoke of teresa? who is teresa?" "ah, you may well ask, signor! no one knows who she is; she loves carmelo neri, and there all is said. such a little thing she is--so delicate! like a foam-bell on the waves; and carmelo--you have seen carmelo, signor?" i shook my head in the negative. "ebbene! carmelo is big and rough and black like a wolf of the forests, all hair and fangs; teresa is, well! you have seen a little cloud in the sky at night, wandering past the moon all flecked with pale gold?--that is teresa. she is, small and slight as a child; she has rippling curls, and soft praying eyes, and tiny, weak, white hands, not strong enough to snap a twig in two. yet she can do anything with carmelo--she is the one soft spot in his life." "i wonder if she is true to him," i muttered, half to myself and half aloud. the captain caught up my words with an accent of surprise. "true to him? ah, dio! but the signor does not know her. there was one of carmelo's own band, as bold and handsome a cut-throat as ever lived--he was mad for teresa--he followed her everywhere like a beaten cur. one day he found her alone; he tried to embrace her--she snatched a knife from his own girdle and stabbed him with it, like a little fury! she did not kill him then, but carmelo did afterward. to think of a little woman like that with such a devil in her! it is her boast that no man, save carmelo, has ever touched so much as a ringlet of her hair. ay; she is true to him--more's the pity." "why--you would not have her false?" i asked. "nay, nay--for a false woman deserves death--but still it is a pity teresa should have fixed her love on carmelo. such a man! one day the gendarmes will have him, then he will be in the galleys for life, and she will die. yes--you may be sure of that! if grief does not kill her quickly enough, then she will kill herself, that is certain! she is slight and frail to look at as a flower, but her soul is strong as iron. she, will have her own way in death as well as in love--some women are made so, and it is generally the weakest-looking among them who have the most courage." our conversation was here interrupted by one of the sailors who came for his master's orders. the talkative skipper, with an apologetic smile and bow, placed his box of cigarettes beside me where i sat, and left me to my own reflections. i was not sorry to be alone. i needed a little breathing time--a rest in which to think, though my thoughts, like a new solar system, revolved round the red planet of one central idea, vengeance. "a false woman deserves death." even this simple sicilian mariner said so. "go and kill her, go and kill her!" these words reiterated themselves over and over again in my ears, till i found myself almost uttering them aloud. my soul sickened at the contemplation of the woman teresa--the mistress of a wretched brigand whose name was fraught with horror--whose looks were terrific--she, even she could keep herself sacred from the profaning touch of other men's caresses--she was proud of being faithful to her wolf of the mountains, whose temper was uncertain and treacherous--she could make lawful boast of her fidelity to her blood-stained lover--while nina--the wedded wife of a noble whose descent was lofty and unsullied, could tear off the fair crown of honorable marriage and cast it in the dust--could take the dignity of an ancient family and trample upon it--could make herself so low and vile that even this common teresa, knowing all, might and most probably would, refuse to touch her hand, considering it polluted. just god! what had carmelo neri done to deserve the priceless jewel of a true woman's heart? what had i done to merit such foul deception as that which i was now called upon to avenge? suddenly i thought of my child. her memory came upon me like a ray of light--i had almost forgotten her. poor little blossom!--the slow hot tears forced themselves between my eyelids, as i called up before my fancy the picture of the soft baby face--the young untroubled eyes--the little coaxing mouth always budding into innocent kisses! what should i do with her? when the plan of punishment i had matured in my brain was carried out to its utmost, should i take her with me far, far away into some quiet corner of the world, and devote my life to hers? alas! alas! she, too, would be a woman and beautiful--she was a flower born of a poisoned tree, who could say that there might not be a canker-worm hidden even in her heart, which waited but for the touch of maturity to commence its work of destruction! oh, men! you that have serpents coiled round your lives in the shape of fair false women--if god has given you children by them, the curse descends upon you doubly! hide it as you will under the society masks we are all forced to wear, you know there is nothing more keenly torturing than to see innocent babes look trustingly in the deceitful eyes of an unfaithful wife, and call her by the sacred name of "mother." eat ashes and drink wormwood, you shall find them sweet in comparison to that nauseating bitterness! for the rest of the day i was very much alone. the captain of the brig spoke cheerily to me now and then, but we were met by light contrary winds that necessitated his giving most of his attention to the management of his vessel, so that he could not permit himself to yield to the love of gossip that was inherent in him. the weather was perfect, and notwithstanding our constant shifting and tacking about to catch the erratic breeze, the gay little brig made merry and rapid way over the sparkling mediterranean, at a rate that promised our arrival at palermo by the sunset of the following day. as the evening came on the wind freshened, and by the time the moon soared like a large blight bird into the sky, we were scudding along sideways, the edge of our vessel leaning over to kiss the waves that gleamed like silver and gold, flecked here and there with phosphorescent flame. we skimmed almost under the bows of a magnificent yacht--the english flag floated from her mast--her sails glittered purely white in the moonbeams, and she sprung over the water like a sea-gull. a man, whose tall athletic figure was shown off to advantage by the yachting costume he wore, stood on deck, his arm thrown round the waist of a girl beside him. we were but a minute or two passing the stately vessel, yet i saw plainly this loving group of two, and--i pitied the man! why? he was english undoubtedly--the son of a country where the very soil is supposed to be odorous of virtue--therefore the woman beside him must be a perfect pearl of purity; an englishman never makes a mistake in these things! never? are you sure? ah, believe me, there is not much difference nowadays between women of opposite nations. once there was--i am willing to admit that possibility. once, from all accounts received, the english rose was the fitting emblem of the english woman, but now, since the world has grown so wise and made such progress in the art of running rapidly downhill, is even the aristocratic british peer quite easy in his mind regarding his fair peeress? can he leave her to her own devices with safety? are there not men, boastful too of their "blue blood," who are perhaps ready to stoop to the thief's trick of entering his house during his absence by means of private keys, and stealing away his wife's affections?--and is not she, though a mother of three or four children, ready to receive with favor the mean robber of her husband's rights and honor? read the london newspapers any day and you will find that once "moral" england is running a neck and neck race with other less hypocritical nations in pursuit of social vice. the barriers that once existed are broken down; "professional beauties" are received in circles where their presence formerly would have been the signal for all respectable women instantly to retire; ladies of title are satisfied to caper on the boards of the theatrical stage, in costumes that display their shape as undisguisedly as possible to the eyes of the grinning public, or they sing in concert halls for the pleasure of showing themselves off, and actually accept the vulgar applause of unwashed crowds with a smile and a bow of gratitude! ye gods! what has become of the superb pride of the old regime--the pride which disdained all ostentation and clung to honor more closely than life! what a striking sign of the times too, is this: let a woman taint her virtue before marriage, she is never forgiven--her sin is never forgotten; but let her do what she will when she has a husband's name to screen her, and society winks its eyes at her crimes. couple this fact with the general spirit of mockery that prevails in fashionable circles--mockery of religion, mockery of sentiment, mockery of all that is best and noblest in the human heart--add to it the general spread of "free-thought," and therefore of conflicting and unstable opinions--let all these things together go on for a few years longer and england will stare at her sister nations like a bold woman in a domino--her features partly concealed from a pretense at shame, but her eyes glittering coldly through the mask, betraying to all who look at her how she secretly revels in her new code of lawlessness coupled with greed. for she will always be avaricious--and the worst of it is, that her nature being prosaic, there will be no redeeming grace to cast a glamour about her. france is unvirtuous enough, god knows, yet there is a sunshiny smile on her lips that cheers the heart. italy is also unvirtuous, yet her voice is full of bird-like melody, and her face is a dream of perfect poetry! but england unvirtuous will be like a cautiously calculating, somewhat shrewish matron, possessed of unnatural and unbecoming friskiness, without either laugh, or song, or smile--her one god, gold, and her one commandment, the suggested eleventh, "thou shall not be found out!" i slept that night on deck. the captain offered me the use of his little cabin, and was, in his kind-hearted manner, truly distressed at my persistent refusal to occupy it. "it is bad to sleep in the moonlight, signor," he said, anxiously. "it makes men mad, they say." i smiled. had madness been my destiny, i should have gone mad last night, i thought! "have no fear!" i answered him, gently. "the moonlight is a joy to me--it has no impression on my mind save that of peace. i shall rest well here, my friend--do not trouble yourself about me." he hesitated and then abruptly left me, to return in the space of two or three minutes with a thick rug of sheepskin. he insisted so earnestly on my accepting this covering as a protection from the night air, that, to please him, i yielded to his entreaties and lay down, wrapped in its warm folds. the good-natured fellow then wished me a "buon riposo, signor!" and descended to his own resting-place, humming a gay tune as he went. from my recumbent posture on the deck i stared upward at the myriad stars that twinkled softly in the warm violet skies--stared long and fixedly till it seemed to me that our ship had also become a star, and was sailing through space with its glittering companions. what inhabitants peopled those fair planets, i wondered? mere men and women who lived and loved and lied to one another as bravely as we do? or superior beings to whom the least falsehood is unknown? was there one world among them where no women were born? vague fancies--odd theories--flitted through my brain. i lived over again the agony of my imprisonment in the vaults--again i forced myself to contemplate the scene i had witnessed between my wife and her lover--again i meditated on every small detail requisite to the fulfillment of the terrible vengeance i had designed. i have often wondered how, in countries where divorce is allowed, a wronged husband can satisfy himself with so meager a compensation for his injuries as the mere getting rid of the woman who has deceived him. it is no punishment to her--it is what she wishes. there is not even any very special disgrace in it according to the present standard of social observances. were public whipping the recognized penalty for the crime of a married woman's infidelity, there would be fewer of the like scandals--the divorce might follow the scourging. a daintily brought-up feminine creature would think twice, nay, fifty times, before she would run the risk of allowing her delicate body to be lashed by whips wielded by the merciless hands of a couple of her own sex--such a prospect of degradation, pain, shame, and outraged vanity would be more effectual to kill the brute in her than all the imposing ceremonials of courts of law and special juries. think of it, kings, lords, and commons! whipping at the cart's tail was once a legal punishment--if you would stop the growing immorality and reckless vice of women you had best revive it again--only apply it to rich as well as to poor, for it is most probable that the gay duchesses and countesses of your lands will need its sharp services more frequently than the work-worn wives of your laboring men. luxury, idleness, and love of dress are hot-beds for sin--look for it, therefore, not so much in the hovels of the starving and naked as in the rose-tinted, musk-scented boudoirs of the aristocracy--look for it, as your brave physicians would search out the seeds of a pestilence that threatens to depopulate a great city, and trample it out if you can and will--if you desire to keep the name of your countries glorious in the eyes of future history. spare not the rod because "my lady" forsooth! with her rich hair falling around her in beauteous dishevelment and her eyes bathed in tears, implores your mercy--for by very reason of her wealth and station she deserves less pity than the painted outcast who knows not where to turn for bread. a high post demands high duty! but i talk wildly. whipping is done away with, for women at least--we give a well-bred shudder of disgust at the thought of it. when do we shudder with equal disgust at our own social enormities? seldom or never. meanwhile, in cases of infidelity, husbands and wives can separate and go on their different ways in comparative peace. yes--some can and some do; but i am not one of these. no law in all the world can mend the torn flag of my honor; therefore i must be a law to myself--a counsel, a jury, a judge, all in one and from my decision there can be no appeal! then i must act as executioner--and what torture was ever so perfectly unique as the one i have devised? so i mused, lying broadly awake, with face upturned to the heavens, watching the light of the moon pouring itself out on the ocean like a shower of gold, while the water rushed gurgling softly against the sides of the brig, and broke into the laughter of white foam as we scudded along. chapter x. all the next day the wind was in our favor, and we arrived at palermo an hour before sunset. we had scarcely run into harbor when a small party of officers and gendarmes, heavily laden with pistols and carbines, came on board and showed a document authorizing them to search the brig for carmelo neri. i was somewhat anxious for the safety of my good friend the captain--but he was in nowise dismayed; he smiled and welcomed the armed emissaries of the government as though they were his dearest friends. "to give you my opinion frankly," he said to them, as he opened a flask of line chianti for their behoof, "i believe the villain carmelo is somewhere about gaeta. i would not tell you a lie--why should i? is there not a reward offered, and am not i poor? look you, i would do my best to assist you!" one of the men looked at him dubiously. "we received information," he said, in precise, business-like tones, "that neri escaped from gaeta two months since, and was aided and abetted in his escape by one andrea luziani, owner of the coasting brig 'laura,' journeying for purposes of trade between naples and palermo. you are andrea luziani, and this is the brig 'laura,'--we are right in this; is it not so?" "as if you could ever be wrong, caro!" cried the captain with undiminished gayety, clapping him on the shoulder. "nay, if st. peter should have the bad taste to shut you out of heaven, you would be cunning enough to find another and better entrance! ah, dio! i believe it! yes, you are right about my name and the name of my brig, but in the other things,"--here he shook his fingers with an expressive sign of denial--"you are wrong--wrong--all wrong!" he broke into a gay laugh. "yes, wrong--but we will not quarrel about it! have some more chianti! searching for brigands is thirsty work. fill your glasses, amici--spare not the flask--there are twenty more below stairs!" the officers smiled in spite of themselves, as they drank the proffered wine, and the youngest-looking of the party, a brisk, handsome fellow, entered into the spirit of the captain with ardor, though he evidently thought he should trap him into a confession unawares, by the apparent carelessness and bonhomie of his manner. "bravo, andrea!" he cried, merrily. "so! let us all be friends together! besides, what harm is there in taking a brigand for a passenger--no doubt he would pay you better than most cargoes!" but andrea was not to be so caught. on the contrary; he raised his hands and eyes with an admirably feigned expression of shocked alarm. "our lady and the saints forgive you!" he exclaimed, piously, "for thinking that i, an honest marinaro, would accept one baiocco from an accursed brigand! ill-luck would follow me ever after! nay, nay--there has been a mistake; i know nothing of carmelo neri, and i hope the saints will grant that i may never meet him!" he spoke with so much apparent sincerity that the officers in command were evidently puzzled, though the fact of their being so did not deter them from searching the brig thoroughly. disappointed in their expectations, they questioned all on board, including myself, but were of course unable to obtain any satisfactory replies. fortunately they accepted my costume as a sign of my trade, and though they glanced curiously at my white hair, they seemed to think there was nothing suspicious about me. after a few more effusive compliments and civilities on the part of the captain, they took their departure, completely baffled, and quite convinced that the information they had received had been somehow incorrect. as soon as they were out of sight, the merry andrea capered on his deck like a child in a play-ground, and snapped his fingers defiantly. "per bacco!" he cried, ecstatically, "they should as soon make a priest tell confessional secrets, as force me, honest andrea luziani, to betray a man who has given me good cigars! let them run back to gaeta and hunt in every hole and corner! carmelo may rest comfortably in the montemaggiore without the shadow of a gendarme to disturb him! ah, signor!" for i had advanced to bid him farewell--"i am truly sorry to part company with you! you do not blame me for helping away a poor devil who trusts me?" "not i!" i answered him heartily. "on the contrary, i would there were more like you. addio! and with this," here i gave him the passage-money we had agreed upon, "accept my thanks. i shall not forget your kindness; if you ever need a friend, send to me." "but," he said, with a naive mingling of curiosity and timidity, "how can i do that if the signor does not tell me his name?" i had thought of this during the past night. i knew it would be necessary to take a different name, and i had resolved on adopting that of a school-friend, a boy to whom i had been profoundly attached in my earliest youth, and who had been drowned before my eyes while bathing in the venetian lido. so i answered andrea's question at once and without effort. "ask for the count cesare oliva," i said. "i shall return to naples shortly, and should you seek me, you will find me there." the sicilian doffed his cap and saluted me profoundly. "i guessed well," he remarked, smilingly, "that the signor conte's hands were not those of a coral-fisher. oh, yes! i know a gentleman when i see him--though we sicilians say we are all gentlemen. it is a good boast, but alas! not always true! a rivederci, signor! command me when you will--i am your servant!" pressing his hand, i sprung lightly from the brig on to the quay. "a rivederci!" i called to him. "again, and yet again, a thousand thanks!" "oh! tropp' onore, signor--tropp' onore!" and thus i left him, standing still bareheaded on the deck of his little vessel, with a kindly light on his brown face like the reflection of a fadeless sunbeam. good-hearted, merry rogue! his ideas of right and wrong were oddly mixed--yet his lies were better than many truths told us by our candid friends--and you may be certain the great recording angel knows the difference between a lie that saves and a truth that kills, and metes out heaven's reward or punishment accordingly. my first care, when i found myself in the streets of palermo, was to purchase clothes of the best material and make adapted to a gentleman's wear. i explained to the tailor whose shop i entered for this purpose that i had joined a party of coral-fishers for mere amusement, and had for the time adopted their costume. he believed my story the more readily as i ordered him to make several more suits for me immediately, giving him the name of count cesare oliva, and the address of the best hotel in the city. he served me with obsequious humility, and allowed me the use of his private back-room, where i discarded my fisher garb for the dress of a gentleman--a ready-made suit that happened to fit me passably well. thus arrayed as became my station, i engaged rooms at the chief hotel of palermo for some weeks--weeks that were for me full of careful preparation for the task of vengeful retribution that lay before me. one of my principal objects was to place the money i had with me in safe hands. i sought out the leading banker in palermo, and introducing myself under my adopted name, i stated that i had newly returned to sicily after some years' absence. he received me well, and though he appeared astonished at the large amount of wealth i had brought, he was eager and willing enough to make satisfactory arrangements with me for its safe keeping, including the bag of jewels, some of which, from their unusual size and luster, excited his genuine admiration. seeing this, i pressed on his acceptance a fine emerald and two large brilliants, all unset, and requested him to have a ring made of them for his own wear. surprised at my generosity, he at first refused--but his natural wish to possess such rare gems finally prevailed, and he took them, overpowering me with thanks--while i was perfectly satisfied to see that i had secured his services so thoroughly by my jeweled bribe, that he either forgot, or else saw no necessity to ask me for personal references, which in my position would have been exceeding difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. when this business transaction was entirely completed, i devoted myself to my next consideration--which was to disguise myself so utterly that no one should possibly be able to recognize the smallest resemblance in me to the late fabio romani, either by look, voice, or trick of manner. i had always worn a mustache--it had turned white in company with my hair. i now allowed my beard to grow--it came out white also. but in contrast with these contemporary signs of age, my face began to fill up and look young again; my eyes, always large and dark, resumed their old flashing, half-defiant look--a look, which it seemed to me, would make some familiar suggestion to those who had once known me as i was before i died. yes--they spoke of things that must be forgotten and unuttered; what should i do with these tell-tale eyes of mine? i thought, and soon decided. nothing was easier than to feign weak sight--sight that was dazzled by the heat and brilliancy of the southern sunshine; i would wear smoke-colored glasses. i bought them as soon as the idea occurred to me, and alone in my room before the mirror i tried their effect. i was satisfied; they perfectly completed the disguise of my face. with them and my white hair and beard, i looked like a well-preserved man of fifty-five or so, whose only physical ailment was a slight affection of the eyes. the next thing to alter was my voice. i had, naturally, a peculiarly soft voice and a rapid, yet clear, enunciation, and it was my habit, as it is the habit of almost every italian, to accompany my words with the expressive pantomime of gesture. i took myself in training as an actor studies for a particular part. i cultivated a harsh accent, and spoke with deliberation and coldness--occasionally with a sort of sarcastic brusquerie, carefully avoiding the least movement of hands or head during converse. this was exceedingly difficult of attainment to me, and took me an infinite deal of time and trouble; but i had for my model a middle-aged englishman who was staying in the same hotel as myself, and whose starched stolidity never relaxed for a single instant. he was a human iceberg--perfectly respectable, with that air of decent gloom about him which is generally worn by all the sons of britain while sojourning in a foreign clime. i copied his manners as closely as possible; i kept my mouth shut with the same precise air of not-to-be-enlightened obstinacy--i walked with the same upright drill demeanor--and i surveyed the scenery with the same superior contempt. i knew i had succeeded at last, for i overheard a waiter speaking of me to his companion as "the white bear!" one other thing i did. i wrote a courteous note to the editor of the principal newspaper published in naples--a newspaper that i knew always found its way to the villa romani--and inclosing fifty francs, i requested him to insert a paragraph for me in his next issue. this paragraph was worded somewhat as follows: "the signor conte cesare oliva, a nobleman who has been for many years absent from his native country, has, we understand, just returned, possessed of almost fabulous wealth, and is about to arrive in naples, where he purposes making his home for the future. the leaders of society here will no doubt welcome with enthusiasm so distinguished an addition to the brilliant circles commanded by their influence." the editor obeyed my wishes, and inserted what i sent him, word for word as it was written. he sent me the paper containing it "with a million compliments," but was discreetly silent concerning the fifty francs, though i am certain he pocketed them with unaffected joy. had i sent him double the money, he might have been induced to announce me as a king or emperor in disguise. editors of newspapers lay claim to be honorable men; they may be so in england, but in italy most of them would do anything for money. poor devils! who can blame them, considering how little they get by their limited dealings in pen and ink! in fact, i am not at all certain but that a few english newspaper editors might be found capable of accepting a bribe, if large enough, and if offered with due delicacy. there are surely one or two magazines, for instance, in london, that would not altogether refuse to insert an indifferently, even badly written article, if paid a thousand pounds down for doing it! on the last day but one of my sojourn in palermo i was reclining in an easy-chair at the window of the hotel smoking-room, looking out on the shimmering waters of the gulf. it was nearly eight o'clock, and though the gorgeous colors of the sunset still lingered in the sky, the breeze blew in from the sea somewhat coldly, giving warning of an approaching chilly night. the character i had adopted, namely that of a somewhat harsh and cynical man who had seen life and did not like it, had by constant hourly practice become with me almost second nature--indeed, i should have had some difficulty in returning to the easy and thoughtless abandon of my former self. i had studied the art of being churlish till i really was churlish; i had to act the chief character in a drama, and i knew my part thoroughly well. i sat quietly puffing at my cigar and thinking of nothing in particular--for, as far as my plans went, i had done with thought, and all my energies were strung up to action--when i was startled by a loud and increasing clamor, as of the shouting of a large crowd coming onward like an overflowing tide. i leaned out of the window, but could see nothing, and i was wondering what the noise could mean, when an excited waiter threw open the door of the smoking-room and cried, breathlessly: "carmelo neri, signor! carmelo neri! they have him, poverino! they have him at last!" though almost as strongly interested in this news as the waiter himself, i did not permit my interest to become manifest. i never forgot for a second the character i had assumed, and drawing the cigar slowly from my lips i merely said: "then they have caught a great rascal. i congratulate the government! where is the fellow?" "in the great square," returned the garcon, eagerly. "if the signor would walk round the corner he would see carmelo, bound and fettered. the saints have mercy upon him! the crowds there are thick as flies round a honeycomb! i must go thither myself--i would not miss the sight for a thousand francs!" and he ran off, as full of the anticipated delight of looking at a brigand as a child going to its first fair. i put on my hat and strolled leisurely round to the scene of excitement. it was a picturesque sight enough; the square was black with a sea of eager heads, and restless, gesticulating figures, and the center of this swaying, muttering crowd was occupied by a compact band of mounted gendarmes with drawn swords flashing in the pale evening light--both horses and men nearly as motionless as though cast in bronze. they were stationed opposite the head-quarters of the carabinieri, where the chief officer of the party had dismounted to make his formal report respecting the details of the capture before proceeding further. between these armed and watchful guards, with his legs strapped to a sturdy mule, his arms tied fast behind him, and his hands heavily manacled, was the notorious neri, as dark and fierce as a mountain thunder-storm. his head was uncovered--his thick hair, long and unkempt, hung in matted locks upon his shoulders--his heavy mustachios and beard were so black and bushy that they almost concealed his coarse and forbidding features--though i could see the tiger-like glitter of his sharp white teeth as he bit and gnawed his under lip in impotent fury and despair--and his eyes, like leaping flames, blazed with a wrathful ferocity from under his shaggy brows. he was a huge, heavy man, broad and muscular; his two hands clinched, tied and manacled behind him, looked like formidable hammers capable of striking a man down dead at one blow; his whole aspect was repulsive and terrible--there was no redeeming point about him--for even the apparent fortitude he assumed was mere bravado--meretricious courage--which the first week of the galleys would crush out of him as easily as one crushes the juice out of a ripe grape. he wore a nondescript costume of vari-colored linen, arranged in folds that would have been the admiration of an artist. it was gathered about him by means of a brilliant scarlet sash negligently tied. his brawny arms were bare to the shoulder--his vest was open, and displayed his strong brown throat and chest heaving with the pent-up anger and fear that raged within him. his dark grim figure was set off by a curious effect of color in the sky--a long wide band of crimson cloud, as though the sun-god had thrown down a goblet of ruby wine and left it to trickle along the smooth blue fairness of his palace floor--a deep after-glow, which burned redly on the olive-tinted eager faces of the multitude that were everywhere upturned in wonder and ill-judged admiration to the brutal black face of the notorious murderer and thief, whose name had for years been the terror of sicily. i pressed through the crowd to obtain a nearer view, and as i did so a sudden savage movement of neri's bound body caused the gendarmes to cross their swords in front of his eyes with a warning clash. the brigand laughed hoarsely. "corpo di cristo!" he muttered--"think you a man tied hand and foot can run like a deer? i am trapped--i know it! but tell him," and he indicated some person in the throng by a nod of his head "tell him to come hither--i have a message for him." the gendarmes looked at one another, and then at the swaying crowd about them in perplexity--they did not understand. carmelo, without wasting more words upon them, raised himself as uprightly as he could in his strained and bound position, and called aloud: "luigi biscardi! capitano! oh he--you thought i could not see you! dio! i should know you in hell! come near, i have a parting word for you." at the sound of his strong harsh voice, a silence half of terror, half of awe, fell upon the chattering multitude. there was a sudden stir as the people made way for a young man to pass through their ranks--a slight, tall, rather handsome fellow, with a pale face and cold, sneering eyes. he was dressed with fastidious care and neatness in the uniform of the bersagliere--and he elbowed his way along with the easy audacity of a privileged dandy. he came close up to the brigand and spoke carelessly, with a slightly mocking smile playing round the corners of his mouth. "ebbene!" he said, "you are caught at last, carmelo! you called me--here i am. what do you want with me, rascal?" neri uttered a ferocious curse between his teeth, and looked for an instant like a wild beast ready to spring. "you betrayed me," he said in fierce yet smothered accents--"you followed me--you hunted me down! teresa told me all. yes--she belongs to you now--you have got your wish. go and take her--she waits for you--make her speak and tell you how she loves you--if you can!" something jeering and withal threatening in the ruffian's look, evidently startled the young officer, for he exclaimed hastily: "what do you mean, wretch? you have not--my god! you have not killed her?" carmelo broke into a loud savage laugh. "she has killed herself!" he cried, exultingly. "ha, ha, i thought you would wince at that! she snatched my knife and stabbed herself with it! yes--rather than see your lying white face again--rather than feel your accursed touch! find her--she lies dead and smiling up there in the mountains and her last kiss was for me--for me--you understand! now go! and may the devil curse you!" again the gendarmes clashed their swords suggestively--and the brigand resumed his sullen attitude of suppressed wrath and feigned indifference. but the man to whom he had spoken staggered and seemed about to fall--his pale face grew paler--he moved away through the curious open-eyed by-standers with the mechanical air of one who knows not whether he be alive or dead. he had evidently received an unexpected shock--a wound that pierced deeply and would be a long time healing. i approached the nearest gendarme and slipped a five-franc piece into his hand. "may one speak?" i asked, carelessly. the man hesitated. "for one instant, signor. but be brief." i addressed the brigand in a low clear-tone. "have you any message for one andrea luziani? i am a friend of his." he looked at me and a dark smile crossed his features. "andrea is a good soul. tell him if you will that teresa is dead. i am worse than dead. he will know that i did not kill teresa. i could not! she had the knife in her breast before i could prevent her. it is better so." "she did that rather than become the property of another man?" i queried. carmelo neri nodded in acquiescence. either my sight deceived me, or else this abandoned villain had tears glittering in the depth of his wicked eyes. the gendarme made me a sign, and i withdrew. almost at the same moment the officer in command of the little detachment appeared, his spurs clinking with measured metallic music on the hard stones of the pavement--he sprung into his saddle and gave the word--the crowd dispersed to the right and left--the horses were put to a quick trot, and in a few moments the whole party with the bulky frowning form of the brigand in their midst had disappeared. the people broke up into little groups talking excitedly of what had occurred, and scattered here and there, returning to their homes and occupations--and more swiftly than one could have imagined possible, the great square was left almost empty. i paced up and down for awhile thinking deeply; i had before my mind's eye the picture of the slight fair teresa as described by the sicilian captain, lying dead in the solitudes of the montemaggiore with that self-inflicted wound in her breast which had set her free of all men's love and persecution. there were some women then who preferred death to infidelity? strange! very strange! common women of course they must be--such as this brigand's mistress; your daintily fed, silk-robed duchess would find a dagger somewhat a vulgar consoler--she would rather choose a lover, or better still a score of lovers. it is only brute ignorance that selects a grave instead of dishonor--modern education instructs us more wisely, and teaches us not to be over-squeamish about such a trifle as breaking a given word or promise. blessed age of progress! age of steady advancement when the apple of vice is so cunningly disguised and so prettily painted that we can actually set it on a porcelain dish and hand it about among our friends as a valuable and choice fruit of virtue--and no one finds out the fraud we are practicing, nay, we scarcely perceive it ourselves, it is such an excellent counterfeit! as i walked to and fro, i found myself continually passing the head office of the carabinieri, and, acting on a sudden impulse of curiosity, i at last entered the building, determined to ask for a few particulars concerning the brigand's capture. i was received by a handsome and intelligent-looking man, who glanced at the card with which i presented myself, and saluted me with courteous affability. "oh, yes!" he said, in answer to my inquiries, "neri has given us a great deal of trouble. but we had our suspicions that he had left gaeta, where he was for a time in hiding. a few stray bits of information gleaned here and there put us on the right track." "was he caught easily, or did he show fight?" "he gave himself up like a lamb, signor! it happened in this way. one of our men followed the woman who lived with neri, one teresa, and traced her up to a certain point, the corner of a narrow mountain pass--where she disappeared. he reported this, and thereupon we sent out an armed party. these crept at midnight two by two, till they were formed in a close ring round the place where neri was judged to be. with the first beam of morning they rushed in upon him and took him prisoner. it appears that he showed no surprise--he merely said, 'i expected you!' he was found sitting by the dead body of his mistress; she was stabbed and newly bleeding. no doubt he killed her, though he swears the contrary--lies are as easy to him as breathing." "but where were his comrades? i thought he commanded a large band?" "so he did, signor; and we caught three of the principals only a fortnight ago, but of the others no trace can be found. i suppose carmelo himself dismissed them and sent them far and wide through the country. at any rate, they are disbanded, and with these sort of fellows, where there is no union there is no danger." "and neri's sentence?" i asked. "oh, the galleys for life of course; there is no possible alternative." i thanked my informant, and left the office. i was glad to have learned these few particulars, for the treasure i had discovered in my own family vault was now more mine than ever. there was not the remotest chance of any one of the neri band venturing so close to naples in search of it, and i thought with a grim smile that had the brigand chief himself known the story of my wrongs, he would most probably have rejoiced to think that his buried wealth was destined to aid me in carrying out so elaborate a plan of vengeance. all difficulties smoothed themselves before me--obstacles were taken out of my path--my way was made perfectly clear--each trifling incident was a new finger-post pointing out the direct road that led me to the one desired end. god himself seemed on my side, as he is surely ever on the side of justice! let not the unfaithful think that because they say long prayers or go regularly and devoutly to church with meek faces and piously folded hands that the eternal wisdom is deceived thereby. my wife could pray--she could kneel like a lovely saint in the dim religious light of the sacred altars, her deep eyes upturned to the blameless, infinitely reproachful christ--and look you! each word she uttered was a blasphemy, destined to come back upon herself as a curse. prayer is dangerous for liars--it is like falling willfully on an upright naked sword. used as an honorable weapon the sword defends--snatched up as the last resource of a coward it kills. chapter xi. the third week of september was drawing to its close when i returned to naples. the weather had grown cooler, and favorable reports of the gradual decrease of the cholera began to gain ground with the suffering and terrified population. business was resumed as usual, pleasure had again her votaries, and society whirled round once more in its giddy waltz as though it had never left off dancing. i arrived in the city somewhat early in the day, and had time to make some preliminary arrangements for my plan of action. i secured the most splendid suite of apartments in the best hotel, impressing the whole establishment with a vast idea of my wealth and importance. i casually mentioned to the landlord that i desired to purchase a carriage and horses--that i needed a first-class valet, and a few other trifles of the like sort, and added that i relied on his good advice and recommendation as to the places where i should best obtain all that i sought. needless to say, he became my slave--never was monarch better served than i--the very waiters hustled each other in a race to attend upon me, and reports of my princely fortune, generosity, and lavish expenditure, began to flit from mouth to mouth--which was the result i desired to obtain. and now the evening of my first day in naples came, and i, the supposed conte cesare oliva, the envied and flattered noble, took the first step toward my vengeance. it was one of the loveliest evenings possible, even in that lovely land--a soft breeze blew in from the sea--the sky was pearl-like and pure as an opal, yet bright with delicate shifting clouds of crimson and pale mauve--small, fleecy flecks of radiance, that looked like a shower of blossoms fallen from some far invisible flower-land. the waters of the bay were slightly ruffled by the wind, and curled into tender little dark-blue waves tipped with light forges of foam. after my dinner i went out and took my way to a well-known and popular cafe which used to be a favorite haunt of mine in the days when i was known as fabio romani. guido ferrari was a constant habitue of the place, and i felt that i should find him there. the brilliant rose-white and gold saloons were crowded, and owing to the pleasant coolness of the air there were hundreds of little tables pushed far out into the street, at which groups of persons were seated, enjoying ices, wine, or coffee, and congratulating each other on the agreeable news of the steady decrease of the pestilence that had ravaged the city. i glanced covertly yet quickly round. yes! i was not mistaken--there was my quondam friend, my traitorous foe, sitting at his ease, leaning comfortably back in one chair, his feet put up on another. he was smoking, and glancing now and then through the columns of the paris "figaro." he was dressed entirely in black--a hypocritical livery, the somber hue of which suited his fine complexion and perfectly handsome features to admiration. on the little finger of the shapely hand that every now and then was raised to adjust his cigar, sparkled a diamond that gave out a myriad scintillations as it flashed in the evening light--it was of exceptional size and brilliancy, and even at a distance i recognized it as my own property! so!--a love-gift, signor, or an in memoriam of the dear and valued friend you have lost? i wondered--watching him in dark scorn the while--then recollecting myself, i sauntered slowly toward him, and perceiving a disengaged table next to his, i drew a chair to it and sat down. he looked at me indifferently over the top of his newspaper--but there was nothing specially attractive in the sight of a white-haired man wearing smoke-colored spectacles, and he resumed his perusal of the "figaro" immediately. i rapped the end of my walking-cane on the table and summoned a waiter from whom i ordered coffee. i then lighted a cigar, and imitating ferrari's easy posture, smoked also. something in my attitude then appeared to strike him, for he laid down his paper and again looked at me, this time with more interest and something of uneasiness. "ca commence, mon ami!" i thought, but i turned my head slightly aside and feigned to be absorbed in the view. my coffee was brought--i paid for it and tossed the waiter an unusually large gratuity--he naturally found it incumbent upon him to polish my table with extra zeal, and to secure all the newspapers, pictorial or otherwise, that were lying about, for the purpose of obsequiously depositing them in a heap at my right hand. i addressed this amiable garcon in the harsh and deliberate accents of my carefully disguised voice. "by the way, i suppose you know naples well?" "oh, si, signor!" "ebbene, can you tell me the way to the house of one count fabio romani, a wealthy nobleman of this city?" ha! a good hit this time! though apparently not looking at him i saw ferrari start as though he had been stung, and then compose himself in his seat with an air of attention. the waiter meanwhile, in answer to my question, raised his hands, eyes and shoulders all together with a shrug expressive of resigned melancholy. "ah, gran dio! e morto!" "dead!" i exclaimed, with a pretended start of shocked surprise. "so young? impossible!" "eh! what will you, signor? it was la pesta; there was no remedy. la pesta cares nothing for youth or age, and spares neither rich nor poor." for a moment i leaned my head on my hand, affecting to be overcome by the suddenness of the news. then looking up, i said, regretfully: "alas! i am too late! i was a friend of his father's. i have been away for many years, and i had a great wish to meet the young romani whom i last saw as a child. are there any relations of his living--was he married?" the waiter, whose countenance had assumed a fitting lugubriousness in accordance with what he imagined were my feelings, brightened up immediately as he replied eagerly: "oh, si, signor! the contessa romani lives up at the villa, though i believe she receives no one since her husband's death. she is young and beautiful as an angel. there is a little child too." a hasty movement on the part of ferrari caused me to turn my eyes, or rather my spectacles, in his direction. he leaned forward, and raising his hat with the old courteous grace i knew so well, said politely: "pardon me, signor, for interrupting you! i knew the late young count romani well--perhaps better than any man in naples. i shall be delighted to afford you any information you may seek concerning him." oh, the old mellow music of his voice--how it struck on my heart and pierced it like the refrain of a familiar song loved in the days of our youth. for an instant i could not speak--wrath and sorrow choked my utterance. fortunately this feeling was but momentary--slowly i raised my hat in response to his salutation, and answered stiffly: "i am your servant, signor. you will oblige me indeed if you can place me in communication with the relatives of this unfortunate young nobleman. the elder count romani was dearer to me than a brother--men have such attachments occasionally. permit me to introduce myself," and i handed him my visiting-card with a slight and formal bow. he accepted it, and as he read the name it bore he gave me a quick glance of respect mingled with pleased surprise. "the conte cesare oliva!" he exclaimed. "i esteem myself most fortunate to have met you! your arrival has already been notified to us by the avant-courier of the fashionable intelligence, so that we are well aware," here laughing lightly, "of the distinctive right you have to a hearty welcome in naples. i am only sorry that any distressing news should have darkened the occasion of your return here after so long an absence. permit me to express the hope that it may at least be the only cloud for you on our southern sunshine!" and he extended his hand with that ready frankness and bonhomie which are always a part of the italian temperament, and were especially so of his. a cold shudder ran through my veins. god! could i take his hand in mine? i must--if i would act my part thoroughly--for should i refuse he would think it strange--even rude--i should lose the game by one false move. with a forced smile i hesitatingly held out my hand also--it was gloved, yet as he clasped it heartily in his own the warm pressure burned through the glove like fire. i could have cried out in agony, so excruciating was the mental torture which i endured at that moment. but it passed, the ordeal was over, and i knew that from henceforth i should be able to shake hands with him as often and as indifferently as with any other man. it was only this first time that it galled me to the quick. ferrari noticed nothing of my emotion--he was in excellent spirits, and turning to the waiter, who had lingered to watch us make each other's acquaintance, he exclaimed: "more coffee, garcon, and a couple of glorias." then looking toward me, "you do not object to a gloria, conte? no? that is well. and here is my card," taking one from his pocket and laying it on the table. "guido ferrari, at your service, an artist and a very poor one. we shall celebrate our meeting by drinking each other's health!" i bowed. the waiter vanished to execute his orders and ferrari drew his chair closer to mine. "i see you smoke," he said, gayly. "can i offer you one of my cigars? they are unusually choice. permit me," and he proffered me a richly embossed and emblazoned silver cigar-case, with the romani arms and coronet and my own initials engraved thereon. it was mine, of course--i took it with a sensation of grim amusement--i had not seen it since the day i died! "a fine antique," i remarked, carelessly, turning it over and over in my hand, "curious and valuable. a gift or an heirloom?" "it belonged to my late friend, count fabio," he answered, puffing a light cloud of smoke in the air as he drew his cigar from his lips to speak. "it was found in his pocket by the priest who saw him die. that and other trifles which he wore on his person were delivered to his wife, and--" "she naturally gave you the cigar-case as a memento of your friend," i said, interrupting him. "just so. you have guessed it exactly. thanks," and he took the case from me as i returned it to him with a frank smile. "is the countess romani young?" i forced myself to inquire. "young and beautiful as a midsummer morning!" replied ferrari, with enthusiasm. "i doubt if sunlight ever fell on a more enchanting woman! if you were a young man, conte, i should be silent regarding her charms--but your white hairs inspire one with confidence. i assure you solemnly, though fabio was my friend, and an excellent fellow in his ways, he was never worthy of the woman he married!" "indeed!" i said, coldly, as this dagger-thrust struck home to my heart. "i only knew him when he was quite a boy. he seemed to me then of a warm and loving temperament, generous to a fault, perhaps over-credulous, yet he promised well. his father thought so, i confess i thought so too. reports have reached me from time to time of the care with which he managed the immense fortune left to him. he gave large sums away in charity, did he not? and was he not a lover of books and simple pleasures?" "oh, i grant you all that!" returned ferrari, with some impatience. "he was the most moral man in immoral naples, if you care for that sort of thing. studious--philosophic--parfait gentilhomme--proud as the devil, virtuous, unsuspecting, and--withal--a fool!" my temper rose dangerously--but i controlled it, and remembering my part in the drama i had constructed, i broke into violent, harsh laughter. "bravo!" i exclaimed. "one can easily see what a first-rate young fellow you are! you have no liking for moral men--ha, ha! excellent! i agree with you. a virtuous man and a fool are synonyms nowadays. yes--i have lived long enough to know that! and here is our coffee--behold also the glorias! i drink your health with pleasure, signor ferrari--you and i must be friends!" for one moment he seemed startled by my sudden outburst of mirth--the next, he laughed heartily himself, and as the waiter appeared with the coffee and cognac, inspired by the occasion, he made an equivocal, slightly indelicate joke concerning the personal charms of a certain antoinetta whom the garcon was supposed to favor with an eye to matrimony. the fellow grinned, in nowise offended--and pocketing fresh gratuities from both ferrari and myself, departed on new errands for other customers, apparently in high good humor with himself, antoinetta, and the world in general. resuming the interrupted conversation i said: "and this poor weak-minded romani--was his death sudden?" "remarkably so," answered ferrari, leaning back in his chair, and turning his handsome flushed face up to the sky where the stars were beginning to twinkle out one by one, "it appears from all accounts that he rose early and went out for a walk on one of those insufferably hot august mornings, and at the furthest limit of the villa grounds he came upon a fruit-seller dying of cholera. of course, with his quixotic ideas, he must needs stay and talk to the boy, and then run like a madman through the heat into naples, to find a doctor for him. instead of a physician he met a priest, and he was taking this priest to the assistance of the fruit-seller (who by the bye died in the meantime and was past all caring for) when he himself was struck down by the plague. he was carried then and there to a common inn, where in about five hours he died--all the time shrieking curses on any one who should dare to take him alive or dead inside his own house. he showed good sense in that at least--naturally he was anxious not to bring the contagion to his wife and child." "is the child a boy or a girl?" i asked, carelessly. "a girl. a mere baby--an uninteresting old-fashioned little thing, very like her father." my poor little stella. every pulse of my being thrilled with indignation at the indifferently chill way in which he, the man who had fondled her and pretended to love her, now spoke of the child. she was, as far as he knew, fatherless; he, no doubt, had good reason to suspect that her mother cared little for her, and, i saw plainly that she was, or soon would be, a slighted and friendless thing in the household. but i made no remark--i sipped my cognac with an abstracted air for a few seconds--then i asked: "how was the count buried? your narrative interests me greatly." "oh, the priest who was with him saw to his burial, and i believe, was able to administer the last sacraments. at any rate, he had him laid with all proper respect in his family vault--i myself was present at the funeral." i started involuntarily, but quickly repressed myself. "you were present--you--you--" and my voice almost failed me. ferrari raised his eyebrows with a look of surprised inquiry. "of course! you are astonished at that? but perhaps you do not understand. i was the count's very closest friend, closer than a brother, i may say. it was natural, even necessary, that i should attend his body to its last resting place." by this time i had recovered myself. "i see--i see!" i muttered, hastily. "pray excuse me--my age renders me nervous of disease in any form, and i should have thought the fear of contagion might have weighed with you." "with me!" and he laughed lightly. "i was never ill in my life, and i have no dread whatever of cholera. i suppose i ran some risk, though i never thought about it at the time--but the priest--one of the benedictine order--died the very next day." "shocking!" i murmured over my coffee-cup. "very shocking. and you actually entertained no alarm for yourself?" "none in the least. to tell you the truth, i am armed against contagious illnesses, by a conviction i have that i am not doomed to die of any disease. a prophecy"--and here a cloud crossed his features--"an odd prophecy was made about me when i was born, which, whether it comes true or not, prevents me from panic in days of plague." "indeed!" i said, with interest, for this was news to me. "and may one ask what this prophecy is?" "oh, certainly. it is to the effect that i shall die a violent death by the hand of a once familiar friend. it was always an absurd statement--an old nurse's tale--but it is now more absurd than ever, considering that the only friend of the kind i ever had or am likely to have is dead and buried--namely, fabio romani." and he sighed slightly. i raised my head and looked at him steadily. chapter xii. the sheltering darkness of the spectacles i wore prevented him from noticing the searching scrutiny of my fixed gaze. his face was shadowed by a faint tinge of melancholy; his eyes were thoughtful and almost sad. "you loved him well then in spite of his foolishness?" i said. he roused himself from the pensive mood into which he had fallen, and smiled. "loved him? no! certainly not--nothing so strong as that! i liked him fairly--he bought several pictures of me--a poor artist has always some sort of regard for the man who buys his work. yes, i liked him well enough--till he married." "ha! i suppose his wife came between you?" he flushed slightly, and drank off the remainder of his cognac in haste. "yes," he replied, briefly, "she came between us. a man is never quite the same after marriage. but we have been sitting a long time here--shall we walk?" he was evidently anxious to change the subject. i rose slowly as though my joints were stiff with age, and drew out my watch, a finely jeweled one, to see the time. it was past nine o'clock. "perhaps," i said, addressing him, "you will accompany me as far as my hotel. i am compelled to retire early as a rule--i suffer much from a chronic complaint of the eyes as you perceive," here touching my spectacles, "and i cannot endure much artificial light. we can talk further on our way. will you give me a chance of seeing your pictures? i shall esteem myself happy to be one of your patrons." "a thousand thanks!" he answered, gayly. "i will show you my poor attempts with pleasure. should you find anything among them to gratify your taste, i shall of course be honored. but, thank heaven! i am not as greedy of patronage as i used to be--in fact i intended resigning the profession altogether in about six months or so." "indeed! are you coming into a fortune?" i asked, carelessly. "well--not exactly," he answered, lightly. "i am going to marry one--that is almost the same thing, is it not?" "precisely! i congratulate you!" i said, in a studiously indifferent and slightly bored tone, though my heart pulsed fiercely with the torrent of wrath pent up within it. i understood his meaning well. in six months he proposed marrying my wife. six months was the shortest possible interval that could be observed, according to social etiquette, between the death of one husband and the wedding of another, and even that was so short as to be barely decent. six months--yet in that space of time much might happen--things undreamed of and undesired--slow tortures carefully measured out, punishment sudden and heavy! wrapped in these sombre musings i walked beside him in profound silence. the moon shone brilliantly; groups of girls danced on the shore with their lovers, to the sound of a flute and mandoline--far off across the bay the sound of sweet and plaintive singing floated from some boat in the distance, to our ears--the evening breathed of beauty, peace and love. but i--my fingers quivered with restrained longing to be at the throat of the graceful liar who sauntered so easily and confidently beside me. ah! heaven, if he only knew! if he could have realized the truth, would his face have worn quite so careless a smile--would his manner have been quite so free and dauntless? stealthily i glanced at him; he was humming a tune softly under his breath, but feeling instinctively, i suppose, that my eyes were upon him, he interrupted the melody and turned to me with the question: "you have traveled far and seen much, conte!" "i have." "and in what country have you found the most beautiful women!" "pardon me, young sir," i answered, coldly, "the business of life has separated me almost entirely from feminine society. i have devoted myself exclusively to the amassing of wealth, understanding thoroughly that gold is the key to all things, even to woman's love; if i desired that latter commodity, which i do not. i fear that i scarcely know a fair face from a plain one--i never was attracted by women, and now at my age, with my settled habits, i am not likely to alter my opinion concerning them--and i frankly confess those opinions are the reverse of favorable." ferrari laughed. "you remind me of fabio!" he said. "he used to talk in that strain before he was married--though he was young and had none of the experiences which may have made you cynical, conte! but he altered his ideas very rapidly--and no wonder!" "is his wife so very lovely then?" i asked. "very! delicately, daintily beautiful. but no doubt you will see her for yourself--as a friend of her late husband's father, you will call upon her, will you not?" "why should i?" i said, gruffly--"i have no wish to meet her! besides, an inconsolable widow seldom cares to receive visitors--i shall not intrude upon her sorrows!" never was there a better move than this show of utter indifference i affected. the less i appeared to care about seeing the countess romani, the more anxious ferrari was to introduce me--(introduce me!--to my wife!)--and he set to work preparing his own doom with assiduous ardor. "oh, but you must see her!" he exclaimed, eagerly. "she will receive you, i am sure, as a special guest. your age and your former acquaintance with her late husband's family will win from her the utmost courtesy, believe me! besides, she is not really inconsolable--" he paused suddenly. we had arrived at the entrance of my hotel. i looked at him steadily. "not really inconsolable?" i repeated, in a tone of inquiry. ferrari broke into a forced laugh, "why no!" he said, "what would you? she is young and light-hearted--perfectly lovely and in the fullness of youth and health. one cannot expect her to weep long, especially for a man she did not care for." i ascended the hotel steps. "pray come in!" i said, with an inviting movement of my hand. "you must take a glass of wine before you leave. and so--she did not care for him, you say?" encouraged by my friendly invitation and manner, ferrari became more at his ease than ever, and hooking his arm through mine as we crossed the broad passage of the hotel together, he replied in a confidential tone: "my dear conte, how can a woman love a man who is forced upon her by her father for the sake of the money he gives her? as i told you before, my late friend was utterly insensible to the beauty of his wife--he was cold as a stone, and preferred his books. then naturally she had no love for him!" by this time we had reached my apartments, and as i threw open the door, i saw that ferrari was taking in with a critical eye the costly fittings and luxurious furniture. in answer to this last remark, i said with a chilly smile: "and as _i_ told you before, my dear signor ferarri, i know nothing whatever about women, and care less than nothing for their loves or hatreds! i have always thought of them more or less as playful kittens, who purr when they are stroked the right way, and scream and scratch when their tails are trodden on. try this montepulciano!" he accepted the glass i proffered him, and tasted the wine with the air of a connoisseur. "exquisite!" he murmured, sipping it lazily. "you are lodged en prince here, conte! i envy you!" "you need not," i answered. "you have youth and health, and--as you have hinted to me--love; all these things are better than wealth, so people say. at any rate, youth and health are good things--love i have no belief in. as for me, i am a mere luxurious animal, loving comfort and ease beyond anything. i have had many trials--i now take my rest in my own fashion." "a very excellent and sensible fashion!" smiled ferrari, leaning his head easily back on the satin cushions of the easy-chair into which he had thrown himself. "do you know, conte, now i look at you well, i think you must have been very handsome when you were young! you have a superb figure." i bowed stiffly. "you flatter me, signor! i believe i never was specially hideous--but looks in a man always rank second to strength, and of strength i have plenty yet remaining." "i do not doubt it," he returned, still regarding me attentively with an expression in which there was the faintest shadow of uneasiness. "it is an odd coincidence, you will say, but i find a most extraordinary resemblance in the height and carriage of your figure to that of my late friend romani." i poured some wine out for myself with a steady hand, and drank it. "really?" i answered. "i am glad that i remind you of him--if the reminder is agreeable! but all tall men are much alike so far as figure goes, providing they are well made." ferrari's brow was contracted in a musing frown and he answered not. he still looked at me, and i returned his look without embarrassment. finally he roused himself, smiled, and finished drinking his glass of montepulciano. then he rose to go. "you will permit me to mention your name to the countess romani, i hope?" he said, cordially. "i am certain she will receive you, should you desire it." i feigned a sort of vexation, and made an abrupt movement of impatience. "the fact is," i said, at last, "i very much dislike talking to women. they are always illogical, and their frivolity wearies me. but you have been so friendly that i will give you a message for the countess--if you have no objection to deliver it. i should be sorry to trouble you unnecessarily--and you perhaps will not have an opportunity of seeing her for some days?" he colored slightly and moved uneasily. then with a kind of effort, he replied: "on the contrary, i am going to see her this very evening. i assure you it will be a pleasure to me to convey to her any greeting you may desire to send." "oh, it is no greeting," i continued, calmly, noting the various signs of embarrassment in his manner with a careful eye. "it is a mere message, which, however, may enable you to understand why i was anxious to see the young man who is dead. in my very early manhood the elder count romani did me an inestimable service. i never forgot his kindness--my memory is extraordinarily tenacious of both benefits and injuries--and i have always desired to repay it in some suitable manner. i have with me a few jewels of almost priceless value--i have myself collected them, and i reserved them as a present to the son of my old friend, simply as a trifling souvenir or expression of gratitude for past favors received from his family. his sudden death has deprived me of the pleasure of fulfilling this intention--but as the jewels are quite useless to me, i am perfectly willing to hand them over to the countess romani, should she care to have them. they would have been hers had her husband lived--they should be hers now. if you, signor, will report these facts to her and learn her wishes with respect to the matter, i shall be much indebted to you." "i shall be delighted to obey you," replied ferrari, courteously, rising at the same time to take his leave. "i am proud to be the bearer of so pleasing an errand. beautiful women love jewels, and who shall blame them? bright eyes and diamonds go well together! a rivederci, signor conte! i trust we shall meet often." "i have no doubt we shall," i answered, quietly. he shook hands cordially--i responded to his farewell salutations with the brief coldness which was now my habitual manner, and we parted. from the window of my saloon i could see him sauntering easily down the hotel steps and from thence along the street. how i cursed him as he stepped jauntily on--how i hated his debonair grace and easy manner! i watched the even poise of his handsome head and shoulders, i noted the assured tread, the air of conscious vanity--the whole demeanor of the man bespoke his perfect self-satisfaction and his absolute confidence in the brightness of the future that awaited him when that stipulated six months of pretended mourning for my untimely death should have expired. once, as he walked on his way, he turned and paused--looking back--he raised his hat to enjoy the coolness of the breeze on his forehead and hair. the light of the moon fell full on his features and showed them in profile, like a finely-cut cameo against the dense dark-blue background of the evening sky. i gazed at him with a sort of grim fascination--the fascination of a hunter for the stag when it stands at bay, just before he draws his knife across its throat. he was in my power--he had deliberately thrown himself in the trap i had set for him. he lay at the mercy of one in whom there was no mercy. he had said and done nothing to deter me from my settled plans. had he shown the least tenderness of recollection for me as fabio romani, his friend and benefactor--had he hallowed my memory by one generous word--had he expressed one regret for my loss--i might have hesitated, i might have somewhat changed my course of action so that punishment should have fallen more lightly on him than on her. for i knew well enough that she, my wife, was the worst sinner of the two. had she chosen to respect herself, not all the forbidden love in the world could have touched her honor. therefore, the least sign of compunction or affection from ferrari for me, his supposed dead friend, would have turned the scale in his favor, and in spite of his treachery, remembering how she must have encouraged him, i would at least have spared him torture. but no sign had been given, no word had been spoken, there was no need for hesitation or pity, and i was glad of it! all this i thought as i watched him standing bareheaded in the moonlight, on his way to--whom? to my wife, of course. i knew that well enough. he was going to console her widow's tears--to soothe her aching heart--a good samaritan in very earnest! he moved, he passed slowly out of my sight. i waited till i had seen the last glimpse of his retreating figure, and then i left the window satisfied with my day's work. vengeance had begun. chapter xiii. quite early in the next day ferrari called to see me. i was at breakfast--he apologized for disturbing me at the meal. "but," he explained, frankly, "the countess romani laid such urgent commands upon me that i was compelled to obey. we men are the slaves of women!" "not always," i said, dryly, as i motioned him to take a seat--"there are exceptions--myself for instance. will you have some coffee?" "thanks, i have already breakfasted. pray do not let me be in your way, my errand is soon done. the countess wishes me to say--" "you saw her last night?" i interrupted him. he flushed slightly. "yes--that is--for a few minutes only. i gave her your message. she thanks you, and desires me to tell you that she cannot think of receiving the jewels unless you will first honor her by a visit. she is not at home to ordinary callers in consequence of her recent bereavement--but to you, so old a friend of her husband's family, a hearty welcome will be accorded." i bowed stiffly. "i am extremely flattered!" i said, in a somewhat sarcastical tone, "it is seldom i receive so tempting an invitation! i regret that i cannot accept it--at least, not at present. make my compliments to the lady, and tell her so in whatever sugared form of words you may think best fitted to please her ears." he looked surprised and puzzled. "do you really mean," he said, with a tinge of hauteur in his accents, "that you will not visit her--that you refuse her request?" i smiled. "i really mean, my dear signor ferrari, that, being always accustomed to have my own way, i can make no exception in favor of ladies, however fascinating they may be. i have business in naples--it claims my first and best attention. when it is transacted i may possibly try a few frivolities for a change--at present i am unfit for the society of the fair sex--an old battered traveler as you see, brusque, and unaccustomed to polite lying. but i promise you i will practice suave manners and a court bow for the countess when i can spare time to call upon her. in the meanwhile i trust to you to make her a suitable and graceful apology for my non-appearance." ferrari's puzzled and vexed expression gave way to a smile--finally he laughed aloud. "upon my word!" he exclaimed, gayly, "you are really a remarkable man, conte! you are extremely cynical! i am almost inclined to believe that you positively hate women." "oh, by no means! nothing so strong as hatred," i said, coolly, as i peeled and divided a fine peach as a finish to my morning's meal. "hatred is a strong passion--to hate well one must first have loved. no, no--i do not find women worth hating--i am simply indifferent to them. they seem to me merely one of the burdens imposed on man's existence--graceful, neatly packed, light burdens in appearance, but in truth, terribly heavy and soul-crushing." "yet many accept such burdens gayly!" interrupted ferrari, with a smile. i glanced at him keenly. "men seldom attain the mastery over their own passions," i replied; "they are in haste to seize every apparent pleasure that comes in their way. led by a hot animal impulse which they call love, they snatch at a woman's beauty as a greedy school-boy snatches ripe fruit--and when possessed, what is it worth? here is its emblem"--and i held up the stone of the peach i had just eaten--"the fruit is devoured--what remains? a stone with a bitter kernel." ferrari shrugged his shoulders. "i cannot agree with you, count," he said; "but i will not argue with you. from your point of view you may be right--but when one is young, and life stretches before you like a fair pleasure-ground, love and the smile of woman are like sunlight falling on flowers! you too must have felt this--in spite of what you say, there must have been a time in your life when you also loved!" "oh, i have had my fancies, of course!" i answered, with an indifferent laugh. "the woman i fancied turned out to be a saint--i was not worthy of her--at least, so i was told. at any rate, i was so convinced of her virtue and my own unworthiness--that--i left her." he looked surprised. "an odd reason, surely, for resigning her, was it not?" "very odd--very unusual--but a sufficient one for me. pray let us talk of something more interesting--your pictures, for instance. when may i see them?" "when you please," he answered, readily--"though i fear they are scarcely worth a visit. i have not worked much lately. i really doubt whether i have any that will merit your notice." "you underrate your powers, signor," i said with formal politeness. "allow me to call at your studio this afternoon. i have a few minutes to spare between three and four o'clock, if that time will suit you." "it will suit me admirably," he said, with a look of gratification; "but i fear you will be disappointed. i assure you i am no artist." i smiled. i knew that well enough. but i made no reply to his remark--i said, "regarding the matter of the jewels for the countess romani--would you care to see them?" "i should indeed," he answered; "they are unique specimens, i think?" "i believe so," i answered, and going to an escritoire in the corner of the room, i unlocked it and took out a massive carved oaken jewel-chest of square shape, which i had had made in palermo. it contained a necklace of large rubies and diamonds, with bracelets to match, and pins of their hair--also a sapphire ring--a cross of fine rose-brilliants, and the pearl pendant i had first found in the vault. all the gems, with the exception of this pendant, had been reset by a skillful jeweler in palermo, who had acted under my superintendence--and ferrari uttered an exclamation of astonishment and admiration as he lifted the glittering toys out one by one and noted the size and brilliancy of the precious stones. "they are trifles," i said, carelessly--"but they may please a woman's taste--and they amount to a certain fixed value. you would do me a great service if you consented to take them to the contessa romani for me--tell her to accept them as heralds of my forthcoming visit. i am sure you will know how to persuade her to take what would unquestionably have been hers had her husband lived. they are really her property--she must not refuse to receive what is her own." ferrari hesitated and looked at me earnestly. "you--will visit her--she may rely on your coming for a certainty, i hope?" i smiled. "you seem very anxious about it. may i ask why?" "i think," he replied at once, "that it would embarrass the countess very much if you gave her no opportunity to thank you for so munificent and splendid a gift--and unless she knew she could do so, i am certain she would not accept it." "make yourself quite easy," i answered. "she shall thank me to her heart's content. i give you my word that within a few days i will call upon the lady--in fact you said you would introduce me--i accept your offer!" he seemed delighted, and seizing my hand, shook it cordially. "then in that case i will gladly take the jewels to her," he exclaimed. "and i may say, count, that had you searched the whole world over, you could not have found one whose beauty was more fitted to show them off to advantage. i assure you her loveliness is of a most exquisite character!" "no doubt!" i said, dryly. "i take your word for it. i am no judge of a fair face or form. and now, my good friend, do not think me churlish if i request you leave me in solitude for the present. between three and four o'clock i shall be at your studio." he rose at once to take his leave. i placed the oaken box of jewels in the leathern case which had been made to contain it, strapped and locked it, and handed it to him together with its key. he was profuse in his compliments and thanks--almost obsequious, in truth--and i discovered another defect in his character--a defect which, as his friend in former days, i had guessed nothing of. i saw that very little encouragement would make him a toady--a fawning servitor on the wealthy--and in our old time of friendship i had believed him to be far above all such meanness, but rather of a manly, independent nature that scorned hypocrisy. thus we are deluded even by our nearest and dearest--and is it well or ill for us, i wonder, when we are at last undeceived? is not the destruction of illusion worse than illusion itself? i thought so, as my quondam friend clasped my hand in farewell that morning. what would i not have given to believe in him as i once did! i held open the door of my room as he passed out, carrying the box of jewels for my wife, and as i bade him a brief adieu, the well-worn story of tristram and king mark came to my mind. he, guido, like tristram, would in a short space clasp the gemmed necklace round the throat of one as fair and false as the fabled iseulte, and i--should i figure as the wronged king? how does the english laureate put it in his idyl on the subject? "'mark's way,' said mark, and clove him through the brain." too sudden and sweet a death by far for such a traitor! the cornish king should have known how to torture his betrayer! i knew--and i meditated deeply on every point of my design, as i sat alone for an hour after ferrari had left me. i had many things to do--i had resolved on making myself a personage of importance in naples, and i wrote several letters and sent out visiting-cards to certain well-established families of distinction as necessary preliminaries to the result i had in view. that day, too, i engaged a valet--a silent and discreet tuscan named vincenzo flamma. he was an admirably trained servant--he never asked questions--was too dignified to gossip, and rendered me instant and implicit obedience--in fact he was a gentleman in his way, with far better manners than many who lay claim to that title. he entered upon his duties at once, and never did i know him to neglect the most trifling thing that could add to my satisfaction or comfort. in making arrangements with him, and in attending to various little matters of business, the hours slipped rapidly away, and in the afternoon, at the time appointed, i made my way to ferrari's studio. i knew it of old--i had no need to consult the card he had left with me on which the address was written. it was a queer, quaintly built little place, situated at the top of an ascending road--its windows commanded an extensive view of the bay and the surrounding scenery. many and many a happy hour had i passed there before my marriage reading some favorite book or watching ferrari as he painted his crude landscapes and figures, most of which i good-naturedly purchased as soon as completed. the little porch over-grown with star-jasmine looked strangely and sorrowfully familiar to my eyes, and my heart experienced a sickening pang of regret for the past, as i pulled the bell and heard the little tinkling sound to which i was so well accustomed. ferrari himself opened the door to me with eager rapidity--he looked excited and radiant. "come in, come in!" he cried with effusive cordiality. "you will find everything in confusion, but pray excuse it. it is some time since i had any visitors. mind the steps, conte!--the place is rather dark just here--every one stumbles at this particular corner." so talking, and laughing as he talked, he escorted me up the short narrow flight of stairs to the light airy room where he usually worked. glancing round it, i saw at once the evidences of neglect and disorder--he had certainly not been there for many days, though he had made an attempt to arrange it tastefully for my reception. on the table stood a large vase of flowers grouped with artistic elegance--i felt instinctively that my wife had put them there. i noticed that ferrari had begun nothing new--all the finished and unfinished studies i saw i recognized directly. i seated myself in an easy-chair and looked at my betrayer with a calmly critical eye. he was what the english would call "got up for effect." though in black, he had donned a velvet coat instead of the cloth one he had worn in the morning--he had a single white japonica in his buttonhole--his face was pale and his eyes unusually brilliant. he looked his best--i admitted it, and could readily understand how an idle, pleasure-seeking feminine animal might be easily attracted by the purely physical beauty of his form and features. i spoke a part of my thoughts aloud. "you are not only an artist by profession, signor ferrari--you are one also in appearance." he flushed slightly and smiled. "you are very amiable to say so," he replied, his pleased vanity displaying itself at once in the expression of his face. "but i am well aware that you flatter me. by the way, before i forget it, i must tell you that i fulfilled your commission." "to the countess romani?" "exactly. i cannot describe to you her astonishment and delight at the splendor and brilliancy of those jewels you sent her. it was really pretty to watch her innocent satisfaction." i laughed. "marguerite and the jewel song in 'faust,' i suppose, with new scenery and effects?" i asked, with a slight sneer. he bit his lip and looked annoyed. but he answered, quietly: "i see you must have your joke, conte; but remember that if you place the countess in the position of marguerite, you, as the giver of the jewels, naturally play the part of mephistopheles." "and you will be faust, of course!" i said, gayly. "why, we might mount the opera with a few supernumeraries and astonish naples by our performance! what say you? but let us come to business. i like the picture you have on the easel there--may i see it more closely?" he drew it nearer; it was a showy landscape with the light of the sunset upon it. it was badly done, but i praised it warmly, and purchased it for five hundred francs. four other sketches of a similar nature were then produced. i bought these also. by the time we got through these matters, ferrari was in the best of humors. he offered me some excellent wine and partook of it himself; he talked incessantly, and diverted me extremely, though my inward amusement was not caused by the witty brilliancy of his conversation. no, i was only excited to a sense of savage humor by the novelty of the position in which we two men stood. therefore i listened to him attentively, applauded his anecdotes--all of which i had heard before--admired his jokes, and fooled his egotistical soul till he had no shred of self-respect remaining. he laid his nature bare before me--and i knew what it was at last--a mixture of selfishness, avarice, sensuality, and heartlessness, tempered now and then by a flash of good-nature and sympathetic attraction which were the mere outcomes of youth and physical health--no more. this was the man i had loved--this fellow who told coarse stories only worthy of a common pot-house, and who reveled in a wit of a high and questionable flavor; this conceited, empty-headed, muscular piece of humanity was the same being for whom i had cherished so chivalrous and loyal a tenderness! our conversation was broken in upon at last by the sound of approaching wheels. a carriage was heard ascending the road--it came nearer--it stopped at the door. i set down the glass of wine i had just raised to my lips, and looked at ferrari steadily. "you expect other visitors?" i inquired. he seemed embarrassed, smiled, and hesitated. "well--i am not sure--but--" the bell rang. with a word of apology ferrari hurried away to answer it. i sprung from my chair--i knew--i felt who was coming. i steadied my nerves by a strong effort. i controlled the rapid beating of my heart; and fixing my dark glasses more closely over my eyes, i drew myself up erect and waited calmly. i heard ferrari ascending the stairs--a light step accompanied his heavier footfall--he spoke to his companion in whispers. another instant--and he flung the door of the studio wide open with the haste and reverence due for the entrance of a queen. there was a soft rustle of silk--a delicate breath of perfume on the air--and then--i stood face to face with my wife! chapter xiv. how dazzlingly lovely she was! i gazed at her with the same bewildered fascination that had stupefied my reason and judgment when i beheld her for the first time. the black robes she wore, the long crape veil thrown back from her clustering hair and mignonne face, all the somber shadows of her mourning garb only served to heighten and display her beauty to greater advantage. a fair widow truly! i, her lately deceased husband, freely admitted the magnetic power of her charms! she paused for an instant on the threshold, a winning smile on her lips; she looked at me, hesitated, and finally spoke in courteous accents: "i think i cannot be mistaken! do i address the noble conte cesare oliva?" i tried to speak, but could not. my mouth was dry and parched with excitement, my throat swelled and ached with the pent-up wrath and despair of my emotions. i answered her question silently by a formal bow. she at once advanced, extending both her hands with the coaxing grace of manner i had so often admired. "i am the countess romani," she said, still smiling. "i heard from signor ferrari that you purposed visiting his studio this afternoon, and i could not resist the temptation of coming to express my personal acknowledgments for the almost regal gift you sent me. the jewels are really magnificent. permit me to offer you my sincere thanks!" i caught her outstretched hands and wrung them hard--so hard that the rings she wore must have dug into her flesh and hurt her, though she was too well-bred to utter any exclamation. i had fully recovered myself, and was prepared to act out my part. "on the contrary, madame," i said in a strong harsh voice, "the thanks must come entirely from me for the honor you have conferred upon me by accepting trifles so insignificant--especially at a time when the cold brilliancy of mere diamonds must jar upon the sensitive feelings of your recent widowhood. believe me, i sympathize deeply with your bereavement. had your husband lived, the jewels would have been his gift to you, and how much more acceptable they would then have appeared in your eyes! i am proud to think you have condescended so far as to receive them from so unworthy a hand as mine." as i spoke her face paled--she seemed startled, and regarded me earnestly. sheltered behind my smoked spectacles, i met the gaze of her large dark eyes without embarrassment. slowly she withdrew her slight fingers from my clasp. i placed an easy chair for her, she sunk softly into it with her old air of indolent ease, the ease of a spoiled empress or sultan's favorite, while she still continued to look up at me thoughtfully. ferrari, meanwhile, busied himself in bringing out more wine, he also produced a dish of fruit and some sweet cakes, and while occupied in these duties as our host he began to laugh. "ha, ha! you are caught!" he exclaimed to me gayly. "you must know we planned this together, madame and i, just to take you by surprise. there was no knowing when you would be persuaded to visit the contessa, and she could not rest till she had thanked you, so we arranged this meeting. could anything be better? come, conte, confess that you are charmed!" "of course i am!" i answered with a slight touch of satire in my tone. "who would not be charmed in the presence of such youth and beauty! and i am also flattered--for i know what exceptional favor the contessa romani extends toward me in allowing me to make her acquaintance at a time which must naturally be for her a secluded season of sorrow." at these words my wife's face suddenly assumed an expression of wistful sadness and appealing gentleness. "ah, poor unfortunate fabio," she sighed. "how terrible it seems that he is not here to greet you! how gladly he would have welcomed any friend of his father's--he adored his father, poor fellow! i cannot realize that he is dead. it was too sudden, too dreadful! i do not think i shall ever recover the shock of his loss!" and her eyes actually filled with tears; though the fact did not surprise me in the least, for many women can weep at will. very little practice is necessary--and we men are such fools, we never know how it is done; we take all the pretty feigned piteousness for real grief, and torture ourselves to find methods of consolation for the feminine sorrows which have no root save in vanity and selfishness. i glanced quickly from my wife to ferrari: he coughed, and appeared embarrassed--he was not so good an actor as she was an actress. studying them both, i know not which feeling gained the mastery in my mind--contempt or disgust. "console yourself, madame," i said, coldly. "time should be quick to heal the wounds of one so young and beautiful as you are! personally speaking, i much regret your husband's death, but i would entreat you not to give way to grief, which, however sincere, must unhappily be useless. your life lies before you--and may happy days and as fair a future await you as you deserve!" she smiled, her tear-drops vanished like morning dew disappearing in the heat. "i thank you for your good wishes, conte," she said "but it rests with you to commence my happy days by honoring me with a visit. you will come, will you not? my house and all that it contains are at your service!" i hesitated. ferrari looked amused. "madame is not aware of your dislike to the society of ladies, conte," he said, and there was a touch of mockery in his tone. i glanced at him coldly, and addressed my answer to my wife. "signor ferrari is perfectly right," i said, bending over her, and speaking in a low tone; "i am often ungallant enough to avoid the society of mere women, but, alas! i have no armor of defense against the smile of an angel." and i bowed with a deep and courtly reverence. her face brightened--she adored her own loveliness, and the desire of conquest awoke in her immediately. she took a glass of wine from my hand with a languid grace, and fixed her glorious eyes full on me with a smile. "that is a very pretty speech," she said, sweetly, "and it means, of course, that you will come to-morrow. angels exact obedience! gui--, i mean signor ferrari, you will accompany the conte and show him the way to the villa?" ferrari bent his head with some stiffness. he looked slightly sullen. "i am glad to see," he observed, with some petulance, "that your persuasions have carried more conviction to the conte oliva than mine. to me he was apparently inflexible." she laughed gayly. "of course! it is only a woman who can always win her own way--am i not right, conte?" and she glanced up at me with an arch expression of mingled mirth and malice. what a love of mischief she had! she saw that guido was piqued, and she took intense delight in teasing him still further. "i cannot tell, madame," i answered her. "i know so little of your charming sex that i need to be instructed. but i instinctively feel that you must be right, whatever you say. your eyes would convert an infidel!" again she looked at me with one of those wonderfully brilliant, seductive, arrowy glances--then she rose to take her leave. "an angel's visit truly," i said, lightly, "sweet, but brief!" "we shall meet to-morrow," she replied, smiling. "i consider i have your promise; you must not fail me! come as early as you like in the afternoon, then you will see my little girl stella. she is very like poor fabio. till to-morrow, adieu!" she extended her hand. i raised it to my lips. she smiled as she withdrew it, and looking at me, or rather at the glasses i wore, she inquired: "you suffer with your eyes?" "ah, madame, a terrible infirmity! i cannot endure the light. but i should not complain--it is a weakness common to age." "you do not seem to be old," she said, thoughtfully. with a woman's quick eye she had noted, i suppose, the unwrinkled smoothness of my skin, which no disguise could alter. but i exclaimed with affected surprise: "not old! with these white hairs!" "many young men have them," she said. "at any rate, they often accompany middle age, or what is called the prime of life. and really, in your case, they are very becoming!" and with a courteous gesture of farewell she moved to leave the room. both ferrari and myself hastened to escort her downstairs to her carriage, which stood in waiting at the door--the very carriage and pair of chestnut ponies which i myself had given her as a birthday present. ferrari offered to assist her in mounting the step of the vehicle; she put his arm aside with a light jesting word and accepted mine instead. i helped her in, and arranged her embroidered wraps about her feet, and she nodded gayly to us both as we stood bareheaded in the afternoon sunlight watching her departure. the horses started at a brisk canter, and in a couple of minutes the dainty equipage was out of sight. when nothing more of it could be seen than the cloud of dust stirred up by its rolling wheels, i turned to look at my companion. his face was stern, and his brows were drawn together in a frown. stung already! i thought. already the little asp of jealousy commenced its bitter work! the trifling favor his light-o'-love and my wife had extended to me in choosing my arm instead of his as a momentary support had evidently been sufficient to pique his pride. god! what blind bats men are! with all their high capabilities and immortal destinies, with all the world before them to conquer, they can sink unnerved and beaten down to impotent weakness before the slighting word or insolent gesture of a frivolous feminine creature, whose best devotions are paid to the mirror that reflects her in the most becoming light! how easy would be my vengeance, i mused, as i watched ferrari. i touched him on the shoulder; he started from his uncomfortable reverie and forced a smile. i held out a cigar-case. "what are you dreaming of?" i asked him, laughingly. "hebe as she waited on the gods, or venus as she rose in bare beauty from the waves? either, neither, or both? i assure you a comfortable smoke is as pleasant in its way as the smile of a woman." he took a cigar and lighted it, but made no answer. "you are dull, my friend," i continued, gayly, hooking my arm through his and pacing him up and down on the turf in front of his studio. "wit, they say, should be sharpened by the glance of a bright eye; how comes it that the edge of your converse seems blunted? perhaps your feelings are too deep for words? if so, i do not wonder at it, for the lady is extremely lovely." he glanced quickly at me. "did i not say so?" he exclaimed. "of all creatures under heaven she is surely the most perfect! even you, conte, with your cynical ideas about women, even you were quite subdued and influenced by her; i could see it!" i puffed slowly at my cigar and pretended to meditate. "was i?" i said at last, with an air of well-acted surprise. "really subdued and influenced? i do not think so. but i admit i have never seen a woman so entirely beautiful." he stopped in his walk, loosened his arm from mine, and regarded me fixedly. "i told you so," he said, deliberately. "you must remember that i told you so. and now perhaps i ought to warn you." "warn me!" i exclaimed, in feigned alarm. "of what? against whom? surely not the contessa romani, to whom you were so anxious to introduce me? she has no illness, no infectious disorder? she is not dangerous to life or limb, is she?" ferrari laughed at the anxiety i displayed for my own bodily safety--an anxiety which i managed to render almost comic--but he looked somewhat relieved too. "oh, no," he said, "i meant nothing of that kind. i only think it fair to tell you that she has very seductive manners, and she may pay you little attentions which would flatter any man who was not aware that they are only a part of her childlike, pretty ways; in short, they might lead him erroneously to suppose himself the object of her particular preference, and--" i broke into a violent fit of laughter, and clapped him roughly on the shoulder. "your warning is quite unnecessary, my good young friend," i said. "come now, do i look a likely man to attract the attention of an adored and capricious beauty? besides, at my age the idea is monstrous! i could figure as her father, as yours, if you like, but in the capacity of a lover--impossible!" he eyed me attentively "she said you did not seem old," he murmured, half to himself and half to me. "oh, i grant you she made me that little compliment, certainly," i answered, amused at the suspicions that evidently tortured his mind; "and i accepted it as it was meant--in kindness. i am well aware what a battered and unsightly wreck of a man i must appear in her eyes when contrasted with you, sir antinous!" he flushed warmly. then, with a half-apologetic air, he said: "well, you must forgive me if i have seemed overscrupulous. the contessa is like a--a sister to me; in fact, my late friend fabio encouraged a fraternal affection between us, and now he is gone i feel it more than ever my duty to protect her, as it were, from herself. she is so young and light-hearted and thoughtless that--but you understand me, do you not?" i bowed. i understood him perfectly. he wanted no more poachers on the land he himself had pilfered. quite right, from his point of view! but i was the rightful owner of the land after all, and i naturally had a different opinion of the matter. however, i made no remark, and feigned to be rather bored by the turn the conversation was taking. seeing this, ferrari exerted himself to be agreeable; he became a gay and entertaining companion once more, and after he had fixed the hour for our visit to the villa romani the next afternoon, our talk turned upon various matters connected with naples and its inhabitants and their mode of life. i hazarded a few remarks on the general immorality and loose principles that prevailed among the people, just to draw my companion out and sound his character more thoroughly--though i thought i knew his opinions well. "pooh, my dear conte," he exclaimed, with a light laugh, as he threw away the end of his cigar, and watched it as it burned dully like a little red lamp among the green grass where it had fallen, "what is immorality after all? merely a matter of opinion. take the hackneyed virtue of conjugal fidelity. when followed out to the better end what is the good of it--where does it lead? why should a man be tied to one woman when he has love enough for twenty? the pretty slender girl whom he chose as a partner in his impulsive youth may become a fat, coarse, red-faced female horror by the time he has attained to the full vigor of manhood--and yet, as long as she lives, the law insists that the full tide of passion shall flow always in one direction--always to the same dull, level, unprofitable shore! the law is absurd, but it exists; and the natural consequence is that we break it. society pretends to be horrified when we do--yes, i know; but it is all pretense. and the thing is no worse in naples than it is in london, the capital of the moral british race, only here we are perfectly frank, and make no effort to hide our little sins, while there, they cover them up carefully and make believe to be virtuous. it is the veriest humbug--the parable of pharisee and publican over again." "not quite," i observed, "for the publican was repentant, and naples is not." "why should she be?" demanded ferrari, gayly; "what, in the name of heaven, is the good of being penitent about anything? will it mend matters? who is to be pacified or pleased by our contrition? god? my dear conte, there are very few of us nowadays who believe in a deity. creation is a mere caprice of the natural elements. the best thing we can do is to enjoy ourselves while we live; we have a very short time of it, and when we die there is an end of all things so far as we are concerned." "that is your creed?" i asked. "that is my creed, certainly. it was solomon's in his heart of hearts. 'eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.' it is the creed of naples, and of nearly all italy. of course the vulgar still cling to exploded theories of superstitious belief, but the educated classes are far beyond the old-world notions." "i believe you," i answered, composedly. i had no wish to argue with him; i only sought to read his shallow soul through and through that i might be convinced of his utter worthlessness. "according to modern civilization there is really no special need to be virtuous unless it suits us. the only thing necessary for pleasant living is to avoid public scandal." "just so!" agreed ferrari; "and that can always be easily managed. take a woman's reputation--nothing is so easily lost, we all know, before she is actually married; but marry her well, and she is free. she can have a dozen lovers if she likes, and if she is a good manager her husband need never be the wiser. he has his amours, of course--why should she not have hers also? only some women are clumsy, they are over-sensitive and betray themselves too easily; then the injured husband (carefully concealing his little peccadilloes) finds everything out and there is a devil of a row--a moral row, which is the worst kind of row. but a really clever woman can always steer clear of slander if she likes." contemptible ruffian! i thought, glancing at his handsome face and figure with scarcely veiled contempt. with all his advantages of education and his well-bred air he was yet ruffian to the core--as low in nature, if not lower, than the half-savage tramp for whom no social law has ever existed or ever will exist. but i merely observed: "it is easy to see that you have a thorough knowledge of the world and its ways. i admire your perception! from your remarks i judge that you have no sympathy with marital wrongs?" "not the least," he replied, dryly; "they are too common and too ludicrous. the 'wronged husband,' as he considers himself in such cases, always cuts such an absurd figure." "always?" i inquired, with apparent curiosity. "well, generally speaking, he does. how can he remedy the matter? he can only challenge his wife's lover. a duel is fought in which neither of the opponents are killed, they wound each other slightly, embrace, weep, have coffee together, and for the future consent to share the lady's affections amicably." "veramente!" i exclaimed, with a forced laugh, inwardly cursing his detestable flippancy; "that is the fashionable mode of taking vengeance?" "absolutely the one respectable way of doing it," he replied; "it is only the canaille who draw heart's blood in earnest." only the canaille! i looked at him fixedly. his smiling eyes met mine with a frank and fearless candor. evidently he was not ashamed of his opinions, he rather gloried in them. as he stood there with the warm sunlight playing upon his features he seemed the very type of youthful and splendid manhood; an apollo in exterior--in mind a silenus. my soul sickened at the sight of him. i felt that the sooner this strong treacherous life was crushed the better; there would be one traitor less in the world at any rate. the thought of my dread but just purpose passed over me like the breath of a bitter wind--a tremor shook my nerves. my face must have betrayed some sign of my inward emotion, for ferrari exclaimed: "you are fatigued, conte? you are ill! pray take my arm!" he extended it as he spoke. i put it gently but firmly aside. "it is nothing," i said, coldly; "a mere faintness which often overcomes me, the remains of a recent illness." here i glanced at my watch; the afternoon was waning rapidly. "if you will excuse me," i continued, "i will now take leave of you. regarding the pictures you have permitted me to select, my servant shall call for them this evening to save you the trouble of sending them." "it is no trouble--" began ferrari. "pardon me," i interrupted him; "you must allow me to arrange the matter in my own way. i am somewhat self-willed, as you know." he bowed and smiled--the smile of a courtier and sycophant--a smile i hated. he eagerly proposed to accompany me back to my hotel, but i declined this offer somewhat peremptorily, though at the same time thanking him for his courtesy. the truth was i had had almost too much of his society; the strain on my nerves began to tell; i craved to be alone. i felt that if i were much longer with him i should be tempted to spring at him and throttle the life out of him. as it was, i bade him adieu with friendly though constrained politeness; he was profuse in his acknowledgments of the favor i had done him by purchasing his pictures. i waived all thanks aside, assuring him that my satisfaction in the matter far exceeded his, and that i was proud to be the possessor of such valuable proofs of his genius. he swallowed my flattery as eagerly as a fish swallows bait, and we parted on excellent terms. he watched me from his door as i walked down the hilly road with the slow and careful step of an elderly man; once out of his sight, however, i quickened my pace, for the tempest of conflicting sensations within me made it difficult for me to maintain even the appearance of composure. on entering my apartment at the hotel the first thing that met my eyes was a large gilt osier basket, filled with fine fruit and flowers, placed conspicuously on the center-table. i summoned my valet. "who sent this?" i demanded. "madame the contessa romani," replied vincenzo with discreet gravity. "there is a card attached, if the eccelenza will be pleased to look." i did look. it was my wife's visiting-card, and on it was written in her own delicate penmanship-- "to remind the conte of his promised visit to-morrow." a sudden anger possessed me. i crumpled up the dainty glossy bit of pasteboard and flung it aside. the mingled odors of the fruit and flowers offended my senses. "i care nothing for these trifles," i said, addressing vincenzo almost impatiently. "take them to the little daughter of the hotel-keeper; she is a child, she will appreciate them. take them away at once." obediently vincenzo lifted the basket and bore it out of the room. i was relieved when its fragrance and color had vanished. i, to receive as a gift, the product of my own garden! half vexed, half sore at heart, i threw myself into an easychair--anon i laughed aloud! so! madame commences the game early, i thought. already paying these marked attentions to a man she knows nothing of beyond that he is reported to be fabulously wealthy. gold, gold forever! what will it not do! it will bring the proud to their knees, it will force the obstinate to servile compliance, it will conquer aversion and prejudice. the world is a slave to its yellow glitter, and the love of woman, that perishable article of commerce, is ever at its command. would you obtain a kiss from a pair of ripe-red lips that seem the very abode of honeyed sweetness? pay for it then with a lustrous diamond; the larger the gem the longer the kiss! the more diamonds you give, the more caresses you will get. the jeunesse doree who ruin themselves and their ancestral homes for the sake of the newest and prettiest female puppet on the stage know this well enough. i smiled bitterly as i thought of the languid witching look my wife had given me when she said, "you do not seem to be old!" i knew the meaning of her eyes; i had not studied their liquid lights and shadows so long for nothing. my road to revenge was a straight and perfectly smooth line--almost too smooth. i could have wished for some difficulty, some obstruction; but there was none--absolutely none. the traitors walked deliberately into the trap set for them. over and over again i asked myself quietly and in cold blood--was there any reason why i should have pity on them? had they shown one redeeming point in their characters? was there any nobleness, any honesty, any real sterling good quality in either of them to justify my consideration? and always the answer came, no! hollow to the heart's core, hypocrites both, liars both--even the guilty passion they cherished for one another had no real earnestness in it save the pursuit of present pleasure; for she, nina, in that fatal interview in the avenue where i had been a tortured listener, had hinted at the possibility of tiring of her lover, and he had frankly declared to me that very day that it was absurd to suppose a man could be true to one woman all his life. in brief, they deserved their approaching fate. such men as guido and such women as my wife, are, i know, common enough in all classes of society, but they are not the less pernicious animals, meriting extermination as much, if not more, than the less harmful beasts of prey. the poor beasts at any rate tell no lies, and after death their skins are of some value; but who shall measure the mischief done by a false tongue--and of what use is the corpse of a liar save to infect the air with pestilence? i used to wonder at the superiority of men over the rest of the animal creation, but i see now that it is chiefly gained by excess of selfish cunning. the bulky, good-natured, ignorant lion who has only one honest way of defending himself, namely with tooth and claw, is no match for the jumping two-legged little rascal who hides himself behind a bush and fires a gun aimed direct at the bigger brute's heart. yet the lion's mode of battle is the braver of the two, and the cannons, torpedoes and other implements of modern warfare are proofs of man's cowardice and cruelty as much as they are of his diabolical ingenuity. calmly comparing the ordinary lives of men and beasts--judging them by their abstract virtues merely--i am inclined to think the beasts the more respectable of the two! chapter xv. "welcome to villa romani!" the words fell strangely on my ears. was i dreaming, or was i actually standing on the smooth green lawn of my own garden, mechanically saluting my own wife, who, smiling sweetly, uttered this cordial greeting? for a moment or two my brain became confused; the familiar veranda with its clustering roses and jasmine swayed unsteadily before my eyes; the stately house, the home of my childhood, the scene of my past happiness, rocked in the air as though it were about to fall. a choking sensation affected my throat. even the sternest men shed tears sometimes. such tears too! wrung like drops of blood from the heart. and i--i could have wept thus. oh, the dear old home! and how fair and yet how sad it seemed to my anguished gaze! it should have been in ruins surely--broken and cast down in the dust like its master's peace and honor. its master, did i say? who was its master? involuntarily i glanced at ferrari, who stood beside me. not he--not he; by heaven he should never be master! but where was my authority? i came to the place as a stranger and an alien. the starving beggar who knows not where to lay his head has no emptier or more desolate heart than i had as i looked wistfully on the home which was mine before i died! i noticed some slight changes here and there; for instance, my deep easy-chair that had always occupied one particular corner of the veranda was gone; a little tame bird that i had loved, whose cage used to hang up among the white roses on the wall, was also gone. my old butler, the servant who admitted ferrari and myself within the gates, had an expression of weariness and injury on his aged features which he had not worn in my time, and which i was sorry to see. and my dog, the noble black scotch colly, what had become of him, i wondered? he had been presented to me by a young highlander who had passed one winter with me in rome, and who, on returning to his native mountains, had sent me the dog, a perfect specimen of its kind, as a souvenir of our friendly intercourse. poor wyvis! i thought. had they made away with him? formerly he had always been visible about the house or garden; his favorite place was on the lowest veranda step, where he loved to bask in the heat of the sun. and now he was nowhere visible. i was mutely indignant at his disappearance, but i kept strict watch over my feelings, and remembered in time the part i had to play. "welcome to villa romani!" so said my wife. then, remarking my silence as i looked about me, she added with a pretty coaxing air, "i am afraid after all you are sorry you have come to see me!" i smiled. it served my purpose now to be as gallant and agreeable as i could; therefore i answered: "sorry, madame! if i were, then should i be the most ungrateful of all men! was dante sorry, think you, when he was permitted to behold paradise?" she blushed; her eyes drooped softly under their long curling lashes. ferrari frowned impatiently--but was silent. she led the way into the house--into the lofty cool drawing-room, whose wide windows opened out to the garden. here all was the same as ever with the exception of one thing--a marble bust of myself as a boy had been removed. the grand piano was open, the mandoline lay on a side-table, looking as though it had been recently used; there were fresh flowers and ferns in all the tall venetian glass vases. i seated myself and remarked on the beauty of the house and its surroundings. "i remember it very well," i added, quietly. "you remember it!" exclaimed ferrari, quickly, as though surprised. "certainly. i omitted to tell you, my friend, that i used to visit this spot often when a boy. the elder conte romani and myself played about these grounds together. the scene is quite familiar to me." nina listened with an appearance of interest. "did you ever see my late husband?" she asked. "once," i answered her, gravely. "he was a mere child at the time, and, as far as i could discern, a very promising one. his father seemed greatly attached to him. i knew his mother also." "indeed," she exclaimed, settling herself on a low ottoman and fixing her eyes upon me; "what was she like?" i paused a moment before replying. could i speak of that unstained sacred life of wifehood and motherhood to this polluted though lovely creature? "she was a beautiful woman unconscious of her beauty," i answered at last. "there, all is said. her sole aim seemed to be to forget herself in making others happy, and to surround her home with an atmosphere of goodness and virtue. she died young." ferrari glanced at me with an evil sneer in his eyes. "that was fortunate," he said. "she had no time to tire of her husband, else--who knows?" my blood rose rapidly to an astonishing heat, but i controlled myself. "i do not understand you," i said, with marked frigidity. "the lady i speak of lived and died under the old regime of noblesse oblige. i am not so well versed in modern social forms of morality as yourself." nina hastily interposed. "oh, my dear conte," she said, laughingly, "pay no attention to signor ferrari! he is rash sometimes, and says very foolish things, but he really does not mean them. it is only his way! my poor dear husband used to be quite vexed with him sometimes, though he was so fond of him. but, conte, as you know so much about the family, i am sure you will like to see my little stella. shall i send for her, or are you bored by children?" "on the contrary, madame, i am fond of them," i answered, with forced composure, though my heart throbbed with mingled delight and agony at the thought of seeing my little one again. "and the child of my old friend's son must needs have a double interest for me." my wife rang the bell, and gave orders to the maid who answered it to send her little girl to her at once. ferrari meanwhile engaged me in conversation, and strove, i could see, by entire deference to my opinions, to make up for any offense his previous remark might have given. a few moments passed--and then the handle of the drawing-room door was timidly turned by an evidently faltering and unpracticed hand. nina called out impatiently--"come in, baby! do not be afraid--come in!" with that the door slowly opened and my little daughter entered. though i had been so short a time absent from her it was easy to see the child had changed very much. her face looked pinched and woe-begone, its expression was one of fear and distrust. the laughter had faded out of her young eyes, and was replaced by a serious look of pained resignation that was pitiful to see in one of her tender years. her mouth drooped plaintively at the corners--her whole demeanor had an appealing anxiety in it that spoke plainly to my soul and enlightened me as to the way she had evidently been forgotten and neglected. she approached us hesitatingly, but stopped half-way and looked doubtfully at ferrari. he met her alarmed gaze with a mocking smile. "come along, stella!" he said. "you need not be frightened! i will not scold you unless you are naughty. silly child! you look as if i were the giant in the fairy tale, going to eat you up for dinner. come and speak to this gentleman--he knew your papa." at this word her eyes brightened, her small steps grew more assured and steady--she advanced and put her tiny hand in mine. the touch of the soft, uncertain little fingers almost unmanned me. i drew her toward me and lifted her on my knee. under pretense of kissing her i hid my face for a second or two in her clustering fair curls, while i forced back the womanish tears that involuntarily filled my eyes. my poor little darling! i wonder now how i maintained my set composure before the innocent thoughtfulness of her gravely questioning gaze! i had fancied she might possibly be scared by the black spectacles i wore--children are frightened by such things sometimes--but she was not. no; she sat on my knee with an air of perfect satisfaction, though she looked at me so earnestly as almost to disturb my self-possession. nina and ferrari watched her with some amusement, but she paid no heed to them--she persisted in staring at me. suddenly a slow sweet smile--the tranquil smile of a contented baby, dawned all over her face; she extended her little arms, and, of her own accord, put up her lips to kiss me! half startled at this manifestation of affection, i hurriedly caught her to my heart and returned her caress, then i looked furtively at my wife and guido. had they any suspicion? no! why should they have any? had not ferrari himself seen me buried? reassured by this thought i addressed myself to stella, making my voice as gratingly harsh as i could, for i dreaded the child's quick instinct. "you are a very charming little lady!" i said, playfully. "and so your name is stella? that is because you are a little star, i suppose?" she became meditative. "papa said i was," she answered, softly and shyly. "papa spoiled you!" interposed nina, pressing a filmy black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes. "poor papa! you were not so naughty to him as you are to me." the child's lip quivered, but she was silent. "oh, fy!" i murmured, half chidingly. "are you ever naughty? surely not! all little stars are good--they never cry--they are always bright and calm." still she remained mute--a sigh, deep enough for an older sufferer, heaved her tiny breast. she leaned her head against my arm and raised her eyes appealingly. "have you seen my papa?" she asked, timidly. "will he come back soon?" for a moment i did not answer her. ferrari took it upon himself to reply roughly. "don't talk nonsense, baby! you know your papa has gone away--you were too naughty for him, and he will never come back again. he has gone to a place where there are no tiresome little girls to tease him." thoughtless and cruel words! i at once understood the secret grief that weighed on the child's mind. whenever she was fretful or petulant, they evidently impressed it upon her that her father had left her because of her naughtiness. she had taken this deeply to heart; no doubt she had brooded upon it in her own vague childish fashion, and had puzzled her little brain as to what she could possibly have done to displease her father so greatly that he had actually gone away never to return. whatever her thoughts were, she did not on this occasion give vent to them by tears or words. she only turned her eyes on ferrari with a look of intense pride and scorn, strange to see in so little a creature--a true romani look, such as i had often noticed in my father's eyes, and such as i knew must be frequently visible in my own. ferrari saw it, and burst out laughing loudly. "there!" he exclaimed. "like that she exactly resembles her father! it is positively ludicrous! fabio, all over! she only wants one thing to make the portrait perfect." and approaching her, he snatched one of her long curls and endeavored to twist it over her mouth in the form of a mustache. the child struggled angrily, and hid her face against my coat. the more she tried to defend herself the greater the malice with which ferrari tormented her. her mother did not interfere--she only laughed. i held the little thing closely sheltered in my embrace, and steadying down the quiver of indignation in my voice, i said with quiet firmness: "fair play, signor! fair play! strength becomes mere bullying when it is employed against absolute weakness." ferrari laughed again, but this time uneasily, and ceasing his monkeyish pranks, walked to the window. smoothing stella's tumbled hair, i added with a sarcastic smile: "this little donzella, will have her revenge when she grows up. recollecting how one man teased her in childhood, she, in return, will consider herself justified in teasing all men. do you not agree with me, madame?" i said, turning to my wife, who gave me a sweetly coquettish look as she answered: "well, really, conte, i do not know! for with the remembrance of one man who teased her, must come also the thought of another who was kind to her--yourself--she will find it difficult to decide the juste milieu." a subtle compliment was meant to be conveyed in these words. i acknowledged it by a silent gesture of admiration, which she quickly understood and accepted. was ever a man in the position of being delicately flattered by his own wife before? i think not! generally married persons are like candid friends--fond of telling each other very unpleasant truths, and altogether avoiding the least soupcon of flattery. though i was not so much flattered as amused--considering the position of affairs. just then a servant threw open the door and announced dinner. i set my child very gently down from my knee and whisperingly told her that i would come and see her soon again. she smiled trustfully, and then in obedience to her mother's imperative gesture, slipped quietly out of the room. as soon as she had gone i praised her beauty warmly, for she was really a lovely little thing--but i could see my admiration of her was not very acceptable to either my wife or her lover. we all went in to dinner--i, as guest, having the privilege of escorting my fair and spotless spouse! on our reaching the dining-room nina said-- "you are such an old friend of the family, conte, that perhaps you will not mind sitting at the head of the table?" "tropp' onore, signora!" i answered, bowing gallantly, as i at once resumed my rightful place at my own table, ferrari placing himself on my right hand, nina on my left. the butler, my father's servant and mine, stood as of old behind my chair, and i noticed that each time he supplied me with wine he eyed me with a certain timid curiosity--but i knew i had a singular and conspicuous appearance, which easily accounted for his inquisitiveness. opposite to where i sat, hung my father's portrait--the character i personated permitted me to look at it fixedly and give full vent to the deep sigh which in very earnest broke from my heart. the eyes of the picture seemed to gaze into mine with a sorrowful compassion--almost i fancied the firm-set lips trembled and moved to echo my sigh. "is that a good likeness?" ferrari asked, suddenly. i started, and recollecting myself, answered: "excellent! so true a resemblance that it arouses a long train of memories in my mind--memories both bitter and sweet. ah! what a proud fellow he was!" "fabio was also very proud," chimed in my wife's sweet voice. "very cold and haughty." little liar! how dared she utter this libel on my memory! haughty, i might have been to others, but never to her--and coldness was no part of my nature. would that it were! would that i had been a pillar of ice, incapable of thawing in the sunlight of her witching smile! had she forgotten what a slave i was to her? what a poor, adoring, passionate fool i became under the influence of her hypocritical caresses! i thought this to myself, but i answered aloud: "indeed! i am surprised to hear that. the romani hauteur had ever to my mind something genial and yielding about it--i know my friend was always most gentle to his dependents." the butler here coughed apologetically behind his hand--an old trick of his, and one which signified his intense desire to speak. ferrari laughed, as he held out his glass for more wine. "here is old giacomo," he said, nodding to him lightly. "he remembers both the romanis--ask him his opinion of fabio--he worshiped his master." i turned to my servant, and with a benignant air addressed him: "your face is not familiar to me, my friend," i said. "perhaps you were not here when i visited the elder count romani?" "no, eccellenza," replied giacomo, rubbing his withered hands nervously together, and speaking with a sort of suppressed eagerness, "i came into my lord's service only a year before the countess died--i mean the mother of the young count." "ah! then i missed making your acquaintance," i said, kindly, pitying the poor old fellow, as i noticed how his lips trembled, and how altogether broken he looked. "you knew the last count from childhood, then?" "i did, eccellenza!" and his bleared eyes roved over me with a sort of alarmed inquiry. "you loved him well?" i said, composedly, observing him with embarrassment. "eccellenza, i never wish to serve a better master. he was goodness itself--a fine, handsome, generous lad--the saints have his soul in their keeping! though sometimes i cannot believe he is dead--my old heart almost broke when i heard it. i have never been the same since--my lady will tell you so--she is often displeased with me." and he looked wistfully at her; there was a note of pleading in his hesitating accents. my wife's delicate brows drew together in a frown, a frown that i had once thought came from mere petulance, but which i was now inclined to accept as a sign of temper. "yes, indeed, giacomo," she said, in hard tones, altogether unlike her usual musical voice. "you are growing so forgetful that it is positively annoying. you know i have often to tell you the same thing several times. one command ought to be sufficient for you." giacomo passed his hand over his forehead in a troubled way, sighed, and was silent. then, as if suddenly recollecting his duty, he refilled my glass, and shrinking aside, resumed his former position behind my chair. the conversation now turned on desultory and indifferent matters. i knew my wife was an excellent talker, but on that particular evening i think she surpassed herself. she had resolved to fascinate me, that i saw at once, and she spared no pains to succeed in her ambition. graceful sallies, witty bon-mots tipped with the pungent sparkle of satire, gay stories well and briskly told, all came easily from her lips, so that though i knew her so well, she almost surprised me by her variety and fluency. yet this gift of good conversation in a woman is apt to mislead the judgment of those who listen, for it is seldom the result of thought, and still more seldom is it a proof of intellectual capacity. a woman talks as a brook babbles; pleasantly, but without depth. her information is generally of the most surface kind--she skims the cream off each item of news, and serves it up to you in her own fashion, caring little whether it be correct or the reverse. and the more vivaciously she talks, the more likely she is to be dangerously insincere and cold-hearted, for the very sharpness of her wit is apt to spoil the more delicate perceptions of her nature. show me a brilliant woman noted for turning an epigram or pointing a satire, and i will show you a creature whose life is a masquerade, full of vanity, sensuality and pride. the man who marries such a one must be content to take the second place in his household, and play the character of the henpecked husband with what meekness he best may. answer me, ye long suffering spouses of "society women" how much would you give to win back your freedom and self-respect? to be able to hold your head up unabashed before your own servants? to feel that you can actually give an order without its being instantly countermanded? ah, my poor friends! millions will not purchase you such joy; as long as your fascinating fair ones are like caesar's wife, "above suspicion" (and they are generally prudent managers), so long must you dance in their chains like the good-natured clumsy bears that you are, only giving vent to a growl now and then; a growl which at best only excites ridicule. my wife was of the true world worldly; never had i seen her real character so plainly as now, when she exerted herself to entertain and charm me. i had thought her spirituelle, ethereal, angelic! never was there less of an angel than she! while she talked, i was quick to observe the changes on ferrari's countenance. he became more silent and sullen as her brightness and cordiality increased. i would not appear aware of the growing stiffness in his demeanor; i continued to draw him into the conversation, forcing him to give opinions on various subjects connected with the art of which he was professedly a follower. he was very reluctant to speak at all; and when compelled to do so, his remarks were curt and almost snappish, so much so that my wife made a laughing comment on his behavior. "you are positively ill-tempered, guido!" she exclaimed, then remembering she had addressed him by his christian name, she turned to me and added--"i always call him guido, en famille; you know he is just like a brother to me." he looked at her and his eyes flashed dangerously, but he was mute. nina was evidently pleased to see him in such a vexed mood; she delighted to pique his pride, and as he steadily gazed at her in a sort of reproachful wonder, she laughed joyously. then rising from the table, she made us a coquettish courtesy. "i will leave you two gentlemen to finish your wine together," she said, "i know all men love to talk a little scandal, and they must be alone to enjoy it. afterward, will you join me in the veranda? you will find coffee ready." i hastened to open the door for her as she passed out smiling; then, returning to the table, i poured out more wine for myself and ferrari, who sat gloomily eying his own reflection in the broad polished rim of a silver fruit-dish that stood near him. giacomo, the butler, had long ago left the room; we were entirely alone. i thought over my plans for a moment or two; the game was as interesting as a problem in chess. with the deliberation of a prudent player i made my next move. "a lovely woman!" i murmured, meditatively, sipping my wine, "and intelligent also. i admire your taste, signor!" he started violently. "what--what do you mean?" he demanded, half fiercely. i stroked my mustache and smiled at him benevolently. "ah, young blood! young blood!" i sighed, shaking my head, "it will have its way! my good sir, why be ashamed of your feelings? i heartily sympathize with you; if the lady does not appreciate the affection of so ardent and gallant an admirer, then she is foolish indeed! it is not every woman who has such a chance of happiness." "you think--you imagine that--that--i--" "that you are in love with her?" i said, composedly. "ma--certamente! and why not? it is as it should be. even the late conte could wish no fairer fate for his beautiful widow than that she should become the wife of his chosen friend. permit me to drink your health! success to your love!" and i drained my glass as i finished speaking. unfortunate fool! he was completely disarmed; his suspicions of me melted away like mist before the morning light. his face cleared--he seized my hand and pressed it warmly. "forgive me, conte," he said, with remorseful fervor; "i fear i have been rude and unsociable. your kind words have put me right again. you will think me a jealous madman, but i really fancied that you were beginning to feel an attraction for her yourself, and actually--(pardon me, i entreat of you!) actually i was making up my mind to--to kill you!" i laughed quietly. "veramente! how very amiable of you! it was a good intention, but you know what place is paved with similar designs?" "ah, conte, it is like your generosity to take my confession so lightly; but i assure you, for the last hour i have been absolutely wretched!" "after the fashion of all lovers, i suppose," i answered "torturing yourself without necessity! well, well, it is very amusing! my young friend, when you come to my time of life, you will prefer the chink of gold to the laughter and kisses of women. how often must i repeat to you that i am a man absolutely indifferent to the tender passion? believe it or not, it is true." he drank off his wine at one gulp and spoke with some excitement. "then i will frankly confide in you. i do love the contessa. love! it is too weak a word to describe what i feel. the touch of her hand thrills me, her very voice seems to shake my soul, her eyes burn through me! ah! you cannot know--you could not understand the joy, the pain--" "calm yourself," i said, in a cold tone, watching my victim as his pent-up emotion betrayed itself, "the great thing is to keep the head cool when the blood burns. you think she loves you?" "think! gran dio! she has--" here he paused and his face flushed deeply--"nay! i have no right to say anything on that score. i know she never cared for her husband." "i know that too!" i answered, steadily. "the most casual observer cannot fail to notice it." "well, and no wonder!" he exclaimed, warmly. "he was such an undemonstrative fool! what business had such a fellow as that to marry so exquisite a creature!" my heart leaped with a sudden impulse of fury, but i controlled my voice and answered calmly: "requiescat in pace! he is dead--let him rest. whatever his faults, his wife of course was true to him while he lived; she considered him worthy of fidelity--is it not so?" he lowered his eyes as he replied in an indistinct tone: "oh, certainly!" "and you--you were a most loyal and faithful friend to him, in spite of the tempting bright eyes of his lady?" again he answered huskily, "why, of course!" but the shapely hand that rested on the table so near to mine trembled. "well, then," i continued, quietly, "the love you bear now to his fair widow is, i imagine, precisely what he would approve. being, as you say, perfectly pure and blameless, what can i wish otherwise than this--may it meet with the reward it deserves!" while i spoke he moved uneasily in his chair, and his eyes roved to my father's picture with restless annoyance. i suppose he saw in it the likeness to his dead friend. after a moment or two of silence he turned to me with a forced smile-- "and so you really entertain no admiration for the contessa?" "oh, pardon me, i do entertain a very strong admiration for her, but not of the kind you seem to suspect. if it will please you, i can guarantee that i shall never make love to the lady unless--" "unless what?" he asked, eagerly. "unless she happens to make love to me. in which case it would be ungallant not to reciprocate!" and i laughed harshly. he stared at me in blank surprise. "she make love to you!" he exclaimed, "you jest. she would never do such a thing." "of course not!" i answered, rising and clapping him heavily on the shoulder. "women never court men, it is quite unheard of; a reverse of the order of nature! you are perfectly safe, my friend; you will certainly win the recompense you so richly merit. come, let us go and drink coffee with the fair one." and arm-in-arm we sauntered out to the veranda in the most friendly way possible. ferrari was completely restored to good humor, and nina, i thought, was rather relieved to see it. she was evidently afraid of ferrari--a good point for me to remember. she smiled a welcome to us as we approached, and began to pour out the fragrant coffee. it was a glorious evening; the moon was already high in the heavens, and the nightingales' voices echoed softly from the distant woods. as i seated myself in a low chair that was placed invitingly near that of my hostess, my ears were startled by a long melancholy howl, which changed every now and then to an impatient whine. "what is that?" i asked, though the question was needless, for i knew the sound. "oh, it is that tiresome dog wyvis," answered nina, in a vexed tone. "he belonged to fabio. he makes the evening quite miserable with his moaning." "where is he?" "well, after my husband's death he became so troublesome, roaming all over the house and wailing; and then he would insist on sleeping in stella's room close to her bedside. he really worried me both day and night, so i was compelled to chain him up." poor wyvis! he was sorely punished for his fidelity. "i am very fond of dogs," i said, slowly, "and they generally take to me with extraordinary devotion. may i see this one of yours?" "oh, certainly! guido, will you go and unfasten him?" guido did not move; he leaned easily back in his chair sipping his coffee. "many thanks," he answered, with a half laugh; "perhaps you forget that last time i did so he nearly tore me to pieces. if you do not object, i would rather giacomo undertook the task." "after such an account of the animal's conduct, perhaps the conte will not care to see him. it is true enough," turning to me as she spoke, "wyvis has taken a great dislike to signor ferrari--and yet he is a good-natured dog, and plays with my little girl all day if she goes to him. do you feel inclined to see him? yes?" and, as i bowed in the affirmative, she rang a little bell twice, and the butler appeared. "giacomo," she continued, "unloose wyvis and send him here." giacomo gave me another of those timid questioning glances, and departed to execute his order. in another five minutes, the howling had suddenly ceased, a long, lithe, black, shadowy creature came leaping wildly across the moonlighted lawn--wyvis was racing at full speed. he paid no heed to his mistress or ferrari; he rushed straight to me with a yelp of joy. his huge tail wagged incessantly, he panted thirstily with excitement, he frisked round and round my chair, he abased himself and kissed my feet and hands, he rubbed his stately head fondly against my knee. his frantic demonstrations of delight were watched by my wife and ferrari with utter astonishment. i observed their surprise, and said lightly: "i told you how it would be! it is nothing remarkable, i assure you. all dogs treat me in the same way." and i laid my hand on the animal's neck with a commanding pressure; he lay down at once, only now and then raising his large wistful brown eyes to my face as though he wondered what had changed it so greatly. but no disguise could deceive his intelligence--the faithful creature knew his master. meantime i thought nina looked pale; certainly the little jeweled white hand nearest to me shook slightly. "are you afraid of this noble animal, madame?" i asked, watching her closely. she laughed, a little forcedly. "oh, no! but wyvis is usually so shy with strangers, and i never saw him greet any one so rapturously except my late husband. it is really very odd!" ferrari, by his looks, agreed with her, and appeared to be uneasily considering the circumstance. "strange to say," he remarked, "wyvis has for once forgotten me. he never fails to give me a passing snarl." hearing his voice, the dog did indeed commence growling discontentedly; but a touch from me silenced him. the animal's declared enmity toward ferrari surprised me--it was quite a new thing, as before my burial his behavior to him had been perfectly friendly. "i have had a great deal to do with dogs in my time," i said, speaking in a deliberately composed voice. "i have found their instinct marvelous; they generally seem to recognize at once the persons who are fond of their society. this wyvis of yours, contessa, has no doubt discovered that i have had many friends among his brethren, so that there is nothing strange in his making so much of me." the air of studied indifference with which i spoke, and the fact of my taking the exuberant delight of wyvis as a matter of course, gradually reassured the plainly disturbed feelings of my two betrayers, for after a little pause the incident was passed over, and our conversation went on with pleasant and satisfactory smoothness. before my departure that evening, however, i offered to chain up the dog--"as, if i do this," i added, "i guarantee he will not disturb your night's rest by his howling." this suggestion met with approval, and ferrari walked with me to show me where the kennel stood. i chained wyvis, and stroked him tenderly; he appeared to understand, and he accepted his fate with perfect resignation, lying down upon his bed of straw without a sign of opposition, save for one imploring look out of his intelligent eyes as i turned away and left him. on making my adieus to nina, i firmly refused ferrari's offered companionship in the walk back to my hotel. "i am fond of a solitary moonlight stroll," i said. "permit me to have my own way in the matter." after some friendly argument they yielded to my wishes. i bade them both a civil "good-night," bending low over my wife's hand and kissing it, coldly enough, god knows, and yet the action was sufficient to make her flush and sparkle with pleasure. then i left them, ferrari himself escorting me to the villa gates, and watching me pass out on the open road. as long as he stood there, i walked with a slow and meditative pace toward the city, but the instant i heard the gate clang heavily as it closed, i hurried back with a cautious and noiseless step. avoiding the great entrance, i slipped round to the western side of the grounds, where there was a close thicket of laurel that extended almost up to the veranda i had just left. entering this and bending the boughs softly aside as i pushed my way through, i gradually reached a position from whence i could see the veranda plainly, and also hear anything that passed. guido was sitting on the low chair i had just vacated, leaning his head back against my wife's breast; he had reached up one arm so that it encircled her neck, and drew her head down toward his. in this half embrace they rested absolutely silent for some moments. suddenly ferrari spoke: "you are very cruel, nina! you actually made me think you admired that rich old conte." she laughed. "so i do! he would be really handsome if he did not wear those ugly spectacles. and his jewels are lovely. i wish he would give me some more!" "and supposing he were to do so, would you care for him, nina?" he demanded, jealously. "surely not. besides, you have no idea how conceited he is. he says he will never make love to a woman unless she first makes love to him; what do you think of that?" she laughed again, more merrily than before. "think! why, that he is very original--charmingly so! are you coming in, guido?" he rose, and standing erect, almost lifted her from her chair and folded her in his arms. "yes, i am coming in," he answered; "and i will have a hundred kisses for every look and smile you bestowed on the conte! you little coquette! you would flirt with your grandfather!" she rested against him with apparent tenderness, one hand playing with the flower in his buttonhole, and then she said, with a slight accent of fear in her voice-- "tell me, guido, do you not think he is a little like--like fabio? is there not a something in his manner that seems familiar?" "i confess i have fancied so once or twice," he returned, musingly; "there is rather a disagreeable resemblance. but what of that? many men are almost counterparts of each other. but i tell you what i think. i am almost positive he is some long-lost relation of the family--fabio's uncle for all we know, who does not wish to declare his actual relationship. he is a good old fellow enough, i believe, and is certainly rich as croesus; he will be a valuable friend to us both. come, sposina mia, it is time to go to rest." and they disappeared within the house, and shut the windows after them. i immediately left my hiding-place, and resumed my way toward naples. i was satisfied they had no suspicion of the truth. after all, it was absurd of me to fancy they might have, for people in general do not imagine it possible for a buried man to come back to life again. the game was in my own hands, and i now resolved to play it out with as little delay as possible. chapter xvi. time flew swiftly on--a month, six weeks, passed, and during that short space i had established myself in naples as a great personage--great, because of my wealth and the style in which i lived. no one in all the numerous families of distinction that eagerly sought my acquaintance cared whether i had intellect or intrinsic personal worth; it sufficed to them that i kept a carriage and pair, an elegant and costly equipage, softly lined with satin and drawn by two arabian mares as black as polished ebony. the value of my friendship was measured by the luxuriousness of my box at the opera, and by the dainty fittings of my yacht, a swift trim vessel furnished with every luxury, and having on board a band of stringed instruments which discoursed sweet music when the moon emptied her horn of silver radiance on the rippling water. in a little while i knew everybody who was worth knowing in naples; everywhere my name was talked of, my doings were chronicled in the fashionable newspapers; stories of my lavish generosity were repeated from mouth to mouth, and the most highly colored reports of my immense revenues were whispered with a kind of breathless awe at every cafe and street corner. tradesmen waylaid my reticent valet, vincenzo, and gave him douceurs in the hope he would obtain my custom for them--"tips" which he pocketed in his usual reserved and discreet manner, but which he was always honest enough to tell me of afterward. he would most faithfully give me the name and address of this or that particular tempter of his fidelity, always adding--"as to whether the rascal sells good things or bad our lady only knows, but truly he gave me thirty francs to secure your excellency's good-will. though for all that i would not recommend him if your excellency knows of an honester man!" among other distinctions which my wealth forced upon me, were the lavish attentions of match-making mothers. the black spectacles which i always wore, were not repulsive to these diplomatic dames--on the contrary, some of them assured me they were most becoming, so anxious were they to secure me as a son-in-law. fair girls in their teens, blushing and ingenuous, were artfully introduced to me--or, i should say, thrust forward like slaves in a market for my inspection--though, to do them justice, they were remarkably shrewd and sharp-witted for their tender years. young as they were, they were keenly alive to the importance of making a good match--and no doubt the pretty innocents laid many dainty schemes in their own minds for liberty and enjoyment when one or the other of them should become the countess oliva and fool the old black-spectacled husband to her heart's content. needless to say their plans were not destined to be fulfilled, though i rather enjoyed studying the many devices they employed to fascinate me. what pretty ogling glances i received!--what whispered admiration of my "beautiful white hair! so distingue"--what tricks of manner, alternating from grave to gay, from rippling mirth to witching languor! many an evening i sat at ease on board my yacht, watching with a satirical inward amusement, one, perhaps two or three of these fair schemers ransacking their youthful brains for new methods to entrap the old millionaire, as they thought me, into the matrimonial net. i used to see their eyes--sparkling with light in the sunshine--grow liquid and dreamy in the mellow radiance of the october moon, and turn upon me with a vague wistfulness most lovely to behold, and--most admirably feigned! i could lay my hand on a bare round white arm and not be repulsed--i could hold little clinging fingers in my own as long as i liked without giving offense such are some of the privileges of wealth! in all the parties of pleasure i formed, and these were many--my wife and ferrari were included as a matter of course. at first nina demurred, with some plaintive excuse concerning her "recent terrible bereavement," but i easily persuaded her out of this. i even told some ladies i knew to visit her and add their entreaties to mine, as i said, with the benignant air of an elderly man, that it was not good for one so young to waste her time and injure her health by useless grieving. she saw the force of this, i must admit, with admirable readiness, and speedily yielded to the united invitations she received, though always with a well-acted reluctance, and saying that she did so merely "because the count oliva was such an old friend of the family and knew my poor dear husband as a child." on ferrari i heaped all manner of benefits. certain debts of his contracted at play i paid privately to surprise him--his gratitude was extreme. i humored him in many of his small extravagances--i played with his follies as an angler plays the fish at the end of his line, and i succeeded in winning his confidence. not that i ever could surprise him into a confession of his guilty amour--but he kept me well informed as to what he was pleased to call "the progress of his attachment," and supplied me with many small details which, while they fired my blood and brain to wrath, steadied me more surely in my plan of vengeance. little did he dream in whom he was trusting!--little did he know into whose hands he was playing! sometimes a kind of awful astonishment would come over me as i listened to his trivial talk, and heard him make plans for a future that was never to be. he seemed so certain of his happiness--so absolutely sure that nothing could or would intervene to mar it. traitor as he was he was unable to foresee punishment--materialist to the heart's core, he had no knowledge of the divine law of compensation. now and then a dangerous impulse stirred me--a desire to say to him point-blank: "you are a condemned criminal--a doomed man on the brink of the grave. leave this light converse and frivolous jesting--and, while there is time, prepare for death!" but i bit my lips and kept stern silence. often, too, i felt disposed to seize him by the throat, and, declaring my identity, accuse him of his treachery to his face, but i always remembered and controlled myself. one point in his character i knew well--i had known it of old--this was his excessive love of good wine. i aided and abetted him in this weakness, and whenever he visited me i took care that he should have his choice of the finest vintages. often after a convivial evening spent in my apartments with a few other young men of his class and caliber, he reeled out of my presence, his deeply flushed face and thick voice bearing plain testimony as to his condition. on these occasions i used to consider with a sort of fierce humor how nina would receive him--for though she saw no offense in the one kind of vice she herself practiced, she had a particular horror of vulgarity in any form, and drunkenness was one of those low failings she specially abhorred. "go to your lady-love, mon beau silenus!" i would think, as i watched him leaving my hotel with a couple of his boon companions, staggering and laughing loudly as he went, or singing the last questionable street-song of the neapolitan bas-peuple. "you are in a would-be riotous and savage mood--her finer animal instincts will revolt from you, as a lithe gazelle would fly from the hideous gambols of a rhinoceros. she is already afraid of you--in a little while she will look upon you with loathing and disgust--tant pis pour vous, tant mieux pour moi!" i had of course attained the position of ami intime at the villa romani. i was welcome there at any hour--i could examine and read my own books in my own library at leisure (what a privilege was mine); i could saunter freely through the beautiful gardens accompanied by wyvis, who attended me as a matter of course; in short, the house was almost at my disposal, though i never passed a night under its roof. i carefully kept up my character as a prematurely elderly man, slightly invalided by a long and ardous career in far-off foreign lands, and i was particularly prudent in my behavior toward my wife before ferrari. never did i permit the least word or action on my part that could arouse his jealousy or suspicion. i treated her with a sort of parental kindness and reserve, but she--trust a woman for intrigue!--she was quick to perceive my reasons for so doing. directly ferrari's back was turned she would look at me with a glance of coquettish intelligence, and smile--a little mocking, half-petulant smile--or she would utter some disparaging remark about him, combining with it a covert compliment to me. it was not for me to betray her secrets--i saw no occasion to tell ferrari that nearly every morning she sent her maid to my hotel with fruit and flowers and inquiries after my health--nor was my valet vincenzo the man to say that he carried gifts and similar messages from me to her. but at the commencement of november things were so far advanced that i was in the unusual position of being secretly courted by my own wife!--i reciprocating her attentions with equal secrecy! the fact of my being often in the company of other ladies piqued her vanity--she knew that i was considered a desirable parti--and--she resolved to win me. in this case i also resolved--to be won! a grim courtship truly--between a dead man and his own widow! ferrari never suspected what was going on; he had spoken of me as "that poor fool fabio, he was too easily duped;" yet never was there one more "easily duped" than himself, or to whom the epithet "poor fool" more thoroughly applied. as i said before, he was sure--too sure of his own good fortune. i wished to excite his distrust and enmity sometimes, but this i found i could not do. he trusted me--yes! as much as in the old days i had trusted him. therefore, the catastrophe for him must be sudden as well as fatal--perhaps, after all, it was better so. during my frequent visits to the villa i saw much of my child stella. she became passionately attached to me--poor little thing!--her love was a mere natural instinct, had she but known it. often, too, her nurse, assunta, would bring her to my hotel to pass an hour or so with me. this was a great treat to her, and her delight reached its climax when i took her on my knee and told her a fairy story--her favorite one being that of a good little girl whose papa suddenly went away, and how the little girl grieved for him till at last some kind fairies helped her to find him again. i was at first somewhat afraid of old assunta--she had been my nurse--was it possible that she would not recognize me? the first time i met her in my new character i almost held my breath in a sort of suspense--but the good old woman was nearly blind, and i think she could scarce make out my lineaments. she was of an entirely different nature to giacomo the butler--she thoroughly believed her master to be dead, as indeed she had every reason to do, but strange to say, giacomo did not. the old man had a fanatical notion that his "young lord" could not have died so suddenly, and he grew so obstinate on the point that my wife declared he must be going crazy. assunta, on the other hand, would talk volubly of my death and tell me with assured earnestness: "it was to be expected, eccellenza--he was too good for us, and the saints took him. of course our lady wanted him--she always picks out the best among us. the poor giacomo will not listen to me, he grows weak and childish, and he loved the master too well--better," and here her voice would deepen into reproachful solemnity, "yes, better actually than st. joseph himself! and of course one is punished for such a thing. i always knew my master would die young--he was too gentle as a baby, and too kind-hearted as a man to stay here long." and she would shake her gray head and feel for the beads of her rosary, and mutter many an ave for the repose of my soul. much as i wished it, i could never get her to talk about her mistress--it was the one subject on which she was invariably silent. on one occasion when i spoke with apparent enthusiasm of the beauty and accomplishments of the young countess, she glanced at me with sudden and earnest scrutiny--sighed--but said nothing. i was glad to see how thoroughly devoted she was to stella, and the child returned her affection with interest--though as the november days came on apace my little one looked far from strong. she paled and grew thin, her eyes looked preternaturally large and solemn, and she was very easily wearied. i called assunta's attention to these signs of ill-health; she replied that she had spoken to the countess, but that "madam" had taken no notice of the child's weakly condition. afterward i mentioned the matter myself to nina, who merely smiled gratefully up in my face and answered: "really, my dear conte, you are too good! there is nothing the matter with stella, her health is excellent; she eats too many bonbons, perhaps, and is growing rather fast, that is all. how kind you are to think of her! but, i assure you, she is quite well." i did not feel so sure of this, yet i was obliged to conceal my anxiety, as overmuch concern about the child would not have been in keeping with my assumed character. it was a little past the middle of november, when a circumstance occurred that gave impetus to my plans, and hurried them to full fruition. the days were growing chilly and sad even in naples--yachting excursions were over, and i was beginning to organize a few dinners and balls for the approaching winter season, when one afternoon ferrari entered my room unannounced and threw himself into the nearest chair with an impatient exclamation, and a vexed expression of countenance. "what is the matter?" i asked, carelessly, as i caught a furtive glance of his eyes. "anything financial? pray draw upon me! i will be a most accommodating banker!" he smiled uneasily though gratefully. "thanks, conte--but it is nothing of that sort--it is--gran dio! what an unlucky wretch i am!" "i hope," and here i put on an expression of the deepest anxiety, "i hope the pretty contessa has not played you false? she has refused to marry you?" he laughed with a disdainful triumph in his laughter. "oh, as far as that goes there is no danger! she dares not play me false." "dares not! that is rather a strong expression, my friend!" and i stroked my beard and looked at him steadily. he himself seemed to think he had spoken too openly and hastily--for he reddened as he said with a little embarrassment: "well, i did not mean that exactly--of course she is perfectly free to do as she likes--but she cannot, i think, refuse me after showing me so much encouragement." i waved my hand with an airy gesture of amicable agreement. "certainly not," i said, "unless she be an arrant coquette and therefore a worthless woman, and you, who know so well her intrinsic goodness and purity, have no reason to fear. but, if not love or money, what is it that troubles you? it must be serious, to judge from your face." he played absently with a ring i had given him, turning it round and round upon his finger many times before replying. "well, the fact is," he said at last, "i am compelled to go away--to leave naples for a time." my heart gave an expectant throb of satisfaction. going away!--leaving naples!--turning away from the field of battle and allowing me to gain the victory! fortune surely favored me. but i answered with feigned concern: "going away! surely you cannot mean it. why?--what for? and where?" "an uncle of mine is dying in rome," he answered, crossly. "he has made me his heir, and i am bound for the sake of decency to attend his last moments. rather protracted last moments they threaten to be too, but the lawyers say i had better be present, as the old man may take it into his head to disinherit me at the final gasp. i suppose i shall not be absent long--a fortnight at most--and in the meanwhile--" here he hesitated and looked at me anxiously. "continue, caro mio, continue!" i said with some impatience. "if i can do anything in your absence, you have only to command me." he rose from his chair, and approaching the window where i sat in a half-reclining position, he drew a small chair opposite mine, and sitting down, laid one hand confidingly on my wrist. "you can do much!" he replied, earnestly, "and i feel that i can thoroughly depend upon you. watch over her! she will have no other protector, and she is so beautiful and careless! you can guard her--your age, your rank and position, the fact of your being an old friend of the family--all these things warrant your censorship and vigilance over her, and you can prevent any other man from intruding himself upon her notice--" "if he does," i exclaimed, starting up from my seat with a mock tragic air, "i will not rest till his body serves my sword as a sheath!" and i laughed loudly, clapping him on the shoulder as i spoke. the words were the very same he had himself uttered when i had witnessed his interview with my wife in the avenue. he seemed to find something familiar in the phrase, for he looked confused and puzzled. seeing this, i hastened to turn the current of his reflections. stopping abruptly in my mirth, i assumed a serious gravity of demeanor, and said: "nay, nay! i see the subject is too sacred to be jested with--pardon my levity! i assure you, my good ferrari, i will watch over the lady with the jealous scrutiny of a brother--an elderly brother too, and therefore one more likely to be a model of propriety. though i frankly admit it is a task i am not specially fitted for, and one that is rather distasteful to me, still, i would do much to please you, and enable you to leave naples with an easy mind. i promise you"--here i took his hand and shook it warmly--"that i will be worthy of your trust and true to it, with exactly the same fine loyalty and fidelity you yourself so nobly showed to your dead friend fabio! history cannot furnish me with a better example!" he started as if he had been stung, and every drop of blood receded from his face, leaving it almost livid. he turned his eyes in a kind of wondering doubt upon me, but i counterfeited an air of such good faith and frankness, that he checked some hasty utterance that rose to his lips, and mastering himself by a strong effort, said, briefly: "i thank you! i know i can rely upon your honor." "you can!" i answered, decisively--"as positively as you rely upon your own!" again he winced, as though whipped smartly by an invisible lash. releasing his hand, i asked, in a tone of affected regret, "and when must you leave us, carino?" "most unhappily, at once," he answered "i start by the early train to-morrow morning." "well, i am glad i knew of this in time," i said, glancing at my writing-table, which was strewn with unsent invitation cards, and estimates from decorators and ball furnishers. "i shall not think of starting any more gayeties till you return." he looked gratefully at me "really? it is very kind of you, but i should be sorry to interfere with any of your plans--" "say no more about it, amico," i interrupted him lightly. "everything can wait till you come back. besides, i am sure you will prefer to think of madama as living in some sort of seclusion during your enforced absence--" "i should not like her to be dull!" he eagerly exclaimed. "oh, no!" i said, with a slight smile at his folly, as if she--nina--would permit herself to be dull! "i will take care of that. little distractions, such as a drive now and then, or a very quiet, select musical evening! i understand--leave it all to me! but the dances, dinners, and other diversions shall wait till your return." a delighted look flashed into his eyes. he was greatly flattered and pleased. "you are uncommonly good to me, conte!" he said, earnestly. "i can never thank you sufficiently." "i shall demand a proof of your gratitude some day," i answered. "and now, had you not better be packing your portmanteau? to-morrow will soon be here. i will come and see you off in the morning." receiving this assurance as another testimony of my friendship, he left me. i saw him no more that day; it was easy to guess where he was! with my wife, of course!--no doubt binding her, by all the most sacred vows he could think of or invent, to be true to him--as true as she had been false to me. in fancy i could see him clasping her in his arms, and kissing her many times in his passionate fervor, imploring her to think of him faithfully, night and day, till he should again return to the joy of her caresses! i smiled coldly, as this glowing picture came before my imagination. ay, guido! kiss her and fondle her now to your heart's content--it is for the last time! never again will that witching glance be turned to you in either fear or favor--never again will that fair body nestle in your jealous embrace--never again will your kisses burn on that curved sweet mouth; never, never again! your day is done--the last brief moments of your sin's enjoyment have come--make the most of them!--no one shall interfere! drink the last drop of sweet wine--my hand shall not dash the cup from your lips on this, the final night of your amour! traitor, liar, and hypocrite! make haste to be happy for the short time that yet remains to you--shut the door close, lest the pure pale stars behold your love ecstasies! but let the perfumed lamps shed their softest artificial luster on all that radiant beauty which tempted your sensual soul to ruin, and of which you are now permitted to take your last look! let there be music too--the music of her voice, which murmurs in your ear such entrancing falsehoods! "she will be true," she says. you must believe her, guido, as i did--and, believing her thus, part from her as lingeringly and tenderly as you will--part from her--forever! chapter xvii. next morning i kept my appointment and met ferrari at the railway station. he looked pale and haggard, though he brightened a little on seeing me. he was curiously irritable and fussy with the porters concerning his luggage, and argued with them about some petty trifles as obstinately and pertinaciously as a deaf old woman. his nerves were evidently jarred and unstrung, and it was a relief when he at last got into his coupe. he carried a yellow paper-covered volume in his hand. i asked him if it contained any amusing reading. "i really do not know," he answered, indifferently, "i have only just bought it. it is by victor hugo." and he held up the title-page for me to see. "le dernier jour d'un condamne," i read aloud with careful slowness. "ah, indeed! you do well to read that. it is a very fine study!" the train was on the point of starting, when he leaned out of the carriage window and beckoned me to approach more closely. "remember!" he whispered, "i trust you to take care of her!" "never fear!" i answered, "i will do my best to replace you!" he smiled a pale uneasy smile, and pressed my hand. these were our last words, for with a warning shriek the train moved off, and in another minute had rushed out of sight. i was alone--alone with perfect freedom of action--i could do as i pleased with my wife now! i could even kill her if i chose--no one would interfere. i could visit her that evening and declare myself to her--could accuse her of her infidelity and stab her to the heart! any italian jury would find "extenuating circumstances" for me. but why? why should i lay myself open to a charge of murder, even for a just cause? no! my original design was perfect, and i must keep to it and work it out with patience, though patience was difficult. while i thus meditated, walking from the station homeward, i was startled by the unexpected appearance of my valet, who came upon me quite suddenly. he was out of breath with running, and he carried a note for me marked "immediate." it was from my wife, and ran briefly thus: "please come at once. stella is very ill, and asks for you." "who brought this?" i demanded, quickening my pace, and signing to vincenzo to keep beside me. "the old man, eccellenza--giacomo. he was weeping and in great trouble--he said the little donzella had the fever in her throat--it is the diphtheria he means, i think. she was taken ill in the middle of the night, but the nurse thought it was nothing serious. this morning she has been getting worse, and is in danger." "a doctor has been sent for, of course?" "yes, eccellenza. so giacomo said. but--" "but what?" i asked, quickly. "nothing, eccellenza! only the old man said the doctor had come too late." my heart sunk heavily, and a sob rose in my throat. i stopped in my rapid walk and bade vincenzo call a carriage, one of the ordinary vehicles that are everywhere standing about for hire in the principal thoroughfares of naples. i sprung into this and told the driver to take me as quickly as possible to the villa romani, and adding to vincenzo that i should not return to the hotel all day, i was soon rattling along the uphill road. on my arrival at the villa i found the gates open, as though in expectation of my visit, and as i approached the entrance door of the house, giacomo himself met me. "how is the child?" i asked him eagerly. he made no reply, but shook his head gravely, and pointed to a kindly looking man who was at that moment descending the stairs--a man whom i instantly recognized as a celebrated english doctor resident in the neighborhood. to him i repeated my inquiry--he beckoned me into a side room and closed the door. "the fact is," he said, simply, "it is a case of gross neglect. the child has evidently been in a weakly condition for some time past, and therefore is an easy prey to any disease that may be lurking about. she was naturally strong--i can see that--and had i been called in when the symptoms first developed themselves, i could have cured her. the nurse tells me she dared not enter the mother's room to disturb her after midnight, otherwise she would have called her to see the child--it is unfortunate, for now i can do nothing." i listened like one in a dream. not even old assunta dared to enter her mistress's room after midnight--no! not though the child might be seriously ill and suffering. i knew the reason well--too well! and so while ferrari had taken his fill of rapturous embraces and lingering farewells, my little one had been allowed to struggle in pain and fever without her mother's care or comfort. not that such consolation would have been much at its best, but i was fool enough to wish there had been this one faint spark of womanhood left in her upon whom i had wasted all the first and only love of my life. the doctor watched me as i remained silent, and after a pause he spoke again. "the child has earnestly asked to see you," he said, "and i persuaded the countess to send for you, though she was very reluctant to do so, as she said you might catch the disease. of course there is always a risk--" "i am no coward, monsieur," i interrupted him, "though many of us italians prove but miserable panic-stricken wretches in time of plague--the more especially when compared with the intrepidity and pluck of englishmen. still there are exceptions--" the doctor smiled courteously and bowed. "then i have no more to say, except that it would be well for you to see my little patient at once. i am compelled to be absent for half an hour, but at the expiration of that time i will return." "stay!" i said, laying a detaining hand on his arm. "is there any hope?" he eyed me gravely. "i fear not." "can nothing be done?" "nothing--except to keep her as quiet and warm as possible. i have left some medicine with the nurse which will alleviate the pain. i shall be able to judge of her better when i return; the illness will have then reached its crisis." in a couple of minutes more he had left the house, and a young maid-servant showed me to the nursery. "where is the contessa?" i asked in a whisper, as i trod softly up the stairs. "the contessa?" said the girl, opening her eyes in astonishment. "in her own bedroom, eccellenza--madama would not think of leaving it; because of the danger of infection." i smothered a rough oath that rose involuntarily to my lips. another proof of the woman's utter heartlessness, i thought! "has she not seen her child?" "since the illness? oh, no, eccellenza!" very gently and on tiptoe i entered the nursery. the blinds were partially drawn as the strong light worried the child, and by the little white bed sat assunta, her brown face pale and almost rigid with anxiety. at my approach she raised her eyes to mine, muttering softly: "it is always so. our lady will have the best of all, first the father, then the child; it is right and just--only the bad are left." "papa!" moaned a little voice feebly, and stella sat up among her tumbled pillows, with wide-opened wild eyes, feverish cheeks, and parted lips through which the breath came in quick, uneasy gasps. shocked at the marks of intense suffering in her face, i put my arms tenderly round her--she smiled faintly and tried to kiss me. i pressed the poor parched little mouth and murmured, soothingly: "stella must be patient and quiet--stella must lie down, the pain will be better so; there! that is right!" as the child sunk back on her bed obediently, still keeping her gaze fixed upon me. i knelt at the bedside, and watched her yearningly--while assunta moistened her lips, and did all she could to ease the pain endured so meekly by the poor little thing whose breathing grew quicker and fainter with every tick of the clock. "you are my papa, are you not?" she asked, a deeper flush crossing her forehead and cheeks. i made no answer--i only kissed the small hot hand i held. assunta shook her head. "ah, poverinetta! the time is near--she sees her father. and why not? he loved her well--he would come to fetch her for certain if the saints would let him." and she fell on her knees and began to tell over her rosary with great devotion. meanwhile stella threw one little arm round my neck--her eyes were half shut--she spoke and breathed with increasing difficulty. "my throat aches so, papa!" she said, pitifully. "can you not make it better?" "i wish i could, my darling!" i murmured. "i would bear all the pain for you if it were possible!" she was silent a minute. then she said: "what a long time you have been away! and now i am too ill to play with you!" then a faint smile crossed her features. "see poor to-to!" she exclaimed, feebly, as her eyes fell on a battered old doll in the spangled dress of a carnival clown that lay at the foot of her bed. "poor dear old to-to! he will think i do not love him any more, because my throat hurts me. give him to me, papa!" and as i obeyed her request she encircled the doll with one arm, while she still clung to me with the other, and added: "to-to remembers you, papa; you know you brought him from rome, and he is fond of you, too--but not as fond as i am!" and her dark eyes glittered feverishly. suddenly her glance fell on assunta, whose gray head was buried in her hands as she knelt. "assunta!" the old woman looked up. "bambinetta!" she answered, and her aged voice trembled. "why are you crying?" inquired stella with an air of plaintive surprise. "are you not glad to see papa?" her words were interrupted by a sharp spasm of pain which convulsed her whole body--she gasped for breath--she was nearly suffocated. assunta and i raised her up gently and supported her against her pillows; the agony passed slowly, but left her little face white and rigid, while large drops of sweat gathered on her brow. i endeavored to soothe her. "darling, you must not talk," i whispered, imploringly; "try to be very still--then the poor throat will not ache so much." she looked at me wistfully. after a minute or two she said, gently: "kiss me, then, and i will be quite good." i kissed her fondly, and she closed her eyes. ten, twenty, thirty minutes passed and she did not stir. at the end of that time the doctor entered. he glanced at her, gave me a warning look, and remained standing quietly at the foot of the bed. suddenly the child woke, and smiled divinely on all three of us. "are you in pain, my dear?" i softly asked. "no!" she answered in a tiny voice, so faint and far away that we held our breath to listen to it; "i am quite well now. assunta must dress me in my white frock again now papa is here. i knew he would come back!" and she turned her eyes upon me with a look of bright intelligence. "her brain wanders," said the doctor, in a low, pitying voice; "it will soon be over." stella did not hear him; she turned and nestled in my arms, asking in a sort of babbling whisper: "you did not go away because i was naughty, did you, papa?" "no darling!" i answered, hiding my face in her curls. "why do you have those ugly black things on?" she asked, in the feeblest and most plaintive tone imaginable, so weak that i myself could scarcely hear it; "has somebody hurt your eyes? let me see your eyes!" i hesitated. dare i humor her in her fancy? i glanced up. the doctor's head again was turned away, assunta was on her knees, her face buried in the bed-clothes, praying to her saints; quick as thought i slipped my spectacles slightly down, and looked over them full at my little one. she uttered a soft cry of delight--"papa! papa!" and stretched out her arms, then a strong and terrible shudder shook her little frame. the doctor came closer--i replaced my glasses without my action being noticed, and we both bent anxiously over the suffering child. her face paled and grew livid--she made another effort to speak--her beautiful eyes rolled upward and became fixed--she sighed--and sunk back on my shoulder--dying--dead! my poor little one! a hard sob stifled itself in my throat--i clasped the small lifeless body close in my embrace, and my tears fell hot and fast. there was a long silence in the room--a deep, an awe-struck, reverent silence, while the angel of death, noiselessly entering and departing, gathered my little white rose for his immortal garden of flowers. chapter xviii. after some little time the doctor's genial voice, slightly tremulous from kindly emotion, roused me from my grief-stricken attitude. "monsieur, permit me to persuade you to come away. poor little child! she is free from pain now. her fancy that you were her father was a fortunate delusion for her. it made her last moments happy. pray come with me--i can see this has been a shock to your feelings." reverently i laid the fragile corpse back on the yet warm pillows. with a fond touch i stroked the flaxen head; i closed the dark, upturned, and glazing eyes--i kissed the waxen cheeks and lips, and folded the tiny hands in an attitude of prayer. there was a grave smile on the young dead face--a smile of superior wisdom and sweetness, majestic in its simplicity. assunta rose from her knees and laid her crucifix on the little breast--the tears were running down her worn and withered countenance. as she strove to wipe them away with her apron, she said tremblingly:-- "it must be told to madama." a frown came on the doctor's face. he was evidently a true britisher, decisive in his opinions, and frank enough to declare them openly. "yes," he said, curtly, "madama, as you call her, should have been here." "the little angel did not once ask for her," murmured assunta. "true!" he answered. and again there was silence. we stood round the small bed, looking at the empty casket that had held the lost jewel--the flawless pearl of innocent childhood that had gone, according to a graceful superstition, to ornament the festal robes of the madonna as she walked in all her majesty through heaven. a profound grief was at my heart--mingled with a sense of mysterious and awful satisfaction. i felt, not as though i had lost my child, but had rather gained her to be more entirely mine than ever. she seemed nearer to me dead than she had been when living. who could say what her future might have been? she would have grown to womanhood--what then? what is the usual fate that falls to even the best woman? sorrow, pain, and petty worry, unsatisfied longings, incompleted aims, the disappointment of an imperfect and fettered life--for say what you will to the contrary, woman's inferiority to man, her physical weakness, her inability to accomplish any great thing for the welfare of the world in which she lives, will always make her more or less an object of pity. if good, she needs all the tenderness, support, and chivalrous guidance of her master, man--if bad, she merits what she receives, his pitiless disdain and measureless contempt. from all dangers and griefs of the kind my stella had escaped--for her, sorrow no longer existed. i was glad of it, i thought, as i watched assunta shutting the blinds close, as a signal to outsiders that death was in the house. at a sign from the doctor i followed him out of the room--on the stairs he turned round abruptly, and asked: "will you tell the countess?" "i would rather be excused," i replied, decisively. "i am not at all in the humor for a scene." "you think she will make a scene?" he said with an astonished uplifting of his eyebrows. "i dare say you are right though! she is an excellent actress." by this time we had reached the foot of the stairs. "she is very beautiful," i answered evasively. "oh, very! no doubt of that!" and here a strange frown contracted the doctor's brow. "for my own taste, i prefer an ugly woman to such beauty." and with these words he left me, disappearing down the passage which led to "madama's" boudoir. left alone, i paced up and down the drawing-room, gazing abstractedly on its costly fittings, its many luxurious knickknacks and elegancies--most of which i had given to my wife during the first few months of our marriage. by and by i heard the sound of violent hysterical sobbing, accompanied by the noise of hurrying footsteps and the rapid whisking about of female garments. in a few moments the doctor entered with an expression of sardonic amusement on his face. "yes!" he said in reply to my look of inquiry, "hysterics, lace handkerchiefs, eau-de-cologne, and attempts at fainting. all very well done! i have assured the lady there is no fear of contagion, as under my orders everything will be thoroughly disinfected. i shall go now. oh, by the way, the countess requests that you will wait here a few minutes--she has a message for you--she will not detain you long. i should recommend you to get back to your hotel as soon as you can, and take some good wine. a rivederci! anything i can do for you pray command me!" and with a cordial shake of the hand he left me, and i heard the street door close behind him. again i paced wearily up and down, wrapped in sorrowful musings. i did not hear a stealthy tread on the carpet behind me, so that when i turned round abruptly, i was startled to find myself face to face with old giacomo, who held out a note to me on a silver salver, and who meanwhile peered at me with his eager eyes in so inquisitive a manner that i felt almost uneasy. "and so the little angel is dead!" he murmured in a thin, quavering voice. "dead! ay, that is a pity, a pity! but my master is not dead--no, no! i am not such an old fool as to believe that." i paid no heed to his rambling talk, but read the message nina had sent to me through him. "i am broken-hearted!" so ran the delicately penciled lines. "will you kindly telegraph my dreadful loss to signor ferrari? i shall be much obliged to you." i looked up from the perfumed missive and down at the old butler's wrinkled visage; he was a short man and much bent, and something in the downward glance i gave him evidently caught and riveted his attention, for he clasped his hands together and muttered something i could not hear. "tell your mistress," i said, speaking slowly and harshly, "that i will do as she wishes. that i am entirely at her service. do you understand?" "yes, yes! i understand!" faltered giacomo, nervously, "my master never thought me foolish--i could always understand him--" "do you know, my friend," i observed, in a purposely cold and cutting tone, "that i have heard somewhat too much about your master? the subject is tiresome to me! were your master alive, he would say you were in your dotage! take my message to the countess at once." the old man's face paled and his lips quivered--he made an attempt to draw up his shrunken figure with a sort of dignity as he answered "eccellenza, my master would never speak to me so--never, never!" then his countenance fell, and he muttered, softly--"though it is just--i am a fool--i am mistaken--quite mistaken--there is no resemblance!" after a little pause he added, humbly, "i will take your message, eccellenza." and stooping more than ever, he shambled out of the room. my heart smote me as he disappeared; i had spoken very harshly to the poor old fellow--but i instinctively felt that it was necessary to do so. his close and ceaseless examination of me--his timidity when he approached me--the strange tremors he experienced when i addressed him, were so many warnings to me to be on my guard with this devoted domestic. were he, by some unforeseen chance, to recognize me, my plans would all be spoiled. i took my hat and left the house. as i crossed the upper terrace, i saw a small round object lying in the grass--it was stella's ball that she used to throw for wyvis to catch and bring to her. i picked up the poor plaything tenderly and put it in my pocket--and glancing up once more at the darkened nursery windows, i waved a kiss of farewell to my little one lying there in her last sleep. then fiercely controlling all the weaker and softer emotions that threatened to overwhelm me, i hurried away. on my road to the hotel i stopped at the telegraph-office and dispatched the news of stella's death to guido ferrari in rome. he would be surprised, i thought, but certainly not grieved--the poor child had always been in his way. would he come back to naples to console the now childless widow? not he!--he would know well that she stood in very small need of consolation--and that she took stella's death as she had taken mine--as a blessing, and not a bereavement. on reaching my own rooms, i gave orders to vincenzo that i was not at home to any one who might call--and i passed the rest of the day in absolute solitude. i had much to think of. the last frail tie between my wife and myself had been snapped asunder--the child, the one innocent link in the long chain of falsehood and deception, no longer existed. was i glad or sorry for this? i asked myself the question a hundred times, and i admitted the truth, though i trembled to realize it. i was glad--yes--glad! glad that my own child was dead! you call this inhuman perhaps? why? she was bound to have been miserable; she was now happy! the tragedy of her parents' lives could be enacted without imbittering and darkening her young days, she was out of it all, and i rejoiced to know it. for i was absolutely relentless; had my little stella lived, not even for her sake would i have relaxed in one detail of my vengeance--nothing seemed to me so paramount as the necessity for restoring my own self-respect and damaged honor. in england i know these things are managed by the divorce court. lawyers are paid exorbitant fees, and the names of the guilty and innocent are dragged through the revolting slums of the low london press. it may be an excellent method--but it does not tend to elevate a man in his own eyes, and it certainly does not do much to restore his lost dignity. it has one advantage--it enables the criminal parties to have their way without further interference--the wronged husband is set free--left out in the cold--and laughed at by those who wronged him. an admirable arrangement no doubt--but one that would not suit me. chacun a son gout! it would be curious to know in matters of this kind whether divorced persons are really satisfied when they have got their divorce--whether the amount of red tape and parchment expended in their interest has done them good and really relieved their feelings. whether, for instance, the betrayed husband is glad to have got rid of his unfaithful wife by throwing her (with the full authority and permission of the law) into his rival's arms? i almost doubt it! i heard of a strange case in england once. a man, moving in good society, having more than suspicions of his wife's fidelity, divorced her--the law pronounced her guilty. some years afterward, he being free, met her again, fell in love with her for the second time and remarried her. she was (naturally!) delighted at his making such a fool of himself--for henceforth, whatever she chose to do, he could not reasonably complain without running the risk of being laughed at. so now the number and variety of her lovers is notorious in the particular social circle where she moves--while he, poor wretch, is perforce tongue-tied, and dare not consider himself wronged. there is no more pitiable object in the world than such a man--secretly derided and jeered at by his fellows, he occupies an almost worse position than that of a galley slave, while in his own esteem he has sunk so low that he dare not, even in secret, try to fathom the depth to which he has fallen. some may assert that to be divorced is a social stigma. it used to be so perhaps, but society has grown very lenient nowadays. divorced women hold their own in the best and most brilliant circles, and what is strange is that they are very generally petted and pitied. "poor thing!" says society, putting up its eyeglass to scan admiringly the beautiful heroine of the latest aristocratic scandal--"she had such a brute of a husband! no wonder she liked that dear lord so-and-so! very wrong of her, of course, but she is so young! she was married at sixteen--quite a child!--could not have known her own mind!" the husband alluded to might have been the best and most chivalrous of men--anything but a "brute"--yet he always figures as such somehow, and gets no sympathy. and, by the way, it is rather a notable fact that all the beautiful, famous, or notorious women were "married at sixteen." how is this managed? i can account for it in southern climates, where girls are full-grown at sixteen and old at thirty--but i cannot understand its being the case in england, where a "miss" of sixteen is a most objectionable and awkward ingenue, without any of the "charms wherewith to charm," and whose conversation is always vapid and silly to the point of absolute exhaustion on the part of those who are forced to listen to it. these sixteen-year-old marriages are, however, the only explanation frisky english matrons can give for having such alarmingly prolific families of tall sons and daughters, and it is a happy and convenient excuse--one that provides a satisfactory reason for the excessive painting of their faces and dyeing of their hair. being young (as they so nobly assert), they wish to look even younger. a la bonne heure! if men cannot see through the delicate fiction, they have only themselves to blame. as for me, i believe in the old, old, apparently foolish legend of adam and eve's sin and the curse which followed it--the curse on man is inevitably carried out to this day. god said: "because" (mark that because!) "thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife" (or thy woman, whoever she be), "and hast eaten of the tree of which i commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it" (the tree or fruit being the evil suggested first to man by woman), "cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life!" true enough! the curse is upon all who trust woman too far--the sorrow upon all who are beguiled by her witching flatteries. of what avail her poor excuse in the ancient story--"the serpent beguiled me and i did eat!" had she never listened she could not have been beguiled. the weakness, the treachery, was in herself, and is there still. through everything the bitterness of it runs. the woman tempts--the man yields--and the gate of eden--the eden of a clear conscience and an untrammeled soul, is shut upon them. forever and ever the divine denunciation re-echoes like muttering thunder through the clouds of passing generations; forever and ever we unconsciously carry it out in our own lives to its full extent till the heart grows sick and the brain weary, and we long for the end of it all, which is death--death, that mysterious silence and darkness at which we sometimes shudder, wondering vaguely--can it be worse than life? chapter xix. more than ten days had passed since stella's death. her mother had asked me to see to the arrangements for the child's funeral, declaring herself too ill to attend to anything. i was glad enough to accede to her request, for i was thus able to avoid the romani vault as a place of interment. i could not bear to think of the little cherished body being laid to molder in that terrific place where i had endured such frantic horrors. therefore, informing all whom it concerned that i acted under the countess's orders, i chose a pretty spot in the open ground of the cemetery, close to the tree where i had heard the nightingale singing in my hour of supreme misery and suffering. here my little one was laid tenderly to rest in warm mother-earth, and i had sweet violets and primroses planted thickly all about the place, while on the simple white marble cross that marked the spot i had the words engraved-- "una stella svanita," [footnote: a vanished star] adding the names of her parents and the date of her birth and death. since all this had been done i had visited my wife several times. she was always at home to me, though of course, for decency's sake, in consequence of the child's death, she denied herself to everybody else. she looked lovelier than ever; the air of delicate languor she assumed suited her as perfectly as its fragile whiteness suits a hot-house lily. she knew the power of her own beauty most thoroughly, and employed it in arduous efforts to fascinate me. but i had changed my tactics; i paid very little heed to her, and never went to see her unless she asked me very pressingly to do so. all compliments and attentions from me to her had ceased. she courted me, and i accepted her courtship in unresponsive silence. i played the part of a taciturn and reserved man, who preferred reading some ancient and abstruse treatise on metaphysics to even the charms of her society--and often, when she urgently desired my company, i would sit in her drawing-room, turning over the leaves of a book and feigning to be absorbed in it, while she, from her velvet fauteuil, would look at me with a pretty pensiveness made up half of respect, half of gentle admiration--a capitally acted facial expression, by the bye, and one that would do credit to sarah bernhardt. we had both heard from guido ferrari; his letter to my wife i of course did not see; she had, however, told me he was "much shocked and distressed to hear of stella's death." the epistle he addressed to me had a different tale to tell. in it he wrote--"you can understand, my dear conte, that i am not much grieved to hear of the death of fabio's child. had she lived, i confess her presence would have been a perpetual reminder to me of things i prefer to forget. she never liked me--she might have been a great source of trouble and inconvenience; so, on the whole, i am glad she is out of the way." further on in the letter he informed me: "my uncle is at death's door, but though that door stands wide open for him, he cannot make up his mind to go in. his hesitation will not be allowed to last, so the doctors tell me--at any rate i fervently hope i shall not be kept waiting too long, otherwise i shall return to naples and sacrifice my heritage, for i am restless and unhappy away from nina, though i know she is safely guarded by your protecting care." i read this particular paragraph to my wife, watching her closely as i slowly enunciated the words contained in it. she listened, and a vivid blush crimsoned her cheeks--a blush of indignation--and her brows contracted in the vexed frown i knew so well. her lips parted in a half-sweet, half-chilly smile as she said, quietly: "i owe you my thanks, conte, for showing me to what extent signor ferrari's impertinence may reach. i am surprised at his writing to you in such a manner! the fact is, my late husband's attachment for him was so extreme that he now presumes upon a supposed right that he has over me--he fancies i am really his sister, and that he can tyrannize, as brothers sometimes do! i really regret i have been so patient with him--i have allowed him too much liberty." true enough! i thought and smiled bitterly. i was now in the heat of the game--the moves must be played quickly--there was no more time for hesitation or reflection. "i think, madam," i said, deliberately, as i folded guido's letter and replaced it in my pocket-book, "signor ferrari ardently aspires to be something more than a brother to you at no very distant date." oh, the splendid hypocrisy of women! no wonder they make such excellent puppets on the theatrical stage--acting is their natural existence, sham their breath of life! this creature showed no sign of embarrassment--she raised her eyes frankly to mine in apparent surprise--then she gave a little low laugh of disdain. "indeed!" she said. "then i fear signor ferrari is doomed to have his aspirations disappointed! my dear conte," and here she rose and swept softly across the room toward me with that graceful gliding step that somehow always reminded me of the approach of a panther, "do you really mean to tell me that his audacity has reached such a height that--really it is too absurd!--that he hopes to marry me?" and sinking into a chair near mine she looked at me in calm inquiry. lost in amazement at the duplicity of the woman, i answered, briefly: "i believe so! he intimated as much to me." she smiled scornfully. "i am too much honored! and did you, conte, think for a moment that such an arrangement would meet with my approval?" i was silent. my brain was confused--i found it difficult to meet with and confront such treachery as this. what! had she no conscience? were all the passionate embraces, the lingering kisses, the vows of fidelity, and words of caressing endearment as naught? were they all blotted from her memory as the writing on a slate is wiped out by a sponge! almost i pitied guido! his fate, in her hands, was evidently to be the same as mine had been; yet after all, why should i be surprised? why should i pity? had i not calculated it all? and was it not part of my vengeance? "tell me!" pursued my wife's dulcet voice, breaking in upon my reflections, "did you really imagine signor ferrari's suit might meet with favor at my hands?" i must speak--the comedy had to be played out. so i answered, bluntly: "madam, i certainly did think so. it seemed a natural conclusion to draw from the course of events. he is young, undeniably handsome, and on his uncle's death will be fairly wealthy--what more could you desire? besides, he was your husband's friend--" "and for that reason i would never marry him!" she interrupted me with a decided gesture. "even if i liked him sufficiently, which i do not" (oh, miserable traitress), "i would not run the risk of what the world would say of such a marriage." "how, madam? pardon me if i fail to comprehend you." "do you not see, conte?" she went on in a coaxing voice, as of one that begged to be believed, "if i were to marry one that was known to have been my husband's most intimate friend, society is so wicked--people would be sure to say that there had been something between us before my husband's death--i know they would, and i could not endure such slander!" "murder will out" they say! here was guilt partially declaring itself. a perfectly innocent woman could not foresee so readily the condemnation of society. not having the knowledge of evil she would be unable to calculate the consequences. the overprudish woman betrays herself; the fine lady who virtuously shudders at the sight of a nude statue or picture, announces at once to all whom it may concern that there is something far coarser in the suggestions of her own mind than the work of art she condemns. absolute purity has no fear of social slander; it knows its own value, and that it must conquer in the end. my wife--alas! that i should call her so--was innately vicious and false; yet how particular she was in her efforts to secure the blind world's good opinion! poor old world! how exquisitely it is fooled, and how good-naturedly it accepts its fooling! but i had to answer the fair liar, whose net of graceful deceptions was now spread to entrap me, therefore i said with an effort of courtesy: "no one would dare to slander you, contessa, in my presence." she bowed and smiled prettily. "but," i went on, "if it is true that you have no liking for signor ferrari--" "it is true!" she exclaimed with sudden emphasis. "he is rough and ill-mannered; i have seen him the worse for wine, sometimes he is insufferable! i am afraid of him!" i glanced at her quietly. her face had paled, and her hands, which were busied with some silken embroidery, trembled a little. "in that case," i continued, slowly, "though i am sorry for ferrari, poor fellow! he will be immensely disappointed! i confess i am glad in other respects, because--" "because what?" she demanded, eagerly. "why," i answered, feigning a little embarrassment, "because there will be more chance for other men who may seek to possess the hand of the accomplished and beautiful contessa romani." she shook her fair head slightly. a transient expression of disappointment passed over her features. "the 'other men' you speak of, conte, are not likely to indulge in such an ambition," she said, with a faint sigh; "more especially," and her eyes flashed indignantly, "since signor ferrari thinks it his duty to mount guard over me. i suppose he wishes to keep me for himself--a most impertinent and foolish notion! there is only one thing to do--i shall leave naples before he returns." "why?" i asked. she flushed deeply. "i wish to avoid him," she said, after a little pause; "i tell you frankly, he has lately given me much cause for annoyance. i will not be persecuted by his attentions; and as i before said to you, i am often afraid of him. under your protection i know i am quite safe, but i cannot always enjoy that--" the moment had come. i advanced a step or two. "why not?" i said. "it rests entirely with yourself." she started and half rose from her chair--her work dropped from her hands. "what do you mean, conte?" she faltered, half timidly, yet anxiously; "i do not understand!" "i mean what i say," i continued in cool hard tones, and stooping, i picked up her work and restored it to her; "but pray do not excite yourself! you say you cannot always enjoy my protection; it seems to me that you can--by becoming my wife." "conte!" she stammered. i held up my hand as a sign to her to be silent. "i am perfectly aware," i went on in business-like accents--"of the disparity in years that exists between us. i have neither youth, health, or good looks to recommend me to you. trouble and bitter disappointment have made me what i am. but i have wealth which is almost inexhaustible--i have position and influence--and beside these things"--and here i looked at her steadily, "i have an ardent desire to do justice to your admirable qualities, and to give you all you deserve. if you think you could be happy with me, speak frankly--i cannot offer you the passionate adoration of a young man--my blood is cold and my pulse is slow--but what i can do, i will!" having spoken thus, i was silent--gazing at her intently. she paled and flushed alternately, and seemed for a moment lost in thought--then a sudden smile of triumph curved her mouth--she raised her large lovely eyes to mine, with a look of melting and wistful tenderness. she laid her needle-work gently down, and came close up to me--her fragrant breath fell warm on my cheek--her strange gaze fascinated me, and a sort of tremor shook my nerves. "you mean," she said, with a tender pathos in her voice--"that you are willing to marry me, but that you do not really love me?" and almost appealingly she laid her white hand on my shoulder--her musical accents were low and thrilling--she sighed faintly. i was silent--battling violently with the foolish desire that had sprung up within me, the desire to draw this witching fragile thing to my heart, to cover her lips with kisses--to startle her with the passion of my embraces! but i forced the mad impulse down and stood mute. she watched me--slowly she lifted her hand from where it had rested, and passed it with a caressing touch through my hair. "no--you do not really love me," she whispered--"but i will tell you the truth--_i_ love you!" and she drew herself up to her full height and smiled again as she uttered the lie. i knew it was a lie--but i seized the hand whose caresses stung me, and held it hard, as i answered: "you love me? no, no--i cannot believe it--it is impossible!" she laughed softly. "it is true though," she said, emphatically, "the very first time i saw you i knew i should love you! i never even liked my husband, and though in some things you resemble him, you are quite different in others--and superior to him in every way. believe it or not as you like, you are the only man in all the world i have ever loved!" and she made the assertion unblushingly, with an air of conscious pride and virtue. half stupefied at her manner, i asked: "then you will be my wife?" "i will!" she answered--"and tell me--your name is cesare, is it not?" "yes," i said, mechanically. "then, cesare" she murmured, tenderly, "i will make you love me very much!" and with a quick lithe movement of her supple figure, she nestled softly against me, and turned up her radiant glowing face. "kiss me!" she said, and waited. as one in a whirling dream, i stooped and kissed those false sweet lips! i would have more readily placed my mouth upon that of a poisonous serpent! yet that kiss roused a sort of fury in me. i slipped my arms round her half-reclining figure, drew her gently backward to the couch she had left, and sat down beside her, still embracing her. "you really love me?" i asked almost fiercely. "yes!" "and i am the first man whom you have really cared for?" "you are!" "you never liked ferrari?" "never!" "did he ever kiss you as i have done?" "not once!" god! how the lies poured forth! a very cascade of them! and they were all told with such an air of truth! i marveled at the ease and rapidity with which they glided off this fair woman's tongue, feeling somewhat the same sense of stupid astonishment a rustic exhibits when he sees for the first time a conjurer drawing yards and yards of many-colored ribbon out of his mouth. i took up the little hand on which the wedding-ring _i_ had placed there was still worn, and quietly slipped upon the slim finger a circlet of magnificent rose-brilliants. i had long carried this trinket about with me in expectation of the moment that had now come. she started from my arms with an exclamation of delight. "oh, cesare! how lovely! how good you are to me!" and leaning toward me, she kissed me, then resting against my shoulder, she held up her hand to admire the flash of the diamonds in the light. suddenly she said, with some anxiety in her tone: "you will not tell guido? not yet?" "no," i answered; "i certainly will not tell him till he returns. otherwise he would leave rome at once, and we do not want him back just immediately, do we?" and i toyed with her rippling gold tresses half mechanically, while i wondered within myself at the rapid success of my scheme. she, in the meantime grew pensive and abstracted, and for a few moments we were both silent. if she had known! i thought, if she could have imagined that she was encircled by the arm of her own husband, the man whom she had duped and wronged, the poor fool she had mocked at and despised, whose life had been an obstruction in her path, whose death she had been glad of! would she have smiled so sweetly? would she have kissed me then? * * * * * she remained leaning against me in a reposeful attitude for some moments, ever and anon turning the ring i had given her round and round upon her finger. by and by she looked up. "will you do me one favor?" she asked, coaxingly; "such a little thing--a trifle! but it would give me such pleasure!" "what is it?" i asked; "it is you to command and i to obey!" "well, to take off those dark glasses just for a minute! i want to see your eyes." i rose from the sofa quickly, and answered her with some coldness. "ask anything you like but that, mia bella. the least light on my eyes gives me the most acute pain--pain that irritates my nerves for hours afterward. be satisfied with me as i am for the present, though i promise you your wish shall be gratified--" "when?" she interrupted me eagerly. i stooped and kissed her hand. "on the evening of our marriage day," i answered. she blushed and turned away her head coquettishly. "ah! that is so long to wait!" she said, half pettishly. "not very long, i hope," i observed, with meaning emphasis. "we are now in november. may i ask you to make my suspense brief? to allow me to fix our wedding for the second month of the new year?" "but my recent widowhood!--stella's death!"--she objected faintly, pressing a perfumed handkerchief gently to her eyes. "in february your husband will have been dead nearly six months," i said, decisively; "it is quite a sufficient period of mourning for one so young as yourself. and the loss of your child so increases the loneliness of your situation, that it is natural, even necessary, that you should secure a protector as soon as possible. society will not censure you, you may be sure--besides, _i_ shall know how to silence any gossip that savors of impertinence." a smile of conscious triumph parted her lips. "it shall be as you wish," she said, demurely; "if you, who are known in naples as one who is perfectly indifferent to women like now to figure as an impatient lover, i shall not object!" and she gave me a quick glance of mischievous amusement from under the languid lids of her dreamy dark eyes. i saw it, but answered, stiffly: "you are aware, contessa, and i am also aware that i am not a 'lover' according to the accepted type, but that i am impatient i readily admit." "and why?" she asked. "because," i replied, speaking slowly and emphatically; "i desire you to be mine and mine only, to have you absolutely in my possession, and to feel that no one can come between us, or interfere with my wishes concerning you." she laughed gayly. "a la bonne heure! you are a lover without knowing it! your dignity will not allow you to believe that you are actually in love with me, but in spite of yourself you are--you know you are!" i stood before her in almost somber silence. at last i said: "if you say so, contessa, then it must be so. i have had no experience in affairs of the heart, as they are called, and i find it difficult to give a name to the feelings which possess me; i am only conscious of a very strong wish to become the absolute master of your destiny." and involuntarily i clinched my hand as i spoke. she did not observe the action, but she answered the words with a graceful bend of the head and a smile. "i could not have a better fortune," she said, "for i am sure my destiny will be all brightness and beauty with you to control and guide it!" "it will be what you desire," i half muttered; then with an abrupt change of manner i said: "i will wish you goodnight, contessa. it grows late, and my state of health compels me to retire to rest early." she rose from her seat and gave me a compassionate look. "you are really a great sufferer then?" she inquired tenderly. "i am sorry! but perhaps careful nursing will quite restore you. i shall be so proud if i can help you to secure better health." "rest and happiness will no doubt do much for me," i answered, "still i warn you, cara mia, that in accepting me as your husband you take a broken-down man, one whose whims are legion and whose chronic state of invalidism may in time prove to be a burden on your young life. are you sure your decision is a wise one?" "quite sure!" she replied firmly. "do i not love you! and you will not always be ailing--you look so strong." "i am strong to a certain extent," i said, unconsciously straightening myself as i stood. "i have plenty of muscle as far as that goes, but my nervous system is completely disorganized. i--why, what is the matter? are you ill?" for she had turned deathly pale, and her eyes look startled and terrified. thinking she would faint, i extended my arms to save her from falling, but she put them aside with an alarmed yet appealing gesture. "it is nothing," she murmured feebly, "a sudden giddiness--i thought--no matter what! tell me, are you not related to the romani family? when you drew yourself up just now you were so like--like fabio! i fancied," and she shuddered, "that i saw his ghost!" i supported her to a chair near the window, which i threw open for air, though the evening was cold. "you are fatigued and overexcited," i said calmly, "your nature is too imaginative. no; i am not related to the romanis, though possibly i may have some of their mannerisms. many men are alike in these things. but you must not give way to such fancies. rest perfectly quiet, you will soon recover." and pouring out a glass of water i handed it to her. she sipped it slowly, leaning back in the fauteuil where i had placed her, and in silence we both looked out on the november night. there was a moon, but she was veiled by driving clouds, which ever and anon swept asunder to show her gleaming pallidly white, like the restless spirit of a deceived and murdered lady. a rising wind moaned dismally among the fading creepers and rustled the heavy branches of a giant cypress that stood on the lawn like a huge spectral mourner draped in black, apparently waiting for a forest funeral. now and then a few big drops of rain fell--sudden tears wrung as though by force from the black heart of the sky. my wife shivered. "shut the window!" she said, glancing back at me where i stood behind her chair. "i am much better now. i was very silly. i do not know what came over me, but for the moment i felt afraid--horribly afraid!--of you!" "that was not complimentary to your future husband," i remarked, quietly, as i closed and fastened the window in obedience to her request. "should i not insist upon an apology?" she laughed nervously, and played with her ring of rose-brilliants. "it is not yet too late," i resumed, "if on second thoughts you would rather not marry me, you have only to say so. i shall accept my fate with equanimity, and shall not blame you." at this she seemed quite alarmed, and rising, laid her hand pleadingly on my arm. "surely you are not offended?" she said. "i was not really afraid of you, you know--it was a stupid fancy--i cannot explain it. but i am quite well now, and i am only too happy. why, i would not lose your love for all the world--you must believe me!" and she touched my hand caressingly with her lips. i withdrew it gently, and stroked her hair with an almost parental tenderness; then i said quietly: "if so, we are agreed, and all is well. let me advise you to take a long night's rest: your nerves are weak and somewhat shaken. you wish me to keep our engagement secret?" she thought for a moment, then answered musingly: "for the present perhaps it would be best. though," and she laughed, "it would be delightful to see all the other women jealous and envious of my good fortune! still, if the news were told to any of our friends--who knows?--it might accidentally reach guido, and--" "i understand! you may rely upon my discretion. good-night, contessa!" "you may call me nina," she murmured, softly. "nina, then," i said, with some effort, as i lightly kissed her. "good-night!--may your dreams be of me!" she responded to this with a gratified smile, and as i left the room she waved her hand in a parting salute. my diamonds flashed on it like a small circlet of fire; the light shed through the rose-colored lamps that hung from the painted ceiling fell full on her exquisite loveliness, softening it into ethereal radiance and delicacy, and when i strode forth from the house into the night air heavy with the threatening gloom of coming tempest, the picture of that fair face and form flitted before me like a mirage--the glitter of her hair flashed on my vision like little snakes of fire--her lithe hands seemed to beckon me--her lips had left a scorching heat on mine. distracted with the thoughts that tortured me, i walked on and on for hours. the storm broke at last; the rain poured in torrents, but heedless of wind and weather, i wandered on like a forsaken fugitive. i seemed to be the only human being left alive in a world of wrath and darkness. the rush and roar of the blast, the angry noise of waves breaking hurriedly on the shore, the swirling showers that fell on my defenseless head--all these things were unfelt, unheard by me. there are times in a man's life when mere physical feeling grows numb under the pressure of intense mental agony--when the indignant soul, smarting with the experience of some vile injustice, forgets for a little its narrow and poor house of clay. some such mood was upon me then, i suppose, for in the very act of walking i was almost unconscious of movement. an awful solitude seemed to encompass me--a silence of my own creating. i fancied that even the angry elements avoided me as i passed; that there was nothing, nothing in all the wide universe but myself and a dark brooding horror called vengeance. all suddenly, the mists of my mind cleared; i moved no longer in a deaf, blind stupor. a flash of lightning danced vividly before my eyes, followed by a crashing peal of thunder. i saw to what end of a wild journey i had come! those heavy gates--that undefined stretch of land--those ghostly glimmers of motionless white like spectral mile-stones emerging from the gloom--i knew it all too well--it was the cemetery! i looked through the iron palisades with the feverish interest of one who watches the stage curtain rise on the last scene of a tragedy. the lightning sprung once more across the sky, and showed me for a brief second the distant marble outline of the romani vault. there the drama began--where would it end? slowly, slowly there flitted into my thoughts the face of my lost child--the young, serious face as it had looked when the calm, preternaturally wise smile of death had rested upon it; and then a curious feeling of pity possessed me--pity that her little body should be lying stiffly out there, not in the vault, but under the wet sod, in such a relentless storm of rain. i wanted to take her up from that cold couch--to carry her to some home where there should be light and heat and laughter--to warm her to life again within my arms; and as my brain played with these foolish fancies, slow hot tears forced themselves into my eyes and scalded my cheeks as they fell. these tears relieved me--gradually the tightly strung tension of my nerves relaxed, and i recovered my usual composure by degrees. turning deliberately away from the beckoning grave-stones, i walked back to the city through the thick of the storm, this time with an assured step and a knowledge of where i was going. i did not reach my hotel till past midnight, but this was not late for naples, and the curiosity of the fat french hall-porter was not so much excited by the lateness of my arrival as by the disorder of my apparel. "ah, heaven!" he cried; "that monsieur the distinguished should have been in such a storm all unprotected! why did not monsieur send for his carriage?" i cut short his exclamations by dropping five francs into his ever-ready hand, assuring him that i had thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of a walk in bad weather, whereat he smiled and congratulated me as much as he had just commiserated me. on reaching my own rooms, my valet vincenzo stared at my dripping and disheveled condition, but was discreetly mute. he quickly assisted me to change my wet clothes for a warm dressing-gown, and then brought a glass of mulled port wine, but performed these duties with such an air of unbroken gravity that i was inwardly amused while i admired the fellow's reticence. when i was about to retire for the night, i tossed him a napoleon. he eyed it musingly and inquiringly; then he asked: "your excellency desires to purchase something?" "your silence, my friend, that is all!" i replied, with a laugh. "understand me, vincenzo, you will serve yourself and me best by obeying implicitly, and asking no questions. fortunate is the servant who, accustomed to see his master drunk every night, swears to all outsiders that he has never served so sober and discreet a gentleman! that is your character, vincenzo--keep to it, and we shall not quarrel." he smiled gravely, and pocketed my piece of gold without a word--like a true tuscan as he was. the sentimental servant, whose fine feelings will not allow him to accept an extra "tip," is, you may be sure, a humbug. i never believed in such a one. labor can always command its price, and what so laborious in this age as to be honest? what so difficult as to keep silence on other people's affairs? such herculean tasks deserve payment! a valet who is generously bribed, in addition to his wages, can be relied on; if underpaid, all heaven and earth will not persuade him to hold his tongue. left alone at last in my sleeping chamber, i remained for some time before actually going to bed. i took off the black spectacles which served me so well, and looked at myself in the mirror with some curiosity. i never permitted vincenzo to enter my bedroom at night, or before i was dressed in the morning, lest he should surprise me without these appendages which were my chief disguise, for in such a case i fancy even his studied composure would have given way. for, disburdened of my smoke-colored glasses, i appeared what i was, young and vigorous in spite of my white beard and hair. my face, which had been worn and haggard at first, had filled up and was healthily colored; while my eyes, the spokesmen of my thoughts, were bright with the clearness and fire of constitutional strength and physical well-being. i wondered, as i stared moodily at my own reflection, how it was that i did not look ill. the mental suffering i continually underwent, mingled though it was with a certain gloomy satisfaction, should surely have left more indelible traces on my countenance. yet it has been proved that it is not always the hollow-eyed, sallow and despairing-looking persons who are really in sharp trouble--these are more often bilious or dyspeptic, and know no more serious grief than the incapacity to gratify their appetites for the high-flavored delicacies of the table. a man may be endowed with superb physique, and a constitution that is in perfect working order--his face and outward appearance may denote the most harmonious action of the life principle within him--and yet his nerves may be so finely strung that he may be capable of suffering acuter agony in his mind than if his body were to be hacked slowly to pieces by jagged knives, and it will leave no mark on his features while youth still has hold on his flesh and blood. so it was with me; and i wondered what she--nina--would say, could she behold me, unmasked as it were, in the solitude of my own room. this thought roused another in my mind--another at which i smiled grimly. i was an engaged man! engaged to marry my own wife; betrothed for the second time to the same woman! what a difference between this and my first courtship of her! then, who so great a fool as i--who so adoring, passionate and devoted! now, who so darkly instructed, who so cold, so absolutely pitiless! the climax to my revenge was nearly reached. i looked through the coming days as one looks through a telescope out to sea, and i could watch the end approaching like a phantom ship--neither slow nor fast, but steadily and silently. i was able to calculate each event in its due order, and i knew there was no fear of failure in the final result. nature itself--the sun, moon and stars, the sweeping circle of the seasons--all seem to aid in the cause of rightful justice. man's duplicity may succeed in withholding a truth for a time, but in the end it must win its way. once resolve, and then determine to carry out that resolve, and it is astonishing to note with what marvelous ease everything makes way for you, provided there be no innate weakness in yourself which causes you to hesitate. i had formerly been weak, i knew, very weak--else i had never been fooled by wife and friend; but now, now my strength was as the strength of a demon working within me. my hand had already closed with an iron grip on two false unworthy lives, and had i not sworn "never to relax, never to relent" till my vengeance was accomplished? i had! heaven and earth had borne witness to my vow, and now held me to its stern fulfillment. chapter xx. winter, or what the neapolitans accept as winter, came on apace. for some time past the air had been full of that mild chill and vaporous murkiness, which, not cold enough to be bracing, sensibly lowered the system and depressed the spirits. the careless and jovial temperament of the people, however, was never much affected by the change of seasons--they drank more hot coffee than usual, and kept their feet warm by dancing from midnight up to the small hours of the morning. the cholera was a thing of the past--the cleansing of the city, the sanitary precautions, which had been so much talked about and recommended in order to prevent another outbreak in the coming year, were all forgotten and neglected, and the laughing populace tripped lightly over the graves of its dead hundreds as though they were odorous banks of flowers. "oggi! oggi!" is their cry--to-day, to-day! never mind what happened yesterday, or what will happen to-morrow--leave that to i signori santi and la signora madonna! and after all there is a grain of reason in their folly, for many of the bitterest miseries of man grow out of a fatal habit of looking back or looking forward, and of never living actually in the full-faced present. then, too, carnival was approaching; carnival, which, though denuded of many of its best and brightest features, still reels through the streets of naples with something of the picturesque madness that in old times used to accompany its prototype, the feast of bacchus. i was reminded of this coming festivity on the morning of the st of december, when i noted some unusual attempts on the part of vincenzo to control his countenance, that often, in spite of his efforts, broadened into a sunny smile as though some humorous thought had flitted across his mind. he betrayed himself at last by asking me demurely whether i purposed taking any part in the carnival? i smiled and shook my head. vincenzo looked dubious, but finally summoned up courage to say: "will the eccellenza permit--" "you to make a fool of yourself?" i interrupted, "by all means! take your own time, enjoy the fun as much as you please; i promise you i will ask no account of your actions." he was much gratified, and attended to me with even more punctiliousness than usual. as he prepared my breakfast i asked him: "by the way, when does the carnival begin?" "on the th," he answered, with a slight air of surprise. "surely the eccellenza knows." "yes, yes," i said, impatiently. "i know, but i had forgotten. i am not young enough to keep the dates of these follies in my memory. what letters have you there?" he handed me a small tray full of different shaped missives, some from fair ladies who "desired the honor of my company," others from tradesmen, "praying the honor of my custom," all from male and female toadies as usual, i thought contemptuously, as i turned them over, when my glance was suddenly arrested by one special envelope, square in form and heavily bordered with black, on which the postmark "roma" stood out distinctly. "at last!" i thought, and breathed heavily. i turned to my valet, who was giving the final polish to my breakfast cup and saucer: "you may leave the room, vincenzo," i said, briefly. he bowed, the door opened and shut noiselessly--he was gone. slowly i broke the seal of that fateful letter; a letter from guido ferrari, a warrant self-signed, for his own execution! "my best friend," so it ran, "you will guess by the 'black flag' on my envelope the good news i have to give you. my uncle is dead at last, thank god! and i am left his sole heir unconditionally. i am free, and shall of course return to naples immediately, that is, as soon as some trifling law business has been got through with the executors. i believe i can arrange my return for the d or th instant, but will telegraph to you the exact day, and, if possible, the exact hour. will you oblige me by not announcing this to the countess, as i wish to take her by surprise. poor girl! she will have often felt lonely, i am sure, and i want to see the first beautiful look of rapture and astonishment in her eyes! you can understand this, can you not, amico, or does it seem to you a folly? at any rate, i should consider it very churlish were i to keep you in ignorance of my coming home, and i know you will humor me in my desire that the news should be withheld from nina. how delighted she will be, and what a joyous carnival we will have this winter! i do not think i ever felt more light of heart; perhaps it is because i am so much heavier in pocket. i am glad of the money, as it places me on a more equal footing with her, and though all her letters to me have been full of the utmost tenderness, still i feel she will think even better of me, now i am in a position somewhat nearer to her own. as for you, my good conte, on my return i shall make it my first duty to pay back with interest the rather large debt i owe to you--thus my honor will be satisfied, and you, i am sure, will have a better opinion of "yours to command, "guido ferrari." this was the letter, and i read it over and over again. some of the words burned themselves into my memory as though they were living flame. "all her letters to me have been full of the utmost tenderness!" oh, miserable-dupe! fooled, fooled to the acme of folly even as i had been! she, the arch-traitress, to prevent his entertaining the slightest possible suspicion or jealousy of her actions during his absence, had written him, no doubt, epistles sweet as honey brimming over with endearing epithets and vows of constancy, even while she knew she had accepted me as her husband--me--good god! what a devil's dance of death it was! "on my return i shall make it my first duty to pay back with interest the rather large debt i owe you" (rather large indeed, guido, so large that you have no idea of its extent!), "thus my honor will be satisfied" (and so will mine in part), "and you, i am sure, will have a better opinion of yours to command." perhaps i shall, guido--mine to command as you are--perhaps when all my commands are fulfilled to the bitter end, i may think more kindly of you. but not till then! in the meantime--i thought earnestly for a few minutes, and then sitting down, i penned the following note. "caro amico! delighted to hear of your good fortune, and still more enchanted to know you will soon enliven us all with your presence! i admire your little plan of surprising the countess, and will respect your wishes in the matter. but you, on your part, must do me a trifling favor: we have been very dull since you left, and i purpose to start the gayeties afresh by giving a dinner on the th (christmas eve), in honor of your return--an epicurean repast for gentlemen only. therefore, i ask you to oblige me by fixing your return for that day, and on arrival at naples, come straight to me at this hotel, that i may have the satisfaction of being the first to welcome you as you deserve. telegraph your answer and the hour of your train; and my carriage shall meet you at the station. the dinner-hour can be fixed to suit your convenience of course; what say you to eight o'clock? after dinner you can betake yourself to the villa romani when you please--your enjoyment of the lady's surprise and rapture will be the more keen for having been slightly delayed. trusting you will not refuse to gratify an old man's whim, i am, "yours for the time being, "cesare oliva." this epistle finished and written in the crabbed disguised penmanship it was part of my business to effect, i folded, sealed and addressed it, and summoning vincenzo, bade him post it immediately. as soon as he had gone on this errand, i sat down to my as yet untasted breakfast and made some effort to eat as usual. but my thoughts were too active for appetite--i counted on my fingers the days--there were four, only four, between me and--what? one thing was certain--i must see my wife, or rather i should say my betrothed--i must see her that very day. i then began to consider how my courtship had progressed since that evening when she had declared she loved me. i had seen her frequently, though not daily--her behavior had been by turns affectionate, adoring, timid, gracious and once or twice passionately loving, though the latter impulse in her i had always coldly checked. for though i could bear a great deal, any outburst of sham sentiment on her part sickened and filled me with such utter loathing that often when she was more than usually tender i dreaded lest my pent-up wrath should break loose and impel me to kill her swiftly and suddenly as one crushes the head of a poisonous adder--an all-too-merciful death for such as she. i preferred to woo her by gifts alone--and her hands were always ready to take whatever i or others chose to offer her. from a rare jewel to a common flower she never refused anything--her strongest passions were vanity and avarice. sparkling gems from the pilfered store of carmelo neri--trinkets which i had especially designed for her--lace, rich embroideries, bouquets of hot-house blossoms, gilded boxes of costly sweets--nothing came amiss to her--she accepted all with a certain covetous glee which she was at no pains to hide from me--nay, she made it rather evident that she expected such things as her right. and after all, what did it matter to me--i thought--of what value was anything i possessed save to assist me in carrying out the punishment i had destined for her? i studied her nature with critical coldness--i saw its inbred vice artfully concealed beneath the affectation of virtue--every day she sunk lower in my eyes, and i wondered vaguely how i could ever have loved so coarse and common a thing! lovely she certainly was--lovely too are many of the wretched outcasts who sell themselves in the streets for gold, and who in spite of their criminal trade are less vile than such a woman as the one i had wedded. mere beauty of face and form can be bought as easily as one buys a flower--but the loyal heart, the pure soul, the lofty intelligence which can make of woman an angel--these are unpurchasable ware, and seldom fall to the lot of man. for beauty, though so perishable, is a snare to us all--it maddens our blood in spite of ourselves--we men are made so. how was it that i--even i, who now loathed the creature i had once loved--could not look upon her physical loveliness without a foolish thrill of passion awaking within me--passion that had something of the murderous in it--admiration that was almost brutal--feelings which i could not control though i despised myself for them while they lasted! there is a weak point in the strongest of us, and wicked women know well where we are most vulnerable. one dainty pin-prick well-aimed--and all the barriers of caution and reserve are broken down--we are ready to fling away our souls for a smile or a kiss. surely at the last day when we are judged--and may be condemned--we can make our last excuse to the creator in the words of the first misguided man: "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me--she tempted me, and i did eat!" i lost no time that day in going to the villa romani. i drove there in my carriage, taking with me the usual love-offering in the shape of a large gilded osier-basket full of white violets. their delicious odor reminded me of that may morning when stella was born--and then quickly there flashed into my mind the words spoken by guido ferrari at the time. how mysterious they had seemed to me then--how clear their meaning now! on arriving at the villa i found my fiance in her own boudoir, attired in morning deshabille, if a trailing robe of white cashmere trimmed with mechlin lace and swan's-down can be considered deshabille. her rich hair hung loosely on her shoulders, and she was seated in a velvet easy-chair before a small sparkling wood fire, reading. her attitude was one of luxurious ease and grace, but she sprung up as soon as her maid announced me, and came forward with her usual charming air of welcome, in which there was something imperial, as of a sovereign who receives a subject. i presented the flowers i had brought, with a few words of studied and formal compliment, uttered for the benefit of the servant who lingered in the room--then i added in a lower tone: "i have news of importance--can i speak to you privately?" she smiled assent, and motioning me by a graceful gesture of her hand to take a seat, she at once dismissed her maid. as soon as the door had closed behind the girl i spoke at once and to the point, scarcely waiting till my wife resumed her easy-chair before the fire. "i have had a letter from signor ferrari." she started slightly, but said nothing, she merely bowed her head and raised her delicately arched eyebrows with a look of inquiry as of one who should say, "indeed! in what way does this concern me?" i watched her narrowly, and then continued, "he is coming back in two or three days--he says he is sure," and here i smiled, "that you will be delighted to see him." this time she half rose from her seat, her lips moved as though she would speak, but she remained silent, and sinking back again among her violet velvet cushions, she grew very pale. "if," i went on, "you have any reason to think that he may make himself disagreeable to you when he knows of your engagement to me, out of disappointed ambition, conceit, or self-interest (for of course you never encouraged him), i should advise you to go on a visit to some friends for a few days, till his irritation shall have somewhat passed. what say you to such a plan?" she appeared to meditate for a few moments--then raising her lovely eyes with a wistful and submissive look, she replied: "it shall be as you wish, cesare! signor ferrari is certainly rash and hot-tempered, he might be presumptuous enough to--but you do not think of yourself in the matter! surely you also are in danger of being insulted by him when he knows all?" "i shall be on my guard!" i said, quietly. "besides, i can easily pardon any outburst of temper on his part--it will be perfectly natural, i think! to lose all hope of ever winning such a love as yours must needs be a sore trial to one of his hot blood and fiery impulses. poor fellow!" and i sighed and shook my head with benevolent gentleness. "by the way, he tells me he has had letters from you?" i put this question carelessly, but it took her by surprise. she caught her breath hard and looked at me sharply, with an alarmed expression. seeing that my face was perfectly impassive, she recovered her composure instantly, and answered: "oh, yes! i have been compelled to write to him once or twice on matters of business connected with my late husband's affairs. most unfortunately, fabio made him one of the trustees of his fortune in case of his death--it is exceedingly awkward for me that he should occupy that position--it appears to give him some authority over my actions. in reality he has none. he has no doubt exaggerated the number of times i have written to him? it would be like his impertinence to do so." though this last remark was addressed to me almost as a question, i let it pass without response. i reverted to my original theme. "what think you, then?" i said. "will you remain here or will you absent yourself for a few days?" she rose from her chair and approaching me, knelt down at my side, clasping her two little hands round my arm. "with your permission," she returned, softly, "i will go to the convent where i was educated. it is some eight or ten miles distant from here, and i think" (here she counterfeited the most wonderful expression of ingenuous sweetness and piety)--"i think i should like to make a 'retreat'--that is, devote some time solely to the duties of religion before i enter upon a second marriage. the dear nuns would be so glad to see me--and i am sure you will not object? it will be a good preparation for my future." i seized her caressing hands and held them hard, while i looked upon her kneeling there like the white-robed figure of a praying saint. "it will indeed!" i said in a harsh voice. "the best of all possible preparations! we none of us know what may happen--we cannot tell whether life or death awaits us--it is wise to prepare for either by words of penitence and devotion! i admire this beautiful spirit in you, carina! go to the convent by all means! i shall find you there and will visit you when the wrath and bitterness of our friend ferrari have been smoothed into silence and resignation. yes--go to the convent, among the good and pious nuns--and when you pray for yourself, pray for the peace of your dead husband's soul--and--for me! such prayers, unselfish and earnest, uttered by pure lips like yours, fly swiftly to heaven! and as for young guido--have no fear--i promise you he shall offend you no more!" "ah, you do not know him!" she murmured, lightly kissing my hands that still held hers; "i fear he will give you a great deal of trouble." "i shall at any rate know how to silence him," i said, releasing her as i spoke, and watching her as she rose from her kneeling position and stood before me, supple and delicate as a white iris swaying in the wind. "you never gave him reason to hope--therefore he has no cause of complaint." "true!" she replied, readily, with an untroubled smile. "but i am such a nervous creature! i am always imagining evils that never happen. and now, cesare, when do you wish me to go to the convent?" i shrugged my shoulders with an air of indifference. "your submission to my will, mia bella" i said, coldly, "is altogether charming, and flatters me much, but i am not your master--not yet! pray choose your own time, and suit your departure to your own pleasure." "then," she replied, with an air of decision, "i will go today. the sooner the better--for some instinct tells me that guido will play us a trick and return before we expect him. yes--i will go to-day." i rose to take my leave. "then you will require leisure to make your preparations," i said, with ceremonious politeness. "i assure you i approve your resolve. if you inform the superioress of the convent that i am your betrothed husband, i suppose i shall be permitted to see you when i call?" "oh, certainly!" she replied. "the dear nuns will do anything for me. their order is one of perpetual adoration, and their rules are very strict, but they do not apply them to their old pupils, and i am one of their great favorites." "naturally!" i observed. "and will you also join in the service of perpetual adoration?" "oh, yes!" "it needs an untainted soul like yours," i said, with a satirical smile, which she did not see, "to pray before the unveiled host without being conscience-smitten! i envy you your privilege. _i_ could not do it--but you are probably nearer to the angels than we know. and so you will pray for me?" she raised her eyes with devout gentleness. "i will indeed!" "i thank you!"--and i choked back the bitter contempt and disgust i had for her hypocrisy as i spoke--"i thank you heartily--most heartily! addio!" she came or rather floated to my side, her white garments trailing about her and the gold of her hair glittering in the mingled glow of the firelight and the wintery sunbeams that shone through the window. she looked up--a witch-like languor lay in her eyes--her red lips pouted. "not one kiss before you go?" she said. chapter xxi. for a moment i lost my self-possession. i scarcely remember now what i did. i know i clasped her almost roughly in my arms--i know that i kissed her passionately on lips, throat and brow--and that in the fervor of my embraces, the thought of what manner of vile thing she was came swiftly upon me, causing me to release her with such suddenness that she caught at the back of a chair to save herself from falling. her breath came and went in little quick gasps of excitement, her face was flushed--she looked astonished, yet certainly not displeased. no, she was not angry, but i was--thoroughly annoyed--bitterly vexed with myself, for being such a fool. "forgive me," i muttered. "i forgot--i--" a little smile stole round the corners of her mouth. "you are fully pardoned!" she said, in a low voice, "you need not apologize." her smile deepened; suddenly she broke into a rippling laugh, sweet and silvery as a bell--a laugh that went through me like a knife. was it not the self-same laughter that had pierced my brain the night i witnessed her amorous interview with guido in the avenue? had not the cruel mockery of it nearly driven me mad? i could not endure it--i sprung to her side--she ceased laughing and looked at me in wide-eyed wonderment. "listen!" i said, in an impatient, almost fierce tone. "do not laugh like that! it jars my nerves--it--hurts me! i will tell you why. once--long ago--in my youth--i loved a woman. she was not like you--no--for she was false! false to the very heart's core--false in every word she uttered. you understand me? she resembled you in nothing--nothing! but she used to laugh at me--she trampled on my life and spoiled it--she broke my heart! it is all past now, i never think of her, only your laughter reminded me--there!" and i took her hands and kissed them. "i have told you the story of my early folly--forget it and forgive me! it is time you prepared for your journey, is it not? if i can be of service to you, command me--you know where to send for me. good-bye! and the peace of a pure conscience be with you!" and i laid my burning hand on her head weighted with its clustering curls of gold. she thought this gesture was one of blessing. _i_ thought--god only knows what i thought--yet surely if curses can be so bestowed, my curse crowned her at that moment! i dared not trust myself longer in her presence, and without another word or look i left her and hurried from the house. i knew she was startled and at the same time gratified to think she could thus have moved me to any display of emotion--but i would not even turn my head to catch her parting glance. i could not--i was sick of myself and of her. i was literally torn asunder between love and hatred--love born basely of material feeling alone--hatred, the offspring of a deeply injured spirit for whose wrong there could scarce be found sufficient remedy. once out of the influence of her bewildering beauty, my mind grew calmer--and the drive back to the hotel in my carriage through the sweet dullness of the december air quieted the feverish excitement of my blood and restored me to myself. it was a most lovely day--bright and fresh, with the savor of the sea in the wind. the waters of the bay were of a steel-like blue shading into deep olive-green, and a soft haze lingered about the shores of amalfi like a veil of gray, shot through with silver and gold. down the streets went women in picturesque garb carrying on their heads baskets full to the brim of purple violets that scented the air as they passed--children ragged and dirty ran along, pushing the luxuriant tangle of their dark locks away from their beautiful wild antelope eyes, and, holding up bunches of roses and narcissi with smiles as brilliant as the very sunshine, implored the passengers to buy "for the sake of the little gesu who was soon coming!" bells clashed and clanged from the churches in honor of san tommaso, whose festival it was, and the city had that aspect of gala gayety about it, which is in truth common enough to all continental towns, but which seems strange to the solemn londoner who sees so much apparently reasonless merriment for the first time. he, accustomed to have his reluctant laughter pumped out of him by an occasional visit to the theater where he can witness the "original," english translation of a french farce, cannot understand why these foolish neapolitans should laugh and sing and shout in the manner they do, merely because they are glad to be alive. and after much dubious consideration, he decides within himself that they are all rascals--the scum of the earth--and that he and he only is the true representative of man at his best--the model of civilized respectability. and a mournful spectacle he thus seems to the eyes of us "base" foreigners--in our hearts we are sorry for him and believe that if he could manage to shake off the fetters of his insular customs and prejudices, he might almost succeed in enjoying life as much as we do! as i drove along i saw a small crowd at one of the street corners--a gesticulating, laughing crowd, listening to an "improvisatore" or wandering poet--a plump-looking fellow who had all the rhymes of italy at his fingers' ends, and who could make a poem on any subject or an acrostic on any name, with perfect facility. i stopped my carriage to listen to his extemporized verses, many of which were really admirable, and tossed him three francs. he threw them up in the air, one after the other, and caught them, as they fell, in his mouth, appearing to have swallowed them all--then with an inimitable grimace, he pulled off his tattered cap and said: "ancora affamato, excellenza!" (i am still hungry!) amid the renewed laughter of his easily amused audience. a merry poet he was and without conceit--and his good humor merited the extra silver pieces i gave him, which caused him, to wish me--"buon appetito e un sorriso della madonna!"--(a good appetite to you and a smile of the madonna!) imagine the lord laureate of england standing at the corner of regent street swallowing half-pence for his rhymes! yet some of the quaint conceits strung together by such a fellow as this improvisatore might furnish material for many of the so called "poets" whose names are mysteriously honored in britain. further on i came upon a group of red-capped coral fishers assembled round a portable stove whereon roasting chestnuts cracked their glossy sides and emitted savory odors. the men were singing gayly to the thrumming of an old guitar, and the song they sung was familiar to me. stay! where had i heard it?--let me listen! "sciore limone le voglio far mori de passione zompa llari llira!" [footnote: neapolitan dialect.] ha! i remembered now. when i had crawled out of the vault through the brigand's hole of entrance--when my heart had bounded with glad anticipations never to be realized--when i had believed in the worth of love and friendship--when i had seen the morning sun glittering on the sea, and had thought--poor fool!--that his long beams were like so many golden flags of joy hung up in heaven to symbolize the happiness of my release from death and my restoration to liberty--then--then i had heard a sailor's voice in the distance singing that "ritornello," and i had fondly imagined its impassioned lines were all for me! hateful music--most bitter sweetness! i could have put my hands up to my ears to shut out the sound of it now that i thought of the time when i had heard it last! for then i had possessed a heart--a throbbing, passionate, sensitive thing--alive to every emotion of tenderness and affection--now that heart was dead and cold as a stone. only its corpse went with me everywhere, weighing me down with itself to the strange grave it occupied, a grave wherein were also buried so many dear delusions--such plaintive regrets, such pleading memories, that surely it was no wonder their small ghosts arose and haunted me, saying, "wilt thou not weep for this lost sweetness?" "wilt thou not relent before such a remembrance?" or "hast thou no desire for that past delight?" but to all such inward temptations my soul was deaf and inexorable; justice--stern, immutable justice was what i sought and what i meant to have. may be you find it hard to understand the possibility of scheming and carrying out so prolonged a vengeance as mine? if you that read these pages are english, i know it will seem to you well-nigh incomprehensible. the temperate blood of the northerner, combined with his open, unsuspicious nature, has, i admit, the advantage over us in matters of personal injury. an englishman, so i hear, is incapable of nourishing a long and deadly resentment, even against an unfaithful wife--he is too indifferent, he thinks it not worth his while. but we neapolitans, we can carry a "vendetta" through a life-time--ay, through generation after generation! this is bad, you say--immoral, unchristian. no doubt! we are more than half pagans at heart; we are as our country and our traditions have made us. it will need another visitation of christ before we shall learn how to forgive those that despitefully use us. such a doctrine seems to us a mere play upon words--a weak maxim only fit for children and priests. besides, did christ himself forgive judas? the gospel does not say so! when i reached my own apartments at the hotel i felt worn out and fagged. i resolved to rest and receive no visitors that day. while giving my orders to vincenzo a thought occurred to me. i went to a cabinet in the room and unlocked a secret drawer. in it lay a strong leather case. i lifted this, and bade vincenzo unstrap and open it. he did so, nor showed the least sign of surprise when a pair of richly ornamented pistols was displayed to his view. "good weapons?" i remarked, in a casual manner. my vallet took each one out of the case, and examined them both critically. "they need cleaning, eccellenza." "good!" i said, briefly. "then clean them and put them in good order. i may require to use them." the imperturbable vincenzo bowed, and taking the weapons, prepared to leave the room. "stay!" he turned. i looked at him steadily. "i believe you are a faithful fellow, vincenzo," i said. he met my glance frankly. "the day may come," i went on, quietly, "when i shall perhaps put your fidelity to the proof." the dark tuscan eyes, keen and clear the moment before, flashed brightly and then grew humid. "eccellenza, you have only to command! i was a soldier once--i know what duty means. but there is a better service--gratitude. i am your poor servant, but you have won my heart. i would give my life for you should you desire it!" he paused, half ashamed of the emotion that threatened to break through his mask of impassibility, bowed again and would have left me, but that i called him back and held out my hand. "shake hands, amico" i said, simply. he caught it with an astonished yet pleased look--and stooping, kissed it before i could prevent him, and this time literally scrambled out of my presence with an entire oblivion of his usual dignity. left alone, i considered this behavior of his with half-pained surprise. this poor fellow loved me it was evident--why, i knew not. i had done no more for him than any other master might have done for a good servant. i had often spoken to him with impatience, even harshness; and yet i had "won his heart"--so he said. why should he care for me? why should my poor old butler giacomo cherish me so devotedly in his memory; why should my very dog still love and obey me, when my nearest and dearest, my wife and my friend, had so gladly forsaken me, and were so eager to forget me! perhaps fidelity was not the fashion now among educated persons? perhaps it was a worn-out virtue, left to the bas-peuple--to the vulgar--and to animals? progress might have attained this result--no doubt it had. i sighed wearily, and threw myself down in an arm-chair near the window, and watched the white-sailed boats skimming like flecks of silver across the blue-green water. the tinkling of a tambourine by and by attracted my wandering attention, and looking into the street just below my balcony i saw a young girl dancing. she was lovely to look at, and she danced with exquisite grace as well as modesty, but the beauty of her face was not so much caused by perfection of feature or outline as by a certain wistful expression that had in it something of nobility and pride. i watched her; at the conclusion of her dance she held up her tambourine with a bright but appealing smile. silver and copper were freely flung to her, i contributing my quota to the amount; but all she received she at once emptied into a leathern bag which was carried by a young and handsome man who accompanied her, and who, alas! was totally blind. i knew the couple well, and had often seen them; their history was pathetic enough. the girl had been betrothed to the young fellow when he had occupied a fairly good position as a worker in silver filigree jewelry. his eyesight, long painfully strained over his delicate labors, suddenly failed him--he lost his place, of course, and was utterly without resources. he offered to release his fiance from her engagement, but she would not take her freedom--she insisted on marrying him at once. she had her way, and devoted herself to him soul and body--danced in the streets and sung to gain a living for herself and him; taught him to weave baskets so that he might not feel himself entirely dependent on her, and she sold these baskets for him so successfully that he was gradually making quite a little trade of them. poor child! for she was not much more than a child--what a bright face she had!--glorified by the self-denial and courage of her everyday life. no wonder she had won the sympathy of the warmhearted and impulsive neapolitans--they looked upon her as a heroine of romance; and as she passed through the streets, leading her blind husband tenderly by the hand, there was not a creature in the city, even among the most abandoned and vile characters, who would have dared to offer her the least insult, or who would have ventured to address her otherwise than respectfully. she was good, innocent, and true; how was it, i wondered dreamily, that i could not have won a woman's heart like hers? were the poor alone to possess all the old world virtues--honor and faith, love and loyalty? was there something in a life of luxury that sapped virtue at its root? evidently early training had little to do with after results, for had not my wife been brought up among an order of nuns renowned for simplicity and sanctity; had not her own father declared her to be "as pure as a flower on the altar of the madonna;" and yet the evil had been in her, and nothing had eradicated it; for even religion, with her, was a mere graceful sham, a kind of theatrical effect used to tone down her natural hypocrisy. my own thoughts began to harass and weary me. i took up a volume of philosophic essays and began to read, in an endeavor to distract my mind from dwelling on the one perpetual theme. the day wore on slowly enough; and i was glad when the evening closed in, and when vincenzo, remarking that the night was chilly, kindled a pleasant wood-fire in my room, and lighted the lamps. a little while before my dinner was served he handed me a letter stating that it had just been brought by the countess romani's coachman. it bore my own seal and motto. i opened it; it was dated, "la santissima annunziata," and ran as follows: "beloved! i arrived here safely; the nuns are delighted to see me, and you will be made heartily welcome when you come. i think of you constantly--how happy i felt this morning! you seemed to love me so much; why are you not always so fond of your faithful "nina?" i crumpled this note fiercely in my hand and flung it into the leaping flames of the newly lighted fire. there was a faint perfume about it that sickened me--a subtle odor like that of a civet cat when it moves stealthily after its prey through a tangle of tropical herbage. i always detested scented note-paper--i am not the only man who does so. one is led to fancy that the fingers of the woman who writes upon it must have some poisonous or offensive taint about them, which she endeavors to cover by the aid of a chemical concoction. i would not permit myself to think of this so "faithful nina," as she styled herself. i resumed my reading, and continued it even at dinner, during which meal vincenzo waited upon me with his usual silent gravity and decorum, though i could feel that he watched me with a certain solicitude. i suppose i looked weary--i certainly felt so, and retired to rest unusually early. the time seemed to me so long--would the end never come? the next day dawned and trailed its tiresome hours after it, as a prisoner might trail his chain of iron fetters, until sunset, and then--then, when the gray of the wintry sky flashed for a brief space into glowing red--then, while the water looked like blood and the clouds like flame--then a few words sped along the telegraph wires that stilled my impatience, roused my soul, and braced every nerve and muscle in my body to instant action. they were plain, clear, and concise: "from guido ferrari, rome, to il conte cesare oliva, naples.--shall be with you on the th inst. train arrives at : p.m. will come to you as you desire without fail." chapter xxii. christmas eve! the day had been extra chilly, with frequent showers of stinging rain, but toward five o'clock in the afternoon the weather cleared. the clouds, which had been of a dull uniform gray, began to break asunder and disclose little shining rifts of pale blue and bright gold; the sea looked like a wide satin ribbon shaken out and shimmering with opaline tints. flower girls trooped forth making the air musical with their mellow cries of "fiori! chi vuol fiori" and holding up their tempting wares--not bunches of holly and mistletoe such as are known in england, but roses, lilies, jonquils, and sweet daffodils. the shops were brilliant with bouquets and baskets of fruits and flowers; a glittering show of etrennes, or gifts to suit all ages and conditions, were set forth in tempting array, from a box of bonbons costing one franc to a jeweled tiara worth a million, while in many of the windows were displayed models of the "bethlehem," with babe jesus lying in his manger, for the benefit of the round-eyed children--who, after staring fondly at his waxen image for some time, would run off hand in hand to the nearest church where the usual christmas creche was arranged, and there kneeling down, would begin to implore their "dear little jesus," their "own little brother," not to forget them, with a simplicity of belief that was as touching as it was unaffected. i am told that in england the principle sight on christmas-eve are the shops of the butchers and poulterers hung with the dead carcases of animals newly slaughtered, in whose mouths are thrust bunches of prickly holly, at which agreeable spectacle the passers-by gape with gluttonous approval. surely there is nothing graceful about such a commemoration of the birth of christ as this? nothing picturesque, nothing poetic?--nothing even orthodox, for christ was born in the east, and the orientals are very small eaters, and are particularly sparing in the use of meat. one wonders what such an unusual display of vulgar victuals has to do with the coming of the saviour, who arrived among us in such poor estate that even a decent roof was denied to him. perhaps, though, the english people read their gospels in a way of their own, and understood that the wise men of the east, who are supposed to have brought the divine child symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, really brought joints of beef, turkeys, and "plum-pudding," that vile and indigestible mixture at which an italian shrugs his shoulders in visible disgust. there is something barbaric, i suppose, in the british customs still--something that reminds one of their ancient condition when the romans conquered them--when their supreme idea of enjoyment was to have an ox roasted whole before them while they drank "wassail" till they groveled under their own tables in a worse condition than overfed swine. coarse and vulgar plenty is still the leading characteristic at the dinners of english or american parvenus; they have scarcely any idea of the refinements that can be imparted to the prosaic necessity of eating--of the many little graces of the table that are understood in part by the french, but that perhaps never reach such absolute perfection of taste and skill as at the banquets of a cultured and clever italian noble. some of these are veritable "feasts of the gods," and would do honor to the fabled olympus, and such a one i had prepared for guido ferrari as a greeting to him on his return from rome--a feast of welcome and--farewell! all the resources of the hotel at which i stayed had been brought into requisition. the chef, a famous cordon bleu, had transferred the work of the usual table d'hote to his underlings, and had bent the powers of his culinary intelligence solely on the production of the magnificent dinner i had ordered. the landlord, in spite of himself, broke into exclamations of wonder and awe as he listened to and wrote down my commands for different wines of the rarest kinds and choicest vintages. the servants rushed hither and thither to obey my various behests, with looks of immense importance; the head waiter, a superb official who prided himself on his artistic taste, took the laying-out of the table under his entire superintendence, and nothing was talked of or thought of for the time but the grandeur of my proposed entertainment. about six o'clock i sent my carriage down to the railway station to meet ferrari as i had arranged; and then, at my landlord's invitation, i went to survey the stage that was prepared for one important scene of my drama--to see if the scenery, side-lights, and general effects were all in working order. to avoid disarranging my own apartments, i had chosen for my dinner-party a room on the ground-floor of the hotel, which was often let out for marriage-breakfasts and other purposes of the like kind; it was octagonal in shape, not too large, and i had had it most exquisitely decorated for the occasion. the walls were hung with draperies of gold-colored silk and crimson velvet, interspersed here and there with long mirrors, which were ornamented with crystal candelabra, in which twinkled hundreds of lights under rose-tinted glass shades. at the back of the room, a miniature conservatory was displayed to view, full of rare ferns and subtly perfumed exotics, in the center of which a fountain rose and fell with regular and melodious murmur. here, later on, a band of stringed instruments and a choir of boys' voices were to be stationed, so that sweet music might be heard and felt without the performers being visible. one, and one only, of the long french windows of the room was left uncurtained, it was simply draped with velvet as one drapes a choice picture, and through it the eyes rested on a perfect view of the bay of naples, white with the wintery moonlight. the dinner-table, laid for fifteen persons, glittered with sumptuous appointments of silver, venetian glass, and the rarest flowers; the floor was carpeted with velvet pile, in which some grains of ambergris had been scattered, so that in walking the feet sunk, as it were, into a bed of moss rich with the odors of a thousand spring blossoms. the very chairs wherein my guests were to seat themselves were of a luxurious shape and softly stuffed, so that one could lean back in them or recline at ease--in short, everything was arranged with a lavish splendor almost befitting the banquet of an eastern monarch, and yet with such accurate taste that there was no detail one could have wished omitted. i was thoroughly satisfied, but as i know what an unwise plan it is to praise servants too highly for doing well what they are expressly paid to do, i intimated my satisfaction to my landlord by a mere careless nod and smile of approval. he, who waited on my every gesture with abject humility, received this sign of condescension with as much delight as though it had come from the king himself, and i could easily see that the very fact of my showing no enthusiasm at the result of his labors, made him consider me a greater man than ever. i now went to my own apartments to don my evening attire; i found vincenzo brushing every speck of dust from my dresscoat with careful nicety--he had already arranged the other articles of costume neatly on my bed ready for wear. i unlocked a dressing-case and took from thence three studs, each one formed of a single brilliant of rare clearness and lusters and handed them to him to fix in my shirt-front. while he was polishing these admiringly on his coat-sleeve i watched him earnestly--then i suddenly addressed him. "vincenzo!" he started. "eccellenza?" "to-night you will stand behind my chair and assist in serving the wine." "yes, eccellenza." "you will," i continued, "attend particularly to sigor ferrari, who will sit at my right hand. take care that his glass is never empty." "yes, eccellenza." "whatever may be said or done," i went on, quietly, "you will show no sign of alarm or surprise. from the commencement of dinner till i tell you to move, remember your place is fixed by me." the honest fellow looked a little puzzled, but replied as before: "yes, eccellenza." i smiled, and advancing, laid my hand on his arm. "how about the pistols, vincenzo?" "they are cleaned and ready for use, eccellenza," he replied. "i have placed them in your cabinet." "that is well!" i said with a satisfied gesture. "you can leave me and arrange the salon for the reception of my friends." he disappeared, and i busied myself with my toilet, about which i was for once unusually particular. the conventional dress-suit is not very becoming, yet there are a few men here and there who look well in it, and who, in spite of similarity in attire, will never be mistaken for waiters. others there are who, passable in appearance when clad in their ordinary garments, reach the very acme of plebeianism when they clothe themselves in the unaccommodating evening-dress. fortunately, i happened to be one of the former class--the sober black, the broad white display of starched shirt-front and neat tie became me, almost too well i thought. it would have been better for my purposes if i could have feigned an aspect of greater age and weightier gravity. i had scarcely finished my toilet when the rumbling of wheels in the court-yard outside made the hot blood rush to my face, and my heart beat with feverish excitement. i left my dressing-room, however, with a composed countenance and calm step, and entered my private salon just as its doors were flung open and "signor ferrari" was announced. he entered smiling--his face was alight with good humor and glad anticipation--he looked handsomer than usual. "eccomi qua!" he cried, seizing my hands enthusiastically in his own. "my dear conte, i am delighted to see you! what an excellent fellow you are! a kind of amiable arabian nights genius, who occupies himself in making mortals happy. and how are you? you look remarkably well!" "i can return the compliment," i said, gayly. "you are more of an antinous than ever." he laughed, well pleased, and sat down, drawing off his gloves and loosening his traveling overcoat. "well, i suppose plenty of cash puts a man in good humor, and therefore in good condition," he replied. "but my dear fellow, you are dressed for dinner--quel preux chevalier! i am positively unfit to be in your company! you insisted that i should come to you directly, on my arrival, but i really must change my apparel. your man took my valise; in it are my dress-clothes--i shall not be ten minutes putting them on." "take a glass of wine first," i said, pouring out some of his favorite montepulciano. "there is plenty of time. it is barely seven, and we do not dine till eight." he took the wine from my hand and smiled. i returned the smile, adding, "it gives me great pleasure to receive you, ferrari! i have been impatient for your return--almost as impatient as--" he paused in the act of drinking, and his eyes flashed delightedly. "as she has? piccinina! how i long to see her again! i swear to you, amico, i should have gone straight to the villa romani had i obeyed my own impulse--but i had promised you to come here, and, on the whole, the evening will do as well"--and he laughed with a covert meaning in his laughter--"perhaps better!" my hands clinched, but i said with forced gayety: "ma certamente! the evening will be much better! is it not byron who says that women, like stars, look best at night? you will find her the same as ever, perfectly well and perfectly charming. it must be her pure and candid soul that makes her face so fair! it may be a relief to your mind to know that i am the only man she has allowed to visit her during your absence!" "thank god for that!" cried ferrari, devoutly, as he tossed off his wine. "and now tell me, my dear conte, what bacchanalians are coming to-night? per dio, after all i am more in the humor for dinner than love-making!" i burst out laughing harshly. "of course! every sensible man prefers good eating even to good women! who are my guests you ask? i believe you know them all. first, there is the duca filippo marina." "by heaven!" interrupted guido. "an absolute gentleman, who by his manner seems to challenge the universe to disprove his dignity! can he unbend so far as to partake of food in public? my dear conte, you should have asked him that question!" "then," i went on, not heeding this interruption, "signor fraschetti and the marchese giulano." "giulano drinks deep," laughed ferrari, "and should he mix his wines, you will find him ready to stab all the waiters before the dinner is half over." "in mixing wines," i returned, coolly, "he will but imitate your example, caro mio." "ah, but i can stand it!" he said. "he cannot! few neapolitans are like me!" i watched him narrowly, and went on with the list of my invited guests. "after these, comes the capitano luigi freccia." "what! the raging fire-eater?" exclaimed guido. "he who at every second word raps out a pagan or christian oath, and cannot for his life tell any difference between the two!" "and the illustrious gentleman crispiano dulci and antonio biscardi, artists like yourself," i continued. he frowned slightly--then smiled. "i wish them good appetites! time was when i envied their skill--now i can afford to be generous. they are welcome to the whole field of art as far as i am concerned. i have said farewell to the brush and palette--i shall never paint again." true enough! i thought, eying the shapely white hand with which he just then stroked his dark mustache; the same hand on which my family diamond ring glittered like a star. he looked up suddenly. "go on, conte i am all impatience. who comes next?" "more fire-eaters, i suppose you will call them," i answered, "and french fire-eaters, too. monsieur le marquis d'avencourt, and le beau capitaine eugene de hamal." ferrari looked astonished. "per bacco!" he exclaimed. "two noted paris duelists! why--what need have you of such valorous associates? i confess your choice surprises me." "i understood them to be your friends," i said, composedly. "if you remember, you introduced me to them. i know nothing of the gentlemen beyond that they appear to be pleasant fellows and good talkers. as for their reputed skill i am inclined to set that down to a mere rumor, at any rate, my dinner-table will scarcely provide a field for the display of swordsmanship." guido laughed. "well, no! but these fellows would like to make it one--why, they will pick a quarrel for the mere lifting of an eyebrow. and the rest of your company?" "are the inseparable brother sculptors carlo and francesco respetti, chevalier mancini, scientist and man of letters, luziano salustri, poet and musician, and the fascinating marchese ippolito gualdro, whose conversation, as you know, is more entrancing than the voice of adelina patti. i have only to add," and i smiled half mockingly, "the name of signor guido ferrari, true friend and loyal lover--and the party is complete." "altro! fifteen in all including yourself," said ferrari, gayly, enumerating them on his fingers. "per la madre di dio! with such a goodly company and a host who entertains en roi we shall pass a merry time of it. and did you, amico, actually organize this banquet, merely to welcome back so unworthy a person as myself?" "solely and entirely for that reason," i replied. he jumped up from his chair and clapped his two hands on my shoulders. "a la bonne heure! but why, in the name of the saints or the devil, have you taken such a fancy to me?" "why have i taken such a fancy to you?" i repeated, slowly. "my dear ferrari, i am surely not alone in my admiration for your high qualities! does not every one like you? are you not a universal favorite? do you not tell me that your late friend the count romani held you as the dearest to him in the world after his wife? ebbene! why underrate yourself?" he let his hands fall slowly from my shoulders and a look of pain contracted his features. after a little silence he said: "fabio again! how his name and memory haunt me! i told you he was a fool--it was part of his folly that he loved me too well--perhaps. do you know i have thought of him very much lately?" "indeed?" and i feigned to be absorbed in fixing a star-like japonica in my button-hole. "how is that?" a grave and meditative look softened the usually defiant brilliancy of his eyes. "i saw my uncle die," he continued, speaking in a low tone. "he was an old man and had very little strength left,--yet his battle with death was horrible--horrible! i see him yet--his yellow convulsed face--his twisted limbs--his claw-like hands tearing at the empty air--then the ghastly grim and dropped jaw--the wide-open glazed eyes--pshaw! it sickened me!" "well, well!" i said in a soothing way, still busying myself with the arrangement of my button-hole, and secretly wondering what new emotion was at work in the volatile mind of my victim. "no doubt it was distressing to witness--but you could not have been very sorry--he was an old man, and, though it is a platitude not worth repeating--we must all die." "sorry!" exclaimed ferrari, talking almost more to himself than to me. "i was glad! he was an old scoundrel, deeply dyed in every sort of social villainy. no--i was not sorry, only as i watched him in his frantic struggle, fighting furiously for each fresh gasp of breath--i thought--i know not why--of fabio." profoundly astonished, but concealing my astonishment under an air of indifference, i began to laugh. "upon my word, ferrari--pardon me for saying so, but the air of rome seems to have somewhat obscured your mind! i confess i cannot follow your meaning." he sighed uneasily. "i dare say not! i scarce can follow it myself. but if it was so hard for an old man to writhe himself out of life, what must it have been for fabio! we were students together; we used to walk with our arms round each other's necks like school-girls, and he was young and full of vitality--physically stronger, too, than i am. he must have battled for life with every nerve and sinew stretched to almost breaking." he stopped and shuddered. "by heaven! death should be made easier for us! it is a frightful thing!" a contemptuous pity arose in me. was he coward as well as traitor? i touched him lightly on the arm. "excuse me, my young friend, if i say frankly that your dismal conversation is slightly fatiguing. i cannot accept it as a suitable preparation for dinner! and permit me to remind you that you have still to dress." the gentle satire of my tone made him look up and smile. his face cleared, and he passed his hand over his forehead, as though he swept it free of some unpleasant thought. "i believe i am nervous," he said with a half laugh. "for the last few hours i have had all sorts of uncomfortable presentiments and forebodings." "no wonder!" i returned carelessly, "with such a spectacle as you have described before the eyes of your memory. the eternal city savors somewhat disagreeably of graves. shake the dust of the caesars from your feet, and enjoy your life, while it lasts!" "excellent advice!" he said, smiling, "and not difficult to follow. now to attire for the festival. have i your permission?" i touched the bell which summoned vincenzo, and bade him wait on signor ferrari's orders. guido disappeared under his escort, giving me a laughing nod of salutation as he left the room. i watched his retiring figure with a strange pitifulness--the first emotion of the kind that had awakened in me for him since i learned his treachery. his allusion to that time when we had been students together--when we had walked with arms round each other's necks "like school-girls," as he said, had touched me more closely than i cared to realize. it was true, we had been happy then--two careless youths with all the world like an untrodden race-course before us. she had not then darkened the heaven of our confidence; she had not come with her false fair face to make of me a blind, doting madman, and to transform him into a liar and hypocrite. it was all her fault, all the misery and horror; she was the blight on our lives; she merited the heaviest punishment, and she would receive it. yet, would to god we had neither of us ever seen her! her beauty, like a sword, had severed the bonds of friendship that after all, when it does exist between two men, is better and braver than the love of woman. however, all regrets were unavailing now; the evil was done, and there was no undoing it. i had little time left me for reflection; each moment that passed brought me nearer to the end i had planned and foreseen. chapter xxiii. at about a quarter to eight my guests began to arrive, and one by one they all came in save two--the brothers respetti. while we were awaiting them, ferrari entered in evening-dress, with the conscious air of a handsome man who knows he is looking his best. i readily admitted his charm of manner; had i not myself been subjugated and fascinated by it in the old happy, foolish days? he was enthusiastically greeted and welcomed back to naples by all the gentlemen assembled, many of whom were his own particular friends. they embraced him in the impressionable style common to italians, with the exception of the stately duca di marina, who merely bowed courteously, and inquired if certain families of distinction whom he named had yet arrived in rome for the winter season. ferrari was engaged in replying to these questions with his usual grace and ease and fluency, when a note was brought to me marked "immediate." it contained a profuse and elegantly worded apology from carlo respetti, who regretted deeply that an unforeseen matter of business would prevent himself and his brother from having the inestimable honor and delight of dining with me that evening. i thereupon rang my bell as a sign that the dinner need no longer be delayed; and, turning to those assembled, i announced to them the unavoidable absence of two of the party. "a pity francesco could not have come," said captain freccia, twirling the ends of his long mustachios. "he loves good wine, and, better still, good company." "caro capitano!" broke in the musical voice of the marchese gualdro, "you know that our francesco goes nowhere without his beloved carlo. carlo cannot come--altro! francesco will not. would that all men were such brothers!" "if they were," laughed luziano salustri, rising from the piano where he had been playing softly to himself, "half the world would be thrown out of employment. you, for instance," turning to the marquis d'avencourt, "would scarce know what to do with your time." the marquis smiled and waved his hand with a deprecatory gesture--that hand, by the by, was remarkably small and delicately formed--it looked almost fragile. yet the strength and suppleness of d'avencourt's wrist was reputed to be prodigious by those who had seen him handle the sword, whether in play or grim earnest. "it is an impossible dream," he said, in reply to the remarks of gualdro and salustri, "that idea of all men fraternizing together in one common pig-sty of equality. look at the differences of caste! birth, breeding and education make of man that high-mettled, sensitive animal known as gentleman, and not all the socialistic theories in the world can force him down on the same level with the rough boor, whose flat nose and coarse features announce him as plebeian even before one hears the tone of his voice. we cannot help these things. i do not think we would help them even if we could." "you are quite right," said ferrari. "you cannot put race-horses to draw the plow. i have always imagined that the first quarrel--the cain and abel affair--must have occurred through some difference of caste as well as jealousy--for instance, perhaps abel was a negro and cain a white man, or vice versa; which would account for the antipathy existing between the races to this day." the duke di marina coughed a stately cough, and shrugged his shoulders. "that first quarrel," he said, "as related in the bible, was exceedingly vulgar. it must have been a kind of prize-fight. ce n'etait pas fin." gualdro laughed delightedly. "so like you, marina!" he exclaimed, "to say that! i sympathize with your sentiments! fancy the butcher abel piling up his reeking carcasses and setting them on fire, while on the other side stood cain the green-grocer frizzling his cabbages, turnips, carrots, and other vegetable matter! what a spectacle! the gods of olympus would have sickened at it! however, the jewish deity, or rather, the well-fed priest who represented him, showed his good taste in the matter; i myself prefer the smell of roast meat to the rather disagreeable odor of scorching vegetables!" we laughed--and at that moment the door was thrown open, and the head-waiter announced in solemn tones befitting his dignity-- "le diner de monsieur le conte est servi!" i at once led the way to the banqueting-room--my guests followed gayly, talking and jesting among themselves. they were all in high good humor, none of them had as yet noticed the fatal blank caused by the absence of the brothers respetti. i had--for the number of my guests was now thirteen instead of fifteen. thirteen at table! i wondered if any of the company were superstitious? ferrari was not, i knew--unless his nerves had been latterly shaken by witnessing the death of his uncle. at any rate, i resolved to say nothing that could attract the attention of my guests to the ill-omened circumstance; if any one should notice it, it would be easy to make light of it and of all similar superstitions. i myself was the one most affected by it--it had for me a curious and fatal significance. i was so occupied with the consideration of it that i scarcely attended to the words addressed to me by the duke di marina, who, walking beside me, seemed disposed to converse with more familiarity than was his usual custom. we reached the door of the dining-room; which at our approach was thrown wide open, and delicious strains of music met our ears as we entered. low murmurs of astonishment and admiration broke from all the gentlemen as they viewed the sumptuous scene before them. i pretended not to hear their eulogies, as i took my seat at the head of the table, with guido ferrari on my right and the duke di marina on my left. the music sounded louder and more triumphant, and while all the company were seating themselves in the places assigned to them, a choir of young fresh voices broke forth into a neapolitan "madrigale"--which as far as i can translate it ran as follows: "welcome the festal hour! pour the red wine into cups of gold! health to the men who are strong and bold! welcome the festal hour! waken the echoes with riotous mirth-- cease to remember the sorrows of earth in the joys of the festal hour! wine is the monarch of laughter and light, death himself shall be merry to-night! hail to the festal hour!" an enthusiastic clapping of hands rewarded this effort on the part of the unseen vocalists, and the music having ceased, conversation became general. "by heaven!" exclaimed ferrari, "if this olympian carouse is meant as a welcome to me, amico, all i can say is that i do not deserve it. why, it is more fit for the welcome of one king to his neighbor sovereign!" "ebbene!" i said. "are there any better kings than honest men? let us hope we are thus far worthy of each other's esteem." he flashed a bright look of gratitude upon me and was silent, listening to the choice and complimentary phrases uttered by the duke di marina concerning the exquisite taste displayed in the arrangement of the table. "you have no doubt traveled much in the east, conte," said this nobleman. "your banquet reminds me of an oriental romance i once read, called 'vathek.'" "exactly," exclaimed guido. "i think oliva must be vathek himself." "scarcely!" i said, smiling coldly. "i lay no claim to supernatural experiences. the realities of life are sufficiently wonderful for me." antonio biscardi the painter, a refined, gentle-featured man, looked toward us and said modestly: "i think you are right, conte. the beauties of nature and of humanity are so varied and profound that were it not for the inextinguishable longing after immortality which has been placed in every one of us, i think we should be perfectly satisfied with this world as it is." "you speak like an artist and a man of even temperament," broke in the marchese gualdro, who had finished his soup quickly in order to be able to talk--talking being his chief delight. "for me, i am never contented. i never have enough of anything! that is my nature. when i see lovely flowers, i wish more of them--when i behold a fine sunset, i desire many more such sunsets--when i look upon a lovely woman--" "you would have lovely women ad infinitum!" laughed the french capitaine de hamal. "en verite, gualdro, you should have been a turk!" "and why not?" demanded gualdro. "the turks are very sensible people--they know how to make coffee better than we do. and what more fascinating than a harem? it must be like a fragrant hot-house, where one is free to wander every day, sometimes gathering a gorgeous lily, sometimes a simple violet--sometimes--" "a thorn?" suggested salustri. "well, perhaps!" laughed the marchese. "yet one would run the risk of that for the sake of a perfect rose." chevalier mancini, who wore in his button-hole the decoration of the legion d'honneur, looked up--he was a thin man with keen eyes and a shrewd face which, though at a first glance appeared stern, could at the least provocation break up into a thousand little wrinkles of laughter. "there is undoubtedly something entrainant about the idea," he observed, in his methodical way. "i have always fancied that marriage as we arrange it is a great mistake." "and that is why you have never tried it?" queried ferrari, looking amused. "certissimamente!" and the chevalier's grim countenance began to work with satirical humor. "i have resolved that i will never be bound over by the law to kiss only one woman. as matters stand, i can kiss them all if i like." a shout of merriment and cries of "oh! oh!" greeted this remark, which ferrari, however, did not seem inclined to take in good part. "all?" he said, with a dubious air. "you mean all except the married ones?" the chevalier put on his spectacles, and surveyed him with a sort of comic severity. "when i said all, i meant all," he returned--"the married ones in particular. they, poor things, need such attentions--and often invite them--why not? their husbands have most likely ceased to be amorous after the first months of marriage." i burst out laughing. "you are right, mancini," i said; "and even if the husbands are fools enough to continue their gallantries they deserve to be duped--and they generally are! come, amico," i added, turning to ferrari, "those are your own sentiments--you have often declared them to me." he smiled uncomfortably, and his brows contracted. i could easily perceive that he was annoyed. to change the tone of the conversation i gave a signal for the music to recommence, and instantly the melody of a slow, voluptuous hungarian waltz-measure floated through the room. the dinner was now fairly on its way; the appetites of my guests were stimulated and tempted by the choicest and most savory viands, prepared with all the taste and intelligence a first rate chef can bestow on his work, and good wine flowed freely. vincenzo obediently following my instructions, stood behind my chair, and seldom moved except to refill ferrari's glass, and occasionally to proffer some fresh vintage to the duke di marina. he, however, was an abstemious and careful man, and followed the good example shown by the wisest italians, who never mix their wines. he remained faithful to the first beverage he had selected--a specially fine chianti, of which he partook freely without its causing the slightest flush to appear on his pale aristocratic features. its warm and mellow flavor did but brighten his eyes and loosen his tongue, inasmuch that he became almost as elegant a talker as the marchese gualdro. this latter, who scarce had a scudo to call his own, and who dined sumptuously every day at other people's expense for the sake of the pleasure his company afforded, was by this time entertaining every one near him by the most sparkling stories and witty pleasantries. the merriment increased as the various courses were served; shouts of laughter frequently interrupted the loud buzz of conversation, mingling with the clinking of glasses and clattering of porcelain. every now and then might be heard the smooth voice of captain freccia rolling out his favorite oaths with the sonority and expression of a primo tenore; sometimes the elegant french of the marquis d'avencourt, with his high, sing-song parisian accent, rang out above the voices of the others; and again, the choice tuscan of the poet luziano salustri rolled forth in melodious cadence as though he were chanting lines from dante or ariosto, instead of talking lightly on indifferent matters. i accepted my share in the universal hilarity, though i principally divided my conversation between ferrari and the duke, paying to both, but specially to ferrari, that absolute attention which is the greatest compliment a host can bestow on those whom he undertakes to entertain. we had reached that stage of the banquet when the game was about to be served--the invisible choir of boys' voices had just completed an enchanting stornello with an accompaniment of mandolines--when a stillness, strange and unaccountable, fell upon the company--a pause--an ominous hush, as though some person supreme in authority had suddenly entered the room and commanded "silence!" no one seemed disposed to speak or to move, the very footsteps of the waiters were muffled in the velvet pile of the carpets--no sound was heard but the measured plash of the fountain that played among the ferns and flowers. the moon, shining frostily white through the one uncurtained window, cast a long pale green ray, like the extended arm of an appealing ghost, against one side of the velvet hangings--a spectral effect which was heightened by the contrast of the garish glitter of the waxen tapers. each man looked at the other with a sort of uncomfortable embarrassment, and somehow, though i moved my lips in an endeavor to speak and thus break the spell, i was at a loss, and could find no language suitable to the moment. ferrari toyed with his wine-glass mechanically--the duke appeared absorbed in arranging the crumbs beside his plate into little methodical patterns; the stillness seemed to last so long that it was like a suffocating heaviness in the air. suddenly vincenzo, in his office of chief butler, drew the cork of a champagne-bottle with a loud-sounding pop! we all started as though a pistol had been fired in our ears, and the marchese gualdro burst out laughing. "corpo di bacco!" he cried. "at last you have awakened from sleep! were you all struck dumb, amici, that you stared at the table-cloth so persistently and with such admirable gravity? may saint anthony and his pig preserve me, but for the time i fancied i was attending a banquet on the wrong side of the styx, and that you, my present companions, were all dead men!" "and that idea made you also hold your tongue, which is quite an unaccountable miracle in its way," laughed luziano salustri. "have you never heard the pretty legend that attaches to such an occurrence as a sudden silence in the midst of high festivity? an angel enters, bestowing his benediction as he passes through." "that story is more ancient than the church," said chevalier mancini. "it is an exploded theory--for we have ceased to believe in angels--we call them women instead." "bravo, mon vieux gaillard!" cried captain de hamal. "your sentiments are the same as mine, with a very trifling difference. you believe women to be angels--i know them to be devils--mas il n'y a qu'un pas entre les deux? we will not quarrel over a word--a votre sante, mon cher!" and he drained his glass, nodding to mancini, who followed his example. "perhaps," said the smooth, slow voice of captain freccia, "our silence was caused by the instinctive consciousness of something wrong with our party--a little inequality--which i dare say our noble host has not thought it worth while to mention." every head was turned in his direction. "what do you mean?" "what inequality?" "explain yourself!" chorused several voices. "really it is a mere nothing," answered freccia, lazily, as he surveyed with the admiring air of a gourmet the dainty portion of pheasant just placed before him. "i assure you, only the uneducated would care two scudi about such a circumstance. the excellent brothers respetti are to blame--their absence to-night has caused--but why should i disturb your equanimity? i am not superstitious--ma, chi sa?--some of you may be." "i see what you mean!" interrupted salustri, quickly. "we are thirteen at table!" chapter xxiv. at this announcement my guests looked furtively at each other, and i could see they were counting up the fatal number for themselves. they were undeniably clever, cultivated men of the world, but the superstitious element was in their blood, and all, with the exception perhaps of freccia and the ever-cool marquis d'avencourt, were evidently rendered uneasy by the fact now discovered. on ferrari it had a curious effect--he started violently and his face flushed. "diabolo!" he muttered, under his breath, and seizing his never-empty glass, he swallowed its contents thirstily and quickly at one gulp as though attacked by fever, and pushed away his plate with a hand that trembled nervously. i, meanwhile, raised my voice and addressed my guests cheerfully! "our distinguished friend salustri is perfectly right, gentlemen. i myself noticed the discrepancy in our number some time ago--but i knew that you were all advanced thinkers, who had long since liberated yourselves from the trammels of superstitious observances, which are the result of priestcraft, and are now left solely to the vulgar. therefore i said nothing. the silly notion of any misfortune attending the number thirteen arose, as you are aware, out of the story of the last supper, and children and women may possibly still give credence to the fancy that one out of thirteen at table must be a traitor and doomed to die. but we men know better. none of us here to-night have reason to put ourselves in the position of a christ or a judas--we are all good friends and boon companions, and i cannot suppose for a moment that this little cloud can possibly affect you seriously. remember also that this is christmas-eve, and that according to the world's greatest poet, shakespeare, "'then no planet strikes, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallowed and so gracious is the time.'" a murmur of applause and a hearty clapping of hands rewarded this little speech, and the marchese gualdro sprung to his feet-- "by heaven!" he exclaimed, "we are not a party of terrified old women to shiver on the edge of a worn-out omen! fill your glasses, signori! more wine, garcon! per bacco! if judas iscariot himself had such a feast as ours before he hanged himself, he was not much to be pitied! hola amici! to the health of our noble host, conte cesare oliva!" he waved his glass in the air three times--every one followed his example and drank the toast with enthusiasm. i bowed my thanks and acknowledgments--and the superstitious dread which at first had undoubtedly seized the company passed away quickly--the talking, the merriment, and laughter were resumed, and soon it seemed as though the untoward circumstance were entirely forgotten. only guido ferrari seemed still somewhat disturbed in his mind--but even his uneasiness dissipated itself by degrees, and heated by the quantity of wine he had taken, he began to talk with boastful braggartism of his many successful gallantries, and related his most questionable anecdotes in such a manner as to cause some haughty astonishment in the mind of the duke di marina, who eyed him from time to time with ill-disguised impatience that bordered on contempt. i, on the contrary, listened to everything he said with urbane courtesy--i humored him and drew him out as much as possible--i smiled complacently at his poor jokes and vulgar witticisms--and when he said something that was more than usually outrageous, i contented myself with a benevolent shake of my head, and the mild remark: "ah! young blood! young blood!" uttered in a bland sotto-voce. the dessert was now served, and with it came the costly wines which i had ordered to be kept back till then. priceless "chateau yquem," "clos vougeot," of the rarest vintages, choice "valpulcello" and an exceedingly superb "lacrima cristi"--one after the other, these were tasted, criticised, and heartily appreciated. there was also a very unique brand of champagne costing nearly forty francs a bottle, which was sparkling and mellow to the palate, but fiery in quality. this particular beverage was so seductive in flavor that every one partook of it freely, with the result that the most discreet among the party now became the most uproarious. antonio biscardi, the quiet and unobtrusive painter, together with his fellow-student, crispiano dulci, usually the shyest of young men, suddenly grew excited, and uttered blatant nothings concerning their art. captain freccia argued the niceties of sword-play with the marquis d'avencourt, both speakers illustrating their various points by thrusting their dessert-knives skillfully into the pulpy bodies of the peaches they had on their plates. luziano salustri lay back at ease in his chair, his classic head reclining on the velvet cushions, and recited in low and measured tones one of his own poems, caring little or nothing whether his neighbors attended to him or not. the glib tongue of the marchese gualdro ran on smoothly and incessantly, though he frequently lost the thread of his anecdotes and became involved in a maze of contradictory assertions. the rather large nose of the chevalier mancini reddened visibly as he laughed joyously to himself at nothing in particular--in short, the table had become a glittering whirlpool of excitement and feverish folly, which at a mere touch, or word out of season, might rise to a raging storm of frothy dissension. the duke di marina and myself alone of all the company were composed as usual--he had resisted the champagne, and as for me, i had let all the splendid wines go past me, and had not taken more than two glasses of a mild chianti. i glanced keenly round the riotous board--i noted the flushed faces and rapid gesticulations of my guests, and listened to the babel of conflicting tongues. i drew a long breath as i looked--i calculated that in two or three minutes at the very least i might throw down the trump card i had held so patiently in my hand all the evening. i took a close observation of ferrari. he had edged his chair a little away from mine, and was talking confidentially to his neighbor, captain de hamal--his utterance was low and thick, but yet i distinctly heard him enumerating in somewhat coarse language the exterior charms of a woman--what woman i did not stop to consider--the burning idea struck me that he was describing the physical perfections of my wife to this de hamal, a mere spadaccino, for whom there was nothing sacred in heaven or earth. my blood rapidly heated itself to boiling point--to this day i remember how it throbbed in my temples, leaving my hands and feet icy cold. i rose in my seat, and tapped on the table to call for silence and attention--but for some time the noise of argument and the clatter of tongues were so great that i could not make myself heard. the duke endeavored to second my efforts, but in vain. at last ferrari's notice was attracted--he turned round, and seizing a dessert knife beat with it on the table and on his own plate so noisily and persistently that the loud laughter and conversation ceased suddenly. the moment had come--i raised my head, fixed my spectacles more firmly over my eyes, and spoke in distinct and steady tones, first of all stealing a covert glance toward ferrari. he had sunk back again lazily in his chair and was lighting a cigarette. "my friends," i said, meeting with a smile the inquiring looks that were directed toward me, "i have presumed to interrupt your mirth for a moment, not to restrain it, but rather to give it a fresh impetus. i asked you all here to-night, as you know, to honor me by your presence and to give a welcome to our mutual friend, signor guido ferrari." here i was interrupted by a loud clapping of hands and ejaculations of approval, while ferrari himself murmured affably between two puffs of his cigarette. "tropp' onore, amico, tropp' onore!" i resumed, "this young and accomplished gentleman, who is, i believe, a favorite with you all, has been compelled through domestic affairs to absent himself from our circle for the past few weeks, and i think he must himself be aware how much we have missed his pleasant company. it will, however, be agreeable to you, as it has been for me, to know that he has returned to naples a richer man than when he left it--that fortune has done him justice, and that with the possession of abundant wealth he is at last called upon to enjoy the reward due to his merits!" here there was more clapping of hands and exclamations of pleasure, while those who were seated near ferrari raised their glasses and drank to his health with congratulations, all of which courtesies he acknowledged by a nonchalant, self-satisfied bow. i glanced at him again--how tranquil he looked!--reclining among the crimson cushions of his chair, a brimming glass of champagne beside him, the cigarette between his lips, and his handsome face slightly upturned, though his eyes rested half drowsily on the uncurtained window through which the bay of naples was seen glittering in the moonlight. i continued: "it was, gentlemen, that you might welcome and congratulate signor ferrari as you have done, that i assembled you here to-night--or rather, let me say it was partly the object of our present festivity--but there is yet another reason which i shall now have the pleasure of explaining to you--a reason which, as it concerns myself and my immediate happiness, will, i feel confident, secure your sympathy and good wishes." this time every one was silent, intently following my words. "what i am about to say," i went on, calmly, "may very possibly surprise you. i have been known to you as a man of few words, and, i fear, of abrupt and brusque manners"--cries of "no, no!" mingled with various complimentary assurances reached my ears from all sides of the table. i bowed with a gratified air, and when silence was restored--"at any rate you would not think me precisely the sort of man to take a lady's fancy." a look of wonder and curiosity was now exchanged among my guests. ferrari took his cigarette out of his mouth and stared at me in blank astonishment. "no," i went on, meditatively, "old as i am, and a half-blind invalid besides, it seems incredible that any woman should care to look at me more than twice en passant. but i have met--let me say with the chevalier mancini--an angel--who has found me not displeasing to her, and--in short--i am going to marry!" there was a pause. ferrari raised himself slightly from his reclining position and seemed about to speak, but apparently changing his mind he remained silent--his face had somewhat paled. the momentary hesitation among my guests passed quickly. all present, except guido, broke out into a chorus of congratulations, mingled with good-humored jesting and laughter. "say farewell to jollity, conte!" cried chevalier mancini; "once drawn along by the rustling music of a woman's gown, no more such feasts as we have had to-night!" and he shook his head with tipsy melancholy. "by all the gods!" exclaimed gualdro, "your news has surprised me! i should have thought you were the last man to give up liberty for the sake of a woman. one woman, too! why, man, freedom could give you twenty!" "ah!" murmured salustri, softly and sentimentally, "but the one perfect pearl--the one flawless diamond--" "bah! salustri, caro mio, you are half asleep!" returned gualdro. "'tis the wine talks, not you. thou art conquered by the bottle, amico. you, the darling of all the women in naples, to talk of one! buona notte, bambino!" i still maintained my standing position, leaning my two hands on the table before me. "what our worthy gualdro says," i went on, "is perfectly true. i have been noted for my antipathy to the fair sex. i know it. but when one of the loveliest among women comes out of her way to tempt me--when she herself displays the matchless store of her countless fascinations for my attraction--when she honors me by special favors and makes me plainly aware that i am not too presumptuous in venturing to aspire to her hand in marriage--what can i do but accept with a good grace the fortune thrown to me by providence? i should be the most ungrateful of men were i to refuse so precious a gift from heaven, and i confess i feel no inclination to reject what i consider to be the certainty of happiness. i therefore ask you all to fill your glasses, and do me the favor to drink to the health and happiness of my future bride." gualdro sprung erect, his glass held high in the air; every man followed his example, ferrari rose to his feet with some unsteadiness, while the hand that held his full champagne glass trembled. the duke di marina, with a courteous gesture, addressed me: "you will, of course, honor us by disclosing the name of the fair lady whom we are prepared to toast with all befitting reverence?" "i was about to ask the same question," said ferrari, in hoarse accents--his lips were dry, and he appeared to have some difficulty in speaking. "possibly we are not acquainted with her?" "on the contrary," i returned, eying him steadily with a cool smile. "you all know her name well! illustrissimi signori!" and my voice rang out clearly--"to the health of my betrothed wife, the contessa romani!" "liar!" shouted ferrari--and with all a madman's fury he dashed his brimming glass of champagne full in my face! in a second the wildest scene of confusion ensued. every man left his place at table and surrounded us. i stood erect and perfectly calm--wiping with my handkerchief the little runlets of wine that dripped from my clothing--the glass had fallen at my feet, striking the table as it fell and splitting itself to atoms. "are you drunk or mad, ferrari?" cried captain de hamal, seizing him by the arm--"do you know what you have done?" ferrari glared about him like a tiger at bay--his face was flushed and swollen like that of a man in apoplexy--the veins in his forehead stood out like knotted cords--his breath came and went hard as though he had been running. he turned his rolling eyes upon me. "damn you!" he muttered through his clinched teeth--then suddenly raising his voice to a positive shriek, he cried, "i will have your blood if i have to tear your heart for it!"--and he made an effort to spring upon me. the marquis d'avencourt quietly caught his other arm and held it as in a vise. "not so fast, not so fast, mon cher" he said, coolly. "we are not murderers, we! what devil possesses you, that you offer such unwarrantable insult to our host?" "ask him!" replied ferrari, fiercely, struggling to release himself from the grasp of the two frenchmen--"he knows well enough! ask him!" all eyes were turned inquiringly upon me. i was silent. "the noble conte is really not bound to give any explanation," remarked captain freccia--"even admitting he were able to do so." "i assure you, my friends," i said, "i am ignorant of the cause of this fracas, except that this young gentleman had pretensions himself to the hand of the lady whose name affects him so seriously!" for a moment i thought ferrari would have choked. "pretensions--pretensions!" he gasped. "gran dio! hear him!--hear the miserable scoundrel!" "ah, basta!" exclaimed chevalier mancini, scornfully--"is that all? a mere bagatelle! ferrari, you were wont to be more sensible! what! quarrel with an excellent friend for the sake of a woman who happens to prefer him to you! ma che! women are plentiful--friends are few." "if," i resumed, still methodically wiping the stains of wine from my coat and vest--"if signor ferrari's extraordinary display of temper is a mere outcome of natural disappointment, i am willing to excuse it. he is young and hotblooded--let him apologize, and i shall freely pardon him." "by my faith!" said the duke di marina with indignation, "such generosity is unheard of, conte! permit me to remark that it is altogether exceptional, after such ungentlemanly conduct." ferrari looked from one to the other in silent fury. his face had grown pale as death. he wrenched himself from the grasp of d'avencourt and de hamal. "fools! let me go!" he said, savagely. "none of you are on my side--i see that!" he stepped to the table, poured out a glass of water and drank it off. he then turned and faced me--his head thrown back, his eyes blazing with wrath and pain. "liar!" he cried again, "double-faced accursed liar! you have stolen her--you have fooled me--but, by g-d, you shall pay for it with your life!" "willingly!" i said, with a mocking smile, restraining by a gesture the hasty exclamations of those around me who resented this fresh attack--"most willingly, caro signor! but excuse me if i fail to see wherein you consider yourself wronged. the lady who is now my fiancee has not the slightest affection for you--she told me so herself. had she entertained any such feelings i might have withdrawn my proposals--but as matters stand, what harm have i done you?" a chorus of indignant voices interrupted me. "shame on you, ferrari!" cried gualdro. "the count speaks like a gentleman and a man of honor. were i in his place you should have had no word of explanation whatever. i would not have condescended to parley with you--by heaven i would not!" "nor i!" said the duke, stiffly. "nor i!" said mancini. "surely," said luziano salustri, "ferrari will make the amende honorable." there was a pause. each man looked at ferrari with some anxiety. the suddenness of the quarrel had sobered the whole party more effectually than a cold douche. ferrari's face grew more and more livid till his very lips turned a ghastly blue--he laughed aloud in bitter scorn. then, walking steadily up to me, with his eyes full of baffled vindictiveness, he said, in a low clear tone: "you say that--you say she never cared for me--you! and i am to apologize to you! thief, coward, traitor--take that for my apology!" and he struck me across the mouth with his bare hand so fiercely that the diamond ring he wore (my diamond ring) cut my flesh and slightly drew blood. a shout of anger broke from all present! i turned to the marquis d'avencourt. "there can be but one answer to this," i said, with indifferent coldness. "signor ferrari has brought it on himself. marquis, will you do me the honor to arrange the affair?" the marquis bowed, "i shall be most happy!" ferrari glared about him for a moment and then said, "freccia, you will second me?" captain freccia shrugged his shoulders. "you must positively excuse me," he said. "my conscience will not permit me to take up such a remarkably wrong cause as yours, cara mio! i shall be pleased to act with d'avencourt for the count, if he will permit me." the marquis received him with cordiality, and the two engaged in earnest conversation. ferrari next proffered his request to his quondam friend de hamal, who also declined to second him, as did every one among the company. he bit his lips in mortification and wounded vanity, and seemed hesitating what to do next, when the marquis approached him with frigid courtesy and appeared to offer him some suggestions in a low tone of voice--for after a few minutes' converse, ferrari suddenly turned on his heel and abruptly left the room without another word or look. at the same instant i touched vincenzo, who, obedient to his orders, had remained an impassive but evidently astonished spectator of all that had passed, and whispered--"follow that man and do not let him see you." he obeyed so instantly that the door had scarcely closed upon ferrari when vincenzo had also disappeared. the marquis d'avencourt now came up to me. "your opponent has gone to find two seconds," he said. "as you perceived, no one here would or could support him. it is a most unfortunate affair." "most unfortunate," chorused de hamal, who, though not in it, appeared thoroughly to enjoy it. "for my part," said the duke di marina, "i wonder how our noble friend could be so lenient with such a young puppy. his conceit is insufferable!" others around me made similar remarks, and were evidently anxious to show how entirely they were on my side. i however remained silent, lest they should see how gratified i was at the success of my scheme. the marquis addressed me again: "while awaiting the other seconds, who are to find us here," he said, with a glance at his watch, "freccia and i have arranged a few preliminaries. it is now nearly midnight. we propose that the affair should come off in the morning at six precisely. will that suit you?" i bowed. "as the insulted party you have the choice of weapons. shall we say--" "pistols," i replied briefly. "a la bonne heure! then, suppose we fix upon the plot of open ground just behind the hill to the left of the casa ghirlande--between that and the villa romani--it is quiet and secluded, and there will be no fear of interruption." i bowed again. "thus it stands," continued the marquis, affably--"the hour of six--the weapons pistols--the paces to be decided hereafter when the other seconds arrive." i professed myself entirely satisfied with these arrangements, and shook hands with my amiable coadjutor. i then looked round at the rest of the assembled company with a smile at their troubled faces. "gentlemen," i said, "our feast has broken up in a rather disagreeable manner--and i am sorry for it, the more especially as it compels me to part from you. receive my thanks for your company, and for the friendship you have displayed toward me! i do not believe that this is the last time i shall have the honor of entertaining you--but if it should be so, i shall at any rate carry a pleasant remembrance of you into the next world! if on the contrary i should survive the combat of the morning, i hope to see you all again on my marriage-day, when nothing shall occur to mar our merriment. in the meantime--good-night!" they closed round me, pressing my hands warmly and assuring me of their entire sympathy with me in the quarrel that had occurred. the duke was especially cordial, giving me to understand that had the others failed in their services, he himself, in spite of his dignity and peace-loving disposition, would have volunteered as my second. i escaped from them all at last and reached the quiet of my own apartments. there i sat alone for more than an hour, waiting for the return of vincenzo, whom i had sent to track ferrari. i heard the departing footsteps of my guests as they left the hotel by twos and threes--i heard the equable voices of the marquis and captain freccia ordering hot coffee to be served to them in a private room where they were to await the other seconds--now and then i caught a few words of the excited language of the waiters who were volubly discussing the affair as they cleared away the remains of the superb feast at which, though none knew it save myself, death had been seated. thirteen at table! one was a traitor and one must die. i knew which one. no presentiment lurked in my mind as to the doubtful result of the coming combat. it was not my lot to fall--my time had not come yet--i felt certain of that! no! all the fateful forces of the universe would help me to keep alive till my vengeance was fulfilled. oh, what bitter shafts of agony ferrari carried in his heart at that moment, i thought. how he had looked when i said she never cared for him! poor wretch! i pitied him even while i rejoiced at his torture. he suffered now as i had suffered--he was duped as i had been duped--and each quiver of his convulsed face and tormented frame had been fraught with satisfaction to me! each moment of his life was now a pang to him. well! it would soon be over--thus far at least i was merciful. i drew out pens and paper and commenced to write a few last instructions, in case the result of the fight should be fatal to me. i made them very concise and brief--i knew, while writing, that they would not be needed. still--for the sake of form i wrote--and sealing the document, i directed it to the duke di marina. i looked at my watch--it was past one o'clock and vincenzo had not yet returned. i went to the window, and drawing back the curtains, surveyed the exquisitely peaceful scene that lay before me. the moon was still high and bright--and her reflection made the waters of the bay appear like a warrior's coat of mail woven from a thousand glittering links of polished steel. here and there, from the masts of anchored brigs and fishing-boats gleamed a few red and green lights burning dimly like fallen and expiring stars. there was a heavy unnatural silence everywhere--it oppressed me, and i threw the window wide open for air. then came the sound of bells chiming softly. people passed to and fro with quiet footsteps--some paused to exchange friendly greetings. i remembered the day with a sort of pang at my heart. the night was over, though as yet there was no sign of dawn--and--it was christmas morning! chapter xxv. the opening of the room door aroused me from my meditations. i turned--to find vincenzo standing near me, hat in hand--he had just entered. "ebbene!" i said, with a cheerful air--"what news?" "eccellenza, you have been obeyed. the young signor ferrari is now at his studio." "you left him there?" "yes, eccellenza"--and vincenzo proceeded to give me a graphic account of his adventures. on leaving the banqueting-room, ferrari had taken a carriage and driven straight to the villa romani--vincenzo, unperceived, had swung himself on to the back of the vehicle and had gone also. "arriving there," continued my valet, "he dismissed the fiacre--and rang the gate-bell furiously six or seven times. no one answered. i hid myself among the trees and watched. there were no lights in the villa windows--all was darkness. he rang it again--he even shook the gate as though he would break it open. at last the poor giacomo came, half undressed and holding a lantern in his hand--he seemed terrified, and trembled so much that the lantern jogged up and down like a corpse-candle on a tomb. "'i must see the contessa,' said the young signor, giacomo blinked like an owl, and coughed as though the devil scratched in his throat. "'the contessa!' he said. 'she is gone!' "the signor then threw himself upon giacomo and shook him to and fro as though he were a bag of loose wheat. "'gone!' and he screamed like a madman! 'where? tell me where, dolt! idiot! driveler! before i twist your neck for you!' "truly, eccellenza, i would have gone to the rescue of the poor giacomo, but respect for your commands kept me silent. 'a thousand pardons, signor!' he whispered, out of breath with his shaking.' i will tell you instantly--most instantly. she is at the convento dell' annunziata--ten miles from here--the saints know i speak the truth--she left two days since.' "the signor ferrari then flung away the unfortunate giacomo with so much force that he fell in a heap on the pavement and broke his lantern to pieces. the old man set up a most pitiful groaning, but the signor cared nothing for that. he was mad, i think. 'get to bed!' he cried, 'and sleep--sleep till you die! tell your mistress when you see her that i came to kill her! my curse upon this house and all who dwell in it!' and with that he ran so quickly through the garden into the high-road that i had some trouble to follow him. there after walking unsteadily for a few paces, he suddenly fell down, senseless." vincenzo paused. "well," i said, "what happened next?" "eccellenza, i could not leave him there without aid. i drew my cloak well up to my mouth and pulled my hat down over my eyes so that he could not recognize me. then i took water from the fountain close by and dashed it on his face. he soon came to himself, and, taking me for a stranger, thanked me for my assistance, saying that he had a sudden shock. he then drank greedily from the fountain and went on his way." "you followed?" "yes, eccellenza--at a little distance. he next visited a common tavern in one of the back streets of the city and came out with two men. they were well dressed--they had the air of gentlemen spoiled by bad fortune. the signor talked with them for some time--he seemed much excited. i could not hear what they said except at the end, when these two strangers consented to appear as seconds for signor ferrari, and they at once left him, to come straight to this hotel. and they are arrived, for i saw them through a half-opened door as i came in, talking with the marquis d'avencourt." "well!" i said, "and what of signor ferrari when he was left alone by his two friends?" "there is not much more to tell, eccellenza. he went up the little hill to his own studio, and i noticed that he walked like a very old man with his head bent. once he stopped and shook his fist in the air as though threatening some one. he let himself in at his door with a private key--and i saw him no more. i felt that he would not come out again for some time. and as i moved away to return here, i heard a sound as of terrible weeping." "and that is all, vincenzo?" "that is all, eccellenza." i was silent. there was something in the simple narration that touched me, though i remained as determinately relentless as ever. after a few moments i said: "you have done well, vincenzo. you are aware how grossly this young man has insulted me--and that his injurious treatment can only be wiped out in one way. that way is already arranged. you can set out those pistols you cleaned." vincenzo obeyed--but as he lifted the heavy case of weapons and set them on the table, he ventured to remark, timidly: "the eccellenza knows it is now christmas-day?" "i am quite aware of the fact," i said somewhat frigidly. in nowise daunted he went on, "coming back just now i saw the big nicolo--the eccellenza has doubtless seen him often?--he is a vine-grower, and they say he is the largest man in naples--three months since he nearly killed his brother--ebbene! to-night that same big nicolo is drinking chianti with that same brother, and both shouted after me as i passed, 'hola! vincenzo flamma! all is well between us because it is the blessed christ's birthday.'" vincenzo stopped and regarded me wistfully. "well!" i said, calmly, "what has the big nicolo or his brother to do with me?" my valet hesitated--looked up--then down--finally he said, simply, "may the saints preserve the eccellenza from all harm!" i smiled gravely. "thank you, my friend! i understand what you mean. have no fear for me. i am now going to lie down and rest till five o'clock or thereabouts--and i advise you to do the same. at that time you can bring me some coffee." and i nodded kindly to him as i left him and entered my sleeping apartment, where i threw myself on the bed, dressed as i was. i had no intention of sleeping--my mind was too deeply engrossed by all i had gone through. i could enter into guido's feelings--had i not suffered as he was now suffering?--nay! more than he--for he, at any rate, would not be buried alive! i should take care of that! he would not have to endure the agony of breaking loose from the cold grasp of the grave to come back to life and find his name slandered, and his vacant place filled up by a usurper. do what i would, i could not torture him as much as i myself had been tortured. that was a pity--death, sudden and almost painless, seemed too good for him. i held up my hand in the half light and watched it closely to see if it trembled ever so slightly. no! it was steady as a rock--i felt i was sure of my aim. i would not fire at his heart, i thought but just above it--for i had to remember one thing--he must live long enough to recognize me before he died. that was the sting i reserved for his last moments! the sick dreams that had bewildered my brain when i was taken ill at the auberge recurred to me. i remembered the lithe figure, so like guido, that had glided in the indian canoe toward me and had plunged a dagger three times in my heart? had it not been realized? had not guido stabbed me thrice?--in his theft of my wife's affections--in his contempt for my little dead child--in his slanders on my name? then why such foolish notions of pity--of forgiveness, that were beginning to steal into my mind? it was too late now for forgiveness--the very idea of it only rose out of a silly sentimentalism awakened by ferrari's allusion to our young days--days for which, after all, he really cared nothing. meditating on all these things, i suppose i must have fallen by imperceptible degrees into a doze which gradually deepened till it became a profound and refreshing sleep. from this i was awakened by a knocking at the door. i arose and admitted vincenzo, who entered bearing a tray of steaming coffee. "is it already so late?" i asked him. "it wants a quarter to five," replied vincenzo--then looking at me in some surprise, he added, "will not the eccellenza change his evening-dress?" i nodded in the affirmative--and while i drank my coffee my valet set out a suit of rough tweed, such as i was accustomed to wear every day. he then left me, and i quickly changed my attire, and while i did so i considered carefully the position of affairs. neither the marquis d'avencourt nor captain freccia had ever known me personally when i was fabio romani--nor was it at all probable that the two tavern companions of ferrari had ever seen me. a surgeon would be on the field--most probably a stranger. thinking over these points, i resolved on a bold stroke--it was this--that when i turned to face ferrari in the combat, i would do so with uncovered eyes--i would abjure my spectacles altogether for the occasion. vaguely i wondered what the effect would be upon him. i was very much changed even without these disguising glasses--my white beard and hair had seemingly altered my aspect--yet i knew there was something familiar in the expression of my eyes that could not fail to startle one who had known me well. my seconds would consider it very natural that i should remove the smoke-colored spectacles in order to see my aim unencumbered--the only person likely to be disconcerted by my action was ferrari himself. the more i thought of it the more determined i was to do it. i had scarcely finished dressing when vincenzo entered with my overcoat, and informed me that the marquis waited for me, and that a close carriage was in attendance at the private door of the hotel. "permit me to accompany you, eccellenza!" pleaded the faithful fellow, with anxiety in the tone of his voice. "come then, amico!" i said, cheerily. "if the marquis makes no objection i shall not. but you must promise not to interrupt any of the proceedings by so much as an exclamation." he promised readily, and when i joined the marquis he followed, carrying my case of pistols. "he can be trusted, i suppose?" asked d'avencourt, glancing keenly at him while shaking hands cordially with me. "to the death!" i replied, laughingly. "he will break his heart if he is not allowed to bind up my wounds!" "i see you are in good spirits, conte," remarked captain freccia, as we took our seats in the carriage. "it is always the way with the man who is in the right. ferrari, i fear, is not quite so comfortable." and he proffered me a cigar, which i accepted. just as we were about to start, the fat landlord of the hotel rushed toward us, and laying hold of the carriage door--"eccellenza," he observed in a confidential whisper, "of course this is only a matter of coffee and glorias? they will be ready for you all on your return. i know--i understand!" and he smiled and nodded a great many times, and laid his finger knowingly on the side of his nose. we laughed heartily, assuring him that his perspicuity was wonderful, and he stood on the broad steps in high good humor, watching us as our vehicle rumbled heavily away. "evidently," i remarked, "he does not consider a duel as a serious affair." "not he!" replied freccia. "he has known of too many sham fights to be able to understand a real one. d'avencourt knows something about that too, though he always kills his man. but very often it is sufficient to scratch one another with the sword-point so as to draw a quarter of a drop of blood, and honor is satisfied! then the coffee and glorias are brought, as suggested by our friend the landlord." "it is a ridiculous age," said the marquis, taking his cigar from his mouth, and complacently surveying his small, supple white hand, "thoroughly ridiculous, but i determined it should never make a fool of me. you see, my dear conte, nowadays a duel is very frequently decided with swords rather than pistols, and why? because cowards fancy it is much more difficult to kill with the sword. but not at all. long ago i made up my mind that no man should continue to live who dared to insult me. i therefore studied swordplay as an art. and i assure you it is a simple matter to kill with the sword--remarkably simple. my opponents are astonished at the ease with which i dispatch them!" freccia laughed. "de hamal is a pupil of yours, marquis, is he not?" "i regret to say yes! he is marvelously clumsy. i have often earnestly requested him to eat his sword rather than handle it so boorishly. yet he kills his men, too, but in a butcher-like manner--totally without grace or refinement. i should say he was about on a par with our two associates, ferrari's seconds." i roused myself from a reverie into which i had fallen. "what men are they?" i inquired. "one calls himself the capitano ciabatti, the other cavaliere dursi, at your service," answered freccia, indifferently. "good swearers both and hard drinkers--filled with stock phrases, such as 'our distinguished dear friend, ferrari,' 'wrongs which can only be wiped out by blood'--all bombast and braggadocio! these fellows would as soon be on one side as the other." he resumed his smoking, and we all three lapsed into silence. the drive seemed very long, though in reality the distance was not great. at last we passed the casa ghirlande, a superb chateau belonging to a distinguished nobleman who in former days had been a friendly neighbor to me, and then our vehicle jolted down a gentle declivity which sloped into a small valley, where there was a good-sized piece of smooth flat greensward. from this spot could be faintly discerned the castellated turrets of my own house, the villa romani. here we came to a standstill. vincenzo jumped briskly down from his seat beside the coachman, and assisted us to alight. the carriage then drove off to a retired corner behind some trees. we surveyed the ground, and saw that as yet only one person beside ourselves had arrived. this was the surgeon, a dapper good-humored little german who spoke bad french and worse italian, and who shook hands cordially with us all. on learning who i was he bowed low and smiled very amiably. "the best wish i can offer to you, signor," he said, "is that you may have no occasion for my services. you have reposed yourself? that is well--sleep steadies the nerves. ach! you shiver! true it is, the morning is cold." i did indeed experience a passing shudder, but not because the air was chilly. it was because i felt certain--so terribly certain, of killing the man i had once loved well. almost i wished i could also feel that there was the slightest possibility of his killing me; but no!--all my instincts told me there was no chance of this. i had a sort of sick pain at my heart, and as i thought of her, the jewel-eyed snake who had wrought all the evil, my wrath against her increased tenfold. i wondered scornfully what she was doing away in the quiet convent where the sacred host, unveiled, glittered on the altar like a star of the morning. no doubt she slept; it was yet too early for her to practice her sham sanctity. she slept, in all probability most peacefully, while her husband and her lover called upon death to come and decide between them. the slow clear strokes of a bell chiming from the city tolled six, and as its last echo trembled mournfully on the wind there was a slight stir among my companions. i looked and saw ferrari approaching with his two associates. he walked slowly, and was muffled in a thick cloak; his hat was pulled over his brows, and i could not see the expression of his face, as he did not turn his head once in my direction, but stood apart leaning against the trunk of a leafless tree. the seconds on both sides now commenced measuring the ground. "we are agreed as to the distance, gentlemen," said the marquis. "twenty paces, i think?" "twenty paces," stiffly returned one of ferrari's friends--a battered-looking middle-aged roue with ferocious mustachios, whom i presumed was captain ciabatti. they went on measuring carefully and in silence. during the pause i turned my back on the whole party, slipped off my spectacles and put them in my pocket. then i lowered the brim of my hat slightly so that the change might not be observed too suddenly--and resuming my first position, i waited. it was daylight though not full morning--the sun had not yet risen, but there was an opaline luster in the sky, and one pale pink streak in the east like the floating pennon from the lance of a hero, which heralded his approach. there was a gentle twittering of awakening birds--the grass sparkled with a million tiny drops of frosty dew. a curious calmness possessed me. i felt for the time as though i were a mechanical automaton moved by some other will than my own. i had no passion left. the weapons were now loaded--and the marquis, looking about him with a cheerful business-like air, remarked: "i think we may now place our men?" this suggestion agreed to, ferrari left his place near the tree against which he had in part inclined as though fatigued, and advanced to the spot his seconds pointed out to him. he threw off his hat and overcoat, thereby showing that he was still in his evening-dress. his face was haggard and of a sickly paleness--his eyes had dark rings of pain round them, and were full of a keen and bitter anguish. he eagerly grasped the pistol they handed to him, and examined it closely with vengeful interest. i meanwhile also threw off my hat and coat--the marquis glanced at me with careless approval. "you look a much younger man without your spectacles, conte," he remarked as he handed me my weapon. i smiled indifferently, and took up my position at the distance indicated, exactly opposite ferrari. he was still occupied in the examination of his pistol, and did not at once look up. "are we ready, gentlemen?" demanded freccia, with courteous coldness. "quite ready," was the response. the marquis d'avencourt took out his handkerchief. then ferrari raised his head and faced me fully for the first time. great heaven! shall i ever forget the awful change that came over his pallid countenance--the confused mad look of his eyes--the startled horror of his expression! his lips moved as though he were about to utter an exclamation--he staggered. "one!" cried d'avencourt. we raised our weapons. "two!" the scared and bewildered expression of ferrari's face deepened visibly as he eyed me steadily in taking aim. i smiled proudly--i gave him back glance for glance--i saw him waver--his hand shook. "three!" and the white handkerchief fluttered to the ground. instantly, and together, we fired. ferrari's bullet whizzed past me, merely tearing my coat and grazing my shoulder. the smoke cleared--ferrari still stood erect, opposite to me, staring straight forward with the same frantic faroff look--the pistol had dropped from his hand. suddenly he threw up his arms--shuddered--and with a smothered groan fell, face forward, prone on the sward. the surgeon hurried to his side and turned him so that he lay on his back. he was unconscious--though his dark eyes were wide open, and turned blindly upward to the sky. the front of his shirt was already soaked with blood. we all gathered round him. "a good shot?" inquired the marquis, with the indifference of a practiced duelist. "ach! a good shot indeed!" replied the little german doctor, shaking his head as he rose from his examination of the wound. "excellent! he will be dead in ten minutes. the bullet has passed through the lungs close to the heart. honor is satisfied certainly!" at that moment a deep anguished sigh parted the lips of the dying man. sense and speculation returned to those glaring eyes so awfully upturned. he looked upon us all doubtfully one after the other--till finally his gaze rested upon me. then he grew strangely excited--his lips moved--he eagerly tried to speak. the doctor, watchful of his movements, poured brandy between his teeth. the cordial gave him momentary strength--he raised himself by a supreme effort. "let me speak," he gasped faintly, "to him!" and he pointed to me--then he continued to mutter like a man in a dream--"to him--alone--alone!--to him alone!" the others, slightly awed by his manner, drew aside out of ear-shot, and i advanced and knelt beside him, stooping my face between his and the morning sky. his wild eyes met mine with a piteous beseeching terror. "in god's name," he whispered, thickly, "who are you?" "you know me, guido!" i answered, steadily. "i am fabio romani, whom you once called friend! i am he whose wife you stole!--whose name you slandered!--whose honor you despised! ah! look at me well! your own heart tells you who i am!" he uttered a low moan and raised his hand with a feeble gesture. "fabio? fabio?" he gasped. "he died--i saw him in his coffin--" i leaned more closely over him. "i was buried alive," i said with thrilling distinctness. "understand me, guido--buried alive! i escaped--no matter how. i came home--to learn your treachery and my own dishonor! shall i tell you more?" a terrible shudder shook his frame--his head moved restlessly to and fro, the sweat stood in large drops upon his forehead. with my own handkerchief i wiped his lips and brow tenderly--my nerves were strung up to an almost brittle tension--i smiled as a woman smiles when on the verge of hysterical weeping. "you know the avenue," i said, "the dear old avenue, where the nightingales sing? i saw you there, guido--with her!--on the very night of my return from death--she was in your arms--you kissed her--you spoke of me--you toyed with the necklace on her white breast!" he writhed under my gaze with a strong convulsive movement. "tell me--quick!" he gasped. "does--she--know you?" "not yet!" i answered, slowly. "but soon she will--when i have married her!" a look of bitter anguish filled his straining eyes. "oh, god, god!" he exclaimed with a groan like that of a wild beast in pain. "this is horrible, too horrible! spare me--spare--" a rush of blood choked his utterance. his breathing grew fainter and fainter; the livid hue of approaching dissolution spread itself gradually over his countenance. staring wildly at me, he groped with his hands as though he searched for some lost thing. i took one of those feebly wandering hands within my own, and held it closely clasped. "you know the rest," i said gently; "you understand my vengeance! but it is all over, guido--all over, now! she has played us both false. may god forgive you as i do!" he smiled--a soft look brightened his fast-glazing eyes--the old boyish look that had won my love in former days. "all over!" he repeated in a sort of plaintive babble. "all over now! god--fabio--forgive!--" a terrible convulsion wrenched and contorted his limbs and features, his throat rattled, and stretching himself out with a long shivering sigh--he died! the first beams of the rising sun, piercing through the dark, moss-covered branches of the pine-trees, fell on his clustering hair, and lent a mocking brilliancy to his wide-open sightless eyes: there was a smile on the closed lips! a burning, suffocating sensation rose in my throat, as of rebellious tears trying to force a passage. i still held the hand of my friend and enemy--it had grown cold in my clasp. upon it sparkled my family diamond--the ring she had given him. i drew the jewel off: then i kissed that poor passive hand as i laid it gently down--kissed it tenderly, reverently. hearing footsteps approaching, i rose from my kneeling posture and stood erect with folded arms, looking tearlessly down on the stiffening clay before me. the rest of the party came up; no one spoke for a minute, all surveyed the dead body in silence. at last captain freccia said, softly in half-inquiring accents: "he is gone, i suppose?" i bowed. i could not trust myself to speak. "he made you his apology?" asked the marquis. i bowed again. there was another pause of heavy silence. the rigid smiling face of the corpse seemed to mock all speech. the doctor stooped and skillfully closed those glazed appealing eyes--and then it seemed to me as though guido merely slept and that a touch would waken him. the marquis d'avencourt took me by the arm and whispered, "get back to the city, amico, and take some wine--you look positively ill! your evident regret does you credit, considering the circumstances--but what would you?--it was a fair fight. consider the provocation you had! i should advise you to leave naples for a couple of weeks--by that time the affair will be forgotten. i know how these things are managed--leave it all to me." i thanked him and shook his hand cordially and turned to depart. vincenzo was in waiting with the carriage. once i looked back, as with slow steps i left the field; a golden radiance illumined the sky just above the stark figure stretched so straightly on the sward; while almost from the very side of that pulseless heart a little bird rose from its nest among the grasses and soared into the heavens, singing rapturously as it flew into the warmth and glory of the living, breathing day. chapter xxvi. entering the fiacre, i drove in it a very little way toward the city. i bade the driver stop at the corner of the winding road that led to the villa romani, and there i alighted. i ordered vincenzo to go on to the hotel and send from thence my own carriage and horses up to the villa gates, where i would wait for it. i also bade him pack my portmanteau in readiness for my departure that evening, as i proposed going to avellino, among the mountains, for a few days. he heard my commands in silence and evident embarrassment. finally he said: "do i also travel with the eccellenza?" "why, no!" i answered with a forced sad smile. "do you not see, amico, that i am heavy-hearted, and melancholy men are best left to themselves. besides--remember the carnival--i told you you were free to indulge in its merriment, and shall i not deprive you of your pleasure? no, vincenzo; stay and enjoy yourself, and take no concern for me." vincenzo saluted me with his usual respectful bow, but his features wore an expression of obstinacy. "the eccellenza must pardon me," he said, "but i have just looked at death, and my taste is spoiled for carnival. again--the eccellenza is sad--it is necessary that i should accompany him to avellino." i saw that his mind was made up, and i was in no humor for argument. "as you will," i answered, wearily, "only believe me, you make a foolish decision. but do what you like; only arrange all so that we leave to-night. and now get back quickly--give no explanation at the hotel of what has occurred, and lose no time in sending on my carriage. i will wait alone at the villa romani till it comes." the vehicle rumbled off, bearing vincenzo seated on the box beside the driver. i watched it disappear, and then turned into the road that led me to my own dishonored home. the place looked silent and deserted--not a soul was stirring. the silken blinds of the reception-rooms were all closely drawn, showing that the mistress of the house was absent; it was as if some one lay dead within. a vague wonderment arose in my mind. who was dead? surely it must be i--i the master of the household, who lay stiff and cold in one of those curtained rooms! this terrible white-haired man who roamed feverishly up and down outside the walls was not me--it was some angry demon risen from the grave to wreak punishment on the guilty. _i_ was dead--_i_ could never have killed the man who had once been my friend. and he also was dead--the same murderess had slain us both--and she lived! ha! that was wrong--she must now die--but in such torture that her very soul shall shrink and shrivel under it into a devil's flame for the furnace of hell! with my brain full of hot whirling thoughts like these i looked through the carved heraldic work of the villa gates. here had guido stood, poor wretch, last night, shaking these twisted wreaths of iron in impotent fury. there on the mosaic pavement he had flung the trembling old servant who had told him of the absence of his traitress. on this very spot he had launched his curse, which, though he knew it not, was the curse of a dying man. i was glad he had uttered it--such maledictions cling! there was nothing but compassion for him in my heart now that he was dead. he had been duped and wronged even as i; and i felt that his spirit, released from its grosser clay, would work with mine and aid in her punishment. i paced round the silent house till i came to the private wicket that led into the avenue; i opened it and entered the familiar path. i had not been there since the fatal night on which i had learned my own betrayal. how intensely still were those solemn pines--how gaunt and dark and grim! not a branch quivered--not a leaf stirred. a cold dew that was scarcely a frost glittered on the moss at my feet, no bird's voice broke the impressive hush of the wood-lands morning dream. no bright-hued flower unbuttoned its fairy cloak to the breeze; yet there was a subtle perfume everywhere--the fragrance of unseen violets whose purple eyes were still closed in slumber. i gazed on the scene as a man may behold in a vision the spot where he once was happy. i walked a few paces, then paused with a strange beating at my heart. a shadow fell across my path--it flitted before me, it stopped--it lay still. i saw it resolve itself into the figure of a man stretched out in rigid silence, with the light beating full on its smiling, dead face, and also on a deep wound just above his heart, from which the blood oozed redly, staining the grass on which he lay. mastering the sick horror which seized me at this sight, i sprung forward--the shadow vanished instantly--it was a mere optical delusion, the result of my overwrought and excited condition. i shuddered involuntarily at the image my own heated fancy had conjured up; should i always see guido thus, i thought, even in my dreams? suddenly a ringing, swaying rush of sound burst joyously on the silence--the slumbering trees awoke, their leaves moved, their dark branches quivered, and the grasses lifted up their green lilliputian sword-blades. bells!--and such bells!--tongues of melody that stormed the air with sweetest eloquence--round, rainbow bubbles of music that burst upon the wind, and dispersed in delicate broken echoes. "peace on earth, good will to men! peace--on--earth--good--will--to--men!" they seemed to say over and over again, till my ears ached with the repetition. peace! what had i to do with peace or good-will? the christ mass could teach me nothing. i was as one apart from human life--an alien from its customs and affections--for me no love, no brotherhood remained. the swinging song of the chimes jarred my nerves. why, i thought, should the wild erring world, with all its wicked men and women, presume to rejoice at the birth of the saviour?--they, who were not worthy to be saved! i turned swiftly away; i strode fiercely past the kingly pines that, now thoroughly awakened, seemed to note me with a stern disdain as though they said among themselves: "what manner of small creature is this that torments himself with passions unknown to us in our calm converse with the stars?" i was glad when i stood again on the high-road, and infinitely relieved when i heard the rapid trot of horses, rumbling of wheels, and saw my closed brougham, drawn by its prancing black arabians, approaching. i walked to meet it; the coachman seeing me drew up instantly, i bade him take me to the convento dell'annunziata, and entering the carriage, i was driven rapidly away. the convent was situated, i knew, somewhere between naples and sorrento. i guessed it to be near castellamare, but it was fully three miles beyond that, and was a somewhat long drive of more than two hours. it lay a good distance out of the direct route, and was only attained by a by-road, which from its rough and broken condition was evidently not much frequented. the building stood apart from all other habitations in a large open piece of ground, fenced in by a high stone wall spiked at the top. roses climbed thickly among the spikes, and almost hid their sharp points from view, and from a perfect nest of green foliage, the slender spire of the convent chapel rose into the sky like a white finger pointing to heaven. my coachman drew up before the heavily barred gates. i alighted, and bade him take the carriage to the principal hostelry at castellamare, and wait for me there. as soon as he had driven off, i rang the convent bell. a little wicket fixed in the gate opened immediately, and the wrinkled visage of a very old and ugly nun looked out. she demanded in low tones what i sought. i handed her my card, and stated my desire to see the countess romani, if agreeable to the superioress. while i spoke she looked at me curiously--my spectacles, i suppose, excited her wonder--for i had replaced these disguising glasses immediately on leaving the scene of the duel--i needed them yet a little while longer. after peering at me a minute or two with her bleared and aged eyes, she shut the wicket in my face with a smart click and disappeared. while i awaited her return i heard the sound of children's laughter and light footsteps running trippingly on the stone passage within. "fi donc, rosie!" said the girl's voice in french; "la bonne mere marguerite sera tres tres fachee avec toi." "tais-toi, petite sainte!" cried another voice more piercing and silvery in tone. "je veux voir qui est la! c'est un homme je sais bien--parceque la vieille mere laura a rougi!" and both young voices broke into a chorus of renewed laughter. then came the shuffling noise of the old nun's footsteps returning; she evidently caught the two truants, whoever they were, for i heard her expostulating, scolding and apostrophizing the saints all in a breath, as she bade them go inside the house and ask the good little jesus to forgive their naughtiness. a silence ensued, then the bolts and bars of the huge gate were undone slowly--it opened, and i was admitted. i raised my hat as i entered, and walked bareheaded through a long, cold corridor, guided by the venerable nun, who looked at me no more, but told her beads as she walked, and never spoke till she had led me into the building, through a lofty hall glorious with sacred paintings and statues, and from thence into a large, elegantly furnished room, whose windows commanded a fine view of the grounds. here she motioned me to take a seat, and without lifting her eyelids, said: "mother marguerite will wait upon you instantly, signor." i bowed, and she glided from the room so noiselessly that i did not even hear the door close behind her. left alone in what i rightly concluded was the reception-room for visitors, i looked about me with some faint interest and curiosity. i had never before seen the interior of what is known as an educational convent. there were many photographs on the walls and mantelpiece--portraits of girls, some plain of face and form, others beautiful--no doubt they had all been sent to the nuns as souvenirs of former pupils. rising from my chair i examined a few of them carelessly, and was about to inspect a fine copy of murillo's virgin, when my attention was caught by an upright velvet frame surmounted with my own crest and coronet. in it was the portrait of my wife, taken in her bridal dress, as she looked when she married me. i took it to the light and stared at the features dubiously. this was she--this slim, fairy-like creature clad in gossamer white, with the marriage veil thrown back from her clustering hair and child-like face--this was the thing for which two men's lives had been sacrificed! with a movement of disgust i replaced the frame in its former position; i had scarcely done so when the door opened quietly and a tall woman, clad in trailing robes of pale blue with a nun's band and veil of fine white cashmere, stood before me. i saluted her with a deep reverence; she responded by the slightest possible bend of her head. her outward manner was so very still and composed that when she spoke her colorless lips scarcely moved, her very breathing never stirred the silver crucifix that lay like a glittering sign-manual on her quiet breast. her voice, though low, was singularly clear and penetrating. "i address the count oliva?" she inquired. i bowed in the affirmative. she looked at me keenly: she had dark, brilliant eyes, in which the smoldering fires of many a conquered passion still gleamed. "you would see the countess romani, who is in retreat here?" "if not inconvenient or out of rule--" i began. the shadow of a smile flitted across the nun's pale, intellectual face; it was gone almost as soon as it appeared. "not at all," she replied, in the same even monotone. "the countess nina is, by her own desire, following a strict regime, but to-day being a universal feast-day all rules are somewhat relaxed. the reverend mother desires me to inform you that it is now the hour for mass--she has herself already entered the chapel. if you will share in our devotions, the countess shall afterward be informed of your presence here." i could do no less than accede to this proposition, though in truth it was unwelcome to me. i was in no humor for either prayers or praise; i thought moodily how startled even this impassive nun might have been, could she have known what manner of man it was that she thus invited to kneel in the sanctuary. however, i said no word of objection, and she bade me follow her. as we left the room i asked: "is the countess well?" "she seems so," returned mere marguerite; "she follows her religious duties with exactitude, and makes no complaint of fatigue." we were now crossing the hall. i ventured on another inquiry. "she was a favorite pupil of yours, i believe?" the nun turned her passionless face toward me with an air of mild surprise and reproof. "i have no favorites," she answered, coldly. "all the children educated here share my attention and regard equally." i murmured an apology, and added with a forced smile: "you must pardon my apparent inquisitiveness, but as the future husband of the lady who was brought up under your care, i am naturally interested in all that concerns her." again the searching eyes of the religieuse surveyed me; she sighed slightly. "i am aware of the connection between you," she said, in rather a pained tone. "nina romani belongs to the world, and follows the ways of the world. of course, marriage is the natural fulfillment of most young girls' destinies, there are comparatively few who are called out of the ranks to serve christ. therefore, when nina married the estimable count romani, of whom report spoke ever favorably, we rejoiced greatly, feeling that her future was safe in the hands of a gentle and wise protector. may his soul rest in peace! but a second marriage for her is what i did not expect, and what i cannot in my conscience approve. you see i speak frankly." "i am honored that you do so, madame!" i said, earnestly, feeling a certain respect for this sternly composed yet patient-featured woman; "yet, though in general you may find many reasonable objections to it, a second marriage is i think, in the countess romani's case almost necessary. she is utterly without a protector--she is very young and how beautiful!" the nun's eyes grew solemn and almost mournful. "such beauty is a curse," she answered, with emphasis; "a fatal--a fearful curse! as a child it made her wayward. as a woman it keeps her wayward still. enough of this, signor!" and she bowed her head; "excuse my plain speaking. rest assured that i wish you both happiness." we had by this time reached the door of the chapel, through which the sound of the pealing organ poured forth in triumphal surges of melody. mere marguerite dipped her fingers in the holy water, and signing herself with the cross, pointed out a bench at the back of the church as one that strangers were allowed to occupy. i seated myself, and looked with a certain soothed admiration at the picturesque scene before me. there was the sparkle of twinkling lights--the bloom and fragrance of flowers. there were silent rows of nuns blue-robed and white-veiled, kneeling and absorbed in prayer. behind these a little cluster of youthful figures in black, whose drooped heads were entirely hidden in veils of flowing white muslin. behind these again, one woman's slight form arrayed in heavy mourning garments; her veil was black, yet not so thick but that i could perceive the sheeny glitter of golden hair--that was my wife, i knew. pious angel! how devout she looked! i smiled in dreary scorn as i watched her; i cursed her afresh in the name of the man i had killed. and above all, surrounded with the luster of golden rays and incrusted jewels, the uncovered host shone serenely like the gleam of the morning star. the stately service went on--the organ music swept through and through the church as though it were a strong wind striving to set itself free--but amid it all i sat as one in a dark dream, scarcely seeing, scarcely hearing--inflexible and cold as marble. the rich plaintive voice of one of the nuns in the choir, singing the agnus dei, moved me to a chill sort of wonder. "qui tollis peccata mundi--who takest away the sin of the world." no, no! there are some sins that cannot be taken away--the sins of faithless women, the "little" sins as they are called nowadays--for we have grown very lenient in some things, and very severe in others. we will imprison the miserable wretch who steals five francs from our pockets, but the cunning feminine thief who robs us of our prestige, our name and honorable standing among our fellow-men, escapes almost scot-free; she cannot be put in prison, or sentenced to hard labor--not she! a pity it is that christ did not leave us some injunction as to what was to be done with such women--not the penitent magdalenes, but the creatures whose mouths are full of lies even when they pretend to pray--they who would be capable of trying to tempt the priest who comes to receive their last confessions--they who would even act out a sham repentance on their deathbeds in order to look well. what can be done with devils such as these? much has been said latterly of the wrongs perpetrated on women by men; will no one take up the other side of the question? we, the stronger sex, are weak in this--we are too chivalrous. when a woman flings herself on our mercy we spare her and are silent. tortures will not wring her secrets out of us; something holds us back from betraying her. i know not what it can be--perhaps it is the memory of our mothers. whatever it is, it is certain that many a man allows himself to be disgraced rather than he will disgrace a woman. but a time is at hand when this foolish chivalry of ours will die out. on changera tout cela! when once our heavy masculine brains shall have grasped the novel idea that woman has by her own wish and choice resigned all claim on our respect or forbearance, we shall have our revenge. we are slow to change the traditions of our forefathers, but no doubt we shall soon manage to quench the last spark of knightly reverence left in us for the female sex, as this is evidently the point the women desire to bring us to. we shall meet them on that low platform of the "equality" they seek for, and we shall treat them with the unhesitating and regardless familiarity they so earnestly invite! absorbed in thought, i knew not when the service ended. a hand touched me, and looking up i saw mere marguerite, who whispered: "follow me, if you please." i rose and obeyed her mechanically. outside the chapel door she said: "pray excuse me for hurrying you, but strangers are not permitted to see the nuns and boarders passing out." i bowed, and walked on beside her. feeling forced to say something, i asked: "have you many boarders at this holiday season?" "only fourteen," she replied, "and they are children whose parents live far away. poor little ones!" and the set lines of the nun's stern face softened into tenderness as she spoke. "we do our best to make them happy, but naturally they feel lonely. we have generally fifty or sixty young girls here, besides the day scholars." "a great responsibility," i remarked. "very great indeed!" and she sighed; "almost terrible. so much of a woman's after life depends on the early training she receives. we do all we can, and yet in some cases our utmost efforts are in vain; evil creeps in, we know not how--some unsuspected fault spoils a character that we judged to be admirable, and we are often disappointed in our most promising pupils. alas! there is nothing entirely without blemish in this world." thus talking, she showed me into a small, comfortable-looking room, lined with books and softly carpeted. "this is one of our libraries," she explained. "the countess will receive you here, as other visitors might disturb you in the drawing-room. pardon me," and her steady gaze had something of compassion in it, "but you do not look well. can i send you some wine?" i declined this offer with many expressions of gratitude, and assured her i was perfectly well. she hesitated, and at last said, anxiously: "i trust you were not offended at my remark concerning nina romani's marriage with you? i fear i was too hasty?" "not so, madame," i answered, with all the earnestness i felt. "nothing is more pleasant to me than a frank opinion frankly spoken. i have been so accustomed to deception--" here i broke off and added hastily, "pray do not think me capable of judging you wrongly." she seemed relieved, and smiling that shadowy, flitting smile of hers, she said: "no doubt you are impatient, signor; nina shall come to you directly," and with a slight salutation she left me. surely she was a good woman, i thought, and vaguely wondered about her past history--that past which she had buried forever under a mountain of prayers. what had she been like when young--before she had shut herself within the convent walls--before she had set the crucifix like a seal on her heart? had she ever trapped a man's soul and strangled it with lies? i fancied not--her look was too pure and candid; yet who could tell? were not nina's eyes trained to appear as though they held the very soul of truth? a few minutes passed. i heard the fresh voices of children singing in the next room: "d'ou vient le petit gesu? ce joli bouton de rose qui fleurit, enfant cheri sur le coeur de notre mere marie." then came a soft rustle of silken garments, the door opened, and my wife entered. chapter xxvii. she approached with her usual panther-like grace and supple movement, her red lips parted in a charming smile. "so good of you to come!" she began, holding out her two hands as though she invited an embrace; "and on christmas morning too!" she paused, and seeing that i did not move or speak, she regarded me with some alarm. "what is the matter?" she asked, in fainter tones; "has anything happened?" i looked at her. i saw that she was full of sudden fear, i made no attempt to soothe her, i merely placed a chair. "sit down," i said, gravely. "i am the bearer of bad news." she sunk into the chair as though unnerved, and gazed at me with terrified eyes. she trembled. watching her keenly, i observed all these outward signs of trepidation with deep satisfaction. i saw plainly what was passing in her mind. a great dread had seized her--the dread that i had found out her treachery. so indeed i had, but the time had not yet come for her to know it. meanwhile she suffered--suffered acutely with that gnawing terror and suspense eating into her soul. i said nothing, i waited for her to speak. after a pause, during which her cheeks had lost their delicate bloom, she said, forcing a smile as she spoke-- "bad news? you surprise me! what can it be? some unpleasantness with guido? have you seen him?" "i have seen him," i answered in the same formal and serious tone; "i have just left him. he sends you this," and i held out my diamond ring that i had drawn off the dead man's finger. if she had been pale before, she grew paler now. all the brilliancy of her complexion faded for the moment into an awful haggardness. she took the ring with fingers that shook visibly and were icy cold. there was no attempt at smiling now. she drew a sharp quick breath; she thought i knew all. i was again silent. she looked at the diamond signet with a bewildered air. "i do not understand," she murmured, petulantly. "i gave him this as a remembrance of his friend, my husband, why does he return it?" self-tortured criminal! i studied her with a dark amusement, but answered nothing. suddenly she looked up at me and her eyes filled with tears. "why are you so cold and strange, cesare?" she pleaded, in a sort of plaintive whimper. "do not stand there like a gloomy sentinel; kiss me and tell me at once what has happened." kiss her! so soon after kissing the dead hand of her lover! no, i could not and would not. i remained standing where i was, inflexibly silent. she glanced at me again, very timidly, and whimpered afresh. "ah, you do not love me!" she murmured. "you could not be so stern and silent if you loved me! if there is indeed any bad news, you ought to break it to me gently and kindly. i thought you would always make everything easy for me--" "such has been my endeavor, madame," i said interrupting her complaint. "from your own statement, i judged that your adopted brother guido ferrari had rendered himself obnoxious to you. i promised that i would silence him--you remember! i have kept my word. he is silenced--forever!" she started. "silenced? how? you mean--" i moved away from my place behind her chair, and stood so that i faced her as i spoke. "i mean that he is dead." she uttered a slight cry, not of sorrow but of wonderment. "dead!" she exclaimed. "not possible! dead! you have killed him?" i bent my head gravely. "i killed him--yes! but in open combat, openly witnessed. last night he insulted me grossly; we fought this morning. we forgave each other before he died." she listened attentively. a little color came back into her cheeks. "in what way did he insult you?" she asked, in a low voice. i told her all, briefly. she still looked anxious. "did he mention my name?" she said. i glanced at her troubled features in profound contempt. she feared the dying man might have made some confession to me! i answered: "no; not after our quarrel. but i hear he went to your house to kill you! not finding you there, he only cursed you." she heaved a sigh of relief. she was safe now, she thought! her red lips widened into a cruel smile. "what bad taste!" she said, coldly. "why he should curse me i cannot imagine! i have always been kind to him--too kind." too kind indeed! kind enough to be glad when the object of all her kindness was dead! for she was glad! i could see that in the murderous glitter of her eyes. "you are not sorry?" i inquired, with an air of pretended surprise. "sorry? not at all! why should i be? he was a very agreeable friend while my husband was alive to keep him in order, but after my poor fabio's death, his treatment of me was quite unbearable." take care, beautiful hypocrite! take care! take care lest your "poor fabio's" fingers should suddenly nip your slim throat with a convulsive twitch that means death! heaven only knows how i managed to keep my hands off her at that moment! why, any groveling beast of the field had more feeling than this wretch whom i had made my wife! even for guido's sake--such are the strange inconsistencies of the human heart--i could have slain her then. but i restrained my fury; i steadied my voice and said calmly: "then i was mistaken? i thought you would be deeply grieved, that my news would shock and annoy you greatly, hence my gravity and apparent coldness. but it seems i have done well?" she sprung up from her chair like a pleased child and flung her arms round my neck. "you are brave, you are brave!" she exclaimed, in a sort of exultation. "you could not have done otherwise! he insulted you and you killed him. that was right! i love you all the more for being such a man of honor!" i looked down upon her in loathing and disgust. honor! its very name was libeled coming from her lips. she did not notice the expression of my face--she was absorbed, excellent actress as she was, in the part she had chosen to play. "and so you were dull and sad because you feared to grieve me! poor cesare!" she said, in child-like caressing accents, such as she could assume when she chose. "but now that you see i am not unhappy, you will be cheerful again? yes? think how much i love you, and how happy we will be! and see, you have given me such lovely jewels, so many of them too, that i scarcely dare offer you such a trifle as this; but as it really belonged to fabio, and to fabio's father, whom you knew, i think you ought to have it. will you take it and wear it to please me?" and she slipped on my finger the diamond signet--my own ring! i could have laughed aloud! but i bent my head gravely as i accepted it. "only as a proof of your affection, cara mia," i said, "though it has a terrible association for me. i took it from ferrari's hand when--" "oh, yes, i know!" she interrupted me with a little shiver; "it must have been trying for you to have seen him dead. i think dead people look so horrid--the sight upsets the nerves! i remember when i was at school here, they would take me to see a nun who died; it sickened me and made me ill for days. i can quite understand your feelings. but you must try and forget the matter. duels are very common occurrences, after all!" "very common," i answered, mechanically, still regarding the fair upturned face, the lustrous eyes, the rippling hair; "but they do not often end so fatally. the result of this one compels me to leave naples for some days. i go to avellino to-night." "to avellino?" she exclaimed, with interest. "oh, i know it very well. i went there once with fabio when i was first married." "and were you happy there?" i inquired, coldly. i remembered the time she spoke of--a time of such unreasoning, foolish joy! "happy? oh, yes; everything was so new to me then. it was delightful to be my own mistress, and i was so glad to be out of the convent." "i thought you liked the nuns?" i said. "some of them--yes. the reverend mother is a dear old thing. but mere marguerite, the vicaire as she is called--the one that received you--oh, i do detest her!" "indeed! and why?" the red lips curled mutinously. "because she is so sly and silent. some of the children here adore her; but they must have something to love, you know," and she laughed merrily. "must they?" i asked the question automatically, merely for the sake of saying something. "of course they must," she answered, gayly. "you foolish cesare! the girls often play at being one another's lovers, only they are careful not to let the nuns know their game. it is very amusing. since i have been here they have what is called a 'craze' for me. they give me flowers, run after me in the garden, and sometimes kiss my dress, and call me by all manner of loving names. i let them do it because it vexes madame la vicaire; but of course it is very foolish." i was silent. i thought what a curse it was--this necessity of loving. even the poison of it must find its way into the hearts of children--young things shut within the walls of a secluded convent, and guarded by the conscientious care of holy women. "and the nuns?" i said, uttering half my thoughts aloud. "how do they manage without love or romance?" a wicked little smile, brilliant and disdainful, glittered in her eyes. "do they always manage without love or romance?" she asked, half indolently. "what of abelard and heloise, or fra lippi?" roused by something in her tone, i caught her round the waist, and held her firmly while i said, with some sternness: "and you--is it possible that you have sympathy with, or find amusement in, the contemplation of illicit and dishonorable passion--tell me?" she recollected herself in time; her white eyelids drooped demurely. "not i!" she answered, with a grave and virtuous air; "how can you think so? there is nothing to my mind so horrible as deceit; no good ever comes of it." i loosened her from my embrace. "you are right," i said, calmly; "i am glad your instincts are so correct! i have always hated lies." "so have i!" she declared, earnestly, with a frank and open look; "i have often wondered why people tell them. they are so sure to be found out!" i bit my lips hard to shut in the burning accusations that my tongue longed to utter. why should i damn the actress or the play before the curtain was ready to fall on both? i changed the subject of converse. "how long do you propose remaining here in retreat?" i asked. "there is nothing now to prevent your returning to naples." she pondered for some minutes before replying, then she said: "i told the superioress i came here for a week. i had better stay till that time is expired. not longer, because as guido is really dead, my presence is actually necessary in the city." "indeed! may i ask why?" she laughed a little consciously. "simply to prove his last will and testament," she replied. "before he left for rome, he gave it into my keeping." a light flashed on my mind. "and its contents?" i inquired. "its contents make me the owner of everything he died possessed of!" she said, with an air of quiet yet malicious triumph. unhappy guido! what trust he had reposed in this vile, self-interested, heartless woman! he had loved her, even as i had loved her--she who was unworthy of any love! i controlled my rising emotion, and merely said with gravity: "i congratulate you! may i be permitted to see this document?" "certainly; i can show it to you now. i have it here," and she drew a russia-leather letter-case from her pocket, and opening it, handed me a sealed envelope. "break the seal!" she added, with childish eagerness. "he closed it up like that after i had read it." with reluctant hand, and a pained piteousness at my heart, i opened the packet. it was as she had said, a will drawn up in perfectly legal form, signed and witnessed, leaving everything unconditionally to "nina, countess romani, of the villa romani, naples." i read it through and returned it to her. "he must have loved you!" i said. she laughed. "of course," she said, airily. "but many people love me--that is nothing new; i am accustomed to be loved. but you see," she went on, reverting to the will again, "it specifies, 'everything he dies possessed of;' that means all the money left to him by his uncle in rome, does it not?" i bowed. i could not trust myself to speak. "i thought so," she murmured, gleefully, more to herself than to me; "and i have a right to all his papers and letters." there she paused abruptly and checked herself. i understood her. she wanted to get back her own letters to the dead man, lest her intimacy with him should leak out in some chance way for which she was unprepared. cunning devil! i was almost glad she showed me to what a depth of vulgar vice she had fallen. there was no question of pity or forbearance in her case. if all the tortures invented by savages or stern inquisitors could be heaped upon her at once, such punishment would be light in comparison with her crimes--crimes for which, mark you, the law gives you no remedy but divorce. tired of the wretched comedy, i looked at my watch. "it is time for me to take my leave of you," i said, in the stiff, courtly manner i affected. "moments fly fast in your enchanting company! but i have still to walk to castellamare, there to rejoin my carriage, and i have many things to attend to before my departure this evening. on my return from avellino shall i be welcome?" "you know it," she returned, nestling her head against my shoulder, while for mere form's sake i was forced to hold her in a partial embrace. "i only wish you were not going at all. dearest, do not stay long away--i shall be so unhappy till you come back!" "absence strengthens love, they say," i observed, with a forced smile. "may it do so in our case. farewell, cara mia! pray for me; i suppose you do pray a great deal here?" "oh, yes," she replied, naively; "there is nothing else to do." i held her hands closely in my grasp. the engagement ring on her finger, and the diamond signet on my own, flashed in the light like the crossing of swords. "pray then," i said, "storm the gates of heaven with sweet-voiced pleadings for the repose of poor ferrari's soul! remember he loved you, though you never loved him. for your sake he quarreled with me, his best friend--for your sake he died! pray for him--who knows," and i spoke in thrilling tones of earnestness--"who knows but that his too-hastily departed spirit may not be near us now--hearing our voices, watching our looks?" she shivered slightly, and her hands in mine grew cold. "yes, yes," i continued, more calmly; "you must not forget to pray for him--he was young and not prepared to die." my words had some of the desired effect upon her--for once her ready speech failed--she seemed as though she sought for some reply and found none. i still held her hands. "promise me!" i continued; "and at the same time pray for your dead husband! he and poor ferrari were close friends, you know; it will be pious and kind of you to join their names in one petition addressed to him 'from whom no secrets are hid,' and who reads with unerring eyes the purity of your intentions. will you do it?" she smiled, a forced, faint smile. "i certainly will," she replied, in a low voice; "i promise you." i released her hands--i was satisfied. if she dared to pray thus i felt--i knew that she would draw down upon her soul the redoubled wrath of heaven; for i looked beyond the grave! the mere death of her body would be but a slight satisfaction to me; it was the utter destruction of her wicked soul that i sought. she should never repent, i swore; she should never have the chance of casting off her vileness as a serpent casts its skin, and, reclothing herself in innocence, presume to ask admittance into that eternal gloryland whither my little child had gone--never, never! no church should save her, no priest should absolve her--not while _i_ lived! she watched me as i fastened my coat and began to draw on my gloves. "are you going now?" she asked, somewhat timidly. "yes, i am going now, cara mia," i said. "why! what makes you look so pale?" for she had suddenly turned very white. "let me see your hand again," she demanded, with feverish eagerness, "the hand on which i placed the ring!" smilingly and with readiness i took off the glove i had just put on. "what odd fancy possesses you now, little one?" i asked, with an air of playfulness. she made no answer, but took my hand and examined it closely and curiously. then she looked up, her lips twitched nervously, and she laughed a little hard mirthless laugh. "your hand," she murmured, incoherently, "with--that--signet--on it--is exactly like--like fabio's!" and before i had time to say a word she went off into a violent fit of hysterics--sobs, little cries, and laughter all intermingled in that wild and reasonless distraction that generally unnerves the strongest man who is not accustomed to it. i rang the bell to summon assistance; a lay-sister answered it, and seeing nina's condition, rushed for a glass of water and summoned madame la vicaire. this latter, entering with her quiet step and inflexible demeanor, took in the situation at a glance, dismissed the lay-sister, and possessing herself of the tumbler of water, sprinkled the forehead of the interesting patient, and forced some drops between her clinched teeth. then turning to me she inquired, with some stateliness of manner, what had caused the attack? "i really cannot tell you, madame," i said, with an air of affected concern and vexation. "i certainly told the countess of the unexpected death of a friend, but she bore the news with exemplary resignation. the circumstance that appears to have so greatly distressed her is that she finds, or says she finds, a resemblance between my hand and the hand of her deceased husband. this seems to me absurd, but there is no accounting for ladies' caprices." and i shrugged my shoulders as though i were annoyed and impatient. over the pale, serious face of the nun there flitted a smile in which there was certainly the ghost of sarcasm. "all sensitiveness and tenderness of heart, you see!" she said, in her chill, passionless tones, which, icy as they were, somehow conveyed to my ear another meaning than that implied by the words she uttered. "we cannot perhaps understand the extreme delicacy of her feelings, and we fail to do justice to them." here nina opened her eyes, and looked at us with piteous plaintiveness, while her bosom heaved with those long, deep sighs which are the finishing chords of the sonata hysteria. "you are better, i trust?" continued the nun, without any sympathy in her monotonous accents, and addressing her with some reserve. "you have greatly alarmed the count oliva." "i am sorry--" began nina, feebly. i hastened to her side. "pray do not speak of it!" i urged, forcing something like a lover's ardor into my voice. "i regret beyond measure that it is my misfortune to have hands like those of your late husband! i assure you i am quite miserable about it. can you forgive me?" she was recovering quickly, and she was evidently conscious that she had behaved somewhat foolishly. she smiled a weak pale smile; but she looked very scared, worn and ill. she rose from her chair slowly and languidly. "i think i will go to my room," she said, not regarding mere marguerite, who had withdrawn to a little distance, and who stood rigidly erect, immovably featured, with her silver crucifix glittering coldly on her still breast. "good-bye, cesare! please forget my stupidity, and write to me from avellino." i took her outstretched hand, and bowing over it, touched it gently with my lips. she turned toward the door, when suddenly a mischievous idea seemed to enter her mind. she looked at madame la vicaire and then came back to me. "addio, amor mio!" she said, with a sort of rapturous emphasis, and throwing her arms round my neck she kissed me almost passionately. then she glanced maliciously at the nun, who had lowered her eyes till they appeared fast shut, and breaking into a low peal of indolently amused laughter, waved her hand to me, and left the room. i was somewhat confused. the suddenness and warmth of her caress had been, i knew, a mere monkeyish trick, designed to vex the religious scruples of mere marguerite. i knew not what to say to the stately woman who remained confronting me with downcast eyes and lips that moved dumbly as though in prayer. as the door closed after my wife's retreating figure, the nun looked up; there was a slight flush on her pallid cheeks, and to my astonishment, tears glittered on her dark lashes. "madame," i began, earnestly, "i assure you--" "say nothing, signor," she interrupted me with a slight deprecatory gesture; "it is quite unnecessary. to mock a religieuse is a common amusement with young girls and women of the world. i am accustomed to it, though i feel its cruelty more than i ought to do. ladies like the countess romani think that we--we, the sepulchers of womanhood--sepulchers that we have emptied and cleansed to the best of our ability, so that they may more fittingly hold the body of the crucified christ; these grandes dames, i say, fancy that we are ignorant of all they know--that we cannot understand love, tenderness or passion. they never reflect--how should they?--that we also have had our histories--histories, perhaps, that would make angels weep for pity! i, even i--" and she struck her breast fiercely, then suddenly recollecting herself, she continued coldly: "the rule of our convent, signor, permits no visitor to remain longer than one hour--that hour has expired. i will summon a sister to show you the way out." "wait one instant, madame," i said, feeling that to enact my part thoroughly i ought to attempt to make some defense of nina's conduct; "permit me to say a word! my fiancee is very young and thoughtless. i really cannot think that her very innocent parting caress to me had anything in it that was meant to purposely annoy you." the nun glanced at me--her eyes flashed disdainfully. "you think it was all affection for you, no doubt, signor? very natural supposition, and--i should be sorry to undeceive you." she paused a moment and then resumed: "you seem an earnest man--may be you are destined to be the means of saving nina; i could say much--yet it is wise to be silent. if you love her do not flatter her; her overweening vanity is her ruin. a firm, wise, ruling master-hand may perhaps--who knows?" she hesitated and sighed, then added, gently, "farewell, signor! benedicite!" and making the sign of the cross as i respectfully bent my head to receive her blessing, she passed noiselessly from the room. one moment later, and a lame and aged lay-sister came to escort me to the gate. as i passed down the stone corridor a side door opened a very little way, and two fair young faces peeped out at me. for an instant i saw four laughing bright eyes; i heard a smothered voice say, "oh! c'est un vieux papa!" and then my guide, who though lame was not blind, perceived the opened door and shut it with an angry bang, which, however, did not drown the ringing merriment that echoed from within. on reaching the outer gates i turned to my venerable companion, and laying four twenty-franc pieces in her shriveled palm, i said: "take these to the reverend mother for me, and ask that mass may be said in the chapel to-morrow for the repose of the soul of him whose name is written here." and i gave her guido ferrari's visiting-card, adding in lower and more solemn tones: "he met with a sudden and unprepared death. of your charity, pray also for the man who killed him!" the old woman looked startled, and crossed herself devoutly; but she promised that my wishes should be fulfilled, and i bade her farewell and passed out, the convent gates closing with a dull clang behind me. i walked on a few yards, and then paused, looking back. what a peaceful home it seemed; how calm and sure a retreat, with the white noisette roses crowning its ancient gray walls! yet what embodied curses were pent up in there in the shape of girls growing to be women; women for whom all the care, stern training and anxious solicitude of the nuns would be unavailing; women who would come forth from even that abode of sanctity with vile natures and animal impulses, and who would hereafter, while leading a life of vice and hypocrisy, hold up this very strictness of their early education as proof of their unimpeachable innocence and virtue! to such, what lesson is learned by the daily example of the nuns who mortify their flesh, fast, pray and weep? no lesson at all--nothing save mockery and contempt. to a girl in the heyday of youth and beauty the life of a religieuse seems ridiculous. "the poor nuns!" she says, with a laugh; "they are so ignorant. their time is over--mine has not yet begun." few, very few, among the thousands of young women who leave the scene of their quiet schooldays for the social whirligig of the world, ever learn to take life in earnest, love in earnest, sorrow in earnest. to most of them life is a large dressmaking and millinery establishment; love a question of money and diamonds; sorrow a solemn calculation as to how much or how little mourning is considered becoming or fashionable. and for creatures such as these we men work--work till our hairs are gray and our backs bent with toil--work till all the joy and zest of living has gone from us, and our reward is--what? happiness?--seldom. infidelity?--often. ridicule? truly we ought to be glad if we are only ridiculed and thrust back to occupy the second place in our own houses; our lady-wives call that "kind treatment." is there a married woman living who does not now and then throw a small stone of insolent satire at her husband when his back is turned? what, madame? you, who read these words--you say with indignation: "certainly there is, and _i_ am that woman!" ah, truly? i salute you profoundly!--you are, no doubt, the one exception! chapter xxviii. avellino is one of those dreamy, quiet and picturesque towns which have not as yet been desecrated by the vandal tourist. persons holding "through tickets" from messrs. cook or gaze do not stop there--there are no "sights" save the old sanctuary called monte virgine standing aloft on its rugged hill, with all the memories of its ancient days clinging to it like a wizard's cloak, and wrapping it in a sort of mysterious meditative silence. it can look back through a vista of eventful years to the eleventh century, when it was erected, so the people say, on the ruins of a temple of cybele. but what do the sheep and geese that are whipped abroad in herds by the drovers cook and gaze know of monte virgine or cybele? nothing--and they care less; and quiet avellino escapes from their depredations, thankful that it is not marked on the business map of the drovers' "runs." shut in by the lofty apennines, built on the slope of the hill that winds gently down into a green and fruitful valley through which the river sabato rushes and gleams white against cleft rocks that look like war-worn and deserted castles, a drowsy peace encircles it, and a sort of stateliness, which, compared with the riotous fun and folly of naples only thirty miles away, is as though the statue of a nude egeria were placed in rivalry with the painted waxen image of a half-dressed ballet-dancer. few lovelier sights are to be seen in nature than a sunset from one of the smaller hills round avellino--when the peaks of the apennines seem to catch fire from the flaming clouds, and below them, the valleys are full of those tender purple and gray shadows that one sees on the canvases of salvator rosa, while the town itself looks like a bronzed carving on an old shield, outlined clearly against the dazzling luster of the sky. to this retired spot i came--glad to rest for a time from my work of vengeance--glad to lay down my burden of bitterness for a brief space, and become, as it were, human again, in the sight of the near mountains. for within their close proximity, things common, things mean seem to slip from the soul--a sort of largeness pervades the thoughts, the cramping prosiness of daily life has no room to assert its sway--a grand hush falls on the stormy waters of passion, and like a chidden babe the strong man stands, dwarfed to an infinite littleness in his own sight, before those majestic monarchs of the landscape whose large brows are crowned with the blue circlet of heaven. i took up my abode in a quiet, almost humble lodging, living simply, and attended only by vincenzo. i was tired of the ostentation i had been forced to practice in naples in order to attain my ends--and it was a relief to me to be for a time as though i were a poor man. the house in which i found rooms that suited me was a ramblingly built, picturesque little place, situated on the outskirts of the town, and the woman who owned it, was, in her way, a character. she was a roman, she told me, with pride flashing in her black eyes--i could guess that at once by her strongly marked features, her magnificently molded figure, and her free, firm tread--that step which is swift without being hasty, which is the manner born of rome. she told me her history in a few words, with such eloquent gestures that she seemed to live through it again as she spoke: her husband had been a worker in a marble quarry--one of his fellows had let a huge piece of the rock fall on him, and he was crushed to death. "and well do i know," she said, "that he killed my toni purposely, for he would have loved me had he dared. but i am a common woman, see you--and it seems to me one cannot lie. and when my love's poor body was scarce covered in the earth, that miserable one--the murderer--came to me--he offered marriage. i accused him of his crime--he denied it--he said the rock slipped from his hands, he knew not how. i struck him on the mouth, and bade him leave my sight and take my curse with him! he is dead now--and surely if the saints have heard me, his soul is not in heaven!" thus she spoke with flashing eyes and purposeful energy, while with her strong brown arms she threw open the wide casement of the sitting-room i had taken, and bade me view her orchard. it was a fresh green strip of verdure and foliage--about eight acres of good land, planted entirely with apple-trees. "yes, truly!" she said, showing her white teeth in a pleased smile as i made the admiring remark she expected. "avellino has long had a name for its apples--but, thanks to the holy mother, i think in the season there is no fruit in all the neighborhood finer than mine. the produce of it brings me almost enough to live upon--that and the house, when i can find signori willing to dwell with me. but few strangers come hither; sometimes an artist, sometimes a poet--such as these are soon tired of gayety, and are glad to rest. to common persons i would not open my door--not for pride, ah, no! but when one has a girl, one cannot be too careful." "you have a daughter, then?" her fierce eyes softened. "one--my lilla. i call her my blessing, and too good for me. often i fancy that it is because she tends them that the trees bear so well, and the apples are so sound and sweet! and when she drives the load of fruit to market, and sits so smilingly behind the team, it seems to me that her very face brings luck to the sale." i smiled at the mother's enthusiasm, and sighed. i had no fair faiths left--i could not even believe in lilla. my landlady, signora monti as she was called, saw that i looked fatigued, and left me to myself--and during my stay i saw very little of her, vincenzo constituting himself my majordomo, or rather becoming for my sake a sort of amiable slave, always looking to the smallest details of my comfort, and studying my wishes with an anxious solicitude that touched while it gratified me. i had been fully three days in my retreat before he ventured to enter upon any conversation with me, for he had observed that i always sought to be alone, that i took long, solitary rambles through the woods and across the hills--and, not daring to break through my taciturnity, he had contented himself by merely attending to my material comforts in silence. one afternoon, however, after clearing away the remains of my light luncheon, he lingered in the room. "the eccellenza has not yet seen lilla monti?" he asked, hesitatingly. i looked at him in some surprise. there was a blush on his olive-tinted cheeks and an unusual sparkle in his eyes. for the first time i realized that this valet of mine was a handsome young fellow. "seen lilla monti!" i repeated, half absently; "oh, you mean the child of the landlady? no, i have not seen her. why do you ask?" vincenzo smiled. "pardon, eccellenza! but she is beautiful, and there is a saying in my province: be the heart heavy as stone, the sight of a fair face will lighten it!" i gave an impatient gesture. "all folly, vincenzo! beauty is the curse of the world. read history, and you shall find the greatest conquerors and sages ruined and disgraced by its snares." he nodded gravely. he probably thought of the announcement i had made at the banquet of my own approaching marriage, and strove to reconcile it with the apparent inconsistency of my present observation. but he was too discreet to utter his mind aloud--he merely said: "no doubt you are right, eccellenza. still one is glad to see the roses bloom, and the stars shine, and the foam-bells sparkle on the waves--so one is glad to see lilla monti." i turned round in my chair to observe him more closely--the flush deepened on his cheek as i regarded him. i laughed with a bitter sadness. "in love, amico, art thou? so soon!--three days--and thou hast fallen a prey to the smile of lilla! i am sorry for thee!" he interrupted me eagerly. "the eccellenza is in error! i would not dare--she is too innocent--she knows nothing! she is like a little bird in the nest, so soft and tender--a word of love would frighten her; i should be a coward to utter it." well, well! i thought, what was the use of sneering at the poor fellow! why, because my own love had turned to ashes in my grasp, should i mock at those who fancied they had found the golden fruit of the hesperides? vincenzo, once a soldier, now half courier, half valet, was something of a poet at heart; he had the grave meditative turn of mind common to tuscans, together with that amorous fire that ever burns under their lightly worn mask of seeming reserve. i roused myself to appear interested. "i see, vincenzo," i said, with a kindly air of banter, "that the sight of lilla monti more than compensates you for that portion of the neapolitan carnival which you lose by being here. but why you should wish me to behold this paragon of maidens i know not, unless you would have me regret my own lost youth." a curious and perplexed expression flitted over his face. at last he said firmly, as though his mind were made up: "the eccellenza must pardon me for seeing what perhaps i ought not to have seen, but--" "but what?" i asked. "eccellenza, you have not lost your youth." i turned my head toward him again--he was looking at me in some alarm--he feared some outburst of anger. "well!" i said, calmly. "that is your idea, is it? and why?" "eccellenza, i saw you without your spectacles that day when you fought with the unfortunate signor ferrari. i watched you when you fired. your eyes are beautiful and terrible--the eyes of a young man, though your hair is white." quietly i took off my glasses and laid them on the table beside me. "as you have seen me once without them, you can see me again," i observed, gently. "i wear them for a special purpose. here in avellino the purpose does not hold. thus far i confide in you. but beware how you betray my confidence." "eccellenza!" cried vincenzo, in truly pained accents, and with a grieved look. i rose and laid my hand on his arm. "there! i was wrong--forgive me. you are honest; you have served your country well enough to know the value of fidelity and duty. but when you say i have not lost my youth, you are wrong, vincenzo! i have lost it--it has been killed within me by a great sorrow. the strength, the suppleness of limb, the brightness of eye these are mere outward things: but in the heart and soul are the chill and drear bitterness of deserted age. nay, do not smile; i am in truth very old--so old that i tire of my length of days; yet again, not too old to appreciate your affection, amico, and"--here i forced a faint smile--"when i see the maiden lilla, i will tell you frankly what i think of her." vincenzo stooped his head, caught my hand within his own, and kissed it, then left the room abruptly, to hide the tears that my words had brought to his eyes. he was sorry for me, i could see, and i judged him rightly when i thought that the very mystery surrounding me increased his attachment. on the whole, i was glad he had seen me undisguised, as it was a relief to me to be without my smoked glasses for a time, and during all the rest of my stay at avellino i never wore them once. one day i saw lilla. i had strolled up to a quaint church situated on a rugged hill and surrounded by fine old chestnut-trees, where there was a picture of the scourging of christ, said to have been the work of fra angelico. the little sanctuary was quite deserted when i entered it, and i paused on the threshold, touched by the simplicity of the place and soothed by the intense silence. i walked on my tiptoe up to the corner where hung the picture i had come to see, and as i did so a girl passed me with a light step, carrying a basket of fragrant winter narcissi and maiden-hair fern. something in her graceful, noiseless movements caused me to look after her; but she had turned her back to me and was kneeling at the shrine consecrated to the virgin, having placed her flowers on the lowest step of the altar. she was dressed in peasant costume--a simple, short blue skirt and scarlet bodice, relieved by the white kerchief that was knotted about her shoulders; and round her small well-shaped head the rich chestnut hair was coiled in thick shining braids. i felt that i must see her face, and for that reason went back to the church door and waited till she should pass out. very soon she came toward me, with the same light timid step that i had often before noticed, and her fair young features were turned fully upon me. what was there in those clear candid eyes that made me involuntarily bow my head in a reverential salutation as she passed? i know not. it was not beauty--for though the child was lovely i had seen lovelier; it was something inexplicable and rare--something of a maidenly composure and sweet dignity that i had never beheld on any woman's face before. her cheeks flushed softly as she modestly returned my salute, and when she was once outside the church door she paused, her small white fingers still clasping the carven brown beads of her rosary. she hesitated a moment, and then spoke shyly yet brightly: "if the eccellenza will walk yet a little further up the hill he will see a finer view of the mountains." something familiar in her look--a sort of reflection of her mother's likeness--made me sure of her identity. i smiled. "ah! you are lilla monti?" she blushed again. "si, signor. i am lilla." i let my eyes dwell on her searchingly and almost sadly. vincenzo was right: the girl was beautiful, not with the forced hot-house beauty of the social world and its artificial constraint, but with the loveliness and fresh radiance which nature gives to those of her cherished ones who dwell with her in peace. i had seen many exquisite women--women of juno-like form and face--women whose eyes were basilisks to draw and compel the souls of men--but i had never seen any so spiritually fair as this little peasant maiden, who stood fearlessly yet modestly regarding me with the innocent inquiry of a child who suddenly sees something new, to which it is unaccustomed. she was a little fluttered by my earnest gaze, and with a pretty courtesy turned to descend the hill. i said gently: "you are going home, fauciulla mia?" the kind protecting tone in which i spoke reassured her. she answered readily: "si signor. my mother waits for me to help her with the eccellenza's dinner." i advanced and took the little hand that held the rosary. "what!" i exclaimed, playfully, "do you still work hard, little lilla, even when the apple season is over?" she laughed musically. "oh! i love work. it is good for the temper. people are so cross when their hands are idle. and many are ill for the same reason. yes, truly!" and she nodded her head with grave importance, "it is often so. old pietro, the cobbler, took to his bed when he had no shoes to mend--yes; he sent for the priest and said he would die, not for want of money--oh no! he has plenty, he is quite rich--but because he had nothing to do. so my mother and i found some shoes with holes, and took them to him; he sat up in bed to mend them, and now he is as well as ever! and we are careful to give him something always." she laughed again, and again looked grave. "yes, yes!" she said, with a wise shake of her little glossy head, "one cannot live without work. my mother says that good women are never tired, it is only wicked persons who are lazy. and that reminds me i must make haste to return and prepare the eccellenza's coffee." "do you make my coffee, little one?" i asked, "and does not vincenzo help you?" the faintest suspicion of a blush tinged her pretty cheeks. "oh, he is very good, vincenzo," she said, demurely, with downcast eyes; "he is what we call buon' amico, yes, indeed! but he is often glad when i make coffee for him also; he likes it so much! he says i do it so well! but perhaps the eccellenza will prefer vincenzo?" i laughed. she was so naive, so absorbed in her little duties--such a child altogether. "nay, lilla, i am proud to think you make anything for me. i shall enjoy it more now that i know what kind hands have been at work. but you must not spoil vincenzo--you will turn his head if you make his coffee too often." she looked surprised. she did not understand. evidently to her mind vincenzo was nothing but a good-natured young fellow, whose palate could be pleased by her culinary skill; she treated him, i dare say, exactly as she would have treated one of her own sex. she seemed to think over my words, as one who considers a conundrum, then she apparently gave it up as hopeless, and shook her head lightly as though dismissing the subject. "will the eccellenza visit the punto d'angelo?" she said brightly, as she turned to go. i had never heard of this place, and asked her to what she alluded. "it is not far from here," she explained, "it is the view i spoke of before. just a little further up the hill you will see a flat gray rock, covered with blue gentians. no one knows how they grow--they are always there, blooming in summer and winter. but it is said that one of god's own great angels comes once in every month at midnight to bless the monte vergine, and that he stands on that rock. and of course wherever the angels tread there are flowers, and no storm can destroy them--not even an avalanche. that is why the people call it the punto d'angelo. it will please you to see it, eccellenza--it is but a walk of a little ten minutes." and with a smile, and a courtesy as pretty and as light as a flower might make to the wind, she left me, half running, half dancing down the hill, and singing aloud for sheer happiness and innocence of heart. her pure lark-like notes floated upward toward me where i stood, wistfully watching her as she disappeared. the warm afternoon sunshine caught lovingly at her chestnut hair, turning it to a golden bronze, and touched up the whiteness of her throat and arms, and brightened the scarlet of her bodice, as she descended the grassy slope, and was at last lost to my view amid the foliage of the surrounding trees. chapter xxix. i sighed heavily as i resumed my walk. i realized all that i had lost. this lovely child with her simple fresh nature, why had i not met such a one and wedded her instead of the vile creature who had been my soul's undoing? the answer came swiftly. even if i had seen her when i was free, i doubt if i should have known her value. we men of the world who have social positions to support, we see little or nothing in the peasant type of womanhood; we must marry "ladies," so-called--educated girls who are as well versed in the world's ways as ourselves, if not more so. and so we get the cleopatras, the du barrys, the pompadours, while unspoiled maidens such as lilla too often become the household drudges of common mechanics or day-laborers, living and dying in the one routine of hard work, and often knowing and caring for nothing better than the mountain-hut, the farm-kitchen, or the covered stall in the market-place. surely it is an ill-balanced world--so many mistakes are made; fate plays us so many apparently unnecessary tricks, and we are all of us such blind madmen, knowing not whither we are going from one day to another! i am told that it is no longer fashionable to believe in a devil--but i care nothing for fashion! a devil there is i am sure, who for some inscrutable reason has a share in the ruling of this planet--a devil who delights in mocking us from the cradle to the grave. and perhaps we are never so hopelessly, utterly fooled as in our marriages! occupied in various thoughts, i scarcely saw where i wandered, till a flashing glimmer of blue blossoms recalled me to the object of my walk. i had reached the punto d'angelo. it was, as lilla had said, a flat rock bare in every place save at the summit, where it was thickly covered with the lovely gentians, flowers that are rare in this part of italy. here then the fabled angel paused in his flight to bless the venerable sanctuary of monte vergine. i stopped and looked around me. the view was indeed superb--from the leafy bosom of the valley, the green hills like smooth, undulating billows rolled upward, till their emerald verdure was lost in the dense purple shadows and tall peaks of the apennines; the town of avellino lay at my feet, small yet clearly defined as a miniature painting on porcelain; and a little further beyond and above me rose the gray tower of the monte vergine itself, the one sad and solitary-looking object in all the luxuriant riante landscape. i sat down to rest, not as an intruder on the angel's flower-embroidered throne, but on a grassy knoll close by. and then i bethought me of a packet i had received from naples that morning--a packet that i desired yet hesitated to open. it had been sent by the marquis d'avencourt, accompanied by a courteous letter, which informed me that ferrari's body had been privately buried with all the last religious rites in the cemetery, "close to the funeral vault of the romani family," wrote d'avencourt, "as, from all we can hear or discover, such seems to have been his own desire. he was, it appears, a sort of adopted brother of the lately deceased count, and on being informed of this circumstance, we buried him in accordance with the sentiments he would no doubt have expressed had he considered the possible nearness of his own end at the time of the combat." with regard to the packet inclosed, d'avencourt continued--"the accompanying letters were found in ferrari's breast-pocket, and on opening the first one, in the expectation of finding some clew as to his last wishes, we came to the conclusion that you, as the future husband of the lady whose signature and handwriting you will here recognize, should be made aware of the contents, not only for your own sake, but in justice to the deceased. if all the letters are of the same tone as the one i unknowingly opened, i have no doubt ferrari considered himself a sufficiently injured man. but of that you will judge for yourself, though, if i might venture so far in the way of friendship, i should recommend you to give careful consideration to the inclosed correspondence before tying the matrimonial knot to which you alluded the other evening. it is not wise to walk on the edge of a precipice with one's eyes shut! captain ciabatti was the first to inform me of what i now know for a fact--namely, that ferrari left a will in which everything he possessed is made over unconditionally to the countess romani. you will of course draw your own conclusions, and pardon me if i am guilty of trop de zele in your service. i have now only to tell you that all the unpleasantness of this affair is passing over very smoothly and without scandal--i have taken care of that. you need not prolong your absence further than you feel inclined, and i, for one, shall be charmed to welcome you back to naples. with every sentiment of the highest consideration and regard, i am, my dear conte, "your very true friend and servitor, "philippe d'avencourt." i folded this letter carefully and put it aside. the little package he had sent me lay in my hand--a bundle of neatly folded letters tied together with a narrow ribbon, and strongly perfumed with the faint sickly perfume i knew and abhorred. i turned them over and over; the edges of the note-paper were stained with blood--guido's blood--as though in its last sluggish flowing it had endeavored to obliterate all traces of the daintily penned lines that now awaited my perusal. slowly i untied the ribbon. with methodical deliberation i read one letter after the other. they were all from nina--all written to guido while he was in rome, some of them bearing the dates of the very days when she had feigned to love me--me, her newly accepted husband. one very amorous epistle had been written on the self-same evening she had plighted her troth to me! letters burning and tender, full of the most passionate protestations of fidelity, overflowing with the sweetest terms of endearment; with such a ring of truth and love throughout them that surely it was no wonder that guido's suspicions were all unawakened, and that he had reason to believe himself safe in his fool's paradise. one passage in this poetical and romantic correspondence fixed my attention: it ran thus: "why do you write so much of marriage to me, guido mio? it seems to my mind that all the joy of loving will be taken from us when once the hard world knows of our passion. if you become my husband you will assuredly cease to be my lover, and that would break my heart. ah, my best beloved! i desire you to be my lover always, as you were when fabio lived--why bring commonplace matrimony into the heaven of such a passion as ours?" i studied these words attentively. of course i understood their drift. she had tried to feel her way with the dead man. she had wanted to marry me, and yet retain guido for her lonely hours, as "her lover always!" such a pretty, ingenious plan it was! no thief, no murderer ever laid more cunning schemes than she, but the law looks after thieves and murderers. for such a woman as this, law says, "divorce her--that is your best remedy." divorce her! let the criminal go scot-free! others may do it that choose--i have different ideas of justice! tying up the packet of letters again, with their sickening perfume and their blood-stained edges, i drew out the last graciously worded missive i had received from nina. of course i heard from her every day--she was a most faithful correspondent! the same affectionate expressions characterized her letters to me as those that had deluded her dead lover--with this difference, that whereas she inveighed much against the prosiness of marriage to guido, to me she drew the much touching pictures of her desolate condition: how lonely she had felt since her "dear husband's" death, how rejoiced she was to think that she was soon again to be a happy wife--the wife of one so noble, so true, so devoted as i was! she had left the convent and was now at home--when should she have the happiness of welcoming me, her best beloved cesare, back to naples? she certainly deserved some credit for artistic lying; i could not understand how she managed it so well. almost i admired her skill, as one sometimes admires a cool-headed burglar, who has more skill, cunning, and pluck than his comrades. i thought with triumph that though the wording of ferrari's will enabled her to secure all other letters she might have written to him, this one little packet of documentary evidence was more than sufficient for my purposes. and i resolved to retain it in my own keeping till the time came for me to use it against her. and how about d'avencourt's friendly advice concerning the matrimonial knot? "a man should not walk on the edge of a precipice with his eyes shut." very true. but if his eyes are open, and he has his enemy by the throat, the edge of a precipice is a convenient position for hurling that enemy down to death in a quiet way, that the world need know nothing of! so for the present i preferred the precipice to walking on level ground. i rose from my seat near the punto d'angelo. it was growing late in the afternoon. from the little church below me soft bells rang out the angelus, and with them chimed in a solemn and harsher sound from the turret of the monte vergine. i lifted my hat with the customary reverence, and stood listening, with my feet deep in the grass and scented thyme, and more than once glanced up at the height whereon the venerable sanctuary held its post, like some lonely old god of memory brooding over vanished years. there, according to tradition, was once celebrated the worship of the many-breasted cybele; down that very slope of grass dotted with violets had rushed the howling, naked priests beating their discordant drums and shrieking their laments for the loss of atys, the beautiful youth, their goddess's paramour. infidelity again!--even in this ancient legend, what did cybele care for old saturn, whose wife she was? nothing, less than nothing!--and her adorers worshiped not her chastity, but her faithlessness; it is the way of the world to this day! the bells ceased ringing; i descended the hill and returned homeward through a shady valley, full of the odor of pines and bog-myrtle. on reaching the gate of the signora monti's humble yet picturesque dwelling, i heard the sound of laughter and clapping of hands, and looking in the direction of the orchard, i saw vincenzo hard at work, his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, splitting some goodly logs of wood, while lilla stood beside him, merrily applauding and encouraging his efforts. he seemed quite in his element, and wielded his ax with a regularity and vigor i should scarcely have expected from a man whom i was accustomed to see performing the somewhat effeminate duties of a valet-de-chambre. i watched him and the fair girl beside him for a few moments, myself unperceived. if this little budding romance were left alone it would ripen into a flower, and vincenzo would be a happier man than his master. he was a true tuscan, from the very way he handled his wood-ax; i could see that he loved the life of the hills and fields--the life of a simple farmer and fruit-grower, full of innocent enjoyments, as sweet as the ripe apples in his orchard. i could foresee his future with lilla beside him. he would have days of unwearying contentment, rendered beautiful by the free fresh air and the fragrance of flowers--his evenings would slip softly by to the tinkle of the mandolin, and the sound of his wife and children's singing. what fairer fate could a man desire?--what life more certain to keep health in the body and peace in the mind? could i not help him to his happiness, i wondered? i, who had grown stern with long brooding upon my vengeance--could i not aid in bringing joy to others! if i could, my mind would be somewhat lightened of its burden--a burden grown heavier since guide's death, for from his blood had sprung forth a new group of furies, that lashed me on to my task with scorpion whips of redoubled wrath and passionate ferocity. yet if i could do one good action now--would it not be as a star shining in the midst of my soul's storm and darkness? just then lilla laughed--how sweetly!--the laugh of a very young child. what amused her now? i looked, and saw that she had taken the ax from vincenzo, and lifting it in her little hands, was endeavoring bravely to imitate his strong and telling stroke; he meanwhile stood aside with an air of smiling superiority, mingled with a good deal of admiration for the slight active figure arrayed in the blue kirtle and scarlet bodice, on which the warm rays of the late sun fell with so much amorous tenderness. poor little lilla! a penknife would have made as much impression as her valorous blows produced on the inflexible, gnarled, knotty old stump she essayed to split in twain. flushed and breathless with her efforts, she looked prettier than ever, and at last, baffled, she resigned her ax to vincenzo, laughing gayly at her incapacity for wood-cutting, and daintily shaking her apron free from the chips and dust, till a call from her mother caused her to run swiftly into the house, leaving vincenzo working away as arduously as ever. i went up to him; he saw me approaching, and paused in his labors with an air of slight embarrassment. "you like this sort of work, amico?" i said, gently. "an old habit, eccellenza--nothing more. it reminds me of the days of my youth, when i worked for my mother. ah! a pleasant place it was--the old home just above fiesole." his eyes grew pensive and sad. "it is all gone now--finished. that was before i became a soldier. but one thinks of it sometimes." "i understand. and no doubt you would be glad to return to the life of your boyhood?" he looked a little startled. "not to leave you, eccellenza!" i smiled rather sadly. "not to leave me? not if you wedded lilla monti?" his olive cheek flushed, but he shook his head. "impossible! she would not listen to me. she is a child." "she will soon be a woman, believe me! a little more of your company will make her so. but there is plenty of time. she is beautiful, as you said: and something better than that, she is innocent--think of that, vincenzo! do you know how rare a thing innocence is--in a woman? respect it as you respect god; let her young life be sacred to you." he glanced upward reverently. "eccellenza, i would as soon tear the madonna from her altars as vex or frighten lilla!" i smiled and said no more, but turned into the house. from that moment i resolved to let this little love-idyll have a fair chance of success. therefore i remained at avellino much longer than i had at first intended, not for my own sake, but for vincenzo's. he served me faithfully; he should have his reward. i took a pleasure in noticing that my efforts to promote his cause were not altogether wasted. i spoke with lilla often on indifferent matters that interested her, and watched her constantly when she was all unaware of my observant gaze. with me she was as frank and fearless as a tame robin; but after some days i found that she grew shy of mentioning the name of vincenzo, that she blushed when he approached her, that she was timid of asking him to do anything for her; and from all these little signs i knew her mind, as one knows by the rosy streaks in the sky that the sunrise is near. one afternoon i called the signora monti to my room. she came, surprised, and a little anxious. was anything wrong with the service? i reassured her housewifely scruples, and came to the point at once. "i would speak to you of your child, the little lilla," i said, kindly. "have you ever thought that she may marry?" her dark bold eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered. "truly i have," she replied with a wistful sadness; "but i have prayed, perhaps foolishly, that she would not leave me yet. i love her so well; she is always a babe to me, so small and sweet! i put the thought of her marriage from me as a sorrowful thing." "i understand your feeling," i said. "still, suppose your daughter wedded a man who would be to you as a son, and who would not part her from you?--for instance, let us say vincenzo?" signora monti smiled through her tears. "vincenzo! he is a good lad, a very good lad, and i love him; but he does not think of lilla--he is devoted to the eccellenza." "i am aware of his devotion," i answered. "still i believe you will find out soon that he loves your lilla. at present he says nothing--he fears to offend you and alarm her; but his eyes speak--so do hers. you are a good woman, a good mother; watch them both, you will soon tell whether love is between them or no. and see," here i handed her a sealed envelope, "in this you will find notes to the amount of four thousand francs." she uttered a little cry of amazement. "it is lilla's dowry, whoever she marries, though i think she will marry vincenzo. nay--no thanks, money is of no value to me; and this is the one pleasure i have had for many weary months. think well of vincenzo--he is an excellent fellow. and all i ask of you is, that you keep this little dowry a secret till the day of your fair child's espousals." before i could prevent her the enthusiastic woman had seized my hand and kissed it. then she lifted her head with the proud free-born dignity of a roman matron; her broad bosom heaved, and her strong voice quivered with suppressed emotion. "i thank you, signor," she said, simply, "for lilla's sake! not that my little one needs more than her mother's hands have toiled for, thanks be to the blessed saints who have had us both in their keeping! but this is a special blessing of god sent through your hands, and i should be unworthy of all prosperity were i not grateful. eccellenza, pardon me, but my eyes are quick to see that you have suffered sorrow. good actions lighten grief! we will pray for your happiness, lilla and i, till the last breath leaves our lips. believe it--the name of our benefactor shall be lifted to the saints night and morning, and who knows but good may come of it!" i smiled faintly. "good will come of it, my excellent signora, though i am all unworthy of your prayers. rather pray," and i sighed heavily, "for the dead, 'that they may be loosed from their sins.'" the good woman looked at me with a sort of kindly pity mingled with awe, then murmuring once more her thanks and blessing, she left the room. a few minutes afterward vincenzo entered. i addressed him cheerfully. "absence is the best test of love, vincenzo; prepare all for our departure! we shall leave avellino the day after to-morrow." and so we did. lilla looked slightly downcast, but vincenzo seemed satisfied, and i augured from their faces, and from the mysterious smile of signora monti, that all was going well. i left the beautiful mountain town with regret, knowing i should see it no more. i touched lilla's fair cheek lightly at parting, and took what i knew was my last look into the sweet candid young face. yet the consciousness that i had done some little good gave my tired heart a sense of satisfaction and repose--a feeling i had not experienced since i died and rose again from the dead. on the last day of january i returned to naples, after an absence of more than a month, and was welcomed back by all my numerous acquaintance with enthusiasm. the marquis d'avencourt had informed me rightly--the affair of the duel was a thing of the past--an almost forgotten circumstance. the carnival was in full riot, the streets were scenes of fantastic mirth and revelry; there was music and song, dancing and masquerading, and feasting. but i withdrew from the tumult of merriment, and absorbed myself in the necessary preparations for--my marriage. chapter xxx. looking back on the incidents of those strange feverish weeks that preceded my wedding-day, they seemed to me like the dreams of a dying man. shifting colors, confused images, moments of clear light, hours of long darkness--all things gross, refined, material, and spiritual were shaken up in my life like the fragments in a kaleidoscope, ever changing into new forms and bewildering patterns. my brain was clear; yet i often questioned myself whether i was not going mad--whether all the careful methodical plans i formed were but the hazy fancies of a hopelessly disordered mind? yet no; each detail of my scheme was too complete, too consistent, too business-like for that. a madman may have a method of action to a certain extent, but there is always some slight slip, some omission, some mistake which helps to discover his condition. now, _i_ forgot nothing--i had the composed exactitude of a careful banker who balances his accounts with the most elaborate regularity. i can laugh to think of it all now; but then--then i moved, spoke, and acted like a human machine impelled by stronger forces than my own--in all things precise, in all things inflexible. within the week of my return from avellino my coming marriage with the countess romani was announced. two days after it had been made public, while sauntering across the largo del castello, i met the marquis d'avencourt. i had not seen him since the morning of the duel, and his presence gave me a sort of nervous shock. he was exceedingly cordial, though i fancied he was also slightly embarrassed after a few commonplace remarks he said, abruptly: "so your marriage will positively take place?" i forced a laugh. "ma! certamente! do you doubt it?" his handsome face clouded and his manner grew still more constrained. "no; but i thought--i had hoped--" "mon cher," i said, airily, "i perfectly understand to what you allude. but we men of the world are not fastidious--we know better than to pay any heed to the foolish love-fancies of a woman before her marriage, so long as she does not trick us afterward. the letters you sent me were trifles, mere trifles! in wedding the contessa romani i assure you i believe i secure the most virtuous as well as the most lovely woman in europe!" and i laughed again heartily. d'avencourt looked puzzled; but he was a punctilious man, and knew how to steer clear of a delicate subject. he smiled. "a la bonne heure," he said--"i wish you joy with all my heart! you are the best judge of your own happiness; as for me--vive la liberte!" and with a gay parting salute he left me. no one else in the city appeared to share his foreboding scruples, if he had any, about my forthcoming marriage. it was everywhere talked of with as much interest and expectation as though it were some new amusement invented to heighten the merriment of carnival. among other things, i earned the reputation of being a most impatient lover, for now i would consent to no delays. i hurried all the preparations on with feverish precipitation. i had very little difficulty in persuading nina that the sooner our wedding took place the better; she was to the full as eager as myself, as ready to rush on her own destruction as guido had been. her chief passion was avarice, and the repeated rumors of my supposed fabulous wealth had aroused her greed from the very moment she had first met me in my assumed character of the count oliva. as soon as her engagement to me became known in naples, she was an object of envy to all those of her own sex who, during the previous autumn, had laid out their store of fascinations to entrap me in vain--and this made her perfectly happy. perhaps the supremest satisfaction a woman of this sort can attain to is the fact of making her less fortunate sisters discontented and miserable! i loaded her, of course, with the costliest gifts, and she, being the sole mistress of the fortune left her by her "late husband," as well as of the unfortunate guido's money, set no limits to her extravagance. she ordered the most expensive and elaborate costumes; she was engaged morning after morning with dressmakers, tailors, and milliners, and she was surrounded by a certain favored "set" of female friends, for whose benefit she displayed the incoming treasures of her wardrobe till they were ready to cry for spite and vexation, though they had to smile and hold in their wrath and outraged vanity beneath the social mask of complacent composure. and nina loved nothing better than to torture the poor women who were stinted of pocket-money with the sight of shimmering satins, soft radiating plushes, rich velvets, embroidery studded with real gems, pieces of costly old lace, priceless scents, and articles of bijouterie; she loved also to dazzle the eyes and bewilder the brains of young girls, whose finest toilet was a garb of simplest white stuff unadorned save by a cluster of natural blossoms, and to send them away sick at heart, pining for they knew not what, dissatisfied with everything, and grumbling at fate for not permitting them to deck themselves in such marvelous "arrangements" of costume as those possessed by the happy, the fortunate future countess oliva. poor maidens! had they but known all they would not have envied her! women are too fond of measuring happiness by the amount of fine clothes they obtain, and i truly believe dress is the one thing that never fails to console them. how often a fit of hysterics can be cut short by the opportune arrival of a new gown! my wife, in consideration of her approaching second nuptial, had thrown off her widow's crape, and now appeared clad in those soft subdued half-tints of color that suited her fragile, fairy-like beauty to perfection. all her old witcheries and her graceful tricks of manner and speech were put forth again for my benefit. i knew them all so well! i understood the value of her light caresses and languishing looks so thoroughly! she was very anxious to attain the full dignity of her position as the wife of so rich a nobleman as i was reputed to be, therefore she raised no objection when i fixed the day of our marriage for giovedi grasso. then the fooling and mumming, the dancing, shrieking, and screaming would be at its height; it pleased my whim to have this other piece of excellent masquerading take place at the same time. the wedding was to be as private as possible, owing to my wife's "recent sad bereavements," as she herself said with a pretty sigh and tearful, pleading glance. it would take place in the chapel of san gennaro, adjoining the cathedral. we were married there before! during the time that intervened, nina's manner was somewhat singular. to me she was often timid, and sometimes half conciliatory. now and then i caught her large dark eyes fixed on me with a startled, anxious look, but this expression soon passed away. she was subject, too, to wild fits of merriment, and anon to moods of absorbed and gloomy silence. i could plainly see that she was strung up to an extreme pitch of nervous excitement and irritability, but i asked her no questions. if--i thought--if she tortured herself with memories, all the better--if she saw, or fancied she saw, the resemblance between me and her "dear dead fabio," it suited me that she should be so racked and bewildered. i came and went to and fro from the villa as i pleased. i wore my dark glasses as usual, and not even giacomo could follow me with his peering, inquisitive gaze; for since the night he had been hurled so fiercely to the ground by guido's reckless and impatient hand, the poor old man had been paralyzed, and had spoken no word. he lay in an upper chamber, tended by assunta, and my wife had already written to his relatives in lombardy, asking them to send for him home. "of what use to keep him?" she had asked me. true! of what use to give even roof-shelter to a poor old human creature, maimed, broken, and useless for evermore? after long years of faithful service, turn him out, cast him forth! if he die of neglect, starvation, and ill-usage, what matter?--he is a worn-out tool, his day is done--let him perish. i would not plead for him--why should i? i had made my own plans for his comfort--plans shortly to be carried out; and in the mean time assunta nursed him tenderly as he lay speechless, with no more strength than a year-old baby, and only a bewildered pain in his upturned, lack-luster eyes. one incident occurred during these last days of my vengeance that struck a sharp pain to my heart, together with a sense of the bitterest anger. i had gone up to the villa somewhat early in the morning, and on crossing the lawn i saw a dark form stretched motionless on one of the paths that led directly up to the house. i went to examine it, and started back in horror--it was my dog wyvis shot dead. his silky black head and forepaws were dabbled in blood--his honest brown eyes were glazed with the film of his dying agonies. sickened and infuriated at the sight, i called to a gardener who was trimming the shrubbery. "who has done this?" i demanded. the man looked pityingly at the poor bleeding remains, and said, in a low voice: "it was madama's order, signor. the dog bit her yesterday; we shot him at daybreak." i stooped to caress the faithful animal's body, and as i stroked the silky coat my eyes were dim with tears. "how did it happen?" i asked in smothered accents. "was your lady hurt?" the gardener shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "ma!--no! but he tore the lace on her dress with his teeth and grazed her hand. it was little, but enough. he will bite no more--povera bestia!" i gave the fellow five francs. "i liked the dog," i said briefly, "he was a faithful creature. bury him decently under that tree," and i pointed to the giant cypress on the lawn, "and take this money for your trouble." he looked surprised but grateful, and promised to do my bidding. once more sorrowfully caressing the fallen head of perhaps the truest friend i ever possessed, i strode hastily into the house, and met nina coming out of her morning-room, clad in one of her graceful trailing garments, in which soft lavender hues were blended like the shaded colors of late and early violets. "so wyvis has been shot?" i said, abruptly. she gave a slight shudder. "oh, yes; is it not sad? but i was compelled to have it done. yesterday i went past his kennel within reach of his chain, and he sprung furiously at me for no reason at all. see!" and holding up her small hand she showed me three trifling marks in the delicate flesh. "i felt that you would be so unhappy if you thought i kept a dog that was at all dangerous, so i determined to get rid of him. it is always painful to have a favorite animal killed; but really wyvis belonged to my poor husband, and i think he has never been quite safe since his master's death, and now giacomo is ill--" "i see!" i said, curtly, cutting her explanations short. within myself i thought how much more sweet and valuable was the dog's life than hers. brave wyvis--good wyvis! he had done his best--he had tried to tear her dainty flesh; his honest instincts had led him to attempt rough vengeance on the woman he had felt was his master's foe. and he had met his fate, and died in the performance of duty. but i said no more on the subject. the dog's death was not alluded to again by either nina or myself. he lay in his mossy grave under the cypress boughs--his memory untainted by any lie, and his fidelity enshrined in my heart as a thing good and gracious, far exceeding the self-interested friendship of so-called christian humanity. the days passed slowly on. to the revelers who chased the flying steps of carnival with shouting and laughter, no doubt the hours were brief, being so brimful of merriment; but to me, who heard nothing save the measured ticking of my own timepiece of revenge, and who saw naught save its hands, that every second drew nearer to the last and fatal figure on the dial, the very moments seemed long and laden with weariness. i roamed the streets of the city aimlessly, feeling more like a deserted stranger than a well-known envied nobleman, whose wealth made him the cynosure of all eyes. the riotous glee, the music, the color that whirled and reeled through the great street of toledo at this season bewildered and pained me. though i knew and was accustomed to the wild vagaries of carnival, yet this year they seemed to be out of place, distracting, senseless, and all unfamiliar. sometimes i escaped from the city tumult and wandered out to the cemetery. there i would stand, dreamily looking at the freshly turned sods above guido ferrari's grave. no stone marked the spot as yet, but it was close to the romani vault--not more than a couple of yards away from the iron grating that barred the entrance to that dim and fatal charnel-house. i had a drear fascination for the place, and more than once i went to the opening of that secret passage made by the brigands to ascertain if all was safe and undisturbed. everything was as i had left it, save that the tangle of brush-wood had become thicker, and weeds and brambles had sprung up, making it less visible than before, and probably rendering it more impassable. by a fortunate accident i had secured the key of the vault. i knew that for family burial-places of this kind there are always two keys--one left in charge of the keeper of the cemetery, the other possessed by the person or persons to whom the mausoleum belongs, and this other i managed to obtain. on one occasion, being left for some time alone in my own library at the villa, i remembered that in an upper drawer of an old oaken escritoire that stood there, had always been a few keys belonging to the doors of cellars and rooms in the house. i looked, and found them lying there as usual; they all had labels attached to them, signifying their use, and i turned them over impatiently, not finding what i sought. i was about to give up the search, when i perceived a large rusty iron key that had slipped to the back of the drawer; i pulled it out, and to my satisfaction it was labeled "mausoleum." i immediately took possession of it, glad to have obtained so useful and necessary an implement; i knew that i should soon need it. the cemetery was quite deserted at this festive season--no one visited it to lay wreaths of flowers or sacred mementoes on the last resting-places of their friends. in the joys of the carnival who thinks of the dead? in my frequent walks there i was always alone; i might have opened my own vault and gone down into it without being observed, but i did not; i contented myself with occasionally trying the key in the lock, and assuring myself that it worked without difficulty. returning from one of these excursions late on a mild afternoon toward the end of the week preceding my marriage, i bent my steps toward the molo, where i saw a picturesque group of sailors and girls dancing one of those fantastic, graceful dances of the country, in which impassioned movement and expressive gesticulation are everything. their steps were guided and accompanied by the sonorous twanging of a full-toned guitar and the tinkling beat of a tambourine. their handsome, animated faces, their flashing eyes and laughing lips, their gay, many-colored costumes, the glitter of beads on the brown necks of the maidens, the red caps jauntily perched on the thick black curls of the fishermen--all made up a picture full of light and life thrown up into strong relief against the pale gray and amber tints of the february sky and sea; while shadowing overhead frowned the stern dark walls of the castel nuovo. it was such a scene as the english painter luke fildes might love to depict on his canvas--the one man of to-day who, though born of the land of opaque mists and rain-burdened clouds, has, notwithstanding these disadvantages, managed to partly endow his brush with the exhaustless wealth and glow of the radiant italian color. i watched the dance with a faint sense of pleasure--it was full of so much harmony and delicacy of rhythm. the lad who thrummed the guitar broke out now and then into song--a song in dialect that fitted into the music of the dance as accurately as a rosebud into its calyx. i could not distinguish all the words he sung, but the refrain was always the same, and he gave it in every possible inflection and variety of tone, from grave to gay, from pleading to pathetic. "che bella cosa e de morire acciso, inanze a la porta de la inamorata!" [footnote: neapolitan dialect.] meaning literally--"how beautiful a thing to die, suddenly slain at the door of one's beloved!" there was no sense in the thing, i thought half angrily--it was a stupid sentiment altogether. yet i could not help smiling at the ragged, barefooted rascal who sung it: he seemed to feel such a gratification in repeating it, and he rolled his black eyes with lovelorn intensity, and breathed forth sighs that sounded through his music with quite a touching earnestness. of course he was only following the manner of all neapolitans, namely, acting his song; they all do it, and cannot help themselves. but this boy had a peculiarly roguish way of pausing and crying forth a plaintive "ah!" before he added "che bella cosa," etc., which gave point and piquancy to his absurd ditty. he was evidently brimful of mischief--his expression betokened it; no doubt he was one of the most thorough little scamps that ever played at "morra," but there was a charm about his handsome dirty face and unkempt hair, and i watched him amusedly, glad to be distracted for a few minutes from the tired inner workings of my own unhappy thoughts. in time to come, so i mused, this very boy might learn to set his song about the "beloved" to a sterner key, and might find it meet, not to be slain himself, but to slay her! such a thing--in naples--was more than probable. by and by the dance ceased, and i recognized in one of the breathless, laughing sailors my old acquaintance andrea luziani, with whom i had sailed to palermo. the sight of him relieved me from a difficulty which had puzzled me for some days, and as soon as the little groups of men and women had partially dispersed, i walked up to him and touched him on the shoulder. he started, looked round surprised, and did not appear to recognize me. i remembered that when he had seen me i had not grown a beard, neither had i worn dark spectacles. i recalled my name to him; his face cleared and he smiled. "ah! buon giorno, eccellenza!" he cried. "a thousand pardons that i did not at first know you! often have i thought of you! often have i heard your name--ah! what a name! rich, great, generous!--ah! what a glad life! and on the point of marrying--ah, dio! love makes all the troubles go--so!" and taking his cigar from his mouth, he puffed a ring of pale smoke into the air and laughed gayly. then suddenly lifting his cap from his clustering black hair, he added, "all joy be with you, eccellenza!" i smiled and thanked him. i noticed he looked at me curiously. "you think i have changed in appearance, my friend?" i said. the sicilian looked embarrassed. "ebbene! we must all change," he answered, lightly, evading my glance. "the days pass on--each day takes a little bit of youth away with it. one grows old without knowing it!" i laughed. "i see," i observed. "you think i have aged somewhat since you saw me?" "a little, eccellenza," he frankly confessed. "i have suffered severe illness," i said, quietly, "and my eyes are still weak, as you perceive," and i touched my glasses. "but i shall get stronger in time. can you come with me for a few moments? i want your help in a matter of importance." he nodded a ready assent and followed me. chapter xxxi. we left the molo, and paused at a retired street corner leading from the chiaja. "you remember carmelo neri?" i asked. andrea shrugged his shoulders with an air of infinite commiseration. "ah! povero diavolo! well do i remember him! a bold fellow and brave, with a heart in him, too, if one did but know where to find it. and now he drags the chain! well, well, no doubt it is what he deserves; but i say, and always will maintain, there are many worse men than carmelo." i briefly related how i had seen the captured brigand in the square at palermo and had spoken with him. "i mentioned you," i added, "and he bade me tell you teresa had killed herself." "ah! that i well know," said the little captain, who had listened to me intently, and over whose mobile face flitted a shadow of tender pity, as he sighed. "poverinetta! so fragile and small! to think she had the force to plunge the knife in her breast! as well imagine a little bird flying down to pierce itself on an uplifted bayonet. ay, ay! women will do strange things--and it is certain she loved carmelo." "you would help him to escape again if you could, no doubt?" i inquired with a half smile. the ready wit of the sicilian instantly asserted itself. "not i, eccellenza," he replied, with an air of dignity and most virtuous honesty. "no, no, not now. the law is the law, and i, andrea luziani, am not one to break it. no, carmelo must take his punishment; it is for life they say--and hard as it seems, it is but just. when the little teresa was in the question, look you, what could i do? but now--let the saints that choose help carmelo, for i will not." i laughed as i met the audacious flash of his eyes; i knew, despite his protestations, that if carmelo neri ever did get clear of the galleys, it would be an excellent thing for him if luziani's vessel chanced to be within reach. "you have your brig the 'laura' still?" i asked him. "yes, eccellenza, the madonna be praised! and she has been newly rigged and painted, and she is as trig and trim a craft as you can meet with in all the wide blue waters of the mediterranean." "now you see," i said, impressively, "i have a friend, a relative, who is in trouble: he wishes to get away from naples quietly and in secret. will you help him? you shall be paid whatever you think proper to demand." the sicilian looked puzzled. he puffed meditatively at his cigar and remained silent. "he is not pursued by the law," i continued, noting his hesitation. "he is simply involved in a cruel difficulty brought upon him by his own family--he seeks to escape from unjust persecution." andrea's brow cleared. "oh, if that is the case, eccellenza, i am at your service. but where does your friend desire to go?" i paused for a moment and considered. "to civita vecchia," i said at last, "from that port he can obtain a ship to take him to his further destination." the captain's expressive face fell--he looked very dubious. "to civita vecchia is a long way, a very long way," he said, regretfully; "and it is the bad season, and there are cross currents and contrary winds. with all the wish in the world to please you, eccellenza, i dare not run the 'laura' so far; but there is another means--" and interrupting himself he considered awhile in silence. i waited patiently for him to speak. "whether it would suit your friend i know not," he said at last, laying his hand confidentially on my arm, "but there is a stout brig leaving here for civita vecchia on friday morning next--" "the day after giovedi grasso?" i queried, with a smile he did not understand. he nodded. "exactly so. she carries a cargo of lacrima cristi, and she is a swift sailer. i know her captain--he is a good soul; but," and andrea laughed lightly, "he is like the rest of us--he loves money. you do not count the francs--no, they are nothing to you--but we look to the soldi. now, if it please you i will make him a certain offer of passage money, as large as you shall choose, also i will tell him when to expect his one passenger, and i can almost promise you that he will not say no!" this proposal fitted in so excellently with my plans that i accepted it, and at once named an exceptionally munificent sum for the passage required. andrea's eyes glistened as he heard. "it is a little fortune!" he cried, enthusiastically. "would that i could earn as much in twenty voyages! but one should not be churlish--such luck cannot fall in all men's way." i smiled. "and do you think, amico, i will suffer you to go unrewarded?" i said. and placing two twenty-franc pieces in his brown palm i added, "as you rightly said, francs are nothing to me. arrange this little matter without difficulty, and you shall not be forgotten. you can call at my hotel to-morrow or the next day, when you have settled everything--here is the address," and i penciled it on my card and gave it to him; "but remember, this is a secret matter, and i rely upon you to explain it as such to your friend who commands the brig going to civita vecchia. he must ask no questions of his passenger--the more silence the more discretion--and when once he has landed him at his destination he will do well to straightway forget all about him. you understand?" andrea nodded briskly. "si, si, signor. he has a bad memory as it is--it shall grow worse at your command! believe it!" i laughed, shook hands, and parted with the friendly little fellow, he returning to the molo, and i slowly walking homeward by way of the villa reale. an open carriage coming swiftly toward me attracted my attention; as it drew nearer i recognized the prancing steeds and the familiar liveries. a fair woman clad in olive velvets and russian sables looked out smiling, and waved her hand. it was my wife--my betrothed bride, and beside her sat the duchess di marina, the most irreproachable of matrons, famous for her piety not only in naples but throughout italy. so immaculate was she that it was difficult to imagine her husband daring to caress that upright, well-dressed form, or venturing to kiss those prim lips, colder than the carven beads of her jeweled rosary. yet there was a story about her too--an old story that came from padua--of how a young and handsome nobleman had been found dead at her palace doors, stabbed to the heart. perhaps--who knows--he also might have thought-- "che bella cosa e de morire accisa, inanze a la porta de la inamorata!" some said the duke had killed him; but nothing could be proved, nothing was certain. the duke was silent, so was his duchess; and scandal herself sat meekly with closed lips in the presence of this stately and august couple, whose bearing toward each other in society was a lesson of complete etiquette to the world. what went on behind the scenes no one could tell. i raised my hat with the profoundest deference as the carriage containing the two ladies dashed by; i knew not which was the cleverest hypocrite of the two, therefore i did equal honor to both. i was in a meditative and retrospective mood, and when i reached the toledo the distracting noises, the cries of the flower-girls, and venders of chestnuts and confetti, the nasal singing of the street-rhymers, the yells of punchinello, and the answering laughter of the populace, were all beyond my endurance. to gratify a sudden whim that seized me, i made my way into the lowest and dirtiest quarters of the city, and roamed through wretched courts and crowded alleys, trying to discover that one miserable street which until now i had always avoided even the thought of, where i had purchased the coral-fisher's clothes on the day of my return from the grave. i went in many wrong directions, but at last i found it, and saw at a glance that the old rag-dealer's shop was still there, in its former condition of heterogeneous filth and disorder. a man sat at the door smoking, but not the crabbed and bent figure i had before seen--this was a younger and stouter individual, with a jewish cast of countenance, and dark, ferocious eyes. i approached him, and seeing by my dress and manner that i was some person of consequence, he rose, drew his pipe from his mouth, and raised his greasy cap with a respectful yet suspicious air. "are you the owner of this place?" i asked. "si, signor!" "what has become of the old man who used to live here?" he laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and drew his pipe-stem across his throat with a significant gesture. "so, signor!--with a sharp knife! he had a good deal of blood, too, for so withered a body. to kill himself in that fashion was stupid: he spoiled an indian shawl that was on his bed, worth more than a thousand francs. one would not have thought he had so much blood." and the fellow put back his pipe in his mouth and smoked complacently. i heard in sickened silence. "he was mad, i suppose?" i said at last. the long pipe was again withdrawn. "mad? well, the people say so. i for one think he was very reasonable--all except that matter of the shawl--he should have taken that off his bed first. but he was wise enough to know that he was of no use to anybody--he did the best he could! did you know him, signor?" "i gave him money once," i replied, evasively; then taking out a few francs i handed them to this evil-eyed, furtive-looking son of israel, who received the gift with effusive gratitude. "thank you for your information," i said coldly. "good-day." "good-day to you, signor," he replied, resuming his seat and watching me curiously as i turned away. i passed out of the wretched street feeling faint and giddy. the end of the miserable rag-dealer had been told to me briefly and brutally enough--yet somehow i was moved to a sense of regret and pity. abjectly poor, half crazy, and utterly friendless, he had been a brother of mine in the same bitterness and irrevocable sorrow. i wondered with a half shudder--would my end be like his? when my vengeance was completed should i grow shrunken, and old, and mad, and one lurid day draw a sharp knife across my throat as a finish to my life's history? i walked more rapidly to shake off the morbid fancies that thus insidiously crept in on my brain; and as before, the noise and glitter of the toledo had been unbearable, so now i found it a relief and a distraction. two maskers bedizened in violet and gold whizzed past me like a flash, one of them yelling a stale jest concerning la 'nnamorata--a jest i scarcely heard, and certainly had no heart or wit to reply to. a fair woman i knew leaned out of a gayly draped balcony and dropped a bunch of roses at my feet; out of courtesy i stooped to pick them up, and then raising my hat i saluted the dark-eyed donor, but a few paces on i gave them away to a ragged child. of all flowers that bloom, they were, and still are, the most insupportable to me. what is it the english poet swinburne says-- "i shall never be friends again with roses!" my wife wore them always: even on that night when i had seen her clasped in guido's arms, a red rose on her breast had been crushed in that embrace--a rose whose withered leaves i still possess. in the forest solitude where i now dwell there are no roses--and i am glad! the trees are too high, the tangle of bramble and coarse brushwood too dense--nothing grows here but a few herbs and field flowers--weeds unfit for wearing by fine ladies, yet to my taste infinitely sweeter than all the tenderly tinted cups of fragrance, whose colors and odors are spoiled to me forever. i am unjust, say you? the roses are innocent of evil? true enough, but their perfume awakens memory, and--i strive always to forget! i reached my hotel that evening to find that i was an hour late for dinner, an unusual circumstance, which had caused vincenzo some disquietude, as was evident from the relieved expression of his face when i entered. for some days the honest fellow had watched me with anxiety; my abstracted moods, the long solitary walks i was in the habit of taking, the evenings i passed in my room writing, with the doors locked--all this behavior on my part exercised his patience, i have no doubt, to the utmost limit, and i could see he had much ado to observe his usual discretion and tact, and refrain from asking questions. on this particular occasion i dined very hastily, for i had promised to join my wife and two of her lady friends at the theater that night. when i arrived there, she was already seated in her box, looking radiantly beautiful. she was attired in some soft, sheeny, clinging primrose stuff, and the brigand's jewels i had given her through guido's hands, flashed brilliantly on her uncovered neck and arms. she greeted me with her usual child-like enthusiasm as i entered, bearing the customary offering--a costly bouquet, set in a holder of mother-of-pearl studded with turquois, for her acceptance. i bowed to her lady friends, both of whom i knew, and then stood beside her watching the stage. the comedietta played there was the airiest trifle--it turned on the old worn-out story--a young wife, an aged, doting husband, and a lover whose principles were, of course, of the "noblest" type. the husband was fooled (naturally), and the chief amusement of the piece appeared to consist in his being shut out of his own house in dressing-gown and slippers during a pelting storm of rain, while his spouse (who was particularly specified as "pure") enjoyed a luxurious supper with her highly moral and virtuous admirer. my wife laughed delightedly at the poor jokes and the stale epigrams, and specially applauded the actress who successfully supported the chief role. this actress, by the way, was a saucy, brazen-faced jade, who had a trick of flashing her black eyes, tossing her head, and heaving her ample bosom tumultuously whenever she hissed out the words vecchiaccio maladetto [footnote: accursed, villainous old monster.] at her discomfited husband, which had an immense effect on the audience--an audience which entirely sympathized with her, though she was indubitably in the wrong. i watched nina in some derision as she nodded her fair head and beat time to the music with her painted fan. i bent over her. "the play pleases you?" i asked, in a low tone. "yes, indeed!" she answered, with a laughing light in her eyes. "the husband is so droll! it is all very amusing." "the husband is always droll!" i remarked, smiling coldly. "it is not a temptation to marry when one knows that as a husband one must always look ridiculous." she glanced up at me. "cesare! you surely are not vexed? of course it is only in plays that it happens so!" "plays, cara mia, are often nothing but the reflex of real life," i said. "but let us hope there are exceptions, and that all husbands are not fools." she smiled expressively and sweetly, toyed with the flowers i had given her, and turned her eyes again to the stage. i said no more, and was a somewhat moody companion for the rest of the evening. as we all left the theater one of the ladies who had accompanied nina said lightly: "you seem dull and out of spirits, conte?" i forced a smile. "not i, signora! surely you do not find me guilty of such ungallantry? were i dull in your company i should prove myself the most ungrateful of my sex." she sighed somewhat impatiently. she was very young and very lovely, and, as far as i knew, innocent, and of a more thoughtful and poetical temperament than most women. "that is the mere language of compliment," she said, looking straightly at me with her clear, candid eyes. "you are a true courtier! yet often i think your courtesy is reluctant." i looked at her in some surprise. "reluctant? signora, pardon me if i do not understand!" "i mean," she continued, still regarding me steadily, though a faint blush warmed the clear pallor of her delicate complexion, "that you do not really like us women; you say pretty things to us, and you try to be amiable in our company, but you are in truth averse to our ways--you are sceptical--you think we are all hypocrites." i laughed a little coldly. "really, signora, your words place me in a very awkward position. were i to tell you my real sentiments--" she interrupted me with a touch of her fan on my arm, and smiled gravely. "you would say, 'yes, you are right, signora. i never see one of your sex without suspecting treachery.' ah, signor conte, we women are indeed full of faults, but nothing can blind our instinct!" she paused, and her brilliant eyes softened as she added gently, "i pray your marriage may be a very happy one." i was silent. i was not even courteous enough to thank her for the wish. i was half angered that this girl should have been able to probe my thoughts so quickly and unerringly. was i so bad an actor after all? i glanced down at her as she leaned lightly on my arm. "marriage is a mere comedietta," i said, abruptly and harshly. "we have seen it acted to-night. in a few days i shall play the part of the chief buffoon--in other words, the husband." and i laughed. my young companion looked startled, almost frightened, and over her fair face there flitted an expression of something like aversion. i did not care--why should i?--and there was no time for more words between us, for we had reached the outer vestibule of the theater. my wife's carriage was drawn up at the entrance--my wife herself was stepping into it. i assisted her, and also her two friends, and then stood with uncovered head at the door wishing them all the "felicissima notte." nina put her tiny jeweled hand through the carriage window--i stooped and kissed it lightly. drawing it back quickly, she selected a white gardenia from her bouquet and gave it to me with a bewitching smile. then the glittering equipage dashed away with a whirl and clatter of prancing hoofs and rapid wheels, and i stood alone under the wide portico of the theater--alone, amid the pressing throngs of the people who were still coming out of the house--holding the strongly scented gardenia in my hand as vaguely as a fevered man who finds a strange flower in one of his sick dreams. after a minute or two i suddenly recollected myself, and throwing the blossom on the ground, i crushed it savagely beneath my heel--the penetrating odor rose from its slain petals as though a vessel of incense had been emptied at my feet. there was a nauseating influence in it; where had i inhaled that subtle perfume last? i remembered--guido ferrari had worn one of those flowers in his coat at my banquet--it had been still in his buttonhole when i killed him! i strode onward and homeward; the streets were full of mirth and music, but i heeded none of it. i felt, rather than saw, the quiet sky bending above me dotted with its countless millions of luminous worlds; i was faintly conscious of the soft plash of murmuring waves mingling with the dulcet chords of deftly played mandolins echoing from somewhere down by the shore; but my soul was, as it were, benumbed--my mind, always on the alert, was for once utterly tired out--my very limbs ached, and when i at last flung myself on my bed, exhausted, my eyes closed instantly, and i slept the heavy, motionless sleep of a man weary unto death. chapter xxxii. "tout le monde vient a celui qui sait attendre." so wrote the great napoleon. the virtue of the aphorism consists in the little words 'qui sait'. all the world comes to him who knows how to wait, _i_ knew this, and i had waited, and my world--a world of vengeance--came to me at last. the slow-revolving wheel of time brought me to the day before my strange wedding--the eve of my remarriage with my own wife! all the preparations were made--nothing was left undone that could add to the splendor of the occasion. for though the nuptial ceremony was to be somewhat quiet and private in character, and the marriage breakfast was to include only a few of our more intimate acquaintances, the proceedings were by no means to terminate tamely. the romance of these remarkable espousals was not to find its conclusion in bathos. no; the bloom and aroma of the interesting event were to be enjoyed in the evening, when a grand supper and ball, given by me, the happy and much-to-be-envied bridegroom, was to take place in the hotel which i had made my residence for so long. no expense was spared for this, the last entertainment offered by me in my brilliant career as a successful count cesare oliva. after it, the dark curtain would fall on the played-out drama, never to rise again. everything that art, taste, and royal luxury could suggest was included in the arrangements for this brilliant ball, to which a hundred and fifty guests had been invited, not one of whom had refused to attend. and now--now, in the afternoon of this, the last of my self-imposed probation--i sat alone with my fair wife in the drawing-room of the villa romani, conversing lightly on various subjects connected with the festivities of the coming morrow. the long windows were open--the warm spring sunlight lay like a filmy veil of woven gold on the tender green of the young grass, birds sung for joy and flitted from branch to branch, now poising hoveringly above their nests, now soaring with all the luxury of perfect liberty into the high heaven of cloudless blue--the great creamy buds of the magnolia looked ready to burst into wide and splendid flower between their large, darkly shining leaves, the odor of violets and primroses floated on every delicious breath of air, and round the wide veranda the climbing white china roses had already unfurled their little crumpled rosette-like blossoms to the balmy wind. it was spring in southern italy--spring in the land where, above all other lands, spring is lovely--sudden and brilliant in its beauty as might be the smile of a happy angel. gran dio!--talk of angels! had i not a veritable angel for my companion at that moment? what fair being, even in mohammed's paradise of houris, could outshine such charms as those which it was my proud privilege to gaze upon without rebuke--dark eyes, rippling golden hair, a dazzling and perfect face, a form to tempt the virtue of a galahad, and lips that an emperor might long to touch--in vain? well, no!--not altogether in vain: if his imperial majesty could offer a bribe large enough--let us say a diamond the size of a pigeon's egg--he might possibly purchase one, nay!--perhaps two kisses from that seductive red mouth, sweeter than the ripest strawberry. i glanced at her furtively from time to time when she was not aware of my gaze; and glad was i of the sheltering protection of the dark glasses i wore, for i knew and felt that there was a terrible look in my eyes--the look of a half-famished tiger ready to spring on some long-desired piece of prey. she herself was exceptionally bright and cheerful; with her riante features and agile movements, she reminded me of some tropical bird of gorgeous plumage swaying to and fro on a branch of equally gorgeous blossom. "you are like a prince in a fairy tale, cesare," she said, with a little delighted laugh; "everything you do is superbly done! how pleasant it is to be so rich--there is nothing better in all the world." "except love!" i returned, with a grim attempt to be sentimental. her large eyes softened like the pleading eyes of a tame fawn. "ay, yes!" and she smiled with expressive tenderness, "except love. but when one has both love and wealth, what a paradise life can be!" "so great a paradise," i assented, "that it is hardly worth while trying to get into heaven at all! will you make earth a heaven for me, nina mia, or will you only love me as much--or as little--as you loved your late husband?" she shrugged her shoulders and pouted like a spoilt child. "why are you so fond of talking about my late husband, cesare?" she asked, peevishly; "i am so tired of his name! besides, one does not always care to be reminded of dead people--and he died so horribly too! i have often told you that i did not love him at all. i liked him a little, and i was quite ill when that dreadful monk, who looked like a ghost himself, came and told me he was dead. fancy hearing such a piece of news suddenly, while i was actually at luncheon with gui--signore ferrari! we were both shocked, of course, but i did not break my heart over it. now i really do love you--" i drew nearer to her on the couch where she sat, and put one arm round her. "you really do?" i asked, in a half-incredulous tone; "you are quite sure?" she laughed and nestled her head on my shoulder. "i am quite sure! how many times have you asked me that absurd question? what can i say, what can i do--to make you believe me?" "nothing," i answered, and answered truly, for certainly nothing she could say or do would make me believe her for a moment. "but how do you love me--for myself or for my wealth?" she raised her head with a proud, graceful gesture. "for yourself, of course! do you think mere wealth could ever win my affection? no, cesare! i love you for your own sake--your own merits have made you dear to me." i smiled bitterly. she did not see the smile. i slowly caressed her silky hair. "for that sweet answer, carissima mia, you shall have your reward. you called me a fairy prince just now--perhaps i merit that title more than you know. you remember the jewels i sent you before we ever met?" "remember them!" she exclaimed. "they are my choicest ornaments. such a parure is fit for an empress." "and an empress of beauty wears them!" i said, lightly. "but they are mere trifles compared to other gems which i possess, and which i intend to offer for your acceptance." her eyes glistened with avarice and expectancy. "oh, let me see them!" she cried. "if they are lovelier than those i already have, they must be indeed magnificent! and are they all for me?" "all for you!" i replied, drawing her closer, and playing with the small white hand on which the engagement-ring i had placed there sparkled so bravely. "all for my bride. a little hoard of bright treasures; red rubies, ay--as red as blood--diamonds as brilliant as the glittering of crossed daggers--sapphires as blue as the lightning--pearls as pure as the little folded hands of a dead child--opals as dazzlingly changeful as woman's love! why do you start?" for she had moved restlessly in my embrace. "do i use bad similes? ah, cara mia, i am no poet! i can but speak of things as they seem to my poor judgment. yes, these precious things are for you, bellissima; you have nothing to do but to take them, and may they bring you much joy!" a momentary pallor had stolen over her face while i was speaking--speaking in my customary hard, harsh voice, which i strove to render even harder and harsher than usual--but she soon recovered from whatever passing emotion she may have felt, and gave herself up to the joys of vanity and greed, the paramount passions of her nature. "i shall have the finest jewels in all naples!" she laughed, delightedly. "how the women will envy me! but where are these treasures? may i see them now--immediately?" "no, not quite immediately," i replied, with a gentle derision that escaped her observation. "to-morrow night--our marriage night--you shall have them. and i must also fulfill a promise i made to you. you wish to see me for once without these," and i touched my dark glasses--"is it not so?" she raised her eyes, conveying into their lustrous depths an expression of melting tenderness. "yes," she murmured; "i want to see you as you are!" "i fear you will be disappointed," i said, with some irony, "for my eyes are not pleasant to look at." "never mind," she returned, gayly. "i shall be satisfied if i see them just once, and we need not have much light in the room, as the light gives you pain. i would not be the cause of suffering to you--no, not for all the world!" "you are very amiable," i answered, "more so than i deserve. i hope i may prove worthy of your tenderness! but to return to the subject of the jewels. i wish you to see them for yourself and choose the best among them. will you come with me to-morrow night? and i will show you where they are." she laughed sweetly. "are you a miser, cesare?--and have you some secret hiding-place full of treasure like aladdin?" i smiled. "perhaps i have," i said. "there are exceptional cases in which one fears to trust even to a bank. gems such as those i have to offer you are almost priceless, and it would be unwise, almost cruel to place such tempting toys within the reach of even an honest man. at any rate, if i have been something of a miser, it is for your sake, for your sake i have personally guarded the treasure that is to be your bridal gift. you cannot blame me for this?" in answer she threw her fair arms round my neck and kissed me. strive against it as i would, i always shuddered at the touch of her lips--a mingled sensation of loathing and longing possessed me that sickened while it stung my soul. "amor mio!" she murmured. "as if _i_ could blame you! you have no faults in my estimation of you. you are good, brave and generous--the best of men; there is only one thing i wish sometimes--" here she paused, and her brow knitted itself frowningly, while a puzzled, pained expression came into her eyes. "and that one thing is?" i inquired. "that you did not remind me so often of fabio," she said, abruptly and half angrily. "not when you speak of him, i do not mean that. what i mean is, that you have ways like his. of course i know there is no actual resemblance, and yet--" she paused again, and again looked troubled. "really, carina mia," i remarked, lightly and jestingly, "you embarrass me profoundly! this fancy of yours is a most awkward one for me. at the convent where i visited you, you became quite ill at the contemplation of my hand, which you declared was like the hand of your deceased husband; and now--this same foolish idea is returning, when i hoped it had gone, with other morbid notions of an oversensitive brain, forever. perhaps you think i am your late husband?" and i laughed aloud! she trembled a little, but soon laughed also. "i know i am very absurd," she said, "perhaps i am a little nervous and unstrung: i have had too much excitement lately. tell me more about the jewels. when will you take me to see them?" "to-morrow night," i answered, "while the ball is going on, you and i will slip away together--we shall return again before any of our friends can miss us. you will come with me?" "of course i will," she replied, readily, "only we must not be long absent, because my maid will have to pack my wedding-dress, and then there will be the jewels also to put in my strong box. let me see! we stay the night at the hotel, and leave for rome and paris the first thing in the morning, do we not?" "that is the arrangement, certainly," i said, with a cold smile. "the little place where you have hidden your jewels, you droll cesare, is quite near then?" she asked. "quite near," i assented, watching her closely. she laughed and clapped her hands. "oh, i must have them," she exclaimed. "it would be ridiculous to go to paris without them. but why will you not get them yourself, cesare, and bring them here to me?" "there are so many," i returned, quietly, "and i do not know which you would prefer. some are more valuable than others. and it will give me a special satisfaction--one that i have long waited for--to see you making your own choice." she smiled half shyly, half cunningly. "perhaps i will make no choice," she whispered, "perhaps i will take them all, cesare. what will you say then?" "that you are perfectly welcome to them," i replied. she looked slightly surprised. "you are really too good to me, caro mio," she said; "you spoil me." "can you be spoiled?" i asked, half jestingly. "good women are like fine brilliants--the more richly they are set the more they shine." she stroked my hand caressingly. "no one ever made such pretty speeches to me as you do!" she murmured. "not even guido ferrari?" i suggested, ironically. she drew herself up with an inimitably well-acted gesture of lofty disdain. "guido ferrari!" she exclaimed. "he dared not address me save with the greatest respect! i was as a queen to him! it was only lately that he began to presume on the trust left him by my husband, and then he became too familiar--a mistake on his part, for which you punished him--as he deserved!" i rose from my seat beside her. i could not answer for my own composure while sitting so close to the actual murderess of my friend and her lover. had she forgotten her own "familiar" treatment of the dead man--the thousand nameless wiles and witcheries and tricks of her trade, by which she had beguiled his soul and ruined his honor? "i am glad you are satisfied with my action in that affair," i said, coldly and steadily. "i myself regret the death of the unfortunate young man, and shall continue to do so. my nature, unhappily, is an oversensitive one, and is apt to be affected by trifles. but now, mia bella, farewell until to-morrow--happy to-morrow!--when i shall call you mine indeed!" a warm flush tinted her cheeks; she came to me where i stood, and leaned against me. "shall i not see you again till we meet in the church?" she inquired, with a becoming bashfulness. "no. i will leave you this last day of your brief widowhood alone. it is not well that i should obtrude myself upon your thoughts or prayers. stay!" and i caught her hand which toyed with the flower in my buttonhole. "i see you still wear your former wedding-ring. may i take it off?" "certainly." and she smiled while i deftly drew off the plain gold circlet i had placed there nearly four years since. "will you let me keep it?" "if you like. _i_ would rather not see it again." "you shall not," i answered, as i slipped it into my pocket. "it will be replaced by a new one to-morrow--one that i hope may be the symbol of more joy to you than this has been." and as her eyes turned to my face in all their melting, perfidious languor, i conquered my hatred of her by a strong effort, and stooped and kissed her. had i yielded to my real impulses, i would have crushed her cruelly in my arms, and bruised her delicate flesh with the brutal ferocity of caresses born of bitterest loathing, not love. but no sign of my aversion escaped me--all she saw was her elderly looking admirer, with his calmly courteous demeanor, chill smile, and almost parental tenderness; and she judged him merely as an influential gentleman of good position and unlimited income, who was about to make her one of the most envied women in all italy. the fugitive resemblance she traced in me to her "dead" husband was certainly attributed by her to a purely accidental likeness common to many persons in this world, where every man, they say, has his double, and for that matter every woman also. who does not remember the touching surprise of heinrich heine when, on visiting the picture-gallery of the palazzo durazzo in genoa, he was brought face to face with the portrait, as he thought, of a dead woman he had loved--"maria la morte." it mattered not to him that the picture was very old, that it had been painted by giorgio barbarelli centuries before his "maria" could have lived; he simply declares: "il est vraiment d'une ressemblance admirable, ressemblant jusqu'au silence de la mort!" such likenesses are common enough, and my wife, though my resemblance to myself (!) troubled her a little, was very far from imagining the real truth of the matter, as indeed how should she? what woman, believing and knowing, as far as anything can be known, her husband to be dead and fast buried, is likely to accept even the idea of his possible escape from the tomb! not one!--else the disconsolate widows would indeed have reason to be more inconsolable than they appear! when i left her that morning i found andrea luziani waiting for me at my hotel. he was seated in the outer entrance hall; i bade him follow me into my private salon. he did so. abashed at the magnificence of the apartment, he paused at the doorway, and stood, red cap in hand, hesitating, though with an amiable smile on his sunburned merry countenance. "come in, amico," i said, with an inviting gesture, "and sit down. all this tawdry show of velvet and gilding must seem common to your eyes, that have rested so long on the sparkling pomp of the foaming waves, the glorious blue curtain of the sky, and the sheeny white of the sails of the 'laura' gleaming in the gold of the sun. would i could live such a life as yours, andrea!--there is nothing better under the width of heaven." the poetical temperament of the sicilian was caught and fired by my words. he at once forgot the splendid appurtenances of wealth and the costly luxuries that surrounded him; he advanced without embarrassment, and seated himself on a velvet and gold chair with as much ease as though it were a coil of rough rope on board the "laura." "you say truly, eccellenza," he said, with a gleam of his white teeth through his jet-black mustache, while his warm southern eyes flashed fire, "there is nothing sweeter than the life of the marinaro. and truly there are many who say to me, 'ah, ah! andrea! buon amico, the time comes when you will wed, and the home where the wife and children sit will seem a better thing to you than the caprice of the wind and waves.' but i--see you!--i know otherwise. the woman i wed must love the sea; she must have the fearless eyes that can look god's storms in the face--her tender words must ring out all the more clearly for the sound of the bubbling waves leaping against the 'laura' when the wind is high! and as for our children," he paused and laughed, "per la santissima madonna! if the salt and iron of the ocean be not in their blood, they will be no children of mine!" i smiled at his enthusiasm, and pouring out some choice montepulciano, bade him taste it. he did so with a keen appreciation of its flavor, such as many a so-called connoisseur of wines does not possess. "to your health, eccellenza!" he said, "and may you long enjoy your life!" i thanked him; but in my heart i was far from echoing the kindly wish. "and are you going to fulfill the prophecy of your friends, andrea?" i asked. "are you about to marry?" he set down his glass only partly emptied, and smiled with an air of mystery. "ebbene! chi sa!" he replied, with a gay little shrug of his shoulders, yet with a sudden tenderness in his keen eyes that did not escape me. "there is a maiden--my mother loves her well--she is little and fair as carmelo neri's teresa--so high," and he laid his brown hand lightly on his breast, "her head touches just here," and he laughed. "she looks as frail as a lily, but she is hardy as a sea-gull, and no one loves the wild waves more than she. perhaps, in the month of the madonna, when the white lilies bloom--perhaps!--one can never tell--the old song may be sung for us-- "chi sa fervente amar solo e felice!" and humming the tune of the well-known love-ditty under his breath, he raised his glass of wine to his lips and drained it off with a relish, while his honest face beamed with gayety and pleasure. always the same story, i thought, moodily. love, the tempter--love, the destroyer--love, the curse! was there no escape possible from this bewildering snare that thus caught and slew the souls of men? chapter xxxiii. he soon roused himself from his pleasant reverie, and drawing his chair closer to mine, assumed an air of mystery. "and for your friend who is in trouble," he said, in a confidential tone, then paused and looked at me as though waiting permission to proceed. i nodded. "go on, amico. what have you arranged?" "everything!" he announced, with an air of triumph. "all is smooth sailing. at six o'clock on friday morning the 'rondinella,' that is the brig i told you of, eccellenza, will weigh anchor for civita vecchia. her captain, old antonio bardi, will wait ten minutes or even a quarter of an hour if necessary for the--the--" "passenger," i supplemented. "very amiable of him, but he will not need to delay his departure for a single instant beyond the appointed hour. is he satisfied with the passage money?" "satisfied!" and andrea swore a good-natured oath and laughed aloud. "by san pietro! if he were not, he would deserve to drown like a dog on the voyage! though truly, it is always difficult to please him, he being old and cross and crusty. yes; he is one of those men who have seen so much of life that they are tired of it. believe it! even the stormiest sea is a tame fish-pond to old bardi. but he is satisfied this time, eccellenza, and his tongue and eyes are so tied up that i should not wonder if your friend found him to be both dumb and blind when he steps on board." "that is well," i said, smiling. "i owe you many thanks, andrea. and yet there is one more favor i would ask of you." he saluted me with a light yet graceful gesture. "eccellenza, anything i can do--command me." "it is a mere trifle," i returned. "it is merely to take a small valise belonging to my friend, and to place it on board the 'rondinella' under the care of the captain. will you do this?" "most willingly. i will take it now if it so please you." "that is what i desire. wait here and i will bring it to you." and leaving him for a minute or two, i went into my bedroom and took from a cupboard i always kept locked a common rough leather bag, which i had secretly packed myself, unknown to vincenzo, with such things as i judged to be useful and necessary. chief among them was a bulky roll of bank-notes. these amounted to nearly the whole of the remainder of the money i had placed in the bank at palermo. i had withdrawn it by gradual degrees, leaving behind only a couple of thousand francs, for which i had no special need. i locked and strapped the valise; there was no name on it and it was scarcely any weight to carry. i took it to andrea, who swung it easily in his right hand and said, smilingly: "your friend is not wealthy, eccellenza, if this is all his luggage!" "you are right," i answered, with a slight sigh; "he is truly very poor--beggared of everything that should be his through the treachery of those whom he has benefited." i paused; andrea was listening sympathetically. "that is why i have paid his passage-money, and have done my best to aid him." "ah! you have the good heart, eccellenza," murmured the sicilian, thoughtfully. "would there were more like you! often when fortune gives a kick to a man, nothing will suit but that all who see him must kick him also. and thus the povero diavolo dies of so many kicks, often! this friend of yours is young, senza dubbio?" "yes, quite young, not yet thirty." "it is as if you were a father to him!" exclaimed andrea, enthusiastically. "i hope he may be truly grateful to you, eccellenza." "i hope so too," i said, unable to resist a smile. "and now, amico, take this," and i pressed a small sealed packet into his hand. "it is for yourself. do not open it till you are at home with the mother you love so well, and the little maiden you spoke of by your side. if its contents please you, as i believe they will, think that _i_ am also rendered happier by your happiness." his dark eyes sparkled with gratitude as i spoke, and setting the valise he held down on the ground, he stretched out his hand half timidly, half frankly. i shook it warmly and bade him farewell. "per bacco!" he said, with a sort of shamefaced eagerness, "the very devil must have caught my tongue in his fingers! there is something i ought to say to you, eccellenza, but for my life i cannot find the right words. i must thank you better when i see you next." "yes," i answered, dreamily and somewhat wearily, "when you see me next, andrea, you shall thank me if you will; but believe me, i need no thanks." and thus we parted, never to meet again--he to the strong glad life that is born of the wind and sea, and i to--. but let me not anticipate. step by step through the labyrinths of memory let me go over the old ground watered with blood and tears, not missing one sharp stone of detail on the drear pathway leading to the bitter end. that same evening i had an interview with vincenzo. he was melancholy and taciturn--a mood which was the result of an announcement i had previously made to him--namely, that his services would not be required during my wedding-trip. he had hoped to accompany me and to occupy the position of courier, valet, major-domo, and generally confidential attendant--a hope which had partially soothed the vexation he had evidently felt at the notion of my marrying at all. his plans were now frustrated, and if ever the good-natured fellow could be ill-tempered, he was assuredly so on this occasion. he stood before me with his usual respectful air, but he avoided my glance, and kept his eyes studiously fixed on the pattern of the carpet. i addressed him with an air of gayety. "ebbene, vincenzo! joy comes at last, you see, even to me! to-morrow i shall wed the countess romani--the loveliest and perhaps the richest woman in naples!" "i know it, eccellenza." this with the same obstinately fixed countenance and downward look. "you are not very pleased, i think, at the prospect of my happiness?" i asked, banteringly. he glanced up for an instant, then as quickly down again. "if one could be sure that the illustrissimo eccellenza was indeed happy, that would be a good thing," he answered, dubiously. "and are you not sure?" he paused, then replied firmly: "no; the eccellenza does not look happy. no, no, davvero! he has the air of being sorrowful and ill, both together." i shrugged my shoulders indifferently. "you mistake me, vincenzo. i am well--very well--and happy! gran dio! who could be happier? but what of my health or happiness?--they are nothing to me, and should be less to you. listen; i have something i wish you to do for me." he gave me a sidelong and half-expectant glance. i went on: "to-morrow evening i want you to go to avellino." he was utterly astonished. "to avellino!" he murmured under his breath, "to avellino!" "yes, to avellino," i repeated, somewhat impatiently. "is there anything so surprising in that? you will take a letter from me to the signora monti. look you, vincenzo, you have been faithful and obedient so far, i expect implicit fidelity and obedience still. you will not be needed here to-morrow after the marriage ball has once begun; you can take the nine o'clock train to avellino, and--understand me--you will remain there till you receive further news from me. you will not have to wait long, and in the mean time," here i smiled, "you can make love to lilla." vincenzo did not return the smile. "but--but," he stammered, sorely perplexed--"if i go to avellino i cannot wait upon the eccellenza. there is the portmanteau to pack--and who will see to the luggage when you leave on friday morning for rome? and--and--i had thought to see you to the station--" he stopped, his vexation was too great to allow him to proceed. i laughed gently. "how many more trifles can you think of, my friend, in opposition to my wishes? as for the portmanteau, you can pack it this very day if you so please--then it will be in readiness. the rest of your duties can for once be performed by others. it is not only important, but imperative that you should go to avellino on my errand. i want you to take this with you," and i tapped a small square iron box, heavily made and strongly padlocked, which stood on the table near me. he glanced at the box, but still hesitated, and the gloom on his countenance deepened. i grew a little annoyed. "what is the matter with you?" i said at last with some sternness. "you have something on your mind--speak out!" the fear of my wrath startled him. he looked up with a bewildered pain in his eyes, and spoke, his mellow tuscan voice vibrating with his own eloquent entreaty. "eccellenza!" he exclaimed, eagerly, "you must forgive me--yes, forgive your poor servant who seems too bold, and who yet is true to you--yes, indeed, so true!--and who would go with you to death if there were need! i am not blind, i can see your sufferings, for you do suffer, 'lustrissimo, though you hide it well. often have i watched you when you have not known it. i feel that you have what we call a wound in the heart, bleeding, bleeding always. such a thing means death often, as much as a straight shot in battle. let me watch over you, eccellenza; let me stay with you! i have learned to love you! ah, mio signor," and he drew nearer and caught my hand timidly, "you do not know--how should you?--the look that is in your face sometimes, the look of one who is stunned by a hard blow. i have said to myself 'that look will kill me if i see it often.' and your love for this great lady, whom you will wed to-morrow, has not lightened your soul as love should lighten it. no! you are even sadder than before, and the look i speak of comes ever again and again. yes, i have watched you, and lately i have seen you writing, writing far into the night, when you should have slept. ah, signor! you are angry, and i know i should not have spoken; but tell me, how can i look at lilla and be happy when i feel that you are alone and sad?" i stopped the flood of his eloquence by a mute gesture and withdrew my hand from his clasp. "i am not angry," i said, with quiet steadiness, and yet with something of coldness, though my whole nature, always highly sensitive, was deeply stirred by the rapid, unstudied expressions of affection that melted so warmly from his lips in the liquid music of the mellow tuscan tongue. "no, i am not angry, but i am sorry to have been the object of so much solicitude on your part. your pity is misplaced, vincenzo, it is indeed! pity an emperor clad in purples and seated on a throne of pure gold, but do not pity me! i tell you that, to-morrow, yes, to-morrow, i shall obtain all that i have ever sought--my greatest desire will be fulfilled. believe it. no man has ever been so thoroughly satiated with--satisfaction--as i shall be!" then seeing him look still sad and incredulous, i clapped my hand on his shoulder and smiled. "come, come, amico, wear a merrier face for my bridal day, or you will not deserve to wed lilla. i thank you from my heart," and i spoke more gravely, "for your well meant care and kindness, but i assure you there is nothing wrong with me. i am well--perfectly well--and happy. it is understood that you go to avellino to-morrow evening?" vincenzo sighed, but was passive. "it must be as the eccellenza pleases," he murmured, resignedly. "that is well," i answered, good-humoredly; "and as you know my pleasure, take care that nothing interferes with your departure. and--one word more--you must cease to watch me. plainly speaking, i do not choose to be under your surveillance. nay--i am not offended, far from it, fidelity and devotion are excellent virtues, but in the present case i prefer obedience--strict, implicit obedience. whatever i may do, whether i sleep or wake, walk or sit still--attend to your duties and pay no heed to my actions. so will you best serve me--you understand?" "si, signor!" and the poor fellow sighed again, and reddened with his own inward confusion. "you will pardon me, eccellenza, for my freedom of speech? i feel i have done wrong--" "i pardon you for what in this world is never pardoned--excess of love," i answered, gently. "knowing you love me, i ask you to obey me in my present wishes, and thus we shall always be friends." his face brightened at these last words, and his thoughts turned in a new direction. he glanced at the iron box i had before pointed out to him. "that is to go to avellino, eccellenza?" he asked, with more alacrity than he had yet shown. "yes," i answered. "you will place it in the hands of the good signora monti, for whom i have a great respect. she will take care of it till--i return." "your commands shall be obeyed, signor," he said, rapidly, as though eager to atone for his past hesitation. "after all," and he smiled, "it will be pleasant to see lilla; she will be interested, too, to hear the account of the eccellenza's marriage." and somewhat consoled by the prospect of the entertainment his unlooked-for visit would give to the charming little maiden of his choice, he left me, and shortly afterward i heard him humming a popular love-song softly under his breath, while he busied himself in packing my portmanteau for the honeymoon trip--a portmanteau destined never to be used or opened by its owner. that night, contrary to my usual habit, i lingered long over my dinner; at its close i poured out a full glass of fine lacrima cristi, and secretly mixing with it a dose of a tasteless but powerful opiate, i called my valet and bade him drink it and wish me joy. he did so readily, draining the contents to the last drop. it was a tempestuous night; there was a high wind, broken through by heavy sweeping gusts of rain. vincenzo cleared the dinner-table, yawning visibly as he did so, then taking my out-door paletot on his arm, he went to his bedroom, a small one adjoining mine, for the purpose of brushing it, according to his customary method. i opened a book, and pretending to be absorbed in its contents, i waited patiently for about half an hour. at the expiration of that time i stole softly to his door and looked in. it was as i had expected; overcome by the sudden and heavy action of the opiate, he had thrown himself on his bed, and was slumbering profoundly, the unbrushed overcoat by his side. poor fellow! i smiled as i watched him; the faithful dog was chained, and could not follow my steps for that night at least. i left him thus, and wrapping myself in a thick almaviva that muffled me almost to the eyes, i hurried out, fortunately meeting no one on my way--out into the storm and darkness, toward the campo santo, the abode of the all-wise though speechless dead. i had work to do there--work that must be done. i knew that if i had not taken the precaution of drugging my too devoted servitor, he might, despite his protestations, have been tempted to track me whither i went. as it was, i felt myself safe, for four hours must pass, i knew, before vincenzo could awake from his lethargy. and i was absent for some time. though i performed my task as quickly as might be, it took me longer than i thought, and filled me with more loathing and reluctance than i had deemed possible. it was a grewsome, ghastly piece of work--a work of preparation--and when i had finished it entirely to my satisfaction, i felt as though the bony fingers of death itself had been plunged into my very marrow. i shivered with cold, my limbs would scarce bear me upright, and my teeth chattered as though i were seized by strong ague. but the fixity of my purpose strengthened me till all was done--till the stage was set for the last scene of the tragedy. or comedy? what you will! i know that in the world nowadays you make a husband's dishonor more of a whispered jest than anything else--you and your heavy machinery of the law. but to me--i am so strangely constituted--dishonor is a bitterer evil than death. if all those who are deceived and betrayed felt thus, then justice would need to become more just. it is fortunate--for the lawyers--that we are not all honorable men! when i returned from my dreary walk in the driving storm i found vincenzo still fast asleep. i was glad of this, for had he seen me in the plight i was, he would have had good reason to be alarmed concerning both my physical and mental condition. perceiving myself in the glass, i recoiled as from an image of horror. i saw a man with haunted, hungry eyes gleaming out from under a mass of disordered white hair, his pale, haggard face set and stern as the face of a merciless inquisitor of old spain, his dark cloak dripping with glittering raindrops, his hands and nails stained as though he had dug them into the black earth, his boots heavy with mire and clay, his whole aspect that of one who had been engaged in some abhorrent deed, too repulsive to be named. i stared at my own reflection thus and shuddered; then i laughed softly with a sort of fierce enjoyment. quickly i threw off all my soiled habiliments, and locked them out of sight, and arraying myself in dressing-gown and slippers, i glanced at the time. it was half-past one--already the morning of my bridal. i had been absent three hours and a half. i went into my salon and remained there writing. a few minutes after two o'clock had struck the door opened noiselessly, and vincenzo, looking still very sleepy, appeared with an expression of inquiring anxiety. he smiled drowsily, and seemed relieved to see me sitting quietly in my accustomed place at the writing-table. i surveyed him with an air of affected surprise. "ebbene, vincenzo! what has become of you all this while?" "eccellenza," he stammered, "it was the lacrima; i am not used to wine! i have been asleep." i laughed, pretended to stifle a yawn on my own account, and rose from my easy-chair. "veramente," i said, lightly, "so have i, very nearly! and if i would appear as a gay bridegroom, it is time i went to bed. buona notte." "buona notte, signor." and we severally retired to rest, he satisfied that i had been in my own room all the evening, and i, thinking with a savage joy at my heart of what i had prepared out there in the darkness, with no witnesses of my work save the whirling wind and rain. chapter xxxiv. my marriage morning dawned bright and clear, though the high wind of the past night still prevailed and sent the white clouds scudding rapidly, like ships running a race, across the blue fairness of the sky. the air was strong, fresh, and exhilarating, and the crowds that swarmed into the piazza del popolo, and the toledo, eager to begin the riot and fun of giovedi grasso, were one and all in the highest good humor. as the hours advanced, many little knots of people hurried toward the cathedral, anxious, if possible, to secure places in or near the chapel of san gennaro, in order to see to advantage the brilliant costumes of the few distinguished persons who had been invited to witness my wedding. the ceremony was fixed to take place at eleven, and at a little before half past ten i entered my carriage, in company with the duke di marina as best man, and drove to the scene of action. clad in garments of admirable cut and fit, with well-brushed hair and beard, and wearing a demeanor of skillfully mingled gravity and gayety, i bore but little resemblance to the haggard, ferocious creature who had faced me in the mirror a few hours previously. a strange and secret mirth too possessed me, a sort of half-frenzied merriment that threatened every now and then to break through the mask of dignified composure it was necessary for me to wear. there were moments when i could have laughed, shrieked, and sung with the fury of a drunken madman. as it was, i talked incessantly; my conversation was flavored with bitter wit and pungent sarcasm, and once or twice my friend the duke surveyed me with an air of wondering inquiry, as though he thought my manner forced or unnatural. my coachman was compelled to drive rather slowly, owing to the pressing throngs that swarmed at every corner and through every thoroughfare, while the yells of the masqueraders, the gambols of street clowns, the firing of toy guns, and the sharp explosion of colored bladders, that were swung to and fro and tossed in the air by the merry populace, startled my spirited horses frequently, and caused them to leap and prance to a somewhat dangerous extent, thus attracting more than the customary attention to my equipage. as it drew up at last at the door of the chapel, i was surprised to see what a number of spectators had collected there. there was a positive crowd of loungers, beggars, children, and middle-class persons of all sorts, who beheld my arrival with the utmost interest and excitement. in accordance with my instructions a rich crimson carpet had been laid down from the very edge of the pavement right into the church as far as the altar; a silken awning had also been erected, under which bloomed a miniature avenue of palms and tropical flowers. all eyes were turned upon me curiously as i stepped from my carriage and entered the chapel, side by side with the duke, and murmurs of my vast wealth and generosity were audibly whispered as i passed along. one old crone, hideously ugly, but with large, dark piercing eyes, the fading lamps of a lost beauty, chuckled and mumbled as she craned her skinny throat forward to observe me more closely. "ay, ay! the saints know he need be rich and generous--pover'uomo to fill her mouth. a little red cruel mouth always open, that swallows money like macaroni, and laughs at the suffering poor! ah! that is bad, bad! he need be rich to satisfy her!" the duke di marina caught these words and glanced quickly at me, but i affected not to have heard. inside the chapel there were a great number of people, but my own invited guests, not numbering more than twenty or thirty, were seated in the space apportioned to them near the altar, which was divided from the mere sight-seers by means of a silken rope that crossed the aisle. i exchanged greetings with most of these persons, and in return received their congratulations; then i walked with a firm deliberate step up to the high altar and there waited. the magnificent paintings on the wall round me seemed endowed with mysterious life--the grand heads of saints and martyrs were turned upon me as though they demanded--"must thou do this thing? hast thou no forgiveness?" and ever my stern answer, "nay; if hereafter i am tortured in eternal flame for all ages, yet now--now while i live, i will be avenged!" a bleeding christ suspended on his cross gazed at me reproachfully with long-enduring eyes of dreadful anguish--eyes that seemed to say, "oh, erring man, that tormentest thyself with passing passions, shall not thine own end approach speedily?--and what comfort wilt thou have in thy last hour?" and inwardly i answered, "none! no shred of consolation can ever again be mine--no joy, save fulfilled revenge! and this i will possess though the heavens should crack and the earth split asunder! for once a woman's treachery shall meet with punishment--for once such strange uncommon justice shall be done!" and my spirit wrapped itself again in somber meditative silence. the sunlight fell gloriously through the stained windows--blue, gold, crimson, and violet shafts of dazzling radiance glittered in lustrous flickering patterns on the snowy whiteness of the marble altar, and slowly, softly, majestically, as though an angel stepped forward, the sound of music stole on the incense-laden air. the unseen organist played a sublime voluntary of palestrina's, and the round harmonious notes came falling gently on one another like drops from a fountain trickling on flowers. i thought of my last wedding-day, when i had stood in this very place, full of hope, intoxicated with love and joy, when guido ferrari had been by my side, and had drunk in for the first time the poisoned draught of temptation from the loveliness of my wife's face and form; when i, poor fool! would as soon have thought that god could lie, as that either of these whom i adored could play me false. i drew the wedding-ring from my pocket and looked at it--it was sparklingly bright and appeared new. yet it was old--it was the very same ring i had drawn off my wife's finger the day before; it had only been burnished afresh by a skilled jeweler, and showed no more marks of wear than if it had been bought that morning. the great bell of the cathedral boomed out eleven, and as the last stroke swung from the tower, the chapel doors were flung more widely open: then came the gentle rustle of trailing robes, and turning, i beheld my wife. she approached, leaning lightly on the arm of the old chevalier mancini, who, true to his creeds of gallantry, had accepted with alacrity the post of paternal protector to the bride on this occasion; and i could not well wonder at the universal admiration that broke in suppressed murmurs from all assembled, as this most fair masterpiece of the devil's creation paced slowly and gracefully up the aisle. she wore a dress of clinging white velvet made with the greatest simplicity--a lace veil, priceless in value and fine as gossamer, draped her from head to foot--the jewels i had given her flashed about her like scintillating points of light, in her hair, at her waist, on her breast and uncovered arms. being as she deemed herself, a widow, she had no bride-maids; her train was held up by a handsome boy clad in the purple and gold costume of a sixteenth century page--he was the youngest son of the duke di marina. two tiny girls of five and six years of age went before, strewing white roses and lilies, and stepping daintily backward as though in attendance on a queen; they looked like two fairies who had slipped out of a midnight dream, in their little loose gowns of gold-colored plush, with wreaths of meadow daffodils on their tumbled curly hair. they had been well trained by nina herself, for on arrival at the altar they stood demurely, one on each side of her, the pretty page occupying his place behind, and still holding up the end of the velvet train with a charming air of hauteur and self-complacency. the whole cortege was a picture in its way, as nina had meant it to be: she was fond of artistic effects. she smiled languishingly upon me as she reached the altar, and sunk on her knees beside me in prayer. the music swelled forth with redoubled grandeur, the priests and acolytes appeared, the marriage service commenced. as i placed the ring on the book i glanced furtively at the bride; her fair head was bent demurely--she seemed absorbed in holy meditations. the priest having performed the ceremony of sprinkling it with holy water, i took it back, and set it for the second time on my wife's soft white little hand--set it in accordance with the catholic ritual, first on the thumb, then on the second finger, then on the third, and lastly on the fourth, where i left it in its old place, wondering as i did so, and murmured, "in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, amen!" whether she recognized it as the one she had worn so long! but it was evident she did not; her calm was unbroken by even so much as a start or tremor; she had the self-possession of a perfectly satisfied, beautiful, vain, and utterly heartless woman. the actual ceremony of marriage was soon over; then followed the mass, in which we, the newly-wedded pair, were compelled, in submission to the rule of the church, to receive the sacrament. i shuddered as the venerable priest gave me the sacred host. what had i to do with the inward purity and peace this memento of christ is supposed to leave in our souls? methought the crucified image in the chapel regarded me afresh with those pained eyes, and said, "even so dost thou seal thine own damnation!" yet she, the true murderess, the arch liar, received the sacrament with the face of a rapt angel--the very priest himself seemed touched by those upraised, candid, glorious eyes, the sweet lips so reverently parted, the absolute, reliable peace that rested on that white brow, like an aureole round the head of a saint! "if _i_ am damned, then is she thrice damned!" i said to myself, recklessly. "i dare say hell is wide enough for us to live apart when we get there." thus i consoled my conscience, and turned resolutely away from the painted appealing faces on the wall--the faces that in their various expressions of sorrow, resignation, pain, and death seemed now to be all pervaded by another look, that of astonishment--astonishment, so i fancied, that such a man as i, and such a woman as she, should be found in the width of the whole world, and should be permitted to kneel at god's altar without being struck dead for their blasphemy! ah, good saints, well may you be astonished! had you lived in our day you must have endured worse martyrdoms than the boiling oil or the wrenching rack! what you suffered was the mere physical pain of torn muscles and scorching flesh, pain that at its utmost could not last long; but your souls were clothed with majesty and power, and were glorious in the light of love, faith, hope, and charity with all men. we have reversed the position you occupied! we have partly learned, and are still learning, how to take care of our dearly beloved bodies, how to nourish and clothe them and guard them from cold and disease; but our souls, good saints, the souls that with you were everything--these we smirch, burn, and rack, torture and destroy--these we stamp upon till we crush out god's image therefrom--these we spit and jeer at, crucify and drown! there is the difference between you, the strong and wise of a fruitful olden time, and we, the miserable, puny weaklings of a sterile modern age. had you, sweet st. dorothy, or fair child-saint agnes, lived in this day, you would have felt something sharper than the executioner's sword; for being pure, you would have been dubbed the worst of women--being prayerful, you would have been called hypocrites--being faithful, you would have been suspected of all vileness--being loving, you would have been mocked at more bitterly than the soldiers of pontius pilate mocked christ; but you would have been free--free to indulge your own opinions, for ours is the age of liberty. yet how much better for you to have died than have lived till now! absorbed in strange, half-morose, half-speculative fancies, i scarcely heard the close of the solemn service. i was roused by a delicate touch from my wife, and i woke, as it were, with a start, to hear the sonorous, crashing chords of the wedding-march in "lohengrin" thundering through the air. all was over: my wife was mine indeed--mine most thoroughly--mine by the exceptionally close-tied knot of a double marriage--mine to do as i would with "till death should us part." how long, i gravely mused, how long before death could come to do us this great service? and straightway i began counting, counting certain spaces of time that must elapse before--i was still absorbed in this mental arithmetic, even while i mechanically offered my arm to my wife as we entered the vestry to sign our names in the marriage register. so occupied was i in my calculations that i nearly caught myself murmuring certain numbers aloud. i checked this, and recalling my thoughts by a strong effort, i strove to appear interested and delighted, as i walked down the aisle with my beautiful bride, through the ranks of admiring and eager spectators. on reaching the outer doors of the chapel several flower-girls emptied their full and fragrant baskets at our feet; and in return, i bade one of my servants distribute a bag of coins i had brought for the purpose, knowing from former experience that it would be needed. to tread across such a heap of flowers required some care, many of the blossoms clinging to nina's velvet train--we therefore moved forward slowly. just as we had almost reached the carriage, a young girl, with large laughing eyes set like flashing jewels in her soft oval face, threw down in my path a cluster of red roses. a sudden fury of impotent passion possessed me, and i crushed my heel instantly and savagely upon the crimson blossoms, stamping upon them again and again so violently that my wife raised her delicate eyebrows in amazement, and the pressing people who stood round us, shrugged their shoulders, and gazed at one another with looks of utter bewilderment--while the girl who had thrown them shrunk back in terror, her face paling as she murmured, "santissima madonna! mi fa paura!" i bit my lip with vexation, inwardly cursing the weakness of my own behavior. i laughed lightly in answer to nina's unspoken, half-alarmed inquiry. "it is nothing--a mere fancy of mine. i hate red roses! they look to me like human blood in flower!" she shuddered slightly. "what a horrible idea! how can you think of such a thing?" i made no response, but assisted her into the carriage with elaborate care and courtesy; then entering it myself, we drove together back to the hotel, where the wedding breakfast awaited us. this is always a feast of general uneasiness and embarrassment everywhere, even in the sunny, pleasure-loving south; every one is glad when it is over, and when the flowery, unmeaning speeches and exaggerated compliments are brought to a fitting and happy conclusion. among my assembled guests, all of whom belonged to the best and most distinguished families in naples, there was a pervading atmosphere of undoubted chilliness: the women were dull, being rendered jealous of the bride's beauty and the richness of her white velvets and jewels; the men were constrained, and could scarcely force themselves into even the appearance of cordiality--they evidently thought that, with such wealth as mine, i would have done much better to remain a bachelor. in truth, italians, and especially neapolitans, are by no means enthusiastic concerning the supposititious joys of marriage. they are apt to shake their heads, and to look upon it as a misfortune rather than a blessing. "l'altare e la tomba dell' amore," is a very common saying with us, and very commonly believed. it was a relief to us all when we rose from the splendidly appointed table, and separated for a few hours. we were to meet again at the ball, which was fixed to commence at nine o'clock in the evening. the cream of the event was to be tasted then--the final toasting of the bride was to take place then--then there would be music, mirth and dancing, and all the splendor of almost royal revelry. i escorted my wife with formal courtesy to a splendid apartment which had been prepared for her, for she had, as she told me, many things to do--as, for instance, to take off her bridal robes, to study every detail of her wondrous ball costume for the night, and to superintend her maid in the packing of her trunks for the next day's journey. the next day! i smiled grimly--i wondered how she would enjoy her trip! then i kissed her hand with the most profound respect and left her to repose--to refresh and prepare herself for the brilliant festivity of the evening. our marriage customs are not as coarse as those of some countries; a bridegroom in italy thinks it scarcely decent to persecute his bride with either his presence or his caresses as soon as the church has made her his. on the contrary, if ardent, he restrains his ardor--he forbears to intrude, he strives to keep up the illusion, the rose-colored light, or rather mist, of love as long as possible, and he has a wise, instinctive dread of becoming overfamiliar; well knowing that nothing kills romance so swiftly and surely as the bare blunt prose of close and constant proximity. and i, like other gentlemen of my rank and class, gave my twice-wedded wife her liberty--the last hours of liberty she would ever know. i left her to busy herself with the trifles she best loved--trifles of dress and personal adornment, for which many women barter away their soul's peace and honor, and divest themselves of the last shred of right and honest principle merely to outshine others of their own sex, and sow broadcast heart-burnings, petty envies, mean hatreds and contemptible spites, where, if they did but choose, there might be a widely different harvest. it is easy to understand the feelings of marie stuart when she arrayed herself in her best garments for her execution: it was simply the heroism of supreme vanity, the desire to fascinate if possible the very headsman. one can understand any beautiful woman being as brave as she. harder than death itself would it have seemed to her had she been compelled to appear on the scaffold looking hideous. she was resolved to make the most of her charms so long as life lasted. i thought of that sweet-lipped, luscious-smiling queen as i parted from my wife for a few brief hours: royal and deeply injured lady though she was, she merited her fate, for she was treacherous--there can be no doubt of that. yet most people reading her her story pity her--i know not why. it is strange that so much of the world's sympathy is wasted on false women! i strolled into one of the broad loggie of the hotel, from whence i could see a portion of the piazza del popolo, and lighting a cigar, i leisurely watched the frolics of the crowd. the customary fooling proper to the day was going on, and no detail of it seemed to pall on the good-natured, easily amused folks who must have seen it all so often before. much laughter was being excited by the remarks of a vender of quack medicines, who was talking with extreme volubility to a number of gayly dressed girls and fishermen. i could not distinguish his words, but i judged he was selling the "elixir of love," from his absurd amatory gestures--an elixir compounded, no doubt, of a little harmless eau sucre. flags tossed on the breeze, trumpets brayed, drums beat; improvisatores twanged their guitars and mandolins loudly to attract attention, and failing in their efforts, swore at each other with the utmost joviality and heartiness; flower-girls and lemonade-sellers made the air ring with their conflicting cries: now and then a shower of chalky confetti flew out from adjacent windows, dusting with white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely covered their halting, withered limbs. it was a scene to bewilder the brain and dazzle the eyes, and i was just turning away from it out of sheer fatigue, when a sudden cessation of movement in the swaying, whirling crowd, and a slight hush, caused me to look out once more. i perceived the cause of the momentary stillness--a funeral cortege appeared, moving at a slow and solemn pace; as it passed across the square, heads were uncovered, and women crossed themselves devoutly. like a black shadowy snake it coiled through the mass of shifting color and brilliance--another moment, and it was gone. the depressing effect of its appearance was soon effaced--the merry crowds resumed their thousand and one freaks of folly, their shrieking, laughing and dancing, and all was as before. why not? the dead are soon forgotten; none knew that better than i! leaning my arms lazily on the edge of the balcony, i finished smoking my cigar. that glimpse of death in the midst of life had filled me with a certain satisfaction. strangely enough, my thoughts began to busy themselves with the old modes of torture that used to be legal, and that, after all, were not so unjust when practiced upon persons professedly vile. for instance, the iron coffin of lissa--that ingeniously contrived box in which the criminal was bound fast hand and foot, and then was forced to watch the huge lid descending slowly, slowly, slowly, half an inch at a time, till at last its ponderous weight crushed into a flat and mangled mass the writhing wretch within, who had for long agonized hours watched death steadily approaching. suppose that _i_ had such a coffin now! i stopped my train of reflection with a slight shudder. no, no; she whom i sought to punish was so lovely, such a softly colored, witching, gracious body, though tenanted by a wicked soul--she should keep her beauty! i would not destroy that--i would be satisfied with my plan as already devised. i threw away the end of my smoked-out cigar and entered my own rooms. calling vincenzo, who was now resigned and even eager to go to avellino, i gave him his final instructions, and placed in his charge the iron cash-box, which, unknown to him, contained , francs in notes and gold. this was the last good action i could do: it was a sufficient sum to set him up as a well-to-do farmer and fruit-grower in avellino with lilla and her little dowry combined. he also carried a sealed letter to signora monti, which i told him she was not to open till a week had elapsed; this letter explained the contents of the box and my wishes concerning it; it also asked the good woman to send to the villa romani for assunta and her helpless charge, poor old paralyzed giacomo, and to tend the latter as well as she could till his death, which i knew could not be far off. i had thought of everything as far as possible, and i could already foresee what a happy, peaceful home there would be in the little mountain town guarded by the monte vergine. lilla and vincenzo would wed, i knew; signora monti and assunta would console each other with their past memories and in the tending of lilla's children; for some little time, perhaps, they would talk of me and wonder sorrowfully where i had gone; then gradually they would forget me, even as i desired to be forgotten. yes; i had done all i could for those who had never wronged me. i had acquitted myself of my debt to vincenzo for his affection and fidelity; the rest of my way was clear. i had no more to do save the one thing, the one deed which had clamored so long for accomplishment. revenge, like a beckoning ghost, had led me on step by step for many weary days and months, which to me had seemed cycles of suffering; but now it paused--it faced me--and turning its blood-red eyes upon my soul said, "strike!" chapter xxxv. the ball opened brilliantly. the rooms were magnificently decorated, and the soft luster of a thousand lamps shone on a scene of splendor almost befitting the court of a king. some of the stateliest nobles in all italy were present, their breasts glittering with jeweled orders and ribbons of honor; some of the loveliest women to be seen anywhere in the world flitted across the polished floors, like poets' dreams of the gliding sylphs that haunt rivers and fountains by moonlight. but fairest where all were fair, peerless in the exuberance of her triumphant vanity, and in the absolute faultlessness of her delicate charms, was my wife--the bride of the day, the heroine of the night. never had she looked so surpassingly beautiful, and i, even i, felt my pulse beat quicker, and the blood course more hotly through my veins, as i beheld her, radiant, victorious, and smiling--a veritable queen of the fairies, as dainty as a drop of dew, as piercing to the eye as a flash of light. her dress was some wonderful mingling of misty lace, with the sheen of satin and glimmering showers of pearl; diamonds glittered on her bodice like sunlight on white foam; the brigand's jewels flashed gloriously on her round white throat and in her tiny shell-like ears, while the masses of her gold hair were coiled to the top of her small head and there caught by a priceless circlet of rose-brilliants--brilliants that i well remembered--they had belonged to my mother. yet more lustrous than the light of the gems she wore was the deep, ardent glory of her eyes, dark as night and luminous as stars; more delicate than the filmy robes that draped her was the pure, pearl-like whiteness of her neck, which was just sufficiently displayed to be graceful without suggesting immodesty. for italian women do not uncover their bosoms for the casual inspection of strangers, as is the custom of their english and german sisters; they know well enough that any lady venturing to wear a decollete dress would find it impossible to obtain admittance to a court ball at the palazzo quirinale. she would be looked upon as one of a questionable class, and no matter how high her rank and station, would run the risk of ejection from the doors, as on one occasion did unfortunately happen to an english peeress, who, ignorant of italian customs, went to an evening reception in rome arrayed in a very low bodice with straps instead of sleeves. her remonstrances were vain; she was politely but firmly refused admittance, though told she might gain her point by changing her costume, which i believe she wisely did. some of the grandes dames present at the ball that night wore dresses the like of which are seldom or never seen out of italy--robes sown with jewels, and thick with wondrous embroidery, such as have been handed down from generation to generation through hundreds of years. as an example of this, the duchess of marina's cloth of gold train, stitched with small rubies and seed-pearls, had formerly belonged to the family of lorenzo de medici. such garments as these, when they are part of the property of a great house, are worn only on particular occasions, perhaps once in a year; and then they are laid carefully by and sedulously protected from dust and moths and damp, receiving as much attention as the priceless pictures and books of a famous historical mansion. nothing ever designed by any great modern tailor or milliner can hope to compete with the magnificent workmanship and durable material of the festa dresses that are locked preciously away in the old oaken coffers of the greatest italian families--dresses that are beyond valuation, because of the romances and tragedies attached to them, and which, when worn, make all the costliest fripperies of to-day look flimsy and paltry beside them, like the attempts of a servant to dress as tastefully as her mistress. such glitter of gold and silver, such scintillations from the burning eyes of jewels, such cloud-like wreaths of floating laces, such subtle odors of rare and exquisite perfume, all things that most keenly prick and stimulate the senses were round me in fullest force this night--this one dazzling, supreme and terrible night, that was destined to burn into my brain like a seal of scorching fire. yes; till i die, that night will remain with me as though it were a breathing, sentient thing; and after death, who knows whether it may not uplift itself in some tangible, awful shape, and confront me with its flashing mock-luster, and the black heart of its true meaning in its menacing eyes, to take its drear place by the side of my abandoned soul through all eternity! i remember now how i shivered and started out of the bitter reverie into which i had fallen at the sound of my wife's low, laughing voice. "you must dance, cesare," she said, with a mischievous smile. "you are forgetting your duties. you should open the ball with me!" i rose at once mechanically. "what dance is it?" i asked, forcing a smile. "i fear you will find me but a clumsy partner." she pouted. "oh, surely not! you are not going to disgrace me--you really must try and dance properly just this once. it will look so stupid if you make any mistake. the band was going to play a quadrille; i would not have it, and told them to strike up the hungarian waltz instead. but i assure you i shall never forgive you if you waltz badly--nothing looks so awkward and absurd." i made no answer, but placed my arm round her waist and stood ready to begin. i avoided looking at her as much as possible, for it was growing more and more difficult with each moment that passed to hold the mastery over myself. i was consumed between hate and love. yes, love!--of an evil kind, i own, and in which there was no shred of reverence--filled me with a sort of foolish fury, which mingled itself with another and manlier craving, namely, to proclaim her vileness then and there before all her titled and admiring friends, and to leave her shamed in the dust of scorn, despised and abandoned. yet i knew well that were i to speak out--to declare my history and hers before that brilliant crowd--i should be accounted mad, and that for a woman such as she there existed no shame. the swinging measure of the slow hungarian waltz, that most witching of dances, danced perfectly only by those of the warm-blooded southern temperament, now commenced. it was played pianissimo, and stole through the room like the fluttering breath of a soft sea wind. i had always been an excellent waltzer, and my step had fitted in with that of nina as harmoniously as the two notes of a perfect chord. she found it so on this occasion, and glanced up with a look of gratified surprise as i bore her lightly with languorous, dreamlike ease of movement through the glittering ranks of our guests, who watched us admiringly as we circled the room two or three times. then--all present followed our lead, and in a couple of minutes the ball-room was like a moving flower-garden in full bloom, rich with swaying colors and rainbow-like radiance; while the music, growing stronger, and swelling out in marked and even time, echoed forth like the sound of clear-toned bells broken through by the singing of birds. my heart beat furiously, my brain reeled, my senses swam as i felt my wife's warm breath on my cheek; i clasped her waist more closely, i held her little gloved hand more firmly. she felt the double pressure, and, lifting her white eyelids fringed with those long dark lashes that gave such a sleepy witchery to her eyes, her lips parted in a little smile. "at last you love me!" she whispered. "at last, at last," i muttered, scarce knowing what i said. "had i not loved you at first, bellissima, i should not have been to you what i am to-night." a low ripple of laughter was her response. "i knew it," she murmured again, half breathlessly, as i drew her with swifter and more voluptuous motion into the vortex of the dancers. "you tried to be cold, but i knew i could make you love me--yes, love me passionately--and i was right." then with an outburst of triumphant vanity she added, "i believe you would die for me!" i bent over her more closely. my hot quick breath moved the feathery gold of her hair. "i have died for you," i said; "i have killed my old self for your sake." dancing still, encircled by my arms, and gliding along like a sea-nymph on moonlighted foam, she sighed restlessly. "tell me what you mean, amor mio," she asked, in the tenderest tone in the world. ah, god! that tender seductive cadence of her voice, how well i knew it!--how often had it lured away my strength, as the fabled siren's song had been wont to wreck the listening mariner. "i mean that you have changed me, sweetest!" i whispered, in fierce, hurried accents. "i have seemed old--for you to-night i will be young again--for you my chilled slow blood shall again be hot and quick as lava--for you my long-buried past shall rise in all its pristine vigor; for you i will be a lover, such as perhaps no woman ever had or ever will have again!" she heard, and nestled closer to me in the dance. my words pleased her. next to her worship of wealth her delight was to arouse the passions of men. she was very panther-like in her nature--her first tendency was to devour, her next to gambol with any animal she met, though her sleek, swift playfulness might mean death. she was by no means exceptional in this; there are many women like her. as the music of the waltz grew slower and slower, dropping down to a sweet and persuasive conclusion, i led my wife to her fauteuil, and resigned her to the care of a distinguished roman prince who was her next partner. then, unobserved, i slipped out to make inquiries concerning vincenzo. he had gone; one of the waiters at the hotel, a friend of his, had accompanied him and seen him into the train for avellino. he had looked in at the ball-room before leaving, and had watched me stand up to dance with my wife, then "with tears in his eyes"--so said the vivacious little waiter who had just returned from the station--he had started without daring to wish me good-bye. i heard this information of course with an apparent kindly indifference, but in my heart i felt a sudden vacancy, a drear, strange loneliness. with my faithful servant near me i had felt conscious of the presence of a friend, for friend he was in his own humble, unobtrusive fashion; but now i was alone--alone in a loneliness beyond all conceivable comparison--alone to do my work, without prevention or detection. i felt, as it were, isolated from humanity, set apart with my victim on some dim point of time, from which the rest of the world receded, where the searching eye of the creator alone could behold me. only she and i and god--these three were all that existed for me in the universe; between these three must justice be fulfilled. musingly, with downcast eyes, i returned to the ball-room. at the door a young girl faced me--she was the only daughter of a great neapolitan house. dressed in pure white, as all such maidens are, with a crown of snow-drops on her dusky hair, and her dimpled face lighted with laughter, she looked the very embodiment of early spring. she addressed me somewhat timidly, yet with all a child's frankness. "is not this delightful? i feel as if i were in fairy-land! do you know this is my first ball?" i smiled wearily. "ay, truly? and you are happy?" "oh, happiness is not the word--it is ecstasy! how i wish it could last forever! and--is it not strange?--i did not know i was beautiful till to-night." she said this with perfect simplicity, and a pleased smile radiated her fair features. i glanced at her with cold scrutiny. "ah! and some one has told you so." she blushed and laughed a little consciously. "yes; the great prince de majano. and he is too noble to say what is not true, so i must be 'la piu bella donzella,' as he said, must i not?" i touched the snow-drops that she wore in a white cluster at her breast. "look at your flowers, child," i said, earnestly. "see how they begin to droop in this heated air. the poor things! how glad they would feel could they again grow in the cool wet moss of the woodlands, waving their little bells to the wholesome, fresh wind! would they revive now, think you, for your great prince de majano if he told them they were fair? so with your life and heart, little one--pass them through the scorching fire of flattery, and their purity must wither even as these fragile blossoms. and as for beauty--are you more beautiful than she?" and i pointed slightly to my wife, who was at that moment courtesying to her partner in the stately formality of the first quadrille. my young companion looked, and her clear eyes darkened enviously. "ah, no, no! but if i wore such lace and satin and pearls, and had such jewels, i might perhaps be more like her!" i sighed bitterly. the poison had already entered this child's soul. i spoke brusquely. "pray that you may never be like her," i said, with somber sternness, and not heeding her look of astonishment. "you are young--you cannot yet have thrown off religion. well, when you go home to-night, and kneel beside your little bed, made holy by the cross above it and your mother's blessing--pray--pray with all your strength that you may never resemble in the smallest degree that exquisite woman yonder! so may you be spared her fate." i paused, for the girl's eyes were dilated in extreme wonder and fear. i looked at her, and laughed abruptly and harshly. "i forgot," i said; "the lady is my wife--i should have thought of that! i was speaking of--another whom you do not know. pardon me! when i am fatigued my memory wanders. pay no attention to my foolish remarks. enjoy yourself, my child, but do not believe all the pretty speeches of the prince de majano. a rivederci!" and smiling a forced smile i left her, and mingled with the crowd of my guests, greeting one here, another there, jesting lightly, paying unmeaning compliments to the women who expected them, and striving to distract my thoughts with the senseless laughter and foolish chatter of the glittering cluster of society butterflies, all the while desperately counting the tedious minutes, and wondering whether my patience, so long on the rack, would last out its destined time. as i made my way through the brilliant assemblage, luziano salustri, the poet, greeted me with a grave smile. "i have had little time to congratulate you, conte," he said, in those mellifluous accents of his which were like his own improvised music, "but i assure you i do so with all my heart. even in my most fantastic dreams i have never pictured a fairer heroine of a life's romance than the lady who is now the countess oliva." i silently bowed my thanks. "i am of a strange temperament, i suppose," he resumed. "to-night this ravishing scene of beauty and splendor makes me sad at heart, i know not why. it seems too brilliant, too dazzling. i would as soon go home and compose a dirge as anything." i laughed satirically. "why not do it?" i said. "you are not the first person who, being present at a marriage, has, with perverse incongruity, meditated on a funeral!" a wistful look came into his brilliant poetic eyes. "i have thought once or twice," he remarked in a low tone, "of that misguided young man ferrari. a pity, was it not, that the quarrel occurred between you?" "a pity indeed!" i replied, brusquely. then taking him by the arm i turned him round so that he faced my wife, who was standing not far off. "but look at the--the--angel i have married! is she not a fair cause for a dispute even unto death? fy on thee, luziano!--why think of ferrari? he is not the first man who has been killed for the sake of a woman, nor will he be the last!" salustri shrugged his shoulders, and was silent for a minute or two. then he added with his own bright smile: "still, amico, it would have been much better if it had ended in coffee and cognac. myself, i would rather shoot a man with an epigram than a leaden bullet! by the way, do you remember our talking of cain and abel that night?" "perfectly." "i have wondered since," he continued half merrily, half seriously, "whether the real cause of their quarrel has ever been rightly told. i should not be at all surprised if one of these days some savant does not discover a papyrus containing a missing page of holy writ, which will ascribe the reason of the first bloodshed to a love affair. perhaps there were wood nymphs in those days, as we are assured there were giants, and some dainty dryad might have driven the first pair of human brothers to desperation by her charms! what say you?" "it is more than probable," i answered, lightly. "make a poem of it, salustri; people will say you have improved on the bible!" and i left him with a gay gesture to join other groups, and to take my part in the various dances which were now following quickly on one another. the supper was fixed to take place at midnight. at the first opportunity i had, i looked at the time. quarter to eleven!--my heart beat quickly, the blood rushed to my temples and surged noisily in my ears. the hour i had waited for so long and so eagerly had come! at last! at last! * * * * * slowly and with a hesitating step i approached my wife. she was resting after her exertions in the dance, and reclined languidly in a low velvet chair, chatting gayly with that very prince de majano whose honeyed compliments had partly spoiled the budding sweet nature of the youngest girl in the room. apologizing for interrupting the conversation, i lowered my voice to a persuasive tenderness as i addressed her. "cara, sposina mia! permit me to remind you of your promise." what a radiant look she gave me! "i am all impatience to fulfill it! tell me when--and how?" "almost immediately. you know the private passage through which we entered the hotel this morning on our return from church?" "perfectly." "well, meet me there in twenty minutes. we must avoid being observed as we pass out. but," and i touched her delicate dress, "you will wear something warmer than this?" "i have a long sable cloak that will do," she replied, brightly. "we are not going far?" "no, not far." "we shall return in time for supper, of course?" i bent my head. "naturally!" her eyes danced mirthfully. "how romantic it seems! a moonlight stroll with you will be charming! who shall say you are not a sentimental bridegroom? is there a bright moon?" "i believe so." "cosa bellissima!" and she laughed sweetly. "i look forward to the trip! in twenty minutes then i shall be with you at the place you name, cesare; in the meanwhile the marchese gualdro claims me for this mazurka." and she turned with her bewitching grace of manner to the marchese, who at that moment advanced with his courteous bow and fascinating smile, and i watched them as they glided forward together in the first figure of the elegant polish dance, in which all lovely women look their loveliest. then, checking the curse that rose to my lips, i hurried away. up to my own room i rushed with feverish haste, full of impatience to be rid of the disguise i had worn so long. within a few minutes i stood before my mirror, transformed into my old self as nearly as it was possible to be. i could not alter the snowy whiteness of my hair, but a few deft quick strokes of the razor soon divested me of the beard that had given me so elderly an aspect, and nothing remained but the mustache curling slightly up at the corners of the lip, as i had worn it in past days. i threw aside the dark glasses, and my eyes, densely brilliant, and fringed with the long lashes that had always been their distinguishing feature, shone with all the luster of strong and vigorous youth. i straightened myself up to my full height, i doubled my fist and felt it hard as iron; i laughed aloud in the triumphant power of my strong manhood. i thought of the old rag-dealing jew--"you could kill anything easily." ay, so i could!--even without the aid of the straight swift steel of the milanese dagger which i now drew from its sheath and regarded steadfastly, while i carefully felt the edge of the blade from hilt to point. should i take it with me? i hesitated. yes! it might be needed. i slipped it safely and secretly into my vest. and now the proofs--the proofs! i had them all ready to my hand, and gathered them quickly together; first the things that had been buried with me--the gold chain on which hung the locket containing the portraits of my wife and child, the purse and card-case which nina herself had given me, the crucifix the monk had laid on my breast in the coffin. the thought of that coffin moved me to a stern smile--that splintered, damp, and moldering wood must speak for itself by and by. lastly i took the letters sent me by the marquis d'avencourt--the beautiful, passionate love epistles she had written to guido ferrari in rome. now, was that all? i thoroughly searched both my rooms, ransacking every corner. i had destroyed everything that could give the smallest clew to my actions; i left nothing save furniture and small valuables, a respectable present enough in their way, to the landlord of the hotel. i glanced again at myself in the mirror. yes; i was once more fabio romani, in spite of my white hair; no one that had ever known me intimately could doubt my identity. i had changed my evening dress for a rough, every-day suit, and now over this i threw my long almaviva cloak, which draped me from head to foot. i kept its folds well up about my mouth and chin, and pulled on a soft slouched hat, with the brim far down over my eyes. there was nothing unusual in such a costume; it was common enough to many neapolitans who have learned to dread the chill night winds that blow down from the lofty apennines in early spring. thus attired, too, i knew my features would be almost invisible to her more especially as the place of our rendezvous was a long dim entresol lighted only by a single oil-lamp, a passage that led into the garden, one that was only used for private purposes, having nothing to do with the ordinary modes of exit and entrance to and from the hotel. into this hall i now hurried with an eager step; it was deserted; she was not there. impatiently i waited--the minutes seemed hours! sounds of music floated toward me from the distant ball-room--the dreamy, swinging measure of a viennese waltz. i could almost hear the flying feet of the dancers. i was safe from all observation where i stood--the servants were busy preparing the grand marriage supper, and all the inhabitants of the hotel were absorbed in watching the progress of the brilliant and exceptional festivities of the night. would she never come? suppose, after all, she should escape me! i trembled at the idea, then put it from me with a smile at my own folly. no, her punishment was just, and in her case the fates were inflexible. so i thought and felt. i paced up and down feverishly; i could count the thick, heavy throbs of my own heart. how long the moments seemed! would she never come? ah! at last! i caught the sound of a rustling robe and a light step--a breath of delicate fragrance was wafted on the air like the odor of falling orange-blossoms. i turned, and saw her approaching. with swift grace she ran up to me as eagerly as a child, her heavy cloak of rich russian sable falling back from her shoulders and displaying her glittering dress, the dark fur of the hood heightening by contrast the fairness of her lovely flushed face, so that it looked like the face of one of correggio's angels framed in ebony and velvet. she laughed, and her eyes flashed saucily. "did i keep you waiting, caro mio?" she whispered; and standing on tiptoe she kissed the hand with which i held my cloak muffled about me. "how tall you look in that almaviva! i am so sorry i am a little late, but that last waltz was so exquisite i could not resist it; only i wish you had danced it with me." "you honor me by the wish," i said, keeping one arm about her waist and drawing her toward the door that opened into the garden. "tell me, how did you manage to leave the ball-room?" "oh, easily. i slipped away from my partner at the end of the waltz, and told him i should return immediately. then i ran upstairs to my room, got my cloak--and here i am." and she laughed again. she was evidently in the highest spirits. "you are very good to come with me at all, mia bella," i murmured as gently as i could; "it is kind of you to thus humor my fancy. did you see your maid? does she know where you are going?" "she? oh, no, she was not in my room at all. she is a great coquette, you know; i dare say she is amusing herself with the waiters in the kitchen. poor thing! i hope she enjoys it." i breathed freely; we were so far undiscovered. no one had as yet noticed our departure--no one had the least clew to my intentions, i opened the door of the passage noiselessly, and we passed out. wrapping my wife's cloak more closely about her with much apparent tenderness, i led her quickly across the garden. there was no one in sight--we were entirely unobserved. on reaching the exterior gate of the inclosure i left her for a moment, while i summoned a carriage, a common fiacre. she expressed some surprise on seeing the vehicle. "i thought we were not going far?" she said. i reassured her on this point, telling her that i only desired to spare her all possible fatigue. satisfied with this explanation, she suffered me to assist her into the carriage. i followed her, and calling to the driver, "a la villa guarda," we rattled away over the rough uneven stones of the back streets of the city. "la villa guarda!" exclaimed nina. "where is that?" "it is an old house," i replied, "situated near the place i spoke to you of, where the jewels are." "oh!" and apparently contented, she nestled back in the carriage, permitting her head to rest lightly on my shoulder. i drew her closer to me, my heart beating with a fierce, terrible joy. "mine--mine at last!" i whispered in her ear. "mine forever!" she turned her face upward and smiled victoriously; her cool fragrant lips met my burning, eager ones in a close, passionate kiss. yes, i kissed her now--why should i not? she was as much mine as any purchased slave, and merited less respect than a sultan's occasional female toy. and as she chose to caress me, i let her do so: i allowed her to think me utterly vanquished by the battery of her charms. yet whenever i caught an occasional glimpse of her face as we drove along in the semi-darkness, i could not help wondering at the supreme vanity of the woman! her self-satisfaction was so complete, and, considering her approaching fate, so tragically absurd! she was entirely delighted with herself, her dress, and her conquest--as she thought--of me. who could measure the height of the dazzling visions she indulged in; who could fathom the depths of her utter selfishness! seeing one like her, beautiful, wealthy, and above all--society knows i speak the truth--well dressed, for by the latter virtue alone is a woman allowed any precedence nowadays--would not all the less fortunate and lovely of her sex feel somewhat envious? ah, yes; they would and they do; but believe me, the selfish feminine thing, whose only sincere worship is offered at the shrines of fashion and folly, is of all creatures the one whose life is to be despised and never desired, and whose death makes no blank even in the circles of her so-called best friends. i knew well enough that there was not a soul in naples who was really attached to my wife--not one who would miss her, no, not even a servant--though she, in her superb self-conceit, imagined herself to be the adored beauty of the city. those who had indeed loved her she had despised, neglected, and betrayed. musingly i looked down upon her as she rested back in the carriage, encircled by my arm, while now and then a little sigh of absolute delight in herself broke from her lips--but we spoke scarcely at all. hate has almost as little to say as love! the night was persistently stormy, though no rain fell--the gale had increased in strength, and the white moon only occasionally glared out from the masses of white and gray cloud that rushed like flying armies across the sky, and her fitful light shone dimly, as though she were a spectral torch glimmering through a forest of shadow. now and again bursts of music, or the blare of discordant trumpets, reached our ears from the more distant thoroughfares where the people were still celebrating the feast of giovedi grasso, or the tinkle of passing mandolins chimed in with the rolling wheels of our carriage; but in a few moments we were out of reach of even such sounds as these. we passed the outer suburbs of the city and were soon on the open road. the man i had hired drove fast; he knew nothing of us, he was probably anxious to get back quickly to the crowded squares and illuminated quarters where the principal merriment of the evening was going on, and no doubt thought i showed but a poor taste in requiring to be driven away, even for a short distance, out of naples on such a night of feasting and folly. he stopped at last; the castellated turrets of the villa i had named were faintly visible among the trees; he jumped down from his box and came to us. "shall i drive up to the house?" he asked, looking as though he would rather be spared this trouble. "no," i answered, indifferently, "you need not. the distance is short, we will walk." and i stepped out into the road and paid him his money. "you seem anxious to get back to the city, my friend," i said, half jocosely. "si, davvero!" he replied, with decision, "i hope to get many a good fare from the count oliva's marriage-ball to-night." "ah! he is a rich fellow, that count," i said, as i assisted my wife to alight, keeping her cloak well muffled round her so that this common fellow should not perceive the glitter of her costly costume; "i wish i were he!" the man grinned and nodded emphatically. he had no suspicion of my identity. he took me, in all probability, for one of those "gay gallants" so common in naples, who, on finding at some public entertainment a "dama" to their taste, hurry her off, carefully cloaked and hooded, to a mysterious nook known only to themselves, where they can complete the romance of the evening entirely to their own satisfaction. bidding me a lively buona notte, he sprung on his box again, jerked his horse's head violently round with a volley of oaths, and drove away at a rattling pace. nina, standing on the road beside me, looked after him with a bewildered air. "could he not have waited to take us back?" she asked. "no," i answered, brusquely; "we shall return by a different route. come." and passing my arm round her, i led her onward. she shivered slightly, and there was a sound of querulous complaint in her voice as she said: "have we to go much further, cesare?" "three minutes, walk will bring us to our destination," i replied, briefly, adding in a softer tone, "are you cold?" "a little," and she gathered her sables more closely about her and pressed nearer to my side. the capricious moon here suddenly leaped forth like the pale ghost of a frenzied dancer, standing tiptoe on the edge of a precipitous chasm of black clouds. her rays, pallidly green and cold, fell full on the dreary stretch of land before us, touching up with luminous distinctness those white mysterious milestones of the campo santo which mark where the journeys of men, women, and children began and where they left off, but never explain in what new direction they are now traveling. my wife saw and stopped, trembling violently. "what place is this?" she asked, nervously. in all her life she had never visited a cemetery--she had too great a horror of death. "it is where i keep all my treasures," i answered, and my voice sounded strange and harsh in my own ears, while i tightened my grasp of her full, warm waist. "come with me, my beloved!" and in spite of my efforts, my tone was one of bitter mockery. "with me you need have no fear! come." and i led her on, too powerless to resist my force, too startled to speak--on, on, on, over the rank dewy grass and unmarked ancient graves--on, till the low frowning gate of the house of my dead ancestors faced me--on, on, on, with the strength of ten devils in my arm as i held her--on, on, on, to her just doom! chapter xxxvi. the moon had retreated behind a dense wall of cloud, and the landscape was enveloped in semi-darkness. reaching the door of the vault, i unlocked it; it opened instantly, and fell back with a sudden clang. she whom i held fast with my iron grip shrunk back, and strove to release herself from my grasp. "where are you going?" she demanded, in a faint tone. "i--i am afraid!" "of what?"--i asked, endeavoring to control the passionate vibrations of my voice and to speak unconcernedly. "because it is dark? we shall have a light directly--you will see--you--you," and to my own surprise i broke into a loud and violent laugh. "you have no cause to be frightened! come!" and i lifted her swiftly and easily over the stone step of the entrance and set her safely inside. inside at last, thank heaven! i shut the great gate upon us both and locked it! again that strange undesired laugh broke from my lips involuntarily, and the echoes of the charnel house responded to it with unearthly and ghastly distinctness. nina clung to me in the dense gloom. "why do you laugh like that?" she cried, loudly and impatiently. "it sounds horrible." i checked myself by a strong effort. "does it? i am sorry--very sorry! i laugh because--because, cara mia, our moonlight ramble is so pleasant--and amusing--is it not?" and i caught her to my heart and kissed her roughly. "now," i whispered, "i will carry you--the steps are too rough for your little feet--dear, dainty, white little feet! i will carry you, you armful of sweetness!--yes, carry you safely down into the fairy grotto where the jewels are--such jewels, and all for you--my love, my wife!" and i raised her from the ground as though she were a young, frail child. whether she tried to resist me or not i cannot now remember. i bore her down the moldering stairway, setting my foot on each crooked step with the firmness of one long familiar with the place. but my brain reeled--rings of red fire circled in the darkness before my eyes; every artery in my body seemed strained to bursting; the pent-up agony and fury of my soul were such that i thought i should go mad or drop down dead ere i gained the end of my long desire. as i descended i felt her clinging to me; her hands were cold and clammy on my neck, as though she were chilled to the blood with terror. at last i reached the lowest step--i touched the floor of the vault. i set my precious burden down. releasing my clasp of her, i remained for a moment inactive, breathing heavily. she caught my arm--she spoke in a hoarse whisper. "what place is this? where is the light you spoke of?" i made no answer. i moved from her side, and taking matches from my pocket, i lighted up six large candles which i had fixed in various corners of the vault the night previously. dazzled by the glare after the intense darkness, she did not at once perceive the nature of the place in which she stood. i watched her, myself still wrapped in the heavy cloak and hat that so effectually disguised my features. what a sight she was in that abode of corruption! lovely, delicate, and full of life, with the shine of her diamonds gleaming from under the folds of rich fur that shrouded her, and the dark hood falling back as though to display the sparkling wonder of her gold hair. suddenly, and with a violent shock, she realized the gloom of her surroundings--the yellow flare of the waxen torches showed her the stone niches, the tattered palls, the decaying trophies of armor, the drear shapes of worm-eaten coffins, and with a shriek of horror she rushed to me where i stood, as immovable as a statue clad in coat of mail, and throwing her arms about me clung to me in a frenzy of fear. "take me away, take me away!" she moaned, hiding her face against my breast. "'tis a vault--oh, santissima madonna!--a place for the dead! quick--quick! take me out to the air--let us go home--home--" she broke off abruptly, her alarm increasing at my utter silence. she gazed up at me with wild wet eyes. "cesare! cesare! speak! what ails you? why have you brought me here? touch me--kiss me! say something--anything--only speak!" and her bosom heaved convulsively; she sobbed with terror. i put her from me with a firm hand. i spoke in measured accents, tinged with some contempt. "hush, i pray you! this is no place for an hysterical scena. consider where you are! you have guessed aright--this is a vault--your own mausoleum, fair lady!--if i mistake not--the burial-place of the romani family." at these words her sobs ceased, as though they had been frozen in her throat; she stared at me in speechless fear and wonder. "here," i went on with methodical deliberation, "here lie all the great ancestors of your husband's family, heroes and martyrs in their day. here will your own fair flesh molder. here," and my voice grew deeper and more resolute, "here, six months ago, your husband himself, fabio romani, was buried." she uttered no sound, but gazed at me like some beautiful pagan goddess turned to stone by the furies. having spoken thus far i was silent, watching the effect of what i had said, for i sought to torture the very nerves of her base soul. at last her dry lips parted--her voice was hoarse and indistinct. "you must be mad!" she said, with smothered anger and horror in her tone. then seeing me still immovable, she advanced and caught my hand half commandingly, half coaxingly. i did not resist her. "come," she implored, "come away at once!" and she glanced about her with a shudder. "let us leave this horrible place; as for the jewels, if you keep them here, they may stay here; i would not wear them for the world! come." i interrupted her, holding her hand in a fierce grasp; i turned her abruptly toward a dark object lying on the ground near us--my own coffin broken asunder. i drew her close to it. "look!" i said in a thrilling whisper, "what is this? examine it well: it is a coffin of flimsiest wood, a cholera coffin! what says this painted inscription? nay, do not start! it bears your husband's name; he was buried in it. then how comes it to be open? where is he?" i felt her sway under me; a new and overwhelming terror had taken instant possession of her, her limbs refused to support her, she sunk on her knees. mechanically and feebly she repeated the words after me-- "where is he? where is he?" "ay!" and my voice rang out through the hollow vault, its passion restrained no more. "where is he?--the poor fool, the miserable, credulous dupe, whose treacherous wife played the courtesan under his very roof, while he loved and blindly trusted her? where is he? here, here!" and i seized her hands and forced her up from her kneeling posture. "i promised you should see me as i am! i swore to grow young to-night for your sake!--now i keep my word! look at me, nina!--look at me, my twice-wedded wife!--look at me!--do you not know your husband?" and throwing my dark habiliments from me, i stood before her undisguised! as though some defacing disease had swept over her at my words and look, so her beauty suddenly vanished. her face became drawn and pinched and almost old--her lips turned blue, her eyes grew glazed, and strained themselves from their sockets to stare at me; her very hands looked thin and ghost-like as she raised them upward with a frantic appealing gesture; there was a sort of gasping rattle in her throat as she drew herself away from me with a convulsive gesture of aversion, and crouched on the floor as though she sought to sink through it and thus avoid my gaze. "oh, no, no, no!" she moaned, wildly, "not fabio!--no, it cannot be--fabio is dead--dead! and you!--you are mad!--this is some cruel jest of yours--some trick to frighten me!" she broke off breathlessly, and her large, terrified eyes wandered to mine again with a reluctant and awful wonder. she attempted to arise from her crouching position; i approached, and assisted her to do so with ceremonious politeness. she trembled violently at my touch, and slowly staggering to her feet, she pushed back her hair from her forehead and regarded me fixedly with a searching, anguished look, first of doubt, then of dread, and lastly of convinced and hopeless certainty, for she suddenly covered her eyes with her hands as though to shut out some repulsive object and broke into a low wailing sound like that of one in bitter physical pain. i laughed scornfully. "well, do you know me at last?" i cried. "'tis true i have somewhat altered. this hair of mine was black, if you remember--it is white enough now, blanched by the horrors of a living death such as you cannot imagine, but which," and i spoke more slowly and impressively, "you may possibly experience ere long. yet in spite of this change i think you know me! that is well. i am glad your memory serves you thus far!" a low sound that was half a sob and half a cry broke from her. "oh, no, no!" she muttered, again, incoherently--"it cannot be! it must be false--it is some vile plot--it cannot be true! true! oh, heaven! it would be too cruel, too horrible!" i strode up to her. i drew her hands away from her eyes and grasped them tightly in my own. "hear me!" i said, in clear, decisive tones. "i have kept silence, god knows, with a long patience, but now--now i can speak. yes! you thought me dead--you had every reason to think so, you had every proof to believe so. how happy my supposed death made you! what a relief it was to you!--what an obstruction removed from your path! but--i was buried alive!" she uttered a faint shriek of terror, and looking wildly about her, strove to wrench her hands from my clasp. i held them more closely. "ay, think of it, wife of mine!--you to whom luxury has been second nature, think of this poor body straightened in a helpless swoon, packed and pressed into yonder coffin and nailed up fast, shut out from the blessed light and air, as one would have thought, forever! who could have dreamed that life still lingered in me--life still strong enough to split asunder the boards that inclosed me, and leave them shattered, as you see them now!" she shuddered and glanced with aversion toward the broken coffin, and again tried to loosen her hands from mine. she looked at me with a burning anger in her face. "let me go!" she panted. "madman! liar!--let me go!" i released her instantly and stood erect, regarding her fixedly. "i am no madman," i said, composedly; "and you know as well as i do that i speak the truth. when i escaped from that coffin i found myself a prisoner in this very vault--this house of my perished ancestry, where, if old legends could be believed, the very bones that are stored up here would start and recoil from your presence as pollution to the dead, whose creed was honor." the sound of her sobbing breath ceased suddenly; she fixed her eyes on mine; they glittered defiantly. "for one long awful night," i resumed, "i suffered here. i might have starved--or perished of thirst. i thought no agony could surpass what i endured! but i was mistaken: there was a sharper torment in store for me. i discovered a way of escape; with grateful tears i thanked god for my rescue, for liberty, for life! oh, what a fool was i! how could i dream that my death was so desired!--how could i know that i had better far have died than have returned to such a home!" her lips moved, but she uttered no word; she shivered as though with intense cold. i drew nearer to her. "perhaps you doubt my story?" she made no answer. a rapid impulse of fury possessed me. "speak!" i cried, fiercely, "or by the god above us i will make you! speak!" and i drew the dagger i carried from my vest. "speak the truth for once--'twill be difficult to you who love lies--but this time i must be answered! tell me, do you know me? do you or do you not believe that i am indeed your husband--your living husband, fabio romani?" she gasped for breath. the sight of my infuriated figure--the glitter of the naked steel before her eyes--the suddenness of my action, the horror of her position, all terrified her into speech. she flung herself down before me in an attitude of abject entreaty. she found her voice at last. "mercy! mercy!" she cried. "oh, god! you will not kill me? anything--anything but death; i am too young to die! yes, yes; i know you are fabio--fabio, my husband, fabio, whom i thought dead--fabio--oh!" and she sobbed convulsively. "you said you loved me to-day--when you married me! why did you marry me? i was your wife already--why--why? oh, horrible, horrible! i see--i understand it all now! but do not, do not kill me, fabio--i am afraid to die!" and she hid her face at my feet and groveled there. as quickly calmed as i had been suddenly furious, i put back the dagger. i smoothed my voice and spoke with mocking courtesy. "pray do not alarm yourself," i said, coolly. "i have not the slightest intention of killing you! i am no vulgar murderer, yielding to mere brute instincts. you forget: a neapolitan has hot passions, but he also has finesse, especially in matters of vengeance. i brought you here to tell you of my existence, and to confront you with the proofs of it. rise, i beg of you, we have plenty of time to talk; with a little patience i shall make things clear to you--rise!" she obeyed me, lifting herself up reluctantly with a long, shuddering sigh. as she stood upright i laughed contemptuously. "what! no love words for me?" i cried, "not one kiss, not one smile, not one word of welcome? you say you know me--well!--are you not glad to see your husband?--you, who were such an inconsolable widow?" a strange quiver passed over her face--she wrung her hands together hard, but she said no word. "listen!" i said, "there is more to tell. when i broke loose from the grasp of death, when i came home--i found my vacant post already occupied. i arrived in time to witness a very pretty pastoral play. the scene was the ilex avenue--the actors, you, my wife, and guido, my friend!" she raised her head and uttered a low exclamation of fear. i advanced a step or two and spoke more rapidly. "you hear? there was moonlight, and the song of nightingales--yes; the stage effects were perfect! _i_ watched the progress of the comedy--with what emotions you may imagine. i learned much that was news to me. i became aware that for a lady of your large heart and sensitive feelings one husband was not sufficient"--here i laid my hand on her shoulder and gazed into her face, while her eyes, dilated with terror, stared hopelessly up to mine--"and that within three little months of your marriage to me you provided yourself with another. nay, no denial can serve you! guido ferrari was husband to you in all things but the name. i mastered the situation--i rose to the emergency. trick for trick, comedy for comedy! you know the rest. as the count oliva you can not deny that i acted well! for the second time i courted you, but not half so eagerly as you courted me! for the second time i have married you! who shall deny that you are most thoroughly mine--mine, body and soul, till death do us part!" and i loosened my grasp of her: she writhed from me like some glittering wounded serpent. the tears had dried on her cheeks, her features were rigid and wax-like as the features of a corpse; only her dark eyes shone, and these seemed preternaturally large, and gleamed with an evil luster. i moved a little away, and turning my own coffin on its side, i sat down upon it as indifferently as though it were an easy-chair in a drawing-room. glancing at her then, i saw a wavering light upon her face. some idea had entered into her mind. she moved gradually from the wall where she leaned, watching me fearfully as she did so. i made no attempt to stir from the seat i occupied. slowly, slowly, still keeping her eyes on me, she glided step by step onward and passed me--then with a sudden rush she reached the stairway and bounded up it with the startled haste of a hunted deer. i smiled to myself. i heard her shaking the iron gateway to and fro with all her feeble strength; she called aloud for help several times. only the sullen echoes of the vault answered her, and the wild whistle of the wind as it surged through the trees of the cemetery. at last she screamed furiously, as a savage cat might scream--the rustle of her silken robes came swiftly sweeping down the steps, and with a spring like that of a young tigress she confronted me, the blood now burning wrathfully in her face, and transforming it back to something of its old beauty. "unlock that door!" she cried, with a furious stamp of her foot. "assassin! traitor! i hate you! i always hated you! unlock the door, i tell you! you dare not disobey me; you have no right to murder me!" i looked at her coldly; the torrent of her words was suddenly checked, something in my expression daunted her; she trembled and shrunk back. "no right!" i said, mockingly. "i differ from you! a man once married has some right over his wife, but a man twice married to the same woman has surely gained a double authority! and as for 'dare not!' there is nothing i 'dare not' do to-night." and with that i rose and approached her. a torrent of passionate indignation boiled in my veins; i seized her two white arms and held her fast. "you talk of murder!" i muttered, fiercely. "you--you who have remorselessly murdered two men! their blood be on your head! for though i live, i am but the moving corpse of the man i was--hope, faith, happiness, peace--all things good and great in me have been slain by you. and as for guido--" she interrupted me with a wild sobbing cry. "he loved me! guido loved me!" "ay, he loved you, oh, devil in the shape of a woman! he loved you! come here, here!" and in a fury i could not restrain i dragged her, almost lifted her along to one corner of the vault, where the light of the torches scarcely illumined the darkness, and there i pointed upward. "above our very heads--to the left of where we stand--the brave strong body of your lover lies, festering slowly in the wet mould, thanks to you!--the fair, gallant beauty of it all marred by the red-mouthed worms--the thick curls of hair combed through by the crawling feet of vile insects--the poor frail heart pierced by a gaping wound--" "you killed him; you--you are to blame," she moaned, restlessly, striving to turn her face away from me. "_i_ killed him? no, no, not i, but you! he died when he learned your treachery--when he knew you were false to him for the sake of wedding a supposed wealthy stranger--my pistol-shot but put him out of torment. you! you were glad of his death--as glad as when you thought of mine! you talk of murder! oh, vilest among women! if i could murder you twenty times over, what then? your sins outweigh all punishment!" and i flung her from me with a gesture of contempt and loathing. this time my words had struck home. she cowered before me in horror--her sables were loosened and scarcely protected her, the richness of her ball costume was fully displayed, and the diamonds on her bosom heaved restlessly up and down as she panted with excitement, rage and fear. "i do not see," she muttered, sullenly, "why you should blame me! i am no worse than other women!" "no worse! no worse!" i cried. "shame, shame upon you that thus outrage your sex! learn for once what men think of unfaithful wives--for may be you are ignorant. the novels you have read in your luxurious, idle hours have perhaps told you that infidelity is no sin--merely a little social error easily condoned, or set right by the divorce court. yes! modern books and modern plays teach you so: in them the world swerves upside down, and vice looks like virtue. but _i_ will tell you what may seem to you a strange and wonderful thing! there is no mean animal, no loathsome object, no horrible deformity of nature so utterly repulsive to a true man as a faithless wife! the cowardly murderer who lies in wait for his victim behind some dark door, and stabs him in the back as he passes by unarmed--he, i say, is more to be pardoned than the woman who takes a husband's name, honor, position, and reputation among his fellows, and sheltering herself with these, passes her beauty promiscuously about like some coarse article of commerce, that goes to the highest bidder! ay, let your french novels and books of their type say what they will--infidelity is a crime, a low, brutal crime, as bad if not worse than murder, and deserves as stern a sentence!" a sudden spirit of defiant insolence possessed her. she drew herself erect, and her level brows knitted in a dark frown. "sentence!" she exclaimed, imperiously. "how dare you judge me! what harm have i done? if i am beautiful, is that my fault? if men are fools, can _i_ help it? you loved me--guido loved me--could _i_ prevent it? i cared nothing for him, and less for you!" "i know it," i said, bitterly. "love was never part of your nature! our lives were but cups of wine for your false lips to drain; once the flavor pleased you, but now--now, think you not the dregs taste somewhat cold?" she shrunk at my glance--her head drooped, and drawing near a projecting stone in the wall, she sat down upon it, pressing one hand to her heart. "no heart, no conscience, no memory!" i cried. "great heaven! that such a thing should live and call itself woman! the lowest beast of the field has more compassion for its kind! listen: before guido died he knew me, even as my child, neglected by you, in her last agony knew her father. she being innocent, passed in peace; but he!--imagine if you can, the wrenching torture in which he perished, knowing all! how his parted spirit must curse you!" she raised her hands to her head and pushed away the light curls from her brow. there was a starving, hunted, almost furious look in her eyes, but she fixed them steadily on me. "see," i went on--"here are more proofs of the truth of my story. these things were buried with me," and i threw into her lap as she sat before me the locket and chain, the card-case and purse she herself had given me. "you will no doubt recognize them. this--" and i showed her the monk's crucifix--"this was laid on my breast in the coffin. it may be useful to you--you can pray to it presently!" she interrupted me with a gesture of her hand; she spoke as though in a dream. "you escaped from this vault?" she said, in a low tone, looking from right to left with searching eagerness. "tell me how--and--where?" i laughed scornfully, guessing her thoughts. "it matters little," i replied. "the passage i discovered is now closed and fast cemented. i have seen to that myself! no other living creature left here can escape as i did. escape is impossible." a stifled cry broke from her; she threw herself at my feet, letting the things i had given her as proofs of my existence fall heedlessly on the floor. "fabio! fabio!" she cried, "save me, pity me! take me out to the light--the air--let me live! drag me through naples--let all the crowd see me dishonored, brand me with the worst of names, make of me a common outcast--only let me feel the warm life throbbing in my veins! i will do anything, say anything, be anything--only let me live! i loath the cold and darkness--the horrible--horrible ways of death!" she shuddered violently and clung to me afresh. "i am so young! and after all, am i so vile? there are women who count their lovers by the score, and yet they are not blamed; why should i suffer more than they?" "why, why?" i echoed, fiercely. "because for once a husband takes the law into his own hands--for once a wronged man insists on justice--for once he dares to punish the treachery that blackens his honor! were there more like me there would be fewer like you! a score of lovers! 'tis not your fault that you had but one! i have something else to say which concerns you. not content with fooling two men, you tried the same amusement on a supposed third. ay, you wince at that! while you thought me to be the count oliva--while you were betrothed to me in that character, you wrote to guido ferrari in rome. very charming letters! here they are," and i flung them down to her. "i have no further use for them--i have read them all!" she let them lie where they fell; she still crouched at my feet, and her restless movements loosened her cloak so far that it hung back from her shoulders, showing the jewels that flashed on her white neck and arms like points of living light. i touched the circlet of diamonds in her hair--i snatched it from her. "these are mine!" i cried, "as much as this signet i wear, which was your love-gift to guido ferrari, and which you afterward returned to me, its rightful owner. these are my mother's gems--how dared you wear them? the stones _i_ gave you are your only fitting ornaments--they are stolen goods, filched by the blood-stained hands of the blackest brigand in sicily! i promised you more like them; behold them!"--and i threw open the coffin-shaped chest containing the remainder of carmelo neri's spoils. it occupied a conspicuous position near where i stood, and i had myself arranged its interior so that the gold ornaments and precious stones should be the first things to meet her eyes. "you see now," i went on, "where the wealth of the supposed count oliva came from. i found this treasure hidden here on the night of my burial--little did i think then what dire need i should have for its usage! it has served me well; it is not yet exhausted; the remainder is at your service!" chapter xxxvii. at these words she rose from her knees and stood upright. making an effort to fasten her cloak with her trembling hands, she moved hesitatingly toward the brigand's coffin and leaned over it, looking in with a faint light of hope as well as curiosity in her haggard face. i watched her in vague wonderment--she had grown old so suddenly. the peach-like bloom and delicacy of her flesh had altogether disappeared--her skin appeared drawn and dry as though parched in tropical heat. her hair was disordered, and fell about her in clustering showers of gold--that, and her eyes, were the only signs of youth about her. a sudden wave of compassion swept over my soul. "oh wife!" i exclaimed--"wife that i so ardently loved--wife that i would have died for indeed, had you bade me!--why did you betray me? i thought you truth itself--ay! and if you had but waited for one day after you thought me dead, and then chosen guido for your lover, i tell you, so large was my tenderness, i would have pardoned you! though risen from the grave, i would have gone away and made no sign--yes if you had waited--if you had wept for me ever so little! but when your own lips confessed your crime--when i knew that within three months of our marriage-day you had fooled me--when i learned that my love, my name, my position, my honor, were used as mere screens to shelter your intrigue with the man i called friend!--god! what creature of mortal flesh and blood could forgive such treachery? i am no more than others--but i loved you--and in proportion to my love, so is the greatness of my wrongs!" she listened--she advanced a little toward me--a faint smile dawned on her pallid lips--she whispered: "fabio! fabio!" i looked at her--unconsciously my voice dropped into a cadence of intense melancholy softened by tenderness. "ay--fabio! what wouldst thou with a ghost of him? does it not seem strange to thee--that hated name?--thou, nina, whom i loved as few men love women--thou who gavest me no love at all--thou, who hast broken my heart and made me what i am!" a hard, heavy sob rose in my throat and choked my utterance. i was young; and the cruel waste and destruction of my life seemed at that moment more than i could bear. she heard me, and the smile brightened more warmly on her countenance. she came close to me--half timidly yet coaxingly she threw one arm about my neck--her bosom heaved quickly. "fabio," she murmured--"fabio, forgive me! i spoke in haste--i do not hate thee! come! i will make amends for all thy suffering--i will love thee--i will be true to thee, i will be all thine! see! thou knowest i have not lost my beauty!" and she clung to me with passion, raising her lips to mine, while with her large inquiring eyes she searched my face for the reply to her words. i gazed down upon her with sorrowful sternness. "beauty? mere food for worms--i care not for it! of what avail is a fair body tenanted by a fiendish soul? forgiveness?--you ask too late! a wrong like mine can never be forgiven." there ensued a silence. she still embraced me, but her eyes roved over me as though she searched for some lost thing. the wind tore furiously among the branches of the cypresses outside, and screamed through the small holes and crannies of the stone-work, rattling the iron gate at the summit of the stairway with a clanking sound, as though the famous brigand chief had escaped with all his chains upon him, and were clamoring for admittance to recover his buried property. suddenly her face lightened with an expression of cunning intensity--and before i could perceive her intent--with swift agility she snatched from my vest the dagger i carried! "too late!" she cried, with a wild laugh. "no; not too late! die--wretch!" for one second the bright steel flashed in the wavering light as she poised it in act to strike--the next, i had caught her murderous hand and forced it down, and was struggling with her for the mastery of the weapon. she held it with a desperate grip--she fought with me breathlessly, clinging to me with all her force--she reminded me of that ravenous unclean bird with which i had had so fierce a combat on the night of my living burial. for some brief moments she was possessed of supernatural strength--she sprung and tore at my clothes, keeping the poniard fast in her clutch. at last i thrust her down, panting and exhausted, with fury flashing in her eyes--i wrenched the steel from her hand and brandished it above her. "who talks of murder now?" i cried, in bitter derision. "oh, what a joy you have lost! what triumph for you, could you have stabbed me to the heart and left me here dead indeed! what a new career of lies would have been yours! how sweetly you would have said your prayers with the stain of my blood upon your soul! ay! you would have fooled the world to the end, and died in the odor of sanctity. and you dared to ask my forgiveness--" i stopped short--a strange, bewildered expression suddenly passed over her face--she looked about her in a dazed, vague way--then her gaze became suddenly fixed, and she pointed toward a dark corner and shuddered. "hush--hush!" she said, in a low, terrified whisper. "look! how still he stands! how pale he seems! do not speak--do not move--hush! he must not hear your voice--i will go to him and tell him all--all--" she rose and stretched out her arms with a gesture of entreaty: "guido! guido!" with a sudden chilled awe at my heart i looked toward the spot that thus riveted her attention--all was shrouded in deep gloom. she caught my arm. "kill him!" she whispered, fiercely--"kill him, and then i will love you! ah!" and with an exclamation of fear she began to retire swiftly backward as though confronted by some threatening figure. "he is coming--nearer! no, no, guido! you shall not touch me--you dare not--fabio is dead and i am free--free!" she paused--her wild eyes gazed upward--did she see some horror there? she put up both hands as though to shield herself from some impending blow, and uttering a loud cry she fell prone on the stone floor insensible. or dead? i balanced this question indifferently, as i looked down upon her inanimate form. the flavor of vengeance was hot in my mouth, and filled me with delirious satisfaction. true, i had been glad, when my bullet whizzing sharply through the air had carried death to guido, but my gladness had been mingled with ruthfulness and regret. now, not one throb of pity stirred me--not the faintest emotion of tenderness, ferrari's sin was great, but she tempted him--her crime outweighed his. and now--there she lay white and silent--in a swoon that was like death--that might be death for aught i knew--or cared! had her lover's ghost indeed appeared before the eyes of her guilty conscience? i did not doubt it--i should scarcely have been startled had i seen the poor pale shadow of him by my side, as i musingly gazed upon the fair fallen body of the traitress who had wantonly wrecked both our lives. "ay, guido," i muttered, half aloud--"dost see the work? thou art avenged, frail spirit--avenged as well as i--part thou in peace from earth and its inhabitants!--haply thou shalt cleanse in pure fire the sins of thy lower nature, and win a final pardon; but for her--is hell itself black enough to match her soul?" and i slowly moved toward the stairway; it was time, i thought, with a grim resolve--to leave her! possibly she was dead--if not--why then she soon would be! i paused irresolute--the wild wind battered ceaselessly at the iron gateway, and wailed as though with a hundred voices of aerial creatures, lamenting. the torches were burning low, the darkness of the vault deepened. its gloom concerned me little--i had grown familiar with its unsightly things, its crawling spiders, its strange uncouth beetles, the clusters of blue fungi on its damp walls. the scurrying noises made by bats and owls, who, scared by the lighted candles, were hiding themselves in holes and corners of refuge, startled me not at all--i was well accustomed to such sounds. in my then state of mind, an emperor's palace were less fair to me than this brave charnel house--this stone-mouthed witness of my struggle back to life and all life's misery. the deep-toned bell outside the cemetery struck one! we had been absent nearly two hours from the brilliant assemblage left at the hotel. no doubt we were being searched for everywhere--it mattered not! they would not come to seek us here. i went on resolutely toward the stair--as i placed my foot on the firm step of the ascent, my wife stirred from her recumbent position--her swoon had passed. she did not perceive me where i stood, ready to depart--she murmured something to herself in a low voice, and taking in her hand the falling tresses of her own hair she seemed to admire its color and texture, for she stroked it and restroked it and finally broke into a gay laugh--a laugh so out of all keeping with her surroundings, that it startled me more than her attempt to murder me. she presently stood up with all her own lily-like grace and fairy majesty; and smiling as though she were a pleased child, she began to arrange her disordered dress with elaborate care. i paused wonderingly and watched her. she went to the brigand's chest of treasure and proceeded to examine its contents--laces, silver and gold embroideries, antique ornaments, she took carefully in her hands, seeming mentally to calculate their cost and value. jewels that were set as necklaces, bracelets and other trinkets of feminine wear she put on, one after the other, till her neck and arms were loaded--and literally blazed with the myriad scintillations of different-colored gems. i marveled at her strange conduct, but did not as yet guess its meaning. i moved away from the staircase and drew imperceptibly nearer to her--hark! what was that? a strange, low rumbling like a distant earthquake, followed by a sharp cracking sound; i stopped to listen attentively. a furious gust of wind rushed round the mausoleum shrieking wildly like some devil in anger, and the strong draught flying through the gateway extinguished two of the flaring candles. my wife, entirely absorbed in counting over carmelo neri's treasures, apparently saw and heard nothing. suddenly she broke into another laugh--a chuckling, mirthless laugh such as might come from the lips of the aged and senile. the sound curdled the blood in my veins--it was the laugh of a mad-woman! with an earnest, distinct voice i called to her: "nina! nina!" she turned toward me still smiling--her eyes were bright, her face had regained its habitual color, and as she stood in the dim light, with her rich tresses falling about her, and the clustering gems massed together in a glittering fire against her white skin, she looked unnaturally, wildly beautiful. she nodded to me, half graciously, half haughtily, but gave me no answer. moved with quick pity i called again: "nina!" she laughed again--the same terrible laugh. "si, si! son' bella, son' bellissima!" she murmured. "e tu, guido mio? tu m'ami?" then raising one hand as though commanding attention she cried: "ascolta!" and began to sing clearly though feebly: "ti saluto, rosignuolo! nel tuo duolo--ti saluto! sei l'amante della rosa che morendo si fa sposa!" as the old familiar melody echoed through the dreary vault, my bitter wrath against her partially lessened; with the swiftness of my southern temperament a certain compassion stirred my soul. she was no longer quite the same woman who had wronged and betrayed me--she had the helplessness and fearful innocence of madness--in that condition i could not have hurt a hair of her head. i stepped hastily forward--i resolved to take her out of the vault--after all i would not leave her thus--but as i approached, she withdrew from me, and with an angry stamp of her foot motioned me backward, while a dark frown knitted her fair brows. "who are you?" she cried, imperiously. "you are dead, quite dead! how dare you come out of your grave!" and she stared at me defiantly--then suddenly clasping her hands as though in ecstasy, and seeming to address some invisible being at her side, she said, in low, delighted tones: "he is dead, guido! are you not glad?" she paused, apparently expecting some reply, for she looked about her wonderingly, and continued--"you did not answer me--are you afraid? why are you so pale and stern? have you just come back from rome? what have you heard? that i am false?--oh, no! i will love you still--ah! i forgot! you also are dead, guido! i remember now--you cannot hurt me any more--i am free--and quite happy!" smiling, she continued her song: "ti saluto, sol di maggio col two raggio ti saluto! sei l'apollo del passato sei l'amore incoronato!" again--again!--that hollow rumbling and crackling sound overhead. what could it be? "l'amore incoronato!" hummed nina fitfully, as she plunged her round, jeweled arm down again into the chest of treasure. "si, si! che morendo si fa sposa--che morendo si fa sposa--ah!" this last was an exclamation of pleasure; she had found some toy that charmed her--it was the old mirror set in its frame of pearls. the possession of this object seemed to fill her with extraordinary joy, and she evidently retained no consciousness of where she was, for she sat down on the upturned coffin, which had held my living body, with absolute indifference. still singing softly to herself, she gazed lovingly at her own reflection, and fingered the jewels she wore, arranging and rearranging them in various patterns with one hand, while in the other she raised the looking-glass in the flare of the candles which lighted up its quaint setting. a strange and awful picture she made there--gazing with such lingering tenderness on the portrait of her own beauty--while surrounded by the moldering coffins that silently announced how little such beauty was worth--playing with jewels, the foolish trinkets of life, in the abode of skeletons, where the password is death! thinking thus, i gazed at her, as one might gaze at a dead body--not loathingly any more, but only mournfully. my vengeance was satiated. i could not wage war against this vacantly smiling mad creature, out of whom the spirit of a devilish intelligence and cunning had been torn, and who therefore was no longer the same woman. her loss of wit should compensate for my loss of love. i determined to try and attract her attention again. i opened my lips to speak--but before the words could form themselves, that odd rumbling noise again broke on my ears--this time with a loud reverberation that rolled overhead like the thunder of artillery. before i could imagine the reason of it--before i could advance one step toward my wife, who still sat on the upturned coffin, smiling at herself in the mirror--before i could utter a word or move an inch, a tremendous crash resounded through the vault, followed by a stinging shower of stones, dust, and pulverized mortar! i stepped backward amazed, bewildered--speechless--instinctively shutting my eyes--when i opened them again all was darkness--all was silence! only the wind howled outside more frantically than ever--a sweeping gust whirled through the vault, blowing some dead leaves against my face, and i heard the boughs of trees creaking noisily in the fury of the storm. hush!--was that a faint moan? quivering in every limb, and sick with a nameless dread, i sought in my pocket for matches--i found them. then with an effort, mastering the shuddering revulsion of my nerves, i struck a light. the flame was so dim that for an instant i could see nothing. i called loudly: "nina!" there was no answer. one of the extinguished candles was near me; i lighted it with trembling hands and held it aloft--then i uttered a wild shriek of horror! oh, god of inexorable justice, surely thy vengeance was greater than mine! an enormous block of stone, dislodged by the violence of the storm, had fallen from the roof of the vault; fallen sheer down over the very place where she had sat a minute or two before, fantastically smiling! crushed under the huge mass--crushed into the very splinters of my own empty coffin, she lay--and yet--and yet--i could see nothing, save one white hand protruding--the hand on which the marriage-ring glittered mockingly! even as i looked, that hand quivered violently--beat the ground--and then--was still! it was horrible. in dreams i see that quivering white hand now, the jewels on it sparkling with derisive luster. it appeals, it calls, it threatens, it prays! and when my time comes to die, it will beckon me to my grave! a portion of her costly dress was visible--my eyes lighted on this--and i saw a slow stream of blood oozing thickly from beneath the stone--the ponderous stone that no man could have moved an inch--the stone that sealed her awful sepulcher! great heaven! how fast the crimson stream of life trickled!--staining the snowy lace of her garment with a dark and dreadful hue! staggering feebly like a drunken man--half delirious with anguish--i approached and touched that small white hand that lay stiffly on the ground--i bent my head--i almost kissed it, but some strange revulsion rose in my soul and forbade the act! in a stupor of dull agony i sought and found the crucifix of the monk cipriano that had fallen to the floor--i closed the yet warm finger-tips around it and left it thus; an unnatural, terrible calmness froze the excitement of my strained nerves. "'tis all i can do for thee!" i muttered, incoherently. "may christ forgive thee, though i cannot!" and covering my eyes to shut out the sight before me i turned away. i hurried in a sort of frenzy toward the stairway--on reaching the lowest step i extinguished the torch i carried. some impulse made me glance back--and i saw what i see now--what i shall always see till i die! an aperture had been made through the roof of the vault by the fall of the great stone, and through this the fitful moon poured down a long ghostly ray. the green glimmer, like a spectral lamp, deepened the surrounding darkness, only showing up with fell distinctness one object--that slender protruding wrist and hand, whiter than alpine snow! i gazed at it wildly--the gleam of the jewels down there hurt my eyes--the shine of the silver crucifix clasped in those little waxen fingers dazzled my brain--and with a frantic cry of unreasoning terror, i rushed up the steps with a maniac speed--opened the iron gate through which she would pass no more, and stood at liberty in the free air, face to face with a wind as tempestuous as my own passions. with what furious haste i shut the entrance to the vault! with what fierce precaution i locked and doubled-locked it! nay, so little did i realize that she was actually dead, that i caught myself saying aloud--"safe--safe at last! she cannot escape--i have closed the secret passage--no one will hear her cries--she will struggle a little, but it will soon be over--she will never laugh any more--never kiss--never love--never tell lies for the fooling of men!--she is buried as i was--buried alive!" muttering thus to myself with a sort of sobbing incoherence, i turned to meet the snarl of the savage blast of the night, with my brain reeling, my limbs weak and trembling--with the heavens and earth rocking before me like a wild sea--with the flying moon staring aghast through the driving clouds--with all the universe, as it were, in a broken and shapeless chaos about me; even so i went forth to meet my fate--and left her! * * * * * unrecognized, untracked, i departed from naples. wrapped in my cloak, and stretched in a sort of heavy stupor on the deck of the "rondinella," my appearance apparently excited no suspicion in the mind of the skipper, old antonio bardi, with whom my friend andrea had made terms for my voyage, little aware of the real identity of the passenger he recommended. the morning was radiantly beautiful--the sparkling waves rose high on tiptoe to kiss the still boisterous wind--the sunlight broke in a wide smile of springtide glory over the world! with the burden of my agony upon me--with the utter exhaustion of my overwrought nerves, i beheld all things as in a feverish dream--the laughing light, the azure ripple of waters--the receding line of my native shores--everything was blurred, indistinct, and unreal to me, though my soul, argus-eyed, incessantly peered down, down into those darksome depths where she lay, silent forever. for now i knew she was dead. fate had killed her--not i. all unrepentant as she was, triumphing in her treachery to the last, even in her madness, still i would have saved her, though she strove to murder me. yet it was well the stone had fallen--who knows!--if she had lived--i strove not to think of her, and drawing the key of the vault from my pocket, i let it drop with a sudden splash into the waves. all was over--no one pursued me--no one inquired whither i went. i arrived at civita vecchia unquestioned; from thence i travelled to leghorn, where i embarked on board a merchant trading vessel bound for south america. thus i lost myself to the world; thus i became, as it were, buried alive for the second time. i am safely sepulchered in these wild woods, and i seek no escape. wearing the guise of a rough settler, one who works in common with others, hewing down tough parasites and poisonous undergrowths in order to effect a clearing through these pathless solitudes, none can trace in the strong stern man, with the care-worn face and white hair, any resemblance to the once popular and wealthy count oliva, whose disappearance, so strange and sudden, was for a time the talk of all italy. for, on one occasion when visiting the nearest town, i saw an article in a newspaper, headed "mysterious occurrence in naples," and i read every word of it with a sensation of dull amusement. from it i learned that the count oliva was advertised for. his abrupt departure, together with that of his newly married wife, formerly contessa romani, on the very night of their wedding, had created the utmost excitement in the city. the landlord of the hotel where he stayed was prosecuting inquiries--so was the count's former valet, one vincenzo flamma. any information would be gratefully received by the police authorities. if within twelve months no news were obtained, the immense properties of the romani family, in default of existing kindred, would be handed over to the crown. there was much more to the same effect, and i read it with the utmost indifference. why do they not search the romani vault?--i thought gloomily--they would find some authentic information there! but i know the neapolitans well; they are timorous and superstitious; they would as soon hug a pestilence as explore a charnel house. one thing gladdened me; it was the projected disposal of my fortune. the crown, the kingdom of italy, was surely as noble an heir as a man could have! i returned to my woodland hut with a strange peace on my soul. as i told you at first, i am a dead man--the world, with its busy life and aims, has naught to do with me. the tall trees, the birds, the whispering grasses are my friends and my companions--they, and they only, are sometimes the silent witnesses of the torturing fits of agony that every now and then overwhelm me with bitterness. for i suffer always. that is natural. revenge is sweet!--but who shall paint the horrors of memory? my vengeance now recoils upon my own head. i do not complain of this--it is the law of compensation--it is just. i blame no one--save her, the woman who wrought my wrong. dead as she is i do not forgive her; i have tried to, but i cannot! do men ever truly forgive the women who ruin their lives? i doubt it. as for me, i feel that the end is not yet--that when my soul is released from its earthly prison, i shall still be doomed in some drear dim way to pursue her treacherous flitting spirit over the black chasms of a hell darker than dante's--she in the likeness of a wandering flame--i as her haunting shadow; she, flying before me in coward fear--i, hasting after her in relentless wrath--and this forever and ever! but i ask no pity--i need none. i punished the guilty, and in doing so suffered more than they--that is as it must always be. i have no regret and no remorse; only one thing troubles me--one little thing--a mere foolish fancy! it comes upon me in the night, when the large-faced moon looks at me from heaven. for the moon is grand in this climate; she is like a golden-robed empress of all the worlds as she sweeps in lustrous magnificence through the dense violet skies. i shut out her radiance as much as i can; i close the blind at the narrow window of my solitary forest cabin; and yet do what i will, one wide ray creeps in always--one ray that eludes all my efforts to expel it. under the door it comes, or through some unguessed cranny in the wood-work. i have in vain tried to find the place of its entrance. the color of the moonlight in this climate is of a mellow amber--so i cannot understand why that pallid ray that visits me so often, should be green--a livid, cold, watery green; and in it, like a lily in an emerald pool, i see a little white hand on which the jewels cluster thick like drops of dew! the hand moves--it lifts itself--the small fingers point at me threateningly--they quiver--and then--they beckon me slowly, solemnly, commandingly onward!--onward!--to some infinite land of awful mysteries where light and love shall dawn for me no more. the end the golden bowl volumes i and ii, complete by henry james book first: the prince part first i the prince had always liked his london, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern romans who find by the thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the tiber. brought up on the legend of the city to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present london much more than in contemporary rome the real dimensions of such a case. if it was a question of an imperium, he said to himself, and if one wished, as a roman, to recover a little the sense of that, the place to do so was on london bridge, or even, on a fine afternoon in may, at hyde park corner. it was not indeed to either of those places that these grounds of his predilection, after all sufficiently vague, had, at the moment we are concerned with him, guided his steps; he had strayed, simply enough, into bond street, where his imagination, working at comparatively short range, caused him now and then to stop before a window in which objects massive and lumpish, in silver and gold, in the forms to which precious stones contribute, or in leather, steel, brass, applied to a hundred uses and abuses, were as tumbled together as if, in the insolence of the empire, they had been the loot of far-off victories. the young man’s movements, however, betrayed no consistency of attention--not even, for that matter, when one of his arrests had proceeded from possibilities in faces shaded, as they passed him on the pavement, by huge beribboned hats, or more delicately tinted still under the tense silk of parasols held at perverse angles in waiting victorias. and the prince’s undirected thought was not a little symptomatic, since, though the turn of the season had come and the flush of the streets begun to fade, the possibilities of faces, on the august afternoon, were still one of the notes of the scene. he was too restless--that was the fact--for any concentration, and the last idea that would just now have occurred to him in any connection was the idea of pursuit. he had been pursuing for six months as never in his life before, and what had actually unsteadied him, as we join him, was the sense of how he had been justified. capture had crowned the pursuit--or success, as he would otherwise have put it, had rewarded virtue; whereby the consciousness of these things made him, for the hour, rather serious than gay. a sobriety that might have consorted with failure sat in his handsome face, constructively regular and grave, yet at the same time oddly and, as might be, functionally almost radiant, with its dark blue eyes, its dark brown moustache and its expression no more sharply “foreign” to an english view than to have caused it sometimes to be observed of him with a shallow felicity that he looked like a “refined” irishman. what had happened was that shortly before, at three o’clock, his fate had practically been sealed, and that even when one pretended to no quarrel with it the moment had something of the grimness of a crunched key in the strongest lock that could be made. there was nothing to do as yet, further, but feel what one had done, and our personage felt it while he aimlessly wandered. it was already as if he were married, so definitely had the solicitors, at three o’clock, enabled the date to be fixed, and by so few days was that date now distant. he was to dine at half-past eight o’clock with the young lady on whose behalf, and on whose father’s, the london lawyers had reached an inspired harmony with his own man of business, poor calderoni, fresh from rome and now apparently in the wondrous situation of being “shown london,” before promptly leaving it again, by mr. verver himself, mr. verver whose easy way with his millions had taxed to such small purpose, in the arrangements, the principle of reciprocity. the reciprocity with which the prince was during these minutes most struck was that of calderoni’s bestowal of his company for a view of the lions. if there was one thing in the world the young man, at this juncture, clearly intended, it was to be much more decent as a son-in-law than lots of fellows he could think of had shown themselves in that character. he thought of these fellows, from whom he was so to differ, in english; he used, mentally, the english term to describe his difference, for, familiar with the tongue from his earliest years, so that no note of strangeness remained with him either for lip or for ear, he found it convenient, in life, for the greatest number of relations. he found it convenient, oddly, even for his relation with himself--though not unmindful that there might still, as time went on, be others, including a more intimate degree of that one, that would seek, possibly with violence, the larger or the finer issue--which was it?--of the vernacular. miss verver had told him he spoke english too well--it was his only fault, and he had not been able to speak worse even to oblige her. “when i speak worse, you see, i speak french,” he had said; intimating thus that there were discriminations, doubtless of the invidious kind, for which that language was the most apt. the girl had taken this, she let him know, as a reflection on her own french, which she had always so dreamed of making good, of making better; to say nothing of his evident feeling that the idiom supposed a cleverness she was not a person to rise to. the prince’s answer to such remarks--genial, charming, like every answer the parties to his new arrangement had yet had from him--was that he was practising his american in order to converse properly, on equal terms as it were, with mr. verver. his prospective father-in-law had a command of it, he said, that put him at a disadvantage in any discussion; besides which--well, besides which he had made to the girl the observation that positively, of all his observations yet, had most finely touched her. “you know i think he’s a real galantuomo--‘and no mistake.’ there are plenty of sham ones about. he seems to me simply the best man i’ve ever seen in my life.” “well, my dear, why shouldn’t he be?” the girl had gaily inquired. it was this, precisely, that had set the prince to think. the things, or many of them, that had made mr. verver what he was seemed practically to bring a charge of waste against the other things that, with the other people known to the young man, had failed of such a result. “why, his ‘form,’” he had returned, “might have made one doubt.” “father’s form?” she hadn’t seen it. “it strikes me he hasn’t got any.” “he hasn’t got mine--he hasn’t even got yours.” “thank you for ‘even’!” the girl had laughed at him. “oh, yours, my dear, is tremendous. but your father has his own. i’ve made that out. so don’t doubt it. it’s where it has brought him out--that’s the point.” “it’s his goodness that has brought him out,” our young woman had, at this, objected. “ah, darling, goodness, i think, never brought anyone out. goodness, when it’s real, precisely, rather keeps people in.” he had been interested in his discrimination, which amused him. “no, it’s his way. it belongs to him.” but she had wondered still. “it’s the american way. that’s all.” “exactly--it’s all. it’s all, i say! it fits him--so it must be good for something.” “do you think it would be good for you?” maggie verver had smilingly asked. to which his reply had been just of the happiest. “i don’t feel, my dear, if you really want to know, that anything much can now either hurt me or help me. such as i am--but you’ll see for yourself. say, however, i am a galantuomo--which i devoutly hope: i’m like a chicken, at best, chopped up and smothered in sauce; cooked down as a creme de volaille, with half the parts left out. your father’s the natural fowl running about the bassecour. his feathers, movements, his sounds--those are the parts that, with me, are left out.” “all, as a matter of course--since you can’t eat a chicken alive!” the prince had not been annoyed at this, but he had been positive. “well, i’m eating your father alive--which is the only way to taste him. i want to continue, and as it’s when he talks american that he is most alive, so i must also cultivate it, to get my pleasure. he couldn’t make one like him so much in any other language.” it mattered little that the girl had continued to demur--it was the mere play of her joy. “i think he could make you like him in chinese.” “it would be an unnecessary trouble. what i mean is that he’s a kind of result of his inevitable tone. my liking is accordingly for the tone--which has made him possible.” “oh, you’ll hear enough of it,” she laughed, “before you’ve done with us.” only this, in truth, had made him frown a little. “what do you mean, please, by my having ‘done’ with you?” “why, found out about us all there is to find.” he had been able to take it indeed easily as a joke. “ah, love, i began with that. i know enough, i feel, never to be surprised. it’s you yourselves meanwhile,” he continued, “who really know nothing. there are two parts of me”--yes, he had been moved to go on. “one is made up of the history, the doings, the marriages, the crimes, the follies, the boundless betises of other people--especially of their infamous waste of money that might have come to me. those things are written--literally in rows of volumes, in libraries; are as public as they’re abominable. everybody can get at them, and you’ve, both of you, wonderfully, looked them in the face. but there’s another part, very much smaller doubtless, which, such as it is, represents my single self, the unknown, unimportant, unimportant--unimportant save to you--personal quantity. about this you’ve found out nothing.” “luckily, my dear,” the girl had bravely said; “for what then would become, please, of the promised occupation of my future?” the young man remembered even now how extraordinarily clear--he couldn’t call it anything else--she had looked, in her prettiness, as she had said it. he also remembered what he had been moved to reply. “the happiest reigns, we are taught, you know, are the reigns without any history.” “oh, i’m not afraid of history!” she had been sure of that. “call it the bad part, if you like--yours certainly sticks out of you. what was it else,” maggie verver had also said, “that made me originally think of you? it wasn’t--as i should suppose you must have seen--what you call your unknown quantity, your particular self. it was the generations behind you, the follies and the crimes, the plunder and the waste--the wicked pope, the monster most of all, whom so many of the volumes in your family library are all about. if i’ve read but two or three yet, i shall give myself up but the more--as soon as i have time--to the rest. where, therefore”--she had put it to him again--“without your archives, annals, infamies, would you have been?” he recalled what, to this, he had gravely returned. “i might have been in a somewhat better pecuniary situation.” but his actual situation under the head in question positively so little mattered to them that, having by that time lived deep into the sense of his advantage, he had kept no impression of the girl’s rejoinder. it had but sweetened the waters in which he now floated, tinted them as by the action of some essence, poured from a gold-topped phial, for making one’s bath aromatic. no one before him, never--not even the infamous pope--had so sat up to his neck in such a bath. it showed, for that matter, how little one of his race could escape, after all, from history. what was it but history, and of their kind very much, to have the assurance of the enjoyment of more money than the palace-builder himself could have dreamed of? this was the element that bore him up and into which maggie scattered, on occasion, her exquisite colouring drops. they were of the colour--of what on earth? of what but the extraordinary american good faith? they were of the colour of her innocence, and yet at the same time of her imagination, with which their relation, his and these people’s, was all suffused. what he had further said on the occasion of which we thus represent him as catching the echoes from his own thoughts while he loitered--what he had further said came back to him, for it had been the voice itself of his luck, the soothing sound that was always with him. “you americans are almost incredibly romantic.” “of course we are. that’s just what makes everything so nice for us.” “everything?” he had wondered. “well, everything that’s nice at all. the world, the beautiful, world--or everything in it that is beautiful. i mean we see so much.” he had looked at her a moment--and he well knew how she had struck him, in respect to the beautiful world, as one of the beautiful, the most beautiful things. but what he had answered was: “you see too much--that’s what may sometimes make you difficulties. when you don’t, at least,” he had amended with a further thought, “see too little.” but he had quite granted that he knew what she meant, and his warning perhaps was needless. he had seen the follies of the romantic disposition, but there seemed somehow no follies in theirs--nothing, one was obliged to recognise, but innocent pleasures, pleasures without penalties. their enjoyment was a tribute to others without being a loss to themselves. only the funny thing, he had respectfully submitted, was that her father, though older and wiser, and a man into the bargain, was as bad--that is as good--as herself. “oh, he’s better,” the girl had freely declared “that is he’s worse. his relation to the things he cares for--and i think it beautiful--is absolutely romantic. so is his whole life over here--it’s the most romantic thing i know.” “you mean his idea for his native place?” “yes--the collection, the museum with which he wishes to endow it, and of which he thinks more, as you know, than of anything in the world. it’s the work of his life and the motive of everything he does.” the young man, in his actual mood, could have smiled again--smiled delicately, as he had then smiled at her. “has it been his motive in letting me have you?” “yes, my dear, positively--or in a manner,” she had said. “american city isn’t, by the way, his native town, for, though he’s not old, it’s a young thing compared with him--a younger one. he started there, he has a feeling about it, and the place has grown, as he says, like the programme of a charity performance. you’re at any rate a part of his collection,” she had explained--“one of the things that can only be got over here. you’re a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of price. you’re not perhaps absolutely unique, but you’re so curious and eminent that there are very few others like you--you belong to a class about which everything is known. you’re what they call a morceau de musee.” “i see. i have the great sign of it,” he had risked--“that i cost a lot of money.” “i haven’t the least idea,” she had gravely answered, “what you cost”--and he had quite adored, for the moment, her way of saying it. he had felt even, for the moment, vulgar. but he had made the best of that. “wouldn’t you find out if it were a question of parting with me? my value would in that case be estimated.” she had looked at him with her charming eyes, as if his value were well before her. “yes, if you mean that i’d pay rather than lose you.” and then there came again what this had made him say. “don’t talk about me--it’s you who are not of this age. you’re a creature of a braver and finer one, and the cinquecento, at its most golden hour, wouldn’t have been ashamed of you. it would of me, and if i didn’t know some of the pieces your father has acquired, i should rather fear, for american city, the criticism of experts. would it at all events be your idea,” he had then just ruefully asked, “to send me there for safety?” “well, we may have to come to it.” “i’ll go anywhere you want.” “we must see first--it will be only if we have to come to it. there are things,” she had gone on, “that father puts away--the bigger and more cumbrous of course, which he stores, has already stored in masses, here and in paris, in italy, in spain, in warehouses, vaults, banks, safes, wonderful secret places. we’ve been like a pair of pirates--positively stage pirates, the sort who wink at each other and say ‘ha-ha!’ when they come to where their treasure is buried. ours is buried pretty well everywhere--except what we like to see, what we travel with and have about us. these, the smaller pieces, are the things we take out and arrange as we can, to make the hotels we stay at and the houses we hire a little less ugly. of course it’s a danger, and we have to keep watch. but father loves a fine piece, loves, as he says, the good of it, and it’s for the company of some of his things that he’s willing to run his risks. and we’ve had extraordinary luck”--maggie had made that point; “we’ve never lost anything yet. and the finest objects are often the smallest. values, in lots of cases, you must know, have nothing to do with size. but there’s nothing, however tiny,” she had wound up, “that we’ve missed.” “i like the class,” he had laughed for this, “in which you place me! i shall be one of the little pieces that you unpack at the hotels, or at the worst in the hired houses, like this wonderful one, and put out with the family photographs and the new magazines. but it’s something not to be so big that i have to be buried.” “oh,” she had returned, “you shall not be buried, my dear, till you’re dead. unless indeed you call it burial to go to american city.” “before i pronounce i should like to see my tomb.” so he had had, after his fashion, the last word in their interchange, save for the result of an observation that had risen to his lips at the beginning, which he had then checked, and which now came back to him. “good, bad or indifferent, i hope there’s one thing you believe about me.” he had sounded solemn, even to himself, but she had taken it gaily. “ah, don’t fix me down to ‘one’! i believe things enough about you, my dear, to have a few left if most of them, even, go to smash. i’ve taken care of that. i’ve divided my faith into water-tight compartments. we must manage not to sink.” “you do believe i’m not a hypocrite? you recognise that i don’t lie or dissemble or deceive? is that water-tight?” the question, to which he had given a certain intensity, had made her, he remembered, stare an instant, her colour rising as if it had sounded to her still stranger than he had intended. he had perceived on the spot that any serious discussion of veracity, of loyalty, or rather of the want of them, practically took her unprepared, as if it were quite new to her. he had noticed it before: it was the english, the american sign that duplicity, like “love,” had to be joked about. it couldn’t be “gone into.” so the note of his inquiry was--well, to call it nothing else-- premature; a mistake worth making, however, for the almost overdone drollery in which her answer instinctively sought refuge. “water-tight--the biggest compartment of all? why, it’s the best cabin and the main deck and the engine-room and the steward’s pantry! it’s the ship itself--it’s the whole line. it’s the captain’s table and all one’s luggage--one’s reading for the trip.” she had images, like that, that were drawn from steamers and trains, from a familiarity with “lines,” a command of “own” cars, from an experience of continents and seas, that he was unable as yet to emulate; from vast modern machineries and facilities whose acquaintance he had still to make, but as to which it was part of the interest of his situation as it stood that he could, quite without wincing, feel his future likely to bristle with them. it was in fact, content as he was with his engagement and charming as he thought his affianced bride, his view of that furniture that mainly constituted our young man’s “romance”--and to an extent that made of his inward state a contrast that he was intelligent enough to feel. he was intelligent enough to feel quite humble, to wish not to be in the least hard or voracious, not to insist on his own side of the bargain, to warn himself in short against arrogance and greed. odd enough, of a truth, was his sense of this last danger--which may illustrate moreover his general attitude toward dangers from within. personally, he considered, he hadn’t the vices in question--and that was so much to the good. his race, on the other hand, had had them handsomely enough, and he was somehow full of his race. its presence in him was like the consciousness of some inexpugnable scent in which his clothes, his whole person, his hands and the hair of his head, might have been steeped as in some chemical bath: the effect was nowhere in particular, yet he constantly felt himself at the mercy of the cause. he knew his antenatal history, knew it in every detail, and it was a thing to keep causes well before him. what was his frank judgment of so much of its ugliness, he asked himself, but a part of the cultivation of humility? what was this so important step he had just taken but the desire for some new history that should, so far as possible, contradict, and even if need be flatly dishonour, the old? if what had come to him wouldn’t do he must make something different. he perfectly recognised--always in his humility--that the material for the making had to be mr. verver’s millions. there was nothing else for him on earth to make it with; he had tried before--had had to look about and see the truth. humble as he was, at the same time, he was not so humble as if he had known himself frivolous or stupid. he had an idea--which may amuse his historian--that when you were stupid enough to be mistaken about such a matter you did know it. therefore he wasn’t mistaken--his future might be might be scientific. there was nothing in himself, at all events, to prevent it. he was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money? his life would be full of machinery, which was the antidote to superstition, which was in its turn, too much, the consequence, or at least the exhalation, of archives. he thought of these--of his not being at all events futile, and of his absolute acceptance of the developments of the coming age to redress the balance of his being so differently considered. the moments when he most winced were those at which he found himself believing that, really, futility would have been forgiven him. even with it, in that absurd view, he would have been good enough. such was the laxity, in the ververs, of the romantic spirit. they didn’t, indeed, poor dears, know what, in that line--the line of futility--the real thing meant. he did-- having seen it, having tried it, having taken its measure. this was a memory in fact simply to screen out--much as, just in front of him while he walked, the iron shutter of a shop, closing early to the stale summer day, rattled down at the turn of some crank. there was machinery again, just as the plate glass, all about him, was money, was power, the power of the rich peoples. well, he was of them now, of the rich peoples; he was on their side--if it wasn’t rather the pleasanter way of putting it that they were on his. something of this sort was in any case the moral and the murmur of his walk. it would have been ridiculous--such a moral from such a source--if it hadn’t all somehow fitted to the gravity of the hour, that gravity the oppression of which i began by recording. another feature was the immediate nearness of the arrival of the contingent from home. he was to meet them at charing cross on the morrow: his younger brother, who had married before him, but whose wife, of hebrew race, with a portion that had gilded the pill, was not in a condition to travel; his sister and her husband, the most anglicised of milanesi, his maternal uncle, the most shelved of diplomatists, and his roman cousin, don ottavio, the most disponible of ex-deputies and of relatives--a scant handful of the consanguineous who, in spite of maggie’s plea for hymeneal reserve, were to accompany him to the altar. it was no great array, yet it was apparently to be a more numerous muster than any possible to the bride herself, having no wealth of kinship to choose from and making it up, on the other hand, by loose invitations. he had been interested in the girl’s attitude on the matter and had wholly deferred to it, giving him, as it did, a glimpse, distinctly pleasing, of the kind of ruminations she would in general be governed by--which were quite such as fell in with his own taste. they hadn’t natural relations, she and her father, she had explained; so they wouldn’t try to supply the place by artificial, by make-believe ones, by any searching of highways and hedges. oh yes, they had acquaintances enough--but a marriage was an intimate thing. you asked acquaintances when you had your kith and kin--you asked them over and above. but you didn’t ask them alone, to cover your nudity and look like what they weren’t. she knew what she meant and what she liked, and he was all ready to take from her, finding a good omen in both of the facts. he expected her, desired her, to have character; his wife should have it, and he wasn’t afraid of her having much. he had had, in his earlier time, to deal with plenty of people who had had it; notably with the three four ecclesiastics, his great-uncle, the cardinal, above all, who had taken a hand and played a part in his education: the effect of all of which had never been to upset him. he was thus fairly on the look-out for the characteristic in this most intimate, as she was to come, of his associates. he encouraged it when it appeared. he felt therefore, just at present, as if his papers were in order, as if his accounts so balanced as they had never done in his life before and he might close the portfolio with a snap. it would open again, doubtless, of itself, with the arrival of the romans; it would even perhaps open with his dining to-night in portland place, where mr. verver had pitched a tent suggesting that of alexander furnished with the spoils of darius. but what meanwhile marked his crisis, as i have said, was his sense of the immediate two or three hours. he paused on corners, at crossings; there kept rising for him, in waves, that consciousness, sharp as to its source while vague as to its end, which i began by speaking of--the consciousness of an appeal to do something or other, before it was too late, for himself. by any friend to whom he might have mentioned it the appeal could have been turned to frank derision. for what, for whom indeed but himself and the high advantages attached, was he about to marry an extraordinarily charming girl, whose “prospects,” of the solid sort, were as guaranteed as her amiability? he wasn’t to do it, assuredly, all for her. the prince, as happened, however, was so free to feel and yet not to formulate that there rose before him after a little, definitely, the image of a friend whom he had often found ironic. he withheld the tribute of attention from passing faces only to let his impulse accumulate. youth and beauty made him scarcely turn, but the image of mrs. assingham made him presently stop a hansom. her youth, her beauty were things more or less of the past, but to find her at home, as he possibly might, would be “doing” what he still had time for, would put something of a reason into his restlessness and thereby probably soothe it. to recognise the propriety of this particular pilgrimage--she lived far enough off, in long cadogan place--was already in fact to work it off a little. a perception of the propriety of formally thanking her, and of timing the act just as he happened to be doing--this, he made out as he went, was obviously all that had been the matter with him. it was true that he had mistaken the mood of the moment, misread it rather, superficially, as an impulse to look the other way--the other way from where his pledges had accumulated. mrs. assingham, precisely, represented, embodied his pledges--was, in her pleasant person, the force that had set them successively in motion. she had made his marriage, quite as truly as his papal ancestor had made his family--though he could scarce see what she had made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic. he had neither bribed nor persuaded her, had given her nothing--scarce even till now articulate thanks; so that her profit-to think of it vulgarly--must have all had to come from the ververs. yet he was far, he could still remind himself, from supposing that she had been grossly remunerated. he was wholly sure she hadn’t; for if there were people who took presents and people who didn’t she would be quite on the right side and of the proud class. only then, on the other hand, her disinterestedness was rather awful--it implied, that is, such abysses of confidence. she was admirably attached to maggie--whose possession of such a friend might moreover quite rank as one of her “assets”; but the great proof of her affection had been in bringing them, with her design, together. meeting him during a winter in rome, meeting him afterwards in paris, and “liking” him, as she had in time frankly let him know from the first, she had marked him for her young friend’s own and had then, unmistakably, presented him in a light. but the interest in maggie--that was the point--would have achieved but little without her interest in him. on what did that sentiment, unsolicited and unrecompensed, rest? what good, again--for it was much like his question about mr. verver--should he ever have done her? the prince’s notion of a recompense to women--similar in this to his notion of an appeal--was more or less to make love to them. now he hadn’t, as he believed, made love the least little bit to mrs. assingham--nor did he think she had for a moment supposed it. he liked in these days, to mark them off, the women to whom he hadn’t made love: it represented-- and that was what pleased him in it--a different stage of existence from the time at which he liked to mark off the women to whom he had. neither, with all this, had mrs. assingham herself been either aggressive or resentful. on what occasion, ever, had she appeared to find him wanting? these things, the motives of such people, were obscure--a little alarmingly so; they contributed to that element of the impenetrable which alone slightly qualified his sense of his good fortune. he remembered to have read, as a boy, a wonderful tale by allan poe, his prospective wife’s countryman-which was a thing to show, by the way, what imagination americans could have: the story of the shipwrecked gordon pym, who, drifting in a small boat further toward the north pole--or was it the south?--than anyone had ever done, found at a given moment before him a thickness of white air that was like a dazzling curtain of light, concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of milk or of snow. there were moments when he felt his own boat move upon some such mystery. the state of mind of his new friends, including mrs. assingham herself, had resemblances to a great white curtain. he had never known curtains but as purple even to blackness--but as producing where they hung a darkness intended and ominous. when they were so disposed as to shelter surprises the surprises were apt to be shocks. shocks, however, from these quite different depths, were not what he saw reason to apprehend; what he rather seemed to himself not yet to have measured was something that, seeking a name for it, he would have called the quantity of confidence reposed in him. he had stood still, at many a moment of the previous month, with the thought, freshly determined or renewed, of the general expectation--to define it roughly--of which he was the subject. what was singular was that it seemed not so much an expectation of anything in particular as a large, bland, blank assumption of merits almost beyond notation, of essential quality and value. it was as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful, of which the “worth” in mere modern change, sovereigns and half crowns, would be great enough, but as to which, since there were finer ways of using it, such taking to pieces was superfluous. that was the image for the security in which it was open to him to rest; he was to constitute a possession, yet was to escape being reduced to his component parts. what would this mean but that, practically, he was never to be tried or tested? what would it mean but that, if they didn’t “change” him, they really wouldn’t know--he wouldn’t know himself--how many pounds, shillings and pence he had to give? these at any rate, for the present, were unanswerable questions; all that was before him was that he was invested with attributes. he was taken seriously. lost there in the white mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him. it was even in mrs. assingham, in spite of her having, as she had frequently shown, a more mocking spirit. all he could say as yet was that he had done nothing, so far as to break any charm. what should he do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally speaking, behind their veil. it would come to asking what they expected him to do. she would answer him probably: “oh, you know, it’s what we expect you to be!” on which he would have no resource but to deny his knowledge. would that break the spell, his saying he had no idea? what idea in fact could he have? he also took himself seriously--made a point of it; but it wasn’t simply a question of fancy and pretension. his own estimate he saw ways, at one time and another, of dealing with: but theirs, sooner or later, say what they might, would put him to the practical proof. as the practical proof, accordingly, would naturally be proportionate to the cluster of his attributes, one arrived at a scale that he was not, honestly, the man to calculate. who but a billionaire could say what was fair exchange for a billion? that measure was the shrouded object, but he felt really, as his cab stopped in cadogan place, a little nearer the shroud. he promised himself, virtually, to give the latter a twitch. ii “they’re not good days, you know,” he had said to fanny assingham after declaring himself grateful for finding her, and then, with his cup of tea, putting her in possession of the latest news--the documents signed an hour ago, de part et d’autre, and the telegram from his backers, who had reached paris the morning before, and who, pausing there a little, poor dears, seemed to think the whole thing a tremendous lark. “we’re very simple folk, mere country cousins compared with you,” he had also observed, “and paris, for my sister and her husband, is the end of the world. london therefore will be more or less another planet. it has always been, as with so many of us, quite their mecca, but this is their first real caravan; they’ve mainly known ‘old england’ as a shop for articles in india-rubber and leather, in which they’ve dressed themselves as much as possible. which all means, however, that you’ll see them, all of them, wreathed in smiles. we must be very easy with them. maggie’s too wonderful--her preparations are on a scale! she insists on taking in the sposi and my uncle. the others will come to me. i’ve been engaging their rooms at the hotel, and, with all those solemn signatures of an hour ago, that brings the case home to me.” “do you mean you’re afraid?” his hostess had amusedly asked. “terribly afraid. i’ve now but to wait to see the monster come. they’re not good days; they’re neither one thing nor the other. i’ve really got nothing, yet i’ve everything to lose. one doesn’t know what still may happen.” the way she laughed at him was for an instant almost irritating; it came out, for his fancy, from behind the white curtain. it was a sign, that is, of her deep serenity, which worried instead of soothing him. and to be soothed, after all, to be tided over, in his mystic impatience, to be told what he could understand and believe--that was what he had come for. “marriage then,” said mrs. assingham, “is what you call the monster? i admit it’s a fearful thing at the best; but, for heaven’s sake, if that’s what you’re thinking of, don’t run away from it.” “ah, to run away from it would be to run away from you,” the prince replied; “and i’ve already told you often enough how i depend on you to see me through.” he so liked the way she took this, from the corner of her sofa, that he gave his sincerity--for it was sincerity--fuller expression. “i’m starting on the great voyage--across the unknown sea; my ship’s all rigged and appointed, the cargo’s stowed away and the company complete. but what seems the matter with me is that i can’t sail alone; my ship must be one of a pair, must have, in the waste of waters, a--what do you call it?--a consort. i don’t ask you to stay on board with me, but i must keep your sail in sight for orientation. i don’t in the least myself know, i assure you, the points of the compass. but with a lead i can perfectly follow. you must be my lead.” “how can you be sure,” she asked, “where i should take you?” “why, from your having brought me safely thus far. i should never have got here without you. you’ve provided the ship itself, and, if you’ve not quite seen me aboard, you’ve attended me, ever so kindly, to the dock. your own vessel is, all conveniently, in the next berth, and you can’t desert me now.” she showed him again her amusement, which struck him even as excessive, as if, to his surprise, he made her also a little nervous; she treated him in fine as if he were not uttering truths, but making pretty figures for her diversion. “my vessel, dear prince?” she smiled. “what vessel, in the world, have i? this little house is all our ship, bob’s and mine--and thankful we are, now, to have it. we’ve wandered far, living, as you may say, from hand to mouth, without rest for the soles of our feet. but the time has come for us at last to draw in.” he made at this, the young man, an indignant protest. “you talk about rest--it’s too selfish!--when you’re just launching me on adventures?” she shook her head with her kind lucidity. “not adventures--heaven forbid! you’ve had yours--as i’ve had mine; and my idea has been, all along, that we should neither of us begin again. my own last, precisely, has been doing for you all you so prettily mention. but it consists simply in having conducted you to rest. you talk about ships, but they’re not the comparison. your tossings are over--you’re practically in port. the port,” she concluded, “of the golden isles.” he looked about, to put himself more in relation with the place; then, after an hesitation, seemed to speak certain words instead of certain others. “oh, i know where i am--! i do decline to be left, but what i came for, of course, was to thank you. if to-day has seemed, for the first time, the end of preliminaries, i feel how little there would have been any at all without you. the first were wholly yours.” “well,” said mrs. assingham, “they were remarkably easy. i’ve seen them, i’ve had them,” she smiled, “more difficult. everything, you must feel, went of itself. so, you must feel, everything still goes.” the prince quickly agreed. “oh, beautifully! but you had the conception.” “ah, prince, so had you!” he looked at her harder a moment. “you had it first. you had it most.” she returned his look as if it had made her wonder. “i liked it, if that’s what you mean. but you liked it surely yourself. i protest, that i had easy work with you. i had only at last--when i thought it was time--to speak for you.” “all that is quite true. but you’re leaving me, all the same, you’re leaving me--you’re washing your hands of me,” he went on. “however, that won’t be easy; i won’t be left.” and he had turned his eyes about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace for a world-worn couple, to which she had lately retired with “bob.” “i shall keep this spot in sight. say what you will, i shall need you. i’m not, you know,” he declared, “going to give you up for anybody.” “if you’re afraid--which of course you’re not--are you trying to make me the same?” she asked after a moment. he waited a minute too, then answered her with a question. “you say you ‘liked’ it, your undertaking to make my engagement possible. it remains beautiful for me that you did; it’s charming and unforgettable. but, still more, it’s mysterious and wonderful. why, you dear delightful woman, did you like it?” “i scarce know what to make,” she said, “of such an inquiry. if you haven’t by this time found out yourself, what meaning can anything i say have for you? don’t you really after all feel,” she added while nothing came from him--“aren’t you conscious every minute, of the perfection of the creature of whom i’ve put you into possession?” “every minute--gratefully conscious. but that’s exactly the ground of my question. it wasn’t only a matter of your handing me over--it was a matter of your handing her. it was a matter of her fate still more than of mine. you thought all the good of her that one woman can think of another, and yet, by your account, you enjoyed assisting at her risk.” she had kept her eyes on him while he spoke, and this was what, visibly, determined a repetition for her. “are you trying to frighten me?” “ah, that’s a foolish view--i should be too vulgar. you apparently can’t understand either my good faith or my humility. i’m awfully humble,” the young man insisted; “that’s the way i’ve been feeling to-day, with everything so finished and ready. and you won’t take me for serious.” she continued to face him as if he really troubled her a little. “oh, you deep old italians!” “there you are,” he returned--“it’s what i wanted you to come to. that’s the responsible note.” “yes,” she went on--“if you’re ‘humble’ you must be dangerous.” she had a pause while he only smiled; then she said: “i don’t in the least want to lose sight of you. but even if i did i shouldn’t think it right.” “thank you for that--it’s what i needed of you. i’m sure, after all, that the more you’re with me the more i shall understand. it’s the only thing in the world i want. i’m excellent, i really think, all round--except that i’m stupid. i can do pretty well anything i see. but i’ve got to see it first.” and he pursued his demonstration. “i don’t in the least mind its having to be shown me--in fact i like that better. therefore it is that i want, that i shall always want, your eyes. through them i wish to look--even at any risk of their showing me what i mayn’t like. for then,” he wound up, “i shall know. and of that i shall never be afraid.” she might quite have been waiting to see what he would come to, but she spoke with a certain impatience. “what on earth are you talking about?” but he could perfectly say: “of my real, honest fear of being ‘off’ some day, of being wrong, without knowing it. that’s what i shall always trust you for--to tell me when i am. no--with you people it’s a sense. we haven’t got it--not as you have. therefore--!” but he had said enough. “ecco!” he simply smiled. it was not to be concealed that he worked upon her, but of course she had always liked him. “i should be interested,” she presently remarked, “to see some sense you don’t possess.” well, he produced one on the spot. “the moral, dear mrs. assingham. i mean, always, as you others consider it. i’ve of course something that in our poor dear backward old rome sufficiently passes for it. but it’s no more like yours than the tortuous stone staircase--half-ruined into the bargain!--in some castle of our quattrocento is like the `lightning elevator’ in one of mr. verver’s fifteen-storey buildings. your moral sense works by steam--it sends you up like a rocket. ours is slow and steep and unlighted, with so many of the steps missing that--well, that it’s as short, in almost any case, to turn round and come down again.” “trusting,” mrs. assingham smiled, “to get up some other way?” “yes--or not to have to get up at all. however,” he added, “i told you that at the beginning.” “machiavelli!” she simply exclaimed. “you do me too much honour. i wish indeed i had his genius. however, if you really believe i have his perversity you wouldn’t say it. but it’s all right,” he gaily enough concluded; “i shall always have you to come to.” on this, for a little, they sat face to face; after which, without comment, she asked him if he would have more tea. all she would give him, he promptly signified; and he developed, making her laugh, his idea that the tea of the english race was somehow their morality, “made,” with boiling water, in a little pot, so that the more of it one drank the more moral one would become. his drollery served as a transition, and she put to him several questions about his sister and the others, questions as to what bob, in particular, colonel assingham, her husband, could do for the arriving gentlemen, whom, by the prince’s leave, he would immediately go to see. he was funny, while they talked, about his own people too, whom he described, with anecdotes of their habits, imitations of their manners and prophecies of their conduct, as more rococo than anything cadogan place would ever have known. this, mrs. assingham professed, was exactly what would endear them to her, and that, in turn, drew from her visitor a fresh declaration of all the comfort of his being able so to depend on her. he had been with her, at this point, some twenty minutes; but he had paid her much longer visits, and he stayed now as if to make his attitude prove his appreciation. he stayed moreover--that was really the sign of the hour--in spite of the nervous unrest that had brought him and that had in truth much rather fed on the scepticism by which she had apparently meant to soothe it. she had not soothed him, and there arrived, remarkably, a moment when the cause of her failure gleamed out. he had not frightened her, as she called it--he felt that; yet she was herself not at ease. she had been nervous, though trying to disguise it; the sight of him, following on the announcement of his name, had shown her as disconcerted. this conviction, for the young man, deepened and sharpened; yet with the effect, too, of making him glad in spite of it. it was as if, in calling, he had done even better than he intended. for it was somehow important--that was what it was--that there should be at this hour something the matter with mrs. assingham, with whom, in all their acquaintance, so considerable now, there had never been the least little thing the matter. to wait thus and watch for it was to know, of a truth, that there was something the matter with him; since strangely, with so little to go upon--his heart had positively begun to beat to the tune of suspense. it fairly befell at last, for a climax, that they almost ceased to pretend--to pretend, that is, to cheat each other with forms. the unspoken had come up, and there was a crisis--neither could have said how long it lasted--during which they were reduced, for all interchange, to looking at each other on quite an inordinate scale. they might at this moment, in their positively portentous stillness, have been keeping it up for a wager, sitting for their photograph or even enacting a tableau-vivant. the spectator of whom they would thus well have been worthy might have read meanings of his own into the intensity of their communion--or indeed, even without meanings, have found his account, aesthetically, in some gratified play of our modern sense of type, so scantly to be distinguished from our modern sense of beauty. type was there, at the worst, in mrs. assingham’s dark, neat head, on which the crisp black hair made waves so fine and so numerous that she looked even more in the fashion of the hour than she desired. full of discriminations against the obvious, she had yet to accept a flagrant appearance and to make the best of misleading signs. her richness of hue, her generous nose, her eyebrows marked like those of an actress--these things, with an added amplitude of person on which middle age had set its seal, seemed to present her insistently as a daughter of the south, or still more of the east, a creature formed by hammocks and divans, fed upon sherbets and waited upon by slaves. she looked as if her most active effort might be to take up, as she lay back, her mandolin, or to share a sugared fruit with a pet gazelle. she was in fact, however, neither a pampered jewess nor a lazy creole; new york had been, recordedly, her birthplace and “europe” punctually her discipline. she wore yellow and purple because she thought it better, as she said, while one was about it, to look like the queen of sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair and crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason: it was her theory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course was to drown, as it was hopeless to try to chasten, the overdressing. so she was covered and surrounded with “things,” which were frankly toys and shams, a part of the amusement with which she rejoiced to supply her friends. these friends were in the game that of playing with the disparity between her aspect and her character. her character was attested by the second movement of her face, which convinced the beholder that her vision of the humours of the world was not supine, not passive. she enjoyed, she needed the warm air of friendship, but the eyes of the american city looked out, somehow, for the opportunity of it, from under the lids of jerusalem. with her false indolence, in short, her false leisure, her false pearls and palms and courts and fountains, she was a person for whom life was multitudinous detail, detail that left her, as it at any moment found her, unappalled and unwearied. “sophisticated as i may appear”--it was her frequent phrase--she had found sympathy her best resource. it gave her plenty to do; it made her, as she also said, sit up. she had in her life two great holes to fill, and she described herself as dropping social scraps into them as she had known old ladies, in her early american time, drop morsels of silk into the baskets in which they collected the material for some eventual patchwork quilt. one of these gaps in mrs. assingham’s completeness was her want of children; the other was her want of wealth. it was wonderful how little either, in the fulness of time, came to show; sympathy and curiosity could render their objects practically filial, just as an english husband who in his military years had “run” everything in his regiment could make economy blossom like the rose. colonel bob had, a few years after his marriage, left the army, which had clearly, by that time, done its laudable all for the enrichment of his personal experience, and he could thus give his whole time to the gardening in question. there reigned among the younger friends of this couple a legend, almost too venerable for historical criticism, that the marriage itself, the happiest of its class, dated from the far twilight of the age, a primitive period when such things--such things as american girls accepted as “good enough”--had not begun to be;--so that the pleasant pair had been, as to the risk taken on either side, bold and original, honourably marked, for the evening of life, as discoverers of a kind of hymeneal northwest passage. mrs. assingham knew better, knew there had been no historic hour, from that of pocahontas down, when some young englishman hadn’t precipitately believed and some american girl hadn’t, with a few more gradations, availed herself to the full of her incapacity to doubt; but she accepted resignedly the laurel of the founder, since she was in fact pretty well the doyenne, above ground, of her transplanted tribe, and since, above all, she had invented combinations, though she had not invented bob’s own. it was he who had done that, absolutely puzzled it out, by himself, from his first odd glimmer-resting upon it moreover, through the years to come, as proof enough, in him, by itself, of the higher cleverness. if she kept her own cleverness up it was largely that he should have full credit. there were moments in truth when she privately felt how little--striking out as he had done--he could have afforded that she should show the common limits. but mrs. assingham’s cleverness was in truth tested when her present visitor at last said to her: “i don’t think, you know, that you’re treating me quite right. you’ve something on your mind that you don’t tell me.” it was positive too that her smile, in reply, was a trifle dim. “am i obliged to tell you everything i have on my mind?” “it isn’t a question of everything, but it’s a question of anything that may particularly concern me. then you shouldn’t keep it back. you know with what care i desire to proceed, taking everything into account and making no mistake that may possibly injure her.” mrs. assingham, at this, had after an instant an odd interrogation. “‘her’?” “her and him. both our friends. either maggie or her father.” “i have something on my mind,” mrs. assingham presently returned; “something has happened for which i hadn’t been prepared. but it isn’t anything that properly concerns you.” the prince, with immediate gaiety, threw back his head. “what do you mean by ‘properly’? i somehow see volumes in it. it’s the way people put a thing when they put it--well, wrong. _i_ put things right. what is it that has happened for me?” his hostess, the next moment, had drawn spirit from his tone. “oh, i shall be delighted if you’ll take your share of it. charlotte stant is in london. she has just been here.” “miss stant? oh really?” the prince expressed clear surprise--a transparency through which his eyes met his friend’s with a certain hardness of concussion. “she has arrived from america?” he then quickly asked. “she appears to have arrived this noon--coming up from southampton; at an hotel. she dropped upon me after luncheon and was here for more than an hour.” the young man heard with interest, though not with an interest too great for his gaiety. “you think then i’ve a share in it? what is my share?” “why, any you like--the one you seemed just now eager to take. it was you yourself who insisted.” he looked at her on this with conscious inconsistency, and she could now see that he had changed colour. but he was always easy. “i didn’t know then what the matter was.” “you didn’t think it could be so bad?” “do you call it very bad?” the young man asked. “only,” she smiled, “because that’s the way it seems to affect you.” he hesitated, still with the trace of his quickened colour, still looking at her, still adjusting his manner. “but you allowed you were upset.” “to the extent--yes--of not having in the least looked for her. any more,” said mrs. assingham, “than i judge maggie to have done.” the prince thought; then as if glad to be able to say something very natural and true: “no--quite right. maggie hasn’t looked for her. but i’m sure,” he added, “she’ll be delighted to see her.” “that, certainly”--and his hostess spoke with a different shade of gravity. “she’ll be quite overjoyed,” the prince went on. “has miss stant now gone to her?” “she has gone back to her hotel, to bring her things here. i can’t have her,” said mrs. assingham, “alone at an hotel.” “no; i see.” “if she’s here at all she must stay with me.” he quite took it in. “so she’s coming now?” “i expect her at any moment. if you wait you’ll see her.” “oh,” he promptly declared--“charming!” but this word came out as if, a little, in sudden substitution for some other. it sounded accidental, whereas he wished to be firm. that accordingly was what he next showed himself. “if it wasn’t for what’s going on these next days maggie would certainly want to have her. in fact,” he lucidly continued, “isn’t what’s happening just a reason to make her want to?” mrs. assingham, for answer, only looked at him, and this, the next instant, had apparently had more effect than if she had spoken. for he asked a question that seemed incongruous. “what has she come for!” it made his companion laugh. “why, for just what you say. for your marriage.” “mine?”--he wondered. “maggie’s--it’s the same thing. it’s ‘for’ your great event. and then,” said mrs. assingham, “she’s so lonely.” “has she given you that as a reason?” “i scarcely remember--she gave me so many. she abounds, poor dear, in reasons. but there’s one that, whatever she does, i always remember for myself.” “and which is that?” he looked as if he ought to guess but couldn’t. “why, the fact that she has no home--absolutely none whatever. she’s extraordinarily alone.” again he took it in. “and also has no great means.” “very small ones. which is not, however, with the expense of railways and hotels, a reason for her running to and fro.” “on the contrary. but she doesn’t like her country.” “hers, my dear man?--it’s little enough ‘hers.’” the attribution, for the moment, amused his hostess. “she has rebounded now--but she has had little enough else to do with it.” “oh, i say hers,” the prince pleasantly explained, “very much as, at this time of day, i might say mine. i quite feel, i assure you, as if the great place already more or less belonged to me.” “that’s your good fortune and your point of view. you own--or you soon practically will own--so much of it. charlotte owns almost nothing in the world, she tells me, but two colossal trunks-only one of which i have given her leave to introduce into this house. she’ll depreciate to you,” mrs. assingham added, “your property.” he thought of these things, he thought of every thing; but he had always his resource at hand of turning all to the easy. “has she come with designs upon me?” and then in a moment, as if even this were almost too grave, he sounded the note that had least to do with himself. “est-elle toujours aussi belle?” that was the furthest point, somehow, to which charlotte stant could be relegated. mrs. assingham treated it freely. “just the same. the person in the world, to my sense, whose looks are most subject to appreciation. it’s all in the way she affects you. one admires her if one doesn’t happen not to. so, as well, one criticises her.” “ah, that’s not fair!” said the prince. “to criticise her? then there you are! you’re answered.” “i’m answered.” he took it, humorously, as his lesson--sank his previous self-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. “i only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done with miss stant than to criticise her. when once you begin that, with anyone--!” he was vague and kind. “i quite agree that it’s better to keep out of it as long as one can. but when one must do it--” “yes?” he asked as she paused. “then know what you mean.” “i see. perhaps,” he smiled, “_i_ don’t know what i mean.” “well, it’s what, just now, in all ways, you particularly should know.” mrs. assingham, however, made no more of this, having, before anything else, apparently, a scruple about the tone she had just used. “i quite understand, of course, that, given her great friendship with maggie, she should have wanted to be present. she has acted impulsively--but she has acted generously.” “she has acted beautifully,” said the prince. “i say ‘generously’ because i mean she hasn’t, in any way, counted the cost. she’ll have it to count, in a manner, now,” his hostess continued. “but that doesn’t matter.” he could see how little. “you’ll look after her.” “i’ll look after her.” “so it’s all right.” “it’s all right,” said mrs. assingham. “then why are you troubled?” it pulled her up--but only for a minute. “i’m not--any more than you.” the prince’s dark blue eyes were of the finest, and, on occasion, precisely, resembled nothing so much as the high windows of a roman palace, of an historic front by one of the great old designers, thrown open on a feast-day to the golden air. his look itself, at such times, suggested an image--that of some very noble personage who, expected, acclaimed by the crowd in the street and with old precious stuffs falling over the sill for his support, had gaily and gallantly come to show himself: always moreover less in his own interest than in that of spectators and subjects whose need to admire, even to gape, was periodically to be considered. the young man’s expression became, after this fashion, something vivid and concrete--a beautiful personal presence, that of a prince in very truth, a ruler, warrior, patron, lighting up brave architecture and diffusing the sense of a function. it had been happily said of his face that the figure thus appearing in the great frame was the ghost of some proudest ancestor. whoever the ancestor now, at all events, the prince was, for mrs. assingham’s benefit, in view of the people. he seemed, leaning on crimson damask, to take in the bright day. he looked younger than his years; he was beautiful, innocent, vague. “oh, well, i’m not!” he rang out clear. “i should like to see you, sir!” she said. “for you wouldn’t have a shadow of excuse.” he showed how he agreed that he would have been at a loss for one, and the fact of their serenity was thus made as important as if some danger of its opposite had directly menaced them. the only thing was that if the evidence of their cheer was so established mrs. assingham had a little to explain her original manner, and she came to this before they dropped the question. “my first impulse is always to behave, about everything, as if i feared complications. but i don’t fear them--i really like them. they’re quite my element.” he deferred, for her, to this account of herself. “but still,” he said, “if we’re not in the presence of a complication.” she hesitated. “a handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one is always a complication.” the young man weighed it almost as if the question were new to him. “and will she stay very long?” his friend gave a laugh. “how in the world can i know? i’ve scarcely asked her.” “ah yes. you can’t.” but something in the tone of it amused her afresh. “do you think you could?” “i?” he wondered. “do you think you could get it out of her for me--the probable length of her stay?” he rose bravely enough to the occasion and the challenge. “i daresay, if you were to give me the chance.” “here it is then for you,” she answered; for she had heard, within the minute, the stop of a cab at her door. “she’s back.” iii it had been said as a joke, but as, after this, they awaited their friend in silence, the effect of the silence was to turn the time to gravity--a gravity not dissipated even when the prince next spoke. he had been thinking the case over and making up his mind. a handsome, clever, odd girl staying with one was a complication. mrs. assingham, so far, was right. but there were the facts--the good relations, from schooldays, of the two young women, and the clear confidence with which one of them had arrived. “she can come, you know, at any time, to us.” mrs. assingham took it up with an irony beyond laughter. “you’d like her for your honeymoon?” “oh no, you must keep her for that. but why not after?” she had looked at him a minute; then, at the sound of a voice in the corridor, they had got up. “why not? you’re splendid!” charlotte stant, the next minute, was with them, ushered in as she had alighted from her cab, and prepared for not finding mrs. assingham alone--this would have been to be noticed--by the butler’s answer, on the stairs, to a question put to him. she could have looked at her hostess with such straightness and brightness only from knowing that the prince was also there--the discrimination of but a moment, yet which let him take her in still better than if she had instantly faced him. he availed himself of the chance thus given him, for he was conscious of all these things. what he accordingly saw, for some seconds, with intensity, was a tall, strong, charming girl who wore for him, at first, exactly the look of her adventurous situation, a suggestion, in all her person, in motion and gesture, in free, vivid, yet altogether happy indications of dress, from the becoming compactness of her hat to the shade of tan in her shoes, of winds and waves and custom-houses, of far countries and long journeys, the knowledge of how and where and the habit, founded on experience, of not being afraid. he was aware, at the same time, that of this combination the “strongminded” note was not, as might have been apprehended, the basis; he was now sufficiently familiar with english-speaking types, he had sounded attentively enough such possibilities, for a quick vision of differences. he had, besides, his own view of this young lady’s strength of mind. it was great, he had ground to believe, but it would never interfere with the play of her extremely personal, her always amusing taste. this last was the thing in her--for she threw it out positively, on the spot, like a light--that she might have reappeared, during these moments, just to cool his worried eyes with. he saw her in her light that immediate, exclusive address to their friend was like a lamp she was holding aloft for his benefit and for his pleasure. it showed him everything--above all her presence in the world, so closely, so irretrievably contemporaneous with his own: a sharp, sharp fact, sharper during these instants than any other at all, even than that of his marriage, but accompanied, in a subordinate and controlled way, with those others, facial, physiognomic, that mrs. assingham had been speaking of as subject to appreciation. so they were, these others, as he met them again, and that was the connection they instantly established with him. if they had to be interpreted, this made at least for intimacy. there was but one way certainly for him--to interpret them in the sense of the already known. making use then of clumsy terms of excess, the face was too narrow and too long, the eyes not large, and the mouth, on the other hand, by no means small, with substance in its lips and a slight, the very slightest, tendency to protrusion in the solid teeth, otherwise indeed well arrayed and flashingly white. but it was, strangely, as a cluster of possessions of his own that these things, in charlotte stant, now affected him; items in a full list, items recognised, each of them, as if, for the long interval, they had been “stored” wrapped up, numbered, put away in a cabinet. while she faced mrs. assingham the door of the cabinet had opened of itself; he took the relics out, one by one, and it was more and more, each instant, as if she were giving him time. he saw again that her thick hair was, vulgarly speaking, brown, but that there was a shade of tawny autumn leaf in it, for “appreciation”--a colour indescribable and of which he had known no other case, something that gave her at moments the sylvan head of a huntress. he saw the sleeves of her jacket drawn to her wrists, but he again made out the free arms within them to be of the completely rounded, the polished slimness that florentine sculptors, in the great time, had loved, and of which the apparent firmness is expressed in their old silver and old bronze. he knew her narrow hands, he knew her long fingers and the shape and colour of her finger-nails, he knew her special beauty of movement and line when she turned her back, and the perfect working of all her main attachments, that of some wonderful finished instrument, something intently made for exhibition, for a prize. he knew above all the extraordinary fineness of her flexible waist, the stem of an expanded flower, which gave her a likeness also to some long, loose silk purse, well filled with gold pieces, but having been passed, empty, through a finger-ring that held it together. it was as if, before she turned to him, he had weighed the whole thing in his open palm and even heard a little the chink of the metal. when she did turn to him it was to recognise with her eyes what he might have been doing. she made no circumstance of thus coming upon him, save so far as the intelligence in her face could at any moment make a circumstance of almost anything. if when she moved off she looked like a huntress, she looked when she came nearer like his notion, perhaps not wholly correct, of a muse. but what she said was simply: “you see you’re not rid of me. how is dear maggie?” it was to come soon enough by the quite unforced operation of chance, the young man’s opportunity to ask her the question suggested by mrs. assingham shortly before her entrance. the license, had he chosen to embrace it, was within a few minutes all there--the license given him literally to inquire of this young lady how long she was likely to be with them. for a matter of the mere domestic order had quickly determined, on mrs. assingham’s part, a withdrawal, of a few moments, which had the effect of leaving her visitors free. “mrs. betterman’s there?” she had said to charlotte in allusion to some member of the household who was to have received her and seen her belongings settled; to which charlotte had replied that she had encountered only the butler, who had been quite charming. she had deprecated any action taken on behalf of her effects; but her hostess, rebounding from accumulated cushions, evidently saw more in mrs. betterman’s non-appearance than could meet the casual eye. what she saw, in short, demanded her intervention, in spite of an earnest “let me go!” from the girl, and a prolonged smiling wail over the trouble she was giving. the prince was quite aware, at this moment, that departure, for himself, was indicated; the question of miss stant’s installation didn’t demand his presence; it was a case for one to go away--if one hadn’t a reason for staying. he had a reason, however--of that he was equally aware; and he had not for a good while done anything more conscious and intentional than not, quickly, to take leave. his visible insistence--for it came to that--even demanded of him a certain disagreeable effort, the sort of effort he had mostly associated with acting for an idea. his idea was there, his idea was to find out something, something he wanted much to know, and to find it out not tomorrow, not at some future time, not in short with waiting and wondering, but if possible before quitting the place. this particular curiosity, moreover, confounded itself a little with the occasion offered him to satisfy mrs. assingham’s own; he wouldn’t have admitted that he was staying to ask a rude question--there was distinctly nothing rude in his having his reasons. it would be rude, for that matter, to turn one’s back, without a word or two, on an old friend. well, as it came to pass, he got the word or two, for mrs. assingham’s preoccupation was practically simplifying. the little crisis was of shorter duration than our account of it; duration, naturally, would have forced him to take up his hat. he was somehow glad, on finding himself alone with charlotte, that he had not been guilty of that inconsequence. not to be flurried was the kind of consistency he wanted, just as consistency was the kind of dignity. and why couldn’t he have dignity when he had so much of the good conscience, as it were, on which such advantages rested? he had done nothing he oughtn’t--he had in fact done nothing at all. once more, as a man conscious of having known many women, he could assist, as he would have called it, at the recurrent, the predestined phenomenon, the thing always as certain as sunrise or the coming round of saints’ days, the doing by the woman of the thing that gave her away. she did it, ever, inevitably, infallibly--she couldn’t possibly not do it. it was her nature, it was her life, and the man could always expect it without lifting a finger. this was his, the man’s, any man’s, position and strength--that he had necessarily the advantage, that he only had to wait, with a decent patience, to be placed, in spite of himself, it might really be said, in the right. just so the punctuality of performance on the part of the other creature was her weakness and her deep misfortune--not less, no doubt, than her beauty. it produced for the man that extraordinary mixture of pity and profit in which his relation with her, when he was not a mere brute, mainly consisted; and gave him in fact his most pertinent ground of being always nice to her, nice about her, nice for her. she always dressed her act up, of course, she muffled and disguised and arranged it, showing in fact in these dissimulations a cleverness equal to but one thing in the world, equal to her abjection: she would let it be known for anything, for everything, but the truth of which it was made. that was what, precisely, charlotte stant would be doing now; that was the present motive and support, to a certainty, of each of her looks and motions. she was the twentieth woman, she was possessed by her doom, but her doom was also to arrange appearances, and what now concerned him was to learn how she proposed. he would help her, would arrange with her to any point in reason; the only thing was to know what appearance could best be produced and best be preserved. produced and preserved on her part of course; since on his own there had been luckily no folly to cover up, nothing but a perfect accord between conduct and obligation. they stood there together, at all events, when the door had closed behind their friend, with a conscious, strained smile and very much as if each waited for the other to strike the note or give the pitch. the young man held himself, in his silent suspense--only not more afraid because he felt her own fear. she was afraid of herself, however; whereas, to his gain of lucidity, he was afraid only of her. would she throw herself into his arms, or would she be otherwise wonderful? she would see what he would do--so their queer minute without words told him; and she would act accordingly. but what could he do but just let her see that he would make anything, everything, for her, as honourably easy as possible? even if she should throw herself into his arms he would make that easy--easy, that is, to overlook, to ignore, not to remember, and not, by the same token, either, to regret. this was not what in fact happened, though it was also not at a single touch, but by the finest gradations, that his tension subsided. “it’s too delightful to be back!” she said at last; and it was all she definitely gave him--being moreover nothing but what anyone else might have said. yet with two or three other things that, on his response, followed it, it quite pointed the path, while the tone of it, and her whole attitude, were as far removed as need have been from the truth of her situation. the abjection that was present to him as of the essence quite failed to peep out, and he soon enough saw that if she was arranging she could be trusted to arrange. good--it was all he asked; and all the more that he could admire and like her for it. the particular appearance she would, as they said, go in for was that of having no account whatever to give him--it would be in fact that of having none to give anybody--of reasons or of motives, of comings or of goings. she was a charming young woman who had met him before, but she was also a charming young woman with a life of her own. she would take it high--up, up, up, ever so high. well then, he would do the same; no height would be too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable to a young person so subtle. the dizziest seemed indeed attained when, after another moment, she came as near as she was to come to an apology for her abruptness. “i’ve been thinking of maggie, and at last i yearned for her. i wanted to see her happy--and it doesn’t strike me i find you too shy to tell me i shall.” “of course she’s happy, thank god! only it’s almost terrible, you know, the happiness of young, good, generous creatures. it rather frightens one. but the blessed virgin and all the saints,” said the prince, “have her in their keeping.” “certainly they have. she’s the dearest of the dear. but i needn’t tell you,” the girl added. “ah,” he returned with gravity, “i feel that i’ve still much to learn about her.” to which he subjoined “she’ll rejoice awfully in your being with us.” “oh, you don’t need me!” charlotte smiled. “it’s her hour. it’s a great hour. one has seen often enough, with girls, what it is. but that,” she said, “is exactly why. why i’ve wanted, i mean, not to miss it.” he bent on her a kind, comprehending face. “you mustn’t miss anything.” he had got it, the pitch, and he could keep it now, for all he had needed was to have it given him. the pitch was the happiness of his wife that was to be--the sight of that happiness as a joy for an old friend. it was, yes, magnificent, and not the less so for its coming to him, suddenly, as sincere, as nobly exalted. something in charlotte’s eyes seemed to tell him this, seemed to plead with him in advance as to what he was to find in it. he was eager--and he tried to show her that too--to find what she liked; mindful as he easily could be of what the friendship had been for maggie. it had been armed with the wings of young imagination, young generosity; it had been, he believed--always counting out her intense devotion to her father--the liveliest emotion she had known before the dawn of the sentiment inspired by himself. she had not, to his knowledge, invited the object of it to their wedding, had not thought of proposing to her, for a matter of a couple of hours, an arduous and expensive journey. but she had kept her connected and informed, from week to week, in spite of preparations and absorptions. “oh, i’ve been writing to charlotte--i wish you knew her better:” he could still hear, from recent weeks, this record of the fact, just as he could still be conscious, not otherwise than queerly, of the gratuitous element in maggie’s wish, which he had failed as yet to indicate to her. older and perhaps more intelligent, at any rate, why shouldn’t charlotte respond--and be quite free to respond--to such fidelities with something more than mere formal good manners? the relations of women with each other were of the strangest, it was true, and he probably wouldn’t have trusted here a young person of his own race. he was proceeding throughout on the ground of the immense difference--difficult indeed as it might have been to disembroil in this young person her race-quality. nothing in her definitely placed her; she was a rare, a special product. her singleness, her solitude, her want of means, that is her want of ramifications and other advantages, contributed to enrich her somehow with an odd, precious neutrality, to constitute for her, so detached yet so aware, a sort of small social capital. it was the only one she had--it was the only one a lonely, gregarious girl could have, since few, surely, had in anything like the same degree arrived at it, and since this one indeed had compassed it but through the play of some gift of nature to which you could scarce give a definite name. it wasn’t a question of her strange sense for tongues, with which she juggled as a conjuror at a show juggled with balls or hoops or lighted brands--it wasn’t at least entirely that, for he had known people almost as polyglot whom their accomplishment had quite failed to make interesting. he was polyglot himself, for that matter--as was the case too with so many of his friends and relations; for none of whom, more than for himself, was it anything but a common convenience. the point was that in this young woman it was a beauty in itself, and almost a mystery: so, certainly, he had more than once felt in noting, on her lips, that rarest, among the barbarians, of all civil graces, a perfect felicity in the use of italian. he had known strangers--a few, and mostly men--who spoke his own language agreeably; but he had known neither man nor woman who showed for it charlotte’s almost mystifying instinct. he remembered how, from the first of their acquaintance, she had made no display of it, quite as if english, between them, his english so matching with hers, were their inevitable medium. he had perceived all by accident--by hearing her talk before him to somebody else that they had an alternative as good; an alternative in fact as much better as the amusement for him was greater in watching her for the slips that never came. her account of the mystery didn’t suffice: her recall of her birth in florence and florentine childhood; her parents, from the great country, but themselves already of a corrupt generation, demoralised, falsified, polyglot well before her, with the tuscan balia who was her first remembrance; the servants of the villa, the dear contadini of the poder, the little girls and the other peasants of the next podere, all the rather shabby but still ever so pretty human furniture of her early time, including the good sisters of the poor convent of the tuscan hills, the convent shabbier than almost anything else, but prettier too, in which she had been kept at school till the subsequent phase, the phase of the much grander institution in paris at which maggie was to arrive, terribly frightened, and as a smaller girl, three years before her own ending of her period of five. such reminiscences, naturally, gave a ground, but they had not prevented him from insisting that some strictly civil ancestor--generations back, and from the tuscan hills if she would-made himself felt, ineffaceably, in her blood and in her tone. she knew nothing of the ancestor, but she had taken his theory from him, gracefully enough, as one of the little presents that make friendship flourish. these matters, however, all melted together now, though a sense of them was doubtless concerned, not unnaturally, in the next thing, of the nature of a surmise, that his discretion let him articulate. “you haven’t, i rather gather, particularly liked your country?” they would stick, for the time, to their english. “it doesn’t, i fear, seem particularly mine. and it doesn’t in the least matter, over there, whether one likes it or not--that is to anyone but one’s self. but i didn’t like it,” said charlotte stant. “that’s not encouraging then to me, is it?” the prince went on. “do you mean because you’re going?” “oh yes, of course we’re going. i’ve wanted immensely to go.” she hesitated. “but now?--immediately?” “in a month or two--it seems to be the new idea.” on which there was something in her face--as he imagined--that made him say: “didn’t maggie write to you?” “not of your going at once. but of course you must go. and of course you must stay”--charlotte was easily clear--“as long as possible.” “is that what you did?” he laughed. “you stayed as long as possible?” “well, it seemed to me so--but i hadn’t ‘interests.’ you’ll have them--on a great scale. it’s the country for interests,” said charlotte. “if i had only had a few i doubtless wouldn’t have left it.” he waited an instant; they were still on their feet. “yours then are rather here?” “oh, mine!”--the girl smiled. “they take up little room, wherever they are.” it determined in him, the way this came from her and what it somehow did for her-it determined in him a speech that would have seemed a few minutes before precarious and in questionable taste. the lead she had given him made the difference, and he felt it as really a lift on finding an honest and natural word rise, by its license, to his lips. nothing surely could be, for both of them, more in the note of a high bravery. “i’ve been thinking it all the while so probable, you know, that you would have seen your way to marrying.” she looked at him an instant, and, just for these seconds, he feared for what he might have spoiled. “to marrying whom?” “why, some good, kind, clever, rich american.” again his security hung in the balance--then she was, as he felt, admirable. “i tried everyone i came across. i did my best. i showed i had come, quite publicly, for that. perhaps i showed it too much. at any rate it was no use. i had to recognise it. no one would have me.” then she seemed to show as sorry for his having to hear of her anything so disconcerting. she pitied his feeling about it; if he was disappointed she would cheer him up. “existence, you know, all the same, doesn’t depend on that. i mean,” she smiled, “on having caught a husband.” “oh--existence!” the prince vaguely commented. “you think i ought to argue for more than mere existence?” she asked. “i don’t see why my existence--even reduced as much as you like to being merely mine--should be so impossible. there are things, of sorts, i should be able to have--things i should be able to be. the position of a single woman to-day is very favourable, you know.” “favourable to what?” “why, just to existence--which may contain, after all, in one way and another, so much. it may contain, at the worst, even affections; affections in fact quite particularly; fixed, that is, on one’s friends. i’m extremely fond of maggie, for instance--i quite adore her. how could i adore her more if i were married to one of the people you speak of?” the prince gave a laugh. “you might adore him more--!” “ah, but it isn’t, is it?” she asked, “a question of that.” “my dear friend,” he returned, “it’s always a question of doing the best for one’s self one can--without injury to others.” he felt by this time that they were indeed on an excellent basis; so he went on again, as if to show frankly his sense of its firmness. “i venture therefore to repeat my hope that you’ll marry some capital fellow; and also to repeat my belief that such a marriage will be more favourable to you, as you call it, than even the spirit of the age.” she looked at him at first only for answer, and would have appeared to take it with meekness had she not perhaps appeared a little more to take it with gaiety. “thank you very much,” she simply said; but at that moment their friend was with them again. it was undeniable that, as she came in, mrs. assingham looked, with a certain smiling sharpness, from one of them to the other; the perception of which was perhaps what led charlotte, for reassurance, to pass the question on. “the prince hopes so much i shall still marry some good person.” whether it worked for mrs. assingham or not, the prince was himself, at this, more than ever reassured. he was safe, in a word--that was what it all meant; and he had required to be safe. he was really safe enough for almost any joke. “it’s only,” he explained to their hostess, “because of what miss stant has been telling me. don’t we want to keep up her courage?” if the joke was broad he had at least not begun it--not, that is, as a joke; which was what his companion’s address to their friend made of it. “she has been trying in america, she says, but hasn’t brought it off.” the tone was somehow not what mrs. assingham had expected, but she made the best of it. “well then,” she replied to the young man, “if you take such an interest you must bring it off.” “and you must help, dear,” charlotte said unperturbed--“as you’ve helped, so beautifully, in such things before.” with which, before mrs. assingham could meet the appeal, she had addressed herself to the prince on a matter much nearer to him. “your marriage is on friday?--on saturday?” “oh, on friday, no! for what do you take us? there’s not a vulgar omen we’re neglecting. on saturday, please, at the oratory, at three o’clock--before twelve assistants exactly.” “twelve including me?” it struck him--he laughed. “you’ll make the thirteenth. it won’t do!” “not,” said charlotte, “if you’re going in for ‘omens.’ should you like me to stay away?” “dear no--we’ll manage. we’ll make the round number--we’ll have in some old woman. they must keep them there for that, don’t they?” mrs. assingham’s return had at last indicated for him his departure; he had possessed himself again of his hat and approached her to take leave. but he had another word for charlotte. “i dine to-night with mr. verver. have you any message?” the girl seemed to wonder a little. “for mr. verver?” “for maggie--about her seeing you early. that, i know, is what she’ll like.” “then i’ll come early--thanks.” “i daresay,” he went on, “she’ll send for you. i mean send a carriage.” “oh, i don’t require that, thanks. i can go, for a penny, can’t i?” she asked of mrs. assingham, “in an omnibus.” “oh, i say!” said the prince while mrs. assingham looked at her blandly. “yes, love--and i’ll give you the penny. she shall get there,” the good lady added to their friend. but charlotte, as the latter took leave of her, thought of something else. “there’s a great favour, prince, that i want to ask of you. i want, between this and saturday, to make maggie a marriage-present.” “oh, i say!” the young man again soothingly exclaimed. “ah, but i must,” she went on. “it’s really almost for that i came back. it was impossible to get in america what i wanted.” mrs. assingham showed anxiety. “what is it then, dear, you want?” but the girl looked only at their companion. “that’s what the prince, if he’ll be so good, must help me to decide.” “can’t _i_,” mrs. assingham asked, “help you to decide?” “certainly, darling, we must talk it well over.” and she kept her eyes on the prince. “but i want him, if he kindly will, to go with me to look. i want him to judge with me and choose. that, if you can spare the hour,” she said, “is the great favour i mean.” he raised his eyebrows at her--he wonderfully smiled. “what you came back from america to ask? ah, certainly then, i must find the hour!” he wonderfully smiled, but it was rather more, after all, than he had been reckoning with. it went somehow so little with the rest that, directly, for him, it wasn’t the note of safety; it preserved this character, at the best, but by being the note of publicity. quickly, quickly, however, the note of publicity struck him as better than any other. in another moment even it seemed positively what he wanted; for what so much as publicity put their relation on the right footing? by this appeal to mrs. assingham it was established as right, and she immediately showed that such was her own understanding. “certainly, prince,” she laughed, “you must find the hour!” and it was really so express a license from her, as representing friendly judgment, public opinion, the moral law, the margin allowed a husband about to be, or whatever, that, after observing to charlotte that, should she come to portland place in the morning, he would make a point of being there to see her and so, easily, arrange with her about a time, he took his departure with the absolutely confirmed impression of knowing, as he put it to himself, where he was. which was what he had prolonged his visit for. he was where he could stay. iv “i don’t quite see, my dear,” colonel assingham said to his wife the night of charlotte’s arrival, “i don’t quite see, i’m bound to say, why you take it, even at the worst, so ferociously hard. it isn’t your fault, after all, is it? i’ll be hanged, at any rate, if it’s mine.” the hour was late, and the young lady who had disembarked at southampton that morning to come up by the “steamer special,” and who had then settled herself at an hotel only to re-settle herself a couple of hours later at a private house, was by this time, they might hope, peacefully resting from her exploits. there had been two men at dinner, rather battered brothers-in-arms, of his own period, casually picked up by her host the day before, and when the gentlemen, after the meal, rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, charlotte, pleading fatigue, had already excused herself. the beguiled warriors, however, had stayed till after eleven--mrs. assingham, though finally quite without illusions, as she said, about the military character, was always beguiling to old soldiers; and as the colonel had come in, before dinner, only in time to dress, he had not till this moment really been summoned to meet his companion over the situation that, as he was now to learn, their visitor’s advent had created for them. it was actually more than midnight, the servants had been sent to bed, the rattle of the wheels had ceased to come in through a window still open to the august air, and robert assingham had been steadily learning, all the while, what it thus behoved him to know. but the words just quoted from him presented themselves, for the moment, as the essence of his spirit and his attitude. he disengaged, he would be damned if he didn’t--they were both phrases he repeatedly used--his responsibility. the simplest, the sanest, the most obliging of men, he habitually indulged in extravagant language. his wife had once told him, in relation to his violence of speech; that such excesses, on his part, made her think of a retired general whom she had once seen playing with toy soldiers, fighting and winning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little fortresses of wood and little armies of tin. her husband’s exaggerated emphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. it harmlessly gratified in him, for his declining years, the military instinct; bad words, when sufficiently numerous and arrayed in their might, could represent battalions, squadrons, tremendous cannonades and glorious charges of cavalry. it was natural, it was delightful--the romance, and for her as well, of camp life and of the perpetual booming of guns. it was fighting to the end, to the death, but no one was ever killed. less fortunate than she, nevertheless, in spite of his wealth of expression, he had not yet found the image that described her favourite game; all he could do was practically to leave it to her, emulating her own philosophy. he had again and again sat up late to discuss those situations in which her finer consciousness abounded, but he had never failed to deny that anything in life, anything of hers, could be a situation for himself. she might be in fifty at once if she liked--and it was what women did like, at their ease, after all; there always being, when they had too much of any, some man, as they were well aware, to get them out. he wouldn’t at any price, have one, of any sort whatever, of his own, or even be in one along with her. he watched her, accordingly, in her favourite element, very much as he had sometimes watched, at the aquarium, the celebrated lady who, in a slight, though tight, bathing-suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of water which looked so cold and uncomfortable to the non-amphibious. he listened to his companion to-night, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling. but it was true that, this being the case, he desired the value of his money. what was it, in the name of wonder, that she was so bent on being responsible for? what did she pretend was going to happen, and what, at the worst, could the poor girl do, even granting she wanted to do anything? what, at the worst, for that matter, could she be conceived to have in her head? “if she had told me the moment she got here,” mrs. assingham replied, “i shouldn’t have my difficulty in finding out. but she wasn’t so obliging, and i see no sign at all of her becoming so. what’s certain is that she didn’t come for nothing. she wants”--she worked it out at her leisure--“to see the prince again. that isn’t what troubles me. i mean that such a fact, as a fact, isn’t. but what i ask myself is, what does she want it for?” “what’s the good of asking yourself if you know you don’t know?” the colonel sat back at his own ease, with an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. it seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade. it went so far as to imply that someone or other would have “got” something or other, confinement to barracks or suppression of pay, if it hadn’t been just as it was. bob assingham was distinguished altogether by a leanness of person, a leanness quite distinct from physical laxity, which might have been determined, on the part of superior powers, by views of transport and accommodation, and which in fact verged on the abnormal. he “did” himself as well as his friends mostly knew, yet remained hungrily thin, with facial, with abdominal cavities quite grim in their effect, and with a consequent looseness of apparel that, combined with a choice of queer light shades and of strange straw-like textures, of the aspect of chinese mats, provocative of wonder at his sources of supply, suggested the habit of tropic islands, a continual cane-bottomed chair, a governorship exercised on wide verandahs. his smooth round head, with the particular shade of its white hair, was like a silver pot reversed; his cheekbones and the bristle of his moustache were worthy of attila the hun. the hollows of his eyes were deep and darksome, but the eyes within them, were like little blue flowers plucked that morning. he knew everything that could be known about life, which he regarded as, for far the greater part, a matter of pecuniary arrangement. his wife accused him of a want, alike, of moral and of intellectual reaction, or rather indeed of a complete incapacity for either. he never went even so far as to understand what she meant, and it didn’t at all matter, since he could be in spite of the limitation a perfectly social creature. the infirmities, the predicaments of men neither surprised nor shocked him, and indeed--which was perhaps his only real loss in a thrifty career--scarce even amused; he took them for granted without horror, classifying them after their kind and calculating results and chances. he might, in old bewildering climates, in old campaigns of cruelty and license, have had such revelations and known such amazements that he had nothing more to learn. but he was wholly content, in spite of his fondness, in domestic discussion, for the superlative degree; and his kindness, in the oddest way, seemed to have nothing to do with his experience. he could deal with things perfectly, for all his needs, without getting near them. this was the way he dealt with his wife, a large proportion of whose meanings he knew he could neglect. he edited, for their general economy, the play of her mind, just as he edited, savingly, with the stump of a pencil, her redundant telegrams. the thing in the world that was least of a mystery to him was his club, which he was accepted as perhaps too completely managing, and which he managed on lines of perfect penetration. his connection with it was really a master-piece of editing. this was in fact, to come back, very much the process he might have been proposing to apply to mrs. assingham’s view of what was now before them; that is to their connection with charlotte stant’s possibilities. they wouldn’t lavish on them all their little fortune of curiosity and alarm; certainly they wouldn’t spend their cherished savings so early in the day. he liked charlotte, moreover, who was a smooth and compact inmate, and whom he felt as, with her instincts that made against waste, much more of his own sort than his wife. he could talk with her about fanny almost better than he could talk with fanny about charlotte. however, he made at present the best of the latter necessity, even to the pressing of the question he has been noted as having last uttered. “if you can’t think what to be afraid of, wait till you can think. then you’ll do it much better. or otherwise, if that’s waiting too long, find out from her. don’t try to find out from me. ask her herself.” mrs. assingham denied, as we know, that her husband had a play of mind; so that she could, on her side, treat these remarks only as if they had been senseless physical gestures or nervous facial movements. she overlooked them as from habit and kindness; yet there was no one to whom she talked so persistently of such intimate things. “it’s her friendship with maggie that’s the immense complication. because that,” she audibly mused, “is so natural.” “then why can’t she have come out for it?” “she came out,” mrs. assingham continued to meditate, “because she hates america. there was no place for her there--she didn’t fit in. she wasn’t in sympathy--no more were the people she saw. then it’s hideously dear; she can’t, on her means, begin to live there. not at all as she can, in a way, here.” “in the way, you mean, of living with us?” “of living with anyone. she can’t live by visits alone--and she doesn’t want to. she’s too good for it even if she could. but she will--she must, sooner or later--stay with them. maggie will want her--maggie will make her. besides, she’ll want to herself.” “then why won’t that do,” the colonel asked, “for you to think it’s what she has come for?” “how will it do, how?”--she went on as without hearing him. “that’s what one keeps feeling.” “why shouldn’t it do beautifully?” “that anything of the past,” she brooded, “should come back now? how will it do, how will it do?” “it will do, i daresay, without your wringing your hands over it. when, my dear,” the colonel pursued as he smoked, “have you ever seen anything of yours--anything that you’ve done--not do?” “ah, i didn’t do this!” it brought her answer straight. “i didn’t bring her back.” “did you expect her to stay over there all her days to oblige you?” “not a bit--for i shouldn’t have minded her coming after their marriage. it’s her coming, this way, before.” to which she added with inconsequence: “i’m too sorry for her--of course she can’t enjoy it. but i don’t see what perversity rides her. she needn’t have looked it all so in the face--as she doesn’t do it, i suppose, simply for discipline. it’s almost--that’s the bore of it--discipline to me.” “perhaps then,” said bob assingham, “that’s what has been her idea. take it, for god’s sake, as discipline to you and have done with it. it will do,” he added, “for discipline to me as well.” she was far, however, from having done with it; it was a situation with such different sides, as she said, and to none of which one could, in justice, be blind. “it isn’t in the least, you know, for instance, that i believe she’s bad. never, never,” mrs. assingham declared. “i don’t think that of her.” “then why isn’t that enough?” nothing was enough, mrs. assingham signified, but that she should develop her thought. “she doesn’t deliberately intend, she doesn’t consciously wish, the least complication. it’s perfectly true that she thinks maggie a dear--as who doesn’t? she’s incapable of any plan to hurt a hair of her head. yet here she is--and there they are,” she wound up. her husband again, for a little, smoked in silence. “what in the world, between them, ever took place?” “between charlotte and the prince? why, nothing--except their having to recognise that nothing could. that was their little romance--it was even their little tragedy.” “but what the deuce did they do?” “do? they fell in love with each other--but, seeing it wasn’t possible, gave each other up.” “then where was the romance?” “why, in their frustration, in their having the courage to look the facts in the face.” “what facts?” the colonel went on. “well, to begin with, that of their neither of them having the means to marry. if she had had even a little--a little, i mean, for two--i believe he would bravely have done it.” after which, as her husband but emitted an odd vague sound, she corrected herself. “i mean if he himself had had only a little--or a little more than a little, a little for a prince. they would have done what they could”--she did them justice”--if there had been a way. but there wasn’t a way, and charlotte, quite to her honour, i consider, understood it. he had to have money--it was a question of life and death. it wouldn’t have been a bit amusing, either, to marry him as a pauper--i mean leaving him one. that was what she had--as he had--the reason to see.” “and their reason is what you call their romance?” she looked at him a moment. “what do you want more?” “didn’t he,” the colonel inquired, “want anything more? or didn’t, for that matter, poor charlotte herself?” she kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half answered. “they were thoroughly in love. she might have been his--” she checked herself; she even for a minute lost herself. “she might have been anything she liked--except his wife.” “but she wasn’t,” said the colonel very smokingly. “she wasn’t,” mrs. assingham echoed. the echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. he seemed to listen to it die away; then he began again. “how are you sure?” she waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite. “there wasn’t time.” he had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some other. “does it take so much time?” she herself, however, remained serious. “it takes more than they had.” he was detached, but he wondered. “what was the matter with their time?” after which, as, remembering it all, living it over and piecing it together, she only considered, “you mean that you came in with your idea?” he demanded. it brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure to answer herself. “not a bit of it--then. but you surely recall,” she went on, “the way, a year ago, everything took place. they had parted before he had ever heard of maggie.” “why hadn’t he heard of her from charlotte herself?” “because she had never spoken of her.” “is that also,” the colonel inquired, “what she has told you?” “i’m not speaking,” his wife returned, “of what she has told me. that’s one thing. i’m speaking of what i know by myself. that’s another.” “you feel, in other words, that she lies to you?” bob assingham more sociably asked. she neglected the question, treating it as gross. “she never so much, at the time, as named maggie.” it was so positive that it appeared to strike him. “it’s he then who has told you?” she after a moment admitted it. “it’s he.” “and he doesn’t lie?” “no--to do him justice. i believe he absolutely doesn’t. if i hadn’t believed it,” mrs. assingham declared, for her general justification, “i would have had nothing to do with him--that is in this connection. he’s a gentleman--i mean all as much of one as he ought to be. and he had nothing to gain. that helps,” she added, “even a gentleman. it was i who named maggie to him--a year from last may. he had never heard of her before.” “then it’s grave,” said the colonel. she hesitated. “do you mean grave for me?” “oh, that everything’s grave for ‘you’ is what we take for granted and are fundamentally talking about. it’s grave--it was--for charlotte. and it’s grave for maggie. that is it was--when he did see her. or when she did see him.” “you don’t torment me as much as you would like,” she presently went on, “because you think of nothing that i haven’t a thousand times thought of, and because i think of everything that you never will. it would all,” she recognised, “have been grave if it hadn’t all been right. you can’t make out,” she contended, “that we got to rome before the end of february.” he more than agreed. “there’s nothing in life, my dear, that i can make out.” well, there was nothing in life, apparently, that she, at real need, couldn’t. “charlotte, who had been there, that year, from early, quite from november, left suddenly, you’ll quite remember, about the th of april. she was to have stayed on--she was to have stayed, naturally, more or less, for us; and she was to have stayed all the more that the ververs, due all winter, but delayed, week after week, in paris, were at last really coming. they were coming--that is maggie was--largely to see her, and above all to be with her there. it was all altered--by charlotte’s going to florence. she went from one day to the other--you forget everything. she gave her reasons, but i thought it odd, at the time; i had a sense that something must have happened. the difficulty was that, though i knew a little, i didn’t know enough. i didn’t know her relation with him had been, as you say, a ‘near’ thing--that is i didn’t know how near. the poor girl’s departure was a flight--she went to save herself.” he had listened more than he showed--as came out in his tone. “to save herself?” “well, also, really, i think, to save him too. i saw it afterwards--i see it all now. he would have been sorry--he didn’t want to hurt her.” “oh, i daresay,” the colonel laughed. “they generally don’t!” “at all events,” his wife pursued, “she escaped--they both did; for they had had simply to face it. their marriage couldn’t be, and, if that was so, the sooner they put the apennines between them the better. it had taken them, it is true, some time to feel this and to find it out. they had met constantly, and not always publicly, all that winter; they had met more than was known--though it was a good deal known. more, certainly,” she said, “than i then imagined--though i don’t know what difference it would after all have made with me. i liked him, i thought him charming, from the first of our knowing him; and now, after more than a year, he has done nothing to spoil it. and there are things he might have done--things that many men easily would. therefore i believe in him, and i was right, at first, in knowing i was going to. so i haven’t”--and she stated it as she might have quoted from a slate, after adding up the items, the sum of a column of figures--“so i haven’t, i say to myself, been a fool.” “well, are you trying to make out that i’ve said you have? all their case wants, at any rate,” bob assingham declared, “is that you should leave it well alone. it’s theirs now; they’ve bought it, over the counter, and paid for it. it has ceased to be yours.” “of which case,” she asked, “are you speaking?” he smoked a minute: then with a groan: “lord, are there so many?” “there’s maggie’s and the prince’s, and there’s the prince’s and charlotte’s.” “oh yes; and then,” the colonel scoffed, “there’s charlotte’s and the prince’s.” “there’s maggie’s and charlotte’s,” she went on--“and there’s also maggie’s and mine. i think too that there’s charlotte’s and mine. yes,” she mused, “charlotte’s and mine is certainly a case. in short, you see, there are plenty. but i mean,” she said, “to keep my head.” “are we to settle them all,” he inquired, “to-night?” “i should lose it if things had happened otherwise--if i had acted with any folly.” she had gone on in her earnestness, unheeding of his question. “i shouldn’t be able to bear that now. but my good conscience is my strength; no one can accuse me. the ververs came on to rome alone--charlotte, after their days with her in florence, had decided about america. maggie, i daresay, had helped her; she must have made her a present, and a handsome one, so that many things were easy. charlotte left them, came to england, ‘joined’ somebody or other, sailed for new york. i have still her letter from milan, telling me; i didn’t know at the moment all that was behind it, but i felt in it nevertheless the undertaking of a new life. certainly, in any case, it cleared that air--i mean the dear old roman, in which we were steeped. it left the field free--it gave me a free hand. there was no question for me of anybody else when i brought the two others together. more than that, there was no question for them. so you see,” she concluded, “where that puts me.” she got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue daylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing her way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered alertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of the train that shoots at last into the open. she turned about the room; she looked out a moment into the august night; she stopped, here and there, before the flowers in bowls and vases. yes, it was distinctly as if she had proved what was needing proof, as if the issue of her operation had been, almost unexpectedly, a success. old arithmetic had perhaps been fallacious, but the new settled the question. her husband, oddly, however, kept his place without apparently measuring these results. as he had been amused at her intensity, so he was not uplifted by her relief; his interest might in fact have been more enlisted than he allowed. “do you mean,” he presently asked, “that he had already forgot about charlotte?” she faced round as if he had touched a spring. “he wanted to, naturally--and it was much the best thing he could do.” she was in possession of the main case, as it truly seemed; she had it all now. “he was capable of the effort, and he took the best way. remember too what maggie then seemed to us.” “she’s very nice; but she always seems to me, more than anything else, the young woman who has a million a year. if you mean that that’s what she especially seemed to him, you of course place the thing in your light. the effort to forget charlotte couldn’t, i grant you, have been so difficult.” this pulled her up but for an instant. “i never said he didn’t from the first--i never said that he doesn’t more and more--like maggie’s money.” “i never said i shouldn’t have liked it myself,” bob assingham returned. he made no movement; he smoked another minute. “how much did maggie know?” “how much?” she seemed to consider--as if it were between quarts and gallons--how best to express the quantity. “she knew what charlotte, in florence, had told her.” “and what had charlotte told her?” “very little.” “what makes you so sure?” “why, this--that she couldn’t tell her.” and she explained a little what she meant. “there are things, my dear--haven’t you felt it yourself, coarse as you are?--that no one could tell maggie. there are things that, upon my word, i shouldn’t care to attempt to tell her now.” the colonel smoked on it. “she’d be so scandalised?” “she’d be so frightened. she’d be, in her strange little way, so hurt. she wasn’t born to know evil. she must never know it.” bob assingham had a queer grim laugh; the sound of which, in fact, fixed his wife before him. “we’re taking grand ways to prevent it.” but she stood there to protest. “we’re not taking any ways. the ways are all taken; they were taken from the moment he came up to our carriage that day in villa borghese--the second or third of her days in rome, when, as you remember, you went off somewhere with mr. verver, and the prince, who had got into the carriage with us, came home with us to tea. they had met; they had seen each other well; they were in relation: the rest was to come of itself and as it could. it began, practically, i recollect, in our drive. maggie happened to learn, by some other man’s greeting of him, in the bright roman way, from a streetcorner as we passed, that one of the prince’s baptismal names, the one always used for him among his relations, was amerigo: which (as you probably don’t know, however, even after a lifetime of me), was the name, four hundred years ago, or whenever, of the pushing man who followed, across the sea, in the wake of columbus and succeeded, where columbus had failed, in becoming godfather, or name-father, to the new continent; so that the thought of any connection with him can even now thrill our artless breasts.” the colonel’s grim placidity could always quite adequately meet his wife’s not infrequent imputation of ignorances, on the score of the land of her birth, unperturbed and unashamed; and these dark depths were even at the present moment not directly lighted by an inquiry that managed to be curious without being apologetic. “but where does the connection come in?” his wife was prompt. “by the women--that is by some obliging woman, of old, who was a descendant of the pushing man, the make-believe discoverer, and whom the prince is therefore luckily able to refer to as an ancestress. a branch of the other family had become great--great enough, at least, to marry into his; and the name of the navigator, crowned with glory, was, very naturally, to become so the fashion among them that some son, of every generation, was appointed to wear it. my point is, at any rate, that i recall noticing at the time how the prince was, from the start, helped with the dear ververs by his wearing it. the connection became romantic for maggie the moment she took it in; she filled out, in a flash, every link that might be vague. ‘by that sign,’ i quite said to myself, ‘he’ll conquer’--with his good fortune, of course, of having the other necessary signs too. it really,” said mrs. assingham, “was, practically, the fine side of the wedge. which struck me as also,” she wound up, “a lovely note for the candour of the ververs.” the colonel took in the tale, but his comment was prosaic. “he knew, amerigo, what he was about. and i don’t mean the old one.” “i know what you mean!” his wife bravely threw off. “the old one”--he pointed his effect “isn’t the only discoverer in the family.” “oh, as much as you like! if he discovered america--or got himself honoured as if he had--his successors were, in due time, to discover the americans. and it was one of them in particular, doubtless, who was to discover how patriotic we are.” “wouldn’t this be the same one,” the colonel asked, “who really discovered what you call the connection?” she gave him a look. “the connection’s a true thing--the connection’s perfectly historic, your insinuations recoil upon your cynical mind. don’t you understand,” she asked, “that the history of such people is known, root and branch, at every moment of its course?” “oh, it’s all right,” said bob assingham. “go to the british museum,” his companion continued with spirit. “and what am i to do there?” “there’s a whole immense room, or recess, or department, or whatever, filled with books written about his family alone. you can see for yourself.” “have you seen for your self?” she faltered but an instant. “certainly--i went one day with maggie. we looked him up, so to say. they were most civil.” and she fell again into the current her husband had slightly ruffled. “the effect was produced, the charm began to work, at all events, in rome, from that hour of the prince’s drive with us. my only course, afterwards, had to be to make the best of it. it was certainly good enough for that,” mrs. assingham hastened to add, “and i didn’t in the least see my duty in making the worst. in the same situation, to-day; i wouldn’t act differently. i entered into the case as it then appeared to me--and as, for the matter of that, it still does. i liked it, i thought all sorts of good of it, and nothing can even now,” she said with some intensity, “make me think anything else.” “nothing can ever make you think anything you don’t want to,” the colonel, still in his chair, remarked over his pipe. “you’ve got a precious power of thinking whatever you do want. you want also, from moment to moment, to think such desperately different things. what happened,” he went on, “was that you fell violently in love with the prince yourself, and that as you couldn’t get me out of the way you had to take some roundabout course. you couldn’t marry him, any more than charlotte could--that is not to yourself. but you could to somebody else--it was always the prince, it was always marriage. you could to your little friend, to whom there were no objections.” “not only there were no objections, but there were reasons, positive ones--and all excellent, all charming.” she spoke with an absence of all repudiation of his exposure of the spring of her conduct; and this abstention, clearly and effectively conscious, evidently cost her nothing. “it is always the prince; and it is always, thank heaven, marriage. and these are the things, god grant, that it will always be. that i could help, a year ago, most assuredly made me happy, and it continues to make me happy.” “then why aren’t you quiet?” “i am quiet,” said fanny assingham. he looked at her, with his colourless candour, still in his place; she moved about again, a little, emphasising by her unrest her declaration of her tranquillity. he was as silent, at first, as if he had taken her answer, but he was not to keep it long. “what do you make of it that, by your own show, charlotte couldn’t tell her all? what do you make of it that the prince didn’t tell her anything? say one understands that there are things she can’t be told--since, as you put it, she is so easily scared and shocked.” he produced these objections slowly, giving her time, by his pauses, to stop roaming and come back to him. but she was roaming still when he concluded his inquiry. “if there hadn’t been anything there shouldn’t have been between the pair before charlotte bolted--in order, precisely, as you say, that there shouldn’t be: why in the world was what there had been too bad to be spoken of?” mrs. assingham, after this question, continued still to circulate--not directly meeting it even when at last she stopped. “i thought you wanted me to be quiet.” “so i do--and i’m trying to make you so much so that you won’t worry more. can’t you be quiet on that?” she thought a moment--then seemed to try. “to relate that she had to ‘bolt’ for the reasons we speak of, even though the bolting had done for her what she wished--that i can perfectly feel charlotte’s not wanting to do.” “ah then, if it has done for her what she wished-!” but the colonel’s conclusion hung by the “if” which his wife didn’t take up. so it hung but the longer when he presently spoke again. “all one wonders, in that case, is why then she has come back to him.” “say she hasn’t come back to him. not really to him.” “i’ll say anything you like. but that won’t do me the same good as your saying it.” “nothing, my dear, will do you good,” mrs. assingham returned. “you don’t care for anything in itself; you care for nothing but to be grossly amused because i don’t keep washing my hands--!” “i thought your whole argument was that everything is so right that this is precisely what you do.” but his wife, as it was a point she had often made, could go on as she had gone on before. “you’re perfectly indifferent, really; you’re perfectly immoral. you’ve taken part in the sack of cities, and i’m sure you’ve done dreadful things yourself. but i don’t trouble my head, if you like. ‘so now there!’” she laughed. he accepted her laugh, but he kept his way. “well, i back poor charlotte.” “‘back’ her?” “to know what she wants.” “ah then, so do i. she does know what she wants.” and mrs. assingham produced this quantity, at last, on the girl’s behalf, as the ripe result of her late wanderings and musings. she had groped through their talk, for the thread, and now she had got it. “she wants to be magnificent.” “she is,” said the colonel almost cynically. “she wants”--his wife now had it fast “to be thoroughly superior, and she’s capable of that.” “of wanting to?” “of carrying out her idea.” “and what is her idea?” “to see maggie through.” bob assingham wondered. “through what?” “through everything. she knows the prince.” “and maggie doesn’t. no, dear thing”--mrs. assingham had to recognise it--“she doesn’t.” “so that charlotte has come out to give her lessons?” she continued, fanny assingham, to work out her thought. “she has done this great thing for him. that is, a year ago, she practically did it. she practically, at any rate, helped him to do it himself--and helped me to help him. she kept off, she stayed away, she left him free; and what, moreover, were her silences to maggie but a direct aid to him? if she had spoken in florence; if she had told her own poor story; if she had, come back at any time--till within a few weeks ago; if she hadn’t gone to new york and hadn’t held out there: if she hadn’t done these things all that has happened since would certainly have been different. therefore she’s in a position to be consistent now. she knows the prince,” mrs. assingham repeated. it involved even again her former recognition. “and maggie, dear thing, doesn’t.” she was high, she was lucid, she was almost inspired; and it was but the deeper drop therefore to her husband’s flat common sense. “in other words maggie is, by her ignorance, in danger? then if she’s in danger, there is danger.” “there won’t be--with charlotte’s understanding of it. that’s where she has had her conception of being able to be heroic, of being able in fact to be sublime. she is, she will be”--the good lady by this time glowed. “so she sees it--to become, for her best friend, an element of positive safety.” bob assingham looked at it hard. “which of them do you call her best friend?” she gave a toss of impatience. “i’ll leave you to discover!” but the grand truth thus made out she had now completely adopted. “it’s for us, therefore, to be hers.” “‘hers’?” “you and i. it’s for us to be charlotte’s. it’s for us, on our side, to see her through.” “through her sublimity?” “through her noble, lonely life. only--that’s essential--it mustn’t be lonely. it will be all right if she marries.” “so we’re to marry her?” “we’re to marry her. it will be,” mrs. assingham continued, “the great thing i can do.” she made it out more and more. “it will make up.” “make up for what?” as she said nothing, however, his desire for lucidity renewed itself. “if everything’s so all right what is there to make up for?” “why, if i did do either of them, by any chance, a wrong. if i made a mistake.” “you’ll make up for it by making another?” and then as she again took her time: “i thought your whole point is just that you’re sure.” “one can never be ideally sure of anything. there are always possibilities.” “then, if we can but strike so wild, why keep meddling?” it made her again look at him. “where would you have been, my dear, if i hadn’t meddled with you?” “ah, that wasn’t meddling--i was your own. i was your own,” said the colonel, “from the moment i didn’t object.” “well, these people won’t object. they are my own too--in the sense that i’m awfully fond of them. also in the sense,” she continued, “that i think they’re not so very much less fond of me. our relation, all round, exists--it’s a reality, and a very good one; we’re mixed up, so to speak, and it’s too late to change it. we must live in it and with it. therefore to see that charlotte gets a good husband as soon as possible--that, as i say, will be one of my ways of living. it will cover,” she said with conviction, “all the ground.” and then as his own conviction appeared to continue as little to match: “the ground, i mean, of any nervousness i may ever feel. it will be in fact my duty and i shan’t rest till my duty’s performed.” she had arrived by this time at something like exaltation. “i shall give, for the next year or two if necessary, my life to it. i shall have done in that case what i can.” he took it at last as it came. “you hold there’s no limit to what you ‘can’?” “i don’t say there’s no limit, or anything of the sort. i say there are good chances--enough of them for hope. why shouldn’t there be when a girl is, after all, all that she is?” “by after ‘all’ you mean after she’s in love with somebody else?” the colonel put his question with a quietude doubtless designed to be fatal; but it scarcely pulled her up. “she’s not too much in love not herself to want to marry. she would now particularly like to.” “has she told you so?” “not yet. it’s too soon. but she will. meanwhile, however, i don’t require the information. her marrying will prove the truth.” “and what truth?” “the truth of everything i say.” “prove it to whom?” “well, to myself, to begin with. that will be enough for me--to work for her. what it will prove,” mrs. assingham presently went on, “will be that she’s cured. that she accepts the situation.” he paid this the tribute of a long pull at his pipe. “the situation of doing the one thing she can that will really seem to cover her tracks?” his wife looked at him, the good dry man, as if now at last he was merely vulgar. “the one thing she can do that will really make new tracks altogether. the thing that, before any other, will be wise and right. the thing that will best give her her chance to be magnificent.” he slowly emitted his smoke. “and best give you, by the same token, yours to be magnificent with her?” “i shall be as magnificent, at least, as i can.” bob assingham got up. “and you call me immoral?” she hesitated. “i’ll call you stupid if you prefer. but stupidity pushed to a certain point is, you know, immorality. just so what is morality but high intelligence?” this he was unable to tell her; which left her more definitely to conclude. “besides, it’s all, at the worst, great fun.” “oh, if you simply put it at that--!” his implication was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even thus he couldn’t catch her by it. “oh, i don’t mean,” she said from the threshold, “the fun that you mean. good-night.” in answer to which, as he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a grunt. he had apparently meant some particular kind. v “well, now i must tell you, for i want to be absolutely honest.” so charlotte spoke, a little ominously, after they had got into the park. “i don’t want to pretend, and i can’t pretend a moment longer. you may think of me what you will, but i don’t care. i knew i shouldn’t and i find now how little. i came back for this. not really for anything else. for this,” she repeated as, under the influence of her tone, the prince had already come to a pause. “for ‘this’?” he spoke as if the particular thing she indicated were vague to him--or were, rather, a quantity that couldn’t, at the most, be much. it would be as much, however, as she should be able to make it. “to have one hour alone with you.” it had rained heavily in the night, and though the pavements were now dry, thanks to a cleansing breeze, the august morning, with its hovering, thick-drifting clouds and freshened air, was cool and grey. the multitudinous green of the park had been deepened, and a wholesome smell of irrigation, purging the place of dust and of odours less acceptable, rose from the earth. charlotte had looked about her, with expression, from the first of their coming in, quite as if for a deep greeting, for general recognition: the day was, even in the heart of london, of a rich, low-browed, weatherwashed english type. it was as if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it, as if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. so far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague italian; it was one of those for which you had to be, blessedly, an american--as indeed you had to be, blessedly, an american for all sorts of things: so long as you hadn’t, blessedly or not, to remain in america. the prince had, by half-past ten--as also by definite appointment--called in cadogan place for mrs. assingham’s visitor, and then, after brief delay, the two had walked together up sloane street and got straight into the park from knightsbridge. the understanding to this end had taken its place, after a couple of days, as inevitably consequent on the appeal made by the girl during those first moments in mrs. assingham’s drawing-room. it was an appeal the couple of days had done nothing to invalidate--everything, much rather, to place in a light, and as to which, obviously, it wouldn’t have fitted that anyone should raise an objection. who was there, for that matter, to raise one, from the moment mrs. assingham, informed and apparently not disapproving, didn’t intervene? this the young man had asked himself--with a very sufficient sense of what would have made him ridiculous. he wasn’t going to begin--that at least was certain--by showing a fear. even had fear at first been sharp in him, moreover, it would already, not a little, have dropped; so happy, all round, so propitious, he quite might have called it, had been the effect of this rapid interval. the time had been taken up largely by his active reception of his own wedding-guests and by maggie’s scarce less absorbed entertainment of her friend, whom she had kept for hours together in portland place; whom she had not, as wouldn’t have been convenient, invited altogether as yet to migrate, but who had been present, with other persons, his contingent, at luncheon, at tea, at dinner, at perpetual repasts--he had never in his life, it struck him, had to reckon with so much eating--whenever he had looked in. if he had not again, till this hour, save for a minute, seen charlotte alone, so, positively, all the while, he had not seen even maggie; and if, therefore, he had not seen even maggie, nothing was more natural than that he shouldn’t have seen charlotte. the exceptional minute, a mere snatch, at the tail of the others, on the huge portland place staircase had sufficiently enabled the girl to remind him--so ready she assumed him to be--of what they were to do. time pressed if they were to do it at all. everyone had brought gifts; his relations had brought wonders--how did they still have, where did they still find, such treasures? she only had brought nothing, and she was ashamed; yet even by the sight of the rest of the tribute she wouldn’t be put off. she would do what she could, and he was, unknown to maggie, he must remember, to give her his aid. he had prolonged the minute so far as to take time to hesitate, for a reason, and then to risk bringing his reason out. the risk was because he might hurt her--hurt her pride, if she had that particular sort. but she might as well be hurt one way as another; and, besides, that particular sort of pride was just what she hadn’t. so his slight resistance, while they lingered, had been just easy enough not to be impossible. “i hate to encourage you--and for such a purpose, after all--to spend your money.” she had stood a stair or two below him; where, while she looked up at him beneath the high, domed light of the hall, she rubbed with her palm the polished mahogany of the balustrade, which was mounted on fine ironwork, eighteenth-century english. “because you think i must have so little? i’ve enough, at any rate--enough for us to take our hour. enough,” she had smiled, “is as good as a feast! and then,” she had said, “it isn’t of course a question of anything expensive, gorged with treasure as maggie is; it isn’t a question of competing or outshining. what, naturally, in the way of the priceless, hasn’t she got? mine is to be the offering of the poor--something, precisely, that--no rich person could ever give her, and that, being herself too rich ever to buy it, she would therefore never have.” charlotte had spoken as if after so much thought. “only, as it can’t be fine, it ought to be funny--and that’s the sort of thing to hunt for. hunting in london, besides, is amusing in itself.” he recalled even how he had been struck with her word. “‘funny’?” “oh, i don’t mean a comic toy--i mean some little thing with a charm. but absolutely right, in its comparative cheapness. that’s what i call funny,” she had explained. “you used,” she had also added, “to help me to get things cheap in rome. you were splendid for beating down. i have them all still, i needn’t say--the little bargains i there owed you. there are bargains in london in august.” “ah, but i don’t understand your english buying, and i confess i find it dull.” so much as that, while they turned to go up together, he had objected. “i understood my poor dear romans.” “it was they who understood you--that was your pull,” she had laughed. “our amusement here is just that they don’t understand us. we can make it amusing. you’ll see.” if he had hesitated again it was because the point permitted. “the amusement surely will be to find our present.” “certainly--as i say.” “well, if they don’t come down--?” “then we’ll come up. there’s always something to be done. besides, prince,” she had gone on, “i’m not, if you come to that, absolutely a pauper. i’m too poor for some things,” she had said--yet, strange as she was, lightly enough; “but i’m not too poor for others.” and she had paused again at the top. “i’ve been saving up.” he had really challenged it. “in america?” “yes, even there--with my motive. and we oughtn’t, you know,” she had wound up, “to leave it beyond to-morrow.” that, definitely, with ten words more, was what had passed--he feeling all the while how any sort of begging-off would only magnify it. he might get on with things as they were, but he must do anything rather than magnify. besides which it was pitiful to make her beg of him. he was making her--she had begged; and this, for a special sensibility in him, didn’t at all do. that was accordingly, in fine, how they had come to where they were: he was engaged, as hard as possible, in the policy of not magnifying. he had kept this up even on her making a point--and as if it were almost the whole point--that maggie of course was not to have an idea. half the interest of the thing at least would be that she shouldn’t suspect; therefore he was completely to keep it from her--as charlotte on her side would--that they had been anywhere at all together or had so much as seen each other for five minutes alone. the absolute secrecy of their little excursion was in short of the essence; she appealed to his kindness to let her feel that he didn’t betray her. there had been something, frankly, a little disconcerting in such an appeal at such an hour, on the very eve of his nuptials: it was one thing to have met the girl casually at mrs. assingham’s and another to arrange with her thus for a morning practically as private as their old mornings in rome and practically not less intimate. he had immediately told maggie, the same evening, of the minutes that had passed between them in cadogan place--though not mentioning those of mrs. assingham’s absence any more than he mentioned the fact of what their friend had then, with such small delay, proposed. but what had briefly checked his assent to any present, to any positive making of mystery--what had made him, while they stood at the top of the stairs, demur just long enough for her to notice it--was the sense of the resemblance of the little plan before him to occasions, of the past, from which he was quite disconnected, from which he could only desire to be. this was like beginning something over, which was the last thing he wanted. the strength, the beauty of his actual position was in its being wholly a fresh start, was that what it began would be new altogether. these items of his consciousness had clustered so quickly that by the time charlotte read them in his face he was in presence of what they amounted to. she had challenged them as soon as read them, had met them with a “do you want then to go and tell her?” that had somehow made them ridiculous. it had made him, promptly, fall back on minimizing it--that is on minimizing “fuss.” apparent scruples were, obviously, fuss, and he had on the spot clutched, in the light of this truth, at the happy principle that would meet every case. this principle was simply to be, with the girl, always simple--and with the very last simplicity. that would cover everything. it had covered, then and there, certainly, his immediate submission to the sight of what was clearest. this was, really, that what she asked was little compared to what she gave. what she gave touched him, as she faced him, for it was the full tune of her renouncing. she really renounced--renounced everything, and without even insisting now on what it had all been for her. her only insistence was her insistence on the small matter of their keeping their appointment to themselves. that, in exchange for “everything,” everything she gave up, was verily but a trifle. he let himself accordingly be guided; he so soon assented, for enlightened indulgence, to any particular turn she might wish the occasion to take, that the stamp of her preference had been well applied to it even while they were still in the park. the application in fact presently required that they should sit down a little, really to see where they were; in obedience to which propriety they had some ten minutes, of a quality quite distinct, in a couple of penny-chairs under one of the larger trees. they had taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened grass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from the broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of park lane, looked across the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine upon their freedom. they helped charlotte thus to make her position--her temporary position--still more clear, and it was for this purpose, obviously, that, abruptly, on seeing her opportunity, she sat down. he stood for a little before her, as if to mark the importance of not wasting time, the importance she herself had previously insisted on; but after she had said a few words it was impossible for him not to resort again to good-nature. he marked as he could, by this concession, that if he had finally met her first proposal for what would be “amusing” in it, so any idea she might have would contribute to that effect. he had consequently--in all consistency--to treat it as amusing that she reaffirmed, and reaffirmed again, the truth that was her truth. “i don’t care what you make of it, and i don’t ask anything whatever of you--anything but this. i want to have said it--that’s all; i want not to have failed to say it. to see you once and be with you, to be as we are now and as we used to be, for one small hour--or say for two--that’s what i have had for weeks in my head. i mean, of course, to get it before--before what you’re going to do. so, all the while, you see,” she went on with her eyes on him, “it was a question for me if i should be able to manage it in time. if i couldn’t have come now i probably shouldn’t have come at all--perhaps even ever. now that i’m here i shall stay, but there were moments, over there, when i despaired. it wasn’t easy--there were reasons; but it was either this or nothing. so i didn’t struggle, you see, in vain. after--oh, i didn’t want that! i don’t mean,” she smiled, “that it wouldn’t have been delightful to see you even then--to see you at any time; but i would never have come for it. this is different. this is what i wanted. this is what i’ve got. this is what i shall always have. this is what i should have missed, of course,” she pursued, “if you had chosen to make me miss it. if you had thought me horrid, had refused to come, i should, naturally, have been immensely ‘sold.’ i had to take the risk. well, you’re all i could have hoped. that’s what i was to have said. i didn’t want simply to get my time with you, but i wanted you to know. i wanted you”--she kept it up, slowly, softly, with a small tremor of voice, but without the least failure of sense or sequence--“i wanted you to understand. i wanted you, that is, to hear. i don’t care, i think, whether you understand or not. if i ask nothing of you i don’t--i mayn’t--ask even so much as that. what you may think of me--that doesn’t in the least matter. what i want is that it shall always be with you--so that you’ll never be able quite to get rid of it--that i did. i won’t say that you did--you may make as little of that as you like. but that i was here with you where we are and as we are--i just saying this. giving myself, in other words, away--and perfectly willing to do it for nothing. that’s all.” she paused as if her demonstration was complete--yet, for the moment, without moving; as if in fact to give it a few minutes to sink in; into the listening air, into the watching space, into the conscious hospitality of nature, so far as nature was, all londonised, all vulgarised, with them there; or even, for that matter, into her own open ears, rather than into the attention of her passive and prudent friend. his attention had done all that attention could do; his handsome, slightly anxious, yet still more definitely “amused” face sufficiently played its part. he clutched, however, at what he could best clutch at--the fact that she let him off, definitely let him off. she let him off, it seemed, even from so much as answering; so that while he smiled back at her in return for her information he felt his lips remain closed to the successive vaguenesses of rejoinder, of objection, that rose for him from within. charlotte herself spoke again at last--“you may want to know what i get by it. but that’s my own affair.” he really didn’t want to know even this--or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as if he didn’t; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he had taken refuge. he was glad when, finally--the point she had wished to make seeming established to her satisfaction--they brought to what might pass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to say. movement and progress, after this, with more impersonal talk, were naturally a relief; so that he was not again, during their excursion, at a loss for the right word. the air had been, as it were, cleared; they had their errand itself to discuss, and the opportunities of london, the sense of the wonderful place, the pleasures of prowling there, the question of shops, of possibilities, of particular objects, noticed by each in previous prowls. each professed surprise at the extent of the other’s knowledge; the prince in especial wondered at his friend’s possession of her london. he had rather prized his own possession, the guidance he could really often give a cabman; it was a whim of his own, a part of his anglomania, and congruous with that feature, which had, after all, so much more surface than depth. when his companion, with the memory of other visits and other rambles, spoke of places he hadn’t seen and things he didn’t know, he actually felt again--as half the effect--just a shade humiliated. he might even have felt a trifle annoyed--if it hadn’t been, on this spot, for his being, even more, interested. it was a fresh light on charlotte and on her curious world-quality, of which, in rome, he had had his due sense, but which clearly would show larger on the big london stage. rome was, in comparison, a village, a family-party, a little old-world spinnet for the fingers of one hand. by the time they reached the marble arch it was almost as if she were showing him a new side, and that, in fact, gave amusement a new and a firmer basis. the right tone would be easy for putting himself in her hands. should they disagree a little--frankly and fairly--about directions and chances, values and authenticities, the situation would be quite gloriously saved. they were none the less, as happened, much of one mind on the article of their keeping clear of resorts with which maggie would be acquainted. charlotte recalled it as a matter of course, named it in time as a condition--they would keep away from any place to which he had already been with maggie. this made indeed a scant difference, for though he had during the last month done few things so much as attend his future wife on her making of purchases, the antiquarii, as he called them with charlotte, had not been the great affair. except in bond street, really, maggie had had no use for them: her situation indeed, in connection with that order of traffic, was full of consequences produced by her father’s. mr. verver, one of the great collectors of the world, hadn’t left his daughter to prowl for herself; he had little to do with shops, and was mostly, as a purchaser, approached privately and from afar. great people, all over europe, sought introductions to him; high personages, incredibly high, and more of them than would ever be known, solemnly sworn as everyone was, in such cases, to discretion, high personages made up to him as the one man on the short authentic list likely to give the price. it had therefore been easy to settle, as they walked, that the tracks of the ververs, daughter’s as well as father’s, were to be avoided; the importance only was that their talk about it led for a moment to the first words they had as yet exchanged on the subject of maggie. charlotte, still in the park, proceeded to them--for it was she who began--with a serenity of appreciation that was odd, certainly, as a sequel to her words of ten minutes before. this was another note on her--what he would have called another light--for her companion, who, though without giving a sign, admired, for what it was, the simplicity of her transition, a transition that took no trouble either to trace or to explain itself. she paused again an instant, on the grass, to make it; she stopped before him with a sudden “anything of course, dear as she is, will do for her. i mean if i were to give her a pin-cushion from the baker-street bazaar.” “that’s exactly what _i_ meant”--the prince laughed out this allusion to their snatch of talk in portland place. “it’s just what i suggested.” she took, however, no notice of the reminder; she went on in her own way. “but it isn’t a reason. in that case one would never do anything for her. i mean,” charlotte explained, “if one took advantage of her character.” “of her character?” “we mustn’t take advantage of her character,” the girl, again unheeding, pursued. “one mustn’t, if not for her, at least for one’s self. she saves one such trouble.” she had spoken thoughtfully, with her eyes on her friend’s; she might have been talking, preoccupied and practical, of someone with whom he was comparatively unconnected. “she certainly gives one no trouble,” said the prince. and then as if this were perhaps ambiguous or inadequate: “she’s not selfish--god forgive her!--enough.” “that’s what i mean,” charlotte instantly said. “she’s not selfish enough. there’s nothing, absolutely, that one need do for her. she’s so modest,” she developed--“she doesn’t miss things. i mean if you love her--or, rather, i should say, if she loves you. she lets it go.” the prince frowned a little--as a tribute, after all, to seriousness. “she lets what--?” “anything--anything that you might do and that you don’t. she lets everything go but her own disposition to be kind to you. it’s of herself that she asks efforts--so far as she ever has to ask them. she hasn’t, much. she does everything herself. and that’s terrible.” the prince had listened; but, always with propriety, he didn’t commit himself. “terrible?” “well, unless one is almost as good as she. it makes too easy terms for one. it takes stuff, within one, so far as one’s decency is concerned, to stand it. and nobody,” charlotte continued in the same manner, “is decent enough, good enough, to stand it--not without help from religion, or something of that kind. not without prayer and fasting--that is without taking great care. certainly,” she said, “such people as you and i are not.” the prince, obligingly, thought an instant. “not good enough to stand it?” “well, not good enough not rather to feel the strain. we happen each, i think, to be of the kind that are easily spoiled.” her friend, again, for propriety, followed the argument. “oh, i don’t know. may not one’s affection for her do something more for one’s decency, as you call it, than her own generosity--her own affection, her ‘decency’--has the unfortunate virtue to undo?” “ah, of course it must be all in that.” but she had made her question, all the same, interesting to him. “what it comes to--one can see what you mean--is the way she believes in one. that is if she believes at all.” “yes, that’s what it comes to,” said charlotte stant. “and why,” he asked, almost soothingly, “should it be terrible?” he couldn’t, at the worst, see that. “because it’s always so--the idea of having to pity people.” “not when there’s also, with it, the idea of helping them.” “yes, but if we can’t help them?” “we can--we always can. that is,” he competently added, “if we care for them. and that’s what we’re talking about.” “yes”--she on the whole assented. “it comes back then to our absolutely refusing to be spoiled.” “certainly. but everything,” the prince laughed as they went on--“all your ‘decency,’ i mean--comes back to that.” she walked beside him a moment. “it’s just what _i_ meant,” she then reasonably said. vi the man in the little shop in which, well after this, they lingered longest, the small but interesting dealer in the bloomsbury street who was remarkable for an insistence not importunate, inasmuch as it was mainly mute, but singularly, intensely coercive--this personage fixed on his visitors an extraordinary pair of eyes and looked from one to the other while they considered the object with which he appeared mainly to hope to tempt them. they had come to him last, for their time was nearly up; an hour of it at least, from the moment of their getting into a hansom at the marble arch, having yielded no better result than the amusement invoked from the first. the amusement, of course, was to have consisted in seeking, but it had also involved the idea of finding; which latter necessity would have been obtrusive only if they had found too soon. the question at present was if they were finding, and they put it to each other, in the bloomsbury shop, while they enjoyed the undiverted attention of the shopman. he was clearly the master, and devoted to his business--the essence of which, in his conception, might precisely have been this particular secret that he possessed for worrying the customer so little that it fairly made for their relations a sort of solemnity. he had not many things, none of the redundancy of “rot” they had elsewhere seen, and our friends had, on entering, even had the sense of a muster so scant that, as high values obviously wouldn’t reign, the effect might be almost pitiful. then their impression had changed; for, though the show was of small pieces, several taken from the little window and others extracted from a cupboard behind the counter--dusky, in the rather low-browed place, despite its glass doors--each bid for their attention spoke, however modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer’s pretensions was promptly enough given. his array was heterogeneous and not at all imposing; still, it differed agreeably from what they had hitherto seen. charlotte, after the incident, was to be full of impressions, of several of which, later on, she gave her companion--always in the interest of their amusement--the benefit; and one of the impressions had been that the man himself was the greatest curiosity they had looked at. the prince was to reply to this that he himself hadn’t looked at him; as, precisely, in the general connection, charlotte had more than once, from other days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below a certain social plane, he never saw. one kind of shopman was just like another to him--which was oddly inconsequent on the part of a mind that, where it did notice, noticed so much. he took throughout, always, the meaner sort for granted--the night of their meanness, or whatever name one might give it for him, made all his cats grey. he didn’t, no doubt, want to hurt them, but he imaged them no more than if his eyes acted only for the level of his own high head. her own vision acted for every relation--this he had seen for himself: she remarked beggars, she remembered servants, she recognised cabmen; she had often distinguished beauty, when out with him, in dirty children; she had admired “type” in faces at hucksters’ stalls. therefore, on this occasion, she had found their antiquario interesting; partly because he cared so for his things, and partly because he cared--well, so for them. “he likes his things--he loves them,” she was to say; “and it isn’t only--it isn’t perhaps even at all--that he loves to sell them. i think he would love to keep them if he could; and he prefers, at any rate, to sell them to right people. we, clearly, were right people--he knows them when he sees them; and that’s why, as i say, you could make out, or at least _i_ could, that he cared for us. didn’t you see”--she was to ask it with an insistence--“the way he looked at us and took us in? i doubt if either of us have ever been so well looked at before. yes, he’ll remember us”--she was to profess herself convinced of that almost to uneasiness. “but it was after all”--this was perhaps reassuring--“because, given his taste, since he has taste, he was pleased with us, he was struck--he had ideas about us. well, i should think people might; we’re beautiful--aren’t we?--and he knows. then, also, he has his way; for that way of saying nothing with his lips when he’s all the while pressing you so with his face, which shows how he knows you feel it--that is a regular way.” of decent old gold, old silver, old bronze, of old chased and jewelled artistry, were the objects that, successively produced, had ended by numerously dotting the counter, where the shopman’s slim, light fingers, with neat nails, touched them at moments, briefly, nervously, tenderly, as those of a chess-player rest, a few seconds, over the board, on a figure he thinks he may move and then may not: small florid ancientries, ornaments, pendants, lockets, brooches, buckles, pretexts for dim brilliants, bloodless rubies, pearls either too large or too opaque for value; miniatures mounted with diamonds that had ceased to dazzle; snuffboxes presented to--or by--the too-questionable great; cups, trays, taper-stands, suggestive of pawn-tickets, archaic and brown, that would themselves, if preserved, have been prized curiosities. a few commemorative medals, of neat outline but dull reference; a classic monument or two, things of the first years of the century; things consular, napoleonic, temples, obelisks, arches, tinily re-embodied, completed the discreet cluster; in which, however, even after tentative reinforcement from several quaint rings, intaglios, amethysts, carbuncles, each of which had found a home in the ancient sallow satin of some weakly-snapping little box, there was, in spite of the due proportion of faint poetry, no great force of persuasion. they looked, the visitors, they touched, they vaguely pretended to consider, but with scepticism, so far as courtesy permitted, in the quality of their attention. it was impossible they shouldn’t, after a little, tacitly agree as to the absurdity of carrying to maggie a token from such a stock. it would be--that was the difficulty--pretentious without being “good”; too usual, as a treasure, to have been an inspiration of the giver, and yet too primitive to be taken as tribute welcome on any terms. they had been out more than two hours and, evidently, had found nothing. it forced from charlotte a kind of admission. “it ought, really, if it should be a thing of this sort, to take its little value from having belonged to one’s self.” “ecco!” said the prince--just triumphantly enough. “there you are.” behind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wall. two or three of these charlotte had seen him open, so that her eyes found themselves resting on those he had not visited. but she completed her admission. “there’s nothing here she could wear.” it was only after a moment that her companion rejoined. “is there anything--do you think--that you could?” it made her just start. she didn’t, at all events, look at the objects; she but looked for an instant very directly at him. “no.” “ah!” the prince quietly exclaimed. “would it be,” charlotte asked, “your idea to offer me something?” “well, why not--as a small ricordo.” “but a ricordo of what?” “why, of ‘this’--as you yourself say. of this little hunt.” “oh, i say it--but hasn’t my whole point been that i don’t ask you to. therefore,” she demanded--but smiling at him now--“where’s the logic?” “oh, the logic--!” he laughed. “but logic’s everything. that, at least, is how i feel it. a ricordo from you--from you to me--is a ricordo of nothing. it has no reference.” “ah, my dear!” he vaguely protested. their entertainer, meanwhile, stood there with his eyes on them, and the girl, though at this minute more interested in her passage with her friend than in anything else, again met his gaze. it was a comfort to her that their foreign tongue covered what they said--and they might have appeared of course, as the prince now had one of the snuffboxes in his hand, to be discussing a purchase. “you don’t refer,” she went on to her companion. “_i_ refer.” he had lifted the lid of his little box and he looked into it hard. “do you mean by that then that you would be free--?” “‘free’--?” “to offer me something?” this gave her a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might have seemed, oddly, to be addressing the dealer. “would you allow me--?” “no,” said the prince into his little box. “you wouldn’t accept it from me?” “no,” he repeated in the same way. she exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. “but you’ve touched an idea that has been mine. it’s what i’ve wanted.” then she added: “it was what i hoped.” he put down his box--this had drawn his eyes. he made nothing, clearly, of the little man’s attention. “it’s what you brought me out for?” “well, that’s, at any rate,” she returned, “my own affair. but it won’t do?” “it won’t do, cara mia.” “it’s impossible?” “it’s impossible.” and he took up one of the brooches. she had another pause, while the shopman only waited. “if i were to accept from you one of these charming little ornaments as you suggest, what should i do with it?” he was perhaps at last a little irritated; he even--as if he might understand--looked vaguely across at their host. “wear it, per bacco!” “where then, please? under my clothes?” “wherever you like. but it isn’t then, if you will,” he added, “worth talking about.” “it’s only worth talking about, mio caro,” she smiled, “from your having begun it. my question is only reasonable--so that your idea may stand or fall by your answer to it. if i should pin one of these things on for you would it be, to your mind, that i might go home and show it to maggie as your present?” they had had between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely, descriptively applied, of “old roman.” it had been, as a pleasantry, in the other time, his explanation to her of everything; but nothing, truly, had even seemed so old-roman as the shrug in which he now indulged. “why in the world not?” “because--on our basis--it would be impossible to give her an account of the pretext.” “the pretext--?” he wondered. “the occasion. this ramble that we shall have had together and that we’re not to speak of.” “oh yes,” he said after a moment “i remember we’re not to speak of it.” “that of course you’re pledged to. and the one thing, you see, goes with the other. so you don’t insist.” he had again, at random, laid back his trinket; with which he quite turned to her, a little wearily at last--even a little impatiently. “i don’t insist.” it disposed for the time of the question, but what was next apparent was that it had seen them no further. the shopman, who had not stirred, stood there in his patience--which, his mute intensity helping, had almost the effect of an ironic comment. the prince moved to the glass door and, his back to the others, as with nothing more to contribute, looked--though not less patiently--into the street. then the shopman, for charlotte, momentously broke silence. “you’ve seen, disgraziatamente, signora principessa,” he sadly said, “too much”--and it made the prince face about. for the effect of the momentous came, if not from the sense, from the sound of his words; which was that of the suddenest, sharpest italian. charlotte exchanged with her friend a glance that matched it, and just for the minute they were held in check. but their glance had, after all, by that time, said more than one thing; had both exclaimed on the apprehension, by the wretch, of their intimate conversation, let alone of her possible, her impossible, title, and remarked, for mutual reassurance, that it didn’t, all the same, matter. the prince remained by the door, but immediately addressing the speaker from where he stood. “you’re italian then, are you?” but the reply came in english. “oh dear no.” “you’re english?” to which the answer was this time, with a smile, in briefest italian. “che!” the dealer waived the question--he practically disposed of it by turning straightway toward a receptacle to which he had not yet resorted and from which, after unlocking it, he extracted a square box, of some twenty inches in height, covered with worn-looking leather. he placed the box on the counter, pushed back a pair of small hooks, lifted the lid and removed from its nest a drinking-vessel larger than a common cup, yet not of exorbitant size, and formed, to appearance, either of old fine gold or of some material once richly gilt. he handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat. “my golden bowl,” he observed--and it sounded, on his lips, as if it said everything. he left the important object--for as “important” it did somehow present itself--to produce its certain effect. simple, but singularly elegant, it stood on a circular foot, a short pedestal with a slightly spreading base, and, though not of signal depth, justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. it might have been a large goblet diminished, to the enhancement of its happy curve, by half its original height. as formed of solid gold it was impressive; it seemed indeed to warn off the prudent admirer. charlotte, with care, immediately took it up, while the prince, who had after a minute shifted his position again, regarded it from a distance. it was heavier than charlotte had thought. “gold, really gold?” she asked of their companion. he hesitated. “look a little, and perhaps you’ll make out.” she looked, holding it up in both her fine hands, turning it to the light. “it may be cheap for what it is, but it will be dear, i’m afraid, for me.” “well,” said the man, “i can part with it for less than its value. i got it, you see, for less.” “for how much then?” again he waited, always with his serene stare. “do you like it then?” charlotte turned to her friend. “do you like it?” he came no nearer; he looked at their companion. “cos’e?” “well, signori miei, if you must know, it’s just a perfect crystal.” “of course we must know, per dio!” said the prince. but he turned away again--he went back to his glass door. charlotte set down the bowl; she was evidently taken. “do you mean it’s cut out of a single crystal?” “if it isn’t i think i can promise you that you’ll never find any joint or any piecing.” she wondered. “even if i were to scrape off the gold?” he showed, though with due respect, that she amused him. “you couldn’t scrape it off--it has been too well put on; put on i don’t know when and i don’t know how. but by some very fine old worker and by some beautiful old process.” charlotte, frankly charmed with the cup, smiled back at him now. “a lost art?” “call it a lost art,” “but of what time then is the whole thing?” “well, say also of a lost time.” the girl considered. “then if it’s so precious, how comes it to be cheap?” her interlocutor once more hung fire, but by this time the prince had lost patience. “i’ll wait for you out in the air,” he said to his companion, and, though he spoke without irritation, he pointed his remark by passing immediately into the street, where, during the next minutes, the others saw him, his back to the shopwindow, philosophically enough hover and light a fresh cigarette. charlotte even took, a little, her time; she was aware of his funny italian taste for london street-life. her host meanwhile, at any rate, answered her question. “ah, i’ve had it a long time without selling it. i think i must have been keeping it, madam, for you.” “you’ve kept it for me because you’ve thought i mightn’t see what’s the matter with it?” he only continued to face her--he only continued to appear to follow the play of her mind. “what is the matter with it?” “oh, it’s not for me to say; it’s for you honestly to tell me. of course i know something must be.” “but if it’s something you can’t find out, isn’t it as good as if it were nothing?” “i probably should find out as soon as i had paid for it.” “not,” her host lucidly insisted, “if you hadn’t paid too much.” “what do you call,” she asked, “little enough?” “well, what should you say to fifteen pounds?” “i should say,” said charlotte with the utmost promptitude, “that it’s altogether too much.” the dealer shook his head slowly and sadly, but firmly. “it’s my price, madam--and if you admire the thing i think it really might be yours. it’s not too much. it’s too little. it’s almost nothing. i can’t go lower.” charlotte, wondering, but resisting, bent over the bowl again. “then it’s impossible. it’s more than i can afford.” “ah,” the man returned, “one can sometimes afford for a present more than one can afford for one’s self.” he said it so coaxingly that she found herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his place. “oh, of course it would be only for a present--!” “then it would be a lovely one.” “does one make a present,” she asked, “of an object that contains, to one’s knowledge, a flaw?” “well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. the good faith,” the man smiled, “is always there.” “and leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover it?” “he wouldn’t discover it--if you’re speaking of a gentleman.” “i’m not speaking of anyone in particular,” charlotte said. “well, whoever it might be. he might know--and he might try. but he wouldn’t find.” she kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet had a fancy for the bowl. “not even if the thing should come to pieces?” and then as he was silent: “not even if he should have to say to me ‘the golden bowl is broken’?” he was still silent; after which he had his strangest smile. “ah, if anyone should want to smash it--!” she laughed; she almost admired the little man’s expression. “you mean one could smash it with a hammer?” “yes; if nothing else would do. or perhaps even by dashing it with violence--say upon a marble floor.” “oh, marble floors!” but she might have been thinking--for they were a connection, marble floors; a connection with many things: with her old rome, and with his; with the palaces of his past, and, a little, of hers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of his marriage, with the wealth of the ververs. all the same, however, there were other things; and they all together held for a moment her fancy. “does crystal then break--when it is crystal? i thought its beauty was its hardness.” her friend, in his way, discriminated. “its beauty is its being crystal. but its hardness is certainly, its safety. it doesn’t break,” he went on, “like vile glass. it splits--if there is a split.” “ah!”--charlotte breathed with interest. “if there is a split.” and she looked down again at the bowl. “there is a split, eh? crystal does split, eh?” “on lines and by laws of its own.” “you mean if there’s a weak place?” for all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. it rang with the finest, sweetest sound. “where is the weak place?” she then did the question justice. “well, for me, only the price. i’m poor, you see--very poor. but i thank you and i’ll think.” the prince, on the other side of the shop-window, had finally faced about and, as to see if she hadn’t done, was trying to reach, with his eyes, the comparatively dim interior. “i like it,” she said--“i want it. but i must decide what i can do.” the man, not ungraciously, resigned himself. “well, i’ll keep it for you.” the small quarter-of-an-hour had had its marked oddity--this she felt even by the time the open air and the bloomsbury aspects had again, in their protest against the truth of her gathered impression, made her more or less their own. yet the oddity might have been registered as small as compared to the other effect that, before they had gone much further, she had, with her companion, to take account of. this latter was simply the effect of their having, by some tacit logic, some queer inevitability, quite dropped the idea of a continued pursuit. they didn’t say so, but it was on the line of giving up maggie’s present that they practically proceeded--the line of giving it up without more reference to it. the prince’s first reference was in fact quite independently made. “i hope you satisfied yourself, before you had done, of what was the matter with that bowl.” “no indeed, i satisfied myself of nothing. of nothing at least but that the more i looked at it the more i liked it, and that if you weren’t so unaccommodating this would be just the occasion for your giving me the pleasure of accepting it.” he looked graver for her, at this, than he had looked all the morning. “do you propose it seriously--without wishing to play me a trick?” she wondered. “what trick would it be?” he looked at her harder. “you mean you really don’t know?” “but know what?” “why, what’s the matter with it. you didn’t see, all the while?” she only continued, however, to stare. “how could you see--out in the street?” “i saw before i went out. it was because i saw that i did go out. i didn’t want to have another scene with you, before that rascal, and i judged you would presently guess for yourself.” “is he a rascal?” charlotte asked. “his price is so moderate.” she waited but a moment. “five pounds. really so little.” “five pounds?” he continued to look at her. “five pounds.” he might have been doubting her word, but he was only, it appeared, gathering emphasis. “it would be dear--to make a gift of--at five shillings. if it had cost you even but five pence i wouldn’t take it from you.” “then,” she asked, “what is the matter?” “why, it has a crack.” it sounded, on his lips, so sharp, it had such an authority, that she almost started, while her colour, at the word, rose. it was as if he had been right, though his assurance was wonderful. “you answer for it without having looked?” “i did look. i saw the object itself. it told its story. no wonder it’s cheap.” “but it’s exquisite,” charlotte, as if with an interest in it now made even tenderer and stranger, found herself moved to insist. “of course it’s exquisite. that’s the danger.” then a light visibly came to her--a light in which her friend suddenly and intensely showed. the reflection of it, as she smiled at him, was in her own face. “the danger--i see--is because you’re superstitious.” “per dio, i’m superstitious! a crack is a crack--and an omen’s an omen.” “you’d be afraid--?” “per bacco!” “for your happiness?” “for my happiness.” “for your safety?” “for my safety.” she just paused. “for your marriage?” “for my marriage. for everything.” she thought again. “thank goodness then that if there be a crack we know it! but if we may perish by cracks in things that we don’t know--!” and she smiled with the sadness of it. “we can never then give each other anything.” he considered, but he met it. “ah, but one does know. _i_ do, at least--and by instinct. i don’t fail. that will always protect me.” it was funny, the way he said such things; yet she liked him, really, the more for it. they fell in for her with a general, or rather with a special, vision. but she spoke with a mild despair. “what then will protect me?” “where i’m concerned _i_ will. from me at least you’ve nothing to fear,” he now quite amiably responded. “anything you consent to accept from me--” but he paused. “well?” “well, shall be perfect.” “that’s very fine,” she presently answered. “it’s vain, after all, for you to talk of my accepting things when you’ll accept nothing from me.” ah, there, better still, he could meet her. “you attach an impossible condition. that, i mean, of my keeping your gift so to myself.” well, she looked, before him there, at the condition--then, abruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. she had a headshake of disenchantment--so far as the idea had appealed to her. it all appeared too difficult. “oh, my ‘condition’--i don’t hold to it. you may cry it on the housetops--anything i ever do.” “ah well, then--!” this made, he laughed, all the difference. but it was too late. “oh, i don’t care now! i should have liked the bowl. but if that won’t do there’s nothing.” he considered this; he took it in, looking graver again; but after a moment he qualified. “yet i shall want some day to give you something.” she wondered at him. “what day?” “the day you marry. for you will marry. you must--seriously--marry.” she took it from him, but it determined in her the only words she was to have uttered, all the morning, that came out as if a spring had been pressed. “to make you feel better?” “well,” he replied frankly, wonderfully--“it will. but here,” he added, “is your hansom.” he had signalled--the cab was charging. she put out no hand for their separation, but she prepared to get in. before she did so, however, she said what had been gathering while she waited. “well, i would marry, i think, to have something from you in all freedom.” part second vii adam verver, at fawns, that autumn sunday, might have been observed to open the door of the billiard-room with a certain freedom--might have been observed, that is, had there been a spectator in the field. the justification of the push he had applied, however, and of the push, equally sharp, that, to shut himself in, he again applied--the ground of this energy was precisely that he might here, however briefly, find himself alone, alone with the handful of letters, newspapers and other unopened missives, to which, during and since breakfast, he had lacked opportunity to give an eye. the vast, square, clean apartment was empty, and its large clear windows looked out into spaces of terrace and garden, of park and woodland and shining artificial lake, of richly-condensed horizon, all dark blue upland and church-towered village and strong cloudshadow, which were, together, a thing to create the sense, with everyone else at church, of one’s having the world to one’s self. we share this world, none the less, for the hour, with mr. verver; the very fact of his striking, as he would have said, for solitude, the fact of his quiet flight, almost on tiptoe, through tortuous corridors, investing him with an interest that makes our attention--tender indeed almost to compassion--qualify his achieved isolation. for it may immediately be mentioned that this amiable man bethought himself of his personal advantage, in general, only when it might appear to him that other advantages, those of other persons, had successfully put in their claim. it may be mentioned also that he always figured other persons--such was the law of his nature--as a numerous array, and that, though conscious of but a single near tie, one affection, one duty deepest-rooted in his life, it had never, for many minutes together, been his portion not to feel himself surrounded and committed, never quite been his refreshment to make out where the many-coloured human appeal, represented by gradations of tint, diminishing concentric zones of intensity, of importunity, really faded to the blessed impersonal whiteness for which his vision sometimes ached. it shaded off, the appeal--he would have admitted that; but he had as yet noted no point at which it positively stopped. thus had grown in him a little habit--his innermost secret, not confided even to maggie, though he felt she understood it, as she understood, to his view, everything--thus had shaped itself the innocent trick of occasionally making believe that he had no conscience, or at least that blankness, in the field of duty, did reign for an hour; a small game to which the few persons near enough to have caught him playing it, and of whom mrs. assingham, for instance, was one, attached indulgently that idea of quaintness, quite in fact that charm of the pathetic, involved in the preservation by an adult of one of childhood’s toys. when he took a rare moment “off,” he did so with the touching, confessing eyes of a man of forty-seven caught in the act of handling a relic of infancy--sticking on the head of a broken soldier or trying the lock of a wooden gun. it was essentially, in him, the imitation of depravity--which, for amusement, as might have been, he practised “keeping up.” in spite of practice he was still imperfect, for these so artlessly-artful interludes were condemned, by the nature of the case, to brevity. he had fatally stamped himself--it was his own fault--a man who could be interrupted with impunity. the greatest of wonders, moreover, was exactly in this, that so interrupted a man should ever have got, as the phrase was, should above all have got so early, to where he was. it argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. the spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff american breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made of the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. this establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions. the essential pulse of the flame, the very action of the cerebral temperature, brought to the highest point, yet extraordinarily contained--these facts themselves were the immensity of the result; they were one with perfection of machinery, they had constituted the kind of acquisitive power engendered and applied, the necessary triumph of all operations. a dim explanation of phenomena once vivid must at all events for the moment suffice us; it being obviously no account of the matter to throw on our friend’s amiability alone the weight of the demonstration of his economic history. amiability, of a truth, is an aid to success; it has even been known to be the principle of large accumulations; but the link, for the mind, is none the less fatally missing between proof, on such a scale, of continuity, if of nothing more insolent, in one field, and accessibility to distraction in every other. variety of imagination--what is that but fatal, in the world of affairs, unless so disciplined as not to be distinguished from monotony? mr. verver then, for a fresh, full period, a period betraying, extraordinarily, no wasted year, had been inscrutably monotonous behind an iridescent cloud. the cloud was his native envelope--the soft looseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive enough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality unmistakable for sensitive feelers. he was still reduced, in fine, to getting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism. his real inability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been better instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable to-day--his acceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of that element of obligation with which he had all the while known he must reckon. a quarter-of-an-hour of egoism was about as much as he, taking one situation with another, usually got. mrs. rance opened the door--more tentatively indeed than he himself had just done; but on the other hand, as if to make up for this, she pushed forward even more briskly on seeing him than he had been moved to do on seeing nobody. then, with force, it came home to him that he had, definitely, a week before, established a precedent. he did her at least that justice--it was a kind of justice he was always doing someone. he had on the previous sunday liked to stop at home, and he had exposed himself thereby to be caught in the act. to make this possible, that is, mrs. rance had only had to like to do the same--the trick was so easily played. it had not occurred to him to plan in any way for her absence--which would have destroyed, somehow, in principle, the propriety of his own presence. if persons under his roof hadn’t a right not to go to church, what became, for a fair mind, of his own right? his subtlest manoeuvre had been simply to change from the library to the billiard-room, it being in the library that his guest, or his daughter’s, or the guest of the miss lutches--he scarce knew in which light to regard her--had then, and not unnaturally, of course, joined him. it was urged on him by his memory of the duration of the visit she had that time, as it were, paid him, that the law of recurrence would already have got itself enacted. she had spent the whole morning with him, was still there, in the library, when the others came back--thanks to her having been tepid about their taking, mr. verver and she, a turn outside. it had been as if she looked on that as a kind of subterfuge--almost as a form of disloyalty. yet what was it she had in mind, what did she wish to make of him beyond what she had already made, a patient, punctilious host, mindful that she had originally arrived much as a stranger, arrived not at all deliberately or yearningly invited?--so that one positively had her possible susceptibilities the more on one’s conscience. the miss lutches, the sisters from the middle west, were there as friends of maggie’s, friends of the earlier time; but mrs. rance was there--or at least had primarily appeared--only as a friend of the miss lutches. this lady herself was not of the middle west--she rather insisted on it--but of new jersey, rhode island or delaware, one of the smallest and most intimate states: he couldn’t remember which, though she insisted too on that. it was not in him--we may say it for him--to go so far as to wonder if their group were next to be recruited by some friend of her own; and this partly because she had struck him, verily, rather as wanting to get the miss lutches themselves away than to extend the actual circle, and partly, as well as more essentially, because such connection as he enjoyed with the ironic question in general resided substantially less in a personal use of it than in the habit of seeing it as easy to others. he was so framed by nature as to be able to keep his inconveniences separate from his resentments; though indeed if the sum of these latter had at the most always been small, that was doubtless in some degree a consequence of the fewness of the former. his greatest inconvenience, he would have admitted, had he analyzed, was in finding it so taken for granted that, as he had money, he had force. it pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of power. everyone had need of one’s power, whereas one’s own need, at the best, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it. the effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most cases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore, though it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite agent, the outrage was not the greatest of which a brave man might complain. complaint, besides, was a luxury, and he dreaded the imputation of greed. the other, the constant imputation, that of being able to “do,” would have no ground if he hadn’t been, to start with--this was the point--provably luxurious. his lips, somehow, were closed--and by a spring connected moreover with the action of his eyes themselves. the latter showed him what he had done, showed him where he had come out; quite at the top of his hill of difficulty, the tall sharp spiral round which he had begun to wind his ascent at the age of twenty, and the apex of which was a platform looking down, if one would, on the kingdoms of the earth and with standing-room for but half-a-dozen others. his eyes, in any case, now saw mrs. rance approach with an instant failure to attach to the fact any grossness of avidity of mrs. rance’s own--or at least to descry any triumphant use even for the luridest impression of her intensity. what was virtually supreme would be her vision of his having attempted, by his desertion of the library, to mislead her--which in point of fact barely escaped being what he had designed. it was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and funnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the one thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course. the billiard-room was not, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a graceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to retire to--and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his visitor wouldn’t, as he apprehended, explicitly make him a scene. should she frankly denounce him for a sneak he would simply go to pieces; but he was, after an instant, not afraid of that. wouldn’t she rather, as emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?--show at least that they needn’t mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. she couldn’t cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round it; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had to cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, to be pursued, to be genially hunted. this last was a turn he was well aware the occasion should on no account take; and there loomed before him--for the mere moment--the prospect of her fairly proposing that they should knock about the balls. that danger certainly, it struck him, he should manage in some way to deal with. why too, for that matter, had he need of defences, material or other?--how was it a question of dangers really to be called such? the deep danger, the only one that made him, as an idea, positively turn cold, would have been the possibility of her seeking him in marriage, of her bringing up between them that terrible issue. here, fortunately, she was powerless, it being apparently so provable against her that she had a husband in undiminished existence. she had him, it was true, only in america, only in texas, in nebraska, in arizona or somewhere--somewhere that, at old fawns house, in the county of kent, scarcely counted as a definite place at all; it showed somehow, from afar, as so lost, so indistinct and illusory, in the great alkali desert of cheap divorce. she had him even in bondage, poor man, had him in contempt, had him in remembrance so imperfect as barely to assert itself, but she had him, none the less, in existence unimpeached: the miss lutches had seen him in the flesh--as they had appeared eager to mention; though when they were separately questioned their descriptions failed to tally. he would be at the worst, should it come to the worst, mrs. rance’s difficulty, and he served therefore quite enough as the stout bulwark of anyone else. this was in truth logic without a flaw, yet it gave mr. verver less comfort than it ought. he feared not only danger--he feared the idea of danger, or in other words feared, hauntedly, himself. it was above all as a symbol that mrs. rance actually rose before him--a symbol of the supreme effort that he should have sooner or later, as he felt, to make. this effort would be to say no--he lived in terror of having to. he should be proposed to at a given moment--it was only a question of time--and then he should have to do a thing that would be extremely disagreeable. he almost wished, on occasion, that he wasn’t so sure he would do it. he knew himself, however, well enough not to doubt: he knew coldly, quite bleakly, where he would, at the crisis, draw the line. it was maggie’s marriage and maggie’s finer happiness--happy as he had supposed her before--that had made the difference; he hadn’t in the other time, it now seemed to him, had to think of such things. they hadn’t come up for him, and it was as if she, positively, had herself kept them down. she had only been his child--which she was indeed as much as ever; but there were sides on which she had protected him as if she were more than a daughter. she had done for him more than he knew--much, and blissfully, as he always had known. if she did at present more than ever, through having what she called the change in his life to make up to him for, his situation still, all the same, kept pace with her activity--his situation being simply that there was more than ever to be done. there had not yet been quite so much, on all the showing, as since their return from their twenty months in america, as since their settlement again in england, experimental though it was, and the consequent sense, now quite established for him, of a domestic air that had cleared and lightened, producing the effect, for their common personal life, of wider perspectives and large waiting spaces. it was as if his son-in-law’s presence, even from before his becoming his son-in-law, had somehow filled the scene and blocked the future--very richly and handsomely, when all was said, not at all inconveniently or in ways not to have been desired: inasmuch as though the prince, his measure now practically taken, was still pretty much the same “big fact,” the sky had lifted, the horizon receded, the very foreground itself expanded, quite to match him, quite to keep everything in comfortable scale. at first, certainly, their decent little old-time union, maggie’s and his own, had resembled a good deal some pleasant public square, in the heart of an old city, into which a great palladian church, say--something with a grand architectural front--had suddenly been dropped; so that the rest of the place, the space in front, the way round, outside, to the east end, the margin of street and passage, the quantity of over-arching heaven, had been temporarily compromised. not even then, of a truth, in a manner disconcerting--given, that is, for the critical, or at least the intelligent, eye, the great style of the facade and its high place in its class. the phenomenon that had since occurred, whether originally to have been pronounced calculable or not, had not, naturally, been the miracle of a night, but had taken place so gradually, quietly, easily, that from this vantage of wide, wooded fawns, with its eighty rooms, as they said, with its spreading park, with its acres and acres of garden and its majesty of artificial lake--though that, for a person so familiar with the “great” ones, might be rather ridiculous--no visibility of transition showed, no violence of adjustment, in retrospect, emerged. the palladian church was always there, but the piazza took care of itself. the sun stared down in his fulness, the air circulated, and the public not less; the limit stood off, the way round was easy, the east end was as fine, in its fashion, as the west, and there were also side doors for entrance, between the two--large, monumental, ornamental, in their style--as for all proper great churches. by some such process, in fine, had the prince, for his father-in-law, while remaining solidly a feature, ceased to be, at all ominously, a block. mr. verver, it may further be mentioned, had taken at no moment sufficient alarm to have kept in detail the record of his reassurance; but he would none the less not have been unable, not really have been indisposed, to impart in confidence to the right person his notion of the history of the matter. the right person--it is equally distinct--had not, for this illumination, been wanting, but had been encountered in the form of fanny assingham, not for the first time indeed admitted to his counsels, and who would have doubtless at present, in any case, from plenitude of interest and with equal guarantees, repeated his secret. it all came then, the great clearance, from the one prime fact that the prince, by good fortune, hadn’t proved angular. he clung to that description of his daughter’s husband as he often did to terms and phrases, in the human, the social connection, that he had found for himself: it was his way to have times of using these constantly, as if they just then lighted the world, or his own path in it, for him--even when for some of his interlocutors they covered less ground. it was true that with mrs. assingham he never felt quite sure of the ground anything covered; she disputed with him so little, agreed with him so much, surrounded him with such systematic consideration, such predetermined tenderness, that it was almost--which he had once told her in irritation as if she were nursing a sick baby. he had accused her of not taking him seriously, and she had replied--as from her it couldn’t frighten him--that she took him religiously, adoringly. she had laughed again, as she had laughed before, on his producing for her that good right word about the happy issue of his connection with the prince--with an effect the more odd perhaps as she had not contested its value. she couldn’t of course, however, be, at the best, as much in love with his discovery as he was himself. he was so much so that he fairly worked it--to his own comfort; came in fact sometimes near publicly pointing the moral of what might have occurred if friction, so to speak, had occurred. he pointed it frankly one day to the personage in question, mentioned to the prince the particular justice he did him, was even explicit as to the danger that, in their remarkable relation, they had thus escaped. oh, if he had been angular!--who could say what might then have happened? he spoke--and it was the way he had spoken to mrs. assingham too--as if he grasped the facts, without exception, for which angularity stood. it figured for him, clearly, as a final idea, a conception of the last vividness. he might have been signifying by it the sharp corners and hard edges, all the stony pointedness, the grand right geometry of his spreading palladian church. just so, he was insensible to no feature of the felicity of a contact that, beguilingly, almost confoundingly, was a contact but with practically yielding lines and curved surfaces. “you’re round, my boy,” he had said--“you’re all, you’re variously and inexhaustibly round, when you might, by all the chances, have been abominably square. i’m not sure, for that matter,” he had added, “that you’re not square in the general mass--whether abominably or not. the abomination isn’t a question, for you’re inveterately round--that’s what i mean--in the detail. it’s the sort of thing, in you, that one feels--or at least i do--with one’s hand. say you had been formed, all over, in a lot of little pyramidal lozenges like that wonderful side of the ducal palace in venice--so lovely in a building, but so damnable, for rubbing against, in a man, and especially in a near relation. i can see them all from here--each of them sticking out by itself--all the architectural cut diamonds that would have scratched one’s softer sides. one would have been scratched by diamonds--doubtless the neatest way if one was to be scratched at all--but one would have been more or less reduced to a hash. as it is, for living with, you’re a pure and perfect crystal. i give you my idea--i think you ought to have it--just as it has come to me.” the prince had taken the idea, in his way, for he was well accustomed, by this time, to taking; and nothing perhaps even could more have confirmed mr. verver’s account of his surface than the manner in which these golden drops evenly flowed over it. they caught in no interstice, they gathered in no concavity; the uniform smoothness betrayed the dew but by showing for the moment a richer tone. the young man, in other words, unconfusedly smiled--though indeed as if assenting, from principle and habit, to more than he understood. he liked all signs that things were well, but he cared rather less why they were. in regard to the people among whom he had since his marriage been living, the reasons they so frequently gave--so much oftener than he had ever heard reasons given before--remained on the whole the element by which he most differed from them; and his father-in-law and his wife were, after all, only first among the people among whom he had been living. he was never even yet sure of how, at this, that or the other point, he would strike them; they felt remarkably, so often, things he hadn’t meant, and missed not less remarkably, and not less often, things he had. he had fallen back on his general explanation--“we haven’t the same values;” by which he understood the same measure of importance. his “curves” apparently were important because they had been unexpected, or, still more, unconceived; whereas when one had always, as in his relegated old world, taken curves, and in much greater quantities too, for granted, one was no more surprised at the resulting feasibility of intercourse than one was surprised at being upstairs in a house that had a staircase. he had in fact on this occasion disposed alertly enough of the subject of mr. verver’s approbation. the promptitude of his answer, we may in fact well surmise, had sprung not a little from a particular kindled remembrance; this had given his acknowledgment its easiest turn. “oh, if i’m a crystal i’m delighted that i’m a perfect one, for i believe that they sometimes have cracks and flaws--in which case they’re to be had very cheap!” he had stopped short of the emphasis it would have given his joke to add that there had been certainly no having him cheap; and it was doubtless a mark of the good taste practically reigning between them that mr. verver had not, on his side either, taken up the opportunity. it is the latter’s relation to such aspects, however, that now most concerns us, and the bearing of his pleased view of this absence of friction upon amerigo’s character as a representative precious object. representative precious objects, great ancient pictures and other works of art, fine eminent “pieces” in gold, in silver, in enamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied themselves round him and, as a general challenge to acquisition and appreciation, so engaged all the faculties of his mind, that the instinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the collector, had fairly served as a basis for his acceptance of the prince’s suit. over and above the signal fact of the impression made on maggie herself, the aspirant to his daughter’s hand showed somehow the great marks and signs, stood before him with the high authenticities, he had learned to look for in pieces of the first order. adam verver knew, by this time, knew thoroughly; no man in europe or in america, he privately believed, was less capable, in such estimates, of vulgar mistakes. he had never spoken of himself as infallible--it was not his way; but, apart from the natural affections, he had acquainted himself with no greater joy, of the intimately personal type, than the joy of his originally coming to feel, and all so unexpectedly, that he had in him the spirit of the connoisseur. he had, like many other persons, in the course of his reading, been struck with keats’s sonnet about stout cortez in the presence of the pacific; but few persons, probably, had so devoutly fitted the poet’s grand image to a fact of experience. it consorted so with mr. verver’s consciousness of the way in which, at a given moment, he had stared at his pacific, that a couple of perusals of the immortal lines had sufficed to stamp them in his memory. his “peak in darien” was the sudden hour that had transformed his life, the hour of his perceiving with a mute inward gasp akin to the low moan of apprehensive passion, that a world was left him to conquer and that he might conquer it if he tried. it had been a turning of the page of the book of life--as if a leaf long inert had moved at a touch and, eagerly reversed, had made such a stir of the air as sent up into his face the very breath of the golden isles. to rifle the golden isles had, on the spot, become the business of his future, and with the sweetness of it--what was most wondrous of all--still more even in the thought than in the act. the thought was that of the affinity of genius, or at least of taste, with something in himself--with the dormant intelligence of which he had thus almost violently become aware and that affected him as changing by a mere revolution of the screw his whole intellectual plane. he was equal, somehow, with the great seers, the invokers and encouragers of beauty--and he didn’t after all perhaps dangle so far below the great producers and creators. he had been nothing of that kind before-too decidedly, too dreadfully not; but now he saw why he had been what he had, why he had failed and fallen short even in huge success; now he read into his career, in one single magnificent night, the immense meaning it had waited for. it was during his first visit to europe after the death of his wife, when his daughter was ten years old, that the light, in his mind, had so broken--and he had even made out at that time why, on an earlier occasion, the journey of his honeymoon year, it had still been closely covered. he had “bought” then, so far as he had been able, but he had bought almost wholly for the frail, fluttered creature at his side, who had had her fancies, decidedly, but all for the art, then wonderful to both of them, of the rue de la paix, the costly authenticities of dressmakers and jewellers. her flutter--pale disconcerted ghost as she actually was, a broken white flower tied round, almost grotesquely for his present sense, with a huge satin “bow” of the boulevard--her flutter had been mainly that of ribbons, frills and fine fabrics; all funny, pathetic evidence, for memory, of the bewilderments overtaking them as a bridal pair confronted with opportunity. he could wince, fairly, still, as he remembered the sense in which the poor girl’s pressure had, under his fond encouragement indeed, been exerted in favour of purchase and curiosity. these were wandering images, out of the earlier dusk, that threw her back, for his pity, into a past more remote than he liked their common past, their young affection, to appear. it would have had to be admitted, to an insistent criticism, that maggie’s mother, all too strangely, had not so much failed of faith as of the right application of it; since she had exercised it eagerly and restlessly, made it a pretext for innocent perversities in respect to which philosophic time was at, last to reduce all groans to gentleness. and they had loved each other so that his own intelligence, on the higher line, had temporarily paid for it. the futilities, the enormities, the depravities, of decoration and ingenuity, that, before his sense was unsealed, she had made him think lovely! musing, reconsidering little man that he was, and addicted to silent pleasures--as he was accessible to silent pains--he even sometimes wondered what would have become of his intelligence, in the sphere in which it was to learn more and more exclusively to play, if his wife’s influence upon it had not been, in the strange scheme of things, so promptly removed. would she have led him altogether, attached as he was to her, into the wilderness of mere mistakes? would she have prevented him from ever scaling his vertiginous peak?--or would she, otherwise, have been able to accompany him to that eminence, where he might have pointed out to her, as cortez to his companions, the revelation vouchsafed? no companion of cortez had presumably been a real lady: mr. verver allowed that historic fact to determine his inference. viii what was at all events not permanently hidden from him was a truth much less invidious about his years of darkness. it was the strange scheme of things again: the years of darkness had been needed to render possible the years of light. a wiser hand than he at first knew had kept him hard at acquisition of one sort as a perfect preliminary to acquisition of another, and the preliminary would have been weak and wanting if the good faith of it had been less. his comparative blindness had made the good faith, which in its turn had made the soil propitious for the flower of the supreme idea. he had had to like forging and sweating, he had had to like polishing and piling up his arms. they were things at least he had had to believe he liked, just as he had believed he liked transcendent calculation and imaginative gambling all for themselves, the creation of “interests” that were the extinction of other interests, the livid vulgarity, even, of getting in, or getting out, first. that had of course been so far from really the case--with the supreme idea, all the while, growing and striking deep, under everything, in the warm, rich earth. he had stood unknowing, he had walked and worked where it was buried, and the fact itself, the fact of his fortune, would have been a barren fact enough if the first sharp tender shoot had never struggled into day. there on one side was the ugliness his middle time had been spared; there on the other, from all the portents, was the beauty with which his age might still be crowned. he was happier, doubtless, than he deserved; but that, when one was happy at all, it was easy to be. he had wrought by devious ways, but he had reached the place, and what would ever have been straighter, in any man’s life, than his way, now, of occupying it? it hadn’t merely, his plan, all the sanctions of civilization; it was positively civilization condensed, concrete, consummate, set down by his hands as a house on a rock--a house from whose open doors and windows, open to grateful, to thirsty millions, the higher, the highest knowledge would shine out to bless the land. in this house, designed as a gift, primarily, to the people of his adoptive city and native state, the urgency of whose release from the bondage of ugliness he was in a position to measure--in this museum of museums, a palace of art which was to show for compact as a greek temple was compact, a receptacle of treasures sifted to positive sanctity, his spirit to-day almost altogether lived, making up, as he would have said, for lost time and haunting the portico in anticipation of the final rites. these would be the “opening exercises,” the august dedication of the place. his imagination, he was well aware, got over the ground faster than his judgment; there was much still to do for the production of his first effect. foundations were laid and walls were rising, the structure of the shell all determined; but raw haste was forbidden him in a connection so intimate with the highest effects of patience and piety; he should belie himself by completing without a touch at least of the majesty of delay a monument to the religion he wished to propagate, the exemplary passion, the passion for perfection at any price. he was far from knowing as yet where he would end, but he was admirably definite as to where he wouldn’t begin. he wouldn’t begin with a small show--he would begin with a great, and he could scarce have indicated, even had he wished to try, the line of division he had drawn. he had taken no trouble to indicate it to his fellow-citizens, purveyors and consumers, in his own and the circumjacent commonwealths, of comic matter in large lettering, diurnally “set up,” printed, published, folded and delivered, at the expense of his presumptuous emulation of the snail. the snail had become for him, under this ironic suggestion, the loveliest beast in nature, and his return to england, of which we are present witnesses, had not been unconnected with the appreciation so determined. it marked what he liked to mark, that he needed, on the matter in question, instruction from no one on earth. a couple of years of europe again, of renewed nearness to changes and chances, refreshed sensibility to the currents of the market, would fall in with the consistency of wisdom, the particular shade of enlightened conviction, that he wished to observe. it didn’t look like much for a whole family to hang about waiting-they being now, since the birth of his grandson, a whole family; and there was henceforth only one ground in all the world, he felt, on which the question of appearance would ever really again count for him. he cared that a work of art of price should “look like” the master to whom it might perhaps be deceitfully attributed; but he had ceased on the whole to know any matter of the rest of life by its looks. he took life in general higher up the stream; so far as he was not actually taking it as a collector, he was taking it, decidedly, as a grandfather. in the way of precious small pieces he had handled nothing so precious as the principino, his daughter’s first-born, whose italian designation endlessly amused him and whom he could manipulate and dandle, already almost toss and catch again, as he couldn’t a correspondingly rare morsel of an earlier pate tendre. he could take the small clutching child from his nurse’s arms with an iteration grimly discountenanced, in respect to their contents, by the glass doors of high cabinets. something clearly beatific in this new relation had, moreover, without doubt, confirmed for him the sense that none of his silent answers to public detraction, to local vulgarity, had ever been so legitimately straight as the mere element of attitude--reduce it, he said, to that--in his easy weeks at fawns. the element of attitude was all he wanted of these weeks, and he was enjoying it on the spot, even more than he had hoped: enjoying it in spite of mrs. rance and the miss lutches; in spite of the small worry of his belief that fanny assingham had really something for him that she was keeping back; in spite of his full consciousness, overflowing the cup like a wine too generously poured, that if he had consented to marry his daughter, and thereby to make, as it were, the difference, what surrounded him now was, exactly, consent vivified, marriage demonstrated, the difference, in fine, definitely made. he could call back his prior, his own wedded consciousness--it was not yet out of range of vague reflection. he had supposed himself, above all he had supposed his wife, as married as anyone could be, and yet he wondered if their state had deserved the name, or their union worn the beauty, in the degree to which the couple now before him carried the matter. in especial since the birth of their boy, in new york--the grand climax of their recent american period, brought to so right an issue--the happy pair struck him as having carried it higher, deeper, further; to where it ceased to concern his imagination, at any rate, to follow them. extraordinary, beyond question, was one branch of his characteristic mute wonderment--it characterised above all, with its subject before it, his modesty: the strange dim doubt, waking up for him at the end of the years, of whether maggie’s mother had, after all, been capable of the maximum. the maximum of tenderness he meant--as the terms existed for him; the maximum of immersion in the fact of being married. maggie herself was capable; maggie herself at this season, was, exquisitely, divinely, the maximum: such was the impression that, positively holding off a little for the practical, the tactful consideration it inspired in him, a respect for the beauty and sanctity of it almost amounting to awe--such was the impression he daily received from her. she was her mother, oh yes--but her mother and something more; it becoming thus a new light for him, and in such a curious way too, that anything more than her mother should prove at this time of day possible. he could live over again at almost any quiet moment the long process of his introduction to his present interests--an introduction that had depended all on himself, like the “cheek” of the young man who approaches a boss without credentials or picks up an acquaintance, makes even a real friend, by speaking to a passer in the street. his real friend, in all the business, was to have been his own mind, with which nobody had put him in relation. he had knocked at the door of that essentially private house, and his call, in truth, had not been immediately answered; so that when, after waiting and coming back, he had at last got in, it was, twirling his hat, as an embarrassed stranger, or, trying his keys, as a thief at night. he had gained confidence only with time, but when he had taken real possession of the place it had been never again to come away. all of which success represented, it must be allowed, his one principle of pride. pride in the mere original spring, pride in his money, would have been pride in something that had come, in comparison, so easily. the right ground for elation was difficulty mastered, and his difficulty--thanks to his modesty--had been to believe in his facility. this was the problem he had worked out to its solution--the solution that was now doing more than all else to make his feet settle and his days flush; and when he wished to feel “good,” as they said at american city, he had but to retrace his immense development. that was what the whole thing came back to--that the development had not been somebody’s else passing falsely, accepted too ignobly, for his. to think how servile he might have been was absolutely to respect himself, was in fact, as much as he liked, to admire himself, as free. the very finest spring that ever responded to his touch was always there to press--the memory of his freedom as dawning upon him, like a sunrise all pink and silver, during a winter divided between florence, rome and naples some three years after his wife’s death. it was the hushed daybreak of the roman revelation in particular that he could usually best recover, with the way that there, above all, where the princes and popes had been before him, his divination of his faculty most went to his head. he was a plain american citizen, staying at an hotel where, sometimes, for days together, there were twenty others like him; but no pope, no prince of them all had read a richer meaning, he believed, into the character of the patron of art. he was ashamed of them really, if he wasn’t afraid, and he had on the whole never so climbed to the tip-top as in judging, over a perusal of hermann grimm, where julius ii and leo x were “placed” by their treatment of michael angelo. far below the plain american citizen--in the case at least in which this personage happened not to be too plain to be adam verver. going to our friend’s head, moreover, some of the results of such comparisons may doubtless be described as having stayed there. his freedom to see--of which the comparisons were part--what could it do but steadily grow and grow? it came perhaps even too much to stand to him for all freedom--since, for example, it was as much there as ever at the very time of mrs. rance’s conspiring against him, at fawns, with the billiard-room and the sunday morning, on the occasion round which we have perhaps drawn our circle too wide. mrs. rance at least controlled practically each other license of the present and the near future: the license to pass the hour as he would have found convenient; the license to stop remembering, for a little, that, though if proposed to--and not only by this aspirant but by any other--he wouldn’t prove foolish, the proof of wisdom was none the less, in such a fashion, rather cruelly conditioned; the license in especial to proceed from his letters to his journals and insulate, orientate, himself afresh by the sound, over his gained interval, of the many-mouthed monster the exercise of whose lungs he so constantly stimulated. mrs. rance remained with him till the others came back from church, and it was by that time clearer than ever that his ordeal, when it should arrive, would be really most unpleasant. his impression--this was the point--took somehow the form not so much of her wanting to press home her own advantage as of her building better than she knew; that is of her symbolising, with virtual unconsciousness, his own special deficiency, his unfortunate lack of a wife to whom applications could be referred. the applications, the contingencies with which mrs. rance struck him as potentially bristling, were not of a sort, really, to be met by one’s self. and the possibility of them, when his visitor said, or as good as said, “i’m restrained, you see, because of mr. rance, and also because i’m proud and refined; but if it wasn’t for mr. rance and for my refinement and my pride!”--the possibility of them, i say, turned to a great murmurous rustle, of a volume to fill the future; a rustle of petticoats, of scented, many-paged letters, of voices as to which, distinguish themselves as they might from each other, it mattered little in what part of the resounding country they had learned to make themselves prevail. the assinghams and the miss lutches had taken the walk, through the park, to the little old church, “on the property,” that our friend had often found himself wishing he were able to transport, as it stood, for its simple sweetness, in a glass case, to one of his exhibitory halls; while maggie had induced her husband, not inveterate in such practices, to make with her, by carriage, the somewhat longer pilgrimage to the nearest altar, modest though it happened to be, of the faith--her own as it had been her mother’s, and as mr. verver himself had been loosely willing, always, to let it be taken for his--without the solid ease of which, making the stage firm and smooth, the drama of her marriage might not have been acted out. what at last appeared to have happened, however, was that the divided parties, coming back at the same moment, had met outside and then drifted together, from empty room to room, yet not in mere aimless quest of the pair of companions they had left at home. the quest had carried them to the door of the billiard-room, and their appearance, as it opened to admit them, determined for adam verver, in the oddest way in the world, a new and sharp perception. it was really remarkable: this perception expanded, on the spot, as a flower, one of the strangest, might, at a breath, have suddenly opened. the breath, for that matter, was more than anything else, the look in his daughter’s eyes--the look with which he saw her take in exactly what had occurred in her absence: mrs. rance’s pursuit of him to this remote locality, the spirit and the very form, perfectly characteristic, of his acceptance of the complication--the seal set, in short, unmistakably, on one of maggie’s anxieties. the anxiety, it was true, would have been, even though not imparted, separately shared; for fanny assingham’s face was, by the same stroke, not at all thickly veiled for him, and a queer light, of a colour quite to match, fairly glittered in the four fine eyes of the miss lutches. each of these persons--counting out, that is, the prince and the colonel, who didn’t care, and who didn’t even see that the others did--knew something, or had at any rate had her idea; the idea, precisely, that this was what mrs. rance, artfully biding her time, would do. the special shade of apprehension on the part of the miss lutches might indeed have suggested the vision of an energy supremely asserted. it was droll, in truth, if one came to that, the position of the miss lutches: they had themselves brought, they had guilelessly introduced mrs. rance, strong in the fact of mr. rance’s having been literally beheld of them; and it was now for them, positively, as if their handful of flowers--since mrs. rance was a handful!--had been but the vehicle of a dangerous snake. mr. verver fairly felt in the air the miss lutches’ imputation--in the intensity of which, really, his own propriety might have been involved. that, none the less, was but a flicker; what made the real difference, as i have hinted, was his mute passage with maggie. his daughter’s anxiety alone had depths, and it opened out for him the wider that it was altogether new. when, in their common past, when till this moment, had she shown a fear, however dumbly, for his individual life? they had had fears together, just as they had had joys, but all of hers, at least, had been for what equally concerned them. here of a sudden was a question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it somehow marked a date. he was on her mind, he was even in a manner on her hands--as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always been, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too deep down, as it were, to be disengaged, contrasted or opposed, in short objectively presented. but time finally had done it; their relation was altered: he saw, again, the difference lighted for her. this marked it to himself--and it wasn’t a question simply of a mrs. rance the more or the less. for maggie too, at a stroke, almost beneficently, their visitor had, from being an inconvenience, become a sign. they had made vacant, by their marriage, his immediate foreground, his personal precinct--they being the princess and the prince. they had made room in it for others--so others had become aware. he became aware himself, for that matter, during the minute maggie stood there before speaking; and with the sense, moreover, of what he saw her see, he had the sense of what she saw him. this last, it may be added, would have been his intensest perception had there not, the next instant, been more for him in fanny assingham. her face couldn’t keep it from him; she had seen, on top of everything, in her quick way, what they both were seeing. ix so much mute communication was doubtless, all this time, marvellous, and we may confess to having perhaps read into the scene, prematurely, a critical character that took longer to develop. yet the quiet hour of reunion enjoyed that afternoon by the father and the daughter did really little else than deal with the elements definitely presented to each in the vibration produced by the return of the church-goers. nothing allusive, nothing at all insistent, passed between them either before or immediately after luncheon--except indeed so far as their failure soon again to meet might be itself an accident charged with reference. the hour or two after luncheon--and on sundays with especial rigour, for one of the domestic reasons of which it belonged to maggie quite multitudinously to take account--were habitually spent by the princess with her little boy, in whose apartment she either frequently found her father already established or was sooner or later joined by him. his visit to his grandson, at some hour or other, held its place, in his day, against all interventions, and this without counting his grandson’s visits to him, scarcely less ordered and timed, and the odd bits, as he called them, that they picked up together when they could--communions snatched, for the most part, on the terrace, in the gardens or the park, while the principino, with much pomp and circumstance of perambulator, parasol, fine lace over-veiling and incorruptible female attendance, took the air. in the private apartments, which, occupying in the great house the larger part of a wing of their own, were not much more easily accessible than if the place had been a royal palace and the small child an heir-apparent--in the nursery of nurseries the talk, at these instituted times, was always so prevailingly with or about the master of the scene that other interests and other topics had fairly learned to avoid the slighting and inadequate notice there taken of them. they came in, at the best, but as involved in the little boy’s future, his past, or his comprehensive present, never getting so much as a chance to plead their own merits or to complain of being neglected. nothing perhaps, in truth, had done more than this united participation to confirm in the elder parties that sense of a life not only uninterrupted but more deeply associated, more largely combined, of which, on adam verver’s behalf, we have made some mention. it was of course an old story and a familiar idea that a beautiful baby could take its place as a new link between a wife and a husband, but maggie and her father had, with every ingenuity, converted the precious creature into a link between a mamma and a grandpapa. the principino, for a chance spectator of this process, might have become, by an untoward stroke, a hapless half-orphan, with the place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the next nearest sympathy. they had no occasion thus, the conjoined worshippers, to talk of what the prince might be or might do for his son--the sum of service, in his absence, so completely filled itself out. it was not in the least, moreover, that there was doubt of him, for he was conspicuously addicted to the manipulation of the child, in the frank italian way, at such moments as he judged discreet in respect to other claims: conspicuously, indeed, that is, for maggie, who had more occasion, on the whole, to speak to her husband of the extravagance of her father than to speak to her father of the extravagance of her husband. adam verver had, all round, in this connection, his own serenity. he was sure of his son-in-law’s auxiliary admiration--admiration, he meant, of his grand-son; since, to begin with, what else had been at work but the instinct--or it might fairly have been the tradition--of the latter’s making the child so solidly beautiful as to have to be admired? what contributed most to harmony in this play of relations, however, was the way the young man seemed to leave it to be gathered that, tradition for tradition, the grandpapa’s own was not, in any estimate, to go for nothing. a tradition, or whatever it was, that had flowered prelusively in the princess herself--well, amerigo’s very discretions were his way of taking account of it. his discriminations in respect to his heir were, in fine, not more angular than any others to be observed in him; and mr. verver received perhaps from no source so distinct an impression of being for him an odd and important phenomenon as he received from this impunity of appropriation, these unchallenged nursery hours. it was as if the grandpapa’s special show of the character were but another side for the observer to study, another item for him to note. it came back, this latter personage knew, to his own previous perception--that of the prince’s inability, in any matter in which he was concerned, to conclude. the idiosyncrasy, for him, at each stage, had to be demonstrated--on which, however, he admirably accepted it. this last was, after all, the point; he really worked, poor young man, for acceptance, since he worked so constantly for comprehension. and how, when you came to that, could you know that a horse wouldn’t shy at a brass-band, in a country road, because it didn’t shy at a traction-engine? it might have been brought up to traction-engines without having been brought up to brass-bands. little by little, thus, from month to month, the prince was learning what his wife’s father had been brought up to; and now it could be checked off--he had been brought, up to the romantic view of principini. who would have thought it, and where would it all stop? the only fear somewhat sharp for mr. verver was a certain fear of disappointing him for strangeness. he felt that the evidence he offered, thus viewed, was too much on the positive side. he didn’t know--he was learning, and it was funny for him--to how many things he had been brought up. if the prince could only strike something to which he hadn’t! this wouldn’t, it seemed to him, ruffle the smoothness, and yet might, a little, add to the interest. what was now clear, at all events, for the father and the daughter, was their simply knowing they wanted, for the time, to be together--at any cost, as it were; and their necessity so worked in them as to bear them out of the house, in a quarter hidden from that in which their friends were gathered, and cause them to wander, unseen, unfollowed, along a covered walk in the “old” garden, as it was called, old with an antiquity of formal things, high box and shaped yew and expanses of brick wall that had turned at once to purple and to pink. they went out of a door in the wall, a door that had a slab with a date set above it, , but in the old multiplied lettering, and then had before them a small white gate, intensely white and clean amid all the greenness, through which they gradually passed to where some of the grandest trees spaciously clustered and where they would find one of the quietest places. a bench had been placed, long ago, beneath a great oak that helped to crown a mild eminence, and the ground sank away below it, to rise again, opposite, at a distance sufficient to enclose the solitude and figure a bosky horizon. summer, blissfully, was with them yet, and the low sun made a splash of light where it pierced the looser shade; maggie, coming down to go out, had brought a parasol, which, as, over her charming bare head, she now handled it, gave, with the big straw hat that her father in these days always wore a good deal tipped back, definite intention to their walk. they knew the bench; it was “sequestered”--they had praised it for that together, before, and liked the word; and after they had begun to linger there they could have smiled (if they hadn’t been really too serious, and if the question hadn’t so soon ceased to matter), over the probable wonder of the others as to what would have become of them. the extent to which they enjoyed their indifference to any judgment of their want of ceremony, what did that of itself speak but for the way that, as a rule, they almost equally had others on their mind? they each knew that both were full of the superstition of not “hurting,” but might precisely have been asking themselves, asking in fact each other, at this moment, whether that was to be, after all, the last word of their conscientious development. certain it was, at all events, that, in addition to the assinghams and the lutches and mrs. rance, the attendance at tea, just in the right place on the west terrace, might perfectly comprise the four or five persons--among them the very pretty, the typically irish miss maddock, vaunted, announced and now brought--from the couple of other houses near enough, one of these the minor residence of their proprietor, established, thriftily, while he hired out his ancestral home, within sight and sense of his profit. it was not less certain, either, that, for once in a way, the group in question must all take the case as they found it. fanny assingham, at any time, for that matter, might perfectly be trusted to see mr. verver and his daughter, to see their reputation for a decent friendliness, through any momentary danger; might be trusted even to carry off their absence for amerigo, for amerigo’s possible funny italian anxiety; amerigo always being, as the princess was well aware, conveniently amenable to this friend’s explanations, beguilements, reassurances, and perhaps in fact rather more than less dependent on them as his new life--since that was his own name for it--opened out. it was no secret to maggie--it was indeed positively a public joke for her--that she couldn’t explain as mrs. assingham did, and that, the prince liking explanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in the manner of book-plates or postage-stamps, for themselves, his requisition of this luxury had to be met. he didn’t seem to want them as yet for use--rather for ornament and amusement, innocent amusement of the kind he most fancied and that was so characteristic of his blessed, beautiful, general, slightly indolent lack of more dissipated, or even just of more sophisticated, tastes. however that might be, the dear woman had come to be frankly and gaily recognised--and not least by herself--as filling in the intimate little circle an office that was not always a sinecure. it was almost as if she had taken, with her kind, melancholy colonel at her heels, a responsible engagement; to be within call, as it were, for all those appeals that sprang out of talk, that sprang not a little, doubtless too, out of leisure. it naturally led her position in the household, as, she called it, to considerable frequency of presence, to visits, from the good couple, freely repeated and prolonged, and not so much as under form of protest. she was there to keep him quiet--it was amerigo’s own description of her influence; and it would only have needed a more visible disposition to unrest in him to make the account perfectly fit. fanny herself limited indeed, she minimised, her office; you didn’t need a jailor, she contended, for a domesticated lamb tied up with pink ribbon. this was not an animal to be controlled--it was an animal to be, at the most, educated. she admitted accordingly that she was educative--which maggie was so aware that she herself, inevitably, wasn’t; so it came round to being true that what she was most in charge of was his mere intelligence. this left, goodness knew, plenty of different calls for maggie to meet--in a case in which so much pink ribbon, as it might be symbolically named, was lavished on the creature. what it all amounted to, at any rate, was that mrs. assingham would be keeping him quiet now, while his wife and his father-in-law carried out their own little frugal picnic; quite moreover, doubtless, not much less neededly in respect to the members of the circle that were with them there than in respect to the pair they were missing almost for the first time. it was present to maggie that the prince could bear, when he was with his wife, almost any queerness on the part of people, strange english types, who bored him, beyond convenience, by being so little as he himself was; for this was one of the ways in which a wife was practically sustaining. but she was as positively aware that she hadn’t yet learned to see him as meeting such exposure in her absence. how did he move and talk, how above all did he, or how would he, look--he who, with his so nobly handsome face, could look such wonderful things--in case of being left alone with some of the subjects of his wonder? there were subjects for wonder among these very neighbours; only maggie herself had her own odd way--which didn’t moreover the least irritate him--of really liking them in proportion as they could strike her as strange. it came out in her by heredity, he amused himself with declaring, this love of chinoiseries; but she actually this evening didn’t mind--he might deal with her chinese as he could. maggie indeed would always have had for such moments, had they oftener occurred, the impression made on her by a word of mrs. assingham’s, a word referring precisely to that appetite in amerigo for the explanatory which we have just found in our path. it wasn’t that the princess could be indebted to another person, even to so clever a one as this friend, for seeing anything in her husband that she mightn’t see unaided; but she had ever, hitherto, been of a nature to accept with modest gratitude any better description of a felt truth than her little limits--terribly marked, she knew, in the direction of saying the right things--enabled her to make. thus it was, at any rate, that she was able to live more or less in the light of the fact expressed so lucidly by their common comforter--the fact that the prince was saving up, for some very mysterious but very fine eventual purpose, all the wisdom, all the answers to his questions, all the impressions and generalisations, he gathered; putting them away and packing them down because he wanted his great gun to be loaded to the brim on the day he should decide to let it off. he wanted first to make sure of the whole of the subject that was unrolling itself before him; after which the innumerable facts he had collected would find their use. he knew what he was about---trust him at last therefore to make, and to some effect, his big noise. and mrs. assingham had repeated that he knew what he was about. it was the happy form of this assurance that had remained with maggie; it could always come in for her that amerigo knew what he was about. he might at moments seem vague, seem absent, seem even bored: this when, away from her father, with whom it was impossible for him to appear anything but respectfully occupied, he let his native gaiety go in outbreaks of song, or even of quite whimsical senseless sound, either expressive of intimate relaxation or else fantastically plaintive. he might at times reflect with the frankest lucidity on the circumstance that the case was for a good while yet absolutely settled in regard to what he still had left, at home, of his very own; in regard to the main seat of his affection, the house in rome, the big black palace, the palazzo nero, as he was fond of naming it, and also on the question of the villa in the sabine hills, which she had, at the time of their engagement, seen and yearned over, and the castello proper, described by him always as the “perched” place, that had, as she knew, formerly stood up, on the pedestal of its mountain-slope, showing beautifully blue from afar, as the head and front of the princedom. he might rejoice in certain moods over the so long-estranged state of these properties, not indeed all irreclaimably alienated, but encumbered with unending leases and charges, with obstinate occupants, with impossibilities of use--all without counting the cloud of mortgages that had, from far back, buried them beneath the ashes of rage and remorse, a shroud as thick as the layer once resting on the towns at the foot of vesuvius, and actually making of any present restorative effort a process much akin to slow excavation. just so he might with another turn of his humour almost wail for these brightest spots of his lost paradise, declaring that he was an idiot not to be able to bring himself to face the sacrifices--sacrifices resting, if definitely anywhere, with mr. verver--necessary for winning them back. one of the most comfortable things between the husband and the wife meanwhile--one of those easy certitudes they could be merely gay about--was that she never admired him so much, or so found him heartbreakingly handsome, clever, irresistible, in the very degree in which he had originally and fatally dawned upon her, as when she saw other women reduced to the same passive pulp that had then begun, once for all, to constitute her substance. there was really nothing they had talked of together with more intimate and familiar pleasantry than of the license and privilege, the boundless happy margin, thus established for each: she going so far as to put it that, even should he some day get drunk and beat her, the spectacle of him with hated rivals would, after no matter what extremity, always, for the sovereign charm of it, charm of it in itself and as the exhibition of him that most deeply moved her, suffice to bring her round. what would therefore be more open to him than to keep her in love with him? he agreed, with all his heart, at these light moments, that his course wouldn’t then be difficult, inasmuch as, so simply constituted as he was on all the precious question--and why should he be ashamed of it?--he knew but one way with the fair. they had to be fair--and he was fastidious and particular, his standard was high; but when once this was the case what relation with them was conceivable, what relation was decent, rudimentary, properly human, but that of a plain interest in the fairness? his interest, she always answered, happened not to be “plain,” and plainness, all round, had little to do with the matter, which was marked, on the contrary, by the richest variety of colour; but the working basis, at all events, had been settled--the miss maddocks of life been assured of their importance for him. how conveniently assured maggie--to take him too into the joke--had more than once gone so far as to mention to her father; since it fell in easily with the tenderness of her disposition to remember she might occasionally make him happy by an intimate confidence. this was one of her rules-full as she was of little rules, considerations, provisions. there were things she of course couldn’t tell him, in so many words, about amerigo and herself, and about their happiness and their union and their deepest depths--and there were other things she needn’t; but there were also those that were both true and amusing, both communicable and real, and of these, with her so conscious, so delicately cultivated scheme of conduct as a daughter, she could make her profit at will. a pleasant hush, for that matter, had fallen on most of the elements while she lingered apart with her companion; it involved, this serenity, innumerable complete assumptions: since so ordered and so splendid a rest, all the tokens, spreading about them, of confidence solidly supported, might have suggested for persons of poorer pitch the very insolence of facility. still, they weren’t insolent--they weren’t, our pair could reflect; they were only blissful and grateful and personally modest, not ashamed of knowing, with competence, when great things were great, when good things were good, and when safe things were safe, and not, therefore, placed below their fortune by timidity which would have been as bad as being below it by impudence. worthy of it as they were, and as each appears, under our last possible analysis, to have wished to make the other feel that they were, what they most finally exhaled into the evening air as their eyes mildly met may well have been a kind of helplessness in their felicity. their rightness, the justification of everything--something they so felt the pulse of--sat there with them; but they might have been asking themselves a little blankly to what further use they could put anything so perfect. they had created and nursed and established it; they had housed it here in dignity and crowned it with comfort; but mightn’t the moment possibly count for them--or count at least for us while we watch them with their fate all before them--as the dawn of the discovery that it doesn’t always meet all contingencies to be right? otherwise why should maggie have found a word of definite doubt--the expression of the fine pang determined in her a few hours before--rise after a time to her lips? she took so for granted moreover her companion’s intelligence of her doubt that the mere vagueness of her question could say it all. “what is it, after all, that they want to do to you?” “they” were for the princess too the hovering forces of which mrs. rance was the symbol, and her father, only smiling back now, at his ease, took no trouble to appear not to know what she meant. what she meant--when once she had spoken--could come out well enough; though indeed it was nothing, after they had come to the point, that could serve as ground for a great defensive campaign. the waters of talk spread a little, and maggie presently contributed an idea in saying: “what has really happened is that the proportions, for us, are altered.” he accepted equally, for the time, this somewhat cryptic remark; he still failed to challenge her even when she added that it wouldn’t so much matter if he hadn’t been so terribly young. he uttered a sound of protest only when she went to declare that she ought as a daughter, in common decency, to have waited. yet by that time she was already herself admitting that she should have had to wait long--if she waited, that is, till he was old. but there was a way. “since you are an irresistible youth, we’ve got to face it. that, somehow, is what that woman has made me feel. there’ll be others.” x to talk of it thus appeared at last a positive relief to him. “yes, there’ll be others. but you’ll see me through.” she hesitated. “do you mean if you give in?” “oh no. through my holding out.” maggie waited again, but when she spoke it had an effect of abruptness. “why should you hold out forever?” he gave, none the less, no start--and this as from the habit of taking anything, taking everything, from her as harmonious. but it was quite written upon him too, for that matter, that holding out wouldn’t be, so very completely, his natural, or at any rate his acquired, form. his appearance would have testified that he might have to do so a long time--for a man so greatly beset. this appearance, that is, spoke but little, as yet, of short remainders and simplified senses--and all in spite of his being a small, spare, slightly stale person, deprived of the general prerogative of presence. it was not by mass or weight or vulgar immediate quantity that he would in the future, any more than he had done in the past, insist or resist or prevail. there was even something in him that made his position, on any occasion, made his relation to any scene or to any group, a matter of the back of the stage, of an almost visibly conscious want of affinity with the footlights. he would have figured less than anything the stage-manager or the author of the play, who most occupy the foreground; he might be, at the best, the financial “backer,” watching his interests from the wing, but in rather confessed ignorance of the mysteries of mimicry. barely taller than his daughter, he pressed at no point on the presumed propriety of his greater stoutness. he had lost early in life much of his crisp, closely-curling hair, the fineness of which was repeated in a small neat beard, too compact to be called “full,” though worn equally, as for a mark where other marks were wanting, on lip and cheek and chin. his neat, colourless face, provided with the merely indispensable features, suggested immediately, for a description, that it was clear, and in this manner somewhat resembled a small decent room, clean-swept and unencumbered with furniture, but drawing a particular advantage, as might presently be noted, from the outlook of a pair of ample and uncurtained windows. there was something in adam verver’s eyes that both admitted the morning and the evening in unusual quantities and gave the modest area the outward extension of a view that was “big” even when restricted to stars. deeply and changeably blue, though not romantically large, they were yet youthfully, almost strangely beautiful, with their ambiguity of your scarce knowing if they most carried their possessor’s vision out or most opened themselves to your own. whatever you might feel, they stamped the place with their importance, as the house-agents say; so that, on one side or the other, you were never out of their range, were moving about, for possible community, opportunity, the sight of you scarce knew what, either before them or behind them. if other importances, not to extend the question, kept themselves down, they were in no direction less obtruded than in that of our friend’s dress, adopted once for all as with a sort of sumptuary scruple. he wore every day of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black “cut away” coat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking trousers, chequered in black and white--the proper harmony with which, he inveterately considered, was a sprigged blue satin necktie; and, over his concave little stomach, quaintly indifferent to climates and seasons, a white duck waistcoat. “should you really,” he now asked, “like me to marry?” he spoke as if, coming from his daughter herself, it might be an idea; which, for that matter, he would be ready to carry out should she definitely say so. definite, however, just yet, she was not prepared to be, though it seemed to come to her with force, as she thought, that there was a truth, in the connection, to utter. “what i feel is that there is somehow something that used to be right and that i’ve made wrong. it used to be right that you hadn’t married, and that you didn’t seem to want to. it used also”--she continued to make out “to seem easy for the question not to come up. that’s what i’ve made different. it does come up. it will come up.” “you don’t think i can keep it down?” mr. verver’s tone was cheerfully pensive. “well, i’ve given you, by my move, all the trouble of having to.” he liked the tenderness of her idea, and it made him, as she sat near him, pass his arm about her. “i guess i don’t feel as if you had ‘moved’ very far. you’ve only moved next door.” “well,” she continued, “i don’t feel as if it were fair for me just to have given you a push and left you so. if i’ve made the difference for you, i must think of the difference.” “then what, darling,” he indulgently asked, “do you think?” “that’s just what i don’t yet know. but i must find out. we must think together--as we’ve always thought. what i mean,” she went on after a moment, “is that it strikes me that i ought to at least offer you some alternative. i ought to have worked one out for you.” “an alternative to what?” “well, to your simply missing what you’ve lost--without anything being done about it.” “but what have i lost?” she thought a minute, as if it were difficult to say, yet as if she more and more saw it. “well, whatever it was that, before, kept us from thinking, and kept you, really, as you might say, in the market. it was as if you couldn’t be in the market when you were married to me. or rather as if i kept people off, innocently, by being married to you. now that i’m married to some one else you’re, as in consequence, married to nobody. therefore you may be married to anybody, to everybody. people don’t see why you shouldn’t be married to them.” “isn’t it enough of a reason,” he mildly inquired, “that i don’t want to be?” “it’s enough of a reason, yes. but to be enough of a reason it has to be too much of a trouble. i mean for you. it has to be too much of a fight. you ask me what you’ve lost,” maggie continued to explain. “the not having to take the trouble and to make the fight--that’s what you’ve lost. the advantage, the happiness of being just as you were--because i was just as _i_ was--that’s what you miss.” “so that you think,” her father presently said, “that i had better get married just in order to be as i was before?” the detached tone of it--detached as if innocently to amuse her by showing his desire to accommodate--was so far successful as to draw from her gravity a short, light laugh. “well, what i don’t want you to feel is that if you were to i shouldn’t understand. i should understand. that’s all,” said the princess gently. her companion turned it pleasantly over. “you don’t go so far as to wish me to take somebody i don’t like?” “ah, father,” she sighed, “you know how far i go--how far i could go. but i only wish that if you ever should like anybody, you may never doubt of my feeling how i’ve brought you to it. you’ll always know that i know that it’s my fault.” “you mean,” he went on in his contemplative way, “that it will be you who’ll take the consequences?” maggie just considered. “i’ll leave you all the good ones, but i’ll take the bad.” “well, that’s handsome.” he emphasised his sense of it by drawing her closer and holding her more tenderly. “it’s about all i could expect of you. so far as you’ve wronged me, therefore, we’ll call it square. i’ll let you know in time if i see a prospect of your having to take it up. but am i to understand meanwhile,” he soon went on, “that, ready as you are to see me through my collapse, you’re not ready, or not as ready, to see me through my resistance? i’ve got to be a regular martyr before you’ll be inspired?” she demurred at his way of putting it. “why, if you like it, you know, it won’t be a collapse.” “then why talk about seeing me through at all? i shall only collapse if i do like it. but what i seem to feel is that i don’t want to like it. that is,” he amended, “unless i feel surer i do than appears very probable. i don’t want to have to think i like it in a case when i really shan’t. i’ve had to do that in some cases,” he confessed--“when it has been a question of other things. i don’t want,” he wound up, “to be made to make a mistake.” “ah, but it’s too dreadful,” she returned, “that you should even have to fear--or just nervously to dream--that you may be. what does that show, after all,” she asked, “but that you do really, well within, feel a want? what does it show but that you’re truly susceptible?” “well, it may show that”--he defended himself against nothing. “but it shows also, i think, that charming women are, in the kind of life we’re leading now, numerous and formidable.” maggie entertained for a moment the proposition; under cover of which, however, she passed quickly from the general to the particular. “do you feel mrs. rance to be charming?” “well, i feel her to be formidable. when they cast a spell it comes to the same thing. i think she’d do anything.” “oh well, i’d help you,” the princess said with decision, “as against her--if that’s all you require. it’s too funny,” she went on before he again spoke, “that mrs. rance should be here at all. but if you talk of the life we lead, much of it is, altogether, i’m bound to say, too funny. the thing is,” maggie developed under this impression, “that i don’t think we lead, as regards other people, any life at all. we don’t at any rate, it seems to me, lead half the life we might. and so it seems, i think, to amerigo. so it seems also, i’m sure, to fanny assingham.” mr. verver-as if from due regard for these persons--considered a little. “what life would they like us to lead?” “oh, it’s not a question, i think, on which they quite feel together. she thinks, dear fanny, that we ought to be greater.” “greater--?” he echoed it vaguely. “and amerigo too, you say?” “ah yes”--her reply was prompt “but amerigo doesn’t mind. he doesn’t care, i mean, what we do. it’s for us, he considers, to see things exactly as we wish. fanny herself,” maggie pursued, “thinks he’s magnificent. magnificent, i mean, for taking everything as it is, for accepting the ‘social limitations’ of our life, for not missing what we don’t give him.” mr. verver attended. “then if he doesn’t miss it his magnificence is easy.” “it is easy-that’s exactly what i think. if there were things he did miss, and if in spite of them he were always sweet, then, no doubt, he would be a more or less unappreciated hero. he could be a hero--he will be one if it’s ever necessary. but it will be about something better than our dreariness. _i_ know,” the princess declared, “where he’s magnificent.” and she rested a minute on that. she ended, however, as she had begun. “we’re not, all the same, committed to anything stupid. if we ought to be grander, as fanny thinks, we can be grander. there’s nothing to prevent.” “is it a strict moral obligation?” adam verver inquired. “no--it’s for the amusement.” “for whose? for fanny’s own?” “for everyone’s--though i dare say fanny’s would be a large part.” she hesitated; she had now, it might have appeared, something more to bring out, which she finally produced. “for yours in particular, say--if you go into the question.” she even bravely followed it up. “i haven’t really, after all, had to think much to see that much more can be done for you than is done.” mr. verver uttered an odd vague sound. “don’t you think a good deal is done when you come out and talk to me this way?” “ah,” said his daughter, smiling at him, “we make too much of that!” and then to explain: “that’s good, and it’s natural--but it isn’t great. we forget that we’re as free as air.” “well, that’s great,” mr. verver pleaded. “great if we act on it. not if we don’t.” she continued to smile, and he took her smile; wondering again a little by this time, however; struck more and more by an intensity in it that belied a light tone. “what do you want,” he demanded, “to do to me?” and he added, as she didn’t say: “you’ve got something in your mind.” it had come to him within the minute that from the beginning of their session there she had been keeping something back, and that an impression of this had more than once, in spite of his general theoretic respect for her present right to personal reserves and mysteries, almost ceased to be vague in him. there had been from the first something in her anxious eyes, in the way she occasionally lost herself, that it would perfectly explain. he was therefore now quite sure. “you’ve got something up your sleeve.” she had a silence that made him right. “well, when i tell you you’ll understand. it’s only up my sleeve in the sense of being in a letter i got this morning. all day, yes--it has been in my mind. i’ve been asking myself if it were quite the right moment, or in any way fair, to ask you if you could stand just now another woman.” it relieved him a little, yet the beautiful consideration of her manner made it in a degree portentous. “stand one--?” “well, mind her coming.” he stared--then he laughed. “it depends on who she is.” “there--you see! i’ve at all events been thinking whether you’d take this particular person but as a worry the more. whether, that is, you’d go so far with her in your notion of having to be kind.” he gave at this the quickest shake to his foot. how far would she go in her notion of it. “well,” his daughter returned, “you know how far, in a general way, charlotte stant goes.” “charlotte? is she coming?” “she writes me, practically, that she’d like to if we’re so good as to ask her.” mr. verver continued to gaze, but rather as if waiting for more. then, as everything appeared to have come, his expression had a drop. if this was all it was simple. “then why in the world not?” maggie’s face lighted anew, but it was now another light. “it isn’t a want of tact?” “to ask her?” “to propose it to you.” “that _i_ should ask her?” he put the question as an effect of his remnant of vagueness, but this had also its own effect. maggie wondered an instant; after which, as with a flush of recognition, she took it up. “it would be too beautiful if you would!” this, clearly, had not been her first idea--the chance of his words had prompted it. “do you mean write to her myself?” “yes--it would be kind. it would be quite beautiful of you. that is, of course,” said maggie, “if you sincerely can.” he appeared to wonder an instant why he sincerely shouldn’t, and indeed, for that matter, where the question of sincerity came in. this virtue, between him and his daughter’s friend, had surely been taken for granted. “my dear child,” he returned, “i don’t think i’m afraid of charlotte.” “well, that’s just what it’s lovely to have from you. from the moment you’re not--the least little bit--i’ll immediately invite her.” “but where in the world is she?” he spoke as if he had not thought of charlotte, nor so much as heard her name pronounced, for a very long time. he quite in fact amicably, almost amusedly, woke up to her. “she’s in brittany, at a little bathing-place, with some people i don’t know. she’s always with people, poor dear--she rather has to be; even when, as is sometimes the case; they’re people she doesn’t immensely like.” “well, i guess she likes us,” said adam verver. “yes--fortunately she likes us. and if i wasn’t afraid of spoiling it for you,” maggie added, “i’d even mention that you’re not the one of our number she likes least.” “why should that spoil it for me?” “oh, my dear, you know. what else have we been talking about? it costs you so much to be liked. that’s why i hesitated to tell you of my letter.” he stared a moment--as if the subject had suddenly grown out of recognition. “but charlotte--on other visits--never used to cost me anything.” “no--only her ‘keep,’” maggie smiled. “then i don’t think i mind her keep--if that’s all.” the princess, however, it was clear, wished to be thoroughly conscientious. “well, it may not be quite all. if i think of its being pleasant to have her, it’s because she will make a difference.” “well, what’s the harm in that if it’s but a difference for the better?” “ah then--there you are!” and the princess showed in her smile her small triumphant wisdom. “if you acknowledge a possible difference for the better we’re not, after all, so tremendously right as we are. i mean we’re not--as satisfied and amused. we do see there are ways of being grander.” “but will charlotte stant,” her father asked with surprise, “make us grander?” maggie, on this, looking at him well, had a remarkable reply. “yes, i think. really grander.” he thought; for if this was a sudden opening he wished but the more to meet it. “because she’s so handsome?” “no, father.” and the princess was almost solemn. “because she’s so great.” “great--?” “great in nature, in character, in spirit. great in life.” “so?” mr. verver echoed. “what has she done--in life?” “well, she has been brave and bright,” said maggie. “that mayn’t sound like much, but she has been so in the face of things that might well have made it too difficult for many other girls. she hasn’t a creature in the world really--that is nearly--belonging to her. only acquaintances who, in all sorts of ways, make use of her, and distant relations who are so afraid she’ll make use of them that they seldom let her look at them.” mr. verver was struck--and, as usual, to some purpose. “if we get her here to improve us don’t we too then make use of her?” it pulled the princess up, however, but an instant. “we’re old, old friends--we do her good too. i should always, even at the worst--speaking for myself--admire her still more than i used her.” “i see. that always does good.” maggie hesitated. “certainly--she knows it. she knows, i mean, how great i think her courage and her cleverness. she’s not afraid--not of anything; and yet she no more ever takes a liberty with you than if she trembled for her life. and then she’s interesting--which plenty of other people with plenty of other merits never are a bit.” in which fine flicker of vision the truth widened to the princess’s view. “i myself of course don’t take liberties, but then i do, always, by nature, tremble for my life. that’s the way i live.” “oh i say, love!” her father vaguely murmured. “yes, i live in terror,” she insisted. “i’m a small creeping thing.” “you’ll not persuade me that you’re not as good as charlotte stant,” he still placidly enough remarked. “i may be as good, but i’m not so great--and that’s what we’re talking about. she has a great imagination. she has, in every way, a great attitude. she has above all a great conscience.” more perhaps than ever in her life before maggie addressed her father at this moment with a shade of the absolute in her tone. she had never come so near telling him what he should take it from her to believe. “she has only twopence in the world--but that has nothing to do with it. or rather indeed”--she quickly corrected herself--“it has everything. for she doesn’t care. i never saw her do anything but laugh at her poverty. her life has been harder than anyone knows.” it was moreover as if, thus unprecedentedly positive, his child had an effect upon him that mr. verver really felt as a new thing. “why then haven’t you told me about her before?” “well, haven’t we always known--?” “i should have thought,” he submitted, “that we had already pretty well sized her up.” “certainly--we long ago quite took her for granted. but things change, with time, and i seem to know that, after this interval, i’m going to like her better than ever. i’ve lived more myself, i’m older, and one judges better. yes, i’m going to see in charlotte,” said the princess--and speaking now as with high and free expectation--“more than i’ve ever seen.” “then i’ll try to do so too. she was”--it came back to mr. verver more--“the one of your friends i thought the best for you.” his companion, however, was so launched in her permitted liberty of appreciation that she for the moment scarce heard him. she was lost in the case she made out, the vision of the different ways in which charlotte had distinguished herself. “she would have liked for instance--i’m sure she would have liked extremely--to marry; and nothing in general is more ridiculous, even when it has been pathetic, than a woman who has tried and has not been able.” it had all mr. verver’s attention. “she has ‘tried’--?” “she has seen cases where she would have liked to.” “but she has not been able?” “well, there are more cases, in europe, in which it doesn’t come to girls who are poor than in which it does come to them. especially,” said maggie with her continued competence, “when they’re americans.” well, her father now met her, and met her cheerfully, on all sides. “unless you mean,” he suggested, “that when the girls are american there are more cases in which it comes to the rich than to the poor.” she looked at him good-humouredly. “that may be--but i’m not going to be smothered in my case. it ought to make me--if i were in danger of being a fool--all the nicer to people like charlotte. it’s not hard for me,” she practically explained, “not to be ridiculous--unless in a very different way. i might easily be ridiculous, i suppose, by behaving as if i thought i had done a great thing. charlotte, at any rate, has done nothing, and anyone can see it, and see also that it’s rather strange; and yet no one--no one not awfully presumptuous or offensive would like, or would dare, to treat her, just as she is, as anything but quite right. that’s what it is to have something about you that carries things off.” mr. verver’s silence, on this, could only be a sign that she had caused her story to interest him; though the sign when he spoke was perhaps even sharper. “and is it also what you mean by charlotte’s being ‘great’?” “well,” said maggie, “it’s one of her ways. but she has many.” again for a little her father considered. “and who is it she has tried to marry?” maggie, on her side as well, waited as if to bring it out with effect; but she after a minute either renounced or encountered an obstacle. “i’m afraid i’m not sure.” “then how do you know?” “well, i don’t know”--and, qualifying again, she was earnestly emphatic. “i only make it out for myself.” “but you must make it out about someone in particular.” she had another pause. “i don’t think i want even for myself to put names and times, to pull away any veil. i’ve an idea there has been, more than once, somebody i’m not acquainted with--and needn’t be or want to be. in any case it’s all over, and, beyond giving her credit for everything, it’s none of my business.” mr. verver deferred, yet he discriminated. “i don’t see how you can give credit without knowing the facts.” “can’t i give it--generally--for dignity? dignity, i mean, in misfortune.” “you’ve got to postulate the misfortune first.” “well,” said maggie, “i can do that. isn’t it always a misfortune to be--when you’re so fine--so wasted? and yet,” she went on, “not to wail about it, not to look even as if you knew it?” mr. verver seemed at first to face this as a large question, and then, after a little, solicited by another view, to let the appeal drop. “well, she mustn’t be wasted. we won’t at least have waste.” it produced in maggie’s face another gratitude. “then, dear sir, that’s all i want.” and it would apparently have settled their question and ended their talk if her father had not, after a little, shown the disposition to revert. “how many times are you supposing that she has tried?” once more, at this, and as if she hadn’t been, couldn’t be, hated to be, in such delicate matters, literal, she was moved to attenuate. “oh, i don’t say she absolutely ever tried--!” he looked perplexed. “but if she has so absolutely failed, what then had she done?” “she has suffered--she has done that.” and the princess added: “she has loved--and she has lost.” mr. verver, however, still wondered. “but how many times.” maggie hesitated, but it cleared up. “once is enough. enough, that is, for one to be kind to her.” her father listened, yet not challenging--only as with a need of some basis on which, under these new lights, his bounty could be firm. “but has she told you nothing?” “ah, thank goodness, no!” he stared. “then don’t young women tell?” “because, you mean, it’s just what they’re supposed to do?” she looked at him, flushed again now; with which, after another hesitation, “do young men tell?” she asked. he gave a short laugh. “how do i know, my dear, what young men do?” “then how do _i_ know, father, what vulgar girls do?” “i see--i see,” he quickly returned. but she spoke the next moment as if she might, odiously, have been sharp. “what happens at least is that where there’s a great deal of pride there’s a great deal of silence. i don’t know, i admit, what _i_ should do if i were lonely and sore--for what sorrow, to speak of, have i ever had in my life? i don’t know even if i’m proud--it seems to me the question has never come up for me.” “oh, i guess you’re proud, mag,” her father cheerfully interposed. “i mean i guess you’re proud enough.” “well then, i hope i’m humble enough too. i might, at all events, for all i know, be abject under a blow. how can i tell? do you realise, father, that i’ve never had the least blow?” he gave her a long, quiet look. “who should realise if i don’t?” “well, you’ll realise when i have one!” she exclaimed with a short laugh that resembled, as for good reasons, his own of a minute before. “i wouldn’t in any case have let her tell me what would have been dreadful to me. for such wounds and shames are dreadful: at least,” she added, catching herself up, “i suppose they are; for what, as i say, do i know of them? i don’t want to know!”--she spoke quite with vehemence. “there are things that are sacred whether they’re joys or pains. but one can always, for safety, be kind,” she kept on; “one feels when that’s right.” she had got up with these last words; she stood there before him with that particular suggestion in her aspect to which even the long habit of their life together had not closed his sense, kept sharp, year after year, by the collation of types and signs, the comparison of fine object with fine object, of one degree of finish, of one form of the exquisite with another--the appearance of some slight, slim draped “antique” of vatican or capitoline halls, late and refined, rare as a note and immortal as a link, set in motion by the miraculous infusion of a modern impulse and yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footsteps forsaken after centuries by their pedestal, keeping still the quality, the perfect felicity, of the statue; the blurred, absent eyes, the smoothed, elegant, nameless head, the impersonal flit of a creature lost in an alien age and passing as an image in worn relief round and round a precious vase. she had always had odd moments of striking him, daughter of his very own though she was, as a figure thus simplified, “generalised” in its grace, a figure with which his human connection was fairly interrupted by some vague analogy of turn and attitude, something shyly mythological and nymphlike. the trick, he was not uncomplacently aware, was mainly of his own mind; it came from his caring for precious vases only less than for precious daughters. and what was more to the point still, it often operated while he was quite at the same time conscious that maggie had been described, even in her prettiness, as “prim”--mrs. rance herself had enthusiastically used the word of her; while he remembered that when once she had been told before him, familiarly, that she resembled a nun, she had replied that she was delighted to hear it and would certainly try to; while also, finally, it was present to him that, discreetly heedless, thanks to her long association with nobleness in art, to the leaps and bounds of fashion, she brought her hair down very straight and flat over her temples, in the constant manner of her mother, who had not been a bit mythological. nymphs and nuns were certainly separate types, but mr. verver, when he really amused himself, let consistency go. the play of vision was at all events so rooted in him that he could receive impressions of sense even while positively thinking. he was positively thinking while maggie stood there, and it led for him to yet another question--which in its turn led to others still. “do you regard the condition as hers then that you spoke of a minute ago?” “the condition--?” “why that of having loved so intensely that she’s, as you say, ‘beyond everything’?” maggie had scarcely to reflect--her answer was so prompt. “oh no. she’s beyond nothing. for she has had nothing.” “i see. you must have had things to be them. it’s a kind of law of perspective.” maggie didn’t know about the law, but she continued definite. “she’s not, for example, beyond help.” “oh well then, she shall have all we can give her. i’ll write to her,” he said, “with pleasure.” “angel!” she answered as she gaily and tenderly looked at him. true as this might be, however, there was one thing more--he was an angel with a human curiosity. “has she told you she likes me much?” “certainly she has told me--but i won’t pamper you. let it be enough for you it has always been one of my reasons for liking her.” “then she’s indeed not beyond everything,” mr. verver more or less humorously observed. “oh it isn’t, thank goodness, that she’s in love with you. it’s not, as i told you at first, the sort of thing for you to fear.” he had spoken with cheer, but it appeared to drop before this reassurance, as if the latter overdid his alarm, and that should be corrected. “oh, my dear, i’ve always thought of her as a little girl.” “ah, she’s not a little girl,” said the princess. “then i’ll write to her as a brilliant woman.” “it’s exactly what she is.” mr. verver had got up as he spoke, and for a little, before retracing their steps, they stood looking at each other as if they had really arranged something. they had come out together for themselves, but it had produced something more. what it had produced was in fact expressed by the words with which he met his companion’s last emphasis. “well, she has a famous friend in you, princess.” maggie took this in--it was too plain for a protest. “do you know what i’m really thinking of?” she asked. he wondered, with her eyes on him--eyes of contentment at her freedom now to talk; and he wasn’t such a fool, he presently showed, as not, suddenly, to arrive at it. “why, of your finding her at last yourself a husband.” “good for you!” maggie smiled. “but it will take,” she added, “some looking.” “then let me look right here with you,” her father said as they walked on. xi mrs. assingham and the colonel, quitting fawns before the end of september, had come back later on; and now, a couple of weeks after, they were again interrupting their stay, but this time with the question of their return left to depend, on matters that were rather hinted at than importunately named. the lutches and mrs. rance had also, by the action of charlotte stant’s arrival, ceased to linger, though with hopes and theories, as to some promptitude of renewal, of which the lively expression, awakening the echoes of the great stone-paved, oak-panelled, galleried hall that was not the least interesting feature of the place, seemed still a property of the air. it was on this admirable spot that, before her october afternoon had waned, fanny assingham spent with her easy host a few moments which led to her announcing her own and her husband’s final secession, at the same time as they tempted her to point the moral of all vain reverberations. the double door of the house stood open to an effect of hazy autumn sunshine, a wonderful, windless, waiting, golden hour, under the influence of which adam verver met his genial friend as she came to drop into the post-box with her own hand a thick sheaf of letters. they presently thereafter left the house together and drew out half-an-hour on the terrace in a manner they were to revert to in thought, later on, as that of persons who really had been taking leave of each other at a parting of the ways. he traced his impression, on coming to consider, back to a mere three words she had begun by using about charlotte stant. she simply “cleared them out”--those had been the three words, thrown off in reference to the general golden peace that the kentish october had gradually ushered in, the “halcyon” days the full beauty of which had appeared to shine out for them after charlotte’s arrival. for it was during these days that mrs. rance and the miss lutches had been observed to be gathering themselves for departure, and it was with that difference made that the sense of the whole situation showed most fair--the sense of how right they had been to engage for so ample a residence, and of all the pleasure so fruity an autumn there could hold in its lap. this was what had occurred, that their lesson had been learned; and what mrs. assingham had dwelt upon was that without charlotte it would have been learned but half. it would certainly not have been taught by mrs. rance and the miss lutches if these ladies had remained with them as long as at one time seemed probable. charlotte’s light intervention had thus become a cause, operating covertly but none the less actively, and fanny assingham’s speech, which she had followed up a little, echoed within him, fairly to startle him, as the indication of something irresistible. he could see now how this superior force had worked, and he fairly liked to recover the sight--little harm as he dreamed of doing, little ill as he dreamed of wishing, the three ladies, whom he had after all entertained for a stiffish series of days. she had been so vague and quiet about it, wonderful charlotte, that he hadn’t known what was happening--happening, that is, as a result of her influence. “their fires, as they felt her, turned to smoke,” mrs. assingham remarked; which he was to reflect on indeed even while they strolled. he had retained, since his long talk with maggie--the talk that had settled the matter of his own direct invitation to her friend--an odd little taste, as he would have described it, for hearing things said about this young woman, hearing, so to speak, what could be said about her: almost as it her portrait, by some eminent hand, were going on, so that he watched it grow under the multiplication of touches. mrs. assingham, it struck him, applied two or three of the finest in their discussion of their young friend--so different a figure now from that early playmate of maggie’s as to whom he could almost recall from of old the definite occasions of his having paternally lumped the two children together in the recommendation that they shouldn’t make too much noise nor eat too much jam. his companion professed that in the light of charlotte’s prompt influence she had not been a stranger to a pang of pity for their recent visitors. “i felt in fact, privately, so sorry for them, that i kept my impression to myself while they were here--wishing not to put the rest of you on the scent; neither maggie, nor the prince, nor yourself, nor even charlotte herself, if you didn’t happen to notice. since you didn’t, apparently, i perhaps now strike you as extravagant. but i’m not--i followed it all. one saw the consciousness i speak of come over the poor things, very much as i suppose people at the court of the borgias may have watched each other begin to look queer after having had the honour of taking wine with the heads of the family. my comparison’s only a little awkward, for i don’t in the least mean that charlotte was consciously dropping poison into their cup. she was just herself their poison, in the sense of mortally disagreeing with them--but she didn’t know it.” “ah, she didn’t know it?” mr. verver had asked with interest. “well, i think she didn’t”--mrs. assingham had to admit that she hadn’t pressingly sounded her. “i don’t pretend to be sure, in every connection, of what charlotte knows. she doesn’t, certainly, like to make people suffer--not, in general, as is the case with so many of us, even other women: she likes much rather to put them at their ease with her. she likes, that is--as all pleasant people do--to be liked.” “ah, she likes to be liked?” her companion had gone on. “she did, at the same time, no doubt, want to help us--to put us at our ease. that is she wanted to put you--and to put maggie about you. so far as that went she had a plan. but it was only after--it was not before, i really believe--that she saw how effectively she could work.” again, as mr. verver felt, he must have taken it up. “ah, she wanted to help us?--wanted to help me?” “why,” mrs. assingham asked after an instant, “should it surprise you?” he just thought. “oh, it doesn’t!” “she saw, of course, as soon as she came, with her quickness, where we all were. she didn’t need each of us to go, by appointment, to her room at night, or take her out into the fields, for our palpitating tale. no doubt even she was rather impatient.” “of the poor things?” mr. verver had here inquired while he waited. “well, of your not yourselves being so--and of your not in particular. i haven’t the least doubt in the world, par exemple, that she thinks you too meek.” “oh, she thinks me too meek?” “and she had been sent for, on the very face of it, to work right in. all she had to do, after all, was to be nice to you.” “to--a--me?” said adam verver. he could remember now that his friend had positively had a laugh for his tone. “to you and to every one. she had only to be what she is--and to be it all round. if she’s charming, how can she help it? so it was, and so only, that she ‘acted’-as the borgia wine used to act. one saw it come over them--the extent to which, in her particular way, a woman, a woman other, and so other, than themselves, could be charming. one saw them understand and exchange looks, then one saw them lose heart and decide to move. for what they had to take home was that it’s she who’s the real thing.” “ah, it’s she who’s the real thing?” as he had not hitherto taken it home as completely as the miss lutches and mrs. rance, so, doubtless, he had now, a little, appeared to offer submission in his appeal. “i see, i see”--he could at least simply take it home now; yet as not without wanting, at the same time, to be sure of what the real thing was. “and what would it be--a--definitely that you understand by that?” she had only for an instant not found it easy to say. “why, exactly what those women themselves want to be, and what her effect on them is to make them recognise that they never will.” “oh--of course never?” it not only remained and abode with them, it positively developed and deepened, after this talk, that the luxurious side of his personal existence was now again furnished, socially speaking, with the thing classed and stamped as “real”--just as he had been able to think of it as not otherwise enriched in consequence of his daughter’s marriage. the note of reality, in so much projected light, continued to have for him the charm and the importance of which the maximum had occasionally been reached in his great “finds”--continued, beyond any other, to keep him attentive and gratified. nothing perhaps might affect us as queerer, had we time to look into it, than this application of the same measure of value to such different pieces of property as old persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions; all the more indeed that the amiable man was not without an inkling, on his own side, that he was, as a taster of life, economically constructed. he put into his one little glass everything he raised to his lips, and it was as if he had always carried in his pocket, like a tool of his trade, this receptacle, a little glass cut with a fineness of which the art had long since been lost, and kept in an old morocco case stamped in uneffaceable gilt with the arms of a deposed dynasty. as it had served him to satisfy himself, so to speak, both about amerigo and about the bernadino luini he had happened to come to knowledge of at the time he was consenting to the announcement of his daughter’s betrothal, so it served him at present to satisfy himself about charlotte stant and an extraordinary set of oriental tiles of which he had lately got wind, to which a provoking legend was attached, and as to which he had made out, contentedly, that further news was to be obtained from a certain mr. gutermann-seuss of brighton. it was all, at bottom, in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold, still flame; where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic beauty, of the thing visibly perfect in its kind; where, in short, in spite of the general tendency of the “devouring element” to spread, the rest of his spiritual furniture, modest, scattered, and tended with unconscious care, escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds from the undue keeping-up of profane altar-fires. adam verver had in other words learnt the lesson of the senses, to the end of his own little book, without having, for a day, raised the smallest scandal in his economy at large; being in this particular not unlike those fortunate bachelors, or other gentlemen of pleasure, who so manage their entertainment of compromising company that even the austerest housekeeper, occupied and competent below-stairs, never feels obliged to give warning. that figure has, however, a freedom that the occasion doubtless scarce demands, though we may retain it for its rough negative value. it was to come to pass, by a pressure applied to the situation wholly from within, that before the first ten days of november had elapsed he found himself practically alone at fawns with his young friend; amerigo and maggie having, with a certain abruptness, invited his assent to their going abroad for a month, since his amusement was now scarce less happily assured than his security. an impulse eminently natural had stirred within the prince; his life, as for some time established, was deliciously dull, and thereby, on the whole, what he best liked; but a small gust of yearning had swept over him, and maggie repeated to her father, with infinite admiration, the pretty terms in which, after it had lasted a little, he had described to her this experience. he called it a “serenade,” a low music that, outside one of the windows of the sleeping house, disturbed his rest at night. timid as it was, and plaintive, he yet couldn’t close his eyes for it, and when finally, rising on tiptoe, he had looked out, he had recognised in the figure below with a mandolin, all duskily draped in her grace, the raised appealing eyes and the one irresistible voice of the ever-to-be-loved italy. sooner or later, that way, one had to listen; it was a hovering, haunting ghost, as of a creature to whom one had done a wrong, a dim, pathetic shade crying out to be comforted. for this there was obviously but one way--as there were doubtless also many words for the simple fact that so prime a roman had a fancy for again seeing rome. they would accordingly--hadn’t they better?--go for a little; maggie meanwhile making the too-absurdly artful point with her father, so that he repeated it, in his amusement, to charlotte stant, to whom he was by this time conscious of addressing many remarks, that it was absolutely, when she came to think, the first thing amerigo had ever asked of her. “she doesn’t count of course his having asked of her to marry him”-- this was mr. verver’s indulgent criticism; but he found charlotte, equally touched by the ingenuous maggie, in easy agreement with him over the question. if the prince had asked something of his wife every day in the year, this would be still no reason why the poor dear man should not, in a beautiful fit of homesickness, revisit, without reproach, his native country. what his father-in-law frankly counselled was that the reasonable, the really too reasonable, pair should, while they were about it, take three or four weeks of paris as well--paris being always, for mr. verver, in any stress of sympathy, a suggestion that rose of itself to the lips. if they would only do that, on their way back, or however they preferred it, charlotte and he would go over to join them there for a small look--though even then, assuredly, as he had it at heart to add, not in the least because they should have found themselves bored at being left together. the fate of this last proposal indeed was that it reeled, for the moment, under an assault of destructive analysis from maggie, who--having, as she granted, to choose between being an unnatural daughter or an unnatural mother, and “electing” for the former--wanted to know what would become of the principino if the house were cleared of everyone but the servants. her question had fairly resounded, but it had afterwards, like many of her questions, dropped still more effectively than it had risen: the highest moral of the matter being, before the couple took their departure, that mrs. noble and dr. brady must mount unchallenged guard over the august little crib. if she hadn’t supremely believed in the majestic value of the nurse, whose experience was in itself the amplest of pillows, just as her attention was a spreading canopy from which precedent and reminiscence dropped as thickly as parted curtains--if she hadn’t been able to rest in this confidence she would fairly have sent her husband on his journey without her. in the same manner, if the sweetest--for it was so she qualified him--of little country doctors hadn’t proved to her his wisdom by rendering irresistible, especially on rainy days and in direct proportion to the frequency of his calls, adapted to all weathers, that she should converse with him for hours over causes and consequences, over what he had found to answer with his little five at home, she would have drawn scant support from the presence of a mere grandfather and a mere brilliant friend. these persons, accordingly, her own predominance having thus, for the time, given way, could carry with a certain ease, and above all with mutual aid, their consciousness of a charge. so far as their office weighed they could help each other with it--which was in fact to become, as mrs. noble herself loomed larger for them, not a little of a relief and a diversion. mr. verver met his young friend, at certain hours, in the day-nursery, very much as he had regularly met the child’s fond mother--charlotte having, as she clearly considered, given maggie equal pledges and desiring never to fail of the last word for the daily letter she had promised to write. she wrote with high fidelity, she let her companion know, and the effect of it was, remarkably enough, that he himself didn’t write. the reason of this was partly that charlotte “told all about him”--which she also let him know she did--and partly that he enjoyed feeling, as a consequence, that he was generally, quite systematically, eased and, as they said, “done” for. committed, as it were, to this charming and clever young woman, who, by becoming for him a domestic resource, had become for him practically a new person--and committed, especially, in his own house, which somehow made his sense of it a deeper thing--he took an interest in seeing how far the connection could carry him, could perhaps even lead him, and in thus putting to the test, for pleasant verification, what fanny assingham had said, at the last, about the difference such a girl could make. she was really making one now, in their simplified existence, and a very considerable one, though there was no one to compare her with, as there had been, so usefully, for fanny--no mrs. rance, no kitty, no dotty lutch, to help her to be felt, according to fanny’s diagnosis, as real. she was real, decidedly, from other causes, and mr. verver grew in time even a little amused at the amount of machinery mrs. assingham had seemed to see needed for pointing it. she was directly and immediately real, real on a pleasantly reduced and intimate scale, and at no moments more so than during those--at which we have just glanced--when mrs. noble made them both together feel that she, she alone, in the absence of the queen-mother, was regent of the realm and governess of the heir. treated on such occasions as at best a pair of dangling and merely nominal court-functionaries, picturesque hereditary triflers entitled to the petites entrees but quite external to the state, which began and ended with the nursery, they could only retire, in quickened sociability, to what was left them of the palace, there to digest their gilded insignificance and cultivate, in regard to the true executive, such snuff-taking ironies as might belong to rococo chamberlains moving among china lap-dogs. every evening, after dinner, charlotte stant played to him; seated at the piano and requiring no music, she went through his “favourite things”--and he had many favourites--with a facility that never failed, or that failed but just enough to pick itself up at a touch from his fitful voice. she could play anything, she could play everything--always shockingly, she of course insisted, but always, by his own vague measure, very much as if she might, slim, sinuous and strong, and with practised passion, have been playing lawn-tennis or endlessly and rhythmically waltzing. his love of music, unlike his other loves, owned to vaguenesses, but while, on his comparatively shaded sofa, and smoking, smoking, always smoking, in the great fawns drawing-room as everywhere, the cigars of his youth, rank with associations--while, i say, he so listened to charlotte’s piano, where the score was ever absent but, between the lighted candles, the picture distinct, the vagueness spread itself about him like some boundless carpet, a surface delightfully soft to the pressure of his interest. it was a manner of passing the time that rather replaced conversation, but the air, at the end, none the less, before they separated, had a way of seeming full of the echoes of talk. they separated, in the hushed house, not quite easily, yet not quite awkwardly either, with tapers that twinkled in the large dark spaces, and for the most part so late that the last solemn servant had been dismissed for the night. late as it was on a particular evening toward the end of october, there had been a full word or two dropped into the still-stirring sea of other voices--a word or two that affected our friend even at the moment, and rather oddly, as louder and rounder than any previous sound; and then he had lingered, under pretext of an opened window to be made secure, after taking leave of his companion in the hall and watching her glimmer away up the staircase. he had for himself another impulse than to go to bed; picking up a hat in the hall, slipping his arms into a sleeveless cape and lighting still another cigar, he turned out upon the terrace through one of the long drawing-room windows and moved to and fro there for an hour beneath the sharp autumn stars. it was where he had walked in the afternoon sun with fanny assingham, and the sense of that other hour, the sense of the suggestive woman herself, was before him again as, in spite of all the previous degustation we have hinted at, it had not yet been. he thought, in a loose, an almost agitated order, of many things; the power that was in them to agitate having been part of his conviction that he should not soon sleep. he truly felt for a while that he should never sleep again till something had come to him; some light, some idea, some mere happy word perhaps, that he had begun to want, but had been till now, and especially the last day or two, vainly groping for. “can you really then come if we start early?”--that was practically all he had said to the girl as she took up her bedroom light. and “why in the world not, when i’ve nothing else to do, and should, besides, so immensely like it?”--this had as definitely been, on her side, the limit of the little scene. there had in fact been nothing to call a scene, even of the littlest, at all--though he perhaps didn’t quite know why something like the menace of one hadn’t proceeded from her stopping half-way upstairs to turn and say, as she looked down on him, that she promised to content herself, for their journey, with a toothbrush and a sponge. there hovered about him, at all events, while he walked, appearances already familiar, as well as two or three that were new, and not the least vivid of the former connected itself with that sense of being treated with consideration which had become for him, as we have noted, one of the minor yet so far as there were any such, quite one of the compensatory, incidents of being a father-in-law. it had struck him, up to now, that this particular balm was a mixture of which amerigo, as through some hereditary privilege, alone possessed the secret; so that he found himself wondering if it had come to charlotte, who had unmistakably acquired it, through the young man’s having amiably passed it on. she made use, for her so quietly grateful host, however this might be, of quite the same shades of attention and recognition, was mistress in an equal degree of the regulated, the developed art of placing him high in the scale of importance. that was even for his own thought a clumsy way of expressing the element of similarity in the agreeable effect they each produced on him, and it held him for a little only because this coincidence in their felicity caused him vaguely to connect or associate them in the matter of tradition, training, tact, or whatever else one might call it. it might almost have been--if such a link between them was to be imagined--that amerigo had, a little, “coached” or incited their young friend, or perhaps rather that she had simply, as one of the signs of the general perfection fanny assingham commended in her, profited by observing, during her short opportunity before the start of the travellers, the pleasant application by the prince of his personal system. he might wonder what exactly it was that they so resembled each other in treating him like--from what noble and propagated convention, in cases in which the exquisite “importance” was to be neither too grossly attributed nor too grossly denied, they had taken their specific lesson; but the difficulty was here of course that one could really never know--couldn’t know without having been one’s self a personage; whether a pope, a king, a president, a peer, a general, or just a beautiful author. before such a question, as before several others when they recurred, he would come to a pause, leaning his arms on the old parapet and losing himself in a far excursion. he had as to so many of the matters in hand a divided view, and this was exactly what made him reach out, in his unrest, for some idea, lurking in the vast freshness of the night, at the breath of which disparities would submit to fusion, and so, spreading beneath him, make him feel that he floated. what he kept finding himself return to, disturbingly enough, was the reflection, deeper than anything else, that in forming a new and intimate tie he should in a manner abandon, or at the best signally relegate, his daughter. he should reduce to definite form the idea that he had lost her--as was indeed inevitable--by her own marriage; he should reduce to definite form the idea of his having incurred an injury, or at the best an inconvenience, that required some makeweight and deserved some amends. and he should do this the more, which was the great point, that he should appear to adopt, in doing it, the sentiment, in fact the very conviction, entertained, and quite sufficiently expressed, by maggie herself, in her beautiful generosity, as to what he had suffered--putting it with extravagance--at her hands. if she put it with extravagance the extravagance was yet sincere, for it came--which she put with extravagance too--from her persistence, always, in thinking, feeling, talking about him, as young. he had had glimpses of moments when to hear her thus, in her absolutely unforced compunction, one would have supposed the special edge of the wrong she had done him to consist in his having still before him years and years to groan under it. she had sacrificed a parent, the pearl of parents, no older than herself: it wouldn’t so much have mattered if he had been of common parental age. that he wasn’t, that he was just her extraordinary equal and contemporary, this was what added to her act the long train of its effect. light broke for him at last, indeed, quite as a consequence of the fear of breathing a chill upon this luxuriance of her spiritual garden. as at a turn of his labyrinth he saw his issue, which opened out so wide, for the minute, that he held his breath with wonder. he was afterwards to recall how, just then, the autumn night seemed to clear to a view in which the whole place, everything round him, the wide terrace where he stood, the others, with their steps, below, the gardens, the park, the lake, the circling woods, lay there as under some strange midnight sun. it all met him during these instants as a vast expanse of discovery, a world that looked, so lighted, extraordinarily new, and in which familiar objects had taken on a distinctness that, as if it had been a loud, a spoken pretension to beauty, interest, importance, to he scarce knew what, gave them an inordinate quantity of character and, verily, an inordinate size. this hallucination, or whatever he might have called it, was brief, but it lasted long enough to leave him gasping. the gasp of admiration had by this time, however, lost itself in an intensity that quickly followed--the way the wonder of it, since wonder was in question, truly had been the strange delay of his vision. he had these several days groped and groped for an object that lay at his feet and as to which his blindness came from his stupidly looking beyond. it had sat all the while at his hearth-stone, whence it now gazed up in his face. once he had recognised it there everything became coherent. the sharp point to which all his light converged was that the whole call of his future to him, as a father, would be in his so managing that maggie would less and less appear to herself to have forsaken him. and it not only wouldn’t be decently humane, decently possible, not to make this relief easy to her--the idea shone upon him, more than that, as exciting, inspiring, uplifting. it fell in so beautifully with what might be otherwise possible; it stood there absolutely confronted with the material way in which it might be met. the way in which it might be met was by his putting his child at peace, and the way to put her at peace was to provide for his future--that is for hers--by marriage, by a marriage as good, speaking proportionately, as hers had been. as he fairly inhaled this measure of refreshment he tasted the meaning of recent agitations. he had seen that charlotte could contribute--what he hadn’t seen was what she could contribute to. when it had all supremely cleared up and he had simply settled this service to his daughter well before him as the proper direction of his young friend’s leisure, the cool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity was constituted. it wasn’t only moreover that the word, with a click, so fitted the riddle, but that the riddle, in such perfection, fitted the word. he might have been equally in want and yet not have had his remedy. oh, if charlotte didn’t accept him, of course the remedy would fail; but, as everything had fallen together, it was at least there to be tried. and success would be great--that was his last throb--if the measure of relief effected for maggie should at all prove to have been given by his own actual sense of felicity. he really didn’t know when in his life he had thought of anything happier. to think of it merely for himself would have been, even as he had just lately felt, even doing all justice to that condition--yes, impossible. but there was a grand difference in thinking of it for his child. xii it was at brighton, above all, that this difference came out; it was during the three wonderful days he spent there with charlotte that he had acquainted himself further--though doubtless not even now quite completely--with the merits of his majestic scheme. and while, moreover, to begin with, he still but held his vision in place, steadying it fairly with his hands, as he had often steadied, for inspection, a precarious old pot or kept a glazed picture in its right relation to the light, the other, the outer presumptions in his favour, those independent of what he might himself contribute and that therefore, till he should “speak,” remained necessarily vague--that quantity, i say, struck him as positively multiplying, as putting on, in the fresh brighton air and on the sunny brighton front, a kind of tempting palpability. he liked, in this preliminary stage, to feel that he should be able to “speak” and that he would; the word itself being romantic, pressing for him the spring of association with stories and plays where handsome and ardent young men, in uniforms, tights, cloaks, high-boots, had it, in soliloquies, ever on their lips; and the sense on the first day that he should probably have taken the great step before the second was over conduced already to make him say to his companion that they must spend more than their mere night or two. at his ease on the ground of what was before him he at all events definitely desired to be, and it was strongly his impression that he was proceeding step by step. he was acting--it kept coming back to that--not in the dark, but in the high golden morning; not in precipitation, flurry, fever, dangers these of the path of passion properly so called, but with the deliberation of a plan, a plan that might be a thing of less joy than a passion, but that probably would, in compensation for that loss, be found to have the essential property, to wear even the decent dignity, of reaching further and of providing for more contingencies. the season was, in local parlance, “on,” the elements were assembled; the big windy hotel, the draughty social hall, swarmed with “types,” in charlotte’s constant phrase, and resounded with a din in which the wild music of gilded and befrogged bands, croatian, dalmatian, carpathian, violently exotic and nostalgic, was distinguished as struggling against the perpetual popping of corks. much of this would decidedly have disconcerted our friends if it hadn’t all happened, more preponderantly, to give them the brighter surprise. the noble privacy of fawns had left them--had left mr. verver at least--with a little accumulated sum of tolerance to spend on the high pitch and high colour of the public sphere. fawns, as it had been for him, and as maggie and fanny assingham had both attested, was out of the world, whereas the scene actually about him, with the very sea a mere big booming medium for excursions and aquariums, affected him as so plump in the conscious centre that nothing could have been more complete for representing that pulse of life which they had come to unanimity at home on the subject of their advisedly not hereafter forgetting. the pulse of life was what charlotte, in her way, at home, had lately reproduced, and there were positively current hours when it might have been open to her companion to feel himself again indebted to her for introductions. he had “brought” her, to put it crudely, but it was almost as if she were herself, in her greater gaiety, her livelier curiosity and intensity, her readier, happier irony, taking him about and showing him the place. no one, really, when he came to think, had ever taken him about before--it had always been he, of old, who took others and who in particular took maggie. this quickly fell into its relation with him as part of an experience--marking for him, no doubt, what people call, considerately, a time of life; a new and pleasant order, a flattered passive state, that might become--why shouldn’t it?-- one of the comforts of the future. mr. gutermann-seuss proved, on the second day--our friend had waited till then--a remarkably genial, a positively lustrous young man occupying a small neat house in a quarter of the place remote from the front and living, as immediate and striking signs testified, in the bosom of his family. our visitors found themselves introduced, by the operation of close contiguity, to a numerous group of ladies and gentlemen older and younger, and of children larger and smaller, who mostly affected them as scarce less anointed for hospitality and who produced at first the impression of a birthday party, of some anniversary gregariously and religiously kept, though they subsequently fell into their places as members of one quiet domestic circle, preponderantly and directly indebted for their being, in fact, to mr. gutermann-seuss. to the casual eye a mere smart and shining youth of less than thirty summers, faultlessly appointed in every particular, he yet stood among his progeny--eleven in all, as he confessed without a sigh, eleven little brown clear faces, yet with such impersonal old eyes astride of such impersonal old noses--while he entertained the great american collector whom he had so long hoped he might meet, and whose charming companion, the handsome, frank, familiar young lady, presumably mrs. verver, noticed the graduated offspring, noticed the fat, ear-ringed aunts and the glossy, cockneyfied, familiar uncles, inimitable of accent and assumption, and of an attitude of cruder intention than that of the head of the firm; noticed the place in short, noticed the treasure produced, noticed everything, as from the habit of a person finding her account at any time, according to a wisdom well learned of life, in almost any “funny” impression. it really came home to her friend on the spot that this free range of observation in her, picking out the frequent funny with extraordinary promptness, would verily henceforth make a different thing for him of such experiences, of the customary hunt for the possible prize, the inquisitive play of his accepted monomania; which different thing could probably be a lighter and perhaps thereby a somewhat more boisterously refreshing form of sport. such omens struck him as vivid, in any case, when mr. gutermann-seuss, with a sharpness of discrimination he had at first scarce seemed to promise, invited his eminent couple into another room, before the threshold of which the rest of the tribe, unanimously faltering, dropped out of the scene. the treasure itself here, the objects on behalf of which mr. verver’s interest had been booked, established quickly enough their claim to engage the latter’s attention; yet at what point of his past did our friend’s memory, looking back and back, catch him, in any such place, thinking so much less of wares artfully paraded than of some other and quite irrelevant presence? such places were not strange to him when they took the form of bourgeois back-parlours, a trifle ominously grey and grim from their north light, at watering-places prevailingly homes of humbug, or even when they wore some aspect still less, if not perhaps still more, insidious. he had been everywhere, pried and prowled everywhere, going, on occasion, so far as to risk, he believed, life, health and the very bloom of honour; but where, while precious things, extracted one by one from thrice-locked yet often vulgar drawers and soft satchels of old oriental ilk, were impressively ranged before him, had he, till now, let himself, in consciousness, wander like one of the vague? he didn’t betray it--ah that he knew; but two recognitions took place for him at once, and one of them suffered a little in sweetness by the confusion. mr. gutermann-seuss had truly, for the crisis, the putting down of his cards, a rare manner; he was perfect master of what not to say to such a personage as mr. verver while the particular importance that dispenses with chatter was diffused by his movements themselves, his repeated act of passage between a featureless mahogany meuble and a table so virtuously disinterested as to look fairly smug under a cotton cloth of faded maroon and indigo, all redolent of patriarchal teas. the damascene tiles, successively, and oh so tenderly, unmuffled and revealed, lay there at last in their full harmony and their venerable splendour, but the tribute of appreciation and decision was, while the spectator considered, simplified to a point that but just failed of representing levity on the part of a man who had always acknowledged without shame, in such affairs, the intrinsic charm of what was called discussion. the infinitely ancient, the immemorial amethystine blue of the glaze, scarcely more meant to be breathed upon, it would seem, than the cheek of royalty--this property of the ordered and matched array had inevitably all its determination for him, but his submission was, perhaps for the first time in his life, of the quick mind alone, the process really itself, in its way, as fine as the perfection perceived and admired: every inch of the rest of him being given to the foreknowledge that an hour or two later he should have “spoken.” the burning of his ships therefore waited too near to let him handle his opportunity with his usual firm and sentient fingers--waited somehow in the predominance of charlotte’s very person, in her being there exactly as she was, capable, as mr. gutermann-seuss himself was capable, of the right felicity of silence, but with an embracing ease, through it all, that made deferred criticism as fragrant as some joy promised a lover by his mistress, or as a big bridal bouquet held patiently behind her. he couldn’t otherwise have explained, surely, why he found himself thinking, to his enjoyment, of so many other matters than the felicity of his acquisition and the figure of his cheque, quite equally high; any more than why, later on, with their return to the room in which they had been received and the renewed encompassment of the tribe, he felt quite merged in the elated circle formed by the girl’s free response to the collective caress of all the shining eyes, and by her genial acceptance of the heavy cake and port wine that, as she was afterwards to note, added to their transaction, for a finish, the touch of some mystic rite of old jewry. this characterisation came from her as they walked away--walked together, in the waning afternoon, back to the breezy sea and the bustling front, back to the nimble and the flutter and the shining shops that sharpened the grin of solicitation on the mask of night. they were walking thus, as he felt, nearer and nearer to where he should see his ships burn, and it was meanwhile for him quite as if this red glow would impart, at the harmonious hour, a lurid grandeur to his good faith. it was meanwhile too a sign of the kind of sensibility often playing up in him that--fabulous as this truth may sound--he found a sentimental link, an obligation of delicacy, or perhaps even one of the penalties of its opposite, in his having exposed her to the north light, the quite properly hard business-light, of the room in which they had been alone with the treasure and its master. she had listened to the name of the sum he was capable of looking in the face. given the relation of intimacy with him she had already, beyond all retractation, accepted, the stir of the air produced at the other place by that high figure struck him as a thing that, from the moment she had exclaimed or protested as little as he himself had apologised, left him but one thing more to do. a man of decent feeling didn’t thrust his money, a huge lump of it, in such a way, under a poor girl’s nose--a girl whose poverty was, after a fashion, the very basis of her enjoyment of his hospitality--without seeing, logically, a responsibility attached. and this was to remain none the less true for the fact that twenty minutes later, after he had applied his torch, applied it with a sign or two of insistence, what might definitely result failed to be immediately clear. he had spoken--spoken as they sat together on the out-of-the-way bench observed during one of their walks and kept for the previous quarter of the present hour well in his memory’s eye; the particular spot to which, between intense pauses and intenser advances, he had all the while consistently led her. below the great consolidated cliff, well on to where the city of stucco sat most architecturally perched, with the rumbling beach and the rising tide and the freshening stars in front and above, the safe sense of the whole place yet prevailed in lamps and seats and flagged walks, hovering also overhead in the close neighbourhood of a great replete community about to assist anew at the removal of dish-covers. “we’ve had, as it seems to me, such quite beautiful days together, that i hope it won’t come to you too much as a shock when i ask if you think you could regard me with any satisfaction as a husband.” as if he had known she wouldn’t, she of course couldn’t, at all gracefully, and whether or no, reply with a rush, he had said a little more--quite as he had felt he must in thinking it out in advance. he had put the question on which there was no going back and which represented thereby the sacrifice of his vessels, and what he further said was to stand for the redoubled thrust of flame that would make combustion sure. “this isn’t sudden to me, and i’ve wondered at moments if you haven’t felt me coming to it. i’ve been coming ever since we left fawns--i really started while we were there.” he spoke slowly, giving her, as he desired, time to think; all the more that it was making her look at him steadily, and making her also, in a remarkable degree, look “well” while she did so--a large and, so far, a happy, consequence. she wasn’t at all events shocked--which he had glanced at but for a handsome humility--and he would give her as many minutes as she liked. “you mustn’t think i’m forgetting that i’m not young.” “oh, that isn’t so. it’s i that am old. you are young.” this was what she had at first answered--and quite in the tone too of having taken her minutes. it had not been wholly to the point, but it had been kind--which was what he most wanted. and she kept, for her next words, to kindness, kept to her clear, lowered voice and unshrinking face. “to me too it thoroughly seems that these days have been beautiful. i shouldn’t be grateful to them if i couldn’t more or less have imagined their bringing us to this.” she affected him somehow as if she had advanced a step to meet him and yet were at the same time standing still. it only meant, however, doubtless, that she was, gravely and reasonably, thinking--as he exactly desired to make her. if she would but think enough she would probably think to suit him. “it seems to me,” she went on, “that it’s for you to be sure.” “ah, but i am sure,” said adam verver. “on matters of importance i never speak when i’m not. so if you can yourself face such a union you needn’t in the least trouble.” she had another pause, and she might have been felt as facing it while, through lamplight and dusk, through the breath of the mild, slightly damp southwest, she met his eyes without evasion. yet she had at the end of another minute debated only to the extent of saying: “i won’t pretend i don’t think it would be good for me to marry. good for me, i mean,” she pursued, “because i’m so awfully unattached. i should like to be a little less adrift. i should like to have a home. i should like to have an existence. i should like to have a motive for one thing more than another--a motive outside of myself. in fact,” she said, so sincerely that it almost showed pain, yet so lucidly that it almost showed humour, “in fact, you know, i want to be married. it’s--well, it’s the condition.” “the condition--?” he was just vague. “it’s the state, i mean. i don’t like my own. ‘miss,’ among us all, is too dreadful--except for a shopgirl. i don’t want to be a horrible english old-maid.” “oh, you want to be taken care of. very well then, i’ll do it.” “i dare say it’s very much that. only i don’t see why, for what i speak of,” she smiled--“for a mere escape from my state--i need do quite so much.” “so much as marry me in particular?” her smile was as for true directness. “i might get what i want for less.” “you think it so much for you to do?” “yes,” she presently said, “i think it’s a great deal.” then it was that, though she was so gentle, so quite perfect with him, and he felt he had come on far--then it was that of a sudden something seemed to fail and he didn’t quite know where they were. there rose for him, with this, the fact, to be sure, of their disparity, deny it as mercifully and perversely as she would. he might have been her father. “of course, yes--that’s my disadvantage: i’m not the natural, i’m so far from being the ideal match to your youth and your beauty. i’ve the drawback that you’ve seen me always, so inevitably, in such another light.” but she gave a slow headshake that made contradiction soft--made it almost sad, in fact, as from having to be so complete; and he had already, before she spoke, the dim vision of some objection in her mind beside which the one he had named was light, and which therefore must be strangely deep. “you don’t understand me. it’s of all that it is for you to do--it’s of that i’m thinking.” oh, with this, for him, the thing was clearer! “then you needn’t think. i know enough what it is for me to do.” but she shook her head again. “i doubt if you know. i doubt if you can.” “and why not, please--when i’ve had you so before me? that i’m old has at least that fact about it to the good--that i’ve known you long and from far back.” “do you think you’ve ‘known’ me?” asked charlotte stant. he hesitated--for the tone of it, and her look with it might have made him doubt. just these things in themselves, however, with all the rest, with his fixed purpose now, his committed deed, the fine pink glow, projected forward, of his ships, behind him, definitely blazing and crackling--this quantity was to push him harder than any word of her own could warn him. all that she was herself, moreover, was so lighted, to its advantage, by the pink glow. he wasn’t rabid, but he wasn’t either, as a man of a proper spirit, to be frightened. “what is that then--if i accept it--but as strong a reason as i can want for just learning to know you?” she faced him always--kept it up as for honesty, and yet at the same time, in her odd way, as for mercy. “how can you tell whether if you did you would?” it was ambiguous for an instant, as she showed she felt. “i mean when it’s a question of learning, one learns sometimes too late.” “i think it’s a question,” he promptly enough made answer, “of liking you the more just for your saying these things. you should make something,” he added, “of my liking you.” “i make everything. but are you sure of having exhausted all other ways?” this, of a truth, enlarged his gaze. “but what other ways?” “why, you’ve more ways of being kind than anyone i ever knew.” “take it then,” he answered, “that i’m simply putting them all together for you.” she looked at him, on this, long again--still as if it shouldn’t be said she hadn’t given him time or had withdrawn from his view, so to speak, a single inch of her surface. this at least she was fully to have exposed. it represented her as oddly conscientious, and he scarce knew in what sense it affected him. on the whole, however, with admiration. “you’re very, very honourable.” “it’s just what i want to be. i don’t see,” she added, “why you’re not right, i don’t see why you’re not happy, as you are. i can not ask myself, i can not ask you,” she went on, “if you’re really as much at liberty as your universal generosity leads you to assume. oughtn’t we,” she asked, “to think a little of others? oughtn’t i, at least, in loyalty--at any rate in delicacy--to think of maggie?” with which, intensely gentle, so as not to appear too much to teach him his duty, she explained. “she’s everything to you--she has always been. are you so certain that there’s room in your life--?” “for another daughter?--is that what you mean?” she had not hung upon it long, but he had quickly taken her up. he had not, however, disconcerted her. “for another young woman--very much of her age, and whose relation to her has always been so different from what our marrying would make it. for another companion,” said charlotte stant. “can’t a man be, all his life then,” he almost fiercely asked, “anything but a father?” but he went on before she could answer. “you talk about differences, but they’ve been already made--as no one knows better than maggie. she feels the one she made herself by her own marriage--made, i mean, for me. she constantly thinks of it--it allows her no rest. to put her at peace is therefore,” he explained, “what i’m trying, with you, to do. i can’t do it alone, but i can do it with your help. you can make her,” he said, “positively happy about me.” “about you?” she thoughtfully echoed. “but what can i make her about herself?” “oh, if she’s at ease about me the rest will take care of itself. the case,” he declared, “is in your hands. you’ll effectually put out of her mind that i feel she has abandoned me.” interest certainly now was what he had kindled in her face, but it was all the more honourable to her, as he had just called it that she should want to see each of the steps of his conviction. “if you’ve been driven to the ‘likes’ of me, mayn’t it show that you’ve felt truly forsaken?” “well, i’m willing to suggest that, if i can show at the same time that i feel consoled.” “but have you,” she demanded, “really felt so?” he hesitated. “consoled?” “forsaken.” “no--i haven’t. but if it’s her idea--!” if it was her idea, in short, that was enough. this enunciation of motive, the next moment, however, sounded to him perhaps slightly thin, so that he gave it another touch. “that is if it’s my idea. i happen, you see, to like my idea.” “well, it’s beautiful and wonderful. but isn’t it, possibly,” charlotte asked, “not quite enough to marry me for?” “why so, my dear child? isn’t a man’s idea usually what he does marry for?” charlotte, considering, looked as if this might perhaps be a large question, or at all events something of an extension of one they were immediately concerned with. “doesn’t that a good deal depend on the sort of thing it may be?” she suggested that, about marriage, ideas, as he called them, might differ; with which, however, giving no more time to it, she sounded another question. “don’t you appear rather to put it to me that i may accept your offer for maggie’s sake? somehow”--she turned it over--“i don’t so clearly see her quite so much finding reassurance, or even quite so much needing it.” “do you then make nothing at all of her having been so ready to leave us?” ah, charlotte on the contrary made much! “she was ready to leave us because she had to be. from the moment the prince wanted it she could only go with him.” “perfectly--so that, if you see your way, she will be able to ‘go with him’ in future as much as she likes.” charlotte appeared to examine for a minute, in maggie’s interest, this privilege--the result of which was a limited concession. “you’ve certainly worked it out!” “of course i’ve worked it out--that’s exactly what i have done. she hadn’t for a long time been so happy about anything as at your being there with me.” “i was to be with you,” said charlotte, “for her security.” “well,” adam verver rang out, “this is her security. you’ve only, if you can’t see it, to ask her.” “‘ask’ her?”--the girl echoed it in wonder. “certainly--in so many words. telling her you don’t believe me.” still she debated. “do you mean write it to her?” “quite so. immediately. to-morrow.” “oh, i don’t think i can write it,” said charlotte stant. “when i write to her”--and she looked amused for so different a shade--“it’s about the principino’s appetite and dr. brady’s visits.” “very good then--put it to her face to face. we’ll go straight to paris to meet them.” charlotte, at this, rose with a movement that was like a small cry; but her unspoken sense lost itself while she stood with her eyes on him--he keeping his seat as for the help it gave him, a little, to make his appeal go up. presently, however, a new sense had come to her, and she covered him, kindly, with the expression of it. “i do think, you know, you must rather ‘like’ me.” “thank you,” said adam verver. “you will put it to her yourself then?” she had another hesitation. “we go over, you say, to meet them?” “as soon as we can get back to fawns. and wait there for them, if necessary, till they come.” “wait--a--at fawns?” “wait in paris. that will be charming in itself.” “you take me to pleasant places.” she turned it over. “you propose to me beautiful things.” “it rests but with you to make them beautiful and pleasant. you’ve made brighton--!” “ah!”--she almost tenderly protested. “with what i’m doing now?” “you’re promising me now what i want. aren’t you promising me,” he pressed, getting up, “aren’t you promising me to abide by what maggie says?” oh, she wanted to be sure she was. “do you mean she’ll ask it of me?” it gave him indeed, as by communication, a sense of the propriety of being himself certain. yet what was he but certain? “she’ll speak to you. she’ll speak to you for me.” this at last then seemed to satisfy her. “very good. may we wait again to talk of it till she has done so?” he showed, with his hands down in his pockets and his shoulders expressively up, a certain disappointment. soon enough, none the less, his gentleness was all back and his patience once more exemplary. “of course i give you time. especially,” he smiled, “as it’s time that i shall be spending with you. our keeping on together will help you perhaps to see. to see, i mean, how i need you.” “i already see,” said charlotte, “how you’ve persuaded yourself you do.” but she had to repeat it. “that isn’t, unfortunately, all.” “well then, how you’ll make maggie right.” “‘right’?” she echoed it as if the word went far. and “o--oh!” she still critically murmured as they moved together away. xiii he had talked to her of their waiting in paris, a week later, but on the spot there this period of patience suffered no great strain. he had written to his daughter, not indeed from brighton, but directly after their return to fawns, where they spent only forty-eight hours before resuming their journey; and maggie’s reply to his news was a telegram from rome, delivered to him at noon of their fourth day and which he brought out to charlotte, who was seated at that moment in the court of the hotel, where they had agreed that he should join her for their proceeding together to the noontide meal. his letter, at fawns--a letter of several pages and intended lucidly, unreservedly, in fact all but triumphantly, to inform--had proved, on his sitting down to it, and a little to his surprise, not quite so simple a document to frame as even his due consciousness of its weight of meaning had allowed him to assume: this doubtless, however, only for reasons naturally latent in the very wealth of that consciousness, which contributed to his message something of their own quality of impatience. the main result of their talk, for the time, had been a difference in his relation to his young friend, as well as a difference, equally sensible, in her relation to himself; and this in spite of his not having again renewed his undertaking to “speak” to her so far even as to tell her of the communication despatched to rome. delicacy, a delicacy more beautiful still, all the delicacy she should want, reigned between them--it being rudimentary, in their actual order, that she mustn’t be further worried until maggie should have put her at her ease. it was just the delicacy, however, that in paris--which, suggestively, was brighton at a hundredfold higher pitch--made, between him and his companion, the tension, made the suspense, made what he would have consented perhaps to call the provisional peculiarity, of present conditions. these elements acted in a manner of their own, imposing and involving, under one head, many abstentions and precautions, twenty anxieties and reminders--things, verily, he would scarce have known how to express; and yet creating for them at every step an acceptance of their reality. he was hanging back, with charlotte, till another person should intervene for their assistance, and yet they had, by what had already occurred, been carried on to something it was out of the power of other persons to make either less or greater. common conventions--that was what was odd--had to be on this basis more thought of; those common conventions that, previous to the passage by the brighton strand, he had so enjoyed the sense of their overlooking. the explanation would have been, he supposed--or would have figured it with less of unrest--that paris had, in its way, deeper voices and warnings, so that if you went at all “far” there it laid bristling traps, as they might have been viewed, all smothered in flowers, for your going further still. there were strange appearances in the air, and before you knew it you might be unmistakably matching them. since he wished therefore to match no appearance but that of a gentleman playing with perfect fairness any game in life he might be called to, he found himself, on the receipt of maggie’s missive, rejoicing with a certain inconsistency. the announcement made her from home had, in the act, cost some biting of his pen to sundry parts of him--his personal modesty, his imagination of her prepared state for so quick a jump, it didn’t much matter which--and yet he was more eager than not for the drop of delay and for the quicker transitions promised by the arrival of the imminent pair. there was after all a hint of offence to a man of his age in being taken, as they said at the shops, on approval. maggie, certainly, would have been as far as charlotte herself from positively desiring this, and charlotte, on her side, as far as maggie from holding him light as a real value. she made him fidget thus, poor girl, but from generous rigour of conscience. these allowances of his spirit were, all the same, consistent with a great gladness at the sight of the term of his ordeal; for it was the end of his seeming to agree that questions and doubts had a place. the more he had inwardly turned the matter over the more it had struck him that they had in truth only an ugliness. what he could have best borne, as he now believed, would have been charlotte’s simply saying to him that she didn’t like him enough. this he wouldn’t have enjoyed, but he would quite have understood it and been able ruefully to submit. she did like him enough--nothing to contradict that had come out for him; so that he was restless for her as well as for himself. she looked at him hard a moment when he handed her his telegram, and the look, for what he fancied a dim, shy fear in it, gave him perhaps his best moment of conviction that--as a man, so to speak--he properly pleased her. he said nothing--the words sufficiently did it for him, doing it again better still as charlotte, who had left her chair at his approach, murmured them out. “we start to-night to bring you all our love and joy and sympathy.” there they were, the words, and what did she want more? she didn’t, however, as she gave him back the little unfolded leaf, say they were enough--though he saw, the next moment, that her silence was probably not disconnected from her having just visibly turned pale. her extraordinarily fine eyes, as it was his present theory that he had always thought them, shone at him the more darkly out of this change of colour; and she had again, with it, her apparent way of subjecting herself, for explicit honesty and through her willingness to face him, to any view he might take, all at his ease, and even to wantonness, of the condition he produced in her. as soon as he perceived that emotion kept her soundless he knew himself deeply touched, since it proved that, little as she professed, she had been beautifully hoping. they stood there a minute while he took in from this sign that, yes then, certainly she liked him enough--liked him enough to make him, old as he was ready to brand himself, flush for the pleasure of it. the pleasure of it accordingly made him speak first. “do you begin, a little, to be satisfied?” still, however, she had to think. “we’ve hurried them, you see. why so breathless a start?” “because they want to congratulate us. they want,” said adam verver, “to see our happiness.” she wondered again--and this time also, for him, as publicly as possible. “so much as that?” “do you think it’s too much?” she continued to think plainly. “they weren’t to have started for another week.” “well, what then? isn’t our situation worth the little sacrifice? we’ll go back to rome as soon as you like with them.” this seemed to hold her--as he had previously seen her held, just a trifle inscrutably, by his allusions to what they would do together on a certain contingency. “worth it, the little sacrifice, for whom? for us, naturally--yes,” she said. “we want to see them--for our reasons. that is,” she rather dimly smiled, “you do.” “and you do, my dear, too!” he bravely declared. “yes then--i do too,” she after an instant ungrudging enough acknowledged. “for us, however, something depends on it.” “rather! but does nothing depend on it for them?” “what can--from the moment that, as appears, they don’t want to nip us in the bud? i can imagine their rushing up to prevent us. but an enthusiasm for us that can wait so very little--such intense eagerness, i confess,” she went on, “more than a little puzzles me. you may think me,” she also added, “ungracious and suspicious, but the prince can’t at all want to come back so soon. he wanted quite too intensely to get away.” mr. verver considered. “well, hasn’t he been away?” “yes, just long enough to see how he likes it. besides,” said charlotte, “he may not be able to join in the rosy view of our case that you impute to her. it can’t in the least have appeared to him hitherto a matter of course that you should give his wife a bouncing stepmother.” adam verver, at this, looked grave. “i’m afraid then he’ll just have to accept from us whatever his wife accepts; and accept it--if he can imagine no better reason--just because she does. that,” he declared, “will have to do for him.” his tone made her for a moment meet his face; after which, “let me,” she abruptly said, “see it again”--taking from him the folded leaf that she had given back and he had kept in his hand. “isn’t the whole thing,” she asked when she had read it over, “perhaps but a way like another for their gaining time?” he again stood staring; but the next minute, with that upward spring of his shoulders and that downward pressure of his pockets which she had already, more than once, at disconcerted moments, determined in him, he turned sharply away and wandered from her in silence. he looked about in his small despair; he crossed the hotel court, which, overarched and glazed, muffled against loud sounds and guarded against crude sights, heated, gilded, draped, almost carpeted, with exotic trees in tubs, exotic ladies in chairs, the general exotic accent and presence suspended, as with wings folded or feebly fluttering, in the superior, the supreme, the inexorably enveloping parisian medium, resembled some critical apartment of large capacity, some “dental,” medical, surgical waiting-room, a scene of mixed anxiety and desire, preparatory, for gathered barbarians, to the due amputation or extraction of excrescences and redundancies of barbarism. he went as far as the porte-cochere, took counsel afresh of his usual optimism, sharpened even, somehow, just here, by the very air he tasted, and then came back smiling to charlotte. “it is incredible to you that when a man is still as much in love as amerigo his most natural impulse should be to feel what his wife feels, to believe what she believes, to want what she wants?--in the absence, that is, of special impediments to his so doing.” the manner of it operated--she acknowledged with no great delay this natural possibility. “no--nothing is incredible to me of people immensely in love.” “well, isn’t amerigo immensely in love?” she hesitated but as for the right expression of her sense of the degree--but she after all adopted mr. verver’s. “immensely.” “then there you are!” she had another smile, however--she wasn’t there quite yet. “that isn’t all that’s wanted.” “but what more?” “why that his wife shall have made him really believe that she really believes.” with which charlotte became still more lucidly logical. “the reality of his belief will depend in such a case on the reality of hers. the prince may for instance now,” she went on, “have made out to his satisfaction that maggie may mainly desire to abound in your sense, whatever it is you do. he may remember that he has never seen her do anything else.” “well,” said adam verver, “what kind of a warning will he have found in that? to what catastrophe will he have observed such a disposition in her to lead?” “just to this one!” with which she struck him as rising straighter and clearer before him than she had done even yet. “our little question itself?” her appearance had in fact, at the moment, such an effect on him that he could answer but in marvelling mildness. “hadn’t we better wait a while till we call it a catastrophe?” her rejoinder to this was to wait--though by no means as long as he meant. when at the end of her minute she spoke, however, it was mildly too. “what would you like, dear friend, to wait for?” it lingered between them in the air, this demand, and they exchanged for the time a look which might have made each of them seem to have been watching in the other the signs of its overt irony. these were indeed immediately so visible in mr. verver’s face that, as if a little ashamed of having so markedly produced them--and as if also to bring out at last, under pressure, something she had all the while been keeping back--she took a jump to pure plain reason. “you haven’t noticed for yourself, but i can’t quite help noticing, that in spite of what you assume--we assume, if you like--maggie wires her joy only to you. she makes no sign of its overflow to me.” it was a point--and, staring a moment, he took account of it. but he had, as before, his presence of mind--to say nothing of his kindly humour. “why, you complain of the very thing that’s most charmingly conclusive! she treats us already as one.” clearly now, for the girl, in spite of lucidity and logic, there was something in the way he said things--! she faced him in all her desire to please him, and then her word quite simply and definitely showed it. “i do like you, you know.” well, what could this do but stimulate his humour? “i see what’s the matter with you. you won’t be quiet till you’ve heard from the prince himself. i think,” the happy man added, “that i’ll go and secretly wire to him that you’d like, reply paid, a few words for yourself.” it could apparently but encourage her further to smile. “reply paid for him, you mean--or for me?” “oh, i’ll pay, with pleasure, anything back for you--as many words as you like.” and he went on, to keep it up. “not requiring either to see your message.” she could take it, visibly, as he meant it. “should you require to see the prince’s?” “not a bit. you can keep that also to yourself.” on his speaking, however, as if his transmitting the hint were a real question, she appeared to consider--and almost as if for good taste--that the joke had gone far enough. “it doesn’t matter. unless he speaks of his own movement--! and why should it be,” she asked, “a thing that would occur to him?” “i really think,” mr. verver concurred, “that it naturally wouldn’t. he doesn’t know you’re morbid.” she just wondered--but she agreed. “no--he hasn’t yet found it out. perhaps he will, but he hasn’t yet; and i’m willing to give him meanwhile the benefit of the doubt.” so with this the situation, to her view, would appear to have cleared had she not too quickly had one of her restless relapses. “maggie, however, does know i’m morbid. she hasn’t the benefit.” “well,” said adam verver a little wearily at last, “i think i feel that you’ll hear from her yet.” it had even fairly come over him, under recurrent suggestion, that his daughter’s omission was surprising. and maggie had never in her life been wrong for more than three minutes. “oh, it isn’t that i hold that i’ve a right to it,” charlotte the next instant rather oddly qualified--and the observation itself gave him a further push. “very well--i shall like it myself.” at this then, as if moved by his way of constantly--and more or less against his own contention--coming round to her, she showed how she could also always, and not less gently, come half way. “i speak of it only as the missing grace--the grace that’s in everything that maggie does. it isn’t my due”--she kept it up--“but, taking from you that we may still expect it, it will have the touch. it will be beautiful.” “then come out to breakfast.” mr. verver had looked at his watch. “it will be here when we get back.” “if it isn’t”--and charlotte smiled as she looked about for a feather boa that she had laid down on descending from her room--“if it isn’t it will have had but that slight fault.” he saw her boa on the arm of the chair from which she had moved to meet him, and, after he had fetched it, raising it to make its charming softness brush his face--for it was a wondrous product of paris, purchased under his direct auspices the day before--he held it there a minute before giving it up. “will you promise me then to be at peace?” she looked, while she debated, at his admirable present. “i promise you.” “quite for ever?” “quite for ever.” “remember,” he went on, to justify his demand, “remember that in wiring you she’ll naturally speak even more for her husband than she has done in wiring me.” it was only at a word that charlotte had a demur. “‘naturally’--?” “why, our marriage puts him for you, you see--or puts you for him--into a new relation, whereas it leaves his relation to me unchanged. it therefore gives him more to say to you about it.” “about its making me his stepmother-in-law--or whatever i should become?” over which, for a little, she not undivertedly mused. “yes, there may easily be enough for a gentleman to say to a young woman about that.” “well, amerigo can always be, according to the case, either as funny or as serious as you like; and whichever he may be for you, in sending you a message, he’ll be it all.” and then as the girl, with one of her so deeply and oddly, yet so tenderly, critical looks at him, failed to take up the remark, he found himself moved, as by a vague anxiety, to add a question. “don’t you think he’s charming?” “oh, charming,” said charlotte stant. “if he weren’t i shouldn’t mind.” “no more should i!” her friend harmoniously returned. “ah, but you don’t mind. you don’t have to. you don’t have to, i mean, as i have. it’s the last folly ever to care, in an anxious way, the least particle more than one is absolutely forced. if i were you,” she went on--“if i had in my life, for happiness and power and peace, even a small fraction of what you have, it would take a great deal to make me waste my worry. i don’t know,” she said, “what in the world--that didn’t touch my luck--i should trouble my head about.” “i quite understand you--yet doesn’t it just depend,” mr. verver asked, “on what you call one’s luck? it’s exactly my luck that i’m talking about. i shall be as sublime as you like when you’ve made me all right. it’s only when one is right that one really has the things you speak of. it isn’t they,” he explained, “that make one so: it’s the something else i want that makes them right. if you’ll give me what i ask, you’ll see.” she had taken her boa and thrown it over her shoulders, and her eyes, while she still delayed, had turned from him, engaged by another interest, though the court was by this time, the hour of dispersal for luncheon, so forsaken that they would have had it, for free talk, should they have been moved to loudness, quite to themselves. she was ready for their adjournment, but she was also aware of a pedestrian youth, in uniform, a visible emissary of the postes et telegraphes, who had approached, from the street, the small stronghold of the concierge and who presented there a missive taken from the little cartridge-box slung over his shoulder. the portress, meeting him on the threshold, met equally, across the court, charlotte’s marked attention to his visit, so that, within the minute, she had advanced to our friends with her cap-streamers flying and her smile of announcement as ample as her broad white apron. she raised aloft a telegraphic message and, as she delivered it, sociably discriminated. “cette fois-ci pour madame!”--with which she as genially retreated, leaving charlotte in possession. charlotte, taking it, held it at first unopened. her eyes had come back to her companion, who had immediately and triumphantly greeted it. “ah, there you are!” she broke the envelope then in silence, and for a minute, as with the message he himself had put before her, studied its contents without a sign. he watched her without a question, and at last she looked up. “i’ll give you,” she simply said, “what you ask.” the expression of her face was strange--but since when had a woman’s at moments of supreme surrender not a right to be? he took it in with his own long look and his grateful silence--so that nothing more, for some instants, passed between them. their understanding sealed itself--he already felt that she had made him right. but he was in presence too of the fact that maggie had made her so; and always, therefore, without maggie, where, in fine, would he be? she united them, brought them together as with the click of a silver spring, and, on the spot, with the vision of it, his eyes filled, charlotte facing him meanwhile with her expression made still stranger by the blur of his gratitude. through it all, however, he smiled. “what my child does for me--!” through it all as well, that is still through the blur, he saw charlotte, rather than heard her, reply. she held her paper wide open, but her eyes were all for his. “it isn’t maggie. it’s the prince.” “i say!”--he gaily rang out. “then it’s best of all.” “it’s enough.” “thank you for thinking so!” to which he added “it’s enough for our question, but it isn’t--is it? quite enough for our breakfast? dejeunons.” she stood there, however, in spite of this appeal, her document always before them. “don’t you want to read it?” he thought. “not if it satisfies you. i don’t require it.” but she gave him, as for her conscience, another chance. “you can if you like.” he hesitated afresh, but as for amiability, not for curiosity. “is it funny?” thus, finally, she again dropped her eyes on it, drawing in her lips a little. “no--i call it grave.” “ah, then, i don’t want it.” “very grave,” said charlotte stant. “well, what did i tell you of him?” he asked, rejoicing, as they started: a question for all answer to which, before she took his arm, the girl thrust her paper, crumpled, into the pocket of her coat. part third xiv charlotte, half way up the “monumental” staircase, had begun by waiting alone--waiting to be rejoined by her companion, who had gone down all the way, as in common kindness bound, and who, his duty performed, would know where to find her. she was meanwhile, though extremely apparent, not perhaps absolutely advertised; but she would not have cared if she had been--so little was it, by this time, her first occasion of facing society with a consciousness materially, with a confidence quite splendidly, enriched. for a couple of years now she had known as never before what it was to look “well”--to look, that is, as well as she had always felt, from far back, that, in certain conditions, she might. on such an evening as this, that of a great official party in the full flush of the london spring-time, the conditions affected her, her nerves, her senses, her imagination, as all profusely present; so that perhaps at no moment yet had she been so justified of her faith as at the particular instant of our being again concerned with her, that of her chancing to glance higher up from where she stood and meeting in consequence the quiet eyes of colonel assingham, who had his elbows on the broad balustrade of the great gallery overhanging the staircase and who immediately exchanged with her one of his most artlessly familiar signals. this simplicity of his visual attention struck her, even with the other things she had to think about, as the quietest note in the whole high pitch--much, in fact, as if she had pressed a finger on a chord or a key and created, for the number of seconds, an arrest of vibration, a more muffled thump. the sight of him suggested indeed that fanny would be there, though so far as opportunity went she had not seen her. this was about the limit of what it could suggest. the air, however, had suggestions enough--it abounded in them, many of them precisely helping to constitute those conditions with which, for our young woman, the hour was brilliantly crowned. she was herself in truth crowned, and it all hung together, melted together, in light and colour and sound: the unsurpassed diamonds that her head so happily carried, the other jewels, the other perfections of aspect and arrangement that made her personal scheme a success, the proved private theory that materials to work with had been all she required and that there were none too precious for her to understand and use--to which might be added lastly, as the strong-scented flower of the total sweetness, an easy command, a high enjoyment, of her crisis. for a crisis she was ready to take it, and this ease it was, doubtless, that helped her, while she waited, to the right assurance, to the right indifference, to the right expression, and above all, as she felt, to the right view of her opportunity for happiness--unless indeed the opportunity itself, rather, were, in its mere strange amplitude, the producing, the precipitating cause. the ordered revellers, rustling and shining, with sweep of train and glitter of star and clink of sword, and yet, for all this, but so imperfectly articulate, so vaguely vocal--the double stream of the coming and the going, flowing together where she stood, passed her, brushed her, treated her to much crude contemplation and now and then to a spasm of speech, an offered hand, even in some cases to an unencouraged pause; but she missed no countenance and invited no protection: she fairly liked to be, so long as she might, just as she was--exposed a little to the public, no doubt, in her unaccompanied state, but, even if it were a bit brazen, careless of queer reflections on the dull polish of london faces, and exposed, since it was a question of exposure, to much more competent recognitions of her own. she hoped no one would stop--she was positively keeping herself; it was her idea to mark in a particular manner the importance of something that had just happened. she knew how she should mark it, and what she was doing there made already a beginning. when presently, therefore, from her standpoint, she saw the prince come back she had an impression of all the place as higher and wider and more appointed for great moments; with its dome of lustres lifted, its ascents and descents more majestic, its marble tiers more vividly overhung, its numerosity of royalties, foreign and domestic, more unprecedented, its symbolism of “state” hospitality both emphasised and refined. this was doubtless a large consequence of a fairly familiar cause, a considerable inward stir to spring from the mere vision, striking as that might be, of amerigo in a crowd; but she had her reasons, she held them there, she carried them in fact, responsibly and overtly, as she carried her head, her high tiara, her folded fan, her indifferent, unattended eminence; and it was when he reached her and she could, taking his arm, show herself as placed in her relation, that she felt supremely justified. it was her notion of course that she gave a glimpse of but few of her grounds for this discrimination--indeed of the most evident alone; yet she would have been half willing it should be guessed how she drew inspiration, drew support, in quantity sufficient for almost anything, from the individual value that, through all the picture, her husband’s son-in-law kept for the eye, deriving it from his fine unconscious way, in the swarming social sum, of outshining, overlooking and overtopping. it was as if in separation, even the shortest, she half forgot or disbelieved how he affected her sight, so that reappearance had, in him, each time, a virtue of its own--a kind of disproportionate intensity suggesting his connection with occult sources of renewal. what did he do when he was away from her that made him always come back only looking, as she would have called it, “more so?” superior to any shade of cabotinage, he yet almost resembled an actor who, between his moments on the stage, revisits his dressing-room and, before the glass, pressed by his need of effect, retouches his make-up. the prince was at present, for instance, though he had quitted her but ten minutes before, still more than then the person it pleased her to be left with--a truth that had all its force for her while he made her his care for their conspicuous return together to the upper rooms. conspicuous beyond any wish they could entertain was what, poor wonderful man, he couldn’t help making it; and when she raised her eyes again, on the ascent, to bob assingham, still aloft in his gallery and still looking down at her, she was aware that, in spite of hovering and warning inward voices, she even enjoyed the testimony rendered by his lonely vigil to the lustre she reflected. he was always lonely at great parties, the dear colonel--it wasn’t in such places that the seed he sowed at home was ever reaped by him; but nobody could have seemed to mind it less, to brave it with more bronzed indifference; so markedly that he moved about less like one of the guests than like some quite presentable person in charge of the police arrangements or the electric light. to mrs. verver, as will be seen, he represented, with the perfect good faith of his apparent blankness, something definite enough; though her bravery was not thereby too blighted for her to feel herself calling him to witness that the only witchcraft her companion had used, within the few minutes, was that of attending maggie, who had withdrawn from the scene, to her carriage. notified, at all events, of fanny’s probable presence, charlotte was, for a while after this, divided between the sense of it as a fact somehow to reckon with and deal with, which was a perception that made, in its degree, for the prudence, the pusillanimity of postponement, of avoidance--and a quite other feeling, an impatience that presently ended by prevailing, an eagerness, really, to be suspected, sounded, veritably arraigned, if only that she might have the bad moment over, if only that she might prove to herself, let alone to mrs. assingham also, that she could convert it to good; if only, in short, to be “square,” as they said, with her question. for herself indeed, particularly, it wasn’t a question; but something in her bones told her that fanny would treat it as one, and there was truly nothing that, from this friend, she was not bound in decency to take. she might hand things back with every tender precaution, with acknowledgments and assurances, but she owed it to them, in any case, and it to all mrs. assingham had done for her, not to get rid of them without having well unwrapped and turned them over. to-night, as happened--and she recognised it more and more, with the ebbing minutes, as an influence of everything about her--to-night exactly, she would, no doubt, since she knew why, be as firm as she might at any near moment again hope to be for going through that process with the right temper and tone. she said, after a little, to the prince, “stay with me; let no one take you; for i want her, yes, i do want her to see us together, and the sooner the better”--said it to keep her hand on him through constant diversions, and made him, in fact, by saying it, profess a momentary vagueness. she had to explain to him that it was fanny assingham, she wanted to see--who clearly would be there, since the colonel never either stirred without her or, once arrived, concerned himself for her fate; and she had, further, after amerigo had met her with “see us together? why in the world? hasn’t she often seen us together?” to inform him that what had elsewhere and otherwise happened didn’t now matter and that she at any rate well knew, for the occasion, what she was about. “you’re strange, cara mia,” he consentingly enough dropped; but, for whatever strangeness, he kept her, as they circulated, from being waylaid, even remarking to her afresh as he had often done before, on the help rendered, in such situations, by the intrinsic oddity of the london “squash,” a thing of vague, slow, senseless eddies, revolving as in fear of some menace of conversation suspended over it, the drop of which, with some consequent refreshing splash or spatter, yet never took place. of course she was strange; this, as they went, charlotte knew for herself: how could she be anything else when the situation holding her, and holding him, for that matter, just as much, had so the stamp of it? she had already accepted her consciousness, as we have already noted, that a crisis, for them all, was in the air; and when such hours were not depressing, which was the form indeed in which she had mainly known them, they were apparently in a high degree exhilarating. later on, in a corner to which, at sight of an empty sofa, mrs. assingham had, after a single attentive arrest, led her with a certain earnestness, this vision of the critical was much more sharpened than blurred. fanny had taken it from her: yes, she was there with amerigo alone, maggie having come with them and then, within ten minutes, changed her mind, repented and departed. “so you’re staying on together without her?” the elder woman had asked; and it was charlotte’s answer to this that had determined for them, quite indeed according to the latter’s expectation, the need of some seclusion and her companion’s pounce at the sofa. they were staying on together alone, and--oh distinctly!--it was alone that maggie had driven away, her father, as usual, not having managed to come. “‘as usual’--?” mrs. assingham had seemed to wonder; mr. verver’s reluctances not having, she in fact quite intimated, hitherto struck her. charlotte responded, at any rate, that his indisposition to go out had lately much increased--even though to-night, as she admitted, he had pleaded his not feeling well. maggie had wished to stay with him--for the prince and she, dining out, had afterwards called in portland place, whence, in the event, they had brought her, charlotte, on. maggie had come but to oblige her father--she had urged the two others to go without her; then she had yielded, for the time, to mr. verver’s persuasion. but here, when they had, after the long wait in the carriage, fairly got in; here, once up the stairs, with the rooms before them, remorse had ended by seizing her: she had listened to no other remonstrance, and at present therefore, as charlotte put it, the two were doubtless making together a little party at home. but it was all right--so charlotte also put it: there was nothing in the world they liked better than these snatched felicities, little parties, long talks, with “i’ll come to you to-morrow,” and “no, i’ll come to you,” make-believe renewals of their old life. they were fairly, at times, the dear things, like children playing at paying visits, playing at “mr. thompson” and “mrs. fane,” each hoping that the other would really stay to tea. charlotte was sure she should find maggie there on getting home--a remark in which mrs. verver’s immediate response to her friend’s inquiry had culminated. she had thus, on the spot, the sense of having given her plenty to think about, and that moreover of liking to see it even better than she had expected. she had plenty to think about herself, and there was already something in fanny that made it seem still more. “you say your husband’s ill? he felt too ill to come?” “no, my dear--i think not. if he had been too ill i wouldn’t have left him.” “and yet maggie was worried?” mrs. assingham asked. “she worries, you know, easily. she’s afraid of influenza--of which he has had, at different times, though never with the least gravity, several attacks.” “but you’re not afraid of it?” charlotte had for a moment a pause; it had continued to come to her that really to have her case “out,” as they said, with the person in the world to whom her most intimate difficulties had oftenest referred themselves, would help her, on the whole, more than hinder; and under that feeling all her opportunity, with nothing kept back; with a thing or two perhaps even thrust forward, seemed temptingly to open. besides, didn’t fanny at bottom half expect, absolutely at the bottom half want, things?--so that she would be disappointed if, after what must just have occurred for her, she didn’t get something to put between the teeth of her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear, of which our young woman had already had glimpses, that she might have “gone too far” in her irrepressible interest in other lives. what had just happened--it pieced itself together for charlotte--was that the assingham pair, drifting like everyone else, had had somewhere in the gallery, in the rooms, an accidental concussion; had it after the colonel, over his balustrade, had observed, in the favouring high light, her public junction with the prince. his very dryness, in this encounter, had, as always, struck a spark from his wife’s curiosity, and, familiar, on his side, with all that she saw in things, he had thrown her, as a fine little bone to pick, some report of the way one of her young friends was “going on” with another. he knew perfectly--such at least was charlotte’s liberal assumption--that she wasn’t going on with anyone, but she also knew that, given the circumstances, she was inevitably to be sacrificed, in some form or another, to the humorous intercourse of the inimitable couple. the prince meanwhile had also, under coercion, sacrificed her; the ambassador had come up to him with a message from royalty, to whom he was led away; after which she had talked for five minutes with sir john brinder, who had been of the ambassador’s company and who had rather artlessly remained with her. fanny had then arrived in sight of them at the same moment as someone else she didn’t know, someone who knew mrs. assingham and also knew sir john. charlotte had left it to her friend’s competence to throw the two others immediately together and to find a way for entertaining her in closer quarters. this was the little history of the vision, in her, that was now rapidly helping her to recognise a precious chance, the chance that mightn’t again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point. her point was before her; it was sharp, bright, true; above all it was her own. she had reached it quite by herself; no one, not even amerigo--amerigo least of all, who would have nothing to do with it--had given her aid. to make it now with force for fanny assingham’s benefit would see her further, in the direction in which the light had dawned, than any other spring she should, yet awhile, doubtless, be able to press. the direction was that of her greater freedom--which was all in the world she had in mind. her opportunity had accordingly, after a few minutes of mrs. assingham’s almost imprudently interested expression of face, positively acquired such a price for her that she may, for ourselves, while the intensity lasted, rather resemble a person holding out a small mirror at arm’s length and consulting it with a special turn of the head. it was, in a word, with this value of her chance that she was intelligently playing when she said in answer to fanny’s last question: “don’t you remember what you told me, on the occasion of something or other, the other day? that you believe there’s nothing i’m afraid of? so, my dear, don’t ask me!” “mayn’t i ask you,” mrs. assingham returned, “how the case stands with your poor husband?” “certainly, dear. only, when you ask me as if i mightn’t perhaps know what to think, it seems to me best to let you see that i know perfectly what to think.” mrs. assingham hesitated; then, blinking a little, she took her risk. “you didn’t think that if it was a question of anyone’s returning to him, in his trouble, it would be better you yourself should have gone?” well, charlotte’s answer to this inquiry visibly shaped itself in the interest of the highest considerations. the highest considerations were good humour, candour, clearness and, obviously, the real truth. “if we couldn’t be perfectly frank and dear with each other, it would be ever so much better, wouldn’t it? that we shouldn’t talk about anything at all; which, however, would be dreadful--and we certainly, at any rate, haven’t yet come to it. you can ask me anything under the sun you like, because, don’t you see? you can’t upset me.” “i’m sure, my dear charlotte,” fanny assingham laughed, “i don’t want to upset you.” “indeed, love, you simply couldn’t even if you thought it necessary--that’s all i mean. nobody could, for it belongs to my situation that i’m, by no merit of my own, just fixed--fixed as fast as a pin stuck, up to its head, in a cushion. i’m placed--i can’t imagine anyone more placed. there i am!” fanny had indeed never listened to emphasis more firmly applied, and it brought into her own eyes, though she had reasons for striving to keep them from betrayals, a sort of anxiety of intelligence. “i dare say--but your statement of your position, however you see it, isn’t an answer to my inquiry. it seems to me, at the same time, i confess,” mrs. assingham added, “to give but the more reason for it. you speak of our being ‘frank.’ how can we possibly be anything else? if maggie has gone off through finding herself too distressed to stay, and if she’s willing to leave you and her husband to show here without her, aren’t the grounds of her preoccupation more or less discussable?” “if they’re not,” charlotte replied, “it’s only from their being, in a way, too evident. they’re not grounds for me--they weren’t when i accepted adam’s preference that i should come to-night without him: just as i accept, absolutely, as a fixed rule, all his preferences. but that doesn’t alter the fact, of course, that my husband’s daughter, rather than his wife, should have felt she could, after all, be the one to stay with him, the one to make the sacrifice of this hour--seeing, especially, that the daughter has a husband of her own in the field.” with which she produced, as it were, her explanation. “i’ve simply to see the truth of the matter--see that maggie thinks more, on the whole, of fathers than of husbands. and my situation is such,” she went on, “that this becomes immediately, don’t you understand? a thing i have to count with.” mrs. assingham, vaguely heaving, panting a little but trying not to show it, turned about, from some inward spring, in her seat. “if you mean such a thing as that she doesn’t adore the prince--!” “i don’t say she doesn’t adore him. what i say is that she doesn’t think of him. one of those conditions doesn’t always, at all stages, involve the other. this is just how she adores him,” charlotte said. “and what reason is there, in the world, after all, why he and i shouldn’t, as you say, show together? we’ve shown together, my dear,” she smiled, “before.” her friend, for a little, only looked at her--speaking then with abruptness. “you ought to be absolutely happy. you live with such good people.” the effect of it, as well, was an arrest for charlotte; whose face, however, all of whose fine and slightly hard radiance, it had caused, the next instant, further to brighten. “does one ever put into words anything so fatuously rash? it’s a thing that must be said, in prudence, for one--by somebody who’s so good as to take the responsibility: the more that it gives one always a chance to show one’s best manners by not contradicting it. certainly, you’ll never have the distress, or whatever, of hearing me complain.” “truly, my dear, i hope in all conscience not!” and the elder woman’s spirit found relief in a laugh more resonant than was quite advised by their pursuit of privacy. to this demonstration her friend gave no heed. “with all our absence after marriage, and with the separation from her produced in particular by our so many months in america, maggie has still arrears, still losses to make up--still the need of showing how, for so long, she simply kept missing him. she missed his company--a large allowance of which is, in spite of everything else, of the first necessity to her. so she puts it in when she can--a little here, a little there, and it ends by making up a considerable amount. the fact of our distinct establishments--which has, all the same, everything in its favour,” charlotte hastened to declare, “makes her really see more of him than when they had the same house. to make sure she doesn’t fail of it she’s always arranging for it--which she didn’t have to do while they lived together. but she likes to arrange,” charlotte steadily proceeded; “it peculiarly suits her; and the result of our separate households is really, for them, more contact and more intimacy. to-night, for instance, has been practically an arrangement. she likes him best alone. and it’s the way,” said our young woman, “in which he best likes her. it’s what i mean therefore by being ‘placed.’ and the great thing is, as they say, to ‘know’ one’s place. doesn’t it all strike you,” she wound up, “as rather placing the prince too?” fanny assingham had at this moment the sense as of a large heaped dish presented to her intelligence and inviting it to a feast--so thick were the notes of intention in this remarkable speech. but she also felt that to plunge at random, to help herself too freely, would--apart from there not being at such a moment time for it--tend to jostle the ministering hand, confound the array and, more vulgarly speaking, make a mess. so she picked out, after consideration, a solitary plum. “so placed that you have to arrange?” “certainly i have to arrange.” “and the prince also--if the effect for him is the same?” “really, i think, not less.” “and does he arrange,” mrs. assingham asked, “to make up his arrears?” the question had risen to her lips--it was as if another morsel, on the dish, had tempted her. the sound of it struck her own ear, immediately, as giving out more of her thought than she had as yet intended; but she quickly saw that she must follow it up, at any risk, with simplicity, and that what was simplest was the ease of boldness. “make them up, i mean, by coming to see you?” charlotte replied, however, without, as her friend would have phrased it, turning a hair. she shook her head, but it was beautifully gentle. “he never comes.” “oh!” said fanny assingham: with which she felt a little stupid. “there it is. he might so well, you know, otherwise.” “‘otherwise’?”--and fanny was still vague. it passed, this time, over her companion, whose eyes, wandering, to a distance, found themselves held. the prince was at hand again; the ambassador was still at his side; they were stopped a moment by a uniformed personage, a little old man, of apparently the highest military character, bristling with medals and orders. this gave charlotte time to go on. “he has not been for three months.” and then as with her friend’s last word in her ear: “‘otherwise’--yes. he arranges otherwise. and in my position,” she added, “i might too. it’s too absurd we shouldn’t meet.” “you’ve met, i gather,” said fanny assingham, “to-night.” “yes--as far as that goes. but what i mean is that i might--placed for it as we both are--go to see him.” “and do you?” fanny asked with almost mistaken solemnity. the perception of this excess made charlotte, whether for gravity or for irony, hang fire a minute. “i have been. but that’s nothing,” she said, “in itself, and i tell you of it only to show you how our situation works. it essentially becomes one, a situation, for both of us. the prince’s, however, is his own affair--i meant but to speak of mine.” “your situation’s perfect,” mrs. assingham presently declared. “i don’t say it isn’t. taken, in fact, all round, i think it is. and i don’t, as i tell you, complain of it. the only thing is that i have to act as it demands of me.” “to ‘act’?” said mrs. assingham with an irrepressible quaver. “isn’t it acting, my dear, to accept it? i do accept it. what do you want me to do less?” “i want you to believe that you’re a very fortunate person.” “do you call that less?” charlotte asked with a smile. “from the point of view of my freedom i call it more. let it take, my position, any name you like.” “don’t let it, at any rate”--and mrs. assingham’s impatience prevailed at last over her presence of mind--“don’t let it make you think too much of your freedom.” “i don’t know what you call too much--for how can i not see it as it is? you’d see your own quickly enough if the colonel gave you the same liberty--and i haven’t to tell you, with your so much greater knowledge of everything, what it is that gives such liberty most. for yourself personally of course,” charlotte went on, “you only know the state of neither needing it nor missing it. your husband doesn’t treat you as of less importance to him than some other woman.” “ah, don’t talk to me of other women!” fanny now overtly panted. “do you call mr. verver’s perfectly natural interest in his daughter--?” “the greatest affection of which he is capable?” charlotte took it up in all readiness. “i do distinctly--and in spite of my having done all i could think of--to make him capable of a greater. i’ve done, earnestly, everything i could--i’ve made it, month after month, my study. but i haven’t succeeded--it has been vividly brought home to me to-night. however,” she pursued, “i’ve hoped against hope, for i recognise that, as i told you at the time, i was duly warned.” and then as she met in her friend’s face the absence of any such remembrance: “he did tell me that he wanted me just because i could be useful about her.” with which charlotte broke into a wonderful smile. “so you see i am!” it was on fanny assingham’s lips for the moment to reply that this was, on the contrary, exactly what she didn’t see; she came in fact within an ace of saying: “you strike me as having quite failed to help his idea to work--since, by your account, maggie has him not less, but so much more, on her mind. how in the world, with so much of a remedy, comes there to remain so much of what was to be obviated?” but she saved herself in time, conscious above all that she was in presence of still deeper things than she had yet dared to fear, that there was “more in it” than any admission she had made represented--and she had held herself familiar with admissions: so that, not to seem to understand where she couldn’t accept, and not to seem to accept where she couldn’t approve, and could still less, with precipitation, advise, she invoked the mere appearance of casting no weight whatever into the scales of her young friend’s consistency. the only thing was that, as she was quickly enough to feel, she invoked it rather to excess. it brought her, her invocation, too abruptly to her feet. she brushed away everything. “i can’t conceive, my dear, what you’re talking about!” charlotte promptly rose then, as might be, to meet it, and her colour, for the first time, perceptibly heightened. she looked, for the minute, as her companion had looked--as if twenty protests, blocking each other’s way, had surged up within her. but when charlotte had to make a selection, her selection was always the most effective possible. it was happy now, above all, for being made not in anger but in sorrow. “you give me up then?” “give you up--?” “you forsake me at the hour of my life when it seems to me i most deserve a friend’s loyalty? if you do you’re not just, fanny; you’re even, i think,” she went on, “rather cruel; and it’s least of all worthy of you to seem to wish to quarrel with me in order to cover your desertion.” she spoke, at the same time, with the noblest moderation of tone, and the image of high, pale, lighted disappointment she meanwhile presented, as of a creature patient and lonely in her splendour, was an impression so firmly imposed that she could fill her measure to the brim and yet enjoy the last word, as it is called in such cases, with a perfection void of any vulgarity of triumph. she merely completed, for truth’s sake, her demonstration. “what is a quarrel with me but a quarrel with my right to recognise the conditions of my bargain? but i can carry them out alone,” she said as she turned away. she turned to meet the ambassador and the prince, who, their colloquy with their field-marshal ended, were now at hand and had already, between them, she was aware, addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden glow in which her intelligence was temporarily bathed. she had made her point, the point she had foreseen she must make; she had made it thoroughly and once for all, so that no more making was required; and her success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction before her, unmistakably moved to admiration by her exceptional radiance. she at first but watched this reflection, taking no note of any less adequate form of it possibly presented by poor fanny--poor fanny left to stare at her incurred “score,” chalked up in so few strokes on the wall; then she took in what the ambassador was saying, in french, what he was apparently repeating to her. “a desire for your presence, madame, has been expressed en tres-haut lieu, and i’ve let myself in for the responsibility, to say nothing of the honour, of seeing, as the most respectful of your friends, that so august an impatience is not kept waiting.” the greatest possible personage had, in short, according to the odd formula of societies subject to the greatest personages possible, “sent for” her, and she asked, in her surprise, “what in the world does he want to do to me?” only to know, without looking, that fanny’s bewilderment was called to a still larger application, and to hear the prince say with authority, indeed with a certain prompt dryness: “you must go immediately--it’s a summons.” the ambassador, using authority as well, had already somehow possessed himself of her hand, which he drew into his arm, and she was further conscious as she went off with him that, though still speaking for her benefit, amerigo had turned to fanny assingham. he would explain afterwards--besides which she would understand for herself. to fanny, however, he had laughed--as a mark, apparently, that for this infallible friend no explanation at all would be necessary. xv it may be recorded none the less that the prince was the next moment to see how little any such assumption was founded. alone with him now mrs. assingham was incorruptible. “they send for charlotte through you?” “no, my dear; as you see, through the ambassador.” “ah, but the ambassador and you, for the last quarter-of-an-hour, have been for them as one. he’s your ambassador.” it may indeed be further mentioned that the more fanny looked at it the more she saw in it. “they’ve connected her with you--she’s treated as your appendage.” “oh, my ‘appendage,’” the prince amusedly exclaimed--“cara mia, what a name! she’s treated, rather, say, as my ornament and my glory. and it’s so remarkable a case for a mother-in-law that you surely can’t find fault with it.” “you’ve ornaments enough, it seems to me--as you’ve certainly glories enough--without her. and she’s not the least little bit,” mrs. assingham observed, “your mother-in-law. in such a matter a shade of difference is enormous. she’s no relation to you whatever, and if she’s known in high quarters but as going about with you, then--then--!” she failed, however, as from positive intensity of vision. “then, then what?” he asked with perfect good-nature. “she had better in such a case not be known at all.” “but i assure you i never, just now, so much as mentioned her. do you suppose i asked them,” said the young man, still amused, “if they didn’t want to see her? you surely don’t need to be shown that charlotte speaks for herself--that she does so above all on such an occasion as this and looking as she does to-night. how, so looking, can she pass unnoticed? how can she not have ‘success’? besides,” he added as she but watched his face, letting him say what he would, as if she wanted to see how he would say it, “besides, there is always the fact that we’re of the same connection, of--what is your word?--the same ‘concern.’ we’re certainly not, with the relation of our respective sposi, simply formal acquaintances. we’re in the same boat”--and the prince smiled with a candour that added an accent to his emphasis. fanny assingham was full of the special sense of his manner: it caused her to turn for a moment’s refuge to a corner of her general consciousness in which she could say to herself that she was glad she wasn’t in love with such a man. as with charlotte just before, she was embarrassed by the difference between what she took in and what she could say, what she felt and what she could show. “it only appears to me of great importance that--now that you all seem more settled here--charlotte should be known, for any presentation, any further circulation or introduction, as, in particular, her husband’s wife; known in the least possible degree as anything else. i don’t know what you mean by the ‘same’ boat. charlotte is naturally in mr. verver’s boat.” “and, pray, am _i_ not in mr. verver’s boat too? why, but for mr. verver’s boat, i should have been by this time”--and his quick italian gesture, an expressive direction and motion of his forefinger, pointed to deepest depths--“away down, down, down.” she knew of course what he meant--how it had taken his father-in-law’s great fortune, and taken no small slice, to surround him with an element in which, all too fatally weighted as he had originally been, he could pecuniarily float; and with this reminder other things came to her--how strange it was that, with all allowance for their merit, it should befall some people to be so inordinately valued, quoted, as they said in the stock-market, so high, and how still stranger, perhaps, that there should be cases in which, for some reason, one didn’t mind the so frequently marked absence in them of the purpose really to represent their price. she was thinking, feeling, at any rate, for herself; she was thinking that the pleasure she could take in this specimen of the class didn’t suffer from his consent to be merely made buoyant: partly because it was one of those pleasures (he inspired them) that, by their nature, couldn’t suffer, to whatever proof they were put; and partly because, besides, he after all visibly had on his conscience some sort of return for services rendered. he was a huge expense assuredly--but it had been up to now her conviction that his idea was to behave beautifully enough to make the beauty well nigh an equivalent. and that he had carried out his idea, carried it out by continuing to lead the life, to breathe the air, very nearly to think the thoughts, that best suited his wife and her father-- this she had till lately enjoyed the comfort of so distinctly perceiving as to have even been moved more than once, to express to him the happiness it gave her. he had that in his favour as against other matters; yet it discouraged her too, and rather oddly, that he should so keep moving, and be able to show her that he moved, on the firm ground of the truth. his acknowledgment of obligation was far from unimportant, but she could find in his grasp of the real itself a kind of ominous intimation. the intimation appeared to peep at her even out of his next word, lightly as he produced it. “isn’t it rather as if we had, charlotte and i, for bringing us together, a benefactor in common?” and the effect, for his interlocutress, was still further to be deepened. “i somehow feel, half the time, as if he were her father-in-law too. it’s as if he had saved us both--which is a fact in our lives, or at any rate in our hearts, to make of itself a link. don’t you remember”--he kept it up--“how, the day she suddenly turned up for you, just before my wedding, we so frankly and funnily talked, in her presence, of the advisability, for her, of some good marriage?” and then as his friend’s face, in her extremity, quite again as with charlotte, but continued to fly the black flag of general repudiation: “well, we really began then, as it seems to me, the work of placing her where she is. we were wholly right--and so was she. that it was exactly the thing is shown by its success. we recommended a good marriage at almost any price, so to speak, and, taking us at our word, she has made the very best. that was really what we meant, wasn’t it? only--what she has got--something thoroughly good. it would be difficult, it seems to me, for her to have anything better--once you allow her the way it’s to be taken. of course if you don’t allow her that the case is different. her offset is a certain decent freedom-- which, i judge, she’ll be quite contented with. you may say that will be very good of her, but she strikes me as perfectly humble about it. she proposes neither to claim it nor to use it with any sort of retentissement. she would enjoy it, i think, quite as quietly as it might be given. the ‘boat,’ you see”--the prince explained it no less considerately and lucidly--“is a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored, if you like, out in the stream. i have to jump out from time to time to stretch my legs, and you’ll probably perceive, if you give it your attention, that charlotte really can’t help occasionally doing the same. it isn’t even a question, sometimes, of one’s getting to the dock--one has to take a header and splash about in the water. call our having remained here together to-night, call the accident of my having put them, put our illustrious friends there, on my companion’s track--for i grant you this as a practical result of our combination--call the whole thing one of the harmless little plunges off the deck, inevitable for each of us. why not take them, when they occur, as inevitable--and, above all, as not endangering life or limb? we shan’t drown, we shan’t sink--at least i can answer for myself. mrs. verver too, moreover--do her the justice--visibly knows how to swim.” he could easily go on, for she didn’t interrupt him; fanny felt now that she wouldn’t have interrupted him for the world. she found his eloquence precious; there was not a drop of it that she didn’t, in a manner, catch, as it came, for immediate bottling, for future preservation. the crystal flask of her innermost attention really received it on the spot, and she had even already the vision of how, in the snug laboratory of her afterthought, she should be able chemically to analyse it. there were moments, positively, still beyond this, when, with the meeting of their eyes, something as yet unnamable came out for her in his look, when something strange and subtle and at variance with his words, something that gave them away, glimmered deep down, as an appeal, almost an incredible one, to her finer comprehension. what, inconceivably, was it like? wasn’t it, however gross, such a rendering of anything so occult, fairly like a quintessential wink, a hint of the possibility of their really treating their subject--of course on some better occasion--and thereby, as well, finding it much more interesting? if this far red spark, which might have been figured by her mind as the head-light of an approaching train seen through the length of a tunnel, was not, on her side, an ignis fatuus, a mere subjective phenomenon, it twinkled there at the direct expense of what the prince was inviting her to understand. meanwhile too, however, and unmistakably, the real treatment of their subject did, at a given moment, sound. this was when he proceeded, with just the same perfect possession of his thought--on the manner of which he couldn’t have improved--to complete his successful simile by another, in fact by just the supreme touch, the touch for which it had till now been waiting. “for mrs. verver to be known to people so intensely and exclusively as her husband’s wife, something is wanted that, you know, they haven’t exactly got. he should manage to be known--or at least to be seen--a little more as his wife’s husband. you surely must by this time have seen for yourself that he has his own habits and his own ways, and that he makes, more and more--as of course he has a perfect right to do--his own discriminations. he’s so perfect, so ideal a father, and, doubtless largely by that very fact, a generous, a comfortable, an admirable father-in-law, that i should really feel it base to avail myself of any standpoint whatever to criticise him. to you, nevertheless, i may make just one remark; for you’re not stupid--you always understand so blessedly what one means.” he paused an instant, as if even this one remark might be difficult for him should she give no sign of encouraging him to produce it. nothing would have induced her, however, to encourage him; she was now conscious of having never in her life stood so still or sat, inwardly, as it were, so tight; she felt like the horse of the adage, brought--and brought by her own fault--to the water, but strong, for the occasion, in the one fact that she couldn’t be forced to drink. invited, in other words, to understand, she held her breath for fear of showing she did, and this for the excellent reason that she was at last fairly afraid to. it was sharp for her, at the same time, that she was certain, in advance, of his remark; that she heard it before it had sounded, that she already tasted, in fine, the bitterness it would have for her special sensibility. but her companion, from an inward and different need of his own, was presently not deterred by her silence. “what i really don’t see is why, from his own point of view--given, that is, his conditions, so fortunate as they stood--he should have wished to marry at all.” there it was then--exactly what she knew would come, and exactly, for reasons that seemed now to thump at her heart, as distressing to her. yet she was resolved, meanwhile, not to suffer, as they used to say of the martyrs, then and there; not to suffer, odiously, helplessly, in public--which could be prevented but by her breaking off, with whatever inconsequence; by her treating their discussion as ended and getting away. she suddenly wanted to go home much as she had wanted, an hour or two before, to come. she wanted to leave well behind her both her question and the couple in whom it had, abruptly, taken such vivid form--but it was dreadful to have the appearance of disconcerted flight. discussion had of itself, to her sense, become danger--such light, as from open crevices, it let in; and the overt recognition of danger was worse than anything else. the worst in fact came while she was thinking how she could retreat and still not overtly recognise. her face had betrayed her trouble, and with that she was lost. “i’m afraid, however,” the prince said, “that i, for some reason, distress you--for which i beg your pardon. we’ve always talked so well together--it has been, from the beginning, the greatest pull for me.” nothing so much as such a tone could have quickened her collapse; she felt he had her now at his mercy, and he showed, as he went on, that he knew it. “we shall talk again, all the same, better than ever--i depend on it too much. don’t you remember what i told you, so definitely, one day before my marriage?--that, moving as i did in so many ways among new things, mysteries, conditions, expectations, assumptions different from any i had known, i looked to you, as my original sponsor, my fairy godmother, to see me through. i beg you to believe,” he added, “that i look to you yet.” his very insistence had, fortunately, the next moment, affected her as bringing her help; with which, at least, she could hold up her head to speak. “ah, you are through--you were through long ago. or if you aren’t you ought to be.” “well then, if i ought to be it’s all the more reason why you should continue to help me. because, very distinctly, i assure you, i’m not. the new things or ever so many of them--are still for me new things; the mysteries and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense element that i’ve failed to puzzle out. as we’ve happened, so luckily, to find ourselves again really taking hold together, you must let me, as soon as possible, come to see you; you must give me a good, kind hour. if you refuse it me”--and he addressed himself to her continued reserve--“i shall feel that you deny, with a stony stare, your responsibility.” at this, as from a sudden shake, her reserve proved an inadequate vessel. she could bear her own, her private reference to the weight on her mind, but the touch of another hand made it too horribly press. “oh, i deny responsibility--to you. so far as i ever had it i’ve done with it.” he had been, all the while, beautifully smiling; but she made his look, now, penetrate her again more. “as to whom then do you confess it?” “ah, mio caro, that’s--if to anyone--my own business!” he continued to look at her hard. “you give me up then?” it was what charlotte had asked her ten minutes before, and its coming from him so much in the same way shook her in her place. she was on the point of replying “do you and she agree together for what you’ll say to me?”--but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time, little as her actual answer had perhaps bettered it. “i think i don’t know what to make of you.” “you must receive me at least,” he said. “oh, please, not till i’m ready for you!”--and, though she found a laugh for it, she had to turn away. she had never turned away from him before, and it was quite positively for her as if she were altogether afraid of him. xvi later on, when their hired brougham had, with the long vociferation that tormented her impatience, been extricated from the endless rank, she rolled into the london night, beside her husband, as into a sheltering darkness where she could muffle herself and draw breath. she had stood for the previous half-hour in a merciless glare, beaten upon, stared out of countenance, it fairly seemed to her, by intimations of her mistake. for what she was most immediately feeling was that she had, in the past, been active, for these people, to ends that were now bearing fruit and that might yet bear a larger crop. she but brooded, at first, in her corner of the carriage: it was like burying her exposed face, a face too helplessly exposed, in the cool lap of the common indifference, of the dispeopled streets, of the closed shops and darkened houses seen through the window of the brougham, a world mercifully unconscious and unreproachful. it wouldn’t, like the world she had just left, know sooner or later what she had done, or would know it, at least, only if the final consequence should be some quite overwhelming publicity. she fixed this possibility itself so hard, however, for a few moments, that the misery of her fear produced the next minute a reaction; and when the carriage happened, while it grazed a turn, to catch the straight shaft from the lamp of a policeman in the act of playing his inquisitive flash over an opposite house-front, she let herself wince at being thus incriminated only that she might protest, not less quickly, against mere blind terror. it had become, for the occasion, preposterously, terror--of which she must shake herself free before she could properly measure her ground. the perception of this necessity had in truth soon aided her; since she found, on trying, that, lurid as her prospect might hover there, she could none the less give it no name. the sense of seeing was strong in her, but she clutched at the comfort of not being sure of what she saw. not to know what it would represent on a longer view was a help, in turn, to not making out that her hands were embrued; since if she had stood in the position of a producing cause she should surely be less vague about what she had produced. this, further, in its way, was a step toward reflecting that when one’s connection with any matter was too indirect to be traced it might be described also as too slight to be deplored. by the time they were nearing cadogan place she had in fact recognised that she couldn’t be as curious as she desired without arriving at some conviction of her being as innocent. but there had been a moment, in the dim desert of eaton square, when she broke into speech. “it’s only their defending themselves so much more than they need--it’s only that that makes me wonder. it’s their having so remarkably much to say for themselves.” her husband had, as usual, lighted his cigar, remaining apparently as busy with it as she with her agitation. “you mean it makes you feel that you have nothing?” to which, as she made no answer, the colonel added: “what in the world did you ever suppose was going to happen? the man’s in a position in which he has nothing in life to do.” her silence seemed to characterise this statement as superficial, and her thoughts, as always in her husband’s company, pursued an independent course. he made her, when they were together, talk, but as if for some other person; who was in fact for the most part herself. yet she addressed herself with him as she could never have done without him. “he has behaved beautifully--he did from the first. i’ve thought it, all along, wonderful of him; and i’ve more than once, when i’ve had a chance, told him so. therefore, therefore--!” but it died away as she mused. “therefore he has a right, for a change, to kick up his heels?” “it isn’t a question, of course, however,” she undivertedly went on, “of their behaving beautifully apart. it’s a question of their doing as they should when together--which is another matter.” “and how do you think then,” the colonel asked with interest, “that, when together, they should do? the less they do, one would say, the better--if you see so much in it.” his wife, at this, appeared to hear him. “i don’t see in it what you’d see. and don’t, my dear,” she further answered, “think it necessary to be horrid or low about them. they’re the last people, really, to make anything of that sort come in right.” “i’m surely never horrid or low,” he returned, “about anyone but my extravagant wife. i can do with all our friends--as i see them myself: what i can’t do with is the figures you make of them. and when you take to adding your figures up--!” but he exhaled it again in smoke. “my additions don’t matter when you’ve not to pay the bill.” with which her meditation again bore her through the air. “the great thing was that when it so suddenly came up for her he wasn’t afraid. if he had been afraid he could perfectly have prevented it. and if i had seen he was--if i hadn’t seen he wasn’t--so,” said mrs. assingham, “could i. so,” she declared, “would i. it’s perfectly true,” she went on--“it was too good a thing for her, such a chance in life, not to be accepted. and i liked his not keeping her out of it merely from a fear of his own nature. it was so wonderful it should come to her. the only thing would have been if charlotte herself couldn’t have faced it. then, if she had not had confidence, we might have talked. but she had it to any amount.” “did you ask her how much?” bob assingham patiently inquired. he had put the question with no more than his usual modest hope of reward, but he had pressed, this time, the sharpest spring of response. “never, never--it wasn’t a time to ‘ask.’ asking is suggesting--and it wasn’t a time to suggest. one had to make up one’s mind, as quietly as possible, by what one could judge. and i judge, as i say, that charlotte felt she could face it. for which she struck me at the time as--for so proud a creature--almost touchingly grateful. the thing i should never forgive her for would be her forgetting to whom it is her thanks have remained most due.” “that is to mrs. assingham?” she said nothing for a little--there were, after all, alternatives. “maggie herself of course--astonishing little maggie.” “is maggie then astonishing too?”--and he gloomed out of his window. his wife, on her side now, as they rolled, projected the same look. “i’m not sure that i don’t begin to see more in her than--dear little person as i’ve always thought--i ever supposed there was. i’m not sure that, putting a good many things together, i’m not beginning to make her out rather extraordinary.” “you certainly will if you can,” the colonel resignedly remarked. again his companion said nothing; then again she broke out. “in fact--i do begin to feel it--maggie’s the great comfort. i’m getting hold of it. it will be she who’ll see us through. in fact she’ll have to. and she’ll be able.” touch by touch her meditation had completed it, but with a cumulative effect for her husband’s general sense of her method that caused him to overflow, whimsically enough, in his corner, into an ejaculation now frequent on his lips for the relief that, especially in communion like the present, it gave him, and that fanny had critically traced to the quaint example, the aboriginal homeliness, still so delightful, of mr. verver. “oh, lordy, lordy!” “if she is, however,” mrs. assingham continued, “she’ll be extraordinary enough--and that’s what i’m thinking of. but i’m not indeed so very sure,” she added, “of the person to whom charlotte ought in decency to be most grateful. i mean i’m not sure if that person is even almost the incredible little idealist who has made her his wife.” “i shouldn’t think you would be, love,” the colonel with some promptness responded. “charlotte as the wife of an incredible little idealist--!” his cigar, in short, once more, could alone express it. “yet what is that, when one thinks, but just what she struck one as more or less persuaded that she herself was really going to be?”--this memory, for the full view, fanny found herself also invoking. it made her companion, in truth, slightly gape. “an incredible little idealist--charlotte herself?” “and she was sincere,” his wife simply proceeded “she was unmistakably sincere. the question is only how much is left of it.” “and that--i see--happens to be another of the questions you can’t ask her. you have to do it all,” said bob assingham, “as if you were playing some game with its rules drawn up--though who’s to come down on you if you break them i don’t quite see. or must you do it in three guesses--like forfeits on christmas eve?” to which, as his ribaldry but dropped from her, he further added: “how much of anything will have to be left for you to be able to go on with it?” “i shall go on,” fanny assingham a trifle grimly declared, “while there’s a scrap as big as your nail. but we’re not yet, luckily, reduced only to that.” she had another pause, holding the while the thread of that larger perception into which her view of mrs. verver’s obligation to maggie had suddenly expanded. “even if her debt was not to the others--even then it ought to be quite sufficiently to the prince himself to keep her straight. for what, really, did the prince do,” she asked herself, “but generously trust her? what did he do but take it from her that if she felt herself willing it was because she felt herself strong? that creates for her, upon my word,” mrs. assingham pursued, “a duty of considering him, of honourably repaying his trust, which--well, which she’ll be really a fiend if she doesn’t make the law of her conduct. i mean of course his trust that she wouldn’t interfere with him--expressed by his holding himself quiet at the critical time.” the brougham was nearing home, and it was perhaps this sense of ebbing opportunity that caused the colonel’s next meditation to flower in a fashion almost surprising to his wife. they were united, for the most part, but by his exhausted patience; so that indulgent despair was generally, at the best, his note. he at present, however, actually compromised with his despair to the extent of practically admitting that he had followed her steps. he literally asked, in short, an intelligent, well nigh a sympathising, question. “gratitude to the prince for not having put a spoke in her wheel--that, you mean, should, taking it in the right way, be precisely the ballast of her boat?” “taking it in the right way.” fanny, catching at this gleam, emphasised the proviso. “but doesn’t it rather depend on what she may most feel to be the right way?” “no--it depends on nothing. because there’s only one way--for duty or delicacy.” “oh--delicacy!” bob assingham rather crudely murmured. “i mean the highest kind--moral. charlotte’s perfectly capable of appreciating that. by every dictate of moral delicacy she must let him alone.” “then you’ve made up your mind it’s all poor charlotte?” he asked with an effect of abruptness. the effect, whether intended or not, reached her--brought her face short round. it was a touch at which she again lost her balance, at which, somehow, the bottom dropped out of her recovered comfort. “then you’ve made up yours differently? it really struck you that there is something?” the movement itself, apparently, made him once more stand off. he had felt on his nearer approach the high temperature of the question. “perhaps that’s just what she’s doing: showing him how much she’s letting him alone--pointing it out to him from day to day.” “did she point it out by waiting for him to-night on the stair-case in the manner you described to me?” “i really, my dear, described to you a manner?” the colonel, clearly, from want of habit, scarce recognised himself in the imputation. “yes--for once in a way; in those few words we had after you had watched them come up you told me something of what you had seen. you didn’t tell me very much--that you couldn’t for your life; but i saw for myself that, strange to say, you had received your impression, and i felt therefore that there must indeed have been something out of the way for you so to betray it.” she was fully upon him now, and she confronted him with his proved sensibility to the occasion--confronted him because of her own uneasy need to profit by it. it came over her still more than at the time, it came over her that he had been struck with something, even he, poor dear man; and that for this to have occurred there must have been much to be struck with. she tried in fact to corner him, to pack him insistently down, in the truth of his plain vision, the very plainness of which was its value; for so recorded, she felt, none of it would escape--she should have it at hand for reference. “come, my dear--you thought what you thought: in the presence of what you saw you couldn’t resist thinking. i don’t ask more of it than that. and your idea is worth, this time, quite as much as any of mine--so that you can’t pretend, as usual, that mine has run away with me. i haven’t caught up with you. i stay where i am. but i see,” she concluded, “where you are, and i’m much obliged to you for letting me. you give me a point de repere outside myself--which is where i like it. now i can work round you.” their conveyance, as she spoke, stopped at their door, and it was, on the spot, another fact of value for her that her husband, though seated on the side by which they must alight, made no movement. they were in a high degree votaries of the latch-key, so that their household had gone to bed; and as they were unaccompanied by a footman the coachman waited in peace. it was so indeed that for a minute bob assingham waited--conscious of a reason for replying to this address otherwise than by the so obvious method of turning his back. he didn’t turn his face, but he stared straight before him, and his wife had already perceived in the fact of his not moving all the proof she could desire-- proof, that is, of her own contention. she knew he never cared what she said, and his neglect of his chance to show it was thereby the more eloquent. “leave it,” he at last remarked, “to them.” “‘leave’ it--?” she wondered. “let them alone. they’ll manage.” “they’ll manage, you mean, to do everything they want? ah, there then you are!” “they’ll manage in their own way,” the colonel almost cryptically repeated. it had its effect for her: quite apart from its light on the familiar phenomenon of her husband’s indurated conscience, it gave her, full in her face, the particular evocation of which she had made him guilty. it was wonderful truly, then, the evocation. “so cleverly--that’s your idea?--that no one will be the wiser? it’s your idea that we shall have done all that’s required of us if we simply protect them?” the colonel, still in his place, declined, however, to be drawn into a statement of his idea. statements were too much like theories, in which one lost one’s way; he only knew what he said, and what he said represented the limited vibration of which his confirmed old toughness had been capable. still, none the less, he had his point to make--for which he took another instant. but he made it, for the third time, in the same fashion. “they’ll manage in their own way.” with which he got out. oh yes, at this, for his companion, it had indeed its effect, and while he mounted their steps she but stared, without following him, at his opening of their door. their hall was lighted, and as he stood in the aperture looking back at her, his tall lean figure outlined in darkness and with his crush-hat, according to his wont, worn cavalierly, rather diabolically, askew, he seemed to prolong the sinister emphasis of his meaning. in general, on these returns, he came back for her when he had prepared their entrance; so that it was now as if he were ashamed to face her in closer quarters. he looked at her across the interval, and, still in her seat, weighing his charge, she felt her whole view of everything flare up. wasn’t it simply what had been written in the prince’s own face beneath what he was saying?--didn’t it correspond with the mocking presence there that she had had her troubled glimpse of? wasn’t, in fine, the pledge that they would “manage in their own way” the thing he had been feeling for his chance to invite her to take from him? her husband’s tone somehow fitted amerigo’s look--the one that had, for her, so strangely, peeped, from behind, over the shoulder of the one in front. she had not then read it--but wasn’t she reading it when she now saw in it his surmise that she was perhaps to be squared? she wasn’t to be squared, and while she heard her companion call across to her “well, what’s the matter?” she also took time to remind herself that she had decided she couldn’t be frightened. the “matter”?--why, it was sufficiently the matter, with all this, that she felt a little sick. for it was not the prince that she had been prepared to regard as primarily the shaky one. shakiness in charlotte she had, at the most, perhaps postulated--it would be, she somehow felt, more easy to deal with. therefore if he had come so far it was a different pair of sleeves. there was nothing to choose between them. it made her so helpless that, as the time passed without her alighting, the colonel came back and fairly drew her forth; after which, on the pavement, under the street-lamp, their very silence might have been the mark of something grave--their silence eked out for her by his giving her his arm and their then crawling up their steps quite mildly and unitedly together, like some old darby and joan who have had a disappointment. it almost resembled a return from a funeral--unless indeed it resembled more the hushed approach to a house of mourning. what indeed had she come home for but to bury, as decently as possible, her mistake? xvii it appeared thus that they might enjoy together extraordinary freedom, the two friends, from the moment they should understand their position aright. with the prince himself, from an early stage, not unnaturally, charlotte had made a great point of their so understanding it; she had found frequent occasion to describe to him this necessity, and, her resignation tempered, or her intelligence at least quickened, by irrepressible irony, she applied at different times different names to the propriety of their case. the wonderful thing was that her sense of propriety had been, from the first, especially alive about it. there were hours when she spoke of their taking refuge in what she called the commonest tact--as if this principle alone would suffice to light their way; there were others when it might have seemed, to listen to her, that their course would demand of them the most anxious study and the most independent, not to say original, interpretation of signs. she talked now as if it were indicated, at every turn, by finger-posts of almost ridiculous prominence; she talked again as if it lurked in devious ways and were to be tracked through bush and briar; and she even, on occasion, delivered herself in the sense that, as their situation was unprecedented, so their heaven was without stars. “‘do’?” she once had echoed to him as the upshot of passages covertly, though briefly, occurring between them on her return from the visit to america that had immediately succeeded her marriage, determined for her by this event as promptly as an excursion of the like strange order had been prescribed in his own case. “isn’t the immense, the really quite matchless beauty of our position that we have to ‘do’ nothing in life at all?--nothing except the usual, necessary, everyday thing which consists in one’s not being more of a fool than one can help. that’s all--but that’s as true for one time as for another. there has been plenty of ‘doing,’ and there will doubtless be plenty still; but it’s all theirs, every inch of it; it’s all a matter of what they’ve done to us.” and she showed how the question had therefore been only of their taking everything as everything came, and all as quietly as might be. nothing stranger surely had ever happened to a conscientious, a well-meaning, a perfectly passive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched against such victims than this of forcing them against their will into a relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid. she was to remember not a little, meanwhile, the particular prolonged silent look with which the prince had met her allusion to these primary efforts at escape. she was inwardly to dwell on the element of the unuttered that her tone had caused to play up into his irresistible eyes; and this because she considered with pride and joy that she had, on the spot, disposed of the doubt, the question, the challenge, or whatever else might have been, that such a look could convey. he had been sufficiently off his guard to show some little wonder as to their having plotted so very hard against their destiny, and she knew well enough, of course, what, in this connection, was at the bottom of his thought, and what would have sounded out more or less if he had not happily saved himself from words. all men were brutes enough to catch when they might at such chances for dissent--for all the good it really did them; but the prince’s distinction was in being one of the few who could check himself before acting on the impulse. this, obviously, was what counted in a man as delicacy. if her friend had blurted or bungled he would have said, in his simplicity, “did we do ‘everything to avoid’ it when we faced your remarkable marriage?”--quite handsomely of course using the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of a tribute of memory to the telegram she had received from him in paris after mr. verver had despatched to rome the news of their engagement. that telegram, that acceptance of the prospect proposed to them--an acceptance quite other than perfunctory--she had never destroyed; though reserved for no eyes but her own it was still carefully reserved. she kept it in a safe place--from which, very privately, she sometimes took it out to read it over. “a la guerre comme a la guerre then”--it had been couched in the french tongue. “we must lead our lives as we see them; but i am charmed with your courage and almost surprised at my own.” the message had remained ambiguous; she had read it in more lights than one; it might mean that even without her his career was up-hill work for him, a daily fighting-matter on behalf of a good appearance, and that thus, if they were to become neighbours again, the event would compel him to live still more under arms. it might mean on the other hand that he found he was happy enough, and that accordingly, so far as she might imagine herself a danger, she was to think of him as prepared in advance, as really seasoned and secure. on his arrival in paris with his wife, none the less, she had asked for no explanation, just as he himself had not asked if the document were still in her possession. such an inquiry, everything implied, was beneath him--just as it was beneath herself to mention to him, uninvited, that she had instantly offered, and in perfect honesty, to show the telegram to mr. verver, and that if this companion had but said the word she would immediately have put it before him. she had thereby forborne to call his attention to her consciousness that such an exposure would, in all probability, straightway have dished her marriage; that all her future had in fact, for the moment, hung by the single hair of mr. verver’s delicacy (as she supposed they must call it); and that her position, in the matter of responsibility, was therefore inattackably straight. for the prince himself, meanwhile, time, in its measured allowance, had originally much helped him--helped him in the sense of there not being enough of it to trip him up; in spite of which it was just this accessory element that seemed, at present, with wonders of patience, to lie in wait. time had begotten at first, more than anything else, separations, delays and intervals; but it was troublesomely less of an aid from the moment it began so to abound that he had to meet the question of what to do with it. less of it was required for the state of being married than he had, on the whole, expected; less, strangely, for the state of being married even as he was married. and there was a logic in the matter, he knew; a logic that but gave this truth a sort of solidity of evidence. mr. verver, decidedly, helped him with it--with his wedded condition; helped him really so much that it made all the difference. in the degree in which he rendered it the service on mr. verver’s part was remarkable--as indeed what service, from the first of their meeting, had not been? he was living, he had been living these four or five years, on mr. verver’s services: a truth scarcely less plain if he dealt with them, for appreciation, one by one, than if he poured them all together into the general pot of his gratitude and let the thing simmer to a nourishing broth. to the latter way with them he was undoubtedly most disposed; yet he would even thus, on occasion, pick out a piece to taste on its own merits. wondrous at such hours could seem the savour of the particular “treat,” at his father-in-law’s expense, that he more and more struck himself as enjoying. he had needed months and months to arrive at a full appreciation--he couldn’t originally have given offhand a name to his deepest obligation; but by the time the name had flowered in his mind he was practically living at the ease guaranteed him. mr. verver then, in a word, took care of his relation to maggie, as he took care, and apparently always would, of everything else. he relieved him of all anxiety about his married life in the same manner in which he relieved him on the score of his bank-account. and as he performed the latter office by communicating with the bankers, so the former sprang as directly from his good understanding with his daughter. this understanding had, wonderfully--that was in high evidence--the same deep intimacy as the commercial, the financial association founded, far down, on a community of interest. and the correspondence, for the prince, carried itself out in identities of character the vision of which, fortunately, rather tended to amuse than to--as might have happened--irritate him. those people--and his free synthesis lumped together capitalists and bankers, retired men of business, illustrious collectors, american fathers-in-law, american fathers, little american daughters, little american wives--those people were of the same large lucky group, as one might say; they were all, at least, of the same general species and had the same general instincts; they hung together, they passed each other the word, they spoke each other’s language, they did each other “turns.” in this last connection it of course came up for our young man at a given moment that maggie’s relation with him was also, on the perceived basis, taken care of. which was in fact the real upshot of the matter. it was a “funny” situation--that is it was funny just as it stood. their married life was in question, but the solution was, not less strikingly, before them. it was all right for himself, because mr. verver worked it so for maggie’s comfort; and it was all right for maggie, because he worked it so for her husband’s. the fact that time, however, was not, as we have said, wholly on the prince’s side might have shown for particularly true one dark day on which, by an odd but not unprecedented chance, the reflections just noted offered themselves as his main recreation. they alone, it appeared, had been appointed to fill the hours for him, and even to fill the great square house in portland place, where the scale of one of the smaller saloons fitted them but loosely. he had looked into this room on the chance that he might find the princess at tea; but though the fireside service of the repast was shiningly present the mistress of the table was not, and he had waited for her, if waiting it could be called, while he measured again and again the stretch of polished floor. he could have named to himself no pressing reason for seeing her at this moment, and her not coming in, as the half-hour elapsed, became in fact quite positively, however perversely, the circumstance that kept him on the spot. just there, he might have been feeling, just there he could best take his note. this observation was certainly by itself meagre amusement for a dreary little crisis; but his walk to and fro, and in particular his repeated pause at one of the high front windows, gave each of the ebbing minutes, none the less, after a time, a little more of the quality of a quickened throb of the spirit. these throbs scarce expressed, however, the impatience of desire, any more than they stood for sharp disappointment: the series together resembled perhaps more than anything else those fine waves of clearness through which, for a watcher of the east, dawn at last trembles into rosy day. the illumination indeed was all for the mind, the prospect revealed by it a mere immensity of the world of thought; the material outlook was all the while a different matter. the march afternoon, judged at the window, had blundered back into autumn; it had been raining for hours, and the colour of the rain, the colour of the air, of the mud, of the opposite houses, of life altogether, in so grim a joke, so idiotic a masquerade, was an unutterable dirty brown. there was at first even, for the young man, no faint flush in the fact of the direction taken, while he happened to look out, by a slow-jogging four-wheeled cab which, awkwardly deflecting from the middle course, at the apparent instance of a person within, began to make for the left-hand pavement and so at last, under further instructions, floundered to a full stop before the prince’s windows. the person within, alighting with an easier motion, proved to be a lady who left the vehicle to wait and, putting up no umbrella, quickly crossed the wet interval that separated her from the house. she but flitted and disappeared; yet the prince, from his standpoint, had had time to recognise her, and the recognition kept him for some minutes motionless. charlotte stant, at such an hour, in a shabby four-wheeler and a waterproof, charlotte stant turning up for him at the very climax of his special inner vision, was an apparition charged with a congruity at which he stared almost as if it had been a violence. the effect of her coming to see him, him only, had, while he stood waiting, a singular intensity--though after some minutes had passed the certainty of this began to drop. perhaps she had not come, or had come only for maggie; perhaps, on learning below that the princess had not returned, she was merely leaving a message, writing a word on a card. he should see, at any rate; and meanwhile, controlling himself, would do nothing. this thought of not interfering took on a sudden force for him; she would doubtless hear he was at home, but he would let her visit to him be all of her own choosing. and his view of a reason for leaving her free was the more remarkable that, though taking no step, he yet intensely hoped. the harmony of her breaking into sight while the superficial conditions were so against her was a harmony with conditions that were far from superficial and that gave, for his imagination, an extraordinary value to her presence. the value deepened strangely, moreover, with the rigour of his own attitude--with the fact too that, listening hard, he neither heard the house-door close again nor saw her go back to her cab; and it had risen to a climax by the time he had become aware, with his quickened sense, that she had followed the butler up to the landing from which his room opened. if anything could further then have added to it, the renewed pause outside, as if she had said to the man “wait a moment!” would have constituted this touch. yet when the man had shown her in, had advanced to the tea-table to light the lamp under the kettle and had then busied himself, all deliberately, with the fire, she made it easy for her host to drop straight from any height of tension and to meet her, provisionally, on the question of maggie. while the butler remained it was maggie that she had come to see and maggie that--in spite of this attendant’s high blankness on the subject of all possibilities on that lady’s part--she would cheerfully, by the fire, wait for. as soon as they were alone together, however, she mounted, as with the whizz and the red light of a rocket, from the form to the fact, saying straight out, as she stood and looked at him: “what else, my dear, what in the world else can we do?” it was as if he then knew, on the spot, why he had been feeling, for hours, as he had felt--as if he in fact knew, within the minute, things he had not known even while she was panting, as from the effect of the staircase, at the door of the room. he knew at the same time, none the less, that she knew still more than he--in the sense, that is, of all the signs and portents that might count for them; and his vision of alternative--she could scarce say what to call them, solutions, satisfactions--opened out, altogether, with this tangible truth of her attitude by the chimney-place, the way she looked at him as through the gained advantage of it; her right hand resting on the marble and her left keeping her skirt from the fire while she held out a foot to dry. he couldn’t have told what particular links and gaps had at the end of a few minutes found themselves renewed and bridged; for he remembered no occasion, in rome, from which the picture could have been so exactly copied. he remembered, that is, none of her coming to see him in the rain while a muddy four-wheeler waited, and while, though having left her waterproof downstairs, she was yet invested with the odd eloquence--the positive picturesqueness, yes, given all the rest of the matter--of a dull dress and a black bowdlerised hat that seemed to make a point of insisting on their time of life and their moral intention, the hat’s and the frock’s own, as well as on the irony of indifference to them practically playing in her so handsome rain-freshened face. the sense of the past revived for him nevertheless as it had not yet done: it made that other time somehow meet the future close, interlocking with it, before his watching eyes, as in a long embrace of arms and lips, and so handling and hustling the present that this poor quantity scarce retained substance enough, scarce remained sufficiently there, to be wounded or shocked. what had happened, in short, was that charlotte and he had, by a single turn of the wrist of fate--“led up” to indeed, no doubt, by steps and stages that conscious computation had missed--been placed face to face in a freedom that partook, extraordinarily, of ideal perfection, since the magic web had spun itself without their toil, almost without their touch. above all, on this occasion, once more, there sounded through their safety, as an undertone, the very voice he had listened to on the eve of his marriage with such another sort of unrest. dimly, again and again, from that period on, he had seemed to hear it tell him why it kept recurring; but it phrased the large music now in a way that filled the room. the reason was--into which he had lived, quite intimately, by the end of a quarter-of-an-hour--that just this truth of their safety offered it now a kind of unexampled receptacle, letting it spread and spread, but at the same time elastically enclosing it, banking it in, for softness, as with billows of eiderdown. on that morning; in the park there had been, however dissimulated, doubt and danger, whereas the tale this afternoon was taken up with a highly emphasised confidence. the emphasis, for their general comfort, was what charlotte had come to apply; inasmuch as, though it was not what she definitely began with, it had soon irrepressibly shaped itself. it was the meaning of the question she had put to him as soon as they were alone--even though indeed, as from not quite understanding, he had not then directly replied; it was the meaning of everything else, down to the conscious quaintness of her ricketty “growler” and the conscious humility of her dress. it had helped him a little, the question of these eccentricities, to let her immediate appeal pass without an answer. he could ask her instead what had become of her carriage and why, above all, she was not using it in such weather. “it’s just because of the weather,” she explained. “it’s my little idea. it makes me feel as i used to--when i could do as i liked.” xviii this came out so straight that he saw at once how much truth it expressed; yet it was truth that still a little puzzled him. “but did you ever like knocking about in such discomfort?” “it seems to me now that i then liked everything. it’s the charm, at any rate,” she said from her place at the fire, “of trying again the old feelings. they come back--they come back. everything,” she went on, “comes back. besides,” she wound up, “you know for yourself.” he stood near her, his hands in his pockets; but not looking at her, looking hard at the tea-table. “ah, i haven’t your courage. moreover,” he laughed, “it seems to me that, so far as that goes, i do live in hansoms. but you must awfully want your tea,” he quickly added; “so let me give you a good stiff cup.” he busied himself with this care, and she sat down, on his pushing up a low seat, where she had been standing; so that, while she talked, he could bring her what she further desired. he moved to and fro before her, he helped himself; and her visit, as the moments passed, had more and more the effect of a signal communication that she had come, all responsibly and deliberately, as on the clear show of the clock-face of their situation, to make. the whole demonstration, none the less, presented itself as taking place at a very high level of debate--in the cool upper air of the finer discrimination, the deeper sincerity, the larger philosophy. no matter what were the facts invoked and arrayed, it was only a question, as yet, of their seeing their way together: to which indeed, exactly, the present occasion appeared to have so much to contribute. “it’s not that you haven’t my courage,” charlotte said, “but that you haven’t, i rather think, my imagination. unless indeed it should turn out after all,” she added, “that you haven’t even my intelligence. however, i shall not be afraid of that till you’ve given me more proof.” and she made again, but more clearly, her point of a moment before. “you knew, besides, you knew to-day, i would come. and if you knew that you know everything.” so she pursued, and if he didn’t meanwhile, if he didn’t even at this, take her up, it might be that she was so positively fitting him again with the fair face of temporising kindness that he had given her, to keep her eyes on, at the other important juncture, and the sense of which she might ever since have been carrying about with her like a precious medal--not exactly blessed by the pope suspended round her neck. she had come back, however this might be, to her immediate account of herself, and no mention of their great previous passage was to rise to the lips of either. “above all,” she said, “there has been the personal romance of it.” “of tea with me over the fire? ah, so far as that goes i don’t think even my intelligence fails me.” “oh, it’s further than that goes; and if i’ve had a better day than you it’s perhaps, when i come to think of it, that i am braver. you bore yourself, you see. but i don’t. i don’t, i don’t,” she repeated. “it’s precisely boring one’s self without relief,” he protested, “that takes courage.” “passive then--not active. my romance is that, if you want to know, i’ve been all day on the town. literally on the town--isn’t that what they call it? i know how it feels.” after which, as if breaking off, “and you, have you never been out?” she asked. he still stood there with his hands in his pockets. “what should i have gone out for?” “oh, what should people in our case do anything for? but you’re wonderful, all of you--you know how to live. we’re clumsy brutes, we other’s, beside you--we must always be ‘doing’ something. however,” charlotte pursued, “if you had gone out you might have missed the chance of me--which i’m sure, though you won’t confess it, was what you didn’t want; and might have missed, above all, the satisfaction that, look blank about it as you will, i’ve come to congratulate you on. that’s really what i can at last do. you can’t not know at least, on such a day as this--you can’t not know,” she said, “where you are.” she waited as for him either to grant that he knew or to pretend that he didn’t; but he only drew a long deep breath which came out like a moan of impatience. it brushed aside the question of where he was or what he knew; it seemed to keep the ground clear for the question of his visitor herself, that of charlotte verver exactly as she sat there. so, for some moments, with their long look, they but treated the matter in silence; with the effect indeed, by the end of the time, of having considerably brought it on. this was sufficiently marked in what charlotte next said. “there it all is--extraordinary beyond words. it makes such a relation for us as, i verily believe, was never before in the world thrust upon two well-meaning creatures. haven’t we therefore to take things as we find them?” she put the question still more directly than that of a moment before, but to this one, as well, he returned no immediate answer. noticing only that she had finished her tea, he relieved her of her cup, carried it back to the table, asked her what more she would have; and then, on her “nothing, thanks,” returned to the fire and restored a displaced log to position by a small but almost too effectual kick. she had meanwhile got up again, and it was on her feet that she repeated the words she had first frankly spoken. “what else can we do, what in all the world else?” he took them up, however, no more than at first. “where then have you been?” he asked as from mere interest in her adventure. “everywhere i could think of--except to see people. i didn’t want people--i wanted too much to think. but i’ve been back at intervals--three times; and then come away again. my cabman must think me crazy--it’s very amusing; i shall owe him, when we come to settle, more money than he has ever seen. i’ve been, my dear,” she went on, “to the british museum--which, you know, i always adore. and i’ve been to the national gallery, and to a dozen old booksellers’, coming across treasures, and i’ve lunched, on some strange nastiness, at a cookshop in holborn. i wanted to go to the tower, but it was too far--my old man urged that; and i would have gone to the zoo if it hadn’t been too wet--which he also begged me to observe. but you wouldn’t believe--i did put in st. paul’s. such days,” she wound up, “are expensive; for, besides the cab, i’ve bought quantities of books.” she immediately passed, at any rate, to another point: “i can’t help wondering when you must last have laid eyes on them.” and then as it had apparently for her companion an effect of abruptness: “maggie, i mean, and the child. for i suppose you know he’s with her.” “oh yes, i know he’s with her. i saw them this morning.” “and did they then announce their programme?” “she told me she was taking him, as usual, da nonno.” “and for the whole day?” he hesitated, but it was as if his attitude had slowly shifted. “she didn’t say. and i didn’t ask.” “well,” she went on, “it can’t have been later than half-past ten--i mean when you saw them. they had got to eaton square before eleven. you know we don’t formally breakfast, adam and i; we have tea in our rooms--at least i have; but luncheon is early, and i saw my husband, this morning, by twelve; he was showing the child a picture-book. maggie had been there with them, had left them settled together. then she had gone out--taking the carriage for something he had been intending but that she offered to do instead.” the prince appeared to confess, at this, to his interest. “taking, you mean, your carriage?” “i don’t know which, and it doesn’t matter. it’s not a question,” she smiled, “of a carriage the more or the less. it’s not a question even, if you come to that, of a cab. it’s so beautiful,” she said, “that it’s not a question of anything vulgar or horrid.” which she gave him time to agree about; and though he was silent it was, rather remarkably, as if he fell in. “i went out--i wanted to. i had my idea. it seemed to me important. it has been--it is important. i know as i haven’t known before the way they feel. i couldn’t in any other way have made so sure of it.” “they feel a confidence,” the prince observed. he had indeed said it for her. “they feel a confidence.” and she proceeded, with lucidity, to the fuller illustration of it; speaking again of the three different moments that, in the course of her wild ramble, had witnessed her return--for curiosity, and even really a little from anxiety--to eaton square. she was possessed of a latch-key, rarely used: it had always irritated adam--one of the few things that did--to find servants standing up so inhumanly straight when they came home, in the small hours, after parties. “so i had but to slip in, each time, with my cab at the door, and make out for myself, without their knowing it, that maggie was still there. i came, i went--without their so much as dreaming. what do they really suppose,” she asked, “becomes of one?--not so much sentimentally or morally, so to call it, and since that doesn’t matter; but even just physically, materially, as a mere wandering woman: as a decent harmless wife, after all; as the best stepmother, after all, that really ever was; or at the least simply as a maitresse de maison not quite without a conscience. they must even in their odd way,” she declared, “have some idea.” “oh, they’ve a great deal of idea,” said the prince. and nothing was easier than to mention the quantity. “they think so much of us. they think in particular so much of you.” “ah, don’t put it all on ‘me’!” she smiled. but he was putting it now where she had admirably prepared the place. “it’s a matter of your known character.” “ah, thank you for ‘known’!” she still smiled. “it’s a matter of your wonderful cleverness and wonderful charm. it’s a matter of what those things have done for you in the world--i mean in this world and this place. you’re a personage for them--and personages do go and come.” “oh no, my dear; there you’re quite wrong.” and she laughed now in the happier light they had diffused. “that’s exactly what personages don’t do: they live in state and under constant consideration; they haven’t latch-keys, but drums and trumpets announce them; and when they go out in growlers it makes a greater noise still. it’s you, caro mio,” she said, “who, so far as that goes, are the personage.” “ah,” he in turn protested, “don’t put it all on me! what, at any rate, when you get home,” he added, “shall you say that you’ve been doing?” “i shall say, beautifully, that i’ve been here.” “all day?” “yes--all day. keeping you company in your solitude. how can we understand anything,” she went on, “without really seeing that this is what they must like to think i do for you?--just as, quite as comfortably, you do it for me. the thing is for us to learn to take them as they are.” he considered this a while, in his restless way, but with his eyes not turning from her; after which, rather disconnectedly, though very vehemently, he brought out: “how can i not feel more than anything else how they adore together my boy?” and then, further, as if, slightly disconcerted, she had nothing to meet this and he quickly perceived the effect: “they would have done the same for one of yours.” “ah, if i could have had one--! i hoped and i believed,” said charlotte, “that that would happen. it would have been better. it would have made perhaps some difference. he thought so too, poor duck--that it might have been. i’m sure he hoped and intended so. it’s not, at any rate,” she went on, “my fault. there it is.” she had uttered these statements, one by one, gravely, sadly and responsibly, owing it to her friend to be clear. she paused briefly, but, as if once for all, she made her clearness complete. “and now i’m too sure. it will never be.” he waited for a moment. “never?” “never.” they treated the matter not exactly with solemnity, but with a certain decency, even perhaps urgency, of distinctness. “it would probably have been better,” charlotte added. “but things turn out--! and it leaves us”--she made the point--“more alone.” he seemed to wonder. “it leaves you more alone.” “oh,” she again returned, “don’t put it all on me! maggie would have given herself to his child, i’m sure, scarcely less than he gives himself to yours. it would have taken more than any child of mine,” she explained--“it would have taken more than ten children of mine, could i have had them--to keep our sposi apart.” she smiled as for the breadth of the image, but, as he seemed to take it, in spite of this, for important, she then spoke gravely enough. “it’s as strange as you like, but we’re immensely alone.” he kept vaguely moving, but there were moments when, again, with an awkward ease and his hands in his pockets, he was more directly before her. he stood there at these last words, which had the effect of making him for a little throw back his head and, as thinking something out, stare up at the ceiling. “what will you say,” she meanwhile asked, “that you’ve been doing?” this brought his consciousness and his eyes back to her, and she pointed her question. “i mean when she comes in--for i suppose she will, some time, come in. it seems to me we must say the same thing.” well, he thought again. “yet i can scarce pretend to have had what i haven’t.” “ah, what haven’t you had?--what aren’t you having?” her question rang out as they lingered face to face, and he still took it, before he answered, from her eyes. “we must at least then, not to be absurd together, do the same thing. we must act, it would really seem, in concert.” “it would really seem!” her eyebrows, her shoulders went up, quite in gaiety, as for the relief this brought her. “it’s all in the world i pretend. we must act in concert. heaven knows,” she said, “they do!” so it was that he evidently saw and that, by his admission, the case, could fairly be put. but what he evidently saw appeared to come over him, at the same time, as too much for him, so that he fell back suddenly to ground where she was not awaiting him. “the difficulty is, and will always be, that i don’t understand them. i didn’t at first, but i thought i should learn to. that was what i hoped, and it appeared then that fanny assingham might help me.” “oh, fanny assingham!” said charlotte verver. he stared a moment at her tone. “she would do anything for us.” to which charlotte at first said nothing--as if from the sense of too much. then, indulgently enough, she shook her head. “we’re beyond her.” he thought a moment--as of where this placed them. “she’d do anything then for them.” “well, so would we--so that doesn’t help us. she has broken down. she doesn’t understand us. and really, my dear,” charlotte added, “fanny assingham doesn’t matter.” he wondered again. “unless as taking care of them.” “ah,” charlotte instantly said, “isn’t it for us, only, to do that?” she spoke as with a flare of pride for their privilege and their duty. “i think we want no one’s aid.” she spoke indeed with a nobleness not the less effective for coming in so oddly; with a sincerity visible even through the complicated twist by which any effort to protect the father and the daughter seemed necessarily conditioned for them. it moved him, in any case, as if some spring of his own, a weaker one, had suddenly been broken by it. these things, all the while, the privilege, the duty, the opportunity, had been the substance of his own vision; they formed the note he had been keeping back to show her that he was not, in their so special situation, without a responsible view. a conception that he could name, and could act on, was something that now, at last, not to be too eminent a fool, he was required by all the graces to produce, and the luminous idea she had herself uttered would have been his expression of it. she had anticipated him, but, as her expression left, for positive beauty, nothing to be desired, he felt rather righted than wronged. a large response, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited perception all his own, in the glory of which--as it almost might be called--what he gave her back had the value of what she had, given him. “they’re extraordinarily happy.” oh, charlotte’s measure of it was only too full. “beatifically.” “that’s the great thing,” he went on; “so that it doesn’t matter, really, that one doesn’t understand. besides, you do--enough.” “i understand my husband perhaps,” she after an instant conceded. “i don’t understand your wife.” “you’re of the same race, at any rate--more or less; of the same general tradition and education, of the same moral paste. there are things you have in common with them. but i, on my side, as i’ve gone on trying to see if i haven’t some of these things too--i, on my side, have more and more failed. there seem at last to be none worth mentioning. i can’t help seeing it--i’m decidedly too different.” “yet you’re not”--charlotte made the important point--“too different from me.” “i don’t know--as we’re not married. that brings things out. perhaps if we were,” he said, “you would find some abyss of divergence.” “since it depends on that then,” she smiled, “i’m safe--as you are anyhow. moreover, as one has so often had occasion to feel, and even to remark, they’re very, very simple. that makes,” she added, “a difficulty for belief; but when once one has taken it in it makes less difficulty for action. i have at last, for myself, i think, taken it in. i’m not afraid.” he wondered a moment. “not afraid of what?” “well, generally, of some beastly mistake. especially of any mistake founded on one’s idea of their difference. for that idea,” charlotte developed, “positively makes one so tender.” “ah, but rather!” “well then, there it is. i can’t put myself into maggie’s skin--i can’t, as i say. it’s not my fit--i shouldn’t be able, as i see it, to breathe in it. but i can feel that i’d do anything--to shield it from a bruise. tender as i am for her too,” she went on, “i think i’m still more so for my husband. he’s in truth of a sweet simplicity--!” the prince turned over a while the sweet simplicity of mr. verver. “well, i don’t know that i can choose. at night all cats are grey. i only see how, for so many reasons, we ought to stand toward them--and how, to do ourselves justice, we do. it represents for us a conscious care--” “of every hour, literally,” said charlotte. she could rise to the highest measure of the facts. “and for which we must trust each other--!” “oh, as we trust the saints in glory. fortunately,” the prince hastened to add, “we can.” with which, as for the full assurance and the pledge it involved, their hands instinctively found their hands. “it’s all too wonderful.” firmly and gravely she kept his hand. “it’s too beautiful.” and so for a minute they stood together, as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. they were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met. “it’s sacred,” he said at last. “it’s sacred,” she breathed back to him. they vowed it, gave it out and took it in, drawn, by their intensity, more closely together. then of a sudden, through this tightened circle, as at the issue of a narrow strait into the sea beyond, everything broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled. their lips sought their lips, their pressure their response and their response their pressure; with a violence that had sighed itself the next moment to the longest and deepest of stillnesses they passionately sealed their pledge. xix he had taken it from her, as we have seen, moreover, that fanny assingham didn’t now matter--the “now” he had even himself supplied, as no more than fair to his sense of various earlier stages; and, though his assent remained scarce more than tacit, his behaviour, for the hour, so fell into line that, for many days, he kept postponing the visit he had promised his old friend on the occasion of their talk at the foreign office. with regret, none the less, would he have seen it quite extinguished, that theory of their relation as attached pupil and kind instructress in which they had from the first almost equally found a convenience. it had been he, no doubt, who had most put it forward, since his need of knowledge fairly exceeded her mild pretension; but he had again and again repeated to her that he should never, without her, have been where he was, and she had not successfully concealed the pleasure it might give her to believe it, even after the question of where he was had begun to show itself as rather more closed than open to interpretation. it had never indeed, before that evening, come up as during the passage at the official party, and he had for the first time at those moments, a little disappointedly, got the impression of a certain failure, on the dear woman’s part, of something he was aware of having always rather freely taken for granted in her. of what exactly the failure consisted he would still perhaps have felt it a little harsh to try to say; and if she had in fact, as by charlotte’s observation, “broken down,” the details of the collapse would be comparatively unimportant. they came to the same thing, all such collapses--the failure of courage, the failure of friendship, or the failure just simply of tact; for didn’t any one of them by itself amount really to the failure of wit?--which was the last thing he had expected of her and which would be but another name for the triumph of stupidity. it had been charlotte’s remark that they were at last “beyond” her; whereas he had ever enjoyed believing that a certain easy imagination in her would keep up with him to the end. he shrank from affixing a label to mrs. assingham’s want of faith; but when he thought, at his ease, of the way persons who were capable really entertained--or at least with any refinement--the passion of personal loyalty, he figured for them a play of fancy neither timorous nor scrupulous. so would his personal loyalty, if need be, have accepted the adventure for the good creature herself; to that definite degree that he had positively almost missed the luxury of some such call from her. that was what it all came back to again with these people among whom he was married--that one found one used one’s imagination mainly for wondering how they contrived so little to appeal to it. he felt at moments as if there were never anything to do for them that was worthy--to call worthy--of the personal relation; never any charming charge to take of any confidence deeply reposed. he might vulgarly have put it that one had never to plot or to lie for them; he might humourously have put it that one had never, as by the higher conformity, to lie in wait with the dagger or to prepare, insidiously, the cup. these were the services that, by all romantic tradition, were consecrated to affection quite as much as to hate. but he could amuse himself with saying--so far as the amusement went--that they were what he had once for all turned his back on. fanny was meanwhile frequent, it appeared, in eaton square; so much he gathered from the visitor who was not infrequent, least of all at tea-time, during the same period, in portland place; though they had little need to talk of her after practically agreeing that they had outlived her. to the scene of these conversations and suppressions mrs. assingham herself made, actually, no approach; her latest view of her utility seeming to be that it had found in eaton square its most urgent field. it was finding there in fact everything and everyone but the prince, who mostly, just now, kept away, or who, at all events, on the interspaced occasions of his calling, happened not to encounter the only person from whom he was a little estranged. it would have been all prodigious if he had not already, with charlotte’s aid, so very considerably lived into it--it would have been all indescribably remarkable, this fact that, with wonderful causes for it so operating on the surface, nobody else, as yet, in the combination, seemed estranged from anybody. if mrs. assingham delighted in maggie she knew by this time how most easily to reach her, and if she was unhappy about charlotte she knew, by the same reasoning, how most probably to miss that vision of her on which affliction would feed. it might feed of course on finding her so absent from her home--just as this particular phenomenon of her domestic detachment could be, by the anxious mind, best studied there. fanny was, however, for her reasons, “shy” of portland place itself--this was appreciable; so that she might well, after all, have no great light on the question of whether charlotte’s appearances there were frequent or not, any more than on that of the account they might be keeping of the usual solitude (since it came to this) of the head of that house. there was always, to cover all ambiguities, to constitute a fund of explanation for the divisions of mrs. verver’s day, the circumstance that, at the point they had all reached together, mrs. verver was definitely and by general acclamation in charge of the “social relations” of the family, literally of those of the two households; as to her genius for representing which in the great world and in the grand style vivid evidence had more and more accumulated. it had been established in the two households at an early stage, and with the highest good-humour, that charlotte was a, was the, “social success,” whereas the princess, though kind, though punctilious, though charming, though in fact the dearest little creature in the world and the princess into the bargain, was distinctly not, would distinctly never be, and might as well, practically, give it up: whether through being above it or below it, too much outside of it or too much lost in it, too unequipped or too indisposed, didn’t especially matter. what sufficed was that the whole thing, call it appetite or call it patience, the act of representation at large and the daily business of intercourse, fell in with charlotte’s tested facility and, not much less visibly, with her accommodating, her generous, view of her domestic use. she had come, frankly, into the connection, to do and to be what she could, “no questions asked,” and she had taken over, accordingly, as it stood, and in the finest practical spirit, the burden of a visiting-list that maggie, originally, left to herself, and left even more to the principino, had suffered to get inordinately out of hand. she had in a word not only mounted, cheerfully, the london treadmill--she had handsomely professed herself, for the further comfort of the three others, sustained in the effort by a “frivolous side,” if that were not too harsh a name for a pleasant constitutional curiosity. there were possibilities of dulness, ponderosities of practice, arid social sands, the bad quarters-of-an-hour that turned up like false pieces in a debased currency, of which she made, on principle, very nearly as light as if she had not been clever enough to distinguish. the prince had, on this score, paid her his compliment soon after her return from her wedding-tour in america, where, by all accounts, she had wondrously borne the brunt; facing brightly, at her husband’s side, everything that came up--and what had come, often, was beyond words: just as, precisely, with her own interest only at stake, she had thrown up the game during the visit paid before her marriage. the discussion of the american world, the comparison of notes, impressions and adventures, had been all at hand, as a ground of meeting for mrs. verver and her husband’s son-in-law, from the hour of the reunion of the two couples. thus it had been, in short, that charlotte could, for her friend’s appreciation, so promptly make her point; even using expressions from which he let her see, at the hour, that he drew amusement of his own. “what could be more simple than one’s going through with everything,” she had asked, “when it’s so plain a part of one’s contract? i’ve got so much, by my marriage”--for she had never for a moment concealed from him how “much” she had felt it and was finding it “that i should deserve no charity if i stinted my return. not to do that, to give back on the contrary all one can, are just one’s decency and one’s honour and one’s virtue. these things, henceforth, if you’re interested to know, are my rule of life, the absolute little gods of my worship, the holy images set up on the wall. oh yes, since i’m not a brute,” she had wound up, “you shall see me as i am!” which was therefore as he had seen her--dealing always, from month to month, from day to day and from one occasion to the other, with the duties of a remunerated office. her perfect, her brilliant efficiency had doubtless, all the while, contributed immensely to the pleasant ease in which her husband and her husband’s daughter were lapped. it had in fact probably done something more than this--it had given them a finer and sweeter view of the possible scope of that ease. they had brought her in--on the crudest expression of it--to do the “worldly” for them, and she had done it with such genius that they had themselves in consequence renounced it even more than they had originally intended. in proportion as she did it, moreover, was she to be relieved of other and humbler doings; which minor matters, by the properest logic, devolved therefore upon maggie, in whose chords and whose province they more naturally lay. not less naturally, by the same token, they included the repair, at the hands of the latter young woman, of every stitch conceivably dropped by charlotte in eaton square. this was homely work, but that was just what made it maggie’s. bearing in mind dear amerigo, who was so much of her own great mundane feather, and whom the homeliness in question didn’t, no doubt, quite equally provide for--that would be, to balance, just in a manner charlotte’s very most charming function, from the moment charlotte could be got adequately to recognise it. well, that charlotte might be appraised as at last not ineffectually recognising it, was a reflection that, during the days with which we are actually engaged, completed in the prince’s breast these others, these images and ruminations of his leisure, these gropings and fittings of his conscience and his experience, that we have attempted to set in order there. they bore him company, not insufficiently--considering, in especial, his fuller resources in that line--while he worked out--to the last lucidity the principle on which he forbore either to seek fanny out in cadogan place or to perpetrate the error of too marked an assiduity in eaton square. this error would be his not availing himself to the utmost of the convenience of any artless theory of his constitution, or of charlotte’s, that might prevail there. that artless theories could and did prevail was a fact he had ended by accepting, under copious evidence, as definite and ultimate; and it consorted with common prudence, with the simplest economy of life, not to be wasteful of any odd gleaning. to haunt eaton square, in fine, would be to show that he had not, like his brilliant associate, a sufficiency of work in the world. it was just his having that sufficiency, it was just their having it together, that, so strangely and so blessedly, made, as they put it to each other, everything possible. what further propped up the case, moreover, was that the “world,” by still another beautiful perversity of their chance, included portland place without including to anything like the same extent eaton square. the latter residence, at the same time, it must promptly be added, did, on occasion, wake up to opportunity and, as giving itself a frolic shake, send out a score of invitations--one of which fitful flights, precisely, had, before easter, the effect of disturbing a little our young man’s measure of his margin. maggie, with a proper spirit, held that her father ought from time to time to give a really considered dinner, and mr. verver, who had as little idea as ever of not meeting expectation, was of the harmonious opinion that his wife ought. charlotte’s own judgment was, always, that they were ideally free--the proof of which would always be, she maintained, that everyone they feared they might most have alienated by neglect would arrive, wreathed with smiles, on the merest hint of a belated signal. wreathed in smiles, all round, truly enough, these apologetic banquets struck amerigo as being; they were, frankly, touching occasions to him, marked, in the great london bousculade, with a small, still grace of their own, an investing amenity and humanity. everybody came, everybody rushed; but all succumbed to the soft influence, and the brutality of mere multitude, of curiosity without tenderness, was put off, at the foot of the fine staircase, with the overcoats and shawls. the entertainment offered a few evenings before easter, and at which maggie and he were inevitably present as guests, was a discharge of obligations not insistently incurred, and had thereby, possibly, all the more, the note of this almost arcadian optimism: a large, bright, dull, murmurous, mild-eyed, middle-aged dinner, involving for the most part very bland, though very exalted, immensely announceable and hierarchically placeable couples, and followed, without the oppression of a later contingent, by a brief instrumental concert, over the preparation of which, the prince knew, maggie’s anxiety had conferred with charlotte’s ingenuity and both had supremely revelled, as it were, in mr. verver’s solvency. the assinghams were there, by prescription, though quite at the foot of the social ladder, and with the colonel’s wife, in spite of her humility of position, the prince was more inwardly occupied than with any other person except charlotte. he was occupied with charlotte because, in the first place, she looked so inordinately handsome and held so high, where so much else was mature and sedate, the torch of responsive youth and the standard of passive grace; and because of the fact that, in the second, the occasion, so far as it referred itself with any confidence of emphasis to a hostess, seemed to refer itself preferentially, well-meaningly and perversely, to maggie. it was not indistinguishable to him, when once they were all stationed, that his wife too had in perfection her own little character; but he wondered how it managed so visibly to simplify itself--and this, he knew, in spite of any desire she entertained--to the essential air of having overmuch on her mind the felicity, and indeed the very conduct and credit, of the feast. he knew, as well, the other things of which her appearance was at any time--and in eaton square especially--made up: her resemblance to her father, at times so vivid, and coming out, in the delicate warmth of occasions, like the quickened fragrance of a flower; her resemblance, as he had hit it off for her once in rome, in the first flushed days, after their engagement, to a little dancing-girl at rest, ever so light of movement but most often panting gently, even a shade compunctiously, on a bench; her approximation, finally--for it was analogy, somehow, more than identity--to the transmitted images of rather neutral and negative propriety that made up, in his long line, the average of wifehood and motherhood. if the roman matron had been, in sufficiency, first and last, the honour of that line, maggie would no doubt, at fifty, have expanded, have solidified to some such dignity, even should she suggest a little but a cornelia in miniature. a light, however, broke for him in season, and when once it had done so it made him more than ever aware of mrs. verver’s vaguely, yet quite exquisitely, contingent participation--a mere hinted or tendered discretion; in short of mrs. verver’s indescribable, unfathomable relation to the scene. her placed condition, her natural seat and neighbourhood, her intenser presence, her quieter smile, her fewer jewels, were inevitably all as nothing compared with the preoccupation that burned in maggie like a small flame and that had in fact kindled in each of her cheeks a little attesting, but fortunately by no means unbecoming, spot. the party was her father’s party, and its greater or smaller success was a question having for her all the importance of his importance; so that sympathy created for her a sort of visible suspense, under pressure of which she bristled with filial reference, with little filial recalls of expression, movement, tone. it was all unmistakable, and as pretty as possible, if one would, and even as funny; but it put the pair so together, as undivided by the marriage of each, that the princess il n’y avait pas a dire--might sit where she liked: she would still, always, in that house, be irremediably maggie verver. the prince found himself on this occasion so beset with that perception that its natural complement for him would really have been to wonder if mr. verver had produced on people something of the same impression in the recorded cases of his having dined with his daughter. this backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have been easily arrested; for it was at present to come over amerigo as never before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world least equipped with different appearances for different hours. he was simple, he was a revelation of simplicity, and that was the end of him so far as he consisted of an appearance at all--a question that might verily, for a weakness in it, have been argued. it amused our young man, who was taking his pleasure to-night, it will be seen, in sundry occult ways, it amused him to feel how everything else the master of the house consisted of, resources, possessions, facilities and amiabilities amplified by the social legend, depended, for conveying the effect of quantity, on no personal “equation,” no mere measurable medium. quantity was in the air for these good people, and mr. verver’s estimable quality was almost wholly in that pervasion. he was meagre and modest and clearbrowed, and his eyes, if they wandered without fear, yet stayed without defiance; his shoulders were not broad, his chest was not high, his complexion was not fresh, and the crown of his head was not covered; in spite of all of which he looked, at the top of his table, so nearly like a little boy shyly entertaining in virtue of some imposed rank, that he could only be one of the powers, the representative of a force--quite as an infant king is the representative of a dynasty. in this generalised view of his father-in-law, intensified to-night but always operative, amerigo had now for some time taken refuge. the refuge, after the reunion of the two households in england, had more and more offered itself as the substitute for communities, from man to man, that, by his original calculation, might have become possible, but that had not really ripened and flowered. he met the decent family eyes across the table, met them afterwards in the music-room, but only to read in them still what he had learned to read during his first months, the time of over-anxious initiation, a kind of apprehension in which the terms and conditions were finally fixed and absolute. this directed regard rested at its ease, but it neither lingered nor penetrated, and was, to the prince’s fancy, much of the same order as any glance directed, for due attention, from the same quarter, to the figure of a cheque received in the course of business and about to be enclosed to a banker. it made sure of the amount--and just so, from time to time, the amount of the prince was made sure. he was being thus, in renewed instalments, perpetually paid in; he already reposed in the bank as a value, but subject, in this comfortable way, to repeated, to infinite endorsement. the net result of all of which, moreover, was that the young man had no wish to see his value diminish. he himself, after all, had not fixed it--the “figure” was a conception all of mr. verver’s own. certainly, however, everything must be kept up to it; never so much as to-night had the prince felt this. he would have been uncomfortable, as these quiet expressions passed, had the case not been guaranteed for him by the intensity of his accord with charlotte. it was impossible that he should not now and again meet charlotte’s eyes, as it was also visible that she too now and again met her husband’s. for her as well, in all his pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. it put them, it kept them together, through the vain show of their separation, made the two other faces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the flowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge between them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for that intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of “care,” would be never rashly to forget and never consciously to wound. xx the main interest of these hours for us, however, will have been in the way the prince continued to know, during a particular succession of others, separated from the evening in eaton square by a short interval, a certain persistent aftertaste. this was the lingering savour of a cup presented to him by fanny assingham’s hand after dinner, while the clustered quartette kept their ranged companions, in the music-room, moved if one would, but conveniently motionless. mrs. assingham contrived, after a couple of pieces, to convey to her friend that, for her part, she was moved--by the genius of brahms--beyond what she could bear; so that, without apparent deliberation, she had presently floated away, at the young man’s side, to such a distance as permitted them to converse without the effect of disdain. it was the twenty minutes enjoyed with her, during the rest of the concert, in the less associated electric glare of one of the empty rooms--it was their achieved and, as he would have said, successful, most pleasantly successful, talk on one of the sequestered sofas, it was this that was substantially to underlie his consciousness of the later occasion. the later occasion, then mere matter of discussion, had formed her ground for desiring--in a light undertone into which his quick ear read indeed some nervousness--these independent words with him: she had sounded, covertly but distinctly, by the time they were seated together, the great question of what it might involve. it had come out for him before anything else, and so abruptly that this almost needed an explanation. then the abruptness itself had appeared to explain--which had introduced, in turn, a slight awkwardness. “do you know that they’re not, after all, going to matcham; so that, if they don’t--if, at least, maggie doesn’t--you won’t, i suppose, go by yourself?” it was, as i say, at matcham, where the event had placed him, it was at matcham during the easter days, that it most befell him, oddly enough, to live over, inwardly, for its wealth of special significance, this passage by which the event had been really a good deal determined. he had paid, first and last, many an english country visit; he had learned, even from of old, to do the english things, and to do them, all sufficiently, in the english way; if he didn’t always enjoy them madly he enjoyed them at any rate as much, to an appearance, as the good people who had, in the night of time, unanimously invented them, and who still, in the prolonged afternoon of their good faith, unanimously, even if a trifle automatically, practised them; yet, with it all, he had never so much as during such sojourns the trick of a certain detached, the amusement of a certain inward critical, life; the determined need, which apparently all participant, of returning upon itself, of backing noiselessly in, far in again, and rejoining there, as it were, that part of his mind that was not engaged at the front. his body, very constantly, was engaged at the front--in shooting, in riding, in golfing, in walking, over the fine diagonals of meadow-paths or round the pocketed corners of billiard-tables; it sufficiently, on the whole, in fact, bore the brunt of bridge-playing, of breakfasting, lunching, tea-drinking, dining, and of the nightly climax over the bottigliera, as he called it, of the bristling tray; it met, finally, to the extent of the limited tax on lip, on gesture, on wit, most of the current demands of conversation and expression. therefore something of him, he often felt at these times, was left out; it was much more when he was alone, or when he was with his own people--or when he was, say, with mrs. verver and nobody else--that he moved, that he talked, that he listened, that he felt, as a congruous whole. “english society,” as he would have said, cut him, accordingly, in two, and he reminded himself often, in his relations with it, of a man possessed of a shining star, a decoration, an order of some sort, something so ornamental as to make his identity not complete, ideally, without it, yet who, finding no other such object generally worn, should be perpetually, and the least bit ruefully, unpinning it from his breast to transfer it to his pocket. the prince’s shining star may, no doubt, having been nothing more precious than his private subtlety; but whatever the object was he just now fingered it a good deal, out of sight--amounting as it mainly did for him to a restless play of memory and a fine embroidery of thought. something had rather momentously occurred, in eaton square, during his enjoyed minutes with his old friend: his present perspective made definitely clear to him that she had plumped out for him her first little lie. that took on--and he could scarce have said why--a sharpness of importance: she had never lied to him before--if only because it had never come up for her, properly, intelligibly, morally, that she must. as soon as she had put to him the question of what he would do--by which she meant of what charlotte would also do--in that event of maggie’s and mr. verver’s not embracing the proposal they had appeared for a day or two resignedly to entertain; as soon as she had betrayed her curiosity as to the line the other pair, so left to themselves, might take, a desire to avoid the appearance of at all too directly prying had become marked in her. betrayed by the solicitude of which she had, already, three weeks before, given him a view, she had been obliged, on a second thought, to name, intelligibly, a reason for her appeal; while the prince, on his side, had had, not without mercy, his glimpse of her momentarily groping for one and yet remaining unprovided. not without mercy because, absolutely, he had on the spot, in his friendliness, invented one for her use, presenting it to her with a look no more significant than if he had picked up, to hand back to her, a dropped flower. “you ask if i’m likely also to back out then, because it may make a difference in what you and the colonel decide?”--he had gone as far as that for her, fairly inviting her to assent, though not having had his impression, from any indication offered him by charlotte, that the assinghams were really in question for the large matcham party. the wonderful thing, after this, was that the active couple had, in the interval, managed to inscribe themselves on the golden roll; an exertion of a sort that, to do her justice, he had never before observed fanny to make. this last passage of the chapter but proved, after all, with what success she could work when she would. once launched, himself, at any rate, as he had been directed by all the terms of the intercourse between portland place and eaton square, once steeped, at matcham, in the enjoyment of a splendid hospitality, he found everything, for his interpretation, for his convenience, fall easily enough into place; and all the more that mrs. verver was at hand to exchange ideas and impressions with. the great house was full of people, of possible new combinations, of the quickened play of possible propinquity, and no appearance, of course, was less to be cultivated than that of his having sought an opportunity to foregather with his friend at a safe distance from their respective sposi. there was a happy boldness, at the best, in their mingling thus, each unaccompanied, in the same sustained sociability--just exactly a touch of that eccentricity of associated freedom which sat so lightly on the imagination of the relatives left behind. they were exposed as much as one would to its being pronounced funny that they should, at such a rate, go about together--though, on the other hand, this consideration drew relief from the fact that, in their high conditions and with the easy tradition, the almost inspiring allowances, of the house in question, no individual line, however freely marked, was pronounced anything more than funny. both our friends felt afresh, as they had felt before, the convenience of a society so placed that it had only its own sensibility to consider--looking as it did well over the heads of all lower growths; and that moreover treated its own sensibility quite as the easiest, friendliest, most informal and domesticated party to the general alliance. what anyone “thought” of anyone else--above all of anyone else with anyone else--was a matter incurring in these lulls so little awkward formulation that hovering judgment, the spirit with the scales, might perfectly have been imaged there as some rather snubbed and subdued, but quite trained and tactful poor relation, of equal, of the properest, lineage, only of aspect a little dingy, doubtless from too limited a change of dress, for whose tacit and abstemious presence, never betrayed by a rattle of her rusty machine, a room in the attic and a plate at the side-table were decently usual. it was amusing, in such lightness of air, that the prince should again present himself only to speak for the princess, so unfortunately unable, again, to leave home; and that mrs. verver should as regularly figure as an embodied, a beautifully deprecating apology for her husband, who was all geniality and humility among his own treasures, but as to whom the legend had grown up that he couldn’t bear, with the height of his standards and the tone of the company, in the way of sofas and cabinets, habitually kept by him, the irritation and depression to which promiscuous visiting, even at pompous houses, had been found to expose him. that was all right, the noted working harmony of the clever son-in-law and the charming stepmother, so long as the relation was, for the effect in question, maintained at the proper point between sufficiency and excess. what with the noble fairness of the place, meanwhile, the generous mood of the sunny, gusty, lusty english april, all panting and heaving with impatience, or kicking and crying, even, at moments, like some infant hercules who wouldn’t be dressed; what with these things and the bravery of youth and beauty, the insolence of fortune and appetite so diffused among his fellow-guests that the poor assinghams, in their comparatively marked maturity and their comparatively small splendour, were the only approach to a false note in the concert, the stir of the air was such, for going, in a degree, to one’s head, that, as a mere matter of exposure, almost grotesque in its flagrancy, his situation resembled some elaborate practical joke carried out at his expense. every voice in the great bright house was a call to the ingenuities and impunities of pleasure; every echo was a defiance of difficulty, doubt or danger; every aspect of the picture, a glowing plea for the immediate, and as with plenty more to come, was another phase of the spell. for a world so constituted was governed by a spell, that of the smile of the gods and the favour of the powers; the only handsome, the only gallant, in fact the only intelligent acceptance of which was a faith in its guarantees and a high spirit for its chances. its demand--to that the thing came back--was above all for courage and good-humour; and the value of this as a general assurance--that is for seeing one through at the worst--had not even in the easiest hours of his old roman life struck the prince so convincingly. his old roman life had had more poetry, no doubt, but as he looked back upon it now it seemed to hang in the air of mere iridescent horizons, to have been loose and vague and thin, with large languorous unaccountable blanks. the present order, as it spread about him, had somehow the ground under its feet, and a trumpet in its ears, and a bottomless bag of solid shining british sovereigns--which was much to the point--in its hand. courage and good-humour therefore were the breath of the day; though for ourselves at least it would have been also much to the point that, with amerigo, really, the innermost effect of all this perceptive ease was perhaps a strange final irritation. he compared the lucid result with the extraordinary substitute for perception that presided, in the bosom of his wife, at so contented a view of his conduct and course--a state of mind that was positively like a vicarious good conscience, cultivated ingeniously on his behalf, a perversity of pressure innocently persisted in; and this wonder of irony became on occasion too intense to be kept wholly to himself. it wasn’t that, at matcham, anything particular, anything monstrous, anything that had to be noticed permitted itself, as they said, to “happen”; there were only odd moments when the breath of the day, as it has been called, struck him so full in the face that he broke out with all the hilarity of “what indeed would they have made of it?” “they” were of course maggie and her father, moping--so far as they ever consented to mope in monotonous eaton square, but placid too in the belief that they knew beautifully what their expert companions were in for. they knew, it might have appeared in these lights, absolutely nothing on earth worth speaking of--whether beautifully or cynically; and they would perhaps sometimes be a little less trying if they would only once for all peacefully admit that knowledge wasn’t one of their needs and that they were in fact constitutionally inaccessible to it. they were good children, bless their hearts, and the children of good children; so that, verily, the principino himself, as less consistently of that descent, might figure to the fancy as the ripest genius of the trio. the difficulty was, for the nerves of daily intercourse with maggie in particular, that her imagination was clearly never ruffled by the sense of any anomaly. the great anomaly would have been that her husband, or even that her father’s wife, should prove to have been made, for the long run, after the pattern set from so far back to the ververs. if one was so made one had certainly no business, on any terms, at matcham; whereas if one wasn’t one had no business there on the particular terms--terms of conformity with the principles of eaton square--under which one had been so absurdly dedicated. deep at the heart of that resurgent unrest in our young man which we have had to content ourselves with calling his irritation--deep in the bosom of this falsity of position glowed the red spark of his inextinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety. there were situations that were ridiculous, but that one couldn’t yet help, as for instance when one’s wife chose, in the most usual way, to make one so. precisely here, however, was the difference; it had taken poor maggie to invent a way so extremely unusual--yet to which, none the less, it would be too absurd that he should merely lend himself. being thrust, systematically, with another woman, and a woman one happened, by the same token, exceedingly to like, and being so thrust that the theory of it seemed to publish one as idiotic or incapable--this was a predicament of which the dignity depended all on one’s own handling. what was supremely grotesque, in fact, was the essential opposition of theories--as if a galantuomo, as he at least constitutionally conceived galantuomini, could do anything but blush to “go about” at such a rate with such a person as mrs. verver in a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents before the fall. the grotesque theory, as he would have called it, was perhaps an odd one to resent with violence, and he did it--also as a man of the world--all merciful justice; but, assuredly, none the less, there was but one way really to mark, and for his companion as much as for himself, the commiseration in which they held it. adequate comment on it could only be private, but it could also at least be active, and of rich and effectual comment charlotte and he were fortunately alike capable. wasn’t this consensus literally their only way not to be ungracious? it was positively as if the measure of their escape from that danger were given by the growth between them, during their auspicious visit, of an exquisite sense of complicity. xxi he found himself therefore saying, with gaiety, even to fanny assingham, for their common, concerned glance at eaton square, the glance that was so markedly never, as it might have been, a glance at portland place: “what would our cari sposi have made of it here? what would they, you know, really?”--which overflow would have been reckless if, already, and surprisingly perhaps even to himself, he had not got used to thinking of this friend as a person in whom the element of protest had of late been unmistakably allayed. he exposed himself of course to her replying: “ah, if it would have been so bad for them, how can it be so good for you?”--but, quite apart from the small sense the question would have had at the best, she appeared already to unite with him in confidence and cheer. he had his view, as well--or at least a partial one--of the inner spring of this present comparative humility, which was all consistent with the retraction he had practically seen her make after mr. verver’s last dinner. without diplomatising to do so, with no effort to square her, none to bribe her to an attitude for which he would have had no use in her if it were not sincere, he yet felt how he both held her and moved her by the felicity of his taking pity, all instinctively, on her just discernible depression. by just so much as he guessed that she felt herself, as the slang was, out of it, out of the crystal current and the expensive picture, by just so much had his friendship charmingly made up to her, from hour to hour, for the penalties, as they might have been grossly called, of her mistake. her mistake had only been, after all, in her wanting to seem to him straight; she had let herself in for being--as she had made haste, for that matter, during the very first half-hour, at tea, to proclaim herself--the sole and single frump of the party. the scale of everything was so different that all her minor values, her quainter graces, her little local authority, her humour and her wardrobe alike, for which it was enough elsewhere, among her bons amis, that they were hers, dear fanny assingham’s--these matters and others would be all, now, as nought: five minutes had sufficed to give her the fatal pitch. in cadogan place she could always, at the worst, be picturesque--for she habitually spoke of herself as “local” to sloane street whereas at matcham she should never be anything but horrible. and it all would have come, the disaster, from the real refinement, in her, of the spirit of friendship. to prove to him that she wasn’t really watching him--ground for which would have been too terribly grave--she had followed him in his pursuit of pleasure: so she might, precisely, mark her detachment. this was handsome trouble for her to take--the prince could see it all: it wasn’t a shade of interference that a good-natured man would visit on her. so he didn’t even say, when she told him how frumpy she knew herself, how frumpy her very maid, odiously going back on her, rubbed it into her, night and morning, with unsealed eyes and lips, that she now knew her--he didn’t then say “ah, see what you’ve done: isn’t it rather your own fault?” he behaved differently altogether: eminently distinguished himself--for she told him she had never seen him so universally distinguished--he yet distinguished her in her obscurity, or in what was worse, her objective absurdity, and frankly invested her with her absolute value, surrounded her with all the importance of her wit. that wit, as discriminated from stature and complexion, a sense for “bridge” and a credit for pearls, could have importance was meanwhile but dimly perceived at matcham; so that his “niceness” to her--she called it only niceness, but it brought tears into her eyes--had the greatness of a general as well as of a special demonstration. “she understands,” he said, as a comment on all this, to mrs. verver--“she understands all she needs to understand. she has taken her time, but she has at last made it out for herself: she sees how all we can desire is to give them the life they prefer, to surround them with the peace and quiet, and above all with the sense of security, most favourable to it. she can’t of course very well put it to us that we have, so far as she is concerned, but to make the best of our circumstances; she can’t say in so many words ‘don’t think of me, for i too must make the best of mine: arrange as you can, only, and live as you must.’ i don’t get quite that from her, any more than i ask for it. but her tone and her whole manner mean nothing at all unless they mean that she trusts us to take as watchful, to take as artful, to take as tender care, in our way, as she so anxiously takes in hers. so that she’s--well,” the prince wound up, “what you may call practically all right.” charlotte in fact, however, to help out his confidence, didn’t call it anything; return as he might to the lucidity, the importance, or whatever it was, of this lesson, she gave him no aid toward reading it aloud. she let him, two or three times over, spell it out for himself; only on the eve of their visit’s end was she, for once, clear or direct in response. they had found a minute together in the great hall of the house during the half-hour before dinner; this easiest of chances they had already, a couple of times, arrived at by waiting persistently till the last other loiterers had gone to dress, and by being prepared themselves to dress so expeditiously that they might, a little later on, be among the first to appear in festal array. the hall then was empty, before the army of rearranging, cushion-patting housemaids were marshalled in, and there was a place by the forsaken fire, at one end, where they might imitate, with art, the unpremeditated. above all, here, for the snatched instants, they could breathe so near to each other that the interval was almost engulfed in it, and the intensity both of the union and the caution became a workable substitute for contact. they had prolongations of instants that counted as visions of bliss; they had slow approximations that counted as long caresses. the quality of these passages, in truth, made the spoken word, and especially the spoken word about other people, fall below them; so that our young woman’s tone had even now a certain dryness. “it’s very good of her, my dear, to trust us. but what else can she do?” “why, whatever people do when they don’t trust. let one see they don’t.” “but let whom see?” “well, let me, say, to begin with.” “and should you mind that?” he had a slight show of surprise. “shouldn’t you?” “her letting you see? no,” said charlotte; “the only thing i can imagine myself minding is what you yourself, if you don’t look out, may let her see.” to which she added: “you may let her see, you know, that you’re afraid.” “i’m only afraid of you, a little, at moments,” he presently returned. “but i shan’t let fanny see that.” it was clear, however, that neither the limits nor the extent of mrs. assingham’s vision were now a real concern to her, and she gave expression to this as she had not even yet done. “what in the world can she do against us? there’s not a word that she can breathe. she’s helpless; she can’t speak; she would be herself the first to be dished by it.” and then as he seemed slow to follow: “it all comes back to her. it all began with her. everything, from the first. she introduced you to maggie. she made your marriage.” the prince might have had his moment of demur, but at this, after a little, as with a smile dim but deep, he came on. “mayn’t she also be said, a good deal, to have made yours? that was intended, i think, wasn’t it? for a kind of rectification.” charlotte, on her side, for an instant, hesitated; then she was prompter still. “i don’t mean there was anything to rectify; everything was as it had to be, and i’m not speaking of how she may have been concerned for you and me. i’m speaking of how she took, in her way, each time, their lives in hand, and how, therefore, that ties her up to-day. she can’t go to them and say ‘it’s very awkward of course, you poor dear things, but i was frivolously mistaken.’” he took it in still, with his long look at her. “all the more that she wasn’t. she was right. everything’s right,” he went on, “and everything will stay so.” “then that’s all i say.” but he worked it out, for the deeper satisfaction, even to superfluous lucidity. “we’re happy, and they’re happy. what more does the position admit of? what more need fanny assingham want?” “ah, my dear,” said charlotte, “it’s not i who say that she need want anything. i only say that she’s fixed, that she must stand exactly where everything has, by her own act, placed her. it’s you who have seemed haunted with the possibility, for her, of some injurious alternative, something or other we must be prepared for.” and she had, with her high reasoning, a strange cold smile. “we are prepared--for anything, for everything; and as we are, practically, so she must take us. she’s condemned to consistency; she’s doomed, poor thing, to a genial optimism. that, luckily for her, however, is very much the law of her nature. she was born to soothe and to smooth. now then, therefore,” mrs. verver gently laughed, “she has the chance of her life!” “so that her present professions may, even at the best, not be sincere?--may be but a mask for doubts and fears, and for gaining time?” the prince had looked, with the question, as if this, again, could trouble him, and it determined in his companion a slight impatience. “you keep talking about such things as if they were our affair at all. i feel, at any rate, that i’ve nothing to do with her doubts and fears, or with anything she may feel. she must arrange all that for herself. it’s enough for me that she’ll always be, of necessity, much more afraid for herself, really, either to see or to speak, than we should be to have her do it even if we were the idiots and cowards we aren’t.” and charlotte’s face, with these words--to the mitigation of the slightly hard ring there might otherwise have been in them--fairly lightened, softened, shone out. it reflected as really never yet the rare felicity of their luck. it made her look for the moment as if she had actually pronounced that word of unpermitted presumption--so apt is the countenance, as with a finer consciousness than the tongue, to betray a sense of this particular lapse. she might indeed, the next instant, have seen her friend wince, in advance, at her use of a word that was already on her lips; for it was still unmistakable with him that there were things he could prize, forms of fortune he could cherish, without at all proportionately liking their names. had all this, however, been even completely present to his companion, what other term could she have applied to the strongest and simplest of her ideas but the one that exactly fitted it? she applied it then, though her own instinct moved her, at the same time, to pay her tribute to the good taste from which they hadn’t heretofore by a hair’s breadth deviated. “if it didn’t sound so vulgar i should say that we’re--fatally, as it were--safe. pardon the low expression--since it’s what we happen to be. we’re so because they are. and they’re so because they can’t be anything else, from the moment that, having originally intervened for them, she wouldn’t now be able to bear herself if she didn’t keep them so. that’s the way she’s inevitably with us,” said charlotte over her smile. “we hang, essentially, together.” well, the prince candidly allowed she did bring it home to him. every way it worked out. “yes, i see. we hang, essentially, together.” his friend had a shrug--a shrug that had a grace. “cosa volete?” the effect, beautifully, nobly, was more than roman. “ah, beyond doubt, it’s a case.” he stood looking at her. “it’s a case. there can’t,” he said, “have been many.” “perhaps never, never, never any other. that,” she smiled, “i confess i should like to think. only ours.” “only ours--most probably. speriamo.” to which, as after hushed connections, he presently added: “poor fanny!” but charlotte had already, with a start and a warning hand, turned from a glance at the clock. she sailed away to dress, while he watched her reach the staircase. his eyes followed her till, with a simple swift look round at him, she vanished. something in the sight, however, appeared to have renewed the spring of his last exclamation, which he breathed again upon the air. “poor, poor fanny!” it was to prove, however, on the morrow, quite consistent with the spirit of these words that, the party at matcham breaking up and multitudinously dispersing, he should be able to meet the question of the social side of the process of repatriation with due presence of mind. it was impossible, for reasons, that he should travel to town with the assinghams; it was impossible, for the same reasons, that he should travel to town save in the conditions that he had for the last twenty-four hours been privately, and it might have been said profoundly, thinking out. the result of his thought was already precious to him, and this put at his service, he sufficiently believed, the right tone for disposing of his elder friend’s suggestion, an assumption in fact equally full and mild, that he and charlotte would conveniently take the same train and occupy the same compartment as the colonel and herself. the extension of the idea to mrs. verver had been, precisely, a part of mrs. assingham’s mildness, and nothing could better have characterised her sense for social shades than her easy perception that the gentleman from portland place and the lady from eaton square might now confess, quite without indiscretion, to simultaneity of movement. she had made, for the four days, no direct appeal to the latter personage, but the prince was accidental witness of her taking a fresh start at the moment the company were about to scatter for the last night of their stay. there had been, at this climax, the usual preparatory talk about hours and combinations, in the midst of which poor fanny gently approached mrs. verver. she said “you and the prince, love,”--quite, apparently, without blinking; she took for granted their public withdrawal together; she remarked that she and bob were alike ready, in the interest of sociability, to take any train that would make them all one party. “i feel really as if, all this time, i had seen nothing of you”--that gave an added grace to the candour of the dear thing’s approach. but just then it was, on the other hand, that the young man found himself borrow most effectively the secret of the right tone for doing as he preferred. his preference had, during the evening, not failed of occasion to press him with mute insistences; practically without words, without any sort of straight telegraphy, it had arrived at a felt identity with charlotte’s own. she spoke all for their friend while she answered their friend’s question, but she none the less signalled to him as definitely as if she had fluttered a white handkerchief from a window. “it’s awfully sweet of you, darling--our going together would be charming. but you mustn’t mind us--you must suit yourselves we’ve settled, amerigo and i, to stay over till after luncheon.” amerigo, with the chink of this gold in his ear, turned straight away, so as not to be instantly appealed to; and for the very emotion of the wonder, furthermore, of what divination may achieve when winged by a community of passion. charlotte had uttered the exact plea that he had been keeping ready for the same foreseen necessity, and had uttered it simply as a consequence of their deepening unexpressed need of each other and without the passing between them of a word. he hadn’t, god knew, to take it from her--he was too conscious of what he wanted; but the lesson for him was in the straight clear tone that charlotte could thus distil, in the perfect felicity of her adding no explanation, no touch for plausibility, that she wasn’t strictly obliged to add, and in the truly superior way in which women, so situated, express and distinguish themselves. she had answered mrs. assingham quite adequately; she had not spoiled it by a reason a scrap larger than the smallest that would serve, and she had, above all, thrown off, for his stretched but covered attention, an image that flashed like a mirror played at the face of the sun. the measure of everything, to all his sense, at these moments, was in it--the measure especially of the thought that had been growing with him a positive obsession and that began to throb as never yet under this brush of her having, by perfect parity of imagination, the match for it. his whole consciousness had by this time begun almost to ache with a truth of an exquisite order, at the glow of which she too had, so unmistakably then, been warming herself--the truth that the occasion constituted by the last few days couldn’t possibly, save by some poverty of their own, refuse them some still other and still greater beauty. it had already told them, with an hourly voice, that it had a meaning--a meaning that their associated sense was to drain even as thirsty lips, after the plough through the sands and the sight, afar, of the palm-cluster, might drink in at last the promised well in the desert. there had been beauty, day after day, and there had been, for the spiritual lips, something of the pervasive taste of it; yet it was all, none the less, as if their response had remained below their fortune. how to bring it, by some brave, free lift, up to the same height was the idea with which, behind and beneath everything, he was restlessly occupied, and in the exploration of which, as in that of the sun-chequered greenwood of romance, his spirit thus, at the opening of a vista, met hers. they were already, from that moment, so hand-in-hand in the place that he found himself making use, five minutes later, of exactly the same tone as charlotte’s for telling mrs. assingham that he was likewise, in the matter of the return to london, sorry for what mightn’t be. this had become, of a sudden, the simplest thing in the world--the sense of which moreover seemed really to amount to a portent that he should feel, forevermore, on the general head, conveniently at his ease with her. he went in fact a step further than charlotte--put the latter forward as creating his necessity. she was staying over luncheon to oblige their hostess--as a consequence of which he must also stay to see her decently home. he must deliver her safe and sound, he felt, in eaton square. regret as he might, too, the difference made by this obligation, he frankly didn’t mind, inasmuch as, over and above the pleasure itself, his scruple would certainly gratify both mr. verver and maggie. they never yet had absolutely and entirely learned, he even found deliberation to intimate, how little he really neglected the first--as it seemed nowadays quite to have become--of his domestic duties: therefore he still constantly felt how little he must remit his effort to make them remark it. to which he added with equal lucidity that they would return in time for dinner, and if he didn’t, as a last word, subjoin that it would be “lovely” of fanny to find, on her own return, a moment to go to eaton square and report them as struggling bravely on, this was not because the impulse, down to the very name for the amiable act, altogether failed to rise. his inward assurance, his general plan, had at moments, where she was concerned, its drops of continuity, and nothing would less have pleased him than that she should suspect in him, however tempted, any element of conscious “cheek.” but he was always--that was really the upshot--cultivating thanklessly the considerate and the delicate: it was a long lesson, this unlearning, with people of english race, all the little superstitions that accompany friendship. mrs. assingham herself was the first to say that she would unfailingly “report”; she brought it out in fact, he thought, quite wonderfully--having attained the summit of the wonderful during the brief interval that had separated her appeal to charlotte from this passage with himself. she had taken the five minutes, obviously, amid the rest of the talk and the movement, to retire into her tent for meditation--which showed, among several things, the impression charlotte had made on her. it was from the tent she emerged, as with arms refurbished; though who indeed could say if the manner in which she now met him spoke most, really, of the glitter of battle or of the white waver of the flag of truce? the parley was short either way; the gallantry of her offer was all sufficient. “i’ll go to our friends then--i’ll ask for luncheon. i’ll tell them when to expect you.” “that will be charming. say we’re all right.” “all right--precisely. i can’t say more,” mrs. assingham smiled. “no doubt.” but he considered, as for the possible importance of it. “neither can you, by what i seem to feel, say less.” “oh, i won’t say less!” fanny laughed; with which, the next moment, she had turned away. but they had it again, not less bravely, on the morrow, after breakfast, in the thick of the advancing carriages and the exchange of farewells. “i think i’ll send home my maid from euston,” she was then prepared to amend, “and go to eaton square straight. so you can be easy.” “oh, i think we’re easy,” the prince returned. “be sure to say, at any rate, that we’re bearing up.” “you’re bearing up--good. and charlotte returns to dinner?” “to dinner. we’re not likely, i think, to make another night away.” “well then, i wish you at least a pleasant day,” “oh,” he laughed as they separated, “we shall do our best for it!”--after which, in due course, with the announcement of their conveyance, the assinghams rolled off. xxii it was quite, for the prince, after this, as if the view had further cleared; so that the half-hour during which he strolled on the terrace and smoked--the day being lovely--overflowed with the plenitude of its particular quality. its general brightness was composed, doubtless, of many elements, but what shone out of it as if the whole place and time had been a great picture, from the hand of genius, presented to him as a prime ornament for his collection and all varnished and framed to hang up--what marked it especially for the highest appreciation was his extraordinarily unchallenged, his absolutely appointed and enhanced possession of it. poor fanny assingham’s challenge amounted to nothing: one of the things he thought of while he leaned on the old marble balustrade--so like others that he knew in still more nobly-terraced italy--was that she was squared, all-conveniently even to herself, and that, rumbling toward london with this contentment, she had become an image irrelevant to the scene. it further passed across him, as his imagination was, for reasons, during the time, unprecedentedly active,--that he had, after all, gained more from women than he had ever lost by them; there appeared so, more and more, on those mystic books that are kept, in connection with such commerce, even by men of the loosest business habits, a balance in his favour that he could pretty well, as a rule, take for granted. what were they doing at this very moment, wonderful creatures, but combine and conspire for his advantage?--from maggie herself, most wonderful, in her way, of all, to his hostess of the present hour, into whose head it had so inevitably come to keep charlotte on, for reasons of her own, and who had asked, in this benevolent spirit, why in the world, if not obliged, without plausibility, to hurry, her husband’s son-in-law should not wait over in her company. he would at least see, lady castledean had said, that nothing dreadful should happen to her, either while still there or during the exposure of the run to town; and, for that matter, if they exceeded a little their license it would positively help them to have done so together. each of them would, in this way, at home, have the other comfortably to blame. all of which, besides, in lady castledean as in maggie, in fanny assingham as in charlotte herself, was working; for him without provocation or pressure, by the mere play of some vague sense on their part--definite and conscious at the most only in charlotte--that he was not, as a nature, as a character, as a gentleman, in fine, below his remarkable fortune. but there were more things before him than even these; things that melted together, almost indistinguishably, to feed his sense of beauty. if the outlook was in every way spacious--and the towers of three cathedrals, in different counties, as had been pointed out to him, gleamed discernibly, like dim silver, in the rich sameness of tone--didn’t he somehow the more feel it so because, precisely, lady castledean had kept over a man of her own, and that this offered a certain sweet intelligibility as the note of the day? it made everything fit; above all it diverted him to the extent of keeping up, while he lingered and waited, his meditative smile. she had detained charlotte because she wished to detain mr. blint, and she couldn’t detain mr. blint, disposed though he clearly was to oblige her, without spreading over the act some ampler drapery. castledean had gone up to london; the place was all her own; she had had a fancy for a quiet morning with mr. blint, a sleek, civil, accomplished young man--distinctly younger than her ladyship--who played and sang delightfully (played even “bridge” and sang the english-comic as well as the french-tragic), and the presence--which really meant the absence--of a couple of other friends, if they were happily chosen, would make everything all right. the prince had the sense, all good-humouredly, of being happily chosen, and it was not spoiled for him even by another sense that followed in its train and with which, during his life in england, he had more than once had reflectively to deal: the state of being reminded how, after all, as an outsider, a foreigner, and even as a mere representative husband and son-in-law, he was so irrelevant to the working of affairs that he could be bent on occasion to uses comparatively trivial. no other of her guests would have been thus convenient for their hostess; affairs, of whatever sorts, had claimed, by early trains, every active, easy, smoothly-working man, each in his way a lubricated item of the great social, political, administrative engrenage--claimed most of all castledean himself, who was so very oddly, given the personage and the type, rather a large item. if he, on the other hand, had an affair, it was not of that order; it was of the order, verily, that he had been reduced to as a not quite glorious substitute. it marked, however, the feeling of the hour with him that this vision of being “reduced” interfered not at all with the measure of his actual ease. it kept before him again, at moments, the so familiar fact of his sacrifices--down to the idea of the very relinquishment, for his wife’s convenience, of his real situation in the world; with the consequence, thus, that he was, in the last analysis, among all these so often inferior people, practically held cheap and made light of. but though all this was sensible enough there was a spirit in him that could rise above it, a spirit that positively played with the facts, with all of them; from that of the droll ambiguity of english relations to that of his having in mind something quite beautiful and independent and harmonious, something wholly his own. he couldn’t somehow take mr. blint seriously--he was much more an outsider, by the larger scale, even than a roman prince who consented to be in abeyance. yet it was past finding out, either, how such a woman as lady castledean could take him--since this question but sank for him again into the fathomless depths of english equivocation. he knew them all, as was said, “well”; he had lived with them, stayed with them, dined, hunted, shot and done various other things with them; but the number of questions about them he couldn’t have answered had much rather grown than shrunken, so that experience struck him for the most part as having left in him but one residual impression. they didn’t like les situations nettes--that was all he was very sure of. they wouldn’t have them at any price; it had been their national genius and their national success to avoid them at every point. they called it themselves, with complacency, their wonderful spirit of compromise--the very influence of which actually so hung about him here, from moment to moment, that the earth and the air, the light and the colour, the fields and the hills and the sky, the blue-green counties and the cold cathedrals, owed to it every accent of their tone. verily, as one had to feel in presence of such a picture, it had succeeded; it had made, up to now, for that seated solidity, in the rich sea-mist, on which the garish, the supposedly envious, peoples have ever cooled their eyes. but it was at the same time precisely why even much initiation left one, at given moments, so puzzled as to the element of staleness in all the freshness and of freshness in all the staleness, of innocence in the guilt and of guilt in the innocence. there were other marble terraces, sweeping more purple prospects, on which he would have known what to think, and would have enjoyed thereby at least the small intellectual fillip of a discerned relation between a given appearance and a taken meaning. the inquiring mind, in these present conditions, might, it was true, be more sharply challenged; but the result of its attention and its ingenuity, it had unluckily learned to know, was too often to be confronted with a mere dead wall, a lapse of logic, a confirmed bewilderment. and moreover, above all, nothing mattered, in the relation of the enclosing scene to his own consciousness, but its very most direct bearings. lady castledean’s dream of mr. blint for the morning was doubtless already, with all the spacious harmonies re-established, taking the form of “going over” something with him, at the piano, in one of the numerous smaller rooms that were consecrated to the less gregarious uses; what she had wished had been effected--her convenience had been assured. this made him, however, wonder the more where charlotte was--since he didn’t at all suppose her to be making a tactless third, which would be to have accepted mere spectatorship, in the duet of their companions. the upshot of everything for him, alike of the less and of the more, was that the exquisite day bloomed there like a large fragrant flower that he had only to gather. but it was to charlotte he wished to make the offering, and as he moved along the terrace, which rendered visible parts of two sides of the house, he looked up at all the windows that were open to the april morning, and wondered which of them would represent his friend’s room. it befell thus that his question, after no long time, was answered; he saw charlotte appear above as if she had been called by the pausing of his feet on the flags. she had come to the sill, on which she leaned to look down, and she remained there a minute smiling at him. he had been immediately struck with her wearing a hat and a jacket--which conduced to her appearance of readiness not so much to join him, with a beautiful uncovered head and a parasol, where he stood, as to take with him some larger step altogether. the larger step had been, since the evening before, intensely in his own mind, though he had not fully thought out, even yet, the slightly difficult detail of it; but he had had no chance, such as he needed, to speak the definite word to her, and the face she now showed affected him, accordingly, as a notice that she had wonderfully guessed it for herself. they had these identities of impulse--they had had them repeatedly before; and if such unarranged but unerring encounters gave the measure of the degree in which people were, in the common phrase, meant for each other, no union in the world had ever been more sweetened with rightness. what in fact most often happened was that her rightness went, as who should say, even further than his own; they were conscious of the same necessity at the same moment, only it was she, as a general thing, who most clearly saw her way to it. something in her long look at him now out of the old grey window, something in the very poise of her hat, the colour of her necktie, the prolonged stillness of her smile, touched into sudden light for him all the wealth of the fact that he could count on her. he had his hand there, to pluck it, on the open bloom of the day; but what did the bright minute mean but that her answering hand was already intelligently out? so, therefore, while the minute lasted, it passed between them that their cup was full; which cup their very eyes, holding it fast, carried and steadied and began, as they tasted it, to praise. he broke, however, after a moment, the silence. “it only wants a moon, a mandolin, and a little danger, to be a serenade.” “ah, then,” she lightly called down, “let it at least have this!” with which she detached a rich white rosebud from its company with another in the front of her dress and flung it down to him. he caught it in its fall, fixing her again after she had watched him place it in his buttonhole. “come down quickly!” he said in an italian not loud but deep. “vengo, vengo!” she as clearly, but more lightly, tossed out; and she had left him the next minute to wait for her. he came along the terrace again, with pauses during which his eyes rested, as they had already often done, on the brave darker wash of far-away watercolour that represented the most distant of the cathedral towns. this place, with its great church and its high accessibility, its towers that distinguishably signalled, its english history, its appealing type, its acknowledged interest, this place had sounded its name to him half the night through, and its name had become but another name, the pronounceable and convenient one, for that supreme sense of things which now throbbed within him. he had kept saying to himself “gloucester, gloucester, gloucester,” quite as if the sharpest meaning of all the years just passed were intensely expressed in it. that meaning was really that his situation remained quite sublimely consistent with itself, and that they absolutely, he and charlotte, stood there together in the very lustre of this truth. every present circumstance helped to proclaim it; it was blown into their faces as by the lips of the morning. he knew why, from the first of his marriage, he had tried with such patience for such conformity; he knew why he had given up so much and bored himself so much; he knew why he, at any rate, had gone in, on the basis of all forms, on the basis of his having, in a manner, sold himself, for a situation nette. it had all been just in order that his--well, what on earth should he call it but his freedom?--should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous as some huge precious pearl. he hadn’t struggled nor snatched; he was taking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity, straight into his hand. here, precisely, it was, incarnate; its size and its value grew as mrs. verver appeared, afar off, in one of the smaller doorways. she came toward him in silence, while he moved to meet her; the great scale of this particular front, at matcham, multiplied thus, in the golden morning, the stages of their meeting and the successions of their consciousness. it wasn’t till she had come quite close that he produced for her his “gloucester, gloucester, gloucester,” and his “look at it over there!” she knew just where to look. “yes--isn’t it one of the best? there are cloisters or towers or some thing.” and her eyes, which, though her lips smiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance; came back to him. “or the tomb of some old king.” “we must see the old king; we must ‘do’ the cathedral,” he said; “we must know all about it. if we could but take,” he exhaled, “the full opportunity!” and then while, for all they seemed to give him, he sounded again her eyes: “i feel the day like a great gold cup that we must somehow drain together.” “i feel it, as you always make me feel everything, just as you do; so that i know ten miles off how you feel! but do you remember,” she asked, “apropos of great gold cups, the beautiful one, the real one, that i offered you so long ago and that you wouldn’t have? just before your marriage”--she brought it back to him: “the gilded crystal bowl in the little bloomsbury shop.” “oh yes!”--but it took, with a slight surprise on the ‘prince’s part, some small recollecting. “the treacherous cracked thing you wanted to palm off on me, and the little swindling jew who understood italian and who backed you up! but i feel this an occasion,” he immediately added, “and i hope you don’t mean,” he smiled, “that as an occasion it’s also cracked.” they spoke, naturally, more low than loud, overlooked as they were, though at a respectful distance, by tiers of windows; but it made each find in the other’s voice a taste as of something slowly and deeply absorbed. “don’t you think too much of ‘cracks,’ and aren’t you too afraid of them? i risk the cracks,” said charlotte, “and i’ve often recalled the bowl and the little swindling jew, wondering if they’ve parted company. he made,” she said, “a great impression on me.” “well, you also, no doubt, made a great impression on him, and i dare say that if you were to go back to him you’d find he has been keeping that treasure for you. but as to cracks,” the prince went on--“what did you tell me the other day you prettily call them in english?-’rifts within the lute’?--risk them as much as you like for yourself, but don’t risk them for me.” he spoke it in all the gaiety of his just barely-tremulous serenity. “i go, as you know, by my superstitions. and that’s why,” he said, “i know where we are. they’re every one, to-day, on our side.” resting on the parapet; toward the great view, she was silent a little, and he saw the next moment that her eyes were closed. “i go but by one thing.” her hand was on the sun-warmed stone; so that, turned as they were away from the house, he put his own upon it and covered it. “i go by you,” she said. “i go by you.” so they remained a moment, till he spoke again with a gesture that matched. “what is really our great necessity, you know, is to go by my watch. it’s already eleven”--he had looked at the time; “so that if we stop here to luncheon what becomes of our afternoon?” to this charlotte’s eyes opened straight. “there’s not the slightest need of our stopping here to luncheon. don’t you see,” she asked, “how i’m ready?” he had taken it in, but there was always more and more of her. “you mean you’ve arranged--?” “it’s easy to arrange. my maid goes up with my things. you’ve only to speak to your man about yours, and they can go together.” “you mean we can leave at once?” she let him have it all. “one of the carriages, about which i spoke, will already have come back for us. if your superstitions are on our side,” she smiled, “so my arrangements are, and i’ll back my support against yours.” “then you had thought,” he wondered, “about gloucester?” she hesitated--but it was only her way. “i thought you would think. we have, thank goodness, these harmonies. they are food for superstition if you like. it’s beautiful,” she went on, “that it should be gloucester; ‘glo’ster, glo’ster,’ as you say, making it sound like an old song. however, i’m sure glo’ster, glo’ster will be charming,” she still added; “we shall be able easily to lunch there, and, with our luggage and our servants off our hands, we shall have at least three or four hours. we can wire,” she wound up, “from there.” ever so quietly she had brought it, as she had thought it, all out, and it had to be as covertly that he let his appreciation expand. “then lady castledean--?” “doesn’t dream of our staying.” he took it, but thinking yet. “then what does she dream--?” “of mr. blint, poor dear; of mr. blint only.” her smile for him--for the prince himself--was free. “have i positively to tell you that she doesn’t want us? she only wanted us for the others--to show she wasn’t left alone with him. now that that’s done, and that they’ve all gone, she of course knows for herself--!” “‘knows’?” the prince vaguely echoed. “why, that we like cathedrals; that we inevitably stop to see them, or go round to take them in, whenever we’ve a chance; that it’s what our respective families quite expect of us and would be disappointed for us to fail of. this, as forestieri,” mrs. verver pursued, “would be our pull--if our pull weren’t indeed so great all round.” he could only keep his eyes on her. “and have you made out the very train--?” “the very one. paddington--the . ‘in.’ that gives us oceans; we can dine, at the usual hour, at home; and as maggie will of course be in eaton square i hereby invite you.” for a while he still but looked at her; it was a minute before he spoke. “thank you very much. with pleasure.” to which he in a moment added: “but the train for gloucester?” “a local one-- . ; with several stops, but doing it a good deal, i forget how much, within the hour. so that we’ve time. only,” she said, “we must employ our time.” he roused himself as from the mere momentary spell of her; he looked again at his watch while they moved back to the door through which she had advanced. but he had also again questions and stops--all as for the mystery and the charm. “you looked it up--without my having asked you?” “ah, my dear,” she laughed, “i’ve seen you with bradshaw! it takes anglo-saxon blood.” “‘blood’?” he echoed. “you’ve that of every race!” it kept her before him. “you’re terrible.” well, he could put it as he liked. “i know the name of the inn.” “what is it then?” “there are two--you’ll see. but i’ve chosen the right one. and i think i remember the tomb,” she smiled. “oh, the tomb--!” any tomb would do for him. “but i mean i had been keeping my idea so cleverly for you, while there you already were with it.” “you had been keeping it ‘for’ me as much as you like. but how do you make out,” she asked, “that you were keeping it from me?” “i don’t--now. how shall i ever keep anything--some day when i shall wish to?” “ah, for things i mayn’t want to know, i promise you shall find me stupid.” they had reached their door, where she herself paused to explain. “these days, yesterday, last night, this morning, i’ve wanted everything.” well, it was all right. “you shall have everything.” xxiii fanny, on her arrival in town, carried out her second idea, despatching the colonel to his club for luncheon and packing her maid into a cab, for cadogan place, with the variety of their effects. the result of this for each of the pair was a state of occupation so unbroken that the day practically passed without fresh contact between them. they dined out together, but it was both in going to their dinner and in coming back that they appeared, on either side, to have least to communicate. fanny was wrapped in her thoughts still more closely than in the lemon-coloured mantle that protected her bare shoulders, and her husband, with her silence to deal with, showed himself not less disposed than usual, when so challenged, to hold up, as he would have said, his end of it. they had, in general, in these days, longer pauses and more abrupt transitions; in one of which latter they found themselves, for a climax, launched at midnight. mrs. assingham, rather wearily housed again, ascended to the first floor, there to sink, overburdened, on the landing outside the drawing-room, into a great gilded venetian chair--of which at first, however, she but made, with her brooding face, a sort of throne of meditation. she would thus have recalled a little, with her so free orientalism of type, the immemorially speechless sphinx about at last to become articulate. the colonel, not unlike, on his side, some old pilgrim of the desert camping at the foot of that monument, went, by way of reconnoissance, into the drawing-room. he visited, according to his wont, the windows and their fastenings; he cast round the place the eye, all at once, of the master and the manager, the commandant and the rate-payer; then he came back to his wife, before whom, for a moment, he stood waiting. but she herself, for a time, continued to wait, only looking up at him inscrutably. there was in these minor manoeuvres and conscious patiences something of a suspension of their old custom of divergent discussion, that intercourse by misunderstanding which had grown so clumsy now. this familiar pleasantry seemed to desire to show it could yield, on occasion, to any clear trouble; though it was also sensibly, and just incoherently, in the air that no trouble was at present to be vulgarly recognised as clear. there might, for that matter, even have been in mr. assingham’s face a mild perception of some finer sense--a sense for his wife’s situation, and the very situation she was, oddly enough, about to repudiate--that she had fairly caused to grow in him. but it was a flower to breathe upon gently, and this was very much what she finally did. she knew he needed no telling that she had given herself, all the afternoon, to her friends in eaton square, and that her doing so would have been but the prompt result of impressions gathered, in quantities, in brimming baskets, like the purple grapes of the vintage, at matcham; a process surrounded by him, while it so unmistakably went on, with abstentions and discretions that might almost have counted as solemnities. the solemnities, at the same time, had committed him to nothing--to nothing beyond this confession itself of a consciousness of deep waters. she had been out on these waters, for him, visibly; and his tribute to the fact had been his keeping her, even if without a word, well in sight. he had not quitted for an hour, during her adventure, the shore of the mystic lake; he had on the contrary stationed himself where she could signal to him at need. her need would have arisen if the planks of her bark had parted--then some sort of plunge would have become his immediate duty. his present position, clearly, was that of seeing her in the centre of her sheet of dark water, and of wondering if her actual mute gaze at him didn’t perhaps mean that her planks were now parting. he held himself so ready that it was quite as if the inward man had pulled off coat and waistcoat. before he had plunged, however--that is before he had uttered a question--he perceived, not without relief, that she was making for land. he watched her steadily paddle, always a little nearer, and at last he felt her boat bump. the bump was distinct, and in fact she stepped ashore. “we were all wrong. there’s nothing.” “nothing--?” it was like giving her his hand up the bank. “between charlotte verver and the prince. i was uneasy--but i’m satisfied now. i was in fact quite mistaken. there’s nothing.” “but i thought,” said bob assingham, “that that was just what you did persistently asseverate. you’ve guaranteed their straightness from the first.” “no--i’ve never till now guaranteed anything but my own disposition to worry. i’ve never till now,” fanny went on gravely from her chair, “had such a chance to see and to judge. i had it at that place--if i had, in my infatuation and my folly,” she added with expression, “nothing else. so i did see--i have seen. and now i know.” her emphasis, as she repeated the word, made her head, in her seat of infallibility, rise higher. “i know.” the colonel took it--but took it at first in silence. “do you mean they’ve told you--?” “no--i mean nothing so absurd. for in the first place i haven’t asked them, and in the second their word in such a matter wouldn’t count.” “oh,” said the colonel with all his oddity, “they’d tell us.” it made her face him an instant as with her old impatience of his short cuts, always across her finest flower-beds; but she felt, none the less, that she kept her irony down. “then when they’ve told you, you’ll be perhaps so good as to let me know.” he jerked up his chin, testing the growth of his beard with the back of his hand while he fixed her with a single eye. “ah, i don’t say that they’d necessarily tell me that they are over the traces.” “they’ll necessarily, whatever happens, hold their tongues, i hope, and i’m talking of them now as i take them for myself only. that’s enough for me--it’s all i have to regard.” with which, after an instant, “they’re wonderful,” said fanny assingham. “indeed,” her husband concurred, “i really think they are.” “you’d think it still more if you knew. but you don’t know--because you don’t see. their situation”--this was what he didn’t see--“is too extraordinary.” “‘too’?” he was willing to try. “too extraordinary to be believed, i mean, if one didn’t see. but just that, in a way, is what saves them. they take it seriously.” he followed at his own pace. “their situation?” “the incredible side of it. they make it credible.” “credible then--you do say--to you?” she looked at him again for an interval. “they believe in it themselves. they take it for what it is. and that,” she said, “saves them.” “but if what it ‘is’ is just their chance--?” “it’s their chance for what i told you when charlotte first turned up. it’s their chance for the idea that i was then sure she had.” the colonel showed his effort to recall. “oh, your idea, at different moments, of any one of their ideas!” this dim procession, visibly, mustered before him, and, with the best will in the world, he could but watch its immensity. “are you speaking now of something to which you can comfortably settle down?” again, for a little, she only glowered at him. “i’ve come back to my belief, and that i have done so--” “well?” he asked as she paused. “well, shows that i’m right--for i assure you i had wandered far. now i’m at home again, and i mean,” said fanny assingham, “to stay here. they’re beautiful,” she declared. “the prince and charlotte?” “the prince and charlotte. that’s how they’re so remarkable. and the beauty,” she explained, “is that they’re afraid for them. afraid, i mean, for the others.” “for mr. verver and maggie?” it did take some following. “afraid of what?” “afraid of themselves.” the colonel wondered. “of themselves? of mr. verver’s and maggie’s selves?” mrs. assingham remained patient as well as lucid. “yes--of such blindness too. but most of all of their own danger.” he turned it over. “that danger being the blindness--?” “that danger being their position. what their position contains--of all the elements--i needn’t at this time of day attempt to tell you. it contains, luckily--for that’s the mercy--everything but blindness: i mean on their part. the blindness,” said fanny, “is primarily her husband’s.” he stood for a moment; he would have it straight. “whose husband’s?” “mr. verver’s,” she went on. “the blindness is most of all his. that they feel--that they see. but it’s also his wife’s.” “whose wife’s?” he asked as she continued to gloom at him in a manner at variance with the comparative cheer of her contention. and then as she only gloomed: “the prince’s?” “maggie’s own--maggie’s very own,” she pursued as for herself. he had a pause. “do you think maggie so blind?” “the question isn’t of what i think. the question’s of the conviction that guides the prince and charlotte--who have better opportunities than i for judging.” the colonel again wondered. “are you so very sure their opportunities are better?” “well,” his wife asked, “what is their whole so extraordinary situation, their extraordinary relation, but an opportunity?” “ah, my dear, you have that opportunity--of their extraordinary situation and relation--as much as they.” “with the difference, darling,” she returned with some spirit, “that neither of those matters are, if you please, mine. i see the boat they’re in, but i’m not, thank god, in it myself. to-day, however,” mrs. assingham added, “to-day in eaton square i did see.” “well then, what?” but she mused over it still. “oh, many things. more, somehow, than ever before. it was as if, god help me, i was seeing for them--i mean for the others. it was as if something had happened--i don’t know what, except some effect of these days with them at that place--that had either made things come out or had cleared my own eyes.” these eyes indeed of the poor lady’s rested on her companion’s, meanwhile, with the lustre not so much of intenser insight as of a particular portent that he had at various other times had occasion to recognise. she desired, obviously, to reassure him, but it apparently took a couple of large, candid, gathering, glittering tears to emphasise the fact. they had immediately, for him, their usual direct action: she must reassure him, he was made to feel, absolutely in her own way. he would adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. the only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns. the twist seemed remarkable for instance as she developed her indication of what had come out in the afternoon. “it was as if i knew better than ever what makes them--” “what makes them?”--he pressed her as she fitfully dropped. “well, makes the prince and charlotte take it all as they do. it might well have been difficult to know how to take it; and they may even say for themselves that they were a long time trying to see. as i say, to-day,” she went on, “it was as if i were suddenly, with a kind of horrible push, seeing through their eyes.” on which, as to shake off her perversity, fanny assingham sprang up. but she remained there, under the dim illumination, and while the colonel, with his high, dry, spare look of “type,” to which a certain conformity to the whiteness of inaccessible snows in his necktie, shirt-front and waistcoat gave a rigour of accent, waited, watching her, they might, at the late hour and in the still house, have been a pair of specious worldly adventurers, driven for relief, under sudden stress, to some grim midnight reckoning in an odd corner. her attention moved mechanically over the objects of ornament disposed too freely on the walls of staircase and landing, as to which recognition, for the time, had lost both fondness and compunction. “i can imagine the way it works,” she said; “it’s so easy to understand. yet i don’t want to be wrong,” she the next moment broke out “i don’t, i don’t want to be wrong!” “to make a mistake, you mean?” oh no, she meant nothing of the sort; she knew but too well what she meant. “i don’t make mistakes. but i perpetrate--in thought--crimes.” and she spoke with all intensity. “i’m a most dreadful person. there are times when i seem not to mind a bit what i’ve done, or what i think or imagine or fear or accept; when i feel that i’d do it again--feel that i’d do things myself.” “ah, my dear!” the colonel remarked in the coolness of debate. “yes, if you had driven me back on my ‘nature.’ luckily for you you never have. you’ve done every thing else, but you’ve never done that. but what i really don’t a bit want,” she declared, “is to abet them or to protect them.” her companion turned this over. “what is there to protect them from?--if, by your now so settled faith, they’ve done nothing that justly exposes them.” and it in fact half pulled her up. “well, from a sudden scare. from the alarm, i mean, of what maggie may think.” “yet if your whole idea is that maggie thinks nothing--?” she waited again. “it isn’t my ‘whole’ idea. nothing is my ‘whole’ idea--for i felt to-day, as i tell you, that there’s so much in the air.” “oh, in the air--!” the colonel dryly breathed. “well, what’s in the air always has--hasn’t it?--to come down to the earth. and maggie,” mrs. assingham continued, “is a very curious little person. since i was ‘in,’ this afternoon, for seeing more than i had ever done--well, i felt that too, for some reason, as i hadn’t yet felt it.” “for ‘some’ reason? for what reason?” and then, as his wife at first said nothing: “did she give any sign? was she in any way different?” “she’s always so different from anyone else in the world that it’s hard to say when she’s different from herself. but she has made me,” said fanny after an instant, “think of her differently. she drove me home.” “home here?” “first to portland place--on her leaving her father: since she does, once in a while, leave him. that was to keep me with her a little longer. but she kept the carriage and, after tea there, came with me herself back here. this was also for the same purpose. then she went home, though i had brought her a message from the prince that arranged their movements otherwise. he and charlotte must have arrived--if they have arrived--expecting to drive together to eaton square and keep maggie on to dinner there. she has everything there, you know--she has clothes.” the colonel didn’t in fact know, but he gave it his apprehension. “oh, you mean a change?” “twenty changes, if you like--all sorts of things. she dresses, really, maggie does, as much for her father--and she always did--as for her husband or for herself. she has her room in his house very much as she had it before she was married--and just as the boy has quite a second nursery there, in which mrs. noble, when she comes with him, makes herself, i assure you, at home. si bien that if charlotte, in her own house, so to speak, should wish a friend or two to stay with her, she really would be scarce able to put them up.” it was a picture into which, as a thrifty entertainer himself, bob assingham could more or less enter. “maggie and the child spread so?” “maggie and the child spread so.” well, he considered. “it is rather rum,” “that’s all i claim”--she seemed thankful for the word. “i don’t say it’s anything more--but it is, distinctly, rum.” which, after an instant, the colonel took up. “‘more’? what more could it be?” “it could be that she’s unhappy, and that she takes her funny little way of consoling herself. for if she were unhappy”--mrs. assingham had figured it out--“that’s just the way, i’m convinced, she would take. but how can she be unhappy, since--as i’m also convinced--she, in the midst of everything, adores her husband as much as ever?” the colonel at this brooded for a little at large. “then if she’s so happy, please what’s the matter?” it made his wife almost spring at him. “you think then she’s secretly wretched?” but he threw up his arms in deprecation. “ah, my dear, i give them up to you. i’ve nothing more to suggest.” “then it’s not sweet of you.” she spoke at present as if he were frequently sweet. “you admit that it is ‘rum.’” and this indeed fixed again, for a moment, his intention. “has charlotte complained of the want of rooms for her friends?” “never, that i know of, a word. it isn’t the sort of thing she does. and whom has she, after all,” mrs. assingham added, “to complain to?” “hasn’t she always you?” “oh, ‘me’! charlotte and i, nowadays--!” she spoke as of a chapter closed. “yet see the justice i still do her. she strikes me, more and more, as extraordinary.” a deeper shade, at the renewal of the word, had come into the colonel’s face. “if they’re each and all so extraordinary then, isn’t that why one must just resign one’s self to wash one’s hands of them--to be lost?” her face, however, so met the question as if it were but a flicker of the old tone that their trouble had now become too real for--her charged eyes so betrayed the condition of her nerves that he stepped back, alertly enough, to firmer ground. he had spoken before in this light of a plain man’s vision, but he must be something more than a plain man now. “hasn’t she then, charlotte, always her husband--?” “to complain to? she’d rather die.” “oh!”--and bob assingham’s face, at the vision of such extremities, lengthened for very docility. “hasn’t she the prince then?” “for such matters? oh, he doesn’t count.” “i thought that was just what--as the basis of our agitation--he does do!” mrs. assingham, however, had her distinction ready. “not a bit as a person to bore with complaints. the ground of my agitation is, exactly, that she never on any pretext bores him. not charlotte!” and in the imagination of mrs. verver’s superiority to any such mistake she gave, characteristically, something like a toss of her head--as marked a tribute to that lady’s general grace, in all the conditions, as the personage referred to doubtless had ever received. “ah, only maggie!” with which the colonel gave a short low gurgle. but it found his wife again prepared. “no--not only maggie. a great many people in london--and small wonder!--bore him.” “maggie only worst then?” but it was a question that he had promptly dropped at the returning brush of another, of which she had shortly before sown the seed. “you said just now that he would by this time be back with charlotte ‘if they have arrived.’ you think it then possible that they really won’t have returned?” his companion exhibited to view, for the idea, a sense of her responsibility; but this was insufficient, clearly, to keep her from entertaining it. “i think there’s nothing they’re not now capable of--in their so intense good faith.” “good faith?”--he echoed the words, which had in fact something of an odd ring, critically. “their false position. it comes to the same thing.” and she bore down, with her decision, the superficial lack of sequence. “they may very possibly, for a demonstration--as i see them--not have come back.” he wondered, visibly, at this, how she did see them. “may have bolted somewhere together?” “may have stayed over at matcham itself till tomorrow. may have wired home, each of them, since maggie left me. may have done,” fanny assingham continued, “god knows what!” she went on, suddenly, with more emotion--which, at the pressure of some spring of her inner vision, broke out in a wail of distress, imperfectly smothered. “whatever they’ve done i shall never know. never, never--because i don’t want to, and because nothing will induce me. so they may do as they like. but i’ve worked for them all” she uttered this last with another irrepressible quaver, and the next moment her tears had come, though she had, with the explosion, quitted her husband as if to hide it from him. she passed into the dusky drawing-room, where, during his own prowl, shortly previous, he had drawn up a blind, so that the light of the street-lamps came in a little at the window. she made for this window, against which she leaned her head, while the colonel, with his lengthened face, looked after her for a minute and hesitated. he might have been wondering what she had really done, to what extent, beyond his knowledge or his conception, in the affairs of these people, she could have committed herself. but to hear her cry, and yet try not to, was, quickly enough, too much for him; he had known her at other times quite not try not to, and that had not been so bad. he went to her and put his arm round her; he drew her head to his breast, where, while she gasped, she let it stay a little--all with a patience that presently stilled her. yet the effect of this small crisis, oddly enough, was not to close their colloquy, with the natural result of sending them to bed: what was between them had opened out further, had somehow, through the sharp show of her feeling, taken a positive stride, had entered, as it were, without more words, the region of the understood, shutting the door after it and bringing them so still more nearly face to face. they remained for some minutes looking at it through the dim window which opened upon the world of human trouble in general and which let the vague light play here and there upon gilt and crystal and colour, the florid features, looming dimly, of fanny’s drawing-room. and the beauty of what thus passed between them, passed with her cry of pain, with her burst of tears, with his wonderment and his kindness and his comfort, with the moments of their silence, above all, which might have represented their sinking together, hand in hand, for a time, into the mystic lake where he had begun, as we have hinted, by seeing her paddle alone--the beauty of it was that they now could really talk better than before, because the basis had at last, once for all, defined itself. what was the basis, which fanny absolutely exacted, but that charlotte and the prince must be saved--so far as consistently speaking of them as still safe might save them? it did save them, somehow, for fanny’s troubled mind--for that was the nature of the mind of women. he conveyed to her now, at all events, by refusing her no gentleness, that he had sufficiently got the tip, and that the tip was all he had wanted. this remained quite clear even when he presently reverted to what she had told him of her recent passage with maggie. “i don’t altogether see, you know, what you infer from it, or why you infer anything.” when he so expressed himself it was quite as if in possession of what they had brought up from the depths. xxiv “i can’t say more,” this made his companion reply, “than that something in her face, her voice and her whole manner acted upon me as nothing in her had ever acted before; and just for the reason, above all, that i felt her trying her very best--and her very best, poor duck, is very good--to be quiet and natural. it’s when one sees people who always are natural making little pale, pathetic, blinking efforts for it--then it is that one knows something’s the matter. i can’t describe my impression--you would have had it for yourself. and the only thing that ever can be the matter with maggie is that. by ‘that’ i mean her beginning to doubt. to doubt, for the first time,” mrs. assingham wound up, “of her wonderful little judgment of her wonderful little world.” it was impressive, fanny’s vision, and the colonel, as if himself agitated by it, took another turn of prowling. “to doubt of fidelity--to doubt of friendship! poor duck indeed! it will go hard with her. but she’ll put it all,” he concluded, “on charlotte.” mrs. assingham, still darkly contemplative, denied this with a headshake. “she won’t ‘put’ it anywhere. she won’t do with it anything anyone else would. she’ll take it all herself.” “you mean she’ll make it out her own fault?” “yes--she’ll find means, somehow, to arrive at that.” “ah then,” the colonel dutifully declared, “she’s indeed a little brick!” “oh,” his wife returned, “you’ll see, in one way or another, to what tune!” and she spoke, of a sudden, with an approach to elation--so that, as if immediately feeling his surprise, she turned round to him. “she’ll see me somehow through!” “see you--?” “yes, me. i’m the worst. for,” said fanny assingham, now with a harder exaltation, “i did it all. i recognise that--i accept it. she won’t cast it up at me--she won’t cast up anything. so i throw myself upon her--she’ll bear me up.” she spoke almost volubly--she held him with her sudden sharpness. “she’ll carry the whole weight of us.” there was still, nevertheless, wonder in it. “you mean she won’t mind? i say, love--!” and he not unkindly stared. “then where’s the difficulty?” “there isn’t any!” fanny declared with the same rich emphasis. it kept him indeed, as by the loss of the thread, looking at her longer. “ah, you mean there isn’t any for us!” she met his look for a minute as if it perhaps a little too much imputed a selfishness, a concern, at any cost, for their own surface. then she might have been deciding that their own surface was, after all, what they had most to consider. “not,” she said with dignity, “if we properly keep our heads.” she appeared even to signify that they would begin by keeping them now. this was what it was to have at last a constituted basis. “do you remember what you said to me that night of my first real anxiety--after the foreign office party?” “in the carriage--as we came home?” yes--he could recall it. “leave them to pull through?” “precisely. ‘trust their own wit,’ you practically said, ‘to save all appearances.’ well, i’ve trusted it. i have left them to pull through.” he hesitated. “and your point is that they’re not doing so?” “i’ve left them,” she went on, “but now i see how and where. i’ve been leaving them all the while, without knowing it, to her.” “to the princess?” “and that’s what i mean,” mrs. assingham pensively pursued. “that’s what happened to me with her to-day,” she continued to explain. “it came home to me that that’s what i’ve really been doing.” “oh, i see.” “i needn’t torment myself. she has taken them over.” the colonel declared that he “saw”; yet it was as if, at this, he a little sightlessly stared. “but what then has happened, from one day to the other, to her? what has opened her eyes?” “they were never really shut. she misses him.” “then why hasn’t she missed him before?” well, facing him there, among their domestic glooms and glints, fanny worked it out. “she did--but she wouldn’t let herself know it. she had her reason--she wore her blind. now, at last, her situation has come to a head. to-day she does know it. and that’s illuminating. it has been,” mrs. assingham wound up, “illuminating to me.” her husband attended, but the momentary effect of his attention was vagueness again, and the refuge of his vagueness was a gasp. “poor dear little girl!” “ah no--don’t pity her!” this did, however, pull him up. “we mayn’t even be sorry for her?” “not now--or at least not yet. it’s too soon--that is if it isn’t very much too late. this will depend,” mrs. assingham went on; “at any rate we shall see. we might have pitied her before--for all the good it would then have done her; we might have begun some time ago. now, however, she has begun to live. and the way it comes to me, the way it comes to me--” but again she projected her vision. “the way it comes to you can scarcely be that she’ll like it!” “the way it comes to me is that she will live. the way it comes to me is that she’ll triumph.” she said this with so sudden a prophetic flare that it fairly cheered her husband. “ah then, we must back her!” “no--we mustn’t touch her. we mayn’t touch any of them. we must keep our hands off; we must go on tiptoe. we must simply watch and wait. and meanwhile,” said mrs. assingham, “we must bear it as we can. that’s where we are--and serves us right. we’re in presence.” and so, moving about the room as in communion with shadowy portents, she left it till he questioned again. “in presence of what?” “well, of something possibly beautiful. beautiful as it may come off.” she had paused there before him while he wondered. “you mean she’ll get the prince back?” she raised her hand in quick impatience: the suggestion might have been almost abject. “it isn’t a question of recovery. it won’t be a question of any vulgar struggle. to ‘get him back’ she must have lost him, and to have lost him she must have had him.” with which fanny shook her head. “what i take her to be waking up to is the truth that, all the while, she really hasn’t had him. never.” “ah, my dear--!” the poor colonel panted. “never!” his wife repeated. and she went on without pity. “do you remember what i said to you long ago--that evening, just before their marriage, when charlotte had so suddenly turned up?” the smile with which he met this appeal was not, it was to be feared, robust. “what haven’t you, love, said in your time?” “so many things, no doubt, that they make a chance for my having once or twice spoken the truth. i never spoke it more, at all events, than when i put it to you, that evening, that maggie was the person in the world to whom a wrong thing could least be communicated. it was as if her imagination had been closed to it, her sense altogether sealed, that therefore,” fanny continued, “is what will now have to happen. her sense will have to open.” “i see.” he nodded. “to the wrong.” he nodded again, almost cheerfully--as if he had been keeping the peace with a baby or a lunatic. “to the very, very wrong.” but his wife’s spirit, after its effort of wing, was able to remain higher. “to what’s called evil--with a very big e: for the first time in her life. to the discovery of it, to the knowledge of it, to the crude experience of it.” and she gave, for the possibility, the largest measure. “to the harsh, bewildering brush, the daily chilling breath of it. unless indeed”--and here mrs. assingham noted a limit “unless indeed, as yet (so far as she has come, and if she comes no further), simply to the suspicion and the dread. what we shall see is whether that mere dose of alarm will prove enough.” he considered. “but enough for what then, dear--if not enough to break her heart?” “enough to give her a shaking!” mrs. assingham rather oddly replied. “to give her, i mean, the right one. the right one won’t break her heart. it will make her,” she explained--“well, it will make her, by way of a change, understand one or two things in the world.” “but isn’t it a pity,” the colonel asked, “that they should happen to be the one or two that will be the most disagreeable to her?” “oh, ‘disagreeable’--? they’ll have had to be disagreeable--to show her a little where she is. they’ll have had to be disagreeable to make her sit up. they’ll have had to be disagreeable to make her decide to live.” bob assingham was now at the window, while his companion slowly revolved; he had lighted a cigarette, for final patience, and he seemed vaguely to “time” her as she moved to and fro. he had at the same time to do justice to the lucidity she had at last attained, and it was doubtless by way of expression of this teachability that he let his eyes, for a minute, roll, as from the force of feeling, over the upper dusk of the room. he had thought of the response his wife’s words ideally implied. “decide to live--ah yes!--for her child.” “oh, bother her child!”--and he had never felt so snubbed, for an exemplary view, as when fanny now stopped short. “to live, you poor dear, for her father--which is another pair of sleeves!” and mrs. assingham’s whole ample, ornamented person irradiated, with this, the truth that had begun, under so much handling, to glow. “any idiot can do things for her child. she’ll have a motive more original, and we shall see how it will work her. she’ll have to save him.” “to ‘save’ him--?” “to keep her father from her own knowledge. that”--and she seemed to see it, before her, in her husband’s very eyes--“will be work cut out!” with which, as at the highest conceivable climax, she wound up their colloquy. “good night!” there was something in her manner, however--or in the effect, at least, of this supreme demonstration that had fairly, and by a single touch, lifted him to her side; so that, after she had turned her back to regain the landing and the staircase, he overtook her, before she had begun to mount, with the ring of excited perception. “ah, but, you know, that’s rather jolly!” “jolly’--?” she turned upon it, again, at the foot of the staircase. “i mean it’s rather charming.” “‘charming’--?” it had still to be their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic. “i mean it’s rather beautiful. you just said, yourself, it would be. only,” he pursued promptly, with the impetus of this idea, and as if it had suddenly touched with light for him connections hitherto dim--“only i don’t quite see why that very care for him which has carried her to such other lengths, precisely, as affect one as so ‘rum,’ hasn’t also, by the same stroke, made her notice a little more what has been going on.” “ah, there you are! it’s the question that i’ve all along been asking myself.” she had rested her eyes on the carpet, but she raised them as she pursued--she let him have it straight. “and it’s the question of an idiot.” “an idiot--?” “well, the idiot that i’ve been, in all sorts of ways--so often, of late, have i asked it. you’re excusable, since you ask it but now. the answer, i saw to-day, has all the while been staring me in the face.” “then what in the world is it?” “why, the very intensity of her conscience about him--the very passion of her brave little piety. that’s the way it has worked,” mrs. assingham explained “and i admit it to have been as ‘rum’ a way as possible. but it has been working from a rum start. from the moment the dear man married to ease his daughter off, and it then happened, by an extraordinary perversity, that the very opposite effect was produced--!” with the renewed vision of this fatality, however, she could give but a desperate shrug. “i see,” the colonel sympathetically mused. “that was a rum start.” but his very response, as she again flung up her arms, seemed to make her sense, for a moment, intolerable. “yes--there i am! i was really at the bottom of it,” she declared; “i don’t know what possessed me--but i planned for him, i goaded him on.” with which, however, the next moment, she took herself up. “or, rather, i do know what possessed me--for wasn’t he beset with ravening women, right and left, and didn’t he, quite pathetically, appeal for protection, didn’t he, quite charmingly, show one how he needed and desired it? maggie,” she thus lucidly continued, “couldn’t, with a new life of her own, give herself up to doing for him in the future all she had done in the past--to fencing him in, to keeping him safe and keeping them off. one perceived this,” she went on--“out of the abundance of one’s affection and one’s sympathy.” it all blessedly came back to her--when it wasn’t all, for the fiftieth time, obscured, in face of the present facts, by anxiety and compunction. “one was no doubt a meddlesome fool; one always is, to think one sees people’s lives for them better than they see them for themselves. but one’s excuse here,” she insisted, “was that these people clearly didn’t see them for themselves--didn’t see them at all. it struck one for very pity--that they were making a mess of such charming material; that they were but wasting it and letting it go. they didn’t know how to live--and somehow one couldn’t, if one took an interest in them at all, simply stand and see it. that’s what i pay for”--and the poor woman, in straighter communion with her companion’s intelligence at this moment, she appeared to feel, than she had ever been before, let him have the whole of the burden of her consciousness. “i always pay for it, sooner or later, my sociable, my damnable, my unnecessary interest. nothing of course would suit me but that it should fix itself also on charlotte--charlotte who was hovering there on the edge of our lives, when not beautifully, and a trifle mysteriously, flitting across them, and who was a piece of waste and a piece of threatened failure, just as, for any possible good to the world, mr. verver and maggie were. it began to come over me, in the watches of the night, that charlotte was a person who could keep off ravening women--without being one herself, either, in the vulgar way of the others; and that this service to mr. verver would be a sweet employment for her future. there was something, of course, that might have stopped me: you know, you know what i mean--it looks at me,” she veritably moaned, “out of your face! but all i can say is that it didn’t; the reason largely being--once i had fallen in love with the beautiful symmetry of my plan--that i seemed to feel sure maggie would accept charlotte, whereas i didn’t quite make out either what other woman, or what other kind of woman, one could think of her accepting.” “i see--i see.” she had paused, meeting all the while his listening look, and the fever of her retrospect had so risen with her talk that the desire was visibly strong in him to meet her, on his side, but with cooling breath. “one quite understands, my dear.” it only, however, kept her there sombre. “i naturally see, love, what you understand; which sits again, perfectly, in your eyes. you see that i saw that maggie would accept her in helpless ignorance. yes, dearest”--and the grimness of her dreariness suddenly once more possessed her: “you’ve only to tell me that that knowledge was my reason for what i did. how, when you do, can i stand up to you? you see,” she said with an ineffable headshake, “that i don’t stand up! i’m down, down, down,” she declared; “yet” she as quickly added--“there’s just one little thing that helps to save my life.” and she kept him waiting but an instant. “they might easily--they would perhaps even certainly--have done something worse.” he thought. “worse than that charlotte--?” “ah, don’t tell me,” she cried, “that there could have been nothing worse. there might, as they were, have been many things. charlotte, in her way, is extraordinary.” he was almost simultaneous. “extraordinary!” “she observes the forms,” said fanny assingham. he hesitated. “with the prince--?” “for the prince. and with the others,” she went on. “with mr. verver--wonderfully. but above all with maggie. and the forms”--she had to do even them justice--“are two-thirds of conduct. say he had married a woman who would have made a hash of them.” but he jerked back. “ah, my dear, i wouldn’t say it for the world!” “say,” she none the less pursued, “he had married a woman the prince would really have cared for.” “you mean then he doesn’t care for charlotte--?” this was still a new view to jump to, and the colonel, perceptibly, wished to make sure of the necessity of the effort. for that, while he stared, his wife allowed him time; at the end of which she simply said: “no!” “then what on earth are they up to?” still, however, she only looked at him; so that, standing there before her with his hands in his pockets, he had time, further, to risk, soothingly, another question. “are the ‘forms’ you speak of--that are two-thirds of conduct--what will be keeping her now, by your hypothesis, from coming home with him till morning?” “yes--absolutely. their forms.” “‘theirs’--?” “maggie’s and mr. verver’s--those they impose on charlotte and the prince. those,” she developed, “that, so perversely, as i say, have succeeded in setting themselves up as the right ones.” he considered--but only now, at last, really to relapse into woe. “your ‘perversity,’ my dear, is exactly what i don’t understand. the state of things existing hasn’t grown, like a field of mushrooms, in a night. whatever they, all round, may be in for now is at least the consequence of what they’ve done. are they mere helpless victims of fate?” well, fanny at last had the courage of it, “yes--they are. to be so abjectly innocent--that is to be victims of fate.” “and charlotte and the prince are abjectly innocent--?” it took her another minute, but she rose to the full height. “yes. that is they were--as much so in their way as the others. there were beautiful intentions all round. the prince’s and charlotte’s were beautiful--of that i had my faith. they were--i’d go to the stake. otherwise,” she added, “i should have been a wretch. and i’ve not been a wretch. i’ve only been a double-dyed donkey.” “ah then,” he asked, “what does our muddle make them to have been?” “well, too much taken up with considering each other. you may call such a mistake as that by what ever name you please; it at any rate means, all round, their case. it illustrates the misfortune,” said mrs. assingham gravely, “of being too, too charming.” this was another matter that took some following, but the colonel again did his best. “yes, but to whom?--doesn’t it rather depend on that? to whom have the prince and charlotte then been too charming?” “to each other, in the first place--obviously. and then both of them together to maggie.” “to maggie?” he wonderingly echoed. “to maggie.” she was now crystalline. “by having accepted, from the first, so guilelessly--yes, so guilelessly, themselves--her guileless idea of still having her father, of keeping him fast, in her life.” “then isn’t one supposed, in common humanity, and if one hasn’t quarrelled with him, and one has the means, and he, on his side, doesn’t drink or kick up rows--isn’t one supposed to keep one’s aged parent in one’s life?” “certainly--when there aren’t particular reasons against it. that there may be others than his getting drunk is exactly the moral of what is before us. in the first place mr. verver isn’t aged.” the colonel just hung fire--but it came. “then why the deuce does he--oh, poor dear man!--behave as if he were?” she took a moment to meet it. “how do you know how he behaves?” “well, my own love, we see how charlotte does!” again, at this, she faltered; but again she rose. “ah, isn’t my whole point that he’s charming to her?” “doesn’t it depend a bit on what she regards as charming?” she faced the question as if it were flippant, then with a headshake of dignity she brushed it away. “it’s mr. verver who’s really young--it’s charlotte who’s really old. and what i was saying,” she added, “isn’t affected!” “you were saying”--he did her the justice--“that they’re all guileless.” “that they were. guileless, all, at first--quite extraordinarily. it’s what i mean by their failure to see that the more they took for granted they could work together the more they were really working apart. for i repeat,” fanny went on, “that i really believe charlotte and the prince honestly to have made up their minds, originally, that their very esteem for mr. verver--which was serious, as well it might be!--would save them.” “i see.” the colonel inclined himself. “and save him.” “it comes to the same thing!” “then save maggie.” “that comes,” said mrs. assingham, “to something a little different. for maggie has done the most.” he wondered. “what do you call the most?” “well, she did it originally--she began the vicious circle. for that--though you make round eyes at my associating her with ‘vice’--is simply what it has been. it’s their mutual consideration, all round, that has made it the bottomless gulf; and they’re really so embroiled but because, in their way, they’ve been so improbably good.” “in their way--yes!” the colonel grinned. “which was, above all, maggie’s way.” no flicker of his ribaldry was anything to her now. “maggie had in the first place to make up to her father for her having suffered herself to become--poor little dear, as she believed--so intensely married. then she had to make up to her husband for taking so much of the time they might otherwise have spent together to make this reparation to mr. verver perfect. and her way to do this, precisely, was by allowing the prince the use, the enjoyment, whatever you may call it, of charlotte to cheer his path--by instalments, as it were--in proportion as she herself, making sure her father was all right, might be missed from his side. by so much, at the same time, however,” mrs. assingham further explained, “by so much as she took her young stepmother, for this purpose, away from mr. verver, by just so much did this too strike her as something again to be made up for. it has saddled her, you will easily see, with a positively new obligation to her father, an obligation created and aggravated by her unfortunate, even if quite heroic, little sense of justice. she began with wanting to show him that his marriage could never, under whatever temptation of her own bliss with the prince, become for her a pretext for deserting or neglecting him. then that, in its order, entailed her wanting to show the prince that she recognised how the other desire--this wish to remain, intensely, the same passionate little daughter she had always been--involved in some degree, and just for the present, so to speak, her neglecting and deserting him. i quite hold,” fanny with characteristic amplitude parenthesised, “that a person can mostly feel but one passion--one tender passion, that is--at a time. only, that doesn’t hold good for our primary and instinctive attachments, the ‘voice of blood,’ such as one’s feeling for a parent or a brother. those may be intense and yet not prevent other intensities--as you will recognise, my dear, when you remember how i continued, tout betement, to adore my mother, whom you didn’t adore, for years after i had begun to adore you. well, maggie”--she kept it up--“is in the same situation as i was, plus complications from which i was, thank heaven, exempt: plus the complication, above all, of not having in the least begun with the sense for complications that i should have had. before she knew it, at any rate, her little scruples and her little lucidities, which were really so divinely blind--her feverish little sense of justice, as i say--had brought the two others together as her grossest misconduct couldn’t have done. and now she knows something or other has happened--yet hasn’t heretofore known what. she has only piled up her remedy, poor child--something that she has earnestly but confusedly seen as her necessary policy; piled it on top of the policy, on top of the remedy, that she at first thought out for herself, and that would really have needed, since then, so much modification. her only modification has been the growth of her necessity to prevent her father’s wondering if all, in their life in common, may be so certainly for the best. she has now as never before to keep him unconscious that, peculiar, if he makes a point of it, as their situation is, there’s anything in it all uncomfortable or disagreeable, anything morally the least out of the way. she has to keep touching it up to make it, each day, each month, look natural and normal to him; so that--god forgive me the comparison!--she’s like an old woman who has taken to ‘painting’ and who has to lay it on thicker, to carry it off with a greater audacity, with a greater impudence even, the older she grows.” and fanny stood a moment captivated with the image she had thrown off. “i like the idea of maggie audacious and impudent--learning to be so to gloss things over. she could--she even will, yet, i believe--learn it, for that sacred purpose, consummately, diabolically. for from the moment the dear man should see it’s all rouge--!” she paused, staring at the vision. it imparted itself even to bob. “then the fun would begin?” as it but made her look at him hard, however, he amended the form of his inquiry. “you mean that in that case she will, charming creature, be lost?” she was silent a moment more. “as i’ve told you before, she won’t be lost if her father’s saved. she’ll see that as salvation enough.” the colonel took it in. “then she’s a little heroine.” “rather--she’s a little heroine. but it’s his innocence, above all,” mrs. assingham added, “that will pull them through.” her companion, at this, focussed again mr. verver’s innocence. “it’s awfully quaint.” “of course it’s awfully quaint! that it’s awfully quaint, that the pair are awfully quaint, quaint with all our dear old quaintness--by which i don’t mean yours and mine, but that of my own sweet countrypeople, from whom i’ve so deplorably degenerated--that,” mrs. assingham declared, “was originally the head and front of their appeal to me and of my interest in them. and of course i shall feel them quainter still,” she rather ruefully subjoined, “before they’ve done with me!” this might be, but it wasn’t what most stood in the colonel’s way. “you believe so in mr. verver’s innocence after two years of charlotte?” she stared. “but the whole point is just that two years of charlotte are what he hasn’t really--or what you may call undividedly--had.” “any more than maggie, by your theory, eh, has ‘really or undividedly,’ had four of the prince? it takes all she hasn’t had,” the colonel conceded, “to account for the innocence that in her, too, so leaves us in admiration.” so far as it might be ribald again she let this pass. “it takes a great many things to account for maggie. what is definite, at all events, is that--strange though this be--her effort for her father has, up to now, sufficiently succeeded. she has made him, she makes him, accept the tolerably obvious oddity of their relation, all round, for part of the game. behind her there, protected and amused and, as it were, exquisitely humbugged--the principino, in whom he delights, always aiding--he has safely and serenely enough suffered the conditions of his life to pass for those he had sublimely projected. he hadn’t worked them out in detail--any more than i had, heaven pity me!--and the queerness has been, exactly, in the detail. this, for him, is what it was to have married charlotte. and they both,” she neatly wound up, “‘help.’” “‘both’--?” “i mean that if maggie, always in the breach, makes it seem to him all so flourishingly to fit, charlotte does her part not less. and her part is very large. charlotte,” fanny declared, “works like a horse.” so there it all was, and her husband looked at her a minute across it. “and what does the prince work like?” she fixed him in return. “like a prince!” whereupon, breaking short off, to ascend to her room, she presented her highly--decorated back--in which, in odd places, controlling the complications of its aspect, the ruby or the garnet, the turquoise and the topaz, gleamed like faint symbols of the wit that pinned together the satin patches of her argument. he watched her as if she left him positively under the impression of her mastery of her subject; yes, as if the real upshot of the drama before them was but that he had, when it came to the tight places of life--as life had shrunk for him now--the most luminous of wives. he turned off, in this view of her majestic retreat, the comparatively faint little electric lamp which had presided over their talk; then he went up as immediately behind her as the billows of her amber train allowed, making out how all the clearness they had conquered was even for herself a relief--how at last the sense of the amplitude of her exposition sustained and floated her. joining her, however, on the landing above, where she had already touched a metallic point into light, he found she had done perhaps even more to create than to extinguish in him the germ of a curiosity. he held her a minute longer--there was another plum in the pie. “what did you mean some minutes ago by his not caring for charlotte?” “the prince’s? by his not ‘really’ caring?” she recalled, after a little, benevolently enough. “i mean that men don’t, when it has all been too easy. that’s how, in nine cases out of ten, a woman is treated who has risked her life. you asked me just now how he works,” she added; “but you might better perhaps have asked me how he plays.” well, he made it up. “like a prince?” “like a prince. he is, profoundly, a prince. for that,” she said with expression, “he’s--beautifully--a case. they’re far rarer, even in the ‘highest circles,’ than they pretend to be--and that’s what makes so much of his value. he’s perhaps one of the very last--the last of the real ones. so it is we must take him. we must take him all round.” the colonel considered. “and how must charlotte--if anything happens--take him?” the question held her a minute, and while she waited, with her eyes on him, she put out a grasping hand to his arm, in the flesh of which he felt her answer distinctly enough registered. thus she gave him, standing off a little, the firmest, longest, deepest injunction he had ever received from her. “nothing--in spite of everything--will happen. nothing has happened. nothing is happening.” he looked a trifle disappointed. “i see. for us.” “for us. for whom else?” and he was to feel indeed how she wished him to understand it. “we know nothing on earth--!” it was an undertaking he must sign. so he wrote, as it were, his name. “we know nothing on earth.” it was like the soldiers’ watchword at night. “we’re as innocent,” she went on in the same way, “as babes.” “why not rather say,” he asked, “as innocent as they themselves are?” “oh, for the best of reasons! because we’re much more so.” he wondered. “but how can we be more--?” “for them? oh, easily! we can be anything.” “absolute idiots then?” “absolute idiots. and oh,” fanny breathed, “the way it will rest us!” well, he looked as if there were something in that. “but won’t they know we’re not?” she barely hesitated. “charlotte and the prince think we are--which is so much gained. mr. verver believes in our intelligence--but he doesn’t matter.” “and maggie? doesn’t she know--?” “that we see before our noses?” yes, this indeed took longer. “oh, so far as she may guess it she’ll give no sign. so it comes to the same thing.” he raised his eyebrows. “comes to our not being able to help her?” “that’s the way we shall help her.” “by looking like fools?” she threw up her hands. “she only wants, herself, to look like a bigger! so there we are!” with which she brushed it away--his conformity was promised. something, however, still held her; it broke, to her own vision, as a last wave of clearness. “moreover now,” she said, “i see! i mean,” she added,--“what you were asking me: how i knew to-day, in eaton square, that maggie’s awake.” and she had indeed visibly got it. “it was by seeing them together.” “seeing her with her father?” he fell behind again. “but you’ve seen her often enough before.” “never with my present eyes. for nothing like such a test--that of this length of the others’ absence together--has hitherto occurred.” “possibly! but if she and mr. verver insisted upon it--?” “why is it such a test? because it has become one without their intending it. it has spoiled, so to speak, on their hands.” “it has soured, eh?” the colonel said. “the word’s horrible--say rather it has ‘changed.’ perhaps,” fanny went on, “she did wish to see how much she can bear. in that case she has seen. only it was she alone who--about the visit--insisted. her father insists on nothing. and she watches him do it.” her husband looked impressed. “watches him?” “for the first faint sign. i mean of his noticing. it doesn’t, as i tell you, come. but she’s there for it to see. and i felt,” she continued, “how she’s there; i caught her, as it were, in the fact. she couldn’t keep it from me--though she left her post on purpose--came home with me to throw dust in my eyes. i took it all--her dust; but it was what showed me.” with which supreme lucidity she reached the door of her room. “luckily it showed me also how she has succeeded. nothing--from him--has come.” “you’re so awfully sure?” “sure. nothing will. good-night,” she said. “she’ll die first.” book second: the princess part fourth xxv it was not till many days had passed that the princess began to accept the idea of having done, a little, something she was not always doing, or indeed that of having listened to any inward voice that spoke in a new tone. yet these instinctive postponements of reflection were the fruit, positively, of recognitions and perceptions already active; of the sense, above all, that she had made, at a particular hour, made by the mere touch of her hand, a difference in the situation so long present to her as practically unattackable. this situation had been occupying, for months and months, the very centre of the garden of her life, but it had reared itself there like some strange, tall tower of ivory, or perhaps rather some wonderful, beautiful, but outlandish pagoda, a structure plated with hard, bright porcelain, coloured and figured and adorned, at the overhanging eaves, with silver bells that tinkled, ever so charmingly, when stirred by chance airs. she had walked round and round it--that was what she felt; she had carried on her existence in the space left her for circulation, a space that sometimes seemed ample and sometimes narrow: looking up, all the while, at the fair structure that spread itself so amply and rose so high, but never quite making out, as yet, where she might have entered had she wished. she had not wished till now--such was the odd case; and what was doubtless equally odd, besides, was that, though her raised eyes seemed to distinguish places that must serve, from within, and especially far aloft, as apertures and outlooks, no door appeared to give access from her convenient garden level. the great decorated surface had remained consistently impenetrable and inscrutable. at present, however, to her considering mind, it was as if she had ceased merely to circle and to scan the elevation, ceased so vaguely, so quite helplessly to stare and wonder: she had caught herself distinctly in the act of pausing, then in that of lingering, and finally in that of stepping unprecedentedly near. the thing might have been, by the distance at which it kept her, a mahometan mosque, with which no base heretic could take a liberty; there so hung about it the vision of one’s putting off one’s shoes to enter, and even, verily, of one’s paying with one’s life if found there as an interloper. she had not, certainly, arrived at the conception of paying with her life for anything she might do; but it was nevertheless quite as if she had sounded with a tap or two one of the rare porcelain plates. she had knocked, in short--though she could scarce have said whether for admission or for what; she had applied her hand to a cool smooth spot and had waited to see what would happen. something had happened; it was as if a sound, at her touch, after a little, had come back to her from within; a sound sufficiently suggesting that her approach had been noted. if this image, however, may represent our young woman’s consciousness of a recent change in her life--a change now but a few days old--it must at the same time be observed that she both sought and found in renewed circulation, as i have called it, a measure of relief from the idea of having perhaps to answer for what she had done. the pagoda in her blooming garden figured the arrangement--how otherwise was it to be named?--by which, so strikingly, she had been able to marry without breaking, as she liked to put it, with the past. she had surrendered herself to her husband without the shadow of a reserve or a condition, and yet she had not, all the while, given up her father--the least little inch. she had compassed the high city of seeing the two men beautifully take to each other, and nothing in her marriage had marked it as more happy than this fact of its having practically given the elder, the lonelier, a new friend. what had moreover all the while enriched the whole aspect of success was that the latter’s marriage had been no more meassurably paid for than her own. his having taken the same great step in the same free way had not in the least involved the relegation of his daughter. that it was remarkable they should have been able at once so to separate and so to keep together had never for a moment, from however far back, been equivocal to her; that it was remarkable had in fact quite counted, at first and always, and for each of them equally, as part of their inspiration and their support. there were plenty of singular things they were not enamoured of--flights of brilliancy, of audacity, of originality, that, speaking at least for the dear man and herself, were not at all in their line; but they liked to think they had given their life this unusual extension and this liberal form, which many families, many couples, and still more many pairs of couples, would not have found workable. that last truth had been distinctly brought home to them by the bright testimony, the quite explicit envy, of most of their friends, who had remarked to them again and again that they must, on all the showing, to keep on such terms, be people of the highest amiability--equally including in the praise, of course, amerigo and charlotte. it had given them pleasure--as how should it not?--to find themselves shed such a glamour; it had certainly, that is, given pleasure to her father and herself, both of them distinguishably of a nature so slow to presume that they would scarce have been sure of their triumph without this pretty reflection of it. so it was that their felicity had fructified; so it was that the ivory tower, visible and admirable doubtless, from any point of the social field, had risen stage by stage. maggie’s actual reluctance to ask herself with proportionate sharpness why she had ceased to take comfort in the sight of it represented accordingly a lapse from that ideal consistency on which her moral comfort almost at any time depended. to remain consistent she had always been capable of cutting down more or less her prior term. moving for the first time in her life as in the darkening shadow of a false position, she reflected that she should either not have ceased to be right--that is, to be confident--or have recognised that she was wrong; though she tried to deal with herself, for a space, only as a silken-coated spaniel who has scrambled out of a pond and who rattles the water from his ears. her shake of her head, again and again, as she went, was much of that order, and she had the resource, to which, save for the rude equivalent of his generalising bark, the spaniel would have been a stranger, of humming to herself hard as a sign that nothing had happened to her. she had not, so to speak, fallen in; she had had no accident and had not got wet; this at any rate was her pretension until after she began a little to wonder if she mightn’t, with or without exposure, have taken cold. she could at all events remember no time at which she had felt so excited, and certainly none--which was another special point--that so brought with it as well the necessity for concealing excitement. this birth of a new eagerness became a high pastime, in her view, precisely by reason of the ingenuity required for keeping the thing born out of sight. the ingenuity was thus a private and absorbing exercise, in the light of which, might i so far multiply my metaphors, i should compare her to the frightened but clinging young mother of an unlawful child. the idea that had possession of her would be, by our new analogy, the proof of her misadventure, but likewise, all the while, only another sign of a relation that was more to her than anything on earth. she had lived long enough to make out for herself that any deep-seated passion has its pangs as well as its joys, and that we are made by its aches and its anxieties most richly conscious of it. she had never doubted of the force of the feeling that bound her to her husband; but to become aware, almost suddenly, that it had begun to vibrate with a violence that had some of the effect of a strain would, rightly looked at, after all but show that she was, like thousands of women, every day, acting up to the full privilege of passion. why in the world shouldn’t she, with every right--if, on consideration, she saw no good reason against it? the best reason against it would have been the possibility of some consequence disagreeable or inconvenient to others-- especially to such others as had never incommoded her by the egotism of their passions; but if once that danger were duly guarded against the fulness of one’s measure amounted to no more than the equal use of one’s faculties or the proper playing of one’s part. it had come to the princess, obscurely at first, but little by little more conceivably, that her faculties had not for a good while been concomitantly used; the case resembled in a manner that of her once-loved dancing, a matter of remembered steps that had grown vague from her ceasing to go to balls. she would go to balls again--that seemed, freely, even crudely, stated, the remedy; she would take out of the deep receptacles in which she had laid them away the various ornaments congruous with the greater occasions, and of which her store, she liked to think, was none of the smallest. she would have been easily to be figured for us at this occupation; dipping, at off moments and quiet hours, in snatched visits and by draughty candle-light, into her rich collections and seeing her jewels again a little shyly, but all unmistakably, glow. that in fact may pass as the very picture of her semi-smothered agitation, of the diversion she to some extent successfully found in referring her crisis, so far as was possible, to the mere working of her own needs. it must be added, however, that she would have been at a loss to determine--and certainly at first--to which order, that of self-control or that of large expression, the step she had taken the afternoon of her husband’s return from matcham with his companion properly belonged. for it had been a step, distinctly, on maggie’s part, her deciding to do something, just then and there, which would strike amerigo as unusual, and this even though her departure from custom had merely consisted in her so arranging that he wouldn’t find her, as he would definitely expect to do, in eaton square. he would have, strangely enough, as might seem to him, to come back home for it, and there get the impression of her rather pointedly, or at least all impatiently and independently, awaiting him. these were small variations and mild manoeuvres, but they went accompanied on maggie’s part, as we have mentioned, with an infinite sense of intention. her watching by his fireside for her husband’s return from an absence might superficially have presented itself as the most natural act in the world, and the only one, into the bargain, on which he would positively have reckoned. it fell by this circumstance into the order of plain matters, and yet the very aspect by which it was, in the event, handed over to her brooding fancy was the fact that she had done with it all she had designed. she had put her thought to the proof, and the proof had shown its edge; this was what was before her, that she was no longer playing with blunt and idle tools, with weapons that didn’t cut. there passed across her vision ten times a day the gleam of a bare blade, and at this it was that she most shut her eyes, most knew the impulse to cheat herself with motion and sound. she had merely driven, on a certain wednesday, to portland place, instead of remaining in eaton square, and she privately repeated it again and again--there had appeared beforehand no reason why she should have seen the mantle of history flung, by a single sharp sweep, over so commonplace a deed. that, all the same, was what had happened; it had been bitten into her mind, all in an hour, that nothing she had ever done would hereafter, in some way yet to be determined, so count for her--perhaps not even what she had done in accepting, in their old golden rome, amerigo’s proposal of marriage. and yet, by her little crouching posture there, that of a timid tigress, she had meant nothing recklessly ultimate, nothing clumsily fundamental; so that she called it names, the invidious, the grotesque attitude, holding it up to her own ridicule, reducing so far as she could the portee of what had followed it. she had but wanted to get nearer--nearer to something indeed that she couldn’t, that she wouldn’t, even to herself, describe; and the degree of this achieved nearness was what had been in advance incalculable. her actual multiplication of distractions and suppressions, whatever it did for her, failed to prevent her living over again any chosen minute--for she could choose them, she could fix them--of the freshness of relation produced by her having administered to her husband the first surprise to which she had ever treated him. it had been a poor thing, but it had been all her own, and the whole passage was backwardly there, a great picture hung on the wall of her daily life, for her to make what she would of. it fell, for retrospect, into a succession of moments that were watchable still; almost in the manner of the different things done during a scene on the stage, some scene so acted as to have left a great impression on the tenant of one of the stalls. several of these moments stood out beyond the others, and those she could feel again most, count again like the firm pearls on a string, had belonged more particularly to the lapse of time before dinner--dinner which had been so late, quite at nine o’clock, that evening, thanks to the final lateness of amerigo’s own advent. these were parts of the experience--though in fact there had been a good many of them--between which her impression could continue sharply to discriminate. before the subsequent passages, much later on, it was to be said, the flame of memory turned to an equalising glow, that of a lamp in some side-chapel in which incense was thick. the great moment, at any rate, for conscious repossession, was doubtless the first: the strange little timed silence which she had fully gauged, on the spot, as altogether beyond her own intention, but which--for just how long? should she ever really know for just how long?--she could do nothing to break. she was in the smaller drawing-room, in which she always “sat,” and she had, by calculation, dressed for dinner on finally coming in. it was a wonder how many things she had calculated in respect to this small incident--a matter for the importance of which she had so quite indefinite a measure. he would be late--he would be very late; that was the one certainty that seemed to look her in the face. there was still also the possibility that if he drove with charlotte straight to eaton square he might think it best to remain there even on learning she had come away. she had left no message for him on any such chance; this was another of her small shades of decision, though the effect of it might be to keep him still longer absent. he might suppose she would already have dined; he might stay, with all he would have to tell, just on purpose to be nice to her father. she had known him to stretch the point, to these beautiful ends, far beyond that; he had more than once stretched it to the sacrifice of the opportunity of dressing. if she herself had now avoided any such sacrifice, and had made herself, during the time at her disposal, quite inordinately fresh and quite positively smart, this had probably added, while she waited and waited, to that very tension of spirit in which she was afterwards to find the image of her having crouched. she did her best, quite intensely, by herself, to banish any such appearance; she couldn’t help it if she couldn’t read her pale novel--ah, that, par exemple, was beyond her! but she could at least sit by the lamp with the book, sit there with her newest frock, worn for the first time, sticking out, all round her, quite stiff and grand; even perhaps a little too stiff and too grand for a familiar and domestic frock, yet marked none the less, this time, she ventured to hope, by incontestable intrinsic merit. she had glanced repeatedly at the clock, but she had refused herself the weak indulgence of walking up and down, though the act of doing so, she knew, would make her feel, on the polished floor, with the rustle and the “hang,” still more beautifully bedecked. the difficulty was that it would also make her feel herself still more sharply in a state; which was exactly what she proposed not to do. the only drops of her anxiety had been when her thought strayed complacently, with her eyes, to the front of her gown, which was in a manner a refuge, a beguilement, especially when she was able to fix it long enough to wonder if it would at last really satisfy charlotte. she had ever been, in respect to her clothes, rather timorous and uncertain; for the last year, above all, she had lived in the light of charlotte’s possible and rather inscrutable judgment of them. charlotte’s own were simply the most charming and interesting that any woman had ever put on; there was a kind of poetic justice in her being at last able, in this particular, thanks to means, thanks quite to omnipotence, freely to exercise her genius. but maggie would have described herself as, in these connections, constantly and intimately “torn”; conscious on one side of the impossibility of copying her companion and conscious on the other of the impossibility of sounding her, independently, to the bottom. yes, it was one of the things she should go down to her grave without having known--how charlotte, after all had been said, really thought her stepdaughter looked under any supposedly ingenious personal experiment. she had always been lovely about the stepdaughter’s material braveries--had done, for her, the very best with them; but there had ever fitfully danced at the back of maggie’s head the suspicion that these expressions were mercies, not judgments, embodying no absolute, but only a relative, frankness. hadn’t charlotte, with so perfect a critical vision, if the truth were known, given her up as hopeless--hopeless by a serious standard, and thereby invented for her a different and inferior one, in which, as the only thing to be done, she patiently and soothingly abetted her? hadn’t she, in other words, assented in secret despair, perhaps even in secret irritation, to her being ridiculous?--so that the best now possible was to wonder, once in a great while, whether one mightn’t give her the surprise of something a little less out of the true note than usual. something of this kind was the question that maggie, while the absentees still delayed, asked of the appearance she was endeavouring to present; but with the result, repeatedly again, that it only went and lost itself in the thick air that had begun more and more to hang, for our young woman, over her accumulations of the unanswered. they were there, these accumulations; they were like a roomful of confused objects, never as yet “sorted,” which for some time now she had been passing and re-passing, along the corridor of her life. she passed it when she could without opening the door; then, on occasion, she turned the key to throw in a fresh contribution. so it was that she had been getting things out of the way. they rejoined the rest of the confusion; it was as if they found their place, by some instinct of affinity, in the heap. they knew, in short, where to go; and when she, at present, by a mental act, once more pushed the door open, she had practically a sense of method and experience. what she should never know about charlotte’s thought--she tossed that in. it would find itself in company, and she might at last have been standing there long enough to see it fall into its corner. the sight moreover would doubtless have made her stare, had her attention been more free--the sight of the mass of vain things, congruous, incongruous, that awaited every addition. it made her in fact, with a vague gasp, turn away, and what had further determined this was the final sharp extinction of the inward scene by the outward. the quite different door had opened and her husband was there. it had been as strange as she could consent, afterwards, to think it; it had been, essentially, what had made the abrupt bend in her life: he had come back, had followed her from the other house, visibly uncertain--this was written in the face he for the first minute showed her. it had been written only for those seconds, and it had appeared to go, quickly, after they began to talk; but while it lasted it had been written large, and, though she didn’t quite know what she had expected of him, she felt she hadn’t expected the least shade of embarrassment. what had made the embarrassment--she called it embarrassment so as to be able to assure herself she put it at the very worst--what had made the particular look was his thus distinguishably wishing to see how he should find her. why first--that had, later on, kept coming to her; the question dangled there as if it were the key to everything. with the sense of it on the spot, she had felt, overwhelmingly, that she was significant, that so she must instantly strike him, and that this had a kind of violence beyond what she had intended. it was in fact even at the moment not absent from her view that he might easily have made an abject fool of her--at least for the time. she had indeed, for just ten seconds, been afraid of some such turn: the uncertainty in his face had become so, the next thing, an uncertainty in the very air. three words of impatience the least bit loud, some outbreak of “what in the world are you ‘up to’, and what do you mean?” any note of that sort would instantly have brought her low--and this all the more that heaven knew she hadn’t in any manner designed to be high. it was such a trifle, her small breach with custom, or at any rate with his natural presumption, that all magnitude of wonder had already had, before one could deprecate the shadow of it, the effect of a complication. it had made for him some difference that she couldn’t measure, this meeting him at home and alone instead of elsewhere and with others, and back and back it kept coming to her that the blankness he showed her before he was able to see might, should she choose to insist on it, have a meaning--have, as who should say, an historic value--beyond the importance of momentary expressions in general. she had naturally had on the spot no ready notion of what he might want to see; it was enough for a ready notion, not to speak of a beating heart, that he did see, that he saw his wife in her own drawing-room at the hour when she would most properly be there. he hadn’t in any way challenged her, it was true, and, after those instants during which she now believed him to have been harbouring the impression of something unusually prepared and pointed in her attitude and array, he had advanced upon her smiling and smiling, and thus, without hesitation at the last, had taken her into his arms. the hesitation had been at the first, and she at present saw that he had surmounted it without her help. she had given him no help; for if, on the one hand, she couldn’t speak for hesitation, so on the other--and especially as he didn’t ask her--she couldn’t explain why she was agitated. she had known it all the while down to her toes, known it in his presence with fresh intensity, and if he had uttered but a question it would have pressed in her the spring of recklessness. it had been strange that the most natural thing of all to say to him should have had that appearance; but she was more than ever conscious that any appearance she had would come round, more or less straight, to her father, whose life was now so quiet, on the basis accepted for it, that any alteration of his consciousness even in the possible sense of enlivenment, would make their precious equilibrium waver. that was at the bottom of her mind, that their equilibrium was everything, and that it was practically precarious, a matter of a hair’s breadth for the loss of the balance. it was the equilibrium, or at all events her conscious fear about it, that had brought her heart into her mouth; and the same fear was, on either side, in the silent look she and amerigo had exchanged. the happy balance that demanded this amount of consideration was truly thus, as by its own confession, a delicate matter; but that her husband had also his habit of anxiety and his general caution only brought them, after all, more closely together. it would have been most beautifully, therefore, in the name of the equilibrium, and in that of her joy at their feeling so exactly the same about it, that she might have spoken if she had permitted the truth on the subject of her behaviour to ring out--on the subject of that poor little behaviour which was for the moment so very limited a case of eccentricity. “‘why, why’ have i made this evening such a point of our not all dining together? well, because i’ve all day been so wanting you alone that i finally couldn’t bear it, and that there didn’t seem any great reason why i should try to. that came to me--funny as it may at first sound, with all the things we’ve so wonderfully got into the way of bearing for each other. you’ve seemed these last days--i don’t know what: more absent than ever before, too absent for us merely to go on so. it’s all very well, and i perfectly see how beautiful it is, all round; but there comes a day when something snaps, when the full cup, filled to the very brim, begins to flow over. that’s what has happened to my need of you--the cup, all day, has been too full to carry. so here i am with it, spilling it over you--and just for the reason that is the reason of my life. after all, i’ve scarcely to explain that i’m as much in love with you now as the first hour; except that there are some hours--which i know when they come, because they almost frighten me--that show me i’m even more so. they come of themselves--and, ah, they’ve been coming! after all, after all--!” some such words as those were what didn’t ring out, yet it was as if even the unuttered sound had been quenched here in its own quaver. it was where utterance would have broken down by its very weight if he had let it get so far. without that extremity, at the end of a moment, he had taken in what he needed to take--that his wife was testifying, that she adored and missed and desired him. “after all, after all,” since she put it so, she was right. that was what he had to respond to; that was what, from the moment that, as has been said, he “saw,” he had to treat as the most pertinent thing possible. he held her close and long, in expression of their personal reunion--this, obviously, was one way of doing so. he rubbed his cheek, tenderly, and with a deep vague murmur, against her face, that side of her face she was not pressing to his breast. that was, not less obviously, another way, and there were ways enough, in short, for his extemporised ease, for the good humour she was afterwards to find herself thinking of as his infinite tact. this last was partly, no doubt, because the question of tact might be felt as having come up at the end of a quarter of an hour during which he had liberally talked and she had genially questioned. he had told her of his day, the happy thought of his roundabout journey with charlotte, all their cathedral-hunting adventure, and how it had turned out rather more of an affair than they expected. the moral of it was, at any rate, that he was tired, verily, and must have a bath and dress--to which end she would kindly excuse him for the shortest time possible. she was to remember afterwards something that had passed between them on this--how he had looked, for her, during an instant, at the door, before going out, how he had met her asking him, in hesitation first, then quickly in decision, whether she couldn’t help him by going up with him. he had perhaps also for a moment hesitated, but he had declined her offer, and she was to preserve, as i say, the memory of the smile with which he had opined that at that rate they wouldn’t dine till ten o’clock and that he should go straighter and faster alone. such things, as i say, were to come back to her--they played, through her full after-sense, like lights on the whole impression; the subsequent parts of the experience were not to have blurred their distinctness. one of these subsequent parts, the first, had been the not inconsiderable length, to her later and more analytic consciousness, of this second wait for her husband’s reappearance. she might certainly, with the best will in the world, had she gone up with him, have been more in his way than not, since people could really, almost always, hurry better without help than with it. still, she could actually hardly have made him take more time than he struck her taking, though it must indeed be added that there was now in this much-thinking little person’s state of mind no mere crudity of impatience. something had happened, rapidly, with the beautiful sight of him and with the drop of her fear of having annoyed him by making him go to and fro. subsidence of the fearsome, for maggie’s spirit, was always, at first, positive emergence of the sweet, and it was long since anything had been so sweet to her as the particular quality suddenly given by her present emotion to the sense of possession. xxvi amerigo was away from her again, as she sat there, as she walked there without him--for she had, with the difference of his presence in the house, ceased to keep herself from moving about; but the hour was filled nevertheless with the effect of his nearness, and above all with the effect, strange in an intimacy so established, of an almost renewed vision of the facts of his aspect. she had seen him last but five days since, yet he had stood there before her as if restored from some far country, some long voyage, some combination of dangers or fatigues. this unquenchable variety in his appeal to her interest, what did it mean but that--reduced to the flatness of mere statement--she was married, by good fortune, to an altogether dazzling person? that was an old, old story, but the truth of it shone out to her like the beauty of some family picture, some mellow portrait of an ancestor, that she might have been looking at, almost in surprise, after a long intermission. the dazzling person was upstairs and she was down, and there were moreover the other facts of the selection and decision that this demonstration of her own had required, and of the constant care that the equilibrium involved; but she had, all the same, never felt so absorbingly married, so abjectly conscious of a master of her fate. he could do what he would with her; in fact what was actually happening was that he was actually doing it. “what he would,” what he really would--only that quantity itself escaped perhaps, in the brightness of the high harmony, familiar naming and discussing. it was enough of a recognition for her that, whatever the thing he might desire, he would always absolutely bring it off. she knew at this moment, without a question, with the fullest surrender, how he had brought off, in her, by scarce more than a single allusion, a perfect flutter of tenderness. if he had come back tired, tired from his long day, the exertion had been, literally, in her service and her father’s. they two had sat at home at peace, the principino between them, the complications of life kept down, the bores sifted out, the large ease of the home preserved, because of the way the others held the field and braved the weather. amerigo never complained--any more than, for that matter, charlotte did; but she seemed to see to-night as she had never yet quite done that their business of social representation, conceived as they conceived it, beyond any conception of her own, and conscientiously carried out, was an affair of living always in harness. she remembered fanny assingham’s old judgment, that friend’s description of her father and herself as not living at all, as not knowing what to do or what might be done for them; and there came back to her with it an echo of the long talk they had had together, one september day at fawns, under the trees, when she put before him this dictum of fanny’s. that occasion might have counted for them--she had already often made the reflection--as the first step in an existence more intelligently arranged. it had been an hour from which the chain of causes and consequences was definitely traceable--so many things, and at the head of the list her father’s marriage, having appeared to her to flow from charlotte’s visit to fawns, and that event itself having flowed from the memorable talk. but what perhaps most came out in the light of these concatenations was that it had been, for all the world, as if charlotte had been “had in,” as the servants always said of extra help, because they had thus suffered it to be pointed out to them that if their family coach lumbered and stuck the fault was in its lacking its complement of wheels. having but three, as they might say, it had wanted another, and what had charlotte done from the first but begin to act, on the spot, and ever so smoothly and beautifully, as a fourth? nothing had been, immediately, more manifest than the greater grace of the movement of the vehicle--as to which, for the completeness of her image, maggie was now supremely to feel how every strain had been lightened for herself. so far as she was one of the wheels she had but to keep in her place; since the work was done for her she felt no weight, and it wasn’t too much to acknowledge that she had scarce to turn round. she had a long pause before the fire during which she might have been fixing with intensity her projected vision, have been conscious even of its taking an absurd, fantastic shape. she might have been watching the family coach pass and noting that, somehow, amerigo and charlotte were pulling it while she and her father were not so much as pushing. they were seated inside together, dandling the principino and holding him up to the windows, to see and be seen, like an infant positively royal; so that the exertion was all with the others. maggie found in this image a repeated challenge; again and yet again she paused before the fire: after which, each time, in the manner of one for whom a strong light has suddenly broken, she gave herself to livelier movement. she had seen herself at last, in the picture she was studying, suddenly jump from the coach; whereupon, frankly, with the wonder of the sight, her eyes opened wider and her heart stood still for a moment. she looked at the person so acting as if this person were somebody else, waiting with intensity to see what would follow. the person had taken a decision--which was evidently because an impulse long gathering had at last felt a sharpest pressure. only how was the decision to be applied?--what, in particular, would the figure in the picture do? she looked about her, from the middle of the room, under the force of this question, as if there, exactly, were the field of action involved. then, as the door opened again, she recognised, whatever the action, the form, at any rate, of a first opportunity. her husband had reappeared--he stood before her refreshed, almost radiant, quite reassuring. dressed, anointed, fragrant, ready, above all, for his dinner, he smiled at her over the end of their delay. it was as if her opportunity had depended on his look--and now she saw that it was good. there was still, for the instant, something in suspense, but it passed more quickly than on his previous entrance. he was already holding out his arms. it was, for hours and hours, later on, as if she had somehow been lifted aloft, were floated and carried on some warm high tide beneath which stumbling blocks had sunk out of sight. this came from her being again, for the time, in the enjoyment of confidence, from her knowing, as she believed, what to do. all the next day, and all the next, she appeared to herself to know it. she had a plan, and she rejoiced in her plan: this consisted of the light that, suddenly breaking into her restless reverie, had marked the climax of that vigil. it had come to her as a question--“what if i’ve abandoned them, you know? what if i’ve accepted too passively the funny form of our life?” there would be a process of her own by which she might do differently in respect to amerigo and charlotte--a process quite independent of any process of theirs. such a solution had but to rise before her to affect her, to charm her, with its simplicity, an advantageous simplicity she had been stupid, for so long, not to have been struck by; and the simplicity meanwhile seemed proved by the success that had already begun to attend her. she had only had herself to do something to see how immediately it answered. this consciousness of its having answered with her husband was the uplifting, sustaining wave. he had “met” her--she so put it to herself; met her with an effect of generosity and of gaiety, in especial, on his coming back to her ready for dinner, which she wore in her breast as the token of an escape for them both from something not quite definite, but clearly, much less good. even at that moment, in fact, her plan had begun to work; she had been, when he brightly reappeared, in the act of plucking it out of the heart of her earnestness--plucking it, in the garden of thought, as if it had been some full-blown flower that she could present to him on the spot. well, it was the flower of participation, and as that, then and there, she held it out to him, putting straightway into execution the idea, so needlessly, so absurdly obscured, of her sharing with him, whatever the enjoyment, the interest, the experience might be--and sharing also, for that matter, with charlotte. she had thrown herself, at dinner, into every feature of the recent adventure of the companions, letting him see, without reserve, that she wished to hear everything about it, and making charlotte in particular, charlotte’s judgment of matcham, charlotte’s aspect, her success there, her effect traceably produced, her clothes inimitably worn, her cleverness gracefully displayed, her social utility, in fine, brilliantly exemplified, the subject of endless inquiry. maggie’s inquiry was most empathetic, moreover, for the whole happy thought of the cathedral-hunt, which she was so glad they had entertained, and as to the pleasant results of which, down to the cold beef and bread-and-cheese, the queer old smell and the dirty table-cloth at the inn, amerigo was good-humouredly responsive. he had looked at her across the table, more than once, as if touched by the humility of this welcome offered to impressions at second-hand, the amusements, the large freedoms only of others--as if recognising in it something fairly exquisite; and at the end, while they were alone, before she had rung for a servant, he had renewed again his condonation of the little irregularity, such as it was, on which she had ventured. they had risen together to come upstairs; he had been talking at the last about some of the people, at the very last of all about lady castledean and mr. blint; after which she had once more broken ground on the matter of the “type” of gloucester. it brought her, as he came round the table to join her, yet another of his kind conscious stares, one of the looks, visibly beguiled, but at the same time not invisibly puzzled, with which he had already shown his sense of this charming grace of her curiosity. it was as if he might for a moment be going to say:--“you needn’t pretend, dearest, quite so hard, needn’t think it necessary to care quite so much!”--it was as if he stood there before her with some such easy intelligence, some such intimate reassurance, on his lips. her answer would have been all ready--that she wasn’t in the least pretending; and she looked up at him, while he took her hand, with the maintenance, the real persistence, of her lucid little plan in her eyes. she wanted him to understand from that very moment that she was going to be with him again, quite with them, together, as she doubtless hadn’t been since the “funny” changes--that was really all one could call them--into which they had each, as for the sake of the others, too easily and too obligingly slipped. they had taken too much for granted that their life together required, as people in london said, a special “form”--which was very well so long as the form was kept only for the outside world and was made no more of among themselves than the pretty mould of an iced pudding, or something of that sort, into which, to help yourself, you didn’t hesitate to break with the spoon. so much as that she would, with an opening, have allowed herself furthermore to observe; she wanted him to understand how her scheme embraced charlotte too; so that if he had but uttered the acknowledgment she judged him on the point of making--the acknowledgment of his catching at her brave little idea for their case--she would have found herself, as distinctly, voluble almost to eloquence. what befell, however, was that even while she thus waited she felt herself present at a process taking place rather deeper within him than the occasion, on the whole, appeared to require--a process of weighing something in the balance, of considering, deciding, dismissing. he had guessed that she was there with an idea, there in fact by reason of her idea; only this, oddly enough, was what at the last stayed his words. she was helped to these perceptions by his now looking at her still harder than he had yet done--which really brought it to the turn of a hair, for her, that she didn’t make sure his notion of her idea was the right one. it was the turn of a hair, because he had possession of her hands and was bending toward her, ever so kindly, as if to see, to understand, more, or possibly give more--she didn’t know which; and that had the effect of simply putting her, as she would have said, in his power. she gave up, let her idea go, let everything go; her one consciousness was that he was taking her again into his arms. it was not till afterwards that she discriminated as to this; felt how the act operated with him instead of the words he hadn’t uttered--operated, in his view, as probably better than any words, as always better, in fact, at any time, than anything. her acceptance of it, her response to it, inevitable, foredoomed, came back to her, later on, as a virtual assent to the assumption he had thus made that there was really nothing such a demonstration didn’t anticipate and didn’t dispose of, and that the spring acting within herself moreover might well have been, beyond any other, the impulse legitimately to provoke it. it made, for any issue, the third time since his return that he had drawn her to his breast; and at present, holding her to his side as they left the room, he kept her close for their moving into the hall and across it, kept her for their slow return together to the apartments above. he had been right, overwhelmingly right, as to the felicity of his tenderness and the degree of her sensibility, but even while she felt these things sweep all others away she tasted of a sort of terror of the weakness they produced in her. it was still, for her, that she had positively something to do, and that she mustn’t be weak for this, must much rather be strong. for many hours after, none the less, she remained weak--if weak it was; though holding fast indeed to the theory of her success, since her agitated overture had been, after all, so unmistakably met. she recovered soon enough on the whole, the sense that this left her charlotte always to deal with--charlotte who, at any rate, however she might meet overtures, must meet them, at the worst, more or less differently. of that inevitability, of such other ranges of response as were open to charlotte, maggie took the measure in approaching her, on the morrow of her return from matcham, with the same show of desire to hear all her story. she wanted the whole picture from her, as she had wanted it from her companion, and, promptly, in eaton square, whither, without the prince, she repaired, almost ostentatiously, for the purpose, this purpose only, she brought her repeatedly back to the subject, both in her husband’s presence and during several scraps of independent colloquy. before her father, instinctively, maggie took the ground that his wish for interesting echoes would be not less than her own--allowing, that is, for everything his wife would already have had to tell him, for such passages, between them, as might have occurred since the evening before. joining them after luncheon, reaching them, in her desire to proceed with the application of her idea, before they had quitted the breakfast-room, the scene of their mid-day meal, she referred, in her parent’s presence, to what she might have lost by delay, and expressed the hope that there would be an anecdote or two left for her to pick up. charlotte was dressed to go out, and her husband, it appeared, rather positively prepared not to; he had left the table, but was seated near the fire with two or three of the morning papers and the residuum of the second and third posts on a stand beside him--more even than the usual extravagance, as maggie’s glance made out, of circulars, catalogues, advertisements, announcements of sales, foreign envelopes and foreign handwritings that were as unmistakable as foreign clothes. charlotte, at the window, looking into the side-street that abutted on the square, might have been watching for their visitor’s advent before withdrawing; and in the light, strange and coloured, like that of a painted picture, which fixed the impression for her, objects took on values not hitherto so fully shown. it was the effect of her quickened sensibility; she knew herself again in presence of a problem, in need of a solution for which she must intensely work: that consciousness, lately born in her, had been taught the evening before to accept a temporary lapse, but had quickly enough again, with her getting out of her own house and her walking across half the town--for she had come from portland place on foot--found breath still in its lungs. it exhaled this breath in a sigh, faint and unheard; her tribute, while she stood there before speaking, to realities looming through the golden mist that had already begun to be scattered. the conditions facing her had yielded, for the time, to the golden mist--had considerably melted away; but there they were again, definite, and it was for the next quarter of an hour as if she could have counted them one by one on her fingers. sharp to her above all was the renewed attestation of her father’s comprehensive acceptances, which she had so long regarded as of the same quality with her own, but which, so distinctly now, she should have the complication of being obliged to deal with separately. they had not yet struck her as absolutely extraordinary--which had made for her lumping them with her own, since her view of her own had but so lately begun to change; though it instantly stood out for her that there was really no new judgment of them she should be able to show without attracting in some degree his attention, without perhaps exciting his surprise and making thereby, for the situation she shared with him, some difference. she was reminded and warned by the concrete image; and for a minute charlotte’s face, immediately presented to her, affected her as searching her own to see the reminder tell. she had not less promptly kissed her stepmother, and then had bent over her father, from behind, and laid her cheek upon him; little amenities tantamount heretofore to an easy change of guard--charlotte’s own frequent, though always cheerful, term of comparison for this process of transfer. maggie figured thus as the relieving sentry, and so smoothly did use and custom work for them that her mate might even, on this occasion, after acceptance of the pass-word, have departed without irrelevant and, in strictness, unsoldierly gossip. this was not, none the less, what happened; inasmuch as if our young woman had been floated over her first impulse to break the existing charm at a stroke, it yet took her but an instant to sound, at any risk, the note she had been privately practising. if she had practised it the day before, at dinner, on amerigo, she knew but the better how to begin for it with mrs. verver, and it immensely helped her, for that matter, to be able at once to speak of the prince as having done more to quicken than to soothe her curiosity. frankly and gaily she had come to ask--to ask what, in their unusually prolonged campaign, the two had achieved. she had got out of her husband, she admitted, what she could, but husbands were never the persons who answered such questions ideally. he had only made her more curious, and she had arrived early, this way, in order to miss as little as possible of charlotte’s story. “wives, papa,” she said; “are always much better reporters--though i grant,” she added for charlotte, “that fathers are not much better than husbands. he never,” she smiled, “tells me more than a tenth of what you tell him; so i hope you haven’t told him everything yet, since in that case i shall probably have lost the best part of it.” maggie went, she went--she felt herself going; she reminded herself of an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text. it was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept her up, made her rise higher: just as it was the sense of action that logically involved some platform--action quite positively for the first time in her life, or, counting in the previous afternoon, for the second. the platform remained for three or four days thus sensibly under her feet, and she had all the while, with it, the inspiration of quite remarkably, of quite heroically improvising. preparation and practice had come but a short way; her part opened out, and she invented from moment to moment what to say and to do. she had but one rule of art--to keep within bounds and not lose her head; certainly she might see for a week how far that would take her. she said to herself, in her excitement, that it was perfectly simple: to bring about a difference, touch by touch, without letting either of the three, and least of all her father, so much as suspect her hand. if they should suspect they would want a reason, and the humiliating truth was that she wasn’t ready with a reason--not, that is, with what she would have called a reasonable one. she thought of herself, instinctively, beautifully, as having dealt, all her life, at her father’s side and by his example, only in reasonable reasons; and what she would really have been most ashamed of would be to produce for him, in this line, some inferior substitute. unless she were in a position to plead, definitely, that she was jealous she should be in no position to plead, decently, that she was dissatisfied. this latter condition would be a necessary implication of the former; without the former behind it it would have to fall to the ground. so had the case, wonderfully, been arranged for her; there was a card she could play, but there was only one, and to play it would be to end the game. she felt herself--as at the small square green table, between the tall old silver candlesticks and the neatly arranged counters--her father’s playmate and partner; and what it constantly came back to, in her mind, was that for her to ask a question, to raise a doubt, to reflect in any degree on the play of the others, would be to break the charm. the charm she had to call it, since it kept her companion so constantly engaged, so perpetually seated and so contentedly occupied. to say anything at all would be, in fine, to have to say why she was jealous; and she could, in her private hours, but stare long, with suffused eyes, at that impossibility. by the end of a week, the week that had begun, especially, with her morning hour, in eaton square, between her father and his wife, her consciousness of being beautifully treated had become again verily greater than her consciousness of anything else; and i must add, moreover, that she at last found herself rather oddly wondering what else, as a consciousness, could have been quite so overwhelming. charlotte’s response to the experiment of being more with her ought, as she very well knew, to have stamped the experiment with the feeling of success; so that if the success itself seemed a boon less substantial than the original image of it, it enjoyed thereby a certain analogy with our young woman’s aftertaste of amerigo’s own determined demonstrations. maggie was to have retained, for that matter, more than one aftertaste, and if i have spoken of the impressions fixed in her as soon as she had, so insidiously, taken the field, a definite note must be made of her perception, during those moments, of charlotte’s prompt uncertainty. she had shown, no doubt--she couldn’t not have shown--that she had arrived with an idea; quite exactly as she had shown her husband, the night before, that she was awaiting him with a sentiment. this analogy in the two situations was to keep up for her the remembrance of a kinship of expression in the two faces in respect to which all she as yet professed to herself was that she had affected them, or at any rate the sensibility each of them so admirably covered, in the same way. to make the comparison at all was, for maggie, to return to it often, to brood upon it, to extract from it the last dregs of its interest--to play with it, in short, nervously, vaguely, incessantly, as she might have played with a medallion containing on either side a cherished little portrait and suspended round her neck by a gold chain of a firm fineness that no effort would ever snap. the miniatures were back to back, but she saw them forever face to face, and when she looked from one to the other she found in charlotte’s eyes the gleam of the momentary “what does she really want?” that had come and gone for her in the prince’s. so again, she saw the other light, the light touched into a glow both in portland place and in eaton square, as soon as she had betrayed that she wanted no harm--wanted no greater harm of charlotte, that is, than to take in that she meant to go out with her. she had been present at that process as personally as she might have been present at some other domestic incident--the hanging of a new picture, say, or the fitting of the principino with his first little trousers. she remained present, accordingly, all the week, so charmingly and systematically did mrs. verver now welcome her company. charlotte had but wanted the hint, and what was it but the hint, after all, that, during the so subdued but so ineffaceable passage in the breakfast-room, she had seen her take? it had been taken moreover not with resignation, not with qualifications or reserves, however bland; it had been taken with avidity, with gratitude, with a grace of gentleness that supplanted explanations. the very liberality of this accommodation might indeed have appeared in the event to give its own account of the matter--as if it had fairly written the princess down as a person of variations and had accordingly conformed but to a rule of tact in accepting these caprices for law. the caprice actually prevailing happened to be that the advent of one of the ladies anywhere should, till the fit had changed, become the sign, unfailingly, of the advent of the other; and it was emblazoned, in rich colour, on the bright face of this period, that mrs. verver only wished to know, on any occasion, what was expected of her, only held herself there for instructions, in order even to better them if possible. the two young women, while the passage lasted, became again very much the companions of other days, the days of charlotte’s prolonged visits to the admiring and bountiful maggie, the days when equality of condition for them had been all the result of the latter’s native vagueness about her own advantages. the earlier elements flushed into life again, the frequency, the intimacy, the high pitch of accompanying expression--appreciation, endearment, confidence; the rarer charm produced in each by this active contribution to the felicity of the other: all enhanced, furthermore--enhanced or qualified, who should say which?--by a new note of diplomacy, almost of anxiety, just sensible on charlotte’s part in particular; of intensity of observance, in the matter of appeal and response, in the matter of making sure the princess might be disposed or gratified, that resembled an attempt to play again, with more refinement, at disparity of relation. charlotte’s attitude had, in short, its moments of flowering into pretty excesses of civility, self-effacements in the presence of others, sudden little formalisms of suggestion and recognition, that might have represented her sense of the duty of not “losing sight” of a social distinction. this impression came out most for maggie when, in their easier intervals, they had only themselves to regard, and when her companion’s inveteracy of never passing first, of not sitting till she was seated, of not interrupting till she appeared to give leave, of not forgetting, too, familiarly, that in addition to being important she was also sensitive, had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of silver tissue of decorum. it hung there above them like a canopy of state, a reminder that though the lady-in-waiting was an established favourite, safe in her position, a little queen, however, good-natured, was always a little queen and might, with small warning, remember it. and yet another of these concomitants of feverish success, all the while, was the perception that in another quarter too things were being made easy. charlotte’s alacrity in meeting her had, in one sense, operated slightly overmuch as an intervention: it had begun to reabsorb her at the very hour of her husband’s showing her that, to be all there, as the phrase was, he likewise only required--as one of the other phrases was too--the straight tip. she had heard him talk about the straight tip, in his moods of amusement at english slang, in his remarkable displays of assimilative power, power worthy of better causes and higher inspirations; and he had taken it from her, at need, in a way that, certainly in the first glow of relief, had made her brief interval seem large. then, however, immediately, and even though superficially, there had declared itself a readjustment of relations to which she was, once more, practically a little sacrificed. “i must do everything,” she had said, “without letting papa see what i do--at least till it’s done!” but she scarce knew how she proposed, even for the next few days, to blind or beguile this participant in her life. what had in fact promptly enough happened, she presently recognised, was that if her stepmother had beautifully taken possession of her, and if she had virtually been rather snatched again thereby from her husband’s side, so, on the other hand, this had, with as little delay, entailed some very charming assistance for her in eaton square. when she went home with charlotte, from whatever happy demonstration, for the benefit of the world in which they supposed themselves to live, that there was no smallest reason why their closer association shouldn’t be public and acclaimed--at these times she regularly found that amerigo had come either to sit with his father-in-law in the absence of the ladies, or to make, on his side, precisely some such display of the easy working of the family life as would represent the equivalent of her excursions with charlotte. under this particular impression it was that everything in maggie most melted and went to pieces--every thing, that is, that belonged to her disposition to challenge the perfection of their common state. it divided them again, that was true, this particular turn of the tide--cut them up afresh into pairs and parties; quite as if a sense for the equilibrium was what, between them all, had most power of insistence; quite as if amerigo himself were all the while, at bottom, equally thinking of it and watching it. but, as against that, he was making her father not miss her, and he could have rendered neither of them a more excellent service. he was acting in short on a cue, the cue given him by observation; it had been enough for him to see the shade of change in her behaviour; his instinct for relations, the most exquisite conceivable, prompted him immediately to meet and match the difference, to play somehow into its hands. that was what it was, she renewedly felt, to have married a man who was, sublimely, a gentleman; so that, in spite of her not wanting to translate all their delicacies into the grossness of discussion, she yet found again and again, in portland place, moments for saying: “if i didn’t love you, you know, for yourself, i should still love you for him.” he looked at her, after such speeches, as charlotte looked, in eaton square, when she called her attention to his benevolence: through the dimness of the almost musing smile that took account of her extravagance, harmless though it might be, as a tendency to reckon with. “but my poor child,” charlotte might under this pressure have been on the point of replying, “that’s the way nice people are, all round--so that why should one be surprised about it? we’re all nice together--as why shouldn’t we be? if we hadn’t been we wouldn’t have gone far--and i consider that we’ve gone very far indeed. why should you ‘take on’ as if you weren’t a perfect dear yourself, capable of all the sweetest things?--as if you hadn’t in fact grown up in an atmosphere, the atmosphere of all the good things that i recognised, even of old, as soon as i came near you, and that you’ve allowed me now, between you, to make so blessedly my own.” mrs. verver might in fact have but just failed to make another point, a point charmingly natural to her as a grateful and irreproachable wife. “it isn’t a bit wonderful, i may also remind you, that your husband should find, when opportunity permits, worse things to do than to go about with mine. i happen, love, to appreciate my husband--i happen perfectly to understand that his acquaintance should be cultivated and his company enjoyed.” some such happily-provoked remarks as these, from charlotte, at the other house, had been in the air, but we have seen how there was also in the air, for our young woman, as an emanation from the same source, a distilled difference of which the very principle was to keep down objections and retorts. that impression came back--it had its hours of doing so; and it may interest us on the ground of its having prompted in maggie a final reflection, a reflection out of the heart of which a light flashed for her like a great flower grown in a night. as soon as this light had spread a little it produced in some quarters a surprising distinctness, made her of a sudden ask herself why there should have been even for three days the least obscurity. the perfection of her success, decidedly, was like some strange shore to which she had been noiselessly ferried and where, with a start, she found herself quaking at the thought that the boat might have put off again and left her. the word for it, the word that flashed the light, was that they were treating her, that they were proceeding with her--and, for that matter, with her father--by a plan that was the exact counterpart of her own. it was not from her that they took their cue, but--and this was what in particular made her sit up--from each other; and with a depth of unanimity, an exact coincidence of inspiration that, when once her attention had begun to fix it, struck her as staring out at her in recovered identities of behaviour, expression and tone. they had a view of her situation, and of the possible forms her own consciousness of it might take--a view determined by the change of attitude they had had, ever so subtly, to recognise in her on their return from matcham. they had had to read into this small and all-but-suppressed variation a mute comment--on they didn’t quite know what; and it now arched over the princess’s head like a vault of bold span that important communication between them on the subject couldn’t have failed of being immediate. this new perception bristled for her, as we have said, with odd intimations, but questions unanswered played in and out of it as well--the question, for instance, of why such promptitude of harmony should have been important. ah, when she began to recover, piece by piece, the process became lively; she might have been picking small shining diamonds out of the sweepings of her ordered house. she bent, in this pursuit, over her dust-bin; she challenged to the last grain the refuse of her innocent economy. then it was that the dismissed vision of amerigo, that evening, in arrest at the door of her salottino while her eyes, from her placed chair, took him in--then it was that this immense little memory gave out its full power. since the question was of doors, she had afterwards, she now saw, shut it out; she had responsibly shut in, as we have understood, shut in there with her sentient self, only the fact of his reappearance and the plenitude of his presence. these things had been testimony, after all, to supersede any other, for on the spot, even while she looked, the warmly-washing wave had travelled far up the strand. she had subsequently lived, for hours she couldn’t count, under the dizzying, smothering welter positively in submarine depths where everything came to her through walls of emerald and mother-of-pearl; though indeed she had got her head above them, for breath, when face to face with charlotte again, on the morrow, in eaton square. meanwhile, none the less, as was so apparent, the prior, the prime impression had remained, in the manner of a spying servant, on the other side of the barred threshold; a witness availing himself, in time, of the lightest pretext to re-enter. it was as if he had found this pretext in her observed necessity of comparing--comparing the obvious common elements in her husband’s and her stepmother’s ways of now “taking” her. with or without her witness, at any rate, she was led by comparison to a sense of the quantity of earnest intention operating, and operating so harmoniously, between her companions; and it was in the mitigated midnight of these approximations that she had made out the promise of her dawn. it was a worked-out scheme for their not wounding her, for their behaving to her quite nobly; to which each had, in some winning way, induced the other to contribute, and which therefore, so far as that went, proved that she had become with them a subject of intimate study. quickly, quickly, on a certain alarm taken, eagerly and anxiously, before they should, without knowing it, wound her, they had signalled from house to house their clever idea, the idea by which, for all these days, her own idea had been profiting. they had built her in with their purpose--which was why, above her, a vault seemed more heavily to arch; so that she sat there, in the solid chamber of her helplessness, as in a bath of benevolence artfully prepared for her, over the brim of which she could but just manage to see by stretching her neck. baths of benevolence were very well, but, at least, unless one were a patient of some sort, a nervous eccentric or a lost child, one was usually not so immersed save by one’s request. it wasn’t in the least what she had requested. she had flapped her little wings as a symbol of desired flight, not merely as a plea for a more gilded cage and an extra allowance of lumps of sugar. above all she hadn’t complained, not by the quaver of a syllable--so what wound in particular had she shown her fear of receiving? what wound had she received--as to which she had exchanged the least word with them? if she had ever whined or moped they might have had some reason; but she would be hanged--she conversed with herself in strong language--if she had been, from beginning to end, anything but pliable and mild. it all came back, in consequence, to some required process of their own, a process operating, quite positively, as a precaution and a policy. they had got her into the bath and, for consistency with themselves--which was with each other--must keep her there. in that condition she wouldn’t interfere with the policy, which was established, which was arranged. her thought, over this, arrived at a great intensity--had indeed its pauses and timidities, but always to take afterwards a further and lighter spring. the ground was well-nigh covered by the time she had made out her husband and his colleague as directly interested in preventing her freedom of movement. policy or no policy, it was they themselves who were arranged. she must be kept in position so as not to disarrange them. it fitted immensely together, the whole thing, as soon as she could give them a motive; for, strangely as it had by this time begun to appear to herself, she had hitherto not imagined them sustained by an ideal distinguishably different from her own. of course they were arranged--all four arranged; but what had the basis of their life been, precisely, but that they were arranged together? amerigo and charlotte were arranged together, but she--to confine the matter only to herself--was arranged apart. it rushed over her, the full sense of all this, with quite another rush from that of the breaking wave of ten days before; and as her father himself seemed not to meet the vaguely-clutching hand with which, during the first shock of complete perception, she tried to steady herself, she felt very much alone. xxvii there had been, from far back--that is from the christmas time on--a plan that the parent and the child should “do something lovely” together, and they had recurred to it on occasion, nursed it and brought it up theoretically, though without as yet quite allowing it to put its feet to the ground. the most it had done was to try a few steps on the drawing-room carpet, with much attendance, on either side, much holding up and guarding, much anticipation, in fine, of awkwardness or accident. their companions, by the same token, had constantly assisted at the performance, following the experiment with sympathy and gaiety, and never so full of applause, maggie now made out for herself, as when the infant project had kicked its little legs most wildly--kicked them, for all the world, across the channel and half the continent, kicked them over the pyrenees and innocently crowed out some rich spanish name. she asked herself at present if it had been a “real” belief that they were but wanting, for some such adventure, to snatch their moment; whether either had at any instant seen it as workable, save in the form of a toy to dangle before the other, that they should take flight, without wife or husband, for one more look, “before they died,” at the madrid pictures as well as for a drop of further weak delay in respect to three or four possible prizes, privately offered, rarities of the first water, responsibly reported on and profusely photographed, still patiently awaiting their noiseless arrival in retreats to which the clue had not otherwise been given away. the vision dallied with during the duskier days in eaton square had stretched to the span of three or four weeks of springtime for the total adventure, three or four weeks in the very spirit, after all, of their regular life, as their regular life had been persisting; full of shared mornings, afternoons, evenings, walks, drives, “looks-in,” at old places, on vague chances; full also, in especial, of that purchased social ease, the sense of the comfort and credit of their house, which had essentially the perfection of something paid for, but which “came,” on the whole, so cheap that it might have been felt as costing--as costing the parent and child--nothing. it was for maggie to wonder, at present, if she had been sincere about their going, to ask herself whether she would have stuck to their plan even if nothing had happened. her view of the impossibility of sticking to it now may give us the measure of her sense that everything had happened. a difference had been made in her relation to each of her companions, and what it compelled her to say to herself was that to behave as she might have behaved before would be to act, for amerigo and charlotte, with the highest hypocrisy. she saw in these days that a journey abroad with her father would, more than anything else, have amounted, on his part and her own, to a last expression of an ecstasy of confidence, and that the charm of the idea, in fact, had been in some such sublimity. day after day she put off the moment of “speaking,” as she inwardly and very comprehensively, called it--speaking, that is, to her father; and all the more that she was ridden by a strange suspense as to his himself breaking silence. she gave him time, gave him, during several days, that morning, that noon, that night, and the next and the next and the next; even made up her mind that if he stood off longer it would be proof conclusive that he too wasn’t at peace. they would then have been, all successfully, throwing dust in each other’s eyes; and it would be at last as if they must turn away their faces, since the silver mist that protected them had begun to grow sensibly thin. finally, at the end of april, she decided that if he should say nothing for another period of twenty-four hours she must take it as showing that they were, in her private phraseology, lost; so little possible sincerity could there be in pretending to care for a journey to spain at the approach of a summer that already promised to be hot. such a proposal, on his lips, such an extravagance of optimism, would be his way of being consistent--for that he didn’t really want to move, or to move further, at the worst, than back to fawns again, could only signify that he wasn’t, at heart, contented. what he wanted, at any rate, and what he didn’t want were, in the event, put to the proof for maggie just in time to give her a fresh wind. she had been dining, with her husband, in eaton square, on the occasion of hospitality offered by mr. and mrs. verver to lord and lady castledean. the propriety of some demonstration of this sort had been for many days before our group, the question reduced to the mere issue of which of the two houses should first take the field. the issue had been easily settled--in the manner of every issue referred in any degree to amerigo and charlotte: the initiative obviously belonged to mrs. verver, who had gone to matcham while maggie had stayed away, and the evening in eaton square might have passed for a demonstration all the more personal that the dinner had been planned on “intimate” lines. six other guests only, in addition to the host and the hostess of matcham, made up the company, and each of these persons had for maggie the interest of an attested connection with the easter revels at that visionary house. their common memory of an occasion that had clearly left behind it an ineffaceable charm--this air of beatific reference, less subdued in the others than in amerigo and charlotte, lent them, together, an inscrutable comradeship against which the young woman’s imagination broke in a small vain wave. it wasn’t that she wished she had been of the remembered party and possessed herself of its secrets; for she didn’t care about its secrets--she could concern herself at present, absolutely, with no secret but her own. what occurred was simply that she became aware, at a stroke, of the quantity of further nourishment required by her own, and of the amount of it she might somehow extract from these people; whereby she rose, of a sudden, to the desire to possess and use them, even to the extent of braving, of fairly defying, of directly exploiting, of possibly quite enjoying, under cover of an evil duplicity, the felt element of curiosity with which they regarded her. once she was conscious of the flitting wing of this last impression--the perception, irresistible, that she was something for their queer experience, just as they were something for hers--there was no limit to her conceived design of not letting them escape. she went and went, again, to-night, after her start was taken; went, positively, as she had felt herself going, three weeks before, on the morning when the vision of her father and his wife awaiting her together in the breakfast-room had been so determinant. in this other scene it was lady castledean who was determinant, who kindled the light, or at all events the heat, and who acted on the nerves; lady castledean whom she knew she, so oddly, didn’t like, in spite of reasons upon reasons, the biggest diamonds on the yellowest hair, the longest lashes on the prettiest, falsest eyes, the oldest lace on the most violet velvet, the rightest manner on the wrongest assumption. her ladyship’s assumption was that she kept, at every moment of her life, every advantage--it made her beautifully soft, very nearly generous; so she didn’t distinguish the little protuberant eyes of smaller social insects, often endowed with such a range, from the other decorative spots on their bodies and wings. maggie had liked, in london, and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively quickened her fever to have to recognise, in this case, such a lapse of all the sequences. it was only that a charming clever woman wondered about her--that is wondered about her as amerigo’s wife, and wondered, moreover, with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity, almost, of surprise. the point of view--that one--was what she read in their free contemplation, in that of the whole eight; there was something in amerigo to be explained, and she was passed about, all tenderly and expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its firmly-stuffed middle, for the account she could give. she might have been made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been expected to articulate, with a rare imitation of nature, “oh yes, i’m here all the while; i’m also in my way a solid little fact and i cost originally a great deal of money: cost, that is, my father, for my outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains--toward my training--that money would scarce represent.” well, she would meet them in some such way, and she translated her idea into action, after dinner, before they dispersed, by engaging them all, unconventionally, almost violently, to dine with her in portland place, just as they were, if they didn’t mind the same party, which was the party she wanted. oh she was going, she was going--she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal as if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song. there were breaks in the connection, as there would be hitches in the process; she didn’t wholly see, yet, what they would do for her, nor quite how, herself, she should handle them; but she was dancing up and down, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at least begun something--she so fairly liked to feel that she was a point for convergence of wonder. it wasn’t after all, either, that their wonder so much signified--that of the cornered six, whom it glimmered before her that she might still live to drive about like a flock of sheep: the intensity of her consciousness, its sharpest savour, was in the theory of her having diverted, having, as they said, captured the attention of amerigo and charlotte, at neither of whom, all the while, did she so much as once look. she had pitched them in with the six, for that matter, so far as they themselves were concerned; they had dropped, for the succession of minutes, out of contact with their function--had, in short, startled and impressed, abandoned their post. “they’re paralysed, they’re paralysed!” she commented, deep within; so much it helped her own apprehension to hang together that they should suddenly lose their bearings. her grasp of appearances was thus out of proportion to her view of causes; but it came to her then and there that if she could only get the facts of appearance straight, only jam them down into their place, the reasons lurking behind them, kept uncertain, for the eyes, by their wavering and shifting, wouldn’t perhaps be able to help showing. it wasn’t of course that the prince and mrs. verver marvelled to see her civil to their friends; it was rather, precisely, that civil was just what she wasn’t: she had so departed from any such custom of delicate approach--approach by the permitted note, the suggested “if,” the accepted vagueness--as would enable the people in question to put her off if they wished. and the profit of her plan, the effect of the violence she was willing to let it go for, was exactly in their being the people in question, people she had seemed to be rather shy of before and for whom she suddenly opened her mouth so wide. later on, we may add, with the ground soon covered by her agitated but resolute step, it was to cease to matter what people they were or weren’t; but meanwhile the particular sense of them that she had taken home to-night had done her the service of seeming to break the ice where that formation was thickest. still more unexpectedly, the service might have been the same for her father; inasmuch as, immediately, when everyone had gone, he did exactly what she had been waiting for and despairing of--and did it, as he did everything, with a simplicity that left any purpose of sounding him deeper, of drawing him out further, of going, in his own frequent phrase, “behind” what he said, nothing whatever to do. he brought it out straight, made it bravely and beautifully irrelevant, save for the plea of what they should lose by breaking the charm: “i guess we won’t go down there after all, will we, mag?--just when it’s getting so pleasant here.” that was all, with nothing to lead up to it; but it was done for her at a stroke, and done, not less, more rather, for amerigo and charlotte, on whom the immediate effect, as she secretly, as she almost breathlessly measured it, was prodigious. everything now so fitted for her to everything else that she could feel the effect as prodigious even while sticking to her policy of giving the pair no look. there were thus some five wonderful minutes during which they loomed, to her sightless eyes, on either side of her, larger than they had ever loomed before, larger than life, larger than thought, larger than any danger or any safety. there was thus a space of time, in fine, fairly vertiginous for her, during which she took no more account of them than if they were not in the room. she had never, never treated them in any such way--not even just now, when she had plied her art upon the matcham band; her present manner was an intenser exclusion, and the air was charged with their silence while she talked with her other companion as if she had nothing but him to consider. he had given her the note amazingly, by his allusion to the pleasantness--that of such an occasion as his successful dinner--which might figure as their bribe for renouncing; so that it was all as if they were speaking selfishly, counting on a repetition of just such extensions of experience. maggie achieved accordingly an act of unprecedented energy, threw herself into her father’s presence as by the absolute consistency with which she held his eyes; saying to herself, at the same time that she smiled and talked and inaugurated her system, “what does he mean by it? that’s the question--what does he mean?” but studying again all the signs in him that recent anxiety had made familiar and counting the stricken minutes on the part of the others. it was in their silence that the others loomed, as she felt; she had had no measure, she afterwards knew, of this duration, but it drew out and out--really to what would have been called in simpler conditions awkwardness--as if she herself were stretching the cord. ten minutes later, however, in the homeward carriage, to which her husband, cutting delay short, had proceeded at the first announcement, ten minutes later she was to stretch it almost to breaking. the prince had permitted her to linger much less, before his move to the door, than they usually lingered at the gossiping close of such evenings; which she, all responsive, took for a sign of his impatience to modify for her the odd effect of his not having, and of charlotte’s not having, instantly acclaimed the issue of the question debated, or more exactly, settled, before them. he had had time to become aware of this possible impression in her, and his virtually urging her into the carriage was connected with his feeling that he must take action on the new ground. a certain ambiguity in her would absolutely have tormented him; but he had already found something to soothe and correct--as to which she had, on her side, a shrewd notion of what it would be. she was herself, for that matter, prepared, and she was, of a truth, as she took her seat in the brougham, amazed at her preparation. it allowed her scarce an interval; she brought it straight out. “i was certain that was what father would say if i should leave him alone. i have been leaving him alone, and you see the effect. he hates now to move--he likes too much to be with us. but if you see the effect”--she felt herself magnificently keeping it up--“perhaps you don’t see the cause. the cause, my dear, is too lovely.” her husband, on taking his place beside her, had, during a minute or two, for her watching sense, neither said nor done anything; he had been, for that sense, as if thinking, waiting, deciding: yet it was still before he spoke that he, as she felt it to be, definitely acted. he put his arm round her and drew her close--indulged in the demonstration, the long, firm embrace by his single arm, the infinite pressure of her whole person to his own, that such opportunities had so often suggested and prescribed. held, accordingly, and, as she could but too intimately feel, exquisitely solicited, she had said the thing she was intending and desiring to say, and as to which she felt, even more than she felt anything else, that whatever he might do she mustn’t be irresponsible. yes, she was in his exerted grasp, and she knew what that was; but she was at the same time in the grasp of her conceived responsibility, and the extraordinary thing was that, of the two intensities, the second was presently to become the sharper. he took his time for it meanwhile, but he met her speech after a fashion. “the cause of your father’s deciding not to go?” “yes, and of my having wanted to let it act for him quietly--i mean without my insistence.” she had, in her compressed state, another pause, and it made her feel as if she were immensely resisting. strange enough was this sense for her, and altogether new, the sense of possessing, by miraculous help, some advantage that, absolutely then and there, in the carriage, as they rolled, she might either give up or keep. strange, inexpressibly strange--so distinctly she saw that if she did give it up she should somehow give up everything for ever. and what her husband’s grasp really meant, as her very bones registered, was that she should give it up: it was exactly for this that he had resorted to unfailing magic. he knew how to resort to it--he could be, on occasion, as she had lately more than ever learned, so munificent a lover: all of which was, precisely, a part of the character she had never ceased to regard in him as princely, a part of his large and beautiful ease, his genius for charm, for intercourse, for expression, for life. she should have but to lay her head back on his shoulder with a certain movement to make it definite for him that she didn’t resist. to this, as they went, every throb of her consciousness prompted her--every throb, that is, but one, the throb of her deeper need to know where she “really” was. by the time she had uttered the rest of her idea, therefore, she was still keeping her head and intending to keep it; though she was also staring out of the carriage-window with eyes into which the tears of suffered pain had risen, indistinguishable, perhaps, happily, in the dusk. she was making an effort that horribly hurt her, and, as she couldn’t cry out, her eyes swam in her silence. with them, all the same, through the square opening beside her, through the grey panorama of the london night, she achieved the feat of not losing sight of what she wanted; and her lips helped and protected her by being able to be gay. “it’s not to leave you, my dear--for that he’ll give up anything; just as he would go off anywhere, i think, you know, if you would go with him. i mean you and he alone,” maggie pursued with her gaze out of her window. for which amerigo’s answer again took him a moment. “ah, the dear old boy! you would like me to propose him something--?” “well, if you think you could bear it.” “and leave,” the prince asked, “you and charlotte alone?” “why not?” maggie had also to wait a minute, but when she spoke it came clear. “why shouldn’t charlotte be just one of my reasons--my not liking to leave her? she has always been so good, so perfect, to me--but never so wonderfully as just now. we have somehow been more together--thinking, for the time, almost only of each other; it has been quite as in old days.” and she proceeded consummately, for she felt it as consummate: “it’s as if we had been missing each other, had got a little apart--though going on so side by side. but the good moments, if one only waits for them,” she hastened to add, “come round of themselves. moreover you’ve seen for yourself, since you’ve made it up so to father; feeling, for yourself, in your beautiful way, every difference, every air that blows; not having to be told or pushed, only being perfect to live with, through your habit of kindness and your exquisite instincts. but of course you’ve seen, all the while, that both he and i have deeply felt how you’ve managed; managed that he hasn’t been too much alone and that i, on my side, haven’t appeared, to--what you might call--neglect him. this is always,” she continued, “what i can never bless you enough for; of all the good things you’ve done for me you’ve never done anything better.” she went on explaining as for the pleasure of explaining--even though knowing he must recognise, as a part of his easy way too, her description of his large liberality. “your taking the child down yourself, those days, and your coming, each time, to bring him away--nothing in the world, nothing you could have invented, would have kept father more under the charm. besides, you know how you’ve always suited him, and how you’ve always so beautifully let it seem to him that he suits you. only it has been, these last weeks, as if you wished--just in order to please him--to remind him of it afresh. so there it is,” she wound up; “it’s your doing. you’ve produced your effect--that of his wanting not to be, even for a month or two, where you’re not. he doesn’t want to bother or bore you--that, i think, you know, he never has done; and if you’ll only give me time i’ll come round again to making it my care, as always, that he shan’t. but he can’t bear you out of his sight.” she had kept it up and up, filling it out, crowding it in; and all, really, without difficulty, for it was, every word of it, thanks to a long evolution of feeling, what she had been primed to the brim with. she made the picture, forced it upon him, hung it before him; remembering, happily, how he had gone so far, one day, supported by the principino, as to propose the zoo in eaton square, to carry with him there, on the spot, under this pleasant inspiration, both his elder and his younger companion, with the latter of whom he had taken the tone that they were introducing granddaddy, granddaddy nervous and rather funking it, to lions and tigers more or less at large. touch by touch she thus dropped into her husband’s silence the truth about his good nature and his good manners; and it was this demonstration of his virtue, precisely, that added to the strangeness, even for herself, of her failing as yet to yield to him. it would be a question but of the most trivial act of surrender, the vibration of a nerve, the mere movement of a muscle; but the act grew important between them just through her doing perceptibly nothing, nothing but talk in the very tone that would naturally have swept her into tenderness. she knew more and more--every lapsing minute taught her--how he might by a single rightness make her cease to watch him; that rightness, a million miles removed from the queer actual, falling so short, which would consist of his breaking out to her diviningly, indulgently, with the last happy inconsequence. “come away with me, somewhere, you--and then we needn’t think, we needn’t even talk, of anything, of anyone else:” five words like that would answer her, would break her utterly down. but they were the only ones that would so serve. she waited for them, and there was a supreme instant when, by the testimony of all the rest of him, she seemed to feel them in his heart and on his lips; only they didn’t sound, and as that made her wait again so it made her more intensely watch. this in turn showed her that he too watched and waited, and how much he had expected something that he now felt wouldn’t come. yes, it wouldn’t come if he didn’t answer her, if he but said the wrong things instead of the right. if he could say the right everything would come--it hung by a hair that everything might crystallise for their recovered happiness at his touch. this possibility glowed at her, however, for fifty seconds, only then to turn cold, and as it fell away from her she felt the chill of reality and knew again, all but pressed to his heart and with his breath upon her cheek, the slim rigour of her attitude, a rigour beyond that of her natural being. they had silences, at last, that were almost crudities of mutual resistance--silences that persisted through his felt effort to treat her recurrence to the part he had lately played, to interpret all the sweetness of her so talking to him, as a manner of making love to him. ah, it was no such manner, heaven knew, for maggie; she could make love, if this had been in question, better than that! on top of which it came to her presently to say, keeping in with what she had already spoken: “except of course that, for the question of going off somewhere, he’d go readily, quite delightedly, with you. i verily believe he’d like to have you for a while to himself.” “do you mean he thinks of proposing it?” the prince after a moment sounded. “oh no--he doesn’t ask, as you must so often have seen. but i believe he’d go ‘like a shot,’ as you say, if you were to suggest it.” it had the air, she knew, of a kind of condition made, and she had asked herself while she spoke if it wouldn’t cause his arm to let her go. the fact that it didn’t suggested to her that she had made him, of a sudden, still more intensely think, think with such concentration that he could do but one thing at once. and it was precisely as if the concentration had the next moment been proved in him. he took a turn inconsistent with the superficial impression--a jump that made light of their approach to gravity and represented for her the need in him to gain time. that she made out, was his drawback--that the warning from her had come to him, and had come to charlotte, after all, too suddenly. that they were in face of it rearranging, that they had to rearrange, was all before her again; yet to do as they would like they must enjoy a snatch, longer or shorter, of recovered independence. amerigo, for the instant, was but doing as he didn’t like, and it was as if she were watching his effort without disguise. “what’s your father’s idea, this year, then, about fawns? will he go at whitsuntide, and will he then stay on?” maggie went through the form of thought. “he will really do, i imagine, as he has, in so many ways, so often done before; do whatever may seem most agreeable to yourself. and there’s of course always charlotte to be considered. only their going early to fawns, if they do go,” she said, “needn’t in the least entail your and my going.” “ah,” amerigo echoed, “it needn’t in the least entail your and my going?” “we can do as we like. what they may do needn’t trouble us, since they’re by good fortune perfectly happy together.” “oh,” the prince returned, “your father’s never so happy as with you near him to enjoy his being so.” “well, i may enjoy it,” said maggie, “but i’m not the cause of it.” “you’re the cause,” her husband declared, “of the greater part of everything that’s good among us.” but she received this tribute in silence, and the next moment he pursued: “if mrs. verver has arrears of time with you to make up, as you say, she’ll scarcely do it--or you scarcely will--by our cutting, your and my cutting, too loose.” “i see what you mean,” maggie mused. he let her for a little to give her attention to it; after which, “shall i just quite, of a sudden,” he asked, “propose him a journey?” maggie hesitated, but she brought forth the fruit of reflection. “it would have the merit that charlotte then would be with me--with me, i mean, so much more. also that i shouldn’t, by choosing such a time for going away, seem unconscious and ungrateful, seem not to respond, seem in fact rather to wish to shake her off. i should respond, on the contrary, very markedly--by being here alone with her for a month.” “and would you like to be here alone with her for a month?” “i could do with it beautifully. or we might even,” she said quite gaily, “go together down to fawns.” “you could be so very content without me?” the prince presently inquired. “yes, my own dear--if you could be content for a while with father. that would keep me up. i might, for the time,” she went on, “go to stay there with charlotte; or, better still, she might come to portland place.” “oho!” said the prince with cheerful vagueness. “i should feel, you see,” she continued, “that the two of us were showing the same sort of kindness.” amerigo thought. “the two of us? charlotte and i?” maggie again hesitated. “you and i, darling.” “i see, i see”--he promptly took it in. “and what reason shall i give--give, i mean, your father?” “for asking him to go off? why, the very simplest--if you conscientiously can. the desire,” said maggie, “to be agreeable to him. just that only.” something in this reply made her husband again reflect. “‘conscientiously?’ why shouldn’t i conscientiously? it wouldn’t, by your own contention,” he developed, “represent any surprise for him. i must strike him sufficiently as, at the worst, the last person in the world to wish to do anything to hurt him.” ah, there it was again, for maggie--the note already sounded, the note of the felt need of not working harm! why this precautionary view, she asked herself afresh, when her father had complained, at the very least, as little as herself? with their stillness together so perfect, what had suggested so, around them, the attitude of sparing them? her inner vision fixed it once more, this attitude, saw it, in the others, as vivid and concrete, extended it straight from her companion to charlotte. before she was well aware, accordingly, she had echoed in this intensity of thought amerigo’s last words. “you’re the last person in the world to wish to do anything to hurt him.” she heard herself, heard her tone, after she had spoken, and heard it the more that, for a minute after, she felt her husband’s eyes on her face, very close, too close for her to see him. he was looking at her because he was struck, and looking hard--though his answer, when it came, was straight enough. “why, isn’t that just what we have been talking about--that i’ve affected you as fairly studying his comfort and his pleasure? he might show his sense of it,” the prince went on, “by proposing to me an excursion.” “and you would go with him?” maggie immediately asked. he hung fire but an instant. “per dio!” she also had her pause, but she broke it--since gaiety was in the air--with an intense smile. “you can say that safely, because the proposal’s one that, of his own motion, he won’t make.” she couldn’t have narrated afterwards--and in fact was at a loss to tell herself--by what transition, what rather marked abruptness of change in their personal relation, their drive came to its end with a kind of interval established, almost confessed to, between them. she felt it in the tone with which he repeated, after her, “‘safely’--?” “safely as regards being thrown with him perhaps after all, in such a case, too long. he’s a person to think you might easily feel yourself to be. so it won’t,” maggie said, “come from father. he’s too modest.” their eyes continued to meet on it, from corner to corner of the brougham. “oh your modesty, between you--!” but he still smiled for it. “so that unless i insist--?” “we shall simply go on as we are.” “well, we’re going on beautifully,” he answered--though by no means with the effect it would have had if their mute transaction, that of attempted capture and achieved escape, had not taken place. as maggie said nothing, none the less, to gainsay his remark, it was open to him to find himself the next moment conscious of still another idea. “i wonder if it would do. i mean for me to break in.” “‘to break in’--?” “between your father and his wife. but there would be a way,” he said--“we can make charlotte ask him.” and then as maggie herself now wondered, echoing it again: “we can suggest to her to suggest to him that he shall let me take him off.” “oh!” said maggie. “then if he asks her why i so suddenly break out she’ll be able to tell him the reason.” they were stopping, and the footman, who had alighted, had rung at the house-door. “that you think it would be so charming?” “that i think it would be so charming. that we’ve persuaded her will be convincing.” “i see,” maggie went on while the footman came back to let them out. “i see,” she said again; though she felt a little disconcerted. what she really saw, of a sudden, was that her stepmother might report her as above all concerned for the proposal, and this brought her back her need that her father shouldn’t think her concerned in any degree for anything. she alighted the next instant with a slight sense of defeat; her husband, to let her out, had passed before her, and, a little in advance, he awaited her on the edge of the low terrace, a step high, that preceded their open entrance, on either side of which one of their servants stood. the sense of a life tremendously ordered and fixed rose before her, and there was something in amerigo’s very face, while his eyes again met her own through the dusky lamplight, that was like a conscious reminder of it. he had answered her, just before, distinctly, and it appeared to leave her nothing to say. it was almost as if, having planned for the last word, she saw him himself enjoying it. it was almost as if--in the strangest way in the world--he were paying her back, by the production of a small pang, that of a new uneasiness, for the way she had slipped from him during their drive. xxviii maggie’s new uneasiness might have had time to drop, inasmuch as she not only was conscious, during several days that followed, of no fresh indication for it to feed on, but was even struck, in quite another way, with an augmentation of the symptoms of that difference she had taken it into her head to work for. she recognised by the end of a week that if she had been in a manner caught up her father had been not less so--with the effect of her husband’s and his wife’s closing in, together, round them, and of their all having suddenly begun, as a party of four, to lead a life gregarious, and from that reason almost hilarious, so far as the easy sound of it went, as never before. it might have been an accident and a mere coincidence--so at least she said to herself at first; but a dozen chances that furthered the whole appearance had risen to the surface, pleasant pretexts, oh certainly pleasant, as pleasant as amerigo in particular could make them, for associated undertakings, quite for shared adventures, for its always turning out, amusingly, that they wanted to do very much the same thing at the same time and in the same way. funny all this was, to some extent, in the light of the fact that the father and daughter, for so long, had expressed so few positive desires; yet it would be sufficiently natural that if amerigo and charlotte had at last got a little tired of each other’s company they should find their relief not so much in sinking to the rather low level of their companions as in wishing to pull the latter into the train in which they so constantly moved. “we’re in the train,” maggie mutely reflected after the dinner in eaton square with lady castledean; “we’ve suddenly waked up in it and found ourselves rushing along, very much as if we had been put in during sleep--shoved, like a pair of labelled boxes, into the van. and since i wanted to ‘go’ i’m certainly going,” she might have added; “i’m moving without trouble--they’re doing it all for us: it’s wonderful how they understand and how perfectly it succeeds.” for that was the thing she had most immediately to acknowledge: it seemed as easy for them to make a quartette as it had formerly so long appeared for them to make a pair of couples--this latter being thus a discovery too absurdly belated. the only point at which, day after day, the success appeared at all qualified was represented, as might have been said, by her irresistible impulse to give her father a clutch when the train indulged in one of its occasional lurches. then--there was no denying it--his eyes and her own met; so that they were themselves doing active violence, as against the others, to that very spirit of union, or at least to that very achievement of change, which she had taken the field to invoke. the maximum of change was reached, no doubt, the day the matcham party dined in portland place; the day, really perhaps, of maggie’s maximum of social glory, in the sense of its showing for her own occasion, her very own, with every one else extravagantly rallying and falling in, absolutely conspiring to make her its heroine. it was as if her father himself, always with more initiative as a guest than as a host, had dabbled too in the conspiracy; and the impression was not diminished by the presence of the assinghams, likewise very much caught-up, now, after something of a lull, by the side-wind of all the rest of the motion, and giving our young woman, so far at least as fanny was concerned, the sense of some special intention of encouragement and applause. fanny, who had not been present at the other dinner, thanks to a preference entertained and expressed by charlotte, made a splendid show at this one, in new orange-coloured velvet with multiplied turquoises, and with a confidence, furthermore, as different as possible, her hostess inferred, from her too-marked betrayal of a belittled state at matcham. maggie was not indifferent to her own opportunity to redress this balance--which seemed, for the hour, part of a general rectification; she liked making out for herself that on the high level of portland place, a spot exempt, on all sorts of grounds, from jealous jurisdictions, her friend could feel as “good” as any one, and could in fact at moments almost appear to take the lead in recognition and celebration, so far as the evening might conduce to intensify the lustre of the little princess. mrs. assingham produced on her the impression of giving her constantly her cue for this; and it was in truth partly by her help, intelligently, quite gratefully accepted, that the little princess, in maggie, was drawn out and emphasised. she couldn’t definitely have said how it happened, but she felt herself, for the first time in her career, living up to the public and popular notion of such a personage, as it pressed upon her from all round; rather wondering, inwardly too, while she did so, at that strange mixture in things through which the popular notion could be evidenced for her by such supposedly great ones of the earth as the castledeans and their kind. fanny assingham might really have been there, at all events, like one of the assistants in the ring at the circus, to keep up the pace of the sleek revolving animal on whose back the lady in short spangled skirts should brilliantly caper and posture. that was all, doubtless maggie had forgotten, had neglected, had declined, to be the little princess on anything like the scale open to her; but now that the collective hand had been held out to her with such alacrity, so that she might skip up into the light, even, as seemed to her modest mind, with such a show of pink stocking and such an abbreviation of white petticoat, she could strike herself as perceiving, under arched eyebrows, where her mistake had been. she had invited for the later hours, after her dinner, a fresh contingent, the whole list of her apparent london acquaintance--which was again a thing in the manner of little princesses for whom the princely art was a matter of course. that was what she was learning to do, to fill out as a matter of course her appointed, her expected, her imposed character; and, though there were latent considerations that somewhat interfered with the lesson, she was having to-night an inordinate quantity of practice, none of it so successful as when, quite wittingly, she directed it at lady castledean, who was reduced by it at last to an unprecedented state of passivity. the perception of this high result caused mrs. assingham fairly to flush with responsive joy; she glittered at her young friend, from moment to moment, quite feverishly; it was positively as if her young friend had, in some marvellous, sudden, supersubtle way, become a source of succour to herself, become beautifully, divinely retributive. the intensity of the taste of these registered phenomena was in fact that somehow, by a process and through a connexion not again to be traced, she so practised, at the same time, on amerigo and charlotte--with only the drawback, her constant check and second-thought, that she concomitantly practised perhaps still more on her father. this last was a danger indeed that, for much of the ensuing time, had its hours of strange beguilement--those at which her sense for precautions so suffered itself to lapse that she felt her communion with him more intimate than any other. it couldn’t but pass between them that something singular was happening--so much as this she again and again said to herself; whereby the comfort of it was there, after all, to be noted, just as much as the possible peril, and she could think of the couple they formed together as groping, with sealed lips, but with mutual looks that had never been so tender, for some freedom, some fiction, some figured bravery, under which they might safely talk of it. the moment was to come--and it finally came with an effect as penetrating as the sound that follows the pressure of an electric button--when she read the least helpful of meanings into the agitation she had created. the merely specious description of their case would have been that, after being for a long time, as a family, delightfully, uninterruptedly happy, they had still had a new felicity to discover; a felicity for which, blessedly, her father’s appetite and her own, in particular, had been kept fresh and grateful. this livelier march of their intercourse as a whole was the thing that occasionally determined in him the clutching instinct we have glanced at; very much as if he had said to her, in default of her breaking silence first: “everything is remarkably pleasant, isn’t it?--but where, for it, after all, are we? up in a balloon and whirling through space, or down in the depths of the earth, in the glimmering passages of a gold-mine?” the equilibrium, the precious condition, lasted in spite of rearrangement; there had been a fresh distribution of the different weights, but the balance persisted and triumphed: all of which was just the reason why she was forbidden, face to face with the companion of her adventure, the experiment of a test. if they balanced they balanced--she had to take that; it deprived her of every pretext for arriving, by however covert a process, at what he thought. but she had her hours, thus, of feeling supremely linked to him by the rigour of their law, and when it came over her that, all the while, the wish, on his side, to spare her might be what most worked with him, this very fact of their seeming to have nothing “inward” really to talk about wrapped him up for her in a kind of sweetness that was wanting, as a consecration, even in her yearning for her husband. she was powerless, however, was only more utterly hushed, when the interrupting flash came, when she would have been all ready to say to him, “yes, this is by every appearance the best time we’ve had yet; but don’t you see, all the same, how they must be working together for it, and how my very success, my success in shifting our beautiful harmony to a new basis, comes round to being their success, above all; their cleverness, their amiability, their power to hold out, their complete possession, in short, of our life?” for how could she say as much as that without saying a great deal more? without saying “they’ll do everything in the world that suits us, save only one thing--prescribe a line for us that will make them separate.” how could she so much as imagine herself even faintly murmuring that without putting into his mouth the very words that would have made her quail? “separate, my dear? do you want them to separate? then you want us to--you and me? for how can the one separation take place without the other?” that was the question that, in spirit, she had heard him ask--with its dread train, moreover, of involved and connected inquiries. their own separation, his and hers, was of course perfectly thinkable, but only on the basis of the sharpest of reasons. well, the sharpest, the very sharpest, would be that they could no longer afford, as it were, he to let his wife, she to let her husband, “run” them in such compact formation. and say they accepted this account of their situation as a practical finality, acting upon it and proceeding to a division, would no sombre ghosts of the smothered past, on either side, show, across the widening strait, pale unappeased faces, or raise, in the very passage, deprecating, denouncing hands? meanwhile, however such things might be, she was to have occasion to say to herself that there might be but a deeper treachery in recoveries and reassurances. she was to feel alone again, as she had felt at the issue of her high tension with her husband during their return from meeting the castledeans in eaton square. the evening in question had left her with a larger alarm, but then a lull had come--the alarm, after all, was yet to be confirmed. there came an hour, inevitably, when she knew, with a chill, what she had feared and why; it had taken, this hour, a month to arrive, but to find it before her was thoroughly to recognise it, for it showed her sharply what amerigo had meant in alluding to a particular use that they might make, for their reaffirmed harmony and prosperity, of charlotte. the more she thought, at present, of the tone he had employed to express their enjoyment of this resource, the more it came back to her as the product of a conscious art of dealing with her. he had been conscious, at the moment, of many things--conscious even, not a little, of desiring; and thereby of needing, to see what she would do in a given case. the given case would be that of her being to a certain extent, as she might fairly make it out, menaced--horrible as it was to impute to him any intention represented by such a word. why it was that to speak of making her stepmother intervene, as they might call it, in a question that seemed, just then and there, quite peculiarly their own business--why it was that a turn so familiar and so easy should, at the worst, strike her as charged with the spirit of a threat, was an oddity disconnected, for her, temporarily, from its grounds, the adventure of an imagination within her that possibly had lost its way. that, precisely, was doubtless why she had learned to wait, as the weeks passed by, with a fair, or rather indeed with an excessive, imitation of resumed serenity. there had been no prompt sequel to the prince’s equivocal light, and that made for patience; yet she was none the less to have to admit, after delay, that the bread he had cast on the waters had come home, and that she should thus be justified of her old apprehension. the consequence of this, in turn, was a renewed pang in presence of his remembered ingenuity. to be ingenious with her--what didn’t, what mightn’t that mean, when she had so absolutely never, at any point of contact with him, put him, by as much as the value of a penny, to the expense of sparing, doubting, fearing her, of having in any way whatever to reckon with her? the ingenuity had been in his simply speaking of their use of charlotte as if it were common to them in an equal degree, and his triumph, on the occasion, had been just in the simplicity. she couldn’t--and he knew it--say what was true: “oh, you ‘use’ her, and i use her, if you will, yes; but we use her ever so differently and separately--not at all in the same way or degree. there’s nobody we really use together but ourselves, don’t you see?--by which i mean that where our interests are the same i can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve you for everything, and you can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve me. the only person either of us needs is the other of us; so why, as a matter of course, in such a case as this, drag in charlotte?” she couldn’t so challenge him, because it would have been--and there she was paralysed--the note. it would have translated itself on the spot, for his ear, into jealousy; and, from reverberation to repercussion, would have reached her father’s exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep. it had been for many days almost as difficult for her to catch a quiet twenty minutes with her father as it had formerly been easy; there had been in fact, of old--the time, so strangely, seemed already far away--an inevitability in her longer passages with him, a sort of domesticated beauty in the calculability, round about them, of everything. but at present charlotte was almost always there when amerigo brought her to eaton square, where amerigo was constantly bringing her; and amerigo was almost always there when charlotte brought her husband to portland place, where charlotte was constantly bringing him. the fractions of occasions, the chance minutes that put them face to face had, as yet, of late, contrived to count but little, between them, either for the sense of opportunity or for that of exposure; inasmuch as the lifelong rhythm of their intercourse made against all cursory handling of deep things. they had never availed themselves of any given quarter-of-an-hour to gossip about fundamentals; they moved slowly through large still spaces; they could be silent together, at any time, beautifully, with much more comfort than hurriedly expressive. it appeared indeed to have become true that their common appeal measured itself, for vividness, just by this economy of sound; they might have been talking “at” each other when they talked with their companions, but these latter, assuredly, were not in any directer way to gain light on the current phase of their relation. such were some of the reasons for which maggie suspected fundamentals, as i have called them, to be rising, by a new movement, to the surface--suspected it one morning late in may, when her father presented himself in portland place alone. he had his pretext--of that she was fully aware: the principino, two days before, had shown signs, happily not persistent, of a feverish cold and had notoriously been obliged to spend the interval at home. this was ground, ample ground, for punctual inquiry; but what it wasn’t ground for, she quickly found herself reflecting, was his having managed, in the interest of his visit, to dispense so unwontedly--as their life had recently come to be arranged--with his wife’s attendance. it had so happened that she herself was, for the hour, exempt from her husband’s, and it will at once be seen that the hour had a quality all its own when i note that, remembering how the prince had looked in to say he was going out, the princess whimsically wondered if their respective sposi mightn’t frankly be meeting, whimsically hoped indeed they were temporarily so disposed of. strange was her need, at moments, to think of them as not attaching an excessive importance to their repudiation of the general practice that had rested only a few weeks before on such a consecrated rightness. repudiations, surely, were not in the air--they had none of them come to that; for wasn’t she at this minute testifying directly against them by her own behaviour? when she should confess to fear of being alone with her father, to fear of what he might then--ah, with such a slow, painful motion as she had a horror of!--say to her, then would be time enough for amerigo and charlotte to confess to not liking to appear to foregather. she had this morning a wonderful consciousness both of dreading a particular question from him and of being able to check, yes even to disconcert, magnificently, by her apparent manner of receiving it, any restless imagination he might have about its importance. the day, bright and soft, had the breath of summer; it made them talk, to begin with, of fawns, of the way fawns invited--maggie aware, the while, that in thus regarding, with him, the sweetness of its invitation to one couple just as much as to another, her humbugging smile grew very nearly convulsive. that was it, and there was relief truly, of a sort, in taking it in: she was humbugging him already, by absolute necessity, as she had never, never done in her life--doing it up to the full height of what she had allowed for. the necessity, in the great dimly-shining room where, declining, for his reasons, to sit down, he moved about in amerigo’s very footsteps, the necessity affected her as pressing upon her with the very force of the charm itself; of the old pleasantness, between them, so candidly playing up there again; of the positive flatness of their tenderness, a surface all for familiar use, quite as if generalised from the long succession of tapestried sofas, sweetly faded, on which his theory of contentment had sat, through unmeasured pauses, beside her own. she knew, from this instant, knew in advance and as well as anything would ever teach her, that she must never intermit for a solitary second her so highly undertaking to prove that there was nothing the matter with her. she saw, of a sudden, everything she might say or do in the light of that undertaking, established connections from it with any number of remote matters, struck herself, for instance, as acting all in its interest when she proposed their going out, in the exercise of their freedom and in homage to the season, for a turn in the regent’s park. this resort was close at hand, at the top of portland place, and the principino, beautifully better, had already proceeded there under high attendance: all of which considerations were defensive for maggie, all of which became, to her mind, part of the business of cultivating continuity. upstairs, while she left him to put on something to go out in, the thought of his waiting below for her, in possession of the empty house, brought with it, sharply if briefly, one of her abrupt arrests of consistency, the brush of a vain imagination almost paralysing her, often, for the minute, before her glass--the vivid look, in other words, of the particular difference his marriage had made. the particular difference seemed at such instants the loss, more than anything else, of their old freedom, their never having had to think, where they were together concerned, of any one, of anything but each other. it hadn’t been her marriage that did it; that had never, for three seconds, suggested to either of them that they must act diplomatically, must reckon with another presence--no, not even with her husband’s. she groaned to herself, while the vain imagination lasted, “why did he marry? ah, why did he?” and then it came up to her more than ever that nothing could have been more beautiful than the way in which, till charlotte came so much more closely into their life, amerigo hadn’t interfered. what she had gone on owing him for this mounted up again, to her eyes, like a column of figures---or call it even, if one would, a house of cards; it was her father’s wonderful act that had tipped the house down and made the sum wrong. with all of which, immediately after her question, her “why did he, why did he?” rushed back, inevitably, the confounding, the overwhelming wave of the knowledge of his reason. “he did it for me, he did it for me,” she moaned, “he did it, exactly, that our freedom--meaning, beloved man, simply and solely mine--should be greater instead of less; he did it, divinely, to liberate me so far as possible from caring what became of him.” she found time upstairs, even in her haste, as she had repeatedly found time before, to let the wonderments involved in these recognitions flash at her with their customary effect of making her blink: the question in especial of whether she might find her solution in acting, herself, in the spirit of what he had done, in forcing her “care” really to grow as much less as he had tried to make it. thus she felt the whole weight of their case drop afresh upon her shoulders, was confronted, unmistakably, with the prime source of her haunted state. it all came from her not having been able not to mind--not to mind what became of him; not having been able, without anxiety, to let him go his way and take his risk and lead his life. she had made anxiety her stupid little idol; and absolutely now, while she stuck a long pin, a trifle fallaciously, into her hat--she had, with an approach to irritation, told her maid, a new woman, whom she had lately found herself thinking of as abysmal, that she didn’t want her--she tried to focus the possibility of some understanding between them in consequence of which he should cut loose. very near indeed it looked, any such possibility! that consciousness, too, had taken its turn by the time she was ready; all the vibration, all the emotion of this present passage being, precisely, in the very sweetness of their lapse back into the conditions of the simpler time, into a queer resemblance between the aspect and the feeling of the moment and those of numberless other moments that were sufficiently far away. she had been quick in her preparation, in spite of the flow of the tide that sometimes took away her breath; but a pause, once more, was still left for her to make, a pause, at the top of the stairs, before she came down to him, in the span of which she asked herself if it weren’t thinkable, from the perfectly practical point of view, that she should simply sacrifice him. she didn’t go into the detail of what sacrificing him would mean--she didn’t need to; so distinct was it, in one of her restless lights, that there he was awaiting her, that she should find him walking up and down the drawing-room in the warm, fragrant air to which the open windows and the abundant flowers contributed; slowly and vaguely moving there and looking very slight and young and, superficially, manageable, almost as much like her child, putting it a little freely, as like her parent; with the appearance about him, above all, of having perhaps arrived just on purpose to say it to her, himself, in so many words: “sacrifice me, my own love; do sacrifice me, do sacrifice me!” should she want to, should she insist on it, she might verily hear him bleating it at her, all conscious and all accommodating, like some precious, spotless, exceptionally intelligent lamb. the positive effect of the intensity of this figure, however, was to make her shake it away in her resumed descent; and after she had rejoined him, after she had picked him up, she was to know the full pang of the thought that her impossibility was made, absolutely, by his consciousness, by the lucidity of his intention: this she felt while she smiled there for him, again, all hypocritically; while she drew on fair, fresh gloves; while she interrupted the process first to give his necktie a slightly smarter twist and then to make up to him for her hidden madness by rubbing her nose into his cheek according to the tradition of their frankest levity. from the instant she should be able to convict him of intending, every issue would be closed and her hypocrisy would have to redouble. the only way to sacrifice him would be to do so without his dreaming what it might be for. she kissed him, she arranged his cravat, she dropped remarks, she guided him out, she held his arm, not to be led, but to lead him, and taking it to her by much the same intimate pressure she had always used, when a little girl, to mark the inseparability of her doll--she did all these things so that he should sufficiently fail to dream of what they might be for. xxix there was nothing to show that her effort in any degree fell short till they got well into the park and he struck her as giving, unexpectedly, the go-by to any serious search for the principino. the way they sat down awhile in the sun was a sign of that; his dropping with her into the first pair of sequestered chairs they came across and waiting a little, after they were placed, as if now at last she might bring out, as between them, something more specific. it made her but feel the more sharply how the specific, in almost any direction, was utterly forbidden her--how the use of it would be, for all the world, like undoing the leash of a dog eager to follow up a scent. it would come out, the specific, where the dog would come out; would run to earth, somehow, the truth--for she was believing herself in relation to the truth!--at which she mustn’t so much as indirectly point. such, at any rate, was the fashion in which her passionate prudence played over possibilities of danger, reading symptoms and betrayals into everything she looked at, and yet having to make it evident, while she recognised them, that she didn’t wince. there were moments between them, in their chairs, when he might have been watching her guard herself and trying to think of something new that would trip her up. there were pauses during which, with her affection as sweet and still as the sunshine, she might yet, as at some hard game, over a table, for money, have been defying him to fasten upon her the least little complication of consciousness. she was positively proud, afterwards, of the great style in which she had kept this up; later on, at the hour’s end, when they had retraced their steps to find amerigo and charlotte awaiting them at the house, she was able to say to herself that, truly, she had put her plan through; even though once more setting herself the difficult task of making their relation, every minute of the time, not fall below the standard of that other hour, in the treasured past, which hung there behind them like a framed picture in a museum, a high watermark for the history of their old fortune; the summer evening, in the park at fawns, when, side by side under the trees just as now, they had let their happy confidence lull them with its most golden tone. there had been the possibility of a trap for her, at present, in the very question of their taking up anew that residence; wherefore she had not been the first to sound it, in spite of the impression from him of his holding off to see what she would do. she was saying to herself in secret: “can we again, in this form, migrate there? can i, for myself, undertake it? face all the intenser keeping-up and stretching-out, indefinitely, impossibly, that our conditions in the country, as we’ve established and accepted them, would stand for?” she had positively lost herself in this inward doubt--so much she was subsequently to remember; but remembering then too that her companion, though perceptibly perhaps as if not to be eager, had broken the ice very much as he had broken it in eaton square after the banquet to the castledeans. her mind had taken a long excursion, wandered far into the vision of what a summer at fawns, with amerigo and charlotte still more eminently in presence against that higher sky, would bring forth. wasn’t her father meanwhile only pretending to talk of it? just as she was, in a manner, pretending to listen? he got off it, finally, at all events, for the transition it couldn’t well help thrusting out at him; it had amounted exactly to an arrest of her private excursion by the sense that he had begun to imitate--oh, as never yet!--the ancient tone of gold. it had verily come from him at last, the question of whether she thought it would be very good--but very good indeed--that he should leave england for a series of weeks, on some pretext, with the prince. then it had been that she was to know her husband’s “menace” hadn’t really dropped, since she was face to face with the effect of it. ah, the effect of it had occupied all the rest of their walk, had stayed out with them and come home with them, besides making it impossible that they shouldn’t presently feign to recollect how rejoining the child had been their original purpose. maggie’s uneffaced note was that it had, at the end of five minutes more, driven them to that endeavour as to a refuge, and caused them afterwards to rejoice, as well, that the boy’s irrepressibly importunate company, in due course secured and enjoyed, with the extension imparted by his governess, a person expectant of consideration, constituted a cover for any awkwardness. for that was what it had all come to, that the dear man had spoken to her to try her--quite as he had been spoken to himself by charlotte, with the same fine idea. the princess took it in, on the spot, firmly grasping it; she heard them together, her father and his wife, dealing with the queer case. “the prince tells me that maggie has a plan for your taking some foreign journey with him, and, as he likes to do everything she wants, he has suggested my speaking to you for it as the thing most likely to make you consent. so i do speak--see?--being always so eager myself, as you know, to meet maggie’s wishes. i speak, but without quite understanding, this time, what she has in her head. why should she, of a sudden, at this particular moment, desire to ship you off together and to remain here alone with me? the compliment’s all to me, i admit, and you must decide quite as you like. the prince is quite ready, evidently, to do his part--but you’ll have it out with him. that is you’ll have it out with her.” something of that kind was what, in her mind’s ear, maggie heard--and this, after his waiting for her to appeal to him directly, was her father’s invitation to her to have it out. well, as she could say to herself all the rest of the day, that was what they did while they continued to sit there in their penny chairs, that was what they had done as much as they would now ever, ever, have out anything. the measure of this, at least, had been given, that each would fight to the last for the protection, for the perversion, of any real anxiety. she had confessed, instantly, with her humbugging grin, not flinching by a hair, meeting his eyes as mildly as he met hers, she had confessed to her fancy that they might both, he and his son-in-law, have welcomed such an escapade, since they had both been so long so furiously domestic. she had almost cocked her hat under the inspiration of this opportunity to hint how a couple of spirited young men, reacting from confinement and sallying forth arm-in-arm, might encounter the agreeable in forms that would strike them for the time at least as novel. she had felt for fifty seconds, with her eyes, all so sweetly and falsely, in her companion’s, horribly vulgar; yet without minding it either--such luck should she have if to be nothing worse than vulgar would see her through. “and i thought amerigo might like it better,” she had said, “than wandering off alone.” “do you mean that he won’t go unless i take him?” she had considered here, and never in her life had she considered so promptly and so intently. if she really put it that way, her husband, challenged, might belie the statement; so that what would that do but make her father wonder, make him perhaps ask straight out, why she was exerting pressure? she couldn’t of course afford to be suspected for an instant of exerting pressure; which was why she was obliged only to make answer: “wouldn’t that be just what you must have out with him?” “decidedly--if he makes me the proposal. but he hasn’t made it yet.” oh, once more, how she was to feel she had smirked! “perhaps he’s too shy!” “because you’re so sure he so really wants my company?” “i think he has thought you might like it.” “well, i should--!” but with this he looked away from her, and she held her breath to hear him either ask if she wished him to address the question to amerigo straight, or inquire if she should be greatly disappointed by his letting it drop. what had “settled” her, as she was privately to call it, was that he had done neither of these things, and had thereby markedly stood off from the risk involved in trying to draw out her reason. to attenuate, on the other hand, this appearance, and quite as if to fill out the too large receptacle made, so musingly, by his abstention, he had himself presently given her a reason--had positively spared her the effort of asking whether he judged charlotte not to have approved. he had taken everything on himself--that was what had settled her. she had had to wait very little more to feel, with this, how much he was taking. the point he made was his lack of any eagerness to put time and space, on any such scale, between himself and his wife. he wasn’t so unhappy with her--far from it, and maggie was to hold that he had grinned back, paternally, through his rather shielding glasses, in easy emphasis of this--as to be able to hint that he required the relief of absence. therefore, unless it was for the prince himself--! “oh, i don’t think it would have been for amerigo himself. amerigo and i,” maggie had said, “perfectly rub on together.” “well then, there we are.” “i see”--and she had again, with sublime blandness, assented. “there we are.” “charlotte and i too,” her father had gaily proceeded, “perfectly rub on together.” and then he had appeared for a little to be making time. “to put it only so,” he had mildly and happily added--“to put it only so!” he had spoken as if he might easily put it much better, yet as if the humour of contented understatement fairly sufficed for the occasion. he had played then, either all consciously or all unconsciously, into charlotte’s hands; and the effect of this was to render trebly oppressive maggie’s conviction of charlotte’s plan. she had done what she wanted, his wife had--which was also what amerigo had made her do. she had kept her test, maggie’s test, from becoming possible, and had applied instead a test of her own. it was exactly as if she had known that her stepdaughter would be afraid to be summoned to say, under the least approach to cross-examination, why any change was desirable; and it was, for our young woman herself, still more prodigiously, as if her father had been capable of calculations to match, of judging it important he shouldn’t be brought to demand of her what was the matter with her. why otherwise, with such an opportunity, hadn’t he demanded it? always from calculation--that was why, that was why. he was terrified of the retort he might have invoked: “what, my dear, if you come to that, is the matter with you?” when, a minute later on, he had followed up his last note by a touch or two designed still further to conjure away the ghost of the anomalous, at that climax verily she would have had to be dumb to the question. “there seems a kind of charm, doesn’t there? on our life--and quite as if, just lately, it had got itself somehow renewed, had waked up refreshed. a kind of wicked selfish prosperity perhaps, as if we had grabbed everything, fixed everything, down to the last lovely object for the last glass case of the last corner, left over, of my old show. that’s the only take-off, that it has made us perhaps lazy, a wee bit languid--lying like gods together, all careless of mankind.” “do you consider that we’re languid?”--that form of rejoinder she had jumped at for the sake of its pretty lightness. “do you consider that we are careless of mankind?--living as we do in the biggest crowd in the world, and running about always pursued and pursuing.” it had made him think indeed a little longer than she had meant; but he came up again, as she might have said, smiling. “well, i don’t know. we get nothing but the fun, do we?” “no,” she had hastened to declare; “we certainly get nothing but the fun.” “we do it all,” he had remarked, “so beautifully.” “we do it all so beautifully.” she hadn’t denied this for a moment. “i see what you mean.” “well, i mean too,” he had gone on, “that we haven’t, no doubt, enough, the sense of difficulty.” “enough? enough for what?” “enough not to be selfish.” “i don’t think you are selfish,” she had returned--and had managed not to wail it. “i don’t say that it’s me particularly--or that it’s you or charlotte or amerigo. but we’re selfish together--we move as a selfish mass. you see we want always the same thing,” he had gone on--“and that holds us, that binds us, together. we want each other,” he had further explained; “only wanting it, each time, for each other. that’s what i call the happy spell; but it’s also, a little, possibly, the immorality.” “‘the immorality’?” she had pleasantly echoed. “well, we’re tremendously moral for ourselves--that is for each other; and i won’t pretend that i know exactly at whose particular personal expense you and i, for instance, are happy. what it comes to, i daresay, is that there’s something haunting--as if it were a bit uncanny--in such a consciousness of our general comfort and privilege. unless indeed,” he had rambled on, “it’s only i to whom, fantastically, it says so much. that’s all i mean, at any rate--that it’s sort of soothing; as if we were sitting about on divans, with pigtails, smoking opium and seeing visions. ‘let us then be up and doing’--what is it longfellow says? that seems sometimes to ring out; like the police breaking in--into our opium den--to give us a shake. but the beauty of it is, at the same time, that we are doing; we’re doing, that is, after all, what we went in for. we’re working it, our life, our chance, whatever you may call it, as we saw it, as we felt it, from the first. we have worked it, and what more can you do than that? it’s a good deal for me,” he had wound up, “to have made charlotte so happy--to have so perfectly contented her. you, from a good way back, were a matter of course--i mean your being all right; so that i needn’t mind your knowing that my great interest, since then, has rather inevitably been in making sure of the same success, very much to your advantage as well, for charlotte. if we’ve worked our life, our idea really, as i say--if at any rate i can sit here and say that i’ve worked my share of it--it has not been what you may call least by our having put charlotte so at her ease. that has been soothing, all round; that has curled up as the biggest of the blue fumes, or whatever they are, of the opium. don’t you see what a cropper we would have come if she hadn’t settled down as she has?” and he had concluded by turning to maggie as for something she mightn’t really have thought of. “you, darling, in that case, i verily believe, would have been the one to hate it most.” “to hate it--?” maggie had wondered. “to hate our having, with our tremendous intentions, not brought it off. and i daresay i should have hated it for you even more than for myself.” “that’s not unlikely perhaps when it was for me, after all, that you did it.” he had hesitated, but only a moment. “i never told you so.” “well, charlotte herself soon enough told me.” “but i never told her,” her father had answered. “are you very sure?” she had presently asked. “well, i like to think how thoroughly i was taken with her, and how right i was, and how fortunate, to have that for my basis. i told her all the good i thought of her.” “then that,” maggie had returned, “was precisely part of the good. i mean it was precisely part of it that she could so beautifully understand.” “yes--understand everything.” “everything--and in particular your reasons. her telling me--that showed me how she had understood.” they were face to face again now, and she saw she had made his colour rise; it was as if he were still finding in her eyes the concrete image, the enacted scene, of her passage with charlotte, which he was now hearing of for the first time and as to which it would have been natural he should question her further. his forbearance to do so would but mark, precisely, the complication of his fears. “what she does like,” he finally said, “is the way it has succeeded.” “your marriage?” “yes--my whole idea. the way i’ve been justified. that’s the joy i give her. if for her, either, it had failed--!” that, however, was not worth talking about; he had broken off. “you think then you could now risk fawns?” “‘risk’ it?” “well, morally--from the point of view i was talking of; that of our sinking deeper into sloth. our selfishness, somehow, seems at its biggest down there.” maggie had allowed him the amusement of her not taking this up. “is charlotte,” she had simply asked, “really ready?” “oh, if you and i and amerigo are. whenever one corners charlotte,” he had developed more at his ease, “one finds that she only wants to know what we want. which is what we got her for!” “what we got her for--exactly!” and so, for a little, even though with a certain effect of oddity in their more or less successful ease, they left it; left it till maggie made the remark that it was all the same wonderful her stepmother should be willing, before the season was out, to exchange so much company for so much comparative solitude. “ah,” he had then made answer, “that’s because her idea, i think, this time, is that we shall have more people, more than we’ve hitherto had, in the country. don’t you remember that that, originally, was what we were to get her for?” “oh yes--to give us a life.” maggie had gone through the form of recalling this, and the light of their ancient candour, shining from so far back, had seemed to bring out some things so strangely that, with the sharpness of the vision, she had risen to her feet. “well, with a ‘life’ fawns will certainly do.” he had remained in his place while she looked over his head; the picture, in her vision, had suddenly swarmed. the vibration was that of one of the lurches of the mystic train in which, with her companion, she was travelling; but she was having to steady herself, this time, before meeting his eyes. she had measured indeed the full difference between the move to fawns because each of them now knew the others wanted it and the pairing-off, for a journey, of her husband and her father, which nobody knew that either wanted. “more company” at fawns would be effectually enough the key in which her husband and her stepmother were at work; there was truly no question but that she and her father must accept any array of visitors. no one could try to marry him now. what he had just said was a direct plea for that, and what was the plea itself but an act of submission to charlotte? he had, from his chair, been noting her look, but he had, the next minute, also risen, and then it was they had reminded each other of their having come out for the boy. their junction with him and with his companion successfully effected, the four had moved home more slowly, and still more vaguely; yet with a vagueness that permitted of maggie’s reverting an instant to the larger issue. “if we have people in the country then, as you were saying, do you know for whom my first fancy would be? you may be amused, but it would be for the castledeans.” “i see. but why should i be amused?” “well, i mean i am myself. i don’t think i like her--and yet i like to see her: which, as amerigo says, is ‘rum.’” “but don’t you feel she’s very handsome?” her father inquired. “yes, but it isn’t for that.” “then what is it for?” “simply that she may be there--just there before us. it’s as if she may have a value--as if something may come of her. i don’t in the least know what, and she rather irritates me meanwhile. i don’t even know, i admit, why--but if we see her often enough i may find out.” “does it matter so very much?” her companion had asked while they moved together. she had hesitated. “you mean because you do rather like her?” he on his side too had waited a little, but then he had taken it from her. “yes, i guess i do rather like her.” which she accepted for the first case she could recall of their not being affected by a person in the same way. it came back therefore to his pretending; but she had gone far enough, and to add to her appearance of levity she further observed that, though they were so far from a novelty, she should also immediately desire, at fawns, the presence of the assinghams. that put everything on a basis independent of explanations; yet it was extraordinary, at the same time, how much, once in the country again with the others, she was going, as they used to say at home, to need the presence of the good fanny. it was the strangest thing in the world, but it was as if mrs. assingham might in a manner mitigate the intensity of her consciousness of charlotte. it was as if the two would balance, one against the other; as if it came round again in that fashion to her idea of the equilibrium. it would be like putting this friend into her scale to make weight--into the scale with her father and herself. amerigo and charlotte would be in the other; therefore it would take the three of them to keep that one straight. and as this played, all duskily, in her mind it had received from her father, with a sound of suddenness, a luminous contribution. “ah, rather! do let’s have the assinghams.” “it would be to have them,” she had said, “as we used so much to have them. for a good long stay, in the old way and on the old terms: ‘as regular boarders’ fanny used to call it. that is if they’ll come.” “as regular boarders, on the old terms--that’s what i should like too. but i guess they’ll come,” her companion had added in a tone into which she had read meanings. the main meaning was that he felt he was going to require them quite as much as she was. his recognition of the new terms as different from the old, what was that, practically, but a confession that something had happened, and a perception that, interested in the situation she had helped to create, mrs. assingham would be, by so much as this, concerned in its inevitable development? it amounted to an intimation, off his guard, that he should be thankful for some one to turn to. if she had wished covertly to sound him he had now, in short, quite given himself away, and if she had, even at the start, needed anything more to settle her, here assuredly was enough. he had hold of his small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy’s hand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat little porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points--so that, secretly, while they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn’t have been more real, mightn’t above all have demanded less strange a study, had it only been on the books that charlotte should give him a principino of his own. she had repossessed herself now of his other arm, only this time she was drawing him back, gently, helplessly back, to what they had tried, for the hour, to get away from--just as he was consciously drawing the child, and as high miss bogle on her left, representing the duties of home, was complacently drawing her. the duties of home, when the house in portland place reappeared, showed, even from a distance, as vividly there before them. amerigo and charlotte had come in--that is amerigo had, charlotte, rather, having come out--and the pair were perched together in the balcony, he bare-headed, she divested of her jacket, her mantle, or whatever, but crowned with a brilliant brave hat, responsive to the balmy day, which maggie immediately “spotted” as new, as insuperably original, as worn, in characteristic generous harmony, for the first time; all, evidently, to watch for the return of the absent, to be there to take them over again as punctually as possible. they were gay, they were amused, in the pleasant morning; they leaned across the rail and called down their greeting, lighting up the front of the great black house with an expression that quite broke the monotony, that might almost have shocked the decency, of portland place. the group on the pavement stared up as at the peopled battlements of a castle; even miss bogle, who carried her head most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as toward truly superior beings. there could scarce have been so much of the open mouth since the dingy waits, on christmas eve, had so lamentably chanted for pennies--the time when amerigo, insatiable for english customs, had come out, with a gasped “santissima vergine!” to marvel at the depositaries of this tradition and purchase a reprieve. maggie’s individual gape was inevitably again for the thought of how the pair would be at work. xxx she had not again, for weeks, had mrs. assingham so effectually in presence as on the afternoon of that lady’s return from the easter party at matcham; but the intermission was made up as soon as the date of the migration to fawns--that of the more or less simultaneous adjournment of the two houses--began to be discussed. it had struck her, promptly, that this renewal, with an old friend, of the old terms she had talked of with her father, was the one opening, for her spirit, that wouldn’t too much advertise or betray her. even her father, who had always, as he would have said, “believed in” their ancient ally, wouldn’t necessarily suspect her of invoking fanny’s aid toward any special inquiry--and least of all if fanny would only act as fanny so easily might. maggie’s measure of fanny’s ease would have been agitating to mrs. assingham had it been all at once revealed to her--as, for that matter, it was soon destined to become even on a comparatively graduated showing. our young woman’s idea, in particular, was that her safety, her escape from being herself suspected of suspicion, would proceed from this friend’s power to cover, to protect and, as might be, even showily to represent her--represent, that is, her relation to the form of the life they were all actually leading. this would doubtless be, as people said, a large order; but that mrs. assingham existed, substantially, or could somehow be made prevailingly to exist, for her private benefit, was the finest flower maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant seed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in portland place to the matcham company. mrs. assingham, that night, rebounding from dejection, had bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then absolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper and darker consciousness--an impression it would now be late for her inconsistently to attempt to undo. it was with a wonderful air of giving out all these truths that the princess at present approached her again; making doubtless at first a sufficient scruple of letting her know what in especial she asked of her, yet not a bit ashamed, as she in fact quite expressly declared, of fanny’s discerned foreboding of the strange uses she might perhaps have for her. quite from the first, really, maggie said extraordinary things to her, such as “you can help me, you know, my dear, when nobody else can;” such as “i almost wish, upon my word, that you had something the matter with you, that you had lost your health, or your money, or your reputation (forgive me, love!) so that i might be with you as much as i want, or keep you with me, without exciting comment, without exciting any other remark than that such kindnesses are ‘like’ me.” we have each our own way of making up for our unselfishness, and maggie, who had no small self at all as against her husband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her stepmother, would verily, at this crisis, have seen mrs. assingham’s personal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang. the attitude that the appetite in question maintained in her was to draw peculiar support moreover from the current aspects and agitations of her victim. this personage struck her, in truth, as ready for almost anything; as not perhaps effusively protesting, yet as wanting with a restlessness of her own to know what she wanted. and in the long run--which was none so long either--there was to be no difficulty, as happened, about that. it was as if, for all the world, maggie had let her see that she held her, that she made her, fairly responsible for something; not, to begin with, dotting all the i’s nor hooking together all the links, but treating her, without insistence, rather with caressing confidence, as there to see and to know, to advise and to assist. the theory, visibly, had patched itself together for her that the dear woman had somehow, from the early time, had a hand in all their fortunes, so that there was no turn of their common relations and affairs that couldn’t be traced back in some degree to her original affectionate interest. on this affectionate interest the good lady’s young friend now built, before her eyes--very much as a wise, or even as a mischievous, child, playing on the floor, might pile up blocks, skilfully and dizzily, with an eye on the face of a covertly-watching elder. when the blocks tumbled down they but acted after the nature of blocks; yet the hour would come for their rising so high that the structure would have to be noticed and admired. mrs. assingham’s appearance of unreservedly giving herself involved meanwhile, on her own side, no separate recognitions: her face of almost anxious attention was directed altogether to her young friend’s so vivid felicity; it suggested that she took for granted, at the most, certain vague recent enhancements of that state. if the princess now, more than before, was going and going, she was prompt to publish that she beheld her go, that she had always known she would, sooner or later, and that any appeal for participation must more or less contain and invite the note of triumph. there was a blankness in her blandness, assuredly, and very nearly an extravagance in her generalising gaiety; a precipitation of cheer particularly marked whenever they met again after short separations: meetings during the first flush of which maggie sometimes felt reminded of other looks in other faces; of two strangely unobliterated impressions above all, the physiognomic light that had played out in her husband at the shock--she had come at last to talk to herself of the “shock”--of his first vision of her on his return from matcham and gloucester, and the wonder of charlotte’s beautiful bold wavering gaze when, the next morning in eaton square, this old friend had turned from the window to begin to deal with her. if she had dared to think of it so crudely she would have said that fanny was afraid of her, afraid of something she might say or do, even as, for their few brief seconds, amerigo and charlotte had been--which made, exactly, an expressive element common to the three. the difference however was that this look had in the dear woman its oddity of a constant renewal, whereas it had never for the least little instant again peeped out of the others. other looks, other lights, radiant and steady, with the others, had taken its place, reaching a climax so short a time ago, that morning of the appearance of the pair on the balcony of her house to overlook what she had been doing with her father; when their general interested brightness and beauty, attuned to the outbreak of summer, had seemed to shed down warmth and welcome and the promise of protection. they were conjoined not to do anything to startle her--and now at last so completely that, with experience and practice, they had almost ceased to fear their liability. mrs. assingham, on the other hand, deprecating such an accident not less, had yet less assurance, as having less control. the high pitch of her cheer, accordingly, the tentative, adventurous expressions, of the would-be smiling order, that preceded her approach even like a squad of skirmishers, or whatever they were called, moving ahead of the baggage train--these things had at the end of a fortnight brought a dozen times to our young woman’s lips a challenge that had the cunning to await its right occasion, but of the relief of which, as a demonstration, she meanwhile felt no little need. “you’ve such a dread of my possibly complaining to you that you keep pealing all the bells to drown my voice; but don’t cry out, my dear, till you’re hurt--and above all ask yourself how i can be so wicked as to complain. what in the name of all that’s fantastic can you dream that i have to complain of?” such inquiries the princess temporarily succeeded in repressing, and she did so, in a measure, by the aid of her wondering if this ambiguity with which her friend affected her wouldn’t be at present a good deal like the ambiguity with which she herself must frequently affect her father. she wondered how she should enjoy, on his part, such a take-up as she but just succeeded, from day to day, in sparing mrs. assingham, and that made for her trying to be as easy with this associate as mr. verver, blessed man, all indulgent but all inscrutable, was with his daughter. she had extracted from her, none the less, a vow in respect to the time that, if the colonel might be depended on, they would spend at fawns; and nothing came home to her more, in this connection, or inspired her with a more intimate interest, than her sense of absolutely seeing her interlocutress forbear to observe that charlotte’s view of a long visit, even from such allies, was there to be reckoned with. fanny stood off from that proposition as visibly to the princess, and as consciously to herself, as she might have backed away from the edge of a chasm into which she feared to slip; a truth that contributed again to keep before our young woman her own constant danger of advertising her subtle processes. that charlotte should have begun to be restrictive about the assinghams--which she had never, and for a hundred obviously good reasons, been before--this in itself was a fact of the highest value for maggie, and of a value enhanced by the silence in which fanny herself so much too unmistakably dressed it. what gave it quite thrillingly its price was exactly the circumstance that it thus opposed her to her stepmother more actively--if she was to back up her friends for holding out--than she had ever yet been opposed; though of course with the involved result of the fine chance given mrs. verver to ask her husband for explanations. ah, from the moment she should be definitely caught in opposition there would be naturally no saying how much charlotte’s opportunities might multiply! what would become of her father, she hauntedly asked, if his wife, on the one side, should begin to press him to call his daughter to order, and the force of old habit--to put it only at that--should dispose him, not less effectively, to believe in this young person at any price? there she was, all round, imprisoned in the circle of the reasons it was impossible she should give--certainly give him. the house in the country was his house, and thereby was charlotte’s; it was her own and amerigo’s only so far as its proper master and mistress should profusely place it at their disposal. maggie felt of course that she saw no limit to her father’s profusion, but this couldn’t be even at the best the case with charlotte’s, whom it would never be decent, when all was said, to reduce to fighting for her preferences. there were hours, truly, when the princess saw herself as not unarmed for battle if battle might only take place without spectators. this last advantage for her, was, however, too sadly out of the question; her sole strength lay in her being able to see that if charlotte wouldn’t “want” the assinghams it would be because that sentiment too would have motives and grounds. she had all the while command of one way of meeting any objection, any complaint, on his wife’s part, reported to her by her father; it would be open to her to retort to his possible “what are your reasons, my dear?” by a lucidly-produced “what are hers, love, please?--isn’t that what we had better know? mayn’t her reasons be a dislike, beautifully founded, of the presence, and thereby of the observation, of persons who perhaps know about her things it’s inconvenient to her they should know?” that hideous card she might in mere logic play--being by this time, at her still swifter private pace, intimately familiar with all the fingered pasteboard in her pack. but she could play it only on the forbidden issue of sacrificing him; the issue so forbidden that it involved even a horror of finding out if he would really have consented to be sacrificed. what she must do she must do by keeping her hands off him; and nothing meanwhile, as we see, had less in common with that scruple than such a merciless manipulation of their yielding beneficiaries as her spirit so boldly revelled in. she saw herself, in this connexion, without detachment--saw others alone with intensity; otherwise she might have been struck, fairly have been amused, by her free assignment of the pachydermatous quality. if she could face the awkwardness of the persistence of her friends at fawns in spite of charlotte, she somehow looked to them for an inspiration of courage that would improve upon her own. they were in short not only themselves to find a plausibility and an audacity, but were somehow by the way to pick up these forms for her, maggie, as well. and she felt indeed that she was giving them scant time longer when, one afternoon in portland place, she broke out with an irrelevance that was merely superficial. “what awfulness, in heaven’s name, is there between them? what do you believe, what do you know?” oh, if she went by faces her visitor’s sudden whiteness, at this, might have carried her far! fanny assingham turned pale for it, but there was something in such an appearance, in the look it put into the eyes, that renewed maggie’s conviction of what this companion had been expecting. she had been watching it come, come from afar, and now that it was there, after all, and the first convulsion over, they would doubtless soon find themselves in a more real relation. it was there because of the sunday luncheon they had partaken of alone together; it was there, as strangely as one would, because of the bad weather, the cold perverse june rain, that was making the day wrong; it was there because it stood for the whole sum of the perplexities and duplicities among which our young woman felt herself lately to have picked her steps; it was there because amerigo and charlotte were again paying together alone a “week end” visit which it had been maggie’s plan infernally to promote--just to see if, this time, they really would; it was there because she had kept fanny, on her side, from paying one she would manifestly have been glad to pay, and had made her come instead, stupidly, vacantly, boringly, to luncheon: all in the spirit of celebrating the fact that the prince and mrs. verver had thus put it into her own power to describe them exactly as they were. it had abruptly occurred, in truth, that maggie required the preliminary help of determining how they were; though, on the other hand, before her guest had answered her question everything in the hour and the place, everything in all the conditions, affected her as crying it out. her guest’s stare of ignorance, above all--that of itself at first cried it out. “‘between them?’ what do you mean?” “anything there shouldn’t be, there shouldn’t have been--all this time. do you believe there is--or what’s your idea?” fanny’s idea was clearly, to begin with, that her young friend had taken her breath away; but she looked at her very straight and very hard. “do you speak from a suspicion of your own?” “i speak, at last, from a torment. forgive me if it comes out. i’ve been thinking for months and months, and i’ve no one to turn to, no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own, don’t you see? to go by.” “you’ve been thinking for months and months?” mrs. assingham took it in. “but what then, dear maggie, have you been thinking?” “well, horrible things--like a little beast that i perhaps am. that there may be something--something wrong and dreadful, something they cover up.” the elder woman’s colour had begun to come back; she was able, though with a visible effort, to face the question less amazedly. “you imagine, poor child, that the wretches are in love? is that it?” but maggie for a minute only stared back at her. “help me to find out what i imagine. i don’t know--i’ve nothing but my perpetual anxiety. have you any?--do you see what i mean? if you’ll tell me truly, that at least, one way or the other, will do something for me.” fanny’s look had taken a peculiar gravity--a fulness with which it seemed to shine. “is what it comes to that you’re jealous of charlotte?” “do you mean whether i hate her?”--and maggie thought. “no; not on account of father.” “ah,” mrs. assingham returned, “that isn’t what one would suppose. what i ask is if you’re jealous on account of your husband.” “well,” said maggie presently, “perhaps that may be all. if i’m unhappy i’m jealous; it must come to the same thing; and with you, at least, i’m not afraid of the word. if i’m jealous, don’t you see? i’m tormented,” she went on--“and all the more if i’m helpless. and if i’m both helpless and tormented i stuff my pocket-handkerchief into my mouth, i keep it there, for the most part, night and day, so as not to be heard too indecently moaning. only now, with you, at last, i can’t keep it longer; i’ve pulled it out, and here i am fairly screaming at you. they’re away,” she wound up, “so they can’t hear; and i’m, by a miracle of arrangement, not at luncheon with father at home. i live in the midst of miracles of arrangement, half of which i admit, are my own; i go about on tiptoe, i watch for every sound, i feel every breath, and yet i try all the while to seem as smooth as old satin dyed rose-colour. have you ever thought of me,” she asked, “as really feeling as i do?” her companion, conspicuously, required to be clear. “jealous, unhappy, tormented--? no,” said mrs. assingham; “but at the same time--and though you may laugh at me for it!--i’m bound to confess that i’ve never been so awfully sure of what i may call knowing you. here you are indeed, as you say--such a deep little person! i’ve never imagined your existence poisoned, and, since you wish to know if i consider that it need be, i’ve not the least difficulty in speaking on the spot. nothing, decidedly, strikes me as more unnecessary.” for a minute after this they remained face to face; maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. it had accumulated, considerably, by this time, round mrs. assingham’s ample presence, and it made, even to our young woman’s own sense, a medium in which she could at last take a deeper breath. “i’ve affected you, these months--and these last weeks in especial--as quiet and natural and easy?” but it was a question that took, not imperceptibly, some answering. “you’ve never affected me, from the first hour i beheld you, as anything but--in a way all your own--absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. in a way, as i say,” mrs. assingham almost caressingly repeated, “just all your very own--nobody else’s at all. i’ve never thought of you but as outside of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. i’ve never mixed you up with them; there would have been time enough for that if they had seemed to be near you. but they haven’t--if that’s what you want to know.” “you’ve only believed me contented then because you’ve believed me stupid?” mrs. assingham had a free smile, now, for the length of this stride, dissimulated though it might be in a graceful little frisk. “if i had believed you stupid i shouldn’t have thought you interesting, and if i hadn’t thought you interesting i shouldn’t have noted whether i ‘knew’ you, as i’ve called it, or not. what i’ve always been conscious of is your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character; quite as much in fact,” fanny smiled, “as one could suppose a person of your size able to carry. the only thing was,” she explained, “that thanks to your never calling one’s attention to it, i hadn’t made out much more about it, and should have been vague, above all, as to where you carried it or kept it. somewhere under, i should simply have said--like that little silver cross you once showed me, blest by the holy father, that you always wear, out of sight, next your skin. that relic i’ve had a glimpse of”--with which she continued to invoke the privilege of humour. “but the precious little innermost, say this time little golden, personal nature of you--blest by a greater power, i think, even than the pope--that you’ve never consentingly shown me. i’m not sure you’ve ever consentingly shown it to anyone. you’ve been in general too modest.” maggie, trying to follow, almost achieved a little fold of her forehead. “i strike you as modest to-day--modest when i stand here and scream at you?” “oh, your screaming, i’ve granted you, is something new. i must fit it on somewhere. the question is, however,” mrs. assingham further proceeded, “of what the deuce i can fit it on to. do you mean,” she asked, “to the fact of our friends’ being, from yesterday to to-morrow, at a place where they may more or less irresponsibly meet?” she spoke with the air of putting it as badly for them as possible. “are you thinking of their being there alone--of their having consented to be?” and then as she had waited without result for her companion to say: “but isn’t it true that--after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour, said you wouldn’t--they would really much rather not have gone?” “yes--they would certainly much rather not have gone. but i wanted them to go.” “then, my dear child, what in the world is the matter?” “i wanted to see if they would. and they’ve had to,” maggie added. “it was the only thing.” her friend appeared to wonder. “from the moment you and your father backed out?” “oh, i don’t mean go for those people; i mean go for us. for father and me,” maggie went on. “because now they know.” “they ‘know’?” fanny assingham quavered. “that i’ve been for some time past taking more notice. notice of the queer things in our life.” maggie saw her companion for an instant on the point of asking her what these queer things might be; but mrs. assingham had the next minute brushed by that ambiguous opening and taken, as she evidently felt, a better one. “and is it for that you did it? i mean gave up the visit.” “it’s for that i did it. to leave them to themselves--as they less and less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to be left. as they had for so long arranged things,” the princess went on, “you see they sometimes have to be.” and then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, mrs. assingham for a little said nothing: “now do you think i’m modest?” with time, however; fanny could brilliantly think anything that would serve. “i think you’re wrong. that, my dear, is my answer to your question. it demands assuredly the straightest i can make. i see no ‘awfulness’--i suspect none. i’m deeply distressed,” she added, “that you should do anything else.” it drew again from maggie a long look. “you’ve never even imagined anything?” “ah, god forbid!--for it’s exactly as a woman of imagination that i speak. there’s no moment of my life at which i’m not imagining something; and it’s thanks to that, darling,” mrs. assingham pursued, “that i figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable, adorable wife.” she paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this--as to maggie’s measure of which, however, no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort.--“he wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head.” it had produced in maggie, at once, and apparently in the intended form of a smile, the most extraordinary expression. “ah, there it is!” but her guest had already gone on. “and i’m absolutely certain that charlotte wouldn’t either.” it kept the princess, with her strange grimace, standing there. “no--charlotte wouldn’t either. that’s how they’ve had again to go off together. they’ve been afraid not to--lest it should disturb me, aggravate me, somehow work upon me. as i insisted that they must, that we couldn’t all fail--though father and charlotte hadn’t really accepted; as i did this they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger: which would be the danger, you see, of my feeling myself wronged. their least danger, they know, is in going on with all the things that i’ve seemed to accept and that i’ve given no indication, at any moment, of not accepting. everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away--so that it’s all as wonderful as you may conceive. they move at any rate among the dangers i speak of--between that of their doing too much and that of their not having any longer the confidence, or the nerve, or whatever you may call it, to do enough.” her tone, by this time, might have shown a strangeness to match her smile; which was still more marked as she wound up. “and that’s how i make them do what i like!” it had an effect on mrs. assingham, who rose with the deliberation that, from point to point, marked the widening of her grasp. “my dear child, you’re amazing.” “amazing--?” “you’re terrible.” maggie thoughtfully shook her head. “no; i’m not terrible, and you don’t think me so. i do strike you as surprising, no doubt--but surprisingly mild. because--don’t you see?--i am mild. i can bear anything.” “oh, ‘bear’!” mrs. assingham fluted. “for love,” said the princess. fanny hesitated. “of your father?” “for love,” maggie repeated. it kept her friend watching. “of your husband?” “for love,” maggie said again. it was, for the moment, as if the distinctness of this might have determined in her companion a choice between two or three highly different alternatives. mrs. assingham’s rejoinder, at all events--however much or however little it was a choice--was presently a triumph. “speaking with this love of your own then, have you undertaken to convey to me that you believe your husband and your father’s wife to be in act and in fact lovers of each other?” and then as the princess didn’t at first answer: “do you call such an allegation as that ‘mild’?” “oh, i’m not pretending to be mild to you. but i’ve told you, and moreover you must have seen for yourself, how much so i’ve been to them.” mrs. assingham, more brightly again, bridled. “is that what you call it when you make them, for terror as you say, do as you like?” “ah, there wouldn’t be any terror for them if they had nothing to hide.” mrs. assingham faced her--quite steady now. “are you really conscious, love, of what you’re saying?” “i’m saying that i’m bewildered and tormented, and that i’ve no one but you to speak to. i’ve thought, i’ve in fact been sure, that you’ve seen for yourself how much this is the case. it’s why i’ve believed you would meet me half way.” “half way to what? to denouncing,” fanny asked, “two persons, friends of years, whom i’ve always immensely admired and liked, and against whom i haven’t the shadow of a charge to make?” maggie looked at her with wide eyes. “i had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them. denounce me, denounce me,” she said, “if you can see your way.” it was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. “if, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if, conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig--!” “well?” said mrs. assingham, consideringly, as she paused for emphasis. “i think i shall be saved.” her friend took it, for a minute, however, by carrying thoughtful eyes, eyes verily portentous, over her head. “you say you’ve no one to speak to, and you make a point of your having so disguised your feelings--not having, as you call it, given yourself away. have you then never seen it not only as your right, but as your bounden duty, worked up to such a pitch, to speak to your husband?” “i’ve spoken to him,” said maggie. mrs. assingham stared. “ah, then it isn’t true that you’ve made no sign.” maggie had a silence. “i’ve made no trouble. i’ve made no scene. i’ve taken no stand. i’ve neither reproached nor accused him. you’ll say there’s a way in all that of being nasty enough.” “oh!” dropped from fanny as if she couldn’t help it. “but i don’t think--strangely enough--that he regards me as nasty. i think that at bottom--for that is,” said the princess, “the strangeness--he’s sorry for me. yes, i think that, deep within, he pities me.” her companion wondered. “for the state you’ve let yourself get into?” “for not being happy when i’ve so much to make me so.” “you’ve everything,” said mrs. assingham with alacrity. yet she remained for an instant embarrassed as to a further advance. “i don’t understand, however, how, if you’ve done nothing--” an impatience from maggie had checked her. “i’ve not done absolutely ‘nothing.’” “but what then--?” “well,” she went on after a minute, “he knows what i’ve done.” it produced on mrs. assingham’s part, her whole tone and manner exquisitely aiding, a hush not less prolonged, and the very duration of which inevitably gave it something of the character of an equal recognition. “and what then has he done?” maggie took again a minute. “he has been splendid.” “‘splendid’? then what more do you want?” “ah, what you see!” said maggie. “not to be afraid.” it made her guest again hang fire. “not to be afraid really to speak?” “not to be afraid not to speak.” mrs. assingham considered further. “you can’t even to charlotte?” but as, at this, after a look at her, maggie turned off with a movement of suppressed despair, she checked herself and might have been watching her, for all the difficulty and the pity of it, vaguely moving to the window and the view of the hill street. it was almost as if she had had to give up, from failure of responsive wit in her friend--the last failure she had feared--the hope of the particular relief she had been working for. mrs. assingham resumed the next instant, however, in the very tone that seemed most to promise her she should have to give up nothing. “i see, i see; you would have in that case too many things to consider.” it brought the princess round again, proving itself thus the note of comprehension she wished most to clutch at. “don’t be afraid.” maggie took it where she stood--which she was soon able to signify. “thank-you.” it very properly encouraged her counsellor. “what your idea imputes is a criminal intrigue carried on, from day to day, amid perfect trust and sympathy, not only under your eyes, but under your father’s. that’s an idea it’s impossible for me for a. moment to entertain.” “ah, there you are then! it’s exactly what i wanted from you.” “you’re welcome to it!” mrs. assingham breathed. “you never have entertained it?” maggie pursued. “never for an instant,” said fanny with her head very high. maggie took it again, yet again as wanting more. “pardon my being so horrid. but by all you hold sacred?” mrs. assingham faced her. “ah, my dear, upon my positive word as an honest woman.” “thank-you then,” said the princess. so they remained a little; after which, “but do you believe it, love?” fanny inquired. “i believe you.” “well, as i’ve faith in them, it comes to the same thing.” maggie, at this last, appeared for a moment to think again; but she embraced the proposition. “the same thing.” “then you’re no longer unhappy?” her guest urged, coming more gaily toward her. “i doubtless shan’t be a great while.” but it was now mrs. assingham’s turn to want more. “i’ve convinced you it’s impossible?” she had held out her arms, and maggie, after a moment, meeting her, threw herself into them with a sound that had its oddity as a sign of relief. “impossible, impossible,” she emphatically, more than emphatically, replied; yet the next minute she had burst into tears over the impossibility, and a few seconds later, pressing, clinging, sobbing, had even caused them to flow, audibly, sympathetically and perversely, from her friend. xxxi the understanding appeared to have come to be that the colonel and his wife were to present themselves toward the middle of july for the “good long visit” at fawns on which maggie had obtained from her father that he should genially insist; as well as that the couple from eaton square should welcome there earlier in the month, and less than a week after their own arrival, the advent of the couple from portland place. “oh, we shall give you time to breathe!” fanny remarked, in reference to the general prospect, with a gaiety that announced itself as heedless of criticism, to each member of the party in turn; sustaining and bracing herself by her emphasis, pushed even to an amiable cynicism, of the confident view of these punctualities of the assinghams. the ground she could best occupy, to her sense, was that of her being moved, as in this connexion she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her avidity, the way the hospitality of the ververs met her convenience and ministered to her ease, destitute as the colonel had kept her, from the first, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base for the stale season now at hand. she had explained at home, she had repeatedly reexplained, the terms of her dilemma, the real difficulty of her, or--as she now put it--of their position. when the pair could do nothing else, in cadogan place, they could still talk of marvellous little maggie, and of the charm, the sinister charm, of their having to hold their breath to watch her; a topic the momentous midnight discussion at which we have been present was so far from having exhausted. it came up, irrepressibly, at all private hours; they had planted it there between them, and it grew, from day to day, in a manner to make their sense of responsibility almost yield to their sense of fascination. mrs. assingham declared at such moments that in the interest of this admirable young thing--to whom, she also declared, she had quite “come over”--she was ready to pass with all the world else, even with the prince himself, the object, inconsequently, as well, of her continued, her explicitly shameless appreciation, for a vulgar, indelicate, pestilential woman, showing her true character in an abandoned old age. the colonel’s confessed attention had been enlisted, we have seen, as never yet, under pressure from his wife, by any guaranteed imbroglio; but this, she could assure him she perfectly knew, was not a bit because he was sorry for her, or touched by what she had let herself in for, but because, when once they had been opened, he couldn’t keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost intelligently, on the princess. if he was in love with her now, however, so much the better; it would help them both not to wince at what they would have to do for her. mrs. assingham had come back to that, whenever he groaned or grunted; she had at no beguiled moment--since maggie’s little march was positively beguiling--let him lose sight of the grim necessity awaiting them. “we shall have, as i’ve again and again told you, to lie for her--to lie till we’re black in the face.” “to lie ‘for’ her?” the colonel often, at these hours, as from a vague vision of old chivalry in a new form, wandered into apparent lapses from lucidity. “to lie to her, up and down, and in and out--it comes to the same thing. it will consist just as much of lying to the others too: to the prince about one’s belief in him; to charlotte about one’s belief in her; to mr. verver, dear sweet man, about one’s belief in everyone. so we’ve work cut out--with the biggest lie, on top of all, being that we like to be there for such a purpose. we hate it unspeakably--i’m more ready to be a coward before it, to let the whole thing, to let everyone, selfishly and pusillanimously slide, than before any social duty, any felt human call, that has ever forced me to be decent. i speak at least for myself. for you,” she had added, “as i’ve given you so perfect an opportunity to fall in love with maggie, you’ll doubtless find your account in being so much nearer to her.” “and what do you make,” the colonel could, at this, always imperturbably enough ask, “of the account you yourself will find in being so much nearer to the prince; of your confirmed, if not exasperated, infatuation with whom--to say nothing of my weak good-nature about it--you give such a pretty picture?” to the picture in question she had been always, in fact, able contemplatively to return. “the difficulty of my enjoyment of that is, don’t you see? that i’m making, in my loyalty to maggie, a sad hash of his affection for me.” “you find means to call it then, this whitewashing of his crime, being ‘loyal’ to maggie?” “oh, about that particular crime there is always much to say. it is always more interesting to us than any other crime; it has at least that for it. but of course i call everything i have in mind at all being loyal to maggie. being loyal to her is, more than anything else, helping her with her father--which is what she most wants and needs.” the colonel had had it before, but he could apparently never have too much of it. “helping her ‘with’ him--?” “helping her against him then. against what we’ve already so fully talked of--its having to be recognised between them that he doubts. that’s where my part is so plain--to see her through, to see her through to the end.” exaltation, for the moment, always lighted mrs. assingham’s reference to this plainness; yet she at the same time seldom failed, the next instant, to qualify her view of it. “when i talk of my obligation as clear i mean that it’s absolute; for just how, from day to day and through thick and thin, to keep the thing up is, i grant you, another matter. there’s one way, luckily, nevertheless, in which i’m strong. i can perfectly count on her.” the colonel seldom failed here, as from the insidious growth of an excitement, to wonder, to encourage. “not to see you’re lying?” “to stick to me fast, whatever she sees. if i stick to her--that is to my own poor struggling way, under providence, of watching over them all--she’ll stand by me to the death. she won’t give me away. for, you know, she easily can.” this, regularly, was the most lurid turn of their road; but bob assingham, with each journey, met it as for the first time. “easily?” “she can utterly dishonour me with her father. she can let him know that i was aware, at the time of his marriage--as i had been aware at the time of her own--of the relations that had pre-existed between his wife and her husband.” “and how can she do so if, up to this minute, by your own statement, she is herself in ignorance of your knowledge?” it was a question that mrs. assingham had ever, for dealing with, a manner to which repeated practice had given almost a grand effect; very much as if she was invited by it to say that about this, exactly, she proposed to do her best lying. but she said, and with full lucidity, something quite other: it could give itself a little the air, still, of a triumph over his coarseness. “by acting, immediately with the blind resentment with which, in her place, ninety-nine women out of a hundred would act; and by so making mr. verver, in turn, act with the same natural passion, the passion of ninety-nine men out of a hundred. they’ve only to agree about me,” the poor lady said; “they’ve only to feel at one over it, feel bitterly practised upon, cheated and injured; they’ve only to denounce me to each other as false and infamous, for me to be quite irretrievably dished. of course it’s i who have been, and who continue to be, cheated--cheated by the prince and charlotte; but they’re not obliged to give me the benefit of that, or to give either of us the benefit of anything. they’ll be within their rights to lump us all together as a false, cruel, conspiring crew, and, if they can find the right facts to support them, get rid of us root and branch.” this, on each occasion, put the matter so at the worst that repetition even scarce controlled the hot flush with which she was compelled to see the parts of the whole history, all its ugly consistency and its temporary gloss, hang together. she enjoyed, invariably, the sense of making her danger present, of making it real, to her husband, and of his almost turning pale, when their eyes met, at this possibility of their compromised state and their shared discredit. the beauty was that, as under a touch of one of the ivory notes at the left of the keyboard, he sounded out with the short sharpness of the dear fond stupid uneasy man. “conspiring--so far as you were concerned--to what end?” “why, to the obvious end of getting the prince a wife--at maggie’s expense. and then to that of getting charlotte a husband at mr. verver’s.” “of rendering friendly services, yes--which have produced, as it turns out, complications. but from the moment you didn’t do it for the complications, why shouldn’t you have rendered them?” it was extraordinary for her, always, in this connexion, how, with time given him, he fell to speaking better for her than she could, in the presence of her clear-cut image of the “worst,” speak for herself. troubled as she was she thus never wholly failed of her amusement by the way. “oh, isn’t what i may have meddled ‘for’--so far as it can be proved i did meddle--open to interpretation; by which i mean to mr. verver’s and maggie’s? mayn’t they see my motive, in the light of that appreciation, as the wish to be decidedly more friendly to the others than to the victimised father and daughter?” she positively liked to keep it up. “mayn’t they see my motive as the determination to serve the prince, in any case, and at any price, first; to ‘place’ him comfortably; in other words to find him his fill of money? mayn’t it have all the air for them of a really equivocal, sinister bargain between us--something quite unholy and louche?” it produced in the poor colonel, infallibly, the echo. “‘louche,’ love--?” “why, haven’t you said as much yourself?--haven’t you put your finger on that awful possibility?” she had a way now, with his felicities, that made him enjoy being reminded of them. “in speaking of your having always had such a ‘mash’--?” “such a mash, precisely, for the man i was to help to put so splendidly at his ease. a motherly mash an impartial look at it would show it only as likely to have been--but we’re not talking, of course, about impartial looks. we’re talking of good innocent people deeply worked upon by a horrid discovery, and going much further, in their view of the lurid, as such people almost always do, than those who have been wider awake, all round, from the first. what i was to have got from my friend, in such a view, in exchange for what i had been able to do for him--well, that would have been an equivalent, of a kind best known to myself, for me shrewdly to consider.” and she easily lost herself, each time, in the anxious satisfaction of filling out the picture. “it would have been seen, it would have been heard of, before, the case of the woman a man doesn’t want, or of whom he’s tired, or for whom he has no use but such uses, and who is capable, in her infatuation, in her passion, of promoting his interests with other women rather than lose sight of him, lose touch of him, cease to have to do with him at all. cela s’est vu, my dear; and stranger things still--as i needn’t tell you! very good then,” she wound up; “there is a perfectly possible conception of the behaviour of your sweet wife; since, as i say, there’s no imagination so lively, once it’s started, as that of really agitated lambs. lions are nothing to them, for lions are sophisticated, are blases, are brought up, from the first, to prowling and mauling. it does give us, you’ll admit, something to think about. my relief is luckily, however, in what i finally do think.” he was well enough aware, by this time, of what she finally did think; but he was not without a sense, again, also for his amusement by the way. it would have made him, for a spectator of these passages between the pair, resemble not a little the artless child who hears his favourite story told for the twentieth time and enjoys it exactly because he knows what is next to happen. “what of course will pull them up, if they turn out to have less imagination than you assume, is the profit you can have found in furthering mrs. verver’s marriage. you weren’t at least in love with charlotte.” “oh,” mrs. assingham, at this, always brought out, “my hand in that is easily accounted for by my desire to be agreeable to him.” “to mr. verver?” “to the prince--by preventing her in that way from taking, as he was in danger of seeing her do, some husband with whom he wouldn’t be able to open, to keep open, so large an account as with his father-in-law. i’ve brought her near him, kept her within his reach, as she could never have remained either as a single woman or as the wife of a different man.” “kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress?” “kept her, on that sweet construction, to be his mistress.” she brought it out grandly--it had always so, for her own ear as well as, visibly, for her husband’s, its effect. “the facilities in the case, thanks to the particular conditions, being so quite ideal.” “down even to the facility of your minding everything so little--from your own point of view--as to have supplied him with the enjoyment of two beautiful women.” “down even to that--to the monstrosity of my folly. but not,” mrs. assingham added, “‘two’ of anything. one beautiful woman--and one beautiful fortune. that’s what a creature of pure virtue exposes herself to when she suffers her pure virtue, suffers her sympathy, her disinterestedness, her exquisite sense for the lives of others, to carry her too far. voila.” “i see. it’s the way the ververs have you.” “it’s the way the ververs ‘have’ me. it’s in other words the way they would be able to make such a show to each other of having me--if maggie weren’t so divine.” “she lets you off?” he never failed to insist on all this to the very end; which was how he had become so versed in what she finally thought. “she lets me off. so that now, horrified and contrite at what i’ve done, i may work to help her out. and mr. verver,” she was fond of adding, “lets me off too.” “then you do believe he knows?” it determined in her always, there, with a significant pause, a deep immersion in her thought. “i believe he would let me off if he did know--so that i might work to help him out. or rather, really,” she went on, “that i might work to help maggie. that would be his motive, that would be his condition, in forgiving me; just as hers, for me, in fact, her motive and her condition, are my acting to spare her father. but it’s with maggie only that i’m directly concerned; nothing, ever--not a breath, not a look, i’ll guarantee--shall i have, whatever happens, from mr. verver himself. so it is, therefore, that i shall probably, by the closest possible shave, escape the penalty of my crimes.” “you mean being held responsible.” “i mean being held responsible. my advantage will be that maggie’s such a trump.” “such a trump that, as you say, she’ll stick to you.” “stick to me, on our understanding--stick to me. for our understanding’s signed and sealed.” and to brood over it again was ever, for mrs. assingham, to break out again with exaltation. “it’s a grand, high compact. she has solemnly promised.” “but in words--?” “oh yes, in words enough--since it’s a matter of words. to keep up her lie so long as i keep up mine.” “and what do you call ‘her’ lie?” “why, the pretence that she believes me. believes they’re innocent.” “she positively believes then they’re guilty? she has arrived at that, she’s really content with it, in the absence of proof?” it was here, each time, that fanny assingham most faltered; but always at last to get the matter, for her own sense, and with a long sigh, sufficiently straight. “it isn’t a question of belief or of proof, absent or present; it’s inevitably, with her, a question of natural perception, of insurmountable feeling. she irresistibly knows that there’s something between them. but she hasn’t ‘arrived’ at it, as you say, at all; that’s exactly what she hasn’t done, what she so steadily and intensely refuses to do. she stands off and off, so as not to arrive; she keeps out to sea and away from the rocks, and what she most wants of me is to keep at a safe distance with her--as i, for my own skin, only ask not to come nearer.” after which, invariably, she let him have it all. “so far from wanting proof--which she must get, in a manner, by my siding with her--she wants disproof, as against herself, and has appealed to me, so extraordinarily, to side against her. it’s really magnificent, when you come to think of it, the spirit of her appeal. if i’ll but cover them up brazenly enough, the others, so as to show, round and about them, as happy as a bird, she on her side will do what she can. if i’ll keep them quiet, in a word, it will enable her to gain time--time as against any idea of her father’s--and so, somehow, come out. if i’ll take care of charlotte, in particular, she’ll take care of the prince; and it’s beautiful and wonderful, really pathetic and exquisite, to see what she feels that time may do for her.” “ah, but what does she call, poor little thing, ‘time’?” “well, this summer at fawns, to begin with. she can live as yet, of course, but from hand to mouth; but she has worked it out for herself, i think, that the very danger of fawns, superficially looked at, may practically amount to a greater protection. there the lovers--if they are lovers!--will have to mind. they’ll feel it for themselves, unless things are too utterly far gone with them.” “and things are not too utterly far gone with them?” she had inevitably, poor woman, her hesitation for this, but she put down her answer as, for the purchase of some absolutely indispensable article, she would have put down her last shilling. “no.” it made him always grin at her. “is that a lie?” “do you think you’re worth lying to? if it weren’t the truth, for me,” she added, “i wouldn’t have accepted for fawns. i can, i believe, keep the wretches quiet.” “but how--at the worst?” “oh, ‘the worst’--don’t talk about the worst! i can keep them quiet at the best, i seem to feel, simply by our being there. it will work, from week to week, of itself. you’ll see.” he was willing enough to see, but he desired to provide--! “yet if it doesn’t work?” “ah, that’s talking about the worst!” well, it might be; but what were they doing, from morning to night, at this crisis, but talk? “who’ll keep the others?” “the others--?” “who’ll keep them quiet? if your couple have had a life together, they can’t have had it completely without witnesses, without the help of persons, however few, who must have some knowledge, some idea about them. they’ve had to meet, secretly, protectedly, they’ve had to arrange; for if they haven’t met, and haven’t arranged, and haven’t thereby, in some quarter or other, had to give themselves away, why are we piling it up so? therefore if there’s evidence, up and down london--” “there must be people in possession of it? ah, it isn’t all,” she always remembered, “up and down london. some of it must connect them--i mean,” she musingly added, “it naturally would--with other places; with who knows what strange adventures, opportunities, dissimulations? but whatever there may have been, it will also all have been buried on the spot. oh, they’ve known how--too beautifully! but nothing, all the same, is likely to find its way to maggie of itself.” “because every one who may have anything to tell, you hold, will have been so squared?” and then inveterately, before she could say--he enjoyed so much coming to this: “what will have squared lady castledean?” “the consciousness”--she had never lost her promptness--“of having no stones to throw at any one else’s windows. she has enough to do to guard her own glass. that was what she was doing,” fanny said, “that last morning at matcham when all of us went off and she kept the prince and charlotte over. she helped them simply that she might herself be helped--if it wasn’t perhaps, rather, with her ridiculous mr. blint, that he might be. they put in together, therefore, of course, that day; they got it clear--and quite under her eyes; inasmuch as they didn’t become traceable again, as we know, till late in the evening.” on this historic circumstance mrs. assingham was always ready afresh to brood; but she was no less ready, after her brooding, devoutly to add “only we know nothing whatever else--for which all our stars be thanked!” the colonel’s gratitude was apt to be less marked. “what did they do for themselves, all the same, from the moment they got that free hand to the moment (long after dinner-time, haven’t you told me?) of their turning up at their respective homes?” “well, it’s none of your business!” “i don’t speak of it as mine, but it’s only too much theirs. people are always traceable, in england, when tracings are required. something, sooner or later, happens; somebody, sooner or later, breaks the holy calm. murder will out.” “murder will--but this isn’t murder. quite the contrary perhaps! i verily believe,” she had her moments of adding, “that, for the amusement of the row, you would prefer an explosion.” this, however, was a remark he seldom noticed; he wound up, for the most part, after a long, contemplative smoke, with a transition from which no exposed futility in it had succeeded in weaning him. “what i can’t for my life make out is your idea of the old boy.” “charlotte’s too inconceivably funny husband? i have no idea.” “i beg your pardon--you’ve just shown it. you never speak of him but as too inconceivably funny.” “well, he is,” she always confessed. “that is he may be, for all i know, too inconceivably great. but that’s not an idea. it represents only my weak necessity of feeling that he’s beyond me--which isn’t an idea either. you see he may be stupid too.” “precisely--there you are.” “yet on the other hand,” she always went on, “he may be sublime: sublimer even than maggie herself. he may in fact have already been. but we shall never know.” with which her tone betrayed perhaps a shade of soreness for the single exemption she didn’t yearningly welcome. “that i can see.” “oh, i say--!” it came to affect the colonel himself with a sense of privation. “i’m not sure, even, that charlotte will.” “oh, my dear, what charlotte doesn’t know--!” but she brooded and brooded. “i’m not sure even that the prince will.” it seemed privation, in short, for them all. “they’ll be mystified, confounded, tormented. but they won’t know--and all their possible putting their heads together won’t make them. that,” said fanny assingham, “will be their punishment.” and she ended, ever, when she had come so far, at the same pitch. “it will probably also--if i get off with so little--be mine.” “and what,” her husband liked to ask, “will be mine?” “nothing--you’re not worthy of any. one’s punishment is in what one feels, and what will make ours effective is that we shall feel.” she was splendid with her “ours”; she flared up with this prophecy. “it will be maggie herself who will mete it out.” “maggie--?” “she’ll know--about her father; everything. everything,” she repeated. on the vision of which, each time, mrs. assingham, as with the presentiment of an odd despair, turned away from it. “but she’ll never tell us.” xxxii if maggie had not so firmly made up her mind never to say, either to her good friend or to any one else, more than she meant about her father, she might have found herself betrayed into some such overflow during the week spent in london with her husband after the others had adjourned to fawns for the summer. this was because of the odd element of the unnatural imparted to the so simple fact of their brief separation by the assumptions resident in their course of life hitherto. she was used, herself, certainly, by this time, to dealing with odd elements; but she dropped, instantly, even from such peace as she had patched up, when it was a question of feeling that her unpenetrated parent might be alone with them. she thought of him as alone with them when she thought of him as alone with charlotte--and this, strangely enough, even while fixing her sense to the full on his wife’s power of preserving, quite of enhancing, every felicitous appearance. charlotte had done that--under immeasurably fewer difficulties indeed--during the numerous months of their hymeneal absence from england, the period prior to that wonderful reunion of the couples, in the interest of the larger play of all the virtues of each, which was now bearing, for mrs. verver’s stepdaughter at least, such remarkable fruit. it was the present so much briefer interval, in a situation, possibly in a relation, so changed--it was the new terms of her problem that would tax charlotte’s art. the princess could pull herself up, repeatedly, by remembering that the real “relation” between her father and his wife was a thing that she knew nothing about and that, in strictness, was none of her business; but she none the less failed to keep quiet, as she would have called it, before the projected image of their ostensibly happy isolation. nothing could have had less of the quality of quietude than a certain queer wish that fitfully flickered up in her, a wish that usurped, perversely, the place of a much more natural one. if charlotte, while she was about it, could only have been worse!--that idea maggie fell to invoking instead of the idea that she might desirably have been better. for, exceedingly odd as it was to feel in such ways, she believed she mightn’t have worried so much if she didn’t somehow make her stepmother out, under the beautiful trees and among the dear old gardens, as lavish of fifty kinds of confidence and twenty kinds, at least, of gentleness. gentleness and confidence were certainly the right thing, as from a charming woman to her husband, but the fine tissue of reassurance woven by this lady’s hands and flung over her companion as a light, muffling veil, formed precisely a wrought transparency through which she felt her father’s eyes continually rest on herself. the reach of his gaze came to her straighter from a distance; it showed him as still more conscious, down there alone, of the suspected, the felt elaboration of the process of their not alarming or hurting him. she had herself now, for weeks and weeks, and all unwinkingly, traced the extension of this pious effort; but her perfect success in giving no sign--she did herself that credit--would have been an achievement quite wasted if mrs. verver should make with him those mistakes of proportion, one set of them too abruptly, too incoherently designed to correct another set, that she had made with his daughter. however, if she had been worse, poor woman, who should say that her husband would, to a certainty, have been better? one groped noiselessly among such questions, and it was actually not even definite for the princess that her own amerigo, left alone with her in town, had arrived at the golden mean of non-precautionary gallantry which would tend, by his calculation, to brush private criticism from its last perching-place. the truth was, in this connection, that she had different sorts of terrors, and there were hours when it came to her that these days were a prolonged repetition of that night-drive, of weeks before, from the other house to their own, when he had tried to charm her, by his sovereign personal power, into some collapse that would commit her to a repudiation of consistency. she was never alone with him, it was to be said, without her having sooner or later to ask herself what had already become of her consistency; yet, at the same time, so long as she breathed no charge, she kept hold of a remnant of appearance that could save her from attack. attack, real attack, from him, as he would conduct it was what she above all dreaded; she was so far from sure that under that experience she mightn’t drop into some depth of weakness, mightn’t show him some shortest way with her that he would know how to use again. therefore, since she had given him, as yet, no moment’s pretext for pretending to her that she had either lost faith or suffered by a feather’s weight in happiness, she left him, it was easy to reason, with an immense advantage for all waiting and all tension. she wished him, for the present, to “make up” to her for nothing. who could say to what making-up might lead, into what consenting or pretending or destroying blindness it might plunge her? she loved him too helplessly, still, to dare to open the door, by an inch, to his treating her as if either of them had wronged the other. something or somebody--and who, at this, which of them all?--would inevitably, would in the gust of momentary selfishness, be sacrificed to that; whereas what she intelligently needed was to know where she was going. knowledge, knowledge, was a fascination as well as a fear; and a part, precisely, of the strangeness of this juncture was the way her apprehension that he would break out to her with some merely general profession was mixed with her dire need to forgive him, to reassure him, to respond to him, on no ground that she didn’t fully measure. to do these things it must be clear to her what they were for; but to act in that light was, by the same effect, to learn, horribly, what the other things had been. he might tell her only what he wanted, only what would work upon her by the beauty of his appeal; and the result of the direct appeal of any beauty in him would be her helpless submission to his terms. all her temporary safety, her hand-to-mouth success, accordingly, was in his neither perceiving nor divining this, thanks to such means as she could take to prevent him; take, literally from hour to hour, during these days of more unbroken exposure. from hour to hour she fairly expected some sign of his having decided on a jump. “ah yes, it has been as you think; i’ve strayed away, i’ve fancied myself free, given myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because i thought you were different--different from what i now see. but it was only, only, because i didn’t know--and you must admit that you gave me scarce reason enough. reason enough, i mean, to keep clear of my mistake; to which i confess, for which i’ll do exquisite penance, which you can help me now, i too beautifully feel, to get completely over.” that was what, while she watched herself, she potentially heard him bring out; and while she carried to an end another day, another sequence and yet another of their hours together, without his producing it, she felt herself occupied with him beyond even the intensity of surrender. she was keeping her head, for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of this detachment, with the labour of her keeping the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air. her greatest danger, or at least her greatest motive for care, was the obsession of the thought that, if he actually did suspect, the fruit of his attention to her couldn’t help being a sense of the growth of her importance. taking the measure, with him, as she had taken it with her father, of the prescribed reach of her hypocrisy, she saw how it would have to stretch even to her seeking to prove that she was not, all the same, important. a single touch from him--oh, she should know it in case of its coming!--any brush of his hand, of his lips, of his voice, inspired by recognition of her probable interest as distinct from pity for her virtual gloom, would hand her over to him bound hand and foot. therefore to be free, to be free to act, other than abjectly, for her father, she must conceal from him the validity that, like a microscopic insect pushing a grain of sand, she was taking on even for herself. she could keep it up with a change in sight, but she couldn’t keep it up forever; so that, really, one extraordinary effect of their week of untempered confrontation, which bristled with new marks, was to make her reach out, in thought, to their customary companions and calculate the kind of relief that rejoining them would bring. she was learning, almost from minute to minute, to be a mistress of shades since, always, when there were possibilities enough of intimacy, there were also, by that fact, in intercourse, possibilities of iridescence; but she was working against an adversary who was a master of shades too, and on whom, if she didn’t look out, she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the nature of their struggle. to feel him in fact, to think of his feeling himself, her adversary in things of this fineness--to see him at all, in short, brave a name that would represent him as in opposition-- was already to be nearly reduced to a visible smothering of her cry of alarm. should he guess they were having, in their so occult manner, a high fight, and that it was she, all the while, in her supposed stupidity, who had made it high and was keeping it high--in the event of his doing this before they could leave town she should verily be lost. the possible respite for her at fawns would come from the fact that observation, in him, there, would inevitably find some of its directness diverted. this would be the case if only because the remarkable strain of her father’s placidity might be thought of as likely to claim some larger part of his attention. besides which there would be always charlotte herself to draw him off. charlotte would help him again, doubtless, to study anything, right or left, that might be symptomatic; but maggie could see that this very fact might perhaps contribute, in its degree, to protect the secret of her own fermentation. it is not even incredible that she may have discovered the gleam of a comfort that was to broaden in the conceivable effect on the prince’s spirit, on his nerves, on his finer irritability, of some of the very airs and aspects, the light graces themselves, of mrs. verver’s too perfect competence. what it would most come to, after all, she said to herself, was a renewal for him of the privilege of watching that lady watch her. very well, then: with the elements after all so mixed in him, how long would he go on enjoying mere spectatorship of that act? for she had by this time made up her mind that in charlotte’s company he deferred to charlotte’s easier art of mounting guard. wouldn’t he get tired--to put it only at that--of seeing her always on the rampart, erect and elegant, with her lace-flounced parasol now folded and now shouldered, march to and fro against a gold-coloured east or west? maggie had gone far, truly for a view of the question of this particular reaction, and she was not incapable of pulling herself up with the rebuke that she counted her chickens before they were hatched. how sure she should have to be of so many things before she might thus find a weariness in amerigo’s expression and a logic in his weariness! one of her dissimulated arts for meeting their tension, meanwhile, was to interweave mrs. assingham as plausibly as possible with the undulations of their surface, to bring it about that she should join them, of an afternoon, when they drove together or if they went to look at things--looking at things being almost as much a feature of their life as if they were bazaar-opening royalties. then there were such combinations, later in the day, as her attendance on them, and the colonel’s as well, for such whimsical matters as visits to the opera no matter who was singing, and sudden outbreaks of curiosity about the british drama. the good couple from cadogan place could always unprotestingly dine with them and “go on” afterwards to such publicities as the princess cultivated the boldness of now perversely preferring. it may be said of her that, during these passages, she plucked her sensations by the way, detached, nervously, the small wild blossoms of her dim forest, so that she could smile over them at least with the spacious appearance, for her companions, for her husband above all, of bravely, of altogether frivolously, going a-maying. she had her intense, her smothered excitements, some of which were almost inspirations; she had in particular the extravagant, positively at moments the amused, sense of using her friend to the topmost notch, accompanied with the high luxury of not having to explain. never, no never, should she have to explain to fanny assingham again--who, poor woman, on her own side, would be charged, it might be forever, with that privilege of the higher ingenuity. she put it all off on fanny, and the dear thing herself might henceforth appraise the quantity. more and more magnificent now in her blameless egoism, maggie asked no questions of her, and thus only signified the greatness of the opportunity she gave her. she didn’t care for what devotions, what dinners of their own the assinghams might have been “booked”; that was a detail, and she could think without wincing of the ruptures and rearrangements to which her service condemned them. it all fell in beautifully, moreover; so that, as hard, at this time, in spite of her fever, as a little pointed diamond, the princess showed something of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive, the creative hand. she had but to have the fancy of presenting herself, of presenting her husband, in a certain high and convenient manner, to make it natural they should go about with their gentleman and their lady. to what else but this, exactly, had charlotte, during so many weeks of the earlier season, worked her up?--herself assuming and discharging, so far as might be, the character and office of one of those revolving subordinate presences that float in the wake of greatness. the precedent was therefore established and the group normally constituted. mrs. assingham, meanwhile, at table, on the stairs, in the carriage or the opera-box, might--with her constant overflow of expression, for that matter, and its singularly resident character where men in especial were concerned--look across at amerigo in whatever sense she liked: it was not of that maggie proposed to be afraid. she might warn him, she might rebuke him, she might reassure him, she might--if it were impossible not to--absolutely make love to him; even this was open to her, as a matter simply between them, if it would help her to answer for the impeccability he had guaranteed. and maggie desired in fact only to strike her as acknowledging the efficacy of her aid when she mentioned to her one evening a small project for the morrow, privately entertained--the idea, irresistible, intense, of going to pay, at the museum, a visit to mr. crichton. mr. crichton, as mrs. assingham could easily remember, was the most accomplished and obliging of public functionaries, whom every one knew and who knew every one--who had from the first, in particular, lent himself freely, and for the love of art and history, to becoming one of the steadier lights of mr. verver’s adventurous path. the custodian of one of the richest departments of the great national collection of precious things, he could feel for the sincere private collector and urge him on his way even when condemned to be present at his capture of trophies sacrificed by the country to parliamentary thrift. he carried his amiability to the point of saying that, since london, under pettifogging views, had to miss, from time to time, its rarest opportunities, he was almost consoled to see such lost causes invariably wander at last, one by one, with the tormenting tinkle of their silver bells, into the wondrous, the already famous fold beyond the mississippi. there was a charm in his “almosts” that was not to be resisted, especially after mr. verver and maggie had grown sure--or almost, again--of enjoying the monopoly of them; and on this basis of envy changed to sympathy by the more familiar view of the father and the daughter, mr. crichton had at both houses, though especially in eaton square, learned to fill out the responsive and suggestive character. it was at his invitation, fanny well recalled, that maggie, one day, long before, and under her own attendance precisely, had, for the glory of the name she bore, paid a visit to one of the ampler shrines of the supreme exhibitory temple, an alcove of shelves charged with the gold-and-brown, gold-and-ivory, of old italian bindings and consecrated to the records of the prince’s race. it had been an impression that penetrated, that remained; yet maggie had sighed, ever so prettily, at its having to be so superficial. she was to go back some day, to dive deeper, to linger and taste; in spite of which, however, mrs. assingham could not recollect perceiving that the visit had been repeated. this second occasion had given way, for a long time, in her happy life, to other occasions--all testifying, in their degree, to the quality of her husband’s blood, its rich mixture and its many remarkable references; after which, no doubt, the charming piety involved had grown, on still further grounds, bewildered and faint. it now appeared, none the less, that some renewed conversation with mr. crichton had breathed on the faintness revivingly, and maggie mentioned her purpose as a conception of her very own, to the success of which she designed to devote her morning. visits of gracious ladies, under his protection, lighted up rosily, for this perhaps most flower-loving and honey-sipping member of the great bloomsbury hive, its packed passages and cells; and though not sworn of the province toward which his friend had found herself, according to her appeal to him, yearning again, nothing was easier for him than to put her in relation with the presiding urbanities. so it had been settled, maggie said to mrs. assingham, and she was to dispense with amerigo’s company. fanny was to remember later on that she had at first taken this last fact for one of the finer notes of her young woman’s detachment, imagined she must be going alone because of the shade of irony that, in these ambiguous days, her husband’s personal presence might be felt to confer, practically, on any tribute to his transmitted significance. then as, the next moment, she felt it clear that so much plotted freedom was virtually a refinement of reflection, an impulse to commemorate afresh whatever might still survive of pride and hope, her sense of ambiguity happily fell and she congratulated her companion on having anything so exquisite to do and on being so exquisitely in the humour to do it. after the occasion had come and gone she was confirmed in her optimism; she made out, in the evening, that the hour spent among the projected lights, the annals and illustrations, the parchments and portraits, the emblazoned volumes and the murmured commentary, had been for the princess enlarging and inspiring. maggie had said to her some days before, very sweetly but very firmly, “invite us to dine, please, for friday, and have any one you like or you can--it doesn’t in the least matter whom;” and the pair in cadogan place had bent to this mandate with a docility not in the least ruffled by all that it took for granted. it provided for an evening--this had been maggie’s view; and she lived up to her view, in her friend’s eyes, by treating the occasion, more or less explicitly, as new and strange. the good assinghams had feasted in fact at the two other boards on a scale so disproportionate to the scant solicitations of their own that it was easy to make a joke of seeing how they fed at home, how they met, themselves, the question of giving to eat. maggie dined with them, in short, and arrived at making her husband appear to dine, much in the manner of a pair of young sovereigns who have, in the frolic humour of the golden years of reigns, proposed themselves to a pair of faithfully-serving subjects. she showed an interest in their arrangements, an inquiring tenderness almost for their economies; so that her hostess not unnaturally, as they might have said, put it all down--the tone and the freedom of which she set the example--to the effect wrought in her afresh by one of the lessons learned, in the morning, at the altar of the past. hadn’t she picked it up, from an anecdote or two offered again to her attention, that there were, for princesses of such a line, more ways than one of being a heroine? maggie’s way to-night was to surprise them all, truly, by the extravagance of her affability. she was doubtless not positively boisterous; yet, though mrs. assingham, as a bland critic, had never doubted her being graceful, she had never seen her put so much of it into being what might have been called assertive. it was all a tune to which fanny’s heart could privately palpitate: her guest was happy, happy as a consequence of something that had occurred, but she was making the prince not lose a ripple of her laugh, though not perhaps always enabling him to find it absolutely not foolish. foolish, in public, beyond a certain point, he was scarce the man to brook his wife’s being thought to be; so that there hovered before their friend the possibility of some subsequent scene between them, in the carriage or at home, of slightly sarcastic inquiry, of promptly invited explanation; a scene that, according as maggie should play her part in it, might or might not precipitate developments. what made these appearances practically thrilling, meanwhile, was this mystery--a mystery, it was clear, to amerigo himself--of the incident or the influence that had so peculiarly determined them. the lady of cadogan place was to read deeper, however, within three days, and the page was turned for her on the eve of her young confidant’s leaving london. the awaited migration to fawns was to take place on the morrow, and it was known meanwhile to mrs. assingham that their party of four were to dine that night, at the american embassy, with another and a larger party; so that the elder woman had a sense of surprise on receiving from the younger, under date of six o’clock, a telegram requesting her immediate attendance. “please come to me at once; dress early, if necessary, so that we shall have time: the carriage, ordered for us, will take you back first.” mrs. assingham, on quick deliberation, dressed, though not perhaps with full lucidity, and by seven o’clock was in portland place, where her friend, “upstairs” and described to her on her arrival as herself engaged in dressing, instantly received her. she knew on the spot, poor fanny, as she was afterwards to declare to the colonel, that her feared crisis had popped up as at the touch of a spring, that her impossible hour was before her. her impossible hour was the hour of its coming out that she had known of old so much more than she had ever said; and she had often put it to herself, in apprehension, she tried to think even in preparation, that she should recognise the approach of her doom by a consciousness akin to that of the blowing open of a window on some night of the highest wind and the lowest thermometer. it would be all in vain to have crouched so long by the fire; the glass would have been smashed, the icy air would fill the place. if the air in maggie’s room then, on her going up, was not, as yet, quite the polar blast she had expected, it was distinctly, none the less, such an atmosphere as they had not hitherto breathed together. the princess, she perceived, was completely dressed--that business was over; it added indeed to the effect of her importantly awaiting the assistance she had summoned, of her showing a deck cleared, so to speak, for action. her maid had already left her, and she presented herself, in the large, clear room, where everything was admirable, but where nothing was out of place, as, for the first time in her life rather “bedizened.” was it that she had put on too many things, overcharged herself with jewels, wore in particular more of them than usual, and bigger ones, in her hair?--a question her visitor presently answered by attributing this appearance largely to the bright red spot, red as some monstrous ruby, that burned in either of her cheeks. these two items of her aspect had, promptly enough, their own light for mrs. assingham, who made out by it that nothing more pathetic could be imagined than the refuge and disguise her agitation had instinctively asked of the arts of dress, multiplied to extravagance, almost to incoherence. she had had, visibly, her idea--that of not betraying herself by inattentions into which she had never yet fallen, and she stood there circled about and furnished forth, as always, in a manner that testified to her perfect little personal processes. it had ever been her sign that she was, for all occasions, found ready, without loose ends or exposed accessories or unremoved superfluities; a suggestion of the swept and garnished, in her whole splendid, yet thereby more or less encumbered and embroidered setting, that reflected her small still passion for order and symmetry, for objects with their backs to the walls, and spoke even of some probable reference, in her american blood, to dusting and polishing new england grandmothers. if her apartment was “princely,” in the clearness of the lingering day, she looked as if she had been carried there prepared, all attired and decorated, like some holy image in a procession, and left, precisely, to show what wonder she could work under pressure. her friend felt--how could she not?--as the truly pious priest might feel when confronted, behind the altar, before the festa, with his miraculous madonna. such an occasion would be grave, in general, with all the gravity of what he might look for. but the gravity to-night would be of the rarest; what he might look for would depend so on what he could give. xxxiii “something very strange has happened, and i think you ought to know it.” maggie spoke this indeed without extravagance, yet with the effect of making her guest measure anew the force of her appeal. it was their definite understanding: whatever fanny knew fanny’s faith would provide for. and she knew, accordingly, at the end of five minutes, what the extraordinary, in the late occurrence, had consisted of, and how it had all come of maggie’s achieved hour, under mr. crichton’s protection, at the museum. he had desired, mr. crichton, with characteristic kindness, after the wonderful show, after offered luncheon at his incorporated lodge hard by, to see her safely home; especially on his noting, in attending her to the great steps, that she had dismissed her carriage; which she had done, really, just for the harmless amusement of taking her way alone. she had known she should find herself, as the consequence of such an hour, in a sort of exalted state, under the influence of which a walk through the london streets would be exactly what would suit her best; an independent ramble, impressed, excited, contented, with nothing to mind and nobody to talk to, and shop-windows in plenty to look at if she liked: a low taste, of the essence, it was to be supposed, of her nature, that she had of late, for so many reasons, been unable to gratify. she had taken her leave, with her thanks--she knew her way quite enough; it being also sufficiently the case that she had even a shy hope of not going too straight. to wander a little wild was what would truly amuse her; so that, keeping clear of oxford street and cultivating an impression as of parts she didn’t know, she had ended with what she had more or less had been fancying, an encounter with three or four shops--an old bookseller’s, an old printmonger’s, a couple of places with dim antiquities in the window--that were not as so many of the other shops, those in sloane street, say; a hollow parade which had long since ceased to beguile. there had remained with her moreover an allusion of charlotte’s, of some months before--seed dropped into her imagination in the form of a casual speech about there being in bloomsbury such “funny little fascinating” places and even sometimes such unexpected finds. there could perhaps have been no stronger mark than this sense of well-nigh romantic opportunity--no livelier sign of the impression made on her, and always so long retained, so watchfully nursed, by any observation of charlotte’s, however lightly thrown off. and then she had felt, somehow, more at her ease than for months and months before; she didn’t know why, but her time at the museum, oddly, had done it; it was as if she hadn’t come into so many noble and beautiful associations, nor secured them also for her boy, secured them even for her father, only to see them turn to vanity and doubt, turn possibly to something still worse. “i believed in him again as much as ever, and i felt how i believed in him,” she said with bright, fixed eyes; “i felt it in the streets as i walked along, and it was as if that helped me and lifted me up, my being off by myself there, not having, for the moment, to wonder and watch; having, on the contrary, almost nothing on my mind.” it was so much as if everything would come out right that she had fallen to thinking of her father’s birthday, had given herself this as a reason for trying what she could pick up for it. they would keep it at fawns, where they had kept it before--since it would be the twenty-first of the month; and she mightn’t have another chance of making sure of something to offer him. there was always the impossibility, of course, of finding him anything, the least bit “good,” that he wouldn’t already, long ago, in his rummagings, have seen himself--and only not to think a quarter good enough; this, however, was an old story, and one could not have had any fun with him but for his sweet theory that the individual gift, the friendship’s offering, was, by a rigorous law of nature, a foredoomed aberration, and that the more it was so the more it showed, and the more one cherished it for showing, how friendly it had been. the infirmity of art was the candour of affection, the grossness of pedigree the refinement of sympathy; the ugliest objects, in fact, as a general thing, were the bravest, the tenderest mementos, and, as such, figured in glass cases apart, worthy doubtless of the home, but not worthy of the temple--dedicated to the grimacing, not to the clear-faced, gods. she herself, naturally, through the past years, had come to be much represented in those receptacles; against the thick, locked panes of which she still liked to flatten her nose, finding in its place, each time, everything she had on successive anniversaries tried to believe he might pretend, at her suggestion, to be put off with, or at least think curious. she was now ready to try it again: they had always, with his pleasure in her pretence and her pleasure in his, with the funny betrayal of the sacrifice to domestic manners on either side, played the game so happily. to this end, on her way home, she had loitered everywhere; quite too deludedly among the old books and the old prints, which had yielded nothing to her purpose, but with a strange inconsequence in one of the other shops, that of a small antiquarian, a queer little foreign man, who had shown her a number of things, shown her finally something that, struck with it as rather a rarity and thinking it would, compared to some of her ventures, quite superlatively do, she had bought--bought really, when it came to that, for a price. “it appears now it won’t do at all,” said maggie, “something has happened since that puts it quite out of the question. i had only my day of satisfaction in it, but i feel, at the same time, as i keep it here before me, that i wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” she had talked, from the first of her friend’s entrances coherently enough, even with a small quaver that overstated her calm; but she held her breath every few seconds, as if for deliberation and to prove she didn’t pant--all of which marked for fanny the depth of her commotion: her reference to her thought about her father, about her chance to pick up something that might divert him, her mention, in fine, of his fortitude under presents, having meanwhile, naturally, it should be said, much less an amplitude of insistence on the speaker’s lips than a power to produce on the part of the listener herself the prompt response and full comprehension of memory and sympathy, of old amused observation. the picture was filled out by the latter’s fond fancy. but maggie was at any rate under arms; she knew what she was doing and had already her plan--a plan for making, for allowing, as yet, “no difference”; in accordance with which she would still dine out, and not with red eyes, nor convulsed features, nor neglected items of appearance, nor anything that would raise a question. yet there was some knowledge that, exactly to this support of her not breaking down, she desired, she required, possession of; and, with the sinister rise and fall of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, it played before mrs. assingham’s eyes that she herself should have, at whatever risk or whatever cost, to supply her with the stuff of her need. all our friend’s instinct was to hold off from this till she should see what the ground would bear; she would take no step nearer unless intelligibly to meet her, and, awkward though it might be to hover there only pale and distorted, with mere imbecilities of vagueness, there was a quality of bald help in the fact of not as yet guessing what such an ominous start could lead to. she caught, however, after a second’s thought, at the princess’s allusion to her lost reassurance. “you mean you were so at your ease on monday--the night you dined with us?” “i was very happy then,” said maggie. “yes--we thought you so gay and so brilliant.” fanny felt it feeble, but she went on. “we were so glad you were happy.” maggie stood a moment, at first only looking at her. “you thought me all right, eh?” “surely, dearest; we thought you all right.” “well, i daresay it was natural; but in point of fact i never was more wrong in my life. for, all the while, if you please, this was brewing.” mrs. assingham indulged, as nearly as possible to luxury, her vagueness. “‘this’--?” “that!” replied the princess, whose eyes, her companion now saw, had turned to an object on the chimney-piece of the room, of which, among so many precious objects--the ververs, wherever they might be, always revelled peculiarly in matchless old mantel ornaments--her visitor had not taken heed. “do you mean the gilt cup?” “i mean the gilt cup.” the piece now recognised by fanny as new to her own vision was a capacious bowl, of old-looking, rather strikingly yellow gold, mounted, by a short stem, on an ample foot, which held a central position above the fire-place, where, to allow it the better to show, a clearance had been made of other objects, notably of the louis-seize clock that accompanied the candelabra. this latter trophy ticked at present on the marble slab of a commode that exactly matched it in splendour and style. mrs. assingham took it, the bowl, as a fine thing; but the question was obviously not of its intrinsic value, and she kept off from it, admiring it at a distance. “but what has that to do--?” “it has everything. you’ll see.” with which again, however, for the moment, maggie attached to her strange wide eyes. “he knew her before--before i had ever seen him.” “‘he’ knew--?” but fanny, while she cast about her for the links she missed, could only echo it. “amerigo knew charlotte--more than i ever dreamed.” fanny felt then it was stare for stare. “but surely you always knew they had met.” “i didn’t understand. i knew too little. don’t you see what i mean?” the princess asked. mrs. assingham wondered, during these instants, how much she even now knew; it had taken a minute to perceive how gently she was speaking. with that perception of its being no challenge of wrath, no heat of the deceived soul, but only a free exposure of the completeness of past ignorance, inviting derision even if it must, the elder woman felt, first, a strange, barely credible relief: she drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower, the sweet certainty of not meeting, any way she should turn, any consequence of judgment. she shouldn’t be judged--save by herself; which was her own wretched business. the next moment, however, at all events, she blushed, within, for her immediate cowardice: she had thought of herself, thought of “getting off,” before so much as thinking--that is of pitifully seeing--that she was in presence of an appeal that was all an appeal, that utterly accepted its necessity. “in a general way, dear child, yes. but not--a--in connexion with what you’ve been telling me.” “they were intimate, you see. intimate,” said the princess. fanny continued to face her, taking from her excited eyes this history, so dim and faint for all her anxious emphasis, of the far-away other time. “there’s always the question of what one considers--!” “what one considers intimate? well, i know what i consider intimate now. too intimate,” said maggie, “to let me know anything about it.” it was quiet--yes; but not too quiet for fanny assingham’s capacity to wince. “only compatible with letting me, you mean?” she had asked it after a pause, but turning again to the new ornament of the chimney and wondering, even while she took relief from it, at this gap in her experience. “but here are things, my dear, of which my ignorance is perfect.” “they went about together--they’re known to have done it. and i don’t mean only before--i mean after.” “after?” said fanny assingham. “before we were married--yes; but after we were engaged.” “ah, i’ve known nothing about that!” and she said it with a braver assurance--clutching, with comfort, at something that was apparently new to her. “that bowl,” maggie went on, “is, so strangely--too strangely, almost, to believe at this time of day--the proof. they were together all the while--up to the very eve of our marriage. don’t you remember how just before that she came back, so unexpectedly, from america?” the question had for mrs. assingham--and whether all consciously or not--the oddest pathos of simplicity. “oh yes, dear, of course i remember how she came back from america--and how she stayed with us, and what view one had of it.” maggie’s eyes still, all the time, pressed and penetrated; so that, during a moment, just here, she might have given the little flare, have made the little pounce, of asking what then “one’s” view had been. to the small flash of this eruption fanny stood, for her minute, wittingly exposed; but she saw it as quickly cease to threaten--quite saw the princess, even though in all her pain, refuse, in the interest of their strange and exalted bargain, to take advantage of the opportunity for planting the stab of reproach, the opportunity thus coming all of itself. she saw her--or she believed she saw her--look at her chance for straight denunciation, look at it and then pass it by; and she felt herself, with this fact, hushed well-nigh to awe at the lucid higher intention that no distress could confound and that no discovery--since it was, however obscurely, a case of “discovery”--could make less needful. these seconds were brief--they rapidly passed; but they lasted long enough to renew our friend’s sense of her own extraordinary undertaking, the function again imposed on her, the answerability again drilled into her, by this intensity of intimation. she was reminded of the terms on which she was let off--her quantity of release having made its sufficient show in that recall of her relation to charlotte’s old reappearance; and deep within the whole impression glowed--ah, so inspiringly when it came to that! her steady view, clear from the first, of the beauty of her companion’s motive. it was like a fresh sacrifice for a larger conquest “only see me through now, do it in the face of this and in spite of it, and i leave you a hand of which the freedom isn’t to be said!” the aggravation of fear--or call it, apparently, of knowledge--had jumped straight into its place as an aggravation above all for her father; the effect of this being but to quicken to passion her reasons for making his protectedness, or in other words the forms of his ignorance, still the law of her attitude and the key to her solution. she kept as tight hold of these reasons and these forms, in her confirmed horror, as the rider of a plunging horse grasps his seat with his knees; and she might absolutely have been putting it to her guest that she believed she could stay on if they should only “meet” nothing more. though ignorant still of what she had definitely met fanny yearned, within, over her spirit; and so, no word about it said, passed, through mere pitying eyes, a vow to walk ahead and, at crossroads, with a lantern for the darkness and wavings away for unadvised traffic, look out for alarms. there was accordingly no wait in maggie’s reply. “they spent together hours--spent at least a morning--the certainty of which has come back to me now, but that i didn’t dream of it at the time. that cup there has turned witness--by the most wonderful of chances. that’s why, since it has been here, i’ve stood it out for my husband to see; put it where it would meet him, almost immediately, if he should come into the room. i’ve wanted it to meet him,” she went on, “and i’ve wanted him to meet it, and to be myself present at the meeting. but that hasn’t taken place as yet; often as he has lately been in the way of coming to see me here--yes, in particular lately--he hasn’t showed to-day.” it was with her managed quietness, more and more, that she talked--an achieved coherence that helped her, evidently, to hear and to watch herself; there was support, and thereby an awful harmony, but which meant a further guidance, in the facts she could add together. “it’s quite as if he had an instinct--something that has warned him off or made him uneasy. he doesn’t quite know, naturally, what has happened, but guesses, with his beautiful cleverness, that something has, and isn’t in a hurry to be confronted with it. so, in his vague fear, he keeps off.” “but being meanwhile in the house--?” “i’ve no idea--not having seen him to-day, by exception, since before luncheon. he spoke to me then,” the princess freely explained, “of a ballot, of great importance, at a club--for somebody, some personal friend, i think, who’s coming up and is supposed to be in danger. to make an effort for him he thought he had better lunch there. you see the efforts he can make”--for which maggie found a smile that went to her friend’s heart. “he’s in so many ways the kindest of men. but it was hours ago.” mrs. assingham thought. “the more danger then of his coming in and finding me here. i don’t know, you see, what you now consider that you’ve ascertained; nor anything of the connexion with it of that object that you declare so damning.” her eyes rested on this odd acquisition and then quitted it, went back to it and again turned from it: it was inscrutable in its rather stupid elegance, and yet, from the moment one had thus appraised it, vivid and definite in its domination of the scene. fanny could no more overlook it now than she could have overlooked a lighted christmas-tree; but nervously and all in vain she dipped into her mind for some floating reminiscence of it. at the same time that this attempt left her blank she understood a good deal, she even not a little shared the prince’s mystic apprehension. the golden bowl put on, under consideration, a sturdy, a conscious perversity; as a “document,” somehow, it was ugly, though it might have a decorative grace. “his finding me here in presence of it might be more flagrantly disagreeable--for all of us--than you intend or than would necessarily help us. and i must take time, truly, to understand what it means.” “you’re safe, as far as that goes,” maggie returned; “you may take it from me that he won’t come in; and that i shall only find him below, waiting for me, when i go down to the carriage.” fanny assingham took it from her, took it and more. “we’re to sit together at the ambassador’s then--or at least you two are--with this new complication thrust up before you, all unexplained; and to look at each other with faces that pretend, for the ghastly hour, not to be seeing it?” maggie looked at her with a face that might have been the one she was preparing. “‘unexplained,’ my dear? quite the contrary--explained: fully, intensely, admirably explained, with nothing really to add. my own love”--she kept it up--“i don’t want anything more. i’ve plenty to go upon and to do with, as it is.” fanny assingham stood there in her comparative darkness, with her links, verily, still missing; but the most acceptable effect of this was, singularly, as yet, a cold fear of getting nearer the fact. “but when you come home--? i mean he’ll come up with you again. won’t he see it then?” on which maggie gave her, after an instant’s visible thought, the strangest of slow headshakes. “i don’t know. perhaps he’ll never see it--if it only stands there waiting for him. he may never again,” said the princess, “come into this room.” fanny more deeply wondered, “never again? oh--!” “yes, it may be. how do i know? with this!” she quietly went on. she had not looked again at the incriminating piece, but there was a marvel to her friend in the way the little word representing it seemed to express and include for her the whole of her situation. “then you intend not to speak to him--?” maggie waited. “to ‘speak’--?” “well, about your having it and about what you consider that it represents.” “oh, i don’t know that i shall speak--if he doesn’t. but his keeping away from me because of that--what will that be but to speak? he can’t say or do more. it won’t be for me to speak,” maggie added in a different tone, one of the tones that had already so penetrated her guest. “it will be for me to listen.” mrs. assingham turned it over. “then it all depends on that object that you regard, for your reasons, as evidence?” “i think i may say that _i_ depend on it. i can’t,” said maggie, “treat it as nothing now.” mrs. assingham, at this, went closer to the cup on the chimney--quite liking to feel that she did so, moreover, without going closer to her companion’s vision. she looked at the precious thing--if precious it was--found herself in fact eyeing it as if, by her dim solicitation, to draw its secret from it rather than suffer the imposition of maggie’s knowledge. it was brave and rich and firm, with its bold deep hollow; and, without this queer torment about it, would, thanks to her love of plenty of yellow, figure to her as an enviable ornament, a possession really desirable. she didn’t touch it, but if after a minute she turned away from it the reason was, rather oddly and suddenly, in her fear of doing so. “then it all depends on the bowl? i mean your future does? for that’s what it comes to, i judge.” “what it comes to,” maggie presently returned, “is what that thing has put me, so almost miraculously, in the way of learning: how far they had originally gone together. if there was so much between them before, there can’t--with all the other appearances--not be a great deal more now.” and she went on and on; she steadily made her points. “if such things were already then between them they make all the difference for possible doubt of what may have been between them since. if there had been nothing before there might be explanations. but it makes to-day too much to explain. i mean to explain away,” she said. fanny assingham was there to explain away--of this she was duly conscious; for that at least had been true up to now. in the light, however, of maggie’s demonstration the quantity, even without her taking as yet a more exact measure, might well seem larger than ever. besides which, with or without exactness, the effect of each successive minute in the place was to put her more in presence of what maggie herself saw. maggie herself saw the truth, and that was really, while they remained there together, enough for mrs. assingham’s relation to it. there was a force in the princess’s mere manner about it that made the detail of what she knew a matter of minor importance. fanny had in fact something like a momentary shame over her own need of asking for this detail. “i don’t pretend to repudiate,” she said after a little, “my own impressions of the different times i suppose you speak of; any more,” she added, “than i can forget what difficulties and, as it constantly seemed to me, what dangers, every course of action--whatever i should decide upon--made for me. i tried, i tried hard, to act for the best. and, you know,” she next pursued, while, at the sound of her own statement, a slow courage and even a faint warmth of conviction came back to her--“and, you know, i believe it’s what i shall turn out to have done.” this produced a minute during which their interchange, though quickened and deepened, was that of silence only, and the long, charged look; all of which found virtual consecration when maggie at last spoke. “i’m sure you tried to act for the best.” it kept fanny assingham again a minute in silence. “i never thought, dearest, you weren’t an angel.” not, however, that this alone was much help! “it was up to the very eve, you see,” the princess went on--“up to within two or three days of our marriage. that, that, you know--!” and she broke down for strangely smiling. “yes, as i say, it was while she was with me. but i didn’t know it. that is,” said fanny assingham, “i didn’t know of anything in particular.” it sounded weak--that she felt; but she had really her point to make. “what i mean is that i don’t know, for knowledge, now, anything i didn’t then. that’s how i am.” she still, however, floundered. “i mean it’s how i was.” “but don’t they, how you were and how you are,” maggie asked, “come practically to the same thing?” the elder woman’s words had struck her own ear as in the tone, now mistimed, of their recent, but all too factitious understanding, arrived at in hours when, as there was nothing susceptible of proof, there was nothing definitely to disprove. the situation had changed by--well, by whatever there was, by the outbreak of the definite; and this could keep maggie at least firm. she was firm enough as she pursued. “it was on the whole thing that amerigo married me.” with which her eyes had their turn again at her damnatory piece. “and it was on that--it was on that!” but they came back to her visitor. “and it was on it all that father married her.” her visitor took it as might be. “they both married--ah, that you must believe!--with the highest intentions.” “father did certainly!” and then, at the renewal of this consciousness, it all rolled over her. “ah, to thrust such things on us, to do them here between us and with us, day after day, and in return, in return--! to do it to him--to him, to him!” fanny hesitated. “you mean it’s for him you most suffer?” and then as the princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the room--which made the question somehow seem a blunder--“i ask,” she continued, “because i think everything, everything we now speak of, may be for him, really may be made for him, quite as if it hadn’t been.” but maggie had, the next moment faced about as if without hearing her. “father did it for me--did it all and only for me.” mrs. assingham, with a certain promptness, threw up her head; but she faltered again before she spoke. “well--!” it was only an intended word, but maggie showed after an instant that it had reached her. “do you mean that that’s the reason, that that’s a reason--?” fanny at first, however, feeling the response in this, didn’t say all she meant; she said for the moment something else instead. “he did it for you--largely at least for you. and it was for you that i did, in my smaller, interested way--well, what i could do. for i could do something,” she continued; “i thought i saw your interest as he himself saw it. and i thought i saw charlotte’s. i believed in her.” “and _i_ believed in her,” said maggie. mrs. assingham waited again; but she presently pushed on. “she believed then in herself.” “ah?” maggie murmured. something exquisite, faintly eager, in the prompt simplicity of it, supported her friend further. “and the prince believed. his belief was real. just as he believed in himself.” maggie spent a minute in taking it from her. “he believed in himself?” “just as i too believed in him. for i absolutely did, maggie.” to which fanny then added: “and i believe in him yet. i mean,” she subjoined--“well, i mean i do.” maggie again took it from her; after which she was again, restlessly, set afloat. then when this had come to an end: “and do you believe in charlotte yet?” mrs. assingham had a demur that she felt she could now afford. “we’ll talk of charlotte some other day. they both, at any rate, thought themselves safe at the time.” “then why did they keep from me everything i might have known?” her friend bent upon her the mildest eyes. “why did i myself keep it from you?” “oh, you weren’t, for honour, obliged.” “dearest maggie,” the poor woman broke out on this, “you are divine!” “they pretended to love me,” the princess went on. “and they pretended to love him.” “and pray what was there that i didn’t pretend?” “not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for amerigo and for charlotte. they were much more interesting--it was perfectly natural. how couldn’t you like amerigo?” maggie continued. mrs. assingham gave it up. “how couldn’t i, how couldn’t i?” then, with a fine freedom, she went all her way. “how can’t i, how can’t i?” it fixed afresh maggie’s wide eyes on her. “i see--i see. well, it’s beautiful for you to be able to. and of course,” she added, “you wanted to help charlotte.” “yes”--fanny considered it--“i wanted to help charlotte. but i wanted also, you see, to help you--by not digging up a past that i believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. i wanted, as i still want,” she richly declared, “to help every one.” it set maggie once more in movement--movement which, however, spent itself again with a quick emphasis. “then it’s a good deal my fault--if everything really began so well?” fanny assingham met it as she could. “you’ve been only too perfect. you’ve thought only too much.” but the princess had already caught at the words. “yes--i’ve thought only too much!” yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of that fault. she had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. “of him, dear man, of him--!” her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. that way might safety lie--it was like a wider chink of light. “he believed--with a beauty!--in charlotte.” “yes, and it was i who had made him believe. i didn’t mean to, at the time, so much; for i had no idea then of what was coming. but i did it, i did it!” the princess declared. “with a beauty--ah, with a beauty, you too!” mrs. assingham insisted. maggie, however, was seeing for herself--it was another matter, “the thing was that he made her think it would be so possible.” fanny again hesitated. “the prince made her think--?” maggie stared--she had meant her father. but her vision seemed to spread. “they both made her think. she wouldn’t have thought without them.” “yet amerigo’s good faith,” mrs. assingham insisted, “was perfect. and there was nothing, all the more,” she added, “against your father’s.” the remark, however, kept maggie for a moment still. “nothing perhaps but his knowing that she knew.” “‘knew’?” “that he was doing it, so much, for me. to what extent,” she suddenly asked of her friend, “do you think he was aware that she knew?” “ah, who can say what passes between people in such a relation? the only thing one can be sure of is that he was generous.” and mrs. assingham conclusively smiled. “he doubtless knew as much as was right for himself.” “as much, that is, as was right for her.” “yes then--as was right for her. the point is,” fanny declared, “that, whatever his knowledge, it made, all the way it went, for his good faith.” maggie continued to gaze, and her friend now fairly waited on her successive movements. “isn’t the point, very considerably, that his good faith must have been his faith in her taking almost as much interest in me as he himself took?” fanny assingham thought. “he recognised, he adopted, your long friendship. but he founded on it no selfishness.” “no,” said maggie with still deeper consideration: “he counted her selfishness out almost as he counted his own.” “so you may say.” “very well,” maggie went on; “if he had none of his own, he invited her, may have expected her, on her side, to have as little. and she may only since have found that out.” mrs. assingham looked blank. “since--?” “and he may have become aware,” maggie pursued, “that she has found it out. that she has taken the measure, since their marriage,” she explained, “of how much he had asked of her--more, say, than she had understood at the time. he may have made out at last how such a demand was, in the long run, to affect her.” “he may have done many things,” mrs. assingham responded; “but there’s one thing he certainly won’t have done. he’ll never have shown that he expected of her a quarter as much as she must have understood he was to give.” “i’ve often wondered,” maggie mused, “what charlotte really understood. but it’s one of the things she has never told me.” “then as it’s one of the things she has never told me either, we shall probably never know it; and we may regard it as none of our business. there are many things,” said mrs. assingham, “that we shall never know.” maggie took it in with a long reflection. “never.” “but there are others,” her friend went on, “that stare us in the face and that--under whatever difficulty you may feel you labour--may now be enough for us. your father has been extraordinary.” it had been as if maggie were feeling her way; but she rallied to this with a rush. “extraordinary.” “magnificent,” said fanny assingham. her companion held tight to it. “magnificent.” “then he’ll do for himself whatever there may be to do. what he undertook for you he’ll do to the end. he didn’t undertake it to break down; in what--quiet, patient, exquisite as he is--did he ever break down? he had never in his life proposed to himself to have failed, and he won’t have done it on this occasion.” “ah, this occasion!”--and maggie’s wail showed her, of a sudden, thrown back on it. “am i in the least sure that, with everything, he even knows what it is? and yet am i in the least sure he doesn’t?” “if he doesn’t then, so much the better. leave him alone.” “do you mean give him up?” “leave her,” fanny assingham went on. “leave her to him.” maggie looked at her darkly. “do you mean leave him to her? after this?” “after everything. aren’t they, for that matter, intimately together now?” “‘intimately’--? how do i know?” but fanny kept it up. “aren’t you and your husband--in spite of everything?” maggie’s eyes still further, if possible, dilated. “it remains to be seen!” “if you’re not then, where’s your faith?” “in my husband--?” mrs. assingham but for an instant hesitated. “in your father. it all comes back to that. rest on it.” “on his ignorance?” fanny met it again. “on whatever he may offer you. take that.” “take it--?” maggie stared. mrs. assingham held up her head. “and be grateful.” on which, for a minute, she let the princess face her. “do you see?” “i see,” said maggie at last. “then there you are.” but maggie had turned away, moving to the window, as if still to keep something in her face from sight. she stood there with her eyes on the street while mrs. assingham’s reverted to that complicating object on the chimney as to which her condition, so oddly even to herself, was that both of recurrent wonder and recurrent protest. she went over it, looked at it afresh and yielded now to her impulse to feel it in her hands. she laid them on it, lifting it up, and was surprised, thus, with the weight of it--she had seldom handled so much massive gold. that effect itself somehow prompted her to further freedom and presently to saying: “i don’t believe in this, you know.” it brought maggie round to her. “don’t believe in it? you will when i tell you.” “ah, tell me nothing! i won’t have it,” said mrs. assingham. she kept the cup in her hand, held it there in a manner that gave maggie’s attention to her, she saw the next moment, a quality of excited suspense. this suggested to her, oddly, that she had, with the liberty she was taking, an air of intention, and the impression betrayed by her companion’s eyes grew more distinct in a word of warning. “it’s of value, but its value’s impaired, i’ve learned, by a crack.” “a crack?--in the gold--?” “it isn’t gold.” with which, somewhat strangely, maggie smiled. “that’s the point.” “what is it then?” “it’s glass--and cracked, under the gilt, as i say, at that.” “glass?--of this weight?” “well,” said maggie, “it’s crystal--and was once, i suppose, precious. but what,” she then asked, “do you mean to do with it?” she had come away from her window, one of the three by which the wide room, enjoying an advantageous “back,” commanded the western sky and caught a glimpse of the evening flush; while mrs. assingham, possessed of the bowl, and possessed too of this indication of a flaw, approached another for the benefit of the slowly-fading light. here, thumbing the singular piece, weighing it, turning it over, and growing suddenly more conscious, above all, of an irresistible impulse, she presently spoke again. “a crack? then your whole idea has a crack.” maggie, by this time at some distance from her, waited a moment. “if you mean by my idea the knowledge that has come to me that--” but fanny, with decision, had already taken her up. “there’s only one knowledge that concerns us--one fact with which we can have anything to do.” “which one, then?” “the fact that your husband has never, never, never--!” but the very gravity of this statement, while she raised her eyes to her friend across the room, made her for an instant hang fire. “well, never what?” “never been half so interested in you as now. but don’t you, my dear, really feel it?” maggie considered. “oh, i think what i’ve told you helps me to feel it. his having to-day given up even his forms; his keeping away from me; his not having come.” and she shook her head as against all easy glosses. “it is because of that, you know.” “well then, if it’s because of this--!” and fanny assingham, who had been casting about her and whose inspiration decidedly had come, raised the cup in her two hands, raised it positively above her head, and from under it, solemnly, smiled at the princess as a signal of intention. so for an instant, full of her thought and of her act, she held the precious vessel, and then, with due note taken of the margin of the polished floor, bare, fine and hard in the embrasure of her window, she dashed it boldly to the ground, where she had the thrill of seeing it, with the violence of the crash, lie shattered. she had flushed with the force of her effort, as maggie had flushed with wonder at the sight, and this high reflection in their faces was all that passed between them for a minute more. after which, “whatever you meant by it--and i don’t want to know now--has ceased to exist,” mrs. assingham said. “and what in the world, my dear, did you mean by it?”--that sound, as at the touch of a spring, rang out as the first effect of fanny’s speech. it broke upon the two women’s absorption with a sharpness almost equal to the smash of the crystal, for the door of the room had been opened by the prince without their taking heed. he had apparently had time, moreover, to catch the conclusion of fanny’s act; his eyes attached themselves, through the large space allowing just there, as happened, a free view, to the shining fragments at this lady’s feet. his question had been addressed to his wife, but he moved his eyes immediately afterwards to those of her visitor, whose own then held them in a manner of which neither party had been capable, doubtless, for mute penetration, since the hour spent by him in cadogan place on the eve of his marriage and the afternoon of charlotte’s reappearance. something now again became possible for these communicants, under the intensity of their pressure, something that took up that tale and that might have been a redemption of pledges then exchanged. this rapid play of suppressed appeal and disguised response lasted indeed long enough for more results than one--long enough for mrs. assingham to measure the feat of quick self-recovery, possibly therefore of recognition still more immediate, accompanying amerigo’s vision and estimate of the evidence with which she had been--so admirably, she felt as she looked at him--inspired to deal. she looked at him and looked at him--there were so many things she wanted, on the spot, to say. but maggie was looking too--and was moreover looking at them both; so that these things, for the elder woman, quickly enough reduced themselves to one. she met his question--not too late, since, in their silence, it had remained in the air. gathering herself to go, leaving the golden bowl split into three pieces on the ground, she simply referred him to his wife. she should see them later, they would all meet soon again; and meanwhile, as to what maggie had meant--she said, in her turn, from the door--why, maggie herself was doubtless by this time ready to tell him. xxxiv left with her husband, maggie, however, for the time, said nothing; she only felt, on the spot, a strong, sharp wish not to see his face again till he should have had a minute to arrange it. she had seen it enough for her temporary clearness and her next movement--seen it as it showed during the stare of surprise that followed his entrance. then it was that she knew how hugely expert she had been made, for judging it quickly, by that vision of it, indelibly registered for reference, that had flashed a light into her troubled soul the night of his late return from matcham. the expression worn by it at that juncture, for however few instants, had given her a sense of its possibilities, one of the most relevant of which might have been playing up for her, before the consummation of fanny assingham’s retreat, just long enough to be recognised. what she had recognised in it was his recognition, the result of his having been forced, by the flush of their visitor’s attitude and the unextinguished report of her words, to take account of the flagrant signs of the accident, of the incident, on which he had unexpectedly dropped. he had, not unnaturally, failed to see this occurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently valuable which lay there on the floor and which, even across the width of the room, his kept interval, reminded him, unmistakably though confusedly, of something known, some other unforgotten image. that was a mere shock, that was a pain--as if fanny’s violence had been a violence redoubled and acting beyond its intention, a violence calling up the hot blood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. maggie knew as she turned away from him that she didn’t want his pain; what she wanted was her own simple certainty--not the red mark of conviction flaming there in his beauty. if she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she would have liked that best; if it were a question of saying what she now, apparently, should have to, and of taking from him what he would say, any blindness that might wrap it would be the nearest approach to a boon. she went in silence to where her friend--never, in intention, visibly, so much her friend as at that moment--had braced herself to so amazing an energy, and there, under amerigo’s eyes, she picked up the shining pieces. bedizened and jewelled, in her rustling finery, she paid, with humility of attitude, this prompt tribute to order--only to find, however, that she could carry but two of the fragments at once. she brought them over to the chimney-piece, to the conspicuous place occupied by the cup before fanny’s appropriation of it, and, after laying them carefully down, went back for what remained, the solid detached foot. with this she returned to the mantel-shelf, placing it with deliberation in the centre and then, for a minute, occupying herself as with the attempt to fit the other morsels together. the split, determined by the latent crack, was so sharp and so neat that if there had been anything to hold them the bowl might still, quite beautifully, a few steps away, have passed for uninjured. but, as there was, naturally, nothing to hold them but maggie’s hands, during the few moments the latter were so employed, she could only lay the almost equal parts of the vessel carefully beside their pedestal and leave them thus before her husband’s eyes. she had proceeded without words, but quite as if with a sought effect-in spite of which it had all seemed to her to take a far longer time than anything she had ever so quickly accomplished. amerigo said nothing either-though it was true that his silence had the gloss of the warning she doubtless appeared to admonish him to take: it was as if her manner hushed him to the proper observation of what she was doing. he should have no doubt of it whatever: she _knew_ and her broken bowl was proof that she knew-yet the least part of her desire was to make him waste words. he would have to think-this she knew even better still; and all she was for the present concerned with was that he should be aware. she had taken him for aware all day, or at least for obscurely and instinctively anxious-as to that she had just committed herself to fanny assingham; but what she had been wrong about was the effect of his anxiety. his fear of staying away, as a marked symptom, had at least proved greater than his fear of coming in ; he had come in even at the risk of bringing it with him-and, ah, what more did she require now than her sense, established within the first minute or two, that he had brought it, however he might be steadying himself against dangers of betrayal by some wrong word, and that it was shut in there between them, the successive moments throbbing under it the while as the pulse of fever throbs under the doctor’s thumb? maggie’s sense, in fine, in his presence, was that though the bowl had been broken, her reason hadn’t ; the reason for which she had made up her mind, the reason for which she had summoned her friend, the reason for which she had prepared the place for her husband’s eyes ; it was all one reason, and, as her intense little clutch held the matter, what had happened by fanny’s act and by his apprehension of it had not in the least happened to _her_ but absolutely and directly to himself, as he must proceed to take in. there it was that her wish for time interposed-time for amerigo’s use, not for hers, since she, for ever so long now, for hours and hours as they seemed, had been living with eternity; with which she would continue to live. she wanted to say to him, “ take it, take it, take all you need of it ; arrange yourself so as to suffer least, or to be, at any rate, least distorted and disfigured only _see_ see that _i_ see, and make up your mind, on this new basis, at your convenience. wait-it won’t be long-till you can confer again with charlotte, for you’ll do it much better then-more easily to both of us. above all don’t show me, till you’ve got it well under, the dreadful blur, the ravage of suspense and embarrassment, produced, and produced by my doing, in your personal serenity, your incomparable superiority.” after she had squared again her little objects on the chimney, she was within an ace, in fact, of turning on him with that appeal; besides its being lucid for her, all the while, that the occasion was passing, that they were dining out, that he wasn’t dressed, and that, though she herself was, she was yet, in all probability, so horribly red in the face and so awry, in many ways, with agitation, that in view of the ambassador’s company, of possible comments and constructions, she should need, before her glass, some restoration of appearances. amerigo, meanwhile, after all, could clearly make the most of her having enjoined on him to wait--suggested it by the positive pomp of her dealings with the smashed cup; to wait, that is, till she should pronounce as mrs. assingham had promised for her. this delay, again, certainly tested her presence of mind--though that strain was not what presently made her speak. keep her eyes, for the time, from her husband’s as she might, she soon found herself much more drivingly conscious of the strain on his own wit. there was even a minute, when her back was turned to him, during which she knew once more the strangeness of her desire to spare him, a strangeness that had already, fifty times, brushed her, in the depth of her trouble, as with the wild wing of some bird of the air who might blindly have swooped for an instant into the shaft of a well, darkening there by his momentary flutter the far-off round of sky. it was extraordinary, this quality in the taste of her wrong which made her completed sense of it seem rather to soften than to harden and it was the more extraordinary the more she had to recognise it; for what it came to was that seeing herself finally sure, knowing everything, having the fact, in all its abomination, so utterly before her that there was nothing else to add--what it came to was that, merely by being with him there in silence, she felt, within her, the sudden split between conviction and action. they had begun to cease, on the spot, surprisingly, to be connected; conviction, that is, budged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil--but action began to hover like some lighter and larger, but easier form, excited by its very power to keep above ground. it would be free, it would be independent, it would go in--wouldn’t it?--for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own. what would condemn it, so to speak, to the responsibility of freedom--this glimmered on maggie even now--was the possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband would have, on the whole question, a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds. it struck her truly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with it at all; would indeed, absolutely, by this circumstance, be really needing her for the first one in their whole connection. no, he had used her, had even exceedingly enjoyed her, before this; but there had been no precedent for that character of a proved necessity to him which she was rapidly taking on. the immense advantage of this particular clue, moreover, was that she should have now to arrange, alter, to falsify nothing; should have to be but consistently simple and straight. she asked herself, with concentration, while her back was still presented, what would be the very ideal of that method; after which, the next instant, it had all come to her and she had turned round upon him for the application. “fanny assingham broke it--knowing it had a crack and that it would go if she used sufficient force. she thought, when i had told her, that that would be the best thing to do with it--thought so from her own point of view. that hadn’t been at all my idea, but she acted before i understood. i had, on the contrary,” she explained, “put it here, in full view, exactly that you might see.” he stood with his hands in his pockets; he had carried his eyes to the fragments on the chimney-piece, and she could already distinguish the element of relief, absolutely of succour, in his acceptance from her of the opportunity to consider the fruits of their friend’s violence--every added inch of reflection and delay having the advantage, from this point on, of counting for him double. it had operated within her now to the last intensity, her glimpse of the precious truth that by her helping him, helping him to help himself, as it were, she should help him to help her. hadn’t she fairly got into his labyrinth with him?--wasn’t she indeed in the very act of placing herself there, for him, at its centre and core, whence, on that definite orientation and by an instinct all her own, she might securely guide him out of it? she offered him thus, assuredly, a kind of support that was not to have been imagined in advance, and that moreover required--ah most truly!--some close looking at before it could be believed in and pronounced void of treachery. “yes, look, look,” she seemed to see him hear her say even while her sounded words were other--“look, look, both at the truth that still survives in that smashed evidence and at the even more remarkable appearance that i’m not such a fool as you supposed me. look at the possibility that, since i am different, there may still be something in it for you--if you’re capable of working with me to get that out. consider of course, as you must, the question of what you may have to surrender, on your side, what price you may have to pay, whom you may have to pay with, to set this advantage free; but take in, at any rate, that there is something for you if you don’t too blindly spoil your chance for it.” he went no nearer the damnatory pieces, but he eyed them, from where he stood, with a degree of recognition just visibly less to be dissimulated; all of which represented for her a certain traceable process. and her uttered words, meanwhile, were different enough from those he might have inserted between the lines of her already-spoken. “it’s the golden bowl, you know, that you saw at the little antiquario’s in bloomsbury, so long ago--when you went there with charlotte, when you spent those hours with her, unknown to me, a day or two before our marriage. it was shown you both, but you didn’t take it; you left it for me, and i came upon it, extraordinarily, through happening to go into the same shop on monday last; in walking home, in prowling about to pick up some small old thing for father’s birthday, after my visit to the museum, my appointment there with mr. crichton, of which i told you. it was shown me, and i was struck with it and took it--knowing nothing about it at the time. what i now know i’ve learned since--i learned this afternoon, a couple of hours ago; receiving from it naturally a great impression. so there it is--in its three pieces. you can handle them--don’t be afraid--if you want to make sure the thing is the thing you and charlotte saw together. its having come apart makes an unfortunate difference for its beauty, its artistic value, but none for anything else. its other value is just the same--i mean that of its having given me so much of the truth about you. i don’t therefore so much care what becomes of it now--unless perhaps you may yourself, when you come to think, have some good use for it. in that case,” maggie wound up, “we can easily take the pieces with us to fawns.” it was wonderful how she felt, by the time she had seen herself through this narrow pass, that she had really achieved something--that she was emerging a little, in fine, with the prospect less contracted. she had done for him, that is, what her instinct enjoined; had laid a basis not merely momentary on which he could meet her. when, by the turn of his head, he did finally meet her, this was the last thing that glimmered out of his look; but it came into sight, none the less, as a perception of his distress and almost as a question of his eyes; so that, for still another minute, before he committed himself, there occurred between them a kind of unprecedented moral exchange over which her superior lucidity presided. it was not, however, that when he did commit himself the show was promptly portentous. “but what in the world has fanny assingham had to do with it?” she could verily, out of all her smothered soreness, almost have smiled: his question so affected her as giving the whole thing up to her. but it left her only to go the straighter. “she has had to do with it that i immediately sent for her and that she immediately came. she was the first person i wanted to see--because i knew she would know. know more about what i had learned, i mean, than i could make out for myself. i made out as much as i could for myself--that i also wanted to have done; but it didn’t, in spite of everything, take me very far, and she has really been a help. not so much as she would like to be--not so much as, poor dear, she just now tried to be; yet she has done her very best for you--never forget that!--and has kept me along immeasurably better than i should have been able to come without her. she has gained me time; and that, these three months, don’t you see? has been everything.” she had said “don’t you see?” on purpose, and was to feel the next moment that it had acted. “these three months’?” the prince asked. “counting from the night you came home so late from matcham. counting from the hours you spent with charlotte at gloucester; your visit to the cathedral--which you won’t have forgotten describing to me in so much detail. for that was the beginning of my being sure. before it i had been sufficiently in doubt. sure,” maggie developed, “of your having, and of your having for a long time had, two relations with charlotte.” he stared, a little at sea, as he took it up. “two--?” something in the tone of it gave it a sense, or an ambiguity, almost foolish--leaving maggie to feel, as in a flash, how such a consequence, a foredoomed infelicity, partaking of the ridiculous even in one of the cleverest, might be of the very essence of the penalty of wrong-doing. “oh, you may have had fifty--had the same relation with her fifty times! it’s of the number of kinds of relation with her that i speak--a number that doesn’t matter, really, so long as there wasn’t only one kind, as father and i supposed. one kind,” she went on, “was there before us; we took that fully for granted, as you saw, and accepted it. we never thought of there being another, kept out of our sight. but after the evening i speak of i knew there was something else. as i say, i had, before that, my idea--which you never dreamed i had. from the moment i speak of it had more to go upon, and you became yourselves, you and she, vaguely, yet uneasily, conscious of the difference. but it’s within these last hours that i’ve most seen where we are; and as i’ve been in communication with fanny assingham about my doubts, so i wanted to let her know my certainty--with the determination of which, however, you must understand, she has had nothing to do. she defends you,” maggie remarked. he had given her all his attention, and with this impression for her, again, that he was, in essence, fairly reaching out to her for time--time, only time--she could sufficiently imagine, and to whatever strangeness, that he absolutely liked her to talk, even at the cost of his losing almost everything else by it. it was still, for a minute, as if he waited for something worse; wanted everything that was in her to come out, any definite fact, anything more precisely nameable, so that he too--as was his right--should know where he was. what stirred in him above all, while he followed in her face the clear train of her speech, must have been the impulse to take up something she put before him that he was yet afraid directly to touch. he wanted to make free with it, but had to keep his hands off--for reasons he had already made out; and the discomfort of his privation yearned at her out of his eyes with an announcing gleam of the fever, the none too tolerable chill, of specific recognition. she affected him as speaking more or less for her father as well, and his eyes might have been trying to hypnotise her into giving him the answer without his asking the question. “had he his idea, and has he now, with you, anything more?”--those were the words he had to hold himself from not speaking and that she would as yet, certainly, do nothing to make easy. she felt with her sharpest thrill how he was straitened and tied, and with the miserable pity of it her present conscious purpose of keeping him so could none the less perfectly accord. to name her father, on any such basis of anxiety, of compunction, would be to do the impossible thing, to do neither more nor less than give charlotte away. visibly, palpably, traceably, he stood off from this, moved back from it as from an open chasm now suddenly perceived, but which had been, between the two, with so much, so strangely much else, quite uncalculated. verily it towered before her, this history of their confidence. they had built strong and piled high--based as it was on such appearances--their conviction that, thanks to her native complacencies of so many sorts, she would always, quite to the end and through and through, take them as nobly sparing her. amerigo was at any rate having the sensation of a particular ugliness to avoid, a particular difficulty to count with, that practically found him as unprepared as if he had been, like his wife, an abjectly simple person. and she meanwhile, however abjectly simple, was further discerning, for herself, that, whatever he might have to take from her--she being, on her side, beautifully free--he would absolutely not be able, for any qualifying purpose, to name charlotte either. as his father-in-law’s wife mrs. verver rose between them there, for the time, in august and prohibitive form; to protect her, defend her, explain about her, was, at the least, to bring her into the question--which would be by the same stroke to bring her husband. but this was exactly the door maggie wouldn’t open to him; on all of which she was the next moment asking herself if, thus warned and embarrassed, he were not fairly writhing in his pain. he writhed, on that hypothesis, some seconds more, for it was not till then that he had chosen between what he could do and what he couldn’t. “you’re apparently drawing immense conclusions from very small matters. won’t you perhaps feel, in fairness, that you’re striking out, triumphing, or whatever i may call it, rather too easily--feel it when i perfectly admit that your smashed cup there does come back to me? i frankly confess, now, to the occasion, and to having wished not to speak of it to you at the time. we took two or three hours together, by arrangement; it was on the eve of my marriage--at the moment you say. but that put it on the eve of yours too, my dear--which was directly the point. it was desired to find for you, at the eleventh hour, some small wedding-present--a hunt, for something worth giving you, and yet possible from other points of view as well, in which it seemed i could be of use. you were naturally not to be told--precisely because it was all for you. we went forth together and we looked; we rummaged about and, as i remember we called it, we prowled; then it was that, as i freely recognise, we came across that crystal cup--which i’m bound to say, upon my honour, i think it rather a pity fanny assingham, from whatever good motive, should have treated so.” he had kept his hands in his pockets; he turned his eyes again, but more complacently now, to the ruins of the precious vessel; and maggie could feel him exhale into the achieved quietness of his explanation a long, deep breath of comparative relief. behind everything, beneath everything, it was somehow a comfort to him at last to be talking with her--and he seemed to be proving to himself that he could talk. “it was at a little shop in bloomsbury--i think i could go to the place now. the man understood italian, i remember; he wanted awfully to work off his bowl. but i didn’t believe in it, and we didn’t take it.” maggie had listened with an interest that wore all the expression of candour. “oh, you left it for me. but what did you take?” he looked at her; first as if he were trying to remember, then as if he might have been trying to forget. “nothing, i think--at that place.” “what did you take then at any other? what did you get me--since that was your aim and end--for a wedding-gift?” the prince continued very nobly to bethink himself. “didn’t we get you anything?” maggie waited a little; she had for some time, now, kept her eyes on him steadily; but they wandered, at this, to the fragments on her chimney. “yes; it comes round, after all, to your having got me the bowl. i myself was to come upon it, the other day, by so wonderful a chance; was to find it in the same place and to have it pressed upon me by the same little man, who does, as you say, understand italian. i did ‘believe in it,’ you see--must have believed in it somehow instinctively; for i took it as soon as i saw it. though i didn’t know at all then,” she added, “what i was taking with it.” the prince paid her for an instant, visibly, the deference of trying to imagine what this might have been. “i agree with you that the coincidence is extraordinary--the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels and plays. but i don’t see, you must let me say, the importance or the connexion--” “of my having made the purchase where you failed of it?” she had quickly taken him up; but she had, with her eyes on him once more, another drop into the order of her thoughts, to which, through whatever he might say, she was still adhering. “it’s not my having gone into the place, at the end of four years, that makes the strangeness of the coincidence; for don’t such chances as that, in london, easily occur? the strangeness,” she lucidly said, “is in what my purchase was to represent to me after i had got it home; which value came,” she explained, “from the wonder of my having found such a friend.” “‘such a friend’?” as a wonder, assuredly, her husband could but take it. “as the little man in the shop. he did for me more than he knew--i owe it to him. he took an interest in me,” maggie said; “and, taking that interest, he recalled your visit, he remembered you and spoke of you to me.” on which the prince passed the comment of a sceptical smile. “ah but, my dear, if extraordinary things come from people’s taking an interest in you--” “my life in that case,” she asked, “must be very agitated? well, he liked me, i mean--very particularly. it’s only so i can account for my afterwards hearing from him--and in fact he gave me that to-day,” she pursued, “he gave me it frankly as his reason.” “to-day?” the prince inquiringly echoed. but she was singularly able--it had been marvellously “given” her, she afterwards said to herself--to abide, for her light, for her clue, by her own order. “i inspired him with sympathy--there you are! but the miracle is that he should have a sympathy to offer that could be of use to me. that was really the oddity of my chance,” the princess proceeded--“that i should have been moved, in my ignorance, to go precisely to him.” he saw her so keep her course that it was as if he could, at the best, but stand aside to watch her and let her pass; he only made a vague demonstration that was like an ineffective gesture. “i’m sorry to say any ill of your friends, and the thing was a long time ago; besides which there was nothing to make me recur to it. but i remember the man’s striking me as a decided little beast.” she gave a slow headshake--as if, no, after consideration, not that way were an issue. “i can only think of him as kind, for he had nothing to gain. he had in fact only to lose. it was what he came to tell me--that he had asked me too high a price, more than the object was really worth. there was a particular reason, which he hadn’t mentioned, and which had made him consider and repent. he wrote for leave to see me again--wrote in such terms that i saw him here this afternoon.” “here?”--it made the prince look about him. “downstairs--in the little red room. while he was waiting he looked at the few photographs that stand about there and recognised two of them. though it was so long ago, he remembered the visit made him by the lady and the gentleman, and that gave him his connexion. it gave me mine, for he remembered everything and told me everything. you see you too had produced your effect; only, unlike you, he had thought of it again--he had recurred to it. he told me of your having wished to make each other presents--but of that’s not having come off. the lady was greatly taken with the piece i had bought of him, but you had your reason against receiving it from her, and you had been right. he would think that of you more than ever now,” maggie went on; “he would see how wisely you had guessed the flaw and how easily the bowl could be broken. i had bought it myself, you see, for a present--he knew i was doing that. this was what had worked in him--especially after the price i had paid.” her story had dropped an instant; she still brought it out in small waves of energy, each of which spent its force; so that he had an opportunity to speak before this force was renewed. but the quaint thing was what he now said. “and what, pray, was the price?” she paused again a little. “it was high, certainly--for those fragments. i think i feel, as i look at them there, rather ashamed to say.” the prince then again looked at them; he might have been growing used to the sight. “but shall you at least get your money back?” “oh, i’m far from wanting it back--i feel so that i’m getting its worth.” with which, before he could reply, she had a quick transition. “the great fact about the day we’re talking of seems to me to have been, quite remarkably, that no present was then made me. if your undertaking had been for that, that was not at least what came of it.” “you received then nothing at all?” the prince looked vague and grave, almost retrospectively concerned. “nothing but an apology for empty hands and empty pockets; which was made me--as if it mattered a mite!--ever so frankly, ever so beautifully and touchingly.” this amerigo heard with interest, yet not with confusion. “ah, of course you couldn’t have minded!” distinctly, as she went on, he was getting the better of the mere awkwardness of his arrest; quite as if making out that he need suffer arrest from her now--before they should go forth to show themselves in the world together--in no greater quantity than an occasion ill-chosen at the best for a scene might decently make room for. he looked at his watch; their engagement, all the while, remained before him. “but i don’t make out, you see, what case against me you rest--” “on everything i’m telling you? why, the whole case--the case of your having for so long so successfully deceived me. the idea of your finding something for me--charming as that would have been--was what had least to do with your taking a morning together at that moment. what had really to do with it,” said maggie, “was that you had to: you couldn’t not, from the moment you were again face to face. and the reason of that was that there had been so much between you before--before i came between you at all.” her husband had been for these last moments moving about under her eyes; but at this, as to check any show of impatience, he again stood still. “you’ve never been more sacred to me than you were at that hour--unless perhaps you’ve become so at this one.” the assurance of his speech, she could note, quite held up its head in him; his eyes met her own so, for the declaration, that it was as if something cold and momentarily unimaginable breathed upon her, from afar off, out of his strange consistency. she kept her direction still, however, under that. “oh, the thing i’ve known best of all is that you’ve never wanted, together, to offend us. you’ve wanted quite intensely not to, and the precautions you’ve had to take for it have been for a long time one of the strongest of my impressions. that, i think,” she added, “is the way i’ve best known.” “known?” he repeated after a moment. “known. known that you were older friends, and so much more intimate ones, than i had any reason to suppose when we married. known there were things that hadn’t been told me--and that gave their meaning, little by little, to other things that were before me.” “would they have made a difference, in the matter of our marriage,” the prince presently asked, “if you had known them?” she took her time to think. “i grant you not--in the matter of ours.” and then as he again fixed her with his hard yearning, which he couldn’t keep down: “the question is so much bigger than that. you see how much what i know makes of it for me.” that was what acted on him, this iteration of her knowledge, into the question of the validity, of the various bearings of which, he couldn’t on the spot trust himself to pretend, in any high way, to go. what her claim, as she made it, represented for him--that he couldn’t help betraying, if only as a consequence of the effect of the word itself, her repeated distinct “know, know,” on his nerves. she was capable of being sorry for his nerves at a time when he should need them for dining out, pompously, rather responsibly, without his heart in it; yet she was not to let that prevent her using, with all economy, so precious a chance for supreme clearness. “i didn’t force this upon you, you must recollect, and it probably wouldn’t have happened for you if you hadn’t come in.” “ah,” said the prince, “i was liable to come in, you know.” “i didn’t think you were this evening.” “and why not?” “well,” she answered, “you have many liabilities--of different sorts.” with which she recalled what she had said to fanny assingham. “and then you’re so deep.” it produced in his features, in spite of his control of them, one of those quick plays of expression, the shade of a grimace, that testified as nothing else did to his race. “it’s you, cara, who are deep.” which, after an instant, she had accepted from him; she could so feel at last that it was true. “then i shall have need of it all.” “but what would you have done,” he was by this time asking, “if i hadn’t come in?” “i don’t know.” she had hesitated. “what would you?” “oh; i oh--that isn’t the question. i depend upon you. i go on. you would have spoken to-morrow?” “i think i would have waited.” “and for what?” he asked. “to see what difference it would make for myself. my possession at last, i mean, of real knowledge.” “oh!” said the prince. “my only point now, at any rate,” she went on, “is the difference, as i say, that it may make for you. your knowing was--from the moment you did come in--all i had in view.” and she sounded it again--he should have it once more. “your knowing that i’ve ceased--” “that you’ve ceased--?” with her pause, in fact, she had fairly made him press her for it. “why, to be as i was. not to know.” it was once more then, after a little, that he had had to stand receptive; yet the singular effect of this was that there was still something of the same sort he was made to want. he had another hesitation, but at last this odd quantity showed. “then does any one else know?” it was as near as he could come to naming her father, and she kept him at that distance. “any one--?” “any one, i mean, but fanny assingham.” “i should have supposed you had had by this time particular means of learning. i don’t see,” she said, “why you ask me.” then, after an instant--and only after an instant, as she saw--he made out what she meant; and it gave her, all strangely enough, the still further light that charlotte, for herself, knew as little as he had known. the vision loomed, in this light, it fairly glared, for the few seconds--the vision of the two others alone together at fawns, and charlotte, as one of them, having gropingly to go on, always not knowing and not knowing! the picture flushed at the same time with all its essential colour--that of the so possible identity of her father’s motive and principle with her own. he was “deep,” as amerigo called it, so that no vibration of the still air should reach his daughter; just as she had earned that description by making and by, for that matter, intending still to make, her care for his serenity, or at any rate for the firm outer shell of his dignity, all marvellous enamel, her paramount law. more strangely even than anything else, her husband seemed to speak now but to help her in this. “i know nothing but what you tell me.” “then i’ve told you all i intended. find out the rest--!” “find it out--?” he waited. she stood before him a moment--it took that time to go on. depth upon depth of her situation, as she met his face, surged and sank within her; but with the effect somehow, once more, that they rather lifted her than let her drop. she had her feet somewhere, through it all--it was her companion, absolutely, who was at sea. and she kept her feet; she pressed them to what was beneath her. she went over to the bell beside the chimney and gave a ring that he could but take as a summons for her maid. it stopped everything for the present; it was an intimation to him to go and dress. but she had to insist. “find out for yourself!” part fifth xxxv after the little party was again constituted at fawns--which had taken, for completeness, some ten days--maggie naturally felt herself still more possessed, in spirit, of everything that had last happened in london. there was a phrase that came back to her from old american years: she was having, by that idiom, the time of her life--she knew it by the perpetual throb of this sense of possession, which was almost too violent either to recognise or to hide. it was as if she had come out--that was her most general consciousness; out of a dark tunnel, a dense wood, or even simply a smoky room, and had thereby, at least, for going on, the advantage of air in her lungs. it was as if she were somehow at last gathering in the fruits of patience; she had either been really more patient than she had known at the time, or had been so for longer: the change brought about by itself as great a difference of view as the shift of an inch in the position of a telescope. it was her telescope in fact that had gained in range--just as her danger lay in her exposing herself to the observation by the more charmed, and therefore the more reckless, use of this optical resource. not under any provocation to produce it in public was her unremitted rule; but the difficulties of duplicity had not shrunk, while the need of it had doubled. humbugging, which she had so practised with her father, had been a comparatively simple matter on the basis of mere doubt; but the ground to be covered was now greatly larger, and she felt not unlike some young woman of the theatre who, engaged for a minor part in the play and having mastered her cues with anxious effort, should find herself suddenly promoted to leading lady and expected to appear in every act of the five. she had made much to her husband, that last night, of her “knowing”; but it was exactly this quantity she now knew that, from the moment she could only dissimulate it, added to her responsibility and made of the latter all a mere question of having something precious and precarious in charge. there was no one to help her with it--not even fanny assingham now; this good friend’s presence having become, inevitably, with that climax of their last interview in portland place, a severely simplified function. she had her use, oh yes, a thousand times; but it could only consist henceforth in her quite conspicuously touching at no point whatever--assuredly, at least with maggie--the matter they had discussed. she was there, inordinately, as a value, but as a value only for the clear negation of everything. she was their general sign, precisely, of unimpaired beatitude--and she was to live up to that somewhat arduous character, poor thing, as she might. she might privately lapse from it, if she must, with amerigo or with charlotte--only not, of course, ever, so much as for the wink of an eye, with the master of the house. such lapses would be her own affair, which maggie at present could take no thought of. she treated her young friend meanwhile, it was to be said, to no betrayal of such wavering; so that from the moment of her alighting at the door with the colonel everything went on between them at concert pitch. what had she done, that last evening in maggie’s room, but bring the husband and wife more together than, as would seem, they had ever been? therefore what indiscretion should she not show by attempting to go behind the grand appearance of her success?--which would be to court a doubt of her beneficent work. she knew accordingly nothing but harmony and diffused, restlessly, nothing but peace--an extravagant, expressive, aggressive peace, not incongruous, after all, with the solid calm of the place; a kind of helmetted, trident-shaking pax britannica. the peace, it must be added, had become, as the days elapsed, a peace quite generally animated and peopled--thanks to that fact of the presence of “company” in which maggie’s ability to preserve an appearance had learned, from so far back, to find its best resource. it was not inconspicuous, it was in fact striking, that this resource, just now, seemed to meet in the highest degree every one’s need: quite as if every one were, by the multiplication of human objects in the scene, by the creation, by the confusion, of fictive issues, hopeful of escaping somebody else’s notice. it had reached the point, in truth, that the collective bosom might have been taken to heave with the knowledge of the descent upon adjacent shores, for a short period, of mrs. rance and the lutches, still united, and still so divided, for conquest: the sense of the party showed at least, oddly enough, as favourable to the fancy of the quaint turn that some near “week-end” might derive from their reappearance. this measured for maggie the ground they had all travelled together since that unforgotten afternoon of the none so distant year, that determinant september sunday when, sitting with her father in the park, as in commemoration of the climax both of their old order and of their old danger, she had proposed to him that they should “call in” charlotte,--call her in as a specialist might be summoned to an invalid’s chair. wasn’t it a sign of something rather portentous, their being ready to be beholden, as for a diversion, to the once despised kitty and dotty? that had already had its application, in truth, to her invocation of the castledeans and several other members, again, of the historic matcham week, made before she left town, and made, always consistently, with an idea--since she was never henceforth to approach these people without an idea, and since that lurid element of their intercourse grew and grew for her with each occasion. the flame with which it burned afresh during these particular days, the way it held up the torch to anything, to everything, that might have occurred as the climax of revels springing from traditions so vivified--this by itself justified her private motive and reconsecrated her diplomacy. she had already produced by the aid of these people something of the effect she sought--that of being “good” for whatever her companions were good for, and of not asking either of them to give up anyone or anything for her sake. there was moreover, frankly, a sharpness of point in it that she enjoyed; it gave an accent to the truth she wished to illustrate--the truth that the surface of her recent life, thick-sown with the flower of earnest endeavour, with every form of the unruffled and the undoubting, suffered no symptom anywhere to peep out. it was as if, under her pressure, neither party could get rid of the complicity, as it might be figured, of the other; as if, in a word, she saw amerigo and charlotte committed, for fear of betrayals on their own side, to a kind of wan consistency on the subject of lady castledean’s “set,” and this latter group, by the same stroke, compelled to assist at attestations the extent and bearing of which they rather failed to grasp and which left them indeed, in spite of hereditary high spirits, a trifle bewildered and even a trifle scared. they made, none the less, at fawns, for number, for movement, for sound--they played their parts during a crisis that must have hovered for them, in the long passages of the old house, after the fashion of the established ghost, felt, through the dark hours as a constant possibility, rather than have menaced them in the form of a daylight bore, one of the perceived outsiders who are liable to be met in the drawing-room or to be sat next to at dinner. if the princess, moreover, had failed of her occult use for so much of the machinery of diversion, she would still have had a sense not other than sympathetic for the advantage now extracted from it by fanny assingham’s bruised philosophy. this good friend’s relation to it was actually the revanche, she sufficiently indicated, of her obscured lustre at matcham, where she had known her way about so much less than most of the others. she knew it at fawns, through the pathless wild of the right tone, positively better than any one, maggie could note for her; and her revenge had the magnanimity of a brave pointing out of it to every one else, a wonderful irresistible, conscious, almost compassionate patronage. here was a house, she triumphantly caused it to be noted, in which she so bristled with values that some of them might serve, by her amused willingness to share, for such of the temporarily vague, among her fellow-guests, such of the dimly disconcerted, as had lost the key to their own. it may have been partly through the effect of this especial strain of community with her old friend that maggie found herself, one evening, moved to take up again their dropped directness of reference. they had remained downstairs together late; the other women of the party had filed, singly or in couples, up the “grand” staircase on which, from the equally grand hall, these retreats and advances could always be pleasantly observed; the men had apparently taken their way to the smoking-room; while the princess, in possession thus of a rare reach of view, had lingered as if to enjoy it. then she saw that mrs. assingham was remaining a little--and as for the appreciation of her enjoyment; upon which they stood looking at each other across the cleared prospect until the elder woman, only vaguely expressive and tentative now, came nearer. it was like the act of asking if there were anything she could yet do, and that question was answered by her immediately feeling, on this closer view, as she had felt when presenting herself in portland place after maggie’s last sharp summons. their understanding was taken up by these new snatched moments where that occasion had left it. “he has never told her that i know. of that i’m at last satisfied.” and then as mrs. assingham opened wide eyes: “i’ve been in the dark since we came down, not understanding what he has been doing or intending--not making out what can have passed between them. but within a day or two i’ve begun to suspect, and this evening, for reasons--oh, too many to tell you!--i’ve been sure, since it explains. nothing has passed between them--that’s what has happened. it explains,” the princess repeated with energy; “it explains, it explains!” she spoke in a manner that her auditor was afterwards to describe to the colonel, oddly enough, as that of the quietest excitement; she had turned back to the chimney-place, where, in honour of a damp day and a chill night, the piled logs had turned to flame and sunk to embers; and the evident intensity of her vision for the fact she imparted made fanny assingham wait upon her words. it explained, this striking fact, more indeed than her companion, though conscious of fairly gaping with good-will, could swallow at once. the princess, however, as for indulgence and confidence, quickly filled up the measure. “he hasn’t let her know that i know--and, clearly, doesn’t mean to. he has made up his mind; he’ll say nothing about it. therefore, as she’s quite unable to arrive at the knowledge by herself, she has no idea how much i’m really in possession. she believes,” said maggie, “and, so far as her own conviction goes, she knows, that i’m not in possession of anything. and that, somehow, for my own help seems to me immense.” “immense, my dear!” mrs. assingham applausively murmured, though not quite, even as yet, seeing all the way. “he’s keeping quiet then on purpose?” “on purpose.” maggie’s lighted eyes, at least, looked further than they had ever looked. “he’ll never tell her now.” fanny wondered; she cast about her; most of all she admired her little friend, in whom this announcement was evidently animated by an heroic lucidity. she stood there, in her full uniform, like some small erect commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news, replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the place. this importance breathed upon her comrade. “so you’re all right?” “oh, all right’s a good deal to say. but i seem at least to see, as i haven’t before, where i am with it.” fanny bountifully brooded; there was a point left vague. “and you have it from him?--your husband himself has told you?” “‘told’ me--?” “why, what you speak of. it isn’t of an assurance received from him then that you do speak?” at which maggie had continued to stare. “dear me, no. do you suppose i’ve asked him for an assurance?” “ah, you haven’t?” her companion smiled. “that’s what i supposed you might mean. then, darling, what have you--?” “asked him for? i’ve asked him for nothing.” but this, in turn, made fanny stare. “then nothing, that evening of the embassy dinner, passed between you?” “on the contrary, everything passed.” “everything--?” “everything. i told him what i knew--and i told him how i knew it.” mrs. assingham waited. “and that was all?” “wasn’t it quite enough?” “oh, love,” she bridled, “that’s for you to have judged!” “then i have judged,” said maggie--“i did judge. i made sure he understood--then i let him alone.” mrs. assingham wondered. “but he didn’t explain--?” “explain? thank god, no!” maggie threw back her head as with horror at the thought, then the next moment added: “and i didn’t, either.” the decency of pride in it shed a cold little light--yet as from heights at the base of which her companion rather panted. “but if he neither denies nor confesses--?” “he does what’s a thousand times better--he lets it alone. he does,” maggie went on, “as he would do; as i see now that i was sure he would. he lets me alone.” fanny assingham turned it over. “then how do you know so where, as you say, you ‘are’?” “why, just by that. i put him in possession of the difference; the difference made, about me, by the fact that i hadn’t been, after all--though with a wonderful chance, i admitted, helping me--too stupid to have arrived at knowledge. he had to see that i’m changed for him--quite changed from the idea of me that he had so long been going on with. it became a question then of his really taking in the change--and what i now see is that he is doing so.” fanny followed as she could. “which he shows by letting you, as you say, alone?” maggie looked at her a minute. “and by letting her.” mrs. assingham did what she might to embrace it--checked a little, however, by a thought that was the nearest approach she could have, in this almost too large air, to an inspiration. “ah, but does charlotte let him?” “oh, that’s another affair--with which i’ve practically nothing to do. i dare say, however, she doesn’t.” and the princess had a more distant gaze for the image evoked by the question. “i don’t in fact well see how she can. but the point for me is that he understands.” “yes,” fanny assingham cooed, “understands--?” “well, what i want. i want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger.” “a brilliant, perfect surface--to begin with at least. i see.” “the golden bowl--as it was to have been.” and maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. “the bowl with all our happiness in it. the bowl without the crack.” for mrs. assingham too the image had its force, and the precious object shone before her again, reconstituted, plausible, presentable. but wasn’t there still a piece missing? “yet if he lets you alone and you only let him--?” “mayn’t our doing so, you mean, be noticed?--mayn’t it give us away? well, we hope not--we try not--we take such care. we alone know what’s between us--we and you; and haven’t you precisely been struck, since you’ve been here,” maggie asked, “with our making so good a show?” her friend hesitated. “to your father?” but it made her hesitate too; she wouldn’t speak of her father directly. “to everyone. to her--now that you understand.” it held poor fanny again in wonder. “to charlotte--yes: if there’s so much beneath it, for you, and if it’s all such a plan. that makes it hang together it makes you hang together.” she fairly exhaled her admiration. “you’re like nobody else--you’re extraordinary.” maggie met it with appreciation, but with a reserve. “no, i’m not extraordinary--but i am, for every one, quiet.” “well, that’s just what is extraordinary. ‘quiet’ is more than _i_ am, and you leave me far behind.” with which, again, for an instant, mrs. assingham frankly brooded. “‘now that i understand,’ you say--but there’s one thing i don’t understand.” and the next minute, while her companion waited, she had mentioned it. “how can charlotte, after all, not have pressed him, not have attacked him about it? how can she not have asked him--asked him on his honour, i mean--if you know?” “how can she ‘not’? why, of course,” said the princess limpidly, “she must!” “well then--?” “well then, you think, he must have told her? why, exactly what i mean,” said maggie, “is that he will have done nothing of the sort; will, as i say, have maintained the contrary.” fanny assingham weighed it. “under her direct appeal for the truth?” “under her direct appeal for the truth.” “her appeal to his honour?” “her appeal to his honour. that’s my point.” fanny assingham braved it. “for the truth as from him to her?” “from him to any one.” mrs. assingham’s face lighted. “he’ll simply, he’ll insistently have lied?” maggie brought it out roundly. “he’ll simply, he’ll insistently have lied.” it held again her companion, who next, however, with a single movement, throwing herself on her neck, overflowed. “oh, if you knew how you help me!” maggie had liked her to understand, so far as this was possible; but had not been slow to see afterwards how the possibility was limited, when one came to think, by mysteries she was not to sound. this inability in her was indeed not remarkable, inasmuch as the princess herself, as we have seen, was only now in a position to boast of touching bottom. maggie lived, inwardly, in a consciousness that she could but partly open even to so good a friend, and her own visitation of the fuller expanse of which was, for that matter, still going on. they had been duskier still, however, these recesses of her imagination--that, no doubt, was what might at present be said for them. she had looked into them, on the eve of her leaving town, almost without penetration: she had made out in those hours, and also, of a truth, during the days which immediately followed, little more than the strangeness of a relation having for its chief mark--whether to be prolonged or not--the absence of any “intimate” result of the crisis she had invited her husband to recognise. they had dealt with this crisis again, face to face, very briefly, the morning after the scene in her room--but with the odd consequence of her having appeared merely to leave it on his hands. he had received it from her as he might have received a bunch of keys or a list of commissions--attentive to her instructions about them, but only putting them, for the time, very carefully and safely, into his pocket. the instructions had seemed, from day to day, to make so little difference for his behaviour--that is for his speech or his silence; to produce, as yet, so little of the fruit of action. he had taken from her, on the spot, in a word, before going to dress for dinner, all she then had to give--after which, on the morrow, he had asked her for more, a good deal as if she might have renewed her supply during the night; but he had had at his command for this latter purpose an air of extraordinary detachment and discretion, an air amounting really to an appeal which, if she could have brought herself to describe it vulgarly, she would have described as cool, just as he himself would have described it in any one else as “cheeky”; a suggestion that she should trust him on the particular ground since she didn’t on the general. neither his speech nor his silence struck her as signifying more, or less, under this pressure, than they had seemed to signify for weeks past; yet if her sense hadn’t been absolutely closed to the possibility in him of any thought of wounding her, she might have taken his undisturbed manner, the perfection of his appearance of having recovered himself, for one of those intentions of high impertinence by the aid of which great people, les grands seigneurs, persons of her husband’s class and type, always know how to re-establish a violated order. it was her one purely good fortune that she could feel thus sure impertinence--to her at any rate--was not among the arts on which he proposed to throw himself; for though he had, in so almost mystifying a manner, replied to nothing, denied nothing, explained nothing, apologised for nothing, he had somehow conveyed to her that this was not because of any determination to treat her case as not “worth” it. there had been consideration, on both occasions, in the way he had listened to her--even though at the same time there had been extreme reserve; a reserve indeed, it was also to be remembered, qualified by the fact that, on their second and shorter interview, in portland place, and quite at the end of this passage, she had imagined him positively proposing to her a temporary accommodation. it had been but the matter of something in the depths of the eyes he finally fixed upon her, and she had found in it, the more she kept it before her, the tacitly-offered sketch of a working arrangement. “leave me my reserve; don’t question it--it’s all i have, just now, don’t you see? so that, if you’ll make me the concession of letting me alone with it for as long a time as i require, i promise you something or other, grown under cover of it, even though i don’t yet quite make out what, as a return for your patience.” she had turned away from him with some such unspoken words as that in her ear, and indeed she had to represent to herself that she had spiritually heard them, had to listen to them still again, to explain her particular patience in face of his particular failure. he hadn’t so much as pretended to meet for an instant the question raised by her of her accepted ignorance of the point in time, the period before their own marriage, from which his intimacy with charlotte dated. as an ignorance in which he and charlotte had been personally interested--and to the pitch of consummately protecting, for years, each other’s interest--as a condition so imposed upon her the fact of its having ceased might have made it, on the spot, the first article of his defence. he had vouchsafed it, however, nothing better than his longest stare of postponed consideration. that tribute he had coldly paid it, and maggie might herself have been stupefied, truly, had she not had something to hold on by, at her own present ability, even provisional, to make terms with a chapter of history into which she could but a week before not have dipped without a mortal chill. at the rate at which she was living she was getting used hour by hour to these extensions of view; and when she asked herself, at fawns, to what single observation of her own, in london, the prince had had an affirmation to oppose, she but just failed to focus the small strained wife of the moments in question as some panting dancer of a difficult step who had capered, before the footlights of an empty theatre, to a spectator lounging in a box. her best comprehension of amerigo’s success in not committing himself was in her recall, meanwhile, of the inquiries he had made of her on their only return to the subject, and which he had in fact explicitly provoked their return in order to make. he had had it over with her again, the so distinctly remarkable incident of her interview at home with the little bloomsbury shopman. this anecdote, for him, had, not altogether surprisingly, required some straighter telling, and the prince’s attitude in presence of it had represented once more his nearest approach to a cross-examination. the difficulty in respect to the little man had been for the question of his motive--his motive in writing, first, in the spirit of retraction, to a lady with whom he had made a most advantageous bargain, and in then coming to see her so that his apology should be personal. maggie had felt her explanation weak; but there were the facts, and she could give no other. left alone, after the transaction, with the knowledge that his visitor designed the object bought of him as a birthday-gift to her father--for maggie confessed freely to having chattered to him almost as to a friend--the vendor of the golden bowl had acted on a scruple rare enough in vendors of any class, and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of israel. he hadn’t liked what he had done, and what he had above all made such a “good thing” of having done; at the thought of his purchaser’s good faith and charming presence, opposed to that flaw in her acquestion which would make it, verily, as an offering to a loved parent, a thing of sinister meaning and evil effect, he had known conscientious, he had known superstitious visitings, had given way to a whim all the more remarkable to his own commercial mind, no doubt, from its never having troubled him in other connexions. she had recognised the oddity of her adventure and left it to show for what it was. she had not been unconscious, on the other hand, that if it hadn’t touched amerigo so nearly he would have found in it matter for some amused reflection. he had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and a howl, on her saying, as she had made a point of doing: “oh, most certainly, he told me his reason was because he ‘liked’ me”--though she remained in doubt of whether that inarticulate comment had been provoked most by the familiarities she had offered or by those that, so pictured, she had had to endure. that the partner of her bargain had yearned to see her again, that he had plainly jumped at a pretext for it, this also she had frankly expressed herself to the prince as having, in no snubbing, no scandalised, but rather in a positively appreciative and indebted spirit, not delayed to make out. he had wished, ever so seriously, to return her a part of her money, and she had wholly declined to receive it; and then he had uttered his hope that she had not, at all events, already devoted the crystal cup to the beautiful purpose she had, so kindly and so fortunately, named to him. it wasn’t a thing for a present to a person she was fond of, for she wouldn’t wish to give a present that would bring ill luck. that had come to him--so that he couldn’t rest, and he should feel better now that he had told her. his having led her to act in ignorance was what he should have been ashamed of; and, if she would pardon, gracious lady as she was, all the liberties he had taken, she might make of the bowl any use in life but that one. it was after this that the most extraordinary incident of all, of course, had occurred--his pointing to the two photographs with the remark that those were persons he knew, and that, more wonderful still, he had made acquaintance with them, years before, precisely over the same article. the lady, on that occasion, had taken up the fancy of presenting it to the gentleman, and the gentleman, guessing and dodging ever so cleverly, had declared that he wouldn’t for the world receive an object under such suspicion. he himself, the little man had confessed, wouldn’t have minded--about them; but he had never forgotten either their talk or their faces, the impression altogether made by them, and, if she really wished to know, now, what had perhaps most moved him, it was the thought that she should ignorantly have gone in for a thing not good enough for other buyers. he had been immensely struck--that was another point--with this accident of their turning out, after so long, friends of hers too: they had disappeared, and this was the only light he had ever had upon them. he had flushed up, quite red, with his recognition, with all his responsibility--had declared that the connexion must have had, mysteriously, something to do with the impulse he had obeyed. and maggie had made, to her husband, while he again stood before her, no secret of the shock, for herself, so suddenly and violently received. she had done her best, even while taking it full in the face, not to give herself away; but she wouldn’t answer--no, she wouldn’t--for what she might, in her agitation, have made her informant think. he might think what he would--there had been three or four minutes during which, while she asked him question upon question, she had doubtless too little cared. and he had spoken, for his remembrance, as fully as she could have wished; he had spoken, oh, delightedly, for the “terms” on which his other visitors had appeared to be with each other, and in fact for that conviction of the nature and degree of their intimacy under which, in spite of precautions, they hadn’t been able to help leaving him. he had observed and judged and not forgotten; he had been sure they were great people, but no, ah no, distinctly, hadn’t “liked” them as he liked the signora principessa. certainly--she had created no vagueness about that--he had been in possession of her name and address, for sending her both her cup and her account. but the others he had only, always, wondered about--he had been sure they would never come back. and as to the time of their visit, he could place it, positively, to a day--by reason of a transaction of importance, recorded in his books, that had occurred but a few hours later. he had left her, in short, definitely rejoicing that he had been able to make up to her for not having been quite “square” over their little business by rendering her, so unexpectedly, the service of this information. his joy, moreover, was--as much as amerigo would!--a matter of the personal interest with which her kindness, gentleness, grace, her charming presence and easy humanity and familiarity, had inspired him. all of which, while, in thought, maggie went over it again and again--oh, over any imputable rashness of her own immediate passion and pain, as well as over the rest of the straight little story she had, after all, to tell--might very conceivably make a long sum for the prince to puzzle out. there were meanwhile, after the castledeans and those invited to meet them had gone, and before mrs. rance and the lutches had come, three or four days during which she was to learn the full extent of her need not to be penetrable; and then it was indeed that she felt all the force, and threw herself upon all the help, of the truth she had confided, several nights earlier, to fanny assingham. she had known it in advance, had warned herself of it while the house was full: charlotte had designs upon her of a nature best known to herself, and was only waiting for the better opportunity of their finding themselves less companioned. this consciousness had been exactly at the bottom of maggie’s wish to multiply their spectators; there were moments for her, positively, moments of planned postponement, of evasion scarcely less disguised than studied, during which she turned over with anxiety the different ways--there being two or three possible ones--in which her young stepmother might, at need, seek to work upon her. amerigo’s not having “told” her of his passage with his wife gave, for maggie, altogether a new aspect to charlotte’s consciousness and condition--an aspect with which, for apprehension, for wonder, and even, at moments, inconsequently enough, for something like compassion, the princess had now to reckon. she asked herself--for she was capable of that--what he had meant by keeping the sharer of his guilt in the dark about a matter touching her otherwise so nearly; what he had meant, that is, for this unmistakably mystified personage herself. maggie could imagine what he had meant for her--all sorts of thinkable things, whether things of mere “form” or things of sincerity, things of pity or things of prudence: he had meant, for instance, in all probability, primarily, to conjure away any such appearance of a changed relation between the two women as his father-in-law might notice and follow up. it would have been open to him however, given the pitch of their intimacy, to avert this danger by some more conceivable course with charlotte; since an earnest warning, in fact, the full freedom of alarm, that of his insisting to her on the peril of suspicion incurred, and on the importance accordingly of outward peace at any price, would have been the course really most conceivable. instead of warning and advising he had reassured and deceived her; so that our young woman, who had been, from far back, by the habit, if her nature, as much on her guard against sacrificing others as if she felt the great trap of life mainly to be set for one’s doing so, now found herself attaching her fancy to that side of the situation of the exposed pair which involved, for themselves at least, the sacrifice of the least fortunate. she never, at present, thought of what amerigo might be intending, without the reflection, by the same stroke, that, whatever this quantity, he was leaving still more to her own ingenuity. he was helping her, when the thing came to the test, only by the polished, possibly almost too polished surface his manner to his wife wore for an admiring world; and that, surely, was entitled to scarcely more than the praise of negative diplomacy. he was keeping his manner right, as she had related to mrs. assingham; the case would have been beyond calculation, truly, if, on top of everything, he had allowed it to go wrong. she had hours of exaltation indeed when the meaning of all this pressed in upon her as a tacit vow from him to abide without question by whatever she should be able to achieve or think fit to prescribe. then it was that, even while holding her breath for the awe of it, she truly felt almost able enough for anything. it was as if she had passed, in a time incredibly short, from being nothing for him to being all; it was as if, rightly noted, every turn of his head, every tone of his voice, in these days, might mean that there was but one way in which a proud man reduced to abjection could hold himself. during those of maggie’s vigils in which that view loomed largest, the image of her husband that it thus presented to her gave out a beauty for the revelation of which she struck herself as paying, if anything, all too little. to make sure of it--to make sure of the beauty shining out of the humility, and of the humility lurking in all the pride of his presence--she would have gone the length of paying more yet, of paying with difficulties and anxieties compared to which those actually before her might have been as superficial as headaches or rainy days. the point at which these exaltations dropped, however, was the point at which it was apt to come over her that if her complications had been greater the question of paying would have been limited still less to the liabilities of her own pocket. the complications were verily great enough, whether for ingenuities or sublimities, so long as she had to come back to it so often that charlotte, all the while, could only be struggling with secrets sharper than her own. it was odd how that certainty again and again determined and coloured her wonderments of detail; the question, for instance, of how amerigo, in snatched opportunities of conference, put the haunted creature off with false explanations, met her particular challenges and evaded--if that was what he did do!--her particular demands. even the conviction that charlotte was but awaiting some chance really to test her trouble upon her lover’s wife left maggie’s sense meanwhile open as to the sight of gilt wires and bruised wings, the spacious but suspended cage, the home of eternal unrest, of pacings, beatings, shakings, all so vain, into which the baffled consciousness helplessly resolved itself. the cage was the deluded condition, and maggie, as having known delusion--rather!--understood the nature of cages. she walked round charlotte’s--cautiously and in a very wide circle; and when, inevitably, they had to communicate she felt herself, comparatively, outside, on the breast of nature, and saw her companion’s face as that of a prisoner looking through bars. so it was that through bars, bars richly gilt, but firmly, though discreetly, planted, charlotte finally struck her as making a grim attempt; from which, at first, the princess drew back as instinctively as if the door of the cage had suddenly been opened from within. xxxvi they had been alone that evening--alone as a party of six, and four of them, after dinner, under suggestion not to be resisted, sat down to “bridge” in the smoking-room. they had passed together to that apartment, on rising from table, charlotte and mrs. assingham alike indulgent, always, to tobacco, and in fact practising an emulation which, as fanny said, would, for herself, had the colonel not issued an interdict based on the fear of her stealing his cigars, have stopped only at the short pipe. here cards had with inevitable promptness asserted their rule, the game forming itself, as had often happened before, of mr. verver with mrs. assingham for partner and of the prince with mrs. verver. the colonel, who had then asked of maggie license to relieve his mind of a couple of letters for the earliest post out on the morrow, was addressing himself to this task at the other end of the room, and the princess herself had welcomed the comparatively hushed hour--for the bridge-players were serious and silent--much in the mood of a tired actress who has the good fortune to be “off,” while her mates are on, almost long enough for a nap on the property sofa in the wing. maggie’s nap, had she been able to snatch forty winks, would have been of the spirit rather than of the sense; yet as she subsided, near a lamp, with the last salmon-coloured french periodical, she was to fail, for refreshment, even of that sip of independence. there was no question for her, as she found, of closing her eyes and getting away; they strayed back to life, in the stillness, over the top of her review; she could lend herself to none of those refinements of the higher criticism with which its pages bristled; she was there, where her companions were, there again and more than ever there; it was as if, of a sudden, they had been made, in their personal intensity and their rare complexity of relation, freshly importunate to her. it was the first evening there had been no one else. mrs. rance and the lutches were due the next day; but meanwhile the facts of the situation were upright for her round the green cloth and the silver flambeaux; the fact of her father’s wife’s lover facing his mistress; the fact of her father sitting, all unsounded and unblinking, between them; the fact of charlotte keeping it up, keeping up everything, across the table, with her husband beside her; the fact of fanny assingham, wonderful creature, placed opposite to the three and knowing more about each, probably, when one came to think, than either of them knew of either. erect above all for her was the sharp-edged fact of the relation of the whole group, individually and collectively, to herself--herself so speciously eliminated for the hour, but presumably more present to the attention of each than the next card to be played. yes, under that imputation, to her sense, they sat--the imputation of wondering, beneath and behind all their apparently straight play, if she weren’t really watching them from her corner and consciously, as might be said, holding them in her hand. she was asking herself at last how they could bear it--for, though cards were as nought to her and she could follow no move, so that she was always, on such occasions, out of the party, they struck her as conforming alike, in the matter of gravity and propriety, to the stiff standard of the house. her father, she knew, was a high adept, one of the greatest--she had been ever, in her stupidity, his small, his sole despair; amerigo excelled easily, as he understood and practised every art that could beguile large leisure; mrs. assingham and charlotte, moreover, were accounted as “good” as members of a sex incapable of the nobler consistency could be. therefore, evidently, they were not, all so up to their usual form, merely passing it off, whether for her or for themselves; and the amount of enjoyed, or at least achieved, security represented by so complete a conquest of appearances was what acted on her nerves, precisely, with a kind of provocative force. she found herself, for five minutes, thrilling with the idea of the prodigious effect that, just as she sat there near them, she had at her command; with the sense that if she were but different--oh, ever so different!--all this high decorum would hang by a hair. there reigned for her, absolutely, during these vertiginous moments, that fascination of the monstrous, that temptation of the horribly possible, which we so often trace by its breaking out suddenly, lest it should go further, in unexplained retreats and reactions. after it had been thus vividly before her for a little that, springing up under her wrong and making them all start, stare and turn pale, she might sound out their doom in a single sentence, a sentence easy to choose among several of the lurid--after she had faced that blinding light and felt it turn to blackness, she rose from her place, laying aside her magazine, and moved slowly round the room, passing near the card-players and pausing an instant behind the chairs in turn. silent and discreet, she bent a vague mild face upon them, as if to signify that, little as she followed their doings, she wished them well; and she took from each, across the table, in the common solemnity, an upward recognition which she was to carry away with her on her moving out to the terrace, a few minutes later. her father and her husband, mrs. assingham and charlotte, had done nothing but meet her eyes; yet the difference in these demonstrations made each a separate passage--which was all the more wonderful since, with the secret behind every face, they had alike tried to look at her through it and in denial of it. it all left her, as she wandered off, with the strangest of impressions--the sense, forced upon her as never yet, of an appeal, a positive confidence, from the four pairs of eyes, that was deeper than any negation, and that seemed to speak, on the part of each, of some relation to be contrived by her, a relation with herself, which would spare the individual the danger, the actual present strain, of the relation with the others. they thus tacitly put it upon her to be disposed of, the whole complexity of their peril, and she promptly saw why because she was there, and there just as she was, to lift it off them and take it; to charge herself with it as the scapegoat of old, of whom she had once seen a terrible picture, had been charged with the sins of the people and had gone forth into the desert to sink under his burden and die. that indeed wasn’t their design and their interest, that she should sink under hers; it wouldn’t be their feeling that she should do anything but live, live on somehow for their benefit, and even as much as possible in their company, to keep proving to them that they had truly escaped and that she was still there to simplify. this idea of her simplifying, and of their combined struggle, dim as yet but steadily growing, toward the perception of her adopting it from them, clung to her while she hovered on the terrace, where the summer night was so soft that she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. several of the long windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came out in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. the hour was moonless and starless and the air heavy and still--which was why, in her evening dress, she need fear no chill and could get away, in the outer darkness, from that provocation of opportunity which had assaulted her, within, on her sofa, as a beast might have leaped at her throat. nothing in fact was stranger than the way in which, when she had remained there a little, her companions, watched by her through one of the windows, actually struck her as almost consciously and gratefully safer. they might have been--really charming as they showed in the beautiful room, and charlotte certainly, as always, magnificently handsome and supremely distinguished--they might have been figures rehearsing some play of which she herself was the author; they might even, for the happy appearance they continued to present, have been such figures as would, by the strong note of character in each, fill any author with the certitude of success, especially of their own histrionic. they might in short have represented any mystery they would; the point being predominantly that the key to the mystery, the key that could wind and unwind it without a snap of the spring, was there in her pocket--or rather, no doubt, clasped at this crisis in her hand and pressed, as she walked back and forth, to her breast. she walked to the end and far out of the light; she returned and saw the others still where she had left them; she passed round the house and looked into the drawing-room, lighted also, but empty now, and seeming to speak the more, in its own voice, of all the possibilities she controlled. spacious and splendid, like a stage again awaiting a drama, it was a scene she might people, by the press of her spring, either with serenities and dignities and decencies, or with terrors and shames and ruins, things as ugly as those formless fragments of her golden bowl she was trying so hard to pick up. she continued to walk and continued to pause; she stopped afresh for the look into the smoking-room, and by this time--it was as if the recognition had of itself arrested her--she saw as in a picture, with the temptation she had fled from quite extinct, why it was she had been able to give herself so little, from the first, to the vulgar heat of her wrong. she might fairly, as she watched them, have missed it as a lost thing; have yearned for it, for the straight vindictive view, the rights of resentment, the rages of jealousy, the protests of passion, as for something she had been cheated of not least: a range of feelings which for many women would have meant so much, but which for her husband’s wife, for her father’s daughter, figured nothing nearer to experience than a wild eastern caravan, looming into view with crude colours in the sun, fierce pipes in the air, high spears against the sky, all a thrill, a natural joy to mingle with, but turning off short before it reached her and plunging into other defiles. she saw at all events why horror itself had almost failed her; the horror that, foreshadowed in advance, would, by her thought, have made everything that was unaccustomed in her cry out with pain; the horror of finding evil seated, all at its ease, where she had only dreamed of good; the horror of the thing hideously behind, behind so much trusted, so much pretended, nobleness, cleverness, tenderness. it was the first sharp falsity she had known in her life, to touch at all, or be touched by; it had met her like some bad-faced stranger surprised in one of the thick-carpeted corridors of a house of quiet on a sunday afternoon; and yet, yes, amazingly, she had been able to look at terror and disgust only to know that she must put away from her the bitter-sweet of their freshness. the sight, from the window, of the group so constituted, told her why, told her how, named to her, as with hard lips, named straight at her, so that she must take it full in the face, that other possible relation to the whole fact which alone would bear upon her irresistibly. it was extraordinary: they positively brought home to her that to feel about them in any of the immediate, inevitable, assuaging ways, the ways usually open to innocence outraged and generosity betrayed, would have been to give them up, and that giving them up was, marvellously, not to be thought of. she had never, from the first hour of her state of acquired conviction, given them up so little as now; though she was, no doubt, as the consequence of a step taken a few minutes later, to invoke the conception of doing that, if might be, even less. she had resumed her walk--stopping here and there, while she rested on the cool smooth stone balustrade, to draw it out; in the course of which, after a little, she passed again the lights of the empty drawing-room and paused again for what she saw and felt there. it was not at once, however, that this became quite concrete; that was the effect of her presently making out that charlotte was in the room, launched and erect there, in the middle, and looking about her; that she had evidently just come round to it, from her card-table, by one of the passages--with the expectation, to all appearance, of joining her stepdaughter. she had pulled up at seeing the great room empty--maggie not having passed out, on leaving the group, in a manner to be observed. so definite a quest of her, with the bridge-party interrupted or altered for it, was an impression that fairly assailed the princess, and to which something of attitude and aspect, of the air of arrested pursuit and purpose, in charlotte, together with the suggestion of her next vague movements, quickly added its meaning. this meaning was that she had decided, that she had been infinitely conscious of maggie’s presence before, that she knew that she would at last find her alone, and that she wanted her, for some reason, enough to have presumably called on bob assingham for aid. he had taken her chair and let her go, and the arrangement was for maggie a signal proof of her earnestness; of the energy, in fact, that, though superficially commonplace in a situation in which people weren’t supposed to be watching each other, was what affected our young woman, on the spot, as a breaking of bars. the splendid shining supple creature was out of the cage, was at large; and the question now almost grotesquely rose of whether she mightn’t by some art, just where she was and before she could go further, be hemmed in and secured. it would have been for a moment, in this case, a matter of quickly closing the windows and giving the alarm--with poor maggie’s sense that, though she couldn’t know what she wanted of her, it was enough for trepidation that, at these firm hands, anything should be to say nothing of the sequel of a flight taken again along the terrace, even under the shame of the confessed feebleness of such evasions on the part of an outraged wife. it was to this feebleness, none the less, that the outraged wife had presently resorted; the most that could be said for her being, as she felt while she finally stopped short, at a distance, that she could at any rate resist her abjection sufficiently not to sneak into the house by another way and safely reach her room. she had literally caught herself in the act of dodging and ducking, and it told her there, vividly, in a single word, what she had all along been most afraid of. she had been afraid of the particular passage with charlotte that would determine her father’s wife to take him into her confidence as she couldn’t possibly as yet have done, to prepare for him a statement of her wrong, to lay before him the infamy of what she was apparently suspected of. this, should she have made up her mind to do it, would rest on a calculation the thought of which evoked, strangely, other possibilities and visions. it would show her as sufficiently believing in her grasp of her husband to be able to assure herself that, with his daughter thrown on the defensive, with maggie’s cause and maggie’s word, in fine, against her own, it wasn’t maggie’s that would most certainly carry the day. such a glimpse of her conceivable idea, which would be founded on reasons all her own, reasons of experience and assurance, impenetrable to others, but intimately familiar to herself--such a glimpse opened out wide as soon as it had come into view; for if so much as this was still firm ground between the elder pair, if the beauty of appearances had been so consistently preserved, it was only the golden bowl as maggie herself knew it that had been broken. the breakage stood not for any wrought discomposure among the triumphant three--it stood merely for the dire deformity of her attitude toward them. she was unable at the minute, of course, fully to measure the difference thus involved for her, and it remained inevitably an agitating image, the way it might be held over her that if she didn’t, of her own prudence, satisfy charlotte as to the reference, in her mocking spirit, of so much of the unuttered and unutterable, of the constantly and unmistakably implied, her father would be invited without further ceremony to recommend her to do so. but any confidence, any latent operating insolence, that mrs. verver should, thanks to her large native resources, continue to be possessed of and to hold in reserve, glimmered suddenly as a possible working light and seemed to offer, for meeting her, a new basis and something like a new system. maggie felt, truly, a rare contraction of the heart on making out, the next instant, what the new system would probably have to be--and she had practically done that before perceiving that the thing she feared had already taken place. charlotte, extending her search, appeared now to define herself vaguely in the distance; of this, after an instant, the princess was sure, though the darkness was thick, for the projected clearness of the smoking-room windows had presently contributed its help. her friend came slowly into that circle--having also, for herself, by this time, not indistinguishably discovered that maggie was on the terrace. maggie, from the end, saw her stop before one of the windows to look at the group within, and then saw her come nearer and pause again, still with a considerable length of the place between them. yes, charlotte had seen she was watching her from afar, and had stopped now to put her further attention to the test. her face was fixed on her, through the night; she was the creature who had escaped by force from her cage, yet there was in her whole motion assuredly, even as so dimly discerned, a kind of portentous intelligent stillness. she had escaped with an intention, but with an intention the more definite that it could so accord with quiet measures. the two women, at all events, only hovered there, for these first minutes, face to face over their interval and exchanging no sign; the intensity of their mutual look might have pierced the night, and maggie was at last to start with the scared sense of having thus yielded to doubt, to dread, to hesitation, for a time that, with no other proof needed, would have completely given her away. how long had she stood staring?--a single minute or five? long enough, in any case, to have felt herself absolutely take from her visitor something that the latter threw upon her, irresistibly, by this effect of silence, by this effect of waiting and watching, by this effect, unmistakably, of timing her indecision and her fear. if then, scared and hanging back, she had, as was so evident, sacrificed all past pretences, it would have been with the instant knowledge of an immense advantage gained that charlotte finally saw her come on. maggie came on with her heart in her hands; she came on with the definite prevision, throbbing like the tick of a watch, of a doom impossibly sharp and hard, but to which, after looking at it with her eyes wide open, she had none the less bowed her head. by the time she was at her companion’s side, for that matter, by the time charlotte had, without a motion, without a word, simply let her approach and stand there, her head was already on the block, so that the consciousness that everything had now gone blurred all perception of whether or no the axe had fallen. oh, the “advantage,” it was perfectly enough, in truth, with mrs. verver; for what was maggie’s own sense but that of having been thrown over on her back, with her neck, from the first, half broken and her helpless face staring up? that position only could account for the positive grimace of weakness and pain produced there by charlotte’s dignity. “i’ve come to join you--i thought you would be here.” “oh yes, i’m here,” maggie heard herself return a little flatly. “it’s too close in-doors.” “very--but close even here.” charlotte was still and grave--she had even uttered her remark about the temperature with an expressive weight that verged upon solemnity; so that maggie, reduced to looking vaguely about at the sky, could only feel her not fail of her purpose. “the air’s heavy as if with thunder--i think there’ll be a storm.” she made the suggestion to carry off an awkwardness--which was a part, always, of her companion’s gain; but the awkwardness didn’t diminish in the silence that followed. charlotte had said nothing in reply; her brow was dark as with a fixed expression, and her high elegance, her handsome head and long, straight neck testified, through the dusk, to their inveterate completeness and noble erectness. it was as if what she had come out to do had already begun, and when, as a consequence, maggie had said helplessly, “don’t you want something? won’t you have my shawl?” everything might have crumbled away in the comparative poverty of the tribute. mrs. verver’s rejection of it had the brevity of a sign that they hadn’t closed in for idle words, just as her dim, serious face, uninterruptedly presented until they moved again, might have represented the success with which she watched all her message penetrate. they presently went back the way she had come, but she stopped maggie again within range of the smoking-room window and made her stand where the party at cards would be before her. side by side, for three minutes, they fixed this picture of quiet harmonies, the positive charm of it and, as might have been said, the full significance--which, as was now brought home to maggie, could be no more, after all, than a matter of interpretation, differing always for a different interpreter. as she herself had hovered in sight of it a quarter-of-an-hour before, it would have been a thing for her to show charlotte--to show in righteous irony, in reproach too stern for anything but silence. but now it was she who was being shown it, and shown it by charlotte, and she saw quickly enough that, as charlotte showed it, so she must at present submissively seem to take it. the others were absorbed and unconscious, either silent over their game or dropping remarks unheard on the terrace; and it was to her father’s quiet face, discernibly expressive of nothing that was in his daughter’s mind, that our young woman’s attention was most directly given. his wife and his daughter were both closely watching him, and to which of them, could he have been notified of this, would his raised eyes first, all impulsively, have responded; in which of them would he have felt it most important to destroy--for his clutch at the equilibrium--any germ of uneasiness? not yet, since his marriage, had maggie so sharply and so formidably known her old possession of him as a thing divided and contested. she was looking at him by charlotte’s leave and under charlotte’s direction; quite in fact as if the particular way she should look at him were prescribed to her; quite, even, as if she had been defied to look at him in any other. it came home to her too that the challenge wasn’t, as might be said, in his interest and for his protection, but, pressingly, insistently, in charlotte’s, for that of her security at any price. she might verily, by this dumb demonstration, have been naming to maggie the price, naming it as a question for maggie herself, a sum of money that she, properly, was to find. she must remain safe and maggie must pay--what she was to pay with being her own affair. straighter than ever, thus, the princess again felt it all put upon her, and there was a minute, just a supreme instant, during which there burned in her a wild wish that her father would only look up. it throbbed for these seconds as a yearning appeal to him--she would chance it, that is, if he would but just raise his eyes and catch them, across the larger space, standing in the outer dark together. then he might be affected by the sight, taking them as they were; he might make some sign--she scarce knew what--that would save her; save her from being the one, this way, to pay all. he might somehow show a preference-- distinguishing between them; might, out of pity for her, signal to her that this extremity of her effort for him was more than he asked. that represented maggie’s one little lapse from consistency--the sole small deflection in the whole course of her scheme. it had come to nothing the next minute, for the dear man’s eyes had never moved, and charlotte’s hand, promptly passed into her arm, had already, had very firmly drawn her on--quite, for that matter, as from some sudden, some equal perception on her part too of the more ways than one in which their impression could appeal. they retraced their steps along the rest of the terrace, turning the corner of the house, and presently came abreast of the other windows, those of the pompous drawing-room, still lighted and still empty. here charlotte again paused, and it was again as if she were pointing out what maggie had observed for herself, the very look the place had of being vivid in its stillness, of having, with all its great objects as ordered and balanced as for a formal reception, been appointed for some high transaction, some real affair of state. in presence of this opportunity she faced her companion once more; she traced in her the effect of everything she had already communicated; she signified, with the same success, that the terrace and the sullen night would bear too meagre witness to the completion of her idea. soon enough then, within the room, under the old lustres of venice and the eyes of the several great portraits, more or less contemporary with these, that awaited on the walls of fawns their final far migration--soon enough maggie found herself staring, and at first all too gaspingly, at the grand total to which each separate demand mrs. verver had hitherto made upon her, however she had made it, now amounted. “i’ve been wanting--and longer than you’d perhaps believe--to put a question to you for which no opportunity has seemed to me yet quite so good as this. it would have been easier perhaps if you had struck me as in the least disposed ever to give me one. i have to take it now, you see, as i find it.” they stood in the centre of the immense room, and maggie could feel that the scene of life her imagination had made of it twenty minutes before was by this time sufficiently peopled. these few straight words filled it to its uttermost reaches, and nothing was now absent from her consciousness, either, of the part she was called upon to play in it. charlotte had marched straight in, dragging her rich train; she rose there beautiful and free, with her whole aspect and action attuned to the firmness of her speech. maggie had kept the shawl she had taken out with her, and, clutching it tight in her nervousness, drew it round her as if huddling in it for shelter, covering herself with it for humility. she looked out as from under an improvised hood--the sole headgear of some poor woman at somebody’s proud door; she waited even like the poor woman; she met her friend’s eyes with recognitions she couldn’t suppress. she might sound it as she could--“what question then?”--everything in her, from head to foot, crowded it upon charlotte that she knew. she knew too well--that she was showing; so that successful vagueness, to save some scrap of her dignity from the imminence of her defeat, was already a lost cause, and the one thing left was if possible, at any cost, even that of stupid inconsequence, to try to look as if she weren’t afraid. if she could but appear at all not afraid she might appear a little not ashamed--that is not ashamed to be afraid, which was the kind of shame that could be fastened on her, it being fear all the while that moved her. her challenge, at any rate, her wonder, her terror--the blank, blurred surface, whatever it was that she presented became a mixture that ceased to signify; for to the accumulated advantage by which charlotte was at present sustained her next words themselves had little to add. “have you any ground of complaint of me? is there any wrong you consider i’ve done you? i feel at last that i’ve a right to ask you.” their eyes had to meet on it, and to meet long; maggie’s avoided at least the disgrace of looking away. “what makes you want to ask it?” “my natural desire to know. you’ve done that, for so long, little justice.” maggie waited a moment. “for so long? you mean you’ve thought--?” “i mean, my dear, that i’ve seen. i’ve seen, week after week, that you seemed to be thinking--of something that perplexed or worried you. is it anything for which i’m in any degree responsible?” maggie summoned all her powers. “what in the world should it be?” “ah, that’s not for me to imagine, and i should be very sorry to have to try to say! i’m aware of no point whatever at which i may have failed you,” said charlotte; “nor of any at which i may have failed any one in whom i can suppose you sufficiently interested to care. if i’ve been guilty of some fault i’ve committed it all unconsciously, and am only anxious to hear from you honestly about it. but if i’ve been mistaken as to what i speak of--the difference, more and more marked, as i’ve thought, in all your manner to me--why, obviously, so much the better. no form of correction received from you could give me greater satisfaction.” she spoke, it struck her companion, with rising, with extraordinary ease; as if hearing herself say it all, besides seeing the way it was listened to, helped her from point to point. she saw she was right--that this was the tone for her to take and the thing for her to do, the thing as to which she was probably feeling that she had in advance, in her delays and uncertainties, much exaggerated the difficulty. the difficulty was small, and it grew smaller as her adversary continued to shrink; she was not only doing as she wanted, but had by this time effectively done it and hung it up. all of which but deepened maggie’s sense of the sharp and simple need, now, of seeing her through to the end. “‘if’ you’ve been mistaken, you say?”--and the princess but barely faltered. “you have been mistaken.” charlotte looked at her splendidly hard. “you’re perfectly sure it’s all my mistake?” “all i can say is that you’ve received a false impression.” “ah then--so much the better! from the moment i had received it i knew i must sooner or later speak of it--for that, you see, is, systematically, my way. and now,” charlotte added, “you make me glad i’ve spoken. i thank you very much.” it was strange how for maggie too, with this, the difficulty seemed to sink. her companion’s acceptance of her denial was like a general pledge not to keep things any worse for her than they essentially had to be; it positively helped her to build up her falsehood--to which, accordingly, she contributed another block. “i’ve affected you evidently--quite accidentally--in some way of which i’ve been all unaware. i’ve not felt at any time that you’ve wronged me.” “how could i come within a mile,” charlotte inquired, “of such a possibility?” maggie, with her eyes on her more easily now, made no attempt to say; she said, after a little, something more to the present point. “i accuse you--i accuse you of nothing.” “ah, that’s lucky!” charlotte had brought this out with the richness, almost, of gaiety; and maggie, to go on, had to think, with her own intensity, of amerigo--to think how he, on his side, had had to go through with his lie to her, how it was for his wife he had done so, and how his doing so had given her the clue and set her the example. he must have had his own difficulty about it, and she was not, after all, falling below him. it was in fact as if, thanks to her hovering image of him confronted with this admirable creature even as she was confronted, there glowed upon her from afar, yet straight and strong, a deep explanatory light which covered the last inch of the ground. he had given her something to conform to, and she hadn’t unintelligently turned on him, “gone back on” him, as he would have said, by not conforming. they were together thus, he and she, close, close together--whereas charlotte, though rising there radiantly before her, was really off in some darkness of space that would steep her in solitude and harass her with care. the heart of the princess swelled, accordingly, even in her abasement; she had kept in tune with the right, and something, certainly, something that might be like a rare flower snatched from an impossible ledge, would, and possibly soon, come of it for her. the right, the right--yes, it took this extraordinary form of her humbugging, as she had called it, to the end. it was only a question of not, by a hair’s breadth, deflecting into the truth. so, supremely, was she braced. “you must take it from me that your anxiety rests quite on a misconception. you must take it from me that i’ve never at any moment fancied i could suffer by you.” and, marvellously, she kept it up--not only kept it up, but improved on it. “you must take it from me that i’ve never thought of you but as beautiful, wonderful and good. which is all, i think, that you can possibly ask.” charlotte held her a moment longer: she needed--not then to have appeared only tactless--the last word. “it’s much more, my dear, than i dreamed of asking. i only wanted your denial.” “well then, you have it.” “upon your honour?” “upon my honour:” and she made a point even, our young woman, of not turning away. her grip of her shawl had loosened--she had let it fall behind her; but she stood there for anything more and till the weight should be lifted. with which she saw soon enough what more was to come. she saw it in charlotte’s face, and felt it make between them, in the air, a chill that completed the coldness of their conscious perjury. “will you kiss me on it then?” she couldn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no; what availed her still, however, was to measure, in her passivity, how much too far charlotte had come to retreat. but there was something different also, something for which, while her cheek received the prodigious kiss, she had her opportunity--the sight of the others, who, having risen from their cards to join the absent members of their party, had reached the open door at the end of the room and stopped short, evidently, in presence of the demonstration that awaited them. her husband and her father were in front, and charlotte’s embrace of her--which wasn’t to be distinguished, for them, either, she felt, from her embrace of charlotte--took on with their arrival a high publicity. xxxvii her father had asked her, three days later, in an interval of calm, how she was affected, in the light of their reappearance and of their now perhaps richer fruition, by dotty and kitty, and by the once formidable mrs. rance; and the consequence of this inquiry had been, for the pair, just such another stroll together, away from the rest of the party and off into the park, as had asserted its need to them on the occasion of the previous visit of these anciently more agitating friends--that of their long talk, on a sequestered bench beneath one of the great trees, when the particular question had come up for them the then purblind discussion of which, at their enjoyed leisure, maggie had formed the habit of regarding as the “first beginning” of their present situation. the whirligig of time had thus brought round for them again, on their finding themselves face to face while the others were gathering for tea on the terrace, the same odd impulse quietly to “slope”--so adam verver himself, as they went, familiarly expressed it--that had acted, in its way, of old; acted for the distant autumn afternoon and for the sharpness of their since so outlived crisis. it might have been funny to them now that the presence of mrs. rance and the lutches--and with symptoms, too, at that time less developed--had once, for their anxiety and their prudence, constituted a crisis; it might have been funny that these ladies could ever have figured, to their imagination, as a symbol of dangers vivid enough to precipitate the need of a remedy. this amount of entertainment and assistance they were indeed disposed to extract from their actual impressions; they had been finding it, for months past, by maggie’s view, a resource and a relief to talk, with an approach to intensity, when they met, of all the people they weren’t really thinking of and didn’t really care about, the people with whom their existence had begun almost to swarm; and they closed in at present round the spectres of their past, as they permitted themselves to describe the three ladies, with a better imitation of enjoying their theme than they had been able to achieve, certainly, during the stay, for instance, of the castledeans. the castledeans were a new joke, comparatively, and they had had--always to maggie’s view--to teach themselves the way of it; whereas the detroit, the providence party, rebounding so from providence, from detroit, was an old and ample one, of which the most could be made and as to which a humorous insistence could be guarded. sharp and sudden, moreover, this afternoon, had been their well-nigh confessed desire just to rest together, a little, as from some strain long felt but never named; to rest, as who should say, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, each pair of eyes so yearningly--and indeed what could it be but so wearily?--closed as to render the collapse safe from detection by the other pair. it was positively as if, in short, the inward felicity of their being once more, perhaps only for half-an-hour, simply daughter and father had glimmered out for them, and they had picked up the pretext that would make it easiest. they were husband and wife--oh, so immensely!--as regards other persons; but after they had dropped again on their old bench, conscious that the party on the terrace, augmented, as in the past, by neighbours, would do beautifully without them, it was wonderfully like their having got together into some boat and paddled off from the shore where husbands and wives, luxuriant complications, made the air too tropical. in the boat they were father and daughter, and poor dotty and kitty supplied abundantly, for their situation, the oars or the sail. why, into the bargain, for that matter--this came to maggie--couldn’t they always live, so far as they lived together, in a boat? she felt in her face, with the question, the breath of a possibility that soothed her; they needed only know each other, henceforth, in the unmarried relation. that other sweet evening, in the same place, he had been as unmarried as possible--which had kept down, so to speak, the quantity of change in their state. well then, that other sweet evening was what the present sweet evening would resemble; with the quite calculable effect of an exquisite inward refreshment. they had, after all, whatever happened, always and ever each other; each other--that was the hidden treasure and the saving truth--to do exactly what they would with: a provision full of possibilities. who could tell, as yet, what, thanks to it, they wouldn’t have done before the end? they had meanwhile been tracing together, in the golden air that, toward six o’clock of a july afternoon, hung about the massed kentish woods, several features of the social evolution of her old playmates, still beckoned on, it would seem, by unattainable ideals, still falling back, beyond the sea, to their native seats, for renewals of the moral, financial, conversational--one scarce knew what to call it--outfit, and again and for ever reappearing like a tribe of wandering jewesses. our couple had finally exhausted, however, the study of these annals, and maggie was to take up, after a drop, a different matter, or one at least with which the immediate connection was not at first apparent. “were you amused at me just now--when i wondered what other people could wish to struggle for? did you think me,” she asked with some earnestness--“well, fatuous?” “‘fatuous’?”--he seemed at a loss. “i mean sublime in our happiness--as if looking down from a height. or, rather, sublime in our general position--that’s what i mean.” she spoke as from the habit of her anxious conscience something that disposed her frequently to assure herself, for her human commerce, of the state of the “books” of the spirit. “because i don’t at all want,” she explained, “to be blinded, or made ‘sniffy,’ by any sense of a social situation.” her father listened to this declaration as if the precautions of her general mercy could still, as they betrayed themselves, have surprises for him--to say nothing of a charm of delicacy and beauty; he might have been wishing to see how far she could go and where she would, all touchingly to him, arrive. but she waited a little--as if made nervous, precisely, by feeling him depend too much on what she said. they were avoiding the serious, standing off, anxiously, from the real, and they fell, again and again, as if to disguise their precaution itself, into the tone of the time that came back to them from their other talk, when they had shared together this same refuge. “don’t you remember,” she went on, “how, when they were here before, i broke it to you that i wasn’t so very sure we, ourselves had the thing itself?” he did his best to do so. “had, you mean a social situation?” “yes--after fanny assingham had first broken it to me that, at the rate we were going, we should never have one.” “which was what put us on charlotte?” oh yes, they had had it over quite often enough for him easily to remember. maggie had another pause--taking it from him that he now could both affirm and admit without wincing that they had been, at their critical moment, “put on” charlotte. it was as if this recognition had been threshed out between them as fundamental to the honest view of their success. “well,” she continued, “i recall how i felt, about kitty and dotty, that even if we had already then been more ‘placed,’ or whatever you may call what we are now, it still wouldn’t have been an excuse for wondering why others couldn’t obligingly leave me more exalted by having, themselves, smaller ideas. for those,” she said, “were the feelings we used to have.” “oh yes,” he responded philosophically--“i remember the feelings we used to have.” maggie appeared to wish to plead for them a little, in tender retrospect--as if they had been also respectable. “it was bad enough, i thought, to have no sympathy in your heart when you had a position. but it was worse to be sublime about it--as i was so afraid, as i’m in fact still afraid of being--when it wasn’t even there to support one.” and she put forth again the earnestness she might have been taking herself as having outlived; became for it--which was doubtless too often even now her danger--almost sententious. “one must always, whether or no, have some imagination of the states of others--of what they may feel deprived of. however,” she added, “kitty and dotty couldn’t imagine we were deprived of anything. and now, and now--!” but she stopped as for indulgence to their wonder and envy. “and now they see, still more, that we can have got everything, and kept everything, and yet not be proud.” “no, we’re not proud,” she answered after a moment. “i’m not sure that we’re quite proud enough.” yet she changed the next instant that subject too. she could only do so, however, by harking back--as if it had been a fascination. she might have been wishing, under this renewed, this still more suggestive visitation, to keep him with her for remounting the stream of time and dipping again, for the softness of the water, into the contracted basin of the past. “we talked about it--we talked about it; you don’t remember so well as i. you too didn’t know--and it was beautiful of you; like kitty and dotty you too thought we had a position, and were surprised when _i_ thought we ought to have told them we weren’t doing for them what they supposed. in fact,” maggie pursued, “we’re not doing it now. we’re not, you see, really introducing them. i mean not to the people they want.” “then what do you call the people with whom they’re now having tea?” it made her quite spring round. “that’s just what you asked me the other time--one of the days there was somebody. and i told you i didn’t call anybody anything.” “i remember--that such people, the people we made so welcome, didn’t ‘count’; that fanny assingham knew they didn’t.” she had awakened, his daughter, the echo; and on the bench there, as before, he nodded his head amusedly, he kept nervously shaking his foot. “yes, they were only good enough--the people who came--for us. i remember,” he said again: “that was the way it all happened.” “that was the way--that was the way. and you asked me,” maggie added, “if i didn’t think we ought to tell them. tell mrs. rance, in particular, i mean, that we had been entertaining her up to then under false pretences.” “precisely--but you said she wouldn’t have understood.” “to which you replied that in that case you were like her. you didn’t understand.” “no, no--but i remember how, about our having, in our benighted innocence, no position, you quite crushed me with your explanation.” “well then,” said maggie with every appearance of delight, “i’ll crush you again. i told you that you by yourself had one--there was no doubt of that. you were different from me--you had the same one you always had.” “and then i asked you,” her father concurred, “why in that case you hadn’t the same.” “then indeed you did.” he had brought her face round to him before, and this held it, covering him with its kindled brightness, the result of the attested truth of their being able thus, in talk, to live again together. “what i replied was that i had lost my position by my marriage. that one--i know how i saw it--would never come back. i had done something to it--i didn’t quite know what; given it away, somehow, and yet not, as then appeared, really got my return. i had been assured--always by dear fanny--that i could get it, only i must wake up. so i was trying, you see, to wake up--trying very hard.” “yes--and to a certain extent you succeeded; as also in waking me. but you made much,” he said, “of your difficulty.” to which he added: “it’s the only case i remember, mag, of you ever making anything of a difficulty.” she kept her eyes on him a moment. “that i was so happy as i was?” “that you were so happy as you were.” “well, you admitted”--maggie kept it up--“that that was a good difficulty. you confessed that our life did seem to be beautiful.” he thought a moment. “yes--i may very well have confessed it, for so it did seem to me.” but he guarded himself with his dim, his easier smile. “what do you want to put on me now?” “only that we used to wonder--that we were wondering then--if our life wasn’t perhaps a little selfish.” this also for a time, much at his leisure, adam verver retrospectively fixed. “because fanny assingham thought so?” “oh no; she never thought, she couldn’t think, if she would, anything of that sort. she only thinks people are sometimes fools,” maggie developed; “she doesn’t seem to think so much about their being wrong--wrong, that is, in the sense of being wicked. she doesn’t,” the princess further adventured, “quite so much mind their being wicked.” “i see--i see.” and yet it might have been for his daughter that he didn’t so very vividly see. “then she only thought us fools?” “oh no--i don’t say that. i’m speaking of our being selfish.” “and that comes under the head of the wickedness fanny condones?” “oh, i don’t say she condones--!” a scruple in maggie raised its crest. “besides, i’m speaking of what was.” her father showed, however, after a little, that he had not been reached by this discrimination; his thoughts were resting for the moment where they had settled. “look here, mag,” he said reflectively--“i ain’t selfish. i’ll be blowed if i’m selfish.” well, maggie, if he would talk of that, could also pronounce. “then, father, _i_ am.” “oh shucks!” said adam verver, to whom the vernacular, in moments of deepest sincerity, could thus come back. “i’ll believe it,” he presently added, “when amerigo complains of you.” “ah, it’s just he who’s my selfishness. i’m selfish, so to speak, for him. i mean,” she continued, “that he’s my motive--in everything.” well, her father could, from experience, fancy what she meant. “but hasn’t a girl a right to be selfish about her husband?” “what i don’t mean,” she observed without answering, “is that i’m jealous of him. but that’s his merit--it’s not mine.” her father again seemed amused at her. “you could be--otherwise?” “oh, how can i talk,” she asked, “of otherwise? it isn’t, luckily for me, otherwise. if everything were different”--she further presented her thought--“of course everything would be.” and then again, as if that were but half: “my idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous--or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. but when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you are, in the same proportion, jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. when, however, you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all--why then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.” mr. verver listened as if he had nothing, on these high lines, to oppose. “and that’s the way you love?” for a minute she failed to speak, but at last she answered: “it wasn’t to talk about that. i do feel, however, beyond everything--and as a consequence of that, i dare say,” she added with a turn to gaiety, “seem often not to know quite where i am.” the mere fine pulse of passion in it, the suggestion as of a creature consciously floating and shining in a warm summer sea, some element of dazzling sapphire and silver, a creature cradled upon depths, buoyant among dangers, in which fear or folly, or sinking otherwise than in play, was impossible--something of all this might have been making once more present to him, with his discreet, his half shy assent to it, her probable enjoyment of a rapture that he, in his day, had presumably convinced no great number of persons either of his giving or of his receiving. he sat awhile as if he knew himself hushed, almost admonished, and not for the first time; yet it was an effect that might have brought before him rather what she had gained than what he had missed. besides, who but himself really knew what he, after all, hadn’t, or even had, gained? the beauty of her condition was keeping him, at any rate, as he might feel, in sight of the sea, where, though his personal dips were over, the whole thing could shine at him, and the air and the plash and the play become for him too a sensation. that couldn’t be fixed upon him as missing; since if it wasn’t personally floating, if it wasn’t even sitting in the sand, it could yet pass very well for breathing the bliss, in a communicated irresistible way--for tasting the balm. it could pass, further, for knowing--for knowing that without him nothing might have been: which would have been missing least of all. “i guess i’ve never been jealous,” he finally remarked. and it said more to her, he had occasion next to perceive, than he was intending; for it made her, as by the pressure of a spring, give him a look that seemed to tell of things she couldn’t speak. but she at last tried for one of them. “oh, it’s you, father, who are what i call beyond everything. nothing can pull you down.” he returned the look as with the sociability of their easy communion, though inevitably throwing in this time a shade of solemnity. he might have been seeing things to say, and others, whether of a type presumptuous or not, doubtless better kept back. so he settled on the merely obvious. “well then, we make a pair. we’re all right.” “oh, we’re all right!” a declaration launched not only with all her discriminating emphasis, but confirmed by her rising with decision and standing there as if the object of their small excursion required accordingly no further pursuit. at this juncture, however--with the act of their crossing the bar, to get, as might be, into port--there occurred the only approach to a betrayal of their having had to beat against the wind. her father kept his place, and it was as if she had got over first and were pausing for her consort to follow. if they were all right; they were all right; yet he seemed to hesitate and wait for some word beyond. his eyes met her own, suggestively, and it was only after she had contented herself with simply smiling at him, smiling ever so fixedly, that he spoke, for the remaining importance of it, from the bench; where he leaned back, raising his face to her, his legs thrust out a trifle wearily and his hands grasping either side of the seat. they had beaten against the wind, and she was still fresh; they had beaten against the wind, and he, as at the best the more battered vessel, perhaps just vaguely drooped. but the effect of their silence was that she appeared to beckon him on, and he might have been fairly alongside of her when, at the end of another minute, he found their word. “the only thing is that, as for ever putting up again with your pretending that you’re selfish--!” at this she helped him out with it. “you won’t take it from me?” “i won’t take it from you.” “well, of course you won’t, for that’s your way. it doesn’t matter, and it only proves--! but it doesn’t matter, either, what it proves. i’m at this very moment,” she declared, “frozen stiff with selfishness.” he faced her awhile longer in the same way; it was, strangely, as if, by this sudden arrest, by their having, in their acceptance of the unsaid, or at least their reference to it, practically given up pretending--it was as if they were “in” for it, for something they had been ineffably avoiding, but the dread of which was itself, in a manner, a seduction, just as any confession of the dread was by so much an allusion. then she seemed to see him let himself go. “when a person’s of the nature you speak of there are always other persons to suffer. but you’ve just been describing to me what you’d take, if you had once a good chance, from your husband.” “oh, i’m not talking about my husband!” “then whom, are you talking about?” both the retort and the rejoinder had come quicker than anything previously exchanged, and they were followed, on maggie’s part, by a momentary drop. but she was not to fall away, and while her companion kept his eyes on her, while she wondered if he weren’t expecting her to name his wife then, with high hypocrisy, as paying for his daughter’s bliss, she produced something that she felt to be much better. “i’m talking about you.” “do you mean i’ve been your victim?” “of course you’ve been my victim. what have you done, ever done, that hasn’t been for me?” “many things; more than i can tell you--things you’ve only to think of for yourself. what do you make of all that i’ve done for myself?” “‘yourself’?--” she brightened out with derision. “what do you make of what i’ve done for american city?” it took her but a moment to say. “i’m not talking of you as a public character--i’m talking of you on your personal side.” “well, american city--if ‘personalities’ can do it--has given me a pretty personal side. what do you make,” he went on, “of what i’ve done for my reputation?” “your reputation there? you’ve given it up to them, the awful people, for less than nothing; you’ve given it up to them to tear to pieces, to make their horrible vulgar jokes against you with.” “ah, my dear, i don’t care for their horrible vulgar jokes,” adam verver almost artlessly urged. “then there, exactly, you are!” she triumphed. “everything that touches you, everything that surrounds you, goes on--by your splendid indifference and your incredible permission--at your expense.” just as he had been sitting he looked at her an instant longer; then he slowly rose, while his hands stole into his pockets, and stood there before her. “of course, my dear, you go on at my expense: it has never been my idea,” he smiled, “that you should work for your living. i wouldn’t have liked to see it.” with which, for a little again, they remained face to face. “say therefore i have had the feelings of a father. how have they made me a victim?” “because i sacrifice you.” “but to what in the world?” at this it hung before her that she should have had as never yet her opportunity to say, and it held her for a minute as in a vise, her impression of his now, with his strained smile, which touched her to deepest depths, sounding her in his secret unrest. this was the moment, in the whole process of their mutual vigilance, in which it decidedly most hung by a hair that their thin wall might be pierced by the lightest wrong touch. it shook between them, this transparency, with their very breath; it was an exquisite tissue, but stretched on a frame, and would give way the next instant if either so much as breathed too hard. she held her breath, for she knew by his eyes, the light at the heart of which he couldn’t blind, that he was, by his intention, making sure--sure whether or no her certainty was like his. the intensity of his dependence on it at that moment--this itself was what absolutely convinced her so that, as if perched up before him on her vertiginous point and in the very glare of his observation, she balanced for thirty seconds, she almost rocked: she might have been for the time, in all her conscious person, the very form of the equilibrium they were, in their different ways, equally trying to save. and they were saving it--yes, they were, or at least she was: that was still the workable issue, she could say, as she felt her dizziness drop. she held herself hard; the thing was to be done, once for all, by her acting, now, where she stood. so much was crowded into so short a space that she knew already she was keeping her head. she had kept it by the warning of his eyes; she shouldn’t lose it again; she knew how and why, and if she had turned cold this was precisely what helped her. he had said to himself “she’ll break down and name amerigo; she’ll say it’s to him she’s sacrificing me; and its by what that will give me--with so many other things too--that my suspicion will be clinched.” he was watching her lips, spying for the symptoms of the sound; whereby these symptoms had only to fail and he would have got nothing that she didn’t measure out to him as she gave it. she had presently in fact so recovered herself that she seemed to know she could more easily have made him name his wife than he have made her name her husband. it was there before her that if she should so much as force him just not consciously to avoid saying “charlotte, charlotte” he would have given himself away. but to be sure of this was enough for her, and she saw more clearly with each lapsing instant what they were both doing. he was doing what he had steadily been coming to; he was practically offering himself, pressing himself upon her, as a sacrifice--he had read his way so into her best possibility; and where had she already, for weeks and days past, planted her feet if not on her acceptance of the offer? cold indeed, colder and colder she turned, as she felt herself suffer this close personal vision of his attitude still not to make her weaken. that was her very certitude, the intensity of his pressure; for if something dreadful hadn’t happened there wouldn’t, for either of them, be these dreadful things to do. she had meanwhile, as well, the immense advantage that she could have named charlotte without exposing herself--as, for that matter, she was the next minute showing him. “why, i sacrifice you, simply, to everything and to every one. i take the consequences of your marriage as perfectly natural.” he threw back his head a little, settling with one hand his eyeglass. “what do you call, my dear, the consequences?” “your life as your marriage has made it.” “well, hasn’t it made it exactly what we wanted?” she just hesitated, then felt herself steady--oh, beyond what she had dreamed. “exactly what _i_ wanted--yes.” his eyes, through his straightened glasses, were still on hers, and he might, with his intenser fixed smile, have been knowing she was, for herself, rightly inspired. “what do you make then of what i wanted?” “i don’t make anything, any more than of what you’ve got. that’s exactly the point. i don’t put myself out to do so--i never have; i take from you all i can get, all you’ve provided for me, and i leave you to make of your own side of the matter what you can. there you are--the rest is your own affair. i don’t even pretend to concern myself--!” “to concern yourself--?” he watched her as she faintly faltered, looking about her now so as not to keep always meeting his face. “with what may have really become of you. it’s as if we had agreed from the first not to go into that--such an arrangement being of course charming for me. you can’t say, you know, that i haven’t stuck to it.” he didn’t say so then--even with the opportunity given him of her stopping once more to catch her breath. he said instead: “oh, my dear--oh, oh!” but it made no difference, know as she might what a past--still so recent and yet so distant--it alluded to; she repeated her denial, warning him off, on her side, from spoiling the truth of her contention. “i never went into anything, and you see i don’t; i’ve continued to adore you--but what’s that, from a decent daughter to such a father? what but a question of convenient arrangement, our having two houses, three houses, instead of one (you would have arranged for fifty if i had wished!) and my making it easy for you to see the child? you don’t claim, i suppose, that my natural course, once you had set up for yourself, would have been to ship you back to american city?” these were direct inquiries, they quite rang out, in the soft, wooded air; so that adam verver, for a minute, appeared to meet them with reflection. she saw reflection, however, quickly enough show him what to do with them. “do you know, mag, what you make me wish when you talk that way?” and he waited again, while she further got from him the sense of something that had been behind, deeply in the shade, coming cautiously to the front and just feeling its way before presenting itself. “you regularly make me wish that i had shipped back to american city. when you go on as you do--” but he really had to hold himself to say it. “well, when i go on--?” “why, you make me quite want to ship back myself. you make me quite feel as if american city would be the best place for us.” it made her all too finely vibrate. “for ‘us’--?” “for me and charlotte. do you know that if we should ship, it would serve you quite right?” with which he smiled--oh he smiled! “and if you say much more we will ship.” ah, then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim, overflowed at a touch! there was his idea, the clearness of which for an instant almost dazzled her. it was a blur of light, in the midst of which she saw charlotte like some object marked, by contrast, in blackness, saw her waver in the field of vision, saw her removed, transported, doomed. and he had named charlotte, named her again, and she had made him--which was all she had needed more: it was as if she had held a blank letter to the fire and the writing had come out still larger than she hoped. the recognition of it took her some seconds, but she might when she spoke have been folding up these precious lines and restoring them to her pocket. “well, i shall be as much as ever then the cause of what you do. i haven’t the least doubt of your being up to that if you should think i might get anything out of it; even the little pleasure,” she laughed, “of having said, as you call it, ‘more.’ let my enjoyment of this therefore, at any price, continue to represent for you what _i_ call sacrificing you.” she had drawn a long breath; she had made him do it all for her, and had lighted the way to it without his naming her husband. that silence had been as distinct as the sharp, the inevitable sound, and something now, in him, followed it up, a sudden air as of confessing at last fully to where she was and of begging the particular question. “don’t you think then i can take care of myself?” “ah, it’s exactly what i’ve gone upon. if it wasn’t for that--!” but she broke off, and they remained only another moment face to face. “i’ll let you know, my dear, the day _i_ feel you’ve begun to sacrifice me.” “‘begun’?” she extravagantly echoed. “well, it will be, for me, the day you’ve ceased to believe in me.” with which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back, his legs a little apart, he seemed to plant or to square himself for a kind of assurance it had occurred to him he might as well treat her to, in default of other things, before they changed their subject. it had the effect, for her, of a reminder--a reminder of all he was, of all he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her perfect little father, she might take him as representing, take him as having, quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been capable of, and as therefore wishing, not--was it?--illegitimately, to call her attention to. the “successful,” beneficent person, the beautiful, bountiful, original, dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was--these things struck her, on the spot, as making up for him, in a wonderful way, a character she must take into account in dealing with him either for pity or for envy. he positively, under the impression, seemed to loom larger than life for her, so that she saw him during these moments in a light of recognition which had had its brightness for her at many an hour of the past, but which had never been so intense and so almost admonitory. his very quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable, incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be--all the more too as the result, for the present occasion, of an admirable, traceable effort--that placed him in her eyes as no precious a work of art probably had ever been placed in his own. there was a long moment, absolutely, during which her impression rose and rose, even as that of the typical charmed gazer, in the still museum, before the named and dated object, the pride of the catalogue, that time has polished and consecrated. extraordinary, in particular, was the number of the different ways in which he thus affected her as showing. he was strong--that was the great thing. he was sure--sure for himself, always, whatever his idea: the expression of that in him had somehow never appeared more identical with his proved taste for the rare and the true. but what stood out beyond everything was that he was always, marvellously, young--which couldn’t but crown, at this juncture, his whole appeal to her imagination. before she knew it she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simply a great and deep and high little man, and that to love him with tenderness was not to be distinguished, a whit, from loving him with pride. it came to her, all strangely, as a sudden, an immense relief. the sense that he wasn’t a failure, and could never be, purged their predicament of every meanness--made it as if they had really emerged, in their transmuted union, to smile almost without pain. it was like a new confidence, and after another instant she knew even still better why. wasn’t it because now, also, on his side, he was thinking of her as his daughter, was trying her, during these mute seconds, as the child of his blood? oh then, if she wasn’t with her little conscious passion, the child of any weakness, what was she but strong enough too? it swelled in her, fairly; it raised her higher, higher: she wasn’t in that case a failure either--hadn’t been, but the contrary; his strength was her strength, her pride was his, and they were decent and competent together. this was all in the answer she finally made him. “i believe in you more than any one.” “than any one at all?” she hesitated, for all it might mean; but there was--oh a thousand times!--no doubt of it. “than any one at all.” she kept nothing of it back now, met his eyes over it, let him have the whole of it; after which she went on: “and that’s the way, i think, you believe in me.” he looked at her a minute longer, but his tone at last was right. “about the way--yes.” “well then--?” she spoke as for the end and for other matters--for anything, everything, else there might be. they would never return to it. “well then--!” his hands came out, and while her own took them he drew her to his breast and held her. he held her hard and kept her long, and she let herself go; but it was an embrace that, august and almost stern, produced, for all its intimacy, no revulsion and broke into no inconsequence of tears. xxxviii maggie was to feel, after this passage, how they had both been helped through it by the influence of that accident of her having been caught, a few nights before, in the familiar embrace of her father’s wife. his return to the saloon had chanced to coincide exactly with this demonstration, missed moreover neither by her husband nor by the assinghams, who, their card-party suspended, had quitted the billiard-room with him. she had been conscious enough at the time of what such an impression, received by the others, might, in that extended state, do for her case; and none the less that, as no one had appeared to wish to be the first to make a remark about it, it had taken on perceptibly the special shade of consecration conferred by unanimities of silence. the effect, she might have considered, had been almost awkward--the promptitude of her separation from charlotte, as if they had been discovered in some absurdity, on her becoming aware of spectators. the spectators, on the other hand--that was the appearance--mightn’t have supposed them, in the existing relation, addicted to mutual endearments; and yet, hesitating with a fine scruple between sympathy and hilarity, must have felt that almost any spoken or laughed comment could be kept from sounding vulgar only by sounding, beyond any permitted measure, intelligent. they had evidently looked, the two young wives, like a pair of women “making up” effusively, as women were supposed to do, especially when approved fools, after a broil; but taking note of the reconciliation would imply, on her father’s part, on amerigo’s, and on fanny assingham’s, some proportionate vision of the grounds of their difference. there had been something, there had been but too much, in the incident, for each observer; yet there was nothing any one could have said without seeming essentially to say: “see, see, the dear things--their quarrel’s blissfully over!” “our quarrel? what quarrel?” the dear things themselves would necessarily, in that case, have demanded; and the wits of the others would thus have been called upon for some agility of exercise. no one had been equal to the flight of producing, off-hand, a fictive reason for any estrangement--to take, that is, the place of the true, which had so long, for the finer sensibility, pervaded the air; and every one, accordingly, not to be inconveniently challenged, was pretending, immediately after, to have remarked nothing that any one else hadn’t. maggie’s own measure had remained, all the same, full of the reflection caught from the total inference; which had acted, virtually, by enabling every one present--and oh charlotte not least!--to draw a long breath. the message of the little scene had been different for each, but it had been this, markedly, all round, that it reinforced--reinforced even immensely--the general effort, carried on from week to week and of late distinctly more successful, to look and talk and move as if nothing in life were the matter. supremely, however, while this glass was held up to her, had maggie’s sense turned to the quality of the success constituted, on the spot, for charlotte. most of all, if she was guessing how her father must have secretly started, how her husband must have secretly wondered, how fanny assingham must have secretly, in a flash, seen daylight for herself--most of all had she tasted, by communication, of the high profit involved for her companion. she felt, in all her pulses, charlotte feel it, and how publicity had been required, absolutely, to crown her own abasement. it was the added touch, and now nothing was wanting--which, to do her stepmother justice, mrs. verver had appeared but to desire, from that evening, to show, with the last vividness, that she recognised. maggie lived over again the minutes in question--had found herself repeatedly doing so; to the degree that the whole evening hung together, to her aftersense, as a thing appointed by some occult power that had dealt with her, that had for instance--animated the four with just the right restlessness too, had decreed and directed and exactly timed it in them, making their game of bridge--however abysmal a face it had worn for her--give way, precisely, to their common unavowed impulse to find out, to emulate charlotte’s impatience; a preoccupation, this latter, attached detectedly to the member of the party who was roaming in her queerness and was, for all their simulated blindness, not roaming unnoted. if mrs. verver meanwhile, then, had struck her as determined in a certain direction by the last felicity into which that night had flowered, our young woman was yet not to fail of appreciating the truth that she had not been put at ease, after all, with absolute permanence. maggie had seen her, unmistakably, desire to rise to the occasion and be magnificent--seen her decide that the right way for this would be to prove that the reassurance she had extorted there, under the high, cool lustre of the saloon, a twinkle of crystal and silver, had not only poured oil upon the troubled waters of their question, but had fairly drenched their whole intercourse with that lubricant. she had exceeded the limit of discretion in this insistence on her capacity to repay in proportion a service she acknowledged as handsome. “why handsome?” maggie would have been free to ask; since if she had been veracious the service assuredly would not have been huge. it would in that case have come up vividly, and for each of them alike, that the truth, on the princess’s lips, presented no difficulty. if the latter’s mood, in fact, could have turned itself at all to private gaiety it might have failed to resist the diversion of seeing so clever a creature so beguiled. charlotte’s theory of a generous manner was manifestly to express that her stepdaughter’s word, wiping out, as she might have said, everything, had restored them to the serenity of a relation without a cloud. it had been, in short, in this light, ideally conclusive, so that no ghost of anything it referred to could ever walk again. what was the ecstasy of that, however, but in itself a trifle compromising?--as truly, within the week, maggie had occasion to suspect her friend of beginning, and rather abruptly, to remember. convinced as she was of the example already given her by her husband, and in relation to which her profession of trust in his mistress had been an act of conformity exquisitely calculated, her imagination yet sought in the hidden play of his influence the explanation of any change of surface, any difference of expression or intention. there had been, through life, as we know, few quarters in which the princess’s fancy could let itself loose; but it shook off restraint when it plunged into the figured void of the detail of that relation. this was a realm it could people with images--again and again with fresh ones; they swarmed there like the strange combinations that lurked in the woods at twilight; they loomed into the definite and faded into the vague, their main present sign for her being, however, that they were always, that they were duskily, agitated. her earlier vision of a state of bliss made insecure by the very intensity of the bliss--this had dropped from her; she had ceased to see, as she lost herself, the pair of operatic, of high wagnerian lovers (she found, deep within her, these comparisons) interlocked in their wood of enchantment, a green glade as romantic as one’s dream of an old german forest. the picture was veiled, on the contrary, with the dimness of trouble; behind which she felt, indistinguishable, the procession of forms that had lost, all so pitifully, their precious confidence. therefore, though there was in these days, for her, with amerigo, little enough even of the imitation, from day to day, of unembarrassed references--as she had foreseen, for that matter, from the first, that there would be--her active conception of his accessibility to their companion’s own private and unextinguished right to break ground was not much less active than before. so it was that her inner sense, in spite of everything, represented him as still pulling wires and controlling currents, or rather indeed as muffling the whole possibility, keeping it down and down, leading his accomplice continually on to some new turn of the road. as regards herself maggie had become more conscious from week to week of his ingenuities of intention to make up to her for their forfeiture, in so dire a degree, of any reality of frankness--a privation that had left on his lips perhaps a little of the same thirst with which she fairly felt her own distorted, the torment of the lost pilgrim who listens in desert sands for the possible, the impossible, plash of water. it was just this hampered state in him, none the less, that she kept before her when she wished most to find grounds of dignity for the hard little passion which nothing he had done could smother. there were hours enough, lonely hours, in which she let dignity go; then there were others when, clinging with her winged concentration to some deep cell of her heart, she stored away her hived tenderness as if she had gathered it all from flowers. he was walking ostensibly beside her, but in fact given over, without a break, to the grey medium in which he helplessly groped; a perception on her part which was a perpetual pang and which might last what it would--for ever if need be--but which, if relieved at all, must be relieved by his act alone. she herself could do nothing more for it; she had done the utmost possible. it was meantime not the easier to bear for this aspect under which charlotte was presented as depending on him for guidance, taking it from him even in doses of bitterness, and yet lost with him in devious depths. nothing was thus more sharply to be inferred than that he had promptly enough warned her, on hearing from her of the precious assurance received from his wife, that she must take care her satisfaction didn’t betray something of her danger. maggie had a day of still waiting, after allowing him time to learn how unreservedly she had lied for him--of waiting as for the light of she scarce knew what slow-shining reflection of this knowledge in his personal attitude. what retarded evolution, she asked herself in these hours, mightn’t poor charlotte all unwittingly have precipitated? she was thus poor charlotte again for maggie even while maggie’s own head was bowed, and the reason for this kept coming back to our young woman in the conception of what would secretly have passed. she saw her, face to face with the prince, take from him the chill of his stiffest admonition, with the possibilities of deeper difficulty that it represented for each. she heard her ask, irritated and sombre, what tone, in god’s name--since her bravery didn’t suit him--she was then to adopt; and, by way of a fantastic flight of divination, she heard amerigo reply, in a voice of which every fine note, familiar and admirable, came home to her, that one must really manage such prudences a little for one’s self. it was positive in the princess that, for this, she breathed charlotte’s cold air--turned away from him in it with her, turned with her, in growing compassion, this way and that, hovered behind her while she felt her ask herself where then she should rest. marvellous the manner in which, under such imaginations, maggie thus circled and lingered--quite as if she were, materially, following her unseen, counting every step she helplessly wasted, noting every hindrance that brought her to a pause. a few days of this, accordingly, had wrought a change in that apprehension of the instant beatitude of triumph--of triumph magnanimous and serene--with which the upshot of the night-scene on the terrace had condemned our young woman to make terms. she had had, as we know, her vision of the gilt bars bent, of the door of the cage forced open from within and the creature imprisoned roaming at large--a movement, on the creature’s part, that was to have even, for the short interval, its impressive beauty, but of which the limit, and in yet another direction, had loomed straight into view during her last talk under the great trees with her father. it was when she saw his wife’s face ruefully attached to the quarter to which, in the course of their session, he had so significantly addressed his own--it was then that maggie could watch for its turning pale, it was then she seemed to know what she had meant by thinking of her, in she shadow of his most ominous reference, as “doomed.” if, as i say, her attention now, day after day, so circled and hovered, it found itself arrested for certain passages during which she absolutely looked with charlotte’s grave eyes. what she unfailingly made out through them was the figure of a little quiet gentleman who mostly wore, as he moved, alone, across the field of vision, a straw hat, a white waistcoat and a blue necktie, keeping a cigar in his teeth and his hands in his pockets, and who, oftener than not, presented a somewhat meditative back while he slowly measured the perspectives of the park and broodingly counted (it might have appeared) his steps. there were hours of intensity, for a week or two, when it was for all the world as if she had guardedly tracked her stepmother, in the great house, from room to room and from window to window, only to see her, here and there and everywhere, try her uneasy outlook, question her issue and her fate. something, unmistakably, had come up for her that had never come up before; it represented a new complication and had begotten a new anxiety--things, these, that she carried about with her done up in the napkin of her lover’s accepted rebuke, while she vainly hunted for some corner where she might put them safely down. the disguised solemnity, the prolonged futility of her search might have been grotesque to a more ironic eye; but maggie’s provision of irony, which we have taken for naturally small, had never been so scant as now, and there were moments while she watched with her, thus unseen, when the mere effect of being near her was to feel her own heart in her throat, was to be almost moved to saying to her: “hold on tight, my poor dear--without too much terror--and it will all come out somehow.” even to that indeed, she could reflect, charlotte might have replied that it was easy to say; even to that no great meaning could attach so long as the little meditative man in the straw hat kept coming into view with his indescribable air of weaving his spell, weaving it off there by himself. in whatever quarter of the horizon the appearances were scanned he was to be noticed as absorbed in this occupation; and maggie was to become aware of two or three extraordinary occasions of receiving from him the hint that he measured the impression he produced. it was not really till after their recent long talk in the park that she knew how deeply, how quite exhaustively, they had then communicated--so that they were to remain together, for the time, in consequence, quite in the form of a couple of sociable drinkers who sit back from the table over which they have been resting their elbows, over which they have emptied to the last drop their respective charged cups. the cups were still there on the table, but turned upside down; and nothing was left for the companions but to confirm by placid silences the fact that the wine had been good. they had parted, positively, as if, on either side, primed with it--primed for whatever was to be; and everything between them, as the month waned, added its touch of truth to this similitude. nothing, truly, was at present between them save that they were looking at each other in infinite trust; it fairly wanted no more words, and when they met, during the deep summer days, met even without witnesses, when they kissed at morning and evening, or on any of the other occasions of contact that they had always so freely celebrated, a pair of birds of the upper air could scarce have appeared less to invite each other to sit down and worry afresh. so it was that in the house itself, where more of his waiting treasures than ever were provisionally ranged, she sometimes only looked at him--from end to end of the great gallery, the pride of the house, for instance--as if, in one of the halls of a museum, she had been an earnest young woman with a baedeker and he a vague gentleman to whom even baedekers were unknown. he had ever, of course, had his way of walking about to review his possessions and verify their condition; but this was a pastime to which he now struck her as almost extravagantly addicted, and when she passed near him and he turned to give her a smile she caught--or so she fancied--the greater depth of his small, perpetual hum of contemplation. it was as if he were singing to himself, sotto voce, as he went--and it was also, on occasion, quite ineffably, as if charlotte, hovering, watching, listening, on her side too, kept sufficiently within earshot to make it out as song, and yet, for some reason connected with the very manner of it, stood off and didn’t dare. one of the attentions she had from immediately after her marriage most freely paid him was that of her interest in his rarities, her appreciation of his taste, her native passion for beautiful objects and her grateful desire not to miss anything he could teach her about them. maggie had in due course seen her begin to “work” this fortunately natural source of sympathy for all it was worth. she took possession of the mound throughout its extent; she abounded, to odd excess, one might have remarked, in the assumption of its being for her, with her husband, all the ground, the finest, clearest air and most breathable medium common to them. it had been given to maggie to wonder if she didn’t, in these intensities of approbation, too much shut him up to his province; but this was a complaint he had never made his daughter, and charlotte must at least have had for her that, thanks to her admirable instinct, her range of perception marching with his own and never falling behind, she had probably not so much as once treated him to a rasping mistake or a revealing stupidity. maggie, wonderfully, in the summer days, felt it forced upon her that that was one way, after all, of being a genial wife; and it was never so much forced upon her as at these odd moments of her encountering the sposi, as amerigo called them, under the coved ceilings of fawns while, so together, yet at the same time so separate, they were making their daily round. charlotte hung behind, with emphasised attention; she stopped when her husband stopped, but at the distance of a case or two, or of whatever other succession of objects; and the likeness of their connection would not have been wrongly figured if he had been thought of as holding in one of his pocketed hands the end of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck. he didn’t twitch it, yet it was there; he didn’t drag her, but she came; and those indications that i have described the princess as finding extraordinary in him were two or three mute facial intimations which his wife’s presence didn’t prevent his addressing his daughter--nor prevent his daughter, as she passed, it was doubtless to be added, from flushing a little at the receipt of. they amounted perhaps only to a wordless, wordless smile, but the smile was the soft shake of the twisted silken rope, and maggie’s translation of it, held in her breast till she got well away, came out only, as if it might have been overheard, when some door was closed behind her. “yes, you see--i lead her now by the neck, i lead her to her doom, and she doesn’t so much as know what it is, though she has a fear in her heart which, if you had the chances to apply your ear there that i, as a husband, have, you would hear thump and thump and thump. she thinks it may be, her doom, the awful place over there--awful for her; but she’s afraid to ask, don’t you see? just as she’s afraid of not asking; just as she’s afraid of so many other things that she sees multiplied round her now as portents and betrayals. she’ll know, however--when she does know.” charlotte’s one opportunity, meanwhile, for the air of confidence she had formerly worn so well and that agreed so with her firm and charming type, was the presence of visitors, never, as the season advanced, wholly intermitted--rather, in fact, so constant, with all the people who turned up for luncheon and for tea and to see the house, now replete, now famous, that maggie grew to think again of this large element of “company” as of a kind of renewed water-supply for the tank in which, like a party of panting gold-fish, they kept afloat. it helped them, unmistakably, with each other, weakening the emphasis of so many of the silences of which their intimate intercourse would otherwise have consisted. beautiful and wonderful for her, even, at times, was the effect of these interventions--their effect above all in bringing home to each the possible heroism of perfunctory things. they learned fairly to live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda, where gaiety might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister circular passages. here they turned up for each other, as they said, with the blank faces that denied any uneasiness felt in the approach; here they closed numerous doors carefully behind them--all save the door that connected the place, as by a straight tented corridor, with the outer world, and, encouraging thus the irruption of society, imitated the aperture through which the bedizened performers of the circus are poured into the ring. the great part mrs. verver had socially played came luckily, maggie could make out, to her assistance; she had “personal friends”--charlotte’s personal friends had ever been, in london, at the two houses, one of the most convenient pleasantries--who actually tempered, at this crisis, her aspect of isolation; and it wouldn’t have been hard to guess that her best moments were those in which she suffered no fear of becoming a bore to restrain her appeal to their curiosity. their curiosity might be vague, but their clever hostess was distinct, and she marched them about, sparing them nothing, as if she counted, each day, on a harvest of half crowns. maggie met her again, in the gallery, at the oddest hours, with the party she was entertaining; heard her draw out the lesson, insist upon the interest, snub, even, the particular presumption and smile for the general bewilderment--inevitable features, these latter, of almost any occasion--in a manner that made our young woman, herself incurably dazzled, marvel afresh at the mystery by which a creature who could be in some connexions so earnestly right could be in others so perversely wrong. when her father, vaguely circulating, was attended by his wife, it was always charlotte who seemed to bring up the rear; but he hung in the background when she did cicerone, and it was then perhaps that, moving mildly and modestly to and fro on the skirts of the exhibition, his appearance of weaving his spell was, for the initiated conscience, least to be resisted. brilliant women turned to him in vague emotion, but his response scarce committed him more than if he had been the person employed to see that, after the invading wave was spent, the cabinets were all locked and the symmetries all restored. there was a morning when, during the hour before luncheon and shortly after the arrival of a neighbourly contingent--neighbourly from ten miles off--whom mrs. verver had taken in charge, maggie paused on the threshold of the gallery through which she had been about to pass, faltered there for the very impression of his face as it met her from an opposite door. charlotte, half-way down the vista, held together, as if by something almost austere in the grace of her authority, the semi-scared (now that they were there!) knot of her visitors, who, since they had announced themselves by telegram as yearning to inquire and admire, saw themselves restricted to this consistency. her voice, high and clear and a little hard, reached her husband and her step-daughter while she thus placed beyond doubt her cheerful submission to duty. her words, addressed to the largest publicity, rang for some minutes through the place, every one as quiet to listen as if it had been a church ablaze with tapers and she were taking her part in some hymn of praise. fanny assingham looked rapt in devotion--fanny assingham who forsook this other friend as little as she forsook either her host or the princess or the prince or the principino; she supported her, in slow revolutions, in murmurous attestations of presence, at all such times, and maggie, advancing after a first hesitation, was not to fail of noting her solemn, inscrutable attitude, her eyes attentively lifted, so that she might escape being provoked to betray an impression. she betrayed one, however, as maggie approached, dropping her gaze to the latter’s level long enough to seem to adventure, marvellously, on a mute appeal. “you understand, don’t you, that if she didn’t do this there would be no knowing what she might do?” this light mrs. assingham richly launched while her younger friend, unresistingly moved, became uncertain again, and then, not too much to show it--or, rather, positively to conceal it, and to conceal something more as well--turned short round to one of the windows and awkwardly, pointlessly waited. “the largest of the three pieces has the rare peculiarity that the garlands, looped round it, which, as you see, are the finest possible vieux saxe, are not of the same origin or period, or even, wonderful as they are, of a taste quite so perfect. they have been put on at a later time, by a process of which there are very few examples, and none so important as this, which is really quite unique--so that, though the whole thing is a little baroque, its value as a specimen is, i believe, almost inestimable.” so the high voice quavered, aiming truly at effects far over the heads of gaping neighbours; so the speaker, piling it up, sticking at nothing, as less interested judges might have said, seemed to justify the faith with which she was honoured. maggie meanwhile, at the window, knew the strangest thing to be happening: she had turned suddenly to crying, or was at least on the point of it--the lighted square before her all blurred and dim. the high voice went on; its quaver was doubtless for conscious ears only, but there were verily thirty seconds during which it sounded, for our young woman, like the shriek of a soul in pain. kept up a minute longer it would break and collapse--so that maggie felt herself, the next thing, turn with a start to her father. “can’t she be stopped? hasn’t she done it enough?”--some such question as that she let herself ask him to suppose in her. then it was that, across half the gallery--for he had not moved from where she had first seen him--he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. “poor thing, poor thing”--it reached straight-- “isn’t she, for one’s credit, on the swagger?” after which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away. the affair but of a few muffled moments, this snatched communion yet lifted maggie as on air--so much, for deep guesses on her own side too, it gave her to think of. there was, honestly, an awful mixture in things, and it was not closed to her aftersense of such passages--we have already indeed, in other cases, seen it open--that the deepest depth of all, in a perceived penalty, was that you couldn’t be sure some of your compunctions and contortions wouldn’t show for ridiculous. amerigo, that morning, for instance, had been as absent as he at this juncture appeared to desire he should mainly be noted as being; he had gone to london for the day and the night--a necessity that now frequently rose for him and that he had more than once suffered to operate during the presence of guests, successions of pretty women, the theory of his fond interest in whom had been publicly cultivated. it had never occurred to his wife to pronounce him ingenuous, but there came at last a high dim august dawn when she couldn’t sleep and when, creeping restlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded acres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception of that other almost equal prodigy. it rosily coloured her vision that--even such as he was, yes--her husband could on occasion sin by excess of candour. he wouldn’t otherwise have given as his reason for going up to portland place in the august days that he was arranging books there. he had bought a great many of late, and he had had others, a large number, sent from rome--wonders of old print in which her father had been interested. but when her imagination tracked him to the dusty town, to the house where drawn blinds and pale shrouds, where a caretaker and a kitchenmaid were alone in possession, it wasn’t to see him, in his shirtsleeves, unpacking battered boxes. she saw him, in truth, less easily beguiled--saw him wander, in the closed dusky rooms, from place to place, or else, for long periods, recline on deep sofas and stare before him through the smoke of ceaseless cigarettes. she made him out as liking better than anything in the world just now to be alone with his thoughts. being herself connected with his thoughts, she continued to believe, more than she had ever been, it was thereby a good deal as if he were alone with her. she made him out as resting so from that constant strain of the perfunctory to which he was exposed at fawns; and she was accessible to the impression of the almost beggared aspect of this alternative. it was like his doing penance in sordid ways--being sent to prison or being kept without money; it wouldn’t have taken much to make her think of him as really kept without food. he might have broken away, might easily have started to travel; he had a right--thought wonderful maggie now--to so many more freedoms than he took! his secret was of course that at fawns he all the while winced, was all the while in presences in respect to which he had thrown himself back, with a hard pressure, on whatever mysteries of pride, whatever inward springs familiar to the man of the world, he could keep from snapping. maggie, for some reason, had that morning, while she watched the sunrise, taken an extraordinary measure of the ground on which he would have had to snatch at pretexts for absence. it all came to her there--he got off to escape from a sound. the sound was in her own ears still--that of charlotte’s high coerced quaver before the cabinets in the hushed gallery; the voice by which she herself had been pierced the day before as by that of a creature in anguish and by which, while she sought refuge at the blurred window, the tears had been forced into her eyes. her comprehension soared so high that the wonder for her became really his not feeling the need of wider intervals and thicker walls. before that admiration she also meditated; consider as she might now, she kept reading not less into what he omitted than into what he performed a beauty of intention that touched her fairly the more by being obscure. it was like hanging over a garden in the dark; nothing was to be made of the confusion of growing things, but one felt they were folded flowers, and their vague sweetness made the whole air their medium. he had to turn away, but he wasn’t at least a coward; he would wait on the spot for the issue of what he had done on the spot. she sank to her knees with her arm on the ledge of her window-seat, where she blinded her eyes from the full glare of seeing that his idea could only be to wait, whatever might come, at her side. it was to her buried face that she thus, for a long time, felt him draw nearest; though after a while, when the strange wail of the gallery began to repeat its inevitable echo, she was conscious of how that brought out his pale hard grimace. xxxix the resemblance had not been present to her on first coming out into the hot, still brightness of the sunday afternoon--only the second sunday, of all the summer, when the party of six, the party of seven including the principino, had practically been without accessions or invasions; but within sight of charlotte, seated far away, very much where she had expected to find her, the princess fell to wondering if her friend wouldn’t be affected quite as she herself had been, that night on the terrace, under mrs. verver’s perceptive pursuit. the relation, to-day, had turned itself round; charlotte was seeing her come, through patches of lingering noon, quite as she had watched charlotte menace her through the starless dark; and there was a moment, that of her waiting a little as they thus met across the distance, when the interval was bridged by a recognition not less soundless, and to all appearance not less charged with strange meanings, than that of the other occasion. the point, however, was that they had changed places; maggie had from her window, seen her stepmother leave the house--at so unlikely an hour, three o’clock of a canicular august, for a ramble in garden or grove--and had thereupon felt her impulse determined with the same sharpness that had made the spring of her companion’s three weeks before. it was the hottest day of the season, and the shaded siesta, for people all at their ease, would certainly rather have been prescribed; but our young woman had perhaps not yet felt it so fully brought home that such refinements of repose, among them, constituted the empty chair at the feast. this was the more distinct as the feast, literally, in the great bedimmed dining-room, the cool, ceremonious semblance of luncheon, had just been taking place without mrs. verver. she had been represented but by the plea of a bad headache, not reported to the rest of the company by her husband, but offered directly to mr. verver himself, on their having assembled, by her maid, deputed for the effect and solemnly producing it. maggie had sat down, with the others, to viands artfully iced, to the slow circulation of precious tinkling jugs, to marked reserves of reference in many directions--poor fanny assingham herself scarce thrusting her nose out of the padded hollow into which she had withdrawn. a consensus of languor, which might almost have been taken for a community of dread, ruled the scene--relieved only by the fitful experiments of father mitchell, good holy, hungry man, a trusted and overworked london friend and adviser, who had taken, for a week or two, the light neighbouring service, local rites flourishing under maggie’s munificence, and was enjoying, as a convenience, all the bounties of the house. he conversed undiscouraged, father mitchell--conversed mainly with the indefinite, wandering smile of the entertainers, and the princess’s power to feel him on the whole a blessing for these occasions was not impaired by what was awkward in her consciousness of having, from the first of her trouble, really found her way without his guidance. she asked herself at times if he suspected how more than subtly, how perversely, she had dispensed with him, and she balanced between visions of all he must privately have guessed and certitudes that he had guessed nothing whatever. he might nevertheless have been so urbanely filling up gaps, at present, for the very reason that his instinct, sharper than the expression of his face, had sufficiently served him--made him aware of the thin ice, figuratively speaking, and of prolongations of tension, round about him, mostly foreign to the circles in which luxury was akin to virtue. some day in some happier season, she would confess to him that she hadn’t confessed, though taking so much on her conscience; but just now she was carrying in her weak, stiffened hand a glass filled to the brim, as to which she had recorded a vow that no drop should overflow. she feared the very breath of a better wisdom, the jostle of the higher light, of heavenly help itself; and, in addition, however that might be, she drew breath this afternoon, as never yet, in an element heavy to oppression. something grave had happened, somehow and somewhere, and she had, god knew, her choice of suppositions: her heart stood still when she wondered above all if the cord mightn’t at last have snapped between her husband and her father. she shut her eyes for dismay at the possibility of such a passage--there moved before them the procession of ugly forms it might have taken. “find out for yourself!” she had thrown to amerigo, for her last word, on the question of who else “knew,” that night of the breaking of the bowl; and she flattered herself that she hadn’t since then helped him, in her clear consistency, by an inch. it was what she had given him, all these weeks, to be busy with, and she had again and again lain awake for the obsession of this sense of his uncertainty ruthlessly and endlessly playing with his dignity. she had handed him over to an ignorance that couldn’t even try to become indifferent and that yet wouldn’t project itself, either, into the cleared air of conviction. in proportion as he was generous it had bitten into his spirit, and more than once she had said to herself that to break the spell she had cast upon him and that the polished old ivory of her father’s inattackable surface made so absolute, he would suddenly commit some mistake or some violence, smash some windowpane for air, fail even of one of his blest inveteracies of taste. in that way, fatally, he would have put himself in the wrong--blighting by a single false step the perfection of his outward show. these shadows rose and fell for her while father mitchell prattled; with other shadows as well, those that hung over charlotte herself, those that marked her as a prey to equal suspicions--to the idea, in particular, of a change, such a change as she didn’t dare to face, in the relations of the two men. or there were yet other possibilities, as it seemed to maggie; there were always too many, and all of them things of evil when one’s nerves had at last done for one all that nerves could do; had left one in a darkness of prowling dangers that was like the predicament of the night-watcher in a beast-haunted land who has no more means for a fire. she might, with such nerves, have supposed almost anything of any one; anything, almost, of poor bob assingham, condemned to eternal observances and solemnly appreciating her father’s wine; anything, verily, yes, of the good priest, as he finally sat back with fat folded hands and twiddled his thumbs on his stomach. the good priest looked hard at the decanters, at the different dishes of dessert--he eyed them, half-obliquely, as if they might have met him to-day, for conversation, better than any one present. but the princess had her fancy at last about that too; she was in the midst of a passage, before she knew it, between father mitchell and charlotte--some approach he would have attempted with her, that very morning perhaps, to the circumstance of an apparent detachment, recently noted in her, from any practice of devotion. he would have drawn from this, say, his artless inference--taken it for a sign of some smothered inward trouble and pointed, naturally, the moral that the way out of such straits was not through neglect of the grand remedy. he had possibly prescribed contrition--he had at any rate quickened in her the beat of that false repose to which our young woman’s own act had devoted her at her all so deluded instance. the falsity of it had laid traps compared to which the imputation of treachery even accepted might have seemed a path of roses. the acceptance, strangely, would have left her nothing to do--she could have remained, had she liked, all insolently passive; whereas the failure to proceed against her, as it might have been called, left her everything, and all the more that it was wrapped so in confidence. she had to confirm, day after day, the rightness of her cause and the justice and felicity of her exemption--so that wouldn’t there have been, fairly, in any explicit concern of father mitchell’s, depths of practical derision of her success? the question was provisionally answered, at all events, by the time the party at luncheon had begun to disperse--with maggie’s version of mrs. verver sharp to the point of representing her pretext for absence as a positive flight from derision. she met the good priest’s eyes before they separated, and priests were really, at the worst, so to speak, such wonderful people that she believed him for an instant on the verge of saying to her, in abysmal softness: “go to mrs. verver, my child--you go: you’ll find that you can help her.” this didn’t come, however; nothing came but the renewed twiddle of thumbs over the satisfied stomach and the full flush, the comical candour, of reference to the hand employed at fawns for mayonnaise of salmon. nothing came but the receding backs of each of the others--her father’s slightly bent shoulders, in especial, which seemed to weave his spell, by the force of habit, not less patiently than if his wife had been present. her husband indeed was present to feel anything there might be to feel--which was perhaps exactly why this personage was moved promptly to emulate so definite an example of “sloping.” he had his occupations--books to arrange perhaps even at fawns; the idea of the siesta, moreover, in all the conditions, had no need to be loudly invoked. maggie, was, in the event, left alone for a minute with mrs. assingham, who, after waiting for safety, appeared to have at heart to make a demonstration. the stage of “talking over” had long passed for them; when they communicated now it was on quite ultimate facts; but fanny desired to testify to the existence, on her part, of an attention that nothing escaped. she was like the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl--the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents--and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest. what was clearest, always, in our young woman’s imaginings, was the sense of being herself left, for any occasion, in the breach. she was essentially there to bear the burden, in the last resort, of surrounding omissions and evasions, and it was eminently to that office she had been to-day abandoned--with this one alleviation, as appeared, of mrs. assingham’s keeping up with her. mrs. assingham suggested that she too was still on the ramparts--though her gallantry proved indeed after a moment to consist not a little of her curiosity. she had looked about and seen their companions beyond earshot. “don’t you really want us to go--?” maggie found a faint smile. “do you really want to--?” it made her friend colour. “well then--no. but we would, you know, at a look from you. we’d pack up and be off--as a sacrifice.” “ah, make no sacrifice,” said maggie. “see me through.” “that’s it--that’s all i want. i should be too base--! besides,” fanny went on, “you’re too splendid.” “splendid?” “splendid. also, you know, you are all but ‘through.’ you’ve done it,” said mrs. assingham. but maggie only half took it from her. “what does it strike you that i’ve done?” “what you wanted. they’re going.” maggie continued to look at her. “is that what i wanted?” “oh, it wasn’t for you to say. that was his business.” “my father’s?” maggie asked after an hesitation. “your father’s. he has chosen--and now she knows. she sees it all before her--and she can’t speak, or resist, or move a little finger. that’s what’s the matter with her,” said fanny assingham. it made a picture, somehow, for the princess, as they stood there--the picture that the words of others, whatever they might be, always made for her, even when her vision was already charged, better than any words of her own. she saw, round about her, through the chinks of the shutters, the hard glare of nature--saw charlotte, somewhere in it, virtually at bay, and yet denied the last grace of any protecting truth. she saw her off somewhere all unaided, pale in her silence and taking in her fate. “has she told you?” she then asked. her companion smiled superior. “_i_ don’t need to be told--either! i see something, thank god, every day.” and then as maggie might appear to be wondering what, for instance: “i see the long miles of ocean and the dreadful great country, state after state--which have never seemed to me so big or so terrible. i see them at last, day by day and step by step, at the far end--and i see them never come back. but never--simply. i see the extraordinary ‘interesting’ place--which i’ve never been to, you know, and you have--and the exact degree in which she will be expected to be interested.” “she will be,” maggie presently replied. “expected?” “interested.” for a little, after this, their eyes met on it; at the end of which fanny said: “she’ll be--yes--what she’ll have to be. and it will be--won’t it? for ever and ever.” she spoke as abounding in her friend’s sense, but it made maggie still only look at her. these were large words and large visions--all the more that now, really, they spread and spread. in the midst of them, however, mrs. assingham had soon enough continued. “when i talk of ‘knowing,’ indeed, i don’t mean it as you would have a right to do. you know because you see--and i don’t see him. i don’t make him out,” she almost crudely confessed. maggie again hesitated. “you mean you don’t make out amerigo?” but fanny shook her head, and it was quite as if, as an appeal to one’s intelligence, the making out of amerigo had, in spite of everything, long been superseded. then maggie measured the reach of her allusion, and how what she next said gave her meaning a richness. no other name was to be spoken, and mrs. assingham had taken that, without delay, from her eyes--with a discretion, still, that fell short but by an inch. “you know how he feels.” maggie at this then slowly matched her headshake. “i know nothing.” “you know how you feel.” but again she denied it. “i know nothing. if i did--!” “well, if you did?” fanny asked as she faltered. she had had enough, however. “i should die,” she said as she turned away. she went to her room, through the quiet house; she roamed there a moment, picking up, pointlessly, a different fan, and then took her way to the shaded apartments in which, at this hour, the principino would be enjoying his nap. she passed through the first empty room, the day nursery, and paused at an open door. the inner room, large, dim and cool, was equally calm; her boy’s ample, antique, historical, royal crib, consecrated, reputedly, by the guarded rest of heirs-apparent, and a gift, early in his career, from his grandfather, ruled the scene from the centre, in the stillness of which she could almost hear the child’s soft breathing. the prime protector of his dreams was installed beside him; her father sat there with as little motion--with head thrown back and supported, with eyes apparently closed, with the fine foot that was so apt to betray nervousness at peace upon the other knee, with the unfathomable heart folded in the constant flawless freshness of the white waistcoat that could always receive in its armholes the firm prehensile thumbs. mrs. noble had majestically melted, and the whole place signed her temporary abdication; yet the actual situation was regular, and maggie lingered but to look. she looked over her fan, the top of which was pressed against her face, long enough to wonder if her father really slept or if, aware of her, he only kept consciously quiet. did his eyes truly fix her between lids partly open, and was she to take this--his forebearance from any question--only as a sign again that everything was left to her? she at all events, for a minute, watched his immobility--then, as if once more renewing her total submission, returned, without a sound, to her own quarters. a strange impulse was sharp in her, but it was not, for her part, the desire to shift the weight. she could as little have slept as she could have slept that morning, days before, when she had watched the first dawn from her window. turned to the east, this side of her room was now in shade, with the two wings of the casement folded back and the charm she always found in her seemingly perched position--as if her outlook, from above the high terraces, was that of some castle-tower mounted on a rock. when she stood there she hung over, over the gardens and the woods--all of which drowsed below her, at this hour, in the immensity of light. the miles of shade looked hot, the banks of flowers looked dim; the peacocks on the balustrades let their tails hang limp and the smaller birds lurked among the leaves. nothing therefore would have appeared to stir in the brilliant void if maggie, at the moment she was about to turn away, had not caught sight of a moving spot, a clear green sunshade in the act of descending a flight of steps. it passed down from the terrace, receding, at a distance, from sight, and carried, naturally, so as to conceal the head and back of its bearer; but maggie had quickly recognised the white dress and the particular motion of this adventurer--had taken in that charlotte, of all people, had chosen the glare of noon for an exploration of the gardens, and that she could be betaking herself only to some unvisited quarter deep in them, or beyond them, that she had already marked as a superior refuge. the princess kept her for a few minutes in sight, watched her long enough to feel her, by the mere betrayal of her pace and direction, driven in a kind of flight, and then understood, for herself, why the act of sitting still had become impossible to either of them. there came to her, confusedly, some echo of an ancient fable--some vision of io goaded by the gadfly or of ariadne roaming the lone sea-strand. it brought with it all the sense of her own intention and desire; she too might have been, for the hour, some far-off harassed heroine--only with a part to play for which she knew, exactly, no inspiring precedent. she knew but that, all the while--all the while of her sitting there among the others without her--she had wanted to go straight to this detached member of the party and make somehow, for her support, the last demonstration. a pretext was all that was needful, and maggie after another instant had found one. she had caught a glimpse, before mrs. verver disappeared, of her carrying a book--made out, half lost in the folds of her white dress, the dark cover of a volume that was to explain her purpose in case of her being met with surprise, and the mate of which, precisely, now lay on maggie’s table. the book was an old novel that the princess had a couple of days before mentioned having brought down from portland place in the charming original form of its three volumes. charlotte had hailed, with a specious glitter of interest, the opportunity to read it, and our young woman had, thereupon, on the morrow, directed her maid to carry it to mrs. verver’s apartments. she was afterwards to observe that this messenger, unintelligent or inadvertent, had removed but one of the volumes, which happened not to be the first. still possessed, accordingly, of the first while charlotte, going out, fantastically, at such an hour, to cultivate romance in an arbour, was helplessly armed with the second, maggie prepared on the spot to sally forth with succour. the right volume, with a parasol, was all she required--in addition, that is, to the bravery of her general idea. she passed again through the house, unchallenged, and emerged upon the terrace, which she followed, hugging the shade, with that consciousness of turning the tables on her friend which we have already noted. but so far as she went, after descending into the open and beginning to explore the grounds, mrs. verver had gone still further--with the increase of the oddity, moreover, of her having exchanged the protection of her room for these exposed and shining spaces. it was not, fortunately, however, at last, that by persisting in pursuit one didn’t arrive at regions of admirable shade: this was the asylum, presumably, that the poor wandering woman had had in view--several wide alleys, in particular, of great length, densely overarched with the climbing rose and the honeysuckle and converging, in separate green vistas, at a sort of umbrageous temple, an ancient rotunda, pillared and statued, niched and roofed, yet with its uncorrected antiquity, like that of everything else at fawns, conscious hitherto of no violence from the present and no menace from the future. charlotte had paused there, in her frenzy, or what ever it was to be called; the place was a conceivable retreat, and she was staring before her, from the seat to which she appeared to have sunk, all unwittingly, as maggie stopped at the beginning of one of the perspectives. it was a repetition more than ever then of the evening on the terrace; the distance was too great to assure her she had been immediately seen, but the princess waited, with her intention, as charlotte on the other occasion had waited--allowing, oh allowing, for the difference of the intention! maggie was full of the sense of that--so full that it made her impatient; whereupon she moved forward a little, placing herself in range of the eyes that had been looking off elsewhere, but that she had suddenly called to recognition. charlotte had evidently not dreamed of being followed, and instinctively, with her pale stare, she stiffened herself for protest. maggie could make that out--as well as, further, however, that her second impression of her friend’s approach had an instant effect on her attitude. the princess came nearer, gravely and in silence, but fairly paused again, to give her time for whatever she would. whatever she would, whatever she could, was what maggie wanted--wanting above all to make it as easy for her as the case permitted. that was not what charlotte had wanted the other night, but this never mattered--the great thing was to allow her, was fairly to produce in her, the sense of highly choosing. at first, clearly, she had been frightened; she had not been pursued, it had quickly struck her, without some design on the part of her pursuer, and what might she not be thinking of in addition but the way she had, when herself the pursuer, made her stepdaughter take in her spirit and her purpose? it had sunk into maggie at the time, that hard insistence, and mrs. verver had felt it and seen it and heard it sink; which wonderful remembrance of pressure successfully applied had naturally, till now, remained with her. but her stare was like a projected fear that the buried treasure, so dishonestly come by, for which her companion’s still countenance, at the hour and afterwards, had consented to serve as the deep soil, might have worked up again to the surface, to be thrown back upon her hands. yes, it was positive that during one of these minutes the princess had the vision of her particular alarm. “it’s her lie, it’s her lie that has mortally disagreed with her; she can keep down no longer her rebellion at it, and she has come to retract it, to disown it and denounce it--to give me full in my face the truth instead.” this, for a concentrated instant, maggie felt her helplessly gasp--but only to let it bring home the indignity, the pity of her state. she herself could but tentatively hover, place in view the book she carried, look as little dangerous, look as abjectly mild, as possible; remind herself really of people she had read about in stories of the wild west, people who threw up their hands, on certain occasions, as a sign they weren’t carrying revolvers. she could almost have smiled at last, troubled as she yet knew herself, to show how richly she was harmless; she held up her volume, which was so weak a weapon, and while she continued, for consideration, to keep her distance, she explained with as quenched a quaver as possible. “i saw you come out--saw you from my window, and couldn’t bear to think you should find yourself here without the beginning of your book. this is the beginning; you’ve got the wrong volume, and i’ve brought you out the right.” she remained after she had spoken; it was like holding a parley with a possible adversary, and her intense, her exalted little smile asked for formal leave. “may i come nearer now?” she seemed to say--as to which, however, the next minute, she saw charlotte’s reply lose itself in a strange process, a thing of several sharp stages, which she could stand there and trace. the dread, after a minute, had dropped from her face; though, discernibly enough, she still couldn’t believe in her having, in so strange a fashion, been deliberately made up to. if she had been made up to, at least, it was with an idea--the idea that had struck her at first as necessarily dangerous. that it wasn’t, insistently wasn’t, this shone from maggie with a force finally not to be resisted; and on that perception, on the immense relief so constituted, everything had by the end of three minutes extraordinarily changed. maggie had come out to her, really, because she knew her doomed, doomed to a separation that was like a knife in her heart; and in the very sight of her uncontrollable, her blinded physical quest of a peace not to be grasped, something of mrs. assingham’s picture of her as thrown, for a grim future, beyond the great sea and the great continent had at first found fulfilment. she had got away, in this fashion--burning behind her, almost, the ships of disguise--to let her horror of what was before her play up without witnesses; and even after maggie’s approach had presented an innocent front it was still not to be mistaken that she bristled with the signs of her extremity. it was not to be said for them, either, that they were draped at this hour in any of her usual graces; unveiled and all but unashamed, they were tragic to the princess in spite of the dissimulation that, with the return of comparative confidence, was so promptly to operate. how tragic, in essence, the very change made vivid, the instant stiffening of the spring of pride--this for possible defence if not for possible aggression. pride indeed, the next moment, had become the mantle caught up for protection and perversity; she flung it round her as a denial of any loss of her freedom. to be doomed was, in her situation, to have extravagantly incurred a doom, so that to confess to wretchedness was, by the same stroke, to confess to falsity. she wouldn’t confess, she didn’t--a thousand times no; she only cast about her, and quite frankly and fiercely, for something else that would give colour to her having burst her bonds. her eyes expanded, her bosom heaved as she invoked it, and the effect upon maggie was verily to wish she could only help her to it. she presently got up--which seemed to mean “oh, stay if you like!” and when she had moved about awhile at random, looking away, looking at anything, at everything but her visitor; when she had spoken of the temperature and declared that she revelled in it; when she had uttered her thanks for the book, which, a little incoherently, with her second volume, she perhaps found less clever than she expected; when she had let maggie approach sufficiently closer to lay, untouched, the tribute in question on a bench and take up obligingly its superfluous mate: when she had done these things she sat down in another place, more or less visibly in possession of her part. our young woman was to have passed, in all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her companion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she was finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret, responsive ecstasy, to wondering if there were not some supreme abjection with which she might be inspired. vague, but increasingly brighter, this possibility glimmered on her. it at last hung there adequately plain to charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said) grovel; and that, truly, made the stage large. it had absolutely, within the time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them alike. “i’m glad to see you alone--there’s something i’ve been wanting to say to you. i’m tired,” said mrs. verver, “i’m tired--!” “tired--?” it had dropped the next thing; it couldn’t all come at once; but maggie had already guessed what it was, and the flush of recognition was in her face. “tired of this life--the one we’ve been leading. you like it, i know, but i’ve dreamed another dream.” she held up her head now; her lighted eyes more triumphantly rested; she was finding, she was following her way. maggie, by the same influence, sat in sight of it; there was something she was saving, some quantity of which she herself was judge; and it was for a long moment, even with the sacrifice the princess had come to make, a good deal like watching her, from the solid shore, plunge into uncertain, into possibly treacherous depths. “i see something else,” she went on; “i’ve an idea that greatly appeals to me--i’ve had it for a long time. it has come over me that we’re wrong. our real life isn’t here.” maggie held her breath. “‘ours’--?” “my husband’s and mine. i’m not speaking for you.” “oh!” said maggie, only praying not to be, not even to appear, stupid. “i’m speaking for ourselves. i’m speaking,” charlotte brought out, “for him.” “i see. for my father.” “for your father. for whom else?” they looked at each other hard now, but maggie’s face took refuge in the intensity of her interest. she was not at all even so stupid as to treat her companion’s question as requiring an answer; a discretion that her controlled stillness had after an instant justified. “i must risk your thinking me selfish--for of course you know what it involves. let me admit it--i am selfish. i place my husband first.” “well,” said maggie smiling and smiling, “since that’s where i place mine--!” “you mean you’ll have no quarrel with me? so much the better then; for,” charlotte went on with a higher and higher flight, “my plan is completely formed.” maggie waited--her glimmer had deepened; her chance somehow was at hand. the only danger was her spoiling it; she felt herself skirting an abyss. “what then, may i ask is your plan?” it hung fire but ten seconds; it came out sharp. “to take him home--to his real position. and not to wait.” “do you mean--a--this season?” “i mean immediately. and--i may as well tell you now--i mean for my own time. i want,” charlotte said, “to have him at last a little to myself; i want, strange as it may seem to you”--and she gave it all its weight “to keep the man i’ve married. and to do so, i see, i must act.” maggie, with the effort still to follow the right line, felt herself colour to the eyes. “immediately?” she thoughtfully echoed. “as soon as we can get off. the removal of everything is, after all, but a detail. that can always be done; with money, as he spends it, everything can. what i ask for,” charlotte declared, “is the definite break. and i wish it now.” with which her head, like her voice rose higher. “oh,” she added, “i know my difficulty!” far down below the level of attention, in she could scarce have said what sacred depths, maggie’s inspiration had come, and it had trembled the next moment into sound. “do you mean i’m your difficulty?” “you and he together--since it’s always with you that i’ve had to see him. but it’s a difficulty that i’m facing, if you wish to know; that i’ve already faced; that i propose to myself to surmount. the struggle with it--none too pleasant--hasn’t been for me, as you may imagine, in itself charming; i’ve felt in it at times, if i must tell you all, too great and too strange, an ugliness. yet i believe it may succeed.” she had risen, with this, mrs. verver, and had moved, for the emphasis of it, a few steps away; while maggie, motionless at first, but sat and looked at her. “you want to take my father from me?” the sharp, successful, almost primitive wail in it made charlotte turn, and this movement attested for the princess the felicity of her deceit. something in her throbbed as it had throbbed the night she stood in the drawing-room and denied that she had suffered. she was ready to lie again if her companion would but give her the opening. then she should know she had done all. charlotte looked at her hard, as if to compare her face with her note of resentment; and maggie, feeling this, met it with the signs of an impression that might pass for the impression of defeat. “i want really to possess him,” said mrs. verver. “i happen also to feel that he’s worth it.” maggie rose as if to receive her. “oh--worth it!” she wonderfully threw off. the tone, she instantly saw, again had its effect: charlotte flamed aloft--might truly have been believing in her passionate parade. “you’ve thought you’ve known what he’s worth?” “indeed then, my dear, i believe i have--as i believe i still do.” she had given it, maggie, straight back, and again it had not missed. charlotte, for another moment, only looked at her; then broke into the words--maggie had known they would come--of which she had pressed the spring. “how i see that you loathed our marriage!” “do you ask me?” maggie after an instant demanded. charlotte had looked about her, picked up the parasol she had laid on a bench, possessed herself mechanically of one of the volumes of the relegated novel and then, more consciously, flung it down again: she was in presence, visibly, of her last word. she opened her sunshade with a click; she twirled it on her shoulder in her pride. “‘ask’ you? do i need? how i see,” she broke out, “that you’ve worked against me!” “oh, oh, oh!” the princess exclaimed. her companion, leaving her, had reached one of the archways, but on this turned round with a flare. “you haven’t worked against me?” maggie took it and for a moment kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast. then she opened her eyes to speak. “what does it matter--if i’ve failed?” “you recognise then that you’ve failed?” asked charlotte from the threshold. maggie waited; she looked, as her companion had done a moment before, at the two books on the seat; she put them together and laid them down; then she made up her mind. “i’ve failed!” she sounded out before charlotte, having given her time, walked away. she watched her, splendid and erect, float down the long vista; then she sank upon a seat. yes, she had done all. part sixth. xl “i’ll do anything you like,” she said to her husband on one of the last days of the month, “if our being here, this way at this time, seems to you too absurd, or too uncomfortable, or too impossible. we’ll either take leave of them now, without waiting--or we’ll come back in time, three days before they start. i’ll go abroad with you, if you but say the word; to switzerland, the tyrol, the italian alps, to whichever of your old high places you would like most to see again--those beautiful ones that used to do you good after rome and that you so often told me about.” where they were, in the conditions that prompted this offer, and where it might indeed appear ridiculous that, with the stale london september close at hand, they should content themselves with remaining, was where the desert of portland place looked blank as it had never looked, and where a drowsy cabman, scanning the horizon for a fare, could sink to oblivion of the risks of immobility. but amerigo was of the odd opinion, day after day, that their situation couldn’t be bettered; and he even went at no moment through the form of replying that, should their ordeal strike her as exceeding their patience, any step they might take would be for her own relief. this was, no doubt, partly because he stood out so wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a weak word at least, that any element of their existence was, or ever had been, an ordeal; no trap of circumstance, no lapse of “form,” no accident of irritation, had landed him in that inconsequence. his wife might verily have suggested that he was consequent--consequent with the admirable appearance he had from the first so undertaken, and so continued, to present--rather too rigidly at her expense; only, as it happened, she was not the little person to do anything of the sort, and the strange tacit compact actually in operation between them might have been founded on an intelligent comparison, a definite collation positively, of the kinds of patience proper to each. she was seeing him through--he had engaged to come out at the right end if she would see him: this understanding, tacitly renewed from week to week, had fairly received, with the procession of the weeks, the consecration of time; but it scarce needed to be insisted on that she was seeing him on his terms, not all on hers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained and uncharted, his one practicably workable way. if that way, by one of the intimate felicities the liability to which was so far from having even yet completely fallen from him, happened handsomely to show him as more bored than boring (with advantages of his own freely to surrender, but none to be persuadedly indebted to others for,) what did such a false face of the matter represent but the fact itself that she was pledged? if she had questioned or challenged or interfered--if she had reserved herself that right--she wouldn’t have been pledged; whereas there were still, and evidently would be yet a while, long, tense stretches during which their case might have been hanging, for every eye, on her possible, her impossible defection. she must keep it up to the last, mustn’t absent herself for three minutes from her post: only on those lines, assuredly, would she show herself as with him and not against him. it was extraordinary how scant a series of signs she had invited him to make of being, of truly having been at any time, “with” his wife: that reflection she was not exempt from as they now, in their suspense, supremely waited--a reflection under the brush of which she recognised her having had, in respect to him as well, to “do all,” to go the whole way over, to move, indefatigably, while he stood as fixed in his place as some statue of one of his forefathers. the meaning of it would seem to be, she reasoned in sequestered hours, that he had a place, and that this was an attribute somehow indefeasible, unquenchable, which laid upon others--from the moment they definitely wanted anything of him-- the necessity of taking more of the steps that he could, of circling round him, of remembering for his benefit the famous relation of the mountain to mahomet. it was strange, if one had gone into it, but such a place as amerigo’s was like something made for him beforehand by innumerable facts, facts largely of the sort known as historical, made by ancestors, examples, traditions, habits; while maggie’s own had come to show simply as that improvised “post”--a post of the kind spoken of as advanced--with which she was to have found herself connected in the fashion of a settler or a trader in a new country; in the likeness even of some indian squaw with a papoose on her back and barbarous bead-work to sell. maggie’s own, in short, would have been sought in vain in the most rudimentary map of the social relations as such. the only geography marking it would be doubtless that of the fundamental passions. the “end” that the prince was at all events holding out for was represented to expectation by his father-in-law’s announced departure for america with mrs. verver; just as that prospective event had originally figured as advising, for discretion, the flight of the younger couple, to say nothing of the withdrawal of whatever other importunate company, before the great upheaval of fawns. this residence was to be peopled for a month by porters, packers and hammerers, at whose operations it had become peculiarly public--public that is for portland place--that charlotte was to preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed scale and style of which had at no moment loomed so large to maggie’s mind as one day when the dear assinghams swam back into her ken besprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen samson pull down the temple. they had seen at least what she was not seeing, rich dim things under the impression of which they had retired; she having eyes at present but for the clock by which she timed her husband, or for the glass--the image perhaps would be truer--in which he was reflected to her as he timed the pair in the country. the accession of their friends from cadogan place contributed to all their intermissions, at any rate, a certain effect of resonance; an effect especially marked by the upshot of a prompt exchange of inquiries between mrs. assingham and the princess. it was noted, on the occasion of that anxious lady’s last approach to her young friend at fawns, that her sympathy had ventured, after much accepted privation, again to become inquisitive, and it had perhaps never so yielded to that need as on this question of the present odd “line” of the distinguished eccentrics. “you mean to say really that you’re going to stick here?” and then before maggie could answer: “what on earth will you do with your evenings?” maggie waited a moment--maggie could still tentatively smile. “when people learn we’re here--and of course the papers will be full of it!--they’ll flock back in their hundreds, from wherever they are, to catch us. you see you and the colonel have yourselves done it. as for our evenings, they won’t, i dare say, be particularly different from anything else that’s ours. they won’t be different from our mornings or our afternoons--except perhaps that you two dears will sometimes help us to get through them. i’ve offered to go anywhere,” she added; “to take a house if he will. but this--just this and nothing else--is amerigo’s idea. he gave it yesterday” she went on, “a name that, as, he said, described and fitted it. so you see”--and the princess indulged again in her smile that didn’t play, but that only, as might have been said, worked--“so you see there’s a method in our madness.” it drew mrs. assingham’s wonder. “and what then is the name?” “‘the reduction to its simplest expression of what we are doing’--that’s what he called it. therefore as we’re doing nothing, we’re doing it in the most aggravated way--which is the way he desires.” with which maggie further said: “of course i understand.” “so do i!” her visitor after a moment breathed. “you’ve had to vacate the house--that was inevitable. but at least here he doesn’t funk.” our young woman accepted the expression. “he doesn’t funk.” it only, however, half contented fanny, who thoughtfully raised her eyebrows. “he’s prodigious; but what is there--as you’ve ‘fixed’ it--to dodge? unless,” she pursued, “it’s her getting near him; it’s--if you’ll pardon my vulgarity--her getting at him. that,” she suggested, “may count with him.” but it found the princess prepared. “she can get near him here. she can get ‘at’ him. she can come up.” “can she?” fanny assingham questioned. “can’t she?” maggie returned. their eyes, for a minute, intimately met on it; after which the elder woman said: “i mean for seeing him alone.” “so do i,” said the princess. at which fanny, for her reasons, couldn’t help smiling. “oh, if it’s for that he’s staying--!” “he’s staying--i’ve made it out--to take anything that comes or calls upon him. to take,” maggie went on, “even that.” then she put it as she had at last put it to herself. “he’s staying for high decency.” “decency?” mrs. assingham gravely echoed. “decency. if she should try--!” “well--?” mrs. assingham urged. “well, i hope--!” “hope he’ll see her?” maggie hesitated, however; she made no direct reply. “it’s useless hoping,” she presently said. “she won’t. but he ought to.” her friend’s expression of a moment before, which had been apologised for as vulgar, prolonged its sharpness to her ear--that of an electric bell under continued pressure. stated so simply, what was it but dreadful, truly, that the feasibility of charlotte’s “getting at” the man who for so long had loved her should now be in question? strangest of all things, doubtless, this care of maggie’s as to what might make for it or make against it; stranger still her fairly lapsing at moments into a vague calculation of the conceivability, on her own part, with her husband, of some direct sounding of the subject. would it be too monstrous, her suddenly breaking out to him as in alarm at the lapse of the weeks: “wouldn’t it really seem that you’re bound in honour to do something for her, privately, before they go?” maggie was capable of weighing the risk of this adventure for her own spirit, capable of sinking to intense little absences, even while conversing, as now, with the person who had most of her confidence, during which she followed up the possibilities. it was true that mrs. assingham could at such times somewhat restore the balance--by not wholly failing to guess her thought. her thought, however, just at present, had more than one face--had a series that it successively presented. these were indeed the possibilities involved in the adventure of her concerning herself for the quantity of compensation that mrs. verver might still look to. there was always the possibility that she was, after all, sufficiently to get at him--there was in fact that of her having again and again done so. against this stood nothing but fanny assingham’s apparent belief in her privation--more mercilessly imposed, or more hopelessly felt, in the actual relation of the parties; over and beyond everything that, from more than three months back, of course, had fostered in the princess a like conviction. these assumptions might certainly be baseless--inasmuch as there were hours and hours of amerigo’s time that there was no habit, no pretence of his accounting for; inasmuch too as charlotte, inevitably, had had more than once, to the undisguised knowledge of the pair in portland place, been obliged to come up to eaton square, whence so many of her personal possessions were in course of removal. she didn’t come to portland place--didn’t even come to ask for luncheon on two separate occasions when it reached the consciousness of the household there that she was spending the day in london. maggie hated, she scorned, to compare hours and appearances, to weigh the idea of whether there hadn’t been moments, during these days, when an assignation, in easy conditions, a snatched interview, in an air the season had so cleared of prying eyes, mightn’t perfectly work. but the very reason of this was partly that, haunted with the vision of the poor woman carrying off with such bravery as she found to her hand the secret of her not being appeased, she was conscious of scant room for any alternative image. the alternative image would have been that the secret covered up was the secret of appeasement somehow obtained, somehow extorted and cherished; and the difference between the two kinds of hiding was too great to permit of a mistake. charlotte was hiding neither pride nor joy--she was hiding humiliation; and here it was that the princess’s passion, so powerless for vindictive flights, most inveterately bruised its tenderness against the hard glass of her question. behind the glass lurked the whole history of the relation she had so fairly flattened her nose against it to penetrate--the glass mrs. verver might, at this stage, have been frantically tapping, from within, by way of supreme, irrepressible entreaty. maggie had said to herself complacently, after that last passage with her stepmother in the garden of fawns, that there was nothing left for her to do and that she could thereupon fold her hands. but why wasn’t it still left to push further and, from the point of view of personal pride, grovel lower?--why wasn’t it still left to offer herself as the bearer of a message reporting to him their friend’s anguish and convincing him of her need? she could thus have translated mrs. verver’s tap against the glass, as i have called it, into fifty forms; could perhaps have translated it most into the form of a reminder that would pierce deep. “you don’t know what it is to have been loved and broken with. you haven’t been broken with, because in your relation what can there have been, worth speaking of, to break? ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better meaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your hour, for blight, why was i myself dealt with all for deception? why condemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame--oh, the golden flame!--a mere handful of black ashes?” our young woman so yielded, at moments, to what was insidious in these foredoomed ingenuities of her pity, that for minutes together, sometimes, the weight of a new duty seemed to rest upon her--the duty of speaking before separation should constitute its chasm, of pleading for some benefit that might be carried away into exile like the last saved object of price of the emigre, the jewel wrapped in a piece of old silk and negotiable some day in the market of misery. this imagined service to the woman who could no longer help herself was one of the traps set for maggie’s spirit at every turn of the road; the click of which, catching and holding the divine faculty fast, was followed inevitably by a flutter, by a struggle of wings and even, as we may say, by a scattering of fine feathers. for they promptly enough felt, these yearnings of thought and excursions of sympathy, the concussion that couldn’t bring them down--the arrest produced by the so remarkably distinct figure that, at fawns, for the previous weeks, was constantly crossing, in its regular revolution, the further end of any watched perspective. whoever knew, or whoever didn’t, whether or to what extent charlotte, with natural business in eaton square, had shuffled other opportunities under that cloak, it was all matter for the kind of quiet ponderation the little man who so kept his wandering way had made his own. it was part of the very inveteracy of his straw hat and his white waistcoat, of the trick of his hands in his pockets, of the detachment of the attention he fixed on his slow steps from behind his secure pince-nez. the thing that never failed now as an item in the picture was that gleam of the silken noose, his wife’s immaterial tether, so marked to maggie’s sense during her last month in the country. mrs. verver’s straight neck had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord--oh, quite conveniently long!--disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that, with his fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. to have recognised, for all its tenuity, the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted, to what tension subjected, but could never be to doubt either of its adequacy to its office or of its perfect durability. these reminded states for the princess were in fact states of renewed gaping. so many things her father knew that she even yet didn’t! all this, at present, with mrs. assingham, passed through her in quick vibrations. she had expressed, while the revolution of her thought was incomplete, the idea of what amerigo “ought,” on his side, in the premises, to be capable of, and then had felt her companion’s answering stare. but she insisted on what she had meant. “he ought to wish to see her--and i mean in some protected and independent way, as he used to--in case of her being herself able to manage it. that,” said maggie with the courage of her conviction, “he ought to be ready, he ought to be happy, he ought to feel himself sworn--little as it is for the end of such a history!--to take from her. it’s as if he wished to get off without taking anything.” mrs. assingham deferentially mused. “but for what purpose is it your idea that they should again so intimately meet?” “for any purpose they like. that’s their affair.” fanny assingham sharply laughed, then irrepressibly fell back to her constant position. “you’re splendid--perfectly splendid.” to which, as the princess, shaking an impatient head, wouldn’t have it again at all, she subjoined: “or if you’re not it’s because you’re so sure. i mean sure of him.” “ah, i’m exactly not sure of him. if i were sure of him i shouldn’t doubt--!” but maggie cast about her. “doubt what?” fanny pressed as she waited. “well, that he must feel how much less than she he pays--and how that ought to keep her present to him.” this, in its turn, after an instant, mrs. assingham could meet with a smile. “trust him, my dear, to keep her present! but trust him also to keep himself absent. leave him his own way.” “i’ll leave him everything,” said maggie. “only--you know it’s my nature--i think.” “it’s your nature to think too much,” fanny assingham a trifle coarsely risked. this but quickened, however, in the princess the act she reprobated. “that may be. but if i hadn’t thought--!” “you wouldn’t, you mean, have been where you are?” “yes, because they, on their side, thought of everything but that. they thought of everything but that i might think.” “or even,” her friend too superficially concurred, “that your father might!” as to this, at all events, maggie discriminated. “no, that wouldn’t have prevented them; for they knew that his first care would be not to make me do so. as it is,” maggie added, “that has had to become his last.” fanny assingham took it in deeper--for what it immediately made her give out louder. “he’s splendid then.” she sounded it almost aggressively; it was what she was reduced to--she had positively to place it. “ah, that as much as you please!” maggie said this and left it, but the tone of it had the next moment determined in her friend a fresh reaction. “you think, both of you, so abysmally and yet so quietly. but it’s what will have saved you.” “oh,” maggie returned, “it’s what--from the moment they discovered we could think at all--will have saved them. for they’re the ones who are saved,” she went on. “we’re the ones who are lost.” “lost--?” “lost to each other--father and i.” and then as her friend appeared to demur, “oh yes,” maggie quite lucidly declared, “lost to each other much more, really, than amerigo and charlotte are; since for them it’s just, it’s right, it’s deserved, while for us it’s only sad and strange and not caused by our fault. but i don’t know,” she went on, “why i talk about myself, for it’s on father it really comes. i let him go,” said maggie. “you let him, but you don’t make him.” “i take it from him,” she answered. “but what else can you do?” “i take it from him,” the princess repeated. “i do what i knew from the first i should do. i get off by giving him up.” “but if he gives you?” mrs. assingham presumed to object. “doesn’t it moreover then,” she asked, “complete the very purpose with which he married--that of making you and leaving you more free?” maggie looked at her long. “yes--i help him to do that.” mrs. assingham hesitated, but at last her bravery flared. “why not call it then frankly his complete success?” “well,” said maggie, “that’s all that’s left me to do.” “it’s a success,” her friend ingeniously developed, “with which you’ve simply not interfered.” and as if to show that she spoke without levity mrs. assingham went further. “he has made it a success for them--!” “ah, there you are!” maggie responsively mused. “yes,” she said the next moment, “that’s why amerigo stays.” “let alone it’s why charlotte goes.” that mrs. assingham, and emboldened, smiled “so he knows--?” but maggie hung back. “amerigo--?” after which, however, she blushed--to her companion’s recognition. “your father. he knows what you know? i mean,” fanny faltered--“well, how much does he know?” maggie’s silence and maggie’s eyes had in fact arrested the push of the question--which, for a decent consistency, she couldn’t yet quite abandon. “what i should rather say is does he know how much?” she found it still awkward. “how much, i mean, they did. how far”--she touched it up--“they went.” maggie had waited, but only with a question. “do you think he does?” “know at least something? oh, about him i can’t think. he’s beyond me,” said fanny assingham. “then do you yourself know?” “how much--?” “how much.” “how far--?” “how far.” fanny had appeared to wish to make sure, but there was something she remembered--remembered in time and even with a smile. “i’ve told you before that i know absolutely nothing.” “well--that’s what _i_ know,” said the princess. her friend again hesitated. “then nobody knows--? i mean,” mrs. assingham explained, “how much your father does.” oh, maggie showed that she understood. “nobody.” “not--a little--charlotte?” “a little?” the princess echoed. “to know anything would be, for her, to know enough.” “and she doesn’t know anything?” “if she did,” maggie answered, “amerigo would.” “and that’s just it--that he doesn’t?” “that’s just it,” said the princess profoundly. on which mrs. assingham reflected. “then how is charlotte so held?” “just by that.” “by her ignorance?” “by her ignorance.” fanny wondered. “a torment--?” “a torment,” said maggie with tears in her eyes. her companion a moment watched them. “but the prince then--?” “how is he held?” maggie asked. “how is he held?” “oh, i can’t tell you that!” and the princess again broke off. xli a telegram, in charlotte’s name, arrived early--“we shall come and ask you for tea at five, if convenient to you. am wiring for the assinghams to lunch.” this document, into which meanings were to be read, maggie promptly placed before her husband, adding the remark that her father and his wife, who would have come up the previous night or that morning, had evidently gone to an hotel. the prince was in his “own” room, where he often sat now alone; half-a-dozen open newspapers, the “figaro” notably, as well as the “times,” were scattered about him; but, with a cigar in his teeth and a visible cloud on his brow, he appeared actually to be engaged in walking to and fro. never yet, on thus approaching him--for she had done it of late, under one necessity or another, several times--had a particular impression so greeted her; supremely strong, for some reason, as he turned quickly round on her entrance. the reason was partly the look in his face--a suffusion like the flush of fever, which brought back to her fanny assingham’s charge, recently uttered under that roof, of her “thinking” too impenetrably. the word had remained with her and made her think still more; so that, at first, as she stood there, she felt responsible for provoking on his part an irritation of suspense at which she had not aimed. she had been going about him these three months, she perfectly knew, with a maintained idea--of which she had never spoken to him; but what had at last happened was that his way of looking at her, on occasion, seemed a perception of the presence not of one idea, but of fifty, variously prepared for uses with which he somehow must reckon. she knew herself suddenly, almost strangely, glad to be coming to him, at this hour, with nothing more abstract than a telegram; but even after she had stepped into his prison under her pretext, while her eyes took in his face and then embraced the four walls that enclosed his restlessness, she recognised the virtual identity of his condition with that aspect of charlotte’s situation for which, early in the summer and in all the amplitude of a great residence, she had found, with so little seeking, the similitude of the locked cage. he struck her as caged, the man who couldn’t now without an instant effect on her sensibility give an instinctive push to the door she had not completely closed behind her. he had been turning twenty ways, for impatiences all his own, and when she was once shut in with him it was yet again as if she had come to him in his more than monastic cell to offer him light or food. there was a difference none the less, between his captivity and charlotte’s--the difference, as it might be, of his lurking there by his own act and his own choice; the admission of which had indeed virtually been in his starting, on her entrance, as if even this were in its degree an interference. that was what betrayed for her, practically, his fear of her fifty ideas, and what had begun, after a minute, to make her wish to repudiate or explain. it was more wonderful than she could have told; it was for all the world as if she was succeeding with him beyond her intention. she had, for these instants, the sense that he exaggerated, that the imputation of purpose had fairly risen too high in him. she had begun, a year ago, by asking herself how she could make him think more of her; but what was it, after all, he was thinking now? he kept his eyes on her telegram; he read it more than once, easy as it was, in spite of its conveyed deprecation, to understand; during which she found herself almost awestruck with yearning, almost on the point of marking somehow what she had marked in the garden at fawns with charlotte--that she had truly come unarmed. she didn’t bristle with intentions--she scarce knew, as he at this juncture affected her, what had become of the only intention she had come with. she had nothing but her old idea, the old one he knew; she hadn’t the ghost of another. presently in fact, when four or five minutes had elapsed, it was as if she positively, hadn’t so much even as that one. he gave her back her paper, asking with it if there were anything in particular she wished him to do. she stood there with her eyes on him, doubling the telegram together as if it had been a precious thing and yet all the while holding her breath. of a sudden, somehow, and quite as by the action of their merely having between them these few written words, an extraordinary fact came up. he was with her as if he were hers, hers in a degree and on a scale, with an intensity and an intimacy, that were a new and a strange quantity, that were like the irruption of a tide loosening them where they had stuck and making them feel they floated. what was it that, with the rush of this, just kept her from putting out her hands to him, from catching at him as, in the other time, with the superficial impetus he and charlotte had privately conspired to impart, she had so often, her breath failing her, known the impulse to catch at her father? she did, however, just yet, nothing inconsequent--though she couldn’t immediately have said what saved her; and by the time she had neatly folded her telegram she was doing something merely needful. “i wanted you simply to know--so that you mayn’t by accident miss them. for it’s the last,” said maggie. “the last?” “i take it as their good-bye.” and she smiled as she could always smile. “they come in state--to take formal leave. they do everything that’s proper. tomorrow,” she said, “they go to southampton.” “if they do everything that’s proper,” the prince presently asked, “why don’t they at least come to dine?” she hesitated, yet she lightly enough provided her answer. “that we must certainly ask them. it will be easy for you. but of course they’re immensely taken--!” he wondered. “so immensely taken that they can’t--that your father can’t--give you his last evening in england?” this, for maggie, was more difficult to meet; yet she was still not without her stop-gap. “that may be what they’ll propose--that we shall go somewhere together, the four of us, for a celebration--except that, to round it thoroughly off, we ought also to have fanny and the colonel. they don’t want them at tea, she quite sufficiently expresses; they polish them off, poor dears, they get rid of them, beforehand. they want only us together; and if they cut us down to tea,” she continued, “as they cut fanny and the colonel down to luncheon, perhaps it’s for the fancy, after all, of their keeping their last night in london for each other.” she said these things as they came to her; she was unable to keep them back, even though, as she heard herself, she might have been throwing everything to the winds. but wasn’t that the right way--for sharing his last day of captivity with the man one adored? it was every moment more and more for her as if she were waiting with him in his prison--waiting with some gleam of remembrance of how noble captives in the french revolution, the darkness of the terror, used to make a feast, or a high discourse, of their last poor resources. if she had broken with everything now, every observance of all the past months, she must simply then take it so--take it that what she had worked for was too near, at last, to let her keep her head. she might have been losing her head verily in her husband’s eyes--since he didn’t know, all the while, that the sudden freedom of her words was but the diverted intensity of her disposition personally to seize him. he didn’t know, either, that this was her manner--now she was with him--of beguiling audaciously the supremacy of suspense. for the people of the french revolution, assuredly, there wasn’t suspense; the scaffold, for those she was thinking of, was certain--whereas what charlotte’s telegram announced was, short of some incalculable error, clear liberation. just the point, however, was in its being clearer to herself than to him; her clearnesses, clearances--those she had so all but abjectly laboured for--threatened to crowd upon her in the form of one of the clusters of angelic heads, the peopled shafts of light beating down through iron bars, that regale, on occasion, precisely, the fevered vision of those who are in chains. she was going to know, she felt, later on--was going to know with compunction, doubtless, on the very morrow, how thumpingly her heart had beaten at this foretaste of their being left together: she should judge at leisure the surrender she was making to the consciousness of complications about to be bodily lifted. she should judge at leisure even that avidity for an issue which was making so little of any complication but the unextinguished presence of the others; and indeed that she was already simplifying so much more than her husband came out for her next in the face with which he listened. he might certainly well be puzzled, in respect to his father-in-law and mrs. verver, by her glance at their possible preference for a concentrated evening. “but it isn’t--is it?” he asked--“as if they were leaving each other?” “oh no; it isn’t as if they were leaving each other. they’re only bringing to a close--without knowing when it may open again--a time that has been, naturally, awfully interesting to them.” yes, she could talk so of their “time”--she was somehow sustained; she was sustained even to affirm more intensely her present possession of her ground. “they have their reasons--many things to think of; how can one tell? but there’s always, also, the chance of his proposing to me that we shall have our last hours together; i mean that he and i shall. he may wish to take me off to dine with him somewhere alone--and to do it in memory of old days. i mean,” the princess went on, “the real old days; before my grand husband was invented and, much more, before his grand wife was: the wonderful times of his first great interest in what he has since done, his first great plans and opportunities, discoveries and bargains. the way we’ve sat together late, ever so late, in foreign restaurants, which he used to like; the way that, in every city in europe, we’ve stayed on and on, with our elbows on the table and most of the lights put out, to talk over things he had that day seen or heard of or made his offer for, the things he had secured or refused or lost! there were places he took me to--you wouldn’t believe!--for often he could only have left me with servants. if he should carry me off with him to-night, for old sake’s sake, to the earl’s court exhibition, it will be a little--just a very, very little--like our young adventures.” after which while amerigo watched her, and in fact quite because of it, she had an inspiration, to which she presently yielded. if he was wondering what she would say next she had found exactly the thing. “in that case he will leave you charlotte to take care of in our absence. you’ll have to carry her off somewhere for your last evening; unless you may prefer to spend it with her here. i shall then see that you dine, that you have everything, quite beautifully. you’ll be able to do as you like.” she couldn’t have been sure beforehand, and had really not been; but the most immediate result of this speech was his letting her see that he took it for no cheap extravagance either of irony or of oblivion. nothing in the world, of a truth, had ever been so sweet to her, as his look of trying to be serious enough to make no mistake about it. she troubled him--which hadn’t been at all her purpose; she mystified him--which she couldn’t help and, comparatively, didn’t mind; then it came over her that he had, after all, a simplicity, very considerable, on which she had never dared to presume. it was a discovery--not like the other discovery she had once made, but giving out a freshness; and she recognised again in the light of it the number of the ideas of which he thought her capable. they were all, apparently, queer for him, but she had at least, with the lapse of the months, created the perception that there might be something in them; whereby he stared there, beautiful and sombre, at what she was at present providing him with. there was something of his own in his mind, to which, she was sure, he referred everything for a measure and a meaning; he had never let go of it, from the evening, weeks before, when, in her room, after his encounter with the bloomsbury cup, she had planted it there by flinging it at him, on the question of her father’s view of him, her determined “find out for yourself!” she had been aware, during the months, that he had been trying to find out, and had been seeking, above all, to avoid the appearance of any evasions of such a form of knowledge as might reach him, with violence or with a penetration more insidious, from any other source. nothing, however, had reached him; nothing he could at all conveniently reckon with had disengaged itself for him even from the announcement, sufficiently sudden, of the final secession of their companions. charlotte was in pain, charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause, that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language, subject to varieties of interpretation. what renewed the obscurity was her strange image of their common offer to him, her father’s and her own, of an opportunity to separate from mrs. verver with the due amount of form--and all the more that he was, in so pathetic a way, unable to treat himself to a quarrel with it on the score of taste. taste, in him, as a touchstone, was now all at sea; for who could say but that one of her fifty ideas, or perhaps forty-nine of them, wouldn’t be, exactly, that taste by itself, the taste he had always conformed to, had no importance whatever? if meanwhile, at all events, he felt her as serious, this made the greater reason for her profiting by it as she perhaps might never be able to profit again. she was invoking that reflection at the very moment he brought out, in reply to her last words, a remark which, though perfectly relevant and perfectly just, affected her at first as a high oddity. “they’re doing the wisest thing, you know. for if they were ever to go--!” and he looked down at her over his cigar. if they were ever to go, in short, it was high time, with her father’s age, charlotte’s need of initiation, and the general magnitude of the job of their getting settled and seasoned, their learning to “live into” their queer future--it was high time that they should take up their courage. this was eminent sense, but it didn’t arrest the princess, who, the next moment, had found a form for her challenge. “but shan’t you then so much as miss her a little? she’s wonderful and beautiful, and i feel somehow as if she were dying. not really, not physically,” maggie went on--“she’s so far, naturally, splendid as she is, from having done with life. but dying for us--for you and me; and making us feel it by the very fact of there being so much of her left.” the prince smoked hard a minute. “as you say, she’s splendid, but there is--there always will be--much of her left. only, as you also say, for others.” “and yet i think,” the princess returned, “that it isn’t as if we had wholly done with her. how can we not always think of her? it’s as if her unhappiness had been necessary to us--as if we had needed her, at her own cost, to build us up and start us.” he took it in with consideration, but he met it with a lucid inquiry. “why do you speak of the unhappiness of your father’s wife?” they exchanged a long look--the time that it took her to find her reply. “because not to--!” “well, not to--?” “would make me have to speak of him. and i can’t,” said maggie, “speak of him.” “you ‘can’t’--?” “i can’t.” she said it as for definite notice, not to be repeated. “there are too many things,” she nevertheless added. “he’s too great.” the prince looked at his cigar-tip, and then as he put back the weed: “too great for whom?” upon which as she hesitated, “not, my dear, too great for you,” he declared. “for me--oh, as much as you like.” “too great for me is what i mean. i know why i think it,” maggie said. “that’s enough.” he looked at her yet again as if she but fanned his wonder; he was on the very point, she judged, of asking her why she thought it. but her own eyes maintained their warning, and at the end of a minute he had uttered other words. “what’s of importance is that you’re his daughter. that at least we’ve got. and i suppose that, if i may say nothing else, i may say at least that i value it.” “oh yes, you may say that you value it. i myself make the most of it.” this again he took in, letting it presently put forth for him a striking connection. “she ought to have known you. that’s what’s present to me. she ought to have understood you better.” “better than you did?” “yes,” he gravely maintained, “better than i did. and she didn’t really know you at all. she doesn’t know you now.” “ah, yes she does!” said maggie. but he shook his head--he knew what he meant. “she not only doesn’t understand you more than i, she understands you ever so much less. though even i--!” “well, even you?” maggie pressed as he paused. “even i, even i even yet--!” again he paused and the silence held them. but maggie at last broke it. “if charlotte doesn’t understand me, it is that i’ve prevented her. i’ve chosen to deceive her and to lie to her.” the prince kept his eyes on her. “i know what you’ve chosen to do. but i’ve chosen to do the same.” “yes,” said maggie after an instant--“my choice was made when i had guessed yours. but you mean,” she asked, “that she understands you?” “it presents small difficulty!” “are you so sure?” maggie went on. “sure enough. but it doesn’t matter.” he waited an instant; then looking up through the fumes of his smoke, “she’s stupid,” he abruptly opined. “o--oh!” maggie protested in a long wail. it had made him in fact quickly change colour. “what i mean is that she’s not, as you pronounce her, unhappy.” and he recovered, with this, all his logic. “why is she unhappy if she doesn’t know?” “doesn’t know--?” she tried to make his logic difficult. “doesn’t know that you know.” it came from him in such a way that she was conscious, instantly, of three or four things to answer. but what she said first was: “do you think that’s all it need take?” and before he could reply, “she knows, she knows!” maggie proclaimed. “well then, what?” but she threw back her head, she turned impatiently away from him. “oh, i needn’t tell you! she knows enough. besides,” she went on, “she doesn’t believe us.” it made the prince stare a little. “ah, she asks too much!” that drew, however, from his wife another moan of objection, which determined in him a judgment. “she won’t let you take her for unhappy.” “oh, i know better than any one else what she won’t let me take her for!” “very well,” said amerigo, “you’ll see.” “i shall see wonders, i know. i’ve already seen them, and i’m prepared for them.” maggie recalled--she had memories enough. “it’s terrible”--her memories prompted her to speak. “i see it’s always terrible for women.” the prince looked down in his gravity. “everything’s terrible, cara, in the heart of man. she’s making her life,” he said. “she’ll make it.” his wife turned back upon him; she had wandered to a table, vaguely setting objects straight. “a little by the way then too, while she’s about it, she’s making ours.” at this he raised his eyes, which met her own, and she held him while she delivered herself of some thing that had been with her these last minutes. “you spoke just now of charlotte’s not having learned from you that i ‘know.’ am i to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?” he did the inquiry all the honours--visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response. “you think i might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?” “it isn’t a question of any beauty,” said maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.” “oh, the quantity of truth!” the prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured. “that’s a thing by itself, yes. but there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.” “of course there are!” the prince hastened to reply. after which he brought up more slowly: “if ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” but he dropped it, offering it simply for that. for that then, when it had had time somewhat to settle, like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air--for that then maggie showed herself, as deeply and strangely taking it. “i see.” and she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it. “i see.” the completeness, clearly, after an instant, had struck him as divine. “ah, my dear, my dear, my dear--!” it was all he could say. she wasn’t talking, however, at large. “you’ve kept up for so long a silence--!” “yes, yes, i know what i’ve kept up. but will you do,” he asked, “still one thing more for me?” it was as if, for an instant, with her new exposure, it had made her turn pale. “is there even one thing left?” “ah, my dear, my dear, my dear!”--it had pressed again in him the fine spring of the unspeakable. there was nothing, however, that the princess herself couldn’t say. “i’ll do anything, if you’ll tell me what.” “then wait.” and his raised italian hand, with its play of admonitory fingers, had never made gesture more expressive. his voice itself dropped to a tone--! “wait,” he repeated. “wait.” she understood, but it was as if she wished to have it from him. “till they’ve been here, you mean?” “yes, till they’ve gone. till they’re away.” she kept it up. “till they’ve left the country?” she had her eyes on him for clearness; these were the conditions of a promise--so that he put the promise, practically, into his response. “till we’ve ceased to see them--for as long as god may grant! till we’re really alone.” “oh, if it’s only that--!” when she had drawn from him thus then, as she could feel, the thick breath of the definite--which was the intimate, the immediate, the familiar, as she hadn’t had them for so long--she turned away again, she put her hand on the knob of the door. but her hand rested at first without a grasp; she had another effort to make, the effort of leaving him, of which everything that had just passed between them, his presence, irresistible, overcharged with it, doubled the difficulty. there was something--she couldn’t have told what; it was as if, shut in together, they had come too far--too far for where they were; so that the mere act of her quitting him was like the attempt to recover the lost and gone. she had taken in with her something that, within the ten minutes, and especially within the last three or four, had slipped away from her--which it was vain now, wasn’t it? to try to appear to clutch or to pick up. that consciousness in fact had a pang, and she balanced, intensely, for the lingering moment, almost with a terror of her endless power of surrender. he had only to press, really, for her to yield inch by inch, and she fairly knew at present, while she looked at him through her cloud, that the confession of this precious secret sat there for him to pluck. the sensation, for the few seconds, was extraordinary; her weakness, her desire, so long as she was yet not saving herself, flowered in her face like a light or a darkness. she sought for some word that would cover this up; she reverted to the question of tea, speaking as if they shouldn’t meet sooner. “then about five. i count on you.” on him too, however, something had descended; as to which this exactly gave him his chance. “ah, but i shall see you--! no?” he said, coming nearer. she had, with her hand still on the knob, her back against the door, so that her retreat, under his approach must be less than a step, and yet she couldn’t for her life, with the other hand, have pushed him away. he was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him, kiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his face--frowning, smiling, she mightn’t know which; only beautiful and strange--was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in dreams. she closed her eyes to it, and so, the next instant, against her purpose, she had put out her hand, which had met his own and which he held. then it was that, from behind her closed eyes, the right word came. “wait!” it was the word of his own distress and entreaty, the word for both of them, all they had left, their plank now on the great sea. their hands were locked, and thus she said it again. “wait. wait.” she kept her eyes shut, but her hand, she knew, helped her meaning--which after a minute she was aware his own had absorbed. he let her go--he turned away with this message, and when she saw him again his back was presented, as he had left her, and his face staring out of the window. she had saved herself and she got off. xlii later on, in the afternoon, before the others arrived, the form of their reunion was at least remarkable: they might, in their great eastward drawing-room, have been comparing notes or nerves in apprehension of some stiff official visit. maggie’s mind, in its restlessness, even played a little with the prospect; the high cool room, with its afternoon shade, with its old tapestries uncovered, with the perfect polish of its wide floor reflecting the bowls of gathered flowers and the silver and linen of the prepared tea-table, drew from her a remark in which this whole effect was mirrored, as well as something else in the prince’s movement while he slowly paced and turned. “we’re distinctly bourgeois!” she a trifle grimly threw off, as an echo of their old community; though to a spectator sufficiently detached they might have been quite the privileged pair they were reputed, granted only they were taken as awaiting the visit of royalty. they might have been ready, on the word passed up in advance, to repair together to the foot of the staircase--the prince somewhat in front, advancing indeed to the open doors and even going down, for all his princedom, to meet, on the stopping of the chariot, the august emergence. the time was stale, it was to be admitted, for incidents of magnitude; the september hush was in full possession, at the end of the dull day, and a couple of the long windows stood open to the balcony that overhung the desolation-- the balcony from which maggie, in the springtime, had seen amerigo and charlotte look down together at the hour of her return from the regent’s park, near by, with her father, the principino and miss bogle. amerigo now again, in his punctual impatience, went out a couple of times and stood there; after which, as to report that nothing was in sight, he returned to the room with frankly nothing else to do. the princess pretended to read; he looked at her as he passed; there hovered in her own sense the thought of other occasions when she had cheated appearances of agitation with a book. at last she felt him standing before her, and then she raised her eyes. “do you remember how, this morning, when you told me of this event, i asked you if there were anything particular you wished me to do? you spoke of my being at home, but that was a matter of course. you spoke of something else,” he went on, while she sat with her book on her knee and her raised eyes; “something that makes me almost wish it may happen. you spoke,” he said, “of the possibility of my seeing her alone. do you know, if that comes,” he asked, “the use i shall make of it?” and then as she waited: “the use is all before me.” “ah, it’s your own business now!” said his wife. but it had made her rise. “i shall make it my own,” he answered. “i shall tell her i lied to her.” “ah no!” she returned. “and i shall tell her you did.” she shook her head again. “oh, still less!” with which therefore they stood at difference, he with his head erect and his happy idea perched, in its eagerness, on his crest. “and how then is she to know?” “she isn’t to know.” “she’s only still to think you don’t--?” “and therefore that i’m always a fool? she may think,” said maggie, “what she likes.” “think it without my protest--?” the princess made a movement. “what business is it of yours?” “isn’t it my right to correct her--?” maggie let his question ring--ring long enough for him to hear it himself; only then she took it up. “‘correct’ her?”--and it was her own now that really rang. “aren’t you rather forgetting who she is?” after which, while he quite stared for it, as it was the very first clear majesty he had known her to use, she flung down her book and raised a warning hand. “the carriage. come!” the “come!” had matched, for lucid firmness, the rest of her speech, and, when they were below, in the hall, there was a “go!” for him, through the open doors and between the ranged servants, that matched even that. he received royalty, bareheaded, therefore, in the persons of mr. and mrs. verver, as it alighted on the pavement, and maggie was at the threshold to welcome it to her house. later on, upstairs again, she even herself felt still more the force of the limit of which she had just reminded him; at tea, in charlotte’s affirmed presence--as charlotte affirmed it--she drew a long breath of richer relief. it was the strangest, once more, of all impressions; but what she most felt, for the half-hour, was that mr. and mrs. verver were making the occasion easy. they were somehow conjoined in it, conjoined for a present effect as maggie had absolutely never yet seen them; and there occurred, before long, a moment in which amerigo’s look met her own in recognitions that he couldn’t suppress. the question of the amount of correction to which charlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered, for the instant, only to sink, conspicuously, by its own weight; so high a pitch she seemed to give to the unconsciousness of questions, so resplendent a show of serenity she succeeded in making. the shade of the official, in her beauty and security, never for a moment dropped; it was a cool, high refuge, like the deep, arched recess of some coloured and gilded image, in which she sat and smiled and waited, drank her tea, referred to her husband and remembered her mission. her mission had quite taken form--it was but another name for the interest of her great opportunity--that of representing the arts and the graces to a people languishing, afar off, in ignorance. maggie had sufficiently intimated to the prince, ten minutes before, that she needed no showing as to what their friend wouldn’t consent to be taken for; but the difficulty now indeed was to choose, for explicit tribute of admiration, between the varieties of her nobler aspects. she carried it off, to put the matter coarsely, with a taste and a discretion that held our young woman’s attention, for the first quarter-of-an-hour, to the very point of diverting it from the attitude of her overshadowed, her almost superseded companion. but adam verver profited indeed at this time, even with his daughter, by his so marked peculiarity of seeming on no occasion to have an attitude; and so long as they were in the room together she felt him still simply weave his web and play out his long fine cord, knew herself in presence of this tacit process very much as she had known herself at fawns. he had a way, the dear man, wherever he was, of moving about the room, noiselessly, to see what it might contain; and his manner of now resorting to this habit, acquainted as he already was with the objects in view, expressed with a certain sharpness the intention of leaving his wife to her devices. it did even more than this; it signified, to the apprehension of the princess, from the moment she more directly took thought of him, almost a special view of these devices, as actually exhibited in their rarity, together with an independent, a settled appreciation of their general handsome adequacy, which scarcely required the accompaniment of his faint contemplative hum. charlotte throned, as who should say, between her hostess and her host, the whole scene having crystallised, as soon as she took her place, to the right quiet lustre; the harmony was not less sustained for being superficial, and the only approach to a break in it was while amerigo remained standing long enough for his father-in-law, vaguely wondering, to appeal to him, invite or address him, and then, in default of any such word, selected for presentation to the other visitor a plate of petits fours. maggie watched her husband--if it now could be called watching--offer this refreshment; she noted the consummate way--for “consummate” was the term she privately applied--in which charlotte cleared her acceptance, cleared her impersonal smile, of any betrayal, any slightest value, of consciousness; and then felt the slow surge of a vision that, at the end of another minute or two, had floated her across the room to where her father stood looking at a picture, an early florentine sacred subject, that he had given her on her marriage. he might have been, in silence, taking his last leave of it; it was a work for which he entertained, she knew, an unqualified esteem. the tenderness represented for her by his sacrifice of such a treasure had become, to her sense, a part of the whole infusion, of the immortal expression; the beauty of his sentiment looked out at her, always, from the beauty of the rest, as if the frame made positively a window for his spiritual face: she might have said to herself, at this moment, that in leaving the thing behind him, held as in her clasping arms, he was doing the most possible toward leaving her a part of his palpable self. she put her hand over his shoulder, and their eyes were held again, together, by the abiding felicity; they smiled in emulation, vaguely, as if speech failed them through their having passed too far; she would have begun to wonder the next minute if it were reserved to them, for the last stage, to find their contact, like that of old friends reunited too much on the theory of the unchanged, subject to shy lapses. “it’s all right, eh?” “oh, my dear--rather!” he had applied the question to the great fact of the picture, as she had spoken for the picture in reply, but it was as if their words for an instant afterwards symbolised another truth, so that they looked about at everything else to give them this extension. she had passed her arm into his, and the other objects in the room, the other pictures, the sofas, the chairs, the tables, the cabinets, the “important” pieces, supreme in their way, stood out, round them, consciously, for recognition and applause. their eyes moved together from piece to piece, taking in the whole nobleness--quite as if for him to measure the wisdom of old ideas. the two noble persons seated, in conversation, at tea, fell thus into the splendid effect and the general harmony: mrs. verver and the prince fairly “placed” themselves, however unwittingly, as high expressions of the kind of human furniture required, esthetically, by such a scene. the fusion of their presence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and admirable; though, to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than the occasion really demanded, they also might have figured as concrete attestations of a rare power of purchase. there was much indeed in the tone in which adam verver spoke again, and who shall say where his thought stopped? “le compte y est. you’ve got some good things.” maggie met it afresh--“ah, don’t they look well?” their companions, at the sound of this, gave them, in a spacious intermission of slow talk, an attention, all of gravity, that was like an ampler submission to the general duty of magnificence; sitting as still, to be thus appraised, as a pair of effigies of the contemporary great on one of the platforms of madame tussaud. “i’m so glad--for your last look.” with which, after maggie--quite in the air--had said it, the note was struck indeed; the note of that strange accepted finality of relation, as from couple to couple, which almost escaped an awkwardness only by not attempting a gloss. yes, this was the wonder, that the occasion defied insistence precisely because of the vast quantities with which it dealt--so that separation was on a scale beyond any compass of parting. to do such an hour justice would have been in some degree to question its grounds--which was why they remained, in fine, the four of them, in the upper air, united in the firmest abstention from pressure. there was no point, visibly, at which, face to face, either amerigo or charlotte had pressed; and how little she herself was in danger of doing so maggie scarce needed to remember. that her father wouldn’t, by the tip of a toe--of that she was equally conscious: the only thing was that, since he didn’t, she could but hold her breath for what he would do instead. when, at the end of three minutes more, he had said, with an effect of suddenness, “well, mag--and the principino?” it was quite as if that were, by contrast, the hard, the truer voice. she glanced at the clock. “i ‘ordered’ him for half-past five--which hasn’t yet struck. trust him, my dear, not to fail you!” “oh, i don’t want him to fail me!” was mr. verver’s reply; yet uttered in so explicitly jocose a relation to the possibilities of failure that even when, just afterwards, he wandered in his impatience to one of the long windows and passed out to the balcony, she asked herself but for a few seconds if reality, should she follow him, would overtake or meet her there. she followed him of necessity--it came, absolutely, so near to his inviting her, by stepping off into temporary detachment, to give the others something of the chance that she and her husband had so fantastically discussed. beside him then, while they hung over the great dull place, clear and almost coloured now, coloured with the odd, sad, pictured, “old-fashioned” look that empty london streets take on in waning afternoons of the summer’s end, she felt once more how impossible such a passage would have been to them, how it would have torn them to pieces, if they had so much as suffered its suppressed relations to peep out of their eyes. this danger would doubtless indeed have been more to be reckoned with if the instinct of each--she could certainly at least answer for her own--had not so successfully acted to trump up other apparent connexions for it, connexions as to which they could pretend to be frank. “you mustn’t stay on here, you know,” adam verver said as a result of his unobstructed outlook. “fawns is all there for you, of course--to the end of my tenure. but fawns so dismantled,” he added with mild ruefulness, “fawns with half its contents, and half its best things, removed, won’t seem to you, i’m afraid, particularly lively.” “no,” maggie answered, “we should miss its best things. its best things, my dear, have certainly been removed. to be back there,” she went on, “to be back there--!” and she paused for the force of her idea. “oh, to be back there without anything good--!” but she didn’t hesitate now; she brought her idea forth. “to be back there without charlotte is more than i think would do.” and as she smiled at him with it, so she saw him the next instant take it--take it in a way that helped her smile to pass all for an allusion to what she didn’t and couldn’t say. this quantity was too clear--that she couldn’t at such an hour be pretending to name to him what it was, as he would have said, “going to be,” at fawns or anywhere else, to want for him. that was now--and in a manner exaltedly, sublimely--out of their compass and their question; so that what was she doing, while they waited for the principino, while they left the others together and their tension just sensibly threatened, what was she doing but just offer a bold but substantial substitute? nothing was stranger moreover, under the action of charlotte’s presence, than the fact of a felt sincerity in her words. she felt her sincerity absolutely sound--she gave it for all it might mean. “because charlotte, dear, you know,” she said, “is incomparable.” it took thirty seconds, but she was to know when these were over that she had pronounced one of the happiest words of her life. they had turned from the view of the street; they leaned together against the balcony rail, with the room largely in sight from where they stood, but with the prince and mrs. verver out of range. nothing he could try, she immediately saw, was to keep his eyes from lighting; not even his taking out his cigarette-case and saying before he said anything else: “may i smoke?” she met it, for encouragement, with her “my dear!” again, and then, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be nervous--a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair inside: “father, father--charlotte’s great!” it was not till after he had begun to smoke that he looked at her. “charlotte’s great.” they could close upon it--such a basis as they might immediately feel it make; and so they stood together over it, quite gratefully, each recording to the other’s eyes that it was firm under their feet. they had even thus a renewed wait, as for proof of it; much as if he were letting her see, while the minutes lapsed for their concealed companions, that this was finally just why--but just why! “you see,” he presently added, “how right i was. right, i mean, to do it for you.” “ah, rather!” she murmured with her smile. and then, as to be herself ideally right: “i don’t see what you would have done without her.” “the point was,” he returned quietly, “that i didn’t see what you were to do. yet it was a risk.” “it was a risk,” said maggie--“but i believed in it. at least for myself!” she smiled. “well now,” he smoked, “we see.” “we see.” “i know her better.” “you know her best.” “oh, but naturally!” on which, as the warranted truth of it hung in the air--the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present opportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted--she found herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet known, in the vision of all he might mean. the sense of it in her rose higher, rose with each moment that he invited her thus to see him linger; and when, after a little more, he had said, smoking again and looking up, with head thrown back and hands spread on the balcony rail, at the grey, gaunt front of the house, “she’s beautiful, beautiful!” her sensibility reported to her the shade of a new note. it was all she might have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the note of possession and control; and yet it conveyed to her as nothing till now had done the reality of their parting. they were parting, in the light of it, absolutely on charlotte’s value--the value that was filling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play, and with which the prince, on his side, was perhaps making larger acquaintance. if maggie had desired, at so late an hour, some last conclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might have found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon high values. somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her gifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of charlotte’s! what else had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as great? great for the world that was before her--that he proposed she should be: she was not to be wasted in the application of his plan. maggie held to this then--that she wasn’t to be wasted. to let his daughter know it he had sought this brief privacy. what a blessing, accordingly, that she could speak her joy in it! his face, meanwhile, at all events, was turned to her, and as she met his eyes again her joy went straight. “it’s success, father.” “it’s success. and even this,” he added as the principino, appearing alone, deep within, piped across an instant greeting--“even this isn’t altogether failure!” they went in to receive the boy, upon whose introduction to the room by miss bogle charlotte and the prince got up--seemingly with an impressiveness that had caused miss bogle not to give further effect to her own entrance. she had retired, but the principino’s presence, by itself, sufficiently broke the tension--the subsidence of which, in the great room, ten minutes later, gave to the air something of the quality produced by the cessation of a sustained rattle. stillness, when the prince and princess returned from attending the visitors to their carriage, might have been said to be not so much restored as created; so that whatever next took place in it was foredoomed to remarkable salience. that would have been the case even with so natural, though so futile, a movement as maggie’s going out to the balcony again to follow with her eyes her father’s departure. the carriage was out of sight--it had taken her too long solemnly to reascend, and she looked awhile only at the great grey space, on which, as on the room still more, the shadow of dusk had fallen. here, at first, her husband had not rejoined her; he had come up with the boy, who, clutching his hand, abounded, as usual, in remarks worthy of the family archives; but the two appeared then to have proceeded to report to miss bogle. it meant something for the princess that her husband had thus got their son out of the way, not bringing him back to his mother; but everything now, as she vaguely moved about, struck her as meaning so much that the unheard chorus swelled. yet this above all--her just being there as she was and waiting for him to come in, their freedom to be together there always--was the meaning most disengaged: she stood in the cool twilight and took in, all about her, where it lurked, her reason for what she had done. she knew at last really why--and how she had been inspired and guided, how she had been persistently able, how, to her soul, all the while, it had been for the sake of this end. here it was, then, the moment, the golden fruit that had shone from afar; only, what were these things, in the fact, for the hand and for the lips, when tested, when tasted--what were they as a reward? closer than she had ever been to the measure of her course and the full face of her act, she had an instant of the terror that, when there has been suspense, always precedes, on the part of the creature to be paid, the certification of the amount. amerigo knew it, the amount; he still held it, and the delay in his return, making her heart beat too fast to go on, was like a sudden blinding light on a wild speculation. she had thrown the dice, but his hand was over her cast. he opened the door, however, at last--he hadn’t been away ten minutes; and then, with her sight of him renewed to intensity, she seemed to have a view of the number. his presence alone, as he paused to look at her, somehow made it the highest, and even before he had spoken she had begun to be paid in full. with that consciousness, in fact, an extraordinary thing occurred; the assurance of her safety so making her terror drop that already, within the minute, it had been changed to concern for his own anxiety, for everything that was deep in his being and everything that was fair in his face. so far as seeing that she was “paid” went, he might have been holding out the money-bag for her to come and take it. but what instantly rose, for her, between the act and her acceptance was the sense that she must strike him as waiting for a confession. this, in turn, charged her with a new horror: if that was her proper payment she would go without money. his acknowledgment hung there, too monstrously, at the expense of charlotte, before whose mastery of the greater style she had just been standing dazzled. all she now knew, accordingly, was that she should be ashamed to listen to the uttered word; all, that is, but that she might dispose of it on the spot forever. “isn’t she too splendid?” she simply said, offering it to explain and to finish. “oh, splendid!” with which he came over to her. “that’s our help, you see,” she added--to point further her moral. it kept him before her therefore, taking in--or trying to--what she so wonderfully gave. he tried, too clearly, to please her--to meet her in her own way; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept before him, his hands holding her shoulders, his whole act enclosing her, he presently echoed: “‘see’? i see nothing but you.” and the truth of it had, with this force, after a moment, so strangely lighted his eyes that, as for pity and dread of them, she buried her own in his breast. transcriber's note: minor printing errors have been corrected. phrases printed in italics in the original version are indicated in this electronic version by _ (underscore). a list of amendments are given at the end of the book. madame bovary a tale of provincial life by gustave flaubert with a critical introduction by ferdinand brunetiÈre of the french academy and a biographical preface by robert arnot, m. a volume i. simon p. magee, publisher, chicago, ill. copyright, , by m. walter dunne entered at stationers' hall, london contents part i. i. the new boy ii. a good patient iii. a lonely widower iv. consolation v. the new mÉnage vi. a maiden's yearnings vii. disillusion viii. glimpses of the world ix. idle dreams part ii. i. a new field ii. new friends iii. added cares iv. silent homage v. smothered flames vi. spiritual counsel vii. a woman's whims viii. a village festival ix. a woodland idyll x. lovers' vows xi. an experiment and a failure xii. preparations for flight xiii. deserted xiv. religious fervor xv. a new delight critical introduction _domi mansit, lanam fecit:_ "he remained at home and wrote," is the first thing that should be said of gustave flaubert. this trait, which he shares with many of the writers of his generation,--renan, taine, leconte de lisle and dumas _fils_,--distinguishes them and distinguishes him from those of the preceding generation, who voluntarily sought inspiration in disorder and agitation,--balzac and george sand, for instance (to speak only of romance writers), and the elder dumas or eugène sue. flaubert, indeed, had no "outward life;" he lived only for his art. a second trait of his character, and of his genius as a writer, is that of seeing in his art only the art itself--and art alone, without the mingling of any vision of fortune or success. a competency,--which he had inherited from the great surgeon, his father,--and moderate tastes, infinitely more _bourgeois_ than his literature,--permitted him to shun the great stumbling-block of the professional man of letters, which, in our day, and doubtless in the united states as well as in france, is the temptation to coin money with the pen. never was writer more disinterested than flaubert; and the story is that _madame bovary_ brought him francs--in debts. a third trait, which helps not only to characterise but to individualise him, is his subordination not only of his own existence, but of life in general, to his conception of art. it is not enough to say that he lived for his art: he saw nothing in the world or in life but material for that art,--_hostis quid aliud quam perpetua materia gloriæ?_--and if it be true that others have died of their ambition, it could literally be said of flaubert that he was killed by his art. it is this point that i should like to bring out in this introduction,--where we need not speak of his norman origin, or (as his friend ducamp has written in his _literary souvenirs_ with a disagreeable persistence, and so uselessly!) of his nervousness and epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely of his work. we know, in fact, to-day, that if all such details are made clear in the biography of a great writer, in no way do they explain his work. the author of _gil blas_, alain rené lesage, was a breton, like the author of _atala_; the corneille brothers had almost nothing in common. of all our great writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to jean-jacques rousseau, who died a victim to delirium from persecution, was madame sand, who had, without doubt, the sanest and best balanced temperament. other writers have sought,--for instance, our great classical authors, pascal, bossuet and perhaps corneille,--to influence the thought of their time; some, like molière, la fontaine, and la bruyère, to correct customs. others still,--such as our romantic writers, hugo or de musset,--desired only to express their personal conception of the world and of life. and then balzac, whose object,--almost scientific,--was to make a "natural history," a study and description, of the social species, as an animal or vegetable species is described in zoology or botany. gustave flaubert attempted only to work out his art, for and through the love of art. very early in life, as we clearly see from his correspondence, his consideration for art was not even that of a social but of a _sacred_ function, in which the artist was the priest. we hear sometimes, in metaphor and not without irony, of the "priesthood" of the artist and the "worship" of art. these expressions must be taken literally in flaubert's case. he was cloistered in his art as a monk in his convent or by his discipline; and he truly lived only in meditation upon that art, as a mystic in contemplation of the perfections of his god. nothing outside of art truly interested him, neither science, nor things political or religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy himself with them, it was never in a degree greater than could benefit his art. "the accidents of the world"--this is his own expression--appeared to him only as things permitted _for the sake of description_, so much so that his own existence, even, seemed to him to have no other excuse. it is that which explains the mixture of "romanticism," "naturalism," and i will add, of "classicism"--which has been pointed out more than once in flaubert's work. _madame bovary_ is the masterpiece of naturalistic romance and has not been surpassed by the studies of zola or the stories of de maupassant. on the other hand, there is nothing in hugo, even, more romantic than _the temptation of saint antony_. but it is necessary to look for many things in romanticism; and the romanticism of hugo, which was one of the delights of flaubert, did not resemble that of de musset, (lord de musset, as flaubert called him) which he strongly disliked. what he loved in romanticism was the "colour," and nothing but the colour. he loved the romanticism of the orientals, of hugo and chateaubriand, that plastic romanticism, whose object is to substitute in literature "sensations of art" for the "expression of ideas," or even of sentiments. it is precisely here that naturalism and romanticism--or at least french naturalism, which is very different from that of the russians or the english--join hands. in the one case, as in the other, the attempt is made to "represent"--as he himself puts it; and when one represents nothing except the vulgar, the common, the mediocre, the everyday, commonplace, or grotesque, he is a "naturalist," like the author of _madame bovary_; but one is a "romanticist" when, like the author of _salammbô_, he makes this world vanish, and recreates a strange land filled with byzantine or carthaginian civilization, with its barbaric luxury, its splendour of corruption, immoderate appetites, and monstrous deities. we have done wrong in considering flaubert a naturalist impeded by his romanticism, or a romanticist impenitent, irritated with himself because of his tendency to naturalism. he was both naturalist and romanticist. and in both he was an artist, so much of an artist (i say this without fear of contradiction) that he saw nothing in his art but "representation," the telling of the truth in all its depth and fidelity. _les fileuses_ and _la reddition de bréda_ are always by velasquez; but the genius of the painter has nothing in common with the subject he has chosen or the circumstances that inspired him. from this source proceeds that insensibility in flaubert with which he has so often been reproached, not without reason, and which divides his naturalism from that of the author of _adam bede_ or that of the author of _anna karenina_ by an abyss. honest, as a man, a good citizen, a good son, a good brother, a good friend, flaubert was indifferent, as an artist, to all that did not belong to his art. "i believe that it is necessary to love nothing," he has written somewhere, and even underscored it--that is to say, it is necessary to hover impartially above all objective points. and, in fact, as nothing passed before his eyes that he considered did not lie within the possibility of representation, he made it a law unto himself to look nothing in the face except from this point of view. in this regard one may compare his attitude in the presence of his model to that of his contemporaries, renan, for example, or taine, in the presence of the object of their studies. with them also critical impartiality resembles not only indifference but insensibility. not only have they refused to confound their emotions with their judgments, but their judgments have no value in their eyes except as they separate them from their emotions,--as they emancipate themselves from them or even place themselves in opposition to them. in like manner did flaubert. the first condition of an exact representation of things is to dominate them; and in order to dominate them, is it not necessary to begin by detaching yourself from them? we see dimly through tears, and we are too much absorbed in that which gives us pleasure to be good judges of it. "an ideal society would be one where each individual performed his duty according to his ability. now, then, i do my duty as best i can; i am forsaken.... no one pities my misfortunes; those of others occupy their attention! i give to humanity what it gives to me--_indifference!_" is not the link between flaubert's "indifference" and his conception of art evident here? but flaubert said besides: "living does not concern me! it is only necessary to shun suffering." should we not change the name of this to "egotism" or "insensibility?" we might, indeed, did we not know that this egotism germinated in flaubert as a means of discipline. the object of this discipline was to concentrate, for the profit of his art, those qualities or forces which the ordinary man dissipates in the pursuit of useless pleasures, or squanders in intensity of life. we may take account at the same time of the nature of his pessimism. for there are many ways of being a pessimist, and flaubert's was not at all like that of schopenhauer or leopardi. his pessimism, real and sincere, proceeded neither from personally grievous experiences of life, as did that of the recluse of recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical view of the conditions of existence in which humanity is placed, like the pessimism of the frankfort philosopher. flaubert was rather a victim of what théophile gautier, in his well-known _emaux et camées_, calls by the singularly happy name of "the luminous spleen of the orient." to tell the truth, what flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that it did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism was a consequence of his æstheticism. "as lovers of the beautiful," he tells us, "we are all outlaws! humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it because it wounds us! let us love, then, in art, as the mystics love their god; and let all pale before this love." these lines are dated , before he had published anything. therefore, flaubert did not express himself thus because he was not successful. his self-love was not in question! no one had yet criticised or discussed him. but he felt that his ideal of art, an art which he could not renounce, was opposed to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats that he must face at once exalted and exasperated him. his pessimism was of the élite, or rather the minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes himself to be, superior, and who, knowing well that he will always be in the minority, fears, and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. it is a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one would think, and taine, among others, said practically the same thing when he averred that "one writes only for one or two hundred people in europe, or in the world." it may be that this is too individual a case! a more liberal estimate would be that we write for all those who can comprehend us; that style has for its first object the increase of such a number; and, after that, if there still be those who cannot comprehend us, no reason for despair exists on our part or on theirs. let us follow, now, the consequences of this principle in flaubert's work, and see successively all that his work means, and the dogma of art which proceeds from it. at first you are tempted to believe that flaubert's work is diverse, though inconsiderable in volume; and, primarily do not see clearly the threads which unite the _education sentimentale_ with the _tentation de saint antoine_ or _salammbô_ with _madame bovary_. on the one side christian egypt, and on the other the france of , madame arnoux, rosanette, and frederick moreau, the orleanist carnival, and the "underwood" of fontainebleau. here, carthage, hamilcar, hannibal, narr' havas, the numidian hero, and spendius, the greek slave, the lions in bondage, the pomegranate trees which they sprinkled with silphium, the whole a strange and barbaric world; then charles bovary, the chemist homais, his son napoléon and his daughter athalie, provincial life in the time of the second empire; _bourgeois_ adultery, _diligences_ and notaries' clerks. then again herodias, salome, saint jean-baptiste, or saint julien l'hospitalier, the middle ages and antiquity,--all, at first sight, seem far removed, one from the other. at first one must admire, in such a contrast of subjects and colors, the extraordinary skill, let us say the _virtuosité_, of the artist. but, if we look more closely, we shall not be slow to perceive that no work is more homogeneous than that of flaubert, and that, in truth, the _education sentimentale_, differs from _salammbô_ only as a kermesse of rubens, for example, or a bacchante of poussin differs from the apotheoses or the church pictures of the painters themselves. the making is the same, and you immediately recognise the hand. the difference is in the choice of subjects, which is of no importance, since flaubert is only attempting to "represent" something, and in the choice of material, when he is "representing," he is no longer free. that is the reason why, if one seek for lessons in "naturalism" in _salammbô_, he will find them, and will also find all the "romanticism" he seeks in the _education sentimentale_ and in _madame bovary_. from the other lessons that flow from this work, i find some in rhetoric, in art, in invention, in composition, and two or three of great import, eloquent in their bearing upon the history of contemporary french literature. a master does not mingle or engage his personality in his subject; but, as a god creates from the height of his serenity, without passion, if without love, so the poet or the artist expands the thing he touches, and, on each occasion, brings to bear upon it all the faculties that are his by toil but not innate. nothing is demanded of the workers, and they make no confessions or confidences. literature and art are not, nor should be, the expression of men's emotions, and still less the history of their lives. that is the reason why, while from reading _rené_, for example, or _fraziella_, _delphine_, _corinne_, _adolphe_, _indiana_, _volupté_, or some of the romances of balzac--_la muse du departement_, or _un grand homme de province à paris_,--you could induct balzac's entire psychology, or sainte-beuve's, or madame sand's, benjamin constant's, madame de staël's or chateaubriand's, you would find in _madame bovary_ or _salammbô_ nothing of flaubert, except his temperament, his taste, and his ideals as an artist. let us suppose another flaubert, who did not live at rouen, whose life is not that related in his correspondence, who was not the friend of maxime ducamp or of louise colet, and the _education sentimentale_ or the _tentation de saint antoine_ would not be in the least different from what they are now, nor should we see one line of change to be made. this is a triumph in objective art. "i do not wish to consider art as an overflow of passion," he wrote once, a little brutally. "i love my little niece as if she were my daughter, and i am sufficiently active in her behalf to prove that these are not empty phrases. but may i be flayed alive rather than exploit that kind of thing in style!" it has been but a short hundred years since, as he expressed it, romanticism "exploited its emotions in style," and made art from the heart. "ah! strike upon the heart, 'tis there that genius lies!" but, for a whole generation, _madame bovary_, _salammbô_ and _education sentimentale_ have been teaching the contrary. "the author in his work should be like god in the universe, everywhere present but nowhere visible. art being second nature, the creator of this nature should act through analogous procedure. he must be felt in each atom, under every aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon the spectator should be a kind of amazement." furthermore, he remarks that this principle was the core of greek art. i know not, or at least i do not recall, whether he had observed (as he should, since anglo-saxons have been quick to notice it) that this "principle" underlies the art of shakespeare. to realize this principle in work you must proceed scientifically, and, in this connection, we may notice that flaubert's idea is that of leconte de lisle in the preface to his _poèmes antiques_, and of taine in his lectures upon _l'idéal dans l'art_. romanticism had confounded the picturesque with the anecdotal; character with accident; colour with oddity. _han d'islande_, _nôtre-dame de paris_ and some romances of balzac, the first and poorest, not signed with his name, may serve as an example. the classic writers on their side, had not always distinguished very profoundly the difference between the general and the universal, the principal and the accessory, the permanent and the superficial. we see this in the french comedies of the eighteenth century, even in some of molière's--in his _l'avare_ and his _le misanthrope_, for example. flaubert believed that a means of terminating this conflict is to be found in method; and that is the reason why, if we confine ourselves wholly to the consideration of the medium in his works, we shall find the _tentation de saint antoine_ entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation, nothing is more classic than _madame bovary_. the reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever it was, carthaginian or low norman, refined or _bourgeois_, modern or antique, he saw only the subject itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly the plant or the animal under observation. there is no sentiment in botany or in chemistry, and in them the desideratum is truth. singleness of aim is the primary virtue in a _savant_. things are what they are, and we demand of him that he show them to us as they are. we accuse him of lying if he disguises, weakens, alters or embellishes them. likewise the artist! his function is ever to "represent:" and in order to accomplish this, he should, like the savant, mirror only the facts. after this, what do the names "romanticism" or "classicism" signify? their sole use is to indicate the side taken; they are, so to speak, an acknowledgment that the writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to represent. he may make it more universal or more characteristic than nature! but, inversely, if all art is concentrated upon the representation, what matters the subject? is one animal or plant more interesting than another to the naturalist? does a name matter? all demand the same attention. art can make exception in its subjects no more than science. if we ask in what consists the difference between science and art, on this basis, flaubert, with leconte de lisle and with taine, will tell us that it is in the beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or in the power of form. "what i have just written might be taken for something of paul de kock's, had i not given it a profoundly literary form," wrote flaubert, while he was at work on _madame bovary_; "but how, out of trivial dialogue, produce style? yet it is absolutely necessary! it must be done!" he went further still, and persuaded himself that style had a value in itself, intrinsic and absolute, aside from the subject. in fact, if the subject had no importance of its own, and if there were no personal motives for choosing one subject rather than another, what reason would there be for writing _madame bovary_ or _salammbô_? one alone: and that to "make something out of nothing," to produce a work of art from things of no import. for though everyone has some ideas, and everyone has had experience in some kind of life, it is given to few to be able to express their experience or their ideas in terms of beauty. this, precisely, is the goal of art. form, then, is the great preoccupation of the artist, since, if he is an artist, it is through form, and in the perfection or originality of that form, that his triumph comes. nothing stands out from the general mediocrity except by means of form; nothing becomes concrete, assuming immortality, save through form. form in art is queen and sovereign. even truth makes itself felt only through the attractiveness of form. and further, we cannot part one from the other; they are not opposed to each other; they are at one; and art in every phase consists only in this union. it is the end of art to give the superior life of form to that which has it not; and finally, this superior life of form, this magic wand of style, rhythmic as verse and terse as science, by firmly establishing the thing it touches, withdraws it from that law of change, constant in its inconstancy, which is the miserable condition of existence. all passes; art in its strength alone remains to all eternity; the bust survives the city. this it is that makes up the charm, the social dignity, and the lasting grandeur of art. this is not the place to discuss the "æsthetic" quality, and i shall content myself with indicating briefly some of the objections it has called forth. has form indeed all the importance in literature that flaubert claimed for it? and what importance has it in sculpture, for example, or in painting? let us grant its necessity. colour and line, which are, so to speak, the primal elements in the alphabet of painting and of sculpture, have not in themselves determined and precise significance. yellow and red, green and blue are only general and confused sensations. but words express particular sentiments and well-defined ideas, and have a value that does not depend upon the form or the quality of the words. you cannot, then, in using them, distinguish between significance and form, or combine them independently of the idea they are intended to convey, as is possible with colours and with lines, solely for the beauty that results from combination. if literary art is a "representation," it is also something more; and the lapse in flaubert, as in all those who have followed him in the letter, lies in having missed this distinction. you cannot write merely to represent; you write also to express ideas, to determine or to modify convictions; you write that you may act, or impel others to act: these are effects beyond the power of painting or of sculpture. a statue or a picture never brought about a revolution; a book, a pamphlet, nay, a few fiery words, have overturned a dynasty. it is no longer true, as a whole generation of writers has believed, that art and science may be one and the same thing; or that the first, as taine has said, may be an "anticipation of the second." we could not in the presence of our fellow-creatures and their suffering affect the indifference of a naturalist before the plant or the animal he is studying. whatever the nature of "human phenomena" may be, we in our quality as man can only look at them with human eyes, and could temptation make us change our point of view, it would properly be called inhuman. one might add that, if it is not certain that nature was made for man, and if, for that reason, science is wholly independent of conscience, as we take it, it is otherwise with art. we know that man was not made for art, but that art was made for man. we forget each time we speak of "art for art's sake" that there is need precisely to define the meaning of the expression and to recall that but for truth art could not have for its object the perfecting of political institutions, the uplifting of the masses, the correction of customs, the teachings of religion, and that although this may lead finally to the realization of beauty, it nevertheless remains the duty of man, and consequently, is human in its origin, human in its development, and human in its aim. upon all these points, it is only necessary to think sensibly, as also upon the question--which we have not touched upon,--of knowing under what conditions, in what sense, and in what degree the person of the artist can or should remain foreign to his work. but a peculiarity of flaubert's,--and one more personal, which even most of the naturalists have not shared with him, neither the dutch in their paintings, nor the english in the history of romance (the author of _tom jones_ or of _clarissa harlowe_), nor the russians, tolstoi or dostoiefski,--is to despise the rôle of irony in art. "my personages are profoundly repugnant to me," he wrote, _à propos_ of _madame bovary_. but they were not always repugnant to him, at least not all of them, and, in verification of this, we find that he has not for spendius, matho, hamilcar, and hanno, the boundless scorn that he affects for homais or for bournisien, for bouvard or for pecuchet. we recognise here the particular and special form of flaubert's pessimism. that there could be people in the world, among his contemporaries, who were not wholly absorbed and preoccupied with art, surpassed his comprehension, and when this indifference did not arouse an indignation which exasperated him even to blows, it drew from him a scornful laughter that one might call homeric or rabelaisian, since it incited more to anger than to gaiety. and this is the reason why _madame bovary_, _education sentimentale_, _un coeur simple_, and _bouvard et pecuchet_ would be more truly named were they called satires and not representations. the exaggeration of the principle here recoils upon itself. that disinterestedness, that impartiality, that serenity which permitted him to "hover impartially above all objects" deserted him. a satirist, or to be more exact, a caricaturist, awoke within the naturalist. he raged at his own characters. he railed at them and mocked them. the interest of the representation had undergone a change. he was no longer in the attitude of mere fidelity to facts, but in a state of scorn and violent derision. homais and bournisien are no longer studies in themselves, but a burden to flaubert. his _education sentimentale_, in spite of him, became, to use his own expression, an overflow of rancour. in _bouvard et pecuchet_ he gave way to his hatred of humanity; here, as a favour, and under the mask of irony, he brings himself into his work, and, like a simple madame sand, or a vulgar de musset, we perceive flaubert himself, bull-necked and ruddy, with the moustaches of a gallic chief, agonizing at each turn in the romance. it is not necessary to exaggerate flaubert's influence. in his time there were ten other writers, none of whom equalled him,--parnassians in poetry, positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in dramatic writing,--who laboured at the same work. his æstheticism is not his alone, yet _madame bovary_ and _salammbô_ shot like unexpected meteors out of a grey sky, the dull, low sky of the second empire. in the sky was not so grey or so low; and the _poèmes antiques_ of leconte de lisle, the _Études d'histoire religieuse_ of renan, and the _essais de critique_ of taine, are possibly not unworthy to be placed in parallel or comparison with the first writings of flaubert. an exquisite judge of things of the mind, j. j. weiss, very clearly saw at that time what there was in common in all these works, in the glory of which he was not deceived when he added the _fleurs du mai_ by charles baudelaire, and the first comedies of alexandre dumas _fils_. but the truth is, not one of these works was marked with signs of masterly maturity in like degree with _madame bovary_. it is, then, natural that, from day to day, flaubert should become a guide, and here, if we consider the nature of the lessons he gives, we cannot deny their towering excellence. if there was need to agitate against romanticism, _madame bovary_ performed the duty; and if in this agitation there was need to save what was worth salvation, _salammbô_ saved it. if it was fitting to recall to poets and to writers of romance, to madame sand herself and victor hugo, that art was not invented as a public carrier for their confidences, it is still flaubert who does it. he taught the school of hasty writers that talent, or even genius, is in need of discipline,--the discipline of a long and painful prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their work. he has widened, and especially has he hollowed and deepened, the notion that romanticism was born of nature, and, in doing this, has brought art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. his rhetoric and æstheticism brought him face to face with nature, enabled him to see her, a gift as rare as it is great, and to "represent" her--the proof of the preceding. it is the artist that judges the model. poets and romance-writers, like painters, we value only in as much as they represent life--by and for the fidelity, the originality, the novelty, the depth, the distinction, the perfection with which they represent it. it is the rule of rules, the principle of principles! and if flaubert had no other merit than to have seen this better than any other writer of his age, it would be enough to assure for him a place, and a very exalted place, in the pantheon of french literature. f. brunetiÈre biographical preface gustave flaubert was born at rouen, december , . his father was a physician, who later became chief surgeon in the hôtel dieu of that city, and his mother, anne-justine-carline fleuriot, was of norman extraction. fourth of a family of six children, as a child flaubert exhibited marked fondness for stories, and, with his favourite sister, caroline, would invent them for pastime. as a youth, he was exceedingly handsome, tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, of independent turn of mind, fond of study, and caring little for the luxuries of life. he attended the college of rouen, but showed no marked characteristic save a pronounced taste for history. after graduating, he went to paris to read law, at the École de droit. at this time disease, the nature of which he always endeavored to conceal from the world, attacked him and compelled a return to rouen. the complaint, as revealed after his death by maxime ducamp, was epilepsy, and the constant fear of suffering an attack in public led flaubert to live the life of a recluse. the death of his father occurring at this critical period, flaubert abandoned the study of law, which he had begun only in obedience to the formally expressed wish of his family. having a comfortable income, he turned his thoughts to literature, and from that time all other work was distasteful. he read and wrote incessantly, although at this period he never completed anything. among his papers were found several fragments written between his eighteenth and twentieth years. some bear the stamp of his individuality, if not in the substance, which is romantic,--at least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise,--for instance, the slight, romantic, autobiographic sketch entitled _novembre_. flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame. to him, art was religion, and to it he sacrificed his life. perfection of style was his goal; and unremitting devotion to his ideal slew him. that he was never satisfied with what he wrote, his letters show; and all who knew him marvelled at his laborious and pathetic application to his work. he settled first in croisset, near rouen, with his family, but shortly afterwards went to brittany with maxime ducamp. on his return he planned _la tentation de saint antoine_, which grew out of a fragmentary sketch entitled _smarh_ (a mediæval mystery, the manuscript tells us), written in early youth. _la tentation_ proved a source of labor, for he never ceased revising it until it appeared in book form in . in , he wrote a modern play, entitled _le candidat_, produced in at the vaudeville. it was not his first dramatic effort, as he had already written a sort of lyric fairy-play, _le château des coeurs_, which was published in his _oeuvres posthumes_. in flaubert visited greece, egypt, and syria, again accompanied by his friend maxime ducamp. after his return he planned a book of impressions similar to _par les champs et par les grèves_, which was the result of the trip to brittany; but the beginning only was achieved. still he gathered many data for his future great novel, _salammbô_. the year found him back in croisset, working at _la tentation de saint antoine_, which he dropped suddenly, when half finished, for an entirely different subject--_madame bovary_, a novel of provincial life, published first in in the _revue de paris_. for this flaubert was prosecuted, on the charge of offending against public morals, but was acquitted after the remarkable defense offered by maître senard. flaubert's fame dates from _madame bovary_, which was much discussed by press and public. many, including his friend, maxime ducamp, condemned it, but sainte-beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval. it was generally considered, however, as the starting point of a new phase in letters, frankly realistic, and intent on understanding and expressing everything. such success might have influenced flaubert's artistic inclinations but did not, for while _madame bovary_ was appearing in the _revue de paris_, the _artiste_ was publishing fragments of _la tentation de saint antoine_. in flaubert went to tunis, visited the site of ancient carthage, and four years afterwards wrote _salammbô_, a marvellous reconstitution, more than half intuitive, of a civilisation practically unrecorded in history. this extraordinary book did not call forth the enthusiasm that greeted _madame bovary_. flaubert, in whom correctness of detail was a passion, was condemned, even by sainte-beuve, for choosing from all history a civilisation of which so little is known. the author replied, and a lengthy controversy ensued, but it was not a subject that could be settled definitely in one way or another. in _l'education sentimentale, roman d'un jeune homme_, published in , flaubert returns momentarily to the style which brought him such rapid and deserved celebrity. in appeared _trois contes_, three short stories written in the impersonal style of _salammbô_, contrasting strangely with _la legende de saint julien l'hospitalier_ and _herodias_, wherein flaubert shows himself supreme in the art of word-painting. death came to him on may , , as he was writing the last chapters of a new work, _bouvard et pecuchet_, which was published in part after he died and later appeared in book form ( ). at the age of twenty-five, flaubert met the only woman who in any way entered his sentimental life. she was an author, the wife of lucien colet, and the "madame x" of the correspondence. their friendship lasted eight years and ended unpleasantly, flaubert being too absorbed by his worship for art to let passion sway him. he remained unmarried because his love for his mother and family made calls upon him that he would not neglect. he was indifferent to women, treated them with paternal indulgence, and often avowed that "woman is the undoing of the just." yet a warm friendship existed between him and george sand, and many of his letters are addressed to her, touching upon various questions in art, literature, and politics. the misanthropy which haunted flaubert, of which so much has been said, was not innate, but was acquired through the constant contemplation of human folly. it was natural for him to be cheerful and kind-hearted, and of his generosity and disinterestedness not enough can be said. at the close of his life financial difficulties assailed him, for he had given a great part of his fortune to the support of a niece, restricting his own expenses and living as modestly as possible. in , m. jules ferry, then minister of public instruction, offered him a place in the bibliothèque mazarine, but the appointment was not confirmed. flaubert's method of production was slow and laborious. sometimes weeks were required to write a few pages, for he accumulated masses of notes and, it must be said, so much erudition as at times to impede action. he thought no toil too great, did it but aid him in his pursuit of literary perfection, and when the work that called for such expenditure of strength and thought was finished, he looked for no reward save that of a satisfied soul. alien to business wisdom, he believed that to set a price upon his work disparaged it. in flaubert, a romanticist and a naturalist at first were blended. but the latter tendency was fostered and acknowledged, while the former was repressed. he was an ardent advocate of the impersonal in art, declaring that an author should not in a page, a line, or a word, express the smallest part of an opinion. to him a writer was a mirror, but a mirror that reflected life while adding that divine effulgence which is art. of him a french romanticist still living says: "imagination was espoused by unremitting-toil-in-faith and bore flaubert. france fed the child, but art stepped in and gave him to the nations as a beacon for the worshippers of truth-in-letters-and-in-life." the city of rouen reared a monument to flaubert's memory, but on the spot where he breathed his last are reared the chimneys and the buildings of a factory, a tribute--possibly unconscious--to reality in life. before writing _madame bovary_ flaubert had tested himself, and an idea of the scope and variety of his ideas may be gained from the following list of inedited and unfinished fragments: historical the death of the due de guise, norman chronicle of the tenth century, two hands on a crown, or, during the fifteenth century, . essay on the struggle between priesthood and empire, . rome and the cæsars, . travels various notes on travels to the pyrenean mountains, corsica, spain and the orient, from to . tales and novels the plague in florence, rage and impotence, the society woman, fantastic verses, bibliomania, an exquisite perfume, or, the buffoons, . dreams of the infernal regions, passion and chastity, the funeral of dr. mathurin, or, during the xvth century, . frenzy and death, sentimental education (not the novel published under same title). . plays louis xi, drama, discovery of vaccination, a parody of tragic style; one act only was written. criticisms on romantic literature in france miscellany quidquid volueris? a psychological study, . agony (sceptical thoughts), art and commerce, . several nameless sketches. unfortunately, nearly all the works of flaubert's youth were mere sketches, laid aside by him. their publication would have added nothing to his fame. still, the loss of some would have been deplorable, to wit, such gems as _novembre_, _the dance of death_, _rabelais_, and the travels, _over strand and field_. these sketches will be found in this edition. robert arnot madame bovary part i. i. the new boy. we were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. the head-master made a sign to us to sit down. then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice: "monsieur roger, here is a pupil whom i recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. if his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age." the "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. his hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the armholes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. his legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces. he wore stout, ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots. we began repeating the lesson. he listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us. when we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the floor so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing." but, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow" was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. it was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton nightcap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long, thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. the cap was new; its peak shone. "rise," said the master. he stood up; his cap fell. the whole class began to laugh. he stooped to pick it up. a neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more. "get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag. there was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the floor, or put it on his head. he sat down again and placed it on his knee. "rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name." the new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name. "again!" the same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of the class. "louder!" cried the master; "louder!" the "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling some one the word, "charbovari." a hubbub broke out, rose in _crescendo_ with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "charbovari! charbovari!"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh. however, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of "charles bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. he got up, but before going hesitated. "what are you looking for?" asked the master. "my c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round him. "five hundred verses for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice, stopped, like the _quos ego_, a fresh outburst "silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he had just taken from his cap. "as to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate '_ridiculus sum_' twenty times." then, in a gentler tone, "come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't been stolen." quiet was restored. heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. but he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered. in the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. we saw him working conscientiously, looking out every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. but though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. it was the curé of his village who had taught him his first latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible. his father, monsieur charles denis bartolomé bovary, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about in certain conscription scandals, and forced at that time to leave the service, had then taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his good looks. a fine man, a great talker, making his spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache, his fingers always garnished with rings, and dressed in loud colors, he had the dash of a military man with the easy air of a commercial traveller. once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theater, and haunting cafés. the father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money. but, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better to give up all speculation. for two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the provinces of caux and picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck, jealous of every one, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live in peace. his wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. lively once, expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. she had suffered so much without complaint at first, when she had seen him going after all the village drabs, and when a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. then her pride revolted. after that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. she was constantly going about looking after business matters. she called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home, ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders. when she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. when he came home, the lad was spoiled as if he were a prince. his mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. as opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a spartan, to give him a strong constitution. he sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum, and to jeer at religious processions. but, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. his mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. in her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. she dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. she taught him to read, and even on an old piano she had taught him two or three little songs. but to all this monsieur bovary, caring little for letters, said: "it is not worth while. shall we ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or to start him in business? besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." madame bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village. he went after the laborers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. he ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fêtes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong of hand, fresh of color. when he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began his lessons. the curé took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. they were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the curé, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the _angelus_. they went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. it was close, the child fell asleep and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. on other occasions, when monsieur le curé, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight of charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour, and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. the rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. all the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory. charles could not go on like this. madame bovary took strong steps. ashamed, or rather tired out, monsieur bovary gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion. six months more passed, and the year after charles was finally sent to school at rouen, whither his father took him towards the end of october, at the time of the st. romain fair. it would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. he was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. he had _in loco parentis_ a wholesale ironmonger in the rue ganterie, who took him out once a month on sundays after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before supper. every thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or read an old volume of "anarchasis" that was knocking about the study. when we went for walks he talked to the servant who, like himself, came from the country. by dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once even he got a certificate in natural history. but at the end of his third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself. his mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she knew, overlooking the eau-de-robec. she made arrangements for his board, got him furniture, a table and two chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child. then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be good, now that he was going to be left to himself. the syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him: lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics, without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness. he understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did not follow. still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all the courses, never missed a single lecture. he did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work he is doing. to spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, on which he lunched when he came back from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. after this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. in the evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room and set to work again in his wet clothes, that smoked as he sat in front of the hot stove. on the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are empty, when the servants are playing shuttlecock at the doors, he opened his window and leaned out. the river, that makes of this quarter of rouen a wretched little venice, flowed beneath him, between the bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. working men, kneeling on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. on poles projecting from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. opposite, beyond the roofs, spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. how pleasant it must be at home! how fresh under the beech-tree! and he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odors of the country which did not reach him. he grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look that made it almost interesting. naturally, through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had made. once he missed a lecture; the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little he gave up work altogether. he got into the habit of going to the public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. to shut himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the small sheep-bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. it was beginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. then many things hidden within him come out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to his boon companions, became enthusiastic about béranger, learnt how to make punch, and, finally, how to make love. thanks to these preparatory labors, he failed completely in his examination for an ordinary degree. he was expected home the same night to celebrate his success. he started on foot, stopped at the beginning of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. she excused him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight. it was only five years later that monsieur bovary knew the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it. moreover, he could not believe that a man born of him could be a fool. so charles set to work again and crammed for his examination, ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. he passed pretty well. what a happy day for his mother! they gave a grand dinner. where should he go to practise? to tostes, where there was only one old doctor. for a long time madame bovary had been on the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when charles was installed, opposite his place, as his successor. but it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him taught medicine, and discovered tostes, where he could practise it; he must have a wife. she found him one--the widow of a bailiff at dieppe, who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs. though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds, madame dubuc had no lack of suitors. to attain her ends madame bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a pork-butcher backed up by the priests. charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. but his wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast every friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients who did not pay. she opened his letters, watched his comings and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his surgery. she must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. she constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. the noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. when charles returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting her, he loved another. she had been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little more love. ii. a good patient. one night toward eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a horse pulling up outside their door. the servant opened the garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below. he came for the doctor, had a letter for him. nastasie came downstairs shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. the man left his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. he pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag and presented it gingerly to charles, who rested his elbow on the pillow to read it. nastasie, standing near the bed, held the light. madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back. this letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged monsieur bovary to come immediately to the farm of the bertaux to set a broken leg. now from tostes to the bertaux was a good eighteen miles across country by way of longueville and saint-victor. it was a dark night; madame bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. so it was decided the stable-boy should go on first; charles would start three hours later when the moon rose. a boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him. towards four o'clock in the morning, charles, well wrapped up in his cloak, set out for the bertaux. still sleepy from the warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. when it stopped of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that are dug on the margin of furrows, charles awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures he knew. the rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers bristling in the cold morning wind. the flat country stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violet stains on the vast gray surface, that on the horizon faded into the gloom of the sky, charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein his recent sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation theater as of old. the warm smell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh odor of dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed, and saw his wife sleeping. as he passed vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch. "are you the doctor?" asked the child. and on charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on in front of him. the general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk that monsieur rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers. he had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a twelfth-night feast at a neighbor's. his wife had been dead for two years. there was only his daughter, who helped him to keep house, with him. the ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the bertaux. the little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. the horse slipped on the wet grass; charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. the watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their chains. as he entered the bertaux the horse took fright and stumbled. it was a substantial-looking farm. in the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys five or six peacocks, a luxury in chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it. the sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your hand. under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts, and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. the courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond. a young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the threshold of the door to receive monsieur bovary, whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. the servants' breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. some damp clothes were drying inside the chimney-corner. the shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the window, was mirrored fitfully. charles went up to the first floor to see the patient. he found him in his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap far away from him. he was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin and blue eyes, the fore part of his head was bald, and he wore ear-rings. near him on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured himself out a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, he began to groan feebly. the fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication. charles could not have hoped for an easier case. then calling to mind the devices of his masters at the bedside of patients, he comforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put on bistouries. in order to make some splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. charles selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment of window-pane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and mademoiselle emma tried to sew some pads. as she was a long time before she found her workcase, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck. charles was much surprised at the whiteness of her nails. they were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of dieppe, and almond-shaped. yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. her real beauty was in her eyes. although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness. the bandaging over, the doctor was invited by monsieur rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left. charles went down into the room on the ground-floor. knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing turks. there was an odor of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. on the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. these were the overflow from the neighboring granary, to which three stone steps led. by way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint had scaled off from the effects of saltpeter, was a crayon head of minerva in a gold frame, underneath which was written in gothic letters "to dear papa." first they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night. mademoiselle rouault did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. as the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. this showed something of her full lips, that she had a habit of biting when silent. her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. her hair, whose two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. the upper part of her cheek was rose-colored. she had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. when charles, after bidding farewell to old rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. she turned round. "are you looking for anything?" she asked. "my whip, if you please," he answered. he began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. it had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. mademoiselle emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. charles, out of politeness, made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. she drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip. instead of returning to the bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident. everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favorably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," monsieur bovary began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. old rouault said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of yvetot, or even of rouen. as to charles, he did not stay to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the bertaux. had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of his life? on these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. he liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. he liked the granary and the stables; he liked old rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his savior; he liked the small wooden shoes of mademoiselle emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots. she always reconducted him to the first step of the stairs. when his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. they had said "good-bye;" there was no more talking. the open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips her apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. once, during a thaw, the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. the sunshade, of silk of the color of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. she smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk. during the first period of charles's visits to the bertaux, madame bovary, junior, never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for monsieur rouault. but when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt that mademoiselle rouault, brought up at the ursuline convent, had received what is called "a good education;" and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider and play the piano. that was the last straw. "so it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain. ah! that woman! that woman!" and she detested her instinctively. at first she solaced herself by allusions that charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "why did he go back to the bertaux now that monsieur rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who knew how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. that was what he cared about; he wanted town misses." and she went on: "the daughter of old rouault a town miss! get out! their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. it is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on sundays in a silk gown, like a countess. besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears." for very weariness charles left off going to the bertaux. héloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more, after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. he obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naïve hypocrisy, that this interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. and then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over gray stockings. charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. it was wrong of him to eat so much. why did he always offer a glass of something to every one who came? what obstinacy not to wear flannels! in the spring it came about that a notary at ingouville, the holder of the widow dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. héloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the rue st. françois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. the matter had to be gone into. the house at dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary god only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. she had lied, the good lady! in his exasperation, monsieur bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused the misfortune of their son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. they came to tostes. explanations followed. there were scenes. héloise in tears, throwing her arms about her husband, conjured him to defend her from his parents. charles tried to speak up for her. they grew angry and left the house. but the blow had struck home. a week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while charles had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "o god!" gave a sigh and fainted. she was dead! what a surprise! when all was over at the cemetery, charles went home. he found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. she had loved him, after all! iii. a lonely widower. one morning old rouault brought charles the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. he had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could. "i know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "i've been through it. when i lost my dear departed, i went into the fields to be quite alone. i fell at the foot of a tree; i cried; i called on god; i talked nonsense to him. i wanted to be like the moles that i saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. and when i thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, i struck great blows on the earth with my stick. i was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a café disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, i should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom, as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. but since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. you must pull yourself together, monsieur bovary. it will pass away. come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. spring will soon be here. we'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit." charles followed his advice. he went back to the bertaux. he found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. the pear trees were already in blossom, and farmer rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life. thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. he told stories. charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her. he thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. the new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. he could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself full length on his bed. so he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. on the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "the poor young man! what a loss!" his name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and, moreover, he could go to the bertaux just as he liked. he had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass. one day he got there about three o'clock. everybody was in the fields. he went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of emma; the outside shutters were closed. through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. the daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. between the window and the hearth emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. after the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. he said no; she insisted and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. so she went to fetch a bottle of curaçoa from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after clinking their glasses, carried hers to her mouth. as it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. she laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass. she sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. she worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did charles. the air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs. she complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, charles of his school; words came to them. they went up into her bedroom. she showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. she spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. but their gardeners had understood nothing about it; servants were so careless. she would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. and, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden, all languor, lingering out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself; now joyous, opening big, naïve eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering. going home at night, charles went over her words, one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. but he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom? alas! old rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! but emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "if you should marry, after all! if you should marry!" at night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. he got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. the night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. he turned his head toward the bertaux. thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips. old rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. in his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. he did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. he liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, _glorias_[ ] well beaten up. he took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid, as on the stage. [footnote : a mixture of coffee and spirits.--trans.] when, therefore, he perceived that charles's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. he certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well-conducted, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. now, as old rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "if he asks for her," he said to himself, "i'll give her to him." at michaelmas charles went to spend three days at the bertaux. the last had passed like the others, in procrastinating from hour to hour. old rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. this was the time. charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it: "monsieur rouault," he murmured, "i should like to say something to you." they stopped. charles was silent. "well, tell me your story. don't i know all about it?" said old rouault, laughing softly. "monsieur rouault--monsieur rouault," stammered charles. "i ask nothing better," the farmer went on. "although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. so you get off--i'll go back home. if it is 'yes,' you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. but so that you mayn't be eating your heart, i'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge." and he went off. charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. half-an-hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging. the next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. old rouault embraced his future son-in-law. the discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year. the winter passed waiting for this. mademoiselle rouault was busy with her trousseau. part of it was ordered at rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. when charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be the entrées. emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old rouault could not understand such an idea. so there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following. iv. consolation. the guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, wagonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. some came from a distance of thirty miles, from goderville, from normanville, and from cany. all the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. from time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. they got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. the ladies wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little colored fichus fastened down behind with a pin, that left the back of the neck bare. the lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day handselled their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a word, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion, were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose-pomade, and very much afraid of soiling their gloves. as there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. according to their different social positions, they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting-jackets, cutaway-coats: fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that came out of the wardrobe only on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting-jackets of coarse cloth, usually worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very far down with a worked belt. and the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! every one had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaven; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air _en route_ had inflamed, so that the great, white, beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. the _mairie_ was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. the procession, first united like one long colored scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up in different groups that loitered to talk. the fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons in its pegs. then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing among themselves unseen. emma's skirt, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. old rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to madame bovary, senior. as to monsieur bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. she bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. the other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. when he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. the noise of the instrument drove the little birds far away. the table was laid under the cart-shed. on it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassées, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast sucking-pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. at the corners were decanters of brandy. sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. a confectioner of yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. as he had only just set up in the place, he had taken great trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. to begin with, at its base was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches were constellations of gilt paper stars; on the second stage was a dungeon of savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper layer was a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing, whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top. until night they ate. when any of them were too tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the granary, and then returned to table. toward the finish some went to sleep and snored. but with the coffee every one woke up. then they began songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the women. at night when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins. those who stayed at the bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen. the children had fallen asleep under the seats. the bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage pleasantries. however, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole, when old rouault came up just in time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. the cousin all the same did not give in to these reasons readily. in his heart he accused old rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints hoping he would ruin himself. madame bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. she had been consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. her husband, instead of following her, sent to saint-victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. this added greatly to the consideration in which he was held. charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding. he answered feebly to the puns, _doubles entendres_, compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup appeared. the next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. it was he who might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. the shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. but charles concealed nothing. he called her "my wife," _tutoyéd_ her, asked for her of every one, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards where he could be seen from afar, among the trees putting his arm round her waist, and walking half bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head. two days after the wedding the married pair left. charles, on account of his patients, could not be away longer. old rouault had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as vassonville. here he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way. when he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near christmas-time, and the country was all white. she held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her cauchois head-dress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. to warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. how long ago it all was! their son would have been thirty by now. then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. he felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. as he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went directly home. monsieur and madame charles arrived at tostes about six o'clock. the neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife. the old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should look over her house. v. the new mÉnage. the brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road. behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor in a corner, were a pair of leggings still covered with dry mud. on the right was the one apartment that was both dining and sitting room. a canary-yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly-stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crosswise the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks under oval shades. on the other side of the passage was charles's consulting-room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an office-chair. volumes of the "dictionary of medical science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost alone the six shelves of a deal bookcase. the smell of melted butter penetrated the thin walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in the consulting-room and recounting their whole histories. then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess. the garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. in the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower-beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen-garden bed. at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a curé in plaster reading his breviary. emma went upstairs. the first room was not furnished, but in the second, which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery. a shell-box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in a bottle. it was a bride's bouquet; it was the other one's. she looked at it. charles noticed it; he took it and carried it up to the attic, while emma, seated in an armchair (they were putting her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she were to die. during the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in the house. she took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wall-paper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. finally, her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a second-hand dog-cart, which, with new lamps and a splash-board in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury. he was happy then, and without a care in the world. a meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and many another thing in which charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the endless round of his happiness. in bed, in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her nightcap. seen thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different colors, that, darker in the center, grew paler toward the surface of the eye. his own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open. he rose. she came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing-gown hanging loosely about her. charles in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out at him. then this, eddying, floating, described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless at the door. charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. and then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbors, along paths where the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are digesting. until now what good had he had of his life? his time at school, when he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs? or later, when he studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress? afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. but now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored. for him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her. he wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beating heart. emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry. he could not keep from continually touching her comb, her rings, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you. before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. and emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words _felicity_, _passion_, _rapture_, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books. vi. a maiden's yearnings. she had read "paul and virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger domingo, the dog fidèle, but above all the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest. when she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. they stopped at an inn in the st. gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the story of mademoiselle de la vallière. the explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court. far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. she played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered monsieur le vicaire's difficult questions. living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the class-rooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. she tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. she puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill. when she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. the comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. in the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. on week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the lectures of the abbé frayssinous, and on sundays passages from the "génie du christianisme," as a recreation. how she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing through the world and eternity! if her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. but she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. she loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. she wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. at the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. the girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. she knew by heart the love-songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. she told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. they were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, somber forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. for six months, then, emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. with walter scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. she would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted châtelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. at this time she had a cult for mary stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. joan of arc, héloise, agnès sorel, the beautiful ferronnière, and clémence isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow and all unconnected, st. louis with his oak, the dying bayard, some cruelties of louis xi, a little of st. bartholomew's, the plume of the béarnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honor of louis xiv. in the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;--mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. these had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. she trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of english ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage, driven at a trot by two small postilions in white breeches. others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. the naïve ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. and you too were there, sultans with long pipes, reclining beneath arbors in the arms of bayadères; djiaours, turkish sabers, greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. and the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the boulevards. when her mother died she cried much the first few days. she had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried some day in the same grave. the goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. she let herself glide along with lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the eternal discoursing down the valleys. she wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. the good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that mademoiselle rouault seemed to be slipping from them. they had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses: she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. this nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. when her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. the lady superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. emma at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. when charles came to the bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. but the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-colored wings, had hung in the splendor of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed. vii. disillusion. she thought sometimes that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. to taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. in post-chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep roads, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon-trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. it seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, that cannot thrive elsewhere. why could not she lean over balconies in swiss châlets, or enshrine her melancholy in a scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to some one. but how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? words failed her--the opportunity, the courage. if charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. but as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him. charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every one's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. he had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from paris. he could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel. a man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? but this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. he thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him. sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. as to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. she struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bareheaded and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand. emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. she sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill. when they had a neighbor to dinner on sundays, she managed to have some dainty dish--piled up pyramids of green-gages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. from all this, much consideration was extended to bovary. charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. he showed with pride in the sitting-room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wall-paper by long green cords. people returning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers. he came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, emma waited on him. he took off his coat to dine more at his ease. he told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored. as he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. he always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. he said that was "quite good enough for the country." his mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent scene at her place; and yet madame bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. she thought "her ways too fine for their position;" the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as at "a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. she put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. emma put up with these lessons. madame bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger. in madame dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the favorite; but now the love of charles for emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. she recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively. charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. when madame bovary had gone he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients. and yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make herself in love with him. by moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before, and charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved. when she had thus for a while struck the flint of her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. his outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. it was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner. a gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had given madame a little italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. she went as far as the beeches of banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. amid the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut. she began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last she had been there. she found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, emma repeated to herself, "good heavens! why did i marry?" she asked herself if by some other chance combination it would not have been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealized events, this different life, this unknown husband. all, surely, could not be like this one. he might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. what were they doing now? in town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theaters, and the lights of the ball-room, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. but she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer-window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. she recalled the prize-days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. in her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music-master with his violin-case bowed in passing by. how far off all this! how far away! she called djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long, delicate head, saying, "come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles." then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling. occasionally there came gusts of wind, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. the rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. emma drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose. in the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lighted the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. the sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. a fear took hold of her; she called djali, and hurriedly returned to tostes by the highroad, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak. but towards the end of september something extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the marquis d'andervilliers to vaubyessard. secretary of state under the restoration, the marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the chamber of deputies long beforehand. in the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the conseil général always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his arrondissement. during the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. the steward sent to tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. now cherry-trees did not thrive at vaubyessard; the marquis asked bovary for some slips; made it his business to thank him personally; saw emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple. one wednesday at three o'clock, monsieur and madame bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front on the apron. besides these charles held a bandbox between his knees. they arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lighted to show the carriage-drive. viii. glimpses of the world. the château, a modern building in italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. a river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently-sloping well-timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach-houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old château. charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants appeared; the marquis came forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule. it was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church. opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard-room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. as she crossed it to go to the drawing-room, emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. they all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes. on the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black letters. she read: "jean-antoine d'andervilliers d'yverbonville, count de la vaubyessard and baron de la fresnaye, killed at the battle of coutras on the th of october ." and on another: "jean-antoine-henry-guy d'andervilliers de la vaubyessard, admiral of france and chevalier of the order of st. michael, wounded at the battle of the hougue-saint-vaast on the th of may ; died at vaubyessard on the rd of january ." one could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf. the marquis opened the drawing-room door; one of the ladies (the marchioness herself) came to meet emma. she made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. she was about forty years old, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. a fair young woman was by her side in a high-backed chair, and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire. at seven dinner was served. the men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining-room with the marquis and marchioness. emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odor of the truffles. the silver dish-covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected pale rays from one to the other; bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's miter, held between its two gaping folds a small oval-shaped roll. the red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offered ready-carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, and with a touch of the spoon gave the piece chosen. on the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life. madame bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. but at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. his eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black ribbon. he was the marquis's father-in-law, the old duke de laverdière, once on a time favorite of the count d'artois, in the days of the vaudreuil hunting-parties at the marquis de conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of queen marie antoinette, between monsieur de coigny and monsieur de lauzun. he had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. a servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. he had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! iced champagne was poured out. emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. she had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples. the powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. the ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare for the ball. emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her début. she did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barège dress spread out upon the bed. charles's trousers were tight across the belly. "my trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said. "dancing?" repeated emma. "yes!" "why, you must be mad! they would make fun of you; keep your place. besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added. charles was silent. he walked up and down waiting for emma to finish dressing. he saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. her black eyes seemed blacker than ever. her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. she wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green. charles came and kissed her on her shoulder. "let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me." one could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. she went downstairs restraining herself from running. dancing had begun. guests were arriving. there was some crushing. she sat down on a form near the door. the quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. the hair, well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and cornflowers. calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans. emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. but her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. a smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis-d'or that were being thrown down upon the card-tables in the next room; then all struck in again, the cornet-à-piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again. a few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, or face. their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. they had the complexion of wealth,--that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with embroidered initials, that gave forth a subtle perfume. those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. in their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women. a few steps from emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls. they were praising the breadth of the columns of st. peter's, tivoli, vesuvius, castellamare, and cassines, the roses of genoa, the coliseum by moonlight. with her other ear emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. a circle gathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten "miss arabella" and "romulus," and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in england. one complained that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his horse. the atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. guests were flocking to the billiard-room. a servant got upon a chair and broke the window-panes. at the crash of the glass madame bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. then the memory of the bertaux came back to her. she saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. but in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. she was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. she was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth. a lady near her dropped her fan. a gentleman was passing. "would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?" the gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, emma saw the hand of the young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. the gentleman picking up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet. after supper, where were plenty of spanish and rhine wines, soups _à la bisque_ and _au lait d'amandes_, puddings _à la trafalgar_, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. raising the corner of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. the seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door. at three o'clock the cotillion began. emma did not know how to waltz. every one was waltzing, mademoiselle d'andervilliers herself and the marquis only the guests staying at the castle were still there about a dozen persons. one of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask madame bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well. they began slowly, then went more rapidly. they turned; all around them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. on passing near the doors the bottom of emma's dress caught against his trousers. their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. a torpor seized her; she stopped. they started again, and with a more rapid movement; the viscount, dragging her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where, panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. and then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. she leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. when she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing-room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. she chose the viscount, and the violin struck up once more. every one looked at them. they passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. that woman knew how to waltz! they kept up a long time, and tired out all the others. then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good-nights, or rather good-mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed. charles dragged himself up by the balusters. his knees were going up into his body. he had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card-tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots. emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out. the night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. she breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. the music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up. day began to break. she looked long at the windows of the château, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. she would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. but she was shivering with cold. she undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against charles, who was asleep. there were a great many people to luncheon. the repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. next, mademoiselle d'andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. the orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the château. the marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables. above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. each animal in its stall whisked its tail when any one went near and said "tchk! tchk!" the boards of the harness-room shone like the flooring of a drawing-room. the carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall. charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. the dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and all the parcels being crammed in, the bovarys paid their respects to the marquis and marchioness and set out again for tostes. emma watched the turning wheels in silence. charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. the loose reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it. they were on the heights of thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed, laughing. emma thought she recognized the viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop. a mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken. but charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between the horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and blazoned in the center like the door of a carriage. "there are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening after dinner." "why, do you smoke?" she asked. "sometimes, when i get a chance." he put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag. when they reached home the dinner was not ready. madame lost her temper. nastasie answered rudely. "leave the room!" said emma. "you are forgetting yourself. i give you warning." for dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel. charles, seated opposite emma, rubbed his hands gleefully. "how good it is to be at home again!" nastasie could be heard crying. he was rather fond of the poor girl. she had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowerhood, kept him company many an evening. she had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place. "have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last. "yes. who is to prevent me?" she replied. then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. charles began to smoke. he smoked with his lips protruded, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff. "you'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully. he put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. emma seizing hold of the cigar-case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard. the next day was a long one. she walked above her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. how far off the ball seemed already! what was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? her journey to vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. still she was resigned. she devoutly put away in her closets her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose sole were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. her heart was like these. in its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. the memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for emma. whenever the wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "ah! i was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." and little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance. she forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her. ix. idle dreams. often when charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar-case. she looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odor of the lining--a mixture of verbena and tobacco. whose was it? the viscount's? perhaps it was a present from his mistress. it had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. a breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. and then one morning the viscount had taken it away with him. of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-manteled chimneys between flower-vases and pompadour clocks? she was at tostes; he was at paris now, far away! what was this paris like? what a vague name! she repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pomade-pots. at night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the "marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. "they will be there to-morrow!" she said to herself. and she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. at the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died. she bought a plan of paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. she went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. at last she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres. she took in "la corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "sylphe des salons." she devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirées, took an interest in the début of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. she knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the bois and the opera. in eugène sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read balzac and george sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while charles ate and talked to her. the memory of the viscount always returned as she read. between him and the imaginary personages she made comparisons. but the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams. paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before emma's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. the many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. emma perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity. the world of ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. there were skirts with trains; deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore english point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at baden, and towards the forties married heiresses. in the private rooms of restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. they were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. this was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. for the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place, and as if non-existent. the nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. all her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched as far as eye could see an immense land of joys and of passions. she confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. did not love, like indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? sighs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries. the lad from the posting-house, who came to groom the mare every morning, passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. and this was the groom in knee-breeches with whom she had to be content! his work done, he did not come back again all day, for charles on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the manger. to replace nastasie (who left tostes shedding torrents of tears) emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. she forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her,--tried to make a lady's-maid of her. the new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent away; and, as madame usually left the key in the sideboard, félicité every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed after she had said her prayers. sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. madame was in her room upstairs. she wore an open dressing-gown, that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chemisette with three gold buttons. her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. she had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. she longed to travel or to go back to her convent. she wished at the same time to die and to live in paris. charles in snow and rain trotted across country. he ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous her chemise. she charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoilt, but that charles swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. at rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on their watch-chains; she bought some charms. she wanted for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory _nécessaire_ with a silver-gilt thimble. the less charles understood these refinements the more they seduced him. they added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. it was like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life. he was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. the country-folk loved him because he was not proud. he petted the children, never went to the public-house, and, moreover, his morals inspired confidence. he was specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints. being much afraid of killing his patients, charles, in fact, prescribed only sedatives, from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or leeches. it was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the "devil's own wrist." finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "la ruche médicale," a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. he read it a little after dinner, but in about five minutes, the warmth of the room added to the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. why, at least, was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age when rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coats? she could have wished this name of bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the newspapers, known to all france. but charles had no ambition. an yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. when, in the evening, charles told her this anecdote, emma inveighed loudly against his colleague. charles was much touched. he kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. but she was angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself. "what a man! what a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips. besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. as he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples. sometimes emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest into his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the soiled gloves he was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, charles was something, an ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation. she confided many a thing to her greyhound. she would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock. at bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. she did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, toward what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the port-holes. but each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. spring came round. with the first warm weather, when the pear-trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea. from the beginning of july she counted how many weeks there were to october, thinking that perhaps the marquis d'andervilliers would give another ball at vaubyessard. but all september passed without letters or visits. after the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. so now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing nothing. other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. one adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences, and the scene changed. but nothing happened to her; god had willed it so! the future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast. she gave up music. what was the good of playing? who would hear her? since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an erard at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with practising. her drawing cardboard and her embroidery she left in the cupboard. what was the good? what was the good? sewing irritated her. "i have read everything," she said to herself. and she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling. how sad she was on sundays when vespers sounded! she listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. a cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. the wind on the highroad blew up clouds of dust. afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields. but the people came out from church. the women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bareheaded children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. and till nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn. the winter was severe. the windows every morning were covered with rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the whole day long. at four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted. on fine days she went down into the garden. the dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. no birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face. then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. she would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her. every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skull-cap opened the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre over his blouse, passed by. night and morning the post-horses, three by three, crossed the street to water at the pond. from time to time the bell of a public-house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. this shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate stuck against a window-pane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. he, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town--at rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor, near the theater--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, sombre, and waiting for customers. when madame bovary looked up, she always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skull-cap over his ears and his waistcoat of lasting. sometimes in the afternoon, outside the window of her room, the head of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. a waltz immediately began, and on the organ, in a little drawing-room, dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans, tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock-coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking-glass held together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. the man turned his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee he raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. they were airs played in other places at the theaters, sung in drawing-rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to emma. endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an indian dancing-girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leaped with the notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. when the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. she watched him going. but it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground-floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness of life seemed served up on her plate, and with the smoke of the boiled beef arose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. charles was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oil-cloth table-cover with the point of her knife. she now let everything in her household take care of itself, and madame bovary senior, when she came to spend part of lent at tostes, was much surprised at the change. she who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore gray cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles. she kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. besides, emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once even, madame bovary having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not mention it again. emma was growing _difficile_, capricious. she ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, and the next cups of tea by the dozen. often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light frocks. after she had well scolded her servant, she gave her presents or sent her out to see the neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands. toward the end of february old rouault, in memory of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at tostes. charles being with his patients, emma kept him company. he smoked in the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. moreover, she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all which made her husband open his eyes widely. would this misery last forever? would she never issue from it? yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. she had seen duchesses at vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of god. she leant her head against the walls to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent pleasures, with all the wildness, that she did not know, but that these must surely yield. she grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more. on certain days she chattered with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. what then revived her was pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms. as she was constantly complaining about tostes, charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere. from that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite. it cost charles much to give up tostes after living there four years and when he was "beginning to get on there." yet if it must be! he took her to rouen to see his old master. it was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed. after looking about him on this side and on that, charles learnt that in the neufchâtel arrondissement there was a considerable market-town called yonville l'abbaye, whose doctor, a polish refugee, had decamped a week before. then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if emma's health did not improve. one day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. it was a wire of her wedding-bouquet. the orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. she threw it into the fire. it flared up more quickly than dry straw. then it was like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. she watched it burn. the little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shrivelled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney. when they left tostes in the month of march, madame bovary was pregnant. part ii. i. a new field. yonville-l'abbaye (so called from an old capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from rouen, between the abbeville and beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the rieule, a little river that runs into the andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on sundays. we leave the highroad at la boissière and keep straight on to the top of the leux hill, whence the valley is seen. the river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies,--all on the left is pasture land, all on the right arable. the meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. the water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the color of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver. before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of argueil, with the steeps of the saint-jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the gray color of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. here we are on the confines of normandy, picardy, and the Île-de-france, a bastard land, whose language is without accent as its landscape is without character. it is there that they make the worst neufchâtel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints. up to there was no practicable road for getting to yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of abbeville to that of amiens, and is occasionally used by the rouen wagoners on their way to flanders. yonville-l'abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. it is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the waterside. at the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. these, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds, and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. the thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. against the plaster wall, diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their door a small swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. but the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly block up the way. then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons[ ] blaze upon the door. it is the notary's house, and the finest in the place. [footnote : the _panonceaux_ that have to be hung over the doors of notaries.--trans.] the church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. the little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast-high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. the church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of charles x. the wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue color. over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes. the daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "monsieur so-and-so's pew." and at the spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the sandwich islands; and, finally, a copy of the "holy family, presented by the minister of the interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. the choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted. the market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of yonville. the town hall, constructed "from the designs of a paris architect," is a sort of greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. on the ground floor are three ionic columns, and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "charte" and holding in the other the scales of justice. but that which most attracts the eye is, opposite the lion d'or inn, the chemist's shop of monsieur homais. in the evening especially its argand lamp is lighted, and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of color; then across them, as if in bengal lights, is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. his house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "vichy, seltzer, barège waters, blood purifiers, raspail patent medicine, arabian racahout, darcet lozenges, regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," &c. and the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "homais, chemist." then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word "laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats "homais" in gold letters on a black ground. beyond this there is nothing to see at yonville. the street (the only one) a gunshot in length, and flanked by a few shops on either side, stops short at the turn of the highroad. if it is left on the right hand and the foot of the saint-jean hills followed, the cemetery is soon reached. at the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together toward the gate. the keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. from year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials. "you live on the dead, lestiboudois!" the curé at last said to him one day. this grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally. since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at yonville. the tin tricolor flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linendraper's; the chemist's foetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane. on the evening when the bovarys were to arrive at yonville, widow lefrançois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. to-morrow was market-day. the meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. moreover, she had the boarders' meals to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in the small parlor were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which the spinach was being chopped. from the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls which the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks. a man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. his face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist. "artémise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! if only i knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! good heavens! those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! the 'hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. call polyte and tell him to put it up. only to think, monsieur homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand. "that wouldn't be much of a loss," replied monsieur homais. "you would buy another." "another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "since that one is coming to pieces, madame lefrançois. i tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! and besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! one must keep pace with the times! just look at tellier!" the hostess reddened with vexation. the chemist went on: "you may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for poland or the sufferers from the lyons floods"-- "it isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "come, come, monsieur homais; as long as the 'lion d'or' exists people will come to it. we've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'café français' closed with a big placard on the shutters. change my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, i have slept six visitors! but that dawdler, hivert, doesn't come!" "are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?" "wait for him! and what about monsieur binet? as the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. he must always have his seat in the small parlor. he'd rather die than dine anywhere else. and so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! not like monsieur léon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. such a nice young man! never speaks a rough word!" "well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector." six o'clock struck. binet came in. he wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. he wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, gray trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big toes. not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin-rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois. he went to the small parlor, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, binet remained silent in his place near the stove. then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way. "it isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was alone with the landlady. "he never talks more," she replied. "last week two travelers in the cloth line were here--such clever chaps, who told such jokes in the evening, that i fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word." "yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society man." "yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady. "parts!" replied monsieur homais; "he parts! in his own line it is possible," he added in a calmer tone. and he went on-- "ah! that a merchant, who has large connections, a juris-consult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, i can understand; such cases are cited in history. but at least it is because they are thinking of something. myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that i had put it behind my ear?" madame lefrançois just then went to the door to see if the "hirondelle" were not coming. she started. a man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. by the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic. "what can i do for you, monsieur le curé?" asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "will you take something? a thimbleful of _cassis_? a glass of wine?" the priest declined very politely. he had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the ernemont convent, and after asking madame lefrançois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the angelus was ringing. when the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. this refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe. the landlady took up the defense of her curé. "besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong." "bravo!" said the chemist. "now just send your daughters to confess to fellows with such a temperament! i, if i were the government, i'd have the priests bled once a month. yes, madame lefrançois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals." "be quiet, monsieur homais. you are an infidel; you've no religion." the chemist answered: "i have a religion, my religion, and i even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. i adore god, on the contrary. i believe in the supreme being, in a creator, whatever he may be. i care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but i don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. for one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. my god! mine is the god of socrates, of franklin, of voltaire, and béranger! i am for the profession of faith of the 'savoyard vicar,' and the immortal principles of ' ! and i can't admit of an old boy of a god who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them." he ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. but the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. one could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the "hirondelle" stopped at the door. it was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and soiled their shoulders. the small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. it was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground. some of the inhabitants of yonville came out into the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. hivert did not know whom to answer. it was he who did the errands of the place in town. he went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hairdresser's, and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards. an accident had delayed him. madame bovary's greyhound had run across the field. they had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on. emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused charles of this misfortune. monsieur lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. one, he said, had been told of who had come back to paris from constantinople. another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swam four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town. ii. new friends. emma got out first, then félicité, monsieur lheureux, and a nurse, and they had to wake up charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in. homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away. when madame bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. with the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. the flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gown, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. a great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door. on the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her silently. as he was a good deal bored at yonville, where he was a clerk at the notary's, monsieur guillaumin monsieur léon dupuis (it was he who was the second _habitué_ of the "lion d'or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in the hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. on the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a _tête-à-tête_ with binet. it was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlor where madame lefrançois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four. homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza; then turning to his neighbor-- "madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'hirondelle.'" "that is true," replied emma; "but moving about always amuses me. i like change of place." "it is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same places." "if you were like me," said charles, "constantly obliged to be in the saddle"-- "but," léon went on, addressing himself to madame bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added. "moreover," said the chemist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are well off, they pay pretty well. we have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings. ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, monsieur bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. the climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. the thermometer (i have made some observations) falls in winter to degrees and in the hottest season rises to or degrees centigrade at the outside, which gives us degrees réaumur as the maximum, or otherwise degrees fahrenheit (english scale), not more. and, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the st. jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapors given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata,--this heat, i say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the seine, reach us sometimes all at once, like breezes from russia." "at any rate, you have some walks in the neighborhood?" continued madame bovary, speaking to the young man. "oh, very few," he answered. "there is a place they call la pâture, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. sometimes, on sundays, i go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset." "i think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but especially by the side of the sea." "oh, i adore the sea!" said monsieur léon. "and then, does it not seem to you," continued madame bovary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?" "it is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued léon. "a cousin of mine who traveled in switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. one sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and i no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site." "you play?" she asked. "no, but i am very fond of music," he replied. "ah! don't you listen to him, madame bovary," interrupted homais, bending over his plate. "that's sheer modesty. why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'l'ange gardien' ravishingly. i heard you from the laboratory. you gave it like an actor." léon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's, where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the place. he blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of yonville. he was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and "there was the tuvache household," who made a good deal of show. emma continued, "and what music do you prefer?" "oh, german music; that which makes you dream." "have you been to the opera?" "not yet; but i shall go next year, when i am living at paris to finish reading for the bar." "as i had the honor of putting it to your husband," said the chemist, "with regard to this poor yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of yonville. its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the walk, where one can go in and out unseen. moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, etc. he was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. at the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbor built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be able"-- "my wife doesn't care about it," said charles; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading." "like me," replied léon. "and indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" "what, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "one thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. it mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes." "that is true! that is true!" she said. "has it ever happened to you," léon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?" "i have experienced it," she replied. "that is the reason why," he said, "i especially love the poets. i think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." "still in the long run it is tiring," continued emma. "now i, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. i detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature." "in fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, it seems to me, the true end of art. it is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. for myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but yonville affords so few resources." "like tostes, no doubt," replied emma; "and so i always subscribed to a lending library." "if madame will do me the honor of making use of it," said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, "i have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, voltaire, rousseau, delille, walter scott, the 'echo des feuilletons;' and in addition i receive various periodicals, among them the 'fanal de rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of buchy, forges, neufchâtel, yonville and vicinity." for two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant artémise, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks. unconsciously, léon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which madame bovary was sitting. she wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. thus, side by side, while charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed center of a common sympathy. the paris theaters, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; tostes, where she had lived, and yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner. when coffee was served félicité went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. madame lefrançois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show monsieur and madame bovary the way home. bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. when he had taken in his other hand the curé's umbrella, they started. the town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all gray as on a summer's night. but as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company dispersed. as soon as she entered the passage, emma felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. the walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. in their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows. she could catch glimpses of tree-tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. in the middle of the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the floor,--the two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly. this was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. the first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her arrival at tostes; the third, at vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. and each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. she did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better. iii. added cares. the next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the place. she had on a dressing-gown. he looked up and bowed. she nodded quickly and reclosed the window. léon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but monsieur binet, already at table. the dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." how then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? he was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation. at yonville he was considered "well-bred." he listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. then he had some accomplishments; he painted in water-colors, could read the key of _g_, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. monsieur homais respected him for his education; madame homais liked him for his good-nature, for he often took the little homaises into the garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoiled, and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. besides the servant to look after them, they had justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of monsieur homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant. the chemist proved the best of neighbors. he gave madame bovary information as to the tradespeople, sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funereal functions, looked after the principal gardens at yonville by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers. the need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it all. he had infringed the law of the th ventôse, year xi, article , which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practice medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, homais had been summoned to rouen to see the procureur of the king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. it was in the morning, before the court opened. in the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. the chemist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke: he saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a café and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits. little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his back-parlor. but the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over monsieur bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later, should he notice anything. so every morning homais brought him "the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the doctor. charles was dull: patients did not come. he remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting-room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. but money matters worried him. he had spent so much for repairs at tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years. then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from tostes to yonville, without counting the plaster curé, who, falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavement of quincampoix! a pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. as the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. it was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. when from afar he saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and, half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. the idea of having begotten a child delighted him. now he wanted nothing. he knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity. emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. but not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated. as charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively. she hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him george; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. a man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. but a woman is always hampered. at once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. she was confined on a sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising. "it is a girl!" said charles. she turned her head away and fainted. madame homais, as well as madame lefrançois of the lion d'or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. the chemist, as a man of discretion, offered only a few provisional felicitations through the half-open door. he wished to see the child, and thought it well made. while she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. first she went over all those that have italian endings, such as clara, louisa, amanda, atala; she liked galsuinde very well, and yseult or léocadie still better. charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; emma opposed this. they ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders. "monsieur léon," said the chemist, "with whom i was talking about it the other day, wonders you do not choose madeleine. it is very much in fashion just now." but madame bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. as to monsieur homais, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he baptized his four children. thus napoléon represented glory and franklin liberty; irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the french stage. for his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. in this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. when he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown racine with both his hands and argue with him for a good quarter of an hour. at last emma remembered that at the château of vaubyessard she had heard the marchioness call a young lady berthe; from that moment this name was chosen; and as old rouault could not come, monsieur homais was requested to stand godfather. his gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marsh-mallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy, into the bargain, that he had come across in a cupboard. on the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the curé was present; there was much excitement. monsieur homais toward liqueur-time began singing "le dieu des bonnes gens." monsieur léon sang a barcarolle, and madame bovary, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the empire; finally, m. bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. this mockery of the first of the sacraments made the abbé bournisien angry; old bovary replied by a quotation from "la guerre des dieux;" the curé wished to leave; the ladies implored, homais interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer. monsieur bovary, senior, stayed at yonville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the lion d'or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne. the latter did not at all dislike his company. he had knocked about the world, he talked about berlin, vienna, and strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "charles, look out for yourself." then madame bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. monsieur bovary was not the man to respect anything. one day emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and without looking at the almanac to see whether the six weeks of the virgin were yet passed, she set out for the rollets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the highroad and the fields. it was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed, and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of their gables. a heavy wind was blowing; emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest. at this moment monsieur léon came out from a neighboring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. he came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of lheureux's shop under the projecting gray awning. madame bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired. "if--" said léon, not daring to go on. "have you any business to attend to?" she asked. and on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. that same evening this was known in yonville, and madame tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "madame bovary was compromising herself." to get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. they were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts, some pig on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. the two, side by side, walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air. they recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. low, and covered with brown tiles, outside it hung, beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuces, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen, were spread over the hedge. at the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. with her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country. "go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep." the room on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. in the corner behind the door, shining hobnailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a _matthieu laensberg_ lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gun-flints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs. emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. she took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro. léon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. madame bovary reddened, he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. then she put back the baby girl, who had just vomited over her frock. the nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show. "she gives me other doses," she said; "i am always a-washing of her. if you would have the goodness to order camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap; it would really be more convenient for you, as i needn't trouble you then." "very well! very well!" said emma. "good morning, madame rollet," and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door. the good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights. "i'm that worn out sometimes as i drop asleep on my chair. i'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a month, and i'd take it of a morning with some milk." after submitting to her thanks, madame bovary left. she had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. it was the nurse. "what is it?" then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain-- "oh, be quick!" said emma. "well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "i'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone; you know men--" "but you are to have some," emma repeated; "i will give you some. you bother me!" "oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see, in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. he even says that cider weakens him." "do make haste, mère rollet!" "well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and i'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue." once rid of the nurse, emma again took monsieur léon's arm. she walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvet collar. his brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. she noticed his nails, which were longer than one wore them at yonville. it was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing-desk. they returned to yonville by the waterside. in the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to its foot the garden walls, whence a few steps led to the river. it flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the top of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with thin legs crawled or rested. the sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their gray backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. it was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of emma's skirts rustling around her. the walls of the gardens, with pieces of bottle on their coping, were as hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade madame bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk. they were talking of a troupe of spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the rouen theatre. "are you going?" she asked. "if i can," he answered. had they nothing else to say to one another? yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases they felt the same languor stealing over them both. it was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know. in one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. she often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on the stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water. when they arrived in front of her garden, madame bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared. léon returned to his office. his chief was away; he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out. he went to la pâture at the top of the argueil hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and gazed at the sky through his fingers. "how bored i am!" he said to himself, "how bored i am!" he thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with homais for a friend and monsieur guillaumin for master. the latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff english manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk. as to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for others' woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown. and what else was there? binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the curé, and, finally, monsieur tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions. but from the general background of all these human faces emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss. in the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and léon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible. iv. silent homage. when the first cold days set in emma left her bedroom for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the looking-glass. seated in her armchair near the window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement. twice a day léon went from his office to the lion d'or. emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. but in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. she would get up and order the table to be laid. monsieur homais called at dinner-time. skull-cap in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase, "good evening, everybody." then, when he had taken his seat at table between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted him as to the probability of their payment. next they talked of what was in the paper. homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in france or abroad. but the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him. sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. he talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. moreover, homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the last inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of preserving cheeses and of curing sick wines. at eight o'clock justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. then monsieur homais gave him a sly look, especially if félicité was there, for he had noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house. "the young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil take me if i don't believe he's in love with your servant!" but a more serious fault with which he reproached justin was his constantly listening to conversation. on sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither madame homais had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the armchairs, and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too large. not many people came to these soirées at the chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successively alienated various respectable persons from him. the clerk never failed to be there. as soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet madame bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow. first they played some hands at trente-et-un; next monsieur homais played écarté with emma; léon behind her gave her advice. standing up with his hands on the back of her chair, he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. with every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her bodice was drawn up. from her turned-up hair a dark color fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. then her skirt fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out, full of folds, and reaching the floor. when léon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one. when the game of cards was over, the druggist and the doctor played dominoes, and emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of "l'illustration." she had brought her ladies' journal with her. léon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for each other at the bottom of the pages. she often begged him to read her the verses; léon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. but the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. monsieur homais was strong at the game; he could beat charles and give him a double-six. then, the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep. the fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, léon was still reading. emma listened to him, mechanically turning round the lamp-shade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dancers with their balancing-poles. léon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard. thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances. monsieur bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it. on his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax, and painted blue. this was an attention of the clerk's. he showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, léon bought some for madame bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "hirondelle," pricking his fingers with their stiff hairs. she had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the pots. the clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows. of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for on sundays, from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of a garret the profile of monsieur binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the lion d'or. one evening on coming home léon found in his room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. he called madame homais, monsieur homais, justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wished to see this rug. why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? it looked queer. they decided that she must be in love with him. he made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that binet once roughly answered him: "what does it matter to me since i'm not in her set?" he tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and, always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred. often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in emma's presence, and when charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighborhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. her husband, was he not something belonging to her? as to emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. she did not know that on the terraces of houses lakes are formed when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in its wall. v. smothered flames. it was a sunday in february, an afternoon when the snow was falling. they had all, monsieur and madame bovary, homais, and monsieur léon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and half from yonville. the druggist had taken napoléon and athalie to give them some exercise, and justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder. nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. a great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few brake-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. the building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. attached to the top-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricolored ribbons in the wind. homais was talking. he explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as monsieur binet possessed for his own special use. emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendor. she turned. charles was there. his cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer. while she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, léon made a step forward. the cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored. "wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist. and he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. at the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed napoléon began to roar, while justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. but a knife was wanted; charles offered his. "ah!" she said to herself, "he carries a knife in his pocket like a peasant." the hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to yonville. in the evening madame bovary did not go to her neighbor's, and when charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison recurred with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. looking from her bed at the clear fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, léon standing up with one hand bending his cane, and with the other holding athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. she thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss-- "yes, charming! charming! is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but with whom? with me?" all the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. the flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms. then began the eternal lamentation: "oh, if heaven had but willed it! and why not? what prevented it?" when charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening. "monsieur léon," he said, "went to his room early." she could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight. the next day, at dusk, she received a visit from monsieur lheureux, the draper. he was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. born a gascon but bred a norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the cauchois. his fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. no one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar, said some, a banker at routot, according to others. what was certain was, that he made complex calculations in his head that would have frightened binet himself. polite to obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who invites. after leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. a poor shop like his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady;" he emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. he was connected with the best houses. you could speak of him at the "trois frères," at the "barbe d'or," or at the "grand sauvage;" all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. to-day, then, he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. and he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box. madame bovary examined them. "i do not require anything," she said. then monsieur lheureux delicately exhibited three algerian scarves, several packets of english needles, a pair of straw slippers, and, finally, four eggcups in cocoa-nut wood, carved in open-work by convicts. then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. from time to time, as if to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little stars. "how much are they?" "a mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. but there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. we are not jews." she reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining monsieur lheureux's offer. he replied quite unconcernedly: "very well. we shall understand each other by and by. i have always got on with ladies--if i didn't with my own!" emma smiled. "i wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that it isn't the money i should trouble about. why, i could give you some, if need be." she made a gesture of surprise. "ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "i shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on that." and he began asking after père tellier, the proprietor of the "café français," whom monsieur bovary was then attending. "what's the matter with père tellier? he coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and i'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. he was such a rake as a young man! that sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. still it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off." and while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's patients. "it's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor, "that causes these illnesses. i, too, don't feel the thing. one of these days i shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain i have in my back. well, good-bye, madame bovary. at your service; your very humble servant." and he closed the door gently. emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her. "how good i was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves. she heard some steps on the stairs. it was léon. she got up and took from the chest of drawers the first of a pile of dusters to be hemmed. when he came in she seemed very busy. the conversation languished; madame bovary gave it up every few minutes, while he himself seemed quite embarrassed. seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. she stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. she did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech. "poor fellow!" she thought. "how have i displeased her?" he asked himself. at last, however, léon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to rouen on some office business. "your music subscription is out; am i to renew it?" "no," she replied. "why?" "because--" and pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of gray thread. this work irritated léon. it seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. a gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it. "then you are giving it up?" he went on. "what?" she asked hurriedly. "music? ah! yes! have i not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?" she looked at the clock. charles was late. then she affected anxiety. two or three times she even repeated, "he is so good!" the clerk was fond of monsieur bovary. but this tenderness in his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up his praises, which he said every one was singing, especially the chemist. "ah! he is a good fellow," continued emma. "certainly," replied the clerk. and he began talking of madame homais, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh. "what does it matter?" interrupted emma. "a good housewife does not trouble about her appearance." then she relapsed into silence. it was the same on the following days; her talk, her manners, everything changed. she took interest in the house-work, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity. she took berthe from nurse. when visitors called, félicité brought her in, and madame bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. she declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outbursts which would have reminded any one but the yonville people of sachette in "nôtre dame de paris." when charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. his waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the nightcaps arranged in piles of the same height. she no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when léon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his armchair to kiss his forehead: "what madness!" he said to himself. "and how to reach her!" and thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. but by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. to him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. it was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices. emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. with her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? she was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. the others even did not escape from this seduction. the chemist said-- "she is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a sub-prefecture." the housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the poor her charity. but she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. that dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted heart, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing. she was in love with léon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his image. the sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness of this meditation. emma thrilled at the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow. léon did not know that when he left her in despair, she rose after he had gone to see him in the street. she concerned herself about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room. the chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centred upon this house, like the "lion d'or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters. but the more emma recognized her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. she would have liked léon to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this. what restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. she thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. then pride, the joy of being able to say to herself, "i am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making. then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion, all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasions for it. she was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home. what exasperated her was that charles did not seem to notice her anguish. his conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. for whose sake, then, was she virtuous? was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that buckled her in on all sides? on him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation between them. her own gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to adulterous desires. she would have liked charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. she was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed. yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. she was seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with léon to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul. "besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "what is to become of me? what help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?" she was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears. "why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in during these crises. "it is the nerves," said emma. "do not speak to him of it; it would worry him." "ah! yes," félicité went on, "you are just like la guérine, père guérin's daughter, the fisherman at pollet, that i used to know at dieppe before i came to you. she was so sad, so sad, that to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. when she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the seashore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. then, after her marriage, it went off, they say." "but with me," replied emma, "it was after marriage that it began." vi. spiritual counsel. one evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the angelus ringing. it was the beginning of april, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fêtes. through the bars of the arbor and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. the evening vapors rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. in the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation. with this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. she remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. she would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stiff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-dieu. at mass on sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it. on the place she met lestiboudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labor, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the angelus to suit his own convenience. besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour. already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. this was the only green spot. all the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom. the children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. the shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. this grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. at the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. a long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners. "where is the curé?" asked madame bovary of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it. "he is just coming," he answered. and in fact the door of the presbytery grated; abbé bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church. "these young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with his foot, "they respect nothing!" but as soon as he caught sight of madame bovary, "excuse me," he said; "i did not recognize you." he thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers. the light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, ravelled at the hem. grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. he had just dined, and was breathing noisily. "how are you?" he added. "not well," replied emma; "i am ill." "well, and so am i," answered the priest. "these first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? but, after all, we are born to suffer, as st. paul says. but what does monsieur bovary think of it?" "he!" she said with a gesture of contempt. "what!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe something for you?" "ah!" said emma, "it is no earthly remedy i need." but the curé from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards. "i should like to know--" she went on. "you look out, riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "i'll warm your ears, you imp!" then turning to emma. "he's boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. and so sometimes for a joke i call him _ri_boudet (like the road one takes to go to maromme), and i even say '_mon_ riboudet.' ha! ha! '_mont_ riboudet.' the other day i repeated that jest to monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. and how is monsieur bovary?" she seemed not to hear him. and he went on: "always very busy, no doubt; for he and i are certainly the busiest people in the parish. but he is doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh, "and i of the soul." she fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows." "ah! don't talk to me of it, madame bovary. this morning i had to go to bas-diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. all their cows, i don't know how it is--but pardon me! longuemarre and boudet! bless me! will you leave off?" and with a bound he ran into the church. the boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. but the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there. "yes," said he, when he returned to emma, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied." "others, too," she replied. "assuredly. town-laborers, for example." "it is not they--" "pardon! i've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, i assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread." "but those," replied emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, "those, monsieur le curé, who have bread and have no--" "fire in the winter," said the priest. "oh, what does that matter?" "what! what does it matter? it seems to me that when one has firing and food--for, after all--" "my god! my god!" she sighed. "do you feel unwell?" he asked, approaching her anxiously. "it is indigestion, no doubt? you must get home, madame bovary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar." "why?" and she looked like one awaking from a dream. "well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. i thought you felt faint." then, bethinking himself, "but you were asking me something? what was it? i really don't remember." "i? nothing! nothing!" repeated emma. and the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the cassock. they looked at one another face to face without speaking. "then, madame bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you know; i must look after my good-for-nothings. the first communion will soon be upon us, and i fear we shall be behind after all. so after ascension day i keep them _recta_ an extra hour every wednesday. poor children! one cannot lead them too soon into the path of the lord, as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his divine son. good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband." and he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached the door. emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him. then she turned on her heel with one movement, like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. but the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her. "are you a christian?" "yes, i am a christian?" "what is a christian?" "he who, being baptized--baptized--baptized--" she went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an armchair. the whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. the furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. the fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. but little berthe was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings. "leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand. the little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron. "leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably. her face frightened the child, who began to scream. "will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow. berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting against it her cheek, which began to bleed. madame bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse herself when charles appeared. it was the dinner-hour; he had come home. "look, dear!" said emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down while she was playing, and has hurt herself." charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for some sticking plaster. madame bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look after the child. then, watching her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little. berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely. "it is very strange," thought emma, "how ugly this child is!" when at eleven o'clock charles came back from the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle. "i assure you it's nothing," he said, kissing her on the forehead. "don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill." he had stayed a long time at the chemist's. although he had not seemed much moved, homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. madame homais knew something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end of trouble for her. the knives were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the little homaises, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without some one watching them; at the slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors. this, it is true, was a fancy of madame homais's; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. fearing the possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual organs, he even went so far as to say to her, "do you want to make caribs or botocudos of them?" charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. "i should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him. "can he suspect anything?" léon asked himself. his heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises. at last, charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at rouen of a fine daguerreotype. it was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. but he wanted first to know how much it would be. the inquiries would not put monsieur léon out, since he went to town almost every week. why? monsieur homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. but he was mistaken. léon was after no love-making. he was sadder than ever, as madame lefrançois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. to find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. binet answered roughly that he wasn't paid by the police. all the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for léon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life. "it's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector. "what recreation?" "if i were you i'd have a lathe." "but i don't know how to turn," answered the clerk. "ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction. léon was weary of loving without any result; moreover, he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. he was so bored with yonville and the yonvillers, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. this apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. as he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? what prevented him? and he began making home preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. he furnished in his head an apartment. he would lead an artist's life there! he would take lessons on the guitar! he would have a dressing-gown, a basque cap, blue velvet slippers! he even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's-head on the guitar above them. the difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. taking a middle course, then, léon looked for some place as second clerk at rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at paris immediately. she consented. he did not hurry. every day for a month hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from yonville to rouen and from rouen to yonville; and when léon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three armchairs restuffed, bought a stock of cravats, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage round the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation. when the moment for the farewells had come, madame homais wept, justin sobbed; homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking léon to rouen in his carriage. the latter had just time to bid farewell to monsieur bovary. when he reached the head of the stairs he stopped, he was so out of breath. on his coming in, madame bovary rose hurriedly. "it is i again!" said léon. "i was sure of it!" she bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. she remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot. "the doctor is not here?" he went on. "he is out." she repeated, "he is out." then there was silence. they looked one at the other, and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts. "i should like to kiss berthe," said léon. emma went down a few steps and called félicité. he threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the brackets, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. but she returned, and the servant brought berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downward at the end of a string. léon kissed her several times on the neck. "good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!" and he gave her back to her mother. "take her away," she said. they remained alone--madame bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; léon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh. "it is going to rain," said emma. "i have a cloak," he answered. "ah!" she turned round, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. the light fell on it as on a piece of marble to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what emma was seeing in the horizon or what she was thinking within herself. "well, good-bye," he sighed. she raised her head with a quick movement. "yes, good-bye--go!" they advanced toward each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated. "in the english fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh. léon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared. when he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. he thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds, that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. léon set off running. from afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. homais and monsieur guillaumin were talking. they were waiting for him. "embrace me," said the chemist with tears in his eyes. "here is your coat, my good friend. mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself." "come, léon, jump in," said the notary. homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs, uttered these three sad words: "a pleasant journey!" "good-night," said monsieur guillaumin. "give him his head." they set out, and homais went back. * * * * * madame bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched the clouds. they were gathering round the sunset on the side of rouen, and swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. but a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves. then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia. "ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought. monsieur homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner. "well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!" "so it seems," replied the doctor. then turning on his chair: "any news at home?" "nothing much. only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. you know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. and we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours." "poor léon!" said charles. "how will he live at paris? will he get used to it?" madame bovary sighed. "get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "the outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly enough, i assure you." "i don't think he'll go wrong," objected bovary. "nor do i," said monsieur homais quickly; "although he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a jesuit. and you don't know what a life those dogs lead in the latin quarter with actresses. besides, students are thought a great deal of at paris. provided they have a few accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even ladies of the faubourg saint-germain who fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches." "but," said the doctor, "i fear for him that down there--" "you are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the medal. and one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there. thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. an individual presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, whom any one would take for a diplomatist. he approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. then you become more intimate; he takes you to a café, invites you to his country-house, introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into some pernicious step." "that is true," said charles; "but i was thinking especially of illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the provinces." emma shuddered. "because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. and then the water at paris, don't you know! the dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. for my own part, i have always preferred plain living; it is more healthful. so when i was studying pharmacy at rouen, i boarded in a boardinghouse; i dined with the professors." and thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal likings, until justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted. "not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! i can't go out for a minute! like a plough-horse, i have always to be moiling and toiling. what drudgery!" then, when he was at the door, "by the way, do you know the news?" "what news?" "that it is very likely," homais went on, raising his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expressions, "that the agricultural meeting of the seine-inférieure will be held this year at yonville-l'abbaye. the rumor, at all events, is going the round. this morning the paper alluded to it. it would be of the utmost importance for our district. but we'll talk it over later on. i can see, thank you; justin has the lantern." vii. a woman's whims. the next day was a dreary one for emma. every thing seemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulphed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. it was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on. as on the return from vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. léon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. though separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow. she could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. the river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks. they had often walked there to the murmur of the waves, over the moss-covered pebbles. how bright the sun had been! what happy afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! he read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbor. ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. why had she not seized this happiness when it came to her? why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees, when it was about to flee from her? and she cursed herself for not having loved léon. she thirsted for his lips. the wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, "it is i; i am yours." but emma recoiled beforehand at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, became only the more acute. henceforth the memory of léon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travelers leave on the snow of a russian steppe. she sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost hopes, the domestic tête-à-tête,--she gathered it all up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy. the flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much. love, little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. in the supineness of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her. then the evil days of tostes began again. she thought herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end. a woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself certain whims. she bought a gothic prie-dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted round her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb. she often changed her coiffure; she did her hair _à la chinoise_, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted it on one side and rolled it under like a man's. she wished to learn italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a supply of white paper. she tried serious reading, history, and philosophy. sometimes in the night charles woke up with a start, thinking he was being called to a patient. "i'm coming," he stammered; and it was the noise of a match emma had struck to relight the lamp. but her reading fared like her pieces of embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other books. she had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any folly. she maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop. in spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives of yonville called them), emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. she was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. after discovering three gray hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age. she often fainted. one day she even spat blood, and, as charles fussed round her showing his anxiety-- "bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?" charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table, sitting in an armchair at his bureau under the phrenological head. then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come, and they had many long consultations together on the subject of emma. what should they decide? what was to be done since she rejected all medical treatment? "do you know what your wife wants?" replied madame bovary, senior. "she wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. if she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have these vapors, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she lives." "yet she is always busy," said charles. "ah! always busy at what? reading novels, bad books, works against religion, in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from voltaire. but all that leads you far astray, my poor child. any one who has no religion always ends by turning out badly." so they decided to stop emma from reading novels. the enterprise did not seem easy. the good lady undertook it. she was, when she passed through rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that emma had discontinued her subscription. would they not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? the farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. during the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in the evening before going to bed. madame bovary left on a wednesday, the market-day at yonville. the place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses from the church to the inn. on the other side there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. the coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw stuck out. near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through the bars of flat cages. the people, crowding in the same place and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the shop-front of the chemist. on wednesdays his shop was never empty, and the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations, so great was homais's reputation in the neighboring villages. his robust aplomb had fascinated the rustics. they considered him a greater doctor than all the doctors. emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. the window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, and she amused herself with watching the crowd of boors, when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. he had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking with bent head and quite a thoughtful air. "can i see the doctor?" he asked justin, who was talking on the doorsteps with félicité, and, taking him for a servant of the house: "tell him that monsieur rodolphe boulanger of la huchette is here." it was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of la huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. la huchette, in fact, was an estate near yonville, where he had just bought the château and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however, troubling very much about them. he lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year. charles came into the room. monsieur boulanger introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over." "that'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning. so bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked justin to hold it. then addressing the countryman, already pale-- "don't be afraid, my lad." "no, no, sir," said the other; "get on." and with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. at the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass. "hold the basin nearer," exclaimed charles. "lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain flowing. how red my blood is! that's a good sign isn't it?" "sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution like this man." at these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between his fingers. a shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. his hat fell off. "i thought as much," said bovary, pressing his finger on the vein. the basin was beginning to tremble in justin's hands; his knees shook, he turned pale. "emma! emma!" called charles. with one bound she came down the staircase. "some vinegar," he cried. "o dear! two at once!" and in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress. "it is nothing," said monsieur boulanger quietly, taking justin in his arms. he seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall. madame bovary began taking off his cravat. the strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow's neck. then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. the ploughman revived, but justin's syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale sclerotic like blue flowers in milk. "we must hide this from him," said charles. madame bovary took the basin to put it under the table. with the movement she made in bending down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the room; and as emma, stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust. then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. the servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. seeing his pupil with his eyes open he drew a long breath; then going round him he looked at him from head to foot. "fool!" he said, "really a little fool! a fool in four letters! a phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! and a fellow who isn't afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about yourself! here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile." justin did not answer. the chemist went on-- "who asked you to come? you are always pestering the doctor and madame. on wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. there are now twenty people in the shop. i left everything because of the interest i take in you. come, get along! sharp! wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars." when justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a little while about fainting-fits. madame bovary said she had never fainted. "that is extraordinary for a lady," said monsieur boulanger; "but some people are very susceptible. thus, in a duel, i have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols." "for my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would make me faint, if i reflected upon it too much." monsieur boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over. "it procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added, and he looked at emma as he said this. then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out. he was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to la huchette), and emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects. "she is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this doctor's wife. fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a parisienne's. where the devil does she come from? wherever did this fat fellow pick her up?" monsieur rodolphe boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well. this one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband. "i think he is very stupid. she is tired of him, no doubt. he has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. while he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. and she gets bored! she would like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. poor little woman! she is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. with three words of gallantry she'd adore one, i'm sure of it. she'd be tender, charming! yes; but how get rid of her afterwards?" then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by contrast think of his mistress. she was an actress at rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated-- "ah! madame bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher. virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. she is so finikin with her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns." the fields were empty, and around him rodolphe heard only the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with the cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. he again saw emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her. "oh, i will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. and he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise. he asked himself-- "where shall we meet? by what means? we shall always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of worries. pshaw! one would lose too much time over it." then he resumed, "she really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a gimlet. and that pale complexion; i adore pale women!" when he reached the top of the argueil hills he had made up his mind. "it's only finding the opportunities. well, i will call in now and then. i'll send them venison, poultry; i'll have myself bled, if need be. we shall become friends; i'll invite them to my place. by jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural show coming on. she'll be there. i shall see her. we'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way." viii. a village festival. at last it came, the famous agricultural show. on the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. the pediment of the townhall had been hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the middle of the place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. the national guard of buchy (there was none at yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom binet was captain. on that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs; which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. as there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. one saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and repass alternately; there was no end to it, and it continually began again. there had never been such a display of pomp. several citizens had washed down their houses the evening before; tricolored flags hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the colored neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with their motley colors the somber monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. the neighboring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out a long pin that fastened round them their skirts, turned up for fear of mud; the husbands, on the contrary, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs round them, holding one corner between their teeth. the crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. people poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fête. what was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. besides this there were against the four columns of the townhall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. on one was written, "to commerce;" on the other, "to agriculture;" on the third, "to industry;" and on the fourth, "to the fine arts." but the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of madame lefrançois, the innkeeper. standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "what rubbish! what rubbish! with their canvas booth! do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? they call all this fussing doing good to the place! then it wasn't worth while sending to neufchâtel for the keeper of a cookshop! and for whom? for cowherds! tatterdemalions!" the chemist was passing. he had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown. "your servant! excuse me, i am in a hurry." and as the fat widow asked where he was going-- "it seems odd to you, doesn't it, to see me, who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese, taking a holiday?" "what cheese?" asked the landlady. "oh, nothing! nothing!" homais continued. "i merely wished to convey to you, madame lefrançois, that i usually live at home like a recluse. to-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--" "oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously. "yes, i am going," replied the chemist, astonished. "am i not a member of the consulting commission?" mère lefrançois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying with a smile: "that's another pair of shoes! but what does agriculture matter to you? do you understand anything about it?" "certainly i understand it, since i am a druggist,--that is to say, a chemist. and the object of chemistry, madame lefrançois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. and, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, i ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?" the landlady did not answer. homais went on: "do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? it is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. and one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of the domestics. and, moreover, madame lefrançois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements." the landlady never took her eyes off the "café français," and the chemist went on: "would to god our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. thus, lately i myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two pages, entitled, 'cider, its manufacture and its effects, together with some new reflections on this subject,' that i sent to the agricultural society of rouen, and which even procured me the honor of being received among its members--section, agriculture; class, pomological. well, if my work had been given to the public--" but the druggist stopped, madame lefrançois seemed so preoccupied. "just look at them!" she said. "it's past comprehension! such a cookshop as that!" and with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "well, it won't last long," she added; "it'll be over before a week." homais drew back with stupefaction. she came down three steps and whispered in his ear: "what! you didn't know it? there'll be an execution in next week. it's lheureux who is selling him up; he has killed him with bills." "what a terrible catastrophe!" cried the chemist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances. then the landlady began telling him this story, that she had heard from théodore, monsieur guillaumin's servant, and although she detested telher, she blamed lheureux. he was "a wheedler, a sneak." "there!" she said. "look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to madame bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. why, she's taking monsieur boulanger's arm." "madame bovary!" exclaimed homais. "i must go at once and pay her my respects. perhaps she'd be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle." and, without heeding madame lefrançois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing exuberantly right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind. rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but madame bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone: "it's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist." she pressed his elbow. "what's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. and he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. it stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of reeds. her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheekbones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. a pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. her head leaned towards her shoulder, and the pearly tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips. "is she making fun of me?" thought rodolphe. emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for monsieur lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation. "what a superb day! everybody is out! the wind is east!" and neither madame bovary nor rodolphe answered him, while at the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "i beg your pardon!" and raised his hat. when they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him madame bovary. he called out: "good evening, monsieur lheureux! see you again presently." "how you got rid of him!" she said, laughing. "why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? and as to-day i have the happiness of being with you----" emma blushed. he did not finish his sentence. then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. a few daisies had sprung up again. "here are some pretty easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." he added, "shall i pick some? what do you think?" "are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little. "h'm, h'm! who knows?" answered rodolphe. the meadow began to fill, and the housewives, hustled one with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. one had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one passed close to them. they walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent. but this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks. the beasts were there, their noses toward the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking toward the mares. these stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. and above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. a child in rags was holding him by a rope. between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. one who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he walked along. this was the president of the jury, monsieur derozerays de la panville. as soon as he recognized rodolphe he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said: "what! monsieur boulanger, you are deserting us?" rodolphe protested that he was just coming. but when the president had disappeared: "_ma foi!_" said he, "i shall not go. your company is better than his." and while poking fun at the show, rodolphe, to move about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast which madame bovary did not at all admire. he noticed this and began jeering at the yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologized for the negligence of his own. he had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of gray ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. these were so polished that they reflected the grass. he trampled on horses' dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side. "besides," added he, "when one lives in the country----" "it's waste of time," said emma. "that is true," replied rodolphe. "to think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!" then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there. "and i too," said rodolphe, "am drifting into depression." "you!" she said in astonishment; "i thought you very light-hearted." "ah! yes. i seem so, because in the midst of the world i know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have i not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!" "oh! and your friends?" she said. "you do not think of them." "my friends! what friends? have i any? who cares for me?" and he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips. but they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. he was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. it was lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about among the people. alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. in fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and they lent against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration. madame bovary again took rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself: "yes, i have missed so many things. always alone! ah! if i had some aim in life, if i had met some love, if i had found some one! oh, how i would have spent all the energy of which i am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!" "yet it seems to me," said emma, "that you are not to be pitied." "ah! you think so?" said rodolphe. "for, after all," she went on, "you are free----" she hesitated, "rich----" "do not mock me," he replied. and she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell toward the village. it was a false alarm. the prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait. at last at the end of the place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, whom a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. binet had only just time to shout, "present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. all ran toward the enclosure; every one pushed forward. a few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the national guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time. "present!" shouted binet. "halt!" shouted the colonel. "left about, march." and after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. then were seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. his eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. he recognized the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. he himself was a councilor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies. monsieur tuvache answered them with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages, the national guard and the crowd. the councilor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the honor that was being done to yonville. hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the "lion d'or," where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. the drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet armchairs that had been lent by madame tuvache. all these people looked alike. their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the color of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. all the waistcoats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; every one rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of his trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of his heavy boots. the ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars, while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. as a matter of fact, lestiboudois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. he caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform. "i think," said monsieur lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his place, "that they ought to have put up two venetian masts with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect." "to be sure," replied homais; "but what can you expect? the mayor took everything on his own shoulders. he hasn't much taste. poor tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art." rodolphe, meanwhile, with madame bovary, had gone up to the first floor of the townhall, to the "council-room," and as it was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. he fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other. there was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. at last the councilor got up. they knew now that his name was lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. after he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began: "gentlemen! may i be permitted first of all (before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment, will, i am sure, be shared by you all), may i be permitted, i say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts." "i ought," said rodolphe, "to get back a little further." "why?" said emma. but at this moment the voice of the councilor rose to an extraordinary pitch. he declaimed: "this is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations." "well, some one down there might see me," rodolphe resumed, "then i should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation----" "oh, you are slandering yourself," said emma. "no! it is dreadful, i assure you." "but, gentlemen," continued the councilor, "if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, i carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do i see there? everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. our great industrial centers have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and france breathes once more!" "besides," added rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they are right." "how so?" she asked. "what!" said he. "do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? they need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies." then she looked at him as one looks at a traveler who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on: "we have not even this distraction, we poor women!" "a sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it." "but is it ever found?" she asked. "yes; one day it comes," he answered. "and this is what you have understood," said the councilor. "you farmers, agricultural laborers! you pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you men of progress and morality, you have understood, i say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!" "it comes one day," repeated rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'it is here!' you feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. there is no need for explanations; they understand one another. they have seen each other in dreams!" he looked at her. "in fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. it glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light!" and as he ended rodolphe suited the action to the word. he passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. then he let it fall on emma's. she took hers away. "and who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? he only who was so blind, so plunged (i do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations. where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? and, gentlemen, i do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty----" "ah! again!" said rodolphe. "always 'duty.' i am sick of the word. they are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'duty, duty!' ah! by jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us." "yet--yet----" objected madame bovary. "no, no! why cry out against the passions? are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?" "but one must," said emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code." "ah! but there are two," he replied. "the small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthy, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there. but the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us light." monsieur lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief. he continued: "and what should i do here, gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? who supplies our wants? who provides our means of subsistence? is it not the agriculturist? the agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in the pastures? for how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? and, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? but i should never end if i were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple-tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which i will more particularly call your attention." he had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words. tuvache by his side listened to him with starting eyes. monsieur derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son napoléon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. the chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. the firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. his lieutenant, the youngest son of monsieur tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. he smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness. the square as far as the houses was crowded with people. one saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. in spite of the silence monsieur lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. it reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. in fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths. rodolphe had drawn nearer to emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly: "does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? the noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. oh! no matter. sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other." his arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face toward emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. she noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. then a faintness came over her; she recalled the viscount who had waltzed with her at vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. but in making this movement, as she leaned back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence the "hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. it was in this yellow carriage that léon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. she fancied she saw him opposite at his window; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the arm of the viscount, and that léon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of rodolphe's head by her side. this sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. she opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. she took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councilor intoning his phrases. he said: "continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the hope of better success. and you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labor no government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices." monsieur lieuvain then sat down; monsieur derozerays got up, beginning another speech. his was not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. thus the praise of the government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. he showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilization. rodolphe with madame bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? monsieur derozerays set himself this problem. from magnetism little by little rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing cincinnatus and his plough, diocletian planting his cabbages, and the emperors of china inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. "thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? what chance willed it? it was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us toward each other." and he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it. "for good farming generally!" cried the president. "just now, for example, when i went to your house." "to monsieur bizat of quincampoix." "did i know i should accompany you?" "seventy francs." "a hundred times i wished to go; and i followed you--i remained." "manures!" "and i shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!" "to monsieur caron of argueil, a gold medal!" "for i have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm." "to monsieur bain of givry-saint-martin." "and i shall carry away with me the remembrance of you." "for a merino ram!" "but you will forget me; i shall pass away like a shadow." "to monsieur belot of nôtre-dame." "oh, no! i shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall i not?" "porcine race; prizes--equal, to messrs. lehérissé and cullembourg, sixty francs!" rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that tries to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a movement with her fingers. he exclaimed-- "oh, i thank you! you do not repulse me! you are good! you understand that i am yours! let me look at you; let me contemplate you!" a gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. "use of oil-cakes," continued the president. he was hurrying on: "flemish manure--flax-growing--drainage--long leases--domestic service." rodolphe was no longer speaking. they looked at one another. a supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and softly, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. "catherine nicaise elizabeth leroux, of sassetot-la-guerrière, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value, twenty-five francs!" "where is catherine leroux?" repeated the councilor. she did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering: "go up!" "don't be afraid!" "oh, how stupid she is!" "well, is she there?" cried tuvache. "yes; here she is." "then let her come up!" then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. on her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. her pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket hung down two large hands with knotty joints. the dust of barns, the potash of washings, and the grease of wools had so incrusted, roughened, hardened these, that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. something of monastic rigidity dignified her face. nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. in her constant living with animals she had caught their dumbness and their calm. it was the first time that she found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the councilor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her. thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of servitude. "approach, venerable catherine nicaise elizabeth leroux!" said the councilor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone: "approach! approach!" "are you deaf?" said tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began shouting in her ear, "fifty-four years of service. a silver medal! twenty-five francs! for you!" then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her muttering: "i'll give it to our curé up home, to say some masses for me!" "what fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary. the meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green crown on their horns. the national guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the townhall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. madame bovary took rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet. the feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight. they ate hugely. each one stuffed himself on his own account. sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps. rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of emma that he heard nothing. behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates; his neighbors were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. he was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future. he saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with her husband. madame homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to binet. the pyrotechnic pieces sent to monsieur tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. now and then a meager roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. emma silently nestled gently against charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. they went out one by one. the stars shone out. a few drops of rain began to fall. she knotted her fichu round her bare head. at this moment the councilor's carriage came out from the inn. his coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces. "truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness! i should like to see written up weekly at the door of the townhall on a board _ad hoc_ the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need. but excuse me!" and he once more ran off to the captain. the latter was going back to see his lathe again. "perhaps you would not do ill," homais said to him, "to send one of your men, or to go yourself----" "leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "it's all right!" "do not be uneasy," said the chemist, when he returned to his friends. "monsieur binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. no sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. let us go to rest." "_ma foi!_ i want it," said madame homais, yawning at large. "but never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fête." rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "oh, yes! very beautiful." and having bowed to one another, they separated. two days later, in the "fanal de rouen," there was a long article on the show. homais had composed it with _verve_ the very next morning. "why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?" then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. certainly the government was doing much, but not enough. "courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" then touching on the entry of the councilor, he did not forget "the martial air of our militia," nor "our most merry village maidens," nor the "bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our immortal phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums." he cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that monsieur homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. when he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "the father embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. more than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot. "about six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of monsieur leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fête. the greatest cordiality reigned here. divers toasts were proposed. monsieur lieuvain, the king; monsieur tuvache, the prefect; monsieur derozerays, agriculture; monsieur homais, industry and the fine arts, those twin sisters; monsieur leplichey, progress. in the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. one would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the 'thousand and one nights.' "let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." and he added: "only the absence of the clergy was remarked. no doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion. just as you please, messieurs the followers of loyola!" ix. a woodland idyll. six weeks passed. rodolphe did not come again. at last one evening he appeared. the day after the show he had said to himself: "we mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake." and at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. after the hunting he had thought he was too late, and then he reasoned thus: "if from the first day she loved me, she must, from impatience to see me again, love me more. let's go on with it!" and he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the room, he saw emma turn pale. she was alone. the day was drawing in. the small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral. rodolphe remained standing, and emma hardly answered his first conventional phrases. "i," he said, "have been busy. i have been ill." "seriously?" she cried. "well," said rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it was because i did not want to come back." "why?" "can you not guess?" he looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. he went on: "emma!" "sir," she said, drawing back a little. "ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that i was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! madame bovary! why all the world calls you thus! besides it is not your name; it is the name of another!" he repeated, "of another!" and he hid his face in his hands. "yes, i think of you constantly. the memory of you drives me to despair. ah! forgive me! i will leave you! farewell! i will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--i know not what force impelled me toward you. for one does not struggle against heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable." it was the first time that emma had heard such words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language. "but if i did not come," he continued, "if i could not see you, at least i have gazed long on all that surrounds you. at night--every night--i arose; i came hither; i watched your house, its roof glimmering in the moonlight, the trees in the garden before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!" she turned toward him with a sob. "oh, you are good!" she said. "no, i love you, that is all! you do not doubt that! tell me--one word--only one word!" and rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the floor; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and, he noticed the door of the room was not closed. "how kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humor a whim of mine." it was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and madame bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when charles came in. "good morning, doctor," rodolphe said to him. the doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little. "madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health." charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. then rodolphe asked if riding would not be good. "certainly! excellent! just the thing! there's an idea! you ought to follow it up." and as she objected that she had no horse, monsieur rodolphe offered one. she refused his offer; he did not insist. then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness. "i'll call round," said bovary. "no, no! i'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient for you." "ah! very good! i thank you." and as soon as they were alone, "why don't you accept monsieur boulanger's kind offer?" she assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd. "well, what the deuce do i care for that?" said charles, making a pirouette. "health before everything! you are wrong." "and how do you think i can ride when i haven't got a habit?" "you must order one," he answered. the riding-habit decided her. when the habit was ready, charles wrote to monsieur boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature. the next day at noon rodolphe appeared at charles's door with two saddle-horses. one had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle. rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. in fact, emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. she was ready; she was waiting for him. justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also came out. he was giving monsieur boulanger a little good advice. "an accident happens so easily. be careful! your horses perhaps are mettlesome." she heard a noise above her; it was félicité drumming on the window-panes to amuse little berthe. the child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip. "a pleasant ride!" cried monsieur homais. "prudence! above all, prudence!" and he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear. as soon as he felt the ground, emma's horse set off at a gallop. rodolphe galloped by her side. now and then they exchanged a word. her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. at the bottom of the hill rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her. it was early in october. there was fog over the land. hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roofs of yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls, and the church steeple. emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. from the height on which they were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapor into the air. clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind. beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. the earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them. rodolphe and emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. she turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. the horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked. just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out. "god protects us!" said rodolphe. "do you think so?" she said. "forward! forward!" he continued. he "tchk'd" with his tongue. the two beasts set off at a trot. long ferns by the roadside caught in emma's stirrup. rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. at other times to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. the sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. there were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, fawn, or golden colored, according to the nature of their leaves. often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amid the oaks. they dismounted. rodolphe fastened up the horses. she walked on in front on the moss between the paths. but her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness. she stopped. "i am tired," she said. "come, try again," he went on. "courage!" then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves. "but where are we going?" he did not answer. she was breathing irregularly. rodolphe looked round him biting his mustache. they came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut. they sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. he did not begin by frightening her with compliments. he was calm, serious, melancholy. emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. but at the words, "are not our destinies now one?----" "oh, no!" she replied. "you know that well. it is impossible!" she rose to go. he seized her by the wrist. she stopped. then, having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said hurriedly: "ah! do not speak of it again! where are the horses? let us go back." he made a gesture of anger and annoyance. she repeated: "where are the horses? where are the horses?" then smiling a strange smile, his pupils fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. she recoiled trembling. she stammered: "oh, you frighten me! you hurt me! let us go!" "if it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. she gave him her arm. they went back. he said: "what was the matter with you? why? i do not understand. you were mistaken, no doubt. in my soul you are as a madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. but i want you for my life. i must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! be my friend, my sister, my angel!" and he put out his arm around her waist. she feebly tried to disengage herself. he supported her thus as they walked along. but they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves. "oh! one moment!" said rodolphe. "do not let us go! stay!" he drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. faded waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. at the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves. "i am wrong! i am wrong!" she said. "i am mad to listen to you!" "why? emma! emma!" "oh, rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder. the cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. she threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him. the shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds flying about had scattered their feathers. silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles. they returned to yonville by the same road. on the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones in the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places. rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it. she was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face something flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening. on entering yonville she made her horse prance in the road. people looked at her from the windows. at dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles. "'emma!" he said. "what?" "well, i spent the afternoon at monsieur alexandre's. he has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, that could be bought, i am very sure, for a hundred crowns." he added, "and thinking it might please you, i have bespoken it--bought it. have i done right? do tell me!" she nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later-- "are you going out to-night?" she asked. "yes. why?" "oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!" and as soon as she had got rid of charles she went and shut herself up in her room. at first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled. but when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. something subtle about her being transfigured her. she repeated, "i have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. so at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! she was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. an azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared remote, far below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. she became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and realized the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied. besides, emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. had she not suffered enough? but now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. she tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble. the day following passed with a new sweetness. they made vows to one another. she told him of her sorrows. rodolphe interrupted her with kisses; and she, looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her. they were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some wooden-shoe maker. the walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. they were seated side by side on a bed of dry leaves. from that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as too short. one morning, when charles had gone out before daybreak, she was seized with the fancy to see rodolphe at once. she would go quickly to la huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at yonville while every one was still asleep. this idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her. day was just breaking. emma from afar recognized her lover's house. its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn. beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must be the château. she entered it as if the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. a large straight staircase led up to the corridor, emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man sleeping. it was rodolphe. she uttered a cry. "you here? you here?" he repeated, "how did you manage to come? ah! your dress is damp." "i love you," she answered, passing her arms round his neck. this first piece of daring successful, now every time charles went out early emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside. but when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling, and clogging her thin shoes. her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. she was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. at this hour rodolphe still slept. it was like a spring morning coming into his room. the yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly. emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face. rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him and pressed her to his breast. then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water. it took them a good quarter of an hour to say good-bye. then emma wept. she would have wished never to leave rodolphe. something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out. "what is the matter with you?" she said. "are you ill? tell me!" at last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself. x. lovers' vows. gradually rodolphe's fears took possession of her. at first, love had intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. but now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. when she came back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. she listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. one morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. it stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a jack-in-the-box. he had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. it was captain binet lying in ambush for wild ducks. "you ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed. "when one sees a gun, one should always give warning." the tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duck-hunting except in boats, monsieur binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. but this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cleverness. at sight of emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation. "it isn't warm; it's nipping." emma answered nothing. he went on-- "and you're out so early?" "yes," she said stammering; "i am just coming from the nurse where my child is." "ah! very good! very good! for myself, i am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun----" "good evening, monsieur binet," she interrupted him, turning on her heel. "your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub. emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. no doubt he would form unfavorable conjectures. the story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, every one at yonville knowing that the little bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to la huchette. binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. she remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag. charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the tax-collector again. he was standing in front of the counter, lighted by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying: "please give me half an ounce of vitriol." "justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." then to emma, who was going up to madame homais' room, "no, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. excuse me. good-day, doctor" (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "now, take care not to upset the mortars! you'd better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the armchairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room." and to put his armchair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid. "sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; i'm ignorant of it! but perhaps you want oxalic acid. it is oxalic acid, isn't it?" binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copper-water with which to remove rust from his hunting things. emma shuddered. the chemist began, saying: "indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp." "nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are people who like it." she was stifling. "and give me----" "will he never go?" thought she. "half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs." the chemist was beginning to cut the wax when madame homais appeared, irma in her arms, napoléon by her side, and athalie following. she sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. the latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. around him all were silent; only from time to time were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil. "and how's the little woman?" suddenly asked madame homais. "silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste-book. "why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice. "hush! hush!" said emma, pointing with her finger to the chemist. but binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. at last he went out. then emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh. "how hard you are breathing!" said madame homais. "well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied. the next day the lovers discussed how to arrange their rendezvous. emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at yonville. rodolphe promised to look for one. all through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. emma had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which charles thought lost. to call her, rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. she jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. she was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. at last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. but charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too. "come, now, emma," he said, "it is time." "yes, i am coming," she answered. then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell asleep. she escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden. it was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly léon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. she never thought of him now. the stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. the cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations. when the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the car-shed and the stable. she lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. rodolphe settled down there as if at home. the sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about charles, which rather embarrassed emma. she would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley. "some one is coming!" she said. he blew out the light. "have you your pistols?" "why?" "why, to defend yourself," replied emma. "from your husband? oh, poor devil!" and rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that said, "i could crush him with a flip of my finger." she was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naïve coarseness that scandalized her. rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. if she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject emma had treated him to a lecture, which he did not think in the best taste. besides, she was growing very sentimental. she had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. she often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would soothe a forsaken child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon: "i am sure that above there together they approve of our love." but she was so pretty! he had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. this love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed. he had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. she would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less. she did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. the humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. it was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. he subjugated her; she almost feared him. appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame. it was the time of year when old rouault sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. the present always arrived with a letter. emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines:-- "my dear children,--i hope this will find you in good health, and that it will be as good as the others, for it seems to me a little more tender, if i may venture to say so, and heavier. but next time, for a change, i'll give you a turkey-cock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. i have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. the harvest has not been over-good either. finally, i don't know when i shall come to see you. it is so difficult now to leave the house since i am alone, my poor emma." here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while. "for myself, i am very well, except for a cold i caught the other day at the fair at yvetot, where i had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. how we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! besides, he was also rude. i heard from a pedlar, who, traveling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that bovary was as usual working hard. that doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. i asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which i conclude that business is looking up. so much the better, my dear children, and may god send you every imaginable happiness! it grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, berthe bovary. i have planted an orleans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and i won't have it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by-and-bye, that i will keep in the cupboard for when she comes. "good-bye my dear children. i kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. i am, with best compliments, your loving father, "thÉodore rouault." she held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. the mistakes in spelling interwove with one another, but emma followed the kindly thought that chattered through it all like a hen half hidden in a hedge of thorns. the writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. how long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! she remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. the colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. what happiness she had had at that time, what freedom, what hope! what an abundance of illusions! nothing was left of them now. she had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life,--maidenhood, her marriage, and her love;--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road. but what, then, made her so unhappy? what was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? and she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer. an april ray was dancing on the china of the _étagère_; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter. in fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. she was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. the servant was holding her by her skirt. lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she leant forward, beating the air with both her arms. "bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "how i love you, my poor child! how i love you!" then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunder-stricken at this excess of tenderness. that evening rodolphe found her more serious than usual. "that will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim." and he missed three rendezvous running. when he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous. "ah! you're losing your time, my lady!" and he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out. then emma repented. she even asked herself why she detested charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? but he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the chemist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity. xi. an experiment and a failure. he had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot. "for," said he to emma, "what risk is there? see" (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain relief and beautifying the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator. why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor hippolyte of the 'lion d'or'? note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then" (homais lowered his voice and looked round him), "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! and who knows? who knows?" in fact, bovary might succeed. nothing proved to emma that he was not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by which his reputation and fortune would be increased! she only wished to lean on something more solid than love. charles, urged by the chemist and by her, allowed himself to be persuaded. he sent to rouen for dr. duval's volume, and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it. while he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say, _katastrephopody_, _endostrephopody_, and _exostrephopody_ (or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the _hypostrephopody_ and _anastrephopody_), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, monsieur homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the operation. "you will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns." hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes. "however," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. it's for your sake, for pure humanity! i should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous deformity, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling." then homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. then he attacked him through his vanity:-- "aren't you a man? hang it! what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? ah! hippolyte!" and homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science. the poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. binet, who never interfered with other people's business, madame lefrançois, artémise, the neighbors, even the mayor, monsieur tuvache--every one persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the operation. this generosity was an idea of emma's, and charles consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel. so, by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, in which iron, wood, sheet-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared. but to know which of hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had. he had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. but with this equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black nails looked as if made of iron, the club-foot ran about like a deer from morn till night. he was constantly to be seen on the place, jumping around the carts, thrusting his limping foot forward. he seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. by dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and of energy; and when he was doing some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its fellow. now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendo achillis, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that he did not know. neither ambrose paré, applying for the first time since celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as had the doctor when he approached hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers. and, as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of bandages--every bandage to be found at the chemist's. it was monsieur homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. charles pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. the tendon was cut, the operation over. hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over bovary's hands to cover them with kisses. "come, be calm," said the chemist; "later you will show your gratitude to your benefactor." and he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that hippolyte would reappear walking properly. then charles, having buckled his patient into the machine, went home, where emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door. she threw herself on his neck: they sat down to table; he ate much, and at dessert he even wished to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he permitted himself only on sundays when there was company. the evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. they talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. the thought of rodolphe for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth. they were in bed when monsieur homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. it was the paragraph he intended for the "fanal de rouen." he brought it them to read. "read it yourself," said bovary. he read: "'despite the prejudices that still cover a part of the face of europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country places. thus on tuesday our little town of yonville found itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of loftiest philanthropy. monsieur bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners----" "oh, that is too much! too much!" said charles, choking with emotion. "no, no! not at all! what next!" "'----performed an operation on a club-footed man.' i have not used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper every one would not perhaps understand. the masses must----" "no doubt," said bovary; "go on!" "i proceed," said the chemist. "'monsieur bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called hippolyte tautain, stable-man for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the "lion d'or," kept by widow lefrançois, at the place d'armes. the novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. the operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as if to show that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. the patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain. his condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. everything tends to show that his convalescence will be brief; and who knows whether, at our next village festivity, we shall not see our good hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? honor, then, to the generous savants! honor to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! honor, thrice honor! is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? but that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. we shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'" * * * this did not prevent mère lefrançois from coming five days after, scared, and crying out-- "help! he is dying! i am going crazy!" charles rushed to the "lion d'or," and the chemist, who caught sight of him passing along the place hatless, abandoned his shop. he appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking every one who was going up the stairs-- "why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?" the strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to break it. with many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. the outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. no attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. but hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. at last, three days after, hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. the livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and there, whence oozed a black liquid. matters were taking a serious turn. hippolyte began to worry himself, and mère lefrançois had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction. but the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such companionship. then hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. he lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale, with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. madame bovary went to see him. she brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted and encouraged him. besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days, when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled. "how are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "ah! you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. you should do this! do that!" and then they told him stories of people who had all been cured by other remedies than his. then by way of consolation they added:-- "you give way too much! get up! you coddle yourself like a king! all the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!" gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. bovary himself turned sick at it. he came every hour, every moment. hippolyte looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing-- "when shall i get well? oh, save me! how unfortunate i am! how unfortunate i am!" and the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself. "don't listen to him, my lad," said mère lefrançois. "haven't they tortured you enough already? you'll grow still weaker. here! swallow this." and she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the strength to put to his lips. abbé bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. he began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to heaven. "for," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. how many years is it since you approached the holy table? i understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your salvation. but now is the time to reflect. yet don't despair. i have known great sinners, who, about to appear before god (you are not yet at this point, i know), had implored his mercy, and who certainly died in the best frame of mind. let us hope that, like them, you will set us a good example. thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying morning and evening a 'hail mary, full of grace,' and 'our father which art in heaven'? yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. that won't cost you anything. will you promise me?" the poor devil promised. the curé came back day after day. he chatted with the landlady, and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and puns that hippolyte did not understand. then, as soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression of face. his zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to bon-secours if he were cured; to which monsieur bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better than one; it was no risk. the chemist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating to madame lefrançois, "leave him alone! leave him alone! you perturb his morals with your mysticism." but the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. from a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box. religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the stomach. it was all very well to vary the potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when mère lefrançois asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for monsieur canivet of neufchâtel, who was a celebrity. a doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and self-possessed, charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. then having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. shaking monsieur homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the shop: "these are the inventions of paris! these are the ideas of those gentry of the capital! it is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the government ought to prohibit. but they want to do the clever, and they cram you with remedies without troubling about the consequences. we are not so clever, not we! we are not savants, coxcombs, fops! we are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream of operating on any one who is in perfect health. straighten club-feet! as if one could straighten club-feet! it is as if one wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!" homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour monsieur canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as yonville. so he did not take up the defense of bovary; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious interests of his business. this amputation of the thigh by doctor canivet was a great event in the village. on that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the grande rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. at the grocer's they discussed hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and madame tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to see the operator arrive. he came in his gig, which he drove himself. but the springs of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly. after he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "lion d'or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. then he went into the stable to see that he was eating his oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his gig. people even said about this: "ah! monsieur camvet's a character!" and he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. the universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed the smallest of his habits. homais presented himself. "i count on you," said the doctor. "are we ready? come along!" but the chemist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to assist at such an operation. "when one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know, is impressed. and then i have such a nervous system!" "pshaw!" interrupted canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined to apoplexy. besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your constitutions. now just look at me. i get up every day at four o'clock; i shave with cold water (and am never cold). i don't wear flannels, and i never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! i live now in one way, now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why i am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a christian as the first fowl that turns up. then, perhaps, you will say, habit! habit!" then, without any consideration for hippolyte, who was sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation, in which the chemist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing to canivet, who launched out on the exigencies of his art. he looked upon it as a sacred office, although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. at last, coming back to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by homais, the same that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for some one to hold the limb for him. lestiboudois was sent for, and monsieur canivet having turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the chemist stayed with artémise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, and with ears strained towards the door. bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house. he kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "what a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" perhaps, after all, he had made some slip. he thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. but the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! people, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! it would spread as far as forges, as neufchâtel, as rouen, everywhere! who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. hippolyte might even prosecute him. he saw himself dishonored, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves. emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. as if twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity. charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the floor. "sit down," she said; "you fidget me." he sat down again. how was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? she recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might have had! and for what? for what? in the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending cry rose on the air. bovary turned white to fainting. she knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. and it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! for he was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his. she had made efforts to love him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another! "but it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed bovary, who was meditating. at the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, emma, shuddering, raised her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked one at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. charles gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered. emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral that she had broken, fixed on charles the burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. everything in him irritated her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his existence, in fine. she repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and what still remained of it crumbled away beneath the furious blows of her pride. she revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. the memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm; and charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as absent for ever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about to die and were passing under her eyes. there was a sound of steps on the pavement. charles looked up, and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the broad sunshine dr. canivet, who was wiping his brow with his handkerchief. homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his hand, and both were going towards the chemist's. then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement charles turned to his wife saying to her: "oh, kiss me, my own!" "leave me!" she said, red with anger. "what is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "be calm; compose yourself. you know well enough that i love you. come!" "enough!" she cried with a terrible look. and escaping from the room, emma closed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor. charles sank back into his armchair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him. when rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. they threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss. xii. preparations for flight. they began to love one another again. often, even in the middle of the day, emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to la huchette. rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored; that her husband was odious, her life frightful. "but what can i do?" he cried one day impatiently. "ah! if you would--" she was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost. "why, what?" said rodolphe. she sighed. "we would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!" "you are really mad!" he said laughing. "how could that be possible?" she returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation. what he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love. she had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection. her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband. the more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed the other. never had charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with rodolphe. then, while playing the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. it was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. she loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. when he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. the servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day félicité did not stir from the kitchen, where little justin, who often kept her company, watched her at work. with his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women's clothes spread out about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below. "what is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes. "why, haven't you ever seen anything?" félicité answered laughing. "as if your mistress, madame homais, didn't wear the same." "oh, i daresay! madame homais!" and he added with a meditative air, "as if she were a lady like madame!" but félicité grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. she was six years older than he, and théodore, monsieur guillaumin's servant, was beginning to pay court to her. "let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "you'd better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your chin." "oh, don't be cross! i'll go and clean her boots." and he at once took down from the shelf emma's boots, all coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight. "how afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her. emma had many shoes in her closet that she wore out one after the other, without charles allowing himself the slightest observation. so also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper to make a present of to hippolyte. its top was covered with cork, and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. but hippolyte, not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged madame bovary to get him another more convenient one. the doctor, of course, had again to defray the expense of this purchase. so little by little the stable-man took up his work again. one saw him running about the village as before, and when charles heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction. it was monsieur lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting emma. he chatted with her about the new goods from paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. emma yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. thus she wanted to have a very handsome riding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at rouen, to give to rodolphe. the week after monsieur lheureux placed it on her table. but the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and seventy francs, not counting the centimes. emma was much embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a fortnight's wages to lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and bovary was impatiently expecting monsieur derozerays' account, which he was in the habit of paying him every year about midsummer. she succeeded at first in putting off lheureux. at last he lost patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received. "oh, very well, take them!" said emma. "i was only joking," he replied; "the only thing i regret is the whip. my word! i'll ask monsieur to return it to me." "no, no!" she said. "ah! i've got you!" thought lheureux. and, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle: "good! we shall see! we shall see!" she was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from monsieur derozerays." emma pounced upon and opened it. it contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. she heard charles on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key. three days after lheureux reappeared. "i have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "if, instead of the sum agreed on, you would take----" "here it is," she said, placing fourteen napoleons in his hand. the tradesman was astounded. then, to conceal his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which emma declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. she promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on. "pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again." * * * besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, rodolphe had received a seal with the motto _amor nel cor_; furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the viscount's, that charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that emma had kept. these presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and over-exacting. then she had strange ideas. "when midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me." and if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question: "do you love me?" "why, of course i love you," he answered. "a great deal?" "certainly!" "you haven't loved any others?" "did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing. emma wept, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with puns. "oh," she went on, "i love you! i love you so that i could not live without you, do you see? there are times when i long to see you again, when i am torn by all the anger of love. i ask myself, where is he? perhaps he is talking to other women. they smile upon him; he approaches. oh no! no one else pleases you. there are some more beautiful, but i love you best. i know how to love best. i am your servant, your concubine! you are my king, my idol! you are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!" he had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. he did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fulness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. but with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him, who, in no matter what circumstance, holds back, rodolphe saw other delights to be got out of this love. he thought all modesty in the way. he treated her quite _sans façon_. he made of her something supple and corrupt. hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like clarence in his butt of malmsey. by the mere effect of her love madame bovary's manners changed. her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the impropriety of walking out with monsieur rodolphe, a cigarette in her mouth, "as if to defy the people." at last those who still doubted doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the "hirondelle" her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and madame bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk. many other things displeased her. first, charles had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house" annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one on account of félicité. madame bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. then emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to look after those of one's servants. "where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so impertinent a look that madame bovary asked her if she were not perhaps defending her own case. "leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound. "emma! mamma!" cried charles, trying to reconcile them. but both had fled in their exasperation. emma was stamping her feet as she repeated-- "oh! what manners! what a peasant!" he ran to his mother; she was beside herself. she stammered: "she is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!" and she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologize. so charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying-- "very well! i'll go to her." and in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity of a marchioness as she said: "excuse me, madame." then having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow. she and rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to be in yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house. emma made the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of rodolphe at the corner of the market. she felt tempted to open the window and call him, but he had already disappeared. she fell back in despair. soon, however, it seemed to her that some one was walking on the pavement. it was he, no doubt. she went downstairs, crossed the yard. he was there outside. she threw herself into his arms. "do take care!" he said. "ah! if you knew!" she replied. and she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly, exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses that he understood nothing of it. "come, my poor angel, courage! be comforted! be patient!" "but i have been patient; i have suffered for four years. a love like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. they torture me! i can bear it no longer! save me!" she clung to rodolphe. her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so that he lost his head and said: "what is it? what do you wish?" "take me away," she cried, "carry me off! oh, i entreat you!" and she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the unexpected consent it breathed forth in a kiss. "but----" rodolphe resumed. "what?" "your little girl!" she reflected a few moments, then replied-- "we will take her! it can't be helped!" "what a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. for she had run into the garden. some one was calling her. on the following days madame bovary senior was much surprised at the change in her daughter-in-law. emma, in fact, was showing herself more docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins. was it the better to deceive them both? or did she wish by a sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the things she was about to leave? but she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as if lost in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness. it was an eternal subject for conversation with rodolphe. she leant on his shoulder murmuring-- "ah! when we are in the mail-coach! do you think about it? can it be? it seems to me that the moment i feel the carriage start, it will be as if we were rising in a balloon as if we were setting out for the clouds. do you know that i count the hours? and you?" never had madame bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all the plenitude of her nature. her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. one would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. her voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot. charles, as when they were first married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible. when he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake her. the porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed, as it were, a white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside charles looked at them. he seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. she would grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. he already saw her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. then she would have to be sent to a boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be done? then he reflected. he thought of hiring a small farm in the neighborhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his patients. he would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the savings-bank. then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he wanted berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play the piano. ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters. he pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her gaiety. at last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for ever. emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her side she awakened to other dreams. to the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a new land, whence they would return no more. they went on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. often from the top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed steeples were storks' nests. they went at a walking-pace because of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. they heard the chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. and then, one night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. it was there that they would stay; they would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. they would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. however, in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonized, azure, and bathed in sunshine. but the child began to cough in her cot or bovary snored more loudly, and emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the window, and when little justin was already in the square taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop. she had sent for monsieur lheureux, and had said to him-- "i want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar." "you are going on a journey?" he asked. "no; but--never mind. i may count on you, may i not, and quickly?" he bowed. "besides, i shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy." "yes, yes, i understand. about three feet by a foot and a half, as they are being made just now." "and a travelling bag." "decidedly," thought lheureux, "there's a row on here." "and," said madame bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this; you can pay yourself out of it." but the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another; did he doubt her? what childishness! she insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him back. "you will leave everything at your place. as to the cloak"--she seemed to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's address, and tell him to have it ready for me." it was the next month that they were to run away. she was to leave yonville as if she was going on some business to rouen. rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping to genoa. she would take care to send her luggage to lheureux', whence it would be taken direct to the "hirondelle," so that no one would have any suspicion. and in all this there never was any allusion to the child. rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it. he wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. the month of august passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the th september--a monday. at length the saturday before arrived. rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual. "everything is ready?" she asked him. "yes." then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the curb-stone of the wall. "you are sad," said emma. "no; why?" and yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion. "is it because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are leaving what is dear to you--your life? ah! i understand. i have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall i be to you. i will be your people, your country; i will tend, i will love you!" "how sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms. "really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "do you love me? swear it then!" "do i love you--love you? i adore you, my love!" the moon, full and purple-colored, was rising right out of the earth at the end of the meadow. she rose quickly between the branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with holes. then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a headless serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. the soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches. emma, her eyes half-closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind that was blowing. they did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of their reverie. the tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach falling all alone from the espalier. "ah! what a lovely night!" said rodolphe. "we shall have others," replied emma; and, as if speaking to herself, "yes, it will be good to travel. and yet, why should my heart be so heavy? is it dread of the unknown? the effect of habits left? or rather----? no; it is the excess of happiness. how weak i am, am i not? forgive me!" "there is still time!" he cried. "reflect! perhaps you may repent!" "never!" she cried impetuously. and coming closer to him: "what ill could come to me? there is no desert, no precipice, no ocean i would not traverse with you. the longer we live together the more it will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. there will be nothing to trouble us, no care, no obstacle. we shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally. oh, speak! answer me!" at regular intervals he answered, "yes--yes--" she had passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears which were falling, "rodolphe! rodolphe! ah! rodolphe! dear little rodolphe!" midnight struck. "midnight!" said she. "come! it is to-morrow! one day more!" he rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for their flight, emma said, suddenly, assuming a gay air-- "you have the passports?" "yes." "you are forgetting nothing?" "no." "are you sure?" "certainly." "it is at the hôtel de provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at mid-day?" he nodded. "till to-morrow then!" said emma, in a last caress; and she watched him go. he did not turn round. she ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes-- "to-morrow!" she cried. he was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow. after a few moments rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall. "what an imbecile i am!" he said with a fearful oath. "no matter! she was a pretty mistress!" and immediately emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. for a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her. "for, after all," he exclaimed gesticulating, "i can't exile myself--have a child on my hands." he was saying these things to give himself firmness. "and besides, the worry, the expense! ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand times no! it would have been too stupid." xiii. deserted. no sooner was rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. but when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect. emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them. to get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odor of dry dust and withered roses. first he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. it was a handkerchief of hers. once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, emma's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. he wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. in order to find them at the bottom of the box, rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened. thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. they were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. a word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all. in fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalized them all. so taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. at last, bored and weary, rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, "what a lot of rubbish!" which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. "come," said he, "let's begin." he wrote-- "courage, emma! courage! i would not bring misery into your life." "after all, that's true," thought rodolphe. "i am acting in her interest; i am honest." "have you carefully weighed your resolution? do you know to what an abyss i was dragging you, poor angel? no, you do not, do you? you were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!" rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse. "if i told her all my fortune is lost? no! besides that would stop nothing. it would all have to be begun over again later on. as if one could make women like that listen to reason!" he reflected, then went on-- "i shall not forget you, oh! believe it; and i shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if i should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since i should have been its cause? the mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, emma. forget me! why did i ever know you? why were you so beautiful? is it my fault? o my god! no, no! accuse only fate." "that's a word that always tells," he said to himself. "ah! if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly i might, through egotism, have made an experiment, in that case without danger for you. but that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. nor had i reflected upon this at first, and i rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences." "perhaps she'll think i'm giving it up from avarice. ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!" "the world is cruel, emma. wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us. you would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult, perhaps. insult to you! oh! and i, who would place you on a throne! i who bear with me your memory as a talisman! for i am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill i have done you. i am going away. whither i know not. i am mad. adieu! be good always. preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers." the wicks of the candles flickered. rodolphe got up to shut the window, and when he had sat down again-- "i think it's all right. ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up." "i shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for i have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. no weakness! i shall return, and perhaps later we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. adieu!" and there was a last 'adieu' divided into two words: "a dieu!" which he thought in very excellent taste. "now how am i to sign?" he said to himself. "yours devotedly?' no! 'your friend?' yes, that's it." "your friend." he re-read his letter. he considered it very good. "poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "she'll think me harder than a rock. there ought to have been some tears on this; but i can't cry; it isn't my fault." then, having emptied some water into a glass, rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "_amor nel cor_." "that doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. pshaw! never mind!" after which he smoked three pipes and went to bed. the next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late), rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. he put his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to madame bovary. he made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits or game. "if she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that i have gone on a journey. you must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands. get along and take care!" girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the apricots, and, walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made his way to yonville. madame bovary, when he got to her house was arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with félicité. "here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you from master." she was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move any one. at last he went out. félicité remained. emma could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting-room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, she flew to her room terrified. charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. on the second floor she stopped before the attic-door, that was closed. then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. and where? how? she would be seen! "ah, no! here," she thought, "i shall be all right." emma pushed open the door and went in. the slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. she drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap. opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country until it was lost to the sight. underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were motionless. at the corner of the street, from a lower story, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. it was binet turning. she leant against the embrasure of the window, and re-read the letter with angry sneers. but the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. she saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and the throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. she looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. why not end it all? what restrained her? she was free. she advanced, looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself, "come! come!" the luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. it seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. she was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. the blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. "emma! emma!" cried charles. she stopped. "wherever are you? come!" the thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. she closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was félicité. "master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table." and she had to go down to sit at table. she tried to eat. the food choked her. then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. how had she lost it? where could she find it? but she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. then she became a coward; she was afraid of charles; he knew all, that was certain! indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner: "we are not likely to see monsieur rodolphe soon again, it seems." "who told you?" she said, shuddering. "who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "why, girard, whom i met just now at the door of the café-français. he has gone on a journey, or is to go." she gave a sob. "what surprises you in that? he absents himself like that from time to time for a change, and, _ma foi_, i think he's right, when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. he's a bit of a rake. monsieur langlois told me--" he stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. she put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. charles, without noticing his wife's color, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it. "ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!" and he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently. "do just smell! what an odor!" he remarked, passing it under her nose several times. "i am choking," she cried, leaping up. but by an effort of will the spasm passed; then-- "it is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! it is nervousness. sit down and go on eating." for she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left alone. charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate. suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground. in fact, rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for rouen. now, as from la huchette to buchy there is no other way than by yonville, he had to go through the village, and emma had recognized him by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the twilight. the chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house, ran thither. the table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; charles was calling for help; berthe, scared, was crying; and félicité, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively. "i'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the chemist. then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle: "i was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for you!" "speak to us," said charles; "collect yourself; it is i--your charles, who loves you. do you know me? see! here is your little girl! oh, kiss her!" the child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. but turning away her head, emma said in a broken voice-- "no, no! no one!" she fainted again. they carried her to her bed. she lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow. charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life. "do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "i think the paroxysm is past." "yes, she is resting a little now," answered charles, watching her sleep. "poor girl! poor girl! she has gone off now!" then homais asked how the accident had come about. charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots. "extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "but it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. the priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. it is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread--" "take care; you'll wake her!" said bovary in a low voice. "and not only," the chemist went on, "are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the _nepeta cataria_, vulgarly called cat-mint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity i can answer for, bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the rue malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. he often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at guillaume wood. would any one believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? it is extremely curious, is it not?" "yes," said charles, who was not listening to him. "this shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system. with regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, i confess, very susceptible. and so i should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. no; no useless physicking! diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?" "in what way? how?" said bovary. "ah! that is it. such is indeed the question. 'that is the question,' as i lately read in a newspaper." but emma, awaking, cried out-- "the letter! the letter!" they thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. brain-fever had set in. for forty-three days charles did not leave her. he gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. he sent justin as far as neufchâtel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. he called monsieur canivet into consultation; he sent for dr. larivière, his old master, from rouen; he was in despair. what alarmed him most was emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after all their troubles. about the middle of october she could sit up in bed supported by pillows. charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. her strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the garden. the sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and leaning against charles's shoulder. she smiled all the time. they went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. she drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. she looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills. "you will tire yourself, my darling!" said bovary. and pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, "sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable." "oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice. she was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more complex symptoms. now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer. and besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters. xiv. religious fervor. to begin with, he did not know how he could pay monsieur homais for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an obligation. then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; monsieur lheureux especially harassed him. in fact, at the height of emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other things. it was very well for charles to say he did not want them. the tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his goods. charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop. félicité forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more about them. monsieur lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and whining, so managed that bovary ended by signing a bill at six months. but hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from lheureux. so, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back the money and dictated another bill, by which bovary undertook to pay to his order on the st of september next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at six per cent, in addition to one-fourth for commission; and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. he hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag. everything, moreover, succeeded with him. he was adjudicator for a supply of cider to the hospital at neufchâtel; monsieur guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service between arcueil and rouen, which no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "lion d'or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of yonville. charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be able to pay back so much money. he reflected, imagined expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something. but his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. he reproached himself with forgetting emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be constantly thinking of her. the winter was severe, madame bovary's convalescence slow. when it was fine they wheeled her armchair to the window that overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. she wished the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her. all her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. she stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. the snow on the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain began to fall; and emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no relation to her. the most important was the arrival of the "hirondelle" in the evening. then the landlady shouted out, and other voices answered, while hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star in the darkness. at mid-day charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one after the other. it was at this hour that monsieur bournisien came to see her. he inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion in a coaxing little gossip that was not without its charm. the mere thought of his cassock comforted her. one day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the night-table covered with sirups into an altar, and while félicité was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward god, would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into vapour. the bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the saviour presented to her. the curtains of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, god the father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms. this splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation, that still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. there existed, then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys,--another love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! she saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. she wanted to become a saint. she bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening. the curé marvelled at this humour, although emma's religion, he thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. but not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to monsieur boulard, bookseller to monsignor, to send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." the bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pell-mell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book trade. there were little manuals in questions and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of monsieur de maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent blue-stockings. there were the "think of it; the man of the world at mary's feet, by monsieur de * * *, _décoré_ with many orders;" "the errors of voltaire, for the use of the young," &c. madame bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much hurry. she grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive. as for the memory of rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. an exhalation escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. when she knelt on her gothic prie-dieu, she addressed to the lord the same suave words that she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. it was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic dupery. this searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness emma compared herself to those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of la vallière, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded. then she gave herself up to excessive charity. she sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and charles one day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table eating soup. she had her little girl, whom during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. she wanted to teach her to read; even when berthe cried, she was not vexed. she had made up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. her language about everything was full of ideal expressions. she said to her child, "is your stomach-ache better, my angel?" madame bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even staid there till after easter, to escape the sarcasms of old bovary, who never failed on good friday to order chitterlings. besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, emma almost every day had other visitors. these were madame langlois, madame caron, madame dubreuil, madame tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent madame homais, who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbor. the little homais also came to see her; justin accompanied them. he went up with them to her bedroom, and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. often even madame bovary, taking no heed of him, began her toilette. she began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him. emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity. she had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. one evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext. then suddenly-- "so you love him?" she said. and without waiting for any answer from félicité, who was blushing, she added, "there! run along; enjoy yourself!" in the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end, despite bovary's remonstrances. however, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. as she grew stronger she displayed more wilfulness. first, she found occasion to expel mère rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. then she got rid of the homais family, successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less assiduously, to the great approval of the chemist, who said to her in a friendly way-- "you were going in a bit for the cassock!" as formerly, monsieur bournisien dropped in every day when he came out after catechism class. he preferred staying out of doors to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. this was the time when charles came home. they were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's complete restoration. binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace wall, fishing for cray-fish. bovary invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles. "you must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants." but during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this joke-- "it's goodness strikes the eye!" he was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised charles to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, lagardy. homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature. but the chemist took up the defence of letters. the theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue. "_castigat ridendo mores_, monsieur bournisien! thus, consider the greater part of voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that make them a very school of morals and diplomacy for the people." "i," said binet, "once saw a piece called the 'gamin de paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a t. he sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the end----" "certainly," continued homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned galileo." "i know very well," objected the curé, "that there are good works, good authors. however, if it were only those persons of different sexes together in a bewitching apartment, decorated with worldly pomp, and then, those pagan disguises, that rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts, and impure temptations. such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the fathers. finally," he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice, while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, "if the church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her decrees." "why," asked the chemist, "should she excommunicate actors? for formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called 'mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency." the ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on-- "it's just as it is in the bible; for there, you know, are more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!" and on a gesture of irritation from monsieur bournisien-- "ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and i should be sorry if athalie----" "but it is the protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently, "who recommend the bible." "no matter," said homais. "i am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, any one should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?" "no doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas. the conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a parthian arrow. "i've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kicking about." "come, come!" said the curé. "ah! i've known some!" and separating the words of his sentence, homais repeated, "i--have--known--some!" "well, they did wrong," said bournisien, resigned to anything. "by jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the chemist. "sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that homais was intimidated by them. "i only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion." "that is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again on his chair. but he stayed only a few moments. then, as soon as he had gone, monsieur homais said to the doctor-- "that's what i call a cock-fight. i beat him, did you see, in a way!--now take my advice. take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! if any one could take my place, i would accompany you myself. be quick about it. lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to england at a high salary. from what i hear, he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. all these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that stirs the imagination to some extent. but they die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by. well, a pleasant dinner! good-bye till to-morrow." the idea of the theatre quickly germinated in bovary's head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. he saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of lheureux's bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o'clock they set out in the "hirondelle." the chemist, whom nothing whatever kept at yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go. "well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you are!" then addressing himself to emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with four flounces-- "you are as lovely as a venus. you'll cut a figure at rouen." the diligence stopped at the "croix-rouge" in the place beauvoisine. it was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers;--a good old house with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in sunday-clothes, has a café on the street, and towards the country-side a kitchen-garden. charles at once set out. he muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard. madame bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. the doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the theatre, which were still closed. xv. a new delight. the crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. at the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "lucia de lammermoor--lagardy--opera--&c." the weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and again a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. a little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. this was an exhalation from the rue des charrettes, full of large black ware-houses where they make casks. for fear of seeming ridiculous, emma before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach. her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. she involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. she was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. she breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess. the theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. they came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cotton, spirits of wine, or indigo. the heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. the young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or apple-green cravats, and madame bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves. now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. but three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene. it was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. she felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of walter scott. she seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. she gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. she had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when any one walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. but a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. she was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. lucia attacked her cavatina in g major bravely. she plained of love; she longed for wings. emma too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. suddenly edgar-lagardy appeared. he had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the south. his vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast around laughing looks showing his white teeth. they said that a polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. she had ruined herself for him. he had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. the diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. a fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable, charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toréador. from the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. he pressed lucia in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. she was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. she recognized all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. the voice of the prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. but no one on earth had loved her with such love. he had not wept like edgar that last moonlit night when they said, "to-morrow! to-morrow!" the theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords. "but why," asked bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?" "no, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!" "yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, 'i love lucia and she loves me!' besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. for he certainly is her father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?" despite emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master ashton, charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive lucia, thought it was a love-gift sent by edgar. he confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words. "what does it matter?" said emma. "do be quiet!" "yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "i like to understand things." "be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently. lucia advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. emma dreamed of her marriage-day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? she, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. but that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. she now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. so, striving to divert her thoughts, emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak. his large spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; lucia, uttered her shrill plaint, arthur, at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. they were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. the outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. he, she thought, must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. all her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. they would have known one another, loved one another. with him, through all the kingdoms of europe she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. then each evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work, she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted he would have looked at her. but the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. she longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, "take me away! carry me with you! let us go! thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!" the curtain fell. the smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more suffocating. emma wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her armchair with palpitations that choked her. charles, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water. he had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. her husband, who was a mill-owner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. at last charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath: "_ma foi!_ i thought i should have had to stay there. there is such a crowd--_such_ a crowd!" he added-- "just guess whom i met up there! monsieur léon!" "léon?" "himself! he's coming along to pay his respects." and as he finished these words the ex-clerk of yonville entered the box. he held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and madame bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. she had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. but soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words. "ah, good-day! what! you here?" "silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning. "so you are at rouen?" "yes." "and since when?" "turn them out! turn them out!" people were looking at them. they were silent. but from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between ashton and his servant, the grand duet in d major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. she remembered the games at cards at the chemist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, _tête-à-tête_ by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender and that she had nevertheless forgotten. and why had he come back? what combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life. he was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair. "does this amuse you?" he said, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. she replied carelessly: "oh, dear me, no, not much." then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere. "oh, not yet; let us stay," said bovary. "her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic." but the mad scene did not at all interest emma, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated. "she screams too loud," said she, turning to charles, who was listening. "yes--perhaps--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion. then with a sigh léon said: "the heat is--" "unbearable! yes!" "do you feel unwell?" asked bovary. "yes, i am stifling; let us go." monsieur léon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a café. first they spoke of her illness, although emma interrupted charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring monsieur léon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in normandy and paris. then he inquired after berthe, the homais, mère lefrançois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end. people coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "_o bel ange, ma lucie!_" then léon playing the dilettante, began to talk music. he had seen tamburini, rubini, persiani, grisi, and compared with them, lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere. "yet," interrupted charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. i regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me." "why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance." but charles replied that they were going back next day. "unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, pussy?" and changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of lagardy in the last number. it was really superb, sublime. then charles insisted-- "you would get back on sunday. come, make up your mind. you are wrong not to stay if you feel that this is doing you the least good." the tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood discreetly near them. charles, who understood, took out his purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble. "i am really sorry," said bovary, "about the money which you are----" the other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat said-- "it is settled, isn't it? to-morrow, at six o'clock?" charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented emma---- "but," she stammered, with a strange smile, "i am not sure----" "well, you must think it over. we'll see. night brings counsel." then to léon, who was walking along with them, "now that you are in our part of the world, i hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then." the clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover, to go to yonville on some business for his office. and they parted before the saint-herbland passage just as the cathedral struck half-past eleven. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | page ix: "the elder dumas or eugene sue." has been changed | | to "the elder dumas or eugène sue." | | | | page xiv: emaux in "in his well-known emaux et camées" | | remains unchanged--without an accent | | | | education in "education sentimentale" remains unchanged-- | | without an accent on pages xvi, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxx | | | | page xvi: "his son napoleon" has been changed to "his son | | napoléon" with an accent | | | | page xvii: departement in "la muse du departement" remains | | unchanged--without an accent | | | | page xxx: legende in "la legende de saint julien | | l'hospitalier" remains unchanged--without an accent | | | | page : "ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots." has been changed to | | "ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots." | | | | page : "under the cartshed" has been changed to "under | | the cart-shed" | | | | page : "than regularly twice a week," has been changed to | | "then regularly twice a week," | | | | page : "on the roofs of the out-buildings" has been | | changed to "on the roofs of the outbuildings" | | | | page : "opposite the fire. on a little table" has been | | changed to "opposite the fire, on a little table" | | | | page : in the original, the word tutoyéd is unclear in | | 'he called her "my wife," _tutoyéd_ her' | | | | page : "a second-hand dogcart," has been changed to | | "a second-hand dog-cart," | | | | page : "a siesta by the water-side." has been changed to | | "a siesta by the waterside." | | | | page : "madame lafrançois" has been changed to "madame | | lefrançois" | | | | page : "thus napoleon represented glory" has been changed | | to "thus napoléon represented glory" | | | | page : "yonville by the water-side." has been changed to | | "yonville by the waterside." | | | | page : "seated in her arm-chair" has been changed to | | "seated in her armchair" | | | | page : "falling asleep in the arm-chairs" has been | | changed to "falling asleep in the armchairs" | | | | page : "the druggist had taken napoleon" has been | | changed to "the druggist had taken napoléon" | | | | page : "napoleon began to roar," has been changed to | | "napoléon began to roar," | | | | page : "the night-caps arranged in piles" has been | | changed to "the nightcaps arranged in piles" | | | | page : "who came behind his arm-chair" has been | | changed to "who came behind his armchair" | | | | page : "threw herself into an arm-chair." has been | | changed to "threw herself into an armchair." | | | | page : "his three arm-chairs restuffed," has been | | changed to "his three armchairs restuffed," | | | | page : "an arm-chair at his bureau" has been changed to | | "an armchair at his bureau" | | | | page : "columns of the town-hall" has been changed to | | "columns of the townhall" | | | | page : "she had heard from theodore," has been changed to | | "she had heard from théodore," | | | | page : "and said to her it a low voice" has been changed | | to "and said to her in a low voice" | | | | page : "decending" has been changed to "descending" | | | | page : "monsieur belot of notre-dame." has been changed | | to "monsieur belot of nôtre-dame." | | | | page : "the arm-chairs are not to be taken" has been | | changed to "the armchairs are not to be taken" | | | | page : "to put his arm-chair back" has been changed to | | "to put his armchair back" | | | | page : "he sat down again" has been changed to | | "he sat down again." | | | | page : "into his arm-chair overwhelmed" has been changed | | to "into his armchair overwhelmed" | | | | page : closing quotation marks have been added to | | "ah! if you would--" | | | | page : closing quotation marks have been added to | | "very well! i'll go to her." | | | | page : "rumaging" has been changed to "rummaging" | | | | page : "they wheeled her arm-chair" has been changed | | to "they wheeled her armchair" | | | | page : "with them to her bed-room," has been changed | | to "with them to her bedroom," | | | | page : "her arm-chair with palpitations" has been changed | | to "her armchair with palpitations" | | | | page : "the tables round them, however, were emptying:" | | has been changed to "the tables round them, however, were | | emptying;" | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ aaron's rod by d. h. lawrence contents i. the blue ball ii. royal oak iii. “the lighted tree” iv. “the pillar of salt” v. at the opera vi. talk vii. the dark square garden viii. a punch in the wind ix. low-water mark x. the war again xi. more pillar of salt xii. novara xiii. wie es ihnen gefaellt xiv. xx settembre xv. a railway journey xvi. florence xvii. high up over the cathedral square xviii. the marchesa xix. cleopatra, but not anthony xx. the broken rod xxi. words chapter i. the blue ball there was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. it was christmas eve. also the war was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace. a man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank that evening. aaron sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line climbing the hill home from work. he was late because he had attended a meeting of the men on the bank. he was secretary to the miners union for his colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that left him nettled. he strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and was in the long road of colliers' dwellings. just across was his own house: he had built it himself. he went through the little gate, up past the side of the house to the back. there he hung a moment, glancing down the dark, wintry garden. “my father--my father's come!” cried a child's excited voice, and two little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs. “father, shall you set the christmas tree?” they cried. “we've got one!” “afore i have my dinner?” he answered amiably. “set it now. set it now.--we got it through fred alton.” “where is it?” the little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of the passage into the light of the kitchen door. “it's a beauty!” exclaimed millicent. “yes, it is,” said marjory. “i should think so,” he replied, striding over the dark bough. he went to the back kitchen to take off his coat. “set it now, father. set it now,” clamoured the girls. “you might as well. you've left your dinner so long, you might as well do it now before you have it,” came a woman's plangent voice, out of the brilliant light of the middle room. aaron sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap. he stood bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree. “what am i to put it in?” he queried. he picked up the tree, and held it erect by the topmost twig. he felt the cold as he stood in the yard coatless, and he twitched his shoulders. “isn't it a beauty!” repeated millicent. “ay!--lop-sided though.” “put something on, you two!” came the woman's high imperative voice, from the kitchen. “we aren't cold,” protested the girls from the yard. “come and put something on,” insisted the voice. the man started off down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. the sky was clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under air. aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a spade and a box that was suitable. then he came out to his neat, bare, wintry garden. the girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their hats under their chins as they ran. the tree and the box lay on the frozen earth. the air breathed dark, frosty, electric. “hold it up straight,” he said to millicent, as he arranged the tree in the box. she stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the roots. when it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. the girls were hovering excited round the tree. he dropped the barrow and stooped to the box. the girls watched him hold back his face--the boughs pricked him. “is it very heavy?” asked millicent. “ay!” he replied, with a little grunt. then the procession set off--the trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited little girls. they arrived at the door. down went the legs of the wheel-barrow on the yard. the man looked at the box. “where are you going to have it?” he called. “put it in the back kitchen,” cried his wife. “you'd better have it where it's going to stop. i don't want to hawk it about.” “put it on the floor against the dresser, father. put it there,” urged millicent. “you come and put some paper down, then,” called the mother hastily. the two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold, shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly. the open inner door showed a bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on which stood an aspidistra. again with a wrench aaron sisson lifted the box. the tree pricked and stung. his wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his face averted. “mind where you make a lot of dirt,” she said. he lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper on the floor. soil scattered. “sweep it up,” he said to millicent. his ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the tree-boughs. a stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything sharp and hard. in the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. all was scrupulously clean and perfect. a baby was cooing in a rocker-less wicker cradle by the hearth. the mother, a slim, neat woman with dark hair, was sewing a child's frock. she put this aside, rose, and began to take her husband's dinner from the oven. “you stopped confabbing long enough tonight,” she said. “yes,” he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands. in a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner. the doors were shut close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines under the house made the doors not fit. aaron moved his chair, to get out of the draught. but he still sat in his shirt and trousers. he was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years old. he did not talk much, but seemed to think about something. his wife resumed her sewing. she was acutely aware of her husband, but he seemed not very much aware of her. “what were they on about today, then?” she said. “about the throw-in.” “and did they settle anything?” “they're going to try it--and they'll come out if it isn't satisfactory.” “the butties won't have it, i know,” she said. he gave a short laugh, and went on with his meal. the two children were squatted on the floor by the tree. they had a wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets, which they were spreading out like wares. “don't open any. we won't open any of them till we've taken them all out--and then we'll undo one in our turns. then we s'll both undo equal,” millicent was saying. “yes, we'll take them all out first,” re-echoed marjory. “and what are they going to do about job arthur freer? do they want him?” a faint smile came on her husband's face. “nay, i don't know what they want.--some of 'em want him--whether they're a majority, i don't know.” she watched him closely. “majority! i'd give 'em majority. they want to get rid of you, and make a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. strikes me you need something to break your heart over.” he laughed silently. “nay,” he said. “i s'll never break my heart.” “you'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just because a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to do the union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you, and you eat your heart out about it. more fool you, that's all i say--more fool you. if you cared for your wife and children half what you care about your union, you'd be a lot better pleased in the end. but you care about nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don't know what they want except it's more money just for themselves. self, self, self--that's all it is with them--and ignorance.” “you'd rather have self without ignorance?” he said, smiling finely. “i would, if i've got to have it. but what i should like to see is a man that has thought for others, and isn't all self and politics.” her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed. a blank look had come over the man's face, as if he did not hear or heed any more. he drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with two fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children. they had laid all the little packets on the floor, and millicent was saying: “now i'll undo the first, and you can have the second. i'll take this--” she unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament for a christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy indentations on each side. “oh!” she exclaimed. “isn't it lovely!” her fingers cautiously held the long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious, irritating possession. the man's eyes moved away from her. the lesser child was fumbling with one of the little packets. “oh!”--a wail went up from millicent. “you've taken one!--you didn't wait.” then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began to interfere. “this is the way to do it, look! let me help you.” but marjory drew back with resentment. “don't, millicent!--don't!” came the childish cry. but millicent's fingers itched. at length marjory had got out her treasure--a little silvery bell with a glass top hanging inside. the bell was made of frail glassy substance, light as air. “oh, the bell!” rang out millicent's clanging voice. “the bell! it's my bell. my bell! it's mine! don't break it, marjory. don't break it, will you?” marjory was shaking the bell against her ear. but it was dumb, it made no sound. “you'll break it, i know you will.--you'll break it. give it me--” cried millicent, and she began to take away the bell. marjory set up an expostulation. “let her alone,” said the father. millicent let go as if she had been stung, but still her brassy, impudent voice persisted: “she'll break it. she'll break it. it's mine--” “you undo another,” said the mother, politic. millicent began with hasty, itching fingers to unclose another package. “aw--aw mother, my peacock--aw, my peacock, my green peacock!” lavishly she hovered over a sinuous greenish bird, with wings and tail of spun glass, pearly, and body of deep electric green. “it's mine--my green peacock! it's mine, because marjory's had one wing off, and mine hadn't. my green peacock that i love! i love it!” she swung it softly from the little ring on its back. then she went to her mother. “look, mother, isn't it a beauty?” “mind the ring doesn't come out,” said her mother. “yes, it's lovely!” the girl passed on to her father. “look, father, don't you love it!” “love it?” he re-echoed, ironical over the word love. she stood for some moments, trying to force his attention. then she went back to her place. marjory had brought forth a golden apple, red on one cheek, rather garish. “oh!” exclaimed millicent feverishly, instantly seized with desire for what she had not got, indifferent to what she had. her eye ran quickly over the packages. she took one. “now!” she exclaimed loudly, to attract attention. “now! what's this?--what's this? what will this beauty be?” with finicky fingers she removed the newspaper. marjory watched her wide-eyed. millicent was self-important. “the blue ball!” she cried in a climax of rapture. “i've got the blue ball.” she held it gloating in the cup of her hands. it was a little globe of hardened glass, of a magnificent full dark blue color. she rose and went to her father. “it was your blue ball, wasn't it, father?” “yes.” “and you had it when you were a little boy, and now i have it when i'm a little girl.” “ay,” he replied drily. “and it's never been broken all those years.” “no, not yet.” “and perhaps it never will be broken.” to this she received no answer. “won't it break?” she persisted. “can't you break it?” “yes, if you hit it with a hammer,” he said. “aw!” she cried. “i don't mean that. i mean if you just drop it. it won't break if you drop it, will it?” “i dare say it won't.” “but will it?” “i sh'd think not.” “should i try?” she proceeded gingerly to let the blue ball drop, it bounced dully on the floor-covering. “oh-h-h!” she cried, catching it up. “i love it.” “let me drop it,” cried marjory, and there was a performance of admonition and demonstration from the elder sister. but millicent must go further. she became excited. “it won't break,” she said, “even if you toss it up in the air.” she flung it up, it fell safely. but her father's brow knitted slightly. she tossed it wildly: it fell with a little splashing explosion: it had smashed. it had fallen on the sharp edge of the tiles that protruded under the fender. “now what have you done!” cried the mother. the child stood with her lip between her teeth, a look, half, of pure misery and dismay, half of satisfaction, on her pretty sharp face. “she wanted to break it,” said the father. “no, she didn't! what do you say that for!” said the mother. and millicent burst into a flood of tears. he rose to look at the fragments that lay splashed on the floor. “you must mind the bits,” he said, “and pick 'em all up.” he took one of the pieces to examine it. it was fine and thin and hard, lined with pure silver, brilliant. he looked at it closely. so--this was what it was. and this was the end of it. he felt the curious soft explosion of its breaking still in his ears. he threw his piece in the fire. “pick all the bits up,” he said. “give over! give over! don't cry any more.” the good-natured tone of his voice quieted the child, as he intended it should. he went away into the back kitchen to wash himself. as he was bending his head over the sink before the little mirror, lathering to shave, there came from outside the dissonant voices of boys, pouring out the dregs of carol-singing. “while shep-ep-ep-ep-herds watched--” he held his soapy brush suspended for a minute. they called this singing! his mind flitted back to early carol music. then again he heard the vocal violence outside. “aren't you off there!” he called out, in masculine menace. the noise stopped, there was a scuffle. but the feet returned and the voices resumed. almost immediately the door opened, boys were heard muttering among themselves. millicent had given them a penny. feet scraped on the yard, then went thudding along the side of the house, to the street. to aaron sisson, this was home, this was christmas: the unspeakably familiar. the war over, nothing was changed. yet everything changed. the scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very clean, the floor was red tiles. the wash-copper of red bricks was very red, the mangle with its put-up board was white-scrubbed, the american oil-cloth on the table had a gay pattern, there was a warm fire, the water in the boiler hissed faintly. and in front of him, beneath him as he leaned forward shaving, a drop of water fell with strange, incalculable rhythm from the bright brass tap into the white enamelled bowl, which was now half full of pure, quivering water. the war was over, and everything just the same. the acute familiarity of this house, which he had built for his marriage twelve years ago, the changeless pleasantness of it all seemed unthinkable. it prevented his thinking. when he went into the middle room to comb his hair he found the christmas tree sparkling, his wife was making pastry at the table, the baby was sitting up propped in cushions. “father,” said millicent, approaching him with a flat blue-and-white angel of cotton-wool, and two ends of cotton--“tie the angel at the top.” “tie it at the top?” he said, looking down. “yes. at the very top--because it's just come down from the sky.” “ay my word!” he laughed. and he tied the angel. coming downstairs after changing he went into the icy cold parlour, and took his music and a small handbag. with this he retreated again to the back kitchen. he was still in trousers and shirt and slippers: but now it was a clean white shirt, and his best black trousers, and new pink and white braces. he sat under the gas-jet of the back kitchen, looking through his music. then he opened the bag, in which were sections of a flute and a piccolo. he took out the flute, and adjusted it. as he sat he was physically aware of the sounds of the night: the bubbling of water in the boiler, the faint sound of the gas, the sudden crying of the baby in the next room, then noises outside, distant boys shouting, distant rags of carols, fragments of voices of men. the whole country was roused and excited. the little room was hot. aaron rose and opened a square ventilator over the copper, letting in a stream of cold air, which was grateful to him. then he cocked his eye over the sheet of music spread out on the table before him. he tried his flute. and then at last, with the odd gesture of a diver taking a plunge, he swung his head and began to play. a stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the flute. he played beautifully. he moved his head and his raised bare arms with slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out. it was sixteenth-century christmas melody, very limpid and delicate. the pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music delighted him with a strange exasperation. there was something tense, exasperated to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored breast, as he played the finely-spun peace-music. the more exquisite the music, the more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; and at the same time, the more intense was the maddened exasperation within him. millicent appeared in the room. she fidgetted at the sink. the music was a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was on her own mind. at length it ended, her father was turning over the various books and sheets. she looked at him quickly, seizing her opportunity. “are you going out, father?” she said. “eh?” “are you going out?” she twisted nervously. “what do you want to know for?” he made no other answer, and turned again to the music. his eye went down a sheet--then over it again--then more closely over it again. “are you?” persisted the child, balancing on one foot. he looked at her, and his eyes were angry under knitted brows. “what are you bothering about?” he said. “i'm not bothering--i only wanted to know if you were going out,” she pouted, quivering to cry. “i expect i am,” he said quietly. she recovered at once, but still with timidity asked: “we haven't got any candles for the christmas tree--shall you buy some, because mother isn't going out?” “candles!” he repeated, settling his music and taking up the piccolo. “yes--shall you buy us some, father? shall you?” “candles!” he repeated, putting the piccolo to his mouth and blowing a few piercing, preparatory notes. “yes, little christmas-tree candles--blue ones and red ones, in boxes--shall you, father?” “we'll see--if i see any--” “but shall you?” she insisted desperately. she wisely mistrusted his vagueness. but he was looking unheeding at the music. then suddenly the piccolo broke forth, wild, shrill, brilliant. he was playing mozart. the child's face went pale with anger at the sound. she turned, and went out, closing both doors behind her to shut out the noise. the shrill, rapid movement of the piccolo music seemed to possess the air, it was useless to try to shut it out. the man went on playing to himself, measured and insistent. in the frosty evening the sound carried. people passing down the street hesitated, listening. the neighbours knew it was aaron practising his piccolo. he was esteemed a good player: was in request at concerts and dances, also at swell balls. so the vivid piping sound tickled the darkness. he played on till about seven o'clock; he did not want to go out too soon, in spite of the early closing of the public houses. he never went with the stream, but made a side current of his own. his wife said he was contrary. when he went into the middle room to put on his collar and tie, the two little girls were having their hair brushed, the baby was in bed, there was a hot smell of mince-pies baking in the oven. “you won't forget our candles, will you, father?” asked millicent, with assurance now. “i'll see,” he answered. his wife watched him as he put on his overcoat and hat. he was well-dressed, handsome-looking. she felt there was a curious glamour about him. it made her feel bitter. he had an unfair advantage--he was free to go off, while she must stay at home with the children. “there's no knowing what time you'll be home,” she said. “i shan't be late,” he answered. “it's easy to say so,” she retorted, with some contempt. he took his stick, and turned towards the door. “bring the children some candles for their tree, and don't be so selfish,” she said. “all right,” he said, going out. “don't say all right if you never mean to do it,” she cried, with sudden anger, following him to the door. his figure stood large and shadowy in the darkness. “how many do you want?” he said. “a dozen,” she said. “and holders too, if you can get them,” she added, with barren bitterness. “yes--all right,” he turned and melted into the darkness. she went indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame. he crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed its lights under the night. the country ran away, rising on his right hand. it was no longer a great bank of darkness. lights twinkled freely here and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time restrictions were removed. it was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-heads glittering far-off with electricity. neither was it the black gulf of the war darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling. everybody seemed to be out of doors. the hollow dark countryside re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices. restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the air. there was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional, a neurasthenic haste for excitement. every moment aaron sisson was greeted with good-night--good-night, aaron--good-night, mr. sisson. people carrying parcels, children, women, thronged home on the dark paths. they were all talking loudly, declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what this or the other had lost. when he got into the main street, the only street of shops, it was crowded. there seemed to have been some violent but quiet contest, a subdued fight, going on all the afternoon and evening: people struggling to buy things, to get things. money was spent like water, there was a frenzy of money-spending. though the necessities of life were in abundance, still the people struggled in frenzy for cheese, sweets, raisins, pork-stuff, even for flowers and holly, all of which were scarce, and for toys and knick-knacks, which were sold out. there was a wild grumbling, but a deep satisfaction in the fight, the struggle. the same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was witnessed whenever a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into sight. then the struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage, but stimulating. souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet for their feelings. as he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the christmas-tree candles. he did not intend to trouble himself. and yet, when he glanced in passing into the sweet-shop window, and saw it bare as a board, the very fact that he probably _could not_ buy the things made him hesitate, and try. “have you got any christmas-tree candles?” he asked as he entered the shop. “how many do you want?” “a dozen.” “can't let you have a dozen. you can have two boxes--four in a box--eight. six-pence a box.” “got any holders?” “holders? don't ask. haven't seen one this year.” “got any toffee--?” “cough-drops--two-pence an ounce--nothing else left.” “give me four ounces.” he watched her weighing them in the little brass scales. “you've not got much of a christmas show,” he said. “don't talk about christmas, as far as sweets is concerned. they ought to have allowed us six times the quantity--there's plenty of sugar, why didn't they? we s'll have to enjoy ourselves with what we've got. we mean to, anyhow.” “ay,” he said. “time we had a bit of enjoyment, this christmas. they ought to have made things more plentiful.” “yes,” he said, stuffing his package in his pocket. chapter ii. royal oak the war had killed the little market of the town. as he passed the market place on the brow, aaron noticed that there were only two miserable stalls. but people crowded just the same. there was a loud sound of voices, men's voices. men pressed round the doorways of the public-houses. but he was going to a pub out of town. he descended the dark hill. a street-lamp here and there shed parsimonious light. in the bottoms, under the trees, it was very dark. but a lamp glimmered in front of the “royal oak.” this was a low white house sunk three steps below the highway. it was darkened, but sounded crowded. opening the door, sisson found himself in the stone passage. old bob, carrying three cans, stopped to see who had entered--then went on into the public bar on the left. the bar itself was a sort of little window-sill on the right: the pub was a small one. in this window-opening stood the landlady, drawing and serving to her husband. behind the bar was a tiny parlour or den, the landlady's preserve. “oh, it's you,” she said, bobbing down to look at the newcomer. none entered her bar-parlour unless invited. “come in,” said the landlady. there was a peculiar intonation in her complacent voice, which showed she had been expecting him, a little irritably. he went across into her bar-parlour. it would not hold more than eight or ten people, all told--just the benches along the walls, the fire between--and two little round tables. “i began to think you weren't coming,” said the landlady, bringing him a whiskey. she was a large, stout, high-coloured woman, with a fine profile, probably jewish. she had chestnut-coloured eyes, quick, intelligent. her movements were large and slow, her voice laconic. “i'm not so late, am i?” asked aaron. “yes, you are late, i should think.” she looked up at the little clock. “close on nine.” “i did some shopping,” said aaron, with a quick smile. “did you indeed? that's news, i'm sure. may we ask what you bought?” this he did not like. but he had to answer. “christmas-tree candles, and toffee.” “for the little children? well you've done well for once! i must say i recommend you. i didn't think you had so much in you.” she sat herself down in her seat at the end of the bench, and took up her knitting. aaron sat next to her. he poured water into his glass, and drank. “it's warm in here,” he said, when he had swallowed the liquor. “yes, it is. you won't want to keep that thick good overcoat on,” replied the landlady. “no,” he said, “i think i'll take it off.” she watched him as he hung up his overcoat. he wore black clothes, as usual. as he reached up to the pegs, she could see the muscles of his shoulders, and the form of his legs. her reddish-brown eyes seemed to burn, and her nose, that had a subtle, beautiful hebraic curve, seemed to arch itself. she made a little place for him by herself, as he returned. she carried her head thrown back, with dauntless self-sufficiency. there were several colliers in the room, talking quietly. they were the superior type all, favoured by the landlady, who loved intellectual discussion. opposite, by the fire, sat a little, greenish man--evidently an oriental. “you're very quiet all at once, doctor,” said the landlady in her slow, laconic voice. “yes.--may i have another whiskey, please?” she rose at once, powerfully energetic. “oh, i'm sorry,” she said. and she went to the bar. “well,” said the little hindu doctor, “and how are things going now, with the men?” “the same as ever,” said aaron. “yes,” said the stately voice of the landlady. “and i'm afraid they will always be the same as ever. when will they learn wisdom?” “but what do you call wisdom?” asked sherardy, the hindu. he spoke with a little, childish lisp. “what do i call wisdom?” repeated the landlady. “why all acting together for the common good. that is wisdom in my idea.” “yes, very well, that is so. but what do you call the common good?” replied the little doctor, with childish pertinence. “ay,” said aaron, with a laugh, “that's it.” the miners were all stirring now, to take part in the discussion. “what do i call the common good?” repeated the landlady. “that all people should study the welfare of other people, and not only their own.” “they are not to study their own welfare?” said the doctor. “ah, that i did not say,” replied the landlady. “let them study their own welfare, and that of others also.” “well then,” said the doctor, “what is the welfare of a collier?” “the welfare of a collier,” said the landlady, “is that he shall earn sufficient wages to keep himself and his family comfortable, to educate his children, and to educate himself; for that is what he wants, education.” “ay, happen so,” put in brewitt, a big, fine, good-humoured collier. “happen so, mrs. houseley. but what if you haven't got much education, to speak of?” “you can always get it,” she said patronizing. “nay--i'm blest if you can. it's no use tryin' to educate a man over forty--not by book-learning. that isn't saying he's a fool, neither.” “and what better is them that's got education?” put in another man. “what better is the manager, or th' under-manager, than we are?--pender's yaller enough i' th' face.” “he is that,” assented the men in chorus. “but because he's yellow in the face, as you say, mr. kirk,” said the landlady largely, “that doesn't mean he has no advantages higher than what you have got.” “ay,” said kirk. “he can ma'e more money than i can--that's about a' as it comes to.” “he can make more money,” said the landlady. “and when he's made it, he knows better how to use it.” “'appen so, an' a'!--what does he do, more than eat and drink and work?--an' take it out of hisself a sight harder than i do, by th' looks of him.--what's it matter, if he eats a bit more or drinks a bit more--” “no,” reiterated the landlady. “he not only eats and drinks. he can read, and he can converse.” “me an' a',” said tom kirk, and the men burst into a laugh. “i can read--an' i've had many a talk an' conversation with you in this house, mrs. houseley--am havin' one at this minute, seemingly.” “seemingly, you are,” said the landlady ironically. “but do you think there would be no difference between your conversation, and mr. pender's, if he were here so that i could enjoy his conversation?” “an' what difference would there be?” asked tom kirk. “he'd go home to his bed just the same.” “there, you are mistaken. he would be the better, and so should i, a great deal better, for a little genuine conversation.” “if it's conversation as ma'es his behind drop--” said tom kirk. “an' puts th' bile in his face--” said brewitt. there was a general laugh. “i can see it's no use talking about it any further,” said the landlady, lifting her head dangerously. “but look here, mrs. houseley, do you really think it makes much difference to a man, whether he can hold a serious conversation or not?” asked the doctor. “i do indeed, all the difference in the world--to me, there is no greater difference, than between an educated man and an uneducated man.” “and where does it come in?” asked kirk. “but wait a bit, now,” said aaron sisson. “you take an educated man--take pender. what's his education for? what does he scheme for?--what does he contrive for? what does he talk for?--” “for all the purposes of his life,” replied the landlady. “ay, an' what's the purpose of his life?” insisted aaron sisson. “the purpose of his life,” repeated the landlady, at a loss. “i should think he knows that best himself.” “no better than i know it--and you know it,” said aaron. “well,” said the landlady, “if you know, then speak out. what is it?” “to make more money for the firm--and so make his own chance of a rise better.” the landlady was baffled for some moments. then she said: “yes, and suppose that he does. is there any harm in it? isn't it his duty to do what he can for himself? don't you try to earn all you can?” “ay,” said aaron. “but there's soon a limit to what i can earn.--it's like this. when you work it out, everything comes to money. reckon it as you like, it's money on both sides. it's money we live for, and money is what our lives is worth--nothing else. money we live for, and money we are when we're dead: that or nothing. an' it's money as is between the masters and us. there's a few educated ones got hold of one end of the rope, and all the lot of us hanging on to th' other end, an' we s'll go on pulling our guts out, time in, time out--” “but they've got th' long end o' th' rope, th' masters has,” said brewitt. “for as long as one holds, the other will pull,” concluded aaron sisson philosophically. “an' i'm almighty sure o' that,” said kirk. there was a little pause. “yes, that's all there is in the minds of you men,” said the landlady. “but what can be done with the money, that you never think of--the education of the children, the improvement of conditions--” “educate the children, so that they can lay hold of the long end of the rope, instead of the short end,” said the doctor, with a little giggle. “ay, that's it,” said brewitt. “i've pulled at th' short end, an' my lads may do th' same.” “a selfish policy,” put in the landlady. “selfish or not, they may do it.” “till the crack o' doom,” said aaron, with a glistening smile. “or the crack o' th' rope,” said brewitt. “yes, and then what?” cried the landlady. “then we all drop on our backsides,” said kirk. there was a general laugh, and an uneasy silence. “all i can say of you men,” said the landlady, “is that you have a narrow, selfish policy.--instead of thinking of the children, instead of thinking of improving the world you live in--” “we hang on, british bulldog breed,” said brewitt. there was a general laugh. “yes, and little wiser than dogs, wrangling for a bone,” said the landlady. “are we to let t' other side run off wi' th' bone, then, while we sit on our stunts an' yowl for it?” asked brewitt. “no indeed. there can be wisdom in everything.--it's what you do with the money, when you've got it,” said the landlady, “that's where the importance lies.” “it's missis as gets it,” said kirk. “it doesn't stop wi' us.” “ay, it's the wife as gets it, ninety per cent,” they all concurred. “and who should have the money, indeed, if not your wives? they have everything to do with the money. what idea have you, but to waste it!” “women waste nothing--they couldn't if they tried,” said aaron sisson. there was a lull for some minutes. the men were all stimulated by drink. the landlady kept them going. she herself sipped a glass of brandy--but slowly. she sat near to sisson--and the great fierce warmth of her presence enveloped him particularly. he loved so to luxuriate, like a cat, in the presence of a violent woman. he knew that tonight she was feeling very nice to him--a female glow that came out of her to him. sometimes when she put down her knitting, or took it up again from the bench beside him, her fingers just touched his thigh, and the fine electricity ran over his body, as if he were a cat tingling at a caress. and yet he was not happy--nor comfortable. there was a hard, opposing core in him, that neither the whiskey nor the woman could dissolve or soothe, tonight. it remained hard, nay, became harder and more deeply antagonistic to his surroundings, every moment. he recognised it as a secret malady he suffered from: this strained, unacknowledged opposition to his surroundings, a hard core of irrational, exhausting withholding of himself. irritating, because he still wanted to give himself. a woman and whiskey, these were usually a remedy--and music. but lately these had begun to fail him. no, there was something in him that would not give in--neither to the whiskey, nor the woman, nor even the music. even in the midst of his best music, it sat in the middle of him, this invisible black dog, and growled and waited, never to be cajoled. he knew of its presence--and was a little uneasy. for of course he _wanted_ to let himself go, to feel rosy and loving and all that. but at the very thought, the black dog showed its teeth. still he kept the beast at bay--with all his will he kept himself as it were genial. he wanted to melt and be rosy, happy. he sipped his whiskey with gratification, he luxuriated in the presence of the landlady, very confident of the strength of her liking for him. he glanced at her profile--that fine throw-back of her hostile head, wicked in the midst of her benevolence; that subtle, really very beautiful delicate curve of her nose, that moved him exactly like a piece of pure sound. but tonight it did not overcome him. there was a devilish little cold eye in his brain that was not taken in by what he saw. a terrible obstinacy located itself in him. he saw the fine, rich-coloured, secretive face of the hebrew woman, so loudly self-righteous, and so dangerous, so destructive, so lustful--and he waited for his blood to melt with passion for her. but not tonight. tonight his innermost heart was hard and cold as ice. the very danger and lustfulness of her, which had so pricked his senses, now made him colder. he disliked her at her tricks. he saw her once too often. her and all women. bah, the love game! and the whiskey that was to help in the game! he had drowned himself once too often in whiskey and in love. now he floated like a corpse in both, with a cold, hostile eye. and at least half of his inward fume was anger because he could no longer drown. nothing would have pleased him better than to feel his senses melting and swimming into oneness with the dark. but impossible! cold, with a white fury inside him, he floated wide eyed and apart as a corpse. he thought of the gentle love of his first married years, and became only whiter and colder, set in more intense obstinacy. a wave of revulsion lifted him. he became aware that he was deadly antagonistic to the landlady, that he disliked his whole circumstances. a cold, diabolical consciousness detached itself from his state of semi-intoxication. “is it pretty much the same out there in india?” he asked of the doctor, suddenly. the doctor started, and attended to him on his own level. “probably,” he answered. “it is worse.” “worse!” exclaimed aaron sisson. “how's that?” “why, because, in a way the people of india have an easier time even than the people of england. because they have no responsibility. the british government takes the responsibility. and the people have nothing to do, except their bit of work--and talk perhaps about national rule, just for a pastime.” “they have to earn their living?” said sisson. “yes,” said the little doctor, who had lived for some years among the colliers, and become quite familiar with them. “yes, they have to earn their living--and then no more. that's why the british government is the worst thing possible for them. it is the worst thing possible. and not because it is a bad government. really, it is not a bad government. it is a good one--and they know it--much better than they would make for themselves, probably. but for that reason it is so very bad.” the little oriental laughed a queer, sniggering laugh. his eyes were very bright, dilated, completely black. he was looking into the ice-blue, pointed eyes of aaron sisson. they were both intoxicated--but grimly so. they looked at each other in elemental difference. the whole room was now attending to this new conversation: which they all accepted as serious. for aaron was considered a special man, a man of peculiar understanding, even though as a rule he said little. “if it is a good government, doctor, how can it be so bad for the people?” said the landlady. the doctor's eyes quivered for the fraction of a second, as he watched the other man. he did not look at the landlady. “it would not matter what kind of mess they made--and they would make a mess, if they governed themselves, the people of india. they would probably make the greatest muddle possible--and start killing one another. but it wouldn't matter if they exterminated half the population, so long as they did it themselves, and were responsible for it.” again his eyes dilated, utterly black, to the eyes of the other man, and an arch little smile flickered on his face. “i think it would matter very much indeed,” said the landlady. “they had far better not govern themselves.” she was, for some reason, becoming angry. the little greenish doctor emptied his glass, and smiled again. “but what difference does it make,” said aaron sisson, “whether they govern themselves or not? they only live till they die, either way.” and he smiled faintly. he had not really listened to the doctor. the terms “british government,” and “bad for the people--good for the people,” made him malevolently angry. the doctor was nonplussed for a moment. then he gathered himself together. “it matters,” he said; “it matters.--people should always be responsible for themselves. how can any people be responsible for another race of people, and for a race much older than they are, and not at all children.” aaron sisson watched the other's dark face, with its utterly exposed eyes. he was in a state of semi-intoxicated anger and clairvoyance. he saw in the black, void, glistening eyes of the oriental only the same danger, the same menace that he saw in the landlady. fair, wise, even benevolent words: always the human good speaking, and always underneath, something hateful, something detestable and murderous. wise speech and good intentions--they were invariably maggoty with these secret inclinations to destroy the man in the man. whenever he heard anyone holding forth: the landlady, this doctor, the spokesman on the pit bank: or when he read the all-righteous newspaper; his soul curdled with revulsion as from something foul. even the infernal love and good-will of his wife. to hell with good-will! it was more hateful than ill-will. self-righteous bullying, like poison gas! the landlady looked at the clock. “ten minutes to, gentlemen,” she said coldly. for she too knew that aaron was spoiled for her for that night. the men began to take their leave, shakily. the little doctor seemed to evaporate. the landlady helped aaron on with his coat. she saw the curious whiteness round his nostrils and his eyes, the fixed hellish look on his face. “you'll eat a mince-pie in the kitchen with us, for luck?” she said to him, detaining him till last. but he turned laughing to her. “nay,” he said, “i must be getting home.” he turned and went straight out of the house. watching him, the landlady's face became yellow with passion and rage. “that little poisonous indian viper,” she said aloud, attributing aaron's mood to the doctor. her husband was noisily bolting the door. outside it was dark and frosty. a gang of men lingered in the road near the closed door. aaron found himself among them, his heart bitterer than steel. the men were dispersing. he should take the road home. but the devil was in it, if he could take a stride in the homeward direction. there seemed a wall in front of him. he veered. but neither could he take a stride in the opposite direction. so he was destined to veer round, like some sort of weather-cock, there in the middle of the dark road outside the “royal oak.” but as he turned, he caught sight of a third exit. almost opposite was the mouth of shottle lane, which led off under trees, at right angles to the highroad, up to new brunswick colliery. he veered towards the off-chance of this opening, in a delirium of icy fury, and plunged away into the dark lane, walking slowly, on firm legs. chapter iii. “the lighted tree” it is remarkable how many odd or extraordinary people there are in england. we hear continual complaints of the stodgy dullness of the english. it would be quite as just to complain of their freakish, unusual characters. only _en masse_ the metal is all britannia. in an ugly little mining town we find the odd ones just as distinct as anywhere else. only it happens that dull people invariably meet dull people, and odd individuals always come across odd individuals, no matter where they may be. so that to each kind society seems all of a piece. at one end of the dark tree-covered shottle lane stood the “royal oak” public house; and mrs. houseley was certainly an odd woman. at the other end of the lane was shottle house, where the bricknells lived; the bricknells were odd, also. alfred bricknell, the old man, was one of the partners in the colliery firm. his english was incorrect, his accent, broad derbyshire, and he was not a gentleman in the snobbish sense of the word. yet he was well-to-do, and very stuck-up. his wife was dead. shottle house stood two hundred yards beyond new brunswick colliery. the colliery was imbedded in a plantation, whence its burning pit-hill glowed, fumed, and stank sulphur in the nostrils of the bricknells. even war-time efforts had not put out this refuse fire. apart from this, shottle house was a pleasant square house, rather old, with shrubberies and lawns. it ended the lane in a dead end. only a field-path trekked away to the left. on this particular christmas eve alfred bricknell had only two of his children at home. of the others, one daughter was unhappily married, and away in india weeping herself thinner; another was nursing her babies in streatham. jim, the hope of the house, and julia, now married to robert cunningham, had come home for christmas. the party was seated in the drawing-room, that the grown-up daughters had made very fine during their periods of courtship. its walls were hung with fine grey canvas, it had a large, silvery grey, silky carpet, and the furniture was covered with dark green silky material. into this reticence pieces of futurism, omega cushions and van-gogh-like pictures exploded their colours. such _chic_ would certainly not have been looked for up shottle lane. the old man sat in his high grey arm-chair very near an enormous coal fire. in this house there was no coal-rationing. the finest coal was arranged to obtain a gigantic glow such as a coal-owner may well enjoy, a great, intense mass of pure red fire. at this fire alfred bricknell toasted his tan, lambs-wool-lined slippers. he was a large man, wearing a loose grey suit, and sprawling in the large grey arm-chair. the soft lamp-light fell on his clean, bald, michael-angelo head, across which a few pure hairs glittered. his chin was sunk on his breast, so that his sparse but strong-haired white beard, in which every strand stood distinct, like spun glass lithe and elastic, curved now upwards and inwards, in a curious curve returning upon him. he seemed to be sunk in stern, prophet-like meditation. as a matter of fact, he was asleep after a heavy meal. across, seated on a pouffe on the other side of the fire, was a cameo-like girl with neat black hair done tight and bright in the french mode. she had strangely-drawn eyebrows, and her colour was brilliant. she was hot, leaning back behind the shaft of old marble of the mantel-piece, to escape the fire. she wore a simple dress of apple-green satin, with full sleeves and ample skirt and a tiny bodice of green cloth. this was josephine ford, the girl jim was engaged to. jim bricknell himself was a tall big fellow of thirty-eight. he sat in a chair in front of the fire, some distance back, and stretched his long legs far in front of him. his chin too was sunk on his breast, his young forehead was bald, and raised in odd wrinkles, he had a silent half-grin on his face, a little tipsy, a little satyr-like. his small moustache was reddish. behind him a round table was covered with cigarettes, sweets, and bottles. it was evident jim bricknell drank beer for choice. he wanted to get fat--that was his idea. but he couldn't bring it off: he was thin, though not too thin, except to his own thinking. his sister julia was bunched up in a low chair between him and his father. she too was a tall stag of a thing, but she sat bunched up like a witch. she wore a wine-purple dress, her arms seemed to poke out of the sleeves, and she had dragged her brown hair into straight, untidy strands. yet she had real beauty. she was talking to the young man who was not her husband: a fair, pale, fattish young fellow in pince-nez and dark clothes. this was cyril scott, a friend. the only other person stood at the round table pouring out red wine. he was a fresh, stoutish young englishman in khaki, julia's husband, robert cunningham, a lieutenant about to be demobilised, when he would become a sculptor once more. he drank red wine in large throatfuls, and his eyes grew a little moist. the room was hot and subdued, everyone was silent. “i say,” said robert suddenly, from the rear--“anybody have a drink? don't you find it rather hot?” “is there another bottle of beer there?” said jim, without moving, too settled even to stir an eye-lid. “yes--i think there is,” said robert. “thanks--don't open it yet,” murmured jim. “have a drink, josephine?” said robert. “no thank you,” said josephine, bowing slightly. finding the drinks did not go, robert went round with the cigarettes. josephine ford looked at the white rolls. “thank you,” she said, and taking one, suddenly licked her rather full, dry red lips with the rapid tip of her tongue. it was an odd movement, suggesting a snake's flicker. she put her cigarette between her lips, and waited. her movements were very quiet and well bred; but perhaps too quiet, they had the dangerous impassivity of the bohemian, parisian or american rather than english. “cigarette, julia?” said robert to his wife. she seemed to start or twitch, as if dazed. then she looked up at her husband with a queer smile, puckering the corners of her eyes. he looked at the cigarettes, not at her. his face had the blunt voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat. she kept him standing for some moments impassively. then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking one out at last. “thank you, dear--thank you,” she cried, rather high, looking up and smiling once more. he turned calmly aside, offering the cigarettes to scott, who refused. “oh!” said julia, sucking the end of her cigarette. “robert is so happy with all the good things--aren't you dear?” she sang, breaking into a hurried laugh. “we aren't used to such luxurious living, we aren't--are we dear--no, we're not such swells as this, we're not. oh, robbie, isn't it all right, isn't it just all right?” she tailed off into her hurried, wild, repeated laugh. “we're so happy in a land of plenty, aren't we dear?” “do you mean i'm greedy, julia?” said robert. “greedy!--oh, greedy!--he asks if he's greedy?--no you're not greedy, robbie, you're not greedy. i want you to be happy.” “i'm quite happy,” he returned. “oh, he's happy!--really!--he's happy! oh, what an accomplishment! oh, my word!” julia puckered her eyes and laughed herself into a nervous twitching silence. robert went round with the matches. julia sucked her cigarette. “give us a light, robbie, if you are happy!” she cried. “it's coming,” he answered. josephine smoked with short, sharp puffs. julia sucked wildly at her light. robert returned to his red wine. jim bricknell suddenly roused up, looked round on the company, smiling a little vacuously and showing his odd, pointed teeth. “where's the beer?” he asked, in deep tones, smiling full into josephine's face, as if she were going to produce it by some sleight of hand. then he wheeled round to the table, and was soon pouring beer down his throat as down a pipe. then he dropped supine again. cyril scott was silently absorbing gin and water. “i say,” said jim, from the remote depths of his sprawling. “isn't there something we could do to while the time away?” everybody suddenly laughed--it sounded so remote and absurd. “what, play bridge or poker or something conventional of that sort?” said josephine in her distinct voice, speaking to him as if he were a child. “oh, damn bridge,” said jim in his sleep-voice. then he began pulling his powerful length together. he sat on the edge of his chair-seat, leaning forward, peering into all the faces and grinning. “don't look at me like that--so long--” said josephine, in her self-contained voice. “you make me uncomfortable.” she gave an odd little grunt of a laugh, and the tip of her tongue went over her lips as she glanced sharply, half furtively round the room. “i like looking at you,” said jim, his smile becoming more malicious. “but you shouldn't, when i tell you not,” she returned. jim twisted round to look at the state of the bottles. the father also came awake. he sat up. “isn't it time,” he said, “that you all put away your glasses and cigarettes and thought of bed?” jim rolled slowly round towards his father, sprawling in the long chair. “ah, dad,” he said, “tonight's the night! tonight's some night, dad.--you can sleep any time--” his grin widened--“but there aren't many nights to sit here--like this--eh?” he was looking up all the time into the face of his father, full and nakedly lifting his face to the face of his father, and smiling fixedly. the father, who was perfectly sober, except for the contagion from the young people, felt a wild tremor go through his heart as he gazed on the face of his boy. he rose stiffly. “you want to stay?” he said. “you want to stay!--well then--well then, i'll leave you. but don't be long.” the old man rose to his full height, rather majestic. the four younger people also rose respectfully--only jim lay still prostrate in his chair, twisting up his face towards his father. “you won't stay long,” said the old man, looking round a little bewildered. he was seeking a responsible eye. josephine was the only one who had any feeling for him. “no, we won't stay long, mr. bricknell,” she said gravely. “good night, dad,” said jim, as his father left the room. josephine went to the window. she had rather a stiff, _poupee_ walk. “how is the night?” she said, as if to change the whole feeling in the room. she pushed back the thick grey-silk curtains. “why?” she exclaimed. “what is that light burning? a red light?” “oh, that's only the pit-bank on fire,” said robert, who had followed her. “how strange!--why is it burning now?” “it always burns, unfortunately--it is most consistent at it. it is the refuse from the mines. it has been burning for years, in spite of all efforts to the contrary.” “how very curious! may we look at it?” josephine now turned the handle of the french windows, and stepped out. “beautiful!” they heard her voice exclaim from outside. in the room, julia laid her hand gently, protectively over the hand of cyril scott. “josephine and robert are admiring the night together!” she said, smiling with subtle tenderness to him. “naturally! young people always do these romantic things,” replied cyril scott. he was twenty-two years old, so he could afford to be cynical. “do they?--don't you think it's nice of them?” she said, gently removing her hand from his. his eyes were shining with pleasure. “i do. i envy them enormously. one only needs to be sufficiently naive,” he said. “one does, doesn't one!” cooed julia. “i say, do you hear the bells?” said robert, poking his head into the room. “no, dear! do you?” replied julia. “bells! hear the bells! bells!” exclaimed the half-tipsy and self-conscious jim. and he rolled in his chair in an explosion of sudden, silent laughter, showing his mouthful of pointed teeth, like a dog. then he gradually gathered himself together, found his feet, smiling fixedly. “pretty cool night!” he said aloud, when he felt the air on his almost bald head. the darkness smelt of sulphur. josephine and robert had moved out of sight. julia was abstracted, following them with her eyes. with almost supernatural keenness she seemed to catch their voices from the distance. “yes, josephine, wouldn't that be awfully romantic!”--she suddenly called shrilly. the pair in the distance started. “what--!” they heard josephine's sharp exclamation. “what's that?--what would be romantic?” said jim as he lurched up and caught hold of cyril scott's arm. “josephine wants to make a great illumination of the grounds of the estate,” said julia, magniloquent. “no--no--i didn't say it,” remonstrated josephine. “what josephine said,” explained robert, “was simply that it would be pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a christmas-tree indoors.” “oh, josephine, how sweet of you!” cried julia. cyril scott giggled. “good egg! champion idea, josey, my lass. eh? what--!” cried jim. “why not carry it out--eh? why not? most attractive.” he leaned forward over josephine, and grinned. “oh, no!” expostulated josephine. “it all sounds so silly now. no. let us go indoors and go to bed.” “no, josephine dear--no! it's a lovely idea!” cried julia. “let's get candles and lanterns and things--” “let's!” grinned jim. “let's, everybody--let's.” “shall we really?” asked robert. “shall we illuminate one of the fir-trees by the lawn?” “yes! how lovely!” cried julia. “i'll fetch the candles.” “the women must put on warm cloaks,” said robert. they trooped indoors for coats and wraps and candles and lanterns. then, lighted by a bicycle lamp, they trooped off to the shed to twist wire round the candles for holders. they clustered round the bench. “i say,” said julia, “doesn't cyril look like a pilot on a stormy night! oh, i say--!” and she went into one of her hurried laughs. they all looked at cyril scott, who was standing sheepishly in the background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe. the young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a stoic air of philosophic indifference. soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. jim stood in the background vaguely staring. the bicycle lamp sent a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and hands worked. the night above was silent, dim. there was no wind. in the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the colliery. “shall we light them as we fix them,” asked robert, “or save them for one grand rocket at the end?” “oh, as we do them,” said cyril scott, who had lacerated his fingers and wanted to see some reward. a match spluttered. one naked little flame sprang alight among the dark foliage. the candle burned tremulously, naked. they all were silent. “we ought to do a ritual dance! we ought to worship the tree,” sang julia, in her high voice. “hold on a minute. we'll have a little more illumination,” said robert. “why yes. we want more than one candle,” said josephine. but julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a _pas seul_ before the tree, looking like an animated bough herself. jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short, harsh, cackling laugh. “aren't we fools!” he cried. “what? oh, god's love, aren't we fools!” “no--why?” cried josephine, amused but resentful. but jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a red indian gripping his pipe. the beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees. several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the naked air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage. they gave a strange, perpendicular aspiration in the night. julia waved slowly in her tree dance. jim stood apart, with his legs straddled, a motionless figure. the party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree. pale candles became evident, the air was luminous. the illumination was becoming complete, harmonious. josephine suddenly looked round. “why-y-y!” came her long note of alarm. a man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the twilight. “what is it?” cried julia. “_homo sapiens_!” said robert, the lieutenant. “hand the light, cyril.” he played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat, with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking face. the hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye, the man was well-featured. he did not speak. “did you want anything?” asked robert, from behind the light. aaron sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him. to him, they were all illusory. he did not answer. “anything you wanted?” repeated robert, military, rather peremptory. jim suddenly doubled himself up and burst into a loud harsh cackle of laughter. whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter. whoop! whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with laughter. he was in that state of intoxication when he could find no release from maddening self-consciousness. he knew what he was doing, he did it deliberately. and yet he was also beside himself, in a sort of hysterics. he could not help himself in exasperated self-consciousness. the others all began to laugh, unavoidably. it was a contagion. they laughed helplessly and foolishly. only robert was anxious. “i'm afraid he'll wake the house,” he said, looking at the doubled up figure of jim writhing on the grass and whooping loudly. “or not enough,” put in cyril scott. he twigged jim's condition. “no--no!” cried josephine, weak with laughing in spite of herself. “no--it's too long--i'm like to die laughing--” jim embraced the earth in his convulsions. even robert shook quite weakly with laughter. his face was red, his eyes full of dancing water. yet he managed to articulate. “i say, you know, you'll bring the old man down.” then he went off again into spasms. “hu! hu!” whooped jim, subsiding. “hu!” he rolled over on to his back, and lay silent. the others also became weakly silent. “what's amiss?” said aaron sisson, breaking this spell. they all began to laugh again, except jim, who lay on his back looking up at the strange sky. “what're you laughing at?” repeated aaron. “we're laughing at the man on the ground,” replied josephine. “i think he's drunk a little too much.” “ay,” said aaron, standing mute and obstinate. “did you want anything?” robert enquired once more. “eh?” aaron looked up. “me? no, not me.” a sort of inertia kept him rooted. the young people looked at one another and began to laugh, rather embarrassed. “another!” said cyril scott cynically. they wished he would go away. there was a pause. “what do you reckon stars are?” asked the sepulchral voice of jim. he still lay flat on his back on the grass. josephine went to him and pulled at his coat. “get up,” she said. “you'll take cold. get up now, we're going indoors.” “what do you reckon stars are?” he persisted. aaron sisson stood on the edge of the light, smilingly staring at the scene, like a boy out of his place, but stubbornly keeping his ground. “get up now,” said josephine. “we've had enough.” but jim would not move. robert went with the bicycle lamp and stood at aaron's side. “shall i show you a light to the road--you're off your track,” he said. “you're in the grounds of shottle house.” “i can find my road,” said aaron. “thank you.” jim suddenly got up and went to peer at the stranger, poking his face close to aaron's face. “right-o,” he replied. “you're not half a bad sort of chap--cheery-o! what's your drink?” “mine--whiskey,” said aaron. “come in and have one. we're the only sober couple in the bunch--what?” cried jim. aaron stood unmoving, static in everything. jim took him by the arm affectionately. the stranger looked at the flickering tree, with its tiers of lights. “a christmas tree,” he said, jerking his head and smiling. “that's right, old man,” said jim, seeming thoroughly sober now. “come indoors and have a drink.” aaron sisson negatively allowed himself to be led off. the others followed in silence, leaving the tree to flicker the night through. the stranger stumbled at the open window-door. “mind the step,” said jim affectionately. they crowded to the fire, which was still hot. the newcomer looked round vaguely. jim took his bowler hat and gave him a chair. he sat without looking round, a remote, abstract look on his face. he was very pale, and seemed-inwardly absorbed. the party threw off their wraps and sat around. josephine turned to aaron sisson, who sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, rather slack in his chair, in his thickish overcoat. he did not want to drink. his hair was blond, quite tidy, his mouth and chin handsome but a little obstinate, his eyes inscrutable. his pallor was not natural to him. though he kept the appearance of a smile, underneath he was hard and opposed. he did not wish to be with these people, and yet, mechanically, he stayed. “do you feel quite well?” josephine asked him. he looked at her quickly. “me?” he said. he smiled faintly. “yes, i'm all right.” then he dropped his head again and seemed oblivious. “tell us your name,” said jim affectionately. the stranger looked up. “my name's aaron sisson, if it's anything to you,” he said. jim began to grin. “it's a name i don't know,” he said. then he named all the party present. but the stranger hardly heeded, though his eyes looked curiously from one to the other, slow, shrewd, clairvoyant. “were you on your way home?” asked robert, huffy. the stranger lifted his head and looked at him. “home!” he repeated. “no. the other road--” he indicated the direction with his head, and smiled faintly. “beldover?” inquired robert. “yes.” he had dropped his head again, as if he did not want to look at them. to josephine, the pale, impassive, blank-seeming face, the blue eyes with the smile which wasn't a smile, and the continual dropping of the well-shaped head was curiously affecting. she wanted to cry. “are you a miner?” robert asked, _de haute en bas_. “no,” cried josephine. she had looked at his hands. “men's checkweighman,” replied aaron. he had emptied his glass. he put it on the table. “have another?” said jim, who was attending fixedly, with curious absorption, to the stranger. “no,” cried josephine, “no more.” aaron looked at jim, then at her, and smiled slowly, with remote bitterness. then he lowered his head again. his hands were loosely clasped between his knees. “what about the wife?” said robert--the young lieutenant. “what about the wife and kiddies? you're a married man, aren't you?” the sardonic look of the stranger rested on the subaltern. “yes,” he said. “won't they be expecting you?” said robert, trying to keep his temper and his tone of authority. “i expect they will--” “then you'd better be getting along, hadn't you?” the eyes of the intruder rested all the time on the flushed subaltern. the look on aaron's face became slowly satirical. “oh, dry up the army touch,” said jim contemptuously, to robert. “we're all civvies here. we're all right, aren't we?” he said loudly, turning to the stranger with a grin that showed his pointed teeth. aaron gave a brief laugh of acknowledgement. “how many children have you?” sang julia from her distance. “three.” “girls or boys?” “girls.” “all girls? dear little things! how old?” “oldest eight--youngest nine months--” “so small!” sang julia, with real tenderness now--aaron dropped his head. “but you're going home to them, aren't you?” said josephine, in whose eyes the tears had already risen. he looked up at her, at her tears. his face had the same pale perverse smile. “not tonight,” he said. “but why? you're wrong!” cried josephine. he dropped his head and became oblivious. “well!” said cyril scott, rising at last with a bored exclamation. “i think i'll retire.” “will you?” said julia, also rising. “you'll find your candle outside.” she went out. scott bade good night, and followed her. the four people remained in the room, quite silent. then robert rose and began to walk about, agitated. “don't you go back to 'em. have a night out. you stop here tonight,” jim said suddenly, in a quiet intimate tone. the stranger turned his head and looked at him, considering. “yes?” he said. he seemed to be smiling coldly. “oh, but!” cried josephine. “your wife and your children! won't they be awfully bothered? isn't it awfully unkind to them?” she rose in her eagerness. he sat turning up his face to her. she could not understand his expression. “won't you go home to them?” she said, hysterical. “not tonight,” he replied quietly, again smiling. “you're wrong!” she cried. “you're wrong!” and so she hurried out of the room in tears. “er--what bed do you propose to put him in?” asked robert rather officer-like. “don't propose at all, my lad,” replied jim, ironically--he did not like robert. then to the stranger he said: “you'll be all right on the couch in my room?--it's a good couch, big enough, plenty of rugs--” his voice was easy and intimate. aaron looked at him, and nodded. they had another drink each, and at last the two set off, rather stumbling, upstairs. aaron carried his bowler hat with him. robert remained pacing in the drawing-room for some time. then he went out, to return in a little while. he extinguished the lamps and saw that the fire was safe. then he went to fasten the window-doors securely. outside he saw the uncanny glimmer of candles across the lawn. he had half a mind to go out and extinguish them--but he did not. so he went upstairs and the house was quiet. faint crumbs of snow were falling outside. when jim woke in the morning aaron had gone. only on the floor were two packets of christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger's pockets. he had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come. the housemaid said that while she was cleaning the grate in the dining-room she heard someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-maid had even seen someone come out of jim's bedroom. but they had both thought it was jim himself, for he was an unsettled house mate. there was a thin film of snow, a lovely christmas morning. chapter iv. “the pillar of salt” our story will not yet see daylight. a few days after christmas, aaron sat in the open shed at the bottom of his own garden, looking out on the rainy darkness. no one knew he was there. it was some time after six in the evening. from where he sat, he looked straight up the garden to the house. the blind was not drawn in the middle kitchen, he could see the figures of his wife and one child. there was a light also in the upstairs window. his wife was gone upstairs again. he wondered if she had the baby ill. he could see her figure vaguely behind the lace curtains of the bedroom. it was like looking at his home through the wrong end of a telescope. now the little girls had gone from the middle room: only to return in a moment. his attention strayed. he watched the light falling from the window of the next-door house. uneasily, he looked along the whole range of houses. the street sloped down-hill, and the backs were open to the fields. so he saw a curious succession of lighted windows, between which jutted the intermediary back premises, scullery and outhouse, in dark little blocks. it was something like the keyboard of a piano: more still, like a succession of musical notes. for the rectangular planes of light were of different intensities, some bright and keen, some soft, warm, like candle-light, and there was one surface of pure red light, one or two were almost invisible, dark green. so the long scale of lights seemed to trill across the darkness, now bright, now dim, swelling and sinking. the effect was strange. and thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights. there was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs. he felt himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of back premises. he heard the familiar sound of water gushing from the sink in to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the clink of a coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices. so many houses cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back yards, back doors giving on to the night. it was revolting. away in the street itself, a boy was calling the newspaper: “--'ning post! --'ning po-o-st!” it was a long, melancholy howl, and seemed to epitomise the whole of the dark, wet, secretive, thickly-inhabited night. a figure passed the window of aaron's own house, entered, and stood inside the room talking to mrs. sisson. it was a young woman in a brown mackintosh and a black hat. she stood under the incandescent light, and her hat nearly knocked the globe. next door a man had run out in his shirt sleeves: this time a young, dark-headed collier running to the gate for a newspaper, running bare-headed, coatless, slippered in the rain. he had got his news-sheet, and was returning. and just at that moment the young man's wife came out, shading her candle with a lading tin. she was going to the coal-house for some coal. her husband passed her on the threshold. she could be heard breaking the bits of coal and placing them on the dustpan. the light from her candle fell faintly behind her. then she went back, blown by a swirl of wind. but again she was at the door, hastily standing her iron shovel against the wall. then she shut the back door with a bang. these noises seemed to scrape and strike the night. in aaron's own house, the young person was still talking to mrs. sisson. millicent came out, sheltering a candle with her hand. the candle blew out. she ran indoors, and emerged again, her white pinafore fluttering. this time she performed her little journey safely. he could see the faint glimmer of her candle emerging secretly from the closet. the young person was taking her leave. he could hear her sympathetic--“well--good night! i hope she'll be no worse. good night mrs. sisson!” she was gone--he heard the windy bang of the street-gate. presently millicent emerged again, flitting indoors. so he rose to his feet, balancing, swaying a little before he started into motion, as so many colliers do. then he moved along the path towards the house, in the rain and darkness, very slowly edging forwards. suddenly the door opened. his wife emerged with a pail. he stepped quietly aside, on to his side garden, among the sweet herbs. he could smell rosemary and sage and hyssop. a low wall divided his garden from his neighbour's. he put his hand on it, on its wetness, ready to drop over should his wife come forward. but she only threw the contents of her pail on the garden and retired again. she might have seen him had she looked. he remained standing where he was, listening to the trickle of rain in the water-butt. the hollow countryside lay beyond him. sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn of new brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at bestwood colliery. away in the dark hollow, nearer, the glare of the electric power-station disturbed the night. so again the wind swirled the rain across all these hieroglyphs of the countryside, familiar to him as his own breast. a motor-car was labouring up the hill. his trained ear attended to it unconsciously. it stopped with a jar. there was a bang of the yard-gate. a shortish dark figure in a bowler hat passed the window. millicent was drawing down the blind. it was the doctor. the blind was drawn, he could see no more. stealthily he began to approach the house. he stood by the climbing rose of the porch, listening. he heard voices upstairs. perhaps the children would be downstairs. he listened intently. voices were upstairs only. he quietly opened the door. the room was empty, save for the baby, who was cooing in her cradle. he crossed to the hall. at the foot of the stairs he could hear the voice of the indian doctor: “now little girl, you must just keep still and warm in bed, and not cry for the moon.” he said “_de_ moon,” just as ever.--marjory must be ill. so aaron quietly entered the parlour. it was a cold, clammy room, dark. he could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement below the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence. he began feeling for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside the piano. he touched and felt--he could not find what he wanted. perplexed, he turned and looked out of the window. through the iron railing of the front wall he could see the little motorcar sending its straight beams of light in front of it, up the street. he sat down on the sofa by the window. the energy had suddenly left all his limbs. he sat with his head sunk, listening. the familiar room, the familiar voice of his wife and his children--he felt weak as if he were dying. he felt weak like a drowning man who acquiesces in the waters. his strength was gone, he was sinking back. he would sink back to it all, float henceforth like a drowned man. so he heard voices coming nearer from upstairs, feet moving. they were coming down. “no, mrs. sisson, you needn't worry,” he heard the voice of the doctor on the stairs. “if she goes on as she is, she'll be all right. only she must be kept warm and quiet--warm and quiet--that's the chief thing.” “oh, when she has those bouts i can't bear it,” aaron heard his wife's voice. they were downstairs. their feet click-clicked on the tiled passage. they had gone into the middle room. aaron sat and listened. “she won't have any more bouts. if she does, give her a few drops from the little bottle, and raise her up. but she won't have any more,” the doctor said. “if she does, i s'll go off my head, i know i shall.” “no, you won't. no, you won't do anything of the sort. you won't go off your head. you'll keep your head on your shoulders, where it ought to be,” protested the doctor. “but it nearly drives me mad.” “then don't let it. the child won't die, i tell you. she will be all right, with care. who have you got sitting up with her? you're not to sit up with her tonight, i tell you. do you hear me?” “miss smitham's coming in. but it's no good--i shall have to sit up. i shall have to.” “i tell you you won't. you obey me. i know what's good for you as well as for her. i am thinking of you as much as of her.” “but i can't bear it--all alone.” this was the beginning of tears. there was a dead silence--then a sound of millicent weeping with her mother. as a matter of fact, the doctor was weeping too, for he was an emotional sympathetic soul, over forty. “never mind--never mind--you aren't alone,” came the doctor's matter-of-fact voice, after a loud nose-blowing. “i am here to help you. i will do whatever i can--whatever i can.” “i can't bear it. i can't bear it,” wept the woman. another silence, another nose-blowing, and again the doctor: “you'll have to bear it--i tell you there's nothing else for it. you'll have to bear it--but we'll do our best for you. i will do my best for you--always--always--in sickness or out of sickness--there!” he pronounced _there_ oddly, not quite _dhere_. “you haven't heard from your husband?” he added. “i had a letter--“--sobs--“from the bank this morning.” “from de bank?” “telling me they were sending me so much per month, from him, as an allowance, and that he was quite well, but he was travelling.” “well then, why not let him travel? you can live.” “but to leave me alone,” there was burning indignation in her voice. “to go off and leave me with every responsibility, to leave me with all the burden.” “well i wouldn't trouble about him. aren't you better off without him?” “i am. i am,” she cried fiercely. “when i got that letter this morning, i said may evil befall you, you selfish demon. and i hope it may.” “well-well, well-well, don't fret. don't be angry, it won't make it any better, i tell you.” “angry! i am angry. i'm worse than angry. a week ago i hadn't a grey hair in my head. now look here--” there was a pause. “well-well, well-well, never mind. you will be all right, don't you bother. your hair is beautiful anyhow.” “what makes me so mad is that he should go off like that--never a word--coolly takes his hook. i could kill him for it.” “were you ever happy together?” “we were all right at first. i know i was fond of him. but he'd kill anything.--he kept himself back, always kept himself back, couldn't give himself--” there was a pause. “ah well,” sighed the doctor. “marriage is a mystery. i'm glad i'm not entangled in it.” “yes, to make some woman's life a misery.--i'm sure it was death to live with him, he seemed to kill everything off inside you. he was a man you couldn't quarrel with, and get it over. quiet--quiet in his tempers, and selfish through and through. i've lived with him twelve years--i know what it is. killing! you don't know what he was--” “i think i knew him. a fair man? yes?” said the doctor. “fair to look at.--there's a photograph of him in the parlour--taken when he was married--and one of me.--yes, he's fairhaired.” aaron guessed that she was getting a candle to come into the parlour. he was tempted to wait and meet them--and accept it all again. devilishly tempted, he was. then he thought of her voice, and his heart went cold. quick as thought, he obeyed his first impulse. he felt behind the couch, on the floor where the curtains fell. yes--the bag was there. he took it at once. in the next breath he stepped out of the room and tip-toed into the passage. he retreated to the far end, near the street door, and stood behind the coats that hung on the hall-stand. at that moment his wife came into the passage, holding a candle. she was red-eyed with weeping, and looked frail. “did you leave the parlour door open?” she asked of millicent, suspiciously. “no,” said millicent from the kitchen. the doctor, with his soft, oriental tread followed mrs. sisson into the parlour. aaron saw his wife hold up the candle before his portrait and begin to weep. but he knew her. the doctor laid his hand softly on her arm, and left it there, sympathetically. nor did he remove it when millicent stole into the room, looking very woe-begone and important. the wife wept silently, and the child joined in. “yes, i know him,” said the doctor. “if he thinks he will be happier when he's gone away, you must be happier too, mrs. sisson. that's all. don't let him triumph over you by making you miserable. you enjoy yourself as well. you're only a girl---” but a tear came from his eye, and he blew his nose vigorously on a large white silk handkerchief, and began to polish his _pince nez_. then he turned, and they all bundled out of the room. the doctor took his departure. mrs. sisson went almost immediately upstairs, and millicent shortly crept after her. then aaron, who had stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down the passage and into the living room. his face was very pale, ghastly-looking. he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the mantel, as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal. but his heart did not relax, nevertheless. so he hurried into the night, down the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across the field in the rain, towards the highroad. he felt sick in every fibre. he almost hated the little handbag he carried, which held his flute and piccolo. it seemed a burden just then--a millstone round his neck. he hated the scene he had left--and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck unchanging in his own breast. coming to the high-road, he saw a tall, luminous tram-car roving along through the rain. the trams ran across country from town to town. he dared not board, because people knew him. so he took a side road, and walked in a detour for two miles. then he came out on the high-road again and waited for a tram-car. the rain blew on his face. he waited a long time for the last car. chapter v. at the opera a friend had given josephine ford a box at the opera for one evening; our story continues by night. the box was large and important, near the stage. josephine and julia were there, with robert and jim--also two more men. the women sat in the front of the box, conspicuously. they were both poor, they were rather excited. but they belonged to a set which looked on social triumphs as a downfall that one allows oneself. the two men, lilly and struthers, were artists, the former literary, the latter a painter. lilly sat by josephine in the front of the box: he was her little lion of the evening. few women can sit in the front of a big box, on a crowded and full-swing opera night, without thrilling and dilating. there is an intoxication in being thus thrust forward, conspicuous and enhanced, right in the eye of the vast crowd that lines the hollow shell of the auditorium. thus even josephine and julia leaned their elbows and poised their heads regally, looking condescendingly down upon the watchful world. they were two poor women, having nothing to do with society. half bohemians. josephine was an artist. in paris she was a friend of a very fashionable dressmaker and decorator, master of modern elegance. sometimes she designed dresses for him, and sometimes she accepted from him a commission to decorate a room. usually at her last sou, it gave her pleasure to dispose of costly and exquisite things for other people, and then be rid of them. this evening her dress was a simple, but a marvellously poised thing of black and silver: in the words of the correct journal. with her tight, black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and her bare shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting looks; she looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off. julia was the english beauty, in a lovely blue dress. her hair was becomingly untidy on her low brow, her dark blue eyes wandered and got excited, her nervous mouth twitched. her high-pitched, sing-song voice and her hurried laugh could be heard in the theatre. she twisted a beautiful little fan that a dead artist had given her. not being fashionable, they were in the box when the overture began. the opera was verdi--_aida_. if it is impossible to be in an important box at the opera without experiencing the strange intoxication of social pre-eminence, it is just as impossible to be there without some feeling of horror at the sight the stage presents. josephine leaned her elbow and looked down: she knew how arresting that proud, rather stiff bend of her head was. she had some aboriginal american in her blood. but as she looked, she pursed her mouth. the artist in her forgot everything, she was filled with disgust. the sham egypt of _aida_ hid from her nothing of its shame. the singers were all colour-washed, deliberately colour-washed to a bright orange tint. the men had oblong dabs of black wool under their lower lip; the beard of the mighty pharaohs. this oblong dab shook and wagged to the singing. the vulgar bodies of the fleshy women were unendurable. they all looked such good meat. why were their haunches so prominent? it was a question josephine could not solve. she scanned their really expensive, brilliant clothing. it was _nearly_ right--nearly splendid. it only lacked that last subtlety which the world always lacks, the last final clinching which puts calm into a sea of fabric, and yet is the opposite pole to machine fixity. but the leading tenor was the chief pain. he was large, stout, swathed in a cummerbund, and looked like a eunuch. this fattish, emasculated look seems common in stage heroes--even the extremely popular. the tenor sang bravely, his mouth made a large, coffin-shaped, yawning gap in his orange face, his little beard fluttered oddly, like a tail. he turned up his eyes to josephine's box as he sang--that being the regulation direction. meanwhile his abdomen shook as he caught his breath, the flesh of his fat, naked arms swayed. josephine looked down with the fixed gravity of a red indian, immovable, inscrutable. it was not till the scene was ended that she lifted her head as if breaking a spell, sent the point of her tongue rapidly over her dried lips, and looked round into the box. her brown eyes expressed shame, fear, and disgust. a curious grimace went over her face--a grimace only to be expressed by the exclamation _merde!_ but she was mortally afraid of society, and its fixed institutions. rapidly she scanned the eyes of her friends in the box. she rested on the eyes of lilly, a dark, ugly man. “isn't it nasty?” she said. “you shouldn't look so closely,” he said. but he took it calmly, easily, whilst she felt floods of burning disgust, a longing to destroy it all. “oh-ho-ho!” laughed julia. “it's so fu-nny--so funny!” “of course we are too near,” said robert. “say you admire that pink fondant over there,” said struthers, indicating with his eyebrows a blond large woman in white satin with pink edging, who sat in a box opposite, on the upper tier. “oh, the fondant--exactly--the fondant! yes, i admire her immensely! isn't she exactly it!” sang julia. josephine was scanning the auditorium. so many myriads of faces--like beads on a bead-work pattern--all bead-work, in different layers. she bowed to various acquaintances--mostly americans in uniform, whom she had known in paris. she smiled to lady cochrane, two boxes off--lady cochrane had given her the box. but she felt rather coldly towards her. the curtain rose, the opera wound its slow length along. the audience loved it. they cheered with mad enthusiasm. josephine looked down on the choppy sea of applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. the noise was strange and rattling. what a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was! it seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. the singers appeared before the curtain--the applause rose up like clouds of dust. “oh, isn't it too wonderful!” cried julia. “i am wild with excitement. are you all of you?” “absolutely wild,” said lilly laconically. “where is scott to-night?” asked struthers. julia turned to him and gave him a long, queer look from her dark blue eyes. “he's in the country,” she said, rather enigmatic. “don't you know, he's got a house down in dorset,” said robert, verbally rushing in. “he wants julia to go down and stay.” “is she going?” said lilly. “she hasn't decided,” replied robert. “oh! what's the objection?” asked struthers. “well, none whatsoever, as far as can be seen, except that she can't make up her mind,” replied robert. “julia's got no mind,” said jim rudely. “oh! hear the brotherly verdict!” laughed julia hurriedly. “you mean to go down to dorset alone!” said struthers. “why not?” replied robert, answering for her. “and stay how long?” “oh--as long as it lasts,” said robert again. “starting with eternity,” said lilly, “and working back to a fortnight.” “and what's the matter?--looks bad in the eyes of the world?” “yes--about that. afraid of compromising herself--” lilly looked at them. “depends what you take the world to mean. do you mean us in this box, or the crew outside there?” he jerked his head towards the auditorium. “do you think, lilly, that we're the world?” said robert ironically. “oh, yes, i guess we're shipwrecked in this box, like robinson crusoes. and what we do on our own little island matters to us alone. as for the infinite crowds of howling savages outside there in the unspeakable, all you've got to do is mind they don't scrap you.” “but won't they?” said struthers. “not unless you put your head in their hands,” said lilly. “i don't know--” said jim. but the curtain had risen, they hushed him into silence. all through the next scene, julia puzzled herself, as to whether she should go down to the country and live with scott. she had carried on a nervous kind of _amour_ with him, based on soul sympathy and emotional excitement. but whether to go and live with him? she didn't know if she wanted to or not: and she couldn't for her life find out. she was in that nervous state when desire seems to evaporate the moment fulfilment is offered. when the curtain dropped she turned. “you see,” she said, screwing up her eyes, “i have to think of robert.” she cut the word in two, with an odd little hitch in her voice--“rob-ert.” “my dear julia, can't you believe that i'm tired of being thought of,” cried robert, flushing. julia screwed up her eyes in a slow smile, oddly cogitating. “well, who am i to think of?” she asked. “yourself,” said lilly. “oh, yes! why, yes! i never thought of that!” she gave a hurried little laugh. “but then it's no fun to think about oneself,” she cried flatly. “i think about rob-ert, and scott.” she screwed up her eyes and peered oddly at the company. “which of them will find you the greatest treat,” said lilly sarcastically. “anyhow,” interjected robert nervously, “it will be something new for scott.” “stale buns for you, old boy,” said jim drily. “i don't say so. but--” exclaimed the flushed, full-blooded robert, who was nothing if not courteous to women. “how long ha' you been married? eh?” asked jim. “six years!” sang julia sweetly. “good god!” “you see,” said robert, “julia can't decide anything for herself. she waits for someone else to decide, then she puts her spoke in.” “put it plainly--” began struthers. “but don't you know, it's no use putting it plainly,” cried julia. “but do you want to be with scott, out and out, or don't you?” said lilly. “exactly!” chimed robert. “that's the question for you to answer julia.” “i won't answer it,” she cried. “why should i?” and she looked away into the restless hive of the theatre. she spoke so wildly that she attracted attention. but it half pleased her. she stared abstractedly down at the pit. the men looked at one another in some comic consternation. “oh, damn it all!” said the long jim, rising and stretching himself. “she's dead nuts on scott. she's all over him. she'd have eloped with him weeks ago if it hadn't been so easy. she can't stand it that robert offers to hand her into the taxi.” he gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out. he did not reappear for the next scene. “of course, if she loves scott--” began struthers. julia suddenly turned with wild desperation, and cried: “i like him tremendously--tre-men-dous-ly! he does understand.” “which we don't,” said robert. julia smiled her long, odd smile in their faces: one might almost say she smiled in their teeth. “what do you think, josephine?” asked lilly. josephine was leaning froward. she started. her tongue went rapidly over her lips. “who--? i--?” she exclaimed. “yes.” “i think julia should go with scott,” said josephine. “she'll bother with the idea till she's done it. she loves him, really.” “of course she does,” cried robert. julia, with her chin resting on her arms, in a position which irritated the neighbouring lady cochrane sincerely, was gazing with unseeing eyes down upon the stalls. “well then--” began struthers. but the music struck up softly. they were all rather bored. struthers kept on making small, half audible remarks--which was bad form, and displeased josephine, the hostess of the evening. when the curtain came down for the end of the act, the men got up. lilly's wife, tanny, suddenly appeared. she had come on after a dinner engagement. “would you like tea or anything?” lilly asked. the women refused. the men filtered out on to the crimson and white, curving corridor. julia, josephine and tanny remained in the box. tanny was soon hitched on to the conversation in hand. “of course,” she replied, “one can't decide such a thing like drinking a cup of tea.” “of course, one can't, dear tanny,” said julia. “after all, one doesn't leave one's husband every day, to go and live with another man. even if one looks on it as an experiment--.” “it's difficult!” cried julia. “it's difficult! i feel they all want to force me to decide. it's cruel.” “oh, men with their beastly logic, their either-this-or-that stunt, they are an awful bore.--but of course, robert can't love you really, or he'd want to keep you. i can see lilly discussing such a thing for me. but then you don't love robert either,” said tanny. “i do! oh, i do, tanny! i do love him, i love him dearly. i think he's beautiful. robert's beautiful. and he needs me. and i need him too. i need his support. yes, i do love him.” “but you like scott better,” said tanny. “only because he--he's different,” sang julia, in long tones. “you see scott has his art. his art matters. and rob-ert--robert is a dilettante, don't you think--he's dilettante--” she screwed up her eyes at tanny. tanny cogitated. “of course i don't think that matters,” she replied. “but it does, it matters tremendously, dear tanny, tremendously.” “of course,” tanny sheered off. “i can see scott has great attractions--a great warmth somewhere--” “exactly!” cried julia. “he understands!” “and i believe he's a real artist. you might even work together. you might write his librettos.” “yes!--yes!--” julia spoke with a long, pondering hiss. “it might be awfully nice,” said tanny rapturously. “yes!--it might!--it might--!” pondered julia. suddenly she gave herself a shake. then she laughed hurriedly, as if breaking from her line of thought. “and wouldn't robert be an awfully nice lover for josephine! oh, wouldn't that be splendid!” she cried, with her high laugh. josephine, who had been gazing down into the orchestra, turned now, flushing darkly. “but i don't want a lover, julia,” she said, hurt. “josephine dear! dear old josephine! don't you really! oh, yes, you do.--i want one so badly,” cried julia, with her shaking laugh. “robert's awfully good to me. but we've been married six years. and it does make a difference, doesn't it, tanny dear?” “a great difference,” said tanny. “yes, it makes a difference, it makes a difference,” mused julia. “dear old rob-ert--i wouldn't hurt him for worlds. i wouldn't. do you think it would hurt robert?” she screwed up her eyes, looking at tanny. “perhaps it would do robert good to be hurt a little,” said tanny. “he's so well-nourished.” “yes!--yes!--i see what you mean, tanny!--poor old rob-ert! oh, poor old rob-ert, he's so young!” “he does seem young,” said tanny. “one doesn't forgive it.” “he is young,” said julia. “i'm five years older than he. he's only twenty-seven. poor old robert.” “robert is young, and inexperienced,” said josephine, suddenly turning with anger. “but i don't know why you talk about him.” “is he inexperienced, josephine dear? is he?” sang julia. josephine flushed darkly, and turned away. “ah, he's not so innocent as all that,” said tanny roughly. “those young young men, who seem so fresh, they're deep enough, really. they're far less innocent really than men who are experienced.” “they are, aren't they, tanny,” repeated julia softly. “they're old--older than the old man of the seas, sometimes, aren't they? incredibly old, like little boys who know too much--aren't they? yes!” she spoke quietly, seriously, as if it had struck her. below, the orchestra was coming in. josephine was watching closely. julia became aware of this. “do you see anybody we know, josephine?” she asked. josephine started. “no,” she said, looking at her friends quickly and furtively. “dear old josephine, she knows all sorts of people,” sang julia. at that moment the men returned. “have you actually come back!” exclaimed tanny to them. they sat down without answering. jim spread himself as far as he could, in the narrow space. he stared upwards, wrinkling his ugly, queer face. it was evident he was in one of his moods. “if only somebody loved me!” he complained. “if only somebody loved me i should be all right. i'm going to pieces.” he sat up and peered into the faces of the women. “but we all love you,” said josephine, laughing uneasily. “why aren't you satisfied?” “i'm not satisfied. i'm not satisfied,” murmured jim. “would you like to be wrapped in swaddling bands and laid at the breast?” asked lilly, disagreeably. jim opened his mouth in a grin, and gazed long and malevolently at his questioner. “yes,” he said. then he sprawled his long six foot of limb and body across the box again. “you should try loving somebody, for a change,” said tanny. “you've been loved too often. why not try and love somebody?” jim eyed her narrowly. “i couldn't love you,” he said, in vicious tones. “_a la bonne heure_!” said tanny. but jim sank his chin on his chest, and repeated obstinately: “i want to be loved.” “how many times have you been loved?” robert asked him. “it would be rather interesting to know.” jim looked at robert long and slow, but did not answer. “did you ever keep count?” tanny persisted. jim looked up at her, malevolent. “i believe i did,” he replied. “forty is the age when a man should begin to reckon up,” said lilly. jim suddenly sprang to his feet, and brandished his fists. “i'll pitch the lot of you over the bloody rail,” he said. he glared at them, from under his bald, wrinkled forehead. josephine glanced round. she had become a dusky white colour. she was afraid of him, and she disliked him intensely nowadays. “do you recognise anyone in the orchestra?” she asked. the party in the box had become dead silent. they looked down. the conductor was at his stand. the music began. they all remained silent and motionless during the next scene, each thinking his own thoughts. jim was uncomfortable. he wanted to make good. he sat with his elbows on his knees, grinning slightly, looking down. at the next interval he stood up suddenly. “it is the chap--what?” he exclaimed excitedly, looking round at his friends. “who?” said tanny. “it is he?” said josephine quietly, meeting jim's eye. “sure!” he barked. he was leaning forward over the ledge, rattling a programme in his hand, as if trying to attract attention. then he made signals. “there you are!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “that's the chap.” “who? who?” they cried. but neither jim nor josephine would vouchsafe an answer. the next was the long interval. jim and josephine gazed down at the orchestra. the musicians were laying aside their instruments and rising. the ugly fire-curtain began slowly to descend. jim suddenly bolted out. “is it that man aaron sisson?” asked robert. “where? where?” cried julia. “it can't be.” but josephine's face was closed and silent. she did not answer. the whole party moved out on to the crimson-carpeted gangway. groups of people stood about chatting, men and women were passing along, to pay visits or to find drinks. josephine's party stared around, talking desultorily. and at length they perceived jim stalking along, leading aaron sisson by the arm. jim was grinning, the flautist looked unwilling. he had a comely appearance, in his white shirt--a certain comely blondness and repose. and as much a gentleman as anybody. “well!” cried josephine to him. “how do you come here?” “i play the flute,” he answered, as he shook hands. the little crowd stood in the gangway and talked. “how wonderful of you to be here!” cried julia. he laughed. “do you think so?” he answered. “yes, i do.--it seems so far from shottle house and christmas eve.--oh, wasn't it exciting!” cried julia. aaron looked at her, but did not answer. “we've heard all about you,” said tanny playfully. “oh, yes,” he replied. “come!” said josephine, rather irritated. “we crowd up the gangway.” and she led the way inside the box. aaron stood and looked down at the dishevelled theatre. “you get all the view,” he said. “we do, don't we!” cried julia. “more than's good for us,” said lilly. “tell us what you are doing. you've got a permanent job?” asked josephine. “yes--at present.” “ah! it's more interesting for you than at beldover.” she had taken her seat. he looked down at her dusky young face. her voice was always clear and measured. “it's a change,” he said, smiling. “oh, it must be more than that,” she said. “why, you must feel a whole difference. it's a whole new life.” he smiled, as if he were laughing at her silently. she flushed. “but isn't it?” she persisted. “yes. it can be,” he replied. he looked as if he were quietly amused, but dissociated. none of the people in the box were quite real to him. he was not really amused. julia found him dull, stupid. tanny also was offended that he could not _perceive her_. the men remained practically silent. “you're a chap i always hoped would turn up again,” said jim. “oh, yes!” replied aaron, smiling as if amused. “but perhaps he doesn't like us! perhaps he's not glad that we turned up,” said julia, leaving her sting. the flautist turned and looked at her. “you can't remember us, can you?” she asked. “yes,” he said. “i can remember you.” “oh,” she laughed. “you are unflattering.” he was annoyed. he did not know what she was getting at. “how are your wife and children?” she asked spitefully. “all right, i think.” “but you've been back to them?” cried josephine in dismay. he looked at her, a slow, half smiling look, but did not speak. “come and have a drink. damn the women,” said jim uncouthly, seizing aaron by the arm and dragging him off. chapter vi. talk the party stayed to the end of the interminable opera. they had agreed to wait for aaron. he was to come around to the vestibule for them, after the show. they trooped slowly down-stairs into the crush of the entrance hall. chattering, swirling people, red carpet, palms green against cream-and-gilt walls, small whirlpools of life at the open, dark doorways, men in opera hats steering decisively about-it was the old scene. but there were no taxis--absolutely no taxis. and it was raining. fortunately the women had brought shoes. they slipped these on. jim rocked through the crowd, in his tall hat, looking for the flautist. at last aaron was found--wearing a bowler hat. julia groaned in spirit. josephine's brow knitted. not that anybody cared, really. but as one must frown at something, why not at the bowler hat? acquaintances and elegant young men in uniforms insisted on rushing up and bowing and exchanging a few words, either with josephine, or jim, or julia, or lilly. they were coldly received. the party veered out into the night. the women hugged their wraps about them, and set off sharply, feeling some repugnance for the wet pavements and the crowd. they had not far to go--only to jim's rooms in adelphi. jim was leading aaron, holding him by the arm and slightly pinching his muscles. it gave him great satisfaction to have between his fingers the arm-muscles of a working-man, one of the common people, the _fons et origo_ of modern life. jim was talking rather vaguely about labour and robert smillie, and bolshevism. he was all for revolution and the triumph of labour. so they arrived, mounted a dark stair, and entered a large, handsome room, one of the adams rooms. jim had furnished it from heale's with striped hangings, green and white and yellow and dark purple, and with a green-and-black checked carpet, and great stripe-covered chairs and chesterfield. a big gas-fire was soon glowing in the handsome old fire-place, the panelled room seemed cosy. while jim was handing round drinks and sandwiches, and josephine was making tea, robert played bach on the piano--the pianola, rather. the chairs and lounge were in a half-circle round the fire. the party threw off their wraps and sank deep into this expensive comfort of modern bohemia. they needed the bach to take away the bad taste that _aida_ had left in their mouths. they needed the whiskey and curacao to rouse their spirits. they needed the profound comfort in which to sink away from the world. all the men, except aaron, had been through the war in some way or other. but here they were, in the old setting exactly, the old bohemian routine. the bell rang, jim went downstairs. he returned shortly with a frail, elegant woman--fashionable rather than bohemian. she was cream and auburn, irish, with a slightly-lifted upper lip that gave her a pathetic look. she dropped her wrap and sat down by julia, taking her hand delicately. “how are you, darling?” she asked. “yes--i'm happy,” said julia, giving her odd, screwed-up smile. the pianola stopped, they all chatted indiscriminately. jim was watching the new-comer--mrs. browning--with a concentrated wolfish grin. “i like her,” he said at last. “i've seen her before, haven't i?--i like her awfully.” “yes,” said josephine, with a slight grunt of a laugh. “he wants to be loved.” “oh,” cried clariss. “so do i!” “then there you are!” cried tanny. “alas, no, there we aren't,” cried clariss. she was beautiful too, with her lifted upper-lip. “we both want to be loved, and so we miss each other entirely. we run on in two parallel lines, that can never meet.” she laughed low and half sad. “doesn't she love you?” said aaron to jim amused, indicating josephine. “i thought you were engaged.” “her!” leered jim vindictively, glancing at josephine. “she doesn't love me.” “is that true?” asked robert hastily, of josephine. “why,” she said, “yes. why should he make me say out here that i don't love him!” “got you my girl,” said jim. “then it's no engagement?” said robert. “listen to the row fools make, rushing in,” said jim maliciously. “no, the engagement is broken,” said josephine. “world coming to pieces bit by bit,” said lilly. jim was twisting in his chair, and looking like a chinese dragon, diabolical. the room was uneasy. “what gives you such a belly-ache for love, jim?” said lilly, “or for being loved? why do you want so badly to be loved?” “because i like it, damn you,” barked jim. “because i'm in need of it.” none of them quite knew whether they ought to take it as a joke. it was just a bit too real to be quite pleasant. “why are you such a baby?” said lilly. “there you are, six foot in length, have been a cavalry officer and fought in two wars, and you spend your time crying for somebody to love you. you're a comic.” “am i though?” said jim. “i'm losing life. i'm getting thin.” “you don't look as if you were losing life,” said lilly. “don't i? i am, though. i'm dying.” “what of? lack of life?” “that's about it, my young cock. life's leaving me.” “better sing tosti's farewell to it.” jim who had been sprawling full length in his arm-chair, the centre of interest of all the company, suddenly sprang forward and pushed his face, grinning, in the face of lilly. “you're a funny customer, you are,” he said. then he turned round in his chair, and saw clariss sitting at the feet of julia, with one white arm over her friend's knee. jim immediately stuck forward his muzzle and gazed at her. clariss had loosened her masses of thick, auburn hair, so that it hung half free. her face was creamy pale, her upper lip lifted with odd pathos! she had rose-rubies in her ears. “i like her,” said jim. “what's her name?” “mrs. browning. don't be so rude,” said josephine. “browning for gravies. any relation of robert?” “oh, yes! you ask my husband,” came the slow, plangent voice of clariss. “you've got a husband, have you?” “rather! haven't i, juley?” “yes,” said julia, vaguely and wispily. “yes, dear, you have.” “and two fine children,” put in robert. “no! you don't mean it!” said jim. “who's your husband? anybody?” “rather!” came the deep voice of clariss. “he sees to that.” jim stared, grinning, showing his pointed teeth, reaching nearer and nearer to clariss who, in her frail scrap of an evening dress, amethyst and silver, was sitting still in the deep black hearth-rug, her arm over julia's knee, taking very little notice of jim, although he amused her. “i like you awfully, i say,” he repeated. “thanks, i'm sure,” she said. the others were laughing, sprawling in their chairs, and sipping curacao and taking a sandwich or a cigarette. aaron sisson alone sat upright, smiling flickeringly. josephine watched him, and her pointed tongue went from time to time over her lips. “but i'm sure,” she broke in, “this isn't very interesting for the others. awfully boring! don't be silly all the time, jim, or we must go home.” jim looked at her with narrowed eyes. he hated her voice. she let her eye rest on his for a moment. then she put her cigarette to her lips. robert was watching them both. josephine took her cigarette from her lips again. “tell us about yourself, mr. sisson,” she said. “how do you like being in london?” “i like london,” said aaron. where did he live? bloomsbury. did he know many people? no--nobody except a man in the orchestra. how had he got his job? through an agent. etc. etc. “what do you make of the miners?” said jim, suddenly taking a new line. “me?” said sisson. “i don't make anything of them.” “do you think they'll make a stand against the government?” “what for?” “nationalisation.” “they might, one day.” “think they'd fight?” “fight?” “yes.” aaron sat laughing. “what have they to fight for?” “why, everything! what haven't they to fight for?” cried josephine fiercely. “freedom, liberty, and escape from this vile system. won't they fight for that?” aaron sat smiling, slowly shaking his head. “nay,” he said, “you mustn't ask me what they'll do--i've only just left them, for good. they'll do a lot of cavilling.” “but won't they act?” cried josephine. “act?” said aaron. “how, act?” “why, defy the government, and take things in their own hands,” said josephine. “they might, some time,” said aaron, rather indifferent. “i wish they would!” cried josephine. “my, wouldn't i love it if they'd make a bloody revolution!” they were all looking now at her. her black brows were twitching, in her black and silver dress she looked like a symbol of young disaster. “must it be bloody, josephine?” said robert. “why, yes. i don't believe in revolutions that aren't bloody,” said josephine. “wouldn't i love it! i'd go in front with a red flag.” “it would be rather fun,” said tanny. “wouldn't it!” cried josephine. “oh, josey, dear!” cried julia hysterically. “isn't she a red-hot bolsher! _i_ should be frightened.” “no!” cried josephine. “i should love it.” “so should i,” said jim, in a luscious sort of voice. “what price machine-guns at the end of the strand! that's a day to live for, what?” “ha! ha!” laughed clariss, with her deep laugh. “we'd all bolsh together. i'd give the cheers.” “i wouldn't mind getting killed. i'd love it, in a real fight,” said josephine. “but, josephine,” said robert, “don't you think we've had enough of that sort of thing in the war? don't you think it all works out rather stupid and unsatisfying?” “ah, but a civil war would be different. i've no interest in fighting germans. but a civil war would be different.” “that's a fact, it would,” said jim. “only rather worse,” said robert. “no, i don't agree,” cried josephine. “you'd feel you were doing something, in a civil war.” “pulling the house down,” said lilly. “yes,” she cried. “don't you hate it, the house we live in--london--england--america! don't you hate them?” “i don't like them. but i can't get much fire in my hatred. they pall on me rather,” said lilly. “ay!” said aaron, suddenly stirring in his chair. lilly and he glanced at one another with a look of recognition. “still,” said tanny, “there's got to be a clearance some day or other.” “oh,” drawled clariss. “i'm all for a clearance. i'm all for pulling the house down. only while it stands i do want central heating and a good cook.” “may i come to dinner?” said jim. “oh, yes. you'd find it rather domestic.” “where do you live?” “rather far out now--amersham.” “amersham? where's that--?” “oh, it's on the map.” there was a little lull. jim gulped down a drink, standing at the sideboard. he was a tall, fine, soldierly figure, and his face, with its little sandy moustache and bald forehead, was odd. aaron sisson sat watching him, unconsciously. “hello you!” said jim. “have one?” aaron shook his head, and jim did not press him. it saved the drinks. “you believe in love, don't you?” said jim, sitting down near aaron, and grinning at him. “love!” said aaron. “love! he says,” mocked jim, grinning at the company. “what about it, then?” asked aaron. “it's life! love is life,” said jim fiercely. “it's a vice, like drink,” said lilly. “eh? a vice!” said jim. “may be for you, old bird.” “more so still for you,” said lilly. “it's life. it's life!” reiterated jim. “don't you agree?” he turned wolfishly to clariss. “oh, yes--every time--” she drawled, nonchalant. “here, let's write it down,” said lilly. he found a blue pencil and printed in large letters on the old creamy marble of the mantel-piece panel:--love is life. julia suddenly rose and flung her arms asunder wildly. “oh, i hate love. i hate it,” she protested. jim watched her sardonically. “look at her!” he said. “look at lesbia who hates love.” “no, but perhaps it is a disease. perhaps we are all wrong, and we can't love properly,” put in josephine. “have another try,” said jim,--“i know what love is. i've thought about it. love is the soul's respiration.” “let's have that down,” said lilly. love is the soul's respiration. he printed it on the old mantel-piece. jim eyed the letters. “it's right,” he said. “quite right. when you love, your soul breathes in. if you don't breathe in, you suffocate.” “what about breathing out?” said robert. “if you don't breathe out, you asphyxiate.” “right you are, mock turtle--” said jim maliciously. “breathing out is a bloody revolution,” said lilly. “you've hit the nail on the head,” said jim solemnly. “let's record it then,” said lilly. and with the blue pencil he printed: when you love, your soul breathes in-- when your soul breathes out, it's a bloody revolution. “i say jim,” he said. “you must be busting yourself, trying to breathe in.” “don't you be too clever. i've thought about it,” said jim. “when i'm in love, i get a great inrush of energy. i actually feel it rush in--here!” he poked his finger on the pit of his stomach. “it's the soul's expansion. and if i can't get these rushes of energy, i'm dying, and i know i am.” he spoke the last words with sudden ferocity and desperation. “all _i_ know is,” said tanny, “you don't look it.” “i am. i am.” jim protested. “i'm dying. life's leaving me.” “maybe you're choking with love,” said robert. “perhaps you have breathed in so much, you don't know how to let it go again. perhaps your soul's got a crick in it, with expanding so much.” “you're a bloody young sucking pig, you are,” said jim. “even at that age, i've learned my manners,” replied robert. jim looked round the party. then he turned to aaron sisson. “what do you make of 'em, eh?” he said. aaron shook his head, and laughed. “me?” he said. but jim did not wait for an answer. “i've had enough,” said tanny suddenly rising. “i think you're all silly. besides, it's getting late.” “she!” said jim, rising and pointing luridly to clariss. “she's love. and he's the working people. the hope is these two--” he jerked a thumb at aaron sisson, after having indicated mrs. browning. “oh, how awfully interesting. it's quite a long time since i've been a personification.--i suppose you've never been one before?” said clariss, turning to aaron in conclusion. “no, i don't think i have,” he answered. “i hope personification is right.--ought to be _allegory_ or something else?” this from clariss to robert. “or a parable, clariss,” laughed the young lieutenant. “goodbye,” said tanny. “i've been awfully bored.” “have you?” grinned jim. “goodbye! better luck next time.” “we'd better look sharp,” said robert, “if we want to get the tube.” the party hurried through the rainy narrow streets down to the embankment station. robert and julia and clariss were going west, lilly and his wife were going to hampstead, josephine and aaron sisson were going both to bloomsbury. “i suppose,” said robert, on the stairs--“mr. sisson will see you to your door, josephine. he lives your way.” “there's no need at all,” said josephine. the four who were going north went down to the low tube level. it was nearly the last train. the station was half deserted, half rowdy, several fellows were drunk, shouting and crowing. down there in the bowels of london, after midnight, everything seemed horrible and unnatural. “how i hate this london,” said tanny. she was half norwegian, and had spent a large part of her life in norway, before she married lilly. “yes, so do i,” said josephine. “but if one must earn one's living one must stay here. i wish i could get back to paris. but there's nothing doing for me in france.--when do you go back into the country, both of you?” “friday,” said lilly. “how lovely for you!--and when will you go to norway, tanny?” “in about a month,” said tanny. “you must be awfully pleased.” “oh--thankful--thankful to get out of england--” “i know. that's how i feel. everything is so awful--so dismal and dreary, i find it--” they crowded into the train. men were still yelling like wild beasts--others were asleep--soldiers were singing. “have you really broken your engagement with jim?” shrilled tanny in a high voice, as the train roared. “yes, he's impossible,” said josephine. “perfectly hysterical and impossible.” “and selfish--” cried tanny. “oh terribly--” cried josephine. “come up to hampstead to lunch with us,” said lilly to aaron. “ay--thank you,” said aaron. lilly scribbled directions on a card. the hot, jaded midnight underground rattled on. aaron and josephine got down to change trains. chapter vii. the dark square garden josephine had invited aaron sisson to dinner at a restaurant in soho, one sunday evening. they had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle of burgundy she was getting his history from him. his father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been killed by a fall down the shaft when aaron was only four years old. the widow had opened a shop: aaron was her only child. she had done well in her shop. she had wanted aaron to be a schoolteacher. he had served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the pit. “but why?” said josephine. “i couldn't tell you. i felt more like it.” he had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. on purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. he understood perfectly what a personification was--and an allegory. but he preferred to be illiterate. josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was. she tried to find out what sort of wife aaron had--but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing. “and do you send her money?” she asked. “ay,” said aaron. “the house is mine. and i allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. my mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died.” “you don't mind what i say, do you?” said josephine. “no i don't mind,” he laughed. he had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. but he really kept her at a distance. in some things he reminded her of robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and english-seeming. but there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. an inward indifference to her--perhaps to everything. yet his laugh was so handsome. “will you tell me why you left your wife and children?--didn't you love them?” aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. she had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears. “why i left her?” he said. “for no particular reason. they're all right without me.” josephine watched his face. she saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes. “but you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all--” “yes, i did. for no reason--except i wanted to have some free room round me--to loose myself--” “you mean you wanted love?” flashed josephine, thinking he said _lose_. “no, i wanted fresh air. i don't know what i wanted. why should i know?” “but we must know: especially when other people will be hurt,” said she. “ah, well! a breath of fresh air, by myself. i felt forced to feel--i feel if i go back home now, i shall be forced--forced to love--or care--or something.” “perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you,” she said. “perhaps less. she's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not going to let me off.” “did you never love her?” said josephine. “oh, yes. i shall never love anybody else. but i'm damned if i want to be a lover any more. to her or to anybody. that's the top and bottom of it. i don't want to care, when care isn't in me. and i'm not going to be forced to it.” the fat, aproned french waiter was hovering near. josephine let him remove the plates and the empty bottle. “have more wine,” she said to aaron. but he refused. she liked him because of his dead-level indifference to his surroundings. french waiters and foreign food--he noticed them in his quick, amiable-looking fashion--but he was indifferent. josephine was piqued. she wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness of his. she ordered coffee and brandies. “but you don't want to get away from everything, do you? i myself feel so lost sometimes--so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don't you know. but my life seems alone, for some reason--” “haven't you got relations?” he said. “no one, now mother is dead. nothing nearer than aunts and cousins in america. i suppose i shall see them all again one day. but they hardly count over here.” “why don't you get married?” he said. “how old are you?” “i'm twenty-five. how old are you?” “thirty-three.” “you might almost be any age.--i don't know why i don't get married. in a way, i hate earning my own living--yet i go on--and i like my work--” “what are you doing now?” “i'm painting scenery for a new play--rather fun--i enjoy it. but i often wonder what will become of me.” “in what way?” she was almost affronted. “what becomes of me? oh, i don't know. and it doesn't matter, not to anybody but myself.” “what becomes of anybody, anyhow? we live till we die. what do you want?” “why, i keep saying i want to get married and feel sure of something. but i don't know--i feel dreadful sometimes--as if every minute would be the last. i keep going on and on--i don't know what for--and it keeps going on and on--goodness knows what it's all for.” “you shouldn't bother yourself,” he said. “you should just let it go on and on--” “but i must bother,” she said. “i must think and feel--” “you've no occasion,” he said. “how--?” she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. then she lit a cigarette. “no,” she said. “what i should really like more than anything would be an end of the world. i wish the world would come to an end.” he laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat. “it won't, for wishing,” he said. “no, that's the awful part of it. it'll just go on and on-- doesn't it make you feel you'd go mad?” he looked at her and shook his head. “you see it doesn't concern me,” he said. “so long as i can float by myself.” “but are you satisfied!” she cried. “i like being by myself--i hate feeling and caring, and being forced into it. i want to be left alone--” “you aren't very polite to your hostess of the evening,” she said, laughing a bit miserably. “oh, we're all right,” he said. “you know what i mean--” “you like your own company? do you?--sometimes i think i'm nothing when i'm alone. sometimes i think i surely must be nothing--nothingness.” he shook his head. “no,” he said. “no. i only want to be left alone.” “not to have anything to do with anybody?” she queried ironically. “not to any extent.” she watched him--and then she bubbled with a laugh. “i think you're funny,” she said. “you don't mind?” “no--why--it's just as you see it.--jim bricknell's a rare comic, to my eye.” “oh, him!--no, not actually. he's self-conscious and selfish and hysterical. it isn't a bit funny after a while.” “i only know what i've seen,” said aaron. “you'd both of you like a bloody revolution, though.” “yes. only when it came he wouldn't be there.” “would you?” “yes, indeed i would. i would give everything to be in it. i'd give heaven and earth for a great big upheaval--and then darkness.” “perhaps you'll get it, when you die,” said aaron. “oh, but i don't want to die and leave all this standing. i hate it so.” “why do you?” “but don't you?” “no, it doesn't really bother me.” “it makes me feel i can't live.” “i can't see that.” “but you always disagree with one!” said josephine. “how do you like lilly? what do you think of him?” “he seems sharp,” said aaron. “but he's more than sharp.” “oh, yes! he's got his finger in most pies.” “and doesn't like the plums in any of them,” said josephine tartly. “what does he do?” “writes--stories and plays.” “and makes it pay?” “hardly at all.--they want us to go. shall we?” she rose from the table. the waiter handed her her cloak, and they went out into the blowy dark night. she folded her wrap round her, and hurried forward with short, sharp steps. there was a certain parisian _chic_ and mincingness about her, even in her walk: but underneath, a striding, savage suggestion as if she could leg it in great strides, like some savage squaw. aaron pressed his bowler hat down on his brow. “would you rather take a bus?” she said in a high voice, because of the wind. “i'd rather walk.” “so would i.” they hurried across the charing cross road, where great buses rolled and rocked, crammed with people. her heels clicked sharply on the pavement, as they walked east. they crossed holborn, and passed the museum. and neither of them said anything. when they came to the corner, she held out her hand. “look!” she said. “don't come any further: don't trouble.” “i'll walk round with you: unless you'd rather not.” “no--but do you want to bother?” “it's no bother.” so they pursued their way through the high wind, and turned at last into the old, beautiful square. it seemed dark and deserted, dark like a savage wilderness in the heart of london. the wind was roaring in the great bare trees of the centre, as if it were some wild dark grove deep in a forgotten land. josephine opened the gate of the square garden with her key, and let it slam to behind him. “how wonderful the wind is!” she shrilled. “shall we listen to it for a minute?” she led him across the grass past the shrubs to the big tree in the centre. there she climbed up to a seat. he sat beside her. they sat in silence, looking at the darkness. rain was blowing in the wind. they huddled against the big tree-trunk, for shelter, and watched the scene. beyond the tall shrubs and the high, heavy railings the wet street gleamed silently. the houses of the square rose like a cliff on this inner dark sea, dimly lighted at occasional windows. boughs swayed and sang. a taxi-cab swirled round a corner like a cat, and purred to a standstill. there was a light of an open hall door. but all far away, it seemed, unthinkably far away. aaron sat still and watched. he was frightened, it all seemed so sinister, this dark, bristling heart of london. wind boomed and tore like waves ripping a shingle beach. the two white lights of the taxi stared round and departed, leaving the coast at the foot of the cliffs deserted, faintly spilled with light from the high lamp. beyond there, on the outer rim, a policeman passed solidly. josephine was weeping steadily all the time, but inaudibly. occasionally she blew her nose and wiped her face. but he had not realized. she hardly realized herself. she sat near the strange man. he seemed so still and remote--so fascinating. “give me your hand,” she said to him, subduedly. he took her cold hand in his warm, living grasp. she wept more bitterly. he noticed at last. “why are you crying?” he said. “i don't know,” she replied, rather matter-of-fact, through her tears. so he let her cry, and said no more, but sat with her cold hand in his warm, easy clasp. “you'll think me a fool,” she said. “i don't know why i cry.” “you can cry for nothing, can't you?” he said. “why, yes, but it's not very sensible.” he laughed shortly. “sensible!” he said. “you are a strange man,” she said. but he took no notice. “did you ever intend to marry jim bricknell?” he asked. “yes, of course.” “i can't imagine it,” he said. “why not?” both were watching blankly the roaring night of mid-london, the phantasmagoric old bloomsbury square. they were still hand in hand. “such as you shouldn't marry,” he said. “but why not? i want to.” “you think you do.” “yes indeed i do.” he did not say any more. “why shouldn't i?” she persisted. “i don't know--” and again he was silent. “you've known some life, haven't you?” he asked. “me? why?” “you seem to.” “do i? i'm sorry. do i seem vicious?--no, i'm not vicious.--i've seen some life, perhaps--in paris mostly. but not much. why do you ask?” “i wasn't thinking.” “but what do you mean? what are you thinking?” “nothing. nothing.” “don't be so irritating,” said she. but he did not answer, and she became silent also. they sat hand in hand. “won't you kiss me?” came her voice out of the darkness. he waited some moments, then his voice sounded gently, half mocking, half reproachful. “nay!” he said. “why not?” “i don't want to.” “why not?” she asked. he laughed, but did not reply. she sat perfectly still for some time. she had ceased to cry. in the darkness her face was set and sullen. sometimes a spray of rain blew across it. she drew her hand from his, and rose to her feet. “ill go in now,” she said. “you're not offended, are you?” he asked. “no. why?” they stepped down in the darkness from their perch. “i wondered.” she strode off for some little way. then she turned and said: “yes, i think it is rather insulting.” “nay,” he said. “not it! not it!” and he followed her to the gate. she opened with her key, and they crossed the road to her door. “good-night,” she said, turning and giving him her hand. “you'll come and have dinner with me--or lunch--will you? when shall we make it?” he asked. “well, i can't say for certain--i'm very busy just now. i'll let you know.” a policeman shed his light on the pair of them as they stood on the step. “all right,” said aaron, dropping back, and she hastily opened the big door, and entered. chapter viii. a punch in the wind the lillys had a labourer's cottage in hampshire--pleasant enough. they were poor. lilly was a little, dark, thin, quick fellow, his wife was strong and fair. they had known robert and julia for some years, but josephine and jim were new acquaintances,--fairly new. one day in early spring lilly had a telegram, “coming to see you arrive : --bricknell.” he was surprised, but he and his wife got the spare room ready. and at four o'clock lilly went off to the station. he was a few minutes late, and saw jim's tall, rather elegant figure stalking down the station path. jim had been an officer in the regular army, and still spent hours with his tailor. but instead of being a soldier he was a sort of socialist, and a red-hot revolutionary of a very ineffectual sort. “good lad!” he exclaimed, as lilly came up. “thought you wouldn't mind.” “not at all. let me carry your bag.” jim had a bag and a knapsack. “i had an inspiration this morning,” said jim. “i suddenly saw that if there was a man in england who could save me, it was you.” “save you from what?” asked lilly, rather abashed. “eh--?” and jim stooped, grinning at the smaller man. lilly was somewhat puzzled, but he had a certain belief in himself as a saviour. the two men tramped rather incongruously through the lanes to the cottage. tanny was in the doorway as they came up the garden path. “so nice to see you! are you all right?” she said. “a-one!” said jim, grinning. “nice of you to have me.” “oh, we're awfully pleased.” jim dropped his knapsack on the broad sofa. “i've brought some food,” he said. “have you! that's sensible of you. we can't get a great deal here, except just at week-ends,” said tanny. jim fished out a pound of sausages and a pot of fish paste. “how lovely the sausages,” said tanny. “we'll have them for dinner tonight--and we'll have the other for tea now. you'd like a wash?” but jim had already opened his bag, taken off his coat, and put on an old one. “thanks,” he said. lilly made the tea, and at length all sat down. “well how unexpected this is--and how nice,” said tanny. “jolly--eh?” said jim. he ate rapidly, stuffing his mouth too full. “how is everybody?” asked tanny. “all right. julia's gone with cyril scott. can't stand that fellow, can you? what?” “yes, i think he's rather nice,” said tanny. “what will robert do?” “have a shot at josephine, apparently.” “really? is he in love with her? i thought so. and she likes him too, doesn't she?” said tanny. “very likely,” said jim. “i suppose you're jealous,” laughed tanny. “me!” jim shook his head. “not a bit. like to see the ball kept rolling.” “what have you been doing lately?” “been staying a few days with my wife.” “no, really! i can't believe it.” jim had a french wife, who had divorced him, and two children. now he was paying visits to this wife again: purely friendly. tanny did most of the talking. jim excited her, with his way of looking in her face and grinning wolfishly, and at the same time asking to be saved. after tea, he wanted to send telegrams, so lilly took him round to the village post-office. telegrams were a necessary part of his life. he had to be suddenly starting off to keep sudden appointments, or he felt he was a void in the atmosphere. he talked to lilly about social reform, and so on. jim's work in town was merely nominal. he spent his time wavering about and going to various meetings, philandering and weeping. lilly kept in the back of his mind the saving which james had come to look for. he intended to do his best. after dinner the three sat cosily round the kitchen fire. “but what do you really think will happen to the world?” lilly asked jim, amid much talk. “what? there's something big coming,” said jim. “where from?” “watch ireland, and watch japan--they're the two poles of the world,” said jim. “i thought russia and america,” said lilly. “eh? what? russia and america! they'll depend on ireland and japan. i know it. i've had a vision of it. ireland on this side and japan on the other--they'll settle it.” “i don't see how,” said lilly. “i don't see how--but i had a vision of it.” “what sort of vision?” “couldn't describe it.” “but you don't think much of the japanese, do you?” asked lilly. “don't i! don't i!” said jim. “what, don't you think they're wonderful?” “no. i think they're rather unpleasant.” “i think the salvation of the world lies with them.” “funny salvation,” said lilly. “i think they're anything but angels.” “do you though? now that's funny. why?” “looking at them even. i knew a russian doctor who'd been through the russo-japanese war, and who had gone a bit cracked. he said he saw the japs rush a trench. they threw everything away and flung themselves through the russian fire and simply dropped in masses. but those that reached the trenches jumped in with bare hands on the russians and tore their faces apart and bit their throats out--fairly ripped the faces off the bone.--it had sent the doctor a bit cracked. he said the wounded were awful,--their faces torn off and their throats mangled--and dead japs with flesh between the teeth--god knows if it's true. but that's the impression the japanese had made on this man. it had affected his mind really.” jim watched lilly, and smiled as if he were pleased. “no--really--!” he said. “anyhow they're more demon than angel, i believe,” said lilly. “oh, no, rawdon, but you always exaggerate,” said tanny. “maybe,” said lilly. “i think japanese are fascinating--fascinating--so quick, and such force in them--” “rather!--eh?” said jim, looking with a quick smile at tanny. “i think a japanese lover would be marvellous,” she laughed riskily. “i s'd think he would,” said jim, screwing up his eyes. “do you hate the normal british as much as i do?” she asked him. “hate them! hate them!” he said, with an intimate grin. “their beastly virtue,” said she. “and i believe there's nobody more vicious underneath.” “nobody!” said jim. “but you're british yourself,” said lilly to jim. “no, i'm irish. family's irish--my mother was a fitz-patrick.” “anyhow you live in england.” “because they won't let me go to ireland.” the talk drifted. jim finished up all the beer, and they prepared to go to bed. jim was a bit tipsy, grinning. he asked for bread and cheese to take upstairs. “will you have supper?” said lilly. he was surprised, because jim had eaten strangely much at dinner. “no--where's the loaf?” and he cut himself about half of it. there was no cheese. “bread'll do,” said jim. “sit down and eat it. have cocoa with it,” said tanny. “no, i like to have it in my bedroom.” “you don't eat bread in the night?” said lilly. “i do.” “what a funny thing to do.” the cottage was in darkness. the lillys slept soundly. jim woke up and chewed bread and slept again. in the morning at dawn he rose and went downstairs. lilly heard him roaming about--heard the woman come in to clean--heard them talking. so he got up to look after his visitor, though it was not seven o'clock, and the woman was busy.--but before he went down, he heard jim come upstairs again. mrs. short was busy in the kitchen when lilly went down. “the other gentleman have been down, sir,” said mrs. short. “he asked me where the bread and butter were, so i said should i cut him a piece. but he wouldn't let me do it. i gave him a knife and he took it for himself, in the pantry.” “i say, bricknell,” said lilly at breakfast time, “why do you eat so much bread?” “i've got to feed up. i've been starved during this damned war.” “but hunks of bread won't feed you up.” “gives the stomach something to work at, and prevents it grinding on the nerves,” said jim. “but surely you don't want to keep your stomach always full and heavy.” “i do, my boy. i do. it needs keeping solid. i'm losing life, if i don't. i tell you i'm losing life. let me put something inside me.” “i don't believe bread's any use.” during breakfast jim talked about the future of the world. “i reckon christ's the finest thing time has ever produced,” said he; “and will remain it.” “but you don't want crucifixions _ad infinitum_,” said lilly. “what? why not?” “once is enough--and have done.” “don't you think love and sacrifice are the finest things in life?” said jim, over his bacon. “depends what love, and what sacrifice,” said lilly. “if i really believe in an almighty god, i am willing to sacrifice for him. that is, i'm willing to yield my own personal interest to the bigger creative interest.--but it's obvious almighty god isn't mere love.” “i think it is. love and only love,” said jim. “i think the greatest joy is sacrificing oneself to love.” “to someone you love, you mean,” said tanny. “no i don't. i don't mean someone at all. i mean love--love--love. i sacrifice myself to love. i reckon that's the highest man is capable of.” “but you can't sacrifice yourself to an abstract principle,” said tanny. “that's just what you can do. and that's the beauty of it. who represents the principle doesn't matter. christ is the principle of love,” said jim. “but no!” said tanny. “it must be more individual. it must be somebody you love, not abstract love in itself. how can you sacrifice yourself to an abstraction.” “ha, i think love and your christ detestable,” said lilly--“a sheer ignominy.” “finest thing the world has produced,” said jim. “no. a thing which sets itself up to be betrayed! no, it's foul. don't you see it's the judas principle you really worship. judas is the real hero. but for judas the whole show would have been _manque_.” “oh yes,” said jim. “judas was inevitable. i'm not sure that judas wasn't the greatest of the disciples--and jesus knew it. i'm not sure judas wasn't the disciple jesus loved.” “jesus certainly encouraged him in his judas tricks,” said tanny. jim grinned knowingly at lilly. “then it was a nasty combination. and anything which turns on a judas climax is a dirty show, to my thinking. i think your judas is a rotten, dirty worm, just a dirty little self-conscious sentimental twister. and out of all christianity he is the hero today. when people say christ they mean judas. they find him luscious on the palate. and jesus fostered him--” said lilly. “he's a profound figure, is judas. it's taken two thousand years to begin to understand him,” said jim, pushing the bread and marmalade into his mouth. “a traitor is a traitor--no need to understand any further. and a system which rests all its weight on a piece of treachery makes that treachery not only inevitable but sacred. that's why i'm sick of christianity.--at any rate this modern christ-mongery.” “the finest thing the world has produced, or ever will produce--christ and judas--” said jim. “not to me,” said lilly. “foul combination.” it was a lovely morning in early march. violets were out, and the first wild anemones. the sun was quite warm. the three were about to take out a picnic lunch. lilly however was suffering from jim's presence. “jolly nice here,” said jim. “mind if i stay till saturday?” there was a pause. lilly felt he was being bullied, almost obscenely bullied. was he going to agree? suddenly he looked up at jim. “i'd rather you went tomorrow,” he said. tanny, who was sitting opposite jim, dropped her head in confusion. “what's tomorrow?” said jim. “thursday,” said lilly. “thursday,” repeated jim. and he looked up and got lilly's eye. he wanted to say “friday then?” “yes, i'd rather you went thursday,” repeated lilly. “but rawdon--!” broke in tanny, who was suffering. she stopped, however. “we can walk across country with you some way if you like,” said lilly to jim. it was a sort of compromise. “fine!” said jim. “we'll do that, then.” it was lovely sunshine, and they wandered through the woods. between jim and tanny was a sort of growing _rapprochement_, which got on lilly's nerves. “what the hell do you take that beastly personal tone for?” cried lilly at tanny, as the three sat under a leafless great beech-tree. “but i'm not personal at all, am i, mr. bricknell?” said tanny. jim watched lilly, and grinned pleasedly. “why shouldn't you be, anyhow?” he said. “yes!” she retorted. “why not!” “not while i'm here. i loathe the slimy creepy personal intimacy.--'don't you think, mr. bricknell, that it's lovely to be able to talk quite simply to somebody? oh, it's such a relief, after most people---'” lilly mimicked his wife's last speech savagely. “but i mean it,” cried tanny. “it is lovely.” “dirty messing,” said lilly angrily. jim watched the dark, irascible little man with amusement. they rose, and went to look for an inn, and beer. tanny still clung rather stickily to jim's side. but it was a lovely day, the first of all the days of spring, with crocuses and wall-flowers in the cottage gardens, and white cocks crowing in the quiet hamlet. when they got back in the afternoon to the cottage, they found a telegram for jim. he let the lillys see it--“meet you for a walk on your return journey lois.” at once tanny wanted to know all about lois. lois was a nice girl, well-to-do middle-class, but also an actress, and she would do anything jim wanted. “i must get a wire to her to meet me tomorrow,” he said. “where shall i say?” lilly produced the map, and they decided on time and station at which lois coming out of london, should meet jim. then the happy pair could walk along the thames valley, spending a night perhaps at marlowe, or some such place. off went jim and lilly once more to the postoffice. they were quite good friends. having so inhospitably fixed the hour of departure, lilly wanted to be nice. arrived at the postoffice, they found it shut: half-day closing for the little shop. “well,” said lilly. “we'll go to the station.” they proceeded to the station--found the station-master--were conducted down to the signal-box. lilly naturally hung back from people, but jim was hob-nob with the station-master and the signal man, quite officer-and-my-men kind of thing. lilly sat out on the steps of the signal-box, rather ashamed, while the long telegram was shouted over the telephone to the junction town--first the young lady and her address, then the message “meet me x. station : tomorrow walk back great pleasure jim.” anyhow that was done. they went home to tea. after tea, as the evening fell, lilly suggested a little stroll in the woods, while tanny prepared the dinner. jim agreed, and they set out. the two men wandered through the trees in the dusk, till they came to a bank on the farther edge of the wood. there they sat down. and there lilly said what he had to say. “as a matter of fact,” he said, “it's nothing but love and self-sacrifice which makes you feel yourself losing life.” “you're wrong. only love brings it back--and wine. if i drink a bottle of burgundy i feel myself restored at the middle--right here! i feel the energy back again. and if i can fall in love--but it's becoming so damned hard--” “what, to fall in love?” asked lilly. “yes.” “then why not leave off trying! what do you want to poke yourself and prod yourself into love, for?” “because i'm dead without it. i'm dead. i'm dying.” “only because you force yourself. if you drop working yourself up--” “i shall die. i only live when i can fall in love. otherwise i'm dying by inches. why, man, you don't know what it was like. i used to get the most grand feelings--like a great rush of force, or light--a great rush--right here, as i've said, at the solar plexus. and it would come any time--anywhere--no matter where i was. and then i was all right. “all right for what?--for making love?” “yes, man, i was.” “and now you aren't?--oh, well, leave love alone, as any twopenny doctor would tell you.” “no, you're off it there. it's nothing technical. technically i can make love as much as you like. it's nothing a doctor has any say in. it's what i feel inside me. i feel the life going. i know it's going. i never get those inrushes now, unless i drink a jolly lot, or if i possibly could fall in love. technically, i'm potent all right--oh, yes!” “you should leave yourself and your inrushes alone.” “but you can't. it's a sort of ache.” “then you should stiffen your backbone. it's your backbone that matters. you shouldn't want to abandon yourself. you shouldn't want to fling yourself all loose into a woman's lap. you should stand by yourself and learn to be by yourself. why don't you be more like the japanese you talk about? quiet, aloof little devils. they don't bother about being loved. they keep themselves taut in their own selves--there, at the bottom of the spine--the devil's own power they've got there.” jim mused a bit. “think they have?” he laughed. it seemed comic to him. “sure! look at them. why can't you gather yourself there?” “at the tail?” “yes. hold yourself firm there.” jim broke into a cackle of a laugh, and rose. the two went through the dark woods back to the cottage. jim staggered and stumbled like a drunken man: or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia: as if he had no power in his lower limbs. “walk there--!” said lilly, finding him the smoothest bit of the dark path. but jim stumbled and shambled, in a state of nauseous weak relaxation. however, they reached the cottage: and food and beer--and tanny, piqued with curiosity to know what the men had been saying privately to each other. after dinner they sat once more talking round the fire. lilly sat in a small chair facing the fire, the other two in the armchairs on either side the hearth. “how nice it will be for you, walking with lois towards london tomorrow,” gushed tanny sentimentally. “good god!” said lilly. “why the dickens doesn't he walk by himself, without wanting a woman always there, to hold his hand.” “don't be so spiteful,” said tanny. “you see that you have a woman always there, to hold your hand.” “my hand doesn't need holding,” snapped lilly. “doesn't it! more than most men's! but you're so beastly ungrateful and mannish. because i hold you safe enough all the time you like to pretend you're doing it all yourself.” “all right. don't drag yourself in,” said lilly, detesting his wife at that moment. “anyhow,” and he turned to jim, “it's time you'd done slobbering yourself over a lot of little women, one after the other.” “why shouldn't i, if i like it?” said jim. “yes, why not?” said tanny. “because it makes a fool of you. look at you, stumbling and staggering with no use in your legs. i'd be ashamed if i were you.” “would you?” said jim. “i would. and it's nothing but your wanting to be loved which does it. a maudlin crying to be loved, which makes your knees all go rickety.” “think that's it?” said jim. “what else is it. you haven't been here a day, but you must telegraph for some female to be ready to hold your hand the moment you go away. and before she lets go, you'll be wiring for another. you want to be loved, you want to be loved--a man of your years. it's disgusting--” “i don't see it. i believe in love--” said jim, watching and grinning oddly. “bah, love! messing, that's what it is. it wouldn't matter if it did you no harm. but when you stagger and stumble down a road, out of sheer sloppy relaxation of your will---” at this point jim suddenly sprang from his chair at lilly, and gave him two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the body. then he sat down in his own chair again, saying sheepishly: “i knew i should have to do it, if he said any more.” lilly sat motionless as a statue, his face like paper. one of the blows had caught him rather low, so that he was almost winded and could not breathe. he sat rigid, paralysed as a winded man is. but he wouldn't let it be seen. with all his will he prevented himself from gasping. only through his parted lips he drew tiny gasps, controlled, nothing revealed to the other two. he hated them both far too much. for some minutes there was dead silence, whilst lilly silently and viciously fought for his breath. tanny opened her eyes wide in a sort of pleased bewilderment, and jim turned his face aside, and hung his clasped hands between his knees. “there's a great silence, suddenly!” said tanny. “what is there to say?” ejaculated lilly rapidly, with a spoonful of breath which he managed to compress and control into speech. then he sat motionless again, concerned with the business of getting back his wind, and not letting the other two see. jim jerked in his chair, and looked round. “it isn't that i don't like the man,” he said, in a rather small voice. “but i knew if he went on i should have to do it.” to lilly, rigid and physically preoccupied, there sounded a sort of self-consciousness in jim's voice, as if the whole thing had been semi-deliberate. he detected the sort of maudlin deliberateness which goes with hysterics, and he was colder, more icy than ever. tanny looked at lilly, puzzled, bewildered, but still rather pleased, as if she demanded an answer. none being forthcoming, she said: “of course, you mustn't expect to say all those things without rousing a man.” still lilly did not answer. jim glanced at him, then looked at tanny. “it isn't that i don't like him,” he said, slowly. “i like him better than any man i've ever known, i believe.” he clasped his hands and turned aside his face. “judas!” flashed through lilly's mind. again tanny looked for her husband's answer. “yes, rawdon,” she said. “you can't say the things you do without their having an effect. you really ask for it, you know.” “it's no matter.” lilly squeezed the words out coldly. “he wanted to do it, and he did it.” a dead silence ensued now. tanny looked from man to man. “i could feel it coming on me,” said jim. “of course!” said tanny. “rawdon doesn't know the things he says.” she was pleased that he had had to pay for them, for once. it takes a man a long time to get his breath back, after a sharp blow in the wind. lilly was managing by degrees. the others no doubt attributed his silence to deep or fierce thoughts. it was nothing of the kind, merely a cold struggle to get his wind back, without letting them know he was struggling: and a sheer, stock-stiff hatred of the pair of them. “i like the man,” said jim. “never liked a man more than i like him.” he spoke as if with difficulty. “the man” stuck safely in lilly's ears. “oh, well,” he managed to say. “it's nothing. i've done my talking and had an answer, for once.” “yes, rawdy, you've had an answer, for once. usually you don't get an answer, you know--and that's why you go so far--in the things you say. now you'll know how you make people feel.” “quite!” said lilly. “_i_ don't feel anything. i don't mind what he says,” said jim. “yes, but he ought to know the things he does say,” said tanny. “he goes on, without considering the person he's talking to. this time it's come back on him. he mustn't say such personal things, if he's not going to risk an answer.” “i don't mind what he says. i don't mind a bit,” said jim. “nor do i mind,” said lilly indifferently. “i say what i feel--you do as you feel--there's an end of it.” a sheepish sort of silence followed this speech. it was broken by a sudden laugh from tanny. “the things that happen to us!” she said, laughing rather shrilly. “suddenly, like a thunderbolt, we're all struck into silence!” “rum game, eh!” said jim, grinning. “isn't it funny! isn't life too funny!” she looked again at her husband. “but, rawdy, you must admit it was your own fault.” lilly's stiff face did not change. “why fault!” he said, looking at her coldly. “what is there to talk about?” “usually there's so much,” she said sarcastically. a few phrases dribbled out of the silence. in vain jim, tried to get lilly to thaw, and in vain tanny gave her digs at her husband. lilly's stiff, inscrutable face did not change, he was polite and aloof. so they all went to bed. in the morning, the walk was to take place, as arranged, lilly and tanny accompanying jim to the third station across country. the morning was lovely, the country beautiful. lilly liked the countryside and enjoyed the walk. but a hardness inside himself never relaxed. jim talked a little again about the future of the world, and a higher state of christlikeness in man. but lilly only laughed. then tanny managed to get ahead with jim, sticking to his side and talking sympathetic personalities. but lilly, feeling it from afar, ran after them and caught them up. they were silent. “what was the interesting topic?” he said cuttingly. “nothing at all!” said tanny, nettled. “why must you interfere?” “because i intend to,” said lilly. and the two others fell apart, as if severed with a knife. jim walked rather sheepishly, as if cut out. so they came at last past the canals to the wayside station: and at last jim's train came. they all said goodbye. jim and tanny were both waiting for lilly to show some sign of real reconciliation. but none came. he was cheerful and aloof. “goodbye,” he said to jim. “hope lois will be there all right. third station on. goodbye! goodbye!” “you'll come to rackham?” said jim, leaning out of the train. “we should love to,” called tanny, after the receding train. “all right,” said lilly, non-committal. but he and his wife never saw jim again. lilly never intended to see him: a devil sat in the little man's breast. “you shouldn't play at little jesus, coming so near to people, wanting to help them,” was tanny's last word. chapter ix. low-water mark tanny went away to norway to visit her people, for the first time for three years. lilly did not go: he did not want to. he came to london and settled in a room over covent garden market. the room was high up, a fair size, and stood at the corner of one of the streets and the market itself, looking down on the stalls and the carts and the arcade. lilly would climb out of the window and sit for hours watching the behaviour of the great draught-horses which brought the mountains of boxes and vegetables. funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and fleshy, yet so cockney. there was one which could not bear donkeys, and which used to stretch out its great teeth like some massive serpent after every poor diminutive ass that came with a coster's barrow. another great horse could not endure standing. it would shake itself and give little starts, and back into the heaps of carrots and broccoli, whilst the driver went into a frenzy of rage. there was always something to watch. one minute it was two great loads of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled, leaning to fall disastrously. then the drivers cursed and swore and dismounted and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow was persuaded to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a monkey. and he actually managed to put them to rights. great sigh of relief when the vans rocked out of the market. again there was a particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewhere to somewhere, under the arches beside the market. the great brawny porters would tease him, and he would stop to give them cheek. one afternoon a giant lunged after him: the boy darted gracefully among the heaps of vegetables, still bearing aloft his tea-tray, like some young blue-buttoned acolyte fleeing before a false god. the giant rolled after him--when alas, the acolyte of the tea-tray slipped among the vegetables, and down came the tray. then tears, and a roar of unfeeling mirth from the giants. lilly felt they were going to make it up to him. another afternoon a young swell sauntered persistently among the vegetables, and lilly, seated in his high little balcony, wondered why. but at last, a taxi, and a very expensive female, in a sort of silver brocade gown and a great fur shawl and ospreys in her bonnet. evidently an assignation. yet what could be more conspicuous than this elegant pair, picking their way through the cabbage-leaves? and then, one cold grey afternoon in early april, a man in a black overcoat and a bowler hat, walking uncertainly. lilly had risen and was just retiring out of the chill, damp air. for some reason he lingered to watch the figure. the man was walking east. he stepped rather insecurely off the pavement, and wavered across the setts between the wheels of the standing vans. and suddenly he went down. lilly could not see him on the ground, but he saw some van-men go forward, and he saw one of them pick up the man's hat. “i'd better go down,” said lilly to himself. so he began running down the four long flights of stone stairs, past the many doors of the multifarious business premises, and out into the market. a little crowd had gathered, and a large policeman was just rowing into the centre of the interest. lilly, always a hoverer on the edge of public commotions, hung now hesitating on the outskirts of the crowd. “what is it?” he said, to a rather sniffy messenger boy. “drunk,” said the messenger boy: except that, in unblushing cockney, he pronounced it “drank.” lilly hung further back on the edge of the little crowd. “come on here. where d' you want to go?” he heard the hearty tones of the policeman. “i'm all right. i'm all right,” came the testy drunken answer. “all right, are yer! all right, and then some,--come on, get on your pins.” “i'm all right! i'm all right.” the voice made lilly peer between the people. and sitting on the granite setts, being hauled up by a burly policeman, he saw our acquaintance aaron, very pale in the face and a little dishevelled. “like me to tuck the sheets round you, shouldn't you? fancy yourself snug in bed, don't you? you won't believe you're right in the way of traffic, will you now, in covent garden market? come on, we'll see to you.” and the policeman hoisted the bitter and unwilling aaron. lilly was quickly at the centre of the affair, unobtrusive like a shadow, different from the other people. “help him up to my room, will you?” he said to the constable. “friend of mine.” the large constable looked down on the bare-headed wispy, unobtrusive lilly with good-humoured suspicion and incredulity. lilly could not have borne it if the policeman had uttered any of this cockney suspicion, so he watched him. there was a great gulf between the public official and the odd, quiet little individual--yet lilly had his way. “which room?” said the policeman, dubious. lilly pointed quickly round. then he said to aaron: “were you coming to see me, sisson? you'll come in, won't you?” aaron nodded rather stupidly and testily. his eyes looked angry. somebody stuck his hat on his head for him, and made him look a fool. lilly took it off again, and carried it for him. he turned and the crowd eased. he watched aaron sharply, and saw that it was with difficulty he could walk. so he caught him by the arm on the other side from the policeman, and they crossed the road to the pavement. “not so much of this sort of thing these days,” said the policeman. “not so much opportunity,” said lilly. “more than there was, though. coming back to the old days, like. working round, bit by bit.” they had arrived at the stairs. aaron stumbled up. “steady now! steady does it!” said the policeman, steering his charge. there was a curious breach of distance between lilly and the constable. at last lilly opened his own door. the room was pleasant. the fire burned warm, the piano stood open, the sofa was untidy with cushions and papers. books and papers covered the big writing desk. beyond the screen made by the bookshelves and the piano were two beds, with washstand by one of the large windows, the one through which lilly had climbed. the policeman looked round curiously. “more cosy here than in the lock-up, sir!” he said. lilly laughed. he was hastily clearing the sofa. “sit on the sofa, sisson,” he said. the policeman lowered his charge, with a-- “right we are, then!” lilly felt in his pocket, and gave the policeman half a crown. but he was watching aaron, who sat stupidly on the sofa, very pale and semi-conscious. “do you feel ill, sisson?” he said sharply. aaron looked back at him with heavy eyes, and shook his head slightly. “i believe you are,” said lilly, taking his hand. “might be a bit o' this flu, you know,” said the policeman. “yes,” said lilly. “where is there a doctor?” he added, on reflection. “the nearest?” said the policeman. and he told him. “leave a message for you, sir?” lilly wrote his address on a card, then changed his mind. “no, i'll run round myself if necessary,” he said. and the policeman departed. “you'll go to bed, won't you?” said lilly to aaron, when the door was shut. aaron shook his head sulkily. “i would if i were you. you can stay here till you're all right. i'm alone, so it doesn't matter.” but aaron had relapsed into semi-consciousness. lilly put the big kettle on the gas stove, the little kettle on the fire. then he hovered in front of the stupefied man. he felt uneasy. again he took aaron's hand and felt the pulse. “i'm sure you aren't well. you must go to bed,” he said. and he kneeled and unfastened his visitor's boots. meanwhile the kettle began to boil, he put a hot-water bottle into the bed. “let us get your overcoat off,” he said to the stupefied man. “come along.” and with coaxing and pulling and pushing he got off the overcoat and coat and waistcoat. at last aaron was undressed and in bed. lilly brought him tea. with a dim kind of obedience he took the cup and would drink. he looked at lilly with heavy eyes. “i gave in, i gave in to her, else i should ha' been all right,” he said. “to whom?” said lilly. “i gave in to her--and afterwards i cried, thinking of lottie and the children. i felt my heart break, you know. and that's what did it. i should have been all right if i hadn't given in to her--” “to whom?” said lilly. “josephine. i felt, the minute i was loving her, i'd done myself. and i had. everything came back on me. if i hadn't given in to her, i should ha' kept all right.” “don't bother now. get warm and still--” “i felt it--i felt it go, inside me, the minute i gave in to her. it's perhaps killed me.” “no, not it. never mind, be still. be still, and you'll be all right in the morning.” “it's my own fault, for giving in to her. if i'd kept myself back, my liver wouldn't have broken inside me, and i shouldn't have been sick. and i knew--” “never mind now. have you drunk your tea? lie down. lie down, and go to sleep.” lilly pushed aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. then he thrust his hands under the bedclothes and felt his feet--still cold. he arranged the water bottle. then he put another cover on the bed. aaron lay still, rather grey and peaked-looking, in a stillness that was not healthy. for some time lilly went about stealthily, glancing at his patient from time to time. then he sat down to read. he was roused after a time by a moaning of troubled breathing and a fretful stirring in the bed. he went across. aaron's eyes were open, and dark looking. “have a little hot milk,” said lilly. aaron shook his head faintly, not noticing. “a little bovril?” the same faint shake. then lilly wrote a note for the doctor, went into the office on the same landing, and got a clerk, who would be leaving in a few minutes, to call with the note. when he came back he found aaron still watching. “are you here by yourself?” asked the sick man. “yes. my wife's gone to norway.” “for good?” “no,” laughed lilly. “for a couple of months or so. she'll come back here: unless she joins me in switzerland or somewhere.” aaron was still for a while. “you've not gone with her,” he said at length. “to see her people? no, i don't think they want me very badly--and i didn't want very badly to go. why should i? it's better for married people to be separated sometimes.” “ay!” said aaron, watching the other man with fever-darkened eyes. “i hate married people who are two in one--stuck together like two jujube lozenges,” said lilly. “me an' all. i hate 'em myself,” said aaron. “everybody ought to stand by themselves, in the first place--men and women as well. they can come together, in the second place, if they like. but nothing is any good unless each one stands alone, intrinsically.” “i'm with you there,” said aaron. “if i'd kep' myself to myself i shouldn't be bad now--though i'm not very bad. i s'll be all right in the morning. but i did myself in when i went with another woman. i felt myself go--as if the bile broke inside me, and i was sick.” “josephine seduced you?” laughed lilly. “ay, right enough,” replied aaron grimly. “she won't be coming here, will she?” “not unless i ask her.” “you won't ask her, though?” “no, not if you don't want her.” “i don't.” the fever made aaron naive and communicative, unlike himself. and he knew he was being unlike himself, he knew that he was not in proper control of himself, so he was unhappy, uneasy. “i'll stop here the night then, if you don't mind,” he said. “you'll have to,” said lilly. “i've sent for the doctor. i believe you've got the flu.” “think i have?” said aaron frightened. “don't be scared,” laughed lilly. there was a long pause. lilly stood at the window looking at the darkening market, beneath the street-lamps. “i s'll have to go to the hospital, if i have,” came aaron's voice. “no, if it's only going to be a week or a fortnight's business, you can stop here. i've nothing to do,” said lilly. “there's no occasion for you to saddle yourself with me,” said aaron dejectedly. “you can go to your hospital if you like--or back to your lodging--if you wish to,” said lilly. “you can make up your mind when you see how you are in the morning.” “no use going back to my lodgings,” said aaron. “i'll send a telegram to your wife if you like,” said lilly. aaron was silent, dead silent, for some time. “nay,” he said at length, in a decided voice. “not if i die for it.” lilly remained still, and the other man lapsed into a sort of semi-sleep, motionless and abandoned. the darkness had fallen over london, and away below the lamps were white. lilly lit the green-shaded reading lamp over the desk. then he stood and looked at aaron, who lay still, looking sick. rather beautiful the bones of the countenance: but the skull too small for such a heavy jaw and rather coarse mouth. aaron half-opened his eyes, and writhed feverishly, as if his limbs could not be in the right place. lilly mended the fire, and sat down to write. then he got up and went downstairs to unfasten the street door, so that the doctor could walk up. the business people had gone from their various holes, all the lower part of the tall house was in darkness. lilly waited and waited. he boiled an egg and made himself toast. aaron said he might eat the same. lilly cooked another egg and took it to the sick man. aaron looked at it and pushed it away with nausea. he would have some tea. so lilly gave him tea. “not much fun for you, doing this for somebody who is nothing to you,” said aaron. “i shouldn't if you were unsympathetic to me,” said lilly. “as it is, it's happened so, and so we'll let be.” “what time is it?” “nearly eight o'clock.” “oh, my lord, the opera.” and aaron got half out of bed. but as he sat on the bedside he knew he could not safely get to his feet. he remained a picture of dejection. “perhaps we ought to let them know,” said lilly. but aaron, blank with stupid misery, sat huddled there on the bedside without answering. “ill run round with a note,” said lilly. “i suppose others have had flu, besides you. lie down!” but aaron stupidly and dejectedly sat huddled on the side of the bed, wearing old flannel pyjamas of lilly's, rather small for him. he felt too sick to move. “lie down! lie down!” said lilly. “and keep still while i'm gone. i shan't be more than ten minutes.” “i don't care if i die,” said aaron. lilly laughed. “you're a long way from dying,” said he, “or you wouldn't say it.” but aaron only looked up at him with queer, far-off, haggard eyes, something like a criminal who is just being executed. “lie down!” said lilly, pushing him gently into the bed. “you won't improve yourself sitting there, anyhow.” aaron lay down, turned away, and was quite still. lilly quietly left the room on his errand. the doctor did not come until ten o'clock: and worn out with work when he did come. “isn't there a lift in this establishment?” he said, as he groped his way up the stone stairs. lilly had heard him, and run down to meet him. the doctor poked the thermometer under aaron's tongue and felt the pulse. then he asked a few questions: listened to the heart and breathing. “yes, it's the flu,” he said curtly. “nothing to do but to keep warm in bed and not move, and take plenty of milk and liquid nourishment. i'll come round in the morning and give you an injection. lungs are all right so far.” “how long shall i have to be in bed?” said aaron. “oh--depends. a week at least.” aaron watched him sullenly--and hated him. lilly laughed to himself. the sick man was like a dog that is ill but which growls from a deep corner, and will bite if you put your hand in. he was in a state of black depression. lilly settled him down for the night, and himself went to bed. aaron squirmed with heavy, pained limbs, the night through, and slept and had bad dreams. lilly got up to give him drinks. the din in the market was terrific before dawn, and aaron suffered bitterly. in the morning he was worse. the doctor gave him injections against pneumonia. “you wouldn't like me to wire to your wife?” said lilly. “no,” said aaron abruptly. “you can send me to the hospital. i'm nothing but a piece of carrion.” “carrion!” said lilly. “why?” “i know it. i feel like it.” “oh, that's only the sort of nauseated feeling you get with flu.” “i'm only fit to be thrown underground, and made an end of. i can't stand myself--” he had a ghastly, grey look of self-repulsion. “it's the germ that makes you feel like that,” said lilly. “it poisons the system for a time. but you'll work it off.” at evening he was no better, the fever was still high. yet there were no complications--except that the heart was irregular. “the one thing i wonder,” said lilly, “is whether you hadn't better be moved out of the noise of the market. it's fearful for you in the early morning.” “it makes no difference to me,” said aaron. the next day he was a little worse, if anything. the doctor knew there was nothing to be done. at evening he gave the patient a calomel pill. it was rather strong, and aaron had a bad time. his burning, parched, poisoned inside was twisted and torn. meanwhile carts banged, porters shouted, all the hell of the market went on outside, away down on the cobble setts. but this time the two men did not hear. “you'll feel better now,” said lilly, “after the operation.” “it's done me harm,” cried aaron fretfully. “send me to the hospital, or you'll repent it. get rid of me in time.” “nay,” said lilly. “you get better. damn it, you're only one among a million.” again over aaron's face went the ghastly grimace of self-repulsion. “my soul's gone rotten,” he said. “no,” said lilly. “only toxin in the blood.” next day the patient seemed worse, and the heart more irregular. he rested badly. so far, lilly had got a fair night's rest. now aaron was not sleeping, and he seemed to struggle in the bed. “keep your courage up, man,” said the doctor sharply. “you give way.” aaron looked at him blackly, and did not answer. in the night lilly was up time after time. aaron would slip down on his back, and go semi-conscious. and then he would awake, as if drowning, struggling to move, mentally shouting aloud, yet making no sound for some moments, mentally shouting in frenzy, but unable to stir or make a sound. when at last he got some sort of physical control he cried: “lift me up! lift me up!” lilly hurried and lifted him up, and he sat panting with a sobbing motion, his eyes gloomy and terrified, more than ever like a criminal who is just being executed. he drank brandy, and was laid down on his side. “don't let me lie on my back,” he said, terrified. “no, i won't,” said lilly. aaron frowned curiously on his nurse. “mind you don't let me,” he said, exacting and really terrified. “no, i won't let you.” and now lilly was continually crossing over and pulling aaron on to his side, whenever he found him slipped down on his back. in the morning the doctor was puzzled. probably it was the toxin in the blood which poisoned the heart. there was no pneumonia. and yet aaron was clearly growing worse. the doctor agreed to send in a nurse for the coming night. “what's the matter with you, man!” he said sharply to his patient. “you give way! you give way! can't you pull yourself together?” but aaron only became more gloomily withheld, retracting from life. and lilly began to be really troubled. he got a friend to sit with the patient in the afternoon, whilst he himself went out and arranged to sleep in aaron's room, at his lodging. the next morning, when he came in, he found the patient lying as ever, in a sort of heap in the bed. nurse had had to lift him up and hold him up again. and now aaron lay in a sort of semi-stupor of fear, frustrated anger, misery and self-repulsion: a sort of interlocked depression. the doctor frowned when he came. he talked with the nurse, and wrote another prescription. then he drew lilly away to the door. “what's the matter with the fellow?” he said. “can't you rouse his spirit? he seems to be sulking himself out of life. he'll drop out quite suddenly, you know, if he goes on like this. can't you rouse him up?” “i think it depresses him partly that his bowels won't work. it frightens him. he's never been ill in his life before,” said lilly. “his bowels won't work if he lets all his spirit go, like an animal dying of the sulks,” said the doctor impatiently. “he might go off quite suddenly--dead before you can turn round--” lilly was properly troubled. yet he did not quite know what to do. it was early afternoon, and the sun was shining into the room. there were daffodils and anemones in a jar, and freezias and violets. down below in the market were two stalls of golden and blue flowers, gay. “the flowers are lovely in the spring sunshine,” said lilly. “i wish i were in the country, don't you? as soon as you are better we'll go. it's been a terrible cold, wet spring. but now it's going to be nice. do you like being in the country?” “yes,” said aaron. he was thinking of his garden. he loved it. never in his life had he been away from a garden before. “make haste and get better, and we'll go.” “where?” said aaron. “hampshire. or berkshire. or perhaps you'd like to go home? would you?” aaron lay still, and did not answer. “perhaps you want to, and you don't want to,” said lilly. “you can please yourself, anyhow.” there was no getting anything definite out of the sick man--his soul seemed stuck, as if it would not move. suddenly lilly rose and went to the dressing-table. “i'm going to rub you with oil,” he said. “i'm going to rub you as mothers do their babies whose bowels don't work.” aaron frowned slightly as he glanced at the dark, self-possessed face of the little man. “what's the good of that?” he said irritably. “i'd rather be left alone.” “then you won't be.” quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion, a sort of massage. for a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of incantation. he rubbed every speck of the man's lower body--the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted. then aaron was covered up again, and lilly sat down in fatigue to look at his patient. he saw a change. the spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face. aaron was regaining himself. but lilly said nothing. he watched his patient fall into a proper sleep. and he sat and watched him sleep. and he thought to himself: “i wonder why i do it. i wonder why i bother with him.... jim ought to have taught me my lesson. as soon as this man's really better he'll punch me in the wind, metaphorically if not actually, for having interfered with him. and tanny would say, he was quite right to do it. she says i want power over them. what if i do? they don't care how much power the mob has over them, the nation, lloyd george and northcliffe and the police and money. they'll yield themselves up to that sort of power quickly enough, and immolate themselves _pro bono publico_ by the million. and what's the bonum publicum but a mob power? why can't they submit to a bit of healthy individual authority? the fool would die, without me: just as that fool jim will die in hysterics one day. why does he last so long! “tanny's the same. she does nothing really but resist me: my authority, or my influence, or just me. at the bottom of her heart she just blindly and persistently opposes me. god knows what it is she opposes: just me myself. she thinks i want her to submit to me. so i do, in a measure natural to our two selves. somewhere, she ought to submit to me. but they all prefer to kick against the pricks. not that they get many pricks. i get them. damn them all, why don't i leave them alone? they only grin and feel triumphant when they've insulted one and punched one in the wind. “this aaron will do just the same. i like him, and he ought to like me. and he'll be another jim: he will like me, if he can knock the wind out of me. a lot of little stavrogins coming up to whisper affectionately, and biting one's ear. “but anyhow i can soon see the last of this chap: and him the last of all the rest. i'll be damned for ever if i see their jims and roberts and julias and scotts any more. let them dance round their insipid hell-broth. thin tack it is. “there's a whole world besides this little gang of europeans. except, dear god, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing. i can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the chinese and japs and orientals altogether. only vermin teem by the billion. higher types breed slower. i would have loved the aztecs and the red indians. i know they hold the element in life which i am looking for--they had living pride. not like the flea-bitten asiatics--even niggers are better than asiatics, though they are wallowers--the american races--and the south sea islanders--the marquesans, the maori blood. that was the true blood. it wasn't frightened. all the rest are craven--europeans, asiatics, africans--everyone at his own individual quick craven and cringing: only conceited in the mass, the mob. how i hate them: the mass-bullies, the individual judases. “well, if one will be a jesus he must expect his judas. that's why abraham lincoln gets shot. a jesus makes a judas inevitable. a man should remain himself, not try to spread himself over humanity. he should pivot himself on his own pride. “i suppose really i ought to have packed this aaron off to the hospital. instead of which here am i rubbing him with oil to rub the life into him. and i know he'll bite me, like a warmed snake, the moment he recovers. and tanny will say 'quite right, too,' i shouldn't have been so intimate. no, i should have left it to mechanical doctors and nurses. “so i should. everything to its own. and aaron belongs to this little system, and jim is waiting to be psychoanalysed, and tanny is waiting for her own glorification. “all right, aaron. last time i break my bread for anybody, this is. so get better, my flautist, so that i can go away. “it was easy for the red indians and the others to take their hook into death. they might have stayed a bit longer to help one to defy the white masses. “i'll make some tea--” lilly rose softly and went across to the fire. he had to cross a landing to a sort of little lavatory, with a sink and a tap, for water. the clerks peeped out at him from an adjoining office and nodded. he nodded, and disappeared from their sight as quickly as possible, with his kettle. his dark eyes were quick, his dark hair was untidy, there was something silent and withheld about him. people could never approach him quite ordinarily. he put on the kettle, and quietly set cups and plates on a tray. the room was clean and cosy and pleasant. he did the cleaning himself, and was as efficient and inobtrusive a housewife as any woman. while the kettle boiled, he sat darning the socks which he had taken off aaron's feet when the flautist arrived, and which he had washed. he preferred that no outsider should see him doing these things. yet he preferred also to do them himself, so that he should be independent of outside aid. his face was dark and hollow, he seemed frail, sitting there in the london afternoon darning the black woollen socks. his full brow was knitted slightly, there was a tension. at the same time, there was an indomitable stillness about him, as it were in the atmosphere about him. his hands, though small, were not very thin. he bit off the wool as he finished his darn. as he was making the tea he saw aaron rouse up in bed. “i've been to sleep. i feel better,” said the patient, turning round to look what the other man was doing. and the sight of the water steaming in a jet from the teapot seemed attractive. “yes,” said lilly. “you've slept for a good two hours.” “i believe i have,” said aaron. “would you like a little tea?” “ay--and a bit of toast.” “you're not supposed to have solid food. let me take your temperature.” the temperature was down to a hundred, and lilly, in spite of the doctor, gave aaron a piece of toast with his tea, enjoining him not to mention it to the nurse. in the evening the two men talked. “you do everything for yourself, then?” said aaron. “yes, i prefer it.” “you like living all alone?” “i don't know about that. i never have lived alone. tanny and i have been very much alone in various countries: but that's two, not one.” “you miss her then?” “yes, of course. i missed her horribly in the cottage, when she'd first gone. i felt my heart was broken. but here, where we've never been together, i don't notice it so much.” “she'll come back,” said aaron. “yes, she'll come back. but i'd rather meet her abroad than here--and get on a different footing.” “why?” “oh, i don't know. there's something with marriage altogether, i think. _egoisme a deux_--” “what's that mean?” “_egoisme a deux_? two people, one egoism. marriage is a self-conscious egoistic state, it seems to me.” “you've got no children?” said aaron. “no. tanny wants children badly. i don't. i'm thankful we have none.” “why?” “i can't quite say. i think of them as a burden. besides, there are such millions and billions of children in the world. and we know well enough what sort of millions and billions of people they'll grow up into. i don't want to add my quota to the mass--it's against my instinct--” “ay!” laughed aaron, with a curt acquiescence. “tanny's furious. but then, when a woman has got children, she thinks the world wags only for them and her. nothing else. the whole world wags for the sake of the children--and their sacred mother.” “ay, that's damned true,” said aaron. “and myself, i'm sick of the children stunt. children are all right, so long as you just take them for what they are: young immature things like kittens and half-grown dogs, nuisances, sometimes very charming. but i'll be hanged if i can see anything high and holy about children. i should be sorry, too, it would be so bad for the children. young brats, tiresome and amusing in turns.” “when they don't give themselves airs,” said aaron. “yes, indeed. which they do half the time. sacred children, and sacred motherhood, i'm absolutely fed stiff by it. that's why i'm thankful i have no children. tanny can't come it over me there.” “it's a fact. when a woman's got her children, by god, she's a bitch in the manger. you can starve while she sits on the hay. it's useful to keep her pups warm.” “yes.” “why, you know,” aaron turned excitedly in the bed, “they look on a man as if he was nothing but an instrument to get and rear children. if you have anything to do with a woman, she thinks it's because you want to get children by her. and i'm damned if it is. i want my own pleasure, or nothing: and children be damned.” “ah, women--they must be loved, at any price!” said lilly. “and if you just don't want to love them--and tell them so--what a crime.” “a crime!” said aaron. “they make a criminal of you. them and their children be cursed. is my life given me for nothing but to get children, and work to bring them up? see them all in hell first. they'd better die while they're children, if childhood's all that important.” “i quite agree,” said lilly. “if childhood is more important than manhood, then why live to be a man at all? why not remain an infant?” “be damned and blasted to women and all their importances,” cried aaron. “they want to get you under, and children is their chief weapon.” “men have got to stand up to the fact that manhood is more than childhood--and then force women to admit it,” said lilly. “but the rotten whiners, they're all grovelling before a baby's napkin and a woman's petticoat.” “it's a fact,” said aaron. but he glanced at lilly oddly, as if suspiciously. and lilly caught the look. but he continued: “and if they think you try to stand on your legs and walk with the feet of manhood, why, there isn't a blooming father and lover among them but will do his best to get you down and suffocate you--either with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat.” lilly's lips were curling; he was dark and bitter. “ay, it is like that,” said aaron, rather subduedly. “the man's spirit has gone out of the world. men can't move an inch unless they can grovel humbly at the end of the journey.” “no,” said aaron, watching with keen, half-amused eyes. “that's why marriage wants readjusting--or extending--to get men on to their own legs once more, and to give them the adventure again. but men won't stick together and fight for it. because once a woman has climbed up with her children, she'll find plenty of grovellers ready to support her and suffocate any defiant spirit. and women will sacrifice eleven men, fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers, for one baby--or for her own female self-conceit--” “she will that,” said aaron. “and can you find two men to stick together, without feeling criminal, and without cringing, and without betraying one another? you can't. one is sure to go fawning round some female, then they both enjoy giving each other away, and doing a new grovel before a woman again.” “ay,” said aaron. after which lilly was silent. chapter x. the war again “one is a fool,” said lilly, “to be lachrymose. the thing to do is to get a move on.” aaron looked up with a glimpse of a smile. the two men were sitting before the fire at the end of a cold, wet april day: aaron convalescent, somewhat chastened in appearance. “ay,” he said rather sourly. “a move back to guilford street.” “oh, i meant to tell you,” said lilly. “i was reading an old baden history. they made a law in --not a law, but a regulation--that: if a man forsakes his wife and children, as now so often happens, the said wife and children are at once to be dispatched after him. i thought that would please you. does it?” “yes,” said aaron briefly. “they would have arrived the next day, like a forwarded letter.” “i should have had to get a considerable move on, at that rate,” grinned aaron. “oh, no. you might quite like them here.” but lilly saw the white frown of determined revulsion on the convalescent's face. “wouldn't you?” he asked. aaron shook his head. “no,” he said. and it was obvious he objected to the topic. “what are you going to do about your move on?” “me!” said lilly. “i'm going to sail away next week--or steam dirtily away on a tramp called the _maud allen wing_.” “where to?” “malta.” “where from?” “london dock. i fixed up my passage this morning for ten pounds. i am cook's assistant, signed on.” aaron looked at him with a little admiration. “you can take a sudden jump, can't you?” he said. “the difficulty is to refrain from jumping: overboard or anywhere.” aaron smoked his pipe slowly. “and what good will malta do you?” he asked, envious. “heaven knows. i shall cross to syracuse, and move up italy.” “sounds as if you were a millionaire.” “i've got thirty-five pounds in all the world. but something will come along.” “i've got more than that,” said aaron. “good for you,” replied lilly. he rose and went to the cupboard, taking out a bowl and a basket of potatoes. he sat down again, paring the potatoes. his busy activity annoyed aaron. “but what's the good of going to malta? shall you be any different in yourself, in another place? you'll be the same there as you are here.” “how am i here?” “why, you're all the time grinding yourself against something inside you. you're never free. you're never content. you never stop chafing.” lilly dipped his potato into the water, and cut out the eyes carefully. then he cut it in two, and dropped it in the clean water of the second bowl. he had not expected this criticism. “perhaps i don't,” said he. “then what's the use of going somewhere else? you won't change yourself.” “i may in the end,” said lilly. “you'll be yourself, whether it's malta or london,” said aaron. “there's a doom for me,” laughed lilly. the water on the fire was boiling. he rose and threw in salt, then dropped in the potatoes with little plops. “there there are lots of mes. i'm not only just one proposition. a new place brings out a new thing in a man. otherwise you'd have stayed in your old place with your family.” “the man in the middle of you doesn't change,” said aaron. “do you find it so?” said lilly. “ay. every time.” “then what's to be done?” “nothing, as far as i can see. you get as much amusement out of life as possible, and there's the end of it.” “all right then, i'll get the amusement.” “ay, all right then,” said aaron. “but there isn't anything wonderful about it. you talk as if you were doing something special. you aren't. you're no more than a man who drops into a pub for a drink, to liven himself up a bit. only you give it a lot of names, and make out as if you were looking for the philosopher's stone, or something like that. when you're only killing time like the rest of folks, before time kills you.” lilly did not answer. it was not yet seven o'clock, but the sky was dark. aaron sat in the firelight. even the saucepan on the fire was silent. darkness, silence, the firelight in the upper room, and the two men together. “it isn't quite true,” said lilly, leaning on the mantelpiece and staring down into the fire. “where isn't it? you talk, and you make a man believe you've got something he hasn't got? but where is it, when it comes to? what have you got, more than me or jim bricknell! only a bigger choice of words, it seems to me.” lilly was motionless and inscrutable like a shadow. “does it, aaron!” he said, in a colorless voice. “yes. what else is there to it?” aaron sounded testy. “why,” said lilly at last, “there's something. i agree, it's true what you say about me. but there's a bit of something else. there's just a bit of something in me, i think, which isn't a man running into a pub for a drink--” “and what--?” the question fell into the twilight like a drop of water falling down a deep shaft into a well. “i think a man may come into possession of his own soul at last--as the buddhists teach--but without ceasing to love, or even to hate. one loves, one hates--but somewhere beyond it all, one understands, and possesses one's soul in patience and in peace--” “yes,” said aaron slowly, “while you only stand and talk about it. but when you've got no chance to talk about it--and when you've got to live--you don't possess your soul, neither in patience nor in peace, but any devil that likes possesses you and does what it likes with you, while you fridge yourself and fray yourself out like a worn rag.” “i don't care,” said lilly, “i'm learning to possess my soul in patience and in peace, and i know it. and it isn't a negative nirvana either. and if tanny possesses her own soul in patience and peace as well--and if in this we understand each other at last--then there we are, together and apart at the same time, and free of each other, and eternally inseparable. i have my nirvana--and i have it all to myself. but more than that. it coincides with her nirvana.” “ah, yes,” said aaron. “but i don't understand all that word-splitting.” “i do, though. you learn to be quite alone, and possess your own soul in isolation--and at the same time, to be perfectly with someone else--that's all i ask.” “sort of sit on a mountain top, back to back with somebody else, like a couple of idols.” “no--because it isn't a case of sitting--or a case of back to back. it's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. and it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. it flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them.” “what wouldn't?” “the possessing one's own soul--and the being together with someone else in silence, beyond speech.” “and you've got them?” “i've got a bit of the real quietness inside me.” “so has a dog on a mat.” “so i believe, too.” “or a man in a pub.” “which i don't believe.” “you prefer the dog?” “maybe.” there was silence for a few moments. “and i'm the man in the pub,” said aaron. “you aren't the dog on the mat, anyhow.” “and you're the idol on the mountain top, worshipping yourself.” “you talk to me like a woman, aaron.” “how do you talk to me, do you think?” “how do i?” “are the potatoes done?” lilly turned quickly aside, and switched on the electric light. everything changed. aaron sat still before the fire, irritated. lilly went about preparing the supper. the room was pleasant at night. two tall, dark screens hid the two beds. in front, the piano was littered with music, the desk littered with papers. lilly went out on to the landing, and set the chops to grill on the gas stove. hastily he put a small table on the hearth-rug, spread it with a blue-and-white cloth, set plates and glasses. aaron did not move. it was not his nature to concern himself with domestic matters--and lilly did it best alone. the two men had an almost uncanny understanding of one another--like brothers. they came from the same district, from the same class. each might have been born into the other's circumstance. like brothers, there was a profound hostility between them. but hostility is not antipathy. lilly's skilful housewifery always irritated aaron: it was so self-sufficient. but most irritating of all was the little man's unconscious assumption of priority. lilly was actually unaware that he assumed this quiet predominance over others. he mashed the potatoes, he heated the plates, he warmed the red wine, he whisked eggs into the milk pudding, and served his visitor like a housemaid. but none of this detracted from the silent assurance with which he bore himself, and with which he seemed to domineer over his acquaintance. at last the meal was ready. lilly drew the curtains, switched off the central light, put the green-shaded electric lamp on the table, and the two men drew up to the meal. it was good food, well cooked and hot. certainly lilly's hands were no longer clean: but it was clean dirt, as he said. aaron sat in the low arm-chair at table. so his face was below, in the full light. lilly sat high on a small chair, so that his face was in the green shadow. aaron was handsome, and always had that peculiar well-dressed look of his type. lilly was indifferent to his own appearance, and his collar was a rag. so the two men ate in silence. they had been together alone for a fortnight only: but it was like a small eternity. aaron was well now--only he suffered from the depression and the sort of fear that follows influenza. “when are you going?” he asked irritably, looking up at lilly, whose face hovered in that green shadow above, and worried him. “one day next week. they'll send me a telegram. not later than thursday.” “you're looking forward to going?” the question was half bitter. “yes. i want to get a new tune out of myself.” “had enough of this?” “yes.” a flush of anger came on aaron's face. “you're easily on, and easily off,” he said, rather insulting. “am i?” said lilly. “what makes you think so?” “circumstances,” replied aaron sourly. to which there was no answer. the host cleared away the plates, and put the pudding on the table. he pushed the bowl to aaron. “i suppose i shall never see you again, once you've gone,” said aaron. “it's your choice. i will leave you an address.” after this, the pudding was eaten in silence. “besides, aaron,” said lilly, drinking his last sip of wine, “what do you care whether you see me again or not? what do you care whether you see anybody again or not? you want to be amused. and now you're irritated because you think i am not going to amuse you any more: and you don't know who is going to amuse you. i admit it's a dilemma. but it's a hedonistic dilemma of the commonest sort.” “i don't know hedonistic. and supposing i am as you say--are you any different?” “no, i'm not very different. but i always persuade myself there's a bit of difference. do you know what josephine ford confessed to me? she's had her lovers enough. 'there isn't any such thing as love, lilly,' she said. 'men are simply afraid to be alone. that is absolutely all there is in it: fear of being alone.'” “what by that?” said aaron. “you agree?” “yes, on the whole.” “so do i--on the whole. and then i asked her what about woman. and then she said with a woman it wasn't fear, it was just boredom. a woman is like a violinist: any fiddle, any instrument rather than empty hands and no tune going.” “yes--what i said before: getting as much amusement out of life as possible,” said aaron. “you amuse me--and i'll amuse you.” “yes--just about that.” “all right, aaron,” said lilly. “i'm not going to amuse you, or try to amuse you any more.” “going to try somebody else; and malta.” “malta, anyhow.” “oh, and somebody else--in the next five minutes.” “yes--that also.” “goodbye and good luck to you.” “goodbye and good luck to you, aaron.” with which lilly went aside to wash the dishes. aaron sat alone under the zone of light, turning over a score of _pelleas_. though the noise of london was around them, it was far below, and in the room was a deep silence. each of the men seemed invested in his own silence. aaron suddenly took his flute, and began trying little passages from the opera on his knee. he had not played since his illness. the noise came out a little tremulous, but low and sweet. lilly came forward with a plate and a cloth in his hand. “aaron's rod is putting forth again,” he said, smiling. “what?” said aaron, looking up. “i said aaron's rod is putting forth again.” “what rod?” “your flute, for the moment.” “it's got to put forth my bread and butter.” “is that all the buds it's going to have?” “what else!” “nay--that's for you to show. what flowers do you imagine came out of the rod of moses's brother?” “scarlet runners, i should think if he'd got to live on them.” “scarlet enough, i'll bet.” aaron turned unnoticing back to his music. lilly finished the wiping of the dishes, then took a book and sat on the other side of the table. “it's all one to you, then,” said aaron suddenly, “whether we ever see one another again?” “not a bit,” said lilly, looking up over his spectacles. “i very much wish there might be something that held us together.” “then if you wish it, why isn't there?” “you might wish your flute to put out scarlet-runner flowers at the joints.” “ay--i might. and it would be all the same.” the moment of silence that followed was extraordinary in its hostility. “oh, we shall run across one another again some time,” said aaron. “sure,” said lilly. “more than that: i'll write you an address that will always find me. and when you write i will answer you.” he took a bit of paper and scribbled an address. aaron folded it and put it into his waistcoat pocket. it was an italian address. “but how can i live in italy?” he said. “you can shift about. i'm tied to a job.” “you--with your budding rod, your flute--and your charm--you can always do as you like.” “my what?” “your flute and your charm.” “what charm?” “just your own. don't pretend you don't know you've got it. i don't really like charm myself; too much of a trick about it. but whether or not, you've got it.” “it's news to me.” “not it.” “fact, it is.” “ha! somebody will always take a fancy to you. and you can live on that, as well as on anything else.” “why do you always speak so despisingly?” “why shouldn't i?” “have you any right to despise another man?” “when did it go by rights?” “no, not with you.” “you answer me like a woman, aaron.” again there was a space of silence. and again it was aaron who at last broke it. “we're in different positions, you and me,” he said. “how?” “you can live by your writing--but i've got to have a job.” “is that all?” said lilly. “ay. and plenty. you've got the advantage of me.” “quite,” said lilly. “but why? i was a dirty-nosed little boy when you were a clean-nosed little boy. and i always had more patches on my breeches than you: neat patches, too, my poor mother! so what's the good of talking about advantages? you had the start. and at this very moment you could buy me up, lock, stock, and barrel. so don't feel hard done by. it's a lie.” “you've got your freedom.” “i make it and i take it.” “circumstances make it for you.” “as you like.” “you don't do a man justice,” said aaron. “does a man care?” “he might.” “then he's no man.” “thanks again, old fellow.” “welcome,” said lilly, grimacing. again aaron looked at him, baffled, almost with hatred. lilly grimaced at the blank wall opposite, and seemed to ruminate. then he went back to his book. and no sooner had he forgotten aaron, reading the fantasies of a certain leo frobenius, than aaron must stride in again. “you can't say there isn't a difference between your position and mine,” he said pertinently. lilly looked darkly over his spectacles. “no, by god,” he said. “i should be in a poor way otherwise.” “you can't say you haven't the advantage--your job gives you the advantage.” “all right. then leave it out with my job, and leave me alone.” “that's your way of dodging it.” “my dear aaron, i agree with you perfectly. there is no difference between us, save the fictitious advantage given to me by my job. save for my job--which is to write lies--aaron and i are two identical little men in one and the same little boat. shall we leave it at that, now?” “yes,” said aaron. “that's about it.” “let us shake hands on it--and go to bed, my dear chap. you are just recovering from influenza, and look paler than i like.” “you mean you want to be rid of me,” said aaron. “yes, i do mean that,” said lilly. “ay,” said aaron. and after a few minutes more staring at the score of _pelleas_, he rose, put the score away on the piano, laid his flute beside it, and retired behind the screen. in silence, the strange dim noise of london sounding from below, lilly read on about the kabyles. his soul had the faculty of divesting itself of the moment, and seeking further, deeper interests. these old africans! and atlantis! strange, strange wisdom of the kabyles! old, old dark africa, and the world before the flood! how jealous aaron seemed! the child of a jealous god. a jealous god! could any race be anything but despicable, with such an antecedent? but no, persistent as a jealous god himself, aaron reappeared in his pyjamas, and seated himself in his chair. “what is the difference then between you and me, lilly?” he said. “haven't we shaken hands on it--a difference of jobs.” “you don't believe that, though, do you?” “nay, now i reckon you're trespassing.” “why am i? i know you don't believe it.” “what do i believe then?” said lilly. “you believe you know something better than me--and that you are something better than me. don't you?” “do you believe it?” “what?” “that i am something better than you, and that i know something better?” “no, because i don't see it,” said aaron. “then if you don't see it, it isn't there. so go to bed and sleep the sleep of the just and the convalescent. i am not to be badgered any more.” “am i badgering you?” said aaron. “indeed you are.” “so i'm in the wrong again?” “once more, my dear.” “you're a god-almighty in your way, you know.” “so long as i'm not in anybody else's way--anyhow, you'd be much better sleeping the sleep of the just. and i'm going out for a minute or two. don't catch cold there with nothing on-- “i want to catch the post,” he added, rising. aaron looked up at him quickly. but almost before there was time to speak, lilly had slipped into his hat and coat, seized his letters, and gone. it was a rainy night. lilly turned down king street to walk to charing cross. he liked being out of doors. he liked to post his letters at charing cross post office. he did not want to talk to aaron any more. he was glad to be alone. he walked quickly down villiers street to the river, to see it flowing blackly towards the sea. it had an endless fascination for him: never failed to soothe him and give him a sense of liberty. he liked the night, the dark rain, the river, and even the traffic. he enjoyed the sense of friction he got from the streaming of people who meant nothing to him. it was like a fox slipping alert among unsuspecting cattle. when he got back, he saw in the distance the lights of a taxi standing outside the building where he lived, and heard a thumping and hallooing. he hurried forward. it was a man called herbertson. “oh, why, there you are!” exclaimed herbertson, as lilly drew near. “can i come up and have a chat?” “i've got that man who's had flu. i should think he is gone to bed.” “oh!” the disappointment was plain. “well, look here i'll just come up for a couple of minutes.” he laid his hand on lilly's arm. “i heard you were going away. where are you going?” “malta.” “malta! oh, i know malta very well. well now, it'll be all right if i come up for a minute? i'm not going to see much more of you, apparently.” he turned quickly to the taxi. “what is it on the clock?” the taxi was paid, the two men went upstairs. aaron was in bed, but he called as lilly entered the room. “hullo!” said lilly. “not asleep? captain herbertson has come in for a minute.” “hope i shan't disturb you,” said captain herbertson, laying down his stick and gloves, and his cap. he was in uniform. he was one of the few surviving officers of the guards, a man of about forty-five, good-looking, getting rather stout. he settled himself in the chair where aaron had sat, hitching up his trousers. the gold identity plate, with its gold chain, fell conspicuously over his wrist. “been to 'rosemary,'” he said. “rotten play, you know--but passes the time awfully well. oh, i quite enjoyed it.” lilly offered him sauterne--the only thing in the house. “oh, yes! how awfully nice! yes, thanks, i shall love it. can i have it with soda? thanks! do you know, i think that's the very best drink in the tropics: sweet white wine, with soda? yes--well!-- well--now, why are you going away?” “for a change,” said lilly. “you're quite right, one needs a change now the damned thing is all over. as soon as i get out of khaki i shall be off. malta! yes! i've been in malta several times. i think valletta is quite enjoyable, particularly in winter, with the opera. oh--er--how's your wife? all right? yes!--glad to see her people again. bound to be-- oh, by the way, i met jim bricknell. sends you a message hoping you'll go down and stay--down at captain bingham's place in surrey, you know. awfully queer lot down there. not my sort, no. you won't go down? no, i shouldn't. not the right sort of people.” herbertson rattled away, rather spasmodic. he had been through the very front hell of the war--and like every man who had, he had the war at the back of his mind, like an obsession. but in the meantime, he skirmished. “yes. i was on guard one day when the queen gave one of her tea-parties to the blind. awful affair. but the children are awfully nice children. prince of wales awfully nice, almost too nice. prince henry smart boy, too--oh, a smart boy. queen mary poured the tea, and i handed round bread and butter. she told me i made a very good waiter. i said, thank you, madam. but i like the children. very different from the battenbergs. oh!--” he wrinkled his nose. “i can't stand the battenbergs.” “mount battens,” said lilly. “yes! awful mistake, changing the royal name. they were guelfs, why not remain it? why, i'll tell you what battenberg did. he was in the guards, too--” the talk flowed on: about royalty and the guards, buckingham palace and st. james. “rather a nice story about queen victoria. man named joyce, something or other, often used to dine at the palace. and he was an awfully good imitator--really clever, you know. used to imitate the queen. 'mr. joyce,' she said, 'i hear your imitation is very amusing. will you do it for us now, and let us see what it is like?' 'oh, no, madam! i'm afraid i couldn't do it now. i'm afraid i'm not in the humour.' but she would have him do it. and it was really awfully funny. he had to do it. you know what he did. he used to take a table-napkin, and put it on with one corner over his forehead, and the rest hanging down behind, like her veil thing. and then he sent for the kettle-lid. he always had the kettle-lid, for that little crown of hers. and then he impersonated her. but he was awfully good--so clever. 'mr. joyce,' she said. 'we are not amused. please leave the room.' yes, that is exactly what she said: 'we are not amused--please leave the room.' i like the we, don't you? and he a man of sixty or so. however, he left the room and for a fortnight or so he wasn't invited--wasn't she wonderful--queen victoria?” and so, by light transitions, to the prince of wales at the front, and thus into the trenches. and then herbertson was on the subject he was obsessed by. he had come, unconsciously, for this and this only, to talk war to lilly: or at lilly. for the latter listened and watched, and said nothing. as a man at night helplessly takes a taxi to find some woman, some prostitute, herbertson had almost unthinkingly got into a taxi and come battering at the door in covent garden, only to talk war to lilly, whom he knew very little. but it was a driving instinct--to come and get it off his chest. and on and on he talked, over his wine and soda. he was not conceited--he was not showing off--far from it. it was the same thing here in this officer as it was with the privates, and the same with this englishman as with a frenchman or a german or an italian. lilly had sat in a cowshed listening to a youth in the north country: he had sat on the corn-straw that the oxen had been treading out, in calabria, under the moon: he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a german prisoner: and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind, anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, and doesn't know where to turn. none of the glamour of returned heroes, none of the romance of war: only a hot, blind, mesmerised voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot bear. in this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour. but underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations: the hot, seared burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not to be relieved. the experience gradually cooled on top: but only with a surface crust. the soul did not heal, did not recover. “i used to be awfully frightened,” laughed herbertson. “now you say, lilly, you'd never have stood it. but you would. you're nervous--and it was just the nervous ones that did stand it. when nearly all our officers were gone, we had a man come out--a man called margeritson, from india--big merchant people out there. they all said he was no good--not a bit of good--nervous chap. no good at all. but when you had to get out of the trench and go for the germans he was perfect--perfect--it all came to him then, at the crisis, and he was perfect. “some things frighten one man, and some another. now shells would never frighten me. but i couldn't stand bombs. you could tell the difference between our machines and the germans. ours was a steady noise--drrrrrrrr!--but their's was heavy, drrrrrururrrrruru!-- my word, that got on my nerves.... “no i was never hit. the nearest thing was when i was knocked down by an exploding shell--several times that--you know. when you shout like mad for the men to come and dig you out, under all the earth. and my word, you do feel frightened then.” herbertson laughed with a twinkling motion to lilly. but between his brows there was a tension like madness. “and a funny thing you know--how you don't notice things. in--let me see-- , the german guns were a lot better than ours. ours were old, and when they're old you can't tell where they'll hit: whether they'll go beyond the mark, or whether they'll fall short. well, this day our guns were firing short, and killing our own men. we'd had the order to charge, and were running forward, and i suddenly felt hot water spurting on my neck--” he put his hand to the back of his neck and glanced round apprehensively. “it was a chap called innes--oh, an awfully decent sort--people were in the argentine. he'd been calling out to me as we were running, and i was just answering. when i felt this hot water on my neck and saw him running past me with no head--he'd got no head, and he went running past me. i don't know how far, but a long way.... blood, you know--yes--well-- “oh, i hated chelsea--i loathed chelsea--chelsea was purgatory to me. i had a corporal called wallace--he was a fine chap--oh, he was a fine chap--six foot two--and about twenty-four years old. he was my stand-back. oh, i hated chelsea, and parades, and drills. you know, when it's drill, and you're giving orders, you forget what order you've just given--in front of the palace there the crowd don't notice--but it's awful for you. and you know you daren't look round to see what the men are doing. but wallace was splendid. he was just behind me, and i'd hear him, quite quiet you know, 'it's right wheel, sir.' always perfect, always perfect--yes--well.... “you know you don't get killed if you don't think you will. now i never thought i should get killed. and i never knew a man get killed if he hadn't been thinking he would. i said to wallace i'd rather be out here, at the front, than at chelsea. i hated chelsea--i can't tell you how much. 'oh no, sir!' he said. 'i'd rather be at chelsea than here. i'd rather be at chelsea. there isn't hell like this at chelsea.' we'd had orders that we were to go back to the real camp the next day. 'never mind, wallace,' i said. 'we shall be out of this hell-on-earth tomorrow.' and he took my hand. we weren't much for showing feeling or anything in the guards. but he took my hand. and we climbed out to charge--poor fellow, he was killed--” herbertson dropped his head, and for some moments seemed to go unconscious, as if struck. then he lifted his face, and went on in the same animated chatty fashion: “you see, he had a presentiment. i'm sure he had a presentiment. none of the men got killed unless they had a presentiment--like that, you know....” herbertson nodded keenly at lilly, with his sharp, twinkling, yet obsessed eyes. lilly wondered why he made the presentiment responsible for the death--which he obviously did--and not vice versa. herbertson implied every time, that you'd never get killed if you could keep yourself from having a presentiment. perhaps there was something in it. perhaps the soul issues its own ticket of death, when it can stand no more. surely life controls life: and not accident. “it's a funny thing what shock will do. we had a sergeant and he shouted to me. both his feet were off--both his feet, clean at the ankle. i gave him morphia. you know officers aren't allowed to use the needle--might give the man blood poisoning. you give those tabloids. they say they act in a few minutes, but they don't. it's a quarter of an hour. and nothing is more demoralising than when you have a man, wounded, you know, and crying out. well, this man i gave him the morphia before he got over the stunning, you know. so he didn't feel the pain. well, they carried him in. i always used to like to look after my men. so i went next morning and i found he hadn't been removed to the clearing station. i got hold of the doctor and i said, 'look here! why hasn't this man been taken to the clearing station?' i used to get excited. but after some years they'd got used to me. 'don't get excited, herbertson, the man's dying.' 'but,' i said, 'he's just been talking to me as strong as you are.' and he had--he'd talk as strong and well as you or me, then go quiet for a bit. i said i gave him the morphia before he came round from the stunning. so he'd felt nothing. but in two hours he was dead. the doctor says that the shock does it like that sometimes. you can do nothing for them. nothing vital is injured--and yet the life is broken in them. nothing can be done--funny thing--must be something in the brain--” “it's obviously not the brain,” said lilly. “it's deeper than the brain.” “deeper,” said herbertson, nodding. “funny thing where life is. we had a lieutenant. you know we all buried our own dead. well, he looked as if he was asleep. most of the chaps looked like that.” herbertson closed his eyes and laid his face aside, like a man asleep and dead peacefully. “you very rarely see a man dead with any other look on his face--you know the other look.--” and he clenched his teeth with a sudden, momentaneous, ghastly distortion.--“well, you'd never have known this chap was dead. he had a wound here--in the back of the head--and a bit of blood on his hand--and nothing else, nothing. well, i said we'd give him a decent burial. he lay there waiting--and they'd wrapped him in a filthy blanket--you know. well, i said he should have a proper blanket. he'd been dead lying there a day and a half you know. so i went and got a blanket, a beautiful blanket, out of his private kit--his people were scotch, well-known family--and i got the pins, you know, ready to pin him up properly, for the scots guards to bury him. and i thought he'd be stiff, you see. but when i took him by the arms, to lift him on, he sat up. it gave me an awful shock. 'why he's alive!' i said. but they said he was dead. i couldn't believe it. it gave me an awful shock. he was as flexible as you or me, and looked as if he was asleep. you couldn't believe he was dead. but we pinned him up in his blanket. it was an awful shock to me. i couldn't believe a man could be like that after he'd been dead two days.... “the germans were wonderful with the machine guns--it's a wicked thing, a machine gun. but they couldn't touch us with the bayonet. every time the men came back they had bayonet practice, and they got awfully good. you know when you thrust at the germans--so--if you miss him, you bring your rifle back sharp, with a round swing, so that the butt comes up and hits up under the jaw. it's one movement, following on with the stab, you see, if you miss him. it was too quick for them--but bayonet charge was worst, you know. because your man cries out when you catch him, when you get him, you know. that's what does you.... “no, oh no, this was no war like other wars. all the machinery of it. no, you couldn't stand it, but for the men. the men are wonderful, you know. they'll be wiped out.... no, it's your men who keep you going, if you're an officer.... but there'll never be another war like this. because the germans are the only people who could make a war like this--and i don't think they'll ever do it again, do you? “oh, they were wonderful, the germans. they were amazing. it was incredible, what they invented and did. we had to learn from them, in the first two years. but they were too methodical. that's why they lost the war. they were too methodical. they'd fire their guns every ten minutes--regular. think of it. of course we knew when to run, and when to lie down. you got so that you knew almost exactly what they'd do--if you'd been out long enough. and then you could time what you wanted to do yourselves. “they were a lot more nervous than we were, at the last. they sent up enough light at night from their trenches--you know, those things that burst in the air like electric light--we had none of that to do--they did it all for us--lit up everything. they were more nervous than we were....” it was nearly two o'clock when herbertson left. lilly, depressed, remained before the fire. aaron got out of bed and came uneasily to the fire. “it gives me the bellyache, that damned war,” he said. “so it does me,” said lilly. “all unreal.” “real enough for those that had to go through it.” “no, least of all for them,” said lilly sullenly. “not as real as a bad dream. why the hell don't they wake up and realise it!” “that's a fact,” said aaron. “they're hypnotised by it.” “and they want to hypnotise me. and i won't be hypnotised. the war was a lie and is a lie and will go on being a lie till somebody busts it.” “it was a fact--you can't bust that. you can't bust the fact that it happened.” “yes you can. it never happened. it never happened to me. no more than my dreams happen. my dreams don't happen: they only seem.” “but the war did happen, right enough,” smiled aaron palely. “no, it didn't. not to me or to any man, in his own self. it took place in the automatic sphere, like dreams do. but the actual man in every man was just absent--asleep--or drugged--inert--dream-logged. that's it.” “you tell 'em so,” said aaron. “i do. but it's no good. because they won't wake up now even--perhaps never. they'll all kill themselves in their sleep.” “they wouldn't be any better if they did wake up and be themselves--that is, supposing they are asleep, which i can't see. they are what they are--and they're all alike--and never very different from what they are now.” lilly stared at aaron with black eyes. “do you believe in them less than i do, aaron?” he asked slowly. “i don't even want to believe in them.” “but in yourself?” lilly was almost wistful--and aaron uneasy. “i don't know that i've any more right to believe in myself than in them,” he replied. lilly watched and pondered. “no,” he said. “that's not true--i knew the war was false: humanly quite false. i always knew it was false. the germans were false, we were false, everybody was false.” “and not you?” asked aaron shrewishly. “there was a wakeful, self-possessed bit of me which knew that the war and all that horrible movement was false for me. and so i wasn't going to be dragged in. the germans could have shot my mother or me or what they liked: i wouldn't have joined the war. i would like to kill my enemy. but become a bit of that huge obscene machine they called the war, that i never would, no, not if i died ten deaths and had eleven mothers violated. but i would like to kill my enemy: oh, yes, more than one enemy. but not as a unit in a vast obscene mechanism. that never: no, never.” poor lilly was too earnest and vehement. aaron made a fine nose. it seemed to him like a lot of words and a bit of wriggling out of a hole. “well,” he said, “you've got men and nations, and you've got the machines of war--so how are you going to get out of it? league of nations?” “damn all leagues. damn all masses and groups, anyhow. all i want is to get myself out of their horrible heap: to get out of the swarm. the swarm to me is nightmare and nullity--horrible helpless writhing in a dream. i want to get myself awake, out of it all--all that mass-consciousness, all that mass-activity--it's the most horrible nightmare to me. no man is awake and himself. no man who was awake and in possession of himself would use poison gases: no man. his own awake self would scorn such a thing. it's only when the ghastly mob-sleep, the dream helplessness of the mass-psyche overcomes him, that he becomes completely base and obscene.” “ha--well,” said aaron. “it's the wide-awake ones that invent the poison gas, and use it. where should we be without it?” lilly started, went stiff and hostile. “do you mean that, aaron?” he said, looking into aaron's face with a hard, inflexible look. aaron turned aside half sheepishly. “that's how it looks on the face of it, isn't it?” he said. “look here, my friend, it's too late for you to be talking to me about the face of things. if that's how you feel, put your things on and follow herbertson. yes--go out of my room. i don't put up with the face of things here.” aaron looked at him in cold amazement. “it'll do tomorrow morning, won't it?” he asked rather mocking. “yes,” said lilly coldly. “but please go tomorrow morning.” “oh, i'll go all right,” said aaron. “everybody's got to agree with you--that's your price.” but lilly did not answer. aaron turned into bed, his satirical smile under his nose. somewhat surprised, however, at this sudden turn of affairs. as he was just going to sleep, dismissing the matter, lilly came once more to his bedside, and said, in a hard voice: “i'm not going to pretend to have friends on the face of things. no, and i don't have friends who don't fundamentally agree with me. a friend means one who is at one with me in matters of life and death. and if you're at one with all the rest, then you're their friend, not mine. so be their friend. and please leave me in the morning. you owe me nothing, you have nothing more to do with me. i have had enough of these friendships where i pay the piper and the mob calls the tune. “let me tell you, moreover, your heroic herbertsons lost us more than ever they won. a brave ant is a damned cowardly individual. your heroic officers are a sad sight afterwards, when they come home. bah, your herbertson! the only justification for war is what we learn from it. and what have they learnt?--why did so many of them have presentiments, as he called it? because they could feel inside them, there was nothing to come after. there was no life-courage: only death-courage. nothing beyond this hell--only death or love--languishing--” “what could they have seen, anyhow?” said aaron. “it's not what you see, actually. it's the kind of spirit you keep inside you: the life spirit. when wallace had presentiments, herbertson, being officer, should have said: 'none of that, wallace. you and i, we've got to live and make life smoke.'--instead of which he let wallace be killed and his own heart be broken. always the death-choice-- and we won't, we simply will not face the world as we've made it, and our own souls as we find them, and take the responsibility. we'll never get anywhere till we stand up man to man and face everything out, and break the old forms, but never let our own pride and courage of life be broken.” lilly broke off, and went silently to bed. aaron turned over to sleep, rather resenting the sound of so many words. what difference did it make, anyhow? in the morning, however, when he saw the other man's pale, closed, rather haughty face, he realised that something _had_ happened. lilly was courteous and even affable: but with a curious cold space between him and aaron. breakfast passed, and aaron knew that he must leave. there was something in lilly's bearing which just showed him the door. in some surprise and confusion, and in some anger, not unmingled with humorous irony, he put his things in his bag. he put on his hat and coat. lilly was seated rather stiffly writing. “well,” said aaron. “i suppose we shall meet again.” “oh, sure to,” said lilly, rising from his chair. “we are sure to run across one another.” “when are you going?” asked aaron. “in a few days' time.” “oh, well, i'll run in and see you before you go, shall i?” “yes, do.” lilly escorted his guest to the top of the stairs, shook hands, and then returned into his own room, closing the door on himself. aaron did not find his friend at home when he called. he took it rather as a slap in the face. but then he knew quite well that lilly had made a certain call on his, aaron's soul: a call which he, aaron, did not at all intend to obey. if in return the soul-caller chose to shut his street-door in the face of the world-friend--well, let it be quits. he was not sure whether he felt superior to his unworldly enemy or not. he rather thought he did. chapter xi. more pillar of salt the opera season ended, aaron was invited by cyril scott to join a group of musical people in a village by the sea. he accepted, and spent a pleasant month. it pleased the young men musically-inclined and bohemian by profession to patronise the flautist, whom they declared marvellous. bohemians with well-to-do parents, they could already afford to squander a little spasmodic and self-gratifying patronage. and aaron did not mind being patronised. he had nothing else to do. but the party broke up early in september. the flautist was detained a few days at a country house, for the amusement of the guests. then he left for london. in london he found himself at a loose end. a certain fretful dislike of the patronage of indifferent young men, younger than himself, and a certain distaste for regular work in the orchestra made him look round. he wanted something else. he wanted to disappear again. qualms and emotions concerning his abandoned family overcame him. the early, delicate autumn affected him. he took a train to the midlands. and again, just after dark, he strolled with his little bag across the field which lay at the end of his garden. it had been mown, and the grass was already growing long. he stood and looked at the line of back windows, lighted once more. he smelled the scents of autumn, phlox and moist old vegetation and corn in sheaf. a nostalgia which was half at least revulsion affected him. the place, the home, at once fascinated and revolted him. sitting in his shed, he scrutinised his garden carefully, in the starlight. there were two rows of beans, rather disshevelled. near at hand the marrow plants sprawled from their old bed. he could detect the perfume of a few carnations. he wondered who it was had planted the garden, during his long absence. anyhow, there it was, planted and fruited and waning into autumn. the blind was not drawn. it was eight o'clock. the children were going to bed. aaron waited in his shed, his bowels stirred with violent but only half-admitted emotions. there was his wife, slim and graceful, holding a little mug to the baby's mouth. and the baby was drinking. she looked lonely. wild emotions attacked his heart. there was going to be a wild and emotional reconciliation. was there? it seemed like something fearful and imminent. a passion arose in him, a craving for the violent emotional reconciliation. he waited impatiently for the children to be gone to bed, gnawed with restless desire. he heard the clock strike nine, then half-past, from the village behind. the children would be asleep. his wife was sitting sewing some little frock. he went lingering down the garden path, stooping to lift the fallen carnations, to see how they were. there were many flowers, but small. he broke one off, then threw it away. the golden rod was out. even in the little lawn there were asters, as of old. his wife started to listen, hearing his step. he was filled with a violent conflict of tenderness, like a sickness. he hesitated, tapping at the door, and entered. his wife started to her feet, at bay. “what have you come for!” was her involuntary ejaculation. but he, with the familiar odd jerk of his head towards the garden, asked with a faint smile: “who planted the garden?” and he felt himself dropping into the twang of the vernacular, which he had discarded. lottie only stood and stared at him, objectively. she did not think to answer. he took his hat off, and put it on the dresser. again the familiar act maddened her. “what have you come for?” she cried again, with a voice full of hate. or perhaps it was fear and doubt and even hope as well. he heard only hate. this time he turned to look at her. the old dagger was drawn in her. “i wonder,” he said, “myself.” then she recovered herself, and with trembling hand picked up her sewing again. but she still stood at bay, beyond the table. she said nothing. he, feeling tired, sat down on the chair nearest the door. but he reached for his hat, and kept it on his knee. she, as she stood there unnaturally, went on with her sewing. there was silence for some time. curious sensations and emotions went through the man's frame seeming to destroy him. they were like electric shocks, which he felt she emitted against him. and an old sickness came in him again. he had forgotten it. it was the sickness of the unrecognised and incomprehensible strain between him and her. after a time she put down her sewing, and sat again in her chair. “do you know how vilely you've treated me?” she said, staring across the space at him. he averted his face. yet he answered, not without irony. “i suppose so.” “and why?” she cried. “i should like to know why.” he did not answer. the way she rushed in made him go vague. “justify yourself. say why you've been so vile to me. say what you had against me,” she demanded. “what i had against her,” he mused to himself: and he wondered that she used the past tense. he made no answer. “accuse me,” she insisted. “say what i've done to make you treat me like this. say it. you must think it hard enough.” “nay,” he said. “i don't think it.” this speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her. “don't come pretending you love me, now. it's too late,” she said with contempt. yet perhaps also hope. “you might wait till i start pretending,” he said. this enraged her. “you vile creature!” she exclaimed. “go! what have you come for?” “to look at you,” he said sarcastically. after a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron. and again his bowels stirred and boiled. “what have i done! what have i done! i don't know what i've done that he should be like this to me,” she sobbed, into her apron. it was childish, and perhaps true. at least it was true from the childish part of her nature. he sat gloomy and uneasy. she took the apron from her tear-stained face, and looked at him. it was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman--a beautiful woman. at this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful. “tell me,” she challenged. “tell me! tell me what i've done. tell me what you have against me. tell me.” watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face. telling isn't so easy--especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension. he couldn't _tell_ what he had against her. and he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. he knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves. “you can't,” she cried vindictively. “you can't. you can't find anything real to bring against me, though you'd like to. you'd like to be able to accuse me of something, but you can't, because you know there isn't anything.” she watched him, watched. and he sat in the chair near the door, without moving. “you're unnatural, that's what you are,” she cried. “you're unnatural. you're not a man. you haven't got a man's feelings. you're nasty, and cold, and unnatural. and you're a coward. you're a coward. you run away from me, without telling me what you've got against me.” “when you've had enough, you go away and you don't care what you do,” he said, epigrammatic. she paused a moment. “enough of what?” she said. “what have you had enough of? of me and your children? it's a nice manly thing to say. haven't i loved you? haven't i loved you for twelve years, and worked and slaved for you and tried to keep you right? heaven knows where you'd have been but for me, evil as you are at the bottom. you're evil, that's what it is--and weak. you're too weak to love a woman and give her what she wants: too weak. unmanly and cowardly, he runs away.” “no wonder,” he said. “no,” she cried. “it is no wonder, with a nature like yours: weak and unnatural and evil. it is no wonder.” she became quiet--and then started to cry again, into her apron. aaron waited. he felt physically weak. “and who knows what you've been doing all these months?” she wept. “who knows all the vile things you've been doing? and you're the father of my children--the father of my little girls--and who knows what vile things he's guilty of, all these months?” “i shouldn't let my imagination run away with me,” he answered. “i've been playing the flute in the orchestra of one of the theatres in london.” “ha!” she cried. “it's more than that. don't think i'm going to believe you. i know you, with your smooth-sounding lies. you're a liar, as you know. and i know you've been doing other things besides play a flute in an orchestra. you!--as if i don't know you. and then coming crawling back to me with your lies and your pretense. don't think i'm taken in.” “i should be sorry,” he said. “coming crawling back to me, and expecting to be forgiven,” she went on. “but no--i don't forgive--and i can't forgive--never--not as long as i live shall i forgive what you've done to me.” “you can wait till you're asked, anyhow,” he said. “and you can wait,” she said. “and you shall wait.” she took up her sewing, and stitched steadily, as if calmly. anyone glancing in would have imagined a quiet domestic hearth at that moment. he, too, feeling physically weak, remained silent, feeling his soul absent from the scene. again she suddenly burst into tears, weeping bitterly. “and the children,” she sobbed, rocking herself with grief and chagrin. “what have i been able to say to the children--what have i been able to tell them?” “what have you told them?” he asked coldly. “i told them you'd gone away to work,” she sobbed, laying her head on her arms on the table. “what else could i tell them? i couldn't tell them the vile truth about their father. i couldn't tell them how evil you are.” she sobbed and moaned. he wondered what exactly the vile truth would have been, had she _started_ to tell it. and he began to feel, coldly and cynically, that among all her distress there was a luxuriating in the violent emotions of the scene in hand, and the situation altogether. then again she became quiet, and picked up her sewing. she stitched quietly, wistfully, for some time. then she looked up at him--a long look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness. he turned his face aside. “you know you've been wrong to me, don't you?” she said, half wistfully, half menacing. he felt her wistfulness and her menace tearing him in his bowels and loins. “you do know, don't you?” she insisted, still with the wistful appeal, and the veiled threat. “you do, or you would answer,” she said. “you've still got enough that's right in you, for you to know.” she waited. he sat still, as if drawn by hot wires. then she slipped across to him, put her arms round him, sank on her knees at his side, and sank her face against his thigh. “say you know how wrong you are. say you know how cruel you've been to me,” she pleaded. but under her female pleading and appeal he felt the iron of her threat. “you do know it,” she murmured, looking up into his face as she crouched by his knee. “you do know it. i can see in your eyes that you know it. and why have you come back to me, if you don't know it! why have you come back to me? tell me!” her arms gave him a sharp, compulsory little clutch round the waist. “tell me! tell me!” she murmured, with all her appeal liquid in her throat. but him, it half overcame, and at the same time, horrified. he had a certain horror of her. the strange liquid sound of her appeal seemed to him like the swaying of a serpent which mesmerises the fated, fluttering, helpless bird. she clasped her arms round him, she drew him to her, she half roused his passion. at the same time she coldly horrified and repelled him. he had not the faintest feeling, at the moment, of his own wrong. but she wanted to win his own self-betrayal out of him. he could see himself as the fascinated victim, falling to this cajoling, awful woman, the wife of his bosom. but as well, he had a soul outside himself, which looked on the whole scene with cold revulsion, and which was as unchangeable as time. “no,” he said. “i don't feel wrong.” “you do!” she said, giving him a sharp, admonitory clutch. “you do. only you're silly, and obstinate, babyish and silly and obstinate. an obstinate little boy--you do feel wrong. and you are wrong. and you've got to say it.” but quietly he disengaged himself and got to his feet, his face pale and set, obstinate as she said. he put his hat on, and took his little bag. she watched him curiously, still crouching by his chair. “i'll go,” he said, putting his hand on the latch. suddenly she sprang to her feet and clutched him by the shirt-neck, her hand inside his soft collar, half strangling him. “you villain,” she said, and her face was transfigured with passion as he had never seen it before, horrible. “you villain!” she said thickly. “what have you come here for?” his soul went black as he looked at her. he broke her hand away from his shirt collar, bursting the stud-holes. she recoiled in silence. and in one black, unconscious movement he was gone, down the garden and over the fence and across the country, swallowed in a black unconsciousness. she, realising, sank upon the hearth-rug and lay there curled upon herself. she was defeated. but she, too, would never yield. she lay quite motionless for some time. then she got up, feeling the draught on the floor. she closed the door, and drew down the blind. then she looked at her wrist, which he had gripped, and which pained her. then she went to the mirror and looked for a long time at her white, strained, determined face. come life, come death, she, too would never yield. and she realised now that he would never yield. she was faint with weariness, and would be glad to get to bed and sleep. aaron meanwhile had walked across the country and was looking for a place to rest. he found a cornfield with a half-built stack, and sheaves in stook. ten to one some tramp would have found the stack. he threw a dozen sheaves together and lay down, looking at the stars in the september sky. he, too, would never yield. the illusion of love was gone for ever. love was a battle in which each party strove for the mastery of the other's soul. so far, man had yielded the mastery to woman. now he was fighting for it back again. and too late, for the woman would never yield. but whether woman yielded or not, he would keep the mastery of his own soul and conscience and actions. he would never yield himself up to her judgment again. he would hold himself forever beyond her jurisdiction. henceforth, life single, not life double. he looked at the sky, and thanked the universe for the blessedness of being alone in the universe. to be alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything. he thought of lottie, and knew how much more truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her. and he was thankful for the division between them. such scenes as the last were too horrible and unreal. as for future unions, too soon to think about it. let there be clean and pure division first, perfected singleness. that is the only way to final, living unison: through sheer, finished singleness. chapter xii. novara having no job for the autumn, aaron fidgetted in london. he played at some concerts and some private shows. he was one of an odd quartette, for example, which went to play to lady artemis hooper, when she lay in bed after her famous escapade of falling through the window of her taxi-cab. aaron had that curious knack, which belongs to some people, of getting into the swim without knowing he was doing it. lady artemis thought his flute lovely, and had him again to play for her. aaron looked at her and she at him. she, as she reclined there in bed in a sort of half-light, well made-up, smoking her cigarettes and talking in a rather raucous voice, making her slightly rasping witty comments to the other men in the room--of course there were other men, the audience--was a shock to the flautist. this was the bride of the moment! curious how raucous her voice sounded out of the cigarette smoke. yet he liked her--the reckless note of the modern, social freebooter. in himself was a touch of the same quality. “do you love playing?” she asked him. “yes,” he said, with that shadow of irony which seemed like a smile on his face. “live for it, so to speak,” she said. “i make my living by it,” he said. “but that's not really how you take it?” she said. he eyed her. she watched him over her cigarette. it was a personal moment. “i don't think about it,” he said. “i'm sure you don't. you wouldn't be so good if you did. you're awfully lucky, you know, to be able to pour yourself down your flute.” “you think i go down easy?” he laughed. “ah!” she replied, flicking her cigarette broadcast. “that's the point. what should you say, jimmy?” she turned to one of the men. he screwed his eyeglass nervously and stiffened himself to look at her. “i--i shouldn't like to say, off-hand,” came the small-voiced, self-conscious answer. and jimmy bridled himself and glanced at aaron. “do you find it a tight squeeze, then?” she said, turning to aaron once more. “no, i can't say that,” he answered. “what of me goes down goes down easy enough. it's what doesn't go down.” “and how much is that?” she asked, eying him. “a good bit, maybe,” he said. “slops over, so to speak,” she retorted sarcastically. “and which do you enjoy more, trickling down your flute or slopping over on to the lap of mother earth--of miss, more probably!” “depends,” he said. having got him a few steps too far upon the personal ground, she left him to get off by himself. so he found london got on his nerves. he felt it rubbed him the wrong way. he was flattered, of course, by his own success--and felt at the same time irritated by it. this state of mind was by no means acceptable. wherever he was he liked to be given, tacitly, the first place--or a place among the first. among the musical people he frequented, he found himself on a callow kind of equality with everybody, even the stars and aristocrats, at one moment, and a backstairs outsider the next. it was all just as the moment demanded. there was a certain excitement in slithering up and down the social scale, one minute chatting in a personal tete-a-tete with the most famous, or notorious, of the society beauties: and the next walking in the rain, with his flute in a bag, to his grubby lodging in bloomsbury. only the excitement roused all the savage sarcasm that lay at the bottom of his soul, and which burned there like an unhealthy bile. therefore he determined to clear out--to disappear. he had a letter from lilly, from novara. lilly was drifting about. aaron wrote to novara, and asked if he should come to italy, having no money to speak of. “come if you want to. bring your flute. and if you've no money, put on a good suit of clothes and a big black hat, and play outside the best cafe in any italian town, and you'll collect enough to get on with.” it was a sporting chance. aaron packed his bag and got a passport, and wrote to lilly to say he would join him, as invited, at sir william franks'. he hoped lilly's answer would arrive before he left london. but it didn't. therefore behold our hero alighting at novara, two hours late, on a wet, dark evening. he hoped lilly would be there: but nobody. with some slight dismay he faced the big, crowded station. the stream of people carried him automatically through the barrier, a porter having seized his bag, and volleyed various unintelligible questions at him. aaron understood not one word. so he just wandered after the blue blouse of the porter. the porter deposited the bag on the steps of the station front, fired off more questions and gesticulated into the half-illuminated space of darkness outside the station. aaron decided it meant a cab, so he nodded and said “yes.” but there were no cabs. so once more the blue-bloused porter slung the big bag and the little bag on the strap over his shoulder, and they plunged into the night, towards some lights and a sort of theatre place. one carriage stood there in the rain--yes, and it was free. “keb? yes--orright--sir. whe'to? where you go? sir william franks? yes, i know. long way go--go long way. sir william franks.” the cabman spattered his few words of english. aaron gave the porter an english shilling. the porter let the coin lie in the middle of his palm, as if it were a live beetle, and darted to the light of the carriage to examine the beast, exclaiming volubly. the cabman, wild with interest, peered down from the box into the palm of the porter, and carried on an impassioned dialogue. aaron stood with one foot on the step. “what you give--he? one franc?” asked the driver. “a shilling,” said aaron. “one sheeling. yes. i know that. one sheeling english”--and the driver went off into impassioned exclamations in torinese. the porter, still muttering and holding his hand as if the coin might sting him, filtered away. “orright. he know--sheeling--orright. english moneys, eh? yes, he know. you get up, sir.” and away went aaron, under the hood of the carriage, clattering down the wide darkness of novara, over a bridge apparently, past huge rain-wet statues, and through more rainy, half-lit streets. they stopped at last outside a sort of park wall with trees above. the big gates were just beyond. “sir william franks--there.” in a mixture of italian and english the driver told aaron to get down and ring the bell on the right. aaron got down and in the darkness was able to read the name on the plate. “how much?” said aaron to the driver. “ten franc,” said the fat driver. but it was his turn now to screw down and scrutinise the pink ten-shilling note. he waved it in his hand. “not good, eh? not good moneys?” “yes,” said aaron, rather indignantly. “good english money. ten shillings. better than ten francs, a good deal. better--better--” “good--you say? ten sheeling--” the driver muttered and muttered, as if dissatisfied. but as a matter of fact he stowed the note in his waistcoat pocket with considerable satisfaction, looked at aaron curiously, and drove away. aaron stood there in the dark outside the big gates, and wished himself somewhere else. however, he rang the bell. there was a huge barking of dogs on the other side. presently a light switched on, and a woman, followed by a man, appeared cautiously, in the half-opened doorway. “sir william franks?” said aaron. “si, signore.” and aaron stepped with his two bags inside the gate. huge dogs jumped round. he stood in the darkness under the trees at the foot of the park. the woman fastened the gate--aaron saw a door--and through an uncurtained window a man writing at a desk--rather like the clerk in an hotel office. he was going with his two bags to the open door, when the woman stopped him, and began talking to him in italian. it was evident he must not go on. so he put down the bags. the man stood a few yards away, watchfully. aaron looked down at the woman and tried to make out something of what she was saying, but could not. the dogs still barked spasmodically, drops fell from the tall, dark trees that rose overhead. “is mr. lilly here? mr. lilly?” he asked. “signor lillee. no, signore--” and off the woman went in italian. but it was evident lilly was not at the house. aaron wished more than ever he had not come, but had gone to an hotel. he made out that the woman was asking him for his name--“meester--? meester--?” she kept saying, with a note of interrogation. “sisson. mr. sisson,” said aaron, who was becoming impatient. and he found a visiting card to give her. she seemed appeased--said something about telephone--and left him standing. the rain had ceased, but big drops were shaken from the dark, high trees. through the uncurtained window he saw the man at the desk reach the telephone. there was a long pause. at length the woman came back and motioned to him to go up--up the drive which curved and disappeared under the dark trees. “go up there?” said aaron, pointing. that was evidently the intention. so he picked up his bags and strode forward, from out of the circle of electric light, up the curved drive in the darkness. it was a steep incline. he saw trees and the grass slopes. there was a tang of snow in the air. suddenly, up ahead, a brilliant light switched on. he continued uphill through the trees along the path, towards it, and at length, emerged at the foot of a great flight of steps, above which was a wide glass entrance, and an italian manservant in white gloves hovering as if on the brink. aaron emerged from the drive and climbed the steps. the manservant came down two steps and took the little bag. then he ushered aaron and the big bag into a large, pillared hall, with thick turkish carpet on the floor, and handsome appointments. it was spacious, comfortable and warm; but somewhat pretentious; rather like the imposing hall into which the heroine suddenly enters on the film. aaron dropped his heavy bag, with relief, and stood there, hat in hand, in his damp overcoat in the circle of light, looking vaguely at the yellow marble pillars, the gilded arches above, the shadowy distances and the great stairs. the butler disappeared--reappeared in another moment--and through an open doorway came the host. sir william was a small, clean old man with a thin, white beard and a courtly deportment, wearing a black velvet dinner jacket faced with purple silk. “how do you do, mr. sisson. you come straight from england?” sir william held out his hand courteously and benevolently, smiling an old man's smile of hospitality. “mr. lilly has gone away?” said aaron. “yes. he left us several days ago.” aaron hesitated. “you didn't expect me, then?” “yes, oh, yes. yes, oh, yes. very glad to see you--well, now, come in and have some dinner--” at this moment lady franks appeared--short, rather plump, but erect and definite, in a black silk dress and pearls round her throat. “how do you do? we are just at dinner,” she said. “you haven't eaten? no--well, then--would you like a bath now, or--?” it was evident the franks had dispensed much hospitality: much of it charitable. aaron felt it. “no,” he said. “i'll wash my hands and come straight in, shall i?” “yes, perhaps that would be better--” “i'm afraid i am a nuisance.” “not at all--beppe--” and she gave instructions in italian. another footman appeared, and took the big bag. aaron took the little one this time. they climbed the broad, turning stairs, crossed another handsome lounge, gilt and ormolu and yellow silk chairs and scattered copies of _the graphic_ or of _country life_, then they disappeared through a doorway into a much narrower flight of stairs. man can so rarely keep it up all the way, the grandeur. two black and white chamber-maids appeared. aaron found himself in a blue silk bedroom, and a footman unstrapping his bag, which he did not want unstrapped. next minute he was beckoned and allured by the italian servants down the corridor, and presented to the handsome, spacious bathroom, which was warm and creamy-coloured and glittering with massive silver and mysterious with up-to-date conveniences. there he was left to his own devices, and felt like a small boy finding out how it works. for even the mere turning on of the taps was a problem in silver mechanics. in spite of all the splendours and the elaborated convenience, he washed himself in good hot water, and wished he were having a bath, chiefly because of the wardrobe of marvellous turkish towels. then he clicked his way back to his bedroom, changed his shirt and combed his hair in the blue silk bedroom with the greuze picture, and felt a little dim and superficial surprise. he had fallen into country house parties before, but never into quite such a plushy sense of riches. he felt he ought to have his breath taken away. but alas, the cinema has taken our breath away so often, investing us in all the splendours of the splendidest american millionaire, or all the heroics and marvels of the somme or the north pole, that life has now no magnate richer than we, no hero nobler than we have been, on the film. _connu_! _connu_! everything life has to offer is known to us, couldn't be known better, from the film. so aaron tied his tie in front of a big venice mirror, and nothing was a surprise to him. he found a footman hovering to escort him to the dining-room--a real italian footman, uneasy because milady's dinner was unsettled. he entered the rather small dining-room, and saw the people at table. he was told various names: bowed to a young, slim woman with big blue eyes and dark hair like a photograph, then to a smaller rather colourless young woman with a large nose: then to a stout, rubicund, bald colonel, and to a tall, thin, oxford-looking major with a black patch over his eye--both these men in khaki: finally to a good-looking, well-nourished young man in a dinner-jacket, and he sat down to his soup, on his hostess' left hand. the colonel sat on her right, and was confidential. little sir william, with his hair and his beard white like spun glass, his manner very courteous and animated, the purple facings of his velvet jacket very impressive, sat at the far end of the table jesting with the ladies and showing his teeth in an old man's smile, a little bit affected, but pleasant, wishing everybody to be happy. aaron ate his soup, trying to catch up. milady's own confidential italian butler, fidelity itself, hovered quivering near, spiritually helping the newcomer to catch up. two nice little entree dishes, specially prepared for aaron to take the place of the bygone fish and vol au-vents of the proper dinner, testified to the courtesy and charity of his hostess. well, eating rapidly, he had more or less caught up by the time the sweets came. so he swallowed a glass of wine and looked round. his hostess with her pearls, and her diamond star in her grey hair, was speaking of lilly and then of music to him. “i hear you are a musician. that's what i should have been if i had had my way.” “what instrument?” asked aaron. “oh, the piano. yours is the flute, mr. lilly says. i think the flute can be so attractive. but i feel, of course you have more range with the piano. i love the piano--and orchestra.” at that moment, the colonel and hostess-duties distracted her. but she came back in snatches. she was a woman who reminded him a little of queen victoria; so assured in her own room, a large part of her attention always given to the successful issue of her duties, the remainder at the disposal of her guests. it was an old-fashioned, not unpleasant feeling: like retrospect. but she had beautiful, big, smooth emeralds and sapphires on her fingers. money! what a curious thing it is! aaron noticed the deference of all the guests at table: a touch of obsequiousness: before the money! and the host and hostess accepted the deference, nay, expected it, as their due. yet both sir william and lady franks knew that it was only money and success. they had both a certain afterthought, knowing dimly that the game was but a game, and that they were the helpless leaders in the game. they had a certain basic ordinariness which prevented their making any great hits, and which kept them disillusioned all the while. they remembered their poor and insignificant days. “and i hear you were playing in the orchestra at covent garden. we came back from london last week. i enjoyed beecham's operas so much.” “which do you like best?” said aaron. “oh, the russian. i think _ivan_. it is such fine music.” “i find _ivan_ artificial.” “do you? oh, i don't think so. no, i don't think you can say that.” aaron wondered at her assurance. she seemed to put him just a tiny bit in his place, even in an opinion on music. money gave her that right, too. curious--the only authority left. and he deferred to her opinion: that is, to her money. he did it almost deliberately. yes--what did he believe in, besides money? what does any man? he looked at the black patch over the major's eye. what had he given his eye for?--the nation's money. well, and very necessary, too; otherwise we might be where the wretched austrians are. instead of which--how smooth his hostess' sapphires! “of course i myself prefer moussorgsky,” said aaron. “i think he is a greater artist. but perhaps it is just personal preference.” “yes. _boris_ is wonderful. oh, some of the scenes in _boris_!” “and even more _kovantchina_,” said aaron. “i wish we could go back to melody pure and simple. yet i find _kovantchina_, which is all mass music practically, gives me more satisfaction than any other opera.” “do you really? i shouldn't say so: oh, no--but you can't mean that you would like all music to go back to melody pure and simple! just a flute--just a pipe! oh, mr. sisson, you are bigoted for your instrument. i just live in harmony--chords, chords!” she struck imaginary chords on the white damask, and her sapphires swam blue. but at the same time she was watching to see if sir william had still got beside his plate the white medicine _cachet_ which he must swallow at every meal. because if so, she must remind him to swallow it. however, at that very moment, he put it on his tongue. so that she could turn her attention again to aaron and the imaginary chord on the white damask; the thing she just lived in. but the rubicund bald colonel, more rubicund after wine, most rubicund now the marsala was going, snatched her attention with a burly homage to her femininity, and shared his fear with her with a boyish gallantry. when the women had gone up, sir william came near and put his hand on aaron's shoulder. it was evident the charm was beginning to work. sir william was a self-made man, and not in the least a snob. he liked the fundamental ordinariness in aaron, the commonness of the common man. “well now, mr. sisson, we are very glad to see you! very glad, indeed. i count mr. lilly one of the most interesting men it has ever been my good fortune to know. and so for your own sake, and for mr. lilly's sake, we are very glad to see you. arthur, my boy, give mr. sisson some marsala--and take some yourself.” “thank you, sir,” said the well-nourished young man in nice evening clothes. “you'll take another glass yourself, sir?” “yes, i will, i will. i will drink a glass with mr. sisson. major, where are you wandering off to? come and take a glass with us, my boy.” “thanks, sir william,” drawled the young major with the black patch. “now, colonel--i hope you are in good health and spirits.” “never better, sir william, never better.” “i'm very glad to hear it; very glad indeed. try my marsala--i think it is quite good. port is beyond us for the moment--for the moment--” and the old man sipped his brown wine, and smiled again. he made quite a handsome picture: but he was frail. “and where are you bound, mr. sisson? towards rome?” “i came to meet lilly,” said aaron. “ah! but lilly has fled over the borders by this time. never was such a man for crossing frontiers. wonderful person, to be able to do it.” “where has he gone?” said aaron. “i think to geneva for the moment. but he certainly talked of venice. you yourself have no definite goal?” “no.” “ah! you have not come to italy to practice your art?” “i shall have to practice it: or else--no, i haven't come for that.” “ah, you will have to practice it. ah, yes! we are all under the necessity to eat. and you have a family in england? am i not right?” “quite. i've got a family depending on me.” “yes, then you must practice your art: you must practice your art. well--shall we join the ladies? coffee will no doubt be served.” “will you take my arm, sir?” said the well-nourished arthur. “thank you, thank you,” the old man motioned him away. so they went upstairs to where the three women were sitting in the library round the fire, chattering not very interested. the entry of sir william at once made a stir. the girl in white, with the biggish nose, fluttered round him. she was arthur's wife. the girl in soft blue spread herself on the couch: she was the young major's wife, and she had a blue band round her hair. the colonel hovered stout and fidgetty round lady franks and the liqueur stand. he and the major were both in khaki--belonging to the service on duty in italy still. coffee appeared--and sir william doled out _creme de menthe_. there was no conversation--only tedious words. the little party was just commonplace and dull--boring. yet sir william, the self-made man, was a study. and the young, oxford-like major, with his english diffidence and his one dark, pensive, baffled eye was only waiting to be earnest, poor devil. the girl in white had been a sort of companion to lady franks, so that arthur was more or less a son-in-law. in this capacity, he acted. aaron strayed round uneasily looking at the books, bought but not read, and at the big pictures above. it was arthur who fetched out the little boxes containing the orders conferred on sir william for his war-work: and perhaps more, for the many thousands of pounds he had spent on his war-work. there were three orders: one british, and quite important, a large silver star for the breast: one italian, smaller, and silver and gold; and one from the state of ruritania, in silver and red-and-green enamel, smaller than the others. “come now, william,” said lady franks, “you must try them all on. you must try them all on together, and let us see how you look.” the little, frail old man, with his strange old man's blue eyes and his old man's perpetual laugh, swelled out his chest and said: “what, am i to appear in all my vanities?” and he laughed shortly. “of course you are. we want to see you,” said the white girl. “indeed we do! we shouldn't mind all appearing in such vanities--what, lady franks!” boomed the colonel. “i should think not,” replied his hostess. “when a man has honours conferred on him, it shows a poor spirit if he isn't proud of them.” “of course i am proud of them!” said sir william. “well then, come and have them pinned on. i think it's wonderful to have got so much in one life-time--wonderful,” said lady franks. “oh, sir william is a wonderful man,” said the colonel. “well--we won't say so before him. but let us look at him in his orders.” arthur, always ready on these occasions, had taken the large and shining british star from its box, and drew near to sir william, who stood swelling his chest, pleased, proud, and a little wistful. “this one first, sir,” said arthur. sir william stood very still, half tremulous, like a man undergoing an operation. “and it goes just here--the level of the heart. this is where it goes.” and carefully he pinned the large, radiating ornament on the black velvet dinner-jacket of the old man. “that is the first--and very becoming,” said lady franks. “oh, very becoming! very becoming!” said the tall wife of the major--she was a handsome young woman of the tall, frail type. “do you think so, my dear?” said the old man, with his eternal smile: the curious smile of old people when they are dead. “not only becoming, sir,” said the major, bending his tall, slim figure forwards. “but a reassuring sign that a nation knows how to distinguish her valuable men.” “quite!” said lady franks. “i think it is a very great honour to have got it. the king was most gracious, too-- now the other. that goes beside it--the italian--” sir william stood there undergoing the operation of the pinning-on. the italian star being somewhat smaller than the british, there was a slight question as to where exactly it should be placed. however, arthur decided it: and the old man stood before the company with his two stars on his breast. “and now the ruritanian,” said lady franks eagerly. “that doesn't go on the same level with the others, lady franks,” said arthur. “that goes much lower down--about here.” “are you sure?” said lady franks. “doesn't it go more here?” “no no, no no, not at all. here! isn't it so, sybil?” “yes, i think so,” said sybil. old sir william stood quite silent, his breast prepared, peering over the facings of his coat to see where the star was going. the colonel was called in, and though he knew nothing about it, he agreed with arthur, who apparently did know something. so the star was pinned quite low down. sir william, peeping down, exclaimed: “well, that is most curious now! i wear an order over the pit of my stomach! i think that is very curious: a curious place to wear an order.” “stand up! stand up and let us look!” said lady franks. “there now, isn't it handsome? and isn't it a great deal of honour for one man? could he have expected so much, in one life-time? i call it wonderful. come and look at yourself, dear”--and she led him to a mirror. “what's more, all thoroughly deserved,” said arthur. “i should think so,” said the colonel, fidgetting. “ah, yes, nobody has deserved them better,” cooed sybil. “nor on more humane and generous grounds,” said the major, _sotto voce._ “the effort to save life, indeed,” returned the major's young wife: “splendid!” sir william stood naively before the mirror and looked at his three stars on his black velvet dinner-jacket. “almost directly over the pit of my stomach,” he said. “i hope that is not a decoration for my greedy appetite.” and he laughed at the young women. “i assure you it is in position, sir,” said arthur. “absolutely correct. i will read it out to you later.” “aren't you satisfied? aren't you a proud man! isn't it wonderful?” said lady franks. “why, what more could a man want from life? he could never expect so much.” “yes, my dear. i am a proud man. three countries have honoured me--” there was a little, breathless pause. “and not more than they ought to have done,” said sybil. “well! well! i shall have my head turned. let me return to my own humble self. i am too much in the stars at the moment.” sir william turned to arthur to have his decorations removed. aaron, standing in the background, felt the whole scene strange, childish, a little touching. and lady franks was so obviously trying to _console_ her husband: to console the frail, excitable old man with his honours. but why console him? did he need consolation? and did she? it was evident that only the hard-money woman in her put any price on the decorations. aaron came forward and examined the orders, one after the other. just metal playthings of curious shiny silver and gilt and enamel. heavy the british one--but only like some heavy buckle, a piece of metal merely when one turned it over. somebody dropped the italian cross, and there was a moment of horror. but the lump of metal took no hurt. queer to see the things stowed in their boxes again. aaron had always imagined these mysterious decorations as shining by nature on the breasts of heroes. pinned-on pieces of metal were a considerable come-down. the orders were put away, the party sat round the fire in the comfortable library, the men sipping more _creme de menthe_, since nothing else offered, and the couple of hours in front promising the tedium of small-talk of tedious people who had really nothing to say and no particular originality in saying it. aaron, however, had reckoned without his host. sir william sat upright in his chair, with all the determination of a frail old man who insists on being level with the young. the new guest sat in a lower chair, smoking, that curious glimmer on his face which made him so attractive, and which only meant that he was looking on the whole scene from the outside, as it were, from beyond a fence. sir william came almost directly to the attack. “and so, mr. sisson, you have no definite purpose in coming to italy?” “no, none,” said aaron. “i wanted to join lilly.” “but when you had joined him--?” “oh, nothing--stay here a time, in this country, if i could earn my keep.” “ah!--earn your keep? so you hope to earn your keep here? may i ask how?” “by my flute.” “italy is a poor country.” “i don't want much.” “you have a family to provide for.” “they are provided for--for a couple of years.” “oh, indeed! is that so?” the old man got out of aaron the detailed account of his circumstances--how he had left so much money to be paid over to his wife, and had received only a small amount for himself. “i see you are like lilly--you trust to providence,” said sir william. “providence or fate,” said aaron. “lilly calls it providence,” said sir william. “for my own part, i always advise providence plus a banking account. i have every belief in providence, plus a banking account. providence and no banking account i have observed to be almost invariably fatal. lilly and i have argued it. he believes in casting his bread upon the waters. i sincerely hope he won't have to cast himself after his bread, one of these days. providence with a banking account. believe in providence once you have secured enough to live on. i should consider it disastrous to believe in providence before. one can never be sure of providence.” “what can you be sure of, then?” said aaron. “well, in moderation, i can believe in a little hard cash, and in my own ability to earn a little hard cash.” “perhaps lilly believes in his own ability, too.” “no. not so. because he will never directly work to earn money. he works--and works quite well, i am told: but only as the spirit moves him, and never with any eye to the market. now i call that tempting providence, myself. the spirit may move him in quite an opposite direction to the market--then where is lilly? i have put it to him more than once.” “the spirit generally does move him dead against the market,” said aaron. “but he manages to scrape along.” “in a state of jeopardy: all the time in a state of jeopardy,” said the old man. “his whole existence, and that of his wife, is completely precarious. i found, in my youth, the spirit moved me to various things which would have left me and my wife starving. so i realised in time, this was no good. i took my spirit in hand, therefore, and made him pull the cart which mankind is riding in. i harnessed him to the work of productive labour. and so he brought me my reward.” “yes,” said aaron. “but every man according to his belief.” “i don't see,” said sir william, “how a man can believe in a providence unless he sets himself definitely to the work of earning his daily bread, and making provision for future needs. that's what providence means to me--making provision for oneself and one's family. now, mr. lilly--and you yourself--you say you believe in a providence that does not compel you to earn your daily bread, and make provision. i confess myself i cannot see it: and lilly has never been able to convince me.” “i don't believe in a kind-hearted providence,” said aaron, “and i don't believe lilly does. but i believe in chance. i believe, if i go my own way, without tying my nose to a job, chance will always throw something in my way: enough to get along with.” “but on what do you base such a very unwarrantable belief?” “i just feel like that.” “and if you are ever quite without success--and nothing to fall back on?” “i can work at something.” “in case of illness, for example?” “i can go to a hospital--or die.” “dear me! however, you are more logical than lilly. he seems to believe that he has the invisible--call it providence if you will--on his side, and that this invisible will never leave him in the lurch, or let him down, so long as he sticks to his own side of the bargain, and never works for his own ends. i don't quite see how he works. certainly he seems to me a man who squanders a great deal of talent unworthily. yet for some reason or other he calls this true, genuine activity, and has a contempt for actual work by which a man makes provision for his years and for his family. in the end, he will have to fall back on charity. but when i say so, he denies it, and says that in the end we, the men who work and make provision, will have to fall back on him. well, all i can say is, that so far he is in far greater danger of having to fall back on me, than i on him.” the old man sat back in his chair with a little laugh of triumph. but it smote almost devilishly on aaron's ears, and for the first time in his life he felt that there existed a necessity for taking sides. “i don't suppose he will do much falling back,” he said. “well, he is young yet. you are both young. you are squandering your youth. i am an old man, and i see the end.” “what end, sir william?” “charity--and poverty--and some not very congenial 'job,' as you call it, to put bread in your mouth. no, no, i would not like to trust myself to your providence, or to your chance. though i admit your chance is a sounder proposition than lilly's providence. you speculate with your life and your talent. i admit the nature which is a born speculator. after all, with your flute, you will speculate in other people's taste for luxury, as a man may speculate in theatres or _trains de luxe_. you are the speculator. that may be your way of wisdom. but lilly does not even speculate. i cannot see his point. i cannot see his point. i cannot see his point. yet i have the greatest admiration for his mentality.” the old man had fired up during this conversation--and all the others in the room had gone silent. lady franks was palpably uneasy. she alone knew how frail the old man was--frailer by far than his years. she alone knew what fear of his own age, what fear of death haunted him now: fear of his own non-existence. his own old age was an agony to him; worse than an agony, a horror. he wanted to be young--to live, to live. and he was old, he was breaking up. the glistening youth of aaron, the impetuousness of lilly fascinated him. and both these men seemed calmly to contradict his own wealth and honours. lady franks tried to turn off the conversation to the trickles of normal chit-chat. the colonel was horribly bored--so were all the women--arthur was indifferent. only the young major was implicated, troubled in his earnest and philosophic spirit. “what i can't see,” he said, “is the place that others have in your scheme.” “is isn't a scheme,” said aaron. “well then, your way of life. isn't it pretty selfish, to marry a woman and then expect her to live on very little indeed, and that always precarious, just because you happen to believe in providence or in chance: which i think worse? what i don't see is where others come in. what would the world be like if everybody lived that way?” “other people can please themselves,” said aaron. “no, they can't--because you take first choice, it seems to me. supposing your wife--or lilly's wife--asks for security and for provision, as sir william says. surely she has a right to it.” “if i've no right to it myself--and i have no right to it, if i don't want it--then what right has she?” “every right, i should say. all the more since you are improvident.” “then she must manage her rights for herself. it's no good her foisting her rights on to me.” “isn't that pure selfishness?” “it may be. i shall send my wife money as long as i've money to send.” “and supposing you have none?” “then i can't send it--and she must look out for herself.” “i call that almost criminal selfishness.” “i can't help it.” the conversation with the young major broke off. “it is certainly a good thing for society that men like you and mr. lilly are not common,” said sir william, laughing. “becoming commoner every day, you'll find,” interjaculated the colonel. “indeed! indeed! well. may we ask you another question, mr. sisson? i hope you don't object to our catechism?” “no. nor your judgment afterwards,” said aaron, grinning. “then upon what grounds did you abandon your family? i know it is a tender subject. but lilly spoke of it to us, and as far i could see....” “there were no grounds,” said aaron. “no, there weren't i just left them.” “mere caprice?” “if it's a caprice to be begotten--and a caprice to be born--and a caprice to die--then that was a caprice, for it was the same.” “like birth or death? i don't follow.” “it happened to me: as birth happened to me once--and death will happen. it was a sort of death, too: or a sort of birth. but as undeniable as either. and without any more grounds.” the old, tremulous man, and the young man were watching one another. “a natural event,” said sir william. “a natural event,” said aaron. “not that you loved any other woman?” “god save me from it.” “you just left off loving?” “not even that. i went away.” “what from?” “from it all.” “from the woman in particular?” “oh, yes. yes. yes, that.” “and you couldn't go back?” aaron shook his head. “yet you can give no reasons?” “not any reasons that would be any good. it wasn't a question of reasons. it was a question of her and me and what must be. what makes a child be born out of its mother to the pain and trouble of both of them? i don't know.” “but that is a natural process.” “so is this--or nothing.” “no,” interposed the major. “because birth is a universal process--and yours is a specific, almost unique event.” “well, unique or not, it so came about. i didn't ever leave off loving her--not as far as i know. i left her as i shall leave the earth when i die--because it has to be.” “do you know what i think it is, mr. sisson?” put in lady franks. “i think you are just in a wicked state of mind: just that. mr. lilly, too. and you must be very careful, or some great misfortune will happen to you.” “it may,” said aaron. “and it will, mark my word, it will.” “you almost wish it might, as a judgment on me,” smiled aaron. “oh, no, indeed. i should only be too sorry. but i feel it will, unless you are careful.” “i'll be careful, then.” “yes, and you can't be too careful.” “you make me frightened.” “i would like to make you very frightened indeed, so that you went back humbly to your wife and family.” “it would have to be a big fright then, i assure you.” “ah, you are really heartless. it makes me angry.” she turned angrily aside. “well, well! well, well! life! life! young men are a new thing to me!” said sir william, shaking his head. “well, well! what do you say to whiskey and soda, colonel?” “why, delighted, sir william,” said the colonel, bouncing up. “a night-cap, and then we retire,” said lady franks. aaron sat thinking. he knew sir william liked him: and that lady franks didn't. one day he might have to seek help from sir william. so he had better placate milady. wrinkling the fine, half mischievous smile on his face, and trading on his charm, he turned to his hostess. “you wouldn't mind, lady franks, if i said nasty things about my wife and found a lot of fault with her. what makes you angry is that i know it is not a bit more her fault than mine, that we come apart. it can't be helped.” “oh, yes, indeed. i disapprove of your way of looking at things altogether. it seems to me altogether cold and unmanly and inhuman. thank goodness my experience of a man has been different.” “we can't all be alike, can we? and if i don't choose to let you see me crying, that doesn't prove i've never had a bad half hour, does it? i've had many--ay, and a many.” “then why are you so wrong, so wrong in your behaviour?” “i suppose i've got to have my bout out: and when it's out, i can alter.” “then i hope you've almost had your bout out,” she said. “so do i,” said he, with a half-repentant, half-depressed look on his attractive face. the corners of his mouth grimaced slightly under his moustache. “the best thing you can do is to go straight back to england, and to her.” “perhaps i'd better ask her if she wants me, first,” he said drily. “yes, you might do that, too.” and lady franks felt she was quite getting on with her work of reform, and the restoring of woman to her natural throne. best not go too fast, either. “say when,” shouted the colonel, who was manipulating the syphon. “when,” said aaron. the men stood up to their drinks. “will you be leaving in the morning, mr. sisson?” asked lady franks. “may i stay till monday morning?” said aaron. they were at saturday evening. “certainly. and you will take breakfast in your room: we all do. at what time? half past eight?” “thank you very much.” “then at half past eight the man will bring it in. goodnight.” once more in his blue silk bedroom, aaron grimaced to himself and stood in the middle of the room grimacing. his hostess' admonitions were like vitriol in his ears. he looked out of the window. through the darkness of trees, the lights of a city below. italy! the air was cold with snow. he came back into his soft, warm room. luxurious it was. and luxurious the deep, warm bed. he was still asleep when the man came noiselessly in with the tray: and it was morning. aaron woke and sat up. he felt that the deep, warm bed, and the soft, warm room had made him sleep too well: robbed him of his night, like a narcotic. he preferred to be more uncomfortable and more aware of the flight of the dark hours. it seemed numbing. the footman in his grey house-jacket was neat and italian and sympathising. he gave good-morning in italian--then softly arranged the little table by the bedside, and put out the toast and coffee and butter and boiled egg and honey, with silver and delicate china. aaron watched the soft, catlike motions of the man. the dark eyes glanced once at the blond man, leaning on his elbow on the pillow. aaron's face had that watchful, half-amused expression. the man said something in italian. aaron shook his head, laughed, and said: “tell me in english.” the man went softly to the window curtains, and motioned them with his hand. “yes, do,” said aaron. so the man drew the buff-coloured silk curtains: and aaron, sitting in bed, could see away beyond red roofs of a town, and in the further heaven great snowy mountains. “the alps,” he said in surprise. “gli alpi--si, signore.” the man bowed, gathered up aaron's clothes, and silently retired. aaron watched through the window. it was a frosty morning at the end of september, with a clear blue morning-sky, alpine, and the watchful, snow-streaked mountain tops bunched in the distance, as if waiting. there they were, hovering round, circling, waiting. they reminded him of marvellous striped sky-panthers circling round a great camp: the red-roofed city. aaron looked, and looked again. in the near distance, under the house elm-tree tops were yellowing. he felt himself changing inside his skin. so he turned away to his coffee and eggs. a little silver egg-cup with a curious little frill round it: honey in a frail, iridescent glass bowl, gold-iridescent: the charm of delicate and fine things. he smiled half mockingly to himself. two instincts played in him: the one, an instinct for fine, delicate things: he had attractive hands; the other, an inclination to throw the dainty little table with all its niceties out of the window. it evoked a sort of devil in him. he took his bath: the man had brought back his things: he dressed and went downstairs. no one in the lounge: he went down to the ground floor: no one in the big hall with its pillars of yellow marble and its gold arches, its enormous, dark, bluey-red carpet. he stood before the great glass doors. some red flowers still were blooming in the tubs, on the steps, handsome: and beautiful chrysanthemums in the wide portico. beyond, yellow leaves were already falling on the green grass and the neat drive. everywhere was silent and empty. he climbed the wide stairs, sat in the long, upper lounge where the papers were. he wanted his hat and coat, and did not know where to find them. the windows looked on to a terraced garden, the hill rising steeply behind the house. he wanted to go out. so he opened more doors, and in a long drawing-room came upon five or six manservants, all in the grey house-jackets, all clean-shaven, neat, with neat black hair, all with dusters or brushes or feather brooms, and all frolicking, chattering, playing like so many monkeys. they were all of the same neat, smallish size. they were all laughing. they rolled back a great rug as if it were some football game, one flew at the curtains. and they merely looked at aaron and went on chattering, and laughing and dusting. surprised, and feeling that he trespassed, he stood at the window a moment looking out. the noise went on behind him. so he turned, smiling, and asked for his hat, pointing to his head. they knew at once what he wanted. one of the fellows beckoned him away, down to the hall and to the long cupboard place where hats and coats and sticks were hung. there was his hat; he put it on, while the man chattered to him pleasantly and unintelligibly, and opened for him the back door, into the garden. chapter xiii. wie es ihnen gefaellt the fresh morning air comes startling after a central heated house. so aaron found it. he felt himself dashing up the steps into the garden like a bird dashing out of a trap where it has been caught: that warm and luxurious house. heaven bless us, we who want to save civilisation. we had better make up our minds what of it we want to save. the kernel may be all well and good. but there is precious little kernel, to a lot of woolly stuffing and poisonous rind. the gardens to sir william's place were not imposing, and still rather war-neglected. but the pools of water lay smooth in the bright air, the flowers showed their colour beside the walks. many birds dashed about, rather bewildered, having crossed the alps in their migration southwards. aaron noted with gratification a certain big magnificence, a certain reckless powerfulness in the still-blossoming, harsh-coloured, autumn flowers. distinct satisfaction he derived from it. he wandered upwards, up the succeeding flights of step; till he came to the upper rough hedge, and saw the wild copse on the hill-crest just above. passing through a space in the hedge, he climbed the steep last bit of sir william's lane. it was a little vineyard, with small vines and yellowing leaves. everywhere the place looked neglected--but as if man had just begun to tackle it once more. at the very top, by the wild hedge where spindle-berries hung pink, seats were placed, and from here the view was very beautiful. the hill dropped steep beneath him. a river wound on the near side of the city, crossed by a white bridge. the city lay close clustered, ruddy on the plains, glittering in the clear air with its flat roofs and domes and square towers, strangely naked-seeming in the clear, clean air. and massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger-like alps. tigers prowling between the north and the south. and this beautiful city lying nearest exposed. the snow-wind brushed her this morning like the icy whiskers of a tiger. and clear in the light lay novara, wide, fearless, violent novara. beautiful the perfect air, the perfect and unblemished alp-sky. and like the first southern flower, novara. aaron sat watching in silence. only the uneasy birds rustled. he watched the city and the winding river, the bridges, and the imminent alps. he was on the south side. on the other side of the time barrier. his old, sleepy english nature was startled in its sleep. he felt like a man who knows it is time to wake up, and who doesn't want to wake up, to face the responsibility of another sort of day. to open his darkest eyes and wake up to a new responsibility. wake up and enter on the responsibility of a new self in himself. ach, the horror of responsibility! he had all his life slept and shelved the burden. and he wanted to go on sleeping. it was so hateful to have to get a new grip on his own bowels, a new hard recklessness into his heart, a new and responsible consciousness into his mind and soul. he felt some finger prodding, prodding, prodding him awake out of the sleep of pathos and tragedy and spasmodic passion, and he wriggled, unwilling, oh, most unwilling to undertake the new business. in fact he ran away again. he gave a last look at the town and its white-fanged mountains, and descended through the garden, round the way of the kitchen garden and garage and stables and pecking chickens, back to the house again. in the hall still no one. he went upstairs to the long lounge. there sat the rubicund, bald, boy-like colonel reading the _graphic_. aaron sat down opposite him, and made a feeble attempt at conversation. but the colonel wasn't having any. it was evident he didn't care for the fellow--mr. aaron, that is. aaron therefore dried up, and began to sit him out, with the aid of _the queen_. came a servant, however, and said that the signor colonello was called up from the hospital, on the telephone. the colonel once departed, aaron fled again, this time out of the front doors, and down the steep little park to the gates. huge dogs and little dogs came bounding forward. out of the lodge came the woman with the keys, smiling very pleasantly this morning. so, he was in the street. the wide road led him inevitably to the big bridge, with the violent, physical stone statue-groups. men and women were moving about, and he noticed for the first time the littleness and the momentaneousness of the italians in the street. perhaps it was the wideness of the bridge and the subsequent big, open boulevard. but there it was: the people seemed little, upright brisk figures moving in a certain isolation, like tiny figures on a big stage. and he felt himself moving in the space between. all the northern cosiness gone. he was set down with a space round him. little trams flitted down the boulevard in the bright, sweet light. the barbers' shops were all busy, half the novarese at that moment ambushed in lather, full in the public gaze. a shave is nothing if not a public act, in the south. at the little outdoor tables of the cafes a very few drinkers sat before empty coffee-cups. most of the shops were shut. it was too soon after the war for life to be flowing very fast. the feeling of emptiness, of neglect, of lack of supplies was evident everywhere. aaron strolled on, surprised himself at his gallant feeling of liberty: a feeling of bravado and almost swaggering carelessness which is italy's best gift to an englishman. he had crossed the dividing line, and the values of life, though ostensibly and verbally the same, were dynamically different. alas, however, the verbal and the ostensible, the accursed mechanical ideal gains day by day over the spontaneous life-dynamic, so that italy becomes as idea-bound and as automatic as england: just a business proposition. coming to the station, he went inside. there he saw a money-changing window which was open, so he planked down a five-pound note and got two-hundred-and-ten lire. here was a start. at a bookstall he saw a man buy a big timetable with a large railway map in it. he immediately bought the same. then he retired to a corner to get his whereabouts. in the morning he must move: where? he looked on the map. the map seemed to offer two alternatives, milan and genoa. he chose milan, because of its musical associations and its cathedral. milano then. strolling and still strolling, he found the boards announcing arrivals and departures. as far as he could make out, the train for milan left at : in the morning. so much achieved, he left the big desolating caravanserai of the station. soldiers were camped in every corner, lying in heaps asleep. in their grey-green uniform, he was surprised at their sturdy limbs and uniformly short stature. for the first time, he saw the cock-feathers of the bersaglieri. there seemed a new life-quality everywhere. many worlds, not one world. but alas, the one world triumphing more and more over the many worlds, the big oneness swallowing up the many small diversities in its insatiable gnawing appetite, leaving a dreary sameness throughout the world, that means at last complete sterility. aaron, however, was too new to the strangeness, he had no eye for the horrible sameness that was spreading like a disease over italy from england and the north. he plunged into the space in front of the station, and took a new, wide boulevard. to his surprise he ran towards a big and over-animated statue that stood resolutely with its back to the magnificent snow-domes of the wild alps. wolves in the street could not have startled him more than those magnificent fierce-gleaming mountains of snow at the street-end, beyond the statue. he stood and wondered, and never thought to look who the gentleman was. then he turned right round, and began to walk home. luncheon was at one o'clock. it was half-past twelve when he rang at the lodge gates. he climbed through the leaves of the little park, on a side-path, rather reluctantly towards the house. in the hall lady franks was discussing with arthur a fat pekinese who did not seem very well. she was sure the servants did not obey her orders concerning the pekinese bitch. arthur, who was more than indifferent, assured her they did. but she seemed to think that the whole of the male human race was in league against the miserable specimen of a she-dog. she almost cried, thinking her queenie _might_ by some chance meet with, perhaps, a harsh word or look. queenie apparently fattened on the secret detestation of the male human species. “i can't bear to think that a dumb creature might be ill-treated,” she said to aaron. “thank goodness the italians are better than they used to be.” “are they better than they used to be?” “oh, much. they have learnt it from us.” she then enquired if her guest had slept, and if he were rested from his journey. aaron, into whose face the faint snow-wind and the sun had brought a glow, replied that he had slept well and enjoyed the morning, thank you. whereupon lady franks knitted her brows and said sir william had had such a bad night. he had not been able to sleep, and had got up and walked about the room. the least excitement, and she dreaded a break-down. he must have absolute calm and restfulness. “there's one for you and your jawing last night, aaron, my boy!” said our hero to himself. “i thought sir william seemed so full of life and energy,” he said, aloud. “ah, did you! no, he wants to be. but he can't do it. he's very much upset this morning. i have been very anxious about him.” “i am sorry to hear that.” lady franks departed to some duty. aaron sat alone before the fire. it was a huge fireplace, like a dark chamber shut in by tall, finely-wrought iron gates. behind these iron gates of curly iron the logs burned and flickered like leopards slumbering and lifting their heads within their cage. aaron wondered who was the keeper of the savage element, who it was that would open the iron grille and throw on another log, like meat to the lions. to be sure the fire was only to be looked at: like wild beasts in the zoo. for the house was warm from roof to floor. it was strange to see the blue air of sunlight outside, the yellow-edged leaves falling in the wind, the red flowers shaking. the gong sounded softly through the house. the colonel came in heartily from the garden, but did not speak to aaron. the major and his wife came pallid down the stairs. lady franks appeared, talking domestic-secretarial business with the wife of arthur. arthur, well-nourished and half at home, called down the stairs. and then sir william descended, old and frail now in the morning, shaken: still he approached aaron heartily, and asked him how he did, and how he had spent his morning. the old man who had made a fortune: how he expected homage: and how he got it! homage, like most things, is just a convention and a social trick. aaron found himself paying homage, too, to the old man who had made a fortune. but also, exacting a certain deference in return, from the old man who had made a fortune. getting it, too. on what grounds? youth, maybe. but mostly, scorn for fortunes and fortune-making. did he scorn fortunes and fortune-making? not he, otherwise whence this homage for the old man with much money? aaron, like everybody else, was rather paralysed by a million sterling, personified in one old man. paralysed, fascinated, overcome. all those three. only having no final control over his own make-up, he could not drive himself into the money-making or even into the money-having habit. and he had just wit enough to threaten sir william's golden king with his own ivory queen and knights of wilful life. and sir william quaked. “well, and how have you spent your morning?” asked the host. “i went first to look at the garden.” “ah, not much to see now. they have been beautiful with flowers, once. but for two and a half years the house has been a hospital for officers--and even tents in the park and garden--as many as two hundred wounded and sick at a time. we are only just returning to civil life. and flowers need time. yes--yes--british officers--for two and a half years. but did you go up, now, to the belvedere?” “to the top--where the vines are? i never expected the mountains.” “you never expected the mountains? pray, why not? they are always there!” “but i was never there before. i never knew they were there, round the town. i didn't expect it like that.” “ah! so you found our city impressive?” “very! ah, very! a new world to me. i feel i've come out of myself.” “yes, it is a wonderful sight--a wonderful sight-- but you have not been into the town?” “yes. i saw the men being shaved, and all the soldiers at the station: and a statue, and mountains behind it. oh, i've had a full morning.” “a full morning! that is good, that is good!” the old man looked again at the younger man, and seemed to get life from him, to live in him vicariously. “come,” said the hostess. “luncheon.” aaron sat again on his hostess' left hand. the colonel was more affable now it was meal-time. sir william was again in a good humour, chaffing the young ladies with an old man's gallantry. but now he insisted on drawing aaron into the play. and aaron did not want to be drawn. he did not one bit want to chaffer gallantries with the young women. between him and sir william there was a curious rivalry--unconscious on both sides. the old knight had devoted an energetic, adventurous, almost an artistic nature to the making of his fortune and the developing of later philanthropies. he had no children. aaron was devoting a similar nature to anything but fortune-making and philanthropy. the one held life to be a storing-up of produce and a conservation of energy: the other held life to be a sheer spending of energy and a storing-up of nothing but experience. there they were, in opposition, the old man and the young. sir william kept calling aaron into the chaffer at the other end of the table: and aaron kept on refusing to join. he hated long distance answers, anyhow. and in his mood of the moment he hated the young women. he had a conversation with arthur about statues: concerning which aaron knew nothing, and arthur less than nothing. then lady franks turned the conversation to the soldiers at the station, and said how sir william had equipped rest-huts for the italian privates, near the station: but that such was the jealousy and spite of the italian red cross--or some such body, locally--that sir william's huts had been left empty--standing unused--while the men had slept on the stone floor of the station, night after night, in icy winter. there was evidently much bitter feeling as a result of sir william's philanthropy. apparently even the honey of lavish charity had turned to gall in the italian mouth: at least the official mouth. which gall had been spat back at the charitable, much to his pain. it is in truth a difficult world, particularly when you have another race to deal with. after which came the beef-olives. “oh,” said lady franks, “i had such a dreadful dream last night, such a dreadful dream. it upset me so much. i have not been able to get over it all day.” “what was it?” said aaron. “tell it, and break it.” “why,” said his hostess, “i dreamed i was asleep in my room--just as i actually was--and that it was night, yet with a terrible sort of light, like the dead light before dawn, so that one could see. and my maid giuseppina came running into my room, saying: 'signora! signora! si alza! subito! signora! vengono su!'--and i said, 'chi? chi sono chi vengono? chi?'--'i novaresi! i novaresi vengono su. vengono qui!'--i got out of bed and went to the window. and there they were, in the dead light, rushing up to the house, through the trees. it was so awful, i haven't been able to forget it all day.” “tell me what the words are in english,” said aaron. “why,” she said, “get up, get up--the novaresi, the people of novara are coming up--vengono su--they are coming up--the novara people--work-people. i can't forget it. it was so real, i can't believe it didn't actually happen.” “ah,” said aaron. “it will never happen. i know, that whatever one foresees, and feels has happened, never happens in real life. it sort of works itself off through the imagining of it.” “well, it was almost more real to me than real life,” said his hostess. “then it will never happen in real life,” he said. luncheon passed, and coffee. the party began to disperse--lady franks to answer more letters, with the aid of arthur's wife--some to sleep, some to walk. aaron escaped once more through the big gates. this time he turned his back on the town and the mountains, and climbed up the hill into the country. so he went between the banks and the bushes, watching for unknown plants and shrubs, hearing the birds, feeling the influence of a new soil. at the top of the hill he saw over into vineyards, and a new strange valley with a winding river, and jumbled, entangled hills. strange wild country so near the town. it seemed to keep an almost virgin wildness--yet he saw the white houses dotted here and there. just below him was a peasant house: and on a little loggia in the sun two peasants in white shirtsleeves and black sunday suits were sitting drinking wine, and talking, talking. peasant youths in black hats, their sweethearts in dark stuff dresses, wearing no hat, but a black silk or a white silk scarf, passed slowly along the little road just below the ridge. none looked up to see aaron sitting there alone. from some hidden place somebody was playing an accordion, a jerky sound in the still afternoon. and away beyond lay the unchanging, mysterious valley, and the infolding, mysterious hills of italy. returning back again another way, he lost himself at the foot of the hill in new and deserted suburb streets--unfinished streets of seemingly unfinished houses. then a sort of boulevard where bourgeois families were taking the sunday afternoon walk: stout papas, stout, pallid mamas in rather cheap black fur, little girls very much dressed, and long lads in short socks and round sailor caps, ribbons fluttering. alien they felt, alien, alien, as a bourgeois crowd always does, but particularly a foreign, sunday-best bourgeois crowd. aaron wandered and wandered, finding the tram terminus and trying blank, unfinished street after street. he had a great disinclination to ask his way. at last he recognised the bank and the little stream of water that ran along the street side. so he was back in time for tea. a hospital nurse was there, and two other strange women. arthur played the part of host. sir william came in from a walk with the dogs, but retired to his room without taking tea. and so the evening fell. aaron sat in the hall at some distance from the fire, which burned behind its wrought iron gates. he was tired now with all his impressions, and dispirited. he thought of his wife and children at home: of the church-bells ringing so loudly across the field beyond his garden end: of the dark-clad people trailing unevenly across the two paths, one to the left, one to the right, forking their way towards the houses of the town, to church or to chapel: mostly to chapel. at this hour he himself would be dressed in his best clothes, tying his bow, ready to go out to the public house. and his wife would be resenting his holiday departure, whilst she was left fastened to the children. rather tired and dispirited in this alien place, he wondered if he wished himself back. but the moment he actually _realised_ himself at home, and felt the tension of barrenness which it meant, felt the curious and deadly opposition of his wife's will against his own nature, the almost nauseating ache which it amounted to, he pulled himself together and rejoiced again in his new surroundings. her will, her will, her terrible, implacable, cunning will! what was there in the female will so diabolical, he asked himself, that it could press like a flat sheet of iron against a man all the time? the female will! he realised now that he had a horror of it. it was flat and inflexible as a sheet of iron. but also it was cunning as a snake that could sing treacherous songs. of two people at a deadlock, he always reminded himself, there is not one only wholly at fault. both must be at fault. having a detached and logical soul, he never let himself forget this truth. take lottie! he had loved her. he had never loved any other woman. if he had had his other affairs--it was out of spite or defiance or curiosity. they meant nothing. he and lottie had loved one another. and the love had developed almost at once into a kind of combat. lottie had been the only child of headstrong, well-to-do parents. he also had been the only child of his widowed mother. well then, both he and lottie had been brought up to consider themselves the first in whatsoever company they found themselves. during the early months of the marriage he had, of course, continued the spoiling of the young wife. but this never altered the fact that, by his very nature, he considered himself as first and almost as single in any relationship. first and single he felt, and as such he bore himself. it had taken him years to realise that lottie also felt herself first and single: under all her whimsicalness and fretfulness was a conviction as firm as steel: that she, as woman, was the centre of creation, the man was but an adjunct. she, as woman, and particularly as mother, was the first great source of life and being, and also of culture. the man was but the instrument and the finisher. she was the source and the substance. sure enough, lottie had never formulated this belief inside herself. but it was formulated for her in the whole world. it is the substantial and professed belief of the whole white world. she did but inevitably represent what the whole world around her asserted: the life-centrality of woman. woman, the life-bearer, the life-source. nearly all men agree to the assertion. practically all men, even while demanding their selfish rights as superior males, tacitly agree to the fact of the sacred life-bearing priority of woman. tacitly, they yield the worship to that which is female. tacitly, they conspire to agree that all that is productive, all that is fine and sensitive and most essentially noble, is woman. this, in their productive and religious souls, they believe. and however much they may react against the belief, loathing their women, running to prostitutes, or beer or _anything_, out of reaction against this great and ignominious dogma of the sacred priority of women, still they do but profane the god they worship. profaning woman, they still inversely worship her. but in aaron was planted another seed. he did not know it. he started off on the good old tack of worshipping his woman while his heart was honest, and profaning her in his fits of temper and revolt. but he made a bad show. born in him was a spirit which could not worship woman: no, and would not. could not and would not. it was not in him. in early days, he tried to pretend it was in him. but through his plaintive and homage-rendering love of a young husband was always, for the woman, discernible the arrogance of self-unyielding male. he never yielded himself: never. all his mad loving was only an effort. afterwards, he was as devilishly unyielded as ever. and it was an instinct in her, that her man must yield to her, so that she should envelop him yielding, in her all-beneficent love. she was quite sure that her love was all-beneficent. of this no shadow of doubt. she was quite sure that the highest her man could ever know or ever reach, was to be perfectly enveloped in her all-beneficent love. this was her idea of marriage. she held it not as an idea, but as a profound impulse and instinct: an instinct developed in her by the age in which she lived. all that was deepest and most sacred in he feeling centred in this belief. and he outraged her! oh, from the first day and the first night, she felt he outraged her. true, for some time she had been taken in by his manifest love. but though you can deceive the conscious mind, you can never deceive the deep, unconscious instinct. she could never understand whence arose in her, almost from the first days of marriage with him, her terrible paroxysms of hatred for him. she was in love with him: ah, heaven, how maddeningly she was in love with him: a certain unseizable beauty that was his, and which fascinated her as a snake a bird. but in revulsion, how she hated him! how she abhorred him! how she despised and shuddered at him! he seemed a horrible thing to her. and then again, oh, god, the agony of her desire for him. the agony of her long, long desire for him. he was a passionate lover. he gave her, ostensibly, all she asked for. he withheld from her nothing, no experience, no degree of intimacy. she was his initiate, or he hers. and yet, oh, horror for a woman, he withheld everything from her. he withheld the very centre of himself. for a long time, she never realised. she was dazed and maddened only. but as months of married experience passed into years of married torment, she began to understand. it was that, after their most tremendous, and, it seemed to her, heaven-rending passion--yea, when for her every veil seemed rent and a terrible and sacred creative darkness covered the earth--then--after all this wonder and miracle--in crept a poisonous grey snake of disillusionment, a poisonous grey snake of disillusion that bit her to madness, so that she really was a mad woman, demented. why? why? he never gave himself. he never came to her, _really_. he withheld himself. yes, in those supreme and sacred times which for her were the whole culmination of life and being, the ecstasy of unspeakable passional conjunction, he was not really hers. he was withheld. he withheld the central core of himself, like the devil and hell-fiend he was. he cheated and made play with her tremendous passional soul, her sacred sex passion, most sacred of all things for a woman. all the time, some central part of him stood apart from her, aside, looking on. oh, agony and horror for a passionate, fierce-hearted woman! she who loved him. she who loved him to madness. she who would have died for him. she who did die with him, many terrible and magnificent connubial deaths, in his arms, her husband. her husband! how bitter the word grew to her! her husband! and him never once given, given wholly to her! her husband--and in all the frenzied finality of desire, she never _fully_ possessed him, not once. no, not once. as time went on, she learned it for inevitable. not once! and then, how she hated him! cheated, foiled, betrayed, forced to love him or to hate him: never able to be at peace near him nor away from him: poor lottie, no wonder she was as a mad woman. she was strictly as a woman demented, after the birth of her second child. for all her instinct, all her impulse, all her desire, and above all, all her _will_, was to possess her man in very fulness once: just once: and once and for all. once, just once: and it would be once and for all. but never! never! not once! never! not for one single solitary second! was it not enough to send a woman mad! was it not enough to make her demented! yes, and mad she was. she made his life a hell for him. she bit him to the bone with her frenzy of rage, chagrin, and agony. she drove him mad, too: mad, so that he beat her: mad so that he longed to kill her. but even in his greatest rages it was the same: he never finally lost himself: he remained, somewhere in the centre, in possession of himself. she sometimes wished he would kill her: or that she would kill him. neither event happened. and neither of them understood what was happening. how should they? they were both dazed, horrified, and mortified. he took to leaving her alone as much as was possible. but when he _had_ to come home, there was her terrible will, like a flat, cold snake coiled round his soul and squeezing him to death. yes, she did not relent. she was a good wife and mother. all her duties she fulfilled. but she was not one to yield. _he_ must yield. that was written in eternal letters, on the iron tablet of her will. _he_ must yield. she the woman, the mother of his children, how should she ever even think to yield? it was unthinkable. he, the man, the weak, the false, the treacherous, the half-hearted, it was he who must yield. was not hers the divine will and the divine right? ha, she would be less than woman if she ever capitulated, abandoned her divine responsibility as woman! no, _he_ must yield. so, he was unfaithful to her. piling reproach after reproach upon himself, he added adultery to his brutality. and this was the beginning of the end. she was more than maddened: but he began to grow silent, unresponsive, as if he did not hear her. he was unfaithful to her: and oh, in such a low way. such shame, such shame! but he only smiled carelessly now, and asked her what she wanted. she had asked for all she got. that he reiterated. and that was all he would do. terrible was, that she found even his smile of insolent indifference half-beautiful. oh, bitter chain to bear! but she summoned up all her strange woman's will. she fought against his fascination, the fascination he exerted over her. with fearful efforts of will she fought against it, and mastered it. and then, suddenly, horror and agony of it, up it would rush in her again, her unbearable desire for him, the longing for his contact, his quality of beauty. that was a cross hard to bear. yet even that she bore. and schooled herself into a fretful, petulant manner of indifference. her odd, whimsical petulance hid a will which he, and he alone, knew to be stronger than steel, strong as a diabolical, cold, grey snake that presses and presses and cannot-relax: nay, cannot relax. she became the same as he. even in her moments of most passionate desire for him, the cold and snake-like tension of her will never relaxed, and the cold, snake-like eye of her intention never closed. so, till it reached a deadlock. each will was wound tense, and so fixed. fixed! there was neither any relaxing or any increase of pressure. fixed. hard like a numbness, a grip that was solidifying and turning to stone. he realised, somehow, that at this terrible passive game of fixed tension she would beat him. her fixed female soul, her wound-up female will would solidify into stone--whereas his must break. in him something must break. it was a cold and fatal deadlock, profitless. a life-automatism of fixed tension that suddenly, in him, did break. his will flew loose in a recoil: a recoil away from her. he left her, as inevitably as a broken spring flies out from its hold. not that he was broken. he would not do her even that credit. he had only flown loose from the old centre-fixture. his will was still entire and unabated. only he did not know: he did not understand. he swung wildly about from place to place, as if he were broken. then suddenly, on this sunday evening in the strange country, he realised something about himself. he realised that he had never intended to yield himself fully to her or to anything: that he did not intend ever to yield himself up entirely to her or to anything: that his very being pivoted on the fact of his isolate self-responsibility, aloneness. his intrinsic and central aloneness was the very centre of his being. break it, and he broke his being. break this central aloneness, and he broke everything. it was the great temptation, to yield himself: and it was the final sacrilege. anyhow, it was something which, from his profoundest soul, he did not intend to do. by the innermost isolation and singleness of his own soul he would abide though the skies fell on top of one another, and seven heavens collapsed. vaguely he realised this. and vaguely he realised that this had been the root cause of his strife with lottie: lottie, the only person who had mattered at all to him in all the world: save perhaps his mother. and his mother had not mattered, no, not one-half nor one-fifth what lottie had mattered. so it was: there was, for him, only her significant in the universe. and between him and her matters were as they were. he coldly and terribly hated her, for a moment. then no more. there was no solution. it was a situation without a solution. but at any rate, it was now a defined situation. he could rest in peace. thoughts something in this manner ran through aaron's subconscious mind as he sat still in the strange house. he could not have fired it all off at any listener, as these pages are fired off at any chance reader. nevertheless there it was, risen to half consciousness in him. all his life he had _hated_ knowing what he felt. he had wilfully, if not consciously, kept a gulf between his passional soul and his open mind. in his mind was pinned up a nice description of himself, and a description of lottie, sort of authentic passports to be used in the conscious world. these authentic passports, self-describing: nose short, mouth normal, etc.; he had insisted that they should do all the duty of the man himself. this ready-made and very banal idea of himself as a really quite nice individual: eyes blue, nose short, mouth normal, chin normal; this he had insisted was really himself. it was his conscious mask. now at last, after years of struggle, he seemed suddenly to have dropped his mask on the floor, and broken it. his authentic self-describing passport, his complete and satisfactory idea of himself suddenly became a rag of paper, ridiculous. what on earth did it matter if he was nice or not, if his chin was normal or abnormal. his mask, his idea of himself dropped and was broken to bits. there he sat now maskless and invisible. that was how he strictly felt: invisible and undefined, rather like wells' _invisible man_. he had no longer a mask to present to people: he was present and invisible: they _could_ not really think anything about him, because they could not really see him. what did they see when they looked at him? lady franks, for example. he neither knew nor cared. he only knew he was invisible to himself and everybody, and that all thinking about what he was like was only a silly game of mrs. mackenzie's dead. so there. the old aaron sisson was as if painfully transmuted, as the invisible man when he underwent his transmutations. now he was gone, and no longer to be seen. his visibility lost for ever. and then what? sitting there as an invisible presence, the preconceived world melted also and was gone. lady franks, sir william, all the guests, they talked and maneuvered with their visible personalities, manipulating the masks of themselves. and underneath there was something invisible and dying--something fading, wilting: the essential plasm of themselves: their invisible being. well now, and what next? having in some curious manner tumbled from the tree of modern knowledge, and cracked and rolled out from the shell of the preconceived idea of himself like some dark, night-lustrous chestnut from the green ostensibility of the burr, he lay as it were exposed but invisible on the floor, knowing, but making no conceptions: knowing, but having no idea. now that he was finally unmasked and exposed, the accepted idea of himself cracked and rolled aside like a broken chestnut-burr, the mask split and shattered, he was at last quiet and free. he had dreaded exposure: and behold, we cannot be exposed, for we are invisible. we cannot be exposed to the looks of others, for our very being is night-lustrous and unseeable. like the invisible man, we are only revealed through our clothes and our masks. in his own powerful but subconscious fashion aaron realized this. he was a musician. and hence even his deepest _ideas_: were not word-ideas, his very thoughts were not composed of words and ideal concepts. they too, his thoughts and his ideas, were dark and invisible, as electric vibrations are invisible no matter how many words they may purport. if i, as a word-user, must translate his deep conscious vibrations into finite words, that is my own business. i do but make a translation of the man. he would speak in music. i speak with words. the inaudible music of his conscious soul conveyed his meaning in him quite as clearly as i convey it in words: probably much more clearly. but in his own mode only: and it was in his own mode only he realised what i must put into words. these words are my own affair. his mind was music. don't grumble at me then, gentle reader, and swear at me that this damned fellow wasn't half clever enough to think all these smart things, and realise all these fine-drawn-out subtleties. you are quite right, he wasn't, yet it all resolved itself in him as i say, and it is for you to prove that it didn't. in his now silent, maskless state of wordless comprehension, he knew that he had never wanted to surrender himself utterly to lottie: nor to his mother: nor to anybody. the last extreme of self-abandon in love was for him an act of false behaviour. his own nature inside him fated him not to take this last false step, over the edge of the abyss of selflessness. even if he wanted to, he could not. he might struggle on the edge of the precipice like an assassin struggling with his own soul, but he could not conquer. for, according to all the current prejudice and impulse in one direction, he too had believed that the final achievement, the consummation of human life, was this flinging oneself over the precipice, down the bottomless pit of love. now he realised that love, even in its intensest, was only an attribute of the human soul: one of its incomprehensible gestures. and to fling down the whole soul in one gesture of finality in love was as much a criminal suicide as to jump off a church-tower or a mountain-peak. let a man give himself as much as he liked in love, to seven thousand extremities, he must never give himself _away_. the more generous and the more passionate a soul, the more it _gives_ itself. but the more absolute remains the law, that it shall never give itself away. give thyself, but give thyself not away. that is the lesson written at the end of the long strange lane of love. the _idee fixe_ of today is that every individual shall not only give himself, but shall achieve the last glory of giving himself away. and since this takes two--you can't even make a present of yourself unless you've got somebody to receive the present; since this last extra-divine act takes two people to perform it, you've got to take into count not only your giver but your receiver. who is going to be the giver and who the receiver. why, of course, in our long-drawn-out christian day, man is given and woman is recipient. man is the gift, woman the receiver. this is the sacrament we live by; the holy communion we live for. that man gives himself to woman in an utter and sacred abandon, all, all, all himself given, and taken. woman, eternal woman, she is the communicant. she receives the sacramental body and spirit of the man. and when she's got it, according to her passionate and all-too-sacred desire, completely, when she possesses her man at last finally and ultimately, without blemish or reservation in the perfection of the sacrament: then, also, poor woman, the blood and the body of which she has partaken become insipid or nauseous to her, she is driven mad by the endless meal of the marriage sacrament, poisoned by the sacred communion which was her goal and her soul's ambition. we have pushed a process into a goal. the aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. love is a process of the incomprehensible human soul: love also incomprehensible, but still only a process. the process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish. the completion of the process of love is the arrival at a state of simple, pure self-possession, for man and woman. only that. which isn't exciting enough for us sensationalists. we prefer abysses and maudlin self-abandon and self-sacrifice, the degeneration into a sort of slime and merge. perhaps, truly, the process of love is never accomplished. but it moves in great stages, and at the end of each stage a true goal, where the soul possesses itself in simple and generous singleness. without this, love is a disease. so aaron, crossing a certain border-line and finding himself alone completely, accepted his loneliness or singleness as a fulfilment, a state of fulfilment. the long fight with lottie had driven him at last to himself, so that he was quiet as a thing which has its root deep in life, and has lost its anxiety. as for considering the lily, it is not a matter of consideration. the lily toils and spins hard enough, in her own way. but without that strain and that anxiety with which we try to weave ourselves a life. the lily is life-rooted, life-central. she _cannot_ worry. she is life itself, a little, delicate fountain playing creatively, for as long or as short a time as may be, and unable to be anxious. she may be sad or sorry, if the north wind blows. but even then, anxious she cannot be. whether her fountain play or cease to play, from out the cold, damp earth, she cannot be anxious. she may only be glad or sorry, and continue her way. she is perfectly herself, whatever befall! even if frosts cut her off. happy lily, never to be saddled with an _idee fixe_, never to be in the grip of a monomania for happiness or love or fulfilment. it is not _laisser aller_. it is life-rootedness. it is being by oneself, life-living, like the much-mooted lily. one toils, one spins, one strives: just as the lily does. but like her, taking one's own life-way amidst everything, and taking one's own life-way alone. love too. but there also, taking one's way alone, happily alone in all the wonders of communion, swept up on the winds, but never swept away from one's very self. two eagles in mid-air, maybe, like whitman's dalliance of eagles. two eagles in mid-air, grappling, whirling, coming to their intensification of love-oneness there in mid-air. in mid-air the love consummation. but all the time each lifted on its own wings: each bearing itself up on its own wings at every moment of the mid-air love consummation. that is the splendid love-way. ............... the party was festive at dinner-time, the women in their finest dresses, new flowers on the table, the best wine going. it was sunday evening. aaron too was dressed--and lady franks, in black lace and pearls, was almost gay. there were quails for dinner. the colonel was quite happy. an air of conviviality gathered round the table during the course of the meal. “i hope,” said aaron, “that we shall have some music tonight.” “i want so much to hear your flute,” said his hostess. “and i your piano,” he said. “i am very weak--very out of practise. i tremble at the thought of playing before a musician. but you must not be too critical.” “oh,” said aaron, “i am not a man to be afraid of.” “well, we will see,” said lady franks. “but i am afraid of music itself.” “yes,” said aaron. “i think it is risky.” “risky! i don't see that! music risky? bach? beethoven! no, i don't agree. on the contrary, i think it is most elevating--most morally inspiring. no, i tremble before it because it is so wonderful and elevating.” “i often find it makes me feel diabolical,” said he. “that is your misfortune, i am sure,” said lady franks. “please do take another--but perhaps you don't like mushrooms?” aaron quite liked mushrooms, and helped himself to the _entree_. “but perhaps,” said she, “you are too modern. you don't care for bach or beethoven or chopin--dear chopin.” “i find them all quite as modern as i am.” “is that so! yes. for myself i am quite old-fashioned--though i can appreciate strauss and stravinsky as well, some things. but my old things--ah, i don't think the moderns are so fine. they are not so deep. they haven't fathomed life so deeply.” lady franks sighed faintly. “they don't care for depths,” said aaron. “no, they haven't the capacity. but i like big, deep music. oh, i love orchestra. but my instrument is the piano. i like the great masters, bach, beethoven. they have such faith. you were talking of faith--believing that things would work out well for you in the end. beethoven inspires that in me, too.” “he makes you feel that all will be well with you at last?” “yes, he does. he makes me feel faith in my personal destiny. and i do feel that there is something in one's special fate. i feel that i myself have a special kind of fate, that will always look after me.” “and you can trust to it?” “yes, i can. it always turns out right. i think something has gone wrong--and then, it always turns out right. why when we were in london--when we were at lunch one morning it suddenly struck me, haven't i left my fur cloak somewhere? it was rather cold, so i had taken it with me, and then never put it on. and i hadn't brought it home. i had left it somewhere. but whether in a taxi, or in a shop, or in a little show of pictures i had been to, i couldn't remember. i could not remember. and i thought to myself: have i lost my cloak? i went round to everywhere i could think of: no-trace of it. but i didn't give it up. something prompted me not to give it up: quite distinctly, i felt something telling me that i should get it back. so i called at scotland yard and gave the information. well, two days later i had a notice from scotland yard, so i went. and there was my cloak. i had it back. and that has happened to me almost every time. i almost always get my things back. and i always feel that something looks after me, do you know: almost takes care of me.” “but do you mean when you lose things--or in your life?” “i mean when i lose things--or when i want to get something i want--i am very nearly always successful. and i always feel there is some sort of higher power which does it for me.” “finds your cloak for you.” “yes. wasn't it extraordinary? i felt when i saw my cloak in scotland yard: there, i knew i should recover you. and i always feel, as i say, that there is some higher power which helps me. do you feel the same?” “no, not that way, worse luck. i lost a batch of music a month ago which didn't belong to me--and which i couldn't replace. but i never could recover it: though i'm sure nobody wanted it.” “how very unfortunate! whereas my fur cloak was just the thing that gets stolen most.” “i wished some power would trace my music: but apparently we aren't all gifted alike with guardian angels.” “apparently not. and that is how i regard it: almost as a gift, you know, that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle.” “for always recovering your property?” “yes--and succeeding in my undertakings.” “i'm afraid i had no fairy godmother.” “well--i think i had. and very glad i am of it.” “why, yes,” said aaron, looking at his hostess. so the dinner sailed merrily on. “but does beethoven make you feel,” said aaron as an afterthought, “in the same way--that you will always find the things you have lost?” “yes--he makes me feel the same faith: that what i lose will be returned to me. just as i found my cloak. and that if i enter into an undertaking, it will be successful.” “and your life has been always successful?” “yes--almost always. we have succeeded with almost everything.” “why, yes,” said aaron, looking at her again. but even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her satisfaction. she had had her suffering, sure enough. but none the less, she was in the main satisfied. she sat there, a good hostess, and expected the homage due to her success. and of course she got it. aaron himself did his little share of shoe-licking, and swallowed the taste of boot-polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about. the dinner wound gaily to an end. the ladies retired. sir william left his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next to aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near. “now, colonel,” said the host, “send round the bottle.” with a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the colonel sent on the port, actually port, in those bleak, post-war days! “well, mr. sisson,” said sir william, “we will drink to your kind providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by so doing.” “no, sir; no, sir! the providence belonged to mr. lilly. mr. sisson put his money on kindly fortune, i believe,” said arthur, who rosy and fresh with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous _bonne bouchee_ for a finely-discriminating cannibal. “ah, yes, indeed! a much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses to. mr. sisson's kindly fortune. _fortuna gentil-issima_! well, mr. sisson, and may your lady fortune ever smile on you.” sir william lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head. nay, more than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it. the devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines. so, with his strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight glowered sightlessly over his glass at aaron. then he drank: the strange, careful, old-man's gesture in drinking. “but,” said aaron, “if fortune is a female---” “fortune! fortune! why, fortune is a lady. what do you say, major?” “she has all the airs of one, sir william,” said the major, with the wistful grimness of his age and culture. and the young fellow stared like a crucified cyclops from his one eye: the black shutter being over the other. “and all the graces,” capped sir william, delighted with himself. “oh, quite!” said the major. “for some, all the airs, and for others, all the graces.” “faint heart ne'er won fair lady, my boy,” said sir william. “not that your heart is faint. on the contrary--as we know, and your country knows. but with lady fortune you need another kind of stout heart--oh, quite another kind.” “i believe it, sir: and the kind of stout heart which i am afraid i haven't got,” said the major. “what!” said the old man. “show the white feather before you've tackled the lady! fill the major's glass, colonel. i am quite sure we will none of us ever say die.” “not likely. not if we know it,” said the colonel, stretching himself heartily inside his tunic. he was becoming ruddier than the cherry. all he cared about at the moment was his gay little port glass. but the major's young cheek was hollow and sallow, his one eye terribly pathetic. “and you, mr. sisson,” said sir william, “mean to carry all before you by taking no thought for the morrow. well, now, we can only wish you success.” “i don't want to carry all before me,” said aaron. “i should be sorry. i want to walk past most of it.” “can you tell us where to? i am intrigued, as sybil says, to know where you will walk to. come now. enlighten us.” “nowhere, i suppose.” “but is that satisfactory? can you find it satisfactory?” “is it even true?” said the major. “isn't it quite as positive an act to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?” “my dear boy, you can't merely walk away from a situation. believe that. if you walk away from rome, you walk into the maremma, or into the alban hills, or into the sea--but you walk into something. now if i am going to walk away from rome, i prefer to choose my direction, and therefore my destination.” “but you can't,” said the major. “what can't you?” “choose. either your direction or your destination.” the major was obstinate. “really!” said sir william. “i have not found it so. i have not found it so. i have had to keep myself hard at work, all my life, choosing between this or that.” “and we,” said the major, “have no choice, except between this or nothing.” “really! i am afraid,” said sir william, “i am afraid i am too old--or too young--which shall i say?--to understand.” “too young, sir,” said arthur sweetly. “the child was always father to the man, i believe.” “i confess the major makes me feel childish,” said the old man. “the choice between this or nothing is a puzzler to me. can you help me out, mr. sisson? what do you make of this this-or-nothing business? i can understand neck-or-nothing---” “i prefer the nothing part of it to the this part of it,” said aaron, grinning. “colonel,” said the old man, “throw a little light on this nothingness.” “no, sir william,” said the colonel. “i am all right as i am.” “as a matter of fact, so are we all, perfectly a-one,” said arthur. aaron broke into a laugh. “that's the top and bottom of it,” he laughed, flushed with wine, and handsome. we're all as right as ninepence. only it's rather nice to talk.” “there!” said sir william. “we're all as right as ninepence! we're all as right ninepence. so there well leave it, before the major has time to say he is twopence short.” laughing his strange old soundless laugh, sir william rose and made a little bow. “come up and join the ladies in a minute or two,” he said. arthur opened the door for him and he left the room. the four men were silent for a moment--then the colonel whipped up the decanter and filled his glass. then he stood up and clinked glasses with aaron, like a real old sport. “luck to you,” he said. “thanks,” said aaron. “you're going in the morning?” said arthur. “yes,” said aaron. “what train?” said arthur. “eight-forty.” “oh--then we shan't see you again. well--best of luck.” “best of luck--” echoed the colonel. “same to you,” said aaron, and they all peered over their glasses and quite loved one another for a rosy minute. “i should like to know, though,” said the hollow-cheeked young major with the black flap over his eye, “whether you do really mean you are all right--that it is all right with you--or whether you only say so to get away from the responsibility.” “i mean i don't really care--i don't a damn--let the devil take it all.” “the devil doesn't want it, either,” said the major. “then let him leave it. i don't care one single little curse about it all.” “be damned. what is there to care about?” said the colonel. “ay, what?” said aaron. “it's all the same, whether you care or don't care. so i say it's much easier not to care,” said arthur. “of course it is,” said the colonel gaily. “and i think so, too,” said aaron. “right you are! we're all as right as ninepence--what? good old sport! here's yours!” cried the colonel. “we shall have to be going up,” said arthur, wise in his generation. as they went into the hall, arthur suddenly put one arm round aaron's waist, and one arm round the colonel's, and the three did a sudden little barn-dance towards the stairs. arthur was feeling himself quite let loose again, back in his old regimental mess. approaching the foot of the stairs, he let go again. he was in that rosy condition when united-we-stand. but unfortunately it is a complicated job to climb the stairs in unison. the whole lot tends to fall backwards. arthur, therefore, rosy, plump, looking so good to eat, stood still a moment in order to find his own neatly-slippered feet. having found them, he proceeded to put them carefully one before the other, and to his enchantment found that this procedure was carrying him magically up the stairs. the colonel, like a drowning man, clutched feebly for the straw of the great stair-rail--and missed it. he would have gone under, but that aaron's hand gripped his arm. so, orientating once more like a fragile tendril, he reached again for the banister rail, and got it. after which, lifting his feet as if they were little packets of sand tied to his trouser buttons, he manipulated his way upwards. aaron was in that pleasant state when he saw what everybody else was doing and was unconscious of what he did himself. whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a murdered hamlet resurrected in khaki, with the terrible black shutter over his eye, the young major came last. arthur was making a stern fight for his composure. his whole future depended on it. but do what he would, he could not get the flushed, pleased, mess-happy look off his face. the colonel, oh, awful man, did a sort of plump roly-poly-cake-walk, like a fat boy, right to the very door of that santum-sanctorum, the library. aaron was inwardly convulsed. even the major laughed. but arthur stiffened himself militarily and cleared his throat. all four started to compose themselves, like actors going on the stage, outside that library door. and then arthur softly, almost wistfully, opened and held the door for the others to pass. the colonel slunk meekly in, and sat in a chair in the background. the major stalked in expressionless, and hovered towards the sofa where his wife sat. there was a rather cold-water-down-your-back feeling in the library. the ladies had been waiting for coffee. sir william was waiting, too. therefore in a little tension, half silent, the coffee was handed round. lady franks was discussing something with arthur's wife. arthur's wife was in a cream lace dress, and looking what is called lovely. the major's wife was in amethyst chiffon with dark-red roses, and was looking blindingly beautiful. the colonel was looking into his coffee-cup as wistfully as if it contained the illusion of tawny port. the major was looking into space, as if there and there alone, etc. arthur was looking for something which lady franks had asked for, and which he was much too flushed to find. sir william was looking at aaron, and preparing for another _coeur a coeur_. “well,” he said, “i doubt if you will care for milan. it is one of the least italian of all the towns, in my opinion. venice, of course, is a thing apart. i cannot stand, myself, that miserable specimen the modern roman. he has most of the vices of the old romans and none of the virtues. the most congenial town, perhaps, for a stranger, is florence. but it has a very bad climate.” lady franks rose significantly and left the room, accompanied by arthur's wife. aaron knew, silently, that he was summoned to follow. his hostess had her eye on him this evening. but always postponing his obedience to the cool commands of women, he remained talking with his host in the library, and sipping _creme de menthe_! came the ripple of the pianoforte from the open doorway down at the further end of the room. lady franks was playing, in the large drawing-room. and the ripple of the music contained in it the hard insistence of the little woman's will. coldly, and decidedly, she intended there should be no more unsettling conversations for the old sir william. aaron was to come forthwith into the drawing room. which aaron plainly understood--and so he didn't go. no, he didn't go, though the pianoforte rippled and swelled in volume. no, and he didn't go even when lady franks left off playing and came into the library again. there he sat, talking with sir william. let us do credit to lady franks' will-power, and admit that the talk was quite empty and distracted--none of the depths and skirmishes of the previous occasions. none the less, the talk continued. lady franks retired, discomfited, to her piano again. she would never break in upon her lord. so now aaron relented. he became more and more distracted. sir william wandered away like some restless, hunted soul. the colonel still sat in his chair, nursing his last drop of _creme de menthe_ resentfully. he did not care for the green toffee-stuff. arthur was busy. the major lay sprawled in the last stages of everything on the sofa, holding his wife's hand. and the music came pathetically through the open folding-doors. of course, she played with feeling--it went without saying. aaron's soul felt rather tired. but she had a touch of discrimination also. he rose and went to the drawing-room. it was a large, vacant-seeming, empire sort of drawing-room, with yellow silk chairs along the walls and yellow silk panels upon the walls, and a huge, vasty crystal chandelier hanging from a faraway-above ceiling. lady franks sat at a large black bechstein piano at one end of this vacant yellow state-room. she sat, a little plump elderly lady in black lace, for all the world like queen victoria in max beerbohm's drawing of alfred tennyson reading to her victorian majesty, with space before her. arthur's wife was bending over some music in a remote corner of the big room. aaron seated himself on one of the chairs by the wall, to listen. certainly it was a beautiful instrument. and certainly, in her way, she loved it. but aaron remembered an anthem in which he had taken part as a boy. his eye is on the sparrow so i know he watches me. for a long time he had failed to catch the word _sparrow_, and had heard: his eye is on the spy-hole so i know he watches me. which was just how it had all seemed to him, as a boy. now, as ever, he felt the eye was on the spy-hole. there sat the woman playing music. but her inward eye was on the spy-hole of her vital affairs--her domestic arrangements, her control of her household, guests and husband included. the other eye was left for the music, don't you know. sir william appeared hovering in the doorway, not at all liking the defection of mr. aaron. then he retreated. he seemed not to care for music. the major's wife hovered--felt it her duty to _aude_, or play audience--and entered, seating herself in a breath of lilac and amethyst again at the near distance. the major, after a certain beating about the bush, followed and sat wrapt in dim contemplation near his wife. arthur luckily was still busy with something. aaron of course made proper musical remarks in the intervals--arthur's wife sorted out more pieces. arthur appeared--and then the colonel. the colonel tip-toed beautifully across the wide blank space of the empire room, and seated himself on a chair, rather in the distance, with his back to the wall, facing aaron. when lady franks finished her piece, to everybody's amazement the colonel clapped gaily to himself and said bravo! as if at a cafe chantant, looking round for his glass. but there was no glass. so he crossed his neatly-khakied legs, and looked rapt again. lady franks started with a _vivace_ schumann piece. everybody listened in sanctified silence, trying to seem to like it. when suddenly our colonel began to spring and bounce in his chair, slinging his loose leg with a kind of rapture up and down in the air, and capering upon his posterior, doing a sitting-down jig to the schumann _vivace_. arthur, who had seated himself at the farthest extremity of the room, winked with wild bliss at aaron. the major tried to look as if he noticed nothing, and only succeeded in looking agonised. his wife studied the point of her silver shoe minutely, and peeped through her hair at the performance. aaron grimly chuckled, and loved the colonel with real tenderness. and the game went on while the _vivace_ lasted. up and down bounced the plump colonel on his chair, kicking with his bright, black-patent toe higher and higher, getting quite enthusiastic over his jig. rosy and unabashed, he was worthy of the great nation he belonged to. the broad-seated empire chair showed no signs of giving way. let him enjoy himself, away there across the yellow sahara of this silk-panelled salon. aaron felt quite cheered up. “well, now,” he thought to himself, “this man is in entire command of a very important branch of the british service in italy. we are a great race still.” but lady franks must have twigged. her playing went rather stiff. she came to the end of the _vivace_ movement, and abandoned her piece. “i always prefer schumann in his _vivace_ moods,” said aaron. “do you?” said lady franks. “oh, i don't know.” it was now the turn of arthur's wife to sing. arthur seemed to get further away: if it was possible, for he was at the remotest remote end of the room, near the gallery doors. the colonel became quiet, pensive. the major's wife eyed the young woman in white lace, and seemed not to care for lace. arthur seemed to be trying to push himself backwards through the wall. lady franks switched on more lights into the vast and voluminous crystal chandelier which hung like some glory-cloud above the room's centre. and arthur's wife sang sweet little french songs, and _ye banks and braes_, and _caro mio ben_, which goes without saying: and so on. she had quite a nice voice and was quite adequately trained. which is enough said. aaron had all his nerves on edge. then he had to play the flute. arthur strolled upstairs with him, arm-in-arm, where he went to fetch his instrument. “i find music in the home rather a strain, you know,” said arthur. “cruel strain. i quite agree,” said aaron. “i don't mind it so much in the theatre--or even a concert--where there are a lot of other people to take the edge off-- but after a good dinner--” “it's medicine,” said aaron. “well, you know, it really is, to me. it affects my inside.” aaron laughed. and then, in the yellow drawing-room, blew into his pipe and played. he knew so well that arthur, the major, the major's wife, the colonel, and sir william thought it merely an intolerable bore. however, he played. his hostess even accompanied him in a mozart bit. chapter xiv. xx settembre aaron was awakened in the morning by the soft entrance of the butler with the tray: it was just seven o'clock. lady franks' household was punctual as the sun itself. but our hero roused himself with a wrench. the very act of lifting himself from the pillow was like a fight this morning. why? he recognized his own wrench, the pain with which he struggled under the necessity to move. why shouldn't he want to move? why not? because he didn't want the day in front--the plunge into a strange country, towards nowhere, with no aim in view. true, he said that ultimately he wanted to join lilly. but this was hardly more than a sop, an excuse for his own irrational behaviour. he was breaking loose from one connection after another; and what for? why break every tie? snap, snap, snap went the bonds and ligatures which bound him to the life that had formed him, the people he had loved or liked. he found all his affections snapping off, all the ties which united him with his own people coming asunder. and why? in god's name, why? what was there instead? there was nothingness. there was just himself, and blank nothingness. he had perhaps a faint sense of lilly ahead of him; an impulse in that direction, or else merely an illusion. he could not persuade himself that he was seeking for love, for any kind of unison or communion. he knew well enough that the thought of any loving, any sort of real coming together between himself and anybody or anything, was just objectionable to him. no--he was not moving _towards_ anything: he was moving almost violently away from everything. and that was what he wanted. only that. only let him _not_ run into any sort of embrace with anything or anybody--this was what he asked. let no new connection be made between himself and anything on earth. let all old connections break. this was his craving. yet he struggled under it this morning as under the lid of a tomb. the terrible sudden weight of inertia! he knew the tray stood ready by the bed: he knew the automobile would be at the door at eight o'clock, for lady franks had said so, and he half divined that the servant had also said so: yet there he lay, in a kind of paralysis in this bed. he seemed for the moment to have lost his will. why go forward into more nothingness, away from all that he knew, all he was accustomed to and all he belonged to? however, with a click he sat up. and the very instant he had poured his coffee from the little silver coffee-pot into his delicate cup, he was ready for anything and everything. the sense of silent adventure took him, the exhilarated feeling that he was fulfilling his own inward destiny. pleasant to taste was the coffee, the bread, the honey--delicious. the man brought his clothes, and again informed him that the automobile would be at the door at eight o'clock: or at least so he made out. “i can walk,” said aaron. “milady ha comandato l'automobile,” said the man softly. it was evident that if milady had ordered it, so it must be. so aaron left the still-sleeping house, and got into the soft and luxurious car. as he dropped through the park he wondered that sir william and lady franks should be so kind to him: a complete stranger. but so it was. there he sat in their car. he wondered, also, as he ran over the bridge and into the city, whether this soft-running automobile would ever rouse the socialistic bile of the work-people. for the first time in his life, as he sat among the snug cushions, he realised what it might be to be rich and uneasy: uneasy, even if not afraid, lurking there inside an expensive car.--well, it wasn't much of a sensation anyhow: and riches were stuffy, like wadded upholstery on everything. he was glad to get out into the fresh air of the common crowd. he was glad to be in the bleak, not-very-busy station. he was glad to be part of common life. for the very atmosphere of riches seems to be stuffed and wadded, never any real reaction. it was terrible, as if one's very body, shoulders and arms, were upholstered and made cushiony. ugh, but he was glad to shake off himself the atmosphere of wealth and motor-cars, to get out of it all. it was like getting out of quilted clothes. “well,” thought aaron, “if this is all it amounts to, to be rich, you can have riches. they talk about money being power. but the only sort of power it has over me is to bring on a kind of numbness, which i fairly hate. no wonder rich people don't seem to be really alive.” the relief of escaping quite took away his self-conscious embarrassment at the station. he carried his own bags, bought a third-class ticket, and got into the train for milan without caring one straw for the comments or the looks of the porters. it began to rain. the rain ran across the great plain of north italy. aaron sat in his wood-seated carriage and smoked his pipe in silence, looking at the thick, short lombards opposite him without heeding them. he paid hardly any outward attention to his surroundings, but sat involved in himself. in milan he had been advised to go to the hotel britannia, because it was not expensive, and english people went there. so he took a carriage, drove round the green space in front of milan station, and away into the town. the streets were busy, but only half-heartedly so. it must be confessed that every new move he made was rather an effort. even he himself wondered why he was struggling with foreign porters and foreign cabmen, being talked at and not understanding a word. but there he was. so he went on with it. the hotel was small and congenial. the hotel porter answered in english. aaron was given a little room with a tiny balcony, looking on to a quiet street. so, he had a home of his own once more. he washed, and then counted his money. thirty-seven pounds he had: and no more. he stood on the balcony and looked at the people going by below. life seems to be moving so quick, when one looks down on it from above. across the road was a large stone house with its green shutters all closed. but from the flagpole under the eaves, over the central window of the uppermost floor--the house was four storeys high--waved the italian flag in the melancholy damp air. aaron looked at it--the red, white and green tricolour, with the white cross of savoy in the centre. it hung damp and still. and there seemed a curious vacancy in the city--something empty and depressing in the great human centre. not that there was really a lack of people. but the spirit of the town seemed depressed and empty. it was a national holiday. the italian flag was hanging from almost every housefront. it was about three o'clock in the afternoon. aaron sat in the restaurant of the hotel drinking tea, for he was rather tired, and looking through the thin curtains at the little square outside, where people passed: little groups of dark, aimless-seeming men, a little bit poorer looking--perhaps rather shorter in stature--but very much like the people in any other town. yet the feeling of the city was so different from that of london. there seemed a curious emptiness. the rain had ceased, but the pavements were still wet. there was a tension. suddenly there was a noise of two shots, fired in rapid succession. aaron turned startled to look into the quiet piazza. and to his amazement, the pavements were empty, not a soul was in sight. two minutes before the place was busy with passers-by, and a newspaper man selling the corriere, and little carriages rattling through. now, as if by magic, nobody, nothing. it was as if they had all melted into thin air. the waiter, too, was peeping behind the curtain. a carriage came trotting into the square--an odd man took his way alone--the traffic began to stir once more, and people reappeared as suddenly as they had disappeared. then the waiter ran hastily and furtively out and craned his neck, peering round the square. he spoke with two youths--rather loutish youths. then he returned to his duty in the hotel restaurant. “what was it? what were the shots?” aaron asked him. “oh--somebody shooting at a dog,” said the man negligently. “at a dog!” said aaron, with round eyes. he finished his tea, and went out into the town. his hotel was not far from the cathedral square. passing through the arcade, he came in sight of the famous cathedral with its numerous spines pricking into the afternoon air. he was not as impressed as he should have been. and yet there was something in the northern city--this big square with all the trams threading through, the little yellow continental trams: and the spiny bulk of the great cathedral, like a grey-purple sea-urchin with many spines, on the one side, the ornamental grass-plots and flower beds on the other: the big shops going all along the further strands, all round: and the endless restless nervous drift of a north italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy; nervous and twitchy as the slipping past of the little yellow tram-cars; it all affected him with a sense of strangeness, nervousness, and approaching winter. it struck him the people were afraid of themselves: afraid of their own souls, and that which was in their own souls. turning up the broad steps of the cathedral, he entered the famous building. the sky had cleared, and the freshened light shone coloured in living tablets round the wonderful, towering, rose-hearted dusk of the great church. at some altars lights flickered uneasily. at some unseen side altar mass was going on, and a strange ragged music fluttered out on the incense-dusk of the great and lofty interior, which was all shadow, all shadow, hung round with jewel tablets of light. particularly beautiful the great east bay, above the great altar. and all the time, over the big-patterned marble floor, the faint click and rustle of feet coming and going, coming and going, like shallow uneasy water rustled back and forth in a trough. a white dog trotted pale through the under-dusk, over the pale, big-patterned floor. aaron came to the side altar where mass was going on, candles ruddily wavering. there was a small cluster of kneeling women--a ragged handful of on-looking men--and people wandering up and wandering away, young women with neatly dressed black hair, and shawls, but without hats; fine young women in very high heels; young men with nothing to do; ragged men with nothing to do. all strayed faintly clicking over the slabbed floor, and glanced at the flickering altar where the white-surpliced boys were curtseying and the white-and-gold priest bowing, his hands over his breast, in the candle-light. all strayed, glanced, lingered, and strayed away again, as if the spectacle were not sufficiently holding. the bell chimed for the elevation of the host. but the thin trickle of people trickled the same, uneasily, over the slabbed floor of the vastly-upreaching shadow-foliaged cathedral. the smell of incense in his nostrils, aaron went out again by a side door, and began to walk along the pavements of the cathedral square, looking at the shops. some were closed, and had little notices pinned on them. some were open, and seemed half-stocked with half-elegant things. men were carrying newspapers. in the cafes a few men were seated drinking vermouth. in the doorway of the restaurants waiters stood inert, looking out on the streets. the curious heart-eating _ennui_ of the big town on a holiday came over our hero. he felt he must get out, whatever happened. he could not bear it. so he went back to his hotel and up to his room. it was still only five o'clock. and he did not know what to do with himself. he lay down on the bed, and looked at the painting on his bedroom ceiling. it was a terrible business in reckitt's blue and browny gold, with awful heraldic beasts, rather worm-wriggly, displayed in a blue field. as he lay thinking of nothing and feeling nothing except a certain weariness, or dreariness, or tension, or god-knows-what, he heard a loud hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening. rising, he went on to his little balcony. it was a sort of procession, or march of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man's fist. there had been a big meeting, and this was the issue. the procession was irregular, but powerful, men four abreast. they emerged irregularly from the small piazza to the street, calling and vociferating. they stopped before a shop and clotted into a crowd, shouting, becoming vicious. over the shop-door hung a tricolour, a national flag. the shop was closed, but the men began to knock at the door. they were all workmen, some in railway men's caps, mostly in black felt hats. some wore red cotton neck-ties. they lifted their faces to the national flag, and as they shouted and gesticulated aaron could see their strong teeth in their jaws. there was something frightening in their lean, strong italian jaws, something inhuman and possessed-looking in their foreign, southern-shaped faces, so much more formed and demon-looking than northern faces. they had a demon-like set purpose, and the noise of their voices was like a jarring of steel weapons. aaron wondered what they wanted. there were no women--all men--a strange male, slashing sound. vicious it was--the head of the procession swirling like a little pool, the thick wedge of the procession beyond, flecked with red flags. a window opened above the shop, and a frowsty-looking man, yellow-pale, was quickly and nervously hauling in the national flag. there were shouts of derision and mockery--a great overtone of acrid derision--the flag and its owner ignominiously disappeared. and the procession moved on. almost every shop had a flag flying. and every one of these flags now disappeared, quickly or slowly, sooner or later, in obedience to the command of the vicious, derisive crowd, that marched and clotted slowly down the street, having its own way. only one flag remained flying--the big tricolour that floated from the top storey of the house opposite aaron's hotel. the ground floor of this house consisted of shop-premises--now closed. there was no sign of any occupant. the flag floated inert aloft. the whole crowd had come to a stop immediately below the hotel, and all were now looking up at the green and white and red tricolour which stirred damply in the early evening light, from under the broad eaves of the house opposite. aaron looked at the long flag, which drooped almost unmoved from the eaves-shadow, and he half expected it to furl itself up of its own accord, in obedience to the will of the masses. then he looked down at the packed black shoulders of the mob below, and at the curious clustering pattern of a sea of black hats. he could hardly see anything but hats and shoulders, uneasily moving like boiling pitch away beneath him. but the shouts began to come up hotter and hotter. there had been a great ringing of a door-bell and battering on the shop-door. the crowd--the swollen head of the procession--talked and shouted, occupying the centre of the street, but leaving the pavement clear. a woman in a white blouse appeared in the shop-door. she came out and looked up at the flag and shook her head and gesticulated with her hands. it was evidently not her flag--she had nothing to do with it. the leaders again turned to the large house-door, and began to ring all the bells and to knock with their knuckles. but no good--there was no answer. they looked up again at the flag. voices rose ragged and ironical. the woman explained something again. apparently there was nobody at home in the upper floors--all entrance was locked--there was no caretaker. nobody owned the flag. there it hung under the broad eaves of the strong stone house, and didn't even know that it was guilty. the woman went back into her shop and drew down the iron shutter from inside. the crowd, nonplussed, now began to argue and shout and whistle. the voices rose in pitch and derision. steam was getting up. there hung the flag. the procession crowded forward and filled the street in a mass below. all the rest of the street was empty and shut up. and still hung the showy rag, red and white and green, up aloft. suddenly there was a lull--then shouts, half-encouraging, half-derisive. and aaron saw a smallish-black figure of a youth, fair-haired, not more than seventeen years old, clinging like a monkey to the front of the house, and by the help of the heavy drain-pipe and the stone-work ornamentation climbing up to the stone ledge that ran under ground-floor windows, up like a sudden cat on to the projecting footing. he did not stop there, but continued his race like some frantic lizard running up the great wall-front, working away from the noise below, as if in sheer fright. it was one unending wriggling movement, sheer up the front of the impassive, heavy stone house. the flag hung from a pole under one of the windows of the top storey--the third floor. up went the wriggling figure of the possessed youth. the cries of the crowd below were now wild, ragged ejaculations of excitement and encouragement. the youth seemed to be lifted up, almost magically on the intense upreaching excitement of the massed men below. he passed the ledge of the first floor, like a lizard he wriggled up and passed the ledge or coping of the second floor, and there he was, like an upward-climbing shadow, scrambling on to the coping of the third floor. the crowd was for a second electrically still as the boy rose there erect, cleaving to the wall with the tips of his fingers. but he did not hesitate for one breath. he was on his feet and running along the narrow coping that went across the house under the third floor windows, running there on that narrow footing away above the street, straight to the flag. he had got it--he had clutched it in his hand, a handful of it. exactly like a great flame rose the simultaneous yell of the crowd as the boy jerked and got the flag loose. he had torn it down. a tremendous prolonged yell, touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. his face was odd and elated and still. then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise of yelling rose up unheard. there was a great clutch and hiss in the crowd. the boy still stood unmoved, holding by one hand behind him, looking down from above, from his dangerous elevation, in a sort of abstraction. and the next thing aaron was conscious of was the sound of trumpets. a sudden startling challenge of trumpets, and out of nowhere a sudden rush of grey-green carabinieri battering the crowd wildly with truncheons. it was so sudden that aaron _heard_ nothing any more. he only saw. in utmost amazement he saw the greeny-grey uniformed carabinieri rushing thick and wild and indiscriminate on the crowd: a sudden new excited crowd in uniforms attacking the black crowd, beating them wildly with truncheons. there was a seething moment in the street below. and almost instantaneously the original crowd burst into a terror of frenzy. the mob broke as if something had exploded inside it. a few black-hatted men fought furiously to get themselves free of the hated soldiers; in the confusion bunches of men staggered, reeled, fell, and were struggling among the legs of their comrades and of the carabinieri. but the bulk of the crowd just burst and fled--in every direction. like drops of water they seemed to fly up at the very walls themselves. they darted into any entry, any doorway. they sprang up the walls and clambered into the ground-floor windows. they sprang up the walls on to window-ledges, and then jumped down again, and ran--clambering, wriggling, darting, running in every direction; some cut, blood on their faces, terror or frenzy of flight in their hearts. not so much terror as the frenzy of running away. in a breath the street was empty. and all the time, there above on the stone coping stood the long-faced, fair-haired boy, while four stout carabinieri in the street below stood with uplifted revolvers and covered him, shouting that if he moved they would shoot. so there he stood, still looking down, still holding with his left hand behind him, covered by the four revolvers. he was not so much afraid as twitchily self-conscious because of his false position. meanwhile down below the crowd had dispersed--melted momentaneously. the carabinieri were busy arresting the men who had fallen and been trodden underfoot, or who had foolishly let themselves be taken; perhaps half a dozen men, half a dozen prisoners; less rather than more. the sergeant ordered these to be secured between soldiers. and last of all the youth up above, still covered by the revolvers, was ordered to come down. he turned quite quietly, and quite humbly, cautiously picked his way along the coping towards the drain-pipe. he reached this pipe and began, in humiliation, to climb down. it was a real climb down. once in the street he was surrounded by the grey uniforms. the soldiers formed up. the sergeant gave the order. and away they marched, the dejected youth a prisoner between them. then were heard a few scattered yells of derision and protest, a few shouts of anger and derision against the carabinieri. there were once more gangs of men and groups of youths along the street. they sent up an occasional shout. but always over their shoulders, and pretending it was not they who shouted. they were all cowed and hang-dog once more, and made not the slightest effort to save the youth. nevertheless, they prowled and watched, ready for the next time. so, away went the prisoner and the grey-green soldiers, and the street was left to the little gangs and groups of hangdog, discontented men, all thoroughly out of countenance. the scene was ended. aaron looked round, dazed. and then for the first time he noticed, on the next balcony to his own, two young men: young gentlemen, he would have said. the one was tall and handsome and well-coloured, might be italian. but the other with his pale thin face and his rimless monocle in his eye, he was surely an englishman. he was surely one of the young officers shattered by the war. a look of strange, arch, bird-like pleasure was on his face at this moment: if one could imagine the gleaming smile of a white owl over the events that had just passed, this was the impression produced on aaron by the face of the young man with the monocle. the other youth, the ruddy, handsome one, had knitted his brows in mock distress, and was glancing with a look of shrewd curiosity at aaron, and with a look of almost self-satisfied excitement first to one end of the street, then to the other. “but imagine, angus, it's all over!” he said, laying his hand on the arm of the monocled young man, and making great eyes--not without a shrewd glance in aaron's direction. “did you see him fall!” replied angus, with another strange gleam. “yes. but was he hurt--?” “i don't know. i should think so. he fell right back out of that on to those stones!” “but how perfectly awful! did you ever see anything like it?” “no. it's one of the funniest things i ever did see. i saw nothing quite like it, even in the war--” here aaron withdrew into his room. his mind and soul were in a whirl. he sat down in his chair, and did not move again for a great while. when he did move, he took his flute and played he knew not what. but strange, strange his soul passed into his instrument. or passed half into his instrument. there was a big residue left, to go bitter, or to ferment into gold old wine of wisdom. he did not notice the dinner gong, and only the arrival of the chamber-maid, to put the wash-table in order, sent him down to the restaurant. the first thing he saw, as he entered, was the two young englishmen seated at a table in a corner just behind him. their hair was brushed straight back from their foreheads, making the sweep of the head bright and impeccable, and leaving both the young faces clear as if in cameo. angus had laid his monocle on the table, and was looking round the room with wide, light-blue eyes, looking hard, like some bird-creature, and seeming to see nothing. he had evidently been very ill: was still very ill. his cheeks and even his jaw seemed shrunken, almost withered. he forgot his dinner: or he did not care for it. probably the latter. “what do you think, francis,” he said, “of making a plan to see florence and sienna and orvieto on the way down, instead of going straight to rome?” he spoke in precise, particularly-enunciated words, in a public-school manner, but with a strong twang of south wales. “why, angus,” came the graceful voice of francis, “i thought we had settled to go straight through via pisa.” francis was graceful in everything--in his tall, elegant figure, in the poses of his handsome head, in the modulation of his voice. “yes, but i see we can go either way--either pisa or florence. and i thought it might be nice to look at florence and sienna and orvieto. i believe they're very lovely,” came the soft, precise voice of angus, ending in a touch of odd emotion on the words “very lovely,” as if it were a new experience to him to be using them. “i'm sure they're marvellous. i'm quite sure they're marvellously beautiful,” said francis, in his assured, elegant way. “well, then, angus--suppose we do that, then?--when shall we start?” angus was the nervous insister. francis was quite occupied with his own thoughts and calculations and curiosity. for he was very curious, not to say inquisitive. and at the present moment he had a new subject to ponder. this new subject was aaron, who sat with his back to our new couple, and who, with his fine sharp ears, caught every word that they said. aaron's back was broad enough, and his shoulders square, and his head rather small and fairish and well-shaped--and francis was intrigued. he wanted to know, was the man english. he _looked_ so english--yet he might be--he might perhaps be danish, scandinavian, or dutch. therefore, the elegant young man watched and listened with all his ears. the waiter who had brought aaron his soup now came very free and easy, to ask for further orders. “what would you like to drink? wine? chianti? or white wine? or beer?”--the old-fashioned “sir” was dropped. it is too old-fashioned now, since the war. “what should i drink?” said aaron, whose acquaintance with wines was not very large. “half-litre of chianti: that is very good,” said the waiter, with the air of a man who knew only too well how to bring up his betters, and train them in the way they should go. “all right,” said aaron. the welcome sound of these two magic words, all right! was what the waiter most desired. “all right! yes! all right!” this is the pith, the marrow, the sum and essence of the english language to a southerner. of course it is not _all right_. it is _or-rye_--and one word at that. the blow that would be given to most foreign waiters, if they were forced to realize that the famous _orye_ was really composed of two words, and spelt _all right_, would be too cruel, perhaps. “half litre chianti. orye,” said the waiter. and we'll let him say it. “english!” whispered francis melodramatically in the ear of angus. “i thought so. the flautist.” angus put in his monocle, and stared at the oblivious shoulders of aaron, without apparently seeing anything. “yes. obviously english,” said angus, pursing like a bird. “oh, but i heard him,” whispered francis emphatically. “quite,” said angus. “but quite inoffensive.” “oh, but angus, my dear--he's the flautist. don't you remember? the divine bit of scriabin. at least i believe it was scriabin.--but perfectly divine!!! i adore the flute above all things--” and francis placed his hand on angus' arm, and rolled his eyes--lay this to the credit of a bottle of lacrimae cristi, if you like. “yes. so do i,” said angus, again looking archly through the monocle, and seeing nothing. “i wonder what he's doing here.” “don't you think we might ask him?” said francis, in a vehement whisper. “after all, we are the only three english people in the place.” “for the moment, apparently we are,” said angus. “but the english are all over the place wherever you go, like bits of orange peel in the street. don't forget that, francesco.” “no, angus, i don't. the point is, his flute is perfectly divine--and he seems quite attractive in himself. don't you think so?” “oh, quite,” said angus, whose observations had got no further than the black cloth of the back of aaron's jacket. that there was a man inside he had not yet paused to consider. “quite a musician,” said francis. “the hired sort,” said angus, “most probably.” “but he plays--he plays most marvellously. that you can't get away from, angus.” “i quite agree,” said angus. “well, then? don't you think we might hear him again? don't you think we might get him to play for us?--but i should love it more than anything.” “yes, i should, too,” said angus. “you might ask him to coffee and a liqueur.” “i should like to--most awfully. but do you think i might?” “oh, yes. he won't mind being offered a coffee and liqueur. we can give him something decent--where's the waiter?” angus lifted his pinched, ugly bare face and looked round with weird command for the waiter. the waiter, having not much to do, and feeling ready to draw these two weird young birds, allowed himself to be summoned. “where's the wine list? what liqueurs have you got?” demanded angus abruptly. the waiter rattled off a list, beginning with strega and ending with cherry brandy. “grand marnier,” said angus. “and leave the bottle.” then he looked with arch triumph at francis, like a wicked bird. francis bit his finger moodily, and glowered with handsome, dark-blue uncertain eyes at mr. aaron, who was just surveying the _frutte_, which consisted of two rather old pomegranates and various pale yellow apples, with a sprinkling of withered dried figs. at the moment, they all looked like a _natura morta_ arrangement. “but do you think i might--?” said francis moodily. angus pursed his lips with a reckless brightness. “why not? i see no reason why you shouldn't,” he said. whereupon francis cleared his throat, disposed of his serviette, and rose to his feet, slowly but gracefully. then he composed himself, and took on the air he wished to assume at the moment. it was a nice degage air, half naive and half enthusiastic. then he crossed to aaron's table, and stood on one lounging hip, gracefully, and bent forward in a confidential manner, and said: “do excuse me. but i must ask you if it was you we heard playing the flute so perfectly wonderfully, just before dinner.” the voice was confidential and ingratiating. aaron, relieved from the world's stress and seeing life anew in the rosy glow of half a litre of good old chianti--the war was so near but gone by--looked up at the dark blue, ingenuous, well-adapted eyes of our friend francis, and smiling, said: “yes, i saw you on the balcony as well.” “oh, did you notice us?” plunged francis. “but wasn't it an extraordinary affair?” “very,” said aaron. “i couldn't make it out, could you?” “oh,” cried francis. “i never try. it's all much too new and complicated for me.--but perhaps you know italy?” “no, i don't,” said aaron. “neither do we. and we feel rather stunned. we had only just arrived--and then--oh!” francis put up his hand to his comely brow and rolled his eyes. “i feel perfectly overwhelmed with it still.” he here allowed himself to sink friendlily into the vacant chair opposite aaron's. “yes, i thought it was a bit exciting,” said aaron. “i wonder what will become of him--” “--of the one who climbed for the flag, you mean? no!--but wasn't it perfectly marvellous! oh, incredible, quite incredible!--and then your flute to finish it all! oh! i felt it only wanted that.--i haven't got over it yet. but your playing was marvellous, really marvellous. do you know, i can't forget it. you are a professional musician, of course.” “if you mean i play for a living,” said aaron. “i have played in orchestras in london.” “of course! of course! i knew you must be a professional. but don't you give private recitals, too?” “no, i never have.” “oh!” cried francis, catching his breath. “i can't believe it. but you play marvellously! oh, i just loved it, it simply swept me away, after that scene in the street. it seemed to sum it all up, you know.” “did it,” said aaron, rather grimly. “but won't you come and have coffee with us at our table?” said francis. “we should like it most awfully if you would.” “yes, thank you,” said aaron, half-rising. “but you haven't had your dessert,” said francis, laying a fatherly detaining hand on the arm of the other man. aaron looked at the detaining hand. “the dessert isn't much to stop for,” he said. “i can take with me what i want.” and he picked out a handful of dried figs. the two went across to angus' table. “we're going to take coffee together,” said francis complacently, playing the host with a suave assurance that was rather amusing and charming in him. “yes. i'm very glad,” said angus. let us give the show away: he was being wilfully nice. but he _was_ quite glad; to be able to be so nice. anything to have a bit of life going: especially a bit of pleased life. he looked at aaron's comely, wine-warmed face with gratification. “have a grand marnier,” he said. “i don't know how bad it is. everything is bad now. they lay it down to the war as well. it used to be quite a decent drink. what the war had got to do with bad liqueurs, i don't know.” aaron sat down in a chair at their table. “but let us introduce ourselves,” said francis. “i am francis--or really franz dekker--and this is angus guest, my friend.” “and my name is aaron sisson.” “what! what did you say?” said francis, leaning forward. he, too, had sharp ears. “aaron sisson.” “aaron sisson! oh, but how amusing! what a nice name!” “no better than yours, is it?” “mine! franz dekker! oh, much more amusing, _i_ think,” said francis archly. “oh, well, it's a matter of opinion. you're the double decker, not me.” “the double decker!” said francis archly. “why, what do you mean!--” he rolled his eyes significantly. “but may i introduce my friend angus guest.” “you've introduced me already, francesco,” said angus. “so sorry,” said francis. “guest!” said aaron. francis suddenly began to laugh. “may he not be guest?” he asked, fatherly. “very likely,” said aaron. “not that i was ever good at guessing.” francis tilted his eyebrows. fortunately the waiter arrived with the coffee. “tell me,” said francis, “will you have your coffee black, or with milk?” he was determined to restore a tone of sobriety. the coffee was sipped in sober solemnity. “is music your line as well, then?” asked aaron. “no, we're painters. we're going to work in rome.” “to earn your living?” “not yet.” the amount of discretion, modesty, and reserve which francis put into these two syllables gave aaron to think that he had two real young swells to deal with. “no,” continued francis. “i was only just down from oxford when the war came--and angus had been about ten months at the slade--but i have always painted.--so now we are going to work, really hard, in rome, to make up for lost time.--oh, one has lost so much time, in the war. and such precious time! i don't know if ever one will even be able to make it up again.” francis tilted his handsome eyebrows and put his head on one side with a wise-distressed look. “no,” said angus. “one will never be able to make it up. what is more, one will never be able to start again where one left off. we're shattered old men, now, in one sense. and in another sense, we're just pre-war babies.” the speech was uttered with an odd abruptness and didacticism which made aaron open his eyes. angus had that peculiar manner: he seemed to be haranguing himself in the circle of his own thoughts, not addressing himself to his listener. so his listener listened on the outside edge of the young fellow's crowded thoughts. francis put on a distressed air, and let his attention wander. angus pursed his lips and his eyes were stretched wide with a kind of pleasure, like a wicked owl which has just joyfully hooted an ill omen. “tell me,” said francis to aaron. “where were you all the time during the war?” “i was doing my job,” said aaron. which led to his explaining his origins. “really! so your music is quite new! but how interesting!” cried francis. aaron explained further. “and so the war hardly affected you? but what did you feel about it, privately?” “i didn't feel much. i didn't know what to feel. other folks did such a lot of feeling, i thought i'd better keep my mouth shut.” “yes, quite!” said angus. “everybody had such a lot of feelings on somebody else's behalf, that nobody ever had time to realise what they felt themselves. i know i was like that. the feelings all came on to me from the outside: like flies settling on meat. before i knew where i was i was eaten up with a swarm of feelings, and i found myself in the trenches. god knows what for. and ever since then i've been trying to get out of my swarm of feelings, which buzz in and out of me and have nothing to do with me. i realised it in hospital. it's exactly like trying to get out of a swarm of nasty dirty flies. and every one you kill makes you sick, but doesn't make the swarm any less.” again angus pursed and bridled and looked like a pleased, wicked white owl. then he polished his monocle on a very choice silk handkerchief, and fixed it unseeing in his left eye. but francis was not interested in his friend's experiences. for francis had had a job in the war office--whereas angus was a war-hero with shattered nerves. and let him depreciate his own experiences as much as he liked, the young man with the monocle kept tight hold on his prestige as a war hero. only for himself, though. he by no means insisted that anyone else should be war-bitten. francis was one of those men who, like women, can set up the sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising what he is doing. so there sat our friend aaron, amusingly unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome francis. angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his shrunken jaw. and aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, and told all his tale as if it was a comedy. a comedy it seemed, too, at that hour. and a comedy no doubt it was. but mixed, like most things in this life. mixed. it was quite late before this seance broke up: and the waiter itching to get rid of the fellows. “well, now,” said francis, as he rose from the table and settled his elegant waist, resting on one hip, as usual. “we shall see you in the morning, i hope. you say you are going to venice. why? have you some engagement in venice?” “no,” said aaron. “i only was going to look for a friend--rawdon lilly.” “rawdon lilly! why, is he in venice? oh, i've heard such a lot about him. i should like so much to meet him. but i heard he was in germany--” “i don't know where he is.” “angus! didn't we hear that lilly was in germany?” “yes, in munich, being psychoanalysed, i believe it was.” aaron looked rather blank. “but have you anything to take you to venice? it's such a bad climate in the winter. why not come with us to florence?” said francis. aaron wavered. he really did not know what to do. “think about it,” said francis, laying his hand on aaron's arm. “think about it tonight. and we'll meet in the morning. at what time?” “any time,” said aaron. “well, say eleven. we'll meet in the lounge here at eleven. will that suit you? all right, then. it's so awfully nice meeting you. that marvellous flute.--and think about florence. but do come. don't disappoint us.” the two young men went elegantly upstairs. chapter xv. a railway journey the next day but one, the three set off for florence. aaron had made an excursion from milan with the two young heroes, and dined with them subsequently at the most expensive restaurant in the town. then they had all gone home--and had sat in the young men's bedroom drinking tea, whilst aaron played the flute. francis was really musical, and enchanted. angus enjoyed the novelty, and the moderate patronage he was able to confer. and aaron felt amused and pleased, and hoped he was paying for his treat. so behold them setting off for florence in the early morning. angus and francis had first-class tickets: aaron took a third-class. “come and have lunch with us on the train,” said angus. “i'll order three places, and we can lunch together.” “oh, i can buy a bit of food at the station,” said aaron. “no, come and lunch with us. it will be much nicer. and we shall enjoy it as well,” said angus. “of course! ever so much nicer! of course!” cried francis. “yes, why not, indeed! why should you hesitate?” “all right, then,” said aaron, not without some feeling of constraint. so they separated. the young men settled themselves amidst the red plush and crochet-work, looking, with their hair plastered smoothly back, quite as first class as you could wish, creating quite the right impression on the porters and the travelling italians. aaron went to his third-class, further up the train. “well, then, _au revoir_, till luncheon,” cried francis. the train was fairly full in the third and second classes. however, aaron got his seat, and the porter brought on his bags, after disposing of the young men's luggage. aaron gave the tip uneasily. he always hated tipping--it seemed humiliating both ways. and the airy aplomb of the two young cavaliers, as they settled down among the red plush and the obsequiousness, and said “well, then, _au revoir_ till luncheon,” was peculiarly unsettling: though they did not intend it so. “the porter thinks i'm their servant--their valet,” said aaron to himself, and a curious half-amused, half-contemptuous look flickered on his face. it annoyed him. the falsity occasioned by the difference in the price of the tickets was really humiliating. aaron had lived long enough to know that as far as manhood and intellect went--nay, even education--he was not the inferior of the two young “gentlemen.” he knew quite well that, as far as intrinsic nature went, they did not imagine him an inferior: rather the contrary. they had rather an exaggerated respect for him and his life-power, and even his origin. and yet--they had the inestimable cash advantage--and they were going to keep it. they knew it was nothing more than an artificial cash superiority. but they gripped it all the more intensely. they were the upper middle classes. they were eton and oxford. and they were going to hang on to their privileges. in these days, it is a fool who abdicates before he's forced to. and therefore: “well, then--_au revoir_ till luncheon.” they were being so awfully nice. and inwardly they were not condescending. but socially, they just had to be. the world is made like that. it wasn't their own private fault. it was no fault at all. it was just the mode in which they were educated, the style of their living. and as we know, _le style, c'est l'homme_. angus came of very wealthy iron people near merthyr. already he had a very fair income of his own. as soon as the law-business concerning his father's and his grandfather's will was settled, he would be well off. and he knew it, and valued himself accordingly. francis was the son of a highly-esteemed barrister and politician of sydney, and in his day would inherit his father's lately-won baronetcy. but francis had not very much money: and was much more class-flexible than angus. angus had been born in a house with a park, and of awful, hard-willed, money-bound people. francis came of a much more adventurous, loose, excitable family, he had the colonial newness and adaptability. he knew, for his own part, that class superiority was just a trick, nowadays. still, it was a trick that paid. and a trick he was going to play as long as it did pay. while aaron sat, a little pale at the gills, immobile, ruminating these matters, a not very pleasant look about his nose-end, he heard a voice: “oh, there you are! i thought i'd better come and see, so that we can fetch you at lunch time.--you've got a seat? are you quite comfortable? is there anything i could get you? why, you're in a non-smoker!--but that doesn't matter, everybody will smoke. are you sure you have everything? oh, but wait just one moment--” it was francis, long and elegant, with his straight shoulders and his coat buttoned to show his waist, and his face so well-formed and so modern. so modern, altogether. his voice was pleasantly modulated, and never hurried. he now looked as if a thought had struck him. he put a finger to his brow, and hastened back to his own carriage. in a minute, he returned with a new london literary magazine. “something to read--i shall have to fly--see you at lunch,” and he had turned and elegantly hastened, but not too fast, back to his carriage. the porter was holding the door for him. so francis looked pleasantly hurried, but by no means rushed. oh, dear, no. he took his time. it was not for him to bolt and scramble like a mere italian. the people in aaron's carriage had watched the apparition of the elegant youth intently. for them, he was a being from another sphere--no doubt a young milordo with power wealth, and glamorous life behind him. which was just what francis intended to convey. so handsome--so very, very impressive in all his elegant calm showiness. he made such a _bella figura_. it was just what the italians loved. those in the first class regions thought he might even be an italian, he was so attractive. the train in motion, the many italian eyes in the carriage studied aaron. he, too, was good-looking. but by no means as fascinating as the young milordo. not half as sympathetic. no good at all at playing a role. probably a servant of the young signori. aaron stared out of the window, and played the one single british role left to him, that of ignoring his neighbours, isolating himself in their midst, and minding his own business. upon this insular trick our greatness and our predominance depends--such as it is. yes, they might look at him. they might think him a servant or what they liked. but he was inaccessible to them. he isolated himself upon himself, and there remained. it was a lovely day, a lovely, lovely day of early autumn. over the great plain of lombardy a magnificent blue sky glowed like mid-summer, the sun shone strong. the great plain, with its great stripes of cultivation--without hedges or boundaries---how beautiful it was! sometimes he saw oxen ploughing. sometimes. oh, so beautiful, teams of eight, or ten, even of twelve pale, great soft oxen in procession, ploughing the dark velvety earth, a driver with a great whip at their head, a man far behind holding the plough-shafts. beautiful the soft, soft plunging motion of oxen moving forwards. beautiful the strange, snaky lifting of the muzzles, the swaying of the sharp horns. and the soft, soft crawling motion of a team of oxen, so invisible, almost, yet so inevitable. now and again straight canals of water flashed blue. now and again the great lines of grey-silvery poplars rose and made avenues or lovely grey airy quadrangles across the plain. their top boughs were spangled with gold and green leaf. sometimes the vine-leaves were gold and red, a patterning. and the great square farm-homesteads, white, red-roofed, with their out-buildings, stood naked amid the lands, without screen or softening. there was something big and exposed about it all. no more the cosy english ambushed life, no longer the cosy littleness of the landscape. a bigness--and nothing to shelter the unshrinking spirit. it was all exposed, exposed to the sweep of plain, to the high, strong sky, and to human gaze. a kind of boldness, an indifference. aaron was impressed and fascinated. he looked with new interest at the italians in the carriage with him--for this same boldness and indifference and exposed gesture. and he found it in them, too. and again it fascinated him. it seemed so much bigger, as if the walls of life had fallen. nay, the walls of english life will have to fall. sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. the _presence_ of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in england. in england, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free. every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside. and every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. which in the end becomes a sort of self-conscious madness. but here, in the third class carriage, there was no tight string round every man. they were not all trussed with self-conscious string as tight as capons. they had a sufficient amount of callousness and indifference and natural equanimity. true, one of them spat continually on the floor, in large spits. and another sat with his boots all unlaced and his collar off, and various important buttons undone. they did not seem to care if bits of themselves did show, through the gaps in the wrapping. aaron winced--but he preferred it to english tightness. he was pleased, he was happy with the italians. he thought how generous and natural they were. so the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have got outside himself and his old conditions. it seemed like a great escape. there was magic again in life--real magic. was it illusion, or was it genuine? he thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a if there was no danger. lunch-time came. francis summoned aaron down the rocking tram. the three men had a table to themselves, and all felt they were enjoying themselves very much indeed. of course francis and angus made a great impression again. but in the dining car were mostly middle-class, well-to-do italians. and these did not look upon our two young heroes as two young wonders. no, rather with some criticism, and some class-envy. but they were impressed. oh, they were impressed! how should they not be, when our young gentlemen had such an air! aaron was conscious all the time that the fellow-diners were being properly impressed by the flower of civilisation and the salt of the earth, namely, young, well-to-do englishmen. and he had a faint premonition, based on experience perhaps, that fellow-passengers in the end never forgive the man who has “impressed” them. mankind loves being impressed. it asks to be impressed. it almost forces those whom it can force to play a role and to make an impression. and afterwards, never forgives. when the train ran into bologna station, they were still in the restaurant car. nor did they go at once to their seats. angus had paid the bill. there was three-quarters-of-an-hour's wait in bologna. “you may as well come down and sit with us,” said francis. “we've got nobody in our carriage, so why shouldn't we all stay together during the wait. you kept your own seat, i suppose.” no, he had forgotten. so when he went to look for it, it was occupied by a stout man who was just taking off his collar and wrapping a white kerchief round his neck. the third class carriages were packed. for those were early days after the war, while men still had pre-war notions and were poor. ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and the mysterious revolution would be effected. then, the second class and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on all great trains: and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would be comparatively empty. oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody will condescend to travel third! however, these were still modest, sombre months immediately after the peace. so a large man with a fat neck and a white kerchief, and his collar over his knee, sat in aaron's seat. aaron looked at the man, and at his own luggage overhead. the fat man saw him looking and stared back: then stared also at the luggage overhead: and with his almost invisible north-italian gesture said much plainer than words would have said it: “go to hell. i'm here and i'm going to stop here.” there was something insolent and unbearable about the look--and about the rocky fixity of the large man. he sat as if he had insolently taken root in his seat. aaron flushed slightly. francis and angus strolled along the train, outside, for the corridor was already blocked with the mad bologna rush, and the baggage belonging. they joined aaron as he stood on the platform. “but where is your seat?” cried francis, peering into the packed and jammed compartments of the third class. “that man's sitting in it.” “which?” cried francis, indignant. “the fat one there--with the collar on his knee.” “but it was your seat--!” francis' gorge rose in indignation. he mounted into the corridor. and in the doorway of the compartment he bridled like an angry horse rearing, bridling his head. poising himself on one hip, he stared fixedly at the man with the collar on his knee, then at the baggage aloft. he looked down at the fat man as a bird looks down from the eaves of a house. but the man looked back with a solid, rock-like impudence, before which an englishman quails: a jeering, immovable insolence, with a sneer round the nose and a solid-seated posterior. “but,” said francis in english--none of them had any italian yet. “but,” said francis, turning round to aaron, “that was your seat?” and he flung his long fore-finger in the direction of the fat man's thighs. “yes!” said aaron. “and he's taken it--!” cried francis in indignation. “and knows it, too,” said aaron. “but--!” and francis looked round imperiously, as if to summon his bodyguard. but bodyguards are no longer forthcoming, and train-guards are far from satisfactory. the fat man sat on, with a sneer-grin, very faint but very effective, round his nose, and a solidly-planted posterior. he quite enjoyed the pantomime of the young foreigners. the other passengers said something to him, and he answered laconic. then they all had the faint sneer-grin round their noses. a woman in the corner grinned jeeringly straight in francis' face. his charm failed entirely this time: and as for his commandingness, that was ineffectual indeed. rage came up in him. “oh well--something must be done,” said he decisively. “but didn't you put something in the seat to reserve it?” “only that _new statesman_--but he's moved it.” the man still sat with the invisible sneer-grin on his face, and that peculiar and immovable plant of his italian posterior. “mais--cette place etait reservee--” said francis, moving to the direct attack. the man turned aside and ignored him utterly--then said something to the men opposite, and they all began to show their teeth in a grin. francis was not so easily foiled. he touched the man on the arm. the man looked round threateningly, as if he had been struck. “cette place est reservee--par ce monsieur--” said francis with hauteur, though still in an explanatory tone, and pointing to aaron. the italian looked him, not in the eyes, but between the eyes, and sneered full in his face. then he looked with contempt at aaron. and then he said, in italian, that there was room for such snobs in the first class, and that they had not any right to come occupying the place of honest men in the third. “gia! gia!” barked the other passengers in the carriage. “loro possono andare prima classa--prima classa!” said the woman in the corner, in a very high voice, as if talking to deaf people, and pointing to aaron's luggage, then along the train to the first class carriages. “c'e posto la,” said one of the men, shrugging his shoulders. there was a jeering quality in the hard insolence which made francis go very red and augus very white. angus stared like a death's-head behind his monocle, with death-blue eyes. “oh, never mind. come along to the first class. i'll pay the difference. we shall be much better all together. get the luggage down, francis. it wouldn't be possible to travel with this lot, even if he gave up the seat. there's plenty of room in our carriage--and i'll pay the extra,” said angus. he knew there was one solution--and only one--money. but francis bit his finger. he felt almost beside himself--and quite powerless. for he knew the guard of the train would jeer too. it is not so easy to interfere with honest third-class bolognesi in bologna station, even if they _have_ taken another man's seat. powerless, his brow knitted, and looking just like mephistopheles with his high forehead and slightly arched nose, mephistopheles in a rage, he hauled down aaron's bag and handed it to angus. so they transferred themselves to the first-class carriage, while the fat man and his party in the third-class watched in jeering, triumphant silence. solid, planted, immovable, in static triumph. so aaron sat with the others amid the red plush, whilst the train began its long slow climb of the apennines, stinking sulphurous through tunnels innumerable. wonderful the steep slopes, the great chestnut woods, and then the great distances glimpsed between the heights, firenzuola away and beneath, turneresque hills far off, built of heaven-bloom, not of earth. it was cold at the summit-station, ice and snow in the air, fierce. our travellers shrank into the carriage again, and wrapped themselves round. then the train began its long slither downhill, still through a whole necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. so down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the arno valley. but then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in italian travel. the train began to hesitate--to falter to a halt, whistling shrilly as if in protest: whistling pip-pip-pip in expostulation as it stood forlorn among the fields: then stealing forward again and stealthily making pace, gathering speed, till it had got up a regular spurt: then suddenly the brakes came on with a jerk, more faltering to a halt, more whistling and pip-pip-pipping, as the engine stood jingling with impatience: after which another creak and splash, and another choking off. so on till they landed in prato station: and there they sat. a fellow passenger told them, there was an hour to wait here: an hour. something had happened up the line. “then i propose we make tea,” said angus, beaming. “why not! of course. let us make tea. and i will look for water.” so aaron and francis went to the restaurant bar and filled the little pan at the tap. angus got down the red picnic case, of which he was so fond, and spread out the various arrangements on the floor of the coupe. he soon had the spirit-lamp burning, the water heating. francis proposed that he and aaron should dash into prato and see what could be bought, whilst the tea was in preparation. so off they went, leaving angus like a busy old wizard manipulating his arrangements on the floor of the carriage, his monocle beaming with bliss. the one fat fellow--passenger with a lurid striped rug over his knees watched with acute interest. everybody who passed the doorway stood to contemplate the scene with pleasure. officials came and studied the situation with appreciation. then francis and aaron returned with a large supply of roast chestnuts, piping hot, and hard dried plums, and good dried figs, and rather stale rusks. they found the water just boiling, angus just throwing in the tea-egg, and the fellow-passenger just poking his nose right in, he was so thrilled. nothing pleased angus so much as thus pitching camp in the midst of civilisation. the scrubby newspaper packets of chestnuts, plums, figs and rusks were spread out: francis flew for salt to the man at the bar, and came back with a little paper of rock-salt: the brown tea was dispensed in the silver-fitted glasses from the immortal luncheon-case: and the picnic was in full swing. angus, being in the height of his happiness, now sat on the seat cross-legged, with his feet under him, in the authentic buddha fashion, and on his face the queer rapt alert look, half a smile, also somewhat buddhistic, holding his glass of brown tea in his hand. he was as rapt and immobile as if he really were in a mystic state. yet it was only his delight in the tea-party. the fellow-passenger peered at the tea, and said in broken french, was it good. in equally fragmentary french francis said very good, and offered the fat passenger some. he, however, held up his hand in protest, as if to say not for any money would he swallow the hot-watery stuff. and he pulled out a flask of wine. but a handful of chestnuts he accepted. the train-conductor, ticket-collector, and the heavy green soldier who protected them, swung open the door and stared attentively. the fellow passenger addressed himself to these new-comers, and they all began to smile good-naturedly. then the fellow-passenger--he was stout and fifty and had a brilliant striped rug always over his knees--pointed out the buddha-like position of angus, and the three in-starers smiled again. and so the fellow-passenger thought he must try too. so he put aside his rug, and lifted his feet from the floor, and took his toes in his hands, and tried to bring his legs up and his feet under him. but his knees were fat, his trousers in the direst extreme of peril, and he could no more manage it than if he had tried to swallow himself. so he desisted suddenly, rather scared, whilst the three bunched and official heads in the doorway laughed and jested at him, showing their teeth and teasing him. but on our gypsy party they turned their eyes with admiration. they loved the novelty and the fun. and on the thin, elegant angus in his new london clothes, they looked really puzzled, as he sat there immobile, gleaming through his monocle like some buddha going wicked, perched cross-legged and ecstatic on the red velvet seat. they marvelled that the lower half of him could so double up, like a foot-rule. so they stared till they had seen enough. when they suddenly said “buon 'appetito,” withdrew their heads and shoulders, slammed the door, and departed. then the train set off also--and shortly after six arrived in florence. it was debated what should aaron do in florence. the young men had engaged a room at bertolini's hotel, on the lungarno. bertolini's was not expensive--but aaron knew that his friends would not long endure hotel life. however, he went along with the other two, trusting to find a cheaper place on the morrow. it was growing quite dark as they drove to the hotel, but still was light enough to show the river rustling, the ponte vecchio spanning its little storeys across the flood, on its low, heavy piers: and some sort of magic of the darkening, varied houses facing, on the other side of the stream. of course they were all enchanted. “i knew,” said francis, “we should love it.” aaron was told he could have a little back room and pension terms for fifteen lire a day, if he stayed at least fifteen days. the exchange was then at forty-five. so fifteen lire meant just six-shillings-and-six pence a day, without extras. extras meant wine, tea, butter, and light. it was decided he should look for something cheaper next day. by the tone of the young men, he now gathered that they would prefer it if he took himself off to a cheaper place. they wished to be on their own. “well, then,” said francis, “you will be in to lunch here, won't you? then we'll see you at lunch.” it was as if both the young men had drawn in their feelers now. they were afraid of finding the new man an incubus. they wanted to wash their hands of him. aaron's brow darkened. “perhaps it was right your love to dissemble but why did you kick me down stairs?...” then morning found him out early, before his friends had arisen. it was sunny again. the magic of florence at once overcame him, and he forgot the bore of limited means and hotel costs. he went straight out of the hotel door, across the road, and leaned on the river parapet. there ran the arno: not such a flood after all, but a green stream with shoals of pebbles in its course. across, and in the delicate shadow of the early sun, stood the opposite lungarno, the old flat houses, pink, or white, or grey stone, with their green shutters, some closed, some opened. it had a flowery effect, the skyline irregular against the morning light. to the right the delicate trinita bridge, to the left, the old bridge with its little shops over the river. beyond, towards the sun, glimpses of green, sky-bloomed country: tuscany. there was a noise and clatter of traffic: boys pushing hand-barrows over the cobble-stones, slow bullocks stepping side by side, and shouldering one another affectionately, drawing a load of country produce, then horses in great brilliant scarlet cloths, like vivid palls, slowly pulling the long narrow carts of the district: and men hu-huing!--and people calling: all the sharp, clattering morning noise of florence. “oh, angus! do come and look! oh, so lovely!” glancing up, he saw the elegant figure of francis, in fine coloured-silk pyjamas, perched on a small upper balcony, turning away from the river towards the bedroom again, his hand lifted to his lips, as if to catch there his cry of delight. the whole pose was classic and effective: and very amusing. how the italians would love it! aaron slipped back across the road, and walked away under the houses towards the ponte vecchio. he passed the bridge--and passed the uffizi--watching the green hills opposite, and san miniato. then he noticed the over-dramatic group of statuary in the piazza mentana--male and physical and melodramatic--and then the corner house. it was a big old florentine house, with many green shutters and wide eaves. there was a notice plate by the door--“pension nardini.” he came to a full stop. he stared at the notice-plate, stared at the glass door, and turning round, stared at the over-pathetic dead soldier on the arm of his over-heroic pistol-firing comrade; _mentana_--and the date! aaron wondered what and where mentana was. then at last he summoned his energy, opened the glass door, and mounted the first stairs. he waited some time before anybody appeared. then a maid-servant. “can i have a room?” said aaron. the bewildered, wild-eyed servant maid opened a door and showed him into a heavily-gilt, heavily-plush drawing-room with a great deal of frantic grandeur about it. there he sat and cooled his heels for half an hour. arrived at length a stout young lady--handsome, with big dark-blue italian eyes--but anaemic and too stout. “oh!” she said as she entered, not knowing what else to say. “good-morning,” said aaron awkwardly. “oh, good-morning! english! yes! oh, i am so sorry to keep you, you know, to make you wait so long. i was upstairs, you know, with a lady. will you sit?” “can i have a room?” said aaron. “a room! yes, you can.” “what terms?” “terms! oh! why, ten francs a day, you know, pension--if you stay--how long will you stay?” “at least a month, i expect.” “a month! oh yes. yes, ten francs a day.” “for everything?” “everything. yes, everything. coffee, bread, honey or jam in the morning: lunch at half-past twelve; tea in the drawing-room, half-past four: dinner at half-past seven: all very nice. and a warm room with the sun--would you like to see?” so aaron was led up the big, rambling old house to the top floor--then along a long old corridor--and at last into a big bedroom with two beds and a red tiled floor--a little dreary, as ever--but the sun just beginning to come in, and a lovely view on to the river, towards the ponte vecchio, and at the hills with their pines and villas and verdure opposite. here he would settle. the signorina would send a man for his bags, at half past two in the afternoon. at luncheon aaron found the two friends, and told them of his move. “how very nice for you! ten francs a day--but that is nothing. i am so pleased you've found something. and when will you be moving in?” said francis. “at half-past two.” “oh, so soon. yes, just as well.--but we shall see you from time to time, of course. what did you say the address was? oh, yes--just near the awful statue. very well. we can look you up any time--and you will find us here. leave a message if we should happen not to be in--we've got lots of engagements--” chapter xvi. florence the very afternoon after aaron's arrival in florence the sky became dark, the wind cold, and rain began steadily to fall. he sat in his big, bleak room above the river, and watched the pale green water fused with yellow, the many-threaded streams fuse into one, as swiftly the surface flood came down from the hills. across, the dark green hills looked darker in the wet, the umbrella pines held up in vain above the villas. but away below, on the lungarno, traffic rattled as ever. aaron went down at five o'clock to tea, and found himself alone next a group of women, mostly swedes or danish or dutch, drinking a peculiar brown herb-brew which tasted like nothing else on earth, and eating two thick bits of darkish bread smeared with a brown smear which hoped it was jam, but hoped in vain. unhappily he sat in the gilt and red, massively ornate room, while the foreign women eyed him. oh, bitter to be a male under such circumstances. he escaped as soon as possible back to his far-off regions, lonely and cheerless, away above. but he rather liked the far-off remoteness in the big old florentine house: he did not mind the peculiar dark, uncosy dreariness. it was not really dreary: only indifferent. indifferent to comfort, indifferent to all homeliness and cosiness. the over-big furniture trying to be impressive, but never to be pretty or bright or cheerful. there it stood, ugly and apart. and there let it stand.--neither did he mind the lack of fire, the cold sombreness of his big bedroom. at home, in england, the bright grate and the ruddy fire, the thick hearth-rug and the man's arm-chair, these had been inevitable. and now he was glad to get away from it all. he was glad not to have a cosy hearth, and his own arm-chair. he was glad to feel the cold, and to breathe the unwarmed air. he preferred the italian way of no fires, no heating. if the day was cold, he was willing to be cold too. if it was dark, he was willing to be dark. the cosy brightness of a real home--it had stifled him till he felt his lungs would burst. the horrors of real domesticity. no, the italian brutal way was better. so he put his overcoat over his knee, and studied some music he had bought in milan: some pergolesi and the scarlatti he liked, and some corelli. he preferred frail, sensitive, abstract music, with not much feeling in it, but a certain limpidity and purity. night fell as he sat reading the scores. he would have liked to try certain pieces on his flute. but his flute was too sensitive, it winced from the new strange surroundings, and would not blossom. dinner sounded at last--at eight o'clock, or something after. he had to learn to expect the meals always forty minutes late. down he went, down the long, dark, lonely corridors and staircases. the dining room was right downstairs. but he had a little table to himself near the door, the elderly women were at some little distance. the only other men were agostmo, the unshapely waiter, and an italian duke, with wife and child and nurse, the family sitting all together at a table halfway down the room, and utterly pre-occupied with a little yellow dog. however, the food was good enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and the maid-servant cheerful and bustling. everything felt happy-go-lucky and informal, there was no particular atmosphere. nobody put on any airs, because nobody in the nardini took any notice if they did. the little ducal dog yapped, the ducal son shouted, the waiter dropped half a dozen spoons, the old women knitted during the waits, and all went off so badly that it was quite pleasant. yes, aaron preferred it to bertolini's, which was trying to be efficient and correct: though not making any strenuous effort. still, bertolini's was much more up to the scratch, there was the tension of proper standards. whereas here at nardini's, nothing mattered very much. it was november. when he got up to his far-off room again, aaron felt almost as if he were in a castle with the drawbridge drawn up. through the open window came the sound of the swelling arno, as it rushed and rustled along over its gravel-shoals. lights spangled the opposite side. traffic sounded deep below. the room was not really cold, for the summer sun so soaks into these thick old buildings, that it takes a month or two of winter to soak it out.--the rain still fell. in the morning it was still november, and the dawn came slowly. and through the open window was the sound of the river's rushing. but the traffic started before dawn, with a bang and a rattle of carts, and a bang and jingle of tram-cars over the not-distant bridge. oh, noisy florence! at half-past seven aaron rang for his coffee: and got it at a few minutes past eight. the signorina had told him to take his coffee in bed. rain was still falling. but towards nine o'clock it lifted, and he decided to go out. a wet, wet world. carriages going by, with huge wet shiny umbrellas, black and with many points, erected to cover the driver and the tail of the horse and the box-seat. the hood of the carriage covered the fare. clatter-clatter through the rain. peasants with long wagons and slow oxen, and pale-green huge umbrellas erected for the driver to walk beneath. men tripping along in cloaks, shawls, umbrellas, anything, quite unconcerned. a man loading gravel in the river-bed, in spite of the wet. and innumerable bells ringing: but innumerable bells. the great soft trembling of the cathedral bell felt in all the air. anyhow it was a new world. aaron went along close to the tall thick houses, following his nose. and suddenly he caught sight of the long slim neck of the palazzo vecchio up above, in the air. and in another minute he was passing between massive buildings, out into the piazza della signoria. there he stood still and looked round him in real surprise, and real joy. the flat empty square with its stone paving was all wet. the great buildings rose dark. the dark, sheer front of the palazzo vecchio went up like a cliff, to the battlements, and the slim tower soared dark and hawk-like, crested, high above. and at the foot of the cliff stood the great naked david, white and stripped in the wet, white against the dark, warm-dark cliff of the building--and near, the heavy naked men of bandinelli. the first thing he had seen, as he turned into the square, was the back of one of these bandinelli statues: a great naked man of marble, with a heavy back and strong naked flanks over which the water was trickling. and then to come immediately upon the david, so much whiter, glistening skin-white in the wet, standing a little forward, and shrinking. he may be ugly, too naturalistic, too big, and anything else you like. but the david in the piazza della signoria, there under the dark great palace, in the position michelangelo chose for him, there, standing forward stripped and exposed and eternally half-shrinking, half--wishing to expose himself, he is the genius of florence. the adolescent, the white, self-conscious, physical adolescent: enormous, in keeping with the stark, grim, enormous palace, which is dark and bare as he is white and bare. and behind, the big, lumpy bandinelli men are in keeping too. they may be ugly--but they are there in their place, and they have their own lumpy reality. and this morning in the rain, standing unbroken, with the water trickling down their flanks and along the inner side of their great thighs, they were real enough, representing the undaunted physical nature of the heavier florentines. aaron looked and looked at the three great naked men. david so much white, and standing forward, self-conscious: then at the great splendid front of the palazzo vecchio: and at the fountain splashing water upon its wet, wet figures; and the distant equestrian statue; and the stone-flagged space of the grim square. and he felt that here he was in one of the world's living centres, here, in the piazza della signoria. the sense of having arrived--of having reached a perfect centre of the human world: this he had. and so, satisfied, he turned round to look at the bronze perseus which rose just above him. benvenuto cellini's dark hero looked female, with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant: graceful, and rather vulgar. the clownish bandinellis were somehow more to the point.--then all the statuary in the loggia! but that is a mistake. it looks too much like the yard of a monumental mason. the great, naked men in the rain, under the dark-grey november sky, in the dark, strong inviolable square! the wonderful hawk-head of the old palace. the physical, self-conscious adolescent, michelangelo's david, shrinking and exposing himself, with his white, slack limbs! florence, passionate, fearless florence had spoken herself out.--aaron was fascinated by the piazza della signoria. he never went into the town, nor returned from it to his lodging, without contriving to pass through the square. and he never passed through it without satisfaction. here men had been at their intensest, most naked pitch, here, at the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. since then, always rather puling and apologetic. aaron felt a new self, a new life-urge rising inside himself. florence seemed to start a new man in him. it was a town of men. on friday morning, so early, he heard the traffic. early, he watched the rather low, two-wheeled traps of the peasants spanking recklessly over the bridge, coming in to town. and then, when he went out, he found the piazza della signoria packed with men: but all, all men. and all farmers, land-owners and land-workers. the curious, fine-nosed tuscan farmers, with their half-sardonic, amber-coloured eyes. their curious individuality, their clothes worn so easy and reckless, their hats with the personal twist. their curious full oval cheeks, their tendency to be too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs. their close-sitting dark hair. and above all, their sharp, almost acrid, mocking expression, the silent curl of the nose, the eternal challenge, the rock-bottom unbelief, and the subtle fearlessness. the dangerous, subtle, never-dying fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief. but men! men! a town of men, in spite of everything. the one manly quality, undying, acrid fearlessness. the eternal challenge of the un-quenched human soul. perhaps too acrid and challenging today, when there is nothing left to challenge. but men--who existed without apology and without justification. men who would neither justify themselves nor apologize for themselves. just men. the rarest thing left in our sweet christendom. altogether aaron was pleased with himself, for being in florence. those were early days after the war, when as yet very few foreigners had returned, and the place had the native sombreness and intensity. so that our friend did not mind being alone. the third day, however, francis called on him. there was a tap at the bedroom door, and the young man entered, all eyes of curiosity. “oh, there you are!” he cried, flinging his hand and twisting his waist and then laying his hand on his breast. “such a long way up to you! but miles--! well, how are you? are you quite all right here? you are? i'm so glad--we've been so rushed, seeing people that we haven't had a minute. but not a minute! people! people! people! isn't it amazing how many there are, and how many one knows, and gets to know! but amazing! endless acquaintances!--oh, and such quaint people here! so odd! so more than odd! oh, extraordinary--!” francis chuckled to himself over the extraordinariness. then he seated himself gracefully at aaron's table. “oh, music! what? corelli! so interesting! so very clever, these people, weren't they!--corelli and the younger scarlatti and all that crowd.” here he closed the score again. “but now--look! do you want to know anybody here, or don't you? i've told them about you, and of course they're dying to meet you and hear you play. but i thought it best not to mention anything about--about your being hard-up, and all that. i said you were just here on a visit. you see with this kind of people i'm sure it's much the best not to let them start off by thinking you will need them at all--or that you might need them. why give yourself away, anyhow? just meet them and take them for what they're worth--and then you can see. if they like to give you an engagement to play at some show or other--well, you can decide when the time comes whether you will accept. much better that these kind of people shouldn't get it into their heads at once that they can hire your services. it doesn't do. they haven't enough discrimination for that. much best make rather a favour of it, than sort of ask them to hire you.--don't you agree? perhaps i'm wrong.” aaron sat and listened and wondered at the wisdom and the genuine kindness of the young _beau_. and more still, he wondered at the profound social disillusionment. this handsome collie dog was something of a social wolf, half showing his fangs at the moment. but with genuine kindheartedness for another wolf. aaron was touched. “yes, i think that's the best way,” he said. “you do! yes, so do i. oh, they are such queer people! why is it, do you think, that english people abroad go so very queer--so ultra-english--incredible!--and at the same time so perfectly impossible? but impossible! pathological, i assure you.--and as for their sexual behaviour--oh, dear, don't mention it. i assure you it doesn't bear mention.--and all quite flagrant, quite unabashed--under the cover of this fanatical englishness. but i couldn't begin to tell you all the things. it's just incredible.” aaron wondered how on earth francis had been able to discover and bear witness to so much that was incredible, in a bare two days. but a little gossip, and an addition of lurid imagination will carry you anywhere. “well now,” said francis. “what are you doing today?” aaron was not doing anything in particular. “then will you come and have dinner with us--?” francis fixed up the time and the place--a small restaurant at the other end of the town. then he leaned out of the window. “fascinating place! oh, fascinating place!” he said, soliloquy. “and you've got a superb view. almost better than ours, i think.--well then, half-past seven. we're meeting a few other people, mostly residents or people staying some time. we're not inviting them. just dropping in, you know--a little restaurant. we shall see you then! well then, _a rivederci_ till this evening.--so glad you like florence! i'm simply loving it--revelling. and the pictures!--oh--” the party that evening consisted all of men: francis and angus, and a writer, james argyle, and little algy constable, and tiny louis mee, and deaf walter rosen. they all snapped and rattled at one another, and were rather spiteful but rather amusing. francis and angus had to leave early. they had another appointment. and james argyle got quite tipsy, and said to aaron: “but, my boy, don't let yourself be led astray by the talk of such people as algy. beware of them, my boy, if you've a soul to save. if you've a soul to save!” and he swallowed the remains of his litre. algy's nose trembled a little, and his eyes blinked. “and if you've a soul to lose,” he said, “i would warn you very earnestly against argyle.” whereupon algy shut one eye and opened the other so wide, that aaron was almost scared. “quite right, my boy. ha! ha! never a truer thing said! ha-ha-ha.” argyle laughed his mephistophelian tipsy laugh. “they'll teach you to save. never was such a lot of ripe old savers! save their old trouser-buttons! go to them if you want to learn to save. oh, yes, i advise it seriously. you'll lose nothing--not even a reputation.--you may lose a soul, of course. but that's a detail, among such a hoard of banknotes and trouser-buttons. ha-ha! what's a soul, to them--?” “what is it to you, is perhaps the more pertinent question,” said algy, flapping his eyelids like some crazy owl. “it is you who specialise in the matter of soul, and we who are in need of enlightenment--” “yes, very true, you are! you are in need of enlightenment. a set of benighted wise virgins. ha-ha-ha! that's good, that--benighted wise virgins! what--” argyle put his red face near to aaron's, and made a _moue_, narrowing his eyes quizzically as he peered up from under his level grey eyebrows. “sit in the dark to save the lamp-oil--and all no good to them.--when the bridegroom cometh--! ha-ha! good that! good, my boy!--the bridegroom--” he giggled to himself. “what about the bridegroom, algy, my boy? eh? what about him? better trim your wick, old man, if it's not too late--” “we were talking of souls, not wicks, argyle,” said algy. “same thing. upon my soul it all amounts to the same thing. where's the soul in a man that hasn't got a bedfellow--eh?--answer me that! can't be done you know. might as well ask a virgin chicken to lay you an egg.” “then there ought to be a good deal of it about,” said algy. “of what? of soul? there ought to be a good deal of soul about?--ah, because there's a good deal of--, you mean.--ah, i wish it were so. i wish it were so. but, believe me, there's far more damned chastity in the world, than anything else. even in this town.--call it chastity, if you like. i see nothing in it but sterility. it takes a rat to praise long tails. impotence set up the praise of chastity--believe me or not--but that's the bottom of it. the virtue is made out of the necessity.--ha-ha-ha!--like them! like them! ha-ha! saving their souls! why they'd save the waste matter of their bodies if they could. grieves them to part with it.--ha! ha!--ha!” there was a pause. argyle was in his cups, which left no more to be said. algy, quivering and angry, looked disconcertingly round the room as if he were quite calm and collected. the deaf jewish rosen was smiling down his nose and saying: “what was that last? i didn't catch that last,” cupping his ear with his hand in the frantic hope that someone would answer. no one paid any heed. “i shall be going,” said algy, looking round. then to aaron he said, “you play the flute, i hear. may we hear you some time?” “yes,” said aaron, non-committal. “well, look here--come to tea tomorrow. i shall have some friends, and del torre will play the piano. come to tea tomorrow, will you?” “thank you, i will.” “and perhaps you'll bring your flute along.” “don't you do any such thing, my boy. make them entertain you, for once.--they're always squeezing an entertainment out of somebody--” and argyle desperately emptied the remains of algy's wine into his own glass: whilst algy stood as if listening to something far off, and blinking terribly. “anyhow,” he said at length, “you'll come, won't you? and bring the flute if you feel like it.” “don't you take that flute, my boy,” persisted argyle. “don't think of such a thing. if they want a concert, let them buy their tickets and go to the teatro diana. or to marchesa del torre's saturday morning. she can afford to treat them.” algy looked at argyle, and blinked. “well,” he said. “i hope you'll get home all right, argyle.” “thank you for your courtesy, algy. won't you lend me your arm?” as algy was small and frail, somewhat shaky, and as argyle was a finely built, heavy man of fifty or more, the slap was unkind. “afraid i can't tonight. good-night--” algy departed, so did little mee, who had sat with a little delighted disapproval on his tiny, bird-like face, without saying anything. and even the jew rosen put away his deaf-machine and began awkwardly to take his leave. his long nose was smiling to itself complacently at all the things argyle had been saying. when he, too, had gone, argyle arched his brows at aaron, saying: “oh, my dear fellow, what a lot they are!--little mee--looking like an innocent little boy. he's over seventy if he's a day. well over seventy. well, you don't believe me. ask his mother--ask his mother. she's ninety-five. old lady of ninety-five--” argyle even laughed himself at his own preposterousness. “and then algy--algy's not a fool, you know. oh, he can be most entertaining, most witty, and amusing. but he's out of place here. he should be in kensington, dandling round the ladies' drawing rooms and making his _mots_. they're rich, you know, the pair of them. little mee used to boast that he lived on eleven-and-three-pence a week. had to, poor chap. but then what does a white mouse like that need? makes a heavy meal on a cheese-paring. luck, you know--but of course he's come into money as well. rich as croesus, and still lives on nineteen-and-two-pence a week. though it's nearly double, of course, what it used to be. no wonder he looks anxious. they disapprove of me--oh, quite right, quite right from their own point of view. where would their money be otherwise? it wouldn't last long if i laid hands on it--” he made a devilish quizzing face. “but you know, they get on my nerves. little old maids, you know, little old maids. i'm sure i'm surprised at their patience with me.--but when people are patient with you, you want to spit gall at them. don't you? ha-ha-ha! poor old algy.--did i lay it on him tonight, or did i miss him?” “i think you got him,” said aaron. “he'll never forgive me. depend on it, he'll never forgive me. ha-ha! i like to be unforgiven. it adds zest to one's intercourse with people, to know that they'll never forgive one. ha-ha-ha! little old maids, who do their knitting with their tongues. poor old algy--he drops his stitches now. ha-ha-ha!--must be eighty, i should say.” aaron laughed. he had never met a man like argyle before--and he could not help being charmed. the other man had a certain wicked whimsicality that was very attractive, when levelled against someone else, and not against oneself. he must have been very handsome in his day, with his natural dignity, and his clean-shaven strong square face. but now his face was all red and softened and inflamed, his eyes had gone small and wicked under his bushy grey brows. still he had a presence. and his grey hair, almost gone white, was still handsome. “and what are you going to do in florence?” asked argyle. aaron explained. “well,” said argyle. “make what you can out of them, and then go. go before they have time to do the dirty on you. if they think you want anything from them, they'll treat you like a dog, like a dog. oh, they're very frightened of anybody who wants anything of them: frightened to death. i see nothing of them.--live by myself--see nobody. can't stand it, you know: their silly little teaparties--simply can't stand it. no, i live alone--and shall die alone.--at least, i sincerely hope so. i should be sorry to have any of them hanging round.” the restaurant was empty, the pale, malarial waiter--he had of course contracted malaria during the war--was looking purple round the eyes. but argyle callously sat on. aaron therefore rose to his feet. “oh, i'm coming, i'm coming,” said argyle. he got unsteadily to his feet. the waiter helped him on with his coat: and he put a disreputable-looking little curly hat on his head. then he took his stick. “don't look at my appearance, my dear fellow,” said argyle. “i am frayed at the wrists--look here!” he showed the cuffs of his overcoat, just frayed through. “i've got a trunkful of clothes in london, if only somebody would bring it out to me.--ready then! _avanti!_” and so they passed out into the still rainy street. argyle lived in the very centre of the town: in the cathedral square. aaron left him at his hotel door. “but come and see me,” said argyle. “call for me at twelve o'clock--or just before twelve--and let us have luncheon together. what! is that all right?--yes, come just before twelve.--when?--tomorrow? tomorrow morning? will you come tomorrow?” aaron said he would on monday. “monday, eh! you say monday! very well then. don't you forget now. don't you forget. for i've a memory like a vice. _i_ shan't forget.--just before twelve then. and come right up. i'm right under the roof. in paradise, as the porter always says. _siamo nel paradiso_. but he's a _cretin_. as near paradise as i care for, for it's devilish hot in summer, and damned cold in winter. don't you forget now--monday, twelve o'clock.” and argyle pinched aaron's arm fast, then went unsteadily up the steps to his hotel door. the next day at algy's there was a crowd algy had a very pleasant flat indeed, kept more scrupulously neat and finicking than ever any woman's flat was kept. so today, with its bowls of flowers and its pictures and books and old furniture, and algy, very nicely dressed, fluttering and blinking and making really a charming host, it was all very delightful to the little mob of visitors. they were a curious lot, it is true: everybody rather exceptional. which though it may be startling, is so very much better fun than everybody all alike. aaron talked to an old, old italian elegant in side-curls, who peeled off his grey gloves and studied his formalities with a delightful mid-victorian dash, and told stories about a _plaint_ which lady surry had against lord marsh, and was quite incomprehensible. out rolled the english words, like plums out of a burst bag, and all completely unintelligible. but the old _beau_ was supremely satisfied. he loved talking english, and holding his listeners spell-bound. next to aaron on the sofa sat the marchesa del torre, an american woman from the southern states, who had lived most of her life in europe. she was about forty years of age, handsome, well-dressed, and quiet in the buzz of the tea-party. it was evident she was one of algy's lionesses. now she sat by aaron, eating nothing, but taking a cup of tea and keeping still. she seemed sad--or not well perhaps. her eyes were heavy. but she was very carefully made up, and very well dressed, though simply: and sitting there, full-bosomed, rather sad, remote-seeming, she suggested to aaron a modern cleopatra brooding, anthony-less. her husband, the marchese, was a little intense italian in a colonel's grey uniform, cavalry, leather gaiters. he had blue eyes, his hair was cut very short, his head looked hard and rather military: he would have been taken for an austrian officer, or even a german, had it not been for the peculiar italian sprightliness and touch of grimace in his mobile countenance. he was rather like a gnome--not ugly, but odd. now he came and stood opposite to signor di lanti, and quizzed him in italian. but it was evident, in quizzing the old buck, the little marchese was hovering near his wife, in ear-shot. algy came up with cigarettes, and she at once began to smoke, with that peculiar heavy intensity of a nervous woman. aaron did not say anything--did not know what to say. he was peculiarly conscious of the woman sitting next to him, her arm near his. she smoked heavily, in silence, as if abstracted, a sort of cloud on her level, dark brows. her hair was dark, but a softish brown, not black, and her skin was fair. her bosom would be white.--why aaron should have had this thought, he could not for the life of him say. manfredi, her husband, rolled his blue eyes and grimaced as he laughed at old lanti. but it was obvious that his attention was diverted sideways, towards his wife. aaron, who was tired of nursing a tea-cup, placed in on a table and resumed his seat in silence. but suddenly the little marchese whipped out his cigarette-case, and making a little bow, presented it to aaron, saying: “won't you smoke?” “thank you,” said aaron. “turkish that side--virginia there--you see.” “thank you, turkish,” said aaron. the little officer in his dove-grey and yellow uniform snapped his box shut again, and presented a light. “you are new in florence?” he said, as he presented the match. “four days,” said aaron. “and i hear you are musical.” “i play the flute--no more.” “ah, yes--but then you play it as an artist, not as an accomplishment.” “but how do you know?” laughed aaron. “i was told so--and i believe it.” “that's nice of you, anyhow--but you are a musician too.” “yes--we are both musicians--my wife and i.” manfredi looked at his wife. she flicked the ash off her cigarette. “what sort?” said aaron. “why, how do you mean, what sort? we are dilettanti, i suppose.” “no--what is your instrument? the piano?” “yes--the pianoforte. and my wife sings. but we are very much out of practice. i have been at the war four years, and we have had our home in paris. my wife was in paris, she did not wish to stay in italy alone. and so--you see--everything goes--” “but you will begin again?” “yes. we have begun already. we have music on saturday mornings. next saturday a string quartette, and violin solos by a young florentine woman--a friend--very good indeed, daughter of our professor tortoli, who composes--as you may know--” “yes,” said aaron. “would you care to come and hear--?” “awfully nice if you would--” suddenly said the wife, quite simply, as if she had merely been tired, and not talking before. “i should like to very much--” “do come then.” while they were making the arrangements, algy came up in his blandest manner. “now marchesa--might we hope for a song?” “no--i don't sing any more,” came the slow, contralto reply. “oh, but you can't mean you say that deliberately--” “yes, quite deliberately--” she threw away her cigarette and opened her little gold case to take another. “but what can have brought you to such a disastrous decision?” “i can't say,” she replied, with a little laugh. “the war, probably.” “oh, but don't let the war deprive us of this, as of everything else.” “can't be helped,” she said. “i have no choice in the matter. the bird has flown--” she spoke with a certain heavy languor. “you mean the bird of your voice? oh, but that is quite impossible. one can hear it calling out of the leaves every time you speak.” “i'm afraid you can't get him to do any more than call out of the leaves.” “but--but--pardon me--is it because you don't intend there should be any more song? is that your intention?” “that i couldn't say,” said the marchesa, smoking, smoking. “yes,” said manfredi. “at the present time it is because she will not--not because she cannot. it is her will, as you say.” “dear me! dear me!” said algy. “but this is really another disaster added to the war list.--but--but--will none of us ever be able to persuade you?” he smiled half cajoling, half pathetic, with a prodigious flapping of his eyes. “i don't know,” said she. “that will be as it must be.” “then can't we say it must be song once more?” to this sally she merely laughed, and pressed out her half-smoked cigarette. “how very disappointing! how very cruel of--of fate--and the war--and--and all the sum total of evils,” said algy. “perhaps--” here the little and piquant host turned to aaron. “perhaps mr. sisson, your flute might call out the bird of song. as thrushes call each other into challenge, you know. don't you think that is very probable?” “i have no idea,” said aaron. “but you, marchesa. won't you give us hope that it might be so?” “i've no idea, either,” said she. “but i should very much like to hear mr. sisson's flute. it's an instrument i like extremely.” “there now. you see you may work the miracle, mr. sisson. won't you play to us?” “i'm afraid i didn't bring my flute along,” said aaron “i didn't want to arrive with a little bag.” “quite!” said algy. “what a pity it wouldn't go in your pocket.” “not music and all,” said aaron. “dear me! what a _comble_ of disappointment. i never felt so strongly, marchesa, that the old life and the old world had collapsed.--really--i shall soon have to try to give up being cheerful at all.” “don't do that,” said the marchesa. “it isn't worth the effort.” “ah! i'm glad you find it so. then i have hope.” she merely smiled, indifferent. the teaparty began to break up--aaron found himself going down the stairs with the marchesa and her husband. they descended all three in silence, husband and wife in front. once outside the door, the husband asked: “how shall we go home, dear? tram or carriage--?” it was evident he was economical. “walk,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at aaron. “we are all going the same way, i believe.” aaron said where he lived. they were just across the river. and so all three proceeded to walk through the town. “you are sure it won't be too much for you--too far?” said the little officer, taking his wife's arm solicitously. she was taller than he. but he was a spirited fellow. “no, i feel like walking.” “so long as you don't have to pay for it afterwards.” aaron gathered that she was not well. yet she did not look ill--unless it were nerves. she had that peculiar heavy remote quality of pre-occupation and neurosis. the streets of florence were very full this sunday evening, almost impassable, crowded particularly with gangs of grey-green soldiers. the three made their way brokenly, and with difficulty. the italian was in a constant state of returning salutes. the grey-green, sturdy, unsoldierly soldiers looked at the woman as she passed. “i am sure you had better take a carriage,” said manfredi. “no--i don't mind it.” “do you feel at home in florence?” aaron asked her. “yes--as much as anywhere. oh, yes--quite at home.” “do you like it as well as anywhere?” he asked. “yes--for a time. paris for the most part.” “never america?” “no, never america. i came when i was quite a little girl to europe--madrid--constantinople--paris. i hardly knew america at all.” aaron remembered that francis had told him, the marchesa's father had been ambassador to paris. “so you feel you have no country of your own?” “i have italy. i am italian now, you know.” aaron wondered why she spoke so muted, so numbed. manfredi seemed really attached to her--and she to him. they were so simple with one another. they came towards the bridge where they should part. “won't you come and have a cocktail?” she said. “now?” said aaron. “yes. this is the right time for a cocktail. what time is it, manfredi?” “half past six. do come and have one with us,” said the italian. “we always take one about this time.” aaron continued with them over the bridge. they had the first floor of an old palazzo opposite, a little way up the hill. a man-servant opened the door. “if only it will be warm,” she said. “the apartment is almost impossible to keep warm. we will sit in the little room.” aaron found himself in a quite warm room with shaded lights and a mixture of old italian stiffness and deep soft modern comfort. the marchesa went away to take off her wraps, and the marchese chatted with aaron. the little officer was amiable and kind, and it was evident he liked his guest. “would you like to see the room where we have music?” he said. “it is a fine room for the purpose--we used before the war to have music every saturday morning, from ten to twelve: and all friends might come. usually we had fifteen or twenty people. now we are starting again. i myself enjoy it so much. i am afraid my wife isn't so enthusiastic as she used to be. i wish something would rouse her up, you know. the war seemed to take her life away. here in florence are so many amateurs. very good indeed. we can have very good chamber-music indeed. i hope it will cheer her up and make her quite herself again. i was away for such long periods, at the front.--and it was not good for her to be alone.--i am hoping now all will be better.” so saying, the little, odd officer switched on the lights of the long salon. it was a handsome room in the italian mode of the empire period--beautiful old faded tapestry panels--reddish--and some ormolu furniture--and other things mixed in--rather conglomerate, but pleasing, all the more pleasing. it was big, not too empty, and seemed to belong to human life, not to show and shut-upedness. the host was happy showing it. “of course the flat in paris is more luxurious than this,” he said. “but i prefer this. i prefer it here.” there was a certain wistfulness as he looked round, then began to switch off the lights. they returned to the little salotta. the marchesa was seated in a low chair. she wore a very thin white blouse, that showed her arms and her throat. she was a full-breasted, soft-skinned woman, though not stout. “make the cocktails then, manfredi,” she said. “do you find this room very cold?” she asked of aaron. “not a bit cold,” he said. “the stove goes all the time,” she said, “but without much effect.” “you wear such thin clothes,” he said. “ah, no, the stove should give heat enough. do sit down. will you smoke? there are cigarettes--and cigars, if you prefer them.” “no, i've got my own, thanks.” she took her own cigarette from her gold case. “it is a fine room, for music, the big room,” said he. “yes, quite. would you like to play for us some time, do you think?” “do you want me to? i mean does it interest you?” “what--the flute?” “no--music altogether--” “music altogether--! well! i used to love it. now--i'm not sure. manfredi lives for it, almost.” “for that and nothing else?” asked aaron. “no, no! no, no! other things as well.” “but you don't like it much any more?” “i don't know. perhaps i don't. i'm not sure.” “you don't look forward to the saturday mornings?” he asked. “perhaps i don't--but for manfredi's sake, of course, i do. but for his sake more than my own, i admit. and i think he knows it.” “a crowd of people in one's house--” said aaron. “yes, the people. but it's not only that. it's the music itself--i think i can't stand it any more. i don't know.” “too emotional? too much feeling for you?” “yes, perhaps. but no. what i can't stand is chords, you know: harmonies. a number of sounds all sounding together. it just makes me ill. it makes me feel so sick.” “what--do you want discords?--dissonances?” “no--they are nearly as bad. no, it's just when any number of musical notes, different notes, come together, harmonies or discords. even a single chord struck on the piano. it makes me feel sick. i just feel as if i should retch. isn't it strange? of course, i don't tell manfredi. it would be too cruel to him. it would cut his life in two.” “but then why do you have the music--the saturdays--then?” “oh, i just keep out of the way as much as possible. i'm sure you feel there is something wrong with me, that i take it as i do,” she added, as if anxious: but half ironical. “no--i was just wondering--i believe i feel something the same myself. i know orchestra makes me blind with hate or i don't know what. but i want to throw bombs.” “there now. it does that to me, too. only now it has fairly got me down, and i feel nothing but helpless nausea. you know, like when you are seasick.” her dark-blue, heavy, haunted-looking eyes were resting on him as if she hoped for something. he watched her face steadily, a curious intelligence flickering on his own. “yes,” he said. “i understand it. and i know, at the bottom, i'm like that. but i keep myself from realising, don't you know? else perhaps, where should i be? because i make my life and my living at it, as well.” “at music! do you! but how bad for you. but perhaps the flute is different. i have a feeling that it is. i can think of one single pipe-note--yes, i can think of it quite, quite calmly. and i can't even think of the piano, or of the violin with its tremolo, or of orchestra, or of a string quartette--or even a military band--i can't think of it without a shudder. i can only bear drum-and-fife. isn't it crazy of me--but from the other, from what we call music proper, i've endured too much. but bring your flute one day. bring it, will you? and let me hear it quite alone. quite, quite alone. i think it might do me an awful lot of good. i do, really. i can imagine it.” she closed her eyes and her strange, sing-song lapsing voice came to an end. she spoke almost like one in a trance--or a sleep-walker. “i've got it now in my overcoat pocket,” he said, “if you like.” “have you? yes!” she was never hurried: always slow and resonant, so that the echoes of her voice seemed to linger. “yes--do get it. do get it. and play in the other room--quite--quite without accompaniment. do--and try me.” “and you will tell me what you feel?” “yes.” aaron went out to his overcoat. when he returned with his flute, which he was screwing together, manfredi had come with the tray and the three cocktails. the marchesa took her glass. “listen, manfredi,” she said. “mr. sisson is going to play, quite alone in the sala. and i am going to sit here and listen.” “very well,” said manfredi. “drink your cocktail first. are you going to play without music?” “yes,” said aaron. “i'll just put on the lights for you.” “no--leave it dark. enough light will come in from here.” “sure?” said manfredi. “yes.” the little soldier was an intruder at the moment. both the others felt it so. but they bore him no grudge. they knew it was they who were exceptional, not he. aaron swallowed his drink, and looked towards the door. “sit down, manfredi. sit still,” said the marchesa. “won't you let me try some accompaniment?” said the soldier. “no. i shall just play a little thing from memory,” said aaron. “sit down, dear. sit down,” said the marchesa to her husband. he seated himself obediently. the flash of bright yellow on the grey of his uniform seemed to make him like a chaffinch or a gnome. aaron retired to the other room, and waited awhile, to get back the spell which connected him with the woman, and gave the two of them this strange isolation, beyond the bounds of life, as it seemed. he caught it again. and there, in the darkness of the big room, he put his flute to his lips, and began to play. it was a clear, sharp, lilted run-and-fall of notes, not a tune in any sense of the word, and yet a melody, a bright, quick sound of pure animation, a bright, quick, animate noise, running and pausing. it was like a bird's singing, in that it had no human emotion or passion or intention or meaning--a ripple and poise of animate sound. but it was unlike a bird's singing, in that the notes followed clear and single one after the other, in their subtle gallop. a nightingale is rather like that--a wild sound. to read all the human pathos into nightingales' singing is nonsense. a wild, savage, non-human lurch and squander of sound, beautiful, but entirely unaesthetic. what aaron was playing was not of his own invention. it was a bit of mediaeval phrasing written for the pipe and the viol. it made the piano seem a ponderous, nerve-wracking steam-roller of noise, and the violin, as we know it, a hateful wire-drawn nerve-torturer. after a little while, when he entered the smaller room again, the marchesa looked full into his face. “good!” she said. “good!” and a gleam almost of happiness seemed to light her up. she seemed like one who had been kept in a horrible enchanted castle--for years and years. oh, a horrible enchanted castle, with wet walls of emotions and ponderous chains of feelings and a ghastly atmosphere of must-be. she felt she had seen through the opening door a crack of sunshine, and thin, pure, light outside air, outside, beyond this dank and beastly dungeon of feelings and moral necessity. ugh!--she shuddered convulsively at what had been. she looked at her little husband. chains of necessity all round him: a little jailor. yet she was fond of him. if only he would throw away the castle keys. he was a little gnome. what did he clutch the castle-keys so tight for? aaron looked at her. he knew that they understood one another, he and she. without any moral necessity or any other necessity. outside--they had got outside the castle of so-called human life. outside the horrible, stinking human castle of life. a bit of true, limpid freedom. just a glimpse. “charming!” said the marchese. “truly charming! but what was it you played?” aaron told him. “but truly delightful. i say, won't you play for us one of these saturdays? and won't you let me take the accompaniment? i should be charmed, charmed if you would.” “all right,” said aaron. “do drink another cocktail,” said his hostess. he did so. and then he rose to leave. “will you stay to dinner?” said the marchesa. “we have two people coming--two italian relatives of my husband. but--” no, aaron declined to stay to dinner. “then won't you come on--let me see--on wednesday? do come on wednesday. we are alone. and do bring the flute. come at half-past six, as today, will you? yes?” aaron promised--and then he found himself in the street. it was half-past seven. instead of returning straight home, he crossed the ponte vecchio and walked straight into the crowd. the night was fine now. he had his overcoat over his arm, and in a sort of trance or frenzy, whirled away by his evening's experience, and by the woman, he strode swiftly forward, hardly heeding anything, but rushing blindly on through all the crowd, carried away by his own feelings, as much as if he had been alone, and all these many people merely trees. leaving the piazza vittorio emmanuele a gang of soldiers suddenly rushed round him, buffeting him in one direction, whilst another gang, swinging round the corner, threw him back helpless again into the midst of the first gang. for some moments he struggled among the rude, brutal little mob of grey-green coarse uniforms that smelt so strong of soldiers. then, irritated, he found himself free again, shaking himself and passing on towards the cathedral. irritated, he now put on his overcoat and buttoned it to the throat, closing himself in, as it were, from the brutal insolence of the sunday night mob of men. before, he had been walking through them in a rush of naked feeling, all exposed to their tender mercies. he now gathered himself together. as he was going home, suddenly, just as he was passing the bargello, he stopped. he stopped, and put his hand to his breast pocket. his letter-case was gone. he had been robbed. it was as if lightning ran through him at that moment, as if a fluid electricity rushed down his limbs, through the sluice of his knees, and out at his feet, leaving him standing there almost unconscious. for a moment unconscious and superconscious he stood there. he had been robbed. they had put their hand in his breast and robbed him. if they had stabbed him, it could hardly have had a greater effect on him. and he had known it. he had known it. when the soldiers jostled him so evilly they robbed him. and he knew it. he had known it as if it were fate. even as if it were fated beforehand. feeling quite weak and faint, as if he had really been struck by some evil electric fluid, he walked on. and as soon as he began to walk, he began to reason. perhaps his letter-case was in his other coat. perhaps he had not had it with him at all. perhaps he was feeling all this, just for nothing. perhaps it was all folly. he hurried forward. he wanted to make sure. he wanted relief. it was as if the power of evil had suddenly seized him and thrown him, and he wanted to say it was not so, that he had imagined it all, conjured it up. he did not want to admit the power of evil--particularly at that moment. for surely a very ugly evil spirit had struck him, in the midst of that gang of italian soldiers. he knew it--it had pierced him. it had _got_ him. but he wanted to say it was not so. reaching the house, he hastened upwards to his far-off, lonely room, through the dark corridors. once in his own apartment, he shut the door and switched on the light, a sensation like fear at his heart. then he searched his other pockets. he looked everywhere. in vain. in vain, truly enough. for he _knew_ the thing was stolen. he had known it all along. the soldiers had deliberately plotted, had deliberately rushed him and taken his purse. they must have watched him previously. they must have grinned, and jeered at him. he sat down in a chair, to recover from the shock. the pocket-book contained four hundred francs, three one-pound notes, and various letters and private effects. well, these were lost. but it was not so much the loss as the assault on his person that caused him to feel so stricken. he felt the jeering, gibing blows they had given as they jostled him. and now he sat, weak in every limb, and said to himself: “yes--and if i hadn't rushed along so full of feeling: if i hadn't exposed myself: if i hadn't got worked up with the marchesa, and then rushed all kindled through the streets, without reserve, it would never have happened. i gave myself away: and there was someone ready to snatch what i gave. i gave myself away. it is my own fault. i should have been on my guard. i should be always on my guard: always, always. with god and the devil both, i should be on my guard. godly or devilish, i should hold fast to my reserve and keep on the watch. and if i don't, i deserve what i get.” but still he sat in his chair in his bedroom, dazed. one part of his soul was saying emphatically: it serves you right. it is nothing but right. it serves everybody right who rushes enkindled through the street, and trusts implicitly in mankind and in the life-spirit, as if mankind and the life-spirit were a playground for enkindled individuals. it serves you right. you have paid about twelve pounds sterling for your lesson. fool, you might have known beforehand, and then you needn't have paid at all. you can ill afford twelve pounds sterling, you fool. but since paid you have, then mind, mind the lesson is learned. never again. never expose yourself again. never again absolute trust. it is a blasphemy against life, is absolute trust. has a wild creature ever absolute trust? it minds itself. sleeping or waking it is on its guard. and so must you be, or you'll go under. sleeping or waking, man or woman, god or the devil, keep your guard over yourself. keep your guard over yourself, lest worse befall you. no man is robbed unless he incites a robber. no man is murdered unless he attracts a murderer. then be not robbed: it lies within your own power. and be not murdered. or if you are, you deserve it. keep your guard over yourself, now, always and forever. yes, against god quite as hard as against the devil. he's fully as dangerous to you.... thus thinking, not in his mind but in his soul, his active, living soul, he gathered his equanimity once more, and accepted the fact. so he rose and tidied himself for dinner. his face was now set, and still. his heart also was still--and fearless. because its sentinel was stationed. stationed, stationed for ever. and aaron never forgot. after this, it became essential to him to feel that the sentinel stood guard in his own heart. he felt a strange unease the moment he was off his guard. asleep or awake, in the midst of the deepest passion or the suddenest love, or in the throes of greatest excitement or bewilderment, somewhere, some corner of himself was awake to the fact that the sentinel of the soul must not sleep, no, never, not for one instant. chapter xvii. high up over the cathedral square aaron and lilly sat in argyle's little loggia, high up under the eaves of the small hotel, a sort of long attic-terrace just under the roof, where no one would have suspected it. it was level with the grey conical roof of the baptistery. here sat aaron and lilly in the afternoon, in the last of the lovely autumn sunshine. below, the square was already cold in shadow, the pink and white and green baptistery rose lantern-shaped as from some sea-shore, cool, cold and wan now the sun was gone. black figures, innumerable black figures, curious because they were all on end, up on end--aaron could not say why he expected them to be horizontal--little black figures upon end, like fishes that swim on their tails, wiggled endlessly across the piazza, little carriages on natural all-fours rattled tinily across, the yellow little tram-cars, like dogs slipped round the corner. the balcony was so high up, that the sound was ineffectual. the upper space, above the houses, was nearer than the under-currents of the noisy town. sunlight, lovely full sunlight, lingered warm and still on the balcony. it caught the facade of the cathedral sideways, like the tips of a flower, and sideways lit up the stem of giotto's tower, like a lily stem, or a long, lovely pale pink and white and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral. florence, the flowery town. firenze--fiorenze--the flowery town: the red lilies. the fiorentini, the flower-souled. flowers with good roots in the mud and muck, as should be: and fearless blossoms in air, like the cathedral and the tower and the david. “i love it,” said lilly. “i love this place, i love the cathedral and the tower. i love its pinkness and its paleness. the gothic souls find fault with it, and say it is gimcrack and tawdry and cheap. but i love it, it is delicate and rosy, and the dark stripes are as they should be, like the tiger marks on a pink lily. it's a lily, not a rose; a pinky white lily with dark tigery marks. and heavy, too, in its own substance: earth-substance, risen from earth into the air: and never forgetting the dark, black-fierce earth--i reckon here men for a moment were themselves, as a plant in flower is for the moment completely itself. then it goes off. as florence has gone off. no flowers now. but it has flowered. and i don't see why a race should be like an aloe tree, flower once and die. why should it? why not flower again? why not?” “if it's going to, it will,” said aaron. “our deciding about it won't alter it.” “the decision is part of the business.” here they were interrupted by argyle, who put his head through one of the windows. he had flecks of lather on his reddened face. “do you think you're wise now,” he said, “to sit in that sun?” “in november?” laughed lilly. “always fear the sun when there's an 'r' in the month,” said argyle. “always fear it 'r' or no 'r,' _i_ say. i'm frightened of it. i've been in the south, i know what it is. i tell you i'm frightened of it. but if you think you can stand it--well--” “it won't last much longer, anyhow,” said lilly. “too long for me, my boy. i'm a shady bird, in all senses of the word, in all senses of the word.--now are you comfortable? what? have another cushion? a rug for your knees? you're quite sure now? well, wait just one moment till the waiter brings up a syphon, and you shall have a whiskey and soda. precious--oh, yes, very precious these days--like drinking gold. thirty-five lire a bottle, my boy!” argyle pulled a long face, and made a noise with his lips. “but i had this bottle given me, and luckily you've come while there's a drop left. very glad you have! very glad you have.” here he poked a little table through the window, and put a bottle and two glasses, one a tooth-glass, upon it. then he withdrew again to finish shaving. the waiter presently hobbled up with the syphon and third glass. argyle pushed his head through the window, that was only a little higher than the balcony. he was soon neatly shaved, and was brushing his hair. “go ahead, my boys, go ahead with that whiskey!” he said. “we'll wait for you,” said lilly. “no, no, don't think of it. however, if you will, i shall be one minute only--one minute only. i'll put on the water for the tea now. oh, damned bad methylated spirit they sell now! and six francs a litre! six francs a litre! i don't know what i'm going to do, the air i breathe costs money nowadays--just one moment and i'll be with you! just one moment--” in a very little while he came from the tiny attic bedroom, through the tiniest cupboard of a sitting-room under the eaves, where his books were, and where he had hung his old red india tapestries--or silk embroideries--and he emerged there up above the world on the loggia. “now then--_siamo nel paradiso_, eh? paradisal enough for you, is it?” “the devil looking over lincoln,” said lilly laughing, glancing up into argyle's face. “the devil looking over florence would feel sad,” said argyle. “the place is fast growing respectable--oh, piety makes the devil chuckle. but respectability, my boy, argues a serious diminution of spunk. and when the spunk diminishes we-ell--it's enough to make the most sturdy devil look sick. what? no doubt about it, no doubt whatever--there--!” he had just finished settling his tie and buttoning his waistcoat. “how do i look, eh? presentable?--i've just had this suit turned. clever little tailor across the way there. but he charged me a hundred and twenty francs.” argyle pulled a face, and made the little trumping noise with his lips. “however--not bad, is it?--he had to let in a bit at the back of the waistcoat, and a gusset, my boy, a gusset--in the trousers back. seems i've grown in the arsal region. well, well, might do worse.--is it all right?” lilly eyed the suit. “very nice. very nice indeed. such a good cloth! that makes all the difference.” “oh, my dear fellow, all the difference! this suit is eleven years old--eleven years old. but beautiful english cloth--before the war, before the war!” “it looks quite wonderfully expensive and smart now,” said lilly. “expensive and smart, eh! ha-ha-ha! well, it cost me a hundred and twenty francs to have it turned, and i found that expensive enough. well, now, come--” here argyle's voice took on a new gay cheer. “a whiskey and soda, lilly? say when! oh, nonsense, nonsense! you're going to have double that. you're no lily of the valley here, remember. not with me. not likely. _siamo nel paradiso_, remember.” “but why should we drink your whiskey? tea would do for us just as well.” “not likely! not likely! when i have the pleasure of your company, my boy, we drink a glass of something, unless i am utterly stripped. say when, aaron.” “when,” said aaron. argyle at last seated himself heavily in a small chair. the sun had left the loggia, but was glowing still on giotto's tower and the top of the cathedral facade, and on the remoter great red-tiled dome. “look at my little red monthly rose,” said argyle. “wonderful little fellow! i wouldn't have anything happen to him for the world. oh, a bacchic little chap. i made pasquale wear a wreath of them on his hair. very becoming they were, very.--oh, i've had a charming show of flowers. wonderful creatures sunflowers are.” they got up and put their heads over the balcony, looking down on the square below. “oh, great fun, great fun.--yes, i had a charming show of flowers, charming.--zinnias, petunias, ranunculus, sunflowers, white stocks--oh, charming. look at that bit of honeysuckle. you see the berries where his flowers were! delicious scent, i assure you.” under the little balcony wall argyle had put square red-tiled pots, all round, and in these still bloomed a few pansies and asters, whilst in a corner a monthly rose hung flowers like round blood-drops. argyle was as tidy and scrupulous in his tiny rooms and his balcony as if he were a first-rate sea-man on a yacht. lilly remarked on this. “do you see signs of the old maid coming out in me? oh, i don't doubt it. i don't doubt it. we all end that way. age makes old maids of us all. and tanny is all right, you say? bring her to see me. why didn't she come today?” “you know you don't like people unless you expect them.” “oh, but my dear fellow!--you and tanny; you'd be welcome if you came at my busiest moment. of course you would. i'd be glad to see you if you interrupted me at any crucial moment.--i am alone now till august. then we shall go away together somewhere. but you and tanny; why, there's the world, and there's lilly: that's how i put it, my boy.” “all right, argyle.--hoflichkeiten.” “what? gar keine hoflichkeiten. wahrhaftiger kerl bin ich.--when am i going to see tanny? when are you coming to dine with me?” “after you've dined with us--say the day after tomorrow.” “right you are. delighted--. let me look if that water's boiling.” he got up and poked half himself inside the bedroom. “not yet. damned filthy methylated spirit they sell.” “look,” said lilly. “there's del torre!” “like some sort of midge, in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. i can't stand it, i tell you. i can't stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. like a blight on the human landscape. like a blight. like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. europe's got the smother-fly in these infernal shoddy militarists.” “del torre's coming out of it as soon as he can,” said lilly. “i should think so, too.” “i like him myself--very much. look, he's seen us! he wants to come up, argyle.” “what, in that uniform! i'll see him in his grandmother's crinoline first.” “don't be fanatical, it's bad taste. let him come up a minute.” “not for my sake. but for yours, he shall,” argyle stood at the parapet of the balcony and waved his arm. “yes, come up,” he said, “come up, you little mistkafer--what the americans call a bug. come up and be damned.” of course del torre was too far off to hear this exhortation. lilly also waved to him--and watched him pass into the doorway far below. “i'll rinse one of these glasses for him,” said argyle. the marchese's step was heard on the stone stairs: then his knock. “come in! come in!” cried argyle from the bedroom, where he was rinsing the glass. the marchese entered, grinning with his curious, half courteous greeting. “go through--go through,” cried argyle. “go on to the loggia--and mind your head. good heavens, mind your head in that doorway.” the marchese just missed the top of the doorway as he climbed the abrupt steps on to the loggia.--there he greeted lilly and aaron with hearty handshakes. “very glad to see you--very glad, indeed!” he cried, grinning with excited courtesy and pleasure, and covering lilly's hand with both his own gloved hands. “when did you come to florence?” there was a little explanation. argyle shoved the last chair--it was a luggage stool--through the window. “all i can do for you in the way of a chair,” he said. “ah, that is all right,” said the marchese. “well, it is very nice up here--and very nice company. of the very best, the very best in florence.” “the highest, anyhow,” said argyle grimly, as he entered with the glass. “have a whiskey and soda, del torre. it's the bottom of the bottle, as you see.” “the bottom of the bottle! then i start with the tail-end, yes!” he stretched his blue eyes so that the whites showed all round, and grinned a wide, gnome-like grin. “you made that start long ago, my dear fellow. don't play the _ingenue_ with me, you know it won't work. say when, my man, say when!” “yes, when,” said del torre. “when did i make that start, then?” “at some unmentionably young age. chickens such as you soon learn to cheep.” “chickens such as i soon learn to cheap,” repeated del torre, pleased with the verbal play. “what is cheap, please? what is to cheap?” “cheep! cheep!” squeaked argyle, making a face at the little italian, who was perched on one strap of the luggage-stool. “it's what chickens say when they're poking their little noses into new adventures--naughty ones.” “are chickens naughty? oh! i thought they could only be good!” “featherless chickens like yourself, my boy.” “oh, as for featherless--then there is no saying what they will do.--” and here the marchese turned away from argyle with the inevitable question to lilly: “well, and how long will you stay in florence?” lilly did not know: but he was not leaving immediately. “good! then you will come and see us at once....” argyle rose once more, and went to make the tea. he shoved a lump of cake--or rather panetone, good currant loaf--through the window, with a knife to cut it. “help yourselves to the panetone,” he said. “eat it up. the tea is coming at once. you'll have to drink it in your glasses, there's only one old cup.” the marchese cut the cake, and offered pieces. the two men took and ate. “so you have already found mr. sisson!” said del torre to lilly. “ran straight into him in the via nazionale,” said lilly. “oh, one always runs into everybody in florence. we are all already acquainted: also with the flute. that is a great pleasure.” “so i think.--does your wife like it, too?” “very much, indeed! she is quite _eprise_. i, too, shall have to learn to play it.” “and run the risk of spoiling the shape of your mouth--like alcibiades.” “is there a risk? yes! then i shan't play it. my mouth is too beautiful.--but mr. sisson has not spoilt his mouth.” “not yet,” said lilly. “give him time.” “is he also afraid--like alcibiades?” “are you, aaron?” said lilly. “what?” “afraid of spoiling your beauty by screwing your mouth to the flute?” “i look a fool, do i, when i'm playing?” said aaron. “only the least little bit in the world,” said lilly. “the way you prance your head, you know, like a horse.” “ah, well,” said aaron. “i've nothing to lose.” “and were you surprised, lilly, to find your friend here?” asked del torre. “i ought to have been. but i wasn't really.” “then you expected him?” “no. it came naturally, though.--but why did you come, aaron? what exactly brought you?” “accident,” said aaron. “ah, no! no! there is no such thing as accident,” said the italian. “a man is drawn by his fate, where he goes.” “you are right,” said argyle, who came now with the teapot. “a man is drawn--or driven. driven, i've found it. ah, my dear fellow, what is life but a search for a friend? a search for a friend--that sums it up.” “or a lover,” said the marchese, grinning. “same thing. same thing. my hair is white--but that is the sum of my whole experience. the search for a friend.” there was something at once real and sentimental in argyle's tone. “and never finding?” said lilly, laughing. “oh, what would you? often finding. often finding. and losing, of course.--a life's history. give me your glass. miserable tea, but nobody has sent me any from england--” “and you will go on till you die, argyle?” said lilly. “always seeking a friend--and always a new one?” “if i lose the friend i've got. ah, my dear fellow, in that case i shall go on seeking. i hope so, i assure you. something will be very wrong with me, if ever i sit friendless and make no search.” “but, argyle, there is a time to leave off.” “to leave off what, to leave off what?” “having friends: or a friend, rather: or seeking to have one.” “oh, no! not at all, my friend. not at all! only death can make an end of that, my friend. only death. and i should say, not even death. not even death ends a man's search for a friend. that is my belief. you may hang me for it, but i shall never alter.” “nay,” said lilly. “there is a time to love, and a time to leave off loving.” “all i can say to that is that my time to leave off hasn't come yet,” said argyle, with obstinate feeling. “ah, yes, it has. it is only a habit and an idea you stick to.” “indeed, it is no such thing. indeed, it is no such thing. it is a profound desire and necessity: and what is more, a belief.” “an obstinate persistency, you mean,” said lilly. “well, call it so if it pleases you. it is by no means so to me.” there was a brief pause. the sun had left the cathedral dome and the tower, the sky was full of light, the square swimming in shadow. “but can a man live,” said the marchese, “without having something he lives for: something he wishes for, or longs for, and tries that he may get?” “impossible! completely impossible!” said argyle. “man is a seeker, and except as such, he has no significance, no importance.” “he bores me with his seeking,” said lilly. “he should learn to possess himself--to be himself--and keep still.” “ay, perhaps so,” said aaron. “only--” “but my dear boy, believe me, a man is never himself save in the supreme state of love: or perhaps hate, too, which amounts to the same thing. never really himself.--apart from this he is a tram-driver or a money-shoveller or an idea-machine. only in the state of love is he really a man, and really himself. i say so, because i know,” said argyle. “ah, yes. that is one side of the truth. it is quite true, also. but it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself, than in the supreme state of love. never less himself, than then.” “maybe! maybe! but what could be better? what could be better than to lose oneself with someone you love, entirely, and so find yourself. ah, my dear fellow, that is my creed, that is my creed, and you can't shake me in it. never in that. never in that.” “yes, argyle,” said lilly. “i know you're an obstinate love-apostle.” “i am! i am! and i have certain standards, my boy, and certain ideals which i never transgress. never transgress. and never abandon.” “all right, then, you are an incurable love-maker.” “pray god i am,” said argyle. “yes,” said the marchese. “perhaps we are all so. what else do you give? would you have us make money? or do you give the centre of your spirit to your work? how is it to be?” “i don't vitally care either about money or my work or--” lilly faltered. “or what, then?” “or anything. i don't really care about anything. except that--” “you don't care about anything? but what is that for a life?” cried the marchese, with a hollow mockery. “what do you care for?” asked lilly. “me? i care for several things. i care for my wife. i care for love. and i care to be loved. and i care for some pleasures. and i care for music. and i care for italy.” “you are well off for cares,” said lilly. “and you seem to me so very poor,” said del torre. “i should say so--if he cares for nothing,” interjaculated argyle. then he clapped lilly on the shoulder with a laugh. “ha! ha! ha!--but he only says it to tease us,” he cried, shaking lilly's shoulder. “he cares more than we do for his own way of loving. come along, don't try and take us in. we are old birds, old birds,” said argyle. but at that moment he seemed a bit doddering. “a man can't live,” said the italian, “without an object.” “well--and that object?” said lilly. “well--it may be many things. mostly it is two things.--love, and money. but it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art--many things. but it is some objective. something outside the self. perhaps many things outside the self.” “i have had only one objective all my life,” said argyle. “and that was love. for that i have spent my life.” “and the lives of a number of other people, too,” said lilly. “admitted. oh, admitted. it takes two to make love: unless you're a miserable--” “don't you think,” said aaron, turning to lilly, “that however you try to get away from it, if you're not after money, and can't fit yourself into a job--you've got to, you've got to try and find something else--somebody else--somebody. you can't really be alone.” “no matter how many mistakes you've made--you can't really be alone--?” asked lilly. “you can be alone for a minute. you can be alone just in that minute when you've broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone, because the other thing wasn't to be borne. but you can't keep on being alone. no matter how many tunes you've broken free, and feel, thank god to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh air and be alone), no matter how many times you've felt this--it wears off every time, and you begin to look again--and you begin to roam round. and even if you won't admit it to yourself, still you are seeking--seeking. aren't you? aren't you yourself seeking?” “oh, that's another matter,” put in argyle. “lilly is happily married and on the shelf. with such a fine woman as tanny i should think so--rather! but his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case. as for me, i made a hell of my marriage, and i swear it nearly sent me to hell. but i didn't forswear love, when i forswore marriage and woman. not by any means.” “are you not seeking any more, lilly?” asked the marchese. “do you seek nothing?” “we married men who haven't left our wives, are we supposed to seek anything?” said lilly. “aren't we perfectly satisfied and in bliss with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?” “ah, yes, yes!” said the marchese. “but now we are not speaking to the world. now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre of our hearts.” “and what have we there?” said lilly. “well--shall i say? we have unrest. we have another need. we have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. do i speak the truth?” “yes. but what is the something?” “i don't know. i don't know. but it is something in love, i think. it is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer,” said the italian. “but why should it? is that the nature of love?” said lilly. “i don't know. truly. i don't know.--but perhaps it is in the nature of love--i don't know.--but i tell you, i love my wife--she is very dear to me. i admire her, i trust her, i believe her. she is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother.--and so, i am very happy. i am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage.--but wait. nothing has changed--the love has not changed: it is the same.--and yet we are not happy. no, we are not happy. i know she is not happy, i know i am not--” “why should you be?” said lilly. “yes--and it is not even happiness,” said the marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. “it is not even happiness. no, i do not ask to be happy. why should i? it is childish--but there is for both of us, i know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don't know where. but it drives us, and eats away the life--and yet we love each other, and we must not separate--do you know what i mean? do you understand me at all in what i say? i speak what is true.” “yes, i understand. i'm in the same dilemma myself.--but what i want to hear, is why you think it is so. why is it?” “shall i say what i think? yes? and you can tell me if it is foolish to you.--shall i tell you? well. because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. do you understand?--you know--supposing i go to a woman--supposing she is my wife--and i go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is i who want. then she puts me off. then she says, not now, not now, i am tired, i am not well. i do not feel like it. she puts me off--till i am angry or sorry or whatever i am--but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and i don't want her any more. and then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me--till she rouses me once more. so, and so she rouses me--and so i come to her. and i love her, it is very good, very good. but it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.--i do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. she will yield to me--because i insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. so she will yield to me. but ah, what is it, you know? what is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? it is something worse than nothing--worse than nothing. and so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.--if i say to her, she says it is not true--not at all true. then she says, all she wants is that i should desire her, that i should love her and desire her. but even that is putting her will first. and if i come to her so, if i come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. she puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. but now i know, and for many years i did not know--” the little man was intense. his face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. he gazed into lilly's face. “but does it matter?” said lilly slowly, “in which of you the desire initiates? isn't the result the same?” “it matters. it matters--” cried the marchese. “oh, my dear fellow, how much it matters--” interrupted argyle sagely. “ay!” said aaron. the marchese looked from one to the other of them. “it matters!” he cried. “it matters life or death. it used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. it used to be so for a long time in italy. for this reason the women were kept away from the men. for this reason our catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. so that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman's desire over a man, beforehand. this desire which starts in a woman's head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. this is eve. ah, i hate eve. i hate her, when she knows, and when she wills. i hate her when she will make of me that which serves her desire.--she may love me, she may be soft and kind to me, she may give her life for me. but why? only because i am hers. i am that thing which does her most intimate service. she can see no other in me. and i may be no other to her--” “then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?” said lilly. “because i cannot. i cannot. i would. but i cannot. the borghesia--the citizens--the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can. oh, yes. the bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and their wives love them. they are the marital maquereaux--the husband-maquereau, you know. their wives are so stout and happy, and they dote on their husbands and always betray them. so it is with the bourgeoise. she loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to betray him. or she is a madame bovary, seeking for a scandal. but the bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same. he is the horse, and she the driver. and when she says gee-up, you know--then he comes ready, like a hired maquereau. only he feels so good, like a good little boy at her breast. and then there are the nice little children. and so they keep the world going.--but for me--” he spat suddenly and with frenzy on the floor. “you are quite right, my boy,” said argyle. “you are quite right. they've got the start of us, the women: and we've got to canter when they say gee-up. i--oh, i went through it all. but i broke the shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, i can tell you, and i didn't care whether i smashed her up along with it or not. i didn't care one single bit, i assure you.--and here i am. and she is dead and buried these dozen years. well--well! life, you know, life. and women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of you. there's nothing they won't do to you, once they've got you. nothing they won't do to you. especially if they love you. then you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and her in it. otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose. and you'll submit. oh, you'll submit, and go on calling her my darling. or else, if you won't submit, she'll do for you. your only chance is to smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart. or she'll do for you. for a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength--she's a she-bear and a wolf, is a woman when she's got the start of you. oh, it's a terrible experience, if you're not a bourgeois, and not one of the knuckling-under money-making sort.” “knuckling-under sort. yes. that is it,” said the marchese. “but can't there be a balancing of wills?” said lilly. “my dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the other goes down. one acts, the other takes. it is the only way in love--and the women are nowadays the active party. oh, yes, not a shadow of doubt about it. they take the initiative, and the man plays up. that's how it is. the man just plays up.--nice manly proceeding, what!” cried argyle. “but why can't man accept it as the natural order of things?” said lilly. “science makes it the natural order.” “all my ---- to science,” said argyle. “no man with one drop of real spunk in him can stand it long.” “yes! yes! yes!” cried the italian. “most men want it so. most men want only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up to her when she has roused them. most men want only this: that a woman shall choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and come up when she shall provoke him. otherwise he is to keep still. and the woman, she is quite sure of her part. she must be loved and adored, and above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire. there she must not be thwarted, or she becomes a devil. and if she is obeyed, she becomes a misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round for the next man whom she can bring under. so it is.” “well,” said lilly. “and then what?” “nay,” interrupted aaron. “but do you think it's true what he says? have you found it like that? you're married. has your experience been different, or the same?” “what was yours?” asked lilly. “mine was the same. mine was the same, if ever it was,” said aaron. “and mine was extremely similar,” said argyle with a grimace. “and yours, lilly?” asked the marchese anxiously. “not very different,” said lilly. “ah!” cried del torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something. “and what's your way out?” aaron asked him. “i'm not out--so i won't holloa,” said lilly. “but del torre puts it best.--what do you say is the way out, del torre?” “the way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker and the woman the answerer. it must change.” “but it doesn't. prrr!” argyle made his trumpeting noise. “does it?” asked lilly of the marchese. “no. i think it does not.” “and will it ever again?” “perhaps never.” “and then what?” “then? why then man seeks a _pis-aller_. then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will.--so he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. he thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes.--but in this, too, he is mistaken. because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man.” “and so young girls are no good, even as a _pis-aller_.” “no good--because they are all modern women. every one, a modern woman. not one who isn't.” “terrible thing, the modern woman,” put in argyle. “and then--?” “then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love.--but it is all _pis-aller_, you know.” “not by any means, my boy,” cried argyle. “and then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not bearable to love her.” “or one leaves her, like aaron,” said lilly. “and seeks another woman, so,” said the marchese. “does he seek another woman?” said lilly. “do you, aaron?” “i don't want to,” said aaron. “but--i can't stand by myself in the middle of the world and in the middle of people, and know i am quite by myself, and nowhere to go, and nothing to hold on to. i can for a day or two--but then, it becomes unbearable as well. you get frightened. you feel you might go funny--as you would if you stood on this balcony wall with all the space beneath you.” “can't one be alone--quite alone?” said lilly. “but no--it is absurd. like saint simeon stylites on a pillar. but it is absurd!” cried the italian. “i don't mean like simeon stylites. i mean can't one live with one's wife, and be fond of her: and with one's friends, and enjoy their company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet know that one is alone? essentially, at the very core of me, alone. eternally alone. and choosing to be alone. not sentimental or lonely. alone, choosing to be alone, because by one's own nature one is alone. the being with another person is secondary,” said lilly. “one is alone,” said argyle, “in all but love. in all but love, my dear fellow. and then i agree with you.” “no,” said lilly, “in love most intensely of all, alone.” “completely incomprehensible,” said argyle. “amounts to nothing.” “one man is but a part. how can he be so alone?” said the marchese. “in so far as he is a single individual soul, he is alone--ipso facto. in so far as i am i, and only i am i, and i am only i, in so far, i am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-knowledge.” “my dear boy, you are becoming metaphysical, and that is as bad as softening of the brain,” said argyle. “all right,” said lilly. “and,” said the marchese, “it may be so by reason. but in the heart--? can the heart ever beat quite alone? plop! plop!--can the heart beat quite alone, alone in all the atmosphere, all the space of the universe? plop! plop! plop!--quite alone in all the space?” a slow smile came over the italian's face. “it is impossible. it may eat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against the others. it may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent. but this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone.--but either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of someone, mother, wife, friend, children--so must the heart of every man beat. it is so.” “it beats alone in its own silence,” said lilly. the italian shook his head. “we'd better be going inside, anyhow,” said argyle. “some of you will be taking cold.” “aaron,” said lilly. “is it true for you?” “nearly,” said aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet frightening eyes of the other man. “or it has been.” “a miss is as good as a mile,” laughed lilly, rising and picking up his chair to take it indoors. and the laughter of his voice was so like a simple, deliberate amiability, that aaron's heart really stood still for a second. he knew that lilly was alone--as far as he, aaron, was concerned. lilly was alone--and out of his isolation came his words, indifferent as to whether they came or not. and he left his friends utterly to their own choice. utterly to their own choice. aaron felt that lilly was _there_, existing in life, yet neither asking for connection nor preventing any connection. he was present, he was the real centre of the group. and yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing. he left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself: neither more nor less. and there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating. aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man's placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver's hands. lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality. neither would he violently refuse it. he let it lie unmarked. and yet at the same time aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself--so long as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of lilly's soul. but this condition was also hateful. and there was also a great fascination in it. chapter xviii. the marchesa so aaron dined with the marchesa and manfredi. he was quite startled when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. she seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. she wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. it was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms. round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires. her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an aubrey beardsley drawing. she was most carefully made up--yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened aaron. he thought her wonderful, and sinister. she affected him with a touch of horror. she sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. she had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. the gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. it was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity. she must have seen his face, seen that he was _ebloui_. “you brought the flute?” she said, in that toneless, melancholy, unstriving voice of hers. her voice alone was the same: direct and bare and quiet. “yes.” “perhaps i shall sing later on, if you'll accompany me. will you?” “i thought you hated accompaniments.” “oh, no--not just unison. i don't mean accompaniment. i mean unison. i don't know how it will be. but will you try?” “yes, i'll try.” “manfredi is just bringing the cocktails. do you think you'd prefer orange in yours?” “ill have mine as you have yours.” “i don't take orange in mine. won't you smoke?” the strange, naked, remote-seeming voice! and then the beautiful firm limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust. her beautiful woman's legs, slightly glistening, duskily. his one abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them. he had never known a woman to exercise such power over him. it was a bare, occult force, something he could not cope with. manfredi came in with the little tray. he was still in uniform. “hello!” cried the little italian. “glad to see you--well, everything all right? glad to hear it. how is the cocktail, nan?” “yes,” she said. “all right.” “one drop too much peach, eh?” “no, all right.” “ah,” and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered legs as if gaily. he had a curious smiling look on his face, that aaron thought also diabolical--and almost handsome. suddenly the odd, laughing, satanic beauty of the little man was visible. “well, and what have you been doing with yourself?” said he. “what did you do yesterday?” “yesterday?” said aaron. “i went to the uffizi.” “to the uffizi? well! and what did you think of it?” “very fine.” “i think it is. i think it is. what pictures did you look at?” “i was with dekker. we looked at most, i believe.” “and what do you remember best?” “i remember botticelli's venus on the shell.” “yes! yes!--” said manfredi. “i like her. but i like others better. you thought her a pretty woman, yes?” “no--not particularly pretty. but i like her body. and i like the fresh air. i like the fresh air, the summer sea-air all through it--through her as well.” “and her face?” asked the marchesa, with a slow, ironic smile. “yes--she's a bit baby-faced,” said aaron. “trying to be more innocent than her own common-sense will let her,” said the marchesa. “i don't agree with you, nan,” said her husband. “i think it is just that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true venus: the true modern venus. she chooses not to know too much. and that is her attraction. don't you agree, aaron? excuse me, but everybody speaks of you as aaron. it seems to come naturally. most people speak of me as manfredi, too, because it is easier, perhaps, than del torre. so if you find it easier, use it. do you mind that i call you aaron?” “not at all. i hate misters, always.” “yes, so do i. i like one name only.” the little officer seemed very winning and delightful to aaron this evening--and aaron began to like him extremely. but the dominating consciousness in the room was the woman's. “do you agree, mr. sisson?” said the marchesa. “do you agree that the mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of botticelli's venus are her great charms?” “i don't think she is at all charming, as a person,” said aaron. “as a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all. but as a picture--and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air. she doesn't seem so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning-feelings at the seaside.” “quite! a sort of sea-scape of a woman. with a perfectly sham innocence. are you as keen on innocence as manfredi is?” “innocence?” said aaron. “it's the sort of thing i don't have much feeling about.” “ah, i know you,” laughed the soldier wickedly. “you are the sort of man who wants to be anthony to cleopatra. ha-ha!” aaron winced as if struck. then he too smiled, flattered. yet he felt he had been struck! did he want to be anthony to cleopatra? without knowing, he was watching the marchesa. and she was looking away, but knew he was watching her. and at last she turned her eyes to his, with a slow, dark smile, full of pain and fuller still of knowledge. a strange, dark, silent look of knowledge she gave him: from so far away, it seemed. and he felt all the bonds that held him melting away. his eyes remained fixed and gloomy, but with his mouth he smiled back at her. and he was terrified. he knew he was sulking towards her--sulking towards her. and he was terrified. but at the back of his mind, also, he knew there was lilly, whom he might depend on. and also he wanted to sink towards her. the flesh and blood of him simply melted out, in desire towards her. cost what may, he must come to her. and yet he knew at the same time that, cost what may, he must keep the power to recover himself from her. he must have his cake and eat it. and she became cleopatra to him. “age cannot wither, nor custom stale--” to his instinctive, unwilled fancy, she was cleopatra. they went in to dinner, and he sat on her right hand. it was a smallish table, with a very few daisy-flowers: everything rather frail, and sparse. the food the same--nothing very heavy, all rather exquisite. they drank hock. and he was aware of her beautiful arms, and her bosom; her low-crowded, thick hair, parted in the centre: the sapphires on her throat, the heavy rings on her fingers: and the paint on her lips, the fard. something deep, deep at the bottom of him hovered upon her, cleaved to her. yet he was as if sightless, in a stupor. who was she, what was she? he had lost all his grasp. only he sat there, with his face turned to hers, or to her, all the time. and she talked to him. but she never looked at him. indeed she said little. it was the husband who talked. his manner towards aaron was almost caressive. and aaron liked it. the woman was silent mostly, and seemed remote. and aaron felt his life ebb towards her. he felt the marvellousness, the rich beauty of her arms and breast. and the thought of her gold-dusted smooth limbs beneath the table made him feel almost an idiot. the second wine was a gold-coloured moselle, very soft and rich and beautiful. she drank this with pleasure, as one who understands. and for dessert there was a dish of cacchi--that orange-coloured, pulpy japanese fruit--persimmons. aaron had never eaten these before. soft, almost slimy, of a wonderful colour, and of a flavour that had sunk from harsh astringency down to that first decay-sweetness which is all autumn-rich. the marchese loved them, and scooped them out with his spoon. but she ate none. aaron did not know what they talked about, what was said. if someone had taken his mind away altogether, and left him with nothing but a body and a spinal consciousness, it would have been the same. but at coffee the talk turned to manfredi's duties. he would not be free from the army for some time yet. on the morrow, for example, he had to be out and away before it was day. he said he hated it, and wanted to be a free man once more. but it seemed to aaron he would be a very bored man, once he was free. and then they drifted on to talk of the palazzo in which was their apartment. “we've got such a fine terrace--you can see it from your house where you are,” said manfredi. “have you noticed it?” “no,” said aaron. “near that tuft of palm-trees. don't you know?” “no,” said aaron. “let us go out and show it him,” said the marchesa. manfredi fetched her a cloak, and they went through various doors, then up some steps. the terrace was broad and open. it looked straight across the river at the opposite lungarno: and there was the thin-necked tower of the palazzo vecchio, and the great dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. and from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees. “you see,” said the marchesa, coming and standing close to aaron, so that she just touched him, “you can know the terrace, just by these palm trees. and you are in the nardini just across there, are you? on the top floor, you said?” “yes, the top floor--one of the middle windows, i think.” “one that is always open now--and the others are shut. i have noticed it, not connecting it with you.” “yes, my window is always open.” she was leaning very slightly against him, as he stood. and he knew, with the same kind of inevitability with which he knew he would one day die, that he would be the lover of this woman. nay, that he was her lover already. “don't take cold,” said manfredi. she turned at once indoors. aaron caught a faint whiff of perfume from the little orange trees in tubs round the wall. “will you get the flute?” she said as they entered. “and will you sing?” he answered. “play first,” she said. he did as she wished. as the other night, he went into the big music-room to play. and the stream of sound came out with the quick wild imperiousness of the pipe. it had an immediate effect on her. she seemed to relax the peculiar, drug-like tension which was upon her at all ordinary times. she seemed to go still, and yielding. her red mouth looked as if it might moan with relief. she sat with her chin dropped on her breast, listening. and she did not move. but she sat softly, breathing rather quick, like one who has been hurt, and is soothed. a certain womanly naturalness seemed to soften her. and the music of the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call-note, or like a long quick message, half command. to her it was like a pure male voice--as a blackbird's when he calls: a pure male voice, not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something, and soothing her soul to sleep. it was like the fire-music putting brunnhilde to sleep. but the pipe did not flicker and sink. it seemed to cause a natural relaxation in her soul, a peace. perhaps it was more like waking to a sweet, morning awakening, after a night of tormented, painful tense sleep. perhaps more like that. when aaron came in, she looked at him with a gentle, fresh smile that seemed to make the fard on her face look like a curious tiredness, which now she might recover from. and as the last time, it was difficult for her to identify this man with the voice of the flute. it was rather difficult. except that, perhaps, between his brows was something of a doubt, and in his bearing an aloofness that made her dread he might go away and not come back. she could see it in him, that he might go away and not come back. she said nothing to him, only just smiled. and the look of knowledge in her eyes seemed, for the moment, to be contained in another look: a look of faith, and at last happiness. aaron's heart stood still. no, in her moment's mood of faith and at last peace, life-trust, he was perhaps more terrified of her than in her previous sinister elegance. his spirit started and shrank. what was she going to ask of him? “i am so anxious that you should come to play one saturday morning,” said manfredi. “with an accompaniment, you know. i should like so much to hear you with piano accompaniment.” “very well,” said aaron. “will you really come? and will you practise with me, so that i can accompany you?” said manfredi eagerly. “yes. i will,” said aaron. “oh, good! oh, good! look here, come in on friday morning and let us both look through the music.” “if mr. sisson plays for the public,” said the marchesa, “he must not do it for charity. he must have the proper fee.” “no, i don't want it,” said aaron. “but you must earn money, mustn't you?” said she. “i must,” said aaron. “but i can do it somewhere else.” “no. if you play for the public, you must have your earnings. when you play for me, it is different.” “of course,” said manfredi. “every man must have his wage. i have mine from the italian government---” after a while, aaron asked the marchesa if she would sing. “shall i?” she said. “yes, do.” “then i will sing alone first, to let you see what you think of it--i shall be like trilby--i won't say like yvette guilbert, because i daren't. so i will be like trilby, and sing a little french song. though not malbrouck, and without a svengali to keep me in tune.” she went near the door, and stood with heir hands by her side. there was something wistful, almost pathetic now, in her elegance. “derriere chez mon pere _vole vole mon coeur, vole_! derriere chez mon pere il y a un pommier doux. _tout doux, et iou et iou, tout doux. il y a unpommier doux_. trois belles princesses _vole vole mon coeur, vole_! trois belles princesses sont assis dessous. _tout doux, et iou et iou, tout doux. sont asses dessous._” she had a beautiful, strong, sweet voice. but it was faltering, stumbling and sometimes it seemed to drop almost to speech. after three verses she faltered to an end, bitterly chagrined. “no,” she said. “it's no good. i can't sing.” and she dropped in her chair. “a lovely little tune,” said aaron. “haven't you got the music?” she rose, not answering, and found him a little book. “what do the words mean?” he asked her. she told him. and then he took his flute. “you don't mind if i play it, do you?” he said. so he played the tune. it was so simple. and he seemed to catch the lilt and the timbre of her voice. “come and sing it while i play--” he said. “i can't sing,” she said, shaking her head rather bitterly. “but let us try,” said he, disappointed. “i know i can't,” she said. but she rose. he remained sitting at the little table, the book propped up under the reading lamp. she stood at a little distance, unhappy. “i've always been like that,” she said. “i could never sing music, unless i had a thing drilled into me, and then it wasn't singing any more.” but aaron wasn't heeding. his flute was at his mouth, he was watching her. he sounded the note, but she did not begin. she was twisting her handkerchief. so he played the melody alone. at the end of the verse, he looked up at her again, and a half mocking smile played in his eyes. again he sounded the note, a challenge. and this time, as at his bidding, she began to sing. the flute instantly swung with a lovely soft firmness into the song, and she wavered only for a minute or two. then her soul and her voice got free, and she sang--she sang as she wanted to sing, as she had always wanted to sing, without that awful scotch, that impediment inside her own soul, which prevented her. she sang free, with the flute gliding along with her. and oh, how beautiful it was for her! how beautiful it was to sing the little song in the sweetness of her own spirit. how sweet it was to move pure and unhampered at last in the music! the lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! she wasn't aware of the flute. she didn't know there was anything except her own pure lovely song-drift. her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings. for the first time! for the first time her soul drew its own deep breath. all her life, the breath had caught half-way. and now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest extent of her being. and oh, it was so wonderful, she was dazed. the song ended, she stood with a dazed, happy face, like one just coming awake. and the fard on her face seemed like the old night-crust, the bad sleep. new and luminous she looked out. and she looked at aaron with a proud smile. “bravo, nan! that was what you wanted,” said her husband. “it was, wasn't it?” she said, turning a wondering, glowing face to him. his face looked strange and withered and gnome-like, at the moment. she went and sat in her chair, quite silent, as if in a trance. the two men also sat quite still. and in the silence a little drama played itself between the three, of which they knew definitely nothing. but manfredi knew that aaron had done what he himself never could do, for this woman. and yet the woman was his own woman, not aaron's. and so, he was displaced. aaron, sitting there, glowed with a sort of triumph. he had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder-worker, to whom reverence was due. and as in a dream the woman sat, feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit. she was as a swan which never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could get up into the open, where alone it can sing. for swans, and storks make their music only when they are high, high up in the air. then they can give sound to their strange spirits. and so, she. aaron and manfredi kept their faces averted from one another and hardly spoke to one another. it was as if two invisible hands pushed their faces apart, away, averted. and aaron's face glimmered with a little triumph, and a little grimace of obstinacy. and the italian's face looked old, rather monkey-like, and of a deep, almost stone-bare bitterness. the woman looked wondering from one man to the other--wondering. the glimmer of the open flower, the wonder-look, still lasted. and aaron said in his heart, what a goodly woman, what a woman to taste and enjoy. ah, what a woman to enjoy! and was it not his privilege? had he not gained it? his manhood, or rather his maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort of mastery. he felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile title to strength and reward. suddenly, and newly flushed with his own male super-power, he was going to have his reward. the woman was his reward. so it was, in him. and he cast it over in his mind. he wanted her--ha, didn't he! but the husband sat there, like a soap-stone chinese monkey, greyish-green. so, it would have to be another time. he rose, therefore, and took his leave. “but you'll let us do that again, won't you?” said she. “when you tell me, i'll come,” said he. “then i'll tell you soon,” said she. so he left, and went home to his own place, and there to his own remote room. as he laid his flute on the table he looked at it and smiled. he remembered that lilly had called it aaron's rod. “so you blossom, do you?--and thorn as well,” said he. for such a long time he had been gripped inside himself, and withheld. for such a long time it had been hard and unyielding, so hard and unyielding. he had wanted nothing, his desire had kept itself back, fast back. for such a long time his desire for woman had withheld itself, hard and resistant. all his deep, desirous blood had been locked, he had wanted nobody, and nothing. and it had been hard to live, so. without desire, without any movement of passionate love, only gripped back in recoil! that was an experience to endure. and now came his desire back. but strong, fierce as iron. like the strength of an eagle with the lightning in its talons. something to glory in, something overweening, the powerful male passion, arrogant, royal, jove's thunderbolt. aaron's black rod of power, blossoming again with red florentine lilies and fierce thorns. he moved about in the splendour of his own male lightning, invested in the thunder of the male passion-power. he had got it back, the male godliness, the male godhead. so he slept, and dreamed violent dreams of strange, black strife, something like the street-riot in milan, but more terrible. in the morning, however, he cared nothing about his dreams. as soon as it was really light, he rose, and opened his window wide. it was a grey, slow morning. but he saw neither the morning nor the river nor the woman walking on the gravel river-bed with her goose nor the green hill up to san miniato. he watched the tuft of palm-trees, and the terrace beside it. he could just distinguish the terrace clearly, among the green of foliage. so he stood at his window for a full hour, and did not move. motionless, planted, he stood and watched that terrace across above the arno. but like a statue. after an hour or so, he looked at his watch. it was nine o'clock. so he rang for his coffee, and meanwhile still stood watching the terrace on the hill. he felt his turn had come. the phoenix had risen in fire again, out of the ashes. therefore at ten o'clock he went over the bridge. he wrote on the back of his card a request, would she please let him have the little book of songs, that he might practise them over. the manservant went, and came back with the request that aaron should wait. so aaron entered, while the man took his hat. the manservant spoke only french and spanish, no english. he was a spaniard, with greyish hair and stooping shoulders, and dark, mute-seeming eyes. he spoke as little as possible. the marchesa had inherited him from her father. aaron sat in the little sitting-room and waited. after a rather long time the marchesa came in--wearing a white, thin blouse and a blue skirt. she was hardly made up at all. she had an odd pleased, yet brooding look on her face as she gave aaron her hand. something brooded between her brows. and her voice was strange, with a strange, secret undertone, that he could not understand. he looked up at her. and his face was bright, and his knees, as he sat, were like the knees of the gods. “you wanted the book of _chansons_?” she said. “i wanted to learn your tunes,” he replied. “yes. look--here it is!” and she brought him the little yellow book. it was just a hand-book, with melody and words only, no accompaniment. so she stood offering him the book, but waiting as if for something else, and standing as if with another meaning. he opened the leaves at random. “but i ought to know which ones you sing,” said he, rising and standing by her side with the open book. “yes,” she said, looking over his arm. he turned the pages one by one. “_trois jeunes tambours_,” said she. “yes, that.... yes, _en passant par la lorraine_.... _aupres de ma blonde_.... oh, i like that one so much--” he stood and went over the tune in his mind. “would you like me to play it?” he said. “very much,” said she. so he got his flute, propped up the book against a vase, and played the tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily. but as he played, he felt that he did not cast the spell over her. there was no connection. she was in some mysterious way withstanding him. she was withstanding him, and his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire. she was, in some indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly risen from the ashes of its nest in flames. he realised that she did not want him to play. she did not want him to look at the songs. so he put the book away, and turned round, rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was withstanding him. he glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was her cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it. he could not understand it. what was it in her face that puzzled him? almost angered him? but she could not rob him of his male power, she could not divest him of his concentrated force. “won't you take off your coat?” she said, looking at him with strange, large dark eyes. a strange woman, he could not understand her. yet, as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at his limbs, his physical body. and this went against him, he did not want it. yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body. and such desire he would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted. it was his will also. her whole soft white body--to possess it in its entirety, its fulness. “what have you to do this morning?” she asked him. “nothing,” he said. “have you?” he lifted his head and looked at her. “nothing at all,” said she. and then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. then again he looked at her. “shall we be lovers?” he said. she sat with her face averted, and did not answer. his heart struck heavily, but he did not relax. “shall we be lovers?” came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony. her face gradually grew dusky. and he wondered very much to see it. “yes,” said she, still not looking at him. “if you wish.” “i do wish,” he said. and all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her face, and she sat with her face averted. “now?” he said. “and where?” again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself. then she looked at him--a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible, and which he did not like. “you don't want emotions? you don't want me to say things, do you?” he said. a faint ironic smile came on her face. “i know what all that is worth,” she said, with curious calm equanimity. “no, i want none of that.” “then--?” but now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes. it annoyed him. “what do you want to see in me?” he asked, with a smile, looking steadily back again. and now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky colour came in her cheek. he waited. “shall i go away?” he said at length. “would you rather?” she said, keeping her face averted. “no,” he said. then again she was silent. “where shall i come to you?” he said. she paused a moment still, then answered: “i'll go to my room.” “i don't know which it is,” he said. “i'll show it you,” she said. “and then i shall come to you in ten minutes. in ten minutes,” he reiterated. so she rose, and led the way out of the little salon. he walked with her to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at him, holding the door handle; and then he turned and went back to the drawing-room, glancing at his watch. in the drawing-room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and waited. he stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite motionless, planted and firm. so the minutes went by unheeded. he looked at his watch. the ten minutes were just up. he had heard footsteps and doors. so he decided to give her another five minutes. he wished to be quite sure that she had had her own time for her own movements. then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room, entered, and locked the door behind him. she was lying in bed, with her back to him. he found her strange, not as he had imagined her. not powerful, as he had imagined her. strange, in his arms she seemed almost small and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman. strange, the naked way she clung to him! almost like a sister, a younger sister! or like a child! it filled him with a curious wonder, almost a bewilderment. in the dark sightlessness of passion, she seemed almost like a clinging child in his arms. and yet like a child who in some deep and essential way mocked him. in some strange and incomprehensible way, as a girl-child blindly obstinate in her deepest nature, she was against him. he felt she was not his woman. through him went the feeling, “this is not my woman.” when, after a long sleep, he awoke and came fully to himself, with that click of awakeness which is the end, the first shades were closing on the afternoon. he got up and reached for his watch. “quarter past four,” he said. her eyes stretched wide with surprise as she looked at him. but she said nothing. the same strange and wide, perhaps insatiable child-like curiosity was in her eyes as she watched him. he dressed very quickly. and her eyes were wide, and she said no single word. but when he was dressed, and bent over her to say goodbye, she put her arms round him, that seemed such frail and childish arms now, yet withal so deadly in power. her soft arms round his neck, her tangle of hair over his face. and yet, even as he kissed her, he felt her deadly. he wanted to be gone. he wanted to get out of her arms and her clinging and her tangle of hair and her curiosity and her strange and hateful power. “you'll come again. we'll be like this again?” she whispered. and it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea at algy's. “yes! i will! goodbye now!” and he kissed her, and walked straight out of the room. quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and left the house. in his nostrils was still the scent with which the bed linen was faintly scented--he did not know what it was. but now he wiped his face and his mouth, to wipe it away. he had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry, faint-feeling. and his face, and his mind, felt withered. curiously he felt blasted as if blighted by some electricity. and he knew, he knew quite well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural faculties. and in his male spirit he felt himself hating her: hating her deeply, damnably. but he said to himself: “no, i won't hate her. i won't hate her.” so he went on, over the ponte vecchio, where the jeweller's windows on the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town. he wanted to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where one could stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami sandwiches, and drink marsala. so one after the other he ate little truffle rolls, and drank a few glasses of marsala. and then he did not know what to do. he did not want to eat any more, he had had what he wanted. his hunger had been more nervous than sensual. so he went into the street. it was just growing dark and the town was lighting up. he felt curiously blazed, as if some flame or electric power had gone through him and withered his vital tissue. blazed, as if some kind of electric flame had run over him and withered him. his brain felt withered, his mind had only one of its many-sighted eyes left open and unscorched. so many of the eyes of his mind were scorched now and sightless. yet a restlessness was in his nerves. what should he do? he remembered he had a letter in his pocket from sir william franks. sir william had still teased him about his fate and his providence, in which he, aaron, was supposed to trust. “i shall be very glad to hear from you, and to know how your benevolent providence--or was yours a fate--has treated you since we saw you---” so, aaron turned away, and walked to the post office. there he took paper, and sat down at one of the tables in the writing room, and wrote his answer. it was very strange, writing thus when most of his mind's eyes were scorched, and it seemed he could hardly see to hold the pen, to drive it straight across the paper. yet write he must. and most of his faculties being quenched or blasted for the moment, he wrote perhaps his greatest, or his innermost, truth.--“i don't want my fate or my providence to treat me well. i don't want kindness or love. i don't believe in harmony and people loving one another. i believe in the fight and in nothing else. i believe in the fight which is in everything. and if it is a question of women, i believe in the fight of love, even if it blinds me. and if it is a question of the world, i believe in fighting it and in having it hate me, even if it breaks my legs. i want the world to hate me, because i can't bear the thought that it might love me. for of all things love is the most deadly to me, and especially from such a repulsive world as i think this is....” well, here was a letter for a poor old man to receive. but, in the dryness of his withered mind, aaron got it out of himself. when a man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody else. perhaps the same is true of a book. his letter written, however, he stamped it and sealed it and put it in the box. that made it final. then he turned towards home. one fact remained unbroken in the debris of his consciousness: that in the town was lilly: and that when he needed, he could go to lilly: also, that in the world was lottie, his wife: and that against lottie, his heart burned with a deep, deep, almost unreachable bitterness.--like a deep burn on his deepest soul, lottie. and like a fate which he resented, yet which steadied him, lilly. he went home and lay on his bed. he had enough self-command to hear the gong and go down to dinner. white and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner. and then, thank god, he could go to bed, alone, in his own cold bed, alone, thank god. to be alone in the night! for this he was unspeakably thankful. chapter xix. cleopatra, but not anthony aaron awoke in the morning feeling better, but still only a part himself. the night alone had restored him. and the need to be alone still was his greatest need. he felt an intense resentment against the marchesa. he felt that somehow, she had given him a scorpion. and his instinct was to hate her. and yet he avoided hating her. he remembered lilly--and the saying that one must possess oneself, and be alone in possession of oneself. and somehow, under the influence of lilly, he refused to follow the reflex of his own passion. he refused to hate the marchesa. he _did_ like her. he did _esteem_ her. and after all, she too was struggling with her fate. he had a genuine sympathy with her. nay, he was not going to hate her. but he could not see her. he could not bear the thought that she might call and see him. so he took the tram to settignano, and walked away all day into the country, having bread and sausage in his pocket. he sat for long hours among the cypress trees of tuscany. and never had any trees seemed so like ghosts, like soft, strange, pregnant presences. he lay and watched tall cypresses breathing and communicating, faintly moving and as it were walking in the small wind. and his soul seemed to leave him and to go far away, far back, perhaps, to where life was all different and time passed otherwise than time passes now. as in clairvoyance he perceived it: that our life is only a fragment of the shell of life. that there has been and will be life, human life such as we do not begin to conceive. much that is life has passed away from men, leaving us all mere bits. in the dark, mindful silence and inflection of the cypress trees, lost races, lost language, lost human ways of feeling and of knowing. men have known as we can no more know, have felt as we can no more feel. great life-realities gone into the darkness. but the cypresses commemorate. in the afternoon, aaron felt the cypresses rising dark about him, like so many high visitants from an old, lost, lost subtle world, where men had the wonder of demons about them, the aura of demons, such as still clings to the cypresses, in tuscany. all day, he did not make up his mind what he was going to do. his first impulse was never to see her again. and this was his intention all day. but as he went home in the tram he softened, and thought. nay, that would not be fair. for how had she treated him, otherwise than generously. she had been generous, and the other thing, that he felt blasted afterwards, which was his experience, that was fate, and not her fault. so he must see her again. he must not act like a churl. but he would tell her--he would tell her that he was a married man, and that though he had left his wife, and though he had no dogma of fidelity, still, the years of marriage had made a married man of him, and any other woman than his wife was a strange woman to him, a violation. “i will tell her,” he said to himself, “that at the bottom of my heart i love lottie still, and that i can't help it. i believe that is true. it isn't love, perhaps. but it is marriage. i am married to lottie. and that means i can't be married to another woman. it isn't my nature. and perhaps i can't bear to live with lottie now, because i am married and not in love. when a man is married, he is not in love. a husband is not a lover. lilly told me that: and i know it's true now. lilly told me that a husband cannot be a lover, and a lover cannot be a husband. and that women will only have lovers now, and never a husband. well, i am a husband, if i am anything. and i shall never be a lover again, not while i live. no, not to anybody. i haven't it in me. i'm a husband, and so it is finished with me as a lover. i can't be a lover any more, just as i can't be aged twenty any more. i am a man now, not an adolescent. and to my sorrow i am a husband to a woman who wants a lover: always a lover. but all women want lovers. and i can't be it any more. i don't want to. i have finished that. finished for ever: unless i become senile---” therefore next day he gathered up his courage. he would not have had courage unless he had known that he was not alone. the other man was in the town, and from this fact he derived his strength: the fact that lilly was there. so at teatime he went over the river, and rang at her door. yes, she was at home, and she had other visitors. she was wearing a beautiful soft afternoon dress, again of a blue like chicory-flowers, a pale, warm blue. and she had cornflowers in her belt: heaven knows where she had got them. she greeted aaron with some of the childish shyness. he could tell that she was glad he had come, and that she had wondered at his not coming sooner. she introduced him to her visitors: two young ladies and one old lady and one elderly italian count. the conversation was mostly in french or italian, so aaron was rather out of it. however, the visitors left fairly early, so aaron stayed them out. when they had gone, he asked: “where is manfredi?” “he will come in soon. at about seven o'clock.” then there was a silence again. “you are dressed fine today,” he said to her. “am i?” she smiled. he was never able to make out quite what she felt, what she was feeling. but she had a quiet little air of proprietorship in him, which he did not like. “you will stay to dinner tonight, won't you?” she said. “no--not tonight,” he said. and then, awkwardly, he added: “you know. i think it is better if we are friends--not lovers. you know--i don't feel free. i feel my wife, i suppose, somewhere inside me. and i can't help it---” she bent her head and was silent for some moments. then she lifted her face and looked at him oddly. “yes,” she said. “i am sure you love your wife.” the reply rather staggered him--and to tell the truth, annoyed him. “well,” he said. “i don't know about love. but when one has been married for ten years--and i did love her--then--some sort of bond or something grows. i think some sort of connection grows between us, you know. and it isn't natural, quite, to break it.--do you know what i mean?” she paused a moment. then, very softly, almost gently, she said: “yes, i do. i know so well what you mean.” he was really surprised at her soft acquiescence. what _did_ she mean? “but we can be friends, can't we?” he said. “yes, i hope so. why, yes! goodness, yes! i should be sorry if we couldn't be friends.” after which speech he felt that everything was all right--everything was a-one. and when manfredi came home, the first sound he heard was the flute and his wife's singing. “i'm so glad you've come,” his wife said to him. “shall we go into the sala and have real music? will you play?” “i should love to,” replied the husband. behold them then in the big drawing-room, and aaron and the marchese practising together, and the marchesa singing an italian folk-song while her husband accompanied her on the pianoforte. but her singing was rather strained and forced. still, they were quite a little family, and it seemed quite nice. as soon as she could, the marchesa left the two men together, whilst she sat apart. aaron and manfredi went through old italian and old german music, tried one thing and then another, and seemed quite like brothers. they arranged a piece which they should play together on a saturday morning, eight days hence. the next day, saturday, aaron went to one of the del torre music mornings. there was a string quartette--and a violin soloist--and the marchese at the piano. the audience, some dozen or fourteen friends, sat at the near end of the room, or in the smaller salotta, whilst the musicians performed at the further end of the room. the lillys were there, both tanny and her husband. but apart from these, aaron knew nobody, and felt uncomfortable. the marchesa gave her guests little sandwiches and glasses of wine or marsala or vermouth, as they chose. and she was quite the hostess: the well-bred and very simple, but still the conventional hostess. aaron did not like it. and he could see that lilly too was unhappy. in fact, the little man bolted the moment he could, dragging after him the indignant tanny, who was so looking forward to the excellent little sandwiches. but no--lilly just rudely bolted. aaron followed as soon as he could. “will you come to dinner tomorrow evening?” said his hostess to him as he was leaving. and he agreed. he had really resented seeing her as a conventional hostess, attending so charmingly to all the other people, and treating him so merely as one of the guests, among many others. so that when at the last moment she quietly invited him to dinner next day, he was flattered and accepted at once. the next day was sunday--the seventh day after his coming together with the marchesa--which had taken place on the monday. and already he was feeling much less dramatic in his decision to keep himself apart from her, to be merely friends. already the memory of the last time was fanning up in him, not as a warning but as a terrible incitement. again the naked desire was getting hold of him, with that peculiar brutal powerfulness which startled him and also pleased him. so that by the time sunday morning came, his recoil had exhausted itself, and he was ready again, eager again, but more wary this time. he sat in his room alone in the morning, playing his flute, playing over from memory the tunes she loved, and imagining how he and she would get into unison in the evening. his flute, his aaron's rod, would blossom once again with splendid scarlet flowers, the red florentine lilies. it was curious, the passion he had for her: just unalloyed desire, and nothing else. something he had not known in his life before. previously there had been always _some_ personal quality, some sort of personal tenderness. but here, none. she did not seem to want it. she seemed to hate it, indeed. no, all he felt was stark, naked desire, without a single pretension. true enough, his last experience had been a warning to him. his desire and himself likewise had broken rather disastrously under the proving. but not finally broken. he was ready again. and with all the sheer powerful insolence of desire he looked forward to the evening. for he almost expected manfredi would not be there. the officer had said something about having to go to padua on the saturday afternoon. so aaron went skipping off to his appointment, at seven o'clock. judge of his chagrin, then, when he found already seated in the salotta an elderly, quite well-known, very cultured and very well-connected english authoress. she was charming, in her white hair and dress of soft white wool and white lace, with a long chain of filigree gold beads, like bubbles. she was charming in her old-fashioned manner too, as if the world were still safe and stable, like a garden in which delightful culture, and choice ideas bloomed safe from wind and weather. alas, never was aaron more conscious of the crude collapse in the world than when he listened to this animated, young-seeming lady from the safe days of the seventies. all the old culture and choice ideas seemed like blowing bubbles. and dear old corinna wade, she seemed to be blowing bubbles still, as she sat there so charming in her soft white dress, and talked with her bright animation about the influence of woman in parliament and the influence of woman in the periclean day. aaron listened spell-bound, watching the bubbles float round his head, and almost hearing them go pop. to complete the party arrived an elderly litterateur who was more proud of his not-very-important social standing than of his literature. in fact he was one of those english snobs of the old order, living abroad. perfectly well dressed for the evening, his grey hair and his prim face was the most well-dressed thing to be met in north italy. “oh, so glad to see you, mr. french. i didn't know you were in florence again. you make that journey from venice so often. i wonder you don't get tired of it,” cried corinna wade. “no,” he said. “so long as duty to england calls me to florence, i shall come to florence. but i can live in no town but venice.” “no, i suppose you can't. well, there is something special about venice: having no streets and no carriages, and moving about in a gondola. i suppose it is all much more soothing.” “much less nerve-racking, yes. and then there is a quality in the whole life. of course i see few english people in venice--only the old venetian families, as a rule.” “ah, yes. that must be very interesting. they are very exclusive still, the venetian _noblesse_?” said miss wade. “oh, very exclusive,” said mr. french. “that is one of the charms. venice is really altogether exclusive. it excludes the world, really, and defies time and modern movement. yes, in spite of the steamers on the canal, and the tourists.” “that is so. that is so. venice is a strange back-water. and the old families are very proud still, in these democratic days. they have a great opinion of themselves, i am told.” “well,” said mr. french. “perhaps you know the rhyme: “'veneziano gran' signore padovano buon' dotore. vicenzese mangia il gatto veronese tutto matto---'” “how very amusing!” said miss wade. “_veneziana_ gran' signore. the venetian is a great gentleman! yes, i know they are all convinced of it. really, how very amusing, in these advanced days. to be born a venetian, is to be born a great gentleman! but this outdoes divine right of king.” “to be born a venetian gentleman, is to be born a great gentleman,” said mr. french, rather fussily. “you seriously think so?” said miss wade. “well now, what do you base your opinion on?” mr. french gave various bases for his opinion. “yes--interesting. very interesting. rather like the byzantines--lingering on into far other ages. anna comnena always charmed me very much. how she despised the flower of the north--even tancred! and so the lingering venetian families! and you, in your palazzo on the grand canal: you are a northern barbarian civilised into the old venetian signoria. but how very romantic a situation!” it was really amusing to see the old maid, how she skirmished and hit out gaily, like an old jaunty free lance: and to see the old bachelor, how prim he was, and nervy and fussy and precious, like an old maid. but need we say that mr. aaron felt very much out of it. he sat and listened, with a sardonic small smile on his face and a sardonic gleam in his blue eyes, that looked so very blue on such an occasion. he made the two elderly people uncomfortable with his silence: his democratic silence, miss wade might have said. however, miss wade lived out towards galuzzo, so she rose early, to catch her tram. and mr. french gallantly and properly rose to accompany her, to see her safe on board. which left aaron and the marchesa alone. “what time is manfredi coming back?” said he. “tomorrow,” replied she. there was a pause. “why do you have those people?” he asked. “who?” “those two who were here this evening.” “miss wade and mr. french?--oh, i like miss wade so very much. she is so refreshing.” “those old people,” said aaron. “they licked the sugar off the pill, and go on as if everything was toffee. and we've got to swallow the pill. it's easy to be refreshing---” “no, don't say anything against her. i like her so much.” “and him?” “mr. french!--well, he's perhaps a little like the princess who felt the pea through three feather-beds. but he can be quite witty, and an excellent conversationalist, too. oh yes, i like him quite well.” “matter of taste,” said aaron. they had not much to say to one another. the time passed, in the pauses. he looked at his watch. “i shall have to go,” he said. “won't you stay?” she said, in a small, muted voice. “stay all night?” he said. “won't you?” “yes,” he said quietly. did he not feel the strength of his desire on him. after which she said no more. only she offered him whiskey and soda, which he accepted. “go then,” he said to her. “and i'll come to you.--shall i come in fifteen minutes?” she looked at him with strange, slow dark eyes. and he could not understand. “yes,” she said. and she went. and again, this night as before, she seemed strangely small and clinging in his arms. and this night he felt his passion drawn from him as if a long, live nerve were drawn out from his body, a long live thread of electric fire, a long, living nerve finely extracted from him, from the very roots of his soul. a long fine discharge of pure, bluish fire, from the core of his soul. it was an excruciating, but also an intensely gratifying sensation. this night he slept with a deeper obliviousness than before. but ah, as it grew towards morning how he wished he could be alone. they must stay together till the day was light. and she seemed to love clinging to him and curling strangely on his breast. he could never reconcile it with her who was a hostess entertaining her guests. how could she now in a sort of little ecstasy curl herself and nestle herself on his, aaron's breast, tangling his face all over with her hair. he verily believed that this was what she really wanted of him: to curl herself on his naked breast, to make herself small, small, to feel his arms around her, while he himself was remote, silent, in some way inaccessible. this seemed almost to make her beside herself with gratification. but why, why? was it because he was one of her own race, and she, as it were, crept right home to him? he did not know. he only knew it had nothing to do with him: and that, save out of _complaisance_, he did not want it. it simply blasted his own central life. it simply blighted him. and she clung to him closer. strange, she was afraid of him! afraid of him as of a fetish! fetish afraid, and fetish-fascinated! or was her fear only a delightful game of cat and mouse? or was the fear genuine, and the delight the greater: a sort of sacrilege? the fear, and the dangerous, sacrilegious power over that which she feared. in some way, she was not afraid of him at all. in some other way she used him as a mere magic implement, used him with the most amazing priestess-craft. himself, the individual man which he was, this she treated with an indifference that was startling to him. he forgot, perhaps, that this was how he had treated her. his famous desire for her, what had it been but this same attempt to strike a magic fire out of her, for his own ecstasy. they were playing the same game of fire. in him, however, there was all the time something hard and reckless and defiant, which stood apart. she was absolutely gone in her own incantations. she was absolutely gone, like a priestess utterly involved in her terrible rites. and he was part of the ritual only, god and victim in one. god and victim! all the time, god and victim. when his aloof soul realised, amid the welter of incantation, how he was being used,--not as himself but as something quite different--god and victim--then he dilated with intense surprise, and his remote soul stood up tall and knew itself alone. he didn't want it, not at all. he knew he was apart. and he looked back over the whole mystery of their love-contact. only his soul was apart. he was aware of the strength and beauty and godlikeness that his breast was then to her--the magic. but himself, he stood far off, like moses' sister miriam. she would drink the one drop of his innermost heart's blood, and he would be carrion. as cleopatra killed her lovers in the morning. surely they knew that death was their just climax. they had approached the climax. accept then. but his soul stood apart, and could have nothing to do with it. if he had really been tempted, he would have gone on, and she might have had his central heart's blood. yes, and thrown away the carrion. he would have been willing. but fatally, he was not tempted. his soul stood apart and decided. at the bottom of his soul he disliked her. or if not her, then her whole motive. her whole life-mode. he was neither god nor victim: neither greater nor less than himself. his soul, in its isolation as she lay on his breast, chose it so, with the soul's inevitability. so, there was no temptation. when it was sufficiently light, he kissed her and left her. quietly he left the silent flat. he had some difficulty in unfastening the various locks and bars and catches of the massive door downstairs, and began, in irritation and anger, to feel he was a prisoner, that he was locked in. but suddenly the ponderous door came loose, and he was out in the street. the door shut heavily behind him, with a shudder. he was out in the morning streets of florence. chapter xx. the broken rod the day was rainy. aaron stayed indoors alone, and copied music and slept. he felt the same stunned, withered feeling as before, but less intensely, less disastrously, this time. he knew now, without argument or thought that he would never go again to the marchesa: not as a lover. he would go away from it all. he did not dislike her. but he would never see her again. a great gulf had opened, leaving him alone on the far side. he did not go out till after dinner. when he got downstairs he found the heavy night-door closed. he wondered: then remembered the signorina's fear of riots and disturbances. as again he fumbled with the catches, he felt that the doors of florence were trying to prevent his egress. however, he got out. it was a very dark night, about nine o'clock, and deserted seeming. he was struck by the strange, deserted feeling of the city's atmosphere. yet he noticed before him, at the foot of the statue, three men, one with a torch: a long torch with naked flames. the men were stooping over something dark, the man with the torch bending forward too. it was a dark, weird little group, like mediaeval florence. aaron lingered on his doorstep, watching. he could not see what they were doing. but now, the two were crouching down; over a long dark object on the ground, and the one with the torch bending also to look. what was it? they were just at the foot of the statue, a dark little group under the big pediment, the torch-flames weirdly flickering as the torch-bearer moved and stooped lower to the two crouching men, who seemed to be kneeling. aaron felt his blood stir. there was something dark and mysterious, stealthy, in the little scene. it was obvious the men did not want to draw attention, they were so quiet and furtive-seeming. and an eerie instinct prevented aaron's going nearer to look. instead, he swerved on to the lungarno, and went along the top of the square, avoiding the little group in the centre. he walked the deserted dark-seeming street by the river, then turned inwards, into the city. he was going to the piazza vittoria emmanuele, to sit in the cafe which is the centre of florence at night. there he could sit for an hour, and drink his vermouth and watch the florentines. as he went along one of the dark, rather narrow streets, he heard a hurrying of feet behind him. glancing round, he saw the torch-bearer coming along at a trot, holding his flaming torch up in front of him as he trotted down the middle of the narrow dark street. aaron shrank under the wall. the trotting torch-bearer drew near, and now aaron perceived the other two men slowly trotting behind, stealthily, bearing a stretcher on which a body was wrapped up, completely and darkly covered. the torch-bearer passed, the men with the stretcher passed too, hastily and stealthily, the flickering flames revealing them. they took no notice of aaron, no notice of anything, but trotted softly on towards the centre of the city. their queer, quick footsteps echoed down the distance. then aaron too resumed his way. he came to the large, brilliantly-lighted cafe. it was sunday evening, and the place was full. men, florentines, many, many men sat in groups and in twos and threes at the little marble tables. they were mostly in dark clothes or black overcoats. they had mostly been drinking just a cup of coffee--others however had glasses of wine or liquor. but mostly it was just a little coffee-tray with a tiny coffee pot and a cup and saucer. there was a faint film of tobacco smoke. and the men were all talking: talking, talking with that peculiar intensity of the florentines. aaron felt the intense, compressed sound of many half-secret voices. for the little groups and couples abated their voices, none wished that others should hear what they said. aaron was looking for a seat--there was no table to him-—when suddenly someone took him by the arm. it was argyle. “come along, now! come and join us. here, this way! come along!” aaron let himself be led away towards a corner. there sat lilly and a strange man: called levison. the room was warm. aaron could never bear to be too hot. after sitting a minute, he rose and took off his coat, and hung it on a stand near the window. as he did so he felt the weight of his flute--it was still in his pocket. and he wondered if it was safe to leave it. “i suppose no one will steal from the overcoat pockets,” he said, as he sat down. “my dear chap, they'd steal the gold filling out of your teeth, if you happened to yawn,” said argyle. “why, have you left valuables in your overcoat?” “my flute,” said aaron. “oh, they won't steal that,” said argyle. “besides,” said lilly, “we should see anyone who touched it.” and so they settled down to the vermouth. “well,” said argyle, “what have you been doing with yourself, eh? i haven't seen a glimpse of you for a week. been going to the dogs, eh?” “or the bitches,” said aaron. “oh, but look here, that's bad! that's bad! i can see i shall have to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform. oh, i'm a great reformer, a zwingli and savonarola in one. i couldn't count the number of people i've led into the right way. it takes some finding, you know. strait is the gate--damned strait sometimes. a damned tight squeeze....” argyle was somewhat intoxicated. he spoke with a slight slur, and laughed, really tickled at his own jokes. the man levison smiled acquiescent. but lilly was not listening. his brow was heavy and he seemed abstracted. he hardly noticed aaron's arrival. “did you see the row yesterday?” asked levison. “no,” said aaron. “what was it?” it was the socialists. they were making a demonstration against the imprisonment of one of the railway-strikers. i was there. they went on all right, with a good bit of howling and gibing: a lot of young louts, you know. and the shop-keepers shut up shop, and nobody showed the italian flag, of course. well, when they came to the via benedetto croce, there were a few mounted carabinieri. so they stopped the procession, and the sergeant said that the crowd could continue, could go on where they liked, but would they not go down the via verrocchio, because it was being repaired, the roadway was all up, and there were piles of cobble stones. these might prove a temptation and lead to trouble. so would the demonstrators not take that road--they might take any other they liked.--well, the very moment he had finished, there was a revolver shot, he made a noise, and fell forward over his horse's nose. one of the anarchists had shot him. then there was hell let loose, the carabinieri fired back, and people were bolting and fighting like devils. i cleared out, myself. but my god--what do you think of it?” “seems pretty mean,” said aaron. “mean!--he had just spoken them fair--they could go where they liked, only would they not go down the one road, because of the heap of stones. and they let him finish. and then shot him dead.” “was he dead?” said aaron. “yes--killed outright, the nazione says.” there was a silence. the drinkers in the cafe all continued to talk vehemently, casting uneasy glances. “well,” said argyle, “if you let loose the dogs of war, you mustn't expect them to come to heel again in five minutes.” “but there's no fair play about it, not a bit,” said levison. “ah, my dear fellow, are you still so young and callow that you cherish the illusion of fair play?” said argyle. “yes, i am,” said levison. “live longer and grow wiser,” said argyle, rather contemptuously. “are you a socialist?” asked levison. “am i my aunt tabitha's dachshund bitch called bella,” said argyle, in his musical, indifferent voice. “yes, bella's her name. and if you can tell me a damneder name for a dog, i shall listen, i assure you, attentively.” “but you haven't got an aunt called tabitha,” said aaron. “haven't i? oh, haven't i? i've got two aunts called tabitha: if not more.” “they aren't of any vital importance to you, are they?” said levison. “not the very least in the world--if it hadn't been that my elder aunt tabitha had christened her dachshund bitch bella. i cut myself off from the family after that. oh, i turned over a new leaf, with not a family name on it. couldn't stand bella amongst the rest.” “you must have strained most of the gnats out of your drink, argyle,” said lilly, laughing. “assiduously! assiduously! i can't stand these little vermin. oh, i am quite indifferent about swallowing a camel or two--or even a whole string of dromedaries. how charmingly eastern that sounds! but gnats! not for anything in the world would i swallow one.” “you're a bit of a socialist though, aren't you?” persisted levison, now turning to lilly. “no,” said lilly. “i was.” “and am no more,” said argyle sarcastically. “my dear fellow, the only hope of salvation for the world lies in the re-institution of slavery.” “what kind of slavery?” asked levison. “slavery! slavery! when i say slavery i don't mean any of your damned modern reform cant. i mean solid sound slavery on which the greek and the roman world rested. far finer worlds than ours, my dear chap! oh far finer! and can't be done without slavery. simply can't be done.--oh, they'll all come to realise it, when they've had a bit more of this democratic washer-women business.” levison was laughing, with a slight sneer down his nose. “anyhow, there's no immediate danger--or hope, if you prefer it--of the re-instituting of classic slavery,” he said. “unfortunately no. we are all such fools,” said argyle. “besides,” said levison, “who would you make slaves of?” “everybody, my dear chap: beginning with the idealists and the theorising jews, and after them your nicely-bred gentlemen, and then perhaps, your profiteers and rothschilds, and all politicians, and ending up with the proletariat,” said argyle. “then who would be the masters?--the professional classes, doctors and lawyers and so on?” “what? masters. they would be the sewerage slaves, as being those who had made most smells.” there was a moment's silence. “the only fault i have to find with your system,” said levison, rather acidly, “is that there would be only one master, and everybody else slaves.” “do you call that a fault? what do you want with more than one master? are you asking for several?--well, perhaps there's cunning in that.--cunning devils, cunning devils, these theorising slaves--” and argyle pushed his face with a devilish leer into aaron's face. “cunning devils!” he reiterated, with a slight tipsy slur. “that be-fouled epictetus wasn't the last of 'em--nor the first. oh, not by any means, not by any means.” here lilly could not avoid a slight spasm of amusement. “but returning to serious conversation,” said levison, turning his rather sallow face to lilly. “i think you'll agree with me that socialism is the inevitable next step--” lilly waited for some time without answering. then he said, with unwilling attention to the question: “i suppose it's the logically inevitable next step.” “use logic as lavatory paper,” cried argyle harshly. “yes--logically inevitable--and humanly inevitable at the same time. some form of socialism is bound to come, no matter how you postpone it or try variations,” said levison. “all right, let it come,” said lilly. “it's not my affair, neither to help it nor to keep it back, or even to try varying it.” “there i don't follow you,” said levison. “suppose you were in russia now--” “i watch it i'm not.” “but you're in italy, which isn't far off. supposing a socialist revolution takes place all around you. won't that force the problem on you?--it is every man's problem,” persisted levison. “not mine,” said lilly. “how shall you escape it?” said levison. “because to me it is no problem. to bolsh or not to bolsh, as far as my mind goes, presents no problem. not any more than to be or not to be. to be or not to be is simply no problem--” “no, i quite agree, that since you are already existing, and since death is ultimately inevitable, to be or not to be is no sound problem,” said levison. “but the parallel isn't true of socialism. that is not a problem of existence, but of a certain mode of existence which centuries of thought and action on the part of europe have now made logically inevitable for europe. and therefore there is a problem. there is more than a problem, there is a dilemma. either we must go to the logical conclusion--or--” “somewhere else,” said lilly. “yes--yes. precisely! but where else? that's the one half of the problem: supposing you do not agree to a logical progression in human social activity. because after all, human society through the course of ages only enacts, spasmodically but still inevitably, the logical development of a given idea.” “well, then, i tell you.--the idea and the ideal has for me gone dead--dead as carrion--” “which idea, which ideal precisely?” “the ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spirited-ness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity--all the lot--all the whole beehive of ideals--has all got the modern bee-disease, and gone putrid, stinking.--and when the ideal is dead and putrid, the logical sequence is only stink.--which, for me, is the truth concerning the ideal of good, peaceful, loving humanity and its logical sequence in socialism and equality, equal opportunity or whatever you like.--but this time he stinketh--and i'm sorry for any christus who brings him to life again, to stink livingly for another thirty years: the beastly lazarus of our idealism.” “that may be true for you--” “but it's true for nobody else,” said lilly. “all the worse for them. let them die of the bee-disease.” “not only that,” persisted levison, “but what is your alternative? is it merely nihilism?” “my alternative,” said lilly, “is an alternative for no one but myself, so i'll keep my mouth shut about it.” “that isn't fair.” “i tell you, the ideal of fairness stinks with the rest.--i have no obligation to say what i think.” “yes, if you enter into conversation, you have--” “bah, then i didn't enter into conversation.--the only thing is, i agree in the rough with argyle. you've got to have a sort of slavery again. people are not men: they are insects and instruments, and their destiny is slavery. they are too many for me, and so what i think is ineffectual. but ultimately they will be brought to agree--after sufficient extermination--and then they will elect for themselves a proper and healthy and energetic slavery.” “i should like to know what you mean by slavery. because to me it is impossible that slavery should be healthy and energetic. you seem to have some other idea in your mind, and you merely use the word slavery out of exasperation--” “i mean it none the less. i mean a real committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being.” “it'll take a bit of knowing, who are the inferior and which is the superior,” said levison sarcastically. “not a bit. it is written between a man's brows, which he is.” “i'm afraid we shall all read differently.” “so long as we're liars.” “and putting that question aside: i presume that you mean that this committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to someone higher shall be made voluntarily--a sort of voluntary self-gift of the inferiors--” “yes--more or less--and a voluntary acceptance. for it's no pretty gift, after all.--but once made it must be held fast by genuine power. oh yes--no playing and fooling about with it. permanent and very efficacious power.” “you mean military power?” “i do, of course.” here levison smiled a long, slow, subtle smile of ridicule. it all seemed to him the preposterous pretentiousness of a megalomaniac--one whom, after a while, humanity would probably have the satisfaction of putting into prison, or into a lunatic asylum. and levison felt strong, overwhelmingly strong, in the huge social power with which he, insignificant as he was, was armed against such criminal-imbecile pretensions as those above set forth. prison or the lunatic asylum. the face of the fellow gloated in these two inevitable engines of his disapproval. “it will take you some time before you'll get your doctrines accepted,” he said. “accepted! i'd be sorry. i don't want a lot of swine snouting and sniffing at me with their acceptance.--bah, levison--one can easily make a fool of you. do you take this as my gospel?” “i take it you are speaking seriously.” here lilly broke into that peculiar, gay, whimsical smile. “but i should say the blank opposite with just as much fervour,” he declared. “do you mean to say you don't mean what you've been saying?” said levison, now really looking angry. “why, i'll tell you the real truth,” said lilly. “i think every man is a sacred and holy individual, never to be violated; i think there is only one thing i hate to the verge of madness, and that is bullying. to see any living creature bullied, in any way, almost makes a murderer of me. that is true. do you believe it--?” “yes,” said levison unwillingly. “that may be true as well. you have no doubt, like most of us, got a complex nature which--” c r a s h! there intervened one awful minute of pure shock, when the soul was in darkness. out of this shock aaron felt himself issuing amid a mass of terrible sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the hoarse howl of people, the rushing of men, the sudden gulf, the awful gulfing whirlpool of horror in the social life. he stood in agony and semi-blindness amid a chaos. then as he began to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place of debris: he saw lilly standing not far off, white as a sheet, and as if unconscious. and still he had no idea of what had happened. he thought perhaps something had broken down. he could not understand. lilly began to look round. he caught aaron's eye. and then aaron began to approach his friend. “what is it?” he asked. “a bomb,” said lilly. the manager, and one old waiter, and three or four youths had now advanced to the place of debris. and now aaron saw that a man was lying there--and horror, blood was running across the floor of the cafe. men began now hastily to return to the place. some seized their hats and departed again at once. but many began to crowd in--a black eager crowd of men pressing to where the bomb had burst--where the man was lying. it was rather dark, some of the lamps were broken--but enough still shone. men surged in with that eager, excited zest of people, when there has been an accident. grey carabinieri, and carabinieri in the cocked hat and fine sunday uniform pressed forward officiously. “let us go,” said lilly. and he went to the far corner, where his hat hung. but aaron looked in vain for his own hat. the bomb had fallen near the stand where he had hung it and his overcoat. “my hat and coat?” he said to lilly. lilly, not very tall, stood on tiptoe. then he climbed on a chair and looked round. then he squeezed past the crowd. aaron followed. on the other side of the crowd excited angry men were wrestling over overcoats that were mixed up with a broken marble table-top. aaron spied his own black hat under the sofa near the wall. he waited his turn and then in the confusion pressed forward to where the coats were. someone had dragged out his, and it lay on the floor under many feet. he managed, with a struggle, to get it from under the feet of the crowd. he felt at once for his flute. but his trampled, torn coat had no flute in its pocket. he pushed and struggled, caught sight of a section, and picked it up. but it was split right down, two silver stops were torn out, and a long thin spelch of wood was curiously torn off. he looked at it, and his heart stood still. no need to look for the rest. he felt utterly, utterly overcome--as if he didn't care what became of him any further. he didn't care whether he were hit by a bomb, or whether he himself threw the next bomb, and hit somebody. he just didn't care any more about anything in life or death. it was as if the reins of his life slipped from his hands. and he would let everything run where it would, so long as it did run. then he became aware of lilly's eyes on him--and automatically he joined the little man. “let us go,” said lilly. and they pushed their way through the door. the police were just marching across the square. aaron and lilly walked in the opposite direction. groups of people were watching. suddenly lilly swerved--in the middle of the road was a large black glisten of blood, trickling horribly. a wounded man had run from the blow and fallen here. aaron did not know where he was going. but in the via tournabuoni lilly turned towards the arno, and soon they were on the ponte santa trinita. “who threw the bomb?” said aaron. “i suppose an anarchist.” “it's all the same,” said aaron. the two men, as if unable to walk any further, leaned on the broad parapet of the bridge and looked at the water in the darkness of the still, deserted night. aaron still had his flute section in his hand, his overcoat over his arm. “is that your flute?” asked lilly. “bit of it. smashed.” “let me look.” he looked, and gave it back. “no good,” he said. “oh, no,” said aaron. “throw it in the river, aaron,” said lilly. aaron turned and looked at him. “throw it in the river,” repeated lilly. “it's an end.” aaron nervelessly dropped the flute into the stream. the two men stood leaning on the bridge-parapet, as if unable to move. “we shall have to go home,” said lilly. “tanny may hear of it and be anxious.” aaron was quite dumbfounded by the night's event: the loss of his flute. here was a blow he had not expected. and the loss was for him symbolistic. it chimed with something in his soul: the bomb, the smashed flute, the end. “there goes aaron's rod, then,” he said to lilly. “it'll grow again. it's a reed, a water-plant--you can't kill it,” said lilly, unheeding. “and me?” “you'll have to live without a rod, meanwhile.” to which pleasant remark aaron made no reply. chapter xxi. words he went home to bed: and dreamed a strange dream. he dreamed that he was in a country with which he was not acquainted. night was coming on, and he had nowhere to sleep. so he passed the mouth of a sort of cave or house, in which a woman, an old woman, sat. therefore he entered, and though he could not understand the language, still his second self understood. the cave was a house: and men came home from work. his second self assumed that they were tin-miners. he wandered uneasily to and fro, no one taking any particular notice of him. and he realized that there was a whole vast country spreading, a sort of underworld country, spreading away beyond him. he wandered from vast apartment to apartment, down narrow corridors like the roads in a mine. in one of the great square rooms, the men were going to eat. and it seemed to him that what they were going to eat was a man, naked man. but his second self knew that what appeared to his eyes as a man was really a man's skin stuffed tight with prepared meat, as the skin of a bologna sausage. this did not prevent his seeing the naked man who was to be eaten walk slowly and stiffly across the gangway and down the corridor. he saw him from behind. it was a big handsome man in the prime of life, quite naked and perhaps stupid. but of course he was only a skin stuffed with meat, whom the grey tin-miners were going to eat. aaron, the dream-aaron, turned another way, and strayed along the vast square rooms, cavern apartments. he came into one room where there were many children, all in white gowns. and they were all busily putting themselves to bed, in the many beds scattered about the room at haphazard. and each child went to bed with a wreath of flowers on its head, white flowers and pink, so it seemed. so there they all lay, in their flower-crowns in the vast space of the rooms. and aaron went away. he could not remember the following part. only he seemed to have passed through many grey domestic apartments, where were all women, all greyish in their clothes and appearance, being wives of the underground tin-miners. the men were away and the dream-aaron remembered with fear the food they were to eat. the next thing he could recall was, that he was in a boat. and now he was most definitely two people. his invisible, _conscious_ self, what we have called his second self, hovered as it were before the prow of the boat, seeing and knowing, but unseen. his other self, the palpable aaron, sat as a passenger in the boat, which was being rowed by the unknown people of this underworld. they stood up as they thrust the boat along. other passengers were in the boat too, women as well, but all of them unknown people, and not noticeable. the boat was upon a great lake in the underworld country, a lake of dark blue water, but crystal clear and very beautiful in colour. the second or invisible aaron sat in the prow and watched the fishes swimming suspended in the clear, beautiful dark-blue water. some were pale fish, some frightening-looking, like centipedes swimming, and some were dark fish, of definite form, and delightful to watch. the palpable or visible aaron sat at the side of the boat, on the end of the middle seat, with his naked right elbow leaning out over the side. and now the boat entered upon shallows. the impalpable aaron in the bows saw the whitish clay of the bottom swirl up in clouds at each thrust of the oars, whitish-clayey clouds which would envelope the strange fishes in a sudden mist. and on the right hand of the course stakes stood up in the water, at intervals, to mark the course. the boat must pass very near these stakes, almost touching. and aaron's naked elbow was leaning right over the side. as they approached the first stake, the boatmen all uttered a strange cry of warning, in a foreign language. the flesh-and-blood aaron seemed not even to hear. the invisible aaron heard, but did not comprehend the words of the cry. so the naked elbow struck smartly against the stake as the boat passed. the rowers rowed on. and still the flesh-and-blood aaron sat with his arm over the side. another stake was nearing. “will he heed, will he heed?” thought the anxious second self. the rowers gave the strange warning cry. he did not heed, and again the elbow struck against the stake as the boat passed. and yet the flesh-and-blood aaron sat on and made no sign. there were stakes all along this shallow part of the lake. beyond was deep water again. the invisible aaron was becoming anxious. “will he never hear? will he never heed? will he never understand?” he thought. and he watched in pain for the next stake. but still the flesh-and-blood aaron sat on, and though the rowers cried so acutely that the invisible aaron almost understood their very language, still the aaron seated at the side heard nothing, and his elbow struck against the third stake. this was almost too much. but after a few moments, as the boat rowed on, the palpable aaron changed his position as he sat, and drew in his arm: though even now he was not aware of any need to do so. the invisible aaron breathed with relief in the bows, the boat swung steadily on, into the deep, unfathomable water again. they were drawing near a city. a lake-city, like mexico. they must have reached a city, because when aaron woke up and tried to piece together the dream of which these are mere fragments, he could remember having just seen an idol. an astarte he knew it as, seated by the road, and in her open lap, were some eggs: smallish hen's eggs, and one or two bigger eggs, like swan's, and one single little roll of bread. these lay in the lap of the roadside astarte.... and then he could remember no more. he woke, and for a minute tried to remember what he had been dreaming, and what it all meant. but he quickly relinquished the effort. so he looked at his watch: it was only half-past three. he had one of those american watches with luminous, phosphorescent figures and fingers. and tonight he felt afraid of its eerily shining face. he was awake a long time in the dark--for two hours, thinking and not thinking, in that barren state which is not sleep, nor yet full wakefulness, and which is a painful strain. at length he went to sleep again, and did not wake till past eight o'clock. he did not ring for his coffee till nine. outside was a bright day--but he hardly heeded it. he lay profitlessly thinking. with the breaking of the flute, that which was slowly breaking had finally shattered at last. and there was nothing ahead: no plan, no prospect. he knew quite well that people would help him: francis dekker or angus guest or the marchese or lilly. they would get him a new flute, and find him engagements. but what was the good? his flute was broken, and broken finally. the bomb had settled it. the bomb had settled it and everything. it was an end, no matter how he tried to patch things up. the only thing he felt was a thread of destiny attaching him to lilly. the rest had all gone as bare and bald as the dead orb of the moon. so he made up his mind, if he could, to make some plan that would bring his life together with that of his evanescent friend. lilly was a peculiar bird. clever and attractive as he undoubtedly was, he was perhaps the most objectionable person to know. it was stamped on his peculiar face. aaron thought of lilly's dark, ugly face, which had something that lurked in it as a creature under leaves. then he thought of the wide-apart eyes, with their curious candour and surety. the peculiar, half-veiled surety, as if nothing, nothing could overcome him. it made people angry, this look of silent, indifferent assurance. “nothing can touch him on the quick, nothing can really get at him,” they felt at last. and they felt it with resentment, almost with hate. they wanted to be able to get at him. for he was so open-seeming, so very outspoken. he gave himself away so much. and he had no money to fall back on. yet he gave himself away so easily, paid such attention, almost deference to any chance friend. so they all thought: here is a wise person who finds me the wonder which i really am.--and lo and behold, after he had given them the trial, and found their inevitable limitations, he departed and ceased to heed their wonderful existence. which, to say the least of it, was fraudulent and damnable. it was then, after his departure, that they realised his basic indifference to them, and his silent arrogance. a silent arrogance that knew all their wisdom, and left them to it. aaron had been through it all. he had started by thinking lilly a peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing: then cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own: then terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove which is in holes at the finger-ends. and all the time, which was most beastly, seeing through one. all the time, freak and outsider as he was, lilly _knew_. he knew, and his soul was against the whole world. driven to bay, and forced to choose. forced to choose, not between life and death, but between the world and the uncertain, assertive lilly. forced to choose, and yet, in the world, having nothing left to choose. for in the world there was nothing left to choose, unless he would give in and try for success. aaron knew well enough that if he liked to do a bit of buttering, people would gladly make a success of him, and give him money and success. he could become quite a favourite. but no! if he had to give in to something: if he really had to give in, and it seemed he had: then he would rather give in to the little lilly than to the beastly people of the world. if he had to give in, then it should be to no woman, and to no social ideal, and to no social institution. no!--if he had to yield his wilful independence, and give himself, then he would rather give himself to the little, individual man than to any of the rest. for to tell the truth, in the man was something incomprehensible, which had dominion over him, if he chose to allow it. as he lay pondering this over, escaping from the _cul de sac_ in which he had been running for so long, by yielding to one of his pursuers: yielding to the peculiar mastery of one man's nature rather than to the quicksands of woman or the stinking bogs of society: yielding, since yield he must, in some direction or other: yielding in a new direction now, to one strange and incalculable little individual: as aaron lay so relaxing, finding a peculiar delight in giving his soul to his mind's hero, the self-same hero tapped and entered. “i wondered,” he said, “if you'd like to walk into the country with me: it is such a nice day. i thought you might have gone out already. but here you are in bed like a woman who's had a baby.--you're all right, are you?” “yes,” said aaron. “i'm all right.” “miserable about your flute?--ah, well, there are more flutes. get up then.” and lilly went to the window, and stood looking out at the river. “we're going away on thursday,” he said. “where to?” said aaron. “naples. we've got a little house there for the winter--in the country, not far from sorrento--i must get a bit of work done, now the winter is coming. and forget all about everything and just live with life. what's the good of running after life, when we've got it in us, if nobody prevents us and obstructs us?” aaron felt very queer. “but for how long will you settle down--?” he asked. “oh, only the winter. i am a vagrant really: or a migrant. i must migrate. do you think a cuckoo in africa and a cuckoo in essex is one and the same bird? anyhow, i know i must oscillate between north and south, so oscillate i do. it's just my nature. all people don't have the same needs.” “perhaps not,” said aaron, who had risen and was sitting on the side of the bed. “i would very much like to try life in another continent, among another race. i feel europe becoming like a cage to me. europe may be all right in herself. but i find myself chafing. another year i shall get out. i shall leave europe. i begin to feel caged.” “i guess there are others that feel caged, as well as you,” said aaron. “i guess there are.” “and maybe they haven't a chance to get out.” lilly was silent a moment. then he said: “well, i didn't make life and society. i can only go my own way.” aaron too was silent. a deep disappointment was settling over his spirit. “will you be alone all winter?” “just myself and tanny,” he answered. “but people always turn up.” “and then next year, what will you do?” “who knows? i may sail far off. i should like to. i should like to try quite a new life-mode. this is finished in me--and yet perhaps it is absurd to go further. i'm rather sick of seekers. i hate a seeker.” “what,” said aaron rather sarcastically--“those who are looking for a new religion?” “religion--and love--and all that. it's a disease now.” “oh, i don't know,” said aaron. “perhaps the lack of love and religion is the disease.” “ah--bah! the grinding the old millstones of love and god is what ails us, when there's no more grist between the stones. we've ground love very small. time to forget it. forget the very words religion, and god, and love--then have a shot at a new mode. but the very words rivet us down and don't let us move. rivets, and we can't get them out.” “and where should we be if we could?” said aaron. “we might begin to be ourselves, anyhow.” “and what does that mean?” said aaron. “being yourself--what does it mean?” “to me, everything.” “and to most folks, nothing. they've got to have a goal.” “there is no goal. i loathe goals more than any other impertinence. gaols, they are. bah--jails and jailers, gaols and gaolers---” “wherever you go, you'll find people with their noses tied to some goal,” said aaron. “their wagon hitched to a star--which goes round and round like an ass in a gin,” laughed lilly. “be damned to it.” aaron got himself dressed, and the two men went out, took a tram and went into the country. aaron could not help it--lilly put his back up. they came to a little inn near a bridge, where a broad stream rustled bright and shallow. it was a sunny warm day, and aaron and lilly had a table outside under the thin trees at the top of the bank above the river. the yellow leaves were falling--the tuscan sky was turquoise blue. in the stream below three naked boys still adventurously bathed, and lay flat on the shingle in the sun. a wagon with two pale, loving, velvety oxen drew slowly down the hill, looking at each step as if they were going to come to rest, to move no more. but still they stepped forward. till they came to the inn, and there they stood at rest. two old women were picking the last acorns under three scrubby oak-trees, whilst a girl with bare feet drove her two goats and a sheep up from the water-side towards the women. the girl wore a dress that had been blue, perhaps indigo, but which had faded to the beautiful lavender-purple colour which is so common, and which always reminded lilly of purple anemones in the south. the two friends sat in the sun and drank red wine. it was midday. from the thin, square belfry on the opposite hill the bells had rung. the old women and the girl squatted under the trees, eating their bread and figs. the boys were dressing, fluttering into their shirts on the stream's shingle. a big girl went past, with somebody's dinner tied in a red kerchief and perched on her head. it was one of the most precious hours: the hour of pause, noon, and the sun, and the quiet acceptance of the world. at such a time everything seems to fall into a true relationship, after the strain of work and of urge. aaron looked at lilly, and saw the same odd, distant look on his face as on the face of some animal when it lies awake and alert, yet perfectly at one with its surroundings. it was something quite different from happiness: an alert enjoyment of rest, an intense and satisfying sense of centrality. as a dog when it basks in the sun with one eye open and winking: or a rabbit quite still and wide-eyed, with a faintly-twitching nose. not passivity, but alert enjoyment of being central, life-central in one's own little circumambient world. they sat thus still--or lay under the trees--for an hour and a half. then lilly paid the bill, and went on. “what am i going to do this winter, do you think?” aaron asked. “what do you want to do?” “nay, that's what i want to know.” “do you want anything? i mean, does something drive you from inside?” “i can't just rest,” said aaron. “can't you settle down to something?--to a job, for instance?” “i've not found the job i could settle down to, yet,” said aaron. “why not?” “it's just my nature.” “are you a seeker? have you got a divine urge, or need?” “how do i know?” laughed aaron. “perhaps i've got a damned urge, at the bottom of me. i'm sure it's nothing divine.” “very well then. now, in life, there are only two great dynamic urges--do you believe me--?” “how do i know?” laughed aaron. “do you want to be believed?” “no, i don't care a straw. only for your own sake, you'd better believe me.” “all right then--what about it?” “well, then, there are only two great dynamic urges in life: love and power.” “love and power?” said aaron. “i don't see power as so very important.” “you don't see because you don't look. but that's not the point. what sort of urge is your urge? is it the love urge?” “i don't know,” said aaron. “yes, you do. you know that you have got an urge, don't you?” “yes--” rather unwillingly aaron admitted it. “well then, what is it? is it that you want to love, or to be obeyed?” “a bit of both.” “all right--a bit of both. and what are you looking for in love?--a woman whom you can love, and who will love you, out and out and all in all and happy ever after sort of thing?” “that's what i started out for, perhaps,” laughed aaron. “and now you know it's all my eye!” aaron looked at lilly, unwilling to admit it. lilly began to laugh. “you know it well enough,” he said. “it's one of your lost illusions, my boy. well, then, what next? is it a god you're after? do you want a god you can strive to and attain, through love, and live happy ever after, countless millions of eternities, immortality and all that? is this your little dodge?” again aaron looked at lilly with that odd double look of mockery and unwillingness to give himself away. “all right then. you've got a love-urge that urges you to god; have you? then go and join the buddhists in burmah, or the newest fangled christians in europe. go and stick your head in a bush of nirvana or spiritual perfection. trot off.” “i won't,” said aaron. “you must. if you've got a love-urge, then give it its fulfilment.” “i haven't got a love-urge.” “you have. you want to get excited in love. you want to be carried away in love. you want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and love yourself. don't deny it. i know you do. you want passion to sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the swooping eagle swoop right into the sun. i know you, my love-boy.” “not any more--not any more. i've been had too often,” laughed aaron. “bah, it's a lesson men never learn. no matter how sick they make themselves with love, they always rush for more, like a dog to his vomit.” “well, what am i to do then, if i'm not to love?” cried aaron. “you want to go on, from passion to passion, from ecstasy to ecstasy, from triumph to triumph, till you can whoosh away into glory, beyond yourself, all bonds loosened and happy ever after. either that or nirvana, opposite side of the medal.” “there's probably more hate than love in me,” said aaron. “that's the recoil of the same urge. the anarchist, the criminal, the murderer, he is only the extreme lover acting on the recoil. but it is love: only in recoil. it flies back, the love-urge, and becomes a horror.” “all right then. i'm a criminal and a murderer,” said aaron. “no, you're not. but you've a love-urge. and perhaps on the recoil just now. but listen to me. it's no good thinking the love-urge is the one and only. _niente_! you can whoosh if you like, and get excited and carried away loving a woman, or humanity, or god. swoop away in the love direction till you lose yourself. but that's where you're had. you can't lose yourself. you can try. but you might just as well try to swallow yourself. you'll only bite your fingers off in the attempt. you can't lose yourself, neither in woman nor humanity nor in god. you've always got yourself on your hands in the end: and a very raw and jaded and humiliated and nervous-neurasthenic self it is, too, in the end. a very nasty thing to wake up to is one's own raw self after an excessive love-whoosh. look even at president wilson: he love-whooshed for humanity, and found in the end he'd only got a very sorry self on his hands. “so leave off. leave off, my boy. leave off love-whooshing. you can't lose yourself, so stop trying. the responsibility is on your own shoulders all the time, and no god which man has ever struck can take it off. you are yourself and so be yourself. stick to it and abide by it. passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no urge, there's no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an eagle flying into the sun, or a moth into a candle. there's no goal outside you--and there's no god outside you. no god, whom you can get to and rest in. none. it's a case of: 'trot, trot to market, to buy a penny bun, and trot, trot back again, as fast as you can run.' but there's no god outside you, whom you can rise to or sink to or swoop away to. you can't even gum yourself to a divine nirvana moon. because all the time you've got to eat your dinner and digest it. there is no goal outside you. none. “there is only one thing, your own very self. so you'd better stick to it. you can't be any bigger than just yourself, so you needn't drag god in. you've got one job, and no more. there inside you lies your own very self, like a germinating egg, your precious easter egg of your own soul. there it is, developing bit by bit, from one single egg-cell which you were at your conception in your mother's womb, on and on to the strange and peculiar complication in unity which never stops till you die--if then. you've got an innermost, integral unique self, and since it's the only thing you have got or ever will have, don't go trying to lose it. you've got to develop it, from the egg into the chicken, and from the chicken into the one-and-only phoenix, of which there can only be one at a time in the universe. there can only be one of you at a time in the universe--and one of me. so don't forget it. your own single oneness is your destiny. your destiny comes from within, from your own self-form. and you can't know it beforehand, neither your destiny nor your self-form. you can only develop it. you can only stick to your own very self, and never betray it. and by so sticking, you develop the one and only phoenix of your own self, and you unfold your own destiny, as a dandelion unfolds itself into a dandelion, and not into a stick of celery. “remember this, my boy: you've never got to deny the holy ghost which is inside you, your own soul's self. never. or you'll catch it. and you've never got to think you'll dodge the responsibility of your own soul's self, by loving or sacrificing or nirvaning--or even anarchising and throwing bombs. you never will....” aaron was silenced for a moment by this flood of words. then he said smiling: “so i'd better sit tight on my soul, till it hatches, had i?” “oh, yes. if your soul's urge urges you to love, then love. but always know that what you are doing is the fulfilling of your own soul's impulse. it's no good trying to act by prescription: not a bit. and it's no use getting into frenzies. if you've got to go in for love and passion, go in for them. but they aren't the goal. they're a mere means: a life-means, if you will. the only goal is the fulfilling of your own soul's active desire and suggestion. be passionate as much as ever it is your nature to be passionate, and deeply sensual as far as you can be. small souls have a small sensuality, deep souls a deep one. but remember, all the time, the responsibility is upon your own head, it all rests with your own lonely soul, the responsibility for your own action.” “i never said it didn't,” said aaron. “you never said it did. you never accepted. you thought there was something outside, to justify you: god, or a creed, or a prescription. but remember, your soul inside you is your only godhead. it develops your actions within you as a tree develops its own new cells. and the cells push on into buds and boughs and flowers. and these are your passion and your acts and your thoughts and expressions, your developing consciousness. you don't know beforehand, and you can't. you can only stick to your own soul through thick and thin. “you are your own tree of life, roots and limbs and trunk. somewhere within the wholeness of the tree lies the very self, the quick: its own innate holy ghost. and this holy ghost puts forth new buds, and pushes past old limits, and shakes off a whole body of dying leaves. and the old limits hate being empassed, and the old leaves hate to fall. but they must, if the tree-soul says so....” they had sat again during this harangue, under a white wall. aaron listened more to the voice than the words. it was more the sound value which entered his soul, the tone, the strange speech-music which sank into him. the sense he hardly heeded. and yet he understood, he knew. he understood, oh so much more deeply than if he had listened with his head. and he answered an objection from the bottom of his soul. “but you talk,” he said, “as if we were like trees, alone by ourselves in the world. we aren't. if we love, it needs another person than ourselves. and if we hate, and even if we talk.” “quite,” said lilly. “and that's just the point. we've got to love and hate moreover--and even talk. but we haven't got to fix on any one of these modes, and say that's the only mode. it is such imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule. it is so obviously not the case. yet we try and make it so.” “i feel that,” said aaron. “it's all a lie.” “it's worse. it's a half lie. but listen. i told you there were two urges--two great life-urges, didn't i? there may be more. but it comes on me so strongly, now, that there are two: love, and power. and we've been trying to work ourselves, at least as individuals, from the love-urge exclusively, hating the power-urge, and repressing it. and now i find we've got to accept the very thing we've hated. “we've exhausted our love-urge, for the moment. and yet we try to force it to continue working. so we get inevitably anarchy and murder. it's no good. we've got to accept the power motive, accept it in deep responsibility, do you understand me? it is a great life motive. it was that great dark power-urge which kept egypt so intensely living for so many centuries. it is a vast dark source of life and strength in us now, waiting either to issue into true action, or to burst into cataclysm. power--the power-urge. the will-to-power--but not in nietzsche's sense. not intellectual power. not mental power. not conscious will-power. not even wisdom. but dark, living, fructifying power. do you know what i mean?” “i don't know,” said aaron. “take what you call love, for example. in the real way of love, the positive aim is to make the other person--or persons--happy. it devotes itself to the other or to others. but change the mode. let the urge be the urge of power. then the great desire is not happiness, neither of the beloved nor of oneself. happiness is only one of many states, and it is horrible to think of fixing us down to one state. the urge of power does not seek for happiness any more than for any other state. it urges from within, darkly, for the displacing of the old leaves, the inception of the new. it is powerful and self-central, not seeking its centre outside, in some god or some beloved, but acting indomitably from within itself. “and of course there must be one who urges, and one who is impelled. just as in love there is a beloved and a lover: the man is supposed to be the lover, the woman the beloved. now, in the urge of power, it is the reverse. the woman must submit, but deeply, deeply submit. not to any foolish fixed authority, not to any foolish and arbitrary will. but to something deep, deeper. to the soul in its dark motion of power and pride. we must reverse the poles. the woman must now submit--but deeply, deeply, and richly! no subservience. none of that. no slavery. a deep, unfathomable free submission.” “you'll never get it,” said aaron. “you will, if you abandon the love idea and the love motive, and if you stand apart, and never bully, never force from the conscious will. that's where nietzsche was wrong. his was the conscious and benevolent will, in fact, the love-will. but the deep power-urge is not conscious of its aims: and it is certainly not consciously benevolent or love-directed.--whatever else happens, somewhere, sometime, the deep power-urge in man will have to issue forth again, and woman will submit, livingly, not subjectedly.” “she never will,” persisted aaron. “anything else will happen, but not that.” “she will,” said lilly, “once man disengages himself from the love-mode, and stands clear. once he stands clear, and the other great urge begins to flow in him, then the woman won't be able to resist. her own soul will wish to yield itself.” “woman yield--?” aaron re-echoed. “woman--and man too. yield to the deep power-soul in the individual man, and obey implicitly. i don't go back on what i said before. i do believe that every man must fulfil his own soul, every woman must be herself, herself only, not some man's instrument, or some embodied theory. but the mode of our being is such that we can only live and have our being whilst we are implicit in one of the great dynamic modes. we must either love, or rule. and once the love-mode changes, as change it must, for we are worn out and becoming evil in its persistence, then the other mode will take place in us. and there will be profound, profound obedience in place of this love-crying, obedience to the incalculable power-urge. and men must submit to the greater soul in a man, for their guidance: and women must submit to the positive power-soul in man, for their being.” “you'll never get it,” said aaron. “you will, when all men want it. all men say, they want a leader. then let them in their souls submit to some greater soul than theirs. at present, when they say they want a leader, they mean they want an instrument, like lloyd george. a mere instrument for their use. but it's more than that. it's the reverse. it's the deep, fathomless submission to the heroic soul in a greater man. you, aaron, you too have the need to submit. you, too, have the need livingly to yield to a more heroic soul, to give yourself. you know you have. and you know it isn't love. it is life-submission. and you know it. but you kick against the pricks. and perhaps you'd rather die than yield. and so, die you must. it is your affair.” there was a long pause. then aaron looked up into lilly's face. it was dark and remote-seeming. it was like a byzantine eikon at the moment. “and whom shall i submit to?” he said. “your soul will tell you,” replied the other. the end the scarlet stigma a drama in four acts by james edgar smith. founded upon nathaniel hawthorne's novel, "the scarlet letter." washington, d.c. james j. chapman, . copyright, , by james edgar smith. all rights reserved. press of george s. krouse. bindery of edwin f. price. washington, d.c. stigmatization is a rare incident of ecstasy. not many well authenticated cases have been reported by competent medical authorities, and yet there can be no doubt of its occasional occurrence. see encyclopaedia britannica, article on stigmatization by dr. macalister, and references therein cited; also the work on nervous and mental diseases by dr. landon carter gray, page . that it may occur in men of a high order of ability is instanced by the case of st. francis of assisi. it ought not to be necessary to point out that the entire third scene in the second act of this play is a dramatic transcript from the diseased consciousness of mr. dimsdell, that the satan of the play is an hallucination, and that the impress of the stigma upon dimsdell's breast is merely the culmination of his auto-hypnotic ecstasy, or trance. persons represented. roger prynne, called _chillingworth_, a physician. arthur dimsdell, a youthful divine. john wilson, a good old minister. bellingham, governor of the colony. butts, a sea captain. satan, an hallucination of dimsdell's. bronson, } ward, } langdon, } members of the governor's council. arnold, } diggory, a servant to governor bellingham. hester prynne, wife of roger prynne. martha wilson, daughter of rev. john wilson. ursula, a nurse. betsey, a milkmaid. mother carey, keeper of a sailor's inn. _a clerk, a crier, a jailer, councilors, citizens, soldiers, sailors, indians, servants._ scene--_boston_. time--_june, _. the scarlet stigma. act i. scene i.--_a tavern and a street in front of it. settles on porch. sailors smoking and drinking. enter captain butts, singing._ _butts._ _the margery d. was a trim little ship, the men they could man, and the skipper could skip; she sailed from her haven one fine summer day, and she foundered at sea in the following way,-- to-wit:_ _all._ _a-rinkety, clinkety, clink, clank, clank, the liquor they bathed in, the spirits they drank; a sailor at sea with three sheets in the wind can hardly be called, sirs, quite sober._ _enter mother carey, from tavern._ _carey._ cap'n! cap'n butts! gen'le gen'lemen! would ye rune a pore widdy woman by a singing of sech filthy tunes? and me up for my license again nex' tuesday! _butts._ peace! peace, mother carey, hear your chickens screech! come, boys! [_singing._ _the captain was thirsty, and so was each man, they ladled the grog out by cup and by can, the night it was stormy, they knew not the place, and they sang as they sank the following grace,-- to-wit:_ _all._ _a-sinkety, sinkety, sink, sank, sunk, our captain is tipsy, our mate is quite drunk, our widows we leave to the world's tender care, and we don't give a damn for the devil!_ ha! ha! ha! _carey._ o, lord! o, lord! if the magistrates should hear that song, they'd close my place! _butts._ there, there now. [_chucks her under the chin._] the magistrates are not as quick to hear a sailor sing as thou art to take his orders. bring us a pint apiece. _carey._ thou naughty man! [_slaps his jaws._] a pint apiece? [_exit._ _butts._ aye. now, lads, bargain out your time; ye'll not see a petticoat for many a day. [_lights pipe and sits._ _sailors._ aye, aye, sir. _citizens cross stage, singly and in groups, all going in the same direction. enter mother carey from house with ale, serves it, looks up and down street as in expectation of some one, then goes in._ _butts._ mother carey's lost one of her chicks. here lads! here's to the mousey puritan lassies! they won't dance, they can't sing--ah! well! here's to them till we come again! [_all drink._ _enter along the street two councilors._ _arnold._ 'tis very true; but, sir, though many break this law and go unpunished, our godly company should not wink at known adultery. _langdon._ in other words, we must find scape-goats to bear our sins. _arnold._ nay, not exactly that. we vindicate god's laws, and---- [_exeunt councilors._ _butts._ he must be privy councilor to the lord himself! _enter a group of women._ _first woman._ her beauty, say'st thou? pretty is as pretty does, say i. i'd beauty her! go to! who knows the father of her brat; can any tell? _second woman._ thou dost not doubt thy goodman? _first woman._ trust none of them. i know mine own; dost thou know thine? as for her she hath shamed our sex, and i would-- [_exeunt women._ _butts._ god's-my-life, there's more poison in their tongues than in a nest of rattlesnakes? what's all this pother, lads? _sailor._ there's a trial, sir, on a charge of bastardy. _butts._ ha! ha! ha! you rogues had better ship elsewhere; if the wind sits in that quarter, you'll find foul weather here. _sailors._ ha! ha! ha! _more people cross the stage._ _butts._ cheapside on a holiday! _re-enter mother carey, dressed for walking._ _carey._ o, dear! o, dear! i'll be late; i'm sure i'll be late. oh! dear, dear, dear! why will that ursula still lag? _butts._ what's the matter, mother? _carey._ matter? matter enough! a gentlewoman tried for adultery and me sure to miss it all! [_looks around._] why doesn't ursula come? o, dear! o, dear!--why, here she is! _enter ursula._ what kept thee, ursula? _ursula._ such a crowd! whew! i'm out o' breath. [_sits; one or two pass over._] the town's run mad to look upon a gentlewoman shamed. [_citizens still pass._] ah! there's no room for me now, but when her labor came god knows there was no press! i had room enough then, not one would lend a hand--fie! they are serpents, all of them; they have double tongues to hiss, but ne'er a hand to help. _carey._ still talking to herself. here, ursula, take the keys and wait upon the gentlemen. [_hands keys to ursula and exit up street._ _ursula._ let the gentlemen wait on me awhile. _butts._ would you have us die of thirst, ursula? _ursula._ what will you have, captain? _butts._ stingo, ursula, stingo! [_exit ursula in tavern._ what say you, lads, shall we see this trial? _sailor._ aye, aye, sir, the woman's fair to look upon. _butts._ then let us get our ballast in, hoist sail and tack away. _re-enter ursula with ale._ who is it, ursula, they try? _ursula._ a gentle lady, sir. god's-my-life, had no man tempted her--but, that's your ways, you tempt us, blame us when we yield, and then make laws to punish us. _butts._ but, what's her name? _ursula._ what should it be but hester prynne? _butts._ hester prynne? the gentle mistress prynne i brought from amsterdam three years ago? _ursula._ the same, god bless her. _butts._ my lads, don't wait for me. [_exeunt sailors._ i knew her husband, ursula; a man well versed in all the wisdom of the time; somewhat well gone in years, but lovable beyond the shallowness of youth, and rich in mellow charity. oft hath he sailed with me from port to port where learning drew him, and still came richer home. one day he shipped for amsterdam and brought his bride, who, like a hawthorn in its pink of youth that blushes 'neath the shadow of an ancient elm, shed spring-time sweetness round his green old age. i've seen them often in their holland home, where wisdom laid its treasures at the feet of love, and beauty crowned the offering. she was a lovely lady, ursula, and when her lord, still bent on learning more, resolved to come out to america-- his own affairs then calling him to england-- he placed her in my care, intending soon to follow her. he did, but curséd fate! his ship was lost--no one knows where! _ursula._ alack the day! she had not sinned had he been here. _butts._ but, didst thou know her, ursula, as i have known her, wisely good and true, thou wouldst have wondered more. _ursula._ know her, sir! i nursed her! _butts._ thou, ursula? _ursula._ none but i! _butts._ where were her friends? _ursula._ where, but at home! dear heart, they shunned her like the plague--though if the truth were known, many that shun her now would keep her company perforce. none came near but pious master dimsdell, and even he came only out of duty to her soul; he told me so. _butts._ the reverend master dimsdell and thou her only comforters? _ursula._ nay, the little bairn was her greatest comfort, sir. _butts._ how doth she bear her trouble, ursula? _ursula._ like a good woman, sir. _butts._ she yet is that! but have you never learned her lover's name? _ursula._ nay, i never have. _butts._ 'tis strange that she should fall; and then endeavor to conceal her lover! noble, wise and beautiful, no other than a man of mark could win her! _ursula._ a three years widow, baby three months old, a coward run-a-gate of a lover, sir-- tell me, is there no exception made by law for widows? _butts._ none, of which i know. _ursula._ the law is hard indeed! _butts._ i wonder if a rough sea-dog like me might speak a word for her? _ursula._ aye, that you might! go seek the good old doctor wilson, mercy dwells with him, and he will aid you, sir. _butts._ i'll go at once. [_exeunt severally, butts up street, ursula in tavern._ _enter roger prynne, travel stained._ _roger._ we are not masters of our paths, although our wills do seem to guide our faltering steps: ship voyagers are we, and roam at will within the narrow confines of the deck, but neither plot nor steer the destined course. i may have passed her house--i'll ask my way here at the inn. long live king boniface! what ho! some wine! _ursula._ [_within_] your patience, captain, i'll be there anon. _roger._ at your leisure, hostess; i've learned to wait. [_sits._ a bachelor at sixty, i found myself encumbered with a ward--nay, not that-- enriched with female loveliness and grace bequeathed unto me by a dying friend. volition had no part in that, nor in my sudden recrudescency of love. i willed our marriage; but 'twas fate bestowed the joys i long had fled. then came our life in amsterdam; each day so filled with bliss it overflowed into the next, and days of joy grew into weeks and months of happiness-- let me have wine, i say! _ursula._ [_within_] coming, sir! _roger._ anon the traveling itch--was't fate or will-- possessed my soul to see america, and money matters calling me to london, where raged the plague, i sent my wife before me to america with captain butts, then bound for boston. ah! well-a-day, the parting!-- i hurried up my business; fled london town; shipped for america; was wrecked far south; captured by indians; escaping, wandered north until i found the white man's colonies; and now footsore and old i've reached the place i first intended. what next, o, fate? _enter ursula._ good morrow, hostess. _ursula._ good morrow, sir. [_surprised._ _roger._ look not askance upon my way-worn clothes; there's gold to pay my reckoning. [_throwing money down._ _ursula._ your pardon, sir; i marveled, sir, so fine a gentleman should be so travel-stained. what will you have? _roger._ bring me a cup of sherris-sack. _ursula._ [_aside_] i knew he was a gentleman! [_exit._ _roger._ how will my hester greet me? will she know me? she never saw me with a beard, nor in such rags. perhaps she thinks me dead-- if so, the shock might kill her--let me see-- putative widows have before my time bought second husbands with their beauty, wealth, or wit--and she hath all. 'tis probable-- and when the long-supposed defunct returned, he found his amorous relict the bride of a bright-eyed youth! what worse, ye harpy fates? she may be dead! oh! this is madness! sweet heaven, let her live! and, if i find her married, i'll depart unknown to her and bury in my heart's deep sepulchre my widowed grief. bah! i'm a fool! this weakness comes from my long wandering! misfortunes, though we think we conquer them, ever pursue, hang on our rear, and give such rankling wounds as teach our souls to dread what else may lie in wait invincible. _re-enter ursula with wine._ _ursula._ i beg your pardon, sir. i could not find the wine at first. _roger._ why, how was that? _ursula._ i'm not the hostess, sir, she is away; i merely take her place till she comes back. _roger._ you fill it rarely. _ursula._ god bless thee, sir, i'm cook, nurse, or hostess, as people need me. ursula cook, ursula nurse, or ursula goodale, at your service, sir. _roger._ ah, indeed, ursula! then i presume thou knowest many of the citizens? _ursula._ i know them everyone. _roger._ this wine is excellent. [_drinking_] dost know one roger prynne? _ursula._ the husband of our hester prynne? _roger._ the same. [_aside_] thank god, she lives. _ursula._ he's dead, sir, rest his soul, a more than thirty months ago. _roger._ poor fellow! he was a friend of mine. where did they bury him? _ursula._ his ship was wrecked, he had no burial. _roger._ here's to his memory! you know his wife? _ursula._ alas; i do, sweet lady! _roger._ and why alas? the loss of a husband is no great calamity in a colony. there can be no dearth here of husband-material, i fancy. _ursula._ whence come you that you know so little of the doings here? _roger._ from the far south, where for two long years and more i've lived among the savages. what do you mean? _ursula._ i mean her trial by the magistrates. _roger._ tried by magistrates? for what? _ursula._ adultery. _roger._ tried for adultery? _ursula._ aye, sir, that she is. _roger._ it is a lie, a damned lie! tried for adultery! a likely thing! so pure a woman! a purer creature never lived! _ursula._ sir, you are her friend? you know her? _roger._ i am--i am her husband--her husband's friend. i knew her in old england. adultery! a pretty word! who doth accuse her? damned detractors! _ursula._ her child. _roger._ her what? _ursula._ her child. _roger._ hath hester prynne a child? well, well; that is news indeed! god bless the little thing! it can't be quite as much as three years old; nay, not so old. why, such a tot can give no testimony. i'll go to this trial; i may be able yet to aid her. adultery! bah! _ursula._ god bless your heart, sir. _roger._ is't a boy or girl, how old? _ursula._ a girl and three months old. _roger._ three months? three years you mean. _ursula._ three months, i said. _roger._ thou dost not mean that hester prynne hath borne a child within the last two years? _ursula._ i do. [_aside_] a strange man, truly. this news hath troubled him; but that's not strange, it troubles all her friends. he seemed glad enough she had a child, but when i said it was a girl it seemed to sting him. well, well! god help the women; we are unwelcome when we come, abused while we stay, and driven hence with ill-usage. _roger._ adulteress! that cannot be! there's some mistake, or some deceit in this. her great nobility of heart would take upon herself another's wrong. i'll take an oath the babe they say is hers she never bore! _ursula._ 'tis surely hers, for i delivered her. _roger._ hester! hester! o, my god! my hester! woman, didst thou say that she is married? _ursula._ nay, i said she is a widow, sir. _roger._ who is her paramour? _ursula._ i do not know. [_busies herself removing tankards._ _roger._ [_aside_] now is my honored name dragged in the dust by her to whom i did confide its keeping; and she herself, my cherished wife, upraised upon a pedestal of shameful guilt for filthy mouths to spit their venom at. slowly now. whatever haps i'll be cornelius tacitus for the nonce, nor brave my state with that true name which marks me out as publius cornutus. i must have time to think. [_to ursula_] get me more wine. prepare a room for me. _ursula._ aye, sir. [_going._] _roger._ where is this trial held? _ursula._ sir, at the market place, three crossings up the street and to the left. _roger._ i thank thee. go. [_exit ursula._ why was the banishment of tyrant fate annulled by vigorous will? and why should i, for whom the jaws of death unhinged themselves, escape from shipwreck, war, and pestilence, and here attain my journey's end at last, but that such evil deaths were much too mild to gratify the fury that pursues me! i was reserved for this last ignominy as in despite of human purposes; robbed of mine honor where most i placed my trust and reap this pain where most i sowed for peace. was it for this that i did marry her? was it for this i sent her here before me? for this i nursed the holy purposes of wedded purity, o'ercame the shocks of human destiny, and held in check the inward passions of the baser man? for this--to be cornuted in mine age and die a by-word? my purposes! my purposes! o, god! our purposes are little nine-pins which fate's sure aim bowls down incessantly: as fast as we can set them up, events roll down the narrow alleys of our lives, rumbling like distant thunder as they speed, till crash! our king-intent is down, and in his fall share all his puny retinue! she an adulteress! my hester, whom i cherished as my soul! how i loved her! forgotten, like the meat of yesterday, let it pass! henceforth, for me there's nothing on this side of hell, but study of revenge on him who wrought her shame. he must have used foul means; for she was ever chaste in thought and deed. hell fiend! now, under an assuméd name, i'll ferret out her lusty paramour; contrive some means to deeply punish him, and satisfy my fathomless revenge. [_exit._ scene ii.--_another street. enter rev. arthur dimsdell, alone._ _dimsdell._ 'twould do no good.--the governor is late, or i have missed him.--confess?--disgrace for me; no help to her; and all the blasphemies that evil minds could cast on sacred calling would be my blame. whereas, i now can make my pleas take on the color of mine office and yet reflect on it a purer glow.-- why comes he not?--the path of righteousness, though straight, leads on thro' pleasant fields to heaven, whereas the broad and easy road of sin splits in its downward way, and then the will stands at a halt which fork to take, though both lead on to hell! now--why, here he comes! _enter governor, attended._ _governor._ nay, dimsdell, plead no more; she must be tried. i know what thou wouldst say, and like thee for it; but think, my friend, the law would mock itself if pardon did precede the penalty. _dimsdell._ our lord did pardon one was taken in the very act. o, think of him! _governor._ enough! what! wouldst thou have our laws contemned as feeble nets to catch the smaller fry and let the great break through? i tell thee, sir, her wealth, her beauty, her hitherto fair fame, blacken her crime and make its punishment a signal warning to the baser sort. _dimsdell._ hath she not suffered pains and imprisonment? enough to answer all the decalogue? _governor._ i stand for law; and you, i think, do think you stand for gospel.--come, we tarry.-- plead with the council for the woman, and, while i think her death were well deserved, i'll not oppose their mercy if you win it. my hand upon it. [_going._ _dimsdell._ if that she be condemned, suspend her sentence till her paramour be found; and let them die together. _governor._ agreed. come, we're late. [_exeunt._ scene iii.--_the market place.--church with portico, l.--a pillory on a raised platform, r.--the governor and council seated in portico.--a crowd of townsfolk._ _governor._ now that our other business is dispatched, call hester prynne. _wilson._ wise governor, and you, my brethren: dried as i am with age, the tendrils of my heart are pliable; nor have the tangles of this thicket-world so twisted all my grain as not to bend before another's misery. wherefore, i do beseech you, call her not. _governor._ yet must we try the woman, though we pity her; and though the scion mercy grafts upon the stock of justice, the stock is justice still. _wilson._ i plead for justice! even-handed justice! as blind and cold as death--but with a sword, sharp on one side to reach the woman's heart and on the other keener for the man's! you call the woman; where's her paramour? _governor._ we do not know. _wilson._ then grant a stay to hester till he's known. _governor._ too late; nor were it good to let the woman slap the face of law, and not resent it quickly. once again, call hester prynne. the man she may discover. _enter rev. arthur dimsdell through crowd and goes to portico._ _crier._ hester prynne! hester prynne! [_exit._ _dimsdell._ most worthy governor, i am like one who waking hears the village clock toll time, yet, having missed the first few strokes, the hour he cannot tell: and so stand i and hear fair hester called. is it for trial, or for punishment? _governor._ for both. _dimsdell._ i am her pastor and i speak for her; i would to god that i could plead "not guilty," or in her stead could offer up myself to satisfy the law! _crowd._ how good he is! _dimsdell._ gentle and wise she is, grave councilors, and with a modest meekness goes about the daily duties of her household care; oh! i am sure no vulgar palate-bait did lure her to this shame, but some enticement that took the form of higher nature did invest the hook. for she is modesty itself. _governor._ can modesty, then, fall like this? _dimsdell._ the modesty of woman is like the blush upon a tender rose; it is her treasure and her ornament: you cannot touch it, but it fades away; or breathe upon it, but it loses perfume; or bring it to the light, unwilted. _governor._ true, but when the roses fade we cast them forth, nor treasure them again. _dimsdell._ 'tis thus i own; but we have higher teaching. our lord, who knew temptation's mighty power, yet was himself without sin's damning stain, did pass upon a case like this. "let him who hath no sin first cast a stone at her." and then he said, "go, woman, sin no more." oh! wondrous grace that pardoned frailty which had not sunk to vice! _re-enter crier with hester prynne._ _governor._ enough! here comes the woman. hester, thou art accused before this court of that which blushing virtue shrinks to name, adultery. _hester._ i pray you spare me. _governor._ thou art the widow of a man of whom report spake only praise: no act of thine hath openly offended decency, but that young life which draws its sustenance from thy round breast avows thy hidden shame. _hester._ have mercy on the babe, o, god! _governor._ that thou shouldst sin, and thereby, hester, bring dishonor on the name thy spouse did give thee, is worse than in a meaner woman. if thou hast aught to say to mitigate the wrath of justice, speak. and, hester, bear in mind the penalty is death or banishment. _hester._ i would not gloze my crime, nor do i know how to address your worships. yet since you bid me i will plead my cause as best i can. that i have sinned is true; and well i know henceforth for me there's nothing left from all my kind but scorn and hate. for me hath life no charm to cheat my hope, or make me wish to linger here; yet i while lives the child would shelter her, the one sweet flower that lovely grows above the soil of my most foul debasement. although the blossom of iniquity, she takes no tinct from whence she springs, but rather of the sky toward which she doth unfold. believe me, sirs, but for my babe's dear love, i'd ask for death to rid me quickly of my misery: for love itself, dishonored in my being, turns all the gentle cords that bind affection into hard-knotted thongs to whip me hence. therefore, if i do plead for life, think not i do beseech a favor for myself, but rather, that i beg a lingering pain, than expiate in one quick-ending pang the sum of all my loathéd wickedness. thus, for my tender babe, i ask my life, and, for myself, i do implore you now, banish me not. as for my crime, i have repented it most bitterly; yea, i've suffered anguish from the very hour when, as the spring of nature dragged my anchors loose, the soft entreaty of a lover's sigh did blow concurrent with my tide, and swept me out into a troubled sea. now, battered on the rocks of hard opinions, my most untimely wreck is quite complete; yet spare the hulk for that dear freight it bore. _governor._ woman, i pity thee; now, while our laws are strict, yet may our mercy show itself in staving off the penalty, if thou wilt aid us. _hester._ your mercy comes with hard condition; for how can i, who stand here helpless, aid you who have all power? _governor._ tell us who is thy paramour? _hester._ that i will not do. _governor._ thou art most obstinate. what say you now, grave councilors? need we delay the sentence? _bronson._ quick to forgive and slow in condemnation, would be our wisest course in such a case. the life she hath god gave; we should not take it; nor should we banish her, for she is useful, and with her needle doth assist the poor. there is provision in our law to fit this crime when neither death nor banishment is proper. it is: [_reading_] "th' adulteress shall stand upon the pillory; and on her breast shall wear a scarlet letter a, to mark her criminal incontinence." _governor._ a good suggestion truly; we had forgot the clause from long disuse. what say you? _ward._ i think it wise. _arnold._ 'twill be more merciful. _langdon._ a living warning 'gainst adultery. _all._ it is our suffrage. _governor._ so be it then. hester, thou art to stand upon the pillory a little while, and wear upon thy breast the scarlet letter "a" forever; this see thou do on pain of instant death or banishment. hath anyone a piece of scarlet cloth? _bronson._ i have the letter here prepared. _governor._ clerk, affix the letter to her breast. _enter roger prynne, clad as in scene i.--he keeps to the rear of hester._ now, jailer, lead her to the pillory, there let her stand unbound. _hester ascends steps to pillory platform._ dimsdell, you are her pastor, speak to her. hold up her sin before her eyes, and warn the multitude by her example. _dimsdell._ i beg you, sir, let dr. wilson speak. _wilson._ nay, dimsdell. nay, the charge is yours. speak on. and plead that she disclose the man who was her paramour. _dimsdell._ i pray you pardon me. i am not well. _governor._ not well? 'tis but compassion weakens thee. speak man! thy words are gentlest and will draw her secret from her, though ours do seal her lips. proceed, dimsdell. _dimsdell._ we wrong her nature when we seek to know that which her heart doth teach her to conceal; yet at your bidding will i plead with her. _goes over to pillory._ hester, look down upon me; let thine ear receive my meaning with the sound i make; behold in me the body of the council, not me alone; and hear my words as though the general voice, speaking in concert true, did intone them. for it were vain presumption to expect that, what the governor could not extract, my words alone could move thee to disclose. _roger._ a modest gentleman, truly! _dimsdell._ upon thy sin i dwell not; the penalty which thou dost suffer preaches repentance; and in thy nature there is naught to lead thee twice astray. there's not an eye that now doth look upon thee but pities thee, and doubt thou not, if he who wronged thee is present here, his heart is wrung with bitterest remorse. wilt speak his name? _hester._ i will not. _dimsdell._ i do command thee by the commonwealth, i do entreat thee for thy reputation, i do implore thee for thy soul's salvation, give up his name. _hester._ i would not breathe his name to anyone; nay, not to him who was my husband, though the sea should cast him up to question me. _roger._ woman, who did seduce thee? _hester._ i keep my vow. _dimsdell._ hester, deceive thyself no more; look down upon me once again. believe me, hester, no pain the world could now inflict would harm thy recreant lover. to see thee here set up the target of a thousand curious eyes, thy beauties blistered in the noonday sun, thy gentle breast seared with yon scarlet letter, would burn that image on his soul. have mercy, hester, forgive his cowardice, do thou act for him; pronounce his name and let him die to satisfy his crime. _hester._ i will not drag him down with me. _roger._ oh! glorious generosity misplaced! _dimsdell._ your generosity hath led you once astray; do not allow it now to aid him in hypocrisy. for, hester, you, who know his weaknesses and aspirations, his station in his calling, his place in life among us, will be a party to deception if now you hide his name. _hester._ i answer to my god. no man shall know that which is only known to me and him. but speak thou on his crime! _dimsdell._ ho! all ye people of the commonwealth! behold!--let him confess!--o, hester! speak!-- i see--no more-- [_dimsdell falls._ _throng, confused and amazed, closes around dimsdell. cries of horror and apprehension._ _governor._ look to our brother dimsdell. he faints; the heat hath overcome him. _roger._ i am a doctor. make room! the falling sickness. give us breathing space! _governor._ hester, thou art discharged. let all go home! [_exeunt._ act ii. scene i.--_interior of hester's home. furniture dutch-english, comfortable and handsome. windows draped in scarlet-fringed curtains with scarlet cross-cords, simulating the letter "a." rich needle work in the hangings and other accessories. a cradle l., near it a table with a quarto bible. hester discovered bending over cradle, then sits r.c. and takes up a piece of embroidery (the letter "a" in scarlet on a dark background)._ _hester._ god bless the little darling, how she sleeps! had i but thought that all my heart would beat within the tender compass of her arms, i had not prayed she might not be. but now, although unasked she came, unasked she brought a wealth of love and blessing to my soul. [_sits and embroiders._] thus providence, although it pierce the heart, works into it some glorious design; which on this under side of life is blurred, thread over thread in infinite confusion. or, if we are not made of firmest texture, the work pulls through, or tears an ugly rent, or gathers up our woof in meshy tangles. this is a world of worn and fretted ends, knit in a maze of fearful intricacy, wherein we see no meaning. nor can we know the hidden shuttles of eternity, that weave the endless web of living, loving, and begetting, whereby a filament of earth takes on the likeness of an angel. the primal burden of our race-existence, mankind's perpetual perpetuation, weighs on weak womanhood; we bear the race and all its natural ills, yet still our fellows, who proudly call themselves our lords and masters, do heap upon us petty wrongs, and load us down with their oppressions. i cannot tell what rich reward my suffering may bring, but bide the piercing, like this patient cloth, in hope the needle carries golden thread. _enter a_ maid-servant. what is it? _servant._ madam, a gentleman would speak with you. _hester._ bid him enter. [_exit servant._ methought i heard my husband's dreaded voice speak to me on the pillory. what if he lives, or hath arisen from the dead to reckon with me now? well, let him come; for this strong heart outcast from sympathy hath turned back on itself in double strength; and all the puny woman of my mind, burned in the furnace of my sex's scorn, plunged in the icy vat of love's neglect, hath tempered hard. i fear him not. _enter roger prynne, shaved, and dressed as a doctor of medicine._ roger himself! _roger._ thou didst provide snug quarters, hester, against my coming. aye, and hast furnished them better than i bade thee. _hester._ the cost was small; my needle and my energy-- _roger._ have done the work; yea, and supplied the cradle also. ah! 'tis a brave piece of work; very beautiful and delicate; the lusty offspring of lustful parents. somewhat costly, i should think, and asked some pains. methinks, thou hadst some help with that; or was it thy needle or thy energy which wrought this dainty bit? _hester._ touch not the child; 'tis mine, thou hast no part in it. _roger._ too true. but calm thyself. i have not harmed the brat, nor did i touch it. [_looking around._] i like thy taste, hester. a handsome house to hold a handsome woman. _hester._ the house is thine; let me and my babe depart. _roger._ nay, keep the house, 'twill shelter you; i do not need it. _hester._ i will not have it. _roger._ will not, madam hester, is a strong word to use to your wedded lord and master. i say you shall; yea, and, furthermore, here is provision for the child and thee. [_throwing purse upon the table._] _hester._ take up thy purse. i who have done thee wrong will not henceforth eat thy bread. _roger._ wrong, hester. done me wrong? wronged me? nay, hester, wronged thyself; wronged thine innocent babe; wronged the world; wronged whom thou wilt, but not wronged me! to wake me from a doting dream--that was not wrong! a dream of woman's purity and innocence; a foolish dream of married happiness between thy youth and my decrepitude; to put an end to such a madness, surely was not wrong! wronged me? thy levity hath righted my poor mind, which, pondering o'er thy beauties, listed to one side. _hester._ oh! pardon me! _roger._ pardon thee? yea, why should i not? i do pardon thee; yea, more, i do applaud thine act. thou wast no slothful servant; thou didst not fear the coming of thy lord; thou puttest all to use and gottest cent per cent. therefore, the care i show for thee is hire and wages; it is thy due, accept it freely. _hester._ let me and my babe depart. receive thy money and thy house, i can take nothing from thee. ah! if i could i would return thee every penny i have spent of thine. _roger._ wait till i ask thee to account. what! am i so old, and yet not know the cost of dalliance? nothing dearer. and he who eared my field during my absence, being now, in thy abasement, so chary of his presence, spent little of his gold, i'll warrant. who is he, hester? _hester._ thou shalt never know. _roger._ never's a long word, hester; it stretches beyond the judgment into eternity. come, i'll know him then, tell me now. _hester._ he is a scholar and can cope with thee; thou canst not find him. _roger._ if he do walk the earth, i'll find him out; if he be now in hell, i'll follow him; where'er he be, his peace is forfeited and i will-- _hester._ what wilt thou do to him? _roger._ nothing, hester, nothing. i merely wish to thank him for the love he showed thee during my absence, whereby thou didst mourn for me the less. _hester._ thou wilt not kill him? _roger._ what a silly thing thou hast become, now thou hast left the path of virtue! do i kill thee? am i dangerous? is there force in this withered body to harm a lusty knave, a brave seducer of ripe womanhood? _hester._ nay, do not harm him. _roger._ at thy request, mistress. _hester._ the fault was mine. _roger._ no doubt 'twas thine alone. _hester._ wreak vengeance then on me alone. _roger._ i have none. _hester._ i would i could believe thee. _roger._ as well give faith to me as him. but, truly, hester, i had thought these puritans, these pilgrim fathers, had left all fleshly lusts behind them with their vanities in england. he must be a rare bird in these parts--o, i shall know him by his plumage! _hester._ he's safe enough. _roger._ perhaps, but then these poachers, who fish in others' ponds, are proud of their achievements. they will talk. they brag in their cups and strut and ogle when they're sober. _hester._ i'll warn him of thee. _roger._ thou wilt do nothing of the kind. but come, hester, man and wife ought not to quarrel. let us set a good example to the world in peace if not in chastity. sit you here and listen to me. _hester._ well? _roger._ hester, i loved thee when thou wast a babe, a prattling child no taller than my knee, a pretty little innocent, a tot that wavered in its walk and won my heart by tender trustfulness. thou'dt leave thy father, mother, all, to nestle in these arms the whiles i told some worn out fairy tale, or sang of robin hood. that was before thy mind did take its shape, and subsequent events have blotted out all memories of thy babyhood. _hester._ nay, but i do recall, as in a haze, some of the incidents of infancy. _roger._ perhaps. hester, thou wast the dearest child that ever blest fond parents, unfolding sweet thy mother's beauties and thy father's strength. and canst thou now remember who made himself a child to play with thee vain, foolish games; who taught thee out of books such lessons as thy little mind could grasp? _hester._ it was thou. _roger._ then, as thou didst grow toward womanhood, some fifteen springs, thy gentle mother died; a woman beautiful and pure, as sweetly ignorant of all her charms as is the hyacinth. _hester._ mother! mother! _roger._ pray god the saints see nothing here on earth: or else that in their golden paradise some sleepy potion dull their sympathies with us: for who could look upon this world, and see mankind divested of the lies that make our comeliness; or, with an eye undimmed, behold the brutal tragedies of life; and yet find happiness or peace in heaven? hell's flames would reach unto the tree of life itself and singe thy mother's heart, if she could see that scarlet letter on thy breast. [_hester covers her face and moans._] great god! what thread of continuity doth string the whirling incidents of life? this woman was that maid whose purity excelled imagination's greatest reach; whose happiness sang ever like the lark arising from the earth to soar in heaven! and now behold her dyed in scarlet sin, branded with infamy, and moaning here in deepest anguish! nay, come; let out thy grief in linkéd words, for this tooth-gated dumb remorse will herd thy thoughts until they gore each other. hester, thy strength is greater than to yield thus to thy misery; do not lash thy heart into a fury; never blow the tiny sparks of pain into the flaming coals of hell. that sinning soul is traitor to itself that leagues its bruiséd thoughts with imps of hell to torture conscience. _hester._ leave me, i pray you. _roger._ not yet, else were my visit bootless. hester, i will not dwell upon thy life from year to year, nor drag thy colliered soul back to its days of spotless innocence. thy father's amity for me, thou knowest, and how, upon his death, i stood toward thee in place of parents. _hester._ would you had remained a father to me! _roger._ i loved thee, hester; daughter, sister, sweetheart, you were to me. and you did love me too, and as an elder brother looked on me in gentle confidence. so did the years post by in th' dim afterglow that comes to agéd men; while love with thee was in the dawning; a tender sky with both of us, my sun already set; and thine not yet arisen; nor did it ever rise to shine on me, fool that i was! _hester._ i never loved you, should not have married you; knew nothing then of love except the name. _roger._ aye, you loved me, and you loved me not; hester, i wronged thee when i married thee; the fault was mine, old as i was, to hope to still the sweet necessities of youth with passionless love; nature demands her due, and we should know, while love may grow at home, passion requires some novelty. _hester._ we both have done foul wrong unto each other, and, as this world doth judge, mine is the greater. _roger._ yet thou wast tempted by thy youth, my absence, a handsome lover's importunity: but what can be said for me, old as i was, to drive and badger thy chaste ignorance to marry mine infirmities? _hester._ how can i right this wrong? _roger._ and wouldst thou if thou couldst? _hester._ aye, if i could; but yet these broken lives, cracked by my fall, no putty will make whole. _roger._ yet canst thou veil my ruin, and o'er me hang the drapery of silence. dost consent? _hester._ aye, but how? _roger._ but swear to me thou wilt conceal my name, nor ever claim relationship with me, until i bid thee. _hester._ wherefore the vow? _roger._ because i wish it; perhaps, because i would not bear the scorn, the petty taunts, the contumelious looks, that ever greet the cuckold husband. _hester._ then will i take the oath. _roger._ swear by the book, and also by the babe, never to breathe my rightful name; never to claim me as thy husband; never to leave this place. _hester._ wherefore not leave the place? _roger._ swear, woman, swear! never to leave this place, until i bid thee. _hester._ i swear to all these things. _roger._ swear once again; never to tell thy paramour thy husband lives and walks these streets. _hester._ i swear to keep thy counsel as i have kept his and mine own. _roger._ remember then, from this time on, my name is chillingworth, no longer prynne, for that i will not bear. [_going_] hester, farewell. yet ere i go, hester, behold my mind: i love thee still; but with a chastened heart made wise by sorrow. day after day, as thou dost wend thy way about this mazy world, my care will shield thee and thy little babe. do not repulse it. i have no hope that thou wilt think of me without revulsion; then hate me if thou must; but spare the thought that ever thou didst take my hateful kisses, or clasp those soft warm arms about my thin, cold carcass. do not despise thy beauties that i once did own them. forget it, hester, for such a marriage was my infamy, and i it was who sinned against thy youth. farewell! [_exit._ scene ii.--_a churchyard. a bell ringing for service. groups of people standing about. persons cross stage and enter church door on extreme l._ _bronson._ they say the reverend master dimsdell hath recovered from his fainting fit, and will, god willing, preach to us this afternoon. _langdon._ aye, that he will. _arnold._ but hath he come? _ward._ not yet; he's late, but, whether here or elsewhere, he's always doing good. _bronson._ a kindly man! his feet do tread th' o'ergrown path that leads unto the poor man's door. _langdon._ aye, that they do! and, in the darkened hour of mortal grief, his presence like a lamp gives light and hope. _arnold._ his charity exceeds all human bounds, and, though he's blameless in himself, knows how to pardon others. _ward._ aye, that he doth! didst note his plea for hester prynne upon her trial? _langdon._ aye, that i did! _ward._ but know the goodness of it! he was her constant friend up to the time her wantonness declared itself, and then he left her lonely, as though that punishment were all a man of mercy could inflict. _arnold._ he takes it much to heart that wanton vice hath found a nest within his congregation. _langdon._ that grief is truly great with him; but yet he will not hear a word against her.--look! for here she comes. how bravely doth she wear her scarlet letter! _enter hester prynne alone; walks proudly, with slow steps, to porch and enters church; looking neither to the right nor to the left, but straight before her, with her head up. people turn to look at her, but no one speaks._ _first woman._ the brazen thing! _second woman._ didst note the fashion of her badge of vice, and how she's turned it into ornament? _third woman._ a handy woman with her needle. _first woman._ let's in and stare her out of countenance. [_exeunt women._ _enter governor bellingham and roger prynne, called doctor chillingworth._ _governor._ now, as i told you, there hath lately come, but how i know not, a change in him so rare, it baffles cure. _roger._ i think you said he is a very studious man? _governor._ aye, that he is. good evening, gentlemen. _all._ your worship. _roger._ i pray you, tell me more. _governor._ nay, use your eyes, for here he is. _enter rev. arthur dimsdell. people uncover as he passes. he salutes them gravely and generally._ dimsdell, a word with you. _dimsdell._ good evening, gentlemen. _governor._ dimsdell, here is good doctor chillingworth, who tended thee. i hope you gentlemen will prize each other at your native worths. _dimsdell._ i shall be glad to know you better, doctor. _roger._ and i, to see you better, sir. _dimsdell._ pardon me, i must in; i'm late already. _exit dimsdell--all follow except governor bellingham and roger prynne. bell ceases._ _governor._ how weak a hold we have on health! that man is but the standing ruin of his former self, and yet, for beauty, comeliness and grace, he still is model to the colony. what do you think, can care restore him yet, and give him to us as he used to be? _roger._ i cannot tell. i need more knowledge of him. there are no marks of cureless malady-- a faint suggestion of overwatchfulness, that oft points out the student--nothing more. _hymn from church. (tune: "_ein' feste burg_" or other ancient hymn used by the puritans.)_ _governor._ the worship hath begun; but, ere we in, a word about the wealth you left with me. _roger._ no more. pray use it as your own, in trade, or howsoe'er you choose. the largest pearl an indian chief did give me; but sell it with the rest, and with their worth provide for hester. she is the widow of mine ancient friend, to whom i ever shall be much indebted, and while i would not have her know me yet as what i am--her husband's friend and hers-- as that might breed more grief in her, or wake an old one--yet i think it meet to care for her and for her child. _governor._ your goodness is your passport, doctor. come, let us in.--nay, after you; you are my guest. [_exeunt._ scene iii.--_bed room of the rev. arthur dimsdell. night. dimsdell, alone in the dark._ _dimsdell._ o, she is beautiful! the memory of her loveliness pervades my waking dreams, and, pleasant theft, deprives my sleep of dark oblivion. and thus, while fleeing from the gentle bonds of love, i am become the thrall of passion, and sigh my heart away in waste desire! had i but truly loved her, would not our joys, that then were innocent, have moulded soul to soul and made mine take the form of her most dear perfections? but, now! no trait of hester's noble purity remains with guilty me, for i purloined her precious diadem and like a rogue i cast that crown away, afraid to wear what would have been my dearest ornament. why can i not repent? or is it true repentance is denied the hypocrite? and must it then forever be that, though i cast out sin, both root and branch, the seed of evil, scattered long ago, will sprout and bloom carnation thoughts that dull the soul with subtle sweetness! oh! coward that i am! bound down, as to a rock, to form and place, by iron chains of worldly precedent, while my desires like eagles tear my breast, and make of me a base prometheus. o, god! i married all the family of sins, when i espoused the pleasantest; i am become a liar through my lechery, a thief of reputation through my cowardice, and--puh! the rest but follow in the train of my dear wedded crime! o, god! and shall this lust burn on in me still unconsumed? can flagellation, fasting, nor fervent prayer itself, not cleanse my soul from its fond doting on her comeliness? oh! heaven! is there no way for me to jump my middle age and plunge this burning heart into the icy flood of cold decay? none? o, wretched state of luxury! this hot desire grows even in its death and from its ashes doth arise full fledged renewed eternally! _a blinding flash of lightning, followed quickly by sharp thunder, discloses dimsdell kneeling at his couch, and also shows satan--an archangel with bat wings--who has just entered._ have mercy upon me, o, my god, have mercy! according to thy gentle lovingkindness, according to the multitude of all thy tender mercies, blot out my foul transgression. purge me with hyssop, and i shall be clean; wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow; hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. _satan._ you mar the psalm, sir priest, for you omit the saving clause. your sin is unconfessed. _dimsdell._ who art thou that durst interpose between my soul and god? _satan._ i am the stronger part of lower nature, the worser part of all that came from him whom all adore. behold me! _satan becomes visible by light emanating from himself._ _dimsdell._ thou art satan! the prince of hell! _satan._ i am so called. _dimsdell._ get thee hence! i am a minister of god, a priest, and am anointed of the lord to teach his children. _satan._ and, therefore, am i come to thee, sir priest. i do confess a predilection for thy calling; conclaves, synods, convocations, are never held without my guiding presence; they are my field days and my exercises, while in the study and the cell i take my cloistered ease. i love all priests and am the bosom friend of many who would blush to speak to me in public. receive me, brother. _dimsdell._ scorner, avaunt! sink to the hell from whence thou cam'st! i do abhor thee, satan; yea, i tell thee to thy face that i who quail before the awful majesty of god, and cowardly do hide my sin from man, i tell thee, vile as i am, i do detest thy very name! i do defy thee! _satan._ these words are very brave; if more than wind, go to the market place tomorrow, there proclaim thy vice; or else ascend thy pulpit and denounce thyself as what thou art, adulterer. _dimsdell._ recreant to my god am i; think'st thou that i will thee obey, to whom i owe no deep allegiance? _satan._ then bare thy sinful breast, for here i swear, by that dread name which mortals cannot hear, i will upon thee print a mark, the stigma of thy secret crime. _dimsdell._ hold off! i charge thee by that other name of him who rent thy kingdom, and will destroy it, touch me not yet! almighty purity, dread essence increate; behold concentrate, in this wicked form, the universal spirit of iniquity. come quickly in thy majesty, o lord! wither him here within the awful flame of thy bright holiness! shrivel his frame into an atom, and blow the lifeless dust beyond the farthest star. and, if in his destruction my soul should share through close proximity, spare not! then will thy servants serve thee, gracious lord! and mankind find its paradise! _satan._ that was well said! perhaps, sir priest, you now will treat me to a learned disquisition on the birth of evil? i'd like to hear it, if it tread beyond theology's well beaten path; but, if it stumbles in the pug-mill round of teleology, you must excuse me. _dimsdell._ base siege of scorn! i curse thee! _satan._ curses but belch foul wind, they pass beyond me. but, come; i have no time to waste with thee; this visitation had not been, nor would i dignify thy carnal slip by my incarnate presence, but for thy perfidy. for thou hast reached a depth of moral baseness below the meanest fiend in lowest hell; thou hast deserted her who sinned with thee, gave up her virtue to express her love, laid down her treasure to thy secret lust, and then took up thy burden with her own. think not i come to draft thee of my legions, i would not have so weak, so mean a coward, to sow pale fear among them. no! thou wilt be damned outside of hell. i come to show, as in a mirror, what thou art; not what thou shalt be. the past and present both are mine, the future rests with god. but now, _hester's image appears in a cloud dressed in white._ behold the woman as thou first didst know her, a loveliness to tempt or saint or devil, the rare quintessence of pure womanhood! transparent brightness! a living crystal globe, wherein all beauties of humanity reflect themselves with iridescent glow! dost thou remember? behold her now the mother of thy babe, _the image of hester changes. she holds their babe in her arms._ whose pretty wiles would win hard moloch's heart; make him forget his rites, and turn man-nurse. o, fool! i would renounce my war with heaven, eat up my pains in one most bitter mouthful, and sue for pardon from god's hated throne, if such an offspring might but call me father! where is thy manly pride? but, now, behold her shamed, bearing the badge _hester's image wears scarlet letter "a."_ of thy foul infamy. tear wide thy shirt, for as thou look'st on her i will impress upon thy breast a stigma worse than hers. aye, fall upon thy knees to worship her the lady of the scarlet letter. yet while thou kneel'st thy flesh doth glow and burn _scarlet letter "a" glows on dimsdell's breast._ with all the deep red heraldry befits a coward lust: the latter "a" in gules upon thy sable heart. there let it gnaw forever and forever! _hester vanishes. satan fades. no light, save "a" on dimsdell's breast._ and, now i go, i put this curse upon thee: be coward still, wear outwardly the garb of righteousness, shake in thy pious shoes, cover the stigma on thy breast from eyes of flesh, and be a hypocrite, till death relieves the world of thee. we'll meet again. [_lightning. exit satan. dimsdell lies in trance. night. no sound, no light._ act iii. scene i.--_the garden of governor bellingham. roger prynne, called chillingworth, alone._ _roger._ the fox that robbed my roost is sly; he keeps the cover warily; and, now the scent is cold, the curs that yelp in scandal's pack bay loud on many faults, but cannot trace him. _enter diggory._ _diggory._ doctor, the governor will join you presently. _roger._ diggory, i will await him patiently. [_sits._ _diggory retires, then returns._ _diggory._ doctor, may i beg a word with you? _roger._ a thousand if you will. _diggory._ i would speak in confidence. _roger._ the manner would become thee, diggory. but speak, man! say on. _diggory._ i need a philter, doctor. for the love of mercy-- _roger._ for the love of good liquor, diggory, thou shalt have twenty filters. still decanting? _diggory._ o, sir! not that kind of filter. i'm in love! _roger._ ah! thou art in love? in love didst thou say? _diggory._ aye, sir, if it please you. _roger._ it pleases me well enough; how doth it please the lady? _diggory._ she's not a lady, sir, thank god! she's but a simple maiden, and it pleaseth her not. _roger._ a simple maid refuses you! ah! diggory, diggory, be thankful for the good things god hath sent thee. _diggory._ truly, sir, i thank him ev'ry day; but, sir, as i do desire the maiden--i--i--would have her too. _roger._ and so, diggory, thou wouldst have me aid thee in this folly, and give thee a love potion? _diggory._ aye, sir, begging your honor's pardon. _roger._ but why dost thou ask me, diggory? dost thou take me for an herb-doctor, or a necromancer, or what? _diggory._ my master, the governor, says you are a very learned man, a what-you-call-'em--a scientist; and a scientist can do anything. _roger._ humph!--diggory, i do not deal in philters; they are out of date--but i know a charm will win her love. _diggory._ tell it me for the love of-- _roger._ thou wilt betray it, diggory. _diggory._ never! never! _roger._ omit thou but a word of it, and the maiden's lost to thee--but con it well, and all her beauties will be thine. _diggory._ oh! doctor! _roger._ take of the rendered grease of three black bears--do not fail in that--anoint thy curly locks-- _diggory._ my hair is straight. _roger._ never mind--but rub; and, as thou dost, repeat these words: _lady love, lady love, where e'er thou be, think of no man but only me; love me, and wed me, and call me thine own, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, joan._ _diggory._ what is that "ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling"? _roger._ that is the chief element of the charm--don't forget it. having done this on nine successive days--dost thou follow me? _diggory._ aye, sir. _roger._ on the tenth go to the barber's and have thy hair cut short. _diggory._ but, sir, my hair is my best feature! _roger._ it is with many; cut it, however, or lose the worth of all of the charm. dost thou hear, diggory? cut thy hair short or never win fair woman. farewell. _diggory._ i thank you, sir. [_going_] "lady love, ting-a-ling"--nay, that's not it. _roger._ diggory! _diggory._ yes, sir. _roger._ who are with the governor? _diggory._ the worthy ministers, master wilson and master dimsdell. _roger._ very well. [_exit diggory, trying to recall the verse._ ah! diggory, thou art but a dram of love in a fluid ounce of fool! and so may we label all mankind. for instance: the governor is a wise man and a politic; wilson a good man and a pious; dimsdell--ah! there i pause, for what fine formula can sum the qualities of that same arthur dimsdell? he's not a fool; nor mad; nor truly cataleptic--yet he's moody, falls in trance, and i suspect his power as a preacher comes from ecstasy. something he is akin to genius--yet he hath it not, for though his aim be true enough, he often flashes in the pan when genius would have hit the mark. i'll write his case in latin! what a study that would be if i could first find out the reason why he clutches at his breast!--if once i find him in a trance, alone--ah! here they come. _enter governor bellingham, rev. john wilson, rev. arthur dimsdell, and following them, with a tray of wine, diggory._ _wilson._ good morrow, doctor. _roger._ good morning, gentlemen. _governor._ [_to diggory._] leave the wine within the summer house. good morning, doctor. when mistress prynne doth come conduct her hither. _diggory._ sir, she's coming this way now. _governor._ very well. go. [_exit diggory._] doctor, we debate what disposition should be made of hester prynne's young child. we ask your aid--but here she is. _enter hester prynne._ _hester._ your worship hath been pleased to summon me to bring my child before you. _governor._ where is the child? _hester._ the babe is sick but answers by attorney. what is your will? _governor._ some pious matrons, hester, have charged that thou art not a person fit to rear that infant immortality, and guide it unto god. _hester._ god gave the child in rich exchange for all things else which i, poor sinful i, had forfeited; and now you, who have made yourselves the flails of god, would separate the wheat from chaff before the grain is ripe, and take her from me. oh! ye are wise! no doubt ye see beyond the purpose of almighty god who gave the child to me! _governor._ nay, take it not to heart, for, hester, duty to the child we owe to put its soul upon the way that leads to heaven. she will be cared for tenderly. _hester._ she is the last small link that binds my soul to earth, the tiny needle that doth point my way to heaven. you shall not take her from me! speak thou for me [_to dimsdell_]; as my pastor speak; speak now; and say if any harm from me will hurt the child. i will not part with her! say if thou canst, for thou hast sympathies which these men lack, say what the mother's rights are in her child; and what those rights must be when naught beside the child is left to her-- her husband gone, her friends deserted, no reputation, no sympathy, no love-- but only those twin brands of shame, her baby and the scarlet letter! _dimsdell._ i have a dual duty to discharge; i am this woman's pastor--and her friend, and therefore she hath called me to defend her; i am, beside, a member of your council, and hence am with you in your consultation; and yet, i think, these duties may be made to yoke and draw me to a just conclusion. _wilson._ thou also hast a duty to the child. _dimsdell._ aye, so i have. our aim is well enough, but let us pause before we do adopt a means that varies from the one marked out by god and nature. _governor._ is there not command to teach our children in the fear of god and guide them from impurity? _dimsdell._ god gave us mothers when he gave us life, and to their tender care he did entrust the mortal and immortal parts of us. what then? would we improve upon his system; would we now deprive this little one of that fond mother-care which nurtures her? or would we put, in place of mother-love, the cold, hard, formal training of a paid instructor? _governor._ but is this woman, stained with sin, a mother to entrust a child to? _dimsdell._ that question god hath answered; and we know the stain of sin doth fade beneath the bleach of true repentance; through it all appears the woven figure of the woman-fabric-- her motherhood! we owe our lives to woman's suffering, we owe our health unto her temperance, we owe her all the best of us. let god condemn her sin, but let us not presume to punish her where he hath healed her heart. _wilson._ there is weight in what he says. _roger._ yea, and earnestness! _governor._ well, hester, go thy way; the child is thine. remember thou dost owe a gentle thanks unto this pious man. go, hester, keep the child. think well upon his words; be thou a mother in all righteousness, as well as in thy sin. farewell. _hester._ i thank you, gentlemen. [_exit._ _wilson._ that woman would have been a noble wife had not some villain robbed her of her dower. _governor._ come, gentlemen, this business well is ended, and, dimsdell, yours is all the credit of it; for one i thank you. _roger._ we all do thank you, sir. _governor._ come, let us drain a cup of wine; and then go in. _dimsdell._ i beg you to excuse me. _roger._ and me, i pray. i'll stay with dimsdell. _governor._ well, wilson, you shall not escape me. gentlemen, the wine we leave you; keep it company.--and, dimsdell, forget it not, to-morrow thou must preach a grand election sermon. the people do expect a master effort, man. fail not. [_exeunt governor and wilson._ _roger._ he will not fail them, governor; a tongue of flame is his. what ails thee, dimsdell? how now? why man! _dimsdell._ i'm very weak. the pain about my heart-- _roger._ nay, courage, man! 'twill leave thee soon. i'll get a cup of wine to cheer thee up. _dimsdell._ do, i pray. and, doctor, give me something to abate this agony. _roger._ i will. [_exit._ _dimsdell._ try how i may, there's no escape from pain. i robbed the law's strong arm, and thereby put the lash in conscience' hand--and yet i thought hypocrisy a duty to my calling! 'twere better i were known as what i am, than still to hide my sin beneath the garb of outward purity! 'twere better now, by hester's side, to bear opprobrium, and brave what man may do, than still to nurse this misery in secret! _re-enter roger with wine-tray; places it upon a bench and, taking a vial from a pocket medicine-case, pours a few drops into a wine-glass, then fills the glass with wine._ _roger._ a minim more would lull him into sleep. here is the chance--and here the will--to learn his secret malady. what holds me back? conscience? tut, tut! it will not harm him! 'twill do him good to sleep; 'twill do me good to know the why he clutches at his breast. i'll do it. [_pours more from vial._ sir, drink this off. _dimsdell._ i thank thee, kind physician. [_drinks._ _roger._ nay, thank me not. now, take a glass of wine. [_giving him another glass._ _dimsdell._ methinks, the wine is richer than is common. _roger._ thirst always gives an added age to wine. this is right xeres. hast been in spain? _dimsdell._ nay, but the wine hath. i feel its warmth. _roger._ truly, it is a grand inquisitor; 'twill search each petty heresy that taints thy blood, and burn it to a cinder. _dimsdell._ how many leagues it came to serve my need. _roger._ aye, a thousand, and a thousand more! _dimsdell._ i would not go so far for it just now, for through my limbs there creeps a lang'rous ease like that which doth precede deep slumber. _roger._ rest here upon this bench. [_dimsdell sits, half reclining._ give way unto your drowsiness; it is not sleep, but rest and relaxation. there! i'll keep you company. _dimsdell._ do. _roger._ [_pouring wine and drinking._] this wine is liquid gold. i quaff to your good health and ease of mind. this is good wine. it warms my chilly blood with all the dreamy heat of spain. i hear the clack of th' castinet and th' droning twang of stringéd instruments; while there before mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time to the pulsing music of a saraband! and yet there is a flavor of the sea, [_sipping wine._ the long-drawn heaving of the ocean wave, the gentle cradling of a tropic tide; its native golden sun--i fear you sleep? or do the travels of the wine so rock your soul that self is lost in revery? why, man, dream not too much of placid bliss; nor wine, nor man, can reach this clear perfection until they pass the rack of thunder and of hurricane.--'tis on us now! awake! [_shouting in dimsdell's ear._ my friend, awake! dost thou not hear the storm? oh! how it shrieks and whistles through the shrouds! the awful guns of heaven boom in our ears-- nay, that was the mainsail gone by the board, flapping with cannon roar. you do not follow me. o, come, i say! this is no sermon. you cannot be asleep, yet feign you are to cheat me of my story. wake up, my friend. you carry the jest too far. _roger cautiously shakes dimsdell._ so soon! so sound! [_looks around._ i fear you are not easy; thus. that's better. your pardon, sir, your collar's much too tight. now will i steal his hidden mystery, and learn the secret of his lengthened pain; cure him and gain great honor. to think a man would case himself in buttons like an armour! now, shirt---- merciful god! what miracle is this! a stigma! aye! a stigma! the letter "a" in blood suffused! the counterpart of that which hester wears, but palpitating here in life! this is beyond my skill. ah! david! david! thou art the man! thou wouldst have set me in the hot forefront of battle hadst thou but known me as uriah! bah! why, what a brainless dullard have i been, to see this pretty puff-ball of a preacher wax large before mine eyes in righteous husk-- and think him whole within--when but a touch, but one, had aired his rottenness! oh! dotard that i am! blind, deaf and stupid! it takes a miracle to make me see what lay before me open. he did take her part; ever professed himself her friend; and at her trial fell in trance. what more? he is the man! he is the man! now ends our game of hoodman blind; oh, i was warm, so very warm at times, so hot, did almost touch thee; yet i knew thee not for him i sought. thou cunning hypocrite! it must be i am fitted to my state, dull, trusting and incapable; or else--why surely i'm a fool.-- had i been here when hester bore her child, i would have fondly dreamed it was mine own; put on the unearned pride that old men wear when their young wives bear children. a pretty baby, sir! my grandchild?--no; mine own; my very own! nay, wrong me not; i'm not so old--not so damned old after all! a ghe! a ghoo! are not the eyes like mine?-- yea, would have dandled it upon my knee, and coddled each succeeding drop, as though my fires had distilled them. but--now i know--my knowledge must be hid. back shirt! cover blazoned infamy and let the whited front still hide from man the sepulchre of crime that festers here. he will not wake within an hour. i'll go inform the governor he sleeps, and have him order none disturb his pious rest. then i'll return and calmly probe his soul. sleep on! sleep on! [_exit roger._ scene ii.--_another part of the garden. enter alone, diggory._ _diggory._ if there be no true charm but it hath a touch of folly in it, this one must be most potent. now a wise man would not think there's that virtue in a bit of grease, a jingling rhyme, and a hair cut, that one might thereby win a woman's love--but the wise are fools in love. i have here the lard of three bears--one more than the old adage of "bear and forbear"--and with it i am to anoint my head as an enchantment to bring about my marriage to betsey--marry, i'll temper the strength of the charm with a little bergamot, for in truth two of the bears have been dead over-long. whew!--aha! enchantment is the only highway to success in love! now let me see: "lady love, lady love, where'er you be"-- _betsey._ [_singing behind the scenes_] _little bird, little bird, come tell me true; if i love my love, as your love loves you, and if he loves me, as you love your mate; how long, little bird, should i make him wait?_ _diggory._ that's betsey singing now! if the charm works like this, bear fat will be worth its weight in gold. but perhaps my features may have pleased her after all--i'm not bad to look upon; and truly i would save my hair; it's the best part about me. singing again. _betsey._ [_singing behind the scenes_] _in summer-tide, sweet summer-tide, o, what can a maiden do, if, while he walks close by her side, her lover begins to woo?_ _diggory._ now i wonder where she learnt all those profane songs? from some liberal folk in the old country, no doubt; they ill become a puritan. if she were a little slower in her speech, what an angel she would be! as it is, she is a very good woman, tongue and all. _betsey._ [_singing again, behind the scenes._] _for her, of buttercups and violets, a circlet for her hair he makes; and sings, in roundelays and triolets, a song that soon her fancy takes. in summer-tide, sweet summer-tide, o, what can a maiden do, if, while he walks close by her side, her lover begins to woo?_ _diggory._ i'm not a judge of songs, but if she means half she says--and a woman sometimes does--some one is about to be the top feather in fortune's cap; it may be me. i'll try my luck once more. [_going toward r. wing_] why, here she comes. _enter betsey, with a pair of butter paddles._ _betsey._ [_entering._] _adown the moonlit path they walk, through all the world called lover's lane, and hand in hand they sigh and talk of the love that binds them, happy twain!_ what are you gaping like a great gaby for? _diggory._ for fortune to drop the plum into my mouth. _betsey._ where is the plum? _diggory._ there. [_pointing at her._] _betsey._ you silly fellow! yesterday i was a peach; the day before strawberries and cream; the day before that a rose; and last week a dove--marry, i don't coo for you! can i be all these things at once and still be betsey tomkins? _diggory._ o, betsey, thou art all the world to me! _betsey._ o, diggory, thou art a great fool to me! why, man, thy head is as soft as a pat of butter; i could take it between my paddles, like this, and mold it into any shape i chose. _diggory._ so you may, betsey; so you may. and, betsey, for the love of mercy, mold it into the head of thy future husband. _betsey._ 'twould take a pair of shears to do that. _diggory._ wouldst thou marry me, betsey, if i should lose my pretty locks? _betsey._ i would not marry you with them, that's flat. _diggory._ shall i shave my head or only clip it close? _betsey._ cut it off, diggory, cut it off. _diggory._ kiss me but once, betsey, and i'll cut my head off; 'tis of little use to me now, and if thou dost marry me--well, thy head shall rest upon my shoulder, like this, and one head is enough for any pair of shoulders. _betsey._ _in summer-tide, sweet summer-tide, o, what can a maiden do_, etc. [_exeunt._ scene iii.--_the same as in scene i of this act. dimsdell asleep upon a garden bench, half reclining. enter roger prynne, called chillingworth._ _roger._ to kill were easy; aye, but--to stretch his life as on a rack--were that not better still? dead, i'd bury with him my revenge; but while he lives the old account will stand at daily usury. i'll tent his agony, prolong it here, even here where i may feed upon it; not send him hence beyond my reach. aye! i'll fight with death to keep him for mine own. but, now-- o, i must calm myself or miss my aim! for, like a hunter when first he sees the buck, my nerves are all unstrung. this weakling trick of overearnestness betrays the fool in me; and yet we know it, though we profit not, the eager hand doth ever spill the cup that lifted carefully would quench our thirst. i must assume a wise placidity; as he puts on--ah! damnéd hypocrite!-- the air of purity. (_approaches dimsdell._) i'll drink dissimulation at the source; i'll study him.--thus might an angel look when, wearied with the music of the spheres, he laid him down upon a roseate bank to dream of holiness!--he hath not stirred.-- 'twas well i did not speak to bellingham, for we have not been noted. good, so far. all eyes are busy with their own affairs; i'll wake him now and foil discovery. _takes vial from pocket medicine case._ our native drugs are balanced well; one plant sucks in the beams the sleepy moon sends down, another drinks the waking draught of dawn. that made him sleep, but this--ah! a mouldy mummied corse that in the tomb a thousand years had lain, would wake once more, if but three drops of this should touch its lips. i'll give you, sir, but two. _drops liquid into glass and fills with wine._ there, swallow it. _administering to dimsdell._ now, let me see--he must not know how long he slept,--and by the sun it is not long-- i have't; i'll make him think he merely lost himself while i was talking. _dimsdell stirs. roger pours a glass of wine and takes position he occupied when dimsdell fell asleep. speaks as in continuation of former speech._ mellow wine is nature's golden bounty unto man. and it hath well been said: dame nature is a gentle mother if we follow her; but if she drives our steps no fury wields a fiercer lash; yet all her punishments are kindly meant; our puny faculties would nest forever fledgeling in our minds, did not her wise austerity compel their flight. _dimsdell wakes with a start and recovers himself as one who would not seem rude._ or, put the same in other words: that man is noble who doth fear no fate which may afflict humanity; but, like a gallant soldier, meets the charge half way, and takes his wounds a-jesting. now ev'ry one of us, whom nature whips, must take it meekly; for she means our good; and learn to go along with her. _dimsdell._ i fear i dozed and lost the thread of argument. i pray you, pardon me. _roger._ i did not note it. but, be it so, come sun yourself; drive out the fog and vapor that becloud your mind, and let the warmth of nature take their place. nature retrieves our losses, or charges them against us; all things do rest, even the plants do slumber as they grow. _dimsdell._ how greedily the flow'rs drink up the wine our golden sun pours down on them, yet blush to own their drinking! _roger._ this is the new world, man; and nature here is lusty; drink in thy dole of heat and light; for even i, drenched in the golden rain, feel pulsings of lost paradise that make my blood leap with th' quick-step bound of youth. this is the very show'r of gold in which jove comes to fill the longing world with life. and as he kisses her with ling'ring lips, all nature lies wide open to th' warm embrace and quickens in his arms.--all, all, but thou! for thou art single as the northern pole; as cold, as distant, and unreachable to what hath passion's warmth; and, though thy life be at its summer solstice--bright with day--thy heart still turns to barren ice, more bleak than many a wintry age. _dimsdell._ how can i change my disposition, doctor? _roger._ widen the thin ecliptic of thy life; revolve upon another axis, man; let love, the sun of life, beam meltingly upon thy heart and thaw it into happiness. marry, man, marry. _dimsdell._ i cannot marry: i have my work to do. _roger._ if work precedent were to love, the world would be unpeopled. this is the month of june, and now the locust and the linden tree do wed the zephyrs as they blow, and weight the air with oversweetness.--what song is that? [_voice of betsey singing behind scenes._] _for her, of buttercups and violets, a circlet for her hair he makes; and sings, in roundelays and triolets, a song that soon her fancy takes. in summer-tide, sweet summer-tide, o, what can a maiden do, if, while he walks close by her side, her lover begins to woo?_ _roger._ that maid is innocent and happy too. you may have noticed that--when the heart is pure--love overflows the lips in song as sweet and limpid as a mountain spring; but--when it's bitter with base treachery-- it dams itself against all utterance, and either mines the soul, or, breaking forth, sweeps downward to destruction. oh! 'tis true, love is the lyric happiness of youth; and they, who sing its perfect melody, do from the honest parish register still take their tune. and so must you. for you are now in the very period of youth when myriads of unborn beings knock loud and long upon the willing portals of the heart for entrance into life. deny it not; i say but truth--i once was young myself. behold the means! _enter martha wilson, carrying a bunch of roses._ _dimsdell._ oh! oh! [_clasps his breast._] _roger._ whither so fast, martha, that thou canst not speak to us? _martha._ oh! i beg your pardon, doctor. good morning, sir. i seek my father; is he with the governor? _roger._ knowledge is costly, martha; yet thou art rich enough to buy more than information. for one of those sweet roses, i'll tell you he is well and with the governor. _martha._ you beg it prettily. [_giving roger a rose._ _roger._ pure and fragrant as the giver--marry, the blush becomes it not so well; it does not come and go. martha, thy father and the governor are in the library. is that not worth another rose? _martha._ nay, only a very little one; for when he talks of books he's always loath to come with me. _roger._ nay, slander him not. but, martha, books or no books, for two more roses i will bring him here; and, truly, fathers were cheap at three roses apiece. what say you? _martha._ nay, i'll go myself; but do not think i grudge the roses; here they are. you have not begged of me [_to dimsdell_]. may i beg you to accept this? gentlemen, farewell. [_exit martha._ _roger._ roses, and you asked her not! in love! in love! up to the eyes in love! she'll drown in love unless you marry her! _dimsdell._ oh! that i were worthy of her! _roger._ dost love her, dimsdell? ah! she's worthy love. she's fair and young; of gentle birth and rich; and warm and pure and spirit-like as flame that floats above new brandy. _dimsdell._ out upon thee, satyr! thou dishonorest her. _roger._ not a whit. is't dishonor to her purity to urge thy smoky flame to brightness worthy of her? 'tis what she wishes most; witness her confusion and her telltale blushes. do me justice, man; my thoughts are pure and dwell on lawful marriage only. thou, thou alone, couldst see impurity in that. i spoke of thee, man, of thee; and who beside thyself would think a mottled thought could touch a maiden linked to thee in words or fact? _dimsdell._ oh! oh! [_clutching at his breast._ _roger._ had i young daughters by the score, each fair as hebe, as voluptuous as venus, all thinly clad as in the golden age, i could not wish a chaster keeper of them. nay, had i wives in droves like solomon, i'd make thee kislah aga of my harem, chief eunuch and sole security--what! call me satyr when i urge in bounds the boundless beauties of pure maidenhood, and bid thee wed them! thus best advices are construed amiss, and what we kindly mean turned into scorn and filthiness! _dimsdell._ forgive me, doctor; i'm ill at ease. this pain is like a stick thrust in a spring; it muddies all my thoughts. oh! oh! [_pressing his hands to his breast._ _roger._ come, dimsdell, listen to a bit of reason. thy body is as sound as a red apple in november. the pain's imaginary. marry, man, marry; thy wife will prove a counter-irritant and drive the pain away. _dimsdell._ no more of that, i pray you. _roger._ not enough of it, not enough of it! _dimsdell._ no more, no more! i must not marry. _roger._ think once again, man; if that thy mind can pardon the suggestion--and, mark, i urge it with all diffidence--there is a way, wherein the low opinion thou doth hold of thine own virtues--not held by any else-- may wed with beauty all unspeakable, raise up a noble lady, and show thy christian spirit to the world. _dimsdell._ and what is that? _roger._ wed hester prynne. _dimsdell._ wed hester prynne? _roger._ aye! 'twas that i said. she is a paragon--nay, beauty's self. all other women are but kitchen-maids beside her loveliness. _dimsdell._ wed hester prynne! _roger._ i hear her husband left her well to do; and as for that small blot that sullies her 'twill fade when covered by thy name. _dimsdell._ hester prynne! _roger._ what act more merciful, more christianlike? redeem the reputation of her child, and to the jeers of fools stop up thine ears; enwrap thee in her gentle arms, lay down thine aching head upon her tender breast, and dream thyself in paradise. _dimsdell._ thou fiend of hell! i know thee now; thou cam'st but once in thine own form, and ever since hast been too near me in a worser one. back to the pit, i say! no more of tempting! _roger._ art mad? i'm man as thou dost seem to be; i'm not a fiend. _dimsdell._ what dost thou know? [_shaking roger by the shoulders._ _roger._ only this--thou art as cowardly as thou art lecherous. what! betray a woman! desert her in her misery! refuse to marry her! and all the while, cloaked in thy ministry, dispense the sacraments of god to children-- how canst thou do it? _dimsdell._ if thou be not satan, why raise this cloud? why vanish from my sight? yet i did touch him even now-- i'll kill him--kill, kill, kill--now, now, now-- _roger._ in trance again! help! help! help! _dimsdell becomes rigid; with arm uplifted as if to strike a death blow. his speech thickens, and he stands motionless. roger supports him._ act iv. scene i.--_a room. dimsdell upon a couch in a cataleptic trance. roger prynne watching him. two chairs; other furniture heavy and immovable._ _roger._ [_feeling dimsdell's pulse_] there's been no change. a very long trance. at times he mumbles; at other times, as now, he lies like death. if ev'ry murderer were stricken with the image of the thing which he would deal, 'twould be a blessing! yet when consciousness returns, with it will come the murderous disposition; for in these cases the mind, although it wanders while the trance is on, always comes back upon its path where first it left it. therefore, 'twere wise in me to be on guard. well, so i am; but what-- what fear should drive me hence, or make me leave the study of his case? he hath no arms but such as both of us were born with; and despite my age i am his equal that way. ah! a chair swung by a furious man might make an omelet of my brain; therefore, one chair will do--and that for me. [_removes chair._ _enter governor bellingham in robes of office._ _governor._ good morning, doctor. _roger._ good morning, governor. i wish you, sir, as happy and as prosperous a term in office, as that just closing. _governor._ i thank you, sir. has dimsdell recovered from his trance? _roger._ not yet. there he lies. _governor._ wonderful! can you account for his condition, doctor? _roger._ there's no accounting for it, governor. this is the second trance i've seen him in; how many more he's had, god only knows. _governor._ 'tis most unfortunate that we must lack his eloquence to-day. the people, who always love high-sounding words more than wise thoughts, prefer the music of his voice to good old wilson's drone. why isn't he in bed? _roger._ oh! there are many reasons; 'twould take too long to tell you now; but at another time i'll ask your patience for a tale more strange than ever made your flesh to creep. _governor._ is there mystery in the case? _roger._ mystery! aye, and miracle, too! you know him, governor--a man whose nerves are gossamers, too fine to sift the music of the blasts that blow about our burly world, and only fit for harps whereon zephyrus in elysium might breathe.--and yet this man-- oh! you'd not believe it if i told you. _enter_ servant. _servant._ your worship is asked for at the door. _governor._ say i am coming. we'll speak again of this. [_exit servant._ i must be gone. we servants of the state are slaves to show, and serve the people best when most we trick them. the pageant of the day goes much against my better judgment, but the crowd will have it so, and so farewell. _roger._ one moment, if you please. if he revives he'll pick the thread of life up where he dropt it; he may desire to preach, as he hath promised you, and, if he doth, 'twere better not to thwart him. _governor._ very well. i'll speak to wilson. _roger._ i'm sorry i cannot go with you. farewell. _exit governor. dimsdell moves. roger goes to his side and examines him._ the pulse hath quickened. he moves his lips. _dimsdell mumbles indistinctly._ i cannot catch it.-- _dimsdell._ think of it no more, my love.-- our troubles now are ended, hester; the gentle current of our mingled lives, long parted by the barren, rocky isle of hard necessity, flows reunited on. _roger._ indeed! _dimsdell._ how sweet it is, in the afternoon of life, to walk thus, hand in hand, hester. and as the golden sun of love falls gently down into the purple glory of the west, we'll follow it. _roger._ a lengthy jump--from sinning youth plump into the middle of an honored age! yet thus the mind, in trance or dream, achieves without an effort what it wills. again? _dimsdell._ sir, take my daughter and my blessing, too; cherish her as the apple of thine eye; still shield her from the buffets of the world; let thy tenderness breathe gentle love like an italian air sung at twilight, when the melody without tunes that within until the soul arising on the wings of music soars into heaven. _roger._ is there nothing in heredity? or will the orange-blossom take its fragrance from the heaven above; its origin forgot? _dimsdell._ hester, although the snow upon thy head be white as that on yonder distant mount, thine eyes are blue and deep as leman's lake that lies before us. _roger._ thus in our dreams we picture what we wish; not held to time or place; and while the body, like an anchor, sinks in mud, the wingéd craft swings with the tide of thought. he's in geneva now; hester with him; his daughter honorably married; and all the pains of yesterday forgot. i'll write it down. [_roger makes notes._ _dimsdell._ good night, dear wife, good night. the stars of heaven melt into angel forms which stoop to lift me to the gates of bliss. farewell, farewell! nay, weep not, hester; our sins are now forgiven. yea, though i walk through the valley of th' shadow of death, i will fear no evil.--say it with me, hester. _roger._ will he die thus? [_examines dimsdell._ the pulse is weak--a clammy sweat-- 'tis but the culmination of the trance. 'tis but a dream. a dream! yet one must die; and to our human thought that death were best that came preceded by a flag of truce to parley peace. to pass away in dreams-- without the vain regret for work undone; without a load of sin to weight the soul; with all the argentry of honored age to frost our past; with all the fiercer heats of life burnt out into the cold, gray ash-- that were peace! then might a man yield up the willing ghost as calmly as a child that falls asleep upon its mother's breast to wake in paradise. _dimsdell starts up._ _dimsdell._ i see thee now--and now i'll kill, kill, kill-- if thou be satan i cannot harm thee-- but if a man-- _dimsdell attempts to reach roger, who keeps the one chair of the room in front of him and thus wards off dimsdell._ _roger._ madman, listen! thou canst not harm me, yet i am not satan. my name is roger prynne. i am the husband of the woman you have wronged. _dimsdell._ thou roger prynne? _roger._ aye, roger prynne and thine accuser. _dimsdell looks about the room as though dazed._ _dimsdell._ why, how is this?--but now, the governor's garden--and now, my room!--but now, just now, old doctor chillingworth--and now, mine enemy, roger prynne! thou art the devil himself!--thou shalt not trick me thus. _band music in distance._ _roger._ trick thee? why, madman, thou hast been in trance since yester noon. trick thee! i like the word! 'tis now the time of day when thou shouldst preach the great election sermon, the one event that makes or mars you preachers. dost hear the music? a day hath passed since thou wast in the garden. they are marching even now to the market place. _dimsdell._ what shall i do? [_aloud, but to himself._ _roger._ do? stay here and settle our account; or else go on and publish thyself as what thou art--a hypocrite. _dimsdell._ i see it now!--ah! satan! satan!--thou wouldst affright my soul and make me lose my well earned honors. why, roger prynne is dead--dead. 'twas told on good report two years ago. and now--oh! try it if thou wilt--i'll have thee burnt, burnt--burnt at the stake, if thou accusest me! who would believe thee? stand aside, i say! let me pass! _roger._ how came the stigma on thy breast? _dimsdell._ thou knowest!--make way, i tell thee!--thou didst place it there!--make way! _they struggle. roger interposes the chair between himself and dimsdell. finally, dimsdell wrenches the chair from roger, flings it aside, and, grappling him, chokes roger to death._ _dimsdell._ [_panting_] a man! a man! a man!--dead! dead! dead!--nay--like a man!--like a dead man!--a trick!--a devilish trick!--did he not come in angel form--and then as doctor chillingworth--and then as roger prynne--and now,--and now, as a dead body? _spurning roger with his foot._ o, devil, i'll avoid thee yet!--i'll confess my crime and thus unslip the noose about my soul! _hurriedly prepares to depart._ he said we'd meet again! we have, and 'tis the last time! [_exit._ scene ii.--_plain curtain, down. music. music ceases; subdued sounds as of a multitude back of curtain. then the voice of dimsdell rises as quiet returns._ _dimsdell._ and now, good friends, electors and elected, although my speech hath run a lengthened course, and what i purposed hath been said in full, there's more comes to me now. what is our purpose and our destiny? _curtain rises rapidly, disclosing stage set as in act i, scene iii. dimsdell upon a rostrum on church steps. militia standing at rest. citizens and officials in gala attire._ we call us english, anglo-saxon; and from the old we come to build the new, the equal england of our expectation. here in the wilderness, the first small germs of man's long-promised freedom find their soil; here hidden will they rot a little while; anon, the sprouts will break our troubled land, thrust forth the first red blades, and thence grow on, forever and forever! i see this vast expanse of continent, that dwarfs the noble states of cultured europe, spread out before me like a map, from pole to pole, and from the rising to the setting sun. i see it teem with myriads; i see its densely peopled towns and villages; i see its ports, greater than any known, send forth their riches to the hungry world. i see, o blessed, wondrous sight! the strength of anglo-saxondom--our mighty england and our great america, as one-- the lion and the eagle side by side,-- leading the vanguard of humanity! and more i see; i see the rise of man merely as man! let the day come, o lord, when man, without addition to that noble title--man-- can stand erect before his fellow-man, outface oppression with his flashing eye, and stamp and grind proud tyranny to dust. put in our hearts, o, gracious god, the yeast of freedom; let it work our natures free, although it break to recombine again the atoms of each state. send down thy pulsing tongues of burning truth; fire our souls with love of human kind; let hate consume itself; let war thresh out the brutal part of man, and fit us for the last long period of peace. _a pause, then cries severally._ _first citizen._ is he an angel or a man? sure gabriel himself. _second citizen._ look! he faints. _third citizen._ poor minister! _dimsdell._ [_rallying himself_] i will speak on. _governor._ my pious friend, wear not thy body out to please our willing ears. thou hast exceeded thy feeble strength already. cease, man; demosthenes himself could not have stood the strain which thou hast undergone. prithee,-- _dimsdell._ i thank you; reason not my wastefulness, for, if you make me answer you, you cause more waste. my taper's burnt already. it flickers even now, and, ere i leave this place, my light, my life will go. question me not, for, now i have fulfilled my public function, there hurries on a duty of a private kind i must perform at once or not at all; too long delayed already. my friends, my life is flowing fast away, i, that should be at full or on the turn, am near my lowest ebb. this gnawing at my heart hath eaten through, and now my soul releasing body bondage will take its flight--but where? _first citizen._ it goes to heaven when it flies; but go not now. _dimsdell._ behold yon woman with the scarlet letter. _citizens._ oh, shame upon her! fie! _dimsdell._ nay, shame on me; her sufferings have made her pure, but mine, beneath this lying robe, have eaten up my heart. hypocrisy lie there [_taking off gown_]. now, while i do descend these steps i leave my former life behind. _descends and goes toward pillory._ come, hester, come! come take my hand, although it be unworthy. _second citizen._ is the man mad, my masters? _dimsdell._ not mad, friend, not mad; but newly sane. come, my victim, come; assist me up the pillory, there let us stand together-- the woman of the scarlet letter, and he who did this wrong. _first citizen._ that holy man is mad. he an adulterer! i'll believe it when th' devil grows blind. _dimsdell._ support me, hester. _dimsdell and hester ascend pillory together._ ho! all ye people of the commonwealth, behold the man for whom you oft have sought, the man who should have borne the scarlet letter; for i am he. if that the last words of one sinful man may warn a multitude from sin, who knows but that his errors tend toward good at last. let me not think my suffering in vain, or that my crime confessed will lead on others unto their downfall. behold me as i am--o, what a pang [_he clutches his breast from now on._ was that--a hypocritical adulterer. oh!--aye, a base, a low adulterer! o, god, prolong my breath for this confession!-- i wronged this woman who did fondly love me, i did neglect her in my cowardice, i shunned the public scorn.-- o, but a little while!--i stood not with her; i was a coward; and did deny my child. delay! delay! now i avow my crime, i do confess it, [_kneels_] and here i beg you friends, as i have begged my god, forgive me. oh, i must be brief-- if any think that while i walked these streets in seeming honor i lacked my punishment, look here.-- [_tearing shirt open and disclosing stigma._ o--h! this cancer did begin to gnaw my breast when hester first put on the scarlet letter and never since hath once abated. _voices._ o, wonderful! wonderful! he faints! help! help! _hester._ arthur! arthur! one word for me! only one! _dimsdell._ i must say more. [_falls._ _hester._ forgive him, father! o, god, have mercy now; give him but breath to speak to me! arthur! arthur! _dimsdell._ hester, my hester, forgive-- [_dies._ _hester._ farewell, farewell--dead, dead! nay, you shall not take him from me! my breast shall be his pillow; and, that he may rest easy, i here cast off your scarlet letter. _governor._ captain, command your men to bear the body. _a solemn march._ _the end._ transcriber's note: archaic language and usage have been faithfully preserved for this etext. the only change was from "dramatic transscript" to "dramatic transcript." none none this etext was prepared from the macmillan edition by les bowler. two on a tower by thomas hardy. 'ah, my heart! her eyes and she have taught thee new astrology. howe'er love's native hours were set, whatever starry synod met, 'tis in the mercy of her eye, if poor love shall live or die.' crashaw: _love's horoscope_. with a map of wessex. macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london copyright _first published by macmillan and co._, _crown_ _vo,_ _reprinted_ , , , _pocket edition_ . _reprinted_ , , , , , , _wessex edition_ (_ vo_) _reprinted_ printed in great britain preface. this slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men. but, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck with these high aims of the author than with their own opinion, first, that the novel was an 'improper' one in its morals, and, secondly, that it was intended to be a satire on the established church of this country. i was made to suffer in consequence from several eminent pens. that, however, was thirteen years ago, and, in respect of the first opinion, i venture to think that those who care to read the story now will be quite astonished at the scrupulous propriety observed therein on the relations of the sexes; for though there may be frivolous, and even grotesque touches on occasion, there is hardly a single caress in the book outside legal matrimony, or what was intended so to be. as for the second opinion, it is sufficient to draw attention, as i did at the time, to the fact that the bishop is every inch a gentleman, and that the parish priest who figures in the narrative is one of its most estimable characters. however, the pages must speak for themselves. some few readers, i trust--to take a serious view--will be reminded by this imperfect story, in a manner not unprofitable to the growth of the social sympathies, of the pathos, misery, long-suffering, and divine tenderness which in real life frequently accompany the passion of such a woman as viviette for a lover several years her junior. the scene of the action was suggested by two real spots in the part of the country specified, each of which has a column standing upon it. certain surrounding peculiarities have been imported into the narrative from both sites. t. h. _july_ . two on a tower. i on an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in wessex. the spot was where the old melchester road, which the carriage had hitherto followed, was joined by a drive that led round into a park at no great distance off. the footman alighted, and went to the occupant of the carriage, a lady about eight- or nine-and-twenty. she was looking through the opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch of country beyond. in pursuance of some remark from her the servant looked in the same direction. the central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was a circular isolated hill, of no great elevation, which placed itself in strong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage of surrounding arable by being covered with fir-trees. the trees were all of one size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon. this pine-clad protuberance was yet further marked out from the general landscape by having on its summit a tower in the form of a classical column, which, though partly immersed in the plantation, rose above the tree-tops to a considerable height. upon this object the eyes of lady and servant were bent. 'then there is no road leading near it?' she asked. 'nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.' 'then drive home,' she said after a moment. and the carriage rolled on its way. a few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that spot again. her eyes, as before, turned to the distant tower. 'nobbs,' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home through that field, so as to get near the outskirts of the plantation where the column is?' the coachman regarded the field. 'well, my lady,' he observed, 'in dry weather we might drive in there by inching and pinching, and so get across by five-and-twenty acres, all being well. but the ground is so heavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly be safe to try it now.' 'perhaps not,' she assented indifferently. 'remember it, will you, at a drier time?' and again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, and the column that formed its apex, till they were out of sight. a long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again. it was february; the soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and scene being in other respects much as they had been before. the familiar shape of the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for a close inspection had arrived. giving her directions she saw the gate opened, and after a little manoeuvring the carriage swayed slowly into the uneven field. although the pillar stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh impracticable ground. the drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on the nearest edge of the field. she then ascended beneath the trees on foot. the column now showed itself as a much more important erection than it had appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of welland house, her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed it hundreds of times without ever feeling a sufficient interest in its details to investigate them. the column had been erected in the last century, as a substantial memorial of her husband's great-grandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the american war, and the reason of her lack of interest was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon. it was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do--the chronic desire of her curiously lonely life--that had brought her here now. she was in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse an almost killing _ennui_. she would have welcomed even a misfortune. she had heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could be seen. whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking into four counties she resolved to enjoy to-day. the fir-shrouded hill-top was (according to some antiquaries) an old roman camp,--if it were not (as others insisted) an old british castle, or (as the rest swore) an old saxon field of witenagemote,--with remains of an outer and an inner vallum, a winding path leading up between their overlapping ends by an easy ascent. the spikelets from the trees formed a soft carpet over the route, and occasionally a brake of brambles barred the interspaces of the trunks. soon she stood immediately at the foot of the column. it had been built in the tuscan order of classic architecture, and was really a tower, being hollow with steps inside. the gloom and solitude which prevailed round the base were remarkable. the sob of the environing trees was here expressively manifest; and moved by the light breeze their thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like inverted pendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, or occasionally clicked in catching each other. below the level of their summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. pads of moss grew in the joints of the stone-work, and here and there shade-loving insects had engraved on the mortar patterns of no human style or meaning; but curious and suggestive. above the trees the case was different: the pillar rose into the sky a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, clean, and flushed with the sunlight. the spot was seldom visited by a pedestrian, except perhaps in the shooting season. the rarity of human intrusion was evidenced by the mazes of rabbit-runs, the feathers of shy birds, the exuviæ of reptiles; as also by the well-worn paths of squirrels down the sides of trunks, and thence horizontally away. the fact of the plantation being an island in the midst of an arable plain sufficiently accounted for this lack of visitors. few unaccustomed to such places can be aware of the insulating effect of ploughed ground, when no necessity compels people to traverse it. this rotund hill of trees and brambles, standing in the centre of a ploughed field of some ninety or a hundred acres, was probably visited less frequently than a rock would have been visited in a lake of equal extent. she walked round the column to the other side, where she found the door through which the interior was reached. the paint, if it had ever had any, was all washed from the wood, and down the decaying surface of the boards liquid rust from the nails and hinges had run in red stains. over the door was a stone tablet, bearing, apparently, letters or words; but the inscription, whatever it was, had been smoothed over with a plaster of lichen. here stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the most conspicuous and ineffaceable reminder of a man that could be thought of; and yet the whole aspect of the memorial betokened forgetfulness. probably not a dozen people within the district knew the name of the person commemorated, while perhaps not a soul remembered whether the column were hollow or solid, whether with or without a tablet explaining its date and purpose. she herself had lived within a mile of it for the last five years, and had never come near it till now. she hesitated to ascend alone, but finding that the door was not fastened she pushed it open with her foot, and entered. a scrap of writing-paper lay within, and arrested her attention by its freshness. some human being, then, knew the spot, despite her surmises. but as the paper had nothing on it no clue was afforded; yet feeling herself the proprietor of the column and of all around it her self-assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. the staircase was lighted by slits in the wall, and there was no difficulty in reaching the top, the steps being quite unworn. the trap-door leading on to the roof was open, and on looking through it an interesting spectacle met her eye. a youth was sitting on a stool in the centre of the lead flat which formed the summit of the column, his eye being applied to the end of a large telescope that stood before him on a tripod. this sort of presence was unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of the opening. the only effect produced upon him by her footfall was an impatient wave of the hand, which he did without removing his eye from the instrument, as if to forbid her to interrupt him. pausing where she stood the lady examined the aspect of the individual who thus made himself so completely at home on a building which she deemed her unquestioned property. he was a youth who might properly have been characterized by a word the judicious chronicler would not readily use in such a connexion, preferring to reserve it for raising images of the opposite sex. whether because no deep felicity is likely to arise from the condition, or from any other reason, to say in these days that a youth is beautiful is not to award him that amount of credit which the expression would have carried with it if he had lived in the times of the classical dictionary. so much, indeed, is the reverse the case that the assertion creates an awkwardness in saying anything more about him. the beautiful youth usually verges so perilously on the incipient coxcomb, who is about to become the lothario or juan among the neighbouring maidens, that, for the due understanding of our present young man, his sublime innocence of any thought concerning his own material aspect, or that of others, is most fervently asserted, and must be as fervently believed. such as he was, there the lad sat. the sun shone full in his face, and on his head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view below it a curly margin of very light shining hair, which accorded well with the flush upon his cheek. he had such a complexion as that with which raffaelle enriches the countenance of the youthful son of zacharias,--a complexion which, though clear, is far enough removed from virgin delicacy, and suggests plenty of sun and wind as its accompaniment. his features were sufficiently straight in the contours to correct the beholder's first impression that the head was the head of a girl. beside him stood a little oak table, and in front was the telescope. his visitor had ample time to make these observations; and she may have done so all the more keenly through being herself of a totally opposite type. her hair was black as midnight, her eyes had no less deep a shade, and her complexion showed the richness demanded as a support to these decided features. as she continued to look at the pretty fellow before her, apparently so far abstracted into some speculative world as scarcely to know a real one, a warmer wave of her warm temperament glowed visibly through her, and a qualified observer might from this have hazarded a guess that there was romance blood in her veins. but even the interest attaching to the youth could not arrest her attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of moving his eye from the instrument she broke the silence with-- 'what do you see?--something happening somewhere?' 'yes, quite a catastrophe!' he automatically murmured, without moving round. 'what?' 'a cyclone in the sun.' the lady paused, as if to consider the weight of that event in the scale of terrene life. 'will it make any difference to us here?' she asked. the young man by this time seemed to be awakened to the consciousness that somebody unusual was talking to him; he turned, and started. 'i beg your pardon,' he said. 'i thought it was my relative come to look after me! she often comes about this time.' he continued to look at her and forget the sun, just such a reciprocity of influence as might have been expected between a dark lady and a flaxen- haired youth making itself apparent in the faces of each. 'don't let me interrupt your observations,' said she. 'ah, no,' said he, again applying his eye; whereupon his face lost the animation which her presence had lent it, and became immutable as that of a bust, though superadding to the serenity of repose the sensitiveness of life. the expression that settled on him was one of awe. not unaptly might it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. among the various intensities of that worship which have prevailed since the first intelligent being saw the luminary decline westward, as the young man now beheld it doing, his was not the weakest. he was engaged in what may be called a very chastened or schooled form of that first and most natural of adorations. 'but would you like to see it?' he recommenced. 'it is an event that is witnessed only about once in two or three years, though it may occur often enough.' she assented, and looked through the shaded eyepiece, and saw a whirling mass, in the centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare to its core. it was a peep into a maelstrom of fire, taking place where nobody had ever been or ever would be. 'it is the strangest thing i ever beheld,' she said. then he looked again; till wondering who her companion could be she asked, 'are you often here?' 'every night when it is not cloudy, and often in the day.' 'ah, night, of course. the heavens must be beautiful from this point.' 'they are rather more than that.' 'indeed! have you entirely taken possession of this column?' 'entirely.' 'but it is my column,' she said, with smiling asperity. 'then are you lady constantine, wife of the absent sir blount constantine?' 'i am lady constantine.' 'ah, then i agree that it is your ladyship's. but will you allow me to rent it of you for a time, lady constantine?' 'you have taken it, whether i allow it or not. however, in the interests of science it is advisable that you continue your tenancy. nobody knows you are here, i suppose?' 'hardly anybody.' he then took her down a few steps into the interior, and showed her some ingenious contrivances for stowing articles away. 'nobody ever comes near the column,--or, as it's called here, rings-hill speer,' he continued; 'and when i first came up it nobody had been here for thirty or forty years. the staircase was choked with daws' nests and feathers, but i cleared them out.' 'i understood the column was always kept locked?' 'yes, it has been so. when it was built, in , the key was given to my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors should happen to want it. he lived just down there where i live now.' he denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the ploughed land which environed them. 'he kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather, my mother, and myself, the key descended with it. after the first thirty or forty years, nobody ever asked for it. one day i saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, i took it and came up. i stayed here till it was dark, and the stars came out, and that night i resolved to be an astronomer. i came back here from school several months ago, and i mean to be an astronomer still.' he lowered his voice, and added: 'i aim at nothing less than the dignity and office of astronomer royal, if i live. perhaps i shall not live.' 'i don't see why you should suppose that,' said she. 'how long are you going to make this your observatory?' 'about a year longer--till i have obtained a practical familiarity with the heavens. ah, if i only had a good equatorial!' 'what is that?' 'a proper instrument for my pursuit. but time is short, and science is infinite,--how infinite only those who study astronomy fully realize,--and perhaps i shall be worn out before i make my mark.' she seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. perhaps it was owing to the nature of his studies. 'you are often on this tower alone at night?' she said. 'yes; at this time of the year particularly, and while there is no moon. i observe from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a view to my great work on variable stars. but with such a telescope as this--well, i must put up with it!' 'can you see saturn's ring and jupiter's moons?' he said drily that he could manage to do that, not without some contempt for the state of her knowledge. 'i have never seen any planet or star through a telescope.' 'if you will come the first clear night, lady constantine, i will show you any number. i mean, at your express wish; not otherwise.' 'i should like to come, and possibly may at some time. these stars that vary so much--sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars, sometimes in the east, and sometimes in the west--have always interested me.' 'ah--now there is a reason for your not coming. your ignorance of the realities of astronomy is so satisfactory that i will not disturb it except at your serious request.' 'but i wish to be enlightened.' 'let me caution you against it.' 'is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?' 'yes, indeed.' she laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her curiosity as his statement, and turned to descend. he helped her down the stairs and through the briers. he would have gone further and crossed the open corn-land with her, but she preferred to go alone. he then retraced his way to the top of the column, but, instead of looking longer at the sun, watched her diminishing towards the distant fence, behind which waited the carriage. when in the midst of the field, a dark spot on an area of brown, there crossed her path a moving figure, whom it was as difficult to distinguish from the earth he trod as the caterpillar from its leaf, by reason of the excellent match between his clothes and the clods. he was one of a dying-out generation who retained the principle, nearly unlearnt now, that a man's habiliments should be in harmony with his environment. lady constantine and this figure halted beside each other for some minutes; then they went on their several ways. the brown person was a labouring man known to the world of welland as haymoss (the encrusted form of the word amos, to adopt the phrase of philologists). the reason of the halt had been some inquiries addressed to him by lady constantine. 'who is that--amos fry, i think?' she had asked. 'yes my lady,' said haymoss; 'a homely barley driller, born under the eaves of your ladyship's outbuildings, in a manner of speaking,--though your ladyship was neither born nor 'tempted at that time.' 'who lives in the old house behind the plantation?' 'old gammer martin, my lady, and her grandson.' 'he has neither father nor mother, then?' 'not a single one, my lady.' 'where was he educated?' 'at warborne,--a place where they draw up young gam'sters' brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way. they hit so much larning into en that 'a could talk like the day of pentecost; which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the plainest ciphering woman in the world. warborne grammar school--that's where 'twas 'a went to. his father, the reverent pa'son st. cleeve, made a terrible bruckle hit in 's marrying, in the sight of the high. he were the curate here, my lady, for a length o' time.' 'oh, curate,' said lady constantine. 'it was before i knew the village.' 'ay, long and merry ago! and he married farmer martin's daughter--giles martin, a limberish man, who used to go rather bad upon his lags, if you can mind. i knowed the man well enough; who should know en better! the maid was a poor windling thing, and, though a playward piece o' flesh when he married her, 'a socked and sighed, and went out like a snoff! yes, my lady. well, when pa'son st. cleeve married this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o' such d--- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-west thunderstorm; it being said--hee-hee!--that master god was in tantrums wi'en for leaving his service,--hee-hee! i give the story as i heard it, my lady, but be dazed if i believe in such trumpery about folks in the sky, nor anything else that's said on 'em, good or bad. well, swithin, the boy, was sent to the grammar school, as i say for; but what with having two stations of life in his blood he's good for nothing, my lady. he mopes about--sometimes here, and sometimes there; nobody troubles about en.' lady constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward. to her, as a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's incident was that this lad, of striking beauty, scientific attainments, and cultivated bearing, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a local agricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. a more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable of being ruined by flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even gross prosperity, should be at present living on in a primitive eden of unconsciousness, with aims towards whose accomplishment a caliban shape would have been as effective as his own. ii swithin st. cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter anxieties, piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun. the landscape was gently concave; with the exception of tower and hill there were no points on which late rays might linger; and hence the dish- shaped ninety acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue of shade quite suddenly. the one or two stars that appeared were quickly clouded over, and it was soon obvious that there would be no sweeping the heavens that night. after tying a piece of tarpaulin, which had once seen service on his maternal grandfather's farm, over all the apparatus around him, he went down the stairs in the dark, and locked the door. with the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the side of the slope opposite to that trodden by lady constantine, and crossed the field in a line mathematically straight, and in a manner that left no traces, by keeping in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. in a few minutes he reached a little dell, which occurred quite unexpectedly on the other side of the field-fence, and descended to a venerable thatched house, whose enormous roof, broken up by dormers as big as haycocks, could be seen even in the twilight. over the white walls, built of chalk in the lump, outlines of creepers formed dark patterns, as if drawn in charcoal. inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood fire. before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently kept warm. an eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal. this woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted. she was gazing into the flames, with her hands upon her knees, quietly re- enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic, tragical, and humorous, which had constituted the parish history for the last sixty years. on swithin's entry she looked up at him in a sideway direction. 'you should not have waited for me, granny,' he said. ''tis of no account, my child. i've had a nap while sitting here. yes, i've had a nap, and went straight up into my old country again, as usual. the place was as natural as when i left it,--e'en just threescore years ago! all the folks and my old aunt were there, as when i was a child,--yet i suppose if i were really to set out and go there, hardly a soul would be left alive to say to me, dog how art! but tell hannah to stir her stumps and serve supper--though i'd fain do it myself, the poor old soul is getting so unhandy!' hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger than granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious. when the meal was nearly over mrs. martin produced the contents of the mysterious vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be brought in from the back kitchen, because hannah was hardly to be trusted with such things, she was becoming so childish. 'what is it, then?' said swithin. 'oh, one of your special puddings.' at sight of it, however, he added reproachfully, 'now, granny!' instead of being round, it was in shape an irregular boulder that had been exposed to the weather for centuries--a little scrap pared off here, and a little piece broken away there; the general aim being, nevertheless, to avoid destroying the symmetry of the pudding while taking as much as possible of its substance. 'the fact is,' added swithin, 'the pudding is half gone!' 'i've only sliced off the merest paring once or twice, to taste if it was well done!' pleaded granny martin, with wounded feelings. 'i said to hannah when she took it up, "put it here to keep it warm, as there's a better fire than in the back kitchen."' 'well, i am not going to eat any of it!' said swithin decisively, as he rose from the table, pushed away his chair, and went up-stairs; the 'other station of life that was in his blood,' and which had been brought out by the grammar school, probably stimulating him. 'ah, the world is an ungrateful place! 'twas a pity i didn't take my poor name off this earthly calendar and creep under ground sixty long years ago, instead of leaving my own county to come here!' mourned old mrs. martin. 'but i told his mother how 'twould be--marrying so many notches above her. the child was sure to chaw high, like his father!' when swithin had been up-stairs a minute or two however, he altered his mind, and coming down again ate all the pudding, with the aspect of a person undertaking a deed of great magnanimity. the relish with which he did so restored the unison that knew no more serious interruptions than such as this. 'mr. torkingham has been here this afternoon,' said his grandmother; 'and he wants me to let him meet some of the choir here to-night for practice. they who live at this end of the parish won't go to his house to try over the tunes, because 'tis so far, they say, and so 'tis, poor men. so he's going to see what coming to them will do. he asks if you would like to join.' 'i would if i had not so much to do.' 'but it is cloudy to-night.' 'yes; but i have calculations without end, granny. now, don't you tell him i'm in the house, will you? and then he'll not ask for me.' 'but if he should, must i then tell a lie, lord forgive me?' 'no, you can say i'm up-stairs; he must think what he likes. not a word about the astronomy to any of them, whatever you do. i should be called a visionary, and all sorts.' 'so thou beest, child. why can't ye do something that's of use?' at the sound of footsteps swithin beat a hasty retreat up-stairs, where he struck a light, and revealed a table covered with books and papers, while round the walls hung star-maps, and other diagrams illustrative of celestial phenomena. in a corner stood a huge pasteboard tube, which a close inspection would have shown to be intended for a telescope. swithin hung a thick cloth over the window, in addition to the curtains, and sat down to his papers. on the ceiling was a black stain of smoke, and under this he placed his lamp, evidencing that the midnight oil was consumed on that precise spot very often. meanwhile there had entered to the room below a personage who, to judge from her voice and the quick pit-pat of her feet, was a maiden young and blithe. mrs. martin welcomed her by the title of miss tabitha lark, and inquired what wind had brought her that way; to which the visitor replied that she had come for the singing. 'sit ye down, then,' said granny. 'and do you still go to the house to read to my lady?' 'yes, i go and read, mrs. martin; but as to getting my lady to hearken, that's more than a team of six horses could force her to do.' the girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was probably a cause, or a consequence, of her vocation. ''tis the same story, then?' said grandmother martin. 'yes. eaten out with listlessness. she's neither sick nor sorry, but how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell. when i get there in the morning, there she is sitting up in bed, for my lady don't care to get up; and then she makes me bring this book and that book, till the bed is heaped up with immense volumes that half bury her, making her look, as she leans upon her elbow, like the stoning of stephen. she yawns; then she looks towards the tall glass; then she looks out at the weather, mooning her great black eyes, and fixing them on the sky as if they stuck there, while my tongue goes flick-flack along, a hundred and fifty words a minute; then she looks at the clock; then she asks me what i've been reading.' 'ah, poor soul!' said granny. 'no doubt she says in the morning, "would god it were evening," and in the evening, "would god it were morning," like the disobedient woman in deuteronomy.' swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for the duologue interested him. there now crunched heavier steps outside the door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry local representatives of the bass and tenor voice, who lent a cheerful and well- known personality to the names sammy blore, nat chapman, hezekiah biles, and haymoss fry (the latter being one with whom the reader has already a distant acquaintance); besides these came small producers of treble, who had not yet developed into such distinctive units of society as to require particularizing. 'is the good man come?' asked nat chapman. 'no,--i see we be here afore him. and how is it with aged women to-night, mrs. martin?' 'tedious traipsing enough with this one, nat. sit ye down. well, little freddy, you don't wish in the morning that 'twere evening, and at evening that 'twere morning again, do you, freddy, trust ye for it?' 'now, who might wish such a thing as that, mrs martin?--nobody in this parish?' asked sammy blore curiously. 'my lady is always wishing it,' spoke up miss tabitha lark. 'oh, she! nobody can be answerable for the wishes of that onnatural tribe of mankind. not but that the woman's heart-strings is tried in many aggravating ways.' 'ah, poor woman!' said granny. 'the state she finds herself in--neither maid, wife, nor widow, as you may say--is not the primest form of life for keeping in good spirits. how long is it since she has heard from sir blount, tabitha?' 'two years and more,' said the young woman. 'he went into one side of africa, as it might be, three st. martin's days back. i can mind it, because 'twas my birthday. and he meant to come out the other side. but he didn't. he has never come out at all.' 'for all the world like losing a rat in a barley-mow,' said hezekiah. 'he's lost, though you know where he is.' his comrades nodded. 'ay, my lady is a walking weariness. i seed her yawn just at the very moment when the fox was halloaed away by lornton copse, and the hounds runned en all but past her carriage wheels. if i were she i'd see a little life; though there's no fair, club-walking, nor feast to speak of, till easter week,--that's true.' 'she dares not. she's under solemn oath to do no such thing.' 'be cust if i would keep any such oath! but here's the pa'son, if my ears don't deceive me.' there was a noise of horse's hoofs without, a stumbling against the door- scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the door on its hinges, and a voice which swithin recognized as mr. torkingham's. he greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and stated that he was glad to see them all so punctually assembled. 'ay, sir,' said haymoss fry. ''tis only my jints that have kept me from assembling myself long ago. i'd assemble upon the top of welland steeple, if 'tweren't for my jints. i assure ye, pa'son tarkenham, that in the clitch o' my knees, where the rain used to come through when i was cutting clots for the new lawn, in old my lady's time, 'tis as if rats wez gnawing, every now and then. when a feller's young he's too small in the brain to see how soon a constitution can be squandered, worse luck!' 'true,' said biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in finding the psalms. 'a man's a fool till he's forty. often have i thought, when hay-pitching, and the small of my back seeming no stouter than a harnet's, "the devil send that i had but the making of labouring men for a twelvemonth!" i'd gie every man jack two good backbones, even if the alteration was as wrong as forgery.' 'four,--four backbones,' said haymoss, decisively. 'yes, four,' threw in sammy blore, with additional weight of experience. 'for you want one in front for breast-ploughing and such like, one at the right side for ground-dressing, and one at the left side for turning mixens.' 'well; then next i'd move every man's wyndpipe a good span away from his glutchpipe, so that at harvest time he could fetch breath in 's drinking, without being choked and strangled as he is now. thinks i, when i feel the victuals going--' 'now, we'll begin,' interrupted mr. torkingham, his mind returning to this world again on concluding his search for a hymn. thereupon the racket of chair-legs on the floor signified that they were settling into their seats,--a disturbance which swithin took advantage of by going on tiptoe across the floor above, and putting sheets of paper over knot-holes in the boarding at points where carpet was lacking, that his lamp-light might not shine down. the absence of a ceiling beneath rendered his position virtually that of one suspended in the same apartment. the parson announced the tune, and his voice burst forth with 'onward, christian soldiers!' in notes of rigid cheerfulness. in this start, however, he was joined only by the girls and boys, the men furnishing but an accompaniment of ahas and hems. mr. torkingham stopped, and sammy blore spoke,-- 'beg your pardon, sir,--if you'll deal mild with us a moment. what with the wind and walking, my throat's as rough as a grater; and not knowing you were going to hit up that minute, i hadn't hawked, and i don't think hezzy and nat had, either,--had ye, souls?' 'i hadn't got thorough ready, that's true,' said hezekiah. 'quite right of you, then, to speak,' said mr. torkingham. 'don't mind explaining; we are here for practice. now clear your throats, then, and at it again.' there was a noise as of atmospheric hoes and scrapers, and the bass contingent at last got under way with a time of its own: 'honwerd, christen sojers!' 'ah, that's where we are so defective--the pronunciation,' interrupted the parson. 'now repeat after me: "on-ward, christ-ian, sol-diers."' the choir repeated like an exaggerative echo: 'on-wed, chris-ting, sol- jaws!' 'better!' said the parson, in the strenuously sanguine tones of a man who got his living by discovering a bright side in things where it was not very perceptible to other people. 'but it should not be given with quite so extreme an accent; or we may be called affected by other parishes. and, nathaniel chapman, there's a jauntiness in your manner of singing which is not quite becoming. why don't you sing more earnestly?' 'my conscience won't let me, sir. they say every man for himself: but, thank god, i'm not so mean as to lessen old fokes' chances by being earnest at my time o' life, and they so much nearer the need o't.' 'it's bad reasoning, nat, i fear. now, perhaps we had better sol-fa the tune. eyes on your books, please. sol-sol! fa-fa! mi--' 'i can't sing like that, not i!' said sammy blore, with condemnatory astonishment. 'i can sing genuine music, like f and g; but not anything so much out of the order of nater as that.' 'perhaps you've brought the wrong book, sir?' chimed in haymoss, kindly. 'i've knowed music early in life and late,--in short, ever since luke sneap broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding psalm, when pa'son wilton brought home his bride (you can mind the time, sammy?--when we sung "his wife, like a fair fertile vine, her lovely fruit shall bring," when the young woman turned as red as a rose, not knowing 'twas coming). i've knowed music ever since then, i say, sir, and never heard the like o' that. every martel note had his name of a, b, c, at that time.' 'yes, yes, men; but this is a more recent system!' 'still, you can't alter a old-established note that's a or b by nater,' rejoined haymoss, with yet deeper conviction that mr. torkingham was getting off his head. 'now sound a, neighbour sammy, and let's have a slap at christen sojers again, and show the pa'son the true way!' sammy produced a private tuning-fork, black and grimy, which, being about seventy years of age, and wrought before pianoforte builders had sent up the pitch to make their instruments brilliant, was nearly a note flatter than the parson's. while an argument as to the true pitch was in progress, there came a knocking without. 'somebody's at the door!' said a little treble girl. 'thought i heard a knock before!' said the relieved choir. the latch was lifted, and a man asked from the darkness, 'is mr. torkingham here?' 'yes, mills. what do you want?' it was the parson's man. 'oh, if you please,' said mills, showing an advanced margin of himself round the door, 'lady constantine wants to see you very particular, sir, and could you call on her after dinner, if you ben't engaged with poor fokes? she's just had a letter,--so they say,--and it's about that, i believe.' finding, on looking at his watch, that it was necessary to start at once if he meant to see her that night, the parson cut short the practising, and, naming another night for meeting, he withdrew. all the singers assisted him on to his cob, and watched him till he disappeared over the edge of the bottom. iii mr. torkingham trotted briskly onward to his house, a distance of about a mile, each cottage, as it revealed its half-buried position by its single light, appearing like a one-eyed night creature watching him from an ambush. leaving his horse at the parsonage he performed the remainder of the journey on foot, crossing the park towards welland house by a stile and path, till he struck into the drive near the north door of the mansion. this drive, it may be remarked, was also the common highway to the lower village, and hence lady constantine's residence and park, as is occasionally the case with old-fashioned manors, possessed none of the exclusiveness found in some aristocratic settlements. the parishioners looked upon the park avenue as their natural thoroughfare, particularly for christenings, weddings, and funerals, which passed the squire's mansion with due considerations as to the scenic effect of the same from the manor windows. hence the house of constantine, when going out from its breakfast, had been continually crossed on the doorstep for the last two hundred years by the houses of hodge and giles in full cry to dinner. at present these collisions were but too infrequent, for though the villagers passed the north front door as regularly as ever, they seldom met a constantine. only one was there to be met, and she had no zest for outings before noon. the long, low front of the great house, as it was called by the parish, stretching from end to end of the terrace, was in darkness as the vicar slackened his pace before it, and only the distant fall of water disturbed the stillness of the manorial precincts. on gaining admittance he found lady constantine waiting to receive him. she wore a heavy dress of velvet and lace, and being the only person in the spacious apartment she looked small and isolated. in her left hand she held a letter and a couple of at-home cards. the soft dark eyes which she raised to him as he entered--large, and melancholy by circumstance far more than by quality--were the natural indices of a warm and affectionate, perhaps slightly voluptuous temperament, languishing for want of something to do, cherish, or suffer for. mr. torkingham seated himself. his boots, which had seemed elegant in the farm-house, appeared rather clumsy here, and his coat, that was a model of tailoring when he stood amid the choir, now exhibited decidedly strained relations with his limbs. three years had passed since his induction to the living of welland, but he had never as yet found means to establish that reciprocity with lady constantine which usually grows up, in the course of time, between parsonage and manor-house,--unless, indeed, either side should surprise the other by showing respectively a weakness for awkward modern ideas on landownership, or on church formulas, which had not been the case here. the present meeting, however, seemed likely to initiate such a reciprocity. there was an appearance of confidence on lady constantine's face; she said she was so very glad that he had come, and looking down at the letter in her hand was on the point of pulling it from its envelope; but she did not. after a moment she went on more quickly: 'i wanted your advice, or rather your opinion, on a serious matter,--on a point of conscience.' saying which she laid down the letter and looked at the cards. it might have been apparent to a more penetrating eye than the vicar's that lady constantine, either from timidity, misgiving, or reconviction, had swerved from her intended communication, or perhaps decided to begin at the other end. the parson, who had been expecting a question on some local business or intelligence, at the tenor of her words altered his face to the higher branch of his profession. 'i hope i may find myself of service, on that or any other question,' he said gently. 'i hope so. you may possibly be aware, mr. torkingham, that my husband, sir blount constantine, was, not to mince matters, a mistaken--somewhat jealous man. yet you may hardly have discerned it in the short time you knew him.' 'i had some little knowledge of sir blount's character in that respect.' 'well, on this account my married life with him was not of the most comfortable kind.' (lady constantine's voice dropped to a more pathetic note.) 'i am sure i gave him no cause for suspicion; though had i known his disposition sooner i should hardly have dared to marry him. but his jealousy and doubt of me were not so strong as to divert him from a purpose of his,--a mania for african lion-hunting, which he dignified by calling it a scheme of geographical discovery; for he was inordinately anxious to make a name for himself in that field. it was the one passion that was stronger than his mistrust of me. before going away he sat down with me in this room, and read me a lecture, which resulted in a very rash offer on my part. when i tell it to you, you will find that it provides a key to all that is unusual in my life here. he bade me consider what my position would be when he was gone; hoped that i should remember what was due to him,--that i would not so behave towards other men as to bring the name of constantine into suspicion; and charged me to avoid levity of conduct in attending any ball, rout, or dinner to which i might be invited. i, in some contempt for his low opinion of me, volunteered, there and then, to live like a cloistered nun during his absence; to go into no society whatever,--scarce even to a neighbour's dinner-party; and demanded bitterly if that would satisfy him. he said yes, held me to my word, and gave me no loophole for retracting it. the inevitable fruits of precipitancy have resulted to me: my life has become a burden. i get such invitations as these' (holding up the cards), 'but i so invariably refuse them that they are getting very rare. . . . i ask you, can i honestly break that promise to my husband?' mr. torkingham seemed embarrassed. 'if you promised sir blount constantine to live in solitude till he comes back, you are, it seems to me, bound by that promise. i fear that the wish to be released from your engagement is to some extent a reason why it should be kept. but your own conscience would surely be the best guide, lady constantine?' 'my conscience is quite bewildered with its responsibilities,' she continued, with a sigh. 'yet it certainly does sometimes say to me that--that i ought to keep my word. very well; i must go on as i am going, i suppose.' 'if you respect a vow, i think you must respect your own,' said the parson, acquiring some further firmness. 'had it been wrung from you by compulsion, moral or physical, it would have been open to you to break it. but as you proposed a vow when your husband only required a good intention, i think you ought to adhere to it; or what is the pride worth that led you to offer it?' 'very well,' she said, with resignation. 'but it was quite a work of supererogation on my part.' 'that you proposed it in a supererogatory spirit does not lessen your obligation, having once put yourself under that obligation. st. paul, in his epistle to the hebrews, says, "an oath for confirmation is an end of all strife." and you will readily recall the words of ecclesiastes, "pay that which thou hast vowed. better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay." why not write to sir blount, tell him the inconvenience of such a bond, and ask him to release you?' 'no; never will i. the expression of such a desire would, in his mind, be a sufficient reason for disallowing it. i'll keep my word.' mr. torkingham rose to leave. after she had held out her hand to him, when he had crossed the room, and was within two steps of the door, she said, 'mr. torkingham.' he stopped. 'what i have told you is only the least part of what i sent for you to tell you.' mr. torkingham walked back to her side. 'what is the rest of it, then?' he asked, with grave surprise. 'it is a true revelation, as far as it goes; but there is something more. i have received this letter, and i wanted to say--something.' 'then say it now, my dear lady.' 'no,' she answered, with a look of utter inability. 'i cannot speak of it now! some other time. don't stay. please consider this conversation as private. good-night.' iv it was a bright starlight night, a week or ten days later. there had been several such nights since the occasion of lady constantine's promise to swithin st. cleeve to come and study astronomical phenomena on the rings-hill column; but she had not gone there. this evening she sat at a window, the blind of which had not been drawn down. her elbow rested on a little table, and her cheek on her hand. her eyes were attracted by the brightness of the planet jupiter, as he rode in the ecliptic opposite, beaming down upon her as if desirous of notice. beneath the planet could be still discerned the dark edges of the park landscape against the sky. as one of its features, though nearly screened by the trees which had been planted to shut out the fallow tracts of the estate, rose the upper part of the column. it was hardly visible now, even if visible at all; yet lady constantine knew from daytime experience its exact bearing from the window at which she leaned. the knowledge that there it still was, despite its rapid envelopment by the shades, led her lonely mind to her late meeting on its summit with the young astronomer, and to her promise to honour him with a visit for learning some secrets about the scintillating bodies overhead. the curious juxtaposition of youthful ardour and old despair that she had found in the lad would have made him interesting to a woman of perception, apart from his fair hair and early-christian face. but such is the heightening touch of memory that his beauty was probably richer in her imagination than in the real. it was a moot point to consider whether the temptations that would be brought to bear upon him in his course would exceed the staying power of his nature. had he been a wealthy youth he would have seemed one to tremble for. in spite of his attractive ambitions and gentlemanly bearing, she thought it would possibly be better for him if he never became known outside his lonely tower,--forgetting that he had received such intellectual enlargement as would probably make his continuance in welland seem, in his own eye, a slight upon his father's branch of his family, whose social standing had been, only a few years earlier, but little removed from her own. suddenly she flung a cloak about her and went out on the terrace. she passed down the steps to the lower lawn, through the door to the open park, and there stood still. the tower was now discernible. as the words in which a thought is expressed develop a further thought, so did the fact of her having got so far influence her to go further. a person who had casually observed her gait would have thought it irregular; and the lessenings and increasings of speed with which she proceeded in the direction of the pillar could be accounted for only by a motive much more disturbing than an intention to look through a telescope. thus she went on, till, leaving the park, she crossed the turnpike-road, and entered the large field, in the middle of which the fir-clad hill stood like mont st. michel in its bay. the stars were so bright as distinctly to show her the place, and now she could see a faint light at the top of the column, which rose like a shadowy finger pointing to the upper constellations. there was no wind, in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing from the fir-trees showed that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation. nothing but an absolute vacuum could paralyze their utterance. the door of the tower was shut. it was something more than the freakishness which is engendered by a sickening monotony that had led lady constantine thus far, and hence she made no ado about admitting herself. three years ago, when her every action was a thing of propriety, she had known of no possible purpose which could have led her abroad in a manner such as this. she ascended the tower noiselessly. on raising her head above the hatchway she beheld swithin bending over a scroll of paper which lay on the little table beside him. the small lantern that illuminated it showed also that he was warmly wrapped up in a coat and thick cap, behind him standing the telescope on its frame. what was he doing? she looked over his shoulder upon the paper, and saw figures and signs. when he had jotted down something he went to the telescope again. 'what are you doing to-night?' she said in a low voice. swithin started, and turned. the faint lamp-light was sufficient to reveal her face to him. 'tedious work, lady constantine,' he answered, without betraying much surprise. 'doing my best to watch phenomenal stars, as i may call them.' 'you said you would show me the heavens if i could come on a starlight night. i have come.' swithin, as a preliminary, swept round the telescope to jupiter, and exhibited to her the glory of that orb. then he directed the instrument to the less bright shape of saturn. 'here,' he said, warming up to the subject, 'we see a world which is to my mind by far the most wonderful in the solar system. think of streams of satellites or meteors racing round and round the planet like a fly- wheel, so close together as to seem solid matter!' he entered further and further into the subject, his ideas gathering momentum as he went on, like his pet heavenly bodies. when he paused for breath she said, in tones very different from his own, 'i ought now to tell you that, though i am interested in the stars, they were not what i came to see you about. . . . i first thought of disclosing the matter to mr. torkingham; but i altered my mind, and decided on you.' she spoke in so low a voice that he might not have heard her. at all events, abstracted by his grand theme, he did not heed her. he continued,-- 'well, we will get outside the solar system altogether,--leave the whole group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest. now what do you see, lady constantine?' he levelled the achromatic at sirius. she said that she saw a bright star, though it only seemed a point of light now as before. 'that's because it is so distant that no magnifying will bring its size up to zero. though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars, moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that velocity as anything but rest.' and thus they talked on about sirius, and then about other stars . . . in the scrowl of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl, with which, like indian plantations, the learned stock the constellations, till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at that moment. she looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their high position unfolded. 'oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands,' she said absently. 'no. there are only about three thousand. now, how many do you think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?' 'i won't guess.' 'twenty millions. so that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. it is just the same in everything; nothing is made for man.' 'is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age?' she asked, with almost maternal solicitude. 'i think astronomy is a bad study for you. it makes you feel human insignificance too plainly.' 'perhaps it does. however,' he added more cheerfully, 'though i feel the study to be one almost tragic in its quality, i hope to be the new copernicus. what he was to the solar system i aim to be to the systems beyond.' then, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together from the earth to uranus and the mysterious outskirts of the solar system; from the solar system to a star in the swan, the nearest fixed star in the northern sky; from the star in the swan to remoter stars; thence to the remotest visible; till the ghastly chasm which they had bridged by a fragile line of sight was realized by lady constantine. 'we are now traversing distances beside which the immense line stretching from the earth to the sun is but an invisible point,' said the youth. 'when, just now, we had reached a planet whose remoteness is a hundred times the remoteness of the sun from the earth, we were only a two thousandth part of the journey to the spot at which we have optically arrived now.' 'oh, pray don't; it overpowers me!' she replied, not without seriousness. 'it makes me feel that it is not worth while to live; it quite annihilates me.' 'if it annihilates your ladyship to roam over these yawning spaces just once, think how it must annihilate me to be, as it were, in constant suspension amid them night after night.' 'yes. . . . it was not really this subject that i came to see you upon, mr. st. cleeve,' she began a second time. 'it was a personal matter.' 'i am listening, lady constantine.' 'i will tell it you. yet no,--not this moment. let us finish this grand subject first; it dwarfs mine.' it would have been difficult to judge from her accents whether she were afraid to broach her own matter, or really interested in his. or a certain youthful pride that he evidenced at being the elucidator of such a large theme, and at having drawn her there to hear and observe it, may have inclined her to indulge him for kindness' sake. thereupon he took exception to her use of the word 'grand' as descriptive of the actual universe: 'the imaginary picture of the sky as the concavity of a dome whose base extends from horizon to horizon of our earth is grand, simply grand, and i wish i had never got beyond looking at it in that way. but the actual sky is a horror.' 'a new view of our old friends, the stars,' she said, smiling up at them. 'but such an obviously true one!' said the young man. 'you would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind--monsters to which those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison.' 'what monsters may they be?' 'impersonal monsters, namely, immensities. until a person has thought out the stars and their inter-spaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape. such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky. look, for instance, at those pieces of darkness in the milky way,' he went on, pointing with his finger to where the galaxy stretched across over their heads with the luminousness of a frosted web. 'you see that dark opening in it near the swan? there is a still more remarkable one south of the equator, called the coal sack, as a sort of nickname that has a farcical force from its very inadequacy. in these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. those are deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you pass on!' lady constantine was heedful and silent. he tried to give her yet another idea of the size of the universe; never was there a more ardent endeavour to bring down the immeasurable to human comprehension! by figures of speech and apt comparisons he took her mind into leading-strings, compelling her to follow him into wildernesses of which she had never in her life even realized the existence. 'there is a size at which dignity begins,' he exclaimed; 'further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. that size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. so am i not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror?' standing, as she stood, in the presence of the stellar universe, under the very eyes of the constellations, lady constantine apprehended something of the earnest youth's argument. 'and to add a new weirdness to what the sky possesses in its size and formlessness, there is involved the quality of decay. for all the wonder of these everlasting stars, eternal spheres, and what not, they are not everlasting, they are not eternal; they burn out like candles. you see that dying one in the body of the greater bear? two centuries ago it was as bright as the others. the senses may become terrified by plunging among them as they are, but there is a pitifulness even in their glory. imagine them all extinguished, and your mind feeling its way through a heaven of total darkness, occasionally striking against the black, invisible cinders of those stars. . . . if you are cheerful, and wish to remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone. of all the sciences, it alone deserves the character of the terrible.' 'i am not altogether cheerful.' 'then if, on the other hand, you are restless and anxious about the future, study astronomy at once. your troubles will be reduced amazingly. but your study will reduce them in a singular way, by reducing the importance of everything. so that the science is still terrible, even as a panacea. it is quite impossible to think at all adequately of the sky--of what the sky substantially is, without feeling it as a juxtaposed nightmare. it is better--far better--for men to forget the universe than to bear it clearly in mind! . . . but you say the universe was not really what you came to see me about. what was it, may i ask, lady constantine?' she mused, and sighed, and turned to him with something pathetic in her. 'the immensity of the subject you have engaged me on has completely crushed my subject out of me! yours is celestial; mine lamentably human! and the less must give way to the greater.' 'but is it, in a human sense, and apart from macrocosmic magnitudes, important?' he inquired, at last attracted by her manner; for he began to perceive, in spite of his prepossession, that she had really something on her mind. 'it is as important as personal troubles usually are.' notwithstanding her preconceived notion of coming to swithin as employer to dependant, as _chatelaine_ to page, she was falling into confidential intercourse with him. his vast and romantic endeavours lent him a personal force and charm which she could not but apprehend. in the presence of the immensities that his young mind had, as it were, brought down from above to hers, they became unconsciously equal. there was, moreover, an inborn liking in lady constantine to dwell less on her permanent position as a county lady than on her passing emotions as a woman. 'i will postpone the matter i came to charge you with,' she resumed, smiling. 'i must reconsider it. now i will return.' 'allow me to show you out through the trees and across the fields?' she said neither a distinct yes nor no; and, descending the tower, they threaded the firs and crossed the ploughed field. by an odd coincidence he remarked, when they drew near the great house-- 'you may possibly be interested in knowing, lady constantine, that that medium-sized star you see over there, low down in the south, is precisely over sir blount constantine's head in the middle of africa.' 'how very strange that you should have said so!' she answered. 'you have broached for me the very subject i had come to speak of.' 'on a domestic matter?' he said, with surprise. 'yes. what a small matter it seems now, after our astronomical stupendousness! and yet on my way to you it so far transcended the ordinary matters of my life as the subject you have led me up to transcends this. but,' with a little laugh, 'i will endeavour to sink down to such ephemeral trivialities as human tragedy, and explain, since i have come. the point is, i want a helper: no woman ever wanted one more. for days i have wanted a trusty friend who could go on a secret errand for me. it is necessary that my messenger should be educated, should be intelligent, should be silent as the grave. do you give me your solemn promise as to the last point, if i confide in you?' 'most emphatically, lady constantine.' 'your right hand upon the compact.' he gave his hand, and raised hers to his lips. in addition to his respect for her as the lady of the manor, there was the admiration of twenty years for twenty-eight or nine in such relations. 'i trust you,' she said. 'now, beyond the above conditions, it was specially necessary that my agent should have known sir blount constantine well by sight when he was at home. for the errand is concerning my husband; i am much disturbed at what i have heard about him.' 'i am indeed sorry to know it.' 'there are only two people in the parish who fulfil all the conditions,--mr. torkingham, and yourself. i sent for mr. torkingham, and he came. i could not tell him. i felt at the last moment that he wouldn't do. i have come to you because i think you will do. this is it: my husband has led me and all the world to believe that he is in africa, hunting lions. i have had a mysterious letter informing me that he has been seen in london, in very peculiar circumstances. the truth of this i want ascertained. will you go on the journey?' 'personally, i would go to the end of the world for you, lady constantine; but--' 'no buts!' 'how can i leave?' 'why not?' 'i am preparing a work on variable stars. there is one of these which i have exceptionally observed for several months, and on this my great theory is mainly based. it has been hitherto called irregular; but i have detected a periodicity in its so-called irregularities which, if proved, would add some very valuable facts to those known on this subject, one of the most interesting, perplexing, and suggestive in the whole field of astronomy. now, to clinch my theory, there should be a sudden variation this week,--or at latest next week,--and i have to watch every night not to let it pass. you see my reason for declining, lady constantine.' 'young men are always so selfish!' she said. 'it might ruin the whole of my year's labour if i leave now!' returned the youth, greatly hurt. 'could you not wait a fortnight longer?' 'no,--no. don't think that i have asked you, pray. i have no wish to inconvenience you.' 'lady constantine, don't be angry with me! will you do this,--watch the star for me while i am gone? if you are prepared to do it effectually, i will go.' 'will it be much trouble?' 'it will be some trouble. you would have to come here every clear evening about nine. if the sky were not clear, then you would have to come at four in the morning, should the clouds have dispersed.' 'could not the telescope be brought to my house?' swithin shook his head. 'perhaps you did not observe its real size,--that it was fixed to a frame- work? i could not afford to buy an equatorial, and i have been obliged to rig up an apparatus of my own devising, so as to make it in some measure answer the purpose of an equatorial. it _could_ be moved, but i would rather not touch it.' 'well, i'll go to the telescope,' she went on, with an emphasis that was not wholly playful. 'you are the most ungallant youth i ever met with; but i suppose i must set that down to science. yes, i'll go to the tower at nine every night.' 'and alone? i should prefer to keep my pursuits there unknown.' 'and alone,' she answered, quite overborne by his inflexibility. 'you will not miss the morning observation, if it should be necessary?' 'i have given my word.' 'and i give mine. i suppose i ought not to have been so exacting!' he spoke with that sudden emotional sense of his own insignificance which made these alternations of mood possible. 'i will go anywhere--do anything for you--this moment--to-morrow or at any time. but you must return with me to the tower, and let me show you the observing process.' they retraced their steps, the tender hoar-frost taking the imprint of their feet, while two stars in the twins looked down upon their two persons through the trees, as if those two persons could bear some sort of comparison with them. on the tower the instructions were given. when all was over, and he was again conducting her to the great house she said-- 'when can you start?' 'now,' said swithin. 'so much the better. you shall go up by the night mail.' v on the third morning after the young man's departure lady constantine opened the post-bag anxiously. though she had risen before four o'clock, and crossed to the tower through the gray half-light when every blade and twig were furred with rime, she felt no languor. expectation could banish at cock-crow the eye-heaviness which apathy had been unable to disperse all the day long. there was, as she had hoped, a letter from swithin st. cleeve. 'dear lady constantine,--i have quite succeeded in my mission, and shall return to-morrow at p.m. i hope you have not failed in the observations. watching the star through an opera-glass sunday night, i fancied some change had taken place, but i could not make myself sure. your memoranda for that night i await with impatience. please don't neglect to write down _at the moment_, all remarkable appearances both as to colour and intensity; and be very exact as to time, which correct in the way i showed you.--i am, dear lady constantine, yours most faithfully, swithin st. cleeve.' not another word in the letter about his errand; his mind ran on nothing but this astronomical subject. he had succeeded in his mission, and yet he did not even say yes or no to the great question,--whether or not her husband was masquerading in london at the address she had given. 'was ever anything so provoking!' she cried. however, the time was not long to wait. his way homeward would lie within a stone's-throw of the manor-house, and though for certain reasons she had forbidden him to call at the late hour of his arrival, she could easily intercept him in the avenue. at twenty minutes past ten she went out into the drive, and stood in the dark. seven minutes later she heard his footstep, and saw his outline in the slit of light between the avenue- trees. he had a valise in one hand, a great-coat on his arm, and under his arm a parcel which seemed to be very precious, from the manner in which he held it. 'lady constantine?' he asked softly. 'yes,' she said, in her excitement holding out both her hands, though he had plainly not expected her to offer one. 'did you watch the star?' 'i'll tell you everything in detail; but, pray, your errand first!' 'yes, it's all right. did you watch every night, not missing one?' 'i forgot to go--twice,' she murmured contritely. 'oh, lady constantine!' he cried in dismay. 'how could you serve me so! what shall i do?' 'please forgive me! indeed, i could not help it. i had watched and watched, and nothing happened; and somehow my vigilance relaxed when i found nothing was likely to take place in the star.' 'but the very circumstance of it not having happened, made it all the more likely every day.' 'have you--seen--' she began imploringly. swithin sighed, lowered his thoughts to sublunary things, and told briefly the story of his journey. sir blount constantine was not in london at the address which had been anonymously sent her. it was a mistake of identity. the person who had been seen there swithin had sought out. he resembled sir blount strongly; but he was a stranger. 'how can i reward you!' she exclaimed, when he had done. 'in no way but by giving me your good wishes in what i am going to tell you on my own account.' he spoke in tones of mysterious exultation. 'this parcel is going to make my fame!' 'what is it?' 'a huge object-glass for the great telescope i am so busy about! such a magnificent aid to science has never entered this county before, you may depend.' he produced from under his arm the carefully cuddled-up package, which was in shape a round flat disk, like a dinner-plate, tied in paper. proceeding to explain his plans to her more fully, he walked with her towards the door by which she had emerged. it was a little side wicket through a wall dividing the open park from the garden terraces. here for a moment he placed his valise and parcel on the coping of the stone balustrade, till he had bidden her farewell. then he turned, and in laying hold of his bag by the dim light pushed the parcel over the parapet. it fell smash upon the paved walk ten or a dozen feet beneath. 'oh, good heavens!' he cried in anguish. 'what?' 'my object-glass broken!' 'is it of much value?' 'it cost all i possess!' he ran round by the steps to the lower lawn, lady constantine following, as he continued, 'it is a magnificent eight-inch first quality object lens! i took advantage of my journey to london to get it! i have been six weeks making the tube of milled board; and as i had not enough money by twelve pounds for the lens, i borrowed it of my grandmother out of her last annuity payment. what can be, can be done!' 'perhaps it is not broken.' he felt on the ground, found the parcel, and shook it. a clicking noise issued from inside. swithin smote his forehead with his hand, and walked up and down like a mad fellow. 'my telescope! i have waited nine months for this lens. now the possibility of setting up a really powerful instrument is over! it is too cruel--how could it happen! . . . lady constantine, i am ashamed of myself,--before you. oh, but, lady constantine, if you only knew what it is to a person engaged in science to have the means of clinching a theory snatched away at the last moment! it is i against the world; and when the world has accidents on its side in addition to its natural strength, what chance for me!' the young astronomer leant against the wall, and was silent. his misery was of an intensity and kind with that of palissy, in these struggles with an adverse fate. 'don't mind it,--pray don't!' said lady constantine. 'it is dreadfully unfortunate! you have my whole sympathy. can it be mended?' 'mended,--no, no!' 'cannot you do with your present one a little longer?' 'it is altogether inferior, cheap, and bad!' 'i'll get you another,--yes, indeed, i will! allow me to get you another as soon as possible. i'll do anything to assist you out of your trouble; for i am most anxious to see you famous. i know you will be a great astronomer, in spite of this mishap! come, say i may get a new one.' swithin took her hand. he could not trust himself to speak. * * * * * some days later a little box of peculiar kind came to the great house. it was addressed to lady constantine, 'with great care.' she had it partly opened and taken to her own little writing-room; and after lunch, when she had dressed for walking, she took from the box a paper parcel like the one which had met with the accident. this she hid under her mantle, as if she had stolen it; and, going out slowly across the lawn, passed through the little door before spoken of, and was soon hastening in the direction of the rings-hill column. there was a bright sun overhead on that afternoon of early spring, and its rays shed an unusual warmth on south-west aspects, though shady places still retained the look and feel of winter. rooks were already beginning to build new nests or to mend up old ones, and clamorously called in neighbours to give opinions on difficulties in their architecture. lady constantine swerved once from her path, as if she had decided to go to the homestead where swithin lived; but on second thoughts she bent her steps to the column. drawing near it she looked up; but by reason of the height of the parapet nobody could be seen thereon who did not stand on tiptoe. she thought, however, that her young friend might possibly see her, if he were there, and come down; and that he was there she soon ascertained by finding the door unlocked, and the key inside. no movement, however, reached her ears from above, and she began to ascend. meanwhile affairs at the top of the column had progressed as follows. the afternoon being exceptionally fine, swithin had ascended about two o'clock, and, seating himself at the little table which he had constructed on the spot, he began reading over his notes and examining some astronomical journals that had reached him in the morning. the sun blazed into the hollow roof-space as into a tub, and the sides kept out every breeze. though the month was february below it was may in the abacus of the column. this state of the atmosphere, and the fact that on the previous night he had pursued his observations till past two o'clock, produced in him at the end of half an hour an overpowering inclination to sleep. spreading on the lead-work a thick rug which he kept up there, he flung himself down against the parapet, and was soon in a state of unconsciousness. it was about ten minutes afterwards that a soft rustle of silken clothes came up the spiral staircase, and, hesitating onwards, reached the orifice, where appeared the form of lady constantine. she did not at first perceive that he was present, and stood still to reconnoitre. her eye glanced over his telescope, now wrapped up, his table and papers, his observing-chair, and his contrivances for making the best of a deficiency of instruments. all was warm, sunny, and silent, except that a solitary bee, which had somehow got within the hollow of the abacus, was singing round inquiringly, unable to discern that ascent was the only mode of escape. in another moment she beheld the astronomer, lying in the sun like a sailor in the main-top. lady constantine coughed slightly; he did not awake. she then entered, and, drawing the parcel from beneath her cloak, placed it on the table. after this she waited, looking for a long time at his sleeping face, which had a very interesting appearance. she seemed reluctant to leave, yet wanted resolution to wake him; and, pencilling his name on the parcel, she withdrew to the staircase, where the brushing of her dress decreased to silence as she receded round and round on her way to the base. swithin still slept on, and presently the rustle began again in the far- down interior of the column. the door could be heard closing, and the rustle came nearer, showing that she had shut herself in,--no doubt to lessen the risk of an accidental surprise by any roaming villager. when lady constantine reappeared at the top, and saw the parcel still untouched and swithin asleep as before, she exhibited some disappointment; but she did not retreat. looking again at him, her eyes became so sentimentally fixed on his face that it seemed as if she could not withdraw them. there lay, in the shape of an antinous, no _amoroso_, no gallant, but a guileless philosopher. his parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love, but of millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. within his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations. thus, to his physical attractiveness was added the attractiveness of mental inaccessibility. the ennobling influence of scientific pursuits was demonstrated by the speculative purity which expressed itself in his eyes whenever he looked at her in speaking, and in the childlike faults of manner which arose from his obtuseness to their difference of sex. he had never, since becoming a man, looked even so low as to the level of a lady constantine. his heaven at present was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of eve. would any circe or calypso--and if so, what one?--ever check this pale-haired scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire into limbo? oh, the pity of it, if such should be the case! she became much absorbed in these very womanly reflections; and at last lady constantine sighed, perhaps she herself did not exactly know why. then a very soft expression lighted on her lips and eyes, and she looked at one jump ten years more youthful than before--quite a girl in aspect, younger than he. on the table lay his implements; among them a pair of scissors, which, to judge from the shreds around, had been used in cutting curves in thick paper for some calculating process. what whim, agitation, or attraction prompted the impulse, nobody knows; but she took the scissors, and, bending over the sleeping youth, cut off one of the curls, or rather crooks,--for they hardly reached a curl,--into which each lock of his hair chose to twist itself in the last inch of its length. the hair fell upon the rug. she picked it up quickly, returned the scissors to the table, and, as if her dignity had suddenly become ashamed of her fantasies, hastened through the door, and descended the staircase. vi when his nap had naturally exhausted itself swithin awoke. he awoke without any surprise, for he not unfrequently gave to sleep in the day- time what he had stolen from it in the night watches. the first object that met his eyes was the parcel on the table, and, seeing his name inscribed thereon, he made no scruple to open it. the sun flashed upon a lens of surprising magnitude, polished to such a smoothness that the eye could scarcely meet its reflections. here was a crystal in whose depths were to be seen more wonders than had been revealed by the crystals of all the cagliostros. swithin, hot with joyousness, took this treasure to his telescope manufactory at the homestead; then he started off for the great house. on gaining its precincts he felt shy of calling, never having received any hint or permission to do so; while lady constantine's mysterious manner of leaving the parcel seemed to demand a like mysteriousness in his approaches to her. all the afternoon he lingered about uncertainly, in the hope of intercepting her on her return from a drive, occasionally walking with an indifferent lounge across glades commanded by the windows, that if she were in-doors she might know he was near. but she did not show herself during the daylight. still impressed by her playful secrecy he carried on the same idea after dark, by returning to the house and passing through the garden door on to the lawn front, where he sat on the parapet that breasted the terrace. now she frequently came out here for a melancholy saunter after dinner, and to-night was such an occasion. swithin went forward, and met her at nearly the spot where he had dropped the lens some nights earlier. 'i have come to see you, lady constantine. how did the glass get on my table?' she laughed as lightly as a girl; that he had come to her in this way was plainly no offence thus far. 'perhaps it was dropped from the clouds by a bird,' she said. 'why should you be so good to me?' he cried. 'one good turn deserves another,' answered she. 'dear lady constantine! whatever discoveries result from this shall be ascribed to you as much as to me. where should i have been without your gift?' 'you would possibly have accomplished your purpose just the same, and have been so much the nobler for your struggle against ill-luck. i hope that now you will be able to proceed with your large telescope as if nothing had happened.' 'o yes, i will, certainly. i am afraid i showed too much feeling, the reverse of stoical, when the accident occurred. that was not very noble of me.' 'there is nothing unnatural in such feeling at your age. when you are older you will smile at such moods, and at the mishaps that gave rise to them.' 'ah, i perceive you think me weak in the extreme,' he said, with just a shade of pique. 'but you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. no person can see exactly what and where another's horizon is.' they soon parted, and she re-entered the house, where she sat reflecting for some time, till she seemed to fear that she had wounded his feelings. she awoke in the night, and thought and thought on the same thing, till she had worked herself into a feverish fret about it. when it was morning she looked across at the tower, and sitting down, impulsively wrote the following note:-- 'dear mr. st. cleeve,--i cannot allow you to remain under the impression that i despised your scientific endeavours in speaking as i did last night. i think you were too sensitive to my remark. but perhaps you were agitated with the labours of the day, and i fear that watching so late at night must make you very weary. if i can help you again, please let me know. i never realized the grandeur of astronomy till you showed me how to do so. also let me know about the new telescope. come and see me at any time. after your great kindness in being my messenger i can never do enough for you. i wish you had a mother or sister, and pity your loneliness! i am lonely too.--yours truly, viviette constantine.' she was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that she ran across to the column with it during the morning, preferring to be her own emissary in so curious a case. the door, as she had expected, was locked; and, slipping the letter under it, she went home again. during lunch her ardour in the cause of swithin's hurt feelings cooled down, till she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at her lonely table, 'what could have possessed me to write in that way!' after lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the early morning, and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door. she could discern no letter, and, on trying the latch, found that the door would open. the letter was gone, swithin having obviously arrived in the interval. she blushed a blush which seemed to say, 'i am getting foolishly interested in this young man.' she had, in short, in her own opinion, somewhat overstepped the bounds of dignity. her instincts did not square well with the formalities of her existence, and she walked home despondently. had a concert, bazaar, lecture, or dorcas meeting required the patronage and support of lady constantine at this juncture, the circumstance would probably have been sufficient to divert her mind from swithin st. cleeve and astronomy for some little time. but as none of these incidents were within the range of expectation--welland house and parish lying far from large towns and watering-places--the void in her outer life continued, and with it the void in her life within. the youth had not answered her letter; neither had he called upon her in response to the invitation she had regretted, with the rest of the epistle, as being somewhat too warmly informal for black and white. to speak tenderly to him was one thing, to write another--that was her feeling immediately after the event; but his counter-move of silence and avoidance, though probably the result of pure unconsciousness on his part, completely dispersed such self-considerations now. her eyes never fell upon the rings-hill column without a solicitous wonder arising as to what he was doing. a true woman, she would assume the remotest possibility to be the most likely contingency, if the possibility had the recommendation of being tragical; and she now feared that something was wrong with swithin st. cleeve. yet there was not the least doubt that he had become so immersed in the business of the new telescope as to forget everything else. on sunday, between the services, she walked to little welland, chiefly for the sake of giving a run to a house-dog, a large st. bernard, of whom she was fond. the distance was but short; and she returned along a narrow lane, divided from the river by a hedge, through whose leafless twigs the ripples flashed silver lights into her eyes. here she discovered swithin, leaning over a gate, his eyes bent upon the stream. the dog first attracted his attention; then he heard her, and turned round. she had never seen him looking so despondent. 'you have never called, though i invited you,' said lady constantine. 'my great telescope won't work!' he replied lugubriously. 'i am sorry for that. so it has made you quite forget me?' 'ah, yes; you wrote me a very kind letter, which i ought to have answered. well, i _did_ forget, lady constantine. my new telescope won't work, and i don't know what to do about it at all!' 'can i assist you any further?' 'no, i fear not. besides, you have assisted me already.' 'what would really help you out of all your difficulties? something would, surely?' he shook his head. 'there must be some solution to them?' 'o yes,' he replied, with a hypothetical gaze into the stream; '_some_ solution of course--an equatorial, for instance.' 'what's that?' 'briefly, an impossibility. it is a splendid instrument, with an object lens of, say, eight or nine inches aperture, mounted with its axis parallel to the earth's axis, and fitted up with graduated circles for denoting right ascensions and declinations; besides having special eye- pieces, a finder, and all sorts of appliances--clock-work to make the telescope follow the motion in right ascension--i cannot tell you half the conveniences. ah, an equatorial is a thing indeed!' 'an equatorial is the one instrument required to make you quite happy?' 'well, yes.' 'i'll see what i can do.' 'but, lady constantine,' cried the amazed astronomer, 'an equatorial such as i describe costs as much as two grand pianos!' she was rather staggered at this news; but she rallied gallantly, and said, 'never mind. i'll make inquiries.' 'but it could not be put on the tower without people seeing it! it would have to be fixed to the masonry. and there must be a dome of some kind to keep off the rain. a tarpaulin might do.' lady constantine reflected. 'it would be a great business, i see,' she said. 'though as far as the fixing and roofing go, i would of course consent to your doing what you liked with the old column. my workmen could fix it, could they not?' 'o yes. but what would sir blount say, if he came home and saw the goings on?' lady constantine turned aside to hide a sudden displacement of blood from her cheek. 'ah--my husband!' she whispered. . . . 'i am just now going to church,' she added in a repressed and hurried tone. 'i will think of this matter.' in church it was with lady constantine as with the lord angelo of vienna in a similar situation--heaven had her empty words only, and her invention heard not her tongue. she soon recovered from the momentary consternation into which she had fallen at swithin's abrupt query. the possibility of that young astronomer becoming a renowned scientist by her aid was a thought which gave her secret pleasure. the course of rendering him instant material help began to have a great fascination for her; it was a new and unexpected channel for her cribbed and confined emotions. with experiences so much wider than his, lady constantine saw that the chances were perhaps a million to one against swithin st. cleeve ever being astronomer royal, or astronomer extraordinary of any sort; yet the remaining chance in his favour was one of those possibilities which, to a woman of bounding intellect and venturesome fancy, are pleasanter to dwell on than likely issues that have no savour of high speculation in them. the equatorial question was a great one; and she had caught such a large spark from his enthusiasm that she could think of nothing so piquant as how to obtain the important instrument. when tabitha lark arrived at the great house next day, instead of finding lady constantine in bed, as formerly, she discovered her in the library, poring over what astronomical works she had been able to unearth from the worm-eaten shelves. as these publications were, for a science of such rapid development, somewhat venerable, there was not much help of a practical kind to be gained from them. nevertheless, the equatorial retained a hold upon her fancy, till she became as eager to see one on the rings-hill column as swithin himself. the upshot of it was that lady constantine sent a messenger that evening to welland bottom, where the homestead of swithin's grandmother was situated, requesting the young man's presence at the house at twelve o'clock next day. he hurriedly returned an obedient reply, and the promise was enough to lend great freshness to her manner next morning, instead of the leaden air which was too frequent with her before the sun reached the meridian, and sometimes after. swithin had, in fact, arisen as an attractive little intervention between herself and despair. vii a fog defaced all the trees of the park that morning, the white atmosphere adhered to the ground like a fungoid growth from it, and made the turfed undulations look slimy and raw. but lady constantine settled down in her chair to await the coming of the late curate's son with a serenity which the vast blanks outside could neither baffle nor destroy. at two minutes to twelve the door-bell rang, and a look overspread the lady's face that was neither maternal, sisterly, nor amorous; but partook in an indescribable manner of all three kinds. the door was flung open and the young man was ushered in, the fog still clinging to his hair, in which she could discern a little notch where she had nipped off the curl. a speechlessness that socially was a defect in him was to her view a piquant attribute just now. he looked somewhat alarmed. 'lady constantine, have i done anything, that you have sent--?' he began breathlessly, as he gazed in her face, with parted lips. 'o no, of course not! i have decided to do something,--nothing more,' she smilingly said, holding out her hand, which he rather gingerly touched. 'don't look so concerned. who makes equatorials?' this remark was like the drawing of a weir-hatch and she was speedily inundated with all she wished to know concerning astronomical opticians. when he had imparted the particulars he waited, manifestly burning to know whither these inquiries tended. 'i am not going to buy you one,' she said gently. he looked as if he would faint. 'certainly not. i do not wish it. i--could not have accepted it,' faltered the young man. 'but i am going to buy one for _myself_. i lack a hobby, and i shall choose astronomy. i shall fix my equatorial on the column.' swithin brightened up. 'and i shall let you have the use of it whenever you choose. in brief, swithin st. cleeve shall be lady constantine's astronomer royal; and she--and she--' 'shall be his queen.' the words came not much the worse for being uttered only in the tone of one anxious to complete a tardy sentence. 'well, that's what i have decided to do,' resumed lady constantine. 'i will write to these opticians at once.' there seemed to be no more for him to do than to thank her for the privilege, whenever it should be available, which he promptly did, and then made as if to go. but lady constantine detained him with, 'have you ever seen my library?' 'no; never.' 'you don't say you would like to see it.' 'but i should.' 'it is the third door on the right. you can find your way in, and you can stay there as long as you like.' swithin then left the morning-room for the apartment designated, and amused himself in that 'soul of the house,' as cicero defined it, till he heard the lunch bell sounding from the turret, when he came down from the library steps, and thought it time to go home. but at that moment a servant entered to inquire whether he would or would not prefer to have his lunch brought in to him there; upon his replying in the affirmative a large tray arrived on the stomach of a footman, and swithin was greatly surprised to see a whole pheasant placed at his disposal. having breakfasted at eight that morning, and having been much in the open air afterwards, the adonis-astronomer's appetite assumed grand proportions. how much of that pheasant he might consistently eat without hurting his dear patroness lady constantine's feelings, when he could readily eat it all, was a problem in which the reasonableness of a larger and larger quantity argued itself inversely as a smaller and smaller quantity remained. when, at length, he had finally decided on a terminal point in the body of the bird, the door was gently opened. 'oh, you have not finished?' came to him over his shoulder, in a considerate voice. 'o yes, thank you, lady constantine,' he said, jumping up. 'why did you prefer to lunch in this awkward, dusty place?' 'i thought--it would be better,' said swithin simply. 'there is fruit in the other room, if you like to come. but perhaps you would rather not?' 'o yes, i should much like to,' said swithin, walking over his napkin, and following her as she led the way to the adjoining apartment. here, while she asked him what he had been reading, he modestly ventured on an apple, in whose flavour he recognized the familiar taste of old friends robbed from her husband's orchards in his childhood, long before lady constantine's advent on the scene. she supposed he had confined his search to his own sublime subject, astronomy? swithin suddenly became older to the eye, as his thoughts reverted to the topic thus reintroduced. 'yes,' he informed her. 'i seldom read any other subject. in these days the secret of productive study is to avoid well.' 'did you find any good treatises?' 'none. the theories in your books are almost as obsolete as the ptolemaic system. only fancy, that magnificent cyclopædia, leather-bound, and stamped, and gilt, and wide margined, and bearing the blazon of your house in magnificent colours, says that the twinkling of the stars is probably caused by heavenly bodies passing in front of them in their revolutions.' 'and is it not so? that was what i learned when i was a girl.' the modern eudoxus now rose above the embarrassing horizon of lady constantine's great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring footman. he became quite natural, all his self-consciousness fled, and his eye spoke into hers no less than his lips to her ears, as he said, 'how such a theory can have lingered on to this day beats conjecture! francois arago, as long as forty or fifty years ago, conclusively established the fact that scintillation is the simplest thing in the world,--merely a matter of atmosphere. but i won't speak of this to you now. the comparative absence of scintillation in warm countries was noticed by humboldt. then, again, the scintillations vary. no star flaps his wings like sirius when he lies low! he flashes out emeralds and rubies, amethystine flames and sapphirine colours, in a manner quite marvellous to behold, and this is only _one_ star! so, too, do arcturus, and capella, and lesser luminaries. . . . but i tire you with this subject?' 'on the contrary, you speak so beautifully that i could listen all day.' the astronomer threw a searching glance upon her for a moment; but there was no satire in the warm soft eyes which met his own with a luxurious contemplative interest. 'say some more of it to me,' she continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing. after some hesitation the subject returned again to his lips, and he said some more--indeed, much more; lady constantine often throwing in an appreciative remark or question, often meditatively regarding him, in pursuance of ideas not exactly based on his words, and letting him go on as he would. before he left the house the new astronomical project was set in train. the top of the column was to be roofed in, to form a proper observatory; and on the ground that he knew better than any one else how this was to be carried out, she requested him to give precise directions on the point, and to superintend the whole. a wooden cabin was to be erected at the foot of the tower, to provide better accommodation for casual visitors to the observatory than the spiral staircase and lead-flat afforded. as this cabin would be completely buried in the dense fir foliage which enveloped the lower part of the column and its pedestal, it would be no disfigurement to the general appearance. finally, a path was to be made across the surrounding fallow, by which she might easily approach the scene of her new study. when he was gone she wrote to the firm of opticians concerning the equatorial for whose reception all this was designed. the undertaking was soon in full progress; and by degrees it became the talk of the hamlets round that lady constantine had given up melancholy for astronomy, to the great advantage of all who came in contact with her. one morning, when tabitha lark had come as usual to read, lady constantine chanced to be in a quarter of the house to which she seldom wandered; and while here she heard her maid talking confidentially to tabitha in the adjoining room on the curious and sudden interest which lady constantine had acquired in the moon and stars. 'they do say all sorts of trumpery,' observed the handmaid. 'they say--though 'tis little better than mischief, to be sure--that it isn't the moon, and it isn't the stars, and it isn't the plannards, that my lady cares for, but for the pretty lad who draws 'em down from the sky to please her; and being a married example, and what with sin and shame knocking at every poor maid's door afore you can say, "hands off, my dear," to the civilest young man, she ought to set a better pattern.' lady constantine's face flamed up vividly. 'if sir blount were to come back all of a sudden--oh, my!' lady constantine grew cold as ice. 'there's nothing in it,' said tabitha scornfully. 'i could prove it any day.' 'well, i wish i had half her chance!' sighed the lady's maid. and no more was said on the subject then. tabitha's remark showed that the suspicion was quite in embryo as yet. nevertheless, saying nothing to reveal what she had overheard, immediately after the reading lady constantine flew like a bird to where she knew that swithin might be found. he was in the plantation, setting up little sticks to mark where the wooden cabin was to stand. she called him to a remote place under the funereal trees. 'i have altered my mind,' she said. 'i can have nothing to do with this matter.' 'indeed?' said swithin, surprised. 'astronomy is not my hobby any longer. and you are not my astronomer royal.' 'o lady constantine!' cried the youth, aghast. 'why, the work is begun! i thought the equatorial was ordered.' she dropped her voice, though a jericho shout would not have been overheard: 'of course astronomy is my hobby privately, and you are to be my astronomer royal, and i still furnish the observatory; but not to the outer world. there is a reason against my indulgence in such scientific fancies openly; and the project must be arranged in this wise. the whole enterprise is yours: you rent the tower of me: you build the cabin: you get the equatorial. i simply give permission, since you desire it. the path that was to be made from the hill to the park is not to be thought of. there is to be no communication between the house and the column. the equatorial will arrive addressed to you, and its cost i will pay through you. my name must not appear, and i vanish entirely from the undertaking. . . . this blind is necessary,' she added, sighing. 'good- bye!' 'but you _do_ take as much interest as before, and it _will_ be yours just the same?' he said, walking after her. he scarcely comprehended the subterfuge, and was absolutely blind as to its reason. 'can you doubt it? but i dare not do it openly.' with this she went away; and in due time there circulated through the parish an assertion that it was a mistake to suppose lady constantine had anything to do with swithin st. cleeve or his star-gazing schemes. she had merely allowed him to rent the tower of her for use as his observatory, and to put some temporary fixtures on it for that purpose. after this lady constantine lapsed into her former life of loneliness; and by these prompt measures the ghost of a rumour which had barely started into existence was speedily laid to rest. it had probably originated in her own dwelling, and had gone but little further. yet, despite her self-control, a certain north window of the great house, that commanded an uninterrupted view of the upper ten feet of the column, revealed her to be somewhat frequently gazing from it at a rotundity which had begun to appear on the summit. to those with whom she came in contact she sometimes addressed such remarks as, 'is young mr. st. cleeve getting on with his observatory? i hope he will fix his instruments without damaging the column, which is so interesting to us as being in memory of my dear husband's great-grandfather--a truly brave man.' on one occasion her building-steward ventured to suggest to her that, sir blount having deputed to her the power to grant short leases in his absence, she should have a distinctive agreement with swithin, as between landlord and tenant, with a stringent clause against his driving nails into the stonework of such an historical memorial. she replied that she did not wish to be severe on the last representative of such old and respected parishioners as st. cleeve's mother's family had been, and of such a well-descended family as his father's; so that it would only be necessary for the steward to keep an eye on mr. st. cleeve's doings. further, when a letter arrived at the great house from hilton and pimm's, the opticians, with information that the equatorial was ready and packed, and that a man would be sent with it to fix it, she replied to that firm to the effect that their letter should have been addressed to mr. st. cleeve, the local astronomer, on whose behalf she had made the inquiries; that she had nothing more to do with the matter; that he would receive the instrument and pay the bill,--her guarantee being given for the latter performance. viii lady constantine then had the pleasure of beholding a waggon, laden with packing-cases, moving across the field towards the pillar; and not many days later swithin, who had never come to the great house since the luncheon, met her in a path which he knew to be one of her promenades. 'the equatorial is fixed, and the man gone,' he said, half in doubt as to his speech, for her commands to him not to recognize her agency or patronage still puzzled him. 'i respectfully wish--you could come and see it, lady constantine.' 'i would rather not; i cannot.' 'saturn is lovely; jupiter is simply sublime; i can see double stars in the lion and in the virgin, where i had seen only a single one before. it is all i required to set me going!' 'i'll come. but--you need say nothing about my visit. i cannot come to- night, but i will some time this week. yet only this once, to try the instrument. afterwards you must be content to pursue your studies alone.' swithin seemed but little affected at this announcement. 'hilton and pimm's man handed me the bill,' he continued. 'how much is it?' he told her. 'and the man who has built the hut and dome, and done the other fixing, has sent in his.' he named this amount also. 'very well. they shall be settled with. my debts must be paid with my money, which you shall have at once,--in cash, since a cheque would hardly do. come to the house for it this evening. but no, no--you must not come openly; such is the world. come to the window--the window that is exactly in a line with the long snowdrop bed, in the south front--at eight to-night, and i will give you what is necessary.' 'certainly, lady constantine,' said the young man. at eight that evening accordingly, swithin entered like a spectre upon the terrace to seek out the spot she had designated. the equatorial had so entirely absorbed his thoughts that he did not trouble himself seriously to conjecture the why and wherefore of her secrecy. if he casually thought of it, he set it down in a general way to an intensely generous wish on her part not to lessen his influence among the poorer inhabitants by making him appear the object of patronage. while he stood by the long snowdrop bed, which looked up at him like a nether milky way, the french casement of the window opposite softly opened, and a hand bordered by a glimmer of lace was stretched forth, from which he received a crisp little parcel,--bank-notes, apparently. he knew the hand, and held it long enough to press it to his lips, the only form which had ever occurred to him of expressing his gratitude to her without the incumbrance of clumsy words, a vehicle at the best of times but rudely suited to such delicate merchandise. the hand was hastily withdrawn, as if the treatment had been unexpected. then seemingly moved by second thoughts she bent forward and said, 'is the night good for observations?' 'perfect.' she paused. 'then i'll come to-night,' she at last said. 'it makes no difference to me, after all. wait just one moment.' he waited, and she presently emerged, muffled up like a nun; whereupon they left the terrace and struck across the park together. very little was said by either till they were crossing the fallow, when he asked if his arm would help her. she did not take the offered support just then; but when they were ascending the prehistoric earthwork, under the heavy gloom of the fir-trees, she seized it, as if rather influenced by the oppressive solitude than by fatigue. thus they reached the foot of the column, ten thousand spirits in prison seeming to gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs overhead, and a few twigs scratching the pillar with the drag of impish claws as tenacious as those figuring in st. anthony's temptation. 'how intensely dark it is just here!' she whispered. 'i wonder you can keep in the path. many ancient britons lie buried there doubtless.' he led her round to the other side, where, feeling his way with his hands, he suddenly left her, appearing a moment after with a light. 'what place is this?' she exclaimed. 'this is the new wood cabin,' said he. she could just discern the outline of a little house, not unlike a bathing-machine without wheels. 'i have kept lights ready here,' he went on, 'as i thought you might come any evening, and possibly bring company.' 'don't criticize me for coming alone,' she exclaimed with sensitive promptness. 'there are social reasons for what i do of which you know nothing.' 'perhaps it is much to my discredit that i don't know.' 'not at all. you are all the better for it. heaven forbid that i should enlighten you. well, i see this is the hut. but i am more curious to go to the top of the tower, and make discoveries.' he brought a little lantern from the cabin, and lighted her up the winding staircase to the temple of that sublime mystery on whose threshold he stood as priest. the top of the column was quite changed. the tub-shaped space within the parapet, formerly open to the air and sun, was now arched over by a light dome of lath-work covered with felt. but this dome was not fixed. at the line where its base descended to the parapet there were half a dozen iron balls, precisely like cannon-shot, standing loosely in a groove, and on these the dome rested its whole weight. in the side of the dome was a slit, through which the wind blew and the north star beamed, and towards it the end of the great telescope was directed. this latter magnificent object, with its circles, axes, and handles complete, was securely fixed in the middle of the floor. 'but you can only see one part of the sky through that slit,' said she. the astronomer stretched out his arm, and the whole dome turned horizontally round, running on the balls with a rumble like thunder. instead of the star polaris, which had first been peeping in through the slit, there now appeared the countenances of castor and pollux. swithin then manipulated the equatorial, and put it through its capabilities in like manner. she was enchanted; being rather excitable she even clapped her hands just once. she turned to him: 'now are you happy?' 'but it is all _yours_, lady constantine.' 'at this moment. but that's a defect which can soon be remedied. when is your birthday?' 'next month,--the seventh.' 'then it shall all be yours,--a birthday present.' the young man protested; it was too much. 'no, you must accept it all,--equatorial, dome stand, hut, and everything that has been put here for this astronomical purpose. the possession of these apparatus would only compromise me. already they are reputed to be yours, and they must be made yours. there is no help for it. if ever' (here her voice lost some firmness),--'if ever you go away from me,--from this place, i mean,--and marry, and settle in a new home elsewhere for good, and forget me, you must take these things, equatorial and all, and never tell your wife or anybody how they came to be yours.' 'i wish i could do something more for you!' exclaimed the much-moved astronomer. 'if you could but share my fame,--supposing i get any, which i may die before doing,--it would be a little compensation. as to my going away and marrying, i certainly shall not. i may go away, but i shall never marry.' 'why not?' 'a beloved science is enough wife for me,--combined, perhaps, with a little warm friendship with one of kindred pursuits.' 'who is the friend of kindred pursuits?' 'yourself i should like it to be.' 'you would have to become a woman before i could be that, publicly; or i a man,' she replied, with dry melancholy. 'why i a woman, or you a man, dear lady constantine?' 'i cannot explain. no; you must keep your fame and your science all to yourself, and i must keep my--troubles.' swithin, to divert her from melancholy--not knowing that in the expression of her melancholy thus and now she found much pleasure,--changed the subject by asking if they should take some observations. 'yes; the scenery is well hung to-night,' she said looking out upon the heavens. then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars, in the cursory manner of the merely curious. they plunged down to that at other times invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial theatre: remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and singular; pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams without calling forth from a single earthly poet a single line, or being able to bestow a ray of comfort on a single benighted traveller. 'and to think,' said lady constantine, 'that the whole race of shepherds, since the beginning of the world,--even those immortal shepherds who watched near bethlehem,--should have gone into their graves without knowing that for one star that lighted them in their labours, there were a hundred as good behind trying to do so! . . . i have a feeling for this instrument not unlike the awe i should feel in the presence of a great magician in whom i really believed. its powers are so enormous, and weird, and fantastical, that i should have a personal fear in being with it alone. music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is that to drawing down worlds!' 'i often experience a kind of fear of the sky after sitting in the observing-chair a long time,' he answered. 'and when i walk home afterwards i also fear it, for what i know is there, but cannot see, as one naturally fears the presence of a vast formless something that only reveals a very little of itself. that's partly what i meant by saying that magnitude, which up to a certain point has grandeur, has beyond it ghastliness.' thus the interest of their sidereal observations led them on, till the knowledge that scarce any other human vision was travelling within a hundred million miles of their own gave them such a sense of the isolation of that faculty as almost to be a sense of isolation in respect of their whole personality, causing a shudder at its absoluteness. at night, when human discords and harmonies are hushed, in a general sense, for the greater part of twelve hours, there is nothing to moderate the blow with which the infinitely great, the stellar universe, strikes down upon the infinitely little, the mind of the beholder; and this was the case now. having got closer to immensity than their fellow-creatures, they saw at once its beauty and its frightfulness. they more and more felt the contrast between their own tiny magnitudes and those among which they had recklessly plunged, till they were oppressed with the presence of a vastness they could not cope with even as an idea, and which hung about them like a nightmare. he stood by her while she observed; she by him when they changed places. once that swithin's emancipation from a trammelling body had been effected by the telescope, and he was well away in space, she felt her influence over him diminishing to nothing. he was quite unconscious of his terrestrial neighbourings, and of herself as one of them. it still further reduced her towards unvarnished simplicity in her manner to him. the silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock-work which gave diurnal motion to the instrument. the stars moved on, the end of the telescope followed, but their tongues stood still. to expect that he was ever voluntarily going to end the pause by speech was apparently futile. she laid her hand upon his arm. he started, withdrew his eye from the telescope, and brought himself back to the earth by a visible--almost painful--effort. 'do come out of it,' she coaxed, with a softness in her voice which any man but unpractised swithin would have felt to be exquisite. 'i feel that i have been so foolish as to put in your hands an instrument to effect my own annihilation. not a word have you spoken for the last ten minutes.' 'i have been mentally getting on with my great theory. i hope soon to be able to publish it to the world. what, are you going? i will walk with you, lady constantine. when will you come again?' 'when your great theory is published to the world.' ix lady constantine, if narrowly observed at this time, would have seemed to be deeply troubled in conscience, and particularly after the interview above described. ash wednesday occurred in the calendar a few days later, and she went to morning service with a look of genuine contrition on her emotional and yearning countenance. besides herself the congregation consisted only of the parson, clerk, school-children, and three old people living on alms, who sat under the reading-desk; and thus, when mr. torkingham blazed forth the denunciatory sentences of the commination, nearly the whole force of them seemed to descend upon her own shoulders. looking across the empty pews she saw through the one or two clear panes of the window opposite a youthful figure in the churchyard, and the very feeling against which she had tried to pray returned again irresistibly. when she came out and had crossed into the private walk, swithin came forward to speak to her. this was a most unusual circumstance, and argued a matter of importance. 'i have made an amazing discovery in connexion with the variable stars,' he exclaimed. 'it will excite the whole astronomical world, and the world outside but little less. i had long suspected the true secret of their variability; but it was by the merest chance on earth that i hit upon a proof of my guess. your equatorial has done it, my good, kind lady constantine, and our fame is established for ever!' he sprang into the air, and waved his hat in his triumph. 'oh, i am so glad--so rejoiced!' she cried. 'what is it? but don't stop to tell me. publish it at once in some paper; nail your name to it, or somebody will seize the idea and appropriate it,--forestall you in some way. it will be adams and leverrier over again.' 'if i may walk with you i will explain the nature of the discovery. it accounts for the occasional green tint of castor, and every difficulty. i said i would be the copernicus of the stellar system, and i have begun to be. yet who knows?' 'now don't be so up and down! i shall not understand your explanation, and i would rather not know it. i shall reveal it if it is very grand. women, you know, are not safe depositaries of such valuable secrets. you may walk with me a little way, with great pleasure. then go and write your account, so as to insure your ownership of the discovery. . . . but how you have watched!' she cried, in a sudden accession of anxiety, as she turned to look more closely at him. 'the orbits of your eyes are leaden, and your eyelids are red and heavy. don't do it--pray don't. you will be ill, and break down.' 'i have, it is true, been up a little late this last week,' he said cheerfully. 'in fact, i couldn't tear myself away from the equatorial; it is such a wonderful possession that it keeps me there till daylight. but what does that matter, now i have made the discovery?' 'ah, it _does_ matter! now, promise me--i insist--that you will not commit such imprudences again; for what should i do if my astronomer royal were to die?' she laughed, but far too apprehensively to be effective as a display of levity. they parted, and he went home to write out his paper. he promised to call as soon as his discovery was in print. then they waited for the result. it is impossible to describe the tremulous state of lady constantine during the interval. the warm interest she took in swithin st. cleeve--many would have said dangerously warm interest--made his hopes her hopes; and though she sometimes admitted to herself that great allowance was requisite for the overweening confidence of youth in the future, she permitted herself to be blinded to probabilities for the pleasure of sharing his dreams. it seemed not unreasonable to suppose the present hour to be the beginning of realization to her darling wish that this young man should become famous. he had worked hard, and why should he not be famous early? his very simplicity in mundane affairs afforded a strong presumption that in things celestial he might be wise. to obtain support for this hypothesis she had only to think over the lives of many eminent astronomers. she waited feverishly for the flourish of trumpets from afar, by which she expected the announcement of his discovery to be greeted. knowing that immediate intelligence of the outburst would be brought to her by himself, she watched from the windows of the great house each morning for a sight of his figure hastening down the glade. but he did not come. a long array of wet days passed their dreary shapes before her, and made the waiting still more tedious. on one of these occasions she ran across to the tower, at the risk of a severe cold. the door was locked. two days after she went again. the door was locked still. but this was only to be expected in such weather. yet she would have gone on to his house, had there not been one reason too many against such precipitancy. as astronomer and astronomer there was no harm in their meetings; but as woman and man she feared them. ten days passed without a sight of him; ten blurred and dreary days, during which the whole landscape dripped like a mop; the park trees swabbed the gravel from the drive, while the sky was a zinc-coloured archi-vault of immovable cloud. it seemed as if the whole science of astronomy had never been real, and that the heavenly bodies, with their motions, were as theoretical as the lines and circles of a bygone mathematical problem. she could content herself no longer with fruitless visits to the column, and when the rain had a little abated she walked to the nearest hamlet, and in a conversation with the first old woman she met contrived to lead up to the subject of swithin st. cleeve by talking about his grandmother. 'ah, poor old heart; 'tis a bad time for her, my lady!' exclaimed the dame. 'what?' 'her grandson is dying; and such a gentleman through and through!' 'what! . . . oh, it has something to do with that dreadful discovery!' 'discovery, my lady?' she left the old woman with an evasive answer, and with a breaking heart crept along the road. tears brimmed into her eyes as she walked, and by the time that she was out of sight sobs burst forth tumultuously. 'i am too fond of him!' she moaned; 'but i can't help it; and i don't care if it's wrong,--i don't care!' without further considerations as to who beheld her doings she instinctively went straight towards mrs. martin's. seeing a man coming she calmed herself sufficiently to ask him through her dropped veil how poor mr. st. cleeve was that day. but she only got the same reply: 'they say he is dying, my lady.' when swithin had parted from lady constantine, on the previous ash-wednesday, he had gone straight to the homestead and prepared his account of 'a new astronomical discovery.' it was written perhaps in too glowing a rhetoric for the true scientific tone of mind; but there was no doubt that his assertion met with a most startling aptness all the difficulties which had accompanied the received theories on the phenomena attending those changeable suns of marvellous systems so far away. it accounted for the nebulous mist that surrounds some of them at their weakest time; in short, took up a position of probability which has never yet been successfully assailed. the papers were written in triplicate, and carefully sealed up with blue wax. one copy was directed to greenwich, another to the royal society, another to a prominent astronomer. a brief statement of the essence of the discovery was also prepared for the leading daily paper. he considered these documents, embodying as they did two years of his constant thought, reading, and observation, too important to be entrusted for posting to the hands of a messenger; too important to be sent to the sub-post-office at hand. though the day was wet, dripping wet, he went on foot with them to a chief office, five miles off, and registered them. quite exhausted by the walk, after his long night-work, wet through, yet sustained by the sense of a great achievement, he called at a bookseller's for the astronomical periodicals to which he subscribed; then, resting for a short time at an inn, he plodded his way homewards, reading his papers as he went, and planning how to enjoy a repose on his laurels of a week or more. on he strolled through the rain, holding the umbrella vertically over the exposed page to keep it dry while he read. suddenly his eye was struck by an article. it was the review of a pamphlet by an american astronomer, in which the author announced a conclusive discovery with regard to variable stars. the discovery was precisely the discovery of swithin st. cleeve. another man had forestalled his fame by a period of about six weeks. then the youth found that the goddess philosophy, to whom he had vowed to dedicate his whole life, would not in return support him through a single hour of despair. in truth, the impishness of circumstance was newer to him than it would have been to a philosopher of threescore-and-ten. in a wild wish for annihilation he flung himself down on a patch of heather that lay a little removed from the road, and in this humid bed remained motionless, while time passed by unheeded. at last, from sheer misery and weariness, he fell asleep. the march rain pelted him mercilessly, the beaded moisture from the heavily charged locks of heath penetrated him through back and sides, and clotted his hair to unsightly tags and tufts. when he awoke it was dark. he thought of his grandmother, and of her possible alarm at missing him. on attempting to rise, he found that he could hardly bend his joints, and that his clothes were as heavy as lead from saturation. his teeth chattering and his knees trembling he pursued his way home, where his appearance excited great concern. he was obliged at once to retire to bed, and the next day he was delirious from the chill. it was about ten days after this unhappy occurrence that lady constantine learnt the news, as above described, and hastened along to the homestead in that state of anguish in which the heart is no longer under the control of the judgment, and self-abandonment even to error, verges on heroism. on reaching the house in welland bottom the door was opened to her by old hannah, who wore an assiduously sorrowful look; and lady constantine was shown into the large room,--so wide that the beams bent in the middle,--where she took her seat in one of a methodic range of chairs, beneath a portrait of the reverend mr. st. cleeve, her astronomer's erratic father. the eight unwatered dying plants, in the row of eight flower-pots, denoted that there was something wrong in the house. mrs. martin came downstairs fretting, her wonder at beholding lady constantine not altogether displacing the previous mood of grief. 'here's a pretty kettle of fish, my lady!' she exclaimed. lady constantine said, 'hush!' and pointed inquiringly upward. 'he is not overhead, my lady,' replied swithin's grandmother. 'his bedroom is at the back of the house.' 'how is he now?' 'he is better, just at this moment; and we are more hopeful. but he changes so.' 'may i go up? i know he would like to see me.' her presence having been made known to the sufferer, she was conducted upstairs to swithin's room. the way thither was through the large chamber he had used as a study and for the manufacture of optical instruments. there lay the large pasteboard telescope, that had been just such a failure as crusoe's large boat; there were his diagrams, maps, globes, and celestial apparatus of various sorts. the absence of the worker, through illness or death is sufficient to touch the prosiest workshop and tools with the hues of pathos, and it was with a swelling bosom that lady constantine passed through this arena of his youthful activities to the little chamber where he lay. old mrs. martin sat down by the window, and lady constantine bent over swithin. 'don't speak to me!' she whispered. 'it will weaken you; it will excite you. if you do speak, it must be very softly.' she took his hand, and one irrepressible tear fell upon it. 'nothing will excite me now, lady constantine,' he said; 'not even your goodness in coming. my last excitement was when i lost the battle. . . . do you know that my discovery has been forestalled? it is that that's killing me.' 'but you are going to recover; you are better, they say. is it so?' 'i think i am, to-day. but who can be sure?' 'the poor boy was so upset at finding that his labour had been thrown away,' said his grandmother, 'that he lay down in the rain, and chilled his life out.' 'how could you do it?' lady constantine whispered. 'o, how could you think so much of renown, and so little of me? why, for every discovery made there are ten behind that await making. to commit suicide like this, as if there were nobody in the world to care for you!' 'it was done in my haste, and i am very, very sorry for it! i beg both you and all my few friends never, never to forgive me! it would kill me with self-reproach if you were to pardon my rashness!' at this moment the doctor was announced, and mrs. martin went downstairs to receive him. lady constantine thought she would remain to hear his report, and for this purpose withdrew, and sat down in a nook of the adjoining work-room of swithin, the doctor meeting her as he passed through it into the sick chamber. he was there a torturingly long time; but at length he came out to the room she waited in, and crossed it on his way downstairs. she rose and followed him to the stairhead. 'how is he?' she anxiously asked. 'will he get over it?' the doctor, not knowing the depth of her interest in the patient, spoke with the blunt candour natural towards a comparatively indifferent inquirer. 'no, lady constantine,' he replied; 'there's a change for the worse.' and he retired down the stairs. scarcely knowing what she did lady constantine ran back to swithin's side, flung herself upon the bed and in a paroxysm of sorrow kissed him. x the placid inhabitants of the parish of welland, including warbling waggoners, lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the gardener at the great house, the steward and agent, the parson, clerk, and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of st. cleeve's death. the sexton had been going to see his brother-in-law, nine miles distant, but promptly postponed the visit for a few days, that there might be the regular professional hand present to toll the bell in a note of due fulness and solemnity; an attempt by a deputy, on a previous occasion of his absence, having degenerated into a miserable stammering clang that was a disgrace to the parish. but swithin st. cleeve did not decease, a fact of which, indeed, the habituated reader will have been well aware ever since the rain came down upon the young man in the ninth chapter, and led to his alarming illness. though, for that matter, so many maimed histories are hourly enacting themselves in this dun-coloured world as to lend almost a priority of interest to narratives concerning those 'who lay great bases for eternity which prove more short than waste or ruining.' how it arose that he did not die was in this wise; and his example affords another instance of that reflex rule of the vassal soul over the sovereign body, which, operating so wonderfully in elastic natures, and more or less in all, originally gave rise to the legend that supremacy lay on the other side. the evening of the day after the tender, despairing, farewell kiss of lady constantine, when he was a little less weak than during her visit, he lay with his face to the window. he lay alone, quiet and resigned. he had been thinking, sometimes of her and other friends, but chiefly of his lost discovery. although nearly unconscious at the time, he had yet been aware of that kiss, as the delicate flush which followed it upon his cheek would have told; but he had attached little importance to it as between woman and man. had he been dying of love instead of wet weather, perhaps the impulsive act of that handsome lady would have been seized on as a proof that his love was returned. as it was her kiss seemed but the evidence of a naturally demonstrative kindliness, felt towards him chiefly because he was believed to be leaving her for ever. the reds of sunset passed, and dusk drew on. old hannah came upstairs to pull down the blinds and as she advanced to the window he said to her, in a faint voice, 'well, hannah, what news to-day?' 'oh, nothing, sir,' hannah replied, looking out of the window with sad apathy, 'only that there's a comet, they say.' 'a what?' said the dying astronomer, starting up on his elbow. 'a comet--that's all, master swithin,' repeated hannah, in a lower voice, fearing she had done harm in some way. 'well, tell me, tell me!' cried swithin. 'is it gambart's? is it charles the fifth's, or halley's, or faye's, or whose?' 'hush!' said she, thinking st. cleeve slightly delirious again. ''tis god a'mighty's, of course. i haven't seed en myself, but they say he's getting bigger every night, and that he'll be the biggest one known for fifty years when he's full growed. there, you must not talk any more now, or i'll go away.' here was an amazing event, little noise as it had made in the happening. of all phenomena that he had longed to witness during his short astronomical career, those appertaining to comets had excited him most. that the magnificent comet of would not return again for thirty centuries had been quite a permanent regret with him. and now, when the bottomless abyss of death seemed yawning beneath his feet, one of these much-desired apparitions, as large, apparently, as any of its tribe, had chosen to show itself. 'o, if i could but live to see that comet through my equatorial!' he cried. compared with comets, variable stars, which he had hitherto made his study, were, from their remoteness, uninteresting. they were to the former as the celebrities of ujiji or unyamwesi to the celebrities of his own country. members of the solar system, these dazzling and perplexing rangers, the fascination of all astronomers, rendered themselves still more fascinating by the sinister suspicion attaching to them of being possibly the ultimate destroyers of the human race. in his physical prostration st. cleeve wept bitterly at not being hale and strong enough to welcome with proper honour the present specimen of these desirable visitors. the strenuous wish to live and behold the new phenomenon, supplanting the utter weariness of existence that he had heretofore experienced, gave him a new vitality. the crisis passed; there was a turn for the better; and after that he rapidly mended. the comet had in all probability saved his life. the limitless and complex wonders of the sky resumed their old power over his imagination; the possibilities of that unfathomable blue ocean were endless. finer feats than ever he would perform were to be achieved in its investigation. what lady constantine had said, that for one discovery made ten awaited making, was strikingly verified by the sudden appearance of this splendid marvel. the windows of st. cleeve's bedroom faced the west, and nothing would satisfy him but that his bed should be so pulled round as to give him a view of the low sky, in which the as yet minute tadpole of fire was recognizable. the mere sight of it seemed to lend him sufficient resolution to complete his own cure forthwith. his only fear now was lest, from some unexpected cause or other, the comet would vanish before he could get to the observatory on rings-hill speer. in his fervour to begin observing he directed that an old telescope, which he had used in his first celestial attempts, should be tied at one end to the bed-post, and at the other fixed near his eye as he reclined. equipped only with this rough improvisation he began to take notes. lady constantine was forgotten, till one day, suddenly, wondering if she knew of the important phenomenon, he revolved in his mind whether as a fellow- student and sincere friend of his she ought not to be sent for, and instructed in the use of the equatorial. but though the image of lady constantine, in spite of her kindness and unmistakably warm heart, had been obscured in his mind by the heavenly body, she had not so readily forgotten him. too shy to repeat her visit after so nearly betraying her secret, she yet, every day, by the most ingenious and subtle means that could be devised by a woman who feared for herself, but could not refrain from tampering with danger, ascertained the state of her young friend's health. on hearing of the turn in his condition she rejoiced on his account, and became yet more despondent on her own. if he had died she might have mused on him as her dear departed saint without much sin: but his return to life was a delight that bewildered and dismayed. one evening a little later on he was sitting at his bedroom window as usual, waiting for a sufficient decline of light to reveal the comet's form, when he beheld, crossing the field contiguous to the house, a figure which he knew to be hers. he thought she must be coming to see him on the great comet question, to discuss which with so delightful and kind a comrade was an expectation full of pleasure. hence he keenly observed her approach, till something happened that surprised him. when, at the descent of the hill, she had reached the stile that admitted to mrs. martin's garden, lady constantine stood quite still for a minute or more, her gaze bent on the ground. instead of coming on to the house she went heavily and slowly back, almost as if in pain; and then at length, quickening her pace, she was soon out of sight. she appeared in the path no more that day. xi why had lady constantine stopped and turned? a misgiving had taken sudden possession of her. her true sentiment towards st. cleeve was too recognizable by herself to be tolerated. that she had a legitimate interest in him as a young astronomer was true; that her sympathy on account of his severe illness had been natural and commendable was also true. but the superfluous feeling was what filled her with trepidation. superfluities have been defined as things you cannot do without, and this particular emotion, that came not within her rightful measure, was in danger of becoming just such a superfluity with her. in short, she felt there and then that to see st. cleeve again would be an impropriety; and by a violent effort she retreated from his precincts, as he had observed. she resolved to ennoble her conduct from that moment of her life onwards. she would exercise kind patronage towards swithin without once indulging herself with his company. inexpressibly dear to her deserted heart he was becoming, but for the future he should at least be hidden from her eyes. to speak plainly, it was growing a serious question whether, if he were not hidden from her eyes, she would not soon be plunging across the ragged boundary which divides the permissible from the forbidden. by the time that she had drawn near home the sun was going down. the heavy, many-chevroned church, now subdued by violet shadow except where its upper courses caught the western stroke of flame-colour, stood close to her grounds, as in many other parishes, though the village of which it formerly was the nucleus had become quite depopulated: its cottages had been demolished to enlarge the park, leaving the old building to stand there alone, like a standard without an army. it was friday night, and she heard the organist practising voluntaries within. the hour, the notes, the even-song of the birds, and her own previous emotions, combined to influence her devotionally. she entered, turning to the right and passing under the chancel arch, where she sat down and viewed the whole empty length, east and west. the semi-norman arches of the nave, with their multitudinous notchings, were still visible by the light from the tower window, but the lower portion of the building was in obscurity, except where the feeble glimmer from the candle of the organist spread a glow-worm radiance around. the player, who was miss tabitha lark, continued without intermission to produce her wandering sounds, unconscious of any one's presence except that of the youthful blower at her side. the rays from the organist's candle illuminated but one small fragment of the chancel outside the precincts of the instrument, and that was the portion of the eastern wall whereon the ten commandments were inscribed. the gilt letters shone sternly into lady constantine's eyes; and she, being as impressionable as a turtle-dove, watched a certain one of those commandments on the second table, till its thunder broke her spirit with blank contrition. she knelt down, and did her utmost to eradicate those impulses towards st. cleeve which were inconsistent with her position as the wife of an absent man, though not unnatural in her as his victim. she knelt till she seemed scarcely to belong to the time she lived in, which lost the magnitude that the nearness of its perspective lent it on ordinary occasions, and took its actual rank in the long line of other centuries. having once got out of herself, seen herself from afar off, she was calmer, and went on to register a magnanimous vow. she would look about for some maiden fit and likely to make st. cleeve happy; and this girl she would endow with what money she could afford, that the natural result of their apposition should do him no worldly harm. the interest of her, lady constantine's, life should be in watching the development of love between swithin and the ideal maiden. the very painfulness of the scheme to her susceptible heart made it pleasing to her conscience; and she wondered that she had not before this time thought of a stratagem which united the possibility of benefiting the astronomer with the advantage of guarding against peril to both swithin and herself. by providing for him a suitable helpmate she would preclude the dangerous awakening in him of sentiments reciprocating her own. arrived at a point of exquisite misery through this heroic intention, lady constantine's tears moistened the books upon which her forehead was bowed. and as she heard her feverish heart throb against the desk, she firmly believed the wearing impulses of that heart would put an end to her sad life, and momentarily recalled the banished image of st. cleeve to apostrophise him in thoughts that paraphrased the quaint lines of heine's _lieb' liebchen_:-- 'dear my love, press thy hand to my breast, and tell if thou tracest the knocks in that narrow cell; a carpenter dwells there; cunning is he, and slyly he's shaping a coffin for me!' lady constantine was disturbed by a break in the organist's meandering practice, and raising her head she saw a person standing by the player. it was mr. torkingham, and what he said was distinctly audible. he was inquiring for herself. 'i thought i saw lady constantine walk this way,' he rejoined to tabitha's negative. 'i am very anxious indeed to meet with her.' she went forward. 'i am here,' she said. 'don't stop playing, miss lark. what is it, mr. torkingham?' tabitha thereupon resumed her playing, and mr. torkingham joined lady constantine. 'i have some very serious intelligence to break to your ladyship,' he said. 'but--i will not interrupt you here.' (he had seen her rise from her knees to come to him.) 'i will call at the house the first moment you can receive me after reaching home.' 'no, tell me here,' she said, seating herself. he came close, and placed his hand on the poppy-head of the seat. 'i have received a communication,' he resumed haltingly, 'in which i am requested to prepare you for the contents of a letter that you will receive to-morrow morning.' 'i am quite ready.' 'the subject is briefly this, lady constantine: that you have been a widow for more than eighteen months.' 'dead!' 'yes. sir blount was attacked by dysentery and malarious fever, on the banks of the zouga in south africa, so long ago as last october twelvemonths, and it carried him off. of the three men who were with him, two succumbed to the same illness, a hundred miles further on; while the third, retracing his steps into a healthier district, remained there with a native tribe, and took no pains to make the circumstances known. it seems to be only by the mere accident of his having told some third party that we know of the matter now. this is all i can tell you at present.' she was greatly agitated for a few moments; and the table of the law opposite, which now seemed to appertain to another dispensation, glistened indistinctly upon a vision still obscured by the old tears. 'shall i conduct you home?' asked the parson. 'no thank you,' said lady constantine. 'i would rather go alone.' xii on the afternoon of the next day mr. torkingham, who occasionally dropped in to see st. cleeve, called again as usual; after duly remarking on the state of the weather, congratulating him on his sure though slow improvement, and answering his inquiries about the comet, he said, 'you have heard, i suppose, of what has happened to lady constantine?' 'no! nothing serious?' 'yes, it is serious.' the parson informed him of the death of sir blount, and of the accidents which had hindered all knowledge of the same,--accidents favoured by the estrangement of the pair and the cessation of correspondence between them for some time. his listener received the news with the concern of a friend, lady constantine's aspect in his eyes depending but little on her condition matrimonially. 'there was no attempt to bring him home when he died?' 'o no. the climate necessitates instant burial. we shall have more particulars in a day or two, doubtless.' 'poor lady constantine,--so good and so sensitive as she is! i suppose she is quite prostrated by the bad news.' 'well, she is rather serious,--not prostrated. the household is going into mourning.' 'ah, no, she would not be quite prostrated,' murmured swithin, recollecting himself. 'he was unkind to her in many ways. do you think she will go away from welland?' that the vicar could not tell. but he feared that sir blount's affairs had been in a seriously involved condition, which might necessitate many and unexpected changes. time showed that mr. torkingham's surmises were correct. during the long weeks of early summer, through which the young man still lay imprisoned, if not within his own chamber, within the limits of the house and garden, news reached him that sir blount's mismanagement and eccentric behaviour were resulting in serious consequences to lady constantine; nothing less, indeed, than her almost complete impoverishment. his personalty was swallowed up in paying his debts, and the welland estate was so heavily charged with annuities to his distant relatives that only a mere pittance was left for her. she was reducing the establishment to the narrowest compass compatible with decent gentility. the horses were sold one by one; the carriages also; the greater part of the house was shut up, and she resided in the smallest rooms. all that was allowed to remain of her former contingent of male servants were an odd man and a boy. instead of using a carriage she now drove about in a donkey-chair, the said boy walking in front to clear the way and keep the animal in motion; while she wore, so his informants reported, not an ordinary widow's cap or bonnet, but something even plainer, the black material being drawn tightly round her face, giving her features a small, demure, devout cast, very pleasing to the eye. 'now, what's the most curious thing in this, mr. san cleeve,' said sammy blore, who, in calling to inquire after swithin's health, had imparted some of the above particulars, 'is that my lady seems not to mind being a pore woman half so much as we do at seeing her so. 'tis a wonderful gift, mr. san cleeve, wonderful, to be able to guide yerself, and not let loose yer soul in blasting at such a misfortune. i should go and drink neat regular, as soon as i had swallered my breakfast, till my innerds was burnt out like a' old copper, if it had happened to me; but my lady's plan is best. though i only guess how one feels in such losses, to be sure, for i never had nothing to lose.' meanwhile the observatory was not forgotten; nor that visitant of singular shape and habits which had appeared in the sky from no one knew whence, trailing its luminous streamer, and proceeding on its way in the face of a wondering world, till it should choose to vanish as suddenly as it had come. when, about a month after the above dialogue took place, swithin was allowed to go about as usual, his first pilgrimage was to the rings-hill speer. here he studied at leisure what he had come to see. on his return to the homestead, just after sunset, he found his grandmother and hannah in a state of great concern. the former was looking out for him against the evening light, her face showing itself worn and rutted, like an old highway, by the passing of many days. her information was that in his absence lady constantine had called in her driving-chair, to inquire for him. her ladyship had wished to observe the comet through the great telescope, but had found the door locked when she applied at the tower. would he kindly leave the door unfastened to- morrow, she had asked, that she might be able to go to the column on the following evening for the same purpose? she did not require him to attend. during the next day he sent hannah with the key to welland house, not caring to leave the tower open. as evening advanced and the comet grew distinct, he doubted if lady constantine could handle the telescope alone with any pleasure or profit to herself. unable, as a devotee to science, to rest under this misgiving, he crossed the field in the furrow that he had used ever since the corn was sown, and entered the plantation. his unpractised mind never once guessed that her stipulations against his coming might have existed along with a perverse hope that he would come. on ascending he found her already there. she sat in the observing-chair: the warm light from the west, which flowed in through the opening of the dome, brightened her face, and her face only, her robes of sable lawn rendering the remainder of her figure almost invisible. 'you have come!' she said with shy pleasure. 'i did not require you. but never mind.' she extended her hand cordially to him. before speaking he looked at her with a great new interest in his eye. it was the first time that he had seen her thus, and she was altered in more than dress. a soberly-sweet expression sat on her face. it was of a rare and peculiar shade--something that he had never seen before in woman. 'have you nothing to say?' she continued. 'your footsteps were audible to me from the very bottom, and i knew they were yours. you look almost restored.' 'i am almost restored,' he replied, respectfully pressing her hand. 'a reason for living arose, and i lived.' 'what reason?' she inquired, with a rapid blush. he pointed to the rocket-like object in the western sky. 'oh, you mean the comet. well, you will never make a courtier! you know, of course, what has happened to me; that i have no longer a husband--have had none for a year and a half. have you also heard that i am now quite a poor woman? tell me what you think of it.' 'i have thought very little of it since i heard that you seemed to mind poverty but little. there is even this good in it, that i may now be able to show you some little kindness for all those you have done me, my dear lady.' 'unless for economy's sake, i go and live abroad, at dinan, versailles, or boulogne.' swithin, who had never thought of such a contingency, was earnest in his regrets; without, however, showing more than a sincere friend's disappointment. 'i did not say it was absolutely necessary,' she continued. 'i have, in fact, grown so homely and home-loving, i am so interested in the place and the people here, that, in spite of advice, i have almost determined not to let the house; but to continue the less business-like but pleasanter alternative of living humbly in a part of it, and shutting up the rest.' 'your love of astronomy is getting as strong as mine!' he said ardently. 'you could not tear yourself away from the observatory!' 'you might have supposed me capable of a little human feeling as well as scientific, in connection with the observatory.' 'dear lady constantine, by admitting that your astronomer has also a part of your interest--' 'ah, you did not find it out without my telling!' she said, with a playfulness which was scarcely playful, a new accession of pinkness being visible in her face. 'i diminish myself in your esteem by reminding you.' 'you might do anything in this world without diminishing yourself in my esteem, after the goodness you have shown. and more than that, no misrepresentation, no rumour, no damning appearance whatever would ever shake my loyalty to you.' 'but you put a very matter-of-fact construction on my motives sometimes. you see me in such a hard light that i have to drop hints in quite a manoeuvring manner to let you know i am as sympathetic as other people. i sometimes think you would rather have me die than have your equatorial stolen. confess that your admiration for me was based on my house and position in the county! now i am shorn of all that glory, such as it was, and am a widow, and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buy telescopes, and am unable, from the narrowness of my circumstances, to mix in circles that people formerly said i adorned, i fear i have lost the little hold i once had over you.' 'you are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said st. cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. seizing her hand he continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'i swear to you that i have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two blessings in this world, and that one of them is yourself!' 'and the other?' 'the pursuit of astronomy.' 'and astronomy stands first.' 'i have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. and why should you deplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady? your widowhood, if i may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though i suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. for though your pecuniary troubles have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now left free as a bird to follow your own hobbies.' 'i wonder you recognize that.' 'but perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall a prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lost to the scientific world after all.' 'if i fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. but don't go on with this, for heaven's sake! you may think what you like in silence.' 'we are forgetting the comet,' said st. cleeve. he turned, and set the instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome. while she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of labourers crossing directly towards the column. 'what do you see?' lady constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the comet. 'some of the work-folk are coming this way. i know what they are coming for,--i promised to let them look at the comet through the glass.' 'they must not come up here,' she said decisively. 'they shall await your time.' 'i have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here. if you ask why, i can tell you. they mistakenly suspect my interest to be less in astronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no showing for such a wild notion. what can you do to keep them out?' 'i'll lock the door,' said swithin. 'they will then think i am away.' he ran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily turning the key. lady constantine sighed. 'what weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself. 'that envied power of self-control, where is it? that power of concealment which a woman should have--where? to run such risks, to come here alone,--oh, if it were known! but i was always so,--always!' she jumped up, and followed him downstairs. xiii he was standing immediately inside the door at the bottom, though it was so dark she could hardly see him. the villagers were audibly talking just without. 'he's sure to come, rathe or late,' resounded up the spiral in the vocal note of hezzy biles. 'he wouldn't let such a fine show as the comet makes to-night go by without peeping at it,--not master cleeve! did ye bring along the flagon, haymoss? then we'll sit down inside his little board-house here, and wait. he'll come afore bed-time. why, his spy- glass will stretch out that there comet as long as welland lane!' 'i'd as soon miss the great peep-show that comes every year to greenhill fair as a sight of such a immortal spectacle as this!' said amos fry. '"immortal spectacle,"--where did ye get that choice mossel, haymoss?' inquired sammy blore. 'well, well, the lord save good scholars--and take just a bit o' care of them that bain't! as 'tis so dark in the hut, suppose we draw out the bench into the front here, souls?' the bench was accordingly brought forth, and in order to have a back to lean against, they placed it exactly across the door into the spiral staircase. 'now, have ye got any backy? if ye haven't, i have,' continued sammy blore. a striking of matches followed, and the speaker concluded comfortably, 'now we shall do very well.' 'and what do this comet mean?' asked haymoss. 'that some great tumult is going to happen, or that we shall die of a famine?' 'famine--no!' said nat chapman. 'that only touches such as we, and the lord only consarns himself with born gentlemen. it isn't to be supposed that a strange fiery lantern like that would be lighted up for folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week and their gristing, and a load o' thorn faggots when we can get 'em. if 'tis a token that he's getting hot about the ways of anybody in this parish, 'tis about my lady constantine's, since she is the only one of a figure worth such a hint.' 'as for her income,--that she's now lost.' 'ah, well; i don't take in all i hear.' lady constantine drew close to st. cleeve's side, and whispered, trembling, 'do you think they will wait long? or can we get out?' swithin felt the awkwardness of the situation. the men had placed the bench close to the door, which, owing to the stairs within, opened outwards; so that at the first push by the pair inside to release themselves the bench must have gone over, and sent the smokers sprawling on their faces. he whispered to her to ascend the column and wait till he came. 'and have the dead man left her nothing? hey? and have he carried his inheritance into's grave? and will his skeleton lie warm on account o't? hee-hee!' said haymoss. ''tis all swallered up,' observed hezzy biles. 'his goings-on made her miserable till 'a died, and if i were the woman i'd have my randys now. he ought to have bequeathed to her our young gent, mr. st. cleeve, as some sort of amends. i'd up and marry en, if i were she; since her downfall has brought 'em quite near together, and made him as good as she in rank, as he was afore in bone and breeding.' 'd'ye think she will?' asked sammy blore. 'or is she meaning to enter upon a virgin life for the rest of her days?' 'i don't want to be unreverent to her ladyship; but i really don't think she is meaning any such waste of a christian carcase. i say she's rather meaning to commit flat matrimony wi' somebody or other, and one young gentleman in particular.' 'but the young man himself?' 'planned, cut out, and finished for the delight of 'ooman!' 'yet he must be willing.' 'that would soon come. if they get up this tower ruling plannards together much longer, their plannards will soon rule them together, in my way o' thinking. if she've a disposition towards the knot, she can soon teach him.' 'true, true, and lawfully. what before mid ha' been a wrong desire is now a holy wish!' the scales fell from swithin st. cleeve's eyes as he heard the words of his neighbours. how suddenly the truth dawned upon him; how it bewildered him, till he scarcely knew where he was; how he recalled the full force of what he had only half apprehended at earlier times, particularly of that sweet kiss she had impressed on his lips when she supposed him dying,--these vivid realizations are difficult to tell in slow verbiage. he could remain there no longer, and with an electrified heart he retreated up the spiral. he found lady constantine half way to the top, standing by a loop-hole; and when she spoke he discovered that she was almost in tears. 'are they gone?' she asked. 'i fear they will not go yet,' he replied, with a nervous fluctuation of manner that had never before appeared in his bearing towards her. 'what shall i do?' she asked. 'i ought not to be here; nobody knows that i am out of the house. oh, this is a mistake! i must go home somehow.' 'did you hear what they were saying?' 'no,' said she. 'what is the matter? surely you are disturbed? what did they say?' 'it would be the exaggeration of frankness in me to tell you.' 'is it what a woman ought not to be made acquainted with?' 'it is, in this case. it is so new and so indescribable an idea to me--that'--he leant against the concave wall, quite tremulous with strange incipient sentiments. 'what sort of an idea?' she asked gently. 'it is--an awakening. in thinking of the heaven above, i did not perceive--the--' 'earth beneath?' 'the better heaven beneath. pray, dear lady constantine, give me your hand for a moment.' she seemed startled, and the hand was not given. 'i am so anxious to get home,' she repeated. 'i did not mean to stay here more than five minutes!' 'i fear i am much to blame for this accident,' he said. 'i ought not to have intruded here. but don't grieve! i will arrange for your escape, somehow. be good enough to follow me down.' they redescended, and, whispering to lady constantine to remain a few stairs behind, he began to rattle and unlock the door. the men precipitately removed their bench, and swithin stepped out, the light of the summer night being still enough to enable them to distinguish him. 'well, hezekiah, and samuel, and nat, how are you?' he said boldly. 'well, sir, 'tis much as before wi' me,' replied nat. 'one hour a week wi' god a'mighty and the rest with the devil, as a chap may say. and really, now yer poor father's gone, i'd as lief that that sunday hour should pass like the rest; for pa'son tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no hollerday at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's time! but we've been waiting here, mr. san cleeve, supposing ye had not come.' 'i have been staying at the top, and fastened the door not to be disturbed. now i am sorry to disappoint you, but i have another engagement this evening, so that it would be inconvenient to admit you. to-morrow evening, or any evening but this, i will show you the comet and any stars you like.' they readily agreed to come the next night, and prepared to depart. but what with the flagon, and the pipes, and the final observations, getting away was a matter of time. meanwhile a cloud, which nobody had noticed, arose from the north overhead, and large drops of rain began to fall so rapidly that the conclave entered the hut till it should be over. st. cleeve strolled off under the firs. the next moment there was a rustling through the trees at another point, and a man and woman appeared. the woman took shelter under a tree, and the man, bearing wraps and umbrellas, came forward. 'my lady's man and maid,' said sammy. 'is her ladyship here?' asked the man. 'no. i reckon her ladyship keeps more kissable company,' replied nat chapman. 'pack o' stuff!' said blore. 'not here? well, to be sure! we can't find her anywhere in the wide house! i've been sent to look for her with these overclothes and umbrella. i've suffered horse-flesh traipsing up and down, and can't find her nowhere. lord, lord, where can she be, and two months' wages owing to me!' 'why so anxious, anthony green, as i think yer name is shaped? you be not a married man?' said hezzy. ''tis what they call me, neighbours, whether or no.' 'but surely you was a bachelor chap by late, afore her ladyship got rid of the regular servants and took ye?' 'i were; but that's past!' 'and how came ye to bow yer head to 't, anthony? 'tis what you never was inclined to. you was by no means a doting man in my time.' 'well, had i been left to my own free choice, 'tis as like as not i should ha' shunned forming such kindred, being at that time a poor day man, or weekly, at my highest luck in hiring. but 'tis wearing work to hold out against the custom of the country, and the woman wanting ye to stand by her and save her from unborn shame; so, since common usage would have it, i let myself be carried away by opinion, and took her. though she's never once thanked me for covering her confusion, that's true! but, 'tis the way of the lost when safe, and i don't complain. here she is, just behind, under the tree, if you'd like to see her?--a very nice homespun woman to look at, too, for all her few weather-stains. . . . well, well, where can my lady be? and i the trusty jineral man--'tis more than my place is worth to lose her! come forward, christiana, and talk nicely to the work-folk.' while the woman was talking the rain increased so much that they all retreated further into the hut. st. cleeve, who had impatiently stood a little way off, now saw his opportunity, and, putting in his head, said, 'the rain beats in; you had better shut the door. i must ascend and close up the dome.' slamming the door upon them without ceremony he quickly went to lady constantine in the column, and telling her they could now pass the villagers unseen he gave her his arm. thus he conducted her across the front of the hut into the shadows of the firs. 'i will run to the house and harness your little carriage myself,' he said tenderly. 'i will then take you home in it.' 'no; please don't leave me alone under these dismal trees!' neither would she hear of his getting her any wraps; and, opening her little sunshade to keep the rain out of her face, she walked with him across the insulating field, after which the trees of the park afforded her a sufficient shelter to reach home without much damage. swithin was too greatly affected by what he had overheard to speak much to her on the way, and protected her as if she had been a shorn lamb. after a farewell which had more meaning than sound in it, he hastened back to rings-hill speer. the work-folk were still in the hut, and, by dint of friendly converse and a sip at the flagon, had so cheered mr. and mrs. anthony green that they neither thought nor cared what had become of lady constantine. st. cleeve's sudden sense of new relations with that sweet patroness had taken away in one half-hour his natural ingenuousness. henceforth he could act a part. 'i have made all secure at the top,' he said, putting his head into the hut. 'i am now going home. when the rain stops, lock this door and bring the key to my house.' xiv the laboured resistance which lady constantine's judgment had offered to her rebellious affection ere she learnt that she was a widow, now passed into a bashfulness that rendered her almost as unstable of mood as before. but she was one of that mettle--fervid, cordial, and spontaneous--who had not the heart to spoil a passion; and her affairs having gone to rack and ruin by no fault of her own she was left to a painfully narrowed existence which lent even something of rationality to her attachment. thus it was that her tender and unambitious soul found comfort in her reverses. as for st. cleeve, the tardiness of his awakening was the natural result of inexperience combined with devotion to a hobby. but, like a spring bud hard in bursting, the delay was compensated by after speed. at once breathlessly recognizing in this fellow-watcher of the skies a woman who loved him, in addition to the patroness and friend, he truly translated the nearly forgotten kiss she had given him in her moment of despair. lady constantine, in being eight or nine years his senior, was an object even better calculated to nourish a youth's first passion than a girl of his own age, superiority of experience and ripeness of emotion exercising the same peculiar fascination over him as over other young men in their first ventures in this kind. the alchemy which thus transmuted an abstracted astronomer into an eager lover--and, must it be said, spoilt a promising young physicist to produce a common-place inamorato--may be almost described as working its change in one short night. next morning he was so fascinated with the novel sensation that he wanted to rush off at once to lady constantine, and say, 'i love you true!' in the intensest tones of his mental condition, to register his assertion in her heart before any of those accidents which 'creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,' should occur to hinder him. but his embarrassment at standing in a new position towards her would not allow him to present himself at her door in any such hurry. he waited on, as helplessly as a girl, for a chance of encountering her. but though she had tacitly agreed to see him on any reasonable occasion, lady constantine did not put herself in his way. she even kept herself out of his way. now that for the first time he had learnt to feel a strong impatience for their meeting, her shyness for the first time led her to delay it. but given two people living in one parish, who long from the depths of their hearts to be in each other's company, what resolves of modesty, policy, pride, or apprehension will keep them for any length of time apart? one afternoon he was watching the sun from his tower, half echoing the greek astronomer's wish that he might be set close to that luminary for the wonder of beholding it in all its glory, under the slight penalty of being consumed the next instant. he glanced over the high-road between the field and the park (which sublunary features now too often distracted his attention from his telescope), and saw her passing along that way. she was seated in the donkey-carriage that had now taken the place of her landau, the white animal looking no larger than a cat at that distance. the buttoned boy, who represented both coachman and footman, walked alongside the animal's head at a solemn pace; the dog stalked at the distance of a yard behind the vehicle, without indulging in a single gambol; and the whole turn-out resembled in dignity a dwarfed state procession. here was an opportunity but for two obstructions: the boy, who might be curious; and the dog, who might bark and attract the attention of any labourers or servants near. yet the risk was to be run, and, knowing that she would soon turn up a certain shady lane at right angles to the road she had followed, he ran hastily down the staircase, crossed the barley (which now covered the field) by the path not more than a foot wide that he had trodden for himself, and got into the lane at the other end. by slowly walking along in the direction of the turnpike-road he soon had the satisfaction of seeing her coming. to his surprise he also had the satisfaction of perceiving that neither boy nor dog was in her company. they both blushed as they approached, she from sex, he from inexperience. one thing she seemed to see in a moment, that in the interval of her absence st. cleeve had become a man; and as he greeted her with this new and maturer light in his eyes she could not hide her embarrassment, or meet their fire. 'i have just sent my page across to the column with your book on cometary nuclei,' she said softly; 'that you might not have to come to the house for it. i did not know i should meet you here.' 'didn't you wish me to come to the house for it?' 'i did not, frankly. you know why, do you not?' 'yes, i know. well, my longing is at rest. i have met you again. but are you unwell, that you drive out in this chair?' 'no; i walked out this morning, and am a little tired.' 'i have been looking for you night and day. why do you turn your face aside? you used not to be so.' her hand rested on the side of the chair, and he took it. 'do you know that since we last met, i have been thinking of you--daring to think of you--as i never thought of you before?' 'yes, i know it.' 'how did you know?' 'i saw it in your face when you came up.' 'well, i suppose i ought not to think of you so. and yet, had i not learned to, i should never fully have felt how gentle and sweet you are. only think of my loss if i had lived and died without seeing more in you than in astronomy! but i shall never leave off doing so now. when you talk i shall love your understanding; when you are silent i shall love your face. but how shall i know that you care to be so much to me?' her manner was disturbed as she recognized the impending self-surrender, which she knew not how to resist, and was not altogether at ease in welcoming. 'o, lady constantine,' he continued, bending over her, 'give me some proof more than mere seeming and inference, which are all i have at present, that you don't think this i tell you of presumption in me! i have been unable to do anything since i last saw you for pondering uncertainly on this. some proof, or little sign, that we are one in heart!' a blush settled again on her face; and half in effort, half in spontaneity, she put her finger on her cheek. he almost devotionally kissed the spot. 'does that suffice?' she asked, scarcely giving her words voice. 'yes; i am convinced.' 'then that must be the end. let me drive on; the boy will be back again soon.' she spoke hastily, and looked askance to hide the heat of her cheek. 'no; the tower door is open, and he will go to the top, and waste his time in looking through the telescope.' 'then you should rush back, for he will do some damage.' 'no; he may do what he likes, tinker and spoil the instrument, destroy my papers,--anything, so that he will stay there and leave us alone.' she glanced up with a species of pained pleasure. 'you never used to feel like that!' she said, and there was keen self- reproach in her voice. 'you were once so devoted to your science that the thought of an intruder into your temple would have driven you wild. now you don't care; and who is to blame? ah, not you, not you!' the animal ambled on with her, and he, leaning on the side of the little vehicle, kept her company. 'well, don't let us think of that,' he said. 'i offer myself and all my energies, frankly and entirely, to you, my dear, dear lady, whose i shall be always! but my words in telling you this will only injure my meaning instead of emphasize it. in expressing, even to myself, my thoughts of you, i find that i fall into phrases which, as a critic, i should hitherto have heartily despised for their commonness. what's the use of saying, for instance, as i have just said, that i give myself entirely to you, and shall be yours always,--that you have my devotion, my highest homage? those words have been used so frequently in a flippant manner that honest use of them is not distinguishable from the unreal.' he turned to her, and added, smiling, 'your eyes are to be my stars for the future.' 'yes, i know it,--i know it, and all you would say! i dreaded even while i hoped for this, my dear young friend,' she replied, her eyes being full of tears. 'i am injuring you; who knows that i am not ruining your future,--i who ought to know better? nothing can come of this, nothing must,--and i am only wasting your time. why have i drawn you off from a grand celestial study to study poor lonely me? say you will never despise me, when you get older, for this episode in our lives. but you will,--i know you will! all men do, when they have been attracted in their unsuspecting youth, as i have attracted you. i ought to have kept my resolve.' 'what was that?' 'to bear anything rather than draw you from your high purpose; to be like the noble citizen of old greece, who, attending a sacrifice, let himself be burnt to the bone by a coal that jumped into his sleeve rather than disturb the sacred ceremony.' 'but can i not study and love both?' 'i hope so,--i earnestly hope so. but you'll be the first if you do, and i am the responsible one if you do not.' 'you speak as if i were quite a child, and you immensely older. why, how old do you think i am? i am twenty.' 'you seem younger. well, that's so much the better. twenty sounds strong and firm. how old do you think i am?' 'i have never thought of considering.' he innocently turned to scrutinize her face. she winced a little. but the instinct was premature. time had taken no liberties with her features as yet; nor had trouble very roughly handled her. 'i will tell you,' she replied, speaking almost with physical pain, yet as if determination should carry her through. 'i am eight-and-twenty--nearly--i mean a little more, a few months more. am i not a fearful deal older than you?' 'at first it seems a great deal,' he answered, musing. 'but it doesn't seem much when one gets used to it.' 'nonsense!' she exclaimed. 'it _is_ a good deal.' 'very well, then, sweetest lady constantine, let it be,' he said gently. 'you should not let it be! a polite man would have flatly contradicted me. . . . o i am ashamed of this!' she added a moment after, with a subdued, sad look upon the ground. 'i am speaking by the card of the outer world, which i have left behind utterly; no such lip service is known in your sphere. i care nothing for those things, really; but that which is called the eve in us will out sometimes. well, we will forget that now, as we must, at no very distant date, forget all the rest of this.' he walked beside her thoughtfully awhile, with his eyes also bent on the road. 'why must we forget it all?' he inquired. 'it is only an interlude.' 'an interlude! it is no interlude to me. o how can you talk so lightly of this, lady constantine? and yet, if i were to go away from here, i might, perhaps, soon reduce it to an interlude! yes,' he resumed impulsively, 'i will go away. love dies, and it is just as well to strangle it in its birth; it can only die once! i'll go.' 'no, no!' she said, looking up apprehensively. 'i misled you. it is no interlude to me,--it is tragical. i only meant that from a worldly point of view it is an interlude, which we should try to forget. but the world is not all. you will not go away?' but he continued drearily, 'yes, yes, i see it all; you have enlightened me. it will be hurting your prospects even more than mine, if i stay. now sir blount is dead, you are free again,--may marry where you will, but for this fancy of ours. i'll leave welland before harm comes of my staying.' 'don't decide to do a thing so rash!' she begged, seizing his hand, and looking miserable at the effect of her words. 'i shall have nobody left in the world to care for! and now i have given you the great telescope, and lent you the column, it would be ungrateful to go away! i was wrong; believe me that i did not mean that it was a mere interlude to _me_. o if you only knew how very, very far it is from that! it is my doubt of the result to you that makes me speak so slightingly.' they were now approaching cross-roads, and casually looking up they beheld, thirty or forty yards beyond the crossing, mr. torkingham, who was leaning over a gate, his back being towards them. as yet he had not recognized their approach. the master-passion had already supplanted st. cleeve's natural ingenuousness by subtlety. 'would it be well for us to meet mr. torkingham just now?' he began. 'certainly not,' she said hastily, and pulling the rein she instantly drove down the right-hand road. 'i cannot meet anybody!' she murmured. 'would it not be better that you leave me now?--not for my pleasure, but that there may arise no distressing tales about us before we know--how to act in this--this'--(she smiled faintly at him) 'heartaching extremity!' they were passing under a huge oak-tree, whose limbs, irregular with shoulders, knuckles, and elbows, stretched horizontally over the lane in a manner recalling absalom's death. a slight rustling was perceptible amid the leafage as they drew out from beneath it, and turning up his eyes swithin saw that very buttoned page whose advent they had dreaded, looking down with interest at them from a perch not much higher than a yard above their heads. he had a bunch of oak-apples in one hand, plainly the object of his climb, and was furtively watching lady constantine with the hope that she might not see him. but that she had already done, though she did not reveal it, and, fearing that the latter words of their conversation had been overheard, they spoke not till they had passed the next turning. she stretched out her hand to his. 'this must not go on,' she said imploringly. 'my anxiety as to what may be said of such methods of meeting makes me too unhappy. see what has happened!' she could not help smiling. 'out of the frying-pan into the fire! after meanly turning to avoid the parson we have rushed into a worse publicity. it is too humiliating to have to avoid people, and lowers both you and me. the only remedy is not to meet.' 'very well,' said swithin, with a sigh. 'so it shall be.' and with smiles that might more truly have been tears they parted there and then. xv the summer passed away, and autumn, with its infinite suite of tints, came creeping on. darker grew the evenings, tearfuller the moonlights, and heavier the dews. meanwhile the comet had waxed to its largest dimensions,--so large that not only the nucleus but a portion of the tail had been visible in broad day. it was now on the wane, though every night the equatorial still afforded an opportunity of observing the singular object which would soon disappear altogether from the heavens for perhaps thousands of years. but the astronomer of the rings-hill speer was no longer a match for his celestial materials. scientifically he had become but a dim vapour of himself; the lover had come into him like an armed man, and cast out the student, and his intellectual situation was growing a life-and-death matter. the resolve of the pair had been so far kept: they had not seen each other in private for three months. but on one day in october he ventured to write a note to her:-- 'i can do nothing! i have ceased to study, ceased to observe. the equatorial is useless to me. this affection i have for you absorbs my life, and outweighs my intentions. the power to labour in this grandest of fields has left me. i struggle against the weakness till i think of the cause, and then i bless her. but the very desperation of my circumstances has suggested a remedy; and this i would inform you of at once. 'can you come to me, since i must not come to you? i will wait to- morrow night at the edge of the plantation by which you would enter to the column. i will not detain you; my plan can be told in ten words.' the night after posting this missive to her he waited at the spot mentioned. it was a melancholy evening for coming abroad. a blusterous wind had risen during the day, and still continued to increase. yet he stood watchful in the darkness, and was ultimately rewarded by discerning a shady muffled shape that embodied itself from the field, accompanied by the scratching of silk over stubble. there was no longer any disguise as to the nature of their meeting. it was a lover's assignation, pure and simple; and boldly realizing it as such he clasped her in his arms. 'i cannot bear this any longer!' he exclaimed. 'three months since i saw you alone! only a glimpse of you in church, or a bow from the distance, in all that time! what a fearful struggle this keeping apart has been!' 'yet i would have had strength to persist, since it seemed best,' she murmured when she could speak, 'had not your words on your condition so alarmed and saddened me. this inability of yours to work, or study, or observe,--it is terrible! so terrible a sting is it to my conscience that your hint about a remedy has brought me instantly.' 'yet i don't altogether mind it, since it is you, my dear, who have displaced the work; and yet the loss of time nearly distracts me, when i have neither the power to work nor the delight of your company.' 'but your remedy! o, i cannot help guessing it! yes; you are going away!' 'let us ascend the column; we can speak more at ease there. then i will explain all. i would not ask you to climb so high but the hut is not yet furnished.' he entered the cabin at the foot, and having lighted a small lantern, conducted her up the hollow staircase to the top, where he closed the slides of the dome to keep out the wind, and placed the observing-chair for her. 'i can stay only five minutes,' she said, without sitting down. 'you said it was important that you should see me, and i have come. i assure you it is at a great risk. if i am seen here at this time i am ruined for ever. but what would i not do for you? o swithin, your remedy--is it to go away? there is no other; and yet i dread that like death!' 'i can tell you in a moment, but i must begin at the beginning. all this ruinous idleness and distraction is caused by the misery of our not being able to meet with freedom. the fear that something may snatch you from me keeps me in a state of perpetual apprehension.' 'it is too true also of me! i dread that some accident may happen, and waste my days in meeting the trouble half-way.' 'so our lives go on, and our labours stand still. now for the remedy. dear lady constantine, allow me to marry you.' she started, and the wind without shook the building, sending up a yet intenser moan from the firs. 'i mean, marry you quite privately. let it make no difference whatever to our outward lives for years, for i know that in my present position you could not possibly acknowledge me as husband publicly. but by marrying at once we secure the certainty that we cannot be divided by accident, coaxing, or artifice; and, at ease on that point, i shall embrace my studies with the old vigour, and you yours.' lady constantine was so agitated at the unexpected boldness of such a proposal from one hitherto so boyish and deferential that she sank into the observing-chair, her intention to remain for only a few minutes being quite forgotten. she covered her face with her hands. 'no, no, i dare not!' she whispered. 'but is there a single thing else left to do?' he pleaded, kneeling down beside her, less in supplication than in abandonment. 'what else can we do?' 'wait till you are famous.' 'but i cannot be famous unless i strive, and this distracting condition prevents all striving!' 'could you not strive on if i--gave you a promise, a solemn promise, to be yours when your name is fairly well known?' st. cleeve breathed heavily. 'it will be a long, weary time,' he said. 'and even with your promise i shall work but half-heartedly. every hour of study will be interrupted with "suppose this or this happens;" "suppose somebody persuades her to break her promise;" worse still, "suppose some rival maligns me, and so seduces her away." no, lady constantine, dearest, best as you are, that element of distraction would still remain, and where that is, no sustained energy is possible. many erroneous things have been written and said by the sages, but never did they float a greater fallacy than that love serves as a stimulus to win the loved one by patient toil.' 'i cannot argue with you,' she said weakly. 'my only possible other chance would lie in going away,' he resumed after a moment's reflection, with his eyes on the lantern flame, which waved and smoked in the currents of air that leaked into the dome from the fierce wind-stream without. 'if i might take away the equatorial, supposing it possible that i could find some suitable place for observing in the southern hemisphere,--say, at the cape,--i _might_ be able to apply myself to serious work again, after the lapse of a little time. the southern constellations offer a less exhausted field for investigation. i wonder if i might!' 'you mean,' she answered uneasily, 'that you might apply yourself to work when your recollection of me began to fade, and my life to become a matter of indifference to you? . . yes, go! no,--i cannot bear it! the remedy is worse than the disease. i cannot let you go away!' 'then how can you refuse the only condition on which i can stay, without ruin to my purpose and scandal to your name? dearest, agree to my proposal, as you love both me and yourself!' he waited, while the fir-trees rubbed and prodded the base of the tower, and the wind roared around and shook it; but she could not find words to reply. 'would to god,' he burst out, 'that i might perish here, like winstanley in his lighthouse! then the difficulty would be solved for you.' 'you are so wrong, so very wrong, in saying so!' she exclaimed passionately. 'you may doubt my wisdom, pity my short-sightedness; but there is one thing you do know,--that i love you dearly!' 'you do,--i know it!' he said, softened in a moment. 'but it seems such a simple remedy for the difficulty that i cannot see how you can mind adopting it, if you care so much for me as i do for you.' 'should we live . . . just as we are, exactly, . . . supposing i agreed?' she faintly inquired. 'yes, that is my idea.' 'quite privately, you say. how could--the marriage be quite private?' 'i would go away to london and get a license. then you could come to me, and return again immediately after the ceremony. i could return at leisure and not a soul in the world would know what had taken place. think, dearest, with what a free conscience you could then assist me in my efforts to plumb these deeps above us! any feeling that you may now have against clandestine meetings as such would then be removed, and our hearts would be at rest.' there was a certain scientific practicability even in his love-making, and it here came out excellently. but she sat on with suspended breath, her heart wildly beating, while he waited in open-mouthed expectation. each was swayed by the emotion within them, much as the candle-flame was swayed by the tempest without. it was the most critical evening of their lives. the pale rays of the little lantern fell upon her beautiful face, snugly and neatly bound in by her black bonnet; but not a beam of the lantern leaked out into the night to suggest to any watchful eye that human life at its highest excitement was beating within the dark and isolated tower; for the dome had no windows, and every shutter that afforded an opening for the telescope was hermetically closed. predilections and misgivings so equally strove within her still youthful breast that she could not utter a word; her intention wheeled this way and that like the balance of a watch. his unexpected proposition had brought about the smartest encounter of inclination with prudence, of impulse with reserve, that she had ever known. of all the reasons that she had expected him to give for his urgent request to see her this evening, an offer of marriage was probably the last. whether or not she had ever amused herself with hypothetical fancies on such a subject,--and it was only natural that she should vaguely have done so,--the courage in her _protégé_ coolly to advance it, without a hint from herself that such a proposal would be tolerated, showed her that there was more in his character than she had reckoned on: and the discovery almost frightened her. the humour, attitude, and tenor of her attachment had been of quite an unpremeditated quality, unsuggestive of any such audacious solution to their distresses as this. 'i repeat my question, dearest,' he said, after her long pause. 'shall it be done? or shall i exile myself, and study as best i can, in some distant country, out of sight and sound?' 'are those the only alternatives? yes, yes; i suppose they are!' she waited yet another moment, bent over his kneeling figure, and kissed his forehead. 'yes; it shall be done,' she whispered. 'i will marry you.' 'my angel, i am content!' he drew her yielding form to his heart, and her head sank upon his shoulder, as he pressed his two lips continuously upon hers. to such had the study of celestial physics brought them in the space of eight months, one week, and a few odd days. 'i am weaker than you,--far the weaker,' she went on, her tears falling. 'rather than lose you out of my sight i will marry without stipulation or condition. but--i put it to your kindness--grant me one little request.' he instantly assented. 'it is that, in consideration of my peculiar position in this county,--o, you can't understand it!--you will not put an end to the absolute secrecy of our relationship without my full assent. also, that you will never come to welland house without first discussing with me the advisability of the visit, accepting my opinion on the point. there, see how a timid woman tries to fence herself in!' 'my dear lady-love, neither of those two high-handed courses should i have taken, even had you not stipulated against them. the very essence of our marriage plan is that those two conditions are kept. i see as well as you do, even more than you do, how important it is that for the present,--ay, for a long time hence--i should still be but the curate's lonely son, unattached to anybody or anything, with no object of interest but his science; and you the recluse lady of the manor, to whom he is only an acquaintance.' 'see what deceits love sows in honest minds!' 'it would be a humiliation to you at present that i could not bear if a marriage between us were made public; an inconvenience without any compensating advantage.' 'i am so glad you assume it without my setting it before you! now i know you are not only good and true, but politic and trustworthy.' 'well, then, here is our covenant. my lady swears to marry me; i, in return for such great courtesy, swear never to compromise her by intruding at welland house, and to keep the marriage concealed till i have won a position worthy of her.' 'or till i request it to be made known,' she added, possibly foreseeing a contingency which had not occurred to him. 'or till you request it,' he repeated. 'it is agreed,' murmured lady constantine, xvi after this there only remained to be settled between them the practical details of the project. these were that he should leave home in a couple of days, and take lodgings either in the distant city of bath or in a convenient suburb of london, till a sufficient time should have elapsed to satisfy legal requirements; that on a fine morning at the end of this time she should hie away to the same place, and be met at the station by st. cleeve, armed with the marriage license; whence they should at once proceed to the church fixed upon for the ceremony; returning home independently in the course of the next two or three days. while these tactics were under discussion the two-and-thirty winds of heaven continued, as before, to beat about the tower, though their onsets appeared to be somewhat lessening in force. himself now calmed and satisfied, swithin, as is the wont of humanity, took serener views of nature's crushing mechanics without, and said, 'the wind doesn't seem disposed to put the tragic period to our hopes and fears that i spoke of in my momentary despair.' 'the disposition of the wind is as vicious as ever,' she answered, looking into his face with pausing thoughts on, perhaps, other subjects than that discussed. 'it is your mood of viewing it that has changed. "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."' and, as if flatly to stultify swithin's assumption, a circular hurricane, exceeding in violence any that had preceded it, seized hold upon rings- hill speer at that moment with the determination of a conscious agent. the first sensation of a resulting catastrophe was conveyed to their intelligence by the flapping of the candle-flame against the lantern-glass; then the wind, which hitherto they had heard rather than felt, rubbed past them like a fugitive. swithin beheld around and above him, in place of the concavity of the dome, the open heaven, with its racing clouds, remote horizon, and intermittent gleam of stars. the dome that had covered the tower had been whirled off bodily; and they heard it descend crashing upon the trees. finding himself untouched swithin stretched out his arms towards lady constantine, whose apparel had been seized by the spinning air, nearly lifting her off her legs. she, too, was as yet unharmed. each held the other for a moment, when, fearing that something further would happen, they took shelter in the staircase. 'dearest, what an escape!' he said, still holding her. 'what is the accident?' she asked. 'has the whole top really gone?' 'the dome has been blown off the roof.' as soon as it was practicable he relit the extinguished lantern, and they emerged again upon the leads, where the extent of the disaster became at once apparent. saving the absence of the enclosing hemisphere all remained the same. the dome, being constructed of wood, was light by comparison with the rest of the structure, and the wheels which allowed it horizontal, or, as swithin expressed it, azimuth motion, denied it a firm hold upon the walls; so that it had been lifted off them like a cover from a pot. the equatorial stood in the midst as it had stood before. having executed its grotesque purpose the wind sank to comparative mildness. swithin took advantage of this lull by covering up the instruments with cloths, after which the betrothed couple prepared to go downstairs. but the events of the night had not yet fully disclosed themselves. at this moment there was a sound of footsteps and a knocking at the door below. 'it can't be for me!' said lady constantine. 'i retired to my room before leaving the house, and told them on no account to disturb me.' she remained at the top while swithin went down the spiral. in the gloom he beheld hannah. 'o master swithin, can ye come home! the wind have blowed down the chimley that don't smoke, and the pinning-end with it; and the old ancient house, that have been in your family so long as the memory of man, is naked to the world! it is a mercy that your grammer were not killed, sitting by the hearth, poor old soul, and soon to walk wi' god,--for 'a 's getting wambling on her pins, mr. swithin, as aged folks do. as i say, 'a was all but murdered by the elements, and doing no more harm than the babes in the wood, nor speaking one harmful word. and the fire and smoke were blowed all across house like a chapter in revelation; and your poor reverent father's features scorched to flakes, looking like the vilest ruffian, and the gilt frame spoiled! every flitch, every eye- piece, and every chine is buried under the walling; and i fed them pigs with my own hands, master swithin, little thinking they would come to this end. do ye collect yourself, mr. swithin, and come at once!' 'i will,--i will. i'll follow you in a moment. do you hasten back again and assist.' when hannah had departed the young man ran up to lady constantine, to whom he explained the accident. after sympathizing with old mrs. martin lady constantine added, 'i thought something would occur to mar our scheme!' 'i am not quite sure of that yet.' on a short consideration with him, she agreed to wait at the top of the tower till he could come back and inform her if the accident were really so serious as to interfere with his plan for departure. he then left her, and there she sat in the dark, alone, looking over the parapet, and straining her eyes in the direction of the homestead. at first all was obscurity; but when he had been gone about ten minutes lights began to move to and fro in the hollow where the house stood, and shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which retained some violence yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on the strings of a lyre. but not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were. under any other circumstances lady constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus sitting aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet, and palaeolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the recent passionate decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the ordinary tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain. the apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her intentions. after what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps in the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a few instants st. cleeve again stood beside her. the case of the homestead was serious. hannah's account had not been exaggerated in substance: the gable end of the house was open to the garden; the joists, left without support, had dropped, and with them the upper floor. by the help of some labourers, who lived near, and lady constantine's man anthony, who was passing at the time, the homestead had been propped up, and protected for the night by some rickcloths; but swithin felt that it would be selfish in the highest degree to leave two lonely old women to themselves at this juncture. 'in short,' he concluded despondently, 'i cannot go to stay in bath or london just now; perhaps not for another fortnight!' 'never mind,' she said. 'a fortnight hence will do as well.' 'and i have these for you,' he continued. 'your man green was passing my grandmother's on his way back from warborne, where he had been, he says, for any letters that had come for you by the evening post. as he stayed to assist the other men i told him i would go on to your house with the letters he had brought. of course i did not tell him i should see you here.' 'thank you. of course not. now i'll return at once.' in descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one of the letters, and she opened and glanced over it by the lantern light. she seemed startled, and, musing, said, 'the postponement of our--intention must be, i fear, for a long time. i find that after the end of this month i cannot leave home safely, even for a day.' perceiving that he was about to ask why, she added, 'i will not trouble you with the reason now; it would only harass you. it is only a family business, and cannot be helped.' 'then we cannot be married till--god knows when!' said swithin blankly. 'i cannot leave home till after the next week or two; you cannot leave home unless within that time. so what are we to do?' 'i do not know.' 'my dear, dear one, don't let us be beaten like this! don't let a well- considered plan be overthrown by a mere accident! here's a remedy. do _you_ go and stay the requisite time in the parish we are to be married in, instead of me. when my grandmother is again well housed i can come to you, instead of you to me, as we first said. then it can be done within the time.' reluctantly, shyly, and yet with a certain gladness of heart, she gave way to his proposal that they should change places in the programme. there was much that she did not like in it, she said. it seemed to her as if she were taking the initiative by going and attending to the preliminaries. it was the man's part to do that, in her opinion, and was usually undertaken by him. 'but,' argued swithin, 'there are cases in which the woman does give the notices, and so on; that is to say, when the man is absolutely hindered from doing so; and ours is such a case. the seeming is nothing; i know the truth, and what does it matter? you do not refuse--retract your word to be my wife, because, to avoid a sickening delay, the formalities require you to attend to them in place of me?' she did not refuse, she said. in short she agreed to his entreaty. they had, in truth, gone so far in their dream of union that there was no drawing back now. whichever of them was forced by circumstances to be the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing must be done. their intention to become husband and wife, at first halting and timorous, had accumulated momentum with the lapse of hours, till it now bore down every obstacle in its course. 'since you beg me to,--since there is no alternative between my going and a long postponement,' she said, as they stood in the dark porch of welland house before parting,--'since i am to go first, and seem to be the pioneer in this adventure, promise me, swithin, promise your viviette, that in years to come, when perhaps you may not love me so warmly as you do now--' 'that will never be.' 'well, hoping it will not, but supposing it should, promise me that you will never reproach me as the one who took the initiative when it should have been yourself, forgetting that it was at your request; promise that you will never say i showed immodest readiness to do so, or anything which may imply your obliviousness of the fact that i act in obedience to necessity and your earnest prayer.' need it be said that he promised never to reproach her with that or any other thing as long as they should live? the few details of the reversed arrangement were soon settled, bath being the place finally decided on. then, with a warm audacity which events had encouraged, he pressed her to his breast, and she silently entered the house. he returned to the homestead, there to attend to the unexpected duties of repairing the havoc wrought by the gale. * * * * * that night, in the solitude of her chamber, lady constantine reopened and read the subjoined letter--one of those handed to her by st. cleeve:-- "--- street, piccadilly, october , --. 'dear viviette,--you will be surprised to learn that i am in england, and that i am again out of harness--unless you should have seen the latter in the papers. rio janeiro may do for monkeys, but it won't do for me. having resigned the appointment i have returned here, as a preliminary step to finding another vent for my energies; in other words, another milch cow for my sustenance. i knew nothing whatever of your husband's death till two days ago; so that any letter from you on the subject, at the time it became known, must have miscarried. hypocrisy at such a moment is worse than useless, and i therefore do not condole with you, particularly as the event, though new to a banished man like me, occurred so long since. you are better without him, viviette, and are now just the limb for doing something for yourself, notwithstanding the threadbare state in which you seem to have been cast upon the world. you are still young, and, as i imagine (unless you have vastly altered since i beheld you), good-looking: therefore make up your mind to retrieve your position by a match with one of the local celebrities; and you would do well to begin drawing neighbouring covers at once. a genial squire, with more weight than wit, more realty than weight, and more personalty than realty (considering the circumstances), would be best for you. you might make a position for us both by some such alliance; for, to tell the truth, i have had but in-and-out luck so far. i shall be with you in little more than a fortnight, when we will talk over the matter seriously, if you don't object.--your affectionate brother, louis.' it was this allusion to her brother's coming visit which had caught her eye in the tower staircase, and led to a modification in the wedding arrangement. having read the letter through once lady constantine flung it aside with an impatient little stamp that shook the decaying old floor and casement. its contents produced perturbation, misgiving, but not retreat. the deep glow of enchantment shed by the idea of a private union with her beautiful young lover killed the pale light of cold reasoning from an indifferently good relative. 'oh, no,' she murmured, as she sat, covering her face with her hand. 'not for wealth untold could i give him up now!' no argument, short of apollo in person from the clouds, would have influenced her. she made her preparations for departure as if nothing had intervened. xvii in her days of prosperity lady constantine had often gone to the city of bath, either frivolously, for shopping purposes, or musico-religiously, to attend choir festivals in the abbey; so there was nothing surprising in her reverting to an old practice. that the journey might appear to be of a somewhat similar nature she took with her the servant who had been accustomed to accompany her on former occasions, though the woman, having now left her service, and settled in the village as the wife of anthony green, with a young child on her hands, could with some difficulty leave home. lady constantine overcame the anxious mother's scruples by providing that young green should be well cared for; and knowing that she could count upon this woman's fidelity, if upon anybody's, in case of an accident (for it was chiefly lady constantine's exertions that had made an honest wife of mrs. green), she departed for a fortnight's absence. the next day found mistress and maid settled in lodgings in an old plum- coloured brick street, which a hundred years ago could boast of rank and fashion among its residents, though now the broad fan-light over each broad door admitted the sun to the halls of a lodging-house keeper only. the lamp-posts were still those that had done duty with oil lights; and rheumatic old coachmen and postilions, that once had driven and ridden gloriously from london to land's end, ornamented with their bent persons and bow legs the pavement in front of the chief inn, in the sorry hope of earning sixpence to keep body and soul together. 'we are kept well informed on the time o' day, my lady,' said mrs. green, as she pulled down the blinds in lady constantine's room on the evening of their arrival. 'there's a church exactly at the back of us, and i hear every hour strike.' lady constantine said she had noticed that there was a church quite near. 'well, it is better to have that at the back than other folks' winders. and if your ladyship wants to go there it won't be far to walk.' 'that's what occurred to me,' said lady constantine, '_if_ i should want to go.' during the ensuing days she felt to the utmost the tediousness of waiting merely that time might pass. not a soul knew her there, and she knew not a soul, a circumstance which, while it added to her sense of secrecy, intensified her solitude. occasionally she went to a shop, with green as her companion. though there were purchases to be made, they were by no means of a pressing nature, and but poorly filled up the vacancies of those strange, speculative days,--days surrounded by a shade of fear, yet poetized by sweet expectation. on the thirteenth day she told green that she was going to take a walk, and leaving the house she passed by the obscurest streets to the abbey. after wandering about beneath the aisles till her courage was screwed to its highest, she went out at the other side, and, looking timidly round to see if anybody followed, walked on till she came to a certain door, which she reached just at the moment when her heart began to sink to its very lowest, rendering all the screwing up in vain. whether it was because the month was october, or from any other reason, the deserted aspect of the quarter in general sat especially on this building. moreover the pavement was up, and heaps of stone and gravel obstructed the footway. nobody was coming, nobody was going, in that thoroughfare; she appeared to be the single one of the human race bent upon marriage business, which seemed to have been unanimously abandoned by all the rest of the world as proven folly. but she thought of swithin, his blonde hair, ardent eyes, and eloquent lips, and was carried onward by the very reflection. entering the surrogate's room lady constantine managed, at the last juncture, to state her errand in tones so collected as to startle even herself to which her listener replied also as if the whole thing were the most natural in the world. when it came to the affirmation that she had lived fifteen days in the parish, she said with dismay-- 'o no! i thought the fifteen days meant the interval of residence before the marriage takes place. i have lived here only thirteen days and a half. now i must come again!' 'ah--well--i think you need not be so particular,' said the surrogate. 'as a matter of fact, though the letter of the law requires fifteen days' residence, many people make five sufficient. the provision is inserted, as you doubtless are aware, to hinder runaway marriages as much as possible, and secret unions, and other such objectionable practices. you need not come again.' that evening lady constantine wrote to swithin st. cleeve the last letter of the fortnight:-- 'my dearest,--do come to me as soon as you can. by a sort of favouring blunder i have been able to shorten the time of waiting by a day. come at once, for i am almost broken down with apprehension. it seems rather rash at moments, all this, and i wish you were here to reassure me. i did not know i should feel so alarmed. i am frightened at every footstep, and dread lest anybody who knows me should accost me, and find out why i am here. i sometimes wonder how i could have agreed to come and enact your part, but i did not realize how trying it would be. you ought not to have asked me, swithin; upon my word, it was too cruel of you, and i will punish you for it when you come! but i won't upbraid. i hope the homestead is repaired that has cost me all this sacrifice of modesty. if it were anybody in the world but _you_ in question i would rush home, without waiting here for the end of it,--i really think i would! but, dearest, no. i must show my strength now, or let it be for ever hid. the barriers of ceremony are broken down between us, and it is for the best that i am here.' and yet, at no point of this trying prelude need lady constantine have feared for her strength. deeds in this connexion demand the particular kind of courage that such perfervid women are endowed with, the courage of their emotions, in which young men are often lamentably deficient. her fear was, in truth, the fear of being discovered in an unwonted position; not of the act itself. and though her letter was in its way a true exposition of her feeling, had it been necessary to go through the whole legal process over again she would have been found equal to the emergency. it had been for some days a point of anxiety with her what to do with green during the morning of the wedding. chance unexpectedly helped her in this difficulty. the day before the purchase of the license green came to lady constantine with a letter in her hand from her husband anthony, her face as long as a fiddle. 'i hope there's nothing the matter?' said lady constantine. 'the child's took bad, my lady!' said mrs. green, with suspended floods of water in her eyes. 'i love the child better than i shall love all them that's coming put together; for he's been a good boy to his mother ever since twelve weeks afore he was born! 'twas he, a tender deary, that made anthony marry me, and thereby turned hisself from a little calamity to a little blessing! for, as you know, the man were a backward man in the church part o' matrimony, my lady; though he'll do anything when he's forced a bit by his manly feelings. and now to lose the child--hoo-hoo-hoo! what shall i doo!' 'well, you want to go home at once, i suppose?' mrs. green explained, between her sobs, that such was her desire; and though this was a day or two sooner than her mistress had wished to be left alone she consented to green's departure. so during the afternoon her woman went off, with directions to prepare for lady constantine's return in two or three days. but as the exact day of her return was uncertain no carriage was to be sent to the station to meet her, her intention being to hire one from the hotel. lady constantine was now left in utter solitude to await her lover's arrival. xviii a more beautiful october morning than that of the next day never beamed into the welland valleys. the yearly dissolution of leafage was setting in apace. the foliage of the park trees rapidly resolved itself into the multitude of complexions which mark the subtle grades of decay, reflecting wet lights of such innumerable hues that it was a wonder to think their beauties only a repetition of scenes that had been exhibited there on scores of previous octobers, and had been allowed to pass away without a single dirge from the imperturbable beings who walked among them. far in the shadows semi-opaque screens of blue haze made mysteries of the commonest gravel-pit, dingle, or recess. the wooden cabin at the foot of rings-hill speer had been furnished by swithin as a sitting and sleeping apartment, some little while before this time; for he had found it highly convenient, during night observations at the top of the column, to remain on the spot all night, not to disturb his grandmother by passing in and out of the house, and to save himself the labour of incessantly crossing the field. he would much have liked to tell her the secret, and, had it been his own to tell, would probably have done so; but sharing it with an objector who knew not his grandmother's affection so well as he did himself, there was no alternative to holding his tongue. the more effectually to guard it he decided to sleep at the cabin during the two or three nights previous to his departure, leaving word at the homestead that in a day or two he was going on an excursion. it was very necessary to start early. long before the great eye of the sun was lifted high enough to glance into the welland valley, st. cleeve arose from his bed in the cabin and prepared to depart, cooking his breakfast upon a little stove in the corner. the young rabbits, littered during the foregoing summer, watched his preparations through the open door from the grey dawn without, as he bustled, half dressed, in and out under the boughs, and among the blackberries and brambles that grew around. it was a strange place for a bridegroom to perform his toilet in, but, considering the unconventional nature of the marriage, a not inappropriate one. what events had been enacted in that earthen camp since it was first thrown up, nobody could say; but the primitive simplicity of the young man's preparations accorded well with the prehistoric spot on which they were made. embedded under his feet were possibly even now rude trinkets that had been worn at bridal ceremonies of the early inhabitants. little signified those ceremonies to-day, or the happiness or otherwise of the contracting parties. that his own rite, nevertheless, signified much, was the inconsequent reasoning of swithin, as it is of many another bridegroom besides; and he, like the rest, went on with his preparations in that mood which sees in his stale repetition the wondrous possibilities of an untried move. then through the wet cobwebs, that hung like movable diaphragms on each blade and bough, he pushed his way down to the furrow which led from the secluded fir-tree island to the wide world beyond the field. he was not a stranger to enterprise, and still less to the contemplation of enterprise; but an enterprise such as this he had never even outlined. that his dear lady was troubled at the situation he had placed her in by not going himself on that errand, he could see from her letter; but, believing an immediate marriage with her to be the true way of restoring to both that equanimity necessary to serene philosophy, he held it of little account how the marriage was brought about, and happily began his journey towards her place of sojourn. he passed through a little copse before leaving the parish, the smoke from newly lit fires rising like the stems of blue trees out of the few cottage chimneys. here he heard a quick, familiar footstep in the path ahead of him, and, turning the corner of the bushes, confronted the foot- post on his way to welland. in answer to st. cleeve's inquiry if there was anything for himself the postman handed out one letter, and proceeded on his route. swithin opened and read the letter as he walked, till it brought him to a standstill by the importance of its contents. they were enough to agitate a more phlegmatic youth than he. he leant over the wicket which came in his path, and endeavoured to comprehend the sense of the whole. the large long envelope contained, first, a letter from a solicitor in a northern town, informing him that his paternal great-uncle, who had recently returned from the cape (whither he had gone in an attempt to repair a broken constitution), was now dead and buried. this great-uncle's name was like a new creation to swithin. he had held no communication with the young man's branch of the family for innumerable years,--never, in fact, since the marriage of swithin's father with the simple daughter of welland farm. he had been a bachelor to the end of his life, and had amassed a fairly good professional fortune by a long and extensive medical practice in the smoky, dreary, manufacturing town in which he had lived and died. swithin had always been taught to think of him as the embodiment of all that was unpleasant in man. he was narrow, sarcastic, and shrewd to unseemliness. that very shrewdness had enabled him, without much professional profundity, to establish his large and lucrative connexion, which lay almost entirely among a class who neither looked nor cared for drawing-room courtesies. however, what dr. st. cleeve had been as a practitioner matters little. he was now dead, and the bulk of his property had been left to persons with whom this story has nothing to do. but swithin was informed that out of it there was a bequest of pounds a year to himself,--payment of which was to begin with his twenty-first year, and continue for his life, unless he should marry before reaching the age of twenty-five. in the latter precocious and objectionable event his annuity would be forfeited. the accompanying letter, said the solicitor, would explain all. this, the second letter, was from his uncle to himself, written about a month before the former's death, and deposited with his will, to be forwarded to his nephew when that event should have taken place. swithin read, with the solemnity that such posthumous epistles inspire, the following words from one who, during life, had never once addressed him:-- 'dear nephew,--you will doubtless experience some astonishment at receiving a communication from one whom you have never personally known, and who, when this comes into your hands, will be beyond the reach of your knowledge. perhaps i am the loser by this life-long mutual ignorance. perhaps i am much to blame for it; perhaps not. but such reflections are profitless at this date: i have written with quite other views than to work up a sentimental regret on such an amazingly remote hypothesis as that the fact of a particular pair of people not meeting, among the millions of other pairs of people who have never met, is a great calamity either to the world in general or to themselves. 'the occasion of my addressing you is briefly this: nine months ago a report casually reached me that your scientific studies were pursued by you with great ability, and that you were a young man of some promise as an astronomer. my own scientific proclivities rendered the report more interesting than it might otherwise have been to me; and it came upon me quite as a surprise that any issue of your father's marriage should have so much in him, or you might have seen more of me in former years than you are ever likely to do now. my health had then begun to fail, and i was starting for the cape, or i should have come myself to inquire into your condition and prospects. i did not return till six months later, and as my health had not improved i sent a trusty friend to examine into your life, pursuits, and circumstances, without your own knowledge, and to report his observations to me. this he did. through him i learnt, of favourable news:-- '( ) that you worked assiduously at the science of astronomy. '( ) that everything was auspicious in the career you had chosen. 'of unfavourable news:-- '( ) that the small income at your command, even when eked out by the sum to which you would be entitled on your grandmother's death and the freehold of the homestead, would be inadequate to support you becomingly as a scientific man, whose lines of work were of a nature not calculated to produce emoluments for many years, if ever. '( ) that there was something in your path worse than narrow means, and that that something was a _woman_. 'to save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads, i take the preventive measures detailed below. 'the chief step is, as my solicitor will have informed you, that, at the age of twenty-five, the sum of pounds a year be settled on you for life, provided you have not married before reaching that age;--a yearly gift of an equal sum to be also provisionally made to you in the interim--and, vice versa, that if you do marry before reaching the age of twenty-five you will receive nothing from the date of the marriage. 'one object of my bequest is that you may have resources sufficient to enable you to travel and study the southern constellations. when at the cape, after hearing of your pursuits, i was much struck with the importance of those constellations to an astronomer just pushing into notice. there is more to be made of the southern hemisphere than ever has been made of it yet; the mine is not so thoroughly worked as the northern, and thither your studies should tend. 'the only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation, at which i am not an adept. nevertheless, i say to you, swithin st. cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did. if your studies are to be worth anything, believe me, they must be carried on without the help of a woman. avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing. eschew all of that sort for many a year yet. moreover, i say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid in particular. i have heard nothing against her moral character hitherto; i have no doubt it has been excellent. she may have many good qualities, both of heart and of mind. but she has, in addition to her original disqualification as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two serious drawbacks: she is much older than yourself--' '_much_ older!' said swithin resentfully. '--and she is so impoverished that the title she derives from her late husband is a positive objection. beyond this, frankly, i don't think well of her. i don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a man younger than herself. to care to be the first fancy of a young fellow like you shows no great common sense in her. if she were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in your unassured position, to say no worse. she is old enough to know that a _liaison_ with her may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would be preposterous,--unless she is a complete goose, and in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her few senses. 'a woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way most certainly will. yet i hear that she professes a great anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist. the best way in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself. perhaps she persuades herself that she is doing you no harm. well, let her have the benefit of the possible belief; but depend upon it that in truth she gives the lie to her conscience by maintaining such a transparent fallacy. women's brains are not formed for assisting at any profound science: they lack the power to see things except in the concrete. she'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her acquaintance--' 'she's got none!' said swithin, beginning to get warm. '--and make them appear ridiculous by announcing them before they are matured. if you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruled by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead of intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead of reasoned conclusions. your wide heaven of study, young man, will soon reduce itself to the miserable narrow expanse of her face, and your myriad of stars to her two trumpery eyes. 'a woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment when he is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less than committing a crime. 'like a certain philosopher i would, upon my soul, have all young men from eighteen to twenty-five kept under barrels; seeing how often, in the lack of some such sequestering process, the woman sits down before each as his destiny, and too frequently enervates his purpose, till he abandons the most promising course ever conceived! 'but no more. i now leave your fate in your own hands. your well- wishing relative, 'jocelyn st. cleeve, _doctor in medicine_.' as coming from a bachelor and hardened misogynist of seventy-two, the opinions herein contained were nothing remarkable: but their practical result in restricting the sudden endowment of swithin's researches by conditions which turned the favour into a harassment was, at this unique moment, discomfiting and distracting in the highest degree. sensational, however, as the letter was, the passionate intention of the day was not hazarded for more than a few minutes thereby. the truth was, the caution and bribe came too late, too unexpectedly, to be of influence. they were the sort of thing which required fermentation to render them effective. had st. cleeve received the exhortation a month earlier; had he been able to run over in his mind, at every wakeful hour of thirty consecutive nights, a private catechism on the possibilities opened up by this annuity, there is no telling what might have been the stress of such a web of perplexity upon him, a young man whose love for celestial physics was second to none. but to have held before him, at the last moment, the picture of a future advantage that he had never once thought of, or discounted for present staying power, it affected him about as much as the view of horizons shown by sheet-lightning. he saw an immense prospect; it went, and the world was as before. he caught the train at warborne, and moved rapidly towards bath; not precisely in the same key as when he had dressed in the hut at dawn, but, as regarded the mechanical part of the journey, as unhesitatingly as before. and with the change of scene even his gloom left him; his bosom's lord sat lightly in his throne. st. cleeve was not sufficiently in mind of poetical literature to remember that wise poets are accustomed to read that lightness of bosom inversely. swithin thought it an omen of good fortune; and as thinking is causing in not a few such cases, he was perhaps, in spite of poets, right. xix at the station lady constantine appeared, standing expectant; he saw her face from the window of the carriage long before she saw him. he no sooner saw her than he was satisfied to his heart's content with his prize. if his great-uncle had offered him from the grave a kingdom instead of her, he would not have accepted it. swithin jumped out, and nature never painted in a woman's face more devotion than appeared in my lady's at that moment. to both the situation seemed like a beautiful allegory, not to be examined too closely, lest its defects of correspondence with real life should be apparent. they almost feared to shake hands in public, so much depended upon their passing that morning without molestation. a fly was called and they drove away. 'take this,' she said, handing him a folded paper. 'it belongs to you rather than to me.' at crossings, and other occasional pauses, pedestrians turned their faces and looked at the pair (for no reason but that, among so many, there were naturally a few of the sort who have eyes to note what incidents come in their way as they plod on); but the two in the vehicle could not but fear that these innocent beholders had special detective designs on them. 'you look so dreadfully young!' she said with humorous fretfulness, as they drove along (swithin's cheeks being amazingly fresh from the morning air). 'do try to appear a little haggard, that the parson mayn't ask us awkward questions!' nothing further happened, and they were set down opposite a shop about fifty yards from the church door, at five minutes to eleven. 'we will dismiss the fly,' she said. 'it will only attract idlers.' on turning the corner and reaching the church they found the door ajar; but the building contained only two persons, a man and a woman,--the clerk and his wife, as they learnt. swithin asked when the clergyman would arrive. the clerk looked at his watch, and said, 'at just on eleven o'clock.' 'he ought to be here,' said swithin. 'yes,' replied the clerk, as the hour struck. 'the fact is, sir, he is a deppity, and apt to be rather wandering in his wits as regards time and such like, which hev stood in the way of the man's getting a benefit. but no doubt he'll come.' 'the regular incumbent is away, then?' 'he's gone for his bare pa'son's fortnight,--that's all; and we was forced to put up with a weak-talented man or none. the best men goes into the brewing, or into the shipping now-a-days, you see, sir; doctrines being rather shaddery at present, and your money's worth not sure in our line. so we church officers be left poorly provided with men for odd jobs. i'll tell ye what, sir; i think i'd better run round to the gentleman's lodgings, and try to find him?' 'pray do,' said lady constantine. the clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the further end, and swithin and viviette were left to themselves. the imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman's forethought is so assumptive, that the clerk's departure had no sooner doomed them to inaction than it was borne in upon lady constantine's mind that she would not become the wife of swithin st. cleeve, either to-day or on any other day. her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it. 'ah,--the marriage is not to be!' she said to herself. 'this is a fatality.' it was twenty minutes past, and no parson had arrived. swithin took her hand. 'if it cannot be to-day, it can be to-morrow,' he whispered. 'i cannot say,' she answered. 'something tells me _no_.' it was almost impossible that she could know anything of the deterrent force exercised on swithin by his dead uncle that morning. yet her manner tallied so curiously well with such knowledge that he was struck by it, and remained silent. 'you have a black tie,' she continued, looking at him. 'yes,' replied swithin. 'i bought it on my way here.' 'why could it not have been less sombre in colour?' 'my great-uncle is dead.' 'you had a great-uncle? you never told me.' 'i never saw him in my life. i have only heard about him since his death.' he spoke in as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart was sinking. she would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth. she would discover particulars of that great-uncle's provision for him, which he, swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse to be his for his own sake. his conclusion at this moment was precisely what hers had been five minutes sooner: they were never to be husband and wife. but she did not continue her questions, for the simplest of all reasons: hasty footsteps were audible in the entrance, and the parson was seen coming up the aisle, the clerk behind him wiping the beads of perspiration from his face. the somewhat sorry clerical specimen shook hands with them, and entered the vestry; and the clerk came up and opened the book. 'the poor gentleman's memory is a bit topsy-turvy,' whispered the latter. 'he had got it in his mind that 'twere a funeral, and i found him wandering about the cemetery a-looking for us. however, all's well as ends well.' and the clerk wiped his forehead again. 'how ill-omened!' murmured viviette. but the parson came out robed at this moment, and the clerk put on his ecclesiastical countenance and looked in his book. lady constantine's momentary languor passed; her blood resumed its courses with a new spring. the grave utterances of the church then rolled out upon the palpitating pair, and no couple ever joined their whispers thereto with more fervency than they. lady constantine (as she continued to be called by the outside world, though she liked to think herself the mrs. st. cleeve that she legally was) had told green that she might be expected at welland in a day, or two, or three, as circumstances should dictate. though the time of return was thus left open it was deemed advisable, by both swithin and herself, that her journey back should not be deferred after the next day, in case any suspicions might be aroused. as for st. cleeve, his comings and goings were of no consequence. it was seldom known whether he was at home or abroad, by reason of his frequent seclusion at the column. late in the afternoon of the next day he accompanied her to the bath station, intending himself to remain in that city till the following morning. but when a man or youth has such a tender article on his hands as a thirty-hour bride it is hardly in the power of his strongest reason to set her down at a railway, and send her off like a superfluous portmanteau. hence the experiment of parting so soon after their union proved excruciatingly severe to these. the evening was dull; the breeze of autumn crept fitfully through every slit and aperture in the town; not a soul in the world seemed to notice or care about anything they did. lady constantine sighed; and there was no resisting it,--he could not leave her thus. he decided to get into the train with her, and keep her company for at least a few stations on her way. it drew on to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the junction at which the branch line to warborne forked off. here it was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back or she could go on. they wandered outside the station doorway into the gloom of the road, and there agreed to part. while she yet stood holding his arm a phaeton sped towards the station- entrance, where, in ascending the slope to the door, the horse suddenly jibbed. the gentleman who was driving, being either impatient, or possessed with a theory that all jibbers may be started by severe whipping, applied the lash; as a result of it, the horse thrust round the carriage to where they stood, and the end of the driver's sweeping whip cut across lady constantine's face with such severity as to cause her an involuntary cry. swithin turned her round to the lamplight, and discerned a streak of blood on her cheek. by this time the gentleman who had done the mischief, with many words of regret, had given the reins to his man and dismounted. 'i will go to the waiting-room for a moment,' whispered viviette hurriedly; and, loosing her hand from his arm, she pulled down her veil and vanished inside the building. the stranger came forward and raised his hat. he was a slightly built and apparently town-bred man of twenty-eight or thirty; his manner of address was at once careless and conciliatory. 'i am greatly concerned at what i have done,' he said. 'i sincerely trust that your wife'--but observing the youthfulness of swithin, he withdrew the word suggested by the manner of swithin towards lady constantine--'i trust the young lady was not seriously cut?' 'i trust not,' said swithin, with some vexation. 'where did the lash touch her?' 'straight down her cheek.' 'do let me go to her, and learn how she is, and humbly apologize.' 'i'll inquire.' he went to the ladies' room, in which viviette had taken refuge. she met him at the door, her handkerchief to her cheek, and swithin explained that the driver of the phaeton had sent to make inquiries. 'i cannot see him!' she whispered. 'he is my brother louis! he is, no doubt, going on by the train to my house. don't let him recognize me! we must wait till he is gone.' swithin thereupon went out again, and told the young man that the cut on her face was not serious, but that she could not see him; after which they parted. st. cleeve then heard him ask for a ticket for warborne, which confirmed lady constantine's view that he was going on to her house. when the branch train had moved off swithin returned to his bride, who waited in a trembling state within. on being informed that he had departed she showed herself much relieved. 'where does your brother come from?' said swithin. 'from london, immediately. rio before that. he has a friend or two in this neighbourhood, and visits here occasionally. i have seldom or never spoken to you of him, because of his long absence.' 'is he going to settle near you?' 'no, nor anywhere, i fear. he is, or rather was, in the diplomatic service. he was first a clerk in the foreign office, and was afterwards appointed attaché at rio janeiro. but he has resigned the appointment. i wish he had not.' swithin asked why he resigned. 'he complained of the banishment, and the climate, and everything that people complain of who are determined to be dissatisfied,--though, poor fellow, there is some ground for his complaints. perhaps some people would say that he is idle. but he is scarcely that; he is rather restless than idle, so that he never persists in anything. yet if a subject takes his fancy he will follow it up with exemplary patience till something diverts him.' 'he is not kind to you, is he, dearest?' 'why do you think that?' 'your manner seems to say so.' 'well, he may not always be kind. but look at my face; does the mark show?' a streak, straight as a meridian, was visible down her cheek. the blood had been brought almost to the surface, but was not quite through, that which had originally appeared thereon having possibly come from the horse. it signified that to-morrow the red line would be a black one. swithin informed her that her brother had taken a ticket for warborne, and she at once perceived that he was going on to visit her at welland, though from his letter she had not expected him so soon by a few days. 'meanwhile,' continued swithin, 'you can now get home only by the late train, having missed that one.' 'but, swithin, don't you see my new trouble? if i go to welland house to- night, and find my brother just arrived there, and he sees this cut on my face, which i suppose you described to him--' 'i did.' 'he will know i was the lady with you!' 'whom he called my wife. i wonder why we look husband and wife already!' 'then what am i to do? for the ensuing three or four days i bear in my face a clue to his discovery of our secret.' 'then you must not be seen. we must stay at an inn here.' 'o no!' she said timidly. 'it is too near home to be quite safe. we might not be known; but _if_ we were!' 'we can't go back to bath now. i'll tell you, dear viviette, what we must do. we'll go on to warborne in separate carriages; we'll meet outside the station; thence we'll walk to the column in the dark, and i'll keep you a captive in the cabin till the scar has disappeared.' as there was nothing which better recommended itself this course was decided on; and after taking from her trunk the articles that might be required for an incarceration of two or three days they left the said trunk at the cloak-room, and went on by the last train, which reached warborne about ten o'clock. it was only necessary for lady constantine to cover her face with the thick veil that she had provided for this escapade, to walk out of the station without fear of recognition. st. cleeve came forth from another compartment, and they did not rejoin each other till they had reached a shadowy bend in the old turnpike road, beyond the irradiation of the warborne lamplight. the walk to welland was long. it was the walk which swithin had taken in the rain when he had learnt the fatal forestalment of his stellar discovery; but now he was moved by a less desperate mood, and blamed neither god nor man. they were not pressed for time, and passed along the silent, lonely way with that sense rather of predestination than of choice in their proceedings which the presence of night sometimes imparts. reaching the park gate, they found it open, and from this they inferred that her brother louis had arrived. leaving the house and park on their right they traced the highway yet a little further, and, plunging through the stubble of the opposite field, drew near the isolated earthwork bearing the plantation and tower, which together rose like a flattened dome and lantern from the lighter-hued plain of stubble. it was far too dark to distinguish firs from other trees by the eye alone, but the peculiar dialect of sylvan language which the piny multitude used would have been enough to proclaim their class at any time. in the lovers' stealthy progress up the slopes a dry stick here and there snapped beneath their feet, seeming like a shot of alarm. on being unlocked the hut was found precisely as swithin had left it two days before. lady constantine was thoroughly wearied, and sat down, while he gathered a handful of twigs and spikelets from the masses strewn without and lit a small fire, first taking the precaution to blind the little window and relock the door. lady constantine looked curiously around by the light of the blaze. the hut was small as the prophet's chamber provided by the shunammite: in one corner stood the stove, with a little table and chair, a small cupboard hard by, a pitcher of water, a rack overhead, with various articles, including a kettle and a gridiron; while the remaining three or four feet at the other end of the room was fitted out as a dormitory, for swithin's use during late observations in the tower overhead. 'it is not much of a palace to offer you,' he remarked, smiling. 'but at any rate, it is a refuge.' the cheerful firelight dispersed in some measure lady constantine's anxieties. 'if we only had something to eat!' she said. 'dear me,' cried st. cleeve, blankly. 'that's a thing i never thought of.' 'nor i, till now,' she replied. he reflected with misgiving. 'beyond a small loaf of bread in the cupboard i have nothing. however, just outside the door there are lots of those little rabbits, about the size of rats, that the keepers call runners. and they are as tame as possible. but i fear i could not catch one now. yet, dear viviette, wait a minute; i'll try. you must not be starved.' he softly let himself out, and was gone some time. when he reappeared, he produced, not a rabbit, but four sparrows and a thrush. 'i could do nothing in the way of a rabbit without setting a wire,' he said. 'but i have managed to get these by knowing where they roost.' he showed her how to prepare the birds, and, having set her to roast them by the fire, departed with the pitcher, to replenish it at the brook which flowed near the homestead in the neighbouring bottom. 'they are all asleep at my grandmother's,' he informed her when he re- entered, panting, with the dripping pitcher. 'they imagine me to be a hundred miles off.' the birds were now ready, and the table was spread. with this fare, eked out by dry toast from the loaf, and moistened with cups of water from the pitcher, to which swithin added a little wine from the flask he had carried on his journey, they were forced to be content for their supper. xx when lady constantine awoke the next morning swithin was nowhere to be seen. before she was quite ready for breakfast she heard the key turn in the door, and felt startled, till she remembered that the comer could hardly be anybody but he. he brought a basket with provisions, an extra cup-and-saucer, and so on. in a short space of time the kettle began singing on the stove, and the morning meal was ready. the sweet resinous air from the firs blew in upon them as they sat at breakfast; the birds hopped round the door (which, somewhat riskily, they ventured to keep open); and at their elbow rose the lank column into an upper realm of sunlight, which only reached the cabin in fitful darts and flashes through the trees. 'i could be happy here for ever,' said she, clasping his hand. 'i wish i could never see my great gloomy house again, since i am not rich enough to throw it open, and live there as i ought to do. poverty of this sort is not unpleasant at any rate. what are you thinking of?' 'i am thinking about my outing this morning. on reaching my grandmother's she was only a little surprised to see me. i was obliged to breakfast there, or appear to do so, to divert suspicion; and this food is supposed to be wanted for my dinner and supper. there will of course be no difficulty in my obtaining an ample supply for any length of time, as i can take what i like from the buttery without observation. but as i looked in my grandmother's face this morning, and saw her looking affectionately in mine, and thought how she had never concealed anything from me, and had always had my welfare at heart, i felt--that i should like to tell her what we have done.' 'o no,--please not, swithin!' she exclaimed piteously. 'very well,' he answered. 'on no consideration will i do so without your consent.' and no more was said on the matter. the morning was passed in applying wet rag and other remedies to the purple line on viviette's cheek; and in the afternoon they set up the equatorial under the replaced dome, to have it in order for night observations. the evening was clear, dry, and remarkably cold by comparison with the daytime weather. after a frugal supper they replenished the stove with charcoal from the homestead, which they also burnt during the day,--an idea of viviette's, that the smoke from a wood fire might not be seen more frequently than was consistent with the occasional occupation of the cabin by swithin, as heretofore. at eight o'clock she insisted upon his ascending the tower for observations, in strict pursuance of the idea on which their marriage had been based, namely, that of restoring regularity to his studies. the sky had a new and startling beauty that night. a broad, fluctuating, semicircular arch of vivid white light spanned the northern quarter of the heavens, reaching from the horizon to the star eta in the greater bear. it was the aurora borealis, just risen up for the winter season out of the freezing seas of the north, where every autumn vapour was now undergoing rapid congelation. 'o, let us sit and look at it!' she said; and they turned their backs upon the equatorial and the southern glories of the heavens to this new beauty in a quarter which they seldom contemplated. the lustre of the fixed stars was diminished to a sort of blueness. little by little the arch grew higher against the dark void, like the form of the spirit-maiden in the shades of glenfinlas, till its crown drew near the zenith, and threw a tissue over the whole waggon and horses of the great northern constellation. brilliant shafts radiated from the convexity of the arch, coming and going silently. the temperature fell, and lady constantine drew her wrap more closely around her. 'we'll go down,' said swithin. 'the cabin is beautifully warm. why should we try to observe to-night? indeed, we cannot; the aurora light overpowers everything.' 'very well. to-morrow night there will be no interruption. i shall be gone.' 'you leave me to-morrow, viviette?' 'yes; to-morrow morning.' the truth was that, with the progress of the hours and days, the conviction had been borne in upon viviette more and more forcibly that not for kingdoms and principalities could she afford to risk the discovery of her presence here by any living soul. 'but let me see your face, dearest,' he said. 'i don't think it will be safe for you to meet your brother yet.' as it was too dark to see her face on the summit where they sat they descended the winding staircase, and in the cabin swithin examined the damaged cheek. the line, though so far attenuated as not to be observable by any one but a close observer, had not quite disappeared. but in consequence of her reiterated and almost tearful anxiety to go, and as there was a strong probability that her brother had left the house, swithin decided to call at welland next morning, and reconnoitre with a view to her return. locking her in he crossed the dewy stubble into the park. the house was silent and deserted; and only one tall stalk of smoke ascended from the chimneys. notwithstanding that the hour was nearly nine he knocked at the door. 'is lady constantine at home?' asked swithin, with a disingenuousness now habitual, yet unknown to him six months before. 'no, mr. st. cleeve; my lady has not returned from bath. we expect her every day.' 'nobody staying in the house?' 'my lady's brother has been here; but he is gone on to budmouth. he will come again in two or three weeks, i understand.' this was enough. swithin said he would call again, and returned to the cabin, where, waking viviette, who was not by nature an early riser, he waited on the column till she was ready to breakfast. when this had been shared they prepared to start. a long walk was before them. warborne station lay five miles distant, and the next station above that nine miles. they were bound for the latter; their plan being that she should there take the train to the junction where the whip accident had occurred, claim her luggage, and return with it to warborne, as if from bath. the morning was cool and the walk not wearisome. when once they had left behind the stubble-field of their environment and the parish of welland, they sauntered on comfortably, lady constantine's spirits rising as she withdrew further from danger. they parted by a little brook, about half a mile from the station; swithin to return to welland by the way he had come. lady constantine telegraphed from the junction to warborne for a carriage to be in readiness to meet her on her arrival; and then, waiting for the down train, she travelled smoothly home, reaching welland house about five minutes sooner than swithin reached the column hard by, after footing it all the way from where they had parted. xxi from that day forward their life resumed its old channel in general outward aspect. perhaps the most remarkable feature in their exploit was its comparative effectiveness as an expedient for the end designed,--that of restoring calm assiduity to the study of astronomy. swithin took up his old position as the lonely philosopher at the column, and lady constantine lapsed back to immured existence at the house, with apparently not a friend in the parish. the enforced narrowness of life which her limited resources necessitated was now an additional safeguard against the discovery of her relations with st. cleeve. her neighbours seldom troubled her; as much, it must be owned, from a tacit understanding that she was not in a position to return invitations as from any selfish coldness engendered by her want of wealth. at the first meeting of the secretly united pair after their short honeymoon they were compelled to behave as strangers to each other. it occurred in the only part of welland which deserved the name of a village street, and all the labourers were returning to their midday meal, with those of their wives who assisted at outdoor work. before the eyes of this innocent though quite untrustworthy group, swithin and his viviette could only shake hands in passing, though she contrived to say to him in an undertone, 'my brother does not return yet for some time. he has gone to paris. i will be on the lawn this evening, if you can come.' it was a fluttered smile that she bestowed on him, and there was no doubt that every fibre of her heart vibrated afresh at meeting, with such reserve, one who stood in his close relation to her. the shades of night fell early now, and swithin was at the spot of appointment about the time that he knew her dinner would be over. it was just where they had met at the beginning of the year, but many changes had resulted since then. the flower-beds that had used to be so neatly edged were now jagged and leafy; black stars appeared on the pale surface of the gravel walks, denoting tufts of grass that grew unmolested there. lady constantine's external affairs wore just that aspect which suggests that new blood may be advantageously introduced into the line; and new blood had been introduced, in good sooth,--with what social result remained to be seen. she silently entered on the scene from the same window which had given her passage in months gone by. they met with a concerted embrace, and st. cleeve spoke his greeting in whispers. 'we are quite safe, dearest,' said she. 'but the servants?' 'my meagre staff consists of only two women and the boy; and they are away in the other wing. i thought you would like to see the inside of my house, after showing me the inside of yours. so we will walk through it instead of staying out here.' she let him in through the casement, and they strolled forward softly, swithin with some curiosity, never before having gone beyond the library and adjoining room. the whole western side of the house was at this time shut up, her life being confined to two or three small rooms in the south- east corner. the great apartments through which they now whisperingly walked wore already that funereal aspect that comes from disuse and inattention. triangular cobwebs already formed little hammocks for the dust in corners of the wainscot, and a close smell of wood and leather, seasoned with mouse-droppings, pervaded the atmosphere. so seldom was the solitude of these chambers intruded on by human feet that more than once a mouse stood and looked the twain in the face from the arm of a sofa, or the top of a cabinet, without any great fear. swithin had no residential ambition whatever, but he was interested in the place. 'will the house ever be thrown open to gaiety, as it was in old times?' said he. 'not unless you make a fortune,' she replied laughingly. 'it is mine for my life, as you know; but the estate is so terribly saddled with annuities to sir blount's distant relatives, one of whom will succeed me here, that i have practically no more than my own little private income to exist on.' 'and are you bound to occupy the house?' 'not bound to. but i must not let it on lease.' 'and was there any stipulation in the event of your re-marriage?' 'it was not mentioned.' 'it is satisfactory to find that you lose nothing by marrying me, at all events, dear viviette.' 'i hope you lose nothing either--at least, of consequence.' 'what have i to lose?' 'i meant your liberty. suppose you become a popular physicist (popularity seems cooling towards art and coquetting with science now-a- days), and a better chance offers, and one who would make you a newer and brighter wife than i am comes in your way. will you never regret this? will you never despise me?' swithin answered by a kiss, and they again went on; proceeding like a couple of burglars, lest they should draw the attention of the cook or green. in one of the upper rooms his eyes were attracted by an old chamber organ, which had once been lent for use in the church. he mentioned his recollection of the same, which led her to say, 'that reminds me of something. there is to be a confirmation in our parish in the spring, and you once told me that you had never been confirmed. what shocking neglect! why was it?' 'i hardly know. the confusion resulting from my father's death caused it to be forgotten, i suppose.' 'now, dear swithin, you will do this to please me,--be confirmed on the present occasion?' 'since i have done without the virtue of it so long, might i not do without it altogether?' 'no, no!' she said earnestly. 'i do wish it, indeed. i am made unhappy when i think you don't care about such serious matters. without the church to cling to, what have we?' 'each other. but seriously, i should be inverting the established order of spiritual things; people ought to be confirmed before they are married.' 'that's really of minor consequence. now, don't think slightingly of what so many good men have laid down as necessary to be done. and, dear swithin, i somehow feel that a certain levity which has perhaps shown itself in our treatment of the sacrament of marriage--by making a clandestine adventure of what is, after all, a solemn rite--would be well atoned for by a due seriousness in other points of religious observance. this opportunity should therefore not be passed over. i thought of it all last night; and you are a parson's son, remember, and he would have insisted on it if he had been alive. in short, swithin, do be a good boy, and observe the church's ordinances.' lady constantine, by virtue of her temperament, was necessarily either lover or _dévote_, and she vibrated so gracefully between these two conditions that nobody who had known the circumstances could have condemned her inconsistencies. to be led into difficulties by those mastering emotions of hers, to aim at escape by turning round and seizing the apparatus of religion--which could only rightly be worked by the very emotions already bestowed elsewhere--it was, after all, but nature's well- meaning attempt to preserve the honour of her daughter's conscience in the trying quandary to which the conditions of sex had given rise. as viviette could not be confirmed herself, and as communion sunday was a long way off, she urged swithin thus. 'and the new bishop is such a good man,' she continued. 'i used to have a slight acquaintance with him when he was a parish priest.' 'very well, dearest. to please you i'll be confirmed. my grandmother, too, will be delighted, no doubt.' they continued their ramble: lady constantine first advancing into rooms with the candle, to assure herself that all was empty, and then calling him forward in a whisper. the stillness was broken only by these whispers, or by the occasional crack of a floor-board beneath their tread. at last they sat down, and, shading the candle with a screen, she showed him the faded contents of this and that drawer or cabinet, or the wardrobe of some member of the family who had died young early in the century, when muslin reigned supreme, when waists were close to arm-pits, and muffs as large as smugglers' tubs. these researches among habilimental hulls and husks, whose human kernels had long ago perished, went on for about half an hour; when the companions were startled by a loud ringing at the front-door bell. xxii lady constantine flung down the old-fashioned lacework, whose beauties she had been pointing out to swithin, and exclaimed, 'who can it be? not louis, surely?' they listened. an arrival was such a phenomenon at this unfrequented mansion, and particularly a late arrival, that no servant was on the alert to respond to the call; and the visitor rang again, more loudly than before. sounds of the tardy opening and shutting of a passage-door from the kitchen quarter then reached their ears, and viviette went into the corridor to hearken more attentively. in a few minutes she returned to the wardrobe-room in which she had left swithin. 'yes; it is my brother!' she said with difficult composure. 'i just caught his voice. he has no doubt come back from paris to stay. this is a rather vexatious, indolent way he has, never to write to prepare me!' 'i can easily go away,' said swithin. by this time, however, her brother had been shown into the house, and the footsteps of the page were audible, coming in search of lady constantine. 'if you will wait there a moment,' she said, directing st. cleeve into a bedchamber which adjoined; 'you will be quite safe from interruption, and i will quickly come back.' taking the light she left him. swithin waited in darkness. not more than ten minutes had passed when a whisper in her voice came through the keyhole. he opened the door. 'yes; he is come to stay!' she said. 'he is at supper now.' 'very well; don't be flurried, dearest. shall i stay too, as we planned?' 'o, swithin, i fear not!' she replied anxiously. 'you see how it is. to- night we have broken the arrangement that you should never come here; and this is the result. will it offend you if--i ask you to leave?' 'not in the least. upon the whole, i prefer the comfort of my little cabin and homestead to the gauntness and alarms of this place.' 'there, now, i fear you are offended!' she said, a tear collecting in her eye. 'i wish i was going back with you to the cabin! how happy we were, those three days of our stay there! but it is better, perhaps, just now, that you should leave me. yes, these rooms are oppressive. they require a large household to make them cheerful. . . . yet, swithin,' she added, after reflection, 'i will not request you to go. do as you think best. i will light a night-light, and leave you here to consider. for myself, i must go downstairs to my brother at once, or he'll wonder what i am doing.' she kindled the little light, and again retreated, closing the door upon him. swithin stood and waited some time; till he considered that upon the whole it would be preferable to leave. with this intention he emerged and went softly along the dark passage towards the extreme end, where there was a little crooked staircase that would conduct him down to a disused side door. descending this stair he duly arrived at the other side of the house, facing the quarter whence the wind blew, and here he was surprised to catch the noise of rain beating against the windows. it was a state of weather which fully accounted for the visitor's impatient ringing. st. cleeve was in a minor kind of dilemma. the rain reminded him that his hat and great-coat had been left downstairs, in the front part of the house; and though he might have gone home without either in ordinary weather it was not a pleasant feat in the pelting winter rain. retracing his steps to viviette's room he took the light, and opened a closet-door that he had seen ajar on his way down. within the closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of all kinds filling the back part. swithin thought he might find here a cloak of hers to throw round him, but finally took down from a peg a more suitable garment, the only one of the sort that was there. it was an old moth-eaten great-coat, heavily trimmed with fur; and in removing it a companion cap of sealskin was disclosed. 'whose can they be?' he thought, and a gloomy answer suggested itself. 'pooh,' he then said (summoning the scientific side of his nature), 'matter is matter, and mental association only a delusion.' putting on the garments he returned the light to lady constantine's bedroom, and again prepared to depart as before. scarcely, however, had he regained the corridor a second time, when he heard a light footstep--seemingly viviette's--again on the front landing. wondering what she wanted with him further he waited, taking the precaution to step into the closet till sure it was she. the figure came onward, bent to the keyhole of the bedroom door, and whispered (supposing him still inside), 'swithin, on second thoughts i think you may stay with safety.' having no further doubt of her personality he came out with thoughtless abruptness from the closet behind her, and looking round suddenly she beheld his shadowy fur-clad outline. at once she raised her hands in horror, as if to protect herself from him; she uttered a shriek, and turned shudderingly to the wall, covering her face. swithin would have picked her up in a moment, but by this time he could hear footsteps rushing upstairs, in response to her cry. in consternation, and with a view of not compromising her, he effected his retreat as fast as possible, reaching the bend of the corridor just as her brother louis appeared with a light at the other extremity. 'what's the matter, for heaven's sake, viviette?' said louis. 'my husband!' she involuntarily exclaimed. 'what nonsense!' 'o yes, it is nonsense,' she added, with an effort. 'it was nothing.' 'but what was the cause of your cry?' she had by this time recovered her reason and judgment. 'o, it was a trick of the imagination,' she said, with a faint laugh. 'i live so much alone that i get superstitious--and--i thought for the moment i saw an apparition.' 'of your late husband?' 'yes. but it was nothing; it was the outline of the--tall clock and the chair behind. would you mind going down, and leaving me to go into my room for a moment?' she entered the bedroom, and her brother went downstairs. swithin thought it best to leave well alone, and going noiselessly out of the house plodded through the rain homeward. it was plain that agitations of one sort and another had so weakened viviette's nerves as to lay her open to every impression. that the clothes he had borrowed were some cast-off garments of the late sir blount had occurred to st. cleeve in taking them; but in the moment of returning to her side he had forgotten this, and the shape they gave to his figure had obviously been a reminder of too sudden a sort for her. musing thus he walked along as if he were still, as before, the lonely student, dissociated from all mankind, and with no shadow of right or interest in welland house or its mistress. the great-coat and cap were unpleasant companions; but swithin having been reared, or having reared himself, in the scientific school of thought, would not give way to his sense of their weirdness. to do so would have been treason to his own beliefs and aims. when nearly home, at a point where his track converged on another path, there approached him from the latter a group of indistinct forms. the tones of their speech revealed them to be hezzy biles, nat chapman, fry, and other labourers. swithin was about to say a word to them, till recollecting his disguise he deemed it advisable to hold his tongue, lest his attire should tell a too dangerous tale as to where he had come from. by degrees they drew closer, their walk being in the same direction. 'good-night, strainger,' said nat. the stranger did not reply. all of them paced on abreast of him, and he could perceive in the gloom that their faces were turned inquiringly upon his form. then a whisper passed from one to another of them; then chapman, who was the boldest, dropped immediately behind his heels, and followed there for some distance, taking close observations of his outline, after which the men grouped again and whispered. thinking it best to let them pass on swithin slackened his pace, and they went ahead of him, apparently without much reluctance. there was no doubt that they had been impressed by the clothes he wore; and having no wish to provoke similar comments from his grandmother and hannah, swithin took the precaution, on arriving at welland bottom, to enter the homestead by the outhouse. here he deposited the cap and coat in secure hiding, afterwards going round to the front and opening the door in the usual way. in the entry he met hannah, who said-- 'only to hear what have been seed to-night, mr. swithin! the work-folk have dropped in to tell us!' in the kitchen were the men who had outstripped him on the road. their countenances, instead of wearing the usual knotty irregularities, had a smoothed-out expression of blank concern. swithin's entrance was unobtrusive and quiet, as if he had merely come down from his study upstairs, and they only noticed him by enlarging their gaze, so as to include him in the audience. 'we was in a deep talk at the moment,' continued blore, 'and natty had just brought up that story about old jeremiah paddock's crossing the park one night at one o'clock in the morning, and seeing sir blount a-shutting my lady out-o'-doors; and we was saying that it seemed a true return that he should perish in a foreign land; when we happened to look up, and there was sir blount a-walking along.' 'did it overtake you, or did you overtake it?' whispered hannah sepulchrally. 'i don't say 'twas _it_,' returned sammy. 'god forbid that i should drag in a resurrection word about what perhaps was still solid manhood, and has to die! but he, or it, closed in upon us, as 'twere.' 'yes, closed in upon us!' said haymoss. 'and i said "good-night, strainger,"' added chapman. 'yes, "good-night, strainger,"--that wez yer words, natty. i support ye in it.' 'and then he closed in upon us still more.' 'we closed in upon he, rather,' said chapman. 'well, well; 'tis the same thing in such matters! and the form was sir blount's. my nostrils told me, for--there, 'a smelled. yes, i could smell'n, being to leeward.' 'lord, lord, what unwholesome scandal's this about the ghost of a respectable gentleman?' said mrs. martin, who had entered from the sitting-room. 'now, wait, ma'am. i don't say 'twere a low smell, mind ye. 'twere a high smell, a sort of gamey flaviour, calling to mind venison and hare, just as you'd expect of a great squire,--not like a poor man's 'natomy, at all; and that was what strengthened my faith that 'twas sir blount.' ('the skins that old coat was made of,' ruminated swithin.) 'well, well; i've not held out against the figure o' starvation these five-and-twenty year, on nine shillings a week, to be afeard of a walking vapour, sweet or savoury,' said hezzy. 'so here's home-along.' 'bide a bit longer, and i'm going too,' continued fry. 'well, when i found 'twas sir blount my spet dried up within my mouth; for neither hedge nor bush were there for refuge against any foul spring 'a might have made at us.' ''twas very curious; but we had likewise a-mentioned his name just afore, in talking of the confirmation that's shortly coming on,' said hezzy. 'is there soon to be a confirmation?' 'yes. in this parish--the first time in welland church for twenty years. as i say, i had told 'em that he was confirmed the same year that i went up to have it done, as i have very good cause to mind. when we went to be examined, the pa'son said to me, "rehearse the articles of thy belief." mr. blount (as he was then) was nighest me, and he whispered, "women and wine." "women and wine," says i to the pa'son: and for that i was sent back till next confirmation, sir blount never owning that he was the rascal.' 'confirmation was a sight different at that time,' mused biles. 'the bishops didn't lay it on so strong then as they do now. now-a-days, yer bishop gies both hands to every jack-rag and tom-straw that drops the knee afore him; but 'twas six chaps to one blessing when we was boys. the bishop o' that time would stretch out his palms and run his fingers over our row of crowns as off-hand as a bank gentleman telling money. the great lords of the church in them days wasn't particular to a soul or two more or less; and, for my part, i think living was easier for 't.' 'the new bishop, i hear, is a bachelor-man; or a widow gentleman is it?' asked mrs. martin. 'bachelor, i believe, ma'am. mr. san cleeve, making so bold, you've never faced him yet, i think?' mrs. martin shook her head. 'no; it was a piece of neglect. i hardly know how it happened,' she said. 'i am going to, this time,' said swithin, and turned the chat to other matters. xxiii swithin could not sleep that night for thinking of his viviette. nothing told so significantly of the conduct of her first husband towards the poor lady as the abiding dread of him which was revealed in her by any sudden revival of his image or memory. but for that consideration her almost childlike terror at swithin's inadvertent disguise would have been ludicrous. he waited anxiously through several following days for an opportunity of seeing her, but none was afforded. her brother's presence in the house sufficiently accounted for this. at length he ventured to write a note, requesting her to signal to him in a way she had done once or twice before,--by pulling down a blind in a particular window of the house, one of the few visible from the top of the rings-hill column; this to be done on any evening when she could see him after dinner on the terrace. when he had levelled the glass at that window for five successive nights he beheld the blind in the position suggested. three hours later, quite in the dusk, he repaired to the place of appointment. 'my brother is away this evening,' she explained, 'and that's why i can come out. he is only gone for a few hours, nor is he likely to go for longer just yet. he keeps himself a good deal in my company, which has made it unsafe for me to venture near you.' 'has he any suspicion?' 'none, apparently. but he rather depresses me.' 'how, viviette?' swithin feared, from her manner, that this was something serious. 'i would rather not tell.' 'but--well, never mind.' 'yes, swithin, i will tell you. there should be no secrets between us. he urges upon me the necessity of marrying, day after day.' 'for money and position, of course.' 'yes. but i take no notice. i let him go on.' 'really, this is sad!' said the young man. 'i must work harder than ever, or you will never be able to own me.' 'o yes, in good time!' she cheeringly replied. 'i shall be very glad to have you always near me. i felt the gloom of our position keenly when i was obliged to disappear that night, without assuring you it was only i who stood there. why were you so frightened at those old clothes i borrowed?' 'don't ask,--don't ask!' she said, burying her face on his shoulder. 'i don't want to speak of that. there was something so ghastly and so uncanny in your putting on such garments that i wish you had been more thoughtful, and had left them alone.' he assured her that he did not stop to consider whose they were. 'by the way, they must be sent back,' he said. 'no; i never wish to see them again! i cannot help feeling that your putting them on was ominous.' 'nothing is ominous in serene philosophy,' he said, kissing her. 'things are either causes, or they are not causes. when can you see me again?' in such wise the hour passed away. the evening was typical of others which followed it at irregular intervals through the winter. and during the intenser months of the season frequent falls of snow lengthened, even more than other difficulties had done, the periods of isolation between the pair. swithin adhered with all the more strictness to the letter of his promise not to intrude into the house, from his sense of her powerlessness to compel him to keep out should he choose to rebel. a student of the greatest forces in nature, he had, like many others of his sort, no personal force to speak of in a social point of view, mainly because he took no interest in human ranks and formulas; and hence he was as docile as a child in her hands wherever matters of that kind were concerned. her brother wintered at welland; but whether because his experience of tropic climes had unfitted him for the brumal rigours of britain, or for some other reason, he seldom showed himself out of doors, and swithin caught but passing glimpses of him. now and then viviette's impulsive affection would overcome her sense of risk, and she would press swithin to call on her at all costs. this he would by no means do. it was obvious to his more logical mind that the secrecy to which they had bound themselves must be kept in its fulness, or might as well be abandoned altogether. he was now sadly exercised on the subject of his uncle's will. there had as yet been no pressing reasons for a full and candid reply to the solicitor who had communicated with him, owing to the fact that the payments were not to begin till swithin was one-and-twenty; but time was going on, and something definite would have to be done soon. to own to his marriage and consequent disqualification for the bequest was easy in itself; but it involved telling at least one man what both viviette and himself had great reluctance in telling anybody. moreover he wished viviette to know nothing of his loss in making her his wife. all he could think of doing for the present was to write a postponing letter to his uncle's lawyer, and wait events. the one comfort of this dreary winter-time was his perception of a returning ability to work with the regularity and much of the spirit of earlier days. * * * * * one bright night in april there was an eclipse of the moon, and mr. torkingham, by arrangement, brought to the observatory several labouring men and boys, to whom he had promised a sight of the phenomenon through the telescope. the coming confirmation, fixed for may, was again talked of; and st. cleeve learnt from the parson that the bishop had arranged to stay the night at the vicarage, and was to be invited to a grand luncheon at welland house immediately after the ordinance. this seemed like a going back into life again as regarded the mistress of that house; and st. cleeve was a little surprised that, in his communications with viviette, she had mentioned no such probability. the next day he walked round the mansion, wondering how in its present state any entertainment could be given therein. he found that the shutters had been opened, which had restored an unexpected liveliness to the aspect of the windows. two men were putting a chimney-pot on one of the chimney-stacks, and two more were scraping green mould from the front wall. he made no inquiries on that occasion. three days later he strolled thitherward again. now a great cleaning of window-panes was going on, hezzy biles and sammy blore being the operators, for which purpose their services must have been borrowed from the neighbouring farmer. hezzy dashed water at the glass with a force that threatened to break it in, the broad face of sammy being discernible inside, smiling at the onset. in addition to these, anthony green and another were weeding the gravel walks, and putting fresh plants into the flower-beds. neither of these reasonable operations was a great undertaking, singly looked at; but the life viviette had latterly led and the mood in which she had hitherto regarded the premises, rendered it somewhat significant. swithin, however, was rather curious than concerned at the proceedings, and returned to his tower with feelings of interest not entirely confined to the worlds overhead. lady constantine may or may not have seen him from the house; but the same evening, which was fine and dry, while he was occupying himself in the observatory with cleaning the eye-pieces of the equatorial, skull-cap on head, observing-jacket on, and in other ways primed for sweeping, the customary stealthy step on the winding staircase brought her form in due course into the rays of the bull's-eye lantern. the meeting was all the more pleasant to him from being unexpected, and he at once lit up a larger lamp in honour of the occasion. 'it is but a hasty visit,' she said when, after putting up her mouth to be kissed, she had seated herself in the low chair used for observations, panting a little with the labour of ascent. 'but i hope to be able to come more freely soon. my brother is still living on with me. yes, he is going to stay until the confirmation is over. after the confirmation he will certainly leave. so good it is of you, dear, to please me by agreeing to the ceremony. the bishop, you know, is going to lunch with us. it is a wonder he has promised to come, for he is a man averse to society, and mostly keeps entirely with the clergy on these confirmation tours, or circuits, or whatever they call them. but mr. torkingham's house is so very small, and mine is so close at hand, that this arrangement to relieve him of the fuss of one meal, at least, naturally suggested itself; and the bishop has fallen in with it very readily. how are you getting on with your observations? have you not wanted me dreadfully, to write down notes?' 'well, i have been obliged to do without you, whether or no. see here,--how much i have done.' and he showed her a book ruled in columns, headed 'object,' 'right ascension,' 'declination,' 'features,' 'remarks,' and so on. she looked over this and other things, but her mind speedily winged its way back to the confirmation. 'it is so new to me,' she said, 'to have persons coming to the house, that i feel rather anxious. i hope the luncheon will be a success.' 'you know the bishop?' said swithin. 'i have not seen him for many years. i knew him when i was quite a girl, and he held the little living of puddle-sub-mixen, near us; but after that time, and ever since i have lived here, i have seen nothing of him. there has been no confirmation in this village, they say, for twenty years. the other bishop used to make the young men and women go to warborne; he wouldn't take the trouble to come to such an out-of-the-way parish as ours.' 'this cleaning and preparation that i observe going on must be rather a tax upon you?' 'my brother louis sees to it, and, what is more, bears the expense.' 'your brother?' said swithin, with surprise. 'well, he insisted on doing so,' she replied, in a hesitating, despondent tone. 'he has been active in the whole matter, and was the first to suggest the invitation. i should not have thought of it.' 'well, i will hold aloof till it is all over.' 'thanks, dearest, for your considerateness. i wish it was not still advisable! but i shall see you on the day, and watch my own philosopher all through the service from the corner of my pew! . . . i hope you are well prepared for the rite, swithin?' she added, turning tenderly to him. 'it would perhaps be advisable for you to give up this astronomy till the confirmation is over, in order to devote your attention exclusively to that more serious matter.' 'more serious! well, i will do the best i can. i am sorry to see that you are less interested in astronomy than you used to be, viviette.' 'no; it is only that these preparations for the bishop unsettle my mind from study. now put on your other coat and hat, and come with me a little way.' xxiv the morning of the confirmation was come. it was mid-may time, bringing with it weather not, perhaps, quite so blooming as that assumed to be natural to the month by the joyous poets of three hundred years ago; but a very tolerable, well-wearing may, that the average rustic would willingly have compounded for in lieu of mays occasionally fairer, but usually more foul. among the larger shrubs and flowers which composed the outworks of the welland gardens, the lilac, the laburnum, and the guelder-rose hung out their respective colours of purple, yellow, and white; whilst within these, belted round from every disturbing gale, rose the columbine, the peony, the larkspur, and the solomon's seal. the animate things that moved amid this scene of colour were plodding bees, gadding butterflies, and numerous sauntering young feminine candidates for the impending confirmation, who, having gaily bedecked themselves for the ceremony, were enjoying their own appearance by walking about in twos and threes till it was time to start. swithin st. cleeve, whose preparations were somewhat simpler than those of the village belles, waited till his grandmother and hannah had set out, and then, locking the door, followed towards the distant church. on reaching the churchyard gate he met mr. torkingham, who shook hands with him in the manner of a man with several irons in the fire, and telling swithin where to sit, disappeared to hunt up some candidates who had not yet made themselves visible. casting his eyes round for viviette, and seeing nothing of her, swithin went on to the church porch, and looked in. from the north side of the nave smiled a host of girls, gaily uniform in dress, age, and a temporary repression of their natural tendency to 'skip like a hare over the meshes of good counsel.' their white muslin dresses, their round white caps, from beneath whose borders hair-knots and curls of various shades of brown escaped upon their low shoulders, as if against their will, lighted up the dark pews and grey stone-work to an unwonted warmth and life. on the south side were the young men and boys,--heavy, angular, and massive, as indeed was rather necessary, considering what they would have to bear at the hands of wind and weather before they returned to that mouldy nave for the last time. over the heads of all these he could see into the chancel to the square pew on the north side, which was attached to welland house. there he discerned lady constantine already arrived, her brother louis sitting by her side. swithin entered and seated himself at the end of a bench, and she, who had been on the watch, at once showed by subtle signs her consciousness of the presence of the young man who had reversed the ordained sequence of the church services on her account. she appeared in black attire, though not strictly in mourning, a touch of red in her bonnet setting off the richness of her complexion without making her gay. handsomest woman in the church she decidedly was; and yet a disinterested spectator who had known all the circumstances would probably have felt that, the future considered, swithin's more natural mate would have been one of the muslin- clad maidens who were to be presented to the bishop with him that day. when the bishop had arrived and gone into the chancel, and blown his nose, the congregation were sufficiently impressed by his presence to leave off looking at one another. the right reverend cuthbert helmsdale, d.d., ninety-fourth occupant of the episcopal throne of the diocese, revealed himself to be a personage of dark complexion, whose darkness was thrown still further into prominence by the lawn protuberances that now rose upon his two shoulders like the eastern and western hemispheres. in stature he seemed to be tall and imposing, but something of this aspect may have been derived from his robes. the service was, as usual, of a length which severely tried the tarrying powers of the young people assembled; and it was not till the youth of all the other parishes had gone up that the turn came for the welland bevy. swithin and some older ones were nearly the last. when, at the heels of mr. torkingham, he passed lady constantine's pew, he lifted his eyes from the red lining of that gentleman's hood sufficiently high to catch hers. she was abstracted, tearful, regarding him with all the rapt mingling of religion, love, fervour, and hope which such women can feel at such times, and which men know nothing of. how fervidly she watched the bishop place his hand on her beloved youth's head; how she saw the great episcopal ring glistening in the sun among swithin's brown curls; how she waited to hear if dr. helmsdale uttered the form 'this thy child' which he used for the younger ones, or 'this thy servant' which he used for those older; and how, when he said, 'this thy _child_,' she felt a prick of conscience, like a person who had entrapped an innocent youth into marriage for her own gratification, till she remembered that she had raised his social position thereby,--all this could only have been told in its entirety by herself. as for swithin, he felt ashamed of his own utter lack of the high enthusiasm which beamed so eloquently from her eyes. when he passed her again, on the return journey from the bishop to his seat, her face was warm with a blush which her brother might have observed had he regarded her. whether he had observed it or not, as soon as st. cleeve had sat himself down again louis glanville turned and looked hard at the young astronomer. this was the first time that st. cleeve and viviette's brother had been face to face in a distinct light, their first meeting having occurred in the dusk of a railway-station. swithin was not in the habit of noticing people's features; he scarcely ever observed any detail of physiognomy in his friends, a generalization from their whole aspect forming his idea of them; and he now only noted a young man of perhaps thirty, who lolled a good deal, and in whose small dark eyes seemed to be concentrated the activity that the rest of his frame decidedly lacked. this gentleman's eyes were henceforward, to the end of the service, continually fixed upon swithin; but as this was their natural direction, from the position of his seat, there was no great strangeness in the circumstance. swithin wanted to say to viviette, 'now i hope you are pleased; i have conformed to your ideas of my duty, leaving my fitness out of consideration;' but as he could only see her bonnet and forehead it was not possible even to look the intelligence. he turned to his left hand, where the organ stood, with miss tabitha lark seated behind it. it being now sermon-time the youthful blower had fallen asleep over the handle of his bellows, and tabitha pulled out her handkerchief intending to flap him awake with it. with the handkerchief tumbled out a whole family of unexpected articles: a silver thimble; a photograph; a little purse; a scent-bottle; some loose halfpence; nine green gooseberries; a key. they rolled to swithin's feet, and, passively obeying his first instinct, he picked up as many of the articles as he could find, and handed them to her amid the smiles of the neighbours. tabitha was half-dead with humiliation at such an event, happening under the very eyes of the bishop on this glorious occasion; she turned pale as a sheet, and could hardly keep her seat. fearing she might faint, swithin, who had genuinely sympathized, bent over and whispered encouragingly, 'don't mind it, tabitha. shall i take you out into the air?' she declined his offer, and presently the sermon came to an end. swithin lingered behind the rest of the congregation sufficiently long to see lady constantine, accompanied by her brother, the bishop, the bishop's chaplain, mr. torkingham, and several other clergy and ladies, enter to the grand luncheon by the door which admitted from the churchyard to the lawn of welland house; the whole group talking with a vivacity all the more intense, as it seemed, from the recent two hours' enforced repression of their social qualities within the adjoining building. the young man stood till he was left quite alone in the churchyard, and then went slowly homeward over the hill, perhaps a trifle depressed at the impossibility of being near viviette in this her one day of gaiety, and joining in the conversation of those who surrounded her. not that he felt much jealousy of her situation, as his wife, in comparison with his own. he had so clearly understood from the beginning that, in the event of marriage, their outward lives were to run on as before, that to rebel now would have been unmanly in himself and cruel to her, by adding to embarrassments that were great enough already. his momentary doubt was of his own strength to achieve sufficiently high things to render him, in relation to her, other than a patronized young favourite, whom she had married at an immense sacrifice of position. now, at twenty, he was doomed to isolation even from a wife; could it be that at, say thirty, he would be welcomed everywhere? but with motion through the sun and air his mood assumed a lighter complexion, and on reaching home he remembered with interest that venus was in a favourable aspect for observation that afternoon. xxv meanwhile the interior of welland house was rattling with the progress of the ecclesiastical luncheon. the bishop, who sat at lady constantine's side, seemed enchanted with her company, and from the beginning she engrossed his attention almost entirely. the truth was that the circumstance of her not having her whole soul centred on the success of the repast and the pleasure of bishop helmsdale, imparted to her, in a great measure, the mood to ensure both. her brother louis it was who had laid out the plan of entertaining the bishop, to which she had assented but indifferently. she was secretly bound to another, on whose career she had staked all her happiness. having thus other interests she evinced to-day the ease of one who hazards nothing, and there was no sign of that preoccupation with housewifely contingencies which so often makes the hostess hardly recognizable as the charming woman who graced a friend's home the day before. in marrying swithin lady constantine had played her card,--recklessly, impulsively, ruinously, perhaps; but she had played it; it could not be withdrawn; and she took this morning's luncheon as an episode that could result in nothing to her beyond the day's entertainment. hence, by that power of indirectness to accomplish in an hour what strenuous aiming will not effect in a life-time, she fascinated the bishop to an unprecedented degree. a bachelor, he rejoiced in the commanding period of life that stretches between the time of waning impulse and the time of incipient dotage, when a woman can reach the male heart neither by awakening a young man's passion nor an old man's infatuation. he must be made to admire, or he can be made to do nothing. unintentionally that is how viviette operated on her guest. lady constantine, to external view, was in a position to desire many things, and of a sort to desire them. she was obviously, by nature, impulsive to indiscretion. but instead of exhibiting activities to correspond, recently gratified affection lent to her manner just now a sweet serenity, a truly christian contentment, which it puzzled the learned bishop exceedingly to find in a warm young widow, and increased his interest in her every moment. thus matters stood when the conversation veered round to the morning's confirmation. 'that was a singularly engaging young man who came up among mr. torkingham's candidates,' said the bishop to her somewhat abruptly. but abruptness does not catch a woman without her wit. 'which one?' she said innocently. 'that youth with the "corn-coloured" hair, as a poet of the new school would call it, who sat just at the side of the organ. do you know who he is?' in answering viviette showed a little nervousness, for the first time that day. 'o yes. he is the son of an unfortunate gentleman who was formerly curate here,--a mr. st. cleeve.' 'i never saw a handsomer young man in my life,' said the bishop. lady constantine blushed. 'there was a lack of self-consciousness, too, in his manner of presenting himself, which very much won me. a mr. st. cleeve, do you say? a curate's son? his father must have been st. cleeve of all angels, whom i knew. how comes he to be staying on here? what is he doing?' mr. torkingham, who kept one ear on the bishop all the lunch-time, finding that lady constantine was not ready with an answer, hastened to reply: 'your lordship is right. his father was an all angels' man. the youth is rather to be pitied.' 'he was a man of talent,' affirmed the bishop. 'but i quite lost sight of him.' 'he was curate to the late vicar,' resumed the parson, 'and was much liked by the parish: but, being erratic in his tastes and tendencies, he rashly contracted a marriage with the daughter of a farmer, and then quarrelled with the local gentry for not taking up his wife. this lad was an only child. there was enough money to educate him, and he is sufficiently well provided for to be independent of the world so long as he is content to live here with great economy. but of course this gives him few opportunities of bettering himself.' 'yes, naturally,' replied the bishop of melchester. 'better have been left entirely dependent on himself. these half-incomes do men little good, unless they happen to be either weaklings or geniuses.' lady constantine would have given the world to say, 'he is a genius, and the hope of my life;' but it would have been decidedly risky, and in another moment was unnecessary, for mr. torkingham said, 'there is a certain genius in this young man, i sometimes think.' 'well, he really looks quite out of the common,' said the bishop. 'youthful genius is sometimes disappointing,' observed viviette, not believing it in the least. 'yes,' said the bishop. 'though it depends, lady constantine, on what you understand by disappointing. it may produce nothing visible to the world's eye, and yet may complete its development within to a very perfect degree. objective achievements, though the only ones which are counted, are not the only ones that exist and have value; and i for one should be sorry to assert that, because a man of genius dies as unknown to the world as when he was born, he therefore was an instance of wasted material.' objective achievements were, however, those that lady constantine had a weakness for in the present case, and she asked her more experienced guest if he thought early development of a special talent a good sign in youth. the bishop thought it well that a particular bent should not show itself too early, lest disgust should result. 'still,' argued lady constantine rather firmly (for she felt this opinion of the bishop's to be one throwing doubt on swithin), 'sustained fruition is compatible with early bias. tycho brahe showed quite a passion for the solar system when he was but a youth, and so did kepler; and james ferguson had a surprising knowledge of the stars by the time he was eleven or twelve.' 'yes; sustained fruition,' conceded the bishop (rather liking the words), 'is certainly compatible with early bias. fenelon preached at fourteen.' 'he--mr. st. cleeve--is not in the church,' said lady constantine. 'he is a scientific young man, my lord,' explained mr. torkingham. 'an astronomer,' she added, with suppressed pride. 'an astronomer! really, that makes him still more interesting than being handsome and the son of a man i knew. how and where does he study astronomy?' 'he has a beautiful observatory. he has made use of an old column that was erected on this manor to the memory of one of the constantines. it has been very ingeniously adapted for his purpose, and he does very good work there. i believe he occasionally sends up a paper to the royal society, or greenwich, or somewhere, and to astronomical periodicals.' 'i should have had no idea, from his boyish look, that he had advanced so far,' the bishop answered. 'and yet i saw on his face that within there was a book worth studying. his is a career i should very much like to watch.' a thrill of pleasure chased through lady constantine's heart at this praise of her chosen one. it was an unwitting compliment to her taste and discernment in singling him out for her own, despite its temporary inexpediency. her brother louis now spoke. 'i fancy he is as interested in one of his fellow-creatures as in the science of astronomy,' observed the cynic dryly. 'in whom?' said lady constantine quickly. 'in the fair maiden who sat at the organ,--a pretty girl, rather. i noticed a sort of by-play going on between them occasionally, during the sermon, which meant mating, if i am not mistaken.' 'she!' said lady constantine. 'she is only a village girl, a dairyman's daughter,--tabitha lark, who used to come to read to me.' 'she may be a savage, for all that i know: but there is something between those two young people, nevertheless.' the bishop looked as if he had allowed his interest in a stranger to carry him too far, and mr. torkingham was horrified at the irreverent and easy familiarity of louis glanville's talk in the presence of a consecrated bishop. as for viviette, her tongue lost all its volubility. she felt quite faint at heart, and hardly knew how to control herself. 'i have never noticed anything of the sort,' said mr. torkingham. 'it would be a matter for regret,' said the bishop, 'if he should follow his father in forming an attachment that would be a hindrance to him in any honourable career; though perhaps an early marriage, intrinsically considered, would not be bad for him. a youth who looks as if he had come straight from old greece may be exposed to many temptations, should he go out into the world without a friend or counsellor to guide him.' despite her sudden jealousy viviette's eyes grew moist at the picture of her innocent swithin going into the world without a friend or counsellor. but she was sick in soul and disquieted still by louis's dreadful remarks, who, unbeliever as he was in human virtue, could have no reason whatever for representing swithin as engaged in a private love affair if such were not his honest impression. she was so absorbed during the remainder of the luncheon that she did not even observe the kindly light that her presence was shedding on the right reverend ecclesiastic by her side. he reflected it back in tones duly mellowed by his position; the minor clergy caught up the rays thereof, and so the gentle influence played down the table. the company soon departed when luncheon was over, and the remainder of the day passed in quietness, the bishop being occupied in his room at the vicarage with writing letters or a sermon. having a long journey before him the next day he had expressed a wish to be housed for the night without ceremony, and would have dined alone with mr. torkingham but that, by a happy thought, lady constantine and her brother were asked to join them. however, when louis crossed the churchyard and entered the vicarage drawing-room at seven o'clock, his sister was not in his company. she was, he said, suffering from a slight headache, and much regretted that she was on that account unable to come. at this intelligence the social sparkle disappeared from the bishop's eye, and he sat down to table, endeavouring to mould into the form of episcopal serenity an expression which was really one of common human disappointment. in his simple statement louis glanville had by no means expressed all the circumstances which accompanied his sister's refusal, at the last moment, to dine at her neighbour's house. louis had strongly urged her to bear up against her slight indisposition--if it were that, and not disinclination--and come along with him on just this one occasion, perhaps a more important episode in her life than she was aware of. viviette thereupon knew quite well that he alluded to the favourable impression she was producing on the bishop, notwithstanding that neither of them mentioned the bishop's name. but she did not give way, though the argument waxed strong between them; and louis left her in no very amiable mood, saying, 'i don't believe you have any more headache than i have, viviette. it is some provoking whim of yours--nothing more.' in this there was a substratum of truth. when her brother had left her, and she had seen him from the window entering the vicarage gate, viviette seemed to be much relieved, and sat down in her bedroom till the evening grew dark, and only the lights shining through the trees from the parsonage dining-room revealed to the eye where that dwelling stood. then she arose, and putting on the cloak she had used so many times before for the same purpose, she locked her bedroom door (to be supposed within, in case of the accidental approach of a servant), and let herself privately out of the house. lady constantine paused for a moment under the vicarage windows, till she could sufficiently well hear the voices of the diners to be sure that they were actually within, and then went on her way, which was towards the rings-hill column. she appeared a mere spot, hardly distinguishable from the grass, as she crossed the open ground, and soon became absorbed in the black mass of the fir plantation. meanwhile the conversation at mr. torkingham's dinner-table was not of a highly exhilarating quality. the parson, in long self-communing during the afternoon, had decided that the diocesan synod, whose annual session at melchester had occurred in the month previous, would afford a solid and unimpeachable subject to launch during the meal, whenever conversation flagged; and that it would be one likely to win the respect of his spiritual chieftain for himself as the introducer. accordingly, in the further belief that you could not have too much of a good thing, mr. torkingham not only acted upon his idea, but at every pause rallied to the synod point with unbroken firmness. everything which had been discussed at that last session--such as the introduction of the lay element into the councils of the church, the reconstitution of the ecclesiastical courts, church patronage, the tithe question--was revived by mr. torkingham, and the excellent remarks which the bishop had made in his addresses on those subjects were quoted back to him. as for bishop helmsdale himself, his instincts seemed to be to allude in a debonair spirit to the incidents of the past day--to the flowers in lady constantine's beds, the date of her house--perhaps with a view of hearing a little more about their owner from louis, who would very readily have followed the bishop's lead had the parson allowed him room. but this mr. torkingham seldom did, and about half-past nine they prepared to separate. louis glanville had risen from the table, and was standing by the window, looking out upon the sky, and privately yawning, the topics discussed having been hardly in his line. 'a fine night,' he said at last. 'i suppose our young astronomer is hard at work now,' said the bishop, following the direction of louis's glance towards the clear sky. 'yes,' said the parson; 'he is very assiduous whenever the nights are good for observation. i have occasionally joined him in his tower, and looked through his telescope with great benefit to my ideas of celestial phenomena. i have not seen what he has been doing lately.' 'suppose we stroll that way?' said louis. 'would you be interested in seeing the observatory, bishop?' 'i am quite willing to go,' said the bishop, 'if the distance is not too great. i should not be at all averse to making the acquaintance of so exceptional a young man as this mr. st. cleeve seems to be; and i have never seen the inside of an observatory in my life.' the intention was no sooner formed than it was carried out, mr. torkingham leading the way. xxvi half an hour before this time swithin st. cleeve had been sitting in his cabin at the base of the column, working out some figures from observations taken on preceding nights, with a view to a theory that he had in his head on the motions of certain so-called fixed stars. the evening being a little chilly a small fire was burning in the stove, and this and the shaded lamp before him lent a remarkably cosy air to the chamber. he was awakened from his reveries by a scratching at the window- pane like that of the point of an ivy leaf, which he knew to be really caused by the tip of his sweetheart-wife's forefinger. he rose and opened the door to admit her, not without astonishment as to how she had been able to get away from her friends. 'dearest viv, why, what's the matter?' he said, perceiving that her face, as the lamplight fell on it, was sad, and even stormy. 'i thought i would run across to see you. i have heard something so--so--to your discredit, and i know it can't be true! i know you are constancy itself; but your constancy produces strange effects in people's eyes!' 'good heavens! nobody has found us out--' 'no, no--it is not that. you know, swithin, that i am always sincere, and willing to own if i am to blame in anything. now will you prove to me that you are the same by owning some fault to me?' 'yes, dear, indeed; directly i can think of one worth owning.' 'i wonder one does not rush upon your tongue in a moment!' 'i confess that i am sufficiently a pharisee not to experience that spontaneity.' 'swithin, don't speak so affectedly, when you know so well what i mean! is it nothing to you that, after all our vows for life, you have thought it right to--flirt with a village girl?' 'o viviette!' interrupted swithin, taking her hand, which was hot and trembling. 'you who are full of noble and generous feelings, and regard me with devoted tenderness that has never been surpassed by woman,--how can you be so greatly at fault? _i_ flirt, viviette? by thinking that you injure yourself in my eyes. why, i am so far from doing so that i continually pull myself up for watching you too jealously, as to-day, when i have been dreading the effect upon you of other company in my absence, and thinking that you rather shut the gates against me when you have big-wigs to entertain.' 'do you, swithin?' she cried. it was evident that the honest tone of his words was having a great effect in clearing away the clouds. she added with an uncertain smile, 'but how can i believe that, after what was seen to-day? my brother, not knowing in the least that i had an iota of interest in you, told me that he witnessed the signs of an attachment between you and tabitha lark in church, this morning.' 'ah!' cried swithin, with a burst of laughter. 'now i know what you mean, and what has caused this misunderstanding! how good of you, viviette, to come at once and have it out with me, instead of brooding over it with dark imaginings, and thinking bitter things of me, as many women would have done!' he succinctly told the whole story of his little adventure with tabitha that morning; and the sky was clear on both sides. 'when shall i be able to claim you,' he added, 'and put an end to all such painful accidents as these?' she partially sighed. her perception of what the outside world was made of, latterly somewhat obscured by solitude and her lover's company, had been revived to-day by her entertainment of the bishop, clergymen, and, more particularly, clergymen's wives; and it did not diminish her sense of the difficulties in swithin's path to see anew how little was thought of the greatest gifts, mental and spiritual, if they were not backed up by substantial temporalities. however, the pair made the best of their future that circumstances permitted, and the interview was at length drawing to a close when there came, without the slightest forewarning, a smart rat-tat-tat upon the little door. 'o i am lost!' said viviette, seizing his arm. 'why was i so incautious?' 'it is nobody of consequence,' whispered swithin assuringly. 'somebody from my grandmother, probably, to know when i am coming home.' they were unperceived so far, for the only window which gave light to the hut was screened by a curtain. at that moment they heard the sound of their visitors' voices, and, with a consternation as great as her own, swithin discerned the tones of mr. torkingham and the bishop of melchester. 'where shall i get? what shall i do?' said the poor lady, clasping her hands. swithin looked around the cabin, and a very little look was required to take in all its resources. at one end, as previously explained, were a table, stove, chair, cupboard, and so on; while the other was completely occupied by a diminutive arabian bedstead, hung with curtains of pink-and- white chintz. on the inside of the bed there was a narrow channel, about a foot wide, between it and the wall of the hut. into this cramped retreat viviette slid herself, and stood trembling behind the curtains. by this time the knock had been repeated more loudly, the light through the window-blind unhappily revealing the presence of some inmate. swithin threw open the door, and mr. torkingham introduced his visitors. the bishop shook hands with the young man, told him he had known his father, and at swithin's invitation, weak as it was, entered the cabin, the vicar and louis glanville remaining on the threshold, not to inconveniently crowd the limited space within. bishop helmsdale looked benignantly around the apartment, and said, 'quite a settlement in the backwoods--quite: far enough from the world to afford the votary of science the seclusion he needs, and not so far as to limit his resources. a hermit might apparently live here in as much solitude as in a primeval forest.' 'his lordship has been good enough to express an interest in your studies,' said mr. torkingham to st. cleeve. 'and we have come to ask you to let us see the observatory.' 'with great pleasure,' stammered swithin. 'where is the observatory?' inquired the bishop, peering round again. 'the staircase is just outside this door,' swithin answered. 'i am at your lordship's service, and will show you up at once.' 'and this is your little bed, for use when you work late,' said the bishop. 'yes; i am afraid it is rather untidy,' swithin apologized. 'and here are your books,' the bishop continued, turning to the table and the shaded lamp. 'you take an observation at the top, i presume, and come down here to record your observations.' the young man explained his precise processes as well as his state of mind would let him, and while he was doing so mr. torkingham and louis waited patiently without, looking sometimes into the night, and sometimes through the door at the interlocutors, and listening to their scientific converse. when all had been exhibited here below, swithin lit his lantern, and, inviting his visitors to follow, led the way up the column, experiencing no small sense of relief as soon as he heard the footsteps of all three tramping on the stairs behind him. he knew very well that, once they were inside the spiral, viviette was out of danger, her knowledge of the locality enabling her to find her way with perfect safety through the plantation, and into the park home. at the top he uncovered his equatorial, and, for the first time at ease, explained to them its beauties, and revealed by its help the glories of those stars that were eligible for inspection. the bishop spoke as intelligently as could be expected on a topic not peculiarly his own; but, somehow, he seemed rather more abstracted in manner now than when he had arrived. swithin thought that perhaps the long clamber up the stairs, coming after a hard day's work, had taken his spontaneity out of him, and mr. torkingham was afraid that his lordship was getting bored. but this did not appear to be the case; for though he said little he stayed on some time longer, examining the construction of the dome after relinquishing the telescope; while occasionally swithin caught the eyes of the bishop fixed hard on him. 'perhaps he sees some likeness of my father in me,' the young man thought; and the party making ready to leave at this time he conducted them to the bottom of the tower. swithin was not prepared for what followed their descent. all were standing at the foot of the staircase. the astronomer, lantern in hand, offered to show them the way out of the plantation, to which mr. torkingham replied that he knew the way very well, and would not trouble his young friend. he strode forward with the words, and louis followed him, after waiting a moment and finding that the bishop would not take the precedence. the latter and swithin were thus left together for one moment, whereupon the bishop turned. 'mr. st. cleeve,' he said in a strange voice, 'i should like to speak to you privately, before i leave, to-morrow morning. can you meet me--let me see--in the churchyard, at half-past ten o'clock?' 'o yes, my lord, certainly,' said swithin. and before he had recovered from his surprise the bishop had joined the others in the shades of the plantation. swithin immediately opened the door of the hut, and scanned the nook behind the bed. as he had expected his bird had flown. xxvii all night the astronomer's mind was on the stretch with curiosity as to what the bishop could wish to say to him. a dozen conjectures entered his brain, to be abandoned in turn as unlikely. that which finally seemed the most plausible was that the bishop, having become interested in his pursuits, and entertaining friendly recollections of his father, was going to ask if he could do anything to help him on in the profession he had chosen. should this be the case, thought the suddenly sanguine youth, it would seem like an encouragement to that spirit of firmness which had led him to reject his late uncle's offer because it involved the renunciation of lady constantine. at last he fell asleep; and when he awoke it was so late that the hour was ready to solve what conjecture could not. after a hurried breakfast he paced across the fields, entering the churchyard by the south gate precisely at the appointed minute. the inclosure was well adapted for a private interview, being bounded by bushes of laurel and alder nearly on all sides. he looked round; the bishop was not there, nor any living creature save himself. swithin sat down upon a tombstone to await bishop helmsdale's arrival. while he sat he fancied he could hear voices in conversation not far off, and further attention convinced him that they came from lady constantine's lawn, which was divided from the churchyard by a high wall and shrubbery only. as the bishop still delayed his coming, though the time was nearly eleven, and as the lady whose sweet voice mingled with those heard from the lawn was his personal property, swithin became exceedingly curious to learn what was going on within that screened promenade. a way of doing so occurred to him. the key was in the church door; he opened it, entered, and ascended to the ringers' loft in the west tower. at the back of this was a window commanding a full view of viviette's garden front. the flowers were all in gayest bloom, and the creepers on the walls of the house were bursting into tufts of young green. a broad gravel-walk ran from end to end of the facade, terminating in a large conservatory. in the walk were three people pacing up and down. lady constantine's was the central figure, her brother being on one side of her, and on the other a stately form in a corded shovel-hat of glossy beaver and black breeches. this was the bishop. viviette carried over her shoulder a sunshade lined with red, which she twirled idly. they were laughing and chatting gaily, and when the group approached the churchyard many of their remarks entered the silence of the church tower through the ventilator of the window. the conversation was general, yet interesting enough to swithin. at length louis stepped upon the grass and picked up something that had lain there, which turned out to be a bowl: throwing it forward he took a second, and bowled it towards the first, or jack. the bishop, who seemed to be in a sprightly mood, followed suit, and bowled one in a curve towards the jack, turning and speaking to lady constantine as he concluded the feat. as she had not left the gravelled terrace he raised his voice, so that the words reached swithin distinctly. 'do you follow us?' he asked gaily. 'i am not skilful,' she said. 'i always bowl narrow.' the bishop meditatively paused. 'this moment reminds one of the scene in _richard the second_,' he said. 'i mean the duke of york's garden, where the queen and her two ladies play, and the queen says-- "what sport shall we devise here in this garden, to drive away the heavy thought of care?" to which her lady answers, "madam, we'll play at bowls."' 'that's an unfortunate quotation for you,' said lady constantine; 'for if i don't forget, the queen declines, saying, "twill make me think the world is full of rubs, and that my fortune runs against the bias."' 'then i cite _mal a propos_. but it is an interesting old game, and might have been played at that very date on this very green.' the bishop lazily bowled another, and while he was doing it viviette's glance rose by accident to the church tower window, where she recognized swithin's face. her surprise was only momentary; and waiting till both her companions' backs were turned she smiled and blew him a kiss. in another minute she had another opportunity, and blew him another; afterwards blowing him one a third time. her blowings were put a stop to by the bishop and louis throwing down the bowls and rejoining her in the path, the house clock at the moment striking half-past eleven. 'this is a fine way of keeping an engagement,' said swithin to himself. 'i have waited an hour while you indulge in those trifles!' he fumed, turned, and behold somebody was at his elbow: tabitha lark. swithin started, and said, 'how did you come here, tabitha?' 'in the course of my calling, mr. st. cleeve,' said the smiling girl. 'i come to practise on the organ. when i entered i saw you up here through the tower arch, and i crept up to see what you were looking at. the bishop is a striking man, is he not?' 'yes, rather,' said swithin. 'i think he is much devoted to lady constantine, and i am glad of it. aren't you?' 'o yes--very,' said swithin, wondering if tabitha had seen the tender little salutes between lady constantine and himself. 'i don't think she cares much for him,' added tabitha judicially. 'or, even if she does, she could be got away from him in no time by a younger man.' 'pooh, that's nothing,' said swithin impatiently. tabitha then remarked that her blower had not come to time, and that she must go to look for him; upon which she descended the stairs, and left swithin again alone. a few minutes later the bishop suddenly looked at his watch, lady constantine having withdrawn towards the house. apparently apologizing to louis the bishop came down the terrace, and through the door into the churchyard. swithin hastened downstairs and joined him in the path under the sunny wall of the aisle. their glances met, and it was with some consternation that swithin beheld the change that a few short minutes had wrought in that episcopal countenance. on the lawn with lady constantine the rays of an almost perpetual smile had brightened his dark aspect like flowers in a shady place: now the smile was gone as completely as yesterday; the lines of his face were firm; his dark eyes and whiskers were overspread with gravity; and, as he gazed upon swithin from the repose of his stable figure it was like an evangelized king of spades come to have it out with the knave of hearts. * * * * * to return for a moment to louis glanville. he had been somewhat struck with the abruptness of the bishop's departure, and more particularly by the circumstance that he had gone away by the private door into the churchyard instead of by the regular exit on the other side. true, great men were known to suffer from absence of mind, and bishop helmsdale, having a dim sense that he had entered by that door yesterday, might have unconsciously turned thitherward now. louis, upon the whole, thought little of the matter, and being now left quite alone on the lawn, he seated himself in an arbour and began smoking. the arbour was situated against the churchyard wall. the atmosphere was as still as the air of a hot-house; only fourteen inches of brickwork divided louis from the scene of the bishop's interview with st. cleeve, and as voices on the lawn had been audible to swithin in the churchyard, voices in the churchyard could be heard without difficulty from that close corner of the lawn. no sooner had louis lit a cigar than the dialogue began. 'ah, you are here, st. cleeve,' said the bishop, hardly replying to swithin's good morning. 'i fear i am a little late. well, my request to you to meet me may have seemed somewhat unusual, seeing that we were strangers till a few hours ago.' 'i don't mind that, if your lordship wishes to see me.' 'i thought it best to see you regarding your confirmation yesterday; and my reason for taking a more active step with you than i should otherwise have done is that i have some interest in you through having known your father when we were undergraduates. his rooms were on the same staircase with mine at all angels, and we were friendly till time and affairs separated us even more completely than usually happens. however, about your presenting yourself for confirmation.' (the bishop's voice grew stern.) 'if i had known yesterday morning what i knew twelve hours later, i wouldn't have confirmed you at all.' 'indeed, my lord!' 'yes, i say it, and i mean it. i visited your observatory last night.' 'you did, my lord.' 'in inspecting it i noticed something which i may truly describe as extraordinary. i have had young men present themselves to me who turned out to be notoriously unfit, either from giddiness, from being profane or intemperate, or from some bad quality or other. but i never remember a case which equalled the cool culpability of this. while infringing the first principles of social decorum you might at least have respected the ordinance sufficiently to have stayed away from it altogether. now i have sent for you here to see if a last entreaty and a direct appeal to your sense of manly uprightness will have any effect in inducing you to change your course of life.' the voice of swithin in his next remark showed how tremendously this attack of the bishop had told upon his feelings. louis, of course, did not know the reason why the words should have affected him precisely as they did; to any one in the secret the double embarrassment arising from misapprehended ethics and inability to set matters right, because his word of secrecy to another was inviolable, would have accounted for the young man's emotion sufficiently well. 'i am very sorry your lordship should have seen anything objectionable,' said swithin. 'may i ask what it was?' 'you know what it was. something in your chamber, which forced me to the above conclusions. i disguised my feelings of sorrow at the time for obvious reasons, but i never in my whole life was so shocked!' 'at what, my lord?' 'at what i saw.' 'pardon me, bishop helmsdale, but you said just now that we are strangers; so what you saw in my cabin concerns me only.' 'there i contradict you. twenty-four hours ago that remark would have been plausible enough; but by presenting yourself for confirmation at my hands you have invited my investigation into your principles.' swithin sighed. 'i admit it,' he said. 'and what do i find them?' 'you say reprehensible. but you might at least let me hear the proof!' 'i can do more, sir. i can let you see it!' there was a pause. louis glanville was so highly interested that he stood upon the seat of the arbour, and looked through the leafage over the wall. the bishop had produced an article from his pocket. 'what is it?' said swithin, laboriously scrutinizing the thing. 'why, don't you see?' said the bishop, holding it out between his finger and thumb in swithin's face. 'a bracelet,--a coral bracelet. i found the wanton object on the bed in your cabin! and of the sex of the owner there can be no doubt. more than that, she was concealed behind the curtains, for i saw them move.' in the decision of his opinion the bishop threw the coral bracelet down on a tombstone. 'nobody was in my room, my lord, who had not a perfect right to be there,' said the younger man. 'well, well, that's a matter of assertion. now don't get into a passion, and say to me in your haste what you'll repent of saying afterwards.' 'i am not in a passion, i assure your lordship. i am too sad for passion.' 'very well; that's a hopeful sign. now i would ask you, as one man of another, do you think that to come to me, the bishop of this large and important diocese, as you came yesterday, and pretend to be something that you are not, is quite upright conduct, leave alone religious? think it over. we may never meet again. but bear in mind what your bishop and spiritual head says to you, and see if you cannot mend before it is too late.' swithin was meek as moses, but he tried to appear sturdy. 'my lord, i am in a difficult position,' he said mournfully; 'how difficult, nobody but myself can tell. i cannot explain; there are insuperable reasons against it. but will you take my word of assurance that i am not so bad as i seem? some day i will prove it. till then i only ask you to suspend your judgment on me.' the bishop shook his head incredulously and went towards the vicarage, as if he had lost his hearing. swithin followed him with his eyes, and louis followed the direction of swithin's. before the bishop had reached the vicarage entrance lady constantine crossed in front of him. she had a basket on her arm, and was, in fact, going to visit some of the poorer cottages. who could believe the bishop now to be the same man that he had been a moment before? the darkness left his face as if he had come out of a cave; his look was all sweetness, and shine, and gaiety, as he again greeted viviette. xxviii the conversation which arose between the bishop and lady constantine was of that lively and reproductive kind which cannot be ended during any reasonable halt of two people going in opposite directions. he turned, and walked with her along the laurel-screened lane that bordered the churchyard, till their voices died away in the distance. swithin then aroused himself from his thoughtful regard of them, and went out of the churchyard by another gate. seeing himself now to be left alone on the scene, louis glanville descended from his post of observation in the arbour. he came through the private doorway, and on to that spot among the graves where the bishop and st. cleeve had conversed. on the tombstone still lay the coral bracelet which dr. helmsdale had flung down there in his indignation; for the agitated, introspective mood into which swithin had been thrown had banished from his mind all thought of securing the trinket and putting it in his pocket. louis picked up the little red scandal-breeding thing, and while walking on with it in his hand he observed tabitha lark approaching the church, in company with the young blower whom she had gone in search of to inspire her organ-practising within. louis immediately put together, with that rare diplomatic keenness of which he was proud, the little scene he had witnessed between tabitha and swithin during the confirmation, and the bishop's stern statement as to where he had found the bracelet. he had no longer any doubt that it belonged to her. 'poor girl!' he said to himself, and sang in an undertone-- 'tra deri, dera, l'histoire n'est pas nouvelle!' when she drew nearer louis called her by name. she sent the boy into the church, and came forward, blushing at having been called by so fine a gentleman. louis held out the bracelet. 'here is something i have found, or somebody else has found,' he said to her. 'i won't state where. put it away, and say no more about it. i will not mention it either. now go on into the church where you are going, and may heaven have mercy on your soul, my dear.' 'thank you, sir,' said tabitha, with some perplexity, yet inclined to be pleased, and only recognizing in the situation the fact that lady constantine's humorous brother was making her a present. 'you are much obliged to me?' 'o yes!' 'well, miss lark, i've discovered a secret, you see.' 'what may that be, mr. glanville?' 'that you are in love.' 'i don't admit it, sir. who told you so?' 'nobody. only i put two and two together. now take my advice. beware of lovers! they are a bad lot, and bring young women to tears.' 'some do, i dare say. but some don't.' 'and you think that in your particular case the latter alternative will hold good? we generally think we shall be lucky ourselves, though all the world before us, in the same situation, have been otherwise.' 'o yes, or we should die outright of despair.' 'well, i don't think you will be lucky in your case.' 'please how do you know so much, since my case has not yet arrived?' asked tabitha, tossing her head a little disdainfully, but less than she might have done if he had not obtained a charter for his discourse by giving her the bracelet. 'fie, tabitha!' 'i tell you it has not arrived!' she said, with some anger. 'i have not got a lover, and everybody knows i haven't, and it's an insinuating thing for you to say so!' louis laughed, thinking how natural it was that a girl should so emphatically deny circumstances that would not bear curious inquiry. 'why, of course i meant myself,' he said soothingly. 'so, then, you will not accept me?' 'i didn't know you meant yourself,' she replied. 'but i won't accept you. and i think you ought not to jest on such subjects.' 'well, perhaps not. however, don't let the bishop see your bracelet, and all will be well. but mind, lovers are deceivers.' tabitha laughed, and they parted, the girl entering the church. she had been feeling almost certain that, having accidentally found the bracelet somewhere, he had presented it in a whim to her as the first girl he met. yet now she began to have momentary doubts whether he had not been labouring under a mistake, and had imagined her to be the owner. the bracelet was not valuable; it was, in fact, a mere toy,--the pair of which this was one being a little present made to lady constantine by swithin on the day of their marriage; and she had not worn them with sufficient frequency out of doors for tabitha to recognize either as positively her ladyship's. but when, out of sight of the blower, the girl momentarily tried it on, in a corner by the organ, it seemed to her that the ornament was possibly lady constantine's. now that the pink beads shone before her eyes on her own arm she remembered having seen a bracelet with just such an effect gracing the wrist of lady constantine upon one occasion. a temporary self-surrender to the sophism that if mr. louis glanville chose to give away anything belonging to his sister, she, tabitha, had a right to take it without question, was soon checked by a resolve to carry the tempting strings of coral to her ladyship that evening, and inquire the truth about them. this decided on she slipped the bracelet into her pocket, and played her voluntaries with a light heart. * * * * * bishop helmsdale did not tear himself away from welland till about two o'clock that afternoon, which was three hours later than he had intended to leave. it was with a feeling of relief that swithin, looking from the top of the tower, saw the carriage drive out from the vicarage into the turnpike road, and whirl the right reverend gentleman again towards warborne. the coast being now clear of him swithin meditated how to see viviette, and explain what had happened. with this in view he waited where he was till evening came on. meanwhile lady constantine and her brother dined by themselves at welland house. they had not met since the morning, and as soon as they were left alone louis said, 'you have done very well so far; but you might have been a little warmer.' 'done well?' she asked, with surprise. 'yes, with the bishop. the difficult question is how to follow up our advantage. how are you to keep yourself in sight of him?' 'heavens, louis! you don't seriously mean that the bishop of melchester has any feelings for me other than friendly?' 'viviette, this is affectation. you know he has as well as i do.' she sighed. 'yes,' she said. 'i own i had a suspicion of the same thing. what a misfortune!' 'a misfortune? surely the world is turned upside down! you will drive me to despair about our future if you see things so awry. exert yourself to do something, so as to make of this accident a stepping-stone to higher things. the gentleman will give us the slip if we don't pursue the friendship at once.' 'i cannot have you talk like this,' she cried impatiently. 'i have no more thought of the bishop than i have of the pope. i would much rather not have had him here to lunch at all. you said it would be necessary to do it, and an opportunity, and i thought it my duty to show some hospitality when he was coming so near, mr. torkingham's house being so small. but of course i understood that the opportunity would be one for you in getting to know him, your prospects being so indefinite at present; not one for me.' 'if you don't follow up this chance of being spiritual queen of melchester, you will never have another of being anything. mind this, viviette: you are not so young as you were. you are getting on to be a middle-aged woman, and your black hair is precisely of the sort which time quickly turns grey. you must make up your mind to grizzled bachelors or widowers. young marriageable men won't look at you; or if they do just now, in a year or two more they'll despise you as an antiquated party.' lady constantine perceptibly paled. 'young men what?' she asked. 'say that again.' 'i said it was no use to think of young men; they won't look at you much longer; or if they do, it will be to look away again very quickly.' 'you imply that if i were to marry a man younger than myself he would speedily acquire a contempt for me? how much younger must a man be than his wife--to get that feeling for her?' she was resting her elbow on the chair as she faintly spoke the words, and covered her eyes with her hand. 'an exceedingly small number of years,' said louis drily. 'now the bishop is at least fifteen years older than you, and on that account, no less than on others, is an excellent match. you would be head of the church in this diocese: what more can you require after these years of miserable obscurity? in addition, you would escape that minor thorn in the flesh of bishops' wives, of being only "mrs." while their husbands are peers.' she was not listening; his previous observation still detained her thoughts. 'louis,' she said, 'in the case of a woman marrying a man much younger than herself, does he get to dislike her, even if there has been a social advantage to him in the union?' 'yes,--not a whit less. ask any person of experience. but what of that? let's talk of our own affairs. you say you have no thought of the bishop. and yet if he had stayed here another day or two he would have proposed to you straight off.' 'seriously, louis, i could not accept him.' 'why not?' 'i don't love him.' 'oh, oh, i like those words!' cried louis, throwing himself back in his chair and looking at the ceiling in satirical enjoyment. 'a woman who at two-and-twenty married for convenience, at thirty talks of not marrying without love; the rule of inverse, that is, in which more requires less, and less requires more. as your only brother, older than yourself, and more experienced, i insist that you encourage the bishop.' 'don't quarrel with me, louis!' she said piteously. 'we don't know that he thinks anything of me,--we only guess.' 'i know it,--and you shall hear how i know. i am of a curious and conjectural nature, as you are aware. last night, when everybody had gone to bed, i stepped out for a five minutes' smoke on the lawn, and walked down to where you get near the vicarage windows. while i was there in the dark one of them opened, and bishop helmsdale leant out. the illuminated oblong of your window shone him full in the face between the trees, and presently your shadow crossed it. he waved his hand, and murmured some tender words, though what they were exactly i could not hear.' 'what a vague, imaginary story,--as if he could know my shadow! besides, a man of the bishop's dignity wouldn't have done such a thing. when i knew him as a younger man he was not at all romantic, and he's not likely to have grown so now.' 'that's just what he is likely to have done. no lover is so extreme a specimen of the species as an old lover. come, viviette, no more of this fencing. i have entered into the project heart and soul--so much that i have postponed my departure till the matter is well under way.' 'louis--my dear louis--you will bring me into some disagreeable position!' said she, clasping her hands. 'i do entreat you not to interfere or do anything rash about me. the step is impossible. i have something to tell you some day. i must live on, and endure--' 'everything except this penury,' replied louis, unmoved. 'come, i have begun the campaign by inviting bishop helmsdale, and i'll take the responsibility of carrying it on. all i ask of you is not to make a ninny of yourself. come, give me your promise!' 'no, i cannot,--i don't know how to! i only know one thing,--that i am in no hurry--' '"no hurry" be hanged! agree, like a good sister, to charm the bishop.' 'i must consider!' she replied, with perturbed evasiveness. it being a fine evening louis went out of the house to enjoy his cigar in the shrubbery. on reaching his favourite seat he found he had left his cigar-case behind him; he immediately returned for it. when he approached the window by which he had emerged he saw swithin st. cleeve standing there in the dusk, talking to viviette inside. st. cleeve's back was towards louis, but, whether at a signal from her or by accident, he quickly turned and recognized glanville; whereupon raising his hat to lady constantine the young man passed along the terrace-walk and out by the churchyard door. louis rejoined his sister. 'i didn't know you allowed your lawn to be a public thoroughfare for the parish,' he said. 'i am not exclusive, especially since i have been so poor,' replied she. 'then do you let everybody pass this way, or only that illustrious youth because he is so good-looking?' 'i have no strict rule in the case. mr. st. cleeve is an acquaintance of mine, and he can certainly come here if he chooses.' her colour rose somewhat, and she spoke warmly. louis was too cautious a bird to reveal to her what had suddenly dawned upon his mind--that his sister, in common with the (to his thinking) unhappy tabitha lark, had been foolish enough to get interested in this phenomenon of the parish, this scientific adonis. but he resolved to cure at once her tender feeling, if it existed, by letting out a secret which would inflame her dignity against the weakness. 'a good-looking young man,' he said, with his eyes where swithin had vanished. 'but not so good as he looks. in fact a regular young sinner.' 'what do you mean?' 'oh, only a little feature i discovered in st. cleeve's history. but i suppose he has a right to sow his wild oats as well as other young men.' 'tell me what you allude to,--do, louis.' 'it is hardly fit that i should. however, the case is amusing enough. i was sitting in the arbour to-day, and was an unwilling listener to the oddest interview i ever heard of. our friend the bishop discovered, when we visited the observatory last night, that our astronomer was not alone in his seclusion. a lady shared his romantic cabin with him; and finding this, the bishop naturally enough felt that the ordinance of confirmation had been profaned. so his lordship sent for master swithin this morning, and meeting him in the churchyard read him such an excommunicating lecture as i warrant he won't forget in his lifetime. ha-ha-ha! 'twas very good,--very.' he watched her face narrowly while he spoke with such seeming carelessness. instead of the agitation of jealousy that he had expected to be aroused by this hint of another woman in the case, there was a curious expression, more like embarrassment than anything else which might have been fairly attributed to the subject. 'can it be that i am mistaken?' he asked himself. the possibility that he might be mistaken restored louis to good-humour, and lights having been brought he sat with his sister for some time, talking with purpose of swithin's low rank on one side, and the sordid struggles that might be in store for him. st. cleeve being in the unhappy case of deriving his existence through two channels of society, it resulted that he seemed to belong to either this or that according to the altitude of the beholder. louis threw the light entirely on swithin's agricultural side, bringing out old mrs. martin and her connexions and her ways of life with luminous distinctness, till lady constantine became greatly depressed. she, in her hopefulness, had almost forgotten, latterly, that the bucolic element, so incisively represented by messrs. hezzy biles, haymoss fry, sammy blore, and the rest entered into his condition at all; to her he had been the son of his academic father alone. but she would not reveal the depression to which she had been subjected by this resuscitation of the homely half of poor swithin, presently putting an end to the subject by walking hither and thither about the room. 'what have you lost?' said louis, observing her movements. 'nothing of consequence,--a bracelet.' 'coral?' he inquired calmly. 'yes. how did you know it was coral? you have never seen it, have you?' he was about to make answer; but the amazed enlightenment which her announcement had produced in him through knowing where the bishop had found such an article, led him to reconsider himself. then, like an astute man, by no means sure of the dimensions of the intrigue he might be uncovering, he said carelessly, 'i found such a one in the churchyard to-day. but i thought it appeared to be of no great rarity, and i gave it to one of the village girls who was passing by.' 'did she take it? who was she?' said the unsuspecting viviette. 'really, i don't remember. i suppose it is of no consequence?' 'o no; its value is nothing, comparatively. it was only one of a pair such as young girls wear.' lady constantine could not add that, in spite of this, she herself valued it as being swithin's present, and the best he could afford. panic-struck by his ruminations, although revealing nothing by his manner, louis soon after went up to his room, professedly to write letters. he gave vent to a low whistle when he was out of hearing. he of course remembered perfectly well to whom he had given the corals, and resolved to seek out tabitha the next morning to ascertain whether she could possibly have owned such a trinket as well as his sister,--which at present he very greatly doubted, though fervently hoping that she might. xxix the effect upon swithin of the interview with the bishop had been a very marked one. he felt that he had good ground for resenting that dignitary's tone in haughtily assuming that all must be sinful which at the first blush appeared to be so, and in narrowly refusing a young man the benefit of a single doubt. swithin's assurance that he would be able to explain all some day had been taken in contemptuous incredulity. 'he may be as virtuous as his prototype timothy; but he's an opinionated old fogey all the same,' said st. cleeve petulantly. yet, on the other hand, swithin's nature was so fresh and ingenuous, notwithstanding that recent affairs had somewhat denaturalized him, that for a man in the bishop's position to think him immoral was almost as overwhelming as if he had actually been so, and at moments he could scarcely bear existence under so gross a suspicion. what was his union with lady constantine worth to him when, by reason of it, he was thought a reprobate by almost the only man who had professed to take an interest in him? certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as a worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband of viviette, the present imputation was humiliating. the glorious light of this tender and refined passion seemed to have become debased to burlesque hues by pure accident, and his aesthetic no less than his ethic taste was offended by such an anti-climax. he who had soared amid the remotest grandeurs of nature had been taken to task on a rudimentary question of morals, which had never been a question with him at all. this was what the exigencies of an awkward attachment had brought him to; but he blamed the circumstances, and not for one moment lady constantine. having now set his heart against a longer concealment he was disposed to think that an excellent way of beginning a revelation of their marriage would be by writing a confidential letter to the bishop, detailing the whole case. but it was impossible to do this on his own responsibility. he still recognized the understanding entered into with viviette, before the marriage, to be as binding as ever,--that the initiative in disclosing their union should come from her. yet he hardly doubted that she would take that initiative when he told her of his extraordinary reprimand in the churchyard. this was what he had come to do when louis saw him standing at the window. but before he had said half-a-dozen words to viviette she motioned him to go on, which he mechanically did, ere he could sufficiently collect his thoughts on its advisability or otherwise. he did not, however, go far. while louis and his sister were discussing him in the drawing-room he lingered musing in the churchyard, hoping that she might be able to escape and join him in the consultation he so earnestly desired. she at last found opportunity to do this. as soon as louis had left the room and shut himself in upstairs she ran out by the window in the direction swithin had taken. when her footsteps began crunching on the gravel he came forward from the churchyard door. they embraced each other in haste, and then, in a few short panting words, she explained to him that her brother had heard and witnessed the interview on that spot between himself and the bishop, and had told her the substance of the bishop's accusation, not knowing she was the woman in the cabin. 'and what i cannot understand is this,' she added; 'how did the bishop discover that the person behind the bed-curtains was a woman and not a man?' swithin explained that the bishop had found the bracelet on the bed, and had brought it to him in the churchyard. 'o swithin, what do you say? found the coral bracelet? what did you do with it?' swithin clapped his hand to his pocket. 'dear me! i recollect--i left it where it lay on reuben heath's tombstone.' 'oh, my dear, dear swithin!' she cried miserably. 'you have compromised me by your forgetfulness. i have claimed the article as mine. my brother did not tell me that the bishop brought it from the cabin. what can i, can i do, that neither the bishop nor my brother may conclude _i_ was the woman there?' 'but if we announce our marriage--' 'even as your wife, the position was too undignified--too i don't know what--for me ever to admit that i was there! right or wrong, i must declare the bracelet was not mine. such an escapade--why, it would make me ridiculous in the county; and anything rather than that!' 'i was in hope that you would agree to let our marriage be known,' said swithin, with some disappointment. 'i thought that these circumstances would make the reason for doing so doubly strong.' 'yes. but there are, alas, reasons against it still stronger! let me have my way.' 'certainly, dearest. i promised that before you agreed to be mine. my reputation--what is it! perhaps i shall be dead and forgotten before the next transit of venus!' she soothed him tenderly, but could not tell him why she felt the reasons against any announcement as yet to be stronger than those in favour of it. how could she, when her feeling had been cautiously fed and developed by her brother louis's unvarnished exhibition of swithin's material position in the eyes of the world?--that of a young man, the scion of a family of farmers recently her tenants, living at the homestead with his grandmother, mrs. martin. to soften her refusal she said in declaring it, 'one concession, swithin, i certainly will make. i will see you oftener. i will come to the cabin and tower frequently; and will contrive, too, that you come to the house occasionally. during the last winter we passed whole weeks without meeting; don't let us allow that to happen again.' 'very well, dearest,' said swithin good-humouredly. 'i don't care so terribly much for the old man's opinion of me, after all. for the present, then, let things be as they are.' nevertheless, the youth felt her refusal more than he owned; but the unequal temperament of swithin's age, so soon depressed on his own account, was also soon to recover on hers, and it was with almost a child's forgetfulness of the past that he took her view of the case. when he was gone she hastily re-entered the house. her brother had not reappeared from upstairs; but she was informed that tabitha lark was waiting to see her, if her ladyship would pardon the said tabitha for coming so late. lady constantine made no objection, and saw the young girl at once. when lady constantine entered the waiting-room behold, in tabitha's outstretched hand lay the coral ornament which had been causing viviette so much anxiety. 'i guessed, on second thoughts, that it was yours, my lady,' said tabitha, with rather a frightened face; 'and so i have brought it back.' 'but how did you come by it, tabitha?' 'mr. glanville gave it to me; he must have thought it was mine. i took it, fancying at the moment that he handed it to me because i happened to come by first after he had found it.' lady constantine saw how the situation might be improved so as to effect her deliverance from this troublesome little web of evidence. 'oh, you can keep it,' she said brightly. 'it was very good of you to bring it back. but keep it for your very own. take mr. glanville at his word, and don't explain. and, tabitha, divide the strands into two bracelets; there are enough of them to make a pair.' the next morning, in pursuance of his resolution, louis wandered round the grounds till he saw the girl for whom he was waiting enter the church. he accosted her over the wall. but, puzzling to view, a coral bracelet blushed on each of her young arms, for she had promptly carried out the suggestion of lady constantine. 'you are wearing it, i see, tabitha, with the other,' he murmured. 'then you mean to keep it?' 'yes, i mean to keep it.' 'you are sure it is not lady constantine's? i find she has one like it.' 'quite sure. but you had better take it to her, sir, and ask her,' said the saucy girl. 'oh, no; that's not necessary,' replied louis, considerably shaken in his convictions. when louis met his sister, a short time after, he did not catch her, as he had intended to do, by saying suddenly, 'i have found your bracelet. i know who has got it.' 'you cannot have found it,' she replied quietly, 'for i have discovered that it was never lost,' and stretching out both her hands she revealed one on each, viviette having performed the same operation with her remaining bracelet that she had advised tabitha to do with the other. louis was mystified, but by no means convinced. in spite of this attempt to hoodwink him his mind returned to the subject every hour of the day. there was no doubt that either tabitha or viviette had been with swithin in the cabin. he recapitulated every case that had occurred during his visit to welland in which his sister's manner had been of a colour to justify the suspicion that it was she. there was that strange incident in the corridor, when she had screamed at what she described to be a shadowy resemblance to her late husband; how very improbable that this fancy should have been the only cause of her agitation! then he had noticed, during swithin's confirmation, a blush upon her cheek when he passed her on his way to the bishop, and the fervour in her glance during the few moments of the imposition of hands. then he suddenly recalled the night at the railway station, when the accident with the whip took place, and how, when he reached welland house an hour later, he had found no viviette there. running thus from incident to incident he increased his suspicions without being able to cull from the circumstances anything amounting to evidence; but evidence he now determined to acquire without saying a word to any one. his plan was of a cruel kind: to set a trap into which the pair would blindly walk if any secret understanding existed between them of the nature he suspected. xxx louis began his stratagem by calling at the tower one afternoon, as if on the impulse of the moment. after a friendly chat with swithin, whom he found there (having watched him enter), louis invited the young man to dine the same evening at the house, that he might have an opportunity of showing him some interesting old scientific works in folio, which, according to louis's account, he had stumbled on in the library. louis set no great bait for st. cleeve in this statement, for old science was not old art which, having perfected itself, has died and left its secret hidden in its remains. but swithin was a responsive fellow, and readily agreed to come; being, moreover, always glad of a chance of meeting viviette _en famille_. he hoped to tell her of a scheme that had lately suggested itself to him as likely to benefit them both: that he should go away for a while, and endeavour to raise sufficient funds to visit the great observatories of europe, with an eye to a post in one of them. hitherto the only bar to the plan had been the exceeding narrowness of his income, which, though sufficient for his present life, was absolutely inadequate to the requirements of a travelling astronomer. meanwhile louis glanville had returned to the house and told his sister in the most innocent manner that he had been in the company of st. cleeve that afternoon, getting a few wrinkles on astronomy; that they had grown so friendly over the fascinating subject as to leave him no alternative but to invite st. cleeve to dine at welland the same evening, with a view to certain researches in the library afterwards. 'i could quite make allowances for any youthful errors into which he may have been betrayed,' louis continued sententiously, 'since, for a scientist, he is really admirable. no doubt the bishop's caution will not be lost upon him; and as for his birth and connexions,--those he can't help.' lady constantine showed such alacrity in adopting the idea of having swithin to dinner, and she ignored his 'youthful errors' so completely, as almost to betray herself. in fulfilment of her promise to see him oftener she had been intending to run across to swithin on that identical evening. now the trouble would be saved in a very delightful way, by the exercise of a little hospitality which viviette herself would not have dared to suggest. dinner-time came and with it swithin, exhibiting rather a blushing and nervous manner that was, unfortunately, more likely to betray their cause than was viviette's own more practised bearing. throughout the meal louis sat like a spider in the corner of his web, observing them narrowly, and at moments flinging out an artful thread here and there, with a view to their entanglement. but they underwent the ordeal marvellously well. perhaps the actual tie between them, through being so much closer and of so much more practical a nature than even their critic supposed it, was in itself a protection against their exhibiting that ultra-reciprocity of manner which, if they had been merely lovers, might have betrayed them. after dinner the trio duly adjourned to the library as had been planned, and the volumes were brought forth by louis with the zest of a bibliophilist. swithin had seen most of them before, and thought but little of them; but the pleasure of staying in the house made him welcome any reason for doing so, and he willingly looked at whatever was put before him, from bertius's ptolemy to rees's cyclopædia. the evening thus passed away, and it began to grow late. swithin who, among other things, had planned to go to greenwich next day to view the royal observatory, would every now and then start up and prepare to leave for home, when glanville would unearth some other volume and so detain him yet another half-hour. 'by george!' he said, looking at the clock when swithin was at last really about to depart. 'i didn't know it was so late. why not stay here to-night, st. cleeve? it is very dark, and the way to your place is an awkward cross-cut over the fields.' 'it would not inconvenience us at all, mr. st. cleeve, if you would care to stay,' said lady constantine. 'i am afraid--the fact is, i wanted to take an observation at twenty minutes past two,' began swithin. 'oh, now, never mind your observation,' said louis. 'that's only an excuse. do that to-morrow night. now you will stay. it is settled. viviette, say he must stay, and we'll have another hour of these charming intellectual researches.' viviette obeyed with delightful ease. 'do stay, mr st. cleeve!' she said sweetly. 'well, in truth i can do without the observation,' replied the young man, as he gave way. 'it is not of the greatest consequence.' thus it was arranged; but the researches among the tomes were not prolonged to the extent that louis had suggested. in three-quarters of an hour from that time they had all retired to their respective rooms; lady constantine's being on one side of the west corridor, swithin's opposite, and louis's at the further end. had a person followed louis when he withdrew, that watcher would have discovered, on peeping through the key-hole of his door, that he was engaged in one of the oddest of occupations for such a man,--sweeping down from the ceiling, by means of a walking-cane, a long cobweb which lingered on high in the corner. keeping it stretched upon the cane he gently opened the door, and set the candle in such a position on the mat that the light shone down the corridor. thus guided by its rays he passed out slipperless, till he reached the door of st. cleeve's room, where he applied the dangling spider's thread in such a manner that it stretched across like a tight-rope from jamb to jamb, barring, in its fragile way, entrance and egress. the operation completed he retired again, and, extinguishing his light, went through his bedroom window out upon the flat roof of the portico to which it gave access. here louis made himself comfortable in his chair and smoking-cap, enjoying the fragrance of a cigar for something like half-an-hour. his position commanded a view of the two windows of lady constantine's room, and from these a dim light shone continuously. having the window partly open at his back, and the door of his room also scarcely closed, his ear retained a fair command of any noises that might be made. in due time faint movements became audible; whereupon, returning to his room, he re-entered the corridor and listened intently. all was silent again, and darkness reigned from end to end. glanville, however, groped his way along the passage till he again reached swithin's door, where he examined, by the light of a wax-match he had brought, the condition of the spider's thread. it was gone; somebody had carried it off bodily, as samson carried off the pin and the web. in other words, a person had passed through the door. still holding the faint wax-light in his hand louis turned to the door of lady constantine's chamber, where he observed first that, though it was pushed together so as to appear fastened to cursory view, the door was not really closed by about a quarter of an inch. he dropped his light and extinguished it with his foot. listening, he heard a voice within,--viviette's voice, in a subdued murmur, though speaking earnestly. without any hesitation louis then returned to swithin's door, opened it, and walked in. the starlight from without was sufficient, now that his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, to reveal that the room was unoccupied, and that nothing therein had been disturbed. with a heavy tread louis came forth, walked loudly across the corridor, knocked at lady constantine's door, and called 'viviette!' she heard him instantly, replying 'yes' in startled tones. immediately afterwards she opened her door, and confronted him in her dressing-gown, with a light in her hand. 'what is the matter, louis?' she said. 'i am greatly alarmed. our visitor is missing.' 'missing? what, mr. st. cleeve?' 'yes. i was sitting up to finish a cigar, when i thought i heard a noise in this direction. on coming to his room i find he is not there.' 'good heaven! i wonder what has happened!' she exclaimed, in apparently intense alarm. 'i wonder,' said glanville grimly. 'suppose he is a somnambulist! if so, he may have gone out and broken his neck. i have never heard that he is one, but they say that sleeping in strange places disturbs the minds of people who are given to that sort of thing, and provokes them to it.' 'unfortunately for your theory his bed has not been touched.' 'oh, what then can it be?' her brother looked her full in the face. 'viviette!' he said sternly. she seemed puzzled. 'well?' she replied, in simple tones. 'i heard voices in your room,' he continued. 'voices?' 'a voice,--yours.' 'yes, you may have done so. it was mine.' 'a listener is required for a speaker.' 'true, louis.' 'well, to whom were you speaking?' 'god.' 'viviette! i am ashamed of you.' 'i was saying my prayers.' 'prayers--to god! to st. swithin, rather!' 'what do you mean, louis?' she asked, flushing up warm, and drawing back from him. 'it was a form of prayer i use, particularly when i am in trouble. it was recommended to me by the bishop, and mr. torkingham commends it very highly.' 'on your honour, if you have any,' he said bitterly, 'whom have you there in your room?' 'no human being.' 'flatly, i don't believe you.' she gave a dignified little bow, and, waving her hand into the apartment, said, 'very well; then search and see.' louis entered, and glanced round the room, behind the curtains, under the bed, out of the window--a view from which showed that escape thence would have been impossible,--everywhere, in short, capable or incapable of affording a retreat to humanity; but discovered nobody. all he observed was that a light stood on the low table by her bedside; that on the bed lay an open prayer-book, the counterpane being unpressed, except into a little pit beside the prayer book, apparently where her head had rested in kneeling. 'but where is st. cleeve?' he said, turning in bewilderment from these evidences of innocent devotion. 'where can he be?' she chimed in, with real distress. 'i should so much like to know. look about for him. i am quite uneasy!' 'i will, on one condition: that you own that you love him.' 'why should you force me to that?' she murmured. 'it would be no such wonder if i did.' 'come, you do.' 'well, i do.' 'now i'll look for him.' louis took a light, and turned away, astonished that she had not indignantly resented his intrusion and the nature of his questioning. at this moment a slight noise was heard on the staircase, and they could see a figure rising step by step, and coming forward against the long lights of the staircase window. it was swithin, in his ordinary dress, and carrying his boots in his hand. when he beheld them standing there so motionless, he looked rather disconcerted, but came on towards his room. lady constantine was too agitated to speak, but louis said, 'i am glad to see you again. hearing a noise, a few minutes ago, i came out to learn what it could be. i found you absent, and we have been very much alarmed.' 'i am very sorry,' said swithin, with contrition. 'i owe you a hundred apologies: but the truth is that on entering my bedroom i found the sky remarkably clear, and though i told you that the observation i was to make was of no great consequence, on thinking it over alone i felt it ought not to be allowed to pass; so i was tempted to run across to the observatory, and make it, as i had hoped, without disturbing anybody. if i had known that i should alarm you i would not have done it for the world.' swithin spoke very earnestly to louis, and did not observe the tender reproach in viviette's eyes when he showed by his tale his decided notion that the prime use of dark nights lay in their furtherance of practical astronomy. everything being now satisfactorily explained the three retired to their several chambers, and louis heard no more noises that night, or rather morning; his attempts to solve the mystery of viviette's life here and her relations with st. cleeve having thus far resulted chiefly in perplexity. true, an admission had been wrung from her; and even without such an admission it was clear that she had a tender feeling for swithin. how to extinguish that romantic folly it now became his object to consider. xxxi swithin's midnight excursion to the tower in the cause of science led him to oversleep himself, and when the brother and sister met at breakfast in the morning he did not appear. 'don't disturb him,--don't disturb him,' said louis laconically. 'hullo, viviette, what are you reading there that makes you flame up so?' she was glancing over a letter that she had just opened, and at his words looked up with misgiving. the incident of the previous night left her in great doubt as to what her bearing towards him ought to be. she had made no show of resenting his conduct at the time, from a momentary supposition that he must know all her secret; and afterwards, finding that he did not know it, it seemed too late to affect indignation at his suspicions. so she preserved a quiet neutrality. even had she resolved on an artificial part she might have forgotten to play it at this instant, the letter being of a kind to banish previous considerations. 'it is a letter from bishop helmsdale,' she faltered. 'well done! i hope for your sake it is an offer.' 'that's just what it is.' 'no,--surely?' said louis, beginning a laugh of surprise. 'yes,' she returned indifferently. 'you can read it, if you like.' 'i don't wish to pry into a communication of that sort.' 'oh, you may read it,' she said, tossing the letter across to him. louis thereupon read as under:-- 'the palace, melchester, _june_ , --. 'my dear lady constantine,--during the two or three weeks that have elapsed since i experienced the great pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with you, the varied agitation of my feelings has clearly proved that my only course is to address you by letter, and at once. whether the subject of my communication be acceptable to you or not, i can at least assure you that to suppress it would be far less natural, and upon the whole less advisable, than to speak out frankly, even if afterwards i hold my peace for ever. 'the great change in my experience during the past year or two--the change, that is, which has resulted from my advancement to a bishopric--has frequently suggested to me, of late, that a discontinuance in my domestic life of the solitude of past years was a question which ought to be seriously contemplated. but whether i should ever have contemplated it without the great good fortune of my meeting with you is doubtful. however, the thing has been considered at last, and without more ado i candidly ask if you would be willing to give up your life at welland, and relieve my household loneliness here by becoming my wife. 'i am far from desiring to force a hurried decision on your part, and will wait your good pleasure patiently, should you feel any uncertainty at the moment as to the step. i am quite disqualified, by habits and experience, for the delightful procedure of urging my suit in the ardent terms which would be so appropriate towards such a lady, and so expressive of my inmost feeling. in truth, a prosy cleric of five-and-forty wants encouragement to make him eloquent. of this, however, i can assure you: that if admiration, esteem, and devotion can compensate in any way for the lack of those qualities which might be found to burn with more outward brightness in a younger man, those it is in my power to bestow for the term of my earthly life. your steady adherence to church principles and your interest in ecclesiastical polity (as was shown by your bright questioning on those subjects during our morning walk round your grounds) have indicated strongly to me the grace and appropriateness with which you would fill the position of a bishop's wife, and how greatly you would add to his reputation, should you be disposed to honour him with your hand. formerly there have been times when i was of opinion--and you will rightly appreciate my candour in owning it--that a wife was an impediment to a bishop's due activities; but constant observation has convinced me that, far from this being the truth, a meet consort infuses life into episcopal influence and teaching. 'should you reply in the affirmative i will at once come to see you, and with your permission will, among other things, show you a few plain, practical rules which i have interested myself in drawing up for our future guidance. should you refuse to change your condition on my account, your decision will, as i need hardly say, be a great blow to me. in any event, i could not do less than i have done, after giving the subject my full consideration. even if there be a slight deficiency of warmth on your part, my earnest hope is that a mind comprehensive as yours will perceive the immense power for good that you might exercise in the position in which a union with me would place you, and allow that perception to weigh in determining your answer. 'i remain, my dear lady constantine, with the highest respect and affection,--yours always, 'c. melchester.' 'well, you will not have the foolhardiness to decline, now that the question has actually been popped, i should hope,' said louis, when he had done reading. 'certainly i shall,' she replied. 'you will really be such a flat, viviette?' 'you speak without much compliment. i have not the least idea of accepting him.' 'surely you will not let your infatuation for that young fellow carry you so far, after my acquainting you with the shady side of his character? you call yourself a religious woman, say your prayers out loud, follow up the revived methods in church practice, and what not; and yet you can think with partiality of a person who, far from having any religion in him, breaks the most elementary commandments in the decalogue.' 'i cannot agree with you,' she said, turning her face askance, for she knew not how much of her brother's language was sincere, and how much assumed, the extent of his discoveries with regard to her secret ties being a mystery. at moments she was disposed to declare the whole truth, and have done with it. but she hesitated, and left the words unsaid; and louis continued his breakfast in silence. when he had finished, and she had eaten little or nothing, he asked once more, 'how do you intend to answer that letter? here you are, the poorest woman in the county, abandoned by people who used to be glad to know you, and leading a life as dismal and dreary as a nun's, when an opportunity is offered you of leaping at once into a leading position in this part of england. bishops are given to hospitality; you would be welcomed everywhere. in short, your answer must be yes.' 'and yet it will be no,' she said, in a low voice. she had at length learnt, from the tone of her brother's latter remarks, that at any rate he had no knowledge of her actual marriage, whatever indirect ties he might suspect her guilty of. louis could restrain himself no longer at her answer. 'then conduct your affairs your own way. i know you to be leading a life that won't bear investigation, and i'm hanged if i'll stay here any longer!' saying which, glanville jerked back his chair, and strode out of the room. in less than a quarter of an hour, and before she had moved a step from the table, she heard him leaving the house. xxxii what to do she could not tell. the step which swithin had entreated her to take, objectionable and premature as it had seemed in a county aspect, would at all events have saved her from this dilemma. had she allowed him to tell the bishop his simple story in its fulness, who could say but that that divine might have generously bridled his own impulses, entered into the case with sympathy, and forwarded with zest their designs for the future, owing to his interest of old in swithin's father, and in the naturally attractive features of the young man's career. a puff of wind from the open window, wafting the bishop's letter to the floor, aroused her from her reverie. with a sigh she stooped and picked it up, glanced at it again; then arose, and with the deliberateness of inevitable action wrote her reply:-- 'welland house, _june_ , --. 'my dear bishop of melchester,--i confess to you that your letter, so gracious and flattering as it is, has taken your friend somewhat unawares. the least i can do in return for its contents is to reply as quickly as possible. 'there is no one in the world who esteems your high qualities more than myself, or who has greater faith in your ability to adorn the episcopal seat that you have been called on to fill. but to your question i can give only one reply, and that is an unqualified negative. to state this unavoidable decision distresses me, without affectation; and i trust you will believe that, though i decline the distinction of becoming your wife, i shall never cease to interest myself in all that pertains to you and your office; and shall feel the keenest regret if this refusal should operate to prevent a lifelong friendship between us.--i am, my dear bishop of melchester, ever sincerely yours, 'viviette constantine.' a sudden revulsion from the subterfuge of writing as if she were still a widow, wrought in her mind a feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole scheme of concealment; and pushing aside the letter she allowed it to remain unfolded and unaddressed. in a few minutes she heard swithin approaching, when she put the letter out of the way and turned to receive him. swithin entered quietly, and looked round the room. seeing with unexpected pleasure that she was there alone, he came over and kissed her. her discomposure at some foregone event was soon obvious. 'has my staying caused you any trouble?' he asked in a whisper. 'where is your brother this morning?' she smiled through her perplexity as she took his hand. 'the oddest things happen to me, dear swithin,' she said. 'do you wish particularly to know what has happened now?' 'yes, if you don't mind telling me.' 'i do mind telling you. but i must. among other things i am resolving to give way to your representations,--in part, at least. it will be best to tell the bishop everything, and my brother, if not other people.' 'i am truly glad to hear it, viviette,' said he cheerfully. 'i have felt for a long time that honesty is the best policy.' 'i at any rate feel it now. but it is a policy that requires a great deal of courage!' 'it certainly requires some courage,--i should not say a great deal; and indeed, as far as i am concerned, it demands less courage to speak out than to hold my tongue.' 'but, you silly boy, you don't know what has happened. the bishop has made me an offer of marriage.' 'good gracious, what an impertinent old man! what have you done about it, dearest?' 'well, i have hardly accepted him,' she replied, laughing. 'it is this event which has suggested to me that i should make my refusal a reason for confiding our situation to him.' 'what would you have done if you had not been already appropriated?' 'that's an inscrutable mystery. he is a worthy man; but he has very pronounced views about his own position, and some other undesirable qualities. still, who knows? you must bless your stars that you have secured me. now let us consider how to draw up our confession to him. i wish i had listened to you at first, and allowed you to take him into our confidence before his declaration arrived. he may possibly resent the concealment now. however, this cannot be helped.' 'i tell you what, viviette,' said swithin, after a thoughtful pause, 'if the bishop is such an earthly sort of man as this, a man who goes falling in love, and wanting to marry you, and so on, i am not disposed to confess anything to him at all. i fancied him altogether different from that.' 'but he's none the worse for it, dear.' 'i think he is--to lecture me and love you, all in one breath!' 'still, that's only a passing phase; and you first proposed making a confidant of him.' 'i did. . . . very well. then we are to tell nobody but the bishop?' 'and my brother louis. i must tell him; it is unavoidable. he suspects me in a way i could never have credited of him!' swithin, as was before stated, had arranged to start for greenwich that morning, permission having been accorded him by the astronomer-royal to view the observatory; and their final decision was that, as he could not afford time to sit down with her, and write to the bishop in collaboration, each should, during the day, compose a well-considered letter, disclosing their position from his and her own point of view; lady constantine leading up to her confession by her refusal of the bishop's hand. it was necessary that she should know what swithin contemplated saying, that her statements might precisely harmonize. he ultimately agreed to send her his letter by the next morning's post, when, having read it, she would in due course despatch it with her own. as soon as he had breakfasted swithin went his way, promising to return from greenwich by the end of the week. viviette passed the remainder of that long summer day, during which her young husband was receding towards the capital, in an almost motionless state. at some instants she felt exultant at the idea of announcing her marriage and defying general opinion. at another her heart misgave her, and she was tormented by a fear lest swithin should some day accuse her of having hampered his deliberately-shaped plan of life by her intrusive romanticism. that was often the trick of men who had sealed by marriage, in their inexperienced youth, a love for those whom their maturer judgment would have rejected as too obviously disproportionate in years. however, it was now too late for these lugubrious thoughts; and, bracing herself, she began to frame the new reply to bishop helmsdale--the plain, unvarnished tale that was to supplant the undivulging answer first written. she was engaged on this difficult problem till daylight faded in the west, and the broad-faced moon edged upwards, like a plate of old gold, over the elms towards the village. by that time swithin had reached greenwich; her brother had gone she knew not whither; and she and loneliness dwelt solely, as before, within the walls of welland house. at this hour of sunset and moonrise the new parlourmaid entered, to inform her that mr. cecil's head clerk, from warborne, particularly wished to see her. mr. cecil was her solicitor, and she knew of nothing whatever that required his intervention just at present. but he would not have sent at this time of day without excellent reasons, and she directed that the young man might be shown in where she was. on his entry the first thing she noticed was that in his hand he carried a newspaper. 'in case you should not have seen this evening's paper, lady constantine, mr. cecil has directed me to bring it to you at once, on account of what appears there in relation to your ladyship. he has only just seen it himself.' 'what is it? how does it concern me?' 'i will point it out.' 'read it yourself to me. though i am afraid there's not enough light.' 'i can see very well here,' said the lawyer's clerk stepping to the window. folding back the paper he read:-- '"news from south africa. '"cape town, _may_ (_via_ plymouth).--a correspondent of the _cape chronicle_ states that he has interviewed an englishman just arrived from the interior, and learns from him that a considerable misapprehension exists in england concerning the death of the traveller and hunter, sir blount constantine--"' 'o, he's living! my husband is alive,' she cried, sinking down in nearly a fainting condition. 'no, my lady. sir blount is dead enough, i am sorry to say.' 'dead, did you say?' 'certainly, lady constantine; there is no doubt of it.' she sat up, and her intense relief almost made itself perceptible like a fresh atmosphere in the room. 'yes. then what did you come for?' she asked calmly. 'that sir blount has died is unquestionable,' replied the lawyer's clerk gently. 'but there has been some mistake about the date of his death.' 'he died of malarious fever on the banks of the zouga, october , --.' 'no; he only lay ill there a long time it seems. it was a companion who died at that date. but i'll read the account to your ladyship, with your permission:-- '"the decease of this somewhat eccentric wanderer did not occur at the time hitherto supposed, but only in last december. the following is the account of the englishman alluded to, given as nearly as possible in his own words: during the illness of sir blount and his friend by the zouga, three of the servants went away, taking with them a portion of his clothing and effects; and it must be they who spread the report of his death at this time. after his companion's death he mended, and when he was strong enough he and i travelled on to a healthier district. i urged him not to delay his return to england; but he was much against going back there again, and became so rough in his manner towards me that we parted company at the first opportunity i could find. i joined a party of white traders returning to the west coast. i stayed here among the portuguese for many months. i then found that an english travelling party were going to explore a district adjoining that which i had formerly traversed with sir blount. they said they would be glad of my services, and i joined them. when we had crossed the territory to the south of ulunda, and drew near to marzambo, i heard tidings of a man living there whom i suspected to be sir blount, although he was not known by that name. being so near i was induced to seek him out, and found that he was indeed the same. he had dropped his old name altogether, and had married a native princess--"' 'married a native princess!' said lady constantine. 'that's what it says, my lady,--"married a native princess according to the rites of the tribe, and was living very happily with her. he told me he should never return to england again. he also told me that having seen this princess just after i had left him, he had been attracted by her, and had thereupon decided to reside with her in that country, as being a land which afforded him greater happiness than he could hope to attain elsewhere. he asked me to stay with him, instead of going on with my party, and not reveal his real title to any of them. after some hesitation i did stay, and was not uncomfortable at first. but i soon found that sir blount drank much harder now than when i had known him, and that he was at times very greatly depressed in mind at his position. one morning in the middle of december last i heard a shot from his dwelling. his wife rushed frantically past me as i hastened to the spot, and when i entered i found that he had put an end to himself with his revolver. his princess was broken-hearted all that day. when we had buried him i discovered in his house a little box directed to his solicitors at warborne, in england, and a note for myself, saying that i had better get the first chance of returning that offered, and requesting me to take the box with me. it is supposed to contain papers and articles for friends in england who have deemed him dead for some time."' the clerk stopped his reading, and there was a silence. 'the middle of last december,' she at length said, in a whisper. 'has the box arrived yet?' 'not yet, my lady. we have no further proof of anything. as soon as the package comes to hand you shall know of it immediately.' such was the clerk's mission; and, leaving the paper with her, he withdrew. the intelligence amounted to thus much: that, sir blount having been alive till at least six weeks after her marriage with swithin st. cleeve, swithin st. cleeve was not her husband in the eye of the law; that she would have to consider how her marriage with the latter might be instantly repeated, to establish herself legally as that young man's wife. xxxiii next morning viviette received a visit from mr. cecil himself. he informed her that the box spoken of by the servant had arrived quite unexpectedly just after the departure of his clerk on the previous evening. there had not been sufficient time for him to thoroughly examine it as yet, but he had seen enough to enable him to state that it contained letters, dated memoranda in sir blount's handwriting, notes referring to events which had happened later than his supposed death, and other irrefragable proofs that the account in the newspapers was correct as to the main fact--the comparatively recent date of sir blount's decease. she looked up, and spoke with the irresponsible helplessness of a child. 'on reviewing the circumstances, i cannot think how i could have allowed myself to believe the first tidings!' she said. 'everybody else believed them, and why should you not have done so?' said the lawyer. 'how came the will to be permitted to be proved, as there could, after all, have been no complete evidence?' she asked. 'if i had been the executrix i would not have attempted it! as i was not, i know very little about how the business was pushed through. in a very unseemly way, i think.' 'well, no,' said mr. cecil, feeling himself morally called upon to defend legal procedure from such imputations. 'it was done in the usual way in all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. the evidence, such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, your husband's cousins; and the servants who had been with him deposed to his death with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. their error was, not that somebody died--for somebody did die at the time affirmed--but that they mistook one person for another; the person who died being not sir blount constantine. the court was of opinion that the evidence led up to a reasonable inference that the deceased was actually sir blount, and probate was granted on the strength of it. as there was a doubt about the exact day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swear that he died on or after the date last given of his existence--which, in spite of their error then, has really come true, now, of course.' 'they little think what they have done to me by being so ready to swear!' she murmured. mr. cecil, supposing her to allude only to the pecuniary straits in which she had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a year before its due time, said, 'true. it has been to your ladyship's loss, and to their gain. but they will make ample restitution, no doubt: and all will be wound up satisfactorily.' lady constantine was far from explaining that this was not her meaning; and, after some further conversation of a purely technical nature, mr. cecil left her presence. when she was again unencumbered with the necessity of exhibiting a proper bearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by the undue haste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a pressure quite inappreciable beside the greater gravity of her personal position. what was her position as legatee to her situation as a woman? her face crimsoned with a flush which she was almost ashamed to show to the daylight, as she hastily penned the following note to swithin at greenwich--certainly one of the most informal documents she had ever written. 'welland, _thursday_. 'o swithin, my dear swithin, what i have to tell you is so sad and so humiliating that i can hardly write it--and yet i must. though we are dearer to each other than all the world besides, and as firmly united as if we were one, i am not legally your wife! sir blount did not die till some time after we in england supposed. the service must be repeated instantly. i have not been able to sleep all night. i feel so frightened and ashamed that i can scarcely arrange my thoughts. the newspapers sent with this will explain, if you have not seen particulars. do come to me as soon as you can, that we may consult on what to do. burn this at once. 'your viviette.' when the note was despatched she remembered that there was another hardly less important question to be answered--the proposal of the bishop for her hand. his communication had sunk into nothingness beside the momentous news that had so greatly distressed her. the two replies lay before her--the one she had first written, simply declining to become dr. helmsdale's wife, without giving reasons; the second, which she had elaborated with so much care on the previous day, relating in confidential detail the history of her love for swithin, their secret marriage, and their hopes for the future; asking his advice on what their procedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. it was the letter she had barely finished writing when mr. cecil's clerk announced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all. this epistle she now destroyed--and with the less reluctance in knowing that swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as soon as he found that bishop helmsdale was also a victim to tender sentiment concerning her. the first, in which, at the time of writing, the _suppressio veri_ was too strong for her conscience, had now become an honest letter, and sadly folding it she sent the missive on its way. the sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter from swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and it comforted her much. he had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come to her knowledge, and sent this line to reassure her in the perturbation she must naturally feel. she was not to be alarmed at all. they two were husband and wife in moral intent and antecedent belief, and the legal flaw which accident had so curiously uncovered could be mended in half-an- hour. he would return on saturday night at latest, but as the hour would probably be far advanced, he would ask her to meet him by slipping out of the house to the tower any time during service on sunday morning, when there would be few persons about likely to observe them. meanwhile he might provisionally state that their best course in the emergency would be, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been a solemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their re-marriage in as open a manner as possible--as if it were the just-reached climax of a sudden affection, instead of a harking back to an old departure--prefacing it by a public announcement in the usual way. this plan of approaching their second union with all the show and circumstance of a new thing, recommended itself to her strongly, but for one objection--that by such a course the wedding could not, without appearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so quickly as she desired for her own moral satisfaction. it might take place somewhat early, say in the course of a month or two, without bringing down upon her the charge of levity; for sir blount, a notoriously unkind husband, had been out of her sight four years, and in his grave nearly one. but what she naturally desired was that there should be no more delay than was positively necessary for obtaining a new license--two or three days at longest; and in view of this celerity it was next to impossible to make due preparation for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed in her own church, from her own house, with a feast and amusements for the villagers, a tea for the school children, a bonfire, and other of those proclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprive it of much of its intensity. it must be admitted, too, that she even now shrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be caused by her openly taking for husband such a mere youth of no position as swithin still appeared, notwithstanding that in years he was by this time within a trifle of one-and-twenty. the straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend it, so well avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a private repetition of the ceremony would entail, that assuming she could depend upon swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense counselled its serious consideration. she became more composed at her queer situation: hour after hour passed, and the first spasmodic impulse of womanly decorum--not to let the sun go down upon her present improper state--was quite controllable. she could regard the strange contingency that had arisen with something like philosophy. the day slipped by: she thought of the awkwardness of the accident rather than of its humiliation; and, loving swithin now in a far calmer spirit than at that past date when they had rushed into each other's arms and vowed to be one for the first time, she ever and anon caught herself reflecting, 'were it not that for my honour's sake i must re-marry him, i should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him to encumber his bright future by a union with me at all.' this thought, at first artificially raised, as little more than a mental exercise, became by stages a genuine conviction; and while her heart enforced, her reason regretted the necessity of abstaining from self-sacrifice--the being obliged, despite his curious escape from the first attempt, to lime swithin's young wings again solely for her credit's sake. however, the deed had to be done; swithin was to be made legally hers. selfishness in a conjuncture of this sort was excusable, and even obligatory. taking brighter views, she hoped that upon the whole this yoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman and his senior, would not greatly endanger his career. in such a mood night overtook her, and she went to bed conjecturing that swithin had by this time arrived in the parish, was perhaps even at that moment passing homeward beneath her walls, and that in less than twelve hours she would have met him, have ventilated the secret which oppressed her, and have satisfactorily arranged with him the details of their reunion. xxxiv sunday morning came, and complicated her previous emotions by bringing a new and unexpected shock to mingle with them. the postman had delivered among other things an illustrated newspaper, sent by a hand she did not recognize; and on opening the cover the sheet that met her eyes filled her with a horror which she could not express. the print was one which drew largely on its imagination for its engravings, and it already contained an illustration of the death of sir blount constantine. in this work of art he was represented as standing with his pistol to his mouth, his brains being in process of flying up to the roof of his chamber, and his native princess rushing terror-stricken away to a remote position in the thicket of palms which neighboured the dwelling. the crude realism of the picture, possibly harmless enough in its effect upon others, overpowered and sickened her. by a curious fascination she would look at it again and again, till every line of the engraver's performance seemed really a transcript from what had happened before his eyes. with such details fresh in her thoughts she was going out of the door to make arrangements for confirming, by repetition, her marriage with another. no interval was available for serious reflection on the tragedy, or for allowing the softening effects of time to operate in her mind. it was as though her first husband had died that moment, and she was keeping an appointment with another in the presence of his corpse. so revived was the actuality of sir blount's recent life and death by this incident, that the distress of her personal relations with swithin was the single force in the world which could have coerced her into abandoning to him the interval she would fain have set apart for getting over these new and painful impressions. self-pity for ill-usage afforded her good reasons for ceasing to love sir blount; but he was yet too closely intertwined with her past life to be destructible on the instant as a memory. but there was no choice of occasions for her now, and she steadily waited for the church bells to cease chiming. at last all was silent; the surrounding cottagers had gathered themselves within the walls of the adjacent building. tabitha lark's first voluntary then droned from the tower window, and lady constantine left the garden in which she had been loitering, and went towards rings-hill speer. the sense of her situation obscured the morning prospect. the country was unusually silent under the intensifying sun, the songless season of birds having just set in. choosing her path amid the efts that were basking upon the outer slopes of the plantation she wound her way up the tree-shrouded camp to the wooden cabin in the centre. the door was ajar, but on entering she found the place empty. the tower door was also partly open; and listening at the foot of the stairs she heard swithin above, shifting the telescope and wheeling round the rumbling dome, apparently in preparation for the next nocturnal reconnoitre. there was no doubt that he would descend in a minute or two to look for her, and not wishing to interrupt him till he was ready she re-entered the cabin, where she patiently seated herself among the books and papers that lay scattered about. she did as she had often done before when waiting there for him; that is, she occupied her moments in turning over the papers and examining the progress of his labours. the notes were mostly astronomical, of course, and she had managed to keep sufficiently abreast of him to catch the meaning of a good many of these. the litter on the table, however, was somewhat more marked this morning than usual, as if it had been hurriedly overhauled. among the rest of the sheets lay an open note, and, in the entire confidence that existed between them, she glanced over and read it as a matter of course. it was a most business-like communication, and beyond the address and date contained only the following words:-- 'dear sir,--we beg leave to draw your attention to a letter we addressed to you on the th ult., to which we have not yet been favoured with a reply. as the time for payment of the first moiety of the six hundred pounds per annum settled on you by your late uncle is now at hand, we should be obliged by your giving directions as to where and in what manner the money is to be handed over to you, and shall also be glad to receive any other definite instructions from you with regard to the future.--we are, dear sir, yours faithfully, hanner and rawles.' 'swithin st. cleeve, esq.' an income of six hundred a year for swithin, whom she had hitherto understood to be possessed of an annuity of eighty pounds at the outside, with no prospect of increasing the sum but by hard work! what could this communication mean? he whose custom and delight it was to tell her all his heart, had breathed not a syllable of this matter to her, though it met the very difficulty towards which their discussions invariably tended--how to secure for him a competency that should enable him to establish his pursuits on a wider basis, and throw himself into more direct communion with the scientific world. quite bewildered by the lack of any explanation she rose from her seat, and with the note in her hand ascended the winding tower-steps. reaching the upper aperture she perceived him under the dome, moving musingly about as if he had never been absent an hour, his light hair frilling out from under the edge of his velvet skull-cap as it was always wont to do. no question of marriage seemed to be disturbing the mind of this juvenile husband of hers. the _primum mobile_ of his gravitation was apparently the equatorial telescope which she had given him, and which he was carefully adjusting by means of screws and clamps. hearing her movements he turned his head. 'o here you are, my dear viviette! i was just beginning to expect you,' he exclaimed, coming forward. 'i ought to have been looking out for you, but i have found a little defect here in the instrument, and i wanted to set it right before evening comes on. as a rule it is not a good thing to tinker your glasses; but i have found that the diffraction-rings are not perfect circles. i learnt at greenwich how to correct them--so kind they have been to me there!--and so i have been loosening the screws and gently shifting the glass, till i think that i have at last made the illumination equal all round. i have so much to tell you about my visit; one thing is, that the astronomical world is getting quite excited about the coming transit of venus. there is to be a regular expedition fitted out. how i should like to join it!' he spoke enthusiastically, and with eyes sparkling at the mental image of the said expedition; and as it was rather gloomy in the dome he rolled it round on its axis, till the shuttered slit for the telescope directly faced the morning sun, which thereupon flooded the concave interior, touching the bright metal-work of the equatorial, and lighting up her pale, troubled face. 'but swithin!' she faltered; 'my letter to you--our marriage!' 'o yes, this marriage question,' he added. 'i had not forgotten it, dear viviette--or at least only for a few minutes.' 'can you forget it, swithin, for a moment? o how can you!' she said reproachfully. 'it is such a distressing thing. it drives away all my rest!' 'forgotten is not the word i should have used,' he apologized. 'temporarily dismissed it from my mind, is all i meant. the simple fact is, that the vastness of the field of astronomy reduces every terrestrial thing to atomic dimensions. do not trouble, dearest. the remedy is quite easy, as i stated in my letter. we can now be married in a prosy public way. yes, early or late--next week, next month, six months hence--just as you choose. say the word when, and i will obey.' the absence of all anxiety or consternation from his face contrasted strangely with hers, which at last he saw, and, looking at the writing she held, inquired-- 'but what paper have you in your hand?' 'a letter which to me is actually inexplicable,' said she, her curiosity returning to the letter, and overriding for the instant her immediate concerns. 'what does this income of six hundred a year mean? why have you never told me about it, dear swithin? or does it not refer to you?' he looked at the note, flushed slightly, and was absolutely unable to begin his reply at once. 'i did not mean you to see that, viviette,' he murmured. 'why not?' 'i thought you had better not, as it does not concern me further now. the solicitors are labouring under a mistake in supposing that it does. i have to write at once and inform them that the annuity is not mine to receive.' 'what a strange mystery in your life!' she said, forcing a perplexed smile. 'something to balance the tragedy in mine. i am absolutely in the dark as to your past history, it seems. and yet i had thought you told me everything.' 'i could not tell you that, viviette, because it would have endangered our relations--though not in the way you may suppose. you would have reproved me. you, who are so generous and noble, would have forbidden me to do what i did; and i was determined not to be forbidden.' 'to do what?' 'to marry you.' 'why should i have forbidden?' 'must i tell--what i would not?' he said, placing his hands upon her arms, and looking somewhat sadly at her. 'well, perhaps as it has come to this you ought to know all, since it can make no possible difference to my intentions now. we are one for ever--legal blunders notwithstanding; for happily they are quickly reparable--and this question of a devise from my uncle jocelyn only concerned me when i was a single man.' thereupon, with obviously no consideration of the possibilities that were reopened of the nullity of their marriage contract, he related in detail, and not without misgiving for having concealed them so long, the events that had occurred on the morning of their wedding-day; how he had met the postman on his way to warborne after dressing in the cabin, and how he had received from him the letter his dead uncle had confided to his family lawyers, informing him of the annuity, and of the important request attached--that he should remain unmarried until his five-and-twentieth year; how in comparison with the possession of her dear self he had reckoned the income as nought, abandoned all idea of it there and then, and had come on to the wedding as if nothing had happened to interrupt for a moment the working out of their plan; how he had scarcely thought with any closeness of the circumstances of the case since, until reminded of them by this note she had seen, and a previous one of a like sort received from the same solicitors. 'o swithin! swithin!' she cried, bursting into tears as she realized it all, and sinking on the observing-chair; 'i have ruined you! yes, i have ruined you!' the young man was dismayed by her unexpected grief, and endeavoured to soothe her; but she seemed touched by a poignant remorse which would not be comforted. 'and now,' she continued, as soon as she could speak, 'when you are once more free, and in a position--actually in a position to claim the annuity that would be the making of you, i am compelled to come to you, and beseech you to undo yourself again, merely to save me!' 'not to save you, viviette, but to bless me. you do not ask me to re- marry; it is not a question of alternatives at all; it is my straight course. i do not dream of doing otherwise. i should be wretched if you thought for one moment i could entertain the idea of doing otherwise.' but the more he said the worse he made the matter. it was a state of affairs that would not bear discussion at all, and the unsophisticated view he took of his course seemed to increase her responsibility. 'why did your uncle attach such a cruel condition to his bounty?' she cried bitterly. 'o, he little thinks how hard he hits me from the grave--me, who have never done him wrong; and you, too! swithin, are you sure that he makes that condition indispensable? perhaps he meant that you should not marry beneath you; perhaps he did not mean to object in such a case as your marrying (forgive me for saying it) a little above you.' 'there is no doubt that he did not contemplate a case which has led to such happiness as this has done,' the youth murmured with hesitation; for though he scarcely remembered a word of his uncle's letter of advice, he had a dim apprehension that it was couched in terms alluding specifically to lady constantine. 'are you sure you cannot retain the money, and be my lawful husband too?' she asked piteously. 'o, what a wrong i am doing you! i did not dream that it could be as bad as this. i knew i was wasting your time by letting you love me, and hampering your projects; but i thought there were compensating advantages. this wrecking of your future at my hands i did not contemplate. you are sure there is no escape? have you his letter with the conditions, or the will? let me see the letter in which he expresses his wishes.' 'i assure you it is all as i say,' he pensively returned. 'even if i were not legally bound by the conditions i should be morally.' 'but how does he put it? how does he justify himself in making such a harsh restriction? do let me see the letter, swithin. i shall think it a want of confidence if you do not. i may discover some way out of the difficulty if you let me look at the papers. eccentric wills can be evaded in all sorts of ways.' still he hesitated. 'i would rather you did not see the papers,' he said. but she persisted as only a fond woman can. her conviction was that she who, as a woman many years his senior, should have shown her love for him by guiding him straight into the paths he aimed at, had blocked his attempted career for her own happiness. this made her more intent than ever to find out a device by which, while she still retained him, he might also retain the life-interest under his uncle's will. her entreaties were at length too potent for his resistance. accompanying her downstairs to the cabin, he opened the desk from which the other papers had been taken, and against his better judgment handed her the ominous communication of jocelyn st. cleeve which lay in the envelope just as it had been received three-quarters of a year earlier. 'don't read it now,' he said. 'don't spoil our meeting by entering into a subject which is virtually past and done with. take it with you, and look it over at your leisure--merely as an old curiosity, remember, and not as a still operative document. i have almost forgotten what the contents are, beyond the general advice and stipulation that i was to remain a bachelor.' 'at any rate,' she rejoined, 'do not reply to the note i have seen from the solicitors till i have read this also.' he promised. 'but now about our public wedding,' he said. 'like certain royal personages, we shall have had the religious rite and the civil contract performed on independent occasions. will you fix the day? when is it to be? and shall it take place at a registrar's office, since there is no necessity for having the sacred part over again?' 'i'll think,' replied she. 'i'll think it over.' 'and let me know as soon as you can how you decide to proceed.' 'i will write to-morrow, or come. i do not know what to say now. i cannot forget how i am wronging you. this is almost more than i can bear!' to divert her mind he began talking about greenwich observatory, and the great instruments therein, and how he had been received by the astronomers, and the details of the expedition to observe the transit of venus, together with many other subjects of the sort, to which she had not power to lend her attention. 'i must reach home before the people are out of church,' she at length said wearily. 'i wish nobody to know i have been out this morning.' and forbidding swithin to cross into the open in her company she left him on the edge of the isolated plantation, which had latterly known her tread so well. xxxv lady constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found on passing the church that the congregation was still within. there was no hurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to hear that mr. torkingham had only just given out his text. so instead of entering the house she went through the garden-door to the old bowling-green, and sat down in the arbour that louis had occupied when he overheard the interview between swithin and the bishop. not until then did she find courage to draw out the letter and papers relating to the bequest, which swithin in a critical moment had handed to her. had he been ever so little older he would not have placed that unconsidered confidence in viviette which had led him to give way to her curiosity. but the influence over him which eight or nine outnumbering years lent her was immensely increased by her higher position and wider experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all social points; while the same conditions exempted him from any deep consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself. the preamble of dr. st. cleeve's letter, in which he referred to his pleasure at hearing of the young man's promise as an astronomer, disturbed her not at all--indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in favour of the old gentleman who had written it. the first item of what he called 'unfavourable news,' namely, the allusion to the inadequacy of swithin's income to the wants of a scientific man, whose lines of work were not calculated to produce pecuniary emolument for many years, deepened the cast of her face to concern. she reached the second item of the so-called unfavourable news; and her face flushed as she read how the doctor had learnt 'that there was something in your path worse than narrow means, and that something is a woman.' 'to save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,' she read on, 'i take the preventive measures entailed below.' and then followed the announcement of the pounds a year settled on the youth for life, on the single condition that he remained unmarried till the age of twenty-five--just as swithin had explained to her. she next learnt that the bequest was for a definite object--that he might have resources sufficient to enable him to travel in an inexpensive way, and begin a study of the southern constellations, which, according to the shrewd old man's judgment, were a mine not so thoroughly worked as the northern, and therefore to be recommended. this was followed by some sentences which hit her in the face like a switch:-- 'the only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation. . . . swithin st. cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did. if your studies are to be worth anything, believe me they must be carried on without the help of a woman. avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing. eschew all of that sort for many a year yet. moreover, i say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid in particular. . . . she has, in addition to her original disqualification as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two special drawbacks: she is much older than yourself--' lady constantine's indignant flush forsook her, and pale despair succeeded in its stead. alas, it was true. handsome, and in her prime, she might be; but she was too old for swithin! 'and she is so impoverished. . . . beyond this, frankly, i don't think well of her. i don't think well of any woman who dotes upon a man younger than herself. . . . to care to be the first fancy of a young fellow like you shows no great common sense in her. if she were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in your unassured position, to say no more.' (viviette's face by this time tingled hot again.) 'she is old enough to know that a liaison with her may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would be preposterous--unless she is a complete fool; and in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her few senses. 'a woman of honourable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way most certainly will. yet i hear that she professes a great anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist. the best way in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself.' leaving him to himself! she paled again, as if chilled by a conviction that in this the old man was right. 'she'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her acquaintance, and make you appear ridiculous by announcing them before they are matured. if you attempt to study with a woman, you'll be ruled by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead of intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead of reasoned conclusions. . . . 'an experienced woman waking a young man's passions just at a moment when he is endeavouring to shine intellectually, is doing little less than committing a crime.' * * * * * thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. the flushes of indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinion of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered that swithin--her dear swithin--was perfectly acquainted with this cynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as he unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and lay in him. stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and aerate into life. the humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; the mortification--she had known nothing like it till now. but this was not all. there succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment and mortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old man who spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; that he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. only those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for others' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully experience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish for annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that at length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our cause. viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other side of the garden wall. their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away; the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. but her life during that morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. knowing the full circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had never before known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of swithin st. cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was the formidable question which lady constantine propounded to her startled understanding. as a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. save thyself was sound old testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the new. but was there a line of conduct which transcended mere self-preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in practice now? that she had wronged st. cleeve by marrying him--that she would wrong him infinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in her opinion, no doubt. she in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and had led him like a child. she remembered--as if it had been her fault, though it was in fact only her misfortune--that she had been the one to go for the license and take up residence in the parish in which they were wedded. he was now just one-and-twenty. without her, he had all the world before him, six hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road to fame as he should choose: with her, this story was negatived. no money from his uncle; no power of advancement; but a bondage with a woman whose disparity of years, though immaterial just now, would operate in the future as a wet blanket upon his social ambitions; and that content with life as it was which she had noticed more than once in him latterly, a content imperilling his scientific spirit by abstracting his zeal for progress. it was impossible, in short, to blind herself to the inference that marriage with her had not benefited him. matters might improve in the future; but to take upon herself the whole liability of swithin's life, as she would do by depriving him of the help his uncle had offered, was a fearful responsibility. how could she, an unendowed woman, replace such assistance? his recent visit to greenwich, which had momentarily revived that zest for his pursuit that was now less constant than heretofore, should by rights be supplemented by other such expeditions. it would be true benevolence not to deprive him of means to continue them, so as to keep his ardour alive, regardless of the cost to herself. it could be done. by the extraordinary favour of a unique accident she had now an opportunity of redeeming swithin's seriously compromised future, and restoring him to a state no worse than his first. his annuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken, his studies pursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little sacrifice--that of herself. she only had to refuse to legalize their marriage, to part from him for ever, and all would be well with him thenceforward. the pain to him would after all be but slight, whatever it might be to his wretched viviette. the ineptness of retaining him at her side lay not only in the fact itself of injury to him, but in the likelihood of his living to see it as such, and reproaching her for selfishness in not letting him go in this unprecedented opportunity for correcting a move proved to be false. he wished to examine the southern heavens--perhaps his uncle's letter was the father of the wish--and there was no telling what good might not result to mankind at large from his exploits there. why should she, to save her narrow honour, waste the wide promise of his ability? that in immolating herself by refusing him, and leaving him free to work wonders for the good of his fellow-creatures, she would in all probability add to the sum of human felicity, consoled her by its breadth as an idea even while it tortured her by making herself the scapegoat or single unit on whom the evil would fall. ought a possibly large number, swithin included, to remain unbenefited because the one individual to whom his release would be an injury chanced to be herself? love between man and woman, which in homer, moses, and other early exhibitors of life, is mere desire, had for centuries past so far broadened as to include sympathy and friendship; surely it should in this advanced stage of the world include benevolence also. if so, it was her duty to set her young man free. thus she laboured, with a generosity more worthy even than its object, to sink her love for her own decorum in devotion to the world in general, and to swithin in particular. to counsel her activities by her understanding, rather than by her emotions as usual, was hard work for a tender woman; but she strove hard, and made advance. the self-centred attitude natural to one in her situation was becoming displaced by the sympathetic attitude, which, though it had to be artificially fostered at first, gave her, by degrees, a certain sweet sense that she was rising above self-love. that maternal element which had from time to time evinced itself in her affection for the youth, and was imparted by her superior ripeness in experience and years, appeared now again, as she drew nearer the resolve not to secure propriety in her own social condition at the expense of this youth's earthly utility. unexpectedly grand fruits are sometimes forced forth by harsh pruning. the illiberal letter of swithin's uncle was suggesting to lady constantine an altruism whose thoroughness would probably have amazed that queer old gentleman into a withdrawal of the conditions that had induced it. to love st. cleeve so far better than herself as this was to surpass the love of women as conventionally understood, and as mostly existing. before, however, clinching her decision by any definite step she worried her little brain by devising every kind of ingenious scheme, in the hope of lighting on one that might show her how that decision could be avoided with the same good result. but to secure for him the advantages offered, and to retain him likewise; reflection only showed it to be impossible. yet to let him go _for ever_ was more than she could endure, and at length she jumped at an idea which promised some sort of improvement on that design. she would propose that reunion should not be entirely abandoned, but simply postponed--namely, till after his twenty-fifth birthday--when he might be her husband without, at any rate, the loss to him of the income. by this time he would approximate to a man's full judgment, and that painful aspect of her as one who had deluded his raw immaturity would have passed for ever. the plan somewhat appeased her disquieted honour. to let a marriage sink into abeyance for four or five years was not to nullify it; and though she would leave it to him to move its substantiation at the end of that time, without present stipulations, she had not much doubt upon the issue. the clock struck five. this silent mental debate had occupied her whole afternoon. perhaps it would not have ended now but for an unexpected incident--the entry of her brother louis. he came into the room where she was sitting, or rather writhing, and after a few words to explain how he had got there and about the mistake in the date of sir blount's death, he walked up close to her. his next remarks were apologetic in form, but in essence they were bitterness itself. 'viviette,' he said, 'i am sorry for my hasty words to you when i last left this house. i readily withdraw them. my suspicions took a wrong direction. i think now that i know the truth. you have been even madder than i supposed!' 'in what way?' she asked distantly. 'i lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favoured lover.' 'you thought wrong: he is not.' 'he is not--i believe you--for he is more. i now am persuaded that he is your lawful husband. can you deny it!' 'i can.' 'on your sacred word!' 'on my sacred word he is not that either.' 'thank heaven for that assurance!' said louis, exhaling a breath of relief. 'i was not so positive as i pretended to be--but i wanted to know the truth of this mystery. since you are not fettered to him in that way i care nothing.' louis turned away; and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving the room. those few words were the last grains that had turned the balance, and settled her doom. she would let swithin go. all the voices in her world seemed to clamour for that consummation. the morning's mortification, the afternoon's benevolence, and the evening's instincts of evasion had joined to carry the point. accordingly she sat down, and wrote to swithin a summary of the thoughts above detailed. 'we shall separate,' she concluded. 'you to obey your uncle's orders and explore the southern skies; i to wait as one who can implicitly trust you. do not see me again till the years have expired. you will find me still the same. i am your wife through all time; the letter of the law is not needed to reassert it at present; while the absence of the letter secures your fortune.' nothing can express what it cost lady constantine to marshal her arguments; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of the general expediency. it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the only ignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-existent; that is to say, a serious decline in her affection. tenderly she had loved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved him now, as time and her after-conduct proved. women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations. eve probably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the fall. on first learning of her anomalous position lady constantine had blushed hot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize her marriage without a moment's delay. heaven and earth were to be moved at once to effect it. day after day had passed; her union had remained unsecured, and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased to be strange to her; till it became of little account beside her bold resolve for the young man's sake. xxxvi the immediate effect upon st. cleeve of the receipt of her well-reasoned argument for retrocession was, naturally, a bitter attack upon himself for having been guilty of such cruel carelessness as to leave in her way the lawyer's letter that had first made her aware of his uncle's provision for him. immature as he was, he could realize viviette's position sufficiently well to perceive what the poor lady must suffer at having suddenly thrust upon her the responsibility of repairing her own situation as a wife by ruining his as a legatee. true, it was by the purest inadvertence that his pending sacrifice of means had been discovered; but he should have taken special pains to render such a mishap impossible. if on the first occasion, when a revelation might have been made with impunity, he would not put it in the power of her good nature to relieve his position by refusing him, he should have shown double care not to do so now, when she could not exercise that benevolence without the loss of honour. with a young man's inattention to issues he had not considered how sharp her feelings as a woman must be in this contingency. it had seemed the easiest thing in the world to remedy the defect in their marriage, and therefore nothing to be anxious about. and in his innocence of any thought of appropriating the bequest by taking advantage of the loophole in his matrimonial bond, he undervalued the importance of concealing the existence of that bequest. the looming fear of unhappiness between them revived in swithin the warm emotions of their earlier acquaintance. almost before the sun had set he hastened to welland house in search of her. the air was disturbed by stiff summer blasts, productive of windfalls and premature descents of leafage. it was an hour when unripe apples shower down in orchards, and unbrowned chestnuts descend in their husks upon the park glades. there was no help for it this afternoon but to call upon her in a direct manner, regardless of suspicions. he was thunderstruck when, while waiting in the full expectation of being admitted to her presence, the answer brought back to him was that she was unable to see him. this had never happened before in the whole course of their acquaintance. but he knew what it meant, and turned away with a vague disquietude. he did not know that lady constantine was just above his head, listening to his movements with the liveliest emotions, and, while praying for him to go, longing for him to insist on seeing her and spoil all. but the faintest symptom being always sufficient to convince him of having blundered, he unwittingly took her at her word, and went rapidly away. however, he called again the next day, and she, having gained strength by one victory over herself, was enabled to repeat her refusal with greater ease. knowing this to be the only course by which her point could be maintained, she clung to it with strenuous and religious pertinacity. thus immured and self-controlling she passed a week. her brother, though he did not live in the house (preferring the nearest watering-place at this time of the year), was continually coming there; and one day he happened to be present when she denied herself to swithin for the third time. louis, who did not observe the tears in her eyes, was astonished and delighted: she was coming to her senses at last. believing now that there had been nothing more between them than a too-plainly shown partiality on her part, he expressed his commendation of her conduct to her face. at this, instead of owning to its advantage also, her tears burst forth outright. not knowing what to make of this, louis said-- 'well, i am simply upholding you in your course.' 'yes, yes; i know it!' she cried. 'and it is my deliberately chosen course. i wish he--swithin st. cleeve--would go on his travels at once, and leave the place! six hundred a year has been left him for travel and study of the southern constellations; and i wish he would use it. you might represent the advantage to him of the course if you cared to.' louis thought he could do no better than let swithin know this as soon as possible. accordingly when st. cleeve was writing in the hut the next day he heard the crackle of footsteps over the fir-needles outside, and jumped up, supposing them to be hers; but, to his disappointment, it was her brother who appeared at the door. 'excuse my invading the hermitage, st. cleeve,' he said in his careless way, 'but i have heard from my sister of your good fortune.' 'my good fortune?' 'yes, in having an opportunity for roving; and with a traveller's conceit i couldn't help coming to give you the benefit of my experience. when do you start?' 'i have not formed any plan as yet. indeed, i had not quite been thinking of going.' louis stared. 'not going? then i may have been misinformed. what i have heard is that a good uncle has kindly bequeathed you a sufficient income to make a second isaac newton of you, if you only use it as he directs.' swithin breathed quickly, but said nothing. 'if you have not decided so to make use of it, let me implore you, as your friend, and one nearly old enough to be your father, to decide at once. such a chance does not happen to a scientific youth once in a century.' 'thank you for your good advice--for it is good in itself, i know,' said swithin, in a low voice. 'but has lady constantine spoken of it at all?' 'she thinks as i do.' 'she has spoken to you on the subject?' 'certainly. more than that; it is at her request--though i did not intend to say so--that i come to speak to you about it now.' 'frankly and plainly,' said swithin, his voice trembling with a compound of scientific and amatory emotion that defies definition, 'does she say seriously that she wishes me to go?' 'she does.' 'then go i will,' replied swithin firmly. 'i have been fortunate enough to interest some leading astronomers, including the astronomer royal; and in a letter received this morning i learn that the use of the cape observatory has been offered me for any southern observations i may wish to make. this offer i will accept. will you kindly let lady constantine know this, since she is interested in my welfare?' louis promised, and when he was gone swithin looked blankly at his own situation, as if he could scarcely believe in its reality. her letter to him, then, had been deliberately written; she meant him to go. but he was determined that none of those misunderstandings which ruin the happiness of lovers should be allowed to operate in the present case. he would see her, if he slept under her walls all night to do it, and would hear the order to depart from her own lips. this unexpected stand she was making for his interests was winning his admiration to such a degree as to be in danger of defeating the very cause it was meant to subserve. a woman like this was not to be forsaken in a hurry. he wrote two lines, and left the note at the house with his own hand. 'the cabin, rings-hill, _july_ _th_. 'dearest viviette,--if you insist, i will go. but letter-writing will not do. i must have the command from your own two lips, otherwise i shall not stir. i am here every evening at seven. can you come?--s.' this note, as fate would have it, reached her hands in the single hour of that week when she was in a mood to comply with his request, just when moved by a reactionary emotion after dismissing swithin. she went upstairs to the window that had so long served purposes of this kind, and signalled 'yes.' st. cleeve soon saw the answer she had given and watched her approach from the tower as the sunset drew on. the vivid circumstances of his life at this date led him ever to remember the external scenes in which they were set. it was an evening of exceptional irradiations, and the west heaven gleamed like a foundry of all metals common and rare. the clouds were broken into a thousand fragments, and the margin of every fragment shone. foreseeing the disadvantage and pain to her of maintaining a resolve under the pressure of a meeting, he vowed not to urge her by word or sign; to put the question plainly and calmly, and to discuss it on a reasonable basis only, like the philosophers they assumed themselves to be. but this intention was scarcely adhered to in all its integrity. she duly appeared on the edge of the field, flooded with the metallic radiance that marked the close of this day; whereupon he quickly descended the steps, and met her at the cabin door. they entered it together. as the evening grew darker and darker he listened to her reasoning, which was precisely a repetition of that already sent him by letter, and by degrees accepted her decision, since she would not revoke it. time came for them to say good-bye, and then-- 'he turn'd and saw the terror in her eyes, that yearn'd upon him, shining in such wise as a star midway in the midnight fix'd.' it was the misery of her own condition that showed forth, hitherto obscured by her ardour for ameliorating his. they closed together, and kissed each other as though the emotion of their whole year-and-half's acquaintance had settled down upon that moment. 'i won't go away from you!' said swithin huskily. 'why did you propose it for an instant?' thus the nearly ended interview was again prolonged, and viviette yielded to all the passion of her first union with him. time, however, was merciless, and the hour approached midnight, and she was compelled to depart. swithin walked with her towards the house, as he had walked many times before, believing that all was now smooth again between them, and caring, it must be owned, very little for his fame as an expositor of the southern constellations just then. when they reached the silent house he said what he had not ventured to say before, 'fix the day--you have decided that it is to be soon, and that i am not to go?' but youthful swithin was far, very far, from being up to the fond subtlety of viviette this evening. 'i cannot decide here,' she said gently, releasing herself from his arm; 'i will speak to you from the window. wait for me.' she vanished; and he waited. it was a long time before the window opened, and he was not aware that, with her customary complication of feeling, she had knelt for some time inside the room before looking out. 'well?' said he. 'it cannot be,' she answered. 'i cannot ruin you. but the day after you are five-and-twenty our marriage shall be confirmed, if you choose.' 'o, my viviette, how is this!' he cried. 'swithin, i have not altered. but i feared for my powers, and could not tell you whilst i stood by your side. i ought not to have given way as i did to-night. take the bequest, and go. you are too young--to be fettered--i should have thought of it! do not communicate with me for at least a year: it is imperative. do not tell me your plans. if we part, we do part. i have vowed a vow not to further obstruct the course you had decided on before you knew me and my puling ways; and by heaven's help i'll keep that vow. . . . now go. these are the parting words of your own viviette!' swithin, who was stable as a giant in all that appertained to nature and life outside humanity, was a mere pupil in domestic matters. he was quite awed by her firmness, and looked vacantly at her for a time, till she closed the window. then he mechanically turned, and went, as she had commanded. xxxvii a week had passed away. it had been a time of cloudy mental weather to swithin and viviette, but the only noteworthy fact about it was that what had been planned to happen therein had actually taken place. swithin had gone from welland, and would shortly go from england. she became aware of it by a note that he posted to her on his way through warborne. there was much evidence of haste in the note, and something of reserve. the latter she could not understand, but it might have been obvious enough if she had considered. on the morning of his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed, the sunlight streaming through the early mist, the house-martens scratching the back of the ceiling over his head as they scrambled out from the roof for their day's gnat-chasing, the thrushes cracking snails on the garden stones outside with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little anvils. the sun, in sending its rods of yellow fire into his room, sent, as he suddenly thought, mental illumination with it. for the first time, as he sat there, it had crossed his mind that viviette might have reasons for this separation which he knew not of. there might be family reasons--mysterious blood necessities which are said to rule members of old musty-mansioned families, and are unknown to other classes of society--and they may have been just now brought before her by her brother louis on the condition that they were religiously concealed. the idea that some family skeleton, like those he had read of in memoirs, had been unearthed by louis, and held before her terrified understanding as a matter which rendered swithin's departure, and the neutralization of the marriage, no less indispensable to them than it was an advantage to himself, seemed a very plausible one to swithin just now. viviette might have taken louis into her confidence at last, for the sake of his brotherly advice. swithin knew that of her own heart she would never wish to get rid of him; but coerced by louis, might she not have grown to entertain views of its expediency? events made such a supposition on st. cleeve's part as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his own excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead, influenced him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note to her, in which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would omit all reference to his plans. these at the last moment had been modified to fall in with the winter expedition formerly mentioned, to observe the transit of venus at a remote southern station. the business being done, and himself fairly plunged into the preliminaries of an important scientific pilgrimage, swithin acquired that lightness of heart which most young men feel in forsaking old love for new adventure, no matter how charming may be the girl they leave behind them. moreover, in the present case, the man was endowed with that schoolboy temperament which does not see, or at least consider with much curiosity, the effect of a given scheme upon others than himself. the bearing upon lady constantine of what was an undoubted predicament for any woman, was forgotten in his feeling that she had done a very handsome and noble thing for him, and that he was therefore bound in honour to make the most of it. his going had resulted in anything but lightness of heart for her. her sad fancy could, indeed, indulge in dreams of her yellow-haired laddie without that formerly besetting fear that those dreams would prompt her to actions likely to distract and weight him. she was wretched on her own account, relieved on his. she no longer stood in the way of his advancement, and that was enough. for herself she could live in retirement, visit the wood, the old camp, the column, and, like oenone, think of the life they had led there-- 'mournful oenone, wandering forlorn of paris, once her playmate on the hills,' leaving it entirely to his goodness whether he would come and claim her in the future, or desert her for ever. she was diverted for a time from these sad performances by a letter which reached her from bishop helmsdale. to see his handwriting again on an envelope, after thinking so anxiously of making a father-confessor of him, started her out of her equanimity. she speedily regained it, however, when she read his note. 'the palace, melchester, _july_ , --. 'my dear lady constantine,--i am shocked and grieved that, in the strange dispensation of things here below, my offer of marriage should have reached you almost simultaneously with the intelligence that your widowhood had been of several months less duration than you and i, and the world, had supposed. i can quite understand that, viewed from any side, the news must have shaken and disturbed you; and your unequivocal refusal to entertain any thought of a new alliance at such a moment was, of course, intelligible, natural, and praiseworthy. at present i will say no more beyond expressing a hope that you will accept my assurances that i was quite ignorant of the news at the hour of writing, and a sincere desire that in due time, and as soon as you have recovered your equanimity, i may be allowed to renew my proposal.--i am, my dear lady constantine, yours ever sincerely, c. melchester.' she laid the letter aside, and thought no more about it, beyond a momentary meditation on the errors into which people fall in reasoning from actions to motives. louis, who was now again with her, became in due course acquainted with the contents of the letter, and was satisfied with the promising position in which matters seemingly stood all round. lady constantine went her mournful ways as she had planned to do, her chief resort being the familiar column, where she experienced the unutterable melancholy of seeing two carpenters dismantle the dome of its felt covering, detach its ribs, and clear away the enclosure at the top till everything stood as it had stood before swithin had been known to the place. the equatorial had already been packed in a box, to be in readiness if he should send for it from abroad. the cabin, too, was in course of demolition, such having been his directions, acquiesced in by her, before he started. yet she could not bear the idea that these structures, so germane to the events of their romance, should be removed as if removed for ever. going to the men she bade them store up the materials intact, that they might be re-erected if desired. she had the junctions of the timbers marked with figures, the boards numbered, and the different sets of screws tied up in independent papers for identification. she did not hear the remarks of the workmen when she had gone, to the effect that the young man would as soon think of buying a halter for himself as come back and spy at the moon from rings-hill speer, after seeing the glories of other nations and the gold and jewels that were found there, or she might have been more unhappy than she was. on returning from one of these walks to the column a curious circumstance occurred. it was evening, and she was coming as usual down through the sighing plantation, choosing her way between the ramparts of the camp towards the outlet giving upon the field, when suddenly in a dusky vista among the fir-trunks she saw, or thought she saw, a golden-haired, toddling child. the child moved a step or two, and vanished behind a tree. lady constantine, fearing it had lost its way, went quickly to the spot, searched, and called aloud. but no child could she perceive or hear anywhere around. she returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked in the same direction, but nothing reappeared. the only object at all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the colour of a fair child's hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze. this, however, did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to make inquiries of the man whom she had left at work, removing the last traces of swithin's cabin. but he had gone with her departure and the approach of night. feeling an indescribable dread she retraced her steps, and hastened homeward doubting, yet half believing, what she had seemed to see, and wondering if her imagination had played her some trick. the tranquil mournfulness of her night of solitude terminated in a most unexpected manner. the morning after the above-mentioned incident lady constantine, after meditating a while, arose with a strange personal conviction that bore curiously on the aforesaid hallucination. she realized a condition of things that she had never anticipated, and for a moment the discovery of her state so overwhelmed her that she thought she must die outright. in her terror she said she had sown the wind to reap the whirlwind. then the instinct of self-preservation flamed up in her like a fire. her altruism in subjecting her self-love to benevolence, and letting swithin go away from her, was demolished by the new necessity, as if it had been a gossamer web. there was no resisting or evading the spontaneous plan of action which matured in her mind in five minutes. where was swithin? how could he be got at instantly?--that was her ruling thought. she searched about the room for his last short note, hoping, yet doubting, that its contents were more explicit on his intended movements than the few meagre syllables which alone she could call to mind. she could not find the letter in her room, and came downstairs to louis as pale as a ghost. he looked up at her, and with some concern said, 'what's the matter?' 'i am searching everywhere for a letter--a note from mr. st. cleeve--just a few words telling me when the _occidental_ sails, that i think he goes in.' 'why do you want that unimportant document?' 'it is of the utmost importance that i should know whether he has actually sailed or not!' said she in agonized tones. 'where _can_ that letter be?' louis knew where that letter was, for having seen it on her desk he had, without reading it, torn it up and thrown it into the waste-paper basket, thinking the less that remained to remind her of the young philosopher the better. 'i destroyed it,' he said. 'o louis! why did you?' she cried. 'i am going to follow him; i think it best to do so; and i want to know if he is gone--and now the date is lost!' 'going to run after st. cleeve? absurd!' 'yes, i am!' she said with vehement firmness. 'i must see him; i want to speak to him as soon as possible.' 'good lord, viviette! are you mad?' 'o what was the date of that ship! but it cannot be helped. i start at once for southampton. i have made up my mind to do it. he was going to his uncle's solicitors in the north first; then he was coming back to southampton. he cannot have sailed yet.' 'i believe he has sailed,' muttered louis sullenly. she did not wait to argue with him, but returned upstairs, where she rang to tell green to be ready with the pony to drive her to warborne station in a quarter of an hour. xxxviii viviette's determination to hamper swithin no longer had led her, as has been shown, to balk any weak impulse to entreat his return, by forbidding him to furnish her with his foreign address. his ready disposition, his fear that there might be other reasons behind, made him obey her only too literally. thus, to her terror and dismay, she had placed a gratuitous difficulty in the way of her present endeavour. she was ready before green, and urged on that factotum so wildly as to leave him no time to change his corduroys and 'skitty-boots' in which he had been gardening; he therefore turned himself into a coachman as far down as his waist merely--clapping on his proper coat, hat, and waistcoat, and wrapping a rug over his horticultural half below. in this compromise he appeared at the door, mounted, and reins in hand. seeing how sad and determined viviette was, louis pitied her so far as to put nothing in the way of her starting, though he forbore to help her. he thought her conduct sentimental foolery, the outcome of mistaken pity and 'such a kind of gain-giving as would trouble a woman;' and he decided that it would be better to let this mood burn itself out than to keep it smouldering by obstruction. 'do you remember the date of his sailing?' she said finally, as the pony- carriage turned to drive off. 'he sails on the th, that is, to-day. but it may not be till late in the evening.' with this she started, and reached warborne in time for the up-train. how much longer than it really is a long journey can seem to be, was fully learnt by the unhappy viviette that day. the changeful procession of country seats past which she was dragged, the names and memories of their owners, had no points of interest for her now. she reached southampton about midday, and drove straight to the docks. on approaching the gates she was met by a crowd of people and vehicles coming out--men, women, children, porters, police, cabs, and carts. the occidental had just sailed. the adverse intelligence came upon her with such odds after her morning's tension that she could scarcely crawl back to the cab which had brought her. but this was not a time to succumb. as she had no luggage she dismissed the man, and, without any real consciousness of what she was doing, crept away and sat down on a pile of merchandise. after long thinking her case assumed a more hopeful complexion. much might probably be done towards communicating with him in the time at her command. the obvious step to this end, which she should have thought of sooner, would be to go to his grandmother in welland bottom, and there obtain his itinerary in detail--no doubt well known to mrs. martin. there was no leisure for her to consider longer if she would be home again that night; and returning to the railway she waited on a seat without eating or drinking till a train was ready to take her back. by the time she again stood in warborne the sun rested his chin upon the meadows, and enveloped the distant outline of the rings-hill column in his humid rays. hiring an empty fly that chanced to be at the station she was driven through the little town onward to welland, which she approached about eight o'clock. at her request the man set her down at the entrance to the park, and when he was out of sight, instead of pursuing her way to the house, she went along the high road in the direction of mrs. martin's. dusk was drawing on, and the bats were wheeling over the green basin called welland bottom by the time she arrived; and had any other errand instigated her call she would have postponed it till the morrow. nobody responded to her knock, but she could hear footsteps going hither and thither upstairs, and dull noises as of articles moved from their places. she knocked again and again, and ultimately the door was opened by hannah as usual. 'i could make nobody hear,' said lady constantine, who was so weary she could scarcely stand. 'i am very sorry, my lady,' said hannah, slightly awed on beholding her visitor. 'but we was a putting poor mr. swithin's room to rights, now that he is, as a woman may say, dead and buried to us; so we didn't hear your ladyship. i'll call mrs. martin at once. she is up in the room that used to be his work-room.' here hannah's voice implied moist eyes, and lady constantine's instantly overflowed. 'no, i'll go up to her,' said viviette; and almost in advance of hannah she passed up the shrunken ash stairs. the ebbing light was not enough to reveal to mrs. martin's aged gaze the personality of her visitor, till hannah explained. 'i'll get a light, my lady,' said she. 'no, i would rather not. what are you doing, mrs. martin?' 'well, the poor misguided boy is gone--and he's gone for good to me! i am a woman of over four-score years, my lady constantine; my junketting days are over, and whether 'tis feasting or whether 'tis sorrowing in the land will soon be nothing to me. but his life may be long and active, and for the sake of him i care for what i shall never see, and wish to make pleasant what i shall never enjoy. i am setting his room in order, as the place will be his own freehold when i am gone, so that when he comes back he may find all his poor jim-cracks and trangleys as he left 'em, and not feel that i have betrayed his trust.' mrs. martin's voice revealed that she had burst into such few tears as were left her, and then hannah began crying likewise; whereupon lady constantine, whose heart had been bursting all day (and who, indeed, considering her coming trouble, had reason enough for tears), broke into bitterer sobs than either--sobs of absolute pain, that could no longer be concealed. hannah was the first to discover that lady constantine was weeping with them; and her feelings being probably the least intense among the three she instantly controlled herself. 'refrain yourself, my dear woman, refrain!' she said hastily to mrs. martin; 'don't ye see how it do raft my lady?' and turning to viviette she whispered, 'her years be so great, your ladyship, that perhaps ye'll excuse her for busting out afore ye? we know when the mind is dim, my lady, there's not the manners there should be; but decayed people can't help it, poor old soul!' 'hannah, that will do now. perhaps lady constantine would like to speak to me alone,' said mrs. martin. and when hannah had retreated mrs. martin continued: 'such a charge as she is, my lady, on account of her great age! you'll pardon her biding here as if she were one of the family. i put up with such things because of her long service, and we know that years lead to childishness.' 'what are you doing? can i help you?' viviette asked, as mrs. martin, after speaking, turned to lift some large article. 'oh, 'tis only the skeleton of a telescope that's got no works in his inside,' said swithin's grandmother, seizing the huge pasteboard tube that swithin had made, and abandoned because he could get no lenses to suit it. 'i am going to hang it up to these hooks, and there it will bide till he comes again.' lady constantine took one end, and the tube was hung up against the whitewashed wall by strings that the old woman had tied round it. 'here's all his equinoctial lines, and his topics of capricorn, and i don't know what besides,' mrs. martin continued, pointing to some charcoal scratches on the wall. 'i shall never rub 'em out; no, though 'tis such untidiness as i was never brought up to, i shall never rub 'em out.' 'where has swithin gone to first?' asked viviette anxiously. 'where does he say you are to write to him?' 'nowhere yet, my lady. he's gone traipsing all over europe and america, and then to the south pacific ocean about this transit of venus that's going to be done there. he is to write to us first--god knows when!--for he said that if we didn't hear from him for six months we were not to be gallied at all.' at this intelligence, so much worse than she had expected, lady constantine stood mute, sank down, and would have fallen to the floor if there had not been a chair behind her. controlling herself by a strenuous effort, she disguised her despair and asked vacantly: 'from america to the south pacific--transit of venus?' (swithin's arrangement to accompany the expedition had been made at the last moment, and therefore she had not as yet been informed.) 'yes, to a lone island, i believe.' 'yes, a lone islant, my lady!' echoed hannah, who had crept in and made herself one of the family again, in spite of mrs. martin. 'he is going to meet the english and american astronomers there at the end of the year. after that he will most likely go on to the cape.' 'but before the end of the year--what places did he tell you of visiting?' 'let me collect myself; he is going to the observatory of cambridge, united states, to meet some gentlemen there, and spy through the great refractor. then there's the observatory of chicago; and i think he has a letter to make him beknown to a gentleman in the observatory at marseilles--and he wants to go to vienna--and poulkowa, too, he means to take in his way--there being great instruments and a lot of astronomers at each place.' 'does he take europe or america first?' she asked faintly, for the account seemed hopeless. mrs. martin could not tell till she had heard from swithin. it depended upon what he had decided to do on the day of his leaving england. lady constantine bade the old people good-bye, and dragged her weary limbs homeward. the fatuousness of forethought had seldom been evinced more ironically. had she done nothing to hinder him, he would have kept up an unreserved communication with her, and all might have been well. for that night she could undertake nothing further, and she waited for the next day. then at once she wrote two letters to swithin, directing one to marseilles observatory, one to the observatory of cambridge, u.s., as being the only two spots on the face of the globe at which they were likely to intercept him. each letter stated to him the urgent reasons which existed for his return, and contained a passionately regretful intimation that the annuity on which his hopes depended must of necessity be sacrificed by the completion of their original contract without delay. but letter conveyance was too slow a process to satisfy her. to send an epitome of her epistles by telegraph was, after all, indispensable. such an imploring sentence as she desired to address to him it would be hazardous to despatch from warborne, and she took a dreary journey to a strange town on purpose to send it from an office at which she was unknown. there she handed in her message, addressing it to the port of arrival of the occidental, and again returned home. she waited; and there being no return telegram, the inference was that he had somehow missed hers. for an answer to either of her letters she would have to wait long enough to allow him time to reach one of the observatories--a tedious while. then she considered the weakness, the stultifying nature of her attempt at recall. events mocked her on all sides. by the favour of an accident, and by her own immense exertions against her instincts, swithin had been restored to the rightful heritage that he had nearly forfeited on her account. he had just started off to utilize it; when she, without a moment's warning, was asking him again to cast it away. she had set a certain machinery in motion--to stop it before it had revolved once. a horrid apprehension possessed her. it had been easy for swithin to give up what he had never known the advantages of keeping; but having once begun to enjoy his possession would he give it up now? could he be depended on for such self-sacrifice? before leaving, he would have done anything at her request; but the _mollia tempora fandi_ had now passed. suppose there arrived no reply from him for the next three months; and that when his answer came he were to inform her that, having now fully acquiesced in her original decision, he found the life he was leading so profitable as to be unable to abandon it, even to please her; that he was very sorry, but having embarked on this course by her advice he meant to adhere to it by his own. there was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was doing, and cautioned as he had been by her very self against listening to her too readily, she would receive no reply of any sort from him for three or perhaps four months. this would be on the eve of the transit; and what likelihood was there that a young man, full of ardour for that spectacle, would forego it at the last moment to return to a humdrum domesticity with a woman who was no longer a novelty? if she could only leave him to his career, and save her own situation also! but at that moment the proposition seemed as impossible as to construct a triangle of two straight lines. in her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near the dark and deserted tower. night in that solitary place, which would have caused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness, had no terrors for her now. she went up the winding path, and, the door being unlocked, felt her way to the top. the open sky greeted her as in times previous to the dome-and-equatorial period; but there was not a star to suggest to her in which direction swithin had gone. the absence of the dome suggested a way out of her difficulties. a leap in the dark, and all would be over. but she had not reached that stage of action as yet, and the thought was dismissed as quickly as it had come. the new consideration which at present occupied her mind was whether she could have the courage to leave swithin to himself, as in the original plan, and singly meet her impending trial, despising the shame, till he should return at five-and-twenty and claim her? yet was this assumption of his return so very safe? how altered things would be at that time! at twenty-five he would still be young and handsome; she would be three-and- thirty, fading to middle-age and homeliness, from a junior's point of view. a fear sharp as a frost settled down upon her, that in any such scheme as this she would be building upon the sand. she hardly knew how she reached home that night. entering by the lawn door she saw a red coal in the direction of the arbour. louis was smoking there, and he came forward. he had not seen her since the morning and was naturally anxious about her. she blessed the chance which enveloped her in night and lessened the weight of the encounter one half by depriving him of vision. 'did you accomplish your object?' he asked. 'no,' said she. 'how was that?' 'he has sailed.' 'a very good thing for both, i say. i believe you would have married him, if you could have overtaken him.' 'that would i!' she said. 'good god!' 'i would marry a tinker for that matter; i have reasons for being any man's wife,' she said recklessly, 'only i should prefer to drown myself.' louis held his breath, and stood rigid at the meaning her words conveyed. 'but louis, you don't know all!' cried viviette. 'i am not so bad as you think; mine has been folly--not vice. i thought i had married him--and then i found i had not; the marriage was invalid--sir blount was alive! and now swithin has gone away, and will not come back for my calling! how can he? his fortune is left him on condition that he forms no legal tie. o will he--will he, come again?' 'never, if that's the position of affairs,' said louis firmly, after a pause. 'what then shall i do?' said viviette. louis escaped the formidable difficulty of replying by pretending to continue his havannah; and she, bowed down to dust by what she had revealed, crept from him into the house. louis's cigar went out in his hand as he stood looking intently at the ground. xxxix louis got up the next morning with an idea in his head. he had dressed for a journey, and breakfasted hastily. before he had started viviette came downstairs. louis, who was now greatly disturbed about her, went up to his sister and took her hand. '_aux grands maux les grands remedes_,' he said, gravely. 'i have a plan.' 'i have a dozen!' said she. 'you have?' 'yes. but what are they worth? and yet there must--there _must_ be a way!' 'viviette,' said louis, 'promise that you will wait till i come home to- night, before you do anything.' her distracted eyes showed slight comprehension of his request as she said 'yes.' an hour after that time louis entered the train at warborne, and was speedily crossing a country of ragged woodland, which, though intruded on by the plough at places, remained largely intact from prehistoric times, and still abounded with yews of gigantic growth and oaks tufted with mistletoe. it was the route to melchester. on setting foot in that city he took the cathedral spire as his guide, the place being strange to him; and went on till he reached the archway dividing melchester sacred from melchester secular. thence he threaded his course into the precincts of the damp and venerable close, level as a bowling-green, and beloved of rooks, who from their elm perches on high threatened any unwary gazer with the mishap of tobit. at the corner of this reposeful spot stood the episcopal palace. louis entered the gates, rang the bell, and looked around. here the trees and rooks seemed older, if possible, than those in the close behind him. everything was dignified, and he felt himself like punchinello in the king's chambers. verily in the present case glanville was not a man to stick at trifles any more than his illustrious prototype; and on the servant bringing a message that his lordship would see him at once, louis marched boldly in. through an old dark corridor, roofed with old dark beams, the servant led the way to the heavily-moulded door of the bishop's room. dr. helmsdale was there, and welcomed louis with considerable stateliness. but his condescension was tempered with a curious anxiety, and even with nervousness. he asked in pointed tones after the health of lady constantine; if louis had brought an answer to the letter he had addressed to her a day or two earlier; and if the contents of the letter, or of the previous one, were known to him. 'i have brought no answer from her,' said louis. 'but the contents of your letter have been made known to me.' since entering the building louis had more than once felt some hesitation, and it might now, with a favouring manner from his entertainer, have operated to deter him from going further with his intention. but the bishop had personal weaknesses that were fatal to sympathy for more than a moment. 'then i may speak in confidence to you as her nearest relative,' said the prelate, 'and explain that i am now in a position with regard to lady constantine which, in view of the important office i hold, i should not have cared to place myself in unless i had felt quite sure of not being refused by her. and hence it is a great grief, and some mortification to me, that i was refused--owing, of course, to the fact that i unwittingly risked making my proposal at the very moment when she was under the influence of those strange tidings, and therefore not herself, and scarcely able to judge what was best for her.' the bishop's words disclosed a mind whose sensitive fear of danger to its own dignity hindered it from criticism elsewhere. things might have been worse for louis's puck-like idea of mis-mating his hermia with this demetrius. throwing a strong colour of earnestness into his mien he replied: 'bishop, viviette is my only sister; i am her only brother and friend. i am alarmed for her health and state of mind. hence i have come to consult you on this very matter that you have broached. i come absolutely without her knowledge, and i hope unconventionality may be excused in me on the score of my anxiety for her.' 'certainly. i trust that the prospect opened up by my proposal, combined with this other news, has not proved too much for her?' 'my sister is distracted and distressed, bishop helmsdale. she wants comfort.' 'not distressed by my letter?' said the bishop, turning red. 'has it lowered me in her estimation?' 'on the contrary; while your disinterested offer was uppermost in her mind she was a different woman. it is this other matter that oppresses her. the result upon her of the recent discovery with regard to the late sir blount constantine is peculiar. to say that he ill-used her in his lifetime is to understate a truth. he has been dead now a considerable period; but this revival of his memory operates as a sort of terror upon her. images of the manner of sir blount's death are with her night and day, intensified by a hideous picture of the supposed scene, which was cruelly sent her. she dreads being alone. nothing will restore my poor viviette to her former cheerfulness but a distraction--a hope--a new prospect.' 'that is precisely what acceptance of my offer would afford.' 'precisely,' said louis, with great respect. 'but how to get her to avail herself of it, after once refusing you, is the difficulty, and my earnest problem.' 'then we are quite at one.' 'we are. and it is to promote our wishes that i am come; since she will do nothing of herself.' 'then you can give me no hope of a reply to my second communication?' 'none whatever--by letter,' said louis. 'her impression plainly is that she cannot encourage your lordship. yet, in the face of all this reticence, the secret is that she loves you warmly.' 'can you indeed assure me of that? indeed, indeed!' said the good bishop musingly. 'then i must try to see her. i begin to feel--to feel strongly--that a course which would seem premature and unbecoming in other cases would be true and proper conduct in this. her unhappy dilemmas--her unwonted position--yes, yes--i see it all! i can afford to have some little misconstruction put upon my motives. i will go and see her immediately. her past has been a cruel one; she wants sympathy; and with heaven's help i'll give it.' 'i think the remedy lies that way,' said louis gently. 'some words came from her one night which seemed to show it. i was standing on the terrace: i heard somebody sigh in the dark, and found that it was she. i asked her what was the matter, and gently pressed her on this subject of boldly and promptly contracting a new marriage as a means of dispersing the horrors of the old. her answer implied that she would have no objection to do it, and to do it at once, provided she could remain externally passive in the matter, that she would tacitly yield, in fact, to pressure, but would not meet solicitation half-way. now, bishop helmsdale, you see what has prompted me. on the one hand is a dignitary of high position and integrity, to say no more, who is anxious to save her from the gloom of her situation; on the other is this sister, who will not make known to you her willingness to be saved--partly from apathy, partly from a fear that she may be thought forward in responding favourably at so early a moment, partly also, perhaps, from a modest sense that there would be some sacrifice on your part in allying yourself with a woman of her secluded and sad experience.' 'o, there is no sacrifice! quite otherwise. i care greatly for this alliance, mr. glanville. your sister is very dear to me. moreover, the advantages her mind would derive from the enlarged field of activity that the position of a bishop's wife would afford, are palpable. i am induced to think that an early settlement of the question--an immediate coming to the point--which might be called too early in the majority of cases, would be a right and considerate tenderness here. my only dread is that she should think an immediate following up of the subject premature. and the risk of a rebuff a second time is one which, as you must perceive, it would be highly unbecoming in me to run.' 'i think the risk would be small, if your lordship would approach her frankly. write she will not, i am assured; and knowing that, and having her interest at heart, i was induced to come to you and make this candid statement in reply to your communication. her late husband having been virtually dead these four or five years, believed dead two years, and actually dead nearly one, no reproach could attach to her if she were to contract another union to-morrow.' 'i agree with you, mr. glanville,' said the bishop warmly. 'i will think this over. her motive in not replying i can quite understand: your motive in coming i can also understand and appreciate in a brother. if i feel convinced that it would be a seemly and expedient thing i will come to welland to-morrow.' the point to which louis had brought the bishop being so satisfactory, he feared to endanger it by another word. he went away almost hurriedly, and at once left the precincts of the cathedral, lest another encounter with dr. helmsdale should lead the latter to take a new and slower view of his duties as viviette's suitor. he reached welland by dinner-time, and came upon viviette in the same pensive mood in which he had left her. it seemed she had hardly moved since. 'have you discovered swithin st. cleeve's address?' she said, without looking up at him. 'no,' said louis. then she broke out with indescribable anguish: 'but you asked me to wait till this evening; and i have waited through the long day, in the belief that your words meant something, and that you would bring good tidings! and now i find your words meant nothing, and you have _not_ brought good tidings!' louis could not decide for a moment what to say to this. should he venture to give her thoughts a new course by a revelation of his design? no: it would be better to prolong her despair yet another night, and spring relief upon her suddenly, that she might jump at it and commit herself without an interval for reflection on certain aspects of the proceeding. nothing, accordingly, did he say; and conjecturing that she would be hardly likely to take any desperate step that night, he left her to herself. his anxiety at this crisis continued to be great. everything depended on the result of the bishop's self-communion. would he or would he not come the next day? perhaps instead of his important presence there would appear a letter postponing the visit indefinitely. if so, all would be lost. louis's suspense kept him awake, and he was not alone in his sleeplessness. through the night he heard his sister walking up and down, in a state which betokened that for every pang of grief she had disclosed, twice as many had remained unspoken. he almost feared that she might seek to end her existence by violence, so unreasonably sudden were her moods; and he lay and longed for the day. it was morning. she came down the same as usual, and asked if there had arrived any telegram or letter; but there was neither. louis avoided her, knowing that nothing he could say just then would do her any good. no communication had reached him from the bishop, and that looked well. by one ruse and another, as the day went on, he led her away from contemplating the remote possibility of hearing from swithin, and induced her to look at the worst contingency as her probable fate. it seemed as if she really made up her mind to this, for by the afternoon she was apathetic, like a woman who neither hoped nor feared. and then a fly drove up to the door. louis, who had been standing in the hall the greater part of that day, glanced out through a private window, and went to viviette. 'the bishop has called,' he said. 'be ready to see him.' 'the bishop of melchester?' said viviette, bewildered. 'yes. i asked him to come. he comes for an answer to his letters.' 'an answer--to--his--letters?' she murmured. 'an immediate reply of yes or no.' her face showed the workings of her mind. how entirely an answer of assent, at once acted on for better or for worse, would clear the spectre from her path, there needed no tongue to tell. it would, moreover, accomplish that end without involving the impoverishment of swithin--the inevitable result if she had adopted the legitimate road out of her trouble. hitherto there had seemed to her dismayed mind, unenlightened as to any course save one of honesty, no possible achievement of _both_ her desires--the saving of swithin and the saving of herself. but behold, here was a way! a tempter had shown it to her. it involved a great wrong, which to her had quite obscured its feasibility. but she perceived now that it was indeed a way. nature was forcing her hand at this game; and to what will not nature compel her weaker victims, in extremes? louis left her to think it out. when he reached the drawing-room dr. helmsdale was standing there with the air of a man too good for his destiny--which, to be just to him, was not far from the truth this time. 'have you broken my message to her?' asked the bishop sonorously. 'not your message; your visit,' said louis. 'i leave the rest in your lordship's hands. i have done all i can for her.' she was in her own small room to-day; and, feeling that it must be a bold stroke or none, he led the bishop across the hall till he reached her apartment and opened the door; but instead of following he shut it behind his visitor. then glanville passed an anxious time. he walked from the foot of the staircase to the star of old swords and pikes on the wall; from these to the stags' horns; thence down the corridor as far as the door, where he could hear murmuring inside, but not its import. the longer they remained closeted the more excited did he become. that she had not peremptorily negatived the proposal at the outset was a strong sign of its success. it showed that she had admitted argument; and the worthy bishop had a pleader on his side whom he knew little of. the very weather seemed to favour dr. helmsdale in his suit. a blusterous wind had blown up from the west, howling in the smokeless chimneys, and suggesting to the feminine mind storms at sea, a tossing ocean, and the hopeless inaccessibility of all astronomers and men on the other side of the same. the bishop had entered viviette's room at ten minutes past three. the long hand of the hall clock lay level at forty-five minutes past when the knob of the door moved, and he came out. louis met him where the passage joined the hall. dr. helmsdale was decidedly in an emotional state, his face being slightly flushed. louis looked his anxious inquiry without speaking it. 'she accepts me,' said the bishop in a low voice. 'and the wedding is to be soon. her long solitude and sufferings justify haste. what you said was true. sheer weariness and distraction have driven her to me. she was quite passive at last, and agreed to anything i proposed--such is the persuasive force of trained logical reasoning! a good and wise woman, she perceived what a true shelter from sadness was offered in me, and was not the one to despise heaven's gift.' xl the silence of swithin was to be accounted for by the circumstance that neither to the mediterranean nor to america had he in the first place directed his steps. feeling himself absolutely free he had, on arriving at southampton, decided to make straight for the cape, and hence had not gone aboard the occidental at all. his object was to leave his heavier luggage there, examine the capabilities of the spot for his purpose, find out the necessity or otherwise of shipping over his own equatorial, and then cross to america as soon as there was a good opportunity. here he might inquire the movements of the transit expedition to the south pacific, and join it at such a point as might be convenient. thus, though wrong in her premisses, viviette had intuitively decided with sad precision. there was, as a matter of fact, a great possibility of her not being able to communicate with him for several months, notwithstanding that he might possibly communicate with her. this excursive time was an awakening for swithin. to altered circumstances inevitably followed altered views. that such changes should have a marked effect upon a young man who had made neither grand tour nor petty one--who had, in short, scarcely been away from home in his life--was nothing more than natural. new ideas struggled to disclose themselves and with the addition of strange twinklers to his southern horizon came an absorbed attention that way, and a corresponding forgetfulness of what lay to the north behind his back, whether human or celestial. whoever may deplore it few will wonder that viviette, who till then had stood high in his heaven, if she had not dominated it, sank, like the north star, lower and lower with his retreat southward. master of a large advance of his first year's income in circular notes, he perhaps too readily forgot that the mere act of honour, but for her self-suppression, would have rendered him penniless. meanwhile, to come back and claim her at the specified time, four years thence, if she should not object to be claimed, was as much a part of his programme as were the exploits abroad and elsewhere that were to prelude it. the very thoroughness of his intention for that advanced date inclined him all the more readily to shelve the subject now. her unhappy caution to him not to write too soon was a comfortable license in his present state of tension about sublime scientific things, which knew not woman, nor her sacrifices, nor her fears. in truth he was not only too young in years, but too literal, direct, and uncompromising in nature to understand such a woman as lady constantine; and she suffered for that limitation in him as it had been antecedently probable that she would do. he stayed but a little time at cape town on this his first reconnoitring journey; and on that account wrote to no one from the place. on leaving he found there remained some weeks on his hands before he wished to cross to america; and feeling an irrepressible desire for further studies in navigation on shipboard, and under clear skies, he took the steamer for melbourne; returning thence in due time, and pursuing his journey to america, where he landed at boston. having at last had enough of great circles and other nautical reckonings, and taking no interest in men or cities, this indefatigable scrutineer of the universe went immediately on to cambridge; and there, by the help of an introduction he had brought from england, he revelled for a time in the glories of the gigantic refractor (which he was permitted to use on occasion), and in the pleasures of intercourse with the scientific group around. this brought him on to the time of starting with the transit expedition, when he and his kind became lost to the eye of civilization behind the horizon of the pacific ocean. to speak of their doings on this pilgrimage, of ingress and egress, of tangent and parallax, of external and internal contact, would avail nothing. is it not all written in the chronicles of the astronomical society? more to the point will it be to mention that viviette's letter to cambridge had been returned long before he reached that place, while her missive to marseilles was, of course, misdirected altogether. on arriving in america, uncertain of an address in that country at which he would stay long, swithin wrote his first letter to his grandmother; and in this he ordered that all communications should be sent to await him at cape town, as the only safe spot for finding him, sooner or later. the equatorial he also directed to be forwarded to the same place. at this time, too, he ventured to break viviette's commands, and address a letter to her, not knowing of the strange results that had followed his absence from home. it was february. the transit was over, the scientific company had broken up, and swithin had steamed towards the cape to take up his permanent abode there, with a view to his great task of surveying, charting and theorizing on those exceptional features in the southern skies which had been but partially treated by the younger herschel. having entered table bay and landed on the quay, he called at once at the post-office. two letters were handed him, and he found from the date that they had been waiting there for some time. one of these epistles, which had a weather-worn look as regarded the ink, and was in old-fashioned penmanship, he knew to be from his grandmother. he opened it before he had as much as glanced at the superscription of the second. besides immaterial portions, it contained the following:-- 'j reckon you know by now of our main news this fall, but lest you should not have heard of it j send the exact thing snipped out of the newspaper. nobody expected her to do it quite so soon; but it is said hereabout that my lord bishop and my lady had been drawing nigh to an understanding before the glum tidings of sir blount's taking of his own life reached her; and the account of this wicked deed was so sore afflicting to her mind, and made her poor heart so timid and low, that in charity to my lady her few friends agreed on urging her to let the bishop go on paying his court as before, notwithstanding she had not been a widow-woman near so long as was thought. this, as it turned out, she was willing to do; and when my lord asked her she told him she would marry him at once or never. that's as j was told, and j had it from those that know.' the cutting from the newspaper was an ordinary announcement of marriage between the bishop of melchester and lady constantine. swithin was so astounded at the intelligence of what for the nonce seemed viviette's wanton fickleness that he quite omitted to look at the second letter; and remembered nothing about it till an hour afterwards, when sitting in his own room at the hotel. it was in her handwriting, but so altered that its superscription had not arrested his eye. it had no beginning, or date; but its contents soon acquainted him with her motive for the precipitate act. the few concluding sentences are all that it will be necessary to quote here:-- 'there was no way out of it, even if i could have found you, without infringing one of the conditions i had previously laid down. the long desire of my heart has been not to impoverish you or mar your career. the new desire was to save myself and, still more, another yet unborn. . . . i have done a desperate thing. yet for myself i could do no better, and for you no less. i would have sacrificed my single self to honesty, but i was not alone concerned. what woman has a right to blight a coming life to preserve her personal integrity? . . . the one bright spot is that it saves you and your endowment from further catastrophes, and preserves you to the pleasant paths of scientific fame. i no longer lie like a log across your path, which is now as open as on the day before you saw me, and ere i encouraged you to win me. alas, swithin, i ought to have known better. the folly was great, and the suffering be upon my head! i ought not to have consented to that last interview: all was well till then! . . . well, i have borne much, and am not unprepared. as for you, swithin, by simply pressing straight on your triumph is assured. do not communicate with me in any way--not even in answer to this. do not think of me. do not see me ever any more.--your unhappy 'viviette.' swithin's heart swelled within him in sudden pity for her, first; then he blanched with a horrified sense of what she had done, and at his own relation to the deed. he felt like an awakened somnambulist who should find that he had been accessory to a tragedy during his unconsciousness. she had loosened the knot of her difficulties by cutting it unscrupulously through and through. the big tidings rather dazed than crushed him, his predominant feeling being soon again one of keenest sorrow and sympathy. yet one thing was obvious; he could do nothing--absolutely nothing. the event which he now heard of for the first time had taken place five long months ago. he reflected, and regretted--and mechanically went on with his preparations for settling down to work under the shadow of table mountain. he was as one who suddenly finds the world a stranger place than he thought; but is excluded by age, temperament, and situation from being much more than an astonished spectator of its strangeness. * * * * * the royal observatory was about a mile out of the town, and hither he repaired as soon as he had established himself in lodgings. he had decided, on his first visit to the cape, that it would be highly advantageous to him if he could supplement the occasional use of the large instruments here by the use at his own house of his own equatorial, and had accordingly given directions that it might be sent over from england. the precious possession now arrived; and although the sight of it--of the brasses on which her hand had often rested, of the eyepiece through which her dark eyes had beamed--engendered some decidedly bitter regrets in him for a time, he could not long afford to give to the past the days that were meant for the future. unable to get a room convenient for a private observatory he resolved at last to fix the instrument on a solid pillar in the garden; and several days were spent in accommodating it to its new position. in this latitude there was no necessity for economizing clear nights as he had been obliged to do on the old tower at welland. there it had happened more than once, that after waiting idle through days and nights of cloudy weather, viviette would fix her time for meeting him at an hour when at last he had an opportunity of seeing the sky; so that in giving to her the golden moments of cloudlessness he was losing his chance with the orbs above. those features which usually attract the eye of the visitor to a new latitude are the novel forms of human and vegetable life, and other such sublunary things. but the young man glanced slightingly at these; the changes overhead had all his attention. the old subject was imprinted there, but in a new type. here was a heaven, fixed and ancient as the northern; yet it had never appeared above the welland hills since they were heaved up from beneath. here was an unalterable circumpolar region; but the polar patterns stereotyped in history and legend--without which it had almost seemed that a polar sky could not exist--had never been seen therein. st. cleeve, as was natural, began by cursory surveys, which were not likely to be of much utility to the world or to himself. he wasted several weeks--indeed above two months--in a comparatively idle survey of southern novelties; in the mere luxury of looking at stellar objects whose wonders were known, recounted, and classified, long before his own personality had been heard of. with a child's simple delight he allowed his instrument to rove, evening after evening, from the gorgeous glitter of canopus to the hazy clouds of magellan. before he had well finished this optical prelude there floated over to him from the other side of the equator the postscript to the epistle of his lost viviette. it came in the vehicle of a common newspaper, under the head of 'births:'-- 'april th, --, at the palace, melchester, the wife of the bishop of melchester, of a son.' xli three years passed away, and swithin still remained at the cape, quietly pursuing the work that had brought him there. his memoranda of observations had accumulated to a wheelbarrow load, and he was beginning to shape them into a treatise which should possess some scientific utility. he had gauged the southern skies with greater results than even he himself had anticipated. those unfamiliar constellations which, to the casual beholder, are at most a new arrangement of ordinary points of light, were to this professed astronomer, as to his brethren, a far greater matter. it was below the surface that his material lay. there, in regions revealed only to the instrumental observer, were suns of hybrid kind--fire- fogs, floating nuclei, globes that flew in groups like swarms of bees, and other extraordinary sights--which, when decomposed by swithin's equatorial, turned out to be the beginning of a new series of phenomena instead of the end of an old one. there were gloomy deserts in those southern skies such as the north shows scarcely an example of; sites set apart for the position of suns which for some unfathomable reason were left uncreated, their places remaining ever since conspicuous by their emptiness. the inspection of these chasms brought him a second pulsation of that old horror which he had used to describe to viviette as produced in him by bottomlessness in the north heaven. the ghostly finger of limitless vacancy touched him now on the other side. infinite deeps in the north stellar region had a homely familiarity about them, when compared with infinite deeps in the region of the south pole. this was an even more unknown tract of the unknown. space here, being less the historic haunt of human thought than overhead at home, seemed to be pervaded with a more lonely loneliness. were there given on paper to these astronomical exercitations of st. cleeve a space proportionable to that occupied by his year with viviette at welland, this narrative would treble its length; but not a single additional glimpse would be afforded of swithin in his relations with old emotions. in these experiments with tubes and glasses, important as they were to human intellect, there was little food for the sympathetic instincts which create the changes in a life. that which is the foreground and measuring base of one perspective draught may be the vanishing-point of another perspective draught, while yet they are both draughts of the same thing. swithin's doings and discoveries in the southern sidereal system were, no doubt, incidents of the highest importance to him; and yet from an intersocial point of view they served but the humble purpose of killing time, while other doings, more nearly allied to his heart than to his understanding, developed themselves at home. in the intervals between his professional occupations he took walks over the sand-flats near, or among the farms which were gradually overspreading the country in the vicinity of cape town. he grew familiar with the outline of table mountain, and the fleecy 'devil's table-cloth' which used to settle on its top when the wind was south-east. on these promenades he would more particularly think of viviette, and of that curious pathetic chapter in his life with her which seemed to have wound itself up and ended for ever. those scenes were rapidly receding into distance, and the intensity of his sentiment regarding them had proportionately abated. he felt that there had been something wrong therein, and yet he could not exactly define the boundary of the wrong. viviette's sad and amazing sequel to that chapter had still a fearful, catastrophic aspect in his eyes; but instead of musing over it and its bearings he shunned the subject, as we shun by night the shady scene of a disaster, and keep to the open road. he sometimes contemplated her apart from the past--leading her life in the cathedral close at melchester; and wondered how often she looked south and thought of where he was. on one of these afternoon walks in the neighbourhood of the royal observatory he turned and gazed towards the signal-post on the lion's rump. this was a high promontory to the north-west of table mountain, and overlooked table bay. before his eyes had left the scene the signal was suddenly hoisted on the staff. it announced that a mail steamer had appeared in view over the sea. in the course of an hour he retraced his steps, as he had often done on such occasions, and strolled leisurely across the intervening mile and a half till he arrived at the post-office door. there was no letter from england for him; but there was a newspaper, addressed in the seventeenth century handwriting of his grandmother, who, in spite of her great age, still retained a steady hold on life. he turned away disappointed, and resumed his walk into the country, opening the paper as he went along. a cross in black ink attracted his attention; and it was opposite a name among the 'deaths.' his blood ran icily as he discerned the words 'the palace, melchester.' but it was not she. her husband, the bishop of melchester, had, after a short illness, departed this life at the comparatively early age of fifty years. all the enactments of the bygone days at welland now started up like an awakened army from the ground. but a few months were wanting to the time when he would be of an age to marry without sacrificing the annuity which formed his means of subsistence. it was a point in his life that had had no meaning or interest for him since his separation from viviette, for women were now no more to him than the inhabitants of jupiter. but the whirligig of time having again set viviette free, the aspect of home altered, and conjecture as to her future found room to work anew. but beyond the simple fact that she was a widow he for some time gained not an atom of intelligence concerning her. there was no one of whom he could inquire but his grandmother, and she could tell him nothing about a lady who dwelt far away at melchester. several months slipped by thus; and no feeling within him rose to sufficient strength to force him out of a passive attitude. then by the merest chance his granny stated in one of her rambling epistles that lady constantine was coming to live again at welland in the old house, with her child, now a little boy between three and four years of age. swithin, however, lived on as before. but by the following autumn a change became necessary for the young man himself. his work at the cape was done. his uncle's wishes that he should study there had been more than observed. the materials for his great treatise were collected, and it now only remained for him to arrange, digest, and publish them, for which purpose a return to england was indispensable. so the equatorial was unscrewed, and the stand taken down; the astronomer's barrow-load of precious memoranda, and rolls upon rolls of diagrams, representing three years of continuous labour, were safely packed; and swithin departed for good and all from the shores of cape town. he had long before informed his grandmother of the date at which she might expect him; and in a reply from her, which reached him just previous to sailing, she casually mentioned that she frequently saw lady constantine; that on the last occasion her ladyship had shown great interest in the information that swithin was coming home, and had inquired the time of his return. * * * * * on a late summer day swithin stepped from the train at warborne, and, directing his baggage to be sent on after him, set out on foot for old welland once again. it seemed but the day after his departure, so little had the scene changed. true, there was that change which is always the first to arrest attention in places that are conventionally called unchanging--a higher and broader vegetation at every familiar corner than at the former time. he had not gone a mile when he saw walking before him a clergyman whose form, after consideration, he recognized, in spite of a novel whiteness in that part of his hair that showed below the brim of his hat. swithin walked much faster than this gentleman, and soon was at his side. 'mr. torkingham! i knew it was,' said swithin. mr. torkingham was slower in recognizing the astronomer, but in a moment had greeted him with a warm shake of the hand. 'i have been to the station on purpose to meet you!' cried mr. torkingham, 'and was returning with the idea that you had not come. i am your grandmother's emissary. she could not come herself, and as she was anxious, and nobody else could be spared, i came for her.' then they walked on together. the parson told swithin all about his grandmother, the parish, and his endeavours to enlighten it; and in due course said, 'you are no doubt aware that lady constantine is living again at welland?' swithin said he had heard as much, and added, what was far within the truth, that the news of the bishop's death had been a great surprise to him. 'yes,' said mr. torkingham, with nine thoughts to one word. 'one might have prophesied, to look at him, that melchester would not lack a bishop for the next forty years. yes; pale death knocks at the cottages of the poor and the palaces of kings with an impartial foot!' 'was he a particularly good man?' asked swithin. 'he was not a ken or a heber. to speak candidly, he had his faults, of which arrogance was not the least. but who is perfect?' swithin, somehow, felt relieved to hear that the bishop was not a perfect man. 'his poor wife, i fear, had not a great deal more happiness with him than with her first husband. but one might almost have foreseen it; the marriage was hasty--the result of a red-hot caprice, hardly becoming in a man of his position; and it betokened a want of temperate discretion which soon showed itself in other ways. that's all there was to be said against him, and now it's all over, and things have settled again into their old course. but the bishop's widow is not the lady constantine of former days. no; put it as you will, she is not the same. there seems to be a nameless something on her mind--a trouble--a rooted melancholy, which no man's ministry can reach. formerly she was a woman whose confidence it was easy to gain; but neither religion nor philosophy avails with her now. beyond that, her life is strangely like what it was when you were with us.' conversing thus they pursued the turnpike road till their conversation was interrupted by a crying voice on their left. they looked, and perceived that a child, in getting over an adjoining stile, had fallen on his face. mr. torkingham and swithin both hastened up to help the sufferer, who was a lovely little fellow with flaxen hair, which spread out in a frill of curls from beneath a quaint, close-fitting velvet cap that he wore. swithin picked him up, while mr. torkingham wiped the sand from his lips and nose, and administered a few words of consolation, together with a few sweet-meats, which, somewhat to swithin's surprise, the parson produced as if by magic from his pocket. one half the comfort rendered would have sufficed to soothe such a disposition as the child's. he ceased crying and ran away in delight to his unconscious nurse, who was reaching up for blackberries at a hedge some way off. 'you know who he is, of course?' said mr. torkingham, as they resumed their journey. 'no,' said swithin. 'oh, i thought you did. yet how should you? it is lady constantine's boy--her only child. his fond mother little thinks he is so far away from home.' 'dear me!--lady constantine's--ah, how interesting!' swithin paused abstractedly for a moment, then stepped back again to the stile, while he stood watching the little boy out of sight. 'i can never venture out of doors now without sweets in my pocket,' continued the good-natured vicar: 'and the result is that i meet that young man more frequently on my rounds than any other of my parishioners.' st. cleeve was silent, and they turned into welland lane, where their paths presently diverged, and swithin was left to pursue his way alone. he might have accompanied the vicar yet further, and gone straight to welland house; but it would have been difficult to do so then without provoking inquiry. it was easy to go there now: by a cross path he could be at the mansion almost as soon as by the direct road. and yet swithin did not turn; he felt an indescribable reluctance to see viviette. he could not exactly say why. true, before he knew how the land lay it might be awkward to attempt to call: and this was a sufficient excuse for postponement. in this mood he went on, following the direct way to his grandmother's homestead. he reached the garden-gate, and, looking into the bosky basin where the old house stood, saw a graceful female form moving before the porch, bidding adieu to some one within the door. he wondered what creature of that mould his grandmother could know, and went forward with some hesitation. at his approach the apparition turned, and he beheld, developed into blushing womanhood, one who had once been known to him as the village maiden tabitha lark. seeing swithin, and apparently from an instinct that her presence would not be desirable just then, she moved quickly round into the garden. the returned traveller entered the house, where he found awaiting him poor old mrs. martin, to whose earthly course death stood rather as the asymptote than as the end. she was perceptibly smaller in form than when he had left her, and she could see less distinctly. a rather affecting greeting followed, in which his grandmother murmured the words of israel: '"now let me die, since i have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive."' the form of hannah had disappeared from the kitchen, that ancient servant having been gathered to her fathers about six months before, her place being filled by a young girl who knew not joseph. they presently chatted with much cheerfulness, and his grandmother said, 'have you heard what a wonderful young woman miss lark has become?--a mere fleet-footed, slittering maid when you were last home.' st. cleeve had not heard, but he had partly seen, and he was informed that tabitha had left welland shortly after his own departure, and had studied music with great success in london, where she had resided ever since till quite recently; that she played at concerts, oratorios--had, in short, joined the phalanx of wonderful women who had resolved to eclipse masculine genius altogether, and humiliate the brutal sex to the dust. 'she is only in the garden,' added his grandmother. 'why don't ye go out and speak to her?' swithin was nothing loth, and strolled out under the apple-trees, where he arrived just in time to prevent miss lark from going off by the back gate. there was not much difficulty in breaking the ice between them, and they began to chat with vivacity. now all these proceedings occupied time, for somehow it was very charming to talk to miss lark; and by degrees st. cleeve informed tabitha of his great undertaking, and of the voluminous notes he had amassed, which would require so much rearrangement and recopying by an amanuensis as to absolutely appal him. he greatly feared he should not get one careful enough for such scientific matter; whereupon tabitha said she would be delighted to do it for him. then blushing, and declaring suddenly that it had grown quite late, she left him and the garden for her relation's house hard by. swithin, no less than tabitha, had been surprised by the disappearance of the sun behind the hill; and the question now arose whether it would be advisable to call upon viviette that night. there was little doubt that she knew of his coming; but more than that he could not predicate; and being entirely ignorant of whom she had around her, entirely in the dark as to her present feelings towards him, he thought it would be better to defer his visit until the next day. walking round to the front of the house he beheld the well-known agriculturists hezzy biles, haymoss fry, and some others of the same old school, passing the gate homeward from their work with bundles of wood at their backs. swithin saluted them over the top rail. 'well! do my eyes and ears--' began hezzy; and then, balancing his faggot on end against the hedge, he came forward, the others following. 'says i to myself as soon as i heerd his voice,' hezzy continued (addressing swithin as if he were a disinterested spectator and not himself), 'please god i'll pitch my nitch, and go across and speak to en.' 'i knowed in a winking 'twas some great navigator that i see a standing there,' said haymoss. 'but whe'r 'twere a sort of nabob, or a diment- digger, or a lion-hunter, i couldn't so much as guess till i heerd en speak.' 'and what changes have come over welland since i was last at home?' asked swithin. 'well, mr. san cleeve,' hezzy replied, 'when you've said that a few stripling boys and maidens have busted into blooth, and a few married women have plimmed and chimped (my lady among 'em), why, you've said anighst all, mr. san cleeve.' the conversation thus began was continued on divers matters till they were all enveloped in total darkness, when his old acquaintances shouldered their faggots again and proceeded on their way. now that he was actually within her coasts again swithin felt a little more strongly the influence of the past and viviette than he had been accustomed to do for the last two or three years. during the night he felt half sorry that he had not marched off to the great house to see her, regardless of the time of day. if she really nourished for him any particle of her old affection it had been the cruellest thing not to call. a few questions that he put concerning her to his grandmother elicited that lady constantine had no friends about her--not even her brother--and that her health had not been so good since her return from melchester as formerly. still, this proved nothing as to the state of her heart, and as she had kept a dead silence since the bishop's death it was quite possible that she would meet him with that cold repressive tone and manner which experienced women know so well how to put on when they wish to intimate to the long-lost lover that old episodes are to be taken as forgotten. the next morning he prepared to call, if only on the ground of old acquaintance, for swithin was too straightforward to ascertain anything indirectly. it was rather too early for this purpose when he went out from his grandmother's garden-gate, after breakfast, and he waited in the garden. while he lingered his eye fell on rings-hill speer. it appeared dark, for a moment, against the blue sky behind it; then the fleeting cloud which shadowed it passed on, and the face of the column brightened into such luminousness that the sky behind sank to the complexion of a dark foil. 'surely somebody is on the column,' he said to himself, after gazing at it awhile. instead of going straight to the great house he deviated through the insulating field, now sown with turnips, which surrounded the plantation on rings-hill. by the time that he plunged under the trees he was still more certain that somebody was on the tower. he crept up to the base with proprietary curiosity, for the spot seemed again like his own. the path still remained much as formerly, but the nook in which the cabin had stood was covered with undergrowth. swithin entered the door of the tower, ascended the staircase about half-way on tip-toe, and listened, for he did not wish to intrude on the top if any stranger were there. the hollow spiral, as he knew from old experience, would bring down to his ears the slightest sound from above; and it now revealed to him the words of a duologue in progress at the summit of the tower. 'mother, what shall i do?' a child's voice said. 'shall i sing?' the mother seemed to assent, for the child began-- 'the robin has fled from the wood to the snug habitation of man.' this performance apparently attracted but little attention from the child's companion, for the young voice suggested, as a new form of entertainment, 'shall i say my prayers?' 'yes,' replied one whom swithin had begun to recognize. 'who shall i pray for?' no answer. 'who shall i pray for?' 'pray for father.' 'but he is gone to heaven?' a sigh from viviette was distinctly audible. 'you made a mistake, didn't you, mother?' continued the little one. 'i must have. the strangest mistake a woman ever made!' nothing more was said, and swithin ascended, words from above indicating to him that his footsteps were heard. in another half-minute he rose through the hatchway. a lady in black was sitting in the sun, and the boy with the flaxen hair whom he had seen yesterday was at her feet. 'viviette!' he said. 'swithin!--at last!' she cried. the words died upon her lips, and from very faintness she bent her head. for instead of rushing forward to her he had stood still; and there appeared upon his face a look which there was no mistaking. yes; he was shocked at her worn and faded aspect. the image he had mentally carried out with him to the cape he had brought home again as that of the woman he was now to rejoin. but another woman sat before him, and not the original viviette. her cheeks had lost for ever that firm contour which had been drawn by the vigorous hand of youth, and the masses of hair that were once darkness visible had become touched here and there by a faint grey haze, like the via lactea in a midnight sky. yet to those who had eyes to understand as well as to see, the chastened pensiveness of her once handsome features revealed more promising material beneath than ever her youth had done. but swithin was hopelessly her junior. unhappily for her he had now just arrived at an age whose canon of faith it is that the silly period of woman's life is her only period of beauty. viviette saw it all, and knew that time had at last brought about his revenges. she had tremblingly watched and waited without sleep, ever since swithin had re-entered welland, and it was for this. swithin came forward, and took her by the hand, which she passively allowed him to do. 'swithin, you don't love me,' she said simply. 'o viviette!' 'you don't love me,' she repeated. 'don't say it!' 'yes, but i will! you have a right not to love me. you did once. but now i am an old woman, and you are still a young man; so how can you love me? i do not expect it. it is kind and charitable of you to come and see me here.' 'i have come all the way from the cape,' he faltered, for her insistence took all power out of him to deny in mere politeness what she said. 'yes; you have come from the cape; but not for me,' she answered. 'it would be absurd if you had come for me. you have come because your work there is finished. . . . i like to sit here with my little boy--it is a pleasant spot. it was once something to us, was it not? but that was long ago. you scarcely knew me for the same woman, did you?' 'knew you--yes, of course i knew you!' 'you looked as if you did not. but you must not be surprised at me. i belong to an earlier generation than you, remember.' thus, in sheer bitterness of spirit did she inflict wounds on herself by exaggerating the difference in their years. but she had nevertheless spoken truly. sympathize with her as he might, and as he unquestionably did, he loved her no longer. but why had she expected otherwise? 'o woman,' might a prophet have said to her, 'great is thy faith if thou believest a junior lover's love will last five years!' 'i shall be glad to know through your grandmother how you are getting on,' she said meekly. 'but now i would much rather that we part. yes; do not question me. i would rather that we part. good-bye.' hardly knowing what he did he touched her hand, and obeyed. he was a scientist, and took words literally. there is something in the inexorably simple logic of such men which partakes of the cruelty of the natural laws that are their study. he entered the tower-steps, and mechanically descended; and it was not till he got half-way down that he thought she could not mean what she had said. before leaving cape town he had made up his mind on this one point; that if she were willing to marry him, marry her he would without let or hindrance. that much he morally owed her, and was not the man to demur. and though the swithin who had returned was not quite the swithin who had gone away, though he could not now love her with the sort of love he had once bestowed; he believed that all her conduct had been dictated by the purest benevolence to him, by that charity which 'seeketh not her own.' hence he did not flinch from a wish to deal with loving-kindness towards her--a sentiment perhaps in the long-run more to be prized than lover's love. her manner had caught him unawares; but now recovering himself he turned back determinedly. bursting out upon the roof he clasped her in his arms, and kissed her several times. 'viviette, viviette,' he said, 'i have come to marry you!' she uttered a shriek--a shriek of amazed joy--such as never was heard on that tower before or since--and fell in his arms, clasping his neck. there she lay heavily. not to disturb her he sat down in her seat, still holding her fast. their little son, who had stood with round conjectural eyes throughout the meeting, now came close; and presently looking up to swithin said-- 'mother has gone to sleep.' swithin looked down, and started. her tight clasp had loosened. a wave of whiteness, like that of marble which had never seen the sun, crept up from her neck, and travelled upwards and onwards over her cheek, lips, eyelids, forehead, temples, its margin banishing back the live pink till the latter had entirely disappeared. seeing that something was wrong, yet not understanding what, the little boy began to cry; but in his concentration swithin hardly heard it. 'viviette--viviette!' he said. the child cried with still deeper grief, and, after a momentary hesitation, pushed his hand into swithin's for protection. 'hush, hush! my child,' said swithin distractedly. 'i'll take care of you! o viviette!' he exclaimed again, pressing her face to his. but she did not reply. 'what can this be?' he asked himself. he would not then answer according to his fear. he looked up for help. nobody appeared in sight but tabitha lark, who was skirting the field with a bounding tread--the single bright spot of colour and animation within the wide horizon. when he looked down again his fear deepened to certainty. it was no longer a mere surmise that help was vain. sudden joy after despair had touched an over-strained heart too smartly. viviette was dead. the bishop was avenged. the good soldier by ford madox ford contents part i part ii part iii part iv part i i this is the saddest story i have ever heard. we had known the ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of nauheim with an extreme intimacy�or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. my wife and i knew captain and mrs ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. this is, i believe, a state of things only possible with english people of whom, till today, when i sit down to puzzle out what i know of this sad affair, i knew nothing whatever. six months ago i had never been to england, and, certainly, i had never sounded the depths of an english heart. i had known the shallows. i don't mean to say that we were not acquainted with many english people. living, as we perforce lived, in europe, and being, as we perforce were, leisured americans, which is as much as to say that we were un-american, we were thrown very much into the society of the nicer english. paris, you see, was our home. somewhere between nice and bordighera provided yearly winter quarters for us, and nauheim always received us from july to september. you will gather from this statement that one of us had, as the saying is, a "heart", and, from the statement that my wife is dead, that she was the sufferer. captain ashburnham also had a heart. but, whereas a yearly month or so at nauheim tuned him up to exactly the right pitch for the rest of the twelvemonth, the two months or so were only just enough to keep poor florence alive from year to year. the reason for his heart was, approximately, polo, or too much hard sportsmanship in his youth. the reason for poor florence's broken years was a storm at sea upon our first crossing to europe, and the immediate reasons for our imprisonment in that continent were doctor's orders. they said that even the short channel crossing might well kill the poor thing. when we all first met, captain ashburnham, home on sick leave from an india to which he was never to return, was thirty-three; mrs ashburnham �leonora�was thirty-one. i was thirty-six and poor florence thirty. thus today florence would have been thirty-nine and captain ashburnham forty- two; whereas i am forty-five and leonora forty. you will perceive, therefore, that our friendship has been a young-middle-aged affair, since we were all of us of quite quiet dispositions, the ashburnhams being more particularly what in england it is the custom to call "quite good people". they were descended, as you will probably expect, from the ashburnham who accompanied charles i to the scaffold, and, as you must also expect with this class of english people, you would never have noticed it. mrs ashburnham was a powys; florence was a hurlbird of stamford, connecticut, where, as you know, they are more old-fashioned than even the inhabitants of cranford, england, could have been. i myself am a dowell of philadelphia, pa., where, it is historically true, there are more old english families than you would find in any six english counties taken together. i carry about with me, indeed�as if it were the only thing that invisibly anchored me to any spot upon the globe�the title deeds of my farm, which once covered several blocks between chestnut and walnut streets. these title deeds are of wampum, the grant of an indian chief to the first dowell, who left farnham in surrey in company with william penn. florence's people, as is so often the case with the inhabitants of connecticut, came from the neighbourhood of fordingbridge, where the ashburnhams' place is. from there, at this moment, i am actually writing. you may well ask why i write. and yet my reasons are quite many. for it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads. some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of rome by the goths, and i swear to you that the breaking up of our little four-square coterie was such another unthinkable event. supposing that you should come upon us sitting together at one of the little tables in front of the club house, let us say, at homburg, taking tea of an afternoon and watching the miniature golf, you would have said that, as human affairs go, we were an extraordinarily safe castle. we were, if you will, one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest of all the beautiful and safe things that god has permitted the mind of men to frame. where better could one take refuge? where better? permanence? stability? i can't believe it's gone. i can't believe that that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. upon my word, yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters. no, indeed, it can't be gone. you can't kill a minuet de la cour. you may shut up the music-book, close the harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the white satin favours. the mob may sack versailles; the trianon may fall, but surely the minuet�the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? isn't there any nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls? no, by god, it is false! it wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison�a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the taunus wald. and yet i swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. it was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. for, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting�or, no, not acting�sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? if for nine years i have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years i possessed a goodly apple? so it may well be with edward ashburnham, with leonora his wife and with poor dear florence. and, if you come to think of it, isn't it a little odd that the physical rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square house never presented itself to my mind as a menace to its security? it doesn't so present itself now though the two of them are actually dead. i don't know.... i know nothing�nothing in the world�of the hearts of men. i only know that i am alone�horribly alone. no hearthstone will ever again witness, for me, friendly intercourse. no smoking-room will ever be other than peopled with incalculable simulacra amidst smoke wreaths. yet, in the name of god, what should i know if i don't know the life of the hearth and of the smoking-room, since my whole life has been passed in those places? the warm hearthside!�well, there was florence: i believe that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to have weakened her heart�i don't believe that for one minute she was out of my sight, except when she was safely tucked up in bed and i should be downstairs, talking to some good fellow or other in some lounge or smoking-room or taking my final turn with a cigar before going to bed. i don't, you understand, blame florence. but how can she have known what she knew? how could she have got to know it? to know it so fully. heavens! there doesn't seem to have been the actual time. it must have been when i was taking my baths, and my swedish exercises, being manicured. leading the life i did, of the sedulous, strained nurse, i had to do something to keep myself fit. it must have been then! yet even that can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long conversations full of worldly wisdom that leonora has reported to me since their deaths. and is it possible to imagine that during our prescribed walks in nauheim and the neighbourhood she found time to carry on the protracted negotiations which she did carry on between edward ashburnham and his wife? and isn't it incredible that during all that time edward and leonora never spoke a word to each other in private? what is one to think of humanity? for i swear to you that they were the model couple. he was as devoted as it was possible to be without appearing fatuous. so well set up, with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm goodheartedness! and she�so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair! yes, leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true. you don't, i mean, as a rule, get it all so superlatively together. to be the county family, to look the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be so perfect in manner�even just to the saving touch of insolence that seems to be necessary. to have all that and to be all that! no, it was too good to be true. and yet, only this afternoon, talking over the whole matter she said to me: "once i tried to have a lover but i was so sick at the heart, so utterly worn out that i had to send him away." that struck me as the most amazing thing i had ever heard. she said "i was actually in a man's arms. such a nice chap! such a dear fellow! and i was saying to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they say in novels�and really clenching them together: i was saying to myself: 'now, i'm in for it and i'll really have a good time for once in my life�for once in my life!' it was in the dark, in a carriage, coming back from a hunt ball. eleven miles we had to drive! and then suddenly the bitterness of the endless poverty, of the endless acting�it fell on me like a blight, it spoilt everything. yes, i had to realize that i had been spoilt even for the good time when it came. and i burst out crying and i cried and i cried for the whole eleven miles. just imagine me crying! and just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear chap like that. it certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?" i don't know; i don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark of a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? or thinks all the time for the matter of that? who knows? yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the daughters in saecula saeculorum... but perhaps that is what all mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with heart whispering to heart. and, if one doesn't know as much as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here? i asked mrs ashburnham whether she had told florence that and what florence had said and she answered:�"florence didn't offer any comment at all. what could she say? there wasn't anything to be said. with the grinding poverty we had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the way the poverty came about�you know what i mean�any woman would have been justified in taking a lover and presents too. florence once said about a very similar position�she was a little too well-bred, too american, to talk about mine�that it was a case of perfectly open riding and the woman could just act on the spur of the moment. she said it in american of course, but that was the sense of it. i think her actual words were: 'that it was up to her to take it or leave it....'" i don't want you to think that i am writing teddy ashburnham down a brute. i don't believe he was. god knows, perhaps all men are like that. for as i've said what do i know even of the smoking-room? fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories�so gross that they will positively give you a pain. and yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with. and very likely they'd be quite properly offended�that is if you can trust anybody alone with anybody. but that sort of fellow obviously takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross stories�more delight than in anything else in the world. they'll hunt languidly and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without enthusiasm and find it a bore to carry on three minutes' conversation about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort of conversation begins, they'll laugh and wake up and throw themselves about in their chairs. then, if they so delight in the narration, how is it possible that they can be offended�and properly offended�at the suggestion that they might make attempts upon your wife's honour? or again: edward ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of chap;�an excellent magistrate, a first rate soldier, one of the best landlords, so they said, in hampshire, england. to the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as i myself have witnessed, he was like a painstaking guardian. and he never told a story that couldn't have gone into the columns of the field more than once or twice in all the nine years of my knowing him. he didn't even like hearing them; he would fidget and get up and go out to buy a cigar or something of that sort. you would have said that he was just exactly the sort of chap that you could have trusted your wife with. and i trusted mine and it was madness. and yet again you have me. if poor edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressions�and they say that is always the hall-mark of a libertine�what about myself? for i solemnly avow that not only have i never so much as hinted at an impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, i will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life. at what, then, does it all work out? is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? am i no better than a eunuch or is the proper man�the man with the right to existence�a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbour's womankind? i don't know. and there is nothing to guide us. and if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? or are we meant to act on impulse alone? it is all a darkness. ii i don't know how it is best to put this thing down�whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of leonora or from those of edward himself. so i shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. and i shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars. from time to time we shall get up and go to the door and look out at the great moon and say: "why, it is nearly as bright as in provence!" and then we shall come back to the fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are not in that provence where even the saddest stories are gay. consider the lamentable history of peire vidal. two years ago florence and i motored from biarritz to las tours, which is in the black mountains. in the middle of a tortuous valley there rises up an immense pinnacle and on the pinnacle are four castles�las tours, the towers. and the immense mistral blew down that valley which was the way from france into provence so that the silver grey olive leaves appeared like hair flying in the wind, and the tufts of rosemary crept into the iron rocks that they might not be torn up by the roots. it was, of course, poor dear florence who wanted to go to las tours. you are to imagine that, however much her bright personality came from stamford, connecticut, she was yet a graduate of poughkeepsie. i never could imagine how she did it�the queer, chattery person that she was. with the far-away look in her eyes�which wasn't, however, in the least romantic�i mean that she didn't look as if she were seeing poetic dreams, or looking through you, for she hardly ever did look at you!�holding up one hand as if she wished to silence any objection�or any comment for the matter of that�she would talk. she would talk about william the silent, about gustave the loquacious, about paris frocks, about how the poor dressed in , about fantin-latour, about the paris-lyons-mediterranée train-deluxe, about whether it would be worth while to get off at tarascon and go across the windswept suspension- bridge, over the rhone to take another look at beaucaire. we never did take another look at beaucaire, of course�beautiful beaucaire, with the high, triangular white tower, that looked as thin as a needle and as tall as the flatiron, between fifth and broadway�beaucaire with the grey walls on the top of the pinnacle surrounding an acre and a half of blue irises, beneath the tallness of the stone pines, what a beautiful thing the stone pine is!... no, we never did go back anywhere. not to heidelberg, not to hamelin, not to verona, not to mont majour�not so much as to carcassonne itself. we talked of it, of course, but i guess florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. she had the seeing eye. i haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which i want to return�towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crowstepped gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the mediterranean, between leghorn and naples. not one of them did we see more than once, so that the whole world for me is like spots of colour in an immense canvas. perhaps if it weren't so i should have something to catch hold of now. is all this digression or isn't it digression? again i don't know. you, the listener, sit opposite me. but you are so silent. you don't tell me anything. i am, at any rate, trying to get you to see what sort of life it was i led with florence and what florence was like. well, she was bright; and she danced. she seemed to dance over the floors of castles and over seas and over and over and over the salons of modistes and over the plages of the riviera�like a gay tremulous beam, reflected from water upon a ceiling. and my function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. and it was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that dancing reflection. and the task lasted for years. florence's aunts used to say that i must be the laziest man in philadelphia. they had never been to philadelphia and they had the new england conscience. you see, the first thing they said to me when i called in on florence in the little ancient, colonial, wooden house beneath the high, thin-leaved elms�the first question they asked me was not how i did but what did i do. and i did nothing. i suppose i ought to have done something, but i didn't see any call to do it. why does one do things? i just drifted in and wanted florence. first i had drifted in on florence at a browning tea, or something of the sort in fourteenth street, which was then still residential. i don't know why i had gone to new york; i don't know why i had gone to the tea. i don't see why florence should have gone to that sort of spelling bee. it wasn't the place at which, even then, you expected to find a poughkeepsie graduate. i guess florence wanted to raise the culture of the stuyvesant crowd and did it as she might have gone in slumming. intellectual slumming, that was what it was. she always wanted to leave the world a little more elevated than she found it. poor dear thing, i have heard her lecture teddy ashburnham by the hour on the difference between a franz hals and a wouvermans and why the pre-mycenaean statues were cubical with knobs on the top. i wonder what he made of it? perhaps he was thankful. i know i was. for do you understand my whole attentions, my whole endeavours were to keep poor dear florence on to topics like the finds at cnossos and the mental spirituality of walter pater. i had to keep her at it, you understand, or she might die. for i was solemnly informed that if she became excited over anything or if her emotions were really stirred her little heart might cease to beat. for twelve years i had to watch every word that any person uttered in any conversation and i had to head it off what the english call "things"�off love, poverty, crime, religion and the rest of it. yes, the first doctor that we had when she was carried off the ship at havre assured me that this must be done. good god, are all these fellows monstrous idiots, or is there a freemasonry between all of them from end to end of the earth?... that is what makes me think of that fellow peire vidal. because, of course, his story is culture and i had to head her towards culture and at the same time it's so funny and she hadn't got to laugh, and it's so full of love and she wasn't to think of love. do you know the story? las tours of the four castles had for chatelaine blanche somebody-or-other who was called as a term of commendation, la louve�the she-wolf. and peire vidal the troubadour paid his court to la louve. and she wouldn't have anything to do with him. so, out of compliment to her�the things people do when they're in love!�he dressed himself up in wolfskins and went up into the black mountains. and the shepherds of the montagne noire and their dogs mistook him for a wolf and he was torn with the fangs and beaten with clubs. so they carried him back to las tours and la louve wasn't at all impressed. they polished him up and her husband remonstrated seriously with her. vidal was, you see, a great poet and it was not proper to treat a great poet with indifference. so peire vidal declared himself emperor of jerusalem or somewhere and the husband had to kneel down and kiss his feet though la louve wouldn't. and peire set sail in a rowing boat with four companions to redeem the holy sepulchre. and they struck on a rock somewhere, and, at great expense, the husband had to fit out an expedition to fetch him back. and peire vidal fell all over the lady's bed while the husband, who was a most ferocious warrior, remonstrated some more about the courtesy that is due to great poets. but i suppose la louve was the more ferocious of the two. anyhow, that is all that came of it. isn't that a story? you haven't an idea of the queer old-fashionedness of florence's aunts�the misses hurlbird, nor yet of her uncle. an extraordinarily lovable man, that uncle john. thin, gentle, and with a "heart" that made his life very much what florence's afterwards became. he didn't reside at stamford; his home was in waterbury where the watches come from. he had a factory there which, in our queer american way, would change its functions almost from year to year. for nine months or so it would manufacture buttons out of bone. then it would suddenly produce brass buttons for coachmen's liveries. then it would take a turn at embossed tin lids for candy boxes. the fact is that the poor old gentleman, with his weak and fluttering heart, didn't want his factory to manufacture anything at all. he wanted to retire. and he did retire when he was seventy. but he was so worried at having all the street boys in the town point after him and exclaim: "there goes the laziest man in waterbury!" that he tried taking a tour round the world. and florence and a young man called jimmy went with him. it appears from what florence told me that jimmy's function with mr hurlbird was to avoid exciting topics for him. he had to keep him, for instance, out of political discussions. for the poor old man was a violent democrat in days when you might travel the world over without finding anything but a republican. anyhow, they went round the world. i think an anecdote is about the best way to give you an idea of what the old gentleman was like. for it is perhaps important that you should know what the old gentleman was; he had a great deal of influence in forming the character of my poor dear wife. just before they set out from san francisco for the south seas old mr hurlbird said he must take something with him to make little presents to people he met on the voyage. and it struck him that the things to take for that purpose were oranges�because california is the orange country�and comfortable folding chairs. so he bought i don't know how many cases of oranges�the great cool california oranges, and half-a- dozen folding chairs in a special case that he always kept in his cabin. there must have been half a cargo of fruit. for, to every person on board the several steamers that they employed�to every person with whom he had so much as a nodding acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. and they lasted him right round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours. when they were at north cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor dear thin man that he was, a lighthouse. "hello," says he to himself, "these fellows must be very lonely. let's take them some oranges." so he had a boatload of his fruit out and had himself rowed to the lighthouse on the horizon. the folding chairs he lent to any lady that he came across and liked or who seemed tired and invalidish on the ship. and so, guarded against his heart and, having his niece with him, he went round the world.... he wasn't obtrusive about his heart. you wouldn't have known he had one. he only left it to the physical laboratory at waterbury for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary kind of heart. and the joke of the matter was that, when, at the age of eighty- four, just five days before poor florence, he died of bronchitis there was found to be absolutely nothing the matter with that organ. it had certainly jumped or squeaked or something just sufficiently to take in the doctors, but it appears that that was because of an odd formation of the lungs. i don't much understand about these matters. i inherited his money because florence died five days after him. i wish i hadn't. it was a great worry. i had to go out to waterbury just after florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had left a good many charitable bequests and i had to appoint trustees. i didn't like the idea of their not being properly handled. yes, it was a great worry. and just as i had got things roughly settled i received the extraordinary cable from ashburnham begging me to come back and have a talk with him. and immediately afterwards came one from leonora saying, "yes, please do come. you could be so helpful." it was as if he had sent the cable without consulting her and had afterwards told her. indeed, that was pretty much what had happened, except that he had told the girl and the girl told the wife. i arrived, however, too late to be of any good if i could have been of any good. and then i had my first taste of english life. it was amazing. it was overwhelming. i never shall forget the polished cob that edward, beside me, drove; the animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin that was like satin. and the peace! and the red cheeks! and the beautiful, beautiful old house. just near branshaw teleragh it was and we descended on it from the high, clear, windswept waste of the new forest. i tell you it was amazing to arrive there from waterbury. and it came into my head�for teddy ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him�that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people. i tell you it was the very spirit of peace. and leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so behind her. and she just said: "so glad you've come," as if i'd run down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come half the world over at the call of two urgent telegrams. the girl was out with the hounds, i think. and that poor devil beside me was in an agony. absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such as passes the mind of man to imagine. iii it was a very hot summer, in august, ; and florence had already been taking the baths for a month. i don't know how it feels to be a patient at one of those places. i never was a patient anywhere. i daresay the patients get a home feeling and some sort of anchorage in the spot. they seem to like the bath attendants, with their cheerful faces, their air of authority, their white linen. but, for myself, to be at nauheim gave me a sense�what shall i say?�a sense almost of nakedness�the nakedness that one feels on the sea-shore or in any great open space. i had no attachments, no accumulations. in one's own home it is as if little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem friendly when others may be hostile. and, believe me, that feeling is a very important part of life. i know it well, that have been for so long a wanderer upon the face of public resorts. and one is too polished up. heaven knows i was never an untidy man. but the feeling that i had when, whilst poor florence was taking her morning bath, i stood upon the carefully swept steps of the englischer hof, looking at the carefully arranged trees in tubs upon the carefully arranged gravel whilst carefully arranged people walked past in carefully calculated gaiety, at the carefully calculated hour, the tall trees of the public gardens, going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths�or were they white half-timber châlets? upon my word i have forgotten, i who was there so often. that will give you the measure of how much i was in the landscape. i could find my way blindfolded to the hot rooms, to the douche rooms, to the fountain in the centre of the quadrangle where the rusty water gushes out. yes, i could find my way blindfolded. i know the exact distances. from the hotel regina you took one hundred and eighty- seven paces, then, turning sharp, left-handed, four hundred and twenty took you straight down to the fountain. from the englischer hof, starting on the sidewalk, it was ninety-seven paces and the same four hundred and twenty, but turning lefthanded this time. and now you understand that, having nothing in the world to do�but nothing whatever! i fell into the habit of counting my footsteps. i would walk with florence to the baths. and, of course, she entertained me with her conversation. it was, as i have said, wonderful what she could make conversation out of. she walked very lightly, and her hair was very nicely done, and she dressed beautifully and very expensively. of course she had money of her own, but i shouldn't have minded. and yet you know i can't remember a single one of her dresses. or i can remember just one, a very simple one of blue figured silk�a chinese pattern�very full in the skirts and broadening out over the shoulders. and her hair was copper-coloured, and the heels of her shoes were exceedingly high, so that she tripped upon the points of her toes. and when she came to the door of the bathing place, and when it opened to receive her, she would look back at me with a little coquettish smile, so that her cheek appeared to be caressing her shoulder. i seem to remember that, with that dress, she wore an immensely broad leghorn hat�like the chapeau de paille of rubens, only very white. the hat would be tied with a lightly knotted scarf of the same stuff as her dress. she knew how to give value to her blue eyes. and round her neck would be some simple pink, coral beads. and her complexion had a perfect clearness, a perfect smoothness... yes, that is how i most exactly remember her, in that dress, in that hat, looking over her shoulder at me so that the eyes flashed very blue�dark pebble blue... and, what the devil! for whose benefit did she do it? for that of the bath attendant? of the passers-by? i don't know. anyhow, it can't have been for me, for never, in all the years of her life, never on any possible occasion, or in any other place did she so smile to me, mockingly, invitingly. ah, she was a riddle; but then, all other women are riddles. and it occurs to me that some way back i began a sentence that i have never finished... it was about the feeling that i had when i stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out to fetch florence back from the bath. natty, precise, well-brushed, conscious of being rather small amongst the long english, the lank americans, the rotund germans, and the obese russian jewesses, i should stand there, tapping a cigarette on the outside of my case, surveying for a moment the world in the sunlight. but a day was to come when i was never to do it again alone. you can imagine, therefore, what the coming of the ashburnhams meant to me. i have forgotten the aspect of many things, but i shall never forget the aspect of the dining-room of the hotel excelsior on that evening�and on so many other evenings. whole castles have vanished from my memory, whole cities that i have never visited again, but that white room, festooned with papier-maché fruits and flowers; the tall windows; the many tables; the black screen round the door with three golden cranes flying upward on each panel; the palm- tree in the centre of the room; the swish of the waiter's feet; the cold expensive elegance; the mien of the diners as they came in every evening�their air of earnestness as if they must go through a meal prescribed by the kur authorities and their air of sobriety as if they must seek not by any means to enjoy their meals�those things i shall not easily forget. and then, one evening, in the twilight, i saw edward ashburnham lounge round the screen into the room. the head waiter, a man with a face all grey�in what subterranean nooks or corners do people cultivate those absolutely grey complexions?�went with the timorous patronage of these creatures towards him and held out a grey ear to be whispered into. it was generally a disagreeable ordeal for newcomers but edward ashburnham bore it like an englishman and a gentleman. i could see his lips form a word of three syllables�remember i had nothing in the world to do but to notice these niceties�and immediately i knew that he must be edward ashburnham, captain, fourteenth hussars, of branshaw house, branshaw teleragh. i knew it because every evening just before dinner, whilst i waited in the hall, i used, by the courtesy of monsieur schontz, the proprietor, to inspect the little police reports that each guest was expected to sign upon taking a room. the head waiter piloted him immediately to a vacant table, three away from my own�the table that the grenfalls of falls river, n.j., had just vacated. it struck me that that was not a very nice table for the newcomers, since the sunlight, low though it was, shone straight down upon it, and the same idea seemed to come at the same moment into captain ashburnham's head. his face hitherto had, in the wonderful english fashion, expressed nothing whatever. nothing. there was in it neither joy nor despair; neither hope nor fear; neither boredom nor satisfaction. he seemed to perceive no soul in that crowded room; he might have been walking in a jungle. i never came across such a perfect expression before and i never shall again. it was insolence and not insolence; it was modesty and not modesty. his hair was fair, extraordinarily ordered in a wave, running from the left temple to the right; his face was a light brick-red, perfectly uniform in tint up to the roots of the hair itself; his yellow moustache was as stiff as a toothbrush and i verily believe that he had his black smoking jacket thickened a little over the shoulder-blades so as to give himself the air of the slightest possible stoop. it would be like him to do that; that was the sort of thing he thought about. martingales, chiffney bits, boots; where you got the best soap, the best brandy, the name of the chap who rode a plater down the khyber cliffs; the spreading power of number three shot before a charge of number four powder... by heavens, i hardly ever heard him talk of anything else. not in all the years that i knew him did i hear him talk of anything but these subjects. oh, yes, once he told me that i could buy my special shade of blue ties cheaper from a firm in burlington arcade than from my own people in new york. and i have bought my ties from that firm ever since. otherwise i should not remember the name of the burlington arcade. i wonder what it looks like. i have never seen it. i imagine it to be two immense rows of pillars, like those of the forum at rome, with edward ashburnham striding down between them. but it probably isn't�the least like that. once also he advised me to buy caledonian deferred, since they were due to rise. and i did buy them and they did rise. but of how he got the knowledge i haven't the faintest idea. it seemed to drop out of the blue sky. and that was absolutely all that i knew of him until a month ago�that and the profusion of his cases, all of pigskin and stamped with his initials, e. f. a. there were gun cases, and collar cases, and shirt cases, and letter cases and cases each containing four bottles of medicine; and hat cases and helmet cases. it must have needed a whole herd of the gadarene swine to make up his outfit. and, if i ever penetrated into his private room it would be to see him standing, with his coat and waistcoat off and the immensely long line of his perfectly elegant trousers from waist to boot heel. and he would have a slightly reflective air and he would be just opening one kind of case and just closing another. good god, what did they all see in him? for i swear there was all there was of him, inside and out; though they said he was a good soldier. yet, leonora adored him with a passion that was like an agony, and hated him with an agony that was as bitter as the sea. how could he arouse anything like a sentiment, in anybody? what did he even talk to them about�when they were under four eyes?�ah, well, suddenly, as if by a flash of inspiration, i know. for all good soldiers are sentimentalists�all good soldiers of that type. their profession, for one thing, is full of the big words, courage, loyalty, honour, constancy. and i have given a wrong impression of edward ashburnham if i have made you think that literally never in the course of our nine years of intimacy did he discuss what he would have called "the graver things." even before his final outburst to me, at times, very late at night, say, he has blurted out something that gave an insight into the sentimental view of the cosmos that was his. he would say how much the society of a good woman could do towards redeeming you, and he would say that constancy was the finest of the virtues. he said it very stiffly, of course, but still as if the statement admitted of no doubt. constancy! isn't that the queer thought? and yet, i must add that poor dear edward was a great reader�he would pass hours lost in novels of a sentimental type�novels in which typewriter girls married marquises and governesses earls. and in his books, as a rule, the course of true love ran as smooth as buttered honey. and he was fond of poetry, of a certain type�and he could even read a perfectly sad love story. i have seen his eyes filled with tears at reading of a hopeless parting. and he loved, with a sentimental yearning, all children, puppies, and the feeble generally... . so, you see, he would have plenty to gurgle about to a woman�with that and his sound common sense about martingales and his�still sentimental�experiences as a county magistrate; and with his intense, optimistic belief that the woman he was making love to at the moment was the one he was destined, at last, to be eternally constant to.... well, i fancy he could put up a pretty good deal of talk when there was no man around to make him feel shy. and i was quite astonished, during his final burst out to me�at the very end of things, when the poor girl was on her way to that fatal brindisi and he was trying to persuade himself and me that he had never really cared for her�i was quite astonished to observe how literary and how just his expressions were. he talked like quite a good book�a book not in the least cheaply sentimental. you see, i suppose he regarded me not so much as a man. i had to be regarded as a woman or a solicitor. anyhow, it burst out of him on that horrible night. and then, next morning, he took me over to the assizes and i saw how, in a perfectly calm and business-like way, he set to work to secure a verdict of not guilty for a poor girl, the daughter of one of his tenants, who had been accused of murdering her baby. he spent two hundred pounds on her defence... well, that was edward ashburnham. i had forgotten about his eyes. they were as blue as the sides of a certain type of box of matches. when you looked at them carefully you saw that they were perfectly honest, perfectly straightforward, perfectly, perfectly stupid. but the brick pink of his complexion, running perfectly level to the brick pink of his inner eyelids, gave them a curious, sinister expression�like a mosaic of blue porcelain set in pink china. and that chap, coming into a room, snapped up the gaze of every woman in it, as dexterously as a conjurer pockets billiard balls. it was most amazing. you know the man on the stage who throws up sixteen balls at once and they all drop into pockets all over his person, on his shoulders, on his heels, on the inner side of his sleeves; and he stands perfectly still and does nothing. well, it was like that. he had rather a rough, hoarse voice. and, there he was, standing by the table. i was looking at him, with my back to the screen. and suddenly, i saw two distinct expressions flicker across his immobile eyes. how the deuce did they do it, those unflinching blue eyes with the direct gaze? for the eyes themselves never moved, gazing over my shoulder towards the screen. and the gaze was perfectly level and perfectly direct and perfectly unchanging. i suppose that the lids really must have rounded themselves a little and perhaps the lips moved a little too, as if he should be saying: "there you are, my dear." at any rate, the expression was that of pride, of satisfaction, of the possessor. i saw him once afterwards, for a moment, gaze upon the sunny fields of branshaw and say: "all this is my land!" and then again, the gaze was perhaps more direct, harder if possible�hardy too. it was a measuring look; a challenging look. once when we were at wiesbaden watching him play in a polo match against the bonner hussaren i saw the same look come into his eyes, balancing the possibilities, looking over the ground. the german captain, count baron idigon von lelöffel, was right up by their goal posts, coming with the ball in an easy canter in that tricky german fashion. the rest of the field were just anywhere. it was only a scratch sort of affair. ashburnham was quite close to the rails not five yards from us and i heard him saying to himself: "might just be done!" and he did it. goodness! he swung that pony round with all its four legs spread out, like a cat dropping off a roof.... well, it was just that look that i noticed in his eyes: "it might," i seem even now to hear him muttering to himself, "just be done." i looked round over my shoulder and saw, tall, smiling brilliantly and buoyant�leonora. and, little and fair, and as radiant as the track of sunlight along the sea�my wife. that poor wretch! to think that he was at that moment in a perfect devil of a fix, and there he was, saying at the back of his mind: "it might just be done." it was like a chap in the middle of the eruption of a volcano, saying that he might just manage to bolt into the tumult and set fire to a haystack. madness? predestination? who the devil knows? mrs ashburnham exhibited at that moment more gaiety than i have ever since known her to show. there are certain classes of english people�the nicer ones when they have been to many spas, who seem to make a point of becoming much more than usually animated when they are introduced to my compatriots. i have noticed this often. of course, they must first have accepted the americans. but that once done, they seem to say to themselves: "hallo, these women are so bright. we aren't going to be outdone in brightness." and for the time being they certainly aren't. but it wears off. so it was with leonora�at least until she noticed me. she began, leonora did�and perhaps it was that that gave me the idea of a touch of insolence in her character, for she never afterwards did any one single thing like it�she began by saying in quite a loud voice and from quite a distance: "don't stop over by that stuffy old table, teddy. come and sit by these nice people!" and that was an extraordinary thing to say. quite extraordinary. i couldn't for the life of me refer to total strangers as nice people. but, of course, she was taking a line of her own in which i at any rate�and no one else in the room, for she too had taken the trouble to read through the list of guests�counted any more than so many clean, bull terriers. and she sat down rather brilliantly at a vacant table, beside ours�one that was reserved for the guggenheimers. and she just sat absolutely deaf to the remonstrances of the head waiter with his face like a grey ram's. that poor chap was doing his steadfast duty too. he knew that the guggenheimers of chicago, after they had stayed there a month and had worried the poor life out of him, would give him two dollars fifty and grumble at the tipping system. and he knew that teddy ashburnham and his wife would give him no trouble whatever except what the smiles of leonora might cause in his apparently unimpressionable bosom�though you never can tell what may go on behind even a not quite spotless plastron!�and every week edward ashburnham would give him a solid, sound, golden english sovereign. yet this stout fellow was intent on saving that table for the guggenheimers of chicago. it ended in florence saying: "why shouldn't we all eat out of the same trough?�that's a nasty new york saying. but i'm sure we're all nice quiet people and there can be four seats at our table. it's round." then came, as it were, an appreciative gurgle from the captain and i was perfectly aware of a slight hesitation�a quick sharp motion in mrs ashburnham, as if her horse had checked. but she put it at the fence all right, rising from the seat she had taken and sitting down opposite me, as it were, all in one motion. i never thought that leonora looked her best in evening dress. she seemed to get it too clearly cut, there was no ruffling. she always affected black and her shoulders were too classical. she seemed to stand out of her corsage as a white marble bust might out of a black wedgwood vase. i don't know. i loved leonora always and, today, i would very cheerfully lay down my life, what is left of it, in her service. but i am sure i never had the beginnings of a trace of what is called the sex instinct towards her. and i suppose�no i am certain that she never had it towards me. as far as i am concerned i think it was those white shoulders that did it. i seemed to feel when i looked at them that, if ever i should press my lips upon them that they would be slightly cold�not icily, not without a touch of human heat, but, as they say of baths, with the chill off. i seemed to feel chilled at the end of my lips when i looked at her... no, leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue tailor-made. then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white shoulders. certain women's lines guide your eyes to their necks, their eyelashes, their lips, their breasts. but leonora's seemed to conduct your gaze always to her wrist. and the wrist was at its best in a black or a dog-skin glove and there was always a gold circlet with a little chain supporting a very small golden key to a dispatch box. perhaps it was that in which she locked up her heart and her feelings. anyhow, she sat down opposite me and then, for the first time, she paid any attention to my existence. she gave me, suddenly, yet deliberately, one long stare. her eyes too were blue and dark and the eyelids were so arched that they gave you the whole round of the irises. and it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me. i seemed to perceive the swift questions chasing each other through the brain that was behind them. i seemed to hear the brain ask and the eyes answer with all the simpleness of a woman who was a good hand at taking in qualities of a horse�as indeed she was. "stands well; has plenty of room for his oats behind the girth. not so much in the way of shoulders," and so on. and so her eyes asked: "is this man trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is he likely to let his women be troublesome? is he, above all, likely to babble about my affairs?" and, suddenly, into those cold, slightly defiant, almost defensive china blue orbs, there came a warmth, a tenderness, a friendly recognition... oh, it was very charming and very touching�and quite mortifying. it was the look of a mother to her son, of a sister to her brother. it implied trust; it implied the want of any necessity for barriers. by god, she looked at me as if i were an invalid�as any kind woman may look at a poor chap in a bath chair. and, yes, from that day forward she always treated me and not florence as if i were the invalid. why, she would run after me with a rug upon chilly days. i suppose, therefore, that her eyes had made a favourable answer. or, perhaps, it wasn't a favourable answer. and then florence said: "and so the whole round table is begun." again edward ashburnham gurgled slightly in his throat; but leonora shivered a little, as if a goose had walked over her grave. and i was passing her the nickel-silver basket of rolls. avanti!... iv so began those nine years of uninterrupted tranquillity. they were characterized by an extraordinary want of any communicativeness on the part of the ashburnhams to which we, on our part, replied by leaving out quite as extraordinarily, and nearly as completely, the personal note. indeed, you may take it that what characterized our relationship was an atmosphere of taking everything for granted. the given proposition was, that we were all "good people." we took for granted that we all liked beef underdone but not too underdone; that both men preferred a good liqueur brandy after lunch; that both women drank a very light rhine wine qualified with fachingen water�that sort of thing. it was also taken for granted that we were both sufficiently well off to afford anything that we could reasonably want in the way of amusements fitting to our station�that we could take motor cars and carriages by the day; that we could give each other dinners and dine our friends and we could indulge if we liked in economy. thus, florence was in the habit of having the daily telegraph sent to her every day from london. she was always an anglo-maniac, was florence; the paris edition of the new york herald was always good enough for me. but when we discovered that the ashburnhams' copy of the london paper followed them from england, leonora and florence decided between them to suppress one subscription one year and the other the next. similarly it was the habit of the grand duke of nassau schwerin, who came yearly to the baths, to dine once with about eighteen families of regular kur guests. in return he would give a dinner of all the eighteen at once. and, since these dinners were rather expensive (you had to take the grand duke and a good many of his suite and any members of the diplomatic bodies that might be there)�florence and leonora, putting their heads together, didn't see why we shouldn't give the grand duke his dinner together. and so we did. i don't suppose the serenity minded that economy, or even noticed it. at any rate, our joint dinner to the royal personage gradually assumed the aspect of a yearly function. indeed, it grew larger and larger, until it became a sort of closing function for the season, at any rate as far as we were concerned. i don't in the least mean to say that we were the sort of persons who aspired to mix "with royalty." we didn't; we hadn't any claims; we were just "good people." but the grand duke was a pleasant, affable sort of royalty, like the late king edward vii, and it was pleasant to hear him talk about the races and, very occasionally, as a bonne bouche, about his nephew, the emperor; or to have him pause for a moment in his walk to ask after the progress of our cures or to be benignantly interested in the amount of money we had put on lelöffel's hunter for the frankfurt welter stakes. but upon my word, i don't know how we put in our time. how does one put in one's time? how is it possible to have achieved nine years and to have nothing whatever to show for it? nothing whatever, you understand. not so much as a bone penholder, carved to resemble a chessman and with a hole in the top through which you could see four views of nauheim. and, as for experience, as for knowledge of one's fellow beings�nothing either. upon my word, i couldn't tell you offhand whether the lady who sold the so expensive violets at the bottom of the road that leads to the station, was cheating me or no; i can't say whether the porter who carried our traps across the station at leghorn was a thief or no when he said that the regular tariff was a lira a parcel. the instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. after forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. but one doesn't. i think the modern civilized habit�the modern english habit of taking every one for granted�is a good deal to blame for this. i have observed this matter long enough to know the queer, subtle thing that it is; to know how the faculty, for what it is worth, never lets you down. mind, i am not saying that this is not the most desirable type of life in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high standard. for it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have to eat every day several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber, and it is disagreeable to have to drink brandy when you would prefer to be cheered up by warm, sweet kümmel. and it is nasty to have to take a cold bath in the morning when what you want is really a hot one at night. and it stirs a little of the faith of your fathers that is deep down within you to have to have it taken for granted that you are an episcopalian when really you are an old-fashioned philadelphia quaker. but these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole of this society owes to Æsculapius. and the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules applies to anybody�to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in railway trains, to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even, in the end, upon steamers. you meet a man or a woman and, from tiny and intimate sounds, from the slightest of movements, you know at once whether you are concerned with good people or with those who won't do. you know, this is to say, whether they will go rigidly through with the whole programme from the underdone beef to the anglicanism. it won't matter whether they be short or tall; whether the voice squeak like a marionette or rumble like a town bull's; it won't matter whether they are germans, austrians, french, spanish, or even brazilians�they will be the germans or brazilians who take a cold bath every morning and who move, roughly speaking, in diplomatic circles. but the inconvenient�well, hang it all, i will say it�the damnable nuisance of the whole thing is, that with all the taking for granted, you never really get an inch deeper than the things i have catalogued. i can give you a rather extraordinary instance of this. i can't remember whether it was in our first year�the first year of us four at nauheim, because, of course, it would have been the fourth year of florence and myself�but it must have been in the first or second year. and that gives the measure at once of the extraordinariness of our discussion and of the swiftness with which intimacy had grown up between us. on the one hand we seemed to start out on the expedition so naturally and with so little preparation, that it was as if we must have made many such excursions before; and our intimacy seemed so deep.... yet the place to which we went was obviously one to which florence at least would have wanted to take us quite early, so that you would almost think we should have gone there together at the beginning of our intimacy. florence was singularly expert as a guide to archaeological expeditions and there was nothing she liked so much as taking people round ruins and showing you the window from which some one looked down upon the murder of some one else. she only did it once; but she did it quite magnificently. she could find her way, with the sole help of baedeker, as easily about any old monument as she could about any american city where the blocks are all square and the streets all numbered, so that you can go perfectly easily from twenty-fourth to thirtieth. now it happens that fifty minutes away from nauheim, by a good train, is the ancient city of m��, upon a great pinnacle of basalt, girt with a triple road running sideways up its shoulder like a scarf. and at the top there is a castle�not a square castle like windsor, but a castle all slate gables and high peaks with gilt weathercocks flashing bravely�the castle of st elizabeth of hungary. it has the disadvantage of being in prussia; and it is always disagreeable to go into that country; but it is very old and there are many double-spired churches and it stands up like a pyramid out of the green valley of the lahn. i don't suppose the ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and i didn't especially want to go there myself. but, you understand, there was no objection. it was part of the cure to make an excursion three or four times a week. so that we were all quite unanimous in being grateful to florence for providing the motive power. florence, of course, had a motive of her own. she was at that time engaged in educating captain ashburnham�oh, of course, quite pour le bon motif! she used to say to leonora: "i simply can't understand how you can let him live by your side and be so ignorant!" leonora herself always struck me as being remarkably well educated. at any rate, she knew beforehand all that florence had to tell her. perhaps she got it up out of baedeker before florence was up in the morning. i don't mean to say that you would ever have known that leonora knew anything, but if florence started to tell us how ludwig the courageous wanted to have three wives at once�in which he differed from henry viii, who wanted them one after the other, and this caused a good deal of trouble�if florence started to tell us this, leonora would just nod her head in a way that quite pleasantly rattled my poor wife. she used to exclaim: "well, if you knew it, why haven't you told it all already to captain ashburnham? i'm sure he finds it interesting!" and leonora would look reflectively at her husband and say: "i have an idea that it might injure his hand�the hand, you know, used in connection with horses' mouths...." and poor ashburnham would blush and mutter and would say: "that's all right. don't you bother about me." i fancy his wife's irony did quite alarm poor teddy; because one evening he asked me seriously in the smoking-room if i thought that having too much in one's head would really interfere with one's quickness in polo. it struck him, he said, that brainy johnnies generally were rather muffs when they got on to four legs. i reassured him as best i could. i told him that he wasn't likely to take in enough to upset his balance. at that time the captain was quite evidently enjoying being educated by florence. she used to do it about three or four times a week under the approving eyes of leonora and myself. it wasn't, you understand, systematic. it came in bursts. it was florence clearing up one of the dark places of the earth, leaving the world a little lighter than she had found it. she would tell him the story of hamlet; explain the form of a symphony, humming the first and second subjects to him, and so on; she would explain to him the difference between arminians and erastians; or she would give him a short lecture on the early history of the united states. and it was done in a way well calculated to arrest a young attention. did you ever read mrs markham? well, it was like that... . but our excursion to m�� was a much larger, a much more full dress affair. you see, in the archives of the schloss in that city there was a document which florence thought would finally give her the chance to educate the whole lot of us together. it really worried poor florence that she couldn't, in matters of culture, ever get the better of leonora. i don't know what leonora knew or what she didn't know, but certainly she was always there whenever florence brought out any information. and she gave, somehow, the impression of really knowing what poor florence gave the impression of having only picked up. i can't exactly define it. it was almost something physical. have you ever seen a retriever dashing in play after a greyhound? you see the two running over a green field, almost side by side, and suddenly the retriever makes a friendly snap at the other. and the greyhound simply isn't there. you haven't observed it quicken its speed or strain a limb; but there it is, just two yards in front of the retriever's outstretched muzzle. so it was with florence and leonora in matters of culture. but on this occasion i knew that something was up. i found florence some days before, reading books like ranke's history of the popes, symonds' renaissance, motley's rise of the dutch republic and luther's table talk. i must say that, until the astonishment came, i got nothing but pleasure out of the little expedition. i like catching the two-forty; i like the slow, smooth roll of the great big trains�and they are the best trains in the world! i like being drawn through the green country and looking at it through the clear glass of the great windows. though, of course, the country isn't really green. the sun shines, the earth is blood red and purple and red and green and red. and the oxen in the ploughlands are bright varnished brown and black and blackish purple; and the peasants * are dressed in the black and white of magpies; and there are great flocks of magpies too. or the peasants' dresses in another field where there are little mounds of hay that will be grey-green on the sunny side and purple in the shadows�the peasants' dresses are vermilion with emerald green ribbons and purple skirts and white shirts and black velvet stomachers. still, the impression is that you are drawn through brilliant green meadows that run away on each side to the dark purple fir-woods; the basalt pinnacles; the immense forests. and there is meadowsweet at the edge of the streams, and cattle. why, i remember on that afternoon i saw a brown cow hitch its horns under the stomach of a black and white animal and the black and white one was thrown right into the middle of a narrow stream. i burst out laughing. but florence was imparting information so hard and leonora was listening so intently that no one noticed me. as for me, i was pleased to be off duty; i was pleased to think that florence for the moment was indubitably out of mischief�because she was talking about ludwig the courageous (i think it was ludwig the courageous but i am not an historian) about ludwig the courageous of hessen who wanted to have three wives at once and patronized luther�something like that!�i was so relieved to be off duty, because she couldn't possibly be doing anything to excite herself or set her poor heart a-fluttering�that the incident of the cow was a real joy to me. i chuckled over it from time to time for the whole rest of the day. because it does look very funny, you know, to see a black and white cow land on its back in the middle of a stream. it is so just exactly what one doesn't expect of a cow. i suppose i ought to have pitied the poor animal; but i just didn't. i was out for enjoyment. and i just enjoyed myself. it is so pleasant to be drawn along in front of the spectacular towns with the peaked castles and the many double spires. in the sunlight gleams come from the city�gleams from the glass of windows; from the gilt signs of apothecaries; from the ensigns of the student corps high up in the mountains; from the helmets of the funny little soldiers moving their stiff little legs in white linen trousers. and it was pleasant to get out in the great big spectacular prussian station with the hammered bronze ornaments and the paintings of peasants and flowers and cows; and to hear florence bargain energetically with the driver of an ancient droschka drawn by two lean horses. of course, i spoke german much more correctly than florence, though i never could rid myself quite of the accent of the pennsylvania duitsch of my childhood. anyhow, we were drawn in a sort of triumph, for five marks without any trinkgeld, right up to the castle. and we were taken through the museum and saw the fire- backs, the old glass, the old swords and the antique contraptions. and we went up winding corkscrew staircases and through the rittersaal, the great painted hall where the reformer and his friends met for the first time under the protection of the gentleman that had three wives at once and formed an alliance with the gentleman that had six wives, one after the other (i'm not really interested in these facts but they have a bearing on my story). and we went through chapels, and music rooms, right up immensely high in the air to a large old chamber, full of presses, with heavily-shuttered windows all round. and florence became positively electric. she told the tired, bored custodian what shutters to open; so that the bright sunlight streamed in palpable shafts into the dim old chamber. she explained that this was luther's bedroom and that just where the sunlight fell had stood his bed. as a matter of fact, i believe that she was wrong and that luther only stopped, as it were, for lunch, in order to evade pursuit. but, no doubt, it would have been his bedroom if he could have been persuaded to stop the night. and then, in spite of the protest of the custodian, she threw open another shutter and came tripping back to a large glass case. "and there," she exclaimed with an accent of gaiety, of triumph, and of audacity. she was pointing at a piece of paper, like the half-sheet of a letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might have been a jotting of the amounts we were spending during the day. and i was extremely happy at her gaiety, in her triumph, in her audacity. captain ashburnham had his hands upon the glass case. "there it is�the protest." and then, as we all properly stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "don't you know that is why we were all called protestants? that is the pencil draft of the protest they drew up. you can see the signatures of martin luther, and martin bucer, and zwingli, and ludwig the courageous...." i may have got some of the names wrong, but i know that luther and bucer were there. and her animation continued and i was glad. she was better and she was out of mischief. she continued, looking up into captain ashburnham's eyes: "it's because of that piece of paper that you're honest, sober, industrious, provident, and clean-lived. if it weren't for that piece of paper you'd be like the irish or the italians or the poles, but particularly the irish...." and she laid one finger upon captain ashburnham's wrist. i was aware of something treacherous, something frightful, something evil in the day. i can't define it and can't find a simile for it. it wasn't as if a snake had looked out of a hole. no, it was as if my heart had missed a beat. it was as if we were going to run and cry out; all four of us in separate directions, averting our heads. in ashburnham's face i know that there was absolute panic. i was horribly frightened and then i discovered that the pain in my left wrist was caused by leonora's clutching it: "i can't stand this," she said with a most extraordinary passion; "i must get out of this." i was horribly frightened. it came to me for a moment, though i hadn't time to think it, that she must be a madly jealous woman�jealous of florence and captain ashburnham, of all people in the world! and it was a panic in which we fled! we went right down the winding stairs, across the immense rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the lahn, the broad valley and the immense plain into which it opens out. "don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" the panic again stopped my heart. i muttered, i stuttered�i don't know how i got the words out: "no! what's the matter? whatever's the matter?" she looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment i had the feeling that those two blue discs were immense, were overwhelming, were like a wall of blue that shut me off from the rest of the world. i know it sounds absurd; but that is what it did feel like. "don't you see," she said, with a really horrible bitterness, with a really horrible lamentation in her voice, "don't you see that that's the cause of the whole miserable affair; of the whole sorrow of the world? and of the eternal damnation of you and me and them... ." i don't remember how she went on; i was too frightened; i was too amazed. i think i was thinking of running to fetch assistance�a doctor, perhaps, or captain ashburnham. or possibly she needed florence's tender care, though, of course, it would have been very bad for florence's heart. but i know that when i came out of it she was saying: "oh, where are all the bright, happy, innocent beings in the world? where's happiness? one reads of it in books!" she ran her hand with a singular clawing motion upwards over her forehead. her eyes were enormously distended; her face was exactly that of a person looking into the pit of hell and seeing horrors there. and then suddenly she stopped. she was, most amazingly, just mrs ashburnham again. her face was perfectly clear, sharp and defined; her hair was glorious in its golden coils. her nostrils twitched with a sort of contempt. she appeared to look with interest at a gypsy caravan that was coming over a little bridge far below us. "don't you know," she said, in her clear hard voice, "don't you know that i'm an irish catholic?" v those words gave me the greatest relief that i have ever had in my life. they told me, i think, almost more than i have ever gathered at any one moment�about myself. i don't think that before that day i had ever wanted anything very much except florence. i have, of course, had appetites, impatiences... why, sometimes at a table d'hôte, when there would be, say, caviare handed round, i have been absolutely full of impatience for fear that when the dish came to me there should not be a satisfying portion left over by the other guests. i have been exceedingly impatient at missing trains. the belgian state railway has a trick of letting the french trains miss their connections at brussels. that has always infuriated me. i have written about it letters to the times that the times never printed; those that i wrote to the paris edition of the new york herald were always printed, but they never seemed to satisfy me when i saw them. well, that was a sort of frenzy with me. it was a frenzy that now i can hardly realize. i can understand it intellectually. you see, in those days i was interested in people with "hearts." there was florence, there was edward ashburnham�or, perhaps, it was leonora that i was more interested in. i don't mean in the way of love. but, you see, we were both of the same profession�at any rate as i saw it. and the profession was that of keeping heart patients alive. you have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become. just as the blacksmith says: "by hammer and hand all art doth stand," just as the baker thinks that all the solar system revolves around his morning delivery of rolls, as the postmaster-general believes that he alone is the preserver of society�and surely, surely, these delusions are necessary to keep us going�so did i and, as i believed, leonora, imagine that the whole world ought to be arranged so as to ensure the keeping alive of heart patients. you have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become�how imbecile, in view of that engrossment, appear the ways of princes, of republics, of municipalities. a rough bit of road beneath the motor tyres, a couple of succeeding "thank'ee-marms" with their quick jolts would be enough to set me grumbling to leonora against the prince or the grand duke or the free city through whose territory we might be passing. i would grumble like a stockbroker whose conversations over the telephone are incommoded by the ringing of bells from a city church. i would talk about medieval survivals, about the taxes being surely high enough. the point, by the way, about the missing of the connections of the calais boat trains at brussels was that the shortest possible sea journey is frequently of great importance to sufferers from the heart. now, on the continent, there are two special heart cure places, nauheim and spa, and to reach both of these baths from england if in order to ensure a short sea passage, you come by calais�you have to make the connection at brussels. and the belgian train never waits by so much the shade of a second for the one coming from calais or from paris. and even if the french train, are just on time, you have to run�imagine a heart patient running!�along the unfamiliar ways of the brussels station and to scramble up the high steps of the moving train. or, if you miss connection, you have to wait five or six hours.... i used to keep awake whole nights cursing that abuse. my wife used to run�she never, in whatever else she may have misled me, tried to give me the impression that she was not a gallant soul. but, once in the german express, she would lean back, with one hand to her side and her eyes closed. well, she was a good actress. and i would be in hell. in hell, i tell you. for in florence i had at once a wife and an unattained mistress�that is what it comes to�and in the retaining of her in this world i had my occupation, my career, my ambition. it is not often that these things are united in one body. leonora was a good actress too. by jove she was good! i tell you, she would listen to me by the hour, evolving my plans for a shock-proof world. it is true that, at times, i used to notice about her an air of inattention as if she were listening, a mother, to the child at her knee, or as if, precisely, i were myself the patient. you understand that there was nothing the matter with edward ashburnham's heart�that he had thrown up his commission and had left india and come half the world over in order to follow a woman who had really had a "heart" to nauheim. that was the sort of sentimental ass he was. for, you understand, too, that they really needed to live in india, to economize, to let the house at branshaw teleragh. of course, at that date, i had never heard of the kilsyte case. ashburnham had, you know, kissed a servant girl in a railway train, and it was only the grace of god, the prompt functioning of the communication cord and the ready sympathy of what i believe you call the hampshire bench, that kept the poor devil out of winchester gaol for years and years. i never heard of that case until the final stages of leonora's revelations.... but just think of that poor wretch.... i, who have surely the right, beg you to think of that poor wretch. is it possible that such a luckless devil should be so tormented by blind and inscrutable destiny? for there is no other way to think of it. none. i have the right to say it, since for years he was my wife's lover, since he killed her, since he broke up all the pleasantnesses that there were in my life. there is no priest that has the right to tell me that i must not ask pity for him, from you, silent listener beyond the hearth-stone, from the world, or from the god who created in him those desires, those madnesses.... of course, i should not hear of the kilsyte case. i knew none of their friends; they were for me just good people�fortunate people with broad and sunny acres in a southern county. just good people! by heavens, i sometimes think that it would have been better for him, poor dear, if the case had been such a one that i must needs have heard of it�such a one as maids and couriers and other kur guests whisper about for years after, until gradually it dies away in the pity that there is knocking about here and there in the world. supposing he had spent his seven years in winchester gaol or whatever it is that inscrutable and blind justice allots to you for following your natural but ill-timed inclinations�there would have arrived a stage when nodding gossips on the kursaal terrace would have said, "poor fellow," thinking of his ruined career. he would have been the fine soldier with his back now bent.... better for him, poor devil, if his back had been prematurely bent. why, it would have been a thousand times better.... for, of course, the kilsyte case, which came at the very beginning of his finding leonora cold and unsympathetic, gave him a nasty jar. he left servants alone after that. it turned him, naturally, all the more loose amongst women of his own class. why, leonora told me that mrs maidan�the woman he followed from burma to nauheim�assured her he awakened her attention by swearing that when he kissed the servant in the train he was driven to it. i daresay he was driven to it, by the mad passion to find an ultimately satisfying woman. i daresay he was sincere enough. heaven help me, i daresay he was sincere enough in his love for mrs maidan. she was a nice little thing, a dear little dark woman with long lashes, of whom florence grew quite fond. she had a lisp and a happy smile. we saw plenty of her for the first month of our acquaintance, then she died, quite quietly�of heart trouble. but you know, poor little mrs maidan�she was so gentle, so young. she cannot have been more than twenty-three and she had a boy husband out in chitral not more than twenty-four, i believe. such young things ought to have been left alone. of course ashburnham could not leave her alone. i do not believe that he could. why, even i, at this distance of time am aware that i am a little in love with her memory. i can't help smiling when i think suddenly of her�as you might at the thought of something wrapped carefully away in lavender, in some drawer, in some old house that you have long left. she was so�so submissive. why, even to me she had the air of being submissive�to me that not the youngest child will ever pay heed to. yes, this is the saddest story... no, i cannot help wishing that florence had left her alone�with her playing with adultery. i suppose it was; though she was such a child that one has the impression that she would hardly have known how to spell such a word. no, it was just submissiveness�to the importunities, to the tempestuous forces that pushed that miserable fellow on to ruin. and i do not suppose that florence really made much difference. if it had not been for her that ashburnham left his allegiance for mrs maidan, then it would have been some other woman. but still, i do not know. perhaps the poor young thing would have died�she was bound to die, anyhow, quite soon�but she would have died without having to soak her noonday pillow with tears whilst florence, below the window, talked to captain ashburnham about the constitution of the united states.... yes, it would have left a better taste in the mouth if florence had let her die in peace.... leonora behaved better in a sense. she just boxed mrs maidan's ears�yes, she hit her, in an uncontrollable access of rage, a hard blow on the side of the cheek, in the corridor of the hotel, outside edward's rooms. it was that, you know, that accounted for the sudden, odd intimacy that sprang up between florence and mrs ashburnham. because it was, of course, an odd intimacy. if you look at it from the outside nothing could have been more unlikely than that leonora, who is the proudest creature on god's earth, would have struck up an acquaintanceship with two casual yankees whom she could not really have regarded as being much more than a carpet beneath her feet. you may ask what she had to be proud of. well, she was a powys married to an ashburnham�i suppose that gave her the right to despise casual americans as long as she did it unostentatiously. i don't know what anyone has to be proud of. she might have taken pride in her patience, in her keeping her husband out of the bankruptcy court. perhaps she did. at any rate that was how florence got to know her. she came round a screen at the corner of the hotel corridor and found leonora with the gold key that hung from her wrist caught in mrs maidan's hair just before dinner. there was not a single word spoken. little mrs maidan was very pale, with a red mark down her left cheek, and the key would not come out of her black hair. it was florence who had to disentangle it, for leonora was in such a state that she could not have brought herself to touch mrs maidan without growing sick. and there was not a word spoken. you see, under those four eyes�her own and mrs maidan's�leonora could just let herself go as far as to box mrs maidan's ears. but the moment a stranger came along she pulled herself wonderfully up. she was at first silent and then, the moment the key was disengaged by florence she was in a state to say: "so awkward of me... i was just trying to put the comb straight in mrs maidan's hair...." mrs maidan, however, was not a powys married to an ashburnham; she was a poor little o'flaherty whose husband was a boy of country parsonage origin. so there was no mistaking the sob she let go as she went desolately away along the corridor. but leonora was still going to play up. she opened the door of ashburnham's room quite ostentatiously, so that florence should hear her address edward in terms of intimacy and liking. "edward," she called. but there was no edward there. you understand that there was no edward there. it was then, for the only time of her career, that leonora really compromised herself�she exclaimed.... "how frightful!... poor little maisie!..." she caught herself up at that, but of course it was too late. it was a queer sort of affair.... i want to do leonora every justice. i love her very dearly for one thing and in this matter, which was certainly the ruin of my small household cockle-shell, she certainly tripped up. i do not believe�and leonora herself does not believe�that poor little maisie maidan was ever edward's mistress. her heart was really so bad that she would have succumbed to anything like an impassioned embrace. that is the plain english of it, and i suppose plain english is best. she was really what the other two, for reasons of their own, just pretended to be. queer, isn't it? like one of those sinister jokes that providence plays upon one. add to this that i do not suppose that leonora would much have minded, at any other moment, if mrs maidan had been her husband's mistress. it might have been a relief from edward's sentimental gurglings over the lady and from the lady's submissive acceptance of those sounds. no, she would not have minded. but, in boxing mrs maidan's ears, leonora was just striking the face of an intolerable universe. for, that afternoon she had had a frightfully painful scene with edward. as far as his letters went, she claimed the right to open them when she chose. she arrogated to herself the right because edward's affairs were in such a frightful state and he lied so about them that she claimed the privilege of having his secrets at her disposal. there was not, indeed, any other way, for the poor fool was too ashamed of his lapses ever to make a clean breast of anything. she had to drag these things out of him. it must have been a pretty elevating job for her. but that afternoon, edward being on his bed for the hour and a half prescribed by the kur authorities, she had opened a letter that she took to come from a colonel hervey. they were going to stay with him in linlithgowshire for the month of september and she did not know whether the date fixed would be the eleventh or the eighteenth. the address on this letter was, in handwriting, as like colonel hervey's as one blade of corn is like another. so she had at the moment no idea of spying on him. but she certainly was. for she discovered that edward ashburnham was paying a blackmailer of whom she had never heard something like three hundred pounds a year... it was a devil of a blow; it was like death; for she imagined that by that time she had really got to the bottom of her husband's liabilities. you see, they were pretty heavy. what had really smashed them up had been a perfectly common-place affair at monte carlo�an affair with a cosmopolitan harpy who passed for the mistress of a russian grand duke. she exacted a twenty thousand pound pearl tiara from him as the price of her favours for a week or so. it would have pipped him a good deal to have found so much, and he was not in the ordinary way a gambler. he might, indeed, just have found the twenty thousand and the not slight charges of a week at an hotel with the fair creature. he must have been worth at that date five hundred thousand dollars and a little over. well, he must needs go to the tables and lose forty thousand pounds.... forty thousand solid pounds, borrowed from sharks! and even after that he must�it was an imperative passion�enjoy the favours of the lady. he got them, of course, when it was a matter of solid bargaining, for far less than twenty thousand, as he might, no doubt, have done from the first. i daresay ten thousand dollars covered the bill. anyhow, there was a pretty solid hole in a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds or so. and leonora had to fix things up; he would have run from money-lender to money-lender. and that was quite in the early days of her discovery of his infidelities�if you like to call them infidelities. and she discovered that one from public sources. god knows what would have happened if she had not discovered it from public sources. i suppose he would have concealed it from her until they were penniless. but she was able, by the grace of god, to get hold of the actual lenders of the money, to learn the exact sums that were needed. and she went off to england. yes, she went right off to england to her attorney and his while he was still in the arms of his circe�at antibes, to which place they had retired. he got sick of the lady quite quickly, but not before leonora had had such lessons in the art of business from her attorney that she had her plan as clearly drawn up as was ever that of general trochu for keeping the prussians out of paris in . it was about as effectual at first, or it seemed so. that would have been, you know, in , about nine years before the date of which i am talking�the date of florence's getting her hold over leonora; for that was what it amounted to.... well, mrs ashburnham had simply forced edward to settle all his property upon her. she could force him to do anything; in his clumsy, good-natured, inarticulate way he was as frightened of her as of the devil. and he admired her enormously, and he was as fond of her as any man could be of any woman. she took advantage of it to treat him as if he had been a person whose estates are being managed by the court of bankruptcy. i suppose it was the best thing for him. anyhow, she had no end of a job for the first three years or so. unexpected liabilities kept on cropping up�and that afflicted fool did not make it any easier. you see, along with the passion of the chase went a frame of mind that made him be extraordinarily ashamed of himself. you may not believe it, but he really had such a sort of respect for the chastity of leonora's imagination that he hated�he was positively revolted at the thought that she should know that the sort of thing that he did existed in the world. so he would stick out in an agitated way against the accusation of ever having done anything. he wanted to preserve the virginity of his wife's thoughts. he told me that himself during the long walks we had at the last�while the girl was on the way to brindisi. so, of course, for those three years or so, leonora had many agitations. and it was then that they really quarrelled. yes, they quarrelled bitterly. that seems rather extravagant. you might have thought that leonora would be just calmly loathing and he lachrymosely contrite. but that was not it a bit... along with edward's passions and his shame for them went the violent conviction of the duties of his station�a conviction that was quite unreasonably expensive. i trust i have not, in talking of his liabilities, given the impression that poor edward was a promiscuous libertine. he was not; he was a sentimentalist. the servant girl in the kilsyte case had been pretty, but mournful of appearance. i think that, when he had kissed her, he had desired rather to comfort her. and, if she had succumbed to his blandishments i daresay he would have set her up in a little house in portsmouth or winchester and would have been faithful to her for four or five years. he was quite capable of that. no, the only two of his affairs of the heart that cost him money were that of the grand duke's mistress and that which was the subject of the blackmailing letter that leonora opened. that had been a quite passionate affair with quite a nice woman. it had succeeded the one with the grand ducal lady. the lady was the wife of a brother officer and leonora had known all about the passion, which had been quite a real passion and had lasted for several years. you see, poor edward's passions were quite logical in their progression upwards. they began with a servant, went on to a courtesan and then to a quite nice woman, very unsuitably mated. for she had a quite nasty husband who, by means of letters and things, went on blackmailing poor edward to the tune of three or four hundred a year�with threats of the divorce court. and after this lady came maisie maidan, and after poor maisie only one more affair and then�the real passion of his life. his marriage with leonora had been arranged by his parents and, though he always admired her immensely, he had hardly ever pretended to be much more than tender to her, though he desperately needed her moral support, too.... but his really trying liabilities were mostly in the nature of generosities proper to his station. he was, according to leonora, always remitting his tenants' rents and giving the tenants to understand that the reduction would be permanent; he was always redeeming drunkards who came before his magisterial bench; he was always trying to put prostitutes into respectable places�and he was a perfect maniac about children. i don't know how many ill-used people he did not pick up and provide with careers�leonora has told me, but i daresay she exaggerated and the figure seems so preposterous that i will not put it down. all these things, and the continuance of them seemed to him to be his duty�along with impossible subscriptions to hospitals and boy scouts and to provide prizes at cattle shows and antivivisection societies.... well, leonora saw to it that most of these things were not continued. they could not possibly keep up branshaw manor at that rate after the money had gone to the grand duke's mistress. she put the rents back at their old figures; discharged the drunkards from their homes, and sent all the societies notice that they were to expect no more subscriptions. to the children, she was more tender; nearly all of them she supported till the age of apprenticeship or domestic service. you see, she was childless herself. she was childless herself, and she considered herself to be to blame. she had come of a penniless branch of the powys family, and they had forced upon her poor dear edward without making the stipulation that the children should be brought up as catholics. and that, of course, was spiritual death to leonora. i have given you a wrong impression if i have not made you see that leonora was a woman of a strong, cold conscience, like all english catholics. (i cannot, myself, help disliking this religion; there is always, at the bottom of my mind, in spite of leonora, the feeling of shuddering at the scarlet woman, that filtered in upon me in the tranquility of the little old friends' meeting house in arch street, philadelphia.) so i do set down a good deal of leonora's mismanagement of poor dear edward's case to the peculiarly english form of her religion. because, of course, the only thing to have done for edward would have been to let him sink down until he became a tramp of gentlemanly address, having, maybe, chance love affairs upon the highways. he would have done so much less harm; he would have been much less agonized too. at any rate, he would have had fewer chances of ruining and of remorse. for edward was great at remorse. but leonora's english catholic conscience, her rigid principles, her coldness, even her very patience, were, i cannot help thinking, all wrong in this special case. she quite seriously and naïvely imagined that the church of rome disapproves of divorce; she quite seriously and naïvely believed that her church could be such a monstrous and imbecile institution as to expect her to take on the impossible job of making edward ashburnham a faithful husband. she had, as the english would say, the nonconformist temperament. in the united states of north america we call it the new england conscience. for, of course, that frame of mind has been driven in on the english catholics. the centuries that they have gone through�centuries of blind and malignant oppression, of ostracism from public employment, of being, as it were, a small beleagured garrison in a hostile country, and therefore having to act with great formality�all these things have combined to perform that conjuring trick. and i suppose that papists in england are even technically nonconformists. continental papists are a dirty, jovial and unscrupulous crew. but that, at least, lets them be opportunists. they would have fixed poor dear edward up all right. (forgive my writing of these monstrous things in this frivolous manner. if i did not i should break down and cry.) in milan, say, or in paris, leonora would have had her marriage dissolved in six months for two hundred dollars paid in the right quarter. and edward would have drifted about until he became a tramp of the kind i have suggested. or he would have married a barmaid who would have made him such frightful scenes in public places and would so have torn out his moustache and left visible signs upon his face that he would have been faithful to her for the rest of his days. that was what he wanted to redeem him.... for, along with his passions and his shames there went the dread of scenes in public places, of outcry, of excited physical violence; of publicity, in short. yes, the barmaid would have cured him. and it would have been all the better if she drank; he would have been kept busy looking after her. i know that i am right in this. i know it because of the kilsyte case. you see, the servant girl that he then kissed was nurse in the family of the nonconformist head of the county�whatever that post may be called. and that gentleman was so determined to ruin edward, who was the chairman of the tory caucus, or whatever it is�that the poor dear sufferer had the very devil of a time. they asked questions about it in the house of commons; they tried to get the hampshire magistrates degraded; they suggested to the war ministry that edward was not the proper person to hold the king's commission. yes, he got it hot and strong. the result you have heard. he was completely cured of philandering amongst the lower classes. and that seemed a real blessing to leonora. it did not revolt her so much to be connected�it is a sort of connection�with people like mrs maidan, instead of with a little kitchenmaid. in a dim sort of way, leonora was almost contented when she arrived at nauheim, that evening.... she had got things nearly straight by the long years of scraping in little stations in chitral and burma�stations where living is cheap in comparison with the life of a county magnate, and where, moreover, liaisons of one sort or another are normal and inexpensive too. so that, when mrs maidan came along�and the maidan affair might have caused trouble out there because of the youth of the husband�leonora had just resigned herself to coming home. with pushing and scraping and with letting branshaw teleragh, and with selling a picture and a relic of charles i or so, she had got�and, poor dear, she had never had a really decent dress to her back in all those years and years�she had got, as she imagined, her poor dear husband back into much the same financial position as had been his before the mistress of the grand duke had happened along. and, of course, edward himself had helped her a little on the financial side. he was a fellow that many men liked. he was so presentable and quite ready to lend you his cigar puncher�that sort of thing. so, every now and then some financier whom he met about would give him a good, sound, profitable tip. and leonora was never afraid of a bit of a gamble�english papists seldom are, i do not know why. so nearly all her investment turned up trumps, and edward was really in fit case to reopen branshaw manor and once more to assume his position in the county. thus leonora had accepted maisie maidan almost with resignation�almost with a sigh of relief. she really liked the poor child�she had to like somebody. and, at any rate, she felt she could trust maisie�she could trust her not to rook edward for several thousands a week, for maisie had refused to accept so much as a trinket ring from him. it is true that edward gurgled and raved about the girl in a way that she had never yet experienced. but that, too, was almost a relief. i think she would really have welcomed it if he could have come across the love of his life. it would have given her a rest. and there could not have been anyone better than poor little mrs maidan; she was so ill she could not want to be taken on expensive jaunts.... it was leonora herself who paid maisie's expenses to nauheim. she handed over the money to the boy husband, for maisie would never have allowed it; but the husband was in agonies of fear. poor devil! i fancy that, on the voyage from india, leonora was as happy as ever she had been in her life. edward was wrapped up, completely, in his girl�he was almost like a father with a child, trotting about with rugs and physic and things, from deck to deck. he behaved, however, with great circumspection, so that nothing leaked through to the other passengers. and leonora had almost attained to the attitude of a mother towards mrs maidan. so it had looked very well�the benevolent, wealthy couple of good people, acting as saviours to the poor, dark-eyed, dying young thing. and that attitude of leonora's towards mrs maidan no doubt partly accounted for the smack in the face. she was hitting a naughty child who had been stealing chocolates at an inopportune moment. it was certainly an inopportune moment. for, with the opening of that blackmailing letter from that injured brother officer, all the old terrors had redescended upon leonora. her road had again seemed to stretch out endless; she imagined that there might be hundreds and hundreds of such things that edward was concealing from her�that they might necessitate more mortgagings, more pawnings of bracelets, more and always more horrors. she had spent an excruciating afternoon. the matter was one of a divorce case, of course, and she wanted to avoid publicity as much as edward did, so that she saw the necessity of continuing the payments. and she did not so much mind that. they could find three hundred a year. but it was the horror of there being more such obligations. she had had no conversation with edward for many years�none that went beyond the mere arrangements for taking trains or engaging servants. but that afternoon she had to let him have it. and he had been just the same as ever. it was like opening a book after a decade to find the words the same. he had the same motives. he had not wished to tell her about the case because he had not wished her to sully her mind with the idea that there was such a thing as a brother officer who could be a blackmailer�and he had wanted to protect the credit of his old light of love. that lady was certainly not concerned with her husband. and he swore, and swore, and swore, that there was nothing else in the world against him. she did not believe him. he had done it once too often�and she was wrong for the first time, so that he acted a rather creditable part in the matter. for he went right straight out to the post-office and spent several hours in coding a telegram to his solicitor, bidding that hard-headed man to threaten to take out at once a warrant against the fellow who was on his track. he said afterwards that it was a bit too thick on poor old leonora to be ballyragged any more. that was really the last of his outstanding accounts, and he was ready to take his personal chance of the divorce court if the blackmailer turned nasty. he would face it out�the publicity, the papers, the whole bally show. those were his simple words.... he had made, however, the mistake of not telling leonora where he was going, so that, having seen him go to his room to fetch the code for the telegram, and seeing, two hours later, maisie maidan come out of his room, leonora imagined that the two hours she had spent in silent agony edward had spent with maisie maidan in his arms. that seemed to her to be too much. as a matter of fact, maisie's being in edward's room had been the result, partly of poverty, partly of pride, partly of sheer innocence. she could not, in the first place, afford a maid; she refrained as much as possible from sending the hotel servants on errands, since every penny was of importance to her, and she feared to have to pay high tips at the end of her stay. edward had lent her one of his fascinating cases containing fifteen different sizes of scissors, and, having seen from her window, his departure for the post-office, she had taken the opportunity of returning the case. she could not see why she should not, though she felt a certain remorse at the thought that she had kissed the pillows of his bed. that was the way it took her. but leonora could see that, without the shadow of a doubt, the incident gave florence a hold over her. it let florence into things and florence was the only created being who had any idea that the ashburnhams were not just good people with nothing to their tails. she determined at once, not so much to give florence the privilege of her intimacy�which would have been the payment of a kind of blackmail�as to keep florence under observation until she could have demonstrated to florence that she was not in the least jealous of poor maisie. so that was why she had entered the dining-room arm in arm with my wife, and why she had so markedly planted herself at our table. she never left us, indeed, for a minute that night, except just to run up to mrs maidan's room to beg her pardon and to beg her also to let edward take her very markedly out into the gardens that night. she said herself, when mrs maidan came rather wistfully down into the lounge where we were all sitting: "now, edward, get up and take maisie to the casino. i want mrs dowell to tell me all about the families in connecticut who came from fordingbridge." for it had been discovered that florence came of a line that had actually owned branshaw teleragh for two centuries before the ashburnhams came there. and there she sat with me in that hall, long after florence had gone to bed, so that i might witness her gay reception of that pair. she could play up. and that enables me to fix exactly the day of our going to the town of m��. for it was the very day poor mrs maidan died. we found her dead when we got back�pretty awful, that, when you come to figure out what it all means.... at any rate the measure of my relief when leonora said that she was an irish catholic gives you the measure of my affection for that couple. it was an affection so intense that even to this day i cannot think of edward without sighing. i do not believe that i could have gone on any more with them. i was getting too tired. and i verily believe, too, if my suspicion that leonora was jealous of florence had been the reason she gave for her outburst i should have turned upon florence with the maddest kind of rage. jealousy would have been incurable. but florence's mere silly jibes at the irish and at the catholics could be apologized out of existence. and that i appeared to fix up in two minutes or so. she looked at me for a long time rather fixedly and queerly while i was doing it. and at last i worked myself up to saying: "do accept the situation. i confess that i do not like your religion. but i like you so intensely. i don't mind saying that i have never had anyone to be really fond of, and i do not believe that anyone has ever been fond of me, as i believe you really to be." "oh, i'm fond enough of you," she said. "fond enough to say that i wish every man was like you. but there are others to be considered." she was thinking, as a matter of fact, of poor maisie. she picked a little piece of pellitory out of the breast-high wall in front of us. she chafed it for a long minute between her finger and thumb, then she threw it over the coping. "oh, i accept the situation," she said at last, "if you can." vi i remember laughing at the phrase, "accept the situation", which she seemed to repeat with a gravity too intense. i said to her something like: "it's hardly as much as that. i mean, that i must claim the liberty of a free american citizen to think what i please about your co-religionists. and i suppose that florence must have liberty to think what she pleases and to say what politeness allows her to say." "she had better," leonora answered, "not say one single word against my people or my faith." it struck me at the time, that there was an unusual, an almost threatening, hardness in her voice. it was almost as if she were trying to convey to florence, through me, that she would seriously harm my wife if florence went to something that was an extreme. yes, i remember thinking at the time that it was almost as if leonora were saying, through me to florence: "you may outrage me as you will; you may take all that i personally possess, but do not you care to say one single thing in view of the situation that that will set up�against the faith that makes me become the doormat for your feet." but obviously, as i saw it, that could not be her meaning. good people, be they ever so diverse in creed, do not threaten each other. so that i read leonora's words to mean just no more than: "it would be better if florence said nothing at all against my co- religionists, because it is a point that i am touchy about." that was the hint that, accordingly, i conveyed to florence when, shortly afterwards, she and edward came down from the tower. and i want you to understand that, from that moment until after edward and the girl and florence were all dead together, i had never the remotest glimpse, not the shadow of a suspicion, that there was anything wrong, as the saying is. for five minutes, then, i entertained the possibility that leonora might be jealous; but there was never another flicker in that flame-like personality. how in the world should i get it? for, all that time, i was just a male sick nurse. and what chance had i against those three hardened gamblers, who were all in league to conceal their hands from me? what earthly chance? they were three to one�and they made me happy. oh god, they made me so happy that i doubt if even paradise, that shall smooth out all temporal wrongs, shall ever give me the like. and what could they have done better, or what could they have done that could have been worse? i don't know.... i suppose that, during all that time i was a deceived husband and that leonora was pimping for edward. that was the cross that she had to take up during her long calvary of a life.... you ask how it feels to be a deceived husband. just heavens, i do not know. it feels just nothing at all. it is not hell, certainly it is not necessarily heaven. so i suppose it is the intermediate stage. what do they call it? limbo. no, i feel nothing at all about that. they are dead; they have gone before their judge who, i hope, will open to them the springs of his compassion. it is not my business to think about it. it is simply my business to say, as leonora's people say: "requiem aeternam dona eis, domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. in memoria aeterna erit...." but what were they? the just? the unjust? god knows! i think that the pair of them were only poor wretches, creeping over this earth in the shadow of an eternal wrath. it is very terrible.... it is almost too terrible, the picture of that judgement, as it appears to me sometimes, at nights. it is probably the suggestion of some picture that i have seen somewhere. but upon an immense plain, suspended in mid-air, i seem to see three figures, two of them clasped close in an intense embrace, and one intolerably solitary. it is in black and white, my picture of that judgement, an etching, perhaps; only i cannot tell an etching from a photographic reproduction. and the immense plain is the hand of god, stretching out for miles and miles, with great spaces above it and below it. and they are in the sight of god, and it is florence that is alone.... and, do you know, at the thought of that intense solitude i feel an overwhelming desire to rush forward and comfort her. you cannot, you see, have acted as nurse to a person for twelve years without wishing to go on nursing them, even though you hate them with the hatred of the adder, and even in the palm of god. but, in the nights, with that vision of judgement before me, i know that i hold myself back. for i hate florence. i hate florence with such a hatred that i would not spare her an eternity of loneliness. she need not have done what she did. she was an american, a new englander. she had not the hot passions of these europeans. she cut out that poor imbecile of an edward�and i pray god that he is really at peace, clasped close in the arms of that poor, poor girl! and, no doubt, maisie maidan will find her young husband again, and leonora will burn, clear and serene, a northern light and one of the archangels of god. and me.... well, perhaps, they will find me an elevator to run.... but florence... . she should not have done it. she should not have done it. it was playing it too low down. she cut out poor dear edward from sheer vanity; she meddled between him and leonora from a sheer, imbecile spirit of district visiting. do you understand that, whilst she was edward's mistress, she was perpetually trying to reunite him to his wife? she would gabble on to leonora about forgiveness�treating the subject from the bright, american point of view. and leonora would treat her like the whore she was. once she said to florence in the early morning: "you come to me straight out of his bed to tell me that that is my proper place. i know it, thank you." but even that could not stop florence. she went on saying that it was her ambition to leave this world a little brighter by the passage of her brief life, and how thankfully she would leave edward, whom she thought she had brought to a right frame of mind, if leonora would only give him a chance. he needed, she said, tenderness beyond anything. and leonora would answer�for she put up with this outrage for years�leonora, as i understand, would answer something like: "yes, you would give him up. and you would go on writing to each other in secret, and committing adultery in hired rooms. i know the pair of you, you know. no. i prefer the situation as it is." half the time florence would ignore leonora's remarks. she would think they were not quite ladylike. the other half of the time she would try to persuade leonora that her love for edward was quite spiritual�on account of her heart. once she said: "if you can believe that of maisie maidan, as you say you do, why cannot you believe it of me?" leonora was, i understand, doing her hair at that time in front of the mirror in her bedroom. and she looked round at florence, to whom she did not usually vouchsafe a glance,�she looked round coolly and calmly, and said: "never do you dare to mention mrs maidan's name again. you murdered her. you and i murdered her between us. i am as much a scoundrel as you. i don't like to be reminded of it." florence went off at once into a babble of how could she have hurt a person whom she hardly knew, a person whom with the best intentions, in pursuance of her efforts to leave the world a little brighter, she had tried to save from edward. that was how she figured it out to herself. she really thought that.... so leonora said patiently: "very well, just put it that i killed her and that it's a painful subject. one does not like to think that one had killed someone. naturally not. i ought never to have brought her from india." and that, indeed, is exactly how leonora looked at it. it is stated a little baldly, but leonora was always a great one for bald statements. what had happened on the day of our jaunt to the ancient city of m�� had been this: leonora, who had been even then filled with pity and contrition for the poor child, on returning to our hotel had gone straight to mrs maidan's room. she had wanted just to pet her. and she had perceived at first only, on the clear, round table covered with red velvet, a letter addressed to her. it ran something like: "oh, mrs ashburnham, how could you have done it? i trusted you so. you never talked to me about me and edward, but i trusted you. how could you buy me from my husband? i have just heard how you have�in the hall they were talking about it, edward and the american lady. you paid the money for me to come here. oh, how could you? how could you? i am going straight back to bunny...." bunny was mrs maidan's husband. and leonora said that, as she went on reading the letter, she had, without looking round her, a sense that that hotel room was cleared, that there were no papers on the table, that there were no clothes on the hooks, and that there was a strained silence�a silence, she said, as if there were something in the room that drank up such sounds as there were. she had to fight against that feeling, whilst she read the postscript of the letter. "i did not know you wanted me for an adulteress," the postscript began. the poor child was hardly literate. "it was surely not right of you and i never wanted to be one. and i heard edward call me a poor little rat to the american lady. he always called me a little rat in private, and i did not mind. but, if he called me it to her, i think he does not love me any more. oh, mrs ashburnham, you knew the world and i knew nothing. i thought it would be all right if you thought it could, and i thought you would not have brought me if you did not, too. you should not have done it, and we out of the same convent...." leonora said that she screamed when she read that. and then she saw that maisie's boxes were all packed, and she began a search for mrs maidan herself�all over the hotel. the manager said that mrs maidan had paid her bill, and had gone up to the station to ask the reiseverkehrsbureau to make her out a plan for her immediate return to chitral. he imagined that he had seen her come back, but he was not quite certain. no one in the large hotel had bothered his head about the child. and she, wandering solitarily in the hall, had no doubt sat down beside a screen that had edward and florence on the other side. i never heard then or after what had passed between that precious couple. i fancy florence was just about beginning her cutting out of poor dear edward by addressing to him some words of friendly warning as to the ravages he might be making in the girl's heart. that would be the sort of way she would begin. and edward would have sentimentally assured her that there was nothing in it; that maisie was just a poor little rat whose passage to nauheim his wife had paid out of her own pocket. that would have been enough to do the trick. for the trick was pretty efficiently done. leonora, with panic growing and with contrition very large in her heart, visited every one of the public rooms of the hotel�the dining-room, the lounge, the schreibzimmer, the winter garden. god knows what they wanted with a winter garden in an hotel that is only open from may till october. but there it was. and then leonora ran�yes, she ran up the stairs�to see if maisie had not returned to her rooms. she had determined to take that child right away from that hideous place. it seemed to her to be all unspeakable. i do not mean to say that she was not quite cool about it. leonora was always leonora. but the cold justice of the thing demanded that she should play the part of mother to this child who had come from the same convent. she figured it out to amount to that. she would leave edward to florence and to me�and she would devote all her time to providing that child with an atmosphere of love until she could be returned to her poor young husband. it was naturally too late. she had not cared to look round maisie's rooms at first. now, as soon as she came in, she perceived, sticking out beyond the bed, a small pair of feet in high-heeled shoes. maisie had died in the effort to strap up a great portmanteau. she had died so grotesquely that her little body had fallen forward into the trunk, and it had closed upon her, like the jaws of a gigantic alligator. the key was in her hand. her dark hair, like the hair of a japanese, had come down and covered her body and her face. leonora lifted her up�she was the merest featherweight�and laid her on the bed with her hair about her. she was smiling, as if she had just scored a goal in a hockey match. you understand she had not committed suicide. her heart had just stopped. i saw her, with the long lashes on the cheeks, with the smile about the lips, with the flowers all about her. the stem of a white lily rested in her hand so that the spike of flowers was upon her shoulder. she looked like a bride in the sunlight of the mortuary candles that were all about her, and the white coifs of the two nuns that knelt at her feet with their faces hidden might have been two swans that were to bear her away to kissing-kindness land, or wherever it is. leonora showed her to me. she would not let either of the others see her. she wanted, you know, to spare poor dear edward's feelings. he never could bear the sight of a corpse. and, since she never gave him an idea that maisie had written to her, he imagined that the death had been the most natural thing in the world. he soon got over it. indeed, it was the one affair of his about which he never felt much remorse. part ii i the death of mrs maidan occurred on the th of august, . and then nothing happened until the th of august, . there is the curious coincidence of dates, but i do not know whether that is one of those sinister, as if half jocular and altogether merciless proceedings on the part of a cruel providence that we call a coincidence. because it may just as well have been the superstitious mind of florence that forced her to certain acts, as if she had been hypnotized. it is, however, certain that the th of august always proved a significant date for her. to begin with, she was born on the th of august. then, on that date, in the year , she set out with her uncle for the tour round the world in company with a young man called jimmy. but that was not merely a coincidence. her kindly old uncle, with the supposedly damaged heart, was in his delicate way, offering her, in this trip, a birthday present to celebrate her coming of age. then, on the th of august, , she yielded to an action that certainly coloured her whole life�as well as mine. she had no luck. she was probably offering herself a birthday present that morning.... on the th of august, , she married me, and set sail for europe in a great gale of wind�the gale that affected her heart. and no doubt there, again, she was offering herself a birthday gift�the birthday gift of my miserable life. it occurs to me that i have never told you anything about my marriage. that was like this: i have told you, as i think, that i first met florence at the stuyvesants', in fourteenth street. and, from that moment, i determined with all the obstinacy of a possibly weak nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her. i had no occupation�i had no business affairs. i simply camped down there in stamford, in a vile hotel, and just passed my days in the house, or on the verandah of the misses hurlbird. the misses hurlbird, in an odd, obstinate way, did not like my presence. but they were hampered by the national manners of these occasions. florence had her own sitting-room. she could ask to it whom she liked, and i simply walked into that apartment. i was as timid as you will, but in that matter i was like a chicken that is determined to get across the road in front of an automobile. i would walk into florence's pretty, little, old-fashioned room, take off my hat, and sit down. florence had, of course, several other fellows, too�strapping young new englanders, who worked during the day in new york and spent only the evenings in the village of their birth. and, in the evenings, they would march in on florence with almost as much determination as i myself showed. and i am bound to say that they were received with as much disfavour as was my portion�from the misses hurlbird.... they were curious old creatures, those two. it was almost as if they were members of an ancient family under some curse�they were so gentlewomanly, so proper, and they sighed so. sometimes i would see tears in their eyes. i do not know that my courtship of florence made much progress at first. perhaps that was because it took place almost entirely during the daytime, on hot afternoons, when the clouds of dust hung like fog, right up as high as the tops of the thin-leaved elms. the night, i believe, is the proper season for the gentle feats of love, not a connecticut july afternoon, when any sort of proximity is an almost appalling thought. but, if i never so much as kissed florence, she let me discover very easily, in the course of a fortnight, her simple wants. and i could supply those wants.... she wanted to marry a gentleman of leisure; she wanted a european establishment. she wanted her husband to have an english accent, an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from real estate and no ambitions to increase that income. and�she faintly hinted�she did not want much physical passion in the affair. americans, you know, can envisage such unions without blinking. she gave out this information in floods of bright talk�she would pop a little bit of it into comments over a view of the rialto, venice, and, whilst she was brightly describing balmoral castle, she would say that her ideal husband would be one who could get her received at the british court. she had spent, it seemed, two months in great britain�seven weeks in touring from stratford to strathpeffer, and one as paying guest in an old english family near ledbury, an impoverished, but still stately family, called bagshawe. they were to have spent two months more in that tranquil bosom, but inopportune events, apparently in her uncle's business, had caused their rather hurried return to stamford. the young man called jimmy had remained in europe to perfect his knowledge of that continent. he certainly did: he was most useful to us afterwards. but the point that came out�that there was no mistaking�was that florence was coldly and calmly determined to take no look at any man who could not give her a european settlement. her glimpse of english home life had effected this. she meant, on her marriage, to have a year in paris, and then to have her husband buy some real estate in the neighbourhood of fordingbridge, from which place the hurlbirds had come in the year . on the strength of that she was going to take her place in the ranks of english county society. that was fixed. i used to feel mightily elevated when i considered these details, for i could not figure out that amongst her acquaintances in stamford there was any fellow that would fill the bill. the most of them were not as wealthy as i, and those that were were not the type to give up the fascinations of wall street even for the protracted companionship of florence. but nothing really happened during the month of july. on the st of august florence apparently told her aunts that she intended to marry me. she had not told me so, but there was no doubt about the aunts, for, on that afternoon, miss florence hurlbird, senior, stopped me on my way to florence's sitting-room and took me, agitatedly, into the parlour. it was a singular interview, in that old-fashioned colonial room, with the spindle-legged furniture, the silhouettes, the miniatures, the portrait of general braddock, and the smell of lavender. you see, the two poor maiden ladies were in agonies�and they could not say one single thing direct. they would almost wring their hands and ask if i had considered such a thing as different temperaments. i assure you they were almost affectionate, concerned for me even, as if florence were too bright for my solid and serious virtues. for they had discovered in me solid and serious virtues. that might have been because i had once dropped the remark that i preferred general braddock to general washington. for the hurlbirds had backed the losing side in the war of independence, and had been seriously impoverished and quite efficiently oppressed for that reason. the misses hurlbird could never forget it. nevertheless they shuddered at the thought of a european career for myself and florence. each of them really wailed when they heard that that was what i hoped to give their niece. that may have been partly because they regarded europe as a sink of iniquity, where strange laxities prevailed. they thought the mother country as erastian as any other. and they carried their protests to extraordinary lengths, for them.... they even, almost, said that marriage was a sacrament; but neither miss florence nor miss emily could quite bring herself to utter the word. and they almost brought themselves to say that florence's early life had been characterized by flirtations�something of that sort. i know i ended the interview by saying: "i don't care. if florence has robbed a bank i am going to marry her and take her to europe." and at that miss emily wailed and fainted. but miss florence, in spite of the state of her sister, threw herself on my neck and cried out: "don't do it, john. don't do it. you're a good young man," and she added, whilst i was getting out of the room to send florence to her aunt's rescue: "we ought to tell you more. but she's our dear sister's child." florence, i remember, received me with a chalk-pale face and the exclamation: "have those old cats been saying anything against me?" but i assured her that they had not and hurried her into the room of her strangely afflicted relatives. i had really forgotten all about that exclamation of florence's until this moment. she treated me so very well�with such tact�that, if i ever thought of it afterwards i put it down to her deep affection for me. and that evening, when i went to fetch her for a buggy-ride, she had disappeared. i did not lose any time. i went into new york and engaged berths on the "pocahontas", that was to sail on the evening of the fourth of the month, and then, returning to stamford, i tracked out, in the course of the day, that florence had been driven to rye station. and there i found that she had taken the cars to waterbury. she had, of course, gone to her uncle's. the old man received me with a stony, husky face. i was not to see florence; she was ill; she was keeping her room. and, from something that he let drop�an odd biblical phrase that i have forgotten�i gathered that all that family simply did not intend her to marry ever in her life. i procured at once the name of the nearest minister and a rope ladder�you have no idea how primitively these matters were arranged in those days in the united states. i daresay that may be so still. and at one o'clock in the morning of the th of august i was standing in florence's bedroom. i was so one-minded in my purpose that it never struck me there was anything improper in being, at one o'clock in the morning, in florence's bedroom. i just wanted to wake her up. she was not, however, asleep. she expected me, and her relatives had only just left her. she received me with an embrace of a warmth.... well, it was the first time i had ever been embraced by a woman�and it was the last when a woman's embrace has had in it any warmth for me.... i suppose it was my own fault, what followed. at any rate, i was in such a hurry to get the wedding over, and was so afraid of her relatives finding me there, that i must have received her advances with a certain amount of absence of mind. i was out of that room and down the ladder in under half a minute. she kept me waiting at the foot an unconscionable time�it was certainly three in the morning before we knocked up that minister. and i think that that wait was the only sign florence ever showed of having a conscience as far as i was concerned, unless her lying for some moments in my arms was also a sign of conscience. i fancy that, if i had shown warmth then, she would have acted the proper wife to me, or would have put me back again. but, because i acted like a philadelphia gentleman, she made me, i suppose, go through with the part of a male nurse. perhaps she thought that i should not mind. after that, as i gather, she had not any more remorse. she was only anxious to carry out her plans. for, just before she came down the ladder, she called me to the top of that grotesque implement that i went up and down like a tranquil jumping-jack. i was perfectly collected. she said to me with a certain fierceness: "it is determined that we sail at four this afternoon? you are not lying about having taken berths?" i understood that she would naturally be anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of her apparently insane relatives, so that i readily excused her for thinking that i should be capable of lying about such a thing. i made it, therefore, plain to her that it was my fixed determination to sail by the "pocahontas". she said then�it was a moonlit morning, and she was whispering in my ear whilst i stood on the ladder. the hills that surround waterbury showed, extraordinarily tranquil, around the villa. she said, almost coldly: "i wanted to know, so as to pack my trunks." and she added: "i may be ill, you know. i guess my heart is a little like uncle hurlbird's. it runs in families." i whispered that the "pocahontas" was an extraordinarily steady boat.... now i wonder what had passed through florence's mind during the two hours that she had kept me waiting at the foot of the ladder. i would give not a little to know. till then, i fancy she had had no settled plan in her mind. she certainly never mentioned her heart till that time. perhaps the renewed sight of her uncle hurlbird had given her the idea. certainly her aunt emily, who had come over with her to waterbury, would have rubbed into her, for hours and hours, the idea that any accentuated discussions would kill the old gentleman. that would recall to her mind all the safeguards against excitement with which the poor silly old gentleman had been hedged in during their trip round the world. that, perhaps, put it into her head. still, i believe there was some remorse on my account, too. leonora told me that florence said there was�for leonora knew all about it, and once went so far as to ask her how she could do a thing so infamous. she excused herself on the score of an overmastering passion. well, i always say that an overmastering passion is a good excuse for feelings. you cannot help them. and it is a good excuse for straight actions�she might have bolted with the fellow, before or after she married me. and, if they had not enough money to get along with, they might have cut their throats, or sponged on her family, though, of course, florence wanted such a lot that it would have suited her very badly to have for a husband a clerk in a dry-goods store, which was what old hurlbird would have made of that fellow. he hated him. no, i do not think that there is much excuse for florence. god knows. she was a frightened fool, and she was fantastic, and i suppose that, at that time, she really cared for that imbecile. he certainly didn't care for her. poor thing.... at any rate, after i had assured her that the "pocahontas" was a steady ship, she just said: "you'll have to look after me in certain ways�like uncle hurlbird is looked after. i will tell you how to do it." and then she stepped over the sill, as if she were stepping on board a boat. i suppose she had burnt hers! i had, no doubt, eye-openers enough. when we re-entered the hurlbird mansion at eight o'clock the hurlbirds were just exhausted. florence had a hard, triumphant air. we had got married about four in the morning and had sat about in the woods above the town till then, listening to a mocking-bird imitate an old tom-cat. so i guess florence had not found getting married to me a very stimulating process. i had not found anything much more inspiring to say than how glad i was, with variations. i think i was too dazed. well, the hurlbirds were too dazed to say much. we had breakfast together, and then florence went to pack her grips and things. old hurlbird took the opportunity to read me a full-blooded lecture, in the style of an american oration, as to the perils for young american girlhood lurking in the european jungle. he said that paris was full of snakes in the grass, of which he had had bitter experience. he concluded, as they always do, poor, dear old things, with the aspiration that all american women should one day be sexless�though that is not the way they put it.. .. well, we made the ship all right by one-thirty�and there was a tempest blowing. that helped florence a good deal. for we were not ten minutes out from sandy hook before florence went down into her cabin and her heart took her. an agitated stewardess came running up to me, and i went running down. i got my directions how to behave to my wife. most of them came from her, though it was the ship doctor who discreetly suggested to me that i had better refrain from manifestations of affection. i was ready enough. i was, of course, full of remorse. it occurred to me that her heart was the reason for the hurlbirds' mysterious desire to keep their youngest and dearest unmarried. of course, they would be too refined to put the motive into words. they were old stock new englanders. they would not want to have to suggest that a husband must not kiss the back of his wife's neck. they would not like to suggest that he might, for the matter of that. i wonder, though, how florence got the doctor to enter the conspiracy�the several doctors. of course her heart squeaked a bit�she had the same configuration of the lungs as her uncle hurlbird. and, in his company, she must have heard a great deal of heart talk from specialists. anyhow, she and they tied me pretty well down�and jimmy, of course, that dreary boy�what in the world did she see in him? he was lugubrious, silent, morose. he had no talent as a painter. he was very sallow and dark, and he never shaved sufficiently. he met us at havre, and he proceeded to make himself useful for the next two years, during which he lived in our flat in paris, whether we were there or not. he studied painting at julien's, or some such place.... that fellow had his hands always in the pockets of his odious, square- shouldered, broad-hipped, american coats, and his dark eyes were always full of ominous appearances. he was, besides, too fat. why, i was much the better man.... and i daresay florence would have given me the better. she showed signs of it. i think, perhaps, the enigmatic smile with which she used to look back at me over her shoulder when she went into the bathing place was a sort of invitation. i have mentioned that. it was as if she were saying: "i am going in here. i am going to stand so stripped and white and straight�and you are a man...." perhaps it was that.... no, she cannot have liked that fellow long. he looked like sallow putty. i understand that he had been slim and dark and very graceful at the time of her first disgrace. but, loafing about in paris, on her pocket- money and on the allowance that old hurlbird made him to keep out of the united states, had given him a stomach like a man of forty, and dyspeptic irritation on top of it. god, how they worked me! it was those two between them who really elaborated the rules. i have told you something about them�how i had to head conversations, for all those eleven years, off such topics as love, poverty, crime, and so on. but, looking over what i have written, i see that i have unintentionally misled you when i said that florence was never out of my sight. yet that was the impression that i really had until just now. when i come to think of it she was out of my sight most of the time. you see, that fellow impressed upon me that what florence needed most of all were sleep and privacy. i must never enter her room without knocking, or her poor little heart might flutter away to its doom. he said these things with his lugubrious croak, and his black eyes like a crow's, so that i seemed to see poor florence die ten times a day�a little, pale, frail corpse. why, i would as soon have thought of entering her room without her permission as of burgling a church. i would sooner have committed that crime. i would certainly have done it if i had thought the state of her heart demanded the sacrilege. so at ten o'clock at night the door closed upon florence, who had gently, and, as if reluctantly, backed up that fellow's recommendations; and she would wish me good night as if she were a cinquecento italian lady saying good-bye to her lover. and at ten o'clock of the next morning there she would come out the door of her room as fresh as venus rising from any of the couches that are mentioned in greek legends. her room door was locked because she was nervous about thieves; but an electric contrivance on a cord was understood to be attached to her little wrist. she had only to press a bulb to raise the house. and i was provided with an axe�an axe!�great gods, with which to break down her door in case she ever failed to answer my knock, after i knocked really loud several times. it was pretty well thought out, you see. what wasn't so well thought out were the ultimate consequences�our being tied to europe. for that young man rubbed it so well into me that florence would die if she crossed the channel�he impressed it so fully on my mind that, when later florence wanted to go to fordingbridge, i cut the proposal short�absolutely short, with a curt no. it fixed her and it frightened her. i was even backed up by all the doctors. i seemed to have had endless interviews with doctor after doctor, cool, quiet men, who would ask, in reasonable tones, whether there was any reason for our going to england�any special reason. and since i could not see any special reason, they would give the verdict: "better not, then." i daresay they were honest enough, as things go. they probably imagined that the mere associations of the steamer might have effects on florence's nerves. that would be enough, that and a conscientious desire to keep our money on the continent. it must have rattled poor florence pretty considerably, for you see, the main idea�the only main idea of her heart, that was otherwise cold�was to get to fordingbridge and be a county lady in the home of her ancestors. but jimmy got her, there: he shut on her the door of the channel; even on the fairest day of blue sky, with the cliffs of england shining like mother of pearl in full view of calais, i would not have let her cross the steamer gangway to save her life. i tell you it fixed her. it fixed her beautifully, because she could not announce herself as cured, since that would have put an end to the locked bedroom arrangements. and, by the time she was sick of jimmy�which happened in the year �she had taken on edward ashburnham. yes, it was a bad fix for her, because edward could have taken her to fordingbridge, and, though he could not give her branshaw manor, that home of her ancestors being settled on his wife, she could at least have pretty considerably queened it there or thereabouts, what with our money and the support of the ashburnhams. her uncle, as soon as he considered that she had really settled down with me�and i sent him only the most glowing accounts of her virtue and constancy�made over to her a very considerable part of his fortune for which he had no use. i suppose that we had, between us, fifteen thousand a year in english money, though i never quite knew how much of hers went to jimmy. at any rate, we could have shone in fordingbridge. i never quite knew, either, how she and edward got rid of jimmy. i fancy that fat and disreputable raven must have had his six golden front teeth knocked down his throat by edward one morning whilst i had gone out to buy some flowers in the rue de la paix, leaving florence and the flat in charge of those two. and serve him very right, is all that i can say. he was a bad sort of blackmailer; i hope florence does not have his company in the next world. as god is my judge, i do not believe that i would have separated those two if i had known that they really and passionately loved each other. i do not know where the public morality of the case comes in, and, of course, no man really knows what he would have done in any given case. but i truly believe that i would have united them, observing ways and means as decent as i could. i believe that i should have given them money to live upon and that i should have consoled myself somehow. at that date i might have found some young thing, like maisie maidan, or the poor girl, and i might have had some peace. for peace i never had with florence, and hardly believe that i cared for her in the way of love after a year or two of it. she became for me a rare and fragile object, something burdensome, but very frail. why it was as if i had been given a thin-shelled pullet's egg to carry on my palm from equatorial africa to hoboken. yes, she became for me, as it were, the subject of a bet�the trophy of an athlete's achievement, a parsley crown that is the symbol of his chastity, his soberness, his abstentions, and of his inflexible will. of intrinsic value as a wife, i think she had none at all for me. i fancy i was not even proud of the way she dressed. but her passion for jimmy was not even a passion, and, mad as the suggestion may appear, she was frightened for her life. yes, she was afraid of me. i will tell you how that happened. i had, in the old days, a darky servant, called julius, who valeted me, and waited on me, and loved me, like the crown of his head. now, when we left waterbury to go to the "pocahontas", florence entrusted to me one very special and very precious leather grip. she told me that her life might depend on that grip, which contained her drugs against heart attacks. and, since i was never much of a hand at carrying things, i entrusted this, in turn, to julius, who was a grey-haired chap of sixty or so, and very picturesque at that. he made so much impression on florence that she regarded him as a sort of father, and absolutely refused to let me take him to paris. he would have inconvenienced her. well, julius was so overcome with grief at being left behind that he must needs go and drop the precious grip. i saw red, i saw purple. i flew at julius. on the ferry, it was, i filled up one of his eyes; i threatened to strangle him. and, since an unresisting negro can make a deplorable noise and a deplorable spectacle, and, since that was florence's first adventure in the married state, she got a pretty idea of my character. it affirmed in her the desperate resolve to conceal from me the fact that she was not what she would have called "a pure woman". for that was really the mainspring of her fantastic actions. she was afraid that i should murder her.... so she got up the heart attack, at the earliest possible opportunity, on board the liner. perhaps she was not so very much to be blamed. you must remember that she was a new englander, and that new england had not yet come to loathe darkies as it does now. whereas, if she had come from even so little south as philadelphia, and had been an oldish family, she would have seen that for me to kick julius was not so outrageous an act as for her cousin, reggie hurlbird, to say�as i have heard him say to his english butler�that for two cents he would bat him on the pants. besides, the medicine-grip did not bulk as largely in her eyes as it did in mine, where it was the symbol of the existence of an adored wife of a day. to her it was just a useful lie.... well, there you have the position, as clear as i can make it�the husband an ignorant fool, the wife a cold sensualist with imbecile fears�for i was such a fool that i should never have known what she was or was not�and the blackmailing lover. and then the other lover came along.... well, edward ashburnham was worth having. have i conveyed to you the splendid fellow that he was�the fine soldier, the excellent landlord, the extraordinarily kind, careful and industrious magistrate, the upright, honest, fair-dealing, fair-thinking, public character? i suppose i have not conveyed it to you. the truth is, that i never knew it until the poor girl came along�the poor girl who was just as straight, as splendid and as upright as he. i swear she was. i suppose i ought to have known. i suppose that was, really, why i liked him so much�so infinitely much. come to think of it, i can remember a thousand little acts of kindliness, of thoughtfulness for his inferiors, even on the continent. look here, i know of two families of dirty, unpicturesque, hessian paupers that that fellow, with an infinite patience, rooted up, got their police reports, set on their feet, or exported to my patient land. and he would do it quite inarticulately, set in motion by seeing a child crying in the street. he would wrestle with dictionaries, in that unfamiliar tongue.... well, he could not bear to see a child cry. perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions. but, although i liked him so intensely, i was rather apt to take these things for granted. they made me feel comfortable with him, good towards him; they made me trust him. but i guess i thought it was part of the character of any english gentleman. why, one day he got it into his head that the head waiter at the excelsior had been crying�the fellow with the grey face and grey whiskers. and then he spent the best part of a week, in correspondence and up at the british consul's, in getting the fellow's wife to come back from london and bring back his girl baby. she had bolted with a swiss scullion. if she had not come inside the week he would have gone to london himself to fetch her. he was like that. edward ashburnham was like that, and i thought it was only the duty of his rank and station. perhaps that was all that it was�but i pray god to make me discharge mine as well. and, but for the poor girl, i daresay that i should never have seen it, however much the feeling might have been over me. she had for him such enthusiasm that, although even now i do not understand the technicalities of english life, i can gather enough. she was with them during the whole of our last stay at nauheim. nancy rufford was her name; she was leonora's only friend's only child, and leonora was her guardian, if that is the correct term. she had lived with the ashburnhams ever since she had been of the age of thirteen, when her mother was said to have committed suicide owing to the brutalities of her father. yes, it is a cheerful story.... edward always called her "the girl", and it was very pretty, the evident affection he had for her and she for him. and leonora's feet she would have kissed�those two were for her the best man and the best woman on earth�and in heaven. i think that she had not a thought of evil in her head�the poor girl.... well, anyhow, she chanted edward's praises to me for the hour together, but, as i have said, i could not make much of it. it appeared that he had the d.s.o., and that his troop loved him beyond the love of men. you never saw such a troop as his. and he had the royal humane society's medal with a clasp. that meant, apparently, that he had twice jumped off the deck of a troopship to rescue what the girl called "tommies", who had fallen overboard in the red sea and such places. he had been twice recommended for the v.c., whatever that might mean, and, although owing to some technicalities he had never received that apparently coveted order, he had some special place about his sovereign at the coronation. or perhaps it was some post in the beefeaters'. she made him out like a cross between lohengrin and the chevalier bayard. perhaps he was.... but he was too silent a fellow to make that side of him really decorative. i remember going to him at about that time and asking him what the d.s.o. was, and he grunted out: "it's a sort of a thing they give grocers who've honourably supplied the troops with adulterated coffee in war-time"�something of that sort. he did not quite carry conviction to me, so, in the end, i put it directly to leonora. i asked her fully and squarely�prefacing the question with some remarks, such as those that i have already given you, as to the difficulty one has in really getting to know people when one's intimacy is conducted as an english acquaintanceship�i asked her whether her husband was not really a splendid fellow�along at least the lines of his public functions. she looked at me with a slightly awakened air�with an air that would have been almost startled if leonora could ever have been startled. "didn't you know?" she asked. "if i come to think of it there is not a more splendid fellow in any three counties, pick them where you will�along those lines." and she added, after she had looked at me reflectively for what seemed a long time: "to do my husband justice there could not be a better man on the earth. there would not be room for it�along those lines." "well," i said, "then he must really be lohengrin and the cid in one body. for there are not any other lines that count." again she looked at me for a long time. "it's your opinion that there are no other lines that count?" she asked slowly. "well," i answered gaily, "you're not going to accuse him of not being a good husband, or of not being a good guardian to your ward?" she spoke then, slowly, like a person who is listening to the sounds in a sea-shell held to her ear�and, would you believe it?�she told me afterwards that, at that speech of mine, for the first time she had a vague inkling of the tragedy that was to follow so soon�although the girl had lived with them for eight years or so: "oh, i'm not thinking of saying that he is not the best of husbands, or that he is not very fond of the girl." and then i said something like: "well, leonora, a man sees more of these things than even a wife. and, let me tell you, that in all the years i've known edward he has never, in your absence, paid a moment's attention to any other woman�not by the quivering of an eyelash. i should have noticed. and he talks of you as if you were one of the angels of god." "oh," she came up to the scratch, as you could be sure leonora would always come up to the scratch, "i am perfectly sure that he always speaks nicely of me." i daresay she had practice in that sort of scene�people must have been always complimenting her on her husband's fidelity and adoration. for half the world�the whole of the world that knew edward and leonora believed that his conviction in the kilsyte affair had been a miscarriage of justice�a conspiracy of false evidence, got together by nonconformist adversaries. but think of the fool that i was.... ii let me think where we were. oh, yes... that conversation took place on the th of august, . i remember saying to her that, on that day, exactly nine years before, i had made their acquaintance, so that it had seemed quite appropriate and like a birthday speech to utter my little testimonial to my friend edward. i could quite confidently say that, though we four had been about together in all sorts of places, for all that length of time, i had not, for my part, one single complaint to make of either of them. and i added, that that was an unusual record for people who had been so much together. you are not to imagine that it was only at nauheim that we met. that would not have suited florence. i find, on looking at my diaries, that on the th of september, , edward accompanied florence and myself to paris, where we put him up till the twenty-first of that month. he made another short visit to us in december of that year�the first year of our acquaintance. it must have been during this visit that he knocked mr jimmy's teeth down his throat. i daresay florence had asked him to come over for that purpose. in he was in paris three times�once with leonora, who wanted some frocks. in we spent the best part of six weeks together at mentone, and edward stayed with us in paris on his way back to london. that was how it went. the fact was that in florence the poor wretch had got hold of a tartar, compared with whom leonora was a sucking kid. he must have had a hell of a time. leonora wanted to keep him for�what shall i say�for the good of her church, as it were, to show that catholic women do not lose their men. let it go at that, for the moment. i will write more about her motives later, perhaps. but florence was sticking on to the proprietor of the home of her ancestors. no doubt he was also a very passionate lover. but i am convinced that he was sick of florence within three years of even interrupted companionship and the life that she led him.... if ever leonora so much as mentioned in a letter that they had had a woman staying with them�or, if she so much as mentioned a woman's name in a letter to me�off would go a desperate cable in cipher to that poor wretch at branshaw, commanding him on pain of an instant and horrible disclosure to come over and assure her of his fidelity. i daresay he would have faced it out; i daresay he would have thrown over florence and taken the risk of exposure. but there he had leonora to deal with. and leonora assured him that, if the minutest fragment of the real situation ever got through to my senses, she would wreak upon him the most terrible vengeance that she could think of. and he did not have a very easy job. florence called for more and more attentions from him as the time went on. she would make him kiss her at any moment of the day; and it was only by his making it plain that a divorced lady could never assume a position in the county of hampshire that he could prevent her from making a bolt of it with him in her train. oh, yes, it was a difficult job for him. for florence, if you please, gaining in time a more composed view of nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at a frame of mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me all about it�nothing less than that. she said that her situation was too unbearable with regard to me. she proposed to tell me all, secure a divorce from me, and go with edward and settle in california.... i do not suppose that she was really serious in this. it would have meant the extinction of all hopes of branshaw manor for her. besides she had got it into her head that leonora, who was as sound as a roach, was consumptive. she was always begging leonora, before me, to go and see a doctor. but, none the less, poor edward seems to have believed in her determination to carry him off. he would not have gone; he cared for his wife too much. but, if florence had put him at it, that would have meant my getting to know of it, and his incurring leonora's vengeance. and she could have made it pretty hot for him in ten or a dozen different ways. and she assured me that she would have used every one of them. she was determined to spare my feelings. and she was quite aware that, at that date, the hottest she could have made it for him would have been to refuse, herself, ever to see him again.... well, i think i have made it pretty clear. let me come to the th of august, , the last day of my absolute ignorance�and, i assure you, of my perfect happiness. for the coming of that dear girl only added to it all. on that th of august i was sitting in the lounge with a rather odious englishman called bagshawe, who had arrived that night, too late for dinner. leonora had just gone to bed and i was waiting for florence and edward and the girl to come back from a concert at the casino. they had not gone there all together. florence, i remember, had said at first that she would remain with leonora, and me, and edward and the girl had gone off alone. and then leonora had said to florence with perfect calmness: "i wish you would go with those two. i think the girl ought to have the appearance of being chaperoned with edward in these places. i think the time has come." so florence, with her light step, had slipped out after them. she was all in black for some cousin or other. americans are particular in those matters. we had gone on sitting in the lounge till towards ten, when leonora had gone up to bed. it had been a very hot day, but there it was cool. the man called bagshawe had been reading the times on the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. i fancy he asked me something about the poll-tax on kur-guests, and whether it could not be sneaked out of. he was that sort of person. well, he was an unmistakable man, with a military figure, rather exaggerated, with bulbous eyes that avoided your own, and a pallid complexion that suggested vices practised in secret along with an uneasy desire for making acquaintance at whatever cost.... the filthy toad... . he began by telling me that he came from ludlow manor, near ledbury. the name had a slightly familiar sound, though i could not fix it in my mind. then he began to talk about a duty on hops, about californian hops, about los angeles, where he had been. he fencing for a topic with which he might gain my affection. and then, quite suddenly, in the bright light of the street, i saw florence running. it was like that�i saw florence running with a face whiter than paper and her hand on the black stuff over her heart. i tell you, my own heart stood still; i tell you i could not move. she rushed in at the swing doors. she looked round that place of rush chairs, cane tables and newspapers. she saw me and opened her lips. she saw the man who was talking to me. she stuck her hands over her face as if she wished to push her eyes out. and she was not there any more. i could not move; i could not stir a finger. and then that man said: "by jove: florry hurlbird." he turned upon me with an oily and uneasy sound meant for a laugh. he was really going to ingratiate himself with me. "do you know who that is?" he asked. "the last time i saw that girl she was coming out of the bedroom of a young man called jimmy at five o'clock in the morning. in my house at ledbury. you saw her recognize me." he was standing on his feet, looking down at me. i don't know what i looked like. at any rate, he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered: "oh, i say...." those were the last words i ever heard of mr bagshawe's. a long time afterwards i pulled myself out of the lounge and went up to florence's room. she had not locked the door�for the first time of our married life. she was lying, quite respectably arranged, unlike mrs maidan, on her bed. she had a little phial that rightly should have contained nitrate of amyl, in her right hand. that was on the th of august, . part iii i the odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest of that evening was leonora's saying: "of course you might marry her," and, when i asked whom, she answered: "the girl." now that is to me a very amazing thing�amazing for the light of possibilities that it casts into the human heart. for i had never had the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; i never had the slightest idea even of caring for her. i must have talked in an odd way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic. it is as if one had a dual personality, the one i being entirely unconscious of the other. i had thought nothing; i had said such an extraordinary thing. i don't know that analysis of my own psychology matters at all to this story. i should say that it didn't or, at any rate, that i had given enough of it. but that odd remark of mine had a strong influence upon what came after. i mean, that leonora would probably never have spoken to me at all about florence's relations with edward if i hadn't said, two hours after my wife's death: "now i can marry the girl." she had, then, taken it for granted that i had been suffering all that she had been suffering, or, at least, that i had permitted all that she had permitted. so that, a month ago, about a week after the funeral of poor edward, she could say to me in the most natural way in the world�i had been talking about the duration of my stay at branshaw�she said with her clear, reflective intonation: "oh, stop here for ever and ever if you can." and then she added, "you couldn't be more of a brother to me, or more of a counsellor, or more of a support. you are all the consolation i have in the world. and isn't it odd to think that if your wife hadn't been my husband's mistress, you would probably never have been here at all?" that was how i got the news�full in the face, like that. i didn't say anything and i don't suppose i felt anything, unless maybe it was with that mysterious and unconscious self that underlies most people. perhaps one day when i am unconscious or walking in my sleep i may go and spit upon poor edward's grave. it seems about the most unlikely thing i could do; but there it is. no, i remember no emotion of any sort, but just the clear feeling that one has from time to time when one hears that some mrs so-and-so is au mieux with a certain gentleman. it made things plainer, suddenly, to my curiosity. it was as if i thought, at that moment, of a windy november evening, that, when i came to think it over afterwards, a dozen unexplained things would fit themselves into place. but i wasn't thinking things over then. i remember that distinctly. i was just sitting back, rather stiffly, in a deep arm-chair. that is what i remember. it was twilight. branshaw manor lies in a little hollow with lawns across it and pine- woods on the fringe of the dip. the immense wind, coming from across the forest, roared overhead. but the view from the window was perfectly quiet and grey. not a thing stirred, except a couple of rabbits on the extreme edge of the lawn. it was leonora's own little study that we were in and we were waiting for the tea to be brought. i, as i said, was sitting in the deep chair, leonora was standing in the window twirling the wooden acorn at the end of the window-blind cord desultorily round and round. she looked across the lawn and said, as far as i can remember: "edward has been dead only ten days and yet there are rabbits on the lawn." i understand that rabbits do a great deal of harm to the short grass in england. and then she turned round to me and said without any adornment at all, for i remember her exact words: "i think it was stupid of florence to commit suicide." i cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that we two seemed to have at that moment. it wasn't as if we were waiting for a train, it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal�it was just that there was nothing to wait for. nothing. there was an extreme stillness with the remote and intermittent sound of the wind. there was the grey light in that brown, small room. and there appeared to be nothing else in the world. i knew then that leonora was about to let me into her full confidence. it was as if�or no, it was the actual fact that�leonora with an odd english sense of decency had determined to wait until edward had been in his grave for a full week before she spoke. and with some vague motive of giving her an idea of the extent to which she must permit herself to make confidences, i said slowly�and these words too i remember with exactitude� "did florence commit suicide? i didn't know." i was just, you understand, trying to let her know that, if she were going to speak she would have to talk about a much wider range of things than she had before thought necessary. so that that was the first knowledge i had that florence had committed suicide. it had never entered my head. you may think that i had been singularly lacking in suspiciousness; you may consider me even to have been an imbecile. but consider the position. in such circumstances of clamour, of outcry, of the crash of many people running together, of the professional reticence of such people as hotel- keepers, the traditional reticence of such "good people" as the ashburnhams�in such circumstances it is some little material object, always, that catches the eye and that appeals to the imagination. i had no possible guide to the idea of suicide and the sight of the little flask of nitrate of amyl in florence's hand suggested instantly to my mind the idea of the failure of her heart. nitrate of amyl, you understand, is the drug that is given to relieve sufferers from angina pectoris. seeing florence, as i had seen her, running with a white face and with one hand held over her heart, and seeing her, as i immediately afterwards saw her, lying upon her bed with the so familiar little brown flask clenched in her fingers, it was natural enough for my mind to frame the idea. as happened now and again, i thought, she had gone out without her remedy and, having felt an attack coming on whilst she was in the gardens, she had run in to get the nitrate in order, as quickly as possible, to obtain relief. and it was equally inevitable my mind should frame the thought that her heart, unable to stand the strain of the running, should have broken in her side. how could i have known that, during all the years of our married life, that little brown flask had contained, not nitrate of amyl, but prussic acid? it was inconceivable. why, not even edward ashburnham, who was, after all more intimate with her than i was, had an inkling of the truth. he just thought that she had dropped dead of heart disease. indeed, i fancy that the only people who ever knew that florence had committed suicide were leonora, the grand duke, the head of the police and the hotel-keeper. i mention these last three because my recollection of that night is only the sort of pinkish effulgence from the electric-lamps in the hotel lounge. there seemed to bob into my consciousness, like floating globes, the faces of those three. now it would be the bearded, monarchical, benevolent head of the grand duke; then the sharp-featured, brown, cavalry-moustached feature of the chief of police; then the globular, polished and high- collared vacuousness that represented monsieur schontz, the proprietor of the hotel. at times one head would be there alone, at another the spiked helmet of the official would be close to the healthy baldness of the prince; then m. schontz's oiled locks would push in between the two. the sovereign's soft, exquisitely trained voice would say, "ja, ja, ja!" each word dropping out like so many soft pellets of suet; the subdued rasp of the official would come: "zum befehl durchlaucht," like five revolver-shots; the voice of m. schontz would go on and on under its breath like that of an unclean priest reciting from his breviary in the corner of a railway-carriage. that was how it presented itself to me. they seemed to take no notice of me; i don't suppose that i was even addressed by one of them. but, as long as one or the other, or all three of them were there, they stood between me as if, i being the titular possessor of the corpse, had a right to be present at their conferences. then they all went away and i was left alone for a long time. and i thought nothing; absolutely nothing. i had no ideas; i had no strength. i felt no sorrow, no desire for action, no inclination to go upstairs and fall upon the body of my wife. i just saw the pink effulgence, the cane tables, the palms, the globular match-holders, the indented ash-trays. and then leonora came to me and it appears that i addressed to her that singular remark: "now i can marry the girl." but i have given you absolutely the whole of my recollection of that evening, as it is the whole of my recollection of the succeeding three or four days. i was in a state just simply cataleptic. they put me to bed and i stayed there; they brought me my clothes and i dressed; they led me to an open grave and i stood beside it. if they had taken me to the edge of a river, or if they had flung me beneath a railway train, i should have been drowned or mangled in the same spirit. i was the walking dead. well, those are my impressions. what had actually happened had been this. i pieced it together afterwards. you will remember i said that edward ashburnham and the girl had gone off, that night, to a concert at the casino and that leonora had asked florence, almost immediately after their departure, to follow them and to perform the office of chaperone. florence, you may also remember, was all in black, being the mourning that she wore for a deceased cousin, jean hurlbird. it was a very black night and the girl was dressed in cream-coloured muslin, that must have glimmered under the tall trees of the dark park like a phosphorescent fish in a cupboard. you couldn't have had a better beacon. and it appears that edward ashburnham led the girl not up the straight allée that leads to the casino, but in under the dark trees of the park. edward ashburnham told me all this in his final outburst. i have told you that, upon that occasion, he became deucedly vocal. i didn't pump him. i hadn't any motive. at that time i didn't in the least connect him with my wife. but the fellow talked like a cheap novelist.�or like a very good novelist for the matter of that, if it's the business of a novelist to make you see things clearly. and i tell you i see that thing as clearly as if it were a dream that never left me. it appears that, not very far from the casino, he and the girl sat down in the darkness upon a public bench. the lights from that place of entertainment must have reached them through the tree-trunks, since, edward said, he could quite plainly see the girl's face�that beloved face with the high forehead, the queer mouth, the tortured eyebrows, and the direct eyes. and to florence, creeping up behind them, they must have presented the appearance of silhouettes. for i take it that florence came creeping up behind them over the short grass to a tree that, i quite well remember, was immediately behind that public seat. it was not a very difficult feat for a woman instinct with jealousy. the casino orchestra was, as edward remembered to tell me, playing the rakocsy march, and although it was not loud enough, at that distance, to drown the voice of edward ashburnham it was certainly sufficiently audible to efface, amongst the noises of the night, the slight brushings and rustlings that might have been made by the feet of florence or by her gown in coming over the short grass. and that miserable woman must have got it in the face, good and strong. it must have been horrible for her. horrible! well, i suppose she deserved all that she got. anyhow, there you have the picture, the immensely tall trees, elms most of them, towering and feathering away up into the black mistiness that trees seem to gather about them at night; the silhouettes of those two upon the seat; the beams of light coming from the casino, the woman all in black peeping with fear behind the tree-trunk. it is melodrama; but i can't help it. and then, it appears, something happened to edward ashburnham. he assured me�and i see no reason for disbelieving him�that until that moment he had had no idea whatever of caring for the girl. he said that he had regarded her exactly as he would have regarded a daughter. he certainly loved her, but with a very deep, very tender and very tranquil love. he had missed her when she went away to her convent-school; he had been glad when she had returned. but of more than that he had been totally unconscious. had he been conscious of it, he assured me, he would have fled from it as from a thing accursed. he realized that it was the last outrage upon leonora. but the real point was his entire unconsciousness. he had gone with her into that dark park with no quickening of the pulse, with no desire for the intimacy of solitude. he had gone, intending to talk about polo-ponies, and tennis-racquets; about the temperament of the reverend mother at the convent she had left and about whether her frock for a party when they got home should be white or blue. it hadn't come into his head that they would talk about a single thing that they hadn't always talked about; it had not even come into his head that the tabu which extended around her was not inviolable. and then, suddenly, that� he was very careful to assure me that at that time there was no physical motive about his declaration. it did not appear to him to be a matter of a dark night and a propinquity and so on. no, it was simply of her effect on the moral side of his life that he appears to have talked. he said that he never had the slightest notion to enfold her in his arms or so much as to touch her hand. he swore that he did not touch her hand. he said that they sat, she at one end of the bench, he at the other; he leaning slightly towards her and she looking straight towards the light of the casino, her face illuminated by the lamps. the expression upon her face he could only describe as "queer". at another time, indeed, he made it appear that he thought she was glad. it is easy to imagine that she was glad, since at that time she could have had no idea of what was really happening. frankly, she adored edward ashburnham. he was for her, in everything that she said at that time, the model of humanity, the hero, the athlete, the father of his country, the law-giver. so that for her, to be suddenly, intimately and overwhelmingly praised must have been a matter for mere gladness, however overwhelming it were. it must have been as if a god had approved her handiwork or a king her loyalty. she just sat still and listened, smiling. and it seemed to her that all the bitterness of her childhood, the terrors of her tempestuous father, the bewailings of her cruel-tongued mother were suddenly atoned for. she had her recompense at last. because, of course, if you come to figure it out, a sudden pouring forth of passion by a man whom you regard as a cross between a pastor and a father might, to a woman, have the aspect of mere praise for good conduct. it wouldn't, i mean, appear at all in the light of an attempt to gain possession. the girl, at least, regarded him as firmly anchored to his leonora. she had not the slightest inkling of any infidelities. he had always spoken to her of his wife in terms of reverence and deep affection. he had given her the idea that he regarded leonora as absolutely impeccable and as absolutely satisfying. their union had appeared to her to be one of those blessed things that are spoken of and contemplated with reverence by her church. so that, when he spoke of her as being the person he cared most for in the world, she naturally thought that he meant to except leonora and she was just glad. it was like a father saying that he approved of a marriageable daughter... and edward, when he realized what he was doing, curbed his tongue at once. she was just glad and she went on being just glad. i suppose that that was the most monstrously wicked thing that edward ashburnham ever did in his life. and yet i am so near to all these people that i cannot think any of them wicked. it is impossible of me to think of edward ashburnham as anything but straight, upright and honourable. that, i mean, is, in spite of everything, my permanent view of him. i try at times by dwelling on some of the things that he did to push that image of him away, as you might try to push aside a large pendulum. but it always comes back�the memory of his innumerable acts of kindness, of his efficiency, of his unspiteful tongue. he was such a fine fellow. so i feel myself forced to attempt to excuse him in this as in so many other things. it is, i have no doubt, a most monstrous thing to attempt to corrupt a young girl just out of a convent. but i think edward had no idea at all of corrupting her. i believe that he simply loved her. he said that that was the way of it and i, at least, believe him and i believe too that she was the only woman he ever really loved. he said that that was so; and he did enough to prove it. and leonora said that it was so and leonora knew him to the bottom of his heart. i have come to be very much of a cynic in these matters; i mean that it is impossible to believe in the permanence of man's or woman's love. or, at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the permanence of any early passion. as i see it, at least, with regard to man, a love affair, a love for any definite woman�is something in the nature of a widening of the experience. with each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. a turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture�all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love�all these things are like so many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk beyond the horizon, to explore. he wants to get, as it were, behind those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world with the eyes that they overshadow. he wants to hear that voice applying itself to every possible proposition, to every possible topic; he wants to see those characteristic gestures against every possible background. of the question of the sex-instinct i know very little and i do not think that it counts for very much in a really great passion. it can be aroused by such nothings�by an untied shoelace, by a glance of the eye in passing�that i think it might be left out of the calculation. i don't mean to say that any great passion can exist without a desire for consummation. that seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a matter needing no comment at all. it is a thing, with all its accidents, that must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some regularity. but the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. he desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. for, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. and that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. we are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. so, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. he will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. but these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. it is sad, but it is so. the pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. well, this is the saddest story. and yet i do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman�or no, that is the wrong way of formulating it. for every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his imagination has set her seal for good. he will travel over no more horizons; he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. he will have gone out of the business. that at any rate was the case with edward and the poor girl. it was quite literally the case. it was quite literally the case that his passions�for the mistress of the grand duke, for mrs basil, for little mrs maidan, for florence, for whom you will�these passions were merely preliminary canters compared to his final race with death for her. i am certain of that. i am not going to be so american as to say that all true love demands some sacrifice. it doesn't. but i think that love will be truer and more permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted. and, in the case of the other women, edward just cut in and cut them out as he did with the polo-ball from under the nose of count baron von lelöffel. i don't mean to say that he didn't wear himself as thin as a lath in the endeavour to capture the other women; but over her he wore himself to rags and tatters and death�in the effort to leave her alone. and, in speaking to her on that night, he wasn't, i am convinced, committing a baseness. it was as if his passion for her hadn't existed; as if the very words that he spoke, without knowing that he spoke them, created the passion as they went along. before he spoke, there was nothing; afterwards, it was the integral fact of his life. well, i must get back to my story. and my story was concerning itself with florence�with florence, who heard those words from behind the tree. that of course is only conjecture, but i think the conjecture is pretty well justified. you have the fact that those two went out, that she followed them almost immediately afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand clutching her dress over her heart. it can't have been only bagshawe. her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me or upon him beside me. but i dare say bagshawe may have been the determining influence in her suicide. leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of prussic acid, for many years and that she was determined to use it if ever i discovered the nature of her relationship with that fellow jimmy. you see, the mainspring of her nature must have been vanity. there is no reason why it shouldn't have been; i guess it is vanity that makes most of us keep straight, if we do keep straight, in this world. if it had been merely a matter of edward's relations with the girl i dare say florence would have faced it out. she would no doubt have made him scenes, have threatened him, have appealed to his sense of humour, to his promises. but mr bagshawe and the fact that the date was the th of august must have been too much for her superstitious mind. you see, she had two things that she wanted. she wanted to be a great lady, installed in branshaw teleragh. she wanted also to retain my respect. she wanted, that is to say, to retain my respect for as long as she lived with me. i suppose, if she had persuaded edward ashburnham to bolt with her she would have let the whole thing go with a run. or perhaps she would have tried to exact from me a new respect for the greatness of her passion on the lines of all for love and the world well lost. that would be just like florence. in all matrimonial associations there is, i believe, one constant factor�a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. for it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. it is really death to do so�that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily. i, for instance, am a rather greedy man; i have a taste for good cookery and a watering tooth at the mere sound of the names of certain comestibles. if florence had discovered this secret of mine i should have found her knowledge of it so unbearable that i never could have supported all the other privations of the régime that she extracted from me. i am bound to say that florence never discovered this secret. certainly she never alluded to it; i dare say she never took sufficient interest in me. and the secret weakness of florence�the weakness that she could not bear to have me discover, was just that early escapade with the fellow called jimmy. let me, as this is in all probability the last time i shall mention florence's name, dwell a little upon the change that had taken place in her psychology. she would not, i mean, have minded if i had discovered that she was the mistress of edward ashburnham. she would rather have liked it. indeed, the chief trouble of poor leonora in those days was to keep florence from making, before me, theatrical displays, on one line or another, of that very fact. she wanted, in one mood, to come rushing to me, to cast herself on her knees at my feet and to declaim a carefully arranged, frightfully emotional, outpouring as to her passion. that was to show that she was like one of the great erotic women of whom history tells us. in another mood she would desire to come to me disdainfully and to tell me that i was considerably less than a man and that what had happened was what must happen when a real male came along. she wanted to say that in cool, balanced and sarcastic sentences. that was when she wished to appear like the heroine of a french comedy. because of course she was always play acting. but what she didn't want me to know was the fact of her first escapade with the fellow called jimmy. she had arrived at figuring out the sort of low-down bowery tough that that fellow was. do you know what it is to shudder, in later life, for some small, stupid action�usually for some small, quite genuine piece of emotionalism�of your early life? well, it was that sort of shuddering that came over florence at the thought that she had surrendered to such a low fellow. i don't know that she need have shuddered. it was her footling old uncle's work; he ought never to have taken those two round the world together and shut himself up in his cabin for the greater part of the time. anyhow, i am convinced that the sight of mr bagshawe and the thought that mr bagshawe�for she knew that unpleasant and toadlike personality�the thought that mr bagshawe would almost certainly reveal to me that he had caught her coming out of jimmy's bedroom at five o'clock in the morning on the th of august, �that was the determining influence in her suicide. and no doubt the effect of the date was too much for her superstitious personality. she had been born on the th of august; she had started to go round the world on the th of august; she had become a low fellow's mistress on the th of august. on the same day of the year she had married me; on that th she had lost edward's love, and bagshawe had appeared like a sinister omen�like a grin on the face of fate. it was the last straw. she ran upstairs, arranged herself decoratively upon her bed�she was a sweetly pretty woman with smooth pink and white cheeks, long hair, the eyelashes falling like a tiny curtain on her cheeks. she drank the little phial of prussic acid and there she lay.�o, extremely charming and clear-cut�looking with a puzzled expression at the electric-light bulb that hung from the ceiling, or perhaps through it, to the stars above. who knows? anyhow, there was an end of florence. you have no idea how quite extraordinarily for me that was the end of florence. from that day to this i have never given her another thought; i have not bestowed upon her so much as a sigh. of course, when it has been necessary to talk about her to leonora, or when for the purpose of these writings i have tried to figure her out, i have thought about her as i might do about a problem in algebra. but it has always been as a matter for study, not for remembrance. she just went completely out of existence, like yesterday's paper. i was so deadly tired. and i dare say that my week or ten days of affaissement�of what was practically catalepsy�was just the repose that my exhausted nature claimed after twelve years of the repression of my instincts, after twelve years of playing the trained poodle. for that was all that i had been. i suppose that it was the shock that did it�the several shocks. but i am unwilling to attribute my feelings at that time to anything so concrete as a shock. it was a feeling so tranquil. it was as if an immensely heavy�an unbearably heavy knapsack, supported upon my shoulders by straps, had fallen off and left my shoulders themselves that the straps had cut into, numb and without sensation of life. i tell you, i had no regret. what had i to regret? i suppose that my inner soul�my dual personality�had realized long before that florence was a personality of paper�that she represented a real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies and with emotions only as a bank- note represents a certain quantity of gold. i know that sort of feeling came to the surface in me the moment the man bagshawe told me that he had seen her coming out of that fellow's bedroom. i thought suddenly that she wasn't real; she was just a mass of talk out of guidebooks, of drawings out of fashion-plates. it is even possible that, if that feeling had not possessed me, i should have run up sooner to her room and might have prevented her drinking the prussic acid. but i just couldn't do it; it would have been like chasing a scrap of paper�an occupation ignoble for a grown man. and, as it began, so that matter has remained. i didn't care whether she had come out of that bedroom or whether she hadn't. it simply didn't interest me. florence didn't matter. i suppose you will retort that i was in love with nancy rufford and that my indifference was therefore discreditable. well, i am not seeking to avoid discredit. i was in love with nancy rufford as i am in love with the poor child's memory, quietly and quite tenderly in my american sort of way. i had never thought about it until i heard leonora state that i might now marry her. but, from that moment until her worse than death, i do not suppose that i much thought about anything else. i don't mean to say that i sighed about her or groaned; i just wanted to marry her as some people want to go to carcassonne. do you understand the feeling�the sort of feeling that you must get certain matters out of the way, smooth out certain fairly negligible complications before you can go to a place that has, during all your life, been a sort of dream city? i didn't attach much importance to my superior years. i was forty-five, and she, poor thing, was only just rising twenty-two. but she was older than her years and quieter. she seemed to have an odd quality of sainthood, as if she must inevitably end in a convent with a white coif framing her face. but she had frequently told me that she had no vocation; it just simply wasn't there�the desire to become a nun. well, i guess that i was a sort of convent myself; it seemed fairly proper that she should make her vows to me. no, i didn't see any impediment on the score of age. i dare say no man does and i was pretty confident that with a little preparation, i could make a young girl happy. i could spoil her as few young girls have ever been spoiled; and i couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. no man can, or if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him. but, as soon as i came out of my catalepsy, i seemed to perceive that my problem�that what i had to do to prepare myself for getting into contact with her, was just to get back into contact with life. i had been kept for twelve years in a rarefied atmosphere; what i then had to do was a little fighting with real life, some wrestling with men of business, some travelling amongst larger cities, something harsh, something masculine. i didn't want to present myself to nancy rufford as a sort of an old maid. that was why, just a fortnight after florence's suicide, i set off for the united states. ii immediately after florence's death leonora began to put the leash upon nancy rufford and edward. she had guessed what had happened under the trees near the casino. they stayed at nauheim some weeks after i went, and leonora has told me that that was the most deadly time of her existence. it seemed like a long, silent duel with invisible weapons, so she said. and it was rendered all the more difficult by the girl's entire innocence. for nancy was always trying to go off alone with edward�as she had been doing all her life, whenever she was home for holidays. she just wanted him to say nice things to her again. you see, the position was extremely complicated. it was as complicated as it well could be, along delicate lines. there was the complication caused by the fact that edward and leonora never spoke to each other except when other people were present. then, as i have said, their demeanours were quite perfect. there was the complication caused by the girl's entire innocence; there was the further complication that both edward and leonora really regarded the girl as their daughter. or it might be more precise to say that they regarded her as being leonora's daughter. and nancy was a queer girl; it is very difficult to describe her to you. she was tall and strikingly thin; she had a tortured mouth, agonized eyes, and a quite extraordinary sense of fun. you, might put it that at times she was exceedingly grotesque and at times extraordinarily beautiful. why, she had the heaviest head of black hair that i have ever come across; i used to wonder how she could bear the weight of it. she was just over twenty-one and at times she seemed as old as the hills, at times not much more than sixteen. at one moment she would be talking of the lives of the saints and at the next she would be tumbling all over the lawn with the st bernard puppy. she could ride to hounds like a maenad and she could sit for hours perfectly still, steeping handkerchief after handkerchief in vinegar when leonora had one of her headaches. she was, in short, a miracle of patience who could be almost miraculously impatient. it was, no doubt, the convent training that effected that. i remember that one of her letters to me, when she was about sixteen, ran something like: "on corpus christi"�or it may have been some other saint's day, i cannot keep these things in my head�"our school played roehampton at hockey. and, seeing that our side was losing, being three goals to one against us at halftime, we retired into the chapel and prayed for victory. we won by five goals to three." and i remember that she seemed to describe afterwards a sort of saturnalia. apparently, when the victorious fifteen or eleven came into the refectory for supper, the whole school jumped upon the tables and cheered and broke the chairs on the floor and smashed the crockery�for a given time, until the reverend mother rang a hand-bell. that is of course the catholic tradition�saturnalia that can end in a moment, like the crack of a whip. i don't, of course, like the tradition, but i am bound to say that it gave nancy�or at any rate nancy had�a sense of rectitude that i have never seen surpassed. it was a thing like a knife that looked out of her eyes and that spoke with her voice, just now and then. it positively frightened me. i suppose that i was almost afraid to be in a world where there could be so fine a standard. i remember when she was about fifteen or sixteen on going back to the convent i once gave her a couple of english sovereigns as a tip. she thanked me in a peculiarly heartfelt way, saying that it would come in extremely handy. i asked her why and she explained. there was a rule at the school that the pupils were not to speak when they walked through the garden from the chapel to the refectory. and, since this rule appeared to be idiotic and arbitrary, she broke it on purpose day after day. in the evening the children were all asked if they had committed any faults during the day, and every evening nancy confessed that she had broken this particular rule. it cost her sixpence a time, that being the fine attached to the offence. just for the information i asked her why she always confessed, and she answered in these exact words: "oh, well, the girls of the holy child have always been noted for their truthfulness. it's a beastly bore, but i've got to do it." i dare say that the miserable nature of her childhood, coming before the mixture of saturnalia and discipline that was her convent life, added something to her queernesses. her father was a violent madman of a fellow, a major of one of what i believe are called the highland regiments. he didn't drink, but he had an ungovernable temper, and the first thing that nancy could remember was seeing her father strike her mother with his clenched fist so that her mother fell over sideways from the breakfast-table and lay motionless. the mother was no doubt an irritating woman and the privates of that regiment appeared to have been irritating, too, so that the house was a place of outcries and perpetual disturbances. mrs rufford was leonora's dearest friend and leonora could be cutting enough at times. but i fancy she was as nothing to mrs rufford. the major would come in to lunch harassed and already spitting out oaths after an unsatisfactory morning's drilling of his stubborn men beneath a hot sun. and then mrs rufford would make some cutting remark and pandemonium would break loose. once, when she had been about twelve, nancy had tried to intervene between the pair of them. her father had struck her full upon the forehead a blow so terrible that she had lain unconscious for three days. nevertheless, nancy seemed to prefer her father to her mother. she remembered rough kindnesses from him. once or twice when she had been quite small he had dressed her in a clumsy, impatient, but very tender way. it was nearly always impossible to get a servant to stay in the family and, for days at a time, apparently, mrs rufford would be incapable. i fancy she drank. at any rate, she had so cutting a tongue that even nancy was afraid of her�she so made fun of any tenderness, she so sneered at all emotional displays. nancy must have been a very emotional child. then one day, quite suddenly, on her return from a ride at fort william, nancy had been sent, with her governess, who had a white face, right down south to that convent school. she had been expecting to go there in two months' time. her mother disappeared from her life at that time. a fortnight later leonora came to the convent and told her that her mother was dead. perhaps she was. at any rate, i never heard until the very end what became of mrs rufford. leonora never spoke of her. and then major rufford went to india, from which he returned very seldom and only for very short visits; and nancy lived herself gradually into the life at branshaw teleragh. i think that, from that time onwards, she led a very happy life, till the end. there were dogs and horses and old servants and the forest. and there were edward and leonora, who loved her. i had known her all the time�i mean, that she always came to the ashburnhams' at nauheim for the last fortnight of their stay�and i watched her gradually growing. she was very cheerful with me. she always even kissed me, night and morning, until she was about eighteen. and she would skip about and fetch me things and laugh at my tales of life in philadelphia. but, beneath her gaiety, i fancy that there lurked some terrors. i remember one day, when she was just eighteen, during one of her father's rare visits to europe, we were sitting in the gardens, near the iron-stained fountain. leonora had one of her headaches and we were waiting for florence and edward to come from their baths. you have no idea how beautiful nancy looked that morning. we were talking about the desirability of taking tickets in lotteries�of the moral side of it, i mean. she was all in white, and so tall and fragile; and she had only just put her hair up, so that the carriage of her neck had that charming touch of youth and of unfamiliarity. over her throat there played the reflection from a little pool of water, left by a thunderstorm of the night before, and all the rest of her features were in the diffused and luminous shade of her white parasol. her dark hair just showed beneath her broad, white hat of pierced, chip straw; her throat was very long and leaned forward, and her eyebrows, arching a little as she laughed at some old-fashionedness in my phraseology, had abandoned their tense line. and there was a little colour in her cheeks and light in her deep blue eyes. and to think that that vivid white thing, that saintly and swanlike being�to think that... why, she was like the sail of a ship, so white and so definite in her movements. and to think that she will never... why, she will never do anything again. i can't believe it... anyhow, we were chattering away about the morality of lotteries. and then, suddenly, there came from the arcades behind us the overtones of her father's unmistakable voice; it was as if a modified foghorn had boomed with a reed inside it. i looked round to catch sight of him. a tall, fair, stiffly upright man of fifty, he was walking away with an italian baron who had had much to do with the belgian congo. they must have been talking about the proper treatment of natives, for i heard him say: "oh, hang humanity!" when i looked again at nancy her eyes were closed and her face was more pallid than her dress, which had at least some pinkish reflections from the gravel. it was dreadful to see her with her eyes closed like that. "oh!" she exclaimed, and her hand that had appeared to be groping, settled for a moment on my arm. "never speak of it. promise never to tell my father of it. it brings back those dreadful dreams..." and, when she opened her eyes she looked straight into mine. "the blessed saints," she said, "you would think they would spare you such things. i don't believe all the sinning in the world could make one deserve them." they say the poor thing was always allowed a light at night, even in her bedroom.... and yet, no young girl could more archly and lovingly have played with an adored father. she was always holding him by both coat lapels; cross-questioning him as to how he spent his time; kissing the top of his head. ah, she was well-bred, if ever anyone was. the poor, wretched man cringed before her�but she could not have done more to put him at his ease. perhaps she had had lessons in it at her convent. it was only that peculiar note of his voice, used when he was overbearing or dogmatic, that could unman her�and that was only visible when it came unexpectedly. that was because the bad dreams that the blessed saints allowed her to have for her sins always seemed to her to herald themselves by the booming sound of her father's voice. it was that sound that had always preceded his entrance for the terrible lunches of her childhood... . i have reported, earlier in this chapter, that leonora said, during that remainder of their stay at nauheim, after i had left, it had seemed to her that she was fighting a long duel with unseen weapons against silent adversaries. nancy, as i have also said, was always trying to go off with edward alone. that had been her habit for years. and leonora found it to be her duty to stop that. it was very difficult. nancy was used to having her own way, and for years she had been used to going off with edward, ratting, rabbiting, catching salmon down at fordingbridge, district-visiting of the sort that edward indulged in, or calling on the tenants. and at nauheim she and edward had always gone up to the casino alone in the evenings�at any rate, whenever florence did not call for his attendance. it shows the obviously innocent nature of the regard of those two that even florence had never had any idea of jealousy. leonora had cultivated the habit of going to bed at ten o'clock. i don't know how she managed it, but, for all the time they were at nauheim, she contrived never to let those two be alone together, except in broad daylight, in very crowded places. if a protestant had done that it would no doubt have awakened a self-consciousness in the girl. but catholics, who have always reservations and queer spots of secrecy, can manage these things better. and i dare say that two things made this easier�the death of florence and the fact that edward was obviously sickening. he appeared, indeed, to be very ill; his shoulders began to be bowed; there were pockets under his eyes; he had extraordinary moments of inattention. and leonora describes herself as watching him as a fierce cat watches an unconscious pigeon in a roadway. in that silent watching, again, i think she was a catholic�of a people that can think thoughts alien to ours and keep them to themselves. and the thoughts passed through her mind; some of them even got through to edward with never a word spoken. at first she thought that it might be remorse, or grief, for the death of florence that was oppressing him. but she watched and watched, and uttered apparently random sentences about florence before the girl, and she perceived that he had no grief and no remorse. he had not any idea that florence could have committed suicide without writing at least a tirade to him. the absence of that made him certain that it had been heart disease. for florence had never undeceived him on that point. she thought it made her seem more romantic. no, edward had no remorse. he was able to say to himself that he had treated florence with gallant attentiveness of the kind that she desired until two hours before her death. leonora gathered that from the look in his eyes, and from the way he straightened his shoulders over her as she lay in her coffin�from that and a thousand other little things. she would speak suddenly about florence to the girl and he would not start in the least; he would not even pay attention, but would sit with bloodshot eyes gazing at the tablecloth. he drank a good deal, at that time�a steady soaking of drink every evening till long after they had gone to bed. for leonora made the girl go to bed at ten, unreasonable though that seemed to nancy. she would understand that, whilst they were in a sort of half mourning for florence, she ought not to be seen at public places, like the casino; but she could not see why she should not accompany her uncle upon his evening strolls though the park. i don't know what leonora put up as an excuse�something, i fancy, in the nature of a nightly orison that she made the girl and herself perform for the soul of florence. and then, one evening, about a fortnight later, when the girl, growing restive at even devotional exercises, clamoured once more to be allowed to go for a walk with edward, and when leonora was really at her wits' end, edward gave himself into her hands. he was just standing up from dinner and had his face averted. but he turned his heavy head and his bloodshot eyes upon his wife and looked full at her. "doctor von hauptmann," he said, "has ordered me to go to bed immediately after dinner. my heart's much worse." he continued to look at leonora for a long minute�with a sort of heavy contempt. and leonora understood that, with his speech, he was giving her the excuse that she needed for separating him from the girl, and with his eyes he was reproaching her for thinking that he would try to corrupt nancy. he went silently up to his room and sat there for a long time�until the girl was well in bed�reading in the anglican prayer-book. and about half-past ten she heard his footsteps pass her door, going outwards. two and a half hours later they came back, stumbling heavily. she remained, reflecting upon this position until the last night of their stay at nauheim. then she suddenly acted. for, just in the same way, suddenly after dinner, she looked at him and said: "teddy, don't you think you could take a night off from your doctor's orders and go with nancy to the casino. the poor child has had her visit so spoiled." he looked at her in turn for a long, balancing minute. "why, yes," he said at last. nancy jumped out of her chair and kissed him. those two words, leonora said, gave her the greatest relief of any two syllables she had ever heard in her life. for she realized that edward was breaking up, not under the desire for possession, but from the dogged determination to hold his hand. she could relax some of her vigilance. nevertheless, she sat in the darkness behind her half-closed jalousies, looking over the street and the night and the trees until, very late, she could hear nancy's clear voice coming closer and saying: "you did look an old guy with that false nose." there had been some sort of celebration of a local holiday up in the kursaal. and edward replied with his sort of sulky good nature: "as for you, you looked like old mother sideacher." the girl came swinging along, a silhouette beneath a gas-lamp; edward, another, slouched at her side. they were talking just as they had talked any time since the girl had been seventeen; with the same tones, the same joke about an old beggar woman who always amused them at branshaw. the girl, a little later, opened leonora's door whilst she was still kissing edward on the forehead as she had done every night. "we've had a most glorious time," she said. "he's ever so much better. he raced me for twenty yards home. why are you all in the dark?" leonora could hear edward going about in his room, but, owing to the girl's chatter, she could not tell whether he went out again or not. and then, very much later, because she thought that if he were drinking again something must be done to stop it, she opened for the first time, and very softly, the never-opened door between their rooms. she wanted to see if he had gone out again. edward was kneeling beside his bed with his head hidden in the counterpane. his arms, outstretched, held out before him a little image of the blessed virgin�a tawdry, scarlet and prussian blue affair that the girl had given him on her first return from the convent. his shoulders heaved convulsively three times, and heavy sobs came from him before she could close the door. he was not a catholic; but that was the way it took him. leonora slept for the first time that night with a sleep from which she never once started. iii and then leonora completely broke down�on the day that they returned to branshaw teleragh. it is the infliction of our miserable minds�it is the scourge of atrocious but probably just destiny that no grief comes by itself. no, any great grief, though the grief itself may have gone, leaves in its place a train of horrors, of misery, and despair. for leonora was, in herself, relieved. she felt that she could trust edward with the girl and she knew that nancy could be absolutely trusted. and then, with the slackening of her vigilance, came the slackening of her entire mind. this is perhaps the most miserable part of the entire story. for it is miserable to see a clean intelligence waver; and leonora wavered. you are to understand that leonora loved edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred. and she had lived with him for years and years without addressing to him one word of tenderness. i don't know how she could do it. at the beginning of that relationship she had been just married off to him. she had been one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy irish manor-house to which she had returned from the convent i have so often spoken of. she had left it just a year and she was just nineteen. it is impossible to imagine such inexperience as was hers. you might almost say that she had never spoken to a man except a priest. coming straight from the convent, she had gone in behind the high walls of the manor-house that was almost more cloistral than any convent could have been. there were the seven girls, there was the strained mother, there was the worried father at whom, three times in the course of that year, the tenants took pot-shots from behind a hedge. the women-folk, upon the whole, the tenants respected. once a week each of the girls, since there were seven of them, took a drive with the mother in the old basketwork chaise drawn by a very fat, very lumbering pony. they paid occasionally a call, but even these were so rare that, leonora has assured me, only three times in the year that succeeded her coming home from the convent did she enter another person's house. for the rest of the time the seven sisters ran about in the neglected gardens between the unpruned espaliers. or they played lawn-tennis or fives in an angle of a great wall that surrounded the garden�an angle from which the fruit trees had long died away. they painted in water-colour; they embroidered; they copied verses into albums. once a week they went to mass; once a week to the confessional, accompanied by an old nurse. they were happy since they had known no other life. it appeared to them a singular extravagance when, one day, a photographer was brought over from the county town and photographed them standing, all seven, in the shadow of an old apple tree with the grey lichen on the raddled trunk. but it wasn't an extravagance. three weeks before colonel powys had written to colonel ashburnham: "i say, harry, couldn't your edward marry one of my girls? it would be a god-send to me, for i'm at the end of my tether and, once one girl begins to go off, the rest of them will follow." he went on to say that all his daughters were tall, upstanding, clean- limbed and absolutely pure, and he reminded colonel ashburnham that, they having been married on the same day, though in different churches, since the one was a catholic and the other an anglican�they had said to each other, the night before, that, when the time came, one of their sons should marry one of their daughters. mrs ashburnham had been a powys and remained mrs powys' dearest friend. they had drifted about the world as english soldiers do, seldom meeting, but their women always in correspondence one with another. they wrote about minute things such as the teething of edward and of the earlier daughters or the best way to repair a jacob's ladder in a stocking. and, if they met seldom, yet it was often enough to keep each other's personalities fresh in their minds, gradually growing a little stiff in the joints, but always with enough to talk about and with a store of reminiscences. then, as his girls began to come of age when they must leave the convent in which they were regularly interned during his years of active service, colonel powys retired from the army with the necessity of making a home for them. it happened that the ashburnhams had never seen any of the powys girls, though, whenever the four parents met in london, edward ashburnham was always of the party. he was at that time twenty-two and, i believe, almost as pure in mind as leonora herself. it is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence untouched in this world. that was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to the fact that the house to which he went at winchester had a particularly pure tone and partly to edward's own peculiar aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories. at sandhurst he had just kept out of the way of that sort of thing. he was keen on soldiering, keen on mathematics, on land-surveying, on politics and, by a queer warp of his mind, on literature. even when he was twenty-two he would pass hours reading one of scott's novels or the chronicles of froissart. mrs ashburnham considered that she was to be congratulated, and almost every week she wrote to mrs powys, dilating upon her satisfaction. then, one day, taking a walk down bond street with her son, after having been at lord's, she noticed edward suddenly turn his head round to take a second look at a well-dressed girl who had passed them. she wrote about that, too, to mrs powys, and expressed some alarm. it had been, on edward's part, the merest reflex action. he was so very abstracted at that time owing to the pressure his crammer was putting upon him that he certainly hadn't known what he was doing. it was this letter of mrs ashburnham's to mrs powys that had caused the letter from colonel powys to colonel ashburnham�a letter that was half- humorous, half longing. mrs ashburnham caused her husband to reply, with a letter a little more jocular�something to the effect that colonel powys ought to give them some idea of the goods that he was marketing. that was the cause of the photograph. i have seen it, the seven girls, all in white dresses, all very much alike in feature�all, except leonora, a little heavy about the chins and a little stupid about the eyes. i dare say it would have made leonora, too, look a little heavy and a little stupid, for it was not a good photograph. but the black shadow from one of the branches of the apple tree cut right across her face, which is all but invisible. there followed an extremely harassing time for colonel and mrs powys. mrs ashburnham had written to say that, quite sincerely, nothing would give greater ease to her maternal anxieties than to have her son marry one of mrs powys' daughters if only he showed some inclination to do so. for, she added, nothing but a love-match was to be thought of in her edward's case. but the poor powys couple had to run things so very fine that even the bringing together of the young people was a desperate hazard. the mere expenditure upon sending one of the girls over from ireland to branshaw was terrifying to them; and whichever girl they selected might not be the one to ring edward's bell. on the other hand, the expenditure upon mere food and extra sheets for a visit from the ashburnhams to them was terrifying, too. it would mean, mathematically, going short in so many meals themselves, afterwards. nevertheless, they chanced it, and all the three ashburnhams came on a visit to the lonely manor-house. they could give edward some rough shooting, some rough fishing and a whirl of femininity; but i should say the girls made really more impression upon mrs ashburnham than upon edward himself. they appeared to her to be so clean run and so safe. they were indeed so clean run that, in a faint sort of way, edward seems to have regarded them rather as boys than as girls. and then, one evening, mrs ashburnham had with her boy one of those conversations that english mothers have with english sons. it seems to have been a criminal sort of proceeding, though i don't know what took place at it. anyhow, next morning colonel ashburnham asked on behalf of his son for the hand of leonora. this caused some consternation to the powys couple, since leonora was the third daughter and edward ought to have married the eldest. mrs powys, with her rigid sense of the proprieties, almost wished to reject the proposal. but the colonel, her husband, pointed out that the visit would have cost them sixty pounds, what with the hire of an extra servant, of a horse and car, and with the purchase of beds and bedding and extra tablecloths. there was nothing else for it but the marriage. in that way edward and leonora became man and wife. i don't know that a very minute study of their progress towards complete disunion is necessary. perhaps it is. but there are many things that i cannot well make out, about which i cannot well question leonora, or about which edward did not tell me. i do not know that there was ever any question of love from edward to her. he regarded her, certainly, as desirable amongst her sisters. he was obstinate to the extent of saying that if he could not have her he would not have any of them. and, no doubt, before the marriage, he made her pretty speeches out of books that he had read. but, as far as he could describe his feelings at all, later, it seems that, calmly and without any quickening of the pulse, he just carried the girl off, there being no opposition. it had, however, been all so long ago that it seemed to him, at the end of his poor life, a dim and misty affair. he had the greatest admiration for leonora. he had the very greatest admiration. he admired her for her truthfulness, for her cleanness of mind, and the clean-run-ness of her limbs, for her efficiency, for the fairness of her skin, for the gold of her hair, for her religion, for her sense of duty. it was a satisfaction to take her about with him. but she had not for him a touch of magnetism. i suppose, really, he did not love her because she was never mournful; what really made him feel good in life was to comfort somebody who would be darkly and mysteriously mournful. that he had never had to do for leonora. perhaps, also, she was at first too obedient. i do not mean to say that she was submissive�that she deferred, in her judgements, to his. she did not. but she had been handed over to him, like some patient medieval virgin; she had been taught all her life that the first duty of a woman is to obey. and there she was. in her, at least, admiration for his qualities very soon became love of the deepest description. if his pulses never quickened she, so i have been told, became what is called an altered being when he approached her from the other side of a dancing-floor. her eyes followed him about full of trustfulness, of admiration, of gratitude, and of love. he was also, in a great sense, her pastor and guide�and he guided her into what, for a girl straight out of a convent, was almost heaven. i have not the least idea of what an english officer's wife's existence may be like. at any rate, there were feasts, and chatterings, and nice men who gave her the right sort of admiration, and nice women who treated her as if she had been a baby. and her confessor approved of her life, and edward let her give little treats to the girls of the convent she had left, and the reverend mother approved of him. there could not have been a happier girl for five or six years. for it was only at the end of that time that clouds began, as the saying is, to arise. she was then about twenty-three, and her purposeful efficiency made her perhaps have a desire for mastery. she began to perceive that edward was extravagant in his largesses. his parents died just about that time, and edward, though they both decided that he should continue his soldiering, gave a great deal of attention to the management of branshaw through a steward. aldershot was not very far away, and they spent all his leaves there. and, suddenly, she seemed to begin to perceive that his generosities were almost fantastic. he subscribed much too much to things connected with his mess, he pensioned off his father's servants, old or new, much too generously. they had a large income, but every now and then they would find themselves hard up. he began to talk of mortgaging a farm or two, though it never actually came to that. she made tentative efforts at remonstrating with him. her father, whom she saw now and then, said that edward was much too generous to his tenants; the wives of his brother officers remonstrated with her in private; his large subscriptions made it difficult for their husbands to keep up with them. ironically enough, the first real trouble between them came from his desire to build a roman catholic chapel at branshaw. he wanted to do it to honour leonora, and he proposed to do it very expensively. leonora did not want it; she could perfectly well drive from branshaw to the nearest catholic church as often as she liked. there were no roman catholic tenants and no roman catholic servants except her old nurse who could always drive with her. she had as many priests to stay with her as could be needed�and even the priests did not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have merely seemed an invidious instance of ostentation. they were perfectly ready to celebrate mass for leonora and her nurse, when they stayed at branshaw, in a cleaned-up outhouse. but edward was as obstinate as a hog about it. he was truly grieved at his wife's want of sentiment�at her refusal to receive that amount of public homage from him. she appeared to him to be wanting in imagination�to be cold and hard. i don't exactly know what part her priests played in the tragedy that it all became; i dare say they behaved quite creditably but mistakenly. but then, who would not have been mistaken with edward? i believe he was even hurt that leonora's confessor did not make strenuous efforts to convert him. there was a period when he was quite ready to become an emotional catholic. i don't know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have queer sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact. perhaps they thought that edward's too early conversion would frighten off other protestant desirables from marrying catholic girls. perhaps they saw deeper into edward than he saw himself and thought that he would make a not very creditable convert. at any rate they�and leonora�left him very much alone. it mortified him very considerably. he has told me that if leonora had then taken his aspirations seriously everything would have been different. but i dare say that was nonsense. at any rate, it was over the question of the chapel that they had their first and really disastrous quarrel. edward at that time was not well; he supposed himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs�he was managing the mess at the time. and leonora was not well�she was beginning to fear that their union might be sterile. and then her father came over from glasmoyle to stay with them. those were troublesome times in ireland, i understand. at any rate, colonel powys had tenants on the brain�his own tenants having shot at him with shot-guns. and, in conversation with edward's land-steward, he got it into his head that edward managed his estates with a mad generosity towards his tenants. i understand, also, that those years�the 'nineties�were very bad for farming. wheat was fetching only a few shillings the hundred; the price of meat was so low that cattle hardly paid for raising; whole english counties were ruined. and edward allowed his tenants very high rebates. to do both justice leonora has since acknowledged that she was in the wrong at that time and that edward was following out a more far-seeing policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a bad period. it was not as if the whole of his money came from the land; a good deal of it was in rails. but old colonel powys had that bee in his bonnet and, if he never directly approached edward himself on the subject, he preached unceasingly, whenever he had the opportunity, to leonora. his pet idea was that edward ought to sack all his own tenants and import a set of farmers from scotland. that was what they were doing in essex. he was of opinion that edward was riding hotfoot to ruin. that worried leonora very much�it worried her dreadfully; she lay awake nights; she had an anxious line round her mouth. and that, again, worried edward. i do not mean to say that leonora actually spoke to edward about his tenants�but he got to know that some one, probably her father, had been talking to her about the matter. he got to know it because it was the habit of his steward to look in on them every morning about breakfast-time to report any little happenings. and there was a farmer called mumford who had only paid half his rent for the last three years. one morning the land-steward reported that mumford would be unable to pay his rent at all that year. edward reflected for a moment and then he said something like: "oh well, he's an old fellow and his family have been our tenants for over two hundred years. let him off altogether." and then leonora�you must remember that she had reason for being very nervous and unhappy at that time�let out a sound that was very like a groan. it startled edward, who more than suspected what was passing in her mind�it startled him into a state of anger. he said sharply: "you wouldn't have me turn out people who've been earning money for us for centuries�people to whom we have responsibilities�and let in a pack of scotch farmers?" he looked at her, leonora said, with what was practically a glance of hatred and then, precipitately, he left the breakfast-table. leonora knew that it probably made it all the worse that he had been betrayed into a manifestation of anger before a third party. it was the first and last time that he ever was betrayed into such a manifestation of anger. the land-steward, a moderate and well-balanced man whose family also had been with the ashburnhams for over a century, took it upon himself to explain that he considered edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course with his tenants. he erred perhaps a little on the side of generosity, but hard times were hard times, and every one had to feel the pinch, landlord as well as tenants. the great thing was not to let the land get into a poor state of cultivation. scotch farmers just skinned your fields and let them go down and down. but edward had a very good set of tenants who did their best for him and for themselves. these arguments at that time carried very little conviction to leonora. she was, nevertheless, much concerned by edward's outburst of anger. the fact is that leonora had been practising economies in her department. two of the under-housemaids had gone and she had not replaced them; she had spent much less that year upon dress. the fare she had provided at the dinners they gave had been much less bountiful and not nearly so costly as had been the case in preceding years, and edward began to perceive a hardness and determination in his wife's character. he seemed to see a net closing round him�a net in which they would be forced to live like one of the comparatively poor county families of the neighbourhood. and, in the mysterious way in which two people, living together, get to know each other's thoughts without a word spoken, he had known, even before his outbreak, that leonora was worrying about his managing of the estates. this appeared to him to be intolerable. he had, too, a great feeling of self-contempt because he had been betrayed into speaking harshly to leonora before that land-steward. she imagined that his nerve must be deserting him, and there can have been few men more miserable than edward was at that period. you see, he was really a very simple soul�very simple. he imagined that no man can satisfactorily accomplish his life's work without loyal and whole-hearted cooperation of the woman he lives with. and he was beginning to perceive dimly that, whereas his own traditions were entirely collective, his wife was a sheer individualist. his own theory�the feudal theory of an over-lord doing his best by his dependents, the dependents meanwhile doing their best for the over- lord�this theory was entirely foreign to leonora's nature. she came of a family of small irish landlords�that hostile garrison in a plundered country. and she was thinking unceasingly of the children she wished to have. i don't know why they never had any children�not that i really believe that children would have made any difference. the dissimilarity of edward and leonora was too profound. it will give you some idea of the extraordinary naïveté of edward ashburnham that, at the time of his marriage and for perhaps a couple of years after, he did not really know how children are produced. neither did leonora. i don't mean to say that this state of things continued, but there it was. i dare say it had a good deal of influence on their mentalities. at any rate, they never had a child. it was the will of god. it certainly presented itself to leonora as being the will of god�as being a mysterious and awful chastisement of the almighty. for she had discovered shortly before this period that her parents had not exacted from edward's family the promise that any children she should bear should be brought up as catholics. she herself had never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother, or her husband. when at last her father had let drop some words leading her to believe that that was the fact, she tried desperately to extort the promise from edward. she encountered an unexpected obstinacy. edward was perfectly willing that the girls should be catholic; the boys must be anglican. i don't understand the bearing of these things in english society. indeed, englishmen seem to me to be a little mad in matters of politics or of religion. in edward it was particularly queer because he himself was perfectly ready to become a romanist. he seemed, however, to contemplate going over to rome himself and yet letting his boys be educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors. this may appear illogical, but i dare say it is not so illogical as it looks. edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own body and soul at his own disposal. but his loyalty to the traditions of his family would not permit him to bind any future inheritors of his name or beneficiaries by the death of his ancestors. about the girls it did not so much matter. they would know other homes and other circumstances. besides, it was the usual thing. but the boys must be given the opportunity of choosing�and they must have first of all the anglican teaching. he was perfectly unshakable about this. leonora was in an agony during all this time. you will have to remember she seriously believed that children who might be born to her went in danger, if not absolutely of damnation, at any rate of receiving false doctrine. it was an agony more terrible than she could describe. she didn't indeed attempt to describe it, but i could tell from her voice when she said, almost negligently, "i used to lie awake whole nights. it was no good my spiritual advisers trying to console me." i knew from her voice how terrible and how long those nights must have seemed and of how little avail were the consolations of her spiritual advisers. her spiritual advisers seemed to have taken the matter a little more calmly. they certainly told her that she must not consider herself in any way to have sinned. nay, they seem even to have extorted, to have threatened her, with a view to getting her out of what they considered to be a morbid frame of mind. she would just have to make the best of things, to influence the children when they came, not by propaganda, but by personality. and they warned her that she would be committing a sin if she continued to think that she had sinned. nevertheless, she continued to think that she had sinned. leonora could not be aware that the man whom she loved passionately and whom, nevertheless, she was beginning to try to rule with a rod of iron�that this man was becoming more and more estranged from her. he seemed to regard her as being not only physically and mentally cold, but even as being actually wicked and mean. there were times when he would almost shudder if she spoke to him. and she could not understand how he could consider her wicked or mean. it only seemed to her a sort of madness in him that he should try to take upon his own shoulders the burden of his troop, of his regiment, of his estate and of half of his country. she could not see that in trying to curb what she regarded as megalomania she was doing anything wicked. she was just trying to keep things together for the sake of the children who did not come. and, little by little, the whole of their intercourse became simply one of agonized discussion as to whether edward should subscribe to this or that institution or should try to reclaim this or that drunkard. she simply could not see it. into this really terrible position of strain, from which there appeared to be no issue, the kilsyte case came almost as a relief. it is part of the peculiar irony of things that edward would certainly never have kissed that nurse-maid if he had not been trying to please leonora. nurse-maids do not travel first-class, and, that day, edward travelled in a third-class carriage in order to prove to leonora that he was capable of economies. i have said that the kilsyte case came almost as a relief to the strained situation that then existed between them. it gave leonora an opportunity of backing him up in a whole-hearted and absolutely loyal manner. it gave her the opportunity of behaving to him as he considered a wife should behave to her husband. you see, edward found himself in a railway carriage with a quite pretty girl of about nineteen. and the quite pretty girl of about nineteen, with dark hair and red cheeks and blue eyes, was quietly weeping. edward had been sitting in his corner thinking about nothing at all. he had chanced to look at the nurse-maid; two large, pretty tears came out of her eyes and dropped into her lap. he immediately felt that he had got to do something to comfort her. that was his job in life. he was desperately unhappy himself and it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that they should pool their sorrows. he was quite democratic; the idea of the difference in their station never seems to have occurred to him. he began to talk to her. he discovered that her young man had been seen walking out with annie of number . he moved over to her side of the carriage. he told her that the report probably wasn't true; that, after all, a young man might take a walk with annie from number without its denoting anything very serious. and he assured me that he felt at least quite half-fatherly when he put his arm around her waist and kissed her. the girl, however, had not forgotten the difference of her station. all her life, by her mother, by other girls, by schoolteachers, by the whole tradition of her class she had been warned against gentlemen. she was being kissed by a gentleman. she screamed, tore herself away; sprang up and pulled a communication cord. edward came fairly well out of the affair in the public estimation; but it did him, mentally, a good deal of harm. iv it is very difficult to give an all-round impression of a man. i wonder how far i have succeeded with edward ashburnham. i dare say i haven't succeeded at all. it is ever very difficult to see how such things matter. was it the important point about poor edward that he was very well built, carried himself well, was moderate at the table and led a regular life�that he had, in fact, all the virtues that are usually accounted english? or have i in the least succeeded in conveying that he was all those things and had all those virtues? he certainly was them and had them up to the last months of his life. they were the things that one would set upon his tombstone. they will, indeed, be set upon his tombstone by his widow. and have i, i wonder, given the due impression of how his life was portioned and his time laid out? because, until the very last, the amount of time taken up by his various passions was relatively small. i have been forced to write very much about his passions, but you have to consider�i should like to be able to make you consider�that he rose every morning at seven, took a cold bath, breakfasted at eight, was occupied with his regiment from nine until one; played polo or cricket with the men when it was the season for cricket, till tea-time. afterwards he would occupy himself with the letters from his land- steward or with the affairs of his mess, till dinner-time. he would dine and pass the evening playing cards, or playing billiards with leonora or at social functions of one kind or another. and the greater part of his life was taken up by that�by far the greater part of his life. his love- affairs, until the very end, were sandwiched in at odd moments or took place during the social evenings, the dances and dinners. but i guess i have made it hard for you, o silent listener, to get that impression. anyhow, i hope i have not given you the idea that edward ashburnham was a pathological case. he wasn't. he was just a normal man and very much of a sentimentalist. i dare say the quality of his youth, the nature of his mother's influence, his ignorances, the crammings that he received at the hands of army coaches�i dare say that all these excellent influences upon his adolescence were very bad for him. but we all have to put up with that sort of thing and no doubt it is very bad for all of us. nevertheless, the outline of edward's life was an outline perfectly normal of the life of a hard-working, sentimental and efficient professional man. that question of first impressions has always bothered me a good deal�but quite academically. i mean that, from time to time i have wondered whether it were or were not best to trust to one's first impressions in dealing with people. but i never had anybody to deal with except waiters and chambermaids and the ashburnhams, with whom i didn't know that i was having any dealings. and, as far as waiters and chambermaids were concerned, i have generally found that my first impressions were correct enough. if my first idea of a man was that he was civil, obliging, and attentive, he generally seemed to go on being all those things. once, however, at our paris flat we had a maid who appeared to be charming and transparently honest. she stole, nevertheless, one of florence's diamond rings. she did it, however, to save her young man from going to prison. so here, as somebody says somewhere, was a special case. and, even in my short incursion into american business life�an incursion that lasted during part of august and nearly the whole of september�i found that to rely upon first impressions was the best thing i could do. i found myself automatically docketing and labelling each man as he was introduced to me, by the run of his features and by the first words that he spoke. i can't, however, be regarded as really doing business during the time that i spent in the united states. i was just winding things up. if it hadn't been for my idea of marrying the girl i might possibly have looked for something to do in my own country. for my experiences there were vivid and amusing. it was exactly as if i had come out of a museum into a riotous fancy-dress ball. during my life with florence i had almost come to forget that there were such things as fashions or occupations or the greed of gain. i had, in fact, forgotten that there was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be extremely desirable if you don't happen to possess one. and i had forgotten, too, that there was such a thing as gossip that mattered. in that particular, philadelphia was the most amazing place i have ever been in in my life. i was not in that city for more than a week or ten days and i didn't there transact anything much in the way of business; nevertheless, the number of times that i was warned by everybody against everybody else was simply amazing. a man i didn't know would come up behind my lounge chair in the hotel, and, whispering cautiously beside my ear, would warn me against some other man that i equally didn't know but who would be standing by the bar. i don't know what they thought i was there to do�perhaps to buy out the city's debt or get a controlling hold of some railway interest. or, perhaps, they imagined that i wanted to buy a newspaper, for they were either politicians or reporters, which, of course, comes to the same thing. as a matter of fact, my property in philadelphia was mostly real estate in the old-fashioned part of the city and all i wanted to do there was just to satisfy myself that the houses were in good repair and the doors kept properly painted. i wanted also to see my relations, of whom i had a few. these were mostly professional people and they were mostly rather hard up because of the big bank failure in or thereabouts. still, they were very nice. they would have been nicer still if they hadn't, all of them, had what appeared to me to be the mania that what they called influences were working against them. at any rate, the impression of that city was one of old-fashioned rooms, rather english than american in type, in which handsome but careworn ladies, cousins of my own, talked principally about mysterious movements that were going on against them. i never got to know what it was all about; perhaps they thought i knew or perhaps there weren't any movements at all. it was all very secret and subtle and subterranean. but there was a nice young fellow called carter who was a sort of second-nephew of mine, twice removed. he was handsome and dark and gentle and tall and modest. i understand also that he was a good cricketer. he was employed by the real-estate agents who collected my rents. it was he, therefore, who took me over my own property and i saw a good deal of him and of a nice girl called mary, to whom he was engaged. at that time i did, what i certainly shouldn't do now�i made some careful inquiries as to his character. i discovered from his employers that he was just all that he appeared, honest, industrious, high-spirited, friendly and ready to do anyone a good turn. his relatives, however, as they were mine, too�seemed to have something darkly mysterious against him. i imagined that he must have been mixed up in some case of graft or that he had at least betrayed several innocent and trusting maidens. i pushed, however, that particular mystery home and discovered it was only that he was a democrat. my own people were mostly republicans. it seemed to make it worse and more darkly mysterious to them that young carter was what they called a sort of a vermont democrat which was the whole ticket and no mistake. but i don't know what it means. anyhow, i suppose that my money will go to him when i die�i like the recollection of his friendly image and of the nice girl he was engaged to. may fate deal very kindly with them. i have said just now that, in my present frame of mind, nothing would ever make me make inquiries as to the character of any man that i liked at first sight. (the little digression as to my philadelphia experiences was really meant to lead around to this.) for who in this world can give anyone a character? who in this world knows anything of any other heart�or of his own? i don't mean to say that one cannot form an average estimate of the way a person will behave. but one cannot be certain of the way any man will behave in every case�and until one can do that a "character" is of no use to anyone. that, for instance, was the way with florence's maid in paris. we used to trust that girl with blank cheques for the payment of the tradesmen. for quite a time she was so trusted by us. then, suddenly, she stole a ring. we should not have believed her capable of it; she would not have believed herself capable of it. it was nothing in her character. so, perhaps, it was with edward ashburnham. or, perhaps, it wasn't. no, i rather think it wasn't. it is difficult to figure out. i have said that the kilsyte case eased the immediate tension for him and leonora. it let him see that she was capable of loyalty to him; it gave her her chance to show that she believed in him. she accepted without question his statement that, in kissing the girl, he wasn't trying to do more than administer fatherly comfort to a weeping child. and, indeed, his own world�including the magistrates�took that view of the case. whatever people say, one's world can be perfectly charitable at times... but, again, as i have said, it did edward a great deal of harm. that, at least, was his view of it. he assured me that, before that case came on and was wrangled about by counsel with all sorts of dirty- mindedness that counsel in that sort of case can impute, he had not had the least idea that he was capable of being unfaithful to leonora. but, in the midst of that tumult�he says that it came suddenly into his head whilst he was in the witness-box�in the midst of those august ceremonies of the law there came suddenly into his mind the recollection of the softness of the girl's body as he had pressed her to him. and, from that moment, that girl appeared desirable to him�and leonora completely unattractive. he began to indulge in day-dreams in which he approached the nurse-maid more tactfully and carried the matter much further. occasionally he thought of other women in terms of wary courtship�or, perhaps, it would be more exact to say that he thought of them in terms of tactful comforting, ending in absorption. that was his own view of the case. he saw himself as the victim of the law. i don't mean to say that he saw himself as a kind of dreyfus. the law, practically, was quite kind to him. it stated that in its view captain ashburnham had been misled by an ill-placed desire to comfort a member of the opposite sex, and it fined him five shilling for his want of tact, or of knowledge of the world. but edward maintained that it had put ideas into his head. i don't believe it, though he certainly did. he was twenty-seven then, and his wife was out of sympathy with him�some crash was inevitable. there was between them a momentary rapprochement; but it could not last. it made it, probably, all the worse that, in that particular matter, leonara had come so very well up to the scratch. for, whilst edward respected her more and was grateful to her, it made her seem by so much the more cold in other matters that were near his heart�his responsibilities, his career, his tradition. it brought his despair of her up to a point of exasperation�and it riveted on him the idea that he might find some other woman who would give him the moral support that he needed. he wanted to be looked upon as a sort of lohengrin. at that time, he says, he went about deliberately looking for some woman who could help him. he found several�for there were quite a number of ladies in his set who were capable of agreeing with this handsome and fine fellow that the duties of a feudal gentleman were feudal. he would have liked to pass his days talking to one or other of these ladies. but there was always an obstacle�if the lady were married there would be a husband who claimed the greater part of her time and attention. if, on the other hand, it were an unmarried girl, he could not see very much of her for fear of compromising her. at that date, you understand, he had not the least idea of seducing any one of these ladies. he wanted only moral support at the hands of some female, because he found men difficult to talk to about ideals. indeed, i do not believe that he had, at any time, any idea of making any one his mistress. that sounds queer; but i believe it is quite true as a statement of character. it was, i believe, one of leonora's priests�a man of the world�who suggested that she should take him to monte carlo. he had the idea that what edward needed, in order to fit him for the society of leonora, was a touch of irresponsibility. for edward, at that date, had much the aspect of a prig. i mean that, if he played polo and was an excellent dancer he did the one for the sake of keeping himself fit and the other because it was a social duty to show himself at dances, and, when there, to dance well. he did nothing for fun except what he considered to be his work in life. as the priest saw it, this must for ever estrange him from leonora�not because leonora set much store by the joy of life, but because she was out of sympathy with edward's work. on the other hand, leonora did like to have a good time, now and then, and, as the priest saw it, if edward could be got to like having a good time now and then, too, there would be a bond of sympathy between them. it was a good idea, but it worked out wrongly. it worked out, in fact, in the mistress of the grand duke. in anyone less sentimental than edward that would not have mattered. with edward it was fatal. for, such was his honourable nature, that for him to enjoy a woman's favours made him feel that she had a bond on him for life. that was the way it worked out in practice. psychologically it meant that he could not have a mistress without falling violently in love with her. he was a serious person�and in this particular case it was very expensive. the mistress of the grand duke�a spanish dancer of passionate appearance�singled out edward for her glances at a ball that was held in their common hotel. edward was tall, handsome, blond and very wealthy as she understood�and leonora went up to bed early. she did not care for public dances, but she was relieved to see that edward appeared to be having a good time with several amiable girls. and that was the end of edward�for the spanish dancer of passionate appearance wanted one night of him for his beaux yeux. he took her into the dark gardens and, remembering suddenly the girl of the kilsyte case, he kissed her. he kissed her passionately, violently, with a sudden explosion of the passion that had been bridled all his life�for leonora was cold, or at any rate, well behaved. la dolciquita liked this reversion, and he passed the night in her bed. when the palpitating creature was at last asleep in his arms he discovered that he was madly, was passionately, was overwhelmingly in love with her. it was a passion that had arisen like fire in dry corn. he could think of nothing else; he could live for nothing else. but la dolciquita was a reasonable creature without an ounce of passion in her. she wanted a certain satisfaction of her appetites and edward had appealed to her the night before. now that was done with, and, quite coldly, she said that she wanted money if he was to have any more of her. it was a perfectly reasonable commercial transaction. she did not care two buttons for edward or for any man and he was asking her to risk a very good situation with the grand duke. if edward could put up sufficient money to serve as a kind of insurance against accident she was ready to like edward for a time that would be covered, as it were, by the policy. she was getting fifty thousand dollars a year from her grand duke; edward would have to pay a premium of two years' hire for a month of her society. there would not be much risk of the grand duke's finding it out and it was not certain that he would give her the keys of the street if he did find out. but there was the risk�a twenty per cent risk, as she figured it out. she talked to edward as if she had been a solicitor with an estate to sell�perfectly quietly and perfectly coldly without any inflections in her voice. she did not want to be unkind to him; but she could see no reason for being kind to him. she was a virtuous business woman with a mother and two sisters and her own old age to be provided comfortably for. she did not expect more than a five years' further run. she was twenty-four and, as she said: "we spanish women are horrors at thirty." edward swore that he would provide for her for life if she would come to him and leave off talking so horribly; but she only shrugged one shoulder slowly and contemptuously. he tried to convince this woman, who, as he saw it, had surrendered to him her virtue, that he regarded it as in any case his duty to provide for her, and to cherish her and even to love her�for life. in return for her sacrifice he would do that. in return, again, for his honourable love she would listen for ever to the accounts of his estate. that was how he figured it out. she shrugged the same shoulder with the same gesture and held out her left hand with the elbow at her side: "enfin, mon ami," she said, "put in this hand the price of that tiara at forli's or..." and she turned her back on him. edward went mad; his world stood on its head; the palms in front of the blue sea danced grotesque dances. you see, he believed in the virtue, tenderness and moral support of women. he wanted more than anything to argue with la dolciquita; to retire with her to an island and point out to her the damnation of her point of view and how salvation can only be found in true love and the feudal system. she had once been his mistress, he reflected, and by all the moral laws she ought to have gone on being his mistress or at the very least his sympathetic confidante. but her rooms were closed to him; she did not appear in the hotel. nothing: blank silence. to break that down he had to have twenty thousand pounds. you have heard what happened. he spent a week of madness; he hungered; his eyes sank in; he shuddered at leonora's touch. i dare say that nine-tenths of what he took to be his passion for la dolciquita was really discomfort at the thought that he had been unfaithful to leonora. he felt uncommonly bad, that is to say�oh, unbearably bad, and he took it all to be love. poor devil, he was incredibly naïve. he drank like a fish after leonora was in bed and he spread himself over the tables, and this went on for about a fortnight. heaven knows what would have happened; he would have thrown away every penny that he possessed. on the night after he had lost about forty thousand pounds and whilst the whole hotel was whispering about it, la dolciquita walked composedly into his bedroom. he was too drunk to recognize her, and she sat in his arm-chair, knitting and holding smelling salts to her nose�for he was pretty far gone with alcoholic poisoning�and, as soon as he was able to understand her, she said: "look here, mon ami, do not go to the tables again. take a good sleep now and come and see me this afternoon." he slept till the lunch-hour. by that time leonora had heard the news. a mrs colonel whelan had told her. mrs colonel whelan seems to have been the only sensible person who was ever connected with the ashburnhams. she had argued it out that there must be a woman of the harpy variety connected with edward's incredible behaviour and mien; and she advised leonora to go straight off to town�which might have the effect of bringing edward to his senses�and to consult her solicitor and her spiritual adviser. she had better go that very morning; it was no good arguing with a man in edward's condition. edward, indeed, did not know that she had gone. as soon as he awoke he went straight to la dolciquita's room and she stood him his lunch in her own apartments. he fell on her neck and wept, and she put up with it for a time. she was quite a good-natured woman. and, when she had calmed him down with eau de mélisse, she said: "look here, my friend, how much money have you left? five thousand dollars? ten?" for the rumour went that edward had lost two kings' ransoms a night for fourteen nights and she imagined that he must be near the end of his resources. the eau de mélisse had calmed edward to such an extent that, for the moment, he really had a head on his shoulders. he did nothing more than grunt: "and then?" "why," she answered, "i may just as well have the ten thousand dollars as the tables. i will go with you to antibes for a week for that sum." edward grunted: "five." she tried to get seven thousand five hundred; but he stuck to his five thousand and the hotel expenses at antibes. the sedative carried him just as far as that and then he collapsed again. he had to leave for antibes at three; he could not do without it. he left a note for leonora saying that he had gone off for a week with the clinton morleys, yachting. he did not enjoy himself very much at antibes. la dolciquita could talk of nothing with any enthusiasm except money, and she tired him unceasingly, during every waking hour, for presents of the most expensive description. and, at the end of a week, she just quietly kicked him out. he hung about in antibes for three days. he was cured of the idea that he had any duties towards la dolciquita�feudal or otherwise. but his sentimentalism required of him an attitude of byronic gloom�as if his court had gone into half-mourning. then his appetite suddenly returned, and he remembered leonora. he found at his hotel at monte carlo a telegram from leonora, dispatched from london, saying; "please return as soon as convenient." he could not understand why leonora should have abandoned him so precipitately when she only thought that he had gone yachting with the clinton morleys. then he discovered that she had left the hotel before he had written the note. he had a pretty rocky journey back to town; he was frightened out of his life�and leonora had never seemed so desirable to him. v i call this the saddest story, rather than "the ashburnham tragedy", just because it is so sad, just because there was no current to draw things along to a swift and inevitable end. there is about it none of the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is about it no nemesis, no destiny. here were two noble people�for i am convinced that both edward and leonora had noble natures�here, then, were two noble natures, drifting down life, like fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing miseries, heart-aches, agony of the mind and death. and they themselves steadily deteriorated. and why? for what purpose? to point what lesson? it is all a darkness. there is not even any villain in the story�for even major basil, the husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the unfortunate edward�even major basil was not a villain in this piece. he was a slack, loose, shiftless sort of fellow�but he did not do anything to edward. whilst they were in the same station in burma he borrowed a good deal of money�though, really, since major basil had no particular vices, it was difficult to know why he wanted it. he collected�different types of horses' bits from the earliest times to the present day�but, since he did not prosecute even this occupation with any vigour, he cannot have needed much money for the acquirement, say, of the bit of genghis khan's charger�if genghis khan had a charger. and when i say that he borrowed a good deal of money from edward i do not mean to say that he had more than a thousand pounds from him during the five years that the connection lasted. edward, of course, did not have a great deal of money; leonora was seeing to that. still, he may have had five hundred pounds a year english, for his menus plaisirs�for his regimental subscriptions and for keeping his men smart. leonora hated that; she would have preferred to buy dresses for herself or to have devoted the money to paying off a mortgage. still, with her sense of justice, she saw that, since she was managing a property bringing in three thousand a year with a view to re-establishing it as a property of five thousand a year and since the property really, if not legally, belonged to edward, it was reasonable and just that edward should get a slice of his own. of course she had the devil of a job. i don't know that i have got the financial details exactly right. i am a pretty good head at figures, but my mind, still, sometimes mixes up pounds with dollars and i get a figure wrong. anyhow, the proposition was something like this: properly worked and without rebates to the tenants and keeping up schools and things, the branshaw estate should have brought in about five thousand a year when edward had it. it brought in actually about four. (i am talking in pounds, not dollars.) edward's excesses with the spanish lady had reduced its value to about three�as the maximum figure, without reductions. leonora wanted to get it back to five. she was, of course, very young to be faced with such a proposition�twenty-four is not a very advanced age. so she did things with a youthful vigour that she would, very likely, have made more merciful, if she had known more about life. she got edward remarkably on the hop. he had to face her in a london hotel, when he crept back from monte carlo with his poor tail between his poor legs. as far as i can make out she cut short his first mumblings and his first attempts at affectionate speech with words something like: "we're on the verge of ruin. do you intend to let me pull things together? if not i shall retire to hendon on my jointure." (hendon represented a convent to which she occasionally went for what is called a "retreat" in catholic circles.) and poor dear edward knew nothing�absolutely nothing. he did not know how much money he had, as he put it, "blued" at the tables. it might have been a quarter of a million for all he remembered. he did not know whether she knew about la dolciquita or whether she imagined that he had gone off yachting or had stayed at monte carlo. he was just dumb and he just wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk. leonora did not make him talk and she said nothing herself. i do not know much about english legal procedure�i cannot, i mean, give technical details of how they tied him up. but i know that, two days later, without her having said more than i have reported to you, leonora and her attorney had become the trustees, as i believe it is called, of all edward's property, and there was an end of edward as the good landlord and father of his people. he went out. leonora then had three thousand a year at her disposal. she occupied edward with getting himself transferred to a part of his regiment that was in burma�if that is the right way to put it. she herself had an interview, lasting a week or so�with edward's land-steward. she made him understand that the estate would have to yield up to its last penny. before they left for india she had let branshaw for seven years at a thousand a year. she sold two vandykes and a little silver for eleven thousand pounds and she raised, on mortgage, twenty-nine thousand. that went to edward's money-lending friends in monte carlo. so she had to get the twenty-nine thousand back, for she did not regard the vandykes and the silver as things she would have to replace. they were just frills to the ashburnham vanity. edward cried for two days over the disappearance of his ancestors and then she wished she had not done it; but it did not teach her anything and it lessened such esteem as she had for him. she did not also understand that to let branshaw affected him with a feeling of physical soiling�that it was almost as bad for him as if a woman belonging to him had become a prostitute. that was how it did affect him; but i dare say she felt just as bad about the spanish dancer. so she went at it. they were eight years in india, and during the whole of that time she insisted that they must be self-supporting�they had to live on his captain's pay, plus the extra allowance for being at the front. she gave him the five hundred a year for ashburnham frills, as she called it to herself�and she considered she was doing him very well. indeed, in a way, she did him very well�but it was not his way. she was always buying him expensive things which, as it were, she took off her own back. i have, for instance, spoken of edward's leather cases. well, they were not edward's at all; they were leonora's manifestations. he liked to be clean, but he preferred, as it were, to be threadbare. she never understood that, and all that pigskin was her idea of a reward to him for putting her up to a little speculation by which she made eleven hundred pounds. she did, herself, the threadbare business. when they went up to a place called simla, where, as i understand, it is cool in the summer and very social�when they went up to simla for their healths it was she who had him prancing around, as we should say in the united states, on a thousand-dollar horse with the gladdest of glad rags all over him. she herself used to go into "retreat". i believe that was very good for her health and it was also very inexpensive. it was probably also very good for edward's health, because he pranced about mostly with mrs basil, who was a nice woman and very, very kind to him. i suppose she was his mistress, but i never heard it from edward, of course. i seem to gather that they carried it on in a high romantic fashion, very proper to both of them�or, at any rate, for edward; she seems to have been a tender and gentle soul who did what he wanted. i do not mean to say that she was without character; that was her job, to do what edward wanted. so i figured it out, that for those five years, edward wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long talks and that every now and then they "fell," which would give edward an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the major another fifty. i don't think that mrs basil considered it to be "falling"; she just pitied him and loved him. you see, leonora and edward had to talk about something during all these years. you cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless you are an inhabitant of the north of england or the state of maine. so leonora imagined the cheerful device of letting him see the accounts of his estate and discussing them with him. he did not discuss them much; he was trying to behave prettily. but it was old mr mumford�the farmer who did not pay his rent�that threw edward into mrs basil's arms. mrs basil came upon edward in the dusk, in the burmese garden, with all sorts of flowers and things. and he was cutting up that crop�with his sword, not a walking-stick. he was also carrying on and cursing in a way you would not believe. she ascertained that an old gentleman called mumford had been ejected from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free, where he lived on ten shillings a week from a farmers' benevolent society, supplemented by seven that was being allowed him by the ashburnham trustees. edward had just discovered that fact from the estate accounts. leonora had left them in his dressing-room and he had begun to read them before taking off his marching-kit. that was how he came to have a sword. leonora considered that she had been unusually generous to old mr mumford in allowing him to inhabit a cottage, rent-free, and in giving him seven shillings a week. anyhow, mrs basil had never seen a man in such a state as edward was. she had been passionately in love with him for quite a time, and he had been longing for her sympathy and admiration with a passion as deep. that was how they came to speak about it, in the burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. i think they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that, though mrs basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the ashburnham estate that she got the name of every field by heart. edward had a huge map of his lands in his harness-room and major basil did not seem to mind. i believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations. it might have lasted for ever if the major had not been made what is called a brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just before the south african war. he was sent off somewhere else and, of course, mrs basil could not stay with edward. edward ought, i suppose, to have gone to the transvaal. it would have done him a great deal of good to get killed. but leonora would not let him; she had heard awful stories of the extravagance of the hussar regiment in war-time�how they left hundred-bottle cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the veldt and so on. besides, she preferred to see how edward was spending his five hundred a year. i don't mean to say that edward had any grievance in that. he was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort and it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of the north western frontier, as to be shot at by an old gentleman in a tophat at the bottom of some spruit. those are more or less his words about it. i believe he quite distinguished himself over there. at any rate, he had had his d.s.o. and was made a brevet-major. leonora, however, was not in the least keen on his soldiering. she hated also his deeds of heroism. one of their bitterest quarrels came after he had, for the second time, in the red sea, jumped overboard from the troopship and rescued a private soldier. she stood it the first time and even complimented him. but the red sea was awful, that trip, and the private soldiers seemed to develop a suicidal craze. it got on leonora's nerves; she figured edward, for the rest of that trip, jumping overboard every ten minutes. and the mere cry of "man overboard" is a disagreeable, alarming and disturbing thing. the ship gets stopped and there are all sorts of shouts. and edward would not promise not to do it again, though, fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather when they were in the persian gulf. leonora had got it into her head that edward was trying to commit suicide, so i guess it was pretty awful for her when he would not give the promise. leonora ought never to have been on that troopship; but she got there somehow, as an economy. major basil discovered his wife's relation with edward just before he was sent to his other station. i don't know whether that was a blackmailer's adroitness or just a trick of destiny. he may have known of it all the time or he may not. at any rate, he got hold of, just about then, some letters and things. it cost edward three hundred pounds immediately. i do not know how it was arranged; i cannot imagine how even a blackmailer can make his demands. i suppose there is some sort of way of saving your face. i figure the major as disclosing the letters to edward with furious oaths, then accepting his explanations that the letters were perfectly innocent if the wrong construction were not put upon them. then the major would say: "i say, old chap, i'm deuced hard up. couldn't you lend me three hundred or so?" i fancy that was how it was. and, year by year, after that there would come a letter from the major, saying that he was deuced hard up and couldn't edward lend him three hundred or so? edward was pretty hard hit when mrs basil had to go away. he really had been very fond of her, and he remained faithful to her memory for quite a long time. and mrs basil had loved him very much and continued to cherish a hope of reunion with him. three days ago there came a quite proper but very lamentable letter from her to leonora, asking to be given particulars as to edward's death. she had read the advertisement of it in an indian paper. i think she must have been a very nice woman.... and then the ashburnhams were moved somewhere up towards a place or a district called chitral. i am no good at geography of the indian empire. by that time they had settled down into a model couple and they never spoke in private to each other. leonora had given up even showing the accounts of the ashburnham estate to edward. he thought that that was because she had piled up such a lot of money that she did not want him to know how she was getting on any more. but, as a matter of fact, after five or six years it had penetrated to her mind that it was painful to edward to have to look on at the accounts of his estate and have no hand in the management of it. she was trying to do him a kindness. and, up in chitral, poor dear little maisie maidan came along.... that was the most unsettling to edward of all his affairs. it made him suspect that he was inconstant. the affair with the dolciquita he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. his relations with mrs basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross kind. the husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him. he thought that mrs basil had been his soul-mate, separated from him by an unkind fate�something sentimental of that sort. but he discovered that, whilst he was still writing long weekly letters to mrs basil, he was beginning to be furiously impatient if he missed seeing maisie maidan during the course of the day. he discovered himself watching the doorways with impatience; he discovered that he disliked her boy husband very much for hours at a time. he discovered that he was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the morning, to go for a walk with maisie maidan. he discovered himself using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words. these, you understand, were discoveries that came so late that he could do nothing but drift. he was losing weight; his eyes were beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. he was, as he described it, pipped. and, one ghastly hot day, he suddenly heard himself say to leonora: "i say, couldn't we take mrs maidan with us to europe and drop her at nauheim?" he hadn't had the least idea of saying that to leonora. he had merely been standing, looking at an illustrated paper, waiting for dinner. dinner was twenty minutes late or the ashburnhams would not have been alone together. no, he hadn't had the least idea of framing that speech. he had just been standing in a silent agony of fear, of longing, of heat, of fever. he was thinking that they were going back to branshaw in a month and that maisie maidan was going to remain behind and die. and then, that had come out. the punkah swished in the darkened room; leonora lay exhausted and motionless in her cane lounge; neither of them stirred. they were both at that time very ill in indefinite ways. and then leonora said: "yes. i promised it to charlie maidan this afternoon. i have offered to pay her ex's myself." edward just saved himself from saying: "good god!" you see, he had not the least idea of what leonora knew�about maisie, about mrs basil, even about la dolciquita. it was a pretty enigmatic situation for him. it struck him that leonora must be intending to manage his loves as she managed his money affairs and it made her more hateful to him�and more worthy of respect. leonora, at any rate, had managed his money to some purpose. she had spoken to him, a week before, for the first time in several years�about money. she had made twenty-two thousand pounds out of the branshaw land and seven by the letting of branshaw furnished. by fortunate investments�in which edward had helped her�she had made another six or seven thousand that might well become more. the mortgages were all paid off, so that, except for the departure of the two vandykes and the silver, they were as well off as they had been before the dolciquita had acted the locust. it was leonora's great achievement. she laid the figures before edward, who maintained an unbroken silence. "i propose," she said, "that you should resign from the army and that we should go back to branshaw. we are both too ill to stay here any longer." edward said nothing at all. "this," leonora continued passionlessly, "is the great day of my life." edward said: "you have managed the job amazingly. you are a wonderful woman." he was thinking that if they went back to branshaw they would leave maisie maidan behind. that thought occupied him exclusively. they must, undoubtedly, return to branshaw; there could be no doubt that leonora was too ill to stay in that place. she said: "you understand that the management of the whole of the expenditure of the income will be in your hands. there will be five thousand a year." she thought that he cared very much about the expenditure of an income of five thousand a year and that the fact that she had done so much for him would rouse in him some affection for her. but he was thinking exclusively of maisie maidan�of maisie, thousands of miles away from him. he was seeing the mountains between them�blue mountains and the sea and sunlit plains. he said: "that is very generous of you." and she did not know whether that were praise or a sneer. that had been a week before. and all that week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and maisie maidan. that thought shook him in the burning nights: the sweat poured from him and he trembled with cold, in the burning noons�at that thought. he had no minute's rest; his bowels turned round and round within him: his tongue was perpetually dry and it seemed to him that the breath between his teeth was like air from a pest-house. he gave no thought to leonora at all; he had sent in his papers. they were to leave in a month. it seemed to him to be his duty to leave that place and to go away, to support leonora. he did his duty. it was horrible, in their relationship at that time, that whatever she did caused him to hate her. he hated her when he found that she proposed to set him up as the lord of branshaw again�as a sort of dummy lord, in swaddling clothes. he imagined that she had done this in order to separate him from maisie maidan. hatred hung in all the heavy nights and filled the shadowy corners of the room. so when he heard that she had offered to the maidan boy to take his wife to europe with him, automatically he hated her since he hated all that she did. it seemed to him, at that time, that she could never be other than cruel even if, by accident, an act of hers were kind.... yes, it was a horrible situation. but the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as if it had been a curtain. they seemed to give him back admiration for her, and respect. the agreeableness of having money lavishly at command, the fact that it had bought for him the companionship of maisie maidan�these things began to make him see that his wife might have been right in the starving and scraping upon which she had insisted. he was at ease; he was even radiantly happy when he carried cups of bouillon for maisie maidan along the deck. one night, when he was leaning beside leonora, over the ship's side, he said suddenly: "by jove, you're the finest woman in the world. i wish we could be better friends." she just turned away without a word and went to her cabin. still, she was very much better in health. and now, i suppose, i must give you leonora's side of the case.... that is very difficult. for leonora, if she preserved an unchanged front, changed very frequently her point of view. she had been drilled�in her tradition, in her upbringing�to keep her mouth shut. but there were times, she said, when she was so near yielding to the temptation of speaking that afterwards she shuddered to think of those times. you must postulate that what she desired above all things was to keep a shut mouth to the world; to edward and to the women that he loved. if she spoke she would despise herself. from the moment of his unfaithfulness with la dolciquita she never acted the part of wife to edward. it was not that she intended to keep herself from him as a principle, for ever. her spiritual advisers, i believe, forbade that. but she stipulated that he must, in some way, perhaps symbolical, come back to her. she was not very clear as to what she meant; probably she did not know herself. or perhaps she did. there were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her; there were moments when she was within a hair of yielding to her physical passion for him. in just the same way, at moments, she almost yielded to the temptation to denounce mrs basil to her husband or maisie maidan to hers. she desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public scandals. for, watching edward more intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies. she was aware of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she knew from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions. at times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted. she imagined that edward was carrying on intrigues with other women�with two at once; with three. for whole periods she imagined him to be a monster of libertinage and she could not see that he could have anything against her. she left him his liberty; she was starving herself to build up his fortunes; she allowed herself none of the joys of femininity�no dresses, no jewels�hardly even friendships, for fear they should cost money. and yet, oddly, she could not but be aware that both mrs basil and maisie maidan were nice women. the curious, discounting eye which one woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing that mrs basil was very good to edward and mrs maidan very good for him. that seemed her to be a monstrous and incomprehensible working of fate's. incomprehensible! why, she asked herself again and again, did none of the good deeds that she did for her husband ever come through to him, or appear to him as good deeds? by what trick of mania could not he let her be as good to him as mrs basil was? mrs basil was not so extraordinarily dissimilar to herself. she was, it was true, tall, dark, with soft mournful voice and a great kindness of manner for every created thing, from punkah men to flowers on the trees. but she was not so well read as leonora, at any rate in learned books. leonora could not stand novels. but, even with all her differences, mrs basil did not appear to leonora to differ so very much from herself. she was truthful, honest and, for the rest, just a woman. and leonora had a vague sort of idea that, to a man, all women are the same after three weeks of close intercourse. she thought that the kindness should no longer appeal, the soft and mournful voice no longer thrill, the tall darkness no longer give a man the illusion that he was going into the depths of an unexplored wood. she could not understand how edward could go on and on maundering over mrs basil. she could not see why he should continue to write her long letters after their separation. after that, indeed, she had a very bad time. she had at that period what i will call the "monstrous" theory of edward. she was always imagining him ogling at every woman that he came across. she did not, that year, go into "retreat" at simla because she was afraid that he would corrupt her maid in her absence. she imagined him carrying on intrigues with native women or eurasians. at dances she was in a fever of watchfulness. she persuaded herself that this was because she had a dread of scandals. edward might get himself mixed up with a marriageable daughter of some man who would make a row or some husband who would matter. but, really, she acknowledged afterwards to herself, she was hoping that, mrs basil being out of the way, the time might have come when edward should return to her. all that period she passed in an agony of jealousy and fear�the fear that edward might really become promiscuous in his habits. so that, in an odd way, she was glad when maisie maidan came along�and she realized that she had not, before, been afraid of husbands and of scandals, since, then, she did her best to keep maisie's husband unsuspicious. she wished to appear so trustful of edward that maidan could not possibly have any suspicions. it was an evil position for her. but edward was very ill and she wanted to see him smile again. she thought that if he could smile again through her agency he might return, through gratitude and satisfied love�to her. at that time she thought that edward was a person of light and fleeting passions. and she could understand edward's passion for maisie, since maisie was one of those women to whom other women will allow magnetism. she was very pretty; she was very young; in spite of her heart she was very gay and light on her feet. and leonora was really very fond of maisie, who was fond enough of leonora. leonora, indeed, imagined that she could manage this affair all right. she had no thought of maisie's being led into adultery; she imagined that if she could take maisie and edward to nauheim, edward would see enough of her to get tired of her pretty little chatterings, and of the pretty little motions of her hands and feet. and she thought she could trust edward. for there was not any doubt of maisie's passion for edward. she raved about him to leonora as leonora had heard girls rave about drawing masters in schools. she was perpetually asking her boy husband why he could not dress, ride, shoot, play polo, or even recite sentimental poems, like their major. and young maidan had the greatest admiration for edward, and he adored, was bewildered by and entirely trusted his wife. it appeared to him that edward was devoted to leonora. and leonora imagined that when poor maisie was cured of her heart and edward had seen enough of her, he would return to her. she had the vague, passionate idea that, when edward had exhausted a number of other types of women he must turn to her. why should not her type have its turn in his heart? she imagined that, by now, she understood him better, that she understood better his vanities and that, by making him happier, she could arouse his love. florence knocked all that on the head.... part iv i i have, i am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. i cannot help it. i have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. and, when one discusses an affair�a long, sad affair�one goes back, one goes forward. one remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. i console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. they will then seem most real. at any rate, i think i have brought my story up to the date of maisie maidan's death. i mean that i have explained everything that went before it from the several points of view that were necessary�from leonora's, from edward's and, to some extent, from my own. you have the facts for the trouble of finding them; you have the points of view as far as i could ascertain or put them. let me imagine myself back, then, at the day of maisie's death�or rather at the moment of florence's dissertation on the protest, up in the old castle of the town of m��. let us consider leonora's point of view with regard to florence; edward's, of course, i cannot give you, for edward naturally never spoke of his affair with my wife. (i may, in what follows, be a little hard on florence; but you must remember that i have been writing away at this story now for six months and reflecting longer and longer upon these affairs.) and the longer i think about them the more certain i become that florence was a contaminating influence�she depressed and deteriorated poor edward; she deteriorated, hopelessly, the miserable leonora. there is no doubt that she caused leonora's character to deteriorate. if there was a fine point about leonora it was that she was proud and that she was silent. but that pride and that silence broke when she made that extraordinary outburst, in the shadowy room that contained the protest, and in the little terrace looking over the river. i don't mean to say that she was doing a wrong thing. she was certainly doing right in trying to warn me that florence was making eyes at her husband. but, if she did the right thing, she was doing it in the wrong way. perhaps she should have reflected longer; she should have spoken, if she wanted to speak, only after reflection. or it would have been better if she had acted�if, for instance, she had so chaperoned florence that private communication between her and edward became impossible. she should have gone eavesdropping; she should have watched outside bedroom doors. it is odious; but that is the way the job is done. she should have taken edward away the moment maisie was dead. no, she acted wrongly.... and yet, poor thing, is it for me to condemn her�and what did it matter in the end? if it had not been florence, it would have been some other... still, it might have been a better woman than my wife. for florence was vulgar; florence was a common flirt who would not, at the last, lacher prise; and florence was an unstoppable talker. you could not stop her; nothing would stop her. edward and leonora were at least proud and reserved people. pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. but if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go. and leonora let them go. she let them go before poor edward did even. consider her position when she burst out over the luther-protest.... consider her agonies.... you are to remember that the main passion of her life was to get edward back; she had never, till that moment, despaired of getting him back. that may seem ignoble; but you have also to remember that her getting him back represented to her not only a victory for herself. it would, as it appeared to her, have been a victory for all wives and a victory for her church. that was how it presented itself to her. these things are a little inscrutable. i don't know why the getting back of edward should have represented to her a victory for all wives, for society and for her church. or, maybe, i have a glimmering of it. she saw life as a perpetual sex-battle between husbands who desire to be unfaithful to their wives, and wives who desire to recapture their husbands in the end. that was her sad and modest view of matrimony. man, for her, was a sort of brute who must have his divagations, his moments of excess, his nights out, his, let us say, rutting seasons. she had read few novels, so that the idea of a pure and constant love succeeding the sound of wedding bells had never been very much presented to her. she went, numbed and terrified, to the mother superior of her childhood's convent with the tale of edward's infidelities with the spanish dancer, and all that the old nun, who appeared to her to be infinitely wise, mystic and reverend, had done had been to shake her head sadly and to say: "men are like that. by the blessing of god it will all come right in the end." that was what was put before her by her spiritual advisers as her programme in life. or, at any rate, that was how their teachings came through to her�that was the lesson she told me she had learned of them. i don't know exactly what they taught her. the lot of women was patience and patience and again patience�ad majorem dei gloriam�until upon the appointed day, if god saw fit, she should have her reward. if then, in the end, she should have succeeded in getting edward back she would have kept her man within the limits that are all that wifehood has to expect. she was even taught that such excesses in men are natural, excusable�as if they had been children. and the great thing was that there should be no scandal before the congregation. so she had clung to the idea of getting edward back with a fierce passion that was like an agony. she had looked the other way; she had occupied herself solely with one idea. that was the idea of having edward appear, when she did get him back, wealthy, glorious as it were, on account of his lands, and upright. she would show, in fact, that in an unfaithful world one catholic woman had succeeded in retaining the fidelity of her husband. and she thought she had come near her desires. her plan with regard to maisie had appeared to be working admirably. edward had seemed to be cooling off towards the girl. he did not hunger to pass every minute of the time at nauheim beside the child's recumbent form; he went out to polo matches; he played auction bridge in the evenings; he was cheerful and bright. she was certain that he was not trying to seduce that poor child; she was beginning to think that he had never tried to do so. he seemed in fact to be dropping back into what he had been for maisie in the beginning�a kind, attentive, superior officer in the regiment, paying gallant attentions to a bride. they were as open in their little flirtations as the dayspring from on high. and maisie had not appeared to fret when he went off on excursions with us; she had to lie down for so many hours on her bed every afternoon, and she had not appeared to crave for the attentions of edward at those times. and edward was beginning to make little advances to leonora. once or twice, in private�for he often did it before people�he had said: "how nice you look!" or "what a pretty dress!" she had gone with florence to frankfurt, where they dress as well as in paris, and had got herself a gown or two. she could afford it, and florence was an excellent adviser as to dress. she seemed to have got hold of the clue to the riddle. yes, leonora seemed to have got hold of the clue to the riddle. she imagined herself to have been in the wrong to some extent in the past. she should not have kept edward on such a tight rein with regard to money. she thought she was on the right tack in letting him�as she had done only with fear and irresolution�have again the control of his income. he came even a step towards her and acknowledged, spontaneously, that she had been right in husbanding, for all those years, their resources. he said to her one day: "you've done right, old girl. there's nothing i like so much as to have a little to chuck away. and i can do it, thanks to you." that was really, she said, the happiest moment of her life. and he, seeming to realize it, had ventured to pat her on the shoulder. he had, ostensibly, come in to borrow a safety-pin of her. and the occasion of her boxing maisie's ears, had, after it was over, riveted in her mind the idea that there was no intrigue between edward and mrs maidan. she imagined that, from henceforward, all that she had to do was to keep him well supplied with money and his mind amused with pretty girls. she was convinced that he was coming back to her. for that month she no longer repelled his timid advances that never went very far. for he certainly made timid advances. he patted her on the shoulder; he whispered into her ear little jokes about the odd figures that they saw up at the casino. it was not much to make a little joke�but the whispering of it was a precious intimacy.... and then�smash�it all went. it went to pieces at the moment when florence laid her hand upon edward's wrist, as it lay on the glass sheltering the manuscript of the protest, up in the high tower with the shutters where the sunlight here and there streamed in. or, rather, it went when she noticed the look in edward's eyes as he gazed back into florence's. she knew that look. she had known�since the first moment of their meeting, since the moment of our all sitting down to dinner together�that florence was making eyes at edward. but she had seen so many women make eyes at edward�hundreds and hundreds of women, in railway trains, in hotels, aboard liners, at street corners. and she had arrived at thinking that edward took little stock in women that made eyes at him. she had formed what was, at that time, a fairly correct estimate of the methods of, the reasons for, edward's loves. she was certain that hitherto they had consisted of the short passion for the dolciquita, the real sort of love for mrs basil, and what she deemed the pretty courtship of maisie maidan. besides she despised florence so haughtily that she could not imagine edward's being attracted by her. and she and maisie were a sort of bulwark round him. she wanted, besides, to keep her eyes on florence�for florence knew that she had boxed maisie's ears. and leonora desperately desired that her union with edward should appear to be flawless. but all that went.... with the answering gaze of edward into florence's blue and uplifted eyes, she knew that it had all gone. she knew that that gaze meant that those two had had long conversations of an intimate kind�about their likes and dislikes, about their natures, about their views of marriage. she knew what it meant that she, when we all four walked out together, had always been with me ten yards ahead of florence and edward. she did not imagine that it had gone further than talks about their likes and dislikes, about their natures or about marriage as an institution. but, having watched edward all her life, she knew that that laying on of hands, that answering of gaze with gaze, meant that the thing was unavoidable. edward was such a serious person. she knew that any attempt on her part to separate those two would be to rivet on edward an irrevocable passion; that, as i have before told you, it was a trick of edward's nature to believe that the seducing of a woman gave her an irrevocable hold over him for life. and that touching of hands, she knew, would give that woman an irrevocable claim�to be seduced. and she so despised florence that she would have preferred it to be a parlour-maid. there are very decent parlour-maids. and, suddenly, there came into her mind the conviction that maisie maidan had a real passion for edward; that this would break her heart�and that she, leonora, would be responsible for that. she went, for the moment, mad. she clutched me by the wrist; she dragged me down those stairs and across that whispering rittersaal with the high painted pillars, the high painted chimney-piece. i guess she did not go mad enough. she ought to have said: "your wife is a harlot who is going to be my husband's mistress.. ." that might have done the trick. but, even in her madness, she was afraid to go as far as that. she was afraid that, if she did, edward and florence would make a bolt of it, and that, if they did that, she would lose forever all chance of getting him back in the end. she acted very badly to me. well, she was a tortured soul who put her church before the interests of a philadelphia quaker. that is all right�i daresay the church of rome is the more important of the two. a week after maisie maidan's death she was aware that florence had become edward's mistress. she waited outside florence's door and met edward as he came away. she said nothing and he only grunted. but i guess he had a bad time. yes, the mental deterioration that florence worked in leonora was extraordinary; it smashed up her whole life and all her chances. it made her, in the first place, hopeless�for she could not see how, after that, edward could return to her�after a vulgar intrigue with a vulgar woman. his affair with mrs basil, which was now all that she had to bring, in her heart, against him, she could not find it in her to call an intrigue. it was a love affair�a pure enough thing in its way. but this seemed to her to be a horror�a wantonness, all the more detestable to her, because she so detested florence. and florence talked.... that was what was terrible, because florence forced leonora herself to abandon her high reserve�florence and the situation. it appears that florence was in two minds whether to confess to me or to leonora. confess she had to. and she pitched at last on leonora, because if it had been me she would have had to confess a great deal more. or, at least, i might have guessed a great deal more, about her "heart", and about jimmy. so she went to leonora one day and began hinting and hinting. and she enraged leonora to such an extent that at last leonora said: "you want to tell me that you are edward's mistress. you can be. i have no use for him." that was really a calamity for leonora, because, once started, there was no stopping the talking. she tried to stop�but it was not to be done. she found it necessary to send edward messages through florence; for she would not speak to him. she had to give him, for instance, to understand that if i ever came to know of his intrigue she would ruin him beyond repair. and it complicated matters a good deal that edward, at about this time, was really a little in love with her. he thought that he had treated her so badly; that she was so fine. she was so mournful that he longed to comfort her, and he thought himself such a blackguard that there was nothing he would not have done to make amends. and florence communicated these items of information to leonora. i don't in the least blame leonora for her coarseness to florence; it must have done florence a world of good. but i do blame her for giving way to what was in the end a desire for communicativeness. you see that business cut her off from her church. she did not want to confess what she was doing because she was afraid that her spiritual advisers would blame her for deceiving me. i rather imagine that she would have preferred damnation to breaking my heart. that is what it works out at. she need not have troubled. but, having no priests to talk to, she had to talk to someone, and as florence insisted on talking to her, she talked back, in short, explosive sentences, like one of the damned. precisely like one of the damned. well, if a pretty period in hell on this earth can spare her any period of pain in eternity�where there are not any periods�i guess leonora will escape hell fire. her conversations with florence would be like this. florence would happen in on her, whilst she was doing her wonderful hair, with a proposition from edward, who seems about that time to have conceived the naïve idea that he might become a polygamist. i daresay it was florence who put it into his head. anyhow, i am not responsible for the oddities of the human psychology. but it certainly appears that at about that date edward cared more for leonora than he had ever done before�or, at any rate, for a long time. and, if leonora had been a person to play cards and if she had played her cards well, and if she had had no sense of shame and so on, she might then have shared edward with florence until the time came for jerking that poor cuckoo out of the nest. well, florence would come to leonora with some such proposition. i do not mean to say that she put it baldly, like that. she stood out that she was not edward's mistress until leonora said that she had seen edward coming out of her room at an advanced hour of the night. that checked florence a bit; but she fell back upon her "heart" and stuck out that she had merely been conversing with edward in order to bring him to a better frame of mind. florence had, of course, to stick to that story; for even florence would not have had the face to implore leonora to grant her favours to edward if she had admitted that she was edward's mistress. that could not be done. at the same time florence had such a pressing desire to talk about something. there would have been nothing else to talk about but a rapprochement between that estranged pair. so florence would go on babbling and leonora would go on brushing her hair. and then leonora would say suddenly something like: "i should think myself defiled if edward touched me now that he has touched you." that would discourage florence a bit; but after a week or so, on another morning she would have another try. and even in other things leonora deteriorated. she had promised edward to leave the spending of his own income in his own hands. and she had fully meant to do that. i daresay she would have done it too; though, no doubt, she would have spied upon his banking account in secret. she was not a roman catholic for nothing. but she took so serious a view of edward's unfaithfulness to the memory of poor little maisie that she could not trust him any more at all. so when she got back to branshaw she started, after less than a month, to worry him about the minutest items of his expenditure. she allowed him to draw his own cheques, but there was hardly a cheque that she did not scrutinize�except for a private account of about five hundred a year which, tacitly, she allowed him to keep for expenditure on his mistress or mistresses. he had to have his jaunts to paris; he had to send expensive cables in cipher to florence about twice a week. but she worried him about his expenditure on wines, on fruit trees, on harness, on gates, on the account at his blacksmith's for work done to a new patent army stirrup that he was trying to invent. she could not see why he should bother to invent a new army stirrup, and she was really enraged when, after the invention was mature, he made a present to the war office of the designs and the patent rights. it was a remarkably good stirrup. i have told you, i think, that edward spent a great deal of time, and about two hundred pounds for law fees on getting a poor girl, the daughter of one of his gardeners, acquitted of a charge of murdering her baby. that was positively the last act of edward's life. it came at a time when nancy rufford was on her way to india; when the most horrible gloom was over the household; when edward himself was in an agony and behaving as prettily as he knew how. yet even then leonora made him a terrible scene about this expenditure of time and trouble. she sort of had the vague idea that what had passed with the girl and the rest of it ought to have taught edward a lesson�the lesson of economy. she threatened to take his banking account away from him again. i guess that made him cut his throat. he might have stuck it out otherwise�but the thought that he had lost nancy and that, in addition, there was nothing left for him but a dreary, dreary succession of days in which he could be of no public service... well, it finished him. it was during those years that leonora tried to get up a love affair of her own with a fellow called bayham�a decent sort of fellow. a really nice man. but the affair was no sort of success. i have told you about it already... . ii well, that about brings me up to the date of my receiving, in waterbury, the laconic cable from edward to the effect that he wanted me to go to branshaw and have a chat. i was pretty busy at the time and i was half minded to send him a reply cable to the effect that i would start in a fortnight. but i was having a long interview with old mr hurlbird's attorneys and immediately afterwards i had to have a long interview with the misses hurlbird, so i delayed cabling. i had expected to find the misses hurlbird excessively old�in the nineties or thereabouts. the time had passed so slowly that i had the impression that it must have been thirty years since i had been in the united states. it was only twelve years. actually miss hurlbird was just sixty-one and miss florence hurlbird fifty-nine, and they were both, mentally and physically, as vigorous as could be desired. they were, indeed, more vigorous, mentally, than suited my purpose, which was to get away from the united states as quickly as i could. the hurlbirds were an exceedingly united family�exceedingly united except on one set of points. each of the three of them had a separate doctor, whom they trusted implicitly�and each had a separate attorney. and each of them distrusted the other's doctor and the other's attorney. and, naturally, the doctors and the attorneys warned one all the time�against each other. you cannot imagine how complicated it all became for me. of course i had an attorney of my own�recommended to me by young carter, my philadelphia nephew. i do not mean to say that there was any unpleasantness of a grasping kind. the problem was quite another one�a moral dilemma. you see, old mr hurlbird had left all his property to florence with the mere request that she would have erected to him in the city of waterbury, ill., a memorial that should take the form of some sort of institution for the relief of sufferers from the heart. florence's money had all come to me�and with it old mr hurlbird's. he had died just five days before florence. well, i was quite ready to spend a round million dollars on the relief of sufferers from the heart. the old gentleman had left about a million and a half; florence had been worth about eight hundred thousand�and as i figured it out, i should cut up at about a million myself. anyhow, there was ample money. but i naturally wanted to consult the wishes of his surviving relatives and then the trouble really began. you see, it had been discovered that mr hurlbird had had nothing whatever the matter with his heart. his lungs had been a little affected all through his life and he had died of bronchitis. it struck miss florence hurlbird that, since her brother had died of lungs and not of heart, his money ought to go to lung patients. that, she considered, was what her brother would have wished. on the other hand, by a kink, that i could not at the time understand, miss hurlbird insisted that i ought to keep the money all to myself. she said that she did not wish for any monuments to the hurlbird family. at the time i thought that that was because of a new england dislike for necrological ostentation. but i can figure out now, when i remember certain insistent and continued questions that she put to me, about edward ashburnham, that there was another idea in her mind. and leonora has told me that, on florence's dressing-table, beside her dead body, there had lain a letter to miss hurlbird�a letter which leonora posted without telling me. i don't know how florence had time to write to her aunt; but i can quite understand that she would not like to go out of the world without making some comments. so i guess florence had told miss hurlbird a good bit about edward ashburnham in a few scrawled words�and that that was why the old lady did not wish the name of hurlbird perpetuated. perhaps also she thought that i had earned the hurlbird money. it meant a pretty tidy lot of discussing, what with the doctors warning each other about the bad effects of discussions on the health of the old ladies, and warning me covertly against each other, and saying that old mr hurlbird might have died of heart, after all, in spite of the diagnosis of his doctor. and the solicitors all had separate methods of arranging about how the money should be invested and entrusted and bound. personally, i wanted to invest the money so that the interest could be used for the relief of sufferers from the heart. if old mr hurlbird had not died of any defects in that organ he had considered that it was defective. moreover, florence had certainly died of her heart, as i saw it. and when miss florence hurlbird stood out that the money ought to go to chest sufferers i was brought to thinking that there ought to be a chest institution too, and i advanced the sum that i was ready to provide to a million and a half of dollars. that would have given seven hundred and fifty thousand to each class of invalid. i did not want money at all badly. all i wanted it for was to be able to give nancy rufford a good time. i did not know much about housekeeping expenses in england where, i presumed, she would wish to live. i knew that her needs at that time were limited to good chocolates, and a good horse or two, and simple, pretty frocks. probably she would want more than that later on. but even if i gave a million and a half dollars to these institutions i should still have the equivalent of about twenty thousand a year english, and i considered that nancy could have a pretty good time on that or less. anyhow, we had a stiff set of arguments up at the hurlbird mansion which stands on a bluff over the town. it may strike you, silent listener, as being funny if you happen to be european. but moral problems of that description and the giving of millions to institutions are immensely serious matters in my country. indeed, they are the staple topics for consideration amongst the wealthy classes. we haven't got peerage and social climbing to occupy us much, and decent people do not take interest in politics or elderly people in sport. so that there were real tears shed by both miss hurlbird and miss florence before i left that city. i left it quite abruptly. four hours after edward's telegram came another from leonora, saying: "yes, do come. you could be so helpful." i simply told my attorney that there was the million and a half; that he could invest it as he liked, and that the purposes must be decided by the misses hurlbird. i was, anyhow, pretty well worn out by all the discussions. and, as i have never heard yet from the misses hurlbird, i rather think that miss hurlbird, either by revelations or by moral force, has persuaded miss florence that no memorial to their names shall be erected in the city of waterbury, conn. miss hurlbird wept dreadfully when she heard that i was going to stay with the ashburnhams, but she did not make any comments. i was aware, at that date, that her niece had been seduced by that fellow jimmy before i had married her�but i contrived to produce on her the impression that i thought florence had been a model wife. why, at that date i still believed that florence had been perfectly virtuous after her marriage to me. i had not figured it out that she could have played it so low down as to continue her intrigue with that fellow under my roof. well, i was a fool. but i did not think much about florence at that date. my mind was occupied with what was happening at branshaw. i had got it into my head that the telegrams had something to do with nancy. it struck me that she might have shown signs of forming an attachment for some undesirable fellow and that leonora wanted me to come back and marry her out of harm's way. that was what was pretty firmly in my mind. and it remained in my mind for nearly ten days after my arrival at that beautiful old place. neither edward nor leonora made any motion to talk to me about anything other than the weather and the crops. yet, although there were several young fellows about, i could not see that any one in particular was distinguished by the girl's preference. she certainly appeared illish and nervous, except when she woke up to talk gay nonsense to me. oh, the pretty thing that she was.... i imagined that what must have happened was that the undesirable young man had been forbidden the place and that nancy was fretting a little. what had happened was just hell. leonora had spoken to nancy; nancy had spoken to edward; edward had spoken to leonora�and they had talked and talked. and talked. you have to imagine horrible pictures of gloom and half lights, and emotions running through silent nights�through whole nights. you have to imagine my beautiful nancy appearing suddenly to edward, rising up at the foot of his bed, with her long hair falling, like a split cone of shadow, in the glimmer of a night-light that burned beside him. you have to imagine her, a silent, a no doubt agonized figure, like a spectre, suddenly offering herself to him�to save his reason! and you have to imagine his frantic refusal�and talk. and talk! my god! and yet, to me, living in the house, enveloped with the charm of the quiet and ordered living, with the silent, skilled servants whose mere laying out of my dress clothes was like a caress�to me who was hourly with them they appeared like tender, ordered and devoted people, smiling, absenting themselves at the proper intervals; driving me to meets�just good people! how the devil�how the devil do they do it? at dinner one evening leonora said�she had just opened a telegram: "nancy will be going to india, tomorrow, to be with her father." no one spoke. nancy looked at her plate; edward went on eating his pheasant. i felt very bad; i imagined that it would be up to me to propose to nancy that evening. it appeared to me to be queer that they had not given me any warning of nancy's departure�but i thought that that was only english manners�some sort of delicacy that i had not got the hang of. you must remember that at that moment i trusted in edward and leonora and in nancy rufford, and in the tranquility of ancient haunts of peace, as i had trusted in my mother's love. and that evening edward spoke to me. what in the interval had happened had been this: upon her return from nauheim leonora had completely broken down�because she knew she could trust edward. that seems odd but, if you know anything about breakdowns, you will know that by the ingenious torments that fate prepares for us, these things come as soon as, a strain having relaxed, there is nothing more to be done. it is after a husband's long illness and death that a widow goes to pieces; it is at the end of a long rowing contest that a crew collapses and lies forward upon its oars. and that was what happened to leonora. from certain tones in edward's voice; from the long, steady stare that he had given her from his bloodshot eyes on rising from the dinner table in the nauheim hotel, she knew that, in the affair of the poor girl, this was a case in which edward's moral scruples, or his social code, or his idea that it would be playing it too low down, rendered nancy perfectly safe. the girl, she felt sure, was in no danger at all from edward. and in that she was perfectly right. the smash was to come from herself. she relaxed; she broke; she drifted, at first quickly, then with an increasing momentum, down the stream of destiny. you may put it that, having been cut off from the restraints of her religion, for the first time in her life, she acted along the lines of her instinctive desires. i do not know whether to think that, in that she was no longer herself; or that, having let loose the bonds of her standards, her conventions and her traditions, she was being, for the first time, her own natural self. she was torn between her intense, maternal love for the girl and an intense jealousy of the woman who realizes that the man she loves has met what appears to be the final passion of his life. she was divided between an intense disgust for edward's weakness in conceiving this passion, an intense pity for the miseries that he was enduring, and a feeling equally intense, but one that she hid from herself�a feeling of respect for edward's determination to keep himself, in this particular affair, unspotted. and the human heart is a very mysterious thing. it is impossible to say that leonora, in acting as she then did, was not filled with a sort of hatred of edward's final virtue. she wanted, i think, to despise him. he was, she realized gone from her for good. then let him suffer, let him agonize; let him, if possible, break and go to that hell that is the abode of broken resolves. she might have taken a different line. it would have been so easy to send the girl away to stay with some friends; to have taken her away herself upon some pretext or other. that would not have cured things but it would have been the decent line,... but, at that date, poor leonora was incapable of taking any line whatever. she pitied edward frightfully at one time�and then she acted along the lines of pity; she loathed him at another and then she acted as her loathing dictated. she gasped, as a person dying of tuberculosis gasps for air. she craved madly for communication with some other human soul. and the human soul that she selected was that of the girl. perhaps nancy was the only person that she could have talked to. with her necessity for reticences, with her coldness of manner, leonora had singularly few intimates. she had none at all, with the exception of the mrs colonel whelen, who had advised her about the affair with la dolciquita, and the one or two religious, who had guided her through life. the colonel's wife was at that time in madeira; the religious she now avoided. her visitors' book had seven hundred names in it; there was not a soul that she could speak to. she was mrs ashburnham of branshaw teleragh. she was the great mrs ashburnham of branshaw and she lay all day upon her bed in her marvellous, light, airy bedroom with the chintzes and the chippendale and the portraits of deceased ashburnhams by zoffany and zucchero. when there was a meet she would struggle up�supposing it were within driving distance�and let edward drive her and the girl to the cross-roads or the country house. she would drive herself back alone; edward would ride off with the girl. ride leonora could not, that season�her head was too bad. each pace of her mare was an anguish. but she drove with efficiency and precision; she smiled at the gimmers and foulkes and the hedley seatons. she threw with exactitude pennies to the boys who opened gates for her; she sat upright on the seat of the high dog-cart; she waved her hands to edward and nancy as they rode off with the hounds, and every one could hear her clear, high voice, in the chilly weather, saying: "have a good time!" poor forlorn woman!... there was, however, one spark of consolation. it came from the fact that rodney bayham, of bayham, followed her always with his eyes. it had been three years since she had tried her abortive love-affair with him. yet still, on the winter mornings he would ride up to her shafts and just say: "good day," and look at her with eyes that were not imploring, but seemed to say: "you see, i am still, as the germans say, a. d.�at disposition." it was a great consolation, not because she proposed ever to take him up again, but because it showed her that there was in the world one faithful soul in riding-breeches. and it showed her that she was not losing her looks. and, indeed, she was not losing her looks. she was forty, but she was as clean run as on the day she had left the convent�as clear in outline, as clear coloured in the hair, as dark blue in the eyes. she thought that her looking-glass told her this; but there are always the doubts.... rodney bayham's eyes took them away. it is very singular that leonora should not have aged at all. i suppose that there are some types of beauty and even of youth made for the embellishments that come with enduring sorrow. that is too elaborately put. i mean that leonora, if everything had prospered, might have become too hard and, maybe, overbearing. as it was she was tuned down to appearing efficient�and yet sympathetic. that is the rarest of all blends. and yet i swear that leonora, in her restrained way, gave the impression of being intensely sympathetic. when she listened to you she appeared also to be listening to some sound that was going on in the distance. but still, she listened to you and took in what you said, which, since the record of humanity is a record of sorrows, was, as a rule, something sad. i think that she must have taken nancy through many terrors of the night and many bad places of the day. and that would account for the girl's passionate love for the elder woman. for nancy's love for leonora was an admiration that is awakened in catholics by their feeling for the virgin mary and for various of the saints. it is too little to say that the girl would have laid her life at leonora's feet. well, she laid there the offer of her virtue�and her reason. those were sufficient instalments of her life. it would today be much better for nancy rufford if she were dead. perhaps all these reflections are a nuisance; but they crowd on me. i will try to tell the story. you see�when she came back from nauheim leonora began to have her headaches�headaches lasting through whole days, during which she could speak no word and could bear to hear no sound. and, day after day, nancy would sit with her, silent and motionless for hours, steeping handkerchiefs in vinegar and water, and thinking her own thoughts. it must have been very bad for her�and her meals alone with edward must have been bad for her too�and beastly bad for edward. edward, of course, wavered in his demeanour, what else could he do? at times he would sit silent and dejected over his untouched food. he would utter nothing but monosyllables when nancy spoke to him. then he was simply afraid of the girl falling in love with him. at other times he would take a little wine; pull himself together; attempt to chaff nancy about a stake and binder hedge that her mare had checked at, or talk about the habits of the chitralis. that was when he was thinking that it was rough on the poor girl that he should have become a dull companion. he realized that his talking to her in the park at nauheim had done her no harm. but all that was doing a great deal of harm to nancy. it gradually opened her eyes to the fact that edward was a man with his ups and downs and not an invariably gay uncle like a nice dog, a trustworthy horse or a girl friend. she would find him in attitudes of frightful dejection, sunk into his armchair in the study that was half a gun-room. she would notice through the open door that his face was the face of an old, dead man, when he had no one to talk to. gradually it forced itself upon her attention that there were profound differences between the pair that she regarded as her uncle and her aunt. it was a conviction that came very slowly. it began with edward's giving an oldish horse to a young fellow called selmes. selmes' father had been ruined by a fraudulent solicitor and the selmes family had had to sell their hunters. it was a case that had excited a good deal of sympathy in that part of the county. and edward, meeting the young man one day, unmounted, and seeing him to be very unhappy, had offered to give him an old irish cob upon which he was riding. it was a silly sort of thing to do really. the horse was worth from thirty to forty pounds and edward might have known that the gift would upset his wife. but edward just had to comfort that unhappy young man whose father he had known all his life. and what made it all the worse was that young selmes could not afford to keep the horse even. edward recollected this, immediately after he had made the offer, and said quickly: "of course i mean that you should stable the horse at branshaw until you have time to turn round or want to sell him and get a better." nancy went straight home and told all this to leonora who was lying down. she regarded it as a splendid instance of edward's quick consideration for the feelings and the circumstances of the distressed. she thought it would cheer leonora up�because it ought to cheer any woman up to know that she had such a splendid husband. that was the last girlish thought she ever had. for leonora, whose headache had left her collected but miserably weak, turned upon her bed and uttered words that were amazing to the girl: "i wish to god," she said, "that he was your husband, and not mine. we shall be ruined. we shall be ruined. am i never to have a chance?" and suddenly leonora burst into a passion of tears. she pushed herself up from the pillows with one elbow and sat there�crying, crying, crying, with her face hidden in her hands and the tears falling through her fingers. the girl flushed, stammered and whimpered as if she had been personally insulted. "but if uncle edward..." she began. "that man," said leonora, with an extraordinary bitterness, "would give the shirt off his back and off mine�and off yours to any..." she could not finish the sentence. at that moment she had been feeling an extraordinary hatred and contempt for her husband. all the morning and all the afternoon she had been lying there thinking that edward and the girl were together�in the field and hacking it home at dusk. she had been digging her sharp nails into her palms. the house had been very silent in the drooping winter weather. and then, after an eternity of torture, there had invaded it the sound of opening doors, of the girl's gay voice saying: "well, it was only under the mistletoe."... and there was edward's gruff undertone. then nancy had come in, with feet that had hastened up the stairs and that tiptoed as they approached the open door of leonora's room. branshaw had a great big hall with oak floors and tiger skins. round this hall there ran a gallery upon which leonora's doorway gave. and even when she had the worst of her headaches she liked to have her door open�i suppose so that she might hear the approaching footsteps of ruin and disaster. at any rate she hated to be in a room with a shut door. at that moment leonora hated edward with a hatred that was like hell, and she would have liked to bring her riding-whip down across the girl's face. what right had nancy to be young and slender and dark, and gay at times, at times mournful? what right had she to be exactly the woman to make leonora's husband happy? for leonora knew that nancy would have made edward happy. yes, leonora wished to bring her riding-whip down on nancy's young face. she imagined the pleasure she would feel when the lash fell across those queer features; the pleasure she would feel at drawing the handle at the same moment toward her, so as to cut deep into the flesh and to leave a lasting wheal. well, she left a lasting wheal, and her words cut deeply into the girl's mind.... they neither of them spoke about that again. a fortnight went by�a fortnight of deep rains, of heavy fields, of bad scent. leonora's headaches seemed to have gone for good. she hunted once or twice, letting herself be piloted by bayham, whilst edward looked after the girl. then, one evening, when those three were dining alone, edward said, in the queer, deliberate, heavy tones that came out of him in those days (he was looking at the table): "i have been thinking that nancy ought to do more for her father. he is getting an old man. i have written to colonel rufford, suggesting that she should go to him." leonora called out: "how dare you? how dare you?" the girl put her hand over her heart and cried out: "oh, my sweet saviour, help me!" that was the queer way she thought within her mind, and the words forced themselves to her lips. edward said nothing. and that night, by a merciless trick of the devil that pays attention to this sweltering hell of ours, nancy rufford had a letter from her mother. it came whilst leonora was talking to edward, or leonora would have intercepted it as she had intercepted others. it was an amazing and a horrible letter.. .. i don't know what it contained. i just average out from its effects on nancy that her mother, having eloped with some worthless sort of fellow, had done what is called "sinking lower and lower". whether she was actually on the streets i do not know, but i rather think that she eked out a small allowance that she had from her husband by that means of livelihood. and i think that she stated as much in her letter to nancy and upbraided the girl with living in luxury whilst her mother starved. and it must have been horrible in tone, for mrs rufford was a cruel sort of woman at the best of times. it must have seemed to that poor girl, opening her letter, for distraction from another grief, up in her bedroom, like the laughter of a devil. i just cannot bear to think of my poor dear girl at that moment.... and, at the same time, leonora was lashing, like a cold fiend, into the unfortunate edward. or, perhaps, he was not so unfortunate; because he had done what he knew to be the right thing, he may be deemed happy. i leave it to you. at any rate, he was sitting in his deep chair, and leonora came into his room�for the first time in nine years. she said: "this is the most atrocious thing you have done in your atrocious life." he never moved and he never looked at her. god knows what was in leonora's mind exactly. i like to think that, uppermost in it was concern and horror at the thought of the poor girl's going back to a father whose voice made her shriek in the night. and, indeed, that motive was very strong with leonora. but i think there was also present the thought that she wanted to go on torturing edward with the girl's presence. she was, at that time, capable of that. edward was sunk in his chair; there were in the room two candles, hidden by green glass shades. the green shades were reflected in the glasses of the book-cases that contained not books but guns with gleaming brown barrels and fishing-rods in green baize over-covers. there was dimly to be seen, above a mantelpiece encumbered with spurs, hooves and bronze models of horses, a dark-brown picture of a white horse. "if you think," leonora said, "that i do not know that you are in love with the girl..." she began spiritedly, but she could not find any ending for the sentence. edward did not stir; he never spoke. and then leonora said: "if you want me to divorce you, i will. you can marry her then. she's in love with you." he groaned at that, a little, leonora said. then she went away. heaven knows what happened in leonora after that. she certainly does not herself know. she probably said a good deal more to edward than i have been able to report; but that is all that she has told me and i am not going to make up speeches. to follow her psychological development of that moment i think we must allow that she upbraided him for a great deal of their past life, whilst edward sat absolutely silent. and, indeed, in speaking of it afterwards, she has said several times: "i said a great deal more to him than i wanted to, just because he was so silent." she talked, in fact, in the endeavour to sting him into speech. she must have said so much that, with the expression of her grievance, her mood changed. she went back to her own room in the gallery, and sat there for a long time thinking. and she thought herself into a mood of absolute unselfishness, of absolute self-contempt, too. she said to herself that she was no good; that she had failed in all her efforts�in her efforts to get edward back as in her efforts to make him curb his expenditure. she imagined herself to be exhausted; she imagined herself to be done. then a great fear came over her. she thought that edward, after what she had said to him, must have committed suicide. she went out on to the gallery and listened; there was no sound in all the house except the regular beat of the great clock in the hall. but, even in her debased condition, she was not the person to hang about. she acted. she went straight to edward's room, opened the door, and looked in. he was oiling the breech action of a gun. it was an unusual thing for him to do, at that time of night, in his evening clothes. it never occurred to her, nevertheless, that he was going to shoot himself with that implement. she knew that he was doing it just for occupation�to keep himself from thinking. he looked up when she opened the door, his face illuminated by the light cast upwards from the round orifices in the green candle shades. she said: "i didn't imagine that i should find nancy here." she thought that she owed that to him. he answered then: "i don't imagine that you did imagine it." those were the only words he spoke that night. she went, like a lame duck, back through the long corridors; she stumbled over the familiar tiger skins in the dark hall. she could hardly drag one limb after the other. in the gallery she perceived that nancy's door was half open and that there was a light in the girl's room. a sudden madness possessed her, a desire for action, a thirst for self-explanation. their rooms all gave on to the gallery; leonora's to the east, the girl's next, then edward's. the sight of those three open doors, side by side, gaping to receive whom the chances of the black night might bring, made leonora shudder all over her body. she went into nancy's room. the girl was sitting perfectly still in an armchair, very upright, as she had been taught to sit at the convent. she appeared to be as calm as a church; her hair fell, black and like a pall, down over both her shoulders. the fire beside her was burning brightly; she must have just put coals on. she was in a white silk kimono that covered her to the feet. the clothes that she had taken off were exactly folded upon the proper seats. her long hands were one upon each arm of the chair that had a pink and white chintz back. leonora told me these things. she seemed to think it extraordinary that the girl could have done such orderly things as fold up the clothes she had taken off upon such a night�when edward had announced that he was going to send her to her father, and when, from her mother, she had received that letter. the letter, in its envelope, was in her right hand. leonora did not at first perceive it. she said: "what are you doing so late?" the girl answered: "just thinking." they seemed to think in whispers and to speak below their breaths. then leonora's eyes fell on the envelope, and she recognized mrs rufford's handwriting. it was one of those moments when thinking was impossible, leonora said. it was as if stones were being thrown at her from every direction and she could only run. she heard herself exclaim: "edward's dying�because of you. he's dying. he's worth more than either of us...." the girl looked past her at the panels of the half-closed door. "my poor father," she said, "my poor father." "you must stay here," leonora answered fiercely. "you must stay here. i tell you you must stay here." "i am going to glasgow," nancy answered. "i shall go to glasgow tomorrow morning. my mother is in glasgow." it appears that it was in glasgow that mrs rufford pursued her disorderly life. she had selected that city, not because it was more profitable but because it was the natal home of her husband to whom she desired to cause as much pain as possible. "you must stay here," leonora began, "to save edward. he's dying for love of you." the girl turned her calm eyes upon leonora. "i know it," she said. "and i am dying for love of him." leonora uttered an "ah," that, in spite of herself, was an "ah" of horror and of grief. "that is why," the girl continued, "i am going to glasgow�to take my mother away from there." she added, "to the ends of the earth," for, if the last months had made her nature that of a woman, her phrases were still romantically those of a schoolgirl. it was as if she had grown up so quickly that there had not been time to put her hair up. but she added: "we're no good�my mother and i." leonora said, with her fierce calmness: "no. no. you're not no good. it's i that am no good. you can't let that man go on to ruin for want of you. you must belong to him." the girl, she said, smiled at her with a queer, far-away smile�as if she were a thousand years old, as if leonora were a tiny child. "i knew you would come to that," she said, very slowly. "but we are not worth it�edward and i." iii nancy had, in fact, been thinking ever since leonora had made that comment over the giving of the horse to young selmes. she had been thinking and thinking, because she had had to sit for many days silent beside her aunt's bed. (she had always thought of leonora as her aunt.) and she had had to sit thinking during many silent meals with edward. and then, at times, with his bloodshot eyes and creased, heavy mouth, he would smile at her. and gradually the knowledge had come to her that edward did not love leonora and that leonora hated edward. several things contributed to form and to harden this conviction. she was allowed to read the papers in those days�or, rather, since leonora was always on her bed and edward breakfasted alone and went out early, over the estate, she was left alone with the papers. one day, in the papers, she saw the portrait of a woman she knew very well. beneath it she read the words: "the hon. mrs brand, plaintiff in the remarkable divorce case reported on p. ." nancy hardly knew what a divorce case was. she had been so remarkably well brought up, and roman catholics do not practise divorce. i don't know how leonora had done it exactly. i suppose she had always impressed it on nancy's mind that nice women did not read these things, and that would have been enough to make nancy skip those pages. she read, at any rate, the account of the brand divorce case�principally because she wanted to tell leonora about it. she imagined that leonora, when her headache left her, would like to know what was happening to mrs brand, who lived at christchurch, and whom they both liked very well. the case occupied three days, and the report that nancy first came upon was that of the third day. edward, however, kept the papers of the week, after his methodical fashion, in a rack in his gun-room, and when she had finished her breakfast nancy went to that quiet apartment and had what she would have called a good read. it seemed to her to be a queer affair. she could not understand why one counsel should be so anxious to know all about the movements of mr brand upon a certain day; she could not understand why a chart of the bedroom accommodation at christchurch old hall should be produced in court. she did not even see why they should want to know that, upon a certain occasion, the drawing-room door was locked. it made her laugh; it appeared to be all so senseless that grown people should occupy themselves with such matters. it struck her, nevertheless, as odd that one of the counsel should cross-question mr brand so insistently and so impertinently as to his feelings for miss lupton. nancy knew miss lupton of ringwood very well�a jolly girl, who rode a horse with two white fetlocks. mr brand persisted that he did not love miss lupton.... well, of course he did not love miss lupton; he was a married man. you might as well think of uncle edward loving... loving anybody but leonora. when people were married there was an end of loving. there were, no doubt, people who misbehaved�but they were poor people�or people not like those she knew. so these matters presented themselves to nancy's mind. but later on in the case she found that mr brand had to confess to a "guilty intimacy" with some one or other. nancy imagined that he must have been telling some one his wife's secrets; she could not understand why that was a serious offence. of course it was not very gentlemanly�it lessened her opinion of mrs brand. but since she found that mrs brand had condoned that offence, she imagined that they could not have been very serious secrets that mr brand had told. and then, suddenly, it was forced on her conviction that mr brand�the mild mr brand that she had seen a month or two before their departure to nauheim, playing "blind man's buff" with his children and kissing his wife when he caught her�mr brand and mrs brand had been on the worst possible terms. that was incredible. yet there it was�in black and white. mr brand drank; mr brand had struck mrs brand to the ground when he was drunk. mr brand was adjudged, in two or three abrupt words, at the end of columns and columns of paper, to have been guilty of cruelty to his wife and to have committed adultery with miss lupton. the last words conveyed nothing to nancy�nothing real, that is to say. she knew that one was commanded not to commit adultery�but why, she thought, should one? it was probably something like catching salmon out of season�a thing one did not do. she gathered it had something to do with kissing, or holding some one in your arms.. .. and yet the whole effect of that reading upon nancy was mysterious, terrifying and evil. she felt a sickness�a sickness that grew as she read. her heart beat painfully; she began to cry. she asked god how he could permit such things to be. and she was more certain that edward did not love leonora and that leonora hated edward. perhaps, then, edward loved some one else. it was unthinkable. if he could love some one else than leonora, her fierce unknown heart suddenly spoke in her side, why could it not be herself? and he did not love her.... this had occurred about a month before she got the letter from her mother. she let the matter rest until the sick feeling went off; it did that in a day or two. then, finding that leonora's headaches had gone, she suddenly told leonora that mrs brand had divorced her husband. she asked what, exactly, it all meant. leonora was lying on the sofa in the hall; she was feeling so weak that she could hardly find the words. she answered just: "it means that mr brand will be able to marry again." nancy said: "but... but..." and then: "he will be able to marry miss lupton." leonora just moved a hand in assent. her eyes were shut. "then..." nancy began. her blue eyes were full of horror: her brows were tight above them; the lines of pain about her mouth were very distinct. in her eyes the whole of that familiar, great hall had a changed aspect. the andirons with the brass flowers at the ends appeared unreal; the burning logs were just logs that were burning and not the comfortable symbols of an indestructible mode of life. the flame fluttered before the high fireback; the st bernard sighed in his sleep. outside the winter rain fell and fell. and suddenly she thought that edward might marry some one else; and she nearly screamed. leonora opened her eyes, lying sideways, with her face upon the black and gold pillow of the sofa that was drawn half across the great fireplace. "i thought," nancy said, "i never imagined.... aren't marriages sacraments? aren't they indissoluble? i thought you were married. .. and..." she was sobbing. "i thought you were married or not married as you are alive or dead." "that," leonora said, "is the law of the church. it is not the law of the land...." "oh yes," nancy said, "the brands are protestants." she felt a sudden safeness descend upon her, and for an hour or so her mind was at rest. it seemed to her idiotic not to have remembered henry viii and the basis upon which protestantism rests. she almost laughed at herself. the long afternoon wore on; the flames still fluttered when the maid made up the fire; the st bernard awoke and lolloped away towards the kitchen. and then leonora opened her eyes and said almost coldly: "and you? don't you think you will get married?" it was so unlike leonora that, for the moment, the girl was frightened in the dusk. but then, again, it seemed a perfectly reasonable question. "i don't know," she answered. "i don't know that anyone wants to marry me." "several people want to marry you," leonora said. "but i don't want to marry," nancy answered. "i should like to go on living with you and edward. i don't think i am in the way or that i am really an expense. if i went you would have to have a companion. or, perhaps, i ought to earn my living...." "i wasn't thinking of that," leonora answered in the same dull tone. "you will have money enough from your father. but most people want to be married." i believe that she then asked the girl if she would not like to marry me, and that nancy answered that she would marry me if she were told to; but that she wanted to go on living there. she added: "if i married anyone i should want him to be like edward." she was frightened out of her life. leonora writhed on her couch and called out: "oh, god!..." nancy ran for the maid; for tablets of aspirin; for wet handkerchiefs. it never occurred to her that leonora's expression of agony was for anything else than physical pain. you are to remember that all this happened a month before leonora went into the girl's room at night. i have been casting back again; but i cannot help it. it is so difficult to keep all these people going. i tell you about leonora and bring her up to date; then about edward, who has fallen behind. and then the girl gets hopelessly left behind. i wish i could put it down in diary form. thus: on the st of september they returned from nauheim. leonora at once took to her bed. by the st of october they were all going to meets together. nancy had already observed very fully that edward was strange in his manner. about the th of that month edward gave the horse to young selmes, and nancy had cause to believe that her aunt did not love her uncle. on the th she read the account of the divorce case, which is reported in the papers of the th and the two following days. on the rd she had the conversation with her aunt in the hall�about marriage in general and about her own possible marriage, her aunt's coming to her bedroom did not occur until the th of november.... thus she had three weeks for introspection�for introspection beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black shadows. it was not a good situation for a girl. she began thinking about love, she who had never before considered it as anything other than a rather humorous, rather nonsensical matter. she remembered chance passages in chance books�things that had not really affected her at all at the time. she remembered someone's love for the princess badrulbadour; she remembered to have heard that love was a flame, a thirst, a withering up of the vitals�though she did not know what the vitals were. she had a vague recollection that love was said to render a hopeless lover's eyes hopeless; she remembered a character in a book who was said to have taken to drink through love; she remembered that lovers' existences were said to be punctuated with heavy sighs. once she went to the little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall and began to play. it was a tinkly, reedy instrument, for none of that household had any turn for music. nancy herself could play a few simple songs, and she found herself playing. she had been sitting on the window seat, looking out on the fading day. leonora had gone to pay some calls; edward was looking after some planting up in the new spinney. thus she found herself playing on the old piano. she did not know how she came to be doing it. a silly lilting wavering tune came from before her in the dusk�a tune in which major notes with their cheerful insistence wavered and melted into minor sounds, as, beneath a bridge, the high lights on dark waters melt and waver and disappear into black depths. well, it was a silly old tune.... it goes with the words�they are about a willow tree, i think: thou art to all lost loves the best the only true plant found. �that sort of thing. it is herrick, i believe, and the music with the reedy, irregular, lilting sound that goes with herrick, and it was dusk; the heavy, hewn, dark pillars that supported the gallery were like mourning presences; the fire had sunk to nothing�a mere glow amongst white ashes.... it was a sentimental sort of place and light and hour.... and suddenly nancy found that she was crying. she was crying quietly; she went on to cry with long convulsive sobs. it seemed to her that everything gay, everything charming, all light, all sweetness, had gone out of life. unhappiness; unhappiness; unhappiness was all around her. she seemed to know no happy being and she herself was agonizing.... she remembered that edward's eyes were hopeless; she was certain that he was drinking too much; at times he sighed deeply. he appeared as a man who was burning with inward flame; drying up in the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. then, the torturing conviction came to her�the conviction that had visited her again and again�that edward must love some one other than leonora. with her little, pedagogic sectarianism she remembered that catholics do not do this thing. but edward was a protestant. then edward loved somebody.... and, after that thought, her eyes grew hopeless; she sighed as the old st bernard beside her did. at meals she would feel an intolerable desire to drink a glass of wine, and then another and then a third. then she would find herself grow gay.... but in half an hour the gaiety went; she felt like a person who is burning up with an inward flame; desiccating at the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. one evening she went into edward's gun-room�he had gone to a meeting of the national reserve committee. on the table beside his chair was a decanter of whisky. she poured out a wineglassful and drank it off. flame then really seemed to fill her body; her legs swelled; her face grew feverish. she dragged her tall height up to her room and lay in the dark. the bed reeled beneath her; she gave way to the thought that she was in edward's arms; that he was kissing her on her face that burned; on her shoulders that burned, and on her neck that was on fire. she never touched alcohol again. not once after that did she have such thoughts. they died out of her mind; they left only a feeling of shame so insupportable that her brain could not take it in and they vanished. she imagined that her anguish at the thought of edward's love for another person was solely sympathy for leonora; she determined that the rest of her life must be spent in acting as leonora's handmaiden�sweeping, tending, embroidering, like some deborah, some medieval saint�i am not, unfortunately, up in the catholic hagiology. but i know that she pictured herself as some personage with a depressed, earnest face and tightly closed lips, in a clear white room, watering flowers or tending an embroidery frame. or, she desired to go with edward to africa and to throw herself in the path of a charging lion so that edward might be saved for leonora at the cost of her life. well, along with her sad thoughts she had her childish ones. she knew nothing�nothing of life, except that one must live sadly. that she now knew. what happened to her on the night when she received at once the blow that edward wished her to go to her father in india and the blow of the letter from her mother was this. she called first upon her sweet saviour�and she thought of our lord as her sweet saviour!�that he might make it impossible that she should go to india. then she realized from edward's demeanour that he was determined that she should go to india. it must then be right that she should go. edward was always right in his determinations. he was the cid; he was lohengrin; he was the chevalier bayard. nevertheless her mind mutinied and revolted. she could not leave that house. she imagined that he wished her gone that she might not witness his amours with another girl. well, she was prepared to tell him that she was ready to witness his amours with another young girl. she would stay there�to comfort leonora. then came the desperate shock of the letter from her mother. her mother said, i believe, something like: "you have no right to go on living your life of prosperity and respect. you ought to be on the streets with me. how do you know that you are even colonel rufford's daughter?" she did not know what these words meant. she thought of her mother as sleeping beneath the arches whilst the snow fell. that was the impression conveyed to her mind by the words "on the streets". a platonic sense of duty gave her the idea that she ought to go to comfort her mother�the mother that bore her, though she hardly knew what the words meant. at the same time she knew that her mother had left her father with another man�therefore she pitied her father, and thought it terrible in herself that she trembled at the sound of her father's voice. if her mother was that sort of woman it was natural that her father should have had accesses of madness in which he had struck herself to the ground. and the voice of her conscience said to her that her first duty was to her parents. it was in accord with this awakened sense of duty that she undressed with great care and meticulously folded the clothes that she took off. sometimes, but not very often, she threw them helter-skelter about the room. and that sense of duty was her prevailing mood when leonora, tall, clean-run, golden-haired, all in black, appeared in her doorway, and told her that edward was dying of love for her. she knew then with her conscious mind what she had known within herself for months�that edward was dying�actually and physically dying�of love for her. it seemed to her that for one short moment her spirit could say: "domine, nunc dimittis,... lord, now, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." she imagined that she could cheerfully go away to glasgow and rescue her fallen mother. iv and it seemed to her to be in tune with the mood, with the hour, and with the woman in front of her to say that she knew edward was dying of love for her and that she was dying of love for edward. for that fact had suddenly slipped into place and become real for her as the niched marker on a whist tablet slips round with the pressure of your thumb. that rubber at least was made. and suddenly leonora seemed to have become different and she seemed to have become different in her attitude towards leonora. it was as if she, in her frail, white, silken kimono, sat beside her fire, but upon a throne. it was as if leonora, in her close dress of black lace, with the gleaming white shoulders and the coiled yellow hair that the girl had always considered the most beautiful thing in the world�it was as if leonora had become pinched, shrivelled, blue with cold, shivering, suppliant. yet leonora was commanding her. it was no good commanding her. she was going on the morrow to her mother who was in glasgow. leonora went on saying that she must stay there to save edward, who was dying of love for her. and, proud and happy in the thought that edward loved her, and that she loved him, she did not even listen to what leonora said. it appeared to her that it was leonora's business to save her husband's body; she, nancy, possessed his soul�a precious thing that she would shield and bear away up in her arms�as if leonora were a hungry dog, trying to spring up at a lamb that she was carrying. yes, she felt as if edward's love were a precious lamb that she were bearing away from a cruel and predatory beast. for, at that time, leonora appeared to her as a cruel and predatory beast. leonora, leonora with her hunger, with her cruelty had driven edward to madness. he must be sheltered by his love for her and by her love�her love from a great distance and unspoken, enveloping him, surrounding him, upholding him; by her voice speaking from glasgow, saying that she loved, that she adored, that she passed no moment without longing, loving, quivering at the thought of him. leonora said loudly, insistently, with a bitterly imperative tone: "you must stay here; you must belong to edward. i will divorce him." the girl answered: "the church does not allow of divorce. i cannot belong to your husband. i am going to glasgow to rescue my mother." the half-opened door opened noiselessly to the full. edward was there. his devouring, doomed eyes were fixed on the girl's face; his shoulders slouched forward; he was undoubtedly half drunk and he had the whisky decanter in one hand, a slanting candlestick in the other. he said, with a heavy ferocity, to nancy: "i forbid you to talk about these things. you are to stay here until i hear from your father. then you will go to your father." the two women, looking at each other, like beasts about to spring, hardly gave a glance to him. he leaned against the door-post. he said again: "nancy, i forbid you to talk about these things. i am the master of this house." and, at the sound of his voice, heavy, male, coming from a deep chest, in the night with the blackness behind him, nancy felt as if her spirit bowed before him, with folded hands. she felt that she would go to india, and that she desired never again to talk of these things. leonora said: "you see that it is your duty to belong to him. he must not be allowed to go on drinking." nancy did not answer. edward was gone; they heard him slipping and shambling on the polished oak of the stairs. nancy screamed when there came the sound of a heavy fall. leonora said again: "you see!" the sounds went on from the hall below; the light of the candle edward held flickered up between the hand rails of the gallery. then they heard his voice: "give me glasgow... glasgow, in scotland.. i want the number of a man called white, of simrock park, glasgow... edward white, simrock park, glasgow... ten minutes... at this time of night..." his voice was quite level, normal, and patient. alcohol took him in the legs, not the speech. "i can wait," his voice came again. "yes, i know they have a number. i have been in communication with them before." "he is going to telephone to your mother," leonora said. "he will make it all right for her." she got up and closed the door. she came back to the fire, and added bitterly: "he can always make it all right for everybody, except me�excepting me!" the girl said nothing. she sat there in a blissful dream. she seemed to see her lover sitting as he always sat, in a round-backed chair, in the dark hall�sitting low, with the receiver at his ear, talking in a gentle, slow voice, that he reserved for the telephone�and saving the world and her, in the black darkness. she moved her hand over the bareness of the base of her throat, to have the warmth of flesh upon it and upon her bosom. she said nothing; leonora went on talking.... god knows what leonora said. she repeated that the girl must belong to her husband. she said that she used that phrase because, though she might have a divorce, or even a dissolution of the marriage by the church, it would still be adultery that the girl and edward would be committing. but she said that that was necessary; it was the price that the girl must pay for the sin of having made edward love her, for the sin of loving her husband. she talked on and on, beside the fire. the girl must become an adulteress; she had wronged edward by being so beautiful, so gracious, so good. it was sinful to be so good. she must pay the price so as to save the man she had wronged. in between her pauses the girl could hear the voice of edward, droning on, indistinguishably, with jerky pauses for replies. it made her glow with pride; the man she loved was working for her. he at least was resolved; was malely determined; knew the right thing. leonora talked on with her eyes boring into nancy's. the girl hardly looked at her and hardly heard her. after a long time nancy said�after hours and hours: "i shall go to india as soon as edward hears from my father. i cannot talk about these things, because edward does not wish it." at that leonora screamed out and wavered swiftly towards the closed door. and nancy found that she was springing out of her chair with her white arms stretched wide. she was clasping the other woman to her breast; she was saying: "oh, my poor dear; oh, my poor dear." and they sat, crouching together in each other's arms, and crying and crying; and they lay down in the same bed, talking and talking, all through the night. and all through the night edward could hear their voices through the wall. that was how it went.... next morning they were all three as if nothing had happened. towards eleven edward came to nancy, who was arranging some christmas roses in a silver bowl. he put a telegram beside her on the table. "you can uncode it for yourself," he said. then, as he went out of the door, he said: "you can tell your aunt i have cabled to mr dowell to come over. he will make things easier till you leave." the telegram when it was uncoded, read, as far as i can remember: "will take mrs rufford to italy. undertake to do this for certain. am devotedly attached to mrs rufford. have no need of financial assistance. did not know there was a daughter, and am much obliged to you for pointing out my duty.�white." it was something like that. then that household resumed its wonted course of days until my arrival. v it is this part of the story that makes me saddest of all. for i ask myself unceasingly, my mind going round and round in a weary, baffled space of pain�what should these people have done? what, in the name of god, should they have done? the end was perfectly plain to each of them�it was perfectly manifest at this stage that, if the girl did not, in leonora's phrase, "belong to edward," edward must die, the girl must lose her reason because edward died�and, that after a time, leonora, who was the coldest and the strongest of the three, would console herself by marrying rodney bayham and have a quiet, comfortable, good time. that end, on that night, whilst leonora sat in the girl's bedroom and edward telephoned down below�that end was plainly manifest. the girl, plainly, was half-mad already; edward was half dead; only leonora, active, persistent, instinct with her cold passion of energy, was "doing things". what then, should they have done? worked out in the extinction of two very splendid personalities�for edward and the girl were splendid personalities, in order that a third personality, more normal, should have, after a long period of trouble, a quiet, comfortable, good time. i am writing this, now, i should say, a full eighteen months after the words that end my last chapter. since writing the words "until my arrival", which i see end that paragraph, i have seen again for a glimpse, from a swift train, beaucaire with the beautiful white tower, tarascon with the square castle, the great rhone, the immense stretches of the crau. i have rushed through all provence�and all provence no longer matters. it is no longer in the olive hills that i shall find my heaven; because there is only hell... . edward is dead; the girl is gone�oh, utterly gone; leonora is having a good time with rodney bayham, and i sit alone in branshaw teleragh. i have been through provence; i have seen africa; i have visited asia to see, in ceylon, in a darkened room, my poor girl, sitting motionless, with her wonderful hair about her, looking at me with eyes that did not see me, and saying distinctly: "credo in unum deum omnipotentem.... credo in unum deum omnipotentem." those are the only reasonable words she uttered; those are the only words, it appears, that she ever will utter. i suppose that they are reasonable words; it must be extraordinarily reasonable for her, if she can say that she believes in an omnipotent deity. well, there it is. i am very tired of it all.... for, i daresay, all this may sound romantic, but it is tiring, tiring, tiring to have been in the midst of it; to have taken the tickets; to have caught the trains; to have chosen the cabins; to have consulted the purser and the stewards as to diet for the quiescent patient who did nothing but announce her belief in an omnipotent deity. that may sound romantic�but it is just a record of fatigue. i don't know why i should always be selected to be serviceable. i don't resent it�but i have never been the least good. florence selected me for her own purposes, and i was no good to her; edward called me to come and have a chat with him, and i couldn't stop him cutting his throat. and then, one day eighteen months ago, i was quietly writing in my room at branshaw when leonora came to me with a letter. it was a very pathetic letter from colonel rufford about nancy. colonel rufford had left the army and had taken up an appointment at a tea-planting estate in ceylon. his letter was pathetic because it was so brief, so inarticulate, and so business-like. he had gone down to the boat to meet his daughter, and had found his daughter quite mad. it appears that at aden nancy had seen in a local paper the news of edward's suicide. in the red sea she had gone mad. she had remarked to mrs colonel luton, who was chaperoning her, that she believed in an omnipotent deity. she hadn't made any fuss; her eyes were quite dry and glassy. even when she was mad nancy could behave herself. colonel rufford said the doctor did not anticipate that there was any chance of his child's recovery. it was, nevertheless, possible that if she could see someone from branshaw it might soothe her and it might have a good effect. and he just simply wrote to leonora: "please come and see if you can do it." i seem to have lost all sense of the pathetic; but still, that simple, enormous request of the old colonel strikes me as pathetic. he was cursed by his atrocious temper; he had been cursed by a half-mad wife, who drank and went on the streets. his daughter was totally mad�and yet he believed in the goodness of human nature. he believed that leonora would take the trouble to go all the way to ceylon in order to soothe his daughter. leonora wouldn't. leonora didn't ever want to see nancy again. i daresay that that, in the circumstances, was natural enough. at the same time she agreed, as it were, on public grounds, that someone soothing ought to go from branshaw to ceylon. she sent me and her old nurse, who had looked after nancy from the time when the girl, a child of thirteen, had first come to branshaw. so off i go, rushing through provence, to catch the steamer at marseilles. and i wasn't the least good when i got to ceylon; and the nurse wasn't the least good. nothing has been the least good. the doctors said, at kandy, that if nancy could be brought to england, the sea air, the change of climate, the voyage, and all the usual sort of things, might restore her reason. of course, they haven't restored her reason. she is, i am aware, sitting in the hall, forty paces from where i am now writing. i don't want to be in the least romantic about it. she is very well dressed; she is quite quiet; she is very beautiful. the old nurse looks after her very efficiently. of course you have the makings of a situation here, but it is all very humdrum, as far as i am concerned. i should marry nancy if her reason were ever sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the anglican marriage service. but it is probable that her reason will never be sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the anglican marriage service. therefore i cannot marry her, according to the law of the land. so here i am very much where i started thirteen years ago. i am the attendant, not the husband, of a beautiful girl, who pays no attention to me. i am estranged from leonora, who married rodney bayham in my absence and went to live at bayham. leonora rather dislikes me, because she has got it into her head that i disapprove of her marriage with rodney bayham. well, i disapprove of her marriage. possibly i am jealous. yes, no doubt i am jealous. in my fainter sort of way i seem to perceive myself following the lines of edward ashburnham. i suppose that i should really like to be a polygamist; with nancy, and with leonora, and with maisie maidan and possibly even with florence. i am no doubt like every other man; only, probably because of my american origin i am fainter. at the same time i am able to assure you that i am a strictly respectable person. i have never done anything that the most anxious mother of a daughter or the most careful dean of a cathedral would object to. i have only followed, faintly, and in my unconscious desires, edward ashburnham. well, it is all over. not one of us has got what he really wanted. leonora wanted edward, and she has got rodney bayham, a pleasant enough sort of sheep. florence wanted branshaw, and it is i who have bought it from leonora. i didn't really want it; what i wanted mostly was to cease being a nurse-attendant. well, i am a nurse-attendant. edward wanted nancy rufford, and i have got her. only she is mad. it is a queer and fantastic world. why can't people have what they want? the things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me. is there any terrestial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people�like the lives of the ashburnhams, of the dowells, of the ruffords�broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic, lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? who the devil knows? for there was a great deal of imbecility about the closing scenes of the ashburnham tragedy. neither of those two women knew what they wanted. it was only edward who took a perfectly clear line, and he was drunk most of the time. but, drunk or sober, he stuck to what was demanded by convention and by the traditions of his house. nancy rufford had to be exported to india, and nancy rufford hadn't to hear a word of love from him. she was exported to india and she never heard a word from edward ashburnham. it was the conventional line; it was in tune with the tradition of edward's house. i daresay it worked out for the greatest good of the body politic. conventions and traditions, i suppose, work blindly but surely for the preservation of the normal type; for the extinction of proud, resolute and unusual individuals. edward was the normal man, but there was too much of the sentimentalist about him; and society does not need too many sentimentalists. nancy was a splendid creature, but she had about her a touch of madness. society does not need individuals with touches of madness about them. so edward and nancy found themselves steamrolled out and leonora survives, the perfectly normal type, married to a man who is rather like a rabbit. for rodney bayham is rather like a rabbit, and i hear that leonora is expected to have a baby in three months' time. so those splendid and tumultuous creatures with their magnetism and their passions�those two that i really loved�have gone from this earth. it is no doubt best for them. what would nancy have made of edward if she had succeeded in living with him; what would edward have made of her? for there was about nancy a touch of cruelty�a touch of definite actual cruelty that made her desire to see people suffer. yes, she desired to see edward suffer. and, by god, she gave him hell. she gave him an unimaginable hell. those two women pursued that poor devil and flayed the skin off him as if they had done it with whips. i tell you his mind bled almost visibly. i seem to see him stand, naked to the waist, his forearms shielding his eyes, and flesh hanging from him in rags. i tell you that is no exaggeration of what i feel. it was as if leonora and nancy banded themselves together to do execution, for the sake of humanity, upon the body of a man who was at their disposal. they were like a couple of sioux who had got hold of an apache and had him well tied to a stake. i tell you there was no end to the tortures they inflicted upon him. night after night he would hear them talking; talking; maddened, sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the voices going on and on. and day after day leonora would come to him and would announce the results of their deliberations. they were like judges debating over the sentence upon a criminal; they were like ghouls with an immobile corpse in a tomb beside them. i don't think that leonora was any more to blame than the girl�though leonora was the more active of the two. leonora, as i have said, was the perfectly normal woman. i mean to say that in normal circumstances her desires were those of the woman who is needed by society. she desired children, decorum, an establishment; she desired to avoid waste, she desired to keep up appearances. she was utterly and entirely normal even in her utterly undeniable beauty. but i don't mean to say that she acted perfectly normally in this perfectly abnormal situation. all the world was mad around her and she herself, agonized, took on the complexion of a mad woman; of a woman very wicked; of the villain of the piece. what would you have? steel is a normal, hard, polished substance. but, if you put it in a hot fire it will become red, soft, and not to be handled. if you put it in a fire still more hot it will drip away. it was like that with leonora. she was made for normal circumstances�for mr rodney bayham, who will keep a separate establishment, secretly, in portsmouth, and make occasional trips to paris and to budapest. in the case of edward and the girl, leonora broke and simply went all over the place. she adopted unfamiliar and therefore extraordinary and ungraceful attitudes of mind. at one moment she was all for revenge. after haranguing the girl for hours through the night she harangued for hours of the day the silent edward. and edward just once tripped up, and that was his undoing. perhaps he had had too much whisky that afternoon. she asked him perpetually what he wanted. what did he want? what did he want? and all he ever answered was: "i have told you". he meant that he wanted the girl to go to her father in india as soon as her father should cable that he was ready to receive her. but just once he tripped up. to leonora's eternal question he answered that all he desired in life was that�that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if�the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him. he wanted nothing more, he prayed his god for nothing more. well, he was a sentimentalist. and the moment that she heard that, leonora determined that the girl should not go five thousand miles away and that she should not continue to love edward. the way she worked it was this: she continued to tell the girl that she must belong to edward; she was going to get a divorce; she was going to get a dissolution of marriage from rome. but she considered it to be her duty to warn the girl of the sort of monster that edward was. she told the girl of la dolciquita, of mrs basil, of maisie maidan, of florence. she spoke of the agonies that she had endured during her life with the man, who was violent, overbearing, vain, drunken, arrogant, and monstrously a prey to his sexual necessities. and, at hearing of the miseries her aunt had suffered�for leonora once more had the aspect of an aunt to the girl�with the swift cruelty of youth and, with the swift solidarity that attaches woman to woman, the girl made her resolves. her aunt said incessantly: "you must save edward's life; you must save his life. all that he needs is a little period of satisfaction from you. then he will tire of you as he has of the others. but you must save his life." and, all the while, that wretched fellow knew�by a curious instinct that runs between human beings living together�exactly what was going on. and he remained dumb; he stretched out no finger to help himself. all that he required to keep himself a decent member of society was, that the girl, five thousand miles away, should continue to love him. they were putting a stopper upon that. i have told you that the girl came one night to his room. and that was the real hell for him. that was the picture that never left his imagination�the girl, in the dim light, rising up at the foot of his bed. he said that it seemed to have a greenish sort of effect as if there were a greenish tinge in the shadows of the tall bedposts that framed her body. and she looked at him with her straight eyes of an unflinching cruelty and she said: "i am ready to belong to you�to save your life." he answered: "i don't want it; i don't want it; i don't want it." and he says that he didn't want it; that he would have hated himself; that it was unthinkable. and all the while he had the immense temptation to do the unthinkable thing, not from the physical desire but because of a mental certitude. he was certain that if she had once submitted to him she would remain his for ever. he knew that. she was thinking that her aunt had said he had desired her to love him from a distance of five thousand miles. she said: "i can never love you now i know the kind of man you are. i will belong to you to save your life. but i can never love you." it was a fantastic display of cruelty. she didn't in the least know what it meant�to belong to a man. but, at that edward pulled himself together. he spoke in his normal tones; gruff, husky, overbearing, as he would have done to a servant or to a horse. "go back to your room," he said. "go back to your room and go to sleep. this is all nonsense." they were baffled, those two women. and then i came on the scene. vi my coming on the scene certainly calmed things down�for the whole fortnight that intervened between my arrival and the girl's departure. i don't mean to say that the endless talking did not go on at night or that leonora did not send me out with the girl and, in the interval, give edward a hell of a time. having discovered what he wanted�that the girl should go five thousand miles away and love him steadfastly as people do in sentimental novels, she was determined to smash that aspiration. and she repeated to edward in every possible tone that the girl did not love him; that the girl detested him for his brutality, his overbearingness, his drinking habits. she pointed out that edward in the girl's eyes, was already pledged three or four deep. he was pledged to leonora herself, to mrs basil, and to the memories of maisie maidan and to florence. edward never said anything. did the girl love edward, or didn't she? i don't know. at that time i daresay she didn't though she certainly had done so before leonora had got to work upon his reputation. she certainly had loved him for what i call the public side of his record�for his good soldiering, for his saving lives at sea, for the excellent landlord that he was and the good sportsman. but it is quite possible that all those things came to appear as nothing in her eyes when she discovered that he wasn't a good husband. for, though women, as i see them, have little or no feeling of responsibility towards a county or a country or a career�although they may be entirely lacking in any kind of communal solidarity�they have an immense and automatically working instinct that attaches them to the interest of womanhood. it is, of course, possible for any woman to cut out and to carry off any other woman's husband or lover. but i rather think that a woman will only do this if she has reason to believe that the other woman has given her husband a bad time. i am certain that if she thinks the man has been a brute to his wife she will, with her instinctive feeling for suffering femininity, "put him back", as the saying is. i don't attach any particular importance to these generalizations of mine. they may be right, they may be wrong; i am only an ageing american with very little knowledge of life. you may take my generalizations or leave them. but i am pretty certain that i am right in the case of nancy rufford�that she had loved edward ashburnham very deeply and tenderly. it is nothing to the point that she let him have it good and strong as soon as she discovered that he had been unfaithful to leonora and that his public services had cost more than leonora thought they ought to have cost. nancy would be bound to let him have it good and strong then. she would owe that to feminine public opinion; she would be driven to it by the instinct for self-preservation, since she might well imagine that if edward had been unfaithful to leonora, to mrs basil and to the memories of the other two, he might be unfaithful to herself. and, no doubt, she had her share of the sex instinct that makes women be intolerably cruel to the beloved person. anyhow, i don't know whether, at this point, nancy rufford loved edward ashburnham. i don't know whether she even loved him when, on getting, at aden, the news of his suicide she went mad. because that may just as well have been for the sake of leonora as for the sake of edward. or it may have been for the sake of both of them. i don't know. i know nothing. i am very tired. leonora held passionately the doctrine that the girl didn't love edward. she wanted desperately to believe that. it was a doctrine as necessary to her existence as a belief in the personal immortality of the soul. she said that it was impossible that nancy could have loved edward after she had given the girl her view of edward's career and character. edward, on the other hand, believed maunderingly that some essential attractiveness in himself must have made the girl continue to go on loving him�to go on loving him, as it were, in underneath her official aspect of hatred. he thought she only pretended to hate him in order to save her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from brindisi was only another attempt to do that�to prove that she had feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal. i don't know. i leave it to you. there is another point that worries me a good deal in the aspects of this sad affair. leonora says that, in desiring that the girl should go five thousand miles away and yet continue to love him, edward was a monster of selfishness. he was desiring the ruin of a young life. edward on the other hand put it to me that, supposing that the girl's love was a necessity to his existence, and, if he did nothing by word or by action to keep nancy's love alive, he couldn't be called selfish. leonora replied that showed he had an abominably selfish nature even though his actions might be perfectly correct. i can't make out which of them was right. i leave it to you. it is, at any rate, certain that edward's actions were perfectly�were monstrously, were cruelly�correct. he sat still and let leonora take away his character, and let leonora damn him to deepest hell, without stirring a finger. i daresay he was a fool; i don't see what object there was in letting the girl think worse of him than was necessary. still there it is. and there it is also that all those three presented to the world the spectacle of being the best of good people. i assure you that during my stay for that fortnight in that fine old house, i never so much as noticed a single thing that could have affected that good opinion. and even when i look back, knowing the circumstances, i can't remember a single thing any of them said that could have betrayed them. i can't remember, right up to the dinner, when leonora read out that telegram�not the tremor of an eyelash, not the shaking of a hand. it was just a pleasant country house-party. and leonora kept it up jolly well, for even longer than that�she kept it up as far as i was concerned until eight days after edward's funeral. immediately after that particular dinner�the dinner at which i received the announcement that nancy was going to leave for india on the following day�i asked leonora to let me have a word with her. she took me into her little sitting-room and i then said�i spare you the record of my emotions�that she was aware that i wished to marry nancy; that she had seemed to favour my suit and that it appeared to be rather a waste of money upon tickets and rather a waste of time upon travel to let the girl go to india if leonora thought that there was any chance of her marrying me. and leonora, i assure you, was the absolutely perfect british matron. she said that she quite favoured my suit; that she could not desire for the girl a better husband; but that she considered that the girl ought to see a little more of life before taking such an important step. yes, leonora used the words "taking such an important step". she was perfect. actually, i think she would have liked the girl to marry me enough but my programme included the buying of the kershaw's house about a mile away upon the fordingbridge road, and settling down there with the girl. that didn't at all suit leonora. she didn't want to have the girl within a mile and a half of edward for the rest of their lives. still, i think she might have managed to let me know, in some periphrasis or other, that i might have the girl if i would take her to philadelphia or timbuctoo. i loved nancy very much�and leonora knew it. however, i left it at that. i left it with the understanding that nancy was going away to india on probation. it seemed to me a perfectly reasonable arrangement and i am a reasonable sort of man. i simply said that i should follow nancy out to india after six months' time or so. or, perhaps, after a year. well, you see, i did follow nancy out to india after a year.... i must confess to having felt a little angry with leonora for not having warned me earlier that the girl would be going. i took it as one of the queer, not very straight methods that roman catholics seem to adopt in dealing with matters of this world. i took it that leonora had been afraid i should propose to the girl or, at any rate, have made considerably greater advances to her than i did, if i had known earlier that she was going away so soon. perhaps leonora was right; perhaps roman catholics, with their queer, shifty ways, are always right. they are dealing with the queer, shifty thing that is human nature. for it is quite possible that, if i had known nancy was going away so soon, i should have tried making love to her. and that would have produced another complication. it may have been just as well. it is queer the fantastic things that quite good people will do in order to keep up their appearance of calm pococurantism. for edward ashburnham and his wife called me half the world over in order to sit on the back seat of a dog-cart whilst edward drove the girl to the railway station from which she was to take her departure to india. they wanted, i suppose, to have a witness of the calmness of that function. the girl's luggage had been already packed and sent off before. her berth on the steamer had been taken. they had timed it all so exactly that it went like clockwork. they had known the date upon which colonel rufford would get edward's letter and they had known almost exactly the hour at which they would receive his telegram asking his daughter to come to him. it had all been quite beautifully and quite mercilessly arranged, by edward himself. they gave colonel rufford, as a reason for telegraphing, the fact that mrs colonel somebody or other would be travelling by that ship and that she would serve as an efficient chaperon for the girl. it was a most amazing business, and i think that it would have been better in the eyes of god if they had all attempted to gouge out each other's eyes with carving knives. but they were "good people". after my interview with leonora i went desultorily into edward's gun- room. i didn't know where the girl was and i thought i might find her there. i suppose i had a vague idea of proposing to her in spite of leonora. so, i presume, i don't come of quite such good people as the ashburnhams. edward was lounging in his chair smoking a cigar and he said nothing for quite five minutes. the candles glowed in the green shades; the reflections were green in the glasses of the book-cases that held guns and fishing-rods. over the mantelpiece was the brownish picture of the white horse. those were the quietest moments that i have ever known. then, suddenly, edward looked me straight in the eyes and said: "look here, old man, i wish you would drive with nancy and me to the station tomorrow." i said that of course i would drive with him and nancy to the station on the morrow. he lay there for a long time, looking along the line of his knees at the fluttering fire, and then suddenly, in a perfectly calm voice, and without lifting his eyes, he said: "i am so desperately in love with nancy rufford that i am dying of it." poor devil�he hadn't meant to speak of it. but i guess he just had to speak to somebody and i appeared to be like a woman or a solicitor. he talked all night. well, he carried out the programme to the last breath. it was a very clear winter morning, with a good deal of frost in it. the sun was quite bright, the winding road between the heather and the bracken was very hard. i sat on the back-seat of the dog-cart; nancy was beside edward. they talked about the way the cob went; edward pointed out with the whip a cluster of deer upon a coombe three-quarters of a mile away. we passed the hounds in the level bit of road beside the high trees going into fordingbridge and edward pulled up the dog-cart so that nancy might say good-bye to the huntsman and cap him a last sovereign. she had ridden with those hounds ever since she had been thirteen. the train was five minutes late and they imagined that that was because it was market-day at swindon or wherever the train came from. that was the sort of thing they talked about. the train came in; edward found her a first-class carriage with an elderly woman in it. the girl entered the carriage, edward closed the door and then she put out her hand to shake mine. there was upon those people's faces no expression of any kind whatever. the signal for the train's departure was a very bright red; that is about as passionate a statement as i can get into that scene. she was not looking her best; she had on a cap of brown fur that did not very well match her hair. she said: "so long," to edward. edward answered: "so long." he swung round on his heel and, large, slouching, and walking with a heavy deliberate pace, he went out of the station. i followed him and got up beside him in the high dog-cart. it was the most horrible performance i have ever seen. and, after that, a holy peace, like the peace of god which passes all understanding, descended upon branshaw teleragh. leonora went about her daily duties with a sort of triumphant smile�a very faint smile, but quite triumphant. i guess she had so long since given up any idea of getting her man back that it was enough for her to have got the girl out of the house and well cured of her infatuation. once, in the hall, when leonora was going out, edward said, beneath his breath�but i just caught the words: "thou hast conquered, o pale galilean." it was like his sentimentality to quote swinburne. but he was perfectly quiet and he had given up drinking. the only thing that he ever said to me after that drive to the station was: "it's very odd. i think i ought to tell you, dowell, that i haven't any feelings at all about the girl now it's all over. don't you worry about me. i'm all right." a long time afterwards he said: "i guess it was only a flash in the pan." he began to look after the estates again; he took all that trouble over getting off the gardener's daughter who had murdered her baby. he shook hands smilingly with every farmer in the market-place. he addressed two political meetings; he hunted twice. leonora made him a frightful scene about spending the two hundred pounds on getting the gardener's daughter acquitted. everything went on as if the girl had never existed. it was very still weather. well, that is the end of the story. and, when i come to look at it i see that it is a happy ending with wedding bells and all. the villains�for obviously edward and the girl were villains�have been punished by suicide and madness. the heroine�the perfectly normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful heroine�has become the happy wife of a perfectly normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful husband. she will shortly become a mother of a perfectly normal, virtuous slightly deceitful son or daughter. a happy ending, that is what it works out at. i cannot conceal from myself the fact that i now dislike leonora. without doubt i am jealous of rodney bayham. but i don't know whether it is merely a jealousy arising from the fact that i desired myself to possess leonora or whether it is because to her were sacrificed the only two persons that i have ever really loved�edward ashburnham and nancy rufford. in order to set her up in a modern mansion, replete with every convenience and dominated by a quite respectable and eminently economical master of the house, it was necessary that edward and nancy rufford should become, for me at least, no more than tragic shades. i seem to see poor edward, naked and reclining amidst darkness, upon cold rocks, like one of the ancient greek damned, in tartarus or wherever it was. and as for nancy... well, yesterday at lunch she said suddenly: "shuttlecocks!" and she repeated the word "shuttlecocks" three times. i know what was passing in her mind, if she can be said to have a mind, for leonora has told me that, once, the poor girl said she felt like a shuttlecock being tossed backwards and forwards between the violent personalities of edward and his wife. leonora, she said, was always trying to deliver her over to edward, and edward tacitly and silently forced her back again. and the odd thing was that edward himself considered that those two women used him like a shuttlecock. or, rather, he said that they sent him backwards and forwards like a blooming parcel that someone didn't want to pay the postage on. and leonora also imagined that edward and nancy picked her up and threw her down as suited their purely vagrant moods. so there you have the pretty picture. mind, i am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. i am not advocating free love in this or any other case. society must go on, i suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to madness. but i guess that i myself, in my fainter way, come into the category of the passionate, of the headstrong, and the too-truthful. for i can't conceal from myself the fact that i loved edward ashburnham�and that i love him because he was just myself. if i had had the courage and virility and possibly also the physique of edward ashburnham i should, i fancy, have done much what he did. he seems to me like a large elder brother who took me out on several excursions and did many dashing things whilst i just watched him robbing the orchards, from a distance. and, you see, i am just as much of a sentimentalist as he was.. .. yes, society must go on; it must breed, like rabbits. that is what we are here for. but then, i don't like society�much. i am that absurd figure, an american millionaire, who has bought one of the ancient haunts of english peace. i sit here, in edward's gun-room, all day and all day in a house that is absolutely quiet. no one visits me, for i visit no one. no one is interested in me, for i have no interests. in twenty minutes or so i shall walk down to the village, beneath my own oaks, alongside my own clumps of gorse, to get the american mail. my tenants, the village boys and the tradesmen will touch their hats to me. so life peters out. i shall return to dine and nancy will sit opposite me with the old nurse standing behind her. enigmatic, silent, utterly well-behaved as far as her knife and fork go, nancy will stare in front of her with the blue eyes that have over them strained, stretched brows. once, or perhaps twice, during the meal her knife and fork will be suspended in mid-air as if she were trying to think of something that she had forgotten. then she will say that she believes in an omnipotent deity or she will utter the one word "shuttle-cocks", perhaps. it is very extraordinary to see the perfect flush of health on her cheeks, to see the lustre of her coiled black hair, the poise of the head upon the neck, the grace of the white hands�and to think that it all means nothing�that it is a picture without a meaning. yes, it is queer. but, at any rate, there is always leonora to cheer you up; i don't want to sadden you. her husband is quite an economical person of so normal a figure that he can get quite a large proportion of his clothes ready- made. that is the great desideratum of life, and that is the end of my story. the child is to be brought up as a romanist. it suddenly occurs to me that i have forgotten to say how edward met his death. you remember that peace had descended upon the house; that leonora was quietly triumphant and that edward said his love for the girl had been merely a passing phase. well, one afternoon we were in the stables together, looking at a new kind of flooring that edward was trying in a loose-box. edward was talking with a good deal of animation about the necessity of getting the numbers of the hampshire territorials up to the proper standard. he was quite sober, quite quiet, his skin was clear-coloured; his hair was golden and perfectly brushed; the level brick-dust red of his complexion went clean up to the rims of his eyelids; his eyes were porcelain blue and they regarded me frankly and directly. his face was perfectly expressionless; his voice was deep and rough. he stood well back upon his legs and said: "we ought to get them up to two thousand three hundred and fifty." a stable-boy brought him a telegram and went away. he opened it negligently, regarded it without emotion, and, in complete silence, handed it to me. on the pinkish paper in a sprawled handwriting i read: "safe brindisi. having rattling good time. nancy." well, edward was the english gentleman; but he was also, to the last, a sentimentalist, whose mind was compounded of indifferent poems and novels. he just looked up to the roof of the stable, as if he were looking to heaven, and whispered something that i did not catch. then he put two fingers into the waistcoat pocket of his grey, frieze suit; they came out with a little neat pen-knife�quite a small pen- knife. he said to me: "you might just take that wire to leonora." and he looked at me with a direct, challenging, brow-beating glare. i guess he could see in my eyes that i didn't intend to hinder him. why should i hinder him? i didn't think he was wanted in the world, let his confounded tenants, his rifle-associations, his drunkards, reclaimed and unreclaimed, get on as they liked. not all the hundreds and hundreds of them deserved that that poor devil should go on suffering for their sakes. when he saw that i did not intend to interfere with him his eyes became soft and almost affectionate. he remarked: "so long, old man, i must have a bit of a rest, you know." i didn't know what to say. i wanted to say, "god bless you", for i also am a sentimentalist. but i thought that perhaps that would not be quite english good form, so i trotted off with the telegram to leonora. she was quite pleased with it. *********************************************************************** there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed at ebook (# ) which contains an illustrated html file *********************************************************************** the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne editor's note nathaniel hawthorne was already a man of forty-six, and a tale writer of some twenty-four years' standing, when "the scarlet letter" appeared. he was born at salem, mass., on july th, , son of a sea-captain. he led there a shy and rather sombre life; of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. its colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his "twice-told tales" and other short stories, the product of his first literary period. even his college days at bowdoin did not quite break through his acquired and inherited reserve; but beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. "the scarlet letter," which explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be gathered from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other writings, early and late, to have its last effect. in the year that saw it published, he began "the house of the seven gables," a later romance or prose-tragedy of the puritan-american community as he had himself known it-- defrauded of art and the joy of life, "starving for symbols" as emerson has it. nathaniel hawthorne died at plymouth, new hampshire, on may th, . the following is the table of his romances, stories, and other works: fanshawe, published anonymously, ; twice-told tales, st series, ; nd series, ; grandfather's chair, a history for youth, : famous old people (grandfather's chair), liberty tree: with the last words of grandfather's chair, ; biographical stories for children, ; mosses from an old manse, ; the scarlet letter, ; the house of the seven gables, : true stories from history and biography (the whole history of grandfather's chair), a wonder book for girls and boys, ; the snow image and other tales, : the blithedale romance, ; life of franklin pierce, ; tanglewood tales ( nd series of the wonder book), ; a rill from the town-pump, with remarks, by telba, ; the marble faun; or, the romance of monte beni ( editor's note) (published in england under the title of "transformation"), , our old home, ; dolliver romance ( st part in "atlantic monthly"), ; in parts, ; pansie, a fragment, hawthorne' last literary effort, ; american note-books, ; english note books, edited by sophia hawthorne, ; french and italian note books, ; septimius felton; or, the elixir of life (from the "atlantic monthly"), ; doctor grimshawe's secret, with preface and notes by julian hawthorne, . tales of the white hills, legends of new england, legends of the province house, , contain tales which had already been printed in book form in "twice-told tales" and the "mosses" "sketched and studies," . hawthorne's contributions to magazines were numerous, and most of his tales appeared first in periodicals, chiefly in "the token," - , "new england magazine," , ; "knickerbocker," - ; "democratic review," - ; "atlantic monthly," - (scenes from the dolliver romance, septimius felton, and passages from hawthorne's note-books). works: in volumes, ; in volumes, with introductory notes by lathrop, riverside edition, . biography, etc.; a. h. japp (pseud. h. a. page), memoir of n. hawthorne, ; j. t. field's "yesterdays with authors," g. p. lathrop, "a study of hawthorne," ; henry james english men of letters, ; julian hawthorne, "nathaniel hawthorne and his wife," ; moncure d. conway, life of nathaniel hawthorne, ; analytical index of hawthorne's works, by e. m. o'connor . contents introductory. the custom-house chapter i. the prison-door chapter ii. the market-place chapter iii. the recognition chapter iv. the interview chapter v. hester at her needle chapter vi. pearl chapter vii. the governor's hall chapter viii. the elf-child and the minister chapter ix. the leech chapter x. the leech and his patient chapter xi. the interior of a heart chapter xii. the minister's vigil chapter xiii. another view of hester chapter xiv. hester and the physician chapter xv. hester and pearl chapter xvi. a forest walk chapter xvii. the pastor and his parishioner chapter xviii. a flood of sunshine chapter xix. the child at the brook-side chapter xx. the minister in a maze chapter xxi. the new england holiday chapter xxii. the procession chapter xxiii. the revelation of the scarlet letter chapter xxiv. conclusion the custom-house introductory to "the scarlet letter" it is a little remarkable, that--though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. the first time was three or four years since, when i favoured the reader--inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine--with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an old manse. and now--because, beyond my deserts, i was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion--i again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience in a custom-house. the example of the famous "p. p., clerk of this parish," was never more faithfully followed. the truth seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. it is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. but, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost me behind its veil. to this extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or his own. it will be seen, likewise, that this custom-house sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognised in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. this, in fact--a desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume--this, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. in accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to make one. in my native town of salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old king derby, was a bustling wharf--but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a nova scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood--at the head, i say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass--here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. from the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of uncle sam's government is here established. its front is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the american eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if i recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. with the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, i presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. but she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later--oftener soon than late--is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows. the pavement round about the above-described edifice--which we may as well name at once as the custom-house of the port--has grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. in some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last war with england, when salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at new york or boston. on some such morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from africa or south america--or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly up and down the granite steps. here, before his own wife has greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box. here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of. here, likewise--the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, careworn merchant--we have the smart young clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends adventures in his master's ships, when he had better be sailing mimic boats upon a mill-pond. another figure in the scene is the outward-bound sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the british provinces; a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying trade. cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time being, it made the custom-house a stirring scene. more frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern-- in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms if wintry or inclement weathers--a row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent exertions. these old gentlemen--seated, like matthew at the receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic errands--were custom-house officers. furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty height, with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a narrow lane, and along a portion of derby street. all three give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers, around the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt the wapping of a seaport. the room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access. in the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and--not to forget the library--on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the acts of congress, and a bulky digest of the revenue laws. a tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. and here, some six months ago--pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper--you might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western side of the old manse. but now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the locofoco surveyor. the besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments. this old town of salem--my native place, though i have dwelt much away from it both in boyhood and maturer years--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which i have never realized during my seasons of actual residence here. indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty--its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame--its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with gallows hill and new guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other--such being the features of my native town, it would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checker-board. and yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for old salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, i must be content to call affection. the sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil. it is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement which has since become a city. and here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, i walk the streets. in part, therefore, the attachment which i speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable to know. but the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. the figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as i can remember. it still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which i scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. i seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor--who came so early, with his bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace--a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. he was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the church; he had all the puritanic traits, both good and evil. he was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. his son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. so deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the charter-street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! i know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another state of being. at all events, i, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them--as i have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist--may be now and henceforth removed. doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. no aim that i have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine--if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success--would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "what is he?" murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "a writer of story books! what kind of business in life--what mode of glorifying god, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation--may that be? why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!" such are the compliments bandied between my great grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! and yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine. planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as i have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice. gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. from father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grandsire. the boy, also in due time, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the natal earth. this long connexion of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him. it is not love but instinct. the new inhabitant--who came himself from a foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came--has little claim to be called a salemite; he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations have been embedded. it is no matter that the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;--all these, and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the purpose. the spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise. so has it been in my case. i felt it almost as a destiny to make salem my home; so that the mould of features and cast of character which had all along been familiar here--ever, as one representative of the race lay down in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main street--might still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town. nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy one, should at last be severed. human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. my children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth. on emerging from the old manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in uncle sam's brick edifice, when i might as well, or better, have gone somewhere else. my doom was on me. it was not the first time, nor the second, that i had gone away--as it seemed, permanently--but yet returned, like the bad halfpenny, or as if salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe. so, one fine morning i ascended the flight of granite steps, with the president's commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility as chief executive officer of the custom-house. i doubt greatly--or, rather, i do not doubt at all--whether any public functionary of the united states, either in the civil or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself. the whereabouts of the oldest inhabitant was at once settled when i looked at them. for upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent position of the collector had kept the salem custom-house out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. a soldier--new england's most distinguished soldier--he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held office, he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and heart-quake. general miller was radically conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought unquestionable improvement. thus, on taking charge of my department, i found few but aged men. they were ancient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast, had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a presidential election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. two or three of their number, as i was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the custom-house during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of may or june, go lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake themselves to bed again. i must plead guilty to the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these venerable servants of the republic. they were allowed, on my representation, to rest from their arduous labours, and soon afterwards--as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for their country's service--as i verily believe it was--withdrew to a better world. it is a pious consolation to me that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every custom-house officer must be supposed to fall. neither the front nor the back entrance of the custom-house opens on the road to paradise. the greater part of my officers were whigs. it was well for their venerable brotherhood that the new surveyor was not a politician, and though a faithful democrat in principle, neither received nor held his office with any reference to political services. had it been otherwise--had an active politician been put into this influential post, to assume the easy task of making head against a whig collector, whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of his office--hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life within a month after the exterminating angel had come up the custom-house steps. according to the received code in such matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine. it was plain enough to discern that the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. it pained, and at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in long-past days, had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten boreas himself to silence. they knew, these excellent old persons, that, by all established rule--and, as regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business--they ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common uncle. i knew it, too, but could never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge. much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and loiter up and down the custom-house steps. they spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the walls; awaking, however, once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among them. the discovery was soon made, i imagine, that the new surveyor had no great harm in him. so, with lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed--in their own behalf at least, if not for our beloved country--these good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office. sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels. mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers whenever such a mischance occurred--when a waggon-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses--nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and secure with tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment that there was no longer any remedy. unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. the better part of my companion's character, if it have a better part, is that which usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby i recognise the man. as most of these old custom-house officers had good traits, and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the growth of friendly sentiments, i soon grew to like them all. it was pleasant in the summer forenoons--when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems--it was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips. externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. in one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood. it would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. in the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. but, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done if i characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. they seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their memory with the husks. they spoke with far more interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes. the father of the custom-house--the patriarch, not only of this little squad of officials, but, i am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over the united states--was a certain permanent inspector. he might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather born in the purple; since his sire, a revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few living men can now remember. this inspector, when i first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. with his florid cheek, his compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed--not young, indeed--but a kind of new contrivance of mother nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. his voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the custom-house, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. looking at him merely as an animal--and there was very little else to look at--he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed at or conceived of. the careless security of his life in the custom-house, on a regular income, and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him. the original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. he possessed no power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities: nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper which grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. he had been the husband of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust. here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through and through with a sable tinge. not so with our old inspector. one brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. the next moment he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant: far readier than the collector's junior clerk, who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of the two. i used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, i think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice. he was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other. my conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as i have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what i found in him. it might be difficult--and it was so--to conceive how he should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age. one point in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. his gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. as he possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table. his reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. there were flavours on his palate that had lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast. i have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been food for worms. it was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually rising up before him--not in anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appreciation, and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual: a tenderloin of beef, a hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board in the days of the elder adams, would be remembered; while all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. the chief tragic event of the old man's life, so far as i could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided with an axe and handsaw. but it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, i should be glad to dwell at considerably more length, because of all men whom i have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a custom-house officer. most persons, owing to causes which i may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar mode of life. the old inspector was incapable of it; and, were he to continue in office to the end of time, would be just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as good an appetite. there is one likeness, without which my gallery of custom-house portraits would be strangely incomplete, but which my comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to sketch only in the merest outline. it is that of the collector, our gallant old general, who, after his brilliant military service, subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild western territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the decline of his varied and honourable life. the brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his three-score years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightening. the step was palsied now, that had been foremost in the charge. it was only with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the custom-house steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. there he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way into his inner sphere of contemplation. his countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. if his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his features, proving that there was light within him, and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage. the closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. when no longer called upon to speak or listen--either of which operations cost him an evident effort--his face would briefly subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. it was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age. the framework of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled into ruin. to observe and define his character, however, under such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like ticonderoga, from a view of its grey and broken ruins. here and there, perchance, the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien weeds. nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection--for, slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be termed so,--i could discern the main points of his portrait. it was marked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished name. his spirit could never, i conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. the heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a furnace. weight, solidity, firmness--this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which i speak. but i could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness--roused by a trumpet's peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only slumbering--he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior. and, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have still been calm. such an exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. what i saw in him--as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of old ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile--was the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at chippewa or fort erie, i take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. he had slain men with his own hand, for aught i know--certainly, they had fallen like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy--but, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. i have not known the man to whose innate kindliness i would more confidently make an appeal. many characteristics--and those, too, which contribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch--must have vanished, or been obscured, before i met the general. all merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined fortress of ticonderoga. still, even in respect of grace and beauty, there were points well worth noting. a ray of humour, now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. a trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth, was shown in the general's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers. an old soldier might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the floral tribe. there, beside the fireplace, the brave old general used to sit; while the surveyor--though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation--was fond of standing at a distance, and watching his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. he seemed away from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own. it might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the unappropriate environment of the collector's office. the evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish of old heroic music, heard thirty years before--such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense. meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of his commercial and custom-house life kept up its little murmur round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the general appear to sustain the most distant relation. he was as much out of place as an old sword--now rusty, but which had flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright gleam along its blade--would have been among the inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers on the deputy collector's desk. there was one thing that much aided me in renewing and re-creating the stalwart soldier of the niagara frontier--the man of true and simple energy. it was the recollection of those memorable words of his--"i'll try, sir"--spoken on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of new england hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. if, in our country, valour were rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrase--which it seems so easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and glory before him, has ever spoken--would be the best and fittest of all mottoes for the general's shield of arms. it contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. the accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my continuance in office. there was one man, especially, the observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. his gifts were emphatically those of a man of business; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. bred up from boyhood in the custom-house, it was his proper field of activity; and the many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper, presented themselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. in my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class. he was, indeed, the custom-house in himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. thus, by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. with an easy condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupidity--which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime--would he forth-with, by the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight. the merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends. his integrity was perfect; it was a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in the administration of affairs. a stain on his conscience, as to anything that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble such a man very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree, than an error in the balance of an account, or an ink-blot on the fair page of a book of record. here, in a word--and it is a rare instance in my life--i had met with a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held. such were some of the people with whom i now found myself connected. i took it in good part, at the hands of providence, that i was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. after my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of brook farm; after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like emerson's; after those wild, free days on the assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with ellery channing; after talking with thoreau about pine-trees and indian relics in his hermitage at walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of hillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at longfellow's hearthstone--it was time, at length, that i should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which i had hitherto had little appetite. even the old inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known alcott. i looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, i could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change. literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my regard. i cared not at this period for books; they were apart from me. nature--except it were human nature--the nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been spiritualized passed away out of my mind. a gift, a faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate within me. there would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had i not been conscious that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past. it might be true, indeed, that this was a life which could not, with impunity, be lived too long; else, it might make me permanently other than i had been, without transforming me into any shape which it would be worth my while to take. but i never considered it as other than a transitory life. there was always a prophetic instinct, a low whisper in my ear, that within no long period, and whenever a new change of custom should be essential to my good, change would come. meanwhile, there i was, a surveyor of the revenue and, so far as i have been able to understand, as good a surveyor as need be. a man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the surveyor's proportion of those qualities), may, at any time, be a man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the trouble. my fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in no other character. none of them, i presume, had ever read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me if they had read them all; nor would it have mended the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been written with a pen like that of burns or of chaucer, each of whom was a custom-house officer in his day, as well as i. it is a good lesson--though it may often be a hard one--for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. i know not that i especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but at any rate, i learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. in the way of literary talk, it is true, the naval officer--an excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and went out only a little later--would often engage me in a discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics, napoleon or shakespeare. the collector's junior clerk, too a young gentleman who, it was whispered occasionally covered a sheet of uncle sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a few yards) looked very much like poetry--used now and then to speak to me of books, as matters with which i might possibly be conversant. this was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite sufficient for my necessities. no longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blasoned abroad on title-pages, i smiled to think that it had now another kind of vogue. the custom-house marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, i hope, will never go again. but the past was not dead. once in a great while, the thoughts that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest so quietly, revived again. one of the most remarkable occasions, when the habit of bygone days awoke in me, was that which brings it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the sketch which i am now writing. in the second storey of the custom-house there is a large room, in which the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered with panelling and plaster. the edifice--originally projected on a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise of the port, and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be realized--contains far more space than its occupants know what to do with. this airy hall, therefore, over the collector's apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labour of the carpenter and mason. at one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of barrels piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. it was sorrowful to think how many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. but then, what reams of other manuscripts--filled, not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts--had gone equally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as these heaped-up papers had, and--saddest of all--without purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the custom-house had gained by these worthless scratchings of the pen. yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, as materials of local history. here, no doubt, statistics of the former commerce of salem might be discovered, and memorials of her princely merchants--old king derby--old billy gray--old simon forrester--and many another magnate in his day, whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. the founders of the greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the revolution, upward to what their children look upon as long-established rank. prior to the revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier documents and archives of the custom-house having, probably, been carried off to halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied the british army in its flight from boston. it has often been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days of the protectorate, those papers must have contained many references to forgotten or remembered men, and to antique customs, which would have affected me with the same pleasure as when i used to pick up indian arrow-heads in the field near the old manse. but, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of some little interest. poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never heard of now on 'change, nor very readily decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the corpse of dead activity--and exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old town's brighter aspect, when india was a new region, and only salem knew the way thither--i chanced to lay my hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment. this envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present. there was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light. unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, i found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of governor shirley, in favour of one jonathan pue, as surveyor of his majesty's customs for the port of salem, in the province of massachusetts bay. i remembered to have read (probably in felt's "annals") a notice of the decease of mr. surveyor pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little graveyard of st. peter's church, during the renewal of that edifice. nothing, if i rightly call to mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle, which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation. but, on examining the papers which the parchment commission served to envelop, i found more traces of mr. pue's mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself. they were documents, in short, not official, but of a private nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity, and apparently with his own hand. i could account for their being included in the heap of custom-house lumber only by the fact that mr. pue's death had happened suddenly, and that these papers, which he probably kept in his official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to the business of the revenue. on the transfer of the archives to halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern, was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened. the ancient surveyor--being little molested, i suppose, at that early day with business pertaining to his office--seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. these supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten up with rust. a portion of his facts, by-the-by, did me good service in the preparation of the article entitled "main street," included in the present volume. the remainder may perhaps be applied to purposes equally valuable hereafter, or not impossibly may be worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of salem, should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. meanwhile, they shall be at the command of any gentleman, inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable labour off my hands. as a final disposition i contemplate depositing them with the essex historical society. but the object that most drew my attention to the mysterious package was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, there were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced, so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left. it had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as i am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. this rag of scarlet cloth--for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag--on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. it was the capital letter a. by an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. it had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) i saw little hope of solving. and yet it strangely interested me. my eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. certainly there was some deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the analysis of my mind. when thus perplexed--and cogitating, among other hypotheses, whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of indians--i happened to place it on my breast. it seemed to me--the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word--it seemed to me, then, that i experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. i shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor. in the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, i had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. this i now opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the old surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. there were several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars respecting the life and conversation of one hester prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our ancestors. she had flourished during the period between the early days of massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century. aged persons, alive in the time of mr. surveyor pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. it had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially those of the heart, by which means--as a person of such propensities inevitably must--she gained from many people the reverence due to an angel, but, i should imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. prying further into the manuscript, i found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled "the scarlet letter"; and it should be borne carefully in mind that the main facts of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of mr. surveyor pue. the original papers, together with the scarlet letter itself--a most curious relic--are still in my possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of them. i must not be understood affirming that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure in it, i have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old surveyor's half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap. on the contrary, i have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly, or altogether, as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. what i contend for is the authenticity of the outline. this incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track. there seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. it impressed me as if the ancient surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his immortal wig--which was buried with him, but did not perish in the grave--had met me in the deserted chamber of the custom-house. in his port was the dignity of one who had borne his majesty's commission, and who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendour that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. how unlike alas the hangdog look of a republican official, who, as the servant of the people, feels himself less than the least, and below the lowest of his masters. with his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic, figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the little roll of explanatory manuscript. with his own ghostly voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him--who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor--to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public. "do this," said the ghost of mr. surveyor pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the profit shall be all your own. you will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and oftentimes an heirloom. but i charge you, in this matter of old mistress prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully due" and i said to the ghost of mr. surveyor pue--"i will". on hester prynne's story, therefore, i bestowed much thought. it was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long extent from the front door of the custom-house to the side entrance, and back again. great were the weariness and annoyance of the old inspector and the weighers and gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps. remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. they probably fancied that my sole object--and, indeed, the sole object for which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion--was to get an appetite for dinner. and, to say the truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind that generally blew along the passage, was the only valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise. so little adapted is the atmosphere of a custom-house to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had i remained there through ten presidencies yet to come, i doubt whether the tale of "the scarlet letter" would ever have been brought before the public eye. my imagination was a tarnished mirror. it would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which i did my best to people it. the characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that i could kindle at my intellectual forge. they would take neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. "what have you to do with us?" that expression seemed to say. "the little power you might have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! you have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. go then, and earn your wages!" in short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion. it was not merely during the three hours and a half which uncle sam claimed as his share of my daily life that this wretched numbness held possession of me. it went with me on my sea-shore walks and rambles into the country, whenever--which was seldom and reluctantly--i bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of nature which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought, the moment that i stepped across the threshold of the old manse. the same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which i most absurdly termed my study. nor did it quit me when, late at night, i sat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the brightening page in many-hued description. if the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly--making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility--is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. there is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture on the wall--all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. a child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse--whatever, in a word, has been used or played with during the day is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the actual and the imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other. ghosts might enter here without affrighting us. it would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside. the somewhat dim coal fire has an essential influence in producing the effect which i would describe. it throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam upon the polish of the furniture. this warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moon-beams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. it converts them from snow-images into men and women. glancing at the looking-glass, we behold--deep within its haunted verge--the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moon-beams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. then, at such an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances. but, for myself, during the whole of my custom-house experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. an entire class of susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them--of no great richness or value, but the best i had--was gone from me. it is my belief, however, that had i attempted a different order of composition, my faculties would not have been found so pointless and inefficacious. i might, for instance, have contented myself with writing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of the inspectors, whom i should be most ungrateful not to mention, since scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvelous gifts as a story-teller. could i have preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the humourous colouring which nature taught him how to throw over his descriptions, the result, i honestly believe, would have been something new in literature. or i might readily have found a more serious task. it was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. the wiser effort would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with which i was now conversant. the fault was mine. the page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace only because i had not fathomed its deeper import. a better book than i shall ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight, and my hand the cunning, to transcribe it. at some future day, it may be, i shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page. these perceptions had come too late. at the instant, i was only conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. there was no occasion to make much moan about this state of affairs. i had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good surveyor of the customs. that was all. but, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. of the fact there could be no doubt and, examining myself and others, i was led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question. in some other form, perhaps, i may hereafter develop these effects. suffice it here to say that a custom-house officer of long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which--though, i trust, an honest one--is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. an effect--which i believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position--is, that while he leans on the mighty arm of the republic, his own proper strength departs from him. he loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. if he possesses an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. the ejected officer--fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world--may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. but this seldom happens. he usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. conscious of his own infirmity--that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost--he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. his pervading and continual hope--a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, i fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death--is, that finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. this faith, more than anything else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his uncle will raise and support him? why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in california, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his uncle's pocket? it is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. uncle sam's gold--meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman--has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the devil's wages. whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character. here was a fine prospect in the distance. not that the surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office or ejectment. yet my reflections were not the most comfortable. i began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. i endeavoured to calculate how much longer i could stay in the custom-house, and yet go forth a man. to confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension--as it would never be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign--it was my chief trouble, therefore, that i was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old inspector. might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this venerable friend--to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? a dreary look-forward, this, for a man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities. but, all this while, i was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. providence had meditated better things for me than i could possibly imagine for myself. a remarkable event of the third year of my surveyorship--to adopt the tone of "p. p. "--was the election of general taylor to the presidency. it is essential, in order to form a complete estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the incumbent at the in-coming of a hostile administration. his position is then one of the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good on either hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event may very probably be the best. but it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would rather be injured than obliged. strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects! there are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency--which i now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours--to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. if the guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact, instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active members of the victorious party were sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked heaven for the opportunity! it appears to me--who have been a calm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat--that this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the whigs. the democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and because the practice of many years has made it the law of political warfare, which unless a different system be proclaimed, it was weakness and cowardice to murmur at. but the long habit of victory has made them generous. they know how to spare when they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off. in short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, i saw much reason to congratulate myself that i was on the losing side rather than the triumphant one. if, heretofore, i had been none of the warmest of partisans i began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections lay; nor was it without something like regret and shame that, according to a reasonable calculation of chances, i saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those of my democratic brethren. but who can see an inch into futurity beyond his nose? my own head was the first that fell. the moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, i am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him. in my particular case the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a considerable time before it was requisite to use them. in view of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and although beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. in the custom-house, as before in the old manse, i had spent three years--a term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break off old intellectual habits, and make room for new ones: long enough, and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no advantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the late surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognised by the whigs as an enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs--his tendency to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of the same household must diverge from one another--had sometimes made it questionable with his brother democrats whether he was a friend. now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as settled. finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with which he had been content to stand than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then to define his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercy of a friendly one. meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like irving's headless horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. so much for my figurative self. the real human being all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his long-disused writing desk, and was again a literary man. now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, mr. surveyor pue, came into play. rusty through long idleness, some little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be brought to work upon the tale with an effect in any degree satisfactory. even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened by genial sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and undoubtedly should soften every picture of them. this uncaptivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped itself. it is no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's mind: for he was happier while straying through the gloom of these sunless fantasies than at any time since he had quitted the old manse. some of the briefer articles, which contribute to make up the volume, have likewise been written since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and honours of public life, and the remainder are gleaned from annuals and magazines, of such antique date, that they have gone round the circle, and come back to novelty again. keeping up the metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the posthumous papers of a decapitated surveyor: and the sketch which i am now bringing to a close, if too autobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. peace be with all the world! my blessing on my friends! my forgiveness to my enemies! for i am in the realm of quiet! the life of the custom-house lies like a dream behind me. the old inspector--who, by-the-bye, i regret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse some time ago, else he would certainly have lived for ever--he, and all those other venerable personages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view: white-headed and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside for ever. the merchants--pingree, phillips, shepard, upton, kimball, bertram, hunt--these and many other names, which had such classic familiarity for my ear six months ago,--these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in the world--how little time has it required to disconnect me from them all, not merely in act, but recollection! it is with an effort that i recall the figures and appellations of these few. soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; i am a citizen of somewhere else. my good townspeople will not much regret me, for--though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place of so many of my forefathers--there has never been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. i shall do better amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well without me. it may be, however--oh, transporting and triumphant thought--that the great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the town's history, shall point out the locality of the town pump. the scarlet letter i. the prison door a throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. the founders of a new colony, whatever utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. in accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on isaac johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of king's chapel. certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. the rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the new world. like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. but on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of june, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of nature could pity and be kind to him. this rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted ann hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine. finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. it may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. ii. the market-place the grass-plot before the jail, in prison lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of new england, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. it could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. but, in that early severity of the puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. it might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. it might be that an antinomian, a quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. it might be, too, that a witch, like old mistress hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. in either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. on the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. it was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. the age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old english birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not character of less force and solidity than her own. the women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. they were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. the bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of new england. there was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone. "goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "i'll tell ye a piece of my mind. it would be greatly for the public behoof if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this hester prynne. what think ye, gossips? if the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? marry, i trow not." "people say," said another, "that the reverend master dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation." "the magistrates are god-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch--that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "at the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on hester prynne's forehead. madame hester would have winced at that, i warrant me. but she--the naughty baggage--little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!" "ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart." "what do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. "this woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; is there not law for it? truly there is, both in the scripture and the statute-book. then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray." "mercy on us, goodwife!" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? that is the hardest word yet! hush now, gossips for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes mistress prynne herself." the door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. this personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender. stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. she bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison. when the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. in a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. on the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter a. it was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. the young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. she had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. she was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. and never had hester prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. it may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. her attire, which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. but the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer--so that both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with hester prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time--was that scarlet letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. it had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. "she hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?" "it were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if we stripped madame hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so curiously, i'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to make a fitter one!" "oh, peace, neighbours--peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her hear you! not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart." the grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "make way, good people--make way, in the king's name!" cried he. "open a passage; and i promise ye, mistress prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. a blessing on the righteous colony of the massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! come along, madame hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!" a lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, hester prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. a crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. it was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the market-place. measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. in our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. with almost a serene deportment, therefore, hester prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. it stood nearly beneath the eaves of boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there. in fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of france. it was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. the very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. there can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual--no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. in hester prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders above the street. had there been a papist among the crowd of puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of divine maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne. the scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it. the witnesses of hester prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. they were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the platform. when such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. the unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. it was almost intolerable to be borne. of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude--each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts--hester prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. but, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once. yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality. be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to hester prynne the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in old england, and her paternal home: a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. she saw her father's face, with its bold brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the old-fashioned elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. she saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. there she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. this figure of the study and the cloister, as hester prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the puritan settlement, with all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at hester prynne--yes, at herself--who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter a, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom. could it be true? she clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. yes these were her realities--all else had vanished! iii. the recognition from this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. an indian in his native garb was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the english settlements that one of them would have attracted any notice from hester prynne at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. by the indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume. he was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which as yet could hardly be termed aged. there was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavoured to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to hester prynne that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other. again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. but the mother did not seem to hear it. at his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on hester prynne. it was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrative. a writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. his face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. after a brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. when he found the eyes of hester prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips. then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood near to him, he addressed him in a formal and courteous manner: "i pray you, good sir," said he, "who is this woman?--and wherefore is she here set up to public shame?" "you must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage companion, "else you would surely have heard of mistress hester prynne and her evil doings. she hath raised a great scandal, i promise you, in godly master dimmesdale's church." "you say truly," replied the other; "i am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. i have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward; and am now brought hither by this indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. will it please you, therefore, to tell me of hester prynne's--have i her name rightly?--of this woman's offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?" "truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched out and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly new england. yonder woman, sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain learned man, english by birth, but who had long ago dwelt in amsterdam, whence some good time agone he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the massachusetts. to this purpose he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. marry, good sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a dweller here in boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentleman, master prynne; and his young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance--" "ah!--aha!--i conceive you," said the stranger with a bitter smile. "so learned a man as you speak of should have learned this too in his books. and who, by your favour, sir, may be the father of yonder babe--it is some three or four months old, i should judge--which mistress prynne is holding in her arms?" "of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "madame hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that god sees him." "the learned man," observed the stranger with another smile, "should come himself to look into the mystery." "it behoves him well if he be still in life," responded the townsman. "now, good sir, our massachusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, and that, moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea, they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. the penalty thereof is death. but in their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed mistress prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom." "a wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely, bowing his head. "thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. it irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. but he will be known--he will be known!--he will be known!" he bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and whispering a few words to his indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd. while this passed, hester prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger--so fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she now did, with the hot mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath a matronly veil at church. dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. it was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and her, than to greet him face to face--they two alone. she fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her. involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude. "hearken unto me, hester prynne!" said the voice. it has already been noticed that directly over the platform on which hester prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meeting-house. it was the place whence proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat governor bellingham himself with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honour. he wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath--a gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles. he was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. the other eminent characters by whom the chief ruler was surrounded were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions. they were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. but, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom hester prynne now turned her face. she seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale, and trembled. the voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and famous john wilson, the eldest clergyman of boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. this last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. there he stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap, while his grey eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like those of hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. he looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of those portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish. "hester prynne," said the clergyman, "i have striven with my young brother here, under whose preaching of the word you have been privileged to sit"--here mr. wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man beside him--"i have sought, i say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. knowing your natural temper better than i, he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy, insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. but he opposes to me--with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his years--that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence of so great a multitude. truly, as i sought to convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth. what say you to it, once again, brother dimmesdale? must it be thou, or i, that shall deal with this poor sinner's soul?" there was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the balcony; and governor bellingham gave expression to its purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed: "good master dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. it behoves you; therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof." the directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the reverend mr. dimmesdale--young clergyman, who had come from one of the great english universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest land. his eloquence and religious fervour had already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. he was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow; large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self restraint. notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister--an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look--as of a being who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike, coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel. such was the young man whom the reverend mr. wilson and the governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. the trying nature of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous. "speak to the woman, my brother," said mr. wilson. "it is of moment to her soul, and, therefore, as the worshipful governor says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. exhort her to confess the truth!" the reverend mr. dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward. "hester prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which i labour. if thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, i charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. what can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without. take heed how thou deniest to him--who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself--the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!" the young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. the feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. even the poor baby at hester's bosom was affected by the same influence, for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards mr. dimmesdale, and held up its little arms with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. so powerful seemed the minister's appeal that the people could not believe but that hester prynne would speak out the guilty name, or else that the guilty one himself in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend the scaffold. hester shook her head. "woman, transgress not beyond the limits of heaven's mercy!" cried the reverend mr. wilson, more harshly than before. "that little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. speak out the name! that, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast." "never," replied hester prynne, looking, not at mr. wilson, but into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "it is too deeply branded. ye cannot take it off. and would that i might endure his agony as well as mine!" "speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "speak; and give your child a father!" "i will not speak!" answered hester, turning pale as death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely recognised. "and my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an earthly one!" "she will not speak!" murmured mr. dimmesdale, who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. he now drew back with a long respiration. "wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! she will not speak!" discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. so forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. hester prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. she had borne that morning all that nature could endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal life remained entire. in this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. the infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she strove to hush it mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathise with its trouble. with the same hard demeanour, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its iron-clamped portal. it was whispered by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior. iv. the interview after her return to the prison, hester prynne was found to be in a state of nervous excitement, that demanded constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. as night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, master brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. he described him as a man of skill in all christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. to say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for hester herself, but still more urgently for the child--who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. it now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which hester prynne had borne throughout the day. closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that individual, of singular aspect whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. he was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the indian sagamores respecting his ransom. his name was announced as roger chillingworth. the jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for hester prynne had immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to moan. "prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the practitioner. "trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in your house; and, i promise you, mistress prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have found her heretofore." "nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered master brackett, "i shall own you for a man of skill, indeed! verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little that i should take in hand, to drive satan out of her with stripes." the stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. nor did his demeanour change when the withdrawal of the prison keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. his first care was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. he examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. it appeared to contain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water. "my old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. here, woman! the child is yours--she is none of mine--neither will she recognise my voice or aspect as a father's. administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand." hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face. "wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered she. "foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly. "what should ail me to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? the medicine is potent for good, and were it my child--yea, mine own, as well as thine! i could do no better for it." as she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the draught. it soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. the moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. the physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother. with calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes--a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught. "i know not lethe nor nepenthe," remarked he; "but i have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them--a recipe that an indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as paracelsus. drink it! it may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. that i cannot give thee. but it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea." he presented the cup to hester, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be. she looked also at her slumbering child. "i have thought of death," said she--"have wished for it--would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as i should pray for anything. yet, if death be in this cup, i bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. see! it is even now at my lips." "drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "dost thou know me so little, hester prynne? are my purposes wont to be so shallow? even if i imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could i do better for my object than to let thee live--than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life--so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" as he spoke, he laid his long fore-finger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into hester's breast, as if it had been red hot. he noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled. "live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women--in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband--in the eyes of yonder child! and, that thou mayest live, take off this draught." without further expostulation or delay, hester prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. she could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do for the relief of physical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured. "hester," said he, "i ask not wherefore, nor how thou hast fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of infamy on which i found thee. the reason is not far to seek. it was my folly, and thy weakness. i--a man of thought--the book-worm of great libraries--a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge--what had i to do with youth and beauty like thine own? misshapen from my birth-hour, how could i delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy? men call me wise. if sages were ever wise in their own behoof, i might have foreseen all this. i might have known that, as i came out of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, hester prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people. nay, from the moment when we came down the old church-steps together, a married pair, i might have beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!" "thou knowest," said hester--for, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame--"thou knowest that i was frank with thee. i felt no love, nor feigned any." "true," replied he. "it was my folly! i have said it. but, up to that epoch of my life, i had lived in vain. the world had been so cheerless! my heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. i longed to kindle one! it seemed not so wild a dream--old as i was, and sombre as i was, and misshapen as i was--that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. and so, hester, i drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!" "i have greatly wronged thee," murmured hester. "we have wronged each other," answered he. "mine was the first wrong, when i betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophised in vain, i seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. but, hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! who is he?" "ask me not!" replied hester prynne, looking firmly into his face. "that thou shalt never know!" "never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with a smile of dark and self-relying intelligence. "never know him! believe me, hester, there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought--few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude. thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. but, as for me, i come to the inquest with other senses than they possess. i shall seek this man, as i have sought truth in books: as i have sought gold in alchemy. there is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. i shall see him tremble. i shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. sooner or later, he must needs be mine." the eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that hester prynne clasped her hand over her heart, dreading lest he should read the secret there at once. "thou wilt not reveal his name? not the less he is mine," resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with him. "he bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost, but i shall read it on his heart. yet fear not for him! think not that i shall interfere with heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. neither do thou imagine that i shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if as i judge, he be a man of fair repute. let him live! let him hide himself in outward honour, if he may! not the less he shall be mine!" "thy acts are like mercy," said hester, bewildered and appalled; "but thy words interpret thee as a terror!" "one thing, thou that wast my wife, i would enjoin upon thee," continued the scholar. "thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour. keep, likewise, mine! there are none in this land that know me. breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever call me husband! here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, i shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, i find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. no matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of right or wrong! thou and thine, hester prynne, belong to me. my home is where thou art and where he is. but betray me not!" "wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired hester, shrinking, she hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "why not announce thyself openly, and cast me off at once?" "it may be," he replied, "because i will not encounter the dishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. it may be for other reasons. enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. recognise me not, by word, by sign, by look! breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! his fame, his position, his life will be in my hands. beware!" "i will keep thy secret, as i have his," said hester. "swear it!" rejoined he. and she took the oath. "and now, mistress prynne," said old roger chillingworth, as he was hereafter to be named, "i leave thee alone: alone with thy infant and the scarlet letter! how is it, hester? doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?" "why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. "art thou like the black man that haunts the forest round about us? hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?" "not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "no, not thine!" v. hester at her needle hester prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. it was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. the very law that condemned her--a giant of stern features but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. but now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. she could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next: each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. the days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast--at her, the child of honourable parents--at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman--at her, who had once been innocent--as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. and over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument. it may seem marvellous that, with the world before her--kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure--free to return to her birth-place, or to any other european land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being--and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her--it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. but there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. it was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into hester prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. all other scenes of earth--even that village of rural england, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago--were foreign to her, in comparison. the chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken. it might be, too--doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole--it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. there dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon hester's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. she barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. what she compelled herself to believe--what, finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of new england--was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. here, she said to herself had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom. hester prynne, therefore, did not flee. on the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. it had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. it stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. a clump of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. in this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, hester established herself, with her infant child. a mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious fear. lonely as was hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. she possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. it was the art, then, as now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp--of needle-work. she bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with. public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. in the array of funerals, too--whether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors--there was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour as hester prynne could supply. baby-linen--for babies then wore robes of state--afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument. by degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. her needle-work was seen on the ruff of the governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. but it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. the exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with which society frowned upon her sin. hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that one ornament--the scarlet letter--which it was her doom to wear. the child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. we may speak further of it hereafter. except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. it is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. she had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, oriental characteristic--a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. to hester prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. this morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong beneath. in this manner, hester prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. with her native energy of character and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which branded the brow of cain. in all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. she stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. these emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. it was not an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the tenderest spot. the poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succour them. dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. hester had schooled herself long and well; and she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom. she was patient--a martyr, indeed--but she forebore to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse. continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the puritan tribunal. clergymen paused in the streets, to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. if she entered a church, trusting to share the sabbath smile of the universal father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. she grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman gliding silently through the town, with never any companion but one only child. therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. it seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves--had the summer breeze murmured about it--had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. when strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter--and none ever failed to do so--they branded it afresh in hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. but then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. from first to last, in short, hester prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture. but sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. the next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. (had hester sinned alone?) her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre would have been still more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to hester--if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted--she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. she shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. she was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. what were they? could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides hester prynne's? or, must she receive those intimations--so obscure, yet so distinct--as truth? in all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. it perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. "what evil thing is at hand?" would hester say to herself. lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! again a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. that unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on hester prynne's--what had the two in common? or, once more, the electric thrill would give her warning--"behold hester, here is a companion!" and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted, with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. o fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?--such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that hester prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself. the vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. they averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever hester prynne walked abroad in the night-time. and we must needs say it seared hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. vi. pearl we have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. how strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! her pearl--for so had hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. but she named the infant "pearl," as being of great price--purchased with all she had--her mother's only treasure! how strange, indeed! man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. god, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! yet these thoughts affected hester prynne less with hope than apprehension. she knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being. certainly there was no physical defect. by its perfect shape, its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. the child had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. but little pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. so magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. and yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself--it would have been no longer pearl! this outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life. her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else hester's fears deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. the child could not be made amenable to rules. in giving her existence a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. hester could only account for the child's character--and even then most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself had been during that momentous period while pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. the mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance. above all, the warfare of hester's spirit at that epoch was perpetuated in pearl. she could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. they were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later in the day of earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind. the discipline of the family in those days was of a far more rigid kind than now. the frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application of the rod, enjoined by scriptural authority, were used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. hester prynne, nevertheless, the loving mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue severity. mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. but the task was beyond her skill. after testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. as to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, little pearl might or might not be within its reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. her mother, while pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labour thrown away to insist, persuade or plead. it was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that hester could not help questioning at such moments whether pearl was a human child. she seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither. beholding it, hester was constrained to rush towards the child--to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began--to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses--not so much from overflowing love as to assure herself that pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. but pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than before. heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. then, perhaps--for there was no foreseeing how it might affect her--pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. not seldom she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. or--but this more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart by breaking it. yet hester was hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness: it passed as suddenly as it came. brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids--little pearl awoke! how soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed--did pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! and then what a happiness would it have been could hester prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children. but this could never be. pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. an imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to other children. never since her release from prison had hester met the public gaze without her. in all her walks about the town, pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of hester's. she saw the children of the settlement on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashions as the puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging quakers; or taking scalps in a sham fight with the indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. if spoken to, she would not speak again. if the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue. the truth was, that the little puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. these outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort for the mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations. it appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. all this enmity and passion had pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of hester's heart. mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted hester prynne before pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by the softening influences of maternity. at home, within and around her mother's cottage, pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of acquaintance. the spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. the unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the puppets of pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. her one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. the pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom pearl smote down and uprooted most unmercifully. it was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity--soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life--and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. it was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. in the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be a little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. the singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded all these offsprings of her own heart and mind. she never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. it was inexpressibly sad--then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the cause--to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good her cause in the contest that must ensue. gazing at pearl, hester prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a groan--"o father in heaven--if thou art still my father--what is this being which i have brought into the world?" and pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play. one peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. the very first thing which she had noticed in her life, was--what?--not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. by no means! but that first object of which pearl seemed to become aware was--shall we say it?--the scarlet letter on hester's bosom! one day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and putting up her little hand she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. then, gasping for breath, did hester prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of pearl's baby-hand. again, as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little pearl look into her eyes, and smile. from that epoch, except when the child was asleep, hester had never felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment of her. weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes. once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes while hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; and suddenly--for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions--she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the small black mirror of pearl's eye. it was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. it was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. many a time afterwards had hester been tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion. in the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hit the scarlet letter. hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. but whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little pearl's wild eyes. still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another. at last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at hester, with that little laughing image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes. "child, what art thou?" cried the mother. "oh, i am your little pearl!" answered the child. but while she said it, pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up the chimney. "art thou my child, in very truth?" asked hester. nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now reveal herself. "yes; i am little pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her antics. "thou art not my child! thou art no pearl of mine!" said the mother half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came over her in the midst of her deepest suffering. "tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?" "tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "do thou tell me!" "thy heavenly father sent thee!" answered hester prynne. but she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter. "he did not send me!" cried she, positively. "i have no heavenly father!" "hush, pearl, hush! thou must not talk so!" answered the mother, suppressing a groan. "he sent us all into the world. he sent even me, thy mother. then, much more thee! or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come?" "tell me! tell me!" repeated pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing and capering about the floor. "it is thou that must tell me!" but hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. she remembered--betwixt a smile and a shudder--the talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little pearl was a demon offspring: such as, ever since old catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned among the new england puritans. vii. the governor's hall hester prynne went one day to the mansion of governor bellingham, with a pair of gloves which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an honourable and influential place among the colonial magistracy. another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves, impelled hester, at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settlement. it had reached her ears that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child. on the supposition that pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. if the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than hester prynne's. among those who promoted the design, governor bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. it may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which in later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the select men of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. at that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight than the welfare of hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. the period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature. full of concern, therefore--but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other--hester prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. little pearl, of course, was her companion. she was now of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion from morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be let down again, and frisked onward before hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. we have spoken of pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty--a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints, a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. there was fire in her and throughout her: she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. so much strength of colouring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth. but it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which hester prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. it was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! the mother herself--as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form--had carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. but, in truth, pearl was the one as well as the other; and only in consequence of that identity had hester contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her appearance. as the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the puritans looked up from their play,--or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins--and spoke gravely one to another. "behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!" but pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight. she resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment--whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. she screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. the victory accomplished, pearl returned quietly to her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face. without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of governor bellingham. this was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away within their dusky chambers. then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. it had, indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. the brilliancy might have be fitted aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old puritan ruler. it was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times. pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with. "no, my little pearl!" said her mother; "thou must gather thine own sunshine. i have none to give thee!" they approached the door, which was of an arched form, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice-windows, the wooden shutters to close over them at need. lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, hester prynne gave a summons, which was answered by one of the governor's bond servant--a free-born englishman, but now a seven years' slave. during that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. the serf wore the customary garb of serving-men at that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of england. "is the worshipful governor bellingham within?" inquired hester. "yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had never before seen. "yea, his honourable worship is within. but he hath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. ye may not see his worship now." "nevertheless, i will enter," answered hester prynne; and the bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land, offered no opposition. so the mother and little pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. with many variations, suggested by the nature of his building materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, governor bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. at one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. at the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the chronicles of england, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre table, to be turned over by the casual guest. the furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste, the whole being of the elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the governor's paternal home. on the table--in token that the sentiment of old english hospitality had not been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had hester or pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale. on the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the bellingham lineage, some with armour on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. all were characterised by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on, as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men. at about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful armourer in london, the same year in which governor bellingham came over to new england. there was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. this bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the pequod war. for, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of bacon, coke, noye, and finch, as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed governor bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler. little pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house, spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate. "mother," cried she, "i see you here. look! look!" hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. in truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. pearl pointed upwards also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. that look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made hester prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into pearl's shape. "come along, pearl," said she, drawing her away, "come and look into this fair garden. it may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we find in the woods." pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted with closely-shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. but the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the atlantic, in a hard soil, and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native english taste for ornamental gardening. cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as new england earth would offer him. there were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the reverend mr. blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull. pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified. "hush, child--hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "do not cry, dear little pearl! i hear voices in the garden. the governor is coming, and gentlemen along with him." in fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of persons were seen approaching towards the house. pearl, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent, not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance of those new personages. viii. the elf-child and the minister governor bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap--such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic privacy--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. the wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey beard, in the antiquated fashion of king james's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of john the baptist in a charger. the impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. but it is an error to suppose that our great forefathers--though accustomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp. this creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor, john wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over governor bellingham's shoulders, while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalised in the new england climate, and that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to flourish against the sunny garden-wall. the old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the english church, had a long established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of hester prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries. behind the governor and mr. wilson came two other guests--one, the reverend arthur dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of hester prynne's disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old roger chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who for two or three years past had been settled in the town. it was understood that this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered of late by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labours and duties of the pastoral relation. the governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall window, found himself close to little pearl. the shadow of the curtain fell on hester prynne, and partially concealed her. "what have we here?" said governor bellingham, looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. "i profess, i have never seen the like since my days of vanity, in old king james's time, when i was wont to esteem it a high favour to be admitted to a court mask! there used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday time, and we called them children of the lord of misrule. but how gat such a guest into my hall?" "ay, indeed!" cried good old mr. wilson. "what little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? methinks i have seen just such figures when the sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the floor. but that was in the old land. prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? art thou a christian child--ha? dost know thy catechism? or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies whom we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of papistry, in merry old england?" "i am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is pearl!" "pearl?--ruby, rather--or coral!--or red rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue!" responded the old minister, putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little pearl on the cheek. "but where is this mother of thine? ah! i see," he added; and, turning to governor bellingham, whispered, "this is the selfsame child of whom we have held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, hester prynne, her mother!" "sayest thou so?" cried the governor. "nay, we might have judged that such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her of babylon! but she comes at a good time, and we will look into this matter forthwith." governor bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed by his three guests. "hester prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question concerning thee of late. the point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen amid the pitfalls of this world. speak thou, the child's own mother! were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? what canst thou do for the child in this kind?" "i can teach my little pearl what i have learned from this!" answered hester prynne, laying her finger on the red token. "woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate. "it is because of the stain which that letter indicates that we would transfer thy child to other hands." "nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, "this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself." "we will judge warily," said bellingham, "and look well what we are about to do. good master wilson, i pray you, examine this pearl--since that is her name--and see whether she hath had such christian nurture as befits a child of her age." the old minister seated himself in an arm-chair and made an effort to draw pearl betwixt his knees. but the child, unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird of rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. mr. wilson, not a little astonished at this outbreak--for he was a grandfatherly sort of personage, and usually a vast favourite with children--essayed, however, to proceed with the examination. "pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?" now pearl knew well enough who made her, for hester prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her heavenly father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. pearl, therefore--so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime--could have borne a fair examination in the new england primer, or the first column of the westminster catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. but that perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. after putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good mr. wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door. this phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the governor's red roses, as pearl stood outside of the window, together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither. old roger chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman's ear. hester prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features--how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen--since the days when she had familiarly known him. she met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward. "this is awful!" cried the governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment into which pearl's response had thrown him. "here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no further." hester caught hold of pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death. "god gave me the child!" cried she. "he gave her in requital of all things else which ye had taken from me. she is my happiness--she is my torture, none the less! pearl keeps me here in life! pearl punishes me, too! see ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a millionfold the power of retribution for my sin? ye shall not take her! i will die first!" "my poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be well cared for--far better than thou canst do for it." "god gave her into my keeping!" repeated hester prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. "i will not give her up!" and here by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, mr. dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. "speak thou for me!" cried she. "thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. i will not lose the child! speak for me! thou knowest--for thou hast sympathies which these men lack--thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! look thou to it! i will not lose the child! look to it!" at this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that hester prynne's situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. he looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of hester's public ignominy; and whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth. "there is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed and the hollow armour rang with it--"truth in what hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her! god gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements--both seemingly so peculiar--which no other mortal being can possess. and, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child?" "ay--how is that, good master dimmesdale?" interrupted the governor. "make that plain, i pray you!" "it must be even so," resumed the minister. "for, if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the heavenly father, the creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognised a deed of sin, and made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? this child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame has come from the hand of god, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly and with such bitterness of spirit the right to keep her. it was meant for a blessing--for the one blessing of her life! it was meant, doubtless, the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution, too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her bosom?" "well said again!" cried good mr. wilson. "i feared the woman had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!" "oh, not so!--not so!" continued mr. dimmesdale. "she recognises, believe me, the solemn miracle which god hath wrought in the existence of that child. and may she feel, too--what, methinks, is the very truth--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which satan might else have sought to plunge her! therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care--to be trained up by her to righteousness, to remind her, at every moment, of her fall, but yet to teach her, as if it were by the creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parents thither! herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. for hester prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as providence hath seen fit to place them!" "you speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old roger chillingworth, smiling at him. "and there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken," added the rev. mr. wilson. "what say you, worshipful master bellingham? hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?" "indeed hath he," answered the magistrate; "and hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. care must be had nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or master dimmesdale's. moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she go both to school and to meeting." the young minister, on ceasing to speak had withdrawn a few steps from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal. pearl, that wild and flighty little elf stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself--"is that my pearl?" yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. the minister--for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly worthy to be loved--the minister looked round, laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow. little pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall so airily, that old mr. wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the floor. "the little baggage hath witchcraft in her, i profess," said he to mr. dimmesdale. "she needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal!" "a strange child!" remarked old roger chillingworth. "it is easy to see the mother's part in her. would it be beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyse that child's nature, and, from it make a mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?" "nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue of profane philosophy," said mr. wilson. "better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless providence reveal it of its own accord. thereby, every good christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the poor, deserted babe." the affair being so satisfactorily concluded, hester prynne, with pearl, departed from the house. as they descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of mistress hibbins, governor bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch. "hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "wilt thou go with us to-night? there will be a merry company in the forest; and i well-nigh promised the black man that comely hester prynne should make one." "make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered hester, with a triumphant smile. "i must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little pearl. had they taken her from me, i would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the black man's book too, and that with mine own blood!" "we shall have thee there anon!" said the witch-lady, frowning, as she drew back her head. but here--if we suppose this interview betwixt mistress hibbins and hester prynne to be authentic, and not a parable--was already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. even thus early had the child saved her from satan's snare. ix. the leech under the appellation of roger chillingworth, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken. it has been related, how, in the crowd that witnessed hester prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. for her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. then why--since the choice was with himself--should the individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? he resolved not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. unknown to all but hester prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour had long ago consigned him. this purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties. in pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the puritan town as roger chillingworth, without other introduction than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common measure. as his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented himself and as such was cordially received. skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. they seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the atlantic. in their researches into the human frame, it may be that the higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised, and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. at all events, the health of the good town of boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his favour than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma. the only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. to such a professional body roger chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. he soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the elixir of life. in his indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his patients that these simple medicines, nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the european pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating. this learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the outward forms of a religious life; and early after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the reverend mr. dimmesdale. the young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heavenly ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labour for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds, for the now feeble new england church, as the early fathers had achieved for the infancy of the christian faith. about this period, however, the health of mr. dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. by those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and more than all, to the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. some declared, that if mr. dimmesdale were really going to die, it was cause enough that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet. he himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. with all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. his form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when roger chillingworth made his advent to the town. his first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous. he was now known to be a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes. he was heard to speak of sir kenelm digby and other famous men--whose scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than supernatural--as having been his correspondents or associates. why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither? what, could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? in answer to this query, a rumour gained ground--and however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people--that heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent doctor of physic from a german university bodily through the air and setting him down at the door of mr. dimmesdale's study! individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in roger chillingworth's so opportune arrival. this idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility. he expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favourable result. the elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens of mr. dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. mr. dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties. "i need no medicine," said he. but how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before--when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? was he weary of his labours? did he wish to die? these questions were solemnly propounded to mr. dimmesdale by the elder ministers of boston, and the deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him," on the sin of rejecting the aid which providence so manifestly held out. he listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the physician. "were it god's will," said the reverend mr. dimmesdale, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old roger chillingworth's professional advice, "i could be well content that my labours, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf." "ah," replied roger chillingworth, with that quietness, which, whether imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. youthful men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily! and saintly men, who walk with god on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden pavements of the new jerusalem." "nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were i worthier to walk there, i could be better content to toil here." "good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician. in this manner, the mysterious old roger chillingworth became the medical adviser of the reverend mr. dimmesdale. as not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. for the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. often, likewise, one was the guest of the other in his place of study and retirement. there was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession. in truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. mr. dimmesdale was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. in no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held converse. it was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid lamp-light, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. but the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. so the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the limits of what their church defined as orthodox. thus roger chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character. he deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good. wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. in arthur dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. so roger chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and licence to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. a man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. if the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more,--let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeable prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word to indicate that all is understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognised character as a physician;--then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight. roger chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above enumerated. nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human thought and study to meet upon; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs, and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his companion's ear. the latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of mr. dimmesdale's bodily disease had never fairly been revealed to him. it was a strange reserve! after a time, at a hint from roger chillingworth, the friends of mr. dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. there was much joy throughout the town when this greatly desirable object was attained. it was held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorised to do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. this latter step, however, there was no present prospect that arthur dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of church discipline. doomed by his own choice, therefore, as mr. dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavoury morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice. the new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on which the venerable structure of king's chapel has since been built. it had the graveyard, originally isaac johnson's home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. the motherly care of the good widow assigned to mr. dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow when desirable. the walls were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the scriptural story of david and bathsheba, and nathan the prophet, in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the fathers, and the lore of rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves. on the other side of the house, old roger chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory: not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose. with such commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into one another's business. and the reverend arthur dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of providence had done all this for the purpose--besought in so many public and domestic and secret prayers--of restoring the young minister to health. but, it must now be said, another portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt mr. dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. when an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. when, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring as to possess the character of truth supernaturally revealed. the people, in the case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against roger chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. there was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of london at the period of sir thomas overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with dr. forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of overbury. two or three individuals hinted that the man of skill, during his indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage priests, who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. a large number--and many of these were persons of such sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have been valuable in other matters--affirmed that roger chillingworth's aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with mr. dimmesdale. at first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. now there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him. according to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty with the smoke. to sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the rev. arthur dimmesdale, like many other personages of special sanctity, in all ages of the christian world, was haunted either by satan himself or satan's emissary, in the guise of old roger chillingworth. this diabolical agent had the divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. no sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. the people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which he would unquestionably win. meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must struggle towards his triumph. alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depth of the poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory anything but secure. x. the leech and his patient old roger chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. he had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. but, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again until he had done all its bidding. he now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. alas, for his own soul, if these were what he sought! sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. the soil where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications that encouraged him. "this man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as they deem him--all spiritual as he seems--hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his mother. let us dig a little further in the direction of this vein!" then after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated by revelation--all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker--he would turn back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point. he groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep--or, it may be, broad awake--with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. in spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his victim. in other words, mr. dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him. but old roger chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathising, but never intrusive friend. yet mr. dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared. he therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency. one day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he talked with roger chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants. "where," asked he, with a look askance at them--for it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate, "where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?" "even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician, continuing his employment. "they are new to me. i found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. they grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime." "perchance," said mr. dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but could not." "and wherefore?" rejoined the physician. "wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?" "that, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the minister. "there can be, if i forbode aright, no power, short of the divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart. the heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. nor have i so read or interpreted holy writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. that, surely, were a shallow view of it. no; these revelations, unless i greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. a knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. and, i conceive moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable." "then why not reveal it here?" asked roger chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister. "why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?" "they mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast, as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. and ever, after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have i witnessed in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after a long stifling with his own polluted breath. how can it be otherwise? why should a wretched man--guilty, we will say, of murder--prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take care of it!" "yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician. "true; there are such men," answered mr. dimmesdale. "but not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. or--can we not suppose it?--guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for god's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. so, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves." "these men deceive themselves," said roger chillingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. "they fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. their love for man, their zeal for god's service--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. but, if they seek to glorify god, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! if they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! would thou have me to believe, o wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for god's glory, or man' welfare--than god's own truth? trust me, such men deceive themselves!" "it may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. he had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament.--"but, now, i would ask of my well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?" before roger chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent burial-ground. looking instinctively from the open window--for it was summer-time--the minister beheld hester prynne and little pearl passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of sympathy or human contact. she now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy--perhaps of isaac johnson himself--she began to dance upon it. in reply to her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered. hester did not pluck them off. roger chillingworth had by this time approached the window and smiled grimly down. "there is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. "i saw her, the other day, bespatter the governor himself with water at the cattle-trough in spring lane. what, in heaven's name, is she? is the imp altogether evil? hath she affections? hath she any discoverable principle of being?" "none, save the freedom of a broken law," answered mr. dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the point within himself, "whether capable of good, i know not." the child probably overheard their voices, for, looking up to the window with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the rev. mr. dimmesdale. the sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous dread, from the light missile. detecting his emotion, pearl clapped her little hands in the most extravagant ecstacy. hester prynne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up, and all these four persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and shouted--"come away, mother! come away, or yonder old black man will catch you! he hath got hold of the minister already. come away, mother or he will catch you! but he cannot catch little pearl!" so she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself akin to it. it was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime. "there goes a woman," resumed roger chillingworth, after a pause, "who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. is hester prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast?" "i do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "nevertheless, i cannot answer for her. there was a look of pain in her face which i would gladly have been spared the sight of. but still, methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman hester is, than to cover it up in his heart." there was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had gathered. "you inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length, "my judgment as touching your health." "i did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it. speak frankly, i pray you, be it for life or death." "freely then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with his plants, but keeping a wary eye on mr. dimmesdale, "the disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself nor as outwardly manifested,--in so far, at least as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation. looking daily at you, my good sir, and watching the tokens of your aspect now for months gone by, i should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you. but i know not what to say, the disease is what i seem to know, yet know it not." "you speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the window. "then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and i crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. let me ask as your friend, as one having charge, under providence, of your life and physical well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid open and recounted to me?" "how can you question it?" asked the minister. "surely it were child's play to call in a physician and then hide the sore!" "you would tell me, then, that i know all?" said roger chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face. "be it so! but again! he to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. a bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. your pardon once again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. you, sir, of all men whom i have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument." "then i need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat hastily rising from his chair. "you deal not, i take it, in medicine for the soul!" "thus, a sickness," continued roger chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing up and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure,--"a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? how may this be unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul?" "no, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried mr. dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old roger chillingworth. "not to thee! but, if it be the soul's disease, then do i commit myself to the one physician of the soul! he, if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure, or he can kill. let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. but who art thou, that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his god?" with a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room. "it is as well to have made this step," said roger chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister, with a grave smile. "there is nothing lost. we shall be friends again anon. but see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! as with one passion so with another. he hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious master dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart." it proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as heretofore. the young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words to excuse or palliate. he marvelled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought. with these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the amplest apologies, and besought his friend still to continue the care which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, in all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. roger chillingworth readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the patient's apartment, at the close of the professional interview, with a mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. this expression was invisible in mr. dimmesdale's presence, but grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold. "a rare case," he muttered. "i must needs look deeper into it. a strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! were it only for the art's sake, i must search this matter to the bottom." it came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the reverend mr. dimmesdale, noon-day, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table. it must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. the profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. to such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old roger chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. the physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment, that hitherto had always covered it even from the professional eye. then, indeed, mr. dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred. after a brief pause, the physician turned away. but with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! with what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! had a man seen old roger chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom. but what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from satan's was the trait of wonder in it! xi. the interior of a heart after the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was really of another character than it had previously been. the intellect of roger chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. it was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. to make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! all that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the pitiless--to him, the unforgiving! all that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance! the clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. roger chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which providence--using the avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it seemed most to punish--had substituted for his black devices. a revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. it mattered little for his object, whether celestial or from what other region. by its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and mr. dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost soul of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every movement. he became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor in the poor minister's interior world. he could play upon him as he chose. would he arouse him with a throb of agony? the victim was for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine: and the physician knew it well. would he startle him with sudden fear? as at the waving of a magician's wand, up rose a grisly phantom--up rose a thousand phantoms--in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his breast! all this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. true, he looked doubtfully, fearfully--even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred--at the deformed figure of the old physician. his gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. for, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so mr. dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. he took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to roger chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose to which--poor forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his victim--the avenger had devoted himself. while thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the reverend mr. dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. he won it indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. his intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. his fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. there are scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, than mr. dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. there were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. there were others again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. all that they lacked was, the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. these fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked heaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the tongue of flame. they would have vainly sought--had they ever dreamed of seeking--to express the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images. their voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt. not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that mr. dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, naturally belonged. to the high mountain peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. it kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to and answered! but this very burden it was that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! the people knew not the power that moved them thus. they deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. they fancied him the mouth-piece of heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. in their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified. the virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. the aged members of his flock, beholding mr. dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children that their old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holy grave. and all this time, perchance, when poor mr. dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried! it is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. it was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. then what was he?--a substance?--or the dimmest of all shadows? he longed to speak out from his own pulpit at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was. "i, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood--i, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the most high omniscience--i, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of enoch--i, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest--i, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your children--i, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted--i, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!" more than once, mr. dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps until he should have spoken words like the above. more than once he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul. more than once--nay, more than a hundred times--he had actually spoken! spoken! but how? he had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and that the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes by the burning wrath of the almighty! could there be plainer speech than this? would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? not so, indeed! they heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. they little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words. "the godly youth!" said they among themselves. "the saint on earth! alas! if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!" the minister well knew--subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. he had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. he had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. and yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self! his inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of rome than with the better light of the church in which he had been born and bred. in mr. dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. oftentimes, this protestant and puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. it was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious puritans, to fast--not however, like them, in order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination--but rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. he kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness, sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. he thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. in these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly and close beside him, within the looking-glass. now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by. ghost of a mother--thinnest fantasy of a mother--methinks she might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! and now, through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided hester prynne leading along little pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast. none of these visions ever quite deluded him. at any moment, by an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leather-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. but, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with. it is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. to the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. and he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. the only truth that continued to give mr. dimmesdale a real existence on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. had he once found power to smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would have been no such man! on one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but forborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair. a new thought had struck him. there might be a moment's peace in it. attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth. xii. the minister's vigil walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, mr. dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, hester prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. the same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. the minister went up the steps. it was an obscure night in early may. an unvaried pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. if the same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while hester prynne sustained her punishment could now have been summoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark grey of the midnight. but the town was all asleep. there was no peril of discovery. the minister might stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. no eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. why, then, had he come hither? was it but the mockery of penitence? a mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself! a mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeering laughter! he had been driven hither by the impulse of that remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself with crime? crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! this feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance. and thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, mr. dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. on that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain. without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro. "it is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. "the whole town will awake and hurry forth, and find me here!" but it was not so. the shriek had perhaps sounded with a far greater power, to his own startled ears, than it actually possessed. the town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise of witches, whose voices, at that period, were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with satan through the air. the clergyman, therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes and looked about him. at one of the chamber-windows of governor bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate himself with a lamp in his hand a white night-cap on his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure. he looked like a ghost evoked unseasonably from the grave. the cry had evidently startled him. at another window of the same house, moreover appeared old mistress hibbins, the governor's sister, also with a lamp, which even thus far off revealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. she thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously upward. beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-lady had heard mr. dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamour of the fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to make excursions in the forest. detecting the gleam of governor bellingham's lamp, the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. possibly, she went up among the clouds. the minister saw nothing further of her motions. the magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness--into which, nevertheless, he could see but little further than he might into a mill-stone--retired from the window. the minister grew comparatively calm. his eyes, however, were soon greeted by a little glimmering light, which, at first a long way off was approaching up the street. it threw a gleam of recognition, on here a post, and there a garden fence, and here a latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here again an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the door-step. the reverend mr. dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him in a few moments more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. as the light drew nearer, he beheld, within its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman--or, to speak more accurately, his professional father, as well as highly valued friend--the reverend mr. wilson, who, as mr. dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of some dying man. and so he had. the good old minister came freshly from the death-chamber of governor winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. and now surrounded, like the saint-like personage of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin--as if the departed governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates--now, in short, good father wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern! the glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to mr. dimmesdale, who smiled--nay, almost laughed at them--and then wondered if he was going mad. as the reverend mr. wilson passed beside the scaffold, closely muffling his geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with the other, the minister could hardly restrain himself from speaking-- "a good evening to you, venerable father wilson. come up hither, i pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!" good heavens! had mr. dimmesdale actually spoken? for one instant he believed that these words had passed his lips. but they were uttered only within his imagination. the venerable father wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head towards the guilty platform. when the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety, although his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness. shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. he felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. morning would break and find him there. the neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself. the earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost--as he needs must think it--of some defunct transgressor. a dusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another. then--the morning light still waxing stronger--old patriarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear. the whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. old governor bellingham would come grimly forth, with his king james' ruff fastened askew, and mistress hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good father wilson too, after spending half the night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreams about the glorified saints. hither, likewise, would come the elders and deacons of mr. dimmesdale's church, and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white bosoms, which now, by-the-bye, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. all people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold. whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow? whom, but the reverend arthur dimmesdale, half-frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where hester prynne had stood! carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter. it was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart--but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute--he recognised the tones of little pearl. "pearl! little pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then, suppressing his voice--"hester! hester prynne! are you there?" "yes; it is hester prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the side-walk, along which she had been passing. "it is i, and my little pearl." "whence come you, hester?" asked the minister. "what sent you hither?" "i have been watching at a death-bed," answered hester prynne "at governor winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling." "come up hither, hester, thou and little pearl," said the reverend mr. dimmesdale. "ye have both been here before, but i was not with you. come up hither once again, and we will stand all three together." she silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding little pearl by the hand. the minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. the moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. the three formed an electric chain. "minister!" whispered little pearl. "what wouldst thou say, child?" asked mr. dimmesdale. "wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?" inquired pearl. "nay; not so, my little pearl," answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which--with a strange joy, nevertheless--he now found himself--"not so, my child. i shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow." pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. but the minister held it fast. "a moment longer, my child!" said he. "but wilt thou promise," asked pearl, "to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide?" "not then, pearl," said the minister; "but another time." "and what other time?" persisted the child. "at the great judgment day," whispered the minister; and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "then, and there, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and i must stand together. but the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!" pearl laughed again. but before mr. dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. it was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. so powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. the great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. it showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. the wooden houses, with their jutting storeys and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and thresholds with the early grass springing up about them; the garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and even in the market-place margined with green on either side--all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. and there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and hester prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and little pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. they stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another. there was witchcraft in little pearl's eyes; and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish. she withdrew her hand from mr. dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. but he clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards the zenith. nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source. thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in the midnight sky, prefigured indian warfare. pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. we doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell new england, from its settlement down to revolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some spectacle of its nature. not seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. oftener, however, its credibility rested on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the coloured, magnifying, and distorted medium of his imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought. it was, indeed, a majestic idea that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. a scroll so wide might not be deemed too expensive for providence to write a people's doom upon. the belief was a favourite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. but what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. in such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate. we impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter--the letter a--marked out in lines of dull red light. not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it. there was a singular circumstance that characterised mr. dimmesdale's psychological state at this moment. all the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little pearl was pointing her finger towards old roger chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. the minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. to his feature as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished hester prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might roger chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. so vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated. "who is that man, hester?" gasped mr. dimmesdale, overcome with terror. "i shiver at him! dost thou know the man? i hate him, hester!" she remembered her oath, and was silent. "i tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the minister again. "who is he? who is he? canst thou do nothing for me? i have a nameless horror of the man!" "minister," said little pearl, "i can tell thee who he is!" "quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. "quickly, and as low as thou canst whisper." pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, like human language, but was only such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with by the hour together. at all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old roger chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind. the elvish child then laughed aloud. "dost thou mock me now?" said the minister. "thou wast not bold!--thou wast not true!" answered the child. "thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noon-tide!" "worthy sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the platform--"pious master dimmesdale! can this be you? well, well, indeed! we men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! we dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. come, good sir, and my dear friend, i pray you let me lead you home!" "how knewest thou that i was here?" asked the minister, fearfully. "verily, and in good faith," answered roger chillingworth, "i knew nothing of the matter. i had spent the better part of the night at the bedside of the worshipful governor winthrop, doing what my poor skill might to give him ease. he, going home to a better world, i, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this light shone out. come with me, i beseech you, reverend sir, else you will be poorly able to do sabbath duty to-morrow. aha! see now how they trouble the brain--these books!--these books! you should study less, good sir, and take a little pastime, or these night whimsies will grow upon you." "i will go home with you," said mr. dimmesdale. with a chill despondency, like one awakening, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led away. the next day, however, being the sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips. souls, it is said, more souls than one, were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards mr. dimmesdale throughout the long hereafter. but as he came down the pulpit steps, the grey-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove, which the minister recognised as his own. "it was found," said the sexton, "this morning on the scaffold where evil-doers are set up to public shame. satan dropped it there, i take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. but, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. a pure hand needs no glove to cover it!" "thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for so confused was his remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past night as visionary. "yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!" "and, since satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves henceforward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "but did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night? a great red letter in the sky--the letter a, which we interpret to stand for angel. for, as our good governor winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice thereof!" "no," answered the minister; "i had not heard of it." xiii. another view of hester in her late singular interview with mr. dimmesdale, hester prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. his nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. his moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. it grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given them. with her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on mr. dimmesdale's well-being and repose. knowing what this poor fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to her--the outcast woman--for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. she decided, moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself, hester saw--or seemed to see--that there lay a responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole world besides. the links that united her to the rest of humankind--links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material--had all been broken. here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations. hester prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. years had come and gone. pearl was now seven years old. her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the townspeople. as is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to hester prynne. it is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. in this matter of hester prynne there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. she never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy was reckoned largely in her favour. with nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths. it was perceived, too, that while hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges--further than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for little pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands--she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man whenever benefits were to be conferred. none so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. none so self-devoted as hester when pestilence stalked through the town. in all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. she came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creature. there glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. it had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. it had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. in such emergencies hester's nature showed itself warm and rich--a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. she was self-ordained a sister of mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. the letter was the symbol of her calling. such helpfulness was found in her--so much power to do, and power to sympathise--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet a by its original signification. they said that it meant able, so strong was hester prynne, with a woman's strength. it was only the darkened house that could contain her. when sunshine came again, she was not there. her shadow had faded across the threshold. the helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. if they were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. this might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind. the public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. interpreting hester prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favoured with, or, perchance, than she deserved. the rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influence of hester's good qualities than the people. the prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron frame-work of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labour to expel them. day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven hester prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. "do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "it is our hester--the town's own hester--who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!" then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. it was none the less a fact, however, that in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. it imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. it was reported, and believed by many, that an indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, and fell harmless to the ground. the effect of the symbol--or rather, of the position in respect to society that was indicated by it--on the mind of hester prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. all the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. it might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. it was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. it was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in hester's face for love to dwell upon; nothing in hester's form, though majestic and statue like, that passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in hester's bosom to make it ever again the pillow of affection. some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. if she be all tenderness, she will die. if she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. the latter is perhaps the truest theory. she who has once been a woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect the transformation. we shall see whether hester prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so transfigured. much of the marble coldness of hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. standing alone in the world--alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little pearl to be guided and protected--alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable--she cast away the fragment of a broken chain. the world's law was no law for her mind. it was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. hester prynne imbibed this spirit. she assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. in her lonesome cottage, by the seashore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in new england; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door. it is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. the thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. so it seemed to be with hester. yet, had little pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. then she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with ann hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. she might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. she might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the puritan establishment. but, in the education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. everything was against her. the world was hostile. the child's own nature had something wrong in it which continually betokened that she had been born amiss--the effluence of her mother's lawless passion--and often impelled hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all. indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them? as concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. a tendency to speculation, though it may keep women quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. she discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. as a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down and built up anew. then the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change, in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. a woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. they are not to be solved, or only in one way. if her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. thus hester prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. there was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. at times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as eternal justice should provide. the scarlet letter had not done its office. now, however, her interview with the reverend mr. dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. she had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. she saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. it was impossible to doubt that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. a secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of mr. dimmesdale's nature. hester could not but ask herself whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. her only justification lay in the fact that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself except by acquiescing in roger chillingworth's scheme of disguise. under that impulse she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. she determined to redeem her error so far as it might yet be possible. strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with roger chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin and half-maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison-chamber. she had climbed her way since then to a higher point. the old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or, perhaps, below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. in fine, hester prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. the occasion was not long to seek. one afternoon, walking with pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket on one arm and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine withal. xiv. hester and the physician hester bade little pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. so the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. here and there she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for pearl to see her face in. forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her. but the visionary little maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say--"this is a better place; come thou into the pool." and pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water. meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "i would speak a word with you," said she--"a word that concerns us much." "aha! and is it mistress hester that has a word for old roger chillingworth?" answered he, raising himself from his stooping posture. "with all my heart! why, mistress, i hear good tidings of you on all hands! no longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, mistress hester, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. it was debated whether or no, with safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom. on my life, hester, i made my intreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith." "it lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge," calmly replied hester. "were i worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport." "nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "a woman must needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment of her person. the letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right bravely on your bosom!" all this while hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. it was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigour and alertness. but the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. it seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile, but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes, as if the old man's soul were on fire and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until by some casual puff of passion it was blown into a momentary flame. this he repressed as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened. in a word, old roger chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. this unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed and gloated over. the scarlet letter burned on hester prynne's bosom. here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her. "what see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at it so earnestly?" "something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it," answered she. "but let it pass! it is of yonder miserable man that i would speak." "and what of him?" cried roger chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "not to hide the truth, mistress hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. so speak freely and i will make answer." "when we last spake together," said hester, "now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. as the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest. yet it was not without heavy misgivings that i thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that i was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. since that day no man is so near to him as you. you tread behind his every footstep. you are beside him, sleeping and waking. you search his thoughts. you burrow and rankle in his heart! your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. in permitting this i have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!" "what choice had you?" asked roger chillingworth. "my finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!" "it had been better so!" said hester prynne. "what evil have i done the man?" asked roger chillingworth again. "i tell thee, hester prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as i have wasted on this miserable priest! but for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. for, hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. oh, i could reveal a goodly secret! but enough. what art can do, i have exhausted on him. that he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!" "better he had died at once!" said hester prynne. "yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old roger chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "better had he died at once! never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. and all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! he has been conscious of me. he has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. he knew, by some spiritual sense--for the creator never made another being so sensitive as this--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. but he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! with the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. but it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! a mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment." the unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. it was one of those moments--which sometimes occur only at the interval of years--when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. not improbably he had never before viewed himself as he did now. "hast thou not tortured him enough?" said hester, noticing the old man's look. "has he not paid thee all?" "no, no! he has but increased the debt!" answered the physician, and as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "dost thou remember me, hester, as i was nine years agone? even then i was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. but all my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other--faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. no life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. dost thou remember me? was i not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself--kind, true, just and of constant, if not warm affections? was i not all this?" "all this, and more," said hester. "and what am i now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. "i have already told thee what i am--a fiend! who made me so?" "it was myself," cried hester, shuddering. "it was i, not less than he. why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?" "i have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied roger chillingworth. "if that has not avenged me, i can do no more!" he laid his finger on it with a smile. "it has avenged thee," answered hester prynne. "i judged no less," said the physician. "and now what wouldst thou with me touching this man?" "i must reveal the secret," answered hester, firmly. "he must discern thee in thy true character. what may be the result i know not. but this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin i have been, shall at length be paid. so far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in my hands. nor do i--whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron entering into the soul--nor do i perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that i shall stoop to implore thy mercy. do with him as thou wilt! there is no good for him, no good for me, no good for thee. there is no good for little pearl. there is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze." "woman, i could well-nigh pity thee," said roger chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too, for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. "thou hadst great elements. peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. i pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature." "and i thee," answered hester prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? if not for his sake, then doubly for thine own! forgive, and leave his further retribution to the power that claims it! i said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. it is not so! there might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thy will to pardon. wilt thou give up that only privilege? wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?" "peace, hester--peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness--"it is not granted me to pardon. i have no such power as thou tellest me of. my old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. by thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am i fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. it is our fate. let the black flower blossom as it may! now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man." he waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs. xv. hester and pearl so roger chillingworth--a deformed old figure with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they liked--took leave of hester prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. he gathered here and there a herb, or grubbed up a root and put it into the basket on his arm. his gray beard almost touched the ground as he crept onward. hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. she wondered what sort of herbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather. would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? or might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch? did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he turned himself? and whither was he now going? would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven? "be it sin or no," said hester prynne, bitterly, as still she gazed after him, "i hate the man!" she upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past days in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. he needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart. such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. she marvelled how such scenes could have been! she marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! she deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. and it seemed a fouler offence committed by roger chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. "yes, i hate him!" repeated hester more bitterly than before. "he betrayed me! he has done me worse wrong than i did him!" let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was roger chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. but hester ought long ago to have done with this injustice. what did it betoken? had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of misery and wrought out no repentance? the emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old roger chillingworth, threw a dark light on hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged to herself. he being gone, she summoned back her child. "pearl! little pearl! where are you?" pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. at first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and--as it declined to venture--seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. she made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snailshells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in new england; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. she seized a live horse-shoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. then she took up the white foam that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it with winged footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell. perceiving a flock of beach-birds that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. one little gray bird, with a white breast, pearl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. but then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as wild as pearl herself. her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. she inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. as the last touch to her mermaid's garb, pearl took some eel-grass and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. a letter--the letter a--but freshly green instead of scarlet. the child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import. "i wonder if mother will ask me what it means?" thought pearl. just then she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along as lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before hester prynne dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom. "my little pearl," said hester, after a moment's silence, "the green letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. but dost thou know, my child, what this letter means which thy mother is doomed to wear?" "yes, mother," said the child. "it is the great letter a. thou hast taught me in the horn-book." hester looked steadily into her little face; but though there was that singular expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether pearl really attached any meaning to the symbol. she felt a morbid desire to ascertain the point. "dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?" "truly do i!" answered pearl, looking brightly into her mother's face. "it is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!" "and what reason is that?" asked hester, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but on second thoughts turning pale. "what has the letter to do with any heart save mine?" "nay, mother, i have told all i know," said pearl, more seriously than she was wont to speak. "ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talking with,--it may be he can tell. but in good earnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean?--and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom?--and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" she took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character. the thought occurred to hester, that the child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. it showed pearl in an unwonted aspect. heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an april breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. and this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child's disposition. any other observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker colouring. but now the idea came strongly into hester's mind, that pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the child. in the little chaos of pearl's character there might be seen emerging and could have been from the very first--the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage--an uncontrollable will--sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect--and a bitter scorn of many things which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. she possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavours of unripe fruit. with all these sterling attributes, thought hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child. pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. from the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. hester had often fancied that providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this marked propensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. if little pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?--and to help her to overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart? such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in hester's mind, with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. and there was little pearl, all this while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once and again, and still a third time. "what does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it? and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" "what shall i say?" thought hester to herself. "no! if this be the price of the child's sympathy, i cannot pay it." then she spoke aloud-- "silly pearl," said she, "what questions are these? there are many things in this world that a child must not ask about. what know i of the minister's heart? and as for the scarlet letter, i wear it for the sake of its gold thread." in all the seven bygone years, hester prynne had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. it may be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as recognising that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one had never been expelled. as for little pearl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face. but the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. two or three times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at supper-time, and while hester was putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly asleep, pearl looked up, with mischief gleaming in her black eyes. "mother," said she, "what does the scarlet letter mean?" and the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making that other enquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her investigations about the scarlet letter-- "mother!--mother!--why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" "hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. "do not tease me; else i shall put thee into the dark closet!" xvi. a forest walk hester prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to mr. dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. for several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighbouring country. there would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she visited him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the scarlet letter. but, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old roger chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together--for all these reasons hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky. at last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the rev. mr. dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the apostle eliot, among his indian converts. he would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the morrow. betimes, therefore, the next day, hester took little pearl--who was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions, however inconvenient her presence--and set forth. the road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a foot-path. it straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. this hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. the day was chill and sombre. overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. this flitting cheerfulness was always at the further extremity of some long vista through the forest. the sportive sunlight--feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene--withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright. "mother," said little pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. it runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. now, see! there it is, playing a good way off. stand you here, and let me run and catch it. i am but a child. it will not flee from me--for i wear nothing on my bosom yet!" "nor ever will, my child, i hope," said hester. "and why not, mother?" asked pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. "will not it come of its own accord when i am a woman grown?" "run away, child," answered her mother, "and catch the sunshine. it will soon be gone." pearl set forth at a great pace, and as hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splendour, and scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid motion. the light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too. "it will go now," said pearl, shaking her head. "see!" answered hester, smiling; "now i can stretch out my hand and grasp some of it." as she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the bright expression that was dancing on pearl's features, her mother could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. there was no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigour in pearl's nature, as this never failing vivacity of spirits: she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. perhaps this, too, was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with which hester had fought against her sorrows before pearl's birth. it was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's character. she wanted--what some people want throughout life--a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanise and make her capable of sympathy. but there was time enough yet for little pearl. "come, my child!" said hester, looking about her from the spot where pearl had stood still in the sunshine--"we will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves." "i am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "but you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile." "a story, child!" said hester. "and about what?" "oh, a story about the black man," answered pearl, taking hold of her mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face. "how he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly black man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. didst thou ever meet the black man, mother?" "and who told you this story, pearl," asked her mother, recognising a common superstition of the period. "it was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where you watched last night," said the child. "but she fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. she said that a thousand and a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. and that ugly tempered lady, old mistress hibbins, was one. and, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the black man's mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood. is it true, mother? and dost thou go to meet him in the nighttime?" "didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?" asked hester. "not that i remember," said the child. "if thou fearest to leave me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. i would very gladly go! but, mother, tell me now! is there such a black man? and didst thou ever meet him? and is this his mark?" "wilt thou let me be at peace, if i once tell thee?" asked her mother. "yes, if thou tellest me all," answered pearl. "once in my life i met the black man!" said her mother. "this scarlet letter is his mark!" thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the forest track. here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. it was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. the trees impending over it had flung down great branches from time to time, which choked up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and here and there a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. all these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue. "oh, brook! oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried pearl, after listening awhile to its talk, "why art thou so sad? pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!" but the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. but, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course. "what does this sad little brook say, mother?" inquired she. "if thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it," answered her mother, "even as it is telling me of mine. but now, pearl, i hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches. i would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder." "is it the black man?" asked pearl. "wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated her mother, "but do not stray far into the wood. and take heed that thou come at my first call." "yes, mother," answered pearl, "but if it be the black man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his arm?" "go, silly child!" said her mother impatiently. "it is no black man! thou canst see him now, through the trees. it is the minister!" "and so it is!" said the child. "and, mother, he has his hand over his heart! is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the black man set his mark in that place? but why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?" "go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time," cried hester prynne. "but do not stray far. keep where thou canst hear the babble of the brook." the child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice. but the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened--or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen--within the verge of the dismal forest. so pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook. she set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevice of a high rock. when her elf-child had departed, hester prynne made a step or two towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. she beheld the minister advancing along the path entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. he looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterised him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. here it was wofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. there was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. the leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided. to hester's eye, the reverend mr. dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart. xvii. the pastor and his parishioner slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before hester prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. at length she succeeded. "arthur dimmesdale!" she said, faintly at first, then louder, but hoarsely--"arthur dimmesdale!" "who speaks?" answered the minister. gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. it may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had stolen out from among his thoughts. he made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter. "hester! hester prynne!", said he; "is it thou? art thou in life?" "even so." she answered. "in such life as has been mine these seven years past! and thou, arthur dimmesdale, dost thou yet live?" it was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. so strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost. they were awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless epochs. the soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. it was with fear, and tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that arthur dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of hester prynne. the grasp, cold as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. they now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere. without a word more spoken--neither he nor she assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent--they glided back into the shadow of the woods whence hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss where she and pearl had before been sitting. when they found voice to speak, it was at first only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintances might have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and, next, the health of each. thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. so long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led across the threshold. after awhile, the minister fixed his eyes on hester prynne's. "hester," said he, "hast thou found peace?" she smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom. "hast thou?" she asked. "none--nothing but despair!" he answered. "what else could i look for, being what i am, and leading such a life as mine? were i an atheist--a man devoid of conscience--a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts--i might have found peace long ere now. nay, i never should have lost it. but, as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of god's gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers of spiritual torment. hester, i am most miserable!" "the people reverence thee," said hester. "and surely thou workest good among them! doth this bring thee no comfort?" "more misery, hester!--only the more misery!" answered the clergyman with a bitter smile. "as concerns the good which i may appear to do, i have no faith in it. it must needs be a delusion. what can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls?--or a polluted soul towards their purification? and as for the people's reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! canst thou deem it, hester, a consolation that i must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it!--must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of pentecost were speaking!--and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolise? i have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what i seem and what i am! and satan laughs at it!" "you wrong yourself in this," said hester gently. "you have deeply and sorely repented. your sin is left behind you in the days long past. your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? and wherefore should it not bring you peace?" "no, hester--no!" replied the clergyman. "there is no substance in it! it is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me! of penance, i have had enough! of penitence, there has been none! else, i should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. happy are you, hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! mine burns in secret! thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for what i am! had i one friend--or were it my worst enemy!--to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, i could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. even thus much of truth would save me! but now, it is all falsehood!--all emptiness!--all death!" hester prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. yet, uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what she came to say. she conquered her fears, and spoke: "such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!" again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort.--"thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof!" the minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his bosom. "ha! what sayest thou?" cried he. "an enemy! and under mine own roof! what mean you?" hester prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. the very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as arthur dimmesdale. there had been a period when hester was less alive to this consideration; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. but of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both softened and invigorated. she now read his heart more accurately. she doubted not that the continual presence of roger chillingworth--the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him--and his authorised interference, as a physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities--that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. by means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the good and true, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type. such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once--nay, why should we not speak it?--still so passionately loved! hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had already told roger chillingworth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose. and now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have laid down on the forest leaves, and died there, at arthur dimmesdale's feet. "oh, arthur!" cried she, "forgive me! in all things else, i have striven to be true! truth was the one virtue which i might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good--thy life--thy fame--were put in question! then i consented to a deception. but a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side! dost thou not see what i would say? that old man!--the physician!--he whom they call roger chillingworth!--he was my husband!" the minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which--intermixed in more shapes than one with his higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than hester now encountered. for the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. but his character had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. he sank down on the ground, and buried his face in his hands. "i might have known it," murmured he--"i did know it! was not the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart at the first sight of him, and as often as i have seen him since? why did i not understand? oh, hester prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! and the shame!--the indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!--i cannot forgive thee!" "thou shalt forgive me!" cried hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. "let god punish! thou shalt forgive!" with sudden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms around him, and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. he would have released himself, but strove in vain to do so. hester would not set him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. all the world had frowned on her--for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman--and still she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. but the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what hester could not bear, and live! "wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again. "wilt thou not frown? wilt thou forgive?" "i do forgive you, hester," replied the minister at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "i freely forgive you now. may god forgive us both. we are not, hester, the worst sinners in the world. there is one worse than even the polluted priest! that old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. he has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. thou and i, hester, never did so!" "never, never!" whispered she. "what we did had a consecration of its own. we felt it so! we said so to each other. hast thou forgotten it?" "hush, hester!" said arthur dimmesdale, rising from the ground. "no; i have not forgotten!" they sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. life had never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along--and yet it unclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment. the forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was passing through it. the boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forbode evil to come. and yet they lingered. how dreary looked the forest-track that led backward to the settlement, where hester prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name! so they lingered an instant longer. no golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! here seen only by her eyes, arthur dimmesdale, false to god and man, might be, for one moment true! he started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him. "hester!" cried he, "here is a new horror! roger chillingworth knows your purpose to reveal his true character. will he continue, then, to keep our secret? what will now be the course of his revenge?" "there is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied hester, thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his revenge. i deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. he will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion." "and i!--how am i to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy?" exclaimed arthur dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart--a gesture that had grown involuntary with him. "think for me, hester! thou art strong. resolve for me!" "thou must dwell no longer with this man," said hester, slowly and firmly. "thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!" "it were far worse than death!" replied the minister. "but how to avoid it? what choice remains to me? shall i lie down again on these withered leaves, where i cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was? must i sink down there, and die at once?" "alas! what a ruin has befallen thee!" said hester, with the tears gushing into her eyes. "wilt thou die for very weakness? there is no other cause!" "the judgment of god is on me," answered the conscience-stricken priest. "it is too mighty for me to struggle with!" "heaven would show mercy," rejoined hester, "hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it." "be thou strong for me!" answered he. "advise me what to do." "is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed hester prynne, fixing her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold itself erect. "doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? whither leads yonder forest-track? backward to the settlement, thou sayest! yes; but, onward, too! deeper it goes, and deeper into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until some few miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's tread. there thou art free! so brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of roger chillingworth?" "yes, hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the minister, with a sad smile. "then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued hester. "it brought thee hither. if thou so choose, it will bear thee back again. in our native land, whether in some remote rural village, or in vast london--or, surely, in germany, in france, in pleasant italy--thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge! and what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? they have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!" "it cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were called upon to realise a dream. "i am powerless to go. wretched and sinful as i am, i have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly existence in the sphere where providence hath placed me. lost as my own soul is, i would still do what i may for other human souls! i dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonour, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!" "thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery," replied hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. "but thou shalt leave it all behind thee! it shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path: neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. meddle no more with it! begin all anew! hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? not so! the future is yet full of trial and success. there is happiness to be enjoyed! there is good to be done! exchange this false life of thine for a true one. be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. or, as is more thy nature, be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. preach! write! act! do anything, save to lie down and die! give up this name of arthur dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life? that have made thee feeble to will and to do? that will leave thee powerless even to repent? up, and away!" "oh, hester!" cried arthur dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, "thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! i must die here! there is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world alone!" it was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. he lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach. he repeated the word--"alone, hester!" "thou shall not go alone!" answered she, in a deep whisper. then, all was spoken! xviii. a flood of sunshine arthur dimmesdale gazed into hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak. but hester prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. she had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild indian in his woods. for years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than the indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. the tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. the scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. shame, despair, solitude! these had been her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss. the minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. but this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts--for those it was easy to arrange--but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. at the head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. as a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. as a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all. thus we seem to see that, as regarded hester prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparation for this very hour. but arthur dimmesdale! were such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? none; unless it avail him somewhat that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. and be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. it may be watched and guarded, so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. but there is still the ruined wall, and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph. the struggle, if there were one, need not be described. let it suffice that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone. "if in all these past seven years," thought he, "i could recall one instant of peace or hope, i would yet endure, for the sake of that earnest of heaven's mercy. but now--since i am irrevocably doomed--wherefore should i not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? or, if this be the path to a better life, as hester would persuade me, i surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! neither can i any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she to sustain--so tender to soothe! o thou to whom i dare not lift mine eyes, wilt thou yet pardon me?" "thou wilt go!" said hester calmly, as he met her glance. the decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. it was the exhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region. his spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth. of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood. "do i feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself. "methought the germ of it was dead in me! oh, hester, thou art my better angel! i seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify him that hath been merciful! this is already the better life! why did we not find it sooner?" "let us not look back," answered hester prynne. "the past is gone! wherefore should we linger upon it now? see! with this symbol i undo it all, and make it as if it had never been!" so speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves. the mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream. with a hand's-breadth further flight, it would have fallen into the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. but there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable misfortune. the stigma gone, hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. o exquisite relief! she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom! by another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features. there played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. a crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. and, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. all at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. the objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. the course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy. such was the sympathy of nature--that wild, heathen nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! love, whether newly-born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in hester's eyes, and bright in arthur dimmesdale's! hester looked at him with a thrill of another joy. "thou must know pearl!" said she. "our little pearl! thou hast seen her--yes, i know it!--but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. she is a strange child! i hardly comprehend her! but thou wilt love her dearly, as i do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her!" "dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "i have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust--a backwardness to be familiar with me. i have even been afraid of little pearl!" "ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "but she will love thee dearly, and thou her. she is not far off. i will call her. pearl! pearl!" "i see the child," observed the minister. "yonder she is, standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook. so thou thinkest the child will love me?" hester smiled, and again called to pearl, who was visible at some distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs. the ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or distinct--now like a real child, now like a child's spirit--as the splendour went and came again. she heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest. pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. the great black forest--stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. it offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. these pearl gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavour. the small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. a partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. a pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. a squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment--for the squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods--so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. it was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. a fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. a wolf, it is said--but here the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable--came up and smelt of pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. the truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a kindred wilderness in the human child. and she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. the bowers appeared to know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!"--and, to please them, pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. with these she decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. in such guise had pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back. slowly--for she saw the clergyman! xix. the child at the brookside "thou wilt love her dearly," repeated hester prynne, as she and the minister sat watching little pearl. "dost thou not think her beautiful? and see with what natural skill she has made those simple flowers adorn her! had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies in the wood, they could not have become her better! she is a splendid child! but i know whose brow she has!" "dost thou know, hester," said arthur dimmesdale, with an unquiet smile, "that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm? methought--oh, hester, what a thought is that, and how terrible to dread it!--that my own features were partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world might see them! but she is mostly thine!" "no, no! not mostly!" answered the mother, with a tender smile. "a little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child she is. but how strangely beautiful she looks with those wild flowers in her hair! it is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in dear old england, had decked her out to meet us." it was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced, that they sat and watched pearl's slow advance. in her was visible the tie that united them. she had been offered to the world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide--all written in this symbol--all plainly manifest--had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame! and pearl was the oneness of their being. be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined when they beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together; thoughts like these--and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or define--threw an awe about the child as she came onward. "let her see nothing strange--no passion or eagerness--in thy way of accosting her," whispered hester. "our pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf sometimes. especially she is generally intolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. but the child hath strong affections! she loves me, and will love thee!" "thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at hester prynne, "how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! but, in truth, as i already told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar with me. they will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile, but stand apart, and eye me strangely. even little babes, when i take them in my arms, weep bitterly. yet pearl, twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! the first time--thou knowest it well! the last was when thou ledst her with thee to the house of yonder stern old governor." "and thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!" answered the mother. "i remember it; and so shall little pearl. fear nothing. she may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!" by this time pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the further side, gazing silently at hester and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive her. just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality. this image, so nearly identical with the living pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child herself. it was strange, the way in which pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. in the brook beneath stood another child--another and the same--with likewise its ray of golden light. hester felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from pearl, as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to return to it. there were both truth and error in the impression; the child and mother were estranged, but through hester's fault, not pearl's. since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified the aspect of them all, that pearl, the returning wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where she was. "i have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy pearl again. or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream? pray hasten her, for this delay has already imparted a tremor to my nerves." "come, dearest child!" said hester encouragingly, and stretching out both her arms. "how slow thou art! when hast thou been so sluggish before now? here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. thou wilt have twice as much love henceforward as thy mother alone could give thee! leap across the brook and come to us. thou canst leap like a young deer!" pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. now she fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both in the same glance, as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another. for some unaccountable reason, as arthur dimmesdale felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand--with that gesture so habitual as to have become involuntary--stole over his heart. at length, assuming a singular air of authority, pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother's breast. and beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of little pearl, pointing her small forefinger too. "thou strange child! why dost thou not come to me?" exclaimed hester. pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on her brow--the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-like aspect of the features that conveyed it. as her mother still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet more imperious look and gesture. in the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little pearl. "hasten, pearl, or i shall be angry with thee!" cried hester prynne, who, however, inured to such behaviour on the elf-child's part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. "leap across the brook, naughty child, and run hither! else i must come to thee!" but pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most extravagant contortions. she accompanied this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides, so that, alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude were lending her their sympathy and encouragement. seen in the brook once more was the shadowy wrath of pearl's image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its small forefinger at hester's bosom. "i see what ails the child," whispered hester to the clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble and annoyance, "children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. pearl misses something that she has always seen me wear!" "i pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! save it were the cankered wrath of an old witch like mistress hibbins," added he, attempting to smile, "i know nothing that i would not sooner encounter than this passion in a child. in pearl's young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. pacify her if thou lovest me!" hester turned again towards pearl with a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman, and then a heavy sigh, while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly pallor. "pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! there!--before thee!--on the hither side of the brook!" the child turned her eyes to the point indicated, and there lay the scarlet letter so close upon the margin of the stream that the gold embroidery was reflected in it. "bring it hither!" said hester. "come thou and take it up!" answered pearl. "was ever such a child!" observed hester aside to the minister. "oh, i have much to tell thee about her! but, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. i must bear its torture yet a little longer--only a few days longer--until we shall have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. the forest cannot hide it! the mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up for ever!" with these words she advanced to the margin of the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. hopefully, but a moment ago, as hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate. she had flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an hour's free breath! and here again was the scarlet misery glittering on the old spot! so it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom. hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and confined them beneath her cap. as if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her. when the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to pearl. "dost thou know thy mother now, child?", asked she, reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. "wilt thou come across the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon her--now that she is sad?" "yes; now i will!" answered the child, bounding across the brook, and clasping hester in her arms "now thou art my mother indeed! and i am thy little pearl!" in a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks. but then--by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguish--pearl put up her mouth and kissed the scarlet letter, too. "that was not kind!" said hester. "when thou hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me!" "why doth the minister sit yonder?" asked pearl. "he waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "come thou, and entreat his blessing! he loves thee, my little pearl, and loves thy mother, too. wilt thou not love him? come he longs to greet thee!" "doth he love us?" said pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into her mother's face. "will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?" "not now, my child," answered hester. "but in days to come he will walk hand in hand with us. we will have a home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many things, and love thee dearly. thou wilt love him--wilt thou not?" "and will he always keep his hand over his heart?" inquired pearl. "foolish child, what a question is that!" exclaimed her mother. "come, and ask his blessing!" but, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature, pearl would show no favour to the clergyman. it was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. the minister--painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards--bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. hereupon, pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. she then remained apart, silently watching hester and the clergyman; while they talked together and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new position and the purposes soon to be fulfilled. and now this fateful interview had come to a close. the dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. and the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore. xx. the minister in a maze as the minister departed, in advance of hester prynne and little pearl, he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. so great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. but there was hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together, and find a single hour's rest and solace. and there was pearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook--now that the intrusive third person was gone--and taking her old place by her mother's side. so the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed! in order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which hester and himself had sketched for their departure. it had been determined between them that the old world, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of new england or all america, with its alternatives of an indian wigwam, or the few settlements of europeans scattered thinly along the sea-board. not to speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the state the more delicately adapted to it the man. in furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility of character. this vessel had recently arrived from the spanish main, and within three days' time would sail for bristol. hester prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted sister of charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew--could take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable. the minister had inquired of hester, with no little interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. it would probably be on the fourth day from the present. "this is most fortunate!" he had then said to himself. now, why the reverend mr. dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we hesitate to reveal. nevertheless--to hold nothing back from the reader--it was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the election sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the life of a new england clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. "at least, they shall say of me," thought this exemplary man, "that i leave no public duty unperformed or ill-performed!" sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived! we have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. the excitement of mr. dimmesdale's feelings as he returned from his interview with hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. the pathway among the woods seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward journey. but he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable activity that astonished him. he could not but recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath he had toiled over the same ground, only two days before. as he drew near the town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented themselves. it seemed not yesterday, not one, not two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. there, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weather-cock at every point where his memory suggested one. not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. the same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. they looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day; it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. a similar impression struck him most remarkably as he passed under the walls of his own church. the edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that mr. dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now. this phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. the minister's own will, and hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. it was the same town as heretofore, but the same minister returned not from the forest. he might have said to the friends who greeted him--"i am not the man for whom you take me! i left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk, and near a melancholy brook! go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!" his friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him--"thou art thyself the man!" but the error would have been their own, not his. before mr. dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. in truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. at every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional, in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. for instance, he met one of his own deacons. the good old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the church, entitled him to use and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister's professional and private claims alike demanded. never was there a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. now, during a conversation of some two or three moments between the reverend mr. dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion-supper. he absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. and, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister's impiety. again, another incident of the same nature. hurrying along the street, the reverend mr. dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his church, a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones. yet all this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. and since mr. dimmesdale had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief earthly comfort--which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all--was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. but, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, mr. dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. the instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. what he really did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recollect. there was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widows comprehension, or which providence interpreted after a method of its own. assuredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale. again, a third instance. after parting from the old church member, he met the youngest sister of them all. it was a maiden newly-won--and won by the reverend mr. dimmesdale's own sermon, on the sabbath after his vigil--to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. she was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in paradise. the minister knew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and desperate man. as she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small compass, and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. so--with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained--he held his geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. she ransacked her conscience--which was full of harmless little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag--and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults, and went about her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning. before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. it was--we blush to tell it--it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk. denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the ship's crew from the spanish main. and here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor mr. dimmesdale longed at least to shake hands with the tarry black-guard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! it was not so much a better principle, as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him safely through the latter crisis. "what is it that haunts and tempts me thus?" cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his hand against his forehead. "am i mad? or am i given over utterly to the fiend? did i make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? and does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination can conceive?" at the moment when the reverend mr. dimmesdale thus communed with himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old mistress hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by. she made a very grand appearance, having on a high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which anne turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady had been hanged for sir thomas overbury's murder. whether the witch had read the minister's thoughts or no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and--though little given to converse with clergymen--began a conversation. "so, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest," observed the witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. "the next time i pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and i shall be proud to bear you company. without taking overmuch upon myself my good word will go far towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of." "i profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good breeding made imperative--"i profess, on my conscience and character, that i am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! i went not into the forest to seek a potentate, neither do i, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favour of such personage. my one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the apostle eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won from heathendom!" "ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high head-dress at the minister. "well, well! we must needs talk thus in the daytime! you carry it off like an old hand! but at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!" she passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a secret intimacy of connexion. "have i then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master?" the wretched minister! he had made a bargain very like it! tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. and the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. it had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him. and his encounter with old mistress hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits. he had by this time reached his dwelling on the edge of the burial ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. the minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets. he entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest dell into the town and thitherward. here he had studied and written; here gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here borne a hundred thousand agonies! there was the bible, in its rich old hebrew, with moses and the prophets speaking to him, and god's voice through all. there on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page two days before. he knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the election sermon! but he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying, but half-envious curiosity. that self was gone. another man had returned out of the forest--a wiser one--with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. a bitter kind of knowledge that! while occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, "come in!"--not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. and so he did! it was old roger chillingworth that entered. the minister stood white and speechless, with one hand on the hebrew scriptures, and the other spread upon his breast. "welcome home, reverend sir," said the physician "and how found you that godly man, the apostle eliot? but methinks, dear sir, you look pale, as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for you. will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your election sermon?" "nay, i think not so," rejoined the reverend mr. dimmesdale. "my journey, and the sight of the holy apostle yonder, and the free air which i have breathed have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. i think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand." all this time roger chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. but, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with hester prynne. the physician knew then that in the minister's regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy. so much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should be expressed. it is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things; and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. thus the minister felt no apprehension that roger chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustained towards one another. yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret. "were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill tonight? verily, dear sir, we must take pains to make you strong and vigorous for this occasion of the election discourse. the people look for great things from you, apprehending that another year may come about and find their pastor gone." "yes, to another world," replied the minister with pious resignation. "heaven grant it be a better one; for, in good sooth, i hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year! but touching your medicine, kind sir, in my present frame of body i need it not." "i joy to hear it," answered the physician. "it may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. happy man were i, and well deserving of new england's gratitude, could i achieve this cure!" "i thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the reverend mr. dimmesdale with a solemn smile. "i thank you, and can but requite your good deeds with my prayers." "a good man's prayers are golden recompense!" rejoined old roger chillingworth, as he took his leave. "yea, they are the current gold coin of the new jerusalem, with the king's own mint mark on them!" left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous appetite. then flinging the already written pages of the election sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered that heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles through so foul an organ pipe as he. however, leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved for ever, he drove his task onward with earnest haste and ecstasy. thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and laid it right across the minister's bedazzled eyes. there he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him! xxi. the new england holiday betimes in the morning of the day on which the new governor was to receive his office at the hands of the people, hester prynne and little pearl came into the market-place. it was already thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony. on this public holiday, as on all other occasions for seven years past, hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. her face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. it was like a mask; or, rather like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out of the world with which she still seemed to mingle. it might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now; unless some preternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart, and have afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenance and mien. such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through several miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of triumph. "look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!"--the people's victim and lifelong bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. "yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! a few hours longer and the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol which ye have caused to burn on her bosom!" nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in hester's mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply incorporated with her being. might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavoured. the wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker, or else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest potency. pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. it would have been impossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct a peculiarity to hester's simple robe. the dress, so proper was it to little pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. as with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. on this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of hester's brow. this effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement, rather than walk by her mother's side. she broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music. when they reached the market-place, she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like the broad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the centre of a town's business. "why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "wherefore have all the people left their work to-day? is it a play-day for the whole world? see, there is the blacksmith! he has washed his sooty face, and put on his sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how! and there is master brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. why does he do so, mother?" "he remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered hester. "he should not nod and smile at me, for all that--the black, grim, ugly-eyed old man!" said pearl. "he may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. but see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and indians among them, and sailors! what have they all come to do, here in the market-place?" "they wait to see the procession pass," said hester. "for the governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the great people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before them." "and will the minister be there?" asked pearl. "and will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side?" "he will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will not greet thee to-day, nor must thou greet him." "what a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "in the dark nighttime he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! and in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! and he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! but, here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! a strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!" "be quiet, pearl--thou understandest not these things," said her mother. "think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. the children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so--as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered--they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world!" it was as hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the people. into this festal season of the year--as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuries--the puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction. but we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. the persons now in the market-place of boston had not been born to an inheritance of puritanic gloom. they were native englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the elizabethan epoch; a time when the life of england, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. had they followed their hereditary taste, the new england settlers would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions. nor would it have been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. there was some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony commenced. the dim reflection of a remembered splendour, a colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in proud old london--we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a lord mayor's show--might be traced in the customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates. the fathers and founders of the commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and the soldier--seemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public and social eminence. all came forth to move in procession before the people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government so newly constructed. then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing the severe and close application to their various modes of rugged industry, which at all other times, seemed of the same piece and material with their religion. here, it is true, were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the england of elizabeth's time, or that of james--no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no merry andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. all such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which give law its vitality. not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled--grimly, perhaps, but widely too. nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on the village-greens of england; and which it was thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were essential in them. wrestling matches, in the different fashions of cornwall and devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place; in one corner, there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and--what attracted most interest of all--on the platform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. but, much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places. it may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. we have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gaiety. the picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the english emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. a party of indians--in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear--stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the puritan aspect could attain. nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. this distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners--a part of the crew of the vessel from the spanish main--who had come ashore to see the humours of election day. they were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. from beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. they transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. it remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. the sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. there could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. but the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. the buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. thus the puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old roger chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel. the latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. he wore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. there was a sword at his side and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. a landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. as regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales. after parting from the physician, the commander of the bristol ship strolled idly through the market-place; until happening to approach the spot where hester prynne was standing, he appeared to recognise, and did not hesitate to address her. as was usually the case wherever hester stood, a small vacant area--a sort of magic circle--had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to intrude. it was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her fellow-creatures. now, if never before, it answered a good purpose by enabling hester and the seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard; and so changed was hester prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in town, most eminent for rigid morality, could not have held such intercourse with less result of scandal than herself. "so, mistress," said the mariner, "i must bid the steward make ready one more berth than you bargained for! no fear of scurvy or ship fever this voyage. what with the ship's surgeon and this other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which i traded for with a spanish vessel." "what mean you?" inquired hester, startled more than she permitted to appear. "have you another passenger?" "why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician here--chillingworth he calls himself--is minded to try my cabin-fare with you? ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of--he that is in peril from these sour old puritan rulers." "they know each other well, indeed," replied hester, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost consternation. "they have long dwelt together." nothing further passed between the mariner and hester prynne. but at that instant she beheld old roger chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest corner of the market-place and smiling on her; a smile which--across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the crowd--conveyed secret and fearful meaning. xxii. the procession before hester prynne could call together her thoughts, and consider what was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along a contiguous street. it denoted the advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens on its way towards the meeting-house: where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever since observed, the reverend mr. dimmesdale was to deliver an election sermon. soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across the market-place. first came the music. it comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitude--that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. little pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be borne upward like a floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells of sound. but she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. this body of soldiery--which still sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and honourable fame--was composed of no mercenary materials. its ranks were filled with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of college of arms, where, as in an association of knights templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war. the high estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. some of them, indeed, by their services in the low countries and on other fields of european warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. the entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal. and yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. even in outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. it was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more. the people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and estimate of public men. the change may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. in that old day the english settler on these rude shores--having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence was strong in him--bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age--on long-tried integrity--on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience--on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability. these primitive statesmen, therefore--bradstreet, endicott, dudley, bellingham, and their compeers--who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. they had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. the traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of countenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. so far as a demeanour of natural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the house of peers, or make the privy council of the sovereign. next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. his was the profession at that era in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life; for--leaving a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. even political power--as in the case of increase mather--was within the grasp of a successful priest. it was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, since mr. dimmesdale first set his foot on the new england shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. there was no feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. it might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical ministrations. it might be the exhilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought. or perchance his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that swelled heaven-ward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether mr. dimmesdale even heard the music. there was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. but where was his mind? far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. men of uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are lifeless for as many more. hester prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not, unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. one glance of recognition she had imagined must needs pass between them. she thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand-in-hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook. how deeply had they known each other then! and was this the man? she hardly knew him now! he, moving proudly past, enveloped as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. and thus much of woman was there in hester, that she could scarcely forgive him--least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!--for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world--while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not. pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around the minister. while the procession passed, the child was uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight. when the whole had gone by, she looked up into hester's face-- "mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?" "hold thy peace, dear little pearl!" whispered her mother. "we must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest." "i could not be sure that it was he--so strange he looked," continued the child. "else i would have run to him, and bid him kiss me now, before all the people, even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. what would the minister have said, mother? would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me begone?" "what should he say, pearl," answered hester, "save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place? well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!" another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to mr. dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities--insanity, as we should term it--led her to do what few of the townspeople would have ventured on--to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter in public. it was mistress hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. as this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. seen in conjunction with hester prynne--kindly as so many now felt towards the latter--the dread inspired by mistress hibbins had doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of the market-place in which the two women stood. "now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the old lady confidentially to hester. "yonder divine man! that saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as--i must needs say--he really looks! who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of his study--chewing a hebrew text of scripture in his mouth, i warrant--to take an airing in the forest! aha! we know what that means, hester prynne! but truly, forsooth, i find it hard to believe him the same man. many a church member saw i, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure with me, when somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an indian powwow or a lapland wizard changing hands with us! that is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. but this minister. couldst thou surely tell, hester, whether he was the same man that encountered thee on the forest path?" "madam, i know not of what you speak," answered hester prynne, feeling mistress hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal connexion between so many persons (herself among them) and the evil one. "it is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious minister of the word, like the reverend mr. dimmesdale." "fie, woman--fie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at hester. "dost thou think i have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there? yea, though no leaf of the wild garlands which they wore while they danced be left in their hair! i know thee, hester, for i behold the token. we may all see it in the sunshine! and it glows like a red flame in the dark. thou wearest it openly, so there need be no question about that. but this minister! let me tell thee in thine ear! when the black man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the reverend mr. dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the eyes of all the world! what is that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his heart? ha, hester prynne?" "what is it, good mistress hibbins?" eagerly asked little pearl. "hast thou seen it?" "no matter, darling!" responded mistress hibbins, making pearl a profound reverence. "thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another. they say, child, thou art of the lineage of the prince of air! wilt thou ride with me some fine night to see thy father? then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!" laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her departure. by this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meeting-house, and the accents of the reverend mr. dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse. an irresistible feeling kept hester near the spot. as the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory. it was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very peculiar voice. this vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated. muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church walls, hester prynne listened with such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. these, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. and yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. a loud or low expression of anguish--the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! at times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a desolate silence. but even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding--when it gushed irrepressibly upward--when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the open air--still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. what was it? the complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,--at every moment,--in each accent,--and never in vain! it was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power. during all this time, hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. if the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would, nevertheless, have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. there was a sense within her--too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind--that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity. little pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was playing at her own will about the market-place. she made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves. she had an undulating, but oftentimes a sharp and irregular movement. it indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tip-toe dance, because it was played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. whenever pearl saw anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. the puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. she ran and looked the wild indian in the face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the indians were of the land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time. one of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to hester prynne was so smitten with pearl's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it. "thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman, "wilt thou carry her a message from me?" "if the message pleases me, i will," answered pearl. "then tell her," rejoined he, "that i spake again with the black-a-visaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. so let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. wilt thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?" "mistress hibbins says my father is the prince of the air!" cried pearl, with a naughty smile. "if thou callest me that ill-name, i shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!" pursuing a zigzag course across the marketplace, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. hester's strong, calm steadfastly-enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery--showed itself with an unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path. with her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. there were many people present from the country round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. these, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about hester prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness. unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. at that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. the whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. even the indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on hester's bosom, conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. lastly, the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented hester prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. hester saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. at the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on. while hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. the sainted minister in the church! the woman of the scarlet letter in the marketplace! what imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both! xxiii. the revelation of the scarlet letter the eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. there was a momentary silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles. then ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. in a moment more the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the church. now that there was an end, they needed more breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought. in the open air their rapture broke into speech. the street and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister. his hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. according to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his. its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. his subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the deity and the communities of mankind, with a special reference to the new england which they were here planting in the wilderness. and, as he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of israel were constrained, only with this difference, that, whereas the jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the lord. but, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh--had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in their tears. this idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant--at once a shadow and a splendour--and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them. thus, there had come to the reverend mr. dimmesdale--as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognised until they see it far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. he stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts or intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in new england's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit at the close of his election sermon. meanwhile hester prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast! now was heard again the clamour of the music, and the measured tramp of the military escort issuing from the church door. the procession was to be marshalled thence to the town hall, where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day. once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers were seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the governor and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. when they were fairly in the marketplace, their presence was greeted by a shout. this--though doubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from the child-like loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers--was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their ears. each felt the impulse in himself, and in the same breath, caught it from his neighbour. within the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to the zenith. there were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphonious feeling to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many. never, from the soil of new england had gone up such a shout! never, on new england soil had stood the man so honoured by his mortal brethren as the preacher! how fared it with him, then? were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? so etherealised by spirit as he was, and so apotheosised by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of earth? as the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approach among them. the shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of him. how feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! the energy--or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the sacred message that had brought its own strength along with it from heaven--was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its office. the glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying embers. it seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a death-like hue: it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his path so nervously, yet tottered, and did not fall! one of his clerical brethren--it was the venerable john wilson--observing the state in which mr. dimmesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his support. the minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. he still walked onward, if that movement could be so described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. and now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, hester prynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare. there stood hester, holding little pearl by the hand! and there was the scarlet letter on her breast! the minister here made a pause; although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the procession moved. it summoned him onward--inward to the festival!--but here he made a pause. bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon him. he now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to give assistance judging, from mr. dimmesdale's aspect that he must otherwise inevitably fall. but there was something in the latter's expression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. the crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. this earthly faintness, was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven! he turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms. "hester," said he, "come hither! come, my little pearl!" it was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. the child, with the bird-like motion, which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. hester prynne--slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest will--likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. at this instant old roger chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd--or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether region--to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do! be that as it might, the old man rushed forward, and caught the minister by the arm. "madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he. "wave back that woman! cast off this child! all shall be well! do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! i can yet save you! would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?" "ha, tempter! methinks thou art too late!" answered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. "thy power is not what it was! with god's help, i shall escape thee now!" he again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter. "hester prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the name of him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what--for my own heavy sin and miserable agony--i withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! thy strength, hester; but let it be guided by the will which god hath granted me! this wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might!--with all his own might, and the fiend's! come, hester--come! support me up yonder scaffold." the crowd was in a tumult. the men of rank and dignity, who stood more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw--unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine any other--that they remained silent and inactive spectators of the judgement which providence seemed about to work. they beheld the minister, leaning on hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. old roger chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore to be present at its closing scene. "hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret--no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me--save on this very scaffold!" "thanks be to him who hath led me hither!" answered the minister. yet he trembled, and turned to hester, with an expression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon his lips. "is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in the forest?" "i know not! i know not!" she hurriedly replied. "better? yea; so we may both die, and little pearl die with us!" "for thee and pearl, be it as god shall order," said the minister; "and god is merciful! let me now do the will which he hath made plain before my sight. for, hester, i am a dying man. so let me make haste to take my shame upon me!" partly supported by hester prynne, and holding one hand of little pearl's, the reverend mr. dimmesdale turned to the dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter--which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise--was now to be laid open to them. the sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of eternal justice. "people of new england!" cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic--yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe--"ye, that have loved me!--ye, that have deemed me holy!--behold me here, the one sinner of the world! at last--at last!--i stand upon the spot where, seven years since, i should have stood, here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith i have crept hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face! lo, the scarlet letter which hester wears! ye have all shuddered at it! wherever her walk hath been--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her. but there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!" it seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. but he fought back the bodily weakness--and, still more, the faintness of heart--that was striving for the mastery with him. he threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the children. "it was on him!" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so determined was he to speak out the whole. "god's eye beheld it! the angels were for ever pointing at it! (the devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger!) but he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world!--and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred! now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you! he bids you look again at hester's scarlet letter! he tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! stand any here that question god's judgment on a sinner! behold! behold, a dreadful witness of it!" with a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. it was revealed! but it were irreverent to describe that revelation. for an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. then, down he sank upon the scaffold! hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. old roger chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed. "thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more than once. "thou hast escaped me!" "may god forgive thee!" said the minister. "thou, too, hast deeply sinned!" he withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the woman and the child. "my little pearl," said he, feebly and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the child--"dear little pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! but now thou wilt?" pearl kissed his lips. a spell was broken. the great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. towards her mother, too, pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was fulfilled. "hester," said the clergyman, "farewell!" "shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her face down close to his. "shall we not spend our immortal life together? surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! then tell me what thou seest!" "hush, hester--hush!" said he, with tremulous solemnity. "the law we broke!--the sin here awfully revealed!--let these alone be in thy thoughts! i fear! i fear! it may be, that, when we forgot our god--when we violated our reverence each for the other's soul--it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. god knows; and he is merciful! he hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. by giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! by sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! by bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people! had either of these agonies been wanting, i had been lost for ever! praised be his name! his will be done! farewell!" that final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. the multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit. xxiv. conclusion after many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold. most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a scarlet letter--the very semblance of that worn by hester prynne--imprinted in the flesh. as regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. some affirmed that the reverend mr. dimmesdale, on the very day when hester prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance--which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out--by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old roger chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. others, again and those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body--whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. the reader may choose among these theories. we have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness. it is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the reverend mr. dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any--the slightest--connexion on his part, with the guilt for which hester prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. according to these highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels--had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. after exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of infinite purity, we are sinners all alike. it was to teach them, that the holiest amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of mr. dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends--and especially a clergyman's--will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust. the authority which we have chiefly followed--a manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whom had known hester prynne, while others had heard the tale from contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing pages. among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:--"be true! be true! be true! show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after mr. dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanour of the old man known as roger chillingworth. all his strength and energy--all his vital and intellectual force--seemed at once to desert him, insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. this unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph consummation that evil principle was left with no further material to support it--when, in short, there was no more devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanised mortal to betake himself whither his master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. but, to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances--as well roger chillingworth as his companions we would fain be merciful. it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. in the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister--mutual victims as they have been--may, unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love. leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the reader. at old roger chillingworth's decease, (which took place within the year), and by his last will and testament, of which governor bellingham and the reverend mr. wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in england to little pearl, the daughter of hester prynne. so pearl--the elf child--the demon offspring, as some people up to that epoch persisted in considering her--became the richest heiress of her day in the new world. not improbably this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little pearl at a marriageable period of life might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest puritan among them all. but, in no long time after the physician's death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and pearl along with her. for many years, though a vague report would now and then find its way across the sea--like a shapeless piece of driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon it--yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received. the story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore where hester prynne had dwelt. near this latter spot, one afternoon some children were at play, when they beheld a tall woman in a gray robe approach the cottage-door. in all those years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments--and, at all events, went in. on the threshold she paused--turned partly round--for perchance the idea of entering alone and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. but her hesitation was only for an instant, though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast. and hester prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame! but where was little pearl? if still alive she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. none knew--nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty--whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness. but through the remainder of hester's life there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to english heraldry. in the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury such as hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased and affection have imagined for her. there were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers at the impulse of a fond heart. and once hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult had any infant thus apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community. in fine, the gossips of that day believed--and mr. surveyor pue, who made investigations a century later, believed--and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes--that pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside. but there was a more real life for hester prynne, here, in new england, than in that unknown region where pearl had found a home. here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. she had returned, therefore, and resumed--of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it--resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. never afterwards did it quit her bosom. but, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. and, as hester prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. women, more especially--in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion--or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came to hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might. she assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. earlier in life, hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognised the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. the angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end. so said hester prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. and, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which king's chapel has since been built. it was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. yet one tomb-stone served for both. all around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate--as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport--there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. it bore a device, a herald's wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:-- "on a field, sable, the letter a, gules" a mummer's wife by george moore a dedication to robert ross i in the sunset of his life a man often finds himself unable to put dates even upon events in which his sympathies were, and perhaps are still, engaged; all things seem to have befallen yesterday, and yet it cannot be less than three years since we were anxious to testify to our belief in the kindness and justice with which you had fulfilled your double duties in the _morning post_ towards us and the proprietors of the paper. a committee sprang up quickly, and a letter was addressed by it to all the notable workers in the arts and to all those who were known to be interested in the arts, and very soon a considerable sum of money was collected; but when the committee met to decide what form the commemorative gift should take, a perplexity arose, many being inclined towards a piece of plate. it was pointed out that a piece of plate worth eight hundred pounds would prove a cumbersome piece of furniture--a white elephant, in fact--in the small house or apartment or flat in which a critic usually lives. the truth of this could not be gainsaid. other suggestions were forthcoming for your benefit, every one obtaining a certain amount of support, but none commanding a majority of votes; and the perplexity continued till it was mooted that the disposal of the money should be left to your option, and in view of the fact that you had filled the post of art critic for many years, you decided to found a slade scholarship. it seemed to you well that a young man on leaving the slade school should be provided with a sum of money sufficient to furnish a studio, and some seven or eight hundred pounds were invested, the remainder being spent on a trinket for your personal wear--a watch. i have not forgotten that i was one of the dissidents, scholarships not appealing to me, but lately i have begun to see that you were wise in the disposal of the money. a watch was enough for remembrance, and since i caught sight of it just now, the pleasant thoughts it has evoked console me for your departure: after bidding you good-bye on the doorstep, i return to my fireside to chew the cud once again of the temperate and tolerant articles that i used to read years ago in the _morning post_. you see, ross, i was critic myself for some years on the _speaker_, but my articles were often bitter and explosive; i was prone to polemics and lacked the finer sense that enabled you to pass over works with which you were not in sympathy, and without wounding the painter. my intention was often to wound him in the absurd hope that i might compel him to do better. my motto seems to have been 'compel them to come in'--words used by jesus in one of his parables, and relied on by ecclesiastics as a justification of persecution, and by many amongst us whose names i will not pillory here, for i have chosen that these pages shall be about you and nothing but you. if i speak of myself in a forgotten crusade, it is to place you in your true light. we recognized your critical insight and your literary skill, but it was not for these qualities that we, the criticized, decided to present you, the critic, with a token of our gratitude; nor was it because you had praised our works (a great number of the subscribers had not received praise from you): we were moved altogether, i think, by the consciousness that you had in a difficult task proved yourself to be a kindly critic, and yet a just one, and it was for these qualities that you received an honour, that is unique, i think, in the chronicles of criticism. ii memory pulls me up, and out of some moments of doubt, the suspicion emerges that all i am writing here was read by me somewhere: but it was not in our original declaration of faith, for i never saw it, not having attended the presentation of the testimonial. where, then? in the newspapers that quoted from the original document? written out by whom? by witt or by maccoll, excellent writers both? but being a writer myself, i am called upon to do my own writing.... newspapers are transitory things--a good reason for writing out the story afresh; and there is still another reason for writing it out--my reasons for dedicating this book to you. we must have reasons always, else we pass for unreasonable beings, and a better reason for dedicating a book to you than mine, i am fain to believe, will never be found by anybody in search of a reason for his actions. my name is among the signatories to the document that i have called 'our declaration of faith'; and having committed myself thus fully to your critical judgment, it seems to me that for the completion of the harmony a dedication is necessary. a fair share of reasons i am setting forth for this act of mine, every one of them valid, and the most valid of all my reason for choosing this book, _a mummer's wife_, to dedicate to you, is your own commendation of it the other night when you said to me that no book of mine in your opinion was more likely to 'live'! to live for five-and-twenty years is as long an immortality as anyone should set his heart on; for who would wish to be chattered about by the people that will live in these islands three hundred years hence? we should not understand them nor they us. avaunt, therefore, all legendary immortalities, and let us be content, ross, to be remembered by our friends, and, perhaps, to have our names passed on by disciples to another generation! a fair and natural immortality this is; let us share it together. our bark lies in the harbour: you tell me the spars are sound, and the seams have been caulked; the bark, you say, is seaworthy and will outlive any of the little storms that she may meet on the voyage--a better craft is not to be found in my little fleet. you said yesterevening across the hearthrug, '_esther waters_ speaks out of a deeper appreciation of life;' but you added: 'in _a mummer's wife_ there is a youthful imagination and a young man's exuberance on coming into his own for the first time, and this is a quality--'no doubt it is a quality, ross; but what kind of quality? you did not finish your sentence, or i have forgotten it. let me finish it for you--'that outweighs all other qualities' but does it? i am interpreting you badly. you would not commit yourself to so crude an opinion, and i am prepared to believe that i did not catch the words as they fell from your lips. all i can recall for certain of the pleasant moment when, you were considering which of my works you liked the best are stray words that may be arranged here into a sentence which, though it does not represent your critical judgments accurately, may be accepted by you. you said your thoughts went more frequently to _a mummer's wife_ than to _esther waters_; and i am almost sure something was said about the earlier book being a more spontaneous issue of the imagination, and that the wandering life of the mummers gives an old-world, adventurous air to the book, reminding you of _the golden ass_--a book i read last year, and found in it so many remembrances of myself that i fell to thinking it was a book i might have written had i lived two thousand years ago. who can say he has not lived before, and is it not as important to believe we lived herebefore as it is to believe we are going to live hereafter? if i had lived herebefore, jupiter knows what i should have written, but it would not have been _esther waters_: more likely a book like _a mummer's wife_--a band of jugglers and acrobats travelling from town to town. as i write these lines an antique story rises up in my mind, a recollection of one of my lost works or an instantaneous reading of apuleius into _a mummers wife_--which? g.m. a mummer's wife i in default of a screen, a gown and a red petticoat had been thrown over a clothes-horse, and these shaded the glare of the lamp from the eyes of the sick man. in the pale obscurity of the room, his bearded cheeks could be seen buried in a heap of tossed pillows. by his bedside sat a young woman. as she dozed, her face drooped until her features were hidden, and the lamp-light made the curious curves of a beautiful ear look like a piece of illuminated porcelain. her hands lay upon her lap, her needlework slipped from them; and as it fell to the ground she awoke. she pressed her hands against her forehead and made an effort to rouse herself. as she did so, her face contracted with an expression of disgust, and she remembered the ether. the soft, vaporous odour drifted towards her from a small table strewn with medicine bottles, and taking care to hold the cork tightly in her fingers she squeezed it into the bottle. at that moment the clock struck eleven and the clear tones of its bell broke the silence sharply; the patient moaned as if in reply, and his thin hairy arms stirred feverishly on the wide patchwork counterpane. she took them in her hands and covered them over; she tried to arrange the pillows more comfortably, but as she did so he turned and tossed impatiently, and, fearing to disturb him, she put back the handkerchief she had taken from the pillow to wipe the sweat from his brow, and regaining her chair, with a weary movement she picked up the cloth that had fallen from her knees and slowly continued her work. it was a piece of patchwork like the counterpane on the bed; the squares of a chessboard had been taken as a design, and, selecting a fragment of stuff, she trimmed it into the required shape and sewed it into its allotted corner. nothing was now heard but the methodical click of her needle as it struck the head of her thimble, and then the long swish of the thread as she drew it through the cloth. the lamp at her elbow burned steadily, and the glare glanced along her arm as she raised it with the large movement of sewing. her hair was blue wherever the light touched it, and it encircled the white prominent temple like a piece of rich black velvet; a dark shadow defined the delicate nose, and hinted at thin indecision of lips, whilst a broad touch of white marked the weak but not unbeautiful chin. on the corner of the table lay a book, a well-worn volume in a faded red paper cover. it was a novel she used to read with delight when she was a girl, but it had somehow failed to interest her, and after a few pages she had laid it aside, preferring for distraction her accustomed sewing. she was now well awake, and, as she worked, her thoughts turned on things concerning the daily routine of her life. she thought of the time when her husband would be well: of the pillow she was making; of how nice it would look in the green armchair; of the much greater likelihood of letting their rooms if they were better furnished; of their new lodger; and of the probability of a quarrel between him and her mother-in-law, mrs. ede. for more than a week past the new lodger had formed the staple subject of conversation in this household. mrs. ede, kate's mother-in-law, was loud in her protestations that the harbouring of an actor could not but be attended by bad luck. kate felt a little uneasy; her puritanism was of a less marked kind; perhaps at first she had felt inclined to agree with her mother-in-law, but her husband had shown himself so stubborn, and had so persistently declared that he was not going to keep his rooms empty any longer, that for peace' sake she was fain to side with him. the question arose in a very unexpected way. during the whole winter they were unfortunate with their rooms, though they made many attempts to get lodgers; they even advertised. some few people asked to see the rooms; but they merely made an offer. one day a man who came into the shop to buy some paper collars asked kate if she had any apartments to let. she answered yes, and they went upstairs. after a cursory inspection he told her that he was the agent in advance to a travelling opera company, and that if she liked he would recommend her rooms to the stage manager, a particular friend of his. the proposition was somewhat startling, but, not liking to say no, she proposed to refer the matter to her husband. at that particular moment ede happened to be engaged in a violent dispute with his mother, and so angry was he that when mrs. ede raised her hands to protest against the introduction of an actor into the household, he straightway told her that 'if she didn't like it she might do the other thing.' nothing more was said at the time; the old lady retired in indignation, and mr. lennox was written to. kate sympathized alternately with both sides. mrs. ede was sturdy in defence of her principles; ede was petulant and abusive; and between the two kate was blown about like a feather in a storm. daily the argument waxed warmer, until one night, in the middle of a scene characterized by much biblical quotation, ede declared he could stand it no longer, and rushed out of the house. in vain the women tried to stop him, knowing well what the consequences would be. a draught, a slight exposure, sufficed to give him a cold, and with him a cold always ended in an asthmatic attack. and these were often so violent as to lay him up for weeks at a time. when he returned, his temper grown cooler under the influence of the night air, he was coughing, and the next night found him breathless. his anger had at first vented itself against his mother, whom he refused to see, and thus the whole labour of nursing him was thrown on kate. she didn't grumble at this, but it was terrible to have to listen to him. it was mr. lennox, and nothing but mr. lennox. all the pauses in the suffocation were utilized to speak on this important question, and even now kate, who had not yet perceived that the short respite which getting rid of the phlegm had given him was coming to an end, expected him to say something concerning the still unknown person. but ede did not speak, and, to put herself as it were out of suspense, she referred to some previous conversation: 'i'm sure you're right; the only people in the town who let their rooms are those who have a theatrical connection.' 'oh, i don't care; i'm going to have a bad night,' said mr. ede, who now thought only of how he should get his next breath. 'but you seemed to be getting better,' she replied hurriedly. 'no! i feel it coming on--i'm suffocating. have you got the ether?' kate did not answer, but made a rapid movement towards the table, and snatching the bottle she uncorked it. the sickly odour quietly spread like oil over the close atmosphere of the room, but, mastering her repugnance, she held it to him, and in the hope of obtaining relief he inhaled it greedily. but the remedy proved of no avail, and he pushed the bottle away. 'oh, these headaches! my head is splitting,' he said, after a deep inspiration which seemed as if it would cost him his life. 'nothing seems to do me any good. have you got any cigarettes?' 'i'm sorry, they haven't arrived yet. i wrote for them,' she replied, hesitating; 'but don't you think--?' he shook his head; and, resenting kate's assiduities, with trembling fingers he unfastened the shawl she had placed on his shoulders, and then, planting his elbows on his knees, with a fixed head and elevated shoulders, he gave himself up to the struggle of taking breath.... at that moment she would have laid down her life to save him from the least of his pains, but she could only sit by him watching the struggle, knowing that nothing could be done to relieve him. she had seen the same scene repeated a hundred times before, but it never seemed to lose any of its terror. in the first month of their marriage she had been frightened by one of these asthmatic attacks. it had come on in the middle of the night, and she remembered well how she had prayed to god that it should not be her fate to see her husband die before her eyes. she knew now that death was not to be apprehended--the paroxysm would wear itself out--but she knew also of the horrors that would have to be endured before the time of relief came. she could count them upon her fingers--she could see it all as in a vision--a nightmare that would drag out its long changes until the dawn began to break; she anticipated the hours of the night. 'air! air! i'm suff-o-cating!' he sobbed out with a desperate effort. kate ran to the window and threw it open. the paroxysm had reached its height, and, resting his elbows well on his knees, he gasped many times, but before the inspiration was complete his strength failed him. no want but that of breath could have forced him to try again; and the second effort was even more terrible than the first. a great upheaval, a great wrenching and rocking seemed to be going on within him; the veins on his forehead were distended, the muscles of his chest laboured, and it seemed as if every minute were going to be his last. but with a supreme effort he managed to catch breath, and then there was a moment of respite, and kate could see that he was thinking of the next struggle, for he breathed avariciously, letting the air that had cost him so much agony pass slowly through his lips. to breathe again he would have to get on to his feet, which he did, and so engrossed was he in the labour of breathing that he pushed the paraffin lamp roughly; it would have fallen had kate not been there to catch it. she besought of him to say what he wanted, but he made no reply, and continued to drag himself from one piece of furniture to another, till at last, grasping the back of a chair, he breathed by jerks, each inspiration being accompanied by a violent spasmodic wrench, violent enough to break open his chest. she watched, expecting every moment to see him roll over, a corpse, but knowing from past experiences that he would recover somehow. his recoveries always seemed to her like miracles, and she watched the long pallid face crushed under a shock of dark matted hair, a dirty nightshirt, a pair of thin legs; but for the moment the grandeur of human suffering covered him, lifting him beyond the pale of loving or loathing, investing and clothing him in the pity of tragic things. the room, too, seemed transfigured. the bare wide floor, the gaunt bed, the poor walls plastered with religious prints cut from journals, even the ordinary furniture of everyday use--the little washhandstand with the common delf ewer, the chest of drawers that might have been bought for thirty shillings--lost their coarseness; their triviality disappeared, until nothing was seen or felt but this one suffering man. the minutes slipped like the iron teeth of a saw over kate's sensibilities. a hundred times she had run over in her mind the list of remedies she had seen him use. they were few in number, and none of any real service except the cigarettes which she had not. she asked him to allow her to try iodine, but he could not or would not make her any answer. it was cruel to see him struggling, but he resisted assistance, and watching like one in a dream, frightened at her own powerlessness to save or avert, kate remained crouching by the fireplace without strength to think or act, until she was suddenly awakened by seeing him relax his hold and slip heavily on the floor; and it was only by putting forth her whole strength she could get him into a sitting position; when she attempted to place him in a chair he slipped through her arms. there was, therefore, nothing to do but to shriek for help, and hope to awaken her mother-in-law. the echoes rang through the house, and as they died away, appalled, she listened to the silence. at length it grew clear that mrs. ede could not be awakened, and kate saw that she would have to trust to herself alone, and after two or three failures she applied herself to winning him back to consciousness. it was necessary to do so before attempting to move him again, and, sprinkling his face with water, she persuaded him to open his eyes, and after one little stare he slipped back into the nothingness he had come out of; and this was repeated several times, kate redoubling her efforts until at last she succeeded in placing him in a chair. he sat there, still striving and struggling with his breath, unable to move, and soaked with sweat, but getting better every minute. the worst of the attack was now over; she buttoned his nightshirt across his panting chest and covered his shoulders with his red shawl once more, and with a sentiment of real tenderness she took his hand in hers. she looked at him, feeling her heart grow larger. he was her husband; he had suffered terribly, and was now getting better; and she was his wife, whose duty it was to attend him. she only wished he would allow her to love him a little better; but against her will facts pierced through this luminous mist of sentiment, and she could not help remembering how petulant he was with her, how utterly all her wishes were disregarded. 'what a pity he's not a little different!' she thought; but when she looked at him and saw how he suffered, all other thoughts were once more drowned and swept away. she forgot how he often rendered her life miserable, wellnigh unbearable, by small vices, faults that defy definition, unending selfishness and unceasing irritability. but now all dissatisfaction and bitternesses were again merged into a sentiment that was akin to love; and in this time of physical degradation he possessed her perhaps more truly, more perfectly, than even in his best moments of health. but her life was one of work, not of musing, and there was plenty for her to attend to. ralph would certainly not be able to leave his chair for some time yet; she had wrapped him up comfortably in a blanket, she could do no more, and whilst he was recovering it would be as well to tidy up the room a bit. he would never be able to sleep in a bed that he had been lying in all day; she had better make the bed at once, for he generally got a little ease towards morning, particularly after a bad attack. so, hoping that the present occasion would not prove an exception, kate set to work to make the bed. she resolved to do this thoroughly, and turning the mattress over, she shook it with all her force. she did the same with the pillows, and fearing that there might be a few crumbs sticking to the sheets, she shook them out several times; and when the last crease had been carefully smoothed away she went back to her husband and insisted on being allowed to paint his back with iodine, although he did not believe in the remedy. on his saying he was thirsty, she went creeping down the narrow stairs to the kitchen, hunted for matches in the dark, lighted a spirit lamp and made him a hot drink, which he drank without thanking her. she fell to thinking of his ingratitude, and then of the discomfort of the asthma. how could she expect him to think of her when he was thinking of his breath? all the same, on these words her waking thoughts must have passed into dream thoughts. she was still watching by his bedside, waiting to succour him whenever he should ask for help, yet she must have been asleep. she did not know how long she slept, but it could not have been for long; and there was no reason for his peevishness, for she had not left him. 'i'm sorry, ralph, but i could not help it, i was so very tired. what can i do for you, dear?' 'do for me?' he said--'why, shut the window. i might have died for all you would have known or cared.' she walked across the room and shut the window, but as she came back to her place she said, 'i don't know why you speak to me like that, ralph.' 'prop me up: if i lie so low i shall get bad again. if you had a touch of this asthma you'd know what it is to lie alone for hours.' 'for hours, ralph?' kate repeated, and she looked at the clock and saw that she had not been asleep for more than half an hour. without contradicting him--for of what use would that be, only to make matters worse?--she arranged the pillows and settled the blankets about him, and thinking it would be advisable to say something, she congratulated him on seeming so much better. 'better! if i'm better, it's no thanks to you,' he said. 'you must have been mad to leave the window open so long.' 'you wanted it open; you know very well that when you're very bad like that you must have change of air. the room was so close.' 'yes, but that is no reason for leaving it open half an hour.' 'i offered to shut it, and you wouldn't let me.' 'i dare say you're sick of nursing me, and would like to get rid of me. the window wasn't a bad dodge.' kate remained silent, being too indignant for the moment to think of replying; but it was evident from her manner that she would not be able to contain herself much longer. he had hurt her to the quick, and her brown eyes swam with tears. his head lay back upon the built-up pillows, he fumed slowly, trying to find new matter for reproach, and breath wherewith to explain it. at last he thought of the cigarettes. 'even supposing that you did not remember how long you left the window open, i cannot understand how you forgot to send for the cigarettes. you know well enough that smoking is the only thing that relieves me when i'm in this state. i think it was most unfeeling--yes, most unfeeling!' having said so much, he leaned forward to get breath, and coughed. 'you'd better lie still, ralph; you'll only make yourself bad again. now that you feel a little easier you should try to go to sleep.' so far she got without betraying any emotion, but as she continued to advise him her voice began to tremble, her presence of mind to forsake her, and she burst into a flood of tears. 'i don't know how you can treat me as you do,' she said, sobbing hysterically. 'i do everything--i give up my night's rest to you, i work hard all day for you, and in return i only receive hard words. oh, it's no use,' she said; 'i can bear it no longer; you'll have to get someone else to mind you.' this outburst of passion came suddenly upon mr. ede, and for some time he was at a loss how to proceed. at last, feeling a little sorry, he resolved to make it up, and putting out his hand to her, he said: 'now, don't cry, kate; perhaps i was wrong in speaking so crossly. i didn't mean all i said--it's this horrid asthma.' 'oh, i can bear anything but to be told i neglect you--and when i stop up watching you three nights running----' these little quarrels were of constant occurrence. irritable by nature, and rendered doubly so by the character of his complaint, the invalid at times found it impossible to restrain his ill-humour; but he was not entirely bad; he inherited a touch of kind-heartedness from his mother, and being now moved by kate's tears, he said: 'that's quite true, and i'm sorry for what i said; you are a good little nurse. i won't scold you again. make it up.' kate found it hard to forget merely because ralph desired it, and for some time she refused to listen to his expostulations, and walked about the room crying, but her anger could not long resist the dead weight of sleep that was oppressing her, and eventually she came and sat down in her own place by him. the next step to reconciliation was more easy. kate was not vindictive, although quicktempered, and at last, amid some hysterical sobbing, peace was restored. ralph began to speak of his asthma again, telling how he had fancied he was going to die, and when she expressed her fear and regret he hastened to assure her that no one ever died of asthma, that a man might live fifty, sixty, or seventy years, suffering all the while from the complaint; and he rambled on until words and ideas together failed him, and he fell asleep. with a sigh of relief kate rose to her feet, and seeing that he was settled for the night, she turned to leave him, and passed into her room with a slow and dragging movement; but the place had a look so cold and unrestful that it pierced through even her sense of weariness, and she stood urging her tired brains to think of what she should do. at last, remembering that she could get a pillow from the room they reserved for letting, she turned to go. facing their room, and only divided by the very narrowest of passages, was the stranger's apartment. both doors were approached by a couple of steps, which so reduced the space that were two people to meet on the landing, one would have to give way to the other. mr. and mrs. ede found this proximity to their lodger, when they had one, somewhat inconvenient, but, as he said, 'one doesn't get ten shillings a week for nothing.' kate lingered a moment on the threshold, and then, with the hand in which she held the novel she had been reading, she picked up her skirt and stepped across the way. ii at first she could not determine who was passing through the twilight of the room, but as the blinds were suddenly drawn up and a flood of sunlight poured across the bed, she fell back amid the pillows, having recognized her mother-in-law in a painful moment of semi-blindness. the old woman carried a slop-pail, which she nearly dropped, so surprised was she to find kate in the stranger's room. 'but how did you get here?' she said hastily. 'i had to give ralph my pillow, and when he went to sleep i came to fetch one out of the bedroom here; and then i thought i would be more comfortable here--i was too tired to go back again--i don't know how it was--what does it matter?' kate, who was stupefied with sleep, had answered so crossly that mrs. ede did not speak for some time; at last, at the end of a long silence, she said: 'then he had a very bad night?' 'dreadful!' returned kate. 'i never was so frightened in my life.' 'and how did the fit come on?' asked mrs. ede. 'oh, i can't tell you now,' said kate. 'i'm so tired. i'm aching all over.' 'well, then, i'll bring you up your breakfast. you do look tired. it will do you good to remain in bed.' 'bring me up my breakfast! then, what time is it?' said kate, sitting up in bed with a start. 'what does it matter what the time is? if you're tired, lie still; i'll see that everything is right.' 'but i've promised mrs. barnes her dress by tomorrow night. oh, my goodness! i shall never get it done! do tell me what time it is.' 'well, it's just nine,' the old woman answered apologetically; 'but mrs. barnes will have to wait; you can't kill yourself. it's a great shame of ralph to have you sitting up when i could look after him just as well, and all because of the mummer.' 'oh, don't, mother,' said kate, who knew that mrs. ede could rate play-actors for a good half-hour without feeling the time passing, and taking her mother-in-law's hands in hers, she looked earnestly in her face, saying: 'you know, mother, i have a hard time of it, and i try to bear up as well as i can. you're the only one i've to help me; don't turn against me. ralph has set his mind on having the rooms let, and the mummer, as you call him, is coming here to-day; it's all settled. promise me you'll do nothing to unsettle it, and that while mr. lennox is here you'll try to make him comfortable. i've my dressmaking to attend to, and can't be always after him. will you do this thing for me?' and after a moment or so of indecision mrs. ede said: 'i don't believe money made out of such people can bring luck, but since you both wish it, i suppose i must give way. but you won't be able to say i didn't warn you.' 'yes, yes, but since we can't prevent his coming, will you promise that whilst he's here you'll attend to him just as you did to the other gentleman?' 'i shall say nothing to him, and if he doesn't make the house a disgrace, i shall be well satisfied.' 'how do you mean a disgrace?' 'don't you know, dear, that actors have always a lot of women after them, and i for one am not going to attend on wenches like them. if i had my way i'd whip such people until i slashed all the wickedness out of them.' 'but he won't bring any women here; we won't allow it,' said kate, a little shocked, and she strove to think how they should put a stop to such behaviour. 'if mr. lennox doesn't conduct himself properly--' 'of course i shall try to do my duty, and if mr. lennox respects himself i shall try to respect him.' she spoke these words hesitatingly, but the admission that she possibly might respect mr. lennox satisfied kate, and not wishing to press the matter further, she said, suddenly referring to their previous conversation: 'but didn't you say that it was nine o'clock?' 'it's more than nine now.' 'oh, lord! oh, lord! how late i am! i suppose the two little girls are here?' 'they just came in as i was going upstairs; i've set them to work.' 'i wish you'd get the tea ready, and you might make some buttered toast; ralph would like some, and so should i, for the matter of that.' then ralph's voice was heard calling, and seeing what was wanted, she hastened to his assistance. 'where were you last night?' he asked her. 'i slept in the stranger's room; i thought you'd not require me, and i was more comfortable there. the bed in the back room is all ups and downs.' he was breathing heavily in a way that made her fear he was going to have another attack. 'is mother in a great rage because i won't let her in?' he said presently. 'she's very much cut up about it, dear; you know she loves you better than anyone in the world. you'd do well to make it up with her.' 'well, perhaps i was wrong,' he said after a time, and with good humour, 'but she annoys me. she will interfere in everything; as if i hadn't a right to let my rooms to whom i please. she pays for all she has here, but i'd much sooner she left us than be lorded over in that way.' 'she doesn't want to lord it over you, dear. it's all arranged. she promised me just now she'd say nothing more about it, and that she'd look after mr. lennox like any other lodger.' on hearing that his mother was willing to submit to his will, the invalid smiled and expressed regret that the presence of an extra person in the house, especially an actor, would give his wife and mother more work to do. 'but i shall soon be well,' he said, 'and i dare say downstairs looking after the shop in a week.' kate protested against such imprudence, and then suggested she should go and see after his breakfast. ralph proffered no objection, and bidding him goodbye for the present, she went downstairs. annie was helping mrs. ede to make the toast in the front kitchen; lizzie stood at the table buttering it, but as soon as kate entered they returned to their sewing, for it was against kate's theories that the apprentices should assist in the household work. 'dear mother,' she began, but desisted, and when all was ready mrs. ede, remembering she had to make peace with her son, seized the tray and went upstairs. and the moment she was gone kate seated herself wearily on the red, calico-covered sofa. like an elongated armchair, it looked quaint, neat, and dumpy, pushed up against the wall between the black fireplace on the right and the little window shaded with the muslin blinds, under which a pot of greenstuff bloomed freshly. she lay back thinking vaguely, her cup of hot tea uppermost in her mind, hoping that mrs. ede would not keep her waiting long; and then, as her thoughts detached themselves, she remembered the actor whom they expected that afternoon. the annoyances which he had unconsciously caused her had linked him to her in a curious way, and all her prejudices vanished in the sensation of nearness that each succeeding hour magnified, and she wondered who this being was who had brought so much trouble into her life even before she had seen him. as the word 'trouble' went through her mind she paused, arrested by a passing feeling of sentimentality; but it explained nothing, defined nothing, only touched her as a breeze does a flower, and floated away. the dreamy warmth of the fire absorbed her more direct feelings, and for some moments she dozed in a haze of dim sensuousness and emotive numbness. as in a dusky glass, she saw herself a tender, loving, but unhappy woman; by her side were her querulous husband and her kindly-minded mother-in-law, and then there was a phantom she could not determine, and behind it something into which she could not see. was it a distant country? was it a scene of revelry? impossible to say, for whenever she attempted to find definite shapes in the glowing colours they vanished in a blurred confusion. but amid these fleeting visions there was one shape that particularly interested her, and she pursued it tenaciously, until in a desperate effort to define its features she awoke with a start and spoke more crossly than she intended to the little girls, who had pulled aside the curtain and were intently examining the huge theatrical poster that adorned the corner of the lane. but as she scolded she could not help smiling; for she saw how her dream had been made out of the red and blue dresses of the picture. the arrival of each new company in the town was announced pictorially on this corner wall, and, in the course of the year, many of the vicissitudes to which human life is liable received illustration upon it. wrecks at sea, robberies on the highways, prisoners perishing in dungeons, green lanes and lovers, babies, glowing hearths, and heroic young husbands. the opera companies exhibited the less serious sides of life--strangely dressed people and gallants kissing their hands to ladies standing on balconies. the little girls examined these pictures and commented on them; and on saturdays it was a matter of the keenest speculation what the following week would bring them. lizzie preferred exciting scenes of murder and arson, while annie was moved more by leavetakings and declarations of unalterable affection. these differences of taste often gave rise to little bickerings, and last week there had been much prophesying as to whether the tragic or the sentimental element would prove next week's attraction. lizzie had voted for robbers and mountains, annie for lovers and a nice cottage. and, remembering their little dispute, kate said: 'well, dears, is it a robber or a sweetheart?' 'we're not sure,' exclaimed both children in a disappointed tone of voice; 'we can't make the picture out.' then lizzie, who cared little for uncertainties, said: 'it isn't a nice picture at all; it is all mixed up.' 'not a nice picture at all, and all mixed up?' said kate, smiling, yet interested in the conversation. 'and all mixed up; how is that? i must see if i can make it out myself.' the huge poster contained some figures nearly life-size. it showed a young girl in a bridal dress and wreath struggling between two police agents, who were arresting her in a marketplace of old time, in a strangely costumed crowd, which was clamouring violently. the poor bridegroom was being held back by his friends; a handsome young man in knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the mêlée. the advertisement was headed, 'morton and cox's operatic company,' and concluded with the announcement that _madame angot_ would be played at the queen's theatre. after a few moments spent in examining the picture kate said it must have something to do with france. 'i know what it means,' cried lizzie; 'you see that old chap on the right? he's the rich man who has sent the two policemen to carry the bride to his castle, and it's the young fellow in the corner who has betrayed them.' the ingenuity of this explanation took kate and annie so much by surprise that for the moment they could not attempt to controvert it, and remained silent, whilst lizzie looked at them triumphantly. the more they examined the picture the more clear did it appear that lizzie was right. at the end of a long pause kate said: 'anyhow, we shall soon know, for one of the actors of the company is coming here to lodge, and we'll ask him.' 'a real actor coming here to lodge?' exclaimed annie. 'oh, how nice that will be! and will he take us to see the play?' 'how silly of you, annie!' said lizzie, who, proud of her successful explanation of the poster, was a little inclined to think she knew all about actors. 'how can he take us to the play? isn't he going to act it himself? but do tell me, mrs. ede--is he the one in the cocked hat?' 'i hope he isn't the fat man who has lost his wig,' annie murmured under her breath. 'i don't know which of those gentlemen is coming here. for all i know it may be the policeman,' kate added maliciously. 'don't say that, mrs. ede!' annie exclaimed. kate smiled at the children's earnestness, and, wishing to keep up the joke, said: 'you know, my dear, they are only sham policemen, and i dare say are very nice gentlemen in reality.' annie and lizzie hung down their heads; it was evident they had no sympathies with policemen, not even with sham ones. 'but if it isn't a policeman, who would you like it to be, lizzie?' said kate. 'oh, the man in the cocked hat,' replied lizzie without hesitation. 'and you, annie?' annie looked puzzled, and after a moment said with a slight whimper: 'lizzie always takes what i want--i was just going--' 'oh yes, miss, we know all about that,' returned lizzie derisively. 'annie never can choose for herself; she always tries to imitate me. she'll have the man who's lost his wig! oh yes, yes! isn't it so, mrs. ede? isn't annie going to marry the man who's lost his wig?' tears trembled in annie's eyes, but as she happened at that moment to catch sight of the young man in white, she declared triumphantly that she would choose him. 'well done, annie!' said kate, laughing as she patted the child's curls, but her eyes fell on the neglected apron, and seeing how crookedly it was being hemmed, she said: 'oh, my dear, this is very bad; you must go back, undo all you have done this morning, and get it quite straight.' she undid some three or four inches of the sewing, and then showed the child how the hem was to be turned in, and while she did so a smile hovered round the corners of her thin lips, for she was thinking of the new lodger, asking herself which man in the picture was coming to lodge in her house. mrs. ede returned, talking angrily, but kate could only catch the words 'waiting' and 'breakfast cold' and 'sorry.' at last, out of a confusion of words a reproof broke from her mother-in-law for not having roused her. 'i called and called,' said kate, 'but nothing would have awakened you.' 'you should have knocked at my door,' mrs. ede answered, and after speaking about open house and late hours she asked kate suddenly what was going to be done about the latchkey. 'i suppose he will have to have his latchkey,' kate answered. 'i shall not close my eyes,' mrs. ede returned, 'until i hear him come into the house. he won't be bringing with him any of the women from the theatre.' kate assured her that she would make this part of the bargain, and somewhat softened, mrs. ede spoke of the danger of bad company, and trusted that having an actor in the house would not be a reason for going to the theatre and falling into idle habits. 'one would have thought that we heard enough of that theatre from miss hender,' she interjected, and then lapsed into silence. miss hender, kate's assistant, was one of mrs. ede's particular dislikes. of her moral character mrs. ede had the gravest doubts; for what could be expected, she often muttered, of a person who turned up her nose when she was asked to stay and attend evening prayers, and who kept company with a stage carpenter? mrs. ede did not cease talking of hender till the girl herself came in, with many apologies for being an hour behind her time, and saying that she really could not help it; her sister had been very ill, and she had been obliged to sit up with her all night. mrs. ede smiled at this explanation, and withdrew, leaving kate in doubt as to the truth of the excuse put forward by her assistant; but remembering that mrs. barnes's dress had been promised for tuesday morning, she said: 'come, we're wasting all the morning; we must get on with mrs. barnes's dress,' and a stout, buxom, carroty-haired girl of twenty followed kate upstairs, thinking of the money she might earn and of how she and the stage carpenter might spend it together. she was always full of information concerning the big red house in queen street. she was sure that the hours in the workroom would not seem half so long if kate would wake up a bit, go to the play, and chat about what was going on in the town. how anyone could live with that horrid old woman always hanging about, with her religion and salvation, was beyond her. she hadn't time for such things, and as for bill, he said it was all 'tommy-rot.' hender was an excellent workwoman, although a lazy girl, and, seeing from kate's manner that the time had not come for conversation, applied herself diligently to her business. placing the two side-seams and the back under the needle, she gave the wheel a turn, and rapidly the little steel needle darted up and down into the glistening silk, as miss hender's thick hands pushed it forward. the work was too delicate to admit of any distraction, so for some time nothing was heard but the clinking rattle of the machine and the 'swishing' of the silk as kate drew it across the table and snipped it with the scissors which hung from her waist. but at the end of about half an hour the work came to a pause. hender had finished sewing up the bodice, had tacked on the facings, and kate had cut out the skirt and basted it together. the time had come for exchanging a few words, and lifting her head from her work, she asked her assistant if she could remain that evening and do a little overtime. hender said she was very sorry, but it was the first night of the new opera company; she had passes for the pit, and had promised to take a friend with her. she would, therefore, have to hurry away a little before six, so as to have her tea and be dressed in time. 'well, i don't know what i shall do,' said kate sorrowfully. 'as for myself, i simply couldn't pass another night out of bed. you know i was up looking after my husband all night. attending a sick man, and one as cross as mr. ede, is not very nice, i can assure you.' hender congratulated herself inwardly that bill was never likely to want much attendance. 'i think you'd better tell mrs. barnes that she can't expect the dress; it will be impossible to get it done in the time. i'd be delighted to help you, but i couldn't disappoint my little friend. besides, you've mr. lennox coming here to-day ... you can't get the dress done by to-morrow night!' hender had been waiting for a long time for an opportunity to lead up to mr. lennox. 'oh, dear me!' said kate, 'i'd forgotten him, and he'll be coming this afternoon, and may want some dinner, and i'll have to help mother.' 'they always have dinner in the afternoon,' said miss hender, with a feeling of pride at being able to speak authoritatively on the ways and habits of actors. 'do they?' replied kate reflectively; and then, suddenly remembering her promise to the little girls, she said: 'but do you know what part he takes in the play?' hender always looked pleased when questioned about the theatre, but all the stage carpenter had been able to tell her about the company was that it was one of the best travelling; that frank bret, the tenor, was supposed to have a wonderful voice; that the amount of presents he received in each town from ladies in the upper ranks of society would furnish a small shop--'it's said that they'd sell the chemises off their backs for him.' the stage carpenter had also informed her that joe mortimer's performance in the cloches was extraordinary; he never failed to bring down the house in his big scene; and lucy leslie was the best clairette going. and now that they were going to have an actor lodging in their house, kate felt a certain interest in hearing what such people were like; and while miss hender gossiped about all she had heard, kate remembered that her question relating to mr. lennox remained unanswered. 'but you've not told me what part mr. lennox plays. perhaps he's the man in white who is being dragged away from his bride? i've been examining the big picture; the little girls were so curious to know what it meant.' 'yes, he may play that part; it is called pom-pom pouet--i can't pronounce it right; it's french. but in any case you'll find him fine. all theatre people are. the other day i went behind to talk to bill, and mr. rickett stopped to speak to me as he was running to make a change.' 'what's that?' asked kate. 'making a change? dressing in a hurry.' 'i hope you won't get into trouble; stopping out so late is very dangerous for a young girl. and i suppose you walk up piccadilly with him after the play?' 'sometimes he takes me out for a drink,' hender replied, anxious to avoid a discussion on the subject, but at the same time tempted to make a little boast of her independence. 'but you must come to see _madame angot_; i hear it is going to be beautifully put on, and mr. lennox is sure to give you a ticket.' 'i dare say i should like it very much; i don't have much amusement.' 'indeed you don't, and what do you get for it? i don't see that mr. ede is so kind to you for all the minding and nursing you do; and old mrs. ede may repeat all day long that she's a christian woman, and what else she likes, but it doesn't make her anything less disagreeable. i wouldn't live in a house with a mother-in-law--and such a mother-in-law!' 'you and mrs. ede never hit it off, but i don't know what i should do without her; she's the only friend i've got.' 'half your time you're shut up in a sick-room, and even when he is well he's always blowing and wheezing; not the man that would suit me.' 'ralph can't help being cross sometimes,' said kate, and she fell to thinking of the fatigue of last night's watching. she felt it still in her bones, and her eyes ached. as she considered the hardships of her life, her manner grew more abandoned. 'if you'll let me have the skirt, ma'am, i'll stitch it up.' kate handed her the silk wearily, and was about to speak when mrs. ede entered. 'mr. lennox is downstairs,' she said stiffly. 'i don't know what you'll think of him. i'm a christian woman and i don't want to misjudge anyone, but he looks to me like a person of very loose ways.' kate flushed a little with surprise, and after a moment she said: 'i suppose i'd better go down and see him. but perhaps he won't like the rooms after all. what shall i say to him?' 'indeed, i can't tell you; i've the dinner to attend to.' 'but,' said kate, getting frightened, 'you promised me not to say any more on this matter.' 'oh, i say nothing. i'm not mistress here. i told you that i would not interfere with mr. lennox; no more will i. why should i? what right have i? but i may warn you, and i have warned you. i've said my say, and i'll abide by it.' these hard words only tended to confuse kate; all her old doubts returned to her, and she remained irresolute. hender, with an expression of contempt on her coarse face, watched a moment and then returned to her sewing. as she did so kate moved towards the door. she waited on the threshold, but seeing that her mother-in-law had turned her back, her courage returned to her and she went downstairs. when she caught sight of mr. lennox she shrank back frightened, for he was a man of about thirty years of age, with bronzed face, and a shock of frizzly hair, and had it not been for his clear blue eyes he might have passed for an italian. leaning his large back against the counter, he examined a tray of ornaments in black jet. kate thought he was handsome. he wore a large soft hat, which was politely lifted from his head when she entered. the attention embarrassed her, and somewhat awkwardly she interrupted him to ask if he would like to see the rooms. the suddenness of the question seemed to surprise him, and he began talking of their common acquaintance, the agent in advance, and of the difficulty in getting lodgings in the town. as he spoke he stared at her, and he appeared interested in the shop. it was a very tiny corner, and, like a samson, mr. lennox looked as if he would only have to extend his arms to pull the whole place down upon his shoulders. from the front window round to the kitchen door ran a mahogany counter; behind it, there were lines of cardboard boxes built up to the ceiling; the lower rows were broken and dusty, and spread upon wires were coarse shirts and a couple of pairs of stays in pink and blue. the windows were filled with babies' frocks, hoods, and many pairs of little woollen shoes. after a few remarks from mr. lennox the conversation came to a pause, and kate asked him again if he would like to see the rooms. he said he would be delighted, and she lifted the flap and let him pass into the house. on the right of the kitchen door there was a small passage, and at the end of it the staircase began; the first few steps turned spirally, but after that it ascended like a huge canister or burrow to the first landing. they passed mrs. ede gazing scornfully from behind the door of the workroom, but mr. lennox did not seem to notice her, and continued to talk affably of the difficulty of finding lodgings in the town. even the shabby gentility of the room, which his presence made her realize more vividly than ever, did not appear to strike him. he examined with interest the patchwork cloth that covered the round table, looked complacently at the little green sofa with the two chairs to match, and said that he thought he would be comfortable. but when kate noticed how dusty was the pale yellow wall-paper, with its watery roses, she could not help feeling ashamed, and she wondered how so fine a gentleman as he could be so easily satisfied. then, plucking up courage, she showed him the little mahogany chiffonier which stood next the door, and told him that it was there she would keep whatever he might order in the way of drinks. mr. lennox walked nearer to the small looking-glass engarlanded with green paper cut into fringes, twirled a slight moustache many shades lighter than his hair, and admired his white teeth. the inspection of the drawing-room being over, they went up the second portion of the canister-like staircase, and after a turn and a stoop arrived at the bedroom. 'i'm sorry you should see the room like this,' kate said. 'i thought that my mother-in-law had got the room ready for you. i was obliged to sleep here last night; my husband--' 'i assure you i take no objection to the fact of your having slept here,' he replied gallantly. kate blushed, and an awkward silence followed. as mr. lennox looked round an expression of dissatisfaction passed over his face. it was a much poorer place than the drawing-room. religion and poverty went there hand-in-hand. a rickety iron bedstead covered with another patchwork quilt occupied the centre of the room, and there was a small chest of drawers in white wood placed near the fireplace--the smallest and narrowest in the world. upon the black painted chimney-piece a large red apple made a spot of colour. the carpet was in rags, and the lace blinds were torn, and hung like fishnets. mr. lennox apparently was not satisfied, but when his eyes fell upon kate it was clear that he thought that so pretty a woman might prove a compensation. but the pious exhortations hanging on the walls seemed to cause him a certain uneasiness. above the washstand there were two cards bearing the inscriptions, 'thou art my hope,' 'thou art my will'; and these declarations of faith were written within a painted garland of lilies and roses. 'i see that you're religious.' 'i'm afraid not so much as i should be, sir.' 'well, i don't know so much about that; the place is covered with bible texts.' 'those were put there by my mother-in-law. she is very good.' 'oh ah,' said mr. lennox, apparently much relieved by the explanation. 'old people are very pious, generally, aren't they? but this patchwork quilt is yours, i suppose?' 'yes, sir; i made it myself,' said kate, blushing. he made several attempts at conversation, but she did not respond, her whole mind being held up by the thought: 'is he going to take the rooms, i wonder?' at last he said: 'i like these apartments very well; and you say that i can have breakfast here?' 'oh, you can have anything you order, sir. i, or my mother, will--' 'very well, then; we may consider the matter settled. i'll tell them to send down my things from the theatre.' this seemed to conclude the affair, and they went downstairs. but mr. lennox stopped on the next landing, and without any apparent object re-examined the drawing-room. speaking like a man who wanted to start a conversation, he manifested interest in everything, and asked questions concerning the rattle of the sewing-machine, which could be heard distinctly; and before she could stop him he opened the door of the workroom. he wondered at all the brown-paper patterns that were hung on the walls, and miss hender, too eager to inform him, took advantage of the occasion to glide in a word to the effect that she was going to see him that evening at the theatre. kate was amused, but felt it was her duty to take the first opportunity of interrupting the conversation. for some unexplained reason mr. lennox seemed loath to go, and it was with difficulty he was got downstairs. even then he could not pass the kitchen door without stopping to speak to the apprentices. he asked them where they had found their brown hair and eyes, and attempted to exchange a remark with mrs. ede. kate thought the encounter unfortunate, but it passed off better than she expected. mrs. ede replied that the little girls were getting on very well, and, apparently satisfied with this answer, mr. lennox turned to go. his manner indicated his bohemian habits, for after all this waste of time he suddenly remembered that he had an appointment, and would probably miss it by about a quarter of an hour. 'will you require any dinner?' asked kate, following him to the door. at the mention of the word 'dinner' he again appeared to forget all about his appointment. his face changed its expression, and his manner again grew confidential. he asked all kinds of questions as to what she could get him to eat, but without ever quite deciding whether he would be able to find time to eat it. kate thought she had never seen such a man. at last in a fit of desperation, he said: 'i'll have a bit of cold steak. i haven't the time to dine, but if you'll put that out for me ... i like a bit of supper after the theatre--' kate wished to ask him what he would like to drink with it, but it was impossible to get an answer. he couldn't stop another minute, and, dodging the passers-by, he rushed rapidly down the street. she watched until the big shoulders were lost in the crowd, and asked herself if she liked the man who had just left her; but the answer slipped from her when she tried to define it, and with a sigh she turned into the shop and mechanically set straight those shirts that hung aslant on the traversing wires. at that moment mrs. ede came from the kitchen carrying a basin of soup for her sick son. she wanted to know why kate had stayed so long talking to that man. 'talking to him!' kate repeated, surprised at the words and suspicious of an implication of vanity. 'if we're going to take his money it's only right that we should try to make him comfortable.' 'i doubt if his ten shillings a week will bring us much good,' mrs. ede answered sourly; and she went upstairs, backbone and principles equally rigid, leaving kate to fume at what she termed her mother-in-law's unreasonableness. but kate had no time to indulge in many angry thoughts, for the tall gaunt woman returned with tears in her eyes to beg pardon. 'i'm so sorry, dear. did i speak crossly? i'll say no more about the actor, i'll promise.' 'i don't see why i should be bullied in my own house,' kate answered, feeling that she must assert herself. 'why shouldn't i let my rooms to mr. lennox if i like?' 'you're right,' mrs. ede replied--'i've said too much; but don't turn against me, kate.' 'no, no, mother; i don't turn against you. you're the only person i have to love.' at these words a look of pleasure passed over the hard, blunt features of the peasant woman, and she said with tears in her voice: 'you know i'm a bit hard with my tongue, but that's all; i don't mean it.' 'well, say no more, mother,' and kate went upstairs to her workroom. miss hender, already returned from dinner, was trembling with excitement, and she waited impatiently for the door to be shut that she might talk. she had been round to see her friend the stage carpenter, and he had told her all about the actor. mr. lennox was the boss; mr. hayes, the acting manager, was a nobody, generally pretty well boozed; and mr. cox, the london gent, didn't travel. kate listened, only half understanding what was said. 'and what part does he play in _madame angot_?' she asked as she bent her head to examine the bead trimmings she was stitching on to the sleeves. 'the low comedy part,' said miss hender; but seeing that kate did not understand, she hastened to explain that the low comedy parts meant the funny parts. 'he's the man who's lost his wig--la--la ravodée, i think they call it--and a very nice man he is. when i was talking to bill i could see mr. lennox between the wings; he had his arm round miss leslie's shoulder. i'm sure he's sweet on her.' kate looked up from her work and stared at miss hender slowly. the announcement that mr. lennox was the funny man was disappointing, but to hear that he was a woman's lover turned her against him. 'all those actors are alike. i see now that my mother-in-law was right. i shouldn't have let him my rooms.' 'one's always afraid of saying anything to you, ma'am; you twist one's words so. i'm sure i didn't mean to say there was any harm between him and miss leslie. there, perhaps you'll go and tell him that i spoke about him.' 'i'm sure i shall do nothing of the sort. mr. lennox has taken my rooms for a week, and there's an end of it. i'm not going to interfere in his private affairs.' the conversation then came to a pause, and all that was heard for a long time was the clicking of the needle and the rustling of silk. kate wondered how it was that mr. lennox was so different off the stage from what he was when on; and it seemed to her strange that such a nice gentleman--for she was obliged to admit that he was that--should choose to play the funny parts. as for his connection with miss leslie, that of course was none of her business. what did it matter to her? he was in love with whom he pleased. she'd have thought he was a man who would not easily fall in love; but perhaps miss leslie was very pretty, and, for the matter of that, they might be going to be married. meanwhile miss hender regretted having told kate anything about mr. lennox. the best and surest way was to let people find out things for themselves, and having an instinctive repugnance to virtue--at least, to questions of conscience--she could not abide whining about spilt milk. beyond an occasional reference to their work, the women did not speak again, until at three o'clock mrs. ede announced that dinner was ready. there was not much to eat, however, and kate had little appetite, and she was glad when the meal was finished. she had then to help mrs. ede in getting the rooms ready, and when this was done it was time for tea. but not even this meal did they get in comfort, for mr. lennox had ordered a beefsteak for supper; somebody would have to go to fetch it. mrs. ede said she would, and kate went into the shop to attend to the few customers who might call in the course of the evening. the last remarkable event in this day of events was the departure of miss hender, who came downstairs saying she had only just allowed herself time to hurry to the theatre; she feared she wouldn't be there before the curtain went up, and she was sorry kate wasn't coming, but she would tell her to-morrow all about mr. lennox, and how the piece went. as kate bade her assistant good-night a few customers dropped in, all of whom gave a great deal of trouble. she had to pull down a number of packages to find what was wanted. then her next-door neighbour, the stationer's wife, called to ask after mr. ede and to buy a reel of cotton; and so, in evening chat, the time passed, until the fruiterer's boy came to ask if he should put up the shutters. kate nodded, and remarked to her friend, who had risen to go, what a nice, kind man mr. jones was. 'yes, indeed, they are very kind people, but their prices are very high. do you deal with them?' kate replied that she did; and, as the fruiterer's boy put up the shutters with a series of bangs, she tried to persuade her neighbour to buy a certain gown she had been long talking of. 'trimming and everything, it won't cost you more than thirty shillings; you'll want something fresh now that summer's coming on.' 'so i shall. i'll speak to my man about it to-night. i think he'll let me have it.' 'he won't refuse you if you press him.' 'well, we shall see,' and bidding kate good-night she passed into the street. the evening was fine, and kate stood for a long while watching the people surging out of the potteries towards piccadilly. 'coming out,' she said, 'for their evening walk,' and she was glad that the evening was fine. 'after a long day in the potteries they want some fresh air,' and then, raising her eyes from the streets, she watched the sunset die out of the west; purple and yellow streaks still outlined the grey expanse of the hills, making the brick town look like a little toy. an ugly little brick town--brick of all colours: the pale reddish-brown of decaying brick-yards, the fierce red brick of the newly built warehouses that turns to purple, and above the walls scarlet tiled roofs pointing sharp angles to a few stars. kate stood watching the fading of the hills into night clouds, interested in her thoughts vaguely--her thoughts adrift and faded somewhat as the spectacle before her. she wondered if her lodger would be satisfied with her mother's cooking; she hoped so. he was a well-spoken man, but she could not hope to change mother. as the image of the lodger floated out of her mind hender's came into it, and she hoped the girl would not get into trouble. so many poor girls are in trouble; how many in the crowd passing before her door? the difficulty she was in with mrs. barnes's dress suggested itself, and with a shiver and a sigh she shut the street-door and went upstairs. the day had passed; it was gone like a hundred days before it--wearily, perhaps, yet leaving in the mind an impression of something done, of duties honestly accomplished. iii 'oh, ma'am!' hender broke in, 'you can't think how amusing it was last night! i never enjoyed myself so much in my life. the place was crammed! such a house! and miss leslie got three encores and a call after each act.' 'and what was mr. lennox like?' 'oh, he only played a small part--one of the policemen. he don't play pom-poucet; i was wrong. it's too heavy a part, and he's too busy looking after the piece. but joe mortimer was splendid; i nearly died of laughing when he fell down and lost his wig in the middle of the stage. and frank bret looked such a swell, and he got an encore for the song, "oh, certainly i love clairette." and he and miss leslie got another for the duet. to-morrow they play the _cloches_.' 'but now you've seen so much of the theatre i hope you'll be able to do a little overtime with me. i've promised to let mrs. barnes have her dress by to-morrow morning.' 'i'm afraid i shan't be able to stay after six o'clock.' 'but surely if they're doing the same play you don't want to see it again?' 'well 'tisn't exactly that, but--well, i prefer to tell you the truth; 'tisn't the piece i go to the theatre for; i'm one of the dressers, and i get twelve shillings a week, and i can't afford to lose it. but there's no use in telling mrs. ede, she'd only make a bother.' 'how do you mean, dressing?' 'the ladies of the theatre must have someone to dress them, and i look after the principals, miss leslie and miss beaumont, that's all.' 'and how long have you been doing that?' 'why, about a month now. bill got me the place.' this conversation had broken in upon a silence of nearly half an hour; with bent heads and clicking needles, kate and hender had been working assiduously at mrs. barnes's skirt. having a great deal of _passementerie_ ornamentation to sew on to the heading of the flounces, and much fringe to arrange round the edge of the drapery, kate looked forward to a heavy day. she had expected miss hender an hour earlier, and she had not turned up until after nine. an assistant whose time was so occupied that she couldn't give an extra hour when you were in a difficulty was of very little use; and it might be as well to look out for somebody more suitable. besides, all this talk about theatres and actors was very wrong; there could be little doubt that the girl was losing her character, and to have her coming about the house would give it a bad name. such were kate's reflections as she handled the rustling silk and folded it into large plaitings. now and again she tried to come to a decision, but she was not sincere with herself. she knew she liked the girl, and hender's conversation amused her: to send her away meant to surrender herself completely to her mother-in-law's stern kindness and her husband's irritability. hender was the window through which kate viewed the bustle and animation of life, and even now, annoyed as she was that she would not be able to get the dress done in time, she could not refrain from listening to the girl's chatter. there was about miss hender that strange charm which material natures possess even when they offend. being of the flesh, we must sympathize with it, and the amiability of hender's spirits made a great deal pass that would have otherwise appeared wicked. she could tell without appearing too rude, how mr. wentworth, the lessee, was gone on a certain lady in the new company, and would give her anything if she would chuck up her engagement and come and live with him. when hender told these stories, kate, fearing that mrs. ede might have overheard, looked anxiously at the door, and under the influence of the emotion, it interested her to warn her assistant of the perils of frequenting bad company. but as kate lectured she could not help wondering how it was that her life passed by so wearily. was she never going to do anything else but work? she often asked herself, and then reproached herself for the regret that had risen unwittingly up in her mind that life was not all pleasure. it certainly was not, 'but perhaps it is better,' she said to herself, 'that we have to get our living, for me at least'--her thoughts broke off sharply, and she passed out of the present into a long past time. kate had never known her father; her mother, an earnest believer in wesley, was a hard-working woman who made a pound a week by painting on china. this was sufficient for their wants, and mrs. howell's only fears were that she might lose her health and die before her time, leaving her daughter in want. to avoid this fate she worked early and late at the factory, and kate was left in the charge of the landlady, a childless old woman who, sitting by the fire, used to tell stories of her deceptions and misfortunes in life, thereby intoxicating the little girl's brain with sentiment. the mother's influence was a sort of make-weight; mrs. howell was a deeply religious woman, and kate was often moved to trace back a large part of herself to bible-readings and extemporary prayers offered up by the bedside in the evening. her school-days were unimportant. she learnt to read and write and to do sums; that was all. kate grew, softly and mystically as a dark damask rose, into a pretty woman without conversions or passions: for notwithstanding her early training, religion had never taken a very firm hold upon her, and despite the fact that she married into a family very similar to her own, although her mother-in-law was almost a counterpart of her real mother--a little harder and more resolute, but as god-fearing and as kind--kate had caught no blast of religious fervour; religion taught her nothing, inspired her with nothing, could influence her in little. she was not strong nor great, nor was she conscious of any deep feeling that if she acted otherwise than she did she would be living an unworthy life. she was merely good because she was a kind-hearted woman, without bad impulses, and admirably suited to the life she was leading. but in this commonplace inactivity of mind there was one strong characteristic, one bit of colour in all these grey tints: kate was dreamy, not to say imaginative. when she was a mere child she loved fairies, and took a vivid interest in goblins; and when afterwards she discarded these stories for others, it was not because it shocked her logical sense to read of a beanstalk a hundred feet high, but for a tenderer reason: jack did not find a beautiful lady to love him. she could not help feeling disappointed, and when the _london journal_ came for the first time across her way, with the story of a broken heart, her own heart melted with sympathy; the more sentimental and unnatural the romance, the more it fevered and enraptured her. she loved to read of singular subterranean combats, of high castles, prisoners, hair-breadth escapes; and her sympathies were always with the fugitives. it was also very delightful to hear of lovers who were true to each other in spite of a dozen wicked uncles, of women who were tempted until their hearts died within them, and who years after threw up their hands and said, 'thank god that i had the courage to resist!' the second period of her sentimental education was when she passed from the authors who deal exclusively with knights, princesses, and kings to those who interest themselves in the love fortunes of doctors and curates. amid these there was one story that interested her in particular, and caused her deeper emotions than the others. it concerned a beautiful young woman with a lovely oval face, who was married to a very tiresome country doctor. this lady was in the habit of reading byron and shelley in a rich, sweet-scented meadow, down by the river, which flowed dreamily through smiling pasture-lands adorned by spreading trees. but this meadow belonged to a squire, a young man with grand, broad shoulders, who day after day used to watch these readings by the river without venturing to address a word to the fair trespasser. one day, however, he was startled by a shriek: in her poetical dreamings the lady had slipped into the water. a moment sufficed to tear off his coat, and as he swam like a water-dog he had no difficulty in rescuing her. of course after this adventure he had to call and inquire, and from henceforth his visits grew more and more frequent, and by a strange coincidence, he used to come riding up to the hall-door when the husband was away curing the ills of the country-folk. hours were passed under the trees by the river, he pleading his cause, and she refusing to leave poor arthur, till at last the squire gave up the pursuit and went to foreign parts, where he waited thirty years, until he heard arthur was dead. and then he came back with a light heart to his first and only love, who had never ceased to think of him, and lived with her happily for ever afterwards. the grotesque mixture of prose and poetry, both equally false, used to enchant kate, and she always fancied that had she been the heroine of the book she would have acted in the same way. kate's taste for novel-reading distressed mrs. howell; she thought it 'a sinful waste of time, not to speak of the way it turned people's heads from god'; and when one day she found kate's scrap-book, made up of poems cut from the _family herald_, she began to despair of her daughter's salvation. the answer kate made to her mother's reproaches was: 'mother, i've been sewing all day; i can't see what harm it can be to read a little before i go to bed. nobody is required to be always saying their prayers.' the next two years passed away unperceived by either mother or daughter, and then an event occurred of some importance. their neighbours at the corner of the street got into difficulties, and were eventually sold out and their places taken by strangers, who changed the oil-shop into a drapery business. the new arrivals aroused the keenest interest, and mrs. howell and her daughter called to see what they were like, as did everybody else. the acquaintance thus formed was renewed at church, and much to their surprise and pleasure, they discovered that they were of the same religious persuasion. henceforth the howells and edes saw a great deal of each other, and every sunday after church the mothers walked home together and the young people followed behind. ralph spoke of his ill-health, and kate pitied him, and when he complimented her on her beautiful hair she blushed with pleasure. for much as she had revelled in fictitious sentiment, she had somehow never thought of seeking it in nature, and how that she had found a lover, the critical sense was not strong enough in her to lead her to compare reality with imagination. she accepted ralph as unsuspectingly as she hitherto accepted the tawdry poetry of her favourite fiction. and her nature not being a passionate one, she was able to do this without any apparent transition of sentiment. she pitied him, hoped she could be of use in nursing him, and felt flattered at the idea of being mistress of a shop. the mothers were delighted, and spoke of the coincidence of their religions and the admirable addition dressmaking would be to the drapery business. of love, small mention was made. the bridegroom spoke of his prospects of improving the business, the bride listened, interested for the while in his enthusiasm; orders came in, and kate was soon transformed into a hard-working woman. this change of character passed unperceived by all but mrs. howell, who died wondering how it came about. kate herself did not know; she fancied that it was fully accounted for by the fact that she had no time--'no time for reading now'--which was no more than the truth; but she did not complain; she accepted her husband's kisses as she did the toil he imposed on her--meekly, unaffectedly, as a matter of course, as if she always knew that the romances which used to fascinate her were merely idle dreams, having no bearing upon the daily life of human beings--things fit to amuse a young girl's fancies, and to be thrown aside when the realities of life were entered upon. the only analogy between the past and present was an ample submission to authority and an indifference to the world and its interest. even the fact of being without children did not seem to concern her, and when her mother-in-law regretted it she merely smiled languidly, or said, 'we are very well as we are.' of the world and the flesh she lived almost in ignorance, suspecting their existence only through miss hender. hender was attracted by her employer's kindness and softness of manner, and kate by her assistant's strength of will. for some months past a friendship had been growing up between the two women, but if kate had known for certain that hender was living a life of sin with the stage carpenter she might not have allowed her into the house. but the possibility of sin attached her to the girl in the sense that it forced her to think of her continually. and then there was a certain air of bravado in miss hender's freckled face that kate admired. she instituted comparisons between herself and the assistant, and she came to the conclusion that she preferred that fair, blonde complexion to her own clear olive skin; and the sparkle of the red frizzy hair put her out of humour with the thick, wavy blue tresses which encircled her small temples like a piece of black velvet. as she continued her sewing she reconsidered the question of hender's dismissal, but only to perceive more and more clearly the blank it would occasion in her life. and besides her personal feeling there was the fact to consider that to satisfy her customers she must have an assistant who could be depended upon. and she did not know where she would find another who would turn out work equal to hender's. at last kate said: 'i don't know what i shall do; i promised the dress by to-morrow morning.' 'i think we'll be able to finish it to-day,' hender answered. 'i'll work hard at it all the afternoon; a lot can be done between this and seven o'clock.' 'oh, i don't know,' replied kate dolefully; 'these leaves take such a time to sew on; and then there's all the festooning.' 'i think it can be managed, but we must stick at it.' on this expression of good-will the conversation ceased for the time being, and the clicking of needles and the buzzing of flies about the brown-paper patterns were all that was heard until twelve o'clock, when mrs. ede burst into the room. 'i knew what it would be,' she said, shutting the door after her. 'what is it?' said kate, looking up frightened. 'well, i offered to do him a chop or some fried eggs, but he says he must have an omelette. did you ever hear of such a thing? i told him i didn't know how to make one, but he said that i was to ask you if you could spare the time.' 'i'll make him an omelette,' said kate, rising. 'have you got the eggs?' 'yes. the trouble that man gives us! what with his bath in the morning, and two pairs of boots to be cleaned, and the clothes that have to be brushed, i've done nothing but attend to him since ten o'clock; and what hours to keep!--it is now past eleven.' 'what's the use of grumbling? you know the work must be done, and i can't be in two places at once. you promised me you wouldn't say anything more about it, but would attend to him just the same as any other lodger.' 'i can't do more than i'm doing; i haven't done anything all the morning but run upstairs,' said mrs. ede very crossly; 'and i wish you'd take the little girls out of the kitchen; i can't look after them, and they do nothing but look out of the window.' 'very well, i'll have them up here; they can sit on the sofa. we can manage with them now that we've finished the cutting out.' hender made no reply to this speech, which was addressed to her. she hated having the little girls up in the workroom, and kate knew it. kate did not take long to make mr. lennox's omelette. there was a bright fire in the kitchen, the muffins were toasted, and the tea was made. 'this is a very small breakfast,' she said as she put the plates and dishes on the tray. 'didn't he order anything else?' 'he spoke about some fried bacon, but i'll attend to that; you take the other things up to him.' as kate passed with the tray in her hand she reproved the little girls for their idleness and told them to come upstairs, but it was not until she motioned them into the workroom that she realized that she was going into mr. lennox's room. after a slight pause she turned the handle of the door and entered. mr. lennox was lying very negligently in the armchair, wrapped in his dressing-gown. 'oh, i beg your pardon, sir; i didn't know--' she said, starting back. then, blushing for shame at her own silliness in taking notice of such things, she laid the breakfast things on the table. mr. lennox thanked her, and without seeming to notice her discomfiture he wrapped himself up more closely, drew his chair forward, and, smacking his lips, took the cover off the dish. 'oh, very nice indeed,' he said, 'but i'm afraid i've given you a great deal of trouble; the old lady said you were very, very busy.' 'i've to finish a dress to-day, sir, and my assistant--' here kate stopped, remembering that if mr. lennox had renewed his acquaintance with hender at the theatre, any allusion to her would give rise to further conversation. 'oh yes, i know miss hender; she's one of our dressers; she looks after our two leading ladies, miss leslie and miss beaumont. but i don't see the bacon here.' 'mrs. ede is cooking it; she'll bring it up in a minute or two,' kate answered, edging towards the door. 'we've nothing to do with the dressers,' said mr. lennox, speaking rapidly, so as to detain his landlady; 'but if you're as pressed with your work as you tell me, i dare say, by speaking to the lessee, i might manage to get miss hender off for this one evening.' 'thank you, sir; i'm sure it's very kind of you, but i shall be able to manage without that.' the lodger spoke with such an obvious desire to oblige that kate could not choose but like him, and it made her wish all the more that he would cover up his big, bare neck. ''pon my word, this is a capital omelette,' he said, licking his lips, 'there is nothing i like so much as a good omelette, i was very lucky to come here,' he added, glancing at kate's waist, which was slim even in her old blue striped dress. 'it's very kind of you to say so, sir,' she said, and a glow of rose-colour flushed the dark complexion. there was something very human in this big man, and kate did not know whether his animalism irritated or pleased her. 'you weren't at the theatre last night?' he said, forcing a huge piece of deeply buttered, spongy french roll into his mouth. 'no, sir, i wasn't there; i rarely go to the theatre.' 'ah! i'm sorry. how's that? we had a tremendous house. i never saw the piece go better. if this business keeps up to the end of the week i think we shall try to get another date.' kate did not know what 'another date' meant, but hender would be able to tell her. 'you've only to tell me when you want to see the piece, and i'll give you places. would you like to come to-night?' 'not to-night, thank you, sir. i shall be busy all the evening, and my husband is not very well.' the conversation then came to an irritating pause. mr. lennox had scraped up the last fragments of the omelette, and poured himself out another cup of tea, when mrs. ede appeared with the broiled bacon. on seeing kate talking to mr. lennox, she at once assumed an air of mingled surprise and regret. kate noticed this, but mr. lennox had no eyes for anything but the bacon, which he heaped on his plate and devoured voraciously. it pleased kate to see him enjoy his breakfast, but while she was admiring him mrs. ede said as she moved towards the door, 'can i do anything for you, sir?' 'well, no,' replied mr. lennox indifferently; but seeing that kate was going too he swallowed a mouthful of tea hastily and said, 'i was just telling the lady here that we had a tremendous success last night, and that she ought to come and see the piece. i think she said she had no one to go with. you should take her. i'm sure you will like the _cloches_.' mrs. ede looked indignant, but after a moment she recovered herself, and said severely and emphatically: 'thank you, sir, but i'm a christian woman. no offence, sir, but i don't think such things are right.' 'ah! don't you, indeed?' replied the mummer, looking at her in blank astonishment. but the expression of his face soon changed, and as if struck suddenly by some painful remembrance, he said, 'you're a dissenter or something of that kind, i suppose. we lost a lot of money at bradford through people of your persuasion; they jolly well preached against us.' mrs. ede did not answer, and after a few brief apologetic phrases to the effect that it would not do for us all to think alike, kate withdrew to her work-room, asking herself if mr. lennox would take offence and leave them. hender suspected that something had occurred, and was curious to hear what it was; but there sat those idiotic little girls, and of course it wouldn't do to speak before them. once she hinted that she had heard that mr. lennox, though a very nice man, was a bit quick-tempered, a query that kate answered evasively, saying that it was difficult to know what mr. lennox was like. words were an effort to her, and she could not detach a single precise thought from the leaden-coloured dreams which hung about her. click, click, went the needles all day long, and kate wondered what a woman who lived in a thirty-pound house could want with a ten-pound dress. but that was no affair of hers, and as it was most important she should not disappoint her, kate kept hender to dinner; and as compensation for the press of work, she sent round to the public for three extra half-pints. they needed a drink, for the warmth of the day was intense. along the red tiles of the houses, amid the brick courtyards, the sun's rays created an oven-like atmosphere. from the high wall opposite the dead glare poured into the little front kitchen through the muslin blinds, burning the pot of green-stuff, and falling in large spots upon the tiled floor; and overcome by the heat, the two women lay back on the little red calico-covered sofa, languidly sipping their beer, and thinking vaguely of when they would have to begin work again. hender lolled with her legs stretched out; kate rested her head upon her hand wearily; mrs. ede sat straight, apparently unheeding the sunlight which fell across the plaid shawl that she wore winter and summer. she drank her beer in quick gulps, as if even the time for swallowing was rigidly portioned out. the others watched her, knowing that when her pewter was empty she would turn them out of the kitchen. in a few moments she said, 'i think, kate, that if you're in a hurry you'd better get on with your dress. i have to see to mr. lennox's dinner, and i can't have you a-hanging about. as it is, i don't know how i'm to get the work done. there's a leg of mutton to be roasted, and a pudding to be made, and all by four o'clock.' kate calmed the old woman with a few words, and taking ralph's dinner from her, carried it upstairs. she found her husband better, and, setting the tray on the edge of the bed, she answered the questions he put to her concerning the actor briefly; then begged of him to excuse her, as she heard voices in the shop. mr. lennox had come in bringing two men with him, joe mortimer, the low comedian, and young montgomery, the conductor; and it became difficult to prevent hender from listening at the doors, and almost useless to remind her of the fact that there were children present, so excited did she become when she spoke of bret's love affairs. but at six o'clock she put on her hat, and there was no dissuading her; mrs. barnes must wait for her dress. there was still much to be done, and when mrs. ede called from the kitchen that tea was ready, kate did not at first answer, and when at last she descended she remained only long enough to eat a piece of bread and butter. her head was filled with grave forebodings, that gradually drifted and concentrated into one fixed idea--not to disappoint mrs. barnes. once quite suddenly, she was startled by an idea which flashed across her mind, and stopping in the middle of a 'leaf,' she considered the question that had propounded itself. lodgers often make love to their landladies; what would she do if mr. lennox made love to her? such a thing might occur. an expression of annoyance contracted her face, and she resumed her sewing. the hours passed slowly and oppressively. it was now ten o'clock, and the tail had still to be bound with braid, and the side strings to be sewn in. she had no tape by her, and thought of putting off these finishing touches till the morning, but plucking up her courage, she determined to go down and fetch from the shop what was required. the walk did her good, but it was hard to sit down to work again; and the next few minutes seemed to her interminable: but at last the final stitch was given, the thread bitten off, and the dress held up in triumph. she looked at it for a moment with a feeling of pride, which soon faded into a sensation of indifference. all the same her day's labour was over; she was now free. but the thought carried a bitterness: she remembered that there was no place for her to go to but her sick husband's room. yet she had been looking forward to having at least one night's rest, and it exasperated her to think that there was nothing for her but a hard pallet in the back room, and the certainty of being awakened several times to attend to ralph. she asked herself passionately if she was always going to remain a slave and a drudge? hender's words came back to her with a strange distinctness, and she saw that she knew nothing of pleasure, or even of happiness; and in a very simple way she wondered what were really the ends of life. if she were good and religious like her mother or her mother-in-law--but somehow she could never feel as they did. heaven seemed so far away. of course it was a consolation to think there was a happier and better world; still--still--not being able to pursue the thread any further, she stopped, puzzled, and a few moments after she was thinking of the lady who used to read byron and shelley, and who resisted her lover's entreaties so bravely. every part of the forgotten story came back to her. she realized the place they used to dream in. she could see them watching with ardent eyes the paling of the distant sky as they listened to the humming of insects, breathing the honied odour of the flowers; she saw her leaning on his arm caressingly, whilst pensively she tore with the other hand the leaves as they passed up the long terrace. then as the vision became more personal and she identified herself with the heroine of the book, she thought of the wealth of love she had to give, and it seemed to her unutterably sad that it should bloom like a rose in a desert unknown and unappreciated. this was the last flight of her dream. the frail wings of her imagination could sustain her no longer, and too weary to care for or even to think of anything, she went upstairs, to find mrs. ede painting her son's chest and back with iodine. he had a bad attack, which was beginning to subside. his face was haggard, his eyes turgid, and the two women talked together. mrs. ede was indignant, and told of all her trouble with the dinner. she had to fetch cigars and drinks. kate listened, watching her husband all the while. he began to get a little better, and mrs. ede took advantage of the occasion to suggest that it was time for evening prayers. in days when speech was possible, it was ralph who read the customary chapter of the bible and led the way with the lord's prayer; but when words were forbidden to him his mother supplied his place. the tall figure knelt upright. it was not a movement of cringing humility, but of stalwart belief, and as she handed her the bible, kate could not help thinking that there was pride in her mother-in-law's very knees. the old woman turned over the leaves for a few seconds in silence; then, having determined on a chapter, she began to read. but she had not got beyond a few sentences before she was interrupted by the sound of laughing voices and stamping feet. she stopped reading, and looked from kate to her husband. he was at the moment searching for his pocket-handkerchief. kate rose to assist him, and mrs. ede said: 'it's shameful! it's disgraceful!' 'it's only mr. lennox coming in.' 'only mr. lennox!' at that moment she was interrupted by the lighter laughter of female voices; she paused to listen, and then, shutting the book fiercely, she said, 'from the first i was against letting our rooms to a mummer; but i didn't think i should live to see my son's house turned into a night house. i shall not stop here.' 'not stop here--eh, eh? we must tell--tell him that it can't be allowed,' ralph wheezed. 'and i should like to know who these women are he has dared to bring into-- people he has met in piccadilly, i suppose!' 'oh no!' interrupted kate, 'i'm sure that they are the ladies of the theatre.' 'and where's the difference?' mrs. ede asked fiercely. sectarian hatred of worldly amusement flamed in her eyes, and made common cause with the ordinary prejudice of the british landlady. mr. ede shared his mother's opinions, but as he was then suffering from a splitting headache, his chief desire was that she should lower the tone of her voice. 'for goodness' sake don't speak so loud!' he said plaintively. 'of course he mustn't bring women into the house; but he had better be told so. kate, go down and tell him that these ladies must leave.' kate stood aghast at hearing her fate thus determined, and she asked herself how she was to tell mr. lennox that he must put his friends out of doors. she hesitated, and during a long silence all three listened. a great guffaw, a woman's shriek, a peal of laughter, and then a clinking of glasses was heard. even kate's face told that she thought it very improper, and mrs. ede said with a theatrical air of suppressed passion: 'very well; i suppose that is all that can be done at present.' feeling very helpless, kate murmured, 'i don't see how i'm to tell them to go. hadn't we better put it off until morning?' 'till morning!' said mr. ede, trying to button his dirty nightshirt across his hairy chest. 'i'm not going to listen to that noise all night. kate, you g-go and tur-r-rn them out.' 'i'm sorry, dearie,' said mrs. ede, seeing her daughter-in-law's distress. 'i'll soon send them away.' 'oh no! i'd rather go myself,' said kate. 'very well, dear. i only thought you might not like to go down among a lot of rough people.' the noise downstairs was in the meanwhile increasing, and ralph grew as angry as his asthma would allow him. 'they're just killing me with their noise. go down at once and tell them they must leave the house instantly. if you don't i'll go myself.' mrs. ede made a movement towards the door, but kate stopped her, saying: 'i'll go; it's my place.' as she descended the stairs she heard a man's voice screaming above the general hubbub: 'i'll tell you what; if miss beaumont doesn't wait for my beat another night, i'll insist on a rehearsal being called. she took the concerted music in the finale of the first act two whole bars before her time. it was damned awful. i nearly broke my stick trying to stop her.' 'quite true; i never saw the piece go so badly. bret was "fluffing" all over the shop.' kate listened to these fragments of conversation, asked herself how she was to walk in upon those people and tell them that they must keep quiet. 'and the way beaumont tries to spoon with dick. she nearly missed her cue once with sneaking after him in the wings.' a peal of laughter followed. this sally determined kate to act; and without having made up her mind what to say, she turned the handle of the door and walked into the room. the three gas-burners were blazing, wine-glasses were on the table, and mr. lennox stood twisting a corkscrew into a bottle which he held between his fat thighs. on the little green sofa miss lucy leslie lay back playing with her bonnet-strings. her legs were crossed, and a lifted skirt showed a bit of striped stocking. next her, with his spare legs sprawled over the arm of the easy-chair, was mr. montgomery, the thinnest being possible to imagine, in grey clothes. his nose was enormous, and he pushed up his glasses when kate came into the room with a movement of the left hand that was clearly habitual. on the other side of the round table sat mr. joe mortimer, the heavy lead, the celebrated miser in the _cloches_. a tall girl standing behind him playfully twisted his back hair. he addressed paternal admonitions to her from time to time in an artificially cracked voice. 'please, sir,' said kate pleadingly, 'i'm very sorry, but we cannot keep open house after eleven o'clock.' a deep silence followed this announcement. miss leslie looked up at kate curiously. mr. lennox stopped twisting the corkscrew into the bottle, and the low comedian, seizing the opportunity, murmured in his mechanical voice to the girl behind him, 'open house! of course, she's quite right. i knew there was a draught somewhere; i felt my hair blowing about.' everybody laughed, and the merriment still contributed to discountenance the workwoman. 'will he never speak and let me go?' she asked herself. at last he did speak, and his words fell upon her like blows. 'i don't know what you mean, mrs. ede,' he said in a loud, commanding voice. 'i made no agreement with you that i wasn't to bring friends home with me in the evening. had i known that i was taking lodgings in a church i wouldn't have come.' she felt dreadfully humiliated, and nothing was really present in her mind but a desire to conciliate mr. lennox. 'it isn't my fault, sir. i really don't mind; but my mother-in-law and my husband won't have people coming into the house after ten o'clock.' mr. lennox's face showed that his heart had softened towards her, and when she mentioned that her husband was lying ill in bed, turning round to his company, he said: 'i think we are making too much noise; we shouldn't like it ourselves if--' but just at that moment, when all was about to end pleasantly, mrs. ede was heard at the top of the stairs. 'i'm a christian woman, and will not remain in a house where drinking and women--' this speech changed everything. mr. lennox's eyes flashed passion, and he made a movement as if he were going to shout an answer back to mrs. ede, but checking himself, he said, addressing kate, 'i beg that you leave my rooms, ma'am. you can give me warning in the morning if you like, or rather, i'll give it to you; but for this evening, at least, the place is mine, and i shall do what i like.' on that he advanced towards the door and threw it open. tears stood in her eyes. she looked sorrowfully at mr. lennox. he noticed the pitiful, appealing glance, but was too angry to understand. the look was her whole soul. she did not see miss leslie sneering, nor mr. montgomery's grinning face. she saw nothing but mr. lennox, and, stunned by the thought of his leaving them, she followed her mother-in-law upstairs. the old woman scolded and rowed. to have that lot of men and women smoking and drinking after eleven o'clock in the house was not to be thought of, and she tried to force her son to say that the police must be sent for. but it was impossible to get an answer from him: the excitement and effort of speaking had rendered him speechless, and holding his moppy black hair with both hands, he wheezed in deep organ tones. kate looked at him blankly, and longed for some place out of hearing of his breath and out of the smell of the medicine-bottles. his mother was now insisting on his taking a couple of pills, and called upon kate to find the box. the sharp, sickly odour of the aloes was abominable, and with her stomach turning, she watched her husband trying vainly to swallow the dose with the aid of a glass of water. stop in this room! no, that she couldn't do! it would poison her. she wanted sleep and fresh air. where could she get them? the mummer was in the spare room; but he would be gone to-morrow, and she would be left alone. the thought startled her, though she soon forgot it in her longing to get out of her husband's sight. every moment this desire grew stronger, and at last she said: 'i cannot stay here; another night would kill me. will you let me have your room?' 'certainly i will, my dear,' replied the old woman, astonished not so much at the request, but at the vehemence of the emphasis laid upon the words. 'you're looking dreadfully worn out, my dear; i'll see to my boy.' as soon as her request had been granted, kate hesitated as if she feared she was doing wrong, and she looked at her husband, wondering if he would call her back. but he took no heed; his attention was too entirely occupied by his breath to think either of her or of the necessity of sending for the police, and he waved his mother away when she attempted to speak to him. 'are those men going to stop there all night?' mrs. ede asked. 'oh, i really don't know; i'm too tired to bother about it any more,' replied kate petulantly. 'it's all your fault--you're to blame for everything; you've no right to interfere with the lodgers in my house.' mrs. ede raised her arms as she sought for words, but kate walked out of the room without giving her time to answer. suddenly a voice cried in a high key: 'who do you take me for, dick? i wasn't born yesterday. a devilish pretty woman, if you ask me. what hair!--like velvet!' kate stopped. 'black hair,' she said to herself--'they must be talking of me,' and she listened intently. the remark, however, did not appear to have been particularly well-timed, for after a long silence, a woman's voice said: 'well, i don't know whether he liked her, and i don't care, but what i'm not going to do is to wait here listening to you all cracking up a landlady's good looks. i'm off.' a scuffle then seemed to be taking place; half a dozen voices spoke together, and in terror of her life kate flew across the workroom to mrs. ede's bed. the door of the sitting-room was flung open and cajoling and protesting words echoed along the passage up and down the staircase. it was disgraceful, and kate expected every minute to hear her mother-in-law's voice mingling in the fray; but peace was restored, and for at least an hour she listened to sounds of laughing voices mingling with the clinking of glasses. at last dick wished his friends good-night, and kate lay under the sheets and listened. something was going to happen. 'he thinks me a pretty woman; she is jealous,' were phrases that rang without ceasing in her ears. then, hearing his door open, she fancied he was coming to seek her, and in consternation buried herself under the bedclothes, leaving only her black hair over the pillows to show where she had disappeared. but the duplicate drop of a pair of boots was conclusive, and assuring herself that he would not venture on such a liberty, she strove to compose herself to sleep. iv next day, about eleven o'clock, kate walked up market street with mrs. barnes's dress, meditating on the letter she had received. a very serious matter this angry letter was to kate, and she thought of what she could say to satisfy her customer. her anxiety of mind caused her to walk faster than she was aware of, up the hill towards the square of sky where the passers-by seemed like figures on the top of a monument. at the top of the hill she would turn to the left and descend towards the little quasi-villa residences which form the suburbs of northwood. ten minutes later kate approached mrs. barnes's door hot and out of breath, her plans matured, determined, if the worst came to the worst, to let the dress go at a reduction. her present difficulty was so great that she forgot other troubles, and it was not until she had received her money that she remembered mr. lennox. he was going. her rooms would be empty again. she was sorry he was going, and at the top of market street she stood at gaze, surprised by the view, though she had never seen any other. a long black valley lay between her and the dim hills far away, miles and miles in length, with tanks of water glittering like blades of steel, and gigantic smoke clouds rolling over the stems of a thousand factory chimneys. she had not come up this hillside at the top of market street for a long while; for many years she had not stood there and gazed at the view, not since she was a little girl, and the memories that she cherished in her workroom between hanley and the wever hills were quite different from the scene she was now looking upon. she saw the valley with different eyes: she saw it now with a woman's eyes; before she had seen it with a child's eyes. she remembered the ruined collieries and the black cinder-heaps protruding through the hillside on which she was now standing. in childhood, these ruins were convenient places to play hide-and-seek in. but now they seemed to convey a meaning to her mind, a meaning that was not very clear, that perplexed her, that she tried to put aside and yet could not. at her left, some fifty feet below, running in the shape of a fan, round a belt of green, were the roofs of northwood--black brick unrelieved except by the yellow chimney-pots, specks of colour upon a line of soft cotton-like clouds melting into grey, the grey passing into blue, and the blue spaces widening. 'it will be a hot day,' she said to herself, and fell to thinking that a hot day was hotter on this hillside than elsewhere. at every moment the light grew more and more intense, till a distant church spire faded almost out of sight, and she was glad she had come up here to admire the view from the top of market street. southwark, on the right, as black as northwood, toppled into the valley in irregular lines, the jaded houses seeming in kate's fancy like cart-loads of gigantic pill-boxes cast in a hurry from the counter along the floor. it amused her to stand gazing, contrasting the reality with her memories. it seemed to her that southwark had never before been so plain to the eye. she could follow the lines of the pavement and almost distinguish the men from the women passing. a hansom appeared and disappeared, the white horse seen now against the green blinds of a semi-detached villa and shown a moment after against the yellow rotundities of a group of pottery ovens. the sun was now rapidly approaching the meridian, and in the vibrating light the wheels of the most distant collieries could almost be counted, and the stems of the far-off factory chimneys appeared like tiny fingers. kate saw with the eyes and heard with the ears of her youth, and the past became as clear as the landscape before her. she remembered the days when she came to read on this hillside. the titles of the books rose up in her mind, and she could recall the sorrow she felt for the heroes and heroines. it seemed to her strange that that time was so long past and she wondered why she had forgotten it. now it all seemed so near to her that she felt like one only just awakened from a dream. and these memories made her happy. she took pleasure in recalling every little event--an excursion she made when she was quite a little girl to the ruined colliery, and later on, a conversation with a chance acquaintance, a young man who had stopped to speak to her. at the bottom of the valley, right before her eyes, the white gables of bucknell rectory, hidden amid masses of trees, glittered now and then in an entangled beam that flickered between chimneys, across brick-banked squares of water darkened by brick walls. behind bucknell were more desolate plains full of pits, brick, and smoke; and beyond bucknell an endless tide of hills rolled upwards and onwards. the american tariff had not yet come into operation, and every wheel was turning, every oven baking; and through a drifting veil of smoke the sloping sides of the hills with all their fields could be seen sleeping under great shadows, or basking in the light. a deluge of rays fell upon them, defining every angle of watley rocks and floating over the grasslands of standon, all shape becoming lost in a huge embrasure filled with the almost imperceptible outlines of the wever hills. and these vast slopes which formed the background of every street were the theatre of all kate's travels before life's struggles began. it amused her to remember that when she played about the black cinders of the hillsides she used to stop to watch the sunlight flash along the far-away green spaces, and in her thoughts connected them with the marvels she read of in her books of fairy-tales. beyond these wonderful hills were the palaces of the kings and queens who would wave their wands and vanish! a few years later it was among or beyond those slopes that the lovers with whom she sympathized in the pages of her novels lived. but it was a long time since she had read a story, and she asked herself how this was. dreams had gone out of her life, everything was a hard reality; her life was like a colliery, every wheel was turning, no respite day or night; her life would be always the same, a burden and a misery. there never could be any change now. she remembered her marriage, and how mrs. ede had persuaded her into it, and for the first time she blamed the old woman for her interference. but this was not all. kate was willing to admit that there was no one she loved like mr. ede, but still it was hard to live with a mother-in-law who had a finger in everything and used the house like her own. it would be all very well if she were not so obstinate, so certain that she was always right. religion was very well, but that perpetual 'i'm a christian woman,' was wearisome. no wonder mr. lennox was leaving. poor man, why shouldn't he have a few friends up in the evening? the lodgings were his own while he paid for them. no wonder he cut up rough; no wonder he was leaving them. if so, she would never see him again. the thought caught her like a pain in the throat, and with a sudden instinct she turned to hurry home. as she did so her eyes fell on mr. lennox walking towards her. at such an unexpected realization of her thoughts she uttered a little cry of surprise; but, smiling affably, and in no way disconcerted, he raised his big hat from his head. on account of the softness of the felt this could only be accomplished by passing the arm over the head and seizing the crown as a conjurer would a pocket-handkerchief. the movement was large and unctuous, and it impressed kate considerably. 'i took the liberty to stop, for you seemed so interested that i felt curious to know what could be worth looking at in those chimneys and cinder-mounds.' 'i wasn't looking at the factories, but at the hills. the view from here is considered very fine. don't you think so, sir?' she asked, feeling afraid that she had made some mistake. 'ah, well, now you mention it, perhaps it is. how far away, and yet how distinct! they look like the gallery of a theatre. we're on the stage, the footlights run round here, and the valley is the pit; and there are plenty of pits in it,' he added, laughing. 'but i mustn't speak to you of the theatre.' 'oh, i'm sure i don't mind! i'm very fond of the theatre,' said kate hastily. this indirect allusion to last night brought the conversation to a close, and for some moments they stood looking vacantly at the landscape. overhead the sky was a blue dome, and so still was the air that the smoke-clouds trailed like the wings of gigantic birds slowly balancing themselves. and waves of white light rolled up the valley as if jealous of the red, flashing furnaces. an odour of iron and cinders poisoned the air, and after some moments of contemplation which seemed to draw them closer together, mr. lennox said: 'there is no doubt that the view is very grand, but it is tantalizing to have those hills before your eyes when you are shut up in a red brick oven. how fresh and cool they look! what wouldn't you give to be straying about in those fresh woods far away?' kate looked at mr. lennox with ravished eyes; his words had flooded her mind with a thousand forgotten dreams. she felt she liked him better for what he had said, and she murmured as if half ashamed: 'i've never been out of hanley. i've never seen the sea, and when i was a child i used to fancy that the fairies lived beyond those hills; even now i can't help imagining that the world is quite different over there. here it is all brick, but in novels they never speak of anything but gardens and fields.' 'never seen the sea! well, there isn't much to _see_ in it,' mr. lennox said, laughing at the pun. 'when you were a little girl you used to come here to play, i suppose?' 'yes, sir; i was born over in one of those cottages.' mr. lennox, without knowing whether to look sorry or sentimental, listened patiently to kate, who, proud of being able to show him anything, drew his attention to the different points of view. the white gables that could just be distinguished in the large dark masses of trees was bucknell rectory. the fragment of the cliff on the top of the highest ridge half-way up the sky was watley rocks; then came western coyney, the plains of standon, and far away in a blue mist the outlines of the wever hills. but mr. lennox did not seem very much interested; the sun was too hot for him, and in the first pause of the conversation he asked kate which way she was going. he had to get on to the theatre, and he asked her if she would show him the way there. 'you can't do better than to go down market street; but if you like i will direct you.' 'i shall be so glad if you will; but market street--i think you said market street? that is just the way i've come.' market street was where people connected with the theatre generally lived, and kate knew at once he had been looking for lodgings; but she was ashamed to ask him, and they walked on for some time without speaking. but every moment the silence became more irritating, and at last, determined to know the worst, she said, 'i suppose you were looking for lodgings; all the theatre people put up in that street.' mr. lennox flinched before this direct question. 'why, no, not exactly; i was calling on some friends; but as you say, some of the profession live in the street, and now you mention it, i suppose i shall have to find some new diggings.' 'i'm sorry, sir, very sorry,' said kate, looking up into the big blue eyes. 'i ought not to have come down; you are, of course, master in your own rooms.' 'oh, it wasn't your fault; i could live with you for ever. you mustn't think i want to change. if you could only guarantee that your mother-in-law will keep out of my way.' kate felt at that moment that she would guarantee anything that would prevent mr. lennox from leaving her house. 'oh, i don't think there will be any difficulty about that,' she said eagerly. 'i'll bring your breakfast and dinner up, and you are out nearly all day.' 'very well, then, and i'll promise not to bring home any friends,' he added gallantly. 'but i'm afraid you'll be very lonely, sir.' 'i'll have you to talk to sometimes.' kate made no answer, but they both felt that the words implied more than they actually meant, and they remained silent, like people who had come to some important conclusion. then after a long pause, and without any transition, mr. lennox spoke of the heat of the weather and of the harm it was likely to do their business at the theatre. she asked him what he thought of hanley. mr. lennox smiled through his faint moustache and said the red brick hurt his eyes. kate did not feel quite satisfied with this last observation, and spoke of the pretty places there were about the town. pointing down a red perspective backed by the usual hills, she told him that trentham, the duke of sutherland's place, was over there. 'what, over those hills? that must be miles away.' 'oh, not so far as that. hanley doesn't reach to there. the country is beautiful, once you get past stoke. i went once to see the duke's place, and we had tea in the inn. that was the only time i was ever really in the country, and even then we were never quite out of sight of the factories. still, it was very nice.' 'and who were you with?' 'oh, with my husband.' 'he's an invalid, isn't he?' 'well, i'm afraid he suffers very much at times, but he's often well enough.' the conversation again came to a pause, and both thought of how happy they would be were they taking tea together at the inn at trentham. but they were now in the centre of the town, close to the town hall, a stupid, square building with two black cannon on either side of the door. opposite was a great shop with 'commercial house' written across the second story in gold letters. bright carpets and coarse goods were piled about the doorway; and from these two houses piccadilly and broad street, its continuation, ran down an incline, and church street branched off, giving the town the appearance of a two-pronged fork. all was red brick blazing under a blue sky without a cloud in it; the red brick that turns to purple; and all the roofs were scarlet--red brick and scarlet tiles, and not a tree anywhere. 'you don't seem to have a tree in hanley,' mr. lennox said. 'i don't think there are many,' she answered, and they gazed at the bald rotundities of the pottery ovens. he had never seen a town before composed entirely of brick and iron. a town of work; a town in which the shrill scream of the steam train as it rolled solemnly up the incline seemed to be man's cry of triumph over vanquished nature. after looking about him, mr. lennox said, 'what i object to in the town is that there's nothing to do. and it's so blazing hot; for goodness' sake let us get under the shadow of a wall.' kate smiled, and as they crossed over they both wiped their faces. 'there are the potteries,' she said, referring to mr. lennox's complaint that there was nothing to do in the town. 'everybody that comes to hanley goes to see them; but the best are in stoke.' 'i'm sure i'm not going to stoke to see potteries,' he answered decisively, 'but if there are any at hanley i dare say i shall turn in some afternoon. i've heard some of our people say they are worth seeing. but,' he added, as if a sudden thought had struck him, 'i might go now; i've nothing to do for the next couple of hours. how far are the nearest?' kate told him that powell and jones's works were close by in the high street. she pointed out the way, but, failing to make mr. lennox understand her, she consented to go with him. he had a kind, soft manner of speaking which drew kate towards him almost as if he had taken her in his arms, and it was astonishing how intimate they had grown in the last few minutes. 'it doesn't look very interesting,' he said, as they stopped before an archway and looked into a yard filled with straw and packing-cases. 'yes it is, but you must see the different rooms. you must go up to the office and ask for permission to see the works.' 'i don't think i'd care to go by myself. won't you come with me?' kate hesitated; she had very little to do at home, and could say that mrs. barnes had kept her waiting. 'do come,' he said after a pause, during which he looked at her eagerly. 'well, i should like to see the room where my mother used to work, but we mustn't stop too long. i shall be missed at home.' the matter being so arranged, they entered the yard, and kate pointed out a rough staircase placed against the wall. 'you must go up there; the office is at the top. ask for permission to see the works and i'll wait here for you.' half a dozen men were packing crockery into crates with spades, and as she watched them she remembered that she used to come to this yard with her mother's dinner, and stand wondering how they could pack the delf without breaking it. she remembered one afternoon particularly well; she had promised to be very good, and had been allowed to sit by her mother and watch her painting flowers that wound in and out and all about a big blue vase. she remembered how she was reproved for peeping over her neighbour's shoulder, and how proud she felt sitting among all the workwomen. she could recall the smell of the paint and turpentine, and her grief when she was told that she was too delicate to learn painting, and was going to be put out to dressmaking. but that time was long ago; her mother was dead and she was married. everything was changed or broken, as was that beautiful vase, probably. it astonished kate to find herself thinking of these things. she had passed the high street twenty times during the last six months without it even occurring to her to visit the old places, and when mr. lennox came back he noticed that there were tears in her eyes. he made no remark, but hastily explained that he had been told that there was a party just that minute gone on in front of them, and they were to catch them up. 'this way, then,' she said, pointing to a big archway. 'oh, i can't run; don't be in such a hurry,' said mr. lennox, panting. kate laughed, and admitted that the heat was great. out of a sky burnt almost to white the glare descended into the narrow brick-yards. the packing straw seemed ready to catch fire; the heaps of wet clay, which two boys were shovelling, smoked, emitting as it did so an unpleasant wet odour. on passing the archway they caught sight of three black coats and three soft hats like the one mr. lennox wore. 'oh!' said kate, stopping, disappointed, 'we'll have to go round with those clergymen.' 'what does that matter? it will be amusing to listen to them.' 'but mother knows all of them.' 'they must be strangers in the town or they wouldn't be visiting the potteries, surely.' 'i hadn't thought of that; i suppose you're right,' and hastening a little, they overtook the party that was being shown round. the dissenting clergymen looked askance at mr. lennox, and as he showed them into a small white cell the guide said, 'you're in plenty of time, sir; these are the snagger-makers.' two men were beating a heap of wet clay in order to insure a something in the bakery which nobody understood, but which the guide took some trouble to explain. the clergymen pressed forward to listen. mr. lennox wiped his face, and they were then hurried into a second cell, where unbaked dishes were piled all around upon shelves. it was said to be the dishmakers' place, and was followed by another and another room, all of which mr. lennox thought equally hot and uninteresting. he strove to escape from the guide, who drew him through the line of clergymen and made plain to him the mysteries of earthenware. at last these preliminary departments were disposed of, and they were led to another part of the works. on their way thither they passed the ovens. these were scattered over the ground like beehives in a garden. lennox patted their round sides, approvingly saying that they reminded him of oyster boys in a pantomime, and might be introduced into the next christmas show. kate looked at him, her eyes full of wonder. she could not understand how he could think of such things. in the printing-room they listened to the guide, who apparently considered it important that clergymen, actor, and dressmaker should understand the different processes the earthenware had to pass through before it was placed on toilet or breakfast table. smoking flannels hung on lines all around, and like laundresses at their tubs, four or five women washed the printed paper from the plates. a man in a paper cap bent over a stove, and as if dissatisfied with the guide's explanation of his work, broke out into a wearisome flow of technical details. at the other end of this vast workroom there was a line of young girls who cut the printed matter out of sheets of paper, the scissors running in and out of flowers, tendrils, and little birds without ever injuring one. the clergymen watched the process, delighted, while lennox stepped behind kate and whispered that he had just caught the tall dissenter winking at the dark girl on the right, which was not true, and was invented for the sake of the opportunity it gave him of breathing on kate's neck--a lead up to the love-scene which he had now decided was to come off as soon as he should find himself alone with her. they passed through a brick alley with a staircase leading to a platform built like a ship's deck, and went on through a series of rooms till they came to a place almost as hot as a turkish bath, filled with unbaked plates and dishes. the smell of wet clay drying in steam diffused from underneath was very unpleasant, and caused one of the ministers to cough violently, whereupon the guide explained that the platemakers' departments were considered the most unhealthy of any in the works; the people who worked there, he said, usually suffered from what is known as the potter's asthma. this interested kate, and she delayed the guide with questions as to how the potter's asthma differed from the ordinary form of the disease, and when their little procession was again put in motion she told mr. lennox how her husband was affected, and the nights she had spent watching at his side. but although lennox listened attentively, she could not help thinking that he seemed rather glad than otherwise that her husband was an invalid. the unkind way in which he spoke of sick people shocked her, and she opposed the opinion that a person in bad health was a disgusting object, while lennox took advantage of the occasion to whisper into her ears that she was far too pretty a woman for an asthmatic husband; and, encouraged by her blushes, he even hazarded a few coarse jokes anent the poor husband's deficiencies. how could a man kiss if he couldn't breathe, for if there was a time when breath was essential, according to him, it was when four lips meet. no one had ever spoken to her in this way before, and had she known how to do so she would have resented his familiarities. once their hands met. the contact caused her a thrill; she put aside the unbaked plate they were examining and said: 'we'd better make haste or we shall lose them.' the next two rooms were considered the most interesting they had been through; even the three clergymen lost something of their stolid manner and asked lennox his opinion regarding the religious character of hanley, and if he were of their persuasion. 'what is that?' asked lennox, affecting a comic innocence which he hoped would tickle kate's fancy. 'we're wesleyans,' said the minister. 'and i'm an actor; but, i beg your pardon, stage-managing's more my business,' news that seemed to cast a gloom over the faces of the ministers; and leaving them to make what they could of his reply, he drew kate forward confidentially and pointed to an old man sitting straddle-legged on a high narrow table just on a line with the window. he was covered with clay; his forehead and beard were plastered with it, and before him was an iron plate, kept continually whirling by steam, which he could stop by a pressure of his foot. he squeezed a lump of clay into a long shape not unlike a tall ice, then, forcing it down into the shape of a batter-pudding, he hollowed it. round and round went the clay, the hands forming it all the while, cleaning and smoothing until it came out a true and perfect jampot, even to the little furrow round the top, which was given by a movement of the thumbs. he had been at work since seven in the morning, and the shelves round him were encumbered with the result of his labours. everyone marvelled at his dexterity, until he was forgotten in the superior attractions of the succeeding room. this was the turning-house, and lennox could not help laughing outright, so amusing did the scene appear to him. women went dancing up and down on one leg, and at such regular intervals that they seemed absolutely like machines. they were at once the motive power and the feeders of the different lathes. it was they who handed the men lumps of dry clay, which they turned into shapes. the strangeness of the spectacle gave rise to much comment. the clergymen were anxious to know if the constant jigging was injurious to health. lennox inquired how much coin they made by their one-leg dancing. he spoke of their good looks, and this led him easily into the question of morals, a subject in which he was much interested. he wanted to know if this crowding together of the sexes could be effected without danger. surely cases of seduction must occur occasionally. in answering him the guide betrayed a certain reticence of manner which encouraged lennox to ask him if he really meant to say that nothing ever befell these young women who were working all day side by side with people of the other sex. did their thoughts never wander from their work? the guide assured mr. lennox that there was no time to think of such nonsense in the factory, and, anxious to vindicate the honour of the establishment, he declared that any who took the smallest liberty with any female would be instantly dismissed from the works. the ministers listened approvingly, although they seemed to think the subject might have been avoided. kate felt a little embarrassed, and mr. lennox watched a big, blonde-haired woman who smiled prettily and seemed quite conscious of her sex, notwithstanding the ludicrous bobbing up and down position she was in. with a courage that surprised herself kate proposed that they should go on. she was beginning to feel uneasy at the time she had been away from home and certain that mrs. ede would be on the doorstep looking up and down the street; and she could well imagine how cross ralph would be if he heard she had been to the potteries with mr. lennox. she felt very sorry for the one and a little resentful towards the other, but the sentimental desire to see the painting-room where her mother used to work prevailed, and with her heart full of recollections she followed the party to the ovens. their way thither led them around the building, and they passed through many workrooms. these were generally clean, airy spaces, with big rafters and whitewashed walls. sometimes a bunch of violets, a book, or a newspaper lying on the table, suggested an absent owner, and a refined countenance was sought for in the different groups of women. there was also a difference in the hats and shawls, and it was easy to tell which belonged to the young girls, which to the mothers of families. everyone looked healthy and contented. all were nice-looking, as lennox continued to assert, and all worked industriously at their numberless employments, one of the most curious of which consisted in knocking the roughness off the finished earthenware. a dozen women sat in a circle; above them and around them were piles of dinner-services of all kinds. each held with one hand a piece of crockery on her knees, whilst with a chisel she chopped away at it as if it could not by any possibility be broken. as may easily be imagined, the noise in this warehouse was bewildering. through this room and others, up and down many narrow staircases, the visiting party went, the guide leading, the three black clergymen following, kate lingering behind with mr. lennox until they came to the ovens. the entrance was from an immense corridor, prolonged by shadow and divided down the middle by presses full of drying earthenware, the smell of which was not, however, as strong as in the platemakers' place, and the difference was noticed by the clergyman with the cough. he said he was not affected to nearly the same extent. from time to time the visitors had to give way to men who marched in single file carrying what seemed to be huge cheeses, but the guide explained that within these were cups, saucers, bowls, and basins, and men mounted on ladders piled these yellow tubs up the walls of the ovens. when the visitors had peeped into the huge interior, they were conducted to the furnaces; and these were set in the oven's inner shell, which made a narrow circular passage slanting inwards as it ascended like the neck of a champagne bottle. the fires glared so furiously that they suggested many impious thoughts to lennox, and he proposed to ask the ministers if there were any warmer corners in hell, and was with difficulty dissuaded by kate, about whose waist he had passed his arm. his constant whispering in her ear, which had at first amused her, now irritated and annoyed her; other emotions filled her mind with a vague tumult, and she longed to be left to think in peace. she begged of him to keep quiet, and as they crossed one of the yards she asked the guide if he could not go straight to the painting-room. he replied that there was a regular order to be observed, and insisted on marching them through two more rooms, and explaining fully three or four more processes. then, after begging them to be careful and to hold the rail, he led them up a high staircase. the warning caused kate a thrill, for she remembered that every step of this staircase had been a terror to her mother. the room itself proved a little disappointing. the tables were not arranged in quite the same way, and these alterations deprived her of the emotions she had expected. still it gave her a great deal of pleasure to point out to mr. lennox where her mother used to work. but to find the exact spot was not by any means easy. there were upwards of a hundred young women sitting on benches, leaning over huge tables covered with unfinished pottery. each held in her hand a plate, bowl, or vase, on which she executed some design. the clergy showed more interest than they had hitherto done, and as they leaned to and fro examining the work, one of them discovered the something _guardian_, a wesleyan organ, on one of the tables, and hailing his fellows, they began to interview the proprietor. but the guide said they had to visit the store-rooms, and forced them away from their 'lamb.' ridges of vases, mounds of basins and jugs, terraces of plates, formed masses of sickly white, through which rays of light were caught and sent dancing. along the wall on the left-hand side presses were overcharged with dusty tea-services. on the right were square grey windows, under which the convex sides of salad-bowls sparkled in the sun; and from rafter to rafter, in garlands and clusters like grapes, hung gilded mugs bearing devices suitable for children, and down the middle of the floor a terrace was built of dinner-plates. two rooms away, a large mound of chamber-pots formed an astonishing background, and against all this white and grey effacement the men who stood on high ladders dusting the crockery came out like strange black climbing insects. the clergyman said it was very interesting, and just as he did everything else the guide explained the system of storing employed by the firm; how the crockery was packed, and how the men would soon be working only three days a week on account of the american tariff. but he was not much listened to. everyone was now tired, and the clergymen, who, since the discovery of the newspaper, had been showing signs that they regarded their visit to the potteries as ended, pulled out their watches and whispered that their time was up. the guide told them that there were only a few more rooms to visit, but they said that they must be off, and demanded to be conducted to the door. this request was an embarrassing one; it was against the rules ever to leave visitors when going the rounds. the guide had, therefore, either to conduct the whole party to the door or transgress his orders. after a slight hesitation, influenced no doubt by a conversation he had had with lennox, in which mention was made of tickets for the theatre, he decided to take the responsibility on himself, and asked that gentleman if he would mind waiting a few minutes with his lady while the religious gentlemen were being shown the way out. lennox assented with readiness, and the three black figures and the guide disappeared a moment after behind the bedroom utensils. after an anxious glance round lennox looked at kate, who, at that moment, was gathering to herself all the recollections that the place evoked. she knew the room she was in well, for she used to pass through it daily with her mother's dinner, and she remembered how in her childhood she wondered how big the world must be to hold enough people to use such thousands of cups and saucers. there used to be a blue tea-service in the far corner, and she had often lingered to imagine a suitable parlour for it and for her dream husband. one day she had torn her frock coming up the stairs, and was terribly scolded; another time mr. powell, attracted by her black curls, had stopped to speak to her, and he had given her as a present one of the children's mugs--one exactly like those hanging over her head. she had treasured it a long time, but at last it was broken. it seemed that all things belonging to her had to be broken; her dreams were made in crockery. but as kate looked into the past she became gradually conscious of a voice whispering to her, 'how odd it is that you should never have thought of revisiting this place until you met me.' she raised her eyes, and, her look seeming to tell him that this was his moment, he turned to see if they were watched. at their feet a pile of plates and teacups slept in a broad flood of sunlight, and three rooms away the boys on high ladders dusted the mugs. 'what a pretty child you must have been! i can fancy you with your black hair falling about your shoulders. had i known you then, i should have taken you in my arms and kissed you. do you think you would have liked me to have kissed you?' she raised her eyes again, and a vague feeling of how nice, how kind he was, rushed through her, and perceiving still more clearly that this moment was his moment, lennox affected to examine a ring on her finger. the warm pressure of his hand caused her to start, and she would have put him from her, but his voice calmed her. 'ah!' he said, 'had i known you then, i should have been in love with you.' kate closed her eyes, and abandoned herself to an ineffable sentiment of weakness, of ravishment; and then, imagining that she was his, lennox took her in his arms and kissed her rudely. but quick, angry thoughts rushed to her head at the first movement of his arms, and obeying an impulse in contradiction to her desire, she shook herself free, and looked at him vexed and humiliated. 'oh, how very cross we are; and about a kiss, just a tiny, wee kiss!' she stood staring at him, only half hearing what he said, irritated against him and herself. 'i'm sure i didn't mean to offend you,' he continued after a pause, for kate's manner puzzled him; 'i love you too well.' 'love me?' she cried, astonished, but with nevertheless a tone of interrogation in her voice. 'why, you never saw me till the other day.' 'i loved you the first moment; i assure you i did.' kate looked at him imploringly, as if beseeching him not to deceive her. there was an honest frankness in his big blue eyes, and his face said as clearly as words, 'i think you a deuced pretty woman, and i'm sure i could love you very much,' and recognizing this, kate remained silent. and thus encouraged, mr. lennox attempted to renew his intentions. but actions have to be prefaced by words, and he commenced by declaring that when a man would give the whole world for a kiss, it was not to be expected that he would resist trying for one, and he strove to think of the famous love scene in _the lady of lyons_. but it was years since he had played the part, and he could only murmur something about reading no books but lovers' books, singing no songs but lovers' songs. the guide would be back in a few minutes, and, inspired by kate's pale face, he came to the conclusion that it would be absurd to let her go without kissing her properly. he was a strong man, but kate had now really lost her temper, and struggled vigorously, determined he should not gain his end. three times his lips had rested on her cheek, once he managed to kiss her on the chin, but he could not reach her mouth: she always succeeded in twisting her face away, and not liking to be beaten he put forth all his strength. she staggered backwards and placed one hand on his throat, and with the other strove to catch at his moustache; she had given it a wrench that had brought tears into his eyes, but now he was pinioning her; she could see his big face approaching, and summoning up all her strength she strove to get away, but that moment, happening to tread on her skirt, her feet slipped. he made a desperate effort to sustain her, but her legs had gone between his. the crash was tremendous. a pile of plates three feet high was sent spinning, a row of salad-bowls was over, and then with a heavy stagger mr. lennox went down into a dinner-service, sending the soup-tureen rolling gravely into the next room. a feeling at first prevailed that some serious accident had happened, but when kate rose, pale and trembling, from the litter of a bedroom set, and lennox was lifted out of the dinner-service with nothing apparently worse than a cut hand, a murmur of voices asking the cause of the disaster was heard. but before a word could be said the guide came running towards them. he declared that he would lose his place, and spoke vaguely to those around him of the necessity of suppressing the fact that he had left visitors alone in the storerooms. lennox, on the other hand, was very silent. he had evidently received some bad cuts, of which he did not speak. he put his hand to his legs and felt them doubtfully. there was a large gash in his right hand, from which he picked a piece of delf, and as he tied the wound up with a pocket-handkerchief he partly quieted the expostulating guide by assuring him that everything would be paid for. and taking kate's arm, he hobbled out of the place. the suddenness and excitement of the accident had for the moment quenched her angry feelings, and, overwhelmed with pity for the poor wounded hand, she thought of nothing but getting him to a doctor. indeed, it was not until she heard him telling mr. powell in the office that he was subject to fits, and that in striving to hold him up the lady had fallen too, that she remembered how he had behaved, how he had disgraced her. but her mouth was closed, and she listened in amazement to him as he invented detail after detail with surprising dexterity. he did not even hesitate to call in the evidence of the guide, who, in his own interests, was obliged to assent; and when mr. powell inquired after the three clergymen, lennox said that they had left them in the yard after visiting the ovens. mr. powell listened with a look of pity on his face, and began to tell of a poor brother of his who was likewise subject to fits, and, possibly influenced by the remembrance, refused to receive any remuneration for the broken crockery, saying that to a firm like theirs a few plates more or less was of no importance. and this matter being settled, lennox hobbled away, leaving a little pool of blood on the floor of the office. she had to lend him her handkerchief, his was now saturated--to tie round his hand: he confessed to a bad cut in the leg, saying he could feel the blood trickling down into his boot, but did not think he needed a doctor. 'a bit of sticking-plaster, dear; i'll get some at the apothecary's. which is the way?' 'take the first turn to the right, and you're in church street; but there may be bits of the delf in the wound?' 'i shall see to that. but how strong you are; you're like a lion. you mustn't struggle like that next time.' at the suggestion that there was going to be a next time kate's face clouded, but she was so alarmed for his safety that it was only for a moment. she had hardly noticed that he called her 'dear'; he used the word so naturally and simply that it touched her with swift pleasure, and was as soon lost in a crowd of conflicting emotions. the man was coarse and largely sensual, but each movement of his fat hands was protective, every word he uttered was kind, the very intonation of his voice was comforting. he was, in a word, human, and this attracted all that was human in her. v on leaving mr. lennox kate walked slowly along the streets, recalling every word he had said, feeling his breath upon her cheek and his blue eyes looking into hers more distinctly in recollection than when he had held her in his arms. she walked immersed in recollections, every one clear and precise, experiencing a sort of supersensual gratification, one she had never known before. being a child of the people, his violence had not impressed her, and she murmured to herself every now and then: 'poor fellow, what a fall he had! i hope he didn't hurt himself.' by turns she thought of things totally different--of hender, of the little girls, who would regret her absence from the workroom, and it was not without surprise that she caught herself wishing suddenly they were her own children. the wish was only momentary, but it was the first time a desire for motherhood had ever troubled her. it amused her to think of their smiling faces, and to make sure of their smiles she entered a shop and bought a small packet of sweetstuff, and with the paper in her hand continued her walk home. the cheap prints in a newspaper shop delayed her, and the workmen who were tearing up the road forced her to consider how a suspension of traffic would interfere with her business. she was now in broad street, and when she raised her eyes she saw her own house. a new building high and narrow, it stood in the main street at the corner of a lane, the ground-floor windows filled with light goods, and underneath them black hats trimmed with wings and tails of birds. there were also children's dresses, and a few neckties trimmed with white lace. as she entered the shop mrs. ede, who was in the front kitchen, cried, 'well, is that you, kate? where have you been? i waited dinner an hour for you; and how tired you look!' in her present state of mind mrs. ede was the last person kate cared to meet. 'what's the matter, my dear? aren't you well? shall i get you a glass of water?' 'oh no, mother; i'm all right. can't you see that i'm only very hot?' 'but where have you been? i waited dinner an hour for you. it's past two o'clock!' kate did not know how to account for her absence from home, but after a pause she answered, thinking of mr. lennox as she spoke, 'mrs. barnes kept me waiting above an hour trying her dress on, and then i was so done up with night-watching and sewing that i thought i'd go for a walk,' and after wiping her weary hot face she asked her mother-in-law if many people had been in the shop that morning. 'well, yes, half a dozen or more,' mrs. ede answered, and began to recount the different events of the morning. mrs. white had bought one of the aprons; she said she hadn't seen the pattern before; a stranger had taken another; and miss sargent had called and wanted to know how much it would cost to remake her blue dress. 'oh, i know; she wants me to reline the skirt and put new trimming on the bodice for seven and sixpence; we can do without her custom. what then?' 'and then--ah! i was forgetting--mrs. west came in to tell us that her friend mrs. wood, the bookseller's wife, you know, up the street, was going to be confined, and would want some baby-linen, and she recommended her here.' 'did you see nobody else?' 'well, yes, a young man who bought half a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs; i let him have the half-dozen for four shillings; and i sold a pink necktie to one of the factory hands over the way.' 'why, mother, you've done a deal of business, and i'm glad about the baby-linen. we've a lot in stock, and it hasn't gone off well. i don't know mrs. wood, but it's very kind of mrs. west to recommend us; and how has hender been getting on with the skirt?' 'well, i must say she has been working very well; she was here at half-past eight, and she did not stop away above three-quarters of an hour for dinner.' 'i'm glad of that, for i was never so backward in my life with my work, what with ralph being ill and mr. ----' kate tried here to stop herself. the conversation had so far been an agreeable one, and she did not wish to spoil it by alluding to a subject on which there was no likelihood of their agreeing. but her mother-in-law, guessing that kate was thinking of the mummer, said, 'yes, i wanted to talk to you about that. he hasn't sent anyone to take away his things, and he didn't even speak when i took him up his breakfast this morning.' 'i don't think mr. lennox is leaving us,' she answered, after a pause. 'i thought it was settled last night that he was to be told that he mustn't bring friends home after eleven o'clock at night. when i see him i'll speak to him about it.' 'the house is yours, deary. if you're satisfied, i am.' and kate walked into the kitchen, and when she had finished her dinner she went upstairs to see ralph, whom mrs. ede declared to be much better. on passing the workroom the door opened suddenly and the bright faces of the little girls darted out. 'oh, is that you, mrs. ede? how we've missed you all the morning!' annie cried. 'and miss hender has been so busy that she had to get me to help her with the skirt, and i did a great long piece myself without a mistake. didn't i, miss hender?' 'i'm going to see my husband,' said kate, smiling; 'but i shall be down presently, and i've bought something for you.' 'oh, what is it?' cried annie excitedly. 'you shall see presently.' ralph was lying still in bed, propped up in his usual attitude, with his legs tucked under him. 'don't you think we might open something?' she said, as she sat down by the bedside; 'and your sheets want changing.' 'oh, if you've only come in to turn everything upside-down, you might as well have stayed away.' he spoke with difficulty, in a thin wheeze. 'i think the pills did me good last night,' he said, after a pause; and then added, laughing as much as his breath would allow him, 'and what a rage mother was in! but tell me, what were they doing downstairs? were there any ladies there? i was too bad to think of anything.' 'yes, some of the ladies from the theatre,' kate answered. 'but i don't think mother had a right to kick up all the row she did.' 'and it just came in upon her prayers,' ralph replied, smiling. although cross-grained, mr. ede was not always an unpleasant man, and often in sudden flashes of affection the kind heart of his mother was recognizable in him. 'you mustn't laugh, ralph,' said kate, looking aside, for the comic side of the question had suddenly dawned upon her. but their hilarity was not of long endurance. ralph was seized with a fit of coughing, and when this was over he lay back exhausted. at last he said: 'but where have you been all the day? we've been wondering what had become of you.' the question, although not put unkindly, annoyed kate. 'one would think i'd come back from a long journey', she said to herself. 'it's just as hender says; if i'm out half an hour more than my time everyone is, as they say, "wondering what has become of me."' assuming an air of indifference, she told him that mrs. barnes kept her a long time, and that she went for a walk afterwards. 'i'm glad of that,' he said. 'you wanted a walk after being shut up with me three nights running. and what a time you must have had of it! but tell me what you've been doing in the shop.' she told him that 'mother' had sold all the aprons, and he said: 'i knew they'd sell. i told you so, didn't i?' 'you did, dear,' said kate, seeking to satisfy him; 'but you mustn't talk so much; you'll make yourself bad again.' 'but are you going?' 'i've been out so long that i've a lot to do; but i'll come back and see you in the evening.' 'well, then, kiss me before you go.' as she kissed him, she remembered the struggle in the potteries, and it appeared strange to her that she should now be giving as a matter of course what she had refused an hour ago. she had always complied with the ordinances of the marriage state without passion or revolt, but now it disgusted her to kiss her husband, and as she stepped into the passage she almost walked into mr. lennox's room unconsciously, without knowing what she was doing, beguiled by the natural sentiment that a woman feels in the room of a man she is interested in. hoping that mrs. ede had not yet set everything straight, she went on to make sure. slippers and boots lay about; the portmanteau yawned wide open, with some soiled shirts on the top; a pair of trousers trailed from a chair on the floor. annoyed at the mother's negligence, kate hung the trousers on the door, placed the slippers tidily by his bedside, and put away the soiled linen. but in doing so she could not refrain from glancing at the contents of the portmanteau. she saw many of the traces which follow those who frequent women's society. the duchess works a pair of slippers for her lover, and the chorus-girl does the same. the merchant's wife, as she holds the loved hand under the ledge of her box at the theatre, clasps the ring she had given; the rich widow opposite has a jewel-case in her pocket which will presently be sent round to the stage-door for the tenor, who is now thinking of his high b flat. under the shirts kate found a pair of slippers, a pin-cushion, and the inevitable ring. but there were other presents more characteristic of the man: there was a bracelet, a scent-bottle, and two pots of _pâté de foie gras_ wrapped up in a lace-trimmed chemise. kate examined everything, but without being able to adduce any conclusion beyond a vague surmise that lennox lived in a different world from hers. the _foie gras_ suggested delicacy of living, the chemise immorality, the bottle of scent refinement of taste; the bracelet she could make nothing of. prosaic and vulgar as were all these articles, in the dressmaker's imagination they became both poetized and purified. an infinite sadness, that she could not explain, rose up through her mind, and, staring vaguely at the pious exhortations hung on the wall--'thou art my will,' 'thou art my hope'--she thought of mr. lennox's wounded legs, and asked herself if his bed were soft, and if she could do anything to make him more comfortable. it vexed her to see that he had chosen to use the basin-stand made out of a triangular board set in a corner instead of the proper one, where she had hung two clean towels; and it was not until she remembered the little girls that she was able to tear herself away. 'what have you got for us?' said four red lips as kate entered. 'oh, you must guess,' she replied, taking a chair, and bidding miss hender good-morning. 'an apple?' cried annie. 'no.' 'an orange?' cried lizzie. kate shook her head, and at the sight of their bright looks she felt her spirits return to her. 'no, it is sweetstuff.' 'brandy balls?' 'no.' 'toffee.' 'yes; annie has guessed right,' said kate, as she divided the toffee equally between the two. 'and do i get nothing for guessing right?' said annie doubtfully. 'oh, for shame, annie! i didn't think you were greedy!' 'i think i ought to have the most,' replied lizzie in self-defence. 'had it not been for me miss hender would never have got through her skirt. i helped you famously, didn't i, miss hender?' the assistant nodded an impatient assent and gazed at her mistress curiously. but while the children were present, she could only watch her employer's face, and strive to read it. and unconscious of the scrutiny, kate sat idly talking of the skirt that was finished. the clicking of the needles sounded as music in her ears, and she abandoned herself to all sorts of soft and floating reveries. not for years had she known what it was to take her fill of rest; and her thoughts swayed, now on one side and then on the other, as voluptuously as flowers, and hid themselves in the luxurious current of idleness which lapped loosely around her. the afternoon passed delightfully, full of ease and pleasant quiet, hender telling them how _les cloches_ had gone the night before: of miss leslie's spirited singing, of the cider song, of joe mortimer's splendid miser scene, of bret's success in the barcarole. so eagerly did she speak of them that one would have thought she herself had received the applause she described. kate listened dreamily, and the little girls sucked toffee, staring the while with interested eyes. vi but kate could not manage to see mr. lennox that evening or the next. he came in very late, and was away before she was down. she tormented herself trying to find reasons for his absence, and it pained her to think that it might be because the breakfasts were not to his taste. it seemed strange to her, too, that when a man cared to walk about the potteries with a woman, and talked as nicely as he had done to her, that he should not take the trouble to come and see her, if only to say good-morning; and in a thousand different ways did these thoughts turn and twist in kate's brain, as she sat sewing opposite hender in the workroom. this young woman had made up her mind that there was something between the stage-manager and her employer, and it irritated her when kate said she had not seen him for the last two days. kate was not very successful either in extracting theatrical news from hender. 'if she's going to be close with me, i'll show her that two can play at that game,' and she answered that she had not noticed any limp. but mrs. ede told kate he limped so badly that she felt sure he must have met with an accident. which was she to believe? mother, of course; but feeling that only direct news of him would satisfy her, she waited next morning in the kitchen. but the trick was not successful; she was serving in the shop, and heard him leave by the side door. whether he had done this on purpose to avoid her, or whether it was the result of chance, kate passed the morning in considering. she had hitherto succeeded in completely ignoring their ridiculous fall amid the teacups, but the memory of it now surged up in her mind; and certain coarse details that she had forgotten continued to recur to her with a singular persistency; deaf to hender's conversation, she sat sullenly sewing, hating even to go down to the shop to attend when mrs. ede called from below that there was a customer waiting. about three o'clock mrs. ede's voice was heard. 'kate, come down; there is someone in the shop.' passing round the counter, she found herself face to face with a well-dressed woman. 'i was recommended here by mrs. west,' the lady said, after a slight hesitation, 'to buy a set of baby clothes.' 'is it for a new-born infant?' kate asked, putting on her shop airs. 'well, the baby is not born yet, but i hope soon will be.' 'oh, i beg pardon,' said kate, casting a rapid glance in the direction of the lady's waist. the baby clothes were kept in a box under the counter, and in a few moments kate reappeared with a bundle of flannels. 'you will find these of the very best quality; will you feel the warmth of this, ma'am?' she said, spreading out something that looked like two large towels. the lady seemed satisfied with the quality, but from her manner of examining the strings kate judged she was at her first confinement, and with short phrases and quick movements proceeded to explain how the infant was to be laid in the middle, and how the tapes were to be tied across. 'and you will want a hood and cloak? we have some very nice ones at two pounds ten; but perhaps you would not like to give so much?' without replying to this question, the lady asked to see the articles referred to, and then, beneath the men's shirts that hung just above their heads, the two women talked with many genuine airs of mystery and covert subtlety. the lady spoke of her fears, of how much she wished the next fortnight was over, of her husband, of how long she had been married. she was mrs. wood, the stationer's wife in piccadilly. kate said she knew her customer's shop perfectly, and assumed a sad expression when in her turn she was asked if she had any children. on her replying in the negative, mrs. wood said, with a sigh of foreboding, that people were possibly just as well without them. it was at this moment that mr. lennox entered, and kate tried to sweep away and to hide up the things that were on the counter. mrs. wood was mildly embarrassed, and with a movement of retiring she attempted to resume the conversation. 'very well, mrs. ede,' she said; 'i quite agree with you--and i'll call again about those pocket-handkerchiefs.' but kate, in her anxiety not to lose a chance of doing a bit of business, foolishly replied: 'yes, but about those baby clothes--shall i send them, mrs. wood?' mrs. wood murmured something inaudible in reply, and as she sidled and backed out of the shop she bumped against mr. lennox. he lifted his big hat and strove to make way for her, but he had to get into a corner to allow her to pass out, and then, still apologizing, he took a step forwards, and leaning on the counter, said in a hurried voice: 'i've been waiting to see you for the last two days. where have you been hiding yourself?' the unexpected question disconcerted kate, and instead of answering him coldly and briefly, as she had intended, said: 'why, here; where did you expect me to be? but you've been out ever since,' she added simply. 'it wasn't my fault--the business i've had to do! i was in london yesterday, and only got back last night in time for the show. there was talk of our boss drying up, but i think it's all right. i'll tell you about that another time. i want you to come to the theatre to-morrow night. here are some tickets for the centre circle. i'll come and sit with you when i get the curtain up, and we'll be able to talk.' the worm does not easily realize the life of the fly, and kate did not understand. the rapidly stated facts bewildered her, and she could only say, in answer to his again repeated question: 'oh, i should like it so much, but it is impossible; if my mother-in-law heard of it i don't know what she would say.' 'well, then, come to-night; but no, confound it! i shall be busy all to-night. hayes, our acting manager, has been drunk for the last three days; he can't even make up the returns. no, no; you must come to-morrow night. come with hender; she's one of the dressers. i'll make that all right; you can tell her so from me. will you promise to come?' 'i should like it so much; but what excuse can i give for being out till half-past ten at night?' 'you needn't stay till then; you can leave before the piece is half over. say you went out for a walk.' the most ingenious and complete fiction that mr. lennox's inventive brain might have worked out would not have appeased kate's fears so completely as the simple suggestion of a walk, and her face lit up with a glow of intelligence as she remembered how successfully she had herself made use of the same excuse. 'then you'll come?' he said, taking her look for an answer. 'i'll try,' she replied, still hesitating. 'then that's all right,' he murmured, pressing two or three pieces of paper into her hands. 'i've been thinking of you a great deal.' kate smiled slowly, and a slight flush for a moment illuminated the pale olive complexion. 'i dreamt that we were going up to london together, and that your head was lying on my shoulder, and it was so nice and pleasant, and when i woke up i was disappointed.' kate shivered a little, and drew back as if afraid; and in the pause which ensued mr. lennox remembered an appointment. 'i must be off now,' he said, 'there's no help for it; but you won't disappoint me, will you? the doors open at half-past six. if you're there early i may be able to see you before the piece begins.' and with a grand lift of the hat the actor hurried away, leaving kate to examine the three pieces of paper he had given her. it was clearly impossible for her to go to the theatre without her assistant finding it out; she must confide in hender, who would be astonished, no doubt. and she was not wrong in her surmise; the news produced first an astonished stare, and then a look of satisfaction to be read: 'well, you are coming to your senses at last.' kate would have liked no more to be said on the subject, but the fact that her employer was going to meet mr. lennox at the theatre was not sufficient for hender; she must needs question kate how this change had come about in her. 'was she really spoons on the actor?' at these words kate, who wished to leave everything vague, the facts as well as her conception of them, declared that she would rather not go to the theatre at all, if such remarks were to be made. whereupon miss hender took a view less carnal, and the two women discussed how old mrs. ede might be given the slip. the idea of the walk was not approved of; it was too simple; but on this point kate would take no advice, although she accepted the suggestion that she was to go upstairs, and under the pretext of changing her petticoat, should fold her hat into her mantle and tie the two behind her just as she would a bustle; an ingenious device, but difficult to put into practice. ralph was out of bed, and, having been deprived of speech for more than a week, he followed kate into the back room, worrying her with questions about the shop, his health, his mother, and mr. lennox. at five o'clock mrs. ede came up to say she was going up the town to do a little marketing for sunday, and to ask kate to come down to the front kitchen, where she could be in sight of the shop. miss hender said nothing could have happened more fortunately, and, with many instructions as to where they should meet, she hurried away. but she was no sooner gone than kate remembered she had no one to leave in charge of the shop. she should have asked one of the apprentices, but she hadn't, and would have to turn the key in the door and leave her mother-in-law to come in by the side way. ralph would open to her; it couldn't be helped. mr. lennox was going away to-morrow; she must see him. at that moment her mantle caused her some uneasiness; it didn't seem to hang well, and it was impossible to go to the theatre in the gloves that had been lying in her pocket for the last month. she took a pair of grey thread from the window, but while pulling them on her face changed expression. was it ralph coming down the staircase? there was nobody else in the house. trembling, she waited for him to appear. wheezing loudly, her husband dragged himself through the doorway. 'what--do you look so fri-frightened at? you did-didn't expect to see me, did you?' 'no, i didn't,' kate answered as if in a dream. 'feeling a good deal better, i thou-ght i would come down, but--but the stairs--have tried me.' it was some time before he could speak again. at last he said: 'where are you going?' 'i was just going for a walk.' 'i don't know how it is, but it seems to me that you're always out now; always coming in or going out; never in the shop. if it wasn't for my asthma i don't think i'd ever be out of the shop, but women think of nothing but pleasure and--,' a very rude word which she had never heard ralph use before. but it might be that she was mistaken. poor man! it was distressing to watch him gasping for breath. he leaned against the counter, and kate begged him to let her help him upstairs, but he shook her off testily, saying that he understood himself better than anybody else did, and that he would look after the shop. 'you're going out? well, go,' and she hurried away, hoping that a customer would come in, for his great delight was the shop. 'attending on half a dozen customers will amuse him more than the play will amuse me,' she said to herself, and a smile rose to her lips, for she imagined him taking advantage of her absence to rearrange the window. 'but what can have brought him down?' kate asked herself. 'ah! that's it,' she said, for it had suddenly come into her mind that ever since she had told him of a certain sale of aprons and some unexpected orders for baby clothes he had often mentioned that the worst part of these asthmatic attacks was that they prevented his attendance in the shop. 'the shop is his pleasure just as the theatre is hender's,' kate said as she hurried up piccadilly to the theatre, her heart in her mouth, for her time was up. fearing to miss hender, she raced along, dodging the passengers with quick turns and twists. 'it's my only chance of seeing him; he's going away tomorrow,' and she was living so intensely in her own imagination that she neither saw nor heeded anybody until she suddenly heard somebody calling after her, 'kate! kate! kate!' she turned round and faced her mother-in-law. 'where on earth are you going at that rate?' said mrs. ede, who carried a small basket on her arm. 'only for a walk,' kate replied in a voice dry with enforced calmness. 'oh, for a walk; i'm glad of that, it will do you good. but which way are you going?' 'any where round about the town. up on the hill, st. john's road.' 'how curious! i was just thinking of going back that way. there's a fruiterer's shop where you can get potatoes a penny a stone cheaper than you can here.' if a thunderbolt had ruined hanley before her eyes at that moment, it would not have appeared to her of such importance as this theft of her evening's pleasure. it was with difficulty that she saved herself from saying straight out that she was going to the theatre to see mr. lennox, and had a right to do so if she pleased. 'but i like walking fast,' she said; 'perhaps i walk too fast for you?' 'oh no, not at all. my old legs are as good as your young ones. kate, dear, what is the matter? are you all right?' she said, seeing how cross her daughter-in-law was looking. 'oh yes, i'm all right, but you do bother one so.' this very injudicious phrase led to a demonstration of affection on the part of mrs. ede, and whatever were the chances of getting rid of her before, they were now reduced to nothing. the strain on her nerves was at height during the first half of the walk, for during that time she knew that mr. lennox was expecting her; afterwards, while bargaining with the fruiterer in st. john's road, she fell into despondency. nothing seemed to matter now; she did not care what might befall her, and in silence she accompanied her mother-in-law home. 'now, mother, you must leave me; i've some work to finish.' 'i'm sorry, kate, if----' 'mother, i've some work to finish; good-night.' and she sat in the workroom waiting for mr. lennox. at last his heavy step was heard on the stairs; then, laying aside the shirt she was making, she stole out to meet him. he saw her as he scraped a match on the wall; dropping it, he put out his hands towards her. 'is that you, dear?' he said. 'why didn't you come to the theatre? we had a magnificent house.' 'i couldn't; i met my mother-in-law.' the red embers of the match that had fallen on the floor now went out, and the indication of their faces was swept away in the darkness. 'let me get a light, dear.' the intonation of his voice as he said 'dear' caused her an involuntary feeling of voluptuousness. she trembled as the vague outline of his big cheeks became clear in the red flame of the match which he held in his hollowed hands. 'won't you come in?' she heard him say a moment after. 'no, i couldn't; i must go upstairs in a minute. i only came to tell you, for i didn't want you to go away angry; it wasn't my fault. i should so much have liked to have gone to the theatre.' 'it was a pity you didn't come; i was waiting at the door for you. i could have sat by you the whole time.' kate's heart died within her at thought of what she had lost, and after a long silence she said very mournfully: 'perhaps when you come back another time i shall be able to go to the theatre.' 'we've done so well here that we're going to get another date. i'll write and let you know.' 'will you? and will you come back and lodge here?' 'of course, and i hope that i shan't be so unlucky the next time as to fall down amid the crockery.' at this they both laughed, and the conversation came to a pause. 'i must bid you good-night now.' 'but won't you kiss me--just a kiss, so that i may have something to think of?' 'why do you want to kiss me? you have miss leslie to kiss.' 'i never kissed leslie; that's all nonsense, and i want to kiss you because i love you.' kate made no answer, and, following her into the heavy darkness that hung around the foot of the staircase, he took her in his arms. she at first made no resistance, but the passion of his kiss caused her a sudden revolt, and she struggled with him. 'oh, mr. lennox, let me go, i beg of you,' she said, speaking with her lips close to his. 'let me go, let me go; they will miss me.' possibly fearing another fall, mr. lennox loosed his embrace, and she left him. vii next morning about eleven the mummer took off his hat in his very largest manner to the ladies, and the bow was so deferential, and seemed to betoken so much respect for the sex, that even mrs. ede could not help thinking that mr. lennox was very polite. ralph too was impressed, as well he might be, so attentively did dick listen to him, just as if nothing in the world concerned him as much as this last attack of asthma, and it was not until mrs. ede mentioned that they would be late for church that it occurred to dick that his chance of catching the eleven o'clock train was growing more and more remote. with a hasty comment on his dilatoriness, he caught up a parcel and rug and shook hands with them all. the cab rattled away, and ralph proceeded up the red, silent streets towards the wesleyan church, walking very slowly between his womankind. 'there's no doubt but that mr. lennox is a very nice man,' he said, after they had gone some twenty or thirty paces--'a very nice man indeed; you must admit, mother, that you were wrong.' 'he's polite, if you will,' replied mrs. ede, who for the last few minutes had been considering the ungodliness of travelling on a sunday. 'don't walk so fast,' ralph cried. 'well, then, we shall be late for church!' 'which, then, is the most important in your eyes--mr. peppencott's sermon or my breath?' 'i'm not thinking of mr. peppencott's sermon.' 'then of his voice in the prayer. lennox may be no better than an actor,' he continued, 'but he's more fellow-feeling than you have. you saw yourself how interested he was in my complaint, and i shall try the cigarettes that used to give his mother relief.' he appealed to kate, who answered him that it would be as well to try the cigarettes, and her thoughts floated away into a regret that mr. lennox had not been able to come to church with them, for she was reckoned to have a good voice. it may have been a memory of dick that enabled her to pour her voice into the hymn, singing it more lustily than mrs. ede ever heard her sing it before. it seemed to mrs. ede that only god's grace could enable anyone to sing as kate was singing, and when the minister began to preach and kate sat down, her eyes fixed, mrs. ede rejoiced. 'the word of god has reached her at last,' she said. 'never have i seen her listen so intently before to mr. peppencott.' kate sat quite still, almost unconscious of the life around her, remembering that it was on her way from the potteries that she had learnt that there is a life within us deeper and more intense than the life without us. dick's kisses had angered her at the moment, but in recollection they were inexpressibly dear to her. her fear had been that time would dim her recollection of them, and her great joy was to discover that this was not so, and that she could recall the intonations of his voice and the colour of his eyes and the words he spoke to her, reliving them in imagination more intensely than while she was actually in his arms just before that terrible fall or in the shop and frightened lest mrs. ede or ralph should come in and surprise them. but in imagination she was secure from interruption and hindrance, and could taste over and over again the words that he had spoken: 'i shall be back in three months, dear one.' a great part of her happiness was in the fact that it was all within herself, that none knew of it; had she wished to communicate it, she could not have done so. it was a life within her life, a voice in her heart which she could hear at any moment, and it was a voice so sweet and intense that it could close her ears to her husband and her mother-in-law, who during dinner fell into one of their habitual quarrels. ralph, who had not forgotten his mother's lack of sympathy on their way to church, maintained the favourable opinion he had formed of mr. lennox. 'it's unchristian,' he said, 'to condemn a man because of the trade or profession he follows,' and somewhat abashed, his mother answered: 'i've always been taught to believe that people who don't go to church lead godless lives.' sunday was kept strictly in this family. three services were attended regularly. kate hoped to recover the sensations of the morning, and attended church in the afternoon. but the whole place seemed changed. the cold white walls chilled her; the people about her appeared to her in a very small and miserable light, and she was glad to get home. her thoughts went back to the book she had fallen asleep over last sunday night when she sat by her husband's bedside, and when the house was quiet she went upstairs and fetched it. but after reading a few pages the heat of the house seemed to her intolerable. there was no place to go to for a walk except st. john's road, and there, turning listlessly over the pages of the old novel, the time passed imperceptibly. it was like sitting on the sea-shore; the hills extended like an horizon, and as the sea dreamer strives to pierce the long illimitable line of the wave and follows the path of the sailing ship, so did kate gaze out of the sweeping green line that enclosed all she knew of the world, and strove to look beyond into the country to where her friend was going. northwood, with its hundreds of sharp roofs and windows, seemed to be dropping into a sunday doze, under pale salmon-coloured tints, and the bells of its church sounded clearer and clearer at each peal. warm airs passed over the red roofs of southwark, and below in the vast hollow of the valley all was still, all seemed abandoned as a desert; no whiff of white steam was blown from the collieries; no black cloud of smoke rolled from the factory chimneys, and they raised their tall stems like a suddenly dismantled forest to a wan, an almost colourless sky. the hills alone maintained their unchangeable aspect. viii by well-known ways the dog comes back to his kennel, the sheep to the fold the horse to the stable, and even so did kate return to her sentimental self. one day she was turning over the local paper, and suddenly, as if obeying a long forgotten instinct, her eyes wandered to the poetry column, and again, just as in old time, she was caught by the same simple sentiments of sadness and longing. she found there the usual song, in which _regret_ rhymes to _forget_. the same dear questions which used to enchant seven years ago were again asked in the same simple fashion; and they touched her now as they had before. she refound all her old dreams. it seemed as if not a day had passed over her. when she was a girl she used to collect every scrap of love poetry that appeared in the local paper, and paste them into a book, and now, the events of the week having roused her from the lethargy into which she had fallen, she turned for a poem to the _hanley courier_ as instinctively as an awakened child turns to the breast. the verses she happened to hit on were after her own heart, and just what were required to complete the transformation of her character: 'i love thee, i love thee, how fondly, how well let the years that are coming my constancy tell; i think of thee daily, my night-thoughts are thine; in fairy-like vision thy hand presses mine; and even though absent you dwell in my heart; of all that is dear to me, dearest, thou art.' in reading these lines kate's heart began to beat quickly, her eyes filled with tears, and wrapped in brightness, like a far distant coast-line, a vision of her girlhood arose. she recalled the emotions she once experienced, the books she had read, and the poetry that was lying upstairs in an old trunk pushed under the bed. it seemed to her wonderful that it had been forgotten so long; her memory skipped from one fragment to the other, picking up a word here, a phrase there, until a remembrance of her favourite novel seized her; she became the heroine of the absurd fiction, substituting herself for the lady who used to read byron and shelley to the gentleman who went to india in despair. as the fitness of the comparison dawned upon her, she yielded to an ineffable sentiment of weakness: george was the husband's name in the book, she was helene, and dick was the lover to whom she could not, would not, give herself, and who on that account had gone away in despair. the coincidence appeared to her as something marvellous, something above nature, and she turned it over, examined it in her mind, as a child would a toy, till, forgetful of her desire to overlook these relics of old times, she went upstairs to the workroom. the missed visit to the theatre was a favourite theme of conversation between the two women. kate listened to what went on behind the scenes with greater indulgence, and she seemed to become more accustomed to the idea that bill and hender were something more than friends. she was conscious of disloyalty to her own upbringing and to her mother-in-law who loved her, and she often blamed herself and resolved never to allow hender to speak ill again of mrs. ede. but the temptation to complain was insidious. it was not every woman who would consent, as she did, to live under the same roof as her mother-in-law, and hender, who hated mrs. ede, who spoke of her as the 'hag,' never lost an opportunity of pointing out the fact that the house was kate's house and not mrs. ede's. the first time hender said, 'after all, the house is yours,' kate was pleased, but the girl insisted too much, and kate was often irritated against her assistant, and she often raged inwardly. it was abominable to have her thoughts interpreted by hender. she loved her mother-in-law dearly, she didn't know what she'd do without her, but--so it went on; struggle as she would with herself, there still lay at the bottom of her mind the thought that mrs. ede had prevented her from going that evening to the theatre, and turn, twist, and wander away as she would, it invariably came back to her. frequently miss hender had to repeat her questions before she obtained an intelligible answer, and often, without even vouchsafing a reply, kate would pitch her work aside nervously. her thoughts were not in her work; she waited impatiently for an opportunity of turning out the old trunk, full of the trinkets, books, verses, remembrances of her youth, which lay under her bed, pushed up against the wall. but a free hour was only possible when ralph was out. then her mother-in-law had to mind the shop, and kate would be sure of privacy at the top of the house. there was no valid reason why she should dread being found out in so innocent an amusement as turning over a few old papers. her fear was merely an unreasoned and nervous apprehension of ridicule. ever since she could remember, her sentimentality was always a subject either of mourning or pity; in allowing it to die out of her heart she had learned to feel ashamed of it; the idea of being discovered going back to it revolted her, and she did not know which would annoy her the most, her husband's sneers or mrs. ede's blank alarm. kate remembered how she used to be told that novels must be wicked and sinful because there was nothing in them that led the soul to god, and she resolved to avoid further lectures on this subject. she devoted herself to the task of persuading ralph to leave his counter and to go out for a walk. this was not easy, but she arrived at last at the point of helping him on with his coat and handing him his hat; then, conducting him to the door, she bade him not to walk fast and to be sure to keep in the sun. she then went upstairs, her mind relaxed, determined to enjoy herself to the extent of allowing her thoughts for an hour or so to wander at their own sweet will. the trunk was an oblong box covered with brown hair; to pull it out she had to get under the bed, and it was with trembling and eager fingers that she untied the old twisted cords. remembrance with kate was a cult, but her husband's indifference and her mother-in-law's hard, determined opposition had forced the past out of sight; but now on the first encouragement it gushed forth like a suppressed fountain that an incautious hand had suddenly liberated. and with what joy she turned over the old books! she examined the colour of the covers, she read a phrase here and there: they were all so dear to her that she did not know which she loved the best. scenes, heroes, and heroines long forgotten came back to her, and in what minuteness, and how vividly! it appeared to her that she could not go on fast enough; her emotion gained upon her until she became quite hysterical; in turning feverishly over some papers a withered pansy floated into her lap. tears started to her eyes, and she pressed the poor little flower, forgotten so long, to her lips. she could not remember when she gathered it, but it had come to her. her lips quivered, the light seemed to be growing dark, and a sudden sense of misery eclipsed her happiness, and unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst into a tumultuous storm of sobs. but after having cried for a few minutes her passion subsided, and she wiped the tears from her hands and face, and, smiling at herself, she continued her search. everything belonging to that time interested her, verses and faded flowers; but her thoughts were especially centred on an old copybook in which she kept the fragments of poetry that used to strike her fancy at the moment. when she came upon it her heart beat quicker, and with mild sentiments of regret she read through the slips of newspaper; they were all the same, but as long as anyone was spoken of as being the nearest and the dearest kate was satisfied. even the bonbon mottoes, of which there were large numbers, drew from her the deepest sighs. the little cupid firing at a target in the shape of a heart, with 'tom smith & co., london,' printed in small letters underneath, did not prevent her from sharing the sentiment expressed in the lines: 'let this cracker, torn asunder, be an emblem of my heart; and as we have shared the plunder, pray you of my love take part.' sitting on the floor, with one hand leaning on the open trunk, she read, letting her thoughts drift through past scenes and sensations. all was far away; and she turned over the relics that the past had thrown up on the shore of the present without seeing any connection between them and the needs of the moment until she lit on the following verses: 'wearily i'm waiting for you, for your absence watched in vain ask myself the hopeless question, will he ever come again? 'all these years, am i forgotten? or in absence are you true? oh, my darling, 'tis so lonely, watching, waiting here for you! 'has your heart from its allegiance turned to greet a fairer face? have you welcomed in another charms you missed in me, and grace? 'long, long years i have been waiting, bearing up against my pain; all my thoughts and vows have vanished, will they ever come again? 'yes, for woman's faith ne'er leaves her, and my trust outweighs my fears; and i still will wait his coming, though it may not be for years.' as the deer, when he believes he has eluded the hounds, leaves the burning plains and plunges into the cool woodland water, kate bathed her tired soul, letting it drink its fill of this very simple poem. the sentiment came to her tenderly, through the weak words; and melting with joy, she repeated them over and over again. at last her sad face lit up with a smile. it had occurred to her to send the poem that gave her so much pleasure to dick. it would make him think of her when he was far away; it would tell him that she had not forgotten him. the idea pleased her so much that it did not occur to her to think if she would be doing wrong in sending these verses to her lodger, and with renewed ardour and happiness she continued her search among her books. there was no question in her mind as to which she would read, and she anticipated hours of delight in tracing resemblances between herself and the lady who used to read byron and shelley to her aristocratic lover. she feared at first she had lost this novel, but when it was discovered it was put aside for immediate use. the next that came under her hand was the story of a country doctor. in this instance the medical hero had poisoned one sister to whom he was secretly married in order that he might wed a second. kate at first hesitated, but remembering that there was an elopement, with a carriage overturned in a muddy lane, she decided upon looking it through again. another book related the love of a young lady who found herself in the awkward predicament of not being able to care for anyone but her groom, who was lucky enough to be the possessor of the most wonderful violet eyes. the fourth described the distressing position of a young clergyman who, when he told the lady of his choice that his means for the moment did not admit of his taking a wife, was answered that it did not matter, for in the meantime she was quite willing to be his mistress. this devotion and self-sacrifice touched kate so deeply that she was forced to pause in her search to consider how those who have loved much are forgiven. but at this moment mrs. ede entered. 'oh, kate, what are you doing?' although the question was asked in an intonation of voice affecting to be one of astonishment only, there was nevertheless in it an accent of reproof that was especially irritating to kate in her present mood. a deaf anger against her mother-in-law's interference oppressed her, but getting the better of it, she said quietly, though somewhat sullenly: 'you always want to know what i'm doing! i declare, one can't turn round but you're after me, just like a shadow.' 'what you say is unjust, kate,' replied the old woman warmly. 'i'm sure i never pry after you.' 'well, anyhow, there it is: i'm looking out for a book to read in the evenings, if you want to know.' 'i thought you'd given up reading those vain and sinful books; they can't do you any good.' 'what harm can they do me?' 'they turn your thoughts from christ. i've looked into them to see that i may not be speaking wrongly, and i've found them nothing but vain accounts of the world and its worldliness. i didn't read far, but what i saw was a lot of excusing of women who couldn't love their husbands, and much sighing after riches and pleasure. i thanked god you'd given over such things. i believed your heart was turned towards him. now it grieves me bitterly to see i was mistaken.' 'i don't know what you mean. ralph never said that there was any harm in my reading tales.' 'ah! ralph, i'm afraid, has never set a good example. i wouldn't blame him, for he's my own son, but i'd wish to see him not prizing so highly the things of the world.' 'we must live, though,' kate answered, without quite understanding what she said. 'live--of course we have to live; but it depends how we live and what we live for--whether it be to indulge the desires of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or to regain the image of god, to have the design of god again planted in our souls. this is what we should live for, and it is only thus that we shall find true happiness.' though these were memories of phrases heard in the pulpit, they were uttered by mrs. ede with a fervour, with a candour of belief, that took from them any appearance of artificiality; and kate did not notice that her mother-in-law was using words that were not habitual to her. 'but what do you want me to do?' said kate, who began to feel frightened. 'to go to christ, to love him. he is all we have to help us, and they who love him truly are guided as to how to live righteously. whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, it springs from or leads to the love of god and man.' these words stirred kate to her very entrails; a sudden gush of feeling brought the tears to her eyes, and she was on the point of throwing herself into mrs. ede's arms. the temptation to have a good cry was almost irresistible, and the burden of her pent-up emotions was more than she could bear. but communing the while rapidly within herself, she hesitated, until an unexpected turn of thought harshly put it before her that she was being made a fool of--that she had a perfect right to look through her books and poetry, and that hender's sneers were no more than she deserved for allowing a mother-in-law to bully her. then the tears of sorrow became those of anger, and striving to speak as rudely as she could, she said: 'i don't talk about christ as much as you, but he judges us by our hearts and not by our words. you would do well to humble yourself before you come to preach to others.' 'dear kate, it's because i see you interested in things that have no concern with god's love that i speak to you so. a man who never knows a thought of god has been staying here, and i fear he has led you----' at these words kate threw the last papers into the trunk, pushed it away, and turned round fiercely. 'led me into what? what do you mean? mr. lennox was here because ralph wished him to be here. i think that you should know better than to say such things. i don't deserve it.' on this kate left the room, her face clouded and trembling with a passion that she did not quite feel. to just an appreciable extent she was conscious that it suited her convenience to quarrel with her mother-in-law. she was tired of the life she was leading; her whole heart was in her novels and poetry; and, determined to take in the _london reader_ or _journal_, she called back to mrs. ede that she was going to consult ralph on the matter. he was in capital spirits. the affairs in the shop were going on more satisfactorily than usual, a fact which he did not fail to attribute to his superior commercial talents. 'a business like theirs went to the bad,' he declared, 'when there wasn't a man to look after it. women liked being attended to by one of the other sex,' and beaming with artificial smiles, the little man measured out yards of ribbon, and suggested 'that they had a very superior thing in the way of petticoats just come from manchester.' his health was also much improved, so much so that his asthmatic attack seemed to have done him good. a little colour flushed his cheeks around the edges of the thick beard. in the evenings after supper, when the shop was closed, an hour before they went up to prayers, he would talk of the sales he had made during the day, and speak authoritatively of the possibilities of enlarging the business. his ambition was to find someone in london who would forward them the latest fashions; somebody who would be clever enough to pick out and send them some stylish but simple dress that kate could copy. he would work the advertisements, and if the articles were well set in the window he would answer for the rest. the great difficulty was, of course, the question of frontage, and mr. ede's face grew grave as he thought of his little windows. 'nothing,' he said, 'can be done without plate-glass; five hundred pounds would buy out the fruit-seller, and throw the whole place into one'; and kate, interested in all that was imaginative, would raise her eyes from the pages of her book and ask if there was no possibility of realizing this grand future. she was reading a novel full of the most singular and exciting scenes. in it she discovered a character who reminded her of her husband, a courtier at the court of louis xiv., who said sharp things, and often made himself disagreeable, but there was something behind that pleased, and under the influence of this fancy she began to find new qualities in ralph, the existence of which she had not before suspected. sometimes the thought struck her that if he had been always like what he was now she would have loved him better, and listening to a dispute which had arisen between him and his mother regarding the purchase of the fruiterer's premises, her smile deepened, and then, the humour of the likeness continuing to tickle her, she burst out laughing. 'what are you laughing at, kate?' said her husband, looking admiringly at her pretty face. mrs. ede sternly continued her knitting, but ralph seemed so pleased, and begged so good-naturedly to be told what the matter was, that the temptation to do so grew irresistible. 'you won't be angry if i tell you?' 'angry, no. why should i be angry?' 'you promise?' 'yes, i promise,' replied ralph, extremely curious. 'well then, there is a cha-cha-rac-ter so--so like----' 'oh, if you want to tell me, don't laugh like that. i can't hear a word you're saying.' 'oh it is so--so--so like----' 'yes, but do stop laughing and tell me.' at last kate had to stop laughing for want of breath, and she said, her voice still trembling: 'well, there's a fellow in this book--you promise not to be angry?' 'oh yes, i promise.' 'well, then, there's someone in this book that does remind me so much--of you--that is to say, when you're cross, not as you are now.' at this announcement mrs. ede looked up in astonishment, and she seemed as hurt as if kate had slapped her in the face, whereas ralph's face lighted up, his smile revealing through the heavy moustache the gap between his front teeth which had been filled with some white substance. kate always noticed it with aversion, but ralph, who was not susceptible to feminine revulsions of feelings, begged her to read the passage, and with an eagerness that surprised his mother. without giving it a second thought she began, but she had not read half a dozen words before mrs. ede had gathered up her knitting and was preparing to leave the room. 'oh, mother, don't go! i assure you there's no harm.' 'leave her alone. i'm sick of all this nonsense about religion. i should like to know what harm we're doing,' said ralph. kate made a movement to rise, but he laid his hand upon her arm, and a moment after mrs. ede was gone. 'oh, do let me go and fetch her,' exclaimed kate. 'i shouldn't--i know i shouldn't read these books. it pains her so much to see me wasting my time. she must be right.' 'there's no right about it; she'd bully us all if she had her way. do be quiet, kate! do as i tell you, and let's hear the story.' relinquishing another half-hearted expostulation which rose to her lips, kate commenced to read. ralph was enchanted, and, deliciously tickled at the idea that he was like someone in print, he chuckled under his breath. soon they came to the part that had struck kate as being so particularly appropriate to her husband. it concerned a scene between this ascetic courtier and a handsome, middle-aged widow who frequently gave him to understand that her feelings regarding him were of the tenderest kind; but on every occasion he pretended to misunderstand her. the humour of the whole thing consisted in the innocence of the lady, who fancied she had not explained herself sufficiently; and harassed with this idea, she pursued the courtier from the court hall into the illuminated gardens, and there told him, and in language that admitted of no doubt, that she wished to marry him. the courtier was indignant, and answered her so tartly that kate, even in reading it over a second time, could not refrain from fits of laughter. 'it is--is so--s-o like what you w-wo-uld say if a wo-wo-man were to fol-low you,' she said, with the tears rolling down her cheeks. 'is it really?' asked ralph, joining in the laugh, although in a way that did not seem to be very genuine. the fact was that he felt just a little piqued at being thought so indifferent to the charms of the other sex, and looked at his wife for a moment or two in a curious sort of way, trying to think how he should express himself. at last he said: 'i'm sure that if it was my own kate who was there i shouldn't answer so crossly.' kate ceased laughing, and looked up at him so suddenly that she increased his embarrassment; but the remembrance that he was after all only speaking to his wife soon came to his aid, and confidentially he sat down beside her on the sofa. her first impulse was to draw away from him--it was so long since he had spoken to her thus. 'could you never love me again if i were very kind to you?' 'of course i love you, ralph.' 'it wasn't my fault if i was ill--one doesn't feel inclined to love anyone in illness. give me a kiss, dear.' a recollection of how she had kissed dick flashed across her mind, but in an instant it was gone; and bending her head, she laid her lips to her husband's. it in no way disgusted her to do so; she was glad of the occasion, and was only surprised at the dull and obtuse anxiety she experienced. they then spoke of indifferent things, but the flow of conversation was often interrupted by complimentary phrases. while ralph discoursed on his mother's nonsense in always dragging religion into everything, kate congratulated him on looking so much better; and, as she told him of the work she would have to get through at all costs before friday, he either squeezed her hand or said that her hair was getting thicker, longer, and more beautiful than ever. * * * * * next morning kate received a letter from dick, saying he was coming to hanley on his return visit, and hoped that he would be able to have his old rooms. ix she would have liked to talk to hender first, but hender would not arrive for another hour, and nothing had ever seemed to her so important as that dick should lodge with them. it was therefore with bated breath that she waited for ralph to speak. they could not hope, he said, to find a nicer lodger; the little he had seen of him made him desirous of renewing the acquaintance, and he continued all through breakfast to eulogize mr. lennox. his mother, whose opinions were attacked, sat munching her bread and butter with indifference. but it was not permitted to anyone to be indifferent to ralph's wishes, and, determined to resent the impertinence, he derisively asked his mother if she had any objections. 'you've a right to do what you like with your rooms; but i should like to know why you so particularly want this actor here. one would think he was a dear friend of yours to hear you talk. is it the ten shillings a week he pays for his room and the few pence you make out of his breakfast you're hankering after?' 'of course i want to keep my rooms let. perhaps you might like to have them yourself; you could have all the clergymen in the town to see you once a week, and a very nice tea-party you'd make in the sitting-room.' nor was this all; he continued to badger his mother with the bitterest taunts he could select. quite calmly kate watched him work himself into a passion, until he declared that he had other reasons more important than the ten shillings a week for wishing to have mr. lennox staying in the house. this statement caused kate just a pang of uneasiness, and she begged for an explanation. partly to reward her for having backed him up in the discussion, and through a wish to parade his own far-seeing views, he declared that mr. lennox might be of great use to them in their little business if he were so inclined. kate could not repress a look of triumph; she knew now that nothing would keep him from having dick in the house. 'shall i write to him to-day, then, and say that we can let him have the rooms from next monday?' 'of course,' ralph replied, and kate went upstairs with hender, who had just come in. the little girls were told to move aside; there was a lot of cutting to be done; this was said preparatory to telling them a little later on that they were too much in the way, and would have to go down and work in the front kitchen under the superintendence of mrs. ede. hender was at the machine, but kate, who had a dressing-gown on order, unrolled the blue silk and fidgeted round the table as if she had not enough room for laying out her pattern-sheets. hender noticed these manoeuvres with some surprise, and when kate said, 'now, my dear children, i'm afraid you're very much in my way; you'd better go downstairs,' she looked up with the expression of one who expects to be told a secret. this manifest certitude that something was coming troubled kate, and she thought it would be better after all to say nothing about mr. lennox, but again changing her mind, she said, assuming an air of indifference: 'mr. lennox will be here on monday. i've just got a letter from him.' 'oh, i'm so glad; for perhaps this time it will be possible to have one spree on the strict q.t.' kate was thinking of exactly the same thing, but miss hender's crude expression took the desire out of her heart, and she remained silent. 'i'm sure it's for you he's coming,' said the assistant. 'i know he likes you; i could see it in his eyes. you can always see if a man likes you by his eyes.' although it afforded kate a great deal of pleasure to think that dick liked her, it was irritating to hear his feelings for her discussed; she could not forget she was a married woman, and she began to regret that she ever mentioned the subject at all, when miss hender said: 'but what's the use of his coming if you can't get out? a man always expects a girl to be able to go out with him. the "hag" is sure to be about, and even if you did manage to give her the slip, there's your husband. lord! i hadn't thought of that before. what damned luck! don't you wish he'd get ill again? another fit of asthma would suit us down to the ground.' the blood rushed to kate's face, and snapping nervously with the scissors in the air, she said: 'i don't know how you can bring yourself to speak in that way. how can you think that i would have my husband ill so that i might go to the theatre with mr. lennox? what do you fancy there is between us that makes you say such a thing as that?' 'oh, i really don't know,' miss hender answered with a toss of her head; 'if you're going to be hoighty-toighty i've done.' kate thought it very provoking that hender could never speak except coarsely, and it would have given her satisfaction to have said something sharp, but she had let hender into a good many of her secrets, and it would be most inconvenient to have her turn round on her. not, indeed, that she supposed she'd be wicked enough to do anything of the kind, but still---- and influenced by these considerations, kate determined not to quarrel with hender, but to avoid speaking to her of dick. even with her own people she maintained an attitude of shy reserve until dick arrived, declining on all occasions to discuss the subject, whether with her husband or mother-in-law. 'i don't care whether he comes or not; decide your quarrels as you like, i've had enough of them,' was her invariable answer. this air of indifference ended by annoying ralph, but she was willing to do that if it saved her from being forced into expressing an opinion--that was the great point; for with a woman's instinct she had already divined that she would not be left out of the events of the coming week. but there was still another reason. she was a little ashamed of her own treachery. otherwise her conscience did not trouble her; it was crushed beneath a weight of desire and expectancy, and for three or four days she moved about the house in a dream. when she met her husband on the stairs and he joked her about the roses in her cheeks, she smiled curiously, and begged him to let her pass. in the workroom she was happy, for the mechanical action of sewing allowed her to follow the train of her dreams, and drew the attention of those present away from her. she had tried her novels, but now the most exciting failed to fix her thoughts. the page swam before her eyes, a confusion of white and black dots, the book would fall upon her lap in a few minutes, and she would relapse again into thinking of what dick would say to her, and of the hours that still separated them. on sunday, without knowing why, she insisted on attending all the services. ralph in no way cared for this excessive devotion, and he proposed to take her for a walk in the afternoon, but she preferred to accompany mrs. ede to church. it loosened the tension of her thoughts to raise her voice in the hymns, and the old woman's gabble was pleasant to listen to on their way home--a sort of meaningless murmur in her ears while she was thinking of dick, whom she might meet on the doorstep. it was, however, his portmanteau that they caught sight of in the passage when they opened the door. ralph had taken it in; lennox said that he had a lot of business to do with the acting manager, and would not return before they went up to prayers. still kate did not lose hope, and on the off chance that he might feel tired after his journey, and come home earlier than he expected, she endeavoured to prolong the conversation after supper. by turns she spoke to mrs. ede of the sermons of the day, and to ralph of the possibilities of enlarging the shop-front. but when she was forced to hear how the actor was to send them the new fashions from london, the old lady grew restive, as did ralph when the conversation turned on the relative merits of the morning and afternoon sermon. it was the old story of the goat and the cabbage--each is uneasy in the other's company; and even before the usual time mother and son agreed that it would be better to say prayers and get to bed. kate would have given anything to see dick that night, and she lay awake for hours listening for the sound of the well-known heavy footstep. at last it came, tramp, tramp, a dull, heavy, noisy flapping through the silence of the house. she trembled, fearing that he would mistake the door and come into their room; if he did, she felt she would die of shame. the footsteps approached nearer, nearer; her husband was snoring loudly, and, casting a glance at him, she wondered if she should have time to push the bolt to. but immediately after, dick stumbled up the stairs into his room, and, hugging the thought that he was again under her roof, she fell to dreaming of their meeting in the morning, wondering if it would befall her to meet him on the stairs or in the shop face to face, or if she would catch sight of him darting out of the door hurrying to keep an appointment which he had already missed. mrs. ede usually took in the lodger's hot water, it not being considered quite right for kate to go into a gentleman's room when he was in bed. but the next morning mrs. ede was out and ralph was asleep, so there was nothing for it but to fill the jug. dick heard the door open, but didn't trouble to look round, thinking it was mrs. ede, and kate glided to the washhandstand and put down the jug in the basin. but the clink of the delf caused him to look round. 'oh, is that you, kate?' he said, brushing aside with a wave of his bare arm his frizzly hair. 'i didn't expect to see so pretty a sight first thing in the morning. and how have you been?' 'i'm very well, thank you, sir,' kate replied, retreating. 'well, i don't see why you should run away like that. what have i done to offend you? you know,' he said, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, 'i didn't write to you about the poetry you sent me (at least, i suppose it was from you, it had the hanley post-mark; if it wasn't, i'll burn it), because i was afraid that your old mother or your husband might get hold of my letter.' 'i must go away now, sir; your hot water is there,' she said, looking towards the door, which was ajar. 'but tell me, wasn't it you who sent me the verses? i have them here, and i brought you a little something--i won't tell you what--in return.' 'i can't talk to you now,' said kate, casting on him one swift glance of mingled admiration and love. although somewhat inclined to corpulence, he was a fine man, and looked a tower of strength as he lay tossed back on the pillows, his big arms and thick brown throat bare. a flush rose to her cheeks when he said that he had brought her a little something; all the same, it was impossible to stop talking to him now, and hoping to make him understand her position, raising her voice, she said: 'and what can i get you for breakfast, sir? would you like an omelette?' 'oh, i shan't be able to wait for breakfast; i have to be up at our acting manager's by nine o'clock. what time is it now?' 'i think it's just going the half-hour, sir.' 'oh, then, i've lots of time yet,' replied dick, settling himself in a way that relieved kate of all apprehension that he was going to spring out before her on the floor. 'then shall i get you breakfast, sir?' 'no, thanks, i shan't have time for that; i shall have something to eat up at hayes'. but tell me, is there anyone listening?' he said, lowering his voice again. 'i want to speak to you now particularly, for i'm afraid i shall be out all day.' afraid that her husband might overhear her, kate made a sign in the negative, and whispered, 'tomorrow at breakfast.' although the thought that he had a present for her delighted her all day, kate was not satisfied; for there had been something pretty, something coquettish associated in her mind with carrying in his breakfast tray (doubtless a remembrance of the ribbon-bedecked chambermaids she had read of in novels), which was absent in the more menial office of taking in his hot water. besides, had he not told her that he was going to be out all day? monday, tuesday, and wednesday she had dotted over with little plans; thursday and friday she knew nothing of. saturday? well, there was just a possibility that he might kiss her before going away. she felt irritated with herself for this thought, but could not rid herself of it; a bitter sense of voluptuousness burnt at the bottom of her heart, and she railed against life sullenly. she had missed him on sunday; monday had ended as abruptly as an empty nut, and hender's questions vexed and wearied her; she despaired of being able to go to the theatre. nothing seemed to be going right. even the little gold earrings which dick took out of a velvet case and wanted to put into her ears only added a bitterer drop to her cup. all she could do was to hide them away where no one could find them. it tortured her to have to tell him that she could not wear them, and the kiss that he would ask for, and she could not refuse, seemed only a mockery. he was going away on sunday, and this time she did not know when he would return. in addition to all these disappointments, she found herself obliged to go for a long walk on tuesday afternoon to see a lady who had written to her about a dress. she did not get home until after six, and then it was only to learn that mr. lennox had been about the house all day, idling and talking to ralph in the shop, and that they had gone off to the theatre together. mrs. ede was more than indignant, and when the little man was brought home at night, speaking painfully in little short gasps, she declared that it was a judgment upon him. next day he was unable to leave his room. when dick was told what had happened he manifested much concern, and insisted on seeing the patient. indeed, the sympathy he showed was so marked that kate at first was tempted to doubt its sincerity. but she was wrong. dick was truly sorry for poor ralph, and he sat a long time with him, thinking what could be done to relieve him. he laid all the blame at his own door. he ought never to have kept a person liable to such a disease out so late at night. there was a particular chair in which ralph always sat when he was affected with his asthma. it had a rail on which he could place his feet, and thus lift one knee almost on to a level with his chest; and in this position, his head on his hand, he would remain for hours groaning and wheezing. dick watched him with an expression of genuine sorrow on his big face; and it was so clear that he regretted what he had done that for a moment even mrs. ede's heart softened towards him. but the thaw was only momentary; she froze again into stone when he remarked that it was a pity that mr. ede was ill, for they were going to play _madame angot_ on thursday night, and he would like them all to come. the invitation flattered ralph's vanity, and, resolved not to be behindhand in civility, he declared between his gasps that no one should be disappointed on his account; he would feel highly complimented by mr. lennox's taking mrs. ede to the play; and on the spot it was arranged that kate and miss hender should go together on thursday night to see _madame angot_. kate murmured that she would be very pleased, and alluding to some work which had to be finished, she returned to the workroom to tell hender the news. 'that's the best bit of news i've heard in this house for some time,' hender said. kate felt she could not endure another disappointment. all that was required of her now was to assume an air of indifference, and take care not to betray herself to mrs. ede, whom she suspected of watching her. but her excitement rendered her nervous, and she found the calm exterior she was so desirous of imposing on herself difficult to maintain. the uncertainty of her husband's temper terrified her. it was liable at any moment to change, and on the night in question he might order her not to leave the house. if so, she asked herself if she would have the courage to disobey him. the answer slipped from her: it was impossible for her to fix her attention on anything; and although she had a press of work on her hands, she availed herself of every occasion to escape to the kitchen, where she might talk to lizzie and annie about the play, and explain to them the meaning of the poster, that she now understood thoroughly. their childish looks and questions soothed the emotions that were burning within her. thursday morning especially seemed interminable, but at last the long-watched clock on their staircase struck the wished-for hour, and still settling their bonnet-strings, kate and hender strolled in the direction of the theatre. the evening was dry and clear, and over an embrasure of the hills beyond stoke the sun was setting in a red and yellow mist. the streets were full of people; and where piccadilly opens into the market-place, groups and couples of factory girls were eagerly talking, some stretching forward in a pose that showed the nape of the neck and an ear; others, graver of face, walking straight as reeds with their hands on their hips, the palms flat, and the fingers half encircling the narrow waists. 'you must be glad to get out.' hender said. 'to be cooped up in the way you are! i couldn't stand it.' 'well, you see, i can enjoy myself all the more when i do get out.' kate would have liked to answer more tartly, but on second thoughts she decided it was not worth while. it bored her to be reminded of the humdrum life she led, and she had come to feel ashamed that she had been to the theatre only twice in her life, especially when it was mentioned in dick's presence. 'we're too soon,' said hender, breaking in jauntily on kate's reflections; 'the doors aren't open yet.' 'i can see that.' 'but what are you so cross about?' asked hender, who was not aware of what was passing in her employer's mind. 'i'm not cross. but how long shall we have to wait? mr. lennox said he'd meet us here, didn't he?' 'oh, he can't be long now, for here comes wentworth with the keys to open the doors.' the street they were in branched to the right and left rectangularly; opposite were large flat walls, red in colour, and roofed like a barn, and before one black doorway some fifty or sixty people had collected. the manager pushed his way through the crowd, and soon after, like a snake into a hole, the line began to disappear. hender explained that this was the way to the pit, and what kate took for a cellar was the stage entrance. a young man with a big nose, whom she recognized as mr. montgomery, stared at them as he passed; then came two ladies--miss leslie and miss beaumont. dick did not appear for some time after, but at last the big hat was seen coming along. although, as usual, in a great hurry, he was apparently much pleased to see them, and he offered kate his arm and conducted her across the street into the theatre. 'you're a bit early, you know. the curtain doesn't go up for half an hour yet,' he said, as they ascended a high flight of steps, at the top of which sat a woman with tickets in her hand. 'we were afraid of being too late.' 'it was very good of you to come. i hope you'll have a pleasant evening; it would be quite a treat to act when you were in the house.' 'but aren't you going to act, sir?' 'you mustn't call me sir; everybody calls me dick, and i don't know anyone who has a better right to do so than you.' 'but aren't you going to act, di--? i can't say it.' 'i don't call it acting. i come on in the first act. i just do that to save the salary, for you know i have an interest in the tour.' kate had no idea as to what was meant by having 'an interest in the tour,' and she did not ask, fearing to waste her present happiness in questions. her attention was so concentrated on the big man by her side that she scarcely knew she was in a theatre, and had as yet perceived neither the star-light nor the drop-curtain. dick spoke to her of herself and of himself, but he said nothing that recalled any of the realities of her life, and when he suddenly lifted his hand from hers and whispered, 'here comes miss hender: we mustn't appear too intimate before her,' she experienced the sensation of one awaking out of a most delicious dream. hender cast a last retort at the two men with whom she was chaffing, and, descending through the chairs, said: 'mr. lennox, you're wanted behind.' dick promised to see them again when the act was over, and hastened away, and hender, settling herself in her chair, looked at kate in a way which said as distinctly as words, 'well, my young woman, you do go it when you're out on the loose.' but she refrained from putting her thoughts into words, possibly because she feared to turn her mistress from what she considered, too obviously, indeed, to be the right path. they were sitting in the middle division of a gallery divided into three parts, where the twilight was broken by the yellow-painted backs of the chairs, and where a series of mirrors, framed in black wood, decorated the walls, reflecting monotonously different small corners of the house. only a dozen or fifteen people had as yet come in, and they moved about like melancholy shades; or, when sitting still, seemed like ink-spots on a dark background. the two women looked down into the great pit, through which the crowd was rolling in one direction, a sort of human tide, a vague tumult in which little was distinguishable; a bald head or a bunch of yellow flowers in a woman's bonnet flashed through the darkness for an instant like the crest of a wave. a dozen pale jets of a miserable iron gas-fitting hanging out of the shadows of the roof struggled in the gloom, leaving the outlines of the muses above the proscenium as undefinable as the silhouettes of the shopkeepers in the pit. over against the shopkeepers was the drop-curtain, the centre of which contained a romantic picture intended to prepare the spectators for the play soon to begin. kate admired the lake, and during the long interval it seemed to her bluer and more beautiful than any she had ever seen. along the shores there were boats with sailors hoisting sails, and she began to wonder what was the destination of these boats, if the sailors were leaving their sweethearts or setting forth to regain them. it seemed to kate that the play was never going to begin, so long had she been kept waiting. she did not consult hender, but possessed her soul in patience till a thin young man came up from under the stage, pushing his glasses higher on his beak-like nose. he took his place on the high stool; he squared his shoulders; looked around; waved his stick. the sparkling marriage chorus, with the fanciful peasants and the still more fanciful bridegroom in silk, the bright appearance of clairette at the window, and the sympathy awakened by her love for the devil-may-care revolutionary poet seduced kate like a sensual dream; and in all she saw and felt there was a mingled sense of nearness and remoteness, an extraordinary concentration, and an absence of her own proper individuality. never had she heard such music. how suave it was compared with the austere and regular rhythm of the hymns she sang in church! the gay tripping measure of the market-woman's song filled her with visions and laughter. there was an accent of insincerity in the serenade that troubled her as a sudden cloud might the dreams of the most indolent of _lazzaroni_, but the beseeching passion of the duet revealed to her sympathies for parting lovers that even her favourite poetry had been unable to do. all her musical sensibilities rushed to her head like wine; it was only by a violent effort, full of acute pain, that she saved herself from raising her voice with those of the singers, and dreading a giddiness that might precipitate her into the pit, she remained staring blindly at the stage. her happiness would have been complete, if such violent emotions can be called happiness, had it not been for hender. this young person, actuated probably by a desire of displaying her knowledge, could not be prevented from talking. as each actor or actress entered she explained their position in the company, and all she knew of their habits in private life. mr. mortimer's dispute the other night with bill, the scene-shifter, necessitated quite a little tirade against drunkenness, and as it was necessary to tell of what had been said in the ladies' dressing-room, a description of miss beaumont's underclothing was introduced; it was very elegant--silk stockings and lace-trimmed chemises; whereas miss leslie's was declared to be much plainer. once or twice hender was asked to keep quiet, but kate did not much mind. the thunder of applause which rose from a pit filled with noisy factory boys and girls was accepted in good faith, and it floated through her mind, elevating and exciting her emotions as the roar of the breakers on the shore does the dreams of a dreamer. but the star she was expecting had not yet appeared. she had seen miss leslie, miss beaumont, joe mortimer, and frank bret, and numberless other people, who had appeared in all sorts of dresses and had sung all kinds of enchanting songs, but dick was nowhere to be found. she had searched vainly for him in the maze of colour that was being flashed before her eyes. would he appear as a king, a monk, a shepherd, or would he wear a cocked hat? she did not know, and was too bewildered to think. she had a dim notion that he would do something wonderful, set everything to rights, that they would all bow down before him when he entered, and she watched every motion of the crowd, expecting it every moment to make way for him. but he did not appear, and at last they all went away singing. her heart sank within her, but just when she had begun to lose hope, two men rushed across the stage and commenced to spy about and make plans. at first kate did not recognize her lover, so completely was he disguised, but soon the dreadful truth commenced to dawn upon her. oh, misery! oh, horror! how could this be? and she closed her eyes to shut out her dreadful disappointment. why had he done this thing? she had expected a king, and had found a policeman. 'there he is, there he is!' whispered hender. 'don't you see, 'tis he who does the policeman? a french policeman! he drags the bride away at the end of the act, you know.' poor kate felt very unhappy indeed. her fanciful house of cards had fallen down and crushed her under the ruins. she felt she could no longer take an interest in anything. the rest of the act was torture to her. what pleasure could it be to her to see her lover, looking hideous, drag a bride away from her intended? kate wished that her lover had not chosen to act such a part, and she felt, dimly, perhaps, but intensely, that it was incongruous of him to exhibit himself to her as a policeman who at the end of the act dragged the bride away from her intended. and she could not understand why he should have chosen, if he loved her, to dress himself in such very unbecoming clothes. she thought she would like to run out of the theatre, but that was impossible. but when dick came to her at the fall of the curtain and sat down by her side she forgot all about the foreign policeman; he was dick again. 'how did you like the piece, dear?' 'very much.' it was on her tongue to ask him why he had chosen to play the policeman, but all that was over; why should she trouble him with questions? yet the question in her mind betrayed itself, for, laying his hand affectionately on hers, he said that he felt that something had happened. hender, who had seen dick take kate's hand, thought that this was a moment for her to escape, but kate begged of her to stay. hender, however, feeling that her absence would be preferable to her company, mentioned that she must go; she had to speak to the manager on some business which she had forgotten till now. 'why did you want her to stay?' said dick, 'don't you like being alone with me?' kate answered him with a look, wondering all the while what could have induced him to play the part of that ugly policeman. 'i'm sure you didn't like the piece,' he continued, 'and yet i must say from behind it seemed to go very well; but then, there are so many things you miss from the wings.' kate understood nothing of what he said, but seeing that he was terribly sincere, and fearing to pain him, she hastened to give the piece her unqualified approbation. 'i assure you i couldn't have liked anything more--the music was so pretty.' 'and how did you think i looked? it's only a small part, you know, but at the same time it requires to be played. if there isn't some go put into it the finale all goes to pot.' now kate felt sure he was quizzing her, and at length she said, the desire to speak her mind triumphing over her shyness, 'but why did you make yourself look like that? it wasn't a nice part, was it?' 'it's only a trumpery bit of a thing, but it is better for me to take it than have another salary on the list. in the next act, you know, i come on as the captain of the guard.' 'and will that be nice?' kate asked, her face flushing at the idea of seeing her lover in a red coat. 'oh yes, it looks well enough, but it isn't an acting part. i'm only on for a few minutes. i'm only supposed to come on in search of the conspirators. i take a turn or two of the waltz with miss beaumont, who plays lange, and it's all over. have you ever heard the waltz?' kate never had; so, drawing her close to him, he sang the soft flowing melody in her ear. in her nervousness she squeezed his hand passionately, and this encouraged him to say, 'how i wish it were you that i had to dance with! how nice it would be to hold you in my arms! would you like to be in my arms?' kate looked at him appealingly; but nothing more was said, and soon after dick remembered he had to get the stage ready for the second act. as he hurried away, hender appeared. she had been round to the 'pub.' to have a drink with bill, and had been behind talking to her ladies, who, as she said, 'were all full of dick's new mash.' 'they've seen you, and are as jealous as a lot of cats.' 'it's very wicked of them to say there's anything between mr. lennox and me,' replied kate angrily. 'i suppose they think everybody is like themselves--a lot of actresses!' hender made no answer, but she turned up her nose at what she considered to be damned insulting to the profession. however, in a few minutes her indignation evaporated, and she called kate's attention to what a splendid house it was. 'i can tell you what; with a shilling pit, a sixpenny gallery, and the centre and side circles pretty well full, it soon runs up. there must be nigh on seventy pounds in--and that for thursday night!' they were now well on in the second act. the brilliancy of the 'choeur des merveilleuses,' the pleading pity of 'she is such a simple little thing,' the quaint drollery of the conspirators, made kate forget the aspersions cast on clairette's character. the light music foamed in her head like champagne, and in a whirling sense of intoxication a vision of dick in a red coat passed and repassed before her. for this she had to wait a long time, but at last the sounds of trumpets were heard, and those on the stage cried that the soldiers were coming. kate's heart throbbed, a mist swam before her eyes, and immediately after came a sense of bright calm; for, in all the splendour of uniform, dick entered, big and stately, at the head of a regiment of girls in red tights. the close-fitting jacket had reduced his size, the top-boots gave a dignity to his legs. he was doubtless a fine man; to kate he was more than divine. then the sweet undulating tune he had sung in her ears began, and casting a glance of explanation in the direction of the gallery, he put his arm round miss beaumont's waist. the action caused kate a heart-pang, but the strangeness of the scene she was witnessing distracted her thoughts. for immediately the other actors and actresses in their startling dresses selected partners, and the stage seemed transformed into a wonderful garden of colour swinging to the music of a fountain that, under the inspiration of the moonlight, broke from its monotonous chant into rhythmical variations. dick, like a great tulip in his red uniform, turned in the middle, and miss beaumont, in her long yellow dress, sprawled upon him. her dress was open at both sides, and each time she passed in front, kate, filled with disgust, strove not to see the thick pink legs, which were visible to the knees. miss leslie in her bride's dress bloomed a lily white, as she danced with a man whose red calves and thighs seemed prolonged into his very chest. la rivodière cast despairing glances at lange, poor pomponet strove to get to his bride, and all the blonde wigs and black collars of the conspirators were mixed amid the strange poke bonnets of the ladies, and the long swallow-tailed coats, reaching almost to the ground, flapped in and out of the legs of the female soldiers. kate smiled feebly and drank in the music of the waltz. it was played over again; like a caged canary's song it haunted clairette's orange-blossoms; like the voluptuous thrill of a nightingale singing in a rose-garden it flowed about lange's heavy draperies and glistening bosom; like the varied chant of the mocking bird it came from under ange pitou's cocked hat. it was sung separately and in unison, and winding and unwinding itself, it penetrated into the deepest recesses of kate's mind. it seduced like a deep slow perfume; it caressed with the long undulations of a beautiful snake and the mystery of a graceful cat; it whispered of fair pleasure places, where scent, music, and love are one, where lovers never grow weary, and where kisses endure for ever. she was conscious of deep self-contentment, of dreamy idleness, of sad languor, and the charm to which she abandoned herself resembled the enervations of a beautiful climate, the softness of a church; she yearned for her lover and the fanciful life of which he was the centre, as one might for some ideal fatherland. the current of the music carried her far away, far beyond the great hills into a land of sleep, dream, and haze, and a wonderful tenderness swam within her as loose and as dim as the green sea depths, that a wave never stirs. she struggled, but it was only as one in a dream strives to lift himself out of the power that holds; and when the conductor waved his stick for the last time, and the curtain came down amid deafening applause, irritated and enervated, she shrank from hender, as if anxious not to be wholly awakened. the third act passed she scarcely knew how. she was overborne and over-tempted; all her blood seemed to be in her head and heart, and from time to time she was shaken with quick shudderings. when dick came to see her she scarcely understood what he said to her, and it annoyed her not to be able to answer him. when the word 'love' was pronounced she smiled, but her smile was one of pain, and she could not rouse herself from a sort of sad ecstasy. gay as the tunes were, there was in every one a sort of inherent sadness which she felt but could not explain to dick, who began to think that she was disappointed in the piece. 'disappointed! oh no,' she said, and they stood for a long while staring at a large golden moon, lighting up the street like a bull's-eye. 'how nice it is to be here out of that hot stuffy theatre!' said dick, putting his arm round her. 'oh, do you think so? i could listen to that music for ever.' 'it is pretty, isn't it? i'm so glad you liked it. i told you the waltz was lovely.' 'lovely! i should think so. i shall never forget it.' she lost her habitual shyness in her enthusiasm, and sang the first bars with her face raised towards her lover's; then, gaining courage from his look of astonishment and pleasure, she gave all the modulations with her full voice. 'by jove! you've a deuced nice soprano, and a devilish good ear too. 'pon my soul, you sing that waltz as well as beaumont.' 'oh, dick, you mustn't laugh at me.' 'i swear i'm not laughing. sing it again; nobody's listening.' they were standing in the shade of a large warehouse; the line of slates making a crescent of the full moon, and amid the reverberating yards and brickways kate's voice sounded as penetrating and direct as a flute. the exquisite accuracy of her ear enabled her to give each note its just value. dick was astonished, and he said when she had finished: 'i really don't want to flatter you, but with a little teaching you would sing far better than beaumont. your ear is perfect; it's the production of the voice that wants looking to;' and he talked to her of the different tunes, listening to what she had to say, and encouraging her to recall the music she had heard. he would beg her to repeat a phrase after him; he taught her how to emphasize the rhythm, and was anxious that she should learn the legend of madame angot. 'now,' said dick, 'i'll sing the symphony, and we'll go through it with all the effects--one, two, three, four, ta ra ta ta ta ta ta.' but as kate attacked the first bar it was taken up by three or four male voices, the owners of which, judging by the sound, could not be more than forty or fifty yards away. 'here's montgomery, joe mortimer, and all that lot. i wouldn't be caught here with you for anything.' 'by going up this passage we can get home in two minutes.' 'can we? well, let's cut; but no, they're too close on us. do you go, dear; i'll remain and tell them it was a lady singing out of that window. here, take my latchkey. off you go.' without another word kate fled down the alley, and dick was left to explain whatever he pleased concerning the mythical lady whom he declared he had been serenading. when kate arrived home that night she lay awake for hours, tossing restlessly, her brain whirling with tunes and parts of tunes. the conspirators' chorus, the waltz song, the legend, and a dozen disconnected fragments of the opera all sang together in her ears, and in her insomnia she continued to take singing lessons from dick. she was certain that he loved her, and the enchantment of her belief murmured in her ears all night long; and when she met hender next morning, the desire to speak of dick burnt her like a great thirst, and it was not until hender left her to go to the theatre that she began to realize in all its direct brutality the fact that on the morrow she would have to bid him goodbye, perhaps for ever. her husband wheezed on the sofa, her mother-in-law read the bible, sitting bolt upright in the armchair, and the shaded lamp covered the table with light, and fearing she might be provoked into shrieks or some violent manifestation of temper, she went to bed as early as she could. but there her torments became still more intolerable. all sorts of ideas and hallucinations, magnified and distorted, filled her brain, rendered astonishingly clear by the effects of insomnia. she saw over again the murders she had read of in her novels, and her imagination supplied details the author had not dreamed of. the elopements, with all their paraphernalia of moonlight and roses, came back to her.... but if she were never to see him again--if it were her fate to lie beside her husband always, to the end of her life! she buried her head in the pillows in the hopes of shutting out the sound of his snores. at last she felt him moving, and a moment afterwards she heard him say, 'there's mr. lennox at the door; he can't get in. do go down and open it for him.' 'why don't you go yourself?' she answered, starting up into a sitting position. 'how am i to go? you don't want me to catch my death at the front door?' ralph replied angrily. kate did not answer, but quickly tying a petticoat about her, and wrapping herself in her dressing-gown, she went downstairs. it was quite dark, and she had to feel her way along the passage. but at last she found and pulled back the latch, and when the white gleam of moonlight entered she retreated timidly behind the door. 'i'm so sorry,' said dick, trying to see who the concealed figure was, 'but i forgot my latchkey.' 'it doesn't matter,' said kate. 'oh, it's you, dear. i've been trying to get home all day to see you, but couldn't. why didn't you come down to the theatre?' 'you know that i can't do as i like.' 'well, never mind; don't be cross; give me a kiss.' kate shrunk back, but dick took her in his arms. 'you were in bed, then?' he said, chuckling. 'yes, but you must let me go.' 'i should like never to let you go again.' 'but you're leaving to-morrow.' 'not unless you wish me to, dear.' kate did not stop to consider the impossibility of his fulfilling his promise, and, her heart beating, she went upstairs. on the first landing he stopped her, and laying his hand on her arm, said, 'and would you really be very glad if i were to stay with you?' 'you know i would, dick.' they could not see each other, and after a long silence she said, 'we mustn't stop here talking. mrs. ede sleeps, you know, in the room at the back of the workroom, and she might hear us.' 'then come into the sitting-room,' said dick, taking her hands and drawing her towards him. 'i cannot.' 'i love you better than anyone in the world.' 'no, no; why should you love me?' 'let us prove our love one to the other,' he murmured, and frightened, but at the same time delighted by the words, she allowed him to draw her into his room. 'my husband will miss me,' she said as the door closed, but she could think no more of him; he was forgotten in a sudden delirium of the senses; and for what seemed to him like half an hour ralph waited, asking himself what his wife could be doing all that time, thinking that perhaps it was not lennox after all, but some rambling vagrant who had knocked at the door, and that he had better go down and rescue his wife. he would have done so had he not been afraid of a sudden draught, and while wondering what was happening he dozed away, to be awakened a few minutes afterwards by voices on the landing. 'let me go, dick, let me go; my husband will miss me.' she passed away from him and entered her husband's room, and ralph said: 'well, who was it?' 'mr. lennox,' she answered. 'our lodger,' ralph murmured, and fell asleep again. x 'is this the stage entrance?' 'yes, ma'am; you see, during the performance the real stage-door is used as a pit entrance, and we pass under the stage.' this explanation was given after a swaggering attitude had been assumed, and a knowing wink, the countersign for 'now i'm going to do something for your amusement,' had been bestowed on his pals. the speaker, a rough man with a beard and a fez cap, became the prominent figure of a group loitering before a square hole with an earthward descent, cut in the wall of the hanley theatre. kate was too occupied with her own thoughts to notice that she was being laughed at, and she said instantly, 'i want to see mr. lennox; will you tell him i'm here?' 'mr. lennox is on the stage; unless yer on in the piece i don't see 'ow it's to be done.' at this rebuff kate looked round the grinning faces, but at that moment a rough-looking fellow of the same class as the speaker ascended from the cellar-like opening, and after nudging his 'pal,' touched his cap, and said with the politeness of one who had been tipped, 'this way, marm. mr. lennox is on the stage, but if you'll wait a minute i'll tell 'im yer 'ere. take care, marm, or yer'll slip; very arkerd place to get down, with all 'em baskets in the way. this company do travel with a deal of luggage. that's mr. lennox's--the one as yer 'and is on.' 'oh, indeed!' kate said, stopping on her way to read mr. lennox's name on the basket. 'we piles 'em 'gainst that 'ere door so as to 'ave 'em 'andy for sending down to the station ter-morrow morning. but if you will remain here a moment, marm, i'll run up on the stage and see if i can see 'im.' the mention made by the scene-shifter of the approaching removal of dick's basket frightened her, and she remembered that she had scarcely spoken to him since last night. he had been obliged to go out in the morning before breakfast; and though he had tried hard to meet her during the course of the day, fate seemed to be against them. she was in a large, low-roofed storeroom with an earthen floor. the wooden ceiling was supported by an endless number of upright posts that gave the place the appearance of a ship. at the farther end there were two stone staircases leading to opposite sides of the stage. in front of her were a drum and barrel, and the semi-darkness at the back was speckled over with the sparkling of the gilt tinsel stuff used in pantomimes; a pair of lattice-windows, a bundle of rapiers, a cradle and a breastplate, formed a group in the centre; a broken trombone lay at her feet. the odour of size that the scenery exhaled reminded her of ralph's room; and she wondered if the swords were real, what different uses the tinsel paper might be put to; until she would awake from her dream, asking herself bitterly why he did not come down to see her. in the pause that followed the question, she was startled by a prolonged shout from the chorus. the orchestra seemed to be going mad; the drum was thumped, the cymbals were clashed, and back and forward rushed the noisy feet, first one way, then the other; a soprano voice was heard for a moment clear and distinct, and was drowned immediately after in a general scream. what could it mean? had the place taken fire? kate asked herself wildly. 'the finale of the act 'as begun, marm; mr. lennox will be hoff the stage directly.' 'has nothing happened? is the--?' the scene-shifter's look of astonishment showed kate that she was mistaken, but before they had time to exchange many words, the trampling and singing overhead suddenly ceased, and the muffled sound of clapping and applause was heard in the distance. 'there's the act.' said bill; 'he'll be down now immediately; he'll take no call for the perliceman,' and a moment after a man attired in knee-breeches, with a huge cravat wound several times round his throat, came running down the stone staircase. 'oh, 'ere he is,' said bill. 'i'll leave yer now, marm.' 'and so you found your way, dear?' said dick, putting out his arm to draw kate towards him. but he looked so very strange with the great patches of coarse red on his cheeks, and the deep black lines drawn about his eyes, that she could not conceal her repulsion, and guessing the cause of her embarrassment, he said, laughing: 'ah! i see you don't know me! a good makeup, isn't it? i took a lot of trouble with it.' kate made no answer; but the sound of his voice soothed her, and she leaned upon his arm. 'give me a kiss, dear, before we go up,' he said coaxingly. kate looked at him curiously, and then, laughing at her own foolishness, said, 'wait until you have the soldier's dress on.' at the top of the staircase the piled-up side-scenes made so many ways and angles that kate had to keep close to dick for fear of getting lost. however, at last they arrived in the wings, where gaslights were burning blankly on the whitewashed walls. a crowd of loud-voiced, perspiring girls in short fancy petticoats and with bare necks and arms, pushed their way towards the mysterious and ladder-like staircases and scrambled up them. ange pitou had taken off his cocked hat and was sharing a pint of beer with clairette. it being her turn to drink, she said: 'noe, hold my skirts in, there's a dear; this beer plays the devil with white satin.' 'it isn't on your skirts it will go if you spill it,' ange replied, 'but into your bosom. stop a second, and i'll give the bottom of the pot a wipe, then you'll be all right.' in the meanwhile pomponet and la rivodière were engaged in a violent quarrel. 'just you understand,' shouted mortimer: 'if you want to do any clowning you'd better fill your wig with sawdust. it had better be stuffed with something.' this sally was received with smacks of approbation from a circle of supers, who were waiting in the hopes of hearing some spirited dialogue. 'clowning! and what can you do? i suppose your line is the legitimate. go and play don john again, and you'll read us the notices in the morning.' 'notices ... talking of notices, you never had one, except one to quit from your landlady, poor woman!' replied mortimer in his most nasal intonation of voice. enchanted at this witticism, the supers laughed, and poor dubois would have been utterly done for if dick had not interposed. 'what do you think, dear?' he said, drawing her aside; 'shall i go and make my change now? i don't come on till the end of the act, and we'll be able to talk without interruption till then.' she had expected him to explain the rights and wrongs of that terrible quarrel that so providentially had passed off without bloodshed, and he seemed to have forgotten all about it. 'but those two gentlemen--the actors--what will happen? are they going to go away?' 'lord, no! of course it is riling to have a fellow mugging behind you with his wig when you're speaking, but one must go in for a bit of extra clowning on saturday night.' all this was greek to her, and before she could ask dick to explain he had darted down a passage. when he was with her it was well enough, but the moment his protection was withdrawn all her old fears returned to her. she did not know where to stand. the scene-shifters had come to carry away the scenes that were piled up in her corner, and one of the huge slips had nearly fallen on her. a troop of girls in single coloured gowns and poke bonnets had stopped to stare at her. she remembered their appearance from thursday, but she had not seen their vulgar, everyday eyes, nor heard until now their coarse, everyday laughs and jokes. amid this group lange, fat and lumpy, perorated. 'the most beastly place i ever was in, my dear. i always dread the week here. just look round the house. i don't believe there's a man in front who has a quid in his pocket. now at liverpool there are lots of nice men. you should have seen the things i had sent me when i was there with harrington's company--and the bouquets! there were flowers left for me every day.' what all this meant kate did not know, and she did not care to guess. for a moment the strange world she found herself in had distracted her thoughts, but it could do so no longer; no, not if it were ten times as strange. what did she care for these actresses? what was it to her what they said or what they thought of her? she had come to look after her lover; that was her business, and that only. he was going away to-morrow, and they had arranged nothing! she did not know whether he was going to remain, or if he expected her to follow him. she hated the people around her; she hated them for their laughter, for their fine clothes; she hated them above all because they were all calling for him. it was mr. lennox here and dick there. what did they want with him? could they do nothing without him? it seemed to her that they were all mocking her, and she hated them for it. the stage was now full of women. the men stood in the wings or ran to the ends of distant passages and called, 'dick, dick, dick!' the orchestra had ceased playing, and the noise in front of the curtain was growing every moment angrier and louder. at last dick appeared, looking splendid in red tights and hessian boots. he caught hold of two or three girls, changed their places, peeped to see if montgomery was all right, and gave the signal to ring up. but once the curtain was raised, he was surrounded by half a dozen persons all wanting to speak to him. ridding himself of them he contrived to get to kate's side, but they had not exchanged half a dozen words before the proprietor asked if he could 'have a moment.' then hender turned up, and begged of kate to come and see the dressing-rooms, but fearing to miss him, she declared she preferred to stay where she was. nevertheless, it was difficult not to listen to her friend's explanations as to what was passing on the stage, and in one of these unguarded moments dick disappeared. it was heart-breaking, but she could do nothing but wait until he came back. like an iron, the idea that she was about to lose her lover forced itself deeper into her heart. the fate of her life was hanging in the balance, and the few words that were to decide it were being delayed time after time, by things of no importance. dick had now returned, and was talking with the gas-man, who wanted to know if the extra 'hand' he had engaged was to be paid by the company or the management. every now and again an actress or an actor would rush through the wings and stare at her; sometimes it was the whole chorus, headed by miss beaumont, whose rude remarks reached her ears frequently. she tried to retreat, but the rude eyes and words followed her. occasionally the voice of the prompter was heard: 'now then, ladies, silence if you please; i can't hear what's being said on the stage.' no one listened to him, and, like animals in a fair, they continued to crush and to crowd in the passage between the wings and the whitewashed wall. a tall, fat girl stood close by; her hand was on her sword, which she slapped slowly against her thighs. the odour of hair, cheap scent, necks, bosoms and arms was overpowering, and to kate's sense of modesty there was something revolting in this loud display of body. a bugle call was soon sounded in the orchestra, and this was the signal for much noise and bustle. the conspirators rushed off the stage, threw aside their cloaks, and immediately after the soft curling strains of the waltz were heard; then the bugle was sounded again, and the girls began to tramp. 'cue for soldiers' entrance,' shouted the prompter. 'now then, ladies, are you ready?' cried dick, as he put himself at the head of the army. 'yes,' was murmured all along the line, and seeing her hero marching away at the head of so many women, any one of whom he could have had for the asking, it crossed her mind that it was unnatural for him to stoop to her, a poor little dressmaker of hanley, who did not know anything except, perhaps, how to stitch the seams of a skirt. but after what had befallen her last night, it did not seem possible that her fate was to be left behind, stitching beside hender and the two little girls, annie and lizzie; stitching bodice after bodice, skirt after skirt, till the end of her days, remembering always something that had come into her life suddenly and had gone out of it suddenly. 'it cannot be,' she cried out to herself--'it cannot be!' and she remembered that he had said that her ear was true, and her voice as pure as leslie's. 'a little throaty,' he had said, 'but that can be improved.' what he meant by throaty she did not know, but no matter; and to convince herself that he had spoken truly she sang the refrain of the waltz till the gas-man pulled a rope and brought the curtain down. she was about to rush on the stage to speak to dick, but the gas-man stopped her. 'you must wait a moment, there's a call,' he said. up went the curtain; the house burst into loud applause. down went the curtain; up it went again. this time only the principals came on, and while they were bowing and smiling to the audience a great herd of females poured through the wings, and kate found herself again among courtesans, conspirators, seducers, and wandering minstrels. 'who is she?' they asked as they went by. and kate heard somebody answer, 'a spoon of dick's,' and unable to endure the coarse jeering faces, which the strange costumes seemed to accentuate, she took advantage of a sudden break in the ranks and ran through the wings towards the back of the stage. 'what's the matter, dear?' he said, drawing her to him. 'oh, dick, you shouldn't neglect me as you do! i've been waiting here among those horrid girls nearly an hour for you, and you're talking to everybody but me.' 'it wasn't my fault, dear; i was on in the last act. they couldn't have finished it without me.' 'i don't know, i don't know; but you're going away to-morrow, and i shall never see you again. it's very hard on me that this last night--night-- that----' 'now, don't cry like that, dear. i tell you what. it's impossible to talk here; everybody's after me. i'll take off these things and we'll go for a walk through the town--will that do? i know we've a lot of things to speak about.' the serious way in which he spoke this last phrase brought courage to kate, and she strove to calm herself, but she was sobbing so heavily that she could not answer. 'well, you'll wait here, dear; no one will disturb you, and i shan't be above two minutes.' kate nodded her head in reply, and five minutes after they were walking up the street together. 'how did you get out, dear? did they see you?' 'no; ralph is bad with his asthma, and mother is sitting upstairs with him. i said i had some sewing to do.... oh, dick, i cannot bear to think that you're going away, and that i shall never see you again.' 'yes, you will, dear,' he answered cheerfully. 'now i wonder if your husband would consent to your going on the stage?' 'who would do the dressmaking for him?' she asked. 'he talks about the business, but we would be starving if we relied upon what we sell.' and stopping from time to time as their talk grew more earnest, they strolled through the crowded streets, kate hanging on dick's arm, her face inspiring the jeers of the factory girls. 'i wouldn't kiss her if i were you,' said the most impudent. 'wouldn't you really?' cried two youths, stealing up from behind and seizing two of the girls by the waist, and kissing them despite blows and laughter. the combats that followed forced kate and dick into the roadway. 'we cannot talk here,' dick said; 'isn't there a quiet street near by?' 'there's market street; don't you remember, dick, where you met me the day you took me to the potteries?' 'yes,' he said, 'i do remember that day. what a crash! and all because you wouldn't let me kiss you; just like those boys and girls. you were more determined than those girls were, for methinks, as we say in shakespeare, they wished to be kissed; but you didn't then.' 'that was the day,' she answered, 'that i took round mrs. barnes's dress after having stayed up all night to finish it. here's market street,' and they walked towards the square of sky enframed in the end of the street, talking of the luck that had brought them together just at the moment when they thought that chance had divided them for ever. 'it was a crash!' dick repeated, and they walked about the grass-grown mounds of cinders. 'but, dick, you won't desert me,' she said. 'tell me that you'll take me away from hanley. i couldn't bear it when you were gone--i would sooner die.' 'of course i'll take you away, my dear,' said dick, with a distinct vision of the divorce court in his mind; 'but you know that will mean giving up everything and travelling about the country with me; i don't know that you'll like it.' 'you mean that you don't love me enough to take me away.' 'i'll take you away, dear, if you'll come. i never liked a woman as i do you. the train call is for ten o'clock. we must contrive something. how are you to meet me at the station?' it was kate's turn then to hesitate. she had never been out of the potteries in her life; she had been born, reared and married here. and now she was going away without hope of ever being able to return, she was going into an unknown region to roam she did not know whither--adrift, and as helpless as a tame bird freed and delivered to the enmities of an unknown land. half the truth dawned upon her in that moment, and lifting her eyes, she said: 'dick! you're asking a great deal of me. what shall i do? never, never, never to see hanley again!' 'i didn't know that you cared so much about hanley. and you accused me just now of not loving you enough to take you away. i think it's you who don't love me.' 'dick, you know that i love you better than anything in the world! but to give up everything, never to see what you have seen all your life.' 'i don't think you'll regret it, dear; we'll be very happy. we're going from here to derby, and from there to blackpool, a very jolly place by the sea.' and he talked to her about boating and picnicking, becoming all the while more convinced of her pretty face, and his memory of her pretty voice was active in him when he took her in his arms and said: 'you mustn't think any more about it, dear; i couldn't leave this place without you. you'll like blackpool if you're fond of boating.' 'i don't know,' she said; 'i've never seen the sea.' 'well, you can see it now,' he answered. 'look out there; the valley between us and the hills filled with mist is more like the ocean than anything i've ever seen.' 'the ocean,' kate repeated. 'have you been to america?' 'yes,' he answered, 'i have lived there for several years. i may take the company out there--probably next year, if all goes well.' 'and will you take me with you?' 'yes,' he said, 'but you must come away to-morrow morning. why do you hesitate?' 'i'm not hesitating,' she answered, 'but those hills beyond the valley have always seemed to me very wonderful; ever since i was a little child i've asked myself what lies beyond those hills.' for answer dick kissed her, and they relapsed into contemplation. the tall stems of the factory chimneys, the bottle-shaped pottery ovens, the intricate shafts of the collieries were hidden in the mist, and the furnace fires flashing through the mist enhanced the likeness of the hanley valley to a sea of stars; like stars these furnaces flamed, now here, now there, over the lower slopes of the hills, till at last one blazed into existence high amid the hills, so high that it must have been on the very lowest verge. it seemed to kate like a hearth of pleasure and comfort awaiting her in some distant country, and all her fancies were centred in this distant light, till another light breaking suddenly higher up in the hills attracted her, and she deemed that it would be in or about this light that she would find happiness. she must ascend from one light to the next, but the light on which her eyes were fixed was not a furnace light, but a star. would she never find happiness, then, in this world? she asked. was dick going to desert her? and without telling him that she had mistaken an earthly for a heavenly light, she threw her arms about him. 'of course, dick, i'll go with you; i will follow you wherever you may choose to go and do the work that you bid me to do. you've spoken well of my voice. oh yes, dick, i'll go with you. why shouldn't i? you're everything to me! i never knew what happiness was till i saw you; i've never had any amusement, i've never had any love; it was nothing but drudgery from morning to night. better be dead than continue such an existence. tell me, dick, you'll take me away.' dick listened calmly and quietly to these passionate beseechings, and taking her in his arms, he kissed her fervidly, though somewhat with the air of one who deems further explanation unnecessary. but when he withdrew his face kate continued, at first plaintively, but afterwards with more passion: 'it's very wicked--i know it is--but i can't help myself. i was brought up religiously, nobody more so, but i never could think of god and forget this world like my mother and mrs. ede. i always used to like to read tales about lovers, and i used to feel miserable when they didn't marry in the end and live happily. but then those people were good and pure, and were commanded to love each other, whereas i'm sinful, and shall be punished for my sin. i don't know how that will be; perhaps you'll cease to love me, and will leave me. when you cease to love me i hope i shall die. but you'll never do that, dick; tell me that you will not. you'll remember that i gave up a great deal for you; that i left my home for you; that i left everything.' her feebleness attracted him as much as her pretty face, and he knew she loved him; and they were going away together; so much had been decided, and as far as he could see, there the matter ended. besides, it was getting very late; the third act must be nearly over now, and he had a lot of business to get through. but it was difficult to suggest that they should go home, for kate had burst into tears, unable to control herself any longer. he must console her. 'you mustn't cry, dear,' he said softly; 'we shall be far away from here to-morrow, and you'll find out then how well i love you.' 'but do you really love me? if i were only sure that it was so!' 'if i didn't love you, why should i ask you to go away with me? if i didn't love you, could i kiss you as i do?' 'of course we've been very wicked,' she continued as if she had not heard him, 'and you can't respect me very much; but then you made love to me so, and the music made me forget everything. it wasn't all my fault, i think, and you were so different from all the other men i've seen--so much more like what i imagined a man should be, so much more like the heroes in the novels. you know in the books there's always a tenor who comes and sings under the window in the moonlight, and sends the lady he loves roses. you never sent me any roses, but then there are no roses in hanley. but you were so kind and nice, and spoke so differently, and when i looked at your blue eyes i couldn't help feeling i loved you. i really think i knew--at least, i couldn't talk to you quite in the same way as i did to other men. you remember when i was showing you over the rooms, how you stopped to talk to me about the pious cards mrs. ede had hung on the wall--well, since then i felt that you liked me. and it was so different since you came to live in the house. i didn't see much of you, you were always so busy, but i used to lie awake at night to hear you come in.' 'look here, dear, i know you're very fond of me--so am i of you--but i must get back to the theatre. you've no idea of the business i've to get through to-night, and as we're going away together we'll have to look out for some place to put up.' this necessity for immediate action at once startled and frightened her, and bursting again into a passionate fit of sobbing, she exclaimed: 'oh, dick, this is a terrible thing you're asking me to do! oh, what will become of me? but do you love me? tell me again that you love me, and will not leave me.' dick drew her closer to him for answer. 'we must not stay here any longer,' he said. 'but i cannot go home, dick--to that house.' 'you'll sleep with me, dear, at the inn.' 'sleep with you?' she repeated and allowed herself to be led. the furnace fires had increased by tens; each dazzling line was now crossed and interwoven with other lines; and through the tears that blinded her eyes kate saw an immense sea of fire, and beyond nothing but unfathomable grey. xi next morning the sky was low and grey, and the house-tops appeared dimly through the mist. a little later the clouds began to gather, and it seemed like rain, but now and then a shaft of sunlight fell on a corner of the table within a few inches of kate's impatiently moving fingers. she had not been able to eat any breakfast--had just crumbled a piece of bread and sipped a cup of tea, and begged dick to hasten. it seemed that he hadn't a thought for her, of what her fate would be if they missed the train. she couldn't spend another night in hanley. 'dick, dear, do make haste. we shall miss the train.' 'we've plenty of time,' he answered, and she read in his face the desire for another plate of crumpets, and she prayed that he might not ask for another egg. 'dick, it's ten minutes to ten.' 'i don't think it can be as much as that, dear.' he turned to look at the clock, which was behind him. 'oh, dick, dick! make haste, i beg of you; you don't know what i'm suffering. supposing my husband was to come in now and find us here?' 'he can't know that we're here; the station is the first place he'd go to; there's no use hanging about there longer than we can help.' 'oh dear, i'd give ten years of my life if we were once in the train.' 'there's no use exciting yourself like that, dear; i'll see that you don't meet anyone.' 'how will you manage that?' 'i'll tell you in the cab. i think on the whole we'd better start now. luckily, we haven't much luggage to delay us. waiter, bring the bill and call me a cab.' 'and how will you save me from meeting him if he's there before us?' she said to dick as they drove away. 'i'll leave you in the cab, and cut down and see if he's there.' 'he might come and find me when you were gone, and that would be worse than anything. he might kill me, and i should have no one to save me.' he was, in truth, a little puzzled, for there was no getting away from the fact that it was only too possible, not to say probable, that they would find mr. ede waiting for them. he thought of disguises and secret doors, and masks and wigs, of the wardrobe-baskets, but a moment's reflection convinced him of the impracticability of stowing kate away in one of these. he then thought of wrapping a railway rug around his newly-acquired wife, and carrying her thus concealed in his arms; but that would not do either. mr. ede would be sure to ask him what he had there. 'oh, dick, dear, what shall we do if we find him waiting on the platform? you'll protect me, won't you? you won't desert me! i couldn't go back to him.' 'of course not. let him take you away from me? not me! if you don't want to live with him any more you've a right to leave him. i'll knock him down if he gives me any of his cheek.' 'you won't do that, will you, dear? remember how small and weak he is; you'd kill him.' 'that's true, so i would. well, i'm damned if i know what to do; you'll have to come with me even if he does kick up a row. it'll be deuced unpleasant, and before the whole company too. don't you think that you could wait a moment in the cab while i have a look round--i won't go far.' 'oh, i'd be too afraid! couldn't you ask someone to go for you?' 'i'll see who's there,' said dick, twisting his neck to look round the corner. 'by jove! they're all there--beaumont, dolly goddard. i think i'll ask montgomery; he's a devilish good chap. we had better stop the cab here and i'll call to him.' kate consented, and a moment after the musician's immense nose and scarecrow face was poked in the window. 'hey, old pal, what is it? waiting--but--i beg----' 'never mind that,' said dick, laying his hand on the young fellow's arm; 'i want you to do me a favour. run down on the platform and see if there's a little scraggy man about the height of dubois hanging about anywhere. you can't mistake him; he has a dirty dark beard that grows on his face like a bunch of grass, and he's no chest, little thin shoulders, and he'd have on----' 'a pair of grey trousers, and a red woollen comforter round his neck,' whispered kate, feeling bitterly ashamed. 'all right,' said montgomery, 'i'll spot him if he's there. but you know the train goes in ten minutes or less, and hayes says that he can't take the tickets; you've all the coin.' 'so i have; i forgot to send it round to him last night. ask him to step up here, there's a good fellow.' 'now, i bet you hayes won't be able to get the tickets right. he's perfectly useless, always boozed--nipping, you know.' kate did not answer, and an uneasy silence ensued, which was broken at length by the appearance of a hiccuping, long-whiskered man. 'how are you, o-o-old man? eh! who is--? i don't think i have the pleasure of this lady's acquaintance.' 'mrs. ede--mr. hayes, our acting manager. now, look here, hayes, you go and get the tickets. i can't leave this lady. thirty-five will do.' 'how thirty-five? we travel forty-one.' 'you know well enough that thirty-five is what we always get. damn it, man, make haste!' 'don't damn me. new member of the com-company, eh?' 'i'll tell you all about that after, old man,' said dick, leaning forward and pretending to whisper confidentially. this satisfied the tippler, who, after pulling his silky whiskers and serving kate to another drunken stare, hurried off, black bag in hand. 'confounded nuisance to have to deal with a fellow like that; he thinks he's a dab at business, and goes about with the black bag for show.' two minutes passed, maybe three; it seemed to her an eternity, and then she heard montgomery's voice crying: 'it's all right, i'm sure.' 'then get out, dear,' said dick, 'we haven't a moment to lose.' she jumped out, but hadn't walked a dozen yards before she stopped panic-stricken. 'mrs. ede--my mother-in-law--perhaps she's there! oh, dick, what shall i do?' 'she isn't there,' montgomery answered; 'i know her by sight,' and that montgomery should know her mother-in-law by sight meant to kate as much as a footprint does to a lost one in a desert. for the sight of the company on the asphalt, and all the luggage, portmanteaux, and huge white baskets labelled 'morton and cox's operatic company,' and the train waiting to carry them away to an unknown destination, made her feel more intensely than ever that she was adrift in a current that would carry her she knew not whither. all these strange people collected together were henceforth her world. she was not unnaturally frightened, but the baggage man especially filled her with alarm, so all-powerful did he seem, rushing up and down the platform, shouting at the porters, and throwing out bits of information to the ladies of the company as he passed them by. 'we shall be off in a minute, dear,' whispered dick softly in her ear, 'and then----' 'whose carriage are you going in, dick?' said a little stout man who walked with a strut and wore a hat like a bishop's. 'i really don't know; i don't mind; anywhere except with the pipe-smokers. i can't stand that lot.' 'perhaps he's going to take a first-class compartment with hot-water pans,' remarked mortimer, and the little group of admirers all laughed consumedly. dick, overhearing the remark, said to kate: 'one mustn't take notice of what he says; i very nearly kicked him into the orchestra at halifax about six months ago. but what compartment shall we take? let's go with leslie and dubois and montgomery; they're the quietest. let me introduce you to miss leslie. miss leslie--mrs. ede, a lady i'm escorting to blackpool; you two have a chat together. i'll be back in a minute. i must go after hayes; if i don't he may forget all about the tickets.' 'i'm afraid you'll find us a very noisy lot, mrs. ede,' said miss leslie, and in a way that made kate feel intimate with her at once. miss leslie had a bright smiling face, with clear blue eyes, and a mop of dyed hair peeped from under a prettily ribboned bonnet, and kate noticed how beautifully cut were her clothes. miss beaumont sported large diamonds in her ears, and she wore a somewhat frayed yellow french cloak, which, she explained to the girls near her, particularly to her pal, dolly goddard, was quite good enough for travelling. no one in the company could understand the friendship between these two; the knowing ones declared that dolly was beaumont's daughter; others, who professed to be more knowing, entertained other views. dolly was a tiny girl with crumpled features, who wore dresses that were remade from the big woman's cast-off garments. she sang in the chorus, was in receipt of a salary of five-and-twenty shillings a week, and was a favourite with everyone. around her stood a group of girls; they formed a black mass of cotton, alpaca, and dirty cloth. near them half a dozen chorus-men were talking of the possibility of getting another drink before the train came up. their frayed boots and threadbare frock-coats would have caused them to be mistaken for street idlers, but one or two of their number exhibited patent leathers and a smart made-up cravat of the latest fashion. dubois's hat gave him the appearance of a bishop, his tight trousers confounded him with a groom; and joe mortimer made up very well for the actor whose friends once believed he was a genius. the news had gone about that dick was running away with a married woman, and that the husband was expected to appear every minute to stop her; it had reached even the ears of the chorus-men in the refreshment-room, and they gulped down their beer and hurried back to see the sport. mortimer declared that they were going to see dick for the first time in legitimate drama, and that he wouldn't miss it for the world. the joke was repeated through the groups, and before the laughter ceased the green-painted engine puffed into sight, and at the same moment dick was seen making his way towards them from the refreshment room, dragging drunken mr. hayes along with them. then kate felt glad, and almost triumphantly she dashed the tears from her eyes. no one could stop her now. she was going away with dick, to be loved and live happy for ever. beaumont was forgotten, and the fierce longing for change she had been so long nourishing completely mastered her, and, with a childlike impetuosity, she rushed up to her lover, and leaning on his arm, strove to speak. 'what is it, dear?' he said, bending towards her. 'what are you crying about?' 'oh, nothing, dick. i'm so happy. oh, if only we were outside this station! where shall i get in?' even if her husband did come, and she were taken back, she thought that she would like to have been at least inside a railway carriage. 'get in here. where's montgomery? let's have him.' 'and, oh, do ask miss leslie! she's been so kind to me.' 'yes, she always travels with us,' said dick, standing at the carriage door. 'come, get in, montgomery; make haste, dubois.' 'but where's bret?' shouted someone. 'i haven't seen him,' replied several voices. 'is there any lady missing?' asked montgomery. 'no,' replied mortimer in the deepest nasal intonation he could assume, 'but i noticed a relation of the chief banker in the town in the theatre last night. perhaps our friend has had his cheque stopped.' roars of laughter greeted this sally, the relevance of which no one could even faintly guess; and the guard smiled as he said to the porter: 'that's mr. mortimer. amusing, is them theatre gentlemen.' then, turning to dick, 'i must start the train. your friend will be late if he doesn't come up jolly quick.' 'isn't it extraordinary that bret can never be up to time? every night there's a stage wait for him to come on for the serenade,' said dick, withdrawing his head from the window. 'here 'e is, sir,' said the guard. 'come on, bret; you'll be late,' shouted dick. a tall, thin man in a velvet coat, urged on by two porters, was seen making his way down the platform with a speed that was evidently painful. 'in here,' said dick, opening the door. out of the dim station they passed into the bright air alongside of long lines of waggons laden with chimney-pots and tiles, the produce of hanley. the collieries steamed above their cinder-hills, the factory chimneys vomited, and as kate looked out on this world of work that she was leaving for ever, she listened to the uncertain trouble that mounted up through her mind, and to the voices of the actors talking of comic songs and dances. she put out her hand instinctively to find dick's; he was sitting beside her, and she felt happy again. at these intimacies none but frank bret was surprised, and the laugh that made kate blush was occasioned by the tenor's stupid questioning look: it was the first time he had seen her; he had not yet heard the story of the elopement, and his glance went from one to the other, vainly demanding an explanation, and to increase the hilarity dick said: 'but, by the way, bret, what made you so late this morning? were you down at the bank cashing a cheque?' 'what are you thinking about? there are no banks open on sunday morning,' said bret, who of course had not the least idea what was meant. the reply provoked peals of laughter from all save miss leslie, and all possible changes were rung on the joke, until it became as nauseous to the rest of the company as to the bewildered tenor, who bore the chaff with the dignified stupidity of good looks. the mummers travelled third class. kate sat next the window, with her back to the engine; dick was beside her, and miss leslie facing her; then came dubois and bret, with montgomery at the far end. the conversation had fallen, and dick, passing his arm around kate's waist, whispered to her and to leslie: 'i want you two to be pals. lucy is one of my oldest friends. i knew her when she was so high, and it was i who gave her her first part, wasn't it, lucy?' 'yes. don't you remember, dick, the first night i played florette in _the brigands_? wasn't i in a fright? i never should have ventured on the stage if you hadn't pushed me on from the wings.' kate thought she had never seen anyone look so nice or heard anyone speak so sweetly. in fact, she liked her better off the stage than on. leslie had a way of raising her voice as she spoke till it ended in a laugh and a display of white teeth. the others of the company she did not yet recognize. they were still to her figures moving through an agitated dream. leslie was the first to awaken to life. the tendency of dick's conversation was to wander, but after having indulged for some time in the pleasures of retrospection he returned to the subject in point: 'well, it's a bit difficult to explain,' dick said, 'but, you see, this lady, mrs. ede, wasn't very happy at home, and having a nice voice--you must hear her sing some _angot_--and such an ear! she only heard the waltz once, and she can give it note for note. well, to make a long story short, she thought she'd cut it, and try what she could do with us.' 'you're all very kind to me, but i'm afraid i've been very wicked.' 'oh my!' said miss leslie, laughing, 'you mustn't talk like that; you'll put us all to the blush.' 'i wonder how such theories would suit beaumont's book,' said dick. 'you see,' dick continued, 'she's left hanley without any clothes except those she's wearing, and we'll have to buy everything in derby,' and he begged bret to move down a bit and allow him to take the seat next to leslie. the tenor, conductor, and second low comedian had spread a rug over their knees, and were playing nap. they shouted, laughed, and sang portions of their evening music when they made or anticipated making points, and kate was therefore left to herself, and she looked out of the window. they were passing through the most beautiful parts of staffordshire, and for the first time she saw the places that seemed to her just like the spot where the lady with the oval face used to read shelley to the handsome baronet when her husband was away doctoring the country-folk. the day was full of mist and sun. along the edges of the woods the white vapours loitered, half concealing the forms of the grazing kine; and the light shadows floated on the grass, long and prolonged, even as the memories that were now filling the mind of this sentimental workwoman. it seemed to her that she was now on the threshold of a new life--the life of which she had so long dreamed. her lover was near her, but in a railway carriage filled with smoke and with various men and women; and it seemed to her that they should be walking in sunny meadows by hedgerows. the birds were singing in the shaws; but in her imagination the clicking of needles and the rustling of silk mingled with the songs of the birds, and forgetting the landscape, with a sigh she fell to thinking of what they would be saying of her at home. she knew mrs. ede would have the whole town searched, and when it was no longer possible to entertain a doubt, she would say that kate's name must never again be mentioned in her presence. a letter! there was much to say: but none would understand. the old woman who had once loved her so dearly would for ever hate and detest her. and ralph? kate did not care quite so much what he thought of her; she fancied him swearing and cursing, and sending the police after her; and then he appeared to her as a sullen, morose figure moving about the shop, growling occasionally at his mother, and muttering from time to time that he was devilish glad that his wife had gone away. she would have wished him to regret her; and when she remembered the little girls, she felt the tears rise to her eyes. what explanation would be given to them? would they learn to hate her? she thought not; but still, they would have to give up coming to the shop--there was no one now to teach them sewing. her absence would change everything. mrs. ede would never be able to get on with hender, and even if she did, neither of them knew enough of dressmaking to keep the business going, and she asked herself sorrowfully: 'what will become of them?' they would not be able to live upon what they sold in the shop--that was a mere nothing. poor ralph's dreams of plate-glass and lamps! where were they now? mrs. ede's thirty pounds a year would barely pay the rent. a vision of destruction and brokers passed before her mind, and she realized for the first time the immense importance of the step she had taken. not only was her own future hidden, but the future of those she had left behind. the tedium of her life in hanley was forgotten, and she remembered only the quiet, certain life she might have led, in and out from the shop to the front kitchen, and up to her workroom--the life that she had been born into. now she had nothing but this man's love. if she were to lose it! leslie smiled at the lovers, and moving towards the card-players, she placed her arm round bret's shoulders and examined his hand. then the three men raised their heads. dubois, with the cynicism of the ugly little man who has ever had to play the part of the disdained lover both in real or fictitious life, giggled, leered, and pointed over his shoulder. montgomery smiled too, but a close observer would detect in him the yearnings of a young man from whose plain face the falling fruit is ever invisibly lifted. bret looked round also, but his look was the indifferent stare of one to whom love has come often, and he glanced as idly at the picture as a worn-out gourmet would over the bill of fare of a table d'hôte dinner. a moment after all eyes were again fixed on the game, and dick began to speak to kate of the clothes she would have to buy in derby. 'i can give you twenty pounds to fit yourself out. do you think you could manage with that?' 'i'm afraid i'm putting you to a lot of expense, dear.' 'not more than you're worth. you don't know what a pleasant time we shall have travellin' about; it's so tiresome bein' always alone. there's no society in these country towns, but i shan't want society now.' 'and do you think that you won't get tired of me? will you never care again for any of these fine ladies?' and her brilliant eyes drew down dick's lips, and when they entered a tunnel the temptation to repeat the kiss was great, but owing to dubois's attempt to light matches it ended in failure. dick bumped his head against the woodwork of the carriage; kate felt she hated the little comedian, and before she recovered her temper the train began to slacken speed, and there were frequent calls for dick from the windows of the different compartments. 'is the railway company going to stand us treat this journey?' shouted mortimer. 'yes,' replied dick, putting his head out, 'seven the last time and seven this; we should have more than a couple of quid.' when the train stopped and a voice was heard crying, 'all tickets here!' he said to dubois, bret, and montgomery, 'now then, you fellows, cut off; get mortimer and a few of the chorus-men to join you; we're seven short.' as they ran away he continued to leslie: 'i hope hayes won't bungle it; he's got the tickets to-day.' 'you shouldn't have let him take them; you know he's always more or less drunk, and may answer forty-two.' 'i can't help it if he does; i'd something else to look after at hanley.' 'tickets!' said the guard. 'our acting manager has them; he's in the end carriage.' 'you know i don't want anything said about it; hayes and i are old pals; but it's a damned nuisance to have an acting manager who's always boozed. i have to look after everythin', even to making up the returns. but i must have a look and see how he's gettin' on with the guard,' said dick, jumping up and putting his head out of the window. after a moment or two he withdrew it and said hastily, 'by jove! there's a row on. i must go and see what's up. i bet that fool has gone and done something.' in a minute he had opened the carriage door and was hurrying down the platform. 'oh, what's the matter?--do tell me,' said kate to miss leslie. 'i hope he won't get into any trouble.' 'it's nothing at all. we never, you know, take the full number of tickets, for it is impossible for the guard to count us all; and besides, there are some members who always run down the platform; and in that way we save a good deal of coin, which is spent in drinks all round.' but guessing what was passing in kate's mind leslie said: 'it isn't cheating. the company provides us with a carriage, and it is all the same to them if we travel five-and-thirty or forty-two.' xii the rest of the journey was accomplished monotonously, the conversation drifting into a discussion, in the course of which mention was made of actors, singers, theatre, prices of admission, 'make-ups,' stage management, and music. it was in birmingham that ashton, leslie's understudy, sang the tenor's music instead of her own in the first act of the _cloches_: and poor so-and-so, who was playing the grenicheux--how he did look when he heard his b flat go off! 'flat,' murmured montgomery sorrowfully, 'isn't the word. i assure you it loosened every tooth in my head. i broke my stick trying to stop her, but it was no bloody good.' then explanations of how the different pieces had been produced in paris were volunteered, and the talents of the different composers were discussed; and all held their sides and roared when dubois, who, kate began to perceive, was the company's laughingstock, declared that he thought offenbach too polkaic. at last the train rolled into derby, and dick asked a red pimply-faced man in a round hat if he had secured good places for his posters. 'spiffing,' the man answered, and he saluted leslie. 'but i couldn't get you the rooms. they're let; and, between ourselves, you'll 'ave a difficulty in finding what you want. this is cattle-show week. you'd better come on at once with me. i know an hotel that isn't bad, and you can have first choice--beaumont's old rooms; but you must come at once.' kate was glad to see that mr. bill williams, the agent in advance, did not remember her. she, however, recognized him at once as the man who had sent dick to her house. 'cattle-show week! all the rooms in the town let!' cried leslie, who had overheard part of mr. williams's whisperings. 'oh dear! i do hope that my rooms aren't let. i hate going to an hotel. let me out; i must see about them at once. here, frank, take hold of this bag.' 'there's no use being in such a hurry; if the rooms are let they are let. what's the name of the hotel you were speaking of, williams?' 'i forget the name, but if you don't find lodgings, i'll leave you the address at the theatre,' said the agent in advance, winking at dick. 'you're too damned clever, williams; you'll be making somebody's fortune one of these days.' kate had some difficulty in keeping close to dick, for he was surrounded the moment he stepped out on the platform. the baggage-man had a quantity of questions to ask him, and hayes was desirous of re-explaining how the ticket-collector had happened to misunderstand him. pulling his long whiskers, the acting manager walked about murmuring, 'stupid fool! stupid darned fool!' and there were some twenty young women who pleaded in turn, their little hands laid on the arm of the popular fat man. 'yes, dear; that's it,' he answered. 'i'll see to it to-morrow. i'll try not to put you in miss crawford's dressing-room, since you don't agree.' 'and, mr. lennox, you will see that i'm not shoved into the back row by miss dacre, won't you?' 'yes, dear--yes, dear; i'll see to that too; but i must be off now; and you'd better see after lodgings; i hear that they are very scarce. if you aren't able to get any, come up to the hen and chickens; i hear they have rooms to let there. poor little girls!' he murmured to williams as they got into a cab. 'they only have twenty-five bob a week; one can't see them robbed by landladies who can let their rooms three times over.' 'just as you like,' said williams, 'but you'll have the hotel full of them.' as they drove through the town dick called attention to the animated appearance of the crowds, and williams explained the advantages of the corners he had chosen; and at last the cab stopped at the inn, or rather before the archway of a stone passage some four or five yards wide. 'there's no inn here!' 'oh yes, there is, and a very nice inn too; the entrance is a little way up the passage.' it was an old-fashioned place--probably it had been a fashionable resort for sporting squires at the beginning of the century. the hall was wainscotted in yellow painted wood; on the right-hand side there was a large brown press, with glass doors, surmounted by a pair of buffalo horns; on the opposite wall hung a barometer; and the wide, slowly sloping staircase, with its low thick banisters, ascended in front of the street door. the apartments were not, however, furnished with archaeological correctness. a wall-paper of an antique design contrasted with a modern tablecloth, and the sombre red curtains were ill suited to the plate-glass which had replaced the narrow windows of old time. dick did not like the dust nor the tarnish, but no other bed and sitting-room being available, a bargain was soon struck, and the proprietor, after hoping that his guests would be comfortable, informed them that the rule of his house was that the street door was barred and locked at eleven o'clock, and would be reopened for no one. he was a quiet man who kept an orderly house, and if people could not manage to be in before midnight he did not care for their custom. after grumbling a bit, dick remembered that the pubs closed at eleven, and as he did not know anyone in the town there would be no temptation to stay out. williams, who had been attentively examining kate, said that he was going down to the theatre, and asked if he should have the luggage sent up. this was an inconvenient question, and as an explanation was impossible before the hotel-keeper, dick was obliged to wish kate good-bye for the present, and accompany williams down to the theatre. she took off her bonnet mechanically, threw it on the table, and, sitting down in an armchair by the window, let her thoughts drift to those at home. whatever doubt there might have been at first, they now knew that she had left them--and for ever. the last three words cost her a sigh, but she was forced to admit them. there could be no uncertainty now in ralph's and his mother's mind that she had gone off with mr. lennox. yes, she had eloped; there could be no question about the fact. she had done what she had so often read of in novels, but somehow it did not seem at all the same thing. this was a startling discovery to make, but of the secret of her disappointment she was nearly unconscious; and rousing herself from the torpor into which she had fallen, she hoped dick would not stop long away. it was so tiresome waiting. but soon miss leslie came running upstairs. 'dinner has been ordered for five o'clock, and we've made up a party of four--you, dick, myself, and frank.' 'and what time is it now?' 'about four. don't you think you'll be able to hold out till then?' 'oh, dear me, yes; i'm not very hungry.' 'and i'll lend you anything you want for to-night.' 'thanks, it's very kind of you.' kate fell to wondering if her kindness had anything to do with dick, and with the view to discovering their secret, if they had one, she watched them during dinner, and was glad to see that mr. frank bret occupied the prima donna's entire attention. soon after dinner the party dispersed. 'you'll not be able to buy anything to-night,' dick said, and kate answered: 'leslie said she'd lend me a nightgown.' 'and to-morrow you'll buy yourself a complete rig-out,' and he gave her five-and-twenty pounds and told her to pal with leslie, that she was the best of the lot. it seemed to her quite a little fortune, and as dick had to go to london next morning, she sent up word to leslie to ask if she would come shopping with her. the idea of losing her lover so soon frightened her, and had it not been for the distraction that the buying of clothes afforded her the week she spent in derby would have been intolerable. leslie, it is true, often came to sit with kate, and on more than one occasion went out to walk with her. but there were long hours which she was forced to pass alone in the gloom of the hotel sitting-room, and as she sat making herself a travelling dress, oppressed and trembling with thoughts, she was often forced to lay down her work. she had to admit that nothing had turned out as she had expected; even her own power of loving appeared feeble in comparison to the wealth of affection she had imagined herself lavishing upon dick. something seemed to separate them; even when she lay back and he held her in his arms, she was not as near to him as she had dreamed of being; and try as she would, she found it impossible to wipe out of her mind the house in hanley. it rose before her, a dark background with touches of clear colour: the little girls working by the luminous window with the muslin curtains and the hanging pot of greenstuff; the stiff-backed woman moving about with plates and dishes in her hands; the invalid wheezing on the little red calico sofa. the past was still reality, and the present a fable. it didn't seem true: lying with a man who was still strange to her; rising when she pleased; getting even her meals when she pleased. she could not realize the fact that she had left for ever her quiet home in the potteries, and was travelling about the country with a company of strolling actors. the spider that had spun itself from the ceiling did not seem suspended in life by a less visible thread than herself. supposing dick were never to return! the thought was appalling, and on more than one occasion she fell down on her knees to pray to be preserved from such a terrible misfortune. but her hours of solitude were not the worst she had to bear. impelled by curiosity to hear all the details of the elopement, and urged by an ever-present desire to say unpleasant things, miss beaumont paid kate many visits, and sitting with her thick legs crossed, she insinuated all she dared. she did not venture upon a direct statement, but by the aid of a smile and an indirect allusion it was easy to suggest that love in an actor's heart is brief. as long as miss beaumont was present kate repressed her feelings, but when she found herself alone tears flowed down her cheeks, and sobs echoed through the dusty sitting-room. it was in one of these trances of emotion that dick found her when he returned, and that night she accompanied him to the theatre. the piece played was _les cloches de corneville_. miss beaumont as germaine disappointed her, and she could not understand how it was that the marquis was not in love with serpolette. but the reality that most grossly contradicted her idea was that dick should be playing the part of the baillie; and when she saw her hero fall down in the middle of the stage and heard everybody laugh at him, she felt both ashamed and insulted. the romantic character of her mind asserted itself, and, against her will, forced her to admire the purple-cloaked marquis. then her thoughts turned to considering if she would be able to act as well as any one of the ladies on the stage. it did not seem to her very difficult, and dick had told her that, with a little teaching, she would be able to sing as well as beaumont. the sad expression that her face wore disappeared, and she grew impatient for the piece to finish so that she might speak to dick about taking lessons. they were now in the third act, and the moment the curtain was rung down she hurried away, asking as she went the way to the stage-door. it was by no means easy to find. she lost herself once or twice in the back streets, and when she at last found the right place, the hall-keeper refused her admittance. 'do you belong to the company?' after a moment's hesitation kate replied that she did not; but that moment's hesitation was sufficient for the porter, and he at once said, 'pass on; you'll find mr. lennox on the stage.' timidly she walked up a narrow passage filled with men talking at the top of their voices, and from thence made her way into the wings. there she was told that mr. lennox was up in his room, but would be down shortly. for a moment kate could not realize where she was, so different was the stage now from what it had been whenever she had seen it before. the present aspect was an entirely new one. it was dark like a cellar, and in the flaring light that spurted from an iron gas-pipe, the stage carpenter carried rocking pieces of scenery to and fro. the auditorium was a round blank overclouded in a deep twilight, through which kate saw the long form of a grey cat moving slowly round the edge of the upper boxes. getting into a corner so as to be out of the way of the people who were walking up and down the stage, she matured her plans for the cultivation of her voice, and waited patiently for her lover to finish dressing. this he took some time to do, and when he did at length come downstairs, he was of course surrounded; everybody as usual wanted to speak to him, but, gallantly offering her his arm, and bending his head, he asked in a whisper how she liked the piece, and insisted on hearing what she thought of this and that part before he replied to any one of the crowd of friends who in turn strove to attract his attention. this was very flattering, but she was nevertheless obliged to relinquish her plan of explaining to him there and then her desire to learn singing. he could not keep his mind fixed on what she was saying. mortimer was telling a story at which everybody was screaming, and just at her elbow dubois and montgomery were engaged in a violent argument regarding the use of consecutive fifths. but besides these distractions there was a tall thin man who kept nudging away at dick's elbow, begging of him to come over to his place, and saying that he would give him as good a glass of whisky as he had ever tasted. nobody knew who the man was, but dick thought he had met him somewhere up in the north. 'i've been about, gentlemen, in america, and in france, and i lead a bachelor life. my house is across the way, and if you'll do me the honour to come in and have a glass with me, i shall feel highly honoured. if there's one thing i do enjoy more than another, it's the conversation of intellectual men, and after the performance of to-night i don't see how i can do better than to come to you for it. but,' he continued gallantly, 'if i said just now that i was a bachelor, it is, i assure you, not because i dislike the sex. my solitary state is my misfortune, not my fault, and if these ladies will accompany you, gentlemen, need i say that i shall be charmed and honoured?' 'we'll do the honouring and the ladies will do the charming,' mortimer said, and on these words the whole party followed the tall thin man to his house, a small affair with a porch and green blinds such as might be rented by a well-to-do commercial traveller. the furniture was mahogany and leather, and when the sideboard was opened, the acrid odour of tea and the sickly smells of stale bread and rank butter were diffused through the room; but these were quickly dominated by the fumes of the malt. a bottle of port was decanted for the ladies. to the host nothing was too much trouble; his guests must eat as well as drink, and he went down to the kitchen and helped the maid-servant to bring up all the eatables that were in the house--some cold beef and cheese--and after having partaken of these the company stretched themselves in their chairs. hayes drank his whisky in silence, while montgomery, his legs thrown over the arm of his chair, tried to get in a word concerning the refrain of a comic song he had just finished scoring; but as the song was not going to be sung in any of the pieces they were touring with, no one was interested, and mortimer's talk about the regeneration of the theatre was becoming so boring that leslie and beaumont had begun to think of bedtime, and might have taken their departure if dubois had not said that all the great french actresses had lovers and that the english would do well to follow their examples. a variety of opinions broke forth, and everyone seemed to wake up; anecdotes were told that brought the colour to kate's cheeks and made her feel uncomfortable. dubois had lived a great deal in france; it was not certain that he had not acted in french, and sitting with his bishop's hat tilted on the back of his head, he related that agar had described george sand as a sort of pouncing disease that had affected her health more than all her other lovers put together. dubois was declared to have insulted the profession; dick agreed that dubois did not know what he was talking about--george sand was a woman, not a man--and montgomery, who had a sister-in-law starring in scotland, refused to be appeased until he was asked to accompany leslie and bret in a duet. the thin man, as everybody now called him, said he had never been so much touched in his life, a statement which beaumont did her best to justify by going to the piano and singing three songs one after another. the third was a signal for departure, and while montgomery vowed under his breath that it was quite enough to have to listen to beaumont during business hours, dick tried to awaken hayes. he had fallen fast asleep. their kind host said that he would put him up for the night, but the mummers thought they would be able to get him home. so, bidding the kindest of farewells to their host, whom they hoped they would see the following evening at the theatre, they stumbled into the street, pushing and carrying the drunken man between them. it was very hard to get hayes along; every ten or a dozen yards he would insist on stopping in the middle of the roadway to argue the value and the sincerity of the friendship his comrades bore for him. mortimer strove to pacify him, saying that he would stand in a puddle all night if by doing so he might prove that he loved him, and dubois entreated him to believe him when he said that to sit with him under a cold september moon talking of the dear dead days would be a bliss that he could not forego. but the comedian's jokes soon began to seem idle and flat, and the ladies proposed to walk on in front, leaving the gentlemen to get their friend home as best they could. 'you're thinking of your beds,' dick cried, and that reminded him that the hotel-keeper had told him that he shut his doors at eleven and would open them for no one before morning. 'what are we to do?' asked leslie; 'it's very cold.' 'we'll ring him up,' said dubois. 'but if he doesn't answer?' suggested bret. 'i'll jolly soon make him answer,' said dick. 'now then, hayes, wake up, old man, and push along.' 'pou-sh-al-long! how can--you--talk to me like that? yer--yer--shunting me--me--for one of those other fellows.' 'we'll talk about that in the morning, old man. now, mortimer, you get hold of his other arm and we'll run him along.' mr. hayes struggled, declaring the while he would no longer believe in the world's friendship; but with montgomery pushing from behind, the last hundred yards were soon accomplished, and the drunken burden deposited against the wall of the passage. dick pulled the bell; the whole party listened to the distant tinkling, and after a minute or two of suspense, mortimer said: 'that won't do, dick; ring again. we shall be here all night.' tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, went the bell, and a husky voice, issuing from the dark shadow of the wall, said: 'i rang for another whisky, waiter, that's all.' 'the still-room maid has gone to sleep, sir,' mortimer answered; and the bell was rung again and again, and whilst one of the company was pulling at the wire, another was hammering away with the knocker. all the same, no answer could be obtained, and the mummers consulted leslie and bret, who proposed that they should seek admittance at another hotel; dubois, that they should beg hospitality of the other members of the company; montgomery, that they should go back to the theatre. but the hotel-keeper had no right to lock them out, and they had a perfect right to break into his house, and the chances they ran of 'doing a week' were anxiously debated as they searched for a piece of wood to serve as a ram. none of sufficient size could be found, much to the relief of the ladies and dubois, who strongly advised dick to renounce this door-smashing experiment. 'oh, dick, pray don't,' whispered kate. 'what does it matter; it will be daylight in a few hours.' 'that's all very well, but i tell you he has no right to lock us out; he's a licensed hotel-keeper. are you game, mortimer? we can burst in the door with our shoulders.' 'game!' said mortimer, in a nasal note that echoed down the courtyard; 'partridges are in season in september. here goes!' and taking a run, he jumped with his full weight against the door. 'out of the way,' cried dick, breaking away from kate, and hurling his huge frame a little closer to the lock than the comedian had done. the excitement being now at boiling pitch, the work was begun in real earnest, and as they darted in regular succession out of the shadow of the buttress across the clear stream of moonlight flowing down the flagstones, they appeared like a procession of figures thrown on a cloth by a magic-lantern. mr. hayes' white stocking served for a line, and bump, bump, they went against the door. each effort was watched with different degrees of interest by the ladies. when little dubois toddled forward, and sprang with what little impetus his short legs could give him, it was difficult not to laugh, and when montgomery's reed-like shanks were seen passing, kate clung to miss leslie in fear that he would crush his frail body against the door; but when it came to the turn of any of the big ones, the excitement was great. mortimer and bret were watched eagerly, but most faith was placed in dick, not only for his greater weight, but for his superior and more plucky way of jumping. springing from the very middle of the passage, his head back and his shoulder forward, he went like a thunderbolt against the door. it seemed wonderful that he did not bring down the wall as well as the woodwork, and a round of applause rewarded each effort. hayes, who fancied himself in bed, and that the waiter was calling him at some strange hour in the morning, shouted occasionally the most fearful of curses from his dark corner. the noise was terrific, and the clapping of hands, shrieks of laughter, and cries of encouragement reverberated through the echoing passage and the silent moonlight. at last dick's turn came again, and enraged by past failures, he put forth his whole strength and jumped from the white stocking with his full weight against the door. it gave way with a crash, and at that moment the proprietor appeared, holding a candle in his hand. everybody made a rush, and picking up dick, who was not in the least hurt, they struck matches on the wall and groped their way up to their rooms, heedless of the denunciations of the enraged proprietor, who declared that he would take an action against them all. in his dressing-gown, and by the light of his candle, he surveyed his dismantled threshold, thinking how he might fasten up his house for the night. the first object he caught sight of was mr. hayes' white stocking. as he did so a wicked light gleamed in his eyes, and after a few efforts to awake the drunkard he walked to the gateway and looked up and down the street to see if a policeman were in sight. in real truth he was doubtful as to his rights to lock visitors out of their hotel, and, did not feel disposed to discuss the question before a magistrate. but what could be said against him for requesting the removal of a drunken man? he did not know who he was, nor was he bound to find out. so argued the proprietor of the hen and chickens, and mr. hayes, still protesting he did not want to be called before ten, was dragged off to the station. next morning the hotel-keeper denied knowing anything whatever about the matter. it was true he had called the policeman's attention to the fact that there was a man asleep under the archway, but he did not know that the man was mr. hayes. this story was rejected by the company, and vowing that they would never again go within a mile of his shop, they all went to see poor hayes pulled out before the beak. it was a forty-shilling affair or the option of a week, and in revenge, dick invited last night's party to dinner at a restaurant. they weren't going to put their money into the pocket of that cad of an inn-keeper. hayes was the hero of the hour, and he made everybody roar with laughter at the way in which he related his experiences. but after a time dick, who had always an eye to business, drew his chair up to mortimer's, and begged of him to try to think of some allusions to the adventures which could be worked into the piece. the question was a serious one, and until it was time to go to the theatre the art of gagging was warmly argued. dubois held the most liberal views. he said that after a certain number of nights the author's words should be totally disregarded in favour of topical remarks. bret, who was slow of wit, maintained that the dignity of a piece could only be maintained by sticking to the text, and cited examples to support his opinion. it was, however, finally agreed that whenever mortimer came on the stage, he should say, 'derby isn't a safe place to get drunk in,' and that dubois should reply, 'rather not.' owing to these little emendations, the piece went with a scream, the receipts were over a hundred, and morton and cox's operatic company, having done a very satisfactory week's business, assembled at the station on sunday morning bound for blackpool. kate and dick jumped into a compartment with the same people as before, plus a chorus-girl who was making up to montgomery in the hopes of being allowed to say on the entrance of the duke, 'oh, what a jolly fellow he is!' mortimer shouted to hayes, who always went with the pipe-smokers, and dick spoke about the possibility of producing some new piece at liverpool. dubois, mortimer, bret, and the chorus-girl settled down to a game of nap. dick, leslie, and montgomery were singing tunes or fragments of tunes to each other, and talking about 'effects' that might be introduced into the new piece. but would dick produce a new piece? the conversation changed, and it was asked if no money could be saved this trip in the taking of the tickets, and dick was closely questioned as to when, in his opinion, it would be safe to try their little plant on again. instead of answering he leant back, and gradually a pleasant smile began to trickle over his broad face. he was evidently maturing some plan. 'what is it, dick? do say like a good fellow,' was repeated many times, but he refused to give any reply. this aroused the curiosity of the company, and it grew to burning pitch when the train drew up at a station and dick began a conversation with the guard concerning the length of time they would have at preston, and where they would find the train that was to take them on to blackpool. 'you'll have a quarter of an hour's wait at preston. you'll arrive there at . and at thirty-five past you'll find the train for blackpool drawn up on the right-hand side of the station.' 'thanks very much,' replied dick as he tipped the guard; and then, turning his head towards his friends, he whispered, 'it's as right as a trivet; i shall be back in a minute.' 'where's he off to?' asked everybody. 'he's just gone into the telegraph office,' said montgomery, who was stationed at the window. a moment after dick was seen running up the platform, his big hat giving him the appearance of an american. as he passed each compartment of their carriage he whispered something in at the window. 'what can he be saying? what can he be arranging?' asked miss leslie. 'i don't care how he arranges it as long as i get a drink on the cheap at preston,' said mortimer. 'that's the main point,' replied dubois. 'well, dick, what is it?' exclaimed everybody, as the big man sat down beside kate. 'the moment the train arrives at preston we must all make a rush for the refreshment-rooms and ask for mr. simpson's lunch.' 'who's mr. simpson? what lunch? oh, do tell us! what a mysterious fellow you are!' were the exclamations reiterated all the way along the route. but the only answer they received was, 'now what does it matter who mr. simpson is? eat and drink all you can, and for the life of you don't ask who mr. simpson is, but only for his lunch.' and as soon as the train stopped actors, actresses, chorus-girls and men, conductor, prompter, manager, and baggage-man rushed like a school towards the glass doors of the refreshment-room, where they found a handsome collation laid out for forty people. 'where's mr. simpson's lunch?' shouted dick. 'here, sir, here; all is ready,' replied two obliging waiters. 'where's mr. simpson's lunch?' echoed dubois and montgomery. 'this way, sir; what will you take, sir? cold beef, chicken and ham, or a little soup?' asked half a dozen waiters. the ladies were at first shy of helping themselves, and hung back a little, but dick drove them on, and, the first step taken, they ate of everything. but kate clung to dick timidly, refusing all offers of chicken, ham, and cold beef. 'but is this paid for?' she whispered to him. 'of course it is. mr. simpson's lunch. take care of what you're sayin'. tuck into this plate of chicken; will you have a bit of tongue with it?' and not having the courage to refuse, kate complied in silence. dick crammed her pockets with cakes. but soon the waiters began to wonder at the absence of mr. simpson, and had already commenced their inquiries. approaching mortimer, the head waiter asked that gentleman if mr. simpson was in the room. 'he's just slipped round to the bookstall to get a sunday paper. he'll be back in a minute, and if you'll get me another bit of chicken in the meantime i shall feel obliged.' in five minutes more the table was cleared, and everybody made a movement to retire, and it was then that the refreshment-room people began to exhibit a very genuine interest in the person of mr. simpson. one waiter begged of dick to describe the gentleman to him, another besought of dubois to say at what end of the table mr. simpson had had his lunch. in turn they appealed to the ladies and to the gentlemen, but were always met with the same answer. 'just saw him a minute ago, going up to the station; if you run after him you're sure to catch him.' 'mr. simpson? why, he was here a minute ago; i think he was speaking about sending a telegram; perhaps he's up in the office.' the train bell then rang, and, like a herd in motion, the whole company crowded to the train. the guard shouted, the panic-stricken waiters tumbled over the luggage, and, running from carriage to carriage, begged to be informed as to mr. simpson's whereabouts. 'he's in the end carriage, i tell you, back there, just at the other end of the train.' the seedy black coats were then seen hurrying down the flags, but only to return in a minute, breathless, for further information. but this could not last for ever, and the guard blew his whistle, the actors began gagging. and, oh, the singing, the whistling, the cheers of the mummers as the train rolled away into the country, now all agleam with the sunset! tattoos were beaten with sticks against the woodwork of each compartment. dick, with his body half out of the window and his curls blowing in the wind, yelled at hayes. montgomery disputed with dubois for possession of the other window, and three chorus-girls giggled and, munching stolen cakes, tried to get into conversation with kate. but though love had compensated her for virtue, nothing could make amends to her for her loss of honesty. she could break a moral law with less suffering than might be expected from her bringing up, but the sentiment the most characteristic, and naturally so, of the middle classes is a respect for the property of others; and she had eaten of stolen bread. oppressed and sickened by this idea, she shrank back in her corner, and filled with a sordid loathing of herself, she moved instinctively away from dick. at blackpool mr. williams's pimply face was the first thing that greeted them. there was the usual crowd of landladies who presented their cards and extolled the comfort and cleanliness of their rooms. one of these women was introduced and specially recommended by mr. williams. he declared that her place was a little paradise, and an hour later, still plunged in conscientious regrets at having eaten a luncheon that had not been paid for, kate sat sipping her tea in a rose-coloured room. xiii but next morning at blackpool kate woke up languid, and seeing dick fast asleep, she thought it would be a pity to awaken him, and twisting her pretty legs out of bed, she went into the sitting-room, with the intention of looking after dick's breakfast, and found it laid out on the round table in the rose-coloured sitting-room, the napery of exceeding whiteness. the two armchairs drawn by the quietly burning fire inspired indolence, and tempted at once by the freshness of her dressing-gown and the warmth of the room, she fell into a sort of happy reverie, from which she awoke in a few minutes prompted by a desire to see dick; to see him asleep; to awaken him; to talk to him; to upbraid him for his laziness. the room, full of the intimacy of their life, enchanted her, and half in shame, half in delight, she affected to arrange the pillows while he buttoned his collar. when this was accomplished she led him triumphantly to the breakfast table, and with one arm resting on his knees watched the white shapes of the eggs seen through the bubbling water. this was the great business of the morning. he would pay twopence apiece to have fresh eggs, and was most particular that they should be boiled for three minutes, and not one second more. the landlady brought up the beefsteak and the hot milk for the coffee, and if any friend came in orders were sent down instantly for more food. such extravagance could not fail to astonish kate, accustomed as she had been from her earliest years to a strict and austere mode of life. frequently she begged of dick to be more economical, but having always lived bohemian-like on the money easily gained, he paid very little attention to what she said, beyond advising her to eat more steak and put colour into her cheeks. and once the ice of habit was broken, she likewise began to abandon herself thoroughly to the pleasures of these rich warm breakfasts, and to look forward to the idle hours of digestion which followed, and the happy dreams that could then be indulged in. before the tea-things were removed dick opened the morning paper, and from time to time read aloud scraps of whatever news he thought interesting. these generally concerned the latest pieces produced in london; and, as if ignorant of the fact that she knew nothing of what he was speaking of, he explained to her his views on the subject--why such and such plays would, and others would not, do for the country. kate listened with riveted attention, although she only understood half of what was told her, and the flattery of being taken into his confidence was a soft and fluttering joy. in these moments all fear that he would one day desert her died away like an ugly wind; and, with the noise of the town drumming dimly in the distance, they abandoned themselves to the pleasure of thinking of each other. dick congratulated himself on the choice he had made, and assured himself that he would never know again the ennui of living alone. she was one of the prettiest women you could see anywhere, and, luckily, not too exacting. in fact, she hadn't a fault if it weren't that she was a bit cold, and he couldn't understand how it was; women were not generally cold with him. the question interested him profoundly, and as he considered it his glance wandered from the loose blue masses of hair to the white satin shoe which she held to the red blaze. 'dick, do you think you'll always love me as you do now?' 'i'm sure of it, dear.' 'it seems to me, if one really loves once one must love always. but i don't know how i can talk to you like this, for how can you respect me? i've been so very wicked.' 'what nonsense, kate! how can you talk like that? i wouldn't respect you if you went on living with a man you didn't care about.' 'well, i liked him well enough till you came, dear, but i couldn't then--it wasn't all my fault; but if you should cease to care for me i think i should die. but you won't; tell me that you won't, dear dick.' at that moment the door opened; it was montgomery come to see them. kate jumped off dick's knees, and, settling her skirts with the pretty movement of a surprised woman, threw herself into a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. the musician had come to speak about his opera, especially the opening chorus, about which he could not make up his mind. 'my boy,' said dick, 'don't be afraid of making it too long. there's nothing like having a good strong number to begin with--something with grip in it, you know.' montgomery looked vaguely into space; he was obviously not listening, but was trying to follow out some musical scheme that was running in his head. after a long silence he said: 'what i can't make up my mind about is whether i ought to concert that first number or have it sung in unison. now listen. the scene is the wedding festivities of prince florimel, who is about to wed eva, the daughter of the duke of perhapsburg--devilish good name, you know. well then, the flower-girls come on first, scattering flowers; they proceed two by two and arrange themselves in line on both sides of the stage. they are followed by trumpeters and a herald; then come the ladies-in-waiting, the pages, the courtiers, and the palace servants. very well; the first four lines, you know--"hail! hail! the festive day"--that, of course, is sung by the sopranos.' 'you surely don't want to concert that, do you?' interrupted dick. 'of course not; you must think me an ignoramus. the first four lines are sung naturally in unison; then there is a repeat, in which the tenors and basses are singing against the women's voices. by that time the stage will be full. well, then, what i'm thinking of doing, when i get to the second part, you know--"may the stars much pleasure send you, may romance and love attend you," is to repeat "may the stars."' 'oh, i see what you mean,' said dick, who began to grow interested. you'll give "may the stars" first to the sopranos, and then repeat with the tenors and basses?' 'that's it. i'll show you,' replied montgomery, rushing to the piano. 'here are the sopranos singing in g, "may the stars"; tenors, "may the stars"; tenors and sopranos, "much pleasure send you"; basses an octave lower, "may the stars--may stars." now i'm going to join them together--"may the stars."' twisting round rapidly on the piano-stool, montgomery pushed his glasses high up on his beak-like nose, and demanded an opinion. but before dick could say a word a kick of the long legs brought the musician again face to the keyboard, and for several minutes he crashed away, occasionally shouting forth an explanatory remark, or muttering an apology when he failed to reach the high soprano notes. the lovesong, however, was too much for him, and, laughing at his own breakdown, he turned from the piano and consented to resume the interrupted conversation. then the plot and musical setting of montgomery's new work was discussed. the names of offenbach and hervé were mentioned; both were admitted to be geniuses, but the latter, it was declared, would have been the greater had he had the advantage of a musical education. various anecdotes were related as to how the latter had achieved his first successes, and montgomery, who questioned the possibility of a man who could not write down the notes being able to compose the whole score of an opera, maintained it was ridiculous to talk of dictating a finale. kate often asked herself if she would ever be able to take part in these artistic discussions; she was afraid not. even when she succeeded in picking up the thread of an idea, it soon got tangled with another, and she began to fear she would never know why hervé was a better composer than offenbach, and why a certain quintette was written on classical lines and such-like. she asked montgomery to explain things to her, but he was more anxious to speak of his own music, and when the names of the ladies of the company were being run over in search of one who could take the part of a page, with a song and twenty lines of dialogue to speak, dick said: 'well, perhaps it isn't for me to say it, but i assure you that i don't know a nicer soprano voice than mrs. ede's.' 'ho, ho!' cried montgomery, twisting his legs over the arm of the chair, 'how is it i never heard of this before? but won't you sing something, mrs. ede? if you have any of your songs here i'll try the accompaniment over.' kate, who did not know a crotchet from a semiquaver, grew frightened at this talk of trying over accompaniments, and tried to stammer out some apologies and excuses. 'oh, really, mr. montgomery, i assure you dick is only joking. i don't sing at all--i don't know anything about music.' 'don't you mind her; 'tis as i say: she's got a very nice soprano voice; and as for an ear, i never knew a better in my life. there's no singing flat there, i can tell you. but, seriously speaking,' he continued, taking pity on kate, whose face expressed the agony of shame she was suffering, 'of course i know well enough she don't know how to produce her voice; she never had a lesson in her life, but i think you'll agree with me, when you hear it, that the organ is there. do sing something, kate.' kate cast a beseeching glance at her lover, and murmured some unintelligible words, but they did not save her. montgomery crossed himself over the stool, and, after running his fingers over the keys, said: 'now, sing the scale after me--do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, la--that's the note; try to get that clear--sol, do!' and kate, not liking to disoblige dick, sang the scale after montgomery in the first instance, and then, encouraged by her success, gave it by herself, first in one octave and then in the other. 'well, don't you agree with me?' said dick. 'the organ is there, and there's no fluffing the notes; they come out clear, don't they?' 'they do indeed,' replied montgomery, casting a warm glance of admiration at kate; 'but i should so much like to hear mrs. ede sing a song.' 'oh, i really couldn't--' 'nonsense! sing the song of "the bells" in the _cloches_,' said dick, taking her by the arm. she pleaded and argued, but it was no use, and when at last it was decided she was to sing, montgomery, who had in the meantime been trying the finale of his first act in several different ways, stopped short and said suddenly: 'oh, i beg your pardon; you're going to sing the song of "the bells." i'll tell you when to begin--now, "though they often tell us of our ancient masters."' when kate had finished singing montgomery spun round, bringing himself face to face with dick, and speaking professionally, said: ''pon my word, it's extraordinary. of course it is a head voice, but as soon as we get a few chest notes--you know i don't pretend to be able to teach singing, but after a year's training under my grandfather beaumont wouldn't be in the same street with you.' 'yes, but as he isn't here,' replied dick, who always kept an eye on the possible, 'don't you think it would be as well for her to learn a little music?' 'i shall be only too delighted to teach mrs. ede the little i know myself. i'll come in the morning, and we'll work away at the piano; and you know,' continued montgomery, who began to regret the confession of his inability to teach singing, 'although i don't pretend to be able to do what my grandfather could with a voice, still, i know something about it. i used to attend all his singing-classes, and am pretty well up in his method, and--and--if mrs. ede likes, i shall be only too happy to do some singing with her; and, between you and me, i think that in a few lessons i could get rid of that throatiness, and show her how to get a note or two from the chest.' 'i'm sure you could, my boy; and i shall be delighted with you if you will. of course we must consider it as a matter of business.' 'oh, nonsense, nonsense, between pals!' exclaimed montgomery, who saw a perspective of long hours passed in the society of a pretty woman--a luxury which his long nose and scraggy figure prevented him from indulging in as frequently as he desired. after some further discussion, it was arranged that montgomery should call round some time after breakfast, and that dick should then leave them together to work away at do, re, mi, fa. hamilton's system was purchased, and it surprised and amused kate to learn that the notes between the spaces spelt 'face.' but it was in her singing lessons that she took the most interest, and her voice soon began to improve both in power and quality. she sang the scales for three-quarters of an hour daily, and before the end of the week she so thoroughly satisfied montgomery in her rendering of a ballad he had bought for her that he begged dick to ask a few of the 'co.' in to tea next sunday evening. the shine would be taken out of beaumont, he declared with emphasis. kate, however, would not hear of singing before anybody for the present, and she gave up going to the theatre in the evening so that she might have two or three hours of quiet to study music-reading by herself. in the morning she woke to talk of montgomery, who generally came in while they were at breakfast; and when the lesson was over he would often stop on until they were far advanced in the afternoon; and, looking at each other from time to time, they spoke of the next town they were going to, and alluded to the events of their last journey. kate would have liked to speak much of dick, but she felt ashamed, and listened with interest to all montgomery told her of himself, of the difficulties he had to contend against, of his hopes for the future. he spoke a great deal of his opera, and often sprang up in the middle of a sentence to give a practical illustration of his meaning on the instrument. but these musical digressions did not weary kate, and to the best of her ability she judged the different versions of the finale. 'give the public what they want,' was his motto, and he intended to act up to it. he had written two or three comic songs that had been immense successes, not to speak of the yards of pantomime music he had composed, and he knew that when he got hold of a good book in three acts he'd be able to tackle it. what he was doing now was not much more than a curtain-raiser; but never mind, that was the way to begin. you couldn't expect a manager to trust you with the piece of the evening until you'd proved that you could interest the public in smaller work. at this point of the argument montgomery generally spoke of dick, whom he declared was a dear good fellow, who would be only too glad to give a pal a lift when the time came. kate, on her side, longed to hear something of her lover from an outside source. all she knew of him she had learned from his own lips. montgomery, in whose head all sorts of reveries concerning kate were floating, was burning to talk to her of her lover, and to hear from her own lips of the happiness which he imagined a true and perfect affection bestowed upon human life. kate had not spoken on this important subject; and montgomery, for fear of wounding her feelings, had avoided it; but they were conscious that the restraint jarred their intimacy. one afternoon dick suddenly burst in upon them, and after some preamble told them that he had arranged to meet there some gentleman with whom he had important business to transact. montgomery took up his hat and prepared to go, and kate offered to sit with the landlady in the kitchen. 'i'm afraid you'll bore yourself, dear,' dick said after a pause. 'but i'll tell you what you might do--i shan't be able to take you out to-day. why not go for a walk with montgomery?' 'i shall be delighted; i'll take you for a charming walk up the hill, and show you the whole town.' kate had no objection to make, and she returned to the sitting-room sooner than they expected her. 'a quick-change artist,' dick said. she wore a brown costume, trimmed with feathers to match; a small bonnet crowned the top of her head, and her face looked adorably coquettish amid the big bows into which she had tied the strings. her companion was very conscious of this fact, and with his heart full of pride he occasionally jerked his head round to watch the passers-by, doubting at the same time if any were as happy as he. it was a great pleasure to be alone with kate in the open air, walking by her side, escorting her, and telling her as they walked all he knew about blackpool: that it bore the same relation to the other towns of lancashire as the seventh day does to the other six of the week; that it was the huge lancashire sunday, where the working classes of accrington, blackburn, preston, and burnley, during a week or a fortnight of the year, go to recreate themselves. 'the streets are built with large pavements,' he told her, 'so that jostling may be avoided, and there are many open spaces where people may loiter and congregate; the bonnets exhibited in the plate-glass windows, you can see, are obviously intended for holiday wear.' she stopped to look at these. 'not one,' he said, 'is as pretty as the one you're wearing.' 'it's a pretty little hat,' she answered, and he pointed to the spider-legged piers and to a high headland, a sort of green cap over the ocean. 'do you know that the fellow who owns that building has made a fortune?' said montgomery, pointing to the roofs which began to appear above the edge of the common. 'did he really?' replied kate, trying to appear interested. 'yes; he began with a sort of shanty where he sold ginger-beer and lemonade. it became the fashion to go out there, and now he's got dining-rooms and a spirit licence. we went up there last week, a lot of us, and we had such fun; we went donkey-riding, and leslie had a fall. did she tell you of it?' 'no; i've scarcely spoken to her for the last few days.' 'how's that? i thought you were such friends.' 'i like her very much; but she's always on the stage at night, and i don't like--i mean i should like--but i don't know that she would like me to go and see her.' 'and why not, pray?' 'well, i thought she mightn't like me to come and see her, because, i'm--well, on account of dick.' 'there's nothing between them now; that's all over ages ago, and she's dead nuts on bret.' kate had been nearly a fortnight with the mummers, but she had lived almost apart. she had not yet learnt that in the company she was in no opprobrium was attached to the fact of a woman having a lover, and she still supposed that because she had left her husband leslie might not like to associate with her. to learn, then, that she had only replaced another woman in dick's affections came upon her with a shock, and it was the very suddenness of the blow that saved her from half the pain; for it was impossible for a woman who saw in the world nothing but the sacrifice she had made for the man she loved, to realize the fact that dick's love of her was a toy that had been taken up, just as love of miss leslie was a toy that had been laid down. it did not occur to her to think that the man she was living with might desert her, nor did she experience any very cruel pangs of jealousy; she was more startled than anything else by the appearance of a third person in the world which for the last week had seemed so entirely her own. 'what do you mean?' she said, stopping abruptly. 'was dick in love with miss leslie before he knew me?' montgomery coloured, and strove to improvise excuses. 'no,' he said, 'of course he wasn't really in love with her; but we used to chaff him about her; that's all.' 'why should you do that, when she is in love with bret?' said kate harshly. montgomery, who dreaded a quarrel with dick as he would death, grasped at a bit of truth to help him out of his difficulty. 'but i assure you bret and leslie's affair only began a couple of months ago, when we first went out on tour. we joked dick about her to vex him, that's all. if you don't believe me, you can ask the rest of the company.' to this kate made no reply, and with her eyes upon the ground she remained for some moments thinking. the light and the matter-of-course way in which her companion spoke of the affections troubled her exceedingly, and very naïvely she asked herself if the company did not admit fornication among the sins. ''tis too bad to be taken up in that way,' he said. 'there's always a bit of chaff going on; but if it were all taken for gospel truth i don't know where we should be. i give you my word of honour that i don't think he ever looked twice at her; anyhow, he didn't hesitate between you; nor could he, for, of course, you know you're a fifty times prettier woman.' kate answered the flattery with a delightful smile, and montgomery thought that he had convinced her. but the young man was deceived by appearances. he had succeeded more in turning the current of her thoughts than in persuading her. 'you seem to think very lightly of such things,' she said, raising her brown eyes with a look that melted her face to a heavenly softness. montgomery did not understand, and she was forced to explain. this was difficult to do, but, after a slight hesitation, she said: 'then you really do believe that miss leslie and mr. bret are lovers?' 'oh, i really don't know,' he said hastily, for he saw himself drawn into a fresh complication; 'i never pry into other people's affairs. they seem to like each other, that's all.' it was now kate's turn to see that indiscreet questions might lead to the quarrels she was most anxious to avoid, and they walked along the breezy common in silence, seeing the sea below them, and far away the weedy waste of stone filled with the white wings of gulls, touched here and there with the black backs of the shrimp-fishers. 'how strange it is that the sea should go and come like that! i'd never seen it as it is now till the day before yesterday, and dick was so amused, for i thought it was going to dry up. the morning after our arrival here we sat down by the bathing-boxes on the beach and listened to the waves. they roared along the shore. it's very wonderful. don't you think so?' 'yes, indeed i do. when i was here before, i spent one whole morning listening to the waves, and their surging suggested a waltz to me. this is the way it went,' and leaning on the rough paling that guarded the precipitous edge, montgomery sang his unpublished composition. 'i never got any further,' he said, stopping short in the middle of the second part; 'i somehow lost the character of the thing; but i like the opening.' 'oh, so do i. i wonder how you can think of such tunes. how clever you must be!' montgomery smiled nervously, and he proposed that they should go over to the hotel to have a drink. 'oh, i don't like to go up there,' she said, after examining for some moments this hillside bar-room. 'there're too many men.' 'what does it matter? we'll have a table to ourselves. besides, you'd better have something to eat, for now we're out we may as well stay out. there's no use going back yet awhile;' and he talked so rapidly of his waltz--of whether he should call it the 'wave,' the 'seashore,' or the 'cliff,' that he didn't give her time to collect her thoughts. 'i can't go in there,' she said; 'why, it's only a public-house.' 'everybody comes up here to have a drink. it's quite the fashion.' the men round the doorway stared at her, and seeing some of the chorus-girls coming from where the donkeys were stationed, in the company of young men with high collars and tight trousers, she almost ran into the bar-room. 'now you see what a scrape you've led me into, i wouldn't have met those people for anything.' 'what does it matter? if it were wrong do you think i'd bring you in here? you ask dick when you get home.' a doubt of the possibility of dick thinking anything wrong clouded kate's mind, and montgomery ordered sandwiches and two brandies-and-sodas. the sandwiches were excellent, and kate, who had scarcely tasted anything but beer in her life, thought the brandy-and-soda very refreshing. the question then came of how to get out of the place, and after much hesitation and conjecturing, they slipped out the back way through the poultry-yard and stables. in front of them was a very steep path that led to the sea strand. large masses of earth had given way, and these had formed ledges which, in turn, had somehow become linked together, and it was possible to climb down these. 'do you think you could manage?' he said, holding out his hand. 'i don't know; do you think it dangerous?' 'no, not if you take care; but the cliff is pretty high; it would not do to fall over. perhaps you'd better come back across the common by the road.' 'and meet all those girls?' 'i don't see why you should be afraid of meeting them,' said montgomery, who was secretly anxious to show the chorus that if he were not the possessor, he was at least on intimate terms of friendship with this pretty woman. 'no, i'd sooner not meet them, and coming out of a public-house; i don't see why we shouldn't come down this way. i'm sure i can manage it if you'll give me your hand and go first.' the descent then began. kate's high-heeled boots were hard to walk in, and every now and then her feet would fail her, and she would utter little cries of fear, and lean against the cliff's side. it was delightful to reassure her, and montgomery profited by those occasions to lay his hands upon her shoulders and hold her arms in his hands. no human creature was in hearing or in sight, and solitude seemed to unite them, and the mimic danger of the descent to endear them to each other. the quiet and enchantment of earth and air melted into her thoughts until she enjoyed a perfect bliss of unreasoned emotion. he, too, was conscious of the day, and his happiness, touched with a diffused sense of desire, was intense, even to a savour of bitterness. like all young men, he longed to complete his youth by some great passion, but out of horror of the gross sensualities with which he was always surrounded, his delicate artistic nature took refuge in a half-platonic affection for his friend's mistress. it was an infinite pleasure, and could it have lasted for ever he would not have thought of changing it. to take her by the hand and help her to cross the weedy stones; to watch her pretty stare of wonderment when he explained that the flux and the reflux of the tides were governed by the moon; to hear her speak of love, and to dream what that love might be, was enough. along the coast there were miles and miles of reaches, and to gain the sea they were obliged to make many detours. sometimes they came upon long stretches of sand separated by what seemed to them to be a river, and montgomery often proposed that he should carry kate across the streamlet. but she would not hear of it, although on one occasion she did not refuse until he had placed his arms around her waist. escaping from him, she ran along the edge, saying she would find a crossing. montgomery pursued her, amused by the fluttering of her petticoats; but after a race of twenty or thirty yards, they found that their discovered river was only a long pool that owned no outlet to the sea, and they both stopped like disappointed children. 'well, never mind,' said kate; 'did you ever see such beautiful clear water? i must have a drink.' 'you've no cup,' he said, turning away so that she should not see him laughing. 'you might manage to get up a little in your hands.' 'so i might. oh, what fun! tell me how i'm to do it.' he told her how to hollow her hands, and waited to enjoy the result, and, forgetful that the sea was salt she lifted the brine to her lips; but when she spat out the horrible mouthful and turned on him a questioning face, he only answered that if she didn't take care she would be the death of him. 'and didn't ums know the sea was salt, and did ums think it very nasty, and not half as nice as a brandy-and-soda?' kate watched him for a moment, and then her face clouded, and pouting her pretty lips, she said: 'of course i don't pretend to be as clever as you, but if you'd never seen the sea until a week ago you might forget.' 'yes, yes, for-for-get that it--it wasn't as nice as brandy-and-soda,' cried montgomery, holding his sides. 'i wasn't going to say that, and it was very rude of you to interrupt me in that way.' 'now come, don't get cross. you should understand a joke better than that,' he replied, for seeing the tears in her eyes he began to fear that he had spoilt the delight of their day. 'i think it is unkind of you to laugh at me and play tricks on me like that,' said kate, trying to master her emotion; and as they walked under the sunset, montgomery broke long and irritating silences by apologizing for his indiscretion, but kate did not answer him until they arrived at a place where a little boy and girl were fishing for shrimps. here there was quite a little lake, and amid the rocks and weedy stones the clear water flowed as it might in an aquarium, the liquid surface reflecting as perfectly as any mirror the sky's blue, with clouds going by and many delicate opal tints, and the forms of the children's plump limbs. 'oh, how nice they look! what little dears!' exclaimed kate, but as she pressed forward to watch the children her foot dislodged a young lobster from the corner of rock in which he had been hiding. 'that's a lobster,' cried montgomery. 'is it?' cried kate, and she pursued the ungainly thing, which sought vainly for a crevice. after an animated chase, with the aid of her parasol she caught it, and was about to take it up with her fingers when montgomery stopped her. 'you'd better take care; it will pretty well nip the fingers off you.' 'you aren't joking?' she asked innocently. 'no, indeed i'm not; but i hope you don't mind my telling you.' at that moment their eyes met, and kate, seeing how foolish she had been, burst into fits of laughter. 'no, no, no, i--i don't mind your telling me that--that a lobster bites, but--' 'but when it comes to saying sea-water is not as nice as brandy-and-soda,' he replied, bursting into a roar of merriment, 'we cut up rough, don't we?' the children climbed up on the rocks to look at them, and it was some time before kate could find words to ask them to show what they had caught. the little boy was especially clever at his work, and regardless of wetting himself, he plunged into the deepest pools, intercepting with his net at every turn the shrimps that vainly sought to escape him. his little sister, too, was not lacking in dexterity, and between them they had filled a fairly-sized basket. kate examined everything with an almost feverish interest. she tore long gluey masses of seaweed from the rocks and insisted on carrying them home; the mussels she found on the rocks interested her; she questioned the little shrimp fishers for several minutes about a dead starfish, and they stared in open-eyed amazement, thinking it very strange that a grown-up woman should ask such questions. at last the little boy showed her what she was to do with the lobster. he wedged the claws with two bits of wood, and attached a string whereby she might carry it in her hand, and in silences that were only interrupted by occasional words they picked their way along the strand. kate thought of dick--of what he was doing, of what he was saying. she saw him surrounded by men; there were glasses on the table. she looked into his large, melancholy blue eyes, and dreamed of the time she would again sit on his knees and explain to him for the hundredth time that love was all-sufficing, and that he who possessed it could possess nothing more. montgomery was also thinking of dick, and for the conquest of so pretty a woman the dreamy-minded musician viewed his manager with admiration. the morality of the question did not appeal to him, and his only fear was that kate would one day be deserted. 'if so, i shall have to support her.' he thought of the music he would have to compose--songs, all of which would be dedicated to her. 'have you known dick,' she asked suddenly, 'a long time?' 'two or three years or so,' replied montgomery, a little abashed at a question which sounded at that moment like a distant echo of his own thoughts. 'why do you ask?' 'for no particular reason, only you seem such great friends.' 'yes, i like him very much; he's a dear good fellow, he'd divide his last bob with a pal.' the conversation then came to a pause. both suddenly remembered how they had set out on their walk determined to seek information of each other on certain subjects. montgomery wished to hear from kate how dick had persuaded her to run away with him; kate wanted to learn from montgomery something of her lover's private life--if he were faithful to a woman when he loved her, if he had been in love with many women before. as she considered how she would put her questions a grey cloud passed over her face, and she thought of leslie. but just as she was going to speak montgomery interrupted her. he said: 'you didn't know dick before he came to lodge in your house at hanley, did you?' kate raised her eyes with a swift and startled look, but being anxious to speak on the subject she replied, speaking very softly: 'no, and perhaps it would have been well if he had never come to my house.' there was not so much insincerity in the phrase as may at first appear. nearly all women consider it necessary to maintain to themselves and to others that they deeply regret having sinned. the delusion at once pleases and consoles them, and they cling to it to the last. 'i often think of you,' said montgomery. 'yours appears to me such a romantic story ... you who sat all day and mi-mi--' he was going to say minding a sick husband, but for fear of wounding her feelings he altered the sentence to 'and never, or hardly ever, left hanley in your life, should be going about the country with us.' kate, who guessed what he had intended saying, answered: 'yes, i'm afraid i've been very wicked. i often think of it and you must despise me. that's what makes me ashamed to go about with the rest of the company. i'm always wondering what they think of me. tell me, do tell me the truth; i don't mind hearing it. what do they say about me? do they abuse me very much?' 'abuse you? they abuse you for being a pretty woman, i suppose; but as for anything else, good heavens! they'd look well! why, you're far the most respectable one among the lot. don't you know that?' 'i suspected beaumont was not quite right, perhaps; but you don't mean to say there isn't one? not that little thing with fair hair who sings in the chorus?' 'well, yes, they say she's all right. there are one or two, perhaps; but when it comes to asking me if beaumont and leslie are down on you--well!' montgomery burst out laughing. this decided expression of opinion was grateful to kate's feelings, and the conversation might have been pursued with advantage, but seeing an opportunity of speaking of dick, she said: 'but you told me there was nothing between mr. bret and miss leslie.' 'i told you i didn't know whether there was or not; but i'm quite sure there never was between her and dick. you see i can guess what you're trying to get at.' 'i can scarcely believe it. now i think of it, i remember she was in his room the night of the row, when he turned me out.' 'yes, yes; but there were a lot of us. the principals in a company generally stick together. it's extraordinary how you women will keep on nagging at a thing. i swear to you that i'm as certain as i stand here there was never anything between them. do let us talk of something else.' they had now wandered back to the fine pebbly beach, to within a hundred yards of the pier, and above the high cliff they could just see the red chimney-stacks of the town. montgomery sang his waltz softly over, but before he arrived at the second part his thoughts wandered, and he said: 'have you heard anything of your husband since you left hanley?' the abruptness of the question made kate start; but she was not offended, and she answered: 'no, i haven't. i wonder what he'll do.' 'possibly apply for a divorce. if he does, you'll be able to marry dick.' a flush of pleasure passed over kate's face, and when she raised her eyes her look seemed to have caught some of the brightness of the sunset. but it died into grey gloom even as the light above, and she said sighing: 'i don't suppose he'd marry me.' 'well, if he wouldn't, there are lots who would.' 'what do you mean?' asked kate simply. 'oh, nothing; only i should think that anyone would be glad to marry you,' the young man answered, hoping that she would not repeat the conversation to her lover. 'i hope he will; for if he were to leave me, i think i should die. but tell me--you will, won't you? for you are my friend, aren't you?' 'i hope so,' he replied constrainedly. 'well, tell me the truth: do you think he can be constant to a woman? does he get tired easily? does he like change?' kate laid her hand on montgomery's shoulder, and looked pleadingly in his face. 'dick is an awful good fellow, and i'm sure he couldn't but behave well to anyone he liked--not to say loved; and i know that he never cared for anybody as he does for you; he as much as told me.' kate's smile was expressive of pleasure and weariness, and after a pause, she said: 'i hope what you say is true; but i don't think men ever love as women do. when we give our heart to one man, we cannot love another. i don't know why, but i don't believe that a man could be quite faithful to a woman.' 'that's all nonsense. i'm sure that if i loved a woman it wouldn't occur to me to think of another.' 'perhaps you might,' she answered; and, unconsciously comparing them with dick's jovial features, she examined intently the enormous nose and the hollow, sunken cheeks. montgomery wondered what she was thinking of, and he half guessed that she was considering if it were possible that any woman could care for him. to die without ever having been able to inspire an affection was a fear that was habitual to him, and often at night he lay awake, racked by the thought that his ugliness would ever debar him from attaining this dearly desired end. 'were you ever in love with anybody?' she asked, after a long silence. 'yes, once.' 'and did she care for you?' 'yes, i think she did at first. we used to meet at dinner every day; but then she fell in love with an acrobat--i suppose you would call him an acrobat--i mean one of those gutta-percha men who tie their legs in a knot over their heads. the child was deformed. i was awfully cut up about it at the time, but it's all over now.' the conversation then came to a pause. kate did not like to ask any further questions, but as she stared vaguely at the pale sun setting, she wondered what the acrobat was like, and how a girl could prefer a gutta-percha man to the musician. as the minutes passed, the silence grew more irritating, and the evening colder. 'i'm afraid we shall catch a chill if we remain here much longer, said montgomery, who had again begun to sing his waltz over. 'yes, i think we'd better be getting home,' kate answered dreamily. after some searching, they found a huge stairway cut for the use of bathers in the side of the cliff, and up this feet-torturing path montgomery helped kate carefully and lovingly. xiv from blackpool morton and cox's opera company proceeded to southport, and, still going northward, they visited newcastle, durham, dundee, glasgow, and edinburgh. but in no one town did they remain more than a week. every sunday morning, regardless as swallows of chiming church-bells, they met at the station and were whirled as fast as steam could take them to new streets, lodging-houses, and theatres. to kate this constant change was at once wearying and perplexing, and she often feared that she would never become accustomed to her new mode of life. but on the principle that we can scarcely be said to be moving when all around is moving in a like proportion, kate learned to regard locality as a mere nothing, and to fix her centre of gravity in the forty human beings who were wandering with her, bound to her by the light ties of _opéra bouffe_. wherever she went her life remained the same. she saw the same faces, heard the same words. were they likely to do good business? was debated when they alighted from the train; that they had or had not done good business was affirmed when they jumped into the train. soon even the change of apartments ceased to astonish her, and she saw nothing surprising in the fact that her chest of drawers was one week on the right and the following on the left-hand side of her bed. nor did she notice after two or three months of travelling whether wax flowers did or did not decorate the corners of her sitting-room, and it seemed to her of no moment whether the venetian blinds were green or brown. the dinners she ate were as good in one place as in another; the family resemblance which slaveys bear to each other satisfied her eyes, and the difference of latitude and longitude between glasgow and aberdeen she found did not in the least alter her daily occupations. montgomery came to see her every morning, and the tunefulness of the piano was really all that reminded them of their change of residence. from twelve until three they worked at music, both vocal and instrumental. dick sought for excuses to absent himself, but when he returned he always insisted that montgomery should remain to dinner. all formalities between them were abolished, and kate did not hesitate to sit on her lover's knees in the presence of her music-master. but he did not seem to care, he only laughed a little nervously. kate sometimes wondered if he really disliked witnessing such familiarities. in her heart of hearts she was conscious that there were affinities of sentiment between them, and during the music lessons they talked continually of love. the sight of montgomery's lanky face often interrupted an emotional mood, but she recovered it again when he sat looking at her, talking to her of his music. in this way he became a necessity to her existence, a sort of spiritual light. they never wearied of talking about dick; between them it was always dick, dick, dick! he told her anecdotes concerning him--how he had acted certain parts; how he had stage-managed certain pieces; of supper parties; of adventures they had been engaged in. these stories amused kate, although the odour of woman in which they were bathed, as in an atmosphere, annoyed and troubled her. as if to repay him for his kindness, she became confidential, and one day she told him the story of her life. it would, she said, were it taken down, make the most wonderful story-book ever written; and beginning at the beginning, she gave rapidly an account of her childhood, accentuating the religious and severe manner in which she had been brought up, until the time she and her mother made the acquaintance of the edes. there it was necessary to hesitate. she did not wish to tell an absolute lie, but was yet desirous to convey the impression that her marriage with mr. ede had been forced upon her; but montgomery had already accepted it as a foregone conclusion. with his fingers twisted through his hair, and his head thrust forward in the position in which we are accustomed to see composers seeking inspiration depicted, he listened, passionately interested. and when it came to telling of the mental struggle she had gone through when struggling between her love for dick and her duty towards her husband, montgomery's face, under the influence of many emotions, straightened and contracted. he asked a hundred questions, and was anxious to know what she had thought of dick when she saw him for the first time. she told him all she could remember. her account of the visit to the potteries proved very amusing, but before she told him of their fall amid the cups and saucers she made montgomery swear he would never breathe a word. 'oh, the devil! was that the way he cut his legs? he told us that he had forgotten his latchkey, and that he had done it in getting over the garden-wall.' running his hand over the piano, montgomery begged of kate to continue her story; but as she proceeded with the analysis of her passion the events became more and more difficult to narrate; and she knew not how to tell the tale how one dark night her husband sent her down to open the door to dick; but she must tell everything so that the whole of the blame should not fall upon him. she alluded vaguely to violence and to force; montgomery's face darkened and he protested against his friend's conduct. to kate it was consoling to meet someone who thought she was not entirely to blame, and the conversation came to a pause. 'and now i'm going about the country with you all, and am thinking of going on the stage.' 'and will be a success, too--that i'll bet my life.' 'do you really think so? do tell me the real truth; do you think i shall ever be able to sing?' 'i'm sure of it.' 'well, i'm glad to hear you say so, for it's now more necessary than ever.' 'how do you mean? has anything fresh happened? you're not on bad terms with dick, are you? tell me.' 'oh, not the least! dick is very good to me; but if i tell you something you promise not to mention it?' 'i promise.' 'well, we were--i don't know what you call it--summoned, i think--by a man before we left blackpool to appear in the divorce court.' for nearly half a minute they looked at each other in silence; then montgomery said: 'i suppose it was after all about the best thing that could happen.' this answer surprised kate. 'why,' she said, 'do you think it's the best thing that could happen to me?' 'because when you get your divorce, if you play your cards well, you'll be able to get dick to marry you.' kate made no reply, and for some time both considered the question in silence. she wondered if dick loved her sufficiently to make such a sacrifice for her: montgomery reflected on the best means of persuading his friend 'to do right by the woman.' at last he said: 'but what did you mean just now when you said that it was more necessary than ever that you should go on the stage?' 'i don't know, only that if i'm going to be divorced i suppose i'd better see what i can do to get my living.' 'well, it isn't my fault if you aren't on the stage already. i've been trying to induce you to make up your mind for the last month past.' 'oh, the chorus! that horrid chorus! i never could walk about before a whole theatre full of people in those red tights.' 'there's nothing indecent in wearing tights. our leading actresses play in travestie. in faust trebelli bettini wears tights, and i'm sure no one can say anything against her.' tights were a constant subject of discussion between the three, friend, mistress, and lover. all sorts of arguments had been adduced, but none of them had shaken kate's unreasoned convictions on this point. a sense of modesty inherited through generations rose to her head, and a feeling of repugnance that seemed almost invincible, forbade her to bare herself thus to the eyes of a gazing public. but although inborn tendencies cannot be eradicated, the will that sustains them can be broken by force of circumstances, and her resolutions began to fail her when dick declared that the thirty shillings a week she would thus earn would be a real assistance to them. in reality the manager had no immediate need of the money, but it went against his feelings to allow principles, and above all principles he could not but think absurd, to stand in the way of his turning over a bit of coin. 'besides, he said, 'how can i put you into a leading business all at once? no matter how well you knew your words, you'd dry up when you got before the footlights. you must get over your stage fright in the chorus. on the first occasion i'll give you a line to speak, then two or three, and then when you've learnt to blurt them out without hesitation, we'll see about a part.' these and similar phrases were dinned into her ears, until at last the matter got somehow decided, and the london costumier was telegraphed to for a new dress. when it arrived a few days after, the opening of the package caused a good deal of merriment. dick held up the long red stockings, as kate called the tights, before montgomery. it was too late now to retract. the dress looked beautiful, and tempted on all sides, she consented to appear that night in _les cloches_. so at half-past six she walked down to the theatre with her bundle under her arm. dick had not allotted to her a dressing-room, and to avoid miss beaumont, who was always rude, she went of her own accord up to number six. an old woman opened the door to her, and when kate had explained what she had come for, she said: 'very well, ma'am. i'm sure i don't mind; but we're already eight in this room, and have only one basin and looking-glass between the lot. i'm afraid you won't be very comfortable.' 'oh! that won't matter. it may be only for to-night. if i'm too much in the way i'll ask mr. lennox to put me somewhere else.' on that kate entered. it was a long, narrow, whitewashed room, smelling strongly of violet-powder and clothes. nobody had arrived yet, and the dresses lay spread out on chairs awaiting the wearers. one was a peasant-girl's dress--a short calico skirt trimmed with wreaths of wild flowers, and she regretted that she could not exchange the page's attire for one of these. 'and as regards the tights,' added the old woman, 'you'd have to wear them just the same with peasant-girls' frocks as with these trunks, for, as you can see, the skirts only just come below the knees.' at this moment the conversation was interrupted by the clattering of feet on the rickety staircase and two girls entered talking loudly; kate had often spoken to them in the wings. then some more women arrived, and kate withdrew her chair as far out of reach as possible of the flying petticoats and the scattered boots and shoes. one lady could not find her tights, another insisted on the bodice of her dress being laced up at once; three voices shouted at once for the dresser, and the call-boy was heard outside: 'ladies! ladies! mr. lennox is waiting; the curtain is going up.' 'all right! all right!' cried an octave of treble voices, and tripping over their swords, those who were ready hurried downstairs, leaving the others screaming at the dresser, who was vainly attempting to tidy the room. when kate got on the stage the first person she saw was montgomery, the very one she wished most to avoid. after having conducted the overture he had come up to find out the reason of the 'wait.' dick was rushing about, declaring that if this ever occurred again half a-crown would be stopped out of all the salaries. 'oh! how very nice we look! and they're not thin,' exclaimed montgomery, pushing his glasses up on his nose. and forgetting his difficulties as if by magic, dick smiled with delight as, holding her at arm's length, he looked at her critically. 'charming, my dear! there won't be a man in front who won't fall in love with you. but i must see where i can place you.' all the rest passed as rapidly as in a dream, and before she could again think distinctly she was walking round the stage in the company of a score of other girls. treading in time to the music, they formed themselves into lines, making place for leslie, who came running down to the footlights. there was no time for thinking; she was whirled along. between the acts she had to rush upstairs to put on another dress; between the scenes she had to watch to know when she had to go on. sometimes dick spoke to her, but he was generally far away, and it was not until the curtain had been rung down for the last time that she got an opportunity of speaking to him. as they walked home up the dark street when all was over, she laid her hand affectionately on his arm: 'tell me, dick, are you satisfied with me? i've done my best to please you.' 'satisfied with you?' replied the big man, turning towards her in his kind unctuous way, 'i should think so: you looked lovely, and your voice was heard above everybody's. i wish you'd heard what montgomery said. i'll give you a line to speak when you've got a bit of confidence. you're a bit timid, that's all.' and delighted kate listened to dick, who had begun to sketch out a career for her. her voice, he said, would improve. she'd have twice the voice in a year from now, and with twice the voice she'd not only be able to sing clairette in _madame angot_, but all schneider's great parts. he talked on and on, and in the early hours of the morning he was relating how _the brigands_ had failed at the globe, the conditions of his capitalist being that his mistress was to play one of the leading parts at a high salary, and that he was to take over the bars. that was thirty pounds a week gone; and the woman sang so fearfully out of tune that she was hissed--a pity, for the piece contained some of offenbach's best music. a casual reference to the dresses led up to a detailed account of how he had bought the satin down at the docks at the extraordinary low price of two shillings a yard, and this bargain prepared the way for a long story concerning a girl who had worn one of these identical dresses. she was now a leading london actress, and every step of her upward career was gone into. then followed several biographies. charlie ---- sang in the chorus and was now a leading tenor. miss ---- had married a rich man on the stock exchange; and so on. indeed, everybody in that ill-fated piece seemed to have succeeded except the manager himself. but no such criticism occurred to kate. her heart was swollen with admiration for the man who had been once at the head of all this talent, and the rich-coloured future he would shape for her flowed hazily through her mind. and kate grew happier as the days passed until she began to think she must be the happiest woman living. her life had now an occupation, and no hour that went pressed upon her heavier than would a butterfly's wing. the mornings when dick was with her had always been delightful; and the afternoons had been taken up with her musical studies. it was the long evenings she used to dread; now they had become part and parcel of her daily pleasures. they dined about four, and when dinner was over it was time to talk about what kind of house they were going to have, to fidget about in search of brushes and combs, the curling-tongs, and to consider what little necessaries she had better bring down to the theatre with her. at first it seemed very strange to her to go tripping down these narrow streets at a certain hour--streets that were filled with people, for the stage and the pit entrance are always within a few yards of each other, and to hear the passers-by whisper as she went by, 'she's one of the actresses.' one day she found a letter addressed to her under the name chosen by dick--a picturesque name he thought looked well on posters--and not suspecting what was in it, she tore open the envelope in presence of half-a-dozen chorus-girls, who had collected in the passage. a diamond ring fell on the floor, and in astonishment kate read: 'dear miss d'arcy,--in recognition of your beauty and the graceful way in which you play your part, i beg to enclose you a ring, which i hope to see on your finger to-night. if you wear it on the right hand i shall understand that you will allow me to wait for you at the stage-door. if, however, you decide that my little offering suits better your left hand, i shall understand that i am unfortunate. '(signed) an admirer.' 'who left this here?' asked kate of the doorkeeper. 'a tall young gent--a london man, i should think, by the cut of him, but he left no name.' 'a very pretty ring, anyhow,' said a girl, picking it up. 'not bad,' said another; 'i got one like it last year at sheffield,' 'but what shall i do with it?' asked kate. 'why, wear it, of course,' answered two or three voices simultaneously. 'wear it!' she repeated, and feeling very much like one in possession of stolen goods, she hurried on to the stage, intending to ask dick what she was to do with the ring. she found him disputing with the property man, and it was some time before he could bring himself to forget the annoyance that a scarcity of daggers had occasioned him. at last, however, with a violent effort of will, he took the note from her hand and read it through. when he had mastered the contents a good-natured smile illumined his chub-cheeked face, and he said: 'well, what do you want to say? i think the ring a very nice one; let's see how it looks on your hand,' 'you don't mean that i'm to wear it?' 'and why not? i think it's a very nice ring,' the manager said unaffectedly. 'wear it first on one hand and then on the other, dear; that will puzzle him,' 'but supposing he comes to meet me at the stage-door?' 'well, what will that matter? we'll go out together; i'll see that he keeps his distance. but now run up and get dressed.' 'now then, come in,' cried dolly, who was walking about in a pair of blue stockings. 'you're as bashful as an undergraduate.' a roar of laughter greeted this sally, and feeling humiliated, she began to dress. 'you haven't heard dolly's story of the undergraduate?' shouted a girl from the other end of the room. 'no, and don't want to,' replied kate, indignantly. 'the conversation in this room is perfectly horrid. i shall ask mr. lennox to change me. and really, miss goddard, i think you might manage to dress yourself with a little more decency.' 'well, if you call this dress,' exclaimed dolly, fanning herself. 'i suppose one must take off one's stockings to please you. you're as bad as----' dolly was the wit of no. dressing-room, and having obtained her laugh she sought to conciliate kate. to achieve this she began by putting on her tights. 'now, mrs. lennox,' she said, 'don't be angry; if i've a good figure i can't help it. and i do want to hear about the diamond ring.' this was said so quaintly, so cunningly, as the americans would say, that kate couldn't help smiling, and abandoning her hand she allowed dolly to examine the ring. 'i never saw anything prettier in my life. it wasn't an undergra--?' said the girl, who was a low comedian at heart and knew the value of repetition. 'i must drink to his health. who has any liquor? have you, vincent?' 'just a drain left,' said a fat girl, pulling a flat bottle out of a dirty black skirt, 'but i'm going to keep it for the end of the second act.' 'selfishness will be your ruin,' said dolly. 'let's subscribe to drink the gentleman's health,' she added, winking at the bevy of damsels who stood waiting, their hands on their hips. and it being impossible for kate to misunderstand what was expected of her she said: 'i shall be very glad to stand treat. what shall it be?' after some discussion it was agreed that they could not do better than a bottle of whisky. the decrepit dresser was given the money, with strict injunctions from dolly not to uncork the bottle. 'we can do that ourselves,' the girl added, facetiously; and a noisy interest was manifested in the ring, the sender and the letter. kate said that dick had advised her to wear the ring first on one hand and then on the other. 'to keep changing it from one hand to another,' cried dolly; 'not a bad idea; and now to the health and success of the sender of the ring.' 'i cannot drink to that toast,' kate answered, laying aside her glass. 'that the word "success" be omitted from the toast!' cried dolly, and the merriment did not cease until the call-boy was heard crying, 'ladies, ladies! mr. lennox is waiting on the stage.' then there was a scramble for the glass and the dresser, and dolly's voice was heard screaming: 'now then, mother hubbard, have you the sweet-stuff i told you to get? i don't want to go downstairs stinking of raw spirit.' 'i couldn't get any,' said the old woman, 'but i brought two slices of bread; that'll do as well.' 'you're a knowing old card,' said dolly. 'eat a mouthful or two, it'll take the smell off, mrs. lennox,' and the girls rattled down the staircase, arriving on the stage only just in time for their cue. 'cue for soldiers' entrance,' the prompter cried, and on they went, montgomery taking the music a little quicker than usual till kate, who was now in the big eight, clean forgot how often she had changed her ring from the left hand to the right. but she did wear it on different hands, and no admirer came up and spoke to her at the stage-door. dick was there waiting for her; she felt quite safe on his arm, and as soon as they had had a mouthful of supper they began the weekly packing. next morning it was train and station, station and train, but despite many delays they managed to catch the train, and on monday night her gracefulness was winning for her new admirers: in every town the company visited she received letters and presents; none succeeded, however, in weakening her love, or persuading her from dick. 'yet lovers around her are sighing,' montgomery chuckled, and dick began to consider seriously the means to be adopted to secure kate's advancement in her new profession. one night montgomery returned home with them after the performance, bringing with him the script, and till one in the morning the twain sat together trying to devise some extra lines for the first scene in _les cloches_. 'the scene,' dick said, 'is on the seashore. the girls are on their way to market.' 'supposing she said something like this, eh? "mr. baillie, do you like brown eyes and cherry lips?" and then another would reply, "cherry brandy most like."' 'no, i don't think the public would see the point; you must remember we're not playing to a london public. i think we'd better have something broader.' 'well, what?' 'you remember the scene in _chilpéric_ when----' the conversation wandered; and mr. diprose's version of the opera and his usual vile taste in the stage management was severely commented on. in such pleasant discussion an hour was agreeably spent; but at last the sudden extinguishing of a cigarette reminded them that they had met for the purpose of writing some dialogue. after a long silence dick said: 'supposing she were to say, "mr. baillie, you've a fine head." you know i want something she'd get a laugh with.' 'if she said the truth, she'd say a fat head,' replied montgomery with a laugh. 'and why shouldn't she? that's the very thing. she's sure to get a laugh with that--"mr. baillie, you have a fat head." let's get that down first. but what shall she say after?' and in silence they ransacked their memories for a joke which could be fitted to the one they had just discovered. after some five minutes of deep consideration, and wearied by the unaccustomed mental strain put upon his mind, dick said: 'do you know the music of _trône d'�cosse_? devilish good. if the book had been better it would have been a big success.' 'the waltz is about the prettiest thing hervé has done.' this expression of opinion led up to an animated discussion, in which the rival claims of hervé and planquette were forcibly argued. many cigarettes were smoked, and not until the packet was emptied did it occur to them that only one 'wheeze' had been found. 'i never can do anything without a cigarette; do try to find me one in the next room, kate, dear. listen, montgomery, we've got "baillie, you've a fat head." that'll do very well for a beginning; but i'm not good at finding wheezes.' 'and then i can say, "baillie, you've a fine head,"' said kate, who had been listening dreamily for a long time, afraid to interrupt. 'not a bad idea,' said dick. 'let's get it down.' 'and then,' screamed montgomery, as he perched both his legs over the arm of his chair, 'she can say, "i mean a great head, mr. baillie."' for a moment dick's eyes flashed with the light of admiration, and he seemed to be considering if it were not his duty to advise the conductor that his talents lay in dialogue rather than in music. but his sentiments, whatever they may have been, disappeared in the burst of inspiration he had been waiting for so long. 'we can go through the whole list of heads,' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'fat head, fine head, broad head, thick head, massive head--yes, massive head. the baillie will appear pleased at that, and will repeat the phrase, and then she will say "dunderhead!" he'll get angry, and she'll run away. that'll make a splendid exit--she'll exit to a roar.' dick noted down the phrases on a piece of paper, to be pasted afterwards into the script. when this was done, he said: 'my dear, if you don't get a roar with these lines, you can call me a ----. and when we play the piece at hull, i shouldn't be surprised if you got noticed in the papers. but you must pluck up courage and check the baillie. we must put up a rehearsal to-morrow for these lines. now listen, montgomery, and tell me how it reads.' xv 'rehearsal to-morrow at twelve for all those in the front scene of the _cloches_,' cried the stage-door keeper to half-a-dozen girls as they pushed past him. 'well i never! and i was going out to see the castle and the ramparts of the town,' said one girl. 'i wonder what it's for,' said another; 'it went all right, i thought--didn't you? did you hear any reason, mr. brown?' 'i 'ear there are to be new lines put in,' replied the stage-door keeper, surlily, 'but i don't know. don't bother me.' at the mention of the new lines the faces of the girls brightened, but instantly they strove to hide the hope and anxiety the announcement had caused them, and in the silence that followed each tried to think how she could get a word with mr. lennox. at length one more enterprising than the rest said: 'i must run back. i've forgotten my handkerchief.' 'you needn't mind your handkerchief, you won't see mr. lennox to-night,' exclaimed dolly, who always trampled on other people's illusions as readily as she did on her own. 'the lines aren't for you nor me, nor any of us,' she continued. 'you little silly, can't you guess who they're for? for his girl, of course!' murmurs of assent followed this statement, and, her hands on her hips, dolly triumphantly faced her auditors. 'it's damned hard, but you can't expect the man to take her out of her linen-drapery for nothing.' the old stage-door keeper, whose attention had been concentrated on what he was eating out of a jam-pot, now suddenly woke up to the fact that the passage was blocked, and that a group of musicians with boxes in their hands were waiting to get through. 'now, ladies, i must ask you to move on; there're a lot of people behind you.' 'yes, get on, girls; we're all up a tree this time, and the moral of it is that we haven't yet learnt how to fall in love with the manager. the paper-collar woman has beaten us at our own game.' a roar of laughter followed this remark, which was heard by everybody, and pushing the girls before her, dolly cleared the way. these girls, whose ambitions in life were first to obtain a line--that is to say, permission to shout, in their red tights, when the low comedian appears on the stage, 'oh, what a jolly good fellow the duke is!'--secondly, to be asked out to dinner by somebody they imagine looks like a gentleman, revolted against hearing this paper-collar woman, as they now called her, speak the long-dreamed-of, long-described phrases; and at night they did everything they dared to 'queer' her scene. they crowded round her, mugged, and tried to divert the attention of the house from her. she had to say, 'mr. baillie, you've a fine head.' _baillie (patting his crown)_: 'yes, a fine head!' _kate_: 'a fat head.' _baillie (indignantly)_: 'a fat head!' _kate (hurriedly)_: 'i mean a broad head.' _baillie_: 'yes, a broad head.' _kate_: 'a thick head.' _baillie (indignantly)_: 'a thick head!' _kate_: 'no, no; a solid head.' and so on _ad lib._ for ten minutes. the scene went splendidly. the pit screamed, and the gallery was in convulsions, and in the street next day nothing was heard but ironical references to fat and thick heads. the girls had not succeeded in spoiling the scene, for, encouraged by the applause, kate had chaffed and mocked at the baillie so winningly that she at once won the sympathy of the house. but the following night a tall, sour-faced girl, who wore pads, and with whom kate had had some words concerning her coarse language, hit upon an ingenious device for 'queering the scene!' her trick was to burst into a roar of laughter just before she had time to say, 'a fat head.' the others soon tumbled to the trick, and in a night or two they worked so well together that kate grew nervous and she could not speak her lines. this made her feel very miserable; and her stage experience being limited, she ascribed her non-success to her own fault, until one night dick rushed on to the stage as soon as the curtain was down, and putting up his arms with a large gesture, he called the company back. 'ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'i've noticed that the front scene in this act has not been going as well as it used to. i don't want anyone to tell me why this is so; the reason is sufficiently obvious, at least to me. i shall expect, therefore, the ladies whom this matter concerns to attend a rehearsal to-morrow at twelve, and if after that i notice what i did tonight, i shall at once dismiss the delinquents from the company. i hope i make myself understood.' after this explanation, any further interference with kate's scene was, of course, out of the question, and the verdict of each new town more and more firmly established its success. but if dick's presence controlled the girls whilst they were on the stage, his authority did not reach to the dressing-rooms. kate's particular enemy was dolly goddard. not a night passed that this girl did not refer to the divorce cases she had read of in the papers, or pretended to have heard of. her natural sharp wit enabled her to do this with considerable acidity. 'never heard such a thing in my life, girls,' she would begin. 'they talk of us, but what we do is child's play compared with the doings of the respectable people. a baker's wife in this blessed town has just run away with the editor of a newspaper, leaving her six little children behind her, one of them being a baby no more than a month old.' 'what will the husband do?' 'get a divorce.' (chorus--'he'll get a divorce, of course, of course, of course!') to this delicate irony no answer was possible, and kate could only bite her lips, and pretend not to understand. but it was difficult not to turn pale and tremble sometimes, so agonizing were the anecdotes that the active brain of dolly conjured up concerning the atrocities that pursuing husbands had perpetrated with knife and pistol on the betrayers of their happiness. and when these scarecrows failed, there were always the stories to fall back upon. a word sufficed to set the whole gang recounting experiences, and comparing notes. a sneer often curled the corners of kate's lips, but to protest she knew would be only to expose herself to a rude answer, and to appeal to dick couldn't fail to excite still further enmity against her. besides, what could he do? how could he define what were and what were not proper conversations for the dressing-rooms? but she might ask him to put her to dress with the principals, and this she decided to do one evening when the words used in no. had been more than usually warm. dick made no objection, and with leslie and beaumont kate got on better. 'i'm so glad you've come,' said leslie, as she bent to allow the dresser to place a wreath of orange-blossom on her head. 'i wonder you didn't think of asking mr. lennox to put you with us before.' 'i didn't like to. i was afraid of being in your way,' kate answered. 'i hope beaumont won't mind my being here.' 'what matter if she does? beaumont isn't half a bad sort once you begin to understand her. just let her talk to you about her diamonds and her men, and it will be all right.' 'but why haven't you been to see me lately? i want you to come out shopping with me one day next week. we shall be at york. i hear there are some good shops there.' 'yes, there are, and i should have been to see you before, but frank has just got some new scores from london, and he wanted me to try them over with him. there's one that's just been produced in paris--the loveliest music you ever heard in all your life. come up to my place to-morrow and i'll play it over to you. but talking of music, i hear that you're getting on nicely.' 'i think i'm improving; montgomery comes to practise with me every morning.' 'he's all very well for the piano, but he can't teach you to produce your voice. what does he know? that brat of a boy! i'll tell you what i'll do,' cried leslie, suddenly confronting kate: 'we're going to york next week. well, i'll introduce you to a first-rate man. he'd do more with you in six lessons than montgomery in fifty. and the week after we shall be at leeds. i can introduce you to another there.' 'the curtain is just going up, miss leslie,' cried the call boy. 'all right,' cried the prima donna, throwing the hare's-foot to the dresser, 'i must be off now. we'll talk of this to-morrow.' immediately after the stately figure of beaumont entered. putting her black bag down with a thump on the table she exclaimed: 'good heavens! not dressed yet! my god! you'll be late.' 'late for what?' asked kate in astonishment. 'didn't mr. lennox tell you that you had to sing my song, the market-woman's song, in the first act?' 'no, i heard nothing of it.' 'then for goodness' sake make haste. here, stick your face out. i'll do your make-up while the dresser laces you. but you'll be able to manage the song, won't you? it's quite impossible for me to get dressed in time. i can't understand mr. lennox not having told you.' 'oh yes, i shall be able to get through it--at least i hope so,' kate answered, trembling with the sudden excitement of the news. 'i think i know all the words except the encore verse.' 'oh, you won't need that,' said beaumont, betrayed by a twinge of professional jealousy. 'now turn the other cheek. by jove! we've no time to lose; they're just finishing the wedding chorus. if you're late it won't be my fault. i sent down word to the theatre to ask if you'd sing my song in the first act, as i had some friends coming down from london to see me. you know the marquis of shoreham--has been a friend of mine for years. that'll do for the left eye.' 'if you put out your leg a little further i'll pull your stocking, and then you'll be all right,' said the dresser, and just staying a moment to pull up her garters in a sort of nervous trance, she rushed on to the stage, followed into the wings by beaumont, who had come to hear how the song would go. she was a complete success, and got a double encore from an enthusiastic pit. but in _madame favart_ she had nothing to do, and wearied waiting in the chorus for another chance which never came, for after her success with the fish-wife's song in _madame angot_, beaumont took good care not to give her another chance. what was to be done? dick said he couldn't sack the principals. 'kate could play serpolette as it was never played before,' exclaimed montgomery, 'and i see no reason why she shouldn't understudy leslie.' 'but what's-her-name is understudying it.' 'why shouldn't there be two understudies?' dick could advance no reason, and once begun, the studies proceeded gaily. apparently deeply interested, dick lay back in the armchair smoking perpetual cigarettes. montgomery hammered with nervous vigour at the piano, and kate stood by his side, her soul burning in the ardours of her task. she would have preferred the part of germaine; it would have better suited her gentle mind than the frisky serpolette; but it seemed vain to hope for illness or any accident that would prevent beaumont from playing. true, leslie was often imprudent, and praying for a bronchial visitation they watched at night to see how she was wrapped up. as soon as kate knew the music, a rehearsal was called for her to go through the business, and it was then that the long-smouldering indignation broke out against her. in the first place the girl who till now had been entrusted with the understudy, and had likewise lived in the hopes of coughs and colds, burst into floods of passionate tears and storms of violent words. she attacked kate vigorously, and the scene was doubly unpleasant, as it took place in the presence of everybody. bitter references were made to dying and deserted husbands, and all the acridness of the chorus-girl was squeezed into allusions anent the divorce court. this was as disagreeable for dick as for kate. the rehearsal had to be dismissed, and the lady in question was sent back to london. sympathy at first ran very strongly on the side of the weak, and the ladies of the theatre were united in their efforts to make it as disagreeable as possible for kate. but she bore up courageously, and after a time her continual refusal to rehearse the part again won a reaction in her favour; and when miss leslie's cold began to grow worse, and it became clear that someone must understudy serpolette, the part fell without opposition to her share. and now every minute of the day was given to learning or thinking out in her inner consciousness some portion of her part. in the middle of her breakfast she would hurriedly lay down her cup with a clink in the saucer and say, 'look here, dick; tell me how i'm to do that run in--my first entrance, you know.' 'what are your words, dear?' '"who speaks ill of serpolette?"' the breakfast-table would then be pushed out of the way and the entrance rehearsed. dick seemed never to weary, and the run was practised over and over again. coming home from the theatre at night, it was always a question of this effect and that effect; of whether leslie might not have scored a point if she had accentuated the lifting of her skirt in the famous song. that was, as dick declared, the 'number of grip'; and often, at two o'clock in the morning, just as she was getting into bed, kate, in her chemise, would begin to sing: '"look at me here! look at me there! criticize me everywhere! from head to feet i am most sweet, and most perfect and complete."' there was a scene in the first act in which serpolette had to run screaming with laughter away from her cross old uncle, gaspard, and dodge him, hiding behind the baillie, and to do this effectively required a certain _chic_, a gaiety, which kate did not seem able to summon up; and this was the weak place in her rendering of the part. 'you're all right for a minute, and then you sober down into a germaine,' dick would say, at the end of a long and critical conversation. the business she learned to 'parrot.' dick taught her the gestures and the intonations of voice to be used, and when she had mastered these dick said he would back her to go through the part quite as well as leslie. leslie! the word was now constantly in their minds. would her cold get worse or better? was the question discussed most frequently between dick, kate, and montgomery. sometimes it was better, sometimes worse; but at the moment of their greatest despondency the welcome news came that she had slipped downstairs and sprained her foot badly. 'oh, the poor thing!' said kate; 'i'm so sorry. had i known that was----' 'was going to happen you wouldn't have learnt the part,' exclaimed montgomery, with his loud, vacant laugh. she beat her foot impatiently on the ground, and after a long silence she said, 'i shall go and see her.' 'you'd much better run through your music with montgomery, and don't forget to see the dresser about your dress. and, for god's sake, do try and put a bit of gaiety into the part. serpolette is a bit of a romp, you know.' 'try to put a bit of gaiety into the part,' rang in kate's ears unceasingly. it haunted her as she took in the waist of leslie's dress, while she leaned over montgomery's shoulder at the piano or listened to his conversation. he was enthusiastic, and she thought it very pretty of him to say, 'i'm glad to have had a share in your first success. no one ever forgets that--that's sure to be remembered.' it was the nearest thing to a profession of love he had ever made, but she was preoccupied with other thoughts, and had to send him away for a last time to study the dialogue before the glass. 'try to put a little gaiety into the part. serpolette is a romp, you know.' 'yes, a romp; but what is a romp?' kate asked herself; and she strove to realize in detail that which she had accepted till now in outline. xvi 'ladies and gentlemen,' said mr. hayes, who had been pushed, much against his will, before the curtain of the theatre royal, bristol, to make the following statement, 'i'm sorry to inform you that in consequence of indisposition--that is to say, the accidental spraining of her ankle--miss leslie will not be able to appear to-night. your kind indulgence is therefore requested for miss d'arcy, who has, on the shortest notice, consented to play the part of serpolette.' 'did yer ever 'ear of anyone spraining an ankle on purpose?' asked a scene-shifter. 'hush!' said the gas-man, 'he'll 'ear you.' amid murmurs of applause, mr. hayes backed into the wings. 'well, was it all right?' he asked dick. 'right, my boy, i should think it was; there was a touch of gladstone in your accidentally sprained ankle.' 'what do you mean?' said the discomfited acting manager. 'i haven't time to tell you now. now then, girls, are you ready?' he said, rushing on to the stage and hurriedly changing the places of the choristers. putting his hand on a girl's shoulder, he moved her to the right or left as his taste dictated. then retiring abruptly, he cried, 'now then, up you go!' and immediately after thirty voices in one sonority sang: '"in corneville's wide market-pla-a-ces, sweet servant-girls, with rosy fa-a-ces, wait here, wait here."' 'now, then, come on. you make your entrance from the top left.' 'i don't think i shall ever be able to do that run in.' 'don't begin to think about anything. if you don't like the run, i'll tell you how to do it,' said dick, his face lighting up with a sudden inspiration; 'do it with a cheeky swagger, walking very slowly, like this; and then when you get quarter of the way down the stage, stop for a moment and sing, "who speaks ill of serpolette?" do you see?' 'yes, yes, that will suit me better; i understand.' then standing under the sloping wing, they both listened anxiously for the cue. 'she loves grenicheux.' 'there's your cue. on you go; give me your shawl.' the footlights dazzled her; a burst of applause rather frightened than reassured her, and a prey to a sort of dull dream, she sang her first lines. but she was a little behind the beat. montgomery brought down his stick furiously, the _répliques_ of the girls buffeted her ears like palms of hands, and it was not until she was halfway through the gossiping couplets, and saw montgomery's arm swing peacefully to and fro over the bent profiles of the musicians that she fairly recovered her presence of mind. then came the little scene in which she runs away from her uncle gaspard and hides behind the baillie. and she dodged the old man with such sprightliness from one side of the stage to the other that a murmur of admiration floated over the pit, and, arising in echoes, was prolonged almost until she stepped down to the footlights to sing the legend of serpolette. the quaintly tripping cadences of the tune and the humour of the words, which demanded to be rather said than sung, were rendered to perfection. it was impossible not to like her when she said: '"i know not much of my relations, i never saw my mother's face; and of preceding generations i never found a single trace. '"i may have fallen from the sky, or blossomed in a rosebud sweet; but all i know is this, that i was found by gaspard in his wheat."' a smile of delight filled the theatre, and kate felt the chilling sense of separation which exists between the public and a debutante being gradually filled in by a delicious but almost incomprehensible notion of contact--a sensation more delicate than the touch of a lover's breath on your face. this reached a climax when she sang the third verse, and had not etiquette forbade, she would have had an encore for it alone. '"i often think that perhaps i may the heiress to a kingdom be, but as i wore no clothes that day i brought no papers out with me."' these words, that had often seemed coarse in leslie's mouth, in kate's seemed adorably simple. so winning was the smile and so coquettishly conscious did she seem of the compromising nature of the statement she was making, that the entire theatre was actuated by the impulse of one thought: oh! what a little dear you must have been lying in the wheat-field! the personality of the actress disappeared in the rosy thighs and chubby arms of the foundling, and notwithstanding the length of the song, she had to sing it twice over. then there was an exit for her, and she rushed into the wings. several of the girls spoke to her, but it was impossible for her to reply to them. everything swam in and out of sight like shapes in a mist, and she could only distinguish the burly form of her lover. he wrapped a shawl about her, and a murmur of amiable words followed her, and, with her thoughts fizzing like champagne, she tried to listen to his praises. then followed moments in which she anxiously waited for her cues. she was nervously afraid of missing her entrance, and she dreaded spoiling her success by some mistake. but it was not until the end of the act when she stepped out of the crowd of servant-girls to sing the famous coquetting song that she reached the summit of her triumph. kate was about the medium height, a shade over five feet five. when she swung her little dress as she strutted on the stage she reminded you immediately of a pigeon. in her apparent thinness from time to time was revealed a surprising plumpness. for instance, her bosom, in a walking dress no more than an indication, in a low body assumed the roundness of a bird's, and the white lines of her falling shoulders floated in long undulations into the blue masses of her hair. the nervous sensibility of her profession had awakened her face, and now the brown eyes laughed with the spiritual maliciousness with which we willingly endow the features of a good fairy. the hips were womanly, the ankle was only a touch of stocking, and the whole house rose to a man and roared when coquettishly lifting the skirt, she sang: '"look at me here! look at me there! criticize me everywhere! from head to feet i am most sweet, and most perfect and complete."' the audience, principally composed of sailors--men home from months of watery weariness, nights of toil and darkness, maddened by the irritating charm of the music and the delicious modernity of kate's figure and dress, looked as if they were going to precipitate themselves from the galleries. was she not the living reality of the figures posted over the hammocks in oil-smelling cabins, the prototype of the short-skirted damsels that decorated the empty match-boxes which they preserved and gazed at under the light of the stars? her success was enormous, and she was forced to sing 'look at me here!' five times before her friends would allow the piece to proceed. at the end of the act she received an ovation. two reporters of the local newspapers obtained permission to come behind to see her. london engagements were spoken of, and in the general enthusiasm someone talked about grand opera. even her fellow artists forgot their jealousies, and in the nervous excitement of the moment complimented her highly. beaumont, anxious to kick down her rival, declared, 'that, to say the least of it, it was a better rendering of the part than leslie's.' and on hearing this, bret, whose forte was not repartee, moved away; mortimer, in his least artificial manner, said that it was not bad for a beginning and that she'd get on if she worked at it. dubois strutted and spoke learnedly of how the part had been played in france, and he was pleased to trace by an analysis which was difficult to follow a resemblance between kate and madame judic. the second act went equally well. and after seeing the ghosts she got a bouquet thrown to her, so cheekily did she sing the refrain: 'for a regiment of soldiers wouldn't make me afraid.' she had therefore now only to maintain her prestige to the end, and when she had got her encore for the cider song, and had been recalled before the curtain at the end of the third act, with unstrung nerves she wandered to her dressing-room, thinking of what dick would say when they got home. but the pleasures of the evening were not over yet: there was the supper, and as she came down from her dressing-room she whispered to montgomery in the wings that they hoped to see him at their place later on. he thanked her and said he would be very glad to come in a little later on, but he had some music to copy now and must away, and feeling a little disappointed that he had to leave she walked up and down the rough boards, stepping out of the way of the scene-shifters. 'by your leave, ma'am,' they cried, going by her with the long swinging wings. she was glad now that montgomery had left her, for alone she could relive distinctly every moment of the performance. as the chorus-girls crossed the stage they stopped to compliment her with a few mechanical words and a hard smile. kate thanked them and returned to her dream all aglow and absorbed in remembrances of her success. the word 'success' returned in her thoughts like the refrain of a song. yes, she had succeeded. wherever she went she would be admired. there was something to live for at last. the t-light flared, and she stopped and began to wonder at the invention, so absurd did it seem; and then feeling that such thoughts were a waste of time, she took up the thread of her memories and had just begun to enjoy again a certain round of applause when beaumont and dolly goddard awoke her with the question, had she seen dick? kate tried to remember. a scene-shifter going by said that he had seen mr. lennox leave the theatre some twenty minutes ago. 'i suppose he will come back for me,' kate said; 'or perhaps i'd better go on? are you coming my way?' beaumont and dolly said they were and proposed that they should pop into a pub before closing time. kate hesitated to accept the invitation, but beaumont insisted, and as it was a question of drinking to the night's success she consented to accompany them. 'no, not here,' said beaumont, shoving the swing-doors an inch or so apart: 'it's too full. i'll show you the way round by the side entrance.' and giggling, the girls slipped into the private apartment. 'what will you have, dear?' asked beaumont in an apologetic whisper. 'i think i'll have a whisky.' 'you'll have the same, dolly?' 'scotch or irish?' asked the barman. the girls consulted a moment and decided in favour of irish. with nods and glances, the health of serpolette was drunk, and then fearing to look as if she were sponging, kate insisted on likewise standing treat. fortunately, when the second round had been drunk, closing time was announced by the man in the shirtsleeves, and bidding her friends good-bye, kate stood in the street trying to think if she ought to return to the theatre to look after dick or go home and find him there. she decided on the latter alternative and walked slowly along the street. a chill wind blew up from the sea, and the sudden transition from the hot atmosphere of the bar brought the fumes of the whisky to her head and she felt a little giddy. an idea of drunkenness suggested itself; it annoyed her, and repulsing it vehemently, her thoughts somewhat savagely fastened on to dick as the culprit. 'where had he gone?' she asked, at first curiously, but at each repetition she put the question more sullenly to herself. if he had come back to fetch her she would not have been led into going into the public-house with beaumont; and, irritated that any shadow should have fallen on the happiness of the evening, she walked sturdily along until a sudden turn brought her face to face with her lover. 'oh!' he said, starting. 'is that you, kate? i was just cutting back to the theatre to fetch you.' 'yes, a nice time you've kept me waiting,' she answered; but as she spoke she recognized the street they were in as the one in which leslie lived. the blood rushed to her face, and tearing the while the paper fringe of her bouquet, she said, 'i know very well where you've been to! i want no telling. you've been round spending your time with leslie.' 'well,' said dick, embarrassed by the directness with which she divined his errand, 'i don't see what harm there was in that; i really thought that i ought to run and see how she was.' struck by the reasonableness of this answer, kate for the moment remained silent, but a sudden remembrance forced the anger that was latent in her to her head, and facing him again she said: 'how dare you tell me such a lie! you know very well you went to see her because you like her, because you love her.' dick looked at her, surprised. 'i assure you, you're mistaken,' he said. but at that moment bret passed them in the street, hurrying towards leslie's. the meeting was an unfortunate one, and it sent a deeper pang of jealousy to kate's heart. 'there,' she said, 'haven't i proof of your baseness? what do you say to that?' 'to what?' 'don't pretend innocence. didn't you see bret passing? you choose your time nicely to pay visits--just when he should be out.' 'oh!' said dick, surprised at the ingenuity of the deduction. 'i give you my word that such an idea never occurred to me.' but before he could get any further with his explanation kate again cut him short, and in passionate words told him he was a monster and a villain. so taken aback was he by this sudden manifestation of temper on the part of one in whom he did not suspect its existence, that he stopped, to assure himself that she was not joking. a glance sufficed to convince him; and making frequent little halts between the lamp-posts to argue the different points more definitely, they proceeded home quarrelling. but on arriving at the door, kate experienced a moment of revolt that surprised herself. the palms of her hands itched, and consumed with a childish desire to scratch and beat this big man, she beat her little feet against the pavement. dick fumbled at the lock. the delay still further irritated her, and it seemed impossible that she could enter the house that night. 'aren't you coming in?' he said at last. 'no, not i. you go back to miss leslie; i'm sure she wants you to attend to her ankle.' this was too absurd, and dick expostulated gently. but nothing he could say was of the slightest avail, and she refused to move from the doorstep. then began a long argument; and in brief phrases, amid frequent interruptions, all sorts of things were discussed. the wind blew very cold; kate did not seem to notice it, but dick shivered in his fat; and noticing his trembling she taunted him with it, and insultingly advised him to go to bed. not knowing what answer to give to this, he walked into the sitting-room and sat down by the fire. how long would she remain on the doorstep? he asked himself humbly, until his reflections were interrupted by the sound of steps. it was montgomery, and chuckling, dick listened to him reasoning with kate. the cold was so intense that the discussion could not be continued for long; and when the two friends entered dick was prepared for a reconciliation. but in this he was disappointed. she merely consented to sit in the armchair, glaring at her lover. montgomery tried to argue with her, but he could scarcely succeed in getting her to answer him, and it was not until he began to question dick on the reason of the quarrel that she consented to speak; and then her utterances were rather passionate denials of her lover's statements than any distinct explanation. there were also long silences, during which she sat savagely picking at the paper of the bouquet, which she still retained. at last montgomery, noticing the supper that no one cared to touch, said: 'well, all i know is, that it's very unfortunate that you should have chosen this night of all others, the night of her success, to have a row. i expected a pleasant evening.' 'success, indeed!' said kate, starting to her feet. 'was it for such a success as this that he took me away from my home? oh, what a fool i was! success! a lot i care for the success, when he has been spending the evening with leslie.' and unable to contain herself any longer, she tore a handful of flowers out of her bouquet and threw them in dick's face. handful succeeded handful, each being accompanied by a shower of vehement words. the two men waited in wonderment, and when passionate reproaches and spring flowers were alike exhausted, a flood of tears and a rush into the next room ended the scene. xvii as soon as it was announced that miss leslie suffered so much with her ankle that she would be unable to travel, the whole company called to see the poor invalid; the chorus left their names, the principals went up to sit by the sofa-side, and all brought her something: beaumont, a basket of fruit; dolly goddard, a bouquet of flowers; dubois, an interesting novel; mortimer, a fresh stock of anecdotes. around her sofa sprains were discussed. dubois had known a _première danseuse_ at the opera house, in paris, but the handing round of cigarettes prevented his story from being heard, and beaumont related instead how lord shoreham in youth had broken his legs out hunting. the relation might not have come to an end that evening if leslie had not asked bret to change her position on the sofa, and when he and dick went out of the room a look of inquiry was passed round. 'you needn't be uneasy. i wouldn't let bret stop for anything. i shall be very comfortable here. my landlady is as kind as she can be and the rooms are very nice.' a murmur of approval followed these words, and continuing miss leslie said, laying her hand on kate's: 'and my friend here will play my parts until i come back. you must begin to-night, my dear, and try to work up clairette. if you're a quick study you may be able to play it on wednesday night.' this was too much; the tears stood in kate's eyes. she had in her pocket a little gold _porte-bonheur_ which she had bought that morning to make a present of to her once hated rival, but she waited until they were alone to slip it on the good natured prima donna's wrist. the parting between the two women was very touching, and being in a melting mood kate made a full confession of her quarrel with dick, and, abandoning herself, she sought for consolation. leslie smiled curiously, and after a long pause said: 'i know what you mean, dear, i've been jealous myself; but you'll get over it, and learn to take things easily as i do. men aren't worth it.' the last phrase seemed to have slipped from her inadvertently, and seeing how she had shocked kate she hastened to add, 'dick is a very good fellow, and will look after you; but take my advice, avoid a row; we women don't gain anything by it.' the words dwelt long in kate's mind, but she found it hard to keep her temper. her temper surprised even herself. it seemed to be giving way, and she trembled with rage at things that before would not have stirred an unquiet thought in her mind. remembrances of the passions that used to convulse her when a child returned to her. as is generally the case, there was right on both sides. her life, it must be confessed, was woven about with temptations. dick's character easily engendered suspicion, and when the study of the part of clairette was over, the iron of distrust began again to force its way into her heart. the slightest thing sufficed to arouse her. on one occasion, when travelling from bath to wolverhampton, she could not help thinking, judging from the expression of the girl's face, that dick was squeezing dolly's foot under the rug; without a word she moved to the other end of the carriage and remained looking out of the window for the rest of the journey. another time she was seized with a fit of mad rage at seeing dick dancing with beaumont at the end of the second act of _madame angot_. there were floods of tears and a distinct refusal 'to dress with that woman.' dick was in despair! what could he do? there was no spare room, and unless she went to dress with the chorus he didn't know what she'd do. 'my god!' he exclaimed to mortimer, as he rushed across the stage after the 'damned property-man,' 'never have your woman playing in the same theatre as yourself; it's awful!' for the last couple of weeks everything he did seemed to be wrong. success, instead of satisfying kate, seemed to render her more irritable, and instead of contenting herself with the plaudits that were nightly showered upon her, her constant occupation was to find out either where dick was or what he had been doing or saying. if he went up to make a change without telling her she would invent some excuse for sending to inquire after him; if he were giving some directions to the girls at one of the top entrances, she would walk from the wing where she was waiting for her cue to ask him what he was saying. this watchfulness caused a great deal of merriment in the theatre, and in the dressing-rooms mortimer's imitation of the catechism the manager was put to at night was considered very amusing. 'my dear, i assure you you're mistaken. i only smoked two cigarettes after lunch, and then i had a glass of beer. i swear i'm concealing nothing from you.' and this is scarcely a parody of the strict surveillance under which dick lived, but from a mixture of lassitude and good nature it did not seem to annoy him too much, and he appeared to be most troubled when kate murmured that she was tired, that she hated the profession and would like to go and live in the country. for now she complained of fatigue and weariness; the society of those who formed her life no longer interested her, and she took violent and unreasoning antipathies. it was not infrequent for mortimer and montgomery to make an arrangement to grub with the lennoxes whenever a landlady could be discovered who would undertake so much cooking. but without being able to explain why, kate declared she could not abide sitting face to face with the heavy lead. she saw and heard quite enough of him at the theatre without being bothered by him in the day-time. dick made no objection. he confessed, and, willingly, that he was a bit tired of disconnected remarks, and the wit of irrelevancies; and mortimer, he said, fell to sulking if you didn't laugh at his jokes. montgomery continued to board with them, the young man very uncertain always whether he would be as unhappy away from her as he was with her. he often dreamed of sending in his resignation, but he could not leave the company, having begun to look upon himself as her guardian angel; and, without consulting dick, they arranged deftly that dubois should be asked to take mortimer's place. dick approved when the project was unfolded to him, the natty appearance of the little foreigner was a welcome change after mortimer's draggled show of genius. he could do everything better than anybody else, but that did not matter, for he was amusing in his relations. whether you spoke of balzac's position in modern fiction or the rolling of cigarettes, you were certain to be interrupted with, 'i assure you, my dear fellow, you're mistaken' uttered in a stentorian voice. on the subject of his bass voice a child could draw him out, and, under the pretext of instituting a comparison between him and one of the bass choristers, montgomery never failed to induce him to give the company an idea of his register. at first to see the little man settling the double chin into his chest in his efforts to get at the low d used to convulse kate with laughter, but after a time even this grew monotonous, and wearily she begged montgomery to leave him alone. 'nothing seems to amuse you now' he would say with a mingled look of affection and regret. a shrug of the shoulder she considered a sufficient answer for him, and she would sink back as if pursuing to its furthest consequences the train of some far-reaching ideas. and in wonder these men watched the progress of kate's malady without ever suspecting what was really the matter with her. she was homesick. but not for the house in hanley and the dressmaking of yore. she had come to look upon hanley, ralph, mrs. ede, the apprentices and hender as a bygone dream, to which she could not return and did not wish to return. her homesickness was not to go back to the point from which she had started, but to settle down in a house for a while. 'not for long, dick,' she said, 'a month; even a fortnight would make all the difference. we spent a fortnight at blackpool, but we have never stayed a fortnight at the same place since.' 'i know what's the matter with you, kate,' he answered; 'you want a holiday; so do i; we all want a holiday. one of these days we shall get one when the tour comes to an end.' it did not seem to kate that the tour would ever come to an end: she would always be going round like a wheel. dick begged her to have patience, and she resolved to have patience, but one saturday night in the middle of her packing the vision of the long railway journey that awaited her on the morrow rose up suddenly in her mind, and she could not do else than spring to her feet, and standing over the half-filled trunk she said: 'dick, i cannot, i cannot; don't ask me.' 'ask you what?' he said. 'to go to bath with you to-morrow morning,' she answered. 'you won't come to bath!' he cried. 'but who will play clairette?' 'i will, of course.' 'i don't understand, kate,' dick replied. 'i only want one day off. why shouldn't i spend the sunday in leamington and go to church? i want a little rest. i can't help it, dick.' 'well, i never! you seem to get more and more capricious every day.' 'then you won't let me?' said kate, with a flush flowing through her olive cheeks. 'won't let you! why shouldn't you stay if it pleases you, dear? montgomery is staying too; he wants to see an aunt of his who lives in the town.' dick's unaffected kindness so touched kate's sensibilities that the tears welled up into her eyes, and she flung herself into his arms sobbing hysterically. for the moment she was very happy, and she looked into the dream of the long day she was going to spend with montgomery, afraid lest some untoward incident might rob her of her happiness. but nothing fell out to blot her hopes, everything seemed to be happening just as she had foreseen it, and trembling with pleasurable excitement the twain hurried through the town inquiring out the way to the wesleyan church. at last it was found in a distant suburb, and her emotion almost from the moment she entered into the peace of the building became so uncontrollable that to hide the tears upon her cheeks she was forced to bury her face in her hands, and in the soft snoring of the organ, recollections of her life frothed up; but as the psalm proceeded her excitement abated, until at last it subsided into a state of languid ecstasy. nor was it till the congregation knelt down with one accord for the extemporary prayer that she asked pardon for her sins. 'but how could god forgive her her sins if she persevered in them?' she asked herself. 'how could she leave dick and return to hanley? her husband would not receive her; her life had got into a tangle and might never get straight again. but all is in the hands of god,' and thinking of the woman that had been and the woman that was, she prayed god to consider her mercifully. 'god will understand,' she said, 'how it all came about; i cannot.' montgomery was kneeling in the pew beside her, and he wondered at seeing her so absorbed in prayer; he did not know that she was so pious, and thought that such piety as hers was not in accord with the life she had taken up and the company with which they were touring. but perhaps it was a mere passing emotion, a sudden recrudescence of her past life which would fade away and never return again; he hoped that this was the case, for he believed in her talent, and that a london success awaited her. he kept his eyes averted from her, knowing that his observation would distress her, and after church she said she would like to go for a walk and he suggested the river. in the shade of spreading trees they watched the boats passing, and in the course of the afternoon talked of many things and of many people, and it pleased and surprised them to find that their ideas coincided, and in the pauses of the conversation they wondered why they had never spoken to each other like this before. he was often tempted to hold out prospects of a london success with a view to cheering her, but he felt that this was not the moment to do so. but she, being a little less tactful, spoke to him of his music with a view to pleasing him, but he could not detach his thoughts from her, and could only tell her that he heard her voice in the music as he composed it. 'the afternoon is passing,' he said; 'it's time to begin thinking of tea.' whereupon they rose to their feet and walked a long way into the country in search of an inn, and finding one they had tea in a garden, and afterwards they dined in a sanded parlour and enjoyed the cold beef, although they could not disguise from themselves the fact that it was a little tough. but what matter the food? it was the close intimacy and atmosphere of the day that mattered to them, and they returned to leamington thinking of the day that had gone by, a day unique in their experience, one that might never return to them. the ways were filled with sunday strollers--mothers leading a tired child moved steadily forward; a drunken man staggered over a heap of stones; sweethearts chased each other; occasionally a girl, kissed from behind as she stretched to reach a honeysuckle, rent the airless evening with a scream. kate had not spoken for a long while, and montgomery's apprehensions were awakened. of what could she be thinking? 'something was on her mind,' he said to himself. 'something has been on her mind all day,' he continued, and he began to ask himself if he should put his arm around her and beg of her to confide in him. he would have done so if the striking of a clock had not reminded him that they had little time before them if they wished to catch the train, so instead of asking her to confide in him he asked her to try to walk a little faster. she was tired. he offered her his arm. 'we've just time to get to the station and no more; it's lucky we have our tickets.' the guard on the platform begged them to hasten and to get in anywhere they could. a moment afterwards they jumped into the carriage, and the train rolled with a slight oscillating motion out of the station into the open country. dim masses of trees, interrupted by spires and roofs, were painted upon a huge orange sky that somehow reminded them of an _opéra bouffe_. 'what are you crying for?' montgomery asked, bending forward. 'oh, i don't know!--nothing,' exclaimed kate, sobbing; 'but i'm very unhappy. i know i've been very wicked, and am sure to be punished for it.' 'nonsense! nonsense!' 'god will punish me--know he will. i felt it all to-day in church. i'm done for, i'm done for.' 'you've made a success on the stage. i never saw anyone get on so well in so short a time; and you're loved,' he added with a certain bitterness, 'as much as any woman could be.' 'that's what you think, but i know better. i see him flirting every day with different girls.' 'you imagine those things. dick couldn't speak roughly to anyone if he tried; but he doesn't care for any woman but you.' 'of course, you say so. you're his friend.' 'i assure you 'pon my word of honour; i wouldn't tell you so if it weren't true. you're my friend as much as he, aren't you?' and then, as if afraid that she should read his thoughts, he added: 'i'm sure he hasn't kissed anyone since he knew you. i can't put it plainer than that, can i?' 'i'm glad to hear you say so. i don't think you'd tell me a lie; it would be too cruel, wouldn't it? for you know what a position i am in: if dick were to desert me to-morrow what should i do?' 'you're in a mournful humour. why should dick desert you? and even if he did, i don't see that it would be such an awful fate.' startled, kate raised her eyes suddenly and looked him straight in the face. 'what do you mean?' she said. the abruptness of her question made him hesitate. in a swift instant he regretted having risked himself so far, and reproached himself for being false to his friend; but the temptation was irresistible, and overcome by the tenderness of the day, and irritated by the memory of years of vain longing, he said: 'even if he did desert you, you might, you would, find somebody better--somebody who'd marry you.' kate did not answer and they sat listening to the rattle of the train. at last she said: 'i could never marry anyone but dick.' 'why? do you love him so much?' 'yes, i love him better than anything in the world; but even if i didn't, there are reasons which would prevent my marrying anyone but him.' 'what reasons?' a desire that someone should know of her trouble smothered all other considerations, and after another attempt to speak she again dropped into silence. montgomery tried to rouse her: 'tell me,' he said, 'tell me why you couldn't marry anyone but dick.' the sound of his voice startled her, and then, in a moment of sudden naturalness, she answered: 'because i'm in the family way.' 'then there's nothing else for him to do but to marry you.' she knew he was at that moment his own proper executioner, but the intensity of her own feelings did not leave her time for pity. why after all shouldn't she marry dick? why hadn't she asked for this reparation before? 'i dare say you're right,' she said. 'when i tell him----' 'what! haven't you told him yet?' montgomery cried. 'no,' kate answered timidly, 'i was afraid he wouldn't care to hear it.' 'then you must do so at once,' montgomery said, and the poor vagrant musician, whom nobody had ever loved, said: 'i will speak to him about it the first time i get a chance. it would be wicked of him not to. he couldn't refuse even if he didn't love you, which he does.' the last streak of yellow had died out of the sky telling of the day that had gone by, and in a deep tranquillity of mind kate inhaled the sweetness of her luck as a convalescent might a bunch of freshly culled violets. xviii it never rains but it pours. she was called before the curtain after every act in _madame angot_ and _les cloches de corneville_, and dick told her that she would cut out all the london prima donnas, giving them the go-by, and establish herself one of the great metropolitan favourites if he could get a new work over from france. 'why a new work?' she asked, and he told her that to draw the attention of the critics and the public upon her, she must appear in a new title role, and sitting in his armchair when they came home from the theatre at night, he brooded many projects, the principal one of which was to obtain a new work from france. but which of the three illustrious composers, hervé, offenbach and lecocq, should he choose to write the music? the book of words would have to be written before the music was composed, and so far as he knew the only french composer who could set english words was hervé. it seemed to kate that he never would cease to draw forth a cigarette case, or to cross and uncross his legs. did this man never wish to go to bed? she hated stopping up after one o'clock in the morning. but, anxious to be a serviceable companion to him on all occasions, she strove against her sleepiness and listened to him whilst he considered whether her voice was heard to most advantage in offenbach or in hervé. she had not yet played the _grande duchesse_, and there were parts in that opera that would suit her very well. he would like to see her in _la belle hélène_ and the _princess of trebizond_, but the last-named opera was never a success in england, and he was not certain about the power of _la périchole_ to draw audiences in the provinces. it was pleasant to kate to hear her talent discussed, analyzed, set forth in the works of great men, but her thought had now turned from her artistic career to her domestic. she wanted to be married. it had always been vaguely understood that they were to be married, that is to say, it had been taken for granted that when a fitting occasion presented itself they would render their cohabitation legal. this understanding had satisfied her till now. in the first months, in the first year after the escape from hanley, her happiness had been so great that she had not had a thought of pressing matters further. she had feared to do anything lest she might destroy her happiness by doing so, and dick, who let everything slide until necessity forced him to take steps, had not troubled himself about his marriage, although quite convinced that he would end by marrying kate. he had treated his marriage exactly as he did his theatrical speculations. 'there is no hurry,' he answered her, and proposed that they should be married in london. 'but why in london?' he spoke of his relations and his friends. he would like kate to know his old mother. 'but, dick, dear, why not at once? we're living in a life of sin, and at times the thought of the sin makes me miserable.' out of his animal repose dick smiled at the religious argument, and being on the watch always for a sneer, the blood rushed to her face instantly and she exclaimed: 'if you did seduce me, if you did drag me away from my peaceful home, if you did make a travelling actress of me, you might at least refrain from insulting my religion.' dick looked up, surprised. kate had put down her knife and fork and was pouring herself out a large glass of sherry. she was evidently going to work herself up into one of her rages. 'i assure you, my dear, i never intended to insult your religion; and i wish you wouldn't drink all that wine, it only excites you.' 'excites me! what does it matter to you if i excite myself or not?' 'my dear kate, this is very foolish of you. i don't see why--if you'll only listen to reason----' 'listen to reason!' she said, spilling the sherry over the table, 'ah! it would have been better if i'd never listened to you.' 'you really mustn't drink any more wine; i can't allow it,' said dick, passing his arm across her and trying to take away the decanter. this was the climax, and her pretty face curiously twisted, she screamed as she struggled away from him: 'leave me go, will you! leave me go! oh! i hate you!' then clenching her teeth, and more savagely, 'no, i'll not be touched! no! no! no! i will not!' dick was so astonished at this burst of passion that he loosed for a moment the arms he was holding, and profiting by the opportunity kate seized him by the frizzly hair with one hand and dragged the nails of the other down his face. at this moment montgomery entered; he stood aghast, and kate, whose anger had now expended itself, burst into a violent fit of weeping. 'what does this mean?' montgomery said, speaking very slowly. neither answered. the man sought for words; the woman walked about the room swinging herself; and as she passed before him montgomery stopped her and begged for an explanation. she gave him a swift look of grief, and breaking away from him, shut herself in the bedroom. 'what does this mean?' dick looked round vaguely, astonished at the authoritative way the question was put, but without inquiring he answered: 'that's what i want to know. i never saw anything like it in my life. we were speaking of being married, when suddenly kate accused me of insulting her religion, and then--well, i don't remember any more. she fell into such a passion--you saw it yourself.' 'did you say you wouldn't marry her?' 'no, on the contrary. i can't make it out. for the last month her caprices, fancies, and jealousies have been something awful!' montgomery made a movement as if he were going to reply, but checking himself, he remained silent. his face then assumed the settled appearance of one who is inwardly examining the different sides of a complex question. at last he said: 'let's come out for a walk, dick, and we'll talk the matter over.' 'do you think i can leave her?' 'it's the best thing you can do. leave her to have her cry out,' and adopting the suggestion, dick picked up his hat, and without further words the men went out of the house, walking slowly arm in arm. 'i cannot understand what is the matter with kate. when i knew her first she hadn't a bad temper.' to this montgomery made no answer. he was thinking. after a pause dick continued, as if speaking to himself: 'and the way she does badger me with her confounded jealousies; i'm afraid now to tell a girl to move up higher on the stage. there are explanations about everything, and i can't think what it's all about. she has everything she requires. she hasn't been a year on the stage, and she's playing leading parts, and scoring successes too.' 'perhaps she has reasons you don't know of.' 'reasons i don't know of? what do you mean?' 'well, you haven't told me yet what the row was about.' 'tell you! that's just what i want to know myself.' 'what were you speaking about when it began?' asked montgomery, who was still feeling his way. 'about our marriage.' 'well, what did you say?' 'what did i say? i really don't remember; the row has put it all out of my head. let me think. i was saying--i mean she was asking me when we should be married.' 'and what did you say to that? did you fix a day?' 'fix a day!' said dick, looking in astonishment at his friend. 'how could i fix a day?' 'i think if i loved a woman and she loved me i could manage somehow to fix a day.' these words were spoken with an earnestness that attracted dick's attention, and he looked inquiringly at the young man. 'so you think i ought to marry her?' 'think you ought to marry her?' exclaimed montgomery indignantly; 'really, dick, i didn't think you were--just remember what she's given up for you. you owe it to her. good heavens!' 'well, you needn't get into a passion; i've had enough of passions for one day.' the impetuousness of the youth had struck through the fat nonchalance of the man, and he said after a pause: 'yes, i suppose i do owe it to her.' the apologetic, easy-going air with which this phrase was spoken maddened montgomery; he could have struck his friend full in the face, but for the sake of the woman he was obliged to keep his temper. 'putting aside the question of what you owe and what you don't owe, i'd like to ask you where you could find a nicer wife? she's the prettiest woman in the company, she's making now five pounds a week, and she loves you as well as ever a woman loved a man. i should like to know what more you want.' this was very agreeable to hear, and after a moment's reflection dick said: 'that's quite true, my boy, and i like her better than any other woman. i don't think i could get anything better. if it weren't for that infernal jealousy of hers. really, her temper is no joke.' 'her temper is all right; she was as quiet as a mouse when you knew her first. take my word for it, there are excellent reasons for her being a bit put out.' 'what do you mean?' 'can't you guess?' the two men stopped and looked each other full in the face, and then resuming his walk, montgomery said: 'yes, it's so; she told me in the train coming up from leamington.' tears glittered in dick's eyes, and he became in that moment all pity, kindness, and good-nature. 'oh, the poor dear! why didn't she tell me that before? and i'd scolded her for ill-temper.' his humanity was as large as his fat, and although he had never thought of the joys of paternity, now, in the warmth of his sentiments, he melted into one feeling of rapture. after a pause, he said: 'i think i'd better go back and see her.' 'yes, i think you'd better; fix a day for your marriage.' 'of course.' nothing further was said; each absorbed in different thoughts the two men retraced their steps, and when they arrived at the door, montgomery said: 'i think i'd better wish you good-bye.' 'no, come in, old man; she'd like to see you.' and as if anxious to torture himself to the last, montgomery entered. kate was still locked in the bedroom, but there was such an unmistakable accent of trepidation and anxiety in dick's fingers and voice that she opened immediately. her beautiful black hair was undone, and fell in rich masses about her. dick took her in his arms, and held her sobbing on his shoulder. all he could say was, 'oh, my darling, i'm so sorry; you will forgive me, won't you?' xix 'well, what are you going to give her? do you see anything you like here?' 'do you think that paper-cutter would do?' 'you can't give anything more suitable, ma'am. then there are these card-cases; nobody could fail to like them.' 'what are you going to give, annie?' 'oh, i'm going to give her the pair of earrings we saw yesterday; but if i were you i wouldn't spend more than half a sovereign: it's quite enough.' 'i should think so indeed--a third of a week's screw,' whispered dolly, 'but she ain't a bad one, and dick will like it, and may give me a line or so in _olivette_. how do you think she'll do in the part?' 'we'll talk about that another time. are you going to buy the paper-cutter?' casting her eyes in despair around the walls of the fancy-goods shop to see if she could find anything she liked better, dolly decided in favour of the paper-cutter and paid the money after a feeble attempt at bargaining. in the street they saw mortimer, who had now allowed his hair to grow in long, snake-like curls completely over his shoulders. 'for goodness' sake come away,' cried beaumont, 'i do hate speaking to him in the street, everybody stares so.' the girls turned to fly, but the heavy lead was upon them, and in his most nasal tones said: 'well, my dear young ladies, engaged in the charming occupation of buying nuptial gifts?' 'how very sharp you are, mr. mortimer,' answered dolly in her pertest manner; 'and what are you going to give? we should so much like to know.' after a moment's hesitation he said, throwing up his chin after the manner of a model sitting for a head of christ: 'my dear young lady, you must not exhibit your curiosity in that way; it's not modest.' 'but do tell us, mr. mortimer; you're a person of such good taste.' the comic tragedian considered for a moment what he could say most ill-natured and so get himself out of his difficulty. 'i tell you, young lady, i'm not decided, but i think that a copy of wesley's hymns bound up with the book of the _grand duchess_ might not be inappropriate.' 'but how do you think she'll play the countess?' asked beaumont. 'oh, we mustn't speak of that now she's going to be married,' and, thinking he could not better this last remark, mortimer bade the ladies good-bye and went off with curls and coat-tails alike swinging in the breeze. farther up the street beaumont and dolly were joined by leslie, bret, and dubois, and the same topics were again discussed. 'what are you going to give?' 'have you bought your present?' 'have you seen mine?' 'do you know who's going to be at the wedding breakfast? they can't ask more than a dozen or so.' 'have you heard that the chorus have clubbed together to buy dick a chain?' 'it's very good of them, but they'll feel hurt at not being asked to the breakfast.' 'what will the lennoxes do?' these and a hundred other questions of a similar sort had been asked in the dressing-rooms, in the wings, in the streets at every available moment since morton and cox's _opéra bouffe_ company had arrived in liverpool. everybody professed to consider the event the happiest and most fortunate that could have happened, but mortimer's words, 'there's many a slip between the ring and the finger,' recurred to them whenever the conversation came to a pause, and they hoped the marriage might yet be averted, even when they stood one bright summer morning assembled on the stage, awaiting the arrival of the bride and bridegroom. the name of the church had been kept a secret, and all that was known was that leslie--who had joined another company in liverpool--bret, montgomery, and beaumont had gone to attend as witnesses, and that they would be back at the theatre at twelve to run through the third act of _olivette_ before producing it that night. many false alarms were given, but when at last the bridal party walked from the wings on to the stage, dick's appearance provoked a little good-natured laughter, so respectable did he look in a spick-and-span new frock-coat and his tall hat. kate never looked prettier; mortimer said her own husband wouldn't know her. she wore a dark green silk pleated down the front, from underneath which a patent-leather boot peeped as she walked; a short jacket showed the drawing of her shoulders, the delicacy of her waist, and the graceful fall of the hips. she carried in her hand a bouquet of yellow and pink roses, a present from montgomery. 'now, ladies and gentlemen, i won't detain you long, but do let us run through the third act, so as to have it right for the night. montgomery, will you oblige me by playing over that sailor-chorus?' dick took the girls in sections and placed them in the positions he desired them to hold. 'now, then; enter the countess. who's in love with the countess?' 'well, if you don't know, i don't know who does,' said mortimer. 'i hear you've been swearing all the morning "till death do us part."' a good deal of laughter greeted this pleasantry and dick himself could not refrain from joining in. at last he said: 'now, kate, dear, do leave off laughing and run through your song.' 'i-i-ca-n't--can-'t; you--you--are--t-t-too funny.' 'we shall never get through this act,' said dick, who had just caught miss leslie walking off with bret into the green-room. now, miss leslie, can't you wait until this rehearsal is over?' 'they'll be late for church to-day; they may as well wait.' another roar of laughter followed this remark, and kate said: 'you'd better give it up, dick, dear; it will be all right at night. i assure you i shall be perfect in my music and words.' 'i must go through the act. the principals are responsible for themselves, but i must look to the chorus. where's that damned property-master?' on the subject of rehearsals dick was always firm, and seeing that it could not be shirked, the chorus pulled themselves together, and the act was run through somehow. then a few more invitations were whispered in the corners on the sly, and the party in couples and groups repaired to the lennoxes' lodgings. mortimer, beaumont, dick, and kate walked together, talking of the night's show. dubois crushed his bishop's hat over his eyes, straddled his ostler-like legs, and discussed wagner's position in music with montgomery and dolly goddard. a baronet's grandson, a chorus singer, told how his ancestor had won the goodwood cup half a century ago, to three ladies in the same position in the theatre as himself. bret and leslie followed very slowly, apparently more than ever enchanted with each other. for the wedding breakfast, the obliging landlady had given up her own rooms on the ground-floor. the table extended from the fireplace to the cabinet, the panels of which mortimer was respectfully requested not to break when he was invited to take the foot of the table and help the cold salmon. the bride and bridegroom took the head, and the soup was placed before them; for this was not, as dick explained, a breakfast served by gunter, but a dinner suitable to people who had been engaged for some time back. at this joke no one knew if they should laugh or not, and mortimer slyly attracted the attention of the company to bret and leslie, who were examining the cake. then all spoke at once of the presents. they were of all sorts, and had come from different parts of the country. mr. cox had given a large diamond ring. leslie had presented kate with a handsome inkstand. bret had bought her a small gold bracelet. dubois, whose fancies were light, offered a fan; beaumont, a pair of earrings; hayes, a cigarette case; dolly goddard, a paper-knife; montgomery, a brooch which must have cost him at least a month's salary. mortimer exclaimed that his wife had been behaving rather badly lately, and that in consequence he had been unable to obtain from her--what he had not been able to obtain dick did not stop to listen to. at that moment the gold chain, the present from the chorus, caught his eye. the kindness of the girls seemed to affect him deeply, and, interrupting kate, who was thanking her friends for all their tokens of good-will, he said: 'i must really thank the ladies of the chorus for the very handsome present they made me. how sorry i am that they are not all here to receive my thanks i cannot say; but those who are here will, i hope, explain to their comrades how we were pressed for space.' 'one would think you were refusing a free admission,' snarled mortimer. 'what a bore that fellow is!' whispered dick to mr. cox, the proprietor of the company, who had come down from london to arrange some business with his manager. 'i'm sure, mr. lennox, we were only too glad to be able to give you something to show you how much we appreciate your kindness,' said a tall girl, speaking in the name of the chorus. 'we must have some fizz after the show to-night on the stage. what do you think. cox?' said dick. 'and then i shall be able to express my thanks to everyone.' 'and we must have a dance,' cried leslie. 'my foot is all right now.' chairs had to be fetched in from the bedroom and even from the kitchen to seat the fifteen people who had been invited. the ladies did not like sitting together and the supply of gentlemen was not sufficient--drawbacks that were forgotten when the first few spoonfuls of soup had been eaten and the sherry tasted. the women examined mr. cox with looks of deep inquiry, but his face told them nothing; it was grave and commercial, and he spoke little to anyone except kate and her husband. the baronet's son sat in the middle of the table with the three chorus-girls, whom he continued to pester with calculations as to how much he would be worth, but for his ancestor's ambition to win the derby with scotch coast. leslie and bret were on the other side of the wedding cake, and they leant towards each other with a thousand little amorous movements. beaumont spoke of the evening's performance, putting questions to montgomery with a view to attracting mr. cox's attention. 'do you think, mr. montgomery, that to take an encore for my song will interfere with the piece?' 'i never heard of a lady putting the piece before herself,' said montgomery, with a loud laugh, for he, too, was anxious to attract mr. cox's attention, and availing himself of miss beaumont's question as a 'lead up,' he said, 'i hope that when my opera is produced i shall find artists who will look as carefully after my interests.' 'but when will you have your opera ready?' kate asked. 'my opera?' he said, as soon as she averted the brown eyes that burnt into his soul. 'it's all finished. it's ready to put on the stage when dick likes.' the ruse proved successful, for mr. cox, bending forward, said in an interested voice: 'may i ask what is the subject of your opera, mr. montgomery?' this was charming, and the musician at once proceeded to enter into a complicated explanation, in which frequent allusion was made to a king, a band of conspirators, a neighbouring prince, a beautiful daughter unfortunately in love with a shepherd, and a treacherous minister. beaumont listened wearily, and, seeing that no mention she could make of her singing would avail her, she commenced to fidget abstractedly with one of her big diamond earrings. in the meanwhile montgomery's difficulties were increasing. to follow successfully the somewhat intricate story of king, conspirators, and amorous shepherd a sustained effort of attention was necessary, and this dick, kate, and mr. cox found it difficult to grant; for in the middle of a somewhat involved bit--in which it was not quite clear whether the king or the minister had entered disguised--the landlady would beg to be excused--if they would just make a little way, so that she might remove the soup. this lady, in her sunday cap, assisted by the maid-of-all-work, from whose canvas-grained hands soap and water had not been able to extract the dirt, strove to lift large dishes of food over the heads of the company. there was a sirloin of beef that had to be placed before mortimer. then came two pairs of chickens, the carving of which dick had taken upon himself. a piece of bacon with cabbage, and a pigeon-pie, adorned the sides of the table. the cutlets were handed round; and for some time conversation gave way to the more necessary occupation of eating. even bret and leslie left off billing and cooing; the grandson of the baronet, forgetful of his family's misfortunes on the turf, dug vigorously into the pigeon-pie and liberally distributed it. the clattering of knives and forks swelled into a sustained sound, which was only broken by observations such as 'thanks, mr. lennox, anything that's handy--a leg, if you please.' 'may i ask you, montgomery, for a slice of bacon? no cabbage, thank you.' 'mr. mortimer, a little more and some gravy; that'll do nicely.' it was not until the first helping had been put away, and eyes began to wander in search of what would be best to go on with, that conversation was resumed. to mortimer, who had had a good deal of trouble with the beef, dick said, 'i hope you are satisfied with your part, mortimer, and that we shall have some good roars. the piece ought to go with a scream.' 'i think i shall knock 'em this time, old boy,' said the comic man, drawling his words slowly through his nose. 'it pretty well killed me when i read it over to myself, so i don't know what it will be when i spit it out at them.' this was deemed unnecessarily coarse, and for a moment it was feared that mortimer was as drunk as mr. hayes, whose eyes were now beginning to blink pathetically. he awoke up, however, with a start and a smile when the first champagne cork went off, and holding out his glass, said, 'shall be very glad to drink your health, a wedding only comes once in a lifetime.' mortimer tried to turn the embarrassing pause that followed this remark to his profit. the beef having kept him silent during the early part of the dinner, he resolved now to prove what a humorist he was, and by raising his voice he strove to attract the attention of the company to himself. this, however, was not easily done. dubois had begun to pinch the backside of the canvas-handed maid, who was lifting a plate of custards over his head; but these frivolities did not prevent him from discussing carlyle's place in english literature with the baronet's son on his left, and arguing from time to time with montgomery on his right against certain effects employed by wagner in his orchestration. kate laid down her spoon and stared vaguely into space and again laid her hand on dick's. the past seemed now to be completely blotted out. what more could she desire? she would go on acting, and dick would continue to love her. by some special interposition of providence all the hazards of existence over which she might have fallen had been swept aside. what broader road could a woman hope to walk in than the one that lay before her in all its clear and bland serenity? god had been good to her! and he was going to be good to her. what a tie the child would be, what an influence, what a source of future happiness! they would work for their child; a boy or girl, which? would it not give them courage to work? would it not give them strength to live? it would be something to hope for. oh, how good god had been to her; and how wicked she had been to him! her heart filled with a fervour of faith she had never felt before; and facing the gracious future which a child and husband promised her, she offered up thanksgivings for her happiness, which she accepted as eternal, so inherent did it seem in herself. 'oh, just look at him!' said kate, waking up with a start from her reveries. 'how can he make such a beast of himself?' 'don't take any notice of him, dear; that's the best way.' but mortimer, who had been vainly struggling for the last five minutes to draw beaumont from the memory of a lord, dubois from his wagnerian argument, and bret and leslie from their flirtation, now seized on poor hayes's drunkenness as a net wherein he could capture everybody. raising his voice so as to ensure silence, he said, addressing himself to mr. cox at the other end of the table, 'how very affecting he is now, how severely natural; the innocence of a young girl in her teens is not, to my mind, nearly so touching as that of a boozer in his cups. have you ever heard how he fancied the waiter was calling him in the morning when the policeman was hauling him off to the station?' mr. cox had not heard; and the whole story of how they bumped in the hotel door at derby had to be gone through. having thus got the company by the ear, mortimer showed for a long time no signs of letting them go. he went straight through his whole repertoire. he told of a man who wanted to post a letter, but not being able to find the letterbox, he applied to a policeman. the bobby showed him something red in the distance, and explained that that was the post. 'keep the red in your eye, my boy,' said the drunkard; and this he did until he found himself in a public-house trying to force his letter down a soldier's collar. he had mistaken the red coat for the pillar. this was followed by a story of a man who apologized to the trees in st. james's park, and explained to them that he had come from a little bachelor's party, until he at last sat down saying, 'this is no good; i mus-mush wait till the bloody pro-prochession has passed.' a heavy digestive indifference to everything was written on each countenance; and in the slanting rays of the setting sun the curling smoke vapours assumed the bluest tints. odours of spirits trailed along the tablecloth. disconnected fragments of conversation, heard against the uninterrupted murmur of mortimer's story-telling, struck the ear. the baronet's son was now explaining to his three ladies that no woman could expect to get on in life unless she were very immoral or very rich; dubois argued across the table with leslie and bret concerning the production of the voice: beaumont cast luminous and provoking glances at mr. cox, and tried to engage him in conversation regarding the inartistic methods of most stage-managers in arranging the processions. 'dick, dear, the cake hasn't yet been cut.' 'no more it hasn't,' dick answered, and when the white-sugared emblem of love and fidelity was distributed, the wedding party awoke to a burst of enthusiasm. everyone suggested something, and much whisky and water was spilt on the tablecloth. but matters, although they were advanced a stage, did not seem to be much expedited. the bride's health had to be drunk, and dick had to return thanks. he did not say very much, but his remarks concerning _olivette_ suggested a good deal of comment. mortimer took a different view of the question, and dubois explained at length how the piece had been done in france. leslie insisted that bret should say something; and once on his legs, to the surprise of everybody, the silent tenor became surprisingly garrulous. it was kate, however, who first guessed the reason of montgomery's despondency, and in pity for him, she made a sign to the ladies, and the room was left to the flat chests and tweed coats. montgomery prayed that this after-dinner interval would not prove a long one, for he dreaded the smutty stories. the baronet's son sprang off with a clear lead, watched by mortimer and dubois. in the way of anecdotes these two would have been rivals had it not been for the latter's fancy for more serious discussions. still, in the invention and collection of the most atrocious, they both employed the energy and patience of the entomologist. a chance word, out of which a racy story might be extracted, was pursued like a rare moth or a butterfly. dubois's were more subtle, but mortimer's, being more to the point, were more generally effective. they waited eagerly for the baronet's son to conclude, and he had hardly pronounced the last phrase when mortimer, coming with a rush, took the lead with 'that reminds me of--' dubois looked discomfited, and settled himself down to waiting for another chance. this, however, did not come just at once; mortimer told six stories, each nastier than the last. everybody was in roars except montgomery and dubois; whilst one thought of his opera, the other searched his memory for something that would out-mortimer mortimer. this was difficult, but when his turn came he surprised the company. mr. cox leaned over the table with a glass of whisky and water in his hand declaring that he had never spent so pleasant a day in his life: and thus encouraged dubois was just beginning to launch out into the intricacies of a fresh tale when montgomery, beside himself with despair, said to dick: 'it was arranged that i should play the music of my new opera over to mr. cox. if you don't put a stop to this it will go on for ever.' 'yes, my boy, it's getting a bit long, isn't it: just let dubois finish and we'll go upstairs.' the story proved a weary one; but like a long railway journey it at last drew to an end, and they went upstairs. there they found the ladies yawning and looking at the presents. kate ran to dick to ask him to arrange about the music, but beaumont had been a little before her and had taken mr. cox out on the balcony. bret was not in the room; leslie did not know the music, and in the face of so many difficulties, dick's attention soon began to wander, and kate was left to console the disappointed musician. once or twice she attempted to renew the subject, but was told that they were all going down to the theatre in half an hour, and that it had better be put off to another time. montgomery made no answer, but he could not cast off the bitter and malignant thought that haunted him, 'i'm as unfortunate in art as in love.' xx the ebb of the company's prosperity dated from kate's marriage. somehow things did not seem to go well after. in the first place the production of _olivette_ was not a success. mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, and went 'fluffing all over the shop.' kate, excited with champagne and compliments, sang the wrong music on one occasion; and to complete their misfortunes, the liverpool public did not in the least tumble to miss beaumont's rendering of the part of the heroine. the gallery thought she was too fat, the papers said she was not sprightly enough, and on wednesday night the old _cloches_ had to be put up. by this failure the management sustained a heavy loss. they had laid out a lot of money on dresses, property and scenery, all of which were now useless to them; and the other two operas were beginning to droop and lose their drawing power, having been on the road for the last three years. the country, too, was suffering from a great commercial crisis, and no one cared to go to the theatre. in many of the towns they visited strikes were on, and the people were convulsed with discussions, projects for resistance, and hopes of bettering their condition. great social problems, the tyranny of capital, and such-like, occupied the minds of men, and there was naturally little taste for the laughing nonchalance of _la fille de madame angot_ or the fooling of the baillie in the _cloches_. as forty thousand men had struck work, our band of travelling actors rolled out of leeds, and they left it bearing with them only a reminiscence of empty benches, and street-corners crowded with idling, sullen-faced men. at newcastle they were not more fortunate, at wigan they fared even worse, and at hull it was equally bad. gaiety seemed to have fled out of the north; the public-house and the platform drew away the pit and the gallery; the frequenters of the boxes and dress-circle remained at home, to talk around their firesides of their jeopardized fortunes. when the workers grow weary of work a hard time sets in for the sellers of amusement, and the fate of morton and cox's operatic company proved no exception to the rule. money was made nowhere, and every friday night a cheque for five-and-twenty pounds had to be sent down from london to make up the deficit in the salary list. nevertheless for two months matters went on very smoothly. the remembrance of large profits made in preceding years was still fresh in the minds of messrs. morton and cox, and they had not yet begun to grumble; but an unintermittent drain of twenty-five to forty pounds a week keeps a man from his sleep at night, and after a big failure in the city, in which mr. cox was muleted to the extent of a couple of thousand pounds, he wrote to dick suggesting that he had better look out for another opera. this was welcome news to montgomery; but no sooner had dick raised him to the seventh heaven of bliss, than he had to knock him down to earth again: a letter arrived from mr. cox, saying that no opera was to be put up; that it would be useless to try anything new in such bad times; they had better try to reduce expenses instead. 'reduce expenses? how are we to reduce expenses except by cutting down the salaries?' 'i'm sure i don't know,' said montgomery; 'and the expense of mounting my piece would be very slight.' without attempting to discuss so vain a question, dick said, 'i must speak to hayes.' but hayes only pulled his silky whiskers, blinked his chinese eyes, drank three glasses of whisky, and changed the position of his black bag several times, and the matter was scarcely alluded to again until the following fortnight, when dick found himself forced to write to mr. cox demanding a cheque for thirty-five pounds, to meet saturday's treasury and the current expenses of the following week. the cheque arrived, but the letter that came with it read very ominously indeed. it read as follows: 'dear mr. lennox,--i enclose you the required amount; but of course you will understand that this cannot go on. i intend running down to see you on tuesday evening. will you have the company assembled to meet me at the theatre, as i have an important explanation to make to them.' dick had too much experience in theatrical speculations not to know that this must mean either a reduction of salaries or a break-up of the tour; but as two whole days still stood between him and the evil hour, it did not occur to him to give the matter another thought, and it was not until they returned home after the theatre, to prepare for the sunday journey, that he spoke to kate of the letter he had received. their portmanteaus were spread out before them, and kate was counting her petticoats when dick said: 'i'll tell you what, kate, i shouldn't be surprised if the company broke up shortly, and we all found ourselves obliged to look out for new berths.' 'what do you mean?' she said, with a startled look on her face. 'well, only that i think that morton and cox are beginning to get tired of losing money. as you know, we've been doing very bad business lately, and i think they'll give us all the sack.' 'give us all the sack!' kate repeated. 'yes,' said dick, pursuing his own reflections 'i'm afraid it's so. it's a deuced bore, for we were very pleasant together. but i don't think i showed you the letter i got this morning. what's the matter, dear?' pale as the petticoat at her feet, kate stood with raised eyebrows and hands that twitched at the folds of her dress. 'oh, dick! what shall we do? we shall starve; we shan't have any place to go to!' 'starve!' said dick in astonishment. 'not if i know it. we shall easily find something else to do. besides, i don't care if he does break up the tour. i believe there's a good bit of coin to be made out of the pier theatre at blackpool. i've been thinking of it for some time--with a good entertainment, you know; and then there's the drama harding did for me--a version of wilkie collins's story--_the yellow mask_--devilish good it is, too. i was reading it the other day. we might take a company out with it. let me see, whom could we get to play in it?' and, sitting over his portmanteau, the actor proceeded to cast the piece, commenting as he went along on the qualifications of the artists, and giving verbal sketches of the characters in the play. 'beaumont would play virginie first rate, you know--a strong, determined, wicked woman, who stops at nothing. i'd like to play the father; mortimer would be very funny as the uncle. we'll have to write in something for you. you couldn't take the sympathetic little girl yet; you haven't had enough experience.' the expenses of scenery, properties, and posting were gone into, and while listening to the different estimates kate looked at her husband vaguely, and plunged in a sort of painful wonderment, asking herself how standing on the brink of ruin he could calmly make plans for the future. but to the actor, whose life had never run for a year without getting entangled in some difficult knot or other, the present hitch did not give the slightest uneasiness. a strange town to face and half a crown in his pocket might cause him some temporary embarrassment, but a hundred pounds at the bank, and the notoriety of having been for two years the manager of a travelling company, was to dick an exceptionally brilliant start in life, and it did not occur to him to doubt that he would hop into another shop as good as the one he had left. but as the woman had been engaged in none of these anxious battles for existence, the news of a threatened break-up of her world fell with a cruel shock upon her, and she experienced in an aggravated form the same dull nervous terror from which she had suffered in the early days when she had first joined the company, but then the full tide of love and prosperity bore their bark along, and quieted her fears. but now in the first puff of the first squall she saw herself like one wrecked and floating on a spar in a wide and unknown sea of trouble. sitting on the bed where she would never sleep again, she watched dick counting on his fingers and looking dreamily into the spaces of some impossible future, and asked herself what was to become of them. for the twentieth time since she had donned them the robes of the bohemian fell from her, and she became again in instincts and tastes a middle-class woman longing for a home, a fixed and tangible fireside where she might sit in the evening by her husband's side, mending his shirts, after the work of the day. a bitter detestation of her wandering life rose to her head, and she longed to beg of her husband to give up theatricals, and try to find some other employment; and the next day it appeared to her more than usually sinful to drive to the station as the church bells were chiming, spending the hours, that should have been passed in praying, in playing 'nap,' smoking cigarettes, and talking of wigs, make-ups, choruses, and such-like. but apparently there was no help for it, and on monday night, in her excitement, increased by the arrival of mr. cox, she could not help getting out of bed to beseech god to be merciful to them; her husband's heavy breathing often interrupted her, but it told her that he was her husband, and that was her only consolation. it astonished her that he could sleep as he did, having in front of him the terrible to-morrow, when perhaps mr. cox would cast them adrift; and she trembled in every fibre when she stood on the stairs leading to the manager's room. there was a great crowd: the chorus-girls wedged themselves into a solid mass, and murmured good-mornings to each other; mortimer told a long story from the top step; dubois tried to talk of balzac to montgomery, who listened, puzzled and interested, fancying it was a question of a libretto; whilst bret, till now silent as the dead, suddenly woke up to the conclusion that it would probably all end in a reduction of salaries. at last dick appeared and called them into the presence of mr. cox. whisky and water was on the table, and with the silky whiskers plunged in the black bag, mr. hayes fumbled aimlessly with many papers. the 'boss' looked very grave and twitched at a heavy moustache; and when they were all grouped about him, in his deepest and most earnest tones, he explained his misfortunes. for the last four months he had been forced to send down a weekly cheque of not less than five-and-twenty pounds; sometimes, indeed, the amount had run up to forty pounds. this, of course, could not go on for ever, he had not the bank of england behind him. but talking of banks, although there was no reason why he should inflict on them an account of his bad luck, he could not refrain from saying that had it not been for a certain bank he should be forced to ask them to accept half salaries. the words brought a flush of indignation to beaumont's cheeks. she made a slight movement, as if she were going to repudiate the suggestion violently, but the silence of those around calmed her, and she contented herself with murmuring to dolly: 'this is an old dodge.' 'i will leave you now,' said mr. cox, 'to consult among yourselves as to whether you will accept my proposal, or if you would prefer me to break up the tour at the end of the week, and pay you your fares back to london.' as mr. cox left the room there was a murmur of inquiry from the chorus ladies, and one or two voices were heard above the rest saying that they did not know how they could manage on less than five-and-twenty shillings a week. these objections were soon silenced by dick, who in a persuasive little speech explained that the reduction of salaries applied to the principals only. 'then why derange these ladies and gentlemen by asking them to attend at this meeting?' said mortimer. to this question dick made answer by telling the ladies and gentlemen of the chorus they might withdraw, and the discussion was resumed by those whom it concerned. beaumont objected to everything. bret spoke of going back to liverpool. dubois explained his opinions on the management of theatres in general, until dick summoned him back to the point. were they or were they not going to accept half salaries? at length the matter was decided by mortimer getting upon a chair and shouting through his nose as through a pipe: 'i don't know if you're all fond of hot weather, but if you are you'll find it to your taste in london; all the theatres are closed, and the cats are baking on the tiles.' this brought the argument to a pause, during which beaumont remembered that grouse were shot in august, and settling her diamonds in her ears, she agreed that the tour was to be continued. a few more remarks were made, and then the party adjourned to a neighbouring 'pub.' to talk of _opéra bouffes_ and bad business. the next places they visited were huddersfield and bradford, but the houses they played to were so poor that mr. cox summoned a general meeting on the sunday morning, and told them frankly that he could not go on losing money any longer; he would, however, lend them the dresses, and they might start a commonwealth if they liked. after much discussion it was decided to accept his offer, and the afternoon was spent in striving to decide how the business was to be carried on. a committee was at last formed consisting of dick, mortimer, dubois, montgomery, bret, and mr. hayes, and they settled, as they went on to halifax by an evening train, that the chorus was, hit or miss, to be paid in full, and the takings then divided among the principals proportionately to the salary previously received. in the face of the bad times it was a risky experiment, and williams, the agent in advance, was anxiously looked out for at the station. what did he think? was there a chance of their doing a bit of business in the town? were there bills up in all the public-houses? williams did not at first understand this unusual display of eagerness, but when the commonwealth was explained to him, his face assumed as grey an expression as the pimples would allow it. he shoved his dust-eaten pot-hat on one side, scratched his thin hair, and after some pressing, admitted that he didn't think that they would do much good in the place; as far as he could see, everybody's ideas were on striking and politics; the general election especially was playing the devil with managers; at least that was what the company that had just left said. this was chilling news, and, alas! each subsequent evening proved only the correctness of mr. williams's anticipations. seven-pound houses were the rule. on friday and saturday they had two very fair pits, but this could not compensate for previous losses, and in the end, when all expenses were paid, only five-and-thirty shillings remained to be divided among the principals. their next try was at oldham, but matters grew worse instead of better, and on saturday night five-and-twenty shillings was sorrowfully portioned out in equal shares. it did not amount to much more than half a crown apiece. rochdale, however, was not far distant, and, still hoping that times would mend, morton and cox's band of travelling actors sped on their way, dreaming of how they could infuse new life into their mumming, and whip up the jaded pleasure-tastes of the miners. but for the moment comic songs proved weak implements in the search for ore, and the committee sitting in the green-room, used likewise as a dressing-room by the two ladies, counted out a miserable four-and-ninepence as the result of a week's hard labour. beaumont fumed before the small glass, arranging her earrings as if she anticipated losing them; kate trembled and clung to her husband's arm, montgomery cast sentimental glances of admiration at her, and mortimer tried to think of something funny, while dubois came to the point by asking: 'well, what are you going to do with that four-and-ninepence? it isn't worth dividing. i suppose we'd better drink it.' at the mention of drinks mr. hayes blinked and shifted the black bag from the chair to the ground. 'yes, that's easily arranged,' said dick, 'but what about the tour? i for one am not going on at four-and-ninepence a week.' 'sp-pend--it--in drinks,' stuttered mr. hayes, awakening to a partial sense of the situation. everybody laughed, but in the pause that ensued, each returned to the idea that there was no use going on at four-and-ninepence a week. 'for we can't live on drink, although beaumont can upon love,' said mortimer, determined to say something. but the joke amused no one, and for some time only short and irrelevant sentences broke the long silences. at last dick said: 'well, then, i suppose we'd better break up the tour.' to this proposal no one made much objection. murmurs came from different sides that it was a great pity they should have to part company in this way after having been so long together. montgomery and dubois contributed largely to this part of the conversation, and through an atmosphere of whisky and soap-suds arose a soft penetrating poetry concerning the delights of friendship. it was very charming to think and speak in this way, but all hoped, with perhaps the exception of montgomery, that no one would insist too strongly on this point, for in the minds of all new thoughts and schemes had already begun to germinate. mortimer remembered a letter he had received from a london manager; dubois saw himself hobnobbing again with the old 'pals' in the strand; bret silently dreamed of miss leslie's dyed hair and blue eyes, and of his chances of getting into the same company. 'then, if it is decided to break up the tour, we must make a subscription to send the chorus back to london,' said dick after a long silence. nobody till now had thought of these unfortunate people and their twenty-five shillings a week, but always ready to help a lame dog over a stile, dick planked down two 'quid' and called on the others to do what they could in the same way. mr. hayes strewed the table instantly with the money he had in his pocket. mortimer spoke about his wife and mentioned details of an intimate nature to show how hard up he was; he nevertheless stumped up a 'thin 'un.' beaumont, rampant at the idea of 'parting,' contributed the same; indignant looks were levelled at her, and dick continued to exhort his friends to be generous. 'the poor girls,' he declared, 'must be got home; it would never do to leave them starving in lancashire.' kate gave a sovereign of her savings, and in this way something over ten pounds was made up; with that dick said he thought he could manage. the trouble he took to manage everything was touching. on sunday, when kate was at church, he was down at the railway station trying to find out what were the best arrangements he could make. and on monday morning when they were all assembled on the platform to bid good-bye to their fellow-workers, it was curious to see this huge man, who at a first impression would be taken for a mere mass of sensuality, rushing about putting buns and sandwiches in paper bags for his poor chorus-girls, encouraging them with kind words, and when the train began to move, waving them large and unctuous farewells with his big hat. since the first shock of the threatened break-up of the tour kate had gradually grown accustomed to the idea and now wept in silence. without precisely suffering from any pangs of fear for the future, an immense sadness seemed to ache within her very bones. all things were passing away. the flock of girls in whose midst she had lived was gone; a later train would take mortimer to london; bret was bidding them good-bye; beaumont was consulting a bradshaw. how sad it seemed! the theatre and artists were vanishing into darkness like a dream. not a day, nor an hour, could she see in front of her. 'what shall we do now?' she whispered to dick, as she trotted along by his side. 'well, i haven't quite made up my mind. i was thinking last night that it wouldn't be a bad idea to make up a little entertainment--four or five of us--and see what we could do in the manufacturing towns. lancashire is, you know, honeycombed with them. our travelling expenses would amount to a mere nothing. we must have someone to operate on the piano. i wonder if montgomery would care about coming with us.' kate thought that he would, and as she happened at that moment to catch sight of the long tails of the newmarket coat at the other side of the station, she begged dick to call to the erratic musician. no sooner was the proposition put forward than it was accepted, and in five minutes they were at luncheon in a 'pub,' arranging the details of the entertainment. 'we shall want an agent-in-advance, a bill-poster, or something of that kind,' said montgomery. 'i've thought of that,' replied dick; 'williams is our man, he'll see to all that; and i don't know if you know, but he can sing a good song on his own account.' 'can he? well, then, we can't have anyone better--and what shall we take out?' 'well, we must have a little operetta, and i don't think we can do better than offenbach's _breaking the spell_.' 'right you are,' said montgomery, pulling out his pocket-book. '_breaking the spell_, so far so good; now we must have a song or a character sketch to follow, and i don't think it would be a bad idea if we rehearsed a comedietta. what do you say to _the happy pair_?' 'right you are, pencil it down, can't do better, it always goes well; and then i can sing between "the men of harlech."' montgomery looked a little awry at the idea of having to listen to 'the men of harlech,' sung by dick, but in the discussion that followed as to what kate was to do, 'the men of harlech' was forgotten. as dick anticipated, williams declared himself delighted to accompany them in the double capacity of bill-poster and occasional singer; and after a fortnight's rehearsal at rochdale, the constellation company started on its wanderings. many drinks had been consumed in seeking for the name; many strange combinations of sound and sense had been rejected, and it was not until dick began to draw lines on a piece of paper, affixing names to the end of each, that the word suggested itself. what joy! what rapture! a rush was made to the printers, and in a few hours the following bill was produced: the constellation company. miss kate d'arcy. * | mr. r. lennox.*-------* mr. p. montgomery. | * mr. b. williams. xxi as the constellation company drove to the station, kate noticed that rochdale and hanley were not unlike, and the likeness between the two towns set her thinking how strange it was. here was the same red town, narrow streets, built of a brick that, under a dull sky, glared to a rich geranium hue. the purplish tints of hanley alone were wanting, but the heavy smoke-clouds, and the tall stems of the chimneys, were as numerous in rochdale as in her native place. and, coincidence still more marvellous, nature had apparently aided and abetted what man's hand had contrived, for in either town a line of hills swept around the sky. the only difference was, that the characteristics of rochdale were not so marked as those of hanley. the hills were not so high, nor were they in such close array as those of the staffordshire town, and the lancashire valley was not so deep and trench-like as the one that engirdles the potteries. it may be that as much smoke hung over it, but the smoke did not seem so black and poisonous, at least not to kate's eyes; and, as the train sped along a high embankment a group of factory chimneys emerged from a fold in the hills, and comparing the two landscapes it seemed to her there were more fields in the lancashire valley, water-courses, trees and hedges--stunted hedges, it is true--but she did not remember any hedges about hanley. at one moment she was minded to turn to dick and to call his attention to the likeness in the country they were travelling through to the country she had come from; had she been alone with him she might have asked him, but he was now busy talking of the comic songs and sketches in which they were to act. 'the mulligan guards' was one of the items on their programme, and she and dick were going to sing it together. this would be the first time they had ever sung together. dick had very little voice, but he was a good actor, and she thought they would be able to make a success of it. he called her attention and the attention of the other members of the constellation company to the scattered towns and villages they were passing through. 'the very country for our kind of entertainment,' he said; and all the mummers rose from their seats and gazed at the wolds and factories. under the green waste of a wold a chimney had been run up; sheds and labourers' cottages had followed, and in five years, if the factory prospered, this beginning would swell into a village, in twenty it would possess twenty thousand inhabitants; for just as in old times the towns followed the castles, so do they now follow in the wake of the factories. the mummers gaped and wondered at the arsenic green sides of the wolds, striped with rough stone walls or blackened with an occasional coalpit, the ridges fringed with trees blown thin by sea-breezes. in the distance, within the folds of the hills, tall chimneys clustered and great clouds of smoke hung listless in the still autumn air. cold rays of sunlight strayed for a moment on the dead green of the fields, pale as invalids enjoying the air for the last time before a winter seclusion. and later on, when the light mists of evening descended and bore away the landscape, the phantom shapes of the wolds took on a strange appearance, producing in kate a sensation of mobility, which to escape from, for it frightened her, she turned to dick and asked how far they were from bacup. he told her they would be there in about half an hour, and half an hour afterwards williams, who had gone on in front, met them at the station, and began at once the tale of his industry, saying that he had been in every public-house, and had stood at the corners of all the principal streets distributing bills. 'i think we shall do pretty well,' he said; 'my only bit of bad news is that i haven't been able to find any lodgings for you; there's but one hotel, and all the rooms are taken.' dick, who on such occasions always took time by the forelock, insisted on starting at once on their search--and up and down the murky streets of the manufacturing town they walked until it was time for them to repair to the mechanics' hall, where they were going to play, and get ready for the entertainment. 'the mulligan guards' proved a great success, as did also the operetta, _breaking the spell_. kate's pretty face and figure won the hearts of the factory hands, and she was applauded whenever she appeared on the stage; and so frequent were the encores that it was half-past ten before they had finished their programme, and close on eleven o'clock before they got out of the hall into the street. then the search for lodgings had to begin again. montgomery and williams, being single men, obtained beds, but kate and dick were not so easily satisfied, and they found themselves standing under a porch with the lights going out on all sides, and the prospect of spending a wet night in the street before them. at last dick bethought himself of the police station, but on applying to a policeman he was directed to the backdoor of a public-house. 'he was pretty sure,' whispered the boy in blue, 'to get put up there.' the door was opened with precaution, and they were allowed in. the place was full of people; it took them a long time to get served, and they were at length told that in the way of a room nothing could be done for them. every bed in the house was occupied. kate raised her eyes to dick, but her look of misery was anticipated by a rough-faced carter who stood at the counter. 'you bear up, little woman,' he said abruptly; 'don't yo' look so froightent. yo' shall both come up to my place, if yo' will; it isna up to much, but oi'll do th' best i can for yo'.' there was no mistaking the kindness with which the offer was made, though the idea of going to sleep at this rough man's house for the moment staggered even the mummer. but as it was now clear that they would have either to accept their new friend's hospitality, or spend the night on the doorstep, it did not take them long to decide on the former alternative. their only reason for hesitating was their inability to understand what were his motives for asking them to come to his place. then, as if divining the reason of their uncertainty, he said: 'i know yo' well, tho' yo' don't know me. i was up at the 'all to-night, and yo' did make me so laugh that i wouldna' see yo' in the streets for nothing. neaw, let it be yea or nay, master.' for answer, dick put out his hand; and when he had thanked the hospitably inclined carter, put some questions to him about the entertainment. soon the two began to 'pal,' and after another drink they all went off together. after wading down a few sloppy streets, he stopped before a low doorway, and ushered them into what looked like an immense kitchen. they saw rafters overhead and an open staircase ascending to the upper rooms, as a ladder might through a series of lofts; and when a candle had been obtained, the first thing their host did was to pull his wife out of bed, and insist on his guests getting into it, a request which the woman joined in as heartily as her husband as soon as the reason for this unceremonious awakening had been explained to her. and so wearied out were kate and dick, and so tempting did any place of rest look to them, that they could offer no opposition to the kind intentions of their host and hostess, and they slept heavily until roused next morning by a loud trampling of feet passing through their room. it was the family coming down from the lofts above, and as they descended the staircase they wished their guests a broad lancashire good-morning. and when kate and dick had recovered from their astonishment, they dressed and went out to buy some provisions, which they hoped to be allowed to cook in the rough kitchen; but when they returned with their purchases they found the carter's daughter standing before an elaborately prepared breakfast, consisting of a huge beefsteak and a high pile of cakes. 'lor, marm, why did yo' buy those things?' said the girl, disappointed. 'well,' said kate, 'we couldn't think of trespassing on you in that fashion. you must, you will, i hope, let us prepare our own breakfast.' 'feyther will never 'ear of it, i know,' said the girl; and immediately after, the carter, with his brawny arms, pushed kate and dick down into two seats at the big table. both cake and meat were delicious, and dick's appetite showed such signs of outdoing the carter's that kate, in the hope of diverting attention, commenced an interesting conversation with the buxom maiden by her side, and so successful were her efforts that a friendship was soon established between the women; and, when the morning's work was done, mary, of her own accord, sought out kate, and as she knitted the thick woollen stocking, was easily led into telling the inevitable love story. we change the surroundings, but a heart bleeds under all social variations; and in this grim manufacturing town when the bridal dress was taken out of its lavender and darkness it seemed to possess a gleam of poetic whiteness that it could not have had even if set off by the pleasant verdure of a devonshire lane. 'but you'll keep it for another; another will be sure to come by very soon,' said kate, trying to console. 'nay, nay, i'll have no other,' said the girl. 'i'll just keep the dress by; but i'll have no other.' then the talk hesitated and fell at last into a long narrative concerning tender hopes and illusions to which kate listened, as all women do, to the story of heart-aches and deceptions; and in after years, when all other remembrances of the black country were swept away, the remembrance of this white dress remained. from bacup they went to whitworth, a town in such immediate neighbourhood that it might be called a suburb of the former place, and there they played in the co-operative hall to an audience consisting of a factory man, two children, and a postman who came in on the free list. this was not encouraging; but they, nevertheless, resolved to try the place again; and next day at dinner-time, as the 'hands' were leaving the factories, they distributed some hundreds of bills. dick said he should never forget it; to watch pimply face cutting about, shoving his bills into the women's aprons, was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his life. but their efforts were all in vain. it rained, and not a soul came to see them; and, in addition to their other troubles, they found whitworth was an awkward place to stop at. dick and his wife had a room in a pub, but montgomery and williams had to walk over each evening to sleep at bacup. one day their landlady spoke of clayton-le-moors, where, she said, a fair was being held, and she advised the constellation company to try their entertainment there. this was considered as a sensible suggestion, and the four mummers started for the fair on the top of an omnibus with their wigs and dresses and make-ups stuck under their legs. the weather at least was in their favour. the sunlight rolled over the great white sides of the booths, aunt sallies were being shied at, the pubs were all open, and a huge, rollicking population, fetid with the fermenting sweat of the factories, was disporting on whisky and fresh air. never were the spirits of dejected strolling players buoyed up with a fairer prospect of a harvest. the next thing to do was to distribute the handbills, and find a place where they could set up their show, and, to conduct their search more thoroughly, they separated, after having decided on a tryst. in this way the town was thoroughly ransacked; but it was not until kate, who had gone off on her own accord, learnt from the landlord of a public-house, where she had entered to get a drink, that he had a large concert-room overhead, that there seemed to be the slightest chance of the constellation company being able to turn the joviality of the factory hands at the fair to any account. matters now seemed to be looking up, and a very neat little arrangement was entered into with the proprietor of the pub. four entertainments of ten minutes each were to be given every hour, for each of which the sum of threepence a head was to be charged, twopence to go to the artists, a penny to the landlord, who would, of course, make his 'bit' also out of the drink supplied. and what a success they had that day! not only did the factory hands come in, but they paid their threepence over and over again. they seemed never to grow tired of hearing dick and kate sing 'the mulligan guards,' and when she called out 'corps' and he touched his cap, and they broke into a dance, the delight of the workpeople knew no bounds, and they often stopped the entertainment to hand up their mugs of beer to the mummers with a 'ave a soop, mon.' from twelve o'clock in the day until eleven at night the affair was kept going; kate, dick, and williams dancing and singing in turn, and montgomery all the while spanking away at the dominoes. it was heavy work, but the coin they took was considerable, and it came in handy, for in the next three towns they did very badly. but at padiham a curious accident turned out in the end very luckily for them. there were but five people in the house, one of whom was drunk. this fellow very humorously in the middle of the entertainment declared that he was going to sing a song; he even wanted to appropriate williams's wig, and when dick, who was always chucker-out on such occasions, attempted to eject him, he climbed out of reach and lodged himself in one of the windows. from there he proceeded to call to the people in the street, and with such excellent result that they made £ in the hall during the evening. this, and similar slices of good fortune, kept the constellation company rolling from one adventure to another. sometimes a wet day came to their assistance; sometimes a dispute between some factory hands and the masters brought them a little money. their wants were simple; a bed in a pub, and a steak for dinner was all they asked for. but at last, as winter wore on, ill-fortune commenced to follow them very closely and persistently. they had been to four different towns and had not made a ten-pound note to divide between the lot of them. in the face of such adversity it was not worth while keeping on; besides, kate's expected confinement rendered it impossible to prolong their little tour much farther. for these reasons, one november morning the constellation company, hoping they would soon meet again, under more auspicious circumstances, bade each other good-bye at the railway station. williams and montgomery went to liverpool, kate and dick to make a stay at rochdale, where they had heard that many companies were coming. the companies came, it is true, but they were, unfortunately, filled up, and lennox and his wife could not get an engagement in any of them. the little money saved out of their tour enabled them to keep body and soul together for about a month; but in the fifth week they were telling the landlady lies, and going through all the classic excuses--expecting a letter every day, by monday at the very latest, etc. in the face of kate's approaching confinement this was a state of things that made even dick begin to look anxiously round and fear for the safety of the future. kate, on the contrary, although fretted and wearied, took matters more easily than might have been expected; and the changing of their last ten shillings frightened her less than had the first announcement of the possible breaking up of morton and cox's operatic company. bohemianism had achieved in her its last victory; and having lately seen so many of the difficulties of life solving themselves in ways that were inexplicable to her, she had unconsciously come to think that there was no knot that chance, luck, or fate would not untie. besides, her big dick's resources were apparently unlimited; the present weakness of her condition tended to induce her to rely more than ever upon his protection; and in the lassitude of weak hopes, she contented herself with praying occasionally that all would yet come right. but her lover, although he told her nothing of his fears, was not so satisfied. never before had he been quite so hard pressed. they now owed a week's rent, besides other small debts; all of which they were unable to pay unless they pawned the remainder of their clothes. he said it would be far better for them to go to manchester, leaving their things, to be redeemed some day, as a security with the landlady--that is to say, if they failed to get out of the house without being perceived by her. they still had half a crown, which would pay kate's railway fare, and as regards himself, dick proposed that he should do the journey on foot; he would be able to walk the distance easily in three hours, and at eleven o'clock would join his wife at an address which he gave her, with many injunctions as to the story that was to be told to the landlady. so, as the clock was striking seven one cold winter's morning, they stole quietly downstairs, dick carrying a small portmanteau. on the table of their room a letter was left, explaining that a telegram received overnight called them to manchester, but that they hoped to be back again in a few days--a week at latest. this assurance dick considered would amply satisfy the old dame, and holding the portmanteau on his shoulder with one arm, and supporting kate with the other, he made his way to the station. the day had not yet begun to break. a heavy, sluggish night hung over the town. the streets were filled with puddles and flowing mud; and kate was frequently obliged to stop and rest against the lamp-posts. she complained of feeling very ill, and she walked with difficulty. in the straggling light of the gas, dick looked at her pale, pretty features, accentuated by suffering; he felt that he had never known before how dearly he loved her, and the pity for her that filled his heart choked him when he attempted to speak: and his eyes misted with tears and he could not bring his mind to leave her. he thought of the old dodge of travelling on the luggage, but fearing that the woman to whose house they were going would not let them in unless they had at least one portmanteau to show, he determined to adhere to the original plan of sending kate on in front; and although tortured by many fears, he hid them, assuring her that their troubles would be over once they set foot in manchester: all he had to do was to go down to the theatre royal to get an engagement. and he spoke so kindly that his kindness seemed to repay her for her sufferings. for some days past she had been subject to violent nauseas and acute pains, and as she bade him goodbye out of the railway-carriage window, she had to bend and press herself against it. and feeling he must encourage her he ran along the platform till the train began to leave him behind, and he stopped out of breath with a cloud of melancholy upon his cheeks, generally so restful in a happy animalism--yet the fat hand lifted the big-brimmed black felt hat, the frizzly curls blew in the cold wind, the train oscillated and then rolled and disappeared round a bend in the line. that was all. what had been done was over, as completely as the splash made by a stone dropped into a well, and the actor awoke to a feeling that something new had again to be begun. after descending the steps of the station, he asked to be directed, and for a long time his way lay through a street, made by red brick houses with stucco porches; but at length these commenced to divide into cottages, and after many inquiries, he was shown into what he was told was an old roman road, called 'going over tindel.' the wind blew bitterly, and against a murky sky the fretted trees on the higher ridges were like veils of grey lace. walking was not dick's forte, and leaning against a farm gate, his eyes embraced the wild black scenery, and remembrances of the hanley hills drifted through his thoughts. there were the same rolling wastes, and like the pieces on a chess-board the factory chimneys appeared at irregular intervals. but these topographical similarities attracted dick only so far as they filled his mind with old memories and associations, and his thoughts flowed from the time he had stood with his wife at the top of market street to the present hour. he neither praised nor blamed himself. he accepted things as they were without criticism, and they appeared to him like a turgid dream swollen and bleak as the confused expanse of distance before him. the stupor into which he occasionally fell endured until a quick thought would strike through the mental gloom that oppressed him, and relinquishing the farm gate he would moodily resume his walk through the heavy slosh of the wet roads. as he did so the vision of kate's pain-stricken face haunted him, and at every step his horror of the danger she ran of being taken ill before arriving in manchester grew darker, and he toiled up hill after hill, yearning to be near her, desiring only the power to relieve and to help. often the intensity of his longing would force him into a run, and then the farm labourers would turn from their work to gaze on this huge creature, who stood on a hill-top wearily wiping his forehead. and then he grew sick of the long, staring, rolling landscape, with its thousand sinuosities, its single trees, its detailed foreground of scrub, hedges, brooks, spanned by small brick bridges, the melting distance, the murky sky, the belching chimneys: he asked himself if it would never end, if it would never define itself into the streets of manchester. and as he descended each incline his eyes searched for the indication of a town, until at last he saw lines of smoke, factories, and masses of brick on his left, and he hastened. all the markings of the way were looked forward to, the outlying streets seemed endless, and so great was his hurry that before he discovered he was in oldham, he had walked into the middle of the town. his disappointment was bitter indeed, almost unbearable, and for the moment he felt that he could go no farther; his courage was exhausted, it was impossible he could face that bleak mocking landscape again. besides, he was fainting for want of food. had he possessed a few pence to treat himself to a glass of beer and a bit of bread and cheese, he thought he would be able to pull himself together and make another effort; but he was destitute. still, he was forced to try again. the thought of kate burned in his brain, and after having inquired the way, with weary and aching feet he once more trudged manfully on. a fretful suspicion now haunted him that she might not find the landlady as agreeable as would under the circumstances be desirable, and he reasoned with himself as he crossed into the open country, until anxiety became absorbed by fatigue. of every passer-by did he ask the way, and as he passed the stately villas dick felt that had there been much farther to walk he would have had to beg a lift from one of the waggoners who passed him constantly driving their heavy teams. but he was now in manchester, and wondering if he had taken longer to walk than he had expected, he looked into the shop windows in search of a clock, and when he rang at the door of the lodging-house his heart beat as rapidly as the jangling bell that pealed through the house the maid who answered the door told him that she knew of no such person and was about to shut the door in his face, but dick's good-natured smile compelled her into parley, and she admitted that, having been out on an errand, she had not seen the missus since ten o'clock. a lady might have called, but she wasn't in the house now; they were as full as they could hold. 'and are you certain that a lady might have called about ten or half-past without your having seen her?' 'i was out on a herrant at that time, so i'm sure she might, for missus wouldn't mind to tell me if i wasn't to get rooms ready for her.' 'and what would your mistress do in the case of not being able to supply a lady with rooms?' 'i should think she would send round to mrs.----well--i don't remember right the name.' 'do you know the address?' 'i know it's behind the station, one of those streets where--nay--but i don't think i could direct you right.' 'then what shall i do?' 'missus will be in shortly. if you'll take a seat in the 'all--i can't ask you into any other room, they're all occupied.' there was nothing to do but to accept, and after having asked when the landlady might be expected in, and receiving the inevitable 'really couldn't say for certain, sir, but i don't think she'll be long,' he sat down in a chair, weary and footsore; there were times when struck by a sudden thought he would make a movement as if to start from his seat; but instantly remembering his own powerlessness, he would slip back into his attitude of heavy fatigue. in the dining-room the clock ticked, and he listened to the passing of the minutes, tortured by the idea that his wife was suffering, dying, and that he was not near to help, to assist, to assuage. he forgot that they were penniless, homeless; all was lost in a boundless pity, and he listened to the footsteps growing sharper as they approached, and duller as they went. at last the sound of the latchkey was heard in the lock, and dick started to his feet. it was the landlady. 'have you seen my wife?' 'yes, sir,' exclaimed the astonished woman; 'she was here this morning; all our rooms are let, so i couldn't----' 'where has she gone to, do you know?' 'well, sir, i was going to say, she asked me if i could recommend her to some quiet place, and i sent her to mrs. hurley's.' 'and will you give me mrs. hurley's address?' 'yes, sir, certainly; but if i may make so bold, you're looking very tired--may i offer you a glass of beer? and mrs. lennox is looking very bad too, she is--' 'i'm much obliged, but i've no time; if you'd give me the address....' no sooner were the words spoken than, forgetful of his aching feet, dick rushed away, and dodging the passers-by he ran until he laid hands on the knocker and bell in question. 'is mrs. lennox staying here?' he asked of the lady who opened the door. 'there was a lady of that name who inquired for rooms here this morning.' 'and isn't she here? why didn't she take the rooms?' 'well, sir, she said she was expecting to be confined, and i didn't care to have illness in my house.' 'you don't mean to tell me that you turned her out? oh, you atrocious--! if you were a man....' overpowered with rage he stopped for words, and the woman, fearing he would strike her, strove to shut the door. but dick, with his thick leg, prevented her, and at this moment they were joined by the maid, who screamed over her mistress's shoulder: 'the lady said she would come round here in a couple o' hours' time to ask for you, and i advised her to try for rooms at no. in this street. you'll find her there.' this was enough for dick, and loosing his hold on the door he made off; streets, carriages, passers-by, whirled before his eyes. 'is mrs. lennox here?' he asked so roughly when the door was opened, that the maid regretted having said yes as soon as the word had passed her lips. 'on what floor?' 'the first, sir; but you'd better let me go up first. mrs. lennox is not very well; she's expecting her husband.' 'i'm her husband.' and on that dick rushed at the staircase. a few strides brought him on to the first landing; but a sudden disappointment seized him--the sitting-room was empty. thinking instantly of the bedroom, he flung open the door, and there he saw kate sitting on the edge of the bed rocking herself to and fro. she rose to her feet and the expression of weary pain was changed to one of joy as she fell into dick's arms. 'i thought you'd never come, and they would take me in nowhere.' 'yes, my darling, i know all about it; i know all.' he laid kisses on the rich black-blue hair and the pale tired face; he felt light hands resting on him; she felt strong arms clasped about her, and each soul seemed to be but the reflection of the other, just as the sky and the sea are when the sun is at its meridian. then, at this brief but ineffable moment of spiritual unison faded words returned to them, and kate spoke of all she had suffered. she whispered the story she had told the landlady, and how she had ordered a big dinner, and everything of the best, so that they might not be suspected of being hard up. dick approved of these arrangements; but just as he smacked his lips, a foretaste of the leg of mutton in his mouth, kate uttered a sort of low cry, and turning pale, pressed her hands to her side. a sharp pain had suddenly run through her, and as quickly died away; but a few minutes after this was succeeded by another, which lasted longer and gripped her more acutely. supporting her tenderly he helped her across the room and laid her on the bed. there she seemed to experience some relief; but very soon she was again seized by the most acute pangs. it seemed to her that she was bound about with a buckler of iron, and frightened dick rang for the landlady. the worthy woman saw at a glance what was happening, and sent him off, weary as he was, to fetch a doctor and the needful assistance. xxii the doctor and nurse arrived almost simultaneously and passed into the sick-room, bidding dick, who came running upstairs a moment after, be of good cheer. the mummer took his hat from his head and stood for a moment staring vacantly at the bedroom door, as if striving to read there the secrets of life, birth, and death. then he remembered how tired he was, and with a large movement of fatigue he sat down on the sofa. a gloomy yellow sky filled the room with an oppressive and mournful twilight, and to relieve his aching feet dick had kicked off his shoes, and with his folded arms pressed against his stomach he sat hour after hour, too hungry to sleep, listening to the low moaning that came through the chinks of the door. he appeared to be totally forgotten; voices whispered on the staircase, people passed hurriedly through the sitting-room, but none asked him if he wanted anything: no one even noticed him, and when the landlady lighted the gas she uttered a cry of astonishment, as if she had discovered an intruder in the room. 'oh, lawks! mr. lennox, we'd forgotten all about you, and you sittin' there so quiet. but your wife is getting on nice; she has just had a cup of beef-tea: in about another couple of hours it will be all over.' 'is she suffering much?' 'well, sir, yes, i wouldn't consider it an easy confinement; but i think it will be all right: you'll see your wife and child alive and well to-morrow morning.' dick could not help doubting the truth of the woman's statement unless she came to his assistance with food. although almost starving, he was afraid to call for dinner lest she should ask him for some money in advance, but at that moment a cramp seized him, and turning pale he had to lean over the table to suppress the moan which rose to his lips. 'what's the matter, sir? you look quite ill,' the woman asked. 'oh, 'twas only a sudden pain,' dick said, making an effort to recover himself. 'i've eaten nothing all day--have had no time, you know.' 'then we shall have you laid up as well as your wife, and there's the leg of mutton she ordered stewing away all these hours. i'm afraid you won't be able to eat it?' absurd as the question appeared to him, dick answered adroitly: 'it will do very well, if you'll bring it up as soon as you can; i may have to go out.' this was intended as a ruse to deceive the landlady, for so tired was he that had it been to save kate's life he did not think he would have walked downstairs. he could think of nothing but putting something into his stomach, and hard and dry as the mutton was it seemed to him the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. his pain melted away with the first mouthful, and the glass of beer ran through and warmed his entire system. down the great throat the victuals disappeared as if by magic, and the unceasing cry that seemed now to fill the entire house passed almost unheeded. for a moment he would listen pityingly, and then like an animal return to his food. he cut slice after slice from the joint, and as his hunger seemed to grow upon him he thought he could finish it, and even longed to take the bone in his hand and pick it with his teeth; but he reasoned with himself; it would not do to let the landlady suspect they had no money, and as he gazed at the last potato, which he was afraid to eat, he considered what he should say in apology for his appetite; but as he sought for a nice phrase, something pleasantly facetious, he remembered that he would have to find money and at once; he must have some no later than to-morrow. there were a thousand things that would have to be paid for--the baby's clothes, the cradle, the--he tried to think of what was generally wanted under such circumstances, but the cries in the next room, which had gradually swelled into shrieks, appalled him, and involuntarily the thought struck him that there might be a funeral to pay for as well as a birth. at that moment the bell tinkled, and the maid came running up. she carried a jug of hot water and flannels in her hand, and pushing past him she declared that she hadn't a moment. the door of the bedroom was ajar; a fire burned, candles flared on the mantelpiece, a basin stood on the floor, and at times nothing was heard but a long moan, mingling with the murmuring voices of the doctor and nurse. the room seemed like a sanctuary in which some mysterious rite was being performed. but suddenly the silence was broken by shrieks so passionate and acute that all the earlier ones were only remembered as feeble lamentations. dick raised his big face from his hands, the movement threw back the mass of frizzly hair, and in the intensity of this emotion he looked like a lion. 'was this life,' he asked himself, 'or death? and by whose order was a human creature tortured thus cruelly?' but the idea of god did not arrest his attention, and his thoughts fixing themselves on the child, he asked himself, what was this new life to him? 'oh, i never will again! oh, how i hate him--i could kill him! i'll never love him, never no more.' the cry touched the fat mummer through all the years of gross sensuality, through the indigestion of his big dinner, and, struck by the sense of her words, he shuddered, remembering that it was he who was the cause of this outrageous suffering and not the innocent child. was it possible, he asked himself, that she would never love him again? he didn't know. was it possible that he was culpable? strange notions respecting the origin, the scheme, the design of the universe, flashed in dim chiaro-oscuro through his thoughts, and for a full hour dick pondered, philosopher-like, on the remote causes and the distant finalities of men and things. an hour full of moans and cries of suffering, then a great silence came, and the whole house seemed to sigh with a sense of relief. 'the baby must be born,' he said; and immediately after a little thin cry was heard, and in his heart it was prolonged like a note of gladness, and his thoughts became paternal. he wondered if it were a girl or a boy; he fancied he'd like a girl best. if she were pretty, and had a bit of a voice, he'd be able to push her to the front, whereas with a boy it would be more difficult. relinquishing his dreams at this point, dick listened to the silence. he did not dare to knock at the door, but the murmur of satisfied voices assured him that all was right. still it was very odd that they did not come out and announce the result to him. did he count for nobody? did they fancy that it was nothing to him if his wife and child were dead or alive? the idea of being thus completely unconsidered in an affair of such deep concern irritated him, and he walked towards the sofa to brood over his wrongs. should he, or should he not, knock at the door? at last he decided that he should, and, after a timid rap, tried the handle. he was immediately confronted by the nurse. 'it's all right, sir; you shall come in in a moment when the baby is washed.' 'yes, but i want to know how my wife is.' 'she's doing very well, sir; you shall see her presently.' the door was then gently but firmly closed, and dick was kept waiting, and almost collapsing he staggered into the room when the nurse called for him to come in. kate lay amid the sheets pale and inert, her beautiful black hair making an ink stain on the pillows. she stretched an exhausted hand to him, and looked at him earnestly and affectionately. to both of them their lives seemed completed. 'oh, my darling, my darling!' he murmured; and his heart melted with happiness at the faint pressure of fingers which he held within his. the nurse standing by him held something red wrapped up in flannels. he scarcely noticed it until he heard kate say: 'it's a little girl. kiss it, dear.' he awkwardly touched with his lips the tiny whining mass of flesh the nurse held forward, feeling, without knowing why, ashamed of himself. 'hearing that madam was taken all unexpected, i brought these flannels with me,' said the large woman with the long-tailed cap; 'but to-morrow i can recommend you, if you like, sir, to a shop where you can get everything required.' this speech brought dick with a cruel jerk to the brink of the atrocious situation in which he had so unexpectedly found himself. to-morrow he would have to find money, and a great deal too. how he was going to do it he did not know, but money would have to be found. 'yes, yes, i'll see to all that to-morrow,' he said, awakening from his lethargy, like a jaded horse touched in some new place by the spur, 'but now i'm so tired i can scarcely speak.' 'that's so,' said the landlady. 'these walking tours is dreadful. he's been over from rochdale to-day, not counting the runnin' about he did after his wife. you know they refused to take her in at number fifteen. but, sir, i don't well know how we shall manage. i don't see how i'm to offer you a bed. the best i can do for you is to make you up something on the sofa in the parlour.' 'oh, the sofa will do very well. i think i could sleep on the tiles; so good-night, dear,' he said as he leaned over and kissed his wife; 'i'm sorry to leave you so soon.' 'it isn't a bit too soon,' said the doctor. 'she must lie still and not talk.' on this dick was led away. the nurse and doctor consulted by the bed where the woman would lie for days, too weak even to dream, while the man went off into the manchester crowd to search for food. beyond the bare idea of 'going down to see what they were doing at the theatre,' he had no plans. the scavenger dog that prowls about the gutter in search of offal could not have less. but he felt sure that something would turn up; he was certain to meet someone to whom he could sell a piano or for whom he could build a theatre. he never made plans. there was no use in making plans; they were always upset by an accident. far better, he thought, to trust to the inspiration of the moment; and when he awoke in the morning, heavy with sleep, he felt no trepidation, no fear beyond that of how he should get his sore feet into his shoes. it was only with a series of groans and curses that he succeeded in doing this, and the limps by which he proceeded down the street were painful to watch. at the stage-door of the theatre royal a conciliatory tone of voice was mechanically assumed as he asked the porter if mr. jackson was in. but before the official could answer, dick caught sight of mr. jackson coming along the passage. 'how do you do, old man? haven't seen you for a long time.' 'what, you, dick, in manchester? come and have a drink, old man. very glad to see you. stopping long here?' 'well, i'm not quite decided. my wife was confined, you know, last night.' 'what! you a father, dick?' mr. jackson leered, poked him in the ribs, and commenced a list of anecdotes. to these dick had to listen, and in the hopes of catching his friend in an unwary moment of good-humour, he laughed heartily at all the best points. but digressive as conversation is in which women are concerned, sooner or later a reference is made to the cost and the worth, and at last mr. jackson was incautious enough to say: 'very expensive those affairs are, to be sure.' this was the chance that dick was waiting for, and immediately buttonholing his friend, he said: 'you're quite right, they are: and to tell you the truth, old man, i'm in the most devilish awkward position i ever was in my life. you heard about the breaking up of morton and cox's company? well, that left me stranded.' at the first words gaiety disappeared from mr. jackson's face, and during dick's narrative of the tour in lancashire he made many ineffectual wriggles to get away. dick judged from these well-known indications that to borrow money might be attended with failure, and after a pathetic description of his poverty he concluded with: 'so now, my dear fellow, you must find something for me to do. it does not matter what--something temporary until i can find something better, you know.' it was difficult to resist this appeal, and after a moment's reflection mr. jackson said: 'well, you know we're all made up here. there's a small part in the new drama to be produced next week; i wouldn't like to offer it as it is, but i might get the author to write it up.' 'it will do first rate. i'm sure to be able to make something of it. what's the screw?' 'that's just the point. we can't afford to pay much for it; our salary list is too big as it is.' 'what did you intend giving for it?' 'well, we meant to give it to a super, but for you i can have it written up. what do you say to two-ten?' dick thought it would be judicious to pause, and after a short silence he said: 'i've had, as you know, bigger things to do; but i'm awfully obliged to you, old pal. you're doing me a good turn that i shan't forget; we can consider the matter as settled.' this was a stroke of luck, and dick congratulated himself warmly, until he remembered that £ s. at the end of next week did not put a farthing into his present pocket. money he would have to find that day, how he did not know. he called upon everybody he had ever heard of; he visited all the theatres and ball-rooms, drank interminable drinks, listened to endless stories, and when questioned as to what he was doing himself, grew delightfully mendacious, and, upon the slight basis of his engagement for the new drama at the royal, constructed a fabulous scheme for the production of new pieces. in this way the afternoon went by, and he was beginning to give up hopes of turning over any money that day, when he met a dramatic author. after the usual salutations--'how do you do, old boy? how's business?' etc.--had been exchanged, the young man said: 'had a bit of luck; just sold my piece--you know the drama i read you, the one in which the mother saves her child from the burning house?' 'how much did you get?' 'seventy-five pound down, and two pounds a night.' at the idea of so much money dick's eyes glistened, and he immediately proceeded to unfold a scheme he had been meditating for some time back for the building of a new theatre. the author listened attentively, and after having dangled about the lamp-post for half an hour, they mutually agreed to eat a bit of dinner together and afterwards go home and read another new piece that was, so said the fortunate author, a clinker. no better excuse than his wife's confinement could be found for fixing the meeting hour at the young man's lodging, and in the enthusiasm which the reading of the acts engendered, it was easy for dick to ask for, and difficult for his friend to refuse, a cheque for £ . xxiii in about a week kate was sufficiently restored to sit up in bed. her very weakness and lassitude were a source of happiness; for, after long months of turmoil and racket, it was pleasant to lie in the covertures, and suffer her thoughts to rise out of unconsciousness or sink back into it without an effort. and these twilight trances flowed imperceptibly into another period, when with coming strength a feverish love awoke in her for the little baby girl who lay sleeping by her side. and for hours in the reposing obscurity of the drawn curtains mother and child would remain hushed in one long warm embrace. to see, to feel, this little life moving against her side was enough. she didn't look into the future, nor did she think of what fate the years held in store for her daughter, but content, lost in emotive contemplation, she watched the blind movements of hands and the vague staring of blue eyes. this puling pulp that was more intimately and intensely herself than herself developed strange yearnings in her, and she often trembled with pride in being the instrument through which so much mystery was worked; to talk to herself of the dark dawn of creation, and of the day sweet with maternal love that lay beyond, was a great source of joy; to hear the large, hobbling woman tell of the different babies she had successfully started that year on their worldly pilgrimage never seemed to weary her. she interested herself in each special case, and when the nurse told her she must talk no more she lay back to dream of the great boy with the black eyes who had so nearly been the death of his little flaxen haired mother. she felt great interest in this infant, who, if he went on growing at the present rate, it was prophesied would be in twenty years' time the biggest man in manchester. but the nurse admitted that all the children were not so strong and healthy. indeed, it was only last week that a little baby she had brought into the world perfectly safely had died within a few days of its birth, for no cause that anyone could discover; it had wilted and passed away like a flower. the tears rolled down kate's cheeks as she listened, and she pressed her own against her breast and insisted on suckling her infant although expressly forbidden to do so by the doctor. these days were the best of her life. she felt more at peace with the world, she placed more confidence in her husband than she had ever done before; and when he came in of an afternoon and sat by her side and talked of herself and of their little baby, softened in all the intimate fibres of her sex, she laid her hand in his, and sighed for sheer joy. the purpose of her life seemed now to show a definite sign of accomplishment. the only drawback to their happiness was their poverty. the fifteen pounds of borrowed money had gone through their hands like water, and god knows what would have become of them if dick had not been fortunate to make another tenner by looking after a piece given at a morning performance. what with the doctor's bills, the nurse's wages, the baby's clothes, they were for ever breaking into their last sovereign. dick spoke of their difficulties with reluctance, not wishing to distress her, but he felt he must rouse her out of the apathy into which she had fallen, and he begged of her to take the next engagement he could find for her. it seemed to him that she was now quite well, but when he pressed for a promise the first time she answered: 'yes, dick, i should like to get to work again,' but when he came to her with a proposal of work, she was quick to find excuses. the baby was foremost among them; she did not like to put the child out to nurse. 'if the child were to die, i should never forgive myself,' she would say. 'don't ask me, dick, don't ask me.' 'but, kate, we cannot go on living here on nothing. we owe the landlady for three weeks.' at these words kate would burst into tears, and when he succeeded in consoling her she would remind him that if she went back to work before she was quite well she might be laid up for a long time, which would be much worse than the loss of a miserable three or four pounds a week. to convince dick completely she would remind him that as she had been playing leading parts it would not be wise to accept the first thing she could get. 'if one lets oneself down, dick, in the profession, it's difficult to get up again.' 'well, dear,' dick would answer, 'i must try and find something to do myself. you shall not be asked again to go back to work until you feel like it. when you come to tell me that you're tired of staying at home. 'don't speak like that, dick, for it seems as if you were laying blame upon me, and i'm not to blame. you will be able to judge for yourself when i'm fit to go back to work, and one of these days you will come with the news of a leading part.' accompanying him to the door she said she would like to return to the stage in a leading part, but not in any of the parts she had already played in, but in something new. these objections and excuses brought a cloud into dick's face which she did not notice, but when he had gone she would begin to think of his kindness towards her and of what she could do to reward him. his shirts wanted mending, and as soon as they were mended she made hoods and shoes for the baby. in many little ways the old life that she thought she had left behind in hanley began to reappear, and when dick came into the room and found her reading a novel by the fire she reminded him of ralph's wife rather than of his own. while she was touring in the country she had given up reading without being aware that she had done so. she had once bought a copy of the _family herald_, hoping that it would help away the time on the long railway journey, but having herself come into a life of passion, energy and infinite variety, she could not follow with any interest the story of three young ladies in reduced circumstances who had started a dressmaking business and who were destined clearly to marry the men they loved and who loved them and who would continue to love them long after the silver threads had appeared among the gold. but now in the long lonely days spent with her baby in the lodging (dick went away early in the morning and sometimes did not return till twelve o'clock at night), a story in a copy of _the family herald_ lent to her by the landlady, on the whole a very kind and patient soul, took hold of kate's imagination, and when she raised her eyes a tear of joy fell upon the page, and in the effusion of these sensations she would take her little girl and press it almost wildly to her breast. before leaving, the nurse had given kate many directions. the baby was to have its bath in the morning; to be kept thoroughly clean, and to be given the bottle at certain times during the day and night. kate was devoted to her child, but the attention she gave it was unsustained, a desultory attention. sometimes she put too much water in the milk, sometimes too little. the christening had awakened in her many forgotten emotions, and now that she was an honest married woman, she did not see why she should not resume her old church-going ways. the story she was reading was full of allusions to the vanity of this world and the durability of the next; and her feet on the fender, penetrated with the dreamy warmth of the fire, she abandoned herself to the seduction of her reveries. everything conspired against her. being still very weak the doctor had ordered her to keep up her strength with stimulants; a table-spoonful of brandy and water taken now and then was what was required. this was the ordinance, but the drinks in the dressing-rooms had taught her the comforts of such medicines, and during the day several glasses were consumed. without getting absolutely drunk, she rapidly sank into sensations of numbness, in which all distinctions were blurred, and thoughts trickled and slipped away like the soothing singing of a brook. it was like an amorous tickling, and as her dreams balanced between a tender declaration of love and the austere language of the testament, the crying of the sick child was unheeded. once kate did not hear it for hours; she did not know she had forgotten to warm its milk, and that the poor little thing was shivering with cold pain. and when at last she awoke, and went over to the cot trying to collect her drink-laden thoughts, the little legs were drawn up, the face was like ivory, and a long thin wail issued from the colourless lips. alarmed, kate called for the landlady, who, after feeling the bottle, advised that the milk should be warmed. when this was done the child took a little and appeared relieved. shortly after a bell was heard ringing, and the landlady said: 'i think it's your husband, ma'am.' it was usual for dick, when he came in at night, to tell what kate termed 'the news.' it amused her to hear what had been done at the theatre, what fresh companies had come to town. on this occasion it surprised him that she took so little interest in the conversation, and after hazarding a few remarks, he said: 'but what's the matter, dear? aren't you well?' 'oh yes, i'm quite well,' kate answered stolidly. 'well, what's the matter? you don't speak.' 'i'm tired, that's all.' 'and how's the baby?' 'i think she's asleep; don't wake her.' but dick went over, and holding a candle in one hand he looked long and anxiously at his child. 'i'm afraid the little thing is not well; she's fidgeting, and is as restless as possible.' 'i wish you'd leave her alone; if she awakes, it's i who will have the trouble of her, not you. it's very unkind of you.' dick looked at his wife and said nothing; but as she continued to speak, the evidences of drink became so unmistakable that he said, trying not to offend her: 'i'm afraid you've been drinking a little too much of the brandy the doctor ordered you.' at this accusation, kate drew herself up and angrily denied having touched a drop of anything that day. 'how dare you accuse me of being drunk? you ought to respect me more.' 'drunk, kate? i never said you were drunk, but i thought you might have taken an overdose.' 'i suppose you'll believe me when i tell you that i've not had a teaspoonful of anything.' 'of course i believe you, dear,' said dick, who did not like to think that kate was telling him a deliberate lie, and to avoid further discussion he suggested bed. kate did not answer him, and he heard her trying to get undressed, and wondering at her clumsiness he asked himself if he should propose to unlace her stays for her. but he was afraid of irritating her, and thought it would be better to leave her alone to undo the knot as best she could. she tugged at the laces furiously, and thinking she might break them and accuse him of unwillingness to come to her assistance, he said, 'shall i----' but she cut him short. 'let me alone, let me alone!' she cried, and dick kicked off his shoes. 'how can you be so unkind, or is it that you've no thought for that poor sick child?' she said; and dick answered: 'i assure you, my dear, it couldn't be helped; the shoe slipped off unexpectedly,' and as if the world had set its face against her, kate burst into tears. at first dick tried to console her, but seeing that this was hopeless, he turned his face to the wall and went to sleep. she had not drawn the curtains of the window, and the outlines of the room showing through the blue dusk frightened her, so ghostlike did they appear. the cradle stood under the window, the child's face just visible on the pallor of the pillow. 'baby is asleep,' she said; 'that's a good sign,' and watched the cradle, trying to remember how long it was since baby had had her bottle; and while wondering if she could trust herself to wake when baby cried she began to notice that the room was becoming lighter. 'it cannot be the dawn,' she thought; 'the dawn is hours away; we're in december. besides, the dawn is grey, and the light is green, a sort of pantomime light,' she said. it seemed to her very like a fairy tale. the giant snoring, and her baby stirring in her cradle with the limelight upon her, or was she dreaming? it might be a dream out of which she could not rouse herself. but the noise she heard was dick's breathing, and she wished that ralph would breathe more easily. ralph, ralph! no, she was with dick. dick, not ralph, was her husband. it was with a great effort that she roused herself. 'it was only a dream' she murmured. 'but baby is crying. her cry is so faint,' she said; and, slinging her legs over the side of the bed, she tried to find her dressing-gown, but could not remember where she had laid it 'baby wants her bottle,' she said, and sought for the matches vainly at first, but at last she found them, and lighted a spirit lamp. 'one must get the water warmed, cold milk would kill her;' and while the water was heating she walked up and down the room rocking her baby, talking to her, striving to quiet her; and when she thought the water was warm she tried to prepare baby's milk as the doctor had ordered it. her hope was that she had succeeded in mixing the milk and water in right proportions, for the last time she had given the baby her bottle she was afraid the water was not warm enough. perhaps that was why baby was crying, or it might be merely a little wind that was troubling her. she held the baby upright, hoping that the pain would pass away with a change of position, and she walked up and down the room rocking the child in her arms and crooning to her for fully half an hour. at last the child ceased to wail, and she laid her in her cradle and sat watching, thinking that if she were to lose her baby she must go mad.... she had lost dick's love, and if the baby were taken away there would be nothing left for her to live for. 'nothing left for me to live for,' she repeated again and again, till the cold winter's night striking through her nightgown reminded her that she was risking her life, which she had no right to do, for baby needed her. 'who would look after poor baby if i were taken away?' she asked, and shaking with cold, was about to crawl into bed; but on laying her knee on the bedside she remembered that a little spirit often saved a human life; and going to the chest of drawers took out the bottle she had hidden from dick and filled a glass. the spirit diffused a grateful warmth through her, and she drank a second glass slowly, thinking of her child and husband, and how good she intended to be to both of them, until ideas became broken, and she tumbled into bed, awaking dick, who was soon asleep again, with kate by his side watching a rim of light rising above a dark chimney stack and wondering what new shows must be preparing. already the rim of light had become a crescent, and before her eyes closed in sleep the full moon looked down through the window into the cradle, waking the sleeping child. but her cries were too weak; her mother lay in sleep beyond reach of her wails, heart-breaking though they were. the little blankets were cast aside, and the struggle between life and death began: soft roundnesses fell into distortions; chubby knees were wrenched to and fro, muscles seemed to be torn, and a few minutes later little kate, who had known of this world but a ray of moonlight, died--a glimpse of the moon was all that had been granted to her. after watching for an hour or more, the moon moved up the skies; and in kate's dream the moon was the great yellow witch in the pantomime, who, before striding her broomstick, cries back: 'thou art mine only, for ever and for ever!' xxiv the passing of a funeral in our english streets is so common a sight that hearses and plumes and mutes and carriages filled with relatives garbed in crape have almost ceased to remind us that our dust too is on the way to the graveyard; and it is not until we catch sight of a man walking in the carriage way carrying a brown box under his arm that we start like someone suddenly stung and remember the mystery of life and death. even dick remembered it, and wondered as he plodded after little kate's coffin why it was that she should have been called out of the void and called back into the void so quickly. 'whether our term be but a month or ninety years, life and death beckon us but once,' he said, and he fell to envying kate her tears, tears seeming to him more comforting than thoughts, and he would gladly have shed a few to help the journey away: not a long one, however, for the lennoxes lived in an unfrequented part of the town by the cemetery. 'we shall soon be there,' he whispered, and kate, raising her weeping face, looked round. all the shops were filled with funeral emblems, wreaths of everlasting flowers, headstones with dates in indelible ink, crosses of consolation, and kneeling angels. 'if we only had money,' kate cried, 'to buy a monument to put on her grave,' and she called upon dick to admire a kneeling angel. 'it's very beautiful,' dick said, 'i wish we had the money to buy it. poor little kate! it's a pity she didn't live; she was very like you, dear.' he had been offered an engagement for kate to play the part of the countess in _olivette_, and had accepted it, hoping in the meanwhile to be able to persuade her to take it. it was rather hard to ask her to play the day after the funeral, but there was no help for it. the company would arrive in town to-morrow, and dick thought it would be a pity to let the chance slip. but her grief was so great that he had not dared to speak to her about it. 'did you ever see so many graves?' she asked. 'we shall never be able to find her when we come to seek the grave out. an angel--a headstone, at least, would be a help. oh, dick, she continued, 'to think they'll put her down into the ground, and that we shall perhaps never even see her grave again. we may be a hundred miles from here tomorrow, or after.' dick, who had had credit of the undertaker, looked around uneasily; but seeing that kate had not been overheard, he said: 'poor little thing! it's sad to lose her, isn't it? i should have liked to have seen her grow up.' the coffin was first deposited in the middle of the church, and dick twisted the brim of his big hat nervously, troubled by the service the parson in a white flowing surplice read from the reading-desk. kate, on the contrary, appeared much consoled, and prayed silently, and the parson mumbled so many prayers that dick began to consider the time it would take to learn a part of equal length. and all this while the little brown box remained like a piece of lost luggage, lonely in the greyness of this station-house-looking church; and when the mutes came to claim it kate again burst into tears. her tears reminded the parson that he was here to console, and in soft and unctuous words he assured the weeping mother that her child had only been removed to a better and brighter world, and that we must all submit to the will of god. but in the porch his attention was drawn from the weeping mother to the weather. 'a little more of this' he thought, 'and others will be doing for me what i'm now doing for others.' but there being no help for it, he followed the procession through the tombstones, his white surplice blowing, dick wondering how the little grave had been found amongst so many, but the sexton knew. the parson sprinkled earth upon the coffin, and the sound of the withdrawn ropes cut the mother's heart even more than the rattle of the earth and stones on the coffin lid. kate threw some flowers into the grave, and it seemed to dick certain that if she didn't pull herself together she would not be able to play the countess in _olivette_ on the morrow. she was so fearfully haggard and worn that he doubted if any amount of rouge would make her look the part. he would have done anything in the world for his little girl while she was alive, but now that she was dead--besides, after all, she was only a baby. for some time past this idea had occurred to him as an excellent argument to convince kate that there was really no reason why she should not go to rehearsal on the following morning. if he had not yet spoken in this way it was only because he was afraid that she would round on him, and call him a heartless beast, and he would do anything to evade a sulky look; and now, when the funeral was over and they were walking home wet, sorrowful, and tired, it was curious to watch how he gave his arm to kate, and the timidity with which he introduced the subject. at first he only spoke of himself, and his hopes of being able to obtain a better part and a higher salary in the new drama. but mention to a mummer who is lying on his death-bed that a new piece is going to be produced, and he will not be able to resist asking a question or two about it; and kate, weary as she was, at once pricked up her ears, and said: 'oh, they're going to do a new piece! you didn't tell me that before.' 'it was only decided last night,' replied dick. the spell was now broken, and when they reached home and had dinner the conversation was resumed in a strain that might be considered as being almost jovial after the mournful tones of the last few days. dick felt as if a big weight had been lifted from his mind, and the thought again occurred to him that there was no use in making such a fuss over a baby that was only three weeks old. kate, too, seemed to be awakening to the conviction that there was no use in grieving for ever. the state of torpor she had been living in--for to stifle remorse she had been drinking heavily on the quiet--now began to wear off, and her brain to uncloud itself; and dick, surprised at the transformation, could not help exclaiming: 'that's right, kate; cheer up, old girl. a baby three weeks old isn't the same as a grown person.' 'i know it isn't, but if you only knew--i'm afraid i neglected the poor little thing.' 'nonsense!' replied dick, for having an eye constantly on the main chance, he wished to avoid any fresh outburst of grief. 'you looked after it very well indeed; besides, you'll have another,' he added with a smile. 'i want no other,' replied kate, vexed at being misunderstood, and yet afraid to explain herself more thoroughly. at last dick said: 'i wish there was a part for you in the new piece.' 'yes, so do i. i haven't been doing anything for a long while now.' and thus encouraged he told her that in the so-and-so company the part of the countess might be had for the asking. 'only they play to-morrow night.' 'oh, to-morrow night! it would be dreadful to act so soon after my poor baby's death, wouldn't it?' 'i can't see why. we shall be as sorry for it in a week's time as now, and yet one must get to work some time or other.' dick considered this a very telling argument, and, not wishing to spoil its effect, he remained silent, so as to give kate time to digest the truth of what he had said. he waited for her to ask him when he would take her to see the manager, but she said nothing, and he was at last obliged to admit that he had made an appointment for to-morrow. she whined a bit but accompanied him to the theatre. the manager was delighted with her appearance. he told her that the photo that dick had forwarded did not do her justice; and, handing her the script, he said: 'now you must make your entrance from this side.' 'what's the cue?' 'here it is. i think i shall now beat a retreat in the direction of home.' 'ah! i see.' and, striving to decipher the manuscript, kate walked towards the middle of the stage. 'i haven't seen the duke for twenty-four hours, and that means misery.' 'you'll get a laugh for that if you'll turn up your eyes a bit,' said dick. then, turning to the manager, he murmured, 'i wish you'd seen her as clairette. the notices were immense. but i must be off now to my own show.' this engagement relieved the lennoxes for the time being of their embarrassments. at four they dined, at six bade each other good-bye, and repaired to their respective theatres. dick was playing in drama, kate in _opéra bouffe_; and something before a quarter to eleven she expected him to meet her at the stage-door of the prince's. on this point she was very particular; if he were a few moments late she questioned him minutely as to where he had been, what he had been doing, and little by little the jealousies and suspicions which her marriage had appeased returned, and tortured her night and day. at first the approach of pain was manifested by a nervous anxiety for her husband's presence. she seemed dissatisfied and restless when he was not with her, and after breakfast in the mornings, when he took up his hat to go out, she would beg of him to stay, and find fault with him for leaving her. he reasoned with her very softly, assuring her that he had the most important engagements. on one occasion it was a man who had given him an appointment in order to speak with him concerning a new theatre, of which he was to have the entire management; another time it was a man who was writing a drama, and wanted a collaborator to put the stage construction right; and as these séances of collaboration occupied both morning and afternoon, kate was thrown entirely on her own resources until four o'clock. the first two or three novels she had read during her convalescence had amused her, but now one seemed so much like the other that they ended by boring her; and, too excited to be able to fix her attention, she often read without understanding what she was reading: on one side the memory of her baby's death preyed upon her--she still could not help thinking that it was owing to her neglect that it had died--on the other, the thought that her husband was playing her false goaded her to madness. sometimes she attempted to follow him, but this only resulted in failure, and she returned home after a fruitless chase more dejected than ever. 'ah! if the baby had not died, there would have been something to live for,' she murmured to herself a thousand times during the day, until at last her burden of remorse grew quite unbearable, and she thought of the brandy the doctor had ordered her. since her engagement to play the countess she had forgotten it, but now a strange desire seized her suddenly as if she had been stung by a snake. there was only a little left in the bottle, but that little cheered and restored her even more than she had expected. her thoughts came to her more fluently, she ate a better dinner, and acted joyously that night at the theatre. 'there's no doubt,' she said to her self, 'the doctor was right. what i want is a little stimulant.' of the truth of this she was more than ever convinced when next morning she found herself again suffering from the usual melancholy and dulness of spirits. the very sight of breakfast disgusted her, and when dick left she wandered about the room, unable to interest herself in anything, with a yearning in her throat for the tingling sensation that brandy would bring; and she longed for yesterday's lightness of conscience. but there was neither brandy nor whisky in the house, not even a glass of sherry. what was to be done? she did not like to ask the landlady to go round to the public-house. such people were always ready to put a wrong interpretation upon everything. but mrs. clarke knew that the doctor had ordered her to take a little brandy when she felt weak. all the same, she determined to wait until dinner-time. half an hour of misery passed, and then, excited till she could bear with the craving for drink no longer, she remembered that it would be very foolish to risk her health for the sake of a prejudice. to obey the doctor's orders was her first duty--a consoling reflection that relieved her mind of much uncertainty; and ringing the bell, she prepared her little speech. 'oh! mrs. clarke, i'm sorry to trouble you, but--i'm feeling so weak this morning--and, if you remember, the doctor ordered me to take a little brandy when i felt i wanted it. do you happen to have any in the house?' 'no, ma'am, i haven't, but i can send out for it in a minute. and you do look as if you wanted something to pick you up.' 'yes,' said kate, throwing as much weakness as she could into her voice, 'somehow i've never felt the same since my confinement.' 'ah! i know well how it pulls one down. if you only knew how i suffered with my third baby!' 'i can well imagine it.' the conversation then came to a pause, and mrs. clarke, not seeing her way to any further family confidences, said: 'what shall i send for, ma'am--half a pint? the grocer round the corner keeps some very nice brandy.' 'yes, that will do,' said kate, seeing an unending perspective of drinks in half a pint. 'shall i put that down in the bill, or will you give me the money now, ma'am?' this was very awkward, for kate suddenly remembered that she had given over her salary to dick this week without keeping anything out of it. there was no help for it now, and putting as bold a face on it as she could, she told mrs. clarke to book it. what did it matter whether dick saw it or not? had not the doctor told her she required a little stimulant? henceforth brandy-drinking became an established part of kate's morning hours. even before dick was out of bed she would invent a pretext for stealing into the next room so that she might have a nip on the sly before breakfast. the bottle, and a packet of sweetstuff to take the smell off her mouth, were kept behind a large oleograph representing swiss scenery. the fear that dick might pop out upon her at any moment often nearly caused her to spill the liquor over the place; but existence was impossible without brandy, and she felt she was bound to get rid of the miserable moods of mind to which she woke. before eleven o'clock dick was out of the house, and this left kate four hours of lonely idleness staring her blankly in the face. sometimes she practised a little music, but it wearied her. she had courage for nothing now, and brandy and water was the only thing that killed the dreariness that ached in heart and head. many half-pint bottles had succeeded the first, and, ashamed to admit her secret drinking, she now paid the landlady regularly out of her own money. when funds were low, a little bill was run up, and this was produced and talked over when the two women were having a glass together of a morning. to pay these debts kate had to resort to lying. all kinds of lies had to be concocted. her first idea was to tell dick she intended to continue her music lessons. he would never, she was sure, ask her a question on the subject; but dick, who was still hard pressed for money, begged of her to wait until they were better off before incurring new expenses, and, annoyed, she fell back on the subject of clothes, and when he asked her if she could not manage to go on with what she had for a bit, it astonished him to see the mad rage into which she fell instantly. was it not her own money? had she not earned it, and was he going to rob her of it? did he only keep her to work for him? if so, she'd very soon put that to rights by chucking up her engagement; then he would be forced to keep her; she wasn't going to be bullied. in his usual kind way dick tried to calm her, explaining to her their position, telling her of his projects; but the fear of discovery was a fixed thought in her mind, and she refused to listen to reason until he put his hand in his pocket and gave her two pounds ten. this was just the sum required to pay what she owed at the ayre arms. and seeing her difficulties removed, her better nature asserted itself. she begged of dick to forgive her, pleading that she had lost her temper, and didn't know what she was saying. for an instant she thought of confessing the truth, then the idea died in a resolution to amend. it was not worth speaking of; she was getting stronger, and would soon need no more stimulants. for two days kate kept to her promise; instead of sitting at home, she called on one of the ladies of the theatre, and passed a pleasant morning with her. she paid visits to other members of the company, and went out shopping with them. but when three or four met at the corner of a street, after a few introductory remarks, a drink was generally proposed--not as men would propose it, but slyly, and with much affectation; and skirting furtively along the streets, a quiet bar would be selected, and then, 'what will you have, dear?' would be whispered softly. 'a drop of gin, dear.' on one of these occasions kate only just escaped getting drunk. as luck would have it, dick did not return home to dinner, and a good sleep and a bottle of soda-water pulled her together, so that she was able to go down to the theatre and play her part without exciting observation. and this decided her not to trust herself again to the temptation of her girl friends. she asked dick to allow her to accompany him sometimes. he made a wry face at this proposal, hesitated, and explained that his collaborator suffered no one to interrupt their séances; he was a timid man, and couldn't work in the presence of a third person. kate only sighed, but although she did not attempt to dispute the veracity of this statement, she felt that it was cruel that she should be left alone hour after hour. but she deceived herself with resolutions and hopes that she would require no more brandy. in her heart of hearts she knew that she would not be able to resist, and, docile as the sheep under the butcher's hand, she recognized her fate, and accepted it. a fresh bill was run up at the grocer's, and the mornings were passed in a state of torpor. without getting absolutely drunk, she drank sufficiently to confuse her thoughts, to reduce them to a sort of nebulae, enough to blend and soften the lines of a too hard reality to a long sensation of tickling, in which no idea was precise, no desire remained long enough to grow to a pain, but caressed and passed away. sometimes, of course, she overdosed herself, but on these occasions, when she found consciousness slipping a little too rapidly from her, she was cunning enough to go and lie down. and living, as she did, in constant fear of detection, she endowed the simplest words and looks with a double meaning, and she could not help hating dick if he asked her questions or dared to accuse her of being sleepy and heavy about the eyes. did he intend to insult her--was that it? if so, she wasn't going to stand it. one day he stood before the oleograph, apparently examining with deep interest the different aspects of the swiss scenery. in reality, his thoughts were far away, but kate, who did not know this, grew so nervous and angry, that it was with difficulty she kept calm. on half a dozen different pretexts she had tried to get him away from the picture, and fearing every moment that he would look behind it or touch it, she caught up a plate from the table and dashed it to the ground. the crash caused dick to jump round, and she began her tirade, beginning with the question, was she so utterly beneath his notice that he couldn't answer a question? almost every day a dispute of this sort arose: she was always being poked up by some new fear of discovery, and engendered, if not hatred, a fierce resentment; and to deceive herself as to the true reason she criticized his conduct and manner of life bitterly and passionately from every point of view. jealousy was natural to her, and she was more subject than ever to attacks of it. once or twice it had blazed into flame, but circumstances had quenched it for the time being. now there was nothing to oppose it, and all things served as fuel. she was conscious of no wrongdoing, she believed, and believed sincerely, that she was acting legitimately in defence of her own interests. she was certain that dick was deceiving her, and the want of moral courage in the man, which forced him to tell lies--lies in which he was sometimes found out--tended to confirm her in this belief. for a few days past she had been preparing for a quarrel, but the time for fight had not yet come, and she chafed under the delay. at last her chance came. he kept her waiting half an hour at the stage-door. where had he been? what had he been doing all this while? were the questions she put to him in many different forms as they walked home. he sought to pacify his wife, assuring her he had been detained by his manager, who wanted to speak with him concerning a new production; he told a long story regarding the arrangement of some of the processions. but kate would not accept any of these excuses, and, convinced he had been after a woman, she stuck to her opinion, and the bickering continued for an hour or more, to end as it had begun. these sudden silences were very welcome, for dick had many things to think out; and nothing more was said until they got up to their room, and then dick, as usual, forgetful of even the immediate past, began to speak of his manager's intentions regarding a new piece. but he did not get far before he was brought to a sudden standstill by a fresh explosion of wrath. 'what have i done now?' he asked. 'done! do you suppose i want to hear about that woman?' 'what woman!' 'oh! you needn't do the innocent with me!' 'really! i give you my word----' 'your word! a nice thing, indeed!' 'well, what do you want me to do?' 'to leave me in peace,' said kate, breaking the string of her stays. dick was very tired, and, without attempting to argue the point further, undressed and got into bed. in bed the quarrel was resumed; it was continued, and for an hour or more, he lying with his head turned close to the wall, hers dancing over the extreme edge of the pillow. 'why don't you go away and leave me? i cannot think how you can be so cruel, and to me, who gave up everything for you!' it was the wail of petulant anger; but as yet she showed no violence, and her temper did not overcome her until her husband, worn out by two hours of unceasing lamentations, begged of her to allow him to go to sleep. her mood was different in the morning, and it was not until she had paid a couple of visits to the blue swiss mountains that she became again taciturn. dick did not as yet suspect his wife of confirmed drunkenness; he merely thought that she had grown lately very ill-tempered, and that a jealous woman was about the most distressing thing in existence; and, anxious to avoid another scene, he hurried through his breakfast. she watched him eating in silence, knowing well he was counting the minutes till he could get away. at last she said: 'will you take me to church to-day?' 'my dear, i'm afraid i've an appointment, but i'll try to come back if i can,' and a few minutes later he slipped away, leaving her to invite the landlady to come up and have a glass with her if she felt so inclined. but feeling somewhat out of humour for the conversation of that respectable woman, she put on her hat and ran after her husband, determined to watch him. but he was already out of sight, and after roaming aimlessly about for some time she turned into a church, and sat through the whole of the service without once attempting to fix her attention on what was going on; her thoughts were on dick, but to stand and to kneel was in itself a relief, and when church was over she returned home, after visiting several public houses, slightly boozed. 'mrs. clarke, has my husband come in?' 'i haven't heard him, mrs. lennox,' was the answer that came up the kitchen stairs. this was unfortunate, for her heart that had been softening towards him tightened into bitterness, and madness was near the thought that at the moment she was patiently waiting dinner for him he might be in the arms of another woman. she told the landlady, who came upstairs a second time in hope of a sociable glass, that she might bring the soup up (they always had soup on sundays); if mr. lennox didn't choose to come in for his meals he might go without them. at that moment a ring at the door was heard, and, throwing himself in an armchair, dick said he was tired. 'i dare say you are; i can easily understand that,' was the curt reply. an expression of pain passed over his face. 'goodness me, kate!' he said in a perplexed voice. 'you don't mean to say you're angry still!' no attention was paid to the landlady, who was placing the soup on the table, and she, being pretty well accustomed to their quarrels, said with an air of indifference as she left the room: 'dinner is served. i shall bring the leg of mutton up when you ring.' no answer was made to her, and the couple sat moodily looking at each other. after a pause dick tried to be conciliatory, and in the most affectionate phrases he could select he besought kate to make it up. 'i assure you, you're wrong,' he said. 'i've been after no woman. do, for goodness' sake, make it up.' then approaching her chair, he tried to draw her toward him, but pulling herself away passionately, she exclaimed: 'no, no; leave me alone--leave me alone--don't touch me--i hate you.' this was not encouraging, but at the end of another silence he attempted to reason with her again. but it was useless; and worn and impatient he begged of her at least to come to dinner. 'if you aren't hungry, i am.' there was no answer; lying back in her chair she sulked, deaf to all entreaty. 'well, if you won't, i will,' he said, seating himself in her place. her eyes flashed with a dull lurid light, and walking close to the table, she looked at him steadily, fidgeting as she did so with the knives and glasses. 'i can't think how you treat me as you do; what have i done to you to deserve it? nothing. but i shall be revenged, that i will; i can bear it no longer.' 'bear what?' he asked despairingly. 'you know well enough. don't aggravate me. i hate you! oh yes,' she said, raising her voice, 'i do hate you!' 'sit down and have some dinner, and don't be so foolish,' he said, trying to be jocular, as he lifted the cover from the soup. 'eat with you? never!' she answered theatrically. but the interest he showed in the steaming liquid annoyed her so much that, overcome by a sudden gust of passion, she upset the tureen into his lap. dick uttered a scream, and in starting back he overturned his chair. although not scalding, the soup was still hot enough to burn him, and he held his thighs dolorously. the tablecloth was deluged, the hearthrug steamed; and, regardless of everything, kate rushed past, accusing her husband of cruelty, of unfaithfulness, stopping only to reproach him with a desire to desert her. while dick in dripping trousers asked what he had done to deserve having the soup flung over him, kate's hair became unloosened and hung down her shoulders like a sheaf of black plumes. dick thought of changing his trousers, but the intensity of her passion detained him. stopping suddenly before the table, she poured out a tumbler of sherry, and drank it almost at a gulp. it was as nauseous to her taste as lukewarm water, and she yearned for brandy. it would sting her, would awaken the dull ache of her palate, and she knew well where the bottle was; she could see it in her mind's eye, the black neck leaning against the frame of the picture. why should she not go and fetch it, and insult him with the confession of her sin? was it not he who drove her to it? so kate thought in her madness, and the lack of courage to execute her wishes angered her still further against the fat creature who lay staring at her, lying back in the armchair. she applied herself again to the sherry and swallowed greedily. 'for goodness' sake,' said dick, who began to get alarmed, 'don't drink that! you'll get drunk.' 'well, what does it matter if i do? it's you who drive me to it. if you don't like it, go to miss vane.' 'what! you've not finished with that yet? haven't i told you twenty times that there's nothing between me and miss vane? i haven't spoken to her for the last three days.' 'that's a lie!' shrieked kate. 'you went to meet her this morning. i saw you. do you take me for a fool? but oh! i don't know how you can be such a beast! if you wanted to desert me, why did you ever take me away from hanley? but you can go now, i don't want the leavings of that creature.' taken aback by what was nothing more than a random guess, dick hesitated, and then, deciding that he might as well be caught out in two lies as in one, he said, as a sort of forlorn hope: 'if you saw us you must have seen that she was with jackson, and that i didn't do any more than raise my hat.' kate made no answer; she was too excited to follow out the train of the simplest idea, and continued to rave incoherent statements of all kinds. the landlady came up to ask when she should bring up the leg of mutton, but she went away frightened. there was no dinner that day. amid screams and violent words the evening died slowly, and the room darkened until nothing was seen but the fitful firelight playing on dick's hands; but still the vague form of the woman passed through the shadows like a figure of avenging fate. would she never grow tired and sit down? dick asked himself a thousand times. it seemed as if it would never cease, and the incessant repetition of the same words and gestures turned in the brain with the mechanical movement of a wheel, dimming the sense of reality and producing the obtuse terror of a nightmare. but from this state of semi-consciousness he was suddenly awakened by the violent ringing of the bell. 'what do you want? can i get you anything?' kate did not deign to answer him. when the landlady appeared, she said: 'i want some more sherry; i'm dying of thirst.' 'you shall not have any more,' said dick, interposing energetically. 'mrs. clarke, i forbid you to bring it up.' 'i say she shall,' replied kate, her face twitching with passion. 'i say she shall not.' 'then i'll go out and get it.' 'no, i'll see you don't do that,' said dick, getting between her and the door. as he did so he turned his back to speak to the landlady, and kate, taking the opportunity, seized a handful of the frizzly hair and almost pulled him to the ground. twisting round he took her by the wrist and freed himself, but this angered and still further excited her. 'you'd better let her have her way,' the landlady said. 'i won't bring up much, and it may put her to sleep.' dick, who at the moment would have given half his life for a little peace, nodded his head affirmatively, and went back to his chair. he did not know what to do. never had he witnessed so terrible a scene before. since three or four days back this quarrel had been working up crescendo; and when the landlady brought up the sherry, kate seized the decanter, and, complaining that it was not full, resumed her drinking. 'so you see i did get it, and i'll get another bottle if i choose. you think that i like it. well, you're mistaken; i don't, i hate it. i only drink it because you told me not, because i know that you begrudge it to me; you begrudge me every bit that i put into my mouth, the very clothes i wear. but it was not you who paid for them. i earned the money myself, and if you think to rob me of what i earn you're mistaken. you shan't. if you try to do so i shall apply to the magistrate for protection. yes, and if you dare to lay a hand on me i shall have you locked up. yes, yes--do you hear me?' she screamed, advancing towards him, spilling as she did the glass of wine she held in her hand over her dress. 'i shall have you locked up, and i should love to do so, because it was you who ruined me, who seduced me, and i hate you for it.' she spoke with a fearful volubility, and her haranguing echoed in dick's ears with the meaningless sound of a water-tap heard splashing on the flagstones of an echoing courtyard. sometimes he would get up, determined to make one more effort, and in his gentlest and most soothing tones would say: 'now look here, dear; will you listen to me? i know you well, and i know you're a bit excited; if you will believe me----' but it was no use. she did not seem to hear him; indeed, it almost seemed as if her ears had become stones. her hands were clenched, and dragging herself away from him, she would resume her tigerish walk. sometimes dick wondered at the strength that sustained her, and the thrill of joy that he experienced was intense when, about two o'clock, after eight or ten hours of the terrible punishment, he noticed that she seemed to be growing weary, that her cries were becoming less articulate. several times she had stopped to rest, her head sank on her bosom, and every effort she made to rouse herself was feebler than the preceding one. at length her legs gave way under her, and she slipped insensible on the floor. dick watched for a time, afraid to touch her, lest by some horrible mischance she should wake up and recommence the terrible scene that had just been concluded, and at least half an hour elapsed before he could muster up courage to undress her and put her to bed. xxv next morning kate was duly repentant and begged dick to forgive her for all she had said and done. she told him that she loved him better than anything in the world, and she persuaded him that if she had taken a drop too much, it was owing to jealousy, and not to any liking for the drink itself. dick adopted the theory willingly (every man is reluctant to believe that his wife is a drunkard), and deceived by the credulity with which he had accepted the excuse, kate resolved to conquer her jealousy, and if she could not conquer it, she would endure it. never would she seek escape from it through spirit again. and had she remained in manchester, or had she even been placed in surroundings that would have rendered the existence of a fixed set of principles possible, she might have cured herself of her vice. but before two months her engagement at the prince's came to an end, and dick's at the royal very soon followed. they then passed into other companies, the first of which dealt with shakespearean revivals. dick played don john successfully in _much ado about nothing_, the ghost in _hamlet_, the friar in _romeo and juliet_. kate on her side represented with a fair amount of success a series of second parts, such as rosalind in _romeo_, bianca in _othello_, sweet ann page in the _merry wives_. it is true there were times when her behaviour was not all that could be desired, sometimes from jealousy, sometimes from drink; generally from a mixture of the two; but on the whole she managed very cleverly, and it was not more than whispered, and always with a good-natured giggle, that mrs. lennox was not averse to a glass. from the shakespearean they went to join a dramatic company, where houses were blown up, and ships sank amid thunder and lightning. dick played a desperate villain, and kate a virtuous parlourmaid, until one night, having surprised him in the act of kissing the manager's wife, she ran off to the nearest pub, and did not return until she was horribly intoxicated, and staggered on to the stage calling him the vilest names, accusing him at the same time of adultery, and pointing out the manager's wife as his paramour. there were shrieks and hysterics, and dick had great difficulty in proving his innocence to the angry impresario. he spoke of his honour and a duel, but as the lady in question was starring, the benefit of the doubt had to be granted her, and on these grounds the matter was hushed up. but after so disgraceful a scandal it was impossible for the lennoxes to remain in the company. dick was very much cut up about it, and without even claiming his week's salary, he and his wife packed up their baskets and boxes and returned to manchester. and there he entered into a quantity of speculations, of the character of which she had not the least idea; all she knew was, that she never saw him from one end of the day to the other. he was out of the place at ten o'clock in the morning, and never returned before twelve at night. these hours of idleness and solitude were hard to bear, and kate begged of dick to get her an engagement. but he was afraid of another shameful scene, and always gave her the same answer--that he had as yet heard of nothing, but as soon as he did he would let her know. she didn't believe him, but she had to submit, for she could never muster up courage to go and look for anything herself, and the long summer days passed wearily in reading the accounts of the new companies, and the new pieces produced. this sedentary life, and the effects of the brandy, which she could now no longer do without, soon began to tell upon her health, and the rich olive complexion began to fade to sickly yellow. even dick noticed that she was not looking well; he said she required change of air, and a few days after, he burst into the room and told her gaily that he had just arranged a tour to go round the coast of england and play little comic sketches and operettas at the pier theatres. this was good news, and the next few days were fully occupied in trying over music, making up their wardrobes, and telegraphing to london for the different books from which they would make their selections. a young man whom dick had heard singing in a public-house proved a great hit. he wrote his own words, some of which were considered so funny that at scarborough and brighton he frequently received a couple of guineas for singing a few songs at private houses after the public entertainment. afterwards he appeared at the pavilion, and for many years supplied the axioms and aphorisms that young toothpick and crutch was in the habit of using to garnish the baldness of his native speech. for a time the sea proved very beneficial to kate's health, but the never-ending surprises and expectations she was exposed to finished by so straining and sharpening her nerves that the stupors, the assuagements of drink, became, as it were, a necessary make-weight. her love for dick pressed upon and agonized her; it was like a dagger whose steel was being slowly reddened in the flames of brandy, and in this subtilization of the brain the remotest particles of pain detached themselves, until life seemed to her nothing but a burning and unbearable frenzy. she did not know what she wanted of him, but with a longing that was nearly madness she desired to possess him wholly; she yearned to bury her poor aching body, throbbing with the anguish of nerves, in that peaceful hulk of fat, so calm, so invulnerable to pain, marching amid, and contented in, its sensualities, as a gainly bull grazing amid the pastures of a succulent meadow. he was never unkind to her; the soft sleek manner that had won her remained ever the same, but she would have preferred a blow. it would have been something to have felt the strength of his hand upon her. she wanted an emotion; she longed to be brutalized. she knew when she tortured him with reproaches she was alienating from herself any affection he might still bear for her; but she found it impossible to restrain herself. there seemed to be a devil within her that goaded her until all power of will ceased, and against her will she had to obey its behests. a blow might exorcise this spirit. were he to strike her to the ground she thought she might still be saved; but, alas! he remained as kind and good-natured as ever; and to disguise her drunkenness she had to exaggerate her jealousy. the two were now mingled so thoroughly in her head that she could scarcely distinguish one from the other. she knew there were women all around him; she could see them ogling him out of the little boxes at the side of the stage. how they could be such beasts, she couldn't conceive. they stood for hours behind the scenes waiting for him, and she was told they had come for engagements. baskets of food, pork pies and tongue, came for him, but these she pitched out of the window; and she soundly boxed the ears of one little wretch, whom she had found loitering about the stage-door. kate was right sometimes in her suspicions, sometimes wrong, but in every case they accentuated the neurosis, occasioned by alcohol, from which she was suffering. still, by some extraordinary cunning, she contrived for some time to regulate her drinking so that it should not interfere with business, and on the rare occasions when dick had to apologize to the public for her non-appearance she insisted that it was not her fault; and from a mixture of vanity and a wish to conceal his wife's shame from himself, dick continued to persuade himself that his wife had no real taste for drink, and never touched it except when these infernal fits of jealousy were upon her. but the words that had come into his mind--'except when these infernal fits of jealousy are upon her'--called up many vivid memories; one especially confounded him. he had seen her frightened to cross the dressing-room lest she might fall, glancing from the table to the chair, calculating the distance. it was on his lips to ask her if she did not feel too ill to appear that day: that perhaps it would be better for him to go before the curtain and apologize to the public. but he had not dared to say anything, and to his astonishment she was able to overcome the influence of the drink (if she had taken any), and he had never heard her sing and dance better. how she had managed it he did not know. 'all the same,' he said, 'drink will get the upper hand of her and conquer her if she doesn't make up her mind to conquer it. the day will come when she will not be able to go on the stage, or will go on and fall down.' dick shut his eyes to exclude from them the horrible spectacle. she would then be an unmitigated burden on his hands. 'not a pleasant prospect', he said to himself. he had now been in the provinces for some years and had lived down the memory of many disastrous managements. he had managed the tour of the morton and cox's opera company very successfully till the crash came. 'but it will be the success that will be remembered and not the crash when i return to london. many changes must have happened in town. many new faces and many old faces that absence will make new again. if only kate were not so jealous. if i could cure her of jealousy i could cure her of drink.' and he thought of all the notices she had had for clairette, for serpolette, for olivette. he would like to see her play the duchess. at that moment his thoughts returned to the last time he had seen her, about half an hour ago; the memory was not a pleasant one, and he was glad that he had run out of the house and come down to the pier. and in the silence and solitude of the pier at midday he asked himself again why he should not return to town and take his chance of getting into a new company or being sent out to manage another provincial tour. in london he might be able to persuade his wife to go into a home, and he fell to thinking of the men and women who he had heard had been cured of drunkenness. his thoughts melted into dreams and then, passing suddenly out of dreams into words, he said: 'she will never consent to go into a home, and if she did she would only be thinking all the time that i'd put her there so that i might be after another woman.' his thoughts were interrupted by a lancinating pain in his feet, and he withdrew into the shade, and resting the heel of the right boot on the toe of the left, a position that freed him from pain for the time being, he looked round and seeing everywhere a misted sky filled with an inner radiance, he said: 'to-day will be the hottest day we've had yet, and there won't be a dozen people in the theatre; everybody will be too hot to leave their houses.' there was languor in the incoming wave. 'we shan't have five pounds in the theatre,' he muttered to himself, and catching sight of one of the directors he continued, 'and those fellows won't think of the heat, but will put down the falling off in the audience to our performance. never,' he added after a pause, 'have i seen the pier so empty,' and he wondered who the woman was coming towards him. a tall, gaunt woman of about forty-five whose striding gait caused a hooped and pleated skirt of green silk, surmounted by a bustle, to sway like a lime-tree in a breeze, wore a bodice open in front, with short sleeves, the fag end of some other fashion, but the long draggled-tailed feather boa belonged to the eighties, as did the marie stuart bonnet. her blackened eyebrows and a thickly painted face attracted dick's attention from afar, and when she approached nearer he was struck by the dark, brilliant, restless eyes. 'a strange and exalted being,' he said to himself. 'an authoress perhaps,' for he noticed that she carried some papers in her hand; 'or a poet,' he added; and prompted by his instinct he began to see in her somebody that might be turned to account, and before long he was thinking how he might introduce himself to her. 'she's forgotten her parasol; i might borrow one for her from the girl at the bar,' and the project seeming good to him he rose, and with a specially large movement of the arm lifted his hat from his head. 'you will excuse me, i hope, madam, addressing you, and if i do so it is because i am in an official capacity here, but may i offer you a parasol?' 'it's very kind of you,' she replied with a smile that lighted up her large mouth, dispersing its ugliness. 'she's got a fine set of teeth,' dick said to himself, and he answered that he would borrow a parasol for her in the theatre. 'it's very kind of you,' she returned, smiling largely and becomingly upon him. 'it's true i forgot to bring a parasol with me, and the sun is very fierce at this time. it will be kind of you,' and much gratified that his proposal had been so graciously received, he hobbled away in the direction of the theatre, to return a few moments after with the bar girl's parasol, which he had borrowed and which he opened and handed to the lady. 'might i ask,' she said, 'if you're one of the directors of the theatre?' 'no,' he answered, 'i'm an actor.' 'an actor in this theatre,' she replied. 'but they only sing trivial songs and dance in this theatre, and you look to me like one of shakespeare's imaginations. henry the eighth, almost any one of the henries. king john.' 'not romeo,' dick interposed. 'perhaps not romeo. romeo was but sixteen or seventeen, eighteen at the most. but when you were eighteen....' 'yes,' dick answered, 'i was thin enough then.' 'but you must not disparage yourself. heroes are not always thin. hamlet was fat and scant of breath. i can see you as hamlet, whereas to cast you for falstaff would be too obvious.' 'i've played falstaff,' dick replied, 'but i never could do much with the part, and i never saw anyone who could. the lines are very often too high-falutin for the character, and they don't seem to come out, no matter who plays it; the critics look on it as the best acting part, but in truth it is the worst.' 'macduff would fit you, no; lear,' the lady cried. dick thought he would like to have a shot at the king, and they were soon talking about a shakespearean theatre devoted to the performance of shakespearean plays. 'a theatre,' she said, 'that would devote itself to the representation of all the heroes in the world; those who spoke noble thoughts and performed noble deeds, thought and deed encompassing each other, instead of which we have a thousand theatres devoted to the representations of the fashions of the moment. so i'm forced to come here at midday, for at midday there is solitude and sacred silence, or else the clashing of waves. here at midday i can fancy myself alone with my heroes.' 'and who are your heroes, may i ask?' said dick. 'many are in shakespeare,' she answered, 'and many are here in this manuscript. the heroes of the ancient world, when men were nearer to the gods than they are now. for men,' she added, 'in my belief, are not moving towards the godhead, but away from it.' 'and who are the heroes that you've written about?' dick asked, and fearing she would enter into too long an explanation he asked if the manuscript she held in her hand was a play. 'no, a poem,' she answered. 'i'm studying it for recitation, one i'm going to recite after my lecture at the working men's club; and the subject of my lecture is the inherent nobility of man, and the necessity of man worship. women have turned from men and are occupied now with their own aspirations, losing sight thereby of the ideal that god gave them. my poem is a sort of abstract, an epitome, a compendium of the lecture itself.' dick did not understand, but the fact that a lady was going in for recitation argued that she was interested in theatricals, and with his ears pricked like a hound who has got wind of something, he said with a sweet smile that showed a whole row of white teeth: 'being an actor myself, i will take the liberty of asking you to allow me to look at your poem, and perhaps if you're studying for recitation i may be of use to you.' 'of the very greatest use,' the lady answered, and handed him her manuscript; 'one of a set of classical cartoons,' she added. 'humanity in large lines,' he replied. 'how quickly you understand,' she rapped out; 'removed altogether from the tea-table in subject and in metre. what have you got to say, my hero, to me about my rendering of these lines? '"the offspring of neptune and terra, daughters of earth and ocean, dowered with fair faces of woman, capping the bodies of vultures; armed with sharp, keen talons; crushing and rending and slaying, blackening and blasting, defiling, spoiling the meats of all banquets; plundering, perplexing, pursuing, cursing the lives of our heroes, ever the harpyiae flourish--just as a triumph of evil."' 'hardly anything; and yet if i may venture a criticism--would you mind passing your manuscript on to me for a moment? may i suggest an emendation that will render the recitation more easy and more effective?' 'certainly you may.' 'then,' dick continued, 'i would drop the words--"just as a triumph of evil," and run on--"flourish from childhood, ensnaring the noble, the brave, and the loyal, spreading their nets for destruction," '"harpyiae flourish in ball-rooms, breathing fierce breath that is poison over the promise of manhood, over the faith and the lovelight that glows in the hearts of our bravest for all of their kind that is weaker----" 'all that follows,' dick added, 'will be recited without emphasis until you come to these two magnificent lines: '"harpyiae stand by our altars, harpyiae sit by our hearthstones, harpyiae suckle our children, harpyiae ravish our nation," etc.' dick finished with a grand gesture. 'i think you're right. yes, i understand that a point can be given to these verses that i had not thought of before. i hope my poem touched a chord in your heart? do you approve of my manner of writing the hexameters?' 'i think the idea very fine, but----' 'but?' 'if you will permit me?' 'certainly.' 'well, there are questions of elocution that i would like to speak to you about. i've to run away now, but we're sure to meet again.' 'i'm on the pier every day at noon, or you will find me in my hotel at five. i hope you'll come, for i should like to avail myself of your instruction.' 'thank you; i hope to have the pleasure of calling upon you to-morrow afternoon. good-bye.' 'you don't know my name,' she cried after him. 'heroes are full of forgetfulness and naturally, but in this tea-table world we can't get on without names and addresses. will you take my card?' dick took the card, thanked her and turned suddenly away. 'like a man filled with disquiet,' the lady said, and she watched the burly actor hurrying up the pier. 'is this woman coming to meet him?' she asked herself as dick hurried away still faster, for in the distance the woman coming down the pier seemed to him like his wife, and if kate caught him talking to a woman on the pier all chance of doing any business with his new acquaintance would be at an end. but the woman who had just passed him by was not kate, and the thought crossed his mind that he might return to his new acquaintance with safety. but on the whole it seemed to him better to wait until to-morrow. to-morrow he would find out all about her. 'her name,' he said, and taking the card out of his pocket he read: 'mrs. forest, mother superior of the yarmouth convent, alexandra hotel, hastings.' 'mother superior of a convent! i should never have thought it. but if she is a nun, why isn't she in a habit? classical cartoons and nunneries. i think this time i've hit upon a strange specimen, one of the strangest i've ever met, which is saying a great deal, for i've met with a good few in my time. it will be better to tear up her card, for if kate should find it----' and then, dismissing mrs. forest from his mind, he wondered if he should find kate drunk or sober. 'quite sober,' he said to himself as soon as he crossed the threshold; and in the best of humours his wife greeted him, and taking his arm they went down to the pier and gave an entertainment that was appreciated by a fairly large audience. 'why didn't she ask me to come to her at five to-day?' he asked himself as he returned home with his wife. 'she may fall through my fingers,' and he would have gone straight away to mrs. forest, if he had been able to rid himself of kate. 'you'll take me out to tea, dick?' she said, and to keep her sober he took her to tea. for the nonce kate drunk would have suited him better than kate sober, and he dared not go down to the pier next morning in search of mrs. forest, it being more than likely that kate might take it into her head to sun herself on the pier, so he decided to wait; the pier was too dangerous. if he weren't interrupted by kate the directors might see them together, and they might know mrs. forest and tell her that he was a married man. no, he'd just keep his appointment with her at five. but to get rid of kate required a deep plan. it was laid and succeeded, and at five he arrived at the alexandra hotel. 'is mrs. forest in?' the hall porter told the page boy to take mr. lennox up to mrs. forest's rooms. 'all this smells money,' dick said to himself in the lift. the page boy threw open the door, and after walking through a long corridor the boy knocked at a door, and dick walked into a red twilight in which he caught sight of a green dress in a distant corner. 'i hope you're not one of those people who require the glare of the sun always. i like the sun in its proper place out of doors,' and while thinking of an appropriate answer dick strove to find his way through the numerous pieces of furniture littered over the carpet. 'come and sit on the sofa beside me.' 'if you'll allow me,' he answered, 'i will sit in this armchair. i shall be able to devote myself more completely to the hearing of your poem.' it was not polite to refuse to sit beside the lady, but dick contrived to convey that her presence would trouble his intellectual enjoyment, and the slight displeasure which the refusal had caused vanished out of the painted face. this first success almost succeeded in screwing up dick's courage to the point of asking her if he might remove the flower vase that stood on the cabinet behind him, but he did not dare, and at every moment he seemed to recognize a new scent. an odour of burning pastilles drifted from a distant corner into a zone of patchouli in which the lady seemed to have encircled herself and which her every movement seemed to spread in more and more violent flavours, till dick began to think he would not be able to hold out till the end of the lady's narrative. patchouli always gave him a headache, but the word 'opera' restored him to himself, and with lips quivering like a cat watching a sparrow he heard that the subject of her opera was derived from her own life; and telling him that it could not be understood without a relation of the events that had given it birth, she drew her legs up on the sofa, and leaning her head against the back commenced in a low, cooing, but not disagreeable voice to tell of her first love adventure. 'i might almost call my departure for bulgaria, some ten years ago, a spiritual adventure,' she said. the departure for bulgaria seemed full of interest, but from dick's point of view the leading up to the departure was unduly prolonged, and he found it difficult to listen with any show of interest to mrs. forest's assurances that until she met the bulgarian she had thought that babies were found in parsley-beds or under gooseberry-bushes, and this innocence of mind was so inherent in her that the bulgarian had not succeeded altogether in robbing her of it. 'nor, indeed, did he ever attempt to do so,' she continued. 'our friendship was founded purely on the intellect.' this admission was a disappointment to dick, who had looked forward to the story of a novel love adventure which might easily be worked into a comic opera, bulgaria offering a suitable background. with many pretty smiles he tried to lead the lady into the real story of her past, but mrs. forest insisted so well that he was fain to believe that there had been no past in her life suitable to comic opera. her bulgarian adventure had been animated by love of liberty and a noble desire to free an oppressed race from the ignoble rule of the turks; 'massacres,' she said, 'full of nameless horrors.' dick would have liked her to name these horrors, but before he could ask her to do so she was telling him of the instinct in every woman to mother something. the bulgarians had appealed to her sympathies, and she had helped to bring about their liberation by her poetry. in three years she had learnt the language and had composed two volumes of poems in it. 'i've looked out copies of my bulgarian poems for you,' and she leaned over the edge of the sofa towards a small table. the movement disarranged her skirt, and dick's eyes were regaled by the show of a thick shapeless leg, 'doubtless swarthy,' he said to himself. 'the title of the first volume,' she said, handing him the books, 'is, _songs of a stranger_. my friend the bulgarian' (and she mentioned an unpronounceable name) 'contributed a preface. the second volume is entitled, _new songs by the stranger_. you will find a translation appended to each.' dick promised that he would read the poems as soon as he got home, and begged mrs. forest to proceed with her interesting story of the war in which she had lost her great friend, her spiritual adventure, as she called him. from bulgaria she had set forth on a long journey, visiting many parts of china, returning home full of love for eastern civilization, and regret that western influence would soon make an end of it. 'but,' she said, 'when i think of my own life, my narrative seems but a faint echo of it all; only a fragment of it appears, whereas, if i could tell the whole of it----' but dick inclined to the belief that her genius was dramatic rather than narrative, and to bring the autobiography to an end, he asked her how she had come to be the mother superior of the yarmouth convent. 'if i can only get her to cut the cackle and get to the 'osses,' he said to himself, but this was not easy to do. mrs. forest had to relate her socialistic adventures, her engagement to edgar horsley. 'for three years,' she said, 'i was engaged to him, and at the end of this time it seemed to me that we must come to an understanding. he was talking of going to jamaica, and to go to jamaica with him we would have to be married. so i went down to where he was staying in the country, a cottage in somersetshire, at the end of a very pretty lane.' 'good god! if she's going to describe the landscape to me,' said dick to himself. but mrs. forest had no eye for the appearance of trees showing against the sky, and she was quickly at the cottage door, which was opened to her, she said, by a suspicious-looking woman, who said, 'i think i've heard of you. mr. horsley is out, but you can come in and wait,' 'and in about half an hour he came in and introduced me to the woman who had opened the door to me. "isabel" is all that i can remember of her name. "isabel," he said, "has been living with me for the last ten years, but if you like to come with us to jamaica you can join us." this seemed to me to be an inacceptable proposition. "what you propose to me," i said, "is unthinkable," and i left the house, and have not seen or heard of mr. edgar horsley since. i've looked at water, i've looked at poison, and i've looked at daggers.' dick asked her why she had meditated suicide and she answered: 'was not such an end to a three years' engagement sufficient to inspire in any woman a thought of suicide? and i'm very exceptional.' a great deal of mrs. forest's life had been unfolded; the only thing that remained in obscurity was how she had come to be the mother superior of the yarmouth convent, and to make that plain, she said it would be necessary to tell the story of her conversion to the catholic faith. 'but that was after the convent; the convent was intended for the reformation of dipsomaniacs, female drunkards,' she said; 'but it was afterwards that i became a roman catholic.' dick had no wish to hear what dogma it was that had tempted her, but it amused him as he returned home to think of all the strange things that mrs. forest had told him; one thing especially amused him, that her real interest in catholicism was the confessional. 'how one does get back to oneself in all these things,' he muttered as he panted up the hot steep road. 'a convent for the reformation of female drunkards,' he repeated. 'it's very strange: she can't know anything about my wife. a strange woman,' he continued, and fell to thinking if all that she had told him was the truth, or if it was one of those stories that people imagine about themselves, and imagine so vividly that after a few years they begin to believe that everything they have told has befallen them. he pulled the books from his pocket; they were evidently written in a strange language, but there were people who could learn languages and could do nothing else. her bulgarian poetry could not be better than her english, and he knew what that was like. 'i suppose as soon as she hears i'm married, and she's sure to find out sooner or later, she will be off on some other back. but is this altogether sure?' he had not walked many steps before he remembered that the lecture she was giving at the working men's club was on the chastity of the marriage state; moreover, she had admitted to him that the bulgarian adventure was a spiritual one. 'i should say she was a woman with a big temperament which must have been worth gratifying when she went away with that bulgarian; i wouldn't have minded being in his skin. she hasn't forgotten that she was once a beautiful girl, that's the worst of it, she hasn't forgotten,' and dick remembered that at parting she was a little demonstrative, saying to him on the staircase: 'but we aren't parting for long. you will be here tomorrow at my door at the same hour.' xxvi the appointment was for five o'clock, and kate would have liked to remain on the pier with dick enjoying the summer evening, but he seemed so intent on returning to their lodging that she did not like to oppose his wishes, and she allowed herself to be led all the way up the dusty town to their close, hot rooms that she might try over fredegonde's music. that he should wish to hear her voice again in this music flattered her, but she rose from the piano, her face aflame, when he began to mention an appointment. 'it's too bad of you, dick, to bring me home and then remember an appointment.' dick overflowed with mellifluous excuses which did not seem to allay kate's anger, and as he hurried down the street it occurred to him that he might have thought of a better reason than fredegonde for bringing her home. however this might be, his thoughts were now with montgomery and mrs. forest rather than with kate, and it was not till he drew the latchkey from his pocket that kate's singing of the waltz returned to him: he ascended the stairs singing it. 'i think it will work out all right.' 'what will work out all right? you're an hour later than you said you'd be.' 'never mind about the hour,' he answered and began to weave a story about his meeting with a pal from london, as he was leaving the pier the other day: he hadn't spoken to her about it before, not caring to do so until something definite had happened. 'what has happened?' kate asked, and dick, his face aglow, related how the pal had spoken of a great revival of interest in comic opera, especially in french music, and that many city men with plenty of money were on the lookout for somebody who knew how to produce this class of work and was in sympathy with the folies dramatiques tradition. kate, who believed everything that dick told her, listened with a heightened temperature. at margate the admirer of hervé's music became an american who wished to see _chilpéric, trône d'�cosse, le petit faust, l'oeil crevé, marguerite de navarre_, reproduced as they had been produced under the composer's direction when dick was stage-manager at that theatre. the american was interested in hervé; for he not only wrote the music but also the words of his operas. hervé was, therefore, the wagner of light comic opera. and if the new venture received sufficient support from the public dick would like to add other works by hervé--_la belle poule_ and _le hussard persecuté_--and having puzzled kate with many titles and an imaginary biography of this musical american he fell to telling her of blanche d'antigny, singing all the little tunes he could remember and branching off into an account of _le canard à trois becs_. this last opera was not by hervé, but the american liked it and might be persuaded to produce it later on. 'it contained a part,' he said, 'in which kate would succeed in establishing herself one of london's favourites;' but his praise of her singing and acting set her wondering if he were gulling her once more, or if he still believed in her. it might be that her continued sobriety had reawakened his old love for her, and she remembered suddenly that she had never really cared for drink, and never would have touched drink if dick had not driven her mad with jealousy. and the fact that her voice had returned to her helped her to believe that dick was sincere when he told her that she would be a better fredegonde than blanche d'antigny, who created the part originally. montgomery endorsed this view one evening; he refused to take 'no' for an answer: she must sing the score through with him, and several times he stopped playing; and looking up in her face told her he had never known a voice to improve so rapidly and so suddenly. dick nodded his acquiescence in montgomery's opinion and hoped there would be no more need to tell kate lies once she was settled in a lodging behind the cattle market. but in this he was mistaken, for in london the need to keep up the fiction of hervé's american admirer was more necessary than at margate. dick had to relate his different quests every evening. he had been after the lyceum, but was unable to get an answer from the lessee; he hoped to get one next week; and when next week came he spoke about the royalty and the adelphi and the haymarket, neglecting, however, to mention the theatre in which he hoped to produce laura's opera. 'the large stage of the lyceum would be excellently well suited,' he said, 'for a fine production of _chilpéric_,' and he besought kate to apply herself to the study of the part of fredegonde. his imagination led him into dreams of an english company going over to paris with all hervé's works, and kate obliterating the blanche d'antigny tradition. kate listened delighted, discovering in dick's praise of her singing a hope that his love of her had survived the many tribulations it had been through; and while listening she vowed she would never touch drink again. nor did her happiness vanish till morning, till she saw him struggling into his greatcoat, and foresaw the long dividing hours. but he had said so many kind things overnight that she was behoven to stifle complaint, and bore with her loneliness all day long refusing food, for without dick's presence food had no pleasure for her, however hungry she might be. she would wait contented hour after hour if she could have him to herself when he returned. but sometimes he would bring back a friend with him, and the pair would sit up talking of women and their aptitudes in different parts. as none of them were known personally to kate, the names they mentioned suggested only new causes for jealousy, and the thought that dick was living among all these women while she was hidden away in this lodging from night till morning, from morning till night, maddened her. it seemed to her that having been out all day dick might at least reserve his evenings for her; and one night she showed the man he had brought back to supper plainly that his absence would, so far as she was concerned, have been preferable to his company. 'i wouldn't have come back,' he said, 'only dick insisted;' and interrupting his regrets that she did not like him, she said: 'it isn't that i don't like you, but you're used to women who aren't in love with their husbands, and i'm in love with mine.' the friend repeated kate's words to dick, who said he hadn't a moment till the cast of the new piece was settled, and a few nights later he brought back some music which he said he would like her to try over. 'but it's manuscript, dick. why don't you bring home the printed score?' the lie that came to his lips was that the score of _trône d'�cosse_ had never been printed, and this seeming to her very unlikely she said she didn't care whether it had or hadn't, but was tired of living in islington, and would like to see something of the london of which she had heard so much. 'i've been in london all my life,' dick said, 'and i haven't been to the tower or to st. paul's. however, dear, if you'd like to see them we'll visit all these places together as soon as _chilpéric_ is produced.' with this promise he consoled her in a measure, and she watched dick depart and then took up a novel and read it till she could read no longer. she then went out for a little walk, but soon returned, finding it wearisome to be always asking the way. so forlorn and lost did she seem that even the fat landlady, the mother of the ten children who clattered about the head of the kitchen staircase, took pity upon her and told her the number of the bus that would bring her to the british museum, assuring her that she would find a great deal there to distract her attention. it did not matter to her where she went if dick wasn't with her; without dick all places were the same to her, and the british museum would do as well as any other place. she must go somewhere, and the british museum would do as well as the tower or st. paul's. there were things to be seen, and she didn't mind what she saw as long as she saw something new. she couldn't look any longer at the two pictures on the walls--"with the stream" and "against the stream," the wax fruit, the mahogany sideboard, the dingy furniture, the torn curtains; and of all she must get out of hearing of the children and the surly landlady, who a few minutes ago was less surly, and had told her of the british museum, and all the wonderful things that were to be seen there. but she hadn't the bus fare, and didn't like to ask the landlady for a few pence. as long as she hadn't any money she was out of temptation, and it was by her own wish that dick left her without money. as she walked to and fro she caught sight of his clothes thrown over the back of a chair in the bedroom; and he might have left a few pence in one of his pockets. she searched the trousers; how careless dick was: several shillings: one, two, three, four, five. five and sixpence. she would take sixpence. as she walked out of the bedroom clinking the coppers the desire to read his letters fell upon her, and yielding to it she put her hand into the inside pocket of his coat and drew from it a packet of letters and some papers, manuscripts, poems. 'now, who,' she asked, 'can have been sending him these _classical cartoons_, number four?' she read of heroes, the glory of manhood collected along the shores of the terrible river that guards the dominions of pluto. she knew nothing of pluto, but recognized the handwriting as a woman's, and the lines: 'zeus, the monarch of heaven, clothed in the form of a mortal, kneeling, caressed and caressing, drank from her lips joy and love-draughts,' caused kate to dash the manuscript from her. a letter accompanied the poem and read: 'my dear, nothing can be done without you, and if you don't come at once we shall miss getting a theatre this season, and without a theatre we are helpless.' kate did not need to read any more. the letter left no doubt that dick was engaged in an intrigue with a woman who had written some play or opera which he was going to produce, and the envelope out of which she had taken the letter bore the direction: 'richard lennox, esq., post restante, margate.' 'so it was lies all the while at margate,' she said to herself, walking about the room, stopping now and again to stare at some object which she did not see. 'there was no american, and no _chilpéric_, no _trône d'�cosse_, no _l'oeil crevé_, no _la belle poule_, no _marguerite de navarre_. lies, lies! nothing but lies! he never intended to produce one of them, or that i should play "fredegonde." lies! lies! and the great part in _le canard à trois becs_ which would establish my reputation in london. lies! he never intended to produce one of these operas,' she cried. 'he shut me up here in this lodging so that i should be out of the way while he carried on with that what's-her-name.' her brain at that instant seemed to catch fire, and snatching up some money from the mantelpiece, she rushed out of the house tumbling over the children as she made her way to the front door without hat or jacket. the sunlight awoke her and she looked round puzzled, and only just escaped being run over by a passing cart. in front of her was a public-house. drink! she went in and drank till she recovered her reason and began to lose it again. a 'bottle of gin, please,' she said, and put the money on the counter and returned to her lodging almost mad with jealousy and rage and thirst for revenge. 'no, she wouldn't drink any more, for if she were to drink any more she'd not be able to have it out with dick, and this time she would have it out with him and no mistake. if he were to kill her it didn't matter; but she would have it out with him.' as she sat by the table waiting hour after hour for him to return, her whole mind was expressed by the words--'i'll have it out with him'--and she didn't weary of repeating them, for it seemed to her that they kept her resolution from dying: what she feared most was that his presence might quell her resolution. to have it out with him as she was minded, she mustn't be drunk, nor yet too sober. he might bring home a friend with him, but that wouldn't stay her hand. montgomery too had deceived her. dick was rehearsing his opera; he had written music for that mrs. forest, and this was the end of their friendship. many hours went by, but they didn't seem long, passion gave her patience. at last a sound of footsteps caused her to start to her feet. it was dick. 'this is going to be an all-night affair,' he said to himself as soon as he crossed the threshold. 'i hope you didn't wait supper for me?' his manner was most conciliatory, and perhaps it was that conciliatory manner that inflamed her. 'business, i suppose; i know damned well what your business was: i know all about it, you and your woman, mrs. forest; the theatre she's taken for you; where you are rehearsing montgomery's opera. you cannot deny it,' she cried. 'mrs. forest is her name,' and reading in his face certain signs of his culpability her anger increased, her teeth were set and her eyes glared. dick feared she was going mad, and with an instinctive movement he put out his arms to restrain her. 'don't touch me! don't touch me!' she screamed, and struck at him with clenched fists, and then feeling that her blows were but puny she went for him like a bird of prey, all her fingers distended. 'take that, and that, and that, you beast! oh, you beast! you beast! you beast!' her shrieks rang through the house as she pursued him round the furniture; he retreating like a lumbering bull striving to escape from her claws. 'how do you like that?' she cried, as she tore at him with her nails again. 'that will teach you to go messing about after other women. i'll settle you before i've done with you.' chairs were thrown down, the coal-scuttle was upset, and at last, as dick tried to get out of the room, kate stumbled against a rosewood cabinet, sending one of the green vases with its glass shade crashing to the ground, summoning the landlady. dick spoke about his wife having had a fit. 'fit or no fit, i hope you'll leave my house to-morrow.' 'meanwhile,' dick answered, 'will you leave my room?' and he shut the door in the face of the indignant householder. kate, who had now recovered herself a little, poured out a large glass of raw gin, and to her surprise dick made no attempt to prevent her drinking it. 'as soon as she drinks herself helpless the better,' he thought, as he went into the bedroom to attend to his wounds. the scratches she had given him before their marriage were nothing to these. one side of his nose was well-nigh ripped open, and there were two big, deep gashes running right across his face, from the cheek-bone to his ear. it was very lucky, he thought, she hadn't had his eye out, and it might be as well to go round to the apothecary's and get some vaseline, some antiseptic treatment, for nails are poisonous, he added, and his eyes going round the room caught sight of his clothes in disorder. 'ah! she has been at my clothes,' and he took up the classical cartoons and his letters and put them away into his pocket, and went into the sitting room, and tried to explain to his wife that he was going out to see if he could get something from the apothecary to heal the wounds she had given him. kate did not answer. 'she's dead drunk,' he said, and it seemed to him that he couldn't do better than to undress her and put her into bed, and when he had done this he lay down upon a sofa hoping that he would wake first, and be able to get out of the house without disturbing her, leaving word with the landlady that he would come back as soon as his rehearsal was over, and make arrangements to leave her house since she didn't wish them to stay any longer. he fell asleep thinking that he might find his landlady in a different mood, and might persuade her in the morning to allow them to stay on. the vase, of course, should be paid for. there was a kindly look in her pleasant country face when she wasn't angry; his torn face might win her pity, and not wishing to increase his troubles, she would probably allow them to stay on; if she didn't he would have to find another lodging that very afternoon, which would be unfortunate, for his engagements were many. as it was he'd have to hasten to keep an appointment which he had made with mrs. forest in the national gallery. 'she really will have to make some alterations in her second act,' he said, going to the glass. kate had clawed him with a vengeance, and he'd have to tell laura how he came by his torn face; and after some consideration it seemed to him that it would be well to admit that he had received these wounds in a conflict with a wife who was, unfortunately, given to drink. it was on these thoughts he fell asleep, and overslept himself, he feared, but kate was still asleep, and without awakening her he stole downstairs to visit the landlady in her parlour, but hearing his step she bounced out of the room with a view, no doubt, to repeating the warning she had given him overnight, but the sight of his torn face brought pity into hers, and she said: 'oh, mr. lennox, i'm so sorry for you.' a little sympathetic conversation followed; and dick went off to meet laura, whom he recognized in the woman who leaned over the railings between the pillars, seemingly attracted by the view across trafalgar square. she still wore her green silk dress, the one which he had first seen her in on the pier at hastings, and the long draggled feather boa. 'she doesn't spend money on dress,' he thought as he lifted his hat with not quite the same ceremonious gesture as usual, for he didn't wish to exhibit his scars yet. 'so here you are, dick, and i waiting for you on the steps of this gallery, glorious with all the imaginations of the heroes.' 'she hasn't seen the scratches yet,' he said to himself, and turned from the light instinctively, preferring that she should make the discovery indoors, rather than out of doors. his wounds would appear less in the gallery than in the open air. 'why didn't she take a little more trouble with her make-up?' he asked himself, and then reproved himself for describing it as a make-up. 'she's not made up,' he said to himself, 'she's painted,' and he wondered how it was that she could plaster her dark skin so flagrantly with carmine, and put her eyebrows so high up in the forehead. 'yet the face,' he said, 'is a finely moulded one, and compelling when she forgets her cosmetics,' and while dick regretted that she didn't show more skill with these, he heard her telling him that she would prefer to stop and talk with him in the gallery devoted to the italian pictures than elsewhere; 'the sublime conceptions of raphael raise me above myself.' and then, as if afraid that her words would seem vainglorious to dick, she said: 'you're always in the same mood, never rising above yourself or sinking below yourself, finding it difficult to understand the pain that those who live mostly in the spiritual plane experience lest they fall into a lower plane. not that i regard you, dick, as a lower plane, but your plane is not mine, and that is why you're so necessary to me, and why, perhaps, i'm so necessary to you, or would be if i'm not. come, let us sit here in front of the raphael and talk, since we must, of comic opera. it's a pity we're not talking of the _parcoe_ who have been in my mind all the morning,' and she began to recite some verses that she had written. but, interrupting herself suddenly, she cried: 'dick, who has been scratching you? how did your face get torn like that--who's been scratching you?' and dick answered: 'my wife.' 'your wife? but you never told me that you were married.' 'if i'd told you i was married i would have had to tell you that my wife is a drunkard and is rapidly drinking herself to death, a thing that no man likes to speak about.' 'my poor friend, i didn't mean to reprove you. how did all this come about?' it wouldn't do to admit that kate had discovered laura's letters and poems in his pockets, and so he told the story of a former experience with his wife, and had barely finished it when laura begged of him to tell her how he had met his wife. and when he had told her the story, to which she listened solemnly, she answered, and there was the same gravity in her voice as in her face: 'all this comes, my dear dick, of lewdness.' 'but, laura, i was faithful to my wife.' 'but she was the wife of another man,' laura replied, 'not that that is an insuperable barrier, but you brought, i fear, lewdness into your conjugal life, and lewdness is fatal to happiness whether it be indulged within or outside the bonds of wedlock. i'm sorry,' she said, 'that you had to leave yarmouth before my lecture on the chastity of the marriage state.' 'it wouldn't have mattered,' dick replied, 'for my wife had taken to drink long before we met at hastings.' an answer that darkened laura's face despite all the paint she wore, and encouraged dick to ask her if she had never felt the thorns of passion prick her when she ran away from her convent school. she seemed uncertain what answer she should return, but only for a moment; and recovering herself quickly she maintained that it wasn't passion, which is but another name for lewdness, but imagination that had prompted this elopement, and that if she had gone to bulgaria it was to seek there a nobler life than the one she had left behind. 'it was the immortal that drew me,' she said. 'even so,' dick answered, 'the mortal seems necessary for the immortal, and to provide him with a habitation a woman must give herself to a man.' 'that,' she replied, 'is one of the penalties entailed by our first parents upon women, but one that is entailed upon a condition that you have not respected, but which i have striven always to respect myself. it would be impossible for me to give myself to a man unless i thought i was going to bear him a child.' it was on dick's lips to remind laura that a woman can always think she is going to bear a child, but he refrained, it seeming to him that his purpose would be better served by allowing laura to justify herself as she pleased, and he waited for an opportunity to speak to her about the alteration which he deemed altogether necessary in the second act. but laura was away on her favourite theme, and in the end he had recourse to his watch. 'my dear laura, i'm due at rehearsal in ten minutes from now.' 'well, let's go,' she cried. 'but, my dear, this is what i've come to tell you. the second act,'--and he explained the difficulty which would have to be removed. 'now, like a dear, good girl, will you go home and do this and bring it down to the theatre to-morrow morning at eleven so that we may have an opportunity of going through it together before rehearsal?' in the meantime, kate lay on her bed, helpless as ever, just as dick had left her; and it was not until he had given his preliminary instructions to the ballet-girls, and montgomery had struck the first notes of his opening chorus, that a ray of consciousness pierced through the heavy, drunken stupor that pressed upon her brain. with vague movements of hands, she endeavoured to fasten the front of her dress, and with a groan rolled herself out of the light; but her efforts to fall back into insensibility were unavailing, and like the dawn that slips and swells through the veils of night, a pale waste of consciousness forced itself upon her. first came the curtains of the bed, then the bare blankness of the wall, and then the great throbbing pain that lay like a lump of lead just above her forehead. her mouth was clammy as if it were filled with glue, her limbs weak as if they had been beaten to a pulp by violent blows. she was all pain, but, worse still, a black horror of her life crushed and terrified her, until she buried her face in the pillow and wept and moaned for mercy. but to remain in bed was impossible. the pallor of the place was intolerable, and sliding her legs over the side she stood, scarcely able to keep her feet. the room swam as if in a mist; she held her head with clasped hands; the top of it seemed to be lifting off, and it was with much difficulty that she staggered as far as the chest of drawers, where she remained for some minutes trying to recover herself, thinking of what had happened overnight. she had been drunk, she knew that, but where was dick? where had he gone? what had she said to him? all mental effort was agony; but she had to think, and straining at the threads of memory, she strove to follow one to the end. but it was no use, it soon became hopelessly entangled, and with a low cry she moaned, 'oh, my poor head! my poor head! i cannot, cannot remember.' but the question: what has become of dick? still continued to torture her, till, raising her face suddenly from her arm, she hitched up her falling skirts, and seeing at that moment the bottle on the table, she went into the sitting-room and poured herself out a little, which she mixed with water. 'just a drop,' she murmured to herself, 'to pull me together. it was his fault; until he put me in a passion i was all right.' spreading and definite thoughts began to emerge, and for a long time she sat moodily thinking over her wrongs, and as her thoughts wavered they grew softer and more argumentative. she considered the question from all sides, and, reasoning with herself, was disposed to conclude that it was not all her fault. if she did drink, it was jealousy that drove her to it. why wasn't he faithful to her who had given up everything for him? why did he want to be always running after a lot of other women? where was he now, she'd like to know? as this question appeared in the lens of her thought, she raised her head, and although boozed the memory of mrs. forest's letters filled her mind. 'oh yes, that's where he's gone to, is it?' she murmured to herself. 'so he's down with his poetess at the opéra comique, rehearsing montgomery's opera.' a determination to follow him slowly formed itself in her mind, and she managed to map out the course that she would have to pursue. it seemed to her that she was beset with difficulties. to begin with, she did not know where the theatre was, and she could not conceal from herself the fact that she was scarcely in a fit state to take a long walk through the london streets. the spirit drunk on an empty stomach had gone to her head; she reeled a little when she walked; and her own incapacity to act maddened her. oh, good heavens! how her head was splitting! what would she not give to be all right just for a couple of hours, just long enough to go and tell that beast of a husband of hers what a pig he was, and let the whole theatre know how he was treating his wife. it was he who drove her to drink. yes, she would go and do this. it was true her head seemed as if it were going to roll off her shoulders, but a good sponging would do it good, and then a bottle or two of soda would put her quite straight--so straight that nobody would know she had touched a drop. it took kate about half an hour to drench herself in a basin, and regardless of her dress, she let her hair lie dripping on her shoulders. the landlady brought her up the soda-water, and seeing what a state her lodger was in, she placed it on the table without a word, without even referring to the notice to quit she had given overnight; and steadying her voice as best she could, kate asked her to call a cab. 'hansom, or four-wheeler?' 'fo-four wheel-er--if you please.' 'yes, that'll suit you best,' said the woman, as she went downstairs. 'you'd perhaps fall out of a hansom. if i were your husband i'd break every bone in your body.' but kate was now much soberer, and weak and sick she leaned back upon the hard cushions of the clattering cab. her mouth was full of water, and the shifting angles of the streets produced on her an effect similar to sea-sickness. london rang in her ears; she could hear a piano tinkling; she saw dick directing the movements of a line of girls. then her dream was brought to an end by a gulp. oh! the fearful nausea; and she did not feel better until, flooding her dress and ruining the red velvet seat, all she had drunk came up. but the vomit brought her great relief, and had it not been for a little dizziness and weakness, she would have felt quite right when she arrived at the stage-door. in a terrible state of dirt and untidiness she was surely, but she noticed nothing, her mind being now fully occupied in thinking what she should say, first to the stage-door-keeper, and then to her husband. at the corner of wych street she dismissed the cab, and this done she did not seem to have courage enough for anything. she felt as if she would like to sit down on a doorstep and cry. the menacing threats, the bitter upbraidings she had intended, all slipped from her like dreams, and she felt utterly wretched. at that moment, in her little walk up the pavement she found herself opposite a public-house. something whispered in her ear that after her sickness one little nip of brandy was necessary, and would put her straight in a moment. she hesitated, but someone pushed her from behind and she went in. a four of brandy freshened her up wonderfully, enabling her to think of what she had come to do, and to remember how badly she was being treated. a second drink put light into her eyes and wickedness into her head, and she felt she could, and would, face the devil. 'i'll give it to him; i'll teach him that i'm not to be trodden on,' she said to herself as she strutted manfully towards the stage-door, walking on her heels so as to avoid any unsteadiness of gait. the man in the little box was old and feeble. he said he would send her name by the first person going down; but kate was not in a mood to brook delays, and, profiting by his inability to stop her, she banged through the swinging door and commenced the descent of a long flight of steps. below her was the stage, and between the wings she could see the girls arranged in a semicircle. dick, with a big staff in hand, stood in front of the footlights directing the movements of a procession which was being formed; the piano tinkled merrily on the o.p. side. 'mr. chappel, will you be good enough to play the "just put this in your pocket" chorus over again?' cried dick, stamping his staff heavily upon the boards. 'now then, girls, i hear a good deal too much talking going on at the back there. i dare say it's very amusing; but if you'd try to combine business with pleasure---now, who did i put in section one?' kate hesitated a moment, arrested by the tones of his voice, and she could not avoid thinking of the time when she used to play clairette; besides, all the well-known faces were there. our lives move as in circles; no matter what strange vicissitudes we pass through, we generally find ourselves gliding once more into the well-known grooves, and dick, in forming the present company, had naturally fallen back upon the old hands, who had travelled with him in the country. they were nearly all there. mortimer, with his ringlets and his long nasal drawl, stood, as usual, in the wings, making ill-natured remarks. dubois strutted as before, and tilting his bishop's hat, explained that he would take no further engagement as a singer; if people would not let him act they would have to do without him. with her dyed hair tucked neatly away under her bonnet miss leslie smiled as agreeably as ever. beaumont alone seemed to be missing, and montgomery, in all the importance of a going-to-be-produced author, strode along up and down the stage, apparently busied in thought, the tails of a newmarket coat still flapping about his thin legs; and when he appeared in profile against the scenery he looked, as he always had done, like the flitting shadow thrown by an enormous magic-lantern. kate sullenly watched them, gripping the rail of the staircase tightly. the momentary softening of heart, occasioned by the remembrance of old times, died away in the bitterness of the thought that she who had counted for so much was now pushed into a corner to live forgotten or disdained. why was she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. at once the answer came. because your husband hates you--because he wants to make love to another woman. then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. she did not even hear mortimer and dubois cry out as she pushed past, 'there's mrs. lennox!' in the middle of the stage, however, she looked round, discountenanced by the silence and the crowd, and, hoping to calm her, dick advised her, in whispers, to go upstairs to his room. but this was the signal for her to break forth. 'go up to your room?' she screamed. 'never, never! do you suppose it is to talk to you that i came here? no, i despise you too much. i hate you, and i want every one here to know how you treat me.' with a dull stare she examined the circle of girls who stood whispering in groups, as if she were going to address one in particular, and several drew back, frightened. dick attempted to say something, but it seemed that the very sound of his voice was enough. 'go away, go away!' she exclaimed at the top of her voice. 'go away; don't touch me! go to that woman of yours--mrs. forest--go to her, and be damned, you beast! you know she's paying for everything here. you know that you are----' 'for goodness' sake remember what you're saying,' said dick, interrupting, and trembling as if for his life. he cast an anxious glance around to see if the lady in question was within hearing. fortunately she was not on the stage. the chorus crowded timidly forward looking like a school in their walking-dresses. the carpenters had ceased to hammer, and were peeping down from the flies; kate stood balancing herself and staring blindly at those who surrounded her. leslie and montgomery, in the position of old friends, were endeavouring to soothe her, whilst mortimer and dubois argued passionately as to when they had seen her drunk for the first time. the first insisted that when she had joined them at hanley she was a bit inebriated; the latter declared that it had begun with the champagne on her wedding day. 'don't you remember, dick was married with a scratched face?' 'to judge from present appearances,' said the comedian, forcing his words slowly through his nose, 'he's likely to die with one.' at this sally three supers retired into the wings holding their sides, and dubois, furious at being outdone in a joke, walked away in high dudgeon, calling mortimer an unfeeling brute. in the meantime the drunken row was waxing more furious every moment. struggling frantically with her friends, kate called attention to the sticking-plaster on dick's face, and declared that she would do for him. 'you see what i gave him last night, and he deserved it. oh! the beast! and i'll give him more; and if you knew all you wouldn't blame me. it was he who seduced me, who got me to run away from home, and he deserts me for other women. but he shan't, he shan't, he shan't; i'll kill him first; yes, i will, and nobody shall stop me.' dick listened quite broken with shame for himself and for her; as an excuse for the absence of his wife from the theatre he had told mortimer and hayes that london did not agree with her, and that she had to spend most of her time at the seaside. all had condoled with him, and when they were searching london for a second lady, all had agreed that mrs. lennox was just the person they wanted for the part. what a pity, they said, she was not in town. at the present moment dick wished her the other side of jordan. for all he knew, she might remain screaming at him the whole day, and if mrs. forest came back--well, he didn't know what would happen; the whole game would then be up the spout. perhaps the best thing to do would be to tell montgomery of the danger his piece was in; he and kate had always been friends; she might listen to him. such were dick's reflections as he stood bashfully trying to avoid the eyes of his ballet-girls. for the life of him he didn't know which way to look. in front of him was a wall of people, whereon certain faces detached themselves. he saw dubois' mumming mug widening with delight until the grin formed a semi-circle round the jew nose. mortimer looked on with the mock earnestness of a tortured saint in a stained-glass window. pity was written on all the girls' faces; all were sorry for dick, especially a tall woman who forgot herself so completely that she threw her arms about a super and sobbed on his shoulder. but kate still continued to advance, although held by montgomery and miss leslie. the long black hair hung in disordered masses; her brown eyes were shot with golden lights; the green tints in her face became, in her excessive pallor, dirty and abominable in colour, and she seemed more like a demon than a woman as her screams echoed through the empty theatre. 'by jove! we ought to put up _jane eyre_,' said mortimer. 'if she were to play the mad woman like that, we'd be sure to draw full houses.' 'i believe you,' said dubois; but at that moment he was interrupted by a violent scream, and suddenly disengaging herself from those who held her, kate rushed at dick. with one hand she grappled him by the throat, and before anyone could interfere she succeeded in nearly tearing the shirt from his back. when at length they were separated, she stood staring and panting, every fibre of her being strained with passion; but she did not again burst forth until someone, in a foolish attempt to pacify her, ventured to side with her in her denunciation of her husband. 'how should such as you dare to say a word against him! i will not hear him abused! no, i will not; i say he's a good man. yes, yes! he is a good man, the best man that ever lived!' she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the boards, 'the best man that ever lived! i will not hear a word against him! no, i will not! he's my husband; he married me! yes he did; i can show my certificate, and that's more than any one of you can. 'i know you, a damned lot of hussies! i know you; i was one of you myself. you think i wasn't. well, i can prove it. you go and ask montgomery if i didn't play serpolette all through the country, and clairette too. i should like to see any of you do that, with the exception of lucy, who was always a good friend to me; but the rest of you i despise as the dirt under my feet; so do you think that i would permit you--that i came here to listen to my husband being abused, and by such as you! if he has his faults he's accountable to none but me.' here she had to pause for lack of breath; and dick, who had been pursuing his shirt-stud, which had rolled into the foot-lights, now drew himself up, and in his stage-commanding voice declared the rehearsal to be over. a few of the girls lingered, but they were beckoned away by the others, who saw that the present time was not suitable for the discussion of boots, tights, and dressing-rooms. there was no one left but leslie, montgomery, dick, kate, and harding, who, twisting his moustache, watched and listened apparently with the greatest interest. 'oh, you've no idea what a nice woman she used to be, and is, were it not for that cursed drink,' said montgomery, with the tears running down his nose. 'you remember her, leslie, don't you? isn't what i say true? i never liked a woman so much in my life.' 'you were a friend of hers, then?' said harding. 'i should think i was.' 'then you never were--yes, yes, i understand. a little friendship flavoured with love. yes, yes. wears better, perhaps, than the genuine article. what do you think, leslie?' 'not bad,' said the prima donna, 'for people with poor appetites. a kind of diet suitable for lent, i should think.' 'ah! a title for a short story, or better still for an operetta. what do you think, montgomery? shall i do you a book entitled _lovers in lent_, or _a lover's lent_? and leslie will--' 'no, i won't. none of your forty days for me.' 'i can't understand how you people can go on talking nonsense with a scene so terrible passing under your eyes,' cried the musician, as he pointed to kate, who was calling after dick as she staggered in pursuit of him up the stairs towards the stage-door. 'well, what do you want me to do?' 'she'll disgrace him in the street.' 'i can't help that. i never interfere in a love affair; and this is evidently the great passion of a life.' montgomery cast an indignant glance at the novelist and rushed after his friends; but when he arrived at the stage-door he saw the uselessness of his interference. it was in the narrow street; the heat sweltered between the old houses that leaned and lolled upon the huge black traversing beams like aged women on crutches; and kate raved against dick in language that was fearful to hear amid the stage carpenters, the chorus-girls, the idlers that a theatre collects standing with one foot in the gutter, where vegetable refuse of all kinds rotted. her beautiful black hair was now hanging over her shoulders like a mane; someone had trodden on her dress and nearly torn it from her waist, and, in avid curiosity, women with dyed hair peeped out of a suspicious-looking tobacco shop. over the way, stuck under an overhanging window, was an orange-stall; the proprietress stood watching, whilst a crowd of vermin-like children ran forward, delighted at the prospect of seeing a woman beaten. close by, in shirt-sleeves, the pot-boy flung open the public-house door, partly for the purpose of attracting custom, half with the intention of letting a little air into the bar-room. 'oh, kate! i beg of you not to go in there,' said dick; 'you've had enough; do come home!' 'come home!' she shrieked, 'and with you, you beast! it was you who seduced me, who got me away from my husband.' this occasioned a good deal of amusement in the crowd, and several voices asked for information. 'and how did he manage to do that, marm?' said one. 'with a bottle of gin. what do you think?' cried another. there were moments when dick longed for the earth to open; but he nevertheless continued to try to prevent kate from entering the public-house. 'i will drink! i will drink! i will drink! and not because i like it, but to spite you, because i hate you.' when she came out she appeared to be a little quieted, and dick tried very hard to persuade her to get into a cab and drive home. but the very sound of his voice, the very sight of him, seemed to excite her, and in a few moments she broke forth into the usual harangue. several times the temptation to run away became almost irresistible, but with a noble effort of will he forced himself to remain with her. hoping to avoid some part of the ridicule that was being so liberally showered upon him, he besought of her to keep up drury lane and not descend into the strand. 'you don't want to be seen with me; i know, you'd prefer to walk there with mrs. forest. you think i shall disgrace you. well, come along, then. '"look at me here! look at me there! criticize me everywhere! i am so sweet from head to feet, and most perfect and complete."' 'that's right, old woman, give us a song. she knows the game,' answered another. raising his big hat from his head, dick wiped his face, and as if divining his extreme despair, kate left off singing and dancing, and the procession proceeded in quiet past several different wine-shops. it was not until they came to short's she declared she was dying of thirst and must have a drink. dick forbade the barman to serve her, and brought upon himself the most shocking abuse. knowing that he would be sure to meet a crowd of his 'pals' at the gaiety bar, he used every endeavour to persuade her to cross the street and get out of the sun. 'don't bother me with your sun,' she exclaimed surlily; and then, as if struck by the meaning of the word, she said, 'but it wasn't a son, it was a daughter; don't you remember?' 'oh, kate! how can you speak so?' 'speak so? i say it was a daughter, and she died; and you said it was my fault, as you say everything is my fault, you beast! you venomous beast! yes, she did die. it was a pity; i could have loved her.' at this moment dick felt a heavy hand clapped on his shoulder, and turning round he saw a pal of his. 'what, dick, my boy! a drunken chorus lady; trying to get her home? always up to some charitable action.' 'no; she's my wife.' 'i beg your pardon, old chap; you know i didn't mean it;' and the man disappeared into the bar-room. 'yes, i'm his wife,' kate shrieked after him. 'i got that much right out of him at least; and i played the serpolette in the _cloches_.' '"look at me here, look at me there,"' she sang, flirting with her abominable skirt, amused by the applause of the roughs. 'but i'm going to have a drink here,' she said, suddenly breaking off. 'no, you can't, my good woman,' said the stout guardian at the door. 'and why--why not?' 'that don't matter. you go on, or i'll have to give you in charge.' kate was not yet so drunk that the words 'in charge' did not frighten her, and she answered humbly enough, 'i'm here wi-th--my hu-s-band, and as you're so im-impertinent i shall go-go elsewhere.' at the next place they came to dick did not protest against her being served, but waited, confident of the result, until she had had her four of gin, and came reeling out into his arms. shaking herself free she stared at him, and when he was fully recognized, cursed him for his damned interference. she could now scarcely stand straight on her legs, and, after staggering a few yards further, fell helplessly on the pavement. calling a cab, he bundled her into it and drove away. xxvii 'oh, dick, dear, what did i do yesterday? do tell me about yesterday. was i very violent? and those wounds on your face, i didn't do that; don't tell me that i did. dick, dick, are you going to leave me?' 'i have to attend to my business, kate.' 'ah, your business! your business! mrs. forest is your business; you've no other business but her now. and that is what is driving me to drink.' 'oh, kate, don't begin it again. i've a rehearsal----' 'yes, the rehearsal of her opera and montgomery's music. i did think he was my friend; yet he is putting up her opera to music, and all the while he was setting it you were telling me lies about _chilpéric_, saying that i was to play the fredegonde, and all the principal parts in the great hervé festival, that the american--but there was no american. it was cruel of you, dick, to shut me up here with nobody to speak to; nothing to do but to wait for you hour after hour, and when you come home to hear nothing from you but lies, nothing but lies! _chilpéric, le petit faust, l'oeil créve, trône d'�cosse, marguerite de navarre, la belle poule_. and all the music i've learnt hoping that i would be allowed to sing it; and yet you expect that a woman who is deceived like that can abstain from drink. why, you drive me to it, dick. an angel from heaven wouldn't abstain from drink. away you go in the morning to mrs. forest--to her opera.' 'but, kate, there's nothing between me and mrs. forest. she is a very clever woman, and i am doing her opera for her. how are we to live if you come between me and my business?' 'womanizing is your business,' kate answered suddenly. 'well, don't let us argue it,' dick answered. he tied his shoe-strings and sought for his hat. 'so you're going,' she said; 'and when shall i see you again?' 'i shall try to get home for dinner.' 'what time?' 'not before eight.' 'i shall not see you before twelve,' she replied, and she experienced a sad sinking of the heart when she heard the door close behind him, a sad sinking that she would have to endure till she heard his latchkey, and that would not be for many hours, perhaps not till midnight. she did not know how she would be able to endure all these hours; to sleep some of them away would be the best thing she could do, and with that intention she drew down the blind and threw herself on the bed, and lay between sleeping and waking till the afternoon. then, feeling a little better, she rang and asked for a cup of tea. it tasted very insipid, but she gulped it down as best she could, making wry faces and feeling more miserable than ever she had felt before; afraid to look back on yesterday, afraid to look forward on the morrow, she bethought herself of the past, of the happy days when montgomery used to come and teach her to sing, and her triumphs in the part of clairette; she was quite as successful in serpolette; people had liked her in serpolette, and to recall those days more distinctly she opened a box in which she kept her souvenirs: a withered flower, a broken cigarette-holder, two or three old buttons that had fallen from his clothes, and a lock of hair, and it was under these that the prize of prizes lay--a string of false pearls. she liked to run them through her fingers and to see them upon her neck. she still kept the dresses she wore in her two favourite parts, the stockings and the shoes, and having nothing to do, no way of passing the time away, she bethought herself of dressing herself in the apparel of her happy days, presenting, when the servant came up with her dinner, a spectacle that almost caused emma to drop the dish of cold mutton. 'lord, mrs. lennox, i thought i see a ghost; you in that white dress, oh, what lovely clothes!' 'these were the clothes i used to wear when i was on the stage.' 'but law, mum, why aren't you on the stage now?' kate began to tell her story to the servant-girl, who listened till a bell rang, and she said: 'that's mr. so-and-so ringing for his wife; i must run and see to it. you must excuse me, mum.' the cold mutton and the damp potatoes did not tempt her appetite, and catching sight of herself in the glass, bitter thoughts of the wrongs done to her surged up in her mind. the tiny nostrils dilated and the upper lip contracted, and for ten minutes she stood, her hands grasping nervously at the back of her chair; the canine teeth showed, for the project of revenge was mounting to her head. 'he'll not be back till midnight; all this while he is with leslie and mrs. forest, or some new girl perhaps. yet when he returns to me, when he is wearied out, he expects to find me sober and pleased to see him. but he shall never see me sober or pleased to see him again.' on these words she walked across the room to the fire-place, and putting her hand up the chimney brought down a bottle of old tom, and sat moodily sipping gin and water till she heard his key in the lock. 'he's back earlier than i expected,' she said. dick entered in his usual deliberate, elephantine way. kate made no sign till he was seated, then she asked what the news was. it was clearly out of the question to tell her that he had been round to tea with one of the girls; to explain how he had wheedled mrs. forest into all sorts of theatrical follies was likewise not to be thought of as a subject of news, and as to making conversation out of the rest of the day's duties, he really didn't see how he was to do it. miss howard had put out the entire procession by not listening to his instructions; miss adair, although she was playing the brigand of the ultramarine mountains, had threatened to throw up her part if she were not allowed to wear her diamond ear-rings. the day had gone in deciding such questions, had passed in drilling those infernal girls; and what interest could there be in going through it all over again? besides, he never knew how or where he might betray himself, and kate was so quick in picking up the slightest word and twisting it into extraordinary meanings, that he really would prefer to talk about something else. 'i can't understand how you can have been out all day without having heard something. it is because you want to keep me shut up here and not let me know anything of your going-on; but i shall go down to the theatre to-morrow and have it out of you.' 'my dear, i assure you that i was at the rehearsal all day. the girls don't know their music yet, and it puts me out in my stage arrangement. i give you my word that is all i heard or saw to-day. i've nothing to conceal from you.' 'you're a liar, and you know you are!' blows and shrieks followed. 'i shall pull that woman's nose off; i know i shall!' 'i give you my word, my dear, that i've been the whole day with montgomery and harding cutting the piece.' 'cutting the piece! and i should like to know why i'm not in that piece. i suppose it was you who kept me out of it. oh, you beast! why did you ever have anything to do with me? it's you who are ruining me. were it not for you, do you think i should be drinking? not i--it was all your fault.' dick made no attempt to answer. he was very tired. kate continued her march up and down the room for some moments in silence, but he could see from the twitching of her face and the swinging of her arms that the storm was bound to burst soon. presently she said: 'you go and get me something to drink; i've had nothing all this evening.' 'oh, kate dear! i beg of--' 'oh, you won't, won't you? we'll see about that,' she answered as she looked around the room for the heaviest object she could conveniently throw at him. seeing how useless it would be to attempt to contradict her in her present mood, dick rose to his feet and said hurriedly: 'now there's no use in getting into a passion, kate. i'll go, i'll go.' 'you'd better, i can tell you.' 'what shall i get, then?' 'get me half a pint of gin, and be quick about it--i'm dying of thirst.' even dick, accustomed as he was now to these scenes, could not repress a look in which there was at once mingled pity, astonishment and fear, so absolutely demoniacal did this little woman seem as she raved under the watery light of the lodging-house gas, her dark complexion gone to a dull greenish pallor. by force of contrast she called to his mind the mild-eyed workwoman he had known in the linen-draper's shop in hanley, and he asked himself if it were possible that she and this raging creature, more like a tiger in her passion than a human being, were one and the same person? he could not choose but wonder. but another scream came, bidding him make haste, or it would be worse for him, and he bent his head and went to fetch the gin. in the meantime kate's fury leaped, crackled, and burnt with the fierceness of a house in the throes of conflagration, and in the smoke-cloud of hatred which enveloped her, only fragments of ideas and sensations flashed like falling sparks through her mind. up and down the room she walked swinging her arms, only hesitating for some new object whereon to wreak new fury. suddenly it struck her that dick had been too long away--that he was keeping her waiting on purpose; and grinding her teeth, she muttered: 'oh, the beast! would he--would he keep me waiting, and since nine this morning i've been alone!' in an instant her resolve was taken. it came to her sullenly, obtusely, like the instinct of revenge to an animal. she did not stop to consider what she was doing, but, seizing a large stick, the handle of a brush that happened to have been broken, she stationed herself at the top of the landing. a feverish tremor agitated her as she waited in the semi-darkness of the stairs. but at last she heard the door open, and dick came up slowly with his usual heavy tread. she made neither sign nor stir, but allowed him to get past her, and then, raising the brush-handle, she landed him one across the back. the poor man uttered a long cry, and the crash of broken glass was heard. 'what did you hit me like that for?' he cried, holding himself with both hands. 'you beast, you! i'll teach you to keep me waiting! you would, would you! do you want another? go into the sitting-room.' dick obeyed humbly and in silence. his only hope was that the landlady had not been awakened, and he felt uneasily at his pockets, through which he could feel the gin dripping down his legs. 'well, have you brought the drink i sent you for? where is it?' 'well,' replied dick, desirous of conciliating at any price, 'it was in my pocket, but when you hit me with that stick you broke it.' 'i broke it?' cried kate, her eyes glistening with fire. 'yes, dear, you did; it wasn't my fault.' 'wasn't your fault! oh, you horrid wretch! you put it there on purpose that i should break it.' 'oh, now really, kate,' he cried, shocked by the unfairness of the accusation, 'how could i know that you were going to hit me there?' 'i don't know and i don't care; what's that to me? but what i'm sure of is that you always want to spite me, that you hate me, that you would wish to see me dead, so that you might marry mrs. forest.' 'i can't think how you can say such things. i've often told you that mrs. forest and i--' 'oh! don't bother me. i'm not such a fool. i know she keeps you, and she will have to pay me a drink to-night. go and get another bottle of gin; and mind you pay for it with the money she gave you to-day. yes, she shall stand me a drink to-night!' 'i give you my word i haven't another penny-piece upon me; it's just the accident--' but dick did not get time to finish the sentence; he was interrupted by a heavy blow across the face, and like a panther that has tasted blood, she rushed at him again, screaming all the while: 'oh, you've no money! you liar! you liar! so you would make me believe that she does not give you money, that you have no money of hers in your pocket. you would keep it all for yourself; but you shan't, no, you shan't, for i will tear it from you and throw it in your face! oh, that filthy money! that filthy money!' the patience with which he bore with her was truly angelic. he might easily have felled her to the ground with one stroke, but he contented himself with merely warding off the blows she aimed at him. from his great height and strength, he was easily able to do this, and she struck at him with her little womanish arms as she might against a door. 'take down your hands,' she screamed, exasperated to a last degree. 'you would strike me, would you? you beast! i know you would.' her rage had now reached its height. showing her clenched teeth, she foamed at the mouth, the bloodshot eyes protruded from their sockets, and her voice grew more and more harsh and discordant. but, although the excited brain gave strength to the muscles and energy to the will, unarmed she could do nothing against dick, and suddenly becoming conscious of this she rushed to the fireplace and seized the poker. with one sweep of the arm she cleared the mantel-board, and the mirror came in for a tremendous blow as she advanced round the table brandishing her weapon; but, heedless of the shattered glass, she followed in pursuit of dick, who continued to defend himself dexterously with a chair. and it is difficult to say how long this combat might have lasted if dick's attention had not been interrupted by the view of the landlady's face at the door; and so touched was he by the woman's dismay when she looked upon her broken furniture, that he forgot to guard himself from the poker. kate took advantage of the occasion and whirled the weapon round her head. he saw it descending in time, and half warded off the blow; but it came down with awful force on the forearm, and glancing off, inflicted a severe scalp wound. the landlady screamed 'murder!' and dick, seeing that matters had come to a crisis, closed in upon his wife, and undeterred by yells and struggles, pinioned her and forced her into a chair. 'oh, dear! oh, dear! you're all bleeding, sir,' cried the landlady; 'she has nearly killed you.' 'never mind me. but what are we to do? i think she has gone mad this time.' 'that's what i think,' said the landlady, trying to make herself heard above kate's shrieks. 'well, then, go and fetch a doctor, and let's hear what he has to say,' replied dick, as he changed his grip on kate's arm, for in a desperate struggle she had nearly succeeded in wrenching herself free. the landlady retreated precipitately towards the door. 'well, will you go?' 'yes, yes, i'll run at once.' 'you'd better,' yelled the mad woman after her. 'i'll give it to you! let me go! let me go, will you?' but dick never ceased his hold of her, and the blood, dripping upon her, trickled in large drops into her ears, and down into her neck and bosom. 'you're spitting on me, you beast! you filthy beast! i'll pay you out for this.' then she perceived that it was blood; the intonation of her voice changed, and in terror she screamed, 'murder! murder! he's murdering me! is there no one here to save me?' the minutes seemed like eternities. dick felt himself growing faint, but should he lose his power over her before the doctor arrived, the consequences might be fatal to himself, so he struggled with her for very life. at last the door was opened, and a man walked into the room, tripping in so doing over a piece of the broken mirror. it was the doctor, and accustomed as he was to betray surprise at nothing, he could not repress a look of horror on catching sight of the scene around him. the apartment was almost dismantled; chairs lay backless about the floor amid china shepherdesses and toreadors; pictures were thrown over the sofa, and a huge pile of wax fruit--apples and purple grapes--was partially reflected in a large piece of mirror that had fallen across the hearthrug. 'come, help me to hold her,' said dick, raising his blood-stained face. with a quick movement the doctor took possession of kate's arms. 'give me a sheet from the next room; i'll soon make her fast.' the threat of being tied had its effect. kate became quieter, and after some trouble they succeeded in carrying her into the next room and laying her on the bed. there she rolled convulsively, beating the pillows with her arms. the landlady stationed herself at the door to give notice of any further manifestation of fury, whilst dick explained the circumstances of the case to the doctor. after a short consultation, he agreed to sign an order declaring that in his opinion mrs. lennox was a dangerous lunatic. 'will that be enough,' said dick, 'to place her in an asylum?' 'no, you'll have to get the opinion of another doctor.' the possibility of being able to rid himself of her was to him like the sudden dawning of a new life, and dick rushed off, bleeding, haggard, wild-looking as he was, to seek for another doctor who would concur in the judgment of the first, asking himself if it were possible to see kate in her present position, and say conscientiously that she was a person who could be safely trusted with her liberty? and to his great joy this view was taken by the second authority consulted, and having placed his wife under lock and key, dick lay down to rest a happier man than he had been for many a day. the position in his mind was, of course, the means he should adopt to place her in the asylum. force was not to be thought of; persuasion must be first tried. so far he was decided, but as to the arguments he should advance to induce her to give up her liberty he knew nothing, nor did he attempt to formulate any scheme, and when he entered the bedroom next morning he relied more on the hope of finding her repentant, and appealing to and working on her feelings of remorse than anything else. 'the whole thing,' as he put it, 'depended upon the humour he should find her in.' and he found her with stains of blood still upon her face, amid the broken furniture, and she asked calmly but with intense emotion: 'dick, did he say i was mad?' 'well, dear, i don't know that he said you were mad except when you were the worse for drink, but he said--' 'that i might become mad,' she interposed, 'if i don't abstain from drink. did he say that?' 'well, it was something like that, kate. you know i only just escaped with my life.' 'only just escaped with your life, dick! oh, if i'd killed you, if i'd killed you! if i'd seen you lying dead at my feet!' and unable to think further she fell on her knees and reached out her arms to him. but he did not take her to his bosom, and she sobbed till, touched to the heart, he strove to console her with kind words, never forgetting, however, to introduce a hint that she was not responsible for her actions. 'then i'm really downright mad?' said kate, raising her tear-stained face from her arms. 'did the doctor say so?' this was by far too direct a question for dick to answer; it were better to equivocate. 'well, my dear--mad? he didn't say that you were always mad, but he said you were liable to fits, and that if you didn't take care those fits would grow upon you, and you would become--' then he hesitated as he always did before a direct statement. 'but what did he say i must do to get well?' 'he advised that you should go to a home where you would not be able to get hold of any liquor and would be looked after' 'you mean a madhouse. you wouldn't put me in a madhouse, dick?' 'i wouldn't put you anywhere where you didn't like to go; but he said nothing about a madhouse.' 'what did he say, then?' 'he spoke merely of one of those houses which are under medical supervision, and where anyone can go and live for a time; a kind of hospital, you know.' the argument was continued for an hour or more. kate wept and protested against being locked up as a mad woman; while he, conscious of the strong hold he had over her, reminded her in a thousand ways of the danger she ran of awakening one morning to find herself a murderess. yet it is difficult to persuade anyone voluntarily to enter a lunatic asylum, no matter how irrefutable the reasons advanced may be, and it was not until dick on one side skilfully threatened her with separation, and tempted her on the other with the hope of being cured of her vice and living with him happily ever afterwards, that she consented to enter dr. ----'s private asylum, craven street, bloomsbury. but even then the battle was not won, for when he suggested going off there at once, he very nearly brought another fit of passion down on his head. it was only the extreme lassitude and debility produced from the excesses of last night that saved him. 'oh, dick, dear! if you only knew how i love you! i would give my last drop of blood to save you from harm.' 'i know you would, dear; it's the fault of that confounded drink,' he answered, his heart tense with the hope of being rid of her. then the packing began. kate sat disconsolate on the sofa, and watched dick folding up her dresses and petticoats. it seemed to her that everything had ended, and wearily she collected the pearls which had been scattered in last night's skirmishing. some had been trodden on, others were lost, and only about half the original number could be found, and shaken with nervousness and lassitude, kate cried and wrung her hands. dick sat next her, kind, huge, and indifferent, even as the world itself. 'but you'll come and see me? you promise me that you'll come--that you'll come very often.' 'yes, dear, i'll come two or three times a week; but i hope that you'll be well soon--very soon.' xxviii the hope dick expressed that his wife would soon be well enough to return home was, of course, untrue, his hope being that she would never cross the doors of the house in bloomsbury whither he was taking her. the empty bed awaiting him was so great a relief that he fell on his knees before it and prayed that the doctors might judge her to be insane, unsafe to be at large. to wake up in the morning alone in his bed, and to be free to go forth to his business without question seemed to him like heaven. but the pleasures of heaven last for eternity, and dick's delight lasted but for two days. two days after kate had gone into the asylum a letter came from one of the doctors saying that mrs. lennox was not insane, and would have to be discharged. dick sank into a chair and lay there almost stunned, plunged in despair that was like a thick fog, and it did not lift until the door opened and kate stood before him again. he raised his head and looked at her stupidly, and interpreting his vacant face, she said: 'dick, you're sorry to have me back again.' 'sorry, kate? well, if things were different i shouldn't be sorry. but you see the blow you struck me with the poker very nearly did for me; i haven't been the same man since.' 'well,' she said, 'i must go back to the asylum or the home, whatever you call it, and tell them that i am mad.' 'there's no use in doing that, kate, they wouldn't believe you. here is the letter i've just received; read it.' 'but, dick, there must be some way out of this dreadful trouble, and yet there doesn't seem to be any. try to think, dear, try to think. can you think of anything, dear? i don't think i shall give way again. if i only had something to do; it's because i'm always alone; because i love you; because i'm jealous of that woman.' 'but, kate, if i stop here with you all day we shall starve. i must go to business.' 'ah, business! business! if i could go to business too. the days when we used to rehearse went merrily enough.' 'you were the best clairette i ever saw,' dick answered; 'better than paola mariee, and i ought to know, for i rehearsed you both.' 'i shall never play clairette again,' kate said sadly. 'i've lost my figure and the part requires a waist.' 'you might get your waist again,' dick said, and the words seemed to him extraordinarily silly, but he had to say something. 'if i could only get to work again,' she muttered to herself, and then turning to dick-- 'dick, if i could get to work again; any part would do; it doesn't matter how small, just to give me something to think about, that's all, to keep my mind off it. if the baby had not died i should have had her to look after and that would have done just as well as a part. but i've disgraced you in company; i don't blame you, you couldn't have me in it, and i couldn't bring myself to sing in that opera.' 'yes, you would only break out again, kate. those jealous fits are terrible. you think you could restrain yourself, but you couldn't; and all that would come of a row between you and mrs. forest would be that i should lose my job.' 'i know, dick, i know,' kate cried painfully, 'but i promise you that i never will again. you may go where you please and do what you please. i will never say a word to you again.' 'i'm sure you believe all that you say, kate, but i cannot get you a job. i may hear of something. meanwhile----' 'meanwhile i shall have to stay here and alone and no way of escaping from the hours, those long dreary hours, no way but one. dick, i'm sorry they did not keep me in the asylum, it would have been better for both of us if they had; and if i could go back there again, if you will take me back, i will try to deceive the doctors.' 'you mean, kate, that you would play the mad woman? i doubt if any woman could do it sufficiently well to deceive the doctors. there was an italian woman,' and they talked of the great italian actress for some time and then dick said: 'well, kate, i must be about my business. i'm sorry to leave you.' 'no, dick, you're not.' 'i am, dear, in a way. but if i hear of anything----' and he left the house knowing that there was no further hope for himself. he was tied to her and might be killed by her in his sleep, but that would not matter. what did matter was the thought that was always at the back of his mind, that she was alone in that islington lodging-house craving for drink, striving to resist it, falling back into drink and might be coming down raving to the theatre to insult him before the company. insult him before the company! that had been done, she had done her worst, and he was indifferent whether she came again, only she must not meet mrs. forest. on the whole he felt that his sorrow was with kate herself rather than himself or with mrs. forest. 'god only knows,' he said as he rushed down the stairs, 'what will become of her.' kate was asking herself the same question--what was to become of her? would it be possible for her to find work to do that would keep her mind away from the drink? she seemed for the moment free from all craving, but she knew what the craving is, how overpowering in the throat it is, and how when one has got one mouthful one must go on and on, so intense is the delight of alcohol in the throat of the drunkard. but there was no craving upon her, and it might never come again. every morning she awoke in great fear, but was glad to find that there was no craving in her throat, and when she went out she rejoiced that the public-houses offered no attraction to her. she became brave; and fear turned to contempt, and at the bottom of her heart she began to jeer at the demon which had conquered and brought her to ruin and which she had in turn conquered. but there was a last mockery she did not dare, for she knew that the demon was but biding his time. he seemed, however, to go on biding it, and dick, finding kate reasonable every evening, came home to dinner earlier so that the day should not appear to her intolerably long. but his business often detained him, and one night coming home late he noticed that she looked more sullen than usual, that her eyes drooped as if she had been drinking. a month of scenes of violence followed; 'not a single day as far as i can remember for a fortnight' he said one day on leaving the house and running to catch his bus to the strand, 'have we had a quiet evening.' when he returned that night she ran at him with a knife, and he had only just time to ward off the blow. the house rang with shrieks and cries of all sorts, and the lennoxes were driven from one lodging-house to another. trousers, dresses, hats, boots and shoes, were all pawned. the comic and the pitiful are but two sides of the same thing, and it was at once comic and pitiful to see dick, with one of the tails of his coat lost in the scrimmage, talking at one o'clock in the morning to a dispassionate policeman, while from the top windows the high treble voice of a woman disturbed the sullen tranquillity of the london night. and yet dick continued with her--continued to allow himself to be beaten, scratched, torn to pieces almost as he would be by a wild beast. human nature can habituate itself even to pain, and it was so with him. he knew that his present life was as a nessus shirt on his back, and yet he couldn't make up his mind to have done with it. in the first place, he pitied his wife; in the second, he did not know how to leave her; and it was not until after another row with kate for having been down to the theatre that he summoned up courage to walk out of the house with a fixed determination never to return again. kate was too tipsy at the time to pay much attention to the announcement he made to her as he left the room. besides, 'wolf!' had been cried so often that it had now lost its terror in her ears, and it was not until next day that she began to experience any very certain fear that dick and she had at last parted for ever. but when, with a clammy, thirsty mouth, she sat rocking herself wearily, and the long idleness of the morning hours became haunted with irritating remembrances of her shameful conduct, of the cruel life she led the man she loved, the black gulf of eternal separation became, as it were, etched upon her mind; and she heard the cold depths reverberating with vain words and foolish prayers. then her thin hands trembled on her black dress, and waves of shivering passed over her. she thought involuntarily that a little brandy might give her strength, and as soon hated herself for the thought. it was brandy that had brought her to this. she would never touch it again. but dick had not left her for ever; he would come back to her; she could not live without him. it was terrible! she would go to him, and on her knees beg his pardon for all she had done. he would forgive her. he must forgive her. such were the fugitive thoughts that flashed through kate's mind as she hurried to and fro, seeking for her bonnet and shawl. she would go down to the theatre and find him; she would be sure to hear news of him there, she said, as she strove to brush away the mist that obscured her eyes. she could see nothing; things seemed to change their places, and so terrible were the palpitations of her heart that she was forced to cling to any piece of furniture within reach. but by walking very slowly she contrived to reach the stage-door of the opéra comique, feeling very weak and ill. 'is mr. lennox in?' she asked, at the same time trying to look conciliatingly at the hard-faced hall-keeper. 'no, ma'am, he ain't,' was the reply. 'who attended the rehearsal to-day, then?' 'there was no rehearsal to-day, ma'am--leastways mr. lennox dismissed the rehearsal at half-past twelve.' 'and why?' 'ah! that i cannot tell you.' 'could you tell me where mr. lennox would be likely to be found?' 'indeed i couldn't, ma'am; i believe he's gone into the country.' 'gone into the country!' echoed kate. 'but may i ask, ma'am, if you be mrs. lennox? because if you be, mr. lennox left a letter to be given to you in case you called.' her eyes brightened at the idea of a letter. to know the worst would be better than a horrible uncertainty, and she said eagerly: 'yes, i'm mrs. lennox; give me the letter.' the hall-keeper handed it to her, and she walked out of the narrow passage into the street, so as to be free from observation. with anxious fingers she tore open the envelope, and read, 'my dear kate, 'it must be now as clear to you as it is to me that it is quite impossible for us to go on living together. there is no use in our again discussing the whys and the wherefores; we had much better accept the facts of the case in silence, and mutually save each other the pain of trying to alter what cannot be altered. 'i have arranged to allow you two pounds a week. this sum will be paid to you every saturday, by applying to messrs. jackson and co., solicitors, arundel street, strand. 'yours very affectionately, 'richard lennox.' kate mechanically repeated the last words as she walked gloomily through the glare of the day. 'two pounds a week.' she said, and with nothing else; not a friend, and the thought passed through her mind that she could not have a friend, she had fallen too low, yet from no fault of her own nor dick's, and it was that that frightened her. a terrible sense of loneliness, of desolation, was created in her heart. for her the world seemed to have ended, and she saw the streets and passers-by with the same vague, irresponsible gaze as a solitary figure would the universal ruin caused by an earthquake. she had no friends, no occupation, no interest of any kind in life; everything had slipped from her, and she shivered with a sense of nakedness, of moral destitution. nothing was left to her, and yet she felt, she lived, she was conscious. oh yes, horribly conscious. and that was the worst; and she asked herself why she could not pass out of sight, out of hearing and feeling of all the crying misery with which she was surrounded, and in a state of emotive somnambulism she walked through the crowds till she was startled from her dreams by hearing a voice calling after her, 'kate! kate!--mrs. lennox!' it was montgomery. 'i'm so glad to have met you--so glad, indeed, for we have not seen much of each other. i don't know how it was, but somehow it seemed to me that dick did not want me to go and see you. i never could make out why, for he couldn't have been jealous of me,' he added a little bitterly. 'but perhaps you've not heard that it's all up as regards my piece at the opéra comique,' he continued, not noticing kate's dejection in his excitement. 'no, i haven't heard,' she answered mechanically. 'it doesn't matter much, though, for i've just been down to the gaiety, and pretty well settled that it's to be done in manchester, at the prince's; so you see i don't let the grass grow under my feet, for my row with mrs. forest only occurred this morning. but what's the matter, kate? what has happened?' 'oh, nothing, nothing. tell me about mrs. forest first; i want to know.' 'well, it's the funniest thing you ever heard in your life; but you won't tell dick, because he forbade me ever to speak to you about mrs. forest--not that there is anything but business between them; that i swear to you. but do tell me, kate, what is the matter? i never saw you look so sad in my life. have you had any bad news?' 'no, no. tell me about mrs. forest and your piece; i want to hear,' she exclaimed excitedly. 'well, this is it,' said montgomery, who saw in a glance that she was not to be contradicted, and that he had better get on with his story. 'in the first place, you know that the old creature has gone in for writing librettos herself, and has finished one about buddhism, an absurdity; the opening chorus is fifty lines long, but she won't cut one; but i'll tell you about that after. i was to get one hundred for setting this blessed production to music, and it was to follow my own piece, which was in rehearsal. well, like a great fool, i was explaining to dubois the bosh i was writing by the yard for this infernal opera of hers. i couldn't help it; she wouldn't take advice on any point. she has written the song of the sun-god in hexameters. i don't know what hexameters are, but i would as soon set bradshaw--leaving st. pancras nine twenty-five, arriving at--ha! ha! ha!--with a puff, puff accompaniment on the trombone.' 'go on with the story,' cried kate. 'well, i was explaining all this,' said montgomery, suddenly growing serious, 'when out she darted from behind the other wing--i never knew she was there. she called me a thief, and said she wouldn't have me another five minutes in her theatre. monti, the italian composer, was sent for. i was shoved out, bag and baggage, and there will be no more rehearsals till the new music is ready. that's all.' 'i'm very sorry for you--very sorry,' said kate very quietly, and she raised her hand to brush away a tear. 'oh, i don't care; i'd sooner have the piece done in manchester. of course it's a bore, losing a hundred pounds. but, oh, kate! do tell me what's the matter; you know you can confide in me; you know i'm your friend.' at these kind words the cold deadly grief that encircled kate's heart like a band of steel melted, and she wept profusely. montgomery drew her arm into his and pleaded and begged to be told the reason of these tears; but she could make no answer, and pressed dick's letter into his hand with a passionate gesture. he read it at a glance, and then hesitated, unable to make up his mind as to what he should do. no words seemed to him adequate wherewith to console her, and she was sobbing so bitterly that it was beginning to attract attention in the streets. they walked on without speaking for a few yards, kate leaning upon montgomery, until a hackney coachman, guessing that something was wrong signed to them with his whip. 'where are you living, dear?' kate told him with some difficulty, and having directed the driver, he lapsed again into considering what course he should adopt. to put off the journey was impossible; dick had promised to meet him there. it was now three o'clock. he had therefore three hours to spend with kate--with the woman whom he had loved steadfastly throughout a loveless life. he had no word of blame for dick; he had heard stories that had made his blood run cold; and yet, knowing her faults as he did, he would have opened his arms had it been possible, and crying through the fervour of years of waiting, said to her, 'yes, i will believe in you; believe in me and you shall be happy.' there had never been a secret between them; their souls had been for ever as if in communication; and the love, unacknowledged in words, had long been as sunlight and moonlight, lighting the spaces of their dream-life. to the woman it had been as a distant star whose pale light was a presage of quietude in hours of vexation; to the man it seemed as a far elysium radiant with sweet longing, large hopes that waxed but never waned, and where the sweet breezes of eternal felicity blew in musical cadence. and yet he was deceived in nothing. he knew now as he had known before, that although this dream might haunt him for ever, he should never hold it in his arms nor press it to his lips; and in the midst of this surging tide of misery there arose a desire that, glad in its own anguish, bade him increase the bitterness of these last hours by making a confession of his suffering; and, exulting savagely in the martyrdom he was preparing for himself, he said: 'you know, kate--i know you must know--you must have guessed that i care for you. i may as well tell you the truth now--you are the only woman i ever loved.' 'yes,' she said, 'i always thought you cared for me. you have been very kind--oh! very kind, and i often think of it. ah! everybody has, all my life long, been very good to me; it is i alone who am to blame, who am in fault. i have, i know i have, been very wicked, and i don't know why. i did not mean it; i know i didn't, for i'm not at heart a wicked woman. i suppose things must have gone against me; that's about all.' montgomery pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and after a long silence he said: 'i've often thought that had you met me before you knew dick, things might have been different. we should have got on better, although you might never have loved me so well.' kate raised her eyes, and she said: 'no one will ever know how i have loved, how i still love that man. oftentimes i think that had i loved him less i should have been a better wife. i think he loved me, but it was not the love i dreamed of. like you, i was always sentimental, and dick never cared for that sort of thing.' 'i think i should have understood you better,' said montgomery; and the conversation came to a pause. a vision of the life of devotion spent at the feet of an ideal lover, that life of sacrifice and tenderness which had been her dream, and which she had so utterly failed to attain, again rose up to tantalize her like a glittering mirage: and she could not help wondering whether she would have realized this beautiful, this wonderful might-have-been if she had chosen this other man. 'but i suppose you'll make it up with dick,' said montgomery somewhat harshly. kate awoke from her reverie with a start, and answered sorrowfully that she did not know, that she was afraid dick would never forgive her again. 'i don't remember if i told you that i'm going to see him in manchester; he promised to go up there to make some arrangements about my piece.' 'no, you didn't tell me.' 'well, i'll speak to him. i'll tell him i've seen you. i fancy i shall be able to make it all right,' he added, with a feeble smile. 'oh! how good you are--how good you are,' cried kate, clasping her hands. 'if he will only forgive me once again, i'll promise, i'll swear to him never to-to--' here kate stopped abashed, and burying her face in her hands, she wept bitterly. the tenderness, the melancholy serenity of their interview, had somehow suddenly come to an end. each was too much occupied with his or her thoughts to talk much, and the effort to find phrases grew more and more irritating. both were very sad, and although they sighed when the clock struck the hour of farewell, they felt that to pass from one pain to another was in itself an assuagement. kate accompanied montgomery to the station. he seemed to her to be out of temper; she to him to be further away than ever. the explanation that had taken place between them had, if not broken, at least altered the old bonds of sympathy, without creating new ones; and they were discontented, even like children who remember for the first time that to-day is not yesterday. they felt lonely watching the parallel lines of platforms; and when montgomery waved his hand for the last time, and the train rolled into the luminous arch of sky that lay beyond the glass roofing, kate turned away overpowered by grief and cruel recollections. when she got home, the solitude of her room became unbearable; she wanted someone to see, someone to console her. she had a few shillings in her pocket, but she remembered her resolutions and for some time resented the impervious clutch of the temptation. but the sorrow that hung about her, that penetrated like a corrosive acid into the very marrow of her bones, grew momentarily more burning, more unendurable. twenty times she tried to wrench it out of her heart. the landlady brought her up some tea; she could not drink it; it tasted like soapsuds in her mouth. then, knowing well what the results would be, she resolved to go out for a walk. next day she was ill, and to pull herself together it was necessary to have a drink. it would not do to look too great a sight in the solicitor's office where dick had told her in his letter to go to get her money. there she found not two, but five pounds awaiting her, and this enabled her to keep up a stage of semi intoxication until the end of the week. she at last woke up speechless, suffering terrible palpitations of the heart, but she had strength enough to ring her bell, and when the landlady came to her she nearly lost her balance and fell to the ground, so strenuously did kate lean and cling to her for support. after gasping painfully for some moments kate muttered: 'i'm dying. these palpitations and the pain in my side.' the landlady asked if she would like to see the doctor, and with difficulty obtained her consent that the doctor should be sent for. 'i'll send at once,' she said. 'no, not at once,' kate cried. 'pour me out a little brandy and water, and i'll see how i am in the course of the day.' the woman did as was desired, and kate told her that she felt better, and that if it wasn't for the pains in her side she'd be all right. the landlady looked a little incredulous; but her lodger had only been with her a fortnight, and so carefully had the brandy been hidden, and the inebriety concealed, that although she had her doubts, she was not yet satisfied that kate was an habitual drunkard. certainly appearances were against mrs. lennox; but as regards the brandy-bottle, she had watched it very carefully, and was convinced that scarcely more than sixpennyworth of liquor went out of it daily. the good woman did not know how it was replenished from another bottle that came sometimes from under the mattress, sometimes out of the chimney. and the disappearance of the husband was satisfactorily accounted for by the announcement that he had gone to manchester to produce a new piece. besides, mrs. lennox was a very nice person; it was a pleasure to attend to her, and during the course of the afternoon mrs. white called several times at the second floor to inquire after her lodger's health. but there was no change for the better. looking the picture of wretchedness, kate lay back in her chair, declaring in low moans that she never felt so ill in her life--that the pain in her side was killing her. at first, mrs. white seemed inclined to make light of all this complaining, but towards evening she began to grow alarmed, and urged that the doctor should be sent for. 'i assure you, ma'am,' she said, 'it's always better to see a doctor. the money is never thrown away; for even if there's nothing serious the matter, it eases one's mind to be told so.' kate was generally easy to persuade, but fearing that her secret drinking would be discovered, she declined for a long time to take medical advice. at last she was obliged to give way, and the die having been cast, she commenced to think how she might conceal part of the truth. something of the coquetry of the actress returned to her, and, getting up from her chair, she went over to the glass to examine herself, and brushing back her hair, she said sorrowfully: 'i'm a complete wreck. i can't think what's the matter with me, and i've lost all my hair. you've no idea, mrs. white, of the beautiful hair i used to have; it used to fall in armfuls over my shoulders; now, it's no more than a wisp.' 'i think you've a great deal yet,' replied mrs. white, not wishing to discourage her. 'and how yellow i am too!' to this mrs. white mumbled something that was inaudible, and kate thought suddenly of her rouge-pot and hare's-foot. her 'make-up,' and all her little souvenirs of dick, lay securely packed away in an old band-box. 'mrs. white,' she said, 'might i ask you to get me a jug of hot water?' when the woman left the room, everything was spread hurriedly over the toilet-table. to see her, one would have thought that the call-boy had knocked at the door for the second time. a thin coating of cold cream was passed over the face and neck; then the powder-puff changed what was yellow into white, and the hare's-foot gave a bloom to the cheeks. the pencil was not necessary, her eyebrows being by nature dark and well-defined. then all disappeared again into the band-box, a drain was taken out of the bottle whilst she listened to steps on the stairs, and she had just time to get back to her chair when the doctor entered. she felt quite prepared to receive him. mrs. white, who had come up at the same time, locked uneasily around; and, after hesitating about the confines of the room, she put the water-jug on the rosewood cabinet, and said: 'i think i'll leave you alone with the doctor, ma'am; if you want me you'll ring.' mr. hooper was a short, stout man, with a large bald forehead, and long black hair; his small eyes were watchful as a ferret's, and his fat chubby hands were constantly laid on his knee-caps. 'i met mrs. white's servant in the street,' he said, looking at kate as if he were trying to read through the rouge on her face, 'so i came at once. mrs. white, with whom i was speaking downstairs, tells me that you're suffering from a pain in your side.' 'yes, doctor, on the right side; and i've not been feeling very well lately.' 'is your appetite good? will you let me feel your pulse?' 'no, i've scarcely any appetite at all--particularly in the morning. i can't touch anything for breakfast.' 'don't you care to drink anything? aren't you thirsty?' kate would have liked to have told a lie, but fearing that she might endanger her life by doing so, she answered: 'oh yes! i'm constantly very thirsty.' 'especially at night-time?' it was irritating to have your life read thus; and kate felt angry when she saw this dispassionate man watching the brandy-bottle, which she had forgotten to put away. 'do you ever find it necessary to take any stimulant?' grasping at the word 'necessary,' she replied: 'yes, doctor; my life isn't a very happy one, and i often feel so low, so depressed as it were, that if i didn't take a little something to keep me up i think i should do away with myself.' 'your husband is an actor, i believe?' 'yes; but he's at present up in manchester, producing a new piece. i'm on the stage, too. i've been playing a round of leading parts in the provinces, but since i've been in london i've been out of an engagement.' 'i just asked you because i noticed you used a little powder, you know, on the face. of course, i can't judge at present what your complexion is; but have you noticed any yellowness about the skin lately?' the first instinct of a woman who drinks is to conceal her vice, and although she was talking to a doctor, kate was again conscious of a feeling of resentment against the merciless eyes which saw through all the secrets of her life. but, cowed, as it were, by the certitude expressed by the doctor's looks and words, she strove to equivocate, and answered humbly that she noticed her skin was not looking as clear as it used to. dr. hooper then questioned her further. he asked if she suffered from a sense of uncomfortable tension, fullness, weight, especially after meals; if she felt any pain in her right shoulder? and she confessed that he was right in all his surmises. 'do tell me, doctor, what is the matter with me. i assure you i'd really much sooner know the worst.' but the doctor did not seem inclined to be communicative, and in reply to her question he merely mumbled something to the effect that the liver was out of order. 'i will send you over some medicine this evening,' he said, 'and if you don't feel better to-morrow send round for me, and don't attempt to get up. i think,' he added, as he took up his hat to go, 'i shall be able to put you all right. but you must follow my instructions; you mustn't frighten yourself, and take as little of that stimulant as possible.' kate answered that it was not her custom to take too much, and she tried to look surprised at the warning. she nevertheless derived a good deal of comfort from the doctor's visit, and during the course of the evening succeeded in persuading herself that her fears of the morning were ill-founded and, putting the medicine that was sent her away for the present, she helped herself from a bottle that was hidden in the upholstery. the fact of having a long letter to write to dick explaining her conduct, made it quite necessary that she should take something to keep her up; and sitting in her lonely room, she drank on steadily until midnight, when she could only just drag her clothes from her back and throw herself stupidly into bed. there she passed a night full of livid-hued nightmares, from which she awoke shivering, and suffering from terrible palpitations of the heart. the silence of the house filled her with terrors, cold and obtuse as the dreams from which she awakened. strength to scream for help she had none; and thinking she was going to die, she sought for relief and consolation in the bottle that lay hidden under the carpet. when the drink took effect upon her she broke out into a profuse perspiration, and she managed to get a little sleep; but when her breakfast was brought up about eleven o'clock in the morning, so ill did she seem that the servant, fearing she was going to drop down dead, begged to be allowed to fetch the doctor. but rejecting all offers of assistance, kate lay moaning in an armchair, unable even to taste the cup of tea that the maid pressed upon her. she consented to take some of the medicines that were ordered her, but whatever good they might have produced was discounted by the constant nip-drinking she kept up during the afternoon. the next day she was very ill indeed, and mrs. white, greatly alarmed, insisted on sending for dr. hooper. he did not seem astonished at the change in his patient. calmly and quietly he watched for some moments in silence. the bed had curtains of a red and antiquated material, and these contrasted with the paleness of the sheets wherein kate lay, tossing feverishly. most of the 'make-up' had been rubbed away from her face; and through patches of red and white the yellow skin started like blisters. she was slightly delirious, and when the doctor took her hand to feel her pulse she gazed at him with her big staring eyes and spoke volubly and excitedly. 'oh! i'm so glad you've come, for i wanted to speak to you about my husband. i think i told you that he'd gone to manchester to produce a new piece. i don't know if i led you to suppose that he'd deserted me, but if i did i was wrong to do so, for he has done nothing of the kind. it's true that we aren't very happy together, but i dare say that is my fault. i never was, i know, as good a wife to him as i intended to be; but then, he made me jealous and sometimes i was mad. yes, i think i must have been mad to have spoken to him in the way i did. anyhow, it doesn't matter now, does it, doctor? but i don't know what i'm saying. still, you won't mention that i've told you anything. it's as likely as not that he'll forgive me, just as he did before; and we may yet be as happy as we were at blackpool. you won't tell him, will you, doctor?' 'no, no, i won't,' said dr. hooper, quietly and firmly. 'but you mustn't talk as much as you do; if you want to see your husband, you must get well first.' 'oh yes! i must get well; but tell me, doctor, how long will that take?' 'not very long, if you will keep quiet and do what i tell you. i want you to tell me how the pain in your side is?' 'very bad; far worse than when i saw you last. i feel it now in my right shoulder as well.' 'but your side--is it sore when you touch it? will you let me feel?' without waiting for a reply, he passed his hand under the sheet. 'is it there that it pains you?' 'yes, yes. oh! you're hurting me.' then the doctor walked aside with the landlady, who had been watching the examination of the patient with anxious eyes. she said: 'do you think it's anything very dangerous? is it contagious? had i better send her to the hospital?' 'no, i should scarcely think it worth while doing that; she will be well in a week, that is to say if she is properly looked after. she's suffering from acute congestion of the liver, brought on by--' 'by drink,' said mrs. white. 'i suspected as much.' 'you've too much to do, mrs. white, with all your children, to give up your time to nursing her; i shall send someone round as soon as possible, but, in the meantime, will you see that her diet is regulated to half a cup of beef-tea, every hour or so. if she complains of thirst, let her have some milk to drink, and you may mix a little brandy with it. to-night i shall send round a sleeping-draught.' 'you're sure, doctor, there is nothing catching, for you know that, with all my children in the house----' 'you need not be alarmed, mrs. white.' 'but do you think, doctor, it will be an expensive illness? for i know very little about her circumstances.' 'i expect she'll be all right in a week or ten days, but what i fear for is her future. i've had a good deal of experience in such matters, and i've never known a case of a woman who cured herself of the vice of intemperance. a man sometimes, a woman never.' the landlady sighed and referred to all she had gone through during poor mr. white's lifetime; the doctor spoke confidingly of a lady who was at present under his charge; and, apparently overcome with pity for suffering humanity, they descended the staircase together. on the doorstep the conversation was continued. 'very well, then, doctor, i will take your advice; but at the end of a week or so, when she is quite recovered, i shall tell her that i've let her rooms. for, as you say, a woman rarely cures herself, and before the children the example would be dreadful.' 'i expect to see her on her feet in about that time, then you can do as you please. i shall call tomorrow.' next day the professional nurse took her place by the bedside. the sinapism which the doctor ordered was applied to the hepatic region, and a small dose of calomel was administered. under this treatment she improved rapidly; but unfortunately, as her health returned her taste for drink increased in a like proportion. indeed, it was almost impossible to keep her from it, and on one occasion she tried very cunningly to outwit the nurse, who had fallen asleep in her chair. waiting patiently until the woman's snoring had become sufficiently regular to warrant the possibility of a successful attempt being made on the brandy-bottle, kate slipped noiselessly out of bed. the unseen night-light cast a rosy glow over the convex side of the basin, without, however, disturbing the bare darkness of the wall, kate knew that all the bottles stood in a line upon the chest of drawers, but it was difficult to distinguish one from the other, and the jingling she made as she fumbled amid them awoke the nurse, who divining at once what was happening, arose quickly from her chair and advancing rapidly towards her, said: 'no, ma'am, i really can't allow it; it's against the doctor's orders.' 'i'm not going to die of thirst to please any doctor. i was only going to take a little milk, i suppose there's no harm in that?' 'not the least, ma'am, and if you'd called me you should have had it.' it was owing to this fortuitous intervention that when dr. hooper called a couple of days after to see his patient he was able to certify to a remarkable change for the better in her. all the distressing symptoms had disappeared; the pain in her side had died away; the complexion was clearer. he therefore thought himself justified in ordering for her lunch a little fish and some weak brandy and water; and to kate, who had not eaten any solid food for several days, this first meal took the importance of a very exceptional event. sitting by her bedside dr. hooper spoke to her. 'now, mrs. lennox,' he said, 'i want to give you a word of warning. i've seen you through what i must specify as a serious illness; dangerous i will not call it, although i might do so if i were to look into the future and anticipate the development the disease will most certainly take, unless, indeed, you will be guided by me, and make a vow against all intoxicating liquors.' at this direct allusion to her vice kate stopped eating, and putting down the fork looked at the doctor. 'now, mrs. lennox, you mustn't be angry,' he continued in his kind way. 'i'm speaking to you in my capacity as a medical man, and i must warn you against the continuous nip-drinking which, of course, i can see you're in the habit of indulging in, and which was the cause of the illness from which you are recovering. i will not harrow your feelings by referring to all the cases that have come under my notice where shame, disgrace, ruin, and death were the result of that one melancholy failing--drink.' 'oh, sir!' cried kate, broken-hearted, 'if you only knew how unhappy i've been, how miserable i am, you would not speak to me so. i've my failing, it is true, but i'm driven to it. i love my husband better than anything in the world, and i see him mixed up always with a lot of girls at the theatre, and it sends me mad, and then i go to drink so as to forget.' 'we've all got our troubles; but it doesn't relieve us of the burden; it only makes us forget it for a short time, and then, when consciousness returns to us, we only remember it all the more bitterly. no, mrs. lennox, take my advice. in a few days, when you're well, go to your husband, demand his forgiveness, and resolve then never to touch spirits again.' 'it's very good of you to speak to me in this way,' said kate, tearfully, 'and i will take your advice, the very first day that i am strong enough to walk down to the strand i will go and see my husband, and if he will give me another trial, he will not, i swear to you, have cause to repent it. oh!' she continued, 'you don't know how good he's been to me, how he has borne with me. if it hadn't been that he tried my temper by flirting with other women we might have been happy now.' then, as kate proceeded to speak of her trials and temptations, she grew more and more excited and hysterical, until the doctor, fearing that she would bring on a relapse, was forced to plead an engagement and wish her good-bye. as he left the room she cried after him, 'the first day i'm well enough to go out i'll go and see my husband.' xxix the next few days passed like dreams. kate's soul, tense with the longing for reconciliation, floated at ease over the sordid miseries that lay within and without her, and enraptured with expectation, she lived in a beautiful paradise of hope. so certain did she feel of being able to cross out the last few years of her life, that her mind was scarcely clouded by a doubt of the possibility of his declining to forgive her--that he might even refuse to see her. the old days seemed charming to her, and looking back, even she seemed to have been perfect then. there her life appeared to have begun. she never thought of hanley now. ralph and mrs. ede were like dim shadows that had no concern in her existence. the potteries and the hills were as the recollections of childhood, dim and unimportant. the footlights and the applause of audiences were also dying echoes in her ears. her life for the moment was concentrated in a loving memory of a lancashire seashore and a rose-coloured room, where she used to sit on the knees of the man she adored. the languors and the mental weakness of convalescence were conducive to this state of mental exaltation. she loved him better than anyone else could love him; she would never touch brandy again. he would take her back, and they would live as the lovers did in all the novels she had ever read. these illusions filled kate's mind like a scarf of white mist hanging around the face of a radiant morning, and as she lay back amid the pillows, or sat dreaming by the fireside in the long evenings that were no longer lonely to her, she formed plans, and considered how she should plead to dick in this much-desired interview. during this period dozens of letters were written and destroyed, and it was not until the time arrived for her to go to the theatre to see him that she could decide upon what she could write. then hastily she scribbled a note, but her hand trembled so much that before she had said half what she intended the paper was covered with blotched and blurred lines. 'it won't do to let him think i'm drunk again,' she said to herself, as she threw aside what she had written and read over one of her previous efforts. it ran as follows: 'my darling dick,-- 'you will, i am sure, be sorry to hear that i have been very ill. i am now, however, much better; indeed, i may say quite recovered. during my illness i have been thinking over our quarrels, and i now see how badly, how wickedly, i have behaved to you on many occasions. i do not know, and i scarcely dared to hope, that you will ever forgive me, but i trust that you will not refuse to see me for a few minutes. i have not, i assure you, tasted spirits for some weeks, so you need not fear i will kick up a row. i will promise to be very quiet. i will not reproach you, nor get excited, nor raise my voice. i shall be very good, and will not detain you but for a very short time. you will not, you cannot, oh, my darling! deny me this one little request--to see you again, although only for a few minutes. 'your affectionate wife, 'kate' compared with the fervid thoughts of her brain, these words appeared to her weak and poor, but feeling that for the moment, at least, she could not add to their intensity, she set out on her walk, hoping to find her husband at the theatre. it was about eight o'clock in the evening. a light, grey fog hung over the background of the streets, and the line of the housetops was almost lost in the morose shadows that fell from a soot-coloured sky. here and there a chimney-stack or the sharp spire of a church tore the muslin-like curtains of descending mist; and vague as the mist were her thoughts. the streets twisted, wriggling their luminous way through slime and gloom, whilst at every turning the broad, flaring windows of the public-houses marked the english highway. but kate paid no attention to the red-lettered temptations. docile and hopeful as a tired animal thinking of its stable, she walked through the dark crowd that pressed upon her, nor did she even notice when she was jostled, but went on, a heedless nondescript--a something in a black shawl and a quasi-respectable bonnet, a slippery stepping-stone between the low women who whispered and the workwoman who hurried home with the tin of evening beer in her hand. like one held and guided by the power of a dream, she lost consciousness of all that was not of it. thoughts of how dick would receive her and forgive her were folded, entangled and broken within narrow limits of time; half an hour passed like a minute, and she found herself at the stage-door of the theatre. drawing the letter from her pocket, she said to the hall-keeper: 'will you kindly give mr. lennox this letter? has he arrived yet?' 'yes, but he's busy for the moment. but,' the man added, as he examined kate's features narrowly, 'you'll excuse me, i made a mistake; mr. lennox isn't in the theatre.' at that moment the swinging door was thrust open, and the call-boy screamed: 'mr. lennox says you're not to let miss thomas pass to-night, and if there are any letters for him i'm to take them in.' 'here's one; will you give it to mr. lennox?' said kate, eagerly thrusting forward her note. 'say that i'm waiting for an answer.' the stage-door keeper tried to interpose, but before he could explain himself the boy had rushed away. 'all letters should be given to me,' he growled as he turned away to argue with miss thomas, who had just arrived. in a few minutes the call-boy came back. 'will you please step this way,' he said to kate. 'no, you shan't,' cried the hall-keeper; 'if you try any nonsense with me i shall send round for a policeman.' kate started back frightened, thinking these words were addressed to her, but a glance showed her that she was mistaken. 'oh! how dare you talk to me like that? you're an unsophisticated beast!' cried miss thomas. 'pass under my arm, ma'am,' said the hall-keeper; 'i don't want this one to get through.' and amid a storm of violent words and the strains of distant music kate went up a narrow staircase that creaked under the weight of a group of girls in strange dresses. when she got past them she saw dick at the door of his room waiting for her. the table was covered with letters, the walls with bills announcing, 'a great success.' he took her hand and placed her in a chair, and at first it seemed doubtful who would break an awkward and irritating silence. at last dick said: 'i'm sorry to hear, kate, that you've been ill; you're looking well now.' 'yes, i'm better now,' she replied drearily; 'but perhaps if i'd died it would have been as well, for you can never love me again.' 'you know, my dear,' he said, equivocating, 'that we didn't get on well together.' 'oh, dick! i know it. you were very good to me, and i made your life wretched on account of my jealousy; but i couldn't help it, for i loved you better than a woman ever loved a man. i cannot tell you, i cannot find words to express how much i love you; you're everything to me. i lived for your love; i'm dying of it. yes, dick, i'm dying for love of you; i feel it here; it devours me like a fire, and what is so strange is, that nothing seems real to me except you. i never think of anything but of things that concern you. anything that ever belonged to you i treasure up as a relic. you know the chaplet of pearls i used to wear when we played _the lovers knot_. well, i have them still, although all else has gone from me. the string was broken once or twice, and some of the pearls were lost, but i threaded them again, and it still goes round my neck. i was looking at them the other day, and it made me very sad, for it made me think of the happy days--ah, the very happy days!--we have had together before i took to ----. but i won't speak of that. i've cured myself. yes, i assure you, dick, i've cured myself; and it is for that i've come to talk to you. were i not sure that i would never touch brandy again i would not ask you to take me back, but i'd sooner die than do what i have done, for i know that i never will. can you--will you--my own darling dick, give me another trial?' the victory hung in the balance, but at that moment a superb girl, in all the splendour of long green tights, and resplendent with breastplate and spear, flung open the door. 'look here, dick,' she began, but seeing kate, she stopped short, and stammered out an apology. 'i shall be down on the stage in a minute, dear,' he said, rising from his chair. the door was shut, and they were again alone; but kate felt that chance had gone against her. the interruption had, with a sudden shock, killed the emotions she had succeeded in awakening, and had supplied dick with an answer that would lead him, by a way after his own heart, straight out of his difficulty. 'my dear,' he said, rising from his chair, 'i'm glad you've given up the--you know what--for, between you and me, that was the cause of all our trouble; but, candidly speaking, i don't think it would be advisable for us to live together, at least for the present, and i'll tell you why. i know that you love me very much, but, as you said yourself just now, it's your jealousy and the drink together that excites you, and leads up to those terrible rows. now, the best plan would be for us to live apart, let us say for six months or so, until you've entirely got over your little weakness, you know; and then--why, then we'll be as happy as we used to be at blackpool in the dear old times long ago.' 'oh, dick! don't say that i must wait six months; i might be dead before then. but you're not speaking the truth to me. you were just going to say that i might come back to you when the horrid girl came in. i know. yes, i believe there's something between you.' 'now, kate, remember your promise not to kick up a row. i consented to see you because you said you wouldn't be violent. here's your letter.' 'i'm not going to be violent, dick; but six months seems such a long time.' 'it won't be as long passing as you think. and now i must run away; they're waiting for me on the stage. have you seen the piece? would you like to go in front?' 'no, not to-night, dick; i feel too sad. but won't you kiss me before i go?' dick bent his face and kissed her; but there was a chill in the kiss that went to her heart, and she felt that his lips would never touch hers again. but she had no protest to make, and almost in silence she allowed herself to be shown out of the theatre. when she got into the mist she shivered a little, and drew her thin shawl tighter about her thin shoulders, and, with one of the choruses still ringing in her ears, she walked in the direction of the strand. somehow her sorrow did not seem too great for her to bear. the interview had passed neither as badly nor as well as had been expected, and thinking of the six months of probation that lay before her, but without being in the least able to realize their meaning, she walked dreaming through the sloppy, fog-smelling streets. the lamps were now but like furred patches of yellow laid on a dead grey background, and a mud-bespattered crowd rolled in and out of the darkness. the roofs overhead were engulfed in the soot-coloured sky that seemed to be descending on the heads of the passengers. men passed carrying parcels; the white necktie of a theatre-goer was caught sight of. from lambeth, from islington, from pimlico, from all the dark corners where it had been lurking in the daytime, prostitution at the fading of the light, had descended on the town--portly matrons, very respectable in brown silk dresses and veils, stood in the corners of alleys and dingy courts, scorned by the younger generation; young girls of fifteen and sixteen going by in couples with wisps of dyed hair hanging about their shoulders, advertisements of their age; the elder taking the responsibility of choosing; germans in long ulsters trafficked in guttural intonations; policemen on their beats could have looked less concerned. the english hung round the public-houses, enviously watching the arched insteps of the frenchwomen tripping by. smiles there were plenty, but the fog was so thick that even the parisians lost their native levity and wished themselves back in paris. at the crossing of wellington street she stumbled against a small man who leaned against a doorway coughing violently. they stared at each other in profound astonishment, and then kate said in a pained and broken voice: 'oh, ralph! is it you?' 'yes, indeed it is. but to think of meeting you here in london!' they had, for the second, in a sort of way, forgotten that they had once been man and wife, and after a pause kate said: 'but that's just what i was thinking. what are you doing in london?' ralph was about to answer when he was cut short by a fit of coughing. his head sank into his chest, and his little body was shaken until it seemed as if it were going to break to pieces like a bundle of sticks. kate looked at him pityingly, and passing unconsciously over the dividing years just as she might have done when they kept shop together in hanley, she said: 'oh! you know you shouldn't stop out in such weather as this: you'll be breathless to-morrow.' 'oh no, i shan't; i've got a new remedy. but i've lost my way; that's the reason why i'm so late.' 'perhaps i can tell you. where are you staying?' 'in an hotel in bedford street, near covent garden.' 'well, then, this is your way; you've come too far.' and passing again into the jostling crowd they walked on in silence side by side. a slanting cloud of fog had drifted from the river down into the street, creating a shivering and terrifying darkness. the cabs moved at walking pace, the huge omnibuses stopped belated, and their advertisements could not be read even when a block occurred close under a gas-lamp. the jewellers' windows emitted the most light; but even gold and silver wares seemed to have become tarnished in the sickening atmosphere. then the smell from fishmongers' shops grew more sour as the assistant piled up the lobsters and flooded the marbles preparatory to closing; and, just within the circle of vision, inhaling the greasy fragrance of soup, a woman in a blue bonnet loitered near a grating. 'this is bedford street, i think,' said kate, 'but it's so dark that it's impossible to see.' 'i suppose you know london well?' replied ralph somewhat pointedly. 'pretty well, i've been here now for some time.' for the last three or four minutes not a word had been spoken. kate was surprised that ralph was not angry with her; she wanted to speak to him of old times, but it was hard to break the ice of intervening years. at last, as they stopped before the door of a small family hotel, he said: 'it's now something like four years since we parted, ain't it?' the question startled her, and she answered nervously and hurriedly: 'i suppose it is, but i'd better wish you good-bye now--you're safe at home.' 'oh no! come in; you look so very tired, a glass of wine will do you good. besides, what harm? wasn't i your husband once?' 'oh, ralph! how can you?' 'why, there's no reason why i shouldn't hear how you've been getting on. we're just like strangers, so many things have occurred; i've married since--but perhaps you didn't hear of it?' 'married! who did you marry?' 'well! i married your assistant, hender.' 'what, hender your wife?' said kate, with an intonation of voice that was full of pain. a dagger thrust suddenly through her side as she went up the staircase could not have wounded her more cruelly than the news that the woman who had been her assistant now owned the house that once was hers. the story of the dog in the manger is as old as the world. through the windows of the little public sitting-room nothing was visible; everything was shrouded in the yellow curtain of fog. a commercial traveller had drawn off his boots, and was warming his slippered feet by the fire. 'dreadful weather, sir,' said the man. 'i'm afraid it won't do your cough much good. will you come near the fire?' 'thank you,' said ralph. kate mechanically drew forward a chair. it would be impossible for them to say a word, for the traveller was evidently inclined to be garrulous, and both wondered what they should do; but at that moment the chambermaid came to announce that the gentleman's room was ready. he took up his boots and retired, leaving the two, who had once been husband and wife, alone; and yet it seemed as difficult as ever to speak of what was uppermost in their minds. kate helped ralph off with his great-coat, and she noticed that he looked thinner and paler. the servant brought up two glasses of grog, and when kate had taken off her bonnet, she said: 'do you think i'm much altered?' 'well, since you ask me, kate, i must say i don't think you're looking very well. you're thinner than you used to be, and you've lost a good deal of your hair.' 'i've only just recovered from a bad illness,' she said, sighing, and as she raised the glass to her lips the gaslight defined the whole contour of her head. the thick hair that used to encircle her pale prominent temples like rich velvet, looked now like a black silk band frayed and whitened at the seam. 'but what have you been doing? have things gone pretty well with you?' said ralph, whose breath came from him in a thin but continuous whistle. 'what happened when i got my decree of divorce?' 'nothing particular for a while, but afterwards we were married.' 'oh!' said ralph, 'so he married you, did he? well, i shouldn't have expected it of him. so we're both married. isn't it odd? and meeting, too, in this way.' 'yes, many things have happened since then. i've been on the stage--travelling all over england.' 'what! you on the stage, kate?' said ralph, lifting his head from his hand. 'oh lord! oh lord! how--ha! ha! oh! but i mustn't la-ugh; i won't be able to breathe.' kate turned to him almost angrily, and the ghost of the prima donna awakening in her, she said: 'i don't see what there is to laugh at. i've played all the leading parts, and in all the principal towns in england--liverpool, manchester, leeds. the newcastle chronicle said my serpolette was the best they'd seen.' ralph looked bewildered, like a man blinded for a moment by a sudden flash of lightning. he could not at once realize that this woman, who had been his wife, who had washed and scrubbed in his little home in hanley, was now one of those luminous women who, in clear skirts and pink stockings, wander singing beautiful songs, amid illimitable forests and unscalable mountains. for a moment he regretted he had married miss hender. 'but i don't think i shall ever act again.' 'how's that?' he said with an intonation of disappointment in his voice. 'i don't know,' said kate. 'i'm not living with my husband now, and i haven't the courage to look out for an engagement myself.' ralph stared at her vaguely. 'look out for an engagement?' he repeated to himself; it seemed to him that he must be dreaming. 'aren't you happy with him? doesn't he treat you well?' said ralph, dropping perforce from his dream back into reality, 'oh yes, he has always been very good to me. i can't say how it was, but somehow after a time we didn't get on. i dare say it was my fault. but how do you get on with miss hender?' said kate, partly from curiosity, half from a wish to change the conversation. 'oh, pretty well,' said ralph, with something that sounded, in spite of his wheezing, like a sigh. 'how does she manage the dressmaking? she was always a good workwoman, but she never had much taste, and i should fancy wouldn't be able to do much if left entirely to herself.' 'that's just what occurred. it's curious you should have guessed so correctly. the business has all gone to the dogs, and since mother's death we've turned the house into a lodging-house.' 'and is mother dead?' cried kate, clasping her hands. 'what must she have thought of me.' ralph did not answer, but after a long silence he said: 'it's a pity, ain't it, that we didn't pull it off better together?' kate raised her head and looked at him quickly. her look was full of gratitude. 'yes,' she said, 'i behaved very badly towards you, but i believe i've been punished for it.' 'you told me that he married you and treated you very well.' 'oh!' she said, bursting into tears, 'don't ask me, it's too long a story; i'll tell you another time, but not now.' it appeared to kate that her heart was on fire and that she must die of grief. 'was this life?' she asked herself. oh, to be at rest and out of the way for ever! ralph, too, seemed deeply affected; after a pause he said: 'i don't know how it was, or why, but now i come to think of it i remember that i used to be cross with you.' 'it was the asthma that made you cross, and well it might;' and she asked him if he still suffered from asthma, and he answered: 'at times, yes.' 'but the cigarettes,' she said, 'used to relieve you; do you still smoke them?' 'yes, and sometimes they relieve me and sometimes they don't.' a long silence separated them, and breaking it suddenly he said: 'there were faults on both sides. on every side,' he added, 'for i don't exempt mother from blame either. she was always too hard upon you. now, i should never have minded your going to the theatre and amusing yourself. i shouldn't have minded your being an actress, and i should have gone to fetch you home every evening.' kate smiled through her misery, and he continued, following his idea to the end: 'it wouldn't have interfered with the business if you had been; on the contrary, it would have brought us a connection, and i might have had up those plate-glass windows, and taken in the fruiterer's shop.' ralph stopped. the roar of london had sunk out of hearing in the yellow depths of the fog, and for some minutes nothing was heard but the short ticking of the clock. it was a melancholy pleasure to dream what might have been had things only taken a different turn, and like children making mud-pies it amused them to rebuild the little fabric of their lives; whilst one reconstructed his vision of broken glass, the other lamented over the ruins of penny journal sentiment. then awakening by fits and starts, each confided in the other. ralph told kate how mrs. ede had spoken of her when her flight had been discovered; kate tried to explain that she was not as much to blame as might be imagined. ralph's curiosity constantly got the better of him, and he couldn't but ask her to tell him something about her stage experience. one thing led to another, and before twelve o'clock it surprised her to think she had told him so much. the conversation was carried on in brief and broken phrases. the man and the woman sat close together shivering over the fire. there were no curtains to the windows, and the fog had crept through the sashes into the room. kate coughed from time to time--a sharp, hacking cough--and ralph's wheezing grew thicker in sound. 'i'm a-fraid i shall have a b-bad night, this dre-ad-ful weather.' 'i should like to stop to nurse you; but i must be getting home.' 'you surely won't think of going out such a night as this; you'll never find your way home.' 'yes, yes, i shall; it wouldn't do for me to remain here.' they who had once been husband and wife looked at each other, and both smiled painfully. 've-ry well, i'll see you do-wnstairs.' 'oh no! you mustn't, you'll kill yourself!' ralph, however, insisted. they stood on the doorstep for a moment together, suffocating in a sulphur-hued atmosphere. 'you'll come a-nd and see me again to-to-morrow, won't you?' 'yes, yes!' cried kate; 'to-morrow! to-morrow!' and she disappeared in the darkness. xxx but on the morrow she could not leave her room, and at the end of the week the news at the bedford hotel was that mr. ede had gone away the day before without leaving any message. the porter who informed her of his departure looked her over curiously, setting her thinking that he thought mr. ede had done well to get clear of the likes of her. she had tried to make herself look tidy and thought she had succeeded, but tidy or untidy, it was all the same, nothing mattered now; she was done for. no doubt the porter was right; ralph had gone away to escape from her, which was just as well, for what more had they to say to each other: hadn't he married hender? and passing in front of a shop-window she caught sight of herself in a looking-glass. 'not up to much,' she said, and passed on into the strand mumbling her misfortunes and causing the passers-by to look after her. she had not pinned up her skirt safely, a foot of it dragged over the pavement, and hearing jeering voices behind her she went into a public-house to ask for a pin. the barmaid obliged her with one, and while arranging her skirt she heard a man say: 'well, they that talk of the evil of drinking know very little of what they are talking about. drink has saved as many men as it has killed.' kate's heart warmed to the man, for she knew a glass had often saved her from making away with herself, but never had she felt more like the river in her life than she did that morning. threepennyworth would be enough, she could not afford more; dick was only allowing her two pounds a week, and a woman had to look after the thirty-nine shillings very strictly to find the fortieth in her pocket before her next week's money was due. she felt better after having her glass; her thoughts were no longer on the river lying at the end of wellington street, but on the passengers in the strand, the swaggering mummers, male and female; the men with lordly airs and billycock hats; the women with yellow hair and unholy looks upon their faces. there were groups of men and women round a theatrical agent's place of business, all sorts of people coming and going; lawyers from the temple, journalists on their way to fleet street; prostitutes of all kinds and all sorts, young and old, fat and thin, of all nationalities, french, belgian, and german, went by in couples, in rows, their eyes flaming invitations. children with orange coloured hair sold matches and were followed down suspicious alleys; a strange hurried life, full of complexity, had begun in the twilight before the lamplighters went by. girls and boys scrambled after each other quarrelling and selling newspapers. the spectacle helped the time away between four o'clock and seven. at seven she turned into some eating-house and dined for a shilling, and afterwards there was nothing to do than wander in the strand. some of the women who preferred to pick up a living by the sale of their lips rather than by standing for hours over a stinking wash-tub were very often kindly human beings, and there was nobody else except these street-walkers with whom she could exchange a few words and invite into a drinking shop for a glass. over the counter she related her successes as clairette in _madame angot_ and serpolette in _les cloches de corneville_, and if an incredulous look came into the faces of her guests she sang to them the little ditties, proving by her knowledge of them that all she told them was true. from the drinking-shop they passed out in groups, and these women took kate to their eating-houses, and she listened to their stories, and when at the end of the week she had spent all her money sometimes these women lent her shillings and half-crowns, and when she could not return the money she had borrowed they asked her: 'why don't you do as we do?' her pretty face of former days was almost gone by this time, but traces of it still remained. 'if you would only dress yourself a little more becomingly and come along with us, you would be able to make two ends meet. with what you get from your husband you would be better off than any of us.' but she could not be persuaded, and as time moved on, and drunkenness became more inveterate, the belief that she was not utterly lost unless she was unfaithful to dick took possession of her, and she clung to it with an almost desperate insistency, saying to her friends, 'if i were to do that i should go down to the river and drown myself.' she used to hear laughter when she said these words, and the replies were that every woman had said the same thing: 'but we all come to it sooner or later.' 'not me, not me!' she replied, tottering out of the public-house. but one night, awakening in the dusk between daylight and dark, she remembered that something had befallen her that had never befallen her before. she was not sure, it may have been that she had dreamed it. all the same, she could not rid herself of the idea that last night in the public-house near charing cross a man had come in and said he would pay for the drinks, and that afterwards she had gone to one of the hotels in villiers street. if she hadn't why did she think of villiers street? she rarely went down that street. yet she was haunted by a memory, a hateful memory that had kept her awake, and had caused her to moan and to cry for hours, till at last sleep fell upon her. on waking her first thought was to inquire from the women, and she walked up and down the strand seeking them till nightfall. but they could tell her nothing of what had happened after she left them, 'dry your eyes, kate,' they said. 'what matter? your husband deserted you; aren't you free to live with whom you please?' kate felt that all they said was true enough, but she prayed that the memory of the hotel bedroom that had risen up in her mind was the memory of a dream, and not of something that had befallen her in her waking senses. it were bad enough that she should have dreamed such a thing, and on returning home she fell on her knees and prayed that what she feared had been, had not been; and she rose from her knees, her eyes full of tears, and a sort of leaden despair in her heart that she felt would never pass away. as the days went by her mind became denser, she fell into obtusities out of which she found it difficult to rouse herself. even her violent temper seemed to leave her, and miserable and hopeless she rolled from one lodging to another, drinking heavily, bringing the drink back with her and drinking in her bed until her hand was too unsteady to pour out another glass of whisky. she drank whisky, brandy, gin, and if she couldn't get these, any other spirit would serve her purpose, even methylated spirit. her bed-curtains were taken away by the landlady lest kate should set them on fire. the landlady lit the gas at nightfall and turned it out before she went to bed--'only in that way,' she said to herself, 'can we be sure that that woman won't burn us all to death in our beds. once a room is let,' she continued, 'it's hard to turn a sick woman out, especially if there's no excuse, and in this case there's none. for you see, mrs. lennox is getting two pounds a week from her husband,' mr. locker, mrs. rawson's evening friend, agreed with her; and he spoke of the recompense she would be entitled to from mr. lennox in the event of mrs. lennox's death; 'for, of course, every trouble and annoyance should be recompensed.' she agreed with him; but her eyes suddenly softening, she said: 'i haven't seen her since this morning when i took her up a cup of tea. she may like a bit of dinner. we're having some rabbit for supper, i'll ask her if she'd like a piece.' a few minutes later she returned saying she was afraid mrs. lennox was dying, and that it might be as well to send to the hospital. locker answered that perhaps it would be just as well, but on second thoughts he suggested that the husband should be communicated with. 'it isn't far to the opéra comique,' mrs. rawson answered, 'i'll just put on my hat and jacket and go round there.' 'it'll be the best way to escape responsibility,' locker said on the doorstep; but without answering she went up the strand, passing over to the other side when she came in sight of the globe theatre. 'where's the stage entrance of the opéra comique?' she asked at the bookstall at the corner of holliwell street, and was told that she would find the stage entrance in wytch street, about half-way down the street. 'the stage-doors of the globe and the opéra comique are side by side,' was cried after her. 'what does he mean by half-way down the street,' she muttered; 'he meant a quarter down,' and she addressed herself to the door-keeper, who answered surlily that mr. lennox was particularly engaged at that moment, but at mrs. rawson's words--'i believe his wife is dying'--he agreed to send up a message as soon as he could get hold of somebody to take it. at last somebody's dresser was stopped as he was about to pass through the swing-door; he agreed to take the message, and a few minutes after mrs. rawson was conducted up several little staircases and down some passages to find herself eventually in a small room in which there were three people, one a pleasant-faced man, so affable and kind that mrs. rawson thought she could have got on with him very well if she had had a chance. by him stood a tall imperious lady who rustled a voluminous skirt--a person of importance, mrs. rawson judged her to be from the deference with which a little thread-paper-man listened to her--the costumier, she learnt from scraps of conversation. 'i'm sorry,' mr. lennox said. 'all you tell me is very sad. but i'm afraid i can do nothing.' 'that's what i think myself,' mrs. rawson answered. 'i'm afraid there's nothing to be done, but i thought i'd better come and tell you. you see, when i went up with some beef-tea she looked to me like one that hadn't many days to live. i may be mistaken, of course.' 'she should have a nurse,' mrs. forest said. 'i do all i can for her,' mrs. rawson murmured, 'but you see with three children to look after and only one maid,'--the two women began to talk together and the thread-paper man took advantage of the opportunity to whisper to dick that he thought he could manage to do the flower-girls' dresses at five shillings less. 'that will be all right,' dick replied. 'i will call round in the morning, mr. shaffle.' mrs. forest held out her jacket to dick, who helped her into it. 'where are you going ... shall you be coming back again?' he asked. 'i'm going to nurse your wife, dick,' she said, picking up her long feather boa, 'and isn't all that is happening now a vindication that we did well not to yield ourselves to ourselves?--for had we done so our regrets would be now unanimous, and i shouldn't be able to go to her with clear conscience.... she's been drinking heavily again, no doubt,' mrs. forest said, turning to mrs. rawson. 'but we mustn't judge or condemn anyone, so jesus hath said. i'll go with you now, mrs. rawson, and you'll perhaps come to-morrow, dick, to see her?' 'if i could help my wife i'd go, laura, but as i've often told you, my will to help her was spent long ago; it would be of no use.' laura's eyes lit up for a moment. 'but if she asks to see me i'll go.' at these words mrs. forest's eyes softened, and he began to ask himself how much truth there was in laura's resolve to go and attend upon his wife in what was no doubt a last agony. seeing and hearing her put into his head remembrances of an actress, he could not remember which. her demeanour was as lofty as any and her speech almost rose into blank verse at times; and he began to think that she had missed her vocation in life. it might have been that she was destined by nature for the stage. 'she's more mummer than myself or kate,' he said to himself, and giving an ear to her outpourings, he recognized in them the rudiments of the grand style: and he admired her transitions--her voice would drop and she seemed to find her way back into homely speech. her soul seemed to pass back and forwards easily, and dick did not feel sure which was the real woman and which the fictitious. 'she doesn't know herself,' he said, for at that moment she had left the tripod and was sitting in imagination at the bedside in attendance, looking from the patient to the clock, administering the medicine on the exact time. when mrs. rawson spoke about the length of the day and night she answered that she would take her work with her, and bade dick not to be anxious about the changes he had asked her to make in the second act. 'they shall be made,' she said, 'and without laying myself open to any claim for demurrage.' 'demurrage' dick exclaimed. 'she shall have attendance, but a soul ready to depart shouldn't be detained in port longer than is necessary. and mrs. rawson would like to let her room to one who has not received her sailing orders, as is the case with your poor wife, dick,--that is to say, if i understand mrs. rawson's account of her illness.' 'she's not here for long,' mrs. rawson answered; 'but you mustn't think, ma'am, that i'd lay any under claim for the trouble she's been to me, only what is fair. "fair is fair all the world over," has been my maxim ever since i started letting apartments. but perhaps, ma'am, you'll be wanting a room in my house. if you do there's the drawing-room floor, which would suit you nicely. but you can't be day nurse and night nurse yourself.' laura answered that that was true, and talking of a nurse from charing cross hospital they went out of the house together. at the end of the street laura stopped suddenly. 'but she must have a doctor,' she said, and waited for mrs. rawson to recommend one, and mrs. rawson replied that the doctor that attended her and her children was out of town. 'we will ask here,' laura said, and called to the cabby to stop at the apothecary's, and the questions she put to the man behind the counter were so pertinent that mrs. rawson began to think that perhaps she had misjudged mrs. forest, who now seemed to her a sensible and practical woman. they jumped again into a cab, and after a short drive returned with a doctor, laura relating to him in the cab all they knew about his patient. 'from what you tell me it seems a bad case,' he said, and turning from laura to mrs. rawson he asked her to describe the patient. 'when i took up the beef-tea i found her that bad that i felt that i'd always have it on my conscience if i didn't let her husband know how bad his wife was----' 'i'm afraid, doctor, that she's been drinking for years,' laura interjected. 'well, as soon as i see mrs. lennox i shall be able to tell you if there is in my opinion any reasonable hope of saving her. i believe you're going to nurse mrs. lennox through this illness?' he asked laura, and she began to tell him how she had always known of this duty: years before she had ever met mr. lennox it had been revealed to her--not the exact time, but the fact that she would have to attend upon the wife of some man who would be engaged in the publication of some of her works. 'you see, her husband is producing my play _incarnation_ at the opéra comique, and i've brought some of my work with me.' she opened her bag and laid on the table the manuscript entitled _sayings of the sybil_, and the doctor listened at first not satisfied that she was altogether the nurse into whose charge he would have liked to have given mrs. lennox; but feeling that, if he were to press the necessity of a nurse on mrs. forest, she might leave, he refrained, thinking that very often people who talked eccentrically were very practical. he had known extravagant speech go with practical nursing, and hoping that mrs. forest would prove another such one, he laid down the manuscript on the table. 'but if you believe that we live hereafter, why should you deny pre-existence?' and without waiting for the doctor to answer, laura averred that she had lived at least eight times already; witnessing the dread contest of death, and dying for the cause of pan, and the light-king, and eros the immortal, 'whose i am,' she said; 'and once again, for the ninth time, i live and watch the contest--watch with joy which overcomes fear, with love that conquers death.' 'well, i hope we shall be able to conquer death in this instance,' the doctor answered, 'and with care we may save her for some time, and if--' 'ah, if,' laura interjected, and curtseying to him she led the doctor to the door. 'nothing,' she began, 'can be worse than the present state of earth-life, and in all its phases; if the human race is to be evolved into a higher degree of perfection, no weak half-measures will avail to effect the change; there must, on the contrary, be a radical change in hereditary environment.' the doctor listened a moment and, as if enchanted with the impression she had produced, laura went back to the writing-table, and settling the folds of her brown silk widely over the floor, she began to write: '"ye gods, they fail, they falter, thy hand hath struck them down. their woof the parcae alter, beware thy mother's frown! what such as i in glory compared with such as thee? would, in the conflict gory, that i had died for thee!"' at this point the inspiration seemed to desert her, and raising her pen from the paper, she bit its end thoughtfully, seeking for a transitional phrase whereby she might be able to allude to the light-god. they were in a six-shilling-a-week bedroom in the neighbourhood of the strand. the window looked on to a bit of red-tiled roofing, a cistern, and a clothes-line on which a petticoat flapped, and in a small iron bedstead, facing the light, kate lay delirious, her stomach enormously distended by dropsy. from time to time she waved her arms, now wasted to mere bones. she had been insensible for three whole days, speaking in broken phrases of her past life--of mrs. ede, the potteries, the two little girls, annie and lizzie. dick, she declared, had been very good to her. ralph, too, had been kind, and she was determined that the two men should not quarrel over her. they must not kill each other; she would not allow it; they should be friends. they would all be friends yet; that is to say, if mrs. ede would permit of it; and why should she stand between people and make enemies of them? she fell back into stupor; and next day her ideas were still more confused. in the belief that it was for the part of the baillie that dick and ralph were quarrelling she began to express her regret that there was nothing in the piece for her. nor were memories of the baby girl who had died in manchester lacking. she prayed ralph to believe that the child was not his but dick's child. she prayed and supplicated in laura's arms till laura laid her back on the pillow exhausted. 'give me something to drink; i'm dying of thirst,' the sick woman murmured faintly. laura started from her reveries, and going over to the fireplace, where the beef-tea was standing, poured out half a cup; but, owing to great difficulty in breathing, it was some time before the patient could drink it. after a long silence kate said: 'i've been very ill, haven't i? i think i must be dying.' 'death is not death,' laura answered, 'when we die for pan, the undying representative of the universe cognizable to the senses.' over kate's mind lay a vague dream, through whose gloom two things were just perceptible--an idea of death and a desire to see dick. but she was almost too weak to seek for words, and it was with great effort that she said: 'i don't remember who you are; i can think of nothing now, but i should like to see my husband once more. could you fetch him? is he here?' 'you've not been happy with him, i know, my sister; but i don't blame you. your marriage was not a psychological union; and when marriage isn't that, woman cannot set her foot on the lowest temple of eros.' 'i'm too ill to talk with you,' kate replied, 'but i loved my husband well, too well. i keep all my little remembrances of him in that box; they aren't much--not much--but i should like him to have them when i'm gone, so that he may know that i loved him to the last. perhaps then he may forgive me. will you let me see them?' she looked at the packet of letters, kissed the crumpled calico rose, the button she had pulled off his coat in a drunken fit and preserved for love, and she even slipped on her wrist the last few pearls that remained of the chaplet she wore when they played at sweethearts in _the lovers' knot_. but after the love-tokens had been put back in the box, and kate again asked mrs. forest to bring dick to her, she began to ramble in her speech, and to fancy herself in hanley. the most diverse scenes were heaped together in the complex confusion of kate's nightmare; the most opposed ideas were intermingled. at one moment she told the little girls, annie and lizzie, of the immorality of the conversations in the dressing-rooms of theatres; at another she stopped the rehearsal of an _opéra bouffe_ to preach to the mummers--in phrases that were remembrances of the extemporaneous prayers in the wesleyan church--of the advantages of an earnest, working religious life. it was like a costume ball, where chastity grinned from behind a mask that vice was looking for, while vice hid his nakedness in some of the robes that chastity had let fall. thus up and down, like dice thrown by demon players, were rattled the two lives, the double life that this weak woman had lived, and a point was reached where the two became one, when she began to sing her famous song: 'look at me here, look at me there,' alternately with the wesleyan hymns. sometimes in her delirium she even fitted the words of one on to the tune of the other. still, laura took no notice, and her pen continued to scratch, scratch, till it occurred to her that although dick's marriage had not been a psychological one, it might be as well that he should see his wife before she died; and having come to this conclusion suddenly, she put on her bonnet and left the house. the landlady brought in the lamp, placing it on the table, out of sight of the dying woman's eyes. a dreadful paleness had changed even the yellow of her face to an ashen tint; her lips had disappeared, her eyes were dilated, and she tried to raise herself up in bed. her withered arms were waved to and, fro, and in the red gloom shed from the ill-smelling paraffin lamp the large, dimly seen folds of the bedclothes were tossed to and fro by the convulsions that agitated the whole body. another hour passed away, marked by the cavernous breathing of the woman as she crept to the edge of death. at last there came a sigh, deeper and more prolonged; and with it she died. soon after, before the corpse had grown cold, heavy steps were heard on the staircase, and dick and laura entered, one with a quantity of cockatoo-like flutterings, the other steadily, like a big and ponderous animal. at a glance they saw that all was over, and in silence they sat down, their hands resting on the table. the man spoke hesitatingly in awkward phrases of a happy release; the woman listened with a calm serenity that caused dick to wonder. she would have liked to have said something concerning psychological marriages, but the appearance of the huge body beneath the bed-clothes restrained her: he wished to say something nice and kind, but laura's presence put everything out of his head, and so his ideas became more than ever broken and disjointed, his thoughts wandered, until at last, lifting his eyes from the manuscript on the table, he said: 'have you finished the second act, dear?' the end the trespasser by d. h. lawrence _chapter _ 'take off that mute, do!' cried louisa, snatching her fingers from the piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist. helena looked slowly from her music. 'my dear louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' she stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic forbearance. 'but i can't understand it,' cried louisa, bouncing on her chair with the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'it is only lately you would even submit to muting your violin. at one time you would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.' 'i have only lately submitted to many things,' replied helena, who seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. louisa drooped from her bristling defiance. 'at any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, i don't like it.' '_go on from allegro_,' said helena, pointing with her bow to the place on louisa's score of the mozart sonata. louisa obediently took the chords, and the music continued. a young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire, turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance with the music. he was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger in the room. it was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds of others of the same kind, along a wide road in south london. now and again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to the sound of the london traffic. it was helena's room, for which she was responsible. the walls were of the dead-green colour of august foliage; the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square of grass in a setting of black loam. ceiling and frieze and fireplace were smooth white. there was no other colouring. the furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of skirting-board, serene. on the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone buddha from china, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. besides these, two tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood, and carved with chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes, rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed. a stranger, entering, felt at a loss. he looked at the bare wall-spaces of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his unwelcome. the only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern, with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of the window-bay. these only, with the fire, seemed friendly. the three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. helena played mechanically. she broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very hurting to hear. the young man frowned, and pondered. uneasily, he turned again to the players. the violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. her white dress, high-waisted, swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if her body were the white stroke of a metronome. it made the young man frown as he watched. yet he continued to watch. she had a very strong, vigorous body. her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. the long white lace of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow. byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. he watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front and glisten over her forehead. suddenly helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable resignation. louisa looked round from the piano, surprised. 'why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?' helena laughed wearily. 'it was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to rest. 'oh, i'm sorry i did so badly,' said louisa in a huff. she loved helena passionately. 'you didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired, apathetic tone. 'it was i.' when she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, helena stood a moment as if at a loss. louisa looked up with eyes full of affection, like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. getting no response, she drooped over the piano. at length helena looked at her friend, then slowly closed her eyes. the burden of this excessive affection was too much for her. smiling faintly, she said, as if she were coaxing a child: 'play some chopin, louisa.' 'i shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder plaintively. louisa was thirty-five. she had been helena's friend for years. 'play the mazurkas,' repeated helena calmly. louisa rummaged among the music. helena blew out her violin-candle, and came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to byrne. the music began. helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing. 'they are inflamed still' said the young man. she glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired, lighting up with a small smile. 'yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine, strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist, like some long, red-burned fruit. the girl laid her cheek on the smarting soft flesh caressively. 'it is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with peculiar joy. 'funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning. 'i can't think why it should last all these months. don't you ever put anything on to heal it?' she smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on the burn. 'it comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious joy. 'and that was august, and now it's february!' he exclaimed. 'it must be psychological, you know. you make it come--the smart; you invoke it.' she looked up at him, suddenly cold. 'i! i never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer. the young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. but the mortification was physical only. smiling quickly, gently--' 'never?' he re-echoed. there was silence between them for some moments, whilst louisa continued to play the piano for their benefit. at last: 'drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool. the two looked up at her. 'ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed byrne. 'you!' cried louisa. 'oh, i can't play any more,' she added, dropping her arms along her skirt pathetically. helena laughed quickly. 'oh i can't, helen!' pleaded louisa. 'my dear,' said helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_ obligation _whatever_.' with the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her self-respect, louisa dropped at the feet of helena, laid her arm and her head languishingly on the knee of her friend. the latter gave no sign, but continued to gaze in the fire. byrne, on the other side of the hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette. the room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. outside, the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. but this vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of helena's room, that remained indifferent, like a church. two candles burned dimly as on an altar, glistening yellow on the dark piano. the lamp was blown out, and the flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. still no one spoke. at last helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her position. she sat motionless. 'will you make coffee, louisa?' she asked. louisa lifted herself, looked at her friend, and stretched slightly. 'oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'this is so comfortable!' 'don't trouble then, i'll go. no, don't get up,' said helena, trying to disengage herself. louisa reached and put her hands on helena's wrists. 'i will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and appealing love. then, as helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend. 'where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy. she was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love. 'i think, my dear,' replied helena, 'it is in its usual place.' 'oh--o-o-oh!' yawned louisa, and she dragged herself out. the two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and played together and lived together. now the friendship was coming to an end. 'after all,' said byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive you've got to live.' helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark. 'wherefore?' she asked indulgently. 'because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied, grinning. she curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man. 'i don't see it at all,' she said. 'you can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in april--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.' 'well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if i can't help myself, why trouble, my friend?' 'because--because i suppose _i_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it does. you see, i'--he smiled brilliantly--'am april.' she paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy, metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering: 'but i am not a bare tree. all my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and go through a kind of _danse macabre_--' 'but you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly. 'really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'i am too tired to bud.' 'no,' he pleaded, 'no!' with his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her anxiously. she had received a great blow in august, and she still was stunned. her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. she looked in the fire, forgetting him. 'you want march,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off your old leaves. i s'll have to be march,' he laughed. she ignored him again because of his presumption. he waited awhile, then broke out once more. 'you must start again--you must. always you rustle your red leaves of a blasted summer. you are not dead. even if you want to be, you're not. even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are not dead....' smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze at a photograph that hung over the piano. it was the profile of a handsome man in the prime of life. he was leaning slightly forward, as if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. he looked out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the regular features. the hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight from his fine brow. his nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded, cleft, rather beautifully moulded. byrne gazed also at the photo. his look became distressed and helpless. 'you cannot say you are dead with siegmund,' he cried brutally. she shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the fire. 'you are not dead with siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say you live with him. you may live with his memory. but siegmund is dead, and his memory is not he--himself,' he made a fierce gesture of impatience. 'siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red leaves--he is siegmund dead! and you do not know him, because you are alive, like me, so siegmund dead is a stranger to you.' with her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at him under her brows. he stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside. 'you stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. no, you never touch the thing,' he cried. 'i have the arms of louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like the cry of a cat. she put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve an ache. he saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from life. she was very sick after the tragedy. he frowned, and his eyes dilated. 'folk are good; they are good for one. you never have looked at them. you would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the road go by. folks are better than a garden in full blossom--' she watched him again. a certain beauty in his speech, and his passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when moving from her torpor was painful. at last-- 'you are merciless, you know, cecil,' she said. 'and i will be,' protested byrne, flinging his hand at her. she laughed softly, wearily. for some time they were silent. she gazed once more at the photograph over the piano, and forgot all the present. byrne, spent for the time being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. he ignored the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she to the memory of siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart. 'i do wish i had siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great intensity. byrne glanced at her, then away. his heart beat sulkily. his sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. he, also, felt the jar, heard the discord. she made him sometimes pant with her own horror. he waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the arrival of louisa with the coffee. _chapter _ siegmund's violin, desired of helena, lay in its case beside siegmund's lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in highgate. it was worth twenty pounds, but beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell it; she kept the black case out of sight. siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. after two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the sensitive body of the instrument. the second string had broken near christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. the violin lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth, soft wood. its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of breaking, smothered under the silk folds. the fragrance of siegmund himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an odour of must. siegmund died out even from his violin. he had infused it with his life, till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. grasping his violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of the heart of helena. it was his little beloved that drank his being and turned it into music. and now siegmund was dead; only an odour of must remained of him in his violin. it lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. six months before it had longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when siegmund's fingers had pressed too hard, when siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had sickened for rest. on that last night of opera, without pity siegmund had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience, wild in anticipation. the curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and siegmund felt the spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. it was hoarse, and savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. quickly, with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away. the theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the opera-house. the members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. other years siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his associates of the orchestra. other years he had left the opera-house with a little pain of regret. now he laughed, and took his comrades' hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. the theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a flame stretched level on the wind. with his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall. for himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. the moon was full above the river. he looked at it as a man in abstraction watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. it was useless to hurry to his train. the traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm on all the golden faces; but siegmund had already left the city. his face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey, shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living flesh. mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. he was in a kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. the train slid out amongst lights and dark places. siegmund watched the endless movement, fascinated. this was one of the crises of his life. for years he had suppressed his soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the rest. then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. now he was going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for his own joy. this, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds, a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. in the excitement of this last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the carriage-window, motionless, watching things move. he felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help. slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. he was trembling in all his being, though he knew not with what. all he could do now was to watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue. when at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low anticipation. the elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their cloaks across the pale fields. he had not seen them so before. the world was changing. the train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. the night air was cool and sweet. he drank it thirstily. in the road again he lifted his face to the moon. it seemed to help him; in its brilliance amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. it would front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and helena, looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden joy. he laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the black masses of the trees. he had forgotten he was going home for this night. the chill wetness of his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face. as he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall, the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. it was an effort to go to bed. nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. there the moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was helena. he held his breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'tomorrow,' he thought, as he laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. but he had a physical feeling of the presence of helena: in his shoulders he seemed to be aware of her. quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the moonshine. 'tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children. in the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. he quickly turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. he was tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. as he lay in his arm-chair, he looked round with disgust. the table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains betokening children. in front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small plate with a knife laid across it. the cheese, on another plate, was wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the cocoa-tin. siegmund looked at his cup. it was chipped, and a stain had gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth. he fetched a glass of water. the room was drab and dreary. the oil-cloth was worn into a hole near the door. boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. in the black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of bread-and-jam. as siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two sweets underfoot. he had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his slippers; and he was in evening dress. it would be the same, while ever beatrice was beatrice and siegmund her husband. he ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. as he ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised helena, half wishing he had no tomorrow. leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. it was a small teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. he grinned to himself. this was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting absurd arms to him. he wondered why gwen had gone to bed without her pet. she would want the silly thing. the strong feeling of affection for his children came over him, battling with something else. he sank in his chair, and gradually his baffled mind went dark. he sat, overcome with weariness and trouble, staring blankly into the space. his own stifling roused him. straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again. after a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed. gwen and marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room. it was fairly light. he saw his favourite daughter lying quite uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. her black hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. marjory snuggled under the sheet. he placed the teddy-bear between the two girls. as he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him. either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or they must suffer. but he had agreed to spend this holiday with helena, and meant to do so. as he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the mirror. he looked back; he peered at himself. his hair still grew thick and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. his eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was full of youth. he rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small room. he was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness. outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. the same pallor went through all the night, glistening on helena as she lay curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept. she was so calm and full of her own assurance. it was a great rest to be with her. with her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things. he felt parched and starving. she had rest and love, like water and manna for him. she was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of beautiful things and of dreams. the clock downstairs struck two. 'i must get to sleep,' he said. he dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it. when at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. the click sounded final. he stood up, stretched himself, and sighed. 'i am fearfully tired,' he said. but that was persuasive. when he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee. 'thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a child!' he began to muse of the morrow. when he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. recollections, swift thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and take possession of a pond. phrases from the opera tyrannized over him; he played the rhythm with all his blood. as he turned over in this torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the de beriot concerto which helena had played for her last lesson. he found himself watching her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he realized where his thoughts were going. she was wrong, he was hasty; and he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him. both started as his daughter vera entered suddenly. she was a handsome girl of nineteen. crossing the room, brushing helena as if she were a piece of furniture in the way, vera had asked her father a question, in a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if helena had not been in the room. helena stood fingering the score of _pelléas_. when vera had gone, she asked, in the peculiar tone that made siegmund shiver: 'why do you consider the music of _pelléas_ cold?' siegmund had struggled to answer. so they passed everything off, without mention, after helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating; and to her much was humiliating. for years she had come as pupil to siegmund, first as a friend of the household. then she and louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or theatre had siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed the habit of coming home together. then helena had invited siegmund to her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went walks together, whilst louisa sheltered them. helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot. he had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and he had lost himself to her. that day, three weeks before the end of the season, when vera had so insulted helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'i think, siegmund, i cannot come here any more. your home is not open to me any longer.' he had writhed in confusion and humiliation. as she pressed his hand, closely and for a long time, she said: 'i will write to you.' then she left him. siegmund had hated his life that day. soon she wrote. a week later, when he lay resting his head on her lap in richmond park, she said: 'you are so tired, siegmund.' she stroked his face, and kissed him softly. siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. but helena was, if it is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and ugly for siegmund. 'you are so tired, dear. you must come away with me and rest, the first week in august.' his blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having no money, he allowed to be overridden. he was going to helena, to the isle of wight, tomorrow. helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow, along with the sea and the downs. he clung to the exquisite flame which flooded him.... but it died out, and he thought of the return to london, to beatrice, and the children. how would it be? beatrice, with her furious dark eyes, and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her: 'i shall be going away tomorrow for a few days' holiday.' she asked for detail, some of which he gave. then, dissatisfied and inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. siegmund hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation from his children. something he had said touched beatrice. she came of good family, had been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in france. he evoked her old pride. she drew herself up with dignity, and called the children away. he wondered if he could bear a repetition of that degradation. it bled him of his courage and self-respect. in the morning beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall door. immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down the gravel path. in her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she lay for the moment stiff with bitterness. 'i am nothing, i am nothing,' she said to herself. she lay quite rigid for a time. there was no sound anywhere. the morning sunlight pierced vividly through the slits of the blind. beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. then came the sound of a train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick 'chuff-chuff-chuff' of its drawing out. beatrice imagined the sunlight on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and helena, rushing through the miles of morning sunshine. 'god strike her dead! mother of god, strike her down!' she said aloud, in a low tone. she hated helena. irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her. _chapter _ in the miles of morning sunshine, siegmund's shadows, his children, beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young man setting forth to travel. when he had passed portsmouth town everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. he laughed as he looked out of the carriage window. below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. a brave sound floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park. people were drifting brightly from church. how could it be sunday! it was no time; it was romance, going back to tristan. women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily. everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. every form danced lightly in the sunshine. and beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with helena. it was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. she would be all in white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which glistened on her uncovered hair. he breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. but he would not grow impatient. the train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers, and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. the train crawled on, drawing near to the sea, for which siegmund waited breathless. it was so like helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve. another moment they were in the dirty station. then the day flashed out, and siegmund mated with joy. he felt the sea heaving below him. he looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness. standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea, feeling like one of the ruddy sails--as if he were part of it all. all his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece of colour. the little ship began to pulse, to tremble. white with the softness of a bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. ships drew near the inquisitive birds; the old _victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by. outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. siegmund laughed at them. he felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the blue sea gathering round. on the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and crimson-winged boats. siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. like the beautiful women in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. it seemed impossible. behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. on either hand the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. beneath him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. in front, sieglinde's island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him, bringing him helena. meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. siegmund regretted it. but helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the fleets of cloud that had launched whilst siegmund was on water. as he watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the chill wind. his travelling was very slow. the sky's dark shipping pressed closer and closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. over the flat lands near newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. all the sky was grey. siegmund waited drearily on newport station, where the wind swept coldly. it was sunday, and the station and the island were desolate, having lost their purposes. siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. all his morning's blaze of elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. he had slept only two hours of the night. an empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the intoxication was dying out. at three o'clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class carriage, looking out. a few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the reeds that shivered in the marshy places. siegmund sat in a chilly torpor. he counted the stations. beneath his stupor his heart was thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain felt dead. the train slowed down: yarmouth! one more station, then. siegmund watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. on the dry grey under the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. suddenly siegmund's heart leaped up, wrenching wildly. he burst open the door, and caught hold of helena. she dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her into the carriage. 'you _here_!' he exclaimed, in a strange tone. she was shivering with cold. her almost naked arms were blue. she could not answer siegmund's question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as his warmth invaded her. he laughed in his heart as she nestled in to him. 'is it a dream now, dear?' he whispered. helena clasped him tightly, shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her. almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes. 'here we are, then!' exclaimed helena, dropping into her conventional, cheerful manner at once. she put straight her hat, while he gathered his luggage. until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. siegmund was tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare stimulant. he wondered at himself. it seemed that every fibre in his body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters astonished cries of delight. when helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. his naïve look of joy was very sweet to her. his eyes were dark blue, showing the fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow, mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. helena appreciated him, feature by feature. she liked his clear forehead, with its thick black hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. she loved his hands, that were small, but strong and nervous, and very white. she liked his breast, that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and his knees. for him, helena was a presence. she was ambushed, fused in an aura of his love. he only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him. outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. their lodging was not far from the bay. as they sat together at tea, siegmund's eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at helena. 'what is it?' he asked, listening uneasily. helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. his little anxious look of distress amused her. 'the noise, you mean? merely the fog-horn, dear--not wotan's wrath, nor siegfried's dragon....' the fog was white at the window. they sat waiting. after a few seconds the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal, alone, the last of the monsters. the whole fog gave off the sound for a second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. siegmund and helena looked at each other. his eyes were full of trouble. to see a big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound amused her. but he was tired. 'i assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed. 'of course. but it is a depressing sort of sound.' 'is it?' she said curiously. 'why? well--yes--i think i can understand its being so to some people. it's something like the call of the horn across the sea to tristan.' she hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. siegmund, with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. the boom of the siren broke in upon them. to him, the sound was full of fatality. helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her horn-call. 'yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested. 'this time next week, helena!' he said. she suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it lay upon the table. 'i shall be calling to you from cornwall,' she said. he did not reply. so often she did not take his meaning, but left him alone with his sense of tragedy. she had no idea how his life was wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him, leaving him inwardly quite lonely. 'there is _no_ next week,' she declared, with great cheerfulness. 'there is only the present.' at the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. putting her arms round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it close, with her hand among his hair. his nostrils and mouth were crushed against her breast. he smelled the silk of her dress and the faint, intoxicating odour of her person. with shut eyes he owned heavily to himself again that she was blind to him. but some other self urged with gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face upon her. she stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his forehead. he took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile. now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and future in a passion worth years of living. after tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful things she had found. she had a woman's curious passion for details, a woman's peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. he listened, smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. she soothed him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended to her words. 'shall we go out, or are you too tired? no, you are tired--you are very tired,' said helena. she stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly. 'no,' he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his handsome limbs in relief--'no, not at all tired now.' helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. but she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes. 'you must go to bed early tonight,' she said, turning aside her face, ruffling his soft black hair. he stretched slightly, stiffening his arms, and smiled without answering. it was a very keen pleasure to be thus alone with her and in her charge. he rose, bidding her wrap herself up against the fog. 'you are sure you're not too tired?' she reiterated. he laughed. outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. they went hand in hand. it was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his overcoat, while they walked together. 'i like the mist,' he said, pressing her hand in his pocket. 'i don't dislike it,' she replied, shrinking nearer to him. 'it puts us together by ourselves,' he said. she plodded alongside, bowing her head, not replying. he did not mind her silence. 'it couldn't have happened better for us than this mist,' he said. she laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears. 'why?' she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly. 'there is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but me--look!' he stood still. they were on the downs, so that helena found herself quite alone with the man in a world of mist. suddenly she flung herself sobbing against his breast. he held her closely, tenderly, not knowing what it was all about, but happy and unafraid. in one hollow place the siren from the needles seemed to bellow full in their ears. both siegmund and helena felt their emotion too intense. they turned from it. 'what is the pitch?' asked helena. 'where it is horizontal? it slides up a chromatic scale,' said siegmund. 'yes, but the settled pitch--is it about e?' 'e!' exclaimed siegmund. 'more like f.' 'nay, listen!' said helena. they stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the fog-horn. 'there!' exclaimed siegmund, imitating the sound. 'that is not e.' he repeated the sound. 'it is f.' 'surely it is e,' persisted helena. 'even f sharp,' he rejoined, humming the note. she laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale. 'but you agree?' he said. 'i do not,' she replied. the fog was cold. it seemed to rob them of their courage to talk. 'what is the note in _tristan_?' helena made an effort to ask. 'that is not the same,' he replied. 'no, dear, that is not the same,' she said in low, comforting tones. he quivered at the caress. she put her arms round him reached up her face yearningly for a kiss. he forgot they were standing in the public footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. she heard footsteps down the fog. as they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey haze at the top. there they were on the turfy lip of the land. the sky was fairly clear overhead. below them the sea was singing hoarsely to itself. helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. he crushed her hand, drawing slightly back. but it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming unbearable. they stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily. 'shall we walk over, then?' said siegmund, glancing downwards. helena's heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. how could he play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? she was afraid of him just then. 'come away, dear,' she pleaded. he would, then, forgo the few consummate days! it was bitterness to her to think so. 'come away, dear!' she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path. 'you are not afraid?' he asked. 'not afraid, no....' her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality that made him shiver. 'it is too easy a way,' he said satirically. she did not take in his meaning. 'and five days of our own before us, siegmund!' she scolded. 'the mist is lethe. it is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.' he laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely. they walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness. as the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. breaking masses of mist went flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western sky stood dimmed with gold. the lovers wandered aimlessly over the golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to helena that she was tired, and would sit down. they faced the lighted chamber of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun was departing with pomp. siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. it was a splendid, flaming bridal chamber where he had come to helena. he wondered how to express it; how other men had borne this same glory. 'what is the music of it?' he asked. she glanced at him. his eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly open, as if in ironic rhapsody. 'of what, dear?' 'what music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?' his skin was gold, his real mood was intense. she revered him for a moment. 'i do not know,' she said quietly; and she rested her head against his shoulder, looking out west. there was a space of silence, while siegmund dreamed on. 'a beethoven symphony--the one--' and he explained to her. she was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. the sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change. 'the grail music in _lohengrin_,' she decided. 'yes,' said siegmund. he found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble to dispute. he dreamed by himself. this displeased her. she wanted him for herself. how could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? she almost put her two hands over his eyes. _chapter _ the gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist closed to. soon siegmund and helena were shut alone within the dense wide fog. she shivered with the cold and the damp. startled, he took her in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. holding her closely, he bent forward, straight to her lips. his moustache was drenched cold with fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again. he did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. thinking it was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his breast, and covered her as best he could. that she feared him at that moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. pleadingly he hid his face on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried against her soft strong throat. 'you are so big i can't hold you,' she whispered plaintively, catching her breath with fear. her small hands grasped at the breadth of his shoulders ineffectually. 'you will be cold. put your hands under my coat,' he whispered. he put her inside his overcoat and his coat. she came to his warm breast with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him. 'see! i can't,' she whispered. he laughed short, and pressed her closer. then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his figure. softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat, under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up again, with fire, till all siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was one great ache. he crushed her to him--crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. his muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running towards her. he remained perfectly still, locked about helena, conscious of nothing. she was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. it was marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like steel. she swooned in a kind of intense bliss. at length she found herself released, taking a great breath, while siegmund was moving his mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his lips. her heart leaped away in revulsion. his moustache thrilled her strangely. his lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear, and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate through all her body. like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. her heart was like fire in her breast. suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse together. it was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one being, two-in-one, the only hermaphrodite. when helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. she belonged to that class of 'dreaming women' with whom passion exhausts itself at the mouth. her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. the fire, in heavy flames, had poured through her to siegmund, from siegmund to her. it sank, and she felt herself flagging. she had not the man's brightness and vividness of blood. she lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare bed. she lay still on siegmund's breast, listening to his heavily beating heart. with her the dream was always more than the actuality. her dream of siegmund was more to her than siegmund himself. he might be less than her dream, which is as it may be. however, to the real man she was very cruel. he held her close. his dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran bright for her. his dreams were the flowers of his blood. hers were more detached and inhuman. for centuries a certain type of woman has been rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract, and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is full of cruelty. helena lay flagging upon the breast of siegmund. he folded her closely, and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. she sank away from his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. he was far too sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to yield to the woman. his heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her withdrawal. still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for some time. she became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet grass, were aching with cold. she said softly, gently, as if he was her child whom she must correct and lead: 'i think we ought to go home, siegmund.' he made a small sound, that might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. his mouth, however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out of it. 'it is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,' she coaxed determinedly. 'soon,' he said thickly. she sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath to take him from his pleasure: 'siegmund, i am cold.' there was a reproach in this which angered him. 'cold!' he exclaimed. 'but you are warm with me--' 'but my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.' 'oh dear!' he said. 'why didn't you give them me to warm?' he leaned forward, and put his hand on her shoes. 'they are very cold,' he said. 'we must hurry and make them warm.' when they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. she clung to siegmund, laughing. 'i wish you had told me before,' he said. 'i ought to have known....' vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home. _chapter _ they found the fire burning brightly in their room. the only other person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for the sake of having visitors, than for gain. helena introduced siegmund as 'my friend'. the old lady smiled upon him. he was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. she had had a son years back.... and the two were lovers. she hoped they would come to her house for their honeymoon. siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while helena attended to the lamp. glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and bewilderment. he was not quite himself. her hand trembled so, she could scarcely adjust the wicks. helena left the room to change her dress. 'i shall be back before mrs curtiss brings in the tray. there is the nietzsche i brought--' he did not answer as he watched her go. left alone, he sat with his arms along his knees, perfectly still. his heart beat heavily, and all his being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. thoughts came up in his brain like bubbles--random, hissing out aimlessly. once, in the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and he smiled. when helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks lighting on the tinder. but her eyes were only moist with tenderness. his look instantly changed. she wondered at his being so silent, so strange. coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way--she was only twenty-six to his thirty-eight--she stood before him, holding both his hands and looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. she wore a white dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam to balance her head. he could see the full white arms passing clear through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. but her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared not reveal the passion burning in him. he could not look at her. he strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put out his fire. she held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for her dream love. he glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. she waited for him. she wanted his caresses and tenderness. he would not look at her. 'you would like supper now, dear?' she asked, looking where the dark hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong setting of his shoulders. 'just as you will,' he replied. still she waited, and still he would not look at her. something troubled him, she thought. he was foreign to her. 'i will spread the cloth, then,' she said, in deep tones of resignation. she pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. he took no notice, but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire. in the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. he watched her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace, and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and fall of her loins as she walked. he felt as if his breast were scalded. it was a physical pain to him. supper was very quiet. helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar, enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. he was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there aloof. he was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident to her through his strangeness. in her heart she wept. at last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. meanwhile, restlessly, she played fragments of wagner on the piano. 'will you want anything else?' asked the smiling old landlady. 'nothing at all, thanks,' said helena, with decision. 'oh! then i think i will go to bed when i've washed the dishes. you will put the lamp out, dear?' 'i am well used to a lamp,' smiled helena. 'we use them always at home.' she had had a day before siegmund's coming, in which to win mrs curtiss' heart, and she had been successful. the old lady took the tray. 'good-night, dear--good-night, sir. i will leave you. you will not be long, dear?' 'no, we shall not be long. mr macnair is very evidently tired out.' 'yes--yes. it is very tiring, london.' when the door was closed, helena stood a moment undecided, looking at siegmund. he was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking in the fire. as she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching, disappointed eyes. 'shall i read to you?' she asked bitterly. 'if you will,' he replied. he sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. she went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily. 'what is it, dear?' she said. 'you,' he replied, smiling with a little grimace. 'why me?' he smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. she slid into his arms with a little moan. he took her on his knee, where she curled up like a heavy white cat. she let him caress her with his mouth, and did not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm. he kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. his tenderness of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously. after a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. helena went very still, and seemed to contract. siegmund himself hesitated in his love-making. all was very quiet. they could hear the faint breathing of the sea. presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and went to the door. 'shall i let her out?' said siegmund. 'do!' said helena, slipping from his knee. 'she goes out when the nights are fine.' siegmund rose to set free the tabby. hearing the front door open, mrs curtiss called from upstairs: 'is that you, dear?' 'i have just let kitty out,' said siegmund. 'ah, thank you. good night!' they heard the old lady lock her bedroom door. helena was kneeling on the hearth. siegmund softly closed the door, then waited a moment. his heart was beating fast. 'shall we sit by firelight?' he asked tentatively. 'yes--if you wish,' she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. he carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. his whole body was burning and surging with desire. the room was black and red with firelight. helena shone ruddily as she knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. now and then red stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. siegmund, his face ruddy, advanced out of the shadows. he sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt on the hearth, with head bowed down. one of the flowers awoke and spread towards her. it asked for her mutely. she was fascinated, scarcely able to move. 'come,' he pleaded softly. she turned, lifted her hands to him. the lace fell back, and her arms, bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. he saw her breasts raised towards him. her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid. lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice. in an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder, abandoned to him. there was a good deal of sorrow in his joy. * * * * * it was eleven o'clock when helena at last loosened siegmund's arms, and rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. she was very hot, feverish, and restless. for the last half-hour he had lain absolutely still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. if she had not seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. she tossed in restlessness on his breast. 'am i not uneasy?' she had said, to make him speak. he had smiled gently. 'it is wonderful to be as still as this,' he said. she had lain tranquil with him, then, for a few moments. to her there was something sacred in his stillness and peace. she wondered at him; he was so different from an hour ago. how could he be the same! now he was like the sea, blue and hazy in the morning, musing by itself. before, he was burning, volcanic, as if he would destroy her. she had given him this new soft beauty. she was the earth in which his strange flowers grew. but she herself wondered at the flowers produced of her. he was so strange to her, so different from herself. what next would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. he seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. she merely helped to produce him. helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of involuntary recoil from shock. she was tired, but restless. all the time siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and unbearable to herself. at last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. siegmund looked at her from his tranquillity. she put the damp hair from her forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. then she glanced hauntingly at her flushed face in the mirror. with the same restlessness, she turned to look at the night. the cool, dark, watery sea called to her. she pushed back the curtain. the moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. beyond the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea, and the moonlight. the moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution on her brow. 'shall we go out a moment, siegmund?' she asked fretfully. 'ay, if you wish to,' he answered, altogether willing. he was filled with an easiness that would comply with her every wish. they went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. there they stood at the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the casement of the land seductively. 'it's the finest night i have seen,' said siegmund. helena's eyes suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness. 'i like the moon on the water,' she said. 'i can hardly tell the one from the other,' he replied simply. 'the sea seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the coast. they are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say, are all you.' 'yes,' she answered, thrilled. this was the siegmund of her dream, and she had created him. yet there was a quiver of pain. he was beyond her now, and did not need her. 'i feel at home here,' he said; 'as if i had come home where i was bred.' she pressed his hand hard, clinging to him. 'we go an awful long way round, helena,' he said, 'just to find we're all right.' he laughed pleasantly. 'i have thought myself such an outcast! how can one be outcast in one's own night, and the moon always naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? what do we want?' helena did not know. nor did she know what he meant. but she felt something of the harmony. 'whatever i have or haven't from now,' he continued, 'the darkness is a sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and sometimes the sea is a brother: and there's a family in one house, you see.' 'and i, siegmund?' she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. she looked up at him piteously. he saw the silver of tears among the moonlit ivory of her face. his heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed, then bent to kiss her. 'the key of the castle,' he said. he put his face against hers, and felt on his cheek the smart of her tears. 'it's all very grandiose,' he said comfortably, 'but it does for tonight, all this that i say.' 'it is true for ever,' she declared. 'in so far as tonight is eternal,' he said. he remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon. they stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night. _chapter _ siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. 'it is like the magic tales,' he thought, as he realized where he was; 'and i am transported to a new life, to realize my dream! fairy-tales are true, after all.' he had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. he issued with delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. reaching out his hand, he felt for his watch. it was seven o'clock. the dew of a sleep-drenched night glittered before his eyes. then he laughed and forgot the night. the creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the sunshine. siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the morning. helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. sparrows in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine; milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine. siegmund rose to look, and it was so. also the houses, like white, and red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of sunshine between him and them. he leaned with his hands on the window-ledge looking out of the casement. the breeze ruffled his hair, blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. he laughed, hastily threw on his clothes, and went out. there was no sign of helena. he strode along, singing to himself, and spinning his towel rhythmically. a small path led him across a field and down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. some nooks, sheltered from the wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. he took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. the grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. again, a fresh breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. the cliff was a tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty. siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where the sunshine but no wind came. he saw the blue bay curl away to the far-off headland. a few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the swinging birds. he chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling square altars, hollowed on top. he threw his clothes on a high rock. it delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him and wandering timidly over his nakedness. he ran laughing over the sand to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the heavy green water. it was cold, and he shrank. for a moment he found himself thigh-deep, watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable glitter, afraid to plunge. laughing, he went under the clear green water. he was a poor swimmer. sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. then he stooped again to resume his game with the sea. it is splendid to play, even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner. with his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer across, taking a seal's view of the cliffs as they confronted the morning. he liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he liked to see the birds come down. but in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. he frowned at the pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it, but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play. when he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were in a turmoil. he panted, filling his breast with the air that was sparkled and tasted of the sea. as he shuddered a little, the wilful palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against him. he offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion. the wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm breath. he delighted in himself. the rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of clear water, with shells and one rose anemone. 'she would make so much of this little pool,' he thought. and as he smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. it made him conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. he glanced at himself, at his handsome, white maturity. as he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red slash. siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. it wound itself redly round the rise of his knee. 'that is i, that creeping red, and this whiteness i pride myself on is i, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are i. it is a weird thing to be a person. what makes me myself, among all these?' feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly. 'i am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'she ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if i were a baboon under my clothing.' he glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. only he was marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply. 'if i was giving her myself, i wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he thought. he wiped the blood from the wound. it was nothing. 'she thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. but, by jove! i'd rather see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together could show.... why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. it was his physical self thinking. after dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. helena was in the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. she looked up at him rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. he put her at her ease. it was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and insistent. she smiled on him with tender dignity. 'you have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled black hair. she shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious. 'you have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. she smelt the brine in his hair. 'no; i bathe later,' she replied. 'but what--' hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously. 'it _is_ blood?' she said. 'i grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied. 'are you sure?' he laughed. 'the towel looks bad enough,' she said. 'it's an alarmist,' he laughed. she looked in concern at him, then turned aside. 'breakfast is quite ready,' she said. 'and i for breakfast--but shall i do?' she glanced at him. he was without a collar, so his throat was bare above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. altogether she disapproved of his slovenly appearance. he was usually so smart in his dress. 'i would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically. whistling, he threw the towel on a chair. 'how did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to eat. 'like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'and you?' 'oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of sleeplessness. 'i haven't slept like that for years,' he said enthusiastically. helena smiled gently on him. the charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over her. she liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested the breast of the man beneath it. she was extraordinarily happy, with him so bright. the dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily winking a golden eye at her. after breakfast, while siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. she dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things--on the barbaric yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers, and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. her walk was one long lingering. more than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more than imagination. she wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity's previous vision for spectacles. so she knew hardly any flower's name, nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an adaptation or a modification. it pleased her that the lowest browny florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. she clothed everything in fancy. 'that yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies before dawn came. it is tousled ...' so she thought to herself. the pink convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the night fairies. the rippling sunlight on the sea was the rhine maidens spreading their bright hair to the sun. that was her favourite form of thinking. the value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. she did not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule. her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic out of the simple morning. she watched the indolent chasing of wavelets round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the water-shadowed reefs. 'this is very good,' she said to herself. 'this is eternally cool, and clean and fresh. it could never be spoiled by satiety.' she tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away the soiling of the last night's passion. the sea played by itself, intent on its own game. its aloofness, its self-sufficiency, are its great charm. the sea does not give and take, like the land and the sky. it has no traffic with the world. it spends its passion upon itself. helena was something like the sea, self-sufficient and careless of the rest. siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging backward and forward like the water. together they leaned on the wall, warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they watched the water playing. when siegmund had helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards something, which he always felt otherwise. she seemed to connect him with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and the darkness. beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. it is that makes love. he could always sympathize with the wistful little flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. in these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. but with helena, in this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day. 'will it be fine all day?' he asked, when a cloud came over. 'i don't know,' she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she did not care at all. 'i think it will be a mixed day--cloud and sun--more sun than cloud.' she looked up gravely to see if he agreed. he turned from frowning at the cloud to smile at her. he seemed so bright, teeming with life. 'i like a bare blue sky,' he said; 'sunshine that you seem to stir about as you walk.' 'it is warm enough here, even for you,' she smiled. 'ah, here!' he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards helena's. she laughed, and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. for nearly an hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that wandered down from the west. she fled as soon from warmth as from cold. physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. but psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one. they climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. on the highest point of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. they read the inscription. 'that's all right--but a vilely ugly railing!' exclaimed siegmund. 'oh, they'd have to fence in lord tennyson's white marble,' said helena, rather indefinitely. he interpreted her according to his own idea. 'yes, he did belittle great things, didn't he?' said siegmund. 'tennyson!' she exclaimed. 'not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.' 'i shouldn't say so,' she declared. he sounded indeterminate, but was not really so. they wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. as they followed the headland to the needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below the cliffs. now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose over the cliff's edge, and sank again. now and again, as the path dipped in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds passing in and out of the cliff shelter. these savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in helena. they fascinated her, they almost voiced her. she crept nearer and nearer the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white above the weed-black rocks. siegmund stood away back, anxiously. he would not dare to tempt fate now, having too strong a sense of death to risk it. 'come back, dear. don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as he might. she heard the pain and appeal in his voice. it thrilled her, and she went a little nearer. what was death to her but one of her symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and sweeping, and dark. leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like froth on a pot, screaming in chorus. she watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of siegmund, and she thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish. helena came smiling to siegmund, saying: 'they look so fine down there.' he fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. he was filled with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. she laughed as he gripped her. they went searching for a way of descent. at last siegmund inquired of the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. he was pointed to the 'path of the hundred steps'. 'when is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they descended the dazzling white chalk. there were sixty-eight steps. helena laughed at his exactitude. 'it must be a love of round numbers,' he said. 'no doubt,' she laughed. he took the thing so seriously. 'or of exaggeration,' he added. there was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet. a sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs. siegmund and helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en route_. amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, siegmund and helena, two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment side by side. they lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. the lazy ships that were idling down the solent observed the cliffs and the boulders, but siegmund and helena were too little. they lay ignored and insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan of day go past. they lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes, looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water. 'now, that one with the greyish sails--' siegmund was saying. 'like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster--yes?' interrupted helena. 'that is a schooner. you see her four sails, and--' he continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the wicked laughter of helena. 'that is right, i am sure,' he protested. 'i won't contradict you,' she laughed, in a tone which showed him he knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did. 'so you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?' he said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. they turned and looked at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in the heat. then they closed their eyes with sunshine. drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. but cold shadows startled them up. 'the clouds are coming,' he said regretfully. 'yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,' she answered, 'look at the shadows--like blots floating away. don't they devour the sunshine?' 'it is quite warm enough here,' she said, nestling in to him. 'yes; but the sting is missing. i like to feel the warmth biting in.' 'no, i do not. to be cosy is enough.' 'i like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. i feel like a seed that has been frozen for ages. i want to be bitten by the sunshine.' she leaned over and kissed him. the sun came bright-footed over the water, leaving a shining print on siegmund's face. he lay, with half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. looking at his limbs, she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. she sat over him, with her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. he lay perfectly still, in a half-dream. presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the sea, and listening to his heart-beats. the throb was strong and deep. it seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. had the world a heart? was there also deep in the world a great god thudding out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? it frightened her. this was the god she knew not, as she knew not this siegmund. it was so different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome, shapely nose. and the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves. she listened for siegmund's soul, but his heart overbeat all other sound, thudding powerfully. _chapter _ siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. he looked across at the shaggy grey water in wonder. then he turned to helena. 'i suppose,' he said, 'they are saluting the czar. poor beggar!' 'i was afraid they would wake you,' she smiled. they listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the water and the downs. the day had gone grey. they decided to walk, down below, to the next bay. 'the tide is coming in,' said helena. 'but this broad strip of sand hasn't been wet for months. it's as soft as pepper,' he replied. they laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of shrivelled fucus. the base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. on the other side was the level plain of the sea. hand in hand, alone and overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. the waves staggered in, and fell, overcome at the end of the race. siegmund and helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of withdrawal. the lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders, that glistened in smooth skins uncannily. but siegmund saw the waves were almost at the wall of the headland. glancing back, he saw the other headland white-dashed at the base with foam. he and helena must hurry, or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still remaining between the great wall and the water. the cliffs overhead oppressed him--made him feel trapped and helpless. he was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled for him. but he and helena. she laboured strenuously beside him, blinded by the skin-like glisten of the white rock. 'i think i will rest awhile,' she said. 'no, come along,' he begged. 'my dear,' she laughed, 'there is tons of this shingle to buttress us from the sea.' he looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders. it would be ridiculous to be trapped. 'look at this black wood,' she said. 'does the sea really char it?' 'let us get round the corner,' he begged. 'really, siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,' she said ironically. when they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved. this bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of shingle. with the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, helena was delighted. 'this is fine, siegmund!' she said, halting and facing west. smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. they were quite alone, in this great white niche thrust out to sea. here, he could see, the tide would beat the base of the wall. it came plunging not far from their feet. 'would you really like to travel beyond the end?' he asked. she looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke: 'this is a fine place. i should like to stay here an hour.' 'and then where?' 'then? oh, then, i suppose, it would be tea-time.' 'tea on brine and pink anemones, with daddy neptune.' she looked sharply at the outjutting capes. the sea did foam perilously near their bases. 'i suppose it _is_ rather risky,' she said; and she turned, began silently to clamber forwards. he followed; she should set the pace. 'i have no doubt there's plenty of room, really,' he said. 'the sea only looks near.' but she toiled on intently. now it was a question of danger, not of inconvenience, siegmund felt elated. the waves foamed up, as it seemed, against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been swept back. supposing they could not get by? he began to smile curiously. he became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always laughed to himself. helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind her. the point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. they had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle, and the swinging sea. the waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind, sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. siegmund hoped they were cut off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. the smile became set on his face. then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and it was against this the waves broke. they climbed the side of this ridge, hurried round to the front. there the wind caught them, wet and furious; the water raged below. between the two helena shrank, wilted. she took hold of siegmund. the great, brutal wave flung itself at the rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. fume and spray were spun on the wind like smoke. the roaring thud of the waves reminded helena of a beating heart. she clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. always, against the rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under the breast. there was something brutal about it that she could not bear. she had no weapon against brute force. she glanced up at siegmund. tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. he was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. her face became heavy and sullen. he was like the heart and the brute sea, just here; he was not her siegmund. she hated the brute in him. turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide, populous bay. he remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil, careless of her departure. he would easily catch her. when at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his savagery, and was sad. he could never take part in the great battle of action. it was beyond him. many things he had let slip by. his life was whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. even here, he had but helena, and through her the rest. after this week--well, that was vague. he left it in the dark, dreading it. and helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. he saw her small figure bowed as she plunged forward. it smote his heart with the keenest tenderness. she was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. why was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter wisdom of experience? she was young and naïve, and should he be angry with her for that? his heart was tight at the thought of her. she would have to suffer also, because of him. he hurried after her. not till they had nearly come to a little green mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch her up. then he took her hand as they walked. they halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word, he folded her in his arms. both were put of breath. he clasped her close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. she felt his body lifting into her, and sinking away. it seemed to force a rhythm, a new pulse, in her. gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down on him, like metal sinking on a mould. he was sea and sunlight mixed, heaving, warm, deliciously strong. siegmund exulted. at last she was moulded to him in pure passion. they stood folded thus for some time. then helena raised her burning face, and relaxed. she was throbbing with strange elation and satisfaction. 'it might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,' she said, startling both of them. the speech went across their thoughtfulness like a star flying into the night, from nowhere. she had no idea why she said it. he pressed his mouth on hers. 'not for you,' he thought, by reflex. 'you can't go that way yet.' but he said nothing, strained her very tightly, and kept her lips. they were roused by the sound of voices. unclasping, they went to walk at the fringe of the water. the tide was creeping back. siegmund stooped, and from among the water's combings picked up an electric-light bulb. it lay in some weed at the base of a rock. he held it in his hand to helena. her face lighted with a curious pleasure. she took the thing delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness. 'isn't it remarkable!' she exclaimed joyously. 'the sea must be very, very gentle--and very kind.' 'sometimes,' smiled siegmund. 'but i did not think it could be so fine-fingered,' she said. she breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she inhaled its fine savour. 'it would not have treated _you_ so well,' he said. she looked at him with heavy eyes. then she returned to her bulb. her fingers were very small and very pink. she had the most delicate touch in the world, like a faint feel of silk. as he watched her lifting her fingers from off the glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. he watched her, waited upon her words and movements attentively. 'it is a graceful act on the sea's part,' she said. 'wotan is so clumsy--he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping fishes, _pizzicato_!--but the sea--' helena's speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. she was not lucid. 'but life's so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. siegmund smiled softly at her. she had him too much in love to disagree or to examine her words. 'there's no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. the only way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and float,' he jested. it hurt her that he was flippant. she proceeded to forget he had spoken. there were three children on the beach. helena had handed him back the senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. being a father: 'i will give it to the children,' he said. she looked up at him, loved him for the thought. wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little girl who was bending over a pool. her black hair hung in long snakes to the water. she stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they approached. in one hand she clasped some pebbles. 'would you like this? i found it down there,' said siegmund, offering her the bulb. she looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. evidently she was not going to say anything. 'the sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,' said helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children. the girl looked at her. 'the waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful fingers--' the child's eyes brightened. 'the tide-line is full of treasures,' said helena, smiling. the child answered her smile a little. siegmund had walked away. 'what beautiful eyes she had!' said helena. 'yes,' he replied. she looked up at him. he felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes. but he could not look back at her. she took his hand and kissed it, knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child. _chapter _ the way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands, rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken and trees. they came to a small roman catholic church in the fields. there the carved christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds under the coverlet. helena's heart was swelling with emotion. all the yearning and pathos of christianity filled her again. the path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand the sleeping dead, and on the other siegmund, strong and vigorous, but walking in the old, dejected fashion. she felt a rare tenderness and admiration for him. it was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive. she made him stop to look at the graves. suddenly, as they stood, she kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as if soon he would burst alight. then she was satisfied, and could laugh. as they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light swish of the wind, she let siegmund predominate; he set the swing of their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough. they argued concerning the way. siegmund, as usual, submitted to her. they went quite wrong. as they retraced their steps, stealthily, through a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more dismayed by evening, helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to siegmund. she walked head down, saying nothing. he also was silent, but his heart was strong in him. somewhere in the distance a band was playing 'the watch on the rhine'. as they passed the beeches and were near home, helena said, to try him, and to strike a last blow for her pride: 'i wonder what next monday will bring us.' 'quick curtain,' he answered joyously. he was looking down and smiling at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. he was wonderful to her. she loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded her. she wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to him, and she wanted to possess him. the hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her. that night she met his passion with love. it was not his passion she wanted, actually. but she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and that he should have all--everything. it was a wonderful night to him. it restored in him the full 'will to live'. but she felt it destroyed her. her soul seemed blasted. at seven o'clock in the morning helena lay in the deliciously cool water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless, continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion. nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water running over her. she lay and looked out on the shining sea. all things, it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. the cliffs rose out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. the coarseness was fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the morning cliffs and the rocks. yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening sap. substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency. she remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as they stretched across the light. winged momentarily on bits of tissued flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her. now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming dimly through them. she felt the wings of all the world upraised against the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. the world itself was flying. sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air of sunshine. she lay and rode the fine journey. sunlight liquid in the water made the waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. her feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. her breast came out bright as the breast of a white bird. where was siegmund? she wondered. he also was somewhere among the sea and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid, restless speck of sunlight. she struck the water, smiling, feeling along with him. they two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild, large birds inhabiting an empty sea. siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and full of life as mounting sap. the white rock glimmered through the water, and soon siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea, like pale flowers trembling upward. 'the water,' said siegmund, 'is as full of life as i am,' and he pressed forward his breast against it. he swam very well that morning; he had more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. venturing recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock, through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. suddenly he emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay. there he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the land. he waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as the shoulders of helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay. he did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its cold lips deeply of his warmth. throwing himself down on the sand that was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom that had waited, how long, for its bee. the sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. it was like a great body he cleaved to. almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving under him in its breathing. then he turned his face to the sun, and laughed. all the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath him. he spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers. 'surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like helena;' and he laid his hands again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering, gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. in the end he found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. he pushed in his hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy coldness. for the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a flower, like himself on the bosom of helena, and flowing like the warmth of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness and warmth merely floated upon. siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over him he was all hot and cloyed. then he rose and looked at himself and laughed. the water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair he should abandon his playmate. siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself free of the clogging sand. he found himself strangely dry and smooth. he tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a child playing some absorbing game with itself. soon his body was dry and warm and smooth as a camomile flower. he was, however, greyed and smeared with sand-dust. siegmund looked at himself with disapproval, though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of himself. he wanted himself clean. he felt the sand thick in his hair, even in his moustache. he went painfully over the pebbles till he found himself on the smooth rock bottom. then he soused himself, and shook his head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his hands assiduously. he must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as if he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea and sun and sand. it was the purification. siegmund became again a happy priest of the sun. he felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleach it white on the sunny shore. so white and sweet and tissue-clean he felt--full of lightness and grace. the garden in front of their house, where helena was waiting for him, was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the door by the side of the lawn. on either hand the high fence of the garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. helena sat sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. it was very still. there was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant little porches of nasturtium flowers. the nasturtium leaf-coins stood cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. there was a faint scent of mignonette. helena, like a white butterfly in the shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench, leaned over her map. she was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness. she traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. as she discovered a name, she conjured up the place. as she moved to the next mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily. she was waiting for siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her. she rose suddenly, in agitation. siegmund was standing in the sunshine at the gate. they greeted each other across the tall roses. when siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing: 'you have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.' she laughed. she was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. she glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness. 'and you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it. siegmund was glad. he rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. after a few moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said: 'i found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. i had to swim there.' 'oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact. 'it seemed just like you. many things seem like you,' he said. she laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration came into her voice. 'i saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said. he did not understand. he looked at her searchingly. she was white and still and inscrutable. then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that would not flinch, gazed straight into him. he trembled, and things all swept into a blur. after she had taken away her eyes he found himself saying: 'you know, i felt as if i were the first man to discover things: like adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.' 'i saw the sunshine in you,' repeated helena quietly, looking at him with her eyes heavy with meaning. he laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love. 'no, but you have altered everything,' he said. the note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond self-control. she caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed it. he became suddenly grave. 'i feel as if it were right--you and me, helena--so, even righteous. it is so, isn't it? and the sea and everything, they all seem with us. do you think so?' looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. he bent and kissed her, and she pressed his head to her bosom. he was very glad. _chapter _ the day waxed hot. a few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. the chalk roads were white, quivering with heat. helena and siegmund walked eastward bareheaded under the sunshine. they felt like two insects in the niche of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. a few poppies here and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like blood-drops on green water. helena recalled francis thompson's poems, which siegmund had never read. she repeated what she knew, and laughed, thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person thompson must have been. she looked at siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her. 'artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced. 'think of wagner,' said siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. all states seemed meagre, save his own. he recalled people who had loved, and he pitied them--dimly, drowsily, without pain. they came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path down a landslip. as they descended through the rockery, yellow with ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay. the living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. among the rocks of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. helena sat down and took off her shoes. she walked on the hot, glistening sand till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. then she ran into the water to cool them. siegmund and she paddled in the light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach. for a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. then there settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. they wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat down together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, siegmund with the sunshine on his forehead, helena drooping close to him, in his shadow. then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go. the sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birds asleep. it may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at them with its bright eyes. meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. dreams came like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of others withal. in them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. and the seed of such blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of god, who held it in his palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendid blooms of beauty. a little breeze came down the cliffs. sleep lightened the lovers of their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. the breeze fanned the face of helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. as the afternoon wore on she revived. quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung into water. she shivered lightly and rose. strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again. she felt beautifully refreshed. all around was quick as a garden wet in the early morning of june. she took her hair and loosened it, shook it free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens itself to the sun. she let the wind comb through its soft fingers the tangles of her hair. helena loved the wind. she turned to it, and took its kisses on her face and throat. siegmund lay still, looking up at her. the changes in him were deeper, like alteration in his tissue. his new buds came slowly, and were of a fresh type. he lay smiling at her. at last he said: 'you look now as if you belonged to the sea.' 'i do; and some day i shall go back to it,' she replied. for to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like siegmund, but more impersonal, who would receive her when siegmund could not. she rejoiced momentarily in the fact. siegmund looked at her and continued smiling. his happiness was budded firm and secure. 'come!' said helena, holding out her hand. he rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia. _chapter _ siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the sand to the rocks. there was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. helena laughed suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. siegmund's heart was leaping like a child's with excitement as he stretched forward, himself very insecure, to succour her. thus they travelled slowly. often she called to him to come and look in the lovely little rock-pools, dusky with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. siegmund loved to poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a shadowy scuttle through the weed. he would tease the expectant anemones, causing them to close suddenly over his finger. but helena liked to watch without touching things. meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and gold upon the lacquered water. at last siegmund looked doubtfully at two miles more of glistening, gilded boulders. helena was seated on a stone, dabbling her feet in a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet of the weeds. 'don't you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?' he said. she glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. then she lapped the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. she was absurdly, childishly happy. 'why should we?' she asked lightly. he watched her. her child-like indifference to consequences touched him with a sense of the distance between them. he himself might play with the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the relentless mass of cold beneath--the mass of life which has no sympathy with the individual, no cognizance of him. she loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things. she would not own life to be relentless. it was either beautiful, fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below consideration. he had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. to helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her kaleidoscope. so she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his gravity. he waited on her, since he never could capture her. 'come,' he said very gently. 'you are only six years old today.' she laughed as she let him take her. then she nestled up to him, smiling in a brilliant, child-like fashion. he kissed her with all the father in him sadly alive. 'now put your stockings on,' he said. 'but my feet are wet.' she laughed. he kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat tossing his hair with her finger-tips. the sunlight grew more and more golden. 'i envy the savages their free feet,' she said. 'there is no broken glass in the wilderness--or there used not to be,' he replied. as they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff track. they descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother. last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. the boys emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them. the little one waited for her father, calling shrilly: 'tiss can't fall now, can she, dadda? shall i put her down?' 'ay, let her have a run,' said the father. very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to her bosom. the mite was bewildered and scared. it turned round pathetically. 'go on, tissie; you're all right,' said the child. 'go on; have a run on the sand.' the kitten stood dubious and unhappy. then, perceiving the dog some distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. but the dog had already raced into the water. the kitten walked a few steps, turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. it looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves. helena glanced at siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. he was watching the kitten and smiling. 'crying because things are too big, and it can't take them in,' he said. 'but look how frightened it is,' she said. 'so am i.' he laughed. 'and if there are any gods looking on and laughing at me, at least they won't be kind enough to put me in their pinafores....' she laughed very quickly. 'but why?' she exclaimed. 'why should you want putting in a pinafore?' 'i don't,' he laughed. on the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun. siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and glowing. he was watching earnestly. 'i want to absorb it all,' he said. when at last they turned away: 'yes,' said helena slowly; 'one can recall the details, but never the atmosphere.' he pondered a moment. 'how strange!' he said. i can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail. it is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. i should say the picture was in me, not out there.' without troubling to understand--she was inclined to think it verbiage--she made a small sound of assent. 'that is why you want to go again to a place, and i don't care so much, because i have it with me,' he concluded. _chapter _ they decided to find their way through the lanes to alum bay, and then, keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path broad on the water before them. for the moon was rising late. twilight, however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. the lane twisted among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite incomprehensible. so they lost their distant landmark, the white cross. darkness filtered through the daylight. when at last they came to a signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. the fingers seemed to withdraw into the dusk the more they looked. 'we must go to the left,' said helena. to the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his shoulders. several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. climbing, they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. having passed a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a sense of space and freedom. 'we can steer by the night,' said siegmund, as they trod upwards pathlessly. helena did not mind whither they steered. all places in that large fair night were home and welcome to her. they drew nearer to the shaggy cloak of furze. 'there will be a path through it,' said siegmund. but when they arrived there was no path. they were confronted by a tall, impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than siegmund. 'stay here,' said he, 'while i look for a way through. i am afraid you will be tired.' she stood alone by the walls of gorse. the lights that had flickered into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid the darkness. helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the west. she asked for the full black night, that would obliterate everything save siegmund. siegmund it was that the whole world meant. the darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to bespeak him. she waited for him to come back. she could hardly endure the condition of intense waiting. he came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. but she felt him coming. 'no good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. not a rabbit-run.' 'then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly. '"here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly. they sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft, and where the darkness seemed deeper. the night was all fragrance, cool odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent. helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh. 'what day is it, siegmund?' she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. he laughed, understanding, and kissed her. 'but really,' she insisted, 'i would not have believed the labels could have fallen off everything like this.' he laughed again. she still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand, stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh. 'the days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in order and costume, going endlessly round.' she laughed, amused at the idea. 'it is very strange,' she continued, 'to have the days and nights smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a lifetime.' 'that is how it is,' he admitted, touched by her eloquence. 'you have torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. this morning! it does seem absurd to talk about this morning. why should i be parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _i_ am not made up of sections of time. now, nights and days go racing over us like cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take no notice.' she put her arms round his neck. he was reminded by a sudden pain in his leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. he held his breath from pain. she was kissing him softly over the eyes. they lay cheek to cheek, looking at the stars. he felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music. 'you know,' he said, repeating himself, 'it is true. you seem to have knit all things in a piece for me. things are not separate; they are all in a symphony. they go moving on and on. you are the motive in everything.' helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss. 'you must write a symphony of this--of us,' she said, prompted by a disciple's vanity. 'some time,' he answered. 'later, when i have time.' 'later,' she murmured--'later than what?' 'i don't know,' he replied. 'this is so bright we can't see beyond.' he turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes that were so close to his. then he kissed her long and lovingly. he lay, with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars. 'i wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said, always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness. 'haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of a brass reed was again in her voice. 'i don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'but you are scented like nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' he remained abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her. 'you are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her voice to speak. 'i believe,' he said slowly, 'i can see the stars moving through your hair. no, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' helena lay obediently very still. 'i thought i could watch them travelling, crawling like gold flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'but now you make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' then, as a new thought struck him: 'have you noticed that you can't recognize the constellations lying back like this. i can't see one. where is the north, even?' she laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things. she refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as of the wayside plants. 'why should i want to label them?' she would say. 'i prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' so she laughed when he asked her to find vega or arcturus. 'how full the sky is!' siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. down here it is vastly lonely in comparison. we've found a place far quieter and more private than the stars, helena. isn't it fine to be up here, with the sky for nearest neighbour?' 'i did well to ask you to come?' she inquired wistfully. he turned to her. 'as wise as god for the minute,' he replied softly. 'i think a few furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in.' 'and you are glad?' she asked. he laughed. '_carpe diem_,' he said. 'we have plucked a beauty, my dear. with this rose in my coat i dare go to hell or anywhere.' 'why hell, siegmund?' she asked in displeasure. 'i suppose it is the _postero_. in everything else i'm a failure, helena. but,' he laughed, 'this day of ours is a rose not many men have plucked.' she kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless fashion. 'what does it matter, helena?' he murmured. 'what does it matter? we are here yet.' the quiet tone of siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. she felt she should lose him. clasping him very closely, she burst into uncontrollable sobbing. he did not understand, but he did not interrupt her. he merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking hair at the motionless stars. he bent his head to hers, he sought her face with his lips, heavy with pity. she grew a little quieter. he felt his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn. 'what is it, helena?' he asked at last. 'why should you cry?' she pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled, unrecognizable voice: 'you won't leave me, will you, siegmund?' 'how could i? how should i?' he murmured soothingly. she lifted her face suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss. 'how could i leave you?' he repeated, and she heard his voice waking, the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad. an intense silence came over everything. helena almost expected to hear the stars moving, everything below was so still. she had no idea what siegmund was thinking. he lay with his arms strong around her. then she heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she thought. it gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled with a sense of triumph. siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone, so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had become different, incomprehensible to her. she had no idea what she thought or felt. all she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something and who dreaded to be sent away. how he came to be so concentratedly urgent she could not understand. it seemed an unreasonable an incomprehensible obsession to her. yet she was glad, and she smiled in her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. yet again, dimly, she wondered where was the siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. this siegmund was so incomprehensible. then again, when he raised his head and found her mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. that, she decided, was supreme, transcendental. the lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks of ships were gone. only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black sea like the broken piece of a star. overhead was a silver-greyness of stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. helena found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea, when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection of stars. _tiefe stille herrscht im wasser ohne regung ruht das meer ..._ she was fond of what scraps of german verse she knew. with french verse she had no sympathy; but goethe and heine and uhland seemed to speak her language. _die luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt, und ruhig fliesst der rhein._ she liked heine best of all: _wie träume der kindheit seh' ich es flimmern auf deinem wogenden wellengebiet, und alte erinnerung erzählt mir auf's neue von all dem lieben herrlichen spielzeug, von all den blinkenden weihnachtsgaben...._ as she lay in siegmund's arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like the gleam of a falling star over water. the night moved on imperceptibly across the sky. unlike the day, it made no sound and gave no sign, but passed unseen, unfelt, over them. till the moon was ready to step forth. then the eastern sky blenched, and there was a small gathering of clouds round the opening gates: _aus alten märchen winket es hervor mit weisser hand, da singt es und da klingt es von einem zauberland._ helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the clouds. she found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful singsong, as children do. 'what is it?' said siegmund. they were both of them sunk in their own stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her singsong, in a little louder tone. he did not listen to her, having forgotten that he had asked her a question. 'turn your head,' she told him, when she had finished the verse, 'and look at the moon.' he pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his chin and his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his nostrils. this thrilled helena with a sense of mystery and magic. '"_die grossen blumen schmachten_,"' she said to herself, curiously awake and joyous. 'the big flowers open with black petals and silvery ones, siegmund. you are the big flowers, siegmund; yours is the bridegroom face, siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled flower, siegmund, and it blooms in the _zauberland_, siegmund--this is the magic land.' between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. he lay still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange ecstasy she concentrated on him. meanwhile she whispered over him sharp, breathless phrases in german and english, touching him with her mouth and her cheeks and her forehead. '"_und liebesweisen tönen_"-not tonight, siegmund. they are all still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing, siegmund. the sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up their faces in a kiss, my darling. but they haven't you-and it all centres in you, my dear, all the wonder-love is in you, more than in them all siegmund--siegmund!' he felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow heavy drops under the ecstasy of her love. then she sank down and lay prone on him, spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the beautiful strong motion of his breathing. rocked thus on his strength, she swooned lightly into unconsciousness. when she came to herself she sighed deeply. she woke to the exquisite heaving of his life beneath her. 'i have been beyond life. i have been a little way into death!' she said to her soul, with wide-eyed delight. she lay dazed, wondering upon it. that she should come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness astonished her. suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the life of siegmund. there was a long space between the lift of one breath and the next. her heart melted with sorrowful pity. resting herself on her hands, she kissed him--a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse her soul into his for ever. then she rose, sighing, sighing again deeply. she put up her hands to her head and looked at the moon. 'no more,' said her heart, almost as if it sighed too-'no more!' she looked down at siegmund. he was drawing in great heavy breaths. he lay still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at his side, looking down at him. he felt stunned, half-conscious. yet as he lay helplessly looking up at her some other consciousness inside him murmured; 'hawwa--eve--mother!' she stood compassionate over him. without touching him she seemed to be yearning over him like a mother. her compassion, her benignity, seemed so different from his little helena. this woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile human being, but a personification of the great motherhood of women. 'i am her child, too,' he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in sleep. he had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when he looked only into deep shadow. she had never before so entered and gathered his plaintive masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture. 'come,' she said gently, when she knew he was restored. 'shall we go?' he rose, with difficulty gathering his strength. _chapter _ siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. the hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into shadowed vagueness about him. they were meaningless dark heaps at some distance, very great, it seemed. 'i can't get hold of them,' he said distractedly to himself. he felt detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported, somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. he wanted to lie down again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and controlling his body. if he could lie down again perfectly still he need not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he would not feel thus sick and outside himself. but helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the moon-path. they must set off downhill. he felt her arm clasped firmly, joyously, round his waist. therein was his stability and warm support. siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious. this pity for her drew him nearer to life. he shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the hill. he set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. it was not in his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for helena did not notice it. yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally. 'what is it?' he asked himself in wonder. his thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally to himself. between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him. they swung rapidly downhill. siegmund still shuddered, but not so uncontrollably. they came to a stile which they must climb. as he stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot securely on the step. the effort was so great that he became conscious of it. 'good lord!' he said to himself. 'i wonder what it is.' he tried to examine himself. he thought of all the organs of his body--his brain, his heart, his liver. there was no pain, and nothing wrong with any of them, he was sure. his dim searching resolved itself into another detached phrase. 'there is nothing the matter with me,' he said. then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when he had fallen ill. 'but i am not like that,' he said, 'because i don't feel tremulous. i am sure my hand is steady.' helena stood still to consider the road. he held out his hand before him. it was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night. 'yes, i think this is the right way,' said helena, and they set off again, as if gaily. 'it certainly feels rather deathly,' said siegmund to himself. he remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was--and here he chose the french word--'_l'agonie_'. but his mother had seen and had cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to spare her her suffering. 'certainly it is like that,' he said. 'certainly it is rather deathly. i wonder how it is.' then he reviewed the last hour. 'i believe we are lost!' helena interrupted him. 'lost! what matter!' he answered indifferently, and helena pressed him tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'but did we not come this way?' he added. 'no. see'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.' 'well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty well, as much as we can,' said siegmund, looking forward over the down, where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. as he looked at the moon he felt a sense of companionship. helena, not understanding, left him so much alone; the moon was nearer. siegmund continued to review the last hours. he had been so wondrously happy. the world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately beauty which he had perceived for the first time. for long hours he had been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world. 'i suppose,' he said to himself, 'i have lived too intensely, i seem to have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now they've gone my house is weak.' so he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. he reviewed his hour of passion with helena. 'surely,' he told himself, 'i have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt my cup. my soul seems to leak out--i am half here, half gone away. that's why i understand the trees and the night so painfully.' then he came to the hour of helena's strange ecstasy over him. that, somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. it was happiness concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine was like a pure poison scathing him. but his consciousness, which had been unnaturally active, now was dulling. he felt the blood flowing vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away his sickness, soothing him. 'i suppose,' he said to himself for the last time, 'i suppose living too intensely kills you, more or less.' then siegmund forgot. he opened his eyes and saw the night about him. the moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo siegmund had ever seen. when the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if siegmund and helena would walk through a large moorish arch of horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. they walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and they were walking north. helena observed three cottages crouching under the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the moonlight. 'we certainly did not come this way before,' she said triumphantly. the idea of being lost delighted her. siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim glisten of moon-mist. he could not yet fully realize that he was walking along a lane in the isle of wight. his surroundings seemed to belong to some state beyond ordinary experience--some place in romance, perhaps, or among the hills where brünhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo of fire. how could it be that he and helena were two children of london wandering to find their lodging in freshwater? he sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of arabian deserts. 'we may be on the road to newport,' said helena presently, 'and the distance is ten miles.' she laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in this wonderful excursion! she and siegmund alone in a glistening wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! siegmund looked at her. he by no means shared her exultation, though he sympathized with it. he walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of which she was not aware. yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her, and grew heavy with responsibility. the fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. the farms huddled together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened. helena walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night, actively searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they approached, listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the darkened rooms. she imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at the windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. helena laughed to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. this was the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. she imagined herself lying asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams. she imagined siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed, their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering over the grey grass seeking her dreams. so she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was fain to remember that it was a long way--a long way. siegmund's arm was about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. they crossed a stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the catholic chapel. the moon, which the days were paring smaller with envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground. the carved christ upon his cross hung against a silver-grey sky. helena looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. siegmund also looked, and bowed his head. 'thirty years of earnest love; three years' life like a passionate ecstasy-and it was finished. he was very great and very wonderful. i am very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. but we are the same; love, the brief ecstasy, and the end. but mine is one rose, and his all the white beauty in the world.' siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of the christ. yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was treating him in the same manner as it had treated the master, though his compared small and despicable with the christ-tragedy. siegmund stepped softly into the shadow of the pine copse. 'let me get under cover,' he thought. 'let me hide in it; it is good, the sudden intense darkness. i am small and futile: my small, futile tragedy!' helena shrank in the darkness. it was almost terrible to her, and the silence was like a deep pit. she shrank to siegmund. he drew her closer, leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. his heart was heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small, brave helena. 'are you sure this is the right way?' he whispered to her. 'quite, quite sure,' she whispered confidently in reply. and presently they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the steep hill. they were both very tired, both found it difficult to go with ease or surety this sudden way down. soon they were creeping cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. helena's heart was beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they wake all the fowls. she dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road not far from home. _chapter _ in the morning, after bathing, siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a kind of reverie. it was late, towards nine o'clock, yet he lounged, dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before him. in the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve and curious as sea-lions strayed afar. siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice beside him say: 'where have they come from; do you know, sir?' he turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships. 'the men-of-war? there are a good many at spithead,' said siegmund. the other glanced negligently into his face. 'they look rather incongruous, don't you think? we left the sea empty and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their eye on us!' siegmund laughed. 'you are not an anarchist, i hope?' he said jestingly. 'a nihilist, perhaps,' laughed the other. 'but i am quite fond of the czar, if pity is akin to love. no; but you can't turn round without finding some policeman or other at your elbow--look at them, abominable ironmongery!--ready to put his hand on your shoulder.' the speaker's grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of siegmund. the latter felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. this stranger ran so quickly to a perturbing intimacy. 'i suppose we are in the hands of--god,' something moved siegmund to say. the stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at the speaker. 'ah!' he drawled curiously. then his eyes wandered over the wet hair, the white brow, and the bare throat of siegmund, after which they returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. 'does the czar sail this way?' he asked at last. 'i do not know,' replied siegmund, who, troubled by the other's penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question. 'i suppose the newspaper will tell us?' said the man. sure to,' said siegmund. 'you haven't seen it this morning?' 'not since saturday.' the swift blue eyes of the man dilated. he looked curiously at siegmund. 'you are not alone on your holiday?' 'no.' siegmund did not like this--he gazed over the sea in displeasure. 'i live here--at least for the present--name, hampson--' 'why, weren't you one of the first violins at the savoy fifteen years back?' asked siegmund. they chatted awhile about music. they had known each other, had been fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. hampson excused himself for having addressed siegmund: 'i saw you with your nose flattened against the window,' he said, 'and as i had mine in the same position too, i thought we were fit to be re-acquainted.' siegmund looked at the man in astonishment. 'i only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. it's a pity to try and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don't you think?' 'stare beyond it, you mean?' asked siegmund. 'exactly!' replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'i call a day like this "the blue room". it's the least draughty apartment in all the confoundedly draughty house of life.' siegmund looked at him very intently. this hampson seemed to express something in his own soul. 'i mean,' the man explained, 'that after all, the great mass of life that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can't stop it, once we've begun to leak.' 'what do you mean by "leak"?' asked siegmund. 'goodness knows--i talk through my hat. but once you've got a bit tired of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the dark--as you were doing.' 'but, to use your metaphor, i'm not tired of the house--if you mean life,' said siegmund. 'praise god! i've met a poet who's not afraid of having his pocket picked--or his soul, or his brain!' said the stranger, throwing his head back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated. 'i don't know what you mean, sir,' said siegmund, very quietly, with a strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart. 'you're not tired of the house, but of your own particular room-say, suite of rooms--' 'tomorrow i am turned out of this "blue room",' said siegmund with a wry smile. the other looked at him seriously. 'dear lord!' exclaimed hampson; then: 'do you remember flaubert's saint, who laid naked against a leper? i could _not_ do it.' 'nor i,' shuddered siegmund. 'but you've got to-or something near it!' siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes. 'what of yourself?' he said, resentfully. 'i've funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and staring from the window at the dark.' 'but can't you _do_ something?' said siegmund. the other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing his teeth. 'i won't ask you what _your_ intentions are,' he said, with delicate irony in his tone. 'you know, i am a tremendously busy man. i earn five hundred a year by hard work; but it's no good. if you have acquired a liking for intensity in life, you can't do without it. i mean vivid soul experience. it takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and physical excitement.' siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes. 'well, and what then?' he said. 'what then? a craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other craving. you become a _concentré_, you feed your normal flame with oxygen, and it devours your tissue. the soulful ladies of romance are always semi-transparent.' siegmund laughed. 'at least, i am quite opaque,' he said. the other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat. 'not altogether,' said hampson. 'and you, i should think, are one whose flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.' siegmund glanced again at him, startled. 'you haven't much reserve. you're like a tree that'll flower till it kills itself,' the man continued. 'you'll run till you drop, and then you won't get up again. you've no dispassionate intellect to control you and economize.' 'you're telling me very plainly what i am and am not,' said siegmund, laughing rather sarcastically. he did not like it. 'oh, it's only what i think,' replied hampson. 'we're a good deal alike, you see, and have gone the same way. you married and i didn't; but women have always done as they liked with me.' 'that's hardly so in my case,' said siegmund. hampson eyed him critically. 'say one woman; it's enough,' he replied. siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea. 'the best sort of women--the most interesting--are the worst for us,' hampson resumed. 'by instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and animal in us. then they are supersensitive--refined a bit beyond humanity. we, who are as little gross as need be, become their instruments. life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth; and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or warmth or power for them. the ordinary woman is, alone, a great potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of life. in us her force becomes evident. 'she can't live without us, but she destroys us. these deep, interesting women don't want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit they can gather of us. we, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us--that is, us altogether.' 'you're a bit downright are you not?' asked siegmund, deprecatingly. he did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements were arbitrary. 'that's according to my intensity,' laughed hampson. 'i can open the blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and see--god knows what! one of these days i shall slip through. oh, i am perfectly sane; i only strive beyond myself!' 'don't you think it's wrong to get like it?' asked siegmund. 'well, i do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the end. when they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.' siegmund pondered a little.... 'you make me feel--as if i were loose, and a long way off from myself,' he said slowly. the young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins. 'i can scarcely believe they are me,' he said. 'if they rose up and refused me, i should not be surprised. but aren't they beautiful?' he looked, with a faint smile, at siegmund. siegmund glanced from the stranger's to his own hands, which lay curved on the sea-wall as if asleep. they were small for a man of his stature, but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life. instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over his thumbs. 'i wonder,' said hampson softly, with strange bitterness, 'that she can't see it; i wonder she doesn't cherish you. you are full and beautiful enough in the flesh--why will she help to destroy you, when she loved you to such extremity?' siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. the frail, swift man, with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly. 'fools--the fools, these women!' he said. 'either they smash their own crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. look at me, i am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by itself. i am very sorry.' all at once he stopped. the bitter despair in his tone was the voice of a heavy feeling of which siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks. siegmund felt a sense of doom. he laughed, trying to shake it off. 'i wish i didn't go on like this,' said hampson piteously. 'i wish i could be normal. how hot it is already! you should wear a hat. it is really hot.' he pulled open his flannel shirt. 'i like the heat,' said siegmund. 'so do i.' directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely to the village. siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. it seemed to him only a painful dream. sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to find helena. _chapter _ in the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums helena was again waiting. it was past nine o'clock, so she was growing impatient. to herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of verses she had bought in st martin's lane for twopence. a late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings, as through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew.... so she read. she made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself that she thought these verses very fine. but she watched the road for siegmund. and now she takes the scissors on her thumb ... oh then, no more unto my lattice come. 'h'm!' she said, 'i really don't know whether i like that or not.' therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road. 'he really is very late. it is absurd to think he may have got drowned; but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on the water!' her heart stood still as she imagined this. 'but what nonsense! i like these verses _very_ much. i will read them as i walk along the side path, where i shall hear the bees, and catch the flutter of a butterfly among the words. that will be a very fitting way to read this poet.' so she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. there, sure enough, was siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his throat bare, and his face bright. she stood in the mottled shade. 'i have kept you waiting,' said siegmund. 'well, i was reading, you see.' she would not admit her impatience. 'i have been talking,' he said. 'talking!' she exclaimed in slight displeasure. 'have you found an acquaintance even here?' 'a fellow who was quite close friends in savoy days; he made me feel queer-sort of _doppelgänger_, he was.' helena glanced up swiftly and curiously. 'in what way?' she said. 'he talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now! the sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the bay. you can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. well, have you made the plans for today?' they went into the house to breakfast. she watched him helping himself to the scarlet and green salad. 'mrs curtiss,' she said, in rather reedy tone, 'has been very motherly to me this morning; oh, very motherly!' siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up. 'what, has she been saying something about last night?' he asked. 'she was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had happened,' continued helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification. 'because we weren't in till about eleven?' said siegmund, also with sarcasm. 'i mustn't do it again. oh no, i mustn't do it again, really.' 'for fear of alarming the old lady?' he asked. '"you know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal ... but if i were your _mother_, i don't know _how_ i should feel,"' she quoted. 'when one engages rooms one doesn't usually stipulate for a stepmother to nourish one's conscience,' said siegmund. they laughed, making jest of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. siegmund writhed within himself with mortification, while helena talked as if her teeth were on edge. 'i don't _mind_ in the least,' she said. 'the poor old woman has her opinions, and i mine.' siegmund brooded a little. 'i know i'm a moral coward,' he said bitterly. 'nonsense' she replied. then, with a little heat: 'but you _do_ continue to try so hard to justify yourself, as if _you_ felt you needed justification.' he laughed bitterly. 'i tell you--a little thing like this--it remains tied tight round something inside me, reminding me for hours--well, what everybody else's opinion of me is.' helena laughed rather plaintively. 'i thought you were so sure we were right,' she said. he winced again. 'in myself i am. but in the eyes of the world--' 'if you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?' she said brutally. he hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring. 'what is myself?' he asked. 'nothing very definite,' she said, with a bitter laugh. they were silent. after a while she rose, went lovingly over to him, and put her arms round his neck. 'this is our last clear day, dear,' she said. a wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. he took her in his arms.... 'it will be hot today,' said helena, as they prepared to go out. 'i felt the sun steaming in my hair as i came up,' he replied. 'i shall wear a hat--you had better do so too.' 'no,' he said. 'i told you i wanted a sun-soaking; now i think i shall get one.' she did not urge or compel him. in these matters he was old enough to choose for himself. this morning they were rather silent. each felt the tarnish on their remaining day. 'i think, dear,' she said, 'we ought to find the little path that escaped us last night.' 'we were lucky to miss it,' he answered. 'you don't get a walk like that twice in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.' she glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words. they set off, siegmund bare-headed. he was dressed in flannels and a loose canvas shirt, but he looked what he was--a londoner on holiday. he had the appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of a gentleman. he had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as he walked he looked unseeing in front of him. helena belonged to the unclassed. she was not ladylike, nor smart, nor assertive. one could not tell whether she were of independent means or a worker. one thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated. rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a _concentrée_ than was siegmund. unless definitely looking at something she always seemed coiled within herself. she wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her breasts, and the skirt dropping straight and clinging. on her head was a large, simple hat of burnt straw. through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun bite vigorously. 'i wish you had put on a hat, siegmund,' she said. 'why?' he laughed. 'my hair is like a hood,' he ruffled it back with his hand. the sunlight glistened on his forehead. on the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the butterflies and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the sky. the lovers stood for some time watching the people of the farm in the down below dip their sheep on this sunny morning. there was a ragged noise of bleating from the flock penned in a corner of the yard. two red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to a large bath that stood in the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or less in the bath, whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body. the white legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape the yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. there was a faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. the farmer's wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if necessary. helena laughed with pleasure. 'that is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,' she said. 'it is cruder than theocritus.' 'in an instant it makes me wish i were a farmer,' he laughed. 'i think every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. it would be fine to be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of one's nose, and to own cattle and land.' 'would it?' asked helena sceptically. 'if i had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as i sat comfortable, i should love it,'he said. 'it amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,' she replied. 'to have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the desideratum.' 'is it?' she asked ironically. 'i would give anything to be like that,' he said. 'that is, not to be yourself,' she said pointedly. he laughed without much heartiness. 'don't they seem a long way off?' he said, staring at the bucolic scene. 'they are farther than theocritus--down there is farther than sicily, and more than twenty centuries from us. i wish it weren't.' 'why do you?' she cried, with curious impatience. he laughed. crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly opposite the path through the furze. 'there it is!' she cried, 'how could we miss it?' 'ascribe it to the fairies,' he replied, whistling the bird music out of _siegfried_, then pieces of _tristan_. they talked very little. she was tired. when they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the cliff's edge, she said: 'this shall be our house today.' 'welcome home!' said siegmund. he flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out to sea. helena sat beside him. it was absolutely still, and the wind was slackening more and more. though they listened attentively, they could hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. siegmund lay with his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. to put her page in the shadow, helena propped her book against him and began to read. presently the breeze, and siegmund, dropped asleep. the sun was pouring with dreadful persistence. it beat and beat on helena, gradually drawing her from her book in a confusion of thought. she closed her eyes wearily, longing for shade. vaguely she felt a sympathy with adam in 'adam cast forth'. her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure strugglings of the two, forth from eden through the primitive wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. thinking of adam blackened with struggle, she looked down at siegmund. the sun was beating him upon the face and upon his glistening brow. his two hands, which lay out on the grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen with heat. yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion. helena felt deeply moved. she wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless, abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. she wanted to kiss him, and shed a few tears. she did neither, but instead, moved her position so that she shaded his head. cautiously putting her hand on his hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under a sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom. 'it will make him ill,' she whispered to herself, and she bent over to smell the hot hair. she noticed where the sun was scalding his forehead. she felt very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow becoming inflamed with the sun-scalding. turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. but the sea was glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. the houses of freshwater slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley. green farringford on the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat and sleep. in the bay below the hill the sea was hot and restless. helena was sick with sunshine and the restless glitter of water. '"and there shall be no more sea,"' she quoted to herself, she knew not wherefrom. 'no more sea, no more anything,' she thought dazedly, as she sat in the midst of this fierce welter of sunshine. it seemed to her as if all the lightness of her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this tremendous furnace, leaving her, helena, like a heavy piece of slag seamed with metal. she tried to imagine herself resuming the old activities, the old manner of living. 'it is impossible,' she said; 'it is impossible! what shall i be when i come out of this? i shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in another shape. no more the same siegmund, no more the same life. what will become of us--what will happen?' she was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun furnace by siegmund's waking. he opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked smiling at helena. 'it is worth while to sleep,' said he, 'for the sake of waking like this. i was dreaming of huge ice-crystals.' she smiled at him. he seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. she smiled upon him almost in condescension. 'i should like to realize your dream,' she said. 'this is terrible!' they went to the cliff's edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from the water. she drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face, and put forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed. 'it is really a very fine sun,' said siegmund lightly. 'i feel as if i were almost satisfied with heat.' helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived, while she affects a light interest in another's pleasure. this time, when siegmund 'failed to follow her', as she put it, she felt she must follow him. 'you are having your satisfaction complete this journey,' she said, smiling; 'even a sufficiency of me.' 'ay!' said siegmund drowsily. 'i think i am. i think this is about perfect, don't you?' she laughed. 'i want nothing more and nothing different,' he continued; 'and that's the extreme of a decent time, i should think.' 'the extreme of a decent time!' she repeated. but he drawled on lazily: 'i've only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. now i've got all the cheese--which is you, my dear.' 'i certainly feel eaten up,' she laughed, rather bitterly. she saw him lying in a royal ease, his eyes naïve as a boy's, his whole being careless. although very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she felt very lonely. being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy, his fellow-suffering. instead of receiving this, she had to play to his buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or spoil one minute of his consummate hour. from the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the path winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them. slowly approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid's chair, wheeling silently over the short dry grass. the invalid, a young man, was so much deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his pale sharp face, as if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted body to develop the fair bud of the spirit. he turned his pain-sunken eyes towards the sea, whose meaning, like that of all things, was half obscure to him. siegmund glanced, and glanced quickly away, before he should see. helena looked intently for two seconds. she thought of the torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of the tide--'the life tide,' she said to herself. the pain of the invalid overshadowed her own distress. she was fretted to her soul. 'come!' she said quietly to siegmund, no longer resenting the completeness of his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him. 'we will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow--so quiet,' she said to herself. they sauntered downwards towards the bay. helena was brooding on her own state, after her own fashion. 'the mist spirit,' she said to herself. 'the mist spirit draws a curtain round us--it is very kind. a heavy gold curtain sometimes; a thin, torn curtain sometimes. i want the mist spirit to close the curtain again, i do not want to think of the outside. i am afraid of the outside, and i am afraid when the curtain tears open in rags. i want to be in our own fine world inside the heavy gold mist-curtain.' as if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, siegmund said: 'do you want anything better than this, dear? shall we come here next year, and stay for a whole month?' 'if there be any next year,' said she. siegmund did not reply. she wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were mocking fate. they walked slowly through the broiling sun towards their lodging. 'there will be an end to this,' said helena, communing with herself. 'and when we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? no matter--let come what will. all along fate has been resolving, from the very beginning, resolving obvious discords, gradually, by unfamiliar progression; and out of original combinations weaving wondrous harmonies with our lives. really, the working out has been wondrous, is wondrous now. the master-fate is too great an artist to suffer an anti-climax. i am sure the master-musician is too great an artist to allow a bathetic anti-climax.' _chapter _ the afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. lying close together on the beach, siegmund and helena let the day exhale its hours like perfume, unperceived. siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams without shape. helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more clearly. she watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading of children through the surf. endless trains of thoughts, like little waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. but each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. helena felt that the sun was setting on her and siegmund. the hour was too composed, spell-bound, for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. she was merely aware that the sun was wheeling down, tangling siegmund and her in the traces, like overthrown charioteers. so the hours passed. after tea they went eastwards on the downs. siegmund was animated, so that helena caught his mood. it was very rare that they spoke of the time preceding their acquaintance, helena knew little or nothing of siegmund's life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned anything concerning her childhood. somehow she did not encourage him to self-discovery. today, however, the painful need of lovers for self-revelation took hold on him. 'it is awfully funny,' he said. 'i was _so_ gone on beatrice when i married her. she had only just come back from egypt. her father was an army officer, a very handsome man, and, i believe, a bit of a rake. beatrice is really well connected, you know. but old fitzherbert ran through all his money, and through everything else. he was too hot for the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether. 'he came to live at peckham when i was sixteen. i had just left school, and was to go into father's business. mrs fitzherbert left cards, and very soon we were acquainted. beatrice had been a good time in a french convent school. she had only knocked about with the army a little while, but it had brought her out. i remember i thought she was miles above me--which she was. she wasn't bad-looking, either, and you know men all like her. i bet she'd marry again, in spite of the children. 'at first i fluttered round her. i remember i'd got a little, silky moustache. they all said i looked older than sixteen. at that time i was mad on the violin, and she played rather well. then fitzherbert went off abroad somewhere, so beatrice and her mother half lived at our house. the mother was an invalid. 'i remember i nearly stood on my head one day. the conservatory opened off the smoking-room, so when i came in the room, i heard my two sisters and beatrice talking about good-looking men. '"i consider bertram will make a handsome man," said my younger sister. '"he's got beautiful eyes," said my other sister. '"and a real darling nose and chin!" cried beatrice. "if only he was more _solide_! he is like a windmill, all limbs." '"he will fill out. remember, he's not quite seventeen," said my elder sister. '"ah, he is _doux_--he is _câlin_," said beatrice. '"i think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age," said my elder sister. '"but he's a fine boy for all that. see how thick his knees are," my younger sister chimed in. '"ah, _si, si_!" cried beatrice. 'i made a row against the door, then walked across. '"hello, is somebody in here?" i said, as i pushed into the little conservatory. 'i looked straight at beatrice, and she at me. we seemed to have formed an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, i of hers. ha! ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white hyacinths, roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. i can see them now, great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green; and i can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of beatrice ... her great dark eyes. 'it's funny, but beatrice is as dead--ay, far more dead--than dante's. and i am not that young fool, not a bit. 'i was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour. beatrice said nobody cared a thing about her. fitzherbert was always jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. so i was seventeen, earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when we ran away to brighton and got married. poor old pater, he took it awfully well, i have been a frightful drag on him, you know. 'there's the romance. i wonder how it will all end.' helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit. they walked on in silence for some time. he was thinking back, before helena's day. this left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and wonderful a thing in a man's life as birth, or adolescence, or death, was temporary, and formed only an episode. it was her hour of disillusion. 'come to think of it,' siegmund continued, 'i have always shirked. whenever i've been in a tight corner i've gone to pater.' 'i think,' she said, 'marriage has been a tight corner you couldn't get out of to go to anybody.' 'yet i'm here,' he answered simply. the blood suffused her face and neck. 'and some men would have made a better job of it. when it's come to sticking out against beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of her, i've always funked. i tell you i'm something of a moral coward.' he had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, 'so be it.' instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies, finally--siegmund. 'in my life,' she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, 'i might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where i am. i seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.' 'you are so hard to get at,' said siegmund. 'and so scornful of familiar things.' she smiled, knowing he did not understand. the heat had jaded her, so that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her teeth on edge. body and soul, she was out of tune. a warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising darkly from the sea. fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her. fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow. yet siegmund took no notice. he did not understand. he walked beside her whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more. they were alone on the smooth hills to the east. helena looked at the day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the night. it was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes after moments of intense living. the rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. in herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. the earth was a cold dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash, and she herself an upright mass of soft ash. she shuddered slightly with horror. the whole face of things was to her livid and ghastly. being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of fervent wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. she had done wrong again. looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. she had a destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. faint voices echoed back from her conscience. the shadows were full of complaint against her. it was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging fate to petty, mean conclusions. life and hope were ash in her mouth. she shuddered with discord. despair grated between her teeth. this dreariness was worse than any her dreary, lonely life had known. she felt she could bear it no longer. siegmund was there. surely he could help? he would rekindle her. but he was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the spring song from _die walküre_. she looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. was that really siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? was that the siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings, the siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her soul? was that the siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her, whose face was a panorama of passing god? she looked at him again. his radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. she saw him a stooping man, past the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short, something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the rest of men. she suffered an agony of disillusion. was this the real siegmund, and her own only a projection of her soul? she took her breath sharply. was he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her soul upon this. there was an awful blank before her. 'siegmund!' she said in despair. he turned sharply at the sound of her voice. seeing her face pale and distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. she mutely lifted her arms to him, watching him in despair. swiftly he took her in his arms, and asked in a troubled voice: 'what is it, dear? is something wrong?' his voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. she felt his arms round her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the beating of his heart. what was all this? this was not comfort or love. he was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. she did not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in his arms. if he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free to pant her heart out in free air. the secret thud, thud of his heart, the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her. she struggled to escape. 'what is it? won't you tell me what is the matter?' he pleaded. she began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. he tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. and all the time he held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud. 'have you heard anything against us? have i done anything? have i said anything? tell me--at any rate tell me, helena.' her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. she grew frantic to be free. stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad. his coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong working of his throat. she fought against him; she struggled in panic to be free. 'let me go!' she cried. 'let me go! let me go!' he held her in bewilderment and terror. she thrust her hands in his chest and pushed him apart. her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her suffering. she thrust him furiously away with great strength. his heart stood still with wonder. she broke from him and dropped down, sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. she was bunched in a small, shaken heap. siegmund could not bear it. he went on one knee beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading: 'only tell me, helena, what it is. tell me what it is. at least tell me, helena; tell me what it is. oh, but this is dreadful!' she had turned convulsively from him. she shook herself, as if beside herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this unreasoning pleading of his voice. seeing her like this, siegmund at last gave in. quite still, he knelt on one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. the intense silence was crackling with the sound of helena's dry, hissing sobs. he remained silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. after waiting a while, he put his hand on her. she winced convulsively away. then he rose, saying in his heart, 'it is enough,' he went behind the small hill, and looked at the night. it was all exposed. he wanted to hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush under which he could find cover. he lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf, trying to hide. quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he lay still, pressed against the earth. he held his breath for a long time before letting it go, then again he held it. he could scarcely bear, even by breathing, to betray himself. his consciousness was dark. helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. at length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. almost she could have gone to sleep. but she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her face. was somebody coming? it was dark when she rose. siegmund was not in sight. she tidied herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. she saw him like a thick shadow on the earth. now she was heavy with tears good to shed. she stood in silent sorrow, looking at him. suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at them. 'dear!' she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. he began to struggle with himself to respond. at that minute he would rather have died than face anyone. his soul was too much uncovered. 'dear, someone is looking,' she pleaded. he drew himself up from cover. but he kept his face averted. they walked on. 'forgive me, dear,' she said softly. 'nay, it's not you,' he answered, and she was silenced. they walked on till the night seemed private. she turned to him, and 'siegmund!' she said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading. he took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her face. he put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy. the sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. the stars, one after another, were catching alight. siegmund perceived first one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the sea. he stood perfectly still, watching them. gradually he remembered how, in the cathedral, the tapers of the choir-stalls would tremble and set steadily to burn, opening the darkness point after point with yellow drops of flame, as the acolyte touched them, one by one, delicately with his rod. the night was religious, then, with its proper order of worship. day and night had their ritual, and passed in uncouth worship. siegmund found himself in an abbey. he looked up the nave of the night, where the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the stars catch fire. at least it was all sacred, whatever the god might be. helena herself, the bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which he touched with his lips as part of the service. he had helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he was quite alone. she would have drawn him back to her, and on her woman's breast have hidden him from fate, and saved him from searching the unknown. but this night he did not want comfort. if he were 'an infant crying in the night', it was crying that a woman could not still. he was abroad seeking courage and faith for his own soul. he, in loneliness, must search the night for faith. 'my fate is finely wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'even damnation may be finely imagined for me in the night. i have come so far. now i must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. i don't want to botch and bungle even damnation.' but he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of his acts. staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though he could not see it. he bowed in obedience. the stars seemed to swing softly in token of submission. _chapter _ feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, helena experienced the dread of losing him. she was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. that was insufferable to her pride. yet she dared not disturb him--she was afraid. bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a little space before. why had she not smothered it and pretended? why had she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? now perhaps she had lost him for good. she was consumed with uneasiness. at last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. as he gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. she must get him back, whatever else she lost. she put her hand tenderly on his brow. 'what are you thinking of?' she asked. 'i?' he replied. 'i really don't know. i suppose i was hardly thinking anything.' she waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in speech, she asked: 'was i very cruel, dear?' it was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he drew her close into him. 'it was pretty bad, i suppose,' he replied. 'but i should think neither of us could help it.' she gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had helped it. then, with madonna love, she clasped his head upon her shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. twice she kissed him softly in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. all the while, delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to her madonna. they remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of healing and renewal--long, pale kisses of after-suffering. someone was coming along the path. helena let him go, shook herself free, turned sharply aside, and said: 'shall we go down to the water?' 'if you like,' he replied, putting out his hand to her. they went thus with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach. there they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless water. around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with star-reflections. the deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars. as yet the moon was not risen. helena proposed that they should lie on a tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. they lay close together without speaking. each was looking at a low, large star which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. it was a star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon the water. helena watched it with delight. as siegmund looked at the star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone home. he imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. what was behind the gate? they heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. the water seemed populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings. siegmund was considering. 'what _was_ the matter with you?' he asked. she leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old in experience: 'why, you see, dear, you won't understand. but there was such a greyish darkness, and through it--the crying of lives i have touched....' his heart suddenly shrank and sank down. she acknowledged then that she also had helped to injure beatrice and his children. he coiled with shame. '....a crying of lives against me, and i couldn't silence them, nor escape out of the darkness. i wanted you--i saw you in front, whistling the spring song, but i couldn't find you--it was not you--i couldn't find you.' she kissed his eyes and his brows. 'no, i don't see it,' he said. 'you would always be you. i could think of hating you, but you'd still be yourself.' she made a moaning, loving sound. full of passionate pity, she moved her mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself. 'sometimes,' she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, 'you lose me.' he gave a brief laugh. 'i lose you!' he repeated. 'you mean i lose my attraction for you, or my hold over you, and then you--?' he did not finish. she made the same grievous murmuring noise over him. 'it shall not be any more,' she said. 'all right,' he replied, 'since you decide it.' she clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity. 'you mustn't be bitter,' she murmured. 'four days is enough,' he said. 'in a fortnight i should be intolerable to you. i am not masterful.' 'it is not so, siegmund,' she said sharply. 'i give way always,' he repeated. 'and then--tonight!' 'tonight, tonight!' she cried in wrath. 'tonight i have been a fool!' 'and i?' he asked. 'you--what of you?' she cried. then she became sad. 'i have little perverse feelings,' she lamented. 'and i can't bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. so i'm always pushed this way and that, like a fool.' 'you don't know how you hurt me, talking so,' she said. he kissed her. after a moment he said: 'you are not like other folk. "_ihr lascheks seid ein anderes geschlecht_." i thought of you when we read it.' 'would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, siegmund? which is it?' 'neither,' he said. 'you are _you_.' they were quiet for a space. the only movement in the night was the faint gambolling of starlight on the water. the last person had passed in black silhouette between them and the sea. he was thinking bitterly. she seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into life. he had a sense of despair, a preference of death. the german she read with him--she loved its loose and violent romance--came back to his mind: '_der tod geht einem zur seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem immer tiefer ins leben._' well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was home. it seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to beatrice. 'this time tomorrow night,' he said. 'siegmund!' she implored. 'why not?' he laughed. 'don't, dear,' she pleaded. 'all right, i won't.' some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a little as it broke in accentuated waves. a warm puff of air wandered in on them now and again. 'you won't be tired when you go back?' helena asked. 'tired!' he echoed. 'you know how you were when you came,' she reminded him, in tones full of pity. he laughed. 'oh, that is gone,' he said. with a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek. 'and will you be sad?' she said, hesitating. 'sad!' he repeated. 'but will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go back?' 'the old life will take me up, i suppose,' he said. there was a pause. 'i think, dear,' she said, 'i have done wrong.' 'good lord--you have not!' he replied sharply, pressing back his head to look at her, for the first time. 'i shall have to send you back to beatrice and the babies--tomorrow--as you are now....' '"take no thought for the morrow." be quiet, helena!' he exclaimed as the reality bit him. he sat up suddenly. 'why?' she asked, afraid. 'why!' he repeated. he remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand, staring intently at helena. she looked back in fear at him. the moment terrified her, and she lost courage. with a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard on the sand as he leaned forward. at once he relaxed his intensity, laughed, then became tender. helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay, half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of sand fell from his palm on her cheek. she shook with dry, withered sobs, as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the doctor and hides in the mother's bosom, refusing to be touched. but she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down on his breast. she was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent days. they must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. she was filled with vague terror of what it would be. the sense of the oneness and unity of their fates was gone. siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. he had more definite knowledge of the next move than had helena. his heart was certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. he shrank away. wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its consequences. he did not want to go. anything rather than go back. in the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. siegmund started to see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. his struggling suddenly ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up, resolve itself. some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. the gold-red cup rose higher, looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. by degrees the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves. it was immense and terrible. when would the tip be placed upon the table of the sea? it stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold over the sea--a libation. siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last the moon looked frail and empty. and there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor of the sea. he wondered how it would be gathered up. 'i gather it up into myself,' he said. and the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were watching, too. 'if i have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.' turning to helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty moon. _chapter _ towards morning, siegmund went to sleep. for four hours, until seven o'clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again. 'but it is finest of all to wake,' he said, as the bright sunshine of the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open. the morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. a fragment of scarlet geranium glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful, offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. everything looked at him with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love. 'they are all extraordinarily sweet,' said siegmund to the full-mouthed scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. three or four butterflies fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him. instinctively siegmund put his hand forward to touch them. 'the careless little beggars!' he said. when he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to meet him. the battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. siegmund had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and everything. we do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break our hearts. 'we have been very happy together,' everything seemed to say. siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh. 'it is very lovely,' he said, 'whatever happens.' so he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last night's experience, smiled always with the pride of love. he undressed by his usual altar-stone. 'how closely familiar everything is,' he thought. 'it seems almost as if the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.' he touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of helena, or of his own babies. he found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with things. a very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. he placed his hands beneath his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with wondering pleasure. 'they find no fault with me,' he said. 'i suppose they are as fallible as i, and so don't judge,' he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance. 'once more,' he said, and he took the sea in his arms. he swam very quietly. the water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. he swam towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a sheen of silver. 'helena is right,' he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but moving upon the bosom of the tide; 'she is right, it is all enchanted. i have got into her magic at last. let us see what it is like.' he determined to visit again his little bay. he swam carefully round the terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald facets of the water seemed merest fancy. siegmund touched them with his foot; they were hard, cold, dangerous. he swam carefully. as he made for the archway, the shadows of the headland chilled the water. there under water, clamouring in a throng at the base of the submerged walls, were sea-women with dark locks, and young sea-girls, with soft hair, vividly green, striving to climb up out of the darkness into the morning, their hair swirling in abandon. siegmund was half afraid of their frantic efforts. but the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch. there was exultance in this sweeping entry. the skin-white, full-fleshed walls of the archway were dappled with green lights that danced in and out among themselves. siegmund was carried along in an invisible chariot, beneath the jewel-stained walls. the tide swerved, threw him as he swam against the inward-curving white rock; his elbow met the rock, and he was sick with pain. he held his breath, trying to get back the joy and magic. he could not believe that the lovely, smooth side of the rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt him thus. he let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the shingle. there he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his arm. the skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch no bigger than a carnation petal. the bruise, however, was painful, especially when, a minute or two later, he bent his arm. 'no,' said he pitiably to himself, 'it is impossible it should have hurt me. i suppose i was careless.' nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. he sat on the boulder looking out on the sea. the azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a bright conversation one with another. the two headlands of the tiny bay gossiped across the street of water. all the boulders and pebbles of the sea-shore played together. 'surely,' said siegmund, 'they take no notice of me; they do not care a jot or a tittle for me. i am a fool to think myself one with them.' he contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on the cliffs. 'i was mistaken,' he said. 'it was an illusion.' he looked wistfully out again. like neighbours leaning from opposite windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with another. white rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white rocks. everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit and with its own comrades. siegmund alone was without pursuit or comrade. 'they will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. even helena, after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. what do i matter?' siegmund thought of the futility of death: we are not long for music and laughter, love and desire and hate; i think we have no portion in them after we pass the gate. 'why should i be turned out of the game?' he asked himself, rebelling. he frowned, and answered: 'oh, lord!--the old argument!' but the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter. 'like the puff from the steamer's funnel, i should be gone.' he looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his maturity. he was very beautiful to himself. 'nothing, in the place where i am,' he said. 'gone, like a puff of steam that melts on the sunshine.' again siegmund looked at the sea. it was glittering with laughter as at a joke. 'and i,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'i am nothing. i do not count; i am inconsiderable.' he set his teeth with pain. there were no tears, there was no relief. a convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. all the while he was arguing with himself. 'well,' he said, 'if i am nothing dead i am nothing alive.' but the vulgar proverb arose--'better a live dog than a dead lion,' to answer him. it seemed an ignominy to be dead. it meant, to be overlooked, even by the smallest creature of god's earth. surely that was a great ignominy. helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore with him. she was no swimmer. her endless delight was to explore, to discover small treasures. for her the world was still a great wonder-box which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. she had bathed in many rock-pools' tepid baths, trying first one, then another. she had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover. 'the sea is a great deal like siegmund,' she said, as she rose panting, trying to dash her nostrils free from water. it was true; the sea as it flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion. she wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they did not fling her about in a game of terror. she bent over watching the anemone's fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. the flowing tide trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously her little pools. helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend. there the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the air was cool and clammy. she pursued her way into the gloom, bending, though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed beneath her naked feet. the water came rustling up beneath the fucus as she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. it needed, for all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off her stone into the black pool that confronted her. it was festooned thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. she scrambled hastily upwards towards the outlet. turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest window. it was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the dragon's hole. 'how surprised they will be to see me!' said helena, scrambling forward, laughing. she stood still in the archway, astounded. the sea was blazing with white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the flames. the sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of god. helena stood still and worshipped. it was a moment of astonishment, when she stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a thank-offering. she felt herself confronting god at home in his white incandescence, his fire settling on her like the holy spirit. her lips were parted in a woman's joy of adoration. the moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion. 'it is good,' said helena; 'it is very good.' she looked again, and saw the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog. 'it is really wonderful here!' said she; but the moment had gone, she could not see again the grand burning of god among the waves. after a while she turned away. as she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, siegmund came over the beach to her. 'you are not gone, then?' he said. 'siegmund!' she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. his face was glowing with the sun's inflaming, but helena did not notice that his eyes were full of misery. 'i, actually,' he said, smiling. 'i did not expect you,' she said, still looking at him in radiant wonder. 'i could easier have expected'--she hesitated, struggled, and continued--'eros walking by the sea. but you are like him,' she said, looking radiantly up into siegmund's face. 'isn't it beautiful this morning?' she added. siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and kissed her. he remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full of contradiction. he was at the bitter point of farewell; could see, beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life. 'isn't the sea wonderful this morning?' asked helena, as she wrung the water from her costume. 'it is very fine,' he answered. he refrained from saying what his heart said: 'it is my last morning; it is not yours. it is my last morning, and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.' 'yes,' said siegmund, 'the morning is perfect.' 'it is,' assented helena warmly. 'have you noticed the waves? they are like a line of children chased by a white dog.' 'ay!' said siegmund. 'didn't you have a good time?' she asked, touching with her finger-tips the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her. 'i swam to my little bay again,' he replied. 'did you?' she exclaimed, pleased. she sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand, holding them to siegmund to dry. 'i am very hungry,' she said. 'and i,' he agreed. 'i feel quite established here,' she said gaily, something in his position having reminded her of their departure. he laughed. 'it seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn't it?' she insisted. 'i wish we might never go back,' he said. helena sighed. 'it would be too much for life to give. we have had something, siegmund,' she said. he bowed his head, and did not answer. 'it has been something, dear,' she repeated. he rose and took her in his arms. 'everything,' he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. he could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. 'everything!' he said. she pressed her two hands on his head. 'i did well, didn't i, siegmund?' she asked. helena felt the responsibility of this holiday. she had proposed it; when he had withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his word, declaring that she should pay the cost. he permitted her at last. 'wonderfully well, helena,' he replied. she kissed his forehead. 'you are everything,' he said. she pressed his head on her bosom. _chapter _ siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. mrs curtiss brought in the coffee. she was a fragile little woman, of delicate, gentle manner. 'the water would be warm this morning,' she said, addressing no one in particular. siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from one leg to the other. he was embarrassed always by the presence of the amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his capacity of accepted swain of helena. 'it was,' assented helena. 'it was as warm as new milk.' 'ay, it would be,' said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the experience of siegmund and his beloved. 'and did ye see the ships of war?' she asked. 'no, they had gone,' replied helena. siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically. 'you'll be coming in to dinner today?' asked the old lady. helena arranged the matter. 'i think ye both look better,' mrs. curtiss said. she glanced at siegmund. he smiled constrainedly. 'i thought ye looked so worn when you came,' she said sympathetically. 'he had been working hard,' said helena, also glancing at him. he bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound. 'ay,' sympathized the little woman. 'and it's a very short time for you. what a pity ye can't stop for the fireworks at cowes on monday. they are grand, so they say.' helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. 'have you never seen them?' she asked. 'no,' replied mrs. curtiss. 'i've never been able to get; but i hope to go yet.' 'i hope you may,' said siegmund. the little woman beamed on him. having won a word from him, she was quite satisfied. 'well,' she said brightly, 'the eggs must be done by now.' she tripped out, to return directly. 'i've brought you,' she said, 'some of the island cream, and some white currants, if ye'll have them. you must think well of the island, and come back.' 'how could we help?' laughed helena. 'we will,' smiled siegmund. when finally the door was closed on her, siegmund sat down in relief. helena looked in amusement at him. she was perfectly self-possessed in presence of the delightful little lady. 'this is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,' she said. she lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants. 'ah!' exclaimed siegmund, smiling at her. 'one of the few places where everything is friendly,' she said. 'and everybody.' 'you have made so many enemies?' he asked, with gentle irony. 'strangers,' she replied. 'i seem to make strangers of all the people i meet.' she laughed in amusement at this _mot_. siegmund looked at her intently. he was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers. 'need we go--need we leave this place of friends?' he said, as if ironically. he was very much afraid of tempting her. she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'one, two, three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. it is an age yet,' she laughed. siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of currants she had extricated for him. _chapter _ the air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea, which led them along their last walk. on either side the white path was a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. some of the reckless little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host. helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of them. 'who called them "fairies' telephones"?' she said to herself. 'they are tiny children in pinafores. how gay they are! they are children dawdling along the pavement of a morning. how fortunate they are! see how they take a wind-thrill! see how wide they are set to the sunshine! and when they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in the dark will gather them away. they won't be here in the morning, shrivelled and dowdy ... if only we could curl up and be gone, after our day....' she looked at siegmund. he was walking moodily beside her. 'it is good when life holds no anti-climax,' she said. 'ay!' he answered. of course, he could not understand her meaning. she strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with bent head, abstract, but happy. 'what is she thinking?' he asked himself. 'she is sufficient to herself--she doesn't want me. she has her own private way of communing with things, and is friends with them.' 'the dew has been very heavy,' she said, turning, and looking up at him from under her brows, like a smiling witch. 'i see it has,' he answered. then to himself he said: 'she can't translate herself into language. she is incommunicable; she can't render herself to the intelligence. so she is alone and a law unto herself: she only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. after a while, when i am gone, she will see i was not indispensable....' the lane led up to the eastern down. as they were emerging, they saw on the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. the low roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers brilliant with dew. a stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. he tried in vain to avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. at last he closed the paper and looked angrily at the house--not at anything in particular. he irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called: 'amy! amy!' no answer was forthcoming. he flung down the paper and strode off indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. his voice was heard calling curtly from the dining-room. there was a jingle of crockery as he bumped the table leg in sitting down. 'he is in a bad temper,' laughed siegmund. 'breakfast is late,' said helena with contempt. 'look!' said siegmund. an elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden gate. their faces were turned anxiously to the house. they were hot with hurrying, and had no breath for words. the girl pressed forward, opened the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. then the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda. there was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by the resentful abuse of the man. the lovers moved out of hearing. 'imagine that breakfast-table!' said siegmund. 'i feel,' said helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.' 'there are many such roosts,' said siegmund pertinently. helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. she talked to him winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next incurving of the coast, and siegmund was happy. but the sense of humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. this haemorrhage of self-esteem tortured him to the end. helena had rejected him. she gave herself to her fancies only. for some time she had confused siegmund with her god. yesterday she had cried to her ideal lover, and found only siegmund. it was the spear in the side of his tortured self-respect. 'at least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone must recognize a strain of god in me--and who does? i don't believe in it myself.' and, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion, the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead, all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and siegmund saw it naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this bead. the island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty and find the dirt. what was he to do? 'you know, domine,' said helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you look quite stern today.' 'i feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'weaker than usual, in fact.' 'yes, perhaps so, when you talk. then you are really surprisingly gentle. but when you are silent, i am even afraid of you--you seem so grave.' he laughed. 'and shall i not be brave?' he said. 'can't you smell _fumum et opes strepitumque romae_?' he turned quickly to helena. 'i wonder if that's right,' he said. 'it's years since i did a line of latin, and i thought it had all gone.' 'in the first place, what does it mean?' said helena calmly, 'for i can only half translate. i have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of such stuff.' 'why,' said siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of rome". but it is remarkable, helena'--here the peculiar look of interest came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that i should have said that.' 'yes, you look surprised,' smiled she. 'but it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since i learned that, and i forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. like a drowning man, i have these memories before....' he broke off, smiling mockingly, to tease her. 'before you go back to london,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost ironical tone. she was inscrutable. this morning she could not bear to let any deep emotion come uppermost. she wanted rest. 'no,' she said, with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the rise to the cliff's edge. 'i can't say that i smell the smoke of london. the mist-curtain is thick yet. there it is'--she pointed to the heavy, purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky and the sea. she thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe. they lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. a warm, drowsy calm drooped over everything. 'six hours,' thought helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain. already it is thinning. i could break it open with waving my hand. i will not wave my hand.' she was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong. siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion. helena had rejected him. in his heart he felt that in this love affair also he had been a failure. no matter how he contradicted himself, and said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as helena's lover, yet he felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even helena, could untie. he had failed as lover to helena. it was not surprising his marriage with beatrice should prove disastrous. rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. when his mind and soul set to develop, as beatrice could not sympathize with his interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. that was not very surprising. but why should he have failed with helena? the bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in the heat. siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space. 'the little fool!' said siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into the light. no ship sailed the curving sea. the light danced in a whirl upon the ripples. everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the wild spinning of the lights. 'even if i were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow apart, helena and i. she would leave me. this time i should be the laggard. she is young and vigorous; i am beginning to set. 'is that why i have failed? i ought to have had her in love sufficiently to keep her these few days. i am not quick. i do not follow her or understand her swiftly enough. and i am always timid of compulsion. i cannot compel anybody to follow me. 'so we are here. i am out of my depth. like the bee, i was mad with the sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now i shall find no footing to alight on. i have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back. when can i set my feet on when this is gone?' the sun grew stronger. slower and more slowly went the hawks of siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. he lay bare-headed, looking out to sea. the sun was burning deeper into his face and head. 'i feel as if it were burning into me,' thought siegmund abstractedly. 'it is certainly consuming some part of me. perhaps it is making me ill.' meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair to the sun. helena lay in what shadow he afforded. the heat put out all her thought-activity. presently she said: 'this heat is terrible, siegmund. shall we go down to the water?' they climbed giddily down the cliff path. already they were somewhat sun-intoxicated. siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on which to lie. 'shall we not go under the rocks?' said helena. 'look!' he said, 'the sun is beating on the cliffs. it is hotter, more suffocating, there.' so they lay down in the glare, helena watching the foam retreat slowly with a cool splash; siegmund thinking. the naked body of heat was dreadful. 'my arms, siegmund,' said she. 'they feel as if they were dipped in fire.' siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat. 'are you sure it is not bad for you--your head, siegmund? are you sure?' he laughed stupidly. 'that is all right,' he said. he knew that the sun was burning through him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication. as he looked wistfully far away over the sea at helena's mist-curtain, he said: 'i _think_ we should be able to keep together if'--he faltered--'if only i could have you a little longer. i have never had you ...' some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring of despair in his quietness, made helena cling to him wildly, with a savage little cry as if she were wounded. she clung to him, almost beside herself. she could not lose him, she could not spare him. she would not let him go. helena was, for the moment, frantic. he held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his lips on her cheek, he murmured: 'i should be able, shouldn't i, helena?' 'you are always able!' she cried. 'it is i who play with you at hiding.' 'i have really had you so little,' he said. 'can't you forget it, siegmund?' she cried. 'can't you forget it? it was only a shadow, siegmund. it was a lie, it was nothing real. can't you forget it, dear?' 'you can't do without me?' he asked. 'if i lose you i am lost,' answered she with swift decision. she had no knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. he held her safely; her arms were hidden under his coat. 'i will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between us,' said helena to herself. 'they may go back to hell.' she still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft away. siegmund felt very peaceful. he lay with his arms about her, listening to the backward-creeping tide. all his thoughts, like bees, were flown out to sea and lost. 'if i had her more, i should understand her through and through. if we were side by side we should grow together. if we could stay here, i should get stronger and more upright.' this was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck. another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. there were only two red blossoms left. then the stem would have set to seed. helena leaned her head upon the breast of siegmund, her arms clasping, under his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of great power. 'if,' thought she, 'the whole clock of the world could stand still now, and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of siegmund in my arms....' but the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm, that it made silence sweet. 'if now,' prayed siegmund, 'death would wipe the sweat from me, and it were dark....' but the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel. gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to rise and go crept upon them. although they remained silent, each knew that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger of the sundial travelling over them. the alternative was, not to return, to let the finger travel and be gone. but then ... helena knew she must not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and travel before the coming finger. siegmund hoped she would not get up. he lay in suspense, waiting. at last she sat up abruptly. 'it is time, siegmund,' she said. he did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him. she wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. then she bent over him. he did not look at her. she saw his forehead was swollen and inflamed with the sun. very gently she wiped from it the glistening sweat. he closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. still he did not look at her. she bent very close to him, feeling her heart crushed with grief for him. 'we must go, siegmund,' she whispered. 'all right,' he said, but still he did not move. she stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of air. she was dazzled blind by the sunshine. siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving. his face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask. helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too strong for her. she lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the sand, and she tried gently to draw him. 'we shall be too late,' she said in distress. he sighed and sat up, looking out over the water. helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. she put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt. siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. pulling himself together, he bent his head from the sea, and said: 'why, what time is it?' he took out his watch, holding it in his hand. helena still held his left hand, and had one arm round his neck. 'i can't see the figures,' he said. 'everything is dimmed, as if it were coming dark.' 'yes,' replied helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. 'my eyes were the same. it is the strong sunlight.' 'i can't,' he repeated, and he was rather surprised--'i can't see the time. can you?' she stooped down and looked. 'it is half past one,' she said. siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. there was still sufficient time to catch the train. he stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: 'i feel almost stunned by the heat. i can hardly see, and all my feeling in my body is dulled.' 'yes,' answered helena, 'i am afraid it will do you harm.' 'at any rate,' he smiled as if sleepily, 'i have had enough. if it's too much--what _is_ too much?' they went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed. 'we are going back--we are going back!' the heart of helena seemed to run hot, beating these words. they climbed the cliff path toilsomely. standing at the top, on the edge of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea. the strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon the heat. the sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still. siegmund and helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful, incandescent world. they looked hopelessly at each other, siegmund's mood was gentle and forbearing. he smiled faintly at helena, then turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he had enjoyed, '_addio_!' he said. he turned away, and, looking from helena landwards, he said, smiling peculiarly: 'it reminds me of traviata--an "_addio_" at every verse-end.' she smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it jarred on her. he was pricked again by her supercilious reserve. '_addi-i-i-i-o, addi-i-i-o_!' he whistled between his teeth, hissing out the italian's passion-notes in a way that made helena clench her fists. 'i suppose,' she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check this discord--'i suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey--thursday.' 'i don't know,' said siegmund. 'there will not be very many people,' she insisted. 'i think,' he said, in a very quiet voice, 'you'd better let me go by the south-western from portsmouth while you go on by the brighton.' 'but why?' she exclaimed in astonishment. 'i don't want to sit looking at you all the way,' he said. 'but why should you?' she exclaimed. he laughed. 'indeed, no!' she said. 'we shall go together.' 'very well,' he answered. they walked on in silence towards the village. as they drew near the little post office, he said: 'i suppose i may as well wire them that i shall be home tonight.' 'you haven't sent them any word?' she asked. he laughed. they came to the open door of the little shop. he stood still, not entering. helena wondered what he was thinking. 'shall i?' he asked, meaning, should he wire to beatrice. his manner was rather peculiar. 'well, i should think so,' faltered helena, turning away to look at the postcards in the window. siegmund entered the shop. it was dark and cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. he asked for a telegraph form. 'my god!' he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. he could not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. he scribbled his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. as he watched the amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her finger, he felt sick with irony. 'that's right,' she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to the instrument. 'what beautiful weather!' she continued. 'it will be making you sorry to leave us.' 'there goes my warrant,' thought siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of paper under the post-mistress's heavy hand. 'yes--it is too bad, isn't it,' he replied, bowing and laughing to the woman. 'it is, sir,' she answered pleasantly. 'good morning.' he came out of the shop still smiling, and when helena turned from the postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face like a mask. she glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her falter with dismay. 'what is he thinking of?' she asked herself. her thoughts flashed back. 'and why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them at home?' 'well,' said siegmund, 'are there any postcards?' 'none that i care to take,' she replied. 'perhaps you would like one of these?' she pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary views of alum bay done in variegated sand. siegmund smiled. 'i wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,' he said. 'or a brush,' said helena. 'she does not understand,' said siegmund to himself. 'and whatever i do i must not tell her. i should have thought she would understand.' as he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings resentment against her. almost he hated her. _chapter _ at first they had a carriage to themselves. they sat opposite each other with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses, the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. they felt as if they were being dragged away like criminals. unable to speak or think, they stared out of the windows, helena struggling in vain to keep back her tears, siegmund labouring to breathe normally. at yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in german that here was room for all. faces innumerable--hot, blue-eyed faces--strained to look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed siegmund. there entered eight germans into the second-class compartment, five men and three ladies. when at last the luggage was stowed away they sank into the seats. the last man on either side to be seated lowered himself carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. siegmund watched the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between his large lady and the small helena. the latter crushed herself against the side of the carriage. the german's hips came down tight against her. she strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. the man squeezed in the opposite direction. 'i am afraid i press you,' he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric german fashion. helena glanced swiftly at him. she liked his grey eyes, she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words. 'oh no,' she answered. 'you do not crush me.' almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window. the man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured remark in german: 'well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?' the whole party began to talk in german with great animation. they told each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly over 'billy'--this being a nickname discovered for the german emperor--and what he would be saying of the czar's trip; they questioned each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. they were pleased with everything; they extolled things english. helena's stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from dresden, began to tell anecdotes. he was a _raconteur_ of the naïve type: he talked with face, hands, with his whole body. now and again he would give little spurts in his seat. after one of these he must have become aware of helena--who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove--struggling to escape his compression. he stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling beseechingly, said in his persuasive way: 'i am sorry. i am sorry. i compress you!' he glanced round in perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. finding none, he turned to her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free helena, and said: 'forgive me, i am sorry.' 'you are forgiven,' replied helena, suddenly smiling into his face with her rare winsomeness. the whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile at this. the good humour was complete. 'thank you,' said the german gratefully. helena turned away. the talk began again like the popping of corn; the _raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. everybody was waiting to laugh. helena rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. siegmund had made no attempt. he had watched, with the others, the german's apologies, and the sight of his lover's face had moved him more than he could tell. she had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. it seemed to him he should never know her. there was a remoteness about her, an estrangement between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown race that never can tell its own story. this feeling always moved siegmund's pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. this same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her. it was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign birth. there was something in her he could never understand, so that never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him the mistress. as she smiled and turned away from the german, mute, uncomplaining, like a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, siegmund's resentment against her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. she was very small. her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made her seem small; for she was very strong. but siegmund saw her now, small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her. but what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone, little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? helena would be left behind; death was no way for her. she could not escape thus with him from this house of strangers which she called 'life'. she had to go on alone, like a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language. 'what will she do?' siegmund asked himself, 'when her loneliness comes upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. she will come to the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her strength is established. but what then?' siegmund could find no answer. he tried to imagine her life. it would go on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? he had not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. what would she do when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? he could not conceive. yet she would not die, of that he was certain. siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real inner life. she was a book written in characters unintelligible to him and to everybody. he was tortured with the problem of her till it became acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. as a boy he had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour with a problem in euclid, for he was capable of great concentration. he felt helena looking at him. turning, he found her steady, unswerving eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. she smiled: by an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold her hand. he leaned forward and put his hand over hers. she had peculiar hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. often they were cool or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were instinct with life, not inert. sometimes he would feel a peculiar jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand. occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were passing out of his blood. but that he dismissed as nonsense. the germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their clothing, which was sticking to their sides. siegmund had not noticed them for some time, he was so much absorbed. but helena, though she sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour's body, the atmosphere of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. the only thing that could relieve her was the hand of siegmund soothing her in its hold. she looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel heavy upon him, and made him shrink. she wanted his strength of nerve to support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out of himself whatever she wanted. _chapter _ the tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of ryde. it was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftily together, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like a concourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. to siegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers crossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up from the street. he saw the solent and the world of glamour flying gay as snow outside, where inside was only siegmund, tired, dispirited, without any joy. he and helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their steamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to stimulate them. the sea was very bright and crowded. white sails leaned slightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber floated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day; small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from cowes swung her soft stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags through a sky dim with distance. 'it is all very glad,' said siegmund to himself, 'but it seems to be fanciful.' he was out of it. already he felt detached from life. he belonged to his destination. it is always so: we have no share in the beauty that lies between us and our goal. helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the blue afternoon. 'we must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and over again. each new charm she caught eagerly. 'i like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said to herself, watching a laden coaster making for portsmouth. they were still among the small shipping of ryde. siegmund and helena, as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the sky. the eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the swell like a coursing dog. a lady, in white, and a lad with dark head and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending over some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the low stern was also stooping forward attending to something. the steamer was sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursing straight across her track. the lady saw the danger first. stretching forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer. 'look!' cried helena, catching hold of siegmund. he was already watching. suddenly the steamer bell clanged. the gentleman looked up, with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. the launch veered. it and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. the lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid, staring ahead. no sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under the bows. the scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog from in front of the traffic. it escaped by a yard or two. then, like a dog, it seemed to look round. the gentleman in the stern glanced back quickly. he was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. his face was as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. then he looked to the steering of his boat. no one had uttered a sound. from the tiny boat coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. the launch raced out of danger towards the yacht. the gentleman, with a brief gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to the lady. he was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she, in her bearing, was prouder still. she received him almost with indifference. helena turned to siegmund. he took both her hands and pressed them, whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. she was white to the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. the noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a moment the noiselessness of death. how everyone was white and gasping! they strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour of life again. 'by jove, that was a near thing!' 'ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman. 'a french yacht,' said somebody. helena was waiting for the voice of siegmund. but he did not know what to say. confused, he repeated: 'that was a close shave.' helena clung to him, searching his face. she felt his difference from herself. there was something in his experience that made him different, quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained. 'ah, dear lord!' he was saying to himself. 'how bright and whole the day is for them! if god had suddenly put his hand over the sun, and swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled. that man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. between the blueness of the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships, and slow-moving monsters of steamboats. 'for me the day is transparent and shrivelling. i can see the darkness through its petals. but for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he fumbles with delights like a bee. 'for me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness the same that fills in my soul. i can see death urging itself into life, the shadow supporting the substance. for my life is burning an invisible flame. the glare of the light of myself, as i burn on the fuel of death, is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. for what is a life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapers into the darkness again? but the death that issues differs from the death that was the source. at least, i shall enrich death with a potent shadow, if i do not enrich life.' 'wasn't that woman fine!' said helena. 'so perfectly still,' he answered. 'the child realized nothing,' she said. siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her. 'i am always so sorry,' he said, 'that the human race is urged inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.' she looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark. 'i guess,' she said slowly, after a while, 'that the man, the sailor, will have a bad time. he was abominably careless.' 'he was careful of something else just then,' said siegmund, who hated to hear her speak in cold condemnation. 'he was attending to the machinery or something.' 'that was scarcely his first business,' said she, rather sarcastic. siegmund looked at her. she seemed very hard in judgement--very blind. sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred. 'do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?' he asked. 'he nearly succeeded,' she replied. there was antagonism between them. siegmund recognized in helena the world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. 'but, after all,' he thought, i suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event and not the person. i have a disease of sympathy, a vice of exoneration.' nevertheless, he did not love helena as a judge. he thought rather of the woman in the boat. she was evidently one who watched the sources of life, saw it great and impersonal. 'would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?' he asked. 'i rather think not. why?' she replied. 'i hope she didn't,' he said. helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. she was very much in love with siegmund. he was suggestive; he stimulated her. but to her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and proud as the wind. she never realized his helplessness. siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman's courage. if she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of helena, and from lamenting his hard fate. they sailed on past the chequered round towers. the sea opened, and they looked out to eastward into the sea-space. siegmund wanted to flee. he yearned to escape down the open ways before him. yet he knew he would be carried on to london. he watched the sea-ways closing up. the shore came round. the high old houses stood flat on the right hand. the shore swept round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. there the old _victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved for a trophy. 'it is a dreadful thing,' thought siegmund, 'to remain as a trophy when there is nothing more to do.' he watched the landing-stages swooping nearer. there were the trains drawn up in readiness. at the other end of the train was london. he could scarcely bear to have helena before him for another two hours. the suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in the beating train, would cost too much. he longed to be released from her. they had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder, in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to the mainland. 'won't you let me go by the south-western, and you by the brighton?' asked siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning's question. helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity. 'no,' she replied. 'let us go together.' siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay. there was no great crowd on the train. they easily found a second-class compartment without occupants. he swung the luggage on the rack and sat down, facing helena. 'now,' said he to himself, 'i wish i were alone.' he wanted to think and prepare himself. helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say: 'shall i not go down to cornwall?' by her soothing willingness to do anything for him, siegmund knew that she was dogging him closely. he could not bear to have his anxiety protracted. 'but you have promised louisa, have you not?' he replied. 'oh, well!' she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him. 'then you must go,' he said. 'but,' she began, with harsh petulance, 'i do not want to go down to cornwall with _louisa and olive_'--she accentuated the two names--'after _this_,' she added. 'then louisa will have no holiday--and you have promised,' he said gravely. helena looked at him. she saw he had decided that she should go. 'is my promise so _very_ important?' she asked. she glanced angrily at the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. nevertheless, the ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the carriage. siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved by their intrusion. if they had stayed out, he might have held helena in his arms for still another hour. as it was, she could not harass him with words. he tried not to look at her, but to think. the train at last moved out of the station. as it passed through portsmouth, siegmund remembered his coming down, on the sunday. it seemed an indefinite age ago. he was thankful that he sat on the side of the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. the afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. the chimneys and the sides of the houses of portsmouth took on that radiant appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. a rich bloom of light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone. 'it will go on,' thought siegmund, 'being gay of an evening, for ever. and i shall miss it all!' but as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the town station, he began again: 'beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when i get home. she will say nothing, thank god--nor shall i. that will expedite matters: there will be no interruptions.... 'but we cannot continue together after this. why should i discuss reasons for and against? we cannot. she goes to a cottage in the country. already i have spoken of it to her. i allow her all i can of my money, and on the rest i manage for myself in lodgings in london. very good. 'but when i am comparatively free i cannot live alone. i shall want helena; i shall remember the children. if i have the one, i shall be damned by the thought of the other. this bruise on my mind will never get better. helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out of pity for me. i know she would. 'but then, what then? beatrice and the children in the country, and me not looking after the children. beatrice is thriftless. she would be in endless difficulty. it would be a degradation to me. she would keep a red sore inflamed against me; i should be a shameful thing in her mouth. besides, there would go all her strength. she would not make any efforts. "he has brought it on us," she would say; "let him see what the result is." and things would go from bad to worse with them. it would be a gangrene of shame. 'and helena--i should have nothing but mortification. when she was asleep i could not look at her. she is such a strange, incongruous creature. but i should be responsible for her. she believes in me as if i had the power of god. what should i think of myself?' siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country whirl past, but seeing nothing. he thought imaginatively, and his imagination destroyed him. he pictured beatrice in the country. he sketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. he thought of beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he took his pleasure elsewhere. this line exhausted or intolerable, siegmund switched off to the consideration of his own life in town. he would go to america; the agreement was signed with the theatre manager. but america would be only a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. he would wait for the home-coming to helena, and she would wait for him. it was inevitable; then would begin--what? he would never have enough money to keep helena, even if he managed to keep himself. their meetings would then be occasional and clandestine. ah, it was intolerable! 'if i were rich,' said siegmund, 'all would be plain. i would give each of my children enough, and beatrice, and we would go away; but i am nearly forty; i have no genius; i shall never be rich,' round and round went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the grain. gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction gathered small and hard upon the floor. as he sat thinking, helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his knee. 'if i have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh with pain, 'you will forgive me.' he started. this was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives, filling the eyes with blood. siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes haunted with pain. 'forgive you?' he repeated. 'forgive you for five days of perfect happiness; the only real happiness i have ever known!' helena tightened her fingers on his knee. she felt herself stinging with painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. she leaned back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike swiftly, in long rows, across her vision. siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. helena had interrupted him. she had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking, so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home of the final convictions. 'what will she do?' cried siegmund, 'what will she do when i am gone? what will become of her? already she has no aim in life; then she will have no object. is it any good my going if i leave her behind? what an inextricable knot this is! but what will she do?' it was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer. they wound through the pass of the south downs. as siegmund, looking backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like a breast, leaning kindly to him. the earth is always kind; it loves us, and would foster us like a nurse. the downs were big and tender and simple. siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wondered what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vague roar of the train that was carrying him home. up towards arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. it was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and magnificent. siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. for a moment he forgot everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the sunset. like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson train. siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field. it came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of darkened grass-lands. helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe sussex. she breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. the sunset was stately. the blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. the day died nobly, so she thought. one gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train. 'surely that cloud is for us,' said she, as she watched it anxiously. dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. it came, unswerving, from behind the trees. 'i am sure it is for us,' she repeated. a gladness came into her eyes. still the cloud followed the train. she leaned forward to siegmund and pointed out the cloud to him. she was very eager to give him a little of her faith. 'it has come with us quite a long way. doesn't it seem to you to be travelling with us? it is the golden hand; it is the good omen.' she then proceeded to tell him the legend from 'aylwin'. siegmund listened, and smiled. the sunset was handsome on his face. helena was almost happy. 'i am right,' said he to himself. i am right in my conclusions, and helena will manage by herself afterwards. i am right; there is the hand to confirm it.' the heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like a greyhound over the level northwards. all the time siegmund was mechanically thinking the well-known movement from the valkyrie ride, his whole self beating to the rhythm. it seemed to him there was a certain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavy insistence of catastrophe. he was afraid; he had to summon his courage to sit quiet. for a time he was reassured; he believed he was going on towards the right end. he hunted through the country and the sky, asking of everything, 'am i right? am i right?' he did not mind what happened to him, so long as he felt it was right. what he meant by 'right' he did not trouble to think, but the question remained. for a time he had been reassured; then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid, and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped him deeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe. the sun had gone down. over the west was a gush of brightness as the fountain of light bubbled lower. the stars, like specks of froth from the foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. like spiders they hung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the hive by the western low door. soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of purple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings--a village; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run. 'ah, well!' thought siegmund--he was tired--'if one bee dies in a swarm, what is it, so long as the hive is all right? apart from the gold light, and the hum and the colour of day, what was i? nothing! apart from these rushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows of night, gathering god knows what, i was a pebble. well, the day will swarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee, and humming in each activity. the gold and the colour and sweet smell and the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only happens we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. it exists whether or not, bee or no bee. since the iridescence and the humming of life _are_ always, and since it was they who made me, then i am not lost. at least, i do not care. if the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is there in the darkness. what does it matter? besides, i _have_ burned bright; i have laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere--i wonder where? we can never point to it; but it _is_ so--what does it matter, then!' they had entered the north downs, and were running through dorking towards leatherhead. box hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the night. helena remembered that here she and siegmund had come for their first walk together. she would like to come again. presently she saw the quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran between high embankments. siegmund recollected that these were covered with roses of sharon--the large golden st john's wort of finest silk. he looked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers, ignored by the stars. at last he had something to say to helena: 'do you remember,' he asked, 'the roses of sharon all along here?' 'i do,' replied helena, glad he spoke so brightly. 'weren't they pretty?' after a few moments of watching the bank, she said: 'do you know, i have never gathered one? i think i should like to; i should like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.' he smiled, without answering. she glanced up at him, smiling brightly. 'but shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?' she asked. she put the question timidly. 'would you care to?' she added. siegmund darkened and frowned. here was the pain revived again. 'no,' he said gently; 'i think we had better not.' almost for the first time he did not make apologetic explanation. helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning of the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near sutton. then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and her basket. she was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. being quite ready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station. siegmund was aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first time, he said to himself, 'ah, well, it must be so.' she looked at him. he was sad, therefore she softened instantly. 'at least,' she said doubtfully, 'i shall see you at the station.' 'at waterloo?' he asked. 'no, at wimbledon,' she replied, in her metallic tone. 'but--' he began. 'it will be the best way for us,' she interrupted, in the calm tone of conviction. 'much better than crossing london from victoria to waterloo.' 'very well,' he replied. he looked up a train for her in his little time-table. 'you will get in wimbledon . --leave . --leave waterloo . ,' he said. 'very good,' she answered. the brakes were grinding. they waited in a burning suspense for the train to stop. 'if only she will soon go!' thought siegmund. it was an intolerable minute. she rose; everything was a red blur. she stood before him, pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. as he leaned upon the window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at him, he could scarcely breathe. 'how long will it be?' he said to himself, looking at the open carriage doors. he hated intensely the lady who could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have killed her; he could have killed the dilatory guard. at last the doors slammed and the whistle went. the train started imperceptibly into motion. 'now i lose her,' said siegmund. she looked up at him; her face was white and dismal. 'good-bye, then!' she said, and she turned away. siegmund went back to his seat. he was relieved, but he trembled with sickness. we are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why did she fling round in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what would she do? _chapter _ siegmund went up to victoria. he was in no hurry to get down to wimbledon. london was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this peculiar lukewarmness was not unpleasant to him. he chose to walk from victoria to waterloo. the streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. the taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other clumsy-footed traffic. he heard the merry click-clock of the swinging hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and stood there panting--great, nervous, clumsy things. siegmund was always amused by the headlong, floundering career of the buses. he was pleased with this scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. he was glad helena was not with him, for the streets would have irritated her with their coarse noise. she would stand for a long time to watch the rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing along of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to her. 'discords,' she said, 'after the trees and sea.' she liked the glistening of the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for pavement, such pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of heaven; but this noise could not be endured near any wonderland. siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. he watched the gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself far before him into the night. he watched the people. soldiers, belted with scarlet, went jauntily on in front. there was a peculiar charm in their movement. there was a soft vividness of life in their carriage; it reminded siegmund of the soft swaying and lapping of a poised candle-flame. the women went blithely alongside. occasionally, in passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of himself, he smiled; he knew not why. the women glanced at him with approval, for he was ruddy; besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair. the eyes of the women said, 'you are comely, you are lovable,' and siegmund smiled. when the street opened, at westminster, he noticed the city sky, a lovely deep purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour of grey-gold light. 'it is a wonderful night,' he said to himself. 'there are not two such in a year.' he went forward to the embankment, with a feeling of elation in his heart. this purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering flame-warmth of soldiers and the quick brightness of women, like lights that clip sharply in a draught, was a revelation to him. as he leaned upon the embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but rather increased. the trams, one after another, floated loftily over the bridge. they went like great burning bees in an endless file into a hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro. 'ah!' said siegmund to himself; 'it is far too wonderful for me. here, as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. whatever happens, the world is wonderful.' so he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night, the swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the floating of many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness, like an army of angels filing past on one of god's campaigns, the purring haste of the taxis, the slightly dancing shadows of people. siegmund went on slowly, like a slow bullet winging into the heart of life. he did not lose this sense of wonder, not in the train, nor as he walked home in the moonless dark. when he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. he did not think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: 'now for the beginning of hell!' he went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy murmur. the clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten, siegmund opened the door of the room. beatrice was sewing, and did not raise her head. frank, a tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a book. he did not look up. vera had her fingers thrust in among her hair, and continued to read the magazine that lay on the table before her. siegmund looked at them all. they gave no sign to show they were aware of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of people who cover their agitation. he glanced round to see where he should go. his wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were standing under the sideboard, as he had left them. siegmund sat down in the creaking chair; he began to feel sick and tired. 'i suppose the children are in bed,' he said. his wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily turned over a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly interested and had known no interruption. siegmund waited, with his slipper dangling from his hand, looking from one to another. 'they've been gone two hours,' said frank at last, still without raising his eyes from his book. his tone was contemptuous, his voice was jarring, not yet having developed a man's fullness. siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. the slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag seemed unnecessarily loud. it annoyed his wife. she took a breath to speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter's scornful restraint upon her. siegmund rested his arms upon his knees, and sat leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace, which was littered with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin. 'do you want any supper?' asked beatrice, and the sudden harshness of her voice startled him into looking at her. she had her face averted, refusing to see him. siegmund's heart went down with weariness and despair at the sight of her. 'aren't _you_ having any?' he asked. the table was not laid. beatrice's work-basket, a little wicker fruit-skep, overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and reels of cotton on the green serge cloth. vera leaned both her elbows on the table. instead of replying to him, beatrice went to the sideboard. she took out a table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the cloth over one end of the table. vera gave her magazine a little knock with her hand. 'have you read this tale of a french convent school in here, mother?' she asked. 'in where?' in this month's _nash's_.' 'no,' replied beatrice. 'what time have i for reading, much less for anything else?' 'you should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people, then,' said vera, with a sneer at the 'other people'. she rose. 'let me do this. you sit down; you are tired, mother,' she said. her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. vera followed her. frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his thin shoulders lower over his book. siegmund remained with his arms on his knees, looking into the grate. from the kitchen came the chinking of crockery, and soon the smell of coffee. all the time vera was heard chatting with affected brightness to her mother, addressing her in fond tones, using all her wits to recall bright little incidents to retail to her. beatrice answered rarely, and then with utmost brevity. presently vera came in with the tray. she put down a cup of coffee, a plate with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer, and some bread-and-butter. then she sat down, noisily turning over the leaves of her magazine. frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely for his father. he looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained himself, and went on reading, or pretended to do so. beatrice came in with the small cruet; it was conspicuously bright. everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin--in fact, it was just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. this scrupulous neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong, impressed siegmund. beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down. her face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. she began to sew. 'what do you say, mother?' said vera, as if resuming a conversation. 'shall it be hampton court or richmond on sunday?' 'i say, as i said before,' replied beatrice: 'i cannot afford to go out.' 'but you must begin, my dear, and sunday shall see the beginning. _dîtes donc_!' 'there are other things to think of,' said beatrice. 'now, _maman, nous avons changé tout cela_! we are going out--a jolly little razzle!' vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and smiled at her mother gaily. 'i am afraid there will be no _razzle_'--beatrice accented the word, smiling slightly--'for me. you are slangy, vera.' '_un doux argot, ma mère_. you look tired.' beatrice glanced at the clock. 'i will go to bed when i have cleared the table,' she said. siegmund winced. he was still sitting with his head bent down, looking in the grate. vera went on to say something more. presently frank looked up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice: 'there's your supper, father.' the women stopped and looked round at this. siegmund bent his head lower. vera resumed her talk. it died out, and there was silence. siegmund was hungry. 'oh, good lord, good lord! bread of humiliation tonight!' he said to himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. he seemed to be shrinking inwards. the women glanced swiftly at him and away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. frank was watching from under his eyebrows. siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of his family. if he had not been hungry, he could not have done it, despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night. he swallowed the coffee with effort. when he had finished he sat irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door. 'good night!' he said. nobody made any reply. frank merely stirred in his chair. siegmund shut the door and went. there was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the tap in the bathroom; then beatrice began to breathe spasmodically, catching her breath as if she would sob. but she restrained herself. the faces of the two children set hard with hate. 'he is not worth the flicking of your little finger, mother,' said vera. beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing and her cottons. 'at any rate, he's come back red enough,' said frank, in his grating tone of contempt. 'he's like boiled salmon.' beatrice did not answer anything. frank rose, and stood with his back to the grate, in his father's characteristic attitude. 'he _would_ come slinking back in a funk!' he said, with a young man's sneer. stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread, and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. vera came to the table at this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. frank watched her with jealous eyes. 'there is a little more ham, if you'd like it,' said beatrice to him. 'i kept you some.' 'all right, ma,' he replied. fetch it in.' beatrice went out to the kitchen. 'and bring the bread and butter, too, will you?' called vera after her. 'the damned coward! ain't he a rotten funker?' said frank, _sotto voce_, while his mother was out of the room. vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree. they petted their mother, while she waited on them. at length frank yawned. he fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother, and, putting his hand on her arm--the feel of his mother's round arm under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise--he said, more gratingly than ever: 'ne'er mind, ma; we'll be all right to you.' then he bent and kissed her. 'good night, mother,' he said awkwardly, and he went out of the room. beatrice was crying. _chapter _ 'i shall never re-establish myself,' said siegmund as he closed behind him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'i am a family criminal. beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent judgement is too much. and i am like a dog that creeps round the house from which it escaped with joy. i have nowhere else to go. why did i come back? but i am sleepy. i will not bother tonight.' he went into the bathroom and washed himself. everything he did gave him a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his position. he dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might feel the delight of it a little farther. his neck he swilled time after time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught him and fell away. the towel reminded him how sore were his forehead and his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. he touched them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his own childish touch-and-shrink. though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. instead, he stepped out into the small balcony. his shirt was open at the neck and wrists. he pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously soft night. he stood looking out at the darkness for some time. the night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of light. the stars were small. near at hand, large shapes of trees rose up. farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowth of darkness. there was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across the distance. 'what a big night!' thought siegmund. 'the night gathers everything into a oneness. i wonder what is in it.' he leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the night. he felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a hold. what could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? a star fell. it seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with a yellow flash. he looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he had seen it or not. there was no gap in the sky. 'it is a good sign--a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'it is a good sign for me. i know i am right. that was my sign.' having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was soon in bed. 'this is a good bed,' he said. 'and the sheets are very fresh.' he lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep. at half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes. 'what is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'well, i've got to go through it.' his sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he forgot when he awoke. only this naïve question and answer betrayed what had taken place in his sleep. immediately he awoke this subordinate knowledge vanished. another fine day was striding in triumphant. the first thing siegmund did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. the second thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the isle of wight. 'what would it just be like now?' said he to himself. he had to give his heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been his during the last mornings. he pictured the garden with roses and nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs. 'it is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'it can't be gone. i looked forward to it as if it never would come. it can't be gone now. helena is not lost to me, surely.' then he began a long pining for the departed beauty of his life. he turned the jewel of memory, and facet by facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. this pain, though it was keen, was half pleasure. presently he heard his wife stirring. she opened the door of the room next to his, and he heard her: 'frank, it's a quarter to eight. you _will_ be late.' 'all right, mother. why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad. 'i didn't wake myself. i didn't go to sleep till morning, and then i slept.' she went downstairs. siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed. the minutes passed. 'the young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said siegmund angrily to himself. he turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep him to his duty. siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and anxiety. when the suave, velvety 'pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was heard striking, frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. he could be heard dressing in clumsy haste. beatrice called from the bottom of the stairs: 'do you want any hot water?' 'you know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son, lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto. the scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. siegmund heard his second daughter, marjory, aged nine, talking to vera, who occupied the same room with her. the child was evidently questioning, and the elder girl answered briefly. there was a lull in the household noises, broken suddenly by marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs: 'mam!' she wailed. 'mam!' still beatrice did not hear her. 'mam! mamma!' beatrice was in the scullery. 'mamma-a!' the child was getting impatient. she lifted her voice and shouted: 'mam? mamma!' still no answer. 'mam-mee-e!' she squealed. siegmund could hardly contain himself. 'why don't you go down and ask?' vera called crossly from the bedroom. and at the same moment beatrice answered, also crossly: 'what do you want?' 'where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice. 'why do you ask me? are they down here?' replied her mother. 'what are you shouting for?' the child plodded downstairs. directly she returned, and as she passed into vera's room, she grumbled: 'and now they're not mended.' siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. it was the crackling of the sides of the crib, as gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out. she was silent for a space. he imagined her sitting on the white rug and pulling on her stockings. then there came the quick little thud of her feet as she went downstairs. 'mam,' siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?' the answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the kitchen. the small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of gwen's feet, made siegmund lie still with torture. he wanted to hear no more. he lay shrinking within himself. it seemed that his soul was sensitive to madness. he felt that he could not, come what might, get up and meet them all. the front door banged, and he heard frank's hasty call: 'good-bye!' evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. siegmund listened for the sound of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. then the water from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. that, he suggested, was vera, who was evidently not going up to town. at the thought of this, siegmund almost hated her. he listened for her to go downstairs. it was nine o'clock. the footsteps of beatrice came upstairs. she put something down in the bathroom--his hot water. siegmund listened intently for her to come to his door. would she speak? she approached hurriedly, knocked, and waited. siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. she knocked loudly. 'all right,' said he. then she went downstairs. he lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till vera's voice said coldly, beneath his window outside: 'you should clear away, then. we don't want the breakfast things on the table for a week.' siegmund's heart set hard. he rose, with a shut mouth, and went across to the bathroom. there he started. the quaint figure of gwen stood at the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly. her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. her arms were bare to the shoulder. she wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette, which hardly reached her knees. siegmund felt slightly amused to see her stout little calves planted so firmly close together. she carefully sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair, but not her ears. then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge and proceeded to wipe away the soap. for some reason or other she glanced round. her startled eyes met his. she, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. she stood, with the sponge at her neck, looking full at him. siegmund felt himself shrinking. the child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable. 'hello!' said her father. 'are you here!' the child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her back on him, and continued wiping her neck. she dropped the sponge in the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. then she turned to look again at siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her, his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. she seemed to be trying to discover something in him. 'have you washed your ears?' he said gaily. she paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a slight constrained smile as she looked at him. she was shy. still she continued to regard him curiously. 'there is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said. 'where have you been to?' she asked suddenly. 'to the seaside,' he answered, smiling. 'to brighton?' she asked. her tone was still condemning. 'much farther than that,' he replied. 'to worthing?' she asked. 'farther--in a steamer,' he replied. 'but who did you go with?' asked the child. 'why, i went all by myself,' he answered. 'twuly?' she asked. 'weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing. 'couldn't you take me?' she asked. 'i will next time,' he replied. the child still looked at him, unsatisfied. 'but what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously. 'to see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--' 'you _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully. 'yes, i ought to have done, oughtn't i?' he said, as if regretful. gwen still looked full at him. 'you _are_ red,' she said. he glanced quickly in the glass, and replied: 'that is the sun. hasn't it been hot?' 'mm! it made my nose all peel. vera said she would scrape me like a new potato.' the child laughed and turned shyly away. 'come here,' said siegmund. 'i believe you've got a tooth out, haven't you?' he was very cautious and gentle. the child drew back. he hesitated, and she drew away from him, unwilling. 'come and let me look,' he repeated. she drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her face, shy, suspicious, condemning. 'aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child hesitated in the doorway. she glanced into his room, and answered: 'i've got to go to mam and have my hair done.' her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. she went downstairs without going into his room. siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart. he was a long time over his toilet. when he stripped himself for the bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. he bent his head and licked his shoulder. it tasted decidedly salt. 'a pity to wash it off,' he said. as he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment exhilarated. he rubbed himself smooth. glancing down at himself, he thought: 'i look young. i look as young as twenty-six.' he turned to the mirror. there he saw himself a mature, complete man of forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance. 'i used to think that, when i was forty,' he said to himself, 'i should find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my affairs as easily as you like. now i am no more sure of myself, have no more confidence than a boy of twenty. what can i do? it seems to me a man needs a mother all his life. i don't feel much like a lord of creation.' having arrived at this cynicism, siegmund prepared to go downstairs. his sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. when he was dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. he was indifferent to his wife and children. no one spoke to him as he sat to the table. that was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him. he ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and vera bustled about in the dining-room. then he retired to the solitude of the drawing-room. as a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. he remarked nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would not have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the cold, polished floor near the window. he merely sat down in an arm-chair, and felt sick. all his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few days, had vanished. he felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly through him. after an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and of sunshine, he was prostrate. like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life struggled in a clogged and broken channel. siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. he would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him into consciousness. 'i suppose this is the result of the sun--a sort of sunstroke,' he said, realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition in his head. 'this is hideous!' he said. his arms were quivering with intense irritation. he exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot irritability commenced in his belly. siegmund fidgeted in his chair without changing his position. he had not the energy to get up and move about. he fidgeted like an insect pinned down. the door opened. he felt violently startled; yet there was no movement perceptible. vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which she was going to copy a drawing from the _london opinion_, really to see what her father was doing. he did not move a muscle. he only longed intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let go. vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. apparently she had not even glanced at her father. in reality, she had observed him closely. 'he is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother. beatrice replied: 'i'm glad he's nothing else to do.' 'i should think he's pitying himself,' said vera. 'he's a good one at it,' answered beatrice. gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking up anxiously. 'what is he doing, mam?' she asked. 'nothing,' replied her mother--'nothing; only sitting in the drawing-room.' 'but what has he _been_ doing?' persisted the anxious child. 'nothing--nothing that i can tell _you_. he's only spoilt all our lives.' the little girl stood regarding her mother in the greatest distress and perplexity. 'but what will he do, mam?' she asked. 'nothing. don't bother. run and play with marjory now. do you want a nice plum?' she took a yellow plum from the table. gwen accepted it without a word. she was too much perplexed. 'what do you say?' asked her mother. 'thank you,' replied the child, turning away. siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. he twisted in his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing irritability from his belly. 'ah, this is horrible!' he said. he stiffened his muscles to quieten them. 'i've never been like this before. what is the matter?' he asked himself. but the question died out immediately. it seemed useless and sickening to try and answer it. he began to cast about for an alleviation. if he could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would be better. 'what do i want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this out. everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often dreamed of, farming in canada. 'i should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'just the same sickening feeling there that i want nothing.' 'helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling. but he only felt a deeper horror. the thought of her made him shrink convulsively. 'i can't endure this,' he said. if this is the case, i had better be dead. to have no want, no desire--that is death, to begin with.' he rested awhile after this. the idea of death alone seemed entertaining. then, 'is there really nothing i could turn to?' he asked himself. to him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not. 'helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'ah, no!' he cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw place. he groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea. there was a fumbling upon the door-knob. siegmund did not start. he merely pulled himself together. gwen pushed open the door, and stood holding on to the door-knob looking at him. 'dad, mam says dinner's ready,' she announced. siegmund did not reply. the child waited, at a loss for some moments, before she repeated, in a hesitating tone: 'dinner's ready.' 'all right,' said siegmund. 'go away.' the little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very crestfallen. 'what did he say?' asked beatrice. 'he shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears. beatrice flushed. tears came into her own eyes. she took the child in her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead. 'did he?' she said very tenderly. 'never mind, then, dearie--never mind.' the tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. vera and marjory sat silent at table. the steak and mashed potatoes steamed and grew cold. _chapter _ when helena arrived home on the thursday evening she found everything repulsive. all the odours of the sordid street through which she must pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. the house was bare and narrow. she remembered children sometimes to have brought her moths shut up in matchboxes. as she knocked at the door she felt like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into his box. the door was opened by her mother. she was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. as helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said: 'well?' 'well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone. her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became proportionately cold. 'so i see,' exclaimed mrs verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular manner. 'and what sort of a time have you had?' 'oh, very good,' replied helena, still more coolly. 'h'm!' mrs verden looked keenly at her daughter. she recognized the peculiar sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she forbore to question. 'you look well,' she said. helena smiled ironically. 'and are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful, affectionate manner she had assumed. 'if the supper is ready i will have it,' replied her daughter. 'well, it's not ready.' the mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'because,' she continued, 'i didn't known when you were coming.' she gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'but,' she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, 'i can soon have it ready. what will you have?' 'the full list of your capacious larder,' replied helena. mrs verden looked at her again, and hesitated. 'will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point curtly. 'lemonade,' said helena. presently mr verden entered--a small, white-bearded man with a gentle voice. 'oh, so you are back, nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner. 'as you see, pater,' she answered. 'h'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts. neither of her parents dared to question helena. they moved about her on tiptoe, stealthily. yet neither subserved her. her father's quiet 'h'm!' her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. she made a careless pretence of eating. she was like a child which has done wrong, and will not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of offence upon it. there was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. mrs verden went to the door. 'has she come?' and there were hasty steps along the passage. louisa entered. she flung herself upon helena and kissed her. 'how long have you been in?' she asked, in a voice trembling with affection. 'ten minutes,' replied helena. 'why didn't you send me the time of the train, so that i could come and meet you?' louisa reproached her. 'why?' drawled helena. louisa looked at her friend without speaking. she was deeply hurt by this sarcasm. as soon as possible helena went upstairs. louisa stayed with her that night. on the next day they were going to cornwall together for their usual midsummer holiday. they were to be accompanied by a third girl--a minor friend of louisa, a slight acquaintance of helena. during the night neither of the two friends slept much. helena made confidences to louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. meanwhile, helena's thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea, pulling forwards as far as the morrow's meeting with siegmund, but reaching no further. friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother, all of which were rapidly repulsed. the father said nothing, and avoided his daughter with his eyes. in his humble reserve there was a dignity which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the repeated flagrant questionings of the mother's eyes. but the day wore on. helena pretended to read, and sat thinking. she played her violin a little, mechanically. she went out into the town, and wandered about. at last the night fell. 'well,' said helena to her mother, 'i suppose i'd better pack.' 'haven't you done it?' cried mrs verden, exaggerating her surprise. 'you'll never have it done. i'd better help you. what times does the train go?' helena smiled. 'ten minutes to ten.' her mother glanced at the clock. it was only half-past eight. there was ample time for everything. 'nevertheless, you'd better look sharp,' mrs verden said. helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration. 'i'll come with you to the station,' suggested mrs verden. 'i'll see the last of you. we shan't see much of you just now.' helena turned round in surprise. 'oh, i wouldn't bother,' she said, fearing to make her disapproval too evident. 'yes--i will--i'll see you off.' mrs verden's animation and indulgence were remarkable. usually she was curt and undemonstrative. on occasions like these, however, when she was reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general distress. helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. she quickly packed her dress-basket. as she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. she glanced away swiftly as if she had been burned. 'how stupid i look!' she said to herself. 'and siegmund, how is he, i wonder?' she wondered how siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him, how he felt, how he looked. she thought of him protectively. having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. her mother was ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. after a short time louisa came in. she dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into a chair. 'i don't want to go, nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence. 'why, how is that?' asked helena, not surprised, but condescending, as to a child. 'oh, i don't know; i'm tired,' said the other petulantly. 'of course you are. what do you expect, after a day like this?' said helena. 'and rushing about packing,' exclaimed mrs verden, still in an exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully. 'oh, i don't know. i don't think i want to go, dear,' repeated louisa dejectedly. 'well, it is time we set out,' replied helena, rising. 'will you carry the basket or the violin, mater?' louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage. the west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. darkness is only smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day. such was helena's longed-for night. the tramcar was crowded. in one corner olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. helena sat mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a third-rate street of shops. she heard olive remarking on her sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. everything was in a maze. to the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'two hundred and forty miles--two hundred and forty miles.' _chapter _ siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. at tea-time beatrice, who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of angry hysteria. 'when does your engagement at the comedy theatre commence?' she had asked him coldly. he knew she was wondering about money. 'tomorrow--if ever,' he had answered. she was aware that he hated the work. for some reason or other her anger flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'. 'what do you think you _can_ do?' she cried. 'for i think you have done enough. we can't do as we like altogether--indeed, indeed we cannot. you have had your fling, haven't you? you have had your fling, and you want to keep on. but there's more than one person in the world. remember that. but there are your children, let me remind you. whose are they? you talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be responsible for your children, do you think?' 'i said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied siegmund, very coldly. 'no, there was no need to say. i know what it means. you sit there sulking all day. what do you think _i_ do? i have to see to the children, i have to work and slave, i go on from day to day. i tell you _i'll_ stop, i tell you _i'll_ do as i like. _i'll_ go as well. no, i wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. you know _i_ wouldn't leave little children--to the workhouse or anything. they're my children; they mightn't be yours.' 'there is no need for this,' said siegmund contemptuously. the pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely sick. beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage. 'isn't there!' she cried. 'oh, isn't there? no, there is need for a great deal more. i don't know what you think i am. how much farther do you' think you can go? no, you don't like reminding of us. you sit moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. i wonder how much you think i shall stand? what do you think i am, to put up with it? what do you think i am? am i a servant to eat out of your hand?' 'be quiet!' shouted siegmund. 'don't i know what you are? listen to yourself!' beatrice was suddenly silenced. it was the stillness of white-hot wrath. even siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. she spoke low and trembling. 'you coward--you miserable coward! it is i, is it, who am wrong? it is i who am to blame, is it? you miserable thing! i have no doubt you know what i am.' siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. she looked back at him with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. his eyes were bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate and misery. she was goading him, in his darkness whither he had withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength should prove. she tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger, which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. he trembled too much, however. his chin dropped again on his chest. beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. she was shuddering slightly, and her eyes were fixed. vera entered with the two children. all three immediately, as if they found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested. vera tackled the situation. 'is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone. her father's cup was half emptied. he had come to tea late, after the others had left the table. evidently he had not finished, but he made no reply, neither did beatrice. vera glanced disgustedly at her father. gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension. 'mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked a sheep, mam, what was hanging up.' beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. the child looked up at her, waited, then continued softly. 'mam, there was a lady had a dog--' 'don't bother!' snapped vera sharply. the child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. vera was taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on the tray. gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated in her softest and most persuasive tones: 'mam, i saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of meat. mam, mam!' there was no answer. gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's knee. 'mam!' she pleaded timidly. no response. 'mam!' she whispered. she was desperate. she stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at her mother's breast. 'mam!' she whispered shrilly. her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her close. gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. with an earnest face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading. 'mam, there was a lady, she had a dog--' vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her nerves, but the mother forestalled her. taking the child in her arms, she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the tears run freely. gwen was too much distressed to cry. the tears gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a muscle in her face. vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. the only sound in the room was the occasional sharp breathing of beatrice. siegmund sat without the trace of a movement, almost without breathing. his head was ducked low; he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence. presently beatrice put down the child, and went to join vera in the scullery. there came the low sound of women's talking--an angry, ominous sound. gwen followed her mother. her little voice could be heard cautiously asking: 'mam, is dad cross--is he? what did he do?' 'don't bother!' snapped vera. 'you _are_ a little nuisance! here, take this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.' the child did not obey. she stood looking from her mother to her sister. the latter pushed a dish into her hand. 'go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth. gwen departed. she hesitated in the kitchen. her father still remained unmoved. the child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was afraid. she crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came slowly back, hesitating. she sidled into the kitchen; she crept round the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. at about a yard from the chair she stopped. he, from under his bent brows, could see her small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting and moving nervously near him. he pulled himself together, as a man does who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. would the child speak to him? would she touch him with her small hands? he held his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. what he should do he did not know. he waited in a daze of suspense. the child shifted from one foot to another. he could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. he wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something against which to hide his face. yet he was afraid. often, when all the world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a piece of apple-blossom in his arms. if she should come to him now--his heart halted again in suspense--he knew not what he would do. it would open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. he was quivering too fast with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped. 'gwen!' called vera, wondering why she did not return. 'gwen!' 'yes,' answered the child, and slowly siegmund saw her feet lifted, hesitate, move, then turn away. she had gone. his excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. for a moment it was so bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. he recovered slightly, pulled himself up, and went upstairs. his fists were tightly clenched, his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. he lay down on the bed. for two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. at the end of that time the knowledge that he had to meet helena was actively at work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness, jogging and pulling him awake. at eight o'clock he sat up. a cramped pain in his thumbs made him wonder. he looked at them, and mechanically shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after two hours of similar constraint. siegmund opened his hands again, smiling. 'it is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to himself. his head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if weighted with lead. he could think only one detached sentence at intervals. between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon. 'i have got to go and meet helena at wimbledon,' he said to himself, and instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'but i must be getting ready. i can't disappoint her,' said siegmund. the idea of helena woke a craving for rest in him. if he should say to her, 'do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. if she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest. this was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. he longed for it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of helena. 'but it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep. 'what time is it?' it was ten minutes to nine. she would be in wimbledon by . . it was time he should be getting ready. yet he remained sitting on the bed. 'i am forgetting again,' he said. 'but i do not want to go. what is the good? i have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. it is too much.' he waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep. suddenly he started awake. the back of his head hurt severely. 'goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!' it was twenty minutes to ten. he went bewildered into the bathroom to wash in cold water and bring back his senses. his hands were sore, and his face blazed with sun inflammation. he made himself neat as usual. it was ten minutes to ten. he would be very late. it was practically dark, though these bright days were endless. he wondered whether the children were in bed. it was too late, however, to wonder. siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. he was walking down the path when the door was snatched open behind him, and vera ran out crying: 'are you going out? where are you going?' siegmund stood still and looked at her. 'she is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically. 'i am only going a walk. i have to go to wimbledon. i shall not be very long.' 'wimbledon, at this time!' said vera sharply, full of suspicion. 'yes, i am late. i shall be back in an hour.' he was sorry for her. she knew he gave her an honourable promise. 'you need not keep us sitting up,' she said. he did not answer, but hurried to the station. _chapter _ helena, louisa, and olive climbed the steps to go to the south-western platform. they were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little packages. olive and louisa, at least, were in high spirits. olive stopped before the indicator. 'the next train for waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice, 'is . . it is now . .' 'we go by the . ; it is a better train,' said helena. olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner. 'very well, dear. there is a parting to be got through, i am told. we sympathize, dear, but we regret it. starting for a holiday is always a prolonged agony. but i am strong to endure it.' 'you look it. you look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried louisa, skittish. 'my dear louisa,' rang out olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by appearances. you're sure to be taken in. with me it's a case of '"oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad, and the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"' she looked round to see the effect of this. helena, expected to say something, chimed in sarcastically: '"they are nothing to her madness--"' 'when she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried olive. 'oh, go on being mad,' cried louisa. 'what, do you like it? i thought you'd be thanking heaven that sanity was given me in large doses.' 'and holidays in small,' laughed louisa. 'good! no, i like your madness, if you call it such. you are always so serious.' '"it's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed olive. she looked from side to side. she felt triumphant. helena smiled, acknowledging the sarcasm. 'but,' said louisa, smiling anxiously, 'i don't quite see it. what's the point?' 'well, to be explicit, dear,' replied olive, 'it is hardly safe to accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.' louisa laughed and shook herself. 'come to think of it, it isn't,' she said. helena sighed, and walked down the platform. her heart was beating thickly; she could hardly breathe. the station lamps hung low, so they made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. she suffocated under them. for a moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under the grey, woolly blanket of heat. siegmund was late. it was already twenty-five minutes past ten. she went towards the booking-office. at that moment siegmund came on to the platform. 'here i am!' he said. 'where is louisa?' helena pointed to the seat without answering. she was looking at siegmund. he was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she could not read him. 'olive is there, too,' she explained. siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. the stranger made things more complex. 'does she--your other friend--does she know?' he asked. 'she knows nothing,' replied helena in a low tone, as she led him forward to be introduced. 'how do you do?' replied olive in most mellow contralto. 'behold the dauntless three, with their traps! you will see us forth on our perils?' 'i will, since i may not do more,' replied siegmund, smiling, continuing: 'and how is sister louisa?' 'she is very well, thank you. it is _her_ turn now,' cried louisa, vindictive, triumphant. there was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards siegmund. he understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really good friends. 'it is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away. he and helena walked down the platform. 'how did you find things at home?' he asked her. 'oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'and you?' 'just the same,' he answered. he thought for a moment or two, then added: 'the children are happier without me.' 'oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested helena miserably. 'it's not true.' 'it's all right, dear,' he answered. 'so long as they are happy, it's all right.' after a pause he added: 'but i feel pretty bad tonight.' helena's hand tightened on his arm. he had reached the end of the platform. there he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a haze of lights. the high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm; farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. a train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon the lovers. dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. the ground and the air rocked. then siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. still watching the distance where the train had vanished, he said: 'dear, i want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go on. remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.' helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his eyes. but he was in the shadow, she could not see him. the flat sound of his voice, lacking resonance--the dead, expressionless tone--made her lose her presence of mind. she stared at him blankly. 'what do you mean? what has happened? something has happened to you. what has happened at home? what are you going to do?' she said sharply. she palpitated with terror. for the first time she felt powerless. siegmund was beyond her grasp. she was afraid of him. he had shaken away her hold over him. 'there is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. he was to be scourged with emotion again. 'i swear it,' he added. 'and i have not made up my mind. but i can't think of life without you--and life must go on.' 'and i swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that i won't live a day after you.' siegmund dropped his head. the dead spring of his emotion swelled up scalding hot again. then he said, almost inaudibly: 'ah, don't speak to me like that, dear. it is late to be angry. when i have seen your train out tonight there is nothing left.' helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry. they became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the waterloo train was to leave from another platform. 'you'd better come,' said siegmund, and they hurried down towards louisa and olive. 'we've got to change platforms,' cried louisa, running forward and excitedly announcing the news. 'yes,' replied helena, pale and impassive. siegmund picked up the luggage. 'i say,' cried olive, rushing to catch helena and louisa by the arm, 'look--look--both of you--look at that hat!' a lady in front was wearing on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'it's the sight of a lifetime. i wouldn't have you miss it,' added olive in hoarse _sotto voce_. 'indeed not!' cried helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'get a good view of it, olive. let's have a good mental impression of it--one that will last.' 'that's right, dear,' said olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst. siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. they could see him ahead, climbing the steps. olive readjusted herself from the wildly animated to the calmly ironical. 'after all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd, 'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.' louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of siegmund. 'just now, at any rate,' she rejoined. as they reached the platform the train ran in before them. helena watched anxiously for an empty carriage. there was not one. 'perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'we needn't talk. there will be three-quarters of an hour at waterloo. if we were alone. olive would make siegmund talk.' she found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession. siegmund followed her with the bags. he swung these on the rack, and then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other two. these he put on the seats or anywhere, while helena stowed them. she was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. other people entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow. when she turned round again she found louisa and olive seated, but siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. he saw her face move as if she would cry to him. she restrained herself, and immediately called: 'you are coming? oh, you are coming to waterloo?' he shook his head. 'i cannot come,' he said. she stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers. she was helpless. siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind: 'oh--go--go--go--when will she go?' he could not bear her piteousness. her presence made him feel insane. 'would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of helena kindly. she smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. he pulled the portmanteau under his legs, and helena edged past. she stood by the door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'hawwa' spirit evident. benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at siegmund. but her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of helplessness. she stood looking at siegmund, saying nothing. his forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath one eye the skin was blistered. his eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. he looked up at her because she wished it. for himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil from her. all he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. yet she wanted him, and so far he yielded. but to go to waterloo he could not yield. the people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did not speak. there were a few taut moments of silence. no one seems to have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. finally, the guard's whistle went. siegmund and helena clasped hands. a warm flush of love and healthy grief came over siegmund for the last time. the train began to move, drawing helena's hand from his. 'monday,' she whispered--'monday,' meaning that on monday she should receive a letter from him. he nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her, turned and walked away. she remained at the window watching him depart. 'now, dear, we are manless,' said olive in a whisper. but her attempt at a joke fell dead. everybody was silent and uneasy. _chapter _ he hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory of helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. he gripped his fists till they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. like a picture on a cloth before him he still saw helena's face, white, rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. he thought of her going on and on, still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing west and west to the land of isolde. things began to haunt siegmund like a delirium. he knew not where he was hurrying. always in front of him, as on a cloth, was the face of helena, while somewhere behind the cloth was cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely. sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of cornwall, very far off. then the face of helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy eyes, came between again. he was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his house. the door opened. he remembered to have heard the quick thud of feet. it was vera. she glanced at him, but said nothing. instinctively she shrank from him. he passed without noticing her. she stood on the door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him. 'you have been over an hour,' she said, still more troubled when she found her voice shaking. she had no idea what alarmed her. 'ay,' returned siegmund. he went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head between his hands. vera followed him nervously. 'will you have anything to eat?' she asked. he looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and incomprehensible. the delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. vera held her breath with fear. he sank his head again and said nothing. vera sat down and waited. the minutes ticked slowly off. siegmund neither moved nor spoke. at last the clock struck midnight. she was weary with sleep, querulous with trouble. 'aren't you going to bed?' she asked. siegmund heard her without paying any attention. he seemed only to half hear. vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively: 'aren't you going to bed, father?' siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. he loathed the idea of having to move. he looked at her confusedly. 'yes, i'm going,' he said, and his head dropped again. vera knew he was not asleep. she dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. again she sat waiting. 'father!' she cried at last. he started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling. 'yes, i'm going,' he said. he rose, and went unevenly upstairs. vera followed him close behind. 'if he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he did not fall. from habit he went into the bathroom. while trying to brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor. 'i'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'i must go to bed--i must go to bed--i am very tired.' he stumbled over the door mat into his own room. vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. she heard the sneck of his lock. she heard the water still running in the bathroom, trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. screwing up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. then she stood again in her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping sister, listening. siegmund undressed quickly. his one thought was to get into bed. 'one must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. he could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him pant. any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. he got things right at last, and was in bed. immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. he would have called it sleep, but such it was not. all the time he could feel his brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening rapidity. this went on, interrupted by little flickerings of consciousness, for three or four hours. each time he had a glimmer of consciousness he wondered if he made any noise. 'what am i doing? what is the matter? am i unconscious? do i make any noise? do i disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to find the record of mechanical sense impression. he believed he could remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. immediately he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. this frightened him. above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the family. he roused himself to listen. everything was breathing in silence. as he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort of sleep. he was awakened finally by his own perspiration. he was terribly hot. the pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. it was coming light. immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. he was now conscious, and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control. siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture of the trickling of drops of sweat. first it would be one gathering and running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. his every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to stiffen his throat slightly. while yet the nerves in the track of this drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop would start from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among the little muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. it was like the running of a spider over his sensitive, moveless body. why he did not wipe himself he did not know. he lay still and endured this horrible tickling, which seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to move, which he loathed to do. the drops ran off his forehead down his temples. those he did not mind: he was blunt there. but they started again, in tiny, vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits, down the inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet, highly-sensitized body. his nerves were trembling, one and all, with outrage and vivid suspense. it became unbearable. he felt that, if he endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst. he sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs. he rubbed madly for a few moments. then he sighed with relief. he sat on the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he had lain. for a moment he thought he would go to sleep. then, in an instant his brain seemed to click awake. he was still as loath as ever to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was clear. he sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. he felt a peculiar sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. it seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. but at the thought of it he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt a sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands. siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. he felt the pillow and the groove where he had lain. it was quite wet and clammy. there was a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted something fresh and cool. siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. the air was beautifully cool. he felt his chest again to make sure it was not clammy. it was smooth as silk. this pleased him very much. he looked out on the night again, and was startled. somewhere the moon was shining duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. he waited breathlessly to see if it were true. then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into the dome of the fading night. it was like a white bird stirring restlessly on its nest. the night was drenching thinner, greyer. the lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day, moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. siegmund watched it with wonder and delight. the day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. the poor moon would be caught when the net was flung. siegmund went out on the balcony to look at it. there it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon, crouching on the mound of its course. it would run nimbly over to the western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its prey, flashing out its bright paws. the moon, before making its last run, lay crouched, palpitating. the sun crept forth, laughing to itself as it saw its prey could not escape. the lightning, however, leaped low off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. siegmund no longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the disturbance of the dawn. instead there came a flush, the white lightning gone. the brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. even in the west they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. they separated, thinned, rising higher. some, flying up, became golden. some flew rosy gold across the moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. soon the pink butterflies had gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. as a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling with whiteness the space which had been the night. siegmund sat watching the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse which floats on water. when the few birds had called in the august morning, when the cocks had finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were astir, siegmund shivered disconsolate. he felt tired again, yet he knew he could not sleep. the bed was repulsive to him. he sat in his chair at the open door, moving uneasily. what should have been sleep was an ache and a restlessness. he turned and twisted in his chair. 'where is helena?' he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning. everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. helena was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. he alone was out of the piece. he sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as if they ached. his arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. for a long time he sat with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. in his present state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind stirred him with dislike or disgust. helena, music, the pleasant company of friends, the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to his thoughts, was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. as nothing could please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the discord. he felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of life: there occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and discoloured, racked with pains. the question was, how should he reset himself into joint? the body of life for him meant beatrice, his children, helena, the comic opera, his friends of the orchestra. how could he set himself again into joint with these? it was impossible. towards his family he would henceforward have to bear himself with humility. that was a cynicism. he would have to leave helena, which he could not do. he would have to play strenuously, night after night, the music of _the saucy little switzer_ which was absurd. in fine, it was all absurd and impossible. very well, then, that being so, what remained possible? why, to depart. 'if thine hand offend thee, cut it off.' he could cut himself off from life. it was plain and straightforward. but beatrice, his young children, without him! he was bound by an agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. very well, he must provide for them. and then what? humiliation at home, helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. that was insufferable--impossible! like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not strong enough to free himself. he could not break with helena and return to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go to helena. very well, it was impossible! then there remained only one door which he could open in this prison corridor of life. siegmund looked round the room. he could get his razor, or he could hang himself. he had thought of the two ways before. yet now he was unprovided. his portmanteau stood at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. a portmanteau strap would do. then it should be a portmanteau strap! 'very well!' said siegmund, 'it is finally settled. i had better write to helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. i'd better tell her.' he sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote nothing. at last he gave up. 'perhaps it is just as well,' he said to himself. 'she said she would come with me--perhaps that is just as well. she will go to the sea. when she knows, the sea will take her. she must know.' he took a card, bearing her name and her cornwall address, from his pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table. 'she will come with me,' he said to himself, and his heart rose with elation. 'that is a cowardice,' he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if wondering whether to destroy it. 'it is in the hands of god. beatrice may or may not send word to her at tintagel. it is in the hands of god,' he concluded. then he sat down again. '"but for that fear of something after-death,"' he quoted to himself. 'it is not fear,' he said. 'the act itself will be horrible and fearsome, but the after-death--it's no more than struggling awake when you're sick with a fright of dreams. "we are such stuff as dreams are made on."' siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. he experienced no mystical ecstasies. he was sure of a wonderful kindness in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though here he could not avail himself of it. siegmund had always inwardly held faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. when he was cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness of his. the heart of life is implacable in its kindness. it may not be moved to fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or of hate. siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. there was no futile hesitation between doom and pity. therefore, he could submit and have faith. if each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. if life could swerve from its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to bear the responsibility of the deflection? siegmund thanked god that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room; otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible parents weaker than himself. 'i know the heart of life is kind,' said siegmund, 'because i feel it. otherwise i would live in defiance. but life is greater than me or anybody. we suffer, and we don't know why, often. life doesn't explain. but i can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. after all, life is as kind to me as i am to my dog. i have, proportionally, as much zest. and my purpose towards my dog is good. i need not despair of life.' it occurred to siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the atheists. he was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over to an imaginary god. 'well,' he said, 'i can't help it. i do not feel altogether self-responsible.' the morning had waxed during these investigations. siegmund had been vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. he was finally startled into a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of vera at his door. 'there are two letters for you. father.' he looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance, and he had no idea of his time or place. 'oh, all right,' he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. he heard his daughter going downstairs. then swiftly returned over him the throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of his body. 'what made her bring me the letters?' he asked himself. it was a very unusual attention. his heart replied, very sullen and shameful: 'she wanted to know; she wanted to make sure i was all right.' siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. the discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. he did not fetch in the letters. 'is it so late?' he said. 'is there no more time for me?' he went to look at his watch. it was a quarter to nine. as he walked across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten. he sat down on the bed. 'what am i going to do?' he asked himself. by this time he was shuddering rapidly. a peculiar feeling, as if his belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists into his abdomen. he remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man who is sick, incapable of thought or action. a second knock came at the door. he started with a jolt. 'here is your shaving-water,' said beatrice in cold tones. 'it's half past nine.' 'all right,' said siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered. 'and what time shall you expect dinner?' asked beatrice. she was still contemptuous. 'any time. i'm not going out,' he answered. he was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. in a shaking, bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. he was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he call his mind to think. he was one shuddering turmoil. yet he performed his purpose methodically and exactly. in every particular he was thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. it was a mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with convulsive sickness. _chapter _ siegmund's lying late in bed made beatrice very angry. the later it became, the more wrathful she grew. at half past nine she had taken up his shaving-water. then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving the breakfast spread in the kitchen. vera and frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner at two o'clock. marjory was despatched on an errand, taking gwen with her. the children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an hour or two. beatrice was alone downstairs. it was a hot, still morning, when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with coolness and colour. but beatrice was angry. she moved rapidly and determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing the litter in the grate, which was clear, friday having been charwoman's day, passing swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with the duster. it was saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. in the afternoon she was going out with vera. that was not, however, what occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work. she had determined to have a settlement with siegmund, as to how matters should continue. she was going to have no more of the past three years' life; things had come to a crisis, and there must be an alteration. beatrice was going to do battle, therefore she flew at her work, thus stirring herself up to a proper heat of blood. all the time, as she thrust things out of sight, or straightened a cover, she listened for siegmund to come downstairs. he did not come, so her anger waxed. 'he can lie skulking in bed!' she said to herself. 'here i've been up since seven, broiling at it. i should think he's pitying himself. he ought to have something else to do. he ought to have to go out to work every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. he has had too little work. he has had too much his own way. but it's come to a stop now. i'll servant-housekeeper him no longer.' beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. she clanged the bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. that piece of work finished, she went into the kitchen. it was twenty past ten. her wrath was at ignition point. she cleared all the things from the table and washed them up. as she was so doing, her anger, having reached full intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in uneasiness. she tried to imagine what siegmund would do and say to her. as she was wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her that her hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and putting them away. at last it was done. her next piece of work was to make the beds. she took her pail and went upstairs. her heart was beating so heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover breath. she dreaded the combat with him. suddenly controlling herself, she said loudly at siegmund's door, her voice coldly hostile: 'aren't you going to get up?' there was not the faintest sound in the house. beatrice stood in the gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears. 'it's after half past ten--aren't you going to get up?' she called. she waited again. two letters lay unopened on a small table. suddenly she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. the pot of shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. she returned and knocked swiftly at her husband's door, not speaking. she waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. something in the sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. the noise was dull and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring, so she thought. she ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front garden, and there looked up at his room. the window-door was open--everything seemed quiet. beatrice stood vacillating. she picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung them in a handful at his door. some spattered on the panes sharply; some dropped dully in the room. one clinked on the wash-hand bowl. there was no response. beatrice was terribly excited. she ran, with her black eyes blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out on to the road. by a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down the road. she hurried to him. 'will you come and see if there's anything wrong with my husband?' she asked wildly. 'why, mum?' answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly familiar. 'is he taken bad or something? yes, i'll come.' he was a tall thin man with a brown beard. his clothes were all so loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs must be bone, and his body a skeleton. he pushed at his ladders with a will. 'where is he, mum?' he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the side passage. 'he's in his bedroom, and i can't get an answer from him.' 'then i s'll want a ladder,' said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift one off his trolley. he was in a very great bustle. he knew which was siegmund's room: he had often seen siegmund rise from some music he was studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. he also knew there were matrimonial troubles: beatrice was not reserved. 'is it the least of the front rooms he's in?' asked the window-cleaner. 'yes, over the porch,' replied beatrice. the man bustled with his ladder. 'it's easy enough,' he said. 'the door's open, and we're soon on the balcony.' he set the ladder securely. beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious fool. he tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously clambered up. at the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the ladder to peer into the room. he could see all sorts of things, for he was frightened. 'i say there!' he called loudly. beatrice stood below in horrible suspense. 'go in!' she cried. 'go in! is he there?' the man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and peered forward. but the glass door reflected into his eyes. he followed slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to take flight. 'hie, hie!' he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back. beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner exclaimed weakly, as if dubious: 'i believe 'e's 'anged 'imself from the door-'ooks!' 'no!' cried beatrice. 'no, no, no!' 'i believe 'e 'as!' repeated the man. 'go in and see if he's dead!' cried beatrice. the man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly. 'i believe he is,' he said doubtfully. 'no--go and see!' screamed beatrice. the man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. he approached the body as if fascinated. shivering, he took it round the loins and tried to lift it down. it was too heavy. 'i know!' he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to do. he took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his way through the leathern strap. it gave. he started, and clutched the body, dropping his knife. beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. the man hauled the body of siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran. it was bedded in siegmund's neck. the window-cleaner tugged at it frantically, till he got it loose. then he looked at siegmund. the dead man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side naked. beatrice was screaming below. the window-cleaner, quite unnerved, ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. siegmund lay heaped on the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him, his face hardly recognizable. _chapter _ helena was dozing down in the cove at tintagel. she and louisa and olive lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity. the journey down had been very tedious. after waiting for half an hour in the midnight turmoil of an august friday in waterloo station, they had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. olive, helena, louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. the men were distributed between them. the three women were not alarmed. their tipsy travelling companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of manner that placed them beyond suspicion. the train drew out westward. helena began to count the miles that separated her from siegmund. the north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth english; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank whisky. through all this they were polite to the girls. as much could hardly be said in return of olive and louisa. they leaned forward whispering one to another. they sat back in their seats laughing, hiding their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle disconcerted by this amusement. the train spun on and on. little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. the men dropped into a doze. olive put a handkerchief over her face and went to sleep. louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. helena sat weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the dull blank of the night sheering off outside. neither the men nor the women looked well asleep. they lurched and nodded stupidly. she thought of bazarof in _fathers and sons_, endorsing his opinion on the appearance of sleepers: all but siegmund. was siegmund asleep? she imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his lips, as she bent in fancy over his face. the dawn came slowly. it was rather cold. olive wrapped herself in rugs and went to sleep again. helena shivered, and stared out of the window. there appeared a wanness in the night, and helena felt inexpressibly dreary. a rosiness spread out far away. it was like a flock of flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. the world vibrated as the sun came up. helena waked the tipsy men at exeter, having heard them say that there they must change. then she walked the platform, very jaded. the train rushed on again. it was a most, most wearisome journey. the fields were very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her? she wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. at eight o'clock, breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious and harsh. 'why am i doing this?' helena asked herself. the three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. it was too hot to rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling in an ill humour. when helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in tintagel. in the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically the same as the walhalla scene in _walküre_; in the second place, _tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a late cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which suggested the anadyomene. in sun it was the enchanted land of divided lovers. helena for ever hummed fragments of _tristan_. as she stood on the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of isolde's love, bits of tristan's anguish, to siegmund. she had not received her letter on sunday. that had not very much disquieted her, though she was disappointed. on monday she was miserable because of siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in tintagel, and olive and louisa were in such high spirits, that she forgot most whiles. on monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of thunder and lightning. louisa started up in bed at the first clap, waking helena. the room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. louisa clutched her friend. all was dark again, the thunder clapping directly. 'there, wasn't that lovely!' cried louisa, speaking of the lightning. 'oo, wasn't it magnificent!--glorious!' the door clicked and opened: olive entered in her long white nightgown. she hurried to the bed. 'i say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may i come into the fold? i prefer the shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.' 'don't you like it?' cried louisa. 'i think it's _lovely_--lovely!' there came another slash of lightning. the night seemed to open and shut. it was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging shutters of darkness. louisa and olive clung to each other spasmodically. 'there!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'that was fine! helena, did you see that?' she clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down. helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder. 'there's no accounting for tastes,' said olive, taking a place in the bed. 'i can't say i'm struck on lightning. what about you, helena?' 'i'm not struck yet,' replied helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a jest. 'thank you, dear,' said olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.' helena laughed ironically. 'catching what?' asked louisa, mystified. 'why, dear,' answered olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'i offered helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. what a flash! you know, it's not that i'm afraid....' the rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder. helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one friend and to the impertinences of the other. in spite of her ironical feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. the night opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with blackness. then the thunder crashed. helena felt as if some secret were being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. the thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. she was sure something had happened. gradually the storm, drew away. the rain came down with a rush, persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves. 'what a deluge!' exclaimed louisa. no one answered her. olive was falling asleep, and helena was in no mood to reply. louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. helena was awake; the storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. she felt bruised. the sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster. she lay wondering what it was, why siegmund had not written, what could have happened to him. she imagined all of them terrible, and endued with grandeur, for she had kinship with hedda gabler. 'but no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have happened to him--i should have known. i should have known the moment his spirit left his body; he would have come to me. but i slept without dreams last night, and today i am sure there has been no crisis. it is impossible it should have happened to him: i should have known.' she was very certain that in event of siegmund's death, she would have received intelligence. she began to consider all the causes which might arise to prevent his writing immediately to her. 'nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if i don't hear tomorrow i will go and see.' she had written to him on monday. if she should receive no answer by wednesday morning she would return to london. as she was deciding this she went to sleep. the next day passed without news. helena was in a state of distress. her wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. louisa waited upon her, was very tender and solicitous. olive, who was becoming painful by reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state of affairs. helena looked up a train. she was quite sure by this time that something fatal awaited her. the next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she would return in the evening. immediately the train had gone, louisa rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. olive shed tears for sympathy and self-pity. she pitied herself that she should be let in for so dismal a holiday. louisa suddenly stopped crying and sat up: 'oh, i know i'm a pig, dear, am i not?' she exclaimed. 'spoiling your holiday. but i couldn't help it, dear, indeed i could not.' 'my dear lou!' cried olive in tragic contralto. 'don't refrain for my sake. the bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.' the two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to their lodging. helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a prayer-wheel. it would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. all the time helena's heart and her consciousness were with siegmund in london, for she believed he was ill and needed her. 'promise me,' she had said, 'if ever i were sick and wanted you, you would come to me.' 'i would come to you from hell!' siegmund had replied. 'and if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added. 'i promise,' he answered. now helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could be of any avail. the miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. the train did what it could. that day remains as a smear in the record of helena's life. in it there is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of suspense. towards six o'clock she alighted, at surbiton station, deciding that this would be the quickest way of getting to wimbledon. she paced the platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the great injustice of delay. presently the local train came in. she had planned to buy a local paper at wimbledon, and if from that source she could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. she had prearranged everything minutely. after turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought. 'the funeral took place, at two o'clock today at kingston cemetery, of ----. deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a holiday on the south coast....' the paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything. 'jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. sympathy was expressed for the widow and children.' helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print. then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where she was going. 'that was what i got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a brick, it was like a brick.' she wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see siegmund's house standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. then she stopped, realizing where she had come. for some time she stood looking at the house. it was no use her going there; it was of no use her going anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no destination, and there was no direction for her to take. as if marooned in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of siegmund over the fields and the hills. siegmund was gone; why had he not taken her with him? the evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when helena looked at her watch, remembering louisa, who would be waiting for her to return to cornwall. 'i must either go to her, or wire to her. she will be in a fever of suspense,' said helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch a tramcar to return to the station. she arrived there at a quarter to eight; there was no train down to tintagel that night. therefore she wired the news: 'siegmund dead. no train tonight. am going home.' * * * * * this done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. by the strength of her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. but her mind was chaotic. 'it was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition. she felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and maiming her. as she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. her mother opened to her. 'what, are you alone?' cried mrs. verden. 'yes. louisa did not come up,' replied helena, passing into the dining-room. as if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if there was a letter. there was a newspaper cutting. she went forward and took it. it was from one of the london papers. 'inquest was held today upon the body of ----.' helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. her mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety. 'how did you get to know?' she asked. 'i went to wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in her muted, toneless voice. 'did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply. 'no,' replied helena. 'i was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother hesitatingly. helena did not answer her. she wandered about the house mechanically, looking for something. her mother followed her, trying very gently to help her. for some time helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her. her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look. they acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet. 'won't you go to rest, nellie?' asked the father at last. he was an unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony. 'won't you go to rest, nellie?' he repeated. helena shivered slightly. 'do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'let me take you to bed.' helena rose. she had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress. when she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her, yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to god; but she dared not. helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze. 'shall i leave you the candle?' said mrs verden. 'no, blow it out,' replied the daughter. the mother did so, and immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. as she entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. she was a tall, erect woman. her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were haggard with tears that did not fall. he bowed down, obliterating himself. his hands were tightly clasped. 'will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked. 'we must listen,' replied the mother abruptly. the parents sat silent in their customary places. presently mrs. verden cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor in the place where helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. then she sat down again. one could see she was keenly alert to every sound. the father had his hand to his head; he was thinking and praying. mrs. verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece, and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. her husband followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's room. the mother tremblingly lit the candle. helena's aspect distressed and alarmed her. the girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. her wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. from time to time she uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. her mother held her hands and soothed her. although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence, helena was more tranquil. the father went downstairs and turned out the light. he brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail, and silently left the room. then he went and kneeled down by his own bedside, and prayed. mrs verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind of mental chant, invoked the help of god. once or twice the girl came to herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could soothe her daughter again. helena was glad of her mother's presence, but she could not bear to be looked at. towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. the mother regarded her closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away, having blown out the candle. she found her husband kneeling in his nightshirt by the bed. he muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up as she entered. 'she is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely. 'is it a--a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband. 'yes. i think it is. i think she will be all right.' 'thank god!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly. he held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. he was the comforter. she felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. he, the quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility upon himself. _chapter _ beatrice was careful not to let the blow of siegmund's death fall with full impact upon her. as it were, she dodged it. she was afraid to meet the accusation of the dead siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories. when the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally suspended. when the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a neighbour. there the children were brought to her. there she wept, and stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with confusion. the good neighbour controlled matters in siegmund's house, sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. before vera and frank came home, and before beatrice returned to her own place, the bedroom of siegmund was locked. beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. she was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. whenever her thoughts wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection. 'the children!' she said to herself--'the children. i must live for the children; i must think for the children.' this she did, and with much success. all her tears and her wildness rose from terror and dismay rather than from grief. she managed to fend back a grief that would probably have broken her. vera was too practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to understand him. she concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully, exonerating him in part because helena, that other, was so much more to blame. frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the personae. the children were acutely distressed by the harassing behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. by common consent no word was spoken of siegmund. as soon as possible after the funeral beatrice moved from south london to harrow. the memory of siegmund began to fade rapidly. beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of living than that of a domestic circle. she liked strangers about the house; they stimulated her agreeably. therefore, nine months after the death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her heart, and take in boarders. she came of a well-to-do family, with whom she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. in the tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the waltons returned again to the aid of beatrice. they came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves on. they inquired what she intended to do. she spoke highly and hopefully of her future boarding-house. they found her a couple of hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. siegmund's father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his grandchildren. so beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to come and board in her house. it was a huge adventure, wherein beatrice was delighted. vera was excited and interested; frank was excited, but doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. the world was big with promise. three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to beatrice's establishment. she hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. her plan was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable blessing of family life. breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone attended. vera sat opposite beatrice, frank sat on the maternal right hand; mr macwhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him sat mr allport, whose opposite was mr holiday. all were young men of less than thirty years. mr macwhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily learned. he never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. therefore frank would have done anything to win his esteem, while beatrice was deferential to him. mr allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a remarkably small chin. he was naïve, inclined to suffer in the first pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous, sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. therefore vera liked him, whilst beatrice mothered him. mr holiday was short, very stout, very ruddy, with black hair. he had a disagreeable voice, was vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to him. therefore frank hated him. vera liked his handsome, lusty appearance, but resented bitterly his behaviour. beatrice was proud of the superior and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape without hurting him. one evening in july, eleven months after the burial of siegmund, beatrice went into the dining-room and found mr allport sitting with his elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. it was half-past seven. the red rents between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered into the room through the open window; towards the south the moon was budding out of the twilight. 'what, you here all alone!' exclaimed beatrice, who had just come from putting the children to bed. 'i thought you had gone out.' 'no--o! what's the use,' replied mr allport, turning to look at his landlady, 'of going out? there's nowhere to go.' 'oh, come! there's the heath, and the city--and you must join a tennis club. now i know just the thing--the club to which vera belongs.' 'ah, yes! you go down to the city--but there's nothing there--what i mean to say--you want a pal--and even then--well'--he drawled the word--'we-ell, it's merely escaping from yourself--killing time.' 'oh, don't say that!' exclaimed beatrice. 'you want to enjoy life.' 'just so! ah, just so!' exclaimed mr allport. 'but all the same--it's like this--you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. what i mean to say--what's the good, after all? it's merely living because you've got to.' 'you are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. i look at it differently myself; yet i'll be bound i have more cause for grumbling. what's the trouble now?' 'we-ell--you can't lay your finger on a thing like that! what i mean to say--it's nothing very definite. but, after all--what is there to do but to hop out of life as quickly as possible? that's the best way.' beatrice became suddenly grave. 'you talk in that way, mr. allport,' she said. 'you don't think of the others.' 'i don't know,' he drawled. 'what does it matter? look here--who'd care? what i mean to say--for long?' 'that's all very easy, but it's cowardly,' replied beatrice gravely. 'nevertheless,' said mr. allport, 'it's true--isn't it?' 'it is not--and i _should_ know,' replied beatrice, drawing a cloak of reserve ostentatiously over her face. mr. allport looked at her and waited. beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man. 'yes,' she said, 'i call it very cowardly to want to get out of your difficulties in that way. think what you inflict on other people. you men, you're all selfish. the burden is always left for the women.' 'ah, but then,' said mr. allport very softly and sympathetically, looking at beatrice's black dress, 'i've no one depending on _me_.' 'no--you haven't--but you've a mother and sister. the women always have to bear the brunt.' mr. allport looked at beatrice, and found her very pathetic. 'yes, they do rather,' he replied sadly, tentatively waiting. 'my husband--' began beatrice. the young man waited. 'my husband was one of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he'd found it--he couldn't carry it off--and left it--to me.' mr. allport looked at her very sympathetically. 'you don't mean it!' he exclaimed softly. 'surely he didn't--?' beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face. 'yes,' she said. 'i know what it is to bear that kind of thing--and it's no light thing, i can assure you.' there was a suspicion of tears in her voice. 'and when was this, then--that he--?' asked mr. allport, almost with reverence. 'only last year,' replied beatrice. mr. allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. little by little beatrice told him so much: 'her husband had got entangled with another woman. she herself had put up with it for a long time. at last she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. he had killed himself--hanged himself--and left her penniless. her people, who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow them. she and frank and vera had done the rest. she did not mind for herself; it was for frank and vera, who should be now enjoying their careless youth, that her heart was heavy.' there was silence for a while. mr. allport murmured his sympathy, and sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by tragedy. the bell rang in the kitchen. vera entered. 'oh, what a nice smell! sitting in the dark, mother?' 'i was just trying to cheer up mr. allport; he is very despondent.' 'pray do not overlook me,' said mr. allport, rising and bowing. 'well! i did not see you! fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting with the mater. you must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.' 'on the contrary,' replied mr. allport, 'mrs. macnair has been so good as to bear with me making a fool of myself.' 'in what way?' asked vera sharply. 'mr. allport is so despondent. i think he must be in love,' said beatrice playfully. 'unfortunately, i am not--or at least i am not yet aware of it,' said mr. allport, bowing slightly to vera. she advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the young man's knees. she was tall and graceful. with her hands clasped behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the richly darkening sky. 'don't look at the moon, miss macnair, it's all rind,' said mr allport in melancholy mockery. 'somebody's bitten all the meat out of our slice of moon, and left us nothing but peel.' 'it certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell--one portion,' replied vera. 'never mind, miss macnair,' he said, 'whoever got the slice found it raw, i think.' 'oh, i don't know,' she said. 'but isn't it a beautiful evening? i will just go and see if i can catch the primroses opening.' 'what primroses?' he exclaimed. 'evening primroses--there are some.' 'are there?' he said in surprise. vera smiled to herself. 'yes, come and look,' she said. the young man rose with alacrity. mr holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden. 'what, nobody in!' they heard him exclaim. 'there is holiday,' murmured mr allport resentfully. vera did not answer. holiday came to the open window, attracted by the fragrance. 'ho! that's where you are!' he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed vera's trained ear. she wished she had not been wearing a white dress to betray herself. 'what have you got?' he asked. 'nothing in particular,' replied mr allport. mr holiday sniggered. 'oh, well, if it's nothing particular and private--' said mr holiday, and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them. 'curst fool!' muttered mr allport. 'i beg your pardon,' he added swiftly to vera. 'have you ever noticed, mr holiday,' asked vera, as if very friendly, 'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? they won't open while you're looking.' 'no,' sniggered he, i don't blame 'em. why should they give themselves away any more than you do? you won't open while you're watched.' he nudged allport facetiously with his elbow. after supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in poor spirits. mr macwhirter retired to read. mr holiday sat picking his teeth; mr. allport begged vera to play the piano. 'oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but i do not play now,' she replied. 'but you will begin again,' pleaded mr. allport. 'no, never!' she said decisively. allport looked at her closely. the family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. he watched her interestedly. 'mother used to play--' she began. 'vera!' said beatrice reproachfully. 'let us have a song,' suggested mr. holiday. 'mr. holiday wishes to sing, mother,' said vera, going to the music-rack. 'nay--i--it's not me,' holiday began. '"the village blacksmith",' said vera, pulling out the piece. holiday advanced. vera glanced at her mother. 'but i have not touched the piano for--for years, i am sure,' protested beatrice. 'you can play beautifully,' said vera. beatrice accompanied the song. holiday sang atrociously. allport glared at him. vera remained very calm. at the end beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. she went out abruptly. 'mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow's jellies are not made,' laughed vera. allport looked at her, and was sad. when beatrice returned, holiday insisted she should play again. she would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply. vera retired early, soon to be followed by allport and holiday. at half past ten mr. macwhirter came in with his ancient volume. beatrice was studying a cookery-book. 'you, too, at the midnight lamp!' exclaimed macwhirter politely. 'ah, i am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,' beatrice replied. 'we shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,' smiled the young man ironically. 'i must look after you,' said beatrice. 'you do--wonderfully. i feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.' the meals were generally late, and something was always wrong. 'because i scan a list of puddings?' smiled beatrice uneasily. 'for the puddings themselves, and all your good things. the piano, for instance. that was very nice indeed.' he bowed to her. 'did it disturb you? but one does not hear very well in the study.' 'i opened the door,' said macwhirter, bowing again. 'it is not fair,' said beatrice. 'i am clumsy now--clumsy. i once could play.' 'you play excellently. why that "once could"?' said macwhirter. 'ah, you are amiable. my old master would have said differently,' she replied. 'we,' said macwhirter, 'are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than excellent.' 'good old monsieur fannière, how he would scold me! he said i would not take my talent out of the napkin. he would quote me the new testament. i always think scripture false in french, do not you?' 'er--my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, i regret to say.' 'no? i was brought up at a convent school near rouen.' 'ah--that would be very interesting.' 'yes, but i was there six years, and the interest wears off everything.' 'alas!' assented macwhirter, smiling. 'those times were very different from these,' said beatrice. 'i should think so,' said macwhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic. _chapter _ in the same month of july, not yet a year after siegmund's death, helena sat on the top of the tramcar with cecil byrne. she was dressed in blue linen, for the day had been hot. byrne was holding up to her a yellow-backed copy of _einsame menschen_, and she was humming the air of the russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the song. she turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing. 'i can't get it--it's no use. i think it's the swinging of the car prevents me getting the time,' she said. 'these little outside things always come a victory over you,' he laughed. 'do they?' she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. it was six o'clock in the evening. the sky was quite overcast, after a dim, warm day. the tramcar was leaping along southwards. out of the corners of his eyes byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck by the wind. 'do you know,' she said, 'it feels rather like rain.' 'then,' said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on the pavement, 'you certainly ought not to be out.' 'i ought not,' she said, 'for i'm totally unprovided.' neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back. presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill off the highway. trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side stood a few villas with lawns upraised. upon one of these lawns two great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity, at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. helena and byrne stood still to watch them. one dog was grey, as is usual, the other pale fawn. they raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. helena laughed at them. 'they are--' she began, in her slow manner. 'villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,' he continued. 'no,' she said, 'they remind me of fafner and fasolt.' 'fasolt? they _are_ like that. i wonder if they really dislike us.' 'it appears so,' she laughed. 'dogs generally chum up to me,' he said. helena began suddenly to laugh. he looked at her inquiringly. 'i remember,' she said, still laughing, 'at knockholt--you--a half-grown lamb--a dog--in procession.' she marked the position of the three with her finger. 'what an ass i must have looked!' he said. 'sort of silent pied piper,' she laughed. 'dogs do follow me like that, though,' he said. 'they did siegmund,' she said. 'ah!' he exclaimed. 'i remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed him home.' 'ah!' he exclaimed. 'i remember, too,' she said, 'a little black-and-white kitten that followed me. mater _would not_ have it in--she would not. and i remember finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. i don't think i ever quite forgave my mater that.' 'more sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the sufferings of men,' he said. she glanced at him and laughed. he was smiling ironically. 'for the latter, you see,' she replied, 'i am not responsible.' as they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell. 'you know,' said helena, 'if it begins it will continue all night. look at that!' she pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead. 'had we better go back?' he asked. 'well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we see how it turns out. we are not far from the cars here.' they walked on and on. the raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned away. 'it is exactly a year today,' she said, as they-walked on the round shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. 'exactly!' 'what anniversary is it, then?' he inquired. 'exactly a year today, siegmund and i walked here--by the day, thursday. we went through the larch-wood. have you ever been through the larch-wood?' 'no.' 'we will go, then,' she said. 'history repeats itself,' he remarked. 'how?' she asked calmly. he was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked. 'i see no repetition,' she added. 'no,' he exclaimed bitingly; 'you are right!' they went on in silence. as they drew near a farm they saw the men unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. he sniffed the air. though he was angry, he spoke. 'they got that hay rather damp,' he said. 'can't you smell it--like hot tobacco and sandal-wood?' 'what, is that the stack?' she asked. 'yes, it's always like that when it's picked damp.' the conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. when they turned on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. leaning over the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full of scent; then he waited for her. she was hanging her head, looking in the hedge-bottom. he presented her with the flowers without speaking. she bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and looked up at him over the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue eyes. he smiled gently to her. 'isn't it nice?' he said. 'aren't they fine bits?' she took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her dress. it was quite against her rule to wear a flower. he took his place by her side. 'i always like the gold-green of cut fields,' he said. 'they seem to give off sunshine even when the sky's greyer than a tabby cat.' she laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing field on her right. they entered the larch-wood. there the chill wind was changed into sound. like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. he was exceedingly delicate in his handling of her. the path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. now and again he would look down passages between the trees--narrow pillared corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. all round was a twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. helena stood still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn, causing slight, perceptible quivering. byrne walked on without her. at a bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of congregated trees. she moved very slowly down the path. 'i might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,' he said to himself bitterly. nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly: 'have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make a brown mist, a brume?' she looked at him suddenly as if interrupted. 'h'm? yes, i see what you mean.' she smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner. 'that's the larch fog,' he laughed. 'yes,' she said, 'you see it in pictures. i had not noticed it before.' he shook the tree on which his hand was laid. 'it laughs through its teeth,' he said, smiling, playing with everything he touched. as they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped, picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. she laughed to herself as if pleased by a coincidence. 'last year,' she said, 'the larch-fingers stole both my pins--the same ones.' he looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost with warmth. he thought of siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the moment, with helena stepping carefully behind. he always felt a deep sympathy and kinship with siegmund; sometimes he thought he hated helena. they had emerged at the head of a shallow valley--one of those wide hollows in the north downs that are like a great length of tapestry held loosely by four people. it was raining. byrne looked at the dark blue dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of helena's dress. they walked on a little way. the rain increased. helena looked about for shelter. 'here,' said byrne--'here is our tent--a black tartar's--ready pitched.' he stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just back from the path. she crept after him. it was really a very good shelter. byrne sat on the ledge of a root, helena beside him. he looked under the flap of the black branches down the valley. the grey rain was falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the monotonous sound of it. in the open, where the bright young corn shone intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. exposed in a large pen on the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the 'tong-ting-tong' of a sheep-bell. first the grey creatures huddled in the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the growing corn lowest down. the rest followed, bleating and pushing each other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit better than where they stood before. 'that's like us all,' said byrne whimsically. 'we're all penned out on a wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is, it would be deliciously cosy.' helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and fretful. he sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his eyes melancholy. she put her hand out to him. he took it without apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously increasing the pressure. 'you are cold,' he said. 'only my hands, and they usually are,' she replied gently. 'and mine are generally warm.' 'i know that,' she said. 'it's almost the only warmth i get now--your hands. they really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.' 'as good as a baked potato,' he said. she pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery. 'so many calories per week--isn't that how we manage it?' he asked. 'on credit?' she put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony, which hurt her. they sat silent for some time. the sheep broke their cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen. 'tong-tong, tong,' went the forlorn bell. the rain waxed louder. byrne was thinking of the previous week. he had gone to helena's home to read german with her as usual. she wanted to understand wagner in his own language. in each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case. he had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle. helena had come quickly and removed the violin. 'i shan't knock it--it is all right,' he had said, protesting. this was siegmund's violin, which helena had managed to purchase, and byrne was always ready to yield its precedence. 'it was all right,' he repeated. 'but you were not,' she had replied gently. since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. now he sat in a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm. by some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. he relaxed. she sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. she wondered what he was thinking of. he smiled quietly. 'the babes in the wood,' he teased. helena laughed, with a sound of tears. in the tree overhead some bird began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song. 'that little beggar sees it's a hopeless case, so he reminds us of heaven. but if he's going to cover us with yew-leaves, he's set himself a job.' helena laughed again, and shivered. he put his arm round her, drawing her nearer his warmth. after this new and daring move neither spoke for a while. 'the rain continues,' he said. 'and will do,' she added, laughing. 'quite content,' he said. the bird overhead chirruped loudly again. '"strew on us roses, roses,"' quoted byrne, adding after a while, in wistful mockery: '"and never a sprig of yew"--eh?' helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and weariness for herself. she let herself sink a little closer against him. 'shall it not be so--no yew?' he murmured. he put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on her chilled wrist. noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held them up. 'i shall make marks on you,' he said. 'they will come off,' she replied. 'yes, we come clean after everything. time scrubs all sorts of scars off us.' 'some scars don't seem to go,' she smiled. and she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his side. there, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from last year. byrne regarded it gravely. 'but it's wearing off--even that,' he said wistfully. helena put her arms found him under his coat. she was cold. he felt a hot wave of joy suffuse him. almost immediately she released him, and took off her hat. 'that is better,' he said. 'i was afraid of the pins,' said she. 'i've been dodging them for the last hour,' he said, laughing, as she put her arms under his coat again for warmth. she laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. he put down his cheek against hers. 'i want rest and warmth,' she said, in her dull tones. 'all right!' he murmured. (http:www.girlebooks.com & http://www.freeliterature.org) the doctor's wife a novel by the author of "lady audley's secret," "aurora floyd" etc. etc. etc. london john and robert maxwell milton house, shoe lane, fleet street contents. i. a young man from the country ii. a sensation author iii. isabel iv. the end of george gilbert's holiday v. george at home vi. too much alone vii. on the bridge viii. about poor joe tillet's young wife ix. miss sleaford's engagement x. a bad beginning xi. "she only said, 'my life is weary!'" xii. something like a birthday xiii. "oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted!" xiv. under lord thurston's oak xv. roland says, "amen" xvi. mr. lansdell relates an adventure xvii. the first warning xviii. the second warning xix. what might have been! xx. "oceans should divide us!" xxi. "once more the gate behind me falls" xxii. "my love's a noble madness" xxiii. a little cloud xxiv. lady gwendoline does her duty xxv. "for love himself took part against himself" xxvi. a popular preacher xxvii. "and now i live, and now my life is done!" xxviii. trying to be good. xxix. the first whisper of the storm xxx. the beginning of a great change xxxi. fifty pounds xxxii. "i'll not believe but desdemona's honest" xxxiii. keeping a promise xxxiv. retrospective xxxv. "'twere best at once to sink to peace" xxxvi. between two worlds xxxvii. "if any calm, a calm despair" the doctors wife. chapter i. a young man from the country there were two surgeons in the little town of graybridge-on-the-wayverne, in pretty pastoral midlandshire,--mr. pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the middle of the queer old high street; and john gilbert, the parish doctor, who lived in his own house on the outskirts of graybridge, and worked very hard for a smaller income than that which the stylish mr. pawlkatt derived from his aristocratic patients. john gilbert was an elderly man, with a young son. he had married late in life, and his wife had died very soon after the birth of this son. it was for this reason, most likely, that the surgeon loved his child as children are rarely loved by their fathers--with an earnest, over-anxious devotion, which from the very first had been something womanly in its character, and which grew with the child's growth. mr. gilbert's mind was narrowed by the circle in which he lived. he had inherited his own patients and the parish patients from his father, who had been a surgeon before him, and who had lived in the same house, with the same red lamp over the little old-fashioned surgery-door, for eight-and-forty years, and had died, leaving the house, the practice, and the red lamp to his son. if john gilbert's only child had possessed the capacity of a newton or the aspirations of a napoleon, the surgeon would nevertheless have shut him up in the surgery to compound aloes and conserve of roses, tincture of rhubarb and essence of peppermint. luckily for the boy, he was only a common-place lad, with a good-looking, rosy face; clear grey eyes, which stared at you frankly; and a thick stubble of brown hair, parted in the middle and waving from the roots. he was tall, straight, and muscular; a good runner, a first-rate cricketer, tolerably skilful with a pair of boxing-gloves or single-sticks, and a decent shot. he wrote a fair business-like hand, was an excellent arithmetician, remembered a smattering of latin, a random line here and there from those roman poets and philosophers whose writings had been his torment at a certain classical and commercial academy at wareham. he spoke and wrote tolerable english, had read shakespeare and sir walter scott, and infinitely preferred the latter, though he made a point of skipping the first few chapters of the great novelist's fictions in order to get at once to the action of the story. he was a very good young man, went to church two or three times on a sunday, and would on no account have broken any one of the ten commandments on the painted tablets above the altar by so much as a thought. he was very good; and, above all, he was very good-looking. no one had ever disputed this fact: george gilbert was eminently good-looking. no one had ever gone so far as to call him handsome; no one had ever presumed to designate him plain. he had those homely, healthy good looks which the novelist or poet in search of a hero would recoil from with actual horror, and which the practical mind involuntarily associates with tenant-farming in a small way, or the sale of butcher's meat. i will not say that poor george was ungentlemanly, because he had kind, cordial manners, and a certain instinctive christianity, which had never yet expressed itself in any very tangible form, but which lent a genial flavour to every word upon his lips, to every thought in his heart. he was a very trusting young man, and thought well of all mankind; he was a tory, heart and soul, as his father and grandfather had been before him; and thought especially well of all the magnates round about wareham and graybridge, holding the grand names that had been familiar to him from his childhood in simple reverence, that was without a thought of meanness. he was a candid, honest, country-bred young man, who did his duty well, and filled a small place in a very narrow circle with credit to himself and the father who loved him. the fiery ordeal of two years' student-life at st. bartholomew's had left the lad almost as innocent as a girl; for john gilbert had planted his son during those two awful years in the heart of a quiet wesleyan family in the seven-sisters road, and the boy had enjoyed very little leisure for disporting himself with the dangerous spirits of st. bartholomew's. george gilbert was two-and-twenty, and in all the course of those two-and-twenty years which made the sum of the young man's life, his father had never had reason to reproach him by so much as a look. the young doctor was held to be a model youth in the town of graybridge; and it was whispered that if he should presume to lift his eyes to miss sophronia burdock, the second daughter of the rich maltster, he need not aspire in vain. but george was by no means a coxcomb, and didn't particularly admire miss burdock, whose eyelashes were a good deal paler than her hair, and whose eyebrows were only visible in a strong light. the surgeon was young, and the world was all before him; but he was not ambitious; he felt no sense of oppression in the narrow high street at graybridge. he could sit in the little parlour next the surgery reading byron's fiercest poems, sympathizing in his own way with giaours and corsairs; but with no passionate yearning stirring up in his breast, with no thought of revolt against the dull quiet of his life. george gilbert took his life as he found it, and had no wish to make it better. to him graybridge-on-the-wayverne was all the world. he had been in london, and had felt a provincial's brief sense of surprised delight in the thronged streets, the clamour, and the bustle; but he had very soon discovered that the great metropolis was a dirty and disreputable place as compared to graybridge-on-the-wayverne, where you might have taken your dinner comfortably off any doorstep as far as the matter of cleanliness is concerned. the young man was more than satisfied with his life; he was pleased with it. he was pleased to think that he was to be his father's partner, and was to live and marry, and have children, and die at last in the familiar rooms in which he had been born. his nature was very adhesive, and he loved the things that he had long known, because they were old and familiar to him; rather than for any merit or beauty in the things themselves. the th of july, , was a very great day for george gilbert, and indeed for the town of graybridge generally; for on that day an excursion train left wareham for london, conveying such roving spirits as cared to pay a week's visit to the great metropolis upon very moderate terms. george had a week's holiday, which he was to spend with an old schoolfellow who had turned author, and had chambers in the temple, but who boarded and lodged with a family at camberwell. the young surgeon left graybridge in the maltster's carriage at eight o'clock upon that bright summer morning, in company with miss burdock and her sister sophronia, who were going up to london on a visit to an aristocratic aunt in baker street, and who had been confided to george's care during the journey. the young ladies and their attendant squire were in very high spirits. london, when your time is spent between st. bartholomew's hospital and the seven-sisters road, is not the most delightful city in the world; but london, when you are a young man from the country, with a week's holiday, and a five-pound note and some odd silver in your pocket, assumes quite another aspect. george was not enthusiastic; but he looked forward to his holiday with a placid sense of pleasure, and listened with untiring good humour to the conversation of the maltster's daughters, who gave him a good deal of information about their aunt in baker street, and the brilliant parties given by that lady and her acquaintance. but, amiable as the young ladies were, george was glad when the midlandshire train steamed into the euston terminus, and his charge was ended. he handed the misses burdock to a portly and rather pompous lady, who had a clarence-and-pair waiting for her, and who thanked him with supreme condescension for his care of her nieces. she even went so far as to ask him to call in baker street during his stay in london, at which sophronia blushed. but, unhappily, sophronia did not blush prettily; a faint patchy red broke out all over her face, even where her eyebrows ought to have been, and was a long time dispersing. if the blush had been beauty's bright, transient glow, as brief as summer lightning in a sunset sky, george gilbert could scarcely have been blind to its flattering import; but he looked at the young lady's emotion from a professional point of view, and mistook it for indigestion. "you're very kind, ma'am," he said. "but i'm going to stay at camberwell; i don't think i shall have time to call in baker street." the carriage drove away, and george took his portmanteau and went to find a cab. he hailed a hansom, and he felt as he stepped into it that he was doing a dreadful thing, which would tell against him in graybridge, if by any evil chance it should become known that he had ridden in that disreputable vehicle. he thought the horse had a rakish, unkempt look about the head and mane, like an animal who was accustomed to night-work, and indifferent as to his personal appearance in the day. george was not used to riding in hansoms; so, instead of balancing himself upon the step for a moment while he gave his orders to the charioteer, he settled himself comfortably inside, and was a little startled when a hoarse voice at the back of his head demanded "where to, sir?" and suggested the momentary idea that he was breaking out into involuntary ventriloquism. "the temple, driver; the temple, in fleet street," mr. gilbert said, politely. the man banged down a little trap-door and rattled off eastwards. i am afraid to say how much george gilbert gave the cabman when he was set down at last at the bottom of chancery lane; but i think he paid for five miles at eightpence a mile, and a trifle in on account of a blockade in holborn; and even then the driver did not thank him. george was a long time groping about the courts and quadrangles of the temple before he found the place he wanted, though he took a crumpled letter out of his waistcoat-pocket, and referred to it every now and then when he came to a standstill. wareham is only a hundred and twenty miles from london; and the excursion train, after stopping at every station on the line, had arrived at the terminus at half-past two o'clock. it was between three and four now, and the sun was shining upon the river, and the flags in the temple were hot under mr. gilbert's feet. he was very warm himself, and almost worn out, when he found at last the name he was looking for, painted very high up, in white letters, upon a black door-post,--" th floor: mr. andrew morgan and mr. sigismund smith." it was in the most obscure corner of the dingiest court in the temple that george gilbert found this name. he climbed a very dirty staircase, thumping the end of his portmanteau upon every step as he went up, until he came to a landing, midway between the third and fourth stories; here he was obliged to stop for sheer want of breath, for he had been lugging the portmanteau about with him throughout his wanderings in the temple, and a good many people had been startled by the aspect of a well-dressed young man carrying his own luggage, and staring at the names of the different rows of houses, the courts and quadrangles in the grave sanctuary. george gilbert stopped to take breath; and he had scarcely done so, when he was terrified by the apparition of a very dirty boy, who slid suddenly down the baluster between the floor above and the landing, and alighted face to face with the young surgeon. the boy's face was very black, and he was evidently a child of tender years, something between eleven and twelve, perhaps; but he was in nowise discomfited by the appearance of mr. gilbert; he ran up-stairs again, and placed himself astride upon the slippery baluster with a view to another descent, when a door above was suddenly opened, and a voice said, "you know where mr. manders, the artist, lives?" "yes, sir;--waterloo road, sir, montague terrace, no. ." "then run round to him, and tell him the subject for the next illustration in the 'smuggler's bride.' a man with his knee upon the chest of another man, and a knife in his hand. you can remember that?" "yes, sir." "and bring me a proof of chapter fifty-seven." "yes, sir." the door was shut, and the boy ran down-stairs, past george gilbert, as fast as he could go. but the door above was opened again, and the same voice called aloud,-- "tell mr. manders the man with the knife in his hand must have on top-boots." "all right, sir," the boy called from the bottom of the staircase. george gilbert went up, and knocked at the door above. it was a black door, and the names of mr. andrew morgan and mr. sigismund smith were painted upon it in white letters as upon the door-post below. a pale-faced young man, with a smudge of ink upon the end of his nose, and very dirty wrist-bands, opened the door. "sam!" "george!" cried the two young men simultaneously, and then began to shake hands with effusion, as the french playwrights say. "my dear old george!" "my dear old sam! but you call yourself sigismund now?" "yes; sigismund smith. it sounds well; doesn't it? if a man's evil destiny makes him a smith, the least he can do is to take it out in his christian name. no smith with a grain of spirit would ever consent to be a samuel. but come in, dear old boy, and put your portmanteau down; knock those papers off that chair--there, by the window. don't be frightened of making 'em in a muddle; they can't be in a worse muddle than they are now. if you don't mind just amusing yourself with the 'times' for half an hour or so, while i finish this chapter of the 'smuggler's bride,' i shall be able to strike work, and do whatever you like; but the printer's boy is coming back in half an hour for the end of the chapter." "i won't speak a word," george said, respectfully. the young man with the smudgy nose was an author, and george gilbert had an awful sense of the solemnity of his friend's vocation. "write away, my dear sam; i won't interrupt you." he drew his chair close to the open window, and looked down into the court below, where the paint was slowly blistering in the july sun. chapter ii. a sensation author. mr. sigismund smith was a sensation author. that bitter term of reproach, "sensation," had not been invented for the terror of romancers in the fifty-second year of this present century; but the thing existed nevertheless in divers forms, and people wrote sensation novels as unconsciously as monsieur jourdain talked prose. sigismund smith was the author of about half-a-dozen highly-spiced fictions, which enjoyed an immense popularity amongst the classes who like their literature as they like their tobacco--very strong. sigismund had never in his life presented himself before the public in a complete form; he appeared in weekly numbers at a penny, and was always so appearing; and except on one occasion when he found himself, very greasy and dog's-eared at the edges, and not exactly pleasant to the sense of smell, on the shelf of a humble librarian and newsvendor, who dealt in tobacco and sweetstuff as well as literature, sigismund had never known what it was to be bound. he was well paid for his work, and he was contented. he had his ambition, which was to write a great novel; and the archetype of this _magnum opus_ was the dream which he carried about with him wherever he went, and fondly nursed by night and day. in the meantime he wrote for his public, which was a public that bought its literature in the same manner as its pudding--in penny slices. there was very little to look at in the court below the window; so george gilbert fell to watching his friend, whose rapid pen scratched along the paper in a breathless way, which indicated a dashing and dumas-like style of literature, rather than the polished composition of a johnson or an addison. sigismund only drew breath once, and then he paused to make frantic gashes at his shirt-collar with an inky bone paper-knife that lay upon the table. "i'm only trying whether a man would cut his throat from right to left, or left to right," mr. smith said, in answer to his friend's look of terror; "it's as well to be true to nature; or as true as one can be, for a pound a page--double-column pages, and eighty-one lines in a column. a man would cut his throat from left to right: he couldn't do it in the other way without making perfect slices of himself." "there's a suicide, then, in your story?" george said, with a look of awe. "_a_ suicide!" exclaimed sigismund smith; "_a_ suicide in the 'smuggler's bride!' why, it teems with suicides. there's the duke of port st. martin's, who walls himself up alive in his own cellar; and there's leonie de pasdebasque, the ballet-dancer, who throws herself out of count cæsar maraschetti's private balloon; and there's lilia, the dumb girl,--the penny public like dumb girls,--who sets fire to herself to escape from the--in fact, there's lots of them," said mr. smith, dipping his pen in his ink, and hurrying wildly along the paper. the boy came back before the last page was finished, and mr. smith detained him for five or ten minutes; at the end of which time he rolled up the manuscript, still damp, and dismissed the printer's emissary. "now, george," he said, "i can talk to you." sigismund was the son of a wareham attorney, and the two young men had been schoolfellows at the classical and commercial academy in the wareham road. they had been schoolfellows, and were very sincerely attached to each other. sigismund was supposed to be reading for the bar; and for the first twelve months of his sojourn in the temple the young man had worked honestly and conscientiously; but finding that his legal studies resulted in nothing but mental perplexity and confusion, sigismund beguiled his leisure by the pursuit of literature. he found literature a great deal more profitable and a great deal easier than the study of coke upon lyttleton, or blackstone's commentaries; and he abandoned himself entirely to the composition of such works as are to be seen, garnished with striking illustrations, in the windows of humble newsvendors in the smaller and dingier thoroughfares of every large town. sigismund gave himself wholly to this fascinating pursuit, and perhaps produced more sheets of that mysterious stuff which literary people call "copy" than any other author of his age. it would be almost impossible for me adequately to describe the difference between sigismund smith as he was known to the very few friends who knew anything at all about him, and sigismund smith as he appeared on paper. in the narrow circle of his home mr. smith was a very mild young man, with the most placid blue eyes that ever looked out of a human head, and a good deal of light curling hair. he was a very mild young man. he could not have hit any one if he had tried ever so; and if you had hit him, i don't think he would have minded--much. it was not in him to be very angry; or to fall in love, to any serious extent; or to be desperate about anything. perhaps it was that he exhausted all that was passionate in his nature in penny numbers, and had nothing left for the affairs of real life. people who were impressed by his fictions, and were curious to see him, generally left him with a strong sense of disappointment, if not indignation. was this meek young man the byronic hero they had pictured? was this the author of "colonel montefiasco, or the brand upon the shoulder-blade?" they had imagined a splendid creature, half magician, half brigand, with a pale face and fierce black eyes, a tumbled mass of raven hair, a bare white throat, a long black velvet dressing-gown, and thin tapering hands, with queer agate and onyx rings encircling the flexible fingers. and then the surroundings. an oak-panelled chamber, of course--black oak, with grotesque and diabolic carvings jutting out at the angles of the room; a crystal globe upon a porphyry pedestal; a mysterious picture, with a curtain drawn before it--certain death being the fate of him who dared to raise that curtain by so much as a corner. a mantel-piece of black marble, and a collection of pistols and scimitars, swords and yataghans--especially yataghans--glimmering and flashing in the firelight. a little show of eccentricity in the way of household pets: a bear under the sofa, and a tame rattlesnake coiled upon the hearth-rug. this was the sort of thing the penny public expected of sigismund smith; and, lo, here was a young man with perennial ink-smudges upon his face, and an untidy chamber in the temple, with nothing more romantic than a waste-paper basket, a litter of old letters and tumbled proofs, and a cracked teapot simmering upon the hob. this was the young man who described the reckless extravagance of a montefiasco's sumptuous chamber, the mysterious elegance of a diana firmiani's dimly-lighted boudoir. this was the young man in whose works there were more masked doors, and hidden staircases, and revolving picture-frames and sliding panels, than in all the old houses in great britain; and a greater length of vaulted passages than would make an underground railway from the scottish border to the land's end. this was the young man who, in an early volume of poems--a failure, as it is the nature of all early volumes of poems to be--had cried in passionate accents to some youthful member of the aristocracy, surname unknown-- "lady mable, lady may, no pæan in your praise i'll sing; my shattered lyre all mutely tells the tortured hand that broke the string. go, fair and false, while jangling bells through golden waves of sunshine ring; go, mistress of a thousand spells: but know, midst those you've left forlorn, _one_, lady, gives you scorn for scorn." "now, george," mr. smith said, as he pushed away a very dirty inkstand, and wiped his pen upon the cuff of his coat,--"now, george, i can attend to the rights of hospitality. you must be hungry after your journey, poor old boy! what'll you take?" there were no cupboards in the room, which was very bare of furniture, and the only vestiges of any kind of refreshment were a brown crockery-ware teapot upon the hob, and a roll and pat of butter upon a plate on the mantel-piece. "have something!" sigismund said. "i know there isn't much, because, you see, i never have time to attend to that sort of thing. have some bread and marmalade?" he drew out a drawer in the desk before which he was sitting, and triumphantly displayed a pot of marmalade with a spoon in it. "bread and marmalade and cold tea's capital," he said; "you'll try some, george, won't you? and then we'll go home to camberwell." mr. gilbert declined the bread and marmalade; so sigismund prepared to take his departure. "morgan's gone into buckinghamshire for a week's fishing," he said, "so i've got the place to myself. i come here of a morning, you know, work all day, and go home to tea and a chop or a steak in the evening. come along, old fellow." the young men went out upon the landing. sigismund locked the black door and put the key in his pocket. they went down-stairs, and through the courts, and across the quadrangles of the temple, bearing towards that outlet which is nearest blackfriars bridge. "you'd like to walk, i suppose, george?" mr. smith asked. "oh, yes; we can talk better walking." they talked a great deal as they went along. they were very fond of one another, and had each of them a good deal to tell; but george wasn't much of a talker as compared to his friend sigismund. that young man poured forth a perpetual stream of eloquence, which knew no exhaustion. "and so you like the people at camberwell?" george said. "oh yes, they're capital people; free and easy, you know, and no stupid stuck-up gentility about them. not but what sleaford's a gentleman; he's a barrister. i don't know exactly where his chambers are, or in what court he practises when he's in town; but he _is_ a barrister. i suppose he goes on circuit sometimes, for he's very often away from home for a long time together; but i don't know what circuit he goes on. it doesn't do to ask a man those sort of questions, you see, george; so i hold my tongue. i don't think he's rich, that's to say not rich in a regular way. he's flush of money sometimes, and then you should see the sunday dinners--salmon and cucumber, and duck and green peas, as if they were nothing." "is he a nice fellow?" "oh yes; a jolly, out-spoken sort of a fellow, with a loud voice and black eyes. he's a capital fellow to me, but he's not fond of company. he seldom shows if i take down a friend. very likely you mayn't see him all the time you stay there. he'll shut himself up in his own room when he's at home, and won't so much as look at you." george seemed to be rather alarmed at this prospect. "but if mr. sleaford objects to my being in the house," he began, "perhaps i'd better--" "oh, he doesn't object, bless you!" sigismund cried, hastily; "not a bit of it. i said to mrs. sleaford the other morning at breakfast, 'a friend of mine is coming up from midlandshire; he's as good a fellow as ever breathed,' i said, 'and good-looking into the bargain,'--don't you blush, george, because it's spooney,--and i asked mrs. s. if she could give you a room and partially board you,--i'm a partial boarder, you know,--for a week or so. she looked at her husband,--she's very sharp with all of _us_, but she's afraid of _him_,--and sleaford said yes; my friend might come and should be welcome, as long as he wasn't bothered about it. so your room's ready, george, and you come as my visitor; and i can get orders for all the theatres in london, and i'll give you a french dinner in the neighbourhood of leicester square every day of your life, if you like; and we'll fill the cup of dissipation to the highest top sparkle." it was a long walk from the temple to camberwell; but the two young men were good walkers, and as sigismund smith talked unceasingly all the way, there were no awkward pauses in the conversation. they walked the whole length of the walworth road, and turned to the left soon after passing the turn-pike. mr. smith conducted his friend by mazy convolutions of narrow streets and lanes, where there were pretty little villas and comfortable cottages nestling amongst trees, and where there was the perpetual sound of clattering tin pails and the slopping of milk, blending pleasantly with the cry of the milkman. sigismund led george through these shady little retreats, and past a tall stern-looking church, and along by the brink of a canal, till they came to a place where the country was wild and sterile in the year . i dare say that railways have cut the neighbourhood all to pieces by this time, and that mr. sleaford's house has been sold by auction in the form of old bricks; but on this summer afternoon the place to which sigismund brought his friend was quite a lonely, countrified spot, where there was one big, ill-looking house, shut in by a high wall, and straggling rows of cottages dwindling away into pigsties upon each side of it. standing before a little wooden door in the wall that surrounded mr. sleaford's garden, george gilbert could only see that the house was a square brick building, with sickly ivy straggling here and there about it, and long narrow windows considerably obscured by dust and dirt. it was not a pleasant house to look at, however agreeable it might be as a habitation; and george compared it unfavourably with the trim white-walled villas he had seen on his way,--those neat little mansions at five-and-thirty pounds a year; those cosy little cottages, with shining windows that winked and blinked in the sunshine by reason of their cleanliness; those dazzling brass plates, which shone like brazen shields upon the vivid green of newly-painted front doors. if mr. sleaford's house had ever been painted within mr sleaford's memory, the barrister must have been one of the oldest inhabitants of that sterile region on the outskirts of camberwell; if mr. sleaford held the house upon a repairing lease, he must have anticipated a prodigious claim for dilapidations at the expiration of his tenancy. whatever could be broken in mr. sleaford's house was broken; whatever could fall out of repair had so fallen. the bricks held together, and the house stood; and that was about all that could be said for the barrister's habitation. the bell was broken, and the handle rattled loosely in a kind of basin of tarnished brass, so it was no use attempting to ring; but sigismund was used to this. he stooped down, put his lips to a hole broken in the wood-work above the lock of the garden-door, and gave a shrill whistle. "they understand that," he said; "the bell's been broken ever since i've lived here, but they never have anything mended." "why not?" "because they're thinking of leaving. i've been with them two years and a half, and they've been thinking of leaving all the time. sleaford has got the house cheap, and the landlord won't do anything; so between them they let it go. sleaford talks about going to australia some of these days." the garden-door was opened while mr. smith was talking, and the two young men went in. the person who had admitted them was a boy who had just arrived at that period of life when boys are most obnoxious. he had ceased to be a boy pure and simple, and had not yet presumed to call himself a young man. rejected on one side by his juniors, who found him arrogant and despotic, mooting strange and unorthodox theories with regard to marbles, and evincing supreme contempt for boys who were not familiar with the latest vaticinations of the sporting prophets in "bell's life" and the "sunday times;" and flouted on the other hand by his seniors, who offered him halfpence for the purchase of hardbake, and taunted him with base insinuations when he was seized with a sudden fancy for going to look at the weather in the middle of a strong cheroot,--the hobbledehoy sought vainly for a standing-place upon the social scale, and finding none, became a misanthrope, and wrapped himself in scorn as in a mantle. for sigismund smith the gloomy youth cherished a peculiar hatred. the young author was master of that proud position to obtain which the boy struggled in vain. he was a man! he could smoke a cigar to the very stump, and not grow ashy pale, or stagger dizzily once during the operation; but how little he made of his advantages! he could stay out late of nights, and there was no one to reprove him, _he_ could go into a popular tavern, and call for gin-and-bitters, and drink the mixture without so much as a wry face, and slap his money upon the pewter counter, and call the barmaid "mary;" and there was no chance of _his_ mother happening to be passing at that moment, and catching a glimpse of his familiar back-view through the half-open swinging door, and rushing in, red and angry, to lead him off by the collar of his jacket, amid the laughter of heartless bystanders. no; sigismund smith was a man. he might have got tipsy if he had liked, and walked about london half the night, ringing surgeons' bells, and pulling off knockers, and being taken to the station-house early in the morning, to be bailed out by a friend by-and-by, and to have his name in the sunday papers, with a sensational heading, "another tipsy swell," or "a modern spring-heeled jack." yes; horace sleaford hated his mother's partial boarder; but his hatred was tempered by disdain. what did mr. smith make of all his lofty privileges? nothing; absolutely nothing. the glory of manhood was thrown away upon a mean-spirited cur, who, possessed of liberty to go where he pleased, had never seen a fight for the championship of england, or the last grand rush for the blue riband of the turf; and who, at four-and-twenty years of age, ate bread and marmalade openly in the face of contemptuous mankind. master sleaford shut the door with a bang, and locked it. there was one exception to the rule of no repairs in mr. sleaford's establishment, the locks were all kept in excellent order. the disdainful boy took the key from the lock, and carried it in-doors on his little finger. he had warts upon his hands, and warts are the stigmata of boyhood; and the sleeves of his jacket were white and shiny at the elbows, and left him cruelly exposed about the wrists. the knowledge of his youth, and that shabby frouziness of raiment peculiar to middle-class hobbledehoyhood, gave him a sulky fierceness of aspect, which harmonized well with a pair of big black eyes and a tumbled shock of blue-black hair. he suspected everybody of despising him, and was perpetually trying to look-down the scorn of others with still deeper scorn. he stared at george gilbert, as the young man came into the garden, but did not deign to speak. george was six feet high, and that was in itself enough to make _him_ hateful. "well, horace!" mr. smith said, good-naturedly. "well, young 'un," the boy answered, disdainfully, "how do _you_ find yourself?" horace sleaford led the way into the house. they went up a flight of steps leading to a half-glass door. it might have been pretty once upon a time, when the glass was bright, and the latticed porch sheltered by clustering roses and clematis; but the clematis had withered, and the straggling roses were choked with wild convolvulus tendrils, that wound about the branches like weedy serpents, and stifled buds and blossoms in their weedy embrace. the boy banged open the door of the house, as he had banged-to the door of the garden. he made a point of doing every thing with a bang; it was one way of evincing his contempt for his species. "mother's in the kitchen," he said; "the boys are on the common flying a kite, and izzie's in the garden." "is your father at home?" sigismund asked. "no, he isn't, clever; you might have known that without asking. whenever is he at home at this time of day?" "is tea ready?" "no, nor won't be for this half-hour," answered the boy, triumphantly; "so, if you and your friend are hungry, you'd better have some bread and marmalade. there's a pot in your drawer up-stairs. i haven't taken any, and i shouldn't have seen it if i hadn't gone to look for a steel pen; so, if you've made a mark upon the label, and think the marmalade's gone down lower, it isn't _me_. tea won't be ready for half-an-hour; for the kitchen-fire's been smokin', and the chops can't be done till that's clear; and the kettle ain't on either; and the girl's gone to fetch a fancy loaf,--so you'll have to wait." "oh, never mind that," sigismund said; "come into the garden, george; i'll introduce you to miss sleaford." "then _i_ shan't go with you," said the boy; "i don't care for girls' talk. i say, mr. gilbert, you're a midlandshire man, and you ought to know something. what odds will you give me against mr. tomlinson's brown colt, vinegar cruet, for the conventford steeple-chase?" unfortunately mr. gilbert was lamentably ignorant of the merits or demerits of vinegar cruet. "i'll tell you what i'll do with you, then," the boy said; "i'll take fifteen to two against him in fourpenny-bits, and that's one less than the last manchester quotation." george shook his head. "horse-racing is worse than greek to me, master sleaford," he said. the "master" goaded the boy to retaliate. "your friend don't seem to have seen much life," he said to sigismund. "i think we shall be able to show him a thing or two before he goes back to midlandshire, eh, samuel?" horace sleaford had discovered that fatal name, samuel, in an old prayer-book belonging to mr. smith; and he kept it in reserve, as a kind of poisoned dart, always ready to be hurled at his foe. "we'll teach him a little life, eh, samuel?" he repeated, "haw, haw, haw!" but his gaiety was cut suddenly short; for a door in the shadowy passage opened, and a woman's face, thin and vinegary of aspect, looked out, and a shrill voice cried: "didn't i tell you i wanted another penn'orth of milk fetched, you young torment? but, law, you're like the rest of them, that's all! _i_ may slave my life out, and there isn't one of you will as much as lift a finger to help me." the boy disappeared upon this, grumbling sulkily; and sigismund opened a door leading into a parlour. the room was large, but shabbily furnished and very untidy. the traces of half-a-dozen different occupations were scattered about, and the apartment was evidently inhabited by people who made a point of never putting anything away. there was a work-box upon the table, open, and running over with a confusion of tangled tapes, and bobbins, and a mass of different-coloured threads, that looked like variegated vermicelli. there was an old-fashioned desk, covered with dusty green baize, and decorated with loose brass-work, which caught at people's garments or wounded their flesh when the desk was carried about; this was open, like the work-box, and was littered with papers that had been blown about by the summer breeze, and were scattered all over the table and the floor beneath it. on a rickety little table near the window there was a dilapidated box of colours, a pot of gum with a lot of brushes sticking up out of it, half-a-dozen sheets of skelt's dramatic scenes and characters lying under scraps of tinsel, and fragments of coloured satin, and neatly-folded packets of little gold and silver dots, which the uninitiated might have mistaken for powders. there were some ragged-looking books on a shelf near the fire-place; two or three different kinds of inkstands on the mantel-piece; a miniature wooden stage, with a lop-sided pasteboard proscenium and greasy tin lamps, in one corner of the floor; a fishing-rod and tackle leaning against the wall in another corner; and the room was generally pervaded by copy-books, slate-pencils, and torn latin grammars with half a brown-leather cover hanging to the leaves by a stout drab thread. everything in the apartment was shabby, and more or less dilapidated; nothing was particularly clean; and everywhere there was the evidence of boys. i believe mr. sleaford's was the true policy. if you have boys, "cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war;" shut your purse against the painter and the carpenter, the plumber and glazier, the upholsterer and gardener; "let what is broken, so remain,"--reparations are wasted labour and wasted money. buy a box of carpenter's tools for your boys, if you like, and let them mend what they themselves have broken; and, if you don't mind their sawing off one or two of their fingers occasionally, you may end by making them tolerably useful. mr. sleaford had one daughter and four sons, and the sons were all boys. people ceased to wonder at the shabbiness of his furniture and the dilapidation of his house, when they were made aware of this fact. the limp chintz curtains that straggled from the cornice had been torn ruthlessly down to serve as draperies for tom when he personated the ghost in a charade, or for jack when he wanted a sail to fasten to his fishing-rod, firmly planted on the quarter-deck of the sofa. the chairs had done duty as blocks for the accommodation of many an imaginary anne boleyn and marie antoinette, upon long winter evenings, when horace decapitated the sofa-pillow with a smoky poker, while tom and jack kept guard upon the scaffold, and held the populace--of one--at bay with their halberds--the tongs and shovel. the loose carpets had done duty as raging oceans on many a night, when the easy-chair had gone to pieces against the sideboard, with a loss of two wine-glasses, and all hands had been picked up in a perishing state by the crew of the sofa, after an undramatic interlude of slaps, cuffs, and remonstrances from the higher powers, who walked into the storm-beaten ocean with cruel disregard of the unities. mr. sleaford had a room to himself up-stairs--a bluebeard chamber, which the boys never entered; for the barrister made a point of locking his door whenever he left his room, and his sons were therefore compelled to respect his apartment. they looked through the keyhole now and then, to see if there was anything of a mysterious nature in the forbidden chamber; but, as they saw nothing but a dingy easy-chair and an office-table, with a quantity of papers scattered about it, their curiosity gradually subsided, and they ceased to concern themselves in any manner about the apartment, which they always spoke of as "pa's room." chapter iii. isabel. the garden at the back of mr. sleaford's house was a large square plot of ground, with fine old pear-trees sheltering a neglected lawn. a row of hazel-bushes screened all the length of the wall upon one side of the garden; and wherever you looked, there were roses and sweet-brier, espaliered apples, and tall straggling raspberry-bushes, all equally unfamiliar with the gardener's pruning knife; though here and there you came to a luckless bush that had been hacked at and mutilated in some amateur operations of "the boys." it was an old-fashioned garden, and had doubtless once been beautifully kept; for bright garden-flowers grew up amongst the weeds summer after summer, as if even neglect or cruel usage could not disroot them from the familiar place they loved. thus rare orchids sprouted up out of beds that were half full of chickweed, and lilies-of-the-valley flourished amongst the ground-sel in a shady corner under the water-butt. there were vines, upon which no grape had ever been suffered to ripen during mr. sleaford's tenancy, but which yet made a beautiful screen of verdant tracery all over the back of the house, twining their loving tendrils about the dilapidated venetian shutters, that rotted slowly on their rusted hinges. there were strawberry-beds, and there was an arbour at one end of the garden in which the boys played at "beggar my neighbour," and "all fours," with greasy, dog's-eared cards in the long summer afternoons; and there were some rabbit-hutches--sure evidence of the neighbourhood of boys--in a sheltered corner under the hazel-bushes. it was a dear old untidy place, where the odour of distant pigsties mingled faintly with the perfume of the roses; and it was in this neglected garden that isabel sleaford spent the best part of her idle, useless life. she was sitting in a basket-chair under one of the pear-trees when sigismund smith and his friend went into the garden to look for her. she was lolling in a low basket-chair, with a book on her lap, and her chin resting on the palm of her hand, so absorbed by the interest of the page before her that she did not even lift her eyes when the two young men went close up to her. she wore a muslin dress a good deal tumbled and not too clean, and a strip of black velvet was tied round her long throat. her hair was almost as black as her brother's, and was rolled up in a great loose knot, from which a long untidy curl fell straggling on her white throat--her throat was very white, with the dead, yellowish whiteness of ivory. "i wish that was 'colonel montefiasco,'" said mr. smith, pointing to the book which the young lady was reading. "i should like to see a lady so interested in one of _my_ books that she wouldn't so much as look up when a gentleman was waiting to be introduced to her." miss sleaford shut her book and rose from her low chair, abashed by this reproach; but she kept her thumb between the pages, and evidently meant to go on with the volume at the first convenient opportunity. she did not wait for any ceremonious introduction to george, but held out her hand to him, and smiled at him frankly. "yon are mr. gilbert, i know," she said. "sigismund has been talking of you incessantly for the last week. mamma has got your room ready; and i suppose we shall have tea soon. there are to be some chops on purpose for your friend, sigismund, mamma told me to tell you." she glanced downwards at the book, as much as to say that she had finished speaking, and wanted to get back to it. "what is it, izzie?" sigismund asked, interpreting her look. "algerman mountfort." "ah, i thought so. always _his_ books." a faint blush trembled over miss sleaford's pale face. "they are so beautiful!" she said. "dangerously beautiful, i'm afraid, isabel," the young man said, gravely; "beautiful sweetmeats, with opium inside the sugar. these books don't make you happy, do they, izzie?" "no, they make me unhappy; but"--she hesitated a little, and then blushed as she said--"i like that sort of unhappiness. it's better than eating and drinking and sleeping, and being happy that way." george could only stare at the young lady's kindling face, which lighted up all in a moment, and was suddenly beautiful, like some transparency which seems a dingy picture till you put a lamp behind it. the young surgeon could only stare wonderingly at mr. sleaford's daughter, for he hadn't the faintest idea what she and his friend were talking about. he could only watch her pale face, over which faint blushes trembled and vanished like the roseate reflections of a sunset sky. george gilbert saw that isabel sleaford had eyes that were large and black, like her brother's, but which were entirely different from his, notwithstanding; for they were soft and sleepy, with very little light in them, and what little light there was, only a dim dreamy glimmer in the depths of the large pupils. being a very quiet young man, without much to say for himself, george gilbert had plenty of leisure in which to examine the young lady's face as she talked to her mother's boarder, who was on cordial brotherly terms with her. george was not a very enthusiastic young man, and he looked at miss sleaford's face with no more emotion than if she had been a statue amongst many statues in a gallery of sculpture. he saw that she had small delicate features and a pale face, and that her great black eyes alone invested her with a kind of weird and melancholy beauty, which kindled into warmer loveliness when she smiled. george did not see the full extent of isabel sleaford's beauty, for he was merely a good young man, with a tolerable commonplace intellect, and isabel's beauty was of a poetical kind, which could only be fully comprehended by a poet; but mr. gilbert arrived at a vague conviction that she was what he called "pretty," and he wondered how it was that her eyes looked a tawny yellow when the light shone full upon them, and a dense black when they were shadowed by their dark lashes. george was not so much impressed by miss sleaford's beauty as by the fact that she was entirely different from any woman he had ever seen before; and i think herein lay this young lady's richest charm, by right of which she should have won the homage of an emperor. there was no one like her. whatever beauty she had was her own, and no common property shared with a hundred other pretty girls. you saw her once, and remembered her for ever; but you never saw any mortal face that reminded you of hers. she shut her book altogether at sigismund's request, and went with the two young men to show george the garden; but she carried the dingy-looking volume lovingly under her arm, and she relapsed into a dreamy silence every now and then, as if she had been reading the hidden pages by some strange faculty of clairvoyance. horace sleaford came running out presently, and summoned the wanderers to the house, where tea was ready. "the boys are to have theirs in the kitchen," he said; "and we elders tea together in the front parlour." three younger boys came trooping out as he spoke, and one by one presented a dingy paw to mr. gilbert. they had been flying a kite, and fishing in the canal, and helping to stack some hay in the distant meadow; and they were rough and tumbled, and smelt strongly of out-door amusements. they were all three very much like their brother; and george, looking at the four boys as they clustered round him, saw eight of the blackest eyes he ever remembered having looked upon; but not one of those four pairs of eyes bore any resemblance to isabel's. the boys were only miss sleaford's half-brothers. mr. sleaford's first wife had died three years after her marriage, and isabel's only memory of her mother was the faint shadow of a loving, melancholy face; a transient shadow, that came to the motherless girl sometimes in her sleep. an old servant, who had come one day, long ago, to see the sleafords, told isabel that her mother had once had a great trouble, and that it had killed her. the child had asked what the great trouble was; but the old servant only shook her head, and said, "better for you not to know, my poor, sweet lamb; better for you never to know." there was a pencil-sketch of the first mrs. sleaford in the best parlour; a fly-spotted pencil-sketch, which represented a young woman like isabel, dressed in a short-waisted gown, with big balloon sleeves; and this was all miss sleaford knew of her mother. the present mrs. sleaford was a shrewish little woman, with light hair, and sharp grey eyes; a well-meaning little woman, who made everybody about her miserable, and who worked from morning till night, and yet never seemed to finish any task she undertook. the sleafords kept one servant, a maid-of-all-work, who was called the girl; but this young person very rarely emerged from the back kitchen, where there was a perpetual pumping of water and clattering of hardware, except to disfigure the gooseberry-bushes with pudding-cloths and dusters, which she hung out to dry in the sunshine. to the ignorant mind it would have seemed that the sleafords might have been very nearly as well off without a servant; for mrs. sleaford appeared to do all the cooking and the greater part of the house-work, while isabel and the boys took it in turns to go upon errands and attend to the garden-door. the front parlour was a palatial chamber as compared to the back; for the boys were chased away with slaps by mrs. sleaford when they carried thither that artistic paraphernalia which she called their "rubbish," and the depredations of the race were, therefore, less visible in this apartment. mrs. sleaford had made herself "tidy" in honour of her new boarder, and her face was shining with the recent application of strong yellow soap. george saw at once that she was a very common little woman, and that any intellectual graces inherited by the boys must have descended to them from their father. he had a profound reverence for the higher branch of the legal profession, and he pondered that a barrister should have married such a woman as mrs. sleaford, and should be content to live in the muddle peculiar to a household where the mistress is her own cook, and the junior branches are amateur errand boys. after tea the two young men walked up and down the weedy pathways in the garden, while isabel sat under her favourite pear-tree reading the volume she had been so loth to close. sigismund and his midlandshire friend walked up and down, smoking cigars, and talking of what they called old times; but those old times were only four or five years ago, though the young men talked like greybeards, who look back half a century or so, and wonder at the folly of their youth. isabel went on with her book; the light was dying away little by little, dropping down behind the pear-trees at the western side of the garden, and the pale evening star glimmered at the end of one of the pathways. she read on more eagerly, almost breathlessly, as the light grew less; for her step-mother would call her in by-and-by, and there would be a torn jacket to mend, perhaps, or a heap of worsted socks to be darned for the boys; and there would be no chance of reading another line of that sweet sentimental story, that heavenly prose, which fell into a cadence like poetry, that tender, melancholy music which haunted the reader long after the book was shut and laid aside, and made the dull course of common life so dismally unendurable. isabel sleaford was not quite eighteen years of age. she had been taught a smattering of everything at a day-school in the albany road; rather a stylish seminary in the opinion of the camberwellians. she knew a little italian, enough french to serve for the reading of novels that she might have better left unread, and just so much of modern history as enabled her to pick out all the sugar-plums in the historian's pages,--the mary stuarts, and joan of arcs, and anne boleyns, the iron masks and la vallières, the marie antoinettes and charlotte cordays, luckless königsmarks and wicked borgias; all the romantic and horrible stories scattered amid the dry records of magna chartas and reform bills, clamorous third estates and beds of justice. she played the piano a little, and sang a little, and painted wishy-washy-looking flowers on bristol-board _from_ nature, but not at all _like_ nature; for the passion-flowers were apt to come out like blue muslin frills, and the fuchsias would have passed for prawns with short-sighted people. miss sleaford had received that half-and-half education which is popular with the poorer middle classes. she left the albany road seminary in her sixteenth year, and set to work to educate herself by means of the nearest circulating library. she did not feed upon garbage, but settled at once upon the highest blossoms in the flower-garden of fiction, and read her favourite novels over and over again, and wrote little extracts of her own choosing in penny account-books, usually employed for the entry of butcher's-meat and grocery. she knew whole pages of her pet authors by heart, and used to recite long sentimental passages to sigismund smith in the dusky summer evenings; and i am sorry to say that the young man, going to work at colonel montefiasco next morning, would put neat paraphrases of bulwer, or dickens, or thackeray into that gentleman's mouth, and invest the heroic brigand with the genial humour of a john brodie, the spirituality of a zanoni, and the savage sarcasm of a lord steyne. perhaps there never was a wider difference between two people than that which existed between isabel sleaford and her mother's boarder. sigismund wrote romantic fictions by wholesale, and yet was as unromantic as the prosiest butcher who ever entered a cattle-market. he sold his imagination, and isabel lived upon hers. to him romance was something which must be woven into the form most likely to suit the popular demand. he slapped his heroes into marketable shape as coolly as a butterman slaps a pat of butter into the semblance of a swan or a crown, in accordance with the requirements of his customers. but poor isabel's heroes were impalpable tyrants, and ruled her life. she wanted her life to be like her books; she wanted to be a heroine,--unhappy perhaps, and dying early. she had an especial desire to die early, by consumption, with a hectic flush and an unnatural lustre in her eyes. she fancied every time she had a little cough that the consumption was coming, and she began to pose herself, and was gently melancholy to her half-brothers, and told them one by one, in confidence, that she did not think she should be with them long. they were slow to understand the drift of her remarks, and would ask her if she was going out as a governess; and, if she took the trouble to explain her dismal meaning, were apt to destroy the sentiment of the situation by saying, "oh, come now, hookee walker. who ate a plum-dumpling yesterday for dinner, and asked for more? that's the only sort of consumption _you've_ got, izzie; two helps of pudding at dinner, and no end of bread-and-butter for breakfast." it was not so that florence dombey's friends addressed her. it was not thus that little paul would have spoken to his sister; but then, who could tolerate these great healthy boys after reading about little paul? poor izzie's life was altogether vulgar and commonplace, and she could not extract one ray of romance out of it, twist it as she would. her father was not a dombey, or an augustine caxton, or even a rawdon crawley. he was a stout, broad-shouldered, good-tempered-looking man, who was fond of good eating, and drank three bottles of french brandy every week of his life. he was tolerably fond of his children; but he never took them out with him, and he saw very little of them at home. there was nothing romantic to be got out of him. isabel would have been rather glad if he had ill-used her; for then she would have had a grievance, and that would have been something. if he would have worked himself up into a rage, and struck her on the stairs, she might have run out into the lane by the canal; but, alas, she had no good captain cuttle with whom to take refuge, no noble-hearted walter to come back to her, with his shadow trembling on the wall in the dim firelight! alas, alas! she looked north and south and east and west, and the sky was all dark; so she was obliged to go back to her intellectual opium-eating, and become a dreamer of dreams. she had plenty of grievances in a small way, such as having to mend awkward three-cornered rents in her brothers' garments, and being sent to fetch butter in the walworth road; but she was willing enough to do these things when once you had wrenched her away from her idolized books; and she carried her ideal world wherever she went, and was tending delirious byron at missolonghi, or standing by the deathbed of napoleon the great while the shopman slapped the butter on the scale, and the vulgar people hustled her before the greasy counter. if there had been any one to take this lonely girl in hand and organize her education, heaven only knows what might have been made of her; but there was no friendly finger to point a pathway in the intellectual forest, and isabel rambled as her inclination led her, now setting up one idol, now superseding him by another; living as much alone as if she had resided in a balloon, for ever suspended in mid air, and never coming down in serious earnest to the common joys and sorrows of the vulgar life about her. george and sigismund talked of miss sleaford when they grew tired of discoursing upon the memories of their schoolboy life in midlandshire. "you didn't tell me that mr. sleaford had a daughter," george said. "didn't i?' "no. she--miss sleaford--is very pretty." "she's gorgeous," answered sigismund, with enthusiasm; "she's lovely. i do her for all my dark heroines,--the good heroines, not the wicked ones. have you noticed isabel's eyes? people call them black; but they're bright orange-colour, if you look at them in the sunshine. there's a story of balzac's called 'the girl with the golden eyes.' i never knew what golden eyes were till i saw isabel sleaford." "you seem very much at home with her?" "oh, yes; we're like brother and sister. she helps me with my work sometimes; at least she throws out suggestions, and i use them. but she's dreadfully romantic. she reads too many novels." "too many?" "yes. don't suppose that i want to depreciate the value of the article. a novel's a splendid thing after a hard day's work, a sharp practical tussle with the real world, a healthy race on the barren moorland of life, a hearty wrestling match in the universal ring. sit down then and read 'ernest maltravers,' or 'eugene aram,' or the 'bride of lammermoor,' and the sweet romance lulls your tired soul to rest, like the cradle-song that soothes a child. no wise man or woman was ever the worse for reading novels. novels are only dangerous for those poor foolish girls who read nothing else, and think that their lives are to be paraphrases of their favourite books. that girl yonder wouldn't look at a decent young fellow in a government office with three hundred a year and the chance of advancement," said mr. smith, pointing to isabel sleaford with a backward jerk of his thumb. "_she's_ waiting for a melancholy creature, with a murder on his mind." they went across the grass to the pear-tree, under which isabel was still seated. it was growing dark, and her pale face and black eyes had a mysterious look in the dusky twilight. george gilbert thought she was fitted to be the heroine of a romance, and felt himself miserably awkward and commonplace as he stood before her, struggling with the sensation that he had more arms and legs than he knew what to do with. i like to think of these three people gathered in this neglected suburban garden upon the st of july, , for they were on the very threshold of life, and the future lay before them like a great stage in a theatre; but the curtain was down, and all beyond it was a dense mystery. these three foolish children had their own ideas about the great mystery. isabel thought that she would meet a duke some day in the walworth road; the duke would be driving his cab, and she would be wearing her best bonnet and _not_ going to fetch butter; and the young patrician would be struck by her, and would drive off to her father, and there and then make a formal demand of her hand; and she would be married to him, and wear ruby velvet and a diamond coronet ever after, like edith dombey in mr. hablot browne's grand picture. poor george fashioned no such romantic destiny in his day-dreams. he thought that he would marry some pretty girl, and have plenty of patients, and perhaps some day be engaged in a great case which would be mentioned in the "lancet," and live and die respected, as his grandfather had done before him, in the old house with the red-tiled roof and oaken gable-ends painted black. sigismund had, of course, only one vision,--and that was the publication of that great book, which should be written about by the reviewers and praised by the public. he could afford to take life very quietly himself; for was he not, in a vicarious manner, going through more adventures than ever the mind of man imagined? he came home to camberwell of an afternoon, and took half a pound of rump-steak and three or four cups of weak tea, and lounged about the weedy garden with the boys; and other young men who saw what his life was, sneered at him and called him "slow." slow, indeed! is it slow to be dangling from a housetop with a frayed rope slipping through your hands and seventy feet of empty space below you? is it slow to be on board a ship on fire in the middle of the lonely atlantic, and to rescue the entire crew on one fragile raft, with the handsomest female passenger lashed to your waist by means of her back hair? is it slow to go down into subterranean passages, with a dark lantern and half-a-dozen bloodhounds, in pursuit of a murderer? this was the sort of thing that sigismund was doing all day and every day--upon paper; and when the day's work was done, he was very well contented to loll in a garden-chair and smoke his cigar, while enthusiastic isabel talked to him about byron, and shelley, and napoleon the first; for the two poets and the warrior were her three idols, and tears came into her eyes when she talked of the sorrowful evening after waterloo, or the wasted journey to missolonghi, just as if she had known and loved these great men. * * * * * the lower windows of the house were lighted by this time, and mrs. sleaford came to the back-parlour window to call the young people to supper. they kept primitive hours at camberwell, and supper was the pleasantest meal in the day; for mrs. sleaford's work was done by that time, and she softened into amiability, and discoursed plaintively of her troubles to sigismund and her children. but to-night was to be a kind of gala, on account of the young man from the country. so there was a lobster and a heap of lettuces,--very little lobster in proportion to the green-stuff,--and sigismund was to make a salad. he was very proud of his skill in this department of culinary art, and as he was generally about five-and-twenty minutes chopping, and sprinkling, and stirring, and tasting, and compounding, before the salad was ready, there was ample time for conversation. to-night george gilbert talked to isabel; while horace enjoyed the privilege of sitting up to supper chiefly because there was no one in the house strong enough to send him to bed, since he refused to retire to his chamber unless driven there by force. he sat opposite his sister, and amused himself by sucking the long feelers of the lobster, and staring reflectively at george with his elbows on the table, while sigismund mixed the salad. they were all very comfortable and very merry, for isabel forgot her heroes, and condescended to come down temporarily to george's level, and talk about the great exhibition of the previous year, and the pantomime she had seen last christmas. he thought her very pretty, as she smiled at him across the table; but he fell to wondering about her again, and wondered why it was she was so different from miss sophronia burdock and the young ladies of graybridge-on-the-wayverne, whom he had known all his life, and in whom he had never found cause for wonder. the salad was pronounced ready at last, and the "six ale," as horace called it, was poured out into long narrow glasses, and being a light frisky kind of beverage, was almost as good as champagne. george had been to supper-parties at graybridge at which there had been real champagne, and jellies, and trifles, but where the talk had not been half so pleasant as at this humble supper-table, on which there were not two forks that matched one another, or a glass that was free from flaw or crack. the young surgeon enjoyed his first night at camberwell to his heart's content; and sigismund's spirits rose perceptibly with the six ale. it was when the little party was gayest that horace jumped up suddenly with the empty lobster-shell in his hand, and told his companions to "hold their noise." "i heard him," he said. a shrill whistle from the gate sounded as the boy spoke. "that's him again!" he exclaimed, running to the door of the room. "he's been at it ever so long, perhaps; and won't he just give it me if he has!" everybody was silent; and george heard the boy opening the hall-door and going out to the gate. he heard a brief colloquy, and a deep voice with rather a sulky tone in it, and then heavy footsteps coming along the paved garden-walk and counting the steps before the door. "it's your pa, izzie," mrs. sleaford said. "he'll want a candle: you'd better take it out to him; i don't suppose he'll care about coming in here." george gilbert felt a kind of curiosity about isabel's father, and was rather disappointed when he learnt that mr. sleaford was not coming into the parlour. but sigismund smith went on eating bread and cheese, and fishing pickled onions out of a deep stone jar, without any reference to the movements of the barrister. isabel took a candle, and went out into the hall to greet her father. she left the door ajar, and george could hear her talking to mr. sleaford; but the barrister answered his daughter with a very ill grace, and the speech which george heard plainest gave him no very favourable impression of his host. "give me the light, girl, and don't bother!" mr. sleaford said. "i've been worried this day until my head's all of a muddle. don't stand staring at me, child! tell your mother i've got some work to do, and mayn't go to bed all night." "you've been worried, papa?" "yes; infernally. and i don't want to be bothered by stupid questions now i've got home. give me the light, can't you?" the heavy footsteps went slowly up the uncarpeted staircase, a door opened on the floor above, and the footsteps were heard in the room over the parlour. isabel came in, looking very grave, and sat down, away from the table. george saw that all pleasure was over for that night; and even sigismund came to a pause in his depredations on the cheese, and meditated, with a pickled onion on the end of his fork. he was thinking that a father who ill-used his daughter would not be a bad subject for penny numbers; and he made a mental plan of the plot for a new romance. if mr. sleaford had business which required to be done that night, he seemed in no great hurry to begin his work; for the heavy footsteps tramped up and down, up and down the floor overhead, as steadily as if the barrister had been some ascetic romanist who had appointed a penance for himself, and was working it out in the solitude of his own chamber. a church clock in the distance struck eleven presently, and a dutch clock in the kitchen struck three, which was tolerably near the mark for any clock in mr. sleaford's house. isabel and her mother made a stir, as if about to retire; so sigismund got up, and lighted a couple of candles for himself and his friend. he undertook to show george to the room that had been prepared for him, and the two young men went up-stairs together, after bidding the ladies good night. horace had fallen asleep, with his elbows upon the table, and his hair flopping against the flaring tallow-candle near him. the young surgeon took very little notice of the apartment to which he was conducted. he was worn out by his journey, and all the fatigue of the long summer day; so he undressed quickly, and fell asleep while his friend was talking to him through the half-open door between the two bedrooms. george slept, but not soundly; for he was accustomed to a quiet house, in which no human creature stirred after ten o'clock at night; and the heavy tramp of mr. sleaford's footsteps in a room near at hand disturbed the young man's slumbers, and mixed themselves with his dreams. it seemed to george gilbert as if mr. sleaford walked up and down his room all night, and long after the early daylight shone through the dingy window-curtains. george was not surprised, therefore, when he was told at breakfast next morning that his host had not yet risen, and was not likely to appear for some hours. isabel had to go to the walworth road on some mysterious mission; and george overheard fragments of a whispered conversation between the young lady and her mother in the passage outside the parlour-door, in which the word "poor's rates," and "summonses," and "silver spoons," and "backing," and "interest," figured several times. mrs. sleaford was busy about the house, and the boys were scattered; so george and sigismund took their breakfast comfortably together, and read mr. sleaford's "times," which was not as yet required for that gentleman's own use. sigismund made a plan of the day. he would take a holiday for once in a way, he said, and would escort his friend to the royal academy, and divers other picture-galleries, and would crown the day's enjoyment by a french dinner. the two young men left the house at eleven o'clock. they had seen nothing of isabel that morning, nor of the master of the house. all that george gilbert knew of that gentleman was the fact that mr. sleaford had a heavy footstep and a deep sulky voice. * * * * * the st of july was a blazing summer's day, and i am ashamed to confess that george gilbert grew very tired of staring at the pictures in the royal academy. to him the finest works of modern art were only "pretty pictures," more or less interesting according to the story they told; and sigismund's disquisitions upon "modelling," and "depth," and "feeling," and tone, and colour, and distance, were so much unintelligible jargon; so he was glad when the day's work was over, and mr. smith led him away to a very dingy street a little way behind the national gallery. "and now i'm going to give you a regular french dinner, george, old fellow;" sigismund said, in a triumphant tone. mr. gilbert looked about him with an air of mystification. he had been accustomed to associate french dinners with brilliantly lighted cafés and gorgeous saloons, where the chairs were crimson velvet and gold, and where a dozen vast sheets of looking-glass reflected you as you ate your soup. he was a little disappointed, perhaps, when sigismund paused before a narrow doorway, on each side of which there was an old-fashioned window with queer-shaped wine and liqueur bottles neatly ranged behind the glass. a big lantern-shaped lamp hung over the door, and below one of the windows was an iron grating, through which a subtle flavour of garlic and mock-turtle soup steamed out upon the summer air. "this is boujeot's," said mr. smith. "it's the jolliest place; no grandeur, you know, but capital wine and first-rate cooking. the emperor of the french used to dine here almost every day when he was in england; but he never told any one his name, and the waiters didn't know who he was till they saw his portrait as president in the 'illustrated news.'" it is a popular fiction that the prince louis napoleon was in the habit of dining daily at every french restaurant in london during the years of his exile; a fiction which gives a romantic flavour to the dishes, and an aroma of poetry to the wines. george gilbert looked about him as he seated himself at a little table chosen by his friend, and he wondered whether napoleon the third had ever sat at that particular table, and whether the table-cloth had been as dirty in his time. the waiters at boujeot's were very civil and accommodating, though they were nearly harassed off their legs by the claims of desultory gentlemen in the public apartments, and old customers dining by pre-arrangement in the private rooms up-stairs. sigismund pounced upon a great sheet of paper, which looked something like a chronological table, and on the blank margins of which the pencil records of dinners lately consumed and paid for had been hurriedly jotted down by the harassed waiters. mr. smith was a long time absorbed in the study of this mysterious document; so george gilbert amused himself by staring at some coffee-coloured marine views upon the walls, which were supposed to represent the bay of biscay and the cape of good hope, with brown waves rolling tempestuously under a brown sky. george stared at these, and at a gentleman who was engaged in the soul-absorbing occupation of paying his bill; and then the surgeon's thoughts went vagabondizing away from the little coffee-room at boujeot's to mr. sleaford's garden, and isabel's pale face and yellow-black eyes, glimmering mysteriously in the summer twilight. he thought of miss sleaford because she was so unlike any other woman he had ever seen, and he wondered how his father would like her. not much, george feared; for mr. gilbert senior expected a young woman to be very neat about her back-hair, which isabel was not, and handy with her needle, and clever in the management of a house and the government of a maid-of-all-work; and isabel could scarcely be that, since her favourite employment was to loll in a wicker-work garden-chair and read novels. the dinner came in at last, with little pewter covers over the dishes, which the waiter drew one by one out of a mysterious kind of wooden oven, from which there came a voice, and nothing more. the two young men dined; and george thought that, except for the fried potatoes, which flew about his plate when he tried to stick his fork into them, and a flavour of garlic, that pervaded everything savoury, and faintly hovered over the sweets, a french dinner was not so very unlike an english one. but sigismund served out the little messes with an air of swelling pride, and george was fain to smack his lips with the manner of a connoisseur when his friend asked him what he thought of the _filets de sole à la maître d'hôtel_, or the _rognons à la_ south african sherry. somehow or other, george was glad when the dinner was eaten and paid for, and it was time to go home to camberwell. it was only seven o'clock as yet, and the sun was shining on the fountains as the young men went across trafalgar square. they took an omnibus at charing cross, and rode to the turnpike at walworth, in the hope of being in time to get a cup of tea before mrs. sleaford let the fire out; for that lady had an aggravating trick of letting out the kitchen-fire at half-past seven or eight o'clock on summer evenings, after which hour hot water was an impossibility; unless mr. sleaford wanted grog, in which case a kettle was set upon a bundle of blazing firewood. george gilbert did not particularly care whether or not there was any tea to be procured at camberwell, but he looked forward with a faint thrill of pleasure to the thought of a stroll with isabel in the twilit garden. he thought so much of this, that he was quite pleased when the big, ill-looking house and the dead wall that surrounded it became visible across the barren waste of ground that was called a common. he was quite pleased, not with any fierce or passionate emotion, but with a tranquil sense of pleasure. when they came to the wooden door in the garden-wall, sigismund smith stooped down and gave his usual whistle at the keyhole; but he looked up suddenly, and cried: "well, i'm blest!" "what's the matter?" "the door's open." mr. smith pushed it as he spoke, and the two young men went into the front garden. "in all the time i've lived with the sleafords, that never happened before," said sigismund. "mr. sleaford's awfully particular about the gate being kept locked. he says that the neighbourhood's a queer one, and you never know what thieves are hanging about the place; though, _inter nos_, i don't see that there's much to steal hereabouts," mr. smith added, in a confidential whisper. the door of the house, as well as that of the garden, was open. sigismund went into the hall, followed closely by george. the parlour door was open too, and the room was empty--the room was empty, and it had an abnormal appearance of tidiness, as if all the litter and rubbish had been suddenly scrambled together and carried away. there was a scrap of old frayed rope upon the table, lying side by side with some tin-tacks, a hammer, and a couple of blank luggage-labels. george did not stop to look at these; he went straight to the open window and looked out into the garden. he had so fully expected to see isabel sitting under the pear-tree with a novel in her lap, that he started and drew back with an exclamation of surprise at finding the garden empty; the place seemed so strangely blank without the girlish figure lolling in the basket-chair. it was as if george gilbert had been familiar with that garden for the last ten years, and had never seen it without seeing isabel in her accustomed place. "i suppose miss sleaford--i suppose they're all out," the surgeon said, rather dolefully. "i suppose they _are_ out," sigismund answered, looking about him with a puzzled air; "and yet, that's strange. they don't often go out; at least, not all at once. they seldom go out at all, in fact, except on errands. i'll call the girl." he opened the door and looked into the front parlour before going to carry out this design, and he started back upon the threshold as if he had seen a ghost. "what is it?" cried george. "my luggage and your portmanteau, all packed and corded; look!" mr. smith pointed as he spoke to a couple of trunks, a hatbox, a carpet-bag, and a portmanteau, piled in a heap in the centre of the room. he spoke loudly in his surprise; and the maid-of-all-work came in with her cap hanging by a single hair-pin to a knob of tumbled hair. "oh, sir!" she said, "they're all gone; they went at six o'clock this evenin'; and they're going to america, missus says; and she packed all your things, and she thinks you'd better have 'em took round to the greengrocer's immediant, for fear of being seized for the rent, which is three-quarters doo; but you was to sleep in the house to-night, if you pleased, and your friend likewise; and i was to get you your breakfastes in the morning, before i take the key round to the albany road, and tell the landlord as they've gone away, which he don't know it yet." "gone away!" said sigismund; "gone away!" "yes, sir, every one of 'em; and the boys was so pleased that they would go shoutin' 'ooray, 'ooray, all over the garding, though mr. sleaford swore at 'em awful, and did hurry and tear so, i thought he was a-goin' mad. but miss isabel, she cried about goin' so sudden and seemed all pale and frightened like. and there's a letter on the chimbley-piece, please, which she put it there." sigismund pounced upon the letter, and tore it open. george read it over his friend's shoulder. it was only two lines. "dear mr. smith,--don't think hardly of us for going away so suddenly. papa says it must be so. "yours ever faithfully, "isabel." "i should like to keep that letter," george said, blushing up to the roots of his hair. "miss sleaford writes a pretty hand." chapter iv. the end of george gilbert's holiday. the two young men acted very promptly upon that friendly warning conveyed in mrs. sleaford's farewell message. the maid-of-all-work went to the greengrocer's, and returned in company with a dirty-looking boy--who was "mrs. judkin's son, please, sir"--and a truck. mrs. judkin's son piled the trunks, portmanteau, and carpet-bag on the truck, and departed with his load, which was to be kept in the custody of the judkin family until the next morning, when sigismund was to take the luggage away in a cab. when this business had been arranged, mr. smith and his friend went out into the garden and talked of the surprise that had fallen upon them. "i always knew they were thinking of leaving," sigismund said, "but i never thought they'd go away like this. i feel quite cut up about it, george. i'd got to like them, you know, old boy, and to feel as if i was one of the family; and i shall never be able to partial-board with any body else." george seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as his friend, though his acquaintance with the sleafords was little more than four-and-twenty hours old. "they must have known before to-day that they were going," he said. "people don't go to america at a few hours' notice." sigismund summoned the dirty maid-of-all-work, and the two young men subjected her to a very rigorous cross-examination; but she could tell them very little more than she had told them all in one breath in the first instance. "mr. sleaford 'ad 'is breakfast at nigh upon one o'clock, leastways she put on the pertaturs for the boys' dinner before she biled 'is egg; and then he went out, and he come tarin' 'ome agen in one of these 'ansom cabs at three o'clock in the afternoon; and he told missus to pack up, and he told the 'ansom cabman to send a four-wheeler from the first stand he passed at six o'clock precise; and the best part of the luggage was sent round to the greengrocer's on a truck, and the rest was took on the roof of the cab, and master 'orace rode alongside the cabman, and would smoke one of them nasty penny pickwicks, which they always made 'im bilious; and mr. sleaford he didn't go in the cab, but walked off as cool as possible, swinging his stick, and 'olding his 'ead as 'igh as hever." sigismund asked the girl if she had heard the address given to the cabman who took the family away. "no," the girl said. mr. sleaford had given no address. he directed the cabman to drive over waterloo bridge, and that was all the girl heard. mr. smith's astonishment knew no bounds. he walked about the deserted house, and up and down the weedy pathways between the espaliers, until long after the summer moon was bright upon the lawn, and every trailing branch and tender leaflet threw its sharp separate shadow on the shining ground. "i never heard of such a thing in all my life," the young author cried; "it's like penny numbers. with the exception of their going away in a four-wheeler cab instead of through a sliding panel and subterranean passage, it's for all the world like penny numbers." "but you'll be able to find out where they've gone, and why they went away so suddenly," suggested george gilbert; "some of their friends will be able to tell you." "friends!" exclaimed sigismund; "they never had any friends--at least not friends that they visited, or anything of that kind. mr. sleaford used to bring home some of his friends now and then of an evening, after dark generally, or on a sunday afternoon. but we never saw much of them, for he used to take them up to his own room; and except for his wanting french brandy and cigars fetched, and chops and steaks cooked, and swearing at the girl over the balusters if the plates weren't hot enough, we shouldn't have known that there was company in the house. i suppose his chums were in the law, like himself," mr. smith added, musingly; "but they didn't look much like barristers, for they had straggling moustachios, and a kind of would-be military way; and if they hadn't been sleaford's friends, i should have thought them raffish-looking." neither of the young men could think of anything or talk of anything that night except the sleafords and their abrupt departure. they roamed about the garden, staring at the long grass and the neglected flower-beds; at the osier arbour, dark under the shadow of a trailing vine, that was half-smothered by the vulgar luxuriance of wild hops,--the osier arbour in which the spiders made their home, and where, upon the rotten bench, romantic izzie had sat through the hot hours of drowsy summer days, reading her favourite novels, and dreaming of a life that was to be like the plot of a novel. they went into the house, and called for candles, and wandered from room to room, looking blankly at the chairs and tables, the open drawers, the disordered furniture, as if from those inanimate objects they might obtain some clue to the little domestic mystery that bewildered them. the house was pervaded by torn scraps of paper, fragments of rag and string, morsels of crumpled lace and muslin, bald hair-brushes lying in the corners of the bedrooms, wisps of hay and straw, tin-tacks, and old kid-gloves. everywhere there were traces of disorder and hurry, except in mr. sleaford's room. that sanctuary was wide open now, and mr. smith and his friend went into it and examined it. to sigismund a newly-excavated chamber in a long-buried city could scarcely have been more interesting. here there was no evidence of reckless haste. there was not a single fragment of waste paper in any one of the half-dozen open drawers on either side of the desk. there was not so much as an old envelope upon the floor. a great heap of grey ashes upon the cold hearthstone revealed the fact that mr. sleaford had employed himself in destroying papers before his hasty departure. the candlestick that isabel had given him upon the previous night stood upon his desk, with the candle burnt down to the socket. george remembered having heard his host's heavy footsteps pacing up and down the room; and the occasional opening and shutting of drawers, and slamming of the lids of boxes, which had mixed with his dreams all through that brief summer's night. it was all explained now. mr sleaford had of course been making his preparations for leaving camberwell--for leaving england; if it was really true that the family were going to america. early the next morning there came a very irate gentleman from the albany road. this was the proprietor of the neglected mansion, who had just heard of the sleaford hegira, and who was in a towering passion because of those three quarter's rent which he was never likely to behold. he walked about the house with his hands in his pockets, kicking the doors open, and denouncing his late tenants in very unpleasant language. he stalked into the back parlour, where george and sigismumd were taking spongy french rolls and doubtful french eggs, and glared ferociously at them, and muttered something to the effect that it was like their impudence to be making themselves so "jolly comfortable" in his house when he'd been swindled by that disreputable gang of theirs. he used other adjectives besides that word "disreputable" when he spoke of the sleafords; but sigismund got up from before the dirty table-cloth, and protested, with his mouth full, that he believed in the honesty of the sleafords; and that, although temporarily under a cloud, mr. sleaford would no doubt make a point of looking up the three quarter's rent, and would forward post-office orders for the amount at the earliest opportunity. to this the landlord merely replied, that he hoped his--sigismund's--head would not ache till mr. sleaford _did_ send the rent; which friendly aspiration was about the only civil thing the proprietor of the mansion said to either of the young men. he prowled about the rooms, poking the furniture with his stick, and punching his fist into the beds to see if any of the feathers had been extracted therefrom. he groaned over the rents in the carpets, the notches and scratches upon the mahogany, the entire absence of handles and knobs wherever it was possible for handles or knobs to be wanting; and every time he found out any new dilapidation in the room where the two young men were taking their breakfast, he made as if he would have come down upon them for the cost of the damage. "is that the best teapot you're a-having your teas out of? where's the britannia metal as i gave thirteen-and-six for seven year ago? where did that twopenny-halfpenny blown-glass sugar-basin come from? it ain't mine; mine was di'mond-cut. why, they've done me two hundred pound mischief. i could afford to forgive 'em the rent. the rent's the least part of the damage they've done me." and then the landlord became too forcible to be recorded in these pages, and then he went groaning about the garden; whereupon george and sigismund collected their toilet-apparatus, and such trifling paraphernalia as they had retained for the night's use, and hustled them into a carpet-bag, and fled hastily and fearfully, after giving the servant-maid a couple of half-crowns, and a solemn injunction to write to sigismund at his address in the temple if she should hear any tidings whatever of the sleafords. so, in the bright summer morning, george gilbert saw the last of the old house which for nearly seven years had sheltered mr. sleaford and his wife and children, the weedy garden in which isabel had idled away so many hours of her early girlhood; the straggling vines under which she had dreamed bright sentimental dreams over the open leaves of her novels. the young men hired a cab at the nearest cab-stand, and drove to the establishment of the friendly greengrocer who had given shelter to their goods. it was well for them, perhaps, that the trunks and portmanteau had been conveyed to that humble sanctuary; for the landlord was in no humour to hesitate at trifles, and would have very cheerfully impounded sigismund's simple wardrobe, and the bran-new linen shirts which george gilbert had brought to london. they bestowed a small gratuity upon mrs. judkin, and then drove to sigismund's chambers, where they encamped, and contrived to make themselves tolerably comfortable, in a rough gipsy kind of way. "you shall have morgan's room," sigismund said to his friend, "and i can make up a bed in the sitting-room; there's plenty of mattresses and blankets." they dined rather late in the evening at a celebrated tavern in the near neighbourhood of those sacred precincts where law and justice have their head-quarters, and after dinner sigismund borrowed the "law list." "we may find out something about mr. sleaford in that," he said. but the "law list" told nothing of mr. sleaford. in vain sigismund and george took it in turn to explore the long catalogue of legal practitioners whose names began with the letter s. there were st. johns and simpsons, st. evremonds and smitherses, standishes and sykeses. there was almost every variety of appellation, aristocratic and plebeian; but the name of sleaford was not in the list: and the young men returned the document to the waiter, and went home wondering how it was that mr. sleaford's name had no place among the names of his brotherhood. * * * * * i have very little to tell concerning the remaining days which the conditions of george gilbert's excursion ticket left him free to enjoy in london. he went to the theatres with his friend, and sat in stifling upper boxes, in which there was a considerable sprinkling of the "order" element, during these sunshiny summer evenings. sigismund also took him to divers _al fresco_ entertainments, where there were fireworks, and "polking," and bottled stout; and in the daytime george was fain to wander about the streets by himself, staring at the shop-windows, and hustled and frowned at for walking on the wrong side of the pavement; or else to loll on the window-seat in sigismund's apartment, looking down into the court below, or watching his friend's scratching pen scud across the paper. sacred as the rites of hospitality may be, they must yet give way before the exigencies of the penny press; and sigismund was rather a dull companion for a young man from the country who was bent upon a week's enjoyment of london life. for very lack of employment, george grew to take an interest in his friend's labour, and asked him questions about the story that poured so rapidly from his hurrying pen. "what's it all about, sigismund?" he demanded. "is it funny?" "funny!" cried mr. smith, with a look of horror; "i should think not, indeed. who ever heard of penny numbers being funny? what the penny public want is plot, and plenty of it; surprises, and plenty of 'em; mystery, as thick as a november fog. don't you know the sort of thing? 'the clock of st. paul's had just sounded eleven hours;'--it's generally a translation, you know, and st. paul's stands for notre dame;--'a man came to appear upon the quay which extends itself all the length between the bridges of waterloo and london.' there isn't any quay, you know; but you're obliged to have it so, on account of the plot. 'this man--who had a true head of vulture, the nose pointed, sharp, terrible; all that there is of the most ferocious; the eyes cavernous, and full of a sombre fire--carried a bag upon his back. presently he stops himself. he regards with all his eyes the quay, nearly desert; the water, black and shiny, which stretches itself at his feet. he listens, but there is nothing. he bends himself upon the border of the quay. he puts aside the bag from his shoulders, and something of dull, heavy, slides slowly downwards and falls into the water. at the instant that the heavy burthen sinks with a dull noise to the bottom of the river, there is a voice, loud and piercing, which seems to elevate itself out of the darkness: 'philip launay, what dost thou do there with the corpse of thy victim?'--that's the sort of thing for the penny public," said mr. smith; "or else a good strong combination story." "what do you call a combination story?" mr. gilbert asked, innocently. "why, you see, when you're doing four great stories a week for a public that must have a continuous flow of incident, you can't be quite as original as a strict sense of honour might prompt you to be; and the next best thing you can do, if you haven't got ideas of your own, is to steal other people's ideas in an impartial manner. don't empty one man's pocket, but take a little bit all round. the combination novel enables a young author to present his public with all the brightest flowers of fiction neatly arranged into every variety of garland. i'm doing a combination novel now--the 'heart of midlothian' and the 'wandering jew.' you've no idea how admirably the two stories blend. in the first place, i throw my period back into the middle ages--there's nothing like the middle ages for getting over the difficulties of a story. good gracious me! why, what is there that isn't possible if you go back to the time of the plantagenets? i make jeannie deans a dumb girl,--there's twice the interest in her if you make her dumb,--and i give her a goat and a tambourine, because, you see, the artist likes that sort of thing for his illustrations. i think you'd admit that i've very much improved upon sir walter scott--a delightful writer, i allow, but decidedly a failure in penny numbers--if you were to run your eye over the story, george; there's only seventy-eight numbers out yet, but you'll be able to judge of the plot. of course i don't make aureola,--i call my jeannie 'aureola;' rather a fine name, isn't it? and entirely my own invention,--of course i don't make aureola walk from edinburgh to london. what would be the good of that? why, anybody _could_ walk it if they only took long enough about it. i make her walk from london to rome, to get a papal bull for the release of her sister from the tower of london. that's something like a walk, i flatter myself; over the alps--which admits of aureola's getting buried in the snow, and dug out again by a mount st. bernard's dog; and then walled up alive by the monks because they suspect her of being friendly to the lollards; and dug out again by cæsar borgia, who happens to be travelling that way, and asks a night's lodging, and heard aureola's tambourine behind the stone wall in his bedroom, and digs her out and falls in love with her; and she escapes from his persecution out of a window, and lets herself down the side of the mountain by means of her gauze scarf, and dances her way to rome, and obtains an audience of the pope, and gets mixed up with the jesuits:--and that's where i work into the 'wandering jew,'" concluded mr. smith. george gilbert ventured to suggest that in the days when the plantagenet ruled our happy isle, ignatius loyola had not yet founded his wonderful brotherhood; but mr. smith acknowledged this prosaic suggestion with a smile of supreme contempt. "oh, if you tie me down to facts," he said, "i can't write at all." "but you like writing?" "for the penny public? oh, yes; i like writing for them. there's only one objection to the style--it's apt to give an author a tendency towards bodies." mr. gilbert was compelled to confess that this last remark was incomprehensible to him. "why, you see, the penny public require excitement," said mr. smith; "and in order to get the excitement up to a strong point, you're obliged to have recourse to bodies. say your hero murders his father, and buries him in the coal-cellar in no. . what's the consequence? there's an undercurrent of the body in the coal-cellar running through every chapter, like the subject in a fugue or a symphony. you drop it in the treble, you catch it up in the bass; and then it goes sliding up into the treble again, and then drops down with a melodious groan into the bass; and so on to the end of the story. and when you've once had recourse to the stimulant of bodies, you're like a man who's accustomed to strong liquors, and to whose vitiated palate simple drinks seem flat and wishy-washy. i think there ought to be a literary temperance pledge by which the votaries of the ghastly and melodramatic school might bind themselves to the renunciation of the bowl and dagger, the midnight rendezvous, the secret grave dug by lantern-light under a black grove of cypress, the white-robed figure gliding in the grey gloaming athwart a lonely churchyard, and all the alcoholic elements of fiction. but, you see, george, it isn't so easy to turn teetotaller," added mr. smith, doubtfully; "and i scarcely know that it is so very wise to make the experiment. are not reformed drunkards the dullest and most miserable of mankind? isn't it better for a man to do his best in the style that is natural to him than to do badly in another man's line of business? 'box and cox' is not a great work when criticised upon sternly æsthetic principles; but i would rather be the author of 'box and cox,' and hear my audience screaming with laughter from the rise of the curtain to the fall thereof, than write a dull five-act tragedy, in the unities of which aristotle himself could find no flaw, but from whose performance panic-stricken spectators should slink away or ere the second act came to its dreary close. i think i should like to have been guilbert de pixérécourt, the father and prince of melodrama, the man whose dramas were acted thirty thousand times in france before he died (and how many times in england?); the man who reigned supreme over the playgoers of his time, and has not yet ceased to reign. who ever quotes any passage from the works of guilbert de pixérécourt, or remembers his name? but to this day his dramas are acted in every country theatre; his persecuted heroines weep and tremble; his murderous scoundrels run their two hours' career of villany, to be dragged off scowling to subterranean dungeons, or to die impenitent and groaning at the feet of triumphant virtue. before nine o'clock to-night there will be honest country-folks trembling for the fate of theresa, the orphan of geneva, and simple matrons weeping over the peril of the wandering boys. but guilbert de pixérécourt was never a great man; he was only popular. if a man can't have a niche in the walhalla, isn't it something to have his name in big letters in the play-bills on the boulevard? and i wonder how long my friend guilbert would have held the stage, if he had emulated racine or corneille. he did what it was in him to do, honestly; and he had his reward. who would not wish to be great? do you think i wouldn't rather be the author of the 'vicar of wakefield' than of 'colonel montefiasco?' i _could_ write the 'vicar of wakefield,' too, but--" george stared aghast at his excited friend. "but not oliver goldsmith's 'vicar of wakefield,'" sigismund explained. he had thrown down his pen now, and was walking up and down the room with his hands thrust deep down in his pockets, and his face scarlet with fierce excitement. "i should do the vicar in the detective pre-raphaelite style. moses knows a secret of his father's--forged accommodation-bills, or something of that kind; sets out to go to the fair on a drowsy summer morning, not a leaf stirring in the vicarage garden. you hear the humming of the bees as they bounce against the vicarage-windows; you see the faint light trembling about olivia's head, as she comes to watch her brother riding along the road; you see him ride away, and the girl watching him, and feel the hot sleepy atmosphere, and hear the swoop of the sickle in the corn-fields on the other side of the road; and the low white gate swings-to with a little click, and miss primrose walks slowly back to the house, and says, 'papa, it's very warm;' and you know there's something going to happen. "then the second chapter comes, and mr. primrose has his dinner, and goes out to visit his poor; and the two girls walk about the garden with mr. burchell, watching for moses, who never comes back. and then the serious business of the story begins, and burchell keeps his eye upon the vicar. nobody else suspects good mr. primrose; but burchell's eye is never off him; and one night, when the curtains are drawn, and the girls are sitting at their work, and dear mrs. primrose is cutting out comfortable flannels for the poor, the vicar opens his desk, and begins to write a letter. you hear the faint sound of the light ashes falling on the hearth, the slow ticking of an eight-day clock in the hall outside the drawing-room door, the sharp snap of mrs. primrose's scissors as they close upon the flannel. sophia asks burchell to fetch a volume from the bookcase behind the vicar's chair. he is a long time choosing the book, and his eye looks over the vicar's shoulder. he takes a mental inventory of the contents of the open desk, and he sees amongst the neatly-docketed papers, the receipted bills, and packets of envelopes--what? a glove, a green kid-glove sewn with white, which he distinctly remembers to have seen worn by moses when he started on that pleasant journey from which he never returned. can't you see the vicar's face, as he looks round at burchell, and knows that his secret is discovered? i can. can't you fancy the awful silent duel between the two men, the furtive glances, the hidden allusions to that dreadful mystery, lurking in every word that burchell utters? "that's how _i_ should do the 'vicar of wakefield,'" said sigismund smith, triumphantly. "there wouldn't be much in it, you know; but the story would be pervaded by moses's body lying murdered in a ditch half a mile from the vicarage, and burchell's ubiquitous eye. i dare say some people would cry out upon it, and declare that it was wicked and immoral, and that the young man who could write about a murder would be ready to commit the deed at the earliest convenient opportunity. but i don't suppose the clergy would take to murdering their sons by reason of my fiction, in which the rules of poetical justice would be sternly adhered to, and nemesis, in the shape of burchell, perpetually before the reader." poor george gilbert listened very patiently to his friend's talk, which was not particularly interesting to him. sigismund preached "shop" to whomsoever would listen to him, or suffer him to talk; which was pretty much the same to this young man. i am afraid there were times when his enthusiastic devotion to his profession rendered mr. smith a terrible nuisance to his friends and acquaintance. he would visit a pleasant country-house, and receive hospitable entertainment, and enjoy himself; and then, when all that was morbid in his imagination had been stimulated by sparkling burgundy and pale hochheimer, this wretched young traitor would steal out into some peaceful garden, where dew-laden flowers flung their odours on the still evening air, and sauntering in the shadowy groves where the nightingale's faint "jug-jug" was beginning to sound, would plan a diabolical murder, to be carried out in seventy-five penny numbers. sometimes he was honourable enough to ask permission of the proprietor of the country mansion; and when, on one occasion, after admiring the trim flower-gardens and ivied walls, the low turreted towers and grassy moats, of a dear old place that had once been a grange, he ventured to remark that the spot was so peaceful it reminded him of slow poisoning, and demanded whether there would be any objection to his making the quiet grange the scene of his next fiction,--the cordial cheery host cried out, in a big voice that resounded high up among the trees where the rooks were cawing, "people it with fiends, my dear boy! you're welcome to people the place with fiends, as far as i'm concerned." chapter v. george at home. the young surgeon went home to midlandshire with his fellow-excursionists, when the appointed monday came round. he met miss burdock and her sister on the platform in euston square, and received those ladies from the hands of their aunt. sophronia did not blush now when her eyes met george gilbert's frank stare. she had danced twice with a young barrister at the little quadrille-party which her aunt had given in honour of the maltster's daughters; a young barrister who was tall and dark and stylish, and who spoke of graybridge-on-the-wayverne as a benighted place, which was only endurable for a week or so in the hunting season. miss sophronia burdock's ideas had expanded during that week in baker street, and she treated her travelling companion with an air of haughty indifference, which might have wounded george to the quick had he been aware of the change in the lady's manner. but poor george saw no alteration in the maltster's daughter; he watched no changes of expression in the face opposite to him as the rushing engine carried him back to midlandshire. he was thinking of another face, which he had only seen for a few brief hours, and which he was perhaps never again to look upon; a pale girlish countenance, framed with dense black hair; a pale face, out of which there looked large solemn eyes, like stars that glimmer faintly through the twilight shadows. before leaving london, george had obtained a promise from his friend sigismund smith. whatever tidings mr. smith should at any time hear about the sleafords, he was to communicate immediately to the young surgeon of graybridge-on-the-wayverne. it was, of course, very absurd of george to take such an interest in this singular family; the young man admitted as much himself; but, then, singular people are always more or less interesting; and, having been a witness of mr. sleaford's abrupt departure, it was only natural that george should want to know the end of the story. if these people were really gone to america, why, of course, it was all over; but if they had not left london, some one or other of the family might turn up some day, and in that case sigismund was to write and tell his friend all about it. george gilbert's last words upon the platform at euston square had relation to this subject; and all the way home he kept debating in his mind whether it was likely the sleafords had really gone to america, or whether the american idea had been merely thrown out with a view to the mystification of the irate landlord. * * * * * life at graybridge-on-the-wayverne was as slow and sleepy as the river which widened in the flat meadows outside the town; the dear old river which crept lazily past the mouldering wall of the churchyard, and licked the moss-grown tombstones that had lurched against that ancient boundary. everything at graybridge was more or less old and quaint and picturesque; but the chief glory of graybridge was the parish church; a grand old edifice which was planted beyond the outskirts of the town, and approached by a long avenue of elms, beneath whose shadow the tombstones glimmered whitely in the sun. the capricious wayverne, which was perpetually winding across your path wheresoever you wandered in pleasant midlandshire, was widest here; and on still summer days the grey towers of the old church looked down at other phantasmal towers in the tranquil water. george used to wander in this churchyard sometimes on his return from a trout-fishing expedition, and, lounging among the tombstones with his rod upon his shoulder, would abandon himself to the simple day-dreams he loved best to weave. but the young surgeon had a good deal of work to do, now that his father had admitted him to the solemn rights of partnership, and very little time for any sentimental musings in the churchyard. the parish work in itself was very heavy, and george rode long distances on his steady-going grey pony to attend to captious patients, who gave him small thanks for his attendance. he was a very soft-hearted young man, and he often gave his slender pocket-money to those of his patients who wanted food rather than medicine. little by little people grew to understand that george gilbert was very different from his father, and had a tender pity for the sorrows and sufferings it was a part of his duty to behold. love and gratitude for this young doctor may have been somewhat slow to spring up in the hearts of his parish patients; but they took a deep root, and became hardy, vigorous plants before the first year of george's service was over. before that year came to a close the partnership between the father and son had been irrevocably dissolved, without the aid of legal practitioners, or any legal formulas whatsoever; and george gilbert was sole master of the old house with the whitewashed plaster-walls and painted beams of massive oak. the young man lamented the loss of his father with all that single-minded earnestness which was the dominant attribute of his character. he had been as obedient to his father at the last as he had been at the first; as submissive in his manhood as in his childhood. but in his obedience there had been nothing childish or cowardly. he was obedient because he believed his father to be wise and good, reverencing the old man with simple, unquestioning veneration. and now that the father was gone, george gilbert began life in real earnest. the poor of graybridge-on-the-wayverne had good reason to rejoice at the change which had given the young doctor increase of means and power. he was elected unanimously to the post his father's death had left nominally vacant; and wherever there was sickness and pain, his kindly face seemed to bring comfort, his bright blue eyes seemed to inspire courage. he took an atmosphere of youth and hope and brave endurance with him everywhere, which was more invigorating than the medicines he prescribed; and, next to mr. neate the curate, george gilbert was the best-beloved and most popular man in graybridge. he had never had any higher ambition than this. he had no wish to strive or to achieve; he only wanted to be useful; and when he heard the parable of the talents read aloud in the old church, a glow of gentle happiness thrilled through his veins as he thought of his own small gifts, which had never yet been suffered to grow rusty for lack of service. the young man's life could scarcely have been more sheltered from the storm and tempest of the world, though the walls of some mediæval monastery had encircled his little surgery. could the tumults of passion ever have a home in the calm breast of these quiet provincials, whose regular lives knew no greater change than the slow alternation of the seasons, whose orderly existences were never disturbed by an event? away at conventford there were factory strikes, and political dissensions, and fighting and rioting now and then; but here the tranquil days crept by, and left no mark by which they might be remembered. miss sophronia burdock did not long cherish the memory of the dark-haired barrister she had met in baker street. to do so would have been as foolish as to "love some bright particular star, and think to wed it," in the young damsel's opinion. she wisely banished the barrister's splendid image, and she smiled once more upon mr. gilbert when she met him coming out of church in the cold wintry sunlight, looking to especial advantage in his new mourning clothes. but george was blind to the sympathetic smiles that greeted him. he was not in love with miss sophronia burdock. the image of isabel's pale face had faded into a very indistinct shadow by this time; nay, it was almost entirely blotted out by the young man's grief for his father's death; but if his heart was empty enough now, there was no place in it for miss burdock, though it was hinted at in graybridge that a dower of four thousand pounds would accompany that fair damsel's hand. george gilbert had no high-flown or sentimental notions; but he would have thought it no greater shame to rifle the contents of the maltster's iron safe, than to enrich himself with the possessions of a woman he did not love. in the meantime he lived his peaceful life in the house where he had been born, mourning with simple, natural sorrow for the old father who had so long sat at the opposite side of the hearth, reading a local paper by the light of a candle held between his eyes and the small print, and putting down the page every now and then to descant, at his ease, upon the degeneracy of the times. the weak, loving, fidgety father was gone now, and george looked blankly at the empty chair which had taken the old man's shape; but his sorrow was unembittered by vain remorse or cruel self-reproach: he had been a good son, and he could look back at his life with his dead father, and thank god for the peaceful life that they had spent together. but he was very lonely now in the old house, which was a bare, blank place, peopled by no bright inanimate creations by which art fills the homes of wealthy hermits with fair semblances of life. the empty walls stared down upon the young man as he sat alone in the dim candlelight, till he was fain to go into the kitchen, which was the most cheerful room in the house, and where he could talk to william and tilly, while he lounged against the quaint old angle of the high oaken chimney-piece smoking his cigar. william and tilly were a certain mr. and mrs. jeffson, who had come southwards with the pretty young woman whom mr. john gilbert had encountered in the course of a holiday-trip to a quiet yorkshire town, where the fair towers of a minster rose above a queer old street, beyond whose gabled roofs lay spreading common-lands, fair pasture-farms, and pleasant market-gardens. it was in the homestead attached to one of these pasture-farms that john gilbert had met the bright, rosy-faced girl whom he made his wife; and mr. and mrs. jeffson were poor relations of the young lady's father. at mrs. gilbert's entreaty they consented to leave the little bit of garden and meadow-land which they rented near her father's farm, and followed the surgeon's wife to her new home, where matilda jeffson took upon herself the duties of housekeeper, general manager, and servant-of-all-work; while her husband looked after the surgeon's table, and worked in the long, old-fashioned garden, where the useful element very much preponderated over the ornamental. i am compelled to admit that, in common with almost all those bright and noble qualities which can make man admirable, mr. william jeffson possessed one failing. he was lazy. but then his laziness gave such a delicious, easy-going tone to his whole character, and was so much a part of his good nature and benevolence, that to wish him faultless would have been to wish him something less than he was. there are some people whose faults are better than other people's virtues. mr. jeffson was lazy. in the garden which it was his duty to cultivate, the snails crawled along their peaceful way, unhindered by cruel rake or hoe; but then, on the other hand, the toads grew fat in shadowy corners under the broad dock-leaves, and the empty shells of their slimy victims attested the uses of those ugly and venomous reptiles. the harmony of the universe asserted itself in that midlandshire garden, unchecked by any presumptuous interference from mr. jeffson. the weeds grew high in waste patches of ground, left here and there amongst the gooseberry-bushes and the cabbages, the raspberries and potatoes; and william jeffson offered little hindrance to their rank luxuriance. "there was room enough for all he wanted," he said philosophically; "and ground that wouldn't grow weeds would be good for naught. mr. gilbert had more fruit and vegetables than he could eat or cared to give away; and surely that was enough for anybody." officious visitors would sometimes suggest this or that alteration or improvement in the simple garden; but mr. jeffson would only smile at them with a bland, sleepy smile, as he lolled upon his spade, and remark, "that he'd been used to gardens all his life, and knew what could be made out of 'em, and what couldn't." in short, mr. jeffson and matilda jeffson his wife did as they liked in the surgeon's house, and had done so ever since that day upon which they came to midlandshire to take friendly service with their second cousin, pretty mrs. john gilbert. they took very small wages from their kinswoman's husband, but they had their own apartments, and lived as they pleased, and ordered the lives of their master and mistress, and idolized the fair-haired baby-boy who was born by-and-by, and who grew day by day under their loving eyes, when the tender gaze of his mother had ceased to follow his toddling footsteps, or yearn for the sight of his frank, innocent face. mr. jeffson may have neglected the surgeon's garden, by reason of that lymphatic temperament which was peculiar to him; but there was one business in which he never lacked energy, one pursuit in which he knew no weariness. he was never tired of any labour which contributed to the pleasure or amusement of mr. gilbert's only son. he carried the child on his shoulders for long journeys to distant meadows in the sunshiny haymaking season, when all the air was fragrant with the scent of grass and flowers; he clambered through thorny gaps amidst the brambly underwood, and tore the flesh off his poor big hands hunting for blackberries and cob-nuts for master "jarge." he persuaded his master into the purchase of a pony when the boy was five years old, and the little fellow trotted to wareham at mr. jeffson's side when that gentleman went on errands for the graybridge household. william jeffson had no children of his own, and he loved the surgeon's boy with all the fondness of a nature peculiarly capable of love and devotion. it was a bitter day for him when master jarge went to the classical and commercial academy at wareham; and but for those happy saturday afternoons on which he went to fetch the boy for a holiday that lasted till sunday evening, poor william jeffson would have lost all the pleasures of his simple life. what was the good of haymaking if george wasn't in the thick of the fun, clambering on the loaded wain, or standing flushed and triumphant, high up against the sunlit sky on the growing summit of the new-made stack? what could be drearier work than feeding the pigs, or milking the cow, unless master jarge was by to turn labour into pleasure by the bright magic of his presence? william jeffson went about his work with a grave countenance during the boy's absence, and only brightened on those delicious saturday afternoons when master jarge came hurrying to the little wooden gate in dr. mulder's playground, shouting a merry welcome to his friend. there was no storm of rain or hail, snow or sleet, that ever came out of the heavens, heavy enough to hinder mr. jeffson's punctual attendance at that little gate. what did he care for drenching showers, or thunderclaps that seemed to shake the earth, so long as the little wooden gate opened, and the fair young face he loved poked out at him with a welcoming smile? "our boys laid any money you wouldn't come to-day, jeff," master gilbert said sometimes; "but i knew there wasn't any weather invented that would keep you away." o blessed reward of fidelity and devotion! what did william jeffson want more than this? matilda jeffson loved her master's son very dearly in her own way; but her household duties were a great deal heavier than mr. jeffson's responsibilities, and she had little time to waste upon the poetry of affection. she kept the boy's wardrobe in excellent order; baked rare batches of hot cakes on saturday afternoons for his special gratification; sent him glorious hampers, in which there were big jars of gooseberry-jam, pork-pies, plum-loaves, and shrivelled apples. in all substantial matters mrs. jeffson was as much the boy's friend as her husband; but that tender, sympathetic devotion which william felt for his master's son was something beyond her comprehension. "my master's daft about the lad," she said, when she spoke of the two. george gilbert taught his companion a good deal in those pleasant saturday evenings, when the surgeon was away amongst his patients, and the boy was free to sit in the kitchen with mr. and mrs. jeffson. he told the yorkshireman all about those enemies of boyhood, the classic poets; but william infinitely preferred shakespeare and milton, byron and scott, to the accomplished romans, whose verses were of the lamest as translated by george. mr. jeffson could never have enough of shakespeare. he was never weary of hamlet, lear, othello, and romeo, the bright young prince who tried on his father's crown, bold hotspur, ill-used richard, passionate margaret, murderous gloster, ruined wolsey, noble katharine. all that grand gallery of pictures unrolled its splendours for this man, and the schoolboy wondered at the enthusiasm he was powerless to understand. he was inclined to think that practical mrs. jeffson was right, and that her husband was a little "daft" upon some matters. the boy returned his humble friend's affection with a steady, honest regard, that richly compensated the gardener, whose love was not of a nature to need much recompense, since its growth was as spontaneous and unconscious as that of the wild flowers amongst the long grass. george returned william jeffson's affection, but he could not return it in kind. the poetry of friendship was not in his nature. he was honest, sincere, and true, but not sympathetic or assimilative; he preserved his own individuality wherever he went, and took no colour from the people amongst whom he lived. mr. gilbert would have been very lonely now that his father was gone, had it not been for this honest couple, who managed his house and garden, his stable and paddocks, and watched his interests as earnestly as if he had been indeed their son. whenever he had a spare half-hour, the young man strolled into the old-fashioned kitchen, and smoked his cigar in the chimney-corner, where he had passed so much of his boyhood. "when i sit here, jeff," he said sometimes, "i seem to go back to the old school-days again, and i fancy i hear brown molly's hoofs upon the frosty road, and my father's voice calling to you to open the gate." mr. jeffson sighed, as he looked up from the mending of a bridle or the patching of a horse-cloth. "them was pleasant days, master jarge," he said, regretfully. he was thinking that the schoolboy had been more to him and nearer to him than the young surgeon could ever be. they had been children together, these two, and william had never grown weary of his childhood. he was left behind now that his companion had grown up, and the happy childish days were all over. there was a gigantic kite on a shelf in the back-kitchen; a kite that mr. jeffson had made with his own patient hands. george gilbert would have laughed now if that kite had been mentioned to him; but william jeffson would have been constant to the same boyish sports until his hair was grey, and would have never known weariness of spirit. "you'll be marrying some fine lady, maybe now, master jarge," mrs. jeffson said; "and she'll look down upon our north-country ways, and turn us out of the old place where we've lived so long." but george protested eagerly that, were he to marry the daughter of the queen of england, which was not particularly likely, that royal lady should take kindly to his old servants, or should be no wife of his. "when i marry, my wife must love the people i love," said, the surgeon, who entertained those superb theories upon the management of a wife which are peculiar to youthful bachelors. george further informed his humble friends that he was not likely to enter the holy estate of matrimony for many years to come, as he had so far seen no one who at all approached his idea of womanly perfection. he had very practical views upon this subject, and meant to wait patiently until some faultless young person came across his pathway; some neat-handed, church-going damsel, with tripping feet and smoothly-banded hair; some fair young sage, who had never been known to do a foolish act or say an idle word. sometimes the image of isabel sleaford trembled faintly upon the magic mirror of the young man's reveries, and he wondered whether, under any combination of circumstances, she would ever arrive at this standard. oh, no, it was impossible. he looked back to the drowsy summer-time, and saw her lolling in the garden-chair, with the shadows of the branches fluttering upon her tumbled muslin dress, and her black hair pushed anyhow away from the broad low brow. "i hope that foolish sigismund won't meet miss sleaford again," george thought, very gravely; "he might be silly enough to marry her, and i'm sure she'd never make a good wife for any man." george gilbert's father died in the autumn of ' ; and early in the following spring the young man received a letter from his friend mr. smith. sigismund wrote very discursively about his own prospects and schemes, and gave his friend a brief synopsis of the romance he had last begun. george skimmed lightly enough over this part of the letter; but as he turned the leaf by-and-by, he saw a name that brought the blood to his face. he was vexed with himself for that involuntary blush, and sorely puzzled to know why he should be so startled by the unexpected sight of isabel sleaford's name. "you made me promise to tell you anything that turned up about the sleafords," sigismund wrote. "you'll be very much surprised to hear that miss sleaford came to me the other day here in my chambers, and asked me if i could help her in any way to get her living. she wanted me to recommend her as a nursery-governess, or companion, or something of that kind, if i knew of any family in want of such a person. she was staying at islington with a sister of her step-mother's, she told me; but she couldn't be a burthen on her any longer. mrs. sleaford and the boys have gone to live in jersey, it seems, on account of things being cheap there; and i have no doubt that boy horace will become an inveterate smoker. poor sleaford is dead. you'll be as much astounded as i was to hear this. isabel did not tell me this at first; but i saw that she was dressed in black, and when i asked her about her father, she burst out crying, and sobbed as if heart would break. i should like to have ascertained what the poor fellow died of, and all about it,--for sleaford was not an old man, and one of the most powerful-looking fellows i ever saw,--but i could not torture izzie with questions while she was in such a state of grief and agitation. 'i'm very sorry you've lost your father, my dear miss sleaford,' i said: and she sobbed out something that i scarcely heard, and i got her some cold water to drink, and it was ever so long before she came round again and was able to talk to me. well, i couldn't think of anybody that was likely to help her that day; but i took the address of her aunt's house at islington, and promised to call upon her there in a day or two. i wrote by that day's post to my mother, and asked her if she could help me; and she wrote back by return to tell me that my uncle, charles raymond, at conventford, was in want of just such a person as miss sleaford (of course i had endowed isabel with all the virtues under the sun), and if i really thought miss s. would suit, and i could answer for the perfect respectability of her connections and antecedents,--it isn't to be supposed that i was going to say anything about that three quarters' rent, or that i should own that isabel's antecedents were lolling in a garden-chair reading novels, or going on suspicious errands to the _jeweller_ ('o my prophetic soul!' _et cetera_) in the walworth road,--why, i was to engage miss s. at twenty pounds a year salary. i went up to islington that very afternoon, although i was a number and a half behind with 'the demon of the galleys' ('the d. of the g.' is a sequel to 'the brand upon the shoulder-blade;' the proprietor of the 'penny parthenon' insisted upon having a sequel, and i had to bring colonel montefiasco to life again, after hurling him over a precipice three hundred feet high),--and the poor girl began to cry when i told her i'd found a home for her. i'm afraid she's had a great deal of trouble since the sleafords left camberwell; for she isn't at all the girl she was. her step-mother's sister is a vulgar woman who lets lodgings, and there's only one servant--such a miserable slavey; and isabel went to the door three times while i was there. you know my uncle raymond, and you know what a dear jolly fellow he is; so you may guess the change will be a very pleasant one for poor izzie. by the bye, you might call and see her the first time you're in conventford, and write me word how the poor child gets on. i thought she seemed a little frightened at the idea of going among strangers. i saw her off at euston square the day before yesterday. she went by the parliamentary train; and i put her in charge of a most respectable family going all the way through, with six children, and a birdcage, and a dog, and a pack of cards to play upon a tea-tray on account of the train being slow." mr. gilbert read this part of his friend's letter three times over before he was able to realize the news contained in it. mr. sleaford dead, and isabel settled as a nursery-governess at conventford! if the winding wayverne had overflowed its sedgy banks and flooded all midlandshire, the young surgeon could have been scarcely more surprised than he was by the contents of his friend's letter. isabel at conventford--within eleven miles of graybridge; within eleven miles of him at that moment, as he walked up and down the little room, with his hair tumbled all about his flushed good-looking face, and sigismund's letter in his waistcoat! what was it to him that isabel sleaford was so near? what was she to him, that he should think of her, or be fluttered by the thought that she was within his reach? what did he know of her? only that she had eyes that were unlike any other eyes he had ever looked at; eyes that haunted his memory like strange stars seen in a feverish dream. he knew nothing of her but this: and that she had a pretty, sentimental manner, a pensive softness in her voice, and sudden flights and capricious changes of expression that had filled his mind with wonder. george went back to the kitchen and smoked another cigar in mr. jeffson's company. he went back to that apartment fully determined to waste no more of his thoughts upon isabel sleaford, who was in sober truth a frivolous, sentimental creature, eminently adapted to make any man miserable; but somehow or other, before the cigar was finished, george had told his earliest friend and confidant all about mr. sleaford's family, touching very lightly upon isabel's attractions, and speaking of a visit to conventford as a disagreeable duty that friendship imposed. "of course i shouldn't think of going all that way on purpose to see miss sleaford," he said, "though sigismund seems to expect me to do so; but i must go to conventford in the course of the week, to see about those drugs johnson promised to get me. they won't make a very big parcel, and i can bring them home in my coat-pocket. you might trim brown molly's fetlocks, jeff; she'll look all the better for it. i'll go on thursday; and yet i don't know that i couldn't better spare the time to-morrow." "to-morrow's market-day, master jarge. i was thinkin' of goin' t' conventford mysen. i might bring t' droogs for thee, and thoo couldst write a noate askin' after t' young leddy," mr. jeffson remarked, thoughtfully. george shook his head. "that would never do, jeff," he said; "sigismund asks me to go and see her." mr. jeffson relapsed into a thoughtful silence, out of which he emerged by-and-by with a slow chuckle. "i reckon miss sleaford'll be a pretty girl," he remarked, thoughtfully, with rather a sly glance at his young master. george gilbert found it necessary to enter into an elaborate explanation upon this subject. no; miss sleaford was not pretty. she had no colour in her cheeks, and her nose was nothing particular,--not a beautiful queenlike hook, like that of miss harleystone, the belle of graybridge, who was considered like the youthful members of the peerage,--and her mouth wasn't very small, and her forehead was low; and, in short, some people might think miss sleaford plain. "but thoo doesn't, master jarge!" exclaimed mr. jeffson, clapping his hand upon his knee with an intolerable chuckle; "thoo thinkst summoat of her. i'll lay; and i'll trim brown molly's fetlocks till she looks as genteel as a thoroughbred." "thoo'rt an old fondy!" cried mrs. jeffson, looking up from her needlework. "it isn't one of these london lasses as'll make a good wife for master jarge; and he'd never be that soft as to go running after nursery-governesses at conventford, when he might have miss burdock and all her money, and be one of the first gentlefolks in graybridge." "hold thy noise, tilly. thou knowst nowt aboot it. didn't i marry thee for loove, lass, when i might have had sarah peglock, as was only daughter to him as kept t' red lion in belminster; and didn't i come up to london, where thou wast in service, and take thee away from thy pleace; and wasn't sarah a'most wild when she heard it? master jarge 'll marry for loove, or he'll never marry at all. don't you remember her as wore the pink sash and shoes wi' sandals at the dancin' school, master jarge; and us takin' her a ploom-loaf, and a valentine, and sugar-sticks, and oranges, when you was home for th' holidays?" mr. jeffson had been the confidant of all george's boyish love-affairs, the innocent leporello of this young provincial juan; and he was eager to be trusted with new secrets, and to have a finger once more in the sentimental pie. but nothing could be more stern than mr. gilbert's denial of any romantic fancy for miss sleaford. "i should be very glad to befriend her in any way," he said gravely; "but she's the very last person in the world that i should ever dream of making my wife." this young man discussed his matrimonial views with the calm grandiosity of manner with which man, the autocrat, talks of his humble slaves before he has tried his hand at governing them,--before he has received the fiery baptism of suffering, and learned by bitter experience that a perfect woman is not a creature to be found at every street-corner waiting meekly for her ruler. chapter vi. too much alone. brown molly's fetlocks were neatly trimmed by mr. jeffson's patient hands. i fancy the old mare would have gone long without a clipping, had it not been george's special pleasure that the animal should be smartened up before he rode her to conventford. clipping is not a very pleasant labour: but there is no task so difficult that william jeffson would have shrunk from it, if its achievement could give george gilbert happiness. brown molly looked a magnificent creature when george came home, after a hurried round of professional visits, and found her saddled and bridled, at eleven o'clock, on the bright march morning which he had chosen for his journey to conventford. but though, the mare was ready, and had been ready for a quarter of an hour, there was some slight delay while george ran up to his room,--the room which he had slept in from his earliest boyhood (there were some of his toys, dusty and forgotten, amongst the portmanteaus and hat-boxes at the top of the painted deal wardrobe),--and was for some little time engaged in changing his neckcloth, brushing his hair and hat, and making other little improvements in his personal appearance. william jeffson declared that his young master looked as if he was going straight off to be married, as he rode away out of the stable-yard, with a bright eager smile upon his face and the spring breezes blowing amongst his hair. he looked the very incarnation of homely, healthy comeliness, the archetype of honest youth and simple english manhood, radiant with the fresh brightness of an unsullied nature, untainted by an evil memory, pure as a new-polished mirror on which no foul breath has ever rested. he rode away to his fate, self-deluded, and happy in the idea that his journey was a wise blending of the duties of friendship and the cares of his surgery. i do not think there can be a more beautiful road in all england than that between graybridge-on-the-wayverne and conventford, and i can scarcely believe that in all england there is an uglier town than conventford itself. i envy george gilbert his long ride on that bright march morning, when the pale primroses glimmered among the underwood, and the odour of early violets mingled faintly with the air. the country roads were long avenues, which might have made the glory of a ducal park; and every here and there, between a gap in the budding hedge, a white-walled country villa or grave old red-brick mansion peeped out of some nook of rustic beauty, with shining windows winking in the noontide sun. midway between graybridge and conventford there is the village of waverly; the straggling village street over whose quaint elizabethan roofs the ruined towers of a grand old castle cast their protecting shadows. john of gaunt was master and founder of the grandest of those old towers, and henry the eighth's wonderful daughter has feasted in the great banqueting-hall, where the ivy hangs its natural garlands round the stone mullions of the tudor window. the surgeon gave his steed a mouthful of hay and a drink of water before the waverly arms, and then sauntered at a foot-pace into the long unbroken arcade which stretches from the quiet village to the very outskirts of the bustling conventford. george urged brown molly into a ponderous kind of canter by-and-by, and went at a dashing rate till he came to the little turnpike at the end of the avenue, and left fair elizabethan midlandshire behind him. before him there was only the smoky, noisy, poverty-stricken town, with hideous factory chimneys blackening the air, and three tall spires rising from amongst the crowded roofs high up into the clearer sky. mr. gilbert drew rein on the green, which was quiet enough to-day, though such an uproarious spot in fair-time; he drew rein, and began to wonder what he should do. should he go to the chemist's in the market-place and get his drugs, and thence to mr. raymond's house, which was at the other end of the town, or rather on the outskirts of the country and beyond the town; or should he go first to mr. raymond's by quiet back lanes, which were clear of the bustle and riot of the market-people? to go to the chemist's first would be the wiser course, perhaps; but then it wouldn't be very agreeable to have drugs in his pocket, and to smell of rhubarb and camomile-flowers when he made his appearance before miss sleaford. after a good deal of deliberation, george decided on going by the back way to mr. raymond's house; and then, as he rode along the lanes and back slums, he began to think that mr. raymond would wonder why he called, and would think his interest in the nursery-governess odd, or even intrusive; and from that a natural transition of thought brought him to wonder whether it would not be better to abandon all idea of seeing miss sleaford, and to content himself with the purchase of the drugs. while he was thinking of this, brown molly brought him into the lane at the end of which mr. raymond's house stood, on a gentle eminence, looking over a wide expanse of grassy fields, a railway cutting, and a white high-road, dotted here and there by little knots of stunted trees. the country upon this side of conventford was bleak and bare of aspect as compared to that fair park-like region which i venture to call elizabethan midlandshire. if mr. raymond had resembled other people, i dare say he would have been considerably surprised--or, it may be, outraged--by a young gentleman in the medical profession venturing to make a morning call upon his nursery-governess; but as mr. charles raymond was the very opposite of everybody else in the world, and as he was a most faithful disciple of mr. george combe, and could discover by a glance at the surgeon's head that the young man was neither a profligate nor a scoundrel, he received george as cordially as it was his habit to receive every living creature who had need of his friendliness; and sent brown molly away to his stable, and set her master at his ease, before george had quite left off blushing in his first paroxysm of shyness. "come into my room," cried mr. raymond, in a voice that had more vibration in it than any other voice that ever rang out upon the air; "come into my room. you've had a letter from sigismund,--the idea of the absurd young dog calling himself sigismund!--and he's told you all about miss sleaford. very nice girl, but wants to be educated before she can teach; keeps the little ones amused, however, and takes them out in the meadows; a very nice, conscientious little thing; cautiousness very large; can't get anything out of her about her past life; turns pale and begins to cry when i ask her questions; has seen a good deal of trouble, i'm afraid. never mind; we'll try and make her happy. what does her past life matter to us if her head's well balanced? let me have my pick of the young people in field lane, and i'll find you an undeveloped archbishop of canterbury; take me into places where the crimes of mankind are only known by their names in the decalogue, and i'll find you an embryo greenacre. miss sleaford's a very good little girl; but she's got too much wonder and exaggerated ideality. she opens her big eyes when she talks of her favourite books, and looks up all scared and startled if you speak to her while she's reading." mr. raymond's room was a comfortable little apartment, lined with books from the ceiling to the floor. there were books everywhere in mr. raymond's house; and the master of the house read at all manner of abnormal hours, and kept a candle burning by his bedside in the dead of the night, when every other citizen of conventford was asleep. he was a bachelor, and the children whom it was miss sleaford's duty to educate were a couple of sickly orphans, left by a pale-faced niece of charles raymond's,--an unhappy young lady, who seemed only born to be unfortunate, and who had married badly, and lost her husband, and died of consumption, running through all the troubles common to womankind before her twenty-fifth birthday. of course mr. raymond took the children; he would have taken an accidental chimney-sweep's children, if it could have been demonstrated to him that there was no one else to take them. he buried the pale-faced niece in a quiet suburban cemetery, and took the orphans home to his pretty house at conventford, and bought black frocks for them, and engaged miss sleaford for their education, and made less fuss about the transaction than many men would have done concerning the donation of a ten-pound note. it was charles raymond's nature to help his fellow-creatures. he had been very rich once, the conventford people said, in those far-off golden days when there were neither strikes nor starvation in the grim old town; and he had lost a great deal of money in the carrying out of sundry philanthropic schemes for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and was comparatively poor in these latter days. but he was never so poor as to be unable to help other people, or to hold his hand when a mechanics' institution, or a working-men's club, or an evening-school, or a cooking-dépôt, was wanted for the benefit and improvement of conventford. and all this time,--while he was the moving spirit of half-a-dozen committees, while he distributed cast-off clothing, and coals, and tickets for soup, and orders for flannel, and debated the solemn question as to whether betsy scrubbs or maria tomkins was most in want of a wadded petticoat, or gave due investigation to the rival claims of mrs. jones and mrs. green to the largess of the soup kitchen,--he was an author, a philosopher, a phrenologist, a metaphysician, writing grave books, and publishing them for the instruction of mankind. he was fifty years of age; but, except that his hair was grey, he had no single attribute of age. that grey hair framed the brightest face that ever smiled upon mankind, and with the liberal sunshine smiled alike on all. george gilbert had seen mr. raymond several times before to-day. everybody in conventford, or within a certain radius of conventford, knew mr. charles raymond; and mr. charles raymond knew everybody. he looked through the transparent screen which shrouded the young surgeon's thoughts: he looked down into the young man's heart, through depths that were as clear as limpid water, and saw nothing there but truth and purity. when i say that mr. raymond looked into george gilbert's heart, i use a figure of speech, for it was from the outside of the surgeon's head he drew his deductions; but i like the old romantic fancy, that a good man's heart is a temple of courage, love, and piety--an earthly shrine of all the virtues. mr. raymond's house was a pretty gothic building, half villa, half cottage, with bay windows opening into a small garden, which was very different from the garden at camberwell, inasmuch as here all was trimly kept by an indefatigable gardener and factotum. beyond the garden there were the meadows, only separated from mr. raymond's lawn by a low privet hedge; and beyond the meadows the roofs and chimneys of conventford loomed darkly in the distance. charles raymond took george into the drawing-room by-and-by, and from the bay window the young man saw isabel sleaford once more, as he had seen her first, in a garden. but the scene had a different aspect from that other scene, which still lingered in his mind, like a picture seen briefly in a crowded gallery. instead of the pear-trees on the low disorderly grass-plat, the straggling branches green against the yellow sunshine of july, george saw a close-cropped lawn and trim flower-beds, stiff groups of laurel, amid bare bleak fields unsheltered from the chill march winds. against the cold blue sky he saw isabel's slight figure, not lolling in a garden-chair reading a novel, but walking primly with two pale-faced children dressed in black. a chill sense of pain crept through the surgeon's breast as he looked at the girlish figure, the pale joyless face, the sad dreaming eyes. he felt that some inexplicable change had come to isabel sleaford since that july day on which she had talked of her pet authors, and glowed and trembled with childish love for the dear books out of whose pages she took the joys and sorrows of her life. the three pale faces, the three black dresses, had a desolate look in the cold sunlight. mr. raymond tapped at the glass, and beckoned to the nursery-governess. "melancholy-looking objects, are they not?" he said to george, as the three girls came towards the window. "i've told my housekeeper to give them plenty of roast meat, not too much done; meat's the best antidote for melancholy." he opened the window and admitted isabel and her two pupils. "here's a friend come to see you, miss sleaford," he said; "a friend of sigismund's; a gentleman who knew you in london." george held out his hand, but he saw something like terror in the girl's face as she recognized him; and he fell straightway into a profound gulf of confusion and embarrassment. "sigismund asked me to call," he stammered. "sigismund told me to write and tell him how you were." miss sleaford's eyes filled with tears. the tears came unbidden to her eyes now with the smallest provocation. "you are all very good to me," she said. "there, you children, go out into the garden and walk about," cried mr. raymond. "you go with them, gilbert, and then come in and have some stilton cheese and bottled beer, and tell us all about your graybridge patients." mr. gilbert obeyed his kindly host. he went out on to the lawn, where the brown shrubs were putting forth their feeble leaflets to be blighted by the chill air of march. he walked by isabel's side, while the two orphans prowled mournfully here and there amongst the evergreens, and picked the lonely daisies that had escaped the gardener's scythe. george and isabel talked a little; but the young man was fain to confine himself to a few commonplace remarks about conventford, and mr. raymond, and miss sleaford's new duties; for he saw that the least allusion to the old camberwell life distressed and agitated her. there was not much that these two could talk about as yet. with sigismund smith, isabel would have had plenty to say; indeed, it would have been a struggle between the two as to which should do all the talking; but in george gilbert's company isabel sleaford's fancies folded themselves like delicate buds whose fragile petals are shrivelled by a bracing northern breeze. she knew that mr. gilbert was a good young man kindly disposed towards her, and, after his simple fashion, eager to please her; but she felt rather than knew that he did not understand her, and that in that cloudy region where her thoughts for ever dwelt he could never be her companion. so, after a little of that deliciously original conversation which forms the staple talk of a morning call amongst people who have never acquired the supreme accomplishment called small-talk, george and isabel returned to the drawing-room, where mr. raymond was ready to preside over a banquet of bread-and-cheese and bottled ale; after which refection the surgeon's steed was brought to the door. "come and see us again, gilbert, whenever you've a day in conventford," mr. raymond said, as he shook hands with the surgeon. george thanked him for his cordial invitation, but he rode away from the house rather depressed in spirit, notwithstanding. how stupid he had been during that brief walk on mr. raymond's lawn; how little he had said to isabel, or she to him! how dismally the conversation had died away into silence every now and then, only to be revived by some lame question, some miserable remark apropos to nothing,--the idiotic emanation of despair! mr. gilbert rode to an inn near the market-place, where his father had been wont to take his dinner whenever he went to conventford. george gave brown molly into the ostler's custody, and then walked away to the crowded pavement, where the country people were jostling each other in front of shop-windows and open stalls; the broad stony market-place, where the voices of the hawkers were loud and shrill, where the brazen boastings of quack-medicine vendors rang out upon the afternoon air. he walked through the crowd, and rambled away into a narrow back street leading to an old square, where the great church of conventford stood amidst a stony waste of tombstones, and where the bells that played a hymn tune when they chimed the hour were booming up in the grand old steeple. the young man went into the stony churchyard, which was lonely enough even on a market-day, and walked about among the tombs, whiling away the time--for the benefit of brown molly, who required considerable rest and refreshment before she set out on the return journey--and thinking of isabel sleaford. he had only seen her twice, and yet already her image had fastened itself with a fatal grip upon his mind, and was planted there--an enduring picture, never again to be blotted out. that evening at camberwell had been the one romantic episode of this young man's eventless life; isabel sleaford the one stranger who had come across his pathway. there were pretty girls, and amiable girls, in graybridge: but then he had known them all his life. isabel came to him in her pale young beauty, and all the latent sentimentality--without which youth is hideous--kindled and thrilled into life at the magic spell of her presence. the mystic venus rises a full-blown beauty from the sea, and man the captive bows down before his divine enslaver. who would care for a venus whose cradle he had rocked, whose gradual growth he had watched, the divinity of whose beauty had perished beneath the withering influence of familiarity? it was dusk when george gilbert went to the chemist and received his parcels of drugs. he would not stop to dine at the white lion, but paid his eighteenpence for brown molly's accommodation, and took a hasty glass of ale at the bar before he sprang into the saddle. he rode homeward through the solemn avenue, the dusky cathedral aisle, the infinite temple, fashioned by the great architect nature. he rode through the long ghostly avenue, until the twinkling lights at waverly glimmered on him faintly between the bare branches of the trees. isabel sleaford's new life was a very pleasant one. there was no butter to be fetched, no mysterious errands to the walworth road. everything was bright and smooth and trim in mr. raymond's household. there was a middle-aged housekeeper who reigned supreme, and an industrious maidservant under her sway. isabel and her sickly charges had two cheerful rooms over the drawing-room, and took their meals together, and enjoyed the delight of one another's society all day long. the children were rather stupid, but they were very good. they too had known the sharp ills of poverty, the butter-fetching, the blank days in which there was no bright oasis of dinner, the scraps of cold meat and melancholy cups of tea. they told isabel their troubles of an evening; how poor mamma had cried when the sheriff's officer came in, and said he was very sorry for her, but must take an inventory, and wouldn't leave even papa's picture or the silver spoons that had been grandmamma's. miss sleaford put her shoulder to the wheel very honestly, and went through pinnock's pleasant abridgments of modern and ancient history with her patient pupils. she let them off with a very slight dose of the heptarchy and the normans, and even the early plantagenet monarchs; but she gave them plenty of anne boleyn and mary queen of scots,--fair princess mary, queen of france, and wife of thomas brandon,--marie antoinette and charlotte corday. the children only said "lor'!" when they heard of mademoiselle corday's heroic adventure; but they were very much interested in the fate of the young princes of the house of york, and amused themselves by a representation of the smothering business with the pillows on the school-room sofa. it was not to be supposed that mr. charles raymond, who had all the interests of conventford to claim his attention, could give much time or trouble to the two pupils or the nursery-governess. he was quite satisfied with miss sleaford's head, and was content to entrust his orphan nieces to her care. "if they were clever children, i should be afraid of her exaggerated ideality," he said; "but they're too stupid to be damaged by any influence of that kind. she's got a very decent moral region--not equal to that young doctor at graybridge, certainly--and she'll do her duty to the little ones very well, i dare say." so no one interfered with isabel or her pupils. the education of association, which would have been invaluable to her, was as much wanting at conventford as it had been at camberwell. she lived alone with her books and the dreams which were born of them, and waited for the prince, the ernest maltravers, the henry esmond, the steerforth--it was steerforth's proud image, and not simple-hearted david's gentle shadow, which lingered in the girl's mind when she shut the book. she was young and sentimental, and it was not the good people upon whom her fancy fixed itself. to be handsome and proud and miserable, was to possess an indisputable claim to miss sleaford's worship. she sighed to sit at the feet of a byron, grand and gloomy and discontented, baring his white brow to the midnight blast, and raving against the baseness and ingratitude of mankind. she pined to be the chosen slave of some scornful creature, who should perhaps ill-treat and neglect her. i think she would have worshipped an aristocratic bill sykes, and would have been content to die under his cruel hand, only in the ruined chamber of some gothic castle, by moonlight, with the distant alps shimmering whitely before her glazing eyes, instead of in poor nancy's unromantic garret. and then the count guilliaume de syques would be sorry, and put up a wooden cross on the mountain pathway, to the memory of--, Ã�nÃ�tkh; and he would be found some morning stretched at the foot of that mysterious memorial, with a long black mantle trailing over his king-like form, and an important blood-vessel broken. there is no dream so foolish, there is no fancy however childish, that did not find a lodgment in isabel sleaford's mind during the long idle evenings in which she sat alone in her quiet school-room, watching the stars kindle faintly in the dusk, and the darkening shadows gathering in the meadows, while feeble lights began to twinkle in the distant streets of conventford. sometimes, when her pupils were fast asleep in their white-curtained beds, izzie stole softly down, and went out into the garden to walk up and down in the fair moonlight; the beautiful moonlight in which juliet had looked more lovely than the light of day to romeo's enraptured eyes; in which hamlet had trembled before his father's ghostly face. she walked up and down in the moonlight, and thought of all her dreams; and wondered when her life was going to begin. she was getting quite old; yes--she thought of it with a thrill of horror--she was nearly eighteen! juliet was buried in the tomb of the capulets before this age, and haughty beatrix had lived her life, and florence dombey was married and settled, and the story all over. a dull despair crept over this foolish girl as she thought that perhaps her life was to be only a commonplace kind of existence, after all; a blank flat level, along which she was to creep to a nameless grave. she was so eager to be _something_. oh, why was not there a revolution, that she might take a knife in her hand and go forth to seek the tyrant in his lodging, and then die; so that people might talk of her, and remember her name when she was dead? i think isabel sleaford was just in that frame of mind in which a respectable, and otherwise harmless, young person aims a bullet at some virtuous sovereign, in a paroxysm of insensate yearning for distinction. miss sleaford wanted to be famous. she wanted the drama of her life to begin, and the hero to appear. vague, and grand, and shadowy, there floated before her the image of the prince; but, oh, how slow he was to come! would he ever come? were there any princes in the world? were there any of those beings whose manners and customs her books described to her, but whose mortal semblances she had never seen? the sleeping beauty in the woods slumbered a century before the appointed hero came to awaken her. beauty must wait, and wait patiently, for the coming of her fate. but poor isabel thought she had waited so long, and as yet there was not even the distant shimmer of the prince's plumes dimly visible on the horizon. there were reasons why isabel sleaford should shut away the memory of her past life, and solace herself with visions of a brighter existence. a little wholesome drudgery might have been good for her, as a homely antidote against the sentimentalism of her nature; but in mr. raymond's house she had ample leisure to sit dreaming over her books, weaving wonderful romances in which she was to be the heroine, and the hero--? the hero was the veriest chameleon, inasmuch as he took his colour from the last book miss sleaford had been reading. sometimes he was ernest maltravers, the exquisite young aristocrat, with violet eyes and silken hair. sometimes he was eugene aram, dark, gloomy, and intellectual, with that awkward little matter of mr. clarke's murder preying upon his mind. at another time he was steerforth, selfish and haughty and elegant, sometimes, when the orphans were asleep. miss sleaford let down her long black hair before the little looking-glass, and acted to herself in a whisper. she saw her pale face, awful in the dusky glass, her lifted arms, her great black eyes, and she fancied herself dominating a terror-stricken pit. sometimes she thought of leaving friendly mr. raymond, and going up to london with a five-pound note in her pocket, and coming out at one of the theatres as a tragic actress. she would go to the manager, and tell him that she wanted to act. there might be a little difficulty at first, perhaps, and he would be rather inclined to be doubtful of her powers; but then she would take off her bonnet, and let down her hair, and would draw the long tresses wildly through her thin white fingers--so; she stopped to look at herself in the glass as she did it,--and would cry, "i am not mad; this hair i tear is mine!" and the thing would be done. the manager would exclaim, "indeed, my dear young lady, i was not prepared for such acting as this. excuse my emotion; but really, since the days of miss o'neil, i don't remember to have witnessed anything to equal your delivery of that speech. come to-morrow evening and play constance. you don't want a rehearsal?--no, of course not; you know every syllable of the part. i shall take the liberty of offering you fifty pounds a night to begin with, and i shall place one of my carriages at your disposal." isabel had read a good many novels in which timid young heroines essay their histrionic powers, but she had never read of a dramatically-disposed heroine who had not burst forth a full-blown mrs. siddons without so much as the ordeal of a rehearsal. sometimes miss sleaford thought that her destiny--she clung to the idea that she had a destiny--designed her to be a poet, an l.e.l.; oh, above all she would have chosen to be l.e.l.; and in the evening, when she had looked over the children's copy-books, and practised a new style of capital b, in order to infuse a dash of variety into the next day's studies, she drew the candles nearer to her, and posed herself, and dipped her pen into the ink, and began to pour forth some melancholy plaint upon the lonely blankness of her life, or some vague invocation of the unknown prince. she rarely finished either the plaint or the invocation, for there was generally some rhythmical difficulty that brought her poetic musings to a dead lock; but she began a great many verses, and spoiled several quires of paper with abortive sonnets, in which "stars" and "streamlets," "dreams" and "fountains," recurred with a frequency which was inimical to originality or variety of style. the poor lonely untaught child looked right and left for some anchorage on the blank sea of life, and could find nothing but floating masses of ocean verdure, that drifted her here and there at the wild will of all the winds of heaven. behind her there was a past that she dared not look back upon or remember; before her lay the unknown future, wrapped in mysterious shadow, grand by reason of its obscurity. she was eager to push onward, to pierce the solemn veil, to tear aside the misty curtain, to penetrate the innermost chamber of the temple. late in the night, when the lights of conventford had died out under the starlit sky, the girl lay awake, sometimes looking up at those mystical stars, and thinking of the future; but never once, in any dream or reverie, in any fantastic vision built out of the stories she loved, did the homely image of the graybridge surgeon find a place. george gilbert thought of her, and wondered about her, as he rode brown molly in the winding midlandshire lanes, where the brown hedge-rows were budding, and the whitethorn bursting into blossom. he thought of her by day and by night, and was angry with himself for so thinking; and then began straightway to consider when he could, with any show of grace, present himself once more before mr. raymond's gothic porch at conventford. chapter vii. on the bridge. while george gilbert was thinking of isabel sleaford's pale face and black eyes; while, in his long rides to and fro among the cottages of his parish patients, he solemnly debated as to whether he ought to call upon mr. raymond when next he went to conventford, or whether he ought to go to conventford for the express purpose of paying his respects to mr. raymond,--the hand of fate turned the wavering balance; and the makeweight which she threw into the scale was no heavier than the ordinary half-ounce of original composition which government undertakes to convey, not exactly from indus to the pole, but from the land's end to the highlands, for the small charge of a penny. while george gilbert hesitated and doubted, and argued and debated with himself, after the manner of every prudent home-bred young man who begins to think that he loves well, and sadly fears that he may not love wisely,--destiny, under the form of a friend, gave him a push, and he went souse over head and ears into the roaring ocean, and there was nothing left for him but to swim as best he might towards the undiscovered shore upon the other side. the letter from sigismund was dated oakbank, conventford, may rd, . "dear george," wrote the author of "the brand upon the shoulder-blade," "i'm down here for a few days with my uncle charles; and we've arranged a picnic in lord hurstonleigh's grounds, and we want you to join us. so, if your patients are not the most troublesome people in the world, you can give yourself a holiday, and meet us on wednesday morning, at twelve, if fine, at the waverly road lodge-gate to hurstonleigh park. mrs. pidgers--pidgers is my uncle's housekeeper; a regular old dear, and _such_ a hand at pie-crusts!--is going to pack up a basket,--and i know what pidgers's baskets are,--and we shall bring plenty of sparkling, because, when my uncle does this sort of thing, he _does_ do it; and we're to drink tea at one of lord hurstonleigh's model cottages, in his model village, with a model old woman, who's had all manner of prizes for the tidiest dust-holes, and the whitest hearth-stones, and the neatest knife-boards, and all that kind of thing; and we're going to make a regular holiday of it; and i shall forget that there's such a creature as 'the demon of the galleys' in the world, and that i'm a number behind with him,--which i am,--and the artist is waiting for a subject for his next cut. "the orphans are coming, of course, and miss sleaford; and, oh, by the bye, _i_ want you to tell me all about poisoning by strychnine, because i think i shall do a case or two in 'the d. of the g.' "twelve o'clock, sharp time, remember! we come in a fly. you can leave your horse at waverly.--yours, s.s." * * * * * yes; fate, impatient perhaps of any wavering of the balance in so insignificant a matter as george gilbert's destiny, threw this penny-post letter into the scale, and, lo! it was turned. the young man read the letter over and over again, till it was crumpled and soiled with much unfolding and refolding, and taking out of, and putting back into, his waistcoat-pocket. a picnic! a picnic in the hurstonleigh grounds, with isabel sleaford! other people were to be of the party; but george gilbert scarcely remembered that. he saw himself, with isabel by his side, wandering along the winding pathways, straying away into mysterious arcades of verdure, where the low branches of the trees would meet above their heads, and shut them in from all the world. he fancied himself talking to mr. sleaford's daughter as he never had talked, nor was ever likely to talk, with any voice audible to mortal ears; he laid out and arranged that day as we are apt to arrange the days that are to come, and which--heaven help our folly and presumption!--- are so different when they do come from the dreams we have dreamed about them. mr. gilbert lived that may holiday over and over again between the monday afternoon on which he received sigismund's letter, and the appointed wednesday morning. he lay awake at night, when his day's work was done, thinking of isabel, and what she would say to him, and how she would look at him, until those fancied words and looks thrilled him to the heart's core, and he was deluded by the thought that it was all a settled thing, and that his love was returned. his love! did he love her, then, already--this pale-faced young person, whom he had only seen twice; who might be a florence nightingale, or a madame de laffarge, for all that he knew either one way or the other? yes, he loved her; the wondrous flower that never yet "thrived by the calendar" had burst into full bloom. he loved this young woman, and believed in her, and was ready to bring her to his simple home whenever she pleased to come thither; and had already pictured her sitting opposite to him in the little parlour, making weak tea for him in a britannia-metal teapot, sewing commonplace buttons upon his commonplace shirts, debating with mrs. jeffson as to whether there should be roast beef or boiled mutton for the two o'clock dinner, sitting up alone in that most uninteresting little parlour when the surgeon's patients were tiresome and insisted upon being ill in the night, waiting to preside over little suppers of cold meat and pickles, bread-and-cheese and celery. yes; george pictured miss sleaford the heroine of such a domestic story as this, and had no power to divine that there was any incongruity in the fancy; no fineness of ear to discover the dissonant interval between the heroine and the story. alas, poor izzie! and are all your fancies, all the pretty stories woven out of your novels, all your long day-dreams about marie antoinette and charlotte corday, edith dombey and ernest maltravers,--all your foolish pictures of a modern byron, fever-stricken at missolonghi, and tended by you; a new napoleon, exiled to st. helena, and followed, perhaps liberated, by you,--are they all come to this? are none of the wonderful things that happen to women ever to happen to you? are you never to be charlotte corday, and die for your country? are you never to wear ruby velvet, and diamonds in your hair, and to lure some recreant carker to a foreign hostelry, and there denounce and scorn him? are all the pages of the great book of life to be closed upon you--you, who seem to yourself predestined, by reason of so many dreams and fancies, to such a wonderful existence? is all the mystic cloudland of your dreams to collapse and shrivel into this,--a commonplace square-built cottage at graybridge-on-the-wayverne, with a commonplace country surgeon for your husband? george gilbert was waiting at the low white gate before the ivy-coloured lodge on the waverly road when the fly from conventford drove up, with sigismund smith sitting beside the coachman, and questioning him about a murder that had been committed in the neighbourhood ten years before; and mr. raymond, miss sleaford, and the orphans inside. the surgeon had been waiting at the gate for a quarter of an hour, and he had been up ever since six o'clock that morning, riding backwards and forwards amongst his patients, doing a day's work in a few hours. he had been home to dress, of course, and wore his newest and most fashionable clothes, and was, in fact, a living realization of one of the figures in a fly-blown fashion-plate for june , still exhibited in the window of a graybridge tailor. he wore a monthly rosebud in his button-hole, and he carried a bunch of spring flowers,--jonquils and polyanthuses, pink hawthorn, peonies, and sweet-brier,--which mr. jeffson had gathered and tied up, with a view to their presentation to isabel,--although there were better flowers in mr. raymond's garden, as george reminded his faithful steward. "don't thee tew thyself about that, master jarge," said the yorkshireman; "th' young wench 'll like the flowers if thoo givest 'em til her." of course it never for a moment entered into mr jeffson's mind that his young master's attentions could be otherwise than welcome and agreeable to any woman living, least of all to a forlorn young damsel who was obliged to earn her bread amongst strangers. "i'd like to see miss sleaford, master jarge," mr. jeffson said, in an insinuating manner, as george gathered up the reins and patted brown molly's neck, preparatory to riding away from the low white gate of his domain. george blushed like the peonies that formed the centre of his nosegay. "i don't know why you should want to see miss sleaford any more than other girls, jeff," he said. "well, never you mind why, master jarge; i _should_ like to see her; i'd give a deal to see her." "then we'll try and manage it, jeff. we're to drink tea at hurstonleigh; and we shall be leaving there, i suppose, as soon as it's dark--between seven and eight o'clock, i dare say. you might ride the grey pony to waverly, and bring brown molly on to hurstonleigh, and stop at the alehouse--there's an alehouse, you know, though it _is_ a model village--until i'm ready to come home; and you can leave the horses with the ostler, you know, and stroll about the village,--and you're sure to find us." "yes, yes, master jarge; i'll manage it." so george was at his post a quarter of an hour before the fly drove up to the gate. he was there to open the door of the vehicle, and to give his hand to isabel when she alighted. he felt the touch of her fingers resting briefly on his arm, and trembled and blushed like a girl as he met the indifferent gaze of her great black eyes. nobody took any notice of his embarrassment. mr. raymond and his nephew were busy with the hampers that had been stowed under the seats of the fly, and the orphans were employed in watching their elders,--for to them the very cream of the picnic was in those baskets. there was a boy at the lodge who was ready to take the basket whithersoever mr. raymond should direct; so all was settled very quickly. the driver received his instructions respecting the return journey, and went rumbling off to hurstonleigh to refresh himself and his horse. the lad went on before the little party, with the baskets swinging on either side of him as he went; and in the bustle of these small arrangements george gilbert found courage to offer isabel his arm. she took it without hesitation, and sigismund placed himself on the other side of her. mr. raymond went on before with the orphans, who affected the neighbourhood of the baskets; and the three young people followed, walking slowly over the grass. isabel had put off her mourning. she had never had but one black dress, poor child; and that being worn out, she was fain to fall back upon her ordinary costume. if she had looked pretty in the garden at camberwell, with tumbled hair and a dingy dress, she looked beautiful to-day, in clean muslin, fresh and crisp, fluttering in the spring breezes as she walked, and with her hair smoothly banded under a broad-leaved straw hat. her face brightened with the brightness of the sunshine and the charm of the landscape; her step grew light and buoyant as she walked upon the springing turf. her eyes lit up by-and-by, when the little party came to a low iron gate, beyond which there was a grove, a winding woodland patch, and undulating glades, and craggy banks half hidden under foliage, and, in a deep cleft below, a brawling waterfall for ever rushing over moss-grown rockwork, and winding far away to meet the river. "oh, how beautiful it is!" cried isabel; "how beautiful!" she was a cockney, poor child, and had spent the best part of her life amidst the suburban districts of camberwell and peckham. all this midlandshire beauty burst upon her like a sudden revelation of paradise. could the garden of eden have been more beautiful than this woodland grove?--where the ground was purple with wild hyacinths that grew under beeches and oaks centuries old; where the sunlight and shadows flickered on the mossy pathways; where the guttural warble of the blackbirds made perpetual music in the air. george looked wonderingly at the girl's rapt countenance, her parted lips, that were faintly tremulous with the force of her emotion. "i did not think there could be any place in england so beautiful," she said by-and-by, when george disturbed her with some trite remark upon the scene. "i thought it was only in italy and in greece, and those sort of places--where childe harold went--that it was beautiful like this. it makes one feel as if one could never go back to the world again, doesn't it?" she asked naïvely. george was fain to confess that, although the grove was very beautiful, it inspired him with no desire to turn hermit, and take up his abode therein. but isabel hardly heard what he said to her. she was looking away into mysterious vistas of light and shadow, and thinking that in such a spot as this the hero of a woman's life might appear in all his shining glory. if she could meet him now, this wonderful unknown being--the childe harold, the lara, of her life! what if it was to be so? what if she was to meet him now, and the story was appointed to begin to-day,--this very day,--and all her life henceforth was to be changed? the day was like the beginning of a story, somehow, inasmuch as it was unlike the other days of her life. she had thought of the holiday, and dreamt about it even more foolishly than george had done; for there had been some foundation for the young man's visions, while hers had been altogether baseless. what if lord hurstonleigh should happen to be strolling in his grove, and should see her and rescue her from death by drowning, or a mad bull, or something of that sort, and thereupon fall in love with her? nothing was more life-like or likely, according to izzie's experience of three-volume novels. unhappily she discovered from mr. raymond that lord hurstonleigh was an elderly married man, and was, moreover, resident in the south of france; so _that_ bright dream was speedily shattered. but there is no point of the compass from which a hero may not come. there was hope yet; there was hope that this bright spring-day might not close as so many days had closed upon the same dull record, the same empty page. mr. raymond was in his highest spirits to-day. he liked to be with young people, and was younger than the youngest of them in his fresh enjoyment of all that is bright and beautiful upon earth. he devoted himself chiefly to the society of his orphan _protégées_, and contrived to impart a good deal of information to them in a pleasant easy-going manner, that took the bitterness out of those pierian waters, for which the orphans had very small affection. they were stupid and unimpressionable; but, then, were they not the children of that unhappy consumptive niece of his, who had acquired, by reason of her many troubles, a kind of divine right to become a burden upon happy people? "if she had left me such an orphan as that girl isabel, i would have thanked her kindly for dying," mr. raymond mused "that girl has mental imitation,--the highest and rarest faculty of the human brain,--ideality, and comparison. what could i not make of such a girl as that? and yet--" mr. raymond only finished the sentence with a sigh. he was thinking that, after all, these bright faculties might not be the best gifts for a woman. it would have been better, perhaps, for isabel to have possessed the organ of pudding-making and stocking-darning, if those useful accomplishments are represented by an organ. the kindly phrenologist was thinking that perhaps the highest fate life held for that pale girl with the yellow tinge in her eyes was to share the home of a simple-hearted country surgeon, and rear his children to be honest men and virtuous women. "i suppose that _is_ the best," mr. raymond said to himself. he had dismissed the orphans now, and had sent them on to walk with sigismund smith, who kindly related to them the story of "lilian the deserted," with such suppressions and emendations as rendered the romance suitable to their tender years. the philosopher of conventford had got rid of the orphans, and was strolling by himself in those delicious glades, swinging his stick as he went, and throwing up his head every now and then to scent all the freshness of the warm spring air. "poor little orphan child!" he mused, "will anybody ever fathom her fancies or understand her dreams? will she marry that good, sheepish country surgeon, who has fallen in love with her? he can give her a home and a shelter; and she seems such a poor friendless little creature, just the sort of girl to get into some kind of mischief if she were left to herself. perhaps it's about the best thing that could happen to her. i should like to have fancied a brighter fate for her, a life with more colour in it. she's so pretty--_so_ pretty; and when she talks, and her face lights up, a sort of picture comes into my mind of what she would be in a great saloon, with clusters of lights about her, and masses of shimmering colour, making a gorgeous background for her pale young beauty; and brilliant men and women clustering round her, to hear her talk and see her smile. i can see her like this; and then, when i remember what her life is likely to be, i begin to feel sorry for her, just as if she were some fair young nun, foredoomed to be buried alive by-and-by. sometimes i have had a fancy that if _he_ were to come home and see her--but that's an old busybody's dream. when did a matchmaker ever create anything but matrimonial confusion and misery? i dare say beatrice kept her word, and _did_ make benedick wretched. no; miss sleaford must marry whom she may, and be happy or miserable, according to the doctrine of averages; and as for _him_--" mr. raymond stopped; and seeing the rest of the party happily engaged in gathering hyacinths under the low branches of the trees, he seated himself upon a clump of fallen timber, and took a book out of his pocket. it was a book that had been sent by post, for the paper wrapper was still about it. it was a neat little volume, bound in glistening green cloth, with uncut edges, and the gilt-letter title on the back of the volume set forth that the book contained "an alien's dreams." an alien's dreams could be nothing but poetry; and as the name of the poet was not printed under the title, it was perhaps only natural that mr. raymond should, not open the book immediately, but should sit turning and twisting the volume about in his hands, and looking at it with a contemptuous expression of countenance. "an alien!" he exclaimed; "why, in the name of all the affectations of the present day, should a young man with fifteen thousand a year, and one of the finest estates in midlandshire, call himself an alien? 'an alien's dreams'--and such dreams! i had a look at them this morning, without cutting the leaves. it's always a mistake to cut the leaves of young people's poetry. such dreams! surely no alien could have been afflicted with anything like them, unless he was perpetually eating heavy suppers of underdone pork, or drinking bad wine, or neglecting the ventilation of his bedroom. imperfect ventilation has a good deal to do with it, i dare say. to think that roland lansdell should write such stuff--such a clever young man as he is, too--such a generous-hearted, high-minded young fellow, who might be--" mr. raymond opened the volume in a very gingerly fashion, almost as if he expected something unpleasant might crawl out of it, and looked in a sideways manner between the leaves, muttering the first line or so of a poem, and then skipping on to another, and giving utterance to every species of contemptuous ejaculation between whiles. "imogen!" he exclaimed; "'to imogen!' as if anybody was ever called imogen out of shakespeare's play and monk lewis's ballad! 'to imogen:' 'do you ever think of me, proud and cruel imogen, as i think, ah! sadly think, of thee-- when the shadows darken on the misty lea, imogen, and the low light dies behind the sea?' 'broken!' 'shattered!' 'blighted!' lively titles to tempt the general reader! here's a nice sort of thing: 'like an actor in a play, like a phantom in a dream, like a lost boat left to stray rudderless adown the stream,-- this is what my life has grown, ida lee, since thy false heart left me lone, ida lee. and i wonder sometimes when the laugh is loud, and i wonder at the faces of the crowd, and the strange fantastic measures that they tread, till i think at last i must be dead-- till i half believe that i am dead.' and to think that roland lansdell should waste his time in writing this sort of thing! and here's his letter, poor boy!--his long rambling letter,--in which he tells me how he wrote the verses, and how writing them was a kind of consolation to him, a safety-valve for so much passionate anger against a world that doesn't exactly harmonize with the utopian fancies of a young man with fifteen thousand a year and nothing to do. if some rightful heir would turn up, in the person of one of roland's gamekeepers, now, and denounce my young friend as a wrongful heir, and turn him out of doors bag and baggage, and with very little bag and baggage, after the manner of those delightful melodramas which hold the mirror up to nature so exactly, what a blessing it would be for the author of 'an alien's dreams!' if he could only find himself without a sixpence in the world, what a noble young soldier in the great battle of life, what a triumphant hero, he might be! but as it is, he is nothing better than a colonel of militia, with a fine uniform, and a long sword that is only meant for show. my poor roland! my poor roland!" mr. raymond murmured sadly, as he dropped the little volume back into his pocket; "i am so sorry that you too should be infected with the noxious disease of our time, the fatal cynicism that transforms youth into a malady for which age is the only cure." but he had no time to waste upon any regretful musings about mr roland lansdell, sole master of lansdell priory, one of the finest seats in midlandshire, and who was just now wandering somewhere in greece, upon a byronic kind of tour that had lasted upwards of six months, and was likely to last much longer. it was nearly three o'clock now, and high time for the opening of the hampers, mr. raymond declared, when he rejoined the rest of the party, much to the delight of the orphans, who were always hungry, and who ate so much, and yet remained so pale and skeleton-like of aspect, that they presented a pair of perpetual phenomena to the eye of the physiologist. the baskets had been carried to a little ivy-sheltered arbour, perched high above the waterfall; and here mr. raymond unpacked them, bringing out his treasures one after another; first a tongue, then a pair of fowls, a packet of anchovy sandwiches, a great poundcake (at sight of which the eyes of the orphans glistened), delicate caprices in the way of pastry, semi-transparent biscuits, and a little block of stilton cheese, to say nothing of sundry bottles of madeira and sparkling burgundy. perhaps there never was a merrier party. to eat cold chicken and drink sparkling burgundy in the open air on a bright may afternoon is always an exhilarating kind of thing, though the scene of your picnic may be the bleakest of the sussex downs, or the dreariest of the yorkshire wolds; but to drink the sparkling wine in that little arbour of hurstonleigh, with the brawling of the waterfall keeping time to your laughter, the shadows of patriarchal oaks sheltering you from all the outer world, is the very acme of bliss in the way of a picnic. and then mr. raymond's companions were so young! it was so easy for them to leave all the past on the threshold of that lovely grove, and to narrow their lives into the life of that one bright day. even isabel forgot that she had a destiny, and consented to be happy in a simple girlish way, without a thought of the prince who was so long coming. it may be that the sparkling burgundy had something to do with george gilbert's enthusiasm; but, by and bye, after the débris of the dinner had been cleared away, and the little party lingered round the rustic table, talking with that expansion of thought and eloquence of language which is so apt to result from the consumption of effervescing wines in the open air, the young surgeon thought that all the earth could scarcely hold a more lovely creature than the girl who sat opposite to him, with her head resting against the rustic wood-work of the arbour, and her hat lying on her knee. she did not say very much, in comparison with sigismund and mr. raymond, who were neither of them indifferent hands at talking; but when she spoke, there was generally something vague and dreamy in her words,--something that set george wondering about her anew, and made him admire her more than ever. he forgot all the dictates of prudence now; he was false to all the grand doctrines of young manhood; he only remembered that isabel sleaford was the loveliest creature upon earth; he only knew that he loved her, and that his love, like all true love, was mingled with modest doubtfulness of his own merits, and exaggerated deference for hers. he loved her as purely and truly as if he had been able to express his passion in the noblest poem ever written; but not being able to express it, his love and himself seemed alike tame and commonplace. i must not dwell too long on this picnic, though it seemed half a lifetime to george gilbert, for he walked with isabel through the lanes between hurstonleigh grove and hurstonleigh village, and he loitered with her in the little churchyard at hurstonleigh, and stood upon the bridge beneath which the wayverne crept like a riband of silver, winding in and out among the rushes. he lingered there by her side while the orphans and sigismund and mr. raymond were getting tea ready at the model cottage, and putting the model old woman's wits into such a state of "flustrification," as she herself expressed it, that she could scarcely hold the tea-kettle, and was in imminent peril of breaking one of her best "chaney" saucers, produced from a corner cupboard in honour of her friend and patron, charles raymond. george loitered on the little stone bridge with isabel, and somehow or other, still emboldened by the sparkling burgundy, his passion all of a sudden found a voice, and he told her that he loved her, and that his highest hope upon earth was the hope of winning her for his wife. i suppose that simple little story must be a pretty story, in its way; for when a woman hears it for the first time, she is apt to feel kindly disposed to the person who recites it, however poorly or tamely he may tell his tale. isabel listened with a most delightful complacency; not because she reciprocated george's affection for her, but because this was the first little bit of romance in her life, and she felt that the story was beginning all at once, and that she was going to be a heroine. she felt this; and with this a kind of grateful liking for the young man at her side, through whose agency all these pleasant feelings came to her. and all this time george was pleading with her, and arguing, from her blushes and her silence, that his suit was not hopeless. emboldened by the girl's tacit encouragement, he grew more and more eloquent, and went on to tell her how he had loved her from the first; yes, from that first summer's afternoon--when he had seen her sitting under the pear-trees in the old-fashioned garden, with the low yellow light behind her. "of course i didn't know then that i loved you, isabel--oh, may i call you isabel? it is such a pretty name. i have written it over and over and over on the leaves of a blotting-book at home, very often without knowing that i was writing it. i only thought at first that i admired you, because you are so beautiful, and so different from other beautiful women; and then, when i was always thinking of you, and wondering about you, i wouldn't believe that it was because i loved you. it is only to-day--this dear, happy day--that has made me understand what i have felt all along; and now i know that i have loved you from the first, isabel, dear isabel, from the very first." all this was quite as it should be. isabel's heart fluttered like the wings of a young bird that essays its first flight. "this is what it is to be a heroine," she thought, as she looked down at the coloured pebbles, the floating river weeds, under the clear rippling water; and yet knew all the time, by virtue of feminine second-sight, that george gilbert was gazing at her and adoring her. she didn't like _him_, but she liked him to be there talking to her. the words she heard for the first time were delightful to her because of their novelty, but they took no charm from the lips that spoke them. any other good-looking, respectably-dressed young man would have been quite as much to her as george gilbert was. but then she did not know this. it was so very easy for her to mistake her pleasure in the "situation;" the rustic bridge, the rippling water, the bright spring twilight, even the faint influence of that one glass of sparkling burgundy, and, above all, the sensation of being a heroine for the first time in her life--it was so terribly easy to mistake all these for that which she did not feel,--a regard for george gilbert. while the young man was still pleading, while she was still listening to him, and blushing and glancing shyly at him out of those wonderful tawny-coloured eyes, which seemed black just now under the shadow of their drooping lashes, sigismund and the orphans appeared at the distant gate of the churchyard whooping and hallooing, to announce that the tea was all ready. "oh, isabel!" cried george, "they are coming, and it maybe ever so long before i see you again alone. isabel, dear isabel! do tell me that you will make me happy--tell me that you will be my wife!" he did not ask her if she loved him; he was too much in love with her--too entirely impressed with her grace and beauty, and his own inferiority--to tempt his fate by such a question. if she would marry him, and let him love her, and by-and-by reward his devotion by loving him a little, surely that would be enough to satisfy his most presumptuous wishes. "dear isabel, you will marry me, won't you? you can't mean to say no,--you would have said it before now. you would not be so cruel as to let me hope, even for a minute, if you meant to disappoint me." "i have known you--you have known me--such a short time," the girl murmured. "but long enough to love you with a love that will last all my life," george answered eagerly. "i shall have no thought except to make you happy, isabel. i know that you are so beautiful that you ought to marry a very different fellow from me,--a man who could give you a grand house, and carriages and horses, and all that sort of thing; but he could never love you better than i, and he mightn't love you as well, perhaps; and i'll work for you, isabel, as no man ever worked before. you shall never know what poverty is, darling, if you will be my wife." "i shouldn't mind being poor," isabel answered, dreamily. she was thinking that walter gay had been poor, and that the chief romance of florence's life had been the quiet wedding in the little city church, and the long sea voyage with her young husband. this sort of poverty was almost as nice as poor edith's miserable wealth, with diamonds flung about and trampled upon, and ruby velvet for every-day wear. "i shouldn't mind so much being poor," repeated the girl; for she thought, if she didn't marry a duke or a dombey, it would be at least something to experience the sentimental phase of poverty. george gilbert seized upon the words. "ah, then, you will marry me, dearest isabel? you will marry me, my own darling, my beautiful wife?" he was almost startled by the intensity of his own feelings, as he bent down and kissed the little ungloved hand lying on the moss-grown stonework of the bridge. "oh, isabel, if you could only know how happy you have made me! if you could only know--" she looked at him with a startled expression in her face. was it all settled, then, so suddenly--with so little consideration? yes, it was all settled; she was beloved with one of those passions that endure for a lifetime. george had said something to that effect. the story had begun, and she was a heroine. "good gracious me!" cried mr. smith, as he bounded on the parapet of the little bridge, and disported himself there in the character of an amateur blondin; "if the model old woman who has had so many prizes--we've been looking at her diplomas, framed and glazed, in a parlour that i couldn't have believed to exist out of "lilian the deserted" (who begins life as the cottager's daughter, you know, and elopes with the squire in top-boots out of a diamond-paned window--and i've been trying the model old woman's windows, and lilian couldn't have done it),--but i was about to remark, that if the old woman hasn't had a prize for a model temper, you two will catch it for keeping the tea waiting. why, izzie, what's the matter? you and george are both looking as spooney as--is it, eh?--yes, it is: isn't it? hooray! didn't i see it from the first?" cried mr. smith, striking an attitude upon the balustrade, and pointing down to the two blushing faces with a triumphant finger. "when george asked me for your letter, izzie,--the little bit of a letter you wrote me when you left camberwell,--didn't i see him fold it up as gingerly as if it had been a fifty-pound note and slip it into his waistcoat-pocket, and then try to look as if he hadn't done it? do you think i wasn't fly, then? a pretty knowledge of human nature i should have, if i couldn't see through that. the creator of octavio montefiasco, the demon of the galleys, flatters himself that he understands the obscurest diagnostic of the complaint commonly designated 'spoons.' don't be downhearted, george," exclaimed sigismund, jumping suddenly off the parapet of the bridge, and extending his hand to his friend. "accept the congratulations of one who, with a heart long ber-lighted by the ber-lasting in-fer-luence of ker-rime, can-er yet-er feel a generous ther-rob in unison with virr-tue." after this they all left the bridge, and went straight to the little cottage, where mr. raymond had been holding a species of yankee levée, for the reception of the model villagers, every one of whom knew him, and required his advice on some knotty point of law, medicine, or domestic economy. the tea was laid upon a little round table, close to the window, in the full light of the low evening sun. isabel sat with her back to that low western light, and george sat next to her, staring at her in a silent rapture, and wondering at himself for his own temerity in having asked her to be his wife. that tiresome sigismund called mr. raymond aside, before sitting down to tea, on the pretence of showing him a highly-coloured representation of joseph and his brethren, with a strong family likeness between the brethren; and told him in a loud whisper what had happened on the little bridge. so it was scarcely wonderful that poor george and isabel took their tea in silence, and were rather awkward in the handling of their teacups. but they were spared any further congratulations from sigismund, as that young gentleman found it was as much as he could do to hold his own against the orphans in the demolition of the poundcake, to say nothing of a lump of honeycomb which the model old woman produced for the delectation of the visitors. the twilight deepened presently, and the stars began to glimmer faintly in an opal-tinted sky. mr. raymond, sigismund, and the orphans, employed themselves in packing the baskets with the knives, plates, and glasses which had been used for the picnic. the fly was to pick them all up at the cottage. isabel stood in the little doorway, looking dreamily out at the village, the dim lights twinkling in the casement windows, the lazy cattle standing in the pond upon the green, and a man holding a couple of horses before the door of the little inn. "that man with the horses is jeffson, my father's gardener; i scarcely like to call him a servant, for he is a kind of connection of my poor mother's family," george said, with a little confusion; for he thought that perhaps miss sleaford's pride might take alarm at the idea of any such kindred between her future husband and his servant; "and he is _such_ a good fellow! and what do you think, isabel?" the young man added, dropping his voice to a whisper; "poor jeffson has come all the way from gray bridge on purpose to see you, because he has heard me say that you are very beautiful; and i think he guessed ever so long ago that i had fallen in love with you. would you have any objection to walk over yonder and see him, isabel, or shall i call him here?" "i'll go to him, if you like; i should like very much to see him," the girl answered. she took the arm george offered her. of course it was only right that she should take his arm. it was all a settled thing now. "miss sleaford has come to see you, jeff," the young man said, when they came to where the yorkshireman was standing. poor jeff had very little to say upon this rather trying occasion. he took off his hat, and stood bareheaded, smiling and blushing--as george spoke of him and praised him--yet all the while keeping a sharp watch upon isabel's face. he could see that pale girlish face very well in the evening light, for miss sleaford had left her hat in the cottage, and stood bareheaded, with her face turned towards the west, while george rambled on about jeff and his old school-days, when jeff and he had been such friends and playfellows. but the fly from conventford came rumbling out of the inn-yard as they stood there, and this was a signal for isabel to hurry back to the cottage. she held out her hand to mr. jeffson as she wished him good night, and then went back, still attended by george, who handed her into the fly presently, and wished her good night in a very commonplace manner; for he was a young man whose feelings hid themselves from indifferent eyes, and, indeed, only appeared under the influence of extreme emotion. chapter viii. about poor joe tillet's young wife. george went back to the seven stars, where mr. jeffson was waiting with the horses. he went back, after watching the open vehicle drive away; he went back with his happiness which was so new and strange, he thought a fresh life was to begin for him from this day, and would have almost expected to find the diseases of his patients miraculously cured, and a new phase of existence opening for them as well as for himself. he was going to be married; he was going to have this beautiful young creature for his wife. he thought of her; and the image of this pale-faced girl, sitting in the little parlour at graybridge, waiting to receive him when he came home from his patients, was such an overpowering vision, that his brain reeled as he contemplated it. was it true--could it be true--that all this inexpressible happiness was to be his? by-and-by, when he was riding brown molly slowly along the shadowy lanes that lie between hurstonleigh and waverly, his silent bliss overflowed his heart and sought to utter itself in words. william jeffson had always been george's confidant; why should he not be so now, when the young man had such need of some friendly ear to which to impart his happiness? somehow or other, the yorkshireman did not seem so eager as usual to take his part in his master's pleasure; he had seemed to hang back a little; for, under ordinary circumstances, george would have had no occasion to break the ice. but to-night mr. jeffson seemed bent on keeping silence, and george was obliged to hazard a preliminary question. "what do you think of her, jeff?" he asked. "what do i think to who, master jarge?" demanded the yorkshireman, in his simple vernacular. "why, isa--miss sleaford, of course," answered george, rather indignantly: was there any other woman in the world whom he could possibly think of or speak of to-night? mr. jeffson was silent for some moments, as if the question related to so profound a subject that he had to descend into the farthest depths of his mind before he could answer it. he was silent; and the slow trampling of the horses' hoofs along the lane, and the twittering of some dissipated bird far away in the dim woodland, were the only sounds that broke the evening stillness. "she's rare an' pretty, master jarge," the philosopher said at last, in a very thoughtful tone; "i a'most think i never see any one so pretty; though it isn't that high-coloured sort of prettiness they think so much to in graybridge. she's still and white, somehow, like the images in york minster; and her eyes seem far away as you look at her. yes, she is rare an' pretty." "i've told her how i love her; and--and you like her, jeff, don't you?" asked george, in a rapture of happiness that was stronger than his native shyness. "you like her, and she likes you, jeff, and will like you better as she comes to know you more. and she's going to be my wife, old jeff!" the young man's voice grew tremulous as he made this grand announcement. whatever enthusiasm there was in his nature seemed concentrated in the emotions of this one day. he had loved for the first time, and declared his love. his true and constant heart, that wondrous aloe which was to bear a single flower, had burst into sudden blossom, and all the vigour of the root was in that one bright bloom. the aloe-flower might bloom steadily on for ever, or might fade and die; but it could never know a second blossoming. "she's going to be my wife, jeff," he repeated, as if to say these words was in itself to taste an overpowering happiness. but william jeffson seemed very stupid to-night. his conversational powers appeared to have undergone a kind of paralysis. he spoke slowly, and made long pauses every now and then. "you're going to marry her, master jarge?" he said. "yes, jeff. i love her better than any living creature in this world--better than the world itself, or my own life; for i think, if she had answered me differently to-day, i should have died. why, you're not surprised, are you, jeff? i thought you guessed at the very first--before i knew it myself even--that i was in love with isabel. isabel! isabel! what a pretty name! it sounds like a flower, doesn't it?" "no; i'm not surprised, master jarge," the yorkshireman said, thoughtfully. "i knew you was in love with miss sleaford, regular fond about her, you know; but i didn't think--i didn't think--as you'd ask her to marry you so soon." "but why not, jeff?" cried the young man. "what should i wait for? i couldn't love her better than i do if i knew her for years and years, and every year were to make her brighter and lovelier than she is now. i've got a home to bring her to, and i'll work for her--i'll work for her as no man ever worked before to make a happy home for his wife." he struck out his arm, with his fist clenched, as if he thought that the highest round on the ladder of fortune was to be reached by any young surgeon who had the desire to climb. "why shouldn't i marry at once, jeff?" he demanded, with some touch of indignation. "i can give my wife as good a home as that from which i shall take her." "it isn't that as i was thinkin' of, master jarge," william jeffson answered, growing slower of speech and graver of tone with every word he spoke; "it isn't that. but, you see, you know so little of miss sleaford; you know naught but that she's different, somehow, to all the other lasses you've seen, and that she seems to take your fancy like, because of that. you know naught about her, master jarge; and what's still worse--ever so much worse than that--you don't know that she loves you. you don't know that, master jarge. if you was only sure of _that_, the rest wouldn't matter so much; for there's scarcely anything in this world as true love can't do; and a woman that loves truly can't be aught but a good woman at heart. i see miss sleaford when you was standin' talkin' by the seven stars, master jarge, and there wasn't any look in her face as if she knew what you was sayin', or thought about it; but her eyes looked ever so far away like: and though there was a kind of light in her face, it didn't seem as if it had anything to do with you. and, lor' bless your heart, master jarge, you should have seen my tilly's face when she come up the airey steps in the square where she was head-housemaid, and see me come up to london on purpose to surprise her. why, it was all of a shine like with smiles and brightness, at the sight o' _me_, master jarge; and i'm sure _i'm_ no great shakes to look at," added mr. jeffson, in a deprecating tone. the reins, lying loose upon brown molly's neck, shook with the sudden trembling of the hand that held them. george gilbert was seized with a kind of panic as he listened to his mentor's discourse. he had not presumed to solicit any confession of love from isabel sleaford; he had thought himself more than blest, inasmuch as she had promised to become his wife; yet he was absolutely terror-stricken at mr. jeffson's humiliating suggestion, and was withal very angry at his old playmate's insolence. "you mean that she doesn't love me?" he said sharply. "oh, master jarge, to be right down truthful with you, that's just what i do mean. she _doan't_ love you; as sure as i've seen true love lookin' out o' my tilly's face, i see somethin' that wasn't love lookin' out o' hearn to-night. i see just such a look in miss sleaford's eyes as i see once in a pretty young creetur that married a mate o' mine down home; a young man as had got a little bit o' land and cottage, and everything comfortable, and it wasn't the young creetur herself that was in favour o' marryin' him; but it was her friends that worried and bothered her till she said yes. she was a poor foolish young thing, that didn't seem to have the strength to say no. and i was at joe tillet's weddin',--his name was joe tillet,--and i see the pretty young creetur standin', like as i saw miss sleaford to-night, close alongside her husband while he was talkin', and lookin' prettier nor ever in her straw bonnet and white ribands; but her eyes seemed to fix themselves on somethin' far away like; and when her husband turned of a sudden and spoke to her, she started, like as if she was waked out of a dream. i never forgot that look o' hearn, master jarge; and i saw the same kind o' look to-night." "what nonsense you're talking, jeff!" george answered, with considerable impatience. "i dare say your friend and his wife were very happy?" "no, master jarge, they wasn't. and that's just the very thing that makes me remember the pretty young creetur's look that summer's day, as she stood, dresssed out in her wedding-clothes, by her loving husband's side. he was very fond of her, and for a good two year or so he seemed very happy, and was allus tellin' his friends he'd got the best wife in the three ridin's, and the quietest and most industrious; but she seemed to pine like; and by-and-by there was a young soldier came home that had been to the indies, and that was her first cousin, and had lived neighbours with her family when she was a bit of a girl. i won't tell you the story, master jarge; for it isn't the pleasantest kind o' thing to tell, nor yet to hear; but the end of it was, my poor mate joe was found one summer's morning--just such a day as that when he was married--hanging dead behind the door of one of his barns; and as for the poor wretched young creetur as had caused his death, nobody ever knew what came of her. and yet," concluded mr. jeffson, in a meditative tone, "i've heard that poor chap joe tell me so confident that his wife would get to love him dearly by-and-by, because he loved her so true and dear." george gilbert, made no answer to all this. he rode on slowly, with his head drooping. the yorkshireman kept an anxious watch upon his master; he could not see the expression of the young man's face, but he could see by his attitude that the story of joseph tillet's misadventure had not been without a depressing influence upon him. "si'thee noo. master jarge," said william jeffson, laying his hand upon the surgeon's wrist, and speaking in a voice that was almost solemn, "marryin' a pretty girl seems no more than gatherin' a wild rose out of the hedge to some men, they do it so light and careless-like,--just because the flower looks pretty where it's growin'. i'd known my tilly six year before i asked her to be my wife, master jarge; and it was only because she'd been true and faithful to me all that time, and because i'd never, look at her when i might, seen anything but love in her face, that i ventured at last to say to mysen, 'william jeffson, there's a lass that'll make thee a true wife.' doan't be in a hurry, master jarge; doan't! take the advice of a poor ignorant chap as has one great advantage over all your learnin', for he's lived double your time in the world. doan't be in a hurry. if miss sleaford loves ye true to-night, she'll love ye ten times truer this night twelvemonths, and truer still this time ten years. if she _doan't_ love you, master jarge, keep clear of her as you would of a venomous serpent; for she'll bring you worse harm than ever that could do, if it stung you to the heart, and made an end of you at once. i see joe tillet lyin' dead after the inquest that was held upon him, master jarge; and the thought that the poor desperate creeter had killed hisself warn't so bad to me as the sight of the suffering on his poor dead face,--the suffering that he'd borne nigh upon two year, master jarge, _and had held his tongue about_." chapter ix. miss sleaford's engagement. isabel sleaford was "engaged." she remembered this when she woke on the morning after that pleasant day in hurstonleigh grove, and that henceforward there existed a person who was bound to be miserable because of her. she thought this as she stood before the modest looking-glass, rolling the long plaits of hair into a great knot, that seemed too heavy for her head. her life was all settled. she was not to be a great poetess or an actress. the tragic mantle of the siddons might have descended on her young shoulders, but she was never to display its gloomy folds on any mortal stage. she was not to be anything great. she was only to be a country surgeon's wife. it was very commonplace, perhaps; and yet this lonely girl--this untaught and unfriended creature--felt some little pride in her new position. after all, she had read many novels in which the story was very little more than this,--three volumes of simple love-making, and a quiet wedding at the end of the chapter. she was not to be an edith dombey or a jane eyre. oh, to have been jane eyre, and to roam away on the cold moorland and starve,--wouldn't _that_ have been delicious! no, there was to be a very moderate portion of romance in her life; but still some romance. george gilbert would be very devoted, and would worship her always, of course. she gave her head a little toss as she thought that, at the worst, she could treat him as edith treated dombey, and enjoy herself that way; though she was doubtful how far edith dombey's style of treatment might answer without the ruby velvet, and diamond coronet, and other "properties" appertaining to the rôle. in the meanwhile, miss sleaford performed her duties as best she could, and instructed the orphans in a dreamy kind of way, breaking off in the middle of the preterperfect tense of a verb to promise them that they should come to spend a day with her when she was married, and neglecting their fingering of the overture to "masaniello" while she pondered on the colour of her wedding-dress. and how much did she think of george gilbert all this time? about as much as she would have thought of the pages who were to support the splendid burden of her trailing robes, if she had been about to be crowned queen of england. he was the bridegroom, the husband; a secondary character in the play of which she was the heroine. poor george's first love-letter came to her on the following day--a vague and rambling epistle, full of shadowy doubts and fears; haunted, as it were, by the phantom of the poor dead-and-gone joe tillet, and without any punctuation whatever: "but oh dearest ever dearest isabel for ever dear you will be to me if you cast me from you and i should go to america for life in graybridge would be worse than odious without you oh isabel if you do not love me i implore you for pity sake say so and end my misery i know i am not worthy of your love who are so beautiful and accomplished but oh the thought of giving you up is so bitter unless you yourself should wish it and oh there is no sacrifice on earth i would not make for you." the letter was certainly not as elegant a composition as isabel would have desired it to be; but then a love-letter is a love-letter, and this was the first miss sleaford had ever received. george's tone of mingled doubt and supplication was by no means displeasing to her. it was only right that he should be miserable: it was only proper that he should be tormented by all manner of apprehensions. they would have to quarrel by-and-by, and to bid each other an eternal farewell, and to burn each other's letters, and be reconciled again. the quietest story could not be made out without such legitimate incidents in the course of the three volumes. although isabel amused herself by planning her wedding-dress, and changed her mind very often as to the colour and material she had no idea of a speedy marriage. were there not three volumes of courtship to be gone through first? * * * * * sigismund went back to town after the picnic which had been planned for his gratification, and isabel was left quite alone with her pupils. she walked with them, and took her meals with them, and was with them all day; and it was only of a sunday that she saw much of mr. raymond. that gentleman was very kind to the affianced lovers. george gilbert rode over to conventford every alternate sunday, and dined with the family at oakbank. sometimes he went early enough to attend isabel and the orphans to church. mr. raymond himself was not a church-goer, but he sent his grand-nieces to perform their devotions, as he sent them to have their hair clipped by the hairdresser, or their teeth examined by the dentist. george plunged into the wildest extravagance in the way of waistcoats, in order to do honour to these happy sundays; and left off mourning for his father a month or so earlier than he had intended, in order to infuse variety into his costume. everything he wore used to look new on these sundays; and isabel, sitting opposite to him in the square pew would contemplate him thoughtfully when the sermon was dull, and wonder, rather regretfully, why his garments never wore themselves into folds, but always retained a hard angular look, as if they had been originally worn by a wooden figure, and had never got over that disadvantage. he wore a watch-chain that his father had given him,--a long chain that went round his neck, but which he artfully twisted and doubled into the semblance of a short one; and on this chain he hung a lucky sixpence and an old-fashioned silver vinaigrette; which trifles, when seen from a distance, looked almost like the gold charms which the officers stationed at conventford wore dangling on their waistcoats. and so the engagement dawdled on through all the bright summer months; and while the leaves were falling in the woods of midlandshire, george still entreating that the marriage might speedily take place, and isabel always deferring that ceremonial to some indefinite period. every alternate sunday the young man's horse appeared at mr. raymond's gate. he would have come every sunday, if he had dared, and indeed had been invited to do so by isabel's kind employer; but he had sensitive scruples about eating so much beef and mutton, and drinking so many cups of tea, for which he could make no adequate return to his hospitable entertainer. sometimes he brought a present for one of the orphans,--a work-box or a desk, fitted with scissors that wouldn't cut, and inkstands that wouldn't open (for there are no parkins and gotto in graybridge or its vicinity), or a marvellous cake, made by matilda jeffson. once he got up a little entertainment for his betrothed and her friends, and gave quite a dinner, with five sweets, and an elaborate dessert, and with the most plum-coloured of ports, and the brownest of sherries, procured specially from the cock at graybridge. but as the orphans, who alone did full justice to the entertainment, were afflicted with a bilious attack on the following day, the experiment was not repeated. but the dinner at graybridge was not without its good effect. isabel saw the house that was to be her home; and the future began to take a more palpable shape than it had worn hitherto. she looked at the little china ornaments on the mantel-piece, the jar of withered rose-leaves, mingled with faint odours of spices--the scent was very faint now, for the hands of george's dead mother had gathered the flowers. george took isabel through the little rooms, and showed her an old-fashioned work-table, with a rosewood box at the top, and a well of fluted silk, that had once been rose-coloured, underneath. "my mother used to sit at this table working, while she waited for my father; i've often heard him say so. you'll use the old work-box, won't you, izzie?" george asked, tenderly. he had grown accustomed to call her izzie now, and was familiar with her, and confided in her, as in a betrothed wife, whom no possible chance could alienate from him. he had ceased to regard her as a superior being, whom it was a privilege to know and worship. he loved her as truly as he had ever loved her; but not being of a poetical or sentimental nature, the brief access of romantic feeling which he had experienced on first falling in love speedily wore itself out, and the young man grew to contemplate his approaching marriage with perfect equanimity. he even took upon himself to lecture isabel, on sundry occasions, with regard to her love of novel-reading, her neglect of plain needlework, and her appalling ignorance on the subject of puddings. he turned over her leaves, and found her places in the hymn-book at church; he made her follow the progress of the lessons, with the aid of a church service printed in pale ink and a minute type; and he frowned at her sternly when he caught her eyes wandering to distant bonnets during the sermon. all the young man's old notions of masculine superiority returned now that he was familiar with miss sleaford; but all this while he loved her as only a good man can love, and supplicated all manner of blessings for her every night when he said his prayers. isabel sleaford improved very much in this matter-of-fact companionship, and in the exercise of her daily round of duty. she was no longer the sentimental young lady, whose best employment was to loll in a garden-chair reading novels, and who was wont to burst into sudden rhapsodies about george gordon lord byron and napoleon the first upon the very smallest provocation. she had tried george on both these subjects, and had found him entirely wanting in any special reverence for either of her pet heroes. talking with him on autumn sunday afternoons in the breezy meadows near conventford, with the orphans loitering behind or straggling on before, miss sleaford had tested her lover's conversational powers to the utmost; but as she found that he neither knew nor wished to know anything about edith dombey or ernest maltravers, and that he regarded the poems of byron and shelley as immoral and blasphemous compositions, whose very titles should be unknown to a well-conducted young woman, isabel was fain to hold her tongue about all the bright reveries of her girlhood, and to talk to mr. gilbert about what he did understand. he had read cooper's novels, and a few of lever's; and he had read sir walter scott and shakespeare, and was fully impressed with the idea that he could not over-estimate these latter writers; but when isabel began to talk about edgar ravenswood and lucy, with her face all lighted up with emotion, the young surgeon could only stare wonderingly at his betrothed. oh, if he had only been like edgar ravenswood! the poor, childish, dissatisfied heart was always wishing that he could be something different from what he was. perhaps during all that engagement the girl never once saw her lover really as he was. she dressed him up in her own fancies, and deluded herself by imaginary resemblances between him and the heroes in her books. if he was abrupt and disagreeable in his manner to her, he was rochester; and she was jane eyre, tender and submissive. if he was cold, he was dombey; and she feasted on her own pride, and scorned him, and made much of one of the orphans during an entire afternoon. if he was clumsy and stupid, he was rawdon crawley; and she patronized him, and laughed at him, and taunted him with little scraps of french with the albany-road accent, and played off all green-eyed becky's prettiest airs upon him. but in spite of all this the young man's sober common sense exercised a beneficial influence upon her; and by-and-by, when the three volumes of courtship had been prolonged to the uttermost, and the last inevitable chapter was close at hand, she had grown to think affectionately of her promised husband, and was determined to be very good and obedient to him when she became his wife. but for the pure and perfect love which makes marriage thrice holy,--the love which counts no sacrifice too great, no suffering too bitter,--the love which knows no change but death, and seems instinct with such divinity that death can be but its apotheosis,--such love as this had no place in isabel sleaford's heart. her books had given her some vague idea of this grand passion, and on comparing herself with lucy ashton and zuleika, with amy robsart and florence dombey and medora, she began to think that the poets and novelists were all in the wrong, and that there were no heroes or heroines upon this commonplace earth. she thought this, and she was content to sacrifice the foolish dreams of her girlhood, which were doubtless as impossible as they were beautiful. she was content to think that her lot in life was fixed, and that she was to be the wife of a good man, and the mistress of an old-fashioned house in one of the dullest towns in england. the time had slipped so quietly away since that spring twilight on the bridge at hurstonleigh, her engagement had been taken so much as a matter of course by every one about her, that no thought of withdrawal therefrom had ever entered into her mind. and then, again, why should she withdraw from the engagement? george loved her; and there was no one else who loved her. there was no wandering jamie to come home in the still gloaming and scare her with the sight of his sad reproachful face. if she was not george gilbert's wife, she would be nothing--a nursery-governess for ever and ever, teaching stupid orphans, and earning five-and-twenty pounds a year. when she thought of her desolate position, and of another subject which was most painful to her, she clung to george gilbert, and was grateful to him, and fancied that she loved him. the wedding-day came at last,--one bleak january morning, when conventford wore its barest and ugliest aspect; and mr. raymond gave his nursery-governess away, after the fashion of that simple protestant ceremonial, which is apt to seem tame and commonplace when compared with the solemn grandeur of a roman catholic marriage. he had given her the dress she wore, and the orphans had clubbed their pocket-money to buy their preceptress a bonnet as a surprise, which was a failure, after the usual manner of artfully-planned surprises. isabel sleaford pronounced the words that made her george gilbert's wife; and if she spoke them somewhat lightly, it was because there had been no one to teach her their solemn import. there was no taint of falsehood in her heart, no thought of revolt or disobedience in her mind; and when she came out of the vestry, leaning on her young husband's arm, there was a smile of quiet contentment on her face. "joe tillet's wife could never have smiled like that," thought george, as he looked at his bride. the life that lay before isabel was new; and, being little more than a child as yet, she thought that novelty must mean happiness. she was to have a house of her own, and servants, and an orchard and paddock, two horses, and a gig. she was to be called mrs. gilbert: was not her name so engraved upon the cards which george had ordered for her, in a morocco card-case, that smelt like new boots, and was difficult to open, as well as on those wedding-cards which the surgeon had distributed among his friends? george had ordered envelopes for these cards with his wife's maiden name engraved inside; but, to his surprise, the girl had implored him, ever so piteously, to counter-order them. "oh, don't have my name upon the envelopes, george," she said; "don't send my name to your friends; don't ever tell them what i was called before you married me." "but why not, izzie?" "because i hate my name," she answered, passionately. "i hate it; i hate it! i would have changed it if i could when--when--i first came here; but sigismund wouldn't let me come to his uncle's house in a false name. i hate my name; i hate and detest it." and then suddenly seeing wonderment and curiosity plainly expressed in her lover's face, the girl cried out that there was no meaning in what she had been saying, and that it was only her own romantic folly, and that he was to forgive her, and forget all about it. "but am i to send your name, or not, isabel?" george asked, rather coolly. he did not relish these flights of fancy on the part of the young lady he was training with a view to his own ideal of a wife. "you first say a thing, and then say you don't mean it. am i to send the envelopes or not?" "no, no, george; don't send them, please; i really do dislike the name. sleaford is such an ugly name, you know." chapter x. a bad beginning. mr. gilbert took his young wife to an hotel at murlington for a week's honeymoon--to a family hotel; a splendid mansion, isabel thought, where there was a solemn church-like stillness all day long, only broken by the occasional tinkling of silver spoons in the distance, or the musical chime of fragile glasses carried hither and thither on salvers of electro-plate. isabel had never stayed at an hotel before; and she felt a thrill of pleasure when she saw the glittering table, the wax-candles in silver branches, the sweeping crimson curtains drawn before the lofty windows, and the delightful waiter, whose manner was such a judicious combination of protecting benevolence and obsequious humility. mrs. george gilbert drew a long breath as she trifled with the shining damask napkin, so wondrously folded into a bishop's mitre, and saw herself reflected in the tall glass on the opposite side of the room. she wore her wedding-dress still; a sombre brown-silk dress, which had been chosen by george himself because of its homely merit of usefulness, rather than for any special beauty or elegance. poor isabel had struggled a little about the choice of that dress, for she had wanted to look like florence dombey on her wedding-day; but she had given way. her life had never been her own yet, and never was to be her own, she thought; for now that her step-mother had ceased to rule over her by force of those spasmodic outbreaks of violence by which sorely-tried matrons govern their households, here was george, with his strong will and sound common sense,--oh, how isabel hated common sense!--and she must needs acknowledge him as her master. but she looked at her reflection in the glass, and saw that she was pretty. was it only prettiness, or was it something more, even in spite of the brown dress? she saw her pale face and black hair lighted up by the wax-candles; and thought, if this could go on for ever,--the tinkling silver and glittering glass, the deferential waiter, the flavour of luxury and elegance, not to say edith dombeyism, that pervaded the atmosphere,--she would be pleased with her new lot. unhappily, there was only to be a brief interval of this aristocratic existence, for george had told his young wife confidentially that he didn't mean to go beyond a ten-pound note; and by-and-by, when the dinner-table had been cleared, he amused himself by making abstruse calculations as to how long that sum would hold out against the charges of the family hotel. * * * * * the young couple stayed for a week at murlington. they drove about the neighbourhood in an open fly, conscientiously admiring what the guide-books called the beauties of the vicinity; and the bleak winds of january tweaked their young noses as they faced the northern sky. george was happy--ah, how serenely happy!--in that the woman he so dearly loved was his wife. the thought of any sorrow darkling in the distance now, now that the solemn vows had been spoken, never entered into his mind. he had thought of william jeffson's warning sometimes, it is true, but only to smile in superb contempt of the simple creature's foolish talk. isabel loved him; she smiled at him when he spoke to her, and was gentle and obedient to his advice: he was, perhaps, a shade too fond of advising her. she had given up novel-reading, and employed her leisure in the interesting pursuit of plain needlework. her husband watched her complacently by the light of the wax-candles while she hemmed a cambric handkerchief, threading and unthreading her needle very often, and boggling a little when she turned the corners, and stopping now and then to yawn behind her pretty little pink fingers; but then she had been out in the open air nearly all day, and it was only natural that she should be sleepy. perhaps it might have been better for george gilbert if he had not solicited mr. pawlkatt's occasional attendance upon the parish patients, and thus secured a week's holiday in honour of his young wife. perhaps it would have been better if he had kept his ten-pound note in his pocket, and taken isabel straight to the house which was henceforth to be her home. that week in the hotel at murlington revealed one dreadful fact of these young people; a fact which the sunday afternoon walks at conventford had only dimly foreshadowed. they had very little to say to each other. that dread discovery, which should bring despair whenever it comes, dawned upon isabel, at least, all at once; and a chill sense of weariness and disappointment crept into her breast, and grew there, while she was yet ignorant of its cause. she was very young. she had not yet parted with one of her delusions, and she ignorantly believed that she could keep those foolish dreams, and yet be a good wife to george gilbert. he talked to her of his school-days, and then branched away to his youth, his father's decline and death, his own election to the parish duties, his lonely bachelorhood, his hope of a better position and larger income some day. oh, how dull and prosaic it all sounded to that creature, whose vague fancies were for ever wandering towards wonderful regions of poetry and romance! it was a relief to her when george left off talking, and left her free to think her own thoughts, as she laboured on at the cambric handkerchief, and pricked the points of her fingers, and entangled her thread. there were no books in the sitting-room at the family hotel; and even if there had been, this honeymoon week seemed to isabel a ceremonial period. she felt as if she were on a visit, and was not free to read. she sighed as she passed the library on the fashionable parade, and saw the name of the new novels exhibited on a board before the door; but she had not the courage to say how happy three cloth-covered volumes of light literature would have made her. george was not a reading man. he read the local papers and skimmed the "times" after breakfast; and then, there he was, all day long. there were two wet days during that week at murlington; and the young married people had ample opportunity of testing each other's conversational powers, as they stood in the broad window, watching occasional passers-by in the sloppy streets, and counting the rain-drops on the glass. the week came to an end at last; and on a wet saturday afternoon george gilbert paid his bill at the family hotel. the ten-pound note had held out very well; for the young bridegroom's ideas had never soared beyond a daily pint of sherry to wash down the simple repast which the discreet waiter provided for those humble guests in pitiful regard to their youth and simplicity. mr. gilbert paid his bill, while isabel packed her own and her husband's things; oh, what uninteresting things!--double-soled boots, and serviceable garments of grey woollen stuff. then, when all was ready, she stood in the window watching for the omnibus which was to carry her to her new home. murlington was only ten miles from graybridge, and the journey between the two places was performed in an old-fashioned stunted omnibus,--a darksome vehicle, with a low roof, a narrow door, and only one small square of glass on each side. isabel breathed a long sigh as she watched for the appearance of this vehicle in the empty street. the dull wet day, the lonely pavement, the blank empty houses to let furnished--for it was not the murlington season now--were not so dull or empty as her own life seemed to her this afternoon. was it to be for ever and for ever like this? yes; she was married, and the story was all over; her destiny was irrevocably sealed, and she was tired of it already. but then she thought of her new home, and all the little plans she had made for herself before her marriage,--the alterations and improvements she had sketched out for the beautification of her husband's house. somehow or other, even these ideas, which had beguiled her so in her maiden reveries, seemed to melt and vanish now. she had spoken to george, and he had received her suggestions doubtfully, hinting at the money which would be required for the carrying out of her plans,--though they were very simple plans, and did not involve much expense. was there to be nothing in her life, then? she was only a week married; and already, as she stood at the window listening to the slop-slop of the everlasting rain, she began to think that she had made a mistake. the omnibus came to the door presently, and she was handed into it, and her husband seated himself, in the dim obscurity, by her side. there was only one passenger--a wet farmer, wrapped in so many greatcoats that being wet outside didn't matter to him, as he only gave other people cold. he wiped his muddy boots on isabel's dress, the brown-silk wedding-dress which she had worn all the week; and mrs. gilbert made no effort to save the garment from his depredations. she leaned her head back in the corner of the omnibus, while the luggage was being bumped upon the roof above her, and let down her veil. the slow tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled down her pale cheeks. it was a mistake,--a horrible and irreparable mistake,--whose dismal consequences she must bear for ever and ever. she felt no dislike of george gilbert. she neither liked nor disliked him--only he could not give her the kind of life she wanted; and by her marriage with him she was shut out for ever from the hope of such a life. no prince would ever come now; no accidental duke would fall in love with her black eyes, and lift her all at once to the bright regions she pined to inhabit. no; it was all over. she had sold her birthright for a vulgar mess of potage. she had bartered all the chances of the future for a little relief to the monotony of the present,--for a few wedding-clothes, a card-case with a new name on the cards contained in it, the brief distinction of being a bride. george spoke to her two or three times during the journey to graybridge; but she only answered him in monosyllables. she had a "headache," she said,--that convenient feminine complaint which is an excuse for anything. she never once looked out of the window, though the road was new to her. she sat back in the dusky vehicle, while george and the farmer talked local politics; and their talk mingled vaguely with her own misery. the darkness grew thicker in the low-roofed carriage; the voices of george and the farmer died drowsily away; and by-and-by there was snoring, whether from george or the farmer isabel did not care to think. she was thinking of byron and of napoleon the first. ah, to have lived in his time, and followed him, and slaved for him, and died for him in that lonely island far out in the waste of waters! the tears fell faster as all her childish dreams came back upon her, and arrayed themselves in cruel contrast with her new life. mr. buckstone's bright irish heroine, when she has been singing her song in the cold city street,--the song which she has dreamt will be the means of finding her lost nursling,--sinks down at last upon a snow-covered doorstep, and sobs aloud because "it all seems so _real_!" life seemed "so real" now to isabel. she awakened suddenly to the knowledge that all her dreams were only dreams after all, and never had been likely to come true. as it was, they could never come true; she had set a barrier against the fulfilment of those bright visions, and she must abide by her own act. it was quite dark upon that wintry afternoon when the omnibus stopped at the cock at graybridge; and then there was more bumping about of the luggage before isabel was handed out upon the pavement to walk home with her husband. yes; they were to walk home. what was the use of a ten-pound note spent upon splendour in murlington, when the honeymoon was to close in degradation such as this? they walked home. the streets were sloppy, and there was mud in the lane where george's house stood; but it was only five or ten minutes' walk, as he said, and nobody in graybridge would have dreamed of hiring a fly. so they walked home, with the luggage following on a truck; and when they came to the house, there was only a dim glimmer in the red lamp over the surgery-door. all the rest was dark, for george's letter to mr. jeffson had been posted too late, and the bride and bridegroom were not expected. everybody knows the cruel bleakness which that simple fact involves. there were no fires in the rooms; no cheery show of preparation; and there was a faint odour of soft-soap, suggestive of recent cleaning. mrs. jeffson was up to her elbows in a flour-tub when the young master pulled his own door-bell; and she came out, with her arms white and her face dirty, to receive the newly-married pair. she set a flaring tallow-candle on the parlour-table, and knelt down to light the fire, exclaiming and wondering all the while at the unexpected arrival of mr. gilbert and his wife. "my master's gone over to conventford for some groceries, and we're all of a moodle like, ma'am," she said; "but we moost e'en do th' best we can, and make all coomfortable. master jarge said moonday as plain as words could speak when he went away, and th' letter's not coom yet; so you may joost excuse things not bein' straight." mrs. jeffson might have gone on apologizing for some time longer: but she jumped up suddenly to attend upon isabel, who had burst into a passion of hysterical sobbing. she was romantic, sensitive, impressionable--selfish, if you will; and her poor untutored heart revolted against the utter ruin of her dreams. "it is _so_ miserable!" she sobbed; "it all seems so miserable!" george came in from the stables, where he had been to see brown molly, and brought his wife some sal-volatile, in a wineglass of water; and mrs. jeffson comforted the poor young creature, and took her up to the half-prepared bedroom, where the carpets were still up, and where the whitewashed walls--it was an old-fashioned house, and the upper rooms had never been papered--and the bare boards looked cheerless and desolate in the light of a tallow-candle. mrs. jeffson brought her young mistress a cup of tea, and sat down by the bedside while she drank it, and talked to her and comforted her, though she did not entertain a very high opinion of a young lady who went into hysterics because there was no fire in her sitting-room. "i dare say it _did_ seem cold and lonesome and comfortless like," mrs. jeffson said, indulgently; "but we'll get things nice in no time." isabel shook her head. "you are very kind," she said; "but it wasn't that made me cry." she closed her eyes, not because she was sleepy, but because she wanted mrs. jeffson to go away and leave her alone. then, when the good woman had retired with cautious footsteps, and closed the door, mrs. george gilbert slowly opened her eyes, and looked at the things on which they were to open every morning for all her life to come. there was nothing beautiful in the room, certainly. there was a narrow mantel-piece, with a few blocks of derbyshire spar and other mineral productions; and above them there hung an old-fashioned engraving of some scriptural subject, in a wooden frame painted black. there was a lumbering old wardrobe--or press, as it was called--of painted wood, with a good deal of the paint chipped off; there was a painted dressing-table, a square looking-glass, with brass ornamentation about the stand and frame,--a glass in which george gilbert's grandfather had looked at himself seventy years before. isabel stared at the blank white walls, the gaunt shadows of the awkward furniture, with a horrible fascination. it was all so ugly, she thought, and her mind revolted against her husband, as she remembered that he could have changed all this, and yet had left it in its bald hideousness. and all this time george was busy in his surgery, grinding his pestle in so cheerful a spirit that it seemed to fall into a kind of tune, and thinking how happy he was now that isabel sleaford was his wife. chapter xi. "she only said, 'my life is weary!'" when the chill discomfort of that first evening at graybridge was past and done with, isabel felt a kind of remorseful regret for the mute passion of discontent and disappointment that had gone along with it. the keen sense of misery passed with the bad influence of the day and hour. in the sunlight her new home looked a little better, her new life seemed a little brighter. yes, she would do her duty; she would be a good wife to dear george, who was so kind to her, and loved her with such a generous devotion. she went to church with him at graybridge for the first time on the morning after that dreary wet saturday evening; and all through the sermon she thought of her new home, and what she would do to make it bright and pretty. the rector of graybridge had chosen one of the obscurest texts in st. paul's epistle to the hebrews for his sermon that morning, and isabel did not even try to understand him. she let her thoughts ramble away to carpets and curtains, and china flower-pots and venetian blinds, and little bits of ornamentation, which should transform george's house from its square nakedness into a bowery cottage. oh, if the trees had only grown differently! if there had been trailing parasites climbing up to the chimneys, and a sloping lawn, and a belt of laurels, and little winding pathways, and a rustic seat half-hidden under a weeping willow, instead of that bleak flat of cabbages and gooseberry-bushes, and raw clods of earth piled in black ridges across the dreary waste! after church there was an early dinner of some baked meat, prepared by mrs. jeffson. isabel did not take much notice of what she ate. she was at that early period of fife when a young person of sentimental temperament scarcely knows roast beef from boiled veal; but she observed that there were steel forks on the surgeon's table,--steel forks with knobby horn handles suggestive of the wildest species of deer,--and a metal mustard-pot lined with blue glass, and willow-pattern plates, and a brown earthenware jug of home-brewed beer; and that everything was altogether commonplace and vulgar. after dinner mrs. gilbert amused herself by going over the house with her husband. it was a very tolerable house, after all; but it wasn't pretty; it had been inhabited by people who were fully satisfied so long as they had chairs to sit upon, and beds to sleep on, and tables and cups and plates for the common purposes of breakfast, dinner, and supper, and who would have regarded the purchase of a chair that was not intended to be sat upon, or a cup that was never designed to be drunk out of, as something useless and absurd, or even, in an indirect manner, sinful, because involving the waste of money that might be devoted to a better use. "george," said isabel, gently, when she had seen all the rooms, "did you never think of re-furnishing the house?" "re-furnishing it! how do you mean, izzie?" "buying new furniture, i mean, dear. this is all so old-fashioned." george the conservative shook his head. "i like it all the better for that, izzie," he said; "it was my father's, you know, and his father's before him. i wouldn't change a stick of it for the world. besides, it's such capital substantial furniture; they don't make such chairs and tables nowadays." "no," izzie murmured with a sigh; "i'm very glad they don't." then she clasped her hands suddenly upon his arm, and looked up at him with her eyes opened to their widest extent, and shining with a look of rapture. "oh, george," she cried, "there was an ottoman in one of the shops at conventford with seats for three people, and little stands for people to put their cups and saucers upon, and a place in the middle for flowers! and i asked the price of it,--i often ask the price of things, for it's almost like buying them, you know,--and it was only eleven pounds ten, and i dare say they'd take less; and oh, george, if you'd make the best parlour into a drawing-room, and have that ottoman in the centre, and chintz curtains lined with rose-colour, and a white watered paper on the walls, and venetian shutters outside--" george put his hand upon the pretty mouth from which the eager words came so rapidly. "why, izzie," he said, "you'd ruin me before the year was out. all that finery would make a hole in a hundred pounds. no, no, dear; the best parlour was good enough for my father and mother, and it ought to be good enough for you and me. by-and-by, when my practice extends, izzie, as i've every reason to hope it will, we'll talk about a new kidderminster carpet,--a nice serviceable brown ground with a drab spot, or something of that kind,--but until then--" isabel turned away from him with a gesture of disgust. "what do i care about new carpets?" she said; "i wanted it all to look pretty." yes; she wanted it to look pretty; she wanted to infuse some beauty into her life--something which, in however remote a degree, should be akin to the things she read of in her books. everything that was beautiful gave her a thrill of happiness; everything that was ugly gave her a shudder of pain; and she had not yet learned that life was never meant to be all happiness, and that the soul must struggle towards the upper light out of a region of pain and darkness and confusion, as the blossoming plant pushes its way to the sunshine from amongst dull clods of earth. she wanted to be happy, and enjoy herself in her own way. she was not content to wait till her allotted portion of joy came to her; and she mistook the power to appreciate and enjoy beautiful things for a kind of divine right to happiness and splendour. to say that george gilbert did not understand his wife is to say very little. nobody, except perhaps sigismund smith, had ever yet understood isabel. she did not express herself better than other girls of her age; sometimes she expressed herself worse; for she wanted to say so much, and a hopeless confusion would arise every now and then out of that entanglement of eager thought and romantic rapture which filled her brain. in miss sleaford's own home people had been a great deal too much occupied with the ordinary bustle of life to trouble themselves about a young lady's romantic reveries. mrs. sleaford had thought that she had said all that was to be said about isabel when she had denounced her as a lazy, selfish thing, who would have sat on the grass and read novels if the house had been blazing, and all her family perishing in the flames. the boys had looked upon their half-sister with all that supercilious mixture of pity and contempt with which all boys are apt to regard any fellow-creature who is so weak-minded as to be a girl. mr. sleaford had been very fond of his only daughter; but he had loved her chiefly because she was pretty, and because of those dark eyes whose like he had never seen except in the face of that young broken-hearted wife so early lost to him. nobody had ever quite understood isabel; and least of all could george gilbert understand the woman whom he had chosen for his wife. he loved her and admired her, and he was honestly anxious that she should be happy; but then he wanted her to be happy according to his ideas of happiness, and not her own. he wanted her to be delighted with stiff little tea-parties, at which the misses pawlkatt, and the misses burdock, and young mrs. henry palmer, wife of mr. henry palmer junior, solicitor, discoursed pleasantly of the newest patterns in crochet, and the last popular memoir of some departed evangelical curate. isabel did not take any interest in these things, and could not make herself happy with these people. unluckily she allowed this to be seen; and, after a few tea-parties, the graybridge aristocracy dropped away from her, only calling now and then, out of respect for george, who was heartily compassionated on account of his most mistaken selection of a wife. so isabel was left to herself, and little by little fell back into very much the same kind of life as that which she had led at camberwell. she had given up all thought of beautifying the house which was now her home. after that struggle about the ottoman, there had been many other struggles in which isabel had pleaded for smaller and less expensive improvements, only to be blighted by that hard common sense with which mr. george gilbert was wont--on principle--to crush his wife's enthusiasm. he had married this girl because she was unlike other women; and now that she was his own property, he set himself conscientiously to work to smooth her into the most ordinary semblance of every-day womanhood, by means of that moral flat-iron called common sense. of course he succeeded to admiration. isabel abandoned all hope of making her new home pretty, or transforming george gilbert into a walter gay. she had made a mistake, and she accepted the consequences of her mistake; and fell back upon the useless dreamy life she had led so long in her father's house. the surgeon's duties occupied him all day long, and isabel was left to herself. she had none of the common distractions of a young matron. she had no servants to scold, no china to dust, no puddings or pies or soups or hashes to compound for her husband's dinner. mrs. jeffson did all that kind of work, and would have bitterly resented any interference from the "slip of a girl" whom mr. gilbert had chosen for his wife. isabel did as she liked; and this meant reading novels all day long, or as long as she had a novel to read, and writing unfinished verses of a lachrymose nature on half-sheets of paper. when the spring came she went out--alone; for her husband was away among his patients, and had no time to accompany her. she went for long rambles in that lovely elizabethan midlandshire, and thought of the life that never was to be hers. she wandered alone in the country lanes where the hedgerows were budding; and sat alone, with her book on her lap, among the buttercups and daisies in the shady angle of a meadow, where the untrimmed hawthorns made a natural bower above her head. stray pedestrians crossing the meadows near graybridge often found the doctor's young wife sitting under a big green parasol, with a little heap of gathered wild-flowers fading on the grass beside her, and with an open book upon her knees. sometimes she went as far as thurston's crag, the midlandshire seat of lord thurston; a dear old place, an island of mediæval splendour amidst a sea of green pasture-land, where, under the very shadow of a noble mansion, there was a waterfall and a miller's cottage that was difficult to believe in out of a picture. there was a wooden bridge across that noisiest of waterfalls, and a monster oak, whose spreading branches shadowed all the width of the water; and it was on a rough wooden bench under this dear old tree that isabel loved best to sit. the graybridge people were not slow to remark upon mrs. gilbert's habits, and hinted that a young person who spent so much of her time in the perusal of works of fiction could scarcely be a model wife. before george had been married three months, the ladies who had been familiar with him in his bachelorhood had begun to pity him, and had already mapped out for him such a career of domestic wretchedness as rarely falls to the lot of afflicted man. mrs. gilbert was _not_ pretty. the graybridge ladies settled that question at the very first tea-party from which george and his wife were absent. she was not pretty--when you looked into her. that was the point upon which the feminine critics laid great stress. at a distance, certainly, mrs. gilbert might look showy. the lady who hit upon the adjective "showy" was very much applauded by her friends. at a distance isabel might be called showy; always provided you like eyes that are so large as only by a miracle to escape from being goggles, and lips that are so red as to be unpleasantly suggestive of scarlet-fever. but _look into_ mrs. gilbert, and even this show of beauty vanished, and you only saw a sickly young person, with insignificant features and coarse black hair--so coarse and common in texture, that its abnormal length and thickness--of which isabel was no doubt inordinately proud--were very little to boast of. but while the graybridge ladies criticised his wife and prophesied for him all manner of dismal sufferings, george gilbert, strange to say, was very happy. he had married the woman he loved, and no thought that he had loved unwisely or married hastily ever entered his mind. when he came home from a long day's work, he found a beautiful creature waiting to receive him--a lovely and lovable creature, who put her arms around his neck and kissed him, and smiled at him. it was not in his nature to see that the graceful little embrace, and the welcoming kiss, and the smile, were rather mechanical matters that came of themselves. he took his dinner, or his weak tea, or his supper, as the case might be, and stretched his long legs across the familiar hearth-rug, and talked to his wife, and was happy. if she had an open book beside her plate, and if her eyes wandered to the page every now and then while he was talking to her, she had often told him that she could listen and read at the same time; and no doubt she could do so. what more than sweet smiles and gentle looks could the most exacting husband demand? and george gilbert had plenty of these; for isabel was very grateful to him, because he never grumbled at her idleness and novel-reading, or worried and scolded as her step-mother had done. she was fond of him, as she would have been fond of a big elder brother, who let her have a good deal of her own way; and so long as he left her unassailed by his common sense, she was happy, and tolerably satisfied with her life. yes; she was satisfied with her life, which was the same every day, and with the dull old town, where no change ever came. she was satisfied as an opium-eater is satisfied with the common every-day world; which is only the frame that holds together all manner of splendid and ever-changing pictures. she was content with a life in which she had ample leisure to dream of a different existence. oh, how she thought of that other and brighter life! that life in which there was passion, and poetry, and beauty, and rapture, and despair! here among these meadows, and winding waters, and hedgerows, life was a long sleep: and one might as well be a brown-eyed cow, browsing from week's end to week's end in the same pastures, as a beautiful woman with an eager yearning soul. mrs. gilbert thought of london--that wonderful west-end, may-fair london, which has no attribute in common with all the great metropolitan wilderness around and about it. she thought of that holy of holies, that inner sanctuary of life, in which all the women are beautiful and all the men are wicked, in which existence is a perpetual whirlpool of balls and dinner-parties and hothouse flowers and despair. she thought of that untasted life, and pictured it, and thrilled with a sense of its splendour and brightness, as she sat by the brawling waterfall, and heard the creaking wheel of the mill, and the splashing of the trailing weeds. she saw herself amongst the light and music of that other world; queen of a lamplit boudoir, where loose patches of ermine gleamed whitely upon carpets of velvet-pile; where, amid a confusion of glitter and colour, she might sit, nestling among the cushions of a low gilded chair, and listening contemptuously (she always imagined herself contemptuous) to the eloquent compliments of a wicked prince. and then the row! she saw herself in the row sometimes, upon an arab--a black arab--that would run away with her at the most fashionable time in the afternoon, and all but kill her; and then she would rein him up as no mortal woman ever reined in an arab steed before, and would ride slowly back between two ranks of half-scared, half-admiring faces, with her hair hanging over her shoulders and her eyelashes drooping on her flushed cheeks. and then the wicked prince, goaded by an unvarying course of contemptuous treatment, would fall ill, and be at the point of death; and one night, when she was at a ball, with floating robes of cloud-like lace and diamonds glimmering in her hair, he would send for her--that wicked, handsome, adorable creature would send his valet to summon her to his deathbed, and she would see him there in the dim lamplight, pale and repentant, and romantic and delightful; and as she fell on her knees in all the splendour of her lace and diamonds, he would break a blood-vessel and die! and then she would go back to the ball, and would be the gayest and most beautiful creature in all that whirlpool of elegance and beauty. only the next morning, when her attendants came to awaken her, they would find her--_dead_! amongst the books which mrs. gilbert most often carried to the bench by the waterfall was the identical volume which charles raymond had looked at in such a contemptuous spirit in hurstonleigh grove--the little thin volume of poems entitled "an alien's dreams." mr. raymond had given his nursery-governess a parcel of light literature soon after her marriage, and this poor little book of verses was one of the volumes in the parcel; and as isabel knew her byron and her shelley by heart, and could recite long melancholy rhapsodies from the works of either poet by the hour together, she fastened quite eagerly upon this little green-covered volume by a nameless writer. the alien's dreams seemed like her own fancies, somehow; for they belonged to that bright _other_ world which she was never to see. how familiar the alien was with that delicious region; and how lightly _he_ spoke of the hothouse flowers and diamonds, the ermine carpets and arab steeds! she read the poems over and over again in the drowsy june weather, sitting in the shabby little common parlour when the afternoons were too hot for out-door rambles, and getting up now and then to look at her profile in the glass over the mantel-piece, and to wonder whether she was like any of those gorgeous but hollow-hearted creatures upon whom the alien showered such torrents of melodious abuse. who was the alien? isabel had asked mr. raymond that question, and had been a little crashed by the reply. the alien was a midlandshire squire, mr. raymond had told her; and the word 'squire' suggested nothing but a broad-shouldered, rosy-faced man, in a scarlet coat and top-boots. surely no squire could have written those half-heartbroken, half-cynical verses, those deliciously scornful elegies upon the hollowness of lovely woman and things in general! isabel had her own image of the writer--her own ideal poet, who rose in all his melancholy glory, and pushed the red-coated country squire out of her mind when she sat with the "alien's dreams" in her lap, or scribbled weak imitations of that gentleman's poetry upon the backs of old envelopes and other scraps of waste paper. sometimes, when george had eaten his supper, isabel would do him the favour of reading aloud one of the most spasmodic of the alien's dreams. but when the alien was most melodiously cynical, and the girl's voice tremulous with sudden exaltation of feeling, her eyes, wandering by chance to where her husband sat, would watch him yawning behind his glass of ale, or reckoning a patient's account on the square tips of his fingers. on one occasion poor george was terribly perplexed to behold his wife suddenly drop her book upon her lap and burst into tears. he could imagine no reason for her weeping, and he sat aghast, staring at her for some moments before he could utter any word of consolation. "you don't care for the poetry, george," she cried, with the sudden passion of a spoiled child. "oh, why do you let me read to you, if you don't care for the poetry?" "but i do care for it, izzie, dear," mr. gilbert murmured, soothingly,--"at least i like to hear you read, if it amuses _you_." isabel flung the "alien" into the remotest corner of the little parlour, and turned from her husband as if he had stung her. "you don't understand me," she said; "you don't understand me." "no, my dear isabel," returned mr. gilbert, with dignity (for his common sense reasserted itself after the first shock of surprise); "i certainly do _not_ understand you when you give way to such temper as this without any visible cause." he walked over to the corner of the room, picked up the little volume, and smoothed the crumpled leaves; for his habits were orderly, and the sight of a book lying open upon the carpet was unpleasant to him. of course poor george was right, and isabel was a very capricious, ill-tempered young woman when she flew into a passion of rage and grief because her husband counted his fingers while she was reading to him. but then such little things as these make the troubles of people who are spared from the storm and tempest of life. such sorrows as these are the scotch mists, the drizzling rains of existence. the weather doesn't appear so very bad to those who behold it from a window; but that sort of scarcely perceptible drizzle chills the hapless pedestrian to the very bone. i have heard of a lady who was an exquisite musician, and who, in the dusky twilight of a honeymoon evening, played to her husband,--played as some women play, pouring out all her soul upon the keys of the piano, breathing her finest and purest thoughts in one of beethoven's sublime sonatas. "that's a very _pretty tune_," said the husband, complacently. she was a proud reserved woman, and she closed the piano without a word of complaint or disdain; but she lived to be old, and she never touched the keys again. chapter xii. something like a birthday. it happened that the very day after isabel's little outbreak of passion was a peculiar occasion in george gilbert's life. it was the nd of july, and it was his wife's birthday,--the first birthday after her marriage; and the young surgeon had planned a grand treat and surprise, quite an elaborate festival, in honour of the day. he had been, therefore, especially wounded by isabel's ill-temper. had he not been thinking of her and of her pleasure at the very moment when she had upbraided him for his lack of interest in the alien? he did _not_ care about the alien. he did not appreciate "clotilde, clotilde, my dark clotilde! with the sleepy light in your midnight glance. we let the dancers go by to dance; but we stayed out on the lamplit stair, and the odorous breath of your trailing hair swept over my face as your whispers stole like a gush of melody through my soul; clotilde, clotilde, my own clotilde!" but he loved his wife, and was anxious to please her; and he had schemed and plotted to do her pleasure. he had hired a fly--an open fly--for the whole day, and mrs. jeffson had prepared a basket with port and sherry from the cock, and all manner of north-country delicacies; and george had written to mr. raymond, asking that gentleman, with the orphans of course, to meet himself and his wife at warncliffe castle, the show-place of the county. this mr. raymond had promised to do; and all the arrangements had been carefully planned, and had been kept profoundly secret from isabel. she was very much pleased when her husband told her of the festival early on that bright summer morning, while she was plaiting her long black hair at the little glass before the open lattice. she ran to the wardrobe to see if she had a clean muslin dress. yes, there it was; the very lavender-muslin which she had worn at the hurstonleigh picnic. george was delighted to see her pleasure; and he sat on the window-sill watching her as she arranged her collar and fastened a little bow of riband at her throat, and admired herself in the glass. "i want it to be like that day last year, izzie; the day i asked you to marry me. mr. raymond will bring the key of hurstonleigh grove, and we're to drive there after we've seen the castle, and picnic there as we did before; and then we're to go to the very identical model old woman's to tea; and everything will be exactly the same." ah, mr. george gilbert, do you know the world so little as to be ignorant that no day in life ever has its counterpart, and that to endeavour to bring about an exact repetition of any given occasion is to attempt the impossible? it was a six-mile drive from graybridge to warncliffe, the grave old country-town,--the dear old town, with shady pavements, and abutting upper stories, pointed gables, and diamond-paned casements; the queer old town, with wonderful churches, and gloomy archways, and steep stony streets, and above all, the grand old castle, the black towers, and keep, and turrets, and gloomy basement dungeons, lashed for ever and for ever by the blue rippling water. i have never seen warncliffe castle except in the summer sunshine, and my hand seems paralyzed when i try to write of it. it is easy to invent a castle, and go into raptures about the ivied walls and mouldering turrets; but i shrink away before the grand reality, and can describe nothing; i see it all too plainly, and feel the tameness of my words too much. but in summer-time this elizabethan midlandshire is an english paradise, endowed with all the wealth of natural loveliness, enriched by the brightest associations of poetry and romance. mr. raymond was waiting at the little doorway when the fly stopped, and he gave isabel his arm and led her into a narrow winding alley of verdure and rockwork, and then across a smooth lawn, and under an arch of solid masonry to another lawn, a velvety grass-plat, surrounded by shrubberies, and altogether a triumph of landscape gardening. they went into the castle with a little group of visitors who have just collected on the broad steps before the door; and they were taken at once under the convoy of a dignified housekeeper in a rustling silk gown, who started off into a _vivâ-voce_ catalogue of the contents of the castle-hall, a noble chamber with armour-clad effigies of dead-and-gone warriors ranged along the walls, with notched battle-axes, and cloven helmets, and monster antlers, and indian wampum, and canadian wolf-skins, and australian boomerangs hanging against the wainscot, with carved oak and ebony muniment-chests upon the floor, and with three deep embayed windows overhanging the brightest landscape, the fairest streamlet in england. while the housekeeper was running herself down like a musical box that had been newly wound up, and with as much animation and expression in her tones as there is in a popular melody interpreted by a musical box, mr. raymond led isabel to the window, and showed her the blue waters of the wayverne bubbling and boiling over craggy masses of rockwork, green boulders, and pebbles that shimmered in the sunlight, and then, playing hide-and-seek under dripping willows, and brawling away over emerald moss and golden sand, to fall with a sudden impetus into the quiet depths beneath the bridge. "look at that, my dear," said mr. raymond; "that isn't in the catalogue. i'll tell you all about the castle: and we'll treat the lady in the silk dress as they treat the organ boys in london. we'll give her half-a-crown to move on, and leave us to look at the pictures, and the boomerangs, and the armour, and the tapestry, and the identical toilet-table and pin-cushion in which her gracious majesty stuck the pin she took out of her bonnet-string when she took luncheon with lord warncliffe a year or two ago. that's the gem of the catalogue in the housekeeper's opinion, i know. we'll look at the pictures by ourselves, mrs. gilbert, and i'll tell you all about them." to my mind, warncliffe castle is one of the pleasantest show-places in the kingdom. there are not many rooms to see, nor are they large rooms. there are not many pictures; but the few in every room are of the choicest, and are hung on a level with the eye, and do not necessitate that straining of the spinal column which makes the misery of most picture galleries. warncliffe castle is like an elegant little dinner; there are not many dishes, and everything is so good that you wish there were more. and at warncliffe the sunny chambers have the extra charm of looking as if people lived in them. you see not only murillos and titians, lelys and vandykes upon the walls; you see tables scattered with books, and women's handiwork here and there; and whichever way you turn, there is always the noisy wayverne brawling and rippling under the windows, and the green expanse of meadow and the glory of purple woodland beyond. isabel moved through the rooms in a silent rapture; but yet there was a pang of anguish lurking somewhere or other amid all that rapture. her dreams were all true, then; there were such places as this, and people lived in them. happy people, for whom life was all loveliness and poetry, looked out of those windows, and lolled in those antique chairs, and lived all their lives amidst caskets of florentine mosaic, and portraits by vandyke, and marble busts of roman emperors, and gobelin tapestries, and a hundred objects of art and beauty, whose very names were a strange language to isabel. for some people life was like this; and for her--! she shuddered as she remembered the parlours at graybridge,--the shabby carpet, the faded moreen curtains edged with rusty velvet, the cracked jars and vases on the mantel-piece; and even if george had given her all that she had asked--the ottoman, and the venetian blind, and the rose-coloured curtains--what would have been the use? her room would never have looked like _this_. she gazed about her in a sort of walking dream, intoxicated by the beauty of the place. she was looking like this when mr. raymond led her into one of the larger rooms, and showed her a little picture in a corner, a tintoretto, which he said was a gem. she looked at the tintoretto in a drowsy kind of way. it was a very brown gem, and its beauties were quite beyond mrs gilbert's appreciation. she was not thinking of the picture. she was thinking if, by some romantic legerdemain, she could "turn out" to be the rightful heiress of such a castle as this, with a river like the wayverne brawling under her windows, and trailing willow-branches dipping into the water. there were some such childish thoughts as these in her mind while mr. raymond was enlarging upon the wonderful finish and modelling of the venetian's masterpiece; and she was aroused from her reverie not by her companion's remarks, but by a woman's voice on the other side of the room. "you so rarely see that contrast of fair hair and black eyes," said the voice; "and there is something peculiar in those eyes." there was nothing particular in the words: it was the tone in which they were spoken that caught isabel gilbert's ear--the tone in which lady clara vere de vere herself might have spoken; a tone in winch there was a lazy hauteur softened by womanly gentleness,--a drawling accent which had yet no affectation, only a kind of liquid carrying on of the voice, like a _legato_ passage in music. "yes," returned another voice, which had all the laziness and none of the hauteur, "it is a pretty face. joanna of naples, isn't it? she was an improper person, wasn't she? threw some one out of a window, and made herself altogether objectionable." mr. raymond wheeled round as suddenly as if he had received an electric shock, and ran across the room to a gentleman who was lounging in a half-reclining attitude upon one of the broad window-seats. "why, roland, i thought you were at corfu!" the gentleman got up, with a kind of effort and the faintest suspicion of a yawn; but his face brightened nevertheless, as he held out his hand to isabel's late employer. "my dear raymond, how glad i am to see you! i meant to ride over to-morrow morning, for a long day's talk. i only came home last night, to please my uncle and cousin, who met me at baden and insisted on bringing me home with them. you know gwendoline? ah, yes, of course you do." a lady with fair banded hair and an aquiline nose--a lady in a bonnet which was simplicity itself, and could only have been produced by a milliner who had perfected herself in the supreme art of concealing her art--dropped the double eye-glass through which she had been looking at joanna of naples, and held out a hand so exquisitely gloved that it looked as if it had been sculptured out of grey marble. "i'm afraid mr. raymond has forgotten me," she said "papa and i have been so long away from midlandshire." "and lowlands was beginning to look quite a deserted habitation. i used to think of hood's haunted house whenever i rode by your gates, lady gwendoline. but you have come home for good now? as if _you_ could come for anything _but_ good," interjected mr. raymond, gallantly. "you have come with the intention of stopping, i hope." "yes," lady gwendoline answered, with something like a sigh; "papa and i mean to settle in midlandshire; he has let the clarges street house for a time; sold his lease, at least, i think; or something of that sort. and we know every nook and corner of the continent. so i suppose that really the best thing we can do is to settle at lowlands. but i suppose we sha'n't keep roland long in the neighbourhood. he'll get tired of us in a fortnight, and run away to the pyrenees, or cairo, or central africa; 'anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!'" "it isn't of _you_ that i shall get tired, gwendoline," said the gentleman called roland, who had dropped back into his old lounging attitude on the window-seat. "it's myself that bores me; the only bore a man can't cut. but i'm not going to run away from midlandshire. i shall go in for steam-farming, and agricultural implements, and drainage. i should think drainage now would have a very elevating influence upon a man's mind; and i shall send my short-horns to smithfield next christmas. and you shall teach me political economy, raymond; and we'll improve the condition of the farm-labourer; and we'll offer a prize for the best essay on, say, classical agriculture as revealed to us in the writings of virgil--that's the sort of thing for the farm-labourer, i should think--and gwendoline shall give the prizes: a blue riband and a gold medal, and a frieze coat, or a pair of top-boots." isabel still lingered by the tintoretto. she was aghast at the fact that mr. raymond knew, and was even familiar with, these beings. yes; beings--creatures of that remote sphere which she only knew in her dreams. standing near the tintoretto, she ventured to look very timidly towards these radiant creatures. what did she see? a young man half reclining in the deep embrasure of a window, with the summer sunshine behind him, and the summer breezes fluttering his loose brown hair--that dark rich brown which is only a warmer kind of black. she saw a man upon whom beneficent or capricious nature, in some fantastic moment, had lavished all the gifts that men most covet and that women most admire. she saw one of the handsomest faces ever seen since napoleon, the young conqueror of italy, first dazzled regenerated france; a kind of face that is only familiar to us in a few old italian portraits; a beautiful, dreamy, perfect face, exquisite alike in form and colour. i do not think that any words of mine can realize roland lansdell's appearance; i can only briefly catalogue the features, which were perfect in their way, and yet formed so small an item in the homogeneous charm of this young man's appearance. the nose was midway betwixt an aquiline and a grecian, but it was in the chiselling of the nostril, the firmness and yet delicacy of the outline, that it differed from other noses; the forehead was of medium height, broad, and full at the temples; the head was strong in the perceptive faculties, very strong in benevolence, altogether wanting in destructiveness; but mr. raymond could have told you that veneration and conscientiousness were deficient in roland lansdell's cranium,--a deficiency sorely to be lamented by those who knew and loved the young man. his eyes and mouth formed the chief beauty of his face; and yet i can describe neither, for their chief charm lay in the fact that they were indescribable. the eyes were of a nondescript colour; the mouth was ever varying in expression. sometimes you looked at the eyes, and they seemed to you a dark bluish-grey; sometimes they were hazel; sometimes you were half beguiled into fancying them black. and the mouth was somehow in harmony with the eyes; inasmuch as looking at it one minute you saw an expression of profound melancholy in the thin flexible lips; and then in the next a cynical smile. very few people ever quite understood mr. lansdell, and perhaps this was his highest charm. to be puzzled is the next thing to being interested; to be interested is to be charmed. yes, capricious nature had showered her gifts upon roland lansdell. she had made him handsome, and had attuned his voice to a low melodious music, and had made him sufficiently clever; and, beyond all this, had bestowed upon him that subtle attribute of grace, which she and she alone can bestow. he was always graceful. involuntarily and unconsciously he fell into harmonious attitudes. he could not throw himself into a chair, or rest his elbow upon a table, or lean against the angle of a doorway, or stretch himself full-length upon the grass to fall asleep with his head upon his folded arms, without making himself into a kind of picture. he looked like a picture just now as he lounged in the castle window, with his face turned towards mr. raymond. the lady, who was called lady gwendoline, put up her eye-glass to look at another picture; and in that attitude isabel had time to contemplate her, and saw that she too was graceful, and that in every fold of her simple dress--it was only muslin, but quite a different fabric from isabel's muslin--there was an indescribable harmony which stamped her as the creature of that splendid sphere which the girl only knew in her books. she looked longer and more earnestly at lady gwendoline than at roland lansdell, for in this elegant being she saw the image of herself, as she had fancied herself so often--the image of a heartless aristocratic divinity, for whose sake people cut their throats, and broke blood-vessels, and drowned themselves. george came in while his wife was looking at lady gwendoline, and mr. raymond suddenly remembered the young couple whom he had taken upon himself to chaperone. "i must introduce you to some new friends of mine, roland," he said; "and when you are ill you must send for mr. gilbert of graybridge, who, i am given to understand, is a very clever surgeon, and whom i _know_ to have the best moral region i ever had under my hand. gilbert, my dear boy, this is roland lansdell of mordred priory; lady gwendoline, mrs. gilbert--mr. lansdell. but you know something about my friend roland, i think, don't you, isabel?" mrs. gilbert bowed and smiled and blushed in a pleasant bewilderment. to be introduced, to two beings in this off-hand manner was almost too much for mr. sleaford's daughter. a faint perfume of jasmine and orange-blossom floated towards her from lady gwendoline's handkerchief, and she seemed to see the fair-haired lady who smiled at her, and the dark-haired gentleman who had risen at her approach, through an odorous mist that confused her senses. "i think you know something of my friend roland," mr. raymond repeated; "eh, my dear?" "oh, n--no indeed," isabel stammered; "i never saw--" "you never saw _him_ before to-day," answered mr. raymond, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder with a kind of protecting tenderness in the gesture. "but you've read his verses; those pretty drawing-room byronics, that refined and anglicised alfred-de-musset-ism, that you told me you are so fond of:--don't you remember asking me who wrote the verses, mrs. gilbert? i told you the alien was a country squire; and here he is--a midlandshire squire of high degree, as the old ballad has it." isabel's heart gave a great throb, and her pale face flushed all over with a faint carnation. to be introduced to a being was something, but to be introduced to a being who was also a poet, and the very poet whose rhapsodies were her last and favourite idolatry! she could not speak. she tried to say something--something very commonplace, to the effect that the verses were very pretty, and she liked them very much, thank you--but the words refused to come, and her lips only trembled. before she could recover her confusion, mr. raymond had hooked his arm through that of roland lansdell, and the two men had walked off together, talking with considerable animation; for charles raymond was a kind of adopted father to the owner of mordred priory, and was about the only man whom roland had ever loved or trusted. isabel was left by the open window with lady gwendoline and george, whose common sense preserved him serene and fearless in the presence of these superior creatures. "you like my cousin's poetry, then, mrs. gilbert?" said lady gwendoline. her cousin! the dark-haired being was cousin to this fair-haired being in the parisian bonnet,--a white-chip bonnet, with just one feathery sprig of mountain heather, and broad thick white-silk strings, tied under an aristocratic chin--a determined chin, mr. raymond would have told isabel. mrs. gilbert took heart of grace now that roland lansdell was out of hearing, and said, "oh, yes; she was very, very fond of the 'alien's dreams;' they were so sweetly pretty." "yes, they are pretty." lady gwendoline said, seating herself by the window, and playing with her bonnet-strings as she spoke; "they are very graceful. do sit down, mrs. gilbert; these show-places are so fatiguing. i am waiting for papa, who is talking politics with some midlandshire people in the hall. i am very glad you like roland's verses. they're not very original; all the young men write the same kind of poetry nowadays--a sort of mixture of tennyson, and edgar poe, and alfred de musset. it reminds me of balfe's music, somehow; it pleases, and one catches the melody without knowing how or why. the book made quite a little sensation. the 'westminster' was very complimentary, but the 'quarterly' was dreadful. i remember roland reading the article and laughing at it; but he looked like a man who tries to be funny in tight boots, and he called it by some horrible slang term--'a slate,' i think he said." isabel had nothing to say to this. she had never heard that the "quarterly" was a popular review; and, indeed, the adjective "quarterly" had only one association for her, and that was rent, which had been almost as painful a subject as taxes in the camberwell household. lady gwendoline's papa came in presently to look for his daughter. he was angus pierrepoint aubrey amyott pomphrey, earl of ruysdale; but he wore a black coat and grey trousers and waistcoat, just like other people, and had thick boots, and didn't look a bit like an earl, isabel thought. he said, "haw, hum--yes, to be sure, my dear," when lady gwendoline told him she was ready to go home; "been talking to witherston--very good fellow, witherston--wants to get his son returned for conventford, gen'ral 'lection next year, lib'ral int'rest--very gentlemanly young f'ler, the son;" and then he went to look for roland, whom he found in the next room with charles raymond; and then lady gwendoline wished isabel good morning, and said something very kind, to the effect that they should most likely meet again before long, lowlands being so near graybridge; and then the earl offered his arm to his daughter. she took it, but she looked back at her cousin, who was talking to mr. raymond, and glancing every now and then in a half-amused, half-admiring way at isabel. "i am so glad to think you like my wretched scribble, mrs. gilbert," he said, going up to her presently. isabel blushed again, and said, "oh, thank you; yes, they are very pretty;" and it was as much as she could do to avoid calling mr. lansdell "sir" or "your lordship." "you are coming with us, i suppose, roland?" lady gwendoline said. "oh, yes,--that is to say. i'll see you to the carriage." "i thought you were coming to luncheon." "no; i meant to come, but i must see that fellow percival, the lawyer, you know, gwendoline, and i want to have a little more talk with raymond. you'll go on and show mrs. gilbert the murillo in the next room, raymond? and i'll run and look for my cousin's carriage, and then come back." "we can find the carriage very well without you, roland," lady gwendoline answered quickly. "come, papa." the young man stopped, and a little shadow darkened over his face. "did you really ask me to luncheon?" he said. "you really volunteered to come, after breakfast this morning, when you proposed bringing us here." "did i? oh, very well; in that case i shall let the percival business stand over; and i shall ride to oakbank to-morrow morning, raymond, and lie on the grass and talk to you all day long, if you'll let me waste your time for once in a way. good-bye; good morning, mrs. gilbert. by the bye, how do you mean to finish the day, raymond?" "i'm going to take mr. and mrs. gilbert to hurstonleigh grove; or rather they take me, for they've brought a basket that reminds one of the derby-day. we're going to picnic in the grove, and drink tea at a cottage in honour of isabel's--mrs. gilbert's--birthday." "you must come and picnic at mordred some day. it's not as pretty as hurstonleigh, but we'll manage to find a rustic spot. if you care for partridges, mr. gilbert, you'll find plenty in the woods round mordred next september." the young man put on his hat, and went after his cousin and her father. isabel saw him walk along the bright vista of rooms, and disappear in a burst of sunshine that flooded the great hall when the door was opened. the beings were gone. for a brief interval she had been breathing the poetry of life; but she fell back now into the sober prose, and thought that half the grandeur of the castle was gone with those aristocratic visitors. "and how do you like my young kinsman?" mr. raymond asked presently. isabel looked at him with surprise. "he is your relation--mr. lansdell?" "yes. my mother was a lansdell. there's a sort of cousin-ship between roland and me. he's a good fellow--a very noble-hearted, high-minded young fellow; but--" but what? mr. raymond broke off with so deep a sigh, that isabel imagined an entire romance upon the strength of the inspiration. had he done anything wicked? that dark beautiful creature, who only wanted the soul-harrowing memory of a crime to render him perfect. had he fled his country, like byron? or buried a fellow-creature in a cave, like mr. aram? isabel's eyes opened to their widest extent; and charles raymond answered that inquiring glance. "i sigh when i speak of roland," he said, "because i know the young man is not happy. he stands quite alone in the world, and has more money than he knows how to spend; two very bad things for a young man. he's handsome and fascinating,--another disadvantage; and he's brilliant without being a genius. in short, he's just the sort of man to dawdle away the brightest years of his life in the drawing-rooms of a lot of women, and take to writing cynical trash about better men in his old age. i can see only one hope of redemption for him, and that is a happy marriage; a marriage with a sensible woman, who would get the whip-hand of him before he knew where he was. all the luckiest and happiest men have been henpecked. look at the fate of the men who won't be henpecked. look at swift: he was a lord of the creation, and made the women fear him; look at him drivelling and doting under the care of a servant-maid. look at sterne; and byron, who outraged his wife in fact, and satirized her in fiction. were their lives so much the better because they scorned the gentle guidance of the apron-string? depend upon it, mrs. gilbert, the men who lead great lives, and do noble deeds, and die happy deaths, are married men who obey their wives. i'm a bachelor; so of course i speak without prejudice. i do most heartily wish that roland lansdell may marry a good and sensible woman." "a good and sensible woman!" isabel gave an involuntary shudder. surely, of all the creatures upon this over-populated earth, a sensible woman was the very last whom roland lansdell ought to marry. he should marry some lovely being in perpetual white muslin, with long shimmering golden hair,--the dark men always married fair women in isabel's novels,--a creature who would sit at his feet, and watch with him, as astarte watched with manfred, till dismal hours in the silent night; and who should be consumptive, and should die some evening--promiscuously, as mrs. gamp would say--with flowers upon her breast, and a smile upon her face. isabel knew very little more of the pictures, or the men in armour, or the cannon in the chambers that yet remained to be seen at warncliffe castle. she was content to let mr. raymond and her husband talk. george admired the cannon, and the old-fashioned locks and keys, and the model of a cathedral made by a poor man out of old champagne corks, and a few other curiosities of the same order; and he enjoyed himself, and was happy to see that his wife was pleased. he could tell that, by the smile upon her lips, though she said so little. the drive from warncliffe to hurstonleigh grove was as beautiful as the drive from graybridge to warncliffe; for this part of midlandshire is a perpetual park. isabel sat back in the carriage, and thought of lady gwendoline's aristocratic face and white-chip bonnet, and wondered whether she was the sensible woman whom roland lansdell would marry. they would be a very handsome couple. mrs. gilbert could fancy them riding arabs--nobody worth speaking of ever rode anything but arab horses, in isabel's fancy--in rotten row. she could see lady gwendoline with a cavalier hat and a long sweeping feather, and roland lansdell bending over her horse's neck to talk to her, as they rode along. she fancied them in that glittering saloon, which was one of the stock scenes always ready to be pushed on the stage of her imagination. she fancied them in the midst of that brilliant supernumerary throng who wait upon the footsteps of heroes and heroines. she pictured them to herself going down to the grave through an existence of dinner-parties, and rotten row, and balls, and ascot cups. ah, what a happy life! what a glorious destiny! the picnic seemed quite a tame thing after these reveries in the carriage. the orphans met their uncle at the lodge-gate; and they all went across the grass, just as they had gone before, to the little low iron gate which mr. raymond was privileged to open with a special key; and into the grove, where the wonderful beeches and oaks made a faint summer darkness. was it the same grove? to isabel it looked as if it had been made smaller since that other picnic; and the waterfall, and the woodland vistas, and the winding paths, and the arbour where they were to dine,--it was all very well for the orphans to clap their hands, and disport themselves upon the grass, and dart off at a tangent every now and then to gather inconvenient wild-flowers; but, after all, there was nothing so very beautiful in hurstonleigh grove. isabel wandered a little way by herself, while mr. raymond and george and the orphans unpacked the basket. she liked to be alone, that she might think of lady gwendoline and her cousin. lady gwendoline pomphrey--oh, how grand it sounded! why, to have such a name as that would alone be bliss; but to be called gwendoline pomphrey, and to wear a white-chip bonnet with that heavenly sprig of heather just trembling on the brim, and those broad, carelessly tied, unapproachable strings! and then, like the sudden fall of a curtain in a brilliant theatre, the scene darkened, and isabel thought of her own life--the life to which she must go back when it was dark that night: the common parlour, or the best parlour,--what was the distinction, in their dismal wretchedness, that one should be called better than the other?--- the bread-and-cheese, the radishes,--and, oh, how george could eat radishes, crunch, crunch, crunch!--till madness would have been relief. this unhappy girl felt a blank despair as she thought of her commonplace home,--her home for ever and ever,--unbrightened by a hope, unsanctified by a memory; her home, in which she had a comfortable shelter, and enough to eat and to drink, and decent garments with which to cover herself; and where, had she been a good or a sensible young woman, she ought of course to have been happy. but she was not happy. the slow fever that had been burning so long in her veins was now a rapid and consuming fire. she wanted a bright life, a happy life, a beautiful life; she wanted to be like lady gwendoline, and to live in a house like warncliffe castle. it was not that she envied lord ruysdale's daughter, remember; envy had no part in her nature. she admired gwendoline pomphrey too much to envy her. she would like to have been that elegant creature's youngest sister, and to have worshipped her and imitated her in a spirit of reverence. she had none of the radical's desire to tear the trappings from the bloated aristocrat; she only wanted to be an aristocrat too, and to wear the same trappings, and to march through life to the same music. george came presently, very much out of breath, to take her back to the arbour where there was a lobster salad, and that fine high-coloured graybridge sherry, and some pale german wine which mr. raymond contributed to the feast. the orphans and the two gentlemen enjoyed themselves very much. mr. raymond could talk about medicine as well as political economy; and he and george entered into a conversation in which there were a great many hard words. the orphans ate--to do that was to be happy; and isabel sat in a corner of the arbour, looking dreamily out at the shadows on the grass, and wondering why fate had denied her the privilege of being an earl's daughter. the drowsy atmosphere of the hot summer's afternoon, the rhine wine, and the sound of his companion's voice, had such a pleasant influence upon mr. raymond, that he fell asleep presently while george was talking; and the young man, perceiving this, produced a midlandshire newspaper, which he softly unfolded, and began to read. "will you come and gather some flowers, izzie?" whispered one of the orphans. "there are wild roses and honeysuckle in the lane outside. do come!" mrs. gilbert was very willing to leave the arbour. she wandered away with the two children along those lonely paths, which now sloped downwards into a kind of ravine, and then wound upwards to the grove. the orphans had a good deal to say to their late governess. they had a new instructress, and "she isn't a bit like you, dear mrs. gilbert," they said; "and we love you best, though she's very kind, you know, and all that; but she's old, you know, very old,--more than thirty; and she makes us hem cambric frills, and does _go on so_ if we don't put away our things; and makes us do such horrid sums; and instead of telling us stories when we're out with her, as you used,--oh, don't you remember telling us pelham? how i love pelham, and dombey!--about the little boy that died, and florence--she teaches us botany and jology" (the orphans called it 'jology'), "and tertiary sandstone, and old red formations, and things like that; and oh, dear izzie, i wish you never had been married." isabel smiled at the orphans, and kissed them, when they entwined themselves about her. but she was thinking of the alien's dreams, and whether lady gwendoline was the "duchess! with the glittering hair and cruel azure eyes," regarding whom the alien was cynical, not to say abusive. mrs. gilbert felt as if she had never read the alien half enough. she had seen him, and spoken to him,--a real poet, a real, living, breathing poet, who only wanted to lame himself, and turn his collars down, to become a byron. she was walking slowly along the woodland pathway, with the orphans round about her, like a modern laocoon family without the serpents, when she was startled by a rustling of the branches a few paces from her, and looking up, with a sudden half-frightened glance, she saw the tall figure of a man between her and the sunlight. the man was mr. roland lansdell, the author of "an alien's dreams." "i'm afraid i startled you, mrs. gilbert," he said, taking off his hat and standing bareheaded, with the shadows of the leaves flickering and trembling about him like living things. "i thought i should find mr. raymond here, as he said you were going to picnic, and i want so much to talk to the dear old boy. so, as they know me at the lodge, i got them to let me in." isabel tried to say something; but the orphans, who were in no way abashed by the stranger's presence, informed mr. lansdell that their uncle charles was asleep in the arbour where they had dined.--"up there." the elder orphan pointed vaguely towards the horizon as she spoke. "thank you; but i don't think i shall find him very easily. i don't know half the windings and twistings of this place." the younger orphan informed mr. lansdell that the way to the arbour was quite straight,--he couldn't miss it. "but you don't know how stupid i am," the gentleman answered, laughing. "ask your uncle if i'm not awfully deficient in the organ of locality. would you mind--but you were going the other way, and it seems so selfish to ask you to turn back; yet if you would take compassion upon my stupidity, and show me the way--?" he appealed to the orphans, but he looked at isabel. he looked at her with those uncertain eyes,--blue with a dash of hazel, hazel with a tinge of blue,--eyes that were always half hidden under the thick fringe of their lashes, like a glimpse of water glimmering athwart overshadowing rushes. "oh, yes, if you like," the orphans cried simultaneously; "we don't mind going back a bit." they turned as they spoke, and isabel turned with them. mr. lansdell put on his hat, and walked amongst the long grass beside the narrow pathway. the orphans were very lively, and fraternized immediately with mr. lansdell. they were mr. raymond's nieces? then they were his poor cousin rosa harlow's children, of whom he had heard so much from that dear good raymond? if so, they were almost cousins of his, mr. lansdell went on to say, and they must come and see him at mordred. and they must ask mrs. gilbert to come with them, as they seemed so fond of her. the girls had plenty to say for themselves. yes; they would like very much to come to mordred priory; it was very pretty; their uncle charles had shown them the house one day when he took them out for a drive. it would be capital fun to come, and to have a picnic in the grounds, as mr. lansdell proposed. the orphans were ready for anything in the way of holiday-making. and for isabel, she only blushed, and said, "thank you," when roland lansdell talked of her visiting mordred with her late charges. she could not talk to this grand and beautiful creature, who possessed in his own person all the attributes of her favourite heroes. how often this young dreamer of dreams had fancied herself in such companionship as this; discoursing with an incessant flow of brilliant persiflage, half scornful, half playful; holding her own against a love-stricken marquis; making as light of a duke as mary queen of scots ever made of a presumptuous chastelar! and now that the dream was realized; now that this splendid byronic creature was by her side, talking to her, trying to make her answer him, looking at her athwart those wondrous eyelashes,--she was stricken and dumbfounded; a miserable, stammering school-girl; a pamela, amazed and bewildered by the first complimentary address of her aristocratic persecutor. she had a painful sense of her own deficiency; she knew all at once that she had no power to play the part she had so often fancied herself performing to the admiration of supernumerary beholders. but with all this pain and mortification there mingled a vague delicious happiness. the dream had come true at last. _this_ was romance--_this_ was life. she knew now what a pallid and ghastly broker's copy of a picture that last year's business had been; the standing on the bridge to be worshipped by a country surgeon; the long tedious courtship; the dowdy, vulgar, commonplace wedding,--she knew now how poor and miserable a mockery all that had been. she looked with furtive glances at the tall figure bending now and then under the branches of the trees; the tall figure in loose garments, which, in the careless perfection of their fashion, were so unlike anything she had ever seen before; the wonderful face in which there was the mellow fight and colour of a guido. she stole a few timid glances at mr. lansdell, and made a picture of him in her mind, which, like or unlike, must be henceforth the only image by which she would recognize or think of him. did she think of him as what he was,--a young english gentleman, idle, rich, accomplished, and with no better light to guide his erratic wanderings than an uncertain glimmer which he called honour? had she thought of him thus, she would have been surely wiser than to give him so large a place in her mind, or any place at all. but she never thought of him in this way. he was all this; he was a shadowy and divine creature, amenable to no earthly laws. he was here now, in this brief hour, under the flickering sunlight and trembling shadows, and to-morrow he would melt away for ever and ever into the regions of light, which were his every-day habitation. what did it matter, then, if she was fluttered and dazed and intoxicated by his presence? what did it signify if the solid earth became empyrean air under this foolish girl's footsteps? mrs. gilbert did not even ask herself these questions. no consciousness of wrong or danger had any place in her mind. she knew nothing, she thought nothing; except that a modern lord byron was walking by her side, and that it was a very little way to the arbour. chapter xiii. "oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted!" roland lansdell dined with his uncle and cousin at lowlands upon the day after the picnic; but he said very little about his afternoon ramble in hurstonleigh grove. he lounged upon the lawn with his cousin gwendoline, and played with the dogs, and stared at the old pictures in the long dreary billiard-room, where the rattle of the rolling balls had been unheard for ages; and he entered into a languid little political discussion with lord ruysdale, and broke off--or rather dropped out of it--in the middle with a yawn, declaring that he knew very little about the matter, and was no doubt making a confounded idiot of himself, and would his uncle kindly excuse him, and reserve his admirable arguments for some one better qualified to appreciate them? the young man had no political enthusiasm. he had been in the great arena, and had done his little bit of wrestling, and had found himself baffled, not by the force of his adversaries, but by the _vis inerticæ_ of things in general. eight or nine years ago roland lansdell had been very much in earnest,--too much in earnest, perhaps,--for he had been like a racehorse that goes off with a rush and makes running for all the other horses, and then breaks down ignominiously midway betwixt the starting-post and the judge's chair. there was no "stay" in this bright young creature. if the prizes of life could have been won by that fiery rush, he would have won them; but as it was, he was fain to fall back among the ranks nameless, and let the plodders rush on towards the golden goal. thus it was that roland lansdell had been a kind of failure and disappointment. he had begun so brilliantly, he had promised so much. "if this young man is so brilliant at one-and-twenty," people had said to one another, "what will he be by the time he is forty-five?" but at thirty roland was nothing. he had dropped out of public life altogether, and was only a drawing-room favourite; a lounger in gay continental cities; a drowsy idler in fair grecian islands; a scribbler of hazy little verses about pretty women, and veils, and fans, and daggers, and jealous husbands, and moonlit balconies, and withered orange-flowers, and poisoned chalices, and midnight revels, and despair; a beautiful useless, purposeless creature; a mark for manoeuvring mothers; a hero for sentimental young ladies,--altogether a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. this was the man whom lady gwendoline and her father had found at baden baden, losing his money _pour se distraire_. gwendoline and her father were on their way back to england. they had gone abroad for the benefit of the earl's income; but continental residence is expensive nowadays, and they were going back to lowlands, lord ruysdale's family seat, where at least they would live free of house-rent, and where they could have garden-stuff and dairy produce, and hares and partridges, and silvery trout from the fish-ponds in the shrubberies, for nothing: and where they could have long credit from the country tradesfolk, and wax or composition candles for something less than tenpence apiece. lord ruysdale persuaded roland to return with them, and the young man assented readily enough. he was tired of the cantinent; he was tired of england too, for the matter of that; but those german gaming-places, those grecian islands, those papist cities where the bells were always calling the faithful to their drowsy devotions in darksome old cathedrals, were his last weariness, and he said, yes; he should be glad to see mordred again; he should enjoy a month's shooting; and he could spend the winter in paris. paris was as good as any other place in the winter. he had so much money and so much leisure, and so little knew what to do with himself. he knew that his life was idle and useless; but he looked about him, and saw that very little came of other men's work; he cried with the preacher, the son of david, king in jerusalem, "behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit, and there is no profit under the sun: that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered: the thing that has been, it is that which shall be." do you remember that saying of mirabeau's which mr. lewes has put upon the title-page of his wonderful life of robespierre: "this man will do great things," said the statesman,--i quote loosely from memory,--"for he believes in himself?" roland lansdell did not believe in himself; and lacking that grand faculty of self-confidence, he had grown to doubt and question all other things, as he doubted and questioned himself. "i will do my best to lead a good life, and be useful to my fellow-creatures," mr. lansdell said, when he left magdalen college, oxford, with a brilliant reputation, and the good wishes of all the magnates of the place. he began life with this intention firmly implanted in his mind. he knew that he was a rich man, and that there was a great deal expected of him. the parable of the talents was not without its import to him, though he had no belief in the divinity of the teacher. there was no great enthusiasm in his nature, but he was very sincere; and he went into parliament as a progressive young liberal, and set to work honestly to help his fellow-creatures. alas for poor humanity! he found the task more wearisome than the labour of sisyphus, or the toil of the daughters of danäus. the stone was always rolling back upon the labourer; the water was perpetually pouring out of the perforated buckets. he cultivated the working man, and founded a club for him, where he might have lectures upon geology and astronomy, and where, after twelve hours' bricklaying or road-making, he might improve his mind with the works of stuart mill or m'culloch, and where he could have almost anything; except those two simple things which he especially wanted,--a pint of decent beer and a quiet puff at his pipe. roland lansdell was the last man to plan any institution upon puritanical principles; but he _did not believe in himself_, so he took other people's ideas as the basis of his work; and by the time he opened his eyes to the necessity of beer and tobacco, the workman had grown tired and had abandoned him. this was only one of many schemes which mr. lansdell attempted while he was still very young, and had a faint belief in his fellow-creatures: but this is a sample of the rest. roland's schemes were not successful; they were not successful because he had no patience to survive preliminary failure, and wade on to ultimate success through a slough of despond and discouragement. he picked his fruit before it was ripe, and was angry when he found it sour, and would hew down the tree that bore so badly, and plant another. his fairest projects fell to the ground, and he left them there to rot; while he went away somewhere else to build new schemes and make fresh failures. moreover, mr. lansdell was a hot-headed, impulsive young man, and there were some things which he could not endure. he could bear ingratitude better than most people, because he was generous-minded, and set a very small price upon the favours he bestowed; but he could not bear to find that the people whom he sought to benefit were bored by his endeavours to help them. he had no ulterior object to gain, remember. he had no solemn conviction of a sacred duty to be performed at any cost to himself, in spite of every hindrance, in the face of every opposition. he only wanted to be useful to his fellow-creatures; and when he found that they repudiated his efforts, he fell away from them, and resigned himself to be useless, and to let his fellow-creatures go their own wilful way. so, almost immediately after making a brilliant speech about the poor-laws, at the very moment when people were talking of him as one of the most promising young liberals of his day, mr. lansdell abruptly turned his back upon st. stephen's, accepted the chiltern hundreds, and went abroad. he had experienced another disappointment besides the failure of his philanthropic schemes,--a disappointment that had struck home to his heart, and had given him an excuse for the cynical indifference, the hypochondriacal infidelity, which grew upon him from this time. mr. lansdell had been his own master from his earliest manhood, for his father and mother had died young. the lansdells were not a long-lived race; indeed, there seemed to be a kind of fatality attached to the masters of mordred priory: and in the long galleries where the portraits of dead-and-gone lansdells looked gravely down upon the frivolous creatures of to-day, the stranger was apt to be impressed by the youth of all the faces--the absence of those grey beards and bald foreheads which give dignity to most collections of family portraits. the lansdells of mordred were not a long-lived race, and roland's father had died suddenly when the boy was away at eton; but his mother, lady anna lansdell, only sister of the present earl of ruysdale, lived to be her son's companion and friend in the best and brightest years of his life. his life seemed to lose its brightness when he lost her; and i think this one great grief, acting upon a naturally pensive temperament, must have done much to confirm that morbid melancholy which overshadowed mr. lansdell's mind. his mother died; and the grand inducement to do something good and great, which might have made her proud and happy, died with her. roland said that he left the purest half of his heart behind him in the protestant cemetery at nice. he went back to england, and made those brilliant speeches of which i have spoken; and was not too proud to seek for sympathy and consolation from the person whom he loved next best to her whom he had lost,--that person was lady gwendoline pomphrey, his betrothed wife, the beloved niece of his dead mother. there had been so complete a sympathy between lady anna lansdell and her son, that the young man had suffered himself, half unconsciously, to be influenced by his mother's predilections. she was very fond of gwendoline; and when the two families were in midlandshire, gwendoline spent the greater part of her life with her aunt. she was two years older than roland, and she was a very beautiful young woman. a fragile-looking, aristocratic beauty, with a lofty kind of gracefulness in all her movements, and with cold blue eyes that would have frozen the very soul of an aspiring young lawrence. she was handsome, self-possessed, and accomplished; and lady anna lansdell was never tired of sounding her praises. so young roland, newly returned from oxford, fell--or imagined himself to have fallen--desperately in love with her; and while his brief access of desperation lasted, the whole thing was arranged, and mr. lansdell found himself engaged. he was engaged, and he was very much in love with his cousin. that two years' interval between their ages gave gwendoline an immense advantage over her lover; she practised a thousand feminine coquetries upon this simple generous lad, and was proud of her power over him, and very fond of him after her own fashion, which was not a very warm one. she was by no means a woman to consider the world well lost for love. her father had told her all about roland's circumstances, and that the settlements would be very handsome. she was only sorry that poor roland was a mere nobody, after all; a country gentleman, who prided himself upon the length of his pedigree and the grandeur of his untitled race; but whose name looked very insignificant when you saw it at the tail of a string of dukes and marquises in the columns of the "morning post." but then he might distinguish himself in parliament. there was something in that; and lady gwendoline brought all her power to bear upon the young man's career. she fanned the faint flames of his languid ambition with her own fiery breath. this girl, with her proud saxon beauty, her cold blue eyes, her pale auburn hair, was as ardent and energetic as joan of arc or elizabeth of england. she was a grand ambitious creature, and she wanted to marry a ruler, and to rule him; and she was discontented with her cousin because a crown did not drop on to his brows the moment he entered the arena. his speeches had been talked about; but, oh, what languid talk it had been! gwendoline wanted all europe to vibrate with the clamour of the name that was so soon to be her own. at the end of his second session roland went abroad with his dying mother. he came back alone, six weeks after his mother's death, and went straight to gwendoline for consolation. he found her in deep mourning; all a-glitter with bracelets and necklaces of shining jet; looking very fair and stately in her trailing black robes; but he found her drawing-room filled with callers, and he left her wounded and angry. he thought her so much a part of himself, that he had expected to find her grief equal to his own. he went to her again, in a passionate outbreak of grief and anger; told her that she was cold-hearted and ungrateful, and that she had never loved the aunt who had been almost a mother to her. lady gwendoline was the last woman in the world to submit to any such reproof. she was astounded by her lover's temerity. "i loved my aunt very dearly, mr. lansdell," she said; "so dearly that i could endure a great deal for her sake; but i can _not_ endure the insolence of her son." and then the earl of ruysdale's daughter swept out of the room, leaving her cousin standing alone in a sunlit window, with the spring breezes blowing in upon him, and the shrill voice of a woman crying primroses sounding in the street below. he went home, dispirited, disheartened, doubtful of himself, doubtful of lady gwendoline, doubtful of all the world; and early the next morning he received a letter from his cousin coolly releasing him from his engagement. the experience of yesterday had proved that they were unsuited to each other, she said; it was better that they should part now, while it was possible for them to part friends. nothing could be more dignified or more decided than the dismissal. mr. lansdell put the letter in his breast; the pretty perfumed letter, with the ruysdale arms emblazoned on the envelope, the elegant ladylike letter, which recorded his sentence without a blot or a blister, without one uncertain line to mark where the hand had trembled. the hand may have trembled, nevertheless; for lady gwendoline was just the woman to write a dozen copies of her letter rather than send one that bore the faintest evidence of her weakness. roland put the letter in his breast, and resigned himself to his fate. he was a great deal too proud to appeal against his cousin's decree; but he had loved her very sincerely, and if she had recalled him, he would have gone back to her and would have forgiven her. he lingered in england for a week or more after all the arrangements for his departure had been made; he lingered in the expectation that his cousin would recall him: but one morning, while he was sitting in the smoking-room at his favourite club, with his face hidden behind the pages of the "post," he burst into a harsh strident laugh. "what the deuce is the matter with you, lansdell?" asked a young man who had been startled by that sudden outbreak of unharmonious hilarity. "oh, nothing particular; i was looking at the announcement of my cousin gwendoline's approaching marriage with the marquis of heatherland. i'm rejoiced to see that our family is getting up in the world." "oh, yes, that's been in the wind a long time," the lounger answered, coolly. "everybody saw that heatherland was very far gone six months ago. he's been mooning about your cousin ever since they met at the bushes, sir francis luxmoor's leicestershire place. they used to say you were rather sweet in that quarter; but i suppose it was only a cousinly flirtation." "yes," said mr. lansdell, throwing down the paper, and taking out his cigar-case; "i suppose it was only what gwendoline would call a flirtation. you see, i have been abroad six months attending the deathbed of my mother. i could scarcely expect to be remembered all that time. will you give me a light for my cigar?" the faces of the two young men were very close together as roland lighted his cigar. mr. lansdell's pale-olive complexion had blanched a little, but his hand was quite steady, and he smoked half his trabuco before he left the club-room. the blow was sharp and unexpected, but lady gwendoline's lover bore it like a philosopher. "i am unhappy because i have lost her," he thought; "but should i have been happy with her, if i had married her? have i ever been happy in my life, or is there such a thing as happiness upon this unequally divided earth? i have played all my cards, and lost the game. philanthropy, ambition, love, friendship--i have lost upon every one of them. it is time that i should begin to enjoy myself." thus it was that mr. lansdell accepted the chiltern hundreds, and turned his back upon a country in which he had never been especially happy. he had plenty of friends upon the continent; and being rich, handsome, and accomplished, was fêted and caressed wherever he went. he was very much admired, and he might have been beloved; but that first disappointment had done its fatal work, and he did not believe that there was in all the world any such thing as pure and disinterested affection for a young man with a landed estate and fifteen thousand a year. so he lounged and dawdled away his time in drawing-rooms and boudoirs, on moonlit balconies, in shadowy orange-groves, beside the rippling arno, in the colonnades of venice, on the parisian boulevards, under the lime-trees of berlin, in any region where there was life and colour and gaiety, and the brightness of beautiful faces, and where a man of a naturally gloomy temperament might forget himself and be amused. he started with the intention of doing no harm; but with no better guiding principle than the intention to be harmless, a man can contrive to do a good deal of mischief. mr. lansdell's life abroad was neither a good nor a useful one. it was an artificial kind of existence, with spurious pleasures, spurious brilliancy,--a life whose brightest moments but poorly compensated for the dismal reaction that followed them. and in the meanwhile lady gwendoline did not become marchioness of heatherland; for, only a month before the day appointed for the wedding, young lord heatherland broke his neck in an irish steeple-chase. it was a terrible and bitter disappointment; but lady gwendoline showed her high breeding and her philosophy at the same time. she retired from the world in which her career had been hitherto so brilliantly successful, and bore her sorrow in silence. she, too, had played her best card, and had lost; and now that the marquis was dead, and rowland lansdell far away, people began to say that the lady had jilted her cousin, and that the loss of her titled lover was heaven's special judgment upon her iniquity,--though why poor lord heatherland should be sacrificed to lady gwendoline pomphrey's sin is rather a puzzling question. it may be that lord ruysdale's daughter hoped her cousin would return when he heard of the marquis's death. she knew that roland had loved her: and what was more likely than that he should come back to her, now that he knew she was once more free to be his wife? lady gwendoline kept the secrets of her own heart, and no one knew which of her two lovers had been dearest to her. she kept her own secrets; and, by-and-by, when she reappeared in the world, people saw that her beauty had suffered very little from her sorrow for her disappointment. she was still very handsome, but her prestige was gone. impertinent young _débutantes_ of eighteen called this splendid creature of four-and-twenty "quite old." wasn't she engaged to a mr. lansdell ever so long ago, and then to the marquis of heatherland? poor thing, how very sad! they wondered she did not go over to rome, or join miss sellon's sisterhood, or something of that kind. lady gwendoline's portrait still held its place in books of beauty, and she could see herself smiling in west-end printshops, with a preternaturally high forehead, and very long ringlets; but she felt that she was old--very old. gossipping dowagers talked aristocratic scandal openly before her, and said, "we don't mind _your_ hearing it, gwendoline dear, for of course you know the world, and that such things _do_ happen;" and a woman has seen the last of her youth when people say that sort of thing to her. she felt that she was very old. she had led a high-pressure kind of existence, in which a year stands for a decade; and now in her lonely old age she discovered that her father was very poor, and that his estates were mortgaged, and that henceforth her existence must be a wretched hand-to-mouth business, unless some distant relation, from whom lord ruysdale had expectations, would be good enough to die. the distant relation had died within the last twelve months, and the fortune inherited from him, though by no means a large one, had set the earl's affairs tolerably straight; so he had returned to lowlands, after selling the lease and furniture of his town-house. it was absurd to keep the town-house any longer for the sake of gwendoline, who was two-and-thirty years of age, and never likely to marry. lord ruysdale argued. so he had paid his debts, and had released his estate from some of its many incumbrances, and had come back to the home of his boyhood, to set up as a model farmer and country gentleman. so, in the bright july sunshine, gwendoline and her cousin lounged upon the lawn, and talked of old pleasures and old acquaintances, and the things that happened to them when they were young. if the lady ever cherished any hope that roland would return to his allegiance, that hope has now utterly vanished. he has forgiven her for all the past, and they are friends and first-cousins again; but there is no room for hope that they can ever be again what they have been. a man who can forgive so generously must have long ceased to love: that strange madness, so nearly allied to hatred, and jealousy, and rage, and despair, has no kindred with forgiveness. lady gwendoline knew that her chance was gone. she knew this; and there was a secret bitterness in her heart when she thought of it, and she was jealous of her cousin's regard, and exacting in her manner to him. he bore it all with imperturbable good temper. he had been hot-headed and fiery-tempered long ago, when he was young and chivalrous, and eager to be useful to his fellow-creatures; but now he was only a languid loiterer upon the earth, and his creed was the creed of the renowned american who has declared that "there is nothing new, and nothing true; and it don't signify." what did it matter? the crooked sticks would never be straight: that which was wanting would never be numbered. roland lansdell suffered from a milder form of that disease in a wild paroxysm of which swift wrote "gulliver," and byron horrified society with "don juan." he suffered from that moody desperation of mind which came upon hamlet after his mother's wedding, and neither man nor woman delighted him. but do not suppose that this young man gave himself melancholy or byronic airs upon the strength of the aching void at his own weary heart. he was a sensible young man; and he did not pose himself _à la_ lara, or turn down his collars, or let his beard grow. he only took life very easily, and was specially indulgent to the follies and vices of people from whom he expected so very little. he had gone back to midlandshire because he was tired of his continental wanderings; and now he was tired of mordred already, before he had been back a week. lady gwendoline catechised him rather closely as to what he had done with himself upon the previous afternoon; and he told her very frankly that he had strolled into hurstonleigh grove to see mr. raymond, and had spent an hour or two talking with his old friend, while mr. and mrs. gilbert and the children enjoyed themselves, and prepared a rustic tea, which would have been something like watteau, if watteau had been a dutchman. "it was very pretty, gwendoline, i assure you," he said. "mrs. gilbert made tea, and we drank it in a scalding state; and the two children were all of a greasy radiance with bread-and-butter. the doctor seems to be an excellent fellow; his moral region is something tremendous, raymond tells me, and he entertained us at tea with a most interesting case of fester." "oh, the doctor? that's mr. gilbert, is it not?" said lady gwendoline; "and what do you think of his wife, roland? you must have formed some opinion upon that subject, i should think, by the manner in which you stared at her." "did i stare at her?" cried mr. lansdell, with supreme carelessness. "i dare say i did; i always stare at pretty women. why should a man go into all manner of stereotyped raptures about a raffaelle or a guido, and yet feel no honest thrill of disinterested admiration when he looks at a picture fresh from the hands of the supreme painter, nature? who, by the way, makes as many failures, and is as often out of drawing, as any other artist. yes, i admire mrs. gilbert, and i like to look at her. i don't suppose she's any better than other people, but she's a great deal prettier. a beautiful piece of animated waxwork, with a little machinery inside, just enough to make her say, 'yes, if you please,' and 'no, thank you.' a lovely non-entity with yellow-black eyes. did you observe her eyes?" "no!" lady gwendoline answered, sharply; "i observed nothing except that she was a very dowdy-looking person. what, in heaven's name, is mr. raymond's motive for taking her up? he's always taking up some extraordinary person." "but mrs. gilbert is not an extraordinary person: she's very stupid and commonplace. she was nursery-maid, or nursery-governess, or something of that kind, to that dear good raymond's penniless nieces." there was no more said about mr. and mrs. gilbert. lady gwendoline did not care to talk about these common people, who came across her dull pathway, and robbed her of some few accidental rays of that light which was now the only radiance upon earth for her,--the light of her cousin's presence. ah, me! with what a stealthy step, invisible in the early sunshine, pitiless nemesis creeps after us, and glides past us, and goes on before to wait for us upon the other side of the hill, amidst the storm-clouds and the darkness! from the very first gwendoline had loved her cousin roland better than any other living creature upon this earth: but the chance of bringing down the bird at whose glorious plumage so many a fair fowler had levelled her rifle had dazzled and tempted her. the true wine of life was not that mawkish, sickly-sweet compound of rose-leaves and honey called love, but an effervescing, intoxicating beverage known as success, lady gwendoline thought: and in the triumph of her splendid conquest it seemed such an easy thing to resign the man she loved. but now it was all different. she looked back, and remembered what her life might have been: she looked forward, and saw what it was to be: and the face of nemesis was very terrible to look upon. thus it was that lady gwendoline was exacting of her cousin's attention, impatient of his neglect. oh, if she could have brought him back! if she could have kindled a new flame in the cold embers! alas! she knew that to do that would be to achieve the impossible. she looked in the glass, and saw that her aristocratic beauty was pale and faded; she felt that the story of her life was ended. the sea might break against the crags for ever and for ever; but the tender grace of a day that was dead could never return to her. "he loved me once," she thought, as she sat in the summer twilight, watching her cousin strolling on the lawn, smoking his after-dinner cigar, and looking so tired--so tired of himself and everything in the world. "he loved me once; it is something to remember that." the day was very dull at lowlands, mr. lansdell thought. there was a handsome house, a little old and faded, but very handsome notwithstanding; and there was a well-cooked dinner, and good wines; and there was an elegant and accomplished woman always ready to talk to him and amuse him;--and yet, somehow, it was all flat, stale, and unprofitable to this young man, who had lived the same kind of life for ten years, and had drained its pleasures to the very dregs. "we should laugh at a man who went on writing epic poems all his life, though people refused to read a line of his poetry; and no man can be expected to go on trying to improve the position of people who don't want to be improved. i've tried my hand at the working-man, and he has rejected me as an intrusive nuisance. i've no doubt he was 'in his right.' how should i like a reformer who wanted to set _me_ straight, and lay out my leisure hours by line and rule, and spend my money for me, and show me how to get mild turkish, and german wines, in the best and cheapest market?" mr. lansdell often thought about his life. it is not natural that a man, originally well disposed, should lead a bad and useless life without thinking of it. mr. lansdell was subject to gloomy fits of melancholy, in which the present seemed a burden, and the future a blank,--a great blank desert, or a long dreary bridge, like that which the genius showed to mirza in his morning vision, with dreadful pitfalls every here and there, down which unwary foot-passengers sank, engulfed in the dreadful blackness of a bottomless ocean. chapter xiv. under lord thurston's oak. while mr. lansdell remembered isabel gilbert as a pretty automaton, who had simpered and blushed when he spoke to her, and stammered shyly when she was called upon to answer him, the doctor's wife walked up and down the flat commonplace garden at graybridge-on-the-wayverne, and thought of her birthday afternoon, whose simple pleasures had been embellished by the presence of a demigod. yes, she walked up and down between two rows of straggling gooseberry-bushes, in a rapturous day-dream; a dangerous day-dream, in which roland lansdell's dark face shone dazzling and beautiful. was it wrong to think of him? she never asked herself that question. she had read sentimental books all her life, and had been passionately in love with heroes in three volumes, ever since she could remember. what did it matter whether she was in love with sir reginald glanville or mr. roland lansdell? one passion was as hopeless as the other, and as harmless therefore. she was never likely to see the lord of mordred priory again. had she not heard him tell mr. raymond that he should spend the winter in paris? mrs. gilbert counted the months upon her fingers. was november the winter? if so, mr. lansdell would be gone in four months' time. and in all those four months what likelihood was there that she should see him,--she, who was such a low degraded wretch as compared with this splendid being and those with whom it was his right to associate? never, no, never until now had she understood the utter hideousness and horror of her life. the square miserable parlour, with little stunted cupboards on each side of the fireplace, and shells and peacocks' feathers, and penny-bottles of ink, and dingy unpaid bills, upon the mantel-piece. she sat there with the july sun glaring in upon her through the yellow-white blind; she sat there and thought of her life and its squalid ugliness, and then thought of lady gwendoline at lowlands, and rebelled against the unkindness of a providence that had not made her an earl's daughter. and then she clasped her hands upon her face, and shut out the vulgar misery of that odious parlour--a _parlour_!--the very word was unknown in those bright regions of which she was always dreaming--and thought of roland lansdell. she thought of him, and she thought what her life might have been--if---- if what? if any one out of a hundred different visions, all equally childish and impossible, could have been realized. if she had been an earl's daughter, like lady gwendoline! if she had been a great actress, and roland lansdell had seen her and fallen in love with her from a stage-box! if he had met her in the walworth road two or three years ago; she fancied the meeting,--he in a cab, with the reins lightly held between the tips of his gloved fingers, and a tiny tiger swinging behind; and she standing on the kerbstone waiting to cross the road, and not out to fetch anything vulgar, only going to pay a water-rate, or to negotiate some mysterious "backing" of the spoons, or some such young-ladylike errand. and then she got up and went to the looking-glass to see if she really was pretty; or if her face, as she saw it in her day-dreams, was only an invention of her own, like the scenery and the dresses of those foolish dreams. she rested her elbows on the mantel-piece, and looked at herself, and pushed her hair about, and experimented with her mouth and eyes, and tried to look like edith dombey in the grand carker scene, and acted the scene in a whisper. no, she wasn't a bit like edith dombey; she was more like juliet, or desdemona. she lowered her eyelids, and then lifted them slowly, revealing a tender penetrating glance in the golden black eyes. "i'm _very_ sorry that you are not well!" she whispered. yes, she would do for desdemona. oh, if instead of marrying george gilbert, she had only run away to london, and gone straight to that enterprising manager, who would have been so sure to engage her! if she had done this, she might have played desdemona, and mr. lansdell might have happened to go to the theatre, and might have fallen desperately in love with her on the spot. she took a dingy volume of the immortal william's from a dusty row of books on one of the cupboards, and went up to her room and locked the door, and pleaded for cassio, and wept and protested opposite the looking-glass, before which three matter-of-fact generations of gilberts had shaved themselves. she was only nineteen, and she was a child, with all a child's eagerness for something bright and happy. it seemed only a very short time since she had longed for a gaily-dressed doll that adorned one of the walworth road shop-windows. her married life had not as yet invested her with any matronly dignity. she had no domestic cares or duties; for the simple household was kept in order by mrs. jeffson, who would have resented any interference from the young mistress. isabel went into the kitchen sometimes, when she was very much at a loss as to what she should do with herself, and sat in an old rocking-chair swinging languidly backwards and forwards, and watching kind-hearted tilly making a pie. there are some young women who take kindly to a simple domestic life, and have a natural genius for pies and puddings, and cutting and contriving, in a cheery, pleasant way, that invests poverty with a grace of its own; and when a gentleman wishes to marry on three hundred a year, he should look out for one of those bright household fairies. isabel had no liking for these things; to her the making of pastry was a wearisome business. it was all very well for ruth pinch to do it for once in a way, and to be admired by john westlock, and marry a rich and handsome young husband offhand. no doubt miss pinch knew instinctively that mr. westlock would come that morning while the beef-steak pudding was in progress. but to go on making puddings for tom pinch for ever and ever, with no john westlock! isabel left the house affairs to mrs. jeffson, and acted shakespearian heroines and edith dombey before her looking-glass, and read her novels, and dreamed her dreams, and wrote little scraps of poetry, and drew pen-and-ink profile portraits of mr. lansdell--always looking from right to left. she gave him very black eyes with white blanks in the centre, and streaky hair; she drew lady gwendoline and the chip bonnet also very often, if not quite as often as the gentleman; so there was no harm in it. mrs. gilbert was strictly punctilious with herself, even in the matter of her thoughts. she only thought of what _might_ have happened if mr. lansdell had met her long ago before her marriage. it is not to be supposed that she forgot roland's talk of some picnic or entertainment at mordred. she thought of it a great deal, sometimes fancying that it was too bright a thing to come to pass: at other times thinking that mr. lansdell was likely to call at any moment with a formal invitation for herself and her husband. the weather was very warm just now, and the roads very dusty; so mrs. gilbert stayed at home a good deal. he might come,--he might come at any unexpected moment. she trembled and turned hot at the sound of a double knock, and ran to the glass to smooth her disordered hair: but only the most commonplace visitors came to mr. gilbert's mansion; and isabel began to think that she would never see roland lansdell again. and then she plunged once more into the hot-pressed pages of the "alien," and read mr. lansdell's plaints, on toned paper, with long _s_'s that looked like _f_'s. and she copied his verses, and translated them into bad french. they were very difficult: how was she to render even such a simple sentence as "my own clotilde?" she tried such locutions as, "_ma propre clotilde_," "_ma clotilde particulière_;" but she doubted if they were quite academically correct. and she set the alien to tunes that he didn't match, and sang him in a low voice to the cracked notes of an old harpsichord which george's mother had imported from yorkshire. one day when she was walking with george,--one dreary afternoon, when george had less to do than usual, and was able to take his wife for a nice dusty walk on the high-road,--mrs. gilbert saw the man of whom she had thought so much. she saw a brown horse and a well-dressed rider sweep past her in a cloud of dust; and she knew, when he had gone by, that he was roland lansdell. he had not seen her any more than if there was no such creature upon this earth. he had not seen her. for the last five weeks she had been thinking of him perpetually, and he rode by and never saw that she was there. no doubt lord byron would have passed her by in much the same manner if he had lived: and would have ridden on to make a morning call upon that thrice-blessed italian woman, whose splendid shame it was to be associated with him. was it not always so? the moon is a cold divinity, and the brooks look up for ever and win no special radiance in recompense for their faithful worship: the sunflower is always turning to the sun, and the planet takes very little notice of the flower. did not napoleon snub madame de staël? and if isabel could have lived thirty years earlier, and worked her passage out to st. helena as ship's needle-woman, or something of that kind, and expressed her intention of sitting at the exile's feet for the rest of her natural life, the hero would have doubtless sent her back by the first homeward-bound vessel with an imperially proportioned flea in her ear. no, she must be content to worship after the manner of the brooks. no subtle power of sympathy was engendered out of her worship. she drew rather fewer profile views of mr. lansdell after that wretched dusty afternoon, and she left off hoping that he would call and invite her to mordred. she resumed her old habits, and went out again with shelley and the "alien," and the big green parasol. one day--one never-to-be-forgotten day, which made a kind of chasm in her life, dividing all the past from the present and the future--she sat on her old seat under the great oak-tree, beside the creaking mill-wheel and the plashing water; she sat in her favourite spot, with shelley on her lap and the green parasol over her head. she had been sitting there for a long time in the drowsy midday atmosphere, when a great dog came up to her, and stared at her, and snuffed at her hands, and made friendly advances to her; and then another dog, bigger, if anything, than the first, came bouncing over a stile and bounding towards her; and then a voice, whose sudden sound made her drop her book all confused and frightened, cried, "hi, frollo! this way, frollo." and in the next minute a gentleman, followed by a third dog, came along the narrow bridge that led straight to the bench on which she was sitting. her parasol had fallen back as she stooped to pick up her book, and roland lansdell could not avoid seeing her face. he thought her very pretty, as we know, but he thought her also very stupid; and he had quite forgotten his talk about her coming to mordred. "let me pick up the book, mrs. gilbert," he said. "what a pretty place you have chosen for your morning's rest! this is a favourite spot of mine." he looked at the open pages of the book as he handed it to her, and saw the title; and glancing at another book on the seat near her, he recognized the familiar green cover and beveled edges of the "alien." a man always knows the cover of his own book, especially when the work has hung rather heavily on the publisher's hands. "you are fond of shelley," he said. (he was considerably surprised to find that this pretty nonentity beguiled her morning walks with the perusal of the "revolt of islam.") "oh yes, i am very, very fond of him. wasn't it a pity that he was drowned?" she spoke of that calamity as if it had been an event of the last week or two. these things were nearer to her than all that common business of breakfast and dinner and supper which made up her daily life. mr. lansdell shot a searching glance at her from under cover of his long lashes. was this feminine affectation, provincial rosa-matilda-ism? "yes, it was a pity," he said; "but i fancy we're beginning to get over the misfortune. and so you like all that dreamy, misty stuff?" he added, pointing to the open book which isabel held in her hands. she was turning the leaves about, with her eyes cast down upon the pages. so would she have sat, shy and trembling, if sir reginald glanville, or eugene aram, or the giaour, or napoleon the great, or any other grand melancholy creature, could have been conjured into life and planted by her side. but she could not tolerate the substantive "stuff" as applied to the works of the lamented percy bysshe shelley. "i think it is the most beautiful _poetry_ that was ever written," she said. "better than byron's?" asked mr. lansdell; "i thought most young ladies made byron their favourite." "oh yes, i love byron. but then he makes one so unhappy, because one feels that he was so unhappy when he wrote. fancy his writing the 'giaour' late at night, after being out at parties where everybody adored him; and if he hadn't written it, he would have gone mad," said mrs. gilbert, opening her eyes very wide. "reading shelley's poetry seems like being amongst birds and flowers and blue rippling water and summer. it always seems summer in his poetry. oh, i don't know which i like best." was all this affectation, or was it only simple childish reality? mr. lansdell was so much given to that dreadful disease, disbelief, that he was slow to accept even the evidence of those eloquent blushes, the earnestness in those wonderful eyes, which could scarcely be assumed at will, however skilled in the light comedy of every-day life mrs. gilbert might be. the dogs, who had no misanthropical tendencies, had made friends with izzie already, and had grouped themselves about her, and laid their big paws and cold wet noses on her knee. "shall i take them away?" asked mr. lansdell. "i am afraid they will annoy you." "oh no, indeed; i am so fond of dogs." she bent over them and caressed them with her ungloved hands, and dropped shelley again, and was ashamed of her awkwardness. would edith dombey have been perpetually dropping things? she bent over a big black retriever till her lips touched his forehead, and he was emboldened to flap his great slimy tongue over her face in token of his affection. _his_ dog! yes, it had come to that already. mr. lansdell was that awful being, the mysterious "lui" of a thousand romances. roland had been standing upon the bridge all this time; but the bridge was very narrow, and as a labouring man came across at this moment with a reaping-hook across his shoulder, mr. lansdell had no choice except to go away, or else sit down on the bench under the tree. so he sat down at a respectful distance from mrs. gilbert, and picked up shelley again; and i think if it had not been for the diversion afforded by the dogs, isabel would have been likely to drop over into the brawling mill-stream in the intensity of her confusion. he was there by her side, a real living hero and poet, and her weak sentimental little heart swelled with romantic rapture; and yet she felt that she ought to go away and leave him. another woman might have looked at her watch, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, and gathered up her books and parasol, and departed with a sweeping curtsey and a dignified adieu to mr. lansdell. but isabel was planted to the spot, held by some fearful but delicious charm,--a magic and a mystic spell,--with which the plashing of the water, and the slow creaking of the mill-wheel, and a faint fluttering of leaves and flowers, the drowzy buzz of multitudinous insects, the thrilling song of shelley's own skylark in the blue heavens high above her head, blended in one sweet confusion. i acknowledge that all this was very hard upon the honest-hearted parish doctor, who was at this moment sitting in the faint atmosphere of a cottage chamber, applying fresh layers of cotton wool to the poor tortured arm of a sunday-school pupil, who had been all but burnt to death in the previous week. but then, if a man chooses to marry a girl because her eyes are black and large and beautiful, he must be contented with the supreme advantage he derives from the special attribute for which he has chosen her: and so long as she does not become a victim to cataract, or aggravated inflammation of the eyelids, or chronic ophthalmia, he has no right to complain of his bargain. if he selects his wife from amongst other women because she is true-hearted and high-minded and trustworthy, he has ample right to be angry with her whenever she ceases to be any one of these things. mr. lansdell and his dogs lingered for some considerable time under the shadow of the big oak. the dogs were rather impatient, and gave expression to their feelings by sundry yawns that were like half-stifled howls, and by eager pantings, and sudden and purposeless leaps, and short broken-off yelps or snaps; but roland lansdell was in no hurry to leave the region of thurston's crag. mrs. gilbert was not stupid, after all; she was something better than a pretty waxen image, animated by limited machinery. that pretty head was tilled with a quaint confusion of ideas, half-formed childish fancies, which charmed and amused this elegant loiterer, who had lived in a world where all the women were clever and accomplished, and able to express all they thought, and a good deal more than they thought, with the clear precision and self-possession of creatures who were thoroughly convinced of the infallibility of their own judgment. yes, mr. lansdell was amused by isabel's talk; and he led her on very gently, till her shyness vanished, and she dared to look up at his face as she spoke to him; and he attuned his own talk to the key of hers, and wandered with her in the valhalla of her heroes, from eugene aram to napoleon buonaparte. but in the midst of all this she looked all in a hurry at the little silver watch that george had given her, and found that it was past three. "oh, i must go, if you please," she said; "i have been out ever since eleven o'clock, and we dine at half-past four." "let me carry your books a little way for you, then," said mr. lansdell. "but are you going that way?" "yes, that is the very way i am going." the dogs were all excitement at the prospect of a move; they barked and careered about isabel, and rushed off as if they were going to run ten miles at a stretch, and then wheeled round with alarming suddenness and flew back to mrs. gilbert and their master. the nearest way to graybridge lay across all that swelling sea of lovely meadow-land, and there were a good many stiles to be crossed and gates to be opened and shut, so the walk occupied some time; and mr. lansdell must have had business to transact in the immediate neighbourhood of graybridge, for he walked all the way through those delicious meadows, and only parted with isabel at a gate that opened into the high-road near the entrance of the town. "i suppose you often stroll as far as thurston's crag?" mr. lansdell said. "oh yes, very often. it isn't too long a walk, and it is so pretty." "it is pretty. mordred is quite as near to you, though, and i think that you would like the garden at mordred; there are ruins, you know, and it's altogether very romantic. i will give you and mr. gilbert a key, if you would like to come there sometimes. oh, by the bye, i hope you haven't forgotten your promise to come to luncheon and see the pictures, and all that sort of thing." no, isabel had not forgotten; her face flushed suddenly at the thought of this rapturous vista opening before her. she was to see _him_ again, once more, in his own house, and then--and then it would be november, and he would go away, and she would never see him again. no, isabel had not forgotten; but until this moment all recollection of that invitation to the priory had been blotted out of mr. lansdell's mind. it flashed back upon him quite suddenly now, and he felt that he had been unduly neglectful of these nice simple-hearted gilberts, in whom his dear good raymond was so much interested. "i dare say you are fond of pictures?" he said, interrogatively. "oh yes, i am very, very fond of them." this was quite true. she was fond of everything that was beautiful,--ready to admire everything with ignorant childish enthusiasm,--pictures, and flowers, and fountains, and moonlit landscapes, and wonderful foreign cities, and everything upon this earth that was romantic, and different from her own life. "then will you ask mr. gilbert to accept an unceremonious invitation, and to bring you to the priory to luncheon,--say next tuesday, as that will give me time to invite my cousin gwendoline, and your old friend mr. raymond, and the two little girls who are so fond of you?" isabel murmured something to the effect that she would be very happy, and she was sure her husband would be very happy. she thought that no creature in the world could be otherwise than enraptured by such an invitation: and then she began to think of what she would wear, and to remember that there were greasy streaks and patches upon her brown silk wedding-dress, which was the best and richest garment her wardrobe contained. oh, if george would only give her a pale pearly-coloured silk that she had seen in a shop-window at murlington, and a black silk mantle, and white bonnet, and pearly gloves and boots and parasol to match the dress! there were people in the world rich enough to have all these things, she thought,--thrice-blessed creatures, who always walked in silk attire. mr. lansdell begged her to write him a line to say if tuesday would suit mr. gilbert. they were at the last gate by this time, and he lifted his hat with one hand while he held out the other to isabel. she touched it very lightly, with fingers that trembled a little at the thrilling contact. her gloves were rolled up in a little ball in her pocket. she was at an age when gloves are rather a nuisance than otherwise; it is only when women come to years of discretion that they are learned as to the conflicting merits of houbigant and piver. "good-bye. i shall see gwendoline this afternoon; and i shall rely upon you for tuesday. hi, frollo, quasimodo, caspar!" he was gone, with his dogs and a cloud of dust about his heels. even the dust imparted a kind of grandeur to him. he seemed a being who appeared and disappeared in a cloud, after the manner of some african genii. graybridge church clock chimed the half-hour after four, and mrs. gilbert hurried home, and went into the common parlour, where dinner was laid, with her face a little flushed, and her dress dusty. george was there already, whistling very loudly, and whittling a stick with a big knobby-handled clasp-knife. "why, izzie," he said, "what _have_ you been doing with yourself?" "_oh_, george!" exclaimed mrs. gilbert, in a tone of mingled triumph and rapture, "i have met mr. lansdell, and he was so polite, and he stopped and talked to me _ever_ so long; and we're to go there on tuesday, and lady gwendoline pomphrey is to be there to meet us,--only think of that!" "where?" cried george. "why, at mordred priory, of course. we're to go to luncheon: and, oh, george, remember you must _never_ call it 'lunch.' and i'm to write and say if you'll go; but of _course_ you will go, george." "humph!" muttered mr. gilbert, reflectively; "tuesday's an awkward day, rather. but still, as you say, izzie, it's a splendid connection, and a man oughtn't to throw away such a chance of extending his practice. yes, i think i'll manage it, my dear. you may write to say we'll go." and this was all; no rapture, no spark of enthusiasm. to tell the truth, the surgeon was hungry, and wanted his dinner. it came in presently, smelling very savoury,--but, oh, so vulgar! it was irish stew,--a horrible, plebeian dinner, such as hibernian labourers might devour after a day's bricklaying. isabel ate very little, and picked out all the bits of onion and put them aside on her plate. come what might, she would never, never eat onions again. _that_ degradation, at least, it was in her own power to avoid. after dinner, while george was busy in the surgery, mrs. gilbert set to work to compose her letter to mr. lansdell. she was to write to him--to him! it was to be only a ceremonious letter, very brief and commonplace: "mr. and mrs. gilbert present their compliments to mr. lansdell, and will be happy to," &c, &c. but even such a letter as this was a critical composition. in that sublime region in which mr. lansdell lived, there might be certain words and phrases that were indispensable,--there might be some arbitrary mode of expression, not to know which would argue yourself unknown. isabel looked into "dombey," but there was no help for her there. she would have been very glad if she could have found "mrs. grainger presents her compliments to mr. dombey," or "miss f. dombey has the pleasure to inform mr. gay--" or something of that kind, anywhere amongst those familiar pages. however, she was obliged to write her letter as best she might, on a sheet of paper that was very thick and slippery, and strongly impregnated with patchouli; and she sealed the envelope with a profile of lord byron imprinted upon white wax, the only stick that was to be had in graybridge, and to find which good-natured mr. jeffson scoured the town, while isabel was writing her letter. _roland lansdell, esqre.,_ _mordred priory._ to write such an address was in itself a pleasure. it was dark by the time mrs. gilbert had finished her letter, and then she began to think of her dress,--her dress for tuesday,--the tuesday which was henceforth to stand out from amongst all the other days in her life. would george give her a new silk dress? no; that was impossible. he would give her a sovereign, and she might "do up" the old one. she was fain to be content and thankful for so much; and she went up-stairs with a candle, and came down presently with two or three dresses on her arm. among them there was a white muslin, a good deal the worse for wear, but prettier than the silk; a soft transparent fabric, and with lace about it. mrs. gilbert determined upon wearing this dress; and early the next morning she went out and consulted with a little dressmaker, and brought the young woman home with her, and sat down with her in the sunny parlour to unpick and refashion and improve this white muslin robe. she told the dressmaker that she was going on a visit to mordred priory, and by nightfall almost everybody in graybridge knew that mr. and mrs. gilbert had received an invitation from mr. lansdell. chapter xv. roland says, "amen." isabel had met mr. lansdell on thursday; and by saturday night all her preparations were made, and the white dress, and a white muslin mantle to match it, were in the hands of mrs. jeffson, who was to get them up in the highest style of clear-starching. the sovereign had done a great deal. isabel had bought a new riband for her straw hat and a pair of pale straw-coloured gloves, and all manner of small matters necessary to the female toilet upon gala occasions. and now that everything was done, the time between saturday night and tuesday lay all before them,--a dreary blank, that must be endured somehow or other. i should be ashamed to say how very little of the rector's sermon isabel heard on sunday morning. she was thinking of mordred priory all the time she was in church, and the beautiful things that mr. lansdell would say to her, and the replies that she would make. she imagined it all, as was her habit to do. and on this summer sunday, this blessed day of quiet and repose, when there was no sound of the sickle in the corn-fields, and only the slow drip, drip, drip of the waterdrops from the motionless mill-wheel at thurston's crag, roland lansdell lounged all day in the library at mordred priory, reading a little, writing a little, smoking and pondering a great deal. what should he do with himself? that was the grand question which this young man found himself very often called upon to decide. he would stop at mordred till he was tired of mordred, and then he would go to paris; and when he was weary of that brilliant city, whose best delights familiarity had rendered indifferent to him, he would go rhine-ward, over all the old ground again, amongst all the old people. ten years is a very long time when you have fifteen thousand a year and nothing particular to do with yourself or your money. roland lansdell had used up all the delights of civilized europe; and the pleasures that seemed so freshly effervescent to other men were to him as champagne that has grown flat and vapid in the unemptied glasses on a deserted banquet-table. he sat to-day in the great window of the library--a deeply-embayed tudor window, jutting out upon a broad stone terrace, along whose balustrade a peacock stalked slowly in the sunshine. there were books on either side of the window; solid ranges of soberly-bound volumes, that reached from floor to ceiling on every side of the room; for the lansdells had been a studious and book-learned race time out of mind, and the library at mordred was worthy of its name. there was only one picture--a portrait by rembrandt, framed in a massive border of carved oak--above the high chimney-piece; a grave grand face, with solemn eyes that followed you wherever you went; a splendid earnest face, with the forehead mysteriously shadowed by the broad brim of a steeple-crowned hat. in the dark melancholy of that sombre countenance there was some vague resemblance to the face of the young man lounging in the sunny window this afternoon, smoking and pondering, and looking up now and then to call to the peacock on the balustrade. beyond that balustrade there was a fair domain, bounded far away by a battlemented wall; a lofty ivy-mantled wall, propped every here and there with mighty buttresses; a wall that had been built in the days when william of normandy enriched his faithful followers with the fairest lands of his newly-conquered realm. beyond that grand old boundary arose the square turret of the village church, coeval with the oldest part of mordred priory. the bells were swinging in the turret now, and the sound of them floated towards roland lansdell as he lounged in the open window. "only thirty years of age," he thought; "and how long it seems since i sat on my mother's knee in the shadowy, sleepy old pew yonder, and heard the vicar's voice humming under the sounding-board above our heads! thirty years--thirty profitless, tiresome years; and there is not a reaper in the fields, or a shock-headed country lad that earns sixpence a day by whooping to the birds amongst the corn, that is not of more use to his fellow-creatures than i am. i suppose though, at the worst, i'm good for trade. and i try my best not to do any harm--heaven knows i don't want to do any harm." it must have been a strange transition of ideas that at this moment led mr. lansdell to think of that chance meeting with the doctor's dark-eyed wife under the dense foliage of lord thurston's oak. "she's a pretty creature," he thought; "a pretty, inexperienced, shy little creature. just the sort of woman that a hardened profligate or a roué would try to pervert and entangle. there's something really bewitching in all that enthusiastic talk about byron and shelley. 'what a pity he was drowned!' and 'oh, if he had only fought for greece, and been victorious, like leonidas, you know,'--poor little thing! i wonder how much she knows about leonidas?--'how splendid that would have been! but, oh, to think that he should have a fever--a fever just such as kills common people--and die, just when he had proved himself so great and noble!' it's the newest thing to find all these silly school-girl fancies confusing the brain of a woman who ought to be the most practical person in graybridge,--a parish surgeon's wife, who should not, according to the fitness of things, have an idea above coarse charity flannels and camomile-tea and gruel. how she will open her eyes when she sees this room; and all the books in it! poor little thing! i shall never forget what a pretty picture she made sitting under the oak, with the greenish grey of the great knotted trunk behind her, and the blue water in the foreground." and then mr. lansdell's ideas, which seemed especially irrelevant this afternoon, broke off abruptly. "i hope i may never do any harm," he thought. "i am not a good man or a useful man; but i don't think i have ever done much harm." he lit another cigar, and strolled out upon the terrace, and from the terrace to the great quadrangular stable-yard. upon one side of the quadrangle there was a cool arched way that had once been a cloister; and i regret to say that the stone cells in which the monks of mordred had once spent their slow quiet days and meditative nights now did duty as loose-boxes for mr. lansdell's hunters. openings had been knocked through the dividing walls; for horses are more socially-disposed creatures than monks, and are apt to pine and sicken if entirely deprived of companionship with their kind. roland went into three or four of the boxes, and looked at the horses, and sighed for the time when the hunting season should commence and midlandshire might be tolerable. "i want occupation," he thought, "physical wear and tear, and all that sort of thing. i let my mind run upon all manner of absurd things for want of occupation." he yawned and threw away his cigar, and strode across the yard towards the open window of a harness-room, at which a man was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, and with a sunday paper before him. "you may bring the diver round in half-an-hour, christie," said mr. lansdell; "i shall ride over to conventford this afternoon." "yes, sir." roland lansdell did ride to conventford; galloping his hardest into waverly, to the scandal of the sober townspeople, who looked up from their tea-tables half-scared at the sound of the clattering hoofs upon the uneven pavement; and then dawdling at a foot-pace all along the avenue which extends in unbroken beauty from waverly to conventford. the streets of this latter town were crowded with gaily-dressed factory-girls, and the bells from three separate spires were clanging loudly in the summer air. mr. lansdell rode very slowly, thinking of "all manner of absurd things" as he went along; and he entered mr. raymond's pretty drawing-room at oakbank just in time to catch that gentleman drinking tea with the orphans. of course roland had forgotten that his friend dined at an early hour on sundays, and he had come to dine; but it wasn't of the least consequence, he would have some tea; yes, and cold beef, by all means, if there was cold beef. a side-table was laid for him, and a great sirloin was brought in. but mr. lansdell did not make much havoc with the joint. he and mr. raymond had a good deal to say to each other: and mr. lansdell took very kindly to the orphans, and asked them a good many questions about their studies and their present governess, who was a native of conventford, and had gone out that evening to drink tea with her friends: and then, somehow or other, the conversation rambled on to their late governess, isabel sleaford, and the orphans had a great deal to say about her. she was so nice, and she told them such pretty things: "eugene aram" and the "giaour"--how wicked black hassan was to tie his poor "sister" up in a sack and drown her, because he didn't wish her to marry the giaour! miss sleaford had modified the romantic story in deference to the tender ages of her pupils. yes, the young ladies said, they loved miss sleaford _dearly_. she was _so nice_; and sometimes, at night, when they begged her very, very hard, she would act (the orphans uttered this last word in an awfully distinct whisper); and, oh, that was beautiful! she would do hamlet and the ghost: when she stood one way, with a black cloak over her shoulder, she was hamlet; when she stood the other way, with a mahogany ruler in her hand, she was the ghost. and she acted the ghost so beautifully, that sometimes they were frightened, and wouldn't go outside the schoolroom-door without a candle, and somebody's hand to hold--tight. and then mr. raymond laughed, and told roland what he thought of isabel, phrenologically and otherwise. "poor little thing! i think there must be something sad about the story of her early life," he said; "for she so evidently shrinks from all allusion to it. it's the old story, i suppose,--an unkind step-mother and an uncomfortable home. under these circumstances, i was very glad to see her married to a well-disposed, honest-hearted young man." "she was very fond of mr. gilbert, i suppose,--very much in love with him?" said roland, after a little pause. "in love with him! not a bit of it. she was very fond of him, i dare say--not in the sentimental manner in which she discourses about her poets and her heroes; but she has every reason to be fond of him as a faithful protector and a good friend." mr. raymond looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon the face of his young kinsman. but it was dusk by this time; and in the dim light of the room charles raymond could not see the expression of roland's face; he could only see the attitude of his head, which drooped a little forward, supported by his hand. "i lent my voice to the bringing about of isabel gilbert's marriage," mr. raymond said, slowly; "and god grant that no man may ever be base enough or cruel enough to interpose himself between these two!" "amen!" answered roland lansdell, in a deep solemn voice. and then he walked to the window and looked out into the twilit garden, above which the faint summer moon had newly arisen. "if i could have believed in that splendid fable of a future life, that grand compensating balance for all the sorrows and mistakes of this lower world, what a good man i might have been!" he thought, as he stood there looking out, with his arm resting upon the broad wooden sash, and his head upon his arm. chapter xvi. mr. lansdell relates an adventure. the tuesday was a fine day. the august sunshine--the beautiful harvest-time sunshine which was rejoicing the hearts of all the farmers in midlandshire--awoke mrs. gilbert very early. she was going to mordred priory. for once she forgot to notice the ugliness of the shabby furniture, the bare whitewashed walls upon which her eyes opened. she was going to mordred priory. there are moments in our lives in which all the great expanse of the past and future seems as nothing compared with the consummate felicity of the present. it was very early; but not too early for her to get up, mrs. gilbert thought. she seated herself before the little glass at the open window, and brushed her long black hair; while the birds twittered and shook themselves in the sunshine, and the faint lowing of cattle came like a long drowsy murmur from the distant fields. the surgeon and his wife had held solemn conference with each other as to the hour at which they ought to arrive at mordred priory. luncheon might be eaten at any time from one until three. mr. gilbert said; and it was decided, therefore, that they should present themselves at the gates of the priory a short time before one o'clock. how pretty the village of mordred looked in the sleepy august atmosphere, the hazy, cuyp-like sunshine! how beautiful everything looked just at the entrance to the village, where there was a long straggling inn with a top-heavy roof, all dotted over with impossible little windows, a dear old red-tiled roof, with pouters and fantails brooding and cooing to themselves in the sunshine, and yellow stonecrop creeping here and there in patches of gold! to the right of the inn a shady road led away below the walls of the priory to the square-turreted church; and, grander than the church itself, the lofty gates of mordred dominated over all. isabel almost trembled as mr. gilbert got out of the gig and pulled the iron ring that hung at the end of a long chain on one side of those formidable oaken gates. it seemed like ringing at the door of the past, somehow; and the doctor's wife half expected to see quaintly-costumed servants, with long points to their shoes and strange parti-coloured garments, and a jester with a cap and bells, when those great gates were opened. but the person who opened the gates was only a very harmless old woman, who inhabited some stony chambers on one side of the ponderous archway. george drove slowly under that splendid norman gateway, and isabel looked with a shiver at the portcullis and the great rusty chains high above her head. if it should fall some day upon mr. lansdell, as he was riding out of his grand domain! her mind was like a voluminous picture-book, full of romantic incidents and dreadful catastrophes; and she was always imagining such events as these. brown molly jogged slowly along the winding drive,--oh, the beautiful shrubberies, and banks of verdure, and dark shining foliage, and spreading cedars, making solemn shadows yonder on the lawn, and peeps of glistening water in the distance; how beautiful! how beautiful!--and stopped before a gothic porch, a grey old ivy-covered porch, beneath which there was an open doorway that revealed a hall with armour on the walls, and helmed classic heads of white marble on black marble pedestals, and skins of savage beasts upon dark oak floors. isabel had only caught a brief glimpse of the dusky splendour of this interior, when a groom appeared from behind a distant angle of the house and ran forward to take george gilbert's horse; and in the next moment mr. lansdell came out of the porch, and bade his visitors welcome to mordred. "i am so glad to see you! what a lovely morning, is it not? i'm afraid you must have found the roads rather dusty, though. take care of mr. gilbert's horse, christie; you'd better put him into one of the loose-boxes. you see my dogs know you, mrs. gilbert." a liver-coloured pointer and a great black retriever were taking friendly notice of isabel. "will you come and see my pictures at once? i expect gwendoline and her father, and your friend mr. raymond, and the children, presently." there was no special brilliancy or eloquence in all this, but it sounded different from other people's talk, somehow. the languid, lingering tones were very cordial in spite of their languor; and then how splendid the speaker looked in his loose black velvet morning coat, which harmonized so exquisitely with the rembrandt hues of his complexion! there was a waxen-looking hothouse flower in his button-hole, and across that inspiration of a west-end tailor, his waistcoat, there glimmered a slender chain of very yellow gold, with onyx cameos and antique golden coins hanging to it,--altogether different from the clumsy yellow lockets and fusee-boxes which dangled on the padded chests of the officers at conventford, whom isabel had until lately so implicitly believed in. mr. lansdell led the way into a room, beyond which there were other rooms opening one into the other in a long vista of splendour and sunshine. isabel had only a very faint idea of what she saw in those beautiful rooms. it was all a confusion of brightness and colour, which was almost too much for her poor sentimental brain. it was all a splendid chaos, in which antique oak cabinets, and buhl and marqueterie, and carved ebony chairs, and filagree-work and ivory, old chelsea, battersea, copenhagen, vienna, dresden, sèvres, derby, and salopian china, majolica and palissy ware, pictures and painted windows, revolved like the figures in a kaleidoscope before her dazzled eyes. mr. lansdell was very kind, and explained the nature of some of these beautiful things as he loitered here and there with his guests. george walked softly, with his hat in his hand, as if he had been in church, and stared with equal reverence at everything. he was pleased with a vandevilde, because the sea was so nice and green, and the rigging so neatly made out; and he stopped a minute before a fyt to admire the whiskers of a hare; and he thought that a plump-shouldered divinity by greuze, with melting blue eyes and a grey satin gown, was rather a fine young woman; but he did not particularly admire the murillos or the spagnolettis, and thought that the models who sat to those two masters would have done better had they washed their faces and combed their hair before doing so. mr. gilbert was not enthusiastic about the pictures; but isabel's eyes wandered here and there in a rapture of admiration, and by-and-by those great dark eyes filled with tears before the gem of mr. lansdell's collection, a raffaelle, a picture of the man of sorrows half fainting under the cruel burden of his cross, sublime in resignation, unspeakably sorrowful and tender; an exquisite half-length figure, sharply defined against a vivid blue sky. "my father believed in that picture," said mr. lansdell; "but connoisseurs shrug their shoulders and tell me that it never stood upon the easel of raffaelle d'urbino." "but it is so beautiful," isabel answered in a low, awe stricken voice. she had been very inattentive to the rector's sermon on the previous sunday, but her heart filled with tender devotion as she looked at this picture. "does it matter much who painted it, if it is only beautiful?" and then mr. lansdell began to explain in what manner the picture differed from the best-authenticated productions of the prince of painters; but in the middle of his little lecture mr. raymond and the orphans came trooping through the rooms, and the conversation became general. soon after this lady gwendoline and her father made their appearance, and then a very neatly-dressed maid conducted the ladies to a dressing-room that had once belonged to roland's mother, where the window-curtains were sea-green silk, and the looking-glass was framed in sèvres-biscuit, and where there were ivory-backed brushes, and glittering bottles of rich yellow-looking perfume in a casket of gold and enamel. isabel took off her bonnet, and smoothed her hair with one of the brushes, and remembered her dressing-table at home, and a broken black brush of george's with all the unprotected wires sticking out at the back. she thought of the drawer in the looking-glass, with a few bent hair-pins, and her husband's razors with coloured bone handles, and a flat empty bottle that had once held lavender-water, all jostling one another when the drawer was pulled open. mrs. gilbert thought of these things while lady gwendoline removed her bonnet--another marvellous bonnet--and drew off the tightest coffee-with-plenty-of-milk-in-it-coloured gloves, and revealed long white hands, luminous with opals and diamonds. the doctor's wife had time to contemplate lady gwendoline's silk dress--that exquisitely-fitting dress, whose soft golden brown was only a little darker than the lady's hair; and the tiny embroidered collar, fitting closely to the long slender throat, and clasped by one big turquoise in a wide rim of lustreless gold, and the turquoise earrings just peeping out under rich bands of auburn hair. mrs. gilbert admired all these things, and she saw that lady gwendoline's face, which was so handsome in profile, was just a little faded and wan when you had a full view of it. the orphans took the gold tops off the bottles one by one, and sniffed energetically at the different perfumes, and disputed in whispers as to which was nicest. lady gwendoline talked very kindly to mrs. gilbert. she did not at all relish being asked to meet the doctor's wife, and she was angry with her cousin for noticing these people; but she was too well bred to be otherwise than kind to roland's visitor. they all went down-stairs presently, and were ushered into an oak-paneled room, where there was an oval table laid for luncheon, and where isabel found herself seated presently on mr. lansdell's right hand, and opposite to lady gwendoline pomphrey. this was life. there was a lance-like group of hothouse grapes and peaches, crowned with a pine-apple, in a high dresden basket in the centre of the table. isabel had never been in company with a pine-apple until to-day. there were flowers upon the table, and a faint odour of orange blossoms and apricots pervaded the atmosphere. there were starry white glasses, so fragile-looking that it seemed as if a breath would have blown them away; cup-shaped glasses, broad shallow glasses like water-lily leaves, glasses of the palest green, and here and there a glimpse of ruby glass flashing in the sunshine. mrs. gilbert had a very vague idea of the nature of the viands which were served to her at that wonderful feast. somebody dropped a lump of ice into the shallow glass, and filled it afterwards with a yellow bubbling wine, which had a faint flavour of jargonelle pears, and which some one said was moselle. mr. lansdell put some white creamy compound on her plate, which might or might not have been chicken: and one of the servants brought her an edifice of airy pastry, filled with some mysterious concoction in which there were little black lumps. she took a spoonful of the concoction, seeing that other people had done so; but she was very doubtful about the little black lumps, which she conjectured to be a mistake of the cook's. and then some one brought her an ice, a real ice,--just as if mordred priory had been a perpetual pastrycook's shop,--a pink ice in the shape of a pear, which she ate with a pointed gold spoon; and then the pine-apple was cut, and she had a slice of it, and was rather disappointed in it, as hardly realizing the promise of its appearance. but all the dishes in that banquet were of "such stuff as dreams are made of." so may have tasted the dew-berries which titania's attendants gave to bottom. to isabel there was a dream-like flavour in everything. was not _he_ by her side, talking to her every now and then? the subjects of which he spoke were commonplace enough, certainly, and he talked to other people as well as to her. he talked about the plans of the cabinet and the hunting season to lord ruysdale, and he talked of books and pictures with mr. raymond and lady gwendoline, and of parish matters with george gilbert. he seemed to know all about everything in the world, isabel thought. she could not say much. _how_ to admire was all the art she knew. as to the orphans, those young ladies sat side by side, and nudged each other when the sacrificial knife was plunged into any fresh viand, and discoursed together every now and then in rapturous whispers. no part of the banquet came amiss to these young persons, from rout-cakes and preserved ginger to lobster-salad or the wall of a fricandeau. it was four o'clock by the time the pine-apple had been cut, and the banquet concluded. the oak-painted room was lighted by one window--a great square window--which almost filled one side of the room; a splendid window, out of which you could walk into a square garden--an old-fashioned garden--divided from the rest of the grounds by cropped hedges of dense box; wonderful boundaries, that had taken a century or two to grow. the bees were humming in this garden all luncheon-time, and yellow butterflies shot backwards and forwards in the sunshine: tall hollyhocks flowered gorgeously in the prim beds, and threw straight shadows on the grass. "shall we go into the garden?" said lady gwendoline, as they rose from the table, and everybody assented: so presently isabel found herself amidst a little group upon the miniature lawn, in the centre of which there was a broad marble basin, filled with gold fish, and a feeble little fountain, that made a faint tinkling sound in the still august atmosphere. mr. raymond and roland lansdell both having plenty to say for themselves, and lord ruysdale and lady gwendoline being able to discourse pleasantly upon any possible subject, there had been no lack of animated conversation, though neither the doctor nor his wife had done much to keep the ball rolling. mr. lansdell and his guests had been talking of all manner of things; flying off at tangents to all kinds of unlikely subjects; till they had come, somehow or other, to discuss the question of length of days. "i can't say that i consider long life an inestimable blessing," said roland, who was amusing himself with throwing minute morsels of a macaroon to the gold fish. "they're not so interesting as sterne's donkey, are they, mrs. gilbert? no, i do _not_ consider long life an advantage, unless one can be 'warm and young' for ever, like our dear raymond. perhaps i am only depreciating the fruit because it hangs out of my reach, though; for everybody knows that the lansdells never live to be old." isabel's heart gave a bump as roland said this, and involuntarily she looked at him with just one sudden startled glance. of course he would die young; beings always have so died, and always must. a thrill of pain shot through her breast as she thought of this; yet i doubt if she would have had it otherwise. it would be almost better that he should break a blood-vessel, or catch a fever, or commit suicide, than that he should ever live to have grey hair, and wear spectacles and double-soled boots. brief as that sudden look of alarm had been, roland had seen it, and paused for a moment before he went on talking. "no; we are not a long-lived race. we have been consumptive; and we have had our heads cut off in the good old days, when to make a confidential remark to a friend was very often leze majesty, or high treason; and we have been killed in battle,--at flodden, to wit, and at fontenoy, and in the peninsula; and one of us was shot through the lungs in an irish duel, on the open sward of the 'phaynix.' in short, i almost fancy some fearful ban must have been set upon us in the dark ages, when one of our progenitors, a wicked prior of mordred, who had been a soldier and a renegade before he crept into the bosom of the church, appropriated some of the sanctified plate to make a dowry for his handsome daughter, who married sir anthony lansdell, knight, and thus became the mother of our race; and we are evidently a doomed race, for very few of us have ever lived to see a fortieth birthday." "and how is your doom to be brought about, roland?" asked lady gwendoline. "oh, _that's_ all settled," mr. lansdell answered. "i know my destiny." "it has been predicted to you?" "yes." "how very interesting!" exclaimed the lady, with a pretty silvery laugh. isabel's eyes opened wider and wider, and fixed themselves on roland lansdell's face. "pray tell us all about it," continued lady gwendoline. "we won't promise to be very much frightened, because the accessories are not quite the thing for a ghost story. if it were midnight now, and we were sitting in the oak room, with the lights burning low, and the shadows trembling on the wall, you might do what you liked with our nerves. and yet i really don't know that a ghost might not be more awful in the broad sunshine--a ghost that would stalk across the grass, and then fade slowly, till it melted into the water-drops of the fountain. come, roland, you must tell us all about the prediction; was it made by a pretty girl with a dove on her wrist, like the phantom that appeared to lord lyttleton? shall we have to put back the clock for an hour, in order to foil the designs of your impalpable foe? or was it a black cat, or a gentleman usher, or a skeleton; or all three?" "i dare say it was an abnormal state of the organs of form and colour," said mr. raymond. "that's the foundation of all ghost stories." "but it isn't by any means a ghost story," answered roland lansdell. "the gentleman who predicted my early death was the very reverse of a phantom; and the region of the prediction was a place which has never yet been invested with any supernatural horrors. amongst all the legends of the old bailey, i never heard of any ghostly record." "the old bailey!" exclaimed lady gwendoline. "yes. the affair was quite an adventure, and the only adventure i ever had in my life." "pray tell us the story." "but it's rather a long one, and not particularly interesting." "i insist upon hearing it," said mr. raymond; "you've stimulated our organs of wonder, and you're bound to restore our brains to their normal state by satisfying our curiosity." "most decidedly," exclaimed lady gwendoline, seating herself upon a rustic bench, with the shining folds of her silk dress spread round her like the plumage of some beautiful bird, and a tiny fringed parasol sloping a little backward from her head, and throwing all manner of tremulous pinky shadows upon her animated face. she was very handsome when she was animated; it was only when her face was in repose that you saw how much her beauty had faded since the picture with the high forehead and the long curls was first exhibited to an admiring public. it may be that lady gwendoline knew this, and was on that, account rather inclined to be animated about trifles. "well, i'll tell you the story, if you like," said roland, "but i warn you that there's not much in it. i don't suppose you--any of you--take much interest in criminal cases; but this one made rather a sensation at the time." "a criminal case?" "yes. i was in town on business a year or two ago. i'd come over from switzerland to renew some leases, and look into a whole batch of tiresome business matters, which my lawyer insisted upon my attending to in my own proper person, very much to my annoyance. while i was in london i dropped into the united joint-stock bank, temple-bar branch, to get circular notes and letters of credit upon their correspondent at constantinople, and so on. i was not in the office more than five minutes. but while i was talking to one of the clerks at the counter, a man came in, and stood close at my elbow while he handed in a cheque for eighty-seven pounds ten, or some such amount--i know it came very close upon the hundred--received the money, and went out. he looked like a groom out of livery. i left the bank almost immediately after him, and as he turned into a little alley leading down to the temple. i followed a few paces behind him, for i had business in paper buildings. at the bottom of the alley my friend the groom was met by a big black-whiskered man, who seemed to have been waiting for him, for he caught him suddenly by the arm, and said, 'well, did they do it?' 'yes,' the other man answered, and began fumbling in his waistcoat-pocket, making a chinking sound as he did so. i had seen him put his money, which he took in notes and gold, into this waistcoat-pocket. 'you needn't have pounced upon me so precious sharp,' he said, rather sulkily; 'i wasn't going to bolt with it, was i?' the black-whiskered man had seen me by this time, and he muttered something to his companion, which evidently meant that he was to hold his tongue, and then dragged him off without further ceremony in the opposite direction to that in which i was going. this was all i saw of the groom or the black-whiskered gentleman on that occasion. i thought their method of cashing a cheque was rather a queer one; but i thought no more about it, until three weeks afterwards, when i went into the temple-bar office of the united joint-stock again to complete my continental arrangements, and was told that the cheque for eighty-seven pounds ten, more or less, which had been cashed in my presence, was a forgery; one of a series of most audacious frauds, perpetrated by a gang whose plans had only just come to light, and none of whom had yet been arrested. 'they've managed to keep themselves dark in the most extraordinary manner,' the clerk told me; 'the cheques are supposed to have been all fabricated by one man, but three or four men have been employed to get hold of the original signatures of our customers, which they have obtained by a complicated system. no two cheques have been presented by the same person,--that's the point that has beaten the detectives; they don't know what sort of men to look for.' 'don't they?' said i; 'then i think i can assist them in the matter.' whereupon i told my little story of the black-whiskered gentleman." mr. lansdell paused to take breath, and stole a glance at isabel. she was pale always,--but she was very pale now, and was watching him with an eager breathless expression. "silly romantic little thing," he thought, "to be so intensely absorbed in my story." "you're getting interesting, roland," said lady gwendoline. "pray, go on." "the upshot of the matter was, that at eight o'clock that evening a grave little gentleman in a pepper-and-salt waistcoat came to me at mivart's, and cross-questioned me closely as to what i knew of the man who had cashed the cheque. 'you think you could recognize this man with the black whiskers?' he said. 'yes; most decidedly i could.' 'and you'll swear to him, if necessary?' 'with pleasure.' on this the detective departed, and came to me the next day, to tell me that he fancied he was on the track of the man he wanted, but he was at a loss for means of identification. he knew, or thought that he knew, who the man was; but he didn't know the man himself from adam. the gang had taken fright, and it was believed that they had all started for liverpool, with the intention of getting off to america by a vessel that was expected to sail at eight o'clock the following morning. the detective had only just got his information, and he came to me for help. the result of the business was, that i put on my great-coat, sent for a cab, and started for euston square with my friend the detective, with a view to identifying the black-whiskered gentleman. it was the first adventure i had ever had in my life, and i assure you i most heartily enjoyed it. "well, we travelled by the mail, got into liverpool in the dead of the night, and in the bleak early dawn of the next morning i had the supreme pleasure of pointing out my black-whiskered acquaintance, just as he was going to step on board the steamer that was to convey him to the _atalanta_ screw-steam-ship, bound for new york. he looked very black at first; but when he found that my companion was altogether _en règle_, he went away with him, meekly enough, declaring that it was all a mistake, and that it would be easily set right in town. i let the two go back together, and returned by a later train, very well pleased with my adventure. "i was not so well pleased, however, when i found that i was wanted as a witness at preliminary examinations, and adjourned examinations, and on and off through a trial that lasted four days and a half; to say nothing of being badgered and browbeaten by old-bailey practitioners,--who were counsel for the prisoner,--and who asked me if it was my friend's whiskers i recognized, or if i had never seen any other whiskers exactly like his? if i should know him without his whiskers? whether i could swear to the colour of his waistcoat? whether any member of my family had ever been in a lunatic asylum? whether i usually devoted my leisure time to travelling about with detective officers? whether i had been plucked at oxford? whether i should be able to recognize an acquaintance whom i had only seen once in twenty years? whether i was short-sighted? could i swear i was not short-sighted? would i be kind enough to read a verse or so from a diamond edition of the works of thomas moore? and so on. but question me as they would, the prisoner at the bar,--commonly known as jack the scribe, _alias_ jack the gentleman, _alias_ ever so many other names, which i have completely forgotten,--was the identical person whom i had seen meet the groom at the entrance to the temple. my evidence was only a single link in a long chain; but i suppose it was eminently damaging to my black-whiskered friend; for, when he and two of his associates had received their sentence--ten years' penal servitude--he turned towards where i was standing, and said: "'i don't bear any grudge against the gentlemen of the jury, and i don't bear any malice against the judge, though his sentence isn't a light one; but when a languid swell mixes himself up in business that doesn't concern him, he deserves to get it hot and strong. if ever i come out of prison alive, i'll _kill you_!'" "he shook his fist at me as he said it. there wasn't much in the words, but there was a good deal in the way in which they were spoken. he tried to say more; but the warders got hold of him and held him down, panting and gasping, and with his face all of a dull livid white. i saw no more of him; but if he does _live_ to come out of prison, i most firmly believe he'll keep his word." "izzie," cried george gilbert suddenly, "what's the matter?" all the point of mr. lansdell's story was lost; for at this moment isabel tottered and fell slowly backward upon the sward, and all the gold fish leaped away in a panic of terror as the doctor dipped his hat into the marble basin. he splashed the water into his wife's face, and she opened her eyes at last, very slowly, and looked round her. "did he say that----" she said,--"did he say that he'd kill----!" chapter xvii. the first warning. mrs. gilbert recovered very quickly from her fainting-fit. she had been frightened by mr. lansdell's story, she said, and the heat had made her dizzy. she sat very quietly upon a sofa, in the drawing-room, with one of the orphans on each side of her, while brown molly was being harnessed. lady gwendoline went away with her father, after bidding mrs. gilbert rather a cool good morning. the earl of ruysdale's daughter did not approve of the fainting-fit, which she was pleased to call mrs. gilbert's extraordinary demonstration. "if she were a single woman, i should fancy she was trying to fascinate roland," lady gwendoline said to her father, as they drove homewards. "what can possibly have induced him to invite those people to mordred? the man is a clod, and the woman a nonentity; except when she chooses to make an exhibition of herself by fainting away. that sort of person is always fainting away, and being knocked down by feathers, and going unexpectedly into impossible hysterics; and so on." but if lady gwendoline was unkind to the doctor's wife, roland was kind; dangerously, bewilderingly kind. he was _so_ anxious about isabel's health. it was his fault, entirely his fault, that she had fainted. he had kept her standing under the blazing sun while he told his stupid story. he should never forgive himself, he said. and he would scarcely accept george gilbert's assurance that his wife was all right. he rang the bell, and ordered strong tea for his visitors. with his own hands he closed the venetian shutters, and reduced the light to a cool dusky glimmer. he begged mr. gilbert to allow him to order a close carriage for his wife's return to graybridge. "the gig shall be sent home to you to-night," he said; "i am sure the air and dust will be too much for mrs. gilbert." but mr. raymond hereupon interfered, and said the fresh air was just the very thing that isabel wanted, to which opinion the lady herself subscribed. she did not want to cause trouble, she said: she would not for all the world have caused _him_ trouble, she thought: so the gig was brought round presently, and george drove his wife away, under the norman archway by which they had entered in the fresh noonday sun. the young man was in excellent spirits, and declared that he had enjoyed himself beyond measure--these undemonstrative people always declare that they enjoy themselves--but isabel was very silent and subdued; and when questioned upon the subject, said that she was tired. oh, how blank the world seemed after that visit to mordred priory! it was all over. this one supreme draught of bliss had been drained to the very dregs. it would be november soon, and roland lansdell would go away. he would go before november, perhaps: he would go suddenly, whenever the fancy seized him. who can calculate the arrangements of the giaour or sir reginald glanville? at any moment, in the dead darkness of the moonless night, the hero may call for his fiery steed, and only the thunder of hurrying hoofs upon the hard high-road may bear witness of his departure. mr. lansdell might leave mordred at any hour in the long summer day, isabel thought, as she stood at the parlour window looking out at the dusty lane, where mrs. jeffson's fowls were pecking up stray grains of wheat that had been scattered by some passing wain. he might be gone now,--yes, now, while she stood there thinking of him. her heart seemed to stop beating as she remembered this. why had he ever invited her to mordred? was it not almost cruel to open the door of that paradise just a little way, only to shut it again when she was half blinded by the glorious light from within? would he ever think of her, this grand creature with the dark pensive eyes, the tender dreamy eyes that were never the same colour for two consecutive minutes? was she anything to him, or was that musical lowering of his voice common to him when he spoke to women? again and again, and again and again, she went over all the shining ground of that day at mordred; and the flowers, and glass, and pictures, and painted windows, and hothouse fruit, only made a kind of variegated background, against which _he_ stood forth paramount and unapproachable. she sat and thought of roland lansdell, with some scrap of never-to-be-finished work lying in her lap. it was better than reading. a crabbed little old woman who kept the only circulating library in graybridge noted a falling-off in her best customer about this time. it was better than reading, to sit through all the length of a hot august afternoon thinking of roland lansdell. what romance had ever been written that was equal to this story; this perpetual fiction, with a real hero dominant in every chapter? there was a good deal of repetition in the book, perhaps; but isabel was never aware of its monotony. it was all very wicked of course, and a deep and cruel wrong to the simple country surgeon, who ate his dinner, and complained of the underdone condition of the mutton, upon one side of the table, while isabel read the inexhaustible volume on the other. it was very wicked; but mrs. gilbert had not yet come to consider the wickedness of her ways. she was a very good wife, very gentle and obedient; and she fancied she had a right to furnish the secret chambers of her mind according to her own pleasure. what did it matter if a strange god reigned in the temple, so long as the doors were for ever closed upon his awful beauty; so long as she rendered all due service to her liege lord and master? he was her lord and master, though his fingers were square at the tips, and he had an abnormal capacity for the consumption of spring-onions. spring-onions! all-the-year-round onions, isabel thought; for those obnoxious bulbs seemed always in season at graybridge. she was very wicked; and she thought perpetually of roland lansdell, as she had thought of eugene aram, and lara, and ernest maltravers--blue-eyed ernest maltravers. the blue-eyed heroes were out of fashion now, for was not _he_ dark of aspect? she was very wicked, she was very foolish, very childish. all her life long she had played with her heroines and heroes, as other children play with their dolls. now edith dombey was the favourite, and now dark-eyed zuleika, kneeling for ever at selim's feet, with an unheeded flower in her hand. left quite to herself through all her idle girlhood, this foolish child had fed upon three volume novels and sentimental poetry: and now that she was married and invested with the solemn duties of a wife, she could not throw off the sweet romantic bondage all at once, and take to pies and puddings. so she made no endeavour to banish mr. lansdell's image from her mind. if she had recognized the need of such an effort, she would have made it, perhaps. but she thought that he would go away, and her life would drop back to its dead level, and would be "all the same as if he had not been." but mr. lansdell did not leave mordred just yet. only a week after the never-to-be-forgotten day at the priory, he came again to thurston's crag, and found isabel sitting under the oak with her books in her lap. she started up as he approached her, looking rather frightened, and with her face flushed and her eyelids drooping. she had not expected him. demi-gods do not often drop out of the clouds. it is only once in a way that castor and pollux are seen fighting in a mortal fray. mrs. gilbert sat down again, blushing and trembling; but, oh, so happy, so foolishly, unutterably happy; and roland lansdell seated himself by her side and began to talk to her. he did not make the slightest allusion to that unfortunate swoon which had spoiled the climax of his story. that one subject, which of all others would have been most embarrassing to the doctor's wife, was scrupulously avoided by mr. lansdell. he talked of all manner of things. he had been a _flâneur_ pure and simple for the last ten years, and was a consummate master of the art of conversation; so he talked to this ignorant girl of books, and pictures, and foreign cities, and wonderful people, living and dead, of whom she had never heard before. he seemed to know everything, mrs gilbert thought. she felt as if she was before the wonderful gates of a new fairy-land, and mr. lansdell had the keys, and could open them for her at his will, and could lead her through the dim mysterious pathways into the beautiful region beyond. mr. lansdell asked his companion a good many questions about her life at graybridge, and the books she read. he found that her life was a very idle one, and that she was perpetually reading the same books,--the dear dilapidated volumes of popular novels that were to be had at every circulating library. poor little childish creature, who could wonder at her foolish sentimentality? out of pure philanthropy roland offered to lend her any of the books in his library. "if you can manage to stroll this way to-morrow morning, i'll bring you the 'life of robespierre,' and carlyle's 'french revolution.' i don't suppose you'll like carlyle at first; but he's wonderful when you get accustomed to his style--like a monster brass-band, you know, that stuns you at first with its crashing thunder, until, little by little, you discover the wonderful harmony, and appreciate the beauty of the instrumentation. shall i bring you lamartine's 'girondists' as well? that will make a great pile of books, but you need not read them laboriously; you can pick out the pages you like here and there, and we can talk about them afterwards." the french revolution was one of isabel's pet oases in the history of the universe. a wonderful period, in which a quiet country-bred young woman had only to make her way up to paris and assassinate a tyrant, and, lo, she became "a feature" throughout all time. mr. lansdell had discovered this special fancy in his talk with the doctor's wife, and he was pleased to let in the light of positive knowledge on her vague ideas of the chiefs of the mountain and the martyrs of the gironde. was it not an act of pure philanthropy to clear some of the sentimental mistiness out of that pretty little head? was it not a good work rather than a harmful one to come now and then to this shadowy resting-place under the oak, and while away an hour or so with this poor little half-educated damsel, who had so much need of some sounder instruction than she had been able to glean, unaided, out of novels and volumes of poetry? there was no harm in these morning rambles, these meetings, which arose out of the purest chance. there was no harm whatever: especially as mr. lansdell meant to turn his back upon midlandshire directly the partridge-shooting was over. he told isabel, indirectly, of this intended departure, presently. "yes," he said, "you must ask me for whatever books you would like to read: and by-and-by, when i have left mordred----" he paused for a moment, involuntarily, for he saw that isabel gave a little shiver. "when i leave mordred, at the end of october, you must go to the priory, and choose the books for yourself. my housekeeper is a very good woman, and she will be pleased to wait upon you." so mrs. gilbert began quite a new course of reading, and eagerly devoured the books which mr. lansdell brought her; and wrote long extracts from them, and made profile sketches of the heroes, all looking from right to left, and all bearing a strong family resemblance to the master of mordred priory. the education of the doctor's wife took a grand stride by this means. she sat for hours together reading in the little parlour at graybridge; and george, whose life was a very busy one, grew to consider her only in her normal state with a book in her hand, and was in nowise offended when she ate her supper with an open volume by the side of her plate, or responded vaguely to his simple talk. mr. gilbert was quite satisfied. he had never sought for more than this: a pretty little wife to smile upon him when he came home, to brush his hat for him now and then in the passage after breakfast, before he went out for his day's work, and to walk to church twice every sunday hanging upon his arm. if any one had ever said that such a marriage as this in any way fell short of perfect and entire union, mr. gilbert would have smiled upon that person as on a harmless madman. mr. lansdell met the doctor's wife very often: sometimes on the bridge beside the water-mill; sometimes in the meadow-land which surged in emerald billows all about graybridge and mordred and warncliffe. he met her very often. it was no new thing for isabel to ramble here and there in that lovely rustic paradise: but it was quite a new thing for mr. lansdell to take such a fancy for pedestrian exercise. the freak could not last long, though: the feast of st. partridge the martyr was close at hand, and then mr. lansdell would have something better to do than to dawdle away his time in country lanes and meadows, talking to the doctor's wife. upon the very eve of that welcome morning which was to set all the guns in midlandshire popping at those innocent red-breasted victims, george gilbert received a letter from his old friend and comrade, mr. sigismund smith, who wrote in very high spirits, and with a great many blots. "i'm coming down to stop a few days with you, dear old boy," he wrote, "to get the london smoke blown out of my hyacinthines, and to go abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs--are there any young lambs in september, by the bye? i want to see what sort of a matron you have made of miss isabel sleaford. do you remember that day in the garden when you first saw her? a palpable case of spoons there and then! k-k-c-k-k! as mr. buckstone remarks when he digs his knuckles into the walking gentleman's ribs. does she make puddings, and sew on buttons, and fill up the holes in your stockings with wonderful trellis-work? she never would do that sort of thing at camberwell. i shall give you a week, and i shall spend another week in the bosom of my family; and i shall bring a gun, because it looks well in the railway carriage, you know, especially if it doesn't go off, which i suppose it won't, if it isn't loaded; though, to my mind, there's always something suspicious about the look of fire-arms, and i should never be surprised to see them explode by spontaneous combustion, or something of that kind. i suppose you've heard of my new three-volume novel--a legitimate three-volume romance, with all the interest concentrated upon one body,--'the mystery of mowbray manor,'--pleasant alliteration of m's, eh?--which is taking the town by storm; that's to say, camden town, where i partial board, and have some opportunity of pushing the book myself by going into all the circulating libraries i pass, and putting my name down for an early perusal of the first copy. of course i never go for the book; but if i am the means of making any one simple-minded librarian take a copy of 'the m. of m. m.' more than he wants, i feel i have not laboured in vain." mr. smith arrived at warncliffe by an early train next morning, and came on to graybridge in an omnibus, which was quite spiky with guns. he was in very high spirits, and talked incessantly to isabel, who had stayed at home to receive him; who had stayed at home when there was just a faint chance that mr. lansdell might take his morning walk in the direction of lord thurston's crag,--only a faint chance, for was it not the st of september; and might not he prefer the slaughter of partridges to those lazy loiterings under the big oak? mrs. gilbert gave her old friend a very cordial welcome. she was fond of him, as she might have been of some big brother less objectionable than the ordinary run of big brothers. he had never seen mr. sleaford's daughter looking so bright and beautiful. a new element had been introduced into her life. she was happy, unutterably happy, on the mystical threshold of a new existence. she did not want to be edith dombey any longer. not for all the ruby-velvet gowns and diamond coronets in the world would she have sacrificed one accidental half-hour on the bridge under lord thurston's oak. she sat at the little table smiling and talking gaily, while the author of "the mystery of mowbray manor" ate about half a quartern of dough made up into puffy yorkshire cakes, and new-laid eggs and frizzled bacon in proportion. mr. smith deprecated the rampant state of his appetite by-and-by, and made a kind of apology for his ravages. "you see, the worst of going into society is _that_," he remarked vaguely, "they see one eat; and it's apt to tell against one in three volumes. it's a great pity that fiction is not compatible with a healthy appetite; but it isn't; and society is so apt to object to one, if one doesn't come up to its expectations. you've no idea what a lot of people have invited me out to tea--ladies, you know--since the publication of 'the mystery of mowbray manor.' i used to go at first. but they generally said to me, 'lor', mr. smith, you're not a bit like what i fancied you were! i thought you'd be tall, and dark, and haughty-looking, like montague manderville in 'the mystery of ---- ', &c, &c.; and that sort of thing is apt to make a man feel himself an impostor. and if a writer of fiction can't drink hot tea without colouring up as if he had just pocketed a silver spoon, and it was his guilty conscience, why, my idea is, he'd better stay at home. i don't think any man was ever as good or as bad as his books," continued sigismund, reflectively, scraping up a spoonful of that liquid grease which mrs. jeffson tersely entitled "dip." "there's a kind of righteous indignation, and a frantic desire to do something splendid for his fellow-creatures, like vaccinating them all over again, or founding a hospital for everybody, which a man feels when he's writing--especially late at night, when he's been keeping himself awake--with bitter ale--that seems to ooze away somehow when his copy has gone to the printers. and it's pretty much the same with one's scorn and hate and cynicism. nobody ever quite comes up to his books. even byron, but for turning down his collars, and walking lame, and dining on biscuits and soda-water, might have been a social failure. i think there's a good deal of horace walpole's inspired idiocy in this world. the morning sun shines, and the statue is musical; but all the day there is silence; and at night--in society, i suppose--the sounds are lugubrious. how i do talk, izzie, and _you_ don't say anything! but i needn't ask if you're happy. i never saw you looking so pretty." isabel blushed. was she pretty? oh, she wanted so much to be pretty! "and i think george may congratulate himself upon having secured the dearest little wife in all midlandshire." mrs. gilbert blushed a deeper red; but the happy smile died away on her lips. something, a very vague something as yet, was lurking in what mr. raymond would have called her "inner consciousness;" and she thought, perhaps, george had not such very great reason for self-gratulation. "i always do as he tells me,"' she said naïvely; "and he's kinder than mamma used to be, and doesn't mind my reading at meals. you know how ma used to go on about it. and i mend his socks--sometimes." she drew open a drawer, where there were some little bundles of grey woollen stuff, and balls of worsted with big needles stuck across them. "and, oh, sigismund," she exclaimed, rather inconsecutively, "we've been to mordred--to mordred priory--to a luncheon; quite a grand luncheon--pine-apple and ices, and nearly half-a-dozen different kinds of glasses for each person." she could talk to sigismund about mordred and the master of mordred. he was not like george, and he would sympathize with her enthusiasm about that earthly paradise. "do you know mordred?" she asked. she felt a kind of pleasure in calling the mansion "mordred," all short, as _he_ called it. "i know the village of mordred well enough," mr. smith answered, "and i _ought_ to know the priory precious well. the last mr. lansdell gave my father a good deal of business; and when roland lansdell was being coached-up in the classics by a private tutor, i used to go up to the priory and read with him. the governor was very glad to get such a chance for me; but i can't say i intensely appreciated the advantage myself, on hot summer afternoons, when there was cricketing on warncliffe meads." "you knew him--you knew mr. roland lansdell when he was a boy?" said isabel, with a little gasp. "i certainly did, my dear izzie; but i don't think there's anything wonderful in that. you couldn't open your eyes much wider if i'd said i'd known eugene aram when he was a boy. i remember roland lansdell," continued mr. smith, slapping his breakfast-napkin across his dusty boots, "and a very jolly young fellow he was; a regular young swell, with a chimney-pot hat and dandy boots, and a gold hunter in his waistcoat-pocket, and no end of pencil-cases, and cricket-bats, and drawing-portfolios, and single-sticks, and fishing-tackle. he taught me fencing," added sigismund, throwing himself suddenly into a position that covered one entire side of the little parlour, and making a postman's knock upon the carpet with the sole of his foot. "come, mrs. gilbert," he said, presently, "put on your bonnet, and come out for a walk. i suppose there's no chance of our seeing george till dinner-time." isabel was pleased to go out. all the world seemed astir upon this bright september morning; and out of doors there was always just a chance of meeting _him_. she put on her hat, the broad-leaved straw that cast such soft shadows upon her face, and she took up the big green parasol, and was ready to accompany her old friend in a minute. "i don't want the greetings in the market-place," mr. smith said, as they went out into the lane, where it was always very dusty in dry weather, and very muddy when there was rain. "i know almost everybody in graybridge; and there'll be a round of stereotyped questions and answers to go through as to how i'm getting on 'oop in london.' i can't tell those people that i earn my bread by writing 'the demon of the galleys,' or 'the mystery of mowbray manor.' take me for a country walk, izzie; a regular rustic ramble." mrs. gilbert blushed. that habit of blushing when she spoke or was spoken to had grown upon her lately. then, after a little pause, she said, shyly: "thurston's crag is a pretty place; shall we go there?" "suppose we do. that's quite a brilliant thought of yours, izzie. thurston's crag is a pretty place, a nice, drowsy, lazy old place, where one always goes to sleep, and wishes one had bottled beer. it reminds one of bottled beer, you know, the waterfall,--bottled beer in a rampant state of effervescence." isabel's face was all lighted up with smiles. "i am so glad you have come to see us, sigismund," she said. she was very glad. she might go to thurston's crag now as often as she could beguile sigismund thitherward, and that haunting sense of something wrong would no longer perplex her in the midst of her unutterable joy. it was unutterable! she had tried to write poetry about it, and had failed dismally, though her heart was making poetry all day long, as wildly, vaguely beautiful as solomon's song. she had tried to set her joy to music; but there were no notes on the harpsichord that could express such wondrous melody; though there was indeed one little simple theme, an old-fashioned air, arranged as a waltz, "'twere vain to tell thee all i feel," which isabel would play slowly, again and again, for an hour together, dragging the melody out in lingering legato notes, and listening to its talk about roland lansdell. but all this was very wicked, of course. to-day she could go to thurston's crag with a serene front, an unburdened conscience. what could be more intensely proper than this country walk with her mother's late partial boarder? they turned into the meadows presently, and as they drew nearer and nearer to the grassy hollow under the cliff, where the miller's cottage and the waterfall were nestled together like jewels in a casket of emerald velvet, the ground seemed to grow unsubstantial under her feet, as if thurston's crag had been a phantasmal region suspended in mid air. would he be there? her heart was perpetually beating out the four syllables of that simple sentence: would he be there? it was the st of september, and he would be away shooting partridges, perhaps. oh, was there even the remotest chance that he would be there? sigismund handed her across the stile in the last meadow, and then there was only a little bit of smooth verdure between them and the waterfall; but the overhanging branches of the trees intervened, and isabel could not see yet whether there was any one on the bridge. but presently the narrow winding path brought them to a break in the foliage. isabel's heart gave a tremendous bound, and then the colour, which had come and gone so often on her face, faded away altogether. he was there: leaning with his back against the big knotted trunk of the oak, and making a picture of himself, with one arm above his head, plucking the oak-leaves and dropping them into the water. he looked down at the glancing water and the hurrying leaves with a moody dissatisfied scowl. had he been anything less than a hero, one might have thought that he looked sulky. but when the light footsteps came rustling through the long grass, accompanied by the faint fluttering of a woman's garments, his face brightened as suddenly as if the dense foliage above his head had been swept away by a titan's axe, and all the sunshine let in upon him. that very expressive face darkened a little when mr. lansdell saw sigismund behind the doctor's wife; but the cloud was transient. the jealous delusions of a monomaniac could scarcely have transformed mr. smith into a cassio. desdemona might have pleaded for him all day long, and might have supplied him with any number of pocket-handkerchiefs hemmed and marked by her own fair hands, without causing the moor a single apprehensive pang. mr. lansdell did not recognize the youthful acquaintance who had stumbled a little way in the thorny path of knowledge by his side; but he saw that sigismund was a harmless creature; and after he had bared his handsome head before isabel, he gave mr. smith a friendly little nod of general application. "i have let the keepers shoot the first of the partridges," he said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he bent over mrs. gilbert, "and i have been here ever since ten o'clock." it was past one now. he had been there three hours, isabel thought, waiting for her. yes, it had gone so far as this already. but he was to go away at the end of october. he was to go away, it would all be over, and the world come to an end by the st of november. there was a little pile of books upon the seat under the tree. mr. lansdell pushed them off the bench, and tumbled them ignominiously among the long grass and weeds beneath it. isabel saw them fall; and uttered a little exclamation of surprise. "you have brought me--" she began; but to her astonishment roland checked her with a frown, and began to talk about the waterfall, and the trout that were to be caught in the season lower down in the stream. mr. lansdell was more worldly wise than the doctor's wife, and he knew that the books brought there for her might seem slightly suggestive of an appointment. there had been no appointment, of course; but there was always a chance of finding isabel under lord thurston's oak. had she not gone there constantly, long ago, when mr. lansdell was lounging in grecian islands, and eating ices under, the colonnades of venice? and was it strange that she should go there now? i should become very wearisome, were i to transcribe all that was said that morning. it was a very happy morning,--a long, idle sunshiny pause in the business of life. roland recognized an old acquaintance in sigismund smith presently, and the two young men talked gaily of those juvenile days at mordred. they talked pleasantly of all manner of things. mr. lansdell must have been quite ardently attached to sigismund in those early days, if one might judge of the past by the present; for he greeted his old acquaintance with absolute effusion, and sketched out quite a little royal progress of rustic enjoyment for the week sigismund was to stay at graybridge. "we'll have a picnic," he said: "you remember we talked about a picnic, mrs. gilbert. we'll have a picnic at waverly castle; there isn't a more delightfully inconvenient place for a picnic in all midlandshire. one can dine on the top of the western tower, in actual danger of one's life. you can write to your uncle raymond, smith, and ask him to join us, with the two nieces, who are really most amiable children; so estimably unintellectual, and no more in the way than a little extra furniture: you mayn't want it; but if you've space enough for it in your rooms, it doesn't in the least inconvenience you. this is thursday; shall we say saturday for my picnic? i mean it to be my picnic, you know; a bachelor's picnic, with all the most obviously necessary items forgotten, i dare say. i think the salad-dressing and the champagne-nippers are the legitimate things to forget, are they not? do you think saturday will suit you and the doctor, mrs. gilbert? i should like it to be saturday, because you must all dine with me at mordred on sunday, in order that we may drink success and a dozen editions to the--what's the name of your novel, smith? shall it be saturday, mrs. gilbert?" isabel only answered by deepening blushes and a confused murmur of undistinguishable syllables. but her face lighted up with a look of rapture that was wont to illuminate it now and then, and which, mr. lansdell thought was the most beautiful expression of the human countenance that he had ever seen, out of a picture or in one. sigismund answered for the doctor's wife. yes, he was sure saturday would do capitally. he would settle it all with george, and he would answer for his uncle raymond and the orphans; and he would answer for the weather even, for the matter of that. he further accepted the invitation to dine at mordred on sunday, for himself and his host and hostess. "you know you can, izzie," he said, in answer to mrs. gilbert's deprecating murmur; "it's mere nonsense talking about prior engagements in a place like graybridge, where nobody ever does go out to dinner, and a tea-party on a sunday is looked upon as wickedness. lansdell always was a jolly good fellow, and i'm not a bit surprised to find that he's a jolly good fellow still; because if you train up a twig in the way it's inclined, the tree will not depart from it, as the philosopher has observed. i want to see mordred again, most particularly; for, to tell you the truth, lansdell," said mr. smith, with a gush of candour, "i was thinking of taking the priory for the scene of my next novel. there's a mossy kind of gloom about the eastern side of the house and the old square garden, that i think would take with the general public; and with regard to the cellarage," cried sigismund, kindling with sudden enthusiasm, "i've been through it with a lantern, and i'm sure there's accommodation for a perfect regiment of bodies, which would be a consideration if i was going to do the story in penny numbers; for in penny numbers one body always leads on to another, and you never know, when you begin, how far you may be obliged to go. however, my present idea is three volumes. what do you think now, lansdell, of the eastern side of the priory; deepening the gloom, you know, and letting the gardens all run to seed, with rank grass and a blasted cedar or so, and introducing rats behind the panelling, and a general rottenness, and perhaps a ghostly footstep in the corridor, or a periodical rustling behind the tapestry? what do you say, now, to mordred, taken in connection with twin brothers hating each other from infancy, and both in love with the same woman, and one of them--the darkest twin, with a scar on his forehead--walling up the young female in a deserted room, while the more amiable twin without a scar devotes his life to searching for her in foreign climes, accompanied by a detective officer and a bloodhound? it's only a rough idea at present," concluded mr. smith, modestly; "but i shall work it out in railway trains and pedestrian exercise. there's nothing like railway travelling or pedestrian exercise for working out an idea of that kind." mr. lansdell declared that his house and grounds were entirely at the service of his young friend; and it was settled that the picnic should take place on saturday, and the dinner-party on sunday; and george gilbert's acquiescence in the two arrangements was guaranteed by his friend sigismund. and then the conversation wandered away into more fanciful regions; and roland and mr. smith talked of men and books, while isabel listened, only chiming in now and then with little sentimental remarks, to which the master of mordred priory listened as intently as if the speaker had been a madame de staël. she may not have said anything very wonderful; but those were wonderful blushes that came and went upon her pale face as she spoke, fluttering and fitful as the shadow of a butterfly's wing hovering above a white rose; and the golden light in her eyes was more wonderful than anything out of a fairy tale. but he always listened to her, and he always looked at her from a certain position which he had elected for himself in relation to her. she was a beautiful child; and he, a man of the world, very much tired and worn out by the ordinary men and women of the world, was half amused, half interested, by her simplicity and sentimentality. he did no wrong, therefore, by cultivating her acquaintance when accident threw her, as had happened so often lately, in his way. there was no harm, so long as he held firmly to the position he had chosen for himself; so long as he contemplated this young gushing creature from across all the width of his own wasted youth and useless days; so long as he looked at her as a bright unapproachable being, as much divided from him by the difference in their natures, as by the fact that she was the lawful wife of mr. george gilbert of graybridge-on-the-wayverne. mr. lansdell tried his uttermost to hold firmly to this self-elected position with regard to isabel. he was always alluding to his own age; an age not to be computed, as he explained to mrs. gilbert, by the actual number of years in which he had inhabited this lower world, but to be calculated rather by the waste of those wearisome years, and the general decadence that had fallen upon him thereby. "i suppose, according to the calendar, i am only your senior by a decade," he said to izzie one day; "but when i hear you talk about your books and your heroes, i feel as if i had lived a century." he took the trouble to make little speeches of this kind very often, for mrs. gilbert's edification; and there were times when the doctor's wife was puzzled, and even wounded, by his talk and his manner, which were both subject to abrupt transitions, that were perplexing to a simple person. mr. lansdell was capricious and fitful in his moods, and would break off in the middle of some delicious little bit of sentiment, worthy of ernest maltravers or eugene aram himself, with a sneering remark about the absurdity of the style of conversation into which he had been betrayed; and would sit moodily pulling his favourite retriever's long ears for ten minutes or so, and then get up and wish isabel an abrupt good morning. mrs. gilbert took these changes of manner very deeply to heart. it was her fault, no doubt; she had said something silly; or affected, perhaps. had not her brother horace been apt to jeer at her as a mass of affectation, because she preferred byron to "bell's life," and was more interested in edith dombey than in the favourite for the oaks? she had said something that had sounded affected, though uttered in all simplicity of heart; and mr. lansdell had been disgusted by her talk. contempt from _him_--she always thought of him in italics--was very bitter! she would never, never go to thurston's crag again. but then, after one of those abruptly-unpleasant "good mornings," mr. lansdell was very apt to call at graybridge. he wanted mr. gilbert to go and see one of the men on the home-farm, who seemed in a very bad way, poor fellow, and ought not to be allowed to go on any longer without medical advice. mr. lansdell was very fond of looking up cases for the graybridge surgeon. how good he was! isabel thought; he in whom goodness was in a manner a supererogatory attribute; since heroes who were dark, and pensive, and handsome, were not called upon to be otherwise virtuous. how good he was! he who was as scornfully depreciative of his own merits as if the bones of another mr. clarke had been bleaching in some distant cave in imperishable evidence of his guilt. how good he was! and he had not been offended or disgusted with her when he left her so suddenly; for to-day he was kinder to her than ever, and lingered for nearly an hour in the unshaded parlour, in the hope that the surgeon would come in. but when mr. lansdell walked slowly homeward after such a visit as this, there was generally a dissatisfied look upon his face, which was altogether inconsistent with the pleasure he had appeared to take in his wasted hour at graybridge. he was inconsistent. it was in his nature, as a hero, to be so, no doubt. there were times when he forgot all about that yawning chasm of years which was supposed to divide him from any possibility of sympathy with isabel gilbert; there were times when he forgot himself so far as to be very young and happy in his loitering visits at graybridge, playing idle scraps of extempore melody on the wizen old harpsichord, sketching little bunches of foliage and frail italian temples, and pretty girlish faces with big black eyes, not altogether unlike isabel's, or strolling out into the flat old-fashioned garden, where mr. jeffson lolled on his spade, and made a rustic figure of himself, between a middle distance of brown earth and a foreground of cabbage-plants. i am bound to say that mr. jeffson, who was generally courtesy itself to every living creature, from the pigs to whom he carried savoury messes of skim-milk and specky potatoes, to the rector of graybridge, who gave him "good evening" sometimes as he reposed himself in the cool twilight, upon the wooden gate leading into george gilbert's stable-yard,--i am bound to say that mr. jeffson was altogether wanting in politeness to roland lansdell, and was apt to follow the young man with black and evil looks as he strolled by izzie's side along the narrow walks, or stooped now and then to extricate her muslin dress from the thorny branches of a gooseberry-bush. once, and once only, did isabel gilbert venture to remonstrate with her husband's retainer on the subject of his surly manner to the master of mordred priory. her remonstrance was a very faint one, and she was stooping over a rose-bush while she talked, and was very busy plucking off the withered leaves, and now and then leaves that were not withered. "i am afraid you don't like mr. lansdell, jeff," she said. she had been very much attached to the gardener, and very confidential to him, before roland's advent, and had done a little amateur gardening under his instructions, and had told him all about eugene aram and the murder of mr. clarke "you seemed quite cross to him this morning when he called to see george, and to inquire about the man that had the rheumatic fever; i'm afraid you don't like him." she bent her face very low over the rose-bush; so low that her hair, which, though much tidier than of old, was never quite as neatly or compactly adjusted as it might have been, fell forward like a veil, and entangled itself among the spiky branches. "oh yes, mrs. george; i like him well enough. there's not a young gentleman that i ever set eyes on as i think nobler to look at, or pleasanter to talk to, than mr. lansdell, or more free and open-like in his manner to poor folk. but, like a many other good things, mrs. george, mr. lansdell's only good, to my mind, when he's in his place; and i tell you, frank and candid, as i think he's never more out of his place than when he's hanging about your house, or idling away his time in this garden. it isn't for me, mrs. george, to say who should come here, and who shouldn't; but there was a kind of relationship between me and my master's dead mother. i can see her now, poor young thing, with her bright fair face, and her fair hair blowing across it, as she used to come towards me along the very pathway on which you're standing now, mrs. george; and all that time comes back to me as if it was yesterday. i never knew any one lead a better or a purer life. i stood beside her deathbed, and i never saw a happier death, nor one that seemed to bring it closer home to a man's mind that there was something happier and better still to come afterwards. but there was never no mr. roland lansdell in those days, mrs. george, scribbling heads with no bodies to 'em, and trees without any stumps, on scraps of paper, or playing tunes, or otherwise dawdling like, while my master was out o' doors. and i remember, as almost the last words that sweet young creature says, was something about having done her duty to her dear husband, and never having known one thought as she could wish to keep hid from him or heaven." mrs. gilbert dropped down on her knees before the rose-bush, with her face still shrouded by her hair, and her hands still busy among the leaves. when she looked up, which was not until after a lapse of some minutes, mr. jeffson was ever so far off, digging potatoes, with his back turned towards her. there had been nothing unkind in his manner of speaking to her; indeed, there had even been a special kindness and tenderness in his tones, a sorrowful gentleness, that went home to her heart. she thought of her husband's dead mother a good deal that night, in a reverential spirit, but with a touch of envy also. was not the first mrs. gilbert specially happy to have died young? was it not an enormous privilege so to die, and to be renowned ever afterwards as having done something meritorious, when, for the matter of that, other people would be very happy to die young, if they could? isabel thought of this with some sense of injury. long ago, when her brothers had been rude to her, and her step-mother had upbraided her on the subject of a constitutional unwillingness to fetch butter, and "back" teaspoons, she had wished to die young, leaving a legacy of perpetual remorse to those unfeeling relatives. but the gods had never cared anything about her. she had kept on wet boots sometimes after "backing" spoons in bad weather, in the fond hope that she might thereby fall into a decline. she had pictured herself in the little bedroom at camberwell, fading by inches, with becoming hectic spots on her cheeks, and imploring her step-mother to call her early; which desire would have been the converse of the popular idea of the ruling passion, inasmuch as in her normal state of health miss sleaford was wont to be late of a morning, and remonstrate drowsily, with the voice of the sluggard, when roughly roused from some foolish dream, in which she wore a ruby-velvet gown that _wouldn't_ keep hooked, and was beloved by a duke who was always inconsistently changing into the young man at the butter-shop. all that evening isabel pondered upon the simple history of her husband's mother, and wished that she could be very, very good, like her, and die early, with holy words upon her lips. but in the midst of such thoughts as these, she found herself wondering whether the hands of mr. gilbert the elder were red and knobby like those of his son, whether he employed the same bootmaker, and entertained an equal predilection for spring-onions and cheshire cheese. and from the picture of her deathbed isabel tried in vain to blot away a figure that had no right to be there,--the figure of some one who would be fetched post-haste, at the last moment, to hear her dying words, and to see her die. chapter xviii. the second warning. mr. roland lansdell did not invite lady gwendoline or her father to that bachelor picnic which he was to give at waverly castle. he had a kind of instinctive knowledge that lord ruysdale's daughter would not relish that sylvan entertainment. "she'd object to poor smith. i dare say," roland said to himself, "with his sporting-cut clothes, and his slang phrases, and his perpetual talk about three-volume novels and penny numbers. no, i don't think it would do to invite gwendoline; she'd be sure to object to smith." mr. lansdell said this, or thought this, a good many times upon the day before the picnic; but it may be that there was a lurking idea in his mind that lady gwendoline might object to the presence of some one other than mr. smith in the little assembly that had been planned under lord thurston's oak. perhaps roland lansdell,--who hated hypocrisy as men who are by no means sinless are yet apt to hate the base and crawling vices of mankind,--had become a hypocrite all at once, and wanted to deceive himself; or it may be that the weak slope of his handsome chin, and the want of breadth in a certain region of his skull, were the outward and visible signs of such a weak and vacillating nature, that what was true with regard to him one minute was false the next; so that out of this perpetual changefulness of thought and purpose there grew a confusion in the young man's mind, like the murmur of many streamlets rushing into one broad river, along whose tide the feeble swimmer was drifted to the very sea he wanted so much to avoid. "the picnic will be a pleasant thing for young smith," mr. lansdell thought; "and it'll please the children to make themselves bilious amongst ruins; and that dear good raymond always enjoys himself with young and happy people. i cannot see that the picnic can be anything but pleasant; and for the matter of that, i've a good mind to send the baskets early by stephens, who could make himself useful all day, and not go at all myself. i could run up to town under pretence of particular business, and amuse myself somehow for a day or two. or, for that matter, i might go over to baden or hombourg, and finish the autumn there. heaven knows i don't want to do any harm." but, in spite of all this uncertainty and vacillation of mind, mr. lansdell took a great deal of interest in the preparations for the picnic. he did not trouble himself about the magnificent game-pie which was made for the occasion, the crust of which was as highly glazed as a piece of modern wedgwood. he did not concern himself about the tender young fowls, nestling in groves of parsley; nor the tongue, floridly decorated with vegetable productions chiselled into the shapes of impossible flowers; nor the york ham, also in a high state of polish, like fine spanish mahogany, and encircled about the knuckle by pure white fringes of cut paper. the comestibles to which mr. lansdell directed his attention were of a more delicate and fairy-like description, such as women and children are apt to take delight in. there must be jellies and creams, mr. lansdell said, whatever difficulty there might be in the conveyance of such compositions. there must be fruit; he attended himself to the cutting of hothouse grapes and peaches, the noblest pine-apple in the long range of forcing-houses, and picturesque pears with leaves still clinging to the stalk. he ordered bouquets to be cut, one a very pyramid of choice flowers, chiefly white and innocent-looking, and he took care to select richly-scented blossoms, and he touched the big nosegay caressingly with his slim white fingers, and looked at it with a tender smile on his dark face, as if the flowers had a language for him,--and so they had; but it was by no means that stereotyped dictionary of substantives and adjectives popularly called the language of flowers. it was nothing new for him to choose a bouquet. had he not dispensed a small fortune in the rue de la paix and in the faubourg st. honoré, in exchange for big bunches of roses and myosotis, and cape-jasmine and waxy camellias; which he saw afterwards lying on the velvet cushion of an opera-box, or withering in the warm atmosphere of a boudoir? he was not a good man,--he had not led a good life. pretty women had called him "enfant!" in the dim mysterious shades of lamplit conservatories, upon the curtain-shrouded thresholds of moonlit balconies. arch soubrettes in little parisian theatres, bewitching marthons and margots and jeannettons, with brooms in their hands and diamonds in their ears, had smiled at him, and acted at him, and sung at him, as he lounged in the dusky recesses of a cavernous box. he had not led a good life. he was not a good man. but he was a man who had never sinned with impunity. with him remorse always went hand-in-hand with wrong-doing. in all his life, i doubt if there was any period in which mr. lansdell had ever so honestly and truly wished to do aright as he did just now. his mind seemed to have undergone a kind of purification in the still atmosphere of those fair midlandshire glades and meads. there was even a purifying influence in the society of such a woman as isabel gilbert, so different from all the other women he had known, so deficient in the merest rudiments of worldly wisdom. mr. lansdell did not go to london. when the ponderous old fly from graybridge drove up a narrow winding lane and emerged upon the green rising ground below the gates of waverly castle, roland was standing under the shadow of the walls, with a big bunch of hothouse flowers in his hand. he was in very high spirits; for to-day he had cast care to the winds. why should he not enjoy this innocent pleasure of a rustic ramble with simple country-bred people and children? he laid some little stress upon the presence of the orphans. yes, he would enjoy himself for to-day; and then to-morrow--ah! by the bye, to-morrow mr. and mrs. gilbert and sigismund smith were to dine with him. after to-morrow it would be all over, and he would be off to the continent again, to begin the old wearisome rounds once more; to eat the same dinners at the same restaurants; the same little suppers after the opera, in stuffy entresol chambers, all crimson velvet, and gaslight, and glass, and gilding; to go to the same balls in the same gorgeous saloons, and to see the same beautiful faces shining upon him in their monotonous splendour. "i might have turned country gentleman, and have been good for something in this world," thought roland, "if----" mr. lansdell was not alone. charles raymond and the orphans had arrived; and they all came forward together to welcome isabel and her companions. mr. raymond had always been very kind to his nieces' governess, but he seemed especially kind to her to-day. he interposed himself between roland and the door of the fly, and assisted isabel to alight. he slipped her hand under his arm with a pleasant friendliness of manner, and looked with a triumphant smile at the rest of the gentlemen. "i mean to appropriate mrs. gilbert for the whole of this day," he said, cheerily; "and i shall give her a full account of waverly, looked upon from an archæological, historical, and legendary point of view. never mind your flowers now, roland; it's a very charming bouquet, but you don't suppose mrs. gilbert is going to carry it about all day? take it into the lodge yonder, and ask them to put it in water; and in the evening, if you're very good, mrs. gilbert shall take it home to ornament her parlour at graybridge." the gates were opened, and they went in; isabel arm-in-arm with mr. raymond. roland placed himself presently on one side of isabel; but mr. raymond was so very instructive about john of gaunt and the tudors, that all mrs. gilbert's attention was taken up in the effort to understand his discourse, which was very pleasant and lively, in spite of its instructive nature. george gilbert looked at the ruins with the same awful respect with which he had regarded the pictures at mordred. he was tolerably familiar with those empty halls, those roofless chambers, and open doorways, and ivy-festooned windows; but he always looked at them with the same reverence, mingled with a vague wonder as to what it was that people admired in ruins, seeing that they generally made such short work of inspecting them, and seemed so pleased to get away and take refreshment. ruins and copious refreshment ware associated in mr. gilbert's mind; and, indeed, there does seem to be a natural union between ivied walls and lobster-salad, crumbling turrets and cold chicken; just as the domes of greenwich hospital, the hilly park beyond, and the rippling water in the foreground, must be for ever and ever associated with floundered souchy and devilled whitebait. mr. sigismund smith was delighted with waverly. he had rambled amongst the ruins often enough in his boyhood; but to-day he saw everything from a new point of view, and he groped about in all manner of obscure corners, with a pencil and pocket-book in his hand, laying the plan of a thrilling serial, and making himself irrecognizable with dust. his friends found him on one occasion stretched at full length amongst crisp fallen leaves in a recess that had once been a fireplace, with a view to ascertain whether it was long enough to accommodate a body. he climbed fearful heights, and planned perilous leaps and "hairbreadth 'scapes," deadly dangers in the way of walks along narrow cornices high up above empty space; such feats as hold the reader with suspended breath, and make the continued expenditure of his weekly penny almost a certainty. the orphans accompanied mr. smith, and were delighted with the little chambers that they found in nooks and corners of the mouldering castle. how delightful to have chairs and tables and kitchen utensils, and to live there for ever and ever, and keep house for themselves! they envied the vulgar children who lived in the square tower by the gate, and saw ruins every day of their lives. it was a very pleasant morning altogether. there was a strangely mingled feeling of satisfaction and annoyance in roland lansdell's mind as he strolled beside isabel, and listened, or appeared to listen, to mr. raymond's talk. he would like to have had isabel's little hand lying lightly on his arm; he would like to have seen those wondering black eyes lifted to his face; he would like her to have heard the romantic legends belonging to the ruined walls and roofless banquet-chambers from him. and yet, perhaps, it was better as it was. he was going away very soon--immediately, indeed; he was going where that simple pleasure would be impossible to him, and it was better not to lull himself in soft delights that were so soon to be taken away from his barren life. yes, his barren life. he had come to think of his fate with bitter repining, and to look upon himself as, somehow or other, cruelly ill-used by providence. but, in spite of mr. raymond, he contrived to sit next isabel at dinner, which was served by-and-by in a lovely sheltered nook under the walls, where there was no chance of the salt being blown into the greengage tart, or the custard spilt over the lobster-salad. mr. lansdell had sent a couple of servants to arrange matters; and the picnic was not a bit like an ordinary picnic, where things are lost and forgotten, and where there is generally confusion by reason of everybody's desire to assist in the preparations. this was altogether a _recherché_ banquet; but scarcely so pleasant as those more rural feasts, in which there is a paucity of tumblers, and no forks to speak of. the champagne was iced, the jellies quivered in the sunlight, everything was in perfect order; and if mr. raymond had not insisted upon sending away the two men, who wanted to wait at table, with the gloomy solemnity of every-day life, it would scarcely have been worthy the name of picnic. but with the two solemn servants out of the way, and with sigismund, very red and dusty and noisy, to act as butler, matters were considerably improved. the sun was low when they left the ruins of the feast for the two solemn men to clear away. the sun was low, and the moon had risen, so pale as to be scarcely distinguishable from a faint summer cloud high up in the clear opal heaven. mr. raymond took isabel up by a winding staircase to the top of a high turret, beneath which spread green meads and slopes of verdure, where once had been a lake and pleasaunce. the moon grew silvery before they reached the top of the turret, where there was room enough for a dozen people. roland went with them, of course, and sat on one of the broad stone battlements looking out at the still night, with his profile defined as sharply as a cameo against the deepening blue of the sky. he was very silent, and his silence had a distracting influence on isabel, who made vain efforts to understand what mr. raymond was saying to her, and gave vague answers every now and then; so vague that charles raymond left off talking presently, and seemed to fall into as profound a reverie as that which kept mr. lansdell silent. to isabel's mind there was a pensive sweetness in that silence, which was in some way in harmony with the scene and the atmosphere. she was free to watch roland's face now that mr. raymond had left off talking to her, and she did watch it; that still profile whose perfect outline grew more and more distinct against the moonlit sky. if anybody could have painted his portrait as he sat there, with one idle hand hanging listless among the ivy-leaves, blanched in the moonlight, what a picture it would have made! what was he thinking of? were his thoughts far away in some foreign city with dark-eyed clotilde? or the duchess with the glittering hair, who had loved him and been false to him long ago, when he was an alien, and recorded the history of his woes in heart-breaking verse, in fitful numbers, larded with scraps of french and latin, alternately despairing and sarcastic? isabel solemnly believed in clotilde and the glittering duchess, and was steeped in self-abasement and humiliation when she compared herself with those vague and splendid creatures. roland spoke at last: if there had been anything common-place or worldly wise in what he said, there must have been a little revulsion in isabel's mind; but his talk was happily attuned to the place and the hour; incomprehensible and mysterious,--like the deepening night in the heavens. "i think there is a point at which a man's life comes to an end," he said. "i think there is a fitting and legitimate close to every man's existence, that is as palpable as the falling of a curtain when a play is done. he goes on living; that is to say, eating and drinking, and inhaling so many cubic feet of fresh air every day, for half a century afterwards, perhaps; but that is nothing. do not the actors live after the play is done, and the curtain has fallen? hamlet goes home and eats his supper, and scolds his wife and snubs his children; but the exaltation and the passion that created him prince of denmark have died out like the coke ashes of the green-room fire. surely that after-life is the penalty, the counter-balance, of brief golden hours of hope and pleasure. i am glad the lansdells are not a long-lived race, raymond; for i think the play is finished, and the dark curtain has dropped for me!" "humph!" muttered mr. raymond; "wasn't there something to that effect in the 'alien?' it's very pretty, roland,--that sort of dismal prettiness which is so much in fashion nowadays; but don't you think if you were to get up a little earlier in the morning, and spend a couple of hours amongst the stubble with your clogs and gun, so as to get an appetite for your breakfast, you might get over that sort of thing?" isabel turned a mutely reproachful gaze upon mr. raymond, but roland burst out laughing. "i dare say i talk like a fool," he said; "i feel like one sometimes." "when are you going abroad again?" "in a month's time. but why should i go abroad?" asked mr. lansdell, with a dash of fierceness in the sudden change of his tone; "why should i go? what is there for me to do there better than here? what good am i there more than i am here?" he asked these questions of the sky as much as of mr. raymond; and the philosopher of conventford did not feel himself called upon to answer them. mr. lansdell relapsed into the silence that so puzzled isabel; and nothing more was said until the voice of george gilbert sounded from below, deeply sonorous amongst the walls and towers, calling to isabel. "i must go," she said; "i dare say the fly is ready to take us back. goodnight, mr. raymond; goodnight, mr. lansdell." she held out her hand, as if doubtful to whom she should first offer it; roland had never changed his position until this moment, but he started up suddenly now, like a man awakened from a dream. "you are going?" he said; "so soon!" "so soon! it is very late, i think," mrs. gilbert answered; "at least, i mean we have enjoyed ourselves very much; and the time has passed so quickly." she thought it was her duty to say something of this kind to him, as the giver of the feast; and then she blushed and grew confused, thinking she had said too much. "good night, mr. lansdell." "but i am coming down with you to the gate," said roland; "do you think we could let you go down those slippery stairs by yourself, to fall and break your neck and haunt the tower by moonlight for ever afterwards, a pale ghost in shadowy muslin drapery? here's mr. gilbert," he added, as the top of george's hat made itself visible upon the winding staircase; "but i'm sure i know the turret better than he does, and i shall take you under my care." he took her hand as he spoke, and led her down the dangerous winding way as carefully and tenderly as if she had been a little child. her hand did not tremble as it rested in his; but something like a mysterious winged creature that had long been imprisoned in her breast seemed to break his bonds all at once, and float away from her towards him. she thought it was her long-imprisoned soul, perhaps, that so left her to become a part of his. if that slow downward journey could have lasted for ever--if she could have gone down, down, down with roland lansdell into some fathomless pit, until at last they came to a luminous cavern and still moonlit water, where there was a heavenly calm--and death! but the descent did not last very long, careful as roland was of every step; and there was the top of george's hat bobbing about in the moonlight all the time; for the surgeon had lost his way in the turret, and only came down at last very warm and breathless when isabel called to him from the bottom of the stairs. sigismund and the orphans appeared at the same moment. mr. raymond had followed roland and isabel very closely, and they all went together to the fly. "remember to-morrow," mr. lansdell said generally to the graybridge party as they took their seats. "i shall expect you as soon as the afternoon service is over. i know you are regular church-goers at graybridge. couldn't you come to mordred for the afternoon service, by the bye?--the church is well worth seeing." there was a little discussion; and it was finally agreed that mr. and mrs. george gilbert and sigismund should go to mordred church on the following afternoon; and then there was a good deal of hand-shaking before the carriage drove away, and disappeared behind the sheltering edges that screened the winding road. "i'll see you and the children off, raymond," mr. lansdell said, "before i go myself." "i'm not going away just this minute," mr. raymond answered gravely; "i want to have a little talk with you first. there's something i particularly want to say to you. mrs. primshaw," he cried to the landlady of a little inn just opposite the castle-gates, a good-natured rosy-faced young woman, who was standing on the threshold of her door watching the movements of the gentlefolks, "will you take care of my little girls, and see whether their wraps are warm enough for the drive home, while i take a moonlight stroll with mr. lansdell?" mrs. primshaw declared that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see to the comfort of the young ladies. so the orphans skipped across the moonlit road, nowise sorry to take shelter in the pleasant bar-parlour, all rosy and luminous with a cosy handful of bright fire in the tiniest grate ever seen out of a doll's house. mr. lansdell and mr. raymond walked along the lonely road under the shadow of the castle wall, and for some minutes neither of them spoke. roland evinced no curiosity about, or interest in, that unknown something which mr. raymond had to say to him; but there was a kind of dogged sullenness in the carriage of his head, the fixed expression of his face, that seemed to promise badly for the pleasantness of the interview. perhaps mr. raymond saw this, and was rather puzzled how to commence the conversation; at any rate, when he did begin, he began very abruptly, taking what one might venture to call a conversational header. "roland," he said, "this won't do!" "what won't do?" asked mr. lansdell, coolly. "of course, i don't set up for being your mentor," returned mr. raymond, "or for having any right to lecture you, or dictate to you. the tie of kinsmanship between us is a very slight one: though, as far as that goes, god knows that i could scarcely love you better than i do, if i were your father. but if i were your father, i don't suppose you'd listen to me, or heed me. men never do in such matters as these. i've lived my life, roland, and i know too well how little good advice can do in such a case as this. but i can't see you going wrong without trying to stop you: and for that poor honest-hearted fellow yonder, for his sake, i must speak, roland. have you any consciousness of the mischief you're doing? have you any knowledge of the bottomless pit of sin, and misery, and shame, and horror that you are digging before that foolish woman's feet?" "why, raymond," cried mr. lansdell, with a laugh,--not a very hearty laugh, but something like that hollow mockery of merriment with which a man greets the narration of some old joe-millerism that has been familiar to him from his childhood,--"why, raymond, you're as obscure as a modern poet! what do you mean? who's the honest-hearted fellow? and who's the foolish woman? and what's the nature of the business altogether?" "roland, let us be frank with each other, at least. do you remember how you told me once that, when every bright illusion had dropped away from you one by one, honour still remained,--- a poor pallid star, compared to those other lights that had perished in the darkness, but still bright enough to keep you in the straight road? has that last light gone out with the rest, roland, my poor melancholy boy,--my boy whom i have loved as my own child?--will the day ever come when i shall have to be ashamed of anna lansdell's only son?" his mother's name had always something of a spell for roland. his head, so proudly held before, drooped suddenly, and he walked on in silence for some little time. mr. raymond was also silent. he had drawn some good augury from the altered carriage of the young man's head, and was loth to disturb the current of his thoughts. when roland did at last raise his head, he turned and looked his friend and kinsman full in the face. "raymond," he said, "i am not a good man;" he was very fond of making this declaration, and i think he fancied that in so doing he made some vague atonement for his short-comings: "i am not a good man, but i am no hypocrite; i will not lie to you, or prevaricate with you. perhaps there may be some justification for what you said just now, or there might be, if i were a different sort of man. but, as it is, i give you my honour you are mistaken. i have been digging no pit for a woman's innocent footsteps to stray into. i have been plotting no treachery against that honest fellow yonder. remember, i do not by any means hold myself blameless. i have admired mrs. gilbert just as one admires a pretty child, and i have allowed myself to be amused by her sentimental talk, and have lent her books, and may perhaps have paid her a little more attention than i ought to have done. but i have done nothing deliberately. i have never for one moment had any purpose in my mind, or mixed her image with so much as a dream of--of--any tangible form. i have drifted into a dangerous position, or a position that might be dangerous to another man; but i can drift out of it as easily as i drifted in. i shall leave midlandshire next month." "and to-morrow the gilberts dine with you at mordred; and all through this month there will be the chance of your seeing mrs. gilbert, and lending her more books, and paying her more attention; and so on. it is not so much that i doubt you, roland; i cannot think so meanly of you as to doubt your honour in this business. but you are doing mischief; you are turning this silly girl's head. it is no kindness to lend her books; it is no kindness to invite her to mordred, and to show her brief glimpses of a life that never can be hers. if you want to do a good deed, and to elevate her life out of its present dead level, make her your almoner, and give her a hundred a year to distribute among her husband's poor patients. the weak unhappy child is perishing for want of some duty to perform upon this earth; some necessary task to keep her busy from day to day, and to make a link between her husband and herself. roland, i do believe that you are as good and generous-minded a fellow as ever an old bachelor was proud of. my dear boy, let me feel prouder of you than i have ever felt yet. leave midlandshire to-morrow morning. it will be easy to invent some excuse for going. go to-morrow, roland." "i will," answered mr. lansdell, after a brief pause; "i will go, raymond," he repeated, holding out his hand, and clasping that of his friend. "i suppose i have been going a little astray lately; but i only wanted the voice of a true-hearted fellow like you to call me back to the straight road. i shall leave midlandshire to-morrow, raymond; and it may be a very long time before you see me back again." "heaven knows i am sorry enough to lose you, my boy," mr. raymond said with some emotion; "but i feel that it's the only thing for you to do. i used sometimes to think, before george gilbert offered to marry isabel, that you and she would have been suited to each other somehow; and i have wished that--" and here mr. raymond stopped abruptly, feeling that this speech was scarcely the wisest he could have made. but roland lansdell took no notice of that unlucky observation. "i shall go to-morrow," he repeated. "i'm very glad you've spoken to me, raymond; i thank you most heartily for the advice you have given me this night; and i shall go to-morrow." and then his mind wandered away to his boyish studies in mythical roman history; and he wondered how marcus curtius felt just after making up his mind to take the leap that made him famous. and then, with a sudden slip from ancient to modern history, he thought of poor tender-hearted louise la vallière running away and hiding herself in a convent, only to have her pure thoughts and aspirations scattered like a cluster of frail wood-anemones in a storm of wind--only to have her holy resolutions trampled upon by the ruthless foot of an impetuous young king. chapter xix. what might have been! mrs. gilbert spoke very little during the homeward drive through the moonlight. in her visions of that drive--or what that drive might be--she had fancied roland lansdell riding by the carriage-window, and going a few miles out of his way in order to escort his friends back to graybridge. "if he cared to be with us, he would have come," isabel thought, with a pensive reproachful feeling about mr. lansdell. it is just possible that roland might have ridden after the fly from graybridge, and ridden beside it along the quiet country roads, talking as he only in all the world could talk, according to mrs. gilbert's opinion. it is possible that, being so sorely at a loss as to what he should do with himself, mr. lansdell might have wasted an hour thus, had he not been detained by his old friend charles raymond. as it was, he rode straight home to mordred priory, very slowly, thinking deeply as he went along; thinking bitter thoughts about himself and his destiny. "if my cousin gwendoline had been true to me, i should have been an utterly different man," he thought; "i should have been a middle-aged steady-going fellow by this time, with a boy at eton, and a pretty fair-haired daughter to ride her pony by my side. i think i might have been good for something if i had married long ago, when my mother died, and my heart was ready to shelter the woman she had chosen for me. children! a man who has children has some reason to be good, and to do his duty. but to stand quite alone in a world that one has grown tired of; with every pleasure exhausted, and every faith worn threadbare; with a dreary waste of memory behind, a barren desert of empty years before;--to be quite alone in the world, the last of a race that once was brave and generous; the feeble, worn-out remnant of a lineage that once did great deeds, and made a name for itself in this world;--that indeed is bitter!" mr. lansdell's thoughts dwelt upon his loneliness to-night, as they had never dwelt before, since the day when his mother's death and cousin's inconstancy first left him lonely. "yes, i shall go abroad again," he thought presently, "and go over the whole dreary beat once more--like marryat's phantom captain turned landsman, like the wandering jew in a poole-built travelling dress. i shall eat fish at philippe's again, and buy more bouquets in the rue castiglione, and lose more money at hombourg, and shoot more crocodiles on the banks of the nile, and be laid up with another fever in the holy land. it will be all the same over again, except that it will be a great deal more tiresome this time." and then mr. lansdell began to think what his life might have been, if the woman he loved, or rather the woman for whom he had a foolish sentimental fancy,--he did not admit to himself that his predilection for isabel gilbert was more than this,--had been free to become his wife. he imagined himself returning from those tiresome continental wanderings a twelve-month earlier than he had actually returned. "ah, me!" he thought, "only one little year earlier, and all things would have been different!" he would have gone to conventford to see his dear old friend charles raymond, and there, in the sunny drawing-room, he would have found a pale-faced, dark-eyed girl bending over a child's lesson-book, or listening while a child strummed on the piano. he could fancy that scene,--he could see it all, like a beautiful cabinet picture; ah, how different, how different everything would have been then! it would have been no sin then to be inexplicably happy in that girlish presence; there would have been no vague remorseful pang, no sting of self-reproach, mingling with every pleasant emotion, contending with every thrill of mystic joy. and then--and then, some night in the twilit garden, when the stars were hovering dim about the city roofs still and hushed in the distance, he would have told her that he loved her; that, after a decade of indifference to all the brightest things of earth, he had found a pure unutterable happiness in the hope and belief that she would be his wife. he fancied her shy blushes, her drooping eyes suddenly tearful in the depth of her joy; and he fancied what his life might have been for ever afterwards, transformed and sublimated by its new purpose, its new delights; transfigured by a pure and exalted affection. he fancied all this as it all might have been; and turned and bowed his face before an image that bore his own likeness, and yet was not himself--the image of a good man, happy husband and father, true friend and gentle master, dwelling for ever and ever amidst that peaceful english landscape; beloved, respected, the centre of a happy circle, the key-stone of a fair domestic arch,--a necessary link in the grand chain of human love and life. "and, instead of all this, i am a wandering nomad, who never has been, and never can be, of any use in this world; who fills no place in life, and will leave no blank when he dies. when louis the well-beloved was disinclined for the chase, the royal huntsmen were wont to announce that to-day his majesty would do nothing. i have been doing nothing all my life, and cannot even rejoice in a stag-hunt." mr. lansdell beguiled his homeward way with many bitter reflections of this kind. but, inconsistent and vacillating in his thoughts, as he had been ever inconsistent and vacillating in his actions, he thought of himself at one time as being deeply and devotedly in love with isabel gilbert, and at another time as being only the victim of a foolish romantic fancy, which would perish by a death as speedy as its birth. "what an idiot i am for my pains!" he said to himself, presently. "in six weeks' time this poor child's pale face will have no more place in my mind than the snows of last winter have on this earth, or only in far-away nooks and corners of memory, like the alpine peaks, where the snows linger undisturbed by the hand of change. poor little girl! how she blushes and falters sometimes when she speaks to me, and how pretty she looks then! if they could get such an ingénue at the français, all paris would be mad about her. we are very much in love with each other, i dare say; but i don't think it's a passion to outlast six weeks' absence on either side, not on her side certainly, dear romantic child! i have only been the hero of a story-book; and all this folly has been nothing more than a page out of a novel set in action. raymond is very right. i must go away; and she will go back to her three-volume novels, and fall in love with a fair-haired hero, and forget me." he sighed as he thought this. it was infinitely better that he should be forgotten, and speedily; and yet it is hard to have no place in the universe--not even one hidden shrine in a foolish woman's heart. mr. lansdell was before the priory gates by this time. the old woman stifled a yawn as she admitted the master of the domain. he went in past the little blinking light in the narrow gothic window, and along the winding roadway between cool shrubberies that shed an aromatic perfume on the still night air. scared fawns flitted ghost-like away into deep recesses amid the mordred oaks; and in the distance the waterdrops of a cascade, changed by the moonbeams into showers of silver, fell with a little tinkling sound amongst great blocks of moss-grown granite and wet fern. mordred priory, seen in the moonlight, was not a place upon which a man would willingly turn his back. long ago roland lansdell had grown tired of its familiar beauties; but to-night the scene seemed transformed. he looked at it with a new interest; he thought of it with a sad tender regret, that stung him like a physical pain. as he had thought of what his life might have been under other circumstances, he thought now of what the place might have been. he fancied the grand old rooms resonant with the echoes of children's voices; he pictured one slender white-robed figure on the moonlit terrace; he fancied a tender earnest face turned steadily towards the path along which he rode; he felt the thrilling contact of a caressing arm twining itself shyly in his; he heard the low murmur of a loving voice--his wife's voice!--bidding him welcome home. but it was never to be! the watch-dog's honest bark--or rather the bark of several watch-dogs--made the night clamorous presently, when mr. lansdell drew rein before the porch; but there was no eye to mark his coming, and be brighter when he came; unless, indeed, it was the eye of his valet, which had waxed dim over the columns of the "morning post," and may have glimmered faintly, in evidence of that functionary's satisfaction at the prospect of being speedily released from duty. if it was so, the valet was doomed to disappointment; for mr. lansdell--usually the least troublesome of masters--wanted a great deal done for him to-night. "you may set to work at once with my portmanteau, jadis," he said, when he met his servant in the hall. "i must leave mordred to-morrow morning in time for the seven o'clock express from warncliffe. i want you to pack my things, and arrange for wilson to be ready to drive me over. i must leave here at six. perhaps, by the bye, you may as well pack one portmanteau for me to take with me, and you can follow with the rest of the luggage on monday." "you are going abroad, sir?" "yes, i am tired of mordred. i shall not stop for the hunting season. you can go up-stairs now and pack the portmanteau. don't forget to make all arrangements about the carriage; for six precisely. you can go to bed when you've finished packing. i've some letters to write, and shall be late." the man bowed and departed, to grumble, in an undertone, over mr. lansdell's shirts and waistcoats, while roland went into the library to write his letters. the letters which he had to write turned out to be only one letter, or rather a dozen variations upon the same theme, which he tore up, one after another, almost as soon as they were written. he was not wont to be so fastidious in the wording of his epistles, but to-night he could not be satisfied with what he wrote. he wrote to mrs. gilbert; yes, to her! why should he not write to her when he was going away to-morrow morning; when he was going to offer up that vague bright dream which had lately beguiled him, a willing sacrifice, on the altar of duty and honour? "i am not much good," he said: for ever excusing his shortcomings by his self-depreciation. "i never set up for being a good man; but i have some feeling of honour left in me at the worst." he wrote to isabel, therefore, rather than to her husband, and he destroyed many letters before he wrote what he fancied suitable to the occasion. did not the smothered tenderness, the regret, the passion, reveal itself in some of those letters, in spite of his own determination to be strictly conventional and correct? but the letter which he wrote last was stiff and commonplace enough to have satisfied the sternest moralist. "dear mrs. gilbert,--i much regret that circumstances, which only came to my knowledge after your party left last night, will oblige me to leave mordred early to-morrow morning. i am therefore compelled to forego the pleasure which i had anticipated from our friendly little dinner to-morrow evening; but pray assure smith that the priory is entirely at his disposal whenever he likes to come here, and that he is welcome to make it the scene of half-a-dozen fictions, if he pleases. i fear the old place will soon look gloomy and desolate enough to satisfy his ideas of the romantic, for it may be some years before i again see the midlandshire woods and meadows." ("the dear old bridge across the waterfall, the old oak under which i have spent such pleasant hours," mr. lansdell had written here in one of the letters which he destroyed.) "i hope you will convey to mr. gilbert my warmest thanks, with the accompanying cheque, for the kindness and skill which have endeared him to my cottagers. i shall be very glad if he will continue to look after them, and i will arrange for the carrying out of any sanitary improvements he may suggest to hodgeson, my steward. "the library will be always prepared for you whenever you feel inclined to read and study there, and the contents of the shelves will be entirely at the service of yourself and mr. gilbert. "with regards to your husband, and all friendly wishes for smith's prosperity and success, "i remain, dear mrs. gilbert, "yery truly yours, "roland lansdell. _"mordred priory, saturday night."_ "it may be some years before i again see the midlandshire woods and meadows!" this sentence was the gist of the letter, the stiff unmeaning letter, which was as dull and laboured as a schoolboy's holiday missive to his honoured parents. "my poor, innocent, tender-hearted darling! will she be sorry when she reads it?" thought mr. lansdell, as he addressed his letter. "will this parting be a new grief to her, a shadowy romantic sorrow, like her regret for drowned shelley, or fever-stricken byron? my darling, my darling! if fate had sent me here a twelvemonth earlier, you and i might have been standing side by side in the moonlight, talking of the happy future before us. only a year! and there were so many accidents that might have caused my return. only one year! and in that little space i lost my one grand chance of happiness." mr. lansdell had done his duty. he had given charles raymond a promise which he meant to keep; and having done so, he gave his thoughts and fancies a license which he had never allowed them before. he no longer struggled to retain the attitude from which he had hitherto endeavoured to regard mrs. gilbert. he no longer considered it his duty to think of her as a pretty, grown-up child, whose childish follies amused him for the moment. no; he was going away now, and had no longer need to set any restraint upon his thoughts. he was going away, and was free to acknowledge to himself that this love which had grown up so suddenly in his breast was the one grand passion of his life, and, under different circumstances, might have been his happiness and redemption. chapter xx. "oceans should divide us." mr. and mrs. gilbert went to church arm-in-arm as usual on the morning after the picnic; but sigismund stayed at home to sketch the rough outline of that feudal romance which he had planned among the ruins of waverly. the day was very fine,--a real summer day, with a blazing sun and a cloudless blue sky. the sunshine seemed like a good omen, mrs. gilbert thought, as she dressed herself in the white muslin robe that she was to wear at mordred. an omen of what? she did not ask herself that question; but she was pleased to think that the heavens should smile upon her visit to mordred. she was thinking of the dinner at the priory while she sat by her husband's side in church, looking demurely down at the prayer-book in her lap. it was a common thing for her now to be thinking of _him_ when she ought to have been attending to the sermon. to-day she did not even try to listen to the rector's discourse. she was fancying herself in the dusky drawing-room at mordred, after dinner, hearing _him_ talk. she saw his face turned towards her in the twilight--the pale dark face--the dreamy, uncertain eyes. when the congregation rose suddenly, at the end of the sermon, she sat bewildered for a moment, like a creature awakened from a dream; and when the people knelt, and became absorbed in silent meditation on the injunctions of their pastor, mrs. gilbert remained so long in a devotional attitude, that her husband was fain to arouse her by a gentle tap upon the shoulder. she had been thinking of _him_ even on her knees. she could not shut his image from her thoughts; she walked about in a perpetual dream, and rarely awakened to the consciousness that there was wickedness in so dreaming; and even when she did reflect upon her sin, it was very easy to excuse it and make light of it. _he_ would never know. in november he would be gone, and the dream would be nothing but a dream. it was only one o'clock, by the old-fashioned eight-day clock in the passage, when they went home after church. the gig was to be ready at a quarter before three, and at that hour they were to start for mordred. george meant to put up his horse at the little inn near the priory gates, and then they could walk quietly from the church to mr. lansdell's after the service. mr. gilbert felt that brown molly appeared rather at a disadvantage in roland's grand stables. sigismund was still sitting in the little parlour, looking very warm, and considerably the worse for ink. he had tried all the penny bottles in the course of his labours, and had a little collection of them clustered at his elbow. "i don't think any one ever imagined so many ink-bottles compatible with so little ink," he said, plaintively. "i've had my test ideas baulked by perpetual hairs in my pen, to say nothing of flies' wings, and even bodies. there's nothing like unlimited ink for imparting fluency to a man's language; you cut short his eloquence the moment you limit his ink. however, i'm down here for pleasure, old fellow," mr. smith added, cheerfully; "and all the printing-machines in the city of london may be waiting for copy for aught i care." an hour and three quarters must elapse before it would be time even to start for mordred. mrs. gilbert went up-stairs and rearranged her hair, and looked at herself in the glass, and wondered if she was pretty. _he_ had never told her so. he had never paid her any compliment. but she fancied, somehow, that he thought her pretty, though she had no idea whence that fancy was derived. she went down-stairs again, and out into the garden, whence mr. smith was calling to her--the little garden in front of the house, where there were a few common flowers blooming dustily in oval beds like dishes; and where, in a corner, there was an erection of shells and broken bits of coloured glass, which mr. jeffson fondly imagined to be the exact representation of a grotto. mr. smith had a good deal to say for himself, as indeed he had on all occasions; but as his discourse was entirely of a personal character, it may have been rather wanting in general interest. isabel strolled up and down the narrow pathway by his side, and turned her face politely towards him, and said, "yes," and "did you really!" and "well, how very strange!" now and then. but she was thinking as she had thought in church; she was thinking of the wonderful happiness that lay before her,--an evening in _his_ companionship, amongst pictures and hothouse flowers and marble busts and trailing silken curtains, and with glimpses of a moonlit expanse of lawn and shrubbery gleaming through every open window. she was thinking of this when a bell rang loud and shrill in her ear: and looking round suddenly, she saw a man in livery--a man who looked like a groom--standing outside the garden gate. she was so near the gate that it would have been a mere affectation to keep the man waiting there while mrs. jeffson made her way from the remote premises at the back of the house. the doctor's wife turned the key in the lock and opened the gate; but the man only wanted to deliver a letter, which he gave her with one hand while he touched the brim of his hat with the other. "from mr. lansdell, ma'am," he said. in the next moment he was gone, and the open gate and the white dusty lane seemed to reel before isabel gilbert's eyes. there had been no need for the man to tell her that the letter was from his master. she knew the bold dashing hand, in which she had read pencil annotations upon the margins of those books which mr. lansdell had lent her. and even if she had not known the hand, she would have easily guessed whence the letter came. who else should send her so grand-looking a missive, with that thick cream-coloured envelope (a big official-looking envelope), and the broad coat-of-arms with tall winged supporters on the seal? but why should he have written to her? it was to put off the dinner, no doubt. her lips trembled a little, like the lips of a child who is going to cry, as she opened the letter. she read it very hurriedly twice, and then all at once comprehended that roland was going away for some years,--for ever,--it was all the same thing; and that she would never, never, never, never,--the word seemed to repeat itself in her brain like the dreadful clanging of a bell,--never see him again! she knew that sigismund was looking at her, and asking her some question about the contents of the letter. "what did lansdell say? was it a put-off, or what?" mr. smith demanded; but isabel did not answer him. she handed him the open letter, and then, suddenly turning from him, ran into the house, up-stairs, and into her room. she locked the door, flung herself face downwards upon the bed, and wept as a woman weeps in the first great agony of her life. the sound of those passionate sobs was stifled by the pillows amidst which her face was buried, but the anguish of them shook her from head to foot. it was very wicked to have thought of him so much, to have loved him so dearly. the punishment of her sin came to her all at once, and was very bitter. mr. smith stood for some moments staring at the doorway through which isabel had disappeared, with the open letter in his hand, and his face a perfect blank in the intensity of his amazement. "i suppose it is a put-off," he said to himself; "and she's disappointed because we're not going. why, what a child she is still! i remember her behaving just like that once at camberwell, when i'd promised her tickets for the play, and couldn't get 'em. the manager of the t. r. d. l. said he didn't consider the author of 'the brand upon the shoulder-blade' entitled to the usual privilege. poor little izzie! i remember her running away, and not coming back for ever so long; and when she did make her appearance, her eyelids were red and swollen." mr. smith stooped to pick up a narrow slip of lavender-tinted paper from the garden-walk. it was the cheque which roland lansdell had written in payment of the doctor's services. sigismund read the letter, and reflected over it. "i'm almost as much disappointed as izzie, for the matter of that," he thought to himself; "we should have had a jolly good dinner at the priory, and any amount of sparkling; and chateau what's-its-name and clos de thingamy to follow, i dare say. i'll take george the letter and the cheque--it's just like izzie to leave the cheque on the ground--and resign myself to a dullish sunday." it was a dull sunday. the unacademical "ish" with which mr. smith had qualified the adjective was quite unnecessary. it was a very dull sunday. ah, reader, if providence has some desperate sorrow in store for you, pray that it may not befall you on a sunday, in the blazing sunshine, when the church bells are ringing on the still drowsy air. mr. gilbert went up-stairs by-and-by, when the bells were at their loudest, and, finding the door of his chamber locked, knocked on the panel, and asked isabel if she did not mean to go to church. but she told him she had a dreadful headache, and wanted to stay at home. he asked her ever so many questions, as to why her head ached, and how long it had ached, and wanted to see her, from a professional point of view. "oh, no, no!" she cried, from the bed upon which she was lying; "i don't want any medicine; i only want to rest my head; i was asleep when you knocked." ah, what a miserable falsehood that was! as if she could ever hope to sleep again! "but, izzie," remonstrated mr. gilbert, "you've had no dinner. there's cold lamb in the house, you know; and we're going to have that and a salad after church. you'll come down to dinner, eh?" "no, no; i don't want any dinner. please, leave me alone. i _only_ want to rest," she answered, piteously. poor honest george gilbert little knew how horrible an effort it had cost his wife to utter even these brief sentences without breaking down in a passion of sobbing and weeping. she buried her face in the pillows again as her husband's footsteps went slowly down the narrow stairs. she was very wretched, very foolish. it was only a dream--nothing more than a dream--that was lost to her. again, had she not known all along that roland lansdell would go away, and that all her bright dreams and fancies must go with him? had she not counted upon his departure? yes; but in november, not in september; not on the day that was to have been such a happy day. "oh, how cruel, how cruel!" she thought. "how cruel of him to go away like that! without even saying good-bye,--without even saying he was sorry to go. and i fancied that he liked to talk to me; i fancied that he was pleased to see me sometimes, and would be sorry when the time came for him to go away. but to think that he should go away two months before the time he spoke of,--to think that he should not even be sorry to go!" mrs. gilbert got up by-and-by, when the western sky was all one lurid glow of light and colour. she got up because there was little peace for a weary spirit in that chamber; to the door of which some considerate creature came every half-hour or so to ask isabel if her head was any better by this time, if she would have a cup of tea, if she would come down-stairs and lie on the sofa, and to torment her with many other thoughtful inquiries of the like nature. she was not to be alone with her great sorrow. sooner or later she must go out and begin life again, and face the blank world in which _he_ was not. better, since it must be so, that she should begin her dreary task at once. she bathed her face and head, she plaited her long black hair before the little glass, behind which the lurid sky glared redly at her. ah, how often in the sunny morning she had stood before that shabby old-fashioned glass thinking of him, and the chance of meeting him beside the mill-stream, under the flickering shadows of the oak-leaves at thurston's crag! and now it was all over, and she would never, never, never, never see him again! her life was finished. ah, how truly he had spoken on the battlements of the ruined tower! and how bitterly the meaning of his words came home to her to-day! her life was finished. the curtain had fallen, and the lights were out; and she had nothing more to do but to grope blindly about upon a darkened stage until she sank in the great vampire-trap--the grave. a pale ghost, with sombre shadowy hair, looked back at her from the glass. oh, if she could die, if she could die! she thought of the mill-stream. the wheel would be idle; and the water low down in the hollow beyond the miller's cottage would be still to-night, still and placid and glassy, shining rosy red in the sunset like the pavement of a cathedral stained with the glory of a painted window. why should she not end her sorrows for ever in the glassy pool, so deep, so tranquil? she thought of ophelia, and the miller's daughter on the banks of allan water. would she be found floating on the stream, with weeds of water-lilies tangled in her long dark hair? would she look pretty when she was dead? would _he_ be sorry when he heard of her death? would he read a paragraph in the newspapers some morning at breakfast, and break a blood-vessel into his coffee-cup? or would he read and not care? why should he care? if he had cared for her, he could never have gone away, he could never have written that cruel formal letter, with not a word of regret--no, not one. vague thoughts like these followed one another in her mind. if she could have the courage to go down to the water's brink, and to drop quietly into the stream where roland lansdell had once told her it was deepest. she went down-stairs by-and-by, in the dusk, with her face as white as the tumbled muslin that hung about her in limp and flabby folds. she went down into the little parlour, where george and sigismund were waiting for their tea, and where two yellow mould-candles were flaring in the faint evening breeze. she told them that her head was better; and then began to make the tea, scooping up vague quantities of congou and gunpowder with the little silver scollop-shell, which had belonged to mr. gilbert's grandmother, and was stamped with a puffy profile of george the third. "but you've been crying, izzie!" george exclaimed presently, for mrs. gilbert's eyelids looked red and swollen in the light of the candles. "yes, my head was so bad it made me cry; but please don't ask me any more about it," isabel pleaded, piteously. "i suppose it was the p-pic-nic"--she nearly broke down upon the word, remembering how good _he_ had been to her all through the happy day--"yesterday that made me ill." "i dare say it was that lobster-salad," mr. gilbert answered, briskly: "i ought to have told you not to eat it. i don't think there's anything more bilious than lobster-salad dressed with cream." sigismund smith watched his hostess with a grave countenance, while she poured out the tea and handed the cups right and left. poor isabel managed it all with tolerable steadiness; and then, when the miserable task was over, she sat by the window alone, staring blankly out at the dusty shrubs distinct in the moonlight, while her husband and his friend smoked their cigars in the lane outside. how was she to bear her life in that dull dusty lane--her odious life, which would go on and on for ever, like a slow barge crawling across dreary flats upon the black tideless waters of a canal? how was she to endure it? all its monotony, all its misery, its shabby dreariness, its dreary shabbiness, rose up before her with redoubled force; and the terror of that hideous existence smote her like a stroke from a giant's hand. it all came back. yes, it came back. for the last two months it had ceased to be; it had been blotted out--hidden, forgotten; there had been no such thing. an enchanter's wand had been waved above that dreary square-built house in the dusty lane, and a fairy palace had arisen for her habitation; a fairy-land of beauty and splendour had spread itself around her, a paradise in which she wandered hand in hand with a demigod. the image of roland lansdell had filled her life, to the exclusion of every other shape, animate or inanimate. but the fairy-land melted away all at once, like a mirage in the desert; like the last scene in a pantomime, the rosy and cerulean lights went out in foul sulphurous vapours. the mystic domes and minarets melted into thin air; but the barren sands remained real and dreary, stretching away for ever and for ever before the wanderer's weary feet. in all mrs. gilbert's thoughts there was no special horror or aversion of her husband. he was only a part of the dulness of her life; he was only one dreary element of that dreary world in which roland lansdell was not. he was very good to her, and she was vaguely sensible of his goodness, and thankful to him. but his image had no abiding place in her thoughts. at stated times he came home and ate his dinner, or drank his tea, with substantial accompaniment of bread and butter and crisp garden-stuff; but, during the last two months, there had been many times when his wife was scarcely conscious of his presence. she was happy in fairy-land, with the prince of her perpetual fairy tale, while poor george gilbert munched bread and butter and crunched overgrown radishes. but the fairy tale was finished now, with an abrupt and cruel climax; the prince had vanished; the dream was over. sitting by that open window, with her folded arms resting on the dusty sill, mrs. gilbert wondered how she was to endure her life. and then her thoughts went back to the still pool below the mill-stream. she remembered the happy, drowsy summer afternoon on which roland lansdell had stood by her side and told her the depth of the stream. she closed her eyes, and her head sank forward upon her folded arms, and all the picture came back to her. she heard the shivering of the rushes, the bubbling splash of a gudgeon leaping out of the water: she saw the yellow sunlight on the leaves, the beautiful sunlight creeping in through every break in the dense foliage; and she saw his face turned towards her with that luminous look, that bright and tender smile, which had only seemed another kind of sunshine. would he be sorry if he opened the newspaper and read a little paragraph in a corner to the effect that she had been found floating amongst the long rushes in that very spot? would he remember the sunny afternoon, and the things he had said to her? his talk had been very dreamy and indefinite; but there had been, or had seemed to be, an undercurrent of mournful tenderness in all he said, as vague and fitful, as faint and mysterious, as the murmuring of the summer wind among the rushes. the two young men came in presently, smelling of dust and tobacco smoke. they found isabel lying on the sofa, with her face turned to the wall. did her head still ache? yes, as badly as ever. george sat down to read his sunday paper. he was very fond of a sunday paper; and he read all the accidents and police reports, and the indignant letters from liberal-minded citizens, who signed themselves aristides, and diogenes, and junius brutus, and made fiery protests against the iniquities of a bloated aristocracy. while the surgeon folded the crackling newspaper and cut the leaves, he told isabel about roland lansdell's cheque. "he has sent me five-and-twenty pounds," he said. "it's very liberal; but of course i can't think of taking such a sum, i've been a good deal about amongst his farm-people,--for there's been so much low fever this last month,--but i've been looking over the account i'd made out against him, and it doesn't come to a five-pound note. i suppose he's been used to deal with physicians, who charge a guinea for every visit. i shall send him back his cheque." isabel shuddered as she listened to her husband's talk. how low and mean all this discussion about money seemed! had not the enclosure of the cheque in that cruel letter been almost an insult? what was her husband better than a tradesman, when there could be this question of accounts and payment between him and roland lansdell? and then she thought of clotilde and the duchess,--the duchess with her glittering hair and the cruel azure eyes. she thought of "marble pillars gleaming white against the purple of the night;" of "crimson curtains starred with gold, and high-bred beauty brightly cold." she thought of all that confusion of colour and glitter and perfume and music which was the staple commodity in mr. lansdell's poetic wares; and she wondered, in self-abasement and humiliation, how she could have ever for a moment deluded herself with the idea that he could feel one transient sentiment of regard or admiration for such a degraded being as herself. she thought of her scanty dresses, that never had the proper number of breadths in the skirt; she thought of her skimpy sleeves made in last year's fashion, her sunburnt straw hat, her green parasol faded like sickly grass at the close of a hot summer. she thought of the gulf between herself and the master of mordred, and wondered at her madness and presumption. * * * * * poor george gilbert was quite puzzled by his wife's headache, which was of a peculiarly obstinate nature, lasting for some days. he gave her cooling draughts, and lotions for her forehead, which was very hot under his calm professional hand. her pulse was rapid, her tongue was white, and the surgeon pronounced her to be bilious. he had not the faintest suspicion of any mental ailment lurking at the root of these physical derangements. he was very simple-minded, and, being incapable of wrong himself, measured all his decent fellow-creatures by a fixed standard. he thought that the good and the wicked formed two separate classes as widely apart as the angels of heaven and the demons of the fiery depths. he knew that there were, somewhere or other in the universe, wives who wronged their husbands and went into outer darkness, just as he knew that in dismal dens of crime there lurked robbers and murderers, forgers and pickpockets, the newspaper record of whose evil deeds made no unpleasant reading for quiet sunday afternoons. but of vague sentimental errors, of shadowy dangers and temptations, he had no conception. he had seen his wife pleased and happy in roland lansdell's society; and the thought that any wrong to himself, how small soever, could arise out of that companionship, had never entered his mind. mr. raymond had remarked of the young surgeon that a man with such a moral region was born to be imposed upon. the rest of the week passed in a strange dreary way for isabel. the weather was very fine, cruelly fine; and to mrs. gilbert the universe seemed all dust and sunshine and blankness. sigismund was very kind to her, and did his best to amuse her, reciting the plots of numerous embryo novels, which were to take camden town by storm in the future. but she sat looking at him without seeing him, and his talk sounded a harsh confusion on her ear. oh, for the sound of that other voice,--that other voice, which had attuned itself to such a tender melody! oh, for the beautiful cynical talk about the hollowness of life, and the wretchedness of things in general! poor simple-hearted mr. smith made himself positively hateful to isabel during that dismal week by reason of his efforts to amuse her. "if he would only let me alone!" she thought. "if people would only have mercy upon me and let me alone!" but that was just what every one seemed determined not to do. sigismund devoted himself exclusively to the society of his young hostess. william jeffson let the weeds grow high amongst the potatoes while he planted standard rose-bushes, and nailed up graceful creepers, and dug, and improved, and transplanted in that portion of the garden which made a faint pretence to prettiness. was it that he wished to occupy mrs. gilbert's mind, and to force her to some slight exertion? he did not prune a shrub, or trim a scrap of box, without consulting the doctor's wife upon the subject; and isabel was called out into the garden half-a-dozen times in an hour. and then during his visit sigismund insisted upon taking mrs. gilbert to warncliffe to dine with his mother and sisters. mr. smith's family made quite a festival for the occasion: there was a goose for dinner,--a vulgar and savoury bird; and a big damson pie, and apples and pears in green leaf-shaped dishes for dessert; and of course isabel's thoughts wandered away from that homely mahogany, with its crimson worsted d'oyleys and dark-blue finger-glasses, to the oval table at mordred and all its artistic splendour of glass and fruit and flowers. the smith family thought mrs. gilbert very quiet and insipid; but luckily sigismund had a great deal to say about his own achievements, past, present, and future; so isabel was free to sit in the twilight listening dreamily to the slow footsteps in the old-fashioned street outside--the postman's knock growing fainter and fainter in the distance--and the cawing of the rooks in a grove of elms on the outskirts of the town. mr. smith senior spent the evening in the bosom of his family, and was put through rather a sharp examination upon abstruse questions in chancery and criminal practice by his aspiring son, who was always getting into morasses of legal difficulty, from which he required to be extricated by professional assistance. the evening seemed a very long one to poor isabel; but it was over at last, and sigismund conducted her back to graybridge in a jolting omnibus; and during that slow homeward drive she was free to sit in a corner and think of _him_. mr. smith left his friends on the following day; and before going, he walked with isabel in the garden, and talked to her a little of her life. "i dare say it is a little dull at graybridge," he said, as if in answer to some remark of isabel's, and yet she had said nothing. "i dare say you do find it a little dull, though george is one of the best fellows that ever lived, and devoted to you; yes, izzie, devoted to you, in his quiet way. he isn't one of your demonstrative fellows, you know; can't go into grand romantic raptures, or anything of that kind. but we were boys together, izzie, and i know him thoroughly: and i know that he loves you dearly, and would break his honest heart if anything happened to you; or he was--anyhow to take it into his head that you didn't love him. but still, i dare say, you do find life rather slow work down here; and i can't help thinking that if you were to occupy yourself a little more than you do, you'd be happier. suppose, now," cried mr. smith, palpably swelling with the importance of his idea,--"suppose you were to write a novel! there! you don't know how happy it would make you. look at me. i always used to be sighing and lamenting, and wishing for this, that, or the other: wishing i had ten thousand a year, or a grecian nose, or some worldly advantage of that sort; but since i've taken to writing novels, i don't think i've a desire unsatisfied. there's nothing i haven't done--on paper. the beautiful women i've loved and married; the fortunes i've come into, always unexpectedly, and when i was at the very lowest ebb, with a tendency to throw myself into the serpentine in the moonlight; the awful vengeance i've wreaked upon my enemies; the murders i've committed would make the life of a napoleon buonaparte seem tame and trivial by comparison. i suppose it isn't i that steal up the creaking stair, with a long knife tightly grasped and gleaming blue in the moonbeams that creep through a chink in the shutter; but i'm sure i enjoy myself as much as if it was. and if i were a young lady," continued mr. smith, speaking with some slight hesitation, and glancing furtively at isabel's face,--"if i were a young lady, and had a kind of romantic fancy for a person i ought not to care about, i'll tell you what i'd do with him,--i'd put him into a novel, izzie, and work him out in three volumes; and if i wasn't heartily sick of him by the time i got to the last chapter, nothing on earth would cure me." this was the advice which sigismund gave to isabel at parting. she understood his meaning, and resented his interference. she was beginning to feel that people guessed her wickedness, and tried to cure her of her madness. yes; she was very wicked--very mad. she acknowledged her sin, but she could not put it away from her. and now that he was gone, now that he was far away, never to come back, never to look upon her face again, surely there could be no harm in thinking of him. she did think of him, daily and hourly; no longer with any reservation, no longer with any attempt at self-deception. eugene aram and ernest maltravers, the giaour and the corsair, were alike forgotten. the real hero of her life had come, and she bowed down before his image, and paid him perpetual worship. what did it matter? he was gone! he was as far away from her life now as those fascinating figments of the poetic brain, messrs. aram and maltravers. he was a dream, like all the other dreams of her life; only he could never melt away or change as they had done. chapter xxi. "once more the gate behind me falls." all through the autumnal months, all through the dreary winter, george gilbert's wife endured her existence, and hated it. the days were all alike, all "dark and cold and dreary;" and her life was "dark and cold and dreary" like the days. she did not write a novel. she did not accomplish any task, or carry out any intention; but she began a great many undertakings, and grew tired of them, and gave them up in despair. she wrote a few chapters of a novel; a wild weird work of fiction, in which mr. roland lansdell reigned paramount over all the rules of lindley murray, and was always nominative when he ought to have been objective, and _vice versa_, and did altogether small credit to the university at which he was described to have gained an impossible conglomeration of honours. mrs. gilbert very soon got tired of the novel, though it was pleasant to imagine it in a complete form taking the town by storm. _he_ would read it, and would know that she had written it. was there not a minute description of lord thurston's oak in the very first chapter? it was pleasant to think of the romance, neatly bound in three volumes. but mrs. gilbert never got beyond a few random chapters, in which the grand crisis of the work--the first meeting of the hero and heroine, the death of the latter by drowning and of the former by rupture of a blood-vessel, and so on--were described. she could not do the every-day work; she could erect a fairy palace, and scatter lavish splendour in its spacious halls; but she could not lay down the stair-carpets, or fit the window-blinds, or arrange the planned furniture. she tore up her manuscript; and then for a little time she thought that she would be very good; kind to the poor, affectionate to her husband, and attentive to the morning and afternoon sermons at graybridge church. she made a little book out of letter-paper, and took notes of the vicar's and the curate's discourses; but both those gentlemen had a fancy for discussing abstruse points of doctrine far beyond mrs. gilbert's comprehension, and the doctor's wife found the business of a reporter very difficult work. she made her poor little unaided effort to repent of her sins, and to do good. she cut up her shabbiest dresses and made them into frocks for some poor children, and she procured a packet of limp tracts from a conventford bookseller, and distributed them with the frocks; having a vague idea that no charitable benefaction was complete unless accompanied by a tract. alas for this poor sentimental child! the effort to be good, and pious, and practical did not sit well upon her. she got on very well with some of the cottagers' daughters, who had been educated at the national school, and were as fond of reading novels as herself; she fraternized with these damsels, and lent them odd volumes out of her little library, and even read aloud to them on occasion; and the vicar of graybridge, entering one day a cottage where she was sitting, was pleased to hear a humming noise, as of the human voice, and praised mrs. gilbert for her devotion to the good cause. he might not have been quite so well pleased had he heard the subject of her lecture, winch had relation to a gentleman of loose principles and buccaneering propensities--a gentleman who "left a corsair's name to other times, link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes." but even these feeble attempts to be good-ah! how short a time it seemed since isabel gilbert had been a child, subject to have her ears boxed by the second mrs. sleaford! how short a time since to "be good" meant to be willing to wash the teacups and saucers, or to darn a three-cornered rent in a hobbledehoy's jacket!--even these feeble efforts ceased by-and-by, and mrs. gilbert abandoned herself to the dull monotony of her life, and solaced herself with the thought of roland lansdell as an opium-eater beguiles his listless days with the splendid visions that glorify his besotted stupor. she resigned herself to her life, and was very obedient to her husband, and read novels as long as she could get one to read, and was for ever thinking of what might have been--if she had been free, and if roland lansdell had loved her. alas! he had only too plainly proved that he did not love her, and had never loved her. he had made this manifest by cruelly indisputable evidence at the very time when she was beginning to be unutterably happy in the thought that she was somehow or another nearer and dearer to him than she ought to have been. the dull autumn days and the dark winter days dragged themselves out, and mr. gilbert came in and went out, and attended to his duties, and ate his dinner, and rode brown molly between the leafless hedgerows, beside the frozen streams, as contentedly as he had done in the bright summer time, when his rides had lain through a perpetual garden. his was one of those happy natures which are undisturbed by any wild yearnings after the unattainable. he had an idea of exchanging his graybridge practice for a better one by-and-by, and he used to talk to isabel of this ambitious design, but she took little interest in the subject. she had evinced very little interest in it from the first, and she displayed less now. what would be the use of such a change? it could only bring her a new kind of dreariness; and it was something to stand shivering on the little bridge under lord thurston's oak, so bare and leafless now; it was something to see even the chimney-pots of mordred, the wonderful clusters of dark red-brick chimneys, warm against the chill december sky. mrs. gilbert did not forget that passage in roland lansdell's letter, in which he had placed the mordred library at her disposal. but she was very slow to avail herself of the privilege thus offered to her. she shrank away shyly from the thought of entering _his_ house, even though there was no chance of meeting him in the beautiful rooms; even though he was at the other end of europe, gay and happy, and forgetful of her. it was only by-and-by, when mr. lansdell had been gone some months, and when the dulness of her life had grown day by day more oppressive, that isabel gilbert took courage to enter the noble gates of mordred. of course she told her husband whither she was going--was it not her duty so to do?--and george good-naturedly approving--"though i'm sure you've got books enough already," he said; "for you seem to be reading all day"--she set out upon a wintry afternoon and walked alone to the priory. the old housekeeper received her very cordially. "i've been expecting to see you every day, ma'am, since mr lansdell left us," the worthy woman exclaimed: "for he said as you were rare and fond of books, and was to take away any that you fancied; and john's to carry them for you, ma'am; and i was to pay you every attention. but i was beginning to think you didn't mean to come at all, ma'am." there were fires in many of the rooms, for mr. lansdell's servants had a wholesome terror of that fatal blue mould which damp engenders upon the surface of a picture. the firelight glimmered upon golden frames, and glowed here and there in the ruby depths of rich bohemian glass, and flashed in fitful gleams upon rare porcelain vases and groups of stainless marble; but the rooms had a desolate look, somehow, in spite of the warmth and light and splendour. mrs. warman, the housekeeper, told isabel of mr. lansdell's whereabouts. he was at milan, lady gwendoline pomphrey had been good enough to tell mrs. warman; somewheres in italy that was, the housekeeper believed; and he was to spend the rest of the winter in rome, and then he was going on to constantinople, and goodness knows where! for there never was such a traveller, or any one so restless-like. "isn't it a pity he don't marry his cousin, lady gwendoline, and settle down like his pa?" said mrs. warman. "it do seem a shame for such a place as this to be shut up from year's end to year's end, till the very pictures get quite a ghastly way with them, and seem to stare at one reproachful-like, as if they was asking, over and over again, 'where is he? why don't he come home?'" isabel was standing with her back to the chill wintry sky outside the window, and the housekeeper did not perceive the effect of her discourse. that simple talk was very painful to mrs. gilbert. it seemed to her as if roland lansdell's image receded farther and farther from her in this grand place, where all the attributes of his wealth and station were a standing evidence of the great gulf between them. "what am i to him?" she thought. "what can such a despicable wretch as i am ever be to him? if he comes home it will be to marry lady gwendoline. perhaps he will tell her how he used to meet me by the mill-stream, and they will laugh together about me." had her conduct been shameless and unwomanly, and would he remember her only to despise her? she hoped that if roland lansdell ever returned to midlandshire it would be to find her dead. he could not despise her if she was dead. the only pleasant thought she had that afternoon was the fancy that mr. lansdell might come back to mordred, and engage himself to his cousin, and the marriage would take place at graybridge church; and as he was leading his bride along the quiet avenue, he would start back, anguish-stricken, at the sight of a newly-erected headstone--"to the memory of isabel gilbert, aged ." ! that seemed quite old, mrs. gilbert thought. she had always fancied that the next best thing to marrying a duke would be to fade into an early grave before the age of eighteen. the first visit to mordred made the doctor's wife very unhappy. was it not a reopening of all the old wounds? did it not bring too vividly back to her the happy summer day when _he_ had sat beside her at luncheon, and bent his handsome head and subdued his deep voice as he talked to her? having broken the ice, however, she went very often to the priory; and on one or two occasions even condescended to take an early cup of tea with mrs. warman, the housekeeper, though she felt that by so doing she in some small measure widened the gulf between mr. lansdell and herself. little by little she grew to feel quite at home in the splendid rooms. it was very pleasant to sit in a low easy-chair in the library,--_his_ easy-chair,--with a pile of books on the little reading-table by her side, and the glow of the great fire subdued by a noble screen of ground-glass and brazen scroll-work. mrs. gilbert was honestly fond of reading, and in the library at mordred her life seemed less bitter than elsewhere. she read a great deal of the lighter literature upon mr. lansdell's book-shelves,--poems and popular histories, biographies and autobiographies, letters, and travels in bright romantic lands. to read of the countries through which mr. lansdell wandered seemed almost like following him. as mrs. gilbert grew more and more familiar with the grand old mansion, and more and more friendly with mrs. warman the housekeeper, she took to wandering in and out of all the rooms at pleasure, sometimes pausing before one picture, sometimes sitting before another for half an hour at a time lost in reverie. she knew all the pictures, and had learned their histories from mrs. warman, and ascertained which of them were most valued by mr. lansdell. she took some of the noble folios from the lower shelves of the library, and read the lives of her favourite painters, and stiff translations of italian disquisitions on art. her mind expanded amongst all the beautiful things around her, and the graver thoughts engendered out of grave books pushed away many of her most childish fancies, her simple sentimental yearnings. until now she had lived too entirely amongst poets and romancers; but now grave volumes of biography opened to her a new picture of life. she read the stories of real men and women, who had lived and suffered real sorrows, prosaic anguish, hard commonplace trial and misery. do you remember how, when young caxton's heart had been wrung by youth's bitterest sorrows, the father sends his son to the "life of robert hall" for comfort? isabel, very foolish and blind as compared with the son of austin caxton, was yet able to take some comfort from the stories of good men's sorrows. the consciousness of her ignorance increased as she became less ignorant; and there were times when this romantic girl was almost sensible, and became resigned to the fact that roland lansdell could have no part in the story of her life. if the drowsy life, the quiet afternoons in the deserted chambers of the priory, could have gone smoothly on for ever, isabel gilbert might have, little by little, developed into a clever and sensible woman; but the current of her existence was not to glide with one dull motion to the end. there were to be storms and peril of shipwreck, and fear and anguish, before the waters flowed into a quiet haven, and the story of her life was ended. one day in march, one bleak day, when the big fires in the rooms at mordred seemed especially comfortable, mrs. gilbert carried her books into an inner apartment, half boudoir, half drawing-room, at the end of a long suite of splendid chambers. she took off her bonnet and shawl, and smoothed her dark hair before the glass. she had altered a little since the autumn, and the face that looked out at her to-day was thinner and older than that passionate tear-blotted face which she had seen in the glass on the night of roland lansdell's departure. her sorrow had not been the less real because it was weak and childish, and had told considerably upon her appearance. but she was getting over it. she was almost sorry to think that it was so. she was almost grieved to find that her grief was less keen than it had been six months ago, and that the splendour of roland lansdell's image was perhaps a trifle faded. but to-day mrs. warman was destined to undo the good work so newly effected by grave books, and to awaken all isabel's regrets for the missing squire of mordred. the worthy housekeeper had received a letter from her master, which she brought in triumph to mrs. gilbert. it was a very brief epistle, enclosing cheques for divers payments, and giving a few directions about the gardens and stables. "see that pines and grapes are sent to lord ruysdale's, whenever he likes to have them; and i shall be glad if you send hothouse fruit and flowers occasionally to mr. gilbert, the surgeon of graybridge. he was very kind to some of my people. be sure that every attention is shown to mrs. gilbert whenever she comes to mordred." isabel's eyes grew dim as she read this part of the letter. he thought of her far away--at the other end of the world almost, as it seemed to her, for his letter was dated from corfu; he remembered her existence, and was anxious for her happiness! the books were no use to her that day. she sat, with a volume open in her lap, staring at the fire, and thinking of _him_. she went back into the old italics again. his image shone out upon her in all its ancient splendour. oh, dreary, dreary life where he was not! how was she to endure her existence? she clasped her hands in a wild rapture. "oh, my darling, if you could know how i love you!" she whispered, and then started, confused and blushing. never until that moment had she dared to put her passion into words. the priory clocks struck three succeeding hours, but mrs. gilbert sat in the same attitude, thinking of roland lansdell. the thought of going home and facing her daily life again was unutterably painful to her. that fatal letter--so commonplace to a common reader--had revived all the old exaltation of feeling. once more isabel gilbert floated away upon the wings of sentiment and fancy, into that unreal region where the young squire of mordred reigned supreme, beautiful as a prince in a fairy tale, grand as a demigod in some classic legend. the french clock on the mantel-piece chimed the half-hour after four, and mrs. gilbert looked up, aroused for a moment from her reverie. "half-past four," she thought; "it will be dark at six, and i have a long walk home." home! she shuddered at the simple monosyllable which it is the special glory of our language to possess. the word is very beautiful, no doubt; especially so to a wealthy country magnate,--happy owner of a grand old english mansion, with fair lands and coverts, home-farm and model-farm buildings, shadowy park and sunlit pleasaunce, and wonderful dairies lined with majolica ware, and musical with the plashing of a fountain. but for mrs. gilbert "home" meant a square-built house in a dusty lane, and was never likely to mean anything better or brighter. she got up from her low seat, and breathed a long-drawn sigh as she took her bonnet and shawl from a table near her, and began to put them on before the glass. "the parlour at home always looks ugliest and barest and shabbiest when i have been here," she thought, as she turned away from the glass and moved towards the door. she paused suddenly. the door of the boudoir was ajar; all the other doors in the long range of rooms were open, and she heard a footstep coming rapidly towards her: a man's footstep! was it one of the servants? no; no servant's foot ever touched the ground with that firm and stately tread. it was a stranger's footstep, of course. who should come there that day except a stranger? _he_ was far away--at the other end of the world almost. it was not within the limits of possibility that _his_ foot-fall should sound on the floors of mordred priory. and yet! and yet! isabel stopped, with her heart beating violently, her hands clasped, her lips apart and tremulous. and in the next moment the step was close to the threshold, the door was pushed open, and she was face to face with roland lansdell; roland lansdell, whom she never thought to see again upon this earth! roland lansdell, whose face had looked at her in her dreams by day and night any time within these last six months! "isabel--mrs. gilbert!" he said, holding out both his hands, and taking hers, which were as cold as death. she tried to speak, but no sound came from her tremulous lips. she could utter no word of welcome to this restless wanderer, but stood before him breathless and trembling. mr. lansdell drew a chair towards her, and made her sit down. "i startled you," he said; "you did not expect to see me. i had no right to come to you so suddenly; but they told me you were here, and i wanted so much to see you,--i wanted so much to speak to you." the words were insignificant enough, but there was a warmth and earnestness in the tones that was new to isabel. faint blushes flickered into her cheeks, so deathly pale a few moments before; her eyelids fell over the dark unfathomable eyes; a look of sudden happiness spread itself upon her face and made it luminous. "i thought you were at corfu," she said. "i thought you would never, never, never come back again." "i have been at corfu, and in italy, and in innumerable places. i meant to stay away; but--but i changed my mind, and i came back. i hope you are glad to see me again." what could she say to him? her terror of saying too much kept her silent; the beating of her heart sounded in her ears, and she was afraid that he too must hear that tell-tale sound. she dared not raise her eyes, and yet she knew that he was looking at her earnestly, scrutinizingly even. "tell me that you are glad to see me," he said. "ah, if you knew why i went away--why i tried so hard to stay away--why i have come back after all--after all--so many resolutions made and broken--so many deliberations--so much doubt and hesitation! isabel! tell me you are glad to see me once more!" she tried to speak, and faltered out a word or two, and broke down, and turned away from him. and then she looked round at him again with a sudden impulse, as innocently and childishly us zuleika may have looked at selim; forgetful for a moment of the square-built house in the dusty lane, of george gilbert, and all the duties of her life. "i have been so unhappy," she exclaimed: "i have been so miserable; and you will go away again by-and-by, and i shall never, never see you any more!" her voice broke, and she burst into tears; and then, remembering the surgeon all in a moment, she brushed them hastily away with her handkerchief. "you frightened me so, mr. lansdell," she said: "and i'm very late, and i was just going home, and my husband will be waiting for me. he comes to meet me sometimes when he can spare time. good-bye." she held out her hand, looking at roland nervously as she did so. did he despise her very much? she wondered. no doubt he had come home to marry lady gwendoline pomphrey, and there would be a fine wedding in the bright may weather. there was just time to go into a consumption between march and may, mrs. gilbert thought; and her tombstone might be ready for the occasion, if the gods who bestow upon their special favourites the boon of early death would only be kind to her. "good-bye, mr. lansdell," she repeated. "let me walk with you a little way. ah, if you knew how i have travelled night and day; if you knew how i have languished for this hour, and for the sight of----" for the sight of what? roland lansdell was looking down at the pale face of the doctor's wife as he uttered that unfinished sentence. but amongst all the wonders that ever made the story of a woman's life wonderful, it could never surely come to pass that a demigod would descend from the ethereal regions which were his common habitation, on _her_ account, mrs. gilbert thought. she went home in the chill march twilight; but not through the bleak and common atmosphere which other people breathed that afternoon; for mr. lansdell walked by her side, and, not encountering the surgeon, went all the way to graybridge, and only left mrs. gilbert at the end of the dusty lane in which the doctor's red lamp already glimmered faintly in the dusk. would the master of mordred priory have been stricken with any sense of shame if he had met george gilbert? there was an air of decision in lansdell's manner which seemed like that of a man who acts upon a settled purpose, and has no thought of shame. chapter xxii. "my love's a noble madness." mr. lansdell did not seem in a hurry to make any demonstration of his return to mordred. he did not affect any secrecy, it is true; but he shut himself a good deal in his own rooms, and seldom went out except to walk in the direction of lord thurston's oak, whither mrs. gilbert also rambled in the chilly spring afternoons, and where mr. lansdell and the doctor's wife met each other very frequently: not quite by accident now; for, at parting, roland would say, with supreme carelessness, "i suppose you will be walking this way to-morrow,--it is the only walk worth taking hereabouts,--and i'll bring you the other volume." lord ruysdale and his daughter were still at lowlands; but mr. lansdell did not betake himself thither to pay his respects to his uncle and cousin, as he should most certainly have done in common courtesy. he did not go near the grey old mansion where the earl and his daughter vegetated in gloomy and economical state; but lady gwendoline heard from her maid that mr. lansdell had come home; and bitterly resented his neglect. she resented it still more bitterly by-and-by, when the maid, who was a little faded like her mistress, and perhaps a little spiteful into the bargain, let drop a scrap of news she had gleaned in the servants' hall. mr. lansdell had been seen walking on the graybridge road with mrs. gilbert, the doctor's wife; "and it wasn't the first time either; and people do say it looks odd when a gentleman like mr. lansdell is seen walking and talking oftentimes with such as her." the maid saw her mistress's face turn pale in the glass. no matter what the rank or station or sex of poor othello; he or she is never suffered to be at peace, or to be happy--knowing nothing. there is always "mine ancient," male or female, as the case may be, to bring home the freshest information about the delinquent. "i have no wish to hear the servants' gossip about my cousin's movements," lady gwendoline said, with supreme hauteur. "he is the master of his own actions, and free to go where he pleases and with whom he pleases." "i'm sure i beg pardon, my lady, and meant no offence," the maid answered, meekly. "but she don't like it for all that," the damsel thought, with an inward chuckle. roland lansdell kept himself aloof from his kindred; but he was not suffered to go his own way unmolested. the road to perdition is not quite so smooth and flower-bestrewn a path as we are sometimes taught to believe. a merciful hand often flings stumbling-blocks and hindering brambles in our way. it is our own fault if we insist upon clambering over the rocky barriers, and scrambling through the briery hedges, in a mad eagerness to reach the goal. roland had started upon the fatal descent, and was of course going at that rapid rate at which we always travel downhill; but the road was not all clear for him. charles raymond of conventford was amongst the people who heard accidentally of the young man's return; and about a week after roland's arrival, the kindly philosopher presented himself at the priory, and was fortunate enough to find his kinsman at home. in spite of mr. lansdell's desire to be at his ease, there was some restraint in his manner as he greeted his old friend. "i am very glad to see you, raymond," he said. "i should have ridden over to conventford in a day or two. i've come home, you see." "yes, and i am very sorry to see it. this is a breach of good faith, roland." "of what faith? with whom?" "with me," answered mr. raymond, gravely. "you promised me that you would go away." "i did; and i went away." "and now you have come back again." "yes," replied mr. lansdell, folding his arms and looking full at his kinsman, with an ominous smile upon his face,--"yes; the fact is a little too evident for the basis of an argument. i have come back." mr. raymond was silent for a minute or so. the younger man stood with his back against the angle of the embayed window, and he never took his eyes from his friend's face. there was something like defiance in the expression of his face, and even in his attitude, as he stood with folded arms leaning against the wainscot. "i hope, roland, that since you have come home, it is because the reason which took you away from this place has ceased to exist. you come back because you are cured. i cannot imagine it to be otherwise, roland; i cannot believe that you have broken faith with me." "what if i have come home because i find my disease is past all cure! what if i have kept faith with you, and have tried to forget, and come back at last because i cannot!" "roland!" "ah! it is a foolish fever, is it not? very foolish, very contemptible to the solemn-faced doctor who looks on and watches the wretched patient tossing and writhing, and listens to his delirious ravings. have you ever seen a man in the agonies of _delirium tremens_, catching imaginary flies, and shrieking about imps and demons capering on his counterpane? what a pitiful disease it is!--only the effect of a few extra bottles of brandy: but you can't cure it. you may despise the sufferer, but you shrink back terror-stricken before the might of the disease. you've done your duty, doctor: you tried honestly to cure my fever, and i submitted honestly to your remedies: but you're only a quack, after all: and you pretended--what all charlatans pretend--to be able to cure the incurable." "you have come back with the intention of remaining, then, roland?" "_c'est selon_! i have no present idea of remaining here very long." "and in the meantime you allow people to see you walking the graybridge road and loitering about thurston's crag with mrs. gilbert. do you know that already that unhappy girl's name is compromised? the graybridge people are beginning to couple her name with yours." mr. lansdell laughed aloud, but not with the pleasant laugh which was common to him. "did you ever look in a british atlas for graybridge-on-the-wayverne?" he asked. "there are some atlases which do not give the name of the place at all: in others you'll find a little black dot, with the word 'graybridge' printed in very small letters. the 'british gazetteer' will tell you that graybridge is interesting on account of its church, which, &c. &c.; that an omnibus plies to and fro between the village and warncliffe station; and that the nearest market-town is wareham. in all the literature of the world, that's about all the student can learn of graybridge. what an affliction it must be to a traveller in the upper pyrenees, or on the banks of the amazon, to know that people at graybridge mix his name sometimes with their tea-table gossip! what an enduring torture for a loiterer in fair grecian isles--an idle dreamer beside the blue depths of a southern sea--to know that graybridge disapproves of him!" "i had better go away, roland," mr. raymond said, looking at his kinsman with a sad reproachful gaze, and stretching out his hand to take up the hat and gloves he had thrown upon a chair near him; "i can do no good here." "you cannot separate me from the woman i love," answered roland, boldly. "i am a scoundrel, i suppose; but i am not a hypocrite. i might tell you a lie, and send you away hoodwinked and happy. no, raymond, i will not do that. if i am foolish and wicked, i have not sinned deliberately. i have striven against my folly and my wickedness. when you talked to me that night at waverly, you only echoed the reproaches of my own conscience. i accepted your counsel, and ran away. my love for isabel gilbert was only a brief infatuation, i thought, which would wear itself out like other infatuations, with time and absence. i went away, fully resolved never to look upon her face again; and then, and then only, i knew how truly and how dearly i loved her. i went from place to place; but i could no more fly from her image than from my own soul. in vain i argued with myself--as better men have done before my time--that this woman was in no way superior to other women. day by day i took my lesson deeper to heart. i cannot talk of these things to you. there is a kind of profanation in such a discussion. i can only tell you that i came back to england with a rooted purpose in my mind. do not thrust yourself upon me; you have done your duty, and may wash your hands of me with christian-like self-satisfaction; you have nothing further to do in this _galère_." "oh, roland, that you should ever come to talk to me like this! have you no sense of truth or honour? not even the common instinct of a gentleman? have you no feeling for that poor honest-hearted fellow who has judged you by his own simple standard, and has trusted you implicitly? have you no feeling for him, roland?"' "yes, i am very sorry for him; i am sorry for the grand mistake of his life. but do you think he could ever be happy with that woman? i have seen them together, and know the meaning of that grand word 'union' as applied to them. all the width of the universe cannot divide them more entirely than they are divided now. they have not one single sentiment in common. charles raymond, i tell you i am not entirely a villain; i do still possess some lingering remnant of that common instinct of which you spoke just now. if i had seen isabel gilbert happy with a husband who loved her, and understood her, and was loved by her, i would have held myself aloof from her pure presence; i would have stifled every thought that was a wrong to that holy union. i am not base enough to steal the lamp which lights a good man's home. but if i find a man who has taken possession of a peerless jewel, as ignorant of its value, and as powerless to appreciate its beauty, as a soldier who drags a raffaelle from the innermost shrine of some ransacked cathedral and makes a knapsack for himself out of the painted canvas; if i find a pig trampling pearls under his ruthless feet,--am i to leave the gems for ever in his sty, in my punctilious dread that i may hurt the feelings of the animal by taking his unvalued treasure away from him?" "other men have argued as you argue to-day, roland," answered mr. raymond. "other men have reasoned as you reason, roland; but they have not the less brought anguish and remorse upon themselves and upon the victims of their sin. did not rousseau declare that the first man who enclosed a lot of ground and called it 'mine' was the enemy of the human race? you young philosophers of our modern day twist the argument another way, and are ready to avow that the man who marries a pretty woman is the foe to all unmarried mankind. he should have held himself aloof, and waited till _the_ man arrived upon the scene,--the man with poetic sympathies and sublime appreciation of womanly grace and beauty, and all manner of hazy attributes which are supposed to be acceptable to sentimental womanhood. bah, roland! all this is very well on toned paper, in a pretty little hot-pressed volume published by messrs. moxon; but the universe was never organized for the special happiness of poets. there must be jog-trot existences, and commonplace contentment, and simple every-day households, in which husbands and wives love each other, and do their duty to each other in a plain prosaic manner. life can't be all rapture and poetry. ah, roland, it has pleased you of late years to play the cynic. let your cynicism save you now. is it worth while to do a great wrong, to commit a terrible sin, for the sake of a pretty face and a pair of black eyes--for the gratification of a passing folly?" "it is not a passing folly," returned mr. lansdell, fiercely. "i was willing to think that it was so last autumn, when i took your advice and went away from this place. i know better now. if there is depth and truth anywhere in the universe, there is depth and truth in my love for isabel gilbert. do not talk to me, raymond. the arguments which would have weight with other men, have no power with me. it is my fault or my misfortune that i cannot believe in the things in which other men believe. above all, i cannot believe in formulas. i cannot believe that a few words shuffled over by a parson at conventford last january twelvemonth can be strong enough to separate me for ever from the woman i love, and who loves me. yes, she loves me, raymond!" cried the young man, his face lighting up suddenly with a smile, which imparted a warmth to his dark complexion like the rich glow of a murillo. "she loves me, my beautiful unvalued blossom, that i found blooming all alone and unnoticed in a desert--she loves me. if i had discovered coldness or indifference, coquetry or pretence of any kind in her manner the other day when i came home, i would have gone back even then; i would have acknowledged my mistake, and would have gone away to suffer alone. my dear old raymond, it is your duty, i know, to lecture me and argue with me; but i tell you again it is only wasted labour; i am past all that. try to pity me, and sympathize with me, if you can. solitude is not such a pleasant thing, and people do not go through the world alone without some sufficient reason for their loneliness. there must have been some sorrow in your life, dear old friend, some mistake, some disappointment. remember that, and have pity upon me." mr. raymond was silent for some minutes; he sat with his face shaded with his hand, and the hand was slightly tremulous. "there was a sorrow in my life, roland," he said by-and-by, "a deep and lasting one; and it is the memory of that sorrow which makes you so dear to me; but it was a sorrow in which shame had no part. i am proud to think that i suffered, and suffered silently. i think you can guess, roland, why you have always been, and always must be, as dear to me as my own son." "i can," answered the young man, holding out his hand, "you loved my mother." "i did, roland, and stood aloof and saw her married to the man she loved. i held her in my arms and blessed her on her wedding-day in the church yonder; but never from that hour to this have i ceased to love and honour her. i have worshipped a shadow all my life; but her image was nearer and dearer to me than the living beauty of other women. i can sympathize with a wasted love, roland; but i cannot sympathize with a love that seeks to degrade its object." "degrade her!" cried roland; "degrade isabel! there can be no degradation in such a love as mine. but, you see, we think differently, we see things from a different point of view. you look through the spectacles of graybridge, and see an elopement, a scandal, a paragraph in the county papers. i recognize only the immortal right of two free souls, who know that they have been created for each other." "do you ever think of your mother, roland? i remember how dearly she loved you, and how proud she was of the qualities that made you worthy to be her son. do you ever think of her as a living presence, conscious of your sorrows, compassionate of your sins? i think, if you considered her thus, roland, as i do,--she has never been dead to me; she is the ideal in my life, and lifts my life above its common level,--if you thought of her as i do, i don't think you could hold to the bad purpose that has brought you back to this place." "if i believed what you believe," cried mr. lansdell, with sudden animation, "i should be a different man from what i am--a better man than you are, perhaps. i sometimes wonder at such as you, who believe in all the glories of unseen worlds, and yet are so eager and so worldly in all your doings upon this shabby commonplace earth. if _i_ believed, i think i should be blinded and intoxicated by the splendour of my heritage; i would turn trappist, and live in a dumb rapture from year's end to year's end. i would go and hide myself amid the mountain-tops, high up amongst the eagles and the stars, and ponder upon my glory. but you see it is my misfortune not to believe in that beautiful fable. i must take my life as it is; and if, after ten foolish, unprofitable years, fate brings one little chance of supreme happiness in my way, who shall tell me to withhold my hand? who shall forbid me to grasp my treasure?" mr. raymond was not a man to be easily put off. he stayed at mordred for the remainder of the day and dined with his young cousin, and sat talking with him until late at night; but he went away at last with a sad countenance and a heavy heart. roland's disease was past the cure of philosophy. what chance have friar lawrence and philosophy ever had against miss capulet's grecian nose and dark italian eyes, the balmy air of a warm southern night, the low harmonious murmur of a girlish voice, the gleaming of a white arm on a moonlit balcony? chapter xxiii. a little cloud. isabel was happy. he had returned; he had returned to her; never again to leave her! had he not said something to that effect? he had returned, because he had found existence unendurable away from her presence. mr. lansdell had told the doctor's wife all this, not once, but twenty times; and she had listened, knowing that it was wicked to listen, and yet powerless to shut her ears against the sweet insidious words. she was beloved; for the first time in her life really, truly, sentimentally beloved, like the heroine of a novel. she was beloved; despite of her shabby dresses, her dowdy bonnets, her clumsy country-made boots. all at once, in a moment, she was elevated into a queen, crowned with woman's noblest diadem, the love of a poet. she was beatrice, and roland lansdell was dante; or she was leonora, and he was tasso; she did not particularly care which. her ideas of the two poets and their loves were almost as vague as the showman's notion of the rival warriors of waterloo. she was the shadowy love of the poet, the pensive impossible love, who never could be more to him than a perpetual dream. this was how isabel gilbert thought of the master of mordred, who met her so often now in the chill spring sunshine. there was a kind of wickedness in these stolen meetings, no doubt, she thought; but her wickedness was no greater than that of the beautiful princess who smiled upon the italian poet. in that serene region of romance, that mystic fairy-land in which isabel's fancies dwelt, sin, as the world comprehends it, had no place. there was no such loathsome image in that fair kingdom of fountains and flowers. it was very wrong to meet mr. lansdell; but i doubt if the happiness of those meetings would have had quite such an exquisite flavour to isabel had that faint _soupçon_ of wickedness been wanting. did mrs. gilbert ever think that the road which seemed so pleasant, the blossoming pathway along which she wandered hand in hand with roland lansdell, was all downhill, and that there was a black and hideous goal hidden below in the farther-most valley? no; she was enraptured and intoxicated by her present happiness, blinded by the glory of her lover's face. it had been very difficult for her to realize the splendid fact of his love and devotion; but once believing, she was ready to believe for ever. she remembered a sweet sentimental legend of the rhineland: the story of a knight who, going away to the wars, was reported as dead: whereon his lady-love, despairing, entered a convent, and consecrated the sad remainder of her days to heaven. but by-and-by the knight, who had not been killed, returned, and finding that his promised bride was lost to him, devoted the remainder of _his_ days to constancy and solitude; building for himself a hermitage upon a rock high above the convent where his fair and faithful hildegonde spent her pure and pious days. and every morning with the earliest flush of light in the low eastern sky, and all day long, and when the evening-star rose pale and silvery beneath the purpling heavens, the hermit of love sat at the door of his cell gazing upon the humble casement behind which it pleased him to fancy his pure mistress kneeling before her crucifix, sometimes mingling his name with her prayers. and was not the name of the knight roland--_his_ name? it was such a love as this which isabel imagined she had won for herself. it is such a love as this which is the dearest desire of womankind,--a beautiful, useless, romantic devotion,--a wasted life of fond regretful worship. poor weak sentimental mary of scotland accepts chastelar's poetic homage, and is pleased to think that the poet's heart is breaking because of her grace and loveliness, and would like it to go on breaking for ever. but the love-sick poet grows weary of that distant worship, and would scale the royal heavens to look nearer at the brightness of his star; whence come confusions and troubles, and the amputation of that foolish half-demented head. so there was no thought of peril to herself or to others in mrs. gilbert's mind when she stood on the bridge above the mill-stream talking with roland lansdell. she had a vague idea that she was not exactly doing her duty to her husband; but poor george's image only receded farther and farther from her. did she not still obey his behests, and sit opposite to him at the little dinner-table, and pour out his tea at breakfast, and assist him to put on his overcoat in the passage before he went out? could she do more for him than that? no; he had himself rejected all further attention. she had tried to brush his hat once in a sudden gush of dutiful feeling; but she had brushed the nap the wrong way, and had incurred her husband's displeasure. she had tried to read poetry to him, and he had yawned during her lecture. she had put flowers on his dressing-table--white fragile-looking flowers--in a tall slender vase with a tendril of convolvulus twined artfully round the stem, like a garland about a classic column; and mr. gilbert had objected to the perfumed blossoms as liable to generate carbonic-acid gas. what could any one do for such a husband as this? the tender sentimental raptures, the poetic emotions, the dim aspirations, which isabel revealed to roland, would have been as unintelligible as the semitic languages to george. why should she not bestow this other half of her nature upon whom she chose? if she gave her duty and obedience to othello, surely cassio might have all the poetry of her soul, which the matter-of-fact moor despised and rejected. it was something after this wise that isabel reasoned when she did reason at all about her platonic attachment for roland lansdell. she was very happy, lulled to rest by her own ignorance of all danger, rather than by any deeply-studied design on the part of her lover. his manner to her was more tender than a father's manner to his favourite child,--more reverential than raleigh's to elizabeth of england,--but in all this he had no thought of deception. the settled purpose in his mind took a firmer root every day; and he fancied that isabel understood him, and knew that the great crisis of her life was fast approaching, and had prepared herself to meet it. one afternoon, late in the month, when the march winds were bleaker and more pitiless than usual, isabel went across the meadows where the hedgerows were putting forth timid little buds to be nipped by the chill breezes, and where here and there a violet made a tiny speck of purple on the grassy bank. mr. lansdell was standing on the bridge when isabel approached the familiar trysting-place, and turned with a smile to greet her. but although he smiled as he pressed the slender little hand that almost always trembled in his own, the master of mordred was not very cheerful this afternoon. it was the day succeeding that on which charles raymond had dined with him, and the influence of his kinsman's talk still hung about him and oppressed him. he could not deny that there had been truth and wisdom in his friend's earnest pleading; but he could not abandon his purpose now. long vacillating and irresolute, long doubtful of himself and all the world, he was resolved at last, and obstinately bent upon carrying out his resolution. "i am going to london, isabel," he said, after standing by mrs. gilbert for some minutes, staring silently at the water; "i am going to london to-morrow morning, isabel." he always called her isabel now, and lingered with a kind of tenderness upon the name. edith dombey would have brought confusion upon him for this presumption, no doubt, by one bright glance of haughty reproof; but poor isabel had found out long ago that she in no way resembled edith dombey. "going to london!" cried the doctor's wife, piteously; "ah, i knew, i knew that you would go away again, and i shall never see you any more." she clasped her hands in her sudden terror, and looked at him with a world of sorrow and reproach in her pale face. "i knew that it would be so!" she repeated; "i dreamt the other night that you had gone away, and i came here; and, oh, it seemed such a dreadful way to come, and i kept taking the wrong turnings, and going through the wrong meadows; and when i came, there was only some one--some stranger, who told me that you were gone, and would never come back." "but, isabel--my love--my darling!--" the tender epithets did not startle her; she was so absorbed by the fear of losing the god of her idolatry,--"i am only going to town for a day or two to see my lawyer--to make arrangements--arrangements of vital importance;--i should be a scoundrel if i neglected them, or incurred the smallest hazard by delaying them an hour. you don't understand these sort of things, isabel; but trust me, and believe that your welfare is dearer to me than my own. i must go to town; but i shall only be gone a day or two--two days at the most--perhaps only one. and when i come back, izzie, i shall have something to say to you--something very serious--something that had better be said at once--something that involves all the happiness of my future life. will you meet me here two days hence,--on wednesday, at three o'clock? you will, won't you, isabel? i know i do wrong in exposing you to the degradation of these stolen meetings. if i feel the shame so keenly, how much worse it must be for you--my own dear girl--my sweet innocent darling. but this shall be the last time, isabel,--the last time i will ask you to incur any humiliation for me. henceforward we will hold our heads high, my love; for at least there shall be no trickery or falsehood in our lives." mrs. gilbert stared at roland lansdell in utter bewilderment. he had spoken of shame and degradation, and had spoken in the tone of a man who had suffered, and still suffered, very bitterly. this was all isabel could gather from her lover's speech, and she opened her eyes in blank amazement as she attended to him. why should he be ashamed, or humiliated, or degraded? was dante degraded by his love for beatrice? was waller degraded by his devotion to saccharissa--for ever evidenced by so many charming versicles, and never dropping down from the rosy cloud-land of poetry into the matter-of-fact regions of prose? degraded! ashamed!--her face grew crimson all in a moment as these cruel words stung her poor sentimental heart. she wanted to run away all at once, and never see mr. lansdell again. her heart would break, as a matter of course; but how infinitely preferable to shame would be a broken heart and early death with an appropriate tombstone! the tears rolled down her flushed cheek, as she turned away her face from roland. she was almost stifled by mingled grief and indignation. "i did not think you were ashamed to meet me here sometimes," she sobbed out; "you asked me to come. i did not think that you were humiliated by talking to me--i----" "why, izzie--isabel darling!" cried roland, "can you misunderstand me so utterly? ashamed to meet you--ashamed of your society! can you doubt what would have happened had i come home a year earlier than it was my ill fortune to come? can you doubt for a moment that i would have chosen you for my wife out of all the women in the universe, and that my highest pride would have been the right to call you by that dear name? i was too late, izzie, too late; too late to win that pure and perfect happiness which would have made a new man of me, which would have transformed me into a good and useful man, as i think. i suppose it is always so; i suppose there is always one drop wanting in the cup of joy, that one mystic drop which would change the commonplace potion into an elixir. i came too late! why should i have everything in this world? why should i have fifteen thousand a year, and mordred priory, and the right to acknowledge the woman i love in the face of all creation, while there are crippled wretches sweeping crossings for the sake of a daily crust, and men and women wasting away in great prison-houses called unions, whose first law is the severance of every earthly tie? i came too late, and i suppose it was natural that i should so come. millions of destinies have been blighted by as small a chance as that which has blighted mine, i dare say. we must take our fate as we find it, isabel; and if we are true to each other, i hope and believe that it may be a bright one even yet--even yet." a woman of the world would have very quickly perceived that mr. lansdell's discourse must have relation to more serious projects than future meetings under lord thurston's oak, with interchange of divers volumes of light literature. but isabel gilbert was not a woman of the world. she had read novels while other people perused the sunday papers; and of the world out of a three-volume romance she had no more idea than a baby. she believed in a phantasmal universe, created out of the pages of poets and romancers; she knew that there were good people and bad people--ernest maltraverses and lumley ferrerses, walter gays and carkers; but beyond this she had very little notion of mankind; and having once placed mr. lansdell amongst the heroes, could not imagine him to possess one attribute in common with the villains. if he seemed intensely in earnest about these meetings under the oak, she was in earnest too; and so had been the german knight, who devoted the greater part of his life to watching the casement of his lady-love. "i shall see you sometimes," she said, with timid hesitation,--"i shall see you sometimes, shan't i, when you come home from town? not often, of course; i dare say it isn't right to come here often, away from george; and the last time i kept him waiting for his dinner; but i told him where i had been, and that i'd seen you, and he didn't mind a bit." roland lansdell sighed. "ah, don't you understand, isabel," he said, "that doubles our degradation? it is for the very reason that he 'doesn't mind,' it is precisely because he is so simple-hearted and trusting, that we ought not to deceive the poor fellow any longer. that's the degradation, izzie; the deception, not the deed itself. a man meets his enemy in fair fight and kills him, and nobody complains. the best man must always win, i suppose; and if he wins by fair means, no one need grudge him his victory. i mystify you, don't i, my darling, by all this rambling talk? i shall speak plainer on wednesday. and now let me take you homewards," added mr. lansdell, looking at his watch, "if you are to be at home at five." he knew the habits of the doctor's little household, and knew that five o'clock was mr. gilbert's dinner-hour. there was no conversation of any serious nature during the homeward walk--only dreamy talk about books and poets and foreign lands. mr. lansdell told isabel of bright spots in italy and greece, wonderful villages upon the borders of blue lakes deeply hidden among alpine slopes, and snow-clad peaks like stationary clouds--beautiful and picturesque regions which she must see by-and-by, roland added gaily. but mrs. gilbert opened her eyes very wide and laughed aloud. how should she ever see such places? she asked, smiling. george would never go there; he would never be rich enough to go; nor would he care to go, were he ever so rich. and while she was speaking, isabel thought that, after all, she cared very little for those lovely lands; much as she had dreamed about them and pined to see them, long ago in the camberwell garden, on still moonlight nights, when she used to stand on the little stone step leading from the kitchen, with her arms resting on the water-butt, like juliet's on the balcony, and fancy it was italy. now she was quite resigned to the idea of never leaving graybridge-on-the-wayverne. she was content to live there all her life, as long as she could see mr. lansdell now and then; so long as she could know that he was near her, thinking of her and loving her, and that at any moment his dark face might shine out of the dulness of her life. a perfect happiness had come to her--the happiness of being beloved by the bright object of her idolatry; nothing could add to that perfection; the cup was full to the very brim, filled with an inexhaustible draught of joy and delight. mr. lansdell stopped to shake hands with isabel when they came to the gate leading into the graybridge road. "good-bye," he said softly: "good-bye, until wednesday, isabel. isabel--what a pretty name it is! you have no other christian name?" "oh no." "only isabel--isabel gilbert. good-bye." he opened the gate and stood watching the doctor's wife as she passed out of the meadow, and walked at a rapid pace towards the town. a man passed along the road as mr. lansdell stood there, and looked at him as he went by, and then turned and looked after isabel. "raymond is right, then," thought roland; "they have begun to stare and chatter already. let them talk about me at their tea-tables, and paragraph me in their newspapers, to their hearts' content! my soul is as much above them as the eagle soaring sunward is above the sheep that stare up at him from the valleys. i have set my foot upon the fiery ploughshare, but my darling shall be carried across it scatheless, in the strong arms of her lover." mrs. gilbert went home to her husband, and sat opposite to him at dinner as usual; but roland's words, dimly as she had comprehended their meaning, had in some manner influenced her, for she blushed when george asked her where she had been that cold afternoon. mr. gilbert did not see the blush, for he was carving the joint as he asked the question, and indeed had asked it rather as a matter of form than otherwise. this time mrs. gilbert did not tell her husband that she had met roland lansdell. the words "shame and degradation" were ringing in her ears all dinner-time. she had tasted, if ever so little, of the fruit of the famous tree, and she found the flavour thereof very bitter. it must be wrong to meet roland under lord thurston's oak, since he said it was so; and the meeting on wednesday was to be the last; and yet their fate was to be a happy one; had he not said so, in eloquently mysterious words, whose full meaning poor isabel was quite unable to fathom? she brooded over what mr. lansdell said all that evening, and a dim sense of impending trouble crept into her mind. he was going away for ever, perhaps; and had only told her otherwise in order to lull her to rest with vain hopes, and thus spare himself the trouble of her lamentations. or he was going to london to arrange for a speedy marriage with lady gwendoline. poor isabel could not shake off her jealous fears of that brilliant high-bred rival, whom mr. lansdell had once loved. yes; he had once loved lady gwendoline. mr. raymond had taken an opportunity of telling isabel all about the young man's early engagement to his cousin; and he had added a hope that, after all, a marriage between the two might yet be brought about; and had not the housekeeper at mordred said very much the same thing? "he will marry lady gwendoline," isabel thought, in a sudden access of despair; "and that is what he is going to tell me on wednesday. he was different to-day from what he has been since he came back to mordred. and yet--and yet--" and yet what? isabel tried in vain to fathom the meaning of all roland lansdell's wild talk--now earnestly grave--now suddenly reckless--one moment full of hope, and in the next tinctured with despair. what was this simple young novel-reader to make of a man of the world, who was eager to defy the world, and knew exactly what a terrible world it was that he was about to outrage and defy? mrs. gilbert lay awake all that night, thinking of the meeting by the waterfall. roland's talk had mystified and alarmed her. the ignorant happiness, the unreflecting delight in her lover's presence, the daily joy that in its fulness had no room for a thought of the morrow, had vanished all at once like a burst of sunlight eclipsed by the darkening clouds that presage a storm. eve had listened to the first whispers of the serpent, and paradise was no longer entirely beautiful. chapter xxiv. lady gwendoline does her duty. mrs. gilbert stayed at home all through the day which succeeded her parting from roland lansdell. she stayed in the dingy parlour, and read a little, and played upon the piano a little, and sketched a few profile portraits of mr. lansdell, desperately inky and sentimental, with impossibly enormous eyes. she worked a little, wounding her fingers, and hopelessly entangling her thread; and she let the fire out two or three times, as she was accustomed to do very often, to the aggravation of mrs. jeffson. that hard-working and faithful retainer came into the parlour at two o'clock, carrying a little plate of seed-cake and a glass of water for her mistress's frugal luncheon; and finding the grate black and dismal for the second time that day, fetched a bundle of wood and a box of matches, and knelt down to rekindle the cavernous cinders in no very pleasant humour. "i'm sorry i've let the fire out again, mrs. jeffson," isabel said meekly. "i think there must be something wrong in the grate somehow, for the fire always _will_ go out." "it usen't to go out in master george's mother's time," mrs. jeffson answered, rather sharply, "and it was the same grate then. but my dear young mistress used to sit in yon chair, stitch, stitch, stitch at the doctor's cambric shirt-fronts, and the fire was always burning bright and pleasant when he came home. she was a regular stay-at-home, she was," added the housekeeper, in a musing tone; "and it was very rare as she went out beyond the garden, except on a summer's evening, when the doctor took her for a walk. she didn't like going out alone, poor dear; for there was plenty of young squires about graybridge as would have been glad enough to follow her and talk to her, and set people's malicious tongues chattering about her, if she'd have let 'em. but she never did; she was as happy as the day was long, sitting at home, working for her husband, and always ready to jump up and run to the door when she heard his step outside--god bless her innocent heart!" mrs. gilbert's face grew crimson as she bent over a sheet of paper on which the words "despair" and "prayer," "breath" and "death," were twisted into a heartrending rhyme. ah, this was a part of the shame and degradation of which roland had spoken. everybody had a right to lecture her, and at every turn the perfections of the dead were cast reproachfully in her face. as if _she_ did not wish to be dead and at rest, regretted and not lectured, deplored rather than slandered and upbraided. these vulgar people laid their rude hands upon her cup of joy, and changed its contents into the bitter waters of shame. these commonplace creatures set themselves up as the judges of her life, and turned all its purest and brightest poetry into a prosaic record of disgrace. the glory of the koh-i-noor would have been tarnished by the print of such base hands as these. how could these people read her heart, or understand her love for roland lansdell? very likely the serene lady of the rhineland, praying in her convent-cell, was slandered and misrepresented by vulgar boors, who, passing along the roadway beneath, saw the hermit-knight sitting at the door of his cell and gazing fondly at his lost love's casement. such thoughts as this arose in isabel's mind, and she was angry and indignant at the good woman who presumed to lecture her. she pushed away the plate of stale cake, and went to the window flushed and resentful. but the flush faded all in a moment from her face when she saw a lady in a carriage driving slowly towards the gate,--a lady who wore a great deal of soft brown fur, and a violet velvet bonnet with drooping features, and who looked up at the house as if uncertain as to its identity. the lady was lord ruysdale's daughter; and the carriage was only a low basket-phaeton, drawn by a stout bay cob, and attended by a groom in a neat livery of dark blue. but if the simple equipage had been the fairy chariot of queen mab herself, mrs. gilbert could scarcely have seemed more abashed and astounded by its apparition before her door. the groom descended from his seat at an order from his mistress, and rang the bell at the surgeon's gate; and then lady gwendoline, having recognized isabel at the window, and saluted her with a very haughty inclination of the head, abandoned the reins to her attendant, and alighted. mrs. jeffson had opened the gate by this time, and the visitor swept by her into the little passage, and thence into the parlour, where she found the doctor's wife standing by the table, trifling nervously with that scrap of fancy-work whose only progress was to get grimier and grimier day by day under isabel's idle fingers. oh, what a dingy shabby place that graybridge parlour was always! how doubly and trebly dingy it seemed to-day by contrast with that gorgeous millais-like figure of gwendoline pomphrey, rich and glorious in violet velvet and russian sable, with the yellow tints of her hair contrasted by the deep purple shadows under her bonnet. mrs. gilbert almost sank under the weight of all that aristocratic splendour. she brought a chair for her visitor, and asked in a tremulous voice if lady gwendoline would be pleased to sit. there was a taint of snobbishness in her reverential awe of the earl's handsome daughter. was not lady gwendoline the very incarnation of all her own foolish dreams of the beautiful? long ago, in the camberwell garden, she had imagined such a creature; and now she bowed herself before the splendour, and was stricken with fear and trembling in the dazzling presence. and then there were other reasons that she should tremble and turn pale. might not lady gwendoline have come to announce her intended marriage with mr. lansdell, and to smite the poor wretch before her with sudden madness and despair? isabel felt that some calamity was coming down upon her: and she stood pale and silent, meekly waiting to receive her sentence. "pray sit down, mrs. gilbert," said lady gwendoline; "i wish to have a little conversation with you. i am very glad to have found you at home, and alone." the lady spoke very kindly, but her kindness had a stately coldness that crept like melted ice through isabel's veins, and chilled her to the bone. "i am older than you, mrs. gilbert," said lady gwendoline, after a little pause, and she slightly winced as she made the confession; "i am older than you; and if i speak to you in a manner that you may have some right to resent as an impertinent interference with your affairs, i trust that you will believe i am influenced only by a sincere desire for your welfare." isabel's heart sank to a profounder depth of terror than before when she heard this. she had never in her life known anything but unpleasantness to come from people's desire for her welfare: from the early days in which her step-mother had administered salutary boxes on the ear, and salts and senna, with an equal regard to her moral and physical improvement. she looked up fearfully at lady gwendoline, and saw that the fair saxon face of her visitor was almost as pale as her own. "i am older than you, mrs. gilbert," repeated gwendoline, "and i know my cousin roland lansdell much better than you can possibly know him." the sound of the dear name, the sacred name, which to isabel's mind should only have been spoken in a hushed whisper, like a tender pianissimo passage in music, shot home to the foolish girl's heart. her face flushed crimson, and she clasped her hands together, while the tears welled slowly up to her eyes. "i know my cousin better than you can know him; i know the world better than you can know it. there are some women, mrs. gilbert, who would condemn you unheard, and who would consider their lips sullied by any mention of your name. there are many women in my position who would hold themselves aloof from you, content to let you go your own way. but i take leave to think for myself in all matters. i have heard mr. raymond speak very kindly of you; i cannot judge you as harshly as other people judge you; i cannot believe you to be what your neighbours think you." "oh, what, what can they think me?" cried isabel, trembling with a vague fear--an ignorant fear of some deadly peril utterly unknown to her, and yet close upon her; "what harm have i done, that they should think ill of me? what can they say of me? what can they say?" her eyes were blinded by tears, that blotted lady gwendoline's stern face from her sight. she was still so much a child, that she made no effort to conceal her terror and confusion. she bared all the foolish secrets of her heart before those cruel eyes. "people say that you are a false wife to a simple-hearted and trusting husband," lord ruysdale's daughter answered, with pitiless calmness; "a false wife in thought and intention, if not in deed; since you have lured my cousin back to this place; and are ready to leave it with him as his mistress whenever he chooses to say 'come.' that is what people think of you; and you have given them only too much cause for their suspicion. do you imagine that you could keep any secret from graybridge? do you think your actions or even your thoughts could escape the dull eyes of these country people, who have nothing better to do than watch the doings of their neighbours?" demanded lady gwendoline, bitterly. alas! she knew that her name had been bandied about from gossip to gossip; and that her grand disappointment in the matter of lord heatherland, her increasing years, and declining chances of a prize in the matrimonial lottery had been freely discussed at all the tea-tables in the little country town. "country people find out everything, mrs. gilbert," she said, presently. "you have been watched in your sentimental meetings and rambles with mr. lansdell; and you may consider yourself very fortunate if no officious person has taken the trouble to convey the information to your husband." isabel had been crying all this time, crying bitterly, with her head bent upon her clasped hands; but to lady gwendoline's surprise she lifted it now, and looked at her accuser with some show of indignation, if not defiance. "i told george every--almost every time i met mr. lansdell," she exclaimed; "and george knows that he lends me books; and he likes me to have books--nice, in-st-structive books," said mrs. gilbert, stifling her sobs as best she might; "and i n-never thought that anybody could be so wicked as to fancy there was any harm in my meeting him. i don't suppose any one ever said anything to beatrice portinari, though she was married, and dante loved her very dearly; and i only want to see him now and then, and to hear him talk; and he has been very, very kind to me." "kind to you!" cried lady gwendoline, scornfully. "do you know the value of such kindness as his? did you ever hear of any good coming of it? did such kindness ever bear any fruit but anguish and misery and mortification? you talk like a baby, mrs. gilbert, or else like a hypocrite. do you know what my cousin's life has been? do you know that he is an infidel, and outrages his friends by opinions which he does not even care to conceal? do you know that his name has been involved with the names of married women before to-day? are you besotted enough to think that his new fancy for you is anything more than the caprice of an idle and dissipated man of the world, who is ready to bring ruin upon the happiest home in england for the sake of a new sensation, a little extra aliment for the vanity which a host of foolish women have pampered into his ruling vice?" "vanity!" exclaimed mrs. gilbert; "oh, lady gwendoline, how can you say that _he_ is vain? it is you who do not know him. ah, if you could only know how good he is, how noble, how generous! i know that he would never try to injure me by so much as a word or a thought. why should i not love him; as we love the stars, that are so beautiful and so distant from us? why should i not worship him as helena worshipped bertram, as viola loved zanoni? the wicked graybridge people may say what they like; and if they tell george anything about me, i will tell him the truth; and then--and then, if i was only a catholic, i would go into a convent like hildegonde! ah, lady gwendoline, you do not understand such love as mine!" added isabel, looking at the earl's daughter with an air of superiority that was superb in its simplicity. she was proud of her love, which was so high above the comprehension of ordinary people. it is just possible that she was even a little proud of the slander which attached to her. she had all her life been pining for the glory of martyrdom, and lo, it had come upon her. the fiery circlet had descended upon her brow; and she assumed a dignified pose in order to support it properly. "i only understand that you are a very foolish person," lady gwendoline answered, coldly; "and i have been extremely foolish to trouble myself about you. i considered it my duty to do what i have done, and i wash my hands henceforward of you and your affairs. pray go your own way, and do not fear any further interference from me. it is quite impossible that i can have the smallest association with my cousin's mistress." she hurled the cruel word at the doctor's wife, and departed with a sound of silken rustling in the narrow passage. isabel heard the carriage drive away, and then flung herself down upon her knees, to sob and lament her cruel destiny. that last word had stung her to the very heart. it took all the poetry out of her life; it brought before her, in its fullest significance, the sense of her position. if she met roland under lord thurston's oak,--if she walked with him in the meadows that his footsteps beautified into the smooth lawns of paradise,--people, vulgar, ignorant people, utterly unable to comprehend her or her love, would say that she was his mistress. his mistress! to what people she had heard that word applied! and beatrice portinari, and viola, and leila, and gulnare, and zelica, what of them? the visions of all those lovely and shining creatures arose before her; and beside them, in letters of fire, blazed the odious word that transformed her fond platonic worship, her sentimental girlish idolatry, into a shame and disgrace. "i will see him to-morrow and say farewell to him," she thought. "i will bid him good-bye for ever and ever, though my heart should break,--ah, how i hope it may, as i say the bitter word!--and never, never will see him again. i know now what he meant by shame and humiliation; i can understand all he said now." * * * * * mrs. gilbert had another of her headaches that evening, and poor george was obliged to dine alone. he went up-stairs once or twice in the course of the evening to see his wife, and found her lying very quietly in the dimly-lighted room with her face turned to the wall. she held out her hand to him as he bent over her, and pressed his broad palm with her feverish fingers. "i'm afraid i've been neglectful of you sometimes, george," she said; "but i won't be so again. i won't go out for those long walks, and keep you waiting for dinner; and if you would like a set of new shirts made--you said the other day that yours were nearly worn out--i should like to make them for you myself. i used to help to make the shirts for my brothers, and i don't think i should pucker so much now; and, oh, george, mrs. jeffson was talking of your poor mother to-day, and i want you to tell me what it was she died of." mr. gilbert patted his wife's hand approvingly, and laid it gently down on the coverlet. "that's a melancholy subject, my love," he said, "and i don't think it would do either of us any good to talk about it. as for the shirts, my dear, it's very good of you to offer to make them; but i doubt if you'd manage them as well as the work-woman at wareham, who made the last. she's very reasonable; and she's lame, poor soul; so it's a kind of charity to employ her. good-bye for the present, izzie; try to get a nap, and don't worry your poor head about anything." he went away, and isabel listened to his substantial boots creaking down the stairs, and away towards the surgery. he had come thence to his wife's room, and he left a faint odour of drugs behind him. ah, how that odious flavour of senna and camomile flowers brought back a magical exotic perfume that had floated towards her one day from _his_ hair as he bent his head to listen to her foolish talk! and now the senna and camomile were to flavour all her life. she was no longer to enjoy that mystical double existence, those delicious glimpses of dreamland, which made up for all the dulness of the common world that surrounded her. if she could have died, and made an end of it all! there are moments in life when death seems the _only_ issue from a dreadful labyrinth of grief and horror. i suppose it is only very weak-minded people--doubtful vacillating creatures like prince hamlet of denmark--who wish to die, and make an easy end of their difficulties; but isabel was not by any means strong-minded, and she thought with a bitter pang of envy of the commonplace young women whom she had known to languish and fade in the most interesting pulmonary diseases, while she so vainly yearned for the healing touch which makes a sure end of all mortal fevers. but there was something--one thing in the world yet worth the weariness of existence--that meeting with _him_--that meeting which was to be also an eternal parting. she would see him once more; he would look down at her with his mysterious eyes--the eyes of zanoni himself could scarcely have been more mystically dark and deep. she would see him, and perhaps that strangely intermingled joy and anguish would be more fatal than earthly disease, and she would drop dead at his feet, looking to the last at the dark splendour of his face--dying under the spell of his low tender voice. and then, with a shudder, she remembered what lady gwendoline had said of her demi-god. dissipated and an infidel; vain, selfish! oh, cruel, cruel slander,--the slander of a jealous woman, perhaps, who had loved him and been slighted by him. the doctor's wife would not believe any treasonous whisper against her idol. only from his own lips could come the words that would be strong enough to destroy her illusions. she lay awake all that night thinking of her interview with lady gwendoline, acting the scene over and over again; hearing the cruel words repeated in her ears with dismal iteration throughout the dark slow hours. the pale cheerless spring daylight came at last, and mrs. gilbert fell asleep just when it was nearly time for her to think of getting up. the doctor breakfasted alone that morning, as he had dined the day before. he begged that isabel might not be disturbed, a good long spell of rest was the best thing for his wife's head, he told mrs. jeffson; to which remark that lady only replied by a suspicious kind of sniff, accompanied by a jerk of the head, and followed by a plaintive sigh, all of which were entirely lost upon the parish surgeon. "females whose headaches keep 'em a-bed when they ought to be seeing after their husband's meals hadn't ought to marry," mrs. jeffson remarked, with better sense than grammar, when she took george's breakfast paraphernalia back to the kitchen. "i heard down the street just now, as _he_ come back to the priory late last night, and i'll lay she'll be goin' out to meet him this afternoon, william." mr. jeffson, who was smoking his matutinal pipe by the kitchen fire, shook his head with a slow melancholy gesture as his wife made this remark. "it's a bad business, tilly," he said, "a bad business first and last. if _he_ was anything of a man, he'd keep away from these parts, and 'ud be above leadin' a poor simple little thing like that astray. them poetry-hooks and such like, as she's allus a-readin', has half turned her head long ago, and it only needs a fine chap like him to turn it altogether. i mind what i say to muster jarge the night as i fust see her; and i can see her face now, tilly, as i see it then, with the eyes fixed and lookin' far away like; and i knew then what i know better still now, my lass,--them two'll never get on together. they warn't made for one another. i wonder sometimes to see the trouble a man'll take before he gets a pair o' boots, to find out as they're a good fit and won't gall his foot when he comes to wear 'em; but t' same man'll go and get married as careless and off-hand like, as if there weren't the smallest chance of his wife's not suiting him. i was took by thy good looks, lass, i won't deny, when i first saw thee," mr. jeffson added, with diplomatic gallantry; "but it wasn't because of thy looks as i asked thee to be my true wife, and friend, and companion, throughout this mortal life and all its various troubles." chapter xxv. "for love himself took part against himself." it was eleven o'clock when isabel woke; and it was twelve when she sat down to make some pretence of eating the egg and toast which mrs. jeffson set before her. the good woman regarded her young mistress with a grave countenance, and mrs. gilbert shrank nervously from that honest gaze. shame and disgrace--she had denied the application of those hideous words to herself: but the cup which she had repudiated met her lips at every turn, and the flavour of its bitter waters was intermingled with everything she tasted. she turned away from mrs. jeffson, and felt angry with her. presently, when the faithful housekeeper was busy in the kitchen, mrs. gilbert went softly up-stairs to her room, and put on her bonnet and shawl. she was not to meet _him_ till three o'clock in the afternoon, and it was now only a little after twelve; but she could not stay in the house. a terrible fever and restlessness had taken possession of her lately. had not her life been altogether one long fever since roland lansdell's advent in midlandshire? she looked back, and remembered that she had lived once, and had been decently contented, in utter ignorance of this splendid being's existence. she had lived, and had believed in the shadowy heroes of books, and in great clumsy grey-coated officers stationed at conventford, and in a sickly curate at camberwell; and long, long ago--oh, unutterable horror!--in a sentimental-looking young chemist's apprentice in the walworth road, who had big watery-looking blue eyes, and was not so very unlike ernest maltravers, and who gave more liberal threepenny-worths of lavender-water or hair-oil than any other chemist on the surrey side of the water--to isabel! not to other people! miss sleaford sent one of the boys for the usual threepenny-worth on one occasion, and the chemist's measure was very different, and the young lady was not a little touched by this proof of her admirer's devotion. and looking back now she remembered these things, and wondered at them, and hated herself because of them. there was no low image of a chemist's assistant lurking dimly in the background of viola's life when she met her fate in the person of zanoni. all isabel's favourite heroines seemed to look out at her reproachfully from their cloudland habitations, as she remembered this portion of her existence. she had lived, and there had been no prophetic vision of _his_ face among all her dreams. and now there was nothing for her but to try to go back to the same dull life again, since to-day she was to part from him for ever. the day was a thorough march day--changeable in mood--now brightened by a sudden glimpse of the sun, now grey and threatening, dull and colourless as the life which lay before isabel gilbert when _he_ should be gone, and the sweet romance of her existence closed abruptly, like a story that is never to be finished. the doctor's wife shuddered as she went out into the lane, where the dust was blowing into eddying circles every now and then by a frolicsome north-easter. she closed the gate safely behind her and went away, and to-day for the first time she felt that her errand was a guilty one. she went into the familiar meadow pathway; she tried to walk slowly, but her feet seemed to carry her towards thurston's crag in spite of herself; and when she was far from graybridge, and looked at her watch, it was only one o'clock, and there were two long hours that must elapse before roland lansdell's coming. it was only a quarter past one when she came in sight of the miller's cottage--the pretty little white-walled habitation nestling low down under big trees, which made a shelter even in winter time. a girl was standing at a door feeding chickens and calling to them in a loud cheerful voice. there was no sorrowful love story in her life, mrs. gilbert thought, as she looked at the bouncing red-elbowed young woman. she would marry some floury-visaged miller's man, most likely, and be happy ever after. but it was only a momentary thrill of envy that shot through isabel's breast. better to die for roland lansdell than to live for a miller's man in thick clumpy boots and an elaborately-stitched smock-frock. better to have lived for the briefest summer time of joy and triumph, and then to stand aloof upon a rock for ever afterwards, staring at the wide expanse of waters, and thinking of the past, like napoleon at st. helena. "he has loved me!" thought isabel; "i ought never to be unhappy, when i remember that." she had brought shelley with her, and she seated herself upon the bench under the oak; but she only turned the leaves over and over, and listened to the brawling waters at her feet, and thought of roland lansdell. sometimes she tried to think of what her life would be after she had parted from him; but all the future after four o'clock that afternoon seemed to recede far away from her, beyond the limits of her understanding. she had a vague idea that after this farewell meeting she would be like louise de la vallière in the days of her seclusion and penitence. if father newman, or any other enthusiastic romanist, could have found her sitting by the brawling water that afternoon, he would have secured a willing convert to his tender sentimental creed. the poor bewildered spirit pined for the shadowy aisles of some conventual sanctuary, the low and solemn music, the glimmering shrines, the dreamy exaltation and rapture, the separation from a hard commonplace world. but no sympathetic stranger happened to pass that way while isabel sat there, watching the path by which roland lansdell must come. she took out her watch every now and then, always to be disappointed at the slow progress of the time; but at last--at last--just as a sudden gleam of sunshine lighted the waterfall, and flickered upon the winding pathway, a distant church clock struck three, and the master of mordred priory pushed open a little gate, and came in and out among the moss-grown trunks of the bare elms. in the next minute he was on the bridge; in the next moment, as it seemed, he was seated by isabel's side, and had taken her passive hand in his. for the last time--for the last time! she thought. involuntarily her fingers closed on his. how closely they seemed linked together now; they who so soon were to be for ever parted; they between whom all the expanse of the atlantic would have been only too narrow a barrier! mrs. gilbert looked up sadly and shrinkingly at roland's face, and saw that it was all flushed and radiant. there was just the faintest expression of nervous hesitation about his mouth; but his dark eyes shone with a resolute glance, and seemed more definite in colour than isabel had ever seen them yet. "my darling," he said, "i am very punctual, am i not? i did not think you would be here before me. you can never guess how much i have thought of our meeting to-day, isabel:--seriously; solemnly even. do you remember the garden-scene in 'romeo and juliet,' izzie? what pretty sportive boy-and-girl gallantry the love-making seems; and yet what a tragedy comes of it directly after! when i look at you to-day, isabel, and think of my sleepless nights, my restless weary days, my useless wanderings, my broken vows and wasted resolutions, i look back and remember our first meeting at warncliffe castle--our chance meeting. if i had gone away ten minutes sooner, i might not have seen you--i might never have seen you. i look back and see it all. i looked up so indifferently when poor raymond introduced you to us; it was almost a bore to get up and bow to you. i thought you were very pretty, a beautiful pale-faced automaton, with wonderful eyes that belonged of right to some italian picture, and not to a commonplace little person like you. and then--having so little to do, being altogether such an idle purposeless wretch, and being glad of any excuse for getting away from my stately cousin and my dear prosy old uncle--i must needs stroll to hurstonleigh grove, and meet you again under the changing shadows of the grand old trees. oh, what was it, isabel? why was it? was it only idle curiosity, as i believed, that took me there? or had the cruel arrow shot home already; was my destiny sealed even then? i don't know--i don't know. i am not a good man, izzie; but i am not utterly bad either. i went away from you, my dear; i _did_ try to avoid the great peril of my life; but--you remember the monk in hugo's 'notre dame.' it seems a grand story in that book, izzie, but it's the commonest story in all the world. some day--some careless day--we look out of the window and see the creature dancing in the sunshine, and from that moment every other purpose of our life is done with and forgotten; we can do nothing but go out and follow her wherever she beckons us. if she is a wicked siren, she may lure us into the dark recesses of her cave and pick our bones at her leisure. if she is undine, and plunges deep down into the blue water, we can only take a header and go to the bottom after her. but if she is a dear little innocent creature, worthy of our best love and worship, why should we not be happy with her ever afterwards, like the good people in the story-books? why should we not plan a bright life of happiness and fidelity? isabel, my darling, i want to talk very seriously to you to-day. the crisis has come in our lives, and i am to find out to-day whether you are the true woman i believe you to be, or only a pretty little village coquette, who has fooled me to the top of my bent, and who can whistle me off and let me down the wind to prey at fortune directly i become a nuisance. izzie, i want you to answer a serious question to-day, and all the happiness of my future life depends upon your answer." "mr. lansdell!" she looked up at him--very much frightened by his manner, but with her hand still clasping his. the link must so soon be broken for ever. only for a little while longer might she retain that dear hand in hers. half an hour more, and they would be parted for ever and ever. the pain of that thought was strangely mingled with the delicious joy of being with him, of hearing from his lips that she was beloved. what did she care for lady gwendoline now?--cruel jealous lady gwendoline, who had outraged and insulted the purity of her love. "isabel," roland said, very gravely, bending his head to a level with hers, as he spoke, but looking at the ground rather than at her, "it is time that we ended this farce of duty and submission to the world; we have tried to submit, and to rule our lives by the laws which other people have made for us. but we cannot--we cannot, my dear. we are only hypocrites, who try to mask our revolt under the pretence of submission. you come here and meet me, and we are happy together--unutterably and innocently happy. but you leave me and go home to your husband, and smile at him, and tell him that, while you were out walking, you met mr. lansdell, and so on; and you hoodwink and fool him, and act a perpetual lie for his delusion. all that must cease, isabel. that preacher, whom _i_ think the noblest reformer, the purest philosopher whose voice was ever heard upon this earth, said that we cannot serve two masters. you cannot go on living the life you have lived for the last three weeks, isabel. that is impossible. you have made a mistake. the world will tell you that, having made it, you must abide by it, and atone for your folly by a life of dissimulation. there are women brave enough--good enough, if you like--to do this, and to bear their burden patiently; but you are not one of them. you cannot dissimulate. your soul has flown to me like a bird out of a cage; it is mine henceforth and for ever; as surely as that i love you,--fatally, unaccountably, mysteriously, but eternally. i know the strength of my chain, for i have tried to break it. i have held aloof, and tested the endurance of my love. if i ask you now to accept that love, it is because i know that it is true and pure,--the true metal, izzie, the real virgin gold! i suppose a narrow vein of it runs through every man's nature; but it is only one woman's hand that has power to strike upon the precious ore. i love you, isabel; and i want you to make an end of your present life, and leave this place for ever. i have written to an agent to get me a little villa on the outskirts of naples. i went there alone, izzie, two months ago, and set up your image in the empty rooms, and fancied you hovering here and there in your white dress, upon the broad marble terrace, with the blue sea below you, and the mountains above. i have made a hundred plans for our life, izzie. there is not a whim or fancy of yours that i have not remembered. ah, what happiness! to show you wonderful things and beautiful scenes! what delicious joy to see your eyes open their widest before all the fairest pictures of earth! i fancy you with me, isabel, and, behold, my life is transformed. i have been so tired of everything in the world; and yet, with you by my side, all the world will be as fresh as eden was to adam on the first day of his life. isabel, you need have no doubt of me. i have doubted myself, and tested myself. mine is no light love, that time or custom can change or lessen: if it were, i would have done my duty, and stayed away from you for ever. i have thought of your happiness as well as my own, darling; and i ask you now to trust me, and leave this place for ever." something like a cry of despair broke from isabel's lips. "you ask me to go away with you!" she exclaimed, looking at roland as if she could scarcely believe the testimony of her own ears. "you ask me to leave george, and be your--mistress! oh, lady gwendoline only spoke the truth, then. you don't understand--no one understands--how i love you!" she had risen as she spoke, and flung herself passionately against the balustrade of the bridge, sobbing bitterly, with her face hidden by her clasped hands. "isabel, for heaven's sake, listen to me! can you doubt the purity of my love--the truth, the honesty of my intentions? i ask you to sign no unequal compact. give me your life, and i'll give you mine in exchange--every day--every hour. whatever the most exacting wife can claim of her husband, you shall receive from me. whatever the truest husband can be to his wife, i swear to be to you. it is only a question of whether you love me, isabel. you have only to choose between me and that man yonder." "oh, roland! roland! i have loved you so--and you could think that i----. oh, you must despise me--you must despise me very much, and think me very wicked, or you would never----" she couldn't say any more; but she still leant against the bridge, sobbing for her lost delusion. lady gwendoline had been right, after all,--this is what isabel thought,--and there had been no platonism, no poet-worship on roland lansdell's side; only the vulgar every-day wish to run away with another man's wife. from first to last she had been misunderstood; she had been the dupe of her own fancies, her own dreams. lady gwendoline's cruel words were only cruel truths. it was no dante, no tasso, who had wandered by her side; only a dissipated young country squire, in the habit of running away with other people's wives, and glorying in his iniquity. there was no middle standing-place which roland lansdell could occupy in this foolish girl's mind. if he was not a demi-god, he must be a villain. if he was not an exalted creature, full of poetic aspirations and noble fancies, he must be a profligate young idler, ready to whisper any falsehood into the ears of foolish rustic womanhood. all the stories of aristocratic villany that she had ever read flashed suddenly back upon mrs. gilbert's mind, and made a crowd of evidence against lady anna lansdell's son. if he was not the one grand thing which she had believed him to be--a poetic and honourable adorer--he was in nothing the hero of her dreams. she loved him still, and must continue to love him, in spite of all his delinquencies; but she must love him henceforward with fear and trembling, as a splendid iniquitous creature, who had not even one virtue to set against a thousand crimes. such thoughts as these crowded upon her, as she leaned sobbing on the narrow wooden rail of the bridge; while roland lansdell stood by, watching her with a grave and angry countenance. "is this acting, mrs. gilbert? is this show of surprise and indignation a little comedy, which you play when you want to get rid of your lovers? am i to accept my dismissal, and bid you good afternoon, and put up patiently with having been made the veriest fool that ever crossed this bridge?" "oh, roland!" cried isabel, lifting her head and looking piteously round at him, "i loved you so--i l-loved so!" "you love me so, and prove your love by fooling me with tender looks and blushes, till i believe that i have met the one woman in all the world who is to make my life happy. oh, isabel, i have loved you because i thought you unlike other women. am i to find that it is only the old story after all--falsehood, and trick, and delusion? it was a feather in your cap to have mr. lansdell of the priory madly in love with you; and now that he grows troublesome, you send him about his business. i am to think this, i suppose. it has all been coquetry and falsehood, from first to last." "falsehood! oh, roland, when i love you so dearly--so dearly and truly; not as you love me,--with a cruel love that would bring shame and disgrace upon me. you never can be more to me than you are now. we may part; but there is no power on earth that can part my soul from yours, or lessen my love. i came to you this afternoon to say good-bye for ever, because i have heard that cruel things have been said of me by people who do not understand my love. ah, how should those common people understand, when even you do not, roland? i came to say good-bye; and then, after to-day, my life will be finished. you know what you said that night: 'the curtain goes down, and all is over!' i shall think of you for ever and ever, till i die. ah, is there any kind of death that can ever make me forget you? but i will never come here again to see you. i will always try to do my duty to my husband." "your husband!" cried mr. lansdell, with a strident laugh; "had we not better leave _his_ name out of the question? oh, isabel!" he exclaimed, suddenly changing his tone, "so help me heaven, i cannot understand you. are you only an innocent child, after all, or the wiliest coquette that ever lived? you must be one or the other. you speak of your husband. my poor dear, it is too late in the day now to talk of him. you should have thought of him when we first met; when your eyelids first drooped beneath my gaze; when your voice first grew tremulous as you spoke my name. from the very first you have lured me on. i am no trickster or thief, to steal another man's property. if your heart had been your husband's when first i met you, the beauty of an angel in a cathedral fresco would not have been farther away from me than yours. depend upon it, eve was growing tired of eden when the serpent began to talk to her. if you had loved your husband, isabel, i should have bowed my head before the threshold of your home, as i would at the entrance to a chapel. but i saw that you did not love him; i very soon saw that you did love, or seemed to love, me. heaven knows how i struggled against the temptation, and only yielded at last when my heart told me that my love was true and honest, and worthy of the sacrifice i ask from you. i do ask that sacrifice; boldly, as a man who is prepared to give measure for measure. the little world to which you will say good-bye, isabel, is a world whose gates will close on me in the same hour. henceforth your life will be mine, with all its forfeitures. i am not an ambitious man, and have long ceased to care about making any figure in a world which has always seemed to me more or less like a show at a fair, with clanging cymbals and brazen trumpets, and promise and protestation, and boasting outside, and only delay and disappointment and vexation within. i do not give up very much, therefore, but what i have i freely resign. come with me, isabel, and i will take you away to the beautiful places you have been pleased to hear me talk about. all the world is ours, my darling, except this little corner of midlandshire. great ships are waiting to waft us away to far southern shores, and tropical paradises, and deep unfathomable forests. all the earth is organized for our happiness. the money that has been so useless to me until now shall have a new use henceforward, for it shall be dedicated to your pleasure. do you remember opening your eyes very wide the other day, isabel, and crying out that you would like to see rome, and poor keats's grave, and the colosseum,--byron's colosseum,--where the poetic gladiator thought of his wife and children, eh, izzie? i made such a dream out of that little childish exclamation. i know the balcony in which we will sit, darling, after dark nights, in carnival time, to watch the crowd in the streets below, and, on one grandest night of all, the big dome of st. peter's shining like a canopy of light, and all the old classic pediments and pillars blazing out of the darkness, as in a city of living fire. isabel, you cannot have been ignorant of the end to which our fate was chaffing us; you must have known that i should sooner or later say what i have said to-day." "oh, no, no, no!" cried mrs. gilbert, despairingly, "i never thought that you would ask me to be more to you than i am now: i never thought that it was wicked to come here and meet you. i have read of people, who by some fatality could never marry, loving each other, and being true to others for years and years--till death sometimes; and i fancied that you loved me like that: and the thought of your love made me so happy; and it was such happiness to see you sometimes, and to think of you afterwards, remembering every word you had said, and seeing your face as plainly as i see it now. i thought, till yesterday, that this might go on for ever, and never, never believed that you would think me like those wicked women who run away from their husbands." "and yet you love me?" "with all my heart." she looked at him with eyes still drowned in tears, but radiant with the truth of her sentimental soul, which had never before revealed itself so artlessly as now. fondly as she worshipped her idol, his words had little power to move her, now that he was false to his attributes, and came down upon common ground and wooed her as an every-day creature. if mr. lansdell had declared his intention of erecting a marble mausoleum in the grounds of mordred, and had requested isabel to commit suicide in order to render herself competent to occupy it with him immediately, she would have thought his request both appropriate and delightful, and would have assented on the spot. but his wild talk of foreign travel had no temptation for her. true, she saw as in a bright and changing vision a picture of what her life might be far away amidst wild romantic regions in that dear companionship. but between herself and those far-away visions there was a darkly-brooding cloud of shame and disgrace. the graybridge people might say what they chose of her: she could afford to hold her head high and despise their slanderous whispers: but she could _not_ afford to tarnish her love--her love which had no existence out of bright ideal regions wherein shame could never enter. roland lansdell watched her face in silence for some moments, and faintly comprehended the exaltation of spirit which lifted this foolish girl above him to-day. but he was a weak vacillating young man, who was unfortunate enough not to believe in anything, and he was, in his own fashion, truly and honestly in love,--too much in love to be just or reasonable,--and he was very angry with isabel. the tide of his feelings had gathered strength day by day, and had relentlessly swept away every impediment, to be breasted at last by a rocky wall; here, where he thought to meet only the free boundless ocean, ready to receive and welcome him. "isabel," he said at last, "have you ever thought what your life is to be, always, after this parting to-day? you are likely to live forty years, and even when you have got through them you will not be an old woman. have you ever contemplated those forty years, with three hundred and sixty-five days in every one of them; every day to be spent with a man you don't love--a man with whom you have not one common thought? think of that, isabel; and then, if you do love me, think of the life i offer you, and choose between them." "i can only make one choice," mrs. gilbert answered, in a low sad voice. "i shall be very unhappy, i dare say; but i will do my duty to my husband--and think of you." "so be it!" exclaimed mr. lansdell, with a long-drawn sigh. "in that case, good-bye." he held out his hand, and isabel was startled by the coldness of its touch. "you are not angry with me?" she asked, piteously. "i have no right to be angry with any one but myself. i do not suppose you meant any harm; but you have done me the deepest wrong a woman can do to a man. i have nothing to say to you except good-bye. for mercy's sake go away, and leave me to myself." she had no pretence for remaining with him after this, so she went away, very slowly, frightened and sorrowful. but when she had gone a few yards along the pathway under the trees, she felt all at once that she could not leave him thus. she must see his face once more: she must know for certain whether he was angry with her or not. she crept slowly back to the spot where she had left him, and found him lying at full length upon the grass, with his face hidden on his folded arms. with a sudden instinct of grief and terror she knew that he was crying, and falling down on her knees by his side, murmured amidst her sobs,-- "oh, pray forgive me! pray do not be angry with me! i love you so dearly and so truly! only say that you forgive me." roland lansdell lifted his face and looked at her. ah, what a reproachful look it was, and how long it lived in her memory and disturbed her peace! "i will forgive you," he answered, sternly, "when i have learnt to endure my life without you." he dropped his head again upon his folded arms, and isabel knelt by his side for some minutes watching him silently; but he never stirred and she was too much frightened and surprised by his anger; and remorsefully impressed with a vague sense of her own wrong-doing, to dare address him further. so at last she got up and went away. she began to feel that she had been, somehow or other, very wicked, and that her sin had brought misery upon this man whom she loved. chapter xxvi. a popular preacher. what could isabel gilbert do? the fabric of all her dreams was shivered like a cobweb in a sudden wind, and floated away from her for ever. everybody had misunderstood her. even _he_, who should have been a demi-god in power of penetration as in every other attribute,--even he had wronged and outraged her, and never again could she look trustfully upward to the dark beauty of his face; never again could her hand rest, oh, so lightly, for one brief instant on his arm; never again could she tell him in childish confidence all the vague yearnings, the innocently-sentimental aspirations, of her childish soul. never any more. the bright ideal of her life had melted away from her like a spectral cloud of silvery spray hovering above an alpine waterfall, and had left behind only a cynical man of the world, who boldly asked her to run away from her husband, and was angry with her because she refused to comply with his cruel demand. not for one moment did the doctor's wife contemplate the possibility of taking the step which roland lansdell had proposed to her. far off--as far away from her as some dim half-forgotten picture of fairy-land--there floated a vision of what her life might have been with him, if she had been clotilde, or the glittering duchess, or lady gwendoline, or some one or other utterly different from herself. but the possibility of deliberately leaving her husband to follow the footsteps of this other man, was as far beyond her power of comprehension as the possibility that she might steal a handful of arsenic out of one of the earthenware jars in the surgery, and mix it with the sugar that sweetened george gilbert's matutinal coffee. she wandered away from thurston's crag, not following the meadow pathway that would have taken her homeward; but going anywhere, half-unconscious, wholly indifferent where she went; and thinking with unutterable sadness of her broken dreams. she had been so childish, so entirely childish, and had given herself up so completely to that one dear day-dream. i think her childhood floated away from her for ever in company with that broken dream; and that the grey dawn of her womanhood broke upon her, cold and chill, as she walked slowly away from the spot where roland lansdell lay face downwards on the grass, weeping over the ruin of _his_ dream. it seemed as if in that hour she crossed mr. longfellow's typical rivulet and passed on to the bleak and sterile country beyond. well may the maiden linger ere she steps across that narrow boundary; for the land upon this hither side is very bare and desolate as compared with the fertile gardens and pleasant meads she abandons for ever. the sweet age of enchantment is over; the fairy companions of girlhood, who were loveliest even when most they deluded, spread their bright wings and flutter away; and the grave genius of common sense--a dismal-looking person, who dresses in grey woollen stuff, warranted not to shrink under the ordeal of the wash-tub, and steadfastly abjures crinoline--stretches out her hand, and offers, with a friendly but uncompromising abruptness, to be the woman's future guide and monitress. isabel gilbert was a woman all at once; ten years older by that bleak afternoon's most bitter discovery. since there was no one in the world who understood her, since even he so utterly failed to comprehend her, it must be that her dreams were foolish and impossible of comprehension to any one but herself. but those foolish dreams had for ever vanished. she could never think of roland lansdell again as she had thought of him. all her fancies about him had been so many fond and foolish delusions. he was not the true and faithful knight who could sit for ever at the entrance of his hermitage gazing fondly at the distant convent-casement, which might or might not belong to his lost love's chamber. no; he was quite another sort of person. he was the fierce dissolute cavalier, with a cross-handled sword a yard and a half long, and pointed shoes with long cruel spurs and steel chain-work jingling and clanking as he strode across his castle-hall. he was the false and wicked lover who would have scaled the wall of hildegonde's calm retreat some fatal night, and would have carried the shrieking nun away, to go mad and throw herself into the rhine on the earliest opportunity. he was a heartless faust, ready to take counsel of mephistopheles and betray poor trusting gretchen. he was robert the devil, about whose accursed footsteps a whole graveyard of accusing spirits might arise at any moment. it may be that isabel did not admire mr. lansdell less when she thought of him thus; but there was an awful shuddering horror mingled with her admiration. she was totally unable to understand him as he really was--a benevolently disposed young man, desirous of doing as little mischief in the world as might be compatible with his being tolerably happy himself; and fully believing that no great or irreparable harm need result from his appropriation of another man's wife. the tears rolled slowly down mrs. gilbert's pale cheeks as she walked along the midlandshire lanes that afternoon. she did not weep violently, or abandon herself to any wild passion of grief. as yet she was quite powerless to realize the blankness of her future life, now that her dream was broken for ever. her grief was not so bitter as it had been on the day of roland's sudden departure from mordred. he had loved her--she knew that now; and the supreme triumph of that thought supported her in the midst of her sorrow. he had loved her. his love was not the sort of thing she had so often read of, and so fondly believed in; it was only the destroying passion of the false knight, the cruel fancy of the wicked squire in top-boots, whom she had frequently seen--per favour of a newspaper-order--from the back boxes of the surrey theatre. but he _did_ love her! he loved her so well as to cast himself on the ground and weep because she had rejected him; and the wicked squire in top-boots had never gone so far as that, generally contenting himself with more practical evidences of his vexation, such as the levying of an execution on the goods and chattels of the heroine's father, or the waylaying and carrying off of the heroine herself by hired ruffians. how oddly it happens that the worthy farmer in the chintz waistcoat is _always_ in arrear with his rent, and always stands in the relation of tenant to the dissolute squire! would mr. lansdell do anything of that kind? isabel gave a little shiver as she glanced at the lonely landscape, and thought how a brace of hireling scoundrels might spring suddenly across the hedge, and bear her off to a convenient postchaise. were there any postchaises in the world now, isabel wondered. a strange confusion of thoughts filled her mind. she could not become _quite_ a woman all in a moment; the crossing of the mystic brook is not so rapid an operation as that. some remnants of the old delusions hung about her, and merely took a new form. she sat down on the lower step of a stile to rest herself by-and-by, and smoothed back her hair, which had been blown about her face by the march wind, and re-tied the strings of her bonnet, before she went out on the high-road, that lay on the other side of the stile. when she did emerge upon the road, she found herself ever so far from home, and close to the model village where mr. raymond had given his simple entertainment of tea and pound-cake, and in which george gilbert had stood by her side pleading to her with such profound humility. poor george! the quiet aspect of the village-green, the tiny cottages, trim and bright in the fading march sunshine; the low wooden gate opening into the churchyard,--all these, so strange and yet so familiar, brought back the memory of a time that seemed unspeakably far away now. it was passion-week,--for easter fell very late in march this year,--and the model village being a worthy model in the matter of piety as well as in all other virtues, there was a great deal of church-going among the simple inhabitants. the bells were ringing for evening service now, as mrs. gilbert lingered in the road between the village and the churchyard; and little groups of twos and threes, and solitary old women in black bonnets, passed her by, as she loitered quite at a loss whither to go, or what to do. they looked at her with solemn curiosity expressed in their faces. she was a stranger there, though graybridge was only a few miles away; she was a stranger, and that alone, in any place so circumscribed as the model village, was enough to excite curiosity; and it may be that, over and above this, there was something in the look of her pale face and heavy eyelids, and a certain absent expression in her downcast eyes, calculated to arouse suspicion. even in the midst of her trouble she could see that people looked at her suspiciously; and all in a moment there flashed back upon her mind the cruel things that lady gwendoline pomphrey had said to her. yes; all at once she remembered those bitter sentences. she had made herself a subject for slanderous tongues, and the story of her wicked love for roland lansdell was on every lip. if _he_, who should have known her--if he before whom she had bared all the secrets of her sentimental soul--if even he thought so badly of her as to believe that she could abandon her husband and become the thing that mr. dombey believed his wife to be when he struck his daughter on the stairs--the sort of creature whom grave judge brandon met one night under a lamp-post in a london street--how could she wonder that other people slandered and despised her? very suddenly had the gates of paradise closed upon her: very swiftly had she been dropped down from the fairy regions of her fancy to this cold, hard, cruel workaday world; and being always prone to exaggeration, she fancied it even colder, harder, and more cruel than it was. she fancied the people pointing at her in the little street at graybridge; the stern rector preaching at her in his sunday sermon. she pictured to herself everything that is most bitterly demonstrative in the way of scorn and contumely. the days were past in which solemn elders of graybridge could send her out to wander here and there with bare bleeding feet and a waxen taper in her hand. there was no scarlet letter with which these people could brand her as the guilty creature they believed her to be; but short of this, what could they not do to her? she imagined it all: her husband would come to know what was thought of her, and to think of her as others thought, and she would be turned out of doors. the groups of quiet people--almost all of them were women, and very few of them were young--melted slowly into the shadowy church-porch, like the dusky unsubstantial figures in a dioramic picture. the bells were still ringing in the chill twilight; but the churchyard was very lonely now; and the big solemn yew-trees looked weird and ghost-like against the darkening grey sky. only one long low line of pale yellow light remained of the day that was gone! the day in which isabel had said farewell to roland lansdell! it was a real farewell; no lovers' quarrel, wherefrom should spring that re-renewal of love so dismally associated with the eton latin grammar. it was an eternal parting: for had he not told her to go away from him--to leave him for ever? not being the wicked thing for which he had mistaken her, she was nothing in the world for him. he did not require perpetual worship; he did not want her to retire to a convent, in order that he might enjoy himself for the rest of his existence by looking up at her window; he did not want her to sit beside a brazier of charcoal with her hand linked in his--and die. he was not like that delightful henry von kleist, who took his henriette to a pleasant inn about a mile from potsdam, supped gaily with her, and then shot her and himself beside a lake in the neighbourhood. mr. lansdell wanted nothing that was poetical or romantic, and had not even mentioned suicide in the course of his passionate talk. she went into the churchyard, and walked towards the little bridge upon which she had stood with george gilbert by her side. the wayverne flowed silently under the solid moss-grown arch; the wind had gone down by this time, and there was only now and then a faint shiver of the long dark rushes, as if the footsteps of the invisible dead, wandering in the twilight, had stirred them. she stood on the bridge, looking down at the quiet water. the opportunity had come now, if she really wanted to drown herself. happily for weak mankind, self-destruction is a matter in which opportunity and inclination very seldom go together. the doctor's wife was very miserable; but she did not feel quite prepared to take that decisive plunge which might have put an end to her earthly troubles, would they hear the splash yonder in the church, if she dropped quietly in among the rushes from the sloping bank under the shadow of the bridge? would they hear the water surging round her as she sank, and wonder what the sound meant, and then go on with their prayers, indifferent to the drowning creature, and absorbed by their devotions? she wondered what these people were like, who kept their houses so tidily, and went to church twice a day in passion-week, and never fell in love with roland lansdell. long ago, in her childhood, when she went to see a play, she had wondered about the people she met in the street; the people who were not going to the theatre. were they very happy? did they know that she had a free admission to the upper boxes of the adelphi, and envy her? how would _they_ spend the evening,--they who were not going to weep with mr. benjamin webster, or miss sarah woolgar? now she wondered about people who were not miserable like herself--simple commonplace people, who had no yearnings after a life of poetry and splendour. she thought of them as a racer, who had just run second for the derby, might think of a quiet pack-horse plodding along a dusty road and not wanting to win any race whatsoever. "even if they knew him, they wouldn't care about him," she thought. they did know him, perhaps,--saw him ride by their open windows, on a summer's afternoon, gorgeous on a two-hundred-guinea hack, and did not feel the world to be a blank desert when he was gone. did she wish to be like these people? no! amid all her sorrow she could acknowledge, in the words of the poet, that it was better to have loved and lost him, than never to have loved him at all. had she not lived her life, and was she not entitled to be a heroine for ever and ever by reason of her love and despair? for a long time she loitered on the bridge, thinking of all these things, and thinking very little of how she was to go back to graybridge, where her absence must have created some alarm by this time. she had often kept the surgeon waiting for his dinner before to-day; but she had never been absent when he ate it. there was a station at the model village; but there was no rail to graybridge; there was only a lumbering old omnibus, that conveyed railway passengers thither. isabel left the churchyard, and went to the little inn before which george had introduced her to his gardener and factotum. a woman standing at the door of this hostelry gave her all needful information about the omnibus, which did not leave the station till half-past eight o'clock; until that time she must remain where she was. so she went slowly back to the churchyard, and being tired of the cold and darkness without, crept softly into the church. the church was very old and very irregular. there were only patches of yellow light here and there, about the pulpit and reading-desk, up in the organ-loft, and near the vestry-door. a woman came out of the dense obscurity as isabel emerged from the porch, and hustled her into a pew; scandalized by her advent at so late a stage of the service, and eager to put her away somewhere as speedily as possible. it was a very big pew, square and high, and screened by faded curtains, hanging from old-fashioned brass rods. there were a great many hassocks, and a whole pile of prayer and hymn books in the darkest corner; and isabel, sitting amongst these, felt as completely hidden as if she had been in a tomb. the prayers were just finished,--the familiar prayers, which had so often fallen like a drowsy cadence of meaningless words upon her unheeding ears, while her erring and foolish thoughts were busy with the master of mordred priory. she heard the footsteps of the clergyman coming slowly along the matted aisle--the rustling of his gown as he drew it on his shoulders; she heard the door of the pulpit closed softly, and then a voice, a low earnest voice, that sounded tender and solemn in the stillness, recited the preliminary prayer. there are voices which make people cry,--voices which touch too acutely on some hidden spring within us, and open the floodgates of our tears; and the voice of the curate of hurstonleigh was one of these. he was only a curate; but he was very popular in the model village, and the rumour of his popularity had already spread to neighbouring towns and villages. people deserted their parish churches on a sunday afternoon and came to hear mr. austin colborne preach one of his awakening sermons. he was celebrated for awakening sermons. the stolid country people wept aloud sometimes in the midst of one of his discourses. he was always in earnest; tenderly earnest, sorrowfully earnest, terribly earnest sometimes. his life, too, outside the church was in perfect harmony with the precepts he set forth under the shadow of the dark oaken sounding-board. there are some men who can believe, who can look forward to a prize so great and wonderful as to hold the pain and trouble of the race of very small account when weighed against the hope of victory. austin colborne was one of these men. the priestly robes he wore had not been loosely shuffled on by him because there was no other lot in life within his reach. he had assumed his sacred office with all the enthusiasm of a loyola or an irving, and he knew no looking back. it was such a man as this whom people came to hear at the little church beside the wandering wayverne. it was such a man as this whose deep-toned voice fell with a strange power upon isabel gilbert's ears to-night. ah, now she could fancy louise de la vallière low on her knees in the black shadow of a gothic pillar, hearkening to the cry of the priest who called upon her to repent and be saved. for some little time she only heard the voice of the preacher--the actual words of his discourse fell blankly on her ear. at first it was only a beautiful voice, a grand and solemn voice, rising and sinking on its course like the distant murmur of mighty waves for ever surging towards the shore. then, little by little, the murmurs took a palpable form, and isabel gilbert found that the preacher was telling a story. ah, that story, that exquisite idyl, that solemn tragedy, that poem so perfect in its beauty, that a sentimental frenchman has only to garnish it with a few flowery periods, and lo, all the world is set reading it on a sudden, fondly believing that they have found something new. mr. austin colborne was very fond of dwelling on the loveliness of that sublime history, and more frequently founded his discourse upon some divine incident in the records of the four evangelists than on any obscure saying in st. paul's epistles to the corinthians or the hebrews. this is no place in which to dwell upon mr. austin colborne, or the simple christian creed it was his delight to illustrate. he was a christian, according to the purest and simplest signification of the word. his sermons were within the comprehension of a rustic or a child, yet full and deep enough in meaning to satisfy the strictest of logicians, the sternest of critics. heaven knows i write of him and of his teaching in all sincerity, and yet the subject seems to have so little harmony with the history of a foolish girl's errors and shortcomings, that i approach it with a kind of terror. i only know that isabel gilbert, weeping silently in the dark corner of the curtained pew, felt as she had never felt in all her graybridge church-going; felt at once distressed and comforted. was it strange that, all at once, isabel gilbert should open her ears to the sublime story, which, in one shape or other, she had heard so often? surely the history of all popular preachers goes far to demonstrate that heaven gives a special power to some voices. when whitfield preached the gospel to the miners at kingswood,--to rugged creatures who were little better than so many savages, but who, no doubt, in some shape or other, had heard that gospel preached to them before,--the scalding tears ploughed white channels upon the black cheeks as the men listened. at last the voice of all others that had power to move them arose, and melted the stubborn ignorant hearts. is it inspiration or animal magnetism which gives this power to some special persons? or is it not rather the force of faith, out of which is engendered a will strong enough to take hold of the wills of other people, and bend them howsoever it pleases? when danton, rugged and gigantic, thundered his hideous demands for new hecatombs of victims, there must have been something in the revolutionary monster strong enough to trample out the common humanity in those who heard him, and mould a mighty populace to his own will and purpose as easily as a giant might fashion a mass of clay. surely mirabeau was right. there can be nothing impossible to the man who believes in himself. the masses of this world, being altogether incapable of lasting belief in anything, are always ready to be beaten into any shape by the chosen individual who _believes_, and is thus of another nature--something so much stronger than all the rest as to seem either a god or a demon. cromwell appears, and all at once a voice is found for the wrongs of a nation. see how the king and his counsellors go down like corn before the blast of the tempest, while the man with a dogged will, and a sublime confidence in his own powers, plants himself at the helm of a disordered state, and wins for himself the name of tiger of the seas. given mr. john law, with ample confidence in his own commercial schemes, and all france is rabid with a sudden madness, beating and trampling one another to death in the rue quincampoix. given a luther, and all the old papistical abuses are swept away like so much chaff before the wind. given a wesley, the believer, the man who is able to preach forty thousand sermons and travel a hundred thousand miles, and, behold, a million disciples exist in this degenerate day to bear testimony to his power. was it strange, then, that isabel gilbert, so dangerously susceptible of every influence, should be touched and melted by mr. colborne's eloquence? she had not been religiously brought up. in the camberwell household sunday had been a day on which people got up later than usual, and there were pies or puddings to be made. it had been a day associated with savoury baked meats, and a beer-stained "weekly dispatch" newspaper borrowed from the nearest tavern. it had been a day on which mr. sleaford slept a good deal on the sofa, excused himself from the trouble of shaving, and very rarely put on his boots. raffish-looking men had come down to camberwell in the sunday twilight, to sit late into the night smoking and drinking, and discoursing in a mysterious jargon known to the household as "business talk." sometimes of a summer evening, mrs. sleaford, awakened to a sense of her religious duties, would suddenly run a raid amongst the junior branches of the family, and hustle off isabel and one or two of the boys to evening service at the big bare church by the canal. but the spasmodic attendance at divine service had very little effect upon miss sleaford, who used to sit staring at the holes in her gloves; or calculating how many yards of riband, at how much per yard, would be required for the trimming of any special bonnet to which her fancy leaned; or thinking how a decent-looking young man up in the gallery might be a stray nobleman, with a cab and tiger waiting somewhere outside the church, who would perhaps fall in love with her before the sermon was finished. she had not been religiously brought up; and the church-going at graybridge had been something of a bore to her; or at best a quiet lull in her life, which left her free to indulge the foolish vagaries of her vagabond fancy. but now, for the first time, she was touched and melted; the weak sentimental heart was caught at the rebound. she was ready to be anything in the world except a commonplace matron, leading a dull purposeless life at graybridge. she wanted to find some shrine, some divinity, who would accept her worship; some temple lifted high above the sordid workaday earth, in which she might kneel for ever and ever. if not roland lansdell, why then christianity. she would have commenced her novitiate that night had she been in a roman catholic land, where convent-doors were open to receive such as her. as it was, she could only sit quietly in the pew and listen. she would have liked to go to the vestry when the service came to an end, and cast herself at the feet of the curate, and make a full confession of her sins; but she had not sufficient courage for that. the curate might misunderstand her, as roland lansdell had done. he might see in her only an ordinarily wicked woman, who wanted to run away from her husband. vague yearnings towards christian holiness filled her foolish breast; but as yet she knew not how to put them into any shape. when the congregation rose to leave the church, she lingered to the last, and then crept slowly away, resolved to come again to hear this wonderful preacher. she went to the little station whence the graybridge omnibus was to start at half-past eight; and after waiting a quarter of an hour took her place in a corner of the vehicle. it was nearly ten when she rang the bell at her husband's gate, and mrs. jeffson came out with a grave face to admit her. "mr. george had his dinner and tea alone, ma'am," she said in tones of awful reproof, while isabel stood before the little glass in the sitting-room taking off her bonnet; "and he's gone out again to see some sick folks in the lanes on the other side of the church. he was right down uneasy about you." "i've been to hurstonleigh, to hear mr. colborne preach," isabel answered, with a very feeble effort to appear quite at her ease. "i had heard so much about his preaching, and i wanted so to hear him." it was true that she had heard austin colborne talked of amongst her church-going acquaintance at graybridge; but it was quite untrue that she had ever felt the faintest desire to hear him preach. had not her whole life been bounded by a magic circle, of which roland lansdell was the resplendent centre? chapter xxvii. "and now i live, and now my life is done!" george gilbert accepted his wife's explanation of her prolonged absence on that march afternoon. she had carried her books to thurston's crag, and had sat there reading, while the time slipped by unawares, and it was too late to come back to dinner; and so she had bethought herself that there was evening service at hurstonleigh during passion-week, and she might hear mr. colborne preach. george gilbert received this explanation as he would have received any other statement from the lips in whose truth he believed. but mrs. jeffson treated her young mistress with a stately politeness that wounded isabel to the quick. she endured it very meekly, however; for she felt that she had been wicked, and that all her sufferings were the fruit of her own sin. she stayed at home for the rest of the week, except when she attended the good-friday's services at graybridge church with her husband; and on sunday afternoon she persuaded george to accompany her to hurstonleigh. she was making her feeble effort to be good; and if the enthusiasm awakened in her breast by mr. colborne's preaching died out a little after she left the church, there was at the worst something left which made her a better woman than she had been before. but did she forget roland lansdell all this time? no; with bitter anguish and regret she thought of the man who had been as powerless to comprehend her as he was intellectually her superior. "he knows so much, and yet did not know that i was not a wicked woman," she thought, in simple wonder. she did not understand roland's sceptical manner of looking at everything, which could perceive no palpable distinction between wrong and right. she could not comprehend that this man had believed himself justified in what he had done. but she thought of him incessantly. the image of his pale reproachful face--so pale, so bitterly reproachful--never left her mental vision. the sound of his voice bidding her leave him was perpetually in her ears. he had loved her: yes; however deep his guilt, he had loved her, and had wept because of her. there were times when the memory of his tears, flashing back upon her suddenly, nearly swept away all her natural purity, her earnest desire to be good; there were times when she wanted to go to him and fall at his feet, crying out, "oh, what am i, that my life should be counted against your sorrow? how can it matter what becomes of me, if you are happy?" there were times when the thought of roland lansdell's sorrow overcame every other thought in isabel gilbert's mind. until the day when he had thrown himself upon the ground in a sudden passion of grief, she had never realized the possibility of his being unhappy because of her. for him to love her in a patronizing far-off kind of manner was very much. was it not the condescension of a demigod, who smiles upon some earthly creature? was it not a reversal of the story of diana and endymion? it was not the goddess, but the god, who came down to earth. but that he should love her desperately and passionately, and be grief-stricken because he could not win her for his own,--this was a stupendous fact, almost beyond isabel gilbert's comprehension. sometimes she thought he was only the wicked squire who pretends to be very much in earnest in the first act, and flings aside his victim with scorn and contumely in the second. sometimes the whole truth burst upon her, sudden as a thunder-clap, and she felt that she had indeed done roland lansdell a great and cruel wrong. * * * * * and where was he all this time--the man who had judged isabel gilbert by a common standard, and had believed her quite ready to answer to his summons whenever he chose to call her to his side? who shall tell the bitter sinful story of his grief and passion? never once in all his anger against lady gwendoline pomphrey, when she jilted him for the sake of young lord heatherland, had he felt so desperate a rage, so deep an indignation, as that which now possessed him when he thought of isabel gilbert. wounded in his pride, his vanity; shaken in the self-confidence peculiar to a man of the world; he could not all at once forgive this woman who had so entirely duped and deceived him. he was mad with mingled anger and disappointment when he thought of the story of the last twelve-month. the bitterness of all his struggles with himself; his heroic resolutions--young and fresh in the early morning, old and grey and wasted before the brief day was done--came back to him; and he laughed aloud to think how useless all those perplexities and hesitations had been, when the obstacle, the real resistance, to his sinful yearnings was _here_--here, in the shape of a simple woman's will. there may be some men who would not have thought the story finished with that farewell under lord thurston's oak; but roland lansdell was not one of those men. he had little force of mind or strength of purpose with which to fight against temptation: but he had, on the other hand, few of the qualifications which make a tempter. so long as he had been uncertain of himself, and the strength of his love for isabel, he had indeed dissembled, so far as to make a poor show of indifference. so long as he meant to go away from midlandshire without "doing any harm," he had thought it a venial sin to affect some little friendship for the husband of the woman he loved. but from the moment in which all vacillation gave way before a settled purpose--from the hour of his return to midlandshire--he had made no secret of his feelings or intentions. he had urged this girl to do a dishonourable act, but he had used no dishonourable means. no words can tell how bitterly he felt his disappointment. for the first time in his life this favourite of bountiful nature, this spoiled child of fortune, found there was something in the world he could not have, something that was denied to his desire. it was such a very little time since he had bewailed the extinction of all youthful hope and ardour in pretty cynical little verses, all sparkling with scraps of french and latin, and spanish and italian, cunningly woven into the native pattern of the rhyme. it was only a few months since he had amused himself by scribbling melodious lamentations upon the emptiness of life in general, and that "mortal coldness of the soul" to which a young man of seven-and-twenty, with a great deal of money, and nothing particular to do, is especially subject. ah, how pitilessly he had laughed at other men's tenderest sentiments! what cruel aphorisms from scarron and rochefoucauld, and swift and voltaire, and wilkes and mirabeau, he had quoted upon the subject of love and woman! how resolutely he had refused to believe in the endurance of passion! how coldly he had sneered at the holy power of affection! he had given himself cynical airs upon the strength of his cousin's falsehood: and had declared there was no truth in woman, because lady gwendoline pomphrey had been true to the teaching of her life, and had tried to make the best market of her saxon face and her long ringlets. and now he was utterly false to his own creed. he was in love, passionately, earnestly in love, with a foolish sentimental little woman, whose best charm was--what? that was the question which he tried in vain to answer. he gnashed his teeth in an access of rage when he sought to discover why he loved this woman. other women more beautiful, and how much more accomplished, had spread enchanted webs of delicious flattery and tenderness about him; and he had broken through the impalpable meshes, and had gone away unscathed from the flashing glances of bright eyes, unmoved by the smiles for which other men were ready to peril so much. why was it that his heart yearned for this woman's presence? she was in no way his intellectual equal: she was not a companion for him, even at her best, when she murmured pretty little feminine truisms about shelley and byron. in all his loiterings by lord thurston's waterfall, he could recall no wise or witty saying that had ever fallen from those childish lips. and yet, and yet--she was something to him that no other woman had ever been, or, as he firmly believed, ever could become. oh, for one upward glance of those dark eyes, so shyly tender, so pensively serene! oh, for the deep delight of standing by her side upon the border of a still italian lake; for the pure happiness of opening all the wild realms of wisdom and poetry before those youthful feet! and then in after years, when she had risen little by little to the standard which the world would deem befitting his wife,--then, fate, or chance, the remote abstraction most men call providence, having favoured the truest and purest love upon this earth,--then he might proclaim the ownership of the prize he had won for himself; then he might exhibit before shallow, sceptical mankind, one bright and grand example of a perfect union. mr. lansdell's thoughts wandered very much after this fashion as he wore out the long dreary days in his solitary home. he went nowhere; he received no one. he gave the servants standing orders to say that he was out, or engaged, to whomsoever came to mordred. his portmanteaus were packed, and had been packed ever since the night of his last meeting with isabel gilbert. every day he gave fresh orders respecting his departure. he would have the carriage at such an hour, to catch a certain train: but when the hour came, the groom was sent back to the stables, and mr. lansdell lingered yet another day at mordred priory. he could not go away. in vain, in vain he wrestled with himself: most bitterly did he despise and hate himself for his unmanly weakness; but he could not go away. she would repent: she would write to summon him to another meeting beneath the bare old oak. with an imagination as ardent as her own, he could picture that meeting; he could almost hear her voice as he fancied the things she would say. "my love, my love!" she would cry, clasping those slender hands about his arm; "i cannot live without you: i cannot, i cannot!" the weeks went slowly by, and mr. lansdell's body-servant had what that individual was pleased to designate "a precious time of it." never was gentleman's gentleman so tormented by the whims and vagaries of his master. one day "we" were off to swisserland--mr. lansdell's valet always called it swisserland--and we were to go as fast as the railway service could carry us, and not get a wink of sleep anywheres, except in railway-carriages, until we got to paw or bas-el--the valet called it bas-el. another day we were going to st. petersburg, with our friend hawkwood, the queen's messenger; and a pretty rate we were going at, knocking the very lives out of us. sometimes we were for tearing across the balkan range, on those blessed turkish horses, that jolt a man's life half out of him; or we were going on a yachting-cruise in the mediterranean; or fishing in the wildest regions of norway. and all about a trumpery minx at graybridge! mr. lansdell's body-servant would wind up, with unmitigated contempt: all about a young person who was not fit to hold a candle to sarah jane the housemaid, or eliza in the laundry! alas for roland lansdell, the servants who waited upon him knew quite as well as he knew himself the nature of the fever which had made him so restless! they knew that he was in love with a woman who could never be his wife; and they despised him for his folly, and discussed all the phases of his madness over their ponderous meat-suppers in the servants' hall. the weeks went slowly by. to roland, the days were weary and the nights intolerable. he went up to london several times, always leaving mordred alone and at abnormal hours, and every time intending to remain away. but he could not: a sudden fever seized him as the distance grew wider between him and midlandshire. she would repent of her stern determination: she would write to him, avowing that she could not live without him. ah, how long he had expected that letter! she would grow suddenly unable to endure her life, perhaps, and would be rash and desperate enough to go to mordred in the hope of seeing him. this would happen while he was away: the chance of happiness would be offered to him, and he would not be there to seize it. she, his love, the sole joy and treasure of his life, would be there, trembling on his threshold, and he would not be near to welcome and receive her. the people at the clarendon thought that mr. lansdell had gone mad, so sudden were his flights from their comfortable quarters. and all this time he could hear nothing of the woman he loved. he could not talk to his servants, and he had closed his doors against all visitors. what was she doing? was she at graybridge still? was she leading the old quiet life, sitting in that shabby parlour, where he had sat by her side? he remembered the pattern of the kidderminster carpet, the limp folds of the muslin-curtains, the faded crimson silk that decorated the front of the piano upon which she had sometimes played to him, oh, so indifferently. day after day he haunted the bridge under lord thurston's oak; day after day he threw tribute of cigar-ends into the waterfall, while he waited in the faint hope that the doctor's wife might wander thither. oh, how cruel she was; how cruel! if she had ever loved him, she too would have haunted that spot. she would have come to the place associated with his memory: she would have come, as he came, in the hope of another meeting. sometimes mr. lansdell ventured to ride along the little street at graybridge and through the dusty lane in which the doctor's house stood. on horseback the master of mordred priory was almost on a level with the bedroom windows of george gilbert's habitation, and could look down into the little parlour where isabel was wont to sit. once and once only he saw her there, sitting before the table with some needlework in her hands, so deeply absorbed, as it seemed, in her commonplace labour that she did not see the cavalier who rode so slowly past her window. how should he know how often she had run eagerly to that very window--her face pale, her heart beating tempestuously--only to find that it was not his horse whose hoof she had heard in the lane? perhaps the sight of george gilbert's wife sitting at her needlework gave roland lansdell a sharper pang than he would have felt had he seen two mutes from wareham keeping guard at the gate, and mrs. gilbert's coffin being carried out at the door. she was not dead, then: she could live and be happy, while he----! well, he was not dead himself, certainly; but he was the very next thing to being dead; and he felt indignant at the sight of isabel's apparent composure. he walked to lowlands in the course of a week or so after this, and strolled into the drawing-rooms with some undefined intention of flirting desperately with his cousin gwendoline; of making her an offer of marriage, perhaps. why should he not marry? he could scarcely be more miserable than he was; and a marriage with gwendoline would be some kind of revenge upon isabel. he was inclined to do anything desperate and foolish, if by so doing he could sting that cruel, obdurate heart. was this generous? ah, no. but then, in spite of all that is said and sung in its honour, love is not such a very generous passion. roland found his cousin alone, in the long low morning-room looking out into her flower-garden. she was making wax flowers, and looked almost as tired of her employment as if she had been some poor little artisan toiling for scanty wages. "i'm very glad you have interrupted me, roland," she said, pushing away all the paraphernalia of her work; "they are very tiresome; and, after all, the roses are as stiff as camellias, and at the very best a vase of wax-flowers only reminds one of an hotel at a watering-place. they always have wax-flowers and bohemian-glass candelabra at sea-side hotels. and now tell me what you have been doing, roland; and why you have never come to us. we are so terribly dull." "and do you think my presence would enliven you?" demanded mr. lansdell, with a sardonic laugh. "no, gwendoline; i have lived my life, and i am only a dreary bore whom people tolerate in their drawing-rooms out of deference to the west-end tailor who gets me up. i am only so much old clothes, and i have to thank mr. poole for any position that i hold in the world. what is the use of me, gwendoline? what am i good for? do i ever say anything new, or think anything new, or do anything for which any human creature has cause to say, thank you? i have lived my life. does this kind of thing usually grow old, i wonder?" he asked, striking himself lightly on the breast. "does it wear well? shall i live to write gossiping old letters and collect china? will christie and manson sell my pictures when i am dead? and shall i win a posthumous reputation by reason of the prices given for my wines, especially tokay?--all connoisseurs go in for tokay. what is to become of me, gwendoline? will any woman have pity upon me and marry me, and transform me into a family man, with a mania for short-horned cattle and subsoil-drainage? is there any woman in all the world capable of caring a little for such a worn-out wretch as i?" it almost depended upon gwendoline pomphrey whether this speech should constitute an offer of marriage. a pretty lackadaisical droop of the head; a softly-murmured, "oh, roland, i cannot bear to hear you talk like this; i cannot bear to think such qualities as yours can be so utterly wasted;" any sentimental, womanly little speech, however stereotyped; and the thing would have been done. but lady gwendoline was a great deal too proud to practise any of those feminine arts affected by manoeuvring mothers. she might jilt a commoner for the chance of winning a marquis; but even that she would only do in a grand off-hand way befitting a daughter of the house of ruysdale. she looked at her cousin now with something like contempt in the curve of her thin upper lip. she loved this man perhaps as well as the doctor's wife loved him, or it may be even with a deeper and more enduring love; but she was of his world, and could see his faults and shortcomings as plainly as he saw them himself. "i am very sorry you have sunk so low as this, roland," she said, gravely. "i fancy it would be much better for you if you employed your life half as well as other men, your inferiors in talent, employ their lives. you were never meant to become a cynical dawdler in a country house. if i were a man, a fortnight in the hunting season would exhaust the pleasures of midlandshire for me; i would be up and doing amongst my compeers." she looked, not at roland, but across the flower-beds in the garden as she spoke, with an eager yearning gaze in her blue eyes. her beauty, a little sharp of outline for a woman, would have well become a young reformer, enthusiastic and untiring in a noble cause. there are these mistakes sometimes--these _mesalliances_ of clay and spirit. a bright ambitious young creature, with the soul of a pitt, sits at home and works sham roses in berlin wool; while her booby brother is thrust out into the world to fight the mighty battle. the cousins sat together for some time, talking of all manner of things. it was a kind of relief to roland to talk to some one--to some one who was not likely to lecture him, or to pry into the secrets of his heart. he did not know how very plainly those secrets were read by gwendoline pomphrey. he did not know that he had aroused a scornful kind of anger in that proud heart by his love for isabel gilbert. "have you seen anything of your friends lately-that graybridge surgeon and his wife, whom we met one day last summer at mordred?" lady gwendoline asked by-and-by, with supreme carelessness. she had no intention of letting roland go away with his wound unprobed. "no; i have seen very little of them," mr. lansdell answered. he was not startled by lady gwendoline's question: he was perpetually thinking of isabel, and felt no surprise at any allusion made to her by other people. "i have not seen mr. gilbert since i returned to england." "indeed! i thought he had inspired you with an actual friendship for him: though i must confess, for my own part, i never met a more commonplace person. my maid, who is an intolerable gossip, tells me that mrs. gilbert has been suddenly seized with a religions mania, and attends all the services at hurstonleigh. the midlandshire people seem to have gone mad about that mr. colborne. i went to hear him last sunday myself, and was very much pleased. i saw mr. gilbert's wife sitting in a pew near the pulpit, with her great unmeaning eyes fixed upon the curate's face all through the sermon. she is just the sort of person to fall in love with a popular preacher." mr. lansdell's face flushed a vivid scarlet, and then grew pale. "with her great unmeaning eyes fixed upon the curate's face." those wondrous eyes that had so often looked up at him, mutely eloquent, tenderly pensive. oh, had he been fooled by his own vanity? was this woman a sentimental coquette, ready to fall in love with any man who came across her path, learned in stereotyped schoolgirl phrases about platonic affection? lady gwendoline's shaft went straight home to his heart. he tried to talk about a few commonplace subjects with a miserable assumption of carelessness; and then, looking suddenly up at the clock on the chimney-piece, made a profuse apology for the length of his visit, and hurried away. it was four o'clock when he left the gates of lowlands, and the next day was sunday. "i will see for myself," he muttered, as he walked along a narrow lane, slashing the low hedge-rows with his stick as he went; "i will see for myself to-morrow." chapter xxviii. trying to be good. the sunday after roland lansdell's visit to his cousin was a warm may day, and the woodland lanes and meadows through which the master of mordred priory walked to hurstonleigh were bright with wild-flowers. nearly two months had gone by since he and the doctor's wife bad parted on the dull march afternoon which made a crisis in isabel's life. the warm breath of the early summer fanned the young man's face as he strolled through the long grass under the spreading branches of elm and beech. he had breakfasted early, and had set out immediately after that poor pretence of eating and drinking. he had set out from mordred in feverish haste; and now that he had walked two or three miles, he looked wan and pale in the vivid light of the bright may morning. to-day he looked as if his cynical talk about himself was not altogether such sentimental nonsense as genial, practical mr. raymond thought it. he looked tired, worn, mentally and physically, like a man who has indeed lived his life. looking at him this morning, young, handsome, clever, and prosperous though he was, there were very few people who would have ventured to prophesy for him a bright and happy existence, a long and useful career. he had a wan, faded, unnatural look in the summer daylight, like a lamp that has been left burning all night. he had only spoken the truth that day in the garden at mordred. the lansdells had never been a long-lived race; and a look that lurked somewhere or other in the faces of all the portraits at the priory might have been seen in the face of roland lansdell to-day. he was tired, very tired. he had lived too fast, and had run through his heritage of animal spirits and youthful enthusiasm like the veriest spendthrift who squanders a fortune in a few nights spent at a gaming-house. the nights are very brilliant while they last, riotous with a wild excitement that can only be purchased at this monstrous cost. but, oh, the blank grey mornings, the freezing chill of that cheerless dawn, from which the spendthrift's eyes shrink appalled when the night is done! roland lansdell was most miserably tired of himself, and all the world except isabel gilbert. life, which is so short when measured by art, science, ambition, glory; life, which always closes too soon upon the statesman or the warrior, whether he dies in the prime of life, like peel, or flourishes a sturdy evergreen like palmerston; whether he perishes like wolfe on the heights of quebec, or sinks to his rest like wellington in his simple dwelling by the sea: life, so brief when estimated by a noble standard, is cruelly long when measured by the empty pleasures of an idle worldling with fifteen thousand a year. emile angier has very pleasantly demonstrated that the world is much smaller for a rich man than it is for a poor one. my lord the millionaire rushes across wide tracts of varied landscape asleep in the padded corner of a first-class carriage, and only stops for a week or so here and there in great cities, to be bored almost to death by cathedrals and valhallas, picture-galleries and ruined roman baths, "done" in the stereotyped fashion. while the poorer traveller, jogging along out-of-the-way country roads, with his staff in his hand, and his knapsack on his shoulder, drops upon a hundred pleasant nooks in this wide universe, and can spend a lifetime agreeably in seeing the same earth that the millionaire, always booked and registered all the way through, like his luggage, grows tired of in a couple of years. we have only to read sterne's "sentimental journey" and dickens's "uncommercial traveller," in order to find out how much there is in the world for the wanderer who has eyes to see. read the story of mr. dickens's pedestrian rambles, and then read william beckford's delicious discontented _blasé_ letters, and see the difference between the great writer, for whom art is long and life is only too short, and the man of pleasure, who squandered all the wealth of his imagination upon the morbid phantasma of "vathek," and whose talent could find no higher exercise than the planning of objectionable towers. the lesson which mr. lansdell was called upon to learn just now was a very difficult one. for the first time in his life he found that there was something in the world that he could not have; for the first time he discovered what it was to wish wildly, madly for one precious treasure out of all the universe; and to wish in vain. this morning he was not such a purposeless wanderer as he usually was; he was going to hurstonleigh church, in the hope of seeing isabel gilbert, and ascertaining for himself whether there was any foundation for lady gwendoline's insinuation. he wanted to ascertain this; but above all, he wanted to _see_ her--only to see her; to look at the pale face and the dark eyes once more. yes, though she were the basest and shallowest-hearted coquette in all creation. mr. lansdell was doomed to be disappointed that morning, for the doctor's wife was not at hurstonleigh church. graybridge would have been scandalized if mr. and mrs. gilbert had not attended morning service in their own parish; so it was only in the afternoon or evening that isabel was free to worship at the feet of the popular preacher. the church was very full in the morning, and roland sat in a pew near the door, waiting patiently until the service concluded. isabel might be lurking somewhere in the rambling old edifice, though he had not been able to see her. he listened very attentively to the sermon, and bent his head approvingly once or twice during mr. colborne's discourse. he had heard so many bad sermons, delivered in divers languages, during his wandering existence, that he had no wish to depreciate a good one. when all was over, he stood at the door of his pew, watching the congregation file slowly and quietly out of the church, and looking for isabel. but she was not there. when the church was quite empty, he breathed a long regretful sigh, and then followed the rest of the congregation. "she will come in the afternoon, perhaps," he thought. "oh, how i love her! what a weak pitiful wretch i must be to feel like this; to feel this sinking at my heart because she is not here; to consider all the universe so much emptiness because her face is missing!" he went away into a secluded corner of the churchyard, a shadowy corner, where there was an angle in the old wall, below which the river crept in and out among the sedges. here the salutations of the congregation loitering about the church-door seemed only a low distant hum; here mr. lansdell could sit at his ease upon the bank, staring absently at the blue wayverne, and thinking of his troubles. the distant murmur of voices, the sound of footsteps, and the rustling of women's light garments in the summer breeze died away presently, and a death-like stillness fell upon the churchyard. all hurstonleigh was at dinner, being a pious village that took its sabbath meal early, and dined chiefly on cold meats and crisp salads. the place was very still: and roland lansdell, lolling idly with his back against the moss-grown wall, had ample leisure for contemplation. what did he think of during those two long hours in which he sat in the churchyard waiting for the afternoon service? what did he think of? his wasted life; the good things he might have done upon this earth? no! his thoughts dwelt with a fatal persistency upon one theme. he thought of what his life might have been, if isabel gilbert had not balked all his plans of happiness. he thought of how he might have been sitting, that very day, at that very hour, on one of the fairest islands in the mediterranean, with the woman he loved by his side: if she had chosen, if she had only chosen that it should be so. and he had been so mistaken in her, so deluded by his own fatuity, as to believe that any obstacle on her part was utterly out of the question. he had believed that it was only for him to weigh the matter in the balance and decide the turning of the scale. he sat by the water listening to the church bells as they rang slowly out upon the tranquil atmosphere. it was one of those bright summer days which come sometimes at the close of may, and the sky above hurstonleigh church was cloudless. when the bells had been ringing for a long time, slow footsteps sounded on the gravel walks upon the other side of the churchyard, with now and then the creaking of a gate or the murmur of voices. the people were coming to church. roland's heart throbbed heavily in his breast. was _she_ amongst them? ah, surely he would have recognized her lightest foot-fall even at that distance. should he go and stand by the gate, to make sure of seeing her as she came in? no, he could not make a show of himself before all those inquisitive country people; he would wait till the service began, and then go into the church. that half-hour, during which the bells swung to and fro in the old steeple with a weary monotonous clang, seemed intolerably long to roland lansdell; but at last, at last, all was quiet, and the only bell to be heard in the summer stillness was the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell far away in the sunlit meadows. mr. lansdell got up as the clock struck three, and walked at a leisurely pace to the church. mr. colborne was reading that solemn invitation to the wicked man to repent of his wickedness as the squire of mordred went into the low porch. the penetrating voice reached the remotest corners of the old building; and yet its tone was low and solemn as an exhortation by a dying man's bed. the church was not by any means so full as it had been in the morning; and there was none of that fluttering noise of bonnet-strings and pocket-handkerchiefs which is apt to disturb the quiet of a crowded edifice. the pew-opener--always on the lookout to hustle stray intruders into pews--pounced immediately upon mr. lansdell. "i should like to sit up-stairs," he whispered, dropping a half-crown into her hand; "can you put me somewhere up-stairs?" he had reflected that from the gallery he should be better able to see isabel, if she was in the church. the woman curtsied and nodded, and then led the way up the broad wooden stairs: where would she not have put mr. lansdell for such a donation as that which he had bestowed upon her! the gallery at hurstonleigh church was a very special and aristocratic quarter. it consisted only of half-a-dozen roomy old pews at one end of the church, immediately opposite the altar, and commanding an excellent view of the pulpit. the chief families of the neighbourhood occupied these six big open pews; and the common herd in the aisles below contemplated these aristocratic persons admiringly in the pauses of the service. as the grand families in the outskirts of hurstonleigh were not quite such unbating church-goers as the model villagers themselves, these gallery-pews were not generally filled of an afternoon; and it was into one of these that the grateful pew-opener ushered mr. lansdell. she was there; yes, she was there. she was alone, in a pew near the pulpit, on her knees, with her hands clasped and her eyes looking upwards. the high old-fashioned pew shut her in from the congregation about her, but mr. lansdell could look down upon her from his post of observation in the gallery. her face was pale and worn, and her eyes looked larger and brighter than when he had last seen her. was she in a consumption? ah, no; it was only the eager yearning soul which was always consuming itself; it was no physical illness, but the sharp pain of a purely mental struggle that had left those traces on her face. her lover watched her amidst the kneeling congregation; and a kind of holy exaltation in her face reminded him of pictures of saints and angels that he had seen abroad. was it real, that exalted expression of the pale still face? was it real, or had she begun a new flirtation, a little platonic sentimentalism in favour of the popular preacher? "the fellow has something in him, and is not by any means bad-looking," thought mr. lansdell; "i wonder whether she is laying traps for him with her great yellow-black eyes?" and then in the next moment he thought how, if that look in her pale face were real, and she was really striving to be good,--how then? had he any right to come into that holy place? for the place was holy, if only by virtue of the simple prayers so simply spoken by happy and pious creatures who were able to believe. had he any right to come there and trouble this girl in the midst of her struggle to forget him? "i think she loved me," he mused; "surely i could not be mistaken in that; surely i have known too many coquettes in my life to be duped by one at the last! yes, i believe she loved me." the earlier prayers and the psalms were over by this time; and mrs. gilbert was seated in her pew facing the gallery, but with the pulpit and reading-desk between. mr. colborne began to read the first lesson; and there was a solemn hush in the church. roland was seized with a sudden desire that isabel should see him. he wanted to see the recognition of him in her face. might he not learn the depth of her love, the strength of her regret, by that one look of recognition? a green serge curtain hung before him. he pushed the folds aside; and the brazen rings made a little clanging noise as they slipped along the rod. the sound was loud enough to startle the woman whom mr. lansdell was watching so intently. she looked up and recognized him. he saw a white change flit across her face; he saw her light muslin garments fluttered by a faint shiver; and then in the next moment she was looking demurely downwards at the book on her lap, something as she had looked on that morning when he first met her under lord thurston's oak. all through the service roland lansdell sat watching her. he made no pretence of joining in the devotions of the congregation; but he disturbed no one. he only sat, grim and sombre-looking, staring down at that one pale face in the pew near the pulpit. a thousand warring thoughts and passionate emotions waged in his breast. he loved her so much that he could not be chivalrous; he could not even be just or reasonable. all through the service he sat watching the face of the woman he loved. if austin colborne could have known how strangely his earnest, pleading words fell upon the ears of two of his listeners that afternoon! isabel gilbert sat very quietly under all the angry fire of that dark gaze. only now and then were her eyelids lifted; only now and then did her eyes steal one brief imploring glance at the face in the gallery. in all the church she could see nothing but that face. it absorbed and blotted out all else: and shone down upon her, grand and dazzling, as of old. she was trying to be good. for the last two months she had been earnestly trying to be good. there was nothing else for her in the world but goodness, seeing that he was lost to her--seeing that a romantic beatrice-portinari kind of existence was an impossibility. if she had been a dweller in a catholic country, she would have gone into a convent; as it was, she could only come to hurstonleigh to hear mr. colborne, whose enthusiasm answered to the vague aspirations of her own ignorant heart. she was trying to be good. she and worthy plain-spoken mrs. jeffson were on the best possible terms now, for the doctor's wife had taken to staying at home a great deal, and had requested honest tilly to instruct her in the art of darning worsted socks. would the sight of the wicked squire's dark reproachful face undo all the work of these two months? surely not. to meet him once more--to hear his voice--to feel the strong grasp of his hand--ah, what deep joy! but what good could come of such a meeting? she could never confide in him again. it would be only new pain--wasted anguish. besides, was there not some glory, some delight, in trying to be good? she felt herself a louise de la vallière standing behind a grating in the convent-parlour, while a kingly louis pleaded and stormed on the other side of the iron bars. some such thoughts as these sustained her all through that afternoon service. the sermon was over; the blessing had been spoken; the congregation began to disperse slowly and quietly. would he go now? would he linger to meet her and speak to her? would he go away at once? he did linger, looking at her with an appealing expression in his haggard face. he stood up, as if waiting until she should leave her pew, in order to leave his at the same moment. but she never stirred. ah, if louise de la vallière suffered as much as that! what wonder that she became renowned for ever in sentimental story! little by little the congregation melted out of the aisle. the charity boys from the neighbourhood of the organ-loft came clumping down the stairs. still mr. lansdell stood waiting and watching the doctor's wife in the pew below. still isabel gilbert kept her place, rigid and inflexible, until the church was quite empty! then mr. lansdell looked at her--only one look--but with a world of passion concentrated in its dark fury. he looked at her, slowly folding his arms, and drawing himself to his fullest height. he shrugged his shoulders, with one brief contemptuous movement, as if he flung some burden off him by the gesture, and then turned and left the pew. mrs. gilbert heard his firm tread upon the stairs, and she rose from her seat in time to see him pass out of the porch. it is very nice to have a place in romantic story: but there are some bitter pangs to be endured in the life of a mademoiselle de la vallière. chapter xxix. the first whisper of the storm. there was no omnibus to take mrs. gilbert back to graybridge after the service at hurstonleigh; but there had been some graybridge people at church, and she found them lingering in the churchyard talking to some of the model villagers, enthusiastic in their praises of mr. colborne's eloquence. amongst these graybridge people was miss sophronia burdock, the maltster's daughter, very radiant in a bright pink bonnet, so vivid as almost to extinguish her freckles, and escorted by young mr. pawlkatt, the surgeon's son, and his sister, a sharp-nosed, high-cheek-boned damsel, who looked polite daggers at the doctor's wife. was not mr. george gilbert a rising man in graybridge? and was it likely that the family of his rival should have any indulgence for the shortcomings of his pale-faced wife? but miss sophronia was in the humour to heap coals of fire on the head of the nursery-governess whom george gilbert had chosen to marry. sophronia was engaged, with her father's full consent, to the younger pawlkatt, who was to insure his life for the full amount of the fair damsel's dower, which was to be rigidly tied up for her separate use and maintenance, &c., and who looked of so sickly and feeble a constitution that the maltster may have reasonably regarded the matrimonial arrangement as a very fair speculation. sophronia was engaged, and displayed the little airs and graces that graybridge considered appropriate to the position of an engaged young lady. "the only way to make love _now_," said mr. nash to goldsmith, "is to take no manner of notice of the lady." and graybridge regarded the art of polite courtship very much in this fashion, considering that a well-bred damsel could not possibly be too contemptuously frigid in her treatment of the man whom she had chosen from all other men to be her partner for life. acting on this principle, miss burdock, although intensely affectionate in her manner to julia pawlkatt, and warmly gushing in her greeting of the doctor's wife, regarded her future husband with a stony glare, only disturbed by a scornful smile when the unfortunate young man ventured to make any remark. to reduce a lover to a state of coma, and exhibit him in that state to admiring beholders for an entire evening, was reckoned high art in graybridge. everybody in the little midlandshire town knew that miss burdock and mr. pawlkatt were engaged; and people considered that augustus pawlkatt had done a very nice thing for himself by becoming affianced to a young lady who was to have four thousand pounds tightly tied up for her separate use and maintenance. the consciousness of being engaged and having a fortune, combined to render sophronia especially amiable to everybody but the comatose "future." was isabel alone, and going to walk back? "oh, then, in that case you _must_ go with us!" cried miss burdock, with a view to the exhibition of the unfortunate augustus in peripatetic coma. what could mrs. gilbert say, except that she would be delighted to go home with them? she was thinking of _him_; she was looking to see his head towering above the crowd. of course it would tower above that crowd, or any crowd; but he was like the famous spanish fleet in the "critic," inasmuch as she could not see him because he was not to be seen. she went with miss burdock and her companions out of the churchyard, towards the meadow-path that led across country towards graybridge. they walked in a straggling, uncomfortable manner, for sophronia resolutely refused all offers of her future husband's arm; and he was fain to content himself with the cold comfort of her parasol, and a church-service of ruby velvet, with a great many ribands between the pages. the conversation during that sabbath afternoon walk was not very remarkable for liveliness or wisdom. isabel only spoke when she was spoken to, and even then like a bewildered creature newly awakened from a dream. miss julia pawlkatt, who was an intellectual young person, and prided herself upon not being frivolous, discoursed upon the botanical names and attributes of the hedge-blossoms beside the path, and made a few remarks on the science of medicine as adapted to female study, which would have served for the ground-work of a letter in a sunday paper. miss burdock, who eschewed intellectual acquirements, and affected to be a gushing thing of the dora spenlow stamp, entreated her future sister-in-law not to be "dreadful," and asked isabel's opinion upon several "dears" of bonnets exhibited that afternoon in hurstonleigh church; and the comatose future, who so rarely spoke that it seemed hard he should always commit himself when he did speak, ventured a few remarks, which were received with black and frowning looks by the idol of his heart. "i say, sophronia, weren't you surprised to see mr. lansdell in the gallery?" the young man remarked, interrupting his betrothed in a discussion of a bunch of artificial may on the top of a white-tulle bonnet so sweet and innocent-looking. "you know, dear, he isn't much of a church-goer, and people _do_ say that he's an atheist; yet there he was as large as life this afternoon, and i thought him looking very ill. i've heard my father say that all those lansdells are consumptive." miss burdock made frowning and forbidding motions at the unhappy youth with her pale-buff eyebrows, as if he had mentioned an improper french novel, or started some other immoral subject. poor isabel's colour went and came. consumptive! ah, what more likely, what more proper, if it came to that? these sort of people were intended to die early. fancy the giaour pottering about in his eightieth year, and boasting that he could read small print without spectacles! imagine the corsair on the parish; or byron, or keats, or shelley grown old, and dim, and grey! ah, how much better to be erratic and hapless shelley, drowned in an italian lake, than worthy respectable samuel rogers, living to demand, in feeble bewilderment, "and who are you, ma'am?" of an amiable and distinguished visitor! of course roland lansdell would die of consumption; he would fade little by little, like that delightful lionel in "rosalind and helen." isabel improved the occasion by asking, mr. augustus pawlkatt if many people died of consumption. she wanted to know what her own chances were. she wanted so much to die, now that she was good. the unhappy augustus was quite relieved by this sudden opening for a professional discourse, and he and his sister became scientific, and neglected sophronia, while they gave isabel a good deal of useful information respecting tubercular disease, phthisis, &c. &c.; whereon miss burdock, taking offence, lapsed into a state of sullen gloom highly approved by graybridge as peculiarly befitting an engaged, young lady who wished to sustain the dignity of her position. at last they came out of a great corn-field into the very lane in which george gilbert's house was situated; and isabel's friends left her at the gate. she had done something to redeem her character in graybridge by her frequent attendance at hurstonleigh church, which was as patent to the gossips as ever her visits to lord thurston's oak had been. she had been cured of running after mr. lansdell, people said. no doubt george gilbert had discovered her goings-on, and had found a means of clipping her wings. it was not likely that graybridge would credit her with any such virtue as repentance, or a wish to be a better woman than she had been. graybridge regarded her as an artful and presuming creature, whose shameful goings-on had been stopped by marital authority. she went into the parlour, and found the tea-things laid on the little table, and mr. gilbert lying on the sofa, which was too short for him by a couple of feet, and was eked out by a chair, on which his clumsy boots rested. isabel had never seen him give way to any such self-indulgence before; but as she bent over him, gently enough, if not tenderly, he told her that his head ached and he was tired, very tired; he had been in the lanes all the afternoon,--the people about there were very bad,--and he had been at work in the surgery since coming in. he put his hand in isabel's, and pressed hers affectionately. a very little attention from his pretty young wife gratified him and made him happy. "why, george," cried mrs. gilbert, "your hand is as hot as a burning coal!" yes, he was very warm, he told her; the weather was hot and oppressive; at least, he had found it so that afternoon. perhaps he had been hurrying too much, walking too fast; he had upset himself somehow or other. "if you'll pour out the tea. izzie, i'll take a cup, and then go to bed," he said; "i'm regularly knocked up." he took not one cup only, but four cups of tea, pouring the mild beverage down his throat at a draught; and then he went up to the room overhead, walking heavily, as if he were very tired. "i'm sure you're ill, george," isabel said, as he left the parlour; "do take something--some of that horrid medicine you give me sometimes." "no, my dear, there's nothing the matter with me. what should there be amiss with me, who never had a day's illness in my life? i must have an assistant, izzie; my work's too hard--that's what is the matter." mrs. gilbert sat in the dusk for a little while after her husband had left her, thinking of that last look which roland lansdell had given her in the church. heaven knows how long she might have sat thinking of him, if mrs. jeffson had not come in with those two miserable mould-candles, which were wont to make feeble patches of yellow haze, not light, in the doctor's parlour. after the candles had been brought isabel took a book from the top of the little chiffonier by the fireplace. it was a religious book. was she not trying to be good now, and was not goodness incompatible with the perusal of shelley's poetry on a sunday? it was a very dry religious book, being in fact a volume of tillotson's sermons, with more hard logic, and firstly, secondly, and thirdly, than ordinary human nature could support. isabel sat with the volume open before her, staring hopelessly at the pale, old-fashioned type, and going back a little way every now and then when she caught her thoughts far away from the reverend tillotson. she sat thus till after the clock had struck ten. she was all alone in the lower part of the house at that hour, for the jeffsons had gone clumping up-stairs to bed at half-past eight. she sat alone, a poor childish, untaught, unguided creature, staring at tillotson, and thinking of roland lansdell; yet trying to be good all the time in her own feeble way. she sat thus, until she was startled by a cautious single knock at the door. she started from her seat at the sound; but she went boldly enough, with the candle in her hand, to answer the summons. there was nothing uncommon in a late knocking at the doctor's door,--some one from the lanes wanted medicine, no doubt; the people in the lanes were always wanting medicine. mrs. gilbert opened the door, and looked out into the darkness. a man was standing there, a well-clad, rather handsome-looking man, with broad shoulders, bold black eyes, and a black beard that covered all the lower part of his face. he did not wait to be invited to enter, but walked across the threshold like a man who had a right to come into that house, and almost pushed isabel on one side as he did so. at first she only stared at him with a blank look of wonder, but all at once her face grew as white as the plaster on the wall behind her. "you!" she gasped, in a whisper; "you here!" "yes, me! you needn't stare as if you saw a ghost. there's nothing so very queer about me, is there? you're a nice young lady, i don't think, to stand there shivering and staring. where's your husband?" "up-stairs. oh, why, why did you come here?" cried the doctor's wife, piteously, clasping her hands like a creature in some extremity of fear and trouble; "how could you be so cruel as to come here; how could you be so cruel as to come?" "how could i be so--fiddlesticks!" muttered the stranger, with supreme contempt. "i came here because i had nowhere else to go, my lassie. you needn't whimper; for i shan't trouble you very long--this is not exactly the sort of place i should care to hang-out in: if you can give me a bed in this house for to-night, well and good; if not, you can give me a sovereign, and i'll find one elsewhere. while i am here, remember my name's captain morgan, and i'm in the merchant service,--just home from the mauritius." chapter xxx. the beginning of a great change. george gilbert was something more than "knocked up." there had been a great deal of typhoid fever amongst the poorer inhabitants of graybridge and the neighbouring villages lately--a bad infectious fever, which hung over the narrow lanes and little clusters of cottages like a black cloud; and the parish surgeon, working early and late, subject to sudden chills when his work was hottest, exposed to every variety of temperature at all times, fasting for long hours, and altogether setting at naught those very first principles of health, wherein it was his duty to instruct other people, had paid the common penalty to which all of his profession are, more or less, subject. george gilbert had caught a touch of the fever. mr. pawlkatt senior called early on monday morning,--summoned by poor terrified isabel, who was a stranger to sickness, and was frightened at the first appearance of the malady,--and spoke of his rival's illness very lightly, as a "touch of the fever." "i always said it was infectious," he remarked; "but your husband would have it that it wasn't. it was all the effect of dirty habits, and low living, he said, and not any special and periodical influence in the air. well, poor fellow, he knows now who is right. you must keep him very quiet. give him a little toast-and-water, and the lime-draughts i shall send you," and mr. pawlkatt went on to give all necessary directions about the invalid. unhappily for the patient, it was not the easiest matter in the world to keep him quiet. there was not so much in george gilbert, according to any poetic or sentimental standard; but there was a great deal in him, when you came to measure him by the far nobler standard of duty. he was essentially "thorough;" and in his own quiet way he was very fond of his profession. he was attached to those rough midlandshire peasants, whom it had been his duty to attend from his earliest manhood until now. never before had he known what it was to have a day's illness; and he could not lie tranquilly watching isabel sitting at work near the window, with the sunlight creeping in at the edges of the dark curtain that had been hastily nailed up to shut out the glaring day;--he could not lie quietly there, while there were mothers of sick children, and wives of sick husbands, waiting for hope and comfort from his lips. true, mr. pawlkatt had promised to attend to george's patients; but then, unhappily, george did not believe in mr. pawlkatt.--the two surgeons' views were in every way opposed,--and the idea of mr. pawlkatt attending the sick people in the lanes, and seizing with delight on the opportunity of reversing his rival's treatment, was almost harder to bear than the thought of the same sufferers being altogether unattended. and, beyond this, mr. gilbert, so clever while other people were concerned, was not the best possible judge of his own case; and he would not consent to believe that he had the fever. "i dare say pawlkatt likes to see me laid by the heels here, izzie," he said to his wife, "while he goes interfering with my patients, and bringing his old-fashioned theories to bear. he'll shut up the poor wretched little windows of all those cottages in the lanes, i dare say; and make the rooms even more stifling than they have been made by the builder. he'll frighten the poor women into shutting out every breath of fresh air, and then take every atom of strength away from those poor wasted creatures by his drastic treatment. dr. robert james graves said he only wanted three words for his epitaph, and those words were, 'he fed fevers.' pawlkatt will be for starving these poor feeble creatures in the lanes. it's no use talking, my dear; i'm a little knocked up, but i've no more fever about me than you have, and i shall go out this evening. i shall go round and see those people. there's a woman in the lane behind the church, a widow, with three children lying ill; and she seems to believe in me, poor creature, as if i was providence itself. i can't forget the look she gave me yesterday, when she stood on the threshold of her wretched hovel, asking me to save her children, as if she thought it rested with me to save them. i can't forget her look, izzie. it haunted me all last night, when i lay tossing about; for i was too tired to sleep, somehow or other. and when i think of pawlkatt pouring his drugs down those children's throats, i--i tell you it's no use, my dear; i'll take a cup of tea, and then get up and dress." it was in vain that isabel pleaded; in vain that she brought to her aid mrs. jeffson, the vigorous and outspoken, who declared that it would be nothing short of self-murder if mr. gilbert insisted on going out that evening; equally in vain the threat of summoning mr. pawlkatt. george was resolute; these quiet people always are resolute, not to say obstinate. it is your animated, impetuous, impulsive creatures who can be turned by a breath from the pursuit or purpose they have most vehemently sworn to accomplish. mr. gilbert put aside all arguments in the quietest possible manner. he was a medical man, and he was surely the best judge of his own health. he was wanted yonder among his patients, and he must go. isabel and mrs. jeffson retired in melancholy resignation to prepare the tea, which was to fortify the surgeon for his evening's work. george came down-stairs half an hour afterwards, looking, not ill, or even weak; but at once flushed and haggard. "there's nothing whatever the matter with me, my dear izzie," he said, as his wife followed him to the door; "i'm only done up by very hard work. i feel tired and cramped in my limbs, as if i'd caught cold somehow or other. i was out all day in the wet, last week, you know; but there's nothing in that. i shall just look in at those people at briargate, and come back by the lanes; and then an hour or so in the surgery will finish my work, and i shall be able to get a good night's rest. i must have an assistant, my dear. the agricultural population gets very thick about graybridge; and unless some one takes pity on the poor people, and brings about some improvement in the places they live in, we may look for plenty of fever." he went out at the little gate, and isabel watched him going along the lane. he walked a little slower than usual, and that was all. she watched him with a quiet affection on her face. there was no possible phase of circumstance by which she could ever have been brought to love him; but she knew that he was good, she knew that there was something praiseworthy in what he was doing to-night,--this resolute visiting of wretched sick people. it was not the knightly sort of goodness she had adored in the heroes of her choice; but it was good; and she admired her husband a little, in a calm unenthusiastic manner,--as she might have admired a very estimable grandfather, had she happened to possess such a relative. she was trying to be good, remember; and all the sentimental tenderness of her nature had been aroused by george's illness. he was a much more agreeable person lying faint and languid in a shaded room, and requiring his head constantly bathed with vinegar-and-water, than when in the full vigour of health and clumsiness. mr. pawlkatt came in for his second visit half an hour after george had left the house. he was very angry when he was told what had happened, and inveighed solemnly upon his patient's imprudence. "i sent my son round amongst your husband's patients," he said, "and i must say, i am a little hurt by the want of confidence in me which mr. gilbert's conduct exhibits." isabel was too much occupied by all manner of contending thoughts to be able to do much towards the soothing of mr. pawlkatt's indignation. that gentleman went away with his heart full of bitterness against the younger practitioner. "if your husband's well enough to go about amongst his patients, he can't want _me_, mrs. gilbert," he said, as isabel opened the gate for him; "but if you find him much worse, as you are very likely to do after his most imprudent conduct, you know where to send for me. i shall not come again till i'm sent for. good night." isabel sighed as she shut the gate upon the offended surgeon. the world seemed to her quite full of trouble just now. roland lansdell was angry with her. ah! what bitter anger and contempt had been exhibited in his face in the church yesterday! george was ill, and bent on making himself worse, as it seemed; a person--the person whom of all others the doctor's wife most feared--had dropped as it were from the clouds into midlandshire; and here, added to all this trouble, was mr. pawlkatt indignant and offended. she did not go indoors at once; the house seemed gloomy and hot in the summer dusk. she lingered by the gate, looking over the top of the rails at the dusty lane,--the monotonous uninteresting lane, of whose changeless aspect she was so very tired. she was sorry for her husband now that he was ill. it was her nature to love and pity every weak thing in creation. the same kind of tenderness that she had felt long ago for a sick kitten, or a wounded bird, or a forlorn street wanderer of the canine species looking pleadingly at her with great hungry eyes, filled her heart now, as she thought of george gilbert. out of the blank emptiness into which he had melted long ago at roland lansdell's advent, he emerged now, distinct and palpable, as a creature who wanted pity and affection. "is he very ill?" she wondered. "he says himself that he is not: and he is much cleverer than mr. pawlkatt." she looked out into the lane, watching for her husband's coming. two or three people went slowly by at considerable intervals; and at last, when it was growing quite dark, the figure of a boy, a slouching country-built lad, loomed out of the obscurity. "be this muster gilbert's the doctor's?" he asked of isabel. "yes; do you want him?" "i doan't want him; but i've got a letter for his wife, from a man that's staying up at our place. be you she?" "yes; give me the letter," answered isabel, putting her hand over the gate. she took the missive from the hand of the boy, who resigned it in a slow unwilling manner, and then slouched away. mrs. gilbert put the letter in her pocket, and went into the house. the candles had just been taken into the parlour. the doctor's wife seated herself at the little table, and took the letter from her pocket and tore it open. it was a very brief and unceremonious kind of epistle, containing only these words: "i've found comfortable quarters, for the nonce, in a little crib called the leicester arms, down in nessborough hollow, to the left of the briargate road. i suppose you know the place; and i shall expect to see you in the course of to-morrow. don't forget the sinews of war; and be sure you ask for captain morgan. yours truly." there was no signature. the letter was written in a big dashing hand, which had sprawled recklessly over a sheet of old-fashioned letter-paper; it seemed a riotous, improvident kind of writing, that gloried in the wasted space and squandered ink. "how cruel of him to come here!" muttered isabel, as she tore the letter into a little heap of fragments; "how cruel of him to come! as if i had not suffered enough already; as if the misery and disgrace had not been bitter enough and hard enough to bear." she rested her elbows on the table, and sat quite still for some time with her face hidden in her hands. her thoughts were very painful; but, for once in a way, they were not entirely devoted to roland lansdell; and yet the master of mordred priory did figure in that long reverie. george came in by-and-by, and found her sitting in the attitude into which she had fallen after destroying the letter. she had been very anxious about her husband some time ago; but for the last half-hour her thoughts had been entirely removed from him; and she looked up at him confusedly, almost startled by his coming, as if he had been the last person in the world whom she expected to see. mr. gilbert did not notice that look of confusion, but dropped heavily into the nearest chair, like a man who feels himself powerless to go one step farther. "i'm very ill, izzie," he said; "it's no use mincing the matter; i _am_ ill. i suppose pawlkatt is right after all, and i've got a touch of the fever." "shall i send for him?" asked isabel, starting up; "he said i was to send for him if you were worse." "not on any account. i know what to do as well as he does. if i should happen to get delirious by-and-by, you can send for him, because i dare say you'd be frightened, poor girl, and would feel more comfortable with a doctor pottering about me. and now listen to me, my dear, while i give you a few directions; for my head feels like a ton weight, and i don't think i shall be able to sit upright much longer." the doctor proceeded to give his wife all necessary instructions for the prevention of infection. she was to have a separate room prepared for herself immediately; and she was to fumigate the room in which he was to lie, in such and such a manner. as for any attendance upon himself, that would be mrs. jeffson's task. "i don't believe the fever is infectious," mr. gilbert said; "i've caught it from the same causes that give it to the poor people: hard work, exposure to bad weather, and the foul air of the places i have to visit. still we can't be too careful. you'd better keep away from my room as much as possible, izzie; and let mrs. jeffson look after me. she's a strong-minded sort of a woman, who wouldn't be likely to catch a fever, because she'd be the last in the world to trouble her head about the risk of catching it." but isabel declared that she herself would wait upon her sick husband. was she not trying to be good; and did not all mr. colborne's sermons inculcate self-sacrifice and compassion, tenderness and pity? the popular curate of hurstonleigh was perhaps the kind of teacher that some people would have designated a sentimentalist; but his tender, loving exhortations had a fascination which could surely never belong to the tenable threats and awful warnings of a sterner preacher. in spite of austin colborne's deep faith in an infinitely grand and beautiful region beyond this lower earth, he did not look upon the world as a howling wilderness, in which providence intended people to be miserable. he might certainly behold in it a place of probation, a kind of preparatory school, in which very small virtues were expected of ignorant and helpless scholars, wandering dimly towards a starry future: but he did not consider it a universal dotheboys hall, presided over by a providence after the model of mr. squeers. he looked into the simple narratives of four historians who flourished some eighteen centuries ago; and in those solemn pages he saw no possible justification for the gloomy view of life entertained by many of his clerical compeers. he found in those sacred histories a story that opened like an idyl; he found bright glimpses of a life in which there were marriage festivals and pleasant gatherings, social feasts and happy sabbath wanderings through rustic paths betwixt the standing corn; he found pure earthly friendship counted no sin against the claims of heaven, and passionate parental love not reproved as an unholy idolatry of the creature, but hallowed for ever, by two separate miracles, that stand eternal records of a love so entirely divine as to be omnipotent, so tenderly human as to change the sternest laws of the universe in pity for weak human sorrow. mr. pawlkatt was summoned to his rival's bedside early on the following morning. george's case was quite out of his own hands by this time; for he had grown much worse in the night, and was fain to submit to whatever people pleased to do to him. he was very ill. isabel sat in the half-darkened room, sometimes reading, sometimes working in the dim light that crept through the curtain, sometimes sitting very quietly wrapt in thought--painful and perplexing thought. mr. gilbert was wakeful all through the day, as he had been all through the night, tossing uneasily from side to side, and now and then uttering half-suppressed groans that wrung his wife's heart. she was very foolish--she had been very wicked--but there was a deep fount of tenderness in that sentimental and essentially feminine breast; and i doubt if george gilbert was not more lovingly watched by his weak erring young wife than ever he could have been by a strong-minded helpmate, who would have frozen any lurking sentiment in mr. lansdell's breast by one glance from her pitiless eyes. the doctor's wife felt a remorseful compassion for the man who, after his own matter-of-fact fashion, had been very good to her. "he has never, never been cross to me, as my step-mother used to be," she thought; "he married me without even knowing who i was, and never asked any cruel questions; and even now, if he knew, i think he would have pity upon me and forgive me." she sat looking at her husband with an earnest yearning expression in her eyes. it seemed as if she wanted to say something to him, but lacked the courage to approach the subject. he was very ill; it was no time to make any unpleasant communication to him. he had been delirious in the night, and had fancied that mr. pawlkatt was present, at an hour when that gentleman was snoring comfortably in his own bed. isabel had been specially enjoined to keep her husband as quiet as it was possible for an active industrious man, newly stricken down by some unlooked-for malady, to be kept. no; whatever she might have to say to him must be left unspoken for the present. whatever help he might, under ordinary circumstances, have given her, he was utterly powerless to give her now. the day in that sick chamber seemed terribly long. not because isabel felt any selfish weariness of her task; she was only too anxious to be of use to the man she had so deeply wronged; she was only too eager to do something,--something that mr. colborne himself might approve,--as an atonement for her sin. but she was quite unused to sickness; and, being of a hyper-sensitive nature, suffered keenly at the sight of any suffering whatever. if the invalid was restless, she fancied directly that he was worse--much worse--in imminent danger, perhaps: if he rambled a little in his talk betwixt sleeping and waking, she sat with his burning hands clasped in hers, trembling from head to foot: if he fell into a profound slumber, she was seized with a sudden terror, fancying him unnaturally quiet, and was fain to disturb him, in her fear lest he should be sinking into some ominous lethargy. the doctor's wife was not one of those excellent nurses who can settle themselves with cheerful briskness in a sick room, and improve the occasion by the darning of a whole basketful of invalided stockings, reserved for some such opportunity. she was not a nurse who could accept the duties of her position in a businesslike way, and polish off each separate task as coolly as a clerk in a banking-house transacts the work assigned to him. yet she was very quiet withal,--soft of foot, gentle-handed, tender; and george was pleased to see her sitting in the shadowy room, when he lifted his heavy eyelids a little now and then; he was pleased in a dim kind of way to take his medicine from her hand,--the slender little white hand with tapering fingers,--the hand he had admired as it lay lightly on the moss-grown brickwork of the bridge in hurstonleigh churchyard on the afternoon when he asked her to be his wife. mrs. gilbert sat all day in her husband's room; but about five in the afternoon george fell into a deep slumber, in which mr. pawlkatt found him at a little after six o'clock. nothing could be better than that tranquil sleep, the surgeon said; and when he was gone, mrs. jeffson, who had been sitting in the room for some time, anxious to be of use to her master, suggested that isabel should go down-stairs and out into the garden to get a breath of fresh air. "you must be a'most stifled, i should think, sitting all day in this room," tilly said, compassionately. mrs. gilbert's face crimsoned all over, as she answered in a timid, hesitating way: "yes; i should like to go down-stairs a little, if you think that george is sure to sleep soundly for a long time; and i know you'll take good care of him. i want to go out somewhere--not very far; but i must go to-night." the doctor's wife sat with her back to the light; and mrs. jeffson did not see that sudden tide of crimson that rushed into her face, and faded, as she said this; but george gilbert's housekeeper gave a sniff of disapproval notwithstanding. "i should have thought if you was the greatest gadderabout that ever was, you'd have stayed quietly at home while your husband was lying ill, mrs. gilbert," she said, sharply; "but of course you know your own business best." "i'm not going far; only--only a little way on the briargate road," isabel answered, piteously; and then her head sank back against the wall behind her, and she sighed a plaintive, almost heart-broken sigh. her life was very hard just now,--hard and difficult,--begirt with terror and peril, as she thought. she put on her bonnet and shawl--the darkest and shabbiest she possessed. mrs. jeffson watched her, as she stood before the old-fashioned looking-glass, and perceived that she did not even take the trouble to brush the rumpled hair which she pushed under her dingy bonnet. "she can't be going to meet _him_ in that plight, anyhow," thought honest matilda, considerably pacified by the contemplation of her mistress's toilette. she lifted the curtain and looked out of the window as the garden-gate closed on isabel, and she saw the doctor's wife hurrying away with her veil pulled over her face. there was some kind of mystery about this evening's walk: something that filled the yorkshirewoman's mind with vague disquietude. * * * * * the "touch of the fever," alluded to so lightly by mr. pawlkatt, turned out to be a great deal more serious in its nature than either he or george gilbert had anticipated. the week came to an end, and the parish surgeon was still a prisoner in the room in which his father and mother had died. it seemed quite a long time now since he had been active and vigorous, going about his work all day, mixing medicines in the surgery, and coming into the parlour at stated times to eat hearty meals of commonplace substantial food. now that he was so weak, and that it was a matter for rejoicing when he took a couple of spoonfuls of beef-tea, isabel's conscience smote her cruelly as she remembered how she had despised him because of his healthy appetite; with what bitter scorn she had regarded him when he ate ponderous slices of underdone meat, and mopped up the last drop of the goriest-looking gravy with great pieces of bread. he had been ill for only a week, and yet already it seemed quite a normal state of things for him to be lying in that darkened chamber, helpless and uneasy, all through the long summer day. the state of the doctor's health was common talk in graybridge; as common a subject for idle people's converse as the heat of the weather, or the progress of the green corn in the fields beyond the little town. all manner of discreditable-looking parish patients came every day to the surgery door to inquire after the surgeon's health; and went away downcast and lamenting, when they were told that he grew daily worse. mrs. gilbert, going down to answer these people's questions, discovered for the first time how much he was beloved; he who had not one of the attributes of a hero. she wondered sometimes whether it might not be better to wear thick boots, and go about doing good, than to be a used-up aristocratic wanderer, with white hands, and, oh, such delightful varnished boots wrinkled over an arched instep. she was trying to be good herself now--pleased and fascinated by mr. colborne's teaching as by some newly-discovered romance--she wanted to be good, and scarcely knew how to set about the task; and, behold, here was the man whom she had so completely ignored and despised, infinitely above her in the region she had entered. but was her romantic attachment to roland lansdell laid down at the new altar she had found for herself? ah, no; she tried very hard to do her duty; but the old sentimental worship still held its place in her heart. she was like some classic pagan newly converted to christianity, and yet entertaining a lurking love and reverence for the old heathen deities, too grand and beautiful to be cast off all at once. the first week came to an end, and still mr. pawlkatt came twice a day to visit his patient; and still he gave very much the same directions to the untiring nurses who waited on george gilbert. he was to be kept very quiet; he was to continue the medicine; all the old stereotyped rules were to be observed. throughout her husband's illness, isabel had taken very little rest; though mr. and mrs. jeffson would gladly have kept watch alternately with her in the sick room, and were a little wounded when banished therefrom. but mrs. gilbert wanted to be good; the harder the task was, the more gladly did she undertake it. very often, quite alone in that quiet room, she sat watching through the stillest hours of the night. during all those solemn watches did any bad thoughts enter her mind? did she ever think that she might be free to marry roland lansdell if the surgeon's illness should terminate fatally? never--never once did such a dark and foul fancy enter the regions of her imagination. do not believe that because she had been a foolish woman she must necessarily be a vicious woman. again and again, on her knees by her husband's bed, she supplicated that his life might be spared. she had never encountered death, and her imagination shrank appalled from the thought of that awful presence. a whole after-life of happiness could not have atoned to her for the one pang of seeing a dreadful change come upon the familiar face. sometimes, in spite of herself, though she put away the thought from her with shuddering horror, the idea that george gilbert might not recover _would_ come into her mind. he might not recover: the horror which so many others had passed through might overtake her. oh, the hideous tramp of the undertaker's men upon the stairs; the knocking, unlike all other knocking; the dreadful aspect of the shrouded house! if--if any such sorrow came upon her, mrs. gilbert thought that she would join some community of holy women, and go about doing good until she died. was it so very strange, this sudden conversion? surely not! in these enthusiastic natures sentiment may take any unexpected form. it is a question whether a madame de chantal shall write hazy devotional letters to a st. francis de sales, or peril her soul for the sake of an earthly lover. chapter xxxi. fifty pounds. after that scene in the church at hurstonleigh, roland lansdell went back to mordred; to think, with even greater bitterness, of the woman he loved. that silent encounter--the sight of the pale face, profoundly melancholy, almost statuesque in its air of half-despairing resignation--had exercised no softening influence on the mind of this young man, who could not understand why the one treasure for which he languished should be denied to him. he could not be generous or just towards the woman who had fooled him with false hopes, and then left him to despair; he could not have pity upon the childish creature who had wandered unawares upon the flowery margin of a hideous gulf, and had fled, aghast and horrified, at the first glimpse of the yawning depths below. no; his anger against isabel could not have been more intense had she been a hardened and practised coquette who had deliberately lured him to his ruin. "i suppose this is what the world calls a virtuous woman," he cried, bitterly. "i dare say lucretia was this sort of person; and dropped her eyelids to show off the dark lashes, and made the most of her tapering arms over the spinning-wheel, and summoned conscious blushes into her cheeks when tarquin looked at her. these virtuous women delight in clamour and scandal. i've no doubt mrs. gilbert profoundly enjoyed herself during our rencontre in the church, and went away proud of the havoc she had made in me--the haggard lines about my mouth, and the caverns under my eyes." "it is _not_ because she is a good woman, it is not because she loves her husband, that she refuses to listen to me," he thought; "it is only a paltry provincial terror of an _esclandre_ that ties her to this wretched place. and when she has broken my heart, and when she has ruined my life, she goes to church at hurstonleigh, and sits in a devotional pose, with her big eyes lifted up to the parson's face, like a madonna by giorgione, in order that she may rehabilitate herself in the consideration of graybridge." he could neither be just nor patient. sometimes he laughed aloud at his own folly. was he, who had prided himself on his cynical disbelief in the depth or endurance of any emotion--was he the man to go mad for love of a pale face, and darkly pensive eyes? ah, yes! it is just these scoffers who take the fever most deeply, when the infection seizes them. "i--i, who have lived my life out, as i thought, wherever life is most worth living,--i suffer like this at last for the sake of a village surgeon's half-educated wife? i--who have given myself the airs of a lauzun or a brummel--am perishing for the love of a woman who doesn't even know how to put on her gloves!" every day mr. lansdell resolved to leave midlandshire to-morrow; but to-morrow found him still lingering at the priory, in a hopeless, purposeless way,-lingering for he knew not what,--lingering, perhaps, for want of the mere physical energy required for the brief effort of departure. he would go to constantinople overland; there would be more fatigue in the journey that way. might not a walk across mount cenis cure him of his foolish love for isabel gilbert? did not d'alembert retire from the world and all its troubles into the peaceful pleasures of geometry? did not goethe seek relief from some great sorrow in the study of a new language? roland lansdell made a faint effort to acquire the arabic alphabet during those wretched idle days and nights at mordred. he would study the semitic languages; all of them. he would go in for the book of job. many people have got plenty of hard work out of the book of job. but the curly little characters in the arabic alphabet slipped out of mr. lansdell's brain as if they had been so many lively young serpents; and he only made so much headway in the attainment of the semitic languages as enabled him to scrawl an arabic rendering of isabel gilbert's name over the leaves of a blotting-book. he was in love. no schoolboy, bewitched by a pretty blue-eyed, blue-ribanded, white-robed partner at a dancing-school, was ever more foolishly in love than the young squire of mordred, who had filled a whole volume with various metrical versions of his profound contempt for his species in general, and the feminine portion of them in particular. he had set up that gladsome halloo before he was safely out of the wood; and now he found to his cost that he had been premature; for lo, the dense forest hemmed him in on every side, and there seemed no way of escape out of the sombre labyrinth. * * * * * george gilbert had been ill nearly a fortnight, and the master of mordred priory still lingered in midlandshire. he had heard nothing of the surgeon's illness, for he had never been much given to gossiping with his body-servant; and that gentleman was especially disinclined to offer his master any unasked-for information just now; for, as he expressed himself in the servants' hall, "mr. lansdell's been in a devil of a temper almost ever since we come back to the priory; and you might as lief talk to a tiger as speak to him, except when you're spoken to and goodness knows _that_ ain't very often; for anything as gloomy as his ways has become of late, i never remember to have met with; and if it wasn't that the remuneration is high, and the perquisites never greasy about the elbows, or frayed at the edges,--which i've been with a member of the peerage that wore his clothes till they was shameful shabby,--it wouldn't be very long as i should trouble this dismal old dungeon with my presence." only from lady gwendoline was roland likely to hear of george gilbert's illness; and he had not been to lowlands lately. he had a vague idea that he would go there some morning, and ask his cousin to marry him, and so make an end of it; but he deferred the carrying out of that idea indefinitely, as a man who contemplates suicide may postpone the ghastly realization of his purpose, keeping his loaded pistol or his prussic acid handy against the time when it shall be wanted. he had never ridden past the surgeon's house since that day on which he had seen isabel seated in the parlour. he had indeed shunned graybridge and the graybridge road altogether. "she shall not triumph in the idea that i pursue her," he thought; "her vain shallow heart shall not be gratified by the knowledge of my pitiful weakness. i bared my foolish breast before her once, and she sat in her pew playing at devotion, and let me go away with my despair. she might have thrown herself in my way that afternoon, if only for a few moments. she might have spoken to me, if only half-a-dozen commonplace words of comfort; but it pleased her better to exhibit her piety. i dare say she knows as well as i do how that devotional air harmonizes with her beauty; and she went home happy, no doubt, in the knowledge that she had made one man miserable. and that's the sort of woman whom the world calls virtuous,--a creature in whom vanity is strong enough to usurp the place of every other passion. for a really good woman, for a true-hearted wife who loves her husband, and before whose quiet presence the veriest libertine bows his head abashed and reverent,--for such a woman as that i have no feeling but respect and admiration; but i hate and despise these sentimental coquettes, who preach secondhand platonism, borrowed from the misty pages of shelley." but it was not always that roland lansdell was thus bitter against the woman he loved. sometimes in the midst of his rage and anger a sudden current of tenderness swept across the dark waters of his soul, and for a little while the image of isabel gilbert appeared to him in its true colours. he saw her as she really was: foolish, but not base; weak, but not hypocritical; sentimental, and with some blemish of womanly vanity perhaps, but not designing. sometimes amidst all contending emotions, in which passion, and selfishness, and wounded pride, and mortified vanity, made a very whirlpool of bitter feeling,--sometimes amidst such baser emotions as these, true love--the sublime, the clear-sighted--arose for a brief interval triumphant, and roland lansdell thought tenderly of the woman who had shattered his future. "my poor little girl,--my poor innocent childish love," he thought, in these moments of purer feeling; "if i could only be noble, and go away, and forgive you, and leave you to grow into a good woman, with that well-meaning commonplace husband, whom it is your duty to honour and obey." nothing could be more irregular than mr. lansdell's habits during this period. the cook at mordred declared that such a thing as a _soufflé_ was a simple impossibility with an employer who might require his dinner served at any time between the hours of seven and nine. the fish was flabby, the joints were leathery; and all the hot-water reservoirs in the mordred dinner-service could not preserve the cook's most special _plats_ from stagnation. that worthy artist shrugged his shoulders over the ruins of his work, and turned his attention to the composition of a menu in which the best things were to be eaten cold. he might have spared himself the trouble. the young man, who, naturally careless as to what he ate, had, out of pure affectation, been wont to outrival the insolence of the oldest _bon-vivants_, now scarcely knew the nature of the dishes that were set before him. he ate and drank mechanically; and it may be drank a little deeper than he had been accustomed to drink of the famous clarets his father and grandfather had collected. but eating delighted him not, nor drinking neither. the wine had no exhilarating effect upon him; he sat dull and gloomy after a magnum of the famous claret--sat with the arabic grammar open before him, wondering what was to become of him, now that his life was done. he was sitting thus in the library, with the sombre rembrandt face that was something like his own looking gravely down upon him; he was sitting thus by the lamplit table one sultry june evening, when george gilbert had been ill nearly a fortnight. the light of the lamp--a soft subdued light, shining dimly through a great moon-like orb of thick ground-glass--fell chiefly on the open book, and left the student's face in shadow. but even in that shadow the face looked wan and haggard, and the something that lurked somewhere in all the lansdell portraits--the something that you may see in every picture of charles the first of england and marie antoinette of france, whensoever and by whomsoever painted--was very visible in roland's face to-night. he had been sitting brooding over his books, but scarcely reading half-a-dozen pages, ever since nine o'clock, and it was now half-past eleven. he was stretching his hand towards the bell in order to summon his valet, and release that personage from the task of sitting up any longer, yawning alone in the housekeeper's room,--for the habits of mordred priory had never lost the sobriety of lady anna lansdell's régime, and all the servants except roland's valet went to bed at eleven,--when that gentleman entered the library. "would you please to see any one, sir?" he asked. "would i please to see any one?" cried roland, turning in his low easy-chair, and staring at the solemn face of his valet; "who should want to see me at such a time of night? is there anything wrong? is it any one from--from lowlands?" "no, sir, it's a strange lady; leastways, when i say a strange lady, i _think_, sir,--though, her veil being down, and a very thick veil, i should not like to speak positive,--i think it's mrs. gilbert, the doctor's lady, from graybridge." mr. lansdell's valet coughed doubtfully behind his hand, and looked discreetly at the carved oaken bosses in the ceiling. roland started to his feet. "mrs. gilbert," he muttered, "at such an hour as this! it can't be; she would never--show the lady here, whoever she is," he added aloud to his servant. "there must be something wrong; it must be some very important business that brings any one to this place to-night." the valet departed, closing the door behind him, and roland stood alone upon the hearth, waiting for his late visitor. all the warmer tints--he never had what people call "a colour"--faded out of his face, and left him very pale. why had she come to him at such a time? what purpose could she have in coming to that house, save one? she had come to revoke her decision. for a moment a flood of rapture swept into his soul, warm and revivifying as the glory of a sudden sunburst on a dull grey autumn day; but in the next moment,--so strange and subtle an emotion is that which we call love,--a chill sense of regret crept into his mind, and he was almost sorry that isabel should come to him thus, even though she were to bring him the promise of future happiness. "my poor ignorant, innocent girl--how hard it seems that my love must for ever place her at a disadvantage!" he thought. the door was opened by the valet, with as bold a sweep as if a duchess had been entering in all the glory of her court-robes, and isabel came into the room. one glance showed mr. lansdell that she was very nervous, that she was suffering cruelly from the terror of his presence; and it may be that even before she had spoken, he understood that she had not come to announce any change in her decision, any modification of the sentiments that had led to their parting at thurston's crag. there was nothing desperate in her manner--nothing of the dramatic _aplomb_ that belongs to the grand crises of life. she stood before him pale and irresolute, with pleading eyes lifted meekly to his face. mr. lansdell wheeled forward a chair, but he was obliged to ask her to sit down; and even then she seated herself with the kind of timid irresolution he had so often seen in a burly farmer come to supplicate abnormal advantages in the renewal of a lease. "i hope you are not angry with me for coming here at such a time," she said, in a low tremulous voice; "i could not come any earlier, or i----" "it can never be anything but a pleasure to me to see you," roland answered, gravely, "even though the pleasure is strangely mingled with pain. you have come to me, perhaps, because you are in some kind of trouble, and have need of my services in some way or other. i am very much pleased to think that you can so far confide in me; i am very glad to think that you can rely on my friendship." mr. lansdell said this because he saw that the doctor's wife had come to demand some favour at his hands, and he wished to smooth the way for that demand. isabel looked up at him with something like surprise in her gaze. she had not expected that he would be like this--calm, self-possessed, reasonable. a mournful feeling took possession of her heart. she thought that his love must have perished altogether, or he could not surely have been so kind to her, so gentle and dispassionate. she looked at him furtively as he lounged against the farther angle of the massive mantel-piece. his transient passion had worn itself out, no doubt, and he was deep in the tumultuous ocean of a new love affair,--a glittering duchess, a dark-eyed clotilde,--some brilliant creature after one of the numerous models in the pages of the "alien." "you are very, very good not to be angry with me," she said; "i have come to ask you a favour--a very great favour--and i----" she stopped, and sat silently twisting the handle of her parasol--the old green parasol under whose shadow roland had so often seen her. it was quite evident that her courage had failed her altogether at this crisis. "it is not for myself i am going to ask you this favour," she said, still hesitating, and looking down at the parasol; "it is for another person, who--it is a secret, in fact, and----" "whatever it is, it shall be granted," roland answered, "without question, without comment." "i have come to ask you to lend me,--or at least i had better ask you to give it me, for indeed i don't know when i should ever be able to repay it,--some money, a great deal of money,--fifty pounds." she looked at him as if she thought the magnitude of the sum must inevitably astonish him, and she saw a tender half-melancholy smile upon his face. "my dear isabel--my dear mrs. gilbert--if all the money i possess in the world could secure your happiness, i would willingly leave midlandshire to-morrow a penniless man. i would not for the world that you should be embarrassed for an hour, while i have more money than i know what to do with. i will write you a cheque immediately,--or, better still, half-a-dozen blank cheques, which you can fill up as you require them." but isabel shook her head at this proposal. "you are very kind," she said; "but a cheque would not do. it must be money, if you please; the person for whom i want it would not take a cheque." roland lansdell looked at her with a sudden expression of doubt,--of something that was almost terror in his face. "the person for whom you want it," he repeated. "it is not for yourself, then, that you want this money?" "oh no, indeed! what should i want with so much money?" "i thought you might be in debt. i thought that----ah, i see; it is for your husband that you want the money." "oh no; my husband knows nothing about it. but, oh, pray, pray don't question me. ah, if you knew how much i suffered before i came here to-night! if there had been any other person in the world who could have helped me, i would never have come here; but there is no one, and i must get the money." roland's face grew darker as mrs. gilbert spoke. her agitation, her earnestness, mystified and alarmed him. "isabel," he cried, "god knows i have little right to question you; but there is something in the manner of your request that alarms me. can you doubt that i am your friend,--next to your husband your best and truest friend, perhaps?--forget every word that i have ever said to you, and believe only what i say to-night--to-night, when all my better feelings are aroused by the sight of you. believe that i am your friend, isabel, and for pity's sake trust me. who is this person who wants money of you? is it your step-mother? if so, my cheque-book is at her disposal." "no," faltered the doctor's wife, "it is not for my step-mother, but----" "but it is for some member of your family?" "yes," she answered, drawing a long breath; "but, oh, pray do not ask me any more questions. you said just now that you would grant me the favour i asked without question or comment. ah, if you knew how painful it was to me to come here!" "indeed! i am sorry that it was so painful to you to trust me." "ah, if you knew----" isabel murmured in a low voice, speaking to herself rather than to roland. mr. lansdell took a little bunch of keys from his pocket, and went across the room to an iron safe, cunningly fashioned after the presentment of an antique ebony cabinet. he opened the ponderous door, and took a little cash-box from one of the shelves. "my steward brought me a bundle of notes yesterday. will you take what you want?" he asked, handing the open box to isabel. "i would rather you gave me the money; i do not want more than fifty pounds." roland counted five ten-pound notes and handed them to isabel. she rose and stood for a few moments, hesitating as if she had something more to say,--something almost as embarrassing in its nature as the money-question had been. "i--i hope you will not think me troublesome," she said; "but there is one more favour that i want to ask of you." "do not hesitate to ask anything of me; all i want is your confidence." "it is only a question that i wish to ask. you talked some time since of going away from midlandshire--from england; do you still think of doing so?" "yes, my plans are all made for an early departure." "a very early departure? you are going almost immediately?" "immediately,--to-morrow, perhaps. i am going to the east. it may be a long time before i return to england." there was a little pause, during which roland saw that a faint flush kindled in isabel gilbert's face, and that her breath came and went rather quicker than before. "then i must say good-bye to-night," she said. "yes, it is not likely we shall meet again. good night--good-bye. perhaps some day, when i am a pottering old man, telling people the same anecdotes every time i dine with them, i shall come back to midlandshire, and find mr. gilbert a crack physician in kylmington, petted by rich old ladies, and riding in a yellow barouche;--till then, good-bye." he held isabel's hand for a few moments,--not pressing it ever so gently,--only holding it, as if in that frail tenure he held the last link that bound him to love and life. isabel looked at him wonderingly. how different was this adieu from that passionate farewell under lord thurston's oak, when he had flung himself upon the ground and wept aloud in the anguish of parting from her! the melodramas she had witnessed at the surrey theatre were evidently true to nature. nothing could be more transient than the wicked squire's love. "only one word more, mrs. gilbert," roland said, after that brief pause. "your husband--does he know about this person who asks for money from you?" "no--i--i should have told him--i think--and asked him to give me the money, only he is so very ill; he must not be troubled about anything." "he is very ill--your husband--is ill?" "yes,--i thought every one knew. he is very, very ill. it is on that account i came here so late. i have been sitting in his room all day. good night." "but you cannot go back alone; it is such a long way. it will be two o'clock in the morning before you can get back to graybridge. i will drive you home; or it will be better to let my coachman--my mother's old coachman--drive you home." it was in vain that mrs. gilbert protested against this arrangement. roland lansdell reflected that as the doctor's wife had been admitted by his valet, her visit would of course be patent to all the other servants at their next morning's breakfast. under these circumstances, mrs. gilbert could not leave mordred with too much publicity; and a steady old man, who had driven lady anna lansdell's fat white horses for slow jog-trot drives along the shady highways and by-ways of midlandshire, was aroused from his peaceful slumbers and told to dress himself, while a half-somnolent stable-boy brought out a big bay horse and an old-fashioned brougham. in this vehicle isabel returned very comfortably to graybridge; but she begged the coachman to stop at the top of the lane, where she alighted and bade him good night. she found all dark in the little surgery, which she entered by means of her husband's latch-key; and she crept softly up the stairs to the room opposite that in which george gilbert lay, watched over by mrs. jeffson. chapter xxxii. "i'll not believe but desdemona's honest." "see that some hothouse grapes and a pine are sent to mr. gilbert at graybridge," roland said to his valet on the morning after isabel's visit. "i was sorry to hear of his serious illness from his wife last night." mr. lansdell's valet, very busily occupied with a hat-brush, smiled softly to himself as his employer made this speech. the master of mordred priory need scarcely have stained his erring soul by any hypocritical phrases respecting the graybridge surgeon. "i shouldn't mind laying a twelvemonth's wages that if her husband dies, he marries her within six months," roland's man-servant remarked, as he sipped his second cup of coffee; "i never did see such an infatuated young man in all my life." a change came over the spirit of mr. lansdell's dreams. the thought, the base and cruel thought, which had never entered isabel's mind, was not to be shut out of roland's breast after that midnight interview in the library. do what he would, struggle against the foul temptation as he might,--and he was not naturally wicked, he was not utterly heartless,--he could not help thinking of what might happen--if--if death, who carries in his fleshless hand so many orders for release, should cut the knot that bound isabel gilbert. "god knows i am not base enough to wish any harm to that poor fellow at graybridge," thought mr. lansdell; "but if--" and then the tempter's hand swept aside a dark curtain, and revealed a lovely picture of the life that might be, if george gilbert would only be so obliging as to sink under that tiresome low fever which had done so much mischief in the lanes about graybridge. roland lansdell was not a hero; he was only a very imperfect, vacillating young man, with noble impulses for ever warring against the baser attributes of his mind; a spoiled child of fortune, who had almost always had his own way until just now. "i ought to go away," he thought; "i ought to go away all the more because of this man's illness. there seems something horrible in my stopping here watching and waiting for the result, when i should gain such an unutterable treasure by george gilbert's death." but he lingered, nevertheless. a man may fully appreciate the enormity of his sin, and yet go on shining. mr. lansdell did not go away from mordred; he contented himself with sending the graybridge surgeon a basket of the finest grapes and a couple of the biggest pines to be found in the priory hothouses; and it may be that his conscience derived some small solace from the performance of this courtesy. lord ruysdale called upon his nephew in the course of the bright summer morning that succeeded isabel's visit to the priory; and as the young man happened to be smoking his cigar in front of the porch at the moment when the earl's quiet cob came jogging along the broad carriage-drive, there was no possibility of avoiding the elderly gentleman's visit. roland threw aside his cigar, and resigned himself to the prospect of an hour's prosy discussion of things in which he felt no kind of interest, no ray of pleasure. what was it to him that there was every prospect of a speedy dissolution, unless----? there almost always was every prospect of a dissolution unless something or other took place; but nothing special ever seemed to come of all the fuss and clamour. the poor people were always poor, and grumbled at being starved to death; the rich people were always rich, and indignant against the oppression of an exorbitant income-tax. poor roland behaved admirably during the infliction of his uncle's visit; and if he gave vague answers and asked irrelevant questions now and then, lord ruysdale was too much engrossed by his own eloquence to find out his nephew's delinquencies. roland only got rid of him at last by promising to dine at lowlands that evening. "if there's a dissolution, our party must inevitably come in," the earl said at parting; "and in that case you must stand for wareham. the wareham people look to you as their legitimate representative. i look forward to great things, my boy, if the present ministry go out. i've been nursing my little exchequer very comfortably for the last twelve months; and i shall take a furnished house in town, and begin life again next year, if things go well; and i expect to see you make a figure in the world yet, roland." and in all that interview lord ruysdale did not once remark the tired look in his nephew's face; that nameless look which gave a sombre cast to all the lansdell portraits, and which made the _blasé_ idler of thirty seem older of aspect than the hopeful country gentleman of sixty. roland went to lowlands in the evening. why should he not do this to please his uncle; inasmuch as it mattered so very little what he did, or where he went, in a universe where everything was weariness. he found lady gwendoline in the drawing-room, looking something like marie antoinette in a _demi-toilette_ of grey silk, with a black-lace scarf crossed upon her stately shoulders, and tied in a careless bow at the back of her waist. mr. raymond was established in a big chintz-covered easy-chair, turning over a box of books newly arrived from london, and muttering scornful comments on their titles and contents. "at last!" he exclaimed, as mr. lansdell's name was announced. "i've called at mordred about half-a-dozen times within the last two months; but as your people always said you were out, and as i could always see by their faces that you were at home, i have given up the business in despair." lord ruysdale came in presently with the "times" newspaper open in his hand, and insisted on reading a leader, which he delivered with amazing energy, and all the emphasis on the beginnings of the sentences. dinner was announced before the leader was finished, and mr. raymond led lady gwendoline to the dining-room, while roland stayed to hear the thunderer's climax murdered by his uncle's defective elocution. the dinner went off very quietly. the earl talked politics, and mr. raymond discoursed very pleasantly on the principles of natural philosophy as applied to the rulers of the nation. there was a strange contrast between the animal spirits of the two men who had passed the meridian of life, and were jogging quietly on the shady slope of the lull, and the dreamy languor exhibited by the two young people who sat listening to them. george sand has declared that nowadays all the oldest books are written by the youngest authors; might she not go even farther, and say that nowadays the young people are older than their seniors? we have got rid of our springheeled jacks and john mittons, and tom and jerry are no more popular either on or off the stage; our young aristocrats no longer think it a fine thing to drive a hearse to epsom races, or to set barrels of wine running in the haymarket; but in place of all this foolish riot and confusion a mortal coldness of the soul seems to have come down upon the youth of our nation, a deadly languor and stagnation of spirit, from which nothing less than a crimean war or an indian rebellion can arouse the worn-out idlers in a weary world. the dinner was drawing to a close, when lord ruysdale mentioned a name that awakened all mr. lansdell's attention. "i rode into graybridge after leaving you, roland," he said, "and made a call or two. i am sorry to hear that mr. gilmore--gilson--gilbert,--ah, yes, gilbert,--that very worthy young doctor, whom we met at your house the other day--last year, by the bye--egad, how the time spins round!--i was sorry to hear that he is ill. low fever--really in a very dangerous state, saunders the solicitor told me. _you'll_ be sorry to hear it, gwendoline." lady gwendoline's face darkened, and she glanced at roland, before she spoke. "i am sorry to hear it," she said. "i am sorry for mr. gilbert, for more than one reason. i am sorry he has so very bad a wife." roland's face flushed crimson, and he turned to his cousin as if about to speak; but mr. raymond was too quick for him. "i think the less we say upon that subject the better," he exclaimed, eagerly; "i think, lady gwendoline, that is a subject that had much better not be discussed here." "why should it not be discussed?" cried roland, looking--if people can look daggers--a perfect arsenal of rage and scorn at his cousin. "of course, we understand that slander of her own sex is a woman's privilege. why should not lady gwendoline avail herself of her special right? here is only a very paltry subject, certainly--a poor little provincial nobody; but she will serve for want of a better;--lay her on the table, by all means, and bring out your dissecting-tools, lady gwendoline. what have you to say against mrs. gilbert?" he waited, breathless and angry, for his cousin's answer, looking at her with sullen defiance in his face. "perhaps mr. raymond is right, after all," gwendoline said, quietly. she was very quiet, but very pale, and looked her cousin as steadily in the eyes as if she had been fighting a small-sword duel with him. "the subject is one that will scarcely bear discussion here or elsewhere; but since you accuse me of feminine malice, i am bound to defend myself. i say that mrs. gilbert is a very bad wife and a very wicked woman. a person who is seen to attend a secret rendezvous with a stranger, not once, but several times, with all appearance of stealth and mystery, while her husband lies between life and death, must surely be one of the worst and vilest of women." mr. lansdell burst into a discordant laugh. "what a place this midlandshire is!" he cried; "and what a miraculous power of invention lies uncultivated amongst the inhabitants of our country towns! i withdraw any impertinent insinuations about your talent for scandal, my dear gwendoline; for i see you are the merest novice in that subtle art. the smallest rudimentary knowledge would teach you to distinguish between the stories that are _ben trovato_ and those that are not; their being true or false is not of the least consequence. unfortunately, this graybridge slander is one of the very lamest of _canards_. a newspaper correspondent sending it in to fill the bottom of a column would be dismissed for incompetency, on the strength of his blunder. tell your maid to be a little more circumspect in future, gwendoline." lady gwendoline did not condescend to discuss the truth or probability of her story. she saw that her cousin was ashy pale to the lips, and she knew that her shot had gone home to the very centre of the bull's-eye. after this there was very little conversation. lord ruysdale started one or two of his favourite topics; but he understood dimly that there was something not quite pleasant at work amongst his companions. roland sat frowning at his plate; and charles raymond watched him with an uneasy expression in his face; as a man who is afraid of lightning might watch the gathering of a storm-cloud. the dinner drew to a close amidst dense gloom and awful silence, dismally broken by the faint chinking of spoons and jingling of glass. ah, what funeral-bell can fall more solemnly upon the ear than those common every-day sounds amidst the awful stillness that succeeds or precedes a domestic tempest! there is nothing very terrible in the twittering of birds; yet how ominous sound the voices of those innocent feathered warblers in the dread pauses of a storm! lady gwendoline rose from the table when her father filled his second glass of burgundy, and mr. raymond hurried to open the door for her. but roland's eyes were never lifted from his empty plate; he was waiting for something; now and then a little convulsive movement of his lower lip betrayed that he was agitated; but that was all. lord ruysdale seemed relieved by his daughter's departure. he had a vague idea that there had been some little passage-at-arms between roland and gwendoline, and fancied that serenity would be restored by the lady's absence. he went twaddling on with his vapid discourse upon the state of the political atmosphere, placid as some babbling stream, until the dusky shadows began to gather in the corners of the low old-fashioned chamber. then the earl pulled out a fat ponderous old hunter, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour. "i've some letters to write that must go by to-night's post," he said. "raymond, i know you'll excuse me if i leave you for an hour or so. roland, i expect you and raymond to do justice to that chambertin." charles raymond murmured some polite conventionality as the earl left the room; but he never removed his eyes from roland's face. he had watched the brewing of the storm, and was prepared for a speedy thunder-clap. nor was he mistaken in his calculations. "raymond, is this true?" mr. lansdell asked, as the door closed upon his uncle. he spoke as if there had been no break or change in the conversation since mrs. gilbert's name had been mentioned. "is what true, roland?" "this dastardly slander against isabel gilbert. is it true? pshaw! i know that it is not. but i want to know if there is any shadow of an excuse for such a scandal. don't trifle with me, raymond; i have kept no secrets from you; and i have a right to expect that you will be candid with me." "i do not think you have any right to question me upon the subject," mr. raymond answered, very gravely: "when last it was mentioned between us, you rejected my advice, and protested against my further interference in your affairs. i thought we finished with the subject then, roland, at your request; and i certainly do not care to renew it now." "but things have changed since then," mr. lansdell said, eagerly. "it is only common justice to mrs. gilbert that i should tell you as much as that, raymond. i was very confident, very presumptuous, i suppose, when i last discussed this business with you. it is only fair that you should know that the schemes i had formed, when i came back to england, have been entirely frustrated by mrs. gilbert herself." "i am very glad to hear it." there was very little real gladness in mr. raymond's tone as he said this; and the uneasy expression with which he had watched roland for the last hour was, if anything, intensified now. "yes; i miscalculated when i built all those grand schemes for a happy future. it is not so easy to persuade a good woman to run away from her husband, however intolerable may be the chain that binds her to him. these provincial wives accept the marriage-service in its sternest sense. mrs. gilbert is a good woman. you can imagine, therefore, how bitterly i felt gwendoline's imputations against her. i suppose these women really derive some kind of pleasure from one another's destruction. and now set my mind quite at rest: there is not one particle of truth--not so much as can serve as the foundation for a lie--in this accusation, is there, raymond?" if the answer to this question had involved a sentence of death, or a reprieve from the gallows, roland lansdell could not have asked it more eagerly. he ought to have believed in isabel so firmly as to be quite unmoved by any village slander; but he loved her too much to be reasonable; jealousy the demon--closely united as a siamese twin to love the god--was already gnawing at his entrails. it could not be, it could not be, that she had deceived and deluded him; but _if_ she had--ah, what baseness, what treachery! "is there any truth in it, raymond?" he repeated, rising from his chair, and glowering across the table at his kinsman. "i decline to answer that question. i have nothing to do with mrs. gilbert, or with any reports that may be circulated against her." "but i insist upon your telling me all you know; or, if you refuse to do so, i will go to lady gwendoline, and obtain the truth from her." mr. raymond shrugged his shoulders, as if he would have said, "all further argument is useless; this demented creature must go to perdition his own way." "you are a very obstinate young man, roland," he said aloud; "and i am very sorry you ever made the acquaintance of this doctor's wife, than whom there are scores of prettier women to be met with in any summer-day's walk; but i dare say there were prettier women than helen, if it comes to that. however, as you insist upon hearing the whole of this village scandal--which may or may not be true--you must have your own way; and i hope, when you have heard it, you will be contented to turn your back for some time to come upon midlandshire and mrs. george gilbert. i _have_ heard something of the story lady gwendoline told you at dinner; and from a tolerably reliable source. i have heard----" "what? that she--that isabel has been seen with some stranger?" "yes." "with whom? when? where?" "there is a strange man staying at a little rustic tavern in nessborough hollow. you know what gossips these country people are; heaven knows i have never put myself out of the way to learn other people's business; but these things get bruited about in all manner of places." roland chafed impatiently during this brief digression. "tell your story plainly, raymond," he said. "there is a strange man staying in nessborough hollow--well; what then?" "he is rather a handsome-looking fellow; flashily dressed--a londoner, evidently--and----" "but what has all this to do with mrs. gilbert?" "only this much,--she has been seen walking alone with this man, after dark, in nessborough hollow." "it must be a lie; a villanous invention! or if--if she has been seen to meet this man, he is some relation. yes, i have reason to think that she has some relation staying in this neighbourhood." "but why, in that case, should she meet the man secretly, at such an hour, while her husband is lying ill?" "there may be a hundred reasons." mr. raymond shrugged his shoulders. "can you suggest one?" he asked. roland lansdell's head sank forward on his breast. no; he could think of no reason why isabel gilbert should meet this stranger secretly--unless there were some kind of guilt involved in their association. secrecy and guilt go so perpetually together, that it is almost difficult for the mind to dissever them. "but _has_ she been seen to meet him?" cried roland, suddenly. "no; i will not believe it. some woman has been seen walking with some man; and the graybridge vultures, eager to swoop down upon my poor innocent dove, must have it that the woman is isabel gilbert. no; i will not believe this story." "so be it, then," answered mr. raymond. "in that case we can drop the subject." but roland was not so easily to be satisfied. the poisoned arrow had entered far into his soul, and he must needs drag the cruel barb backwards and forwards in the wound. "not till you have given me the name of your authority," he said. "pshaw! my dear roland, have i not already told you that my authority is the common graybridge gossip?" "i'll not believe that. you are the last man in the world to be influenced by paltry village scandal. you have better grounds for what you told me. some one has seen isabel and this man. who was that person?" "i protest against this cross-examination. i have been weak enough to sympathize with a dishonourable attachment, so far as to wish to spare you pain. you refuse to be spared, and must take the consequences of your own obstinacy. i was the person who saw isabel gilbert walking with a stranger--a showily-dressed disreputable-looking fellow--in nessborough hollow. i had been dining with hardwick the lawyer at graybridge, and rode home across country by the briargate and hurstonleigh road, instead of going through waverly. i heard the scandal about mrs. gilbert at graybridge,--heard her name linked with that of some stranger staying at the leicester arms, nessborough hollow, who had been known to send letters to her and to meet her after dark. heaven only knows how country people find out these things; but these things always are discovered somehow or other. i defended isabel,--i know her head is a good one, though by no means so well balanced as it might be,--i defended isabel throughout a long discussion with the lawyer's wife; but riding home by the briargate road, i met mrs. gilbert walking arm-in-arm with a man who answered to the description i had heard at graybridge." "when was this?" "the night before last. it must have been some time between ten and eleven when i met them, for it was broad moonlight, and i saw isabel's face as plainly as i see yours." "and did she recognize you?" "yes; and turned abruptly away from the road into the waste grass between the highway and the tall hedgerow beyond." for some moments after this there was a dead silence, and raymond saw the young man standing opposite him in the dusk, motionless as a stone figure--white as death. then after that pause, which seemed so long, roland stretched out his hand and groped among the decanters and glasses on the table for a water-jug; he filled a goblet with water; and charles raymond knew, by the clashing of the glass, that his kinsman's hand was shaken by a convulsive trembling; after taking a long draught of water, roland stretched his hand across the table. "shake hands, raymond," he said, in a dull, thick kind of voice; "i thank you heartily for having told me the truth; it was much better to be candid; it was better to let me know the truth. but, oh, if you could know how i loved her--if you could know! you think it was only the dishonourable passion of a profligate, who falls in love with a married woman, and pursues his fancy, heedless of the ruin he may entail on others. but it was not, raymond; it was nothing like that. so help me heaven, amidst all selfish sorrow for my own most bitter disappointment, i have sometimes felt a thrill of happiness in the thought that my poor girl's name was still untarnished. i have felt this, in spite of my ruined life, the cruel destruction of every hope that had grown up out of my love for her; and to think that she,--that she who saw my truth and my despair, saw my weak heart laid bare in all its abject folly,--to think that she would dismiss me with school-girl speeches about duty and honour; and then,--then, when my grief was new,--while i still lingered here, too infatuated to leave the place in which i had so cruelly suffered,--to think that she should fall into some low intrigue, some base and secret association with----. it is too bitter, raymond; it is too bitter!" the friendly dusk sheltered him as he dropped into a chair and buried his face upon the broad-cushioned elbow. the tears that gathered slowly in his eyes now were even more bitter than those that he had shed two months ago under lord thurston's oak. if this sort of thing is involved in a man's being in earnest, he had not need be in earnest about anything more than once in his life. happily for us, the power to suffer, like every other power, becomes enfeebled and wears out at last by extravagant usage. if othello had survived to marry a second time, he would not have dropped down in a fit when a new iago began to whisper poisonous hints about the lady. "i never loved any one but her," murmured roland lansdell, "i have been a hard judge of other women; but i believed in her." "my poor boy, my poor impetuous roland," mr. raymond said, softly, "men have to suffer like this once in a lifetime. fight it out, and have done with it. look at the foul phantasm straight in the eyes, and it will melt into so much empty air; and then, 'being gone,' you are 'a man again.' my dear boy, before this year is out, you will be sipping absinthe--most abominable stuff!--after supper at the maison dorée, and entertaining your companions with a satirical history of your little caprice for the doctor's wife." "and heaven forgive me for talking like major pendennis, or any other wicked old worldling!" mr. raymond added, mentally. roland lansdell got up by-and-by, and walked to the open french window. there was a silvery shimmer of moonlight upon the lawn, and the great clock in the stables was striking ten. "good night, raymond," said mr. lansdell, turning on the threshold of the window. "you can make some kind of apology for me to my uncle and gwendoline. i won't stop to say good night to them." "but where are you going?" "to nessborough hollow." "are you mad, roland?" "that's a great deal too subtle a question to be answered just now. i am going to nessborough hollow to see isabel gilbert and her lover." chapter xxxiii. keeping a promise. the moon was slowly rising behind a black belt of dense foliage,--a noble screen of elm and beech that sheltered lord ruysdale's domain from the common world without,--as roland lansdell crossed the lawn, and went in amongst the thickest depths of the park. at lowlands there were no smooth glades, and romantic waterfalls, no wonderful effects of landscape-gardening, such as adorned mordred priory. the earls of ruysdale had been more or less behind the world for the last century and a half; and the land about the old red-brick mansion was only a tangled depth of forest, in which the deer browsed peacefully, undisturbed by the ruthless handiwork of trim modern improvement. the lonely wildness of the place suited roland lansdell's mood to-night. at first he had walked very rapidly, even breaking into a run now and then; so feverishly and desperately did he desire to reach the spot where he might perhaps find that which would confirm his despair. but all at once, when he had gone some distance from the house, and the lights in lady gwendoline's drawing-room were shut from him by half the width of the park, he stopped suddenly, leaning against a tree, faint and almost breathless. he stopped for the first time to think of what he had heard. the hot passion of anger, the fierce sense of outraged pride, had filled his breast so entirely as to sweep away every softer feeling, as flowers growing near a volcanic mountain may be scattered by the rolling lava-flood that passes over them. now, for the first time, he lingered a little to reflect upon what he had heard. could it be true? could it be that this woman had deceived him,--this woman for whom he had been false to all the teaching of his life,--this woman, at whose feet he had offered up that comfortable philosophy which found an infallible armour against sorrow in supreme indifference to all things under heaven,--this woman, for whose sake he had consented to reassume the painful heritage of humanity, the faculty of suffering? "and she is like the rest, after all," he thought; "or only a little worse than the rest. and i had forgotten so much for her sake. i had blotted out the experience of a decade in order that i might believe in the witchery of her dark eyes. i, the man of half-a-dozen seasons in london and paris, vienna and st. petersburg, had sponged away every base record in the book of my memory, so that i might scrawl her name upon the blank pages; and now i am angry with her--with her, poor pitiful creature, who i suppose is only true to her nature when she is base and false. i am angry with her, when i have only my own folly to blame for the whole miserable business. i am angry with her, just as if she were a responsible being; as if she could be anything but what she is. and yet there have been good women in the world," he thought, sadly. "my mother was a good woman. i used to fancy sometimes what might have happened if i had known her in my mother's lifetime. i have even made a picture in my mind of the two women, happy together, and loving each other. heaven forgive me! and after all her pretty talk about platonism and poetry, she betrays me for a low intrigue, and a rendezvous kept in an ale-house." in all his anger against the doctor's wife, no thought of her husband's far deeper wrong ever entered into mr. lansdell's mind. it was _he_--roland--who had been betrayed: it was he whose love was outraged, whose pride was humiliated to the very dust. that there was a man, now lying ill and helpless at graybridge, who had a better right to resent isabel gilbert's treachery, and wreak vengeance upon the unknown wretch for whose sake she was thus base and guilty, never occurred to this angry young man. it had been, for a long time past, his habit to forget george gilbert's existence; he had resolutely shut from his mind the image of the graybridge surgeon ever since his return to midlandshire; ever since the wrong he was doing against george gilbert had fallen into a deliberate and persistent course, leading steadily to a foregone conclusion. he had done this, and little by little it had become very easy for him to forget so insignificant and unobtrusive a person as the simple-hearted parish surgeon, whose only sin against mankind was that he had chosen a pretty woman for his wife. so now it was of his own wrongs, and of those wrongs alone, that mr. lansdell thought. all the circumstances of isabel's visit to the priory came back to him. came back? when had they left his mind, except for that brief interval of passion during which his mind had been a chaos? "the money she wanted was for this man, of course!" he thought. "for whom else should it be? for whom else should she come to ask for money--of her rejected lover--in the dead of the night, with all the mean, miserable circumstances of a secret and guilty action? if she had wanted money from me for any legitimate purpose--in any foolish feminine confusion of debt and difficulty--why should she not have written to me boldly for the sum she required? she must have known that my purse was hers to command whenever she required it. but that she should come secretly, trembling like a guilty creature,--compromising herself and me by a midnight visit,--afraid to confess why she wanted the money,--answering my straight questions by hesitation and prevarication! what construction can i put upon her conduct of last night except one--except one? and yet, even after last night, i believed in her. i thought that she might have wanted the money for some relation. some relation! what relation should she meet alone, secretly, late at night, in such a place as nessborough hollow? she who never, in all the course of our acquaintance, mentioned a living creature beyond her step-mother who had any claim upon her; and all at once some one comes--some one for whom she must have fifty pounds; not in the form of a cheque, which might be traced home to the person who received it. i cannot forget that; i cannot forget that she refused to take my cheque for the money she wanted. that alone makes a mystery of the business; and the meeting that raymond witnessed tells all the rest. this strange man is some old lover; some jilted admirer of a bygone era, who comes now and is clamorous and dangerous, and will only be bought off by a bribe. oh, shame, shame, shame upon her, and upon my own folly! and i thought her an innocent child, who had ignorantly broken a strong man's heart!" he walked on slowly now, and with his head bent, no longer trying to make a short cut for himself among the trees, but absently following a narrow winding path worn by slow peasants' feet upon the grass. "why should i be so eager to see this man?" he thought. "what can i discover that i do not already know? if there is any one upon earth whose word i can trust in, it is raymond. he would be the very last to slander this wretched woman, or to be self-deluded by a prejudice; and he saw her--he saw her. and even beyond this, the base intrigue has become common talk. gwendoline would not have dared to say what she said to-day without good grounds for her statement. it is only i,--i who have lived apart from all the world to think and dream about her,--it is only i who am the last to be told of her shame. but i will try to see this fellow notwithstanding. i should like to see the man who has been preferred to me." nessborough hollow was some distance from lowlands; and mr. lansdell, who was familiar with almost every inch of his native county, made his way thither by shadowy lanes and rarely trodden by-ways, where the summer wild-flowers smelt sweetly in the dewy night. never surely had brighter heavens shone upon a fairer earth. the leaves and blossoms, the long lush grasses faintly stirred by lazy summer winds, made a perpetual whisper that scarcely broke the general stillness: and now and then the gurgling notes of a nightingale sounded amongst the clustering foliage that loomed darkly above tangled hedgerows, and broad wastes of moonlit grass. "i wonder why people are not happy," mused mr. lansdell, impressed in spite of himself by the quiet beauty of the summer landscape. intensely subjective though our natures may be, external things will not be quite put away, strive as we may to shut them out. did not fagin think about the broken rail when he stood in the dock, and wonder who would mend it? was not manfred, the supremely egotistical and subjective, perpetually dragging the mountain-tops and alpine streamlets into his talk of his own troubles? so to-night, deeply absorbed though he was by the consciousness of his own wrongs, there was a kind of double action in roland lansdells mind, by means of which he was conscious of every flickering shadow of the honeysuckle blossoms dark upon the silver smoothness of the moonlit grass. "i wonder how it is that people cannot be happy," he thought; "why can't they take a sensuous pleasure out of this beautiful universe, and enjoy the moonlight, and the shadows, and the perfume of new-mown hay upon the summer air; and then, when they are tired of one set of sensations, move on to another: from rural england to tropical india; from the southern prairies to the snow-mantled alps; playing a game at hide-and-seek with the disagreeable seasons, and contriving to go down to the grave through the rosy sunsets of a perpetual summer, indifferent as to who dies or suffers, so long as the beauty of the world endures? why can't people be reasonable, and take life wisely? i begin to think that mr. harold skimpole was the only true philosopher. if he had been rich enough to indulge his sensuous simplicity out of his own pocket, he would have been perfect. it is only when the skimpole philosopher wants other people's pounds that he becomes objectionable. ah, how pleasantly life might glide by, taken à la skimpole;--a beautiful waveless river, drifting imperceptibly on to darkness! but we make our own election. when we are wise enough to abjure all the glittering battle-grounds of man's ambition, we must needs fall in love, and go mad because a shallow-hearted woman has black eyes and a straight nose. with red hair and freckles mrs. gilbert might go to perdition, unwept and unhindered; but because the false creature has a pretty face we want to tear her all to pieces for her treachery." in that moonlight walk from lowlands to nessborough hollow there was time enough for mr. lansdell to fall into many moods. at one time he was ready to laugh aloud, in bitter contempt for his own weakness; at another time, moved almost to tears by the contemplation of his ruined dreams. it was so difficult for him to separate the ideal isabel of yesterday from the degraded creature of to-night. he believed what charles raymond had told him, but he could not realize it; the hard and cruel facts slipped away from him every now and then, and he found himself thinking of the doctor's wife with all the old tenderness. then suddenly, like a glare of phosphoric light, the memory of her treachery would flash back upon him. why should he lament the innocent idol of his dreams? there was not, there never had been, any such creature. but he could not hold this in his mind. he could not blot out of his brain the isabel of the past. it was easier for him to think of her as he might have thought of the dead, dwelling fondly on vain dreams of happiness which once might have been, but now could never be, because _she_ was no more. there was not a scheme that he had ever made for that impossible future which did not come back to his mind to-night. the places in which he had fancied himself lingering in tranquil happiness with the woman he loved arose before him in all their brightest colouring; fair lonely alpine villages, whose very names he had forgotten, emerged from the dim mists of memory, bright as an eastern city rising out of night's swiftly-melting vapours into the clear light of morning; and he saw isabel gilbert leaning from a rustic balcony jutting out upon broad purple waters, screened and sheltered by the tall grandeur of innumerable snow-peaks. ah, how often he had painted these things; the moonlit journeys on nights as calm as this, under still bluer skies lit by a larger moon; the varied ways and waters by which they might have gone, always leading them farther and farther away from the common world and the base thoughts of common people; the perfect isolation in which there should have been no loneliness! and all this might have been, thought mr. lansdell, if she had not been so base and degraded a creature as to cling blindly to a vulgar lover, whose power over her most likely lay in some guilty secret of the past. twenty times in the course of that long summer night's walk roland lansdell stopped for a minute or so, doubtful whether he should go farther or not. what motive had he in seeking out this stranger staying at a rustic public-house? what right had he to interfere in a wicked woman's low intrigue? if isabel gilbert was the creature she was represented to be,--and he could not doubt his authority,--what could it matter to him how low she sank? had she not coolly and deliberately rejected his love--his devotion, so earnestly and solemnly offered to her? had she not left him to his despair and desolation, with no better comfort than the stereotyped promise that she would "think of him?" what was she to him, that he should trouble himself about her, and bring universal scorn upon his name, perhaps, by some low tavern brawl? no; he would go no farther; he would blot this creature out of his mind, and turn his back upon the land which held her. was not all the world before him, and all creation designed for his pleasure? was there anything upon earth denied him, except the ignis-fatuus light of this woman's black eyes? "perhaps this is a turning-point in my life," he thought during one of these pauses; "and there may be some chance for me after all. why should i not have a career like other men, and try like them to be of some use to my species? better, perhaps, to be always trying and always failing, than to stand aloof for ever, wasting my intellect upon vain calculations as to the relative merits of the game and the candle. an outsider cannot judge the merits of the strife. to a man of my temperament it may have seemed a small matter whether spartans or persians were victors in the pass of thermopylæ; but what a glorious thing the heat and din of the struggle must have been for those who were in it! i begin to think it is a mistake to lounge luxuriously on the grand stand, looking down at the riders. better, perhaps, wear a jockey's jacket; even to be thrown and trampled to death in the race. i will wash my hands of mrs. george gilbert, and go back to the priory and sleep peacefully; and to-morrow morning i will ask lady gwendoline to be my wife; and then i can stand for wareham, and go in for liberal-conservatism and steam-farming." but the picture of isabel gilbert and the stranger meeting in nessborough hollow was not to be so easily erased from mr. lansdell's brain. the habit of vacillation, which had grown out of the idleness of his life, was stronger in him to-night than usual; but the desire to see for himself how deeply he was wronged triumphed over every other feeling, and he never turned his face from the direction in which nessborough hollow lay,--a little rustic nook in fertile midlandshire, almost as beautiful, after its own simple english fashion, as those sublime alpine villages which shone upon roland lansdell in his dreams. he came near the place at last; a little tired by the long walk from lowlands; a good deal wearied by all the contending emotions of the last few hours. he came upon the spot at last, not by the ordinary roadway, but across a strip of thickly wooded waste land lying high above the hollow--a dense and verdant shelter, in which the fern grew tall beneath the tangled branches of the trees. here he stopped, upon the top-most edge of a bank that sloped down into the rustic roadway. the place beneath him was a kind of glen, sheltered from all the outer world, solemnly tranquil in that silent hour. he saw the road winding and narrowing under the trees till it reached a little rustic bridge. he heard the low ripple of the distant brook; and close beside the bridge he saw the white wall of the little inn, chequered with broad black beams, and crowned by high peaked gables jutting out above the quaint latticed casements. in one low window he saw a feeble candle gleaming behind a poor patch of crimson curtain, and through the half-open door a narrow stream of light shone in a slanting line upon the ground. he saw all this; and then from the other end of the still glade he saw two figures coming slowly towards the inn. two figures, one of which was so familiar and had been so dear that despair, complete and absolute, came upon him for the first time, in that one brief start of recognition. ah, surely he had never believed in her falsehood until this moment; surely, if he had believed charles raymond, the agony of seeing her here could not have been so great as this! he stood upon the crown of the steep slope, with his hands grasping the branches on each side of him, looking down at those two quiet figures advancing slowly in the moonlight. there was nothing between him and them except the grassy bank, broken here and there by patches of gorse and fern, and briers and saplings; there was nothing to intercept his view, and the moonlight shone full upon them. he did not look at the man. what did it matter to him what _he_ was like? he looked at her--at _her_ whom he had loved so tenderly--at her for whose sake he had consented to believe in woman's truth and purity. he looked at her, and saw her face, very pale in the moonlight,--blanched, no doubt, by the guilty pallor of fear. even the pattern of her dress was familiar to him. had she not worn it in one of their meetings at thurston's crag? "fool!" he thought, "to think that she, who found it so easy a matter to deceive her husband, must needs be true to _me_. _i_ was ill at ease and remorseful when i went to meet her; but she came to me smiling, and went away, placid and beautiful as a good angel, to tell her husband that she had been to thurston's crag, and had happened to meet mr. lansdell." he stood as still as death, not betraying his presence by so much as the rustling of a leaf, while the two figures approached the spot above which he stood. but a little way off they paused, and were parting, very coolly, as it seemed, when mrs. gilbert lifted up her face, and said something to the man. he stood with his back turned towards roland, to whom the very expression of isabel's face was visible in the moonlight. it seemed to him as if she was pleading for something, for he had never seen her face more earnest,--no, not even when she had decided the question of his life's happiness in that farewell meeting beneath thurston's oak. she seemed to be pleading for something, since the man nodded his head once or twice while she was speaking, with a churlish gesture of assent; and when they were about to part he bent his head and kissed her. there was an insolent indifference about his manner of doing this that stung roland more keenly than any display of emotion could have done. after this the doctor's wife went away. roland watched her as she turned once, and stood for a moment looking back at the man from whom she had just parted, and then disappeared amongst the shadows in the glade. ah, if she had been nothing more than a shadow--if he could have awakened to find all this the brief agony of a dream! the man stood where isabel had left him, while he took a box of fusees from his waistcoat-pocket and lighted a cigar; but his back was still turned to mr. lansdell. he drew two or three puffs of smoke from the cigar, assured himself that it was fully lighted, and then strolled slowly towards the spot above which roland stood. all that was left of the original savage in the fine gentleman arose at that moment in roland lansdell's breast. he had come there, only to ascertain for himself that he had been betrayed and deluded; he had come with no vengeful purpose in his mind; or, at any rate, with no consciousness of any such purpose. he had come to be cool, indifferent, ironical; to slay with cruel and cutting words, perhaps, but to use no common weapons. but in a moment all his modern philosophy of indifference melted away, and left him with the original man's murderous instincts and burning sense of wrong raging fiercely in his breast. he leapt down the sloping bank with scarcely any consciousness of touching the slippery grass; but he dragged the ferns and brambles from the loose earth in his descent, and a shower of torn verdure flew up into the summer air. he had no weapon, nothing but his right arm, wherewith to strike the broad-chested black-bearded stranger. but he never paused to consider that, or to count the chances of a struggle. he only knew that he wanted to kill the man for whose sake isabel gilbert had rejected and betrayed him. in the next moment his hands were on the stranger's throat. "you scoundrel!" he gasped, hoarsely, "you consummate coward and scoundrel, to bring that woman to this place!" there was a brief struggle, and then the stranger freed himself from mr. lansdell's grasp. there was no comparison between the physical strength and weight of the two men; and the inequality was sensibly increased by a stout walking-stick of the bludgeon order carried by the black-bearded stranger. "hoity-toity!" cried that gentleman, who seemed scarcely disposed to take mr. lansdell's attack seriously; "have you newly escaped from some local lunatic asylum, my friend, that you go about the country flying at people's throats in this fashion? what's the row? can't a gentleman in the merchant navy take a moonlight stroll with his daughter for once in a way, to wish her good-bye before he fits out for a fresh voyage, without all this hullabaloo?" "your daughter!" cried roland lansdell. "your daughter?" "yes, my daughter isabel, wife of mr. gilbert, surgeon." "thank god!" murmured roland, slowly, "thank god!" and then a pang of remorse shot through his heart, as he thought how little his boasted love had been worth, after all; how ready he had been to disbelieve in her purity; how easily he had accepted the idea of her degradation. "i ought to have known," he thought,--"i ought to have known that she was innocent. if all the world had been banded together against her, i should have been her champion, and defender. but my love was only a paltry passion after all. the gold changed to brass in the fire of the first ordeal." he thought this, or something like this, and then in the next moment he said courteously: "upon my word, i have to apologize for my----" he hesitated a little here, for he really was ashamed of himself; all the murderous instincts were gone, as if they had never been, and the englishman's painfully acute perception of the ridiculous being fully aroused, he felt that he had made a consummate fool of himself. "i have to apologize for my very absurd behaviour just now; but having heard a very cruel and slanderous report, connecting you as a stranger, and not as a near relation, with mrs. gilbert, and entertaining a most sincere respect for that lady and her husband, to say nothing of the fact that i had been lately dining,"--mr. lansdell had not drunk so much as one glassful of wine during the last four-and-twenty hours; but he would have been quite willing to admit himself a drunkard if that could have lessened the ridiculous element of his position--"in point of fact, i completely lost my head. i am very happy to think you are so nearly related to the lady i so much esteem; and if i can be of service to you in any manner, i----" "stop a bit," cried mr. sleaford the barrister,--"stop a bit! i thought i knew your voice. _you're_ the languid swell, who was so jolly knowing at the old bailey,--the languid swell who had nothing better to do than join the hunt against a poor devil that never cheated you out of sixpence. i said, if ever i came out of prison alive, _i'd kill you_; and i'll keep my promise." he hissed out these last words between his set teeth. his big muscular hands were fastened on roland lansdell's throat; and his face was pushed forward until it almost touched that other handsome face which defied him in the proud insolence of a moral courage that rose above all physical superiority. the broad bright moonlight streaming through a wide gap in the foliage fell full upon the two men; and in the dark face glowering at his, mr. lansdell recognized the man whom he had followed down to liverpool for the mere amusement of the chase,--the man described in the police records by a dozen aliases, and best known by his familiar sobriquet of "jack the scribe." "you dog!" cried mr. sleaford, "i've dreamt about such a meeting as this when i was working the pious dodge at portland. i've dreamt about it; and it did me good to feel my fingers at your throat, even in my dreams. you dog! i'll do for you, if i swing for this night's work." there was a struggle,--a brief and desperate struggle,--in which the two men wrestled with each other, and the chances of victory seemed uncertain. then mr. sleaford's bludgeon went whirling up into the air, and descended with a dull thud, once, twice, three times upon roland lansdell's bare head. after the third blow, jack the scribe loosed his grasp from the young man's throat, and the master of mordred priory fell crashing down among the fern and wild-flowers, with a shower of opal-tinted rose-petals fluttering about him as he fell. he lay very quietly where he had fallen. mr. sleaford looked about him right and left along the pleasant moon-lighted glade. there was not a living creature to be seen either way. the light behind the red curtain in the little rustic tavern still glimmered feebly in the distance; but the stillness of the place could scarcely have seemed more profound had nessborough hollow been a hidden glade in some primeval forest. jack the scribe knelt down beside the figure lying so quietly amongst the tangled verdure, and laid his strong bare hand very gently above mr. lansdell's waistcoat. "he'll do," muttered the scribe; "i've spoiled him for some time to come, anyhow. perhaps it's all for the best if i haven't gone too far." he rose from his knees, looked about him again, and assured himself of the perfect loneliness of the place. then he walked slowly towards the little inn. "a low blackguard would have taken the fellow's watch," he mused, "and got himself into trouble that way. what did he mean by flying at me about isabel, i wonder; and how does he come to know her? he belongs to this part of the country, i suppose. and to think that i should have been so near him all this time without knowing it. i knew his name, and that's about all i did know; but i thought he was a london swell." he pushed open the door of the little tavern presently--the door through which the slanting line of light had streamed out upon the pathway. all within was very quiet, for the rustic owners of the habitation had long since retired to their peaceful slumbers, leaving mr. sleaford what he called "the run of the house." they had grown very familiar with their lodger, and placed implicit confidence in him as a jolly outspoken fellow of the seafaring order; for these midlandshire rustics were not very keen to detect any small shortcomings in mr. sleaford's assumption of the mercantile mariner. he went into the room where the light was burning. it was the room which he had occupied during his residence at the leicester arms. he seated himself at the table, on which there were some writing materials, and scrawled a few lines to the effect that he found himself obliged to go away suddenly that night, on his way to liverpool, and that he left a couple of sovereigns, at a rough guess, to pay his score. he wrapped the money up in the letter, sealed it with a great sprawling red seal, directed it to the landlord, and placed it on a conspicuous corner of the mantel-piece. then he took off his boots, and crept softly up the creaking corkscrew staircase leading to his bedroom, with the candle in his hand. he came down-stairs again about ten minutes afterwards carrying a little valise, which he slung across his shoulder by a strap; then he took up his bludgeon and prepared to depart. but before leaving the room he bent over the table, and examined the heaviest end of his stick by the light of the candle. there was blood upon it, and a little tuft of dark hair, which he burned in the flame of the candle; and when he looked at his waistcoat he saw that there were splashes of blood on that and on his shirt. he held the end of the stick over the candle till it was all smoked and charred; he buttoned his cut-away coat over his chest, and then took a railway-rug from a chair in a corner and threw it across his shoulder. "it's an ugly sight to look at, that is," he muttered; "but i don't think i went too far." he went out at the little door, and into the glade, where a nightingale was singing high up amongst the clustering foliage, and where the air was filled with the faint perfume of honeysuckle and starry wild roses. once he looked, with something like terror in his face, towards the spot where he had left his prostrate enemy; and then he turned and walked away at a rapid pace in the other direction, crossing the rustic wooden bridge, and ascending the rising ground that led towards the briargate road. chapter xxxiv. retrospective. the parish surgeon lay in his darkened bedchamber at graybridge day after day and night after night, and mr. pawlkatt, coming twice a day to look at him, could give very small comfort to the watchers. george gilbert had been ill nearly a fortnight--not quite a fortnight--but it seemed now a common thing for the house to be hushed and darkened, and the once active master lying dull, heavy, and lethargic, under the shadow of the dimity bed-curtains. those who watched him lost all count of time. it seemed almost as if the surgeon had always been ill. it was difficult, somehow, to remember that not quite two weeks ago he had been one of the most active inhabitants of graybridge; it was still more difficult to imagine that he could ever again be what he had been. no patient, in the dull anguish of an obstinate fever, could have desired better or more devoted nurses than those who waited on george gilbert. to isabel this experience of a sick room was altogether a new thing. she had known her father to be laid up for the space of a day with a vague sort of ailment which he called "bile," but which generally arose after a dinner in london with certain choice spirits of his acquaintance, and a stealthy return to the sanctuary of his camberwell home in the chill grey glimmer of early morning. she had known her step-mother to complain perpetually of divers aches, and pains, and "stitches," and stiffness of her ribs and shoulder-blades and loins, and other complicated portions of her bony structure, and to throw out dismal prophecies to the effect that she would be worried into a premature grave by the breakage and waste of boys, and the general aggravation of a large family. but illness, a real and dangerous malady, with all its solemn accompaniments of hushed voices and darkness, and grave faces and stealthy footsteps, was quite new to the doctor's wife. if she had loved her sick husband with that romantic love which it had been her sin and her misfortune to bestow elsewhere, she could not have watched quietly in that darkened chamber. she would have fled away from the patient's presence to fling herself on the ground somewhere, wholly abandoned to her anguish. but she had never loved george gilbert; only that womanly tenderness, which was the chief attribute of her nature, that sympathetic affection for everything that was suffering or sorrowful, held her to the invalid's bedside. she was so sorry for him, and she was so horribly afraid that he would die. the thought that she might step across the darksome chasm of his grave into those fair regions inhabited by roland lansdell, could not hold a place in her heart. death, the terrible and the unfamiliar, stood a black and gaunt figure between her and all beyond the sick room. edith dombey and ernest maltravers were alike forgotten during those long days and nights in which the surgeon's rambling delirious talk only broke the silence. isabel gilbert's ever-active imagination was busy with more terrible images than any to be found in her books. the pictures of a funeral _cortège_ in the dusky lane, a yawning grave in the familiar churchyard, forced themselves upon her as she sat watching the black shadow of the perforated lantern that held the rushlight, looming gigantic on the whitewashed wall. and, thinking thus of that dark hour which might be before her, she thought much less of roland lansdell than in the days before her husband's illness. she was not a wicked woman; she was only very foolish. the thought that there was a handsome young country gentleman with a fine estate and fifteen thousand a year waiting to be her second husband, if death loosened her present bondage, could not have a place amongst those tender poetical dreams engendered out of her books. a woman of the world, hardened by worldly experience, might have sat in that dusky chamber watching the sick man, and brooding, half remorsefully, half impatiently, upon the thought of what might happen if his malady should have a fatal ending. but this poor sentimental girl, nourished upon the airiest fancies of poets and romancers, had no such loathsome thoughts. roland lansdell's wealth and position had never tempted her; it had only dazzled her; it had only seemed a bright and splendid atmosphere radiating from and belonging to the deity himself. if, in some dreamy rapture, she had ever fancied herself far away from all the common world, united to the man she loved, she had only pictured herself as a perpetual worshipper in white muslin, kneeling at the feet of her idol, with wild-flowers in her hair. the thought that he had fifteen thousand a year, and a superb estate, never disturbed by its gross influence her brighter dreams; it was not in her to be mercenary, or even ambitious. that yearning for splendour and glitter which had made her envious of edith dombey's fate was only a part of her vague longing for the beautiful; she wanted to be amongst beautiful things, made beautiful herself by their influence; but whether their splendour took the form of a boudoir in may fair all a-glow with wonderful pictures and parian statues, rare old china and tapestry hangings, or the floral luxuriance of a forest on the banks of the amazon, was of very little consequence to this sentimental young dreamer. if she could not be mrs. dombey, sublime in scornful indignation and ruby silk velvet, she would have been contented to be simple dorothea, washing her tired feet in the brook, with her hair about her shoulders. she only wanted the vague poetry of life, the mystic beauty of romance infused somehow into her existence; and she was as yet too young to understand that latent element of poetry which underlies the commonest life. in the meantime a very terrible trouble had come to her--the trouble occasioned by her father's presence in the neighbourhood of graybridge. never, until some days after his apprehension at liverpool, had mr. sleaford's wife and children known the nature of the profession by which the master of the house earned a fluctuating income,--enough for reckless extravagance sometimes, at others barely enough to keep the wolf from the door. this is not a sensation novel. i write here what i know to be the truth. jack the scribe's children were as innocently ignorant of their father's calling as if that gentleman had been indeed what he represented himself--a barrister. he went every day to his professional duties, and returned at night to his domestic hearth; he was a very tolerable father; a faithful, and not unkind husband; a genial companion amongst the sort of men with whom he associated. he had only that awkward little habit of forging other people's names; by which talent, exercised in conjunction with a gang whose cunningly-organized plan of operations won for them considerable celebrity, he had managed to bring up a numerous family in comparative comfort and respectability. if any one had been good enough to die and leave mr. sleaford a thousand a year, jack the scribe would have willingly laid down his pen and retired into respectability; but in the meantime he found it necessary to provide for himself and a hungry family; and having no choice between a clerk's place with a pound a week and the vaguely-glorious chances of a modern freebooter, he had joined the gang in question, to whom he was originally made known by some very pretty little amateur performances in the accommodation-bill line. never, until after his apprehension, had the truth been revealed to any one member of that camberwell household. long ago, when jack the scribe was a dashing young articled clerk, with bold black eyes and a handsome face,--long ago, when isabel was only a baby, the knowledge of a bill-discounting transaction which the clerk designated an awkward scrape, but which his employers declared to be a felony, had come suddenly upon mr. sleaford's first wife, and had broken her heart. but when the amateur artist developed into the accomplished professional, isabel's father learned the art of concealing the art. his sudden departure from camberwell, the huddling of the family into an islington lodging, and his subsequent flight to liverpool, were explained to his household as an attempt to escape an arrest for debt; and as angry creditors and sheriffs' officers had been but common intruders upon the peace of the household, there seemed nothing very unnatural in such a flight. it was only when mr. sleaford was safely lodged within the fatal walls of newgate, when the preliminary investigations of the great forgeries were published in every newspaper, that he communicated the real state of the case to his horror-stricken wife and children. there is little need to dwell upon the details of that most bitter time. people get over these sort of things somehow; and grief and shame are very rarely fatal, even to the most sensitive natures. "alas, sweet friend," says shelley's helen, "you must believe this heart is stone; it did not break!" there seems to be a good deal of the stony element in all our hearts, so seldom are the arrows of affliction fatal. to isabel the horror of being a forger's daughter was something very terrible; but even in its terror there was just the faintest flavour of romance: and if she could have smuggled her father out of newgate in a woman's cap and gown, like lady nithisdale, she might have forgiven him the crimes that had helped to make her a heroine. the boys, after the first shock of the revelation, took a very lenient view of their father's case, and were inclined to attribute his shortcomings to the tyranny and prejudice of society. "if a rich cove has a jolly lot of money in the bank, and poor coves are starving, the rich cove must expect to have it forged away from him," horace sleaford remarked, moodily, when debating the question of his father's guilt. nor did the hobbledehoy's sympathy end here; for he borrowed a dirty and dilapidated copy of mr. ainsworth's delightful romance from a circulating library, and minutely studied that gentleman's description of newgate in the days of jack sheppard, with a view to mr. sleaford's evasion of his jailers. it was not so very bad to bear, after all; for of course jack the scribe was not so imprudent as to make any admission of his guilt. he represented himself as the victim of circumstances, the innocent associate of wicked men, entrapped into the folly of signing other people's names by a conspiracy on the part of his companions. hardened as he was by the experiences of a long and doubtful career, he felt some natural shame; and he did all in his power to keep his wife and children dissociated from himself and his crimes. bitterly though the cynic may bewail the time-serving and mercenary nature of his race, a man can generally find some one to help him in the supreme crisis of his fate. mr. sleaford found friends, obscure and vulgar people, by whose assistance he was enabled to get his family out of the way before his trial came on at the old bailey. the boys, ever athirst for information of the jack-sheppard order, perused the daily record of that old bailey ordeal by stealth in the attic where they slept; but isabel saw nothing of the newspapers, which set forth the story of her father's guilt, and only knew at the last, when all was decided, what mr. sleaford's fate was to be. thus it was that she never saw mr. lansdell's name amongst those of the witnesses against her father; and even if she had seen that name, it is doubtful whether it would have lived in her memory until the day when she met the master of mordred priory. no language can describe the horror that she felt on her father's sudden appearance in midlandshire. utterly ignorant of the practices of prison life, and the privileges of a ticket-of-leave, she had regarded mr. sleaford's dismal habitation as a kind of tomb in which he was to be buried alive for the full term of his imprisonment. vaguely and afar off she saw the shadow of danger to roland, in the ultimate release of his enemy; but the shadow seemed so very far away, that after the first shock of mr. lansdell's story, it had almost faded from her mind, blotted out by nearer joys and sorrows. it was only when her father stood before her, fierce and exacting, hardened and brutalized by prison-life, a wretch for ever at war with the laws he had outraged,--it was only then that the full measure of roland lansdell's danger was revealed to her. "if ever i come out of prison alive, i will kill you!" never had she forgotten the words of that threat. but she might hope that it was only an empty threat, the harmless thunder of a moment's passion; not a deliberate promise, to be fulfilled whenever the chance of its fulfilment arose. she did hope this; and in her first stolen interview with her father, she led him to talk of his trial, and contrived to ascertain his present sentiments regarding the man who had so materially helped to convict him. the dusky shadows of the summer evening hid the pallor of her earnest face, as she walked by mr. sleaford's side in the sheltered hollow; and that gentleman was too much absorbed by the sense of his own wrongs to be very observant of his daughter's agitation. isabel gilbert heard enough during that interview to convince her that roland lansdell's danger was very real and near. mr. sleaford's vengeful passions had fed and battened upon the solitude of the past years. every privation and hardship endured in his prison life had been a fresh item in his long indictment against mr. lansdell, the "languid swell," whom he had never wronged to the extent of a halfpenny, but who, for the mere amusement of the chase, had hunted him down. this was what he could not forgive. he _could not_ recognize the right of an amateur detective, who bore witness against a criminal for the general benefit of society. after this first meeting in nessborough hollow, the doctor's wife had but one thought, one purpose and desire; and that was, to keep her father in ignorance of his enemy's near neighbourhood, and to get him away before mischief arose between the two men. but this was not such an easy matter. mr. sleaford refused to leave his quarters at the leicester arms until he obtained that which he had come to midlandshire to seek--money enough for a new start in life. he had made his way to jersey immediately after getting his release, and had there seen his wife and the boys. from them he heard of isabel's marriage. she had married well, they said: a doctor at a place called graybridge-on-the -wayverne--an important man, no doubt; and she had not been unkind to them upon the whole, writing nice long letters to her step-mother now and then, and sending post-office orders for occasional sovereigns. heaven only knows with what difficulty the poor girl had contrived to save those occasional sovereigns. mr. sleaford demanded money of his daughter. he had made all manner of inquiries about george gilbert's position, and had received very satisfactory answers to those inquiries. the young doctor was a "warm" man, the gossips in the little parlour at the leicester arms told jack the scribe; a prudent young man, who had inherited a nice little nest-egg--perpetually being hatched at a moderate rate of interest in the wareham bank--from his father, and had saved money himself, no doubt. and then the gossips entered into calculations as to the value of mr. gilbert's practice, and the simple eeonomy of his domestic arrangements; all favourable to the idea that the young surgeon had a few thousands snugly invested in the county bank. under these circumstances, mr. sleaford considered himself entirely justified in standing out for what he called his rights, namely, a sum of money--say fifty or a hundred pounds--from his daughter; and isabel, with the thought of roland's danger perpetually in her mind, felt that the money must be obtained at any price. had her husband been well enough to talk of business matters, she might have made her appeal to him; but as it was, there was an easier and more speedy method of getting the money. roland, roland himself, who was rich, and to whom fifty pounds,--large as the sum seemed to this girl, who had never had an unbroken ten-pound note in her life,--must be a very small matter; he was the only person who could give her immediate help. it was to him therefore she appealed. ah, with what bitter shame and anguish! and it was to deliver up the money thus obtained that she met her father in nessborough hollow on the night of that dismal dinner at lowlands. the idea of telling roland of his danger never for a moment entered her mind. was he not a hero, and would he not inevitably have courted that or any other peril? she thought of his position with all a weak woman's illogical terror; and the only course that presented itself to her mind was that which she pursued. she wanted to get her father away before any chance allusion upon a stranger's lips told him that the man he so bitterly hated was within his reach. chapter xxxv. "'twere best at once to sink to peace." after that farewell meeting with mr. sleaford in nessborough hollow, a sense of peace came upon isabel gilbert. she had questioned her father about his plans, and he had told her that he should leave midlandshire by the seven o'clock train from wareham on the following morning. he should be heartily rejoiced to get to london, he said, and to leave a place where he felt like a fox in a hole. the sentimental element was by no means powerfully developed in the nature of jack the scribe, to whom the crowded pavements of fleet street and the strand were infinitely more agreeable than the wild roses and branching fern of midlandshire. his daughter slept tranquilly that night for the first time after mr. sleaford's appearance before the surgeon's door. she slept in peace, worn out by the fatigue and anxiety of the last fortnight; and no evil dream disturbed her slumbers. the odic forces must be worth very little after all, for there was no consciousness in the sleeper's mind of that quiet figure lying among the broken fern; no shadow, however dim, of the scene that had been enacted in the tranquil, summer moonlight, while she was hurrying homeward through the dewy lanes, triumphant in the thought that her difficult task was accomplished. only once in a century does the vision of maria martin appear to an anxious dreamer; only so often as to shake the formal boundary-wall of common sense which we have so rigidly erected between the visible and invisible, and to show us that there are more things in heaven and earth than our dull philosophy is prepared to recognize. isabel woke upon the morning after that interview in the hollow, with a feeling of relief still in her mind. her father was gone, and all was well. he was not likely to return; for she had told him, with most solemn protestations, that she had obtained the money with extreme difficulty, and would never be able to obtain more. she had told him this, and he had promised never again to assail her with any demands. it was a very easy thing for jack the scribe to make that or any other promise; but even if he broke his word, isabel thought, there was every chance that roland lansdell would leave midlandshire very speedily, and become once more an alien and a wanderer. the doctor's wife was at peace, therefore; the dreadful terror of the past fortnight was lifted away from her mind, and she was prepared to do her duty; to be true to mr. colborne's solemn teaching, and to watch dutifully, undistracted by any secret fear and anguish, by george gilbert's sick bed. very dismal faces greeted her beside that bed. mr. jeffson never left his post now at the pillow of his young master. the weeds grew unheeded in the garden; and brown molly missed her customary grooming. the gardener had thrown half a load of straw in the lane, below the doctor's window, so that no rumbling of the waggon-wheels carrying home the new-mown hay should disturb george gilbert's feverish sleep, if the brief fitful dozes into which he fell now and then could be called by so sweet a name. mr. pawlkatt sat looking at his patient longer than usual that morning. george gilbert lay in a kind of stupor, and did not recognize his medical attendant, and sometime rival. he had long since ceased to be anxious about his poor patients in the lanes behind the church, or about anything else upon this earth, as it seemed; and now that her great terror had been lifted from her mind, isabel saw a new and formless horror gliding swiftly towards her, like a great iceberg sailing fast upon an arctic sea. she followed mr. pawlkatt out of the room, and down the little staircase, and clung to his arm as he was about to leave her. "oh, do you think he will die?" she said. "i did not know until this morning that he was so very ill. do you think he will die?" the surgeon looked inquisitively into the earnest face lifted to his--looked with some expression of surprise upon his countenance. "i am very anxious, mrs. gilbert," he answered, gravely. "i will not conceal from you that i am growing very anxious. the pulse is feeble and intermittent; and these low fevers--there, there, don't cry. i'll drive over to wareham, as soon as i've seen the most important of my cases; and i'll ask dr. herstett to come and look at your husband. pray try to be calm." "i am so frightened," murmured isabel, between her low half-stifled sobs. "i never saw any one ill--like that--before." mr. pawlkatt watched her gravely as he drew on his gloves. "i am not sorry to see this anxiety on your part, mrs. gilbert," he remarked sententiously. "as the friend and brother-professional of your husband, and as a man who is--ahem!--old enough to be your father, i will go so far as to say that i am gratified to find that you--i may say, your heart is in the right place. there have been some very awkward reports about you, mrs. gilbert, during the last few days. i--i--of course should not presume to allude to those reports, if i did not believe them to be erroneous," the surgeon added, rather hastily, not feeling exactly secure as to the extent and bearing of the law of libel. but isabel only looked at him with bewilderment and distress in her face. "reports about me!" she repeated. "what reports?" "there has been a person--a stranger--staying at a little inn down in nessborough hollow; and you,--in fact, i really have no right to interfere in this matter, but my very great respect for your husband,-and, in short----" "oh, that person is gone now," isabel answered frankly. "it was very unkind of people to say anything against him, or against me. he was a relation,--a very near relation,--and i could not do otherwise than see him now and then while he was in the neighbourhood. i went late in the evening, because i did not wish to leave my husband at any other time. i did not think that the graybridge people watched me so closely, or were so ready to think that what i do must be wrong." mr. pawlkatt patted her hand soothingly. "a relation, my dear mrs. gilbert?" he exclaimed. "that, of course, quite alters the case. i always said that you were no doubt perfectly justified in doing as you did; though it would have been better to invite the person here. country people will talk, you know. as a medical man, with rather a large field of experience, i see all these little provincial weaknesses. they will talk; but keep up your courage, mrs. gilbert. we shall do our best for our poor friend. we shall do our very best." he gave isabel's tremulous hand a little reassuring squeeze, and departed complacently. the doctor's wife stood absently watching him as he walked away, and then turned and went slowly into the parlour--the empty, miserable-looking parlour, which had not been used now for more than a week. the dust lay thick upon the shabby old furniture, and the atmosphere was hot and oppressive. here isabel sat down beside the chiffonier, where her poor little collection of books was huddled untidily in a dusty corner. she sat down to think--trying to realize the nature of that terror which seemed so close to her, trying to understand the full significance of what mr. pawlkatt had said of her husband. the surgeon had given no hope that george gilbert would recover; he had only made little conventional speeches about calmness and fortitude. she tried to think, but could not. she had only spoken the truth just now, when she cried out that she was frightened. this kind of terror was so utterly new to her that she could not understand the calm business-like aspect of the people who watched and waited on her husband. could he be dying? that strong active man, whose rude health and hearty appetite had once jarred so harshly upon all her schoolgirl notions of consumptive and blood-vessel-breaking heroes! could he be dying?--dying as heroic a death as any she had ever read of in her novels: the death of a man who speculates his life for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and loses by the venture. the memory of every wrong that she had ever done him--small wrongs of neglect, or contemptuous opinions regarding his merits--wrongs that had been quite impalpable to the honest unromantic doctor,--crowded upon her now, and made a dull remorseful anguish in her breast. the dark shadow brooding over george gilbert--the dread gigantic shadow, growing darker day by day--made him a new creature in the mind of this weak girl. no thought of her own position had any place in her mind. she could not think; she could only wait, oppressed by a dread whose nature she dared not realize. she sat for a long time in the same forlornly listless attitude, almost as helpless as the man who lay in the darkened chamber above her. then, rousing herself with effort, she crept up-stairs to the room where the grave faces of the watchers greeted her, with very little sympathy in their gaze. had not mr. and mrs. jeffson heard the reports current in graybridge; and was it likely they could have any pity for a woman who crept stealthily at nightfall from her invalid husband's house to meet a stranger? isabel would have whispered some anxious question about the patient; but matilda jeffson frowned sternly at her, commanding silence with an imperious forefinger; and she was fain to creep into a dark corner, where it had been her habit to sit since the jeffsons had, in a manner, taken possession of her husband's sick bed. she could not dispute their right to do so. what was she but a frivolous, helpless creature, fluttering and trembling like a leaf when she essayed to do any little service for the invalid? the day seemed painfully long. the ticking of an old clock on the stairs, and the heavy troubled breathing of the sick man, were the only sounds that broke the painful silence of the house. once or twice isabel took an open testament from a little table near her, and tried to take some comfort from its pages. but she could not feel the beauty of the words as she had in the little church at hurstonleigh, when her mind had been exalted by all manner of vague spiritualistic yearnings; now it seemed deadened by the sense of dread and horror. she did not love her husband; and those tidings of heavenly love which have so subtle an affinity with earthly affection could not touch her very nearly in her present frame of mind. she did not love her husband well enough to pray that something little short of a miracle might be wrought for his sake. she was only sorry for him; tenderly compassionate of his suffering; very fearful that he might die. she did pray for him; but there was no exaltation in her prayers, and she had a dull presentiment that her supplications would not be answered. it was late in the afternoon when the physician from wareham came with mr. pawlkatt; and when he did arrive, he seemed to do very little, isabel thought. he was a grey-whiskered important-looking man, with creaking boots; he seated himself by the bedside, and felt the patient's pulse, and listened to his breathing, and lifted his heavy eyelids, and peered into his dim blood-shot eyes. he asked a good many questions, and then went down-stairs with mr. pawlkatt, and the two medical men were closeted together some ten or twelve minutes in the little parlour. isabel did not follow mr. pawlkatt down-stairs this time. she was awed by the presence of the strange physician, and there was nothing in the manner of the two men that inspired hope or comfort. she sat quite still in her dusky corner; but mrs. jeffson stole out of the room soon after the medical men had quitted it, and went slowly down-stairs. george was asleep; in a very sound and heavy sleep this time; and his breathing was more regular than it had been--more regular, but still a laboured stertorous kind of respiration that was very painful to hear. in less than ten minutes mrs. jeffson came back, looking very pale, and with traces of tears upon her face. the good woman had been listening to the medical consultation in the little parlour below. perhaps isabel dimly comprehended this; for she got up from her chair, and went a little way towards her husband's housekeeper. "oh, tell me the truth," she whispered, imploringly; "do they think that he will die?" "yes," matilda jeffson answered, in a hard cruel voice, strangely at variance with her stifled sobs, "yes, mrs. gilbert; and you'll be free to take your pleasure, and to meet mr. lansdell as often as you like; and go gadding about after dark with strange men. you might have waited a bit, mrs. gilbert; you wouldn't have had to wait very long--for they say my poor dear master--and i had him in my arms the day he was born, so i've need to love him dearly, even if others haven't!--i heard the doctor from wareham tell mr. pawlkatt that he will never live to see to-morrow morning's light. so you might have waited, mrs. gilbert; but you're a wicked woman and a wicked wife!" but just at this moment the sick man started suddenly from his sleep, and lifted himself into a sitting position. mr. jeffson's arm was about him directly, supporting the wasted figure that had very lately been so strong. george gilbert had heard matilda's last words, for he repeated them in a thick strange voice, but with sufficient distinctness. it was a surprise to those who nursed him to hear him speak reasonably, for it was some time since he had been conscious of passing events. "wicked! no! no!" he said. "always a good wife; always a very good wife! come, izzie; come here. i'm afraid it has been a dull life, my dear," he said very gently, as she came to him, clinging to him, and looking at him with a white scared face,--"dull--very dull; but it wouldn't have been always so. i thought--by-and-by to--new practice--helmswell--market-town--seven thousand inhabitants--and you--drive--pony-carriage, like laura pawlkatt--but--the lord's will be done, my dear!--i hope i've done my duty--the poor people--better rooms--ventilation--please god, by-and-by. i've seen a great deal of suffering--and--my duty----" he slid heavily back upon william jeffson's supporting arm; and a rain of tears--passionate remorseful tears never to be felt by him--fell on his pallid face. his death was very sudden, though his illness had been, considering the nature of his disease, a long and tedious one. he died supremely peaceful in the consciousness of having done his duty. he died, with isabel's hand clasped in his own; and never, throughout his simple life, had one pang of doubt or jealousy tortured his breast. chapter xxxvi. between two worlds. a solemn calm came down upon the house at graybridge, and for the first time isabel gilbert felt the presence of death about and around her, shutting out all the living world by its freezing influence. the great iceberg had come down upon the poor frail barque. it almost seemed to isabel as if she and all in that quiet habitation had been encompassed by a frozen wall, through which the living could not penetrate. she suffered very much; the morbid sensibility of her nature made her especially liable to such suffering. a dull, remorseful pain gnawed at her heart. ah, how wicked she had been! how false, how cruel, how ungrateful! but if she had known that he was to die--if she had only known--it might all have been different. the foreknowledge of his doom would have insured her truth and tenderness; she could not have wronged, even by so much as a thought, a husband whose days were numbered. and amid all her remorse she was for ever labouring with the one grand difficulty--the difficulty of realizing what had happened. she had needed the doctor's solemn assurance that her husband was really dead before she could bring herself to believe that the white swoon, the chill heaviness of the passive hand, did indeed mean death. and even when she had been told that all was over, the words seemed to have very little influence upon her mind. it could not be! all the last fortnight of anxiety and trouble was blotted out, and she could only think of george gilbert as she had always known him until that time, in the full vigour of health and strength. she was very sorrowful; but no passionate grief stirred her frozen breast. it was the shock, the sense of horror that oppressed her, rather than any consciousness of a great loss. she would have called her husband back to life; but chiefly because it was so horrible to her to know that he was there--near her--what he was. once the thought came to her--the weak selfish thought--that it would have been much easier for her to bear this calamity if her husband had gone away, far away from her, and only a letter had come to tell her that he was dead. she fancied herself receiving the letter, and wondering at its black-edged border. the shock would have been very dreadful; but not so horrible as the knowledge that george gilbert was in that house, and yet there was no george gilbert. again and again her mind went over the same beaten track; again and again the full realization of what had happened slipped away from her, and she found herself framing little speeches--penitent, remorseful speeches--expressive of her contrition for all past shortcomings. and then there suddenly flashed back upon her the too vivid picture of that deathbed scene, and she heard the dull thick voice murmuring feebly words of love and praise. in all this time roland lansdell's image was shut out of her mind. in the dense and terrible shadow that filled all the chambers of her brain, that bright and splendid figure could have no place. she thought of mr. colborne at hurstonleigh now and then, and felt a vague yearning for his presence. he might have been able to comfort her perhaps, somehow; he might have made it easier for her to bear the knowledge of that dreadful presence in the room up-stairs. she tried once or twice to read some of the chapters that had seemed so beautiful on the lips of the popular curate; but even out of that holy volume dark and ghastly images arose to terrify her, and she saw lazarus emerging from the tomb livid in his grave-clothes: and death and horror seemed to be everywhere and in everything. after the first burst of passionate grief, bitterly intermingled with indignation against the woman whom she believed to have been a wicked and neglectful wife, matilda jeffson was not ungentle to the terror-stricken girl so newly made a widow. she took a cup of scalding tea into the darkened parlour where isabel sat, shivering every now and then as if with cold, and persuaded the poor frightened creature to take a little of that comforting beverage. she wiped away her own tears with her apron while she talked to isabel of patience and resignation, submission to the will of providence, and all those comforting theories which are very sweet to the faithful mourner, even when the night-time of affliction is darkest. but isabel was not a religious woman. she was a child again, weak and frivolous, frightened by the awful visitant who had so newly entered that house. all through the evening of her husband's death she sat in the little parlour, sometimes trying to read a little, sometimes idly staring at the tall wick of the tallow-candle, which was only snuffed once in a way--when mrs. jeffson came into the room "to keep the scared creature company for a bit," she said to her husband, who sat by the kitchen fire with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands, brooding over those bygone days when he had been wont to fetch his master's son from that commercial academy in the wareham road. there was a good deal of going in and out, a perpetual tramp of hushed footsteps moving to and fro, as it seemed to isabel; and mrs. jeffson, even in the midst of her grief, appeared full of some kind of business that kept her astir all the evening. the doctor's wife had imagined that all voice and motion must come to an end--that life itself must make a pause--in a house where death was. others might feel a far keener grief for the man that was gone; but no one felt so deep an awe of death as she did. mrs. jeffson brought her some supper on a little tray late in the evening; but she pushed it away from her and burst into tears. there seemed a kind of sacrilege in this carrying in and out of food and drink while he lay up-stairs; he whose hat still hung in the passage without, whose papers and ink-bottles and medical books were all primly arranged on one of the little vulgar cupboards by the fireplace. ah, how often she had hated those medical books for being what they were, instead of editions of "zanoni" and "ernest maltravers!" and it seemed wicked even to have thought unkindly of them, now that he to whom they belonged was dead. it was quite in vain that mrs. jeffson urged her to go up-stairs to the room opposite that in which the surgeon lay; it was quite as vainly that the good woman entreated her to go and look at him, now that he was lying so peacefully in the newly-arranged chamber, to lay her hand on his marble forehead, so that no shadow of him should trouble her in her sleep. the girl only shook her head forlornly. "i'm afraid," she said, piteously--"i'm afraid of that room. i never thought that he would die. i know that i wasn't good. it was wicked to think of other people always, and not of him; but i never thought that he would die. i knew that he was good to me; and i tried to obey him: but i think i should have been different if i had known that he would die." she pulled out the little table-drawer where the worsted socks were rolled up in fluffy balls, with needles sticking out of them here and there. even these were a kind of evidence of her neglect. she had cobbled them a little during the later period of her married life,--during the time of her endeavour to be good,--but she had not finished this work or any other. ah, what a poor creature she was, after all!--a creature of feeble resolutions, formed only to be broken; a weak vacillating creature, full of misty yearnings and aspirings--resolving nobly in one moment, to yield sinfully in the next. she begged to be allowed to spend the night down-stairs on the rickety little sofa; and mrs. jeffson, seeing that she was really oppressed by some childish terror of that upper story, brought her some blankets and pillows, and a feeble little light that was to burn until daybreak. so in that familiar room, whose every scrap of shabby furniture had been a part of the monotony of her life, isabel gilbert spent the first night of her widowhood, lying on the little sofa, nervously conscious of every sound in the house; feverishly wakeful until long after the morning sun was shining through the yellow-white blind, when she fell into an uneasy doze, in which she dreamt that her husband was alive and well. she did not arouse herself out of this, and yet she was never thoroughly asleep throughout the time, until after ten o'clock; and then she found mrs. jeffson sitting near the little table, on which the inevitable cup of tea was smoking beside a plate of the clumsy kind of bread-and-butter inseparably identified with george gilbert in isabel's mind. "there's somebody wants to see you, if you're well enough to be spoken to, my dear," matilda said, very gently; for she had been considerably moved by mrs. gilbert's penitent little confession of her shortcomings as a wife; and was inclined to think that perhaps, after all, graybridge had judged this helpless schoolgirl creature rather harshly. "take the tea, my dear; i made it strong on purpose for you; and try and cheer up a bit, poor lassie; you're young to wear widow's weeds; but he was fit to go. if all of us had worked as hard for the good of other folks, we could afford to die as peaceful as he did." isabel pushed the heavy tangled hair away from her pallid face, and pursed-up her pale lips to kiss the yorkshire-woman. "you're very kind to me," she said; "you used to think that i was wicked, i know; and then you seemed very unkind. but i always wished to be good. i should like to have been good, and to die young, like george's mother." it is to be observed that, with isabel's ideal of goodness there was always the association of early death. she had a vague idea that very religious and self-denying people got through their quota of piety with tolerable speed, and received their appointed reward. as yet her notions of self-sacrifice were very limited; and she could scarcely have conceived a long career of perfection. she thought of nuns as creatures who bade farewell to the world, and had all their back-hair cut off, and retired into a convent, and died soon afterwards, while they were still young and interesting. she could not have imagined an elderly nun, with all a long monotonous life of self-abnegation behind her, getting up at four o'clock every morning, and being as bright and vivacious and cheerful as any happy wife or mother outside the convent-walls. yet there are such people. * * * * * mrs. gilbert took a little of the hot tea, and then sat quite still, with her head lying on matilda jeffson's shoulder, and her hand clasped in matilda's rough fingers. that living clasp seemed to impart a kind of comfort, so terribly had death entered into isabel's narrow world. "do you think you shall be well enough to see him presently, poor lassie?" mrs. jeffson said, after a long silence. "i shouldn't ask you, only he seems anxious-like, as if there was something particular on his mind; and i know he's been very kind to you." isabel stared at her in bewilderment. "i don't know who you are talking of," she said. "it's mr. raymond, from coventford! it's early for him to be so far as graybridge; but he looks as pale and worn-like as if he'd been up and about all night. he was all struck of a heap-like when i told him about our poor master." here mrs. jeffson had recourse to the cotton apron which had been so frequently applied to her eyes during the last week. isabel huddled a shabby little shawl about her shoulders; she had made no change in her dress when she had lain down the night before; and she was very pale and wan, and tumbled and woebegone, in the bright summer light. "mr. raymond! mr. raymond!" she repeated his name to herself once or twice, and made a faint effort to understand why he should have come to her. he had always been very kind to her, and associated with his image there was a sense of sound wisdom and vigorous cheerfulness of spirit. his presence would bring some comfort to her, she thought. next to mr. colborne, he was the person whom she would most have desired to see. "i will go to him, mrs. jeffson," she said, rising slowly from the sofa. "he was always very good to me. but, oh, how the sight of him will bring back the time at conventford, when george used to come and see me on sunday afternoons, and we used to walk together in the cold bare meadows!" that time did come back to her as she spoke: a grey colourless pause in her life, in which she had been--not happy, perhaps, but contented. and since that time what tropical splendors, what a gorgeous oasis of light and colour had spread itself suddenly about her path! a forest of miraculous flowers and enchanted foliage that had shut out all the every-day world in which other people dragged out their tiresome existences--a wonderful asiatic wilderness, in which there were hidden dangers lurking, terrible as the cobras that drop down upon the traveller from some flowering palm-tree, or the brindled tigers that prowl in the shadowy jungle. she looked back across that glimpse of an earthly paradise to the old dull days at conventford; and a hot blast from the tropical oasis seemed to rush in upon her, beyond which the past spread far away like a cool grey sea. perhaps that quiet neutral-tinted life was the best, after all. she saw herself again as she had been; "engaged" to the man who lay dead up-stairs; and weaving a poor little web of romance for herself even out of that prosaic situation. mr. raymond was waiting in the best parlour,--that sacred chamber, which had been so rarely used during the parish surgeon's brief wedded life,--that primly-arranged little sitting-room, which always had a faint odour of old-fashioned _pot pourri_; the room which isabel had once yearned to beautify into a bower of chintz and muslin. the blind was down, and the shutters half-closed; and in the dim light charles raymond looked very pale. "my dear mrs. gilbert," he said, taking her hand, and leading her to a seat; "my poor child,--so little more than a child,--so little wiser or stronger than a child,--it seems cruel to come to you at such a time; but life is very hard sometimes----" "it was very kind of you to come," isabel exclaimed, interrupting him. "i wanted to see you, or some one like you; for everything seems so dreadful to me. i never thought that he would die." she began to cry, in a weary helpless way, not like a person moved by some bitter grief; rather like a child that finds itself in a strange place and is frightened. "my poor child, my poor child!" charles raymond still held isabel's passive hand, and she felt tears dropping on it; the tears of a man, of all others the last to give way to any sentimental weakness. but even then she did not divine that he must have some grief of his own--some sorrow that touched him more nearly than george gilbert's death could possibly touch him. her state of feeling just now was a peculiarly selfish state, perhaps; for she could neither understand nor imagine anything outside that darkened house, where death was supreme. the shock had been too terrible and too recent. it was as if an earthquake had taken place, and all the atmosphere round her was thick with clouds of blinding dust produced by the concussion. she felt mr. raymond's tears dropping slowly on her hand; and if she thought about them at all, she thought them only the evidence of his sympathy with her childish fears and sorrows. "i loved him like my own son," murmured charles raymond, in a low tender voice. "if he had not been what he was,--if he had been the veriest cub that ever disgraced a good old stock,--i think even then i should have loved him as dearly and as truly, for her sake. her only son! i've seen him look at me as she looked when i kissed her in the church on her wedding-day. so long as he lived, i should have never felt that she was really lost to me." isabel heard nothing of these broken sentences. mr. raymond uttered them in low musing tones, that were not intended to reach any mortal ears. for some little time he sat silently by the girl's side, with her hand still lying in his; then he rose and walked up and down the room with a soft slow step, and with his head drooping. "you have been very much shocked by your husband's death?" he said at last. isabel began to cry again at this question,--weak hysterical tears, that meant very little, perhaps. "oh, very, very much," she answered. "i know i was not so good as i ought to have been; and i can never ask him to forgive me now." "you were very fond of him, i suppose?" a faint blush flickered and faded upon isabel's pallid face; and then she answered, hesitating a little,---- "he was very good to me, and i--i tried always to be grateful--almost always," she added, with a remorseful recollection of rebellious moments in which she had hated her husband because he ate spring-onions, and wore graybridge-made boots. just the slightest indication of a smile glimmered upon mr. raymond's countenance as he watched isabel's embarrassment. we are such weak and unstable creatures at the very best, that it is just possible this man, who loved roland lansdell very dearly, was not entirely grieved by the discovery of isabel's indifference for her dead husband. he went back to the chair near hers, and seated himself once more by her side. he began to speak to her in a very low earnest voice; but he kept his eyes bent upon the ground; and in that dusky light she was quite unable to see the expression of his face. "isabel," he began, very gravely, "i said just now that life seems very hard to us sometimes,--not to be explained by any doctrine of averages, by any of the codes of philosophy which man frames for his own comfort; only to be understood very dimly by one sublime theory, which some of us are not strong mough to grasp and hold by. ah, what poor tempest-tossed vessels we are without that compass! i have had a great and bitter grief to bear within the last four-and-twenty hours, isabel; a sorrow that has come upon me more suddenly than even the shock of your husband's death can have fallen on you." "i am very sorry for you," isabel answered, dreamily; "the world must be full of trouble, i think. it doesn't seem as if any one was ever really happy." she was thinking of her own life, so long to look back upon, though she was little more than twenty years of age; she was thinking of the petty sordid miseries of her girlhood,--the sheriff's officers and tax-gatherers, and infuriated tradespeople,--the great shock of her father's disgrace; the dull monotony of her married life; and roland lansdell's sudden departure; and his stubborn anger against her when she refused to run away with him; and then her husband's death. it seemed all one dreary record of grief and trouble. "i am growing old. isabel," resumed mr. raymond; "but i have never lost my sympathy with youth and all its brightness. i think, perhaps, that sympathy has grown wider and stronger with increase of years. there is one young man who has been always very dear to me--more dear to me than i can ever make you comprehend, unless i were to tell you the subtle link that has bound him to me. i suppose there are some fathers who have as deep a love for their sons as i have for the man of whom i speak; but i have always fancied fatherly love a very lukewarm feeling compared with my affection for roland lansdell." roland lansdell! it was the first time she had heard his name spoken since that sunday on which her husband's illness had begun. the name shot through her heart with a thrill that was nearly akin to pain. a little glimpse of lurid sunshine burst suddenly in upon the darkness of her life. she clasped her hands before her face almost as if it had been actual light that she wanted to shut out. "oh, don't speak of him!" she said, piteously. "i was so wicked; i thought of him so much; but i did not know that my husband would die. please don't speak of him; it pains me so to hear his name." she broke down into a torrent of hysterical weeping as she uttered this last entreaty. she remembered roland's angry face in the church; his studied courtesy during that midnight interview at the priory, the calm reserve of manner which she had mistaken for indifference. he was nothing to her; he was not even her friend; and she had sinned so deeply against the dead man for his sake. "i should be the last to mention roland lansdell's name in your hearing," mr. raymond answered presently, when she had grown a little quieter, "if the events of the last day or two had not broken down all barriers. the time is very near at hand, isabel, when no name ever spoken upon this earth will be an emptier sound than the name of roland lansdell." she lifted her tear-stained face suddenly and looked at him. all the clouds floated away, and a dreadful light broke in upon her; she looked at him, trembling from head to foot, with her hands clasped convulsively about his arm. "you came here to tell me something!" she gasped; "something has happened--to him! ah, if it has, life is _all_ sorrow!" "he is dying, isabel." "dying!" her lips shaped the words, and her fixed eyes stared at charles raymond's face with an awful look. "he is dying. it would be foolish to deceive you with any false hope, when in four-and-twenty hours' time all will be finished. he went out--riding--the other night, and fell from his horse, as it is supposed. he was found by some haymakers early the next morning, lying helpless, some miles from the priory, and was carried home. the medical men give no hope of his recovery; but he has been sensible at intervals ever since. i have been a great deal with him--constantly with him; and his cousin gwendoline is there. he wants to see you, isabel; of course he knows nothing of your husband's death; i did not know of it myself till i came here this morning. he wants to see you, my poor child. do you think you can come?" she rose and bent her head slowly as if in assent, but the fixed look of horror never left her face. she moved towards the door, and seemed as if she wanted to go at once--dressed as she was, with the old faded shawl wrapped about her. "you'd better get your housekeeper to make you comfortable and tidy, while i go and engage a fly," said mr. raymond; and then looking her full in the face, he added, "can you promise me to be very calm and quiet when you see him? you had better not come unless you can promise me as much as that. his hours are numbered, as it is; but any violent emotion would be immediately fatal. a man's last hours are very precious to him, remember; the hours of a man who knows his end is near make a sacred mystical period in which the world drops far away from him, and he is in a kind of middle region between this life and the next. i want you to recollect this, isabel. the man you are going to see is not the man you have known in the past. there would be very little hope for us after death, if we found no hallowing influence in its approach." "i will recollect," isabel answered. she had shed no tears since she had been told of roland's danger. perhaps this new and most terrible shock had nerved her with an unnatural strength. and amid all the anguish comprehended in the thought of his death, it scarcely seemed strange to her that roland lansdell should be dying. it seemed rather as if the end of the world had suddenly come about; and it mattered very little who should be the first to perish. her own turn would come very soon, no doubt. mr. raymond met mrs. jeffson in the passage, and said a few words to her before he went out of the house. the good woman was shocked at the tidings of mr. lansdell's accident. she had thought very badly of the elegant young master of mordred priory; but death and sorrow take the bitterness out of a true-hearted woman's feelings, and matilda was womanly enough to forgive roland for the wish that summoned the doctor's wife to his deathbed. she went up-stairs, and came down with isabel's bonnet and cloak and simple toilet paraphernalia; and presently mrs. gilbert had a consciousness of cold water splashed upon her face, and a brush passed over her tangled hair. she felt only half conscious of these things, as she might have felt had they been the events of a dream. so presently, when mr. raymond came back, accompanied by the muffled rolling of wheels in the straw-bestrewn lane, and she was half lifted into the old-fashioned, mouldy-smelling graybridge fly,--so all along the familiar high-road, past the old inn with the sloping roof, where the pigeons were cooing to each other, as if there had been no such thing as death or sorrow in the world,--so under the grand gothic gates of monastic mordred, it was all like a dream--a terrible oppressive dream--hideous by reason of some vague sense of horror rather than by the actual vision presented to the eyes of the sleeper. in a troubled dream it is always thus,--it is always a hidden, intangible something that oppresses the dreamer. the leaves were fluttering in the warm midsummer wind, and the bees were humming about the great flower-beds. far away the noise of the waterfall blended with all other summer sounds in a sweet confusion. and he was dying! oh, what wonderful patches of shadow and sunlight on the wide lawns! what marvellous glimpses down long glades, where the young fern heaved to and fro in the fitful breezes like the emerald wavelets of a summer sea! and he was dying! it is such an old, old feeling, this unwillingness to comprehend that there can be death anywhere upon an earth that is so beautiful. eve may have felt very much as isabel felt to-day, when she saw a tropical sky, serenely splendid, above the corpse of murdered abel. hero may have found the purple distances of the classic mountains, the yellow glory of the sunlit sands, almost more difficult to bear than the loss of her drowned lover. there was the same solemn hush at mordred priory that there had been in the surgeon's house at graybridge; only there seemed a deeper solemnity here amid all the darkened splendour of the spacious rooms, stretching far away, one beyond another, like the chambers of a palace. isabel saw the long vista, not as she had seen it once, when _he_ came into the hall to bid her welcome, but with the haunting dreamlike oppression strong upon her. she saw little glimmering patches of gilding and colour here and there in the cool gloom of the shaded rooms, and long bars of light shining through the venetian shutters upon the polished oaken floors. one of the medical men--there were three or four of them in the house--came out of the library and spoke in a whisper to mr. raymond. the result of the whispering seemed tolerably favourable, for the doctor went back to his companions in the library, and charles raymond led isabel up the broad staircase; the beautiful staircase which seemed to belong to a church or a cathedral rather than to any common habitation. they met a nurse in the corridor; a prim, pleasant-looking woman, who answered mr. raymond's questions in a cheerful business-like manner, as if a roland lansdell or so more or less in the world were a matter of very small consequence. and then a mist came before isabel's eyes, and she lost consciousness of the ground on which she trod; and presently there was a faint odour of hartshorn and aromatic medicines, and she felt a soft hand sponging her forehead with eau-de-cologne, and a woman's muslin garments fluttering near her. and then she raised her eyelids with a painful sense of their weight, and a voice very close to her said,-- "it was very kind of you to come. i am afraid the heat of the room makes you faint. if you could contrive to let in a little more air, raymond. it was very good of you to come." oh, he was _not_ dying! her heart seemed to leap out of a dreadful frozen region into an atmosphere of warmth and light. he was not dying! death was not like this. he spoke to her to-day as he had always spoken. it was the same voice, the same low music which she had heard so often mingled with the brawling of the mill-stream: the voice that had sounded perpetually in her dreams by day and night. she slipped from her chair and fell upon her knees by the bedside. there was nothing violent or melodramatic in the movement; it seemed almost involuntary, half unconscious. "oh, i am so glad to hear you speak!" she said; "it makes me so happy--to see you like this. they told me that you were very, very ill; they told me that----" "they told you the truth," roland answered gravely. "oh, dear mrs. gilbert, you must try and forget what i have been, or you will never be able to understand what i am. and i was so tired of life, and thought i had so little interest in the universe; and yet i feel so utterly changed a creature now that all earthly hope has really slipped away from me. i sent for you, isabel, because in this last interview i want to acknowledge all the wrong i have done you; i want to ask your forgiveness for that wrong." "forgiveness--from me! oh, no, no!" she could not abandon her old attitude of worship. he was a prince always--noble or wicked--a prince by divine right of his splendour and beauty! if he stooped from his high estate to smile upon her, was he not entitled to her deepest gratitude, her purest devotion? if it pleased him to spurn and trample her beneath his feet, what was she, when counted against the magnificence of her idol, that she should complain? there is always some devoted creature prostrate in the road when the car comes by; and which of them would dream of upbraiding juggernaut for the anguish inflicted by the crushing wheels? the same kind hands which had bathed mrs. gilbert's forehead half lifted her from her kneeling attitude now; and looking up, isabel saw lady gwendoline bending over her, very pale, very grave, but with a sweet compassionate smile upon her face. lord ruysdale and his daughter had come to the priory immediately after hearing of roland's dangerous state; and during the four-and-twenty hours that had elapsed, lady gwendoline had been a great deal with her cousin. the hidden love which had turned to jealous anger against roland's folly regained all its purer qualities now, and there was no sacrifice of self or self-love that gwendoline pomphrey would have hesitated to make, if in so doing she could have restored life and vigour to the dying man. she had heard the worst the doctors had to tell. she knew that her cousin was dying. she was no woman to delude herself with vain hopes, to put away the cup for awhile because it was bitter, knowing that its last drop must be drained sooner or later. she bowed her head before the inevitable, and accepted her sorrow. never in her brightest day, when her portrait had been in every west-end print-shop, and her name a synonym for all that is elegant and beautiful--never had she seemed so perfect a woman as now, when she sat pale and quiet and resigned, by the deathbed of the man she loved. during that long night of watching, mr. lansdell's mind had seemed at intervals peculiarly clear,--the fatal injuries inflicted upon his brain had not blotted out his intellect. that had been obscured in occasional periods of wandering and stupor, but every now and then the supremacy of spirit over matter reasserted itself, and the young man talked even more calmly than usual. all the fitfulness of passion, the wavering of purpose--now hot, now cold, now generous, now cruel,--all natural weakness seemed to have been swept away, and an unutterable calm had fallen upon his heart and mind. once, on waking from a brief doze, he found his cousin watching, but the nurse asleep, and began to talk of isabel gilbert. "i want you to know all about her," he said; "you have only heard vulgar scandal and gossip. i should like you to know the truth. it is very foolish, that little history--wicked perhaps; but those provincial gossips may have garbled and disfigured the story. i will tell you the truth, gwendoline; for i want you to be a friend to isabel gilbert when i am dead and gone." and then he told the history of all those meetings under lord thurston's oak; dwelling tenderly on isabel's ignorant simplicity, blaming himself for all that was guilty and dishonourable in that sentimental flirtation. he told gwendoline how, from being half amused, half gratified, by mrs. gilbert's unconcealed admiration of him, so naïvely revealed in every look and tone, he had, little by little, grown to find the sole happiness of his life in those romantic meetings; and then he spoke of his struggles with himself, real, earnest struggles--his flight--his return--his presumptuous belief that isabel would freely consent to any step he might propose--his anger and disappointment after the final interview, which proved to him how little he had known the depths of that girlish sentimental heart. "she was only a child playing with fire, gwendoline," he said; "and had not the smallest desire to walk through the furnace. that was my mistake. she was a child, and i mistook her for a woman--a woman who saw the gulf before her, and was prepared to take the desperate leap. she was only a child, pleased with my pretty speeches and town-made clothes and perfumed handkerchiefs,--a schoolgirl; and i set my life upon the chance of being happy with her. will you try and think of her as she really is, gwendoline,--not as these graybridge people see her,--and be kind to her when i am dead and gone? i should like to think she was sure of one wise and good woman for a friend. i have been very cruel to her, very unjust, very selfish. i was never in the same mind about her for an hour together,--sometimes thinking tenderly of her, sometimes upbraiding and hating her as a trickstress and a coquette. but i can understand her and believe in her much better now. the sky is higher, gwendoline." if roland had told his cousin this story a week before, when his life seemed all before him, she might have received his confidence in a very different spirit from that in which she now accepted it; but he was dying, and she had loved him, and had been loved by him. it was by her own act that she had lost that love. she of all others had least right to resent his attachment to another woman. she remembered that day, nearly ten years ago, on which she had quarrelled with him, stung by his reproaches, insolent in the pride of her young beauty and the knowledge that she might marry a man so high above roland lansdell in rank and position. she saw herself as she had been, in all the early splendour of her saxon beauty, and wondered if she really was the same creature as that proud worldly girl who thought the supremest triumph in life was to become the wife of a marquis. "i will be her friend, roland," she said, presently. "i know she is very childish; and i will be patient with her and befriend her, poor lonely girl." lady gwendoline was thinking, as she said this, of that interview in the surgeon's parlour at graybridge--that interview in which isabel had not scrupled to confess her folly and wickedness. "i ought to have been more patient," gwendoline thought; "but i think i was angry with her because she had dared to love roland. i was jealous of his love for her, and i could not be kind or tolerant." thus it was that isabel found lady gwendoline so tender and compassionate to her. she only raised her eyes to the lady's face with a grateful look. she forgot all about the interview at graybridge; what _could_ she remember in that room, except that _he_ was ill? in danger, people had told her; but she could not believe that. the experience of her husband's deathbed had impressed her with an idea that dangerous illness must be accompanied by terrible prostration, delirium, raging fever, dull stupor. she saw roland in one of his best intervals, reasonable, cheerful, self-possessed, and she could not believe that he was going to die. she looked at him, and saw that his face was bloodless, and that his head was bound by linen bandages, which concealed his forehead. a fall from his horse! she remembered how she had seen him once ride by upon the dusty road, unconscious of her presence, grand and self-absorbed as count lara; but amongst all her musings she had never imagined any danger coming to him in that shape. she had fancied him always as a dauntless rider, taming the wildest steed with one light pressure of his hand upon the curb. she looked at him sorrowfully, and the vision of his accident arose before her; she saw the horse tearing across a moonlit waste, and then a fall, and then a figure dragged along the ground. she had read of such things: it was only some old half-forgotten scene out of one of her books that rose in her mind. no doubt as to the nature of mr. lansdell's accident, no glimmering suspicion of the truth, ever entered her brain. she believed most fully that she had herself prevented all chance of an encounter between her father and his enemy. had she not seen the last of mr. sleaford in nessborough hollow, whence he was to depart for wareham station at break of day? and what should take roland lansdell to that lonely glade in which the little rustic inn was hidden,--a resting-place for haymakers and gipsy-hawkers? she never guessed the truth. the medical men who attended roland lansdell knew that the injuries from which he was dying had never been caused by any fall from a horse; and they said as much to charles raymond, who was unutterably distressed by the intelligence. but neither he nor the doctors could obtain any admission from the patient, though mr. raymond most earnestly implored him to reveal the truth. "cure me, if you can," he said; "nothing that i can tell you will give you any help in doing that. if it is my fancy to keep the cause of my death a secret, it is the whim of a dying man, and it ought to be respected. no living creature upon this earth except one man will ever know how i came by these injuries. but i do hope that you gentlemen will be discreet enough to spare my friends any useless pain. the gossips are at work already, i dare say, speculating as to what became of the horse that threw me. for pity's sake, do your best to stop their talk. my life has been sluggish enough; do not let there be any _esclandre_ about my death." against such arguments as these charles raymond could urge nothing. but his grief for the loss of the young man he loved was rendered doubly bitter by the mystery which surrounded roland's fate. the doctors told him that the wounds on mr. lansdell's head could only have been caused by merciless blows inflicted with some blunt instrument. mr. raymond in vain distracted himself with the endeavour to imagine how or why the young man had been attacked. he had not been robbed; for his watch and purse, his rings, and the little trinkets hanging at his chain, all of them costly in their nature, had been found upon him when he was brought home to the priory. that roland lansdell could have counted one enemy amongst all mankind, never entered into his kinsman's calculations. he had no recollection of that little story told so lightly by the young man in the flower-garden; he was entirely without a clue to the catastrophe; and he perceived very plainly that roland's resolution was not to be shaken. there was a quiet determination in mr. lansdell's refusal, which left no hope that he might be induced to change his mind. he spoke with all apparent frankness of the result of his visit to nessborough hollow. he had found isabel there, he said, with a man who was related to her,--a poor relation, who had come to graybridge to extort money from her. he had seen and spoken to the man, and was fully convinced that his account of himself was true. "so you see the graybridge gossips had lighted on the usual mare's nest," roland said, in conclusion; "the man was a relation,--an uncle or cousin, i believe,--i heard it from his own lips. if i had been a gentleman, i should have been superior to the foul suspicions that maddened me that night. what common creatures we are, raymond, some of us! our mothers believe in us, and worship us, and watch over us, and seem to fancy they have dipped us in a kind of moral styx, and that there is something of the immortal infused into our vulgar clay; but rouse our common passions, and we sink to the level of the navigator who beats his wife to death with a poker in defence of his outraged honour. they put a kind of varnish over us at eton and oxford; but the colouring underneath is very much the same, after all. your king arthur, or sir philip sidney, or bayard, crops up once in a century or so, and the world bows down before a gentleman; but, oh, what a rare creature he is!" * * * * * "i want you to forgive me," roland said to isabel, after she had been sitting some minutes in the low chair in which lady gwendoline had placed her. there was no one in the room but charles raymond and gwendoline pomphrey; and mr. raymond had withdrawn himself to a distant window that had been pushed a little way open, near which he sat in a very mournful attitude, with his face averted from the sick bed. "i want you to forgive me for having been very unjust and cruel to you, mrs. gilbert--isabel. ah, i may call you isabel now, and no one will cry out upon me! dying men have all manner of pleasant privileges. i was very cruel, very unjust, very selfish and wicked, my poor girl; and your childish ignorance was wiser than my worldly experience. a man has no right to desire perfect happiness: i can understand that now. he has no right to defy the laws made by wiser men for his protection, because there is a fatal twist in the fabric of his life, and those very laws happen to thwart him in his solitary insignificance. how truly thomas carlyle has told us that manhood only begins when we have surrendered to necessity! we must submit, isabel. i struggled; but i never submitted. i tried to crush and master the pain; but i never resigned myself to endure it; and endurance is so much grander than conquest. and then, when i had yielded to the tempter, when i had taken my stand, prepared to defy heaven and earth, i was angry with you, poor child, because you were not alike rash and desperate. forgive me, my dear; i loved you very much; and it is only now--now when i am dying, that i know how fatal and guilty my love was. but it was never a profligate's brief passion, isabel. it was wicked to love you; but my love was pure. if you had been free to be my wife, i should have been a true and faithful husband to my childish love. ah, even now, when life seems so far away; even now, isabel, the old picture rises before me, and i fancy what might have been if i had found you free." the low penetrating voice reached charles raymond, and he bent his head and sobbed aloud. dimly, as the memory of a dream, came back upon him the recollection of that time in which he had sat amongst the shadows of the great beech-trees at hurstonleigh, with the young man's poems open in his hand, and had been beguiled into thinking of what might happen if roland returned to england to see isabel in her girlish beauty. and roland had returned, and had seen her; but too late; and now she was free once more,--free to be loved and chosen,--and again it was too late. perhaps mr. raymond seems only a foolish sentimentalist, weeping because of the blight upon a young man's love-story; but then he had loved the young man's mother,--and in vain! "gwendoline has promised to be your friend, isabel," roland said by-and-by; "it makes me very happy to know that. oh, my darling, if i could tell you the thoughts that came to me as i lay there, with the odour of leaves and flowers about me, and the stars shining above the tall branches over my head. what is impossible in a universe where there are such stars? it seemed as if i had never seen them until then." he rambled on thus, with isabel's hand held loosely in his. he seemed to be very happy--entirely at peace. gwendoline had proposed to read to him; and the parish rector had been with him, urging the duty of some religious exercises, eager to exhort and to explain; but the young man had smiled at him with some shade of contempt in his expression. "there is very little you could read from that book which i do not already know by heart," he said, pointing to the bible lying open under the clergyman's hand. "it is not your unbeliever who least studies his gospel. imagine a man possessed of a great crystal that looks like a diamond. his neighbours tell him that the gem is priceless--matchless --without crack or flaw. but some evil thing within the man suggests that it may be valueless after all--only a big beautiful lump of glass. you may fancy that he would examine it very closely; he would scrutinize every facet, and contemplate it in every light, and perhaps know a good deal more about it than the believing possessor, who, feeling confident in the worth of his jewel, puts it safely away in a strong box against the hour when it may be wanted. i know all about the gospel, mr. matson; and i think, as my hours are numbered, it may be better for me to lie and ponder upon those familiar words. the light breaks upon me very slowly; but it all comes from a far distant sky; and no earthly hand can lift so much as the uttermost edge of the curtain that shuts out the fuller splendour. i am very near him now; i am very near 'the shadow, cloaked from head to foot, who keeps the keys of all the creeds!'" the conscientious rector thought mr. lansdell a very unpromising penitent; but it was something to hear that the young man did not rail or scoff at religion on his dying bed; and even that might have been expected of a person who had attended divine service only once in six weeks, and had scandalized a pious and well-bred congregation by undisguised yawns, and absent-minded contemplation of his finger-nails, during the respectable prosiness of a long sermon. the rector did not understand this imperfect conversion, expressed in phrases that sounded the reverse of orthodox; but the state of matters in that death-chamber was much better than he had expected. he had heard it hinted that mr. lansdell was a freethinker--a deist; even an atheist, some people had said; and he had half anticipated to find the young man blaspheming aloud in the throes of his dying agony. he had not been prepared for this quiet deathbed; this man, who was dying with a smile upon his face, murmuring alternate fragments of st. john's gospel and tennyson's "in memoriam." "i was with my mother when she died." roland said by-and-by, "and yet could not accept the simple faith that made her so happy. but i dare say saul had seen many wonderful things before that journey to damascus. had he not witnessed the martyrdom of stephen, and had yet been unmoved? the hour comes, and the miracle comes with it. oh, what an empty wasted life mine has been for the last ten years! because i could not understand--i could not see beyond. i might have done so much perhaps, if i could only have seen my way beyond the contradictions and perplexities of this lower life. but i could not--i could not; and so i fell back into a sluggish idleness, 'without a conscience or an aim.' i 'basked and battened in the woods.'" the rector lingered in the house even after he had left roland's chamber. he would be summoned by-and-by, perhaps, and the dying man would require some more orthodox consolation than was to be derived from mr. tennyson's verses. but roland seemed very happy. there was a brightness upon his face, in spite of its death-like pallor--a spiritual brightness, unaffected by any loss of blood, or languor of that slow pulse which the london physicians felt so often. for some two or three hours after the struggle in nessborough hollow he had lain stunned and unconscious; then he had slowly awakened to see the stars fading above the branches over his head, and to hear the early morning breeze creeping with a ghostly rustling noise amidst the fern. he awoke to feel that something of an unwonted nature had happened to him, but not for some time to any distinct remembrance of his encounter with mr. sleaford. he tried to move, but found himself utterly powerless,--a partial paralysis seemed to have changed his limbs to lead; he could only lie as he had fallen; dimly conscious of the fading stars above, the faint summer wind rippling a distant streamlet, and all the vague murmur of newly-awakened nature. he knew as well as if a whole conclave of physicians had announced their decision upon his case,--he knew that for him life was over; and that if there was any vitality in his mind, any sense of a future in his breast, that sense, so vague and imperfect as yet, could only relate to something beyond this earth. very rambling fancies filled mr. lansdell's mind as he lay amongst the bruised fern, with the wild-rose brambles and blossoms above him. he knew that his life was done; he knew that for him all interest in this earth and its creatures had ceased for ever; and a perfect calm came down upon him. he was like a man who had possessed a great fortune, and had been perpetually tormented by doubts and perplexities about it, and who, waking one morning to discover himself a beggar, found a strange relief in the knowledge that he was penniless. the struggle was all over. no longer could the tempter whisper in his ear, urging him to follow this or that wandering exhalation of the world's foul marsh-lands. no more for him irresolution or perplexity. the problem of life was solved; a new and unexpected way was opened for him out of the blank weariness which men call existence. at first, the thought of his approaching release brought with it no feeling but a sense of release. it was only afterwards, when the new aspect of things became familiar to him, that he began to think with remorseful pain of all the empty life that lay behind him. he seemed to be thinking of this even when isabel was with him; for after lying for some time quite silent, in a doze, as they thought who watched him,--he raised his heavy eyelids, and said to her,-- "if ever you should find yourself with the means of doing great good, of being very useful to your fellow-creatures, i should like you to remember my wasted life, isabel. you will try to be patient, won't you, my dear? you will not think, because you are baulked in your first pet scheme for the regeneration of mankind, that you are free to wash your hands of the business, and stand aloof shrugging your shoulders at other people's endeavours. ten years ago i fancied myself a philanthropist; but i was like a child who plants an acorn over-night, and expects to see the tender leaflets of a sapling oak sprouting through the brown earth next morning. i wanted to do great things all at once. my courage failed before the battle had well begun. but i want you to be different from me, my dear. you were wiser than i when you left me that day; when you left me to my foolish anger, my sinful despair. our love _was_ too pure to have survived the stain of treachery and guilt. it would have perished like some beautiful flame that expires in a tainted atmosphere. impure love may flourish in a poisoned habitation; but the true god sickens and dies if you shut him from the free air of heaven. i know now that we should not have been happy, isabel; and i acknowledge the mysterious wisdom that has saved us. my darling, do not look at me with those despairing eyes; death will unite us rather than separate us, isabel. i should have been farther away from you if i had lived; for i was tired of my life. i was like a spoilt child, who has possessed all the toys ever devised by mortal toymaker, and has played with them all, and grown weary of them, and broken them. only his nurses know what an abomination that child is. i might have become a very bad man if i had lived, isabel. as it is, i begin to understand what tennyson means. he has written the gospel of his age, isabel. he has told me what i am: 'an infant crying in the night; an infant crying for the light; and with no language but a cry.'" these were the last words that roland lansdell ever spoke to the doctor's wife. he fell back into the same half-slumber from which he had awakened to talk to her; and some one--she scarcely knew who it was--led her out of the sick chamber, and a little way along the corridor into another room, where the venetian shutters were half open, and there was sunshine and splendour. then, as if in a dream, she found herself lying on a bed; a bed that seemed softer than the billows of the sea, and around which there were curtains of pale green silk and shadowy muslin, and a faint odour like incense hovering about everything. as in a dream, isabel saw lady gwendoline and the nurse bending over her; and then one of them told her to go to sleep; she must want rest; she had been sorely tried lately. "you are among friends," the soft patrician voice murmured. "i know that i wronged you very much, poor child; but i have promised _him_ that i will be your friend." the soft curtains fell with a rustling noise between isabel and the light, and she knew that she was alone; but still the dream-like feeling held her senses as in a spell. does not simple, practical sir walter scott, writing of the time of his wife's burial, tell us that it was all like a dream to him; he could not comprehend or lay hold of the dread reality? and is it any wonder, therefore, if to this romantic girl the calamity that had so suddenly befallen her seemed like a dream? he was dying! every one said that it was so; he himself spoke of his death calmly as a settled thing; and no one gainsayed him. and yet she could not believe in the cruel truth. was he not there, talking to her and advising her? his intellect unclouded as when he had taught her how to criticise her favourite poets in the bright summer days that were gone. no, a thousand times no; she would _not_ believe that he was to die. like all people who have enjoyed a very close acquaintance with poverty, she had an exaggerated idea of the power of wealth. those great physicians, summoned from savile row, and holding solemn conclave in the library,--they would surely save him; they would fan that feeble flame back into new life. what was medical science worth, if it was powerless to save this one sick man? and then the prayers which had seemed cold and lifeless on her lips when she had supplicated for george gilbert's restoration took a new colour, and were as if inspired. she pushed aside the curtains and got up from the bed where they had told her to sleep. she went to the door and opened it a little way; but there was no sound to be heard in the long corridor where the portraits of dead-and-gone lansdells--all seeming to her more or less like him--looked sadly down from the wainscot. a flood of hot sunshine poured into the room, but she had no definite idea of the hour. she had lost all count of time since the sudden shock of her husband's death; and she did not even know the day of the week. she only knew that the world seemed to have come to an end, and that it was very hard to be left alone in a deserted universe. for a long time she knelt by the bedside praying that roland lansdell might live--only that he might live. she would be contented and happy, she thought, to know that all the world lay between her and him, if she could only know that he lived. there was no vestige of any selfish desire in her mind. childishly, ignorantly, as a child might supplicate for the life of its mother, did this girl pray for the recovery of roland lansdell. no thought of her new freedom, no foreshadowing of what might happen if he could be restored to health, disturbed the simple fervour of her prayers. she only wanted him to live. the sun sloped westward, and still shone upon that kneeling figure. perhaps isabel had a vague notion that the length of her prayers might prevail. they were very rambling, unorthodox petitions. it is not every mourner who can cry, "thy will be done!" pitiful and weak and foolish are some of the lamentations that rise to the eternal throne. at last, when isabel had been some hours alone and undisturbed in that sunlit chamber, an eager yearning to see roland lansdell once more came upon her,--to see him, or at least to hear tidings of him; to hear that a happy change had come about; that he was sleeping peacefully, wrapt in a placid slumber that gave promise of recovery. ah, what unspeakable delight it would be to hear something like this! and sick men had been spared before to-day. her heart thrilled with a sudden rapture of hope. she went to the door and opened it, and then stood upon the threshold listening. all was silent as it had been before. no sound of footsteps, no murmur of voices, penetrated the massive old walls. there was no passing servant in the corridor whom she could question as to mr. lansdell's state. she waited with faint hope that lady gwendoline or the sick-nurse might come out of roland's room; but she waited in vain. the western sunlight shining redly through a lantern in the roof of the corridor illumined the sombre faces of the dead lansdells with a factitious glow of life and colour; pensive faces, darkly earnest faces--all with some look of the man who was lying in the chamber yonder. the stillness of that long corridor seemed to freeze isabel's childish hopes. the flapping of a linen blind outside the lantern sounded like the fluttering of a sail at sea; but inside the house there was not so much as a breath or a whisper. the stillness and the suspense grew unendurable. the doctor's wife moved away from the door, and crept nearer and nearer the dark oaken door at the end of the corridor--the ponderous barrier that shut her from roland lansdell. she dared not knock at that door, lest the sound should disturb _him_. some one must surely come out into the corridor before long,--mr. raymond, or lady gwendoline, or the nurse,--some one who could give her hope and comfort. she went towards the door, and suddenly saw that the door of the next room was ajar. from this room came the low murmur of voices; and isabel remembered all at once that she had seen an apartment opening out of that in which roland lansdell lay--a large pleasant-looking chamber, with a high oaken mantel-piece, above which she had seen the glimmer of guns and pistols, and a picture of a horse. she went into this room. it was empty, and the murmur of voices came from the adjoining chamber. the door between the two rooms was open, and she heard something more than voices. there was the sound of low convulsive sobbing; very subdued, but very terrible to hear. she could not see the sick man, for there was a little group about his bed, a group of bending figures, that made a screen between her and him. she saw lady gwendoline on her knees at the bottom of the bed, with her face buried in the silken coverlet, and her arms thrown up above her head; but in the next moment charles raymond saw her, and came to her. he closed the door softly behind him, and shut out that group of bending figures. she would have spoken; but he lifted his hand with a solemn gesture. "come away, my dear," he said softly. "come with me, isabel." "oh, let me see him! let me speak to him! only once more--only once!" "never again, isabel,--never upon this earth any more! you must think of him as something infinitely better and brighter than you ever knew him here. i never saw such a smile upon a human face as i saw just now on his." she had no need of any plainer words to tell her he was dead. she felt the ground reel suddenly beneath her feet, and saw the gradual rising of a misty darkness that shut out the world, and closed about her like the silent waters through which a drowning man goes down to death. chapter the last. "if any calm, a calm despair." lady gwendoline kept her promise. what promises are so sacred as those that are made to the dying, and which become solemn engagements binding us to the dead--the dead whom we have wronged, most likely; for who is there amongst us who does not do some wrong to the creature he most tenderly loves? gwendoline pomphrey repented her jealous anger against her cousin; she bitterly lamented those occasions upon which she had felt a miserable joy in the probing of his wounds. she looked back, now that the blindness of passion had passed away with the passing of the dead, and saw herself as she had really been-unchristian, intolerant, possessed by a jealous anger, which she had hidden under the useful womanly mask of outraged propriety. it was not roland's sin that had stung her proud spirit to the quick: it was her love for the sinner that had been outraged by his devotion to another woman. she never knew that she had sent the man she loved to his death. inflexible to the last, roland lansdell had kept the secret of that fatal meeting in nessborough hollow. the man who had caused his death was isabel's father. if roland had been vindictively disposed towards his enemy, he would, for her sake, have freely let him go: but no very vengeful impulse had stirred the failing pulses of his heart. he was scarcely angry with jack the scribe; but rather recognized in what had occurred the working of a strange fatality, or the execution of a divine judgment. "i was ready to defy heaven and earth for the sake of this girl," he thought. "i fancied it was an easy thing for a man to make his own scheme of life, and be happy after his own fashion. it was well that i should be made to understand my position in the universe. mr. sleaford was only a brutal kind of nemesis waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. if i had tried to clamber upwards,--if i had buckled on my armour, and gone away from this castle of indolence, to fight in the ranks of my fellow-men,--i need never have met the avenger. let him go, then. he has only done his appointed work; and i, who made so pitiful a use of my life, have small ground for complaint against the man who has shortened it by a year or two." thus it was that mr. sleaford went his own way. in spite of that murderous threat uttered by him in the old bailey dock, in spite of the savage violence of his attack upon roland lansdell, he had not, perhaps, meant to kill his enemy. in his own way of expressing it, he had not meant to go too far. there is a wide gulf between the signing of other people's names, or the putting an additional y after the word _eight_, and an unauthorized after the numeral on the face of a cheque--there is an awful distance between such illegal accomplishments and an act of deliberate homicide. mr. sleaford had only intended to "punish" the "languid swell" who had borne witness against him; to spoil his beauty for the time being; and, in short, to give him just cause for remembering that little amateur-detective business by which he had beguiled the elegant idleness of his life. isabel's father had scarcely intended to do more than this. but when you beat a man about the head with a loaded bludgeon, it is not so very easy to draw the line of demarcation between an assault and a murder; and mr. sleaford did go a little too far: as he learned a few days afterwards, when he read in the "times" supplement an intimation of the sudden death of roland lansdell, esq., of mordred priory, midlandshire. the strong man, reading this announcement in the parlour of a low public-house in one of the most obscure purlieus of lambeth, felt an icy sensation of fear that he had never experienced before amidst all the little difficulties attendant upon the forging of negotiable autographs. this was something more than he had bargained for. _this_ midlandshire business was murder, or something so nearly resembling that last and worst of crimes, that a stupid jury might fail to recognize the distinction. jack the scribe, armed with roland lansdell's fifty pounds, had already organized a plan of operations which was likely to result in a very comfortable little income, without involving anything so disagreeable to the feelings of a gentleman as the illegal use of other people's names. it was to the science of money-lending that mr. sleaford had turned his attention; and during the enforced retirement of the last few years he had woven for himself a very neat little system, by which a great deal of interest, in the shape of inquiry-fees and preliminary postage-stamps, could be extorted out of simple-minded borrowers without any expenditure in the way of principal on the part of the lender. with a view to the worthy carrying out of this little scheme, mr. sleaford had made an appointment with one of his old associates, who appeared to him a likely person to act as clerk or underling, and to double that character with the more dignified _rôle_ of solicitor to the mutual and co-operative friend-in-need and friend-in-deed society; but after reading that dismal paragraph respecting mr. lansdell in the supplement of the "times," jack the scribe's ideas underwent a considerable change. it might be that this big pleasant metropolis, in which there is always such a nice little crop of dupes and simpletons ready to fall prone beneath the sickle of the judicious husbandman, would become, in vulgar parlance, a little too hot to hold mr. sleaford. the contemplation of this unpleasant possibility led that gentleman's thoughts away to fairer and more distant scenes. he had a capital of fifty pounds in his pocket. with such a sum for his fulcrum, jack the scribe felt himself capable of astonishing--not to say uprooting--the universe; and if an indiscreet use of his bludgeon had rendered it unadvisable for him to remain in his native land, there were plenty of opportunities in the united states of america for a man of his genius. in america--on the "other side," as he had heard his transatlantic friends designate their country--he might find an appropriate platform for the mutual and co-operative friend-in-need and friend-in-deed society. the genus dupe is cosmopolitan, and the transatlantic arcadian would be just as ready with his postage-stamps as the confiding denizen of bermondsey or camden town. already in his mind's eye mr. sleaford beheld a flaming advertisement of his grand scheme slanting across the back page of a daily newspaper. already he imagined himself thriving on the simplicity of the new yorkers; and departing, enriched and rejoicing, from that delightful city just as the arcadians were beginning to be a little impatient about the conclusion of operations, and a little backward in the production of postage-stamps. having once decided upon the advisability of an early departure from england, mr. sleaford lost no time in putting his plans into operation. he strolled out in the dusk of the evening, and made his way to some dingy lanes and waterside alleys in the neighbourhood of london bridge. here he obtained all information about speedily-departing steam-vessels bound for new york; and early the following morning, burdened only with a carpet-bag and the smallest of portmanteaus, jack the scribe left euston square on his way to liverpool, whence he departed, this time unhindered and unobserved, in the steam-vessel _washington_ bound for new york. and here he drops out of my story, as the avenging goddess might disappear from a classic stage when her work was done. for him too a nemesis waits, lurking darkly in some hidden turning of the sinuous way along which a scoundrel walks. * * * * * "if any calm, a calm despair." such a calm fell at last upon isabel gilbert; but it was slow to come. for a long time it seemed to her as if a dreadful darkness obscured all the world; a darkness in which she groped blindly for a grave, where she might lie down and die. was not _he_ dead? what was there left in all the universe now that he was gone? happily for the sufferer there is attendant upon all great mental anguish a kind of numbness, a stupefaction of the senses, which in some manner deadens the sharpness of the torture. for a long time isabel could not think of what had happened within the last few troubled weeks. she could only sit hopeless and tearless in the little parlour at graybridge while the funeral preparations went quietly on about her, and while mrs. jeffson and the young woman, who went on to work at eighteenpence a day, came in every now and then to arouse her from her dull stupor for the trying-on of mourning garments which smelt of dye and size, and left black marks upon her neck and arms. she heard the horrible snipping of crape and bombazine going on all day, like the monotonous accompaniment of a nightmare; and sometimes when the door had been left ajar, she heard people talking in the opposite room. she heard them talking in stealthy murmurs of the two funerals which were to take place on successive days--one at graybridge, one at mordred. she heard them speculate respecting mr. lansdell's disposal of his wealth; she heard the name, the dear romantic name, that was to be nothing henceforward but an empty sound, bandied from lip to lip; and all this pain was only some portion of the hideous dream which bound her night and day. people were very kind to her. even graybridge took pity upon her youth and desolation; though every pang of her foolish heart was the subject of tea-table speculation. but the accomplished slanderer is not always a malevolently disposed person. he is only like the wit, who loves his jest better than his friend; but who will yet do his friend good service in the day of need. the misses pawlkatt, and many other young ladies of standing in graybridge, wrote isabel pretty little notes of condolence, interlarded with quotations from scripture, and offered to go and "sit with her." to "sit with her;" to beguile with their frivolous stereotype chatter the anguish of this poor stupefied creature, for whom all the universe seemed obscured by one impenetrable cloud. it was on the second day after the surgeon's funeral, the day following that infinitely more stately ceremonial at mordred church, that mr. raymond came to see isabel. he had been with her several times during the last few days; but he had found all attempts at consolation utterly in vain, and he, who had so carefully studied human nature, knew that it was wisest and kindest to let her alone. but on this occasion he came on a business errand; and he was accompanied by a grave-looking person, whom he introduced to isabel as the late mr. lansdell's solicitor. "i have come to bring you strange news, mrs. gilbert," he said--"news that cannot fail to be very startling to you." she looked up at charles raymond with a sad smile, whose meaning he was not slow to interpret. it said so plainly, "do you think anything that can happen henceforward upon this earth could ever seem strange to me?" "when you were with--him--on the last day of his life, isabel," mr. raymond continued, "he talked to you very seriously. he changed--changed wonderfully with the near approach of death. it seemed as if the last ten years had been blotted away, and he was a young man again, just entering life, full of noble yearnings and aspirations. i pray god those ten idle years may never be counted against him. he spoke to you very earnestly, my dear; and he urged you, if ever great opportunities were given you, which they might be, to use them faithfully for his sake. i heard him say this, and was at a loss to understand his full meaning. i comprehend it perfectly now." he paused; but isabel did not even look up at him. the tears were slowly pouring down her colourless cheeks. she was thinking of that last day at mordred; and roland's tenderly-earnest voice seemed still sounding in her ears. "isabel, a great charge has been entrusted to you. mr. lansdell has left you the bulk of his fortune." it is certain that mr. raymond expected some cry of surprise, some token of astonishment, to follow this announcement; but isabel's tears only flowed a little faster, and her head sank forward on the sofa-cushion by her side. "had you any idea that roland intended to leave his money in this manner?" "oh, no, no! i don't want the money; i can do nothing with it. oh, give it to some hospital, please: and let the hospital be called by his name. it was cruel of him to think that i should care for money when he was dead." "i have reason to believe that this will was made under very peculiar circumstances," mr. raymond said presently; "when roland was labouring under a delusion about you--a delusion which you yourself afterwards dispelled. mr. lansdell's solicitor fully understands this; lord ruysdale and his daughter also understand it; and no possible discredit can attach to you from the inheritance of this fortune. had roland lived, he might very possibly have made some alteration and modifications of this will. as it stands, it is as good a will as any ever proved at doctors' commons. you are a very rich woman, isabel. lady gwendoline, her father, and myself are all legatees to a considerable amount; but mordred priory and the bulk of the lansdell property are left to you." and then mr. raymond went on to explain the nature of the will, which left everything to himself and mr. meredith (the london solicitor) as trustees, for the separate use and maintenance of isabel gilbert, and a great deal more, which had no significance for the dull indifferent ears of the mourner. there had been a time when mrs. gilbert would have thought it a grand thing to be rich, and would have immediately imagined a life spent in ruby velvet and diamonds; but that time was past. the blessings we sigh for are very apt to come to us too late; like that pension the tidings of which came to the poet as he lay upon his deathbed. mordred priory became the property of isabel gilbert; and for a time all that shakespearian region of midlandshire had enough to employ them in the discussion of mr. lansdell's will. but even the voice of slander was hushed when mrs. gilbert left england in the company of lord ruysdale and his daughter for a lengthened sojourn on the continent. i quote here from the "wareham gazette," which found isabel's proceedings worthy of record since her inheritance of mr. lansdell's property. lady gwendoline had promised to be the friend of isabel; and she kept her word. there was no bitterness in her heart now; and perhaps she liked george gilbert's widow all the better on account of that foolish wasted love that made a kind of link between them. lord ruysdale's daughter was not the sort of woman to feel any base envy of mrs. gilbert's fortune. the earl had been very slow to understand the motives of his kinsman's will; but as he and his daughter received a legacy of ten thousand pounds apiece, to say nothing of sundry cromwellian tankards, old-fashioned brooches and bracelets in rose-diamonds, a famous pearl necklace that had belonged to lady anna lansdell, a murillo and a rembrandt, and nineteen dozen of madeira that connoisseurs considered unique, lord ruysdale could scarcely esteem himself ill-treated by his late nephew. so mrs. gilbert was permitted to possess her new wealth in peace, protected from any scandal by the ruysdale influence. she was permitted to be at peace; and she went away with lady gwendoline and the earl to those fair foreign lands for which she had pined in the weedy garden at camberwell. even during the first bitterness of her sorrow she was not utterly selfish. she sent money to mrs. sleaford and the boys--money which seemed enormous wealth to them; and she instructed her solicitor to send them quarterly instalments of an income which would enable her half-brothers to receive a liberal education. "i have had a great sorrow," she wrote to her step-mother, "and i am going away with people who are very kind to me; not to forget--i would not for the world find forgetfulness, if such a thing was to be found; only that i may learn to bear my sorrow and to be good. when i come back, i shall be glad to see you and my brothers." she wrote this, and a good deal more that was kind and dutiful, to poor mrs. sleaford, who had changed that tainted name to singleton, in the peaceful retirement of jersey; and then she went away, and was taken to many beautiful cities, over all of which there seemed to hang a kind of mist that shut out the sunshine. it was only when roland lansdell had been dead more than two years, that she began to understand that no grief, however bitter, can entirely obscure the beauty of the universe. she began to feel that there is something left in life even when a first romantic love is nothing but a memory; a peace which is so nearly akin to happiness, that we scarcely regret the flight of the brighter spirit; a calm which lies beyond the regions of despair, and which is unruffled by those vague fears, those shadowy forebodings, that are apt to trouble the joyful heart. and now it seems to me that i have little more to do with isabel gilbert. she passes away from me into a higher region than that in which my story has lain,--useful, serene, almost happy, but very constant to the memory of sorrow,--she is altogether different from the foolish wife who neglected all a wife's duties while she sat by the mill-stream at thurston's crag reading the "revolt of islam." there is a great gulf between a girl of nineteen and a woman of five-and twenty; and isabel's foolish youth is separated from her wiser womanhood by a barrier that is formed by two graves. is it strange, then, that the chastening influence of sorrow has transformed a sentimental girl into a good and noble woman--a woman in whom sentiment takes the higher form of universal sympathy and tenderness? she has faithfully employed the trust confided to her. the money bequeathed to her by the ardent lover, who fancied that he had won the woman of his choice, and that his sole duty was to protect her from worldly loss or trouble,--the fortune bequeathed under such strange circumstances has become a sacred trust, to be accounted for to the dead. only the mourner knows the exquisite happiness involved in any act performed for the sake of the lost. our protestant creed, which will not permit us to pray for our dead, cannot forbid the consecration of our good works to those departed and beloved creatures. charles raymond has transferred to isabel something of that affection which he felt for roland lansdell; and he and the orphans, grown into estimable young persons of sixteen and seventeen, spend a great deal of their time at mordred priory. the agricultural labourer, who had known the doctor's wife only as a pale-faced girlish creature, sitting under the shelter of a hedgerow, with a green parasol above her head, and a book in her lap, has good reason to bless the doctor's widow; for model cottages have arisen in many a pleasant corner of the estate which was once roland lansdell's--pretty elizabethan cottages, with peaked gables and dormer windows. allotment gardens have spread themselves here and there on pleasant slopes; and coming suddenly upon some woody hollow, you find yourself face to face with the tudor windows of a schoolhouse, a substantial modern building, set in an old-world garden, where there are great gnarled pear-trees, and a cluster of beehives in a bowery corner, sheltered by bushes of elder and hazel. sigismund smith appears sometimes at mordred priory, always accompanied by a bloated and dilapidated leathern writing-case, unnaturally distended by stuff which he calls "copy," and other stuff which he speaks of as "proofs." telegrams from infuriated proprietors of penny journals pursue him in his calm retreat, and a lively gentleman in a white hat has been known to arrive per express-train, vaguely declaring his intention of "standing over" mr. smith during the production of an urgently-required chapter of "the bride of the bosphorus; or, the fourteen corpses of the caspian sea." he is very happy and very inky; and the rustic wanderers who meet a pale-faced and mild-looking gentleman loitering in the green lanes about mordred, with his hat upon the back of his head, and his insipid blue eyes fixed on vacancy, would be slow to perceive in him the deliberate contriver of one of the most atrocious and cold-blooded schemes of vengeance that ever outraged the common dictates of human nature and adorned the richly-illustrated pages of a penny periodical. amongst the wild roses and new-mown hay of midlandshire, mr. smith finds it sweet to lie at ease, weaving the dark webs of crime which he subsequently works out upon paper in the dingy loneliness of his temple chambers. he is still a bachelor, and complains that he is not the kind of man to fall in love, as he is compelled to avail himself of the noses and eyes, ruby lips, and golden or raven tresses--there are no other hues in mr. smith's vocabulary--of every eligible young lady he meets, for the decking out of his numerous heroines. "miss binks?" he will perhaps remark, when a lady's name is mentioned to him; "oh yes: _she's_ bella the ballet girl (one of bickers's touch-and-go romances; the first five numbers, and a magnificent engraving of one of landseer's best pictures, for a penny); i finished her off last week. she poisoned herself with insect-powder in a garret near drury lane, after setting fire to the house and grounds of her destroyer. she ran through a hundred and thirteen numbers, and bickers has some idea of getting me to write a sequel. you see there _might_ be an antidote to the insect-powder, or the oilman's shop-boy might have given bella patent mustard in mistake." but it has been observed of late that mr. smith pays very special attention to the elder of the two orphans, whom he declares to be too good for penny numbers, and a charming subject for three volumes of the quiet and domestic school, and he has consulted mr. raymond respecting the investment of his deposit-account, which is supposed to be something considerable; for a gentleman who lives chiefly upon bread-and marmalade and weak tea may amass a very comfortable little independence from the cultivation of sensational literature in penny numbers. available by the internet archive and the university of california, santa barbara library. w. somerset maugham the circle plays: the explorer mrs. dot a man of honour penelope jack straw lady frederick the tenth man landed gentry the unknown smith novels: of human bondage the moon and sixpence the trembling of a leaf liza of lambeth mrs. caddock the explorer the magician the merry-go-round the land of the blessed virgin (_sketches and impressions in andalusia_) the circle a comedy in three acts by w. somerset maugham new york george h. doran company copyright, , by george h. doran company _all applications regarding the performance rights of this play should be addressed to the american play company, west nd street, new york._ printed in the united states of america persons of the play clive champion-cheney arnold champion-cheney, m.p. lord porteous edward luton lady catherine champion-cheney elizabeth mrs. shenstone. _the action takes place at aston-adey, arnold champion-cheney's house in dorset._ the circle the first act _the scene is a stately drawing-room at aston-adey, with fine pictures on the walls and georgian furniture. aston-adey has been described, with many illustrations, in country life. it is not a house, but a place. its owner takes a great pride in it, and there is nothing in the room which is not of the period. through the french windows at the back can be seen the beautiful gardens which are one of the features._ _it is a fine summer morning._ _arnold comes in. he is a man of about thirty-five, tall and good-looking, fair, with a clean-cut, sensitive face. he has a look that is intellectual, but somewhat bloodless. he is very well dressed._ arnold. [_calling._] elizabeth! [_he goes to the window and calls again._] elizabeth! [_he rings the bell. while he is waiting he gives a look round the room. he slightly alters the position of one of the chairs. he takes an ornament from the chimney-piece and blows the dust from it._] [_a footman comes in._ oh, george! see if you can find mrs. cheney, and ask her if she'd be good enough to come here. footman. very good, sir. [_the footman turns to go._ arnold. who is supposed to look after this room? footman. i don't know, sir. arnold. i wish when they dust they'd take care to replace the things exactly as they were before. footman. yes, sir. arnold. [_dismissing him._] all right. [_the footman goes out. he goes again to the window and calls._ arnold. elizabeth! [_he sees mrs. shenstone._] oh, anna, do you know where elizabeth is? [_mrs. shenstone comes in from the garden. she is a woman of forty, pleasant and of elegant appearance._ anna. isn't she playing tennis? arnold. no, i've been down to the tennis court. something very tiresome has happened. anna. oh? arnold. i wonder where the deuce she is. anna. when do you expect lord porteous and lady kitty? arnold. they're motoring down in time for luncheon. anna. are you sure you want me to be here? it's not too late yet, you know. i can have my things packed and catch a train for somewhere or other. arnold. no, of course we want you. it'll make it so much easier if there are people here. it was exceedingly kind of you to come. anna. oh, nonsense! arnold. and i think it was a good thing to have teddie luton down. anna. he is so breezy, isn't he? arnold. yes, that's his great asset. i don't know that he's very intelligent, but, you know, there are occasions when you want a bull in a china shop. i sent one of the servants to find elizabeth. anna. i daresay she's putting on her shoes. she and teddie were going to have a single. arnold. it can't take all this time to change one's shoes. anna. [_with a smile._] one can't change one's shoes without powdering one's nose, you know. [_elizabeth comes in. she is a very pretty creature in the early twenties. she wears a light summer frock._ arnold. my dear, i've been hunting for you everywhere. what _have_ you been doing? elizabeth. nothing! i've been standing on my head. arnold. my father's here. elizabeth. [_startled._] where? arnold. at the cottage. he arrived last night. elizabeth. damn! arnold. [_good-humouredly._] i wish you wouldn't say that, elizabeth. elizabeth. if you're not going to say "damn" when a thing's damnable, when are you going to say "damn"? arnold. i should have thought you could say, "oh, bother!" or something like that. elizabeth. but that wouldn't express my sentiments. besides, at that speech day when you were giving away the prizes you said there were no synonyms in the english language. anna. [_smiling._] oh, elizabeth! it's very unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public. arnold. i'm always willing to stand by anything i've said. there _are_ no synonyms in the english language. elizabeth. in that case i shall be regretfully forced to continue to say "damn" whenever i feel like it. [_edward luton shows himself at the window. he is an attractive youth in flannels._ teddie. i say, what about this tennis? elizabeth. come in. we're having a scene. teddie. [_entering._] how splendid! what about? elizabeth. the english language. teddie. don't tell me you've been splitting your infinitives. arnold. [_with the shadow of a frown._] i wish you'd be serious, elizabeth. the situation is none too pleasant. anna. i think teddie and i had better make ourselves scarce. elizabeth. nonsense! you're both in it. if there's going to be any unpleasantness we want your moral support. that's why we asked you to come. teddie. and i thought i'd been asked for my blue eyes. elizabeth. vain beast! and they happen to be brown. teddie. is anything up? elizabeth. arnold's father arrived last night. teddie. did he, by jove! i thought he was in paris. arnold. so did we all. he told me he'd be there for the next month. anna. have you seen him? arnold. no! he rang me up. it's a mercy he had a telephone put in the cottage. it would have been a pretty kettle of fish if he'd just walked in. elizabeth. did you tell him lady catherine was coming? arnold. of course not. i was flabbergasted to know he was here. and then i thought we'd better talk it over first. elizabeth. is he coming along here? arnold. yes. he suggested it, and i couldn't think of any excuse to prevent him. teddie. couldn't you put the other people off? arnold. they're coming by car. they may be here any minute. it's too late to do that. elizabeth. besides, it would be beastly. arnold. i knew it was silly to have them here. elizabeth insisted. elizabeth. after all, she _is_ your mother, arnold. arnold. that meant precious little to her when she--went away. you can't imagine it means very much to me now. elizabeth. it's thirty years ago. it seems so absurd to bear malice after all that time. arnold. i don't bear malice, but the fact remains that she did me the most irreparable harm. i can find no excuse for her. elizabeth. have you ever tried to? arnold. my dear elizabeth, it's no good going over all that again. the facts are lamentably simple. she had a husband who adored her, a wonderful position, all the money she could want, and a child of five. and she ran away with a married man. elizabeth. lady porteous is not a very attractive woman, arnold. [_to anna._] do you know her? anna. [_smiling._] "forbidding" is the word, i think. arnold. if you're going to make little jokes about it, i have nothing more to say. anna. i'm sorry, arnold. elizabeth. perhaps your mother couldn't help herself--if she was in love? arnold. and had no sense of honour, duty, or decency? oh, yes, under those circumstances you can explain a great deal. elizabeth. that's not a very pretty way to speak of your mother. arnold. i can't look on her as my mother. elizabeth. what you can't get over is that she didn't think of you. some of us are more mother and some of us more woman. it gives me a little thrill when i think that she loved that man so much. she sacrificed her name, her position, and her child to him. arnold. you really can't expect the said child to have any great affection for the mother who treated him like that. elizabeth. no, i don't think i do. but i think it's a pity after all these years that you shouldn't be friends. arnold. i wonder if you realise what it was to grow up under the shadow of that horrible scandal. everywhere, at school, and at oxford, and afterwards in london, i was always the son of lady kitty cheney. oh, it was cruel, cruel! elizabeth. yes, i know, arnold. it was beastly for you. arnold. it would have been bad enough if it had been an ordinary case, but the position of the people made it ten times worse. my father was in the house then, and porteous--he hadn't succeeded to the title--was in the house too; he was under-secretary for foreign affairs, and he was very much in the public eye. anna. my father always used to say he was the ablest man in the party. every one was expecting him to be prime minister. arnold. you can imagine what a boon it was to the british public. they hadn't had such a treat for a generation. the most popular song of the day was about my mother. did you ever hear it? "naughty lady kitty. thought it such a pity . . ." elizabeth. [_interrupting._] oh, arnold, don't! arnold. and then they never let people forget them. if they'd lived quietly in florence and not made a fuss the scandal would have died down. but those constant actions between lord and lady porteous kept on reminding everyone. teddie. what were they having actions about? arnold. of course my father divorced his wife, but lady porteous refused to divorce porteous. he tried to force her by refusing to support her and turning her out of her house, and heaven knows what. they were constantly wrangling in the law courts. anna. i think it was monstrous of lady porteous. arnold. she knew he wanted to marry my mother, and she hated my mother. you can't blame her. anna. it must have been very difficult for them. arnold. that's why they've lived in florence. porteous has money. they found people there who were willing to accept the situation. elizabeth. this is the first time they've ever come to england. arnold. my father will have to be told, elizabeth. elizabeth. yes. anna. [_to elizabeth._] has he ever spoken to you about lady kitty? elizabeth. never. arnold. i don't think her name has passed his lips since she ran away from this house thirty years ago. teddie. oh, they lived here? arnold. naturally. there was a house-party, and one evening neither porteous nor my mother came down to dinner. the rest of them waited. they couldn't make it out. my father sent up to my mother's room, and a note was found on the pincushion. elizabeth. [_with a faint smile._] that's what they did in the dark ages. arnold. i think he took a dislike to this house from that horrible night. he never lived here again, and when i married he handed the place over to me. he just has a cottage now on the estate that he comes to when he feels inclined. elizabeth. it's been very nice for us. arnold. i owe everything to my father. i don't think he'll ever forgive me for asking these people to come here. elizabeth. i'm going to take all the blame on myself, arnold. arnold. [_irritably._] the situation was embarrassing enough anyhow. i don't know how i ought to treat them. elizabeth. don't you think that'll settle itself when you see them? arnold. after all, they're my guests. i shall try and behave like a gentleman. elizabeth. i wouldn't. we haven't got central heating. arnold. [_taking no notice._] will she expect me to kiss her? elizabeth. [_with a smile._] surely. arnold. it always makes me uncomfortable when people are effusive. anna. but i can't understand why you never saw her before. arnold. i believe she tried to see me when i was little, but my father thought it better she shouldn't. anna. yes, but when you were grown up? arnold. she was always in italy. i never went to italy. elizabeth. it seems to me so pathetic that if you saw one another in the street you wouldn't recognise each other. arnold. is it my fault? elizabeth. you've promised to be very gentle with her and very kind. arnold. the mistake was asking porteous to come too. it looks as though we condoned the whole thing. and how am i to treat him? am i to shake him by the hand and slap him on the back? he absolutely ruined my father's life. elizabeth. [_smiling._] how much would you give for a nice motor accident that prevented them from coming? arnold. i let you persuade me against my better judgment, and i've regretted it ever since. elizabeth. [_good-humouredly._] i think it's very lucky that anna and teddie are here. i don't foresee a very successful party. arnold. i'm going to do my best. i gave you my promise and i shall keep it. but i can't answer for my father. anna. here is your father. [_mr. champion-cheney shows himself at one of the french windows._ c.-c. may i come in through the window, or shall i have myself announced by a supercilious flunkey? elizabeth. come in. we've been expecting you. c.-c. impatiently, i hope, my dear child. [_mr. champion-cheney is a tall man in the early sixties, spare, with a fine head of gray hair and an intelligent, somewhat ascetic face. he is very carefully dressed. he is a man who makes the most of himself. he bears his years jauntily. he kisses elizabeth and then holds out his hand to arnold._ elizabeth. we thought you'd be in paris for another month. c.-c. how are you, arnold? i always reserve to myself the privilege of changing my mind. it's the only one elderly gentlemen share with pretty women. elizabeth. you know anna. c.-c. [_shaking hands with her._] of course i do. how very nice to see you here! are you staying long? anna. as long as i'm welcome. elizabeth. and this is mr. luton. c.-c. how do you do? do you play bridge? luton. i do. c.-c. capital. do you declare without top honours? luton. never. c.-c. of such is the kingdom of heaven. i see that you are a good young man. luton. but, like the good in general, i am poor. c.-c. never mind; if your principles are right, you can play ten shillings a hundred without danger. i never play less, and i never play more. arnold. and you--are you going to stay long, father? c.-c. to luncheon, if you'll have me. [_arnold gives elizabeth a harassed look._ elizabeth. that'll be jolly. arnold. i didn't mean that. of course you're going to stay for luncheon. i meant, how long are you going to stay down here? c.-c. a week. [_there is a moment's pause. everyone but champion-cheney is slightly embarrassed._ teddie. i think we'd better chuck our tennis. elizabeth. yes. i want my father-in-law to tell me what they're wearing in paris this week. teddie. i'll go and put the rackets away. [_teddie goes out._ arnold. it's nearly one o'clock, elizabeth. elizabeth. i didn't know it was so late. anna. [_to arnold._] i wonder if i can persuade you to take a turn in the garden before luncheon. arnold. [_jumping at the idea._] i'd love it. [_anna goes out of the window, and as he follows her he stops irresolutely._ i want you to look at this chair i've just got. i think it's rather good. c.-c. charming. arnold. about , i should say. good design, isn't it? it hasn't been restored or anything. c.-c. very pretty. arnold. i think it was a good buy, don't you? c.-c. oh, my dear boy! you know i'm entirely ignorant about these things. arnold. it's exactly my period . . . i shall see you at luncheon, then. [_he follows anna through the window._ c.-c. who is that young man? elizabeth. mr. luton. he's only just been demobilised. he's the manager of a rubber estate in the f.m.s. c.-c. and what are the f.m.s. when they're at home? elizabeth. the federated malay states. he joined up at the beginning of the war. he's just going back there. c.-c. and why have we been left alone in this very marked manner? elizabeth. have we? i didn't notice it. c.-c. i suppose it's difficult for the young to realise that one may be old without being a fool. elizabeth. i never thought you that. everyone knows you're very intelligent. c.-c. they certainly ought to by now. i've told them often enough. are you a little nervous? elizabeth. let me feel my pulse. [_she puts her finger on her wrist._] it's perfectly regular. c.-c. when i suggested staying to luncheon arnold looked exactly like a dose of castor oil. elizabeth. i wish you'd sit down. c.-c. will it make it easier for you? [_he takes a chair._] you have evidently something very disagreeable to say to me. elizabeth. you won't be cross with me? c.-c. how old are you? elizabeth. twenty-five. c.-c. i'm never cross with a woman under thirty. elizabeth. oh, then i've got ten years. c.-c. mathematics? elizabeth. no. paint. c.-c. well? elizabeth. [_reflectively._] i think it would be easier if i sat on your knees. c.-c. that is a pleasing taste of yours, but you must take care not to put on weight. [_she sits down on his knees._ elizabeth. am i boney? c.-c. on the contrary. . . . i'm listening. elizabeth. lady catherine's coming here. c.-c. who's lady catherine? elizabeth. your--arnold's mother. c.-c. is she? [_he withdraws himself a little and elizabeth gets up._ elizabeth. you mustn't blame arnold. it's my fault. i insisted. he was against it. i nagged him till he gave way. and then i wrote and asked her to come. c.-c. i didn't know you knew her. elizabeth. i don't. but i heard she was in london. she's staying at claridge's. it seemed so heartless not to take the smallest notice of her. c.-c. when is she coming? elizabeth. we're expecting her in time for luncheon. c.-c. as soon as that? i understand the embarrassment. elizabeth. you see, we never expected you to be here. you said you'd be in paris for another month. c.-c. my dear child, this is your house. there's no reason why you shouldn't ask whom you please to stay with you. elizabeth. after all, whatever her faults, she's arnold's mother. it seemed so unnatural that they should never see one another. my heart ached for that poor lonely woman. c.-c. i never heard that she was lonely, and she certainly isn't poor. elizabeth. and there's something else. i couldn't ask her by herself. it would have been so--so insulting. i asked lord porteous, too. c.-c. i see. elizabeth. i daresay you'd rather not meet them. c.-c. i daresay they'd rather not meet me. i shall get a capital luncheon at the cottage. i've noticed you always get the best food if you come in unexpectedly and have the same as they're having in the servants' hall. elizabeth. no one's ever talked to me about lady kitty. it's always been a subject that everyone has avoided. i've never even seen a photograph of her. c.-c. the house was full of them when she left. i think i told the butler to throw them in the dust-bin. she was very much photographed. elizabeth. won't you tell me what she was like? c.-c. she was very like you, elizabeth, only she had dark hair instead of red. elizabeth. poor dear! it must be quite white now. c.-c. i daresay. she was a pretty little thing. elizabeth. but she was one of the great beauties of her day. they say she was lovely. c.-c. she had the most adorable little nose, like yours. . . . elizabeth. d'you like my nose? c.-c. and she was very dainty, with a beautiful little figure; very light on her feet. she was like a _marquise_ in an old french comedy. yes, she was lovely. elizabeth. and i'm sure she's lovely still. c.-c. she's no chicken, you know. elizabeth. you can't expect me to look at it as you and arnold do. when you've loved as she's loved you may grow old, but you grow old beautifully. c.-c. you're very romantic. elizabeth. if everyone hadn't made such a mystery of it i daresay i shouldn't feel as i do. i know she did a great wrong to you and a great wrong to arnold. i'm willing to acknowledge that. c.-c. i'm sure it's very kind of you. elizabeth. but she loved and she dared. romance is such an illusive thing. you read of it in books, but it's seldom you see it face to face. i can't help it if it thrills me. c.-c. i am painfully aware that the husband in these cases is not a romantic object. elizabeth. she had the world at her feet. you were rich. she was a figure in society. and she gave up everything for love. c.-c. [_dryly._] i'm beginning to suspect it wasn't only for her sake and for arnold's that you asked her to come here. elizabeth. i seem to know her already. i think her face is a little sad, for a love like that doesn't leave you gay, it leaves you grave, but i think her pale face is unlined. it's like a child's. c.-c. my dear, how you let your imagination run away with you! elizabeth. i imagine her slight and frail. c.-c. frail, certainly. elizabeth. with beautiful thin hands and white hair. i've pictured her so often in that renaissance palace that they live in, with old masters on the walls and lovely carved things all round, sitting in a black silk dress with old lace round her neck and old-fashioned diamonds. you see, i never knew my mother; she died when i was a baby. you can't confide in aunts with huge families of their own. i want arnold's mother to be a mother to me. i've got so much to say to her. c.-c. are you happy with arnold? elizabeth. why shouldn't i be? c.-c. why haven't you got any babies? elizabeth. give us a little time. we've only been married three years. c.-c. i wonder what hughie is like now! elizabeth. lord porteous? c.-c. he wore his clothes better than any man in london. you know he'd have been prime minister if he'd remained in politics. elizabeth. what was he like then? c.-c. he was a nice-looking fellow. fine horseman. i suppose there was something very fascinating about him. yellow hair and blue eyes, you know. he had a very good figure. i liked him. i was his parliamentary secretary. he was arnold's godfather. elizabeth. i know. c.-c. i wonder if he ever regrets! elizabeth. i wouldn't. c.-c. well, i must be strolling back to my cottage. elizabeth. you're not angry with me? c.-c. not a bit. [_she puts up her face for him to kiss. he kisses her on both cheeks and then goes out. in a moment teddie is seen at the window._ teddie. i saw the old blighter go. elizabeth. come in. teddie. everything all right? elizabeth. oh, quite, as far as he's concerned. he's going to keep out of the way. teddie. was it beastly? elizabeth. no, he made it very easy for me. he's a nice old thing. teddie. you were rather scared. elizabeth. a little. i am still. i don't know why. teddie. i guessed you were. i thought i'd come and give you a little moral support. it's ripping here, isn't it? elizabeth. it is rather nice. teddie. it'll be jolly to think of it when i'm back in the f.m.s. elizabeth. aren't you homesick sometimes? teddie. oh, everyone is now and then, you know. elizabeth. you could have got a job in england if you'd wanted to, couldn't you? teddie. oh, but i love it out there. england's ripping to come back to, but i couldn't live here now. it's like a woman you're desperately in love with as long as you don't see her, but when you're with her she maddens you so that you can't bear her. elizabeth. [_smiling._] what's wrong with england? teddie. i don't think anything's wrong with england. i expect something's wrong with me. i've been away too long. england seems to me full of people doing things they don't want to because other people expect it of them. elizabeth. isn't that what you call a high degree of civilisation? teddie. people seem to me so insincere. when you go to parties in london they're all babbling about art, and you feel that in their hearts they don't care twopence about it. they read the books that everybody is talking about because they don't want to be out of it. in the f.m.s. we don't get very many books, and we read those we have over and over again. they mean so much to us. i don't think the people over there are half so clever as the people at home, but one gets to know them better. you see, there are so few of us that we have to make the best of one another. elizabeth. i imagine that frills are not much worn in the f.m.s. it must be a comfort. teddie. it's not much good being pretentious where everyone knows exactly who you are and what your income is. elizabeth. i don't think you want too much sincerity in society. it would be like an iron girder in a house of cards. teddie. and then, you know, the place is ripping. you get used to a blue sky and you miss it in england. elizabeth. what do you do with yourself all the time? teddie. oh, one works like blazes. you have to be a pretty hefty fellow to be a planter. and then there's ripping bathing. you know, it's lovely, with palm trees all along the beach. and there's shooting. and now and then we have a little dance to a gramophone. elizabeth. [_pretending to tease him._] i think you've got a young woman out there, teddie. teddie. [_vehemently._] oh, no! [_she is a little taken aback by the earnestness of his disclaimer. there is a moment's silence, then she recovers herself._ elizabeth. but you'll have to marry and settle down one of these days, you know. teddie. i want to, but it's not a thing you can do lightly. elizabeth. i don't know why there more than elsewhere. teddie. in england if people don't get on they go their own ways and jog along after a fashion. in a place like that you're thrown a great deal on your own resources. elizabeth. of course. teddie. lots of girls come out because they think they're going to have a good time. but if they're empty-headed, then they're just faced with their own emptiness and they're done. if their husbands can afford it they go home and settle down as grass-widows. elizabeth. i've met them. they seem to find it a very pleasant occupation. teddie. it's rotten for their husbands, though. elizabeth. and if the husbands can't afford it? teddie. oh, then they tipple. elizabeth. it's not a very alluring prospect. teddie. but if the woman's the right sort she wouldn't exchange it for any life in the world. when all's said and done it's we who've made the empire. elizabeth. what sort is the right sort? teddie. a woman of courage and endurance and sincerity. of course, it's hopeless unless she's in love with her husband. [_he is looking at her earnestly and she, raising her eyes, gives him a long look. there is silence between them._ teddie. my house stands on the side of a hill, and the cocoanut trees wind down to the shore. azaleas grow in my garden, and camellias, and all sorts of ripping flowers. and in front of me is the winding coast line, and then the blue sea. [_a pause._ do you know that i'm awfully in love with you? elizabeth. [_gravely._] i wasn't quite sure. i wondered. teddie. and you? [_she nods slowly._ i've never kissed you. elizabeth. i don't want you to. [_they look at one another steadily. they are both grave. arnold comes in hurriedly._ arnold. they're coming, elizabeth. elizabeth. [_as though returning from a distant world._] who? arnold. [_impatiently._] my dear! my mother, of course. the car is just coming up the drive. teddie. would you like me to clear out? arnold. no, no! for goodness' sake stay. elizabeth. we'd better go and meet them, arnold. arnold. no, no; i think they'd much better be shown in. i feel simply sick with nervousness. [_anna comes in from the garden._ anna. your guests have arrived. elizabeth. yes, i know. arnold. i've given orders that luncheon should be served at once. elizabeth. why? it's not half-past one already, is it? arnold. i thought it would help. when you don't know exactly what to say you can always eat. [_the butler comes in and announces._ butler. lady catherine champion-cheney! lord porteous! [_lady kitty comes in followed by porteous, and the butler goes out. lady kitty is a gay little lady, with dyed red hair and painted cheeks. she is somewhat outrageously dressed. she never forgets that she has been a pretty woman and she still behaves as if she were twenty-five. lord porteous is a very bald, elderly gentleman in loose, rather eccentric clothes. he is snappy and gruff. this is not at all the couple that elizabeth expected, and for a moment she stares at them with round, startled eyes. lady kitty goes up to her with outstretched hands._ lady kitty. elizabeth! elizabeth! [_she kisses her effusively._] what an adorable creature! [_turning to porteous._] hughie, isn't she adorable? porteous. [_with a grunt._] ugh! [_elizabeth, smiling now, turns to him and gives him her hand._ elizabeth. how d'you do? porteous. damnable road you've got down here. how d'you do, my dear? why d'you have such damnable roads in england? [_lady kitty's eyes fall on teddie and she goes up to him with her arms thrown back, prepared to throw them round him._ lady kitty. my boy, my boy! i should have known you anywhere! elizabeth. [_hastily._] that's arnold. lady kitty. [_without a moment's hesitation._] the image of his father! i should have known him anywhere! [_she throws her arms round his neck._] my boy, my boy! porteous. [_with a grunt._] ugh! lady kitty. tell me, would you have known me again? have i changed? arnold. i was only five, you know, when--when you . . . lady kitty. [_emotionally._] i remember as if it was yesterday. i went up into your room. [_with a sudden change of manner._] by the way, i always thought that nurse drank. did you ever find out if she really did? porteous. how the devil can you expect him to know that, kitty? lady kitty. you've never had a child, hughie; how can you tell what they know and what they don't? elizabeth. [_coming to the rescue._] this is arnold, lord porteous. porteous. [_shaking hands with him._] how d'you do? i knew your father. arnold. yes. porteous. alive still? arnold. yes. porteous. he must be getting on. is he well? arnold. very. porteous. ugh! takes care of himself, i suppose. i'm not at all well. this damned climate doesn't agree with me. elizabeth. [_to lady kitty._] this is mrs. shenstone. and this is mr. luton. i hope you don't mind a very small party. lady kitty. [_shaking hands with anna and teddie._] oh, no, i shall enjoy it. i used to give enormous parties here. political, you know. how nice you've made this room! elizabeth. oh, that's arnold. arnold. [_nervously._] d'you like this chair? i've just bought it. it's exactly my period. porteous. [_bluntly._] it's a fake. arnold. [_indignantly._] i don't think it is for a minute. porteous. the legs are not right. arnold. i don't know how you can say that. if there is anything right about it, it's the legs. lady kitty. i'm sure they're right. porteous. you know nothing whatever about it, kitty. lady kitty. that's what you think. _i_ think it's a beautiful chair. hepplewhite? arnold. no, sheraton. lady kitty. oh, i know. "the school for scandal." porteous. sheraton, my dear. sheraton. lady kitty. yes, that's what i say. i acted the screen scene at some amateur theatricals in florence, and ermeto novelli, the great italian tragedian, told me he'd never seen a lady teazle like me. porteous. ugh! lady kitty. [_to elizabeth._] do you act? elizabeth. oh, i couldn't. i should be too nervous. lady kitty. i'm never nervous. i'm a born actress. of course, if i had my time over again i'd go on the stage. you know, it's extraordinary how they keep young. actresses, i mean. i think it's because they're always playing different parts. hughie, do you think arnold takes after me or after his father? of course i think he's the very image of me. arnold, i think i ought to tell you that i was received into the catholic church last winter. i'd been thinking about it for years, and last time we were at monte carlo i met such a nice monsignore. i told him what my difficulties were and he was too wonderful. i knew hughie wouldn't approve, so i kept it a secret. [_to elizabeth._] are you interested in religion? i think it's too wonderful. we must have a long talk about it one of these days. [_pointing to her frock._] callot? elizabeth. no, worth. lady kitty. i knew it was either worth or callot. of course, it's line that's the important thing. i go to worth myself, and i always say to him, "line, my dear worth, line." what _is_ the matter, hughie? porteous. these new teeth of mine are so damned uncomfortable. lady kitty. men are extraordinary. they can't stand the smallest discomfort. why, a woman's life is uncomfortable from the moment she gets up in the morning till the moment she goes to bed at night. and d'you think it's comfortable to sleep with a mask on your face? porteous. they don't seem to hold up properly. lady kitty. well, that's not the fault of your teeth. that's the fault of your gums. porteous. damned rotten dentist. that's what's the matter. lady kitty. i thought he was a very nice dentist. he told me _my_ teeth would last till i was fifty. he has a chinese room. it's so interesting; while he scrapes your teeth he tells you all about the dear empress dowager. are you interested in china? i think it's too wonderful. you know they've cut off their pigtails. i think it's such a pity. they were so picturesque. [_the butler comes in._ butler. luncheon is served, sir. elizabeth. would you like to see your rooms? porteous. we can see our rooms after luncheon. lady kitty. i must powder my nose, hughie. porteous. powder it down here. lady kitty. i never saw anyone so inconsiderate. porteous. you'll keep us all waiting half an hour. i know you. lady kitty. [_fumbling in her bag._] oh, well, peace at any price, as lord beaconsfield said. porteous. he said a lot of damned silly things, kitty, but he never said that. [_lady kitty's face changes. perplexity is followed by dismay, and dismay by consternation._ lady kitty. oh! elizabeth. what is the matter? lady kitty. [_with anguish._] my lip-stick! elizabeth. can't you find it? lady kitty. i had it in the car. hughie, you remember that i had it in the car. porteous. i don't remember anything about it. lady kitty. don't be so stupid, hughie. why, when we came through the gates i said: "my home, my home!" and i took it out and put some on my lips. elizabeth. perhaps you dropped it in the car. lady kitty. for heaven's sake send some one to look for it. arnold. i'll ring. lady kitty. i'm absolutely lost without my lip-stick. lend me yours, darling, will you? elizabeth. i'm awfully sorry. i'm afraid i haven't got one. lady kitty. do you mean to say you don't use a lip-stick? elizabeth. never. porteous. look at her lips. what the devil d'you think she wants muck like that for? lady kitty. oh, my dear, what a mistake you make! you _must_ use a lip-stick. it's so good for the lips. men like it, you know. i couldn't _live_ without a lip-stick. [_champion-cheney appears at the window holding in his upstretched hand a little gold case._ c.-c. [_as he comes in._] has anyone here lost a diminutive utensil containing, unless i am mistaken, a favourite preparation for the toilet? [_arnold and elizabeth are thunderstruck at his appearance and even teddie and anna are taken aback. but lady kitty is overjoyed._ lady kitty. my lip-stick! c.-c. i found it in the drive and i ventured to bring it in. lady kitty. it's saint antony. i said a little prayer to him when i was hunting in my bag. porteous. saint antony be blowed! it's clive, by god! lady kitty. [_startled, her attention suddenly turning from the lip-stick._] clive! c.-c. you didn't recognise me. it's many years since we met. lady kitty. my poor clive, your hair has gone quite white! c.-c. [_holding out his hand._] i hope you had a pleasant journey down from london. lady kitty. [_offering him her cheek._] you may kiss me, clive. c.-c. [_kissing her._] you don't mind, hughie? porteous. [_with a grunt._] ugh! c.-c. [_going up to him cordially._] and how are you, my dear hughie? porteous. damned rheumatic if you want to know. filthy climate you have in this country. c.-c. aren't you going to shake hands with me, hughie? porteous. i have no objection to shaking hands with you. c.-c. you've aged, my poor hughie. porteous. some one was asking me how old you were the other day. c.-c. were they surprised when you told them? porteous. surprised! they wondered you weren't dead. [_the butler comes in._ butler. did you ring, sir? arnold. no. oh, yes, i did. it doesn't matter now. c.-c. [_as the butler is going._] one moment. my dear elizabeth, i've come to throw myself on your mercy. my servants are busy with their own affairs. there's not a thing for me to eat in my cottage. elizabeth. oh, but we shall be delighted if you'll lunch with us. c.-c. it either means that or my immediate death from starvation. you don't mind, arnold? arnold. my dear father! elizabeth. [_to the butler._] mr. cheney will lunch here. butler. very good, ma'am. c.-c. [_to lady kitty._] and what do you think of arnold? lady kitty. i adore him. c.-c. he's grown, hasn't he? but then you'd expect him to do that in thirty years. arnold. for god's sake let's go in to lunch, elizabeth! end of the first act the second act _the scene is the same as in the preceding act._ _it is afternoon. when the curtain rises porteous and lady kitty, anna and teddie are playing bridge. elizabeth and champion-cheney are watching. porteous and lady kitty are partners._ c.-c. when will arnold be back, elizabeth? elizabeth. soon, i think. c.-c. is he addressing a meeting? elizabeth. no, it's only a conference with his agent and one or two constituents. porteous. [_irritably._] how anyone can be expected to play bridge when people are shouting at the top of their voices all round them, i for one cannot understand. elizabeth. [_smiling._] i'm so sorry. anna. i can see your hand, lord porteous. porteous. it may help you. lady kitty. i've told you over and over again to hold your cards up. it ruins one's game when one can't help seeing one's opponent's hand. porteous. one isn't obliged to look. lady kitty. what was arnold's majority at the last election? elizabeth. seven hundred and something. c.-c. he'll have to fight for it if he wants to keep his seat next time. porteous. are we playing bridge, or talking politics? lady kitty. i never find that conversation interferes with my game. porteous. you certainly play no worse when you talk than when you hold your tongue. lady kitty. i think that's a very offensive thing to say, hughie. just because i don't play the same game as you do you think i can't play. porteous. i'm glad you acknowledge it's not the same game as i play. but why in god's name do you call it bridge? c.-c. i agree with kitty. i hate people who play bridge as though they were at a funeral and knew their feet were getting wet. porteous. of course you take kitty's part. lady kitty. that's the least he can do. c.-c. i have a naturally cheerful disposition. porteous. you've never had anything to sour it. lady kitty. i don't know what you mean by that, hughie. porteous. [_trying to contain himself._] must you trump my ace? lady kitty. [_innocently._] oh, was that your ace, darling? porteous. [_furiously._] yes, it was my ace. lady kitty. oh, well, it was the only trump i had. i shouldn't have made it anyway. porteous. you needn't have told them that. now she knows exactly what i've got. lady kitty. she knew before. porteous. how could she know? lady kitty. she said she'd seen your hand. anna. oh, i didn't. i said i could see it. lady kitty. well, i naturally supposed that if she could see it she did. porteous. really, kitty, you have the most extraordinary ideas. c.-c. not at all. if anyone is such a fool as to show me his hand, of course i look at it. porteous. [_fuming._] if you study the etiquette of bridge, you'll discover that onlookers are expected not to interfere with the game. c.-c. my dear hughie, this is a matter of ethics, not of bridge. anna. anyhow, i get the game. and rubber. teddie. i claim a revoke. porteous. who revoked? teddie. you did. porteous. nonsense. i've never revoked in my life. teddie. i'll show you. [_he turns over the tricks to show the faces of the cards._] you threw away a club on the third heart trick and you had another heart. porteous. i never had more than two hearts. teddie. oh, yes, you had. look here. that's the card you played on the last trick but one. lady kitty. [_delighted to catch him out._] there's no doubt about it, hughie. you revoked. porteous. i tell you i did not revoke. i never revoke. c.-c. you did, hughie. i wondered what on earth you were doing. porteous. i don't know how anyone can be expected not to revoke when there's this confounded chatter going on all the time. teddie. well, that's another hundred to us. porteous. [_to champion-cheney._] i wish you wouldn't breathe down my neck. i never can play bridge when there's somebody breathing down my neck. [_the party have risen from the bridge-table, and they scatter about the room._ anna. well, i'm going to take a book and lie down in the hammock till it's time to dress. teddie. [_who has been adding up._] i'll put it down in the book, shall i? porteous. [_who has not moved, setting out the cards for a patience._] yes, yes, put it down. i never revoke. [_anna goes out._ lady kitty. would you like to come for a little stroll, hughie? porteous. what for? lady kitty. exercise. porteous. i hate exercise. c.-c. [_looking at the patience._] the seven goes on the eight. [_porteous takes no notice._ lady kitty. the seven goes on the eight, hughie. porteous. i don't choose to put the seven on the eight. c.-c. that knave goes on the queen. porteous. i'm not blind, thank you. lady kitty. the three goes on the four. c.-c. all these go over. porteous. [_furiously._] am i playing this patience, or are you playing it? lady kitty. but you're missing everything. porteous. that's my business. c.-c. it's no good losing your temper over it, hughie. porteous. go away, both of you. you irritate me. lady kitty. we were only trying to help you, hughie. porteous. i don't want to be helped. i want to do it by myself. lady kitty. i think your manners are perfectly deplorable, hughie. porteous. it's simply maddening when you're playing patience and people won't leave you alone. c.-c. we won't say another word. porteous. that three goes. i believe it's coming out. if i'd been such a fool as to put that seven up i shouldn't have been able to bring these down. [_he puts down several cards while they watch him silently._ lady kitty and c.-c. [_together._] the four goes on the five. porteous. [_throwing down the cards violently._] damn you! why don't you leave me alone? it's intolerable. c.-c. it was coming out, my dear fellow. porteous. i know it was coming out. confound you! lady kitty. how petty you are, hughie! porteous. petty, be damned! i've told you over and over again that i will not be interfered with when i'm playing patience. lady kitty. don't talk to me like that, hughie. porteous. i shall talk to you as i please. lady kitty. [_beginning to cry._] oh, you brute! you brute! [_she flings out of the room._] porteous. oh, damn! now she's going to cry. [_he shambles out into the garden. champion-cheney, elizabeth and teddie are left alone. there is a moment's pause. champion-cheney looks from teddie to elizabeth, with an ironical smile._ c.-c. upon my soul, they might be married. they frip so much. elizabeth. [_frigidly._] it's been nice of you to come here so often since they arrived. it's helped to make things easy. c.-c. irony? it's a rhetorical form not much favoured in this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this england. elizabeth. what exactly are you getting at? c.-c. how slangy the young women of the present day are! i suppose the fact that arnold is a purist leads you to the contrary extravagance. elizabeth. anyhow you know what i mean. c.-c. [_with a smile._] i have a dim, groping suspicion. elizabeth. you promised to keep away. why did you come back the moment they arrived? c.-c. curiosity, my dear child. a surely pardonable curiosity. elizabeth. and since then you've been here all the time. you don't generally favour us with so much of your company when you're down at your cottage. c.-c. i've been excessively amused. elizabeth. it has struck me that whenever they started fripping you took a malicious pleasure in goading them on. c.-c. i don't think there's much love lost between them now, do you? [_teddie is making as though to leave the room._ elizabeth. don't go, teddie. c.-c. no, please don't. i'm only staying a minute. we were talking about lady kitty just before she arrived. [_to elizabeth._] do you remember? the pale, frail lady in black satin and old lace. elizabeth. [_with a chuckle._] you are a devil, you know. c.-c. ah, well, he's always had the reputation of being a humorist and a gentleman. elizabeth. did _you_ expect her to be like that, poor dear? c.-c. my dear child, i hadn't the vaguest idea. you were asking me the other day what she was like when she ran away. i didn't tell you half. she was so gay and so natural. who would have thought that animation would turn into such frivolity, and that charming impulsiveness lead to such a ridiculous affectation? elizabeth. it rather sets my nerves on edge to hear the way you talk of her. c.-c. it's the truth that sets your nerves on edge, not i. elizabeth. you loved her once. have you no feeling for her at all? c.-c. none. why should i? elizabeth. she's the mother of your son. c.-c. my dear child, you have a charming nature, as simple, frank, and artless as hers was. don't let pure humbug obscure your common sense. elizabeth. we have no right to judge. she's only been here two days. we know nothing about her. c.-c. my dear, her soul is as thickly rouged as her face. she hasn't an emotion that's sincere. she's tinsel. you think i'm a cruel, cynical old man. why, when i think of what she was, if i didn't laugh at what she has become i should cry. elizabeth. how do you know she wouldn't be just the same now if she'd remained your wife? do you think your influence would have had such a salutary effect on her? c.-c. [_good-humouredly._] i like you when you're bitter and rather insolent. elizabeth. d'you like me enough to answer my question? c.-c. she was only twenty-seven when she went away. she might have become anything. she might have become the woman you expected her to be. there are very few of us who are strong enough to make circumstances serve us. we are the creatures of our environment. she's a silly, worthless woman because she's led a silly, worthless life. elizabeth. [_disturbed._] you're horrible to-day. c.-c. i don't say it's i who could have prevented her from becoming this ridiculous caricature of a pretty woman grown old. but life could. here she would have had the friends fit to her station, and a decent activity, and worthy interests. ask her what her life has been all these years among divorced women and kept women and the men who consort with them. there is no more lamentable pursuit than a life of pleasure. elizabeth. at all events she loved and she loved greatly. i have only pity and affection for her. c.-c. and if she loved what d'you think she felt when she saw that she had ruined hughie? look at him. he was tight last night after dinner and tight the night before. elizabeth. i know. c.-c. and she took it as a matter of course. how long do you suppose he's been getting tight every night? do you think he was like that thirty years ago? can you imagine that that was a brilliant young man, whom everyone expected to be prime minister? look at him now. a grumpy sodden old fellow with false teeth. elizabeth. you have false teeth, too. c.-c. yes, but damn it all, they fit. she's ruined him and she knows she's ruined him. elizabeth. [_looking at him suspiciously._] why are you saying all this to me? c.-c. am i hurting your feelings? elizabeth. i think i've had enough for the present. c.-c. i'll go and have a look at the gold-fish. i want to see arnold when he comes in. [_politely._] i'm afraid we've been boring mr. luton. teddie. not at all. c.-c. when are you going back to the f.m.s.? teddie. in about a month. c.-c. i see. [_he goes out._ elizabeth. i wonder what he has at the back of his head. teddie. d'you think he was talking at you? elizabeth. he's as clever as a bagful of monkeys. [_there is a moment's pause. teddie hesitates a little and when he speaks it is in a different tone. he is grave and somewhat nervous._ teddie. it seems very difficult to get a few minutes alone with you. i wonder if you've been making it difficult? elizabeth. i wanted to think. teddie. i've made up my mind to go away to-morrow. elizabeth. why? teddie. i want you altogether or not at all. elizabeth. you're so arbitrary. teddie. you said you--you said you cared for me. elizabeth. i do. teddie. do you mind if we talk it over now? elizabeth. no. teddie. [_frowning._] it makes me feel rather shy and awkward. i've repeated to myself over and over again exactly what i want to say to you, and now all i'd prepared seems rather footling. elizabeth. i'm so afraid i'm going to cry. teddie. i feel it's all so tremendously serious and i think we ought to keep emotion out of it. you're rather emotional, aren't you? elizabeth. [_half smiling and half in tears._] so are you for the matter of that. teddie. that's why i wanted to have everything i meant to say to you cut and dried. i think it would be awfully unfair if i made love to you and all that sort of thing, and you were carried away. i wrote it all down and thought i'd send it you as a letter. elizabeth. why didn't you? teddie. i got the wind up. a letter seems so--so cold. you see, i love you so awfully. elizabeth. for goodness' sake don't say that. teddie. you mustn't cry. please don't, or i shall go all to pieces. elizabeth. [_trying to smile._] i'm sorry. it doesn't mean anything really. it's only tears running out of my eyes. teddie. our only chance is to be awfully matter-of-fact. [_he stops for a moment. he finds it quite difficult to control himself. he clears his throat. he frowns with annoyance at himself._ elizabeth. what's the matter? teddie. i've got a sort of lump in my throat. it is idiotic. i think i'll have a cigarette. [_she watches him in silence while he lights a cigarette._ you see, i've never been in love with anyone before, not really. it's knocked me endways. i don't know how i can live without you now. . . . does that old fool know i'm in love with you? elizabeth. i think so. teddie. when he was talking about lady kitty smashing up lord porteous' career i thought there was something at the back of it. elizabeth. i think he was trying to persuade me not to smash up yours. teddie. i'm sure that's very considerate of him, but i don't happen to have one to smash. i wish i had. it's the only time in my life i've wished i were a hell of a swell so that i could chuck it all and show you how much more you are to me than anything else in the world. elizabeth. [_affectionately._] you're a dear old thing, teddie. teddie. you know, i don't really know how to make love, but if i did i couldn't do it now because i just want to be absolutely practical. elizabeth. [_chaffing him._] i'm glad you don't know how to make love. it would be almost more than i could bear. teddie. you see, i'm not at all romantic and that sort of thing. i'm just a common or garden business man. all this is so dreadfully serious and i think we ought to be sensible. elizabeth. [_with a break in her voice._] you owl! teddie. no, elizabeth, don't say things like that to me. i want you to consider all the _pros_ and _cons,_ and my heart's thumping against my chest, and you know i love you, i love you, i love you. elizabeth. [_in a sigh of passion._] oh, my precious! teddie. [_impatiently, but with himself, rather than with elizabeth._] don't be idiotic, elizabeth. i'm not going to tell you that i can't live without you and a lot of muck like that. you know that you mean everything in the world to me. [_almost giving it up as a bad job._] oh, my god! elizabeth. [_her voice faltering._] d'you think there's anything you can say to me that i don't know already? teddie. [_desperately._] but i haven't said a single thing i wanted to. i'm a business man and i want to put it all in a business way, if you understand what i mean. elizabeth. [_smiling._] i don't believe you're a very good business man. teddie. [_sharply._] you don't know what you're talking about. i'm a first-rate business man, but somehow this is different. [_hopelessly._] i don't know why it won't go right. elizabeth. what are we going to do about it? teddie. you see, it's not just because you're awfully pretty that i love you. i'd love you just as much if you were old and ugly. it's you i love, not what you look like. and it's not only love; love be blowed! it's that i _like_ you so tremendously. i think you're such a ripping good sort. i just want to be with you. i feel so jolly and happy just to think you're there. i'm so awfully _fond_ of you. elizabeth. [_laughing through her tears._] i don't know if this is your idea of introducing a business proposition. teddie. damn you, you won't let me. elizabeth. you said "damn you." teddie. i meant it. elizabeth. your voice sounded as if you meant it, you perfect duck! teddie. really, elizabeth, you're intolerable. elizabeth. i'm doing nothing. teddie. yes, you are, you're putting me off my blow. what i want to say is perfectly simple. i'm a very ordinary business man. elizabeth. you've said that before. teddie. [_angrily._] shut up. i haven't got a bob besides what i earn. i've got no position. i'm nothing. you're rich and you're a big pot and you've got everything that anyone can want. it's awful cheek my saying anything to you at all. but after all there's only one thing that really matters in the world, and that's love. i love you. chuck all this, elizabeth, and come to me. elizabeth. are you cross with me? teddie. furious. elizabeth. darling! teddie. if you don't want me tell me so at once and let me get out quickly. elizabeth. teddie, nothing in the world matters anything to me but you. i'll go wherever you take me. i love you. teddie. [_all to pieces._] oh, my god! elizabeth. does it mean as much to you as that? oh, teddie! teddie. [_trying to control himself._] don't be a fool, elizabeth. elizabeth. it's you're the fool. you're making me cry. teddie. you're so damned emotional. elizabeth. damned emotional yourself. i'm sure you're a rotten business man. teddie. i don't care what you think. you've made me so awfully happy. i say, what a lark life's going to be! elizabeth. teddie, you are an angel. teddie. let's get out quick. it's no good wasting time. elizabeth. elizabeth. what? teddie. nothing. i just like to say elizabeth. elizabeth. you fool! teddie. i say, can you shoot? elizabeth. no. teddie. i'll teach you. you don't know how ripping it is to start out from your camp at dawn and travel through the jungle. and you're so tired at night and the sky's all starry. it's a fair treat. of course i didn't want to say anything about all that till you'd decided. i'd made up my mind to be absolutely practical. elizabeth. [_chaffing him._] the only practical thing you said was that love is the only thing that really matters. teddie. [_happily._] pull the other leg next time, will you? i should have to have one longer than the other. elizabeth. isn't it fun being in love with some one who's in love with you? teddie. i say, i think i'd better clear out at once, don't you? it seems rather rotten to stay on in--in this house. elizabeth. you can't go to-night. there's no train. teddie. i'll go to-morrow. i'll wait in london till you're ready to join me. elizabeth. i'm not going to leave a note on the pincushion like lady kitty, you know. i'm going to tell arnold. teddie. are you? don't you think there'll be an awful bother? elizabeth. i must face it. i should hate to be sly and deceitful. teddie. well, then, let's face it together. elizabeth. no, i'll talk to arnold by myself. teddie. you won't let anyone influence you? elizabeth. no. [_he holds out his hand and she takes it. they look into one another's eyes with grave, almost solemn affection. there is the sound outside of a car driving up._ elizabeth. there's the car. arnold's come back. i must go and bathe my eyes. i don't want them to see i've been crying. teddie. all right. [_as she is going._] elizabeth. elizabeth. [_stopping._] what? teddie. bless you. elizabeth. [_affectionately._] idiot! [_she goes out of the door and teddie through the french window into the garden. for an instant the room is empty. arnold comes in. he sits down and takes some papers out of his despatch-case. lady kitty enters. he gets up._ lady kitty. i saw you come in. oh, my dear, don't get up. there's no reason why you should be so dreadfully polite to me. arnold. i've just rung for a cup of tea. lady kitty. perhaps we shall have the chance of a little talk. we don't seem to have had five minutes by ourselves. i want to make your acquaintance, you know. arnold. i should like you to know that it's not by my wish that my father is here. lady kitty. but i'm so interested to see him. arnold. i was afraid that you and lord porteous must find it embarrassing. lady kitty. oh, no. hughie was his greatest friend. they were at eton and oxford together. i think your father has improved so much since i saw him last. he wasn't good-looking as a young man, but now he's quite handsome. [_the footman brings in a tray on which are tea-things._ lady kitty. shall i pour it out for you? arnold. thank you very much. lady kitty. do you take sugar? arnold. no. i gave it up during the war. lady kitty. so wise of you. it's so bad for the figure. besides being patriotic, of course. isn't it absurd that i should ask my son if he takes sugar or not? life is really very quaint. sad, of course, but oh, so quaint! often i lie in bed at night and have a good laugh to myself as i think how quaint life is. arnold. i'm afraid i'm a very serious person. lady kitty. how old are you now, arnold? arnold. thirty-five. lady kitty. are you really? of course, i was a child when i married your father. arnold. really. he always told me you were twenty-two. lady kitty. oh, what nonsense! why, i was married out of the nursery. i put my hair up for the first time on my wedding-day. arnold. where is lord porteous? lady kitty. my dear, it sounds too absurd to hear you call him lord porteous. why don't you call him--uncle hughie? arnold. he doesn't happen to be my uncle. lady kitty. no, but he's your godfather. you know, i'm sure you'll like him when you know him better. i'm so hoping that you and elizabeth will come and stay with us in florence. i simply adore elizabeth. she's too beautiful. arnold. her hair is very pretty. lady kitty. it's not touched up, is it? arnold. oh, no. lady kitty. i just wondered. it's rather a coincidence that her hair should be the same colour as mine. i suppose it shows that your father and you are attracted by just the same thing. so interesting, heredity, isn't it? arnold. very. lady kitty. of course, since i joined the catholic church i don't believe in it any more. darwin and all that sort of thing. too dreadful. wicked, you know. besides, it's not very good form, is it? [_champion-cheney comes in from the garden._ c.-c. do i intrude? lady kitty. come in, clive. arnold and i have been having such a wonderful heart-to-heart talk. c.-c. very nice. arnold. father, i stepped in for a moment at the harveys' on my way back. it's simply criminal what they're doing with that house. c.-c. what are they doing? arnold. it's an almost perfect georgian house and they've got a lot of dreadful victorian furniture. i gave them my ideas on the subject, but it's quite hopeless. they said they were attached to their furniture. c.-c. arnold should have been an interior decorator. lady kitty. he has wonderful taste. he gets that from me. arnold. i suppose i have a certain _flair._ i have a passion for decorating houses. lady kitty. you've made this one charming. c.-c. d'you remember, we just had chintzes and comfortable chairs when we lived here, kitty. lady kitty. perfectly hideous, wasn't it? c.-c. in those days gentlemen and ladies were not expected to have taste. arnold. you know, i've been looking at this chair again. since lord porteous said the legs weren't right i've been very uneasy. lady kitty. he only said that because he was in a bad temper. c.-c. his temper seems to me very short these days, kitty. lady kitty. oh, it is. arnold. you feel he knows what he's talking about. i gave seventy-five pounds for that chair. i'm very seldom taken in. i always think if a thing's right you feel it. c.-c. well, don't let it disturb your night's rest. arnold. but, my dear father, that's just what it does. i had a most horrible dream about it last night. lady kitty. here is hughie. arnold. i'm going to fetch a book i have on old english furniture. there's an illustration of a chair which is almost identical with this one. [_porteous comes in._ porteous. quite a family gathering, by george! c.-c. i was thinking just now we'd make a very pleasing picture of a typical english home. arnold. i'll be back in five minutes. there's something i want to show you, lord porteous. [_he goes out._ c.-c. would you like to play piquet with me, hughie? porteous. not particularly. c.-c. you were never much of a piquet player, were you? porteous. my dear clive, you people don't know what piquet is in england. c.-c. let's have a game then. you may make money. porteous. i don't want to play with you. lady kitty. i don't know why not, hughie. porteous. let me tell you that i don't like your manner. c.-c. i'm sorry for that. i'm afraid i can't offer to change it at my age. porteous. i don't know what you want to be hanging around here for. c.-c. a natural attachment to my home. porteous. if you'd had any tact you'd have kept out of the way while we were here. c.-c. my dear hughie, i don't understand your attitude at all. if i'm willing to let bygones be bygones why should you object? porteous. damn it all, they're not bygones. c.-c. after all, i am the injured party. porteous. how the devil are you the injured party? c.-c. well, you did run away with my wife, didn't you? lady kitty. now, don't let's go into ancient history. i can't see why we shouldn't all be friends. porteous. i beg you not to interfere, kitty. lady kitty. i'm very fond of clive. porteous. you never cared two straws for clive. you only say that to irritate me. lady kitty. not at all. i don't see why he shouldn't come and stay with us. c.-c. i'd love to. i think florence in spring-time is delightful. have you central heating? porteous. i never liked you, i don't like you now, and i never shall like you. c.-c. how very unfortunate! because i liked you, i like you now, and i shall continue to like you. lady kitty. there's something very nice about you, clive. porteous. if you think that, why the devil did you leave him? lady kitty. are you going to reproach me because i loved you? how utterly, utterly, utterly detestable you are! c.-c. now, now, don't quarrel with one another. lady kitty. it's all his fault. i'm the easiest person in the world to live with. but really he'd try the patience of a saint. c.-c. come, come, don't get upset, kitty. when two people live together there must be a certain amount of give and take. porteous. i don't know what the devil you're talking about. c.-c. it hasn't escaped my observation that you are a little inclined to frip. many couples are. i think it's a pity. porteous. would you have the very great kindness to mind your own business? lady kitty. it is his business. he naturally wants me to be happy. c.-c. i have the very greatest affection for kitty. porteous. then why the devil didn't you look after her properly? c.-c. my dear hughie, you were my greatest friend. i trusted you. it may have been rash. porteous. it was inexcusable. lady kitty. i don't know what you mean by that, hughie. porteous. don't, don't, don't try and bully me, kitty. lady kitty. oh, i know what you mean. porteous. then why the devil did you say you didn't? lady kitty. when i think that i sacrificed everything for that man! and for thirty years i've had to live in a filthy marble palace with no sanitary conveniences. c.-c. d'you mean to say you haven't got a bathroom? lady kitty. i've had to wash in a tub. c.-c. my poor kitty, how you've suffered! porteous. really, kitty, i'm sick of hearing of the sacrifices you made. i suppose you think i sacrificed nothing. i should have been prime minister by now if it hadn't been for you. lady kitty. nonsense! porteous. what do you mean by that? everyone said i should be prime minister. shouldn't i have been prime minister, clive? c.-c. it was certainly the general expectation. porteous. i was the most promising young man of my day. i was bound to get a seat in the cabinet at the next election. lady kitty. they'd have found you out just as i've found you out. i'm sick of hearing that i ruined your career. you never had a career to ruin. prime minister! you haven't the brain. you haven't the character. c.-c. cheek, push, and a gift of the gab will serve very well instead, you know. lady kitty. besides, in politics it's not the men that matter. it's the women at the back of them. i could have made clive a cabinet minister if i'd wanted to. porteous. clive? lady kitty. with my beauty, my charm, my force of character, my wit, i could have done anything. porteous. clive was nothing but my political secretary. when i was prime minister i might have made him governor of some colony or other. western australia, say. out of pure kindliness. lady kitty. [_with flashing eyes._] d'you think i would have buried myself in western australia? with my beauty? my charm? porteous. or barbadoes, perhaps. lady kitty. [_furiously._] barbadoes! barbadoes can go to--barbadoes. porteous. that's all you'd have got. lady kitty. nonsense! i'd have india. porteous. i would never have given you india. lady kitty. you would have given me india. porteous. i tell you i wouldn't. lady kitty. the king would have given me india. the nation would have insisted on my having india. i would have been a vice-reine or nothing. porteous. i tell you that as long as the interests of the british empire--damn it all, my teeth are coming out! [_he hurries from the room._ lady kitty. it's too much. i can't bear it any more. i've put up with him for thirty years and now i'm at the end of my tether. c.-c. calm yourself, my dear kitty. lady kitty. i won't listen to a word. i've quite made up my mind. it's finished, finished, finished. [_with a change of tone._] i was so touched when i heard that you never lived in this house again after i left it. c.-c. the cuckoos have always been very plentiful. their note has a personal application which, i must say, i have found extremely offensive. lady kitty. when i saw that you didn't marry again i couldn't help thinking that you still loved me. c.-c. i am one of the few men i know who is able to profit by experience. lady kitty. in the eyes of the church i am still your wife. the church is so wise. it knows that in the end a woman always comes back to her first love. clive, i am willing to return to you. c.-c. my dear kitty, i couldn't take advantage of your momentary vexation with hughie to let you take a step which i know you would bitterly regret. lady kitty. you've waited for me a long time. for arnold's sake. c.-c. do you think we really need bother about arnold? in the last thirty years he's had time to grow used to the situation. lady kitty. [_with a little smile._] i think i've sown my wild oats, clive. c.-c. i haven't. i was a good young man, kitty. lady kitty. i know. c.-c. and i'm very glad, because it has enabled me to be a wicked old one. lady kitty. i beg your pardon. [_arnold comes in with a large book in his hand._ arnold. i say, i've found the book i was hunting for. oh! isn't lord porteous here? lady kitty. one moment, arnold. your father and i are busy. arnold. i'm so sorry. [_he goes out into the garden._ lady kitty. explain yourself, clive. c.-c. when you ran away from me, kitty, i was sore and angry and miserable. but above all i felt a fool. lady kitty. men are so vain. c.-c. but i was a student of history, and presently i reflected that i shared my misfortune with very nearly all the greatest men. lady kitty. i'm a great reader myself. it has always struck me as peculiar. c.-c. the explanation is very simple. women dislike intelligence, and when they find it in their husbands they revenge themselves on them in the only way they can, by making them--well, what you made me. lady kitty. it's ingenious. it may be true. c.-c. i felt i had done my duty by society and i determined to devote the rest of my life to my own entertainment. the house of commons had always bored me excessively and the scandal of our divorce gave me an opportunity to resign my seat. i have been relieved to find that the country got on perfectly well without me. lady kitty. but has love never entered your life? c.-c. tell me frankly, kitty, don't you think people make a lot of unnecessary fuss about love? lady kitty. it's the most wonderful thing in the world. c.-c. you're incorrigible. do you really think it was worth sacrificing so much for? lady kitty. my dear clive, i don't mind telling you that if i had my time over again i should be unfaithful to you, but i should not leave you. c.-c. for some years i was notoriously the prey of a secret sorrow. but i found so many charming creatures who were anxious to console that in the end it grew rather fatiguing. out of regard to my health i ceased to frequent the drawing-rooms of mayfair. lady kitty. and since then? c.-c. since then i have allowed myself the luxury of assisting financially a succession of dear little things, in a somewhat humble sphere, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. lady kitty. i cannot understand the infatuation of men for young girls. i think they're so dull. c.-c. it's a matter of taste. i love old wine, old friends and old books, but i like young women. on their twenty-fifth birthday i give them a diamond ring and tell them they must no longer waste their youth and beauty on an old fogey like me. we have a most affecting scene, my technique on these occasions is perfect, and then i start all over again. lady kitty. you're a wicked old man, clive. c.-c. that's what i told you. but, by george! i'm a happy one. lady kitty. there's only one course open to me now. c.-c. what is that? lady kitty. [_with a flashing smile._] to go and dress for dinner. c.-c. capital. i will follow your example. [_as lady kitty goes out elizabeth comes in._ elizabeth. where is arnold? c.-c. he's on the terrace. i'll call him. elizabeth. don't bother. c.-c. i was just strolling along to my cottage to put on a dinner jacket. [_as he goes out._] arnold. [_exit c.-c._ arnold. hulloa! [_he comes in._] oh, elizabeth, i've found an illustration here of a chair which is almost identical with mine. it's dated . look! elizabeth. that's very interesting. arnold. i want to show it to porteous. [_moving a chair which has been misplaced._] you know, it does exasperate me the way people will not leave things alone. i no sooner put a thing in its place than somebody moves it. elizabeth. it must be maddening for you. arnold. it is. you are the worst offender. i can't think why you don't take the pride that i do in the house. after all, it's one of the show places in the county. elizabeth. i'm afraid you find me very unsatisfactory. arnold. [_good-humouredly._] i don't know about that. but my two subjects are politics and decoration. i should be a perfect fool if i didn't see that you don't care two straws about either. elizabeth. we haven't very much in common, arnold, have we? arnold. i don't think you can blame me for that. elizabeth. i don't. i blame you for nothing. i have no fault to find with you. arnold. [_surprised at her significant tone._] good gracious me! what's the meaning of all this? elizabeth. well, i don't think there's any object in beating about the bush. i want you to let me go. arnold. go where? elizabeth. away. for always. arnold. my dear child, what _are_ you talking about? elizabeth. i want to be free. arnold. [_amused rather than disconcerted._] don't be ridiculous, darling. i daresay you're run down and want a change. i'll take you over to paris for a fortnight if you like. elizabeth. i shouldn't have spoken to you if i hadn't quite made up my mind. we've been married for three years and i don't think it's been a great success. i'm frankly bored by the life you want me to lead. arnold. well, if you'll allow me to say so, the fault is yours. we lead a very distinguished, useful life. we know a lot of extremely nice people. elizabeth. i'm quite willing to allow that the fault is mine. but how does that make it any better? i'm only twenty-five. if i've made a mistake i have time to correct it. arnold. i can't bring myself to take you very seriously. elizabeth. you see, i don't love you. arnold. well, i'm awfully sorry. but you weren't obliged to marry me. you've made your bed and i'm afraid you must lie on it. elizabeth. that's one of the falsest proverbs in the english language. why should you lie on the bed you've made if you don't want to? there's always the floor. arnold. for goodness' sake don't be funny, elizabeth. elizabeth. i've quite made up my mind to leave you, arnold. arnold. come, come, elizabeth, you must be sensible. you haven't any reason to leave me. elizabeth. why should you wish to keep a woman tied to you who wants to be free? arnold. i happen to be in love with you. elizabeth. you might have said that before. arnold. i thought you'd take it for granted. you can't expect a man to go on making love to his wife after three years. i'm very busy. i'm awfully keen on politics and i've worked like a dog to make this house a thing of beauty. after all, a man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing. i fell in love with you the first time i saw you and i've been in love ever since. elizabeth. i'm sorry, but if you're not in love with a man his love doesn't mean very much to you. arnold. it's so ungrateful. i've done everything in the world for you. elizabeth. you've been very kind to me. but you've asked me to lead a life i don't like and that i'm not suited for. i'm awfully sorry to cause you pain, but now you must let me go. arnold. nonsense! i'm a good deal older than you are and i think i have a little more sense. in your interests as well as in mine i'm not going to do anything of the sort. elizabeth. [_with a smile._] how can you prevent me? you can't keep me under lock and key. arnold. please don't talk to me as if i were a foolish child. you're my wife and you're going to remain my wife. elizabeth. what sort of a life do you think we should lead? do you think there'd be any more happiness for you than for me? arnold. but what is it precisely that you suggest? elizabeth. well, i want you to let me divorce you. arnold. [_astounded._] me? thank you very much. are you under the impression i'm going to sacrifice my career for a whim of yours? elizabeth. how will it do that? arnold. my seat's wobbly enough as it is. do you think i'd be able to hold it if i were in a divorce case? even if it were a put-up job, as most divorces are nowadays, it would damn me. elizabeth. it's rather hard on a woman to be divorced. arnold. [_with sudden suspicion._] what do you mean by that? are you in love with some one? elizabeth. yes. arnold. who? elizabeth. teddie luton. [_he is astonished for a moment, then bursts into a laugh._ arnold. my poor child, how can you be so ridiculous? why, he hasn't a bob. he's a perfectly commonplace young man. it's so absurd i can't even be angry with you. elizabeth. i've fallen desperately in love with him, arnold. arnold. well, you'd better fall desperately out. elizabeth. he wants to marry me. arnold. i daresay he does. he can go to hell. elizabeth. it's no good talking like that. arnold. is he your lover? elizabeth. no, certainly not. arnold. it shows that he's a mean skunk to take advantage of my hospitality to make love to you. elizabeth. he's never even kissed me. arnold. i'd try telling that to the horse marines if i were you. elizabeth. it's because i wanted to do nothing shabby that i told you straight out how things were. arnold. how long have you been thinking of this? elizabeth. i've been in love with teddie ever since i knew him. arnold. and you never thought of me at all, i suppose. elizabeth. oh, yes, i did. i was miserable. but i can't help myself. i wish i loved you, but i don't. arnold. i recommend you to think very carefully before you do anything foolish. elizabeth. i have thought very carefully. arnold. by god! i don't know why i don't give you a sound hiding. i'm not sure if that wouldn't be the best thing to bring you to your senses. elizabeth. oh, arnold, don't take it like that. arnold. how do you expect me to take it? you come to me quite calmly and say: "i've had enough of you. we've been married three years and i think i'd like to marry somebody else now. shall i break up your home? what a bore for you! do you mind my divorcing you? it'll smash up your career, will it? what a pity!" oh, no, my girl, i may be a fool, but i'm not a damned fool. elizabeth. teddie is leaving here by the first train to-morrow. i warn you that i mean to join him as soon as he can make the necessary arrangements. arnold. where is he? elizabeth. i don't know. i suppose he's in his room. [_arnold goes to the door and calls._ arnold. george! [_for a moment he walks up and down the room impatiently. elizabeth watches him. the footman comes in._ footman. yes, sir. arnold. tell mr. luton to come here at once. elizabeth. ask mr. luton if he wouldn't mind coming here for a moment. footman. very good, madam. [_exit footman._ elizabeth. what are you going to say to him? arnold. that's my business. elizabeth. i wouldn't make a scene if i were you. arnold. i'm not going to make a scene. [_they wait in silence._ why did you insist on my mother coming here? elizabeth. it seemed to me rather absurd to take up the attitude that i should be contaminated by her when . . . arnold. [_interrupting._] when you were proposing to do exactly the same thing. well, now you've seen her what do you think of her? do you think it's been a success? is that the sort of woman a man would like his mother to be? elizabeth. i've been ashamed. i've been so sorry. it all seemed dreadful and horrible. this morning i happened to notice a rose in the garden. it was all overblown and bedraggled. it looked like a painted old woman. and i remembered that i'd looked at it a day or two ago. it was lovely then, fresh and blooming and fragrant. it may be hideous now, but that doesn't take away from the beauty it had once. that was real. arnold. poetry, by god! as if this were the moment for poetry! [_teddie comes in. he has changed into a dinner jacket._ teddie. [_to elizabeth._] did you want me? arnold. _i_ sent for you. [_teddie looks from arnold to elizabeth. he sees that something has happened._ when would it be convenient for you to leave this house? teddie. i was proposing to go to-morrow morning. but i can very well go at once if you like. arnold. i do like. teddie. very well. is there anything else you wish to say to me? arnold. do you think it was a very honourable thing to come down here and make love to my wife? teddie. no, i don't. i haven't been very happy about it. that's why i wanted to go away. arnold. upon my word you're cool. teddie. i'm afraid it's no good saying i'm sorry and that sort of thing. you know what the situation is. arnold. is it true that you want to marry elizabeth? teddie. yes. i should like to marry her as soon as ever i can. arnold. have you thought of me at all? has it struck you that you're destroying my home and breaking up my happiness? teddie. i don't see how there could be much happiness for you if elizabeth doesn't care for you. arnold. let me tell you that i refuse to have my home broken up by a twopenny-halfpenny adventurer who takes advantage of a foolish woman. i refuse to allow myself to be divorced. i can't prevent my wife from going off with you if she's determined to make a damned fool of herself, but this i tell you: nothing will induce me to divorce her. elizabeth. arnold, that would be monstrous. teddie. we could force you. arnold. how? teddie. if we went away together openly you'd have to bring an action. arnold. twenty-four hours after you leave this house i shall go down to brighton with a chorus-girl. and neither you nor i will be able to get a divorce. we've had enough divorces in our family. and now get out, get out, get out! [_teddie looks uncertainly at elizabeth._ elizabeth. [_with a little smile._] don't bother about me. i shall be all right. arnold. get out! get out! end of the second act the third act _the scene is the same as in the preceding acts._ _it is the night of the same day as that on which takes place the action of the second act._ _champion-cheney and arnold, both in dinner jackets, are discovered. champion-cheney is seated. arnold walks restlessly up and down the room._ c.-c. i think, if you'll follow my advice to the letter, you'll probably work the trick. arnold. i don't like it, you know. it's against all my principles. c.-c. my dear arnold, we all hope that you have before you a distinguished political career. you can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. arnold. but supposing it doesn't come off? women are incalculable. c.-c. nonsense! men are romantic. a woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. it is her favourite form of self-indulgence. arnold. i never know whether you're a humorist or a cynic, father. c.-c. i'm neither, my dear boy; i'm merely a very truthful man. but people are so unused to the truth that they're apt to mistake it for a joke or a sneer. arnold. [_irritably._] it seems so unfair that this should happen to me. c.-c. keep your head, my boy, and do what i tell you. [_lady kitty and elizabeth come in. lady kitty is in a gorgeous evening gown._ elizabeth. where is lord porteous? c.-c. he's on the terrace. he's smoking a cigar. [_going to window._] hughie! [_porteous comes in._ porteous. [_with a grunt._] yes? where's mrs. shenstone? elizabeth. oh, she had a headache. she's gone to bed. [_when porteous comes in lady kitty with a very haughty air purses her lips and takes up an illustrated paper. porteous gives her an irritated look, takes another illustrated paper and sits himself down at the other end of the room. they are not on speaking terms._ c.-c. arnold and i have just been down to my cottage. elizabeth. i wondered where you'd gone. c.-c. i came across an old photograph album this afternoon. i meant to bring it along before dinner, but i forgot, so we went and fetched it. elizabeth. oh, do let me see it! i love old photographs. [_he gives her the album, and she, sitting down, puts it on her knees and begins to turn over the pages. he stands over her. lady kitty and porteous take surreptitious glances at one another._ c.-c. i thought it might amuse you to see what pretty women looked like five-and-thirty years ago. that was the day of beautiful women. elizabeth. do you think they were more beautiful then than they are now? c.-c. oh, much. now you see lots of pretty little things, but very few beautiful women. elizabeth. aren't their clothes funny? c.-c. [_pointing to a photograph._] that's mrs. langtry. elizabeth. she has a lovely nose. c.-c. she was the most wonderful thing you ever saw. dowagers used to jump on chairs in order to get a good look at her when she came into a drawing-room. i was riding with her once, and we had to have the gates of the livery stable closed when she was getting on her horse because the crowd was so great. elizabeth. and who's that? c.-c. lady lonsdale. that's lady dudley. elizabeth. this is an actress, isn't it? c.-c. it is, indeed. ellen terry. by george! how i loved that woman! elizabeth. [_with a smile._] dear ellen terry! c.-c. that's bwabs. i never saw a smarter man in my life. and oliver montagu. henry manners with his eye-glass. elizabeth. nice-looking, isn't he? and this? c.-c. that's mary anderson. i wish you could have seen her in "a winter's tale." her beauty just took your breath away. and look! there's lady randolph. bernal osborne--the wittiest man i ever knew. elizabeth. i think it's too sweet. i love their absurd bustles and those tight sleeves. c.-c. what figures they had! in those days a woman wasn't supposed to be as thin as a rail and as flat as a pancake. elizabeth. oh, but aren't they laced in? how could they bear it? c.-c. they didn't play golf then, and nonsense like that, you know. they hunted, in a tall hat and a long black habit, and they were very gracious and charitable to the poor in the village. elizabeth. did the poor like it? c.-c. they had a very thin time if they didn't. when they were in london they drove in the park every afternoon, and they went to ten-course dinners, where they never met anybody they didn't know. and they had their box at the opera when patti was singing or madame albani. elizabeth. oh, what a lovely little thing! who on earth is that? c.-c. that? elizabeth. she looks so fragile, like a piece of exquisite china, with all those furs on and her face up against her muff, and the snow falling. c.-c. yes, there was quite a rage at that time for being taken in an artificial snowstorm. elizabeth. what a sweet smile, so roguish and frank, and debonair! oh, i wish i looked like that! do tell me who it is! c.-c. don't you know? elizabeth. no. c.-c. why--it's kitty. elizabeth. lady kitty! [_to lady kitty._] oh, my dear, do look! it's too ravishing. [_she takes the album over to her impulsively._] why didn't you tell me you looked like that? everybody must have been in love with you. [_lady kitty takes the album and looks at it. then she lets it slip from her hands and covers her face with her hands. she is crying._ [_in consternation._] my dear, what's the matter? oh, what have i done? i'm so sorry. lady kitty. don't, don't talk to me. leave me alone. it's stupid of me. [_elizabeth looks at her for a moment perplexed, then, turning round, slips her arm in champion-cheney's and leads him out on to the terrace._ elizabeth. [_as they are going, in a whisper._] did you do that on purpose? [_porteous gets up and goes over to lady kitty. he puts his hand on her shoulder. they remain thus for a little while._ porteous. i'm afraid i was very rude to you before dinner, kitty. lady kitty. [_taking his hand which is on her shoulder._] it doesn't matter. i'm sure i was very exasperating. porteous. i didn't mean what i said, you know. lady kitty. neither did i. porteous. of course i know that i'd never have been prime minister. lady kitty. how can you talk such nonsense, hughie? no one would have had a chance if you'd remained in politics. porteous. i haven't the character. lady kitty. you have more character than anyone i've ever met. porteous. besides, i don't know that i much wanted to be prime minister. lady kitty. oh, but i should have been so proud of you. of course you'd have been prime minister. porteous. i'd have given you india, you know. i think it would have been a very popular appointment. lady kitty. i don't care twopence about india. i'd have been quite content with western australia. porteous. my dear, you don't think i'd have let you bury yourself in western australia? lady kitty. or barbadoes. porteous. never. it sounds like a cure for flat feet. i'd have kept you in london. [_he picks up the album and is about to look at the photograph of lady kitty. she puts her hand over it._ lady kitty. no, don't look. [_he takes her hand away._ porteous. don't be so silly. lady kitty. isn't it hateful to grow old? porteous. you know, you haven't changed much. lady kitty. [_enchanted._] oh, hughie, how can you talk such nonsense? porteous. of course you're a little more mature, but that's all. a woman's all the better for being rather mature. lady kitty. do you really think that? porteous. upon my soul i do. lady kitty. you're not saying it just to please me? porteous. no, no. lady kitty. let me look at the photograph again. [_she takes the album and looks at the photograph complacently._ the fact is, if your bones are good, age doesn't really matter. you'll always be beautiful. porteous. [_with a little smile, almost as if he were talking to a child._] it was silly of you to cry. lady kitty. it hasn't made my eyelashes run, has it? porteous. not a bit. lady kitty. it's very good stuff i use now. they don't stick together either. porteous. look here, kitty, how much longer do you want to stay here? lady kitty. oh, i'm quite ready to go whenever you like. porteous. clive gets on my nerves. i don't like the way he keeps hanging about you. lady kitty. [_surprised, rather amused, and delighted._] hughie, you don't mean to say you're jealous of poor clive? porteous. of course i'm not jealous of him, but he does look at you in a way that i can't help thinking rather objectionable. lady kitty. hughie, you may throw me downstairs like amy robsart; you may drag me about the floor by the hair of my head; i don't care, you're jealous. i shall never grow old. porteous. damn it all, the man was your husband. lady kitty. my dear hughie, he never had your style. why, the moment you come into a room everyone looks and says: "who the devil is that?" porteous. what? you think that, do you? well, i daresay there's something in what you say. these damned radicals can say what they like, but, by god, kitty! when a man's a gentleman--well, damn it all, you know what i mean. lady kitty. i think clive has degenerated dreadfully since we left him. porteous. what do you say to making a bee-line for italy and going to san michele? lady kitty. oh, hughie! it's years since we were there. porteous. wouldn't you like to see it again--just once more? lady kitty. do you remember the first time we went? it was the most heavenly place i'd ever seen. we'd only left england a month, and i said i'd like to spend all my life there. porteous. of course i remember. and in a fortnight it was yours, lock, stock and barrel. lady kitty. we were very happy there, hughie. porteous. let's go back once more. lady kitty. i daren't. it must be all peopled with the ghosts of our past. one should never go again to a place where one has been happy. it would break my heart. porteous. do you remember how we used to sit on the terrace of the old castle and look at the adriatic? we might have been the only people in the world, you and i, kitty. lady kitty. [_tragically._] and we thought our love would last for ever. [_enter champion-cheney._ porteous. is there any chance of bridge this evening? c.-c. i don't think we can make up a four. porteous. what a nuisance that boy went away like that! he wasn't a bad player. c.-c. teddie luton? lady kitty. i think it was very funny his going without saying good-bye to anyone. c.-c. the young men of the present day are very casual. porteous. i thought there was no train in the evening. c.-c. there isn't. the last train leaves at . . porteous. how did he go then? c.-c. he went. porteous. damned selfish i call it. lady kitty. [_intrigued._] why did he go, clive? [_champion-cheney looks at her for a moment reflectively._ c.-c. i have something very grave to say to you. elizabeth wants to leave arnold. lady kitty. clive! what on earth for? c.-c. she's in love with teddie luton. that's why he went. the men of my family are really very unfortunate. porteous. does she want to run away with him? lady kitty. [_with consternation._] my dear, what's to be done? c.-c. i think you can do a great deal. lady kitty. i? what? c.-c. tell her, tell her what it means. [_he looks at her fixedly. she stares at him._ lady kitty. oh, no, no! c.-c. she's a child. not for arnold's sake. for her sake. you must. lady kitty. you don't know what you're asking. c.-c. yes, i do. lady kitty. hughie, what shall i do? porteous. do what you like. i shall never blame you for anything. [_the footman comes in with a letter on a salver. he hesitates on seeing that elizabeth is not in the room._ c.-c. what is it? footman. i was looking for mrs. champion-cheney, sir. c.-c. she's not here. is that a letter? footman. yes, sir. it's just been sent up from the "champion arms." c.-c. leave it. i'll give it to mrs. cheney. footman. very good, sir. [_he brings the tray to clive, who takes the letter. the footman goes out._ porteous. is the "champion arms" the local pub? c.-c. [_looking at the letter._] it's by way of being a hotel, but i never heard of anyone staying there. lady kitty. if there was no train i suppose he had to go there. c.-c. great minds. i wonder what he has to write about! [_he goes to the door leading on to the garden._] elizabeth! elizabeth. [_outside._] yes. c.-c. here's a note for you. [_there is silence. they wait for elizabeth to come. she enters._ elizabeth. it's lovely in the garden to-night. c.-c. they've just sent this up from the "champion arms." elizabeth. thank you. [_without embarrassment she opens the letter. they watch her while she reads it. it covers three pages. she puts it away in her bag._ lady kitty. hughie, i wish you'd fetch me a cloak. i'd like to take a little stroll in the garden, but after thirty years in italy i find these english summers rather chilly. [_without a word porteous goes out. elizabeth is lost in thought._ i want to talk to elizabeth, clive. c.-c. i'll leave you. [_he goes out._ lady kitty. what does he say? elizabeth. who? lady kitty. mr. luton. elizabeth. [_gives a little start. then she looks at lady kitty._] they've told you? lady kitty. yes. and now they have i think i knew it all along. elizabeth. i don't expect you to have much sympathy for me. arnold is your son. lady kitty. so pitifully little. elizabeth. i'm not suited for this sort of existence. arnold wants me to take what he calls my place in society. oh, i get so bored with those parties in london. all those middle-aged painted women, in beautiful clothes, lolloping round ball-rooms with rather old young men. and the endless luncheons where they gossip about so-and-so's love affairs. lady kitty. are you very much in love with mr. luton? elizabeth. i love him with all my heart. lady kitty. and he? elizabeth. he's never cared for anyone but me. he never will. lady kitty. will arnold let you divorce him? elizabeth. no, he won't hear of it. he refuses even to divorce me. lady kitty. why? elizabeth. he thinks a scandal will revive all the old gossip. lady kitty. oh, my poor child! elizabeth. it can't be helped. i'm quite willing to accept the consequences. lady kitty. you don't know what it is to have a man tied to you only by his honour. when married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. it's a tie that only death can sever. elizabeth. if teddie stopped caring for me i shouldn't want him to stay with me for five minutes. lady kitty. one says that when one's sure of a man's love, but when one isn't any more--oh, it's so different. in those circumstances one's got to keep a man's love. it's the only thing one has. elizabeth. i'm a human being. i can stand on my own feet. lady kitty. have you any money of your own? elizabeth. none. lady kitty. then how can you stand on your own feet? you think i'm a silly, frivolous woman, but i've learned something in a bitter school. they can make what laws they like, they can give us the suffrage, but when you come down to bedrock it's the man who pays the piper who calls the tune. woman will only be the equal of man when she earns her living in the same way that he does. elizabeth. [_smiling._] it sounds rather funny to hear you talk like that. lady kitty. a cook who marries a butler can snap her fingers in his face because she can earn just as much as he can. but a woman in your position and a woman in mine will always be dependent on the men who keep them. elizabeth. i don't want luxury. you don't know how sick i am of all this beautiful furniture. these over-decorated houses are like a prison in which i can't breathe. when i drive about in a callot frock and a rolls-royce i envy the shop-girl in a coat and skirt whom i see jumping on the tailboard of a bus. lady kitty. you mean that if need be you could earn your own living? elizabeth. yes. lady kitty. what could you be? a nurse or a typist. it's nonsense. luxury saps a woman's nerve. and when she's known it once it becomes a necessity. elizabeth. that depends on the woman. lady kitty. when we're young we think we're different from everyone else, but when we grow a little older we discover we're all very much of a muchness. elizabeth. you're very kind to take so much trouble about me. lady kitty. it breaks my heart to think that you're going to make the same pitiful mistake that i made. elizabeth. oh, don't say it was that, don't, don't. lady kitty. look at me, elizabeth, and look at hughie. do you think it's been a success? if i had my time over again do you think i'd do it again? do you think he would? elizabeth. you see, you don't know how much i love teddie. lady kitty. and do you think i didn't love hughie? do you think he didn't love me? elizabeth. i'm sure he did. lady kitty. oh, of course in the beginning it was heavenly. we felt so brave and adventurous and we were so much in love. the first two years were wonderful. people cut me, you know, but i didn't mind. i thought love was everything. it _is_ a little uncomfortable when you come upon an old friend and go towards her eagerly, so glad to see her, and are met with an icy stare. elizabeth. do you think friends like that are worth having? lady kitty. perhaps they're not very sure of themselves. perhaps they're honestly shocked. it's a test one had better not put one's friends to if one can help it. it's rather bitter to find how few one has. elizabeth. but one has some. lady kitty. yes, they ask you to come and see them when they're quite certain no one will be there who might object to meeting you. or else they say to you: "my dear, you know i'm devoted to you, and i wouldn't mind at all, but my girl's growing up--i'm sure you understand; you won't think it unkind of me if i don't ask you to the house?" elizabeth. [_smiling._] that doesn't seem to me very serious. lady kitty. at first i thought it rather a relief, because it threw hughie and me together more. but you know, men are very funny. even when they are in love they're not in love all day long. they want change and recreation. elizabeth. i'm not inclined to blame them for that, poor dears. lady kitty. then we settled in florence. and because we couldn't get the society we'd been used to we became used to the society we could get. loose women and vicious men. snobs who liked to patronise people with a handle to their names. vague italian princes who were glad to borrow a few francs from hughie and seedy countesses who liked to drive with me in the cascine. and then hughie began to hanker after his old life. he wanted to go big game shooting, but i dared not let him go. i was afraid he'd never come back. elizabeth. but you knew he loved you. lady kitty. oh, my dear, what a blessed institution marriage is--for women, and what fools they are to meddle with it! the church is so wise to take its stand on the indi--indi-- elizabeth. solu-- lady kitty. bility of marriage. believe me, it's no joke when you have to rely only on yourself to keep a man. i could never afford to grow old. my dear, i'll tell you a secret that i've never told a living soul. elizabeth. what is that? lady kitty. my hair is not naturally this colour. elizabeth. really. lady kitty. i touch it up. you would never have guessed, would you? elizabeth. never. lady kitty. nobody does. my dear, it's white, prematurely of course, but white. i always think it's a symbol of my life. are you interested in symbolism? i think it's too wonderful. elizabeth. i don't think i know very much about it. lady kitty. however tired i've been i've had to be brilliant and gay. i've never let hughie see the aching heart behind my smiling eyes. elizabeth. [_amused and touched._] you poor dear. lady kitty. and when i saw he was attracted by some one else the fear and the jealousy that seized me! you see, i didn't dare make a scene as i should have done if i'd been married--i had to pretend not to notice. elizabeth. [_taken aback._] but do you mean to say he fell in love with anyone else? lady kitty. of course he did eventually. elizabeth. [_hardly knowing what to say._] you must have been very unhappy. lady kitty. oh, i was, dreadfully. night after night i sobbed my heart out when hughie told me he was going to play cards at the club and i knew he was with that odious woman. of course, it wasn't as if there weren't plenty of men who were only too anxious to console me. men have always been attracted by me, you know. elizabeth. oh, of course, i can quite understand it. lady kitty. but i had my self-respect to think of. i felt that whatever hughie did i would do nothing that i should regret. elizabeth. you must be very glad now. lady kitty. oh, yes. notwithstanding all my temptations i've been absolutely faithful to hughie in spirit. elizabeth. i don't think i quite understand what you mean. lady kitty. well, there was a poor italian boy, young count castel giovanni, who was so desperately in love with me that his mother begged me not to be too cruel. she was afraid he'd go into a consumption. what could i do? and then, oh, years later, there was antonio melita. he said he'd shoot himself unless i--well, you understand i couldn't let the poor boy shoot himself. elizabeth. d'you think he really would have shot himself? lady kitty. oh, one never knows, you know. those italians are so passionate. he was really rather a lamb. he had such beautiful eyes. [_elizabeth looks at her for a long time and a certain horror seizes her of this dissolute, painted old woman._ elizabeth. [_hoarsely._] oh, but i think that's--dreadful. lady kitty. are you shocked? one sacrifices one's life for love and then one finds that love doesn't last. the tragedy of love isn't death or separation. one gets over them. the tragedy of love is indifference. [_arnold comes in._ arnold. can i have a little talk with you, elizabeth? elizabeth. of course. arnold. shall we go for a stroll in the garden? elizabeth. if you like. lady kitty. no, stay here. i'm going out anyway. [_exit lady kitty._ arnold. i want you to listen to me for a few minutes, elizabeth. i was so taken aback by what you told me just now that i lost my head. i was rather absurd and i beg your pardon. i said things i regret. elizabeth. oh, don't blame yourself. i'm sorry that i should have given you occasion to say them. arnold. i want to ask you if you've quite made up your mind to go. elizabeth. quite. arnold. just now i seem to have said all that i didn't want to say and nothing that i did. i'm stupid and tongue-tied. i never told you how deeply i loved you. elizabeth. oh, arnold! arnold. please let me speak now. it's so very difficult. if i seemed absorbed in politics and the house, and so on, to the exclusion of my interest in you, i'm dreadfully sorry. i suppose it was absurd of me to think you would take my great love for granted. elizabeth. but, arnold, i'm not reproaching you. arnold. i'm reproaching myself. i've been tactless and neglectful. but i do ask you to believe that it hasn't been because i didn't love you. can you forgive me? elizabeth. i don't think that there's anything to forgive. arnold. it wasn't till to-day when you talked of leaving me that i realised how desperately in love with you i was. elizabeth. after three years? arnold. i'm so proud of you. i admire you so much. when i see you at a party, so fresh and lovely, and everybody wondering at you, i have a sort of little thrill because you're mine, and afterwards i shall take you home. elizabeth. oh, arnold, you're exaggerating. arnold. i can't imagine this house without you. life seems on a sudden all empty and meaningless. oh, elizabeth, don't you love me at all? elizabeth. it's much better to be honest. no. arnold. doesn't my love mean anything to you? elizabeth. i'm very grateful to you. i'm sorry to cause you pain. what would be the good of my staying with you when i should be wretched all the time? arnold. do you love that man as much as all that? does my unhappiness mean nothing to you? elizabeth. of course it does. it breaks my heart. you see, i never knew i meant so much to you. i'm so touched. and i'm so sorry, arnold, really sorry. but i can't help myself. arnold. poor child, it's cruel of me to torture you. elizabeth. oh, arnold, believe me, i have tried to make the best of it. i've tried to love you, but i can't. after all, one either loves or one doesn't. trying is no help. and now i'm at the end of my tether. i can't help the consequences--i must do what my whole self yearns for. arnold. my poor child, i'm so afraid you'll be unhappy. i'm so afraid you'll regret. elizabeth. you must leave me to my fate. i hope you'll forget me and all the unhappiness i've caused you. arnold. [_there is a pause. arnold walks up and down the room reflectively. he stops and faces her._] if you love this man and want to go to him i'll do nothing to prevent you. my only wish is to do what is best for you. elizabeth. arnold, that's awfully kind of you. if i'm treating you badly at least i want you to know that i'm grateful for all your kindness to me. arnold. but there's one favour i should like you to do me. will you? elizabeth. oh, arnold, of course i'll do anything i can. arnold. teddie hasn't very much money. you've been used to a certain amount of luxury, and i can't bear to think that you should do without anything you've had. it would kill me to think that you were suffering any hardship or privation. elizabeth. oh, but teddie can earn enough for our needs. after all, we don't want much money. arnold. i'm afraid my mother's life hasn't been very easy, but it's obvious that the only thing that's made it possible is that porteous was rich. i want you to let me make you an allowance of two thousand a year. elizabeth. oh, no, i couldn't think of it. it's absurd. arnold. i beg you to accept it. you don't know what a difference it will make. elizabeth. it's awfully kind of you, arnold. it humiliates me to speak about it. nothing would induce me to take a penny from you. arnold. well, you can't prevent me from opening an account at my bank in your name. the money shall be paid in every quarter whether you touch it or not, and if you happen to want it, it will be there waiting for you. elizabeth. you overwhelm me, arnold. there's only one thing i want you to do for me. i should be very grateful if you would divorce me as soon as you possibly can. arnold. no, i won't do that. but i'll give you cause to divorce me. elizabeth. you! arnold. yes. but of course you'll have to be very careful for a bit. i'll put it through as quickly as possible, but i'm afraid you can't hope to be free for over six months. elizabeth. but, arnold, your seat and your political career! arnold. oh, well, my father gave up his seat under similar circumstances. he's got along very comfortably without politics. elizabeth. but they're your whole life. arnold. after all one can't have it both ways. you can't serve god and mammon. if you want to do the decent thing you have to be prepared to suffer for it. elizabeth. but i don't want you to suffer for it. arnold. at first i rather hesitated at the scandal. but i daresay that was only weakness on my part. under the circumstances i should have liked to keep out of the divorce court if i could. elizabeth. arnold, you're making me absolutely miserable. arnold. what you said before dinner was quite right. it's nothing for a man, but it makes so much difference to a woman. naturally i must think of you first. elizabeth. that's absurd. it's out of the question. whatever there's to pay i must pay it. arnold. it's not very much i'm asking you, elizabeth. elizabeth. i'm taking everything from you. arnold. it's the only condition i make. my mind is absolutely made up. i will never divorce you, but i will enable you to divorce me. elizabeth. oh, arnold, it's cruel to be so generous. arnold. it's not generous at all. it's the only way i have of showing you how deep and passionate and sincere my love is for you. [_there is a silence. he holds out his hand._ good-night. i have a great deal of work to do before i go to bed. elizabeth. good-night. arnold. do you mind if i kiss you? elizabeth. [_with agony._] oh, arnold! [_he gravely kisses her on the forehead and then goes out. elizabeth stands lost in thought. she is shattered. lady kitty and porteous come in. lady kitty wears a cloak._ lady kitty. you're alone, elizabeth? elizabeth. that note you asked me about, lady kitty, from teddie . . . lady kitty. yes? elizabeth. he wanted to have a talk with me before he went away. he's waiting for me in the summer house by the tennis court. would lord porteous mind going down and asking him to come here? porteous. certainly. certainly. elizabeth. forgive me for troubling you. but it's very important. porteous. no trouble at all. [_he goes out._ lady kitty. hughie and i will leave you alone. elizabeth. but i don't want to be left alone. i want you to stay. lady kitty. what are you going to say to him? elizabeth. [_desperately._] please don't ask me questions. i'm so frightfully unhappy. lady kitty. my poor child! elizabeth. oh, isn't life rotten? why can't one be happy without making other people unhappy? lady kitty. i wish i knew how to help you. i'm simply devoted to you. [_she hunts about in her mind for something to do or say._] would you like my lip-stick? elizabeth. [_smiling through her tears._] thanks. i never use one. lady kitty. oh, but just try. it's such a comfort when you're in trouble. [_enter porteous and teddie._ porteous. i brought him. he said he'd be damned if he'd come. lady kitty. when a lady sent for him? are these the manners of the young men of to-day? teddie. when you've been solemnly kicked out of a house once i think it seems rather pushing to come back again as though nothing had happened. elizabeth. teddie, i want you to be serious. teddie. darling, i had such a rotten dinner at that pub. if you ask me to be serious on the top of that i shall cry. elizabeth. don't be idiotic, teddie. [_her voice faltering._] i'm so utterly wretched. [_he looks at her for a moment gravely._ teddie. what is it? elizabeth. i can't come away with you, teddie. teddie. why not? elizabeth. [_looking away in embarrassment._] i don't love you enough. teddie. fiddle! elizabeth. [_with a flash of anger._] don't say "fiddle" to me. teddie. i shall say exactly what i like to you. elizabeth. i won't be bullied. teddie. now look here, elizabeth, you know perfectly well that i'm in love with you, and i know perfectly well that you're in love with me. so what are you talking nonsense for? elizabeth. [_her voice breaking._] i can't say it if you're cross with me. teddie. [_smiling very tenderly._] i'm not cross with you, silly. elizabeth. it's harder still when you're being rather an owl. teddie. [_with a chuckle._] am i mistaken in thinking you're not very easy to please? elizabeth. oh, it's monstrous. i was all wrought up and ready to do anything, and now you've thoroughly put me out. i feel like a great big fat balloon that some one has put a long pin into. [_with a sudden look at him._] have you done it on purpose? teddie. upon my soul i don't know what you're talking about. elizabeth. i wonder if you're really much cleverer than i think you are. teddie. [_taking her hands and making her sit down._] now tell me exactly what you want to say. by the way, do you want lady kitty and lord porteous to be here? elizabeth. yes. lady kitty. elizabeth asked us to stay. teddie. oh, i don't mind, bless you. i only thought you might feel rather in the way. lady kitty. [_frigidly._] a gentlewoman never feels in the way, mr. luton. teddie. won't you call me teddie? everybody does, you know. [_lady kitty tries to give him a withering look, but she finds it very difficult to prevent herself from smiling. teddie strokes elizabeth's hands. she draws them away._ elizabeth. no, don't do that. teddie, it wasn't true when i said i didn't love you. of course i love you. but arnold loves me, too. i didn't know how much. teddie. what has he been saying to you? elizabeth. he's been very good to me, and so kind. i didn't know he could be so kind. he offered to let me divorce him. teddie. that's very decent of him. elizabeth. but don't you see, it ties my hands. how can i accept such a sacrifice? i should never forgive myself if i profited by his generosity. teddie. if another man and i were devilish hungry and there was only one mutton chop between us, and he said, "you eat it," i wouldn't waste a lot of time arguing. i'd wolf it before he changed his mind. elizabeth. don't talk like that. it maddens me. i'm trying to do the right thing. teddie. you're not in love with arnold; you're in love with me. it's idiotic to sacrifice your life for a slushy sentiment. elizabeth. after all, i did marry him. teddie. well, you made a mistake. a marriage without love is no marriage at all. elizabeth. _i_ made the mistake. why should he suffer for it? if anyone has to suffer it's only right that i should. teddie. what sort of a life do you think it would be with him? when two people are married it's very difficult for one of them to be unhappy without making the other unhappy too. elizabeth. i can't take advantage of his generosity. teddie. i daresay he'll get a lot of satisfaction out of it. elizabeth. you're being beastly, teddie. he was simply wonderful. i never knew he had it in him. he was really noble. teddie. you are talking rot, elizabeth. elizabeth. i wonder if you'd be capable of acting like that. teddie. acting like what? elizabeth. what would you do if i were married to you and came and told you i loved somebody else and wanted to leave you? teddie. you have very pretty blue eyes, elizabeth. i'd black first one and then the other. and after that we'd see. elizabeth. you damned brute! teddie. i've often thought i wasn't quite a gentleman. had it ever struck you? [_they look at one another for a while._ elizabeth. you know, you are taking an unfair advantage of me. i feel as if i came to you quite unsuspectingly and when i wasn't looking you kicked me on the shins. teddie. don't you think we'd get on rather well together? porteous. elizabeth's a fool if she don't stick to her husband. it's bad enough for the man, but for the woman--it's damnable. i hold no brief for arnold. he plays bridge like a foot. saving your presence, kitty, i think he's a prig. lady kitty. poor dear, his father was at his age. i daresay he'll grow out of it. porteous. but you stick to him, elizabeth, stick to him. man is a gregarious animal. we're members of a herd. if we break the herd's laws we suffer for it. and we suffer damnably. lady kitty. oh, elizabeth, my dear child, don't go. it's not worth it. it's not worth it. i tell you that, and i've sacrificed everything to love. [_a pause._ elizabeth. i'm afraid. teddie. [_in a whisper._] elizabeth. elizabeth. i can't face it. it's asking too much of me. let's say good-bye to one another, teddie. it's the only thing to do. and have pity on me. i'm giving up all my hope of happiness. [_he goes up to her and looks into her eyes._ teddie. but i wasn't offering you happiness. i don't think my sort of love tends to happiness. i'm jealous. i'm not a very easy man to get on with. i'm often out of temper and irritable. i should be fed to the teeth with you sometimes, and so would you be with me. i daresay we'd fight like cat and dog, and sometimes we'd hate each other. often you'd be wretched and bored stiff and lonely, and often you'd be frightfully homesick, and then you'd regret all you'd lost. stupid women would be rude to you because we'd run away together. and some of them would cut you. i don't offer you peace and quietness. i offer you unrest and anxiety. i don't offer you happiness. i offer you love. elizabeth. [_stretching out her arms._] you hateful creature, i absolutely adore you! [_he throws his arms round her and kisses her passionately on the lips._ lady kitty. of course the moment he said he'd give her a black eye i knew it was finished. porteous. [_good-humouredly._] you are a fool, kitty. lady kitty. i know i am, but i can't help it. teddie. let's make a bolt for it now. elizabeth. shall we? teddie. this minute. porteous. you're damned fools, both of you, damned fools! if you like you can have my car. teddie. that's awfully kind of you. as a matter of fact i got it out of the garage. it's just along the drive. porteous. [_indignantly._] how do you mean, you got it out of the garage? teddie. well, i thought there'd be a lot of bother, and it seemed to me the best thing would be for elizabeth and me not to stand upon the order of our going, you know. do it now. an excellent motto for a business man. porteous. do you mean to say you were going to steal my car? teddie. not exactly. i was only going to bolshevise it, so to speak. porteous. i'm speechless. i'm absolutely speechless. teddie. hang it all, i couldn't carry elizabeth all the way to london. she's so damned plump. elizabeth. you dirty dog! porteous. [_spluttering._] well, well, well! . . . [_helplessly._] i like him, kitty, it's no good pretending i don't. i like him. teddie. the moon's shining, elizabeth. we'll drive all through the night. porteous. they'd better go to san michele. i'll wire to have it got ready for them. lady kitty. that's where we went when hughie and i . . . [_faltering._] oh, you dear things, how i envy you! porteous. [_mopping his eyes._] now don't cry, kitty. confound you, don't cry. teddie. come, darling. elizabeth. but i can't go like this. teddie. nonsense! lady kitty will lend you her cloak. won't you? lady kitty. [_taking it off._] you're capable of tearing it off my back if i don't. teddie. [_putting the cloak on elizabeth._] and we'll buy you a tooth-brush in london in the morning. lady kitty. she must write a note for arnold. i'll put it on her pincushion. teddie. pincushion be blowed! come, darling. we'll drive through the dawn and through the sunrise. elizabeth. [_kissing lady kitty and porteous._] good-bye. good-bye. [_teddie stretches out his hand and she takes it. hand in hand they go out into the night._ lady kitty. oh, hughie, how it all comes back to me! will they suffer all we suffered? and have we suffered all in vain? porteous. my dear, i don't know that in life it matters so much what you do as what you are. no one can learn by the experience of another because no circumstances are quite the same. if we made rather a hash of things perhaps it was because we were rather trivial people. you can do anything in this world if you're prepared to take the consequences, and consequences depend on character. [_enter champion-cheney, rubbing his hands. he is as pleased as punch._ c.-c. well, i think i've settled the hash of that young man. lady kitty. oh! c.-c. you have to get up very early in the morning to get the better of your humble servant. [_there is the sound of a car starting._ lady kitty. what is that? c.-c. it sounds like a car. i expect it's your chauffeur taking one of the maids for a joy-ride. porteous. whose hash are you talking about? c.-c. mr. edward luton's, my dear hughie. i told arnold exactly what to do and he's done it. what makes a prison? why, bars and bolts. remove them and a prisoner won't want to escape. clever, i flatter myself. porteous. you were always that, clive, but at the moment you're obscure. c.-c. i told arnold to go to elizabeth and tell her she could have her freedom. i told him to sacrifice himself all along the line. i know what women are. the moment every obstacle was removed to her marriage with teddie luton, half the allurement was gone. lady kitty. arnold did that? c.-c. he followed my instructions to the letter. i've just seen him. she's shaken. i'm willing to bet five hundred pounds to a penny that she won't bolt. a downy old bird, eh? downy's the word. downy. [_he begins to laugh. they laugh, too. presently they are all three in fits of laughter._ [the curtain falls] the end transcriber's note this transcription is based on scanned images posted by the internet archive from a copy in the university of california, santa barbara library: archive.org/details/circlecomedyinth maug the following changes were noted: - in the original text, titles for each act (e.g., "the first act") were printed on otherwise blank pages. in addition, the associated versos were blank, as were two of the pages facing these pages. these pages were not included or otherwise identified in the transcription, and thus in the html version of this transcription pp. - , pp. - , and pp. - are missing from the page count. - p. : ...and a note was found on the pin-cushion.--deleted hyphen in "pin-cushion" for consistency. - p. : ...you'll discover that onlokers are expected...--changed "onlokers" to "onlookers". - p. : she's tinsel you think i'm...--inserted a period after "tinsel". - p. : [_almost giving it up as a bad job._ oh, my god!--inserted a closing bracket after "_job._" the html version of this etext attempts to reproduce the layout of the printed text. however, some concessions have been made. for example, stage directions printed flush right were indented the same amount from the left margin and coded as hanging paragraphs. available by the internet archive, the library of congress, the university of toronto, and the university of california. michael and his lost angel _a play in five acts_ by henry arthur jones author of "the tempter," "the crusaders," "the case of rebellious susan," "the middleman," "the dancing girl," "judah," "the masqueraders," "the triumph of the philistines," etc. new york the macmillan company london: macmillan & co., ltd. _all rights reserved_ copyright, , by macmillan and co. set up and electrotyped. published may, . _norwood press_ j. s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith co. norwood, mass., u.s.a. preface michael, though styled by milton "of celestial armies prince," has found his sword unequal to the task of combating the well-ordered hosts of darkness, by thousands and by millions ranged for fight. the author of "michael and his lost angel" seeks accordingly in print consolation for the rebuffs he has experienced upon the stage. some comfort in the midst of defeat may be found in the fact that the gods themselves fight vainly against prejudice and stupidity. i am not in the least seeking to set aside the verdict pronounced by the majority of "experts" upon mr. jones's latest play and subsequently accepted if not ratified by the general public which would not be induced to see it. all i seek to do is to deal so far as i am able with the adverse influences to which it succumbed, and to explain why i think it a fine work and in many respects a triumph. the misfortunes of "michael and his lost angel" attended, if they did not anticipate, its conception. like marina in pericles it had at least as chiding a nativity as play has often encountered. before it saw the light a war had been waged concerning its name. that the name itself involved as some seemed to think a gratuitous insult to any form of religious connection or was even ill chosen i am not prepared to grant. michael is not a scriptural character, and his functions, civil and militant, and his place in the celestial hierarchy are assigned him by uninspired writers. but for the use made of him in art and by milton it is doubtful whether his name would be familiar enough to the general public to provoke a discussion. a discussion was, however, provoked and with a portion of those present the verdict was pronounced before the piece had been given. an opening scene, meanwhile, in which the very raison-d'être of the play is found, an indispensable portion of the motive began too soon and was, through the noise and disturbance caused by late arrivals, practically unheard. the difficulty thus caused was never quite overcome, and the nature of michael feversham's offence and the value of his expiation were both partially misunderstood. that the display of human passions in a sacred edifice and the lavish use of ecclesiastical ceremonial might cause offence i could have conceived, had there not been the immediately previous proof of the success of another play in which the very words of the inspired teacher are used with a background of pagan revelry and a lavish and superfluous display of nudity of limb. paul of tarsus is surely a more recognisable personage, and one more closely connected with christian faith than a nebulous being such as michael. while, however, the slight banter in the title of mr. jones's play and the reproduction of the rather florid pageant of the highest anglican service has in a work of earnest purpose and masterly execution wounded sensitive consciences, the presentation as vulgar as inept of a portion of the holiest mysteries of religion has been received with sacerdotal benediction as well as with public applause. foreign opinion concerning english hypocrisy and prudery finds frequent utterance, and our witty gallic neighbours have excogitated a word they believe to be english and take as the cant phrase of the briton, _schoking._ we do at times our best to furnish foreigners with a justification for their views; and in the present case at least, we have shown our capacity to "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." that the author has overburdened his work with dialogue is shown by the result, since a play that the public will not have is naturally a play unsuited to the public. some measure of the blame, to my thinking, almost the whole of the blame, rests with the audience. in seeking to interest his world in a series of duologues mr. jones has credited it with a knowledge of dramatic art and an interest in psychology it does not possess. his experiment is analogous to that undertaken in france by the younger dumas. a _première_ of dumas was one of the most fashionable and intellectual of parisian "functions." with ears sharpened to acutest attention the parisian public listened not only to dialogue thrice as long as any mr. jones has attempted, but also to monologue of the most didactic kind. in the case of victor hugo again there is more than one soliloquy of length absolutely portentous. these things have never wearied a public art-loving, theatre-loving, before all appreciative of literary subtlety and conscious of what are the true springs of dramatic interest. at the moment when these lines are written, the london playgoer, not perhaps of the most fashionable class, receives with delight a scene in which a hero swims to the rescue of injured innocence, which a generation ago established the fortunes of a dramatist and a theatre. i refer, of course, to the colleen bawn of dion boucicault, which has once more been revived. the rescue scene in this hit exactly the sense of the english public and fulfilled its ideal. for a year or two afterwards the intellect of our dramatists was exercised as to the means by which virtue imperilled could be rescued, whether by climbing a tower or swinging by a tree, or by any other contrivance involving the risk of a broken neck. those days, happily, are past. we have not, however, made great progress in our education, and seem yet to have to learn that the most telling drama is the psychological, and that dialogue moves us, or should move us, more than incident. othello, in some respects the most poignant of tragedies, is nearly all duologue, the gradual poisoning of the moor's mind by iago being one of the most tremendous scenes ever attempted. the greeks, the great art-loving people of antiquity, banished in tragedy all incident from the stage, and in this respect have been copied by the great school of french classicists. so far, without any very direct purpose or intention, i have been posing, apparently, as the apologist for mr. jones's play. underneath this, perhaps, some few may have traced a design still less definite of apologising for the english public. nothing is further from my intention than to proffer an excuse for what i regard as a fine and most moving drama. for myself, i can only say that rarely indeed have my entrails been stirred by more forcible pathos, my attention been rapt by more inspiriting a theme, and my intellect been satisfied by dialogue more natural, appropriate, and, in the highest sense, dramatic. in one respect, i am disposed at times to agree with some of mr. jones's censors. the logic of events which brings about the scene in the island is, perhaps, not sufficiently inexorable. that mrs. lesden is, in the eyes of the world, hopelessly compromised when she spends a night alone on the island with her lover, i will concede. i can conceive, however, michael treating her with the more delicacy therefor, abandoning to her his house, and spending a summer night, no enormous penalty, in the open air, on the seashore. this, however, only means that the overmastering influence of passion over michael has not been fully exhibited in action. with mr. jones's previous works--with "judah," "the crusaders," "saints and sinners"--"michael and his lost angel" is connected by strong, albeit not too evident, links. the bent of mr. jones's mind, or the effect of his early environment, seems to force him into showing the struggle between religious or priestly training, and high and sincere aspiration, on the one hand, and, on the other, those influences, half earthly, half divine, of our physical nature, which sap where they cannot escalade, and, in the highest natures, end always in victory. there is nothing in michael feversham of the hypocrite, little even of the puritan. subject from the outset to priestly influences, and wedded to theories of asceticism, the more binding as self-imposed, he has come to look upon the renegation of the most imperative as well as, in one sense, the holiest functions of our nature as the condition of moral regeneration. _sic itur ad astra._ crime, generally, he holds as condemnable, but murder and theft are things aloof from the human nature with which he has to deal. they are exceptional products of diseased organisations or untoward surroundings. not one of his flock that he is conducting peacefully and unwittingly to rome, is coming to him to own in confession to having stolen an umbrella from a rack or a book from a stall, still less to having slain his enemy on a secret path. had such confession been made, it would have been an episode of comparatively little interest, a mere skirmish in the war he constantly sustains against the forces of evil. uncleanness, on the other hand, as he elects to describe it, is the one offence against the higher life, in regard to which, whether as concerns inward promptings or outside manifestation, it behooves him to be ever armed and vigilant. accepting this theory, which, though subversive of the highest and most obvious aims of nature, is still held by a considerable section of civilised humanity, the conduct of michael wins a measure of sympathy. in imposing upon rose gibbard the unutterably shameful and humiliating penance, the nature of which reaches us from the ferocious calvinism of the puritan rather than from the gentler moral discipline of the romish church, to which he is hastening, michael is thoroughly sincere and conscientious. he believes it the best, nay, the only way to save her soul and restore her to the self-respect and dignity of pure womanhood. so much in earnest is he that, when mrs. lesden propounds the theory, which among the virtuous and generous wins acceptance, that "it is nearly always the good girls who are betrayed," he resents the utterance as a levity, not to say a profanity. a character such as this is not only conceivable, it is well known. there is nothing in its psychology to scare the unthinking or alarm the vulgar. in the humiliation which michael is himself compelled to undergo, i find at once the vindication of a morality immeasurably higher and more christian than that taught by any of the churches, and a soul tragedy of the most harrowing description. my words will to some appear irreverent. i am sorry, but i cannot help it. it is not i who said of the woman taken in adultery, "qui sine peccato est vestrum, primus in illa lapidem mittat"; and again, "nec ego te condemnabo. vade et jam amplius noli peccare." that a nature such as that of michael would be likely to provoke the curiosity and interest of an audrie lesden, few will contest. vain, frivolous, passionate, mutinous, sceptical, defeated, unhappy, with the sweet milk of true womanhood curdled in her breast, audrie lesden sets herself the task of breaking through the defences of this "marble saint." she succeeds. under her temptations the icy image thaws. that she herself thaws also, is a matter of which she scarcely takes cognisance. in her mood of irritation and defiance what happens to herself is a matter of comparative indifference. she has abandoned her positions and called in her reserves, concentrating all her forces for a combat, in which victory is, if possible, more disastrous than rout. let us take then the position. a man resolute as he thinks in the maintenance of a standard of scarcely possible and wholly undesirable purity, a woman bent at first in wantonness of spirit upon his subjugation, but finding as she progresses that her heart is in the struggle, and that instead of being engaged in a mere sportive encounter she is playing for her life, her all. here are the materials for a tragedy, and a tragedy is the outcome. the idea is happy, the execution is superb, and the result is a play that must be pronounced so far mr. jones's masterpiece, and that is in effect one of the worthiest and in the highest sense of the word, putting apart the financial result and judging only from the standpoint of art, one of the most successful dramas of the age. for the first time the dramatist has divested himself of all adventitious aid or support, swimming boldly and skilfully on the sea of drama. the melodramatic devices on which he has leant disappear, the sketches of eccentric character by which he strove to fortify past stories have vanished. a tale of ill-starred love is told with simple downright earnestness, simplicity, and good faith. not a character unnecessary to the action is introduced, not a word that is superfluous or rhetorical is spoken. free from obstruction, unpolluted and undefiled, a limpid stream of human life and love flows into the ocean of defeat and death. in some respects the loves of michael feversham and audrie lesden seem to take rank with the masterpieces of human passion, if not with romeo and juliet, with cupid and psyche, with paul and virginia, and shall i add with edgar of ravenswood and lucy ashton, at least with helen and paris, antony and cleopatra, and manon lescaut and the chevalier des grieux. just enough of fatefulness as well as of human wilfulness is there to add the crowning grace of tragedy by showing man the sport of circumstance. michael dwells on this point and finds "a curious bitter amusement" in tracing out the sequence of events. "the hundred little chances, accidents as we call them, that gave us to each other. everything i did to avoid you threw me at your feet. i felt myself beginning to love you. i wrote urgently to uncle ned in italy, thinking i'd tell him and that he would save me. he came. i couldn't tell him of you, but his coming kept withycombe [the boatman] from getting your telegram. i went to saint decuman's to escape from you. you were moved to come to me. i sent away my own boat to put the sea between us: and so i imprisoned you with me. six years ago i used all my influence to have the new lighthouse built on saint margaret's isle instead of saint decuman's, so that i might keep saint decuman's lonely for myself and prayer. i kept it lonely for myself and you. it was what we call a chance i didn't go to saint margaret's with andrew and my uncle. it was what we call a chance that you telegraphed to my boatman instead of your own. if any one thing had gone differently--" even so. in this world, however, "nothing walks with aimless feet" and the most commonplace and least significant of our actions may have world-reaching results. "oh, god bring back yesterday" is the despairing cry which, since the beginning of time, has been wrung from human lips. the scene on the island seems to me admirable in management. i am not sure that i care for audrie's confession concerning the conquest of the heart of "a cherub aged ten," though that leads to the very humorous illustration of his sister's treason. michael's own confession on the other hand of his one flirtation with nelly, the tender osculation never repeated, and her farewell words "good-night, mike" serve a distinct purpose in preparing michael's ultimate subjugation. "she called you mike?" says audrie with some surprise and more bitterness. he is human then, this austere, ice-bound man only just beginning to relent to her. his lips, those lips for which she hungers, have been pressed upon a woman's face, and he has had a boy's name by which another woman has dared to call him, a name her own lips tremble to frame. she is long before she does frame it aloud. the idea of that woman however dwells in her mind, and its full influence and the extent of her surrender are shown when at what might be quite, and is almost, the close of the third act she looks back and says, "listen to this. whatever happens, i shall never belong to anybody but you. you understand? i shall never belong to anybody but you, mike." all this is supreme in tenderness and truthfulness and is the more dramatic and convincing on account of its simplicity. so it is throughout the play. there is not a moment when the effort after rhetorical speech interferes with or mars the downright earnestness and conviction of the language and the fervour of the underlying emotion. the love-making so far as we are permitted to see it is on the woman's side. hers are the raptures, the reproaches, the protestations. only in the moment of supreme difficulty or defeat is michael tortured into amorous utterance, and then even it is the idea of responsibility and possession that weighs upon him. the deed is done, he belongs to the woman with whom he has sinned, the past is ineffaceable: no expiation can alter, even if it may atone. he is, moreover, impenitent in the midst of penitence, fiercely glad, fiercely happy, in what he has done, ready to face all tribulation, loss, and reproach, rather than sacrifice the burning, maddening, joyous knowledge of his guilt. this is the spirit in which love in strong, austere, unemotional natures manifests itself. "all for love or the world well lost" is the title dryden gives his alteration of antony and cleopatra. all for love or heaven well lost is the phrase mr. jones in effect puts into the lips of his michael, a phrase used not for the first time, and savouring of blasphemy or sanctity according to the point of view of the audience. there are perhaps higher ideals of love. what dramatist or preacher has said anything finer than the words of the great cavalier lyrist:-- i could not love thee, dear, so much, loved i not honour more. one of the best known of the tudor dramatists, habington, says:-- he is but a coward lover, whom or death or hell can fright from 's mistress. the enormity of michael's sacrifice, the very unpardonableness of his offence, constitute the sweetest savour to him as to her. to her it brings an intoxicating, a delirious triumph, to him a sense how much he must hug to himself and cherish a possession secured at so fearful a price. it is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of michael's madness that the sin once committed is not repented. landor talks of modesty who when she flies is fled for ever. this is true of other things beside modesty. not seldom it is true of virtue. sin is our sad portion, let us make the best of it. if we may not have a "stately pleasure-house" of love, let us get what shelter we may and at least cling close together while the winds of censure rebuke and the rains of scandal chill. this is, of course, what audrie would suggest. "my beloved is mine and i am his." what matter concerning other things, what other thing is there to matter? not so michael. lead me back, he says, to the ways of peace and purity. let us march hand in hand to the throne of forgiveness. there is no such throne, says the moralist and the priest within him. "can one be pardoned and retain the offence?" he asks with claudius, and the answer extracted from his conscience is a negative. after her death, a death for which he is, as he knows, mainly responsible, he abandons all struggle, resigns his volition and his being into the hands of a church that demands implicit obedience and pardons no questioning of its decisions and decrees, and taking upon himself monastic vows enters permanently a cloister. if this is not according to the present reading of the word "tragedy," i know not where tragedy is to be sought. it may be that the subject is one that cannot with advantage be set before the public with the fierce and brilliant illumination of stage presentation. compare however the method of treatment, earnest, severe, resolute, unfaltering, with that which was adopted by novelists dealing with clerical trials and offences of the sort from the time of diderot to that of l'abbé michon, the reputed author of "la réligieuse," "le maudit," and other works of the class. once more i repeat that "michael and his lost angel" is the best play mr. jones has given the stage and is in the full sense a masterpiece. it is the work of a man conscious of strength, and sure of the weapons he employs. whether the stage will know it again who shall say? it will at least take rank as literature and in its present shape appeal to most readers capable of having an independent opinion and clearing their minds of cant. from the figures as to the receipts which are published it appears that a full chance of recording its opinion was scarcely given the public. on this point i am not prepared to speak. such rebuff as the play encountered was, i fear, due to the preconceived attitude of some representatives of public opinion rather than to any misunderstanding between mr. jones and the public. mr. forbes robertson's performance of the hero was superb in all respects. the refusal of the part of the heroine by mrs. patrick campbell, its destined exponent, was so far a calamity that it fostered the belief that there was something immoral in the part. in other respects i cannot regard the substitution for that actress of miss marion terry as a misfortune. joseph knight. london, th february, . author's note this play was produced at the lyceum theatre on the th january, , and was withdrawn on the th, the management suddenly announcing the last three nights in the morning papers of the d. an impression has therefore prevailed in the public mind that the piece was a great financial failure. so far was this from being the case that the receipts for the first ten nights during which it was played were more than £ higher than the receipts for the first ten nights of my play "the middleman," which proved so great a financial success in england and america. the takings during the brief run at the lyceum were as follows:-- january . £ s. d. january . £ s. d. " . " . " . " . " . " . " . " . the great number of sympathetic letters that i have received about the play and its cordial reception on the later nights of the run show that it created a deep impression on those who did see it, and encourage me to hope that i may introduce it again to the english public under happier auspices. henry arthur jones. persons represented. the reverend michael feversham. sir lyolf feversham. edward lashmar (father hilary). andrew gibbard. the reverend mark docwray. withycombe. audrie lesden. rose gibbard. mrs. cantelo. fanny clover. _villagers, congregation, choristers, priests._ act i. the vicarage parlour at cleveheddon. (_four months pass._) act ii. the shrine on saint decuman's island. (_two nights and a day pass._) act iii. the vicarage parlour as in act i. (_a year passes._) act iv. the minster church at cleveheddon. (_ten months pass._) act v. reception room of the monastery of san salvatore at majano, italy. act i scene.--_the vicarage parlour at cleveheddon. an old-fashioned comfortable room in an old english house. a large window, with low broad sill, takes up nearly all the back of the stage, showing to the right a part of cleveheddon minster in ruins. to the left a stretch of west country landscape. a door, right, leading to house. a fireplace, right. a door, left. table with chairs, right. a portrait of michael's mother hangs on wall at a height of about nine feet. it is a very striking painting of a lady about twenty-eight, very delicate and spirituelle. time.--a fine spring morning. discover at the window, looking off right, with face turned away from audience, and in an attitude of strained attention to something outside, andrew gibbard. enter fanny clover, the vicarage servant, showing in the reverend mark docwray, a middle-aged clergyman._ fanny. mr. feversham is over to the church, sir, but he'll be back directly. (_exit._) mark. andrew---- (_andrew turns round, an odd, rather seedy, carelessly-dressed man, a little over forty, rather gaunt, longish hair, an intelligent face with something slightly sinister about it. he shows signs of great recent sorrow and distress._) mark. andrew, what is it? andr. i'd rather not tell you, mr. docwray. mark. nothing has happened to mr. feversham? andr. no. mark. come! come! what's the matter? andr. my daughter---- mark. what ails her? where is she? andr. over at the church. mark. what is she doing? andr. making a public confession. mark. public confession--of what? andr. you'll be sure to hear all about it, so i may as well tell you myself. perhaps it was my fault, perhaps i neglected her. all my time is given to mr. feversham in the library here. while i was buried in my work, and sometimes staying here half the night with mr. feversham, a scoundrel ruined my girl. of course my only thought was to hide it. was i wrong? mark. go on. tell me all. andr. well, right or wrong, i sent her away to the other end of england. her child only lived a few weeks. and i brought her back home thinking it was all hushed up. mark. but it became known? andr. yes. little by little, things began to leak out. well, you may blame me if you like--i lied about it; and the more lies i told, the more i had to tell to cover them. mr. feversham heard of it and questioned us. like a fool i lied to him. it wasn't like lying, it was like murdering the truth to tell lies to him. and she had to lie, too. of course he believed us and defended us against everybody. and then we daredn't tell him the truth. mark. go on. what else? andr. there's nothing else. it all had to come out at last. mark. what did mr. feversham do? andr. he persuaded us that we could never be right with ourselves, or right with our neighbours, or right with our god, till we had unsaid all our lies, and undone our deceit. so we've confessed it this morning. mark. in church? in public? andr. yes. i wouldn't have minded it for myself. but was it necessary for her--for rose? was it bound to be in public before all her companions, before all who had watched her grow up from a child? mark. you may be sure mr. feversham wouldn't have urged it unless he had felt it to be right and necessary. andr. i wouldn't have done it for anybody else in the world. i feel almost as if i were quits with him for all his favours to me. mark. you mustn't speak like this. remember all he has done for you. andr. oh, i don't forget it. i don't forget that i was his scout's son, and that he educated me and made me his friend and companion and helper--there isn't a crumb i eat or a thread i wear that i don't owe to him. i don't forget it. but after this morning, i feel it isn't i who am in mr. feversham's debt--it's he who is in my debt. (_a penitential hymn, with organ accompaniment, is sung in church outside._) andr. (_looking off_). it's over. they're coming out. mark. why aren't you there, in church, by her side? andr. i was. i went to church with her. i stood up first and answered all his questions, and then i stood aside, and it was her turn. i saw her step forward, and i noticed a little twitch of her lip like her mother used to have, and then--i couldn't bear it any longer--i came away. i know it was cowardly, but i couldn't stay. (_looking off._) hark! they're coming! she's coming with the sister who is going to take her away. mark. take her away? andr. mr. feversham thinks it better for her to be away from the gossip of the village, so he has found a home for her with some sisters in london. she's going straight off there. perhaps it's best. i don't know. (_rose gibbard, sobbing, with her face in her hands, passes the window from right to left, supported by an anglican sister. the reverend michael feversham follows them and passes window. a crowd of villagers come up to the window and look in. a moment or two later, rose gibbard enters left, supported by the sister. rose is a pretty delicate girl of about twenty, with rather refined features and bearing._) andr. (_holding out his arms to her_). bear up, my dear. don't cry! it breaks my heart to see you. _enter the reverend michael feversham about forty; pale, strong, calm, ascetic, scholarly face, with much sweetness and spirituality of expression; very dignified, gentle manners, calm, strong, persuasive voice, rarely raised above an ordinary speaking tone. his whole presence and bearing denote great strength of character, great dignity, great gentleness, and great self-control._ _the villagers gather round the outside of the window and look in with mingled curiosity, rudeness, and respect. michael goes up to left window, opens it. the villagers draw back a little._ mich. (_speaking in a very calm voice_). those of you who are filled with idle foolish curiosity, come and look in. (_they fall back._) those of you who have been moved by the awful lesson of this morning, go to your homes, ponder it in your hearts, so that all your actions and all your thoughts from this time forth may be as open as the day, as clear as crystal, as white as snow. (_they all go away gradually. michael comes away from the window, leaving it open, goes to mark._) mich. mark! (_cordial handshake._) you've come to stay, i hope? mark. a few days. you have a little business here? (_glancing at the group of rose, andrew, and sister._) mich. it's nearly finished. leave me with them for a few moments. mark. i'll get rid of the dust of my journey and come back to you. (_exit mark. michael turns towards rose with great tenderness._) mich. poor child! (_she comes towards him with evident effort; the sister brings a chair and she sinks into it, sobbing._) mich. (_bending over her with great tenderness_). i know what you have suffered this morning. i would willingly have borne it for you, but that would not have made reparation to those whom you have deceived, or given you peace in your own soul. (_she continues sobbing._) hush! hush! all the bitterness is past! look only to the future! think of the happy newness and whiteness of your life from this moment! think of the delight of waking in the morning and knowing that you have nothing to hide! be sure you have done right to own your sin. there won't be a softer pillow in england to-night than the one your head rests upon. (_she becomes quieter. michael turns to the sister._) watch over her very carefully. keep her from brooding. let her be occupied constantly with work. and write to me very often to tell me how she is. (_turns to rose._) the carriage is ready. it's time to say good-bye. rose. good-bye, sir. thank you for all your kindness. i've been very wicked---- mich. hush! that is all buried now. rose. good-bye, father. (_throws her arms round andrew's neck, clings to him, sobs convulsively for some moments in a paroxysm of grief. michael watches them for some moments._) mich. (_intercepts, gently separates them_). it's more than she can bear. say good-bye, and let her go. andr. (_breaking down_). good-bye, my dear! (_kissing her._) good-bye--i--i--i---- (_tears himself away, goes up to window, stands back to audience._) mich. (_to rose._) no more tears! tears are for evil and sin, and yours are all past! write to me and tell me how you get on, and how you like the work. it will bring you great peace--great peace. why, you are comforted already--i think i see one of your old happy smiles coming. what do you think, sister, isn't that the beginning of a smile? sister. yes, sir. i think it is. rose. good-bye, sir--thank you for all your goodness. i--i---- (_beginning to sob again._) mich. no, no, you are forgetting. i must see a little smile before you go. look, andrew. (_andrew turns round._) for your father's sake. when you have gone you will like him to remember that the last time he saw your face it wore a smile. that's brave! good-bye! good-bye! (_rose with great effort forces a smile and goes off with the sister. a moment or two later she is seen to pass the window sobbing in the sister's arms._) andr. look! oh, sir, was it bound to be in public, before everybody who knew her? mich. believe me, andrew, if my own sister, if my own child had been in your daughter's place, i would have counselled her to act as your daughter has done. andr. she'll never hold up her head again. mich. would you rather that she held up her head in deceit and defiance, or that she held it down in grief and penitence? think what you and she have endured this last year, the deceit, the agony, the shame, the guilt! andr. i can't think of anything except her standing up in the church. i shall never forget it. mich. tell me you know i would willingly have spared you and her if it had been possible. andr. then it wasn't possible? mich. i have done to you this morning as i would wish to be done by if i had followed a course of continued deception. andr. ah, sir, it's easy for you to talk. you aren't likely to be tempted, so you aren't likely to fall. mich. i trust not! i pray god to keep me. but if ever i did, i should think him my true friend who made me confess and rid my soul of my guilt. and you think me your true friend, don't you, andrew? (_holding out hand._) won't you shake hands with me? (_andrew takes michael's hand reluctantly, shakes it half-heartedly; is going off at door._) mich. (_calls_). andrew, it will be very lonely in your own house now your daughter has gone. come and live with me here. there is the large visitors' room. take it for your own, and make this your home. you will be nearer to our work, and you will be nearer to me, my friend. _mark enters._ mark (_at door_). am i interrupting? mich. no. come in. my little talk with andrew is finished. (_to andrew._) say you know i have done what is right and best for you and her. andr. you've done what you thought was best for us, sir. i've never doubted that. i can't see anything straight or clear this morning. (_exit._) mark. you've had a painful business here? mich. terrible! but i was bound to go through with it. the whole village was talking of it. i believed in her innocence and defended her to the last. so when the truth came out i daren't hush it up. i should have been accused of hiding sin in my own household. but that poor child! my heart bled for her! don't let us speak any more of it. tell me about yourself and the work in london. mark. you must come and join us there. (_michael shakes his head._) mich. i couldn't live there. every time i go up for a day or two i come back more and more sickened and frightened and disheartened. besides, you forget my eastern studies. they are my real work. i couldn't pursue them in the hurry and fever of london. mark. how are you getting on with the arabic translations? mich. slowly but surely. andrew is invaluable to me. in spite of his bringing up, he has the true instincts of the scholar. mark. well, you know best. but we want you in london. you'd soon raise the funds for restoring the minster. mich. (_shakes his head_). i can't go round with the hat. mark. how's the work getting on? mich. very slowly. i'm afraid i shall never live to finish it. by the bye, i received fifty pounds anonymously only yesterday. mark. have you any idea where it came from? mich. no. the bank advised me that it had been paid to my credit by a reader of my "hidden life," who desired to remain anonymous. mark. the book is having an enormous influence. nothing else is talked about. and it has gained you one very rich proselyte--this mrs. lesden. she's living here, isn't she? mich. yes. curious woman---- mark. have you seen much of her? mich. i called, of course. i've met her once or twice at dinner. she has called here three or four times, and wasted several good hours for me. mark. how wasted? mich. kept me from my work. i wish the woman would take herself back to london. mark. why? mich. her frivolity and insincerity repel me. no--not insincerity. i recall that. for she said one or two things that seemed to show a vein of true, deep feeling. but on the whole i dislike her--i think i dislike her very much. mark. why? mich. she comes regularly to church---- mark. surely there's no very great harm in that---- mich. no; but i don't know whether she's mocking, or criticising, or worshipping; or whether she's merely bored, and thinking that my surplice is not enough starched, or starched too much. mark. she's very rich, and would be an immense help to our movement. i should try and cultivate her. mich. i can't cultivate people. what do you think of her? mark. a very clever society woman, all the more clever that she was not born in society. mich. what do you know of her? mark. merely what i wrote you in my letter. that she was the only daughter of an australian millionaire. her great-grandfather, i believe, was an australian convict. she was sent to england to be educated, went back to australia, married, lost her husband and father, came back to england a widow, took a house in mayfair, entertained largely, gave largely to charities, read your book, "the hidden life," came down to see the country round here, made up her mind to live here, and wanted an introduction to you--which i gave her. _enter fanny, announcing sir lyolf feversham, an english country gentleman, about sixty-five, a little old-fashioned in manners and dress. exit fanny._ sir lyolf. michael--mr. docwray! glad to see you. you're talking business, or rather religion, which is your business. am i in the way? mich. no, we're not talking business. we're discussing a woman. sir lyolf. aren't women nine-tenths of a parson's business? (_michael looks a little shocked._) excuse me, my dear boy. (_to mark._) i quite believe in all michael is doing. i accept all his new doctrines, i'm prepared to go all lengths with him, on condition that i indulge the latent old adam in me with an occasional mild joke at his expense. but (_with great feeling_) he knows how proud i am of him, and how thankful i am to god for having given me a son who is shaping religious thought throughout england to-day, and who (_with a change to sly humour_) will never be a bishop--not even an archdeacon--i don't believe he'll be so much as a rural dean. what about this woman you were discussing? i'll bet--(_coughs himself up_)--i should say, i'll wager--(_michael looks shocked, sir lyolf shrugs his shoulders at mark, proceeds in a firm voice_)--without staking anything, i will wager i know who the lady is--mrs. lesden? am i right? mich. yes. sir lyolf. well, i haven't heard your opinion of her. but i'll give you mine--without prejudice--(_with emphasis_) very queer lot. mark. michael had just said she was a curious creature. mich. i don't understand her. sir lyolf. when you don't understand a woman, depend upon it there's something not quite right about her. mich. she seems to have immense possibilities of good and evil. sir lyolf. nonsense. there are all sorts of men, but, believe me, there are only two sorts of women--good and bad. mich. you can't divide women into two classes like that. sir lyolf. but i do--sheep and goats. sheep on the right hand--goats on the left. mich. (_shaking his head_). women's characters have greater subtlety than you suppose. sir lyolf. subtlety is the big cant word of our age. depend upon it, there's nothing in subtlety. it either means hair-splitting or it means downright evil. the devil was the first subtle character we meet with in history. mich. and he has still something to do with the shaping of character in this world. sir lyolf. i don't doubt it. and i think he has very likely something to do with the shaping of mrs. lesden's. mich. hasn't he something to do with the shaping of all our characters? don't all our souls swing continually between heaven and hell? sir lyolf. well, the woman whose soul swings continually between heaven and hell is not the woman whom i would choose to sit at my fireside or take the head of my table. though i don't say i wouldn't ask her to dinner occasionally. that reminds me, how long are you staying, mr. docwray? mark. only till friday. sir lyolf. you'll dine with me to-morrow evening? mark. delighted. sir lyolf. you too, michael. i'll ask the standerwicks, and (_suddenly_) suppose i ask this lady? mich. mrs. lesden? i would rather you didn't. sir lyolf. why not? if her soul is swinging between heaven and hell, it would only be kind of you to give it a jog towards heaven. mich. very well--ask her. but i would rather you didn't speak lightly of---- sir lyolf. of her soul? mich. of anyone's soul? sir lyolf. i won't--even of a woman's. but i wish they wouldn't swing about. women's souls oughtn't to swing anywhere, except towards heaven. ah, michael, you must let me have my fling. remember when i was a boy, religion was a very simple, easy-going affair. parson--clerk--old three-decker pulpit--village choir. what a village choir! i suppose it was all wrong--but they were very comfortable old days. mich. religion is not simple--or easy-going. sir lyolf. no. subtlety again. i want a plain "yes" or "no," a plain black or white, a plain right or wrong, and none of our teachers or preachers is prepared to give it to me. oh dear! this world has grown too subtle for me! i'll step over to island house and ask mrs. lesden to dinner to-morrow. mark. i'll come with you and pay my respects to her. you don't mind, michael? mich. not at all. i want to set andrew to work at once to keep him from dwelling on his trouble. sir lyolf. i didn't come to the church this morning. i felt it would be too painful. (_glancing up at portrait._) what would she have said about it? mich. i think she approves what i have done. sir lyolf (_looks at portrait, sighs, turns away_). come, mr. docwray. i can't say i like this mrs. lesden of yours--i wonder why i'm going to ask her to dinner. (_exit._) mark (_who has been looking intently at portrait_). what a wonderful portrait that is of your mother! it seems as if she were alive! mich. she is. (_exit mark after sir lyolf._) mich. (_goes up steps, takes portrait into his hand_). yes, i have acted faithfully to my people, have i not? whisper to me that i have done right to restore to this wandering father and child the blessing of a transparent life, a life without secrecy and without guile! whisper to me that in this morning's work i have done what is well pleasing to my god and to you. _audrie lesden, about thirty, in a very fashionable morning dress, enters at back of window in the opposite direction to that in which sir lyolf and mark have gone off. at first she seems to be watching them off. when she gets to the open window, she turns and sees michael with the portrait in his hand. michael very reverently kisses the portrait and places it on table; as he does so he sees her._ mich. mrs. lesden! audr. wasn't that sir lyolf who just went out? mich. yes. i'll call him back---- audr. please don't. mich. but he wishes to speak to you. audr. i don't wish to speak to him. mich. why not? audr. i wish to speak to you. mich. about what? audr. about my soul, about your soul, and about other people's souls. (_leaning a little in at the window. he remains silent, and reserved. all through the early part of the scene his demeanour is cold, constrained, and a little impatient. a pause._) i know you make it a rule always to see people about their souls. mich. (_very coldly_). if they are really in need of spiritual advice. audr. i think i'm in need of spiritual advice. (_a pause. he stands cold, irresponsive._) did you see me in church? mich. yes. audr. the whole thing was delightfully novel. (_he frowns._) do you mean to repeat this morning's scene? mich. scene? audr. it was a "scene," you know. i felt terribly distressed for the poor girl. and yet i envied her. mich. envied her? audr. (_leaning a little more in at the window_). you must allow she was the heroine of the occasion, though you were certainly very impressive yourself, and did your part very well. still, after all, it's the man who is to be hanged who is the central figure in the proceedings. and the poor little creature looked exquisitely pathetic and graceful, and so sweetly innocent--quite good enough to go to heaven right away, i thought. a sunday-school teacher told me once that it is nearly always the good girls who are betrayed. is that so? mich. (_coldly_). you came to speak to me about yourself. audr. so i did. do you know when i saw that girl standing there and looking so interesting, i felt i wouldn't mind making a public confession myself--if you thought it would benefit the parish--and if you would allow me to wear a special dress for the occasion? (_michael turns round quickly as if about to speak angrily to her, stops, remains silent._) audr. (_musingly_). i suppose one couldn't confess in anything except black or white. it couldn't be done in red or yellow--or blue. pale grey might do. (_pause._) what do you think? (_michael does not reply._) audr. (_leaning a little more in at the window, in a much lower and subtler tone_). don't you find it an exquisite pleasure to feel your sense of power over your people, especially over us poor women? mich. when you come to me you are neither man nor woman--you are only a soul in sin and distress. audr. oh, no! i won't be an "it." i insist on being a woman, though i don't mind _having_ a soul--and in sin and distress, too. and i would save it--only i always think it's such a selfish piece of business, saving one's soul,--don't you?--so unkind to all one's neighbours? (_he stands half-bored, half-angry. a little pause._) do you know what i was thinking in church this morning? mich. no. audr. i was comparing the delights of three different professions,--the soldier's, the doctor's, and the priest's. what a glorious joy it must be to ride to meet a man who is riding to kill you--_and to kill him!_ but i'd rather be a doctor, and play with life and death. to have a man in your power, to see him lying tossing on his bed, and to think, "this may cure him, or it may kill him. shall i risk it? at any rate, if he dies, i shall have learnt so much. i will risk it! and--he dies--no, he lives! i've saved him." wouldn't you like to be a doctor? mich. no. audr. that's because you know what far greater joy it is to be a priest. (_he turns very angrily._) to play with people's souls---- mich. play! audr. you do play with our souls, don't you? they're in your hands. to think, "this man, or, say, this woman, has an immortal soul. she is vain, silly, deceitful, foolish, perhaps wicked, perhaps horribly wicked. she'll lose her soul and be eternally lost. but if i were to struggle with her for it, rebuke her, teach her, plead with her, entreat her, guide her--who knows--she's not wholly bad--i might save her? is she worth saving? the worse she is, the greater will be my reward and honour for having saved her. shall i do it? this woman's soul is in my keeping! i can choose for her eternal life or eternal death. what shall i do? shall i save her, or let her be lost?" mich. (_comes eagerly to the window_). do you mean that? audr. mean what? mich. that your soul is in my keeping? audr. not at all. i meant nothing except that thoughts like these must constantly stray through a priest's mind. don't they? (_long pause._) why don't you speak? mich. (_cold, stern_). i have nothing to say. (_pause._) audr. (_taking out purse, taking out two notes_). oh! i was forgetting--i've brought you a little contribution for the restoration of your minster. (_putting notes on window-sill. michael stands cold, angry._) audr. won't you take it? mich. thank you. no. audr. i think you're a little rude to me. i came as a heart-stricken penitent; you wouldn't accept me in that character. then i came as a pious donor. you wouldn't accept me in that. you've kept me outside here--you haven't even asked me in. mich. (_very sternly_). come in! (_she looks up, uncertain as to his intentions._) (_same cold, stern voice._) please to come in. that way--the outer door is open. (_she goes off, he goes to door left, opens it, she comes in._) mich. (_the moment she has entered closes door decisively, then turns round on her very sternly_). what brings you to this village, to my church, to my house? why are you here? come to me as a penitent, and i will try to give you peace! come to me as a woman of the world, and i will tell you "the friendship of the world is enmity with god. it always has been so, it always will be. the church has no need of you, of your pretended devotions, of your gifts, of your presence at her services. go your way back to the world, and leave her alone." but you come neither as a penitent, nor as a woman of the world. you come like--like some bad angel, to mock, and hint, and question, and suggest. how dare you play with sacred things? how dare you?! audr. (_very low, quiet, amused voice_). i do not think it seemly or becoming in a clergyman to give way to temper. if anyone had asked me i should have said it was impossible in you. (_he stands stern, cold, repellent._) _enter andrew._ mich. what is it, andrew? andr. i thought you were disengaged. (_going._) mich. so i am. i'll come to you at once. (_exit andrew._) mich. (_to audrie_). you are right. it is unseemly to give way to temper, and perhaps you won't think me rude if i guard myself against it in future by asking you not to call upon me until i can be of real service to you. good morning. audr. mr. feversham, mr. feversham. (_michael turns._) i've been very rude and troublesome. i beg your pardon. please forgive me. mich. certainly. pray say no more. audr. i saw you kissing that portrait as i stood at the window. it is your mother? mich. yes. audr. what a good woman she must have been! don't think because i am bad---- mich. are you bad? audr. didn't you say i was? i don't know whether i'm bad or good, but i know that no woman longs to be good more than i do--sometimes. mich. do you indeed? audr. (_impulsively_). let me kiss that portrait! (_leaning forward to do it._) mich. (_peremptorily_). no. (_intercepts and stops her._) audr. why not? mich. i'd rather you didn't. audr. you don't think i'm good enough. mich. i cannot allow you. audr. who painted it? mich. a young italian. my mother's brother is a catholic priest, and at that time he was living at rome. my mother went there for her health when i was three years old. this young italian saw her and asked permission to paint her. she came home and died of consumption. then my uncle sent this portrait to my father with the news that the young painter had also died of consumption. audr. how strange! and you've had it ever since? mich. i was only a child when it came. i fell into the habit of saying my prayers before it. so when i first left home my father gave it to me; it has been with me ever since, at eton, and oxford, and in my different curacies. audr. won't you let me kiss it before i go? (_leaning towards it._) mich. (_preventing her_). i'd rather you did not. audr. why not? mich. i have a strange belief about that picture. i'll hang it up. audr. (_a little intercepting him_). no. let me look at it. let me hold it in my hands. i won't kiss it without your permission. (_she takes it and looks at it intently._) tell me--what is your strange belief about it? mich. my mother was a deeply religious woman, and before my birth she consecrated me to this service as hannah consecrated samuel. when she was dying she said to me, "i'm not leaving you. i shall watch over you every moment of your life. there's not a word, or a deed, or a thought of yours but i shall know it. you won't see me, but i shall be very near you. sometimes my hands will be upon your head, but you won't know it; sometimes my arms will be round you, but you won't feel them; sometimes my lips will be on your face, but you won't know that i have kissed you. remember you are watched by the dead." audr. and you believe that you are watched by the dead? mich. yes. audr. and that she is with us now--in this room? mich. yes. audr. she is your good angel. mich. she is my good angel. audr. i can understand why you did not wish me to kiss her. (_michael makes a movement to take the picture._) audr. (_retains it_). no. yes, i feel she must be in this room. mich. why? audr. i was full of silly wicked thoughts when i came--she has taken them away. mich. ah, if i dared hope that you would really change! audr. perhaps i will. (_very imploringly._) do let me kiss this sweet face. (_pause._) mich. no--at least not now, not yet. please give it back to me. (_he takes it._) i'll hang it up. (_he takes it to steps._) will you hold it for a moment? (_she comes to steps, holds it while he mounts, gives it to him._) audr. what a wonderful thought that is, that we are watched by the dead. it never occurred to me before. i wonder what a spirit is like? (_he hangs up the picture._) now she is quite out of my reach. (_he comes down steps._) won't you take that money for rebuilding the minster! it's there on the window-sill. (_he goes and takes it._) thank you. mich. thank you. audr. then i'm not to call again? not even about my soul? mich. i'm going over to the island for some time, and shall only be back on sundays. audr. saint decuman's island. you've built yourself a house over there, haven't you? mich. the shrine was neglected and decayed. i restored it and built myself a couple of rooms round it. i've a few books, and just food and drink. i go over there sometimes for work and meditation. audr. and yours is the only house on the island? mich. yes. audr. isn't it awfully lonely there? mich. (_glancing at picture_). i'm never alone. audr. no, you have your millions and millions of good and bad angels, besides hundreds of cheap excursionists. mich. yes, in the summer, but they only stay a few hours. audr. i can see the smoke from your chimney quite plainly in the evening from my drawing-room windows. how far is it across? mich. about four miles. audr. i shall get hannaford to row me over some day. don't look alarmed. i won't come when you are there. i should frighten all your good angels away. (_michael shows a little impatience._) you want to get rid of me. (_going, suddenly turns._) if i come to you as a penitent, you won't send me away? mich. not if i can be of service to you. audr. i seem to have changed my nature since i came into this room. mich. how? audr. i don't know. i wonder how many natures i have and how often i can change them. mich. i wish you wouldn't speak like that. audr. i won't. (_very seriously._) you said just now that i was playing with sacred things. i am, or i was until you spoke about her. (_with warning._) don't let me play with your soul. mich. i don't understand you. audr. you may do me good, but i am far more likely to do you harm. mich. how? audr. i'm not nearly so good a woman as you are a man. mich. but perhaps i may influence you for good. audr. do you think that you can have any influence on my soul without my having an equal influence on yours? mich. action and re-action are equal and opposite. you think that law prevails in the spiritual world as well as in the material world? audr. i'm sure it does. so let me go. mich. (_suddenly, with great feeling_). oh, if i could save you! audr. you can if you will. i would try so hard if you would only help me. but you don't believe that i can. mich. what makes you say that? audr. you called me a bad angel--and you don't think me good enough to kiss her. (_sidling up to the steps; he makes a deprecating movement to prevent her, but she takes no notice._) if you knew it would give me a splendid impulse to goodness, would you refuse me? (_she watches him very closely; he watches her, half deprecating, half consenting; she goes up a step or two; he again makes a deprecating gesture, but does not stop her._) can't you see what an awful effect it would have on me if you thought me worthy to be in the company of your good angel? it would be almost a sacrament! (_going up steps. he makes a stronger gesture of deprecation._) ah, you think i'm not worthy---- mich. no, no---- audr. (_on top of steps, very seductively_). do save me. i'm worth saving. (_whispers._) i may kiss her? i may? i may? (_he does not reply. she very reverently takes the picture from the wall, turns round, kisses it reverently, hangs it up again, comes down slowly to him._) your bad angel has kissed your good angel. (_a mock curtsey to him._) (_exit softly. michael stands troubled._) curtain. (_four months pass between acts i. and ii._) act ii scene.--_the shrine on saint decuman's island in the bristol channel. a living room built round the shrine of the saint, a fine piece of decayed decorated gothic now in the back wall of the room. a large fireplace down right. a door above fireplace. a door left; two windows, one on each side of the shrine, show the sea with the horizon line and the sky above. a bookcase; a table; old oaken panelling, about seven feet high, all round the room, and above them white-washed walls. red brick floor. everything very rude and simple, and yet tasteful, as if it had been done by the village mason and carpenter under michael's direction. time, a september evening. discover andrew gibbard packing a portmanteau, and edward lashmar (father hilary), a catholic priest, about sixty, very dignified and refined. enter withycombe, an old boatman._ withy. now, gentlemen, if yu'me ready to start! if yu daunt come sune, us shall lose the tide down. father h. i'm quite ready, withycombe, as soon as i have said "good-bye" to mr. feversham. withy. mr. feversham ain't coming along with us, then? andr. no, he stays on the island all the week, and you are to fetch him on saturday morning. withy. saturday morning. to-day's wednesday. right you are. well and good. saturday morning. yu'me coming on to saint margaret's along with us, mr. gibbard? andr. yes--we can find some accommodation there for the night, can't we? withy. well, i warn ye 'tis rough. father h. rougher than my master had on his first coming here? withy. well, i waun't say that, but so fur as i can judge 'tis about as rough. father h. then it will do for me. where is mr. feversham? withy. a few minutes agone he wor watching the excursion steamer back to lowburnham. father h. will you find him and tell him that i am waiting to start? withy. right you are, sir. well and good. (_exit._) father h. andrew--have you noticed any change in mr. feversham lately? andr. change, father? father h. he seems so restless and disturbed, so unlike himself. andr. does he? father h. it's six years since i was in england. but he was always so calm and concentrated. has he any trouble, do you know? andr. he hasn't spoken of any. father h. no. but you're with him constantly. surely you must have seen the difference in him? andr. yes. he has changed. father h. how long has he been like this? andr. the last four months. father h. do you know of any reason for it? andr. he's coming! _enter michael._ mich. you're ready to start, uncle ned? father h. yes. you won't change your mind and come with us? mich. no, i must stay here. (_glancing at books, restlessly._) i want to be alone. i couldn't be of any service to you over at saint margaret's? father h. there is the legend that connects her with saint decuman--i suppose no more is to be learnt of that than we already know? mich. no. the fisher people only know what they have learnt from the guide books. andr. (_standing with portmanteau_). have you anything more to take to the boat, father? father h. no, that's all, andrew. andr. then i'll take it down and wait for you there. (_exit andrew with portmanteau._) father h. then this is good-bye, michael? mich. unless you'll stay over the sunday at cleveheddon? father h. no, i've done my work in england, and i must be back among my people. i wanted to see the shrines on these two sister islands again before i died. i shall leave saint margaret's to-morrow morning, get back to cleveheddon, take the afternoon train up to london, and leave for italy on friday morning. you'll come and see me at majano? mich. when i can. father h. this winter? mich. no, not this winter. i shall be at work at once on the restorations now i've got all the money. father h. strange that it should all come so soon within two or three months. mich. yes, and from such different quarters of england--a thousand one day from manchester--five hundred the next from some unheard-of village--and then the last great final gift last week. father h. it looks as if it all came from one giver? mich. yes, i had thought that. father h. you don't know of any one? mich. i've one or two suspicions. however, the great fact is that i have it all, and can set my architects to work. father h. michael--i was asking andrew just now, there is something troubling you? mich. no--no. what makes you think that? father h. you are not yourself. (_pause._) is it anything where i can be of help? mich. there is nothing. (_pause._) there has been something. but it is past. (_father hilary looks grave._) you need have no fear for me. (_holding out hand._) father h. (_takes his hand, holds it for a long while, looks gravely at him_). if you should ever need a deeper peace than you can find within or around you, come to me in italy. mich. but i am at peace now. (_restlessly, pushing his hand through hair, then a little querulously._) i am at peace now. (_father hilary shakes his head._) you think you can give me that deeper peace? father h. i know i can. mich. i may come to you some day. (_withycombe puts his head in at door._) withy. now, sir, if yu plaise, we'me losing the tide--us shan't get to margaret's avore supper-time. father h. i'm coming, withycombe. mich. withycombe, you'll come and fetch me on saturday morning. withy. saturday morning, twelve o'clock sharp, i'm here. right you are, mr. feversham. well and good. (_exit._) father h. good-bye. mich. good-bye, uncle ned. (_very hearty hand-shake. exit father hilary. michael goes to door, stands looking a few seconds, comes in, turns to his books._) _re-enter father hilary._ mich. what is it? father h. i don't like leaving you. come with me to-night to margaret's. mich. shall i? perhaps it would be best--wait a minute. withy. (_voice heard of_). now, mr. lashmar, if you plaise, sir--we'me losing the tide. mich. don't wait, i'm safe here. good-bye. father h. (_slowly and regretfully_). good-bye. (_exit slowly. michael watches father hilary off; stays at door for some time, waves his hand, then closes door._) mich. now i shall be at peace! (_takes out letter from his pocket._) her letter! i will not read it! (_puts it back in pocket, kneels and lights the fire._) why did you come into my life? i did not seek you! you came unbidden, and before i was aware of it you had unlocked the holiest places of my heart. your skirts have swept through all the gateways of my being. there is a fragrance of you in every cranny of me. you possess me! (_rises._) no! no! no! i will not yield to you! (_takes up book, seats himself at fire, reads a moment or two._) you are there in the fire! your image plays in the shadows--oh, my light and my fire, will you burn me up with love for you? (_rises, sighs._) i'm mad! (_pause, very resolutely._) i will be master of myself--i will be servant to none save my work and my god! (_seats himself resolutely, reads a moment or two, then drops book on knees._) the wind that blows round here may perhaps play round her brow, the very breath that met my lips as i stood at the door may meet hers on the shore yonder. (_rises, flings book on table, goes to window; takes out letter again, holds it undecidedly._) why shouldn't i read it? every stroke of it is graven on my heart.--(_opens it._) "dear keeper of souls in this parish, i have thought so much of our talk last night. i'm inclined to think that i have a soul after all, but it is a most uncomfortable possession. i believe if someone gave me an enormous impulse i might make a saint or a martyr, or anything that's divine. and i believe there is one man living who could give me that impulse." "one man living who could give me that impulse--" "but i hope he won't. frankly, you may save me at too great cost to yourself. so trouble yourself no further about me. but if after this, you still think my wandering, dangling soul worth a moment of your ghostly care, come and lunch with me to-morrow, and i will give you the sweet plain butter-cakes that you love, on the old blue china. and that our salvation may not be too easy, i will tempt you with one sip of the ancient johannisburg." and i went--yes, i went. "but for your own sake--i speak with all a woman's care for your earthly and heavenly welfare--i would rather you did not come. let it be so. let this be farewell. perhaps our souls may salute each other in aimless vacancy hereafter, and i will smile as sweet a smile as i can without lips or cheeks to smile with, when i remember as i pass you in the shades that i saved you from your bad angel, audrie lesden. p.s. be wise and let me go." i cannot! i cannot! yet if i do not--what remains for me? torture, hopeless love, neglected duty, work cast aside and spoilt, all my life disordered and wrecked. oh, if i could be wise--i will! i will tear out this last one dear sweet thought of her. (_goes to fire, tears up the letter in little pieces, watches them burn._) it's done! i've conquered! now i shall be at peace. (_sits himself resolutely at table, reads. a little tap at the door, he shows surprise; the tap is repeated, he rises, goes to door, opens it. at that moment audrie's face appears at the right-hand window for a moment. he looks out, stays there a moment or two, closes door, seats himself again at table, reads. the tap is repeated; he rises, audrie appears at door, he shows a moment of intense delight which he quickly subdues._) audr. may i come in? (_pause._) you are busy--i'll go-- mich. no--(_she stops on threshold._) come in. _she enters. he stands motionless at table. sunset without. it gradually grows darker._ mich. what brings you here? audr. you did not expect me. you aren't accustomed to entertain angels unawares--even bad ones. mich. (_his voice thick and a little hoarse_). your boat, your companions? audr. i have no boat, and no companions. mich. (_horrified, delighted_). you're alone? audr. quite alone. mich. how did you come here? audr. by the simplest and most prosaic means in the world. this morning i took the train to lowburnham to do some shopping. as i was coming back to the station, a boy put this little handbill into my hand. (_showing a little yellow handbill._) afternoon excursion to saint decuman's and saint margaret's isles. i had an impulse--i obeyed it. i telegraphed to cleveheddon for a boat to meet me here at six--(_takes out watch_)--it only wants ten minutes--and took the excursion steamer. they all landed here for half-an-hour. i hid myself till after the steamer had gone. then i came up here to your cottage. i heard some voices, so i hid again--who was here? mich. only my secretary and my uncle ned. audr. the catholic priest. i saw a boat leaving--it was they? mich. yes. audr. they're not coming back? mich. no. audr. you're annoyed with me for coming? mich. no, but wasn't it a little--imprudent? audr. oh, i must do mad things sometimes, just to preserve my general balance of sanity. besides, my boat will be here in ten minutes. (_pause._) audr. how strange we should be here alone! mich. the only two beings on this island--we two! audr. and our two souls. mich. i wish you wouldn't jest with sacred things. audr. i won't. (_suddenly, impulsively._) i want to be good! help me to be good! you think i'm foolish and light and frivolous! well, perhaps i am, but when i'm with you i'm capable of anything, anything--except being an ordinary, average, good woman. mich. but isn't that all that is required of a woman? audr. perhaps. it's rather a damnable heritage, isn't it? and i'm not a barn-door fowl. mich. what are you? audr. just what you like to make of me. don't think i'm flattering you. don't think i'm bold and unwomanly. i'm only speaking the truth. you have changed me. i'm ready to do anything, believe anything, suffer anything that you bid me! to-night i'm on a pinnacle! i shall either be snatched up to the skies, or tumble into the abyss. which will it be, i wonder? mich. (_after a struggle, in a calm voice_). neither, i trust. i hope you will take your boat back in ten minutes, have a good passage across, a comfortable dinner from your pretty blue china, and a sound night's rest. and to-morrow you will wake and forget this rather imprudent freak. audr. oh, you won't tread the clouds with me! very well! down to the earth we come. i can be as earthly as the very clay itself. but i thought you wanted me to be spiritual. mich. i want you to be sincere, to be yourself. audr. very well. tell me how. you are my ghostly father. mich. no, you've never allowed me to be a priest to you. audr. i've never allowed you? mich. and i've never dared. audr. why not? mich. because you've never allowed me to forget that i am a man. audr. very well. don't be a priest to me--at least not now. tell me some one thing that you would wish me to do, and i'll do it! mich. in that letter you wrote me---- audr. did you keep it? mich. no, i destroyed it. audr. destroyed it! mich. in that letter you said it would be better for us if we did not meet again---- audr. no. i said it would be better for _you_ if we did not meet again. mich. better for me? audr. yes, and worse for me. i came here tonight to warn you---- mich. against what? audr. myself. i've done something that may endanger your peace for ever. mich. what do you mean? audr. sometimes i laugh at it, sometimes i'm frightened. i daren't tell you what i've done. i'll go. (_goes to door, opens it._) mich. no. (_stops her._) mrs. lesden, what have you done against me? you don't mean your gifts to the minster? audr. my gifts--what gifts? mich. during the last four months i've constantly received large sums for the restoration of the minster, and last week a very large sum was sent me, enough to carry out all the work just as i wished. audr. well? mich. it was you who sent it all. audr. i must see if my boatman has come. mich. (_stopping her_). no. why did you send the money--so many different sums from so many different places? audr. because that gave me dozens of pleasures instead of one, in sending it. and i thought it would give you dozens of pleasures instead of one, in receiving it. mich. i knew it was you! how glad i am to owe it all to you! words couldn't tell you how grateful i am. audr. and yet you wouldn't walk the clouds with me for a few minutes? mich. you know that i would do anything in my power for your best, your heavenly welfare. audr. i don't think i care much for my heavenly welfare just at this moment. you tumbled me off my pinnacle, and here i am stuck in the mud. (_looking off at the open door._) look! that boat is half-way to saint margaret's. mich. yes, they sleep there to-night. audr. what a queer-looking man your secretary is. is he quite trustworthy? mich. quite. why? audr. i caught him looking at you in a very strange way a week or two back. mich. he's devoted to me. audr. i'm glad of that. how far is it to saint margaret's? mich. three miles. audr. do you believe the legend about saint decuman and saint margaret? mich. that they loved each other? audr. yes, on separate islands, and never met. mich. they denied themselves love here that they might gain heavenly happiness hereafter. audr. now that their hearts have been dust all these hundreds of years, what good is it to them that they denied themselves love? mich. you think---- audr. i think a little love on this earth is worth a good many paradises hereafter. it's a cold world, hereafter. it chills me to the bone when i think of it! (_shivers a little and comes away from the door._) i'm getting a little cold. mich. (_placing chair_). sit by the fire. (_she sits near fire, which is blazing up; he goes and closes door._) audr. (_putting on some logs_). do i know you well enough to make your fire for you? mich. i hope so. (_she sits; he stands above her for some seconds, watching her keenly; a long pause._) audr. you were looking at me. what were you thinking of? mich. i was wondering what memories are stored in that white forehead. audr. memories? (_long sigh._) a few bright ones, and many sad ones. mich. your past life was not happy? audr. (_a little shudder of recollection_). no. and yours? tell me---- mich. what? audr. something about your past life, something you've never told to a living creature. mich. when i was twenty---- audr. stay--what were you like when you were twenty? (_shuts her eyes, puts her hand over them._) now i can see you when you were twenty. mich. is there anyone with me? audr. no, i can't see her. what was she like? fair or dark? mich. fair, with changing grey eyes that could be serious or merry as she pleased, and fine clear features, and the sweetest provoking mouth---- audr. i hate her. who was she? mich. miss standerwick's niece. she stayed there all the summer that year. audr. was that a happy summer? mich. the happiest i have ever known--till this. audr. ah! mich. i used to go to evening church and follow them home, and wait outside till i could see the candle in her window. when it went out i used to walk home. audr. across those fields where we walked the other night? mich. yes. audr. i'll never walk that way again. go on. mich. one night as i was waiting, she came out suddenly. i couldn't speak for trembling. at last i found my tongue, and we talked about silly common-place things. when she was going in i dared to breathe, "give me one kiss." she didn't answer. i just touched her cheek with my lips, and i whispered, "good-night, nelly." she said, "good-night, mike." audr. she called you mike? mich. i was called mike when i was a boy. audr. and your next meeting? mich. she was called away early the next morning to her father's deathbed. her mother went abroad. i never saw her again. tell me something about your past life. audr. can you see me when i was eight? i was a pretty little brown maid, and i set all aflame the heart of a cherub aged ten, with strong fat legs and curly red hair. his sister was my dearest friend. he spent all his pocket-money in buying sugar-plums for me, and gave them to her to give to me. she ate them herself, and slandered me to him, for she said i was false. he kicked her on the nose, and was sent far--far away to school. this was the first tragedy of my life. now tell me some more of your life. you have had other romances, darker, deeper ones? mich. nothing that i dare show. i have told you of the one love of my youth. and you---- have you had darker, deeper romances? audr. i was unhappy without romance. i would show you all my heart, all my thoughts, all my life, if i could do it as one shows a picture, and let it speak for itself. i wonder if you'd condemn me---- mich. condemn you! audr. i don't think you would. you have never guessed---- mich. guessed---- audr. what a world there is within oneself that one never dares speak of! i wish to hide nothing from you. i would have you know me through and through for just the woman that i am, just that and no other, because, don't you see--i don't want to cheat you of a farthing's-worth of esteem on false pretences--i want you to like me, audrie lesden, and not some myth of your imagination. but if you were armed with all the tortures of hell for plucking the truth about myself from my lips, i should still hide myself from you. so, guess, guess, guess, grand inquisitor--what is here (_tapping her forehead_) and here! (_putting her hand on her heart._) you'll never guess one thousandth part of the truth! mich. but tell me something in your past life that you have never told to another creature. audr. i have two great secrets--one is about yourself, one is about another man. mich. myself? another man? audr. my husband. mich. you said you had been unhappy. audr. i married as thousands of girls do, carelessly, thoughtlessly. i was married for my money. no one had ever told me that love was sacred. mich. nobody ever does tell us that, till we hear it from our own hearts. audr. i suppose it was my own fault. i was very well punished. mich. how long were you married? audr. two years. mich. and then your husband died? audr. he went away from me. i never saw him again--alive. (_passionately._) and there's an end of him! mich. i won't ask you what that secret is. i would wish you to keep it sacred. but your secret about myself? surely i may ask that? audr. i have sold you to the devil. mich. what? audr. i have sold myself, too. mich. still jesting? audr. no, i did it in real, deep earnest. mich. i don't understand you. audr. six months ago i was tired, gnawn to the very heart with ennui, and one hot restless night i happened to take up your book, "the hidden life." it came to me--oh, like a breath of the purest, freshest air in a fevered room. i thought i should like to know you. i got up early, took the first morning train down here, looked about the place, saw the island house was to let, and rented it for three years. mich. well? audr. i got mr. docwray to give me an introduction to you. you annoyed me, you were so cold and priestlike. each time i saw you, you piqued and angered me more and more. i longed to get some power over you. at last one day after you had been so frozen and distant a little black imp jumped into my brain and whispered to me. i said to the devil, "give this sculptured saint to me, and i'll give both our souls to you." mich. but you didn't mean it? audr. yes. i said it with all my heart, and i bit my arm--look--(_showing her arm._) i made the teeth meet. there's the mark. if there is a devil, he heard me. mich. and you think he has given me to you? audr. the next time i saw you, you let me kiss your mother's portrait. mich. ah! audr. but you don't really believe there is a devil? why don't you speak? why don't you laugh at me and tell me it's all nonsense? i haven't really given the devil power over your soul? mich. no devil has any power over any soul of man until the man himself first gives him entrance and consent. audr. and you haven't! say you don't care for me. mich. how can i say that? audr. you must! i'm not strong enough to leave you of my own free will. i shall hang about you, worry you, tease you, tempt you, and at last, destroy you. don't let me do it! beat me away from you, insult me, do something to make me hate you! make me leave you! mich. when i love you with all my being? audr. (_shows great delight_). and you dare go on? it's an awful delight to think that a man would dare to risk hell for one! there aren't many men who would dare lose this world for the woman they love--how many men are there that would dare to lose the other? mich. we must lose this world, for i am vowed away from all earthly things. but why should we lose the other? why should we not make our love the lever to raise our souls? you do love me? audr. love is hardly the word. it is more like--if a man could create a dog, and be her master, friend, father, and god, i think she would feel towards him something of what i feel towards you. you have first made me know what love is, what life is. you have changed me thoroughly--no, you have changed half of me thoroughly--one half is still worthless, silly, capricious, hollow, worldly, and bad--that's my old self. she is gradually withering up under your influence, that old audrie lesden. the other half is looking out of my eyes at you now! look! do you see the new audrie lesden that is your daughter and your creature? aren't you proud of her? mich. i shall be proud of her when she is full grown and dares to leave me of her own free will, because she loves me, and because i am vowed to heaven! audr. do i tempt you? i'll go. you love me. that's enough, or it should be enough. i'll get back to london to-morrow, and strangle the new audrie. then the old audrie will come back again, and live the old weary, dry, empty life--and grow old and wrinkled and heartless and perhaps--rouged---- mich. why do you tear me so? what do you want of me here or hereafter? take it! it's yours---- audr. you dare go on--now you know? mich. yes. audr. ah! i thought it was only women who dared hell for love. i won't take your sacrifice--i will leave you. mich. you will? yes, it must be so! my work, my vows--i cannot, may not taste of earthly love. oh, it's cruel to dash the cup from my lips! (_pause; then very calmly._) you are right! i feel that we are choosing heaven or hell for both our souls this night! help me to choose heaven for you, and i'll help you to choose heaven for me. audr. good-bye, my love, for ever. be brave--and very cold to me, now. be like marble--and death. mich. (_takes her hand; a very long pause; then speaks very calmly_). it is victory, isn't it? we have conquered? i'll go down to the bay and see if your boat has come. (_by this time it is dark outside._) audr. half-past six. i shall have a cold, dark voyage. mich. and it is just a little rough. but hannaford is a careful boatman. audr. it's not hannaford who is coming for me. i telegraphed for withycombe. mich. (_pause--very pale and cold_). withycombe? but you always employ hannaford? audr. yes; and i did write out one telegram to him, and then i thought i should like to go back in the boat that always takes you. so i tore up the telegram to hannaford, and telegraphed to withycombe. mich. withycombe? audr. yes, what's the matter? mich. he lives alone. when he goes out, he locks up his cottage. your telegram will wait at the post office. audr. why? mich. withycombe has gone over to saint margaret's with gibbard and my uncle. they stay there the night. audr. your own boat? mich. i had it towed back last week, so that i couldn't be tempted to come to you. audr. then----? mich. (_looks at her_). no boat will come to-night. (_looks at her more intently._) no boat will come to-night! (_they stand looking at each other._) very slow curtain. (_two nights and a day--from wednesday evening to friday morning--pass between acts ii. and iii._) act iii scene.--_the vicarage parlour, as in first act. morning. enter michael, haggard, troubled, with self-absorbed expression, the expression of a man trying to realize that he has committed a great and irrevocable sin; he stands for some moments helpless, dreamy, as if unconscious of his whereabouts; then looks round; his eyes fall upon his mother's picture, he shudders a little, shows intense pain. at length he goes up the steps, takes the picture down, places it on the floor with its face against the wall, carefully avoiding all the while to look at it. he then moves to table in the same dreamy, helpless, self-absorbed state, sits, looks in front of him. enter andrew, comes up behind him._ mich. oh, andrew---- well? andr. (_coming up to him_). i want to consult you on that passage in the arabic--if you can spare the time. mich. bring the manuscripts here. (_michael unconsciously looks at his hands._) what are you looking at? andr. nothing. your hands are blistered? mich. i did a little rowing--the other day. bring the manuscripts. (_andrew goes to door._) mich. andrew--(andrew _stops_)--i was very restless--did you hear me stirring in the night? andr. stirring? mich. yes, i couldn't sleep. i got up about one and went out--walked about for some hours--it was nearly light when i came in again. did you hear me? andr. (_pauses, then answers_). no. (_is about to go off at right door when fanny enters left. he stops._) fanny. mrs. lesden wishes to see you for a minute or two about one of her cottagers. (_andrew watches michael keenly, but unobtrusively._) mich. (_after a little start of surprise, in a tone of affected carelessness_). show her in. (_exit andrew, right. exit fanny, left. michael rises, shows great perturbation, walks about, watches the door for her entrance._) _re-enter fanny, left, showing in audrie._ fanny. mrs. lesden. (_exit fanny. michael and audrie stand looking at each other for some seconds; then he goes to her, takes her hand, kisses it with great reverence, motions her to a chair; she sits. he holds out to her the palms of his hands with a rueful smile, shows they are much blistered as if with rowing._) audr. poor hands! mich. i'm not used to rowing. (_pause._) audr. i didn't thank you. mich. thank me! audr. (_pause_). wasn't it a terrible voyage, terrible and delightful? but we ought to have been drowned together! mich. oh, don't say that--in sin! to be lost in sin! audr. i'd rather be lost with you than saved with anyone else. mich. you mustn't speak like this---- audr. it won't be right, you know, unless we are lost or saved together, will it? mich. hush! hush! (_pause._) audr. you're sorry? mich. no. and you? audr. no. is all safe, do you think? mich. yes, i believe so. audr. didn't that strange secretary of yours think it curious that you came back on thursday instead of saturday? mich. no. i explained that when withycombe brought me your telegram i thought it better to return at once in case you had started to come, and had been somehow lost. audr. let us go carefully through it all as it happened, to make sure. to-day is friday. on wednesday i telegraphed to withycombe to be at the landing-place at saint decuman's with a boat at six o'clock in the evening to bring me back home from there. mich. yes. audr. but being a strange creature and quite unaccountable for my actions, i changed my mind, and instead of coming to saint decuman's i went up to london, stayed there all day yesterday, and returned by the night mail, reaching home at seven this morning. mich. yes. audr. meantime withycombe has gone to saint margaret's with your uncle, stays there wednesday night and does not get my telegram till his return home yesterday afternoon. he consults my servants, who know nothing of my whereabouts, consults mr. gibbard, who advises him to go to saint decuman's and see if i am there. he reaches saint decuman's last evening. you are surprised when he shows you the telegram--you explain that i am not there, that i have not been there, that you've seen nothing of me. (_very tenderly._) dear, i felt so sorry for you when i heard you blundering and stammering through your tale to withycombe. mich. why? audr. i knew the pain and shame it caused you to say what wasn't true. i wished i could have told all the lies for you. mich. no, no. isn't the truth dear to you? audr. not in comparison with you. besides, i shall be let off my fibs and little sins very cheaply, much more cheaply than you'll be, great serious person. mich. you grieve me to the heart when you speak like this---- audr. (_penitent_). i won't! i won't! i'll be very good and quite serious. where were we? well, you explain to withycombe that i have never been to saint decuman's, and at the same time you also change your mind and return with him last evening instead of staying till saturday. mich. you've seen withycombe and told him you went to london? audr. yes. mich. he suspects nothing? audr. no, i made it all quite clear to him. mich. and your servants? audr. they're used to my absences. they think nothing of it. mich. then all is safe. the matter will never be heard of again--except---- audr. except? mich. in our two hearts, and in the high court where such cases are tried. (_with an inclination of the head and finger towards heaven._) audr. don't preach, and--don't regret. mich. i won't--only how strange it all is! audr. what? mich. (_quiet, calm voice throughout, smiling a little_). how men try to make their religion square with their practice! i was hard, cruelly hard, on that poor little girl of andrew's. i was sure it was for the good of her soul that she should stand up and confess in public. but now it comes to my own self, i make excuses; i hide, and cloak, and equivocate, and lie--what a hypocrite i am! audr. ah, you're sorry! mich. no, i'm strangely happy and--dazed. i feel nothing, except my great joy, and a curious bitter amusement in tracing it all out. audr. tracing what out? mich. the hundred little chances, accidents as we call them, that gave us to each other. everything i did to avoid you threw me at your feet. i felt myself beginning to love you. i wrote urgently to uncle ned in italy, thinking i'd tell him and that he would save me. he came--i couldn't tell him of you, but his coming kept withycombe from getting your telegram. i went to saint decuman's to escape from you. you were moved to come to me. i sent away my own boat to put the sea between us; and so i imprisoned you with me. six years ago i used all my influence to have the new lighthouse built on saint margaret's isle instead of saint decuman's, so that i might keep saint decuman's lonely for myself and prayer. i kept it lonely for myself and _you._ it was what we call a chance i didn't go to saint margaret's with andrew and my uncle. it was what we call a chance that you telegraphed to my boatman instead of your own. if any one thing had gone differently---- audr. (_shaking her head_). we couldn't have missed each other in this world. it's no use blaming chance or fate, or whatever it is. mich. i blame nothing. i am too happy. besides, chance? fate? i had the mastery of all these things. they couldn't have conquered me if my own heart hadn't first yielded. you mustn't stay here. (_turning towards her with great tenderness._) oh, i'm glad that no stain rests upon you through me---- audr. don't trouble about me. i have been thinking of you. your character? mich. my character! my character! my character! audr. (_glances up at the place where the portrait had hung_). where is she? (_he points to the picture on the floor._) mich. i daren't look at her. i must hide it until---- audr. until? mich. until we have done what we can to atone for this. audr. what? mich. repent, confess, submit to any penance that be enjoined us. and then if and when it shall be permitted us--marriage. audr. marriage? mich. retirement from all who know us, and lifelong consecration of ourselves to poverty and good works, so that at the last we may perhaps win forgiveness for what we have done. audr. marriage? _re-enter andrew with manuscripts._ andr. i beg pardon. i thought mrs. lesden had gone. (_puts manuscripts on table and is going off._) audr. i am just going, mr. gibbard. andr. (_turns and speaks to her_). i met a stranger on the beach yesterday evening. he inquired for you and the way to your house. audr. indeed. andr. he asked a great many questions about you. audr. what questions? andr. how you lived in this quiet place, and who were your friends, and where you were yesterday. audr. did he give his name? andr. i didn't ask for it. i suppose he's staying in the place. i saw him at the door of the george later in the evening. audr. one of my london friends, i suppose. what did you reply to his questions? andr. i told him mr. feversham was one of your friends, but as i didn't know where you were yesterday, of course i couldn't tell him, could i? (_looks at her, exit._) audr. did you notice that? mich. notice what? audr. the look that man gave me as he went out. does he suspect us? mich. impossible. audr. i feel sure he does. send for him and question him at once. i'll go. _enter fanny with a letter._ fanny. for you, ma'am. (_giving letter to audrie, who glances at it, shows a sharp, frightened surprise, instantly concealed, and then stands motionless._) fanny. the gentleman's waiting for an answer. audr. (_very quiet, cold voice_). i'll come at once. (_exit fanny._) mich. what's the matter? audr. nothing. question that man. find out if he knows anything. i'll come back as soon as i can. (_exit, without opening letter._) mich. (_follows her to door, closes it after her, then goes to right door, calls_). andrew. _re-enter andrew._ mich. what is this passage you're in difficulty about? andr. (_comes to him with old manuscripts_). what's the matter? mich. my head is dizzy this morning. andr. didn't you say you couldn't sleep? mich. what time did you get back from saint margaret's yesterday? andr. about twelve. mich. you saw my uncle off by the afternoon train? andr. yes. mich. and then? (_andrew does not reply._) you were surprised to find me coming back with withycombe instead of staying till saturday? andr. no. mich. withycombe's message about the telegram a little disturbed me. (_a little pause, watching andrew._) i thought perhaps mrs. lesden might have started to come to saint decuman's (_pause, still watching andrew_), and been lost on the way. andr. did you? mich. she is such a strange, flighty creature, that i should scarcely be surprised at anything she took it into her head to do. andr. (_looking him full in the face_). she went up to london, didn't she? mich. (_wincing a little_). yes. andr. and came back through the night by the mail? mich. yes. why do you look at me like that? andr. i beg your pardon. is there any other question you'd like to ask me? mich. question? about what? andr. about mrs. lesden--or anything that's troubling you. mich. troubling me? i'm not troubled about anything. andr. oh! i thought perhaps you were. (_going._) mich. andrew. (_andrew stops._) i've been thinking about--about rose. andr. have you? mich. perhaps i was wrong in urging her to confess. andr. it isn't much good thinking that now, is it? mich. no, except to ask you to forgive me, and to say that you don't cherish any ill-feeling against me on that account. andr. i forgive you, and i don't cherish any ill-feeling against you on that or any account. mich. i may trust you entirely, andrew? andr. if you doubt it--try me. mich. try you? andr. didn't i tell you to ask me any question you like? mich. (_alarmed_). what do you mean? (_pause, looks at andrew._) enough. i trust you absolutely--(_looks at him_)--in everything. andr. you may. (_is again going._) mich. no, andrew, nothing has occurred--i was afraid--it seemed so strange--this telegram business. what are you thinking about me? andr. take care, sir. don't betray yourself to anybody but me. mich. betray myself? andr. you're a worse bungler at lying than i was. don't look like that, or other people will guess. don't give way. you're safe. nobody but me suspects anything. your character is quite safe--her character is quite safe. they're both in my keeping. mich. (_stares helplessly at him_). how did you know? andr. i've suspected for some time past---- mich. you were wrong. there was nothing to suspect. it was a chance, an accident--there was no intention to deceive. what made you guess? andr. when withycombe brought the telegram to me i guessed something was wrong. i heard you go out in the middle of the night. i followed you down to the beach; i saw you put off; i waited for you to come back. i was on the top of the cliff just above you when you landed with her. i saw you come on here, and i watched her take the road to the station, and saw her come back to her home as if she had come in by the early morning train. mich. what are you going to do? andr. nothing. don't i owe everything i am and everything i have in this world to you? i shall never breathe a word of what i know to a living soul. mich. thank you, andrew. thank you. and you'll be sure above all that she is safe---- andr. as safe as if i were in the grave. you go your way, just the same as if i didn't know. mich. andrew. andr. (_comes back_). sir---- mich. (_breaking down_). i was harsh and cruel to rose. i punished her more than she deserved. i was a hard, self-righteous priest! i hadn't been tempted myself then. send for her to come home again! comfort her and give her the best place in your heart. write at once. let her come back to-morrow! oh, what weak, wretched pharisees we are! what masks of holiness we wear! what whited sepulchres we are! send for her! make up to her for all she has suffered! let me ask her pardon! oh, andrew, have pity on me! forgive me, forgive me! (_bending his head in tears. andrew steals out of the room. a long pause. audrie appears at window in the same place as in act i., looks in, sees him, taps the window, he goes up to it._) audr. let me in. quickly. i want to speak to you. (_he goes to door, opens it; a moment later she enters._) mich. well? audr. why didn't you take my warning? why didn't you beat me, drive me, hound me away from you as i told you? mich. what now? audr. say you'll forgive me before i tell you! no, don't forgive me! mich. i don't understand you. is anything discovered? audr. what does that matter? oh, don't hate me. if you say one unkind word to me i shall kill myself. read the letter which came here to me just now. (_he takes the letter wonderingly._) mich. whom did it come from? audr. my husband. mich. your husband? (_she nods._) your husband! he is alive? (_she nods._) audr. (_with a laugh_). didn't i tell you i should ruin you body and soul? (_he stands overwhelmed._) why do you stand there? why don't you do something? (_laughing at him._) i say, ghostly father, we make a pretty pair, you and i, don't we? what shall we do? confess in white sheets and candles together, you and i? why don't you do something--(_laughing at him._) and you stand there like a stone saint. (_comes up to him._) kill me and have done with me! mich. you said your husband died after two years. audr. i said i never saw him again--alive. i thought then that i never should. mich. but--you believed he was dead. you believed he was dead--(_she does not reply._) you didn't know the night before last that your husband was living? audr. don't i tell you to kill me and have done with it. mich. (_horrified_). you knew he was living? audr. (_very imploringly_). i love you, i love you. say one word to me! say one word to me! say you forgive me. mich. i forgive you. (_stands overwhelmed._) take this letter---- (_offering it._) audr. i didn't mean to do this. do make excuses for me. we lived unhappily together. when i came into all my money i bargained with him that we would never see each other again. it was a fair bargain--a contract. he went away to america--i gave out he was dead. from that time to this i have never had a thought of his return. he was dead to me. he has no right to come and spoil my life. read that letter from him. mich. no--take it. (_gives the letter back._) audr. tell me what to do. mich. i'm not fit to advise you. audr. what can we do? mich. i don't know. we're up a blind alley with our sin. there's no way out of this. audr. i shall defy him. mich. no. audr. yes. a bargain's a bargain. i shall go back and defy him. i'll never see him again. but then--what then? what will you do? mich. don't think of me. audr. speak to me. say one word. oh, it has been on the tip of my tongue so many times to tell you all, but i couldn't bear to lose your love, so i deceived you. (_he walks about perplexed. she goes to him very gently and coaxingly._) say you aren't sorry--say that deep down in your inmost heart you aren't sorry for what is past! mich. sorry? no. god forgive me. i'm not sorry. i can't be sorry. i wish i could. audr. (_coming to him_). ah, now i know you love me! if you only dare be as bold as i dare---- mich. bold? audr. we love each other. our loves and lives are in our own hands. mich. (_repulses her, braces himself to stern resolve, very coldly and commandingly_). listen! these are perhaps the last words i shall ever speak to you. the past is past. there's no way out of that. but the future is in our power. can't you see, woman, that we are half-way down the precipice? we'll go no further. from this moment we part; i toil back to repentance and peace one way, you toil back another. so far as god will give me grace i'll never think of you from this moment--i'll spend all my life in putting a gulf between you and me. you do the same--ask only one thing for yourself and me, that we may forget each other. audr. (_looks at him, smiles, sighs, then as she is going off_). i was right about man's love. you are all cowards. there's not one of you that doesn't think first of his comfort, or his pocket, or his honour, or his skin, or his soul, and second of the woman he thinks he loves. forget you? (_a little laugh._) do you think that possible? do you think i was jesting with you when i gave myself to you? forget you? (_a little laugh._) my memory is good for such trifles. forget you? mich. (_with a wild revulsion_). oh, take me where you will! i have no guide but you! heaven, hell, wherever you go, i shall follow. be sure of that. but won't you be my better angel, now i've lost her: if you love me as you say, you can yet be the master influence of my life, you can yet save yourself through me, and me through you. won't you make our love a monument for good? dearest of all, i'm at your feet--i think you come from heaven, and i'm all obedience to you. you are my angel. lead me--lead me, not back to sin--lead me towards heaven--you can even now! audr. what do you wish me to do? mich. go back to your duty and to deep repentance. have strength, dearest. these are not idle words--duty, purity, holiness. they mean something. love is nothing without them. have courage to tread the hard road. leave me. audr. if i leave you now, shall we meet one day--hereafter? mich. yes. audr. you're sure? you do believe it? mich. with all my heart. audr. and you'll stay here and carry on your work, restore the minster, and let me think that i'm helping you. mich. i can't do that now. audr. yes. mich. no. audr. yes. mich. but with that money--your money! audr. many churches are built with sinners' money. do this for me. mich. if i dared--if it would come to good.--you know how dear a hope it has been to me all my life through. audr. do it, because i ask it. you will? mich. and you'll leave me, leave this place, because i ask it. you will? audr. i love you. i obey you. (_she comes to him._) mich. no, i daren't come near to you. you'll go? (_he opens the door; she passes out; re-enters._) audr. listen to this. whatever happens, i shall never belong to anybody but you. you understand? (_michael bows his head._) i shall never belong to anybody but you, mike. (_she goes out again. he closes door, goes up to window. she passes. he watches her off, stays there some moments._) _re-enter andrew. michael comes from window; the two men stand looking at each other._ andr. you won't begin work this morning, i suppose? mich. (_firmly_). yes. (_goes to table, motions andrew to one chair, seats himself opposite. they take up the manuscripts._) where is the place? andr. fifty-first psalm, verse three. (_michael winces, turns over the manuscript._) have you found it? what are you looking at? mich. (_gets up suddenly_). i can't bear it. andr. can't bear what? (_michael stands looking at him with terror._) andr. (_rises, comes to him_). don't i tell you that all is safe. i shan't blab. nobody shall ever know. mich. but _you_ know! andr. i shall never remind you of it. mich. but you do, you do! your presence reminds me. andr. shall i leave you now and come again by-and-by? mich. (_with an effort_). no, stay. (_points to seat. andrew seats himself._) you've sent for rose to come home? andr. no. mich. no? andr. i don't want to have her in this place where everybody knows about her. mich. won't you send for her, andrew--to please me? andr. she's well enough where she is. (_pointing to the manuscripts._) shall we go on? mich. what ought i to do, andrew? andr. don't you know what you ought to do? mich. what? andr. mete out to yourself the same measure you meted to others. mich. confess--in public. i can't! i can't! i daren't! i'm a coward, a weak miserable coward! don't judge me harshly, andrew! don't be hard on me! (_covering his face with his hands._) andr. (_cold, firm_). come, sir! shall we get on with our work? (_reading manuscript._) "for i acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." (_michael uncovers his face and sits staring at andrew, who sits cold and grim on the other side of the table._) _very slow curtain._ (_a year passes between acts iii. and iv._) act iv scene.--_the chancel of the minster church of saint decuman at cleveheddon, a beautiful building of decorated gothic architecture with signs of recent restoration. the altar and reredos, approached by steps, face the audience, who take up the same position towards it as spectators in the nave would do. behind the altar a long vista of columns, arches, roof, and stained glass windows. an organ is built in left wall of the chancel at a considerable height. on both sides of the chancel are handsome high carved oak stalls. a large open place in front of the altar steps is flanked on each side by the transepts, which run to right and left of spectators and are filled with chair seats so far as can be seen. a small door in the north wall of the left transept leads to the organ loft. the whole church is most lavishly decorated with banners, hangings, scrolls, and large frescoes, and is smothered with flowers as if in readiness for a church festival. large brass candlesticks on altar with lighted candles. time, about nine on an autumn night. an organ voluntary is being played as curtain rises. enter michael from transept. he has aged much, is very pale and emaciated. the voluntary ceases and the organ boy, a lad about fifteen, comes from small door in wall of left transept._ walter (_carelessly_). good-night, sir. mich. (_stopping him, puts his hand on the boy's head_). good-bye, walter. (_pause, still detaining him, with considerable feeling._) good-bye, my dear lad. (_sighs, moves away from him. the boy shows slight respectful surprise and exit along transept. the organist with keys enters from the little door, looks round the church admiringly._) organist. everything ready for the ceremony to-morrow? mich. yes, i think, everything. organist. i was just putting the finishing touches to my music. how beautiful the church looks! you must be very proud and happy now your work is complete. mich. not quite complete. i've to put the finishing touches to my part--to-morrow. _andrew enters rather suddenly from transept._ andr. can i speak to you for a moment? organist. good-night. (_going._) mich. (_detains him_). thank you for all you have done for me, and for the church, and for her services. (_shakes hands warmly. exit the organist by transept._) mich. well? andr. i thought you'd like to know--mrs. lesden has come back to cleveheddon, and she has brought a lady friend with her. mich. i know. andr. you've seen her? (_michael looks at him with great dignity._) andr. i beg your pardon. mich. i've not seen her. andr. i beg your pardon. it's no business of mine. (_going._) mich. (_quietly_). yes, it is business of yours. andr. what do you mean? mich. haven't you made it the chief business of your life all this last year? andr. how? i've kept my word. i've never reminded you of it. mich. you've never allowed me to forget it for a single moment. every time you've spoken to me, or looked at me, or crossed the room, or passed the window, every time i've heard your step on the stairs, or your voice speaking to the servants, you've accused me. if you had been in my place i would have been very kind to you, andrew. andr. how did you treat my girl? mich. i did what i thought was best for her soul. andr. then why don't you do what is best for your own soul? mich. i shall. (_andrew looks at michael in startled inquiry._) _enter by transept docwray and sir lyolf. sir lyolf is in evening dress under summer overcoat. docwray points out the decorations to sir lyolf._ andr. why have you sent for rose to come back to cleveheddon? mich. i wish her to be present at the services to-morrow. she is almost due. go to the station and meet her. bring her to me here. (_sir lyolf and docwray saunter up towards michael and andrew. andrew stands perplexed._) mich. (_firmly, to andrew_). bring her to me here. (_andrew goes off through transept, turns to look at michael before he goes off._) sir lyolf. you didn't turn up at dinner? mich. i was too busy. sir lyolf. all prepared for to-morrow? mich. yes, i think. sir lyolf. so it seems mrs. lesden has come down from town. mich. so i understand. sir lyolf (_michael is listening intently_). i thought we had seen the last of her when the long-lost husband returned and took her off to london. by the way, what has become of her husband? mark. he has gone back to south america. (_michael is listening intently._) sir lyolf. gone back to south america? mark. he only stayed three weeks in england. it is said that she has pensioned him off--he is to keep to his hemisphere, and she is to keep to hers. sir lyolf. i don't like it! mark. don't like what? sir lyolf. i don't like women who pension off their husbands to live in south america. mich. do you see much of her in town? mark. not much. about every two months she sweeps into church in a whirlwind of finery and perfume, gives me a ridiculously large sum for the offertory, makes some most irreverent joke, or else pretends to be deeply religious---- mich. pretends? mark. what can it be but pretence? look at her life this last year. mich. what of it? mark. it has been one continual round of gaiety and excitement except when she was ill. mich. she has been ill? mark. yes, and no wonder. mich. why? mark. she goes everywhere, gives the most extravagant parties, mixes with the fastest, emptiest, london set. and she has taken for her companion a silly, flighty little woman, mrs. cantelo. sir lyolf. i don't like it! why has she come back to cleveheddon just now? mark. to be present at the dedication service to-morrow, i suppose. sir lyolf. michael---- mich. well? sir lyolf. you know that everybody is asking where all the money came from for these magnificent restorations? mich. it was sent to me anonymously. the giver wishes to remain unknown. sir lyolf. yes! yes! that's what you've told us. but of course you know who it is? mich. i mustn't speak of it. sir lyolf. forgive me. mich. let's say no more. i'm glad you came here to-night. i've been very much perplexed by a confession that has been made to me recently. a priest--you know him, mark--he is to be present to-morrow--a priest some time ago discovered one of his people in a course of lying and deception, and insisted upon a very severe penalty from the man. and now the priest tells me, that in order to save one very dear to him, he himself has lately been practising exactly the same course of lying and deception. he came to me for advice. i said, "you must pay exactly the same penalty that you demanded from your parishioner." but he objects--he says it will bring disgrace on his family, and disgrace on our cloth. he urged all manner of excuses, but i wouldn't listen to him. he wishes to be present at the dedication service to-morrow. i've refused him. have i done right? sir lyolf. yes, i should say so. mark. was it a just penalty? mich. yes, i believe so--the just, the only penalty, in my opinion. have i done right? mark. yes, certainly. mich. i'm glad you both think that. to-morrow before the dedication service begins, i shall stand where i'm standing now and confess that i have been guilty of deadly sin and deceit. then i shall go out from this place and never return. (_they come away from him, staring at him in speechless surprise for some moments._) sir lyolf. but--good heaven!--what have you done? mich. (_after a long pause_). guess. sir lyolf. but you won't proclaim yourself? mich. yes. sir lyolf. but your career--your reputation--your opportunities of doing good---- mark. have you thought what this will mean to you, to us, to the church? mich. i have thought of nothing else for many months past. sir lyolf. surely there must be some way to avoid a public declaration. (_michael shakes his head._) you know i don't speak for myself. my day is nearly done, but you're in the full vigour of life, with a great reputation to sustain and increase. don't do this--for my sake, for your own sake, for the sake of heaven, don't do it! mich. i must. mark. what are the circumstances? mich. i can't tell you. i wouldn't have told you so much except that i knew i might trust both of you never to hint or whisper anything against--against any but myself. if you should guess--as most likely you will--the name of my companion in sin, it will never cross your lips? i may ask that of you? sir lyolf. you know you may. mark. of course we shall say nothing. sir lyolf. but--but---- (_sits down overwhelmed._) mark. can't we talk this over further? have you considered everything? mich. everything. i have known for many months that this must come. i have tried to palter and spare myself, but each time the conviction has returned with greater and greater force, "you must do it there, and then, and in that way." mark. but you've repented? mich. most deeply. i have fasted and prayed. i have worn a hair shirt close to my skin. but my sin remains. it isn't rooted out of my heart. i can't get rid of its image. mark. its image? mich. (_same calm, tranquil, matter-of-fact tone_). i believe that every sin has its exact physical image. that just as man is the expression of the thought of god, so our own thoughts and desires and aims, both good and bad, have somewhere or the other their exact material counterpart, their embodiment. the image of my sin is a reptile, a greyish-green reptile, with spikes, and cold eyes without lids. it's more horrible than any creature that was ever seen. it comes and sits in my heart and watches me with those cold eyes that never shut, and never sleep, and never pity. at first it came only very seldom; these last few months it has scarcely left me day or night, only at night it's deadlier and more distorted and weighs more upon me. it's not fancy. mark, i know, i know, that if i do not get rid of my sin, my hell will be to have that thing sitting beside me for ever and ever, watching me with its cold eyes. but (_hopefully_) i shall be rid of it after to-morrow. mark. my poor fellow! sir lyolf (_rising, coming back to michael_). michael, can't you postpone this? can't it be at some other time? not in the very hour which should be the proudest and happiest of your life? mich. there is no other hour, no other way. (_looks at them both, takes both their hands affectionately._) tell me (_very piteously_) that you neither of you love me the less,--or at least say that you love me a little still, after what i've told you. sir lyolf. don't you know? mark. how can you ask that? _andrew and rose appear in the transept._ mich. (_to andrew_). one moment, andrew. (_to his father._) i've a word or two to say to andrew. sir lyolf. come and stay the night with me and let us talk this over. mich. no, i must be alone to-night. good-night, dear mark. (_mark wrings his hand._) sir lyolf. you are resolved to go through with this? it must be? (_michael bows his head._) sir lyolf. i can't be here to-morrow. i couldn't face it. but (_with great affection_) i shan't be far away when you want me. (_very warm handshake._) come, mr. docwray. (_exeunt sir lyolf and docwray by transept._) andr. (_bringing rose to michael_). i've brought her. (_rose is in an anglican sister's dress; she is very pale and her manner is subdued. she comes slowly and reverently to michael, and is going to bend to him. he takes her hands and raises her._) mich. no. you mustn't bend to me. i've sent for you, rose, to ask your pardon. rose. my pardon? mich. i made you pass through a terrible ordeal last year. will you forgive me? rose. what should i forgive? you were right. you said it would bring me great peace. and so it has--great peace. mich. and you wouldn't undo that morning's work? rose. no. it seems i died that morning and left all my old life in a grave. this is quite a new life. i wouldn't change it. mich. andrew, do you hear that? andr. yes. mich. i was right, then? i was right? you are happy? rose. yes, i am happy--at least, i'm peaceful, and peace is better than happiness, isn't it? mich. yes, peace is best! peace is best! i shall find it too, some day. andrew, she has forgiven me. can't you forgive me? we may never see each other again on this side the grave. don't let us part in anger! andr. part? mich. as soon as i can arrange my affairs i shall leave cleveheddon. andr. but your work? mich. my work is ended. i'll see that you and rose are sufficiently provided for. (_taking their hands, trying to join them; andrew holds aloof._) andr. no. i can't take any favour from you. mich. it's no favour. i've trained you to a special work which has unfitted you for everything else. it is my duty to provide for your old age. andr. i can't take any favour from you. mich. old comrade (_leaning on andrew's shoulder; andrew draws away_), old comrade (_draws andrew to him_), we had many happy days together in the summer of our life. now the autumn has come, now the winter is coming, i'm setting out on a cold, dark journey. won't you light a little flame in our old lamp of friendship to cheer me on my way? you'll take my gift--you'll take it, and make a home for her? andr. (_bursts out_). you'll break my heart with your kindness! i don't deserve it! i was a half-bred, starving dog. you took me in, and, like the hound i am, i turned and bit the hand that fed me. let me be! let me be! mich. rose, speak to him. rose. father, you are grieving mr. feversham. andr. i'll do whatever you tell me. but don't forgive me. mich. take him home, rose. i parted you. let me think i have restored you to each other. (_joining them._) andr. (_to michael_). i can't say anything to-night. i never was good enough to black your shoes. i can't thank you. i can't speak. good-night. come, rose! (_michael shakes rose's hand very tenderly. exeunt rose and andrew by transept. michael watches them off, goes to altar._) mich. (_alone_). one thing more and all is done. (_looking round the church._) and i must give you up! never enter your doors, never lead my people through you in chariots of fire, never make you the very presence-chamber of god to my soul and their souls who were committed to me! oh, if i had been worthy! (_a little pause. a woman's laugh is heard in the transept opposite to that by which andrew and rose have gone off. michael withdraws to the side of chancel, where he is seen by the audience, during the following scene, but is hidden from audrie and mrs. cantelo._) _audrie enters from transept in magnificent evening dress, cloak, and jewellery, and carrying a large basket of roses. her features are much paler and sharpened, and she shows a constant restlessness and excitement._ audr. (_looks round, calls out_). somebody is here? (_pause, calls out._) somebody is here? no? (_speaks down transept._) you may come in, milly. _milly cantelo, a fashionable little woman, enters at transept, looking admiringly round the church._ audr. there's nobody here except (_raising her voice_) a stone saint (_pointing up to carved figure_), and he can't hear, because he has only stone ears, and he can't feel, because he has only a stone heart. (_michael shows intense feeling._) milly (_looking round_). isn't it gorgeous? audr. h'm--yes---- (_raises her voice._) i can't bear that stone saint. look how hard and lifeless he is. in a well-regulated world there would be no room for angels or devils, or stone saints, or any such griffins. milly. audrie, you are queer to-night. you'll be ill again. audr. yes, duckie, i hope so. milly. what's the matter with you? audr. life's the matter with me, i think. i've got it badly, and i don't know how to cure myself. milly. i wish you wouldn't talk nonsense, and run about on silly errands in the dark. audr. i won't for long. when my head is tightly bandaged in a white cloth, i can't talk any more nonsense, can i? and when my feet are comfortably tucked up in my final night-gown i can't run after stone saints in the dark, can i? milly. oh, you give me the creeps. i can't imagine why you wanted to come out to-night. audr. to decorate the church. milly. don't you think it's decorated enough? audr. (_looking_). no, it wants a few more touches. i must just titivate a cherub's nose, or hang a garland on an apostle's toe, just to show my deep, deep devotion---- milly. your deep, deep devotion? audr. my deep, deep love, my deep, deep worship, my deep, deep remembrance. milly. of what? audr. the church, of course. milly. what a heap of money all this must have cost! who gave it all? audr. i gave two hundred pounds when i lived here last year. milly. i wonder who gave all the rest! audr. i wonder! milly. mr. feversham must have some very devoted friends. audr. so it seems. milly. did you know him very well when you lived here? audr. not very well. milly. what sort of a man is he? audr. oh, a very cold, distant man--a good deal of the priest about him, and as much feeling as that stone figure up there. milly. you didn't like him? audr. oh, i liked him well enough. but i don't think he cared much for me. i dare say he's forgotten all about me by this time. milly---- (_bursts into tears._) milly. what is it? audr. i'm not well to-night. i oughtn't to have come here. milly--i never forget anybody. if i had once loved you i should love you for ever. if you were wicked, or unfortunate, or unfaithful, it would make no difference to me. kiss me, milly--say you believe me. milly. you know i do, darling. audr. (_very passionately_). i can be constant, milly--i can! constant in my friendship, constant in my love! oh, milly, i'm the most wretched woman in the world! milly. you're hysterical, dear. audr. no, i'm forsaken. nobody loves me! (_sobbing. gesture from michael._) milly. poor audrie! audr. let me be a few minutes by myself. i want to be quite alone. go home and wait for me there. milly. i don't like leaving you. audr. (_getting her off at transept_). yes--go, dear. i shall be better soon. do leave me. milly. you won't be long? audr. no--i'll come soon. (_accompanying her along transept. exit milly by transept. audrie stands listening. michael comes forward a step or two._) audr. (_in the transept_). are you there? (_he comes forward; she goes towards him; they stand for a moment or two looking at each other._) audr. are you deaf? i thought it was only your memory that was gone. mich. why have you come here? audr. mayn't i come into my own church? and such a sinner as i am? mich. forgive me. you know how welcome i would make you--if i dared. audr. then you don't dare? then i'm not welcome? mich. (_troubled_). yes! yes! very welcome! the church owes much to you. audr. i think she does, for she has robbed me of your love. why have you sent back all my letters unopened? mich. can't you guess what it cost me to return them? (_pause._) what have you been doing all this last year? audr. doing? eating my heart. racing through my life to get to the end of it. skipping and chattering from hyde park corner to the inferno by a new short cut. what have you been doing? mich. trying to repent and to forget. audr. ah, well--i haven't been wasting my time quite so foolishly as you after all. mich. will you never be serious? audr. yes--soon. mich. you've been ill? audr. oh, my dear spiritual doctor, you don't know how ill i've been. i get up every morning without hope, i drag through the day without hope, i go to this thing and that, to this party, to that reception, to the theatre, to church, to a pigeon-shooting match, to the park, to ascot, to henley--here, there, everywhere, all without hope. mich. what is it you want? audr. i want to live again! i've never lived but those few months when we were learning to love each other! i want to feel that fierce breeze on my cheek that blew us together! do you remember when we stood on the cliff hand in hand? and we shrieked and laughed down the wind like mad children? do you remember? mich. no. audr. no? nor the wonderful pale sunrise, with the lemon and green lakes of light, and then the path of diamonds all across the sea? don't you remember? mich. no. audr. how strange you don't remember! oh, my god, if i could forget! mich. (_apart from her_). oh, my god, if i could forget! (_a long pause. he comes to her._) i have one awful thought--i am bound to you--there is but one of us--i never felt it more than at this moment--and yet the awful thought comes to me--if by any decree we should be put asunder hereafter--if we should be parted then! audr. don't you dread being parted now--now this moment? don't you dread being unhappy here--here on this earth? mich. i will not think of that. i have vowed! audr. you don't love me! you don't love me! you don't love me! mich. if i had ten thousand worlds i'd sell them all and buy your soul. but i will keep the vow i have vowed. you are the holiest thing on earth to me. i will keep you white and stainless from me. audr. you'll never forget me. mich. i have forgotten you. audr. you'll never forget me. mich. (_same cold tone, going up the altar steps_). i have forgotten you. (_stands with his back to her for a few moments._) audr. (_with a gesture of resignation_). you'll let me put a bunch or two of flowers about the church before i go? mich. if i asked you not---- audr. i should obey you. mich. i do ask you not---- audr. very well. it's hard lines that i mayn't decorate my own church. mich. i have another request to make--a favour to beg of you. audr. it's done, whatever it is. but make it some great thing--something very hard and desperate, that i may show you there's nothing i would not do if you ask it. mich. it's something very simple. i'm going to ask you not to be present at the dedication service to-morrow. audr. but i came on purpose---- mich. i beg you not. i have a strong reason. you won't come? audr. not if you wish me to stay away. shall i see you after to-morrow? mich. after to-morrow i leave cleveheddon for ever. audr. where are you going? mich. i don't know. audr. it doesn't matter, i shall find you out. mich. you'll follow me? audr. yes--all over this world, and the ten thousand others. i shall follow you. you'll find me always with you, clawing at your heart. au revoir. (_takes up her basket of roses, going out with them by transept, stops._) do let me put some flowers on the altar--just to remind you. your memory is so bad, you know. (_he raises his hand very quietly and turns his back on her. she stands very quiet and hopeless for a few seconds, then takes up the basket of flowers, goes a step or two towards transept, turns._) audr. i'm going to be very ill after this. (_he stands at altar in an attitude of prayer, his back to her._) do you hear, i'm going to be very ill? there's a little string in my heart--i've just heard it snap. (_pause._) if i were dying and i sent for you, would you come? mich. (_after a long pause, very quietly_). yes. (_pause._) audr. and that's all? and that's all? (_he stands unmoved at altar, his back to her. she takes a large red rose out of the basket, throws it towards him; it falls on the white marble altar steps._) there's a flower for to-morrow! do put it on the altar for me! you won't? you won't? (_no answer._) it is hard to be turned out of my own church--it is hard---- (_exit audrie by transept with the basket of flowers. a sob is heard, michael turns round. a door is heard to close. he puts out the altar lights, throws himself on altar steps. the curtains fall._ _the falling of the curtains signifies the passing of the night_. _a peal of joyous church bells followed by organ music and singing. the curtain rises and discovers the church in broad daylight and filled with worshippers. andrew and rose are at the corner in prominent positions. audrie's flower is lying on the altar steps. a processional hymn is being sung. a procession of surpliced priests file up the aisle and take their places in the chancel, walking over audrie's rose. michael follows at the end of the procession; as he reaches the altar steps, he turns, very pale and cold, and speaks in a low, calm voice._) mich. before this service begins and this church is re-consecrated i have a duty to perform to my people. (_great attention of all._) i have often insisted in this place on the necessity of a life of perfect openness before god and man. i have taught you that your lives should be crystal clear, that your hearts should be filled with sunlight, so that no foul thing may hide therein. i have enforced that with others, because i believe with my heart and soul that it is the foundation of all wholesome and happy human life. i stand here to affirm it to-day in the presence of god and you all. i stand here to affirm it against myself as i formerly affirmed it against another. i stand here to own to you that while i have been vainly preaching to you, my own life has been polluted with deceit and with deadly sin. i can find no repentance and no peace till i have freely acknowledged to you all that i am not worthy to continue my sacred office, not worthy to be the channel of grace to you. it was the dearest wish of my life to restore this beautiful temple, and to be heaven's vicar here. i have raised it again, but i may not enter. i dare not enter. i have sinned--as david sinned. i have broken the sanctity of the marriage vow. it is my just sentence to go forth from you, not as your guide, your leader, your priest; but as a broken sinner, humbled in the dust before the heaven he has offended. i bid you all farewell. i ask your pardon for having dared to continue in my office knowing i had profaned and desecrated it. it now remains for me to seek the pardon of heaven. let the service continue without me. let no one leave his place. pray for me all of you! i have need of your prayers! pray for me! (_he comes down from the altar steps amidst the hushed and respectful surprise of the congregation, who all turn to look at him as he passes. rose makes a very slight gesture of sympathy as he passes her. andrew stands with hands over his eyes. michael passes out by transept, his head bowed, his lips moving in prayer as he goes off._) _curtain._ (_ten months pass between acts iv. and v._) act v scene.--_reception room of the monastery of san salvatore at majano, in italy. a simply furnished room in an old italian building. at back right an open door approached by a flight of steps, at back left a large window; a mass of masonry divides the window and door. a door down stage, left. the portrait of michael's mother hangs on the wall. time, a summer evening. discover father hilary reading. enter sir lyolf up the steps and by door at back._ father h. well? sir lyolf. i've been to see her again. i can't get her out of my mind. father h. how is she this evening? sir lyolf. in the very strangest state, laughing, crying, jesting, fainting, and chattering like a magpie. i believe she's dying. father h. dying? sir lyolf. yes. it seems she had a kind of malarial fever a month or two ago and wasn't properly treated. i wish there was a good english doctor in the place. and i wish michael was here. father h. be thankful that he is away. sir lyolf. but if he finds out that she has been here, that she has sent again and again for him, and that we have hidden it from him--and that she has died? father h. he mustn't know it until he can bear to hear it. we must consider him first. think what he must have suffered all these months. now that at last he is learning to forget her, now that he is finding peace, how wrong, how cruel it would be to reopen his wounds! sir lyolf. she said he promised to come to her if she sent for him. she begged so hard. she has come from england with the one hope of seeing him. i felt all the while that i was helping to crush the life out of her. father h. what did you tell her? sir lyolf. that he had gone away alone for a few days in the mountains. that we didn't exactly know where to find him, but that he might come back at any time, and that i would bring him to her the moment he returned. father h. well, what more can we do? sir lyolf. nothing now, i suppose. i wish we had sent after him when she came last week. we could have found him before this. besides, she doesn't believe me. father h. doesn't believe you? sir lyolf. she thinks that michael is here with us, and that we are hiding it from him. i wish he'd come back. father h. if she is passing away, better it should all be over before he returns. sir lyolf. i don't like parting them at the last. she loves him, ned, she loves him. father h. remember it's a guilty love. sir lyolf. yes, i know. father h. remember what it has already cost him. sir lyolf. yes, i know. but love is love, and whether it comes from heaven, or whether it comes from the other place, there's no escaping it. i believe it always comes from heaven! (_father hilary shakes his head._) sir lyolf. i'm getting my morals mixed up in my old age, i suppose. but, by god, she loves him, ned, she loves him--who's that? (_father hilary looks out of window, makes a motion of silence._) father h. hush! he's come back. sir lyolf. i must tell him. father h. let us sound him first, and see what his feelings are. then we can judge whether it will be wise to let him know. _enter up steps and by door michael in a travelling cloak. he enters very listlessly. he has an expression of settled pensiveness and resignation, almost despair. he comes up very affectionately to his father, shakes hands, does the same to father hilary. then he sits down without speaking._ sir lyolf. have you come far to-day, michael? mich. no, only from casalta. i stayed there last night. sir lyolf. you are back rather sooner than you expected? mich. i had nothing to keep me away. one place is the same as another. father h. and about the future? have you made up your mind? mich. yes. i had really decided before i went away, but i wanted this week alone to be quite sure of myself, to be quite sure that i was right in taking this final step, and that i should never draw back. (_to father hilary._) you remember at saint decuman's isle, two years ago, you said you could give me a deeper peace than i could find within or around me? father h. and i can. and i will. mich. give me that peace. i need it. when can i be received? father h. when i have prepared you. mich. let it be soon. let it be soon. (_to his father._) this is a blow to you---- sir lyolf. you know best. i wish you could have seen your way to stay in your own church. mich. i was an unfaithful steward and a disobedient son to her. she is well rid of me. (_to father hilary._) you are sure you can give me that peace---- father h. if you'll but give me your will entirely, and let me break it in pieces. on no other condition. come and talk to me alone. (_trying to lead him off left._) sir lyolf. no--! (_goes to michael._) michael, you are at peace now, aren't you? (_michael looks at him._) father h. he will be soon. leave him to me. sir lyolf. no. i must know the truth from him. father h. you're wrong to torture him. sir lyolf (_to michael_). you are at peace now--at least, you are gaining peace, you are forgetting the past? father h. he will. he shall. say no more. (_to michael._) come with me,--i insist! sir lyolf. no. michael, before you take this last step answer me one question--i have a reason for asking. tell me this truly. if by any chance someone in england--someone who was dear to you---- mich. oh, don't speak of her-- (_turns away, hides his head for a minute, turns round with a sudden outburst._) yes, speak of her! speak of her! i haven't heard her name for so long! let me hear it again--audrie! audrie! father h. (_sternly to sir lyolf_). do you hear? let him alone. don't torment him by dragging up the past. he has buried it. mich. no! no! no! why should i deceive you? why should i deceive myself? all this pretended peace is no peace! there is no peace for me without her, either in this world or the next! father h. hush! hush! how dare you speak so! mich. i must. the live agony of speech is better than the dead agony of silence, the eternal days and nights without her! forget her? i can't forget! look! (_takes out a faded red rose._) sir lyolf. what is it? mich. a flower she threw me in church the last time i saw her. and i wouldn't take it! i sent her away! i sent her away! and her flower was trampled on. the next night i got up in the middle of the night and went over to the church and found it on the altar steps. i've kept it ever since. (_to his father._) talk to me about her. i want somebody to talk to me about her. tell me something you remember of her--some little speech of hers.--do talk to me about her. sir lyolf. my poor fellow! mich. i can't forget. the past is always with me! i live in it. it's my life. you think i'm here in this place with you--i've never been here. i'm living with her two years ago. i have no present, no future. i've only the past when she was with me. give me the past! oh! give me back only one moment of that past, one look, one word from her--and then take all that remains of me and do what you like with it. oh! (_goes back to bench, sits._) sir lyolf (_to father hilary_). you see! i must tell him---- father h. no, not while he's in this mad state. let's quiet him first. sir lyolf. then we'll take him to her! father h. when he is calmer. sir lyolf. take care it isn't too late. father h. (_goes to michael, puts his hand on michael's shoulder_). this is weakness. be more brave! control yourself! mich. have i not controlled myself? who trained and guided himself with more care than i? who worked as i worked, prayed as i prayed, kept watch over himself, denied himself, sacrificed himself as i did? and to what end? who had higher aims and resolves than i? they were as high as heaven, and they've tumbled all round me! look at my life, the inconsequence, the inconsistency, the futility, the foolishness of it all. what a patchwork of glory and shame! control myself? why? let me alone! let me drift! what does it matter where i go? i'm lost in the dark! one way is as good as another! (_the vesper bell heard off at some little distance._) father h. you've wandered away from the road, and now you complain that the maps are wrong. get back to the highway, and you'll find that the maps are right. mich. forgive me, uncle ned--i'm ashamed of this. i shall get over it. i'll talk with you by and by. i will submit myself. i will be ruled. father, come to me. you nursed me yourself night after night when i was delirious with the fever. i was a child then. i'm a child now. talk to me about her. talk to me about audrie! (_audrie's face, wasted and hectic, appears just over the doorstep, coming up the steps at back; during the following conversation she raises herself very slowly and with great difficulty up the steps, leaning on the wall._) mich. i've heard nothing of her. where do you think she is? in england? i think i could be patient, i think i could bear my life if i knew for certain that all was well with her. if i could know that she is happy--no, she isn't happy--i know that. sir lyolf. michael, i've had some news of her. mich. news! good? bad? quick! tell me. sir lyolf. you can bear it? mich. she's dead? and i never went to her! i never went to her! she won't forgive me! sir lyolf. she's not dead. mich. what then? sir lyolf. you promised you'd go to her if she sent for you. mich. yes. sir lyolf. she has sent for you. (_sees her entering._) mich. she's dying? (_she has gained the door, just enters, leaning back against the post. michael's back is towards her._) audr. i'm afraid i am. (_michael looks at her, utters a wild cry of joy, then looks at her more closely, realizes she is dying, goes to her, kisses her, bursts into sobs._) audr. (_putting her hand on his head_). don't cry. i'm past crying for. help me there. (_points to seat._) (_he seats her; looks at her with great anxiety._) audr. (_laughing, a little weak feeble laugh, and speaking feebly with pause between each word_). don't pull--that--long--face. you'll--make me--laugh--if you--do. and i want to be--serious now. mich. but you're dying! audr. (_with a sigh_). yes. can't help it. sir lyolf, pay--coachman--(_taking out purse feebly_) outside--no, perhaps--better--wait--or bring another sort--of--carriage. but no mutes--no feathers--no mummery. sir lyolf. i'll send him away. you'll stay with us now? audr. (_nods_). so sorry--to intrude. won't be very long about it. (_exit sir lyolf by door and steps; michael is standing with hands over eyes._) father h. (_coming to audrie_). can i be of any service, any comfort to you? audr. no, thanks. i've been dreadfully wicked--doesn't much--matter, eh? can't help it now. haven't strength to feel sorry. so sorry i can't feel sorry. father h. there is forgiveness---- audr. yes, i know. not now. want to be with him. (_indicating michael._) _sir lyolf re-enters by steps._ sir lyolf. come, ned---- audr. (_to father hilary_). come back again--in--few minutes. i shall want you. i've been dreadfully wicked. but i've built a church--and--(_feverishly_) i've loved him--with all my heart--and a little bit over. (_exeunt sir lyolf and father hilary, door left._) audr. (_motioning michael_). why didn't you come when i sent for you? mich. i've only known this moment. why didn't you send before? audr. i sent you hundreds--of messages--from my heart of hearts. didn't you get them? mich. yes--every one. audr. i've crawled all over europe after you. and you aren't worth it--yes, you are. you wouldn't come---- mich. yes--anywhere--anywhere--take me where you will. audr. you know--he's dead. i'm free. mich. is it so? but it's too late. audr. yes. pity! not quite a well-arranged world, is it? hold my hand. we're not to be parted? mich. no. audr. sure? mich. quite sure. you're suffering? audr. no--that's past--(_shuts her eyes. he watches her._) very comfortable--very happy--just like going into a delicious faint--(_sighs._) do you remember--beautiful sunrise--diamonds on the sea---- mich. yes, i remember--all--every moment! and the wind that blew us together when we stood on the cliff! oh! we were happy then--i remember all! all! all! audr. so glad your memory's good at last. (_a vesper hymn heard off at some distance._) pity to die on such a lovely evening--not quite well-arranged world? but we were happy--if the next world has anything as good it won't be much amiss. i'm going. fetch--priest--(_michael is going to door left; she calls him back._) no. no time to waste. don't leave me. we shan't be parted? mich. no! no! no! no! audr. (_gives a deep sigh of content, then looks up at his mother's picture_). she's there? (_michael nods._) she'll forgive me! (_blows a little kiss to the picture._) but i'm your angel--i'm leading you---- mich. yes. where? audr. i don't know. don't fuss about it. "le bon dieu nous pardonnera: c'est son métier"--(_closes her eyes._) not parted? (_looks up at him._) mich. no! no! no! no! audr. you won't keep me waiting too long? (_looks up at him, a long deep sigh of content._) hold my hand--tight! tight! oh! don't look so solemn---- (_begins to laugh, a ripple of bright, feeble laughter, growing louder and stronger, a little outburst, then a sudden stop, as she drops dead. michael kisses her lips, her face, her hands, her dress._) _enter father hilary._ mich. take me! i give my life, my will, my soul, to you! do what you please with me! i'll believe all, do all, suffer all--only--only persuade me that i shall meet her again! (_throws himself on her body._) curtain. printed in the united states of america. michael and his lost angel. a new and original drama. by henry arthur jones. mo. cloth. cents. press notices. "in 'michael and his lost angel' mr. henry arthur jones has enriched, not our theatre only, but our literature, with a beautiful love-story. . . . where shall we look, in modern fiction or drama, for a large, simple, lyrical love-story, neither philosophic, nor analytic, nor moral, but celebrating with the directness of a ballad or folk-tale, the potency for life or death of the divine illusion? i can think of nothing which so nearly fulfils this definition as mr. jones's finely inspired romance. it is by far--oh, very far!--the best thing he has done." --william archer in _the world._ "one of the great comforts of criticising the work of mr. henry arthur jones is that the critic can go straight to the subject-matter without troubling about the dramatic construction. in the born writer the style is the man; and with the born dramatist the play is the subject. mr. jones's plays grow: they are not cut out of bits of paper and stuck together. . . . when i respond to the appeal of mr. jones's art by throwing myself sympathetically into his characteristic attitude of mind, i am conscious of no shortcoming in 'michael and his lost angel.' it then seems to me to be a genuinely sincere and moving play, feelingly imagined, written with knowledge as to the man and insight as to the woman by an author equipped not only with the experience of an adept playwright, and a kindly and humorous observer's sense of contemporary manners, but with that knowledge of spiritual history in which mr. jones's nearest competitors seem so stupendously deficient. its art is in vital contact with the most passionate religious movement of its century, as fully quickened art always has been. . . . the melancholy truth of the matter is that the english stage got a good play, and was completely and ignominiously beaten by it." --george bernard shaw in _the saturday journal._ "exquisitely touching, human, sad, and painful is the new play by mr. henry arthur jones. . . . mr. jones has the courage of his convictions, and presents uncompromisingly his problem. that his work is as capable as it is thorough will also be conceded. 'michael and his lost angel' is a fine, we are not sure that we ought not to say a great play. granting the choice of a subject, it is difficult to imagine treatment more masterly or more effective than it receives." --_daily graphic._ "in his latest effort mr. henry arthur jones may not have written a play that will appeal to the taste of the average playgoer, but he has unquestionably produced a noble, and we may also add, a great work. it is serious in tone throughout, there is a rigid adherence to its single theme, and he has made no. attempt to lighten the subject by side issues, or lower it by the introduction of any motive or thought below the high level of achievement which, it is self-evident, he marked out for himself. we are no upholders of the morbid drama, of that dragging on to the stage social horrors merely for stage effect, but if we are to have a serious drama then let it be of the quality of 'michael and his lost angel' produced last night at the lyceum with but equivocal success. mr. jones has given us a play of heart-searching truth, a play based on the aspirations and failings of two souls, of love in conflict with religion. he has brought to bear on it a depth of study and insight into the workings of the human heart most profoundly true, and he has clothed the skeleton of his drama with language so noble and expressive that a single hearing enables one to do it only faint justice. a powerful command of the english tongue has long been acknowledged to be among mr. jones's especial gifts, and never before has he, from the purely literary point of view, accomplished anything so refined and poetical in expression, so instinct with the true language of the heart. whatever may be the success of the new play from the box-office point of view, there is no doubt that it will rank in the minds of thoughtful men as his finest work." --_morning advertiser._ "mr. henry arthur jones has written his masterpiece--of this there can be no doubt. but whether 'michael and his lost angel' will achieve a popular success depends entirely upon how far popular judgment is able to appreciate this work--deeply sombre, terribly real, and heartrending from first to last--and whether following with awe its judiciously-set lesson on the frailty of woman and man, the mind will not be too much taxed by serious thoughts to consider 'michael and his lost angel' in the light of an evening's amusement. . . . the fact remains that mr. jones has, with the power of a master, constructed a play of engrossing interest, knit together with a strength and breadth of grasp which leaves a feeling of astonishment at the close of the play, astonishment, because the picturesqueness, and the sorrowful reality of the play are borne down upon you with a force and intenseness that leave no escape for the mind to speculate or to anticipate. the fascination of the picture is absorbing and complete, and one bounds back to stalls and human faces at the close of each act with a thud in the brain." --_court journal._ other works by henry arthur jones. saints and sinners. a new and original drama of middle-class life, in five acts. mo. cloth. cents. the crusaders. an original comedy of modern london life. mo. cloth. cents. judah. an original play in three acts. mo. cloth. cents. the masqueraders. an original play. _in the press._ the renascence of the english drama. essays, lectures, and fragments relating to the modern english stage, written and delivered in the years - . mo. cloth. $ . . macmillan & co., fifth avenue, new york. transcriber's note this transcription is based on scanned images posted by the internet archive from a copy made available by the university of california: archive.org/details/michaelhislostan joneiala this copy is a reprint of the edition published in may . in preparing this transcription, the copy held by the library of congress was also consulted. images of this copy are posted at: archive.org/details/michaelhislostan jone the loc copy appears to be an advance proof submitted to secure copyright in the united states. the title page of the loc copy was date-stamped on december , , and the play opened in london in january . subsequent printings by macmillan have a copyright date of and a date of publication of may . the loc copy was compared with the copy used in the transcription as well as a copy printed in held by the robarts library at the university of toronto and posted at: archive.org/details/michaelandhislos joneuoft the pagination of the loc copy and the other consulted copies is essentially the same. the differences between the loc copy and the play as subsequently printed by macmillan include: - the "preface" and "author's note" were added to the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, the stage direction reads: "_showing to the right part of cleveheddon minster in ruins._" in the edition, "_a_" has been inserted before "_part_". - on p. of the loc copy, the stage direction reads: "_supported by a protestant sister._ in the edition, the words "_a protestant_" have been changed to "_an anglican_". - on p. of the loc copy, a line of michael's reads: "those of you who have been moved by all the awful lesson of this morning. . ." in the edition, "all" has been deleted. - on p. , at the end of act i, after the line "your bad angel has kissed your good angel," the following stage direction was added to the edition: "(_a mock curtsey to him._)" - on p. , audrie's line "he kicked her on the eye. . ." in the loc copy was changed to "he kicked her on the nose. . ." in the edition. - on p. , the tableau at the end of act ii is different. in the loc copy, the stage direction reads "(_takes both her hands in his, very slowly._)" and michael repeats the line "no boat will come to-night!" followed by "very slow curtain." in the edition, the stage direction reads "(_they stand looking at each other._)" followed by "very slow curtain." - on p. of the loc copy, audrie has the line, "my memory is good for such trifles. forget you?!" the exclamation mark is deleted in the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, in the scene description at the beginning of act iv, the phrase "_large brass candlesticks on altar with lighted candles._" is followed by "_the altar covered with flowers._" the second phrase is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, the stage direction at the beginning of act iv describes "_the organ boy_" as "_a refined lad about fifteen_". the word "_refined_" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, the stage direction reads: "_rose is in a protestant sister's dress_". in the edition, the words "_a protestant_" have been changed to "_an anglican_". - on p. of the loc copy, audrie has the line, "life's the matter with me, i think, old girl." the phrase "old girl" is deleted from the edition. - the edition corrects for the missing period at the end of milly's line "oh, you give me the creeps" on p. of the loc copy. - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "ned, i believe she's dying." "ned" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "ned, she has come from england with the one hope of seeing him." "ned" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "i wish he'd come back, ned." "ned" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "ned, i believe it always comes from heaven!" "ned" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "i must tell him, ned." "ned" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, michael enters "_in the dress of a monk, but without a tonsure._" in the edition, he enters "_in a travelling cloak._" - on p. of the loc copy, the stage direction ends with "_then he sits down without speaking._)" the closing parenthesis was deleted in the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, michael has the line, "when can i take the vows?" in the edition, this line was changed to "when can i be received?" - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "no--! wait, ned. (_goes to michael._) michael, you are at peace now, aren't you?" "wait, ned" is deleted from the edition. - on p. of the loc copy, sir lyolf has the line, "no, ned." "ned" is deleted from the edition. the advertising included at the end of the copy held by the robarts library is also included in this transcription. this advertising was included in neither the reprint nor the loc copy. for consistency, closing parentheses were added at the end of stage directions on the following pages: - on p. , at the end of the stage direction that begins "_sits himself resolutely at table_". - on p. , at the end of the stage direction that begins "_she goes out again_". one man's view by leonard merrick with an introduction by granville barker hodder & stoughton london--new york--toronto introduction this story can be said to date, though quite in the sense that a story legitimately may. it is historic, though that is not to say old-fashioned. if one searches by internal evidence for the time of its writing, might be a safe guess. it was about then that many londoners (besides the american girls in the story) were given their first glimpse of niagara at the panorama near victoria street. the building is a motor garage now; it lies beneath the cliffs of queen anne's mansions; aeroplanes may discover its queer round roof. and it was in an ageing past too--for architectural ages veritably flash by in new york--that broadway could be said to spread into the "brightness of union square." to-day there is but a chaos of dingy decay owning to that name. soon it will be smart skyscrapers, no doubt; when the tide of business has covered it, as now the tide of fashion leaves it derelict. duluth, too, with its "storekeepers spitting on wooden sidewalks"! duluth foresees a lake front that will rival chicago. but in such honest "dating," and in the inferences we may draw from it, lie perhaps some of the peculiar merits of mr. merrick's method--his straight telling of a tale. and digging to the heart of the book, the one man's view of his faithless wife--more importantly too, the wife's view of herself--is, in a sense, an "historic" view. not, of course, in its human essentials. those must be true or false of this man and this woman whenever, however they lived and suffered. such sufferings are dateless. and whether they are truly or falsely told, let the reader judge. no preface-writer need pre-judge for him. for in such things, the teller of the tale, from the heart of his subject, speaks straight to the heart and conscience of his audience, and will succeed or fail by no measurable virtue of style or wit, but by the truth that is in him, by how much of it they are open to receive. look besides with ever so slightly an historical eye at the circumstances in which the lives of these two were set to grow, and to flourish or perish, as it was easier or harder to tend them. see the girl with her simple passion for the theatre--so apt a channel for her happy ambition as it appears--and that baulked, her very life baulked. to-day, this war-day, and most surely for the immediate enfranchised to-morrow breaking so close, the same girl will turn her back light-heartedly on the glamour of that little tinselled world to many another prospect of self-fulfilment. and the lawyer, lost in his law. if a solicitor-generalship is his aim, he will be worldly-wise enough, one hopes, to come home not too tired to make at least a passably attractive figure at his wife's well-chosen dinner-parties. or is that phase of english government now also to pass? no; for probably a country will always be governed from its dinner-tables, while its well-being is finally determined by their quality! mamie to-day, though, would be doing more than give dinners. it is a question if the mamie of to-morrow will have time to. and the literary flâneur--the half-hearted seducer of passionless ladies--is he out of date? mr. merrick implies the quite wholesome truth that he always was. through books and bookish dreams--beautiful, wise dreams--lies the passage to life of many boys and girls. but the healthiest instincts in them are seeking still a real world in which it will be both sane and fine to live. their dreams are mostly a hard test of it when it is found; and, oh, the pity if the finding it quite breaks their dream! in sum, then, it was mamie's tragedy to seek her realities during a phase of art and letters which, in their utter unreality, seemed to deny the very existence of any real world at all. neither true art nor true letters then; they were so turning from reality with fear. are they still denying it to-day? if so this story does not date at all, and mamie's tragedy is a tragedy of our time. for tragedy it is, even though in _one man's view_ she finds at last reposeful salvation of a sort. but our hope is better. and half our pleasure in the story and in its historical truth is the thought that, true author as he is, were he writing it to-day, and of to-day, mr. merrick would have written it just so much differently. granville barker. chapter i the idea was so foreign to his temperament that heriot was reluctant to believe that he had entertained it even during a few seconds. he continued his way past the big pink house and the girl on the balcony, surprised at the interest roused in him by this chance discovery of her address. of what consequence was it where she was staying? he had noticed her on the terrace, by the band-stand one morning, and admired her. in other words, he had unconsciously attributed to the possessor of a delicious complexion, and a pair of grey eyes, darkly fringed, vague characteristics to which she was probably a stranger. he had seen her the next day also, and the next--even hoped to see her; speculated quite idly what her social position might be, and how she came beside the impossible woman who accompanied her. all that was nothing; his purpose in coming to eastbourne was to be trivial. but why the sense of gratification with which he had learnt where she lived? as to the idea which had crossed his brain, that was preposterous! of course, since the pink house was a boarding establishment, he might, if he would, make her acquaintance by the simple expedient of removing there, but he did not know how he could have meditated such a step. it was the sort of semi-disreputable folly that a man a decade or so younger might commit and describe as a "lark." no doubt many men a decade or so younger would commit it. he could conceive that a freshly-painted balcony, displaying a pretty girl for an hour or two every afternoon, might serve to extend the clientèle of a boarding-house enormously, and wondered that more attention had not been paid to such a form of advertisement. for himself, however---- his hair was already thinning at the temples; solicitors were deferential to him, and his clerk was taking a villa in brixton; for himself, it would not do! eastbourne was depressing, he reflected, as he strolled towards the dumpy wish tower. he was almost sorry that he hadn't gone to sandhills and quartered himself on his brother for a week or two instead. francis was always pleased to meet him of recent years, and no longer remarked early in the conversation that he was "overdrawn at cox's." on the whole, francis was not a bad fellow, and sandhills and pheasants would have been livelier. he stifled a yawn, and observed with relief that it was near the dinner-hour. in the evening he turned over the papers in the smoking-room. he perceived, as he often did perceive in the vacations, that he was lonely. vacations were a mistake: early in one's career one could not afford them, and by the time one was able to afford them, the taste for holidays was gone. this hotel was dreary, too. the visitors were dull, and the cooking was indifferent. what could be more tedious than the meal from which he had just risen?--the feeble soup, the flaccid fish, the uninterrupted view of the stout lady with the aquiline nose, and a red shawl across her shoulders. now he was lolling on a morocco couch, fingering the _the field_; two or three other men lay about, napping, or looking at the _the graphic_. there was a great deal of tobacco-smoke, and a little whisky; he might as well have stopped in town and gone to the club. he wondered what they did in belle vue mansion after dinner. perhaps there was music, and the girl sang? he could fancy that she sang well. or they might have impromptu dances? personally he did not care for dancing, but even to see others enjoying themselves would be comparatively gay. after all, why should he not remove to belle vue mansion if he wished? he had attached a significance to the step that it did not possess, making it appear absurd by the very absurdity of the consideration that he accorded it. he remembered the time when he would not have hesitated--those were the days when francis was always "overdrawn at cox's." well, he had worked hard since then, and anything that francis might have lent him had been repaid, and he had gradually acquired soberer views of life. perhaps he might be said to have gone to an extreme, indeed, and taken the pledge! he sometimes felt old, and he was still in the thirties. francis was the younger of the two of late, although he had a boy in the brigade; but elder sons often kept young very long--it was easy for them, like the way of righteousness to a bishop.... a waiter cast an inquiring glance round the room, and, crossing to the sofa, handed him a card. heriot read the name with astonishment; he had not seen the man for sixteen years, and even their irregular correspondence had died a natural death. "my dear fellow!" he exclaimed in the hall. "come inside." in the past, of which he had just been thinking, he and dick cheriton had been staunch friends, none the less staunch because cheriton was some years his senior. dick had a studio in howland street then, and was going to set the academy on fire. in the meanwhile he wore a yellow necktie, and married madly, and smoked a clay pipe; he could not guarantee that he would be an r.a., but at least he was resolved that he would be a bohemian. he had some of the qualifications for artistic success, but little talent. when he discovered the fact beyond the possibility of mistake, he accepted a relative's offer of a commercial berth in the united states, and had his hair cut. the valedictory supper in the studio, at which he had renounced ambition, and solemnly burned all his canvases that the dealers would not buy, had been a very affecting spectacle. "my dear fellow!" cried heriot. "come inside. this is a tremendous pleasure. when did you arrive?" "came over in the _germanic_, ten days ago. it _is_ you, then; i saw 'george heriot' in the visitors' list, and strolled round on the chance. i scarcely hoped---- how are you, old man? i'm mighty glad to see you--fact!" "you've been here ten days?" "not here, no; i've only been in eastbourne a few hours." "you should have looked me up in town." "i tried. your chambers were shut." "the hall-porter at the club----" "what club? you forget what an exile i am!" "have a drink? well, upon my word, this is very jolly! sit down; try one of these." "would you have recognised me?" asked cheriton, stretching his legs, and lighting the cigar. "you've changed," admitted heriot; "it's a long time. i've changed too." they regarded each other with a gaze of friendly criticism. heriot noted with some surprise that the other's appearance savoured little of the american man of business, or of the man of business outside america. his hair, though less disordered than it had been in the howland street period, was still rather longer than is customary in the city. it was now grey, and became him admirably. he wore a black velvet jacket, and showed a glimpse of a deep crimson tie. he no longer looked a bohemian, but he had acquired the air of a celebrity. "have you come home for good, cheriton?" cheriton shook his head. "i guess america has got me for life," he answered; "i'm only making a trip. and you? you're still at the bar, eh?" "oh, yes," said heriot drily; "i'm still at the bar." it is not agreeable, when you have succeeded in a profession, to be asked if you are in it still. "i've travelled along the lines on which you left me--it doesn't make an exciting narrative. chambers, court, and bed. a laundress or two has died in the interval. the thing pays better than it used to do, naturally; that's all." "you're doing well?" "i should have called it 'doing well' once; but we are all olivers in our hearts. to-day----" "mistake!" said the elder man. "you wanted the bar--you've got the bar; you ought to be satisfied. now _i_----" "yes?" said heriot, as he paused. "how's the world used you, cheriton? by the way, you never answered my last letter, i think." "it was _you_ who didn't answer _me_." "i fancy not. you were going to chicago, and i wrote----" "i wrote after i arrived in chicago." "well, it must be five years ago; we won't argue. what did you do in chicago, cheriton?" "no good, sir. i went there with a patent horse-collar. capital invention--not my own, i never invented anything!--but it didn't catch on. they seemed to take no interest in horse-collars; no money in it, not a cent! after the horse-collar i started in the dry-goods trade; but i was burned out. from chicago i went to duluth; i've an hotel there to-day." "an hotel?" "that's so. it isn't a distinguished career, running a little hotel, but it's fairly easy. compared with hustling with horse-collars it's luxurious. duluth is not ideal, but what would you have! i make my way, and that's all i ask now. if i had my life over again----" he sighed. "if we could have our lives over again, eh, heriot?" "humph!" said heriot doubtfully; he was wondering if he could make any better use of his own--if he would be any livelier the next time he was eight-and-thirty. "i suppose we all blunder, of course." "_you_ are a young man yet; it's different for you; and you're in the profession of your choice: it's entirely different. we don't look at the thing from the same standpoint, heriot." "you don't mean that you regret giving up art?" "sir," said cheriton mournfully, "it was the error i shall always regret. i wouldn't say as much to anybody else; i keep it here"--he tapped his velvet jacket--"but i had a gift, and i neglected it; i had power, and--and i run an hotel. when i reflect, man, there are hours--well, it's no use crying over spilt milk; but to think of the position i should have made, and to contrast it with what i am, is bitter!" he swept back his wavy hair impatiently, and in the momentary pose looked more like a celebrity still. heriot could see that the cherished delusion gave him a melancholy pleasure, and was at a loss how to reply. "it was uphill work," he said at last. "who can tell? luck----" "i was a lad, an impetuous lad; and i was handicapped--i married." the man with a failure to explain is always grateful to have married. "but i had the stuff in me, i had the temperament. 'had' it? i have it now! i may keep an hotel, but i shall never be an hotel-keeper. god gave me my soul, sir; circumstances gave me an hotel. i mayn't paint any more, but an artist by nature i shall always be. i don't say it in any bragging spirit, heriot; i should be happier if i didn't feel it. the commonplace man may be contented in the commonplace calling: he fills the rôle he was meant for. it's the poor devil like myself, who knows what he _might_ have been, who suffers." heriot didn't pursue the subject; he puffed his cigar meditatively. after the effervescence subsides, such meetings must always have a little sadness; he looked at the wrinkles that had gathered on his friend's face, and realised the crow's-feet on his own. "you lost your wife, you wrote me?" he remarked, breaking a rather lengthy silence. "in new york, yes--pneumonia. _you_ never married, eh?" "no. do you stay over here long?" "a month or two; i can't manage more. but i shall leave my girl in london. i've brought her with me, and she'll remain." "of course," said heriot, "you have a child--of course you have! i remember a little thing tumbling about in howland street. she must be a woman, cheriton?" "mamie is twenty-one. i want to see if i can do anything for her before i go back. she loathes duluth; and she has talent. she'll live with my sister. i don't think you ever saw my sister, did you? she's a widow, and stagnates in wandsworth--mamie will be company for her." "your daughter paints?" "no, not paints; she wants to be an actress. i wasn't very keen on it; but she's got the material in her, and i concluded i'd no right to say 'no.' still, she's not very strong--takes after her mother, i'm afraid, a little; i'd rather she'd had a gift for something else." "was it necessary for her to have a gift at all?" asked heriot, a shade sarcastically. "couldn't she stop at home?" "well," said cheriton, "she tried it, but it's a hard thing for a girl like mamie to content herself with the life in duluth. there isn't much art in that, heriot; there isn't much anything. there's the lake, and superior street, and the storekeepers lounging in the doorways and spitting on the wooden sidewalks. and there's a theatre of a sort--which made her worse. for a girl panting to be famous, duluth is a hell. she's been breaking her heart in it ever since she was sixteen; and after all, it's in the blood. it would have been odd if my daughter _hadn't_ had the artistic temperament, i suppose!" "i suppose it would," said heriot. "well, why doesn't she go on the stage in america? i shouldn't think she'd find it easy here." "she wouldn't find it easy there. there's no stock company in duluth; only the travelling companies come sometimes for a few nights. there's no bigger opportunity for her on the other side than on this. besides, she wants the english stage. i wonder if you know anybody who could give her any introductions?" "i? not a soul!" "i'm sorry to hear you say that," said cheriton blankly; "i was counting on you some." heriot looked at him. "you counted on _me_? for heaven's sake, why?" "well, i don't know many people over here to-day, you see; the fellows i used to knock against have died, gone to the colonies--fizzled out. you were solid; and you were a swell, with connections and all that. i understand the stage has become very fashionable in london--i thought you might meet actor-managers at dinners and things. that was the idea; i daresay it was very stupid, but i had it. i mentioned your name to mamie as soon as it was settled we should come. however, we'll fix the matter somehow." "i'm sorry to prove a disappointment," said heriot. "tell your daughter so for me. i'd do what you want with pleasure, if i were able. you know that, i'm sure?" "oh, i know that," said cheriton; "it can't be helped. yes, i'll tell her. she _will_ be disappointed, of course; she understands how difficult the thing is without influence, and i've talked about you a lot." "do you think you were wise to--to----" "oh, it was a mistake as it turns out!" "i don't mean that only. i mean, do you think you were wise to encourage her hopes in such a direction at all? frankly, if _i_ had a daughter---- forgive me for speaking plainly." "my dear fellow! your daughter and mine!--their paths would be as wide apart as the poles. and you don't know mamie!" "at all events i know that the stage is more overcrowded every year. most girls are stage-struck at some time or other; and there are hundreds of actresses who can't earn bread-and-cheese. a man i know has his type-writing done by a woman who used to be on the stage. she played the best parts in the country, i believe, and, i daresay, nursed the expectation of becoming a bernhardt. she gets a pound a week in his office, he tells me, and was thankful to obtain the post." "mamie is bound to come to the front. she's got it--she's an artist born. i tell you, i should be brutal to stand in the way of her career; the girl is pining, really pining, for distinction! when you've talked to her you'll change your views." "perhaps," said heriot, as the shortest way of ending the discussion; "very likely i'm wrong." the budding genius bored him. "mind you explain to the young lady that my inability, and not my will, refuses, at any rate." "that's all right," declared cheriton, getting up. "i told her i was coming round to see if it was you." he laughed. "i bet she's picturing me coming back with a bushel of letters of introduction from you by now! well, i must be going; it's getting late." "you brought her down to eastbourne to-day?" "oh, i've been dangling about town a little by myself; mamie and my sister have been here a week. good-night, old chap; shall i see you to-morrow? you might give us a look in if you will--say in the afternoon. belle vue mansion; don't forget!" "where?" exclaimed heriot, startled into interest. "belle vue mansion," repeated cheriton, gripping his hand. "you can't miss it: a big pink house on the esplanade." chapter ii heriot betook himself there on the following day with a curious eagerness. if the girl he had noticed should prove to be cheriton's daughter, how odd it would be! he at once hoped for the coincidence, and found the possibility a shade pathetic. it emphasised his years to think that the ill-kept child of the dirty studio might have become the girl he had admired. his progress during the interval appeared momentarily insignificant to him; he felt that while a brat became a woman he ought to have done much more. he was discouraged to reflect that he had not taken silk; for he had always intended to take silk, and had small misgivings that he would have cause to repent it. his practice had indicated for some time that he would not suffer by the step, and yet he had delayed his application. his motto had been, "slow and sure," but it seemed to him suddenly that he had been too slow; his income as a junior should not have contented him so long. he pulled the bell, and was preceded up the stairs by a maid-servant, who opened a door, and announced him to the one occupant of the room. heriot saw that she was the girl of the balcony and the terrace, and that she moved towards him smiling. "i am mamie cheriton," she said. "my father is expecting you." her intonation was faintly american, but her voice was full and sweet. he took her hand with pleasure, and a touch of excitement that did not concord with his countenance, which was formal and impassive. "i am glad to make your acquaintance, miss cheriton." "won't you sit down?" she said. "he will be here in a minute." heriot took a seat, and decided that her eyes were even lovelier than he had known. "when i saw you last, you were a child," he remarked inaccurately. "yes; it must have astonished you meeting my father again after so many years. it was funny, your being here, wasn't it?... but perhaps you often come to eastbourne?" "no," said heriot, "no, i don't often come. how does it strike you, miss cheriton? i suppose you can hardly remember england, can you?" "well, i shan't be sorry to be settled in london; it was london i was anxious to go to, not the sea-shore.... do you say 'sea-shore' in europe, or is it wrong? when i said 'sea-shore' this morning, i noticed that a woman stared at me." "one generally says 'seaside' over here; i don't know that it's important." "well, the 'seaside' then. the seaside was my aunt's wish. well---- well, i'm saying 'well' too often, i guess?--that's american, too! i've got to be quite english--that's my first step. but at least i don't talk like americans in your comic papers, do i?" "you talk very delightfully, i think," he said, taken aback. "i hope you mean it. my voice is most important, you know. it would be very cruel if i were handicapped by having anything the matter with my voice. i shall have difficulties enough without!" "i'm afraid," he said, "that i'm unfortunate. i wish i could have done something to further the ambitions your father mentioned." she smiled again, rather wistfully this time. "they seem very absurd to you, i daresay?" he murmured deprecation: "why?" "the stage-struck girl is always absurd." recognising his own phrase, he perceived that he had been too faithfully reported, and was embarrassed. "i spoke hastily. in the abstract the stage-struck girl may be absurd, but so is a premature opinion." "thank you," she said. "but why 'stage-struck,' anyhow? it's a term i hate. i suppose you wanted to be a barrister, mr. heriot?" "i did," he confessed, "certainly. there are a great many, but i thought there was room for one more." "but you weren't described as 'bar-struck'?" "i don't think i ever heard the expression." "it would be a very foolish one?" "it would sound so to me." "why 'stage-struck' then? is it any more ridiculous to aspire to one profession than another? you don't say a person is 'paint-struck,' or 'ink-struck,' or anything else '-struck'; why the sneer when one is drawn towards the theatre? but perhaps _no_ form of art appears to you necessary?" "i think i should prefer to call it 'desirable,' since you ask the question," he said. "and 'art' is a word used to weight a great many trivialities too! everybody who writes a novel is an artist in his own estimation, and personally, i find existence quite possible without novels." "did you ever read _mademoiselle de maupin_?" asked miss cheriton. "have _you_?" he said quickly. "oh yes; books are very cheap in america. 'i would rather grow roses than potatoes,' is one of the lines in the preface. _you_ would rather grow potatoes than roses, eh?" "you are an enthusiast," said heriot; "i see!" he pitied her for being dick cheriton's daughter. she was inevitable: the pseudo-artist's discontent with realities--the inherited tendencies, fanned by thinly-veiled approval! he understood. cheriton came in after a few minutes, followed by the aunt, to whom heriot was presented. he found her primitive, and far less educated than her brother. she was very happy to see dear dick again, and she was sorry that she must lose him again so soon. dear mamie, though, would be a consolation. a third-rate suburban villa was stamped upon her; he could imagine her making hideous antimacassars for forbidding armchairs, and that a visit to an eastbourne boarding-house was the event of her life. she wore jet earrings, and stirred her tea with vast energy. with the circulation of the tea, strangers drifted into the room, and the conversation was continued in undertones. "have you been talking to mamie about her intentions?" cheriton inquired. "we've been chatting, yes. what steps do you mean to take, miss cheriton? what shall you do?" "i propose to go to the dramatic agents," she said, "and ask them to hear me recite." "dramatic agents must be kept fairly busy, i should say. what if they don't consent?" "i shall recite to them." "you are firm!" he laughed. "i am eager, mr heriot. i have longed till i am sick with longing. london has been my aim since i was a little girl. i have dreamt of it!--i've gone to sleep hoping that i might; i couldn't recall one of its streets, but in dreams i've reached it over and over again. the way was generally across lincoln park, in chicago; and all of a sudden i was among theatres and lights, and it was london!" "and you were an actress. and the audience showered bouquets!" "i always woke up before i was an actress. but now i'm here really, i mean to try to wake london up." "i hope you will," he said. her faith in herself was a little infectious, since she was beautiful. if she had been plain, he would have considered her conceited. "have i gushed?" she said, colouring. he was not sure but what she had. "she's like her father," said cheriton gaily; "get her on the subject of art, and her tongue runs away with her. we're all children, we artists--up in the skies, or down in the dumps. no medium with us! she must recite to _you_ one of these days, heriot; i want you to hear her." "will you, miss cheriton?" "if you like," she said. "dear mamie must recite to _me_," murmured mrs. baines; "i'm quite looking forward to it. what sort of pieces do you say, dear? nice pieces?" "she knows the parts of juliet, and rosalind, and pauline by heart," said cheriton, ignoring his sister. "i think you'll say her balcony scene is almost as fine a rendering as you've ever heard. there's a delicacy, a spiritual----" "has she been trained?" asked heriot; "i understood she was quite a novice." "i've coached her myself," replied cheriton complacently. "i don't pretend to be an elocutionist, of course; but i've been able to give her some hints. all the arts are related, you know, my boy--it's only a difference in the form of expression. they're playing _romeo and juliet_ at the theatre here to-night, and we're going; she never loses an opportunity for study. it's been said that you can learn as much by watching bad acting as good. will you come with us?" he added, lowering his voice. "you'll see how she warms up at the sight of the footlights." "i don't mind," said heriot, "if i shan't be in the way. suppose we all dine together at the hotel, and go on from there? what do you say?" he turned to the ladies, and the widow faltered: "lor, i'm sure it's very kind of you to invite me, mr. heriot. that _would_ be gay, wouldn't it!" she smoothed her flat hair tremulously, and left the decision to her brother and her niece. heriot took his leave with the understanding that he was to expect them, and sauntered along the parade more cheerfully than was his wont. the girl had not failed to impress him, though he disapproved of her tendencies; nor did these appear quite so preposterous to him now, albeit he thought them regrettable. he did not know whether he believed in her or not yet, but he was conscious that he wished to do so. his paramount reflection was that she would have been a wholly charming girl if she had had ordinary advantages--a finishing governess, and a london season, and a touch of conventionality. he disliked to use the word "conventionality," for it sounded priggish; but "conventionality" was what he meant. at dinner, however, and more especially after it, he forgot his objections. in the theatre he watched miss cheriton more attentively than the stage. she herself sat with her eyes riveted on it, and he could see that she was the prey to strong excitement. he wondered whether this was created by the performance, which seemed to him indifferent, or by the thoughts that it awoke, and he resolved to ask her. when the curtain fell, and they went out, he wasn't sorry that cheriton derided his suggestion of a cab and declared that the walk back would be agreeable. he kept by the girl's side, and the others followed. she did not speak, and after a minute he said: "will it jar upon you if i say, 'let us talk'?" she turned to him with a slight start. "of course not! how can you think me so ridiculous?" "yet it did!" said heriot; "i could see." "i know exactly how i appear," she said constrainedly. "i look an affected idiot. if you knew how i hate to appear affected! i give you my word i don't put it on; i can't help it. the theatre gives me hot and cold shivers, and turns me inside out. that isn't prettily expressed, but it describes what i mean as nearly as possible. am i 'enthusing' again?" "i never said you 'enthused' before. you're not my idea of--of 'the gushing girl' at all." "i'm glad to hear it. i was very ashamed when you had gone this afternoon." she hesitated painfully. "i wish i could explain myself, but i can't--without a pen. i can write what i feel much better than i can say it. i began to write a play once, and the girl said just what i felt. it was a bad play, but a big relief. i've sometimes thought that if i walked about with a pen in my hand, i should be a good conversationalist." "try to tell me what you feel without one," said heriot. "you encourage me to bore you. mr. heriot, i yearn, i crave, to do something clever. it isn't only vanity: half the craving is born of the desire to live among clever people. ever since i can remember i've ached to know artists, and actors, and people who write, and do things. i've been cooped among storekeepers without an idea in their heads; i've never seen a man or woman of talent in my life, excepting my father; i've never heard anybody speak who knew what art or ambition meant. you may laugh, but if i had it, i would give five hundred dollars to go home with some of those actresses to-night, and sit mum in a corner and listen to them." "don't you think it very likely you might be disappointed?" he asked. "i don't. i don't expect they would talk blank-verse at supper, but they would talk of their work, of their hopes. an artist must be an artist always--on the stage, or off it; in his studio, or in his club. my father is an instance: he could not be a philistine if he tried. he once said something i've always remembered; he said: 'god gave me my soul, child; circumstances gave me an hotel.' i thought it happily put." heriot perceived that cheriton had thought so too, as the "impromptu" had been repeated. "what a different world we should have lived in by now if he had kept in his profession!" she exclaimed. "i quiver when i realise what i've missed. people that i only know through their books, or the newspapers, would have been familiar friends. i should have seen swinburne smoking cigars in our parlour; and sarah bernhardt would have dropped in to tea and chatted about the rehearsal she had just left, and showed me the patterns of the new costumes she was ordering. isn't it wonderful?" in sympathy for her he said: "it's possible your father might have remained in england without becoming intimate with celebrities." she looked doubtful. "even if he hadn't--and one likes to believe in one's own father--the atmosphere would have been right. they mightn't have been swinburnes and bernhardts that were at home in our place--they might have been people the world hasn't heard of yet. but they would have talked of the time when the world was _going_ to hear of them. one can respect an obscure genius as much as a famous one." they had reached the door of belle vue mansion; and when he was begged to go in for half an hour, heriot did not demur. they had the drawing-room to themselves now, and cheriton descanted with relish on the qualifications for a successful actress. he had no knowledge of the subject, but possessed great fluency, and he spoke of "broad effects," and "communicable emotion," and "what he might call a matter of perspective" with an authority which came near to disguising the fact that there was little or no meaning in what he said. the girl sat pale and attentive, and mrs. baines listened vaguely, as she might have done to a discourse in chinese. relatives who came back from america and invited her to stay with them in a house where she cost two guineas a week, must be treated with deference; but the stage and the circus were of equal significance to her mind, and she would have simpered just as placidly if her niece had been anxious to jump through a hoop. her chief emotion was pride at being in a room with a barrister who, she had learnt, was the brother of a baronet; and she watched him furtively, with the anticipation of describing the event in lavender street, wandsworth, where the magnate was a gentleman who travelled in a brougham, and haberdashery. "would it be inconsiderate to ask you to recite to-night, miss cheriton?" inquired heriot. "don't, if you are too tired." she rose at once, as if compelling herself to subdue reluctance, and moved towards the bay of the window slowly. for a second or two after she stood there she did not speak, only her lips trembled. then she began portia's speech on mercy. in recitation her voice had the slight tremolo that is natural to many beginners who feel deeply; but its quality was delicious, and her obvious earnestness was not without effect. conscious that her gestures were stiff, she had chosen a speech that demanded little action, and it was not until she came to "therefore, jew, though justice be thy plea," that her hands, which she had clasped lightly in front of her, fell apart. with the change of position she seemed to acquire a dignity and confidence that made the climax triumphant, and though heriot could see that she had much to learn, his compliments were sincere. when he bade her good-night, she looked at him appealingly. "tell me the truth," she said under her breath; "i've only had my father's opinion. tell me the truth!" "i honestly believe you're clever," he answered. "i'm sure of it." he felt his words to be very cold compared with the sympathy that was stirring in him. the proprietress, who had entered, hovered about with an eye on the gas, and he repeated his adieux hurriedly. the interest that he already took in the question of miss cheriton's success surprised him. the day had had a charm that was new, and he found that he was eagerly anticipating the morrow. chapter iii on the pavements of the strand the snow had turned to slush; and from the river a fog was blowing up, which got into the girl's throat, and made her cough. she mounted a flight of gloomy stairs, and pulled a bell. already her bearing had lost something that had distinguished it in the summer: something of courage. she rang the bell deprecatingly, as if ashamed. the anteroom into which she passed had become painfully familiar to her, like the faces of many of the occupants. they all wore the same expression--an air of repressed eagerness, of diffidence striving to look assured. the walls were covered with theatrical photographs, and in a corner a pimply youth sat writing at a table. what he wrote nobody knew or cared. the crowd had but one thought--the door that communicated with the agent's private office, to which they prayed, though they were no longer sanguine, that they would gain admission. it was four o'clock, and at five the office would close. there were so many of them that it was impossible for mr. passmore to interview everybody. which of them would be lucky to-day? mamie also looked towards the door, and from the door back to her companions in distress. a little fair woman in a light fawn costume--terribly unsuitable to the season, but her least shabby--met her eyes and spoke. "have you got an appointment?" she asked in a low voice. "no." "oh, then you won't see him," said the little woman more cheerfully. "i thought, as you'd come in so late, that you had an appointment. _i've_ been here since twelve." the door opened, and mr. passmore appeared on the threshold. he did not say "good-afternoon" to his clients; he cast an indifferent gaze round the room, and signed to a cadaverous man who sat sucking the handle of his umbrella. "here! _you!_" he said, retiring again. the cadaverous man rose hurriedly, among envious glances, and twenty-five heads that had been lifted in expectation drooped dejectedly. the men whose watches were not pawned looked to see the time. "what's your line?" said the little woman, addressing mamie once more. "i beg your pardon? oh, i'm trying for my first engagement; i haven't acted yet at all." the other showed surprise and some contempt. "a novice, are you! good lord, it's no good your coming to the agents, my dear; they can't find shops for _us_." "i paid mr. passmore the usual fee," said mamie; "he promised he'd do what he could." the little woman smiled, and turned her shoulder to her, declining further discussion. another girl rang the bell, but withdrew with a sigh as she perceived the futility of waiting. the cadaverous man came out, with "an engagement" writ large upon his features. he stowed a type-written part into the pocket of his overcoat, and nodded good-bye to an acquaintance, whose cast of countenance proclaimed him a low comedian. "got anything, dear boy?" inquired the latter in a husky whisper. "they want me for the _white slaves_ company--the father. offered four. of course i refused point-blank. 'no,' i said, 'six.' 'oh,' he said, 'impossible!' i wouldn't budge; what do _you_ think! why, i had eight with kavanagh, and she's as good as booked me for her next tour. '_i_ don't mind,' i said; 'i'll go to the harcourts!' they've been trying to get me back, and he knows it. 'don't do that,' he said; 'say five, my boy!' 'six!' i said, 'and i only take it then to fill in.' 'well, they want you,' he said; 'you're the only man for the part, and i suppose you've got to have your own terms; but they wouldn't pay it to anybody else.'" his salary was to be three-pounds-ten, and he could have shed tears of relief to get it. "damn fine, old chap!" said the low comedian, who didn't believe him. "is the comedy part open, do you know? i might----" "don't think so; fancy they're complete." his manner was already condescending. "olive oil!" "now, i can't see you people to-day!" exclaimed mr. passmore, putting up his hands impatiently. "no good, miss forbes," as a girl made a dart towards him with a nervous smile that was meant to be ingratiating; "got nothing for you, it's no use.... what do _you_ want, my dear?" another lady, who found it embarrassing to explain her anxiety in public, faltered "that she had just looked in to hear if mr. passmore could kindly----" "nothing doing! perhaps later on. i'll let you know." "you _will_ bear me in mind, _won't_ you, mr. passmore?" she pleaded. "what?" he said. "oh, yes, yes; i'll drop you a postcard--i won't forget you. good-day." he did not even recollect her name. "can i speak to you, mr. passmore?" said mamie, rising. "you?" he said questioningly. "oh, i can't do anything for you yet! everything's made up--things are very quiet just now.... here, miss beaumont, i want a word with you." "give me a minute," persisted mamie. "i want an engagement; i don't care how small the part is. i'll be a servant, i'll be anything, i want a beginning! i recited to you, if you remember, and----" "did you?" he said. "oh, yes, yes, i remember--very nice. you wanted to play juliet!" he laughed. "i'll be _anything!_" she said again. "i'll give you double the commission if----" "have you got enough voice for chorus?" he asked testily. "how are your limbs?" "i want to be an actress," she said, flushing. "i mean to work!" "come on, miss beaumont!" he cried. and miss beaumont swept past her into the sanctum. the girl who six months ago had looked forward to playing juliet made her way down the dingy staircase drearily. this was but one of many dramatic agents with whom she had gone through the form of registering her name. mr. passmore's booking-fee had been five shillings; the booking-fee of most of the others had been five shillings; one had charged a guinea. all had been affable when she paid her first visit, and forgotten who she was when she paid her second; all had been reminded who she was, and failed to recognise her when she called again. she called on one or another of them every day, and contrived to gain such an interview as she had just had about once a week. she had taken in the theatrical papers and replied to shoals of advertisements, but as she had to state that she was a novice, nobody ever took any notice of her applications. she had haunted the stage-doors when she read that a new piece was to be produced, begging in vain to be allowed to see the manager. she had, in fine, done everything that was possible; and she was as far from securing an engagement as on the day that she arrived in england. and she had talent, and she was beautiful, and was prepared to begin upon the lowest rung of the ladder. the stage is generally supposed to be the easiest of all callings to enter. the girl who is unhappy at home, the boy who has been plucked for the army, the woman whose husband has failed on the stock exchange, all speak of "going on the stage" as calmly as if it were only necessary to take a stroll to get there. as a matter of fact, unless an extraordinary piece of luck befalls her, it is almost as difficult for a girl without influence, or a good deal of money, to become an actress as it is for her to marry a duke. she may be in earnest, but there are thousands who are in earnest; she may be pretty, but there are hundreds of pretty actresses struggling and unrecognised; she may be a genius, but she has no opportunity to display her gift until the engagement is obtained. and this is the tremendous obstacle. she can prove nothing; she can only say, "i feel i should succeed." if she is allowed to recite--and it is very rarely that she is--a recital is little or no test of her qualifications for the stage. she may recite cleverly, and as an actress be very indifferent. she has to beg to be taken on trust, while a myriad women, eager for the vacant part, can cry, "i can refer you to so-and-so; i have experience!" though other artistic professions may be as hard to rise in, there is probably none other in which it is quite so difficult to make the first steps. if a girl is able to write, she can sit alone in her bedroom, and demonstrate her capability; if she can paint, her canvases speak for her; if she pants to be a prima donna, she can open her mouth and people hear her sing. the would-be actress, alone among artists, can do nothing to show her fitness for the desired vocation until her self-estimate has been blindly accepted--and she may easily fail to do herself justice then, cast, as she will be, for minor parts entirely foreign to her bent. to succeed on the stage requires indomitable energy, callousness to rebuffs, tact, luck, talent, and facilities for living six or nine months out of the year without earning a shilling. to get on to the stage requires valuable introductions or considerable means. if a woman has neither, the chances are in favour of her seeking an opening vainly all her life. and as to a young man so situated who seeks it, he is endeavouring to pass through a brick wall. mamie descended the dingy staircase, and at the foot she saw the girl who had been addressed as "miss forbes." she was standing on the doorstep, gathering up her skirts. it had begun to snow again, and she contemplated the dark, damp street shrinkingly. an impulse seized mamie to speak as she passed. from such trifles great things sometimes followed, she remembered. she was at the age when the possibility of the happy accident recurs to the mind constantly--a will-o'-the-wisp that lightens the gloom. the reflection takes marvellous forms, and at twenty-one the famous actor--of the aspirant's imagination--who goes about the world crying, "a genius! you must come to me!" may be met in any omnibus. the famous actor of the aspirant's imagination is like the editor as conceived by the general public: he spends his life in quest of obscure ability. "if we're going the same way, i can offer you a share of my umbrella," she said. "oh, thanks!" said the girl in a slightly surprised voice; "i'm going to charing cross." "and _i'm_ going to victoria, so our road is the same," said mamie. a feeling of passionate pleasure suffused her as she moved away by the girl's side through the yellow fog. the roar of the strand had momentarily the music of her dreams while she yearned in duluth; the greatness of the city--the london of theatres, art, and books--throbbed in her veins. she was walking with an actress! "isn't it beastly?" said the girl. "i suppose you've got to train it?" "yes; i'm living at wandsworth. have _you_ far to go?" "notting hill. i take the bus. passmore hadn't got anything for you, had he?" mamie shook her head. "we were both unlucky; but perhaps it doesn't matter so much to you?" "doesn't it!... have you been on his books long, miss----?" "miss cheriton--mamie cheriton." "that's a good name; it sounds like a character in a play--as if she'd have a love-scene under the apple blossom! where were you last?" "at mr. faulkner's; but he didn't know of any vacancy either." "i don't mean that," said miss forbes; "i mean, how long have you been out?" "oh," answered mamie, "i left home at one o'clock; that's the worst of living such a long way off!" the other stared. "don't you understand?" she exclaimed. "i mean, what company were you in last, and when did it finish?" "oh, i see," stammered mamie. "i'm sorry to say i've everything in front of me! i've never had a part yet at all. i'm that awful thing--a novice." "crumbs!" said miss forbes. "i guess you actresses look down on novices rather?" "well, the profession is full enough already, goodness knows! still, i suppose we've all got a right to begin. i don't mind a novice who goes to the agents in the snow; it shows she means business anyhow. it's the amateurs who go to the managers in hansoms that i hate. but it's an awful struggle, my dear, take my word for it; you'd better stop at home if you can afford to. and passmore will never be any use to you. look at _me!_ i've been going to him for four months; and i played prince arthur on tour with sullivan when i was nine." "i _am_ looking at you," said mamie, smiling, "and envying you till i'm ill. you say passmore is no use: let me into a secret. what _can_ i do to get an engagement?" "blest if _i_ know, if you haven't got any friends to pull the strings! i'd like to know the secret myself. well," she broke off, "perhaps we shall meet again. i must say 'good evening' here; there's my bus." "don't go yet!" begged mamie. "won't you come and have some tea first?" miss forbes hesitated eloquently. "i shall get tea when i reach home," she murmured, "and i'm rather late." "oh, let me invite an actress to tea! do, please! it will be the next best thing to getting a part." "you're very kind. i don't mind, i'm sure. there's a place close by where they give you a pot for two for fourpence. you're american, aren't you?" "i've lived in america; i'm english really." they were soon seated at a table. mamie ordered a pot of tea, and muffins. "it's nice and warm in here," she said. "isn't it! i noticed you in the office. my name is mabel forbes; but i daresay you heard passmore speak to me?" "yes; he didn't speak very nicely, did he?" "they never do; they're all alike. they know we can't do without them, and they treat us like dirt. i tell you, it's awful; you don't know what you're letting yourself in for, my dear." "to succeed i'd bear anything, all the snubs and drudgery imaginable. i do know; i know it's not to be avoided. i've read the biographies of so many great actresses. i should think of the future--the reward. i'd set my teeth and _live_ for that time; and i'd work for it morning, noon, and night." "it would do me good to live with you, if we were on tour together," said miss forbes cheerfully; "you'd keep my pecker up, i think. i loathe sharing diggings with another girl, as a rule--one always quarrels with her, and, with the same bedroom, one has nowhere to go and cry. after they've been in the profession a few years they don't talk like you. not that there's really much in it," she added with a sigh. "to set your teeth and work morning, noon, and night sounds very fine, but what does it amount to? it means you'd get two-ten a week, and study leading business on the quiet till you thought you were as good as ellen terry. but if nobody made you an offer, what then?" "you mean it's possible to be really clever, and yet not to come to the front?" asked mamie earnestly. "how can you come to the front if no one gives you the opportunity? you may be liked where you are--in what you're doing--but you can't play lead in london unless a london manager offers you an engagement to play lead, can you? you can't make him! do you suppose the only clever actresses alive are those who're known? besides, if leading business is what you are thinking of, i don't believe you've the physique for it; you don't look strong enough. i should have thought light comedy was more your line." "it isn't. if i'm meant for anything, it's for drama, and--and tragedy. but i'd begin in the smallest way and be grateful. the ideas i had when i came to london have been knocked out of me--and they were moderate enough, too! i'd begin by saying that the 'dinner was ready.' surely it can't be so difficult to get an opening like that, if one knows how to set about it?" "well, look here, my dear. i played prince arthur with sullivan when i was nine, as i tell you, and i've been in the profession ever since. but i've been out of an engagement for four months now; all i could save out of my last screw has gone in bus fares and stamps--and my people haven't got any more money than they know how to spend. if an engagement to announce the dinner had been offered _me_ to-day, i'd have taken it and i'd be going back to notting hill happy." "i'm awfully sorry," said mamie sympathetically. "shall we have another muffin?" "no, i don't want any more, thanks. but you've no idea what a business it is! i've got talent and experience, and i'm not bad-looking, and yet you see how i've got to struggle. one is always too late everywhere. i was at the queen's this morning. there are always any number of small parts in the queen's things, you know, and i thought there might be a chance for _the pride of the troop_. they'd got everybody except the extra ladies. by the way, you might try to get on at the queen's as an extra, if you like. with your appearance you'd have a very good chance, i should say." mamie felt her heart stirring feverishly. "do you mean it?" she asked. "what are 'extras'--you don't mean 'supers'?" "oh, they're better than supers--different class, you know. of course they've nothing to say, except in chorus. they come on in the race-course scene and the ball-room and look nice. they wear swagger frocks--the management finds their dresses--and are supposed to murmur, and laugh, and act in dumb-show in the background. _you_ know! they're frightful fools--a girl who _could_ act a bit would stand out among extra ladies like a bernhardt at the ladbroke hall." "if they'd take me," said mamie, clasping her hands; "if they'd only take me! do you really think they will?" "it couldn't hurt to try. ask for mr. casey and tell him you want to 'walk on.' there, i've given you a hint, after all!" she exclaimed, as she got up; "one can't think of everything right off. it might prove a start for you; who knows? if casey sees you're intelligent, he may give you a line or two to speak. you go up to one of the principals, and say, 'lord tomnoddy, where's that bracelet you promised to send me when i saw you at kempton park?' then the low-comedy merchant--it's generally the low-comedy merchant you speak to--says something that gets a laugh, and bustles up the stage, and you run after him angrily. but don't be sanguine, even of getting on as an extra! there's always a crowd of women besieging the queen's at every production--you won't be the only pretty one. well, i must be going, my dear. i wish you luck." "and luck to _you!_" said mamie, squeezing her hand gratefully; "and many, many thanks. i look forward to telling you the result. i suppose we're sure to see each other at mr. passmore's?" "oh, we're bound to run against each other somewhere before long," returned miss forbes cordially. "yes, i shall be curious to hear what you do; i've enjoyed our chat very much. take care of yourself!" she hurried towards her bus, waving au revoir, and mamie crossed the road. london widened between the girls--and their paths in it never met again. chapter iv as she reached the opposite pavement heriot exclaimed: "miss cheriton! are you going to cut me?" "you?" she cried with surprise. "it was--it was the fog's fault; i didn't see. what a stranger you are! it's a fortnight since you came out to us. a 'fortnight,' you observe--i'm 'quite english, you know,' now." "you're in good spirits," he said. "what have you been doing?" "i've been rising in my career," she answered gaily; "i have had tea in a cakeshop with an actress. i have just shaken hands with her; she has just given me a piece of advice. i am, in imagination, already a personage." "who is she?" asked heriot. "where does she come from?... let me see you to victoria; i suppose that's where you are going?" he stopped a hansom, and scrutinised her sadly as they took their seats. "have you been out in this weather long?" he said. "you poor child, how wet you must be! well, you know an actress. aren't you going to tell me all about it?" she was as voluble as he wished; he had become in the last few months her confidant and consoler. lavender street, wandsworth, or those residents who commanded a view of no. , had learnt to know his figure well. awhile ago he had marvelled at the rôle he was filling; latterly he had ceased to marvel. he realised the explanation--and as he listened to her tale her words smote him. it hurt him to think of the girl beside him cringing to a theatrical agent, forming a chance acquaintance in the streets, and contemplating so ignoble a position as the one of which she spoke. he looked at her yearningly. "you are not pleased," she said. "is there a great deal to be pleased at? is this sort of thing worthy of you?" "it is the first step. oh, be nice about it, do! if you understood ... can i be juliet at once! if i'm to succeed----" "i have sympathised with you," he said; "i've entered into your feelings; i do understand. but you don't know what you're meditating. admitting it's inevitable--admitting, if you're to be an actress, that you must begin, since you've no influence, where you're content to begin--can you bear it? these women you'll be thrown amongst----" "some, at least," she said, "will be like myself, surely? i am not the only girl who has to begin. and ... whatever they are, it can't be helped! remember, i'm in earnest! i talked at first wildly; i see how childish i was. what should i be if i faltered because the path isn't strewn with roses? an actress must be satisfied to work." "it isn't decreed that you need be an actress," answered heriot. "after all, there is no necessity to fight for your bread-and-butter. if you were compelled----" "there are more compelling forces than poverty. can't you recognise ambition?" "haven't i?" he said. "have i been wood?" "ah," she smiled, "forgive me. i didn't mean that. but be nice still. am i to reject a career because i'm not starving? i'm starving with my soul. i'm like a poor mute battling for voice. i want--i want to give expression to what i feel within me." she beat her hands in her lap. "i'm willing to struggle--eager to! you've always known it. why do you disappoint me now? i have to begin even lower than i understood, that's all. and what is it? i shall be surrounded by artists then. by degrees i shall rise. 'you are in the right way, but remember what i say, study, study, study! study well, and god bless you!' do you know who said that?--mrs. siddons to macready. it was at newcastle, and it was about her performance the same night that he wrote: 'the violence of her emotion seemed beyond her power longer to endure, and the words, faintly articulated, "was he alive?" sent an electric thrill through the audience.' think what that means; three words! i can't do it, i've tried--oh, how i've tried! for months after i read that book, i used to say them dozens of times every day, with every intonation i could think of. but there was no effect, no thrill even to myself. 'study, study, study! keep your mind on your art, do not remit your study, and you are certain to succeed!' i _will_ keep my mind on it, i'll obey her advice, i _will_ succeed. heaven couldn't be so cruel as to let me fail after putting such longings into me." heriot sighed. the impulse to tell her that he loved her, to keep her to himself, was mastering him. never before had her hold on him been displayed so vividly, nor had the temptation to throw prudence to the winds been quite so strong. "if you had a happier home," he said, "there would be other influences. don't think me impertinent, but it can't be very lively for you in that house." "it isn't a whirl of gaiety, and aunt lydia is not ideal. but--but i was just the same in duluth." "duluth!" he echoed; "it was dreary in duluth, too." "at all events i had my father there." "what does he write?" asked heriot. "have you had a letter since i saw you?" "he gives no news. the news is to come from _me_." "i think there's a little," he said; "i can tell it by your tone." "it's cheerful to be with some one who _can_ tell things by one's tone. well, he thinks, if i can't make a beginning, that i may as well go back." "i see," he said. "i won't ask you if you mean to." she laughed a shade defiantly. "duluth has many charms--i've been remembering them since his letter. there is my father, and there's strawberry-shortcake. my father will be disappointed in me if i have to go; the strawberry-shortcake--well, there's a tiny shop there where they sell it hot. i've never seen it hot anywhere else--and they turn on the cream with a tap, out of a thing that looks like a miniature cistern." "you're not going back," he said. "you're going on the stage as a supernumerary instead?" in the flare of the station lamps her eyes flashed at him; he could see the passionate trembling of her mouth. the cab stopped, and they got out, and threaded their way among the crowd to the barriers. there was a train in ten minutes, heriot learnt. "shall we go to the waiting-room?" "no," said miss cheriton. "forgive me what i said just now. i am sorry." "what does it matter?" "it was brutal." "rather, perhaps. it was unexpected. you have failed me when i wanted you most." he took two first-class tickets--he wished to be alone with her, and he knew that she travelled "second." "i'm coming with you," he said. "but you can't have dined? our suppers are not extensive." "let us get in!" he answered. they had the compartment to themselves when the door banged, and he regarded her silently, with nerves that had escaped control. "i have warned you," she said. "it will be something out of a tin for certain, with vinegar over it." "mamie!" there was rebuke in her expression. "mamie," he repeated, "i love you. why i dislike your going on the stage is because i want you myself. i was 'brutal' because i'm fond of you. will you marry me?" she lay back against the darkness of the cushions, pale and startled. "are you serious?" she said. "you--want to marry me? do you mean it?" "i mean it. i don't seem able to tell you how much i mean it. can you like me well enough to be my wife?" "i do like you," she stammered; "but i hadn't an idea.... i never thought you thought----oh, i'm sorry!" "why? why can't you say 'yes'?" "to marry you?" "i'll be very gentle to you," he said shakily. "i--for god's sake, don't judge my love for you by the way i put it! i haven't had much practice in love-making; it's a pity, perhaps. there's a word that says it all--i 'worship' you. my darling, what have you to look forward to? you've seen, you've tried, you know what an uphill life it will be. it's not as if i begged you to waive your hopes while you had encouragement to hope--you've made the attempt, and you know the difficulties now. come to me instead. you shall live where you like--you can choose your own quarter. you can have everything you care for--books, pictures, theatres too. oh, my sweet, come to me, and i'll fulfil every wish! will you, mamie?" "i can't," she said tremulously, "it wouldn't be fair." her eyes shone at him, and she leant forward with parted lips. "i like you, i like you very much, but i don't--i'm not---- i've never been in love with anyone." "i'll be grateful for small mercies," said heriot, with an unhappy laugh. "and i _could_ not do what you ask. if i fail, i fail; but i must persevere. i can't accept failure voluntarily--i can't stretch out my arms to it. i should despise myself if i gave in to-day. even you----" "you know better than that!" he said. "well, yes," she owned, "perhaps i'm wrong there; to you it would seem a sensible step. but i believe in myself. all my life i've had the thought, and i should be miserable, i should hate myself! i should be like my father--i should be always thinking of the 'might have been.' you'd be good to me, but you'd know you had been a fool. i'm not a bit the sort of woman you should marry, and you'd repent it." heriot took her hand and held it tightly. "i love you," he said. "consider your own happiness only. i love you." "i am quite selfish--i know it wouldn't content me; i'm not pretending to any nobility. but i'm sorry; i may say that? i didn't dream you liked me in this way. i'm not hard, i'm not a horror, and i can see--i can see that i'm a lot to you." "i'm glad of that," he said simply. "yes, you're 'a lot to me,' mamie. if you know it, and you can't care for me enough, there's no more for me to say. don't worry yourself. it's not unusual for a man to be fond of a woman who doesn't want to marry him." chapter v she betook herself to the queen's next morning less buoyantly than she had anticipated. her meeting with heriot had depressed her. she retained much of the nature of a child, and laughed or cried very easily. she had met heriot laughing, and he had been serious and sad. with some petulance she felt that it was very unfortunate for her that he had fallen in love with her, and chosen that particular day to tell her so. she entered the stage-door with no presentiment of conquest, and inquired of the man in the little recess if mr. casey was in the theatre. stage-door keepers are probably the surliest class in existence. they have much to try them, and they spend their official lives in a violent draught; but if there is a stage-door keeper sweet and sunny in his home, he provides an interesting study for the dramatic authors. the man took her measure in an instant, saving in one particular--she was prepared to give him a shilling and he did not guess it. "mr. casey's on the stage," he said; "he won't be disturbed now." "if i waited, do you think i might see him?" "i couldn't tell you, i'm sure." he resumed his perusal of a newspaper, and mamie looked at him through the aperture helplessly. there was the usual knot of loafers about the step--a scene-hand or two in their shirt-sleeves; a girl in her pathetic best dress, also hoping for miracles; a member of the company, who had slipped out from rehearsal to smoke a cigarette. cerberus was shown where his estimate had been at fault. he said "miss" now: "if you write your business on one of these forms, miss, i'll send it in to mr. casey." he gave her a stump of pencil, and a printed slip, specially designed to scare intruders. she wrote her name, and mr. casey's name, and could find no scope for euphemisms regarding the nature of the interview she sought. she added, "to obtain engagement as extra lady," and returned the paper with embarrassment; she was sufficiently unsophisticated in such matters to assume that her object had not been divined. "'ere, bill!" one of the scene-hands turned. "take it in to mr. casey for this lady." the man addressed as bill departed through a second door with a grunt and a bang, and she waited expectantly. the girl in her best frock sneered; she could not afford to dispense shillings, herself, and already her feet ached. the door swung back constantly. at intervals of a few seconds a stream of nondescripts issued from the unknown interior, and mamie stood watching for the features of her messenger. it was nearly a quarter of an hour before he reappeared. "mr. casey can't see you," he announced. the stage-door keeper heard the intelligence with absolute indifference; but the girl on the step looked gratified. "what shall i do?" asked mamie. "i can't do no more than send in for you, miss. it ain't much good your waiting--the call won't be over till three o'clock." "could i see him then?" "he'll come out. if you like to take your chance----" "i'll come back at three o'clock," she said. it was then eleven. she turned into the strand--the strand that has broken more hearts than fleet street. here a young actor passed her, who was also pacing the inhospitable pavements until the hour in which he hoped to see patience and importunity bear fruit. he wore a fashionable overcoat, and swung his cane with a gloved hand. presently he would seek a public-house and lunch on a scone, and a glass of "mild-and-bitter." if he had "bitter," he would be a halfpenny short in his homeward fare to bow. there a musical comedy actress went by, who had "married a swell." his family had been deeply wounded, and showed their mortification by allowing her to support him. she had had three children; and when he was drunk, which was frequently, he said, "god forbid that they should ever become damned mummers like their mother!" a manager had just told her that "she had lost her figure, and wouldn't look the part!" and she was walking back to islington, where the brokers were in the house. a popular comedian, who had been compelled to listen to three separate tales of distress between charing cross and bedford street, and had already lent unfortunate acquaintances thirty shillings, paused, and hailed a hansom from motives of economy. it was the typical crowd of the strand, a crowd of the footlights. the men whose positions had been won were little noticeable, but the gait and costume of the majority--affected youth, and disheartened age--indicated their profession to the least experienced eyes. because she grew very tired, and not that she had any expectation of hearing good news, mamie went into mr. passmore's office, and sat down. and she did not hear any. after an hour she went away, and rested next in the anteroom of another of the agents, who repeated that "things were very quiet," and that "he wouldn't forget her." seven or eight other girls were waiting their turn to be told the same thing. at a quarter to three she went back to the queen's. "is he coming out now?" she said. "am i too soon?" "eh?" said the stage-door keeper. "you told me he'd be out about three. i was asking for mr. casey this morning." "oh, were you?" he said. "there's been a good many asking for him since then." he gradually recalled her. "mr. casey's gone," he added; "they finished early. he won't be here till to-night." there was a week in which she went to the stage-door of the queen's theatre every day, at all hours, and at last she learnt casually that as many extra ladies as were required for the production had been engaged. there were months during which she persisted in her applications at other stage-doors and hope flickered within her still. but when september came, and a year had passed since her arrival, the expiring spark had faded into lassitude. she tried no longer. only sometimes, out of the sickness of her soul, the impulse to write was born, and she picked up a pen. then it was definitely decided that she should return to america. it was characteristic of her that she had no sooner dried her eyes after the decision than she was restless to return at once; duluth was no drearier than wandsworth. externally it was even picturesque, with the blue water and the sunshine, and the streets of white houses rising in tiers like a theatre; in duluth the residents "looked down on one another" literally. the life was appalling, but when all was said, was it more limited than aunt lydia? and if, in lieu of acting, she dared aspire to dramatic authorship--the thought stirred her occasionally--she could work as well in minnesota as in middlesex. cheriton had remitted the amount of her passage, and suggested that she should sail in a week or two. she had not received the draft two hours when she went up to town and booked a berth in the next steamer. when it was done, she posted a note to heriot, acquainting him with her intention. his visits had not been discontinued, but he came at much longer intervals latterly, and she could not go without bidding him good-bye. she sat in the lavender street parlour the next evening, wondering if he would come. almost she hoped that he would not. she had written, and therefore done her duty. to see him would, in the circumstances, humiliate her cruelly, she felt. she remembered how she had talked to him twelve months before--recalled her confidence, her pictures of a future that she was never to know, and her eyes smarted afresh. she had even failed to obtain a hearing. "what a fool, what an idiot i look!" she thought passionately. tea was over, but the maid-of-all-work had not removed the things; and when heriot entered, the large loaf and the numerous knives, which are held indispensable to afternoon tea in lavender street, were still on the big round table. the aspect of the room did not strike him any more. he was familiar with it, like the view of the kitchen when the front door had been opened, and the glimpse of clothes-line in the yard beyond. "may i come in?" he said. "did you expect me?" "lor, it's mr. heriot!" said mrs. baines. "fancy!" she told the servant to take away the teapot, and to bring in another knife. he wondered vaguely what he was supposed to do with it. "i thought it likely you'd be here," said mamie; "won't you sit down?" "i only had your letter this morning. so you are going away?" "i am going away. i bow, more or less gracefully, to the inevitable." "to bow gracefully to the inevitable is strong evidence of the histrionic gift," he said. "i came, i saw, i was conquered; please don't talk about it.... it was only settled yesterday. i sail on saturday, you know." "yes, you wrote me," murmured heriot. "it's very sudden." "i'm crazy to do something, if only to confess myself beaten." "may i offer you a cup o' tea, mr. heriot?" asked mrs. baines. she always "offered" cups of tea, and was indebted to neighbours for their "hospitality." he thanked her. "you will miss your niece?" he said, declining a place at the table, to which she had moved a chair. "yes, i'm sure!" she answered. "i say now it's a pity she didn't go with her father last october. going in a vessel by herself, oh, dear! i say i wouldn't have got accustomed to having her with me if she'd gone with her father. though that's neither here nor there!" "yes, i think you may believe you'll be missed, miss cheriton," he said. "i say it's very odd she couldn't be an actress as she wanted," continued mrs. baines. "seems so unfortunate with all the trouble that she took. but lor, my dear, we can't see what lies ahead of us, and perhaps it's all for the best! i say perhaps it's all for the best, mr. heriot, eh? dear mamie may be meant to do something different--writing, or such like; it's not for us to say." "have you been writing again?" asked heriot, turning to the girl. "a little," she said bitterly. "my vanity dies hard--and aunt lydia has encouraged me." heriot looked a reproach; her tone hurt him, though he understood of what it was the outcome. "i should be glad if you had encouragement," he replied; "i think you need it now." but it hurt him, also, to discuss her pain in the presence of the intolerable third. he knew that if he remained to supper there would be a preparatory quarter of an hour in which he was alone with her; and it was for this quarter of an hour that he hungered, conscious that during the opening of the lobster-tin two destinies would be determined. "that's right, mr. heriot," said mrs. baines placidly. "i'm glad to hear you say so. that's what i've been telling her. i say she mustn't be disheartened. why, it's surprising, i'm sure, how much seems to be thought of people who write stories and things nowadays; they seem to make quite a fuss of them, don't they? and i'm certain dear mamie could write if she put her mind to it. i was reading in the paper, _tit-bits_, only last week, that there was a book called _robert ellis_, or some such name, that made the author quite talked about. now, i read the piece out to you, dear, didn't i? a book about religion, it was, by a lady; and i'm sure dear mamie knows as much about religion as anyone." "my aunt means _robert elsmere_," said mamie, in a laboured voice. "you may have heard it mentioned?" "you mustn't expect mr. heriot to know much about it," said mrs. baines; "mr. heriot is so busy a gentleman that very likely he doesn't hear of these things. but i assure you, mr. heriot, the story seems to have been read a great deal; and what i say is, if dear mamie can't be an actress, why shouldn't she write books, if she wants to do something of the sort? i wonder my brother didn't teach her to paint, with her notions and that--but, not having learnt, i say she ought to write books. that's the thing for her--a nice pen and ink, and her own home." "i agree with you, mrs. baines. if she wants to write, she can do that in her own home." "not to compare it with such a profession as yours, mr. heriot," she said, "which, of course, is sensible and grave. but girls can't be barristers, and----" "will you open the window for me?" exclaimed mamie; "it's frightfully warm, don't you think so?" she stood there with her head thrown back, and closed eyes, her foot tapping the floor restlessly. "are you wishing you hadn't come?" she asked under her breath. "why?" "one must suffer to be polite here." "aren't you a little unjust?" said heriot deprecatingly. "you have it for an hour," she muttered; "_i_ have had it for twelve months. have you ever wanted to shriek? _i_ wanted to shriek just now, violently!" "i know you did," he said. "well, it's nearly over.... are you glad?" "yes, and no--i can't say. if----" "won't you go on?" "if i dared hope to do anything else.... but i'm not going to talk like that any more! i'm ridiculous enough already." "to whom are you ridiculous?" "to my own perception--you!" "not to me," he said. "'pathetic'? yes, to you i'm 'pathetic.' you pity me as you might pity a lunatic who imagined she was the queen of england." "i think you know," said heriot diffidently, "that neither the queen nor a lunatic inspires in me quite the feeling that i have for you." she changed her position, and spoke at random. "this street is awfully stupid, isn't it?" she said. "look at that man going up the steps!" "yes, he is very stupid, i daresay. what of it?" "he is a clerk," she said; "and wheels his babies out on sunday." "mamie!" "come and talk to aunt lydia again. how rude we are!" "i want to talk to _you_," he demurred. "aren't you going to ask me to stay to supper?" the suggestion came from the widow almost at the same moment. "i think we had better have the lamp," she went on. "the days are drawing in fast, mr. heriot, aren't they? we shall soon have winter again. do you like the long evenings, or the long afternoons best? just about now i always say that i can't bear to think of having to begin lighting up at five or six o'clock--it seems so unnatural; and then, next summer, somehow i feel quite lost, not being able to let down the blinds and light the lamp for tea. mamie, dear, shut the window, and let down the blinds before i light the lamp--somebody might see in!" she suggested the danger in the same tone in which she might have apprehended a burglary. under a glass shade a laggard clock ticked drearily towards the crisis, and heriot provoked its history by the eagerness with which he looked to see the time. it had been a wedding-present from "poor dear edward's brother," and only one clockmaker had really understood it. the man had died, and since then---- he listened, praying for the kitchen to engulf her. when she withdrew at last, with an apology for leaving him, he rose, and went to the girl's side. "do you know why i came this afternoon?" he said. she did know--had known it in the moment that he opened the window for her: "to say 'good-bye,'" she murmured. "i came to beg you not to go! dearest, what do you relinquish by marrying me now? not the stage--your hope of the stage is over; not your ambition in itself--you can be ambitious as my wife. you lose nothing, and you give--a heaven. mamie, won't you stay?" she leant on the mantelpiece without speaking. in the pause, mrs. baines' voice reached them distinctly, as she said, "put the brawn on a smaller dish." "you are forgetting. there was ... a reason besides the stage." "it is you who've forgotten. i told you i would be content.... it wouldn't be repugnant to you?" "to refuse while i thought i had a future, and to say 'yes,' now that----how can you ask me? it would be an insult to your love." "i do ask you," he urged; "i implore." "you implore me to be contemptible. you would have a disappointed woman for your wife. you deserve something better than that." "oh, my god," said heriot, in a low voice, "if i could only tell you how i ache to take you in my arms--as softly as if you were a child! if i could tell you what it is to me to know that you are passing out of my life and that in two days' time i shall never see you again!... mamie?" the heavy shuffle of the servant was heard in the passage. "mamie?" he repeated desperately. "it will be worse over there." her eyes were big with perplexity and doubt. "mamie?" "are you sure you--sure----" "i love you; i want you. only trust me!... mamie?" "if you're quite sure you wish it," she faltered,--"yes!" chapter vi when heriot informed his brother of his approaching marriage, sir francis said, "i never offer advice to a man on matters of this sort"; and proceeded to advise. he considered the union undesirable, and used the word. heriot replied, "on the contrary, i desire it extremely." "you're of course the best judge of your own affairs. i'll only say that it is hardly the attachment i should have expected you to form. it appears to me--if i may employ the term--romantic." "i should say," said heriot, in his most impassive manner, "that that is what it might be called. admitting the element of romance, what of it?" "we are not boys, george," said sir francis. he added, "and the lady is twenty-two! the father is an hotel-keeper in the united states, you tell me, and the aunt lives in wandsworth. socially, wandsworth is farther than the united states, but geographically it is close. this mrs. payne--or baynes--is not a connection you will be proud of, i take it?" "i shall be very proud of my wife," said heriot, with some stiffness. "there are more pedigrees than happy marriages." the baronet looked at his watch. "as i have said, it's not a matter that i would venture to advise you upon. of course i congratulate you. we shall see miss cheriton at sandhills, i hope? and--er--catherine will be delighted to make her acquaintance. i have to meet phil at the club. he's got some absurd idea of exchanging--wants to go out to india, and see active service. and i got him into the guards! boys are damned ungrateful.... when do you marry?" "very shortly--during the vacation. there'll be no fuss." sir francis told his wife that it was very "lamentable," and lady heriot preferred to describe it as "disgusting." but in spite of adjectives the ceremony took place. the honeymoon was brief, and when the bride and bridegroom came back to town, they stayed in an hotel in victoria street while they sought a flat. ultimately they decided upon one in south kensington, and it was the man's delight to render this as exquisite as taste and money made possible. the furniture for his study had simply to be transferred from his bachelor quarters, but the other rooms gave scope for a hundred consultations and caprices; and like a lad he enjoyed the moments in which he and mamie bent their heads together over patterns and designs. she would have been more than human, and less than lovable, if in those early weeks her disappointment had not been lost sight of; more than a girl if the atmosphere of devotion in which she moved had not persuaded her primarily that she was content. only after the instatement was effected and the long days while her husband was away were no longer occupied by upholsterers' plans, did the earliest returning stir of recollection come; only as she wandered from the drawing-room to the dining-room and could find no further touches to make, did she first sigh. a gift of heriot's--he had chosen it without her knowledge, and it had been delivered as a surprise--was a writing-table; a writing-table that was not meant merely to be a costly ornament. and one morning she sat down to it and began another attempt at a play. the occupation served to interest her, and now the days were not so empty. in the evening, as often as he was able, heriot took her out to a theatre, or a concert, or to houses from which invitations came. the evenings were enchantingly new to her; less so, perhaps, when they dined at the solemn houses than when a hansom deposited them at the doors of a restaurant, and her husband's pocket contained the tickets for a couple of stalls. she was conscious that she owed him more than she could ever repay; and though she had casually informed him that she had begun a drama, she did not discuss the subject with him at any length. to dwell upon those eternal ambitions of hers was to remind him that she had said she would be dissatisfied, and he deserved something different from that; he deserved to forget it, to be told that she had not an ungratified wish! she felt ungrateful to realise that such a statement would be an exaggeration. in the november following the wedding it was seen that "her majesty had been pleased, on the recommendation of the lord chancellor, to approve the name of george langdale heriot to the rank of queen's counsel," and heriot soon found reason to congratulate himself on his step. a man may earn a large income as a junior, and find himself in receipt of a very poor one as a leader. there is an instance cited in the inns of court of a stuff-gownsman, making eight thousand a year, whose income fell, when he took silk, to three hundred. but heriot's practice did not decline. few men at the bar could handle a jury better, or showed greater address in their dealings with the bench. he knew instinctively the moment when that small concession was advisable, when the attitude of uncompromising rigour would be fatal to his case. he had his tricks in court: the least affected of men out of it, in court he had his tricks. counsel acquire them inevitably, and one of heriot's had been a favourite device of ballantyne's: in cross-examination he looked at the witness scarcely at all, but kept his face turned to the jury-box. why this should be persuasive is a mystery that no barrister can explain, but its effectiveness is undeniable. nevertheless, he was essentially "sound." as he had been known as "a safe man" while a junior, so, now that he had taken silk, he was believed in as a leader. the figures on the briefs swelled enormously; his services were more and more in demand. then by-and-by there came a criminal case that was discussed day by day throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom--in drawing-rooms and back parlours, in clubs and suburban trains, and heriot was for the defence. the kensington study had held him until dawn during weeks, for he had to break down medical evidence. and on the last day he spoke for five hours, while the reporters' pens flew, and the prisoner swayed in the dock; and the verdict returned was "not guilty." when he unrobed and left the court, george heriot walked into the street the man of the hour; and he drove home to mamie, who kissed him as she might have kissed her father. he adored his wife, and his wife felt affection for him. but the claims of his profession left her to her own resources; and she had no child. chapter vii when they had been married three years she knew many hours of boredom. she could not disguise from herself that she found the life she led more and more unsatisfying--that luxury and a devoted husband, who was in court during the day, and often in his study half the night, were not all that she had craved for; that her environment was philistine, depressing, dull! and she lectured herself and said the fault was her own, and that it was a very much better environment than her abilities entitled her to. she recited all the moral precepts that a third person might have uttered; and the dissatisfaction remained. to write plays ceases to be an attractive occupation when they are never produced. she had written several plays by this time, and submitted them, more or less judiciously, to several west end theatres. there had even been an instance of a manager returning a manuscript in response to her fourth application for it. but she was no nearer to success, or to an artistic circle. a career at the bar is not all causes célèbres, and the details of heriot's briefs were rarely enthralling to her mind, even when he discussed them with her; and when he came into the drawing-room he did not want to discuss his briefs. he wanted to talk trifles, just as he preferred to see a musical comedy or a farce when they went out. nor did he press her for particulars of her own pursuits during his absence. she never sighed over him, and as she appeared to be cheerful, he thought she was contented. that such allusions to her literary work as she made were careless, he took to mean that she had gradually acquired staider views. once he perceived that it was perhaps quieter for her than for most women, for she had no intimate acquaintances; but then she had never been used to any! there were her books, and her music, and her shopping--no, he did not think she could be bored. besides, her manner at dinner was always direct evidence to the contrary! she was now twenty-five years old, and the kensington flat, and abundant means had lost their novelty. she was never moved by a clever novel without detesting her own obscurity; never looked at the window of the stereoscopic company without a passion of envy for the successful artists; never accompanied heriot to the solemn houses without yearning for a passport to upper bohemia instead. she was twenty-five years old, and marriage, without having fulfilled the demands of her temperament, had developed her sensibilities. it was at this period that she met lucas field. if her existence had been a story, nothing could have surprised her less than such a meeting. it would have been at this juncture precisely that she looked for the arrival of an artist, and lucas field would probably have been a brilliant young man who wore his hair long and wrote decadent verse. the trite in fiction is often very astonishing in one's own life, however, and, as a matter of fact, she found their introduction an event, and foresaw nothing at all. lucas field was naturally well known to her by reputation--so well known that when the hostess brought "mr. field" across to her, mamie never dreamed of identifying him with the dramatist. she had long since ceased to expect to meet anybody congenial at these parties, and the fish had been reached before she discovered who it really was who had taken her down. field was finding it a trifle dreary himself. he had not been bred in the vicinity of the footlights---his father had been a physician, and his mother the daughter of a lincolnshire parson--but he had drifted into dramatic literature when he came down from oxford, and the atmosphere of the artistic world had become essential to him by now. portman square, though he admitted its desirability, and would have been mortified if it had been denied to him, invariably oppressed him a shade when he entered it. he was at the present time foretasting hell in the fruitless endeavour to devise a scenario for his next play, and he had looked at mamie with a little interest as he was conducted across the drawing-room. a beautiful woman has always an air of suggestion; she is a beginning, a "heroine" without a plot. regarded from the easel she is all-sufficing--contemplated from the desk, she is illusive. after you have admired the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck, you realise with despondence that she takes you no farther than if she had been plain. field had realised that she left him in the lurch before his soup plate had been removed. presently he inquired if she was fond of the theatre. "please don't say 'yes' from politeness," he added. "why should i?" she had gathered the reason in the next moment, and her eyes lit with eagerness. he had a momentary terror that she was going to be commonplace. "i couldn't dream that it was you--here!" she said apologetically. "isn't a poor playwright respectable?" he asked. there was an instant in which she felt that on her answer depended the justification of her soul. she said afterwards that she could have "fallen round an epigram's neck." "i should think the poor playwright must be very dull," she replied. this was adequate, however, and better than his own response, which was of necessity conventional. "i have seen your new comedy," she continued. "i hope it pleased you?" "i admired it immensely--like every one else. it is a great success, isn't it?" "the theatre is very full every night," he said deprecatingly. "then it _is_ a success!" "does that follow?" "you are not satisfied with it--it falls short of what you meant? i shouldn't have supposed that; it seemed to me entirely clear!" "that i had a theory? really? perhaps i have not failed so badly as i thought." he did not think he had failed at all, but this sort of thing was his innocent weakness. "miss millington is almost perfect as 'daisy,' isn't she?" "'almost'? where do you find her weak?" she blushed. "she struck me--of course i am no authority--as not quite fulfilling your idea in the first act--when she accepted the captain. i thought perhaps she was too responsible there--too grown up." "there isn't a woman in london who could play 'daisy,'" said field savagely. "in other words, you think she wrecked the piece?" "oh no, indeed!" "if 'daisy' isn't a child when she marries, the play has no meaning, no sense. that is why the character was so difficult to cast--in the first act she must be a school-girl, and in the others an emotional woman." "perhaps i said too much." "you are a critic, mrs. heriot." "oh, merely----" "merely?" "merely very interested in the stage." "to be interested in the stage is very ordinary; to be a judge of it is rather rare. no, you didn't say too much: miss millington _doesn't_ fulfil my idea when she accepts 'captain arminger.' and to be frank, _i_ haven't fulfilled miss millington's idea of a consistent part." "i can understand," said mamie, "that the great drawback to writing for the stage is that one depends so largely on one's interpreters. a novelist succeeds or fails by himself, but a dramatist----" "a dramatist is the most miserable of created beings," said field, "if he happens to be an artist." "i can hardly credit that. i can't credit anybody being miserable who is an artist." (he laughed. it was not polite, but he couldn't help it.) "though i can understand his having moods of the most frightful depression!" she added. "oh, you can understand that?" "quite. would he be an artist if he didn't have them!" "may i ask if you write yourself?" "n--no," she murmured. "does that mean 'yes'?" "it means 'only for my own amusement.'" "the writer who only writes for his own amusement is mythical, i'm afraid," said field. "one often hears of him, but he doesn't bear investigation. you don't write plays?" "no--i try to!" he regarded her a little cynically. "i thought ladies generally wrote novels?" "i wish to be original, you see." "do you send them anywhere?" "oh, yes; i _send_ them; i suppose i always shall!" "you're really in earnest then? you're not discouraged?" "i'm earnest, and discouraged, too.... is it impertinent to ask if _you_ had experiences like mine when you were younger?" "i wrote plays for ten years before i ever passed through a stage-door--one must expect to work for years before one is produced.... of course, one may work all one's life, and not be produced then!" "it depends how clever one is, or whether one is clever at all?" "it depends on a good many things. it depends sometimes on advice." if she had been less lovely, he would not have said this, and he knew it; if she had not been mrs. heriot, he would not have said it either. the average woman who "wants a literary man's advice" is the bane of his existence, and field was, not only without sympathy for the tyro as a rule--he was inclined to disparage the majority of his colleagues. he was clever, and was aware of it; he occupied a prominent position. he had arrived at the point when he could dare to be psychological. "it depends sometimes on advice," he said. and the wife of george heriot, q.c., murmured: "unfortunately, i have nobody to advise me!" even as it was, he regretted it when he took his leave; and the manuscript that he had offered to read lay in his study for three weeks before he opened it. he picked it up one night, remembering that the writer had been very beautiful. the reading inspired him with a desire to see her again. that the play was full of faults goes without saying, but it was unconventional, and there was character in it. he recollected that she had interested him while they talked after dinner on a couch by the piano; and, as her work was promising, he wrote, volunteering to point out in an interview, if she liked, those errors in technique which it would take too long to explain by letter. it cannot be made too clear that if she had sent him a work of genius and had been plain miss smith in a home-made blouse, he would have done nothing of the sort. he called upon her with no idea that his hints would make a dramatist of her, nor did he care in the slightest degree whether they did, or did not. she was a singularly lovely woman, and as her drama had not been stupid--stupidity would have repelled him--he thought a tête-à-tête with her would be agreeable. to mamie, however, the afternoon when he sat sipping tea in her drawing-room, like an ordinary mortal, was the day of her life. she told him that she had once hoped to be an actress, and believed that the avowal would advance her in his esteem. he answered that he should not be astonished if she had the histrionic gift; and was secretly disenchanted a shade by what he felt to be banal. then they discussed his own work, and he found her appreciation remarkably intelligent. to talk about himself to a woman, who listened with exquisite eyes fixed upon his face, was very gratifying to him. field had rarely spent a pleasanter hour. it is not intimated that he was a vain puppy--he was not a puppy at all. he had half unconsciously felt the want of a sympathetic confidant for a long while, though, and albeit he did not instantaneously realise that mrs. heriot supplied the void, he walked back to his chambers with exhilaration. he realised it by degrees. he had never married. he had avoided matrimony till he was thirty because he could not afford it; and during the last decade he had escaped it because he had not met a woman whom he desired sufficiently to pay such a price. when he had seen mamie several times--and in the circumstances it was not difficult to invent reasons for seeing her--he wondered whether he would have proposed to her if she had been single. heriot was very pleased to have him dine with them; and he was not ignorant that during the next few months field often dropped in about five o'clock. mamie concealed nothing--knowingly--and the subject of her writing was revived now. she told george that mr. field thought she had ability. she repeated his criticisms; frankly admired his talent; confessed that she was proud to have him on her visiting list--and fell in love with him without either analysing her feelings, or perceiving her risk. and while mrs. heriot fell in love with him, lucas field was not blind. he saw a great deal more than she saw herself--he saw, not only the influence he exercised over her, but that she had moped before he appeared. he did not misread her; he was conscious that she would never take a lover from caprice--that she was the last woman in the world to sin lightly, or under the rose. he saw that, if he yielded to the temptation that had begun to assail him, he must be prepared to ask her to live with him openly. but he asked himself whether it was impossible that he could prevail on her to do that, had he the mind to do so--whether she was so impregnable as she believed. he was by this time fascinated by her. his happiest afternoons were spent in south kensington, advancing his theories, and talking of his latest scenes; nor was it a lie when he averred that she assisted him. to be an artist it is not necessary to be able to produce, and if her own attempts had been infinitely more futile than they were, she might still have expressed opinions that were of service to another. many of her views were impracticable, naturally. psychological as his tendencies were, he was a dramatist, and he could not snap his fingers at the laws imposed by the footlights, though he might affect to deride them in his confidences. the only dramatist alive was ibsen, he said; yet he did not model himself on ibsen, albeit he was delighted when she exclaimed, "how ibsenish that is!" many of her views were impracticable, because she was ignorant about the stage; but many were intensely stimulating. the more he was with her, the less he doubted her worthiness of sinning for his sake. he was so different from the ordinary dramatic author! on the ordinary dramatic author, with no ideas beyond "curtains" and "fees," she would have been thrown away. he did not wish to be associated with a scandal--it would certainly be unpleasant--but she dominated him, there was no disguising the fact. and he would be very good to her; he would marry her. she was adorable! his meditations had not progressed so far without the girl's eyes being opened to her weakness; and now she hated herself more bitterly than she had hated the tedium of her life. she knew that she loved him. she was wretched when he was not with her, and ashamed when he was there. she wandered about the flat in her solitude, frightened as she realised what an awful thing had come to her. but she was drunk--intoxicated by the force of the guilty love, and by the thought that such a man as lucas field could be in love with _her_. she revered him for not having told her of the feelings that she inspired. her courage was sustained by the belief that he did not divine her own--that she would succeed in stamping them out without his dreaming of the danger she had run. yet she was "drunk"; and one afternoon the climax was reached--he implored her to go away with him. chapter viii if a woman sins, and the chronicler of her sin desires to excuse the woman, her throes and her struggles, her pangs and her prayers always occupy at least three chapters. if one does not seek to excuse her, the fact of her fall may as well be stated in the fewest possible words. mamie did struggle--she struggled for a long time--but in the end she was just as guilty as if she hadn't shed a tear. field's pertinacity and passion wore her resistance out at last. theirs was to be the ideal union, and of course he cited famous cases where the man and woman designed for each other by heaven had met only after one of them had blundered. he did not explain why heaven had permitted the blunders, after being at the pains to design kindred souls for each other's ecstasy; but there are things that even the youngest curate cannot explain. he insisted that she would never regret her step; he declared that, with himself for her husband, she would become celebrated. art, love, joy, all might be hers at a word. and she spoke it. when heriot came in one evening, mamie was not there, and he wondered what had become of her, for at this hour she was always at home. but he had not a suspicion of evil--he was as far from being prepared for the blow that was in store as if field had never crossed their path. he had let himself in with his latch-key, and after a quarter of an hour it occurred to him that she might be already in the dining-room. when he entered it, he noted with surprise that the table was laid only for one. "where is mrs. heriot?" he said to the servant who appeared in response to his ring. "mrs. heriot has gone out of town, sir." "out of town!" he exclaimed. "what do you mean?" "mrs. heriot left a note for you, sir, to explain. there it is, sir." heriot took it from the mantelpiece quickly; but still he had no suspicion--not an inkling of the truth. he tore the envelope open and read, while the maid waited respectfully by the door. "your mistress has been called away," he said when he had finished; "illness! she will be gone some time." his back was to her; he could command his voice, but his face was beyond his control. he felt that if he moved he would reel, perhaps fall. he stood motionless, with the letter open in his hand. "shall i serve dinner, sir?" "yes, serve dinner, odell; i'm quite ready." when the door closed, it was his opportunity to gain the chair; he walked towards it slowly, like a blind man. the letter that he held had left but one hope possible--the last hope of despair--to keep the matter for awhile from the servants' knowledge. as yet he was not suffering acutely; indeed, in these early moments, the effect of the shock was more physical than mental. there was a trembling through his body, and his head felt queerly light--empty, not his own. the maid came back, and he forced himself to dine. the first spoonfuls of the soup he took were but heat, entirely tasteless, to his mouth, and at the pit of his stomach a sensation of sickness rose and writhed like something living. when she retired once more, his head fell forward on his arms; it was a relief to rest it so. he did not know how he could support the long strain of her vigilance. by degrees his stupor began to pass, as he stared at the vacant place where his wife should have sat; the dazed brain rallied to comprehension. his wife was not there because she was with her lover! oh, god! with her "lover"--mamie had given herself to another man! _mamie!_ mamie had gone to another man. his face was grey and distorted now, and the glass that he was lifting snapped at the stem. she had gone. she was no longer his wife. she was guilty, shameless, defiled--mamie! he rose, an older, a less vigorous, figure. "i shall be busy to-night," he muttered; "don't let me be disturbed." he went to his study, and dropped upon the seat before his desk. her photograph confronted him, and he took it down and held it shakenly. how young she looked! was there ever a face more pure? and heaven knew that he had loved her as dearly only an hour ago as on the day that they were married! not a whim of hers had been refused; not a request could he recollect that he had failed to obey. yet now she was with a lover! she smiled in the likeness; the eyes that met his own were clear and tender; truth was stamped upon her features. he recalled incidents of the past three years, incidents that had been rich in the intimacy of their life. surely in those hours she had loved him? that had not been gratitude--a sense of duty merely?--had she not loved him then? he remembered their wedding-day. how pale she had been, how innocent--a child. yet now she was with a lover! a sob convulsed him, and he nodded slowly at the likeness through his tears. presently he put it back; he was angered at his weakness. he had deserved something better at her hands! pride forbade that he should mourn for her. he had married wildly, yes, he should have listened to advice; francis had warned him. perhaps while he wept, they were laughing at him together, she and field! how did he know that it was field--had she mentioned his name in the letter? he knew that it was field instinctively; he marvelled that he had not foreseen the danger, and averted it. how stupid had the petitioners in divorce suits often appeared to him in his time!--he had wondered that men could be so purblind--and he himself had been as dense as any!... but she would not laugh. ah, guilty as she was, she would not laugh--she was not so vile as that! the clock in the room struck one. he heard it half unconsciously--then started, and threw out his arms with a hoarse cry. he sprang to his feet, fired with the tortures of the damned. the sweat burst out on him, and the veins in his forehead swelled like cords. he was a temperate man, at once by taste and by necessity, but now he walked to where the brandy was kept and drank a wineglassful in gulps. "mamie!" he groaned again; "mamie!" the brandy did not blot the picture from his brain; and he refilled the glass.... nothing would efface the picture. he knew that it was hopeless to attempt to sleep, yet he went to the bedroom. the ivory brushes were gone from the toilet-table--she had been able to think of brushes! in the wardrobe the frocks were fewer, and the linen was less; the jewellery that he had given to her had been left behind. all was orderly. there were no traces of a hurried departure; the room had its usual aspect. he looked at the pillows. against the one that had been hers lay the bag of silk and lace that contained her night-dress. had she forgotten it; or was it that she had been incapable of transferring that? he picked it up, and dropped it out of sight in one of the drawers. he did not go to bed; he spent the night in an armchair, re-reading the letter, and thinking. when the servant knocked at the door, he went to his dressing-room, and shaved. he had a bath, and breakfasted, and strolled to the station. outwardly he had recovered from the blow, and his clerk who gave him his list of appointments remarked nothing abnormal about him. in court, heriot remembered that mamie and he were to have dined in holland park that evening, and during the luncheon adjournment he sent a telegram of excuse. if any one had known what had happened to him, he would have been thought devoid of feeling. he had scarcely re-entered the flat when mrs. baines called. his first impulse was to decline to see her; but he told the maid to show her in. a glance assured him that she was ignorant of what had occurred. "dear mamie is away, the servant tells me," she said, simpering. "i hadn't seen her for such a long time that i thought i'd look in to-day. not that i should have been so late, but i missed my train! i meant to come in and have a cup of tea with her at five o'clock. well, i _am_ unfortunate! and how have you been keeping, mr. heriot?" "i'm glad to see you. i hope you are well, mrs. baines." "where has dear mamie gone?" she asked. "pleasuring?" "she is on the continent, i believe. may i tell them to bring you some tea now?" "on the continent alone?" exclaimed mrs. baines. "fancy!" "no, she is not alone," said heriot. "you must prepare yourself for a shock, mrs. baines. your niece has left me." she looked at him puzzled. his tone was so composed that it seemed to destroy the significance of his words. "left you? how do you mean?" "she has gone with her lover." "oh, my gawd!" said mrs. baines.... "whatever are you saying, mr. heriot? don't!" "your niece is living with another man. she left me yesterday," he continued quietly. "i am sorry to have to tell you such news." he was sorrier as he observed the effect of it, but he could not soften the shock for her by any outward participation in her grief. since he must speak at all, he must speak as he did. "oh, to hear of such a thing!" she gasped. "oh, to think that--well---- oh, mr. heriot, i can't ... it can't be true. isn't it some mistake? dear mamie would never be so wicked, i'm sure she wouldn't! it's some awful mistake, you may depend." "there's no mistake, mrs. baines. my authority is your niece herself. she left a letter to tell me she was going, and why." the widow moaned feebly. "with another man?" he bowed. "oh, heaven will punish her, mr. heriot! oh, what will her father say--how could she do it! and you--how gentle and kind to her you were _i_ could see." "i did my best to make her happy," he said; "evidently i didn't succeed. is it necessary for us to talk about it much? believe me, you have my sympathy, but talking won't improve matters." "oh, but i can't look at it so--so calmly, mr. heriot! the disgrace! and so sudden. and it isn't for _me_ to have _your_ sympathy, i'm sure. i say it isn't for _you_ to sympathise with _me_. my heart bleeds for you, mr. heriot." "you're very good," he answered; "but i don't know that a faithless wife is much to grieve for after all." "ah, but you don't mean that! you were too fond of her to mean it. she'll live to repent it, you may be certain--the lord will bring it home to her. oh, how could she do it! you don't--you don't intend to have a divorce?" "naturally i intend it. what else do you propose?" "oh, i don't know," she quavered, rocking herself to and fro, and smearing the tears down her cheeks with a forefinger in a black silk glove; "but the disgrace! and all lavender street to read about it! ah, you won't divorce her, mr. heriot? it would be so dreadful!" "don't you want to see the man marry her?" "how 'marry her'?" she asked vaguely. "oh, i understand! yes, i suppose he _could_ marry her then, couldn't he? i'm not a lawyer like you--i didn't look so far ahead. but i don't want a divorce." "ah, well, _i_ want it," he said; "for my own sake." "then you don't love her any more, mr. heriot?" he laughed drearily. "your niece has ended her life with me of her own accord. i've nothing more to do with her." "those are cruel words," said mrs. baines; "those are cruel words about a girl who was your lawful wife--the flesh of your bone in the sight of gawd and man. you're harder than i thought, mr. heriot; you don't take it quite as i'd have supposed you'd take it.... so quiet and stern like! i think if you'd loved her tenderly, you'd have talked more heart-broken, though it's not for me to judge." heriot rose. "i can't discuss my sentiments with you, mrs. baines. think, if you like, that i didn't care for her at all. at least my duty to her is over; and i have a duty to myself to-day." "to cast her off?" the semi-educated classes use the phrases of novelettes habitually. whether this is the reason the novelettes trade in the phrases, or whether the semi-educated acquire the phrases from the novelettes, is not clear. "to----" he paused. he could not trust himself to speak at that moment. "to cast her off?" repeated mrs. baines. "oh, i don't make excuses for her--i don't pity her. though she is my brother's child, i say she is deserving of whatever befalls her. i remember well that when dick married i warned him against it; i said, 'she isn't the wife for you!' it's the mother's blood coming out in her, though my brother's child. but ... what was i going to say? i'm that upset that---- oh yes! i make no excuses for her, but i would have liked to see more sorrow on your part, mr. heriot; i could have pitied you more if you'd have taken it more to heart. you may think me too bold, but it was ever my way to say what was in my mind. i don't think i'll stop any longer. the way you may take it is between you and your gawd, but----" she put out her hand. "i don't think i'll stop." "good-evening," he said stonily. "i'm sorry you can't stay and dine." she recollected on the stairs that she had not inquired who the man was; but she was too much disgusted by heriot's manner to go back. chapter ix when a naturally pure woman, who is not sustained by any emancipated views, consents to live with a man in defiance of social prejudices, she probably obtains as clear an insight as the world affords into the enormous difference that exists between the ideal and the actual. matrimony does not illumine the difference so vividly, because matrimony, with all its disillusions, leaves her an unembarrassed conscience. with her lover such a woman experiences all the prose of wedlock, and a sting to boot. a man cannot be at concert-pitch all day long with his mistress any more easily than with his wife. she has to submit to bills and other practical matters just as much with a smirched reputation as she had with a spotless one. the romance does not wear any better because the marriage service is omitted. a lover is no less liable to be commonplace than a husband when the laundress knocks the buttons off his shirts. yes, mamie was infatuated by field; she had not sinned with a cool head simply to procure a guide up parnassus. but she had hoped to pick a few laurels there all the same. she found herself in a little flat in the rue tronchet. they had few visitors, and those who did come were men who talked a language that she did not understand, but who looked things that she understood only too well. the remorse and humiliation that she felt was not leavened by any consciousness of advancing in her art. field rather pooh-poohed her art, as the months went by after the decree _nisi_ was pronounced. he still discussed his work with her--perhaps less as if she had been a sybil, but still with interest in her ideas. her own work, however, bored him now. he had no intention of being cold, but the subject seemed puerile to his mind. if she did write a play that was produced one day, or if she didn't, what earthly consequence was it? she would never write a great one; and these panting aspirations which begot such mediocre results savoured to him of a storm in a teacup--of a furnace lit to boil the kettle. he was rather sorry that he had run away with her, but he did not regret it particularly. of course he would marry her as soon as he could--he owed her that; and, since he was not such a blackguard as to contemplate deserting her by-and-by, he might just as well marry her as not. the whole affair had been a folly certainly. he was not rich, and he was extravagant; he would have done better to remain as he was. still many men envied him. he trusted fervently she would not have children, though! it didn't seem likely; but if she ever did, the error would be doubled. he did not want a son who had cause to be ashamed of his mother when he grew up. it was curious that she did not refer more often to his legalising their union. her position pained her, he could see, and made her very frequently a dull companion. that was the worst of these things! one paid for the step dearly enough to expect lively society in return, and yet, if one complained of mournfulness, one would be a brute. he would write a drama some time or other to show that it was really the man who was deserving of sympathy in such an alliance. it would be very original, as he would treat it. the lover should explain his situation to another woman whom he had learnt to love since, and--well, he didn't see how it should end:--with the dilemma repeated? and it didn't matter, after all, for nobody would have the courage to produce it! he made these reflections in his study. in the salon--furnished in accordance with the tastes of the lady who had sub-let the flat to them for six months--mamie stood staring down at the street. it was four o'clock, and, saving for half an hour at luncheon, she had not seen him since ten. for distraction she could make her choice among some tauchnitz novels, her music, and a walk. excepting that the room was tawdry and ill-ventilated, and that she had lost her reputation, it was not unlike her life in south kensington. in her pocket was a letter from her father--the most difficult letter that it had ever fallen to dick cheriton's lot to compose. theoretically he thought social prejudices absurd--as became an artist to whom god had given his soul--and he had often insisted on their ineptitude. in the case of his own daughter, however, he would have preferred to see them treated with respect. there was a likeness to lucas field here. field also dwelt on the hill-top, but he wanted his son, if he ever had one, to boast a stainless mother. cheriton had not indited curses, like the fathers in melodrama, and the people who have "found religion"; only parents in melodrama, and some "christians" who go to church twice every sunday, are infamous enough to curse their children; he had told her that if she found herself forsaken, she was to cable for her passage-money back to duluth. but that he was ashamed and broken by what she had done, he had not attempted to conceal; and as she stood there, gazing down on the rue tronchet, mamie was recalling the confession to which this was an answer. phrases that she had used came back to her:--"i have done my best, but my love was too strong for me"; "wicked as it may be to say it, i know that, even in my guilt, i shall always be happy. i met the right man too late, but i am so young--i could not suffer all my life without him. forgive me if you can." had she--it was a horrible thought--had she been mistaken? had she blundered more terribly than when she married? for, unless her prophecies of joy to the brim were fulfilled--unless her measure of thanksgiving overflowed--the blunder _was_ more terrible, infinitely more terrible: she was a gambler who had staked her soul, in her conviction of success. the question was one that she had asked herself many times before, without daring to hear the answer; but that the answer was in her heart, though she shrank from acknowledging it, might be seen in her expression, in her every pose; it might be seen now, as she drooped by the window. she sighed, and sat down, and shivered. yes, she knew it--she had thrown away the substance for the shadow; she could deceive herself no longer. lucas field was not so poetical a personality as she had imagined; guilt had no glamour; her devotion had been a flash in the pan--a madness that had burned itself out. she had no right to blame her lover for that; only, the prospect of marriage with him filled her with no elation; it inspired misgiving rather. if she had made a blunder, would it improve matters to perpetuate it? he was considerate to her, he spared her all the ignominy that was possible; but instinctively she was aware that, if they parted, he would never miss her as her husband had done. in _his_ life she would never make a hole! she guessed the depth of heriot's love better now that she had obtained a smaller one as plummet. between the manner of the man who was not particularly sorry to have run away with her, and his whose pride she had been, the difference was tremendous to a woman whose position was calculated to develop her natural sensitiveness to the point of a disease. should she marry lucas or not? hitherto she had merely avoided the query; now she trembled before it. expedience said, "yes"; something within her said, "no." the decree would be made absolute in two months' time. what was to become of her if they separated? to duluth she could never go, to be pointed at and despised! she sighed again. "bored, dear?" asked field, in the doorway. "i was thinking." "that was obvious. not of your--er--work?" "no, not of my--'er--work.'" he pulled his moustache with some embarrassment. "i didn't mean anything derogatory to it." "oh, i know," she said wearily; "don't--it doesn't matter. you can't think much less of it than i am beginning to do myself. you can't take much less interest in it." "you are unjust," said field. "i am moped. take me out. take me out of myself if you can, but take me out of doors at any rate! i am yearning to be in a crowd." "we might go to a theatre to-night," he said; "would you like to?" "it doesn't amuse me very much; i don't understand what they say. still it would be something. but i want to go out now, for a walk. i don't like walking here alone; can't you come with me?" "i'm afraid i can't. you forget i promised an interview to that paper this afternoon. i expect the fellow here any moment." "you promised it?" she exclaimed, with surprise. "why, i thought you said that the paper was a 'rag' and that you wouldn't dream of consenting?" "after all, one must be courteous; i changed my mind. there's some talk of translating _a clever man's son_ into french. an interview just now would be good policy." "you are going to be adapted? _a clever man's son_?" "translated," he said. "i may adapt. i _am_--translated." she smiled, but perceived almost at the same instant that she had not been intended to do so and that he had said it seriously. "i make a very good interview," he continued, lighting a cigarette; "i daresay you've noticed it. i never count an epigram or two wasted, though they do go into another chap's copy. that's where many men make a mistake; or very likely they can't invent the epigrams. anyhow, they don't! the average interview is as dull as the average play. people think it's the journalists' fault, but it isn't. it's the fault of the deadly dull dogs who've got nothing to tell them. i ought to have gone a good deal further than i have: i've the two essential qualities for success--i'm an artist and a showman." "don't!" she murmured; "don't!" he laughed gaily. "i'm perfectly frank; i admit the necessities of life--i've told you so before. my mind never works so rapidly as it does in prospect of a good advertisement. there the fellow is, i expect!" he added, as the bell rang. "the study is quite in disorder for him, and there are a bunch of parma violets and a flask of maraschino on the desk. i'm going to remark that maraschino and the scent of violets are indispensable to me when i work. he won't believe it, unless he is very young, but he'll be immeasurably obliged; that sort of thing looks well in an interview. violets and maraschino are a graceful combination, i think." she did not reply; she sat pale and chagrined. he was renowned enough, and more than talented enough to dispense with these stage-tricks in the library. she knew it, and _he_ knew it, but he could not help them. awhile ago they had caused her the cruellest pain; now she was more contemptuous than anything else, although she was still galled that he should display his foibles so candidly. "i am quite frank," he had said. she found such "frankness" a milestone on the road that she had travelled. "my dear child," said field, "among the illusions of a man's youth is the belief that, if he goes through life doing his humble best in an unobtrusive way, the press will say what a jolly fine fellow he is, and hold him up as a pattern to all the braggarts and poseurs who are blowing their own trumpets, and scraping on their own fiddles. among the things he learns as he grows older is the fact that, if he does his best in an unobtrusive way, the press will say nothing about him at all. the fiddle and the trumpet are essential; but it is possible to play them with a certain amount of refinement. it is even possible--though a clever man cannot dispense with the fiddle and the trumpet--for the fiddle and the trumpet to be played so dexterously that he may dispense with cleverness. i do not go to such lengths myself----" "you have no need to do so," she said coldly. "i have no need to do so--thank you. but i can quite conceive that, say, violets and maraschino, worked for all they were worth, might alone make a man famous. a mouse liberated a lion, and things smaller than a mouse have created one before now. the violet in the hedgerow 'bloomed unseen,'--or 'died unknown,' was it? it did something modest and unsuccessful, i know. the violet assiduously paragraphed and paraded might lead to fortune." "i would rather be obscure and do honest, conscientious work," answered mamie, "than write rubbish, and finesse myself into popularity." "it is much easier," he said tranquilly. "to be obscure is the one thing that _is_ easy still. you don't mind my saying that i hate the adjectives you used, though, do you? the words 'honest' and 'conscientious,' applied to literature, dearest, make me shudder. i am always afraid that 'wholesome' is coming in the next sentence." "are you going to say so to your interviewer?" "the remark isn't brilliant. it was sincere, and to be sincere and brilliant at the same time is a little difficult.... i've been both, though, in the scene i've just done; you must read it, or rather i'll read it to you. you'll be pleased with it. as soon as the piece is finished i must write to erskine. it will suit the pall mall down to the ground, and i should like it done there, only----" "only what?" field hesitated. "i meant it for erskine from the start. he saw the scenario, and the part fits him like a glove." "but what were you going to say?" "well, i fancy he has some idea that a piece of mine just now---- you understand, with the case so fresh in people's minds!... erskine's a fool. what on earth does the public care? of course he'll do it when he reads the part he's got! only i know he's doubting whether my name'd be a judicious card to play yet awhile." there was a pause, in which her heart contracted painfully. "i see," she rejoined, in a low voice. he fidgeted before the mirror, and glanced at his watch. "that fellow must be getting impatient." "you had better go in to him," she said. "well, we'll go to the vaudeville, or somewhere to-night, mamie--that's arranged?" "yes, to the vaudeville, or somewhere," she assented, with another sigh. she went back to the window, and stared at the rue tronchet with wet eyes. chapter x some weeks afterwards field went to england. he did not take mamie with him, for he intended to remain only a few days, nor had she been at all desirous of accompanying him. she had begun, indeed, to see that she did not know what she did desire. her life in paris oppressed her; the notion of duluth was horrible; and the thought of living with lucas in london, where she might meet an acquaintance of heriot's at any turn, was repugnant in an almost equal degree. field was unexpectedly detained in london. the business that had been responsible for his journey constantly evaded completion, and after he had been gone about a month a letter came, in which he mentioned incidentally that he had a touch of influenza. after this letter a fortnight went by without her hearing from him; and, rendered anxious at last, she wrote to inquire if his silence was attributable to his indisposition--if the latter was of a serious nature. her mind did not instantaneously grasp the significance of the telegram that she tore open a few hours later. it ran: "my nephew dangerously ill. if you desire to see him, better come.--porteous." she stood gazing at it. who had telegraphed? who---- then she understood that it was lucas who was meant. lucas was "dangerously ill"! she must go to him. she must go at once! she was so staggered by the suddenness of the intelligence that she was momentarily incapable of recollecting when the trains left, or how she should act in order to ascertain. all she realised was that this was paris, and lucas lay "dangerously ill" in london, and that she had to reach him. her head swam, and the little french that she knew seemed to desert her; the undertaking looked enormous--beset with difficulties that were almost insuperable. the stupidity of the _bonne_, for whom she pealed the bell, served to sharpen her faculties a trifle, but she made her preparations as in a dream. when she found herself in the train, it appeared to her unreal that she could be there. the interval had left no salient impressions on her brain, nothing but a confused sense of delay. it was only now that she felt able to reflect. the telegram was crumpled in her pocket, and she took it out and re-read it agitatedly. how did this relative come to be at the hotel? lucas had scarcely spoken of his relations. "if you desire to see him"! the import of those words was frightful--he could not be expected to recover. her stupefaction rolled away, and was succeeded by a fever of suspense. the restriction of the compartment was maddening, and she looked at her watch a dozen times, only to find that not ten minutes had passed since she consulted it last. it seemed to her that she had been travelling for at least two days, when she stood outside a bedroom in a little hotel off bond street and tapped at the door with her heart in her throat. the door was opened by a woman whose dress proclaimed her to be an institution nurse. field slept, and mamie sank into a chair, and waited for his wakening. "how is he?" she asked in a low tone. the nurse shook her head. "he's not doing as well as we could wish, ma'am." "is mr. porteous here?" "_mrs._ porteous. she'll be coming presently. she lives close by." so it was a woman who had telegraphed! somehow she had assumed unquestioningly that it was a man. "if you desire to see him----" ah, yes, she might have known it! an aunt, who would be frigid and contemptuous, of course. well, she deserved that, she would have no right to complain; nor was it to be expected that lucas's family should show her much consideration, though she could not perceive that she had done them any injury. two hours passed before she had an interview with the lady. mamie was in the room that she had engaged in the meanwhile. she had bathed her face, and was making ready to return to the sick-room, when she was told that mrs. porteous was inquiring for her. "won't you come in?" she asked. "our voices won't disturb him here." mrs. porteous entered gingerly. she was a massive woman, of middle age, fashionably dressed. her expression suggested no grief, only a vague fear of contamination. she had telegraphed to paris because she felt that it was her duty to do so; but she had not telegraphed until it was almost certain that the patient would not rally sufficiently to make a will. "you are--er--mrs. heriot?" she said, regarding her curiously. "the doctor thought that mr. field's condition ought to be made known to you; so i wired." "thank you; it was very kind." "the doctor advised it," said mrs. porteous again, significantly. "is he--is there no hope?" "we fear not; my nephew is sinking fast--it's as well you should understand it. if you think it necessary to remain---- i see you have taken a room? as--as 'mrs. field,' i presume?" "i should have been 'mrs. field,' if lucas----" his aunt shivered. "there are things we need not discuss. of course i'm aware that you are living under my nephew's name. i was about to say that if you think it necessary to remain till the end, i have no opposition to offer; but the end is very near now. my telegram must have prepared you? i should not have wired unless----" "i understood," answered mamie, "yes. i am glad that your nephew had a relative near him, though your name was quite strange to me. he never mentioned it." "really! lucas called to see us at once. our house is in the neighbourhood." "he wrote me," said mamie, "that he had a touch of influenza. it seems extraordinary that influenza should prove so serious? he was strong, he was in good health----" the other's air implied that she did not find it necessary to discuss this either. "people die of influenza, or the results of it, every year," she said. "the doctor will give you any information you may desire, no doubt. you must excuse me--i may be wanted." while field lingered she never left his side, after mamie's arrival. men committed preposterous actions on their death-beds, and though he was not expected to recover consciousness, there was the possibility that he might do so. if an opportunity occurred, his mistress would doubtless produce a solicitor and a provision for herself with the rapidity of a conjuring trick. as it was, mrs. porteous had small misgivings but what he would die intestate. there might not be much, but at any rate, what he had should not swell the coffers of guilty wives! events proved that her summons had not been precipitate, however. field spoke at the last a few coherent words, and took mamie's hand. but that was all. then he never spoke any more. even as she stood gazing at the unfamiliar face on the pillow, the swiftness of the catastrophe made it difficult for the girl to realise that all was over. the calamity had fallen on her like a thunderbolt--it seemed strange, inexplicable, untrue. the last time but one that he had talked to her he had been full of vigour, packing a portmanteau, humming a tune, alluding to fees, some details of the theatre, the prospect of a smooth crossing. and now he was dead. there had been little or no transition; he was well--he was dead! the curtain had tumbled in the middle of the play--and it would never go up any more. it was not till after the funeral that she was capable of meditating on the change that lucas field's death had wrought in her life. she did not ask herself whether he had left her anything, or not. the idea that he might have done so never occurred to her, nor would she have felt that she could accept his bequest if he had made one. she perceived that she had nobody to turn to but her father, and to him she cabled. cheriton replied by two questions: what was field's will? and would she like to return to duluth? to the second she made a definite answer. "impossible; pray don't ask me." and then there was an interval of correspondence. while mrs. porteous rejoiced to find that her confidence was justified and that her nephew had died intestate, mamie was contemplating the choice of swallowing her repugnance to going back to america, or of living with mrs. baines. cheriton had written to them both, and that one course or the other should be adopted he was insistent. mamie need not live in lavender street; mrs. baines might make her home in another neighbourhood, where they would be strangers. but that the girl should remain alone in england was out of the question. which line of conduct did she prefer? she could not decide immediately. both proposals distressed her. on the whole, perhaps, the lesser evil was to resign herself to her aunt lydia if, as her father declared, her aunt was willing to receive her. mrs. baines, at any rate, was but one, while in duluth half the population would be acquainted with her story. but _was_ her aunt lydia willing?--was she expected to write to her and inquire? she was not entitled to possess dignity, of course; but it was not easy to eat dust because the right to self-respect was forfeited. she had removed to a lodging in bernard street, bloomsbury, and in the fusty sitting-room she sat all day, lonely and miserable, reviewing the blunder of her life. she neither wrote nor read--her writing was an idea she hated now; she merely thought--wishing she could recall the past, wondering how she could bear the future. one afternoon when she sat there, pale and heavy-eyed, the maid-of-all-work announced a visitor, and mrs. baines came in. mamie rose nervously, and the other advanced. she had rehearsed an interview which should be a compromise between the instructions that had been given her by her brother, and the attitude of righteous rebuke that she felt to be a permissible luxury, but the forlornness of the figure before her drove her opening sentence from her head. all she could utter was the girl's name; and then there was a pause in which they looked at each other. "it is kind of you to come," mamie murmured. "i hope you're well?" said mrs. baines. "not very. i----won't you sit down?" "i never thought i should see you like this, mamie!" said the widow half involuntarily, shaking her head. the girl made no answer in words. she caught her breath, and stood passive. if the lash fell she would suffer silently. "we always see sin punished, though." she believed we always did; she retained such startling optimism. "it's not for me to reproach you." "thank you. i'm not too happy, aunt lydia." "i daresay, my dear. i haven't come to make it worse for you." she scrutinised her again. she would have been horrified to hear the suggestion, but her niece's presence was not without a guilty fascination, a pleasurable excitement, to her as she remembered that here was one who had broken the seventh commandment. she was sitting opposite a girl who had lived in paris with a lover; and she was sitting opposite her in circumstances which redounded to her own credit! "i have heard from your father," she went on; "i suppose you know?" "yes," said mamie; "he has written me." "and do you wish to make your home with me again? i'm quite ready to take you if you like." "i could never live in lavender street any more, aunt lydia. you must understand that--that it would be awful to me." "your father hinted at my moving. it will be a great trouble, but i shan't shirk my duty, dear mamie. if it will make your burden any easier to bear, we will live together somewhere else. i say, if i can make your burden any easier for you, i will live somewhere else." "i am not ungrateful. i.... yes, if you will have me, i should like to come to you." mrs. baines sighed, and smoothed her skirt tremulously. "to balham?" she inquired. "you are moving to balham?" "i was thinking about it. i was over there the other day to get some stuff for a bodice. it's nice and healthy, and the shopping is cheap." "it's all the same to me where we go," said mamie, "so long as the people don't know me." "i hear you were living with--with _him_ in paris? operas, and drives, and all manner of things to soothe your conscience he gave you, no doubt?" said mrs. baines, in an awestruck invitation to communicativeness. "after that terrible life in paris, balham will seem quiet to you, i daresay; but perhaps you won't mind that?' "no place can be too quiet for me. the quieter it is, the better i shall like it." "that's as it should be! though, i suppose, with _him_ you were out among gaieties every night?" she waited for a few particulars again. as none were forthcoming: "then i'll try to let the house, and we'll go over together and look at some in balham as soon as you like, my dear," she continued. "your father will see that i'm not put to any expense. in the meantime you'll stay where you are, eh? you know--you know i saw mr. heriot after you'd gone, don't you?" "no," stammered the girl, lifting eager eyes. "you went to him?" "the very next day, my dear, so it seemed! i thought i'd drop in and have a cup of tea with you, not having seen you for so long; and through missing a train, and having such a time to wait at the station, i was an hour and more late when i got to kensington. he was at home. of course i had no idea there was anything wrong; i shall never forget it--never! you might have knocked me down with a feather when i heard you'd gone." "what," muttered mamie, "what did he say?" "it was like this. i said to him, 'dear mamie's away, the servant tells me?' for naturally i thought you were visiting friends; 'as likely as not, she's with his family,' i thought to myself. 'oh, yes,' he said, 'you must prepare yourself for a shock, mrs. baines--my wife has left me.' 'left you?' i said. 'yes,' said he, so cool that it turned me a mask of blood to hear him, 'she's gone away with a lover.' 'mr. heriot!' i exclaimed--'_mister_ heriot!' 'she left a note,' he said, 'so it's quite true. do you think we need talk about it much? i don't know that a worthless woman is any loss,' he said." "he said that?" "those were his very words, my dear. and that cool! i stared at him. i'd no mind to make excuses for you, gawd knows; but, for all that, one's own flesh and blood wasn't going to be talked about like niggers in _my_ hearing. when i got my wits together, i said, 'it seems to me i'd be sorrier for you, mr. heriot, if you took it different.' 'oh,' said he in his superior way, 'would you? we needn't discuss my feelings, madam. perhaps you'll stay and dine?' i was so angry that i couldn't be civil to him. 'i thank you,' i said, 'i will not stay and dine. and i take the opportunity, mr. heriot, of telling you you're a brute!' with that i came away; but there was much more in between that i've forgotten. about the divorce it was. he said he had 'a duty to himself,' and that the man could marry you when you were divorced; which i suppose he _would_ have done if he had lived? though whether your sin would have been any less, my dear, if an archbishop had performed the ceremony is a question that i couldn't undertake to decide. you must begin your life afresh, now that it's all 'absolute'--which i learn is the proper term--and you'll never be in a newspaper any more. pray to heaven for aid, and take heart of grace! and if it will relieve you to speak sometimes of those sinful months with--with the other one in paris, why, you shall talk about them to me, my dear, and i won't reproach you." mamie was no longer listening. an emotion that she did not seek to define was roused in her as she wondered if heriot could indeed have taken the blow so stoically as her aunt declared. she scarcely knew whether she wished to put faith in his demeanour or not, but the subject was one that filled her thoughts long after mrs. baines's departure. it was one to which she constantly recurred. with less delay than might have been anticipated, the widow found a house in balham to fulfil her requirements, and the removal was effected several months before no. , lavender street was sub-let. the houses of this class differ from one another but slightly. excepting that the one in balham was numbered " ," and that the street was called "rosalie road," mamie could have found it easy to believe that she was re-installed in wandsworth. it seemed to her sometimes as if the van that had removed the furniture had also brought the ground-floor parlour, with the miniature bay window overlooking the shrubs and the plot of mould. the back yard with the clothes prop, and the neighbours' yards with the continuous clatter, they too might have been transferred from lavender street; and so abiding was the clatter that even if she felt sleepy at nine o'clock, it was useless to go to bed before eleven. in view of this unintermittent necessity for back yards, she wondered how the inmates of more expensive houses for which back yards were not provided managed to support the deficiency. the women that she viewed, from the bedroom, among the clothes lines, or across the plot of mould, as they went forth with string bags, might have been the lavender street tenants. and were they not the lavender street children, these who on week-days swung, unkempt, on the little creaking gates along the road, and on sundays walked abroad in colours so grotesquely unsuited to them? such houses are, for the most part, happily, the crown of lives too limited to realise their limitations--too unsuccessful to be aware that they have failed. to rosalie road, balham, with her aunt lydia for companion, the divorced woman at the age of twenty-six retired to remember that she had once hoped to be an artist, and had had the opportunity of being happy. to-day she hoped for nothing. there was no scope for hope. if she could have awakened to find herself famous, her existence would have been coloured a little--though she knew that fame could not satisfy her now as it would once have done--but the ability to labour for distinction was gone. she was apathetic, she had no interest in anything. when six months had passed, she regarded death as the only event to which she could still look forward; when she had been here a year, a glimmer of relief entered into her depression--the doctor who had attended her, and sounded her lungs, told her that she "must take care of herself." sometimes a neighbour looked in, and spoke of dilapidations and the indifference of the landlord; of the reductions at a high road linendraper's, and the whooping-cough. sometimes a curate called to sell tickets for a concert more elementary than his sermons. in the afternoon she walked to tooting bec and stared at the bushes; in the evening she betook herself to the "circulating library," where _lady audley's secret_ and _the wide, wide world_ were displayed and the proprietor said he hadn't heard of meredith--"perhaps she had made a mistake in the name?" god help her! she was guilty and she had left a husband desolate; but the music that she had dreamed of was the opera on wagner nights; the books that she had expected were copies containing signatures that were the envy of the autograph-collector; the circle that had been her aim was the world of literature and art. she lived at balham; she saw the curate, and she heard about the dilapidations in the neighbour's roof. one year merged into another; and if she lived for forty more, the neighbour and the curate would be her all. chapter xi when five years had passed after the divorce, the liberal party came into power again, and george heriot, q.c., m.p., was appointed solicitor-general. his work and ambitions had not sufficed to mend the gap in his life; but it had been in work and ambition that he endeavoured to find assuagement of the wound. perhaps eagerness had never been so keen in him after his wife went as while he was contesting the borough that he represented now; perhaps he had never realised the inadequacy of success so fully as he did to-day when one of the richest prizes of his profession was obtained. conscious that the anticipated flavour was lacking, the steps to which he might look forward still lost much of their allurement. were he promoted to the post of attorney-general, and raised to the bench, he foresaw that it would elate him no more than it elated him now, as sir george heriot, and a very wealthy man, to recall the period when, as a struggling junior, he had sat up half the night to earn a guinea. the five years had left their mark upon him; the hours of misery which no one suspected had left their mark upon him. the lines about his eyes and mouth had deepened; his hair was greyer, his figure less erect. men who, in their turn, sat up half the night to earn a guinea, envied him, cited his career as an example of brilliant luck--the success of others is always "luck"--and, though they assumed that a fellow was "generally cut up a bit when his wife went wrong," found it difficult to conceive that sir george had permitted domestic trouble to alloy his triumphs to any great extent. nobody imagined that there were still nights when he suffered scarcely less acutely than on the one when he returned to discover that mamie had gone; nobody guessed that there were evenings when his loneliness was almost unbearable to the dry, self-contained man--that moments came when he took from a drawer the likeness that had once stood on his desk and yearned over it in despair. that was his secret; pride forbade that he should share it with another. he contemned himself that he did suffer still. a worthless woman should not be mourned. out of his life should be out of his memory; such weakness shamed him! in august, a week or so after the vacation began, he went to stay at sandhills. his object in going to sandhills was not wholly to see his brother, and still less was it to see his sister-in-law. he was solitary, he was wretched, and he was only forty-seven years of age. he had been questioning for some time whether the wisest thing he could do would not be to marry again; he sought no resumption of rapture, but he wanted a home. an estimable wife, perhaps a son, would supply new interests; and the vague question that had entered his mind had latterly been emphasised by his introduction to miss pierways, who, he was aware, was now the guest of lady heriot. miss pierways was the daughter of a lady who had been the hon. mrs. pierways, and whose straitened circumstances had debarred her from the suite in hampton court that she might otherwise have had at the period of her husband's death. the widow and the girl had retired to obscure lodgings; the only break in the monotony of the latter's existence being an occasional visit to some connections, or friends, at whose places it was hoped she might form a desirable alliance. the most stringent economies had to be practised in order to procure passable frocks for these visits, but the opportunities had led to no result, though she had beauty. and then an extraordinary event occurred. when the girl was twenty-eight, the widow who, for once, had reluctantly accepted an invitation to accompany her, received an offer of marriage herself, and became the wife of an american who was known to be several times over a millionaire. for one door that had been ajar to the daughter of the hon. mrs. pierways, with nothing but her birth and her appearance to recommend her, a hundred doors flew open to the step-daughter of henry van buren; and it was shortly after the startling metamorphosis in the fortunes of the pair that heriot had first met them. the dowry that agnes pierways might bring to her husband weighed with him very little, for he was in a position to disregard such considerations. but miss pierways' personality appeared to him suggestive of all the qualifications that he sought in the lady whom he should marry. without her manner being impulsive or girlish, she was sufficiently young to be attractive. she was handsome, and in a slightly statuesque fashion that bore promise of the serenity which he told himself was now his aim. certainly if he did re-marry--and he was contemplating the step very seriously--it would be difficult to secure a partner to fulfil his requirements more admirably than miss pierways. whether he fulfilled hers, he could ascertain when he had fully made up his mind. it was with the intention of making up his mind, in proximity to the lady, that he had gone to sandhills; and one evening, when he was alone in the smoking-room with his brother, the latter blundered curiously enough on to the bull's-eye of his meditations. "i wonder," said sir francis, "that you've never thought of re-marrying, george?" "my experience of matrimony was not fortunate," answered heriot, smoking slowly, but with inward perturbation. "your experience of matrimony was a colossal folly. all things considered, the consequences might easily have been a good deal worse." "i don't follow you." "between ourselves, the end never seemed to me so regrettable as you think it." "my wife left me." "and you divorced her! and you have no children." "if i had had children," said heriot musingly, "it is a fact that the consequences would have been worse." "but in any case," said the baronet, "it was a huge mistake. really one may be frank, in the circumstances! you married madly. the probability is that if your wife had been--if you were living together still, you would be a miserable man to-day. it was a very lamentable affair, of course, when it happened, but regarding it coolly--in looking back on it--don't you fancy that perhaps things are just as well as they are?" "i was very fond of my wife," replied heriot, engrossed by his cigar. "to an extent," said sir francis indulgently, "no doubt you had an affection for her. but, my dear fellow, what companionship had you? was she a companion?" "i don't know." "was she interested in your career? could she understand your ways of thought? was she used to your world? one doesn't ask a great deal of women, but had you any single thing in common?" "i don't know," said heriot again. sir francis shrugged his shoulders. "take my word for it that, with such a girl as you married, your divorce wasn't an unmixed evil. it wasn't the release one would have chosen, but at least it was better for you than being tied to her for life. damn it, george! what's the use of blinking the matter now? she was absolutely unsuited to you in every way; you must admit it!" "i suppose she was. at the same time i was happy with her." "how long would the infatuation have lasted?" "it lasted more than three years." "would it have lasted another five?" "speaking honestly, i believe it would." "though you had nothing in common?" "i don't explain," said heriot. "i tell you, i was happy with her, that's all. viewing it dispassionately, i suppose she _was_ unsuited to me--i don't know that we did have anything in common; i don't see any justification for the fool's paradise i lived in. but for all that, if i married again, i should never care for the woman as--as i cared for _her_. in fact, i should merely marry to----" he was about to say "to try to forget her"--"to make a home for myself," he said, instead. "have you considered such a step?" asked sir francis. "sometimes, yes." "the best thing you could do--a very proper thing for you to do.... anybody in particular?" "it's rather premature----" "you're not in chambers, old fellow!" "what do you think of miss pierways?" inquired heriot after a scarcely perceptible pause. "a very excellent choice! i should congratulate you heartily. we had not noticed the---- and catherine is very acute in these matters----" "there has been nothing to notice; probably she would refuse me point-blank. but in the event of my determining to marry again, i've wondered whether miss pierways wouldn't be the lady i proposed to." "i don't think you could do better." "really? you don't think i'm too old for her?" "on my honour! 'too old for her'? not a bit, a very sensible marriage! i'm not surprised that you should be attracted by her." "'attracted by her,'" said heriot, "suggests rather more than the actual facts. i appreciate her qualities, but i can't say i'm sensible of any attachment. i'm sorry that i'm not. i appreciate her so fully that i am anxious to be drawn towards her a little more. i'm somewhat past the age for ardent devotion, but i couldn't take a wife as i might buy a horse. of course, i've not been very much in her society. er--down here, i daresay, when i come to know her better---- have you met van buren?" "in town, before he sailed. he is in new york, you know. i like them all. we were very pleased to have the mother and the girl come to us.... well, make your hay while the sun shines!" "it isn't shining," said heriot; "i'm just looking east, waiting for it to rise. but i'm glad to have talked to you; as soon as the first ray comes i think i'll take your advice. i _ought_ to marry, francis; i know you're right." chapter xii the more he reflected, the more he was convinced of it; in marriage lay his chance of contentment. and during the ensuing fortnight his approval of miss pierways deepened. the house would not fill until the following month, and the smallness of the party there at present was favourable to the development of acquaintance. excepting that she was a trifle cold, there was really no scope for adverse criticism upon miss pierways. she was unusually well read, took an intelligent interest in matters on which women of her age were rarely informed, and was accomplished to the extent that she played the piano after dinner with brilliant execution and admirable hands and wrists. her coldness, theoretically, was no drawback to him, and heriot was a little puzzled by his own attitude. her air was neither so formal as to intimate that his advances would be unwelcome, nor so self-conscious as to repel him by the warmth of its encouragement; yet, in spite of his admiration, the idea of proposing to her dismayed him when he forced himself to approach the brink. his vacillation was especially irritating since he had learned that the ladies were at the point of joining van buren in new york. the opportunity of which he was failing to take advantage would speedily be past, and he dreaded that if he suffered it to escape him, he would recall the matter with regret. he perceived as well, however, that if he were precipitate, he might regret that too, and he was sorry that they were not remaining in europe longer. one evening, when their departure was being discussed, the mother expressed surprise that he had never visited america, though she had had no curiosity about it, herself, until she married an american; and in answer heriot declared that he had frequently thought of "running across during the long vacation." "if you ever do," she said, "i hope you will choose a year when we are there." "to tell you the truth, i was thinking of it this year." "we may see you in new york, sir george?" said miss pierways. "really? how strange that will seem! i've been eager to go to new york all my life; but now that i'm going, i'm rather afraid. the idea of a great city where i haven't any friends----" "but you will have many friends, agnes." "by-and-by," answered miss pierways. "yes, i suppose so. but it's very fatiguing _making_ friends, don't you think so? and i tremble at the voyage." "how delightful it would be," remarked mrs. van buren, "if we were going by the same steamer, sir george!" heriot laughed. "it would be very delightful to me to make the voyage in your company. but i might bore you frightfully; a week at sea must be a severe test. i should be afraid of being found out." "we are promised other passengers," observed miss pierways, looking down with a faint smile. her archness was a shade stiff, but her neck was one of her chief attractions. "why don't you go, george?" said lady heriot cheerfully. "you'd much better go by mrs. van buren's boat than any other; and you've been talking of making a trip to america 'next year' ever since i've known you!" this amiable fiction was succeeded by fresh protestations from mrs. van buren that no arrangement could be more charming, and heriot, half against his will, half with pleasure, found himself agreeing to telegraph in the morning to inquire if he could obtain a berth. he hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad when he had done so. that the step would result in an engagement might be predicted with a tolerable degree of certainty, and he would have preferred to arrive at an understanding with himself under conditions which savoured less of coercion. since a state-room proved to be vacant, however, he could do no less now than engage it; and everybody appeared so much pleased, and miss pierways was so very gracious, that the misgivings that disturbed him looked momentarily more unreasonable than ever. the night before he sailed, in their customary chat over whisky and cigars, sir francis said to him: "'ask, and it shall be given unto you'!" "i'm inclined to think you're right," said his brother. "i suppose it will end in it.... she's a trifle like a well-bred machine--doesn't it strike you so?--warranted never to get out of order!" the other's look was significant, and heriot added, "very desirable in a wife, of course! only somehow----" "'only somehow' you're eccentric, george--you always were!" "it's not my reputation," said heriot drily; "i believe that i'm considered particularly practical." "reputations," retorted the baronet, attempting an epigram, as he sometimes did in the course of his second whisky-and-potash, and failing signally in the endeavour, "are like tombstones--generally false." he realised the reality of tombstones, and became controversial. "_i've_ known you from a boy, and i say you were always eccentric. it was nothing but your eccentricity that you had to thank before. here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the asking, and you grumble--i'm hanged if you don't grumble!--because you see she is to be depended on. what the devil do you want?" "i want to be fond of her," answered heriot. "i admit all you've said of her; i want to like her more." "so you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? all women are alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. she'll make an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, i suppose?" was it? heriot recalled the criticism during his first day on board. neither of the ladies was visible until queenstown was reached, and he paced the deck, pursuing his reflections by the aid of tobacco. she would "make an admirable mother, and that was the main thing"! of the second half of the opinion he was not so sure. to marry a woman simply because one believed she would shine in a maternal capacity was somewhat too altruistic, he thought. however, he was fully aware that miss pierways had other recommendations. she appeared with her mother at the head of the companion-way while he was wishing that he hadn't come, and he found their chairs for them, and arranged their rugs, and subsequently gave their letters to the steward to be posted. after leaving queenstown, mrs. van buren's sufferings increased, and the girl, who, saving for a brief interval, was well and cheerful, was practically in his charge. it was heriot who accompanied her from the saloon after breakfast, and strolled up and down with her till she was tired. when the chair and the rug--the salient features of a voyage are the woman, the chair, and the rug--were satisfactorily arranged, it was he who sat beside her, talking. flying visits she made below, while her mother kept her cabin; but for the most part she was on deck--or in the saloon, or in the reading-room--and for the most part heriot was the person to whom she looked for conversation. if he had been a decade or two younger, he would probably have proposed to her long before they sighted sandy hook, and it surprised him that he did not succumb to the situation as it was. a woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a man so susceptible, as at sea. the interminable days demand flirtation, if one is not to perish of boredom. moonlight and water are notoriously potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every evening. and it is very becoming to the girl. miss pierways' face was always a disappointment to heriot at breakfast. the remembrance of its factitious softness the previous night made its hardness in the sunshine look harder. he wondered if it was the remembrance of its hardness at breakfast that kept him from proposing to her when they loitered in the moonlight. he was certainly doing his best to fall in love with her, and everything conspired to assist him; but the days went on, and the momentous question remained unuttered. "we shall soon be there," she said one evening as they strolled about the deck after dinner. "i'm beginning to be keen. have you noticed how everybody is saying, 'new york' now? at first no one alluded to it--we mightn't have been due for a year--and since yesterday nobody's talking of anything else!" "nearly everyone i've spoken to seems to have made the trip half a dozen times," said heriot. "i feel dreadfully untravelled in the smoking-room. when are you going to niagara? niagara is one of the things i'm determined not to miss." "i was talking to some girls who have lived in new york all their lives--when they weren't in europe--and they haven't been there yet. they told me they had been to the panorama in westminster!" "i have met a londoner who had never been to the temple." "no? how perfectly appalling!" she exclaimed, none the less fervently because she hadn't been to it herself. "oh yes, i know i shall adore niagara! i want to see a great deal of america while i'm there." "i wish _i_ had time to see more; i should like to go to california." "i wouldn't see california for any consideration upon earth!" she declared. "california, to me, is bret harte--i should be so afraid of being disillusioned. when we went to ireland once, do you know, sir george, it was a most painful shock to me! my ideas of ireland were founded on dion boucicault's plays--i expected to see all the peasants in fascinating costumes, with their hair down their backs, just as one sees them on the stage. the reality was terrible. i shudder when i recall the disappointment." "i sympathise." "of course you're laughing at me! i shall have my revenge, if you don't like new york. but, i don't know--i may feel guilty. you mustn't blame us if you don't like new york, sir george. fortunately you won't have time to be very bored, though; will you?" "'fortunately'?" "fortunately if it doesn't amuse you, i mean. when does the--how do you say it? when does your holiday end?" "i must be back in london on the twenty-fourth of next month; i'm almost american myself. i shall have such a fleeting glimpse of the country, that i must really think of writing a book about it." "you have something better to do than write vapid books. to me your profession seems the most fascinating one there is. if i were a man, i'd rather be called to the bar than anything. you'd be astonished if you knew how many biographies of eminent lawyers i've read--they enthralled me as a child. i don't know any career that suggests such power to me as the bar. don't smile: sometimes, when we're talking and i remember the tremendous influence you wield, i tremble." she lifted her eyes to him, deprecating her enthusiasm, which was too palpably a pose, and again heriot was conscious that the opportunity was with him, if he could but grasp it. they had paused by the taffrail, and he stood looking at her, trying to speak the words that would translate their relations to a definite footing. he no longer had any doubt as to her answer; he could foresee her reply--at least the manner of her reply--with disturbing clearness. he knew that she would hesitate an instant, and droop her head, and ultimately murmur correct phrases that would exhilarate him not at all. in imagination he already heard her tones, as she promised to be his wife. he supposed, as they were screened from observation, that he might take her hand. how passionless, how mechanical and flat it would all be! he replied with a commonplace, and after a few moments they continued their stroll. when he turned in, however, he reproached himself more forcibly than he had done yet, and his vacillation was by no means at an end. he was at war, not with his judgment, but with his instinct, and it was the perception of this fact that always increased his perturbation. they landed the following day, and, after being introduced to mr. van buren in the custom-house, heriot drove to an hotel. the hotel he found excellent; new york he found wonderful, but a city different from what he had expected. he had vaguely pictured new york as a paris where everybody talked english. this was before the introduction of the automobile had changed the face of paris, and the face of the parisian--before it incidentally reduced the number of half-fed horses barbarously used in that city, which is the negro's paradise, and the "horse's hell"--and the boulevard was even more unlike broadway then than now. broadway, broad in name only till it spread into the brightness of union square, suggested london more than paris--london in an unprecedented burst of energy. the tireless vigour of the throng, the ubiquitous rush of the elevated railway confused him. though he paid homage to the cuisine of america, which proved as much as much superior to that of england as the worst transatlantic train was to our best of that period, he told himself that he was disappointed. the truth was that, not wishing to take the van burens' invitations too literally, and having no other acquaintances here, he was dull. american hospitality, however, is the most charming in the world, and he spent several very agreeable hours inside the big brownstone house. nothing could have exceeded the geniality of van buren's manner, nor was this due solely to the position of his visitor and a hope of their becoming connected. the average american business man will show more kindness to a stranger, who intrudes into his office, than most englishmen display to one who comes to them with a letter of introduction from a friend, and van buren's welcome was as sincere as it was attractive. heriot stayed in new york a week, and then fulfilled his desire to visit niagara. on his return he called in fifth avenue again. he was already beginning to refer to his homeward voyage, and he was still undetermined whether he would propose to miss pierways or not. the days slipped by without his arriving at a conclusion; and then one morning he told himself he had gone too far to retreat now--that the step, which was doubtless the most judicious he could take, should be made without delay. he called at the house the same afternoon--for on the next day but one the _etruria_ sailed--and he found the ladies at home. he sat down, wondering if he would be left alone with miss pierways and take his departure engaged to her. but for half an hour there seemed no likelihood of a tête-à-tête. presently there were more callers and they were shown into another room. mrs. van buren begged him to excuse her. he rose to leave, but was pressed to remain. "i want to talk to you when they've gone," she said; "i haven't half exhausted my list of messages to london." heriot resumed his seat, and miss pierways smiled. "poor mamma wishes she were going herself, if she told the truth! now that we're here, it is i who like new york, not she." "we're creatures of custom," he said; "your mother has lived in london too long to accustom herself to america very easily... of course you'll be over next season?" "oh yes. shall you ever come to america again, sir george?" "i--i hardly know," he answered. "i certainly hope to." "oh, then, you will! you're your own master." "is anybody his own master?" "to the extent of travelling to america, many people, i should think!" he remembered with sudden gratification that he had never said a word to her that might not have been spoken before a crowd of listeners. what was there to prevent him withholding the proposal if he liked! "i've no doubt i shall come," he said abstractedly. she looked slightly downcast. it was not the reply that she had hoped to hear. "i shall always owe a debt of gratitude to you and to mr. and mrs. van buren for making my visit so pleasant to me," he found himself saying next. "my trip has been a delightful experience." she murmured a conventional response, but chagrin began to creep about her heart. heriot diverged into allusions which advanced the position not at all. they spoke of new york, of england, of the voyage--she perfunctorily, and he with ever-increasing relief. and now he felt that he had been on the verge of the precipice for the last time. he had escaped--and by the intensity of his gratitude he realised how ill-judged had been his action in playing around it. when mrs. van buren reappeared, followed by her husband, her daughter's face told her that the climax had not been reached; and bold in thanksgiving, heriot excused himself when he was asked to dine with them that evening. had he been offered the alternative of the next evening, he could not without rudeness have found a pretext for refusing; but on the morrow, as luck would have it, the van burens were dining out. the footman opened the big door, and heriot descended the steps with a sensation that was foreign to him, and not wholly agreeable. he knew that he did not want to marry miss pierways, and that he had behaved like a fool in trying to acquire the desire, but he was a little ashamed of himself. his conduct had not been irreproachable; and he was conscious that when the steamer sailed and the chapter was closed for good and all, he would be glad to have done with it. he had blundered badly. nevertheless he would have blundered worse, and been a still greater fool, if the affair had terminated in an engagement. of course his brother would say distasteful things when they met, and lady heriot would convey her extreme disapproval of him without saying anything. that he must put up with! of two evils, he had at any rate chosen the lesser. he repeated the assurance with still more conviction on saturday morning during the quarter of an hour in which the cab rattled him to the boat. the experience had been a lesson to him, and he was resolved that henceforward he would dismiss the idea of marriage from his mind. he saw his portmanteau deposited in his cabin, and he returned to the deck as the steamer began to move. the decks were in the confusion that obtains at first. passengers still hung at the taffrail, taking a farewell gaze at friends on the landing-stage. the chairs were huddled in a heap, and stewards bustled among stacks of luggage, importuned at every second step with instructions and inquiries. the deep pulsations sounded more regular; the long line of sheds receded; and the figures of the friends were as little dark toys, waving specks of white. even the most constant among the departing began to turn away now. the hastening stewards were importuned more frequently than before. everybody was in a hurry, and all the women in the crowd that flocked below seemed to be uttering the words "baggage" and "state-room" at the same time. a few men were temporarily in possession of the deck, striding to and fro behind pipes or cigars. the regulation as to "no smoking abaft this" was not in force yet, or was, at least, disobeyed at present. heriot sauntered along the length of deck until it began to fill again. the pile of chairs received attention--they were set out in a row under the awning. the deck took a dryness and a whiteness, and a few passengers sat down, and questioned inwardly if they would find one another companionable. he bent his steps to the smoking-room. but it was empty and uninviting thus early, and he forsook it after a few minutes. as the door slammed behind him, he came face to face with the woman who had been his wife. chapter xiii she approached--their gaze met--he had bowed, and passed her. perhaps it had lasted a second, the mental convulsion in which he looked in her eyes; he did not know. he found a seat and sank into it, staring at the sky and sea, acutely conscious of nothing but her nearness. he could not tell whether it was despair or rejoicing that beat in him; he knew nothing but that the world had swayed, that life was in an instant palpitating and vivid--that he had seen her! then he knew that, in the intensity of emotion that shook him body and brain, there was a thrill of joy, inexplicable but insistent. but when he rose at last, he dreaded that he might see her again. he did not see her till the evening--when he drew back at the door of the saloon as she came out. his features were imperturbable now and betrayed nothing, though her own, before her head drooped, were piteous in appeal. he noted that she looked pale and ill, and that she wore a black dress with crape on it. he wondered whether she had lost her father, or her aunt. next morning he understood that it was her father, for he saw her sitting beside mrs. baines. so dick cheriton was dead. he had once been fond of dick cheriton.... the stranger in the black frock had once slept in his arms, and borne his name.... the sadness of a lifetime weighed on his soul. he perceived that she shunned him by every means in her power. but they were bound to meet; and then across her face would flash the same look that he had seen at the foot of the companion-way; its supplication and abasement wrung him. horrible as the continual meetings grew, in the reading-room, on deck, or below, their lines crossed a dozen times between breakfast and eleven o'clock at night. it became as torturous to heriot as to her. he felt as if he had struck her, as he saw her whiten and shrink as he passed her by. soon he hated himself for being here to cause her this intolerable pain. it was on the evening of the third day that her endurance broke down and she made her petition. with a pang he recognised the voice of her messenger before he turned. "mrs. baines!" "you're surprised i should address you, mr. heriot," she said. "i shouldn't have, but _she_ wants me to beg you to speak to her, if it's only for five minutes. she implores you humbly to let her speak to you. she made me ask you; i couldn't say 'no.'" his pulses throbbed madly, and momentarily he couldn't reply. "what purpose would it serve?" he said in tones he struggled to make firm. "she can't bear it, mr. heriot--_sir_ heriot, i should say; i was forgetting, i'm sure i beg your pardon! she 'implores you humbly to let her speak to you'; i was to use those words. won't you consent? she is ill, she's dying." "dying?" whispered heriot by a physical effort. she nodded slowly. "the doctor has told her. she won't be here long, poor girl. but whether she's to be pitied for it or not, it's hard to say; i don't think she'll be sorry to go.... my brother is gone, sir heriot." his answer was inarticulate. "we got there just at the end. if we had been too late, she----she has been ailing a long while, but we didn't know it was so serious. when she saw you, it was awful for her. i---- oh, what am i to tell her? she's waiting now!" "where?" said heriot, hoarsely. "will you come with me?" "show me," he said; "show me where she is." he still heard the knell of it--"dying!" he heard it as the lonely figure in the darkness rose: "thank you, i am grateful." the familiar voice knocked at his heart. "mrs. baines has told me you are ill. i am grieved to learn how ill you are." "it doesn't matter. it was good of you to come; i thought you would. i--i have prayed to speak to you again!" "it wasn't much to ask," he said; "i--am human." he could see that she trembled painfully. he indicated the chair that she had left, and drew one closer for himself. then for a minute there was silence. "do you hate me?" she said. he shook his head. "should i have come to tell you so?" "but you can never forgive me?" "why distress yourself? if for a moment i hesitated to come, it was because i _knew_ it would be distressing for you. perhaps a refusal would have been kinder after all." "no, no; i was sure you wouldn't refuse. she doubted; but _i_ was sure. i said you'd come when you heard about me." "is it so serious? what is it? tell me; i know nothing." "it's my lungs: they were never very strong, you remember. the doctor told me in duluth: 'perhaps a year,' if i am 'very careful.' i'm _not_ very careful--it'll soon be all over. don't look like that! why should you care? _i_ don't care--i don't want to live a bit. only----do you think, if--if there's anything afterwards, that a woman who's gone wrong like me will be punished?" "for god's sake," he said, "don't talk so!" "but _do_ you? it makes one think of these things when one knows one has only a very little time to live. _you_ can't forgive me--you said so." "i do," he said; "i forgive you freely. if i could undo your wretchedness by giving my life for you, i'd give it. you don't know how i loved you--what it meant to me to find you gone! ah, mamie, how could you do it?" the tears stood in her eyes, as she lifted her white face to him. "i'm ashamed!" she moaned. "what can i say?" "why?" said heriot, at the end of a tense pause. "why? did you care for him so much? if he had lived and married you, would you be happy?" "happy!" she echoed, with something between a laugh and a sob. "tell me. i hoped you'd be happy. that's true. i never wanted you to suffer for what you'd done. i suffered enough for both." "i don't think i should have married him. i don't know; i don't think so. i knew i'd made a mistake before--oh, in the first month! if _you_ haven't hated me, i have hated myself." "and since? you've been with _her_?" "ever since. my poor father wanted me to go home. i wish i had! you know i've lost him--she told you that? he wanted me to go home, but i couldn't--where everybody knew! you understand? and then she moved to balham, and we never left it till two months ago, when the cable came. we were in time to see him die. my poor father!" he touched her hand, and her fingers closed on it. "you oughtn't to be up here at night," he said huskily, looking at her with blinded eyes. "didn't the man tell you that the night air was bad? and that flimsy wrap--it's no use so! draw it across your mouth." "what's the difference?--there, then! shall you--will you speak to me again after this evening, or is this the last talk we shall have? i had so much to say to you, but i don't seem able to find it now you're here.... if you believe that i ask your pardon on my knees, i suppose, after all, that that's everything. if ever a man deserved a good wife it was you; i realise it more clearly than i did while we were together--though i think i knew it then.... you never married again?" "no," he answered; "no, i haven't married." "but you will, perhaps? why haven't you?" "i'm too old, and--i cared too much for _you_." the tears were running down her face now; she loosed his hand to wipe them away. "don't say i've ruined your life," she pleaded; "don't say that! my own--yes; my own--it served me right! but i've tried so hard to believe that _you_ had got over it. when i read of your election, and then that you were made solicitor-general, i was glad, ever so glad. i thought, 'he's successful; he has his career.' i've always wanted to believe that your work was enough--that you had forgotten. it wasn't so?" "no, it wasn't so. i did my best to forget you, but i couldn't." "aunt lydia said you weren't cut up at all when she saw you. you deceived her very well. 'a worthless woman,' you called me; i 'wasn't any loss'! it was quite true; but i knew you couldn't feel like that--not so soon. 'worthless'! i've heard it every day since she told me.... i meant to do my duty when i married you, george; if i could have foreseen----" she broke off, coughing. "if i could have foreseen what the end would be, i'd have killed myself rather than become your wife. i was always grateful to you; you were always good to me--and i only brought you shame." "not 'only,'" he said; "you gave me happiness first, mamie--the greatest happiness i've known. i loved you, and you came to me. you never understood how much i did love you--i think that was the trouble." "'there's a word that says it all: i worship you'! do you remember saying that? you said it in the train when you first proposed to me. i refused you then--why did i ever give way!... how different everything would be now! you 'worshipped' me, and i----" her voice trailed off, and once more only the pounding of the engine broke the stillness on the deck. the ocean swelled darkly under a starless sky, and he sat beside her staring into space. in the steerage someone played "robin adair" on a fiddle. a drizzle began to fall, to blow in upon them. heriot became conscious of it with a start. "you must go below," he said; "it's raining." she rose obediently, shivering a little, and drawing the white scarf more closely about her neck. "good-night," she said, standing there with wide eyes. he put out his hand, and her clasp ran through his blood again. "good-night," he repeated gently. "sleep well." was it real? was he awake? he looked after her as she turned away--looked long after she had disappeared. the fiddle in the steerage was still scraping "robin adair"; the black stretch of deck was desolate. a violent impulse seized him to overtake her, to snatch her back, to hold her in his arms for once, with words and caresses of consolation. "dying"! he wondered if davos, algiers, the cape, anything and everything procurable by money, could prolong her life. then he remembered that she did not wish to live. but that was horrible! she should consult a specialist in town, and follow his advice; he would make her promise it. with the gradual defervescence of his mood, he wondered if she was properly provided for, and he resolved to question mrs. baines on the point. he would elicit the information the following day, and something could be arranged, if necessary--if not with mamie's knowledge, then without it. the morning was bright, and mamie was in her chair when he came up from the saloon after breakfast. as he approached, she watched him expectantly, and it was impossible to pass without a greeting. it was impossible, when the greeting had been exchanged, not to remain with her for a few minutes. "how are you feeling?" he asked; "any better?" "i never feel very bad; i'm just the same to-day as yesterday, thank you." the "thank you" was something more than a formula, and he felt it. it hurt him to hear the gratitude in her tone, natural as it might be. "i want you to go to a good physician when you arrive," he said, "say, to drummond; and to do just as he tells you. you _must_ do that; it is a duty you owe to yourself." she shrugged her shoulders. "what for? that i may last two years, perhaps, instead of one? it is kind of you to care, but i'm quite satisfied as things are. don't bother about me." "you will have to go!" he insisted. "before we land i shall speak to your aunt about it." he had paused by her seat with the intention of resuming his saunter as soon as civility permitted, but her presence was subversive of the intention. he sat down beside her as he had done the previous evening. but now it was inevitable that they should speak of other subjects than infidelity and death. the sky was blue, and the white deck glistened in the sunshine. the sea before them tumbled cheerfully, and to right and left were groups of passengers laughing, flirting, doing fancy-work, or reading novels. "you haven't told me how it was you came to the states?" she said presently; "were you in new york all the time?" heriot did not answer, and she waited with surprise. "i'll tell you, if you wish," he said hastily. "i came out half meaning to marry." "oh!" she said, as if he had struck her. "i thought i might be happier married. the lady and her mother were going to new york, and i travelled with them. i--i was mistaken in myself." they were not looking at each other any longer, and her voice trembled a little as she replied: "you weren't fond enough of her?" "no," he said. "i shall never marry again; i told you so last night." after a long pause, she said: "was she pretty?... prettier than _i_ used to be?" "she was handsome, i think. not like you at all. why talk about it?... i'm glad i came, though, or i shouldn't have seen you. i shall always be glad to have seen you again. remember that, after we part. for me, at least, it will never be so bitter since we've met and i've heard you say you're sorry." "god bless you," she murmured almost inaudibly. he left her after half an hour, but drifted towards her again in the afternoon. insensibly they lost by degrees much of their constraint in talking together. she told him of her father's illness, of her own life in balham; heriot gave her some details of his appointment, explaining that it was the duty of an attorney-general and solicitor-general to reply to questions of law in the house, to advise the government, and conduct its cases, and the rest of it. by wednesday night it was difficult to him to realise that their first interview had occurred only forty-eight hours ago. it had become his habit on deck to turn his steps towards her, to sip tea by her side in the saloon, to saunter with her after dinner in the starlight. even at last he felt no embarrassment as he moved towards her; even at last she came to smile up at him as he drew near. moments there could not fail to be when such a state of things seemed marvellous and unnatural--when conversation ceased, and they paused oppressed and tongue-tied by a consciousness of the anomaly of their relations. nevertheless such moments were but hitches in an intercourse which grew daily more indispensable to them both. how indispensable it had become to herself the woman perceived as the end of the voyage approached; and now she would have asked no better than for them to sail on until she died. when she undressed at night, she sighed, "another day over"; when she woke in the morning, eagerness quickened her pulses. on saturday they would arrive; and when friday dawned, the reunion held less of strangeness than the reflection that she and heriot would separate again directly. to think that, as a matter of course, they would say good-bye to each other, and resume their opposite sides of an impassable gulf, looked more unnatural to her than the renewed familiarity. their pauses were longer than usual on friday evening. both were remembering that it was the last. heriot had ascertained that cheriton had been able to leave her but little; and the notion of providing her with the means to winter in some favourable climate was hot in his mind. "it is understood," he said abruptly, "that you go to drummond and do exactly as he orders? you'll not be so mad as to refuse at the last moment?" "all right!" she answered apathetically, "i'll go. shall i--will you care to hear what he says?" "your aunt has promised to write to me. by the way, there's something i want to say to-night. if what he advises is expensive, you must let me make it possible for you. i claim that as my right. i intended arranging it with mrs. baines, but she tells me you--you'd be bound to know where the money came from. he'll probably tell you to live abroad." "thank you," she said after a slight start, "i could not take your money. it is very good of you, but i would rather you didn't speak of it. if you talked forever, i wouldn't consent." "mamie----" "the very offer turns me cold. please don't!" "you're cruel," he said. "you're refusing to let me prolong your life. have i deserved that from you?" "oh!" she cried, in a tortured voice, "for god's sake, don't press me! leave me something--i won't say 'self-respect,' but a vestige, a grain of proper pride. think what my feelings would be, living on money from you--it wouldn't prolong my life, george; it would kill me sooner. you've been generous and merciful to me; be merciful to me still and talk of something else." "you are asking me to stand by and see you die. _i_ have feelings, too, mamie. i can't do it!" "i'm dying," she said; "if it happens a little sooner, or a little later, does it matter very much? if you want to be very kind to me, to--to brighten the time that remains as much as you can, tell me that if i send to you when--when it's a question of days, you'll come to the place and see me again. i'd bless you for that! i've been afraid to ask you till now; but it would mean more to me than anything else you could do. would you, if i sent?" "why," said heriot labouredly, after another pause, "why would it mean so much?" they were leaning over the taffrail; and suddenly her head was bent, and she broke into convulsive sobs that tore his breast. "mamie!" he exclaimed. "mamie, tell me!" he glanced round and laid a trembling touch on her hands. "tell me, dear!" he repeated hoarsely. "do you love me, then?" her figure was shaken by the shuddering sobs. his touch tightened to a clasp; he drew the hands down from the distorted face, drew the shaken figure closer, till his own met it--till her bosom was heaving against his heart. "do you love me, mamie?" "yes!" she gasped. and then for an instant only their eyes spoke, and in the intensity of their eyes each gave to the other body and soul. "yes, i love you," she panted; "it's my punishment, i suppose, to love you too late. i shall never see you after to-morrow, till i am dying--if then--but i love you. remember it! it's no good to you, you won't care, but remember it, because it's my punishment. you can say, 'when it was too late, she knew! she died detesting herself, shrinking at her own body, her own loathsome body that she gave to another man!' oh!"--she beat her hands hysterically against his chest--"i hate him, i hate him! god forgive me, he's in his grave, but i hate him when i think what's been. and it wasn't his fault; it was mine, mine--my own degraded, beastly self. curse me, throw me from you! i'm not fit to be standing here; i'm lower than the lowest woman in the streets!" the violence of her emotion maddened him. he knew that _he_ loved _her;_ the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought for years to wrap it--he knew that he had never ceased to love her; and a temptation to make her his wife again, to cherish and possess her so long as life should linger in her veins, flooded his reason. their gaze grew wider, deeper still; he could feel her quivering from head to foot. another moment, and he would have offered his honour to her keeping afresh. some men left the smoking-room; there was the sharp interruption of laughter--the slam of the door. they both regained some semblance of self-possession as they moved apart. "i must go down," she said. and he did not beg her to remain. it was their real farewell, for on the morrow they could merely exchange a few words amid the bustle of arrival. liverpool was reached early in the morning, and when he saw her, she wore a hat and veil and was already prepared to go ashore. in the glare of the sunshine the veil could not conceal that her eyes were red with weeping, however, and he divined that she had passed a sleepless night. to mrs. baines he privately repeated his injunctions with regard to the physician, for he was determined to have his way; and the widow assured him that she would write to morson drummond for an appointment without loss of time. the delays and shouts came to an end while he was speaking to her; and the gangway was lowered, and mamie moved forward to her side. he saw them again in the custom-house, but for a minute only, and from a distance. evidently they got through without trouble, for when he looked across again, they had gone. as he saw that they had gone, a sensation of blankness fell upon heriot's mood, where he stood waiting among the scattered luggage. his life felt newly empty and the day all at once seemed cold and dark. chapter xiv the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought to wrap it; he knew that he had never ceased to love her. as he had known it while she sobbed beside him on the boat, so he knew it when the bar claimed him again and he wrestled with temptation amid his work. he might re-marry her! he could not drive this irruptive idea from his mind. it lurked there, impelled attention, dozed, woke, and throbbed in his consciousness persistently. were he but weak enough to make the choice, the woman that he loved might belong to him once more. were he but weak enough! there were minutes in which he was very near to it, minutes in which the dishonour, if dishonour it were, looked as nothing to him compared with the joy of having her for his wife again. yet were he but "weak" enough? would it indeed be weakness--would it not rather be strength, the courage of his convictions? the longing illumined his vision, and he asked himself on what his doubt and hesitation was based. she had sinned; but he had pardoned her sin, not merely in words, but in his heart. and she was very dear to him; and she had repented. then why should it be impossible? what after all had they done to her, what change in the beloved identity had they wrought, those months that were past? he was aware that it was the physical side that repelled him--there had been another man. yet if she had been a widow when he met her first, there would have been another man, and it would have mattered nothing. did this especial sin make of a woman somebody else? did it give her another face, another form, another brain? did unfaithfulness transform her personality? the only difference was the knowledge of what had happened--the woman herself was the same! but he would not vindicate his right to love her--he loved her, that was enough. in its simplicity, the question was whether he would do better to condone her guilt and know happiness, or to preserve his dignity and suffer. he could not blink the question; it confronted him nakedly when a week had worn by. without her he was lonely and wretched; with her, while she lived, he was confident that his joy would be supreme. the step that he considered was, if any one pleased, revolting; but if it led to his contentment, perhaps to be "revolting" might be the height of wisdom. he must sacrifice his pride, or his peace! and at last, quite deliberately, without misgiving or a backward glance, heriot determined to gain peace. a few days after the arrival, mrs. baines had written to inform him that the physician was out of town, but now a line came to say that an appointment had been made for "monday" and that she would communicate dr. drummond's pronouncement immediately they reached home after the interview. it was on monday morning that heriot received the note, and he resolved to go to mamie the same evening. the thought of the amazement that his appearance would cause her excited him wildly as he drove to victoria. he could foresee the wonder in her eyes as he entered, the incredulity on her features as she heard what he was there to say; and the profoundest satisfaction pervaded him that he had resolved to say it. the comments that his world would make had no longer any place in his meditations; a fico for the world that would debar him from delight and censure what it could not understand! he had suffered long enough; his only regret was for the years which had been lost before he grasped the vivid truth that, innocent or guilty, the woman who conferred happiness was the woman to be desired. a criticism of his brother's recurred to him: "you hadn't a single taste in common!" he had not disputed it at the time; he was not certain that he could deny it now. but there was no need to consider whether their views were kindred or opposed, whether she was defiled or stainless, when she was the woman whose magic could transfigure his existence. he was conscious that this marriage to be approved by his judgment, and condemned by society, would be a sweeter and holier union than their first, to which she had brought purity, and indifference. as the cab sped down victoria street, his excitement increased, and in imagination he already clasped her and felt the warmth of her cheek against his face. the hansom slackened, jerked to a standstill; and he leapt out and hurried to the booking-office. a train was at the point of starting. the sentiment of the bygone was quick in him as he found that he must pass through a yellow barrier on to the same platform to which he used to hasten when he went to see her in lavender street, wandsworth. he had never trodden it since. a thousand associations, sad but delicious, were revived as he took his seat, and the guard, whose countenance seemed familiar, sauntered with a green flag and a lantern past the window. victoria slipped back. it had been in one of these compartments--perhaps in this one--that he had first asked her to be his wife. how wet her cape had been when he touched it! a porter sang out, "grosvenor road," and at the sound of it heriot marvelled at having forgotten that they were about to stop there. yes, "grosvenor road," and then--what next? he could not remember. but memory knocked with a louder pang as each of the places on the line was reached. when "wandsworth common" was cried, he glanced at the dimly-lighted station while in fancy he threaded his way to the shabby villa that had been her home. he thought that he could find it blindfold. after this the line was quite strange to him; and now the impatience of his mood had no admixture and he trembled with eagerness to gain his destination. "balham!" was bawled two minutes later; and among a stream of clerks and nondescripts, he descended a flight of steps and emerged into a narrow street. no cab was visible, and, having obtained directions, he set forth for rosalie road afoot. a glimpse he had of cheap commerce, of the flare of gas-jets on oranges, and eggs, and fifth-rate millinery; and then the shops and the masses were left behind, and he was in obscurity. the sound of footsteps occurred but seldom here, and he wandered in a maze of little houses for nearly half an hour before a welcome postman earned a shilling. rosalie road began in darkness, and ended in a brickfield. he identified number by the aid of a vesta, and pulled the bell. impatience was mastering him when he discerned, through the panes, a figure advancing along the passage. his voice was strange in his ears, as he inquired if mamie was in. "yessir; she's in the drorin'-room. 'oo shall i say?" "sir george heriot. is mrs. baines at home?" his title rendered the little maid incapable of an immediate response. "missis is out of a herrand, sir," she stammered; "she won't be long." "when she comes in, tell her that i'm talking privately to her niece. 'privately'; don't forget!" she turned the handle, and heriot followed her into the room. vaguely he heard her announce him; he saw the room as in a mist. momentarily all that was clear was mamie's face, white and wondering in the lamplight. she stood where she had been standing at his entrance, looking at him; he had the impression of many seconds passing while she only looked; many seconds seemed to go by before her colour fluttered back and she said, "you?" "yes, it's i. won't you say you're glad to see me?" "aunt lydia has written to you," she said, still gazing at him as if she doubted his reality. "her letter has gone." "i've come to hear what dr. drummond says." she motioned him to a chair, and drooped weakly on to the shiny couch. "i am not going to die," she muttered. "your sympathy has been thrown away--i'm a fraud." in the breathless pause he felt deafened by the thudding of his heart. "he has given you hope?" "he said, 'bosh!' i told him what the doctor told me in duluth. he said, 'bosh!' one lung isn't quite sound, that's all; i may live to be eighty." "o dear god!" said heriot slowly, "i thank you!" she gave a short laugh, harsh and bitter. "i always posed. my last pose was as a dying woman!" "mamie," he said firmly--he went across to her and sat down by her side--"mamie, i love you. i want you to come back to me, my darling. my life's no good without you, and i want you for my wife again. will you come?" he heard her catch her breath; she could not speak. he took her hands, and drew her to him. their lips clung together, and presently he felt tears on his cheek. then she released herself with a gesture of negation. "you are mad!" she said. "and _i_ should be madder to accept the sacrifice!" for this he was prepared. "i am very sane," he answered. "dearest, when you understand, you will see that it is the only reparation you can make me. listen!" fidelity a novel by susan glaspell author of "the glory of the conquered," "the visioning," etc. boston small, maynard and company publishers _copyright, _ by small, maynard and company incorporated) printers s. j. parkhill & co., boston u.s.a. to lucy huffaker fidelity chapter one it was hard to get back into the easy current of everyday talk. cora albright's question had too rudely pulled them out of it, disturbing the quiet flow of inconsequential things. even when they had recovered and were safely flowing along on the fact that the new hotel was to cost two hundred thousand dollars, after they had moved with apparent serenity to lamentation over a neighbor who was sick in bed and without a cook, it was as if they were making a display of the ease with which they could move on those commonplace things, as if thus to deny the consciousness of whirlpools near by. so they seemed to dr. deane franklin, who, secured by the shadow of the porch vine, could smile to himself at the way he saw through them. though deane franklin's smile for seeing through people was not so much a smile as a queer little twist of the left side of his face, a screwing up of it that half shut one eye and pulled his mouth out of shape, the same twist that used to make people call him a homely youngster. he was thinking that cora's question, or at any rate her manner in asking it, would itself have told that she had lived away from freeport for a number of years. she did not know that they did not talk about ruth holland any more, that certainly they did not speak of her in the tone of everyday things. and yet, looking at it in any but the freeport way, it was the most natural thing in the world that cora should have asked what she did. mrs. lawrence had asked if mr. holland--he was ruth's father--was getting any better, and then cora had turned to him with the inquiry: "do you ever hear from ruth?" it was queer how it arrested them all. he saw mrs. lawrence's start and her quick look over to her daughter--now edith lawrence blair, the edith lawrence who had been ruth's dearest friend. it was edith herself who had most interested him. she had been leaning to the far side of her big chair in order to escape the shaft of light from the porch lamp. but at cora's question she made a quick turn that brought her directly into the light. it gave her startled face, so suddenly and sharply revealed, an unmasked aspect as she turned from cora to him. and when he quietly answered: "yes, i had a letter from ruth this morning," her look of amazement, of sudden feeling, seemed for the instant caught there in the light. he got her quick look over to amy--his bride, and then her conscious leaning back from the disclosing shaft into the shadow. he himself had become suddenly conscious of amy. they had been in california for their honeymoon, and had just returned to freeport. amy was not a freeport girl, and was new to his old crowd, which the visit of cora albright was bringing together in various little reunions. she had been sitting over at the far side of the group, talking with will blair, edith's husband. now they too had stopped talking. "she wanted to know about her father," he added. no one said anything. that irritated him. it seemed that edith or her mother, now that cora had opened it up, might make some little attempt at the common decencies of such a situation, might ask if ruth would come home if her father died, speak of her as if she were a human being. cora did not appear to get from their silence that she was violating freeport custom. "her mother died just about a year after ruth--left, didn't she?" she pursued. "about that," he tersely answered. "died of a broken heart," murmured mrs. lawrence. "she died of pneumonia," was his retort, a little sharp for a young man to an older woman. her slight wordless murmur seemed to comment on his failure to see. she turned to cora with a tolerant, gently-spoken, "i think deane would have to admit that there was little force left for fighting pneumonia. certainly it was a broken life!"--that last was less gently said. exasperation showed in his shifting of position. "it needn't have been," he muttered stubbornly. "deane--deane!" she murmured, as if in reproach for something of long standing. there was a silence in which the whole thing was alive there for those of them who knew. cora and edith, sitting close together, did not turn to one another. he wondered if they were thinking of the countless times ruth had been on that porch with them in the years they were all growing up together. edith's face was turned away from the light now. suddenly cora demanded: "well, there's no prospect at all of a divorce?" mrs. lawrence rose and went over to amy and opened a lively conversation as to whether she found her new maid satisfactory. it left him and edith and cora to themselves. "no," he answered her question, "i guess not. not that i know of." "how terrible it all is!" cora exclaimed, not without feeling; and then, following a pause, she and edith were speaking of how unbecoming the new hats were, talking of the tea one of their old friends was giving for cora next day. he sat there thinking how it was usually those little things that closed in over ruth. when the thought of her, feeling about her, broke through, it was soon covered over with--oh, discussion of how some one was wearing her hair, the health of some one's baby or merits of some one's cook. he listened to their talk about the changes there had been in freeport in the last ten or twelve years. they spoke of deaths, of marriages, of births; of people who had prospered and people who had gone to pieces; of the growth of the town, of new people, of people who had moved away. in a word, they spoke of change. edith would refer things to him and he occasionally joined in the talk, but he was thinking less of the incidents they spoke of than of how it was change they were talking about. this enumeration of changes gave him a sense of life as a continuous moving on, as a thing going swiftly by. life had changed for all those people they were telling cora about. it had changed for themselves too. he had continued to think of edith and the others as girls. but they had moved on from that; they were moving on all the time. why, they were over thirty! as a matter of fact they were women near the middle thirties. people talked so lightly of change, and yet change meant that life was swiftly sweeping one on. he turned from that too somber thinking to amy, watched her as she talked with mrs. lawrence. they too were talking of freeport people and affairs, the older woman bringing amy into the current of life there. his heart warmed a little to edith's mother for being so gracious to amy, though, that did not keep him from marveling at how she could be both so warm and so hard--so loving within the circle of her approval, so unrelenting out beyond it. amy would make friends, he was thinking, lovingly proud. how could it be otherwise when she was so lovely and so charming? she looked so slim, so very young, in that white dress she was wearing. well, and she was young, little older now than these girls had been when they really were "the girls." that bleak sense of life as going by fell away; here _was_ life--the beautiful life he was to have with amy. he watched the breeze play with her hair and his whole heart warmed to her in the thought of the happiness she brought him, in his gratitude for what love made of life. he forgot his resentment about ruth, forgot the old bitterness and old hurt that had just been newly stirred in him. life had been a lonely thing for a number of years after ruth went away. he had amy now--all was to be different. they all stood at the head of the steps for a moment as he and amy were bidding the others goodnight. they talked of the tea edith was to give for amy the following week--what amy would wear--how many people there would be. "and let me pick you up and take you to the tea tomorrow," edith was saying. "it will be small and informal--just cora's old friends--and then you won't have so many strangers to meet next week." he glowed with new liking of edith, felt anew that sweetness in her nature that, after her turning from ruth, had not been there for him. looking at her through this new friendliness he was thinking how beautifully she had developed. edith was a mother now, she had two lovely children. she was larger than in her girlhood; she had indeed flowered, ripened. edith was a sweet woman, he was thinking. "i do think they're the kindest, most beautiful people!" amy exclaimed warmly as they started slowly homeward through the fragrant softness of the may night. chapter two he had known that amy would ask, and wondered a little at her waiting so long. it was an hour later, as she sat before her dressing-table brushing her hair that she turned to him with a little laugh and asked: "who is this mysterious ruth?" he sighed; he was tired and telling about ruth seemed a large undertaking. amy colored and turned from him and picked up her brush. "don't tell me if you don't want to," she said formally. his hand went round her bared shoulder. "dearest! why, i want to, of course. it's just that it's a long story, and tonight i'm a little tired." as she did not respond to that he added: "this was a hard day at the office." amy went on brushing her hair; she did not suggest that he let it go until another time so he began, "ruth was a girl who used to live here." "i gathered that," she replied quietly. her tone made no opening for him. "i thought a great deal of her," he said after a moment. "yes, i gathered that too." she said it dryly, and smiled just a little. he was more conscious than ever of being tired, of its being hard to tell about ruth. "i gathered," said amy, still faintly smiling, though, her voice went a trifle higher, "that you thought more of her--" she hesitated, then amended--"think more of her--than the rest of them do." he answered simply: "yes, i believe that's so. though edith used to care a great deal for ruth," he added meditatively. "well, what did she do?" amy demanded impatiently. "what _is_ it?" for a moment his cheek went down to her soft hair that was all around her, in a surge of love for its softness, a swift, deep gratitude for her loveliness. he wanted to rest there, letting that, for the time, shut out all else, secure in new happiness and forgetting old hurts. but he felt her waiting for what she wanted to know and so with an effort he began: "why, you see, dear, ruth--it was pretty tough for ruth. things didn't go right for her--not as they did for cora and edith and the girls of her crowd. she--" something in the calm of amy's waiting made it curiously hard to say, "ruth couldn't marry the man she cared for." "why not!" she asked dispassionately. "why, because it wasn't possible," he answered a little sharply. "she couldn't marry him because he wasn't divorced," he said bluntly then. amy's deep gray eyes, they had seemed so unperturbed, so unsympathetically calm, were upon him now in a queer, steady way. he felt himself flushing. "wasn't divorced?" she said with a little laugh. "is that a way of saying he was married?" he nodded. "she cared for a man who was married to someone else?" she asked with rising voice. again he only nodded, feeling incapable, when amy looked at him like that, of saying the things he would like to be saying for ruth. abruptly she drew her hair away. "and you can sympathize with--_like_--a person who would do that?" "i certainly both sympathize with and like ruth." that had come quick and sharp, and then suddenly he felt it all wrong that a thing which had gone so deep into his own life should be coming to amy like this, that she should be taking the attitude of the town against his friend, against his own feeling. he blamed his way of putting it, telling himself it was absurd to expect her to understand a bald statement like that. at that moment he realized it was very important she should understand; not only ruth, but something in himself--something counting for much in himself would be shut out if she did not understand. it made his voice gentle as he began: "amy, don't you know that just to be told of a thing may make it seem very different from what the thing really was? seeing a thing from the outside is so different from living through it. won't you reserve judgment about ruth--she is my friend and i hate to see her unfairly judged--until some time when i can tell it better?" "why have _you_ so much to do with it? why is it so important i do not--judge her?" amy's sweetness, that soft quality that had been dear to him seemed to have tightened into a hard shrewdness as she asked: "how did _you_ happen to know it all from within?" he pushed his chair back from her and settled into it wearily. "why, because she was my friend, dear. i was in her confidence." "i don't think i'd be very proud of being in the confidence of a woman who ran away with another woman's husband!" her hostile voice fanned the old anger that had so many times flamed when people were speaking hostilely of ruth. but he managed to say quietly: "but you see you don't know much about it yet, amy." he was facing her mirror and what he saw in it made him lean forward, his arms about her, with an impulsive: "sweetheart, we're not going to quarrel, are we?" but after his kisses she asked, as if she had only been biding her time through the interruption; "_did_ she run away with him?" his arm dropped from her shoulder. "they left together," he answered shortly. "are they married now?" "no." amy, who had resumed the brushing of her hair, held the brush suspended. "_living_ together--all this time--and _not_ married?" "they are not married," was his heated response, "because the man's wife has not divorced him." he added, not without satisfaction: "she's that kind of a person." amy turned and her eyes met his. "what kind of a person?" she said challengingly. "i presume," she added coolly, "that she does not believe in divorce." "i take it that she does not," was his dry answer. she flushed, and exclaimed a little tremulously: "well, really, deane, you needn't be so disagreeable about it!" quickly he turned to her, glad to think that he had been disagreeable; that was so much easier than what he had been trying to keep from thinking. "i didn't mean to be disagreeable, amy dear. i suppose i've got in the habit of being disagreeable about ruth: people here have been so hard about her; i've resented their attitude so." "but why should you _care_? why is it such a personal matter to you?" he was about to say, "she was my friend," but remembering he had said that before, he had anew a sense of helplessness. he did not want to talk about it any more. he had become tired out with thinking about it, with the long grieving for ruth and the sorrowing with her. when he found amy their love had seemed to free him from old hurts and to bring him out from loneliness. wonderful as the ecstasy of fresh love was he had thought even more of the exquisite peace that rests in love. amy had seemed to be bringing him to that; and now it seemed that ruth was still there holding him away from it. the thought brushed his mind, his face softening for the instant with it, that ruth would be so sorry to have that true. amy had braided her hair; the long fair braid hung over her shoulder, beautifully framing her face as she turned to him. "had you supposed, when you all knew her, when she was in your crowd, that she was--that kind of a person?" his blood quickened in the old anger for ruth; but there was something worse than that--a sick feeling, a feeling in which there was disappointment and into which there crept something that was like shame. the telephone rang before he need reply. when he turned from it, it was to say hurriedly, "i'll have to go to the hospital, amy. sorry--that woman i operated on yesterday--" he was in the next room, gathering together his things before he had finished it. amy followed him in. "why, i'm so sorry, dear. it's too bad--when you're so tired." he turned and caught her in his arms and held her there close in a passion of relief at the gentleness and love of her voice that swept away those things about her he had tried to think were not in his mind. amy was so sweet!--so beautiful, so tender. why of course she wouldn't understand about ruth! how absurd to expect her to understand, he thought, when he had blurted things out like that, giving her no satisfaction about it. he was touchy on the subject, he gladly told himself, as he held her close in all the thankfulness of regaining her. and when, after he had kissed her good-by she lifted her face and kissed him again his rush of love for her had power to sweep all else away. chapter three it was in that mood of passionate tenderness for amy, a glow of gratitude for love, that he sent his car swiftly toward the hospital. his feeling diffused warmth for the town through which he drove, the little city that had so many times tightened him up in bitterness. people were kind, after all; how kind they were being to amy, he thought, eager to receive her and make her feel at home, anxious that she be happy among them. the picture of edith as she stood at the head of the steps making plans for amy warmed his heart to her. perhaps he had been unfair to edith; in that one thing, certainly, she had failed as a friend, but perhaps it was impossible for women to go that far in friendship, impossible for them to be themselves on the outer side of the door of their approval. even amy.... that showed, of course, how hard it was for women whose experiences had all fallen within the circle of things as they should be to understand a thing that was--disrupting. it was as if their kindly impulses, sympathy, tenderness, were circumscribed by that circle. little as he liked that, his own mood of the moment, his unrecognized efforts at holding it, kept him within that sphere where good feeling lived. in it were happy anticipations of the life he and amy would have in freeport. he had long been out of humor with his town, scornful. he told himself now that that was a wrong attitude. there was a new feeling for the homes he was passing, for the people in those homes. he had a home there, too; it seemed to make him one with all those people. there was warmth in that feeling of being one with others. he told himself that it was absurd to expect amy to adjust herself all in a minute to a thing he had known about for years, had all the time known from within. he would make amy understand; if ruth came, amy would be good to her. at heart she was not like those others, and happiness would make her want to be kind. he saw her face lifted for that second good-by kiss--and quickened his speed. he hoped he would not have to be long at the hospital, hoped amy would not be asleep when he got back home. he lingered happily around the thought of there being a home to go back to, of how amy would be there when he got back. but it was at a slower speed that, an hour later, he traveled those same streets. he had lost his patient. it was no failure of the operator, but one of those cases where the particular human body is not equal to the demand made upon it, where there was no reaction. he got no satisfaction in telling himself that the woman could not have lived long without the operation; she had not lived with it--that was the only side it turned to him. the surgery was all right enough, but life had ebbed away. it brought a sense of who was master. he had been practising for twelve years, but death always cut deep into his spirit. it was more than chagrin, more than the disheartenment of the workman at failure, when he lost a patient. it was a real sense of death, and with that a feeling of man's final powerlessness. that made it a different town through which he drove upon his return; a town where people cut their way ruthlessly through life--and to what end? they might be a little kinder to each other along the way, it would seem, when this was what it came to for them all. they were kind enough about death--not so kind about the mean twists in life. that feeling was all wrapped up with ruth holland; it brought ruth to him. he thought of the many times they had traveled that road together, times when he would take her where she could meet stuart williams, then pick her up again and bring her home, her family thinking she had been with him. how would he ever make amy understand about that? it seemed now that it could not be done, that it would be something they did not share, perhaps something lying hostilely between them. he wondered why it had not seemed to him the shameful thing it would appear to anyone he told of it. was that something twisted in him, or was it just that utter difference between knowing things from within and judging from without? to himself, it was never in the form of argument he defended ruth. it was the memory of her face at those times when he had seen what she was feeling. he was about to pass the hollands'--her old home. he slackened the car to its slowest. it had seemed a gloomy place in recent years. the big square house in the middle of the big yard of oak trees used to be one of the most friendly-looking places of the town. but after ruth went away and the family drew within themselves, as they did, the hospitable spaciousness seemed to become bleakness, as if the place itself changed with the change of spirit. people began to speak of it as gloomy; now they said it looked forsaken. certainly it was in need of painting--new sidewalks, general repairs. mr. holland had seemed to cease caring how the place looked. there weren't flowers any more. in the upper hall he saw the dim light that burns through the night in a house of sickness. he had been there early in the evening; if he thought the nurse was up he would like to stop again. but he considered that it must be almost one--too late for disturbing them. he hoped mr. holland was having a good night; he would not have many more nights to get through. he wished there was some one of them to whom he could talk about sending for ruth. they had not sent for her when her mother died, but that was sudden, everyone was panic-stricken. and that was only two years after ruth's going away; time had not worked much then on their feeling against her. he would have to answer her letter and tell her that her father could not live. he wanted to have the authority to tell her to come home. anything else seemed fairly indecent in its lack of feeling. eleven years--and ruth had never been home; and she loved her father--though of course no one in the town would believe _that_. his car had slowed almost to a stop; there was a low whistle from the porch and someone was coming down the steps. it was ted holland--ruth's younger brother. "hello, deane," he said, coming out to him; "thinking of coming in?" "no, i guess not; it's pretty late. i was just passing, and wondering about your father." "he went to sleep; seems quiet, and about the same." "that's good; hope it will keep up through the night." the young fellow did not reply. the doctor was thinking that it must be lonely for him--all alone on the porch after midnight, his father dying upstairs, no member of the immediate family in the house. "sent for cy, ted?" he asked. cyrus was the older brother, older than both ted and ruth. it was he who had been most bitter against ruth. deane had always believed that if it had not been for cyrus the rest of them would not have hardened into their pain and humiliation like that. ted nodded. "i had written, and today, after you said what you did, i wired. i had an answer tonight. he has to finish up a deal that will take him a few days, but i am to keep him informed--i told him you said it might be a couple of weeks--and he'll come the first minute he can." there was a pause. deane wanted to say: "and ruth?" but that was a hard thing to say to one of the hollands. but ted himself mentioned her. "tell you what i'm worrying about, deane," he blurted out, "and that's ruth!" deane nodded appreciatively. he had always liked this young ted, but there was a new outgoing to him for this. "father asked for her this afternoon. i don't care whether he was just right in his mind or not--it shows she's _on_ his mind. 'hasn't ruth come in yet!' he asked, several times." "you send for her, ted," commanded the doctor. "you ought to. i'll back you up if cy's disagreeable." "he'll be disagreeable all right," muttered the younger brother. "well, what about harriett?" impatiently demanded deane. "doesn't she see that ruth ought to be here?" harriett was ruth's sister and the eldest of the four children. "harriett would be all right," said ted, "if it weren't for that bunch of piety she's married to!" deane laughed. "not keen for your brother-in-law, ted?" "oh, i'll tell you, deane," the boy burst out, "for a long time i haven't felt just like the rest of the family have about ruth. it was an awful thing--i know that, but just the same it was pretty tough on _ruth_. i'll bet she's been up against it, good and plenty, and all we've seemed to think about is the way it put us in bad. not mother--cy never did really get mother, you know, but father would have softened if it hadn't been for cy's everlasting keeping him nagged up to the fact that he'd been wronged! even harriett would have been human if it hadn't been for cy--and that upright husband she's got!" the boy's face was flushed; he ran his hand back through his hair in an agitated way; it was evident that his heart was hot with feeling about it all. "i don't know whether you know, deane," he said in a lowered voice, "that mother's last words were for ruth. they can't deny it, for i was standing nearest her. 'where's ruth?' she said; and then at the very last--'ruth?'" his voice went unsteady as he repeated it. deane, nodding, was looking straight down the street. "well," said ted, after a minute, "i'm not going to have _that_ happen again. i've been thinking about it. i did write ruth a week ago. now i shall write to her before i go to bed tonight and tell her to come home." "you do that, ted," said the doctor with gruff warmth. "you do that. i'll write her too. ruth wrote to me." "did she?" ted quickly replied. "well"--he hesitated, then threw out in defiant manner and wistful voice, "well, i guess ruth'll find she's got one friend when she comes back to her old town." "you bet she will," snapped deane, adding in another voice: "she knows that." "and as for the family," ted went on, "there are four of us, and i don't know why ruth and i aren't half of that four. cy and harriett haven't got it all to say." he said it so hotly that deane conciliated: "try not to have any split up, ted. that would just make it harder for ruth, you know." "there'll not be any split up if cy will just act like a human being," said the boy darkly. "tell him your father was asking for ruth and that i told you you must send for her. see harriett first and get her in line." "harriett would be all right," muttered ted, "if let alone. lots of people would be all right if other people didn't keep nagging at them about what they ought to be." deane gave him a quick, queer look. "you're right there, my son," he laughed shortly. there was a moment's intimate pause. there seemed not a sound on the whole street save the subdued chug-chug of deane's waiting machine. the only light in the big house back in the shadowy yard was the dim light that burned because a man was dying. deane's hand went out to his steering wheel. "well, so long, ted," he said in a voice curiously gentle. "'by, deane," said the boy. he drove on through the silent town in another mood. this boy's feeling had touched something in his heart that was softening. he had always been attracted to ted holland--his frank hazel eyes, something that seemed so square and so pleasant in the clear, straight features of his freckled face. he had been only a youngster of about thirteen when ruth went away. she had adored him; "my good-looking baby brother," was her affectionate way of speaking of him. he was thinking what it would mean to ruth to come home and find this warmth in ted. why, it might make all the difference in the world, he was gratefully considering. when he came into the room where amy was sleeping she awoke and sat up in bed, rubbing sleepy eyes blinded by the light. "poor dear," she murmured at sight of his face, "so tired?" he sat down on the bed; now that he was home, too tired to move. "pretty tired. woman died." "oh, deane!" she cried. "deane, i'm _so_ sorry." she reached over and put her arms around him. "you couldn't help it, dear," she comforted. "you couldn't help it." her sympathy was very sweet to him; as said by her, the fact that he couldn't help it did make some difference. "and you had to be there such a long time. why it must be most morning." "hardly that. i've been at the hollands' too--talking to ted. poor kid--it's lonesome for him." "who is he?" asked amy. "why--" and then he remembered. "why, ruth holland's brother," he said, trying not to speak consciously. "the father's very sick, you know." "oh," said amy. she moved over to the other side of her bed. "they're going to send for ruth." amy made no reply. he was too utterly tired to think much about it--too worn for acute sensibilities. he sat there yawning. "i really ought to write to ruth myself tonight," he said, sleepily thinking out loud, "but i'm too all in." he wanted her to take the letter off his conscience for him. "i think i'd better come to bed, don't you, honey?" "i should think you would need rest," was her answer. she had turned the other way and seemed to be going to sleep again. somehow he felt newly tired but was too exhausted to think it out. he told himself that amy had just roused for the minute and was too sleepy to keep awake. people were that way when waked out of a sound sleep. chapter four the next evening dr. franklin got home for dinner before his wife had returned from her tea. "mrs. franklin not home yet?" he asked of doris, their maid; he still said mrs. franklin a little consciously and liked saying it. she told him, rather fluttered with the splendor of it--doris being as new to her profession as he to matrimony--that mrs. blair had come for mrs. franklin in her "electric" and they had gone to a tea and had not yet returned. he went out into the yard and busied himself about the place while waiting: trained a vine on a trellis, moved a garden-seat; then he walked about the house surveying it, after the fashion of the happy householder, as if for the first time. the house was new; he had built it for them. from the first moment of his thinking of it it had been designed for amy. that made it much more than mere house. he was thinking that it showed up pretty well with the houses of most of their friends; amy needn't be ashamed of it, anyhow, and it would look better in a couple of seasons, after things had grown up around it a little more. there would be plenty of seasons for them to grow in, he thought, whistling. then he got the gentle sound of edith's pretty little brougham and went down to meet them. she and amy looked charming in there--light dresses and big hats. he made a gallant remark and then a teasing one. "been tea-tattling all this time?" "no," smiled edith; "we took a ride." "such a beautiful ride," cried amy. "way up the river." he had helped her out and edith was leaning out talking to her. "i think i'd better come for you about one," she was saying. he thought with loving pride of how quickly amy had swung into the life of the town. during dinner he sat there adoring her: she was so fair, so beautifully formed, so poised. she was lovely in that filmy dress of cloudy blue. amy's eyes were gray, but the darkness of her long lashes gave an impression of darkness. her skin was smooth and fair and the chiseling of her features clean and strong. she held herself proudly; her fair hair was braided around a well-poised head. she always appeared composed; there never seemed any frittering or disorganizing of herself in trivial feeling or movement. one out of love with her might find her rather too self-possessed a young person. so engaged was deane in admiring her that it was not until they were about to leave the table that he was conscious of something unusual about her; even then he did not make out the excitement just beneath her collected manner. he wanted to show her what he had done to the vines and they went out in the yard. presently they sat down on the garden-seat which he had moved a little while before. he had grown puzzled now by amy's manner. she was smoothing out the sash of her dress. she sang a little under her breath. then she said, with apparent carelessness: "mrs. williams was at the tea today." he knit his brows. "mrs.--?" then, understanding, his face tightened. "was she?" was his only reply. amy sang a little more. "it's her husband that your friend is living with, isn't it?" she asked, and the suppressed excitement came nearer to the surface though her voice remained indifferent. he said "yes" shortly and volunteered nothing. his face had not relaxed. "what a sad face she has," amy murmured. "think so?" he reached over and picked up a twig and flipped a piece of it off his finger. "oh, i don't know. i call it cold rather than sad." "oh, well, of course," cried amy, "_your_ sympathies are all on the other side!" he did not reply. he would try to say as little as possible. "i must say," she resumed excitedly, then drew herself back. "mrs. blair was telling me the whole story this afternoon," she said quietly, but with challenge. the blood came to his face. he cleared his throat and impatiently threw away the twig he had been playing with. "well, edith didn't lose much time, did she?" he said coldly; then added with a rather hard laugh: "that was the reason for the long ride, i suppose." "i don't know that it is so remarkable," amy began with quivering dignity, "that she should tell me something of the affairs of the town." after an instant she added, "i am a stranger here." he caught the different note and turned quickly to her. "dearest, there's nothing about the 'affairs of the town' i won't tell you." he put his arm around the back of the seat, the hand resting on her shoulder. "and i must say i don't think you're much of a stranger here. look at the friends you've made already. i never saw anything like it." "mrs. blair does seem to like me," she answered with composure. then added: "mrs. williams was very nice to me too." his hand on her shoulder drew away a little and he snapped his fingers. then the hand went back to her shoulder. "well, that's very nice," he said quietly. "she's coming to see me. i'm sure i found her anything but cold and hard!" "i don't think that a woman--" he began hotly, but checked himself. but all the feeling that had been alive there just beneath amy's cool exterior flamed through. "well, how you can stand up for a woman who did what _that_ woman did--!" her cheeks were flaming now, her nostrils quivered. "i guess you're the only person in town that does stand up for her! but of course you're right--and the rest of them--" she broke off with a tumultuous little laugh and abruptly got up and went into the house. he sat there for a time alone, sick at heart. he told himself he had bungled the whole thing. why hadn't he told amy all about ruth, putting it in a way that would get her sympathies. surely he could have done that had he told her the story as he knew it, made her feel what ruth had suffered, how tormented and bewildered and desperate she had been. now she had the town's side and naturally resented his championing of what was presented as so outrageous a thing. he went over the story as edith would give it. that was enough to vindicate amy. he rose and followed her into the house. she was fingering some music on the piano. he saw how flushed her face was, how high she carried her head and how quick her breathing. he went and put his arms around her. "sweetheart," he said very simply and gently, "i love you. you know that, don't you?" an instant she held back in conflict. then she hid her face against him and sobbed. he held her close and murmured soothing little things. she was saying something. "i was so happy," he made out the smothered words. "it was all so--beautiful." "but you're happy _now_," he insisted. "it's beautiful _now_." "i feel as if my marriage was being--spoiled," she choked. he shook her, playfully, but his voice as he spoke was not playful. "look here, amy, don't say such a thing. don't let such a thing get into your head for an instant! our happiness isn't a thing to talk like that about." "i feel as if--_that woman_--was standing between us!" he raised her face and made her look into his own, at once stern and very tender. "amy love, we've got to stop this right _now_. a long time ago--more than ten years ago--there was a girl here who had an awfully hard time. i was sorry for her. i'm sorry for her now. life's hit her good and hard. we're among the fortunate people things go right for. we can be together--happy, having friends, everybody approving, everybody good to us. we're mighty lucky that it is that way. and isn't our own happiness going to make us a little sorry for people who are outside all this?" he kissed her. "come now, sweetheart, you're not going to harden up like that. why, that wouldn't be _you_ at all!" she was quiet; after a little she smiled up at him, the sweet, reminiscently plaintive little smile of one just comforted. for the moment, at least, love had won her. "sometime i'll tell you anything about it you want to know," he said, holding her tenderly and smoothing her hair. "meanwhile--let's forget it. come on now, honey, change your dress--get into something warmer and go for a ride with me. i've got to make a couple of calls, and i want you along." "you know," he was saying as he unfastened her dress for her, "after i knew i was going to have you, and before i got you here, i used to think so much about this very thing--the fun of having you going around with me--doing things together. now it seems--" he did not finish, for he was passionately kissing the white shoulder which the unfastened dress had bared. "amy, dear,"--his voice choked--"oh, _doesn't_ it seem too good to be true?" his feeling for her had chased the other things away. she softened to happiness, then grew gay. they were merry and happy again. all seemed well with them. but when, on his rounds, they passed the hollands' and ted waved from the porch he had an anxious moment of fearing she would ask who that was and their crust of happiness would let them through. he quickly began a spirited account of an amusing thing that had happened in the office that day. his dream had been of a happiness into which he could sink, not ground on the surface that must be fought for and held by effort; but he did not let himself consider that then. chapter five the train for chicago was several hours out from denver when the man who had decided that it was an uninteresting car began watching the woman who was facing him from several seats away. he was one of those persons with a drab exterior but not a similarly colored imagination, and he was always striving to defeat the meager life his exterior consigned him to by projecting himself into the possible experiences of people he watched on the trains. afterwards he wondered that he should at first have passed this woman by with the mere impression of a nice-looking woman who seemed tired. it was when he chanced to look at her as she was looking from the window that she arrested him. her sweet face had steeled itself to something, she was as if looking out at a thing that hurt her, but looking with the courage to bear that hurt. he turned and looked from the window in the direction of her intense gaze and then smiled at himself as he turned back from the far-reaching monotonous plain of eastern colorado; he might have known that what she was looking at was not spread out there for anyone else to see. she interested him all through the two days. she puzzled him. he relieved the tedium of the journey with speculations on what sort of thing it was she was thinking about, going over. he would arrive at a conclusion in which he felt considerable satisfaction only to steal another look at her and find that she did not look at all like the woman he had made up his mind she was. what held him was the way feeling shaped her. she had a delicate, sweet face, but there were times when it was almost repellent in its somberness, when it hardened in a way that puzzled him. she would sit looking from the window and it was as if a dense sadness had settled down upon her; then her face would light with a certain sad tenderness, and once he had the fancy of her lifting her head out of gloom to listen to a beautiful, far-away call. there were long meditations, far steady looks out at something, little reminiscent smiles that lingered about her sensitive mouth after her eyes had gone sad again. she would grow tired of thinking and close her eyes and seem to try to rest. her face, at those times, showed the wear of hard years, laying bare lines that one took no count of when her eyes were lighted and her mouth sensitive. frequently she would turn from herself and smile at the baby across the aisle; but once, when the baby was crowing and laughing she abruptly turned away. he tried to construct "a life" for her, but she did not stay in any life he carefully arranged. there were times when he impatiently wondered why he should be wondering so much about her; those were the times when she seemed to have let it all go, was inert. but though he did not succeed in getting a "life" for her, she gave him a freshened sense of life as immensely interesting, as charged with pain and sweetness. it was over the pain and the sweetness of life that this woman--ruth holland--brooded during the two days that carried her back to the home of her girlhood. she seemed to be going back over a long bridge. that part of her life had been cut away from her. with most lives the past grew into the future; it was as a growth that spread, the present but the extent of the growth at the moment. with her there had been the sharp cut; not a cut, but a tear, a tear that left bleeding ends. back there lay the past, a separated thing. during the eleven years since her life had been torn from that past she had seen it not only as a separate thing but a thing that had no reach into the future. the very number of miles between, the fact that she made no journeys back home, contributed to that sense of the cleavage, the remoteness, the finality. those she had left back there remained real and warm in her memory, but her part with them was a thing finished. it was as if only shoots of pain could for the minute unite them. turning her face back toward home turned her back to herself there. she dwelt upon home as she had left it, then formed the picture of what she would find now. her mother and her grandfather would not be there. the father she had left would not be there. a dying man would be there. ted would be grown up. she wondered if anyone had taken care of the flowers. would there be any roses? she and her mother had always taken care of them. edith--? would terror be there? he was only about three when she left; dogs did live as long as that. she had named him terror because of his puppy pranks. but there would be no puppy pranks now. it would be a sedate old dog she would find. he would not know her--she who had cared for him and romped with him through his puppyhood. but they had not shared experiences. on the train carrying her back home her own story opened freshly to her. again and again she would be caught into it.... * * * * * ruth holland--the girl of twenty--was waiting for deane franklin to come and take her to the dance at the country club. she was dressed and wandering restlessly about the house, looking in mirrors as she passed them, pleased with herself in her new white dress. there was an excitement in the fact that she had not seen deane for almost a year; he had been away, studying medicine at johns hopkins. she wondered if he would seem any different; wondered--really more interested in this than in the other--if she would seem any different to him. she did not think of deane "that way" she had told edith lawrence, her bosom friend from childhood, when edith that afternoon had hinted at romantic possibilities. edith was in romantic mood because she and will blair were in the happy state of getting over a quarrel. for a month ruth had listened to explosions against will blair. now it was made up and edith was in sweetly chastened spirit. she explained to ruth at great length and with much earnestness that she had not understood will, that she had done him a great injustice; and she was going to the party with him that night. edith and will and deane and ruth were going together. they were singularly unmatured for girls of twenty. their experiences had not taken them outside the social life of the town, and within it they had found too easy, pre-prepared sailing for any real finding or tests of themselves. they were daughters of two of the town's most important families; they were two of the town's most attractive girls. that fixed their place in a round of things not deepening, not individualizing. it was pleasant, rather characterless living on a limited little part of the surface of life. they went to "the parties," occupied with that social round that is as definite a thing in a town of forty thousand as in a metropolis. their emotional experiences had been little more than part of their social life--within it and of the character of it. attractive, popular, of uncontested place in the society in which they found themselves, they had not known the strivings and the heart-aches that can intensify life within those social boundaries. they were always invited. when they sat out dances it was because they wanted to. life had dealt too favoringly and too uneventfully with them to find out what stuff was really in them. they were almost always spoken of together--edith lawrence and ruth holland--ruth and edith. that was of long standing; they had gone to primary school together, to sunday-school, through the high-school. they told each other things; they even hinted at emotions concealed within their breasts, of dissatisfactions and longings there were no words for. once ruth confided that sometimes she wept and could not have said why, and great seemed the marvel when edith confessed to similar experiences. they never suspected that girlhood was like that; they were like that, and set apart and united in being so. but those spiritual indulgences were rare; for the most part they were what would be called two wholesome, happy girls, girls whose lot had fallen in pleasant places. ruth wanted to go to college, but her father had kept her from it. women should marry and settle down and have families was the belief of cyrus holland. going to college put foolish notions in their heads. not being able to go had been ruth's first big disappointment. edith had gone east to a girls' school. at the last minute, realizing how lonely she would be at home without her chum, ruth had begged to go with her. her mother had urged it for her. but it was an expensive school to which edith was going, and when he found what it would cost ruth's father refused, saying he could not afford it, and that it was nonsense, anyway. ruth had then put in a final plea for the state university, which would not cost half as much as edith's school. seeing that it meant more to her than he had known, and having a particular affection for this younger daughter of his, mr. holland was on the point of giving in when the newspapers came out with a scandal that centered about the suicide of a girl student at the university. that settled it; ruth would stay home with her mother. she could go on with music, and study literature with miss collins. miss collins stood for polite learning in the town. there was not the remotest danger of an education received through her unfeminizing a girl. but ruth soon abandoned miss collins, scornfully informing her parent that she would as soon study literature with a mummy. with ruth, the desire to go to college had been less a definite craving for knowledge than a diffused longing for an enlarged experience. she wanted something different, was impatient for something new, something more. she had more curiosity about the life outside their allotted place than her friend edith lawrence had. she wanted to go to college because that would open out from what she had. ruth would have found small satisfaction in that girls' school of edith's had her father consented to her going. it was little more than the polite learning of miss collins fashionably re-dressed. edith, however, came home with a new grace and poise, an added gift of living charmingly on the surface of life, and held that school was lovely. during that year her friend was away--ruth was nineteen then--she was not so much unhappy as she was growingly impatient for something more, and expectant of it. she was always thinking that something was going to happen--that was why things did not go dead for her. the year was intensifying to her; she missed her friend; she had been baffled in something she wanted. it made her conscious of wanting more than she had. her energies having been shut off from the way they had wanted to go, she was all the more zestful for new things from life. there was much in her that her life did not engage. she loved dancing. she was happily excited that night because they were going to a dance. waiting for deane, she wondered if he had danced any during the year, hoping that he had, and was a little better dancer than of old. dear deane! she always had that "dear deane!" feeling after she had been critical about him. she wished she did think of deane "that way"--the way she had told edith she did not think of him. but "that way" drew her from thoughts of deane. she had stopped before her dressing-table and was toying with her manicure things. she looked at herself in the glass and saw the color coming to her cheeks. she sat there dreaming--such dreams as float through girlhood. her mother came in to see how she looked. mrs. holland was a small, frail-looking woman. ruth resembled her, but with much added. things caught into ruth were not in her mother. they resembled each other in certain definite things, but there was something that flushed ruth to life--transforming her--that did not live in her mother. they were alike as a beautiful shell enclosing a light may be like one that is not lighted. mrs. holland was much occupied with the social life of her town. she was light-hearted, well-liked. she went to the teas and card parties which abounded there and accepted that as life with no dissatisfaction beyond a mild desire for more money. she also enjoyed the social life of her daughter; where ruth was to go and what she would wear were matters of interest and importance. indeed life was compounded of matters concerning where one would go and what one would wear. "well, sally gordon certainly did well with that dress," was her verdict. "some think she's falling off. now do try and not get it spoiled the first thing, ruth. dancing is so hard on your clothes." she surveyed her daughter with satisfaction. ruth was a daughter a mother would survey with satisfaction. the strong life there was in her was delicately and subtly suggested. she did not have what are thought to be the easily distinguishable marks of intense feeling. she suggested fine things--a rare, high quality. she was not out-and-out beautiful; her beauty lurked within her feeling. it was her fluidity that made her lovely. her hazel eyes were ever changing with light and feeling, eyes that could wonderfully darken, that glowed in a rush of feeling and shone in expectancy or delight,--eyes that the spirit made. she had a lovely brow, a sensitive, beautiful mouth. but it needed the light within to find her beauty. without it she was only a sweet-looking, delicately fashioned girl. "that's deane," said ruth, as the bell rang. "i want to see him too," said mrs. holland, "and so will your father." ruth met him in the hall, holding out both hands with, "deane, i'm _so_ glad to see you!" he was not an expressive youth. as he shook ruth's hands with vigor, he exclaimed, "same here! same here!" and straightway he seemed just the deane of old and in the girl's heart was a faint disappointment. as a little boy people had called deane franklin a homely youngster. his thick, sandyish hair used to stand up in an amazing manner. he moved in a peculiarly awkward way, as if the jointing of him had not been perfectly accomplished. he had a wide generous mouth that was attractive when it was not screwed out of shape. his keen blue eyes had a nice twinkle. his abrupt, hearty manner seemed very much his own. he was better dressed than when ruth had last seen him. she was thinking that deane could actually be called attractive in his own homely, awkward way. and yet, as he kept shaking her hands up and down, broadly grinning, nodding his head,--"tickled to death to be back," she felt anew that she could not think of deane "that way." perhaps she had known him too long. she remembered just how absurd he had looked in his first long trousers--and those silly little caps he had worn perched way back on his head! yet she really loved deane, in a way; she felt a great deal nearer to him than to her own brother cyrus. they had gone into the living-room. mrs. holland thought he had grown--grown broader, anyway; mr. holland wanted to know about the medical school, and would he practice in freeport? ted wanted to know if johns hopkins had a good team. "that's will, i guess," he said, turning to ruth as the bell rang. "oh, will," cried mrs. holland, "do ask edith to come in and show us her dress! she won't muss it if she's careful. her mother told me it was the sweetest dress edith ever had." edith entered in her bright, charming way, exhibiting her pretty pink dress with a pleasure that was winning. she had more of definite beauty than ruth--golden hair, really sunny hair, it was, and big, deep blue eyes and fresh, even skin. ruth often complained that edith had something to count on; she could tell how she was going to look, while with her--ruth--there was never any knowing. some of the times when she was most anxious to look her best, she was, as she bewailed it, a fright. edith was larger than ruth, she had more of a woman's development. mrs. holland followed them out to the carriage. "now don't stay until _all_ hours," was her parting admonition, in a tone of comfortable resignation to the fact that that was exactly what they would do. "well," said mr. holland, who had gone as far as the door, "i don't know what young folks are coming to. after nine o'clock now!" "that must be a punk school deane goes to," said ted, his mind not yet pried from the football talk. chapter six "our dance." with a swift little movement the girl turned a glowing face to the man standing before her. flushed with dancing, keyed high in the pleasure and triumphs of the evening, she turned the same radiant face to stuart williams as he claimed their dance that she would have turned to almost anyone claiming a dance. it was something that came to life in the man's eyes as he looked down into her flushed face, meeting her happy, shining eyes, that arrested the flashing, impersonal smile of an instant before and underneath that impersonal gladness of youth there was a faint flutter of self. he was of the "older crowd;" it happened that she had never danced with him before. he was a better dancer than the boys of her own set, but somehow that old impersonal joy in dancing was a lesser thing now than the sense of dancing with this man. "that was worth coming for," he said quietly, when the dance and the encore to it were over and they found themselves by one of the doors opening out on the balcony. she looked up with a smile. it was a smile curiously touched with shyness. he saw the color wavering in her sensitive, delicate face. then he asked lightly: "shall we see what's being dispensed from this punch-bowl?" with their ice, they stood looking out into the moonlight over a wide stretch of meadow to far hills. "a fine night to ride over the hills and far away," he laughed at last, his voice lingering a little on the fancy. she only laughed a little in reply, looking off there toward over the hills and far away. watching her, he wondered why he had never thought anything much about her before. he would have said that ruth holland was one of the nice attractive girls of the town, and beyond that could have said little about her. he watched the flow of her slender neck into her firm delicate little chin, the lovely corners of her mouth where feeling lurked. the fancy came to him that she had not settled into flesh the way most people did, that she was not fixed by it. he puzzled for the word he wanted for her, then got it--luminous was what she was; he felt a considerable satisfaction in having found that word. "seems to me you and edith lawrence grew up in a terrible hurry," he began in a slow, teasing manner. "just a day or two ago you were youngsters racing around with flying pigtails, and now here you are--all these poor young chaps--and all us poor old ones--fighting for dances with you. what made you hurry so?" he laughed. the coquette in most normal girls of twenty rose like a little imp up through her dreaming of over the hills and far away. "why, i don't know," she said, demurely; "perhaps i was hurrying to catch up with someone." his older to younger person manner fell away, leaving the man delighting in the girl, a delightfully daring girl it seemed she was, for all that look of fine things he had felt in her just a moment before. he grew newly puzzled about her, and interested in the puzzle. "would you like to have that someone stand still long enough to give you a good start?" he asked, zestful for following. but she could not go on with it. she was not used to saying daring things to "older men." she was a little appalled at what she had done--saying a thing like that to a man who was married; and yet just a little triumphant in her own audacity, and the way she had been able to make him feel she was something a long way removed from a little girl with flying pigtails. "i really have been grown up for quite a while," she said, suddenly grave. he did not try to bring her back to the other mood,--that astonishing little flare of audacity; he was watching her changing face, like her voice it was sweetly grave. the music had begun again--this time a waltz. a light hand upon her arm, he directed her back towards the dancing floor. "i have this taken," she objected hesitatingly. "this is an extra," he said. she felt sure that it was not; she knew she ought to object, that it was not right to be treating one of the boys of her own crowd that way. but that consciousness of what she ought to be doing fell back--pale, impotent--before the thing she wanted to do.... they were silent for a little time after; without commenting on doing so, they returned to their place outside. "see?" she said presently, "the moon has found another hill. that wasn't there when we were here before." "and beyond that are more hills," he said, "that we don't see even yet." "i suppose," she laughed, "that it's not knowing where we would get makes over the hills and far away--fun." "well, anything rather than standing still." he said it under his breath, more to himself than to her. but it was to her he added, teasingly and a little lingeringly: "unless, of course, one were waiting for someone to catch up with one." she smiled without turning to him; watching her, the thought found its way up through the proprieties of his mind that it would be worth waiting a long time if, after the wait, one could go over the hills and far away with a girl through whom life glowed as he could see it glowed in this girl; no, not with a girl like this--boldly, humorously and a little tenderly he amended in his mind--but with _this_ girl. she wheeled about. "i must go back," she said abruptly. "this dance is with will blair--i must go back. i'll have a hard enough time," she laughed, a little nervously, "making it right with louis stephens." "i'll tell him i heard it was an extra," he said. she halted, looking up at him. "did you hear that!" she demanded. he seemed about to say some light thing, but that died away. "i wanted the dance," was his quiet reply. chapter seven it was a june evening a year later that stuart williams sat on the steps of the porch that ran round the side of his house, humoring the fox terrier who thought human beings existed to throw sticks for dogs. after a while the man grew tired of that theory of human existence, and bade the panting fritz lie down on the step below him. from there fritz would look up to his master appealingly, eyes and tail saying, "now let's begin again." but he got no response, so, in philosophic dog fashion, soon stretched out for a snooze. the man was less philosophic: he had not that gift of turning from what he wanted to what he could have. a little later he would go to the rehearsal of the out-of-door play the country club was getting ready to give. ruth holland would be there: she too was in the play. probably he would take her home, for they lived in the same neighborhood and a little apart from the others. it was mrs. lawrence who, the night of the first rehearsal, commented with relief for one more thing smoothly arranged upon their going the same way. for five weeks now they had been going the same way; their talk on those homeward walks had been the lightest of talk, for the most part a laughing over things that had happened during the rehearsal. and yet the whole world had become newly alive, until tonight it seemed a tremulous, waiting world. that light talk had been little more than a pulling back from the pauses, little more than retreat, safeguard. it was the pauses that lived on with him, creating his dreams; her face as she turned it to him after a silence would sometimes be as if she had been caught into that world touched to new life--world that waited. they would renew the light talk as if coming back from something. he let himself slip into dreaming now; he had told himself that that, at least, could work no one harm, and in quiet hours, when he smoked, relaxed, he was now always drawn over where he knew he must not let himself go. it was as if something stronger than he was all around him. one drooping hand caressed his dog; he drew in the fragrance from a rose trellis near by; the leaves of the big tree moved with a gentle little sound, a sound like the whisper of sweet things; a bird note--goodnight--floated through the dusk. he was a man whom those things reached. and in the last year, particularly in those last weeks, it had come to be that all those things were one with ruth holland; to open to them meant being drawn to her. he would tell himself that that was wrong, mad; nothing he could tell himself seemed to have any check on that pull there was on him in the thought of her. he and his wife were only keeping up the appearance of marriage. for two years he had not had love. he was not a man who could learn to live without it. and now all the desirableness of life, hunger for love, the whole of earth's lure seemed to break in through the feeling for this girl--that wrong, wonderful feeling that had of itself flushed his heart to new life. sharply he pulled himself about, shifting position as if to affirm his change of thinking. it turned him from the outer world to his house; he saw marion sitting in there at her desk writing a letter. he watched her, thinking about her, about their lives. she was so poised, so cool; it would seem, so satisfied. was she satisfied? did denial of life leave nothing to be desired? if there were stirrings for living things they did not appear to disturb her calm surface. he wondered if a night like this never touched old things in her, if there were no frettings for what she had put out of her life. he watched her small, beautifully shaped dark head, the fine smooth hair that fell over the little ear he had loved to kiss. she was beautiful; it was her beauty that had drawn him to her. she was more beautiful than ruth holland, through whom it seemed all the beauty of the world reached him. marion's beauty was a definite separate thing; his face went tender as he thought how ruth holland only grew beautiful in beauty, as if it broke through her, making her. once more he moved sharply, disturbing the little dog at his feet; he realized where his thoughts had again gone, how looking at his wife it was to this other girl he was drawn, she seeming near him and marion apart. he grew miserable in a growing feeling of helplessness, in a sense of waiting disaster. it was as if the whole power of life was drawing him on to disaster. again that bird call floated through the dusk; the gentle breeze stirred the fragrance of flowers; it came to seem that the world was beautiful that it might ensnare him, as if the whole power of the sweetness of life was trying to pull him over where he must not go. he grew afraid. he got the feeling that he must do something--that he must do it at once. after he had sat there brooding for half an hour he abruptly got up and walked in where his wife was sitting. "marion," he began brusquely, "i should like to speak to you." she had been sitting with her back to the door; at his strange address of her she turned round in surprise; she looked startled when she saw his strained face. "we've been married about six years, isn't it?" he had come a little nearer, but remained standing. he still spoke in that rough way. she did not reply but nodded slightly, flushing. "and now for two years we--haven't been married?" she stiffened and there was a slight movement as if drawing back. she did not answer. "i'm thirty-four and you're a little less than that." he paused and it was more quietly, though none the less tensely that he asked: "is it your idea that we go through life like this?" she was gathering together the sheets of paper on her desk. she did not speak. "you were angry at me--disappointed. i grant you, as i did at the time, that it was a silly affair, not--not creditable. i tried to show you how little it meant, how it had--just happened. two years have passed; we are still young people. i want to know--do you intend this to go on? are our whole lives to be spoiled by a mere silly episode?" she spoke then. "mere silly episode," she said with a high little laugh, "seems rather a slight way to dispose of the fact that you were untrue to me." she folded her letter and was putting it in the envelope. it would not go in and she refolded it with hands not steady. he did not speak until she had sealed the letter and was sitting there looking down at her hands, rubbing them a little, as if her interest was in them. "marion," he asked, and his voice shook now, "doesn't it ever seem to you that life is too valuable to throw away like this?" she made no reply and angered by her unresponsiveness he added sharply: "it's rather dangerous, you know." she looked up at him then. "is this a threat?" she asked with a faint, mocking smile. he moved angrily, starting to leave the room. "have you no feeling?" he broke out at her. "is this all you _want_ from life?" she colored and retorted: "it was not the way i expected to live when i married you." he stood there doggedly for a moment, his face working with nervousness. "i think then," he said roughly, "that we'd better be decent enough to get a divorce!" at what he saw in her face he cried passionately: "oh no, you don't believe in divorce--but you believe in _this_!" "was it _i_ who brought it about?" she cried, stung to anger. she had risen and for an instant they stood there facing each other. "haven't you any humanity?" he shot rudely at her. "don't you ever _feel_?" she colored but drew back, in command of herself again. "i do not desecrate my feelings," she said with composure; "i don't degrade my humanity." "feeling--humanity!" he sneered, and wheeled about and left the room. he started at once for his rehearsal. he was trembling with anger and yet underneath that passion was an unacknowledged feeling of relief. it had seemed that he had to do something; now he told himself that he had done what he could. he walked slowly through the soft night, seeking control. he was very bitter toward marion, and yet in his heart he knew that he had asked for what he no longer wanted. he quickened his step toward the lawrences', where they were to hold the rehearsal, where he would find ruth holland. chapter eight after the maelstrom of passion had thrown her out where life left her time to think about what she had felt, ruth holland would wonder whether there was something in her that made her different from the good people of the world. through it all she did not have the feeling that it would seem she would have; what she did did not make her feel as she knew, when she came to think it out, she would be supposed to feel about such a thing. in hours that would be most condemned she had had a simple feeling of life as noble. what would be called the basest things she had done had seemed to free something within her that made her more kind, more generous, more tender, made her as a singing part of a fine, beautiful world. her degradation had seemed to burn away all that was not pure, giving her a sense of being lifted up; it was as if through this illicit love a spiritual fount was unsealed that made her consciously one with life at its highest. afterwards she wondered about it, wondered whether she was indeed different from people who were good, or whether it could be that hearts had been shown, not as they were, but as it was deemed meet they should be shown. when she and deane, with edith and will blair, went home from the dance that night, something new breathed through the night. it was hard to join in the talk; she wanted to be alone, alone with that new stir. she was gentle with deane as they stood for a moment at the door. she felt tender toward him. a little throb of excitement in her voice, the way her eyes shone, made him linger there with her a moment or two. it was as if he wanted to say something but the timid, clumsy words he spoke just before leaving were, "that sure is a peach of a dress. you had them all beat tonight, ruth," and ruth went into the house knowing now for sure how impossible it would be ever to think of deane "that way." in the hour before she went to sleep what she meant by "that way" was a more living thing than it had ever been before. the year which followed was not a happy one; it was a disturbed, a fretted year; girlhood was too ruffled for contentment in the old things, and yet she was not swept on. the social life of the town brought her and stuart williams together from time to time. they always had several dances together at the parties. it was those dances that made the party for her. if he were not there, the evening was a dead thing. when he was, something came to life in her that made everything different. she would be excited; she had color; her eyes shone. it made her gay, as an intoxicant may make one gay. though when she danced with him she went curiously silent; that stilled her. after going home she would lie awake for hours, live over every slightest thing he had said, each glance and move. it was an unreal world of a new reality--quickened, heightened, delirious, promising. in that first year she sometimes wondered if it was what would be called a flirtation. it did not seem so to her, and it was true that after that first night at the country club the quality of flirtation somehow fell away. afterwards, when it became the thing that made her life, she looked back in wonderment to the light little way it had begun. that too did not seem as it should be--that a thing of such tremendous and ruthless power, a thing that swept her whole life on at its will, should come into life in a way so slight, so light, so much of chance. at first it was just the faintest little breath; but it stirred something, it grew, it became a great wind that there was no force anywhere to combat. in that first year there was between them, unspoken of, a consciousness of feeling touched in the other, a sense of the disturbance, the pull. it seemed very wonderful to her that just his presence in the room could make her feel alive in a way she had never felt alive before. and it was sweet almost beyond belief, it was intoxicating, to come to know that her presence was that same strange wine to him. she had seen his eyes anxiously rove a crowded room and stop with her, his face lighting. she loved remembering his face once at a card party of the older crowd where she had been tardily summoned by a disappointed hostess. he had been in the room several minutes, she watching him unseen. he was not looking anxiously about this time, as she had seen him do at the dancing parties. she thought he looked tired as he and his wife came in, not as if anticipating pleasure. then he saw her and she never forgot that leap of glad surprise in his eyes, the quick change in him, the new buoyancy. she would have supposed, thinking back to it afterward, that she would have drawn back; that before feeling really broke through, a girl such as she, reared as she had been, a part of such a society, a girl, as they afterward said, who should have known right from wrong would, in that time of its gathering, have drawn back from so shameful a thing as love with another woman's husband. it was as mystifying to her that she did not fight against it as it was that it should have come. she did not understand the one nor the other. certainly it was not as she would have supposed it would be had she heard of such a thing. something seemed to have caught her up, to have taken her. she was appalled at times, but the truth was that she was carried along almost without resistance; ideas of resistance were there, but they were pale things, not charged with power. she would suppose, had she known the story only through hearing it, that she would have thought intensely and become wretched in the thought of mrs. williams. perhaps if mrs. williams had been a plain little woman, or a sad looking one, that would have come home to her harder. but one would not readily pity marion williams, or get the feeling of wronging her. as marion averley she had been the reigning girl of the town. ruth, ten years younger, had not come far enough out from her little girl's awe of marion averley, the young lady, to be quick in getting the feeling of wronging marion williams, the wife. perhaps one would be more slow in getting a feeling of wronging the most smartly dressed woman in the room than would be the case with the wife dowdy or drab. mrs. williams, while not radiating happiness, seemed somehow impervious to unhappiness, and certainly to any hurt another woman could bring her. she had an atmosphere of high self-valuation. while she never appeared to be having an especially good time she gave a sense of being perfectly able to command a better one had it pleased her to do so. people had supposed that marion averley would make a brilliant marriage. her grandfather had made his money in lumber, in those early days of lumber kings on the mississippi. locally they were looked upon as rich people. marion had gone to a fashionable school, to europe. people of the town said there was nothing "local" about her. other girls had been as much away and yet would return seeming just a part of the town. that was why everyone was surprised when the averleys announced marion's engagement to stuart williams. he was distinctly local and his people were less important than hers. he had come home from college and gone into business. his father had a small canning factory, an industry that for years had not grown much, remaining one of the small concerns in a town of rapidly growing manufactories. stuart went into business with his father and very soon there were expansions, new methods; he brought imagination to bear upon it, and a big fund of young man's energy, until it rapidly came up from a "nice little business" to one of the things that counted in the town. he had a talent for business; his imagination worked that way and he was what they called a hustler. he soon became a part of a number of things, both personal affairs and matters of public concern. he came to be alluded to as one of the prominent young business men. even before marion averley married him people were saying that he would make money. they liked her for marrying him. they said it showed that there was more to her than they had supposed, that there was warmth she did not show. for she must have married him for the good old reason that she had fallen in love with him. their engagement brought stuart williams into a new social conspicuousness, though he had the qualities--in particular a certain easy, sunny manner--that had made him popular all along. during the engagement people spoke of the way marion seemed to thaw out; they liked her much better than they had in the days of being awed by her sophistication, her aloofness. after their marriage the williams' were leaders of the young married set. their house was the gayest place in town; stuart williams had the same talent in hospitality that he had for business--growing, perhaps, out of the same qualities. he was very generally and really deeply liked; they called him a good fellow, a lovable chap. for about four years people spoke of it as a successful marriage, though there were no children. and then, just what it was no one knew, but the williams' began to seem different, going to their house became a different thing. the people who knew marion best had a feeling that she was not the same after the visit of that gay little southern matron whom she had known in school at washington. it was very gay at the williams' through that visit, and then marion said she was tired out and they were going to draw in for a little, and somehow they just never seemed to emerge from that drawing in. her friends wondered; they talked about how stuart and this friend of marion's had certainly hit it off wonderfully; some of them suspected, but marion gave no confidences. she seemed to carry her head higher than ever; in fact, in some curious way she seemed to become marion averley again while stuart williams concentrated more and more upon the various business affairs he was being drawn into. it came about that the williams' were less and less mentioned when the subject of happy marriages was up, and when time had swung ruth holland and edith lawrence into the social life of the town it was the analytical rather than the romantically minded citizens who were talking about them. perhaps life would have been quite another thing for a number of people if the country club had not decided to replenish its treasury by giving a play. mrs. lawrence was chairman of the entertainment committee. that naturally brought edith and ruth into the play, and one night after one of those periods of distraction into which the organizer of amateur theatricals is swept it was mrs. lawrence who exclaimed, "stuart williams! why couldn't he do that part?"--and stuart williams, upon learning who was in the cast, said he would see what he could do with it. again, at the close of the first rehearsal, as they stood about in the hall at the lawrences', laughing over mishaps, it was mrs. lawrence who said, "you and ruth go the same way, don't you, stuart?" tonight they were going that way after the final rehearsal. it was later than usual; they went slowly, saying little. they had fallen silent as they neared ruth's home; they walked slowly and in silence outside the fence; paused an instant at the gate, then, very slowly, started up the walk which led to the big white square house and came to a stop beneath the oak tree which was so near the house that its branches brushed the upper window panes. they stood there silent; the man knew that he ought to go at once; that in that silence the feeling which words had so thinly covered would break through and take them. but knowing he should go seemed without power to make him go. he watched the girl's slightly averted face. he knew why it was averted. he felt sure that he was not alone in what he felt. and so he stood there in the sweetness of that knowing, the sweetness of that understanding why she held herself almost rigid like that, feeling surging higher in him in the thought that she too was fighting feeling. the breeze moved the hair on her temples; he could see the throb in her uncovered throat, her thin white dress moving over her quick breathing. life was in her, and the desire for life. she seemed so tender, so sensitive. he moved a step nearer her, unable to deny himself the sweetness of confirming what it was so wonderful to think. "i won't be taking you home tomorrow night," he said. she looked at him, then swiftly turned away, but not before he had seen her eyes. "shall you care?" he pressed it, unsteadily. he knew by her high head, her tenseness, that she was fighting something back; and he saw the quivering of her tender mouth. she cared! she _did_ care. here was a woman who cared; a woman who wanted love--his love; a woman for whom life counted, as it counted for him. after barren, baffled days, days of denial and humiliation, the sweetness of being desired possessed him overwhelmingly as they stood there in the still, fragrant night before the darkened house. he knew that he must go; he _had_ to go; it was go now, or--. but still he just stood there, unable to do what he knew he should do, reason trying to get hold of that moment of gathering passion, training striving to hold life. it was she who brought them together. with a smothered passionate little sob she had swayed toward him, and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her wet eyes, that tender mouth, the slim throbbing throat. chapter nine there followed three years of happiness wrung from wretchedness, years in which the splendor of love would blaze through the shame of concealment, when joy was always breaking out through fear, when moments of beautiful peace trembled there in the ugly web of circumstance. life was flooded with beauty by a thing called shameful. her affairs as a girl went on just the same; the life on the surface did not change. she continued as ruth holland--the girl who went to parties with the boys of her own set, one of her particular little circle of girls, the chum of edith lawrence, the girl deane franklin liked best. but a life grew underneath that--all the time growing, crowding. she appeared to remain a girl after passion had swept her over into womanhood. to be living through the most determining, most intensifying experience of life while she appeared only to be resting upon the surface was the harassing thing she went through in those years before reality came crashing through pretence and disgrace brought relief. she talked to but one person in those years. that was deane. the night he told her that he loved her she let him see. that was more than a year after the night stuart williams took her home from that last rehearsal; deane was through school now and had come home to practice medicine. she had felt all along that once he was at home for good she might have to tell deane; not alone because he would interfere with her meetings with stuart, but because it seemed she could not bear the further strain of pretending with him. and somehow she would particularly hate pretending with deane. though the night she did let him see it was not that there was any determination for doing so, but because things had become too tense that night and she had no power to go on dissembling. it began in irritation at him, the vicious irritation that springs out against the person who upsets a plan he knows nothing about, and cannot be told of. she had come in from an errand down town and was about to dress hurriedly to go over to edith's for dinner. she was going to make some excuse for getting away from there early and would have an hour with stuart, one of those stolen hours that often crowded, agitated, a number of the hours before it, one of those hours of happiness when fear always stood right there, but when joy had a marvellous power to glow in an atmosphere of ugly things. a few nights before she had tried to arrange one of those times, and just as she was about to leave the house, saying some vague thing about running in somewhere--there was no strict surveillance on members of the holland household--a friend who had been very ill and was just beginning to go about had come to see her and she had been obliged to sit there through the hour she had been living for, striving to crowd down what she was feeling and appear delighted that her friend was able to be about, chatting lightly of inconsequential things while she could think of nothing but stuart waiting for her, had had to smile while she wanted to sob in the fury of disappointed passion. the year had brought many disappointments like that, disappointments which found their way farther into the spirit because they dared not show on the surface. of late there had been so many of them that it was growing hard to hold from her manner her inner chafing against them. there were times when all the people who loved her seemed trying to throw things in her way, and it was the more maddening because blindly done. it was hurting her relations with people; she hated them when they blunderingly stepped in the way of the thing that had come to mean everything to her. she was particularly anxious about this night for stuart was going out of town on a business trip and she would not see him again for more than a week. it was her grandfather who made the first difficulty; as she was going up the stairs he called, "you going over to the lawrences' tonight, ruth?" when she had answered yes he continued: "it wouldn't be much out of your way, would it, to run on over to the allens'?" she hesitated; anything her grandfather asked of her was hard to refuse, not only because she loved him and because he was old, but because it hurt her to see how he missed the visiting around among his old friends that his rheumatism had of late cut him off from. "why--no," she answered, wondering just how she could get it in, for it did take her out of her way, and old mr. allen would want to talk to her; it was going to be hard to get away from edith's anyway, and the time would be so short, for stuart would have to leave for his train at half past nine. she quickly decided that she would go over there before dinner, even though it made her a little late. maybe she didn't need to comb her hair, after all. she was starting up the stairs when her grandfather called: "wait a minute. come here, ruth." she came back, twirling the fingers of one hand nervously. her grandfather was fumbling in the drawer of his secretary. "i want you to take this letter--tell him i got it yesterday--" he stopped, peering at the letter; ruth stood there with hand clenched now, foot tapping. "why no, that's not the one," he rambled on; "i must have put it up above here. or could it--" "oh, i'm in a hurry, grandfather!" cried the girl. he closed the drawer and limped over to his chair. "just let it go, then," he said in the hurt voice of one who has been refused a thing he cannot do for himself. "now, grandfather!" ruth cried, swiftly moving toward him. "how can you be so _silly_--just because i'm a little nervous about being late!" "seems to me you're always a little nervous about something lately," he remarked, rising and resuming the leisurely search for the letter. "you young folks make such hard work of your good times nowadays. anybody'd think you had the world on your shoulders." ruth made no reply, standing there as quietly as she could, waiting while her grandfather scanned a letter. "yes, this is the one," he finally said. "you tell him--" she had the letter and was starting for the stairs while listening to what she was to tell, considering at the same time how she'd take the short cut across the high-school ball park--she could make it all right by half past six. feeling kindly toward her grandfather because it was going to be all right, after all, she called back brightly: "yes, grandfather, i'll get it to him; i'll run right over there with it first thing." "oh, look here, ruth!" he cried, hobbling out to the hall. "don't do that! i want you to go in the evening. he'll not be home till eight o'clock. he's going--" "yes, grandfather," she called from the head of the stairs in a peculiarly quiet voice. "i see. it's all right." then she could not find the things she wanted to put on. there was a button off her dress and her thread broke in sewing it. she was holding herself very tight when her mother came leisurely into the room and stood there commenting on the way ruth's hair was done, on the untidiness of her dressing-table, mildly reproving her for a growing carelessness. then she wandered along about something ruth was to tell edith's mother. ruth, her trembling fingers tangling her thread, was thinking that she was always to tell somebody something somebody else had said, take something from one person to another. the way people were all held together in trivial things, that thin, seemingly purposeless web lightly holding them together was eternally throwing threads around her, keeping her from the one thing that counted. "there!" escaped from her at last, breaking the thread and throwing the dress over her head. her mother sauntered over to fasten it for her, pausing to note how the dress was wearing out, speaking of the new one ruth must have soon, and who should make it. "oh, i'm in a _hurry_, mother!" ruth finally cried when her mother stopped to consider how the dress would have had more style if, instead of buttoning down the back, it had fastened under that fold. "really, my dear," mrs. holland remonstrated, jerking the dress straight with a touch of vexation, "i must say that you are getting positively peevish!" as ruth did not reply, and the mother could feel her body tightening, she went on, with a loving little pat as she fastened the dress over the hip, "and you used to be the most sweet-tempered girl ever lived." still ruth made no answer. "your father was saying the other night that he was sure you couldn't be feeling well. you never used to be a bit irritable, he said, and you nearly snapped his head off when he wanted--just to save you--to drive you over to harriett's." though the dress was all fastened now, ruth did not turn toward her mother. mrs. holland added gently: "now that wasn't reasonable, was it?" the tear ruth had been trying to hold back fell to the handkerchief she was selecting. no, it wouldn't seem reasonable, of course; her father had wanted to help her, and she had been cross. it was all because she couldn't tell him the truth--which was that she hadn't told him the truth, that she wasn't going to harriett's for an hour, that she was going to do something else first. there had been a moment of actually hating her father when, in wanting to help her, he stepped in the way of a thing he knew nothing about. that, it seemed, was what happened between people when things could not be told. mrs. holland, seeing that ruth's hand was unsteady, went on, in a voice meant to soothe: "just take it a little easier, dear. what under the sun have you got to do but enjoy yourself? don't get in such a flutter about it." she sighed and murmured, from the far ground of experience: "wait till you have a real worry." ruth was pinning on her hat. she laughed in a jerky little way and said, in a light voice that was slightly tremulous: "i did get a little fussed, didn't i? but you see i wanted to get over to edith's before dinner time. she wants to talk to me about her shower for cora albright." "but you have all evening to talk that over, haven't you?" calmly admonished mrs. holland. "why, of course," ruth answered, a little crisply, starting for the door. "your petticoat's showing," her mother called to her. "here, i'll pin it up for you." "oh, let it _go_!" cried ruth desperately. "i'll fix it at edith's," she added hurriedly. "ruth, are you crazy?" her mother demanded. "going through the streets with your petticoat showing! i guess you're in no such hurry as that." it was while she was pinning up the skirt that mrs. holland remarked: "oh, i very nearly forgot to tell you; deane's going over there for you tonight." then to the mother's utter bewilderment and consternation ruth covered her face with her hands and burst into sobs. "why, my _dear_," she murmured; "why, ruth _dear_, what _is_ the matter?" ruth sank down on the bed, leaning her head against the foot of it, shaking with sobs. her mother stood over her murmuring, "why, my dear, what _is_ the matter?" ruth, trying to stop crying, began to laugh. "i didn't know he was coming! i was so surprised. we've quarrelled!" she gulped out desperately. "why, he was just as natural and nice as could be over the 'phone," said mrs. holland, pouring some water in the bowl that ruth might bathe her eyes. "really, my dear, it seems to me you make too much of things. he wanted to come here, and when i told him you were going to be at edith's, he said he'd go there. i'm sure he was just as nice as could be." ruth was bathing her eyes, her body still quivering a little. "yes, i know," she spluttered, her face in the water; "he is that way when--after we've quarrelled." "i didn't know you and deane ever did quarrel," ventured mrs. holland. "when you do, i'll warrant it's your fault." she added, significantly: "deane's mighty good to you, ruth." she had said several things like that of late. "oh, he's good enough," murmured ruth from the folds of the towel. "now, powder up a little, dear. there! and now just take it a little easy. why, it's not a hit like you to be so----touchy." she followed ruth downstairs. "got that letter?" the grandfather called out from his room. "i'll send ted with it, father," mrs. holland said hastily, seeing ruth's face. a sudden surge of love for her mother almost swept away ruth's self-command. it was wonderful that some one wanted to help her. it made her want to cry. her mother went with her to the porch. "you look so nice," she said soothingly. "have a good time, dearie." ruth waved her hand without turning her face to her mother. tears were right there close all through that evening. the strain within was so great--(what _was_ she going to do about deane?)--that there was that impulse to cry at the slightest friendliness. she was flushed and tired when she reached edith's, and mrs. lawrence herself went out and got her a glass of water--a fan, drew up a comfortable chair. the whole house seemed so kindly, so favoring. contrasted with her secret turmoil the reposefulness, friendliness of the place was so beautiful to her that taut emotions were ready to give. yet all the while there was that inner distress about how to get away, what to say. the affectionate kindness of her friends, the appeal of their well-ordered lives as something in which to rest, simply had no reach into the thing that dominated her. and now finally she had managed it; deane had come before she could possibly get away but she had said she would have to go up to harriett's, that she must not be too late about it. edith had protested, disappointed at her leaving so early, wanting to know if she couldn't come back. that waved down, there had been a moment of fearing edith was going to propose going with her; so she had quickly spoken of there being something harriett wanted to talk to her about. she had a warm, gentle feeling for edith when finally she saw the way clearing. that was the way it was, gratitude to one who had moved out of her way gave her so warm a feeling that often she would impulsively propose things letting her in for future complications. as she was saying goodnight there was another moment of wanting terribly to cry. they were so good to her, so loving--and what would they think if they knew? her voice was curiously gentle in taking leave of them; there was pain in that feeling of something that removed her from these friends who cared for her, who were so good to her. she asked deane if he hadn't something else to do for an hour, someone to run in and see while she visited with harriett. when he readily fell in with that, saying he hadn't been to the bennetts' since coming home and that it would be a good time to go there, she grew suddenly gay, joking with him in a half tender little way, a sort of affectionate bantering that was the closest they came to intimacy. and then at the very last, after one thing and then another had been disposed of, and just as her whole being was fairly singing with relief and anticipation, the whole thing was threatened and there was another of those moments of actually hating one who was dear to her. they had about reached the corner near harriett's where she was going to insist deane leave her for the bennetts' when they came upon her brother ted, slouching along, whistling, flipping in his hand the letter he was taking to his grandfather's old friend. "hello," he said, "where y' goin'?" "just walking," said ruth, and able to say it with a carelessness that surprised her. "oh," said ted, with a nonchalance that made her want to scream out some awful thing at him, "thought maybe you were making for harriett's. she ain't home." she would like to have pushed him away! she would have liked to push him way off somewhere! she dug her nails down into her palm; she could hardly control the violent, ugly feeling that wanted to leap out at him--at this "kid brother" whom she adored. why need he have said just _that_?--that particular thing, of all things! but she was saying in calm elderly sister fashion, "don't lose that letter, ted," and to deane, as they walked on, "harriett's at a neighbor's; i'll run in for her; she's expecting me to." but it left her weak; her legs were trembling, her heart pounding; there seemed no power left at the center of her for holding herself in one. and now she was rid of deane! she had shaken them all off; for that little time she was free! she hurried toward the narrow street that trailed off into the country. stuart would be waiting for her there. her joy in that, her eagerness, rushed past the dangers all around her, the thing that possessed her avoiding thought of the disastrous possibilities around her as a man in a boat on a narrow rushing river would keep clear of rocks jutting out on either side. sometimes the feeling that swept her on did graze the risks so close about her and she shivered a little. suppose harriett were at the bennetts' when deane got there! suppose deane said something when they got home; suppose ted said something that wouldn't fit in with what deane said; suppose deane got to harriett's too soon--though she had told him not to be there till after half past nine. hadn't deane looked queer at the last? wouldn't he suspect? wouldn't everybody suspect, with her acting like this? and once there was the slightest suspecting.... but she was hurrying on; none of those worries, fears, had power to lay any real hold on the thing that possessed her; faster and faster she hurried; she had turned into the little street, had passed the last house, turned the bend in the road, and yes! there was stuart, waiting for her, coming to her. everything else fell away. nothing else in the world mattered. chapter ten ten o'clock found ruth sitting on the porch at home with her mother and father, her brother cyrus and deane. her father was talking with deane about the operation that had been performed on the book-keeper in mr. holland's bank; cyrus talked of somebody's new touring car, the number of new machines there were in town that year; her mother wondered where some of the people who had them got the money for them. the talk moved placidly from one thing to another, mr. holland saying at intervals that he must be going to bed, his wife slapping at the mosquitoes and talking about going inside--both delaying, comfortably stupid. ruth was sitting on the top step leaning back against the porch pillar. she said little, she was very tired now. something in this dragging talk soothed her. it seemed safe just because it was so commonplace; it was relaxing. she was glad to be back to it--to the world of it; in returning safely to it she felt a curiously tender feeling for it, a perhaps absurd sense of having come through something for it. she could rest in it while within herself she continued to live back in that hour with stuart, that hour which struggle and fear and the passionate determination to have in spite of everything had made terribly intense. they had closed themselves in with that little while of love, holding it apart from everything else, and yet every minute of it was charged with the consciousness of what was all around them. they had clung to that hour with a desperate passion, the joy of the moment that was there always stabbed with pain for a moment passing. at the last they had clung to each other as if time too--time, over which they had no control--was going to beat them apart. so much had been hard that in returning she had a warm feeling of gratitude to all of them for not making it harder for her, not questioning, exposing her; relief was so great that they were all newly dear for thus letting her alone. she had managed all right with deane, the clumsy arrangement she had been forced into appeared to have just that haphazardness which characterizes most of the arrangements of life. her mother had merely asked what the lawrence's had for dinner; her father joked about the way she had trained the roses in the back yard. strangely enough instead of feeling she had outraged them, been unworthy this easy, affectionate intercourse, she had a sense, now that she had again come through a precarious thing safely, of having saved them from something they knew not of, a strange lifted-up feeling of bearing something for them. certainly that would not seem the feeling she should be having, but there was the odd part of it: the feelings she had were so seldom those she would expect herself to have. her mother and father had gone indoors; cyrus sat out there with her and deane for a time. ruth did not love cyrus as she loved ted; he had always had too superior a manner with her for her feeling to be more than the perfunctory thing which sometimes passes for personal affection in families. it was simply that she had never admitted, even to herself, that she did not love him. he belonged to the set just older than ruth's, though she and deane and their friends were arriving now at the time of ceasing to be a separate entity as the young crowd and were being merged in the group just above them. that contributed to cyrus's condescension, he being tempered for condescension. when she and deane were alone the talk lagged, ruth sitting there at the head of the steps leaning against the pillar, he a few steps below her, sprawled out in awkward boyish fashion, looking up at her from time to time as she said something. her silence did not make him feel cut off from her; the things she said were gently said; her tired smile was sweet. he spoke several times of going, but lingered. he was held by something in ruth; it stirred something in him, not knowing that he was drawn by what another man had brought into life. he drew himself up and stole timid glances at ruth as she looked out into the night, feeling something new in her tonight, something that touched the feeling that had all the time been there in him, growing as he grew, of itself waiting for the future as simply and naturally as all maturing things wait for the future. ruth was the girl he had all the time cared for; he was shy about emotional things--awkward; he had had almost no emotional life; he had all the time been diffident about what she made him feel and so they had just gone along for a little time longer than was usual as boy and girl. but something sweet, mysterious, exhaling from her tonight liberated the growing, waiting feeling in him. it took him as he had not been taken before; he watched ruth and was stilled, moved, drawn. finally, as if suddenly conscious of a long silence, she turned to him with something about the plans for cora albright's wedding--she was to be a bridesmaid and he an usher. she went on talking of the man cora was to marry, a man she met away from home and had fallen desperately in love with. he associated the light of her face, the sweetness of her voice, with the things of romance of which she talked. all in a moment his feeling for her, what her strange, softened mood touched in him, leaped up, surging through him, not to be stayed. he moved nearer her. "you know, ruth," he said, in queer, jerky voice, "_i_ love you." she gave a start, drew a little back and looked at him with a certain startled fixity as if he had stopped all else in her. for the moment she just looked at him like that, startled, fixed. "could you care for me at all, ruth?" he asked wistfully, and with a bated passionateness. and then she moved, and it seemed that feeling, too, moved in her again; there was a flow of emotions as she sat looking at him now. and then her strangely shining eyes were misty; her face quivered a little and very slowly she shook her head. "don't do that, ruth," he said quickly, in a voice sharp with pain. "don't do that! you don't _know_--maybe you hadn't thought about it--maybe--" he broke off, reached out for her hands, and could only stammer, "oh, ruth!--i love you so!" he had her hands; he was clutching them very tight; he looked up at her again, imploring. she started to shake her head again, but did not really do it. she seemed about to speak, but did not. what could she say to deane--how make him understand?--unless she told him. she thought of the years she had known him, how much they had been together, how good he had been to her. again her eyes were misty. it was all so tangled. there was so much pain. feeling her softening, her tenderness, he moved nearer, her two hands pressed together so tight in his that it hurt her. "it wouldn't be so bad, would it, ruth?" he urged wistfully, with a little laugh that broke with emotion. "you and i--mightn't life go pretty well for us?" she turned away, looking out into the night. feeling something in her that he did not understand he let her hands go. she put one of them up, still further averting her face, lost to him in the picture forming itself before her of how life would be if love came right; what it would mean not to have to hide, but to have those who cared for her happy in her happiness; what it would mean to give herself to love without fear, to wear her joy proudly before the world, revealing her womanhood. she was not thinking of what life with deane would be but of what love that could have its place would be: telling her mother and father and edith, being able to show the pride of being loved, the triumph of loving. sitting there, turning her face from this friend who loved her, she seemed to be turning it to the years awaiting her, years of desperately clutching at happiness in tension and fear, not understood because unable to show herself,--afraid, harassed, perhaps disgraced. she wanted to take her place among women who loved and were loved! she did not want to be shut away from her friends, not seeming to understand what she understood so well. this picture of what life would be if love could have its place brought home to her what it meant to love and perpetually conceal, stealing one's happiness from the society in which one lived. why could it not have gone right for her too, as it had for cora and would for edith? she too wanted a wedding, she too wanted rejoicing friends. she hid her face in her hands. her body was quivering. the boy's arm stole round her shoulders. she was feeling--maybe she did care. "ruth," he whispered, "love does mean something to you, doesn't it?" she raised her head and looked at him. and that look was a thing deane franklin never forgot; all the years did not blur his memory of it--that flaming claim for love that transformed her face. and then it was lost in contrition, for she saw what he had seen, and what he hoped from that; in her compunction for having let him see what was not for him, the tender, sorrowing look, the impulsive outreaching of her hand, there was the dawn of understanding. at first he was too bewildered to find words. then: "you care for some one else?" he groped unbelievingly. she looked away, but nodded; her tears were falling. he moved a little away and then sat there quite still. a breeze had come up and the vines beat against the porch, making a sound that like the flaming look of a moment ago he never forgot. she knew that he must be wondering; he knew her life there, or what seemed her life. he must be wondering who it was she cared for like that. she laid her hand upon his arm; and when he turned to her she did not say anything at all, but the appeal that looked through pain perhaps went where words could not have gone. "but you're not happy!" he exclaimed, in a sort of harsh exulting in that. she shook her head; her eyes were brimming over. he looked away from her, his own hurt and surprise rousing a savage thing in him that did not want to do what the pleading pain of her eyes so eloquently asked of him. he had always thought that _he_ was to have ruth. well, he was not to have her--there were ugly things which, in that first moment, surged into his disappointment. some one else was to have her. but she was not happy! defeated feeling wrenched its own sorry satisfaction from that. "why aren't you happy?" he asked of her abruptly, roughly. she did not answer, and so he had to look at her. and when he saw ruth's face his real love for her broke through the ugliness of thwarted passion. "can't you tell me, ruth?" he asked gently. she shook her head, but the concern of his voice loosed feeling she was worn out with holding in. her eyes were streaming now. his arm went round her shoulder, gently, as if it would shield, help. his love for her wrenched itself free--for that moment, at least,--from his own hurt. "maybe i can help you, ruth," he was murmuring. chapter eleven he went away from there that night not knowing more than that; it was merely that she let him see. he knew now that there was some big thing in her life he had known nothing about; that he had not understood ruth, though he had known her through all the years and had thought he knew her so well. he was bewildered, his pain was blunted in that bewilderment. there was a sick sense of life as all different, but he was too dazed then for the pain that came later with definite knowing. he went home that night and because he could not sleep tried to read a medical book; usually that took all his mind, for the time other things would not exist for him. but that was not true tonight; that world of facts could not get him; he lived right on in the world of his own feeling. he was not to have ruth; he did not seem able to get a real sense of that either, there was just a sick feeling about it rather than actual realization, acceptance. and what did it mean? surely he knew ruth's life, the people she went with; it was always he, when he was at home, ruth went about with. someone away from home? but she had been very little away from home. who could it be? he went over and over that. it came to seem unreal; as if there were some misunderstanding, some mistake. and yet, that look.... his own disappointment was at times caught up into his marvel at her; that moment's revelation of what her caring could be was so wonderful as to bear him out of the fact that it was not for him she cared. that was the way it was all through, his love for her deepening with his marvel at her, the revelation of what she felt for another man claiming more and more of himself for her. it was a thing he would have scoffed at if told of, it was a thing he could not somehow justify even to himself, but it was true that the more he saw of what love meant to ruth the more ruth came to mean to him. in those next few months, the months before he actually knew, there were times when he could almost persuade himself that there was something unreal about it all, torturous wonderings as to who the man could be trailing off into the possibility of there being no man, because he knew of none; sometimes he tried to persuade himself that this passionate feeling he had glimpsed in ruth was a thing apart from any particular man--for who _was_ the man? sometimes he could, for a moment, let in the hope that since she could care like that she would care for him. though he more than half knew he deluded himself in that; there was, now that his eyes were opened, that in ruth's manner to indicate something in her life which did not appear on the surface. he saw how nervous she was--how strained at times, how worried and cross, which was not like ruth at all. there were times when her eyes were imploring, times when they were afraid, again there were moments of that lovely calm, when feeling deep and beautiful radiated from her, as it had that night they sat on the steps and, drawn by something in her, he had to tell her that he loved her. she did queer unreasonable things, would become exasperated at him for apparently nothing at all. once when she had told him she was going somewhere with her mother he later saw her hurrying by alone; another time she told him she was going to edith's, and when he called up there, wanting to take them both with him for a long trip he had to make into the country, edith said ruth had not been there. thoughts that he did not like, that he could not believe, came into his mind. he was not only unhappy, but he grew more and more worried about ruth. that went on for several months, and then one day late that same summer she came to him with the truth. she came because she had to come. he was a doctor; he was her friend; she was in a girl's most desperate plight and she had no one else to turn to. it was in his office that she told him, not looking at him, her face without color and drawn out of shape, her voice quick, sharp, hard, so unlike ruth's sweet voice that without seeing her he would not have known it. she threw out the bare facts at him as she sat there very straight, hands gripped. he was stupefied at first, but it was fury which then broke through, the fury of knowing it was _this_, that not only was he not to have ruth, but that another man _had_ her, the fury that rose out of the driving back of all those loose ends of hope that had eased pain a little. and _ruth_--_this_! he little knew what things he might not have said and done in those first moments of failing her, turning on her because he himself was hurt beyond his power to bear. and then ruth spoke to him. "but i thought you believed in love, deane," she said, quietly. "_love!_" he brutally flung back at her. "yes, deane, love," she said, and the simplicity, the dignity of her quiet voice commanded him and he had to turn from himself to her. she was different now; she looked at him, steadily, proudly. out of the humiliation of her situation she raised a proud face for love; love could bring her disgrace, it could not strip her of her own sense of the dignity of loving. her power was in that, in that claim for love that pain and humiliation could not beat back. "i notice _he's_ not here," he sneered, still too overwhelmed to be won from his own rage to her feeling. "i thought it better for me to come," she said simply, and as she said it and he remembered her drawn, wretched face in telling him, he was quieted a little by a sense of what it had cost her to come. "because," she added, "you're my friend, you know." he did not say anything, miserably wondering what she now thought of him as her friend. "oh, deane," she broke out, "don't be hard! if you could know what he's suffering! being a man--being a little older--what's that? if you can understand me, deane, you've got to understand him, too!" he stood there in silence looking at ruth as, looking away from him now, she brooded over that. in this hour of her own humiliation her appeal was for the man who had brought it upon her. "how you love him!" escaped from him, in bitterness, and yet marvelling. she turned to him then in her swift way, again, as on that night of his first seeing, her face transformed by that flaming claim for love; it was as if life was shining triumphant through the cloud of misery it had brought down around her. he could not rage against that look; he had no scorn for it. it lighted a country between them which words could not have undarkened. they came together there in that common understanding of the power and beauty of love. he was suddenly ashamed, humbled, feeling in her love a quality upon which no shameful circumstance could encroach. and after that she found relief in words, the words she had had to deny herself so long. it was as if she found it wonderfully good to talk, in some little measure linking her love, as love wants to link itself, with the other people of the world, coming within the human unit. things which circumstances had prisoned in her heart, too intensified by solitude, leaped out like winged things let loose. but in that hour of talking with him, though words served her well, it was that proud, flaming claim for love which again and again lighted her face that brought him into understanding, winning him for her against his own love of her. in the year which followed, that last year before circumstances closed in too tight and they went away, it was he who made it possible for ruth to move a little more freely in the trap in which she found herself. he helped her in deceiving her family and friends, aided them in the ugly work of stealing what happiness they could from the society in which they lived. he did not like doing it. neither did he like attending the agonies of child-birth, or standing impotently at the bed of the dying. it might seem absurd, in trying to explain one's self, to claim for this love the inevitability of the beginning and the end of life, and yet, seeing it as he saw it he did think of it, not as a thing that should or should not be, but as a thing that was; not as life should or should not be lived, but as life. this much he knew: that whatever they might have been able to do at the first, it had them now. they were in too powerful a current to make a well considered retreat to shoals of safety. no matter what her mood might have been in the beginning, no matter what she could have done about it then, ruth was mastered not master now. love _had_ her--he saw that too well to reason with her. what he saw of the way all other people mattered so much less than the passion which claimed her made him feel, not that ruth was selfish, but that the passion was mastering; the way she deceived made him feel, not that she was deceitful, but that love like that was as unable to be held back in the thought of wrong to others as in the consideration of safety for one's self; the two were equally inadequate floodgates. not that those other things did not matter--he knew how they did make her suffer--but that this one thing mattered overwhelmingly more was what he felt in ruth in those days when she would be thought to be with him and would be with stuart williams. for himself that was a year of misery. he saw ruth in a peculiarly intimate way, taken as he was into the great intimacy of her life. his love for her deepened with his knowing of her; and anxiety about her preyed upon him all the time, passionate resentment that it should have gone like that for her, life claiming her only, as it seemed, to destroy her. he never admitted to himself how much he really came to like stuart williams. there seemed something quixotic in that; it did not seem natural he should have any sympathy with this man who not only had ruth's love, but was endangering her whole life. yet the truth was that as time went on he not only came to like him but to feel a growing concern for him. for the man changed in that last year. it was not only that he looked older--harassed, had grown so much more silent, but deane as a physician noticed that he was losing weight and there was a cough that often made him look at him sharply. a number of times ruth said, "i don't think stuart's well," but she looked so wretched in saying it that he always laughed at her. the williams' were not patients of his, so he felt that professional hesitance, even though he thought it foolish professionalism, in himself approaching stuart about his health. once when he seemed particularly tired and nervous deane did venture to suggest a little lay-off from work, a change, but stuart had answered irritably that he couldn't stop work, and didn't want to go away, anyhow. it was almost a year after the day ruth came to him steeled for telling what had to be told that the man of whom she that day talked came to tell him what he had been suspecting, that he had tuberculosis and would have to take that lay-off deane had been hinting at. it seemed it was either go away or die, probably, he added, with an attempted laugh, it was go away and die, but better go away, he thought, than stay there and give his friends an exhibition in dying. they talked along over the surface of it, as is people's way, deane speaking mildly of tuberculosis, how prevalent, how easily controlled, how delightful arizona was, the charms of living out-of-doors, and all the time each of them knew that the other was not thinking of that at all, but thinking of ruth. finally, bracing himself as for a thing that was all he could do, stuart spoke of her. "ruth said she was coming in to see you about something this afternoon. i thought i'd get in first and tell you. i wondered what you'd think--what we'd better do--" his voice trailed off miserably. he turned a little away and sat there in utter dejection. and as he looked at him it came to deane that love could be the most ruthless, most terrible thing in the world. people talked to him afterwards about this man's selfishness in taking his own pleasure, his own happiness, at the cost of everyone else. he said little, for how could he make real to anyone else his own feeling about what he had seen of the man's suffering, utter misery, as he spoke of the girl to whom he must bring new pain. some one spoke to him afterwards of this "light love" and he laughed in that person's face. he knew that it was love bathed in pain. a new sense of just how hideous the whole thing was made him suddenly demand: "can't you--_do_ anything about it? isn't there any _way_?--any way you can get a divorce?" he bluntly asked. "mrs. williams does not believe in divorce," was the answer, spoken with more bitterness than deane had ever heard in any voice before. deane turned away with a little exclamation of rage, rage that one person should have this clutch on the life of another, of two others--and one of them ruth--sickened with a sense of the waste and the folly of it,--for what was _she_ getting out of it? he savagely put to himself. how could one get anything from life simply by holding another from it? "does she know anything about ruth?" he asked with an abrupt turn to stuart. "she has mentioned her name several times lately and looked at me in doing it. she isn't one to speak directly of things," he added with a more subtle bitterness than that of a moment before. they sat there for a couple of minutes in silence--a helpless, miserable silence. when, after that, deane stepped out into the waiting-room he found ruth among those there; he only nodded to her and went back and told stuart that she was there. "but it's only three," said he helplessly, "and she said she was coming at four." "well, i suppose she came earlier than she intended," deane replied, about as helplessly, and went over and stood looking out the window. after a moment he turned. "better get it over with, hadn't you! she's got to be told," he said, a little less brusquely, as he saw the man wince,--"better get it over with." stuart was silent, head down. after a moment he looked up at deane. it was a look one would turn quickly away from. again deane stood looking from the window. he was considering something, considering a thing that would be very hard to do. after a moment he again abruptly turned around. "well, shall i do it!" he asked quietly. the man nodded in a wretched gratefulness that went to deane's heart. so he called ruth in from the waiting-room. he always remembered just how ruth looked that day; she had on a blue suit and a hat with flowers on it that was very becoming to her. she looked very girlish; he had a sudden sense of all the years he had known her. the smile with which she greeted deane changed when she saw stuart sitting there; the instant's pleased surprise went to apprehension at sight of his face. "what's the matter!" she asked sharply. "stuart's rather bummed up, ruth," said deane. swiftly she moved over to the man she loved. "what is it!" she demanded in quick, frightened voice. "oh, just a bad lung," deane continued, not looking at them and speaking with that false cheerfulness so hard fought for and of so little worth. "don't amount to much--happens often--but, well--well, you see, he has to go away--for awhile." he was bending over his desk, fumbling among some papers. there was no sound in the room and at last he looked up. stuart was not looking at ruth and ruth was standing there very still. when she spoke her voice was singularly quiet. "when shall we go?" she asked. chapter twelve everyone who talked about it--and that meant all who knew anything about it--blamed deane franklin for not stopping ruth. perhaps the reason he did not try to defend himself was simply that he could not hope to show how simple was his acceptance of the fact that it would have been impossible to stop her. to understand that, one would have to have seen. oh, to be sure, he could have put obstacles in her way, tightened it around her, but anything he might have done would only have gone to making it harder for ruth to get away; it would not have kept her from going. and after all, he himself saw it as, if not the thing she should do, the thing--it being what it was then--she could not help doing. but one would have to have seen ruth's face, would need to have been with her in those days to understand that. as to warning her family, as he was so blamed by them and by all the town for not doing, that would have seemed to him just one of those things he could have thrown in her way. he did feel that he must try to talk to her of what it was going to mean to her people; he saw that she saw, that it had cruel power to make her suffer--and no power to stop her. nothing could have stopped her; she was like a maddened thing--desperate, ruthless, indomitable. she would have fought the world; she would have let the whole world suffer. love's fear possessed her utterly. he had had the feeling all along that it was rushing on to disaster. he stood back from it now with something like awe: a force not for him to control. and he, with it from within, was the only one who did not condemn stuart williams for letting ruth go. a man, and older than she, they scorned him for letting an infatuated girl throw her life away like that. and it was not only that he saw that the man was sick and broken; it was that he saw that stuart, just as ruth, had gone in love beyond his power to control love, that he was mastered, not master, now. and in those last days, at least, it was ruth who dominated him. there was something terrible in the simplicity with which she saw that she had to go; she never once admitted it to the things that were to be argued about. he talked to her, they both tried to talk to her, about the danger of getting tuberculosis. when he began on that she laughed in his face--and he could not blame her. as if _that_ could keep her! and as she laughed her tortured eyes seemed mockingly to put to him--"what difference would it make?" when, after it all came out, he did not join the outraged town in the outcry against ruth, when it further transpired that he had known about her going and had not tried to stop it, he was so much blamed that it even hurt his practice. there were women who said they would not countenance a young physician who had the ideas of life he must have. his own people were incensed at what they called the shameful advantage ruth had taken of him, holding that she, as an evil woman, had exerted an influence over him that made him do what was against his own nature. as to the hollands, there had been a stormy hour with mr. holland and cyrus, and a far worse half hour with mrs. holland, when her utterly stricken face seemed to stiffen in his throat the things he wanted to say for ruth, things that might have helped ruth's mother. and then he was told that the hollands were through, not alone with ruth, but with him. but he was called there two years later when mrs. holland was dying. she had been begging for him. that moved him deeply because of what in itself it told of her long yearning for ruth. after that there were a number of years when he was not inside that gate. cyrus did not speak to him and the father might as well not have done so. he was amazed, then, when mr. holland finally came to him about his own health. "i've come to you, deane," he said, "because i think you're the best doctor in town now--and i need help." and then he added, and after that first talk this was the closest to speaking of it they ever came: "and i guess you didn't understand, deane; didn't see it right. you were young--and you're a queer one, anyway." perhaps the reason he was never able to do better in explaining himself, or in defending ruth, was simply because in his own thinking about it there were never arguments, or thoughts upon conduct, but always just that memory of ruth's face as he had seen it in revealing moments. everyone saw something that ruth should have done differently. in the weeks they spent upon it they found, if not that they would be able to forgive her, at least that they could think of her with less horror had she done this, had she not done that. but ruth lived through that week seeing little beyond the one thing that she must get through it. she was driven; she had to go ahead, bearing things somehow, getting through them. she had a strange power to steel herself, to keep things, for the most part, from really getting through to her. she could not go ahead if she began letting things in. she sealed herself over and drove ahead with the singleness of purpose, the exclusions, of any tormented thing. it was all terrible, but it was as if she were frozen at the heart to all save the one thing. she stayed through the week because it was the time of edith lawrence's wedding and she was to be maid-of-honor. "i'll have to stay till after edith's wedding," she said to deane and stuart. then on her way home from deane's office she saw that she could not go on with her part in edith's wedding. that she could see clearly enough despite the thing driving her on past things she should be seeing. what would she say to edith?--how get _that_ over? someone was giving a party for edith that night; every day now things were being given for her. she must not go to them. how could she go? it would be absurd to expect that of herself. she would have to tell edith that she could not be her bridesmaid. what a terrible thing edith would think that was! she would have to give a reason--a big reason. what would she tell her?--that she had been called away?--but where? should she tell her the truth? could she? edith would find it almost unbelievable. it was almost unbelievable to herself that her life could be permeated by a thing edith knew nothing about. it was another of the things she would have said, had she known her story only through hearing it, would not be possible. but it was with edith as it was with her own family--simply that such a thing would never occur to her. she winced in thinking of it that way. a number of times she had been right on the edge of a thing it seemed would surely be disclosing, but it strangely happened she had never quite gone over that edge. for one thing, edith had been away from freeport a good deal in those three years. mrs. lawrence had opposed edith's marrying so young, and had taken her to europe for one year, and in the last year they had spent part of the time in california. in the last couple of months, since edith's return from the west, she had spoken of ruth's not seeming like herself, of fearing she was not well. she had several times hurt edith's feelings by refusing, for no apparent reason, to do things with her. but she had always been able to make that up afterwards and in these plans for the wedding she and edith had been drawn close again. when she went over to the lawrences' late that afternoon she had decided that she would tell edith. it seemed she must. she could not hope to tell it in a way that would make edith sympathize. there was not time for that, and she dared not open herself to it. she would just say it briefly, without any attempts at justifying it. something like: "edith, there's been something you haven't known. i'm not like you. i'm not what you think i am. i love stuart williams. we've loved each other for a long time. he's sick. he's got to go away--and i'm going with him. good-bye, edith,--and i hope the wedding goes just beautifully." but that last got through--got down to the feeling she had been trying to keep closed, the feeling that had seemed to seal itself over the moment she saw that she must go with stuart. "i hope the wedding goes just beautifully!" somehow the stiff little phrase seemed to mean all the old things. there was a moment when she _knew_: knew that she was walking those familiar streets, that she would not be walking them any more; knew that she was going over to edith's--that all her life she had been going over to edith's--that she would not be going there any more; knew that she was going away from home, that she loved her father and mother--ted--her grandfather--and terror, her dog. realization broke through and flooded her. she had to walk around a number of blocks before she dared go to edith's. miss edith was up in her room, emma, the maid, said, taking it for granted that ruth would go right up. yes, she always did go right up, she was thinking. she had always been absolutely at home at the lawrences'. they always wanted her; there were times of not wanting to see anyone else, but it seemed both edith and her mother always wanted her. she paused an instant on the stairs, not able to push past that thought, not able to stay the loving rush of gratefulness that broke out of the thought of having always been wanted. she had a confused sense of edith as barricaded by her trousseau. she sat behind a great pile of white things; she had had them all out of her chest for showing to some of her mother's friends, she said, and her mother had not yet put them back. ruth stood there fingering a wonderfully soft chemise. it had come to her that she was not provided with things like these. what would edith think of her, going away without the things it seemed one should have? it seemed to mark the setting of her apart from edith, though there was a wave of tenderness--she tried to hold it back but could not--for dear edith because she did have so many things like this. edith was too deep in the occupation of getting married to mark an unusual absorption in her friend. she was full of talk about what her mother's friends had said of her things, the presents that were coming in, her dress for the party that night, the flowers for the wedding. it made edith seem very young to her. and in her negligee, her hair down, she looked childish. her pleasure in the plans for her wedding seemed like a child's pleasure. it seemed that hurting her in it would be horribly like spoiling a child's party. edith's flushed face, her sparkling eyes, her little excited, happy laugh made it impossible for ruth to speak the words she had come to say. for three days it went on like that: going ahead with the festivities, constantly thinking she would tell edith as soon as they got home from this place or that, waiting until this or that person had gone, then dumb before the childish quality of edith's excitement, deciding to wait until the next morning because edith was either too happy or too tired to talk to her that night. that ingenuousness of her friend's pleasure in her wedding made ruth feel, not only older, but removed from her by experience. those days of her own frozen misery were days of tenderness for edith, that tenderness which one well along the road of living feels for the one just setting feet upon the path. she was never able to understand how she did get through those days. it was an almost unbelievable thing that, knowing, she was able, up to the very last, to go right on with the old things, was able to talk to people as if nothing were different, to laugh, to dance. there were times when something seemed frozen in her heart and she could go on doing the usual things mechanically, just because she knew so well how to do them; then there were other times when every smallest thing was stabbed through and through with the consciousness that she would not be doing it again. and yet even then, she could go on, could appear the same. they were days of a terrible power for bearing pain. when the people of the town looked back to it, recalling everything they could about ruth holland in those days, some of them, remembering a tenderness in her manner with edith, talked of what a hypocrite she was, while others satisfied themselves of her utter heartlessness in remembering her gaiety. it was two days before the wedding when she saw that she was not going to be able to tell edith and got the idea of telling edith's mother. refusing to let herself consider what she would say when she began upon it, she went over there early that morning--edith would not be up. mrs. lawrence was at breakfast alone. ruth kept herself hard against the welcoming smile, but it seemed she was surely going to cry when, with a look of concern, mrs. lawrence exclaimed: "why, ruth dear, how pale you are!" she was telling emma to bring ruth a cup of coffee, talking of how absurd it was the way the girls were wearing themselves out, how, for that reason, she would be glad when it was all over. she spoke with anxiety of how nervous edith had grown in the past week, how tired she was as a result of all the gaiety. "we'll have to be very careful of her, ruth," she said. "don't go to edith with any worries, will you? come to me. the slightest thing would upset edith now." ruth only nodded; she did not know what to say to that; certainly, after that, she did not know how to say the things she had come to tell. for what in the world could upset edith so much as to have her maid-of-honor, her life-long friend, the girl she cared for most, refuse, two days before her wedding, to take her part in it? "and you can do more than anyone else, ruth," mrs. lawrence urged. "you know edith counts so on you," she added with an intimate little smile. and again ruth only nodded, and bent over her coffee. she had a feeling of having been caught, of being helpless. mrs. lawrence was talking about the caterer for the wedding; she wished it were another kind of salad. then she wanted ruth to come up and look at her dress; she wasn't at all satisfied with the touch of velvet they had put on it. after that some one else came in and mrs. lawrence was called away. ruth left without saying what she had come to say. she knew now that she would not say it. she went home seeing that she must go through with the wedding. it was too late now to do anything else. edith would break down--her pleasure in her wedding spoiled; no, edith must be spared--helped. she must do this for edith. no matter what people thought of her, no matter what edith herself thought--though _wouldn't_ she understand? ruth considered with a tortured wistfulness--the thing to do now was to go through with it. edith must look beautiful at her wedding; her happiness must be unmarred. later, when she was away with will--happy--she could bear it better. and she would understand that ruth had wished to spare her; had done it to help her. she held that thought with her--and drove ahead. there were moments in those last two days at home when it seemed that now her heart was indeed breaking: a kindly note in the voice of her father or mother--one of ted's teasing jokes--little requests from her grandfather; then doing things she had done for years and knowing while doing them that she would not be doing them any more--the last time she cut the flowers, and then that last night when she went to bed in her own room, the room she had had ever since old enough to have a room of her own. she lay there that night and listened to the branches of the great oak tapping the house. she had heard that sound all her life; it was associated with all the things of her life; it seemed to be speaking for all those things--mourning for them. but the closest she came to actual breaking down was that last day when her dog, laying his head upon her knee, looked with trust and affection up into her eyes. as she laid her hand upon his head his eyes seemed to speak for all the love she had known through all the years. it seemed she could not bear it, that her heart could not bear it, that she would rather die. but she did bear it; she had that terrible power for bearing. if only she had told her mother, they said over and over again. but if she told her mother she would not go--that was how she saw that; they would not let her; or rather, she would have no strength left to fight through their efforts to keep her. and then how could she tell her mother when her mother would never in the world understand? she did not believe that her mother could so much as comprehend that she could love where she should not, that a girl like ruth--or rather, _ruth_--could love a man it was not right she love. she had never talked with her mother of real things, had never talked with her of the things of her deepest feeling. she would not know how to do it now, even had she dared. her mother helped her dress for the wedding, talking all the while about plans for the evening--just who was going to the church, the details about serving. ruth clung to the thought that those _were_ the things her mother was interested in; they always had been, surely they would continue to be. in her desperation she tried to think that in those little things her mother cared so much about she would, after a time, find healing. with that cruel power for bearing pain she got away from home without breaking down; she got through that last minute when she realized she would not see ted or her grandfather again,--they would not be at the wedding and would be in bed when she returned from it, and she was to leave that night on the two o'clock train. it was unbelievable to her that she had borne it, but she had driven ahead through utter misery as they commented on her dress, praising her and joking with her. that was in the living-room and she never forgot just how they were grouped--her grandfather's newspaper across his knees; mary, who had worked for them for years, standing at the door; her dog terror under the reading table--ted walking round and round her. deane was talking with her father in the hall. her voice was sharp as she went out and said: "we must hurry, deane." the wedding was unreal; it seemed that all those people were just making the movements of life; there were moments when she heard them from a long way off, saw them and was uncertain whether they were there. and yet she could go on and appear about the same; if she seemed a little queer she was sure it was attributed to natural feeling about her dearest friend's wedding--to emotion, excitement. there were moments when things suddenly became real: a moment alone with edith in her room, just before they went to the church; a moment when mrs. lawrence broke down. walking down the aisle, the words of the service--that was in a vague, blurred world; so was edith's strained face as she turned away, and her own walking down the aisle with deane, turning to him and smiling and saying something and feeling as if her lips were frozen. yet for three hours she laughed and talked with people. mrs. williams was at the reception; several times they were in the same group. oh, it was all unreal--terrible--just a thing to drive through. there was a moment at the last when edith clung to her, and when it seemed that she could not do the terrible thing she was going to do, that she was _not_ going to do it--that the whole thing was some hideous nightmare. she wanted to stay with edith. she wanted to be like edith. she felt like a little girl then, just a frightened little girl who did not want to go away by herself, away from everything she knew, from people who loved her. she did not want to do that awful thing! she tried to pretend for a moment she was not going to do it--just as sometimes she used to hide her face when afraid. at last it was all over; she had gone to the train and seen edith and will off for the east. edith's face was pressed against the window of the pullman as the train pulled out. it was ruth she was looking for; it was to ruth her eyes clung until the train drew her from sight. ruth stood there looking after the train; the rest of their little group of intimate friends had turned away--laughing, chattering, getting back in the carriages. deane finally touched ruth's arm, for she was standing in that same place looking after the train which had now passed from sight. when he saw the woe of her wet face he said gruffly: "hadn't we better walk home?" he looked down at her delicate slippers, but better walk in them than join the others looking like that. he supposed walking would not be good for that frail dress; and then it came to him, and stabbed him, that it didn't much matter. probably ruth would not wear that dress again. she walked home without speaking to him, looking straight ahead in that manner she all along had of ruthlessly pressing on to something; her face now was as if it were frozen in suffering, as if it had somehow stiffened in that moment of woe when edith's face was drawn from her sight. and she looked so tired!--so spent, so miserable; as if she ought to be cared for, comforted. he took her arm, protectingly, yearningly. he longed so in that moment to keep ruth, and care for her! he wanted to say things, but he seemed to be struck dumb, appalled by what it was they were about to do. he held her arm close to him. she was going away! now that the moment had come he did not know how he was going to let her go. and looking like this!--suffering like this--needing help. but he must not fail her now at the last; he must not fail her now when she herself was so worn, so wretched, was bearing so much. as they turned in at the gate he fought with all his strength against the thought that they would not be turning in at that gate any more and spoke in matter of fact tones of where he would be waiting for her, what time she must be there. but when they reached the steps they stood there for a minute under the big tree, there where they had so many times stood through a number of years. as they stood there things crowded upon them hard; ruth raised her face and looked at him and at the anguish of her swimming eyes his hands went out to her arms. "don't go, ruth!" he whispered brokenly. "ruth!--_don't go!_" but that made her instantly find herself, that found the fight in her, to strengthen herself, to resist him; she was at once erect, indomitable, the purpose that no misery could shake gleamed through her wet eyes. then she turned and went into the house. her mother called out to her, sleepily asking if she could get out of her dress by herself. she answered yes, and then mrs. holland asked another sleepy question about edith. then the house was still; she knew that they were all asleep. she got her dress off and hung it carefully in the closet. she had already put some things in her bag; she put in a few more now, all the while sobbing under her breath. she took off her slippers. after she had done that she stood looking at her bed. she saw her nightgown hanging in the closet. she wanted to put on her nightgown and get into bed! she leaned against the bed, crying. she wanted to put on her nightgown and get into bed! she was so tired, so frightened, so worn with pain. then she shook herself, steeled again, and began putting on her shoes; put on her suit, her hat, got out her gloves. and then at the very last she had to do what she had been trying to make herself do all that day, and had not dared begin to do. she went to her desk and holding herself tight, very rapidly, though with shaking hand, wrote this note: "dear mother; i'm going away. i love stuart williams. i have for a long time. oh, mother--i'm so sorry--but i can't help it. he's sick. he has to go away, so you see i have to go with him. it's terrible that it is like this. mother, try to believe that i can't help it. after i get away i can write to you more about it. i can't now. it will be terrible for you--for you all. mother, it's been terrible for me. oh, try not to feel any worse than you can help. people won't blame _you_. i wish i could help it. i wish--can't write more now. write later. i'm so sorry--for everybody. so good to me always. i love all--ruth." she put her head down on the desk and cried. finally she got up and blindly threw the note over on her bed; with difficulty, because of the shaking of her hands, put on her gloves, picked up her bag. and then she stood there for a moment before turning off the light; she saw her little chair, her dressing-table. she reached up and turned off the light and then for another moment stood there in the darkened room. she listened to the branches of the oak tree tapping against the house. then she softly opened her bedroom door and carefully closed it behind her. she could hear her father's breathing; then ted's, as she passed his door. on the stairs she stood still: she wanted to hear ted's breathing again. but she had already gone where she could not hear ted's breathing. her hand on the door, she stood still. there was something so unreal about this, so preposterous--not a thing that really happened, that could happen to _her_. it seemed that in just a minute she would wake up and find herself safe in her bed. but in another minute she was leaning against the outside door of her home, crying. she seemed to have left the ruth holland she knew behind when she finally walked down the steps and around the corner where deane was waiting for her. they spoke scarcely a word until they saw the headlight of her train. and then she drew back, clinging to him. "ruth!" he whispered, holding her, "don't!" but that seemed to make her know that she must; she straightened, steeled herself, and moved toward the train. a moment later she was on the platform, looking down at him. when she tried to smile good-by, he whirled and walked blindly away. she did not look from the window as long as the lights of the town were to be seen. she sat there perfectly still, hands tight together, head down. for two hours she scarcely moved. such strange things shot through her mind. maybe her mother, thinking she was tired, would not go to her room until almost noon. at least she would have her coffee first. had she remembered to put edith's handkerchiefs in her bag? had anyone else noticed that the hook at the waist of edith's dress had come unfastened? edith was on a train too--going the other way. how strange it all was! how terrible beyond belief! just as she neared the junction where she would meet stuart and from which they would take the train south together, the thought came to her that none of the rest of them might remember always to have water in terror's drinking pan. when she stepped from the train she was crying--because terror might want a drink and wonder why she was not there to give it to him. he would not understand--and oh, he would miss her so! even when stuart, stepping from the darkness to meet her, drew her to him, brokenly whispering passionate, grateful words, she could not stop crying--for terror, who would not understand, and who would miss her so! he became the whole world she knew--loving, needing world, world that would not understand, and would miss her so! the woman who, on that train from denver, had been drawn into this story which she had once lived was coming now into familiar country. she would be home within an hour. she had sometimes ridden this far with deane on his cases. her heart began to beat fast. why, there was the very grove in which they had that picnic! she could scarcely control the excitement she felt in beginning to find old things. there was something so strange in the old things having remained there just the same when she had passed so completely away from them. seeing things she knew brought the past back with a shock. she could hardly get her breath when first she saw the town. and there was the lawrences'! somehow it was unbelievable. she did not hear the porter speaking to her about being brushed off; she was peering hungrily from the window, looking through tears at the town she had not seen since she left it that awful night eleven years before. she was trembling as she stood on the platform waiting for the slowing train to come to a stop. there was a moment of wanting to run back in the car, of feeling she could not get off. the train had stopped; the porter took her by the arm, thinking by her faltering that she was slipping. she took her bag from him and stood there, turned a little away from the station crowd. ted holland had been waiting for that train, he also with fast beating heart; he too was a little tremulous as he hurried down to the car, far in the rear, from which passengers were alighting from the long train. he scanned the faces of the people who began passing him. no, none of them was ruth. his picture of ruth was clear, though he had not seen her for eleven years. she would be looking about in that eager way--that swift, bright way; when she saw him there would be that glad nodding of her head, her face all lighting up. though of course, he told himself, she would be older, probably a little more--well, dignified. the romance that secretly hung about ruth for him made him picture her as unlike other women; there would be something different about her, he felt. the woman standing there half turned from him was oddly familiar. she was someone he knew, and somehow she agitated him. he did not tell himself that that was ruth--but after seeing her he was not looking at anyone else for ruth. this woman was not "stylish looking." she did not have the smart look of most of the girls of ruth's old crowd. he had told himself that ruth would be older--and yet it was not a woman he had pictured, or rather, it was a woman who had given all for love, not a woman who looked as if she had done just the things of women. this woman stooped a little; care, rather than romance, had put its mark upon her; instead of the secretly expected glamour of those years of love there had been a certain settling of time. he knew before he acknowledged it that it was ruth, knew it by the way this woman made him feel. he came nearer; she had timidly--not with the expected old swiftness--started in the direction he was coming. she saw him--knew him--and in that rush of feeling which transformed her anything of secret disappointment was swept from him. he kissed her, as sheepishly as a brother would any sister, and was soon covering his emotion with a practical request for her trunk check. but as they walked away the boy's heart was strangely warmed. ruth was back! as to ruth, she did not speak. she could not. chapter thirteen it was the afternoon of ruth holland's return to freeport that edith lawrence--now edith lawrence blair--was giving the tea for deane franklin's bride and for cora albright, introducing amy to the society of the town and giving cora another opportunity for meeting old friends. "you see cora was of our old crowd," edith was laughingly saying to one of the older women in introducing her two guests of honor, "and amy has married into it." she turned to amy with a warm little smile and nod, as if wanting to assure her again that they did look upon her as one of them. they had indeed given her that sense of being made one of them. their quick, warm acceptance of her made them seem a wonderfully kindly people. her heart warmed to them because of this going out to her, a stranger. that informality and friendliness which in a society like theirs prevails well within the bounds made them seem to her a people of real warmth. she was pleased with the thought of living among them, being one of them; gratified, not only in the way they seemed to like her, but by the place they gave her. there were happy little anticipations of the life just opening up. she was flushed with pleasure and gratification. she was seeing the society of the town at its best that afternoon; the women who constituted that society were there, and at their best. for some reason they always were at their best at the lawrences', as if living up to the house itself, which was not only one of the most imposing of the homes of that rich little middle-western city, but had an atmosphere which other houses, outwardly equally attractive, lacked. mrs. lawrence had taste and hospitality; the two qualities breathed through her house. she and edith were freeport's most successful hostesses. the society of that town was like the particular thing known as society in other towns; not distinguished by any unique thing so much as by its likeness to the thing in general. amy, knowing society in other places, in a larger place, was a little surprised and much pleased at what she recognized. and she felt that people were liking her, admiring her, and that always put her at her best. sometimes amy's poise, rare in one so young, made her seem aloof, not cordial, and she had not been one to make friends quickly. edith's friendliness had broken through that; she talked more than was usual with her--was gayer, more friendly. "you're making a great hit, my dear," edith whispered to her gayly, and amy flushed with pleasure. people about the room were talking of how charming she was; of there being something unusual in that combination of girlishness and--they called it distinction; had amy been in different mood they might have spoken of it less sympathetically as an apparent feeling of superiority. but she felt that she was with what she called her own sort, and she was warmed in gratification by the place given herself. she was gayly telling a little group of an amusing thing that had happened at her wedding when she overheard someone saying to edith, by whom she was standing: "yes, on the two o'clock train. i was down to see helen off, and saw her myself--walking away with ted." amy noticed that the other women, who also had overheard, were only politely appearing to be listening to her now, and were really discreetly trying to hear what these two were saying. she brought her story to a close. "you mean ruth holland?" one of the women asked, and the two groups became one. amy drew herself up; her head went a little higher, her lips tightened; then, conscious of that, she relaxed and stood a little apart, seeming only to be courteously listening to a thing in which she had no part. they talked in lowered tones of how strange it seemed to feel ruth was back in that town. they had a different manner now--a sort of carefully restrained avidity. "how does she look?" one of the women asked in that lowered tone. "well," said the woman who had been at the train, "she hasn't kept herself _up_. really, i was surprised. you'd think a woman in her position would make a particular effort to--to make the most of herself, now, wouldn't you? what else has she to go on? but really, she wasn't at all good style, and sort of--oh, as if she had let herself _go_, i thought. though,"--she turned to edith in saying this--"there's that same old thing about her; i saw her smile up at ted as they walked away--and she seemed all different then. you know how it always used to be with ruth--so different from one minute to another." edith turned away, rather abruptly, and joined another group. amy could not make out her look; it seemed--why it seemed pain; as if it hurt her to hear what they were saying. could it be that she still _cared_?--after the way she had been treated? that seemed impossible, even in one who had the sweet nature mrs. blair certainly had. while the women about her were still talking of ruth holland, amy saw stuart williams' wife come out of the dining room and stand there alone for a minute looking about the room. it gave her a shock. the whole thing seemed so terrible, so fascinatingly terrible. and it seemed unreal; as a thing one might read or hear about, but not the sort of thing one's own life would come anywhere near. mrs. williams' eyes rested on their little group and amy had a feeling that somehow she knew what they were talking about. as her eyes followed the other woman's about the room she saw that there were several groups in which people were drawn a little closer together and appeared to be speaking a little more intimately than was usual upon such an occasion. she felt that mrs. williams' face became more impassive. a moment later she had come over to amy and was holding out her hand. there seemed to amy something very brave about her, dignified, fine, in the way she went right on, bearing it, holding her own place, keeping silence. she watched her leave the room with a new sense of outrage against that terrible woman--that woman deane stood up for! the resentment which in the past week she had been trying to put down leaped to new life. the women around her resumed their talk: of mrs. williams, the holland family, of the night of edith's wedding when--in that very house--ruth holland had been there up to the very last minute, taking her place with the rest of them. they spoke of her betrayal of edith, her deception of all her friends, of how she was the very last girl in the world they would have believed it of. a little later, when she and edith were talking with some other guests, ruth holland was mentioned again. "i don't want to talk of ruth," edith said that time; "i'd rather not." there was a catch in her voice and one of the women impulsively touched her arm. "it was so terrible for you, dear edith," she murmured. "sometimes," said edith, "it comes home to me that it was pretty terrible for ruth." again she turned away, leaving an instant's pause behind her. then one of the women said, "i think it's simply wonderful that edith can have anything but bitterness in her heart for ruth holland! why there's not another person in town--oh, except deane franklin, of course--" she caught herself, reddened, then turned to amy with a quick smile. "and it's just his sympathetic nature, isn't it? that's exactly deane--taking the part of one who's down." "and then, too, men feel differently about those things," murmured another one of the young matrons of deane's crowd. their manner of seeming anxious to smooth something over, to get out of a difficult situation, enraged amy, not so much against them as because of there being something that needed smoothing over, because deane had put himself and her in a situation that was difficult. how did it look?--what must people think?--his standing up for a woman the whole town had turned against! but she was saying with what seemed a sweet gravity, "i'm sure deane would be sorry for any woman who had been so--unfortunate. and she," she added bravely, "was a dear old friend, was she not?" the woman who had commiserated with edith now nodded approval at amy. "you're sweet, my dear," she said, and the benign looks of them all made her feel there was something for her to be magnanimous about, something queer. her resentment intensified because of having to give that impression of a sweet spirit. and so people talked about deane's standing up for this ruth holland! _why_ did they talk?--just what did they say? "there's more to it than i know," suspicion whispered. in that last half hour it was hard to appear gracious and interested; she saw a number of those little groups in which voices were low and faces were trying not to appear eager. she wished she knew what they were saying; she had an intense desire to hear more about this thing which she so resented, which was so roiling to her. it fascinated as well as galled her; she wanted to know just how this ruth holland looked, how she had looked that night of the wedding, what she had said and done. the fact of being in the very house where ruth holland had been that last night she was with her friends seemed to bring close something mysterious, terrible, stirring imagination and curiosity. had she been with deane that night? had he taken her to the wedding?--taken her home? she hardened to him in the thought of there being this thing she did not know about. it began to seem he had done her a great wrong in not preparing her for a thing that could bring her embarrassment. everyone else knew about it! coming there a bride, and the very first thing encountering something awkward! she persuaded herself that her pleasure in this party, in this opening up of her life there, was spoiled, that deane had spoiled it. and she tormented herself with a hundred little wonderings. she and cora albright went home together in edith's brougham. cora was full of talk of ruth holland, this new development, ruth's return, stirring it all up again for her. amy's few discreet questions brought forth a great deal that she wanted to know. cora had a worldly manner, and that vague sympathy with evil that poetizes one's self without doing anything so definite as condoning, or helping, the sinner. "i do think," she said, with a little shrug, "that the town has been pretty hard about it. but then you know what these middle-western towns are." amy, at this appeal to her sophistication, gravely nodded. "i do feel sorry for ruth," cora added in a more personal tone. "will you go to see her?" amy asked, rather pointedly. "oh, i couldn't do that," replied cora. "my family--you know,--or perhaps you don't know. i'm related to mrs. williams," she laughed. "oh!" amy ejaculated, aghast, and newly fascinated by the horror, what somehow seemed the impossibleness of the whole thing--that she should be talking of ruth holland to a woman related to mrs. williams! "i suppose _she_ felt terribly," amy murmured. cora laughed a little. "oh, i don't know. it never seemed to me that marion would do much feeling. feeling is so--ruffling." "she looks," said amy, a little aggressively, "as though she might not show all she feels." "oh, i suppose not," cora agreed pleasantly. "perhaps i do marion an injustice. she may have suffered in silence. certainly she's kept silence. truth is, i never liked her so very well. i like ruth much the better of the two. i like warmth--feeling." she was leaning forward and looking from the window. "that's the hollands'," she said. and under her breath, compassionately, she murmured, "poor ruth!" "i should think you _would_ go and see her," said amy, curiously resentful of this feeling. with a little sigh cora leaned back in the luxurious corner. "we're not free to do what we might like to do in this life," she said, looking gravely at amy and speaking as one actuated by something larger than personal feeling. "too many people are associated with me for me to go and see ruth--as, for my own part, i'd gladly do. you see it's even closer than being related to marion. cyrus holland,--ruth's brother--married into my family too. funny, isn't it?" she laughed at amy's stare. "yes, cyrus holland married a second cousin of stuart williams' wife." "why--" gasped amy, "it's positively weird, isn't it?" "things are pretty much mixed up in this world," cora went on, speaking with that good-natured sophistication which appealed to amy as worldly. "i think one reason cy was so bitter against ruth, and kept the whole family so, was the way it broke into his own plans. he was in love with louise at the time ruth left; of course all her kith and kin--being also marion's--were determined she should not marry a holland. cy thought he had lost her, but after a time, as long as no one was quite so bitter against ruth as he, the opposition broke down a little--enough for louise to ride over it. oh, yes, in these small towns everybody's somehow mixed up with everyone else," she laughed. "and of course," she went on more gravely, "that is where it is hard to answer the people who seem so hard about ruth. it isn't just one's self, or even just one's family--though it broke them pretty completely, you know; but a thing like that reaches out into so many places--hurts so many lives." "yes," said amy, "it does." she was thinking of her own life, of how it was clouding her happiness. "one has to admit," said cora, in the tone of summing it all up, "that just taking one's own happiness is thorough selfishness. society as a whole is greater than the individual, isn't it?" that seemed to amy the heart of it. she felt herself as one within society, herself faithful to it and guarding it against all who would do it harm; hard to the traitor, not because of any personal feeling--she wished to make that clear to herself--but because society as a whole demanded that hardness. after she had bade cora good-by and as she was about to open the door of the house deane had prepared for her, she told herself that it was a matter of taking the larger view. she was pleased with the phrase; it seemed to clear her own feeling of any possible charge of smallness. chapter fourteen despite the fact that he knew he was going to be late getting home for dinner, dr. franklin was sending his car very slowly along the twelve-mile stretch of road that lay between him and home. this was not so much because it was beautiful country through which he went, and the spring freshness in the softness of late afternoon was grateful to him, nor because too tired for any kind of hurrying, as it was that he did not want to cover those twelve miles before he had thought out what he was going to say to amy. he had seen ruth that afternoon. he went, as usual, to see her father, and as he entered the room ruth was sitting beside the bed. she sat with her back to him and did not seem to know at once that he was there. she was bending forward, elbow on her knee, hand to her face, looking at her father who was asleep, or, rather, in that stupor with which death reaches out into life, through which the living are drawn to the dead. she was sitting very still, intent, as she watched the man whom life was letting go. he had not seen ruth since that night, eleven years before, when she clung to him as she saw the headlight of her train, then turned from him to the car that was to carry her away from the whole world she knew. it had seemed that the best of life was pulling away from him as he heard her train pull out. he fairly ran away from the sound of it; not alone because it was taking ruth out of his own life, but because it was bearing her to a country where the way would be too hard. he knew that that way had been hard, that the years had not spared her; and yet there had been a little shock when he saw ruth that afternoon; he knew now that his fears for her had rather given themselves a color of romance. she looked worn, as if she had worked, and, just at first, before she saw him, she looked older than it would seem that number of years should make her. but when she heard him and turned, coming to him with outstretched hand, it was as it used to be--feeling illumining, transforming her. she was the old flaming ruth then, the years that lined her defied. her eyes--it was like a steady light shining through trembling waters. no one else ever gave him that impression ruth did of a certain deep steadiness through changing feeling. he had thought he remembered just how wonderful ruth's eyes were--how feeling flamed in them and that steady understanding looked through from her to him--that bridge between separateness. but they were newly wonderful to him,--so live, so tender, so potent. she had been very quiet; thinking back to it, he pondered that. it seemed not alone the quiet that comes with the acceptance of death, the quiet that is the subduing effect of strange or moving circumstances, but an inner quiet, a quiet of power. the years had taken something from ruth, but ruth had won much from them. she was worn, a little dimmed, but deepened. a tragedy queen she was not; he had a little smile for himself for that subconscious romantic expectation that gave him, just at the first, a little shock of disappointment when he saw ruth. a tragedy queen would hold herself more imposingly--and would have taken better care of her hands. but that moment of a lighted way between ruth and him could let him afford to smile at disappointed romantic expectation. he had been there for only a few minutes, having the long trip out in the country to make. ruth and ted seemed to be alone in the house. he asked her if she had seen harriett, and she answered, simply, "not yet." she had said, "you're married, deane--and happy. i'm so glad." that, too, she had said very simply; it was real; direct. as he thought of it now it was as if life had simplified her; she had let slip from her, like useless garments, all those blurring artificialities that keep people apart. as usual he would go over again that evening to see his patient; and then he would remain for a visit with ruth. and he wanted to take amy with him. he would not let himself realize just how much he wanted to do that, how much he would hate not doing it. he was thinking it out, trying to arrive at the best way of putting it to amy. if only he could make it seem to her the simple thing it was to him! he would be so happy to do this for ruth, but it was more than that; it was that he wanted to bring amy within--within that feeling of his about ruth. he wanted her to share in that. he could not bear to leave it a thing from which she was apart, to which she was hostile. he could not have said just why he felt it so important amy become a part of what he felt about ruth. when at last they were together over their unusually late dinner the thing he wanted to say seemed to grow more difficult because amy was so much dressed up. in her gown of that afternoon she looked so much the society person that what he had in mind somehow grew less simple. and there was that in her manner too--like her clothes it seemed a society manner--to make it less easy to attempt to take her into things outside the conventional round of life. he felt a little helpless before this self-contained, lovely young person. she did not seem easy to get at. somehow she seemed to be apart from him. there was a real wistfulness in his desire to take her into what to him were things real and important. it seemed if he could not do that now that amy would always be a little apart from him. her talk was of the tea that afternoon: who was there, what they wore, what they had said to her, how the house looked; how lovely mrs. lawrence and edith were. what he was thinking was that it was ruth's old crowd had assembled there--at edith's house--to be gracious to amy that afternoon. she mentioned this name and that--girls ruth had grown up with, girls who had known her so well, and cared for her. and ruth? had they spoken of her? did they know she was home? if they did, did it leave them all unmoved? he thought of the easy, pleasant way life had gone with most of those old friends of ruth's. had they neither the imagination nor the heart to go out in the thought of the different thing it had been to her? he supposed not; certainly they had given no evidence of any such disposition. it hardened him against them. he hated the thought of the gay tea given for amy that afternoon when ruth, just back after all those years away, was home alone with her father, who was dying. amy they were taking in so graciously--because things had gone right with her; ruth, whom they knew, who had been one of them, they left completely out. there flamed up a desire to take amy with him, as against them, to show them that she was sweeter and larger than they, that she understood and put no false value on a cordiality that left the heart hard. but amy looked so much one of them, seemed so much one with them in her talk about them, that he put off what he wanted to say, listening to her. and yet, he assured himself, that was not the whole of amy; he softened and took heart in the thought of her tenderness in moments of love, her sweetness when the world fell away and they were man and woman to each other. those real things were stronger in her than this crust of worldliness. he would reach through that to the life that glowed behind it. if he only had the skill, the understanding, to reach through that crust to the life within, to that which was real, she would understand that the very thing bringing them their happiness was the thing which in ruth put her apart from her friends; she would be larger, more tender, than those others. he wanted that triumph for her over them. he would glory in it so! there would be such pride in showing amy to ruth as a woman who was real. and most of all, because it was a thing so deep in his own life, he wanted amy to come within, to know from within, his feeling about ruth. "you know, dear, that was ruth's old crowd you were meeting this afternoon," he finally said. he saw her instantly stiffen. her mouth looked actually hard. that, he quickly told himself, was what those people had done to her. "and that house," he went on, his voice remaining quiet, "was like another home to ruth." amy cleared her throat. "she didn't make a very good return for the hospitality, do you think?" she asked sharply. flushing, he started to reply to that, but instead asked abruptly, "does edith know that ruth is home?" "yes," amy replied coldly, "they were speaking of her." "_speaking_ of her!" he scoffed. "i suppose _you_ would think," she flamed, "that they ought to have met her at the train!" "the idea doesn't seem to me preposterous," he answered. feeling the coldness in his own voice he realized how he was at the very start getting away from the thing he wanted to do, was estranging amy by his resentment of her feeling about a thing she did not understand. after all--as before, he quickly made this excuse for her--what more natural than that she should take on the feeling of these people she was thrown with, particularly when they were so very kindly in their reception of her? "dear," he began again, "i saw ruth this afternoon. she seems so alone there. she's gone through such--such hard things. it's a pretty sad homecoming for her. i'm going over there again this evening, and, amy dear, i do so want you to go with me." amy did not reply. he had not looked at her after he began speaking--not wanting to lose either his courage or his temper in seeing that stiffening in her. he did not look at her now, even though she did not speak. "i want you to go, amy. i ask you to. i want it--you don't know how much. i'm terribly sorry for ruth. i knew her very well, we were very close friends. now that she is here, and in trouble--and so lonely--i want to take my wife to see her." as even then she remained silent, he turned to her. she sat very straight; red spots burned in her cheeks and there was a light in her eyes he had never seen there before. she pushed back her chair excitedly. "and may i ask,"--her voice was high, tight,--"if you see nothing insulting to your wife in this--proposal?" for an instant he just stared at her. "insulting?" he faltered. "i--i--" he stopped, helpless, and helplessly sat looking at her, sitting erect, breathing fast, face and eyes aflame with anger. and in that moment something in his heart fell back; a desire that had been dear to him, a thing that had seemed so beautiful and so necessary, somehow just crept back where it could not be so much hurt. at the sight of her, hard, scornful, so sure in her hardness, that high desire of his love that she share his feeling fell back. and then to his disappointment was added anger for ruth; through the years anger against so many people had leaped up in him because of their hardness to ruth, that, as if of itself, it leaped up against amy now. "no," he said, his voice hard now too, "i must say i see nothing insulting in asking you to go with me to see ruth holland!" "oh, you don't!" she cried. "a woman living with another woman's husband! why, this very afternoon i was with the wife of the man that woman is living with!--_she_ is the woman i would meet! and you can ask me--your wife--to go and see a woman who turned her back on society--on decency--a woman her own family cast out, and all decent people turn away from." she paused, struggling, unable to keep her dignity and yet say the things rushing up to be said. he had grown red, as he always did when people talked that way about ruth. "of course,"--he made himself say it quietly--"she isn't those things to me, you know. she's--quite other things to me." "i'd like to know what she _is_ to you!" amy cried. "it's very strange--your standing up for her against the whole town!" he did not reply; it was impossible to tell amy, when she was like this, what ruth had been--was--to him. she looked at him as he sat there silent. and this was the man she had married!--a man who could treat her like this, asking her to go and see a woman who wasn't respectable--why, who was as far from respectable as a woman could be! this was the man for whom she had left her mother and father--and a home better than this home certainly,--yes, and that other man who had wanted her and who had so much more to offer! _he_ respected her. he would never ask her to go and see a woman who wasn't decent! but she had married for love; had given up all those other things that she might have love. and now.... her throat tightened and it was hard to hold back tears. and then suddenly she wanted to go over to deane, slip down beside him, put her arms around him, tell him that she loved him and ask him to please tell her that he loved her. but there was so strange an expression on his face; it checked that warm, loving impulse, holding her where she was, hard. what was he thinking about--_that woman_? he had so strange a look. she did not believe it had anything to do with her. no, he had forgotten her. it was this other woman. why, he was in love with her--of course! he had always been in love with her. because it seemed the idea would break her heart, because she could not bear it, it was scoffingly that she threw out: "you were in love with her, i suppose? you've always been in love with her, haven't you?" "yes, amy," he answered, "i was in love with ruth. i loved her--at any rate, i sorrowed for her--until the day i met you." his voice was slow and sad; the whole sadness of it all, all the sadness of a world in which men and women loved and hurt each other seemed closing in around him. he did not seem able to rise out of it, to go out to her; it was as if his new disappointment brought back all the hurt of old ones. young, all inexperienced in the ways of adjusting love to life, of saving it for life, the love in her tried to shoot through the self-love that closed her in, holding her tight. she wanted to follow that impulse, go over and put her arms around her husband, let her kisses drive away that look of sadness. she knew that she could do it, that she ought to do it, that she would be sorry for not having done it, but--she couldn't. love did not know how to fight its way through pride. he had risen. "i must go. i have a number of calls to make. i--i'm sorry you feel as you do, amy." he was not going to explain! he was just leaving her outside it all! he didn't care for her, really, at all--just took her because he couldn't get that other woman! took _her_--amy forrester--because he couldn't get the woman he wanted! great bands of incensed pride bound her heart now, closing in the love that had fluttered there. her face, twisted with varying emotions, was fairly ugly as she cried: "well, i must say, i wish you had told me this before we were married!" he looked at her in surprise. then, surprised anew, looked quickly away. feeling that he had failed, he tried to put it aside lightly. "oh, come now, amy, you didn't think, did you, that you could marry a man of thirty-four who had never loved any woman?" "i should like to think he had loved a respectable woman!" she cried, wounded anew by this lightness, unable to hold back things she miserably knew she would be sorry she had not held back. "and if he had loved that kind of a woman--_did_ love her--i should like to think he had too much respect for his wife to ask her to meet such a person!" "ruth holland is not a woman to speak like that about, amy," he said with unconcealed anger. "she's not a decent woman! she's not a respectable woman! she's a bad woman! she's a low woman!" she could not hold it back. she knew she looked unlovely, knew she was saying things that would not make her loved. she could not help it. deane turned away from her. after a minute he got a little control of himself and instead of the hot things that had flashed up, said coldly: "i don't think you know what you're talking about." "of course i couldn't hope to know as much as _she_ does," she jeered. "however," she went on, with more of a semblance of dignity, "i do know a few things. i know that society cannot countenance a woman who did what that woman did. i know that if a woman is going to selfishly take her own happiness with no thought of others she must expect to find herself outside the lives of decent people. society must protect itself against such persons as she. i know that much--fortunately." her words fortified her. she, certainly, was in the right. she felt that she had behind her all those women of that afternoon. did any of them receive ruth holland? did they not all see that society must close in against the individual who defied it? she felt supported. for the minute he stood there looking at her--so absolutely unyielding, so satisfied in her conclusions,--those same things about society and the individual that he had heard from the rest of them; like the rest of them so satisfied with the law she had laid down--law justifying hardness of heart and closing in against the sorrow of a particular human life; from amy now that same look, those same words. for a little time he did not speak. "i'm awfully sorry, amy," was all he said then. he stood there in miserable embarrassment. he always kissed her good-by. she saw his hesitancy and turned to the other room. "hadn't you better hurry?" she laughed. "you have so many calls to make--and some of them so important!" chapter fifteen it was quiet that evening in the house of cyrus holland; the noises that living makes were muffled by life's awe of death, even sounds that could not disturb the dying guarded against by the sense of decorum of those living on. downstairs were people who had come to inquire for the man they knew would not be one of them again. for forty years cyrus holland had been a factor in the affairs of the town. he was freeport's senior banker, the old-fashioned kind of banker, with neither the imagination nor the daring to make of himself a rich man, or of his bank an institution using all the possibilities of its territory. in venturing days he remained cautious. his friends said that he was sane--responsible; men of a newer day put it that he was limited, lacking in that boldness which makes the modern man of affairs. he had advised many men and always on the side of safety. no one had grown rich through his suggestions, but more than one had been saved by his counsels. with the expansion of the business of the town newer banks had gone ahead of his, and when they said he was one of the good substantial men of the community they were indicating his limitations with his virtues. such a man, not a brilliant figure through his lifetime, would be lamented in his passing. they had often said that he failed in using his opportunities; what they said now was that he had never abused them--death, as usual, inducing the living to turn the kindly side to the truth about the dying. ruth did not go downstairs to see the people who were coming in. ted was down there, and flora copeland, a spinster cousin of the hollands, who for several years had lived in the house. once, in passing through the hall, she heard voices which she recognized. she stood there listening to them. it was so strange to hear them; and so good. she was hungry for voices she knew--old voices. once there was a pause and her heart beat fast for she got a feeling that maybe they were going to ask for her. but they broke that pause to say goodnight. she had received no message about anyone asking for her. but even though she was not seeing the people who came she felt the added strangeness her presence made in that house which had suspended the usual affairs of living in waiting for death. the nurse was one of the girls of the town, of a family ruth knew. she had been only a little girl at the time ruth went away. she was conscious, in the young woman's scrupulously professional manner toward herself, of a covert interest, as in something mysterious, forbidden. she could see that to this decorous young person she was a woman out of another world. it hurt her, and it made her a little angry. she wished that this professional, proper young woman, stealing glances as at a forbidden thing, could know the world in which she actually lived. and yet it occurred to her that the strain was less great than it would have been at any other time--something about a room of death making the living a little less prone to divide themselves into good and bad, approved and condemned. with the approach of death there are likely to be only two classes--the living and the dead. after the first few hours, despite the estranging circumstances, there did seem to be some sort of a bond between her and this girl who attended her father. ruth and ted and flora copeland had had dinner together. her cousin flora had evidently pondered the difficult question of a manner with ruth and was pursuing it scrupulously. her plan was clearly indicated in her manner. she would seem to be acting as if nothing had happened and yet at the same time made it plain that she in no sense countenanced the person to whom she was being kind. her manner was that most dismal of all things--a punctilious kindliness. this same cousin flora, now an anæmic woman of forty-five, had not always been exclusively concerned with propriety. ruth could remember cousin flora's love affair, which had so greatly disturbed the members of the family, and which, to save their own pride, they had thwarted. cousin flora had had the misfortune to fall in love with a man quite outside the social sphere of the copelands and the hollands. he was a young laboring man whom she knew through the social affairs of the church. he had the presumption to fall in love with her. she had not had love before, being less generously endowed in other respects than with social position in freeport. there had been a brief, mad time when cousin flora had seemed to find love greater than exclusiveness. but the undesirable affair was frustrated by a family whose democracy did not extend beyond a working together for the good of the lord, and cousin flora was, as ruth remembered their saying with satisfaction, saved. looking at her now ruth wondered if there ever came times when she regretted having been saved. she tried to make the most of all those little things that came into her mind just because this homecoming was so desolate a thing to be left alone with. she had many times lived through a homecoming. and when she had thought of coming home she had always, in spite of it all, thought of things as much the same. and now even she and ted were strange with each other; it was ted the little boy she knew; it was hard all at once to bridge years in which they had not shared experiences. it was the house itself seemed really to take her in. when she got her first sight of it all the things in between just rolled away. she was back. what moved her first was not that things had changed but that they were so much the same--the gate, the walk up to the house, the big tree, the steps of the porch; as she went up the walk there was the real feeling of coming home. then they stepped up on the porch--and her mother was not there to open the door for her; she knew then with a poignancy even those first days had not carried that she would never see her mother again, knew as she stepped into the house that her mother was gone. and yet it would keep seeming her mother must be somewhere in that house, that in a little while she would come in the room and tell something about where she had been. and she would find herself listening for her grandfather's slow, uncertain step; and for terror's bark--one of his wild, glad rushes into the room. ted said that terror had been run over by an automobile a number of years before. nor was it only those whom death kept away who were not there. her sister harriett had not been there to welcome her; now it was evening and she had not yet seen her. ted had merely said that he guessed harriett was tired out. he seemed embarrassed about it and had hastily begun to talk of something else. and none of the old girls had come in to see her. the fact that she had not expected them to come somehow did not much relieve the hurt of their not coming. when a door opened she would find herself listening for edith's voice; there was no putting down the feeling that surely edith would be running in soon. most of the time she sat by her father's bed; though she was watching him dying, to sit there by him was the closest to comfort she could come. and as she watched the face which already had the look of death there would come pictures of her father at various times through the years. there was that day when she was a tiny girl and he came home bringing her a puppy; she could see his laughing face as he held the soft, wriggling, fuzzy little ball of life up to her, see him standing there enjoying her delight. she saw him as he was one day when she said she was not going to sunday-school, that she was tired of sunday-school and was not going any more. she could hear him saying, "ruth, go upstairs and put on your clothes for sunday-school!"--see him as plainly as though it had just happened standing there pointing a stern finger toward the stairs, not moving until she had started to obey him. and once when she and edith and some other girls were making a great noise on the porch he had stepped out from the living-room, where he and some men were sitting about the table, looking over something, and said, mildly, affectionately, "my dears, what would you think of making a little less noise?" queer things to be remembering, but she saw just how he looked, holding the screen door open as he said it. and as she sat there thinking of how she would never hear his voice again, he reached out his hand as if groping for something he wanted; and when with a little sob she quickly took it he clasped her hand, putting into it a strength that astonished her. he turned toward her after that and the nature of his sleep changed a little; it seemed more natural, as if there were something of peace in it. it was as if he had turned to her, reached out his hand for her, knowing she was there and wanting her. he was too far from life for more, but he had done what he could. her longing gave the little movement big meaning. sitting there holding the hand of her father who would never talk to her nor listen to her again, she wanted as she had never wanted before to tell her story. she had been a long time away; she had had a hard time. she wanted to tell him about it, wanted to try and make him understand how it had all happened. she wanted to tell him how homesick she had been and how she had always loved them all. it seemed if she could just make him know what it was she had felt, and what she had gone through, he would be sorry for her and love her as he used to. someone had come into the room; she did not turn at once, trying to make her blurred eyes clear. when she looked around she saw her sister harriett. her father had relaxed his hold on her hand and so she rose and turned to her sister. "well, ruth," said harriett, in an uncertain tone. then she kissed her. the kiss, too, was uncertain, as if she had not known what to do about it, but had decided in its favor. but she had kissed her. again that hunger to be taken in made much of little. she stood there struggling to hold back the sobs. if only harriett would put her arms around her and really kiss her! but harriett continued to stand there uncertainly. then she moved, as if embarrassed. and then she spoke. "did you have a--comfortable trip?" she asked. the struggle with sobs was over. ruth took a step back from her sister. it was a perfectly controlled voice which answered: "yes, harriett, my trip was comfortable--thank you." harriett flushed and still stood there uncertainly. then, "did the town look natural?" she asked, diffidently this time. but ruth did not say whether the town had looked natural or not. she had noticed something. in a little while harriett would have another baby. and she had not known about it! harriett, to be sure, had had other babies and she had not known about it, but somehow to see harriett, not having known it, brought it home hard that she was not one of them any more; she did not know when children were to be born; she did not know what troubled or what pleased them; did not know how they managed the affairs of living--who their neighbors were--their friends. she had not known about harriett; harriett did not know about her--her longing for a baby, longing which circumstances made her sternly deny herself. unmindful of the hurt of a moment before she now wanted to pour all that out to harriett, wanted to talk with her of those deep, common things. the nurse had come in the room and was beginning some preparations for the night. harriett was moving toward the door. "harriett," ruth began timidly, "won't you come in my room a little while and--talk?" harriett hesitated. they were near the top of the stairs and voices could be heard below. "i guess not," she said nervously. "not tonight," she added hurriedly; "that's edgar down there. he's waiting for me." "then good night," said ruth very quietly, and turned to her room. all day long she had been trying to keep away from her room. "thought probably you'd like to have your old room, ruth," ted had said in taking her to it. he had added, a little hurriedly, "guess no one's had it since you left." it looked as if it was true enough no one had used it since she went out of it that night eleven years before. the same things were there; the bed was in the same position; so was her dressing table, and over by the big window that opened to her side porch was the same little low chair she always sat in to put on her shoes and stockings. it took her a long way back; it made old things very strangely real. she sat down in her little chair now and looked over at a picture of the madonna edith had once given her on her birthday. she could hear people moving about downstairs, hear voices. she had never in her whole life felt as alone. and then she grew angry. harriett had no right to treat her like that! she had worked; she had suffered; she had done her best in meeting the hard things of living. she had gone the way of women, met the things women meet. why, she had done her own washing! harriett had no right to treat her as if she were clear outside the common things of life. she rose and went to the window and lowering it leaned out. she had grown used to turning from hard things within to the night. there in the south-west, where they slept out of doors, she had come to know the night. ever since that it had seemed to have something for her, something from which she could draw. and after they had gone through those first years and the fight was not for keeping life but for making a place for it in the world, she had many times stepped from a cramping little house full of petty questions she did not know how to deal with, from a hard little routine that threatened their love out to the vast, still night of that colorado valley and always something had risen in herself which gave her power. so many times that had happened that instinctively she turned to the outside now, leaning her head against the lowered casing. the oak tree was gently tapping against the house--that same old sound that had gone all through her girlhood; the familiar fragrance of a flowering vine on the porch below; the thrill of the toads off there in the little ravine, a dog's frolicsome barking; the laughter of some boys and girls who were going by--old things those, sweeping her back to old things. down in the next block some boys were singing that old serenading song, "good-night, ladies." long ago boys had sung it to her. she stood there listening to it, tears running down her face. she was startled by a tap at the door; dashing her hands across her face she eagerly called, "come in." "deane's here, ruth," said ted. "wants to see you. shall i tell him to come in here?" she nodded, but for an instant ted stood there looking at her. she was so strange. she had been crying, and yet she seemed so glad, so excited about something. "oh, deane," she cried, holding out her two hands to him, laughter and sobs crowding out together, "_talk_ to me! how's your mother? how's your aunt margaret's rheumatism? what kind of an automobile have you? what about your practice? what about your dog? why, deane," she rushed on, "i'm just starving for things like that! you know i'm just ruth, don't you, deane?" she laughed a little wildly. "and i've come home. and i want to know about things. why i could listen for hours about what streets are being paved--and who supports old mrs. lynch! don't you see, deane?" she laughed through tears. "but first tell me about edith! how does she look? how many children has she? who are her friends? and oh, deane--tell me,--does she _ever_ say anything about me?" they talked for more than two hours. she kept pouring out questions at him every time he would stop for breath. she fairly palpitated with that desire to hear little things--what bob horton did for a living, whether helen matthews still gave music lessons. she hung tremulous upon his words, laughing and often half crying as he told little stories about quarrels and jokes--about churches and cooks. in his profession he had many times seen a system craving a particular thing, but it seemed to him he had never seen any need more pitifully great than this of hers for laughing over the little drolleries of life. and then they sank into deeper channels--he found himself telling her things he had not told anyone: about his practice, about the men he was associated with, things he had come to think. and she talked to him of stuart's health, of their efforts at making a living--what she thought of dry farming, of heaters for apple orchards; the cattle business, the character of western people. she told him of the mountains in winter--snow down to their feet; of colorado air on a winter's morning. and then of more personal, intimate things--how lonely they had been, how much of a struggle they had found it. she talked of the disadvantage stuart was at because of his position, how he had grown sensitive because of suspicion, because there were people who kept away from him; how she herself had not made friends, afraid to because several times after she had come to know the people around her they had "heard," and drawn away. she told it all quite simply, just that she wanted to let him know about their lives. he could see what it was meaning to her to talk, that she had been too tight within and was finding relief. "i try not to talk much to stuart about things that would make him feel bad," she said. "he gets despondent. it's been very hard for stuart, deane. he misses his place among men." she fell silent there, brooding over that--a touch of that tender, passionate brooding he knew of old. and as he watched her he himself was thinking, not of how hard it had been for stuart, but of what it must have been to ruth. that hunger of hers for companionship told him more than words could possibly have done of what her need had been. he studied her as she sat there silent. she was the same old ruth, but a deepened ruth; there was the same old sweetness, but new power. he had a feeling that there was nothing in the world ruth would not understand; that bars to her spirit were down, that she would go out in tenderness to anything that was of life--to sorrow, to joy, with the insight to understand and the warmth to care. he looked at her: worn down by living, yet glorified by it; hurt, yet valiant. the life in her had gone through so much and circumstances had not been able to beat it down. and this was the woman amy said it was insulting of him to ask her to meet! she looked up at him with her bright, warm smile. "oh, deane, it's been so good! you don't know how you've helped me. why you wouldn't believe," she laughed, "how much better i feel." they had risen and he had taken her hand for goodnight. "you always helped me, deane," she said in her simple way. "you never failed me. you don't know"--this with one of those flashes of feeling that lighted ruth and made her wonderful--"how many times, when things were going badly, i've thought of you--and wanted to see you." they stood there a moment silent; the things they had lived through together, in which they had shared understanding, making a spiritual current between them. she broke from it with a light, fond: "dear deane, i'm so glad you're happy. i want you to be happy always." chapter sixteen those words kept coming back to him after he had gone to bed: "i'm so glad you're happy--i want you to be happy always." amy was asleep when he came home, or he took it for granted that she was asleep and was careful not to disturb her, for it was past midnight. he wished she would turn to him with a sleepy little smile. he wanted to be made to feel that it was true he was happy, that he was going to be happy always. that night was not filled with the sweetness of love's faith in permanence. he tried to put away the thought of how amy had looked as she said those things about ruth. knowing the real ruth, his feeling about her freshened, deepened, he could not bear to think of amy as having said those things. he held it off in telling himself again that that was what the people of the town had done, that he himself had not managed well. he would try again--a little differently. amy was really so sweet, so loving, he told himself, that she would come to be different about this. though he did not dwell on that, either--upon her coming to be different; her face in saying those things was a little too hard to forget. he kept up a pretence with himself on the surface, but down in his heart he asked less now; he was not asking of love that complete sharing, that deep understanding which had been his dream before he talked to amy. he supposed things would go on about the same--just that that one thing wouldn't be, was the thought with which he went to sleep, making his first compromise with his ideal for their love. just as he was falling asleep there came before him, half of dreams, ruth's face as it had been when she seemed to be brooding over the things life brought one. it was as if pain had endowed her with understanding. did it take pain to do it? he had an early morning call to make and left home without really talking to amy. when he woke in the morning, yearning to be back in the new joy of her love, he was going to tell her that he was sorry he had hurt her, sorry there was this thing they looked at differently, but that he loved her with his whole heart and that they were going to be happy just the same, and then maybe some time they'd "get together" on this. it was a thing he would not have said he would do, but there are many things one will do to get from the shadow back into that necessary sunlight of love. however, there was not opportunity then for doing it; he had to hurry to the hospital and amy gave him no chance for such a moment with her. she had the manner of keeping up an appearance of going on as if nothing had happened; as if that thing were left behind--frosted over. she kissed him good-by, but even in that there seemed an immense reservation. it made him unhappy, worried him. he told himself that he would have to talk to amy, that it wouldn't do to leave the thing that way. it had been so easy to talk to ruth; it seemed that one could talk to her about anything, that there was no danger of saying a thing and having it bound back from a wall of opinions and prejudices that kept him from her. there was something resting, relaxing, in the way one could be one's self with ruth, the way she seemed to like one for just what one was. he had always felt more at ease with her than with anyone else, but now he more than ever had the feeling that her mind was loosened from the things that held the minds of most of the women he knew. it was a great thing not to have those holdbacks in talking with a friend, to be freed of that fear of blundering into a thing that would be misunderstood. he did not face the fact that that was just the way it was with amy, that there was constantly the fear of saying something that would better have been left unsaid. but he was thinking that being free to say what one was feeling was like drawing a long breath. and in thinking of it as he went about his calls that morning, in various homes, talking with a number of people, it occurred to him that many of those things he had come to think, things of which he did not often try to talk to others, he had arrived at because of ruth. it was amazing how his feeling about her, thoughts through her, had run into all his thinking. it even occurred to him that if it had not been for her he might have fallen into accepting many things more or less as the rest of the town did. it seemed now that as well as having caused him much pain she had brought rich gain; for those questionings of life, that refusal placidly to accept, had certainly brought keener satisfactions than he could have had through a closer companionship with facile acceptors. ruth had been a big thing in his life, not only in his heart, but to his mind. he had come out of the house of one of his patients and was standing on the steps talking with the woman who had anxiously followed him to the door. the house was directly across the street from the lawrences'. edith was sitting out on the porch; her little girl of eight and the boy, who was younger, were with her. they made an attractive picture. he continued his reassuring talk to the woman whose husband was ill, but he was at the same time thinking of ruth's eager questionings about edith, about edith's children, her hunger for every smallest thing he could tell her. when he went down to his car edith, looking up and seeing him, gayly waved her hand. he returned the salute and stood there as if doing something to the car. sitting there in the morning sunshine with her two children edith looked the very picture of the woman for whom things had gone happily. life had opened its pleasantest ways to edith. he could not bring himself to get in his car and start away; he could not get rid of the thought of what it would mean to ruth if edith would go to see her, could not banish the picture of ruth's face if edith were to walk into the room. and because he could not banish it he suddenly turned abruptly from his car and started across the street and up the steps to the porch. she smiled brightly up at him, holding out her hand. "coming up to talk to me? how nice!" he pulled up a chair, bantering with the children. "i know what you've come for," edith laughed gayly. "you've come to hear about how lovely amy was at the tea yesterday. you want to know all the nice things people are saying about her." his face puckered as it did when he was perplexed or annoyed. he laughed with a little constraint as he said: "that would be pleasant hearing, i admit. but it was something else i wanted to talk to you about just now, edith." she raised her brows a little in inquiry, bending forward slightly, waiting, her eyes touched with the anticipation of something serious. he felt sure his tone had suggested ruth to her; that indicated to him that ruth had been much in her mind. "i had a long visit with ruth last night," he began quietly. she did not speak, bending forward a little more, her eyes upon him intently, anxiously. "edith?" "yes, deane?" he paused, then asked simply: "edith, ruth is very lonely. won't you go to see her?" she raised her chin in quick, startled way, some emotion, he did not know just what, breaking over her face. "i thought i'd come and tell you, edith, how lonely--how utterly lonely--ruth is, because i felt if you understood you would want to go and see her." still edith did not speak. she looked as though she were going to cry. "ruth's had a hard time, edith. it's been no light life for her--you don't have to do more than look in her eyes to know that. i wish you could have heard the way she asked about you--poured out questions about you. she loves you just as she always did, edith. she's sorrowed for you all through these years." a tear brimmed over from edith's blue eyes and rolled slowly--unheeded--down her cheek. his heart warmed to her and he took hope as he watched that tear. "she was crazy to know about your children. that's been a grief to her, edith. ruth should be a mother--you know that. you must know what a mother she would have made. if you were to take your youngsters to see her--" he broke off with a laugh, as if there was no way of expressing it. edith looked away from him, seemed to be staring straight into a rose bush at the side of the porch. "couldn't you?" he gently pressed. she turned to him. "i'd like to, deane," she said simply, "but, "--her dimmed eyes were troubled--"i don't see how i could." "why not?" he pursued. "it's simple enough--just go and see her. we might go together, if that would seem easier." she was pulling at a bit of sewing in her lap. "but, deane, it _isn't_ simple," she began hesitatingly. "it isn't just one's self. there's society--the whole big terrible question. if it were just a simple, individual matter,--why, the truth is i'd love to go and see ruth. if it were just a personal thing--why don't you know that i'd forget everything--except that she's ruth?" her voice choked and she did not go on, but was fumbling with the sewing in her lap. he hitched his chair forward anxiously, concentrated on his great desire to say it right, to win edith for ruth. edith was a simple sort of being--really, a loving being; if she could only detach herself from what she pathetically called the whole terrible question--if he could just make her see that the thing she wanted to do was the thing to do. she looked up at him out of big grieving eyes, as if wanting to be convinced, wanting the way opened for the loving thing she would like to do. "but, edith," he began, as composedly and gently as he could, for she was so much a child in her mentality it seemed she must be dealt with gently and simply, "_is_ it so involved, after all? isn't it, more than anything else, just that simple, personal matter? why not forget everything but the personal part of it? ruth is back--lonely--in trouble. things came between you and ruth, but that was a long time ago and since that she's met hard things. you're not a vindictive person; you're a loving person. then for heaven's sake why _wouldn't_ you go and see her?"--it was impossible to keep the impatience out of that last. "i know," she faltered, "but--society--" "society!" he jeered. "_forget_ society, edith, and be just a human being! if _you_ can forget--forgive--what seemed to you the wrong ruth did _you_--if _your_ heart goes out to her--then what else is there to it?" he demanded impatiently. "but you see,"--he could feel her reaching out, as if thinking she must, to the things that had been said to her, was conscious of her mother's thinking pushing on hers as she fumbled, "but one _isn't_ free, deane. society _has_ to protect itself. what might not happen--if it didn't?" he tried to restrain what he wanted to say to that--keep cool, wise, and say the things that would get edith. he was sure that edith wanted to be had; her eyes asked him to overthrow those things that had been fastened on her, to free her so that the simple, human approach was the only one there was to it, justify her in believing one dared be as kind, as natural and simple and real as one wanted to be. he was sure that in edith's heart love for her friend was more real than any sense of duty to society. "but after all what is society, edith?" he began quietly. "just a collection of individuals, isn't it? why must it be so much harder than the individuals comprising it? if it is that--then there's something wrong with it, wouldn't you think?" he looked around at the sound of a screen door closing. edith's mother had stepped out on the porch. he knew by her startled look, her quick, keen glance at him, that she had heard his last words. she stepped forward holding up her hands in mock dismay, with a laughing: "what a large, solemn issue for an early morning conversation!" deane tried to laugh but he was not good at dissembling and he was finding it hard to conceal his annoyance at the interruption. talking to mrs. lawrence was very different from talking to edith. edith, against her own loving impulses, tried to think what she thought she ought to think; mrs. lawrence had hardened into the things she thought should be thought, and at once less loving and more intelligent than edith, she was fixed where her daughter was uncertain, complacent where edith was troubled. she was one of those women who, very kind to people they accept, have no tendrils of kindness running out to those whom they do not approve. her qualities of heart did not act outside the circle of her endorsement. with the exception of ruth's brother cyrus, no one in the town had been harder about her than edith's mother. he had all the time felt that, let alone, edith would have gone back to ruth. he had risen and pulled up a chair for mrs. lawrence and now stood there fumbling with his hat, as if about to leave. it seemed to him he might as well. "why, my dears!" exclaimed the older woman with a sort of light dryness, "pray don't let me feel i have broken up a philosophic discussion." "deane was asking me to go and see ruth, mother," said edith, simply and not without dignity. he saw her flush, her quick look up at him, and then the slight tightening of her lips. "and doesn't it occur to deane," she asked pleasantly, "that that is rather a strange thing to ask of you?" "she is very lonely, deane says," said edith tremulously. mrs. lawrence was threading a needle. "i presume so," she answered quietly. deane felt the blood rising in him. somehow that quiet reply angered him as no sharp retort could have done. he turned to edith, rather pointedly leaving her mother out. "well," he asked bluntly, "will you go?" edith's eyes widened. she looked frightened. she stole a look at her mother, who had serenely begun upon her embroidery. "why, deane!" laughed the mother, as if tolerantly waving aside a preposterous proposal, "how absurd! of course edith won't go! how could she? why should she?" he made no reply, fearing to let himself express the things which--disappointed--he was feeling. mrs. lawrence looked up. "if you will just cast your mind back," she said, her voice remaining pleasant though there was a sting in it now, "to the way ruth treated edith, i think it will come home to you, deane, that you are asking a rather absurd thing." "but edith says,"--he made a big effort to speak as quietly as she did--"that that personal part of it is all right with her. she says that she would really like to go and see ruth, but doesn't think she can--on account of society." mrs. lawrence flushed a little at his tone on that last, but she seemed quite unruffled as she asked: "and you see no point in that?" he had sat down on the railing of the porch. he leaned back against a pillar, turning a little away from them as he said with a laugh not free of bitterness: "i don't believe i quite get this idea about society." abruptly he turned back to mrs. lawrence. "what is it? a collection of individuals for mutual benefit and self-protection, i gather. protection against what? their own warmest selves? the most real things in them?" mrs. lawrence colored, though she was smiling composedly enough. edith was not smiling. he saw her anxious look over at her mother, as if expecting her to answer that, and yet--this was what her eyes made him think--secretly hoping she couldn't. but mrs. lawrence maintained her manner of gracious, rather amused tolerance with an absurd hot-headedness, perversity, on his part. "oh, come now, deane," she laughed, "we're not going to get into an absurd discussion, are we?" "i beg your pardon, mrs. lawrence," he retorted sharply, "but i don't think it an absurd discussion. i don't consider a thing that involves the happiness of as fine a human being as ruth holland an absurd thing to discuss!" she laid down her work. "ruth holland," she began very quietly, "is a human being who selfishly--basely--took her own happiness, leaving misery for others. she outraged society as completely as a woman could outrage it. she was a thief, really,--stealing from the thing that was protecting her, taking all the privileges of a thing she was a traitor to. she was not only what we call a bad woman, she was a hypocrite. more than that, she was outrageously unfaithful to her dearest friend--to edith here who loved and trusted her. having no respect for marriage herself, she actually had the effrontery--to say nothing of the lack of fine feeling--to go to the altar with edith the very night that she herself outraged marriage. i don't know, deane, how a woman could do a worse thing than that. the most pernicious kind of woman is not the one who bears the marks of the bad woman upon her. it's the woman like ruth holland, who appears to be what she is not, who deceives, plays a false part. if you can't see that society must close in against a woman like that then all i can say, my dear deane, is that you don't see very straight. you jeer about society, but society is nothing more than life as we have arranged it. it is an institution. one living within it must keep the rules of that institution. one who defies it--deceives it--must be shut out from it. so much we are forced to do in self-defence. we _owe_ that to the people who are trying to live decently, to be faithful. life, as we have arranged it, must be based on confidence. we have to keep that confidence. we have to punish a violation of it." she took up her sewing again. "your way of looking at it is not a very large way, deane," she concluded pleasantly. edith had settled back in her chair--accepting, though her eyes were grieving. it was that combination which, perhaps even more than the words of her mother, made it impossible for him to hold back. "perhaps not," he said; "not what you would call a large way of looking at it. but do you know, mrs. lawrence, i'm not sure that i care for that large way of looking at it. i'm not sure that i care a great deal about an institution that smothers the kindly things in people--as you are making this do in edith. it sometimes occurs to me that life as we have arranged it is a rather unsatisfactory arrangement. i'm not sure that an arrangement of life which doesn't leave place for the most real things in life is going to continue forever. ruth was driven into a corner and forced to do things she herself hated and suffered for--it was this same arrangement of life forced that on her, you know. you talk of marriage. but you must know there was no real marriage between marion averley and stuart williams. and i don't believe you can deny that there is a real marriage between him and ruth holland." he had risen and now moved a little toward the steps. "so you see i don't believe i care much for your 'society,' mrs. lawrence," he laughed shortly. "this looks to me like a pretty clear case of life against society--and i see things just straight enough that life itself strikes me as rather more important than your precious 'arrangement' of it!" that did not bring the color to mrs. lawrence's face; there seemed no color at all there when deane finished speaking. she sat erect, her hands folded on her sewing, looking at him with strangely bright eyes. when she spoke it was with a certain metallic pleasantness. "why, very well, deane," she said; "one is at perfect liberty to choose, isn't one? and i think it quite right to declare one's self, as you have just done, that we may know who is of us and who is not." she smiled--a smile that seemed definitely to shut him out. he looked at edith; her eyes were down; he could see that her lips trembled. "good-by," he said. mrs. lawrence bowed slightly and took up her sewing. "good-by, edith," he added gently. she looked up at him and he saw then why she had been looking down. "good-by, deane," she said a little huskily, her eyes all clouded with tears. "though how absurd!" she quickly added with a rather tremulous laugh. "we shall be seeing you as usual, of course." but it was more appeal than declaration. chapter seventeen ruth was different after her talk with deane that night. ted felt the change in her when he went up to say goodnight. the constraint between them seemed somehow to have fallen away. ruth was natural now--just ruth, he told himself, and felt that talking to deane had done her good. he lingered to chat with her awhile--of the arrangements for the night, various little things about the house, just the things they naturally would talk of; his feeling of embarrassment, diffidence, melted quite away before her quiet simplicity, her warm naturalness. she had seemed timid all day--holding back. now she seemed just quietly to take her place. he had been afraid of doing or saying something that would hurt her, that had kept him from being natural, he knew. but now he forgot about that. and when ruth put her hands up on his shoulders and lifted her face to kiss him goodnight he suddenly knew how many lonely nights there had been. "i'm so glad i've got you back, ted," she said; "i want to talk to you about heaps of things." and ted, as he went to bed, was thinking that there were heaps of things he wanted to talk to ruth about. he hadn't had much of anybody to talk to about the things one does talk to one's own folks about. his father had been silent and queer the last couple of years, and somehow one wouldn't think of "talking" to harriett. he and ruth had always hit it off, he told himself. he was glad she had found her feet, as he thought of it; evidently talking with deane had made her feel more at home. deane was a bully sort! after he had fallen into a light sleep he awakened and there came all freshly the consciousness that ruth was back, asleep in her old room. it made him feel so good; he stretched out and settled for sleep with satisfaction, drowsily thinking that there _were_ heaps of things he wanted to talk to ruth about. ruth, too, was settling to sleep with more calm, something nearer peace than it had seemed just a little while before she was going to find in her father's house. talking with deane took her in to something from which she had long felt shut out. it was like coming on a camp fire after being overawed by too long a time in the forest--warmth and light and cheerful crackling after loneliness in austere places. dear deane! he was always so good to her; he always helped. it was curious about deane--about deane and her. there seemed a strange openness--she could not think of it any other way--between them. things she lived through, in which he had no part, drew her to him, swung her back to him. there was something between his spirit and hers that seemed to make him part even of experiences she had had with another man, as if things of the emotions, even though not shared, drew them together through the spirit. very deeply she hoped that deane would be happy. she wished she might meet his wife, but probably she wouldn't. she quickly turned from that thought, wanting to stay by the camp fire. anyway, deane was her friend. she rested in that thought of having a friend--someone to talk to about things small and droll, about things large and mysterious. thoughts needed to be spoken. it opened something in one to speak them. with stuart she had been careful not to talk of certain things, fearing to see him sink into that absorption, gloom, she had come to dread. she cried a little after she had crept into her bed--her own old bed; but they were just tears of feeling, not of desolation. the oak tree was tapping against the house, the breeze, carrying familiar scents, blew through the room. she was back home. all the sadness surrounding her homecoming could not keep out the sweet feeling of being back that stole through her senses. next morning she went about the house with new poise; she was quiet, but it was of a different quality from the quiet of the day before. flora copeland found herself thinking less about maintaining her carefully thought out manner toward ruth. she told herself that ruth did not seem like "that kind of a woman." she would forget the "difficult situation" and find herself just talking with ruth--about the death of her sister mary's little girl, of her niece who was about to be married. there was something about ruth that made one slip into talking to her about things one was feeling; and something in the quiet light of her tired sweet eyes made one forget about not being more than courteous. even laura abbott, the nurse, found herself talking naturally to this ruth holland, this woman who lived with another woman's husband, who was more "talked about" than any woman in the town had ever been. but somehow a person just forgot what she really was, she told a friend; she wasn't at all like you'd expect that kind of a person to be. though of course there were terribly embarrassing things--like not knowing what to call her. between ruth and harriett things went much better than they had the day before. ruth seemed so much herself when they met that afternoon that unconsciously harriett emerged from her uncertainty, from that fumbling manner of the day before. the things holding them apart somehow fell back before the things drawing them together. they were two sisters and their father was dying. the doctor had just been there and said he did not believe mr. holland could live another day. they were together when he told them that; for the moment, at least, it melted other things away. they stood at the head of the stairs talking of things of common concern--the efficiency of the nurse, of ted, who had been with his father more than any of the rest of them, for whom they feared it would be very hard when the moment came. then, after a little pause made intimate by feeling shared, harriett told when she would be back, adding, "but you'll see to it that i'm telephoned at once if--if i should be wanted, won't you, ruth?"--as one depending on this other more than on anyone else. ruth only answered gently, "yes, harriett," but she felt warmed in her heart. she had been given something to do. she was depended on. she was not left out. she sat beside her father during the hour that the nurse had to be relieved. very strongly, wonderfully, she had a feeling that her father knew she was there, that he wanted her there. in the strange quiet of that hour she seemed to come close to him, as if things holding them apart while he was of life had fallen away now that he no longer was life-bound. it was very real to her. it was communion. things she could not have expressed seemed to be flowing out to him, and things he could not have understood seemed reaching him now. it was as if she was going with him right up to the border--a long way past the things of life that drove them apart. the nurse, coming back to resume duty, was arrested, moved, by ruth's face. she spoke gently in thanking her, her own face softened. flora copeland, meeting ruth in the hall, paused, somehow held, and then, quite forgetful of the manner she was going to maintain toward ruth, impulsively called after her: "are you perfectly comfortable in your room, ruth? don't you--shan't i bring in one of the big easy chairs?" ruth said no, she liked her own little chair, but she said it very gently, understanding; she had again that feeling of being taken in, the feeling that warmed her heart. she went in her room and sat quietly in her little chair; and what had been a pent up agony in her heart flowed out in open sorrowing: for her mother, who was not there to sit in her room with her; for her father, who was dying. but it was releasing sorrowing, the sorrowing that makes one one with the world, drawing one into the whole life of human feeling, the opened heart that brings one closer to all opened hearts. it was the sadness that softens; such sadness as finds its own healing in enriched feeling. it made her feel very near her father and mother; she loved them; she felt that they loved her. she had hurt them--terribly hurt them; but it all seemed beyond that now; they understood; and she was ruth and they loved her. it was as if the way had been cleared between her and them. she did not feel shut in alone. ted hesitated when he came to her door a little later, drew back before the tender light of her illumined face. it did not seem a time to break in on her. but she held out her hand with a little welcoming gesture and, though strangely subdued, smiled lovingly at him as she said, "come on in, ted." something that the boy felt in her mood made him scowl anew at the thing he had to tell her. he went over to the window, his back to her, and was snapping his finger against the pane. "well," he said at last, gruffly, "cy gets in today. just had a wire." ruth drew back, as one who has left exposed a place that can be hurt draws back when hurt threatens. ted felt it--that retreating within herself, and said roughly: "much anybody cares! between you and me, i don't think father would care so very much, either." "ted!" she remonstrated in elder sister fashion. "cy's got a hard heart, ruth," he said with a sudden gravity that came strangely through his youthfulness. ruth did not reply; she did not want to say what she felt about cy's heart. but after a moment the domestic side of it turned itself to her. "will louise come with him, ted?" "no," he answered shortly. his tone made her look at him in inquiry, but he had turned his back to her again. "i was just wondering about getting their room ready," she said. for a moment ted did not speak, did not turn toward her. then, "we don't have to bother getting any room ready for cy," he said, with a scoffing little laugh. ruth's hand went up to her throat--a curious movement, as if in defense. "what do you mean, ted?" she asked in low quick voice. ted's finger was again snapping the window pane. once more he laughed disdainfully. "our esteemed brother is going to the hotel," he jeered. as ruth did not speak he looked around. he could not bear her face. "don't you care, ruth," he burst out. "why, what's the difference?" he went on scoffingly. "the hotel's a good place. he'll get along all right down there--and it makes it just so much the better for us." but even then ruth could not speak; it had come in too tender a moment, had found her too exposed; she could only cower back. then pride broke through. "cyrus needn't go to the hotel, ted. if he can't stay in the same house with me--even when father is dying--then i'll go somewhere else." "you'll not!" he blazed, with a savagery that at once startled and wonderfully comforted her. "if cy wants to be a fool, let him be a fool! if he can't act decent--then let him do what he pleases--or go to the devil!" she murmured something in remonstrance, but flooded with gratefulness for the very thing she tried to protest against. and then even that was struck out. she had brought about this quarrel, this feeling, between the two brothers. ted's antagonism against cyrus, comforting to her, might work harm to ted. those were the things she did. that was what came through her. the comfort, communion, peace of a few minutes before seemed a mockery. out of her great longing she had deluded herself. now she was cast back; now she knew. it was as if she had only been called out in order to be struck back. and it seemed that ted, whom she had just found again, she must either lose or harm. and the shame of it!--children not coming together under their father's roof when he was dying! even death could not break the bitterness down. it made her know just how it was--just where she stood. and she thought of the town's new talk because of this. "it's pretty bad, isn't it, ted?" she said finally, looking up to him with heavy eyes. ted flushed. "cy makes it worse than it need be," he muttered. "but it is pretty bad, isn't it?" she repeated in a voice there was little life in. "it was about as bad as it could be for you all, wasn't it?" "well, ruth," he began diffidently, "of course--of course this house hasn't been a very cheerful place since you went away." "no," she murmured, "of course not." she sat there dwelling upon that, forming a new picture of just what it had been. "it really made a big difference, did it, ted?--even for you?" she asked it very simply, as one asking a thing in order to know the truth. ted sat down on the bed. he was shuffling his feet a little, embarrassed, but his face was finely serious, as if this were a grave thing of which it was right they talk. "of course i was a good deal of a kid, ruth," he began. "and yet--" he halted, held by kindness. "yes?" she pressed, as if wanting to get him past kindness. "well, yes, ruth, it was--rather bad. i minded on account of the fellows, you see. i knew they were talking and--" again he stopped; his face had reddened. her face too colored up at that. "and then of course home--you know it had always been so jolly here at home--was a pretty different place, ruth," he took it up gently. "with cy charging around, and mother and father so--different." "and they were different, were they, ted?" she asked quietly. he looked at her in surprise. "why, yes, ruth, they certainly were--different." silence fell between them, separately dwelling upon that. "just how--different?" ruth asked, for it seemed he was not going on. "why--mother stopped going out, and of course that made her all different. you know what a lot those parties and doings meant to mother." she did not at once speak, her face working. then: "i'm sorry," she choked. "need she have done that, ted?" she added wistfully after a moment. he looked at her with that fine seriousness that made him seem older than he was--and finer than she had known. "well, i don't know, ruth; you know you don't feel very comfortable if you think people are--talking. it makes you feel sort of--out of it; as if there was something different about you." "and father?" she urged, her voice quiet, strangely quiet. she was sitting very still, looking intently at ted. "well, father rather dropped out of it, too," he went on, his voice gentle as if it would make less hard what it was saying. "he and mother just seemed to want to draw back into their shells. i think--" he stopped, then said: "i guess you really want to know, ruth; it--it did make a big difference in father. i think it went deeper than you may have known--and maybe it's only fair to him you should know. it did make a difference; i think it made a difference even in business. maybe that seems queer, but don't you know when a person doesn't feel right about things he doesn't get on very well with people? father got that way. he didn't seem to want to be with people." she did not raise her eyes at that. "business hasn't gone very well, has it, ted?" she asked after a moment of silence, still not looking up. "pretty bad. and of course _that_ gets cy," he added. she nodded. "i guess there's a good deal to be said on cy's side," she murmured after a little, her hands working and her voice not steady. ted grunted something disdainful, then muttered: "he played things up for all they were worth. don't you think he ever missed anything!" "was that why cy left town, ted?" ruth asked, speaking all the while in that low, strange voice. "oh, he claims so," scoffed ted. "but he can't make me believe any family humiliation would have made him leave town if he hadn't had a better thing somewhere else. but of course he _says_ that. that it was too hard for him and louise! too bad about that little doll-face, isn't it?" ruth made a gesture of remonstrance, but the boyish partisanship brought the tears she had until then been able to hold back. ted rose. and then he hesitated, as if not wanting to leave it like this. "well, ruth, i can tell you one thing," he said gently, a little bashfully; "with all cy's grand talk about the wrong done mother and father, neither of them ever loved him the way they loved you." "oh, _did_ they, ted?" she cried, and all the held back feeling broke through, suffusing her. "they _did_?--in spite of everything? tell me about that, ted! tell me about it!" "mother used to talk a lot to me," he said. "she was always coming into my room and talking to me about you." "oh, _was_ she, ted?" she cried again, feeling breaking over her face in waves. "she _did_ talk about me? what did she say? tell me!" "just little things, mostly. telling about things you had said and done when you were a kid; remembering what you'd worn here and there--who you'd gone with. oh,--you know; just little things. "of course," he went on, ruth leaning forward, hanging on his words, "i was a good deal of a kid then; she didn't talk to me much about the--serious part of it. maybe that was the reason she liked to talk to me--because she could just talk about the little things--old things. though once or twice--" "yes, ted?" she breathed, as he paused there. "well, she did say things to me, too. i remember once she said, 'it wasn't like ruth. something terrible happened. she didn't know what she was doing.'" ruth's hands were pressed tight together; unheeded tears were falling on them. "and she used to worry about you, ruth. when it was cold and she'd come into my room with an extra cover she'd say--'i wish i knew that my girl was warm enough tonight.'" at that ruth's face went down in her hands and she was sobbing. "i don't know what i'm talking like this for!" muttered the boy angrily. "making you feel so bad!" she shook her head, but for a little could not look up. then she choked: "no, i want to know. never mind how it hurts, i want to know." and then, when she had controlled herself a little more she said, simply: "i didn't know it was like that. i didn't know mother felt--like that." "she'd start to write to you, and then lots of times she wouldn't seem to know how. she wanted to write to you lots more than she did. but i don't know, ruth, mother was queer. she seemed sort of bewildered. she--wasn't herself. she was just kind of powerless to do anything about things. she'd come in this room a lot. sit in here by herself. one of the last days mother was around she called me in here and she had that dress you wore to edith lawrence's wedding spread out on the bed and was--oh, just kind of fussing with it. and the reason she called me in was that she wanted to know if i remembered how pretty you looked in it that night." but ruth had thrown out a hand for him to stop, had covered her face as if shutting something out. "oh, i'm sorry, ruth!" murmured ted. "i'm a fool!" he cried angrily. but after a minute he added haltingly, "and yet--you did want to know, and--maybe it's fairer to mother, ruth. maybe--" but he could not go on and went over and stood by the window, not wanting to leave her like that, not knowing what to do. "well, one thing i want you to know, ruth," he said, as he did finally turn to the door. "i've been talking along about how hard it was for the rest of us, but don't for a minute think i don't see how terrible it was for _you_. i get that, all right." she looked up at him, wanting to speak, but dumb; dumb in this new realization of how terrible it had been for them all. chapter eighteen an hour later she had to get away from that room. she did not know where she was going, but she had to have some escape. just the physical act of getting away was something. ted and harriett were talking in the lower hall. they looked in inquiry at the hat she held and her face made ted lay a hand on her arm. she told them she had to have exercise--air--and was going out for a little walk. she thought harriett looked aghast--doubtless preferring ruth be seen as little as possible. but she could not help that; she had to get away--away from that room, that house, away from those old things now newly charged. something left with them shut down around her as a fog in which she could not breathe. ted asked if he should go with her, but she shook her head and started for the side door, fearing he might insist. he called after her that harriett was going to have cyrus stay at her house, that she could make room for him. he said it with a relief which told how he had really hated having his brother go to the hotel. as she turned with something about that being better, she noticed how worn and worried harriett looked, and then hurried on, wanting to get away, to escape for a little while from that crushing realization of how hard she made things for them all. but she could not shut out the thought of the empty rooms upstairs at their house--cyrus's old home--and the crowded quarters at harriett's. yet of course this would be better than the hotel; she was glad harriett and ted had been able to arrange it; she hoped, for their sakes, that cyrus would not, to emphasize his feeling, insist upon staying downtown. she walked several blocks without giving any thought to where she was going. she was not thinking then of those familiar streets, of the times she had walked them. she was getting away, trying, for a little while, to escape from things she had no more power to bear. she could not have stayed another minute in her old room. a little ahead of her she saw a woman sitting in a market wagon, holding the horse. she got the impression that the woman was selling vegetables. she tried to notice, to be interested. she could see, as she came along toward the wagon, that the vegetables looked nice and fresh. she and stuart had raised vegetables once; they had done various things after what money they had was exhausted and, handicapped both by his lack of ruggedness and by the shrinking from people which their position bred in them, they had to do the best they could at making a living. and so she noticed these vegetables, but it was not until she was close to her that she saw the woman had relaxed her hold on the lines and was leaning forward, peering at her. and when she came a little nearer this woman--a thin, wiry little person whose features were sharp, leaned still further forward and cried: "why, how do you do? how d'do, ruth!" for a moment ruth was too startled to make any reply. then she only stammered, "why, how do you do?" but the woman leaned over the side of the wagon. ruth was trying her best to think who she was; she knew that she had known her somewhere, in some way, but that thin, eager little face was way back in the past, and that she should be spoken to in this way--warm, natural--was itself too astonishing, moving, to leave her clear-headed for casting back. and then, just as she seemed about to say something, her face changed a little. ruth heard a gate click behind her and then a man, a stolid farmer, he appeared, came up to the wagon. the woman kept nodding her head, as if in continued greeting, but she had leaned back, as though she had decided against what she had been about to say. ruth, starting on, still bewildered, stirred, nodded and smiled too; and then, when the man had jumped in the wagon and just as the horse was starting, the woman called: "it seems awful good to have you back on these streets, ruth!" ruth could only nod in reply and hurried on; her heart beat fast; her eyes were blurring. "it seems awful good to have you back on these streets, ruth!" was _that_ what she had said? she turned around, wanting to run after that wagon, not wanting to lose that pinched, shabby, eager little woman who was glad to have her back on those streets. but the wagon had turned a corner and was out of sight. back on those streets! it opened her to the fact that she was back on them. she walked more slowly, thinking about that. and she could walk more slowly; she was less driven. after a block of perplexed thinking she knew who that woman was; it flashed from her memory where she had known that intent look, that wistful intentness lighting a thin little face. it was annie morris, a girl in her class at the high-school, a plain, quiet girl--poor she believed she was, not in ruth's crowd. now that she searched back for what she remembered about it she believed that this annie morris had always liked her; and perhaps she had taken more notice of her than edith and the other girls had. she could see her now getting out of the shabby buggy in which she drove in to school--she lived somewhere out in the country. she remembered talking to her sometimes at recess--partly because she seemed a good deal alone and partly because she liked to talk to her. she remembered that she was what they called awfully bright in her classes. that this girl, whom she had forgotten, should welcome her so warmly stirred an old wondering: a wondering if somewhere in the world there were not people who would be her friends. that wondering, longing, had run through many lonely days. the people she had known would no longer be her friends. but were there not other people? she knew so little about the world outside her own life; her own life had seemed to shut down around her. but she had a feeling that surely somewhere--somewhere outside the things she had known--were people among whom she could find friends. so far she had not found them. at the first, seeing how hard it would be, how bad for them both, to have only each other, she had tried to go out to people just as if there were nothing in her life to keep her back from them. and then they would "hear"; that hearing would come in the most unforeseen little ways, at the most unexpected times; usually through those coincidences of somebody's knowing somebody else, perhaps meeting someone from a former place where they had already "heard"; it was as if the haphazardness of life, those little accidents of meetings that were without design, equipped the world with a powerful service for "hearing," which after a time made it impossible for people to feel that what was known in one place would not come to be known in another. after she had several times been hurt by the drawing away of people whom she had grown to like, she herself drew back where she could not be so easily hurt. and so it came about that her personality changed in that; from an outgoing nature she came to be one who held back, shut herself in. even people who had never "heard" had the feeling she did not care to know them, that she wanted to be let alone. it crippled her power for friendship; it hurt her spirit. and it left her very much alone. in that loneliness she wondered if there were not those other people--people who could "hear" and not draw away. she had not found them; perhaps she had at times been near them and in her holding back--not knowing, afraid--had let them go by. of that, too, she had wondered; there had been many lonely wonderings. she came now to a corner where she stopped. she stood looking down that cross street which was shaded by elm trees. that was the corner where she had always turned for edith's. yes, that was the way she used to go. she stood looking down the old way. she wanted to go that way now! she went so far as to cross the street, and on that far corner again stood still, hesitating, wanting to go that old way. it came to her that if this other girl--annie morris--a girl she could barely remember, was glad to see her back, then surely edith--_edith_--would be glad to see her. but after a moment she went slowly on--the other way. she remembered; remembered the one letter she had had from edith--that letter of a few lines sent in reply to her two letters written from arizona, trying to make edith understand. "ruth"--edith had written--she knew the few words by heart; "yes, i received your first letter. i did not reply to it because it did not seem to me there was anything for me to say. and it does not seem to me now that there is anything for me to say." it was signed, "edith lawrence blair." the full signature had seemed even more formal than the cold words. it had hurt more; it seemed actually to be putting in force the decree that everything between her and edith was at an end. it was never to be ruth and edith again. as she walked slowly on now, away from edith's, she remembered the day she walked across that arizona plain, looking at edith's letter a hundred times in the two miles between the little town and their cabin. she had gone into town that day to see the doctor. stuart had seemed weaker and she was terribly frightened. the doctor did not bring her much comfort; he said she would have to be patient, and hope--probably it would all come right. she felt very desolate that day in the far-away, forlorn little town. when she got edith's letter she did not dare to open it until she got out from the town. and then she found those few formal, final words--written, it was evident, to keep her from writing any more. the only human thing about it was a little blot under the signature. it was the only thing a bit like edith; she could see her making it and frowning over it. and she wondered--she had always wondered--if that little blot came there because edith was not as controlled, as without all feeling, as everything else about her letter would indicate. as she looked back to it now it seemed that that day of getting edith's letter was the worst day of all the hard years. she had been so lonely--so frightened; when she saw edith's handwriting it was hard not to burst into tears right there at the little window in the queer general store where they gave out letters as well as everything else. but after she had read the letter there were no tears; there was no feeling of tears. she walked along through that flat, almost unpeopled, half desert country and it seemed that the whole world had shrivelled up. everything had dried, just as the bushes along the road were alive and yet dried up. she knew then that it was certain there was no reach back into the old things. and that night, after they had gone to bed out of doors and stuart had fallen asleep, she lay there in the stillness of that vast arizona night and she came to seem in another world. for hours she lay there looking up at the stars, thinking, fearing. she reached over and very gently, meaning not to wake him, put her hand in the hand of the man asleep beside her, the man who was all she had in the world, whom she loved with a passion that made the possibility of losing him a thing that came in the night to terrorize her. he had awakened and understood, and had comforted her with his love, lavishing upon her tender, passionate assurance of how he was going to get strong and make it all come right for them both. there was something terrible in that passion for one another that came out of the consciousness of all else lost. they had each other--there were moments when that burned with a terrible flame through the feeling that they had nothing else. that night they went to sleep in a wonderful consciousness of being alone together in the world. time after time that swept them together with an intensity of which finally they came to be afraid. they stopped speaking of it; it came to seem a thing not to dwell upon. the thought of edith's letter had brought some of that back now. she turned from it to the things she was passing, houses she recognized, new houses. walking on past them she thought of how those homes joined. with most of them there were no fences between--one yard merging into another. children were running from yard to yard; here a woman was standing in her own yard calling to a woman in the house adjoining. she passed a porch where four women were sitting sewing; another where two women were playing with a baby. there were so many meeting places for their lives; they were not shut in with their own feeling. that feeling which they as individuals knew reached out into common experiences, into a life in common growing out of individual things. passing these houses, she wanted to share in that life in common. she had been too long by herself. she needed to be one with others. life, for a time, had a certain terrible beauty that burned in that sense of isolation. but it was not the way. one needed to be one with others. she thought of how it was love, more than any other thing, that gave these people that common life. love was the fabric of it. love made new combinations of people--homes, children. the very thing in her that had shut her out was the thing drawing them into that oneness, that many in one. homes were closed to her because of that very impulse out of which homes were built. she had, without any plan for doing so, turned down the little street where she used to go to meet stuart. and when she realized where she was going thoughts of other things fell away; the feeling of those first days was strangely revivified, as if going that old way made her for the moment the girl who had gone that way. again love was not a thing of right or wrong, it was the thing that had to have its way--life's great imperative. going down that old street made the glow of those days--the excitement--come to life and quicken her again. it was so real that it was as if she were living it again--a girl palpitating with love going to meet her lover, all else left behind, only love now! for the moment those old surroundings made the old days a living thing to her. the world was just one palpitating beauty; the earth she walked was vibrant; the sweetness of life breathed from the air she breathed. she was charged with the joy of it, bathed in the wonder. love had touched her and taken her, and she was different and everything was different. her body was one consciousness of love; it lifted her up; it melted her to tenderness. it made life joyous and noble. she lived; she loved! standing on the spot where they had many times stood in moments of meeting a very real tenderness for that girl was in the heart of this woman who had paid so terribly for the girl's love. it brought a feeling that she had not paid too much, that no paying was ever too much for love. love made life; and in turn love was what life was for. to live without it would be going through life without having been touched alive. in that moment it seemed no wrong love could bring about would be as deep as the wrong of denying love. there was again that old feeling of rising to something higher in her than she had known was there, that feeling of contact with all the beauty of the world, of being admitted to the inner sweetness and wonder of life. she had a new understanding of what she had felt; that was the thing added; that was the gift of the hard years. and of a sudden she wanted terribly to see her mother. it seemed if she could see her mother now that she could make her understand. she saw it more simply than she had seen it before. she wanted to tell her mother that she loved because she could not help loving. she wanted to tell her that after all those years of paying for it she saw that love as the thing illumining her life; that if there was anything worthy in her, anything to love, it was in just this--that she had fought for love, that she would fight for it again. she wanted to see her mother! she believed she could help the hurt she had dealt. she had walked slowly on, climbing a little hill. from there she looked back at the town. with fresh pain there came the consciousness that her mother was not there, that she could not tell her, that she had gone--gone without understanding, gone bewildered, broken. her eyes dimmed until the town was a blur. she wanted to see her mother! she was about to start back, but turned for a moment's look the other way, across that lovely country of little hills and valleys--brooks, and cattle in the brooks, and fields of many shades of green. and then her eye fixed upon one thing and after that saw no other thing. behind her was the place where the living were gathered together; but over there, right over there on the next hill, were the dead. she stood very still, looking over there passionately through dimmed eyes. and then swiftly, sobbing a little under her breath, she started that way. she wanted to see her mother! and when she came within those gates she grew strangely quiet. back there in the dwelling place of the living she had felt shut out. but she did not feel shut out here. as slowly she wound her way to the hillside where she knew she would find her mother's grave, a strange peace touched her. it was as if she had come within death's tolerance; she seemed somehow to be taken into death's wonderful, all-inclusive love for life. there seemed only one distinction: they were dead and she still lived; she had a sense of being loved because she still lived. slowly, strangely comforted, strangely taken in, she passed the graves of many who, when she left, had been back there in the place of the living. the change from dwelling place to dwelling place had been made in the years she was away. it came with a shock to find some of those tombstones; she found many she had thought of as back there, a few hills away, where men still lived. she would pause and think of them, of the strangeness of finding them here when she had known them there--of life's onward movement, of death's inevitability. there were stones marking the burial places of friends of her grandfather--old people who used to come to the house when she was a little girl; she thought with a tender pleasure of little services she had done them; she had no feeling at all that they would not want her to be there. friends of her father and mother too were there; yes, and some of her own friends--boys and girls with whom she had shared youth. she sat a long time on the hillside where her mother had been put away. at first she cried, but they were not bitter tears. and after that she did not feel that, even if she could have talked to her mother, it would be important to say the things she had thought she wanted to say. here, in this place of the dead, those things seemed understood. vindication was not necessary. was not life life, and should not one live before death came? she saw the monuments marking the graves of the lawrences, the blairs, the williams', the franklins,--her mother's and her father's people. they seemed so strangely one: people who had lived. she looked across the hills to the town which these people had built. right beside her was her grandfather's grave; she thought of his stories of how, when a little boy, he came with his people to that place not then a town; his stories of the beginnings of it, of the struggles and conflicts that had made it what it was. she thought of their efforts, their disappointments, their hopes, their loves. their loves.... she felt very close to them in that. and as she thought of it there rose a strange feeling, a feeling that came strangely strong and sure: if these people who had passed from living were given an after moment of consciousness, a moment when they could look back on life and speak to it, she felt that their voices, with all the force they could gather, would be raised for more living. why did we not live more abundantly? why did we not hold life more precious? were they given power to say just one word, would they not, seeing life from death, cry--live! twilight came; the world had the sweetness of that hour just before night. a breeze stirred softly; birds called lovingly--loving life. the whole fragrance of the world was breathed into one word. it was as if life had caught the passionate feeling of death; it was as if that after consciousness of those who had left life, and so knew its preciousness, broke through into things still articulate. the earth breathed--live! chapter nineteen cyrus holland died just before daybreak next morning. it seemed to deane franklin that he had only just fallen asleep when the telephone beside him was ringing. when tired out he slept through other noises, but that one always instantly reached--a call to him that got through sleep. he wakened just enough to reach out for the 'phone and his "hello!" was cross. was there never a time when one could be let alone? but the voice that came to him banished both sleep and irritation. it was ruth's voice, saying quietly, tensely: "deane? i'm sorry--but we want you. there's a change. i'm sure father's going." he was dressing almost the instant he hung up the receiver. to amy, who had roused, he said: "it's ruth. her father's going. i can't do a thing--but they want me there." at first amy made no reply. he thought nothing about that, engrossed in getting dressed as quickly as possible. when she burst out, "so of course you're going!" he was dumbfounded at the passionateness of her voice. he looked at her in astonishment; then, for the first time the other side of it, as related to their quarrel about ruth, turned itself to him. "why, of course i'm going, amy," he said quietly. "it makes a difference who it is, doesn't it?" she cried, stormily. "the other night when somebody called you and there wasn't a thing you could do, you _said_ so! you _told_ them they mustn't ask you! but _this_ is different, isn't it?" the words had piled up tumultuously; she seemed right on the verge of angry, tumultuous tears. he paused in what he was doing. "why, amy," he murmured in real astonishment. and then helplessly repeated in tender reproach, "why, amy!" but she laughed, it seemed sneeringly. he colored, quickly finished dressing and left the room without saying anything more. when she heard the front door close, heard deane running down the steps, she sat up in bed and burst into tears of rage. always that woman! running away to her in the middle of the night! he didn't _have_ to go! there was nothing for him to do as a doctor--he could do nothing for a man who had been dying for a couple of days. he _said_ that--just a couple of nights before when someone wanted him to come. but this was ruth holland! she had only to telephone. of course he'd go anywhere--any time--for her! her sobs grew more and more passionate. her head down on her knees she rocked back and forth in that miserable fury only jealousy and wounded pride can create. this gathered together, brought to a head, the resentment accumulating through a number of incidents. that afternoon she had gone over to the lawrences' to thank edith and her mother for the flowers from the tea which they had sent her that morning. they had urged her to run in often, to be friendly. her unhappiness about her talk with deane the night before, when he had actually proposed that she go to see this ruth holland, made her want to be with friends; she wanted to see people who felt as she did that--though it did not so present itself to her--she might fortify herself in the conviction that deane was preposterously wrong, and she taking the only course a good woman could take in relation to a bad one. she was prepared to feel that men did not see those things as clearly as women did, that it was woman who was the guardian of society, and that she must bear with man in his failure to see some things right. she had been eager to strengthen herself in that feeling, not alone because it would, in her own mind, get her out of reach of any possible charge of hardness or narrowness, but because it would let her break through her feeling against deane; she wanted to get back to the days of his complete adoration of her, back where his passion for her would sweep all else out of their world. she knew well enough that deane loved her, but there was a tightened up place around her knowing that. it made her miserable. things would not be right until she found a way through that tightened up place--a way that would make her right and deane wrong, but would let her forgive, largely and gently understanding. such, not thought out, were the things that took her to the lawrences' that afternoon. it was apparent that edith had been crying. she and her mother were gracious to amy, but there was a new constraint. she felt uncomfortable. when they were alone edith broke out and told her how she was just sick at heart about ruth. deane had been there that morning urging her to go and see ruth--instantly there was all anew that tightening up that held her from deane, that feeling against him and against this ruth holland that was as if something virulent had been poured into her blood, changing her whole system. edith cried as she told how deane and her mother had quarreled because he felt so strongly on the subject, and didn't seem able to understand her mother's standpoint. then, she too wanting to set herself right with herself, she went over the whole story--the shock to her, how it had hurt her ideal of friendship, had even seemed to take something from the sanctity of her own marriage. she silenced something within herself in recounting the wrong done her, fortified herself in repeating the things she had from her mother about one's not being free, about what the individual owed to society. amy went home in a turmoil of resentment against her husband. it was hard to hold back the angry tears. a nice position he was putting himself in--going about the town pleading for this woman whom nobody would take in!--estranging his friends--yes, probably hurting his practice. and _why_? _why_ was he so wrought up about it? why was he making a regular business of going about fighting her battles? well, _one_ thing it showed! it showed how much consideration he had for his own wife. when she came in sight of their house it was harder than ever to hold back the tears of mortification, of hot resentment. she had been so sure she was going to be perfectly happy in that house! now already her husband was turning away from her--humiliating her--showing how much he thought of another woman, and _such_ a woman! she did not know what to do with the way she felt, did not know how to hold from the surface the ugly things that surged through her, possessed her. until now she had had nothing but adulation from love. a pretty, petted girl she had formed that idea of pretty women in youth that it was for men to give love and women graciously to accept it. for her vanity to be hurt by a man who had roused her passion turned that passion to fury against him and made it seem that a great wrong had been done her. as she approached she saw that deane was standing before the house talking to a woman in a vegetable wagon. he had one foot up on the spoke of the wheel and was talking more earnestly than it seemed one would be talking to a vegetable woman. doubtless she was one of his patients. as she came up he said: "oh, amy, i want you to know mrs. herman." she stiffened; his tone in introducing her to a woman of what she thought of as the lower classes seeming just a new evidence of his inadequate valuation of her. "your husband and i went to school together," said mrs. herman, pleasantly, but as if explaining. "oh?" murmured amy. deane abruptly moved back from the wagon. "well, you do that, annie. ruth would love to see you, i know." so _that_ was it! she turned away with a stiff little nod to the woman in the wagon. always the same thing!--urging tom, dick and harry to go and see that woman!--taking up with a person like this, introducing his wife in that intimate way to a woman who peddled vegetables just because she was willing to go and see ruth holland! she didn't know that she had to stand such things!--she didn't know that she _would_. she guessed she could show him that she wasn't going to play second fiddle to that ruth holland! deane came to the door of the room where she was taking off her hat. her fingers were trembling so that she could scarcely get the pins. "that little woman you were so chilly to is a pretty fine sort, amy," he said incisively. "because she is going to see ruth holland?" she retorted with an excited laugh. "oh, you were pretty stand-offish before you knew that," he answered coolly. vanity smarting from deeper hurts made her answer, haughtily: "i'm rather inexperienced, you know, in meeting people of that class." in his heart too there were deeper disappointments than this touched. "well, i must say--" he began hotly, "i think if i felt as snobbish as that i'd try pretty hard to conceal it!" amy was carefully putting away her hat; she had an appearance of cold composure, of a sense of superiority. it was because she wanted to keep that that she did not speak. the things within would so completely have destroyed it. "i guess you don't understand, amy," said deane, quieted by her silence; "if you knew all about annie morris i think you'd see she is a woman worth meeting." thinking of his talk with edith and her mother that morning, he added, a good deal of feeling breaking into his voice: "a good sight more so than some of the people you are meeting!" "and of course," she could not hold back, "they--those inferior people--won't go to see ruth holland, and this wonderful woman will! that's the secret of it, isn't it?" "it's one thing that shows her superiority," he replied coolly. "another thing is her pluck--grit. her husband is a dolt, and she's determined her three children shall have some sort of a show in life, so she's driven ahead--worked from daylight till dark many a time--to make decent things possible for them." "well, that's very commendable, i'm sure," replied amy mildly, appearing to be chiefly concerned with a loose button on the wrap she had just taken off. "and with all that she's kept her own spirit alive; she's not going to let life get clear ahead of _her_, either. she's pretty valiant, i think." he was thinking again of edith and her mother as he added contentiously, "i don't know any woman in this town i'd rather talk to!" amy, appearing quite outside the things that were disturbing him, only smiled politely and threaded a needle for sewing on the button. he stood there in the doorway, fidgeting, his face red. she seemed so uncaring; she seemed so far away. "oh, amy!" he cried, miserably, appealingly. quickly she looked up; her mouth, which had been so complacent, twitched. he started toward her, but just then the doorbell rang. "i presume that's your mother," she said, in matter of fact tone. mrs. franklin was with them for dinner that night. amy's social training made it appear as if nothing were disturbing her. she appeared wholly composed, serene; it was deane who seemed ill at ease, out of sorts. after dinner he had to go to the hospital and when she was alone with his mother amy was not able to keep away from the subject of ruth holland. for one thing, she wanted to hear about her, she was avid for detail as to how she looked, things she had done and said--that curious human desire to press on a place that hurts. and there was too the impulse for further self-exoneration, to be assured that she was right, to feel that she was injured. all of those things it was easy to get from mrs. franklin. amy, not willing to reveal what there had been between her and deane, and having that instinct for drawing sympathy to herself by seeming self-depreciation, spoke gently of how she feared she did not altogether understand about deane's friend ruth holland. was she wrong in not going with deane to see her? mrs. franklin's explosion of indignation at the idea, and the feeling with which, during the hour that followed, she expressed herself about deane's friend ruth holland, acted in a double fashion as both fortification and new hurt. mrs. franklin, leader in church and philanthropic affairs, had absolutely no understanding of things which went outside the domain of what things should be. the poor and the wicked did terrible things that society must do something about. there was no excuse whatever for people who ought to know better. that people should be dominated by things they ought not to feel was perversity on their part and the most wilful kind of wickedness. she had mrs. lawrence's point of view, but from a more provincial angle. deane did not get his questioning spirit, what she called his stubbornness, from his mother. added to what she as a church woman and worker for social betterment felt about the affair was the resentment of the mother at her son's having been, as she put it, dragged into the outrage. she grew so inflamed in talking of how this woman had used deane that she did not take thought of how she was giving more of an impression of her power over him than might be pleasant hearing for deane's young wife. the indignation of the whole franklin family at what they called the way deane had been made a cat's paw was fanned to full flame in this preposterous suggestion that amy should go to see ruth holland. in her indignation at the idea she gave a new sense of what the town felt about ruth, and she was more vehement than tactful in her expressions against deane for holding out that way against the whole town. "it just shows, my dear," she said, "what a woman of no principle can do with a man!" amy, hurt to the quick in this thought of the mysterious lure of a woman of no principle, remarked casually, "she's wonderfully attractive, i presume." mrs. franklin was not too blunted by indignation to miss the pain that was evident in the indifferently asked question. hastily--more hastily than subtly, she proceeded to depreciate the attractions of ruth holland, but in the depreciation left an impression of some quality--elusive, potent--which more than beauty or definite charm gave her power. edith too had spoken of that "something" about ruth; a something one never forgot; a something, she said, that no one else had. and now, awakened by deane's having been called by this woman in the night, herself alone there and he hurrying to ruth holland, the barriers of pride broke down and she cried because she was sorry for herself, because she was hurt and outraged that she should be hurt, because for the first time in her whole life she was thwarted--not having her way, set aside. she completely lost her hold on herself, got up and stormed about the room. when she looked at her face in the mirror she saw that it was hideous. she couldn't help it!--she didn't care! the resentment, rage, in her heart was like a poison that went all through her. she was something that didn't seem herself. she thought horrible things and ground her teeth and clenched her hands and let her face look as ugly as it could. she hated this woman! she wished some horrible thing would happen to her! she hated deane franklin! the passion he had roused in her all turned into this feeling against him. she wouldn't stand it! she wouldn't stay there and play second fiddle to another woman--she, a bride! fresh tears came with that last. her mother and father would never have treated her that way. they didn't think deane franklin good enough for her, anyway! she would go back home! _that_ would make things pretty hard for him! that would show what this woman had done! and he'd be sorry then--would want her back--and she wouldn't come. she finally found control in that thought of her power over him used to make him suffer. deane, meanwhile, was hurrying through the streets that had the unrealness of that hour just before morning. that aspect of things was with him associated with death; almost always when he had been on the streets at that hour it was because someone was fighting death. it was so still--as if things were awed. and a light that seemed apart from natural things was formed by the way the street lights grew pale in the faint light of coming day. everyone was sleeping--all save those in a house half a dozen blocks away, the house where they were waiting for death. he was on foot, having left his car down at the garage for some repairs after taking his mother home. as he slowed for a moment from a walk that was half run he thought of how useless his hurrying was. what in the world could he do when he got there? nothing save assure them he could do nothing. poor ruth!--it seemed she had so much, so many hard things. this was a time when one needed one's friends, but of course they couldn't come near her--on account of society. though--his face softened with the thought--annie morris would come, she not being oppressed by this duty to society. he thought of the earnestness of her thin face as she talked of ruth. that let in the picture of amy's face as he introduced them. he tried not to keep seeing it. he did think, however, that it was pretty unnecessary of amy to have talked to his mother about ruth. all that was unyielding in him had been summoned by the way his mother talked to him going home--"going for him" like that because he had wanted amy to go and see ruth. that, it seemed to him, was something between him and amy. he would not have supposed she would be so ready to talk with some one else about a thing that was just between themselves. there had been that same old hardening against his mother when she began talking of ruth, and that feeling that shut her out excluded amy with her. and he had wanted amy with him. hurrying on, he tried not to think of it. he didn't know why amy had talked to his mother about it--perhaps it just happened so, perhaps his mother began it. he seized upon that. and amy didn't understand; she was young--her life had never touched anything like this. he was going to talk to her--really talk to her, not fly off the handle at the first thing she would say. he told himself that he had been stupid, hard--a bungler. it made him feel better to tell himself that. yes, he certainly had been unsympathetic, and it was a shame that anything had come to make amy unhappy--and right there at first, too! why, it was actually making her sick! when he went back after taking his mother home amy said she had a bad headache and didn't want to talk. she was so queer that he had taken her at her word and had not tried to talk to her--be nice to her. it seemed now that he hadn't been kind; it helped him to feel that he hadn't been kind. and it was the headache, being roused in the night when she was not well that had made her so--well, so wrought up about his answering to the call of the hollands--old patients, old friends. he was going to be different; he was going to be more tender with amy--that would be the way to make her understand. such were the things his troubled mind and hurt heart tried to be persuaded of as, thinking at the same time of other things--the death to which he was hurrying, how hard it would be for ruth if cyrus didn't speak to her--he passed swiftly by the last houses where people slept and turned from a world tinged with the strangeness of an hour so little known to men's consciousness, softly opened the door and stepped into the house where death was touching life with that same unreality with which, without, day touched night. miss copeland, wrapped in a bathrobe, sat in the upstairs hall. "he's still breathing," she whispered in that voice which is for death alone. in the room ruth and ted stood close together, the nurse on the other side of the bed. ruth's hair was braided down her back; he remembered when she used to wear it that way, he had one of those sudden pictures of her--on her way to school, skipping along with edith lawrence. she turned, hearing him, and there was that rush of feeling to her eyes that always claimed him for ruth, that quick, silent assumption of his understanding that always let down bars between them. but ruth kept close to ted, as if she would shield him; the boy looked as deane had seen novices look in the operating room. there was nothing for him to do beyond look at his patient and nod to the nurse in confirmation that it would be any minute now. he walked around to ted and ruth, taking an arm of each of them and walking with them to the far side of the room. "there's nothing to do but wait," he said. "i wish harriett and cyrus would get here," whispered ruth. "you telephoned?" "before i did you--but of course it's a little farther." they stood there together in that strange silence, hearing only the unlifelike breathing of the man passing from life. listening to it, ruth's hand on deane's arm tightened. soothingly he patted her hand. then, at a movement from the nurse, he stepped quickly to the bed. ruth and ted, close together, first followed, then held back. a minute later he turned to them. "it's over," he said, in the simple way final things are said. there was a choking little cry from ted. ruth murmured something, her face all compassion for him. but after a moment she left her brother and stood alone beside her father. in that moment of seeing her face, before turning away because it seemed he should turn away, deane got one of the strangest impressions of his life. it was as if she was following her father--reaching him; as if there was a fullness of feeling, a rising passionate intensity that could fairly overflow from life. then she turned back to ted. cyrus and harriett had entered. there was a moment when the four children were there together. cyrus did not come up to the bed until ruth had left. deane watched his face as--perfunctorily subdued, decorous, he stood where ruth had stood a moment before. then cyrus turned to him and together they walked from the room, cyrus asking why they had not been telephoned in time. deane lingered for a little while, hating to go without again seeing ruth and ted. he tapped at ruth's door; he was not answered, but the unlatched door had swung a little open at his touch. he saw that the brother and sister were out on the little porch opening off ruth's room. he went out and stood beside them, knowing that he would be wanted. the sun was just rising, touching the dew on the grass. the birds were singing for joy in another day. the three who had just seen death stood there together in silence. chapter twenty the two days when the natural course of life was arrested by death had passed. their father had been buried that afternoon, and in the early evening ted and ruth were sitting on the little upper porch, very quiet in the new poignant emptiness of the house. many people had been coming and going in those last few days; now that was over and there was a pause before the routine of life was to be resumed. the fact that the nurse had gone seemed to turn the page. ruth had just asked how long cyrus was going to stay and ted replied that he wanted to stay on a week or perhaps more, attending to some business. she knew how crowded it must be for them at harriett's, knew that if she went away cyrus would come home. there seemed nothing more to keep her; she would like to be with ted awhile, but it seemed she could not do that without continuing a hard condition for them all. they could settle into a more natural order of things with her not there. it was time for her to go. it was hard to have to think that. she would love to have stayed a little while. she had been away so long--wanting home for so long. she knew now, facing the going away, how much she had secretly hoped might result from this trip back home. she had seen a number of people in the past few days--relatives, old friends of the family, friends of ted. she had done better in meeting them than, just a little while before, she would have thought possible. something remained with her from that hour at her mother's grave, that strange hour when she had seemed to see life from outside, beyond it. that had summoned something within herself that no personal hurt could scatter, as if taking her in to something from which no circumstance could drive her out. she had felt an inner quiet, a steadiness within; there was power in it, and consolation. it took her out of that feeling of having no place--no right to a place, the feeling that had made her wretched and powerless. she was of life; her sure inner sense of the reality and beauty of that seemed a thing not to be broken down from without. it was hers, her own. it sustained her; it gave her poise. the embarrassment of other people gave way before her simple steadiness. she had had but the one point of contact with them--that of her father's death; it made her want more, made going away hard. it was hard to leave all the old things after even this slight touch with them again. and that new quiet, that new force within was beginning to make for new thinking. she had thought much about what she had lived through--she could not help doing that, but she was thinking now with new questionings. she had not questioned much; she had accepted. what was gathering within her now was a feeling that a thing so real, so of life as her love had been should not be a thing to set her apart, should not be a thing to blight the lives that touched hers. this was not something called up in vindication, a mere escape from hard thinking, her own way out from things she could not bear; it was deeper than that, far less facile. it came from that inner quiet--from that strange new assurance--this feeling that her love should not have devastated, that it was too purely of life for that; that it was a thing to build up life, to give to it; this wondering, at once timid and bold, if there was not something wrong with an order that could give it no place, that made it life's enemy. she had been afraid of rebellious thinking, of questionings. there had been so much to fight, so much to make her afraid. at first all the strength of her feeling had gone into the fight for stuart's health; she was afraid of things that made her rebellious--needing all of herself, not daring to break through. the circumstances had seemed to make her own life just shut down around her; and even after those first years, living itself was so hard, there were so many worries and disappointments--her feeling about it was so tense, life so stern--that her thoughts did not shoot a long way out into questionings. she had done a thing that cut her off from her family; she had hurt other people and because of that she herself must suffer. life could not be for her what it was for others. she accepted much that she did not try to understand. for one thing, she had had no one to talk to about those things. seeing how stuart's resentment against the state of things weakened him, keeping him from his full powers to meet those hard conditions, she did not encourage their talking of it and had tried to keep herself from the thinking that with him went into brooding and was weakening. she had to do the best she could about things; she could not spend herself in rebellion against what she had to meet. like a man who finds himself on a dizzy ledge she grew fearful of much looking around. but now, in these last few days, swept back into the wreckage she had left, something fluttered to life and beat hard within her spirit, breaking its way through the fearfulness that shut her in and sending itself out in new bolder flights. not that those outgoings took her away from the place she had devastated; it was out of the poignancy of her feeling about the harm she had done, out of her new grief in it that these new questionings were born. the very fact that she did see so well, and so sorrowingly, what she had done, brought this new feeling that it should not have been that way, that what she had felt, and her fidelity to that feeling--ruthless fidelity though it was--should not have blighted like this. there was something that seemed at the heart of it all in that feeling of not being ashamed in the presence of death--she who had not denied life. silence had fallen between her and ted, she saddened in the thought of going away and open to the puzzling things that touched her life at every point; looking at ted--proud of him--hating to leave him now just when she had found him again, thinking with loving gratefulness and pride of how generous and how understanding he had been with her, how he was at once so boyish and so much more than his years. the fine seriousness of his face tonight made him very dear and very comforting to her. she wanted to keep close to him; she could not bear the thought of again losing him. if her hard visit back home yielded just that she would have had rich gain from it. she began talking with him about what he would do. he talked freely of his work, as if glad to talk of it; he was not satisfied with it, did not think there was much "chance" there for him. ted had thought he wanted to study law, but his father, in one of his periods of depression, had said he could not finish sending him through college and ted had gone into one of the big manufactories there. he was in the sales department, and he talked to ruth of the work. he told her of his friends, of what they were doing; they talked of many things, speaking of the future with that gentle intimacy there can be between those sorrowing together for things past. their sensitive consciousness of the emptiness of the house--the old place, their home,--brought them together through a deep undercurrent of feeling. their voices were low as they spoke of more intimate things than it is usual to speak of without constraint, something lowered between them as only a grief shared can lower bars to the spirit, their thinking set in that poignant sense of life which death alone seems able to create. ted broke a pause to say that he supposed it was getting late and he must be starting for harriett's. cyrus had asked him to come over awhile that evening. mr. mcfarland, their family lawyer, was going out of town for a few days, leaving the next morning. he was coming in that evening, more as the old friend than formally, to speak to them about some business matters, cyrus's time being limited and there being a number of things to arrange. "i hate leaving you alone, ruth," said ted, lingering. she looked over to him with quick affectionate smile. "i don't mind, ted. somehow i don't mind being alone tonight." that was true. being alone would not be loneliness that evening. things were somehow opened; all things had so strangely opened. she had been looking down the deep-shadowed street, that old street down which she used to go. the girl who used to go down that street was singularly real to her just then; she had about her the fresh feeling, the vivid sense, of a thing near in time. old things were so strangely opened, old feeling was alive again: the wild joy in the girl's heart, the delirious expectancy--and the fear. it was strange how completely one could get back across the years, how things gone could become living things again. that was why she was not going to mind being alone just then; she had a sense of the whole flow of her life--living, moving. it did not seem a thing to turn away from; it was not often that things were all open like that. "i shouldn't wonder if deane would drop in," said ted, as if trying to help himself through leaving her there alone. "he may," ruth answered. she did not say it with enthusiasm, much as she would like to talk with deane. deane was just the one it would be good to talk with that night. but deane never mentioned his wife to her. at first, in her preoccupation, and her pleasure in seeing him, she had not thought much about that. then it had come to her that doubtless deane's wife would not share his feeling about her, that she would share the feeling of all the other people; that brought the fear that she might, again, be making things hard for deane. she had done enough of that; much as his loyalty, the rare quality of his affectionate friendship meant to her, she would rather he did not come than let the slightest new shadow fall upon his life because of her. and yet it seemed all wrong, preposterous, to think anyone who was close to deane, anyone whom he loved, should not understand this friendship between them. she thought of how, meeting after all those years, they were not strange with each other. that seemed rare--to be cherished. "what's deane's wife like, ted?" she asked. "i haven't met her," he replied, "but i've seen her. she's awfully good-looking; lots of style, and carries herself as if--oh, as if she knew she was somebody," he laughed. "and i guess deane thinks she _is_," he added with another laugh. "guess he decided that first time he met her. you know he stopped in indianapolis to see a classmate who was practising there--met her at a party, i believe, and--good-by deane! but somehow she isn't what you'd expect deane's wife to be," he went on more seriously. "doesn't look that way, anyhow. looks pretty frigid, i thought, and, oh--fixed up. as if she wasn't just real." ruth's brows puckered. if there was one thing it seemed the wife of deane franklin should be, it was real. but doubtless ted was wrong--not knowing her. it did not seem that deane would be drawn to anyone who was not real. she lingered in the thought of him. real was just what deane was. he had been wonderfully real with her in those days--days that had made the pattern of her life. reality had swept away all other things between them. that carried her back to the new thinking, the questions. it seemed it was the things not real that were holding people apart. it was the artificialities people had let living build up around them made those people hard. people would be simpler--kinder--could those unreal things be swept away. she dwelt on the thought of a world like that--a world of people simple and real as deane franklin was simple and real. she was called from that by a movement and exclamation from ted, who had leaned over the railing. "there goes mildred woodbury," he said,--"and alone." his tone made her look at him in inquiry and then down the street at the slight figure of a girl whose light dress stood out clearly between the shadows. mildred was the daughter of a family who lived in the next block. the woodburys and the hollands had been neighbors and friends as far back as ruth could remember. mildred was only a little girl when ruth went away--such a pretty little girl, her fair hair always gayly tied with ribbons. she had been there with her mother the night before and ruth had been startled by her coming into the room where she was and saying impulsively: "you don't remember me, do you? i'm mildred--mildred woodbury." "and you used to call me wuth!" ruth had eagerly replied. it had touched her, surrounded as she was by perfunctoriness and embarrassment that this young girl should seek her out in that warm way. and something in the girl's eyes had puzzled her. she had returned to thought of it more than once and that made her peculiarly interested in ted's queer allusion to mildred now. "well?" she inquired. "mildred's getting in rather bad," he said shortly. "getting--what do you mean, ted?" she asked, looking at him in a startled way. "people are talking about her," he said. "people are--?" she began, but stopped, looking at him all the while in that startled way. "talking about her," he repeated. "i guess it's been going on for some time--though i didn't hear about it until a little while ago." "about what, ted?" her voice faltered and it seemed to make him suddenly conscious of what he was saying, to whom he spoke. "why,"--he faltered now too, "mildred's acting sort of silly--that's all. i don't know--a flirtation, or something, with billy archer. you don't know him; he came here a few years ago on some construction work. he's an engineer. he is a fascinating fellow, all right," he added. ruth pushed back her chair into deeper shadow. "and--?" she suggested faintly. "he's married," briefly replied ted. she did not speak for what seemed a long time. ted was beginning to fidget. then, "how old is mildred, ted?" ruth asked in a very quiet voice. "about twenty, i guess; she's a couple of years younger than i am." "and this man?--how old is he?" that she asked a little sharply. "oh, i don't know; he's in the older crowd; somewhere in the thirties, i should say." "well--" but she abruptly checked what she had sharply begun to say, and pushed her chair still further back into shadow. when ted stole a timid glance at her a minute later he saw that she seemed to be holding her hands tight together. "and doesn't mildred's mother--?" it seemed impossible for her to finish anything, to say it out. he shook his head. "guess not. it's funny--but you know a person's folks--" there was another silence; then ted began to whistle softly and was looking over the railing as if interested in something down on the lawn. "and you say people are really--talking about mildred, ted?" ruth finally asked, speaking with apparent effort. he nodded. "some people are snubbing her. you know this town is long on that," he threw in with a short laugh. "i saw mrs. brewer--remember her?--she used to be dorothy hanlay--out and out snub mildred at a party the other night. she came up to her after she'd been dancing with billy--lord knows how many times she'd danced with him that night--and mrs. brewer simply cut her. i saw it myself. mildred got white for a moment, then smiled in a funny little way and turned away. tough on her, wasn't it?--for really, she's a good deal of a kid, you know. and say, ruth, there's something mighty decent about edith--about mrs. blair. she saw it and right afterwards she went up to mildred, seemed particularly interested in her, and drew her into her crowd. pretty white, don't you think? that old hen--mrs. brewer--got red, let me tell you, for edith can put it all over her, you know, on being somebody, and that _got_ her--good and plenty!" there was a queer little sound from ruth, a sound like a not quite suppressed sob; ted rose, as if for leaving, and stood there awkwardly, his back to her. he felt that ruth was crying, or at least trying not to cry. why had he talked of a thing like that? why did he have to bring in edith lawrence? it seemed better to go on talking about it now, as naturally as he could. "i never thought there was much to mildred," he resumed, not turning round. "she always seemed sort of stuck up with the fellows of our crowd. but i guess you never can tell. i saw her look at billy archer the other night." he paused with a little laugh. "there wasn't anything very stuck up about that look." as still ruth did not speak he began to talk about the property across the street being for sale. when he turned around for taking leave--it being past the time for going to harriett's--it made him furious at himself to see how strained and miserable ruth's face was. she scarcely said good-by to him; she was staring down the street where mildred had disappeared a few moments before. all the way over to harriett's he wondered just what ruth was thinking. he was curious as well as self-reproachful. chapter twenty-one when ted entered the living-room at his sister harriett's he felt as if something damp and heavy had been thrown around him. he got the feeling of being expected to contribute to the oppressiveness of the occasion. the way no one was sitting in a comfortable position seemed to suggest that constraint was deemed fitting. cyrus was talking to mr. mcfarland with a certain self-conscious decorousness. harriett's husband, the rev. edgar tyler, sat before the library table in more of his pulpit manner than was usual with him in his household, as if--so it seemed to ted--the relation of death to the matter in hand brought it particularly within his province. ted had never liked him; especially he had hated his attitude about ruth--his avowed sorrowfulness with which the heart had nothing to do. he resented the way his brother-in-law had made harriett feel that she owed it to the community, to the church, not to countenance her sister. harriett had grown into that manner of striving to do the right thing. she had it now--sitting a little apart from the others, as if not to intrude herself. sitting there with those others his heart went out to ruth; he was _for_ her, he told himself warmly, and he'd take nothing off of cy about her, either! he watched cyrus and thought of how strange it was that a brother and sister should be as different as he and ruth were. they had always been different; as far back as he could remember they were different about everything. ruth was always keyed up about something--delighted, and cy was always "putting a crimp" in things. as a little boy, when he told ruth things he was pleased about they always grew more delightful for telling her; and somehow when you told cyrus about a jolly thing it always flattened out a little in the telling. a shrinking from the appearance of too great haste gave a personal color to the conversation. it was as old friend quite as much as family solicitor that the lawyer talked to them, although the occasion for getting together that night was that cyrus might learn of an investment of his father's which demanded immediate attention. mr. mcfarland spoke of that, and then of how little else remained. he hesitated, then ventured: "you know, i presume, that your father has not left you now what he would have had ten years ago?" ted saw cyrus's lips tighten, his eyes lower. he glanced at harriett, who looked resigned; though he was not thinking much of them, but of his father, who had met difficulties, borne disappointments. he was thinking of nights when his father came home tired; mornings when he went away in that hurried, harassed way. he could see him sitting in his chair brooding. the picture of him now made him appear more lonely than he had thought of him while living. and now his father was dead and they were sitting there talking over his affairs, looking into things that their father had borne alone, things he had done the best he could about. he wished he had tried harder to be company for him. in too many of those pictures which came now his father was alone. he heard cyrus speaking. "yes," he was saying, "father was broken by our personal troubles." there was a pause. ted did not raise his eyes to his brother. he did not want to look at him, not liking his voice as he said that. "it is just another way," cyrus went on, "in which we all have to suffer for our family disgrace." ted felt himself flushing. why need cy have said that! mr. mcfarland had turned slightly away, as if not caring to hear it. and then cyrus asked about their father's will. the attorney's reply was quiet. "he leaves no will." ted looked at him in surprise. then he looked at cyrus and saw his startled, keen, queer look at the attorney. it was after seeing his brother's face that he realized what this meant--that if his father left no will ruth shared with the rest of them. suddenly his heart was beating fast. "how's that?" cyrus asked sharply. "there was a will, but he destroyed it about two month's ago." "he--? why!" cyrus pressed in that sharp voice. ted felt certain that the lawyer liked saying what he had to say then. he said it quietly, but looking right at cyrus. "he destroyed his will because it cut off his daughter ruth." ted got up and walked to the window, stood there staring out at the street lights. bless dad! he wished he could see him; he would give almost anything to see him for just a minute. he wished he had known; he would love to have told his father just how corking he thought that was. he stood there a minute not wanting to show the others how much he was feeling--this new, warm rush of love for his father, and his deep gladness for ruth. he thought of what it would mean to her, what it would mean to know her father had felt like that. he had had to leave her there at home alone; now he could go home and tell her this news that would mean so much. when he turned back to the group it was to see that he was not alone in being moved by what they had heard. harriett too had turned a little away from the others and was looking down. he saw a tear on her face--and liked her better than he ever had before. then he looked at her husband and in spite of all he was feeling it was hard not to smile; his brother-in-law's face looked so comical to him, trying to twist itself into the fitting emotions. ted watched him unsparingly for a minute, maliciously saying to himself: "keep on, old boy, you'll make it after a little!" then he looked at his brother and his face hardened, seeing too well what new feeling this roused in cyrus against ruth, reading the resentment toward their father for this final weakening in his stand against her. "well--" cyrus began but did not go on, his lips tightening. "your father said," the lawyer added, "that if there was one of his children--more than the others--needed what he could do for her, it was his daughter ruth." he was looking at ted, and ted nodded eagerly, thinking now of what, in the practical sense, this would mean to ruth. mr. mcfarland turned back to cyrus as he remarked: "he spoke of ruth with much feeling." cyrus flushed. "i guess father was pretty much broken--in mind as well as body--at that time," he said unpleasantly. "his mind was all right," answered the lawyer curtly. he left a few minutes later; harriett, who went with him to the door, did not return to the room. the two men and ted sat for a moment in silence. then cyrus turned upon him as if angered by what he divined him to be feeling. "well," he said roughly, "i suppose you're pleased?" "i'm pleased, all right," replied ted with satisfaction. he looked at the minister. "good thing, for i guess i'm the only fellow here who is." harriett's husband colored slightly. "i am neither pleased nor displeased," was his grave reply. "surely it was for your father to do as he wished. for a father to forgive a child is--moving. i only hope," he added, "that it will not seem in the community to mean the countenancing--" he paused, looking to cyrus for approval. then ten blazed out. "well, if you want to know what i think, i don't think a little 'countenancing' of ruth is going to do this community--or anybody else--any harm!" cyrus looked at him with that slightly sneering smile that always enraged ted. "you're proud of your sister, i suppose?" he inquired politely. ted reddened. then he grew strangely quiet. "yes," he said, "i believe i am. i've come pretty close to ruth these last few days, and i think that's just what i am--proud of her. i can't say i'm proud of what ruth did; i'd have to think more about that. but i'm proud of what she _is_. and i don't know--i don't know but what it's what a person _is_ that counts." he fell silent, thinking of what he meant by that, of the things he felt in ruth. cyrus laughed mockingly. "rather a curious thing to be proud of, i should say. what she 'is' is--" ted jumped up. "don't say it, cy! whatever it is you're going to say--just don't say it!" cyrus had risen and was putting in his pocket a paper mr. mcfarland had given him. "no?" he said smoothly, as if quite unperturbed. "and why not?" at that uncaring manner something seemed to break inside ted's head, as if all the things cyrus had said about ruth had suddenly gathered there and pressed too hard. his arm shot out at his brother. "that's why not!" he cried. he had knocked cyrus back against the wall and stood there threatening him. to the minister, who had stepped up, protesting, he snapped: "none of _your_ put-in! and after this, just be a little more careful in _your_ talk--see?" he stepped back from cyrus but stood there glaring, breathing hard with anger. cyrus, whose face had gone white, but who was calm, went back to the table and resumed what he had been doing there. "a creditable performance, i must say, for the day of your father's funeral," he remarked after a moment. "that's all right!" retorted ted. "don't think i'm sorry! i don't know any better way to start out new--start out alone--than to tell you what i think of you!--let you know that i'll not take a thing off of you about ruth. you've done enough, cy. now you quit. you kept mother and father away when they didn't want to be kept away--and i want to tell you that i'm _on_ to you, anyway. don't think for a minute that i believe it's your great virtue that's hurting you. you can't put that over on me. it's pride and stubbornness and just plain meanness makes you the way you are! yes, i'm glad to have a chance to tell you what i think of you--and then i'm through with you, cy. i think you're a pin-head! why, you haven't got the heart of a flea! i don't know how anybody as fine as ruth ever came to have a brother like you!" his feeling had grown as he spoke, and he stopped now because he was too close to losing control; he reddened as his brother--calm, apparently unmoved--surveyed him as if mildly amused. that way cyrus looked at him when they were quarrelling always enraged him. if he would only _say_ something--not stand there as if he were too superior to bother himself with such a thing! he knew cyrus knew it maddened him--that that was why he did it, and so it was quietly that he resumed: "no, cy, i'm not with you, and you might as well know it. i'm for ruth. you've got the world on your side--and i know the arguments you can put up, and all that, but ruth's got a--" he fumbled a minute for the words--"ruth's got a power and an understanding about her that you'll never have. she's got a heart. more than that, she's got--character." he paused, thinking, and cyrus did speak then. "oh, i don't think i'd use that word," he said suavely. "no, you wouldn't; you wouldn't see it, but that's just what i mean." he turned to the minister. "character, i say, is what my sister ruth has got. character is something more than putting up a slick front. it's something more than doing what's expected of you. it's a kind of--a kind of being faithful to yourself. _being_ yourself. oh, i know--" at a sound from his brother--"just how you can laugh at it, but there's something to it just the same. why, ruth's got more real stuff in her than you two put together! after being with her these days you, cy, strike a fellow as pretty shallow." that brought the color to his brother's face. stung to a real retort, he broke out with considerable heat: "if to have a respect for decency is 'shallow'--!" he quickly checked himself as the door opened and harriett's maid entered. she paused, feeling the tension, startled by their faces. "excuse me, sir," she said to the minister, "but mrs. tyler said i was to tell you she had gone out for a few minutes. she said to tell you she had gone to see her sister." she looked startled at ted's laugh. after she had gone he laughed again. "hard luck!" he said to his brother-in-law, and walked from the room. he did not go directly home. he was too upset to face ruth just then; he did not want her to know, it would trouble her. and he wanted to walk--walk as fast as he could, walk off steam, he called it. his heart was pounding and there seemed too much blood in his head. but he wasn't sorry, he told himself. cy would have it in for him now, but what did he care for that? he could get along without him. but his lips trembled as he thought that. he had had to get along without his mother; from now on he would have to get along without his father. he had a moment of feeling very much alone. and then he thought of ruth. yes,--there was ruth! he wheeled toward home. he wanted to tell her. he hoped harriett hadn't got it told; he wanted to tell her himself. bless dad! he loved him for doing that. if only he'd known it in time to let him know what he thought of him for doing it! chapter twenty-two harriett had been with ruth for half an hour and still she had not told her what she had come to tell her. she was meaning to tell it before she left, to begin it any minute now, but, much as she wanted to tell it, she shrank from doing so. it seemed that telling that would open everything up--and they had opened nothing up. harriett had grown into a way of shrinking back from the things she really wanted to do, was unpracticed in doing what she felt like doing. acting upon an impulse, she had started for ruth. there had been a moment of real defiance when she told mamie to tell mr. tyler that she had gone to see her sister. she had a right to go and see her sister! no one should keep her from it. her heart was stirred by what her father had done about ruth. it made her know that she too felt more than she had shown. his having done that made her want to do something. it moved her to have this manifestation of a softening she had not suspected. it reached something in her, something that made her feel a little more free, more bold, more loving. his defiance, for she felt that in it too, struck a spark in her. she even had a secret satisfaction in the discomfiture she knew this revelation of her father's--what they would call weakening--caused her husband and her brother. unacknowledged dissatisfactions of her own sharpened her feeling about it. she had not looked at either her husband or cyrus when the announcement was made, but beneath her own emotion was a secret, unacknowledged gloating at what she knew was their displeasure, at their helplessness to resent. ted was a dear boy! ted's shining eyes somehow made her know just how glad she herself was. so she had hurried along, stirred, eager to tell ruth. but once with her she held back from telling her, grew absurdly timid about it. it seemed so much else might come when that came--things long held back, things hard to let one's self talk about. and then ruth was so strange tonight. after that first day it had been easy to talk with ruth; that first embarrassment over, she had seemed simple and natural and harriett could talk with her about the little things that came up and at times just forget the big thing that held them apart. after that first meeting she had felt much more comfortable with ruth than she would have supposed the terrible circumstances would let her feel. but tonight ruth was different, constrained, timid; she seemed holding herself back, as if afraid of something. it made harriett conscious of what there was holding them apart. she did not know how to begin what she had been so eager to tell. and so they talked of surface things--current things: the service that afternoon; some of the relatives who had been there; of old friends of their father's. they kept away from the things their hearts were full of. ruth had been glad to see harriett; it touched her that harriett should come. but she was nervous with her; it was true that she was holding back. that new assurance which had helped her through the last few days had deserted her. since ted told her of mildred that inner quiet from which assurance drew was dispelled. she seemed struck back--bewildered, baffled. was it always to be that way? every time she gained new ground for her feet was she simply to be struck back to new dismays, new incertitudes, new pain? had she only deluded herself in that feeling which had created the strengthening calm of the last few days? after ted left her she had continued to sit looking down the street where mildred had gone; just a little while before she had been looking down that street as the way she herself had gone--the young girl giving herself to love, facing all perils, daring all things for the love in her heart. but now she was not thinking of the love in mildred's heart; she was thinking of the perils around her--the pity of it--the waiting disaster. a little while before it had seemed there should always be a place in the world for love, that things shutting love out were things unreal. and now she longed to be one with edith in getting mildred back to those very things--those unreal things that would safeguard. the mockery of it beat her back, robbing her of the assurance that had been her new strength. that was why harriett found her strange, hard to talk to. she wanted to cower back. she tried not to think of mildred--to get back to herself. but that she could not do; mildred was there in between--confusing, a mockery. harriett spoke of the house, how she supposed the best thing to do would be to offer it for sale. ruth looked startled and pained. "it's in bad repair," harriett said; "it's all run down. and then--there's really no reason for keeping it." and then they fell silent, thinking of years gone--years when the house had not been all run down, when there was good reason for keeping it. to let the house go to strangers seemed the final acknowledgment that all those old things had passed away. it was a more intimate, a sympathetic silence into which that feeling flowed--each thinking of old days in that house, each knowing that the other was thinking of those days. harriett could see ruth as a little girl running through those rooms. she remembered a certain little blue gingham dress--and ruth's hair braided down her back; pictures of ruth with their grandfather, their mother, their father--all those three gone now. she started to tell ruth what she had come to tell her, then changed it to something else, still holding back, afraid of emotion, of breaking through, seeming powerless and hating herself for being powerless. she would tell that a little later--before she left. she would wait until ted came in. she seized upon that, it let her out--let her out from the thing she had been all warm eagerness to do. to bridge that time she asked a few diffident questions about the west; she really wanted very much to know how ruth lived, how she "managed." but she put the questions carefully, it would seem reluctantly, just because almost everything seemed to lead to that one thing,--the big thing that lay there between her and ruth. it was hard to ask questions about the house ruth lived in and not let her mind get swamped by that one terrible fact that she lived there with stuart williams--another woman's husband. harriett's manner made ruth bitter. it seemed harriett was afraid to talk to her, evidently afraid that at any moment she would come upon something she did not want to come near. harriett needn't be so afraid!--she wasn't going to contaminate her. and so the talk became a pretty miserable affair. it was a relief when flora copeland came in the room. "there's someone here to see you, ruth," she said. "deane?" inquired ruth. "no, a woman." "a woman?"--and then, at the note of astonishment in her own voice she laughed in an embarrassed little way. "yes, a mrs. herman. she says you may remember her as annie morris. she says she went to school with you." "yes," said ruth, "i know." she was looking down, pulling at her handkerchief. after an instant she looked up and said quietly: "won't you ask her to come in here?" the woman who stood in the doorway a moment later gave the impression of life, work, having squeezed her too hard. she had quick movements, as if she were used to doing things in a hurry. she had on a cheap, plain suit, evidently bought several years before. she was very thin, her face almost pinched, but two very live eyes looked out from it. she appeared embarrassed, but somehow the embarrassment seemed only a surface thing. she held out a red, rough hand to ruth and smiled in a quick, bright way as she said: "i don't know that you remember me, ruth." "oh, yes i do, annie," ruth replied, and held on to the red, rough hand. "i didn't know; i'm sure," she laughed, "that you've always meant more to me than i could to you." after ruth had introduced harriett the stranger explained that with: "i thought a great deal of ruth when we were in school together. she never knew it--she had so many friends." a little pause followed that. "so i couldn't bear to go away," annie went on in her rather sharp, bright way, "without seeing you, ruth. i hope i'm not intruding, coming so--soon." "you are not intruding, annie," said ruth; her voice shook just a little. ted had come home, and came in the room then and was introduced to annie, with whom, though frankly surprised at seeing her, he shook hands warmly. "but we do know each other," he said. "oh, yes," she laughed, "i've brought you many a cauliflower." "and oh, those eggs!" he laughed back. again there was a slight pause, and then annie turned to ruth with the manner of being bound to get right into the thing she had come to say. "i didn't wait longer, ruth, because i was afraid you might get away and i wondered,"--this she said diffidently, as one perhaps expecting too much--"if there was any chance of your coming out to make me a little visit before you go back. "you know,"--she turned hastily to ted, turning away from the things gathering in ruth's eyes, "the country is so lovely now. i thought it might do ruth good. she must be tired, after the long journey--and all. i thought a good rest--" she turned back to ruth. "don't you think, ruth," she coaxed, "that you'd like to come out and play with my baby?" and then no one knew what to do for suddenly ruth was shaken with sobs. ted was soothing her, telling annie that naturally she was nervous that night. "ted," she choked, in a queer, wild way, laughing through the sobs, "did you _hear_? she wants me to come out and play with her _baby_!" harriett got up and walked to the other side of the room. ruth--laughing, crying--was repeating: "she wants me to play with her _baby_!" harriett thought of her own children at home, whom ruth had not seen. she listened to the plans annie and ted and ruth were making and wretchedly wished she had done differently years before. chapter twenty-three ruth had been with annie for five days now; the original three days for which she had said she could come had been lengthened to a week, and she knew that she would not want to go even then. for here was rest. here she could forget about herself as set apart from others. here she did not seem apart. after the stress of those days at home it was good to rest in this simple feeling of being just one with others. it was good to lie on the grass under the trees, troubled thoughts in abeyance, and feel spring in the earth, take it in by smell and sound. it was wonderfully good to play with the children, to lie on the grass and let the little two year old girl--annie's baby--pull at her hair, toddling around her, cooing and crowing. there was healing in that. it was good to be some place where she did not seem to cause embarrassment, to be where she was wanted. after the strain of recent events the simple things of these days were very sweet to her. it had become monstrous always to have to feel that something about her made her different from other people. there was something terrible in it--something not good for one. here was release from that. and it was good to be with annie; they had not talked much yet--not seriously talked. annie seemed to know that it was rest in little things ruth needed now, not talk of big ones. they talked about the chickens and the cows, the flowers and the cauliflowers, about the children's pranks. it was restoring to talk thus of inconsequential things; ruth was beginning to feel more herself than she had felt in years. on that fifth day her step was lighter than when she came; it was easier to laugh. hers had once been so sunny a nature; it was amazingly easy to break out of the moroseness with which circumstances had clouded her into that native sunniness. that afternoon she sat on the knoll above the house, leaning back against a tree and smiling lazily at the gamboling of the new little pigs. annie was directing the boy who had been helping her cut asparagus to carry the baskets up where ruth was sitting. "i'm going to talk to you while i make this into bunches, ruth," she called. "i'll help," ruth called back with zest. they talked at first of the idiosyncrasies of asparagus beds, of the marketing of it; then something annie said set ruth thinking of something that had happened when they were in high school. "oh, do you remember, annie--" she laughingly began. there was that sort of talk for awhile--"do you remember...?" and "oh, whatever became of...?" as they worked on ruth thought of the strangeness of her being there with this girl who, when they were in school together, had meant so little to her. her own work lagged, watching annie as with quick, sure motions she made the asparagus into bunches for market. she did things deftly and somehow gave the feeling of subordinating them to something else, of not letting them take all of her. ruth watched her with affectionate interest; she wore an all-over gingham apron, her big sun hat pushed back from her browned, thin face; she was not at all attractive unless one saw the eager, living eyes--keenly intelligent eyes. ruth thought of her other friends--the girls who had been her friends when she was in school and whom she had not seen now; she wondered why it was annie had none of the feeling that kept those other girls away. annie's husband was a slow, stolid man; ruth supposed that in his youth, when annie married him, he had perhaps been attractive in his stalwartness. he was sluggish now; good humored enough, but apparently as heavy in spirit as in body. things outside the material round of life--working, eating, sleeping--simply did not seem to exist for him. at first she wondered how annie could be content with life with him, annie, who herself was so keenly alive. thinking of it now it seemed annie had the same adjustment to him that she had to the asparagus,--something subordinated, not taking up very much of herself. she had about annie, and she did not know just why she had it, the feeling that here was a person who could not be very greatly harmed, could not be completely absorbed by routine, could not, for some reason she could not have given, be utterly vanquished by any circumstance. she went about her work as if that were one thing--and then there were other things; as if she were in no danger of being swallowed up in her manner of living. there was something apart that was dauntless. ruth wondered about her, she wanted to find out about her. she wanted for herself that valiant spirit, a certain unconquerableness she felt in annie. annie broke a pause to say: "you can't know, ruth, how much it means to have you here." ruth's face lighted and she smiled; she started to speak, but instead only smiled again. she wanted to tell what it meant to her to be there, but that seemed a thing not easily told. "i wish you could stay longer," annie went on, all the while working. "so--" she paused, and continued a little diffidently--"so we could really get acquainted; really talk. i hardly ever have anyone to talk to," she said wistfully. "one gets pretty lonely sometimes. it would be good to have someone to talk to about the things one thinks." "what are the things you think, annie?" ruth asked impulsively. "oh, no mighty thoughts," laughed annie; "but of course i'm always thinking about things. we keep alive by thinking, don't we?" ruth gave her a startled look. "perhaps it's because i haven't had from life itself much of what i'd like to have," annie was going on, "that i've made a world within. can't let life cheat us, ruth," she said brightly. "if we can't have things in one way--have to get them in another." again ruth looked at her in that startled way. annie did not see it, reaching over for more asparagus; she was all the time working along in that quick, sure way--doing what she was doing cleverly and as if it weren't very important. "perhaps, ruth," she said after a minute, "that that's why my school-girl fancy for you persisted--deepened--the way it has." she hesitated, then said simply: "i liked you for not letting life cheat you." she looked up with a quick little nod as she said that but found ruth's face very serious, troubled. "but i don't think i've done what you mean, annie," she began uncertainly. "i did what i did--because i had to. and i'm afraid i haven't--gone on. it begins to seem to me now that i've stayed in a pretty small place. i've been afraid!" she concluded with sudden scorn. "that isn't much wonder," annie murmured gently. "but with me," she took it up after a little, "i've had to go on." her voice went hard in saying it. "things would have just shut right down on me if i would have let them," she finished grimly. "i married for passion," she began quietly after a minute. "most people do, i presume. at least most people who marry young." ruth colored. she was not used to saying things right out like that. "romantic love is a wonderful thing," annie pursued; "i suppose it's the most beautiful thing in the world--while it lasts." she laughed in a queer, grim little way and gave a sharp twist to the knot she was tying. "sometimes it opens up to another sort of love--love of another quality--and to companionship. it must be a beautiful thing--when it does that." she hesitated a moment before she finished with a dryness that had that grim quality: "with me--it didn't. "so there came a time," she went on, and seemed newly to have gained serenity, "when i saw that i had to give up--go under--or get through myself what i wasn't going to get through anyone else. oh, it's not the beautiful way--not the complete way. but it's one way!" she flashed in fighting voice. "i fought for something, ruth. i held it. i don't know that i've a name for it--but it's the most precious thing in life. my life itself is pretty limited; aside from the children"--she softened in speaking of them--"my life is--pretty barren. and as for the children"--that fighting spirit broke sharply through, "they're all the more reason for not sinking into things--not sinking into _them_," she laughed. as she stopped there ruth asked eagerly, eyes intently upon her: "but just what is it you mean, annie? just what is it you fought for--kept?" "to be my _own_!" annie flashed back at her, like steel. then she changed; for the first time her work fell unheeded in her lap; the eyes which a minute before had flashed fight looked far off and were dreamy; her face, over which the skin seemed to have become stretched, burned by years of sun and wind, quivered a little. when she spoke again it was firmly but with sadness. "it's what we think that counts, ruth. it's what we feel. it's what we _are_. oh, i'd like richer living--more beauty--more joy. well, i haven't those things. for various reasons, i won't have them. that makes it the more important to have all i can take!"--it leaped out from the gentler thinking like a sent arrow. "nobody holds my thoughts. they travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. they bring me whatever they can bring me--and i shut nothing out. i'm not afraid!" ruth was looking at her with passionate earnestness. "over there in that town,"--annie made a little gesture toward it, "are hundreds of women who would say they have a great deal more than i have. and it's true enough," she laughed, "that they have some things i'd like to have. but do you think i'd trade with them? oh, no! not much! the free don't trade with the bond, ruth." and still ruth did not speak, but listened with that passionate intentness. "there in that town," annie went on, "are people--most a whole townful of them--who are going through life without being really awake to life at all. they move around in a closed place, doing the same silly little things--copy-cats--repeaters. they're not their _own_--they're not awake. they're like things run by machinery. like things going in their sleep. take those girls we used to go to school with. why, take edith lawrence. i see her sometimes. she always speaks sweetly to me; she means to be nice. but she moves round and round in her little place and she doesn't even _know_ of the wonderful things going on in the world today! do you think i'd trade with _her_?--social leader and all the rest of it!" she was gathering together the bundles of asparagus. she had finished her work. "very sweet--very charming," she disposed of edith, "but she simply doesn't count. the world's moving away from her, and she,"--annie laughed with a mild scorn--"doesn't even know that!" chapter twenty-four it was late when ruth went to sleep that night; she and annie talked through the evening--of books annie was reading, of the things which were interesting her. she was rich in interests; ideas were as personal things to her; she found personal satisfactions in them. she was following things which ruth knew little about; she had been long away from the centers of books, and out of touch with awakened people. a whole new world seemed to open from these things that were vital to annie; there was promise in them--a quiet road out from the hard things of self. there were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas. everywhere were new attempts at a better way of doing things. she had been away from all that; what she knew of the world's new achievement had seemed unreal, or at least detached, not having any touch with her own life. but as disclosed by annie those things became realities--things to enrich one's own life. it kindled old fires of her girlhood, fanned the old desire to know. personal things had seemed to quell that; the storm in her own life had shut down around her. now she saw that she, like those others whom annie scorned, had not kept that openness to life, had let her own life shut her in. she had all along been eager for books, but had not been fortunate in the things she had come upon. she had not had access to large libraries--many times not even to small ones; she had had little money for buying books and was so out of touch with the world that she had not had much initiative in trying to get hold of things. she felt now that she had failed miserably in that, but there were years when she was like a hurt thing that keeps in hiding, most of all wanting to escape more hurt. it had been a weakness--she clearly saw that now, and it had been weakening to her powers. most of the books she had come upon were of that shut-in life annie scorned, written from within that static living, and for it. people in them had the feeling it was right people should have, unless there were bad people in the book, and then they were very definitely bad. many of those books had been not only unsatisfying, but saddening to her, causing her to feel newly apart from the experiences of people of her kind. but now annie's books let her glimpse a new world--a world which questioned, a world of protest, of experiment, a world in which people unafraid were trying to find the truth, trying to build freshly, to supplant things outworn with the vital forms of a new reality. it was quickening. it made her eager. she was going to take some of those books home, she would send for others, would learn how to keep in touch with this new world which was emerging from the old. it was like breaking out from a closed circle. it was adventure! even after she went to her room that night, late though it was, she did not go at once to bed. she sat for a time looking off at the lights of that town for which she had so long grieved, the town that had shut her out. the fact that it had shut her out had been a determining thing in her life, to her spirit. she wondered now if perhaps she had not foolishly spent herself in grieving for a thing that would have meant little could she have had it. for it seemed now that it had remained very much a fixed thing, and now she knew that, with it all, she herself had not been fixed. the things of which annie talked, things men of this new day were expressing, roused her like this, not because they were all new, but because of her own inner gropings. within herself she had been stumbling toward some of those things. here was the sure expression of some halting thoughts of her own. it was exciting to find that there were people who were feeling the things that, even in that timid, uncertain way, she had come to feel by herself. she had been half afraid to formulate some of the things that had come into her mind. this gathered together the timid little shoots. she was excited about the things of which annie talked--those new ideals of freedom--not so much because they were new and daring and illumining things, as because they did not come all alien. there was something from within to go out to them. in that--not that there were interesting things she could have from without--but that she, opened to the new stimulus, could become something from within, was the real excitation, the joy of the new promise was there. and this new stir, this promise of new satisfactions, let her feel that her life was not all mapped out, designed ahead. she went to sleep that night with a wonderful new feeling of there being as much for her in life as she herself had power to take. and she woke with that feeling; she was eager to be up, to be out in the sunshine. annie, she found, had gone early to town with her vegetables. ruth helped eleven-year-old dorothy, the eldest child, get off for school and walked with her to the schoolhouse half a mile down the road. the little girl's shyness wore away and she chatted with ruth about school, about teachers and lessons and play. ruth loved it; it seemed to set the seal of a human relationship upon her new feeling. what a wonderful thing for annie to have these children! today gladness in there being children in the world went out past sorrow in her own deprivation. the night before she had said to annie, "you have your children. that makes life worth while to you, doesn't it?" and annie, with that hard, swift look of being ruthless for getting at the truth--for getting her feeling straight and expressing it truly, had answered, "not in itself. i mean, it's not all. i think much precious life has gone dead under that idea of children being enough--letting them be all. _we_ count--_i_ count! just leaving life isn't all; living it while we're here--that counts, too. and keeping open to it in more than any one relationship. suppose they, in their turn, have that idea; then life's never really lived, is it?--always just passed on, always _put off_." they had talked of that at some length. "certainly i want my children to have more than i have," annie said. "i am working that they may. but in that working for them i'm not going to let go of the fact that i count too. now's my only chance," she finished in that grim little way as one not afraid to be hard. thinking back to that it seemed to ruth a bigger mother feeling than the old one. it was not the sort of maternal feeling to hem in the mother and oppress the children. it was love in freedom--love that did not hold in or try to hold in. it would develop a sense of the preciousness of life. it did not glorify self-sacrifice--that insidious foe to the fullness of living. thinking of that, and going out from that to other things, she sat down on a log by the roadside, luxuriating in the opulence and freshness of the world that may morning, newly tuned to life, vibrant with that same fresh sense of it, glad gratefulness in return to it, that comes after long sickness, after imprisonment. the world was full of singing birds that morning,--glorious to be in a world of singing birds! the earth smelled so good! there were plum trees in bloom behind her; every little breeze brought their fragrance. the grass under her feet was springy--the world was vibrant, beautiful, glad. the earth seemed so strong, so full of still unused powers, so ready to give. she sat there a long time; she had the courage this morning to face the facts of her life. she was eager to face them, to understand them that she might go on understandingly. she had the courage to face the facts relating to herself and stuart. that was a thing she had not dared do. with them, love _had_ to last, for love was all they had. they had only each other. they did not dare let themselves think of such a thing as the love between them failing. well, it had not failed; but she let herself see now how greatly it had changed. there was something strangely freeing in just letting herself see it. of course there had been change; things always changed. love changed within marriage--she did not know why she should expect it to be different with her. but in the usual way--within marriage--it would matter less for there would be more ways of adapting one's self to the changing. then one could reach out into new places in life, gaining new channels, taking on new things as old ones slipped away, finding in common interests, common pleasures, the new adjustment for feeling. but with them life had seemed to shut right down around them. and they had never been able to relax in the reassuring sense of the lastingness of their love. she had held herself tense in the idea that there was no change, would be none. she had a feeling now of having tried too hard, of being tired through long trying. there was relief in just admitting that she was tired. and so she let herself look at it now, admitting that she had been clutching at a vanished thing. it would have been different, she felt, had the usual channels of living been opened to them. then together they could have reached out into new experiences. their love had been real--great. related to living, surely it could have remained the heart of life. her seeing now that much of the life had gone out of it did not bear down upon her with the great sadness she would have expected. she knew now that in her heart she had known for a long time that passion had gone. facing it was easier than refusing to see. it ceased to be a terrible thing once one looked at it. of this she was sure: love should be able to be a part of the rest of life; the big relationship, but one among others; the most intense interest, but one with other interests. unrooted, detached, it might for the time be the more intense, but it had less ways of saving itself. if simply, naturally, they could have grown into the common life she felt they might have gone on without too much consciousness of change, growing into new things as old ones died away, half unconsciously making adjustments, doubtless feeling something gone but in the sharing of new things not left desolate through that sense of the passing of old ones. frightened by the thought of having nothing else, they had tried too hard. she was tired; she believed that stuart too was tired. there was a certain tired tenderness in her thinking of him. dear stuart, he loved easy pleasant living. it seemed he was not meant for the too great tests, for tragically isolated love. she knew that he had never ceased to miss the things he had let go--his place among men, the stimulus of the light, pleasant social relationships with women. he was meant for a love more flexibly related to living, a love big and real but fitted more loosely, a little more carelessly, to life. there was always so deep a contrition for his irritations with her. the whole trouble was indicated right there, that the contrition should be all out of proportion to the offence. it would have been better had he felt more free to be irritated; one should not have to feel frightened at a little bit of one's own bad temper--appalled at crossness, at hours of ennui. driving them back together after every drifting apart all of that made for an intensity of passion--passion whipped to life by fear. but that was not the way to grow into life. flames kindled by fear made intense moments but after a time left too many waste places between them and the lives of men. today her hope for the future was in the opening of new places. she was going back with new vision, new courage. they must not any longer cling together in their one little place, coming finally to actual resentment of one another for the enforced isolation. they must let themselves go out into living, dare more, trust more, lose that fear of rebuff, hope for more from life, _claim_ more. as she rose and started towards home there was a new spring in her step. for her part, she was through with that shrinking back! she hoped she could bring stuart to share her feeling, could inspire in him this new trust, new courage that had so stimulated and heartened her. her hope for their future lay there. climbing a hill she came in sight of the little city which they had given up, for which they had grieved. well, they had grieved too much, she resolutely decided now. there were wider horizons than the one that shut down upon that town. she was not conquered! she would not be conquered. she stood on the hilltop exulting in that sense of being free. she had been a weakling to think her life all settled! only cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for the past. love was the great and beautiful wonder--but surely one should not stay with it in the place where it found one. why, loving should light the way! far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now that love should open life to one. whether one kept it or whether one lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. she had been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to grant that it had failed. but now it seemed that it failed if it did not leave her bigger than it had found her. her eyes filled in response to the stern beauty of that. not that one stay with love in the same place, but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it send one on. eyes still dimmed with the feeling of it, she stood looking as if in a final letting go at that town off there on the bend of the river. it became to her the world of shut-in people, people not going on, people who loved and never saw the meaning of love, whose experiences were not as wings to carry them, but as walls shutting them in. she was through grieving for those people. she was going on--past them--so far beyond them that her need for them would fall away. she was conscious of an approaching horse and buggy and stepped aside; then walked on, so aglow with her own thoughts that a passing by did not break in upon her. she did not even know that the girl in the run-about had stopped her horse. at the cry: "oh--i'm so glad!" she was as startled as if she had thought herself entirely alone. it was a big effort to turn, to gather herself together and speak. she had been so far away, so completely possessed that it took her an instant to realize that the girl leaning eagerly toward her was mildred woodbury. mildred was moving over on the seat, inviting her to get in. "i'm so glad!" she repeated. "i went to mrs. herman's, and was so disappointed to miss you. i thought maybe i'd come upon you somewhere," she laughed gladly, though not without embarrassment. there was a moment of wanting to run away, of really considering it. she knew now--had remembered, realized--what it was about mildred. chapter twenty-five her instinct to protect herself from this young girl was the thing that gained composure for her. at first it was simply one of those physical instincts that draw us back from danger, from pain; and then she threw the whole force of her will to keeping that semblance of composure. her instinct was not to let reserves break down, not to show agitation; to protect herself by never leaving commonplace ground. it was terribly hard--this driving back the flood-tide of feeling and giving no sign of the struggle, the resentment. it was as if every nerve had been charged to full life and then left there outraged. but she could do it; she could appear pleasantly surprised at mildred's having come to take her for a drive, could talk along about the little things that must be her shield against the big ones. something in her had gone hard in that first moment of realizing who mildred was. she was not going to be driven back again! and so she forced herself to talk pleasantly of the country through which they went, of mildred's horse, of driving and riding. but it was impossible not to grow a little interested in this young mildred woodbury. she sat erect and drove in a manner that had the little tricks of worldliness, but was somehow charming in spite of its artificiality. ruth was thinking that mildred was a more sophisticated young person than she herself had been at that age. she wondered if sophistication was increasing in the world, if there was more of it in freeport than there used to be. they talked of ruth's father, of mildred's people, of the neighborhood both knew so well. from that it drifted to the social life of the town. she was amused, rather sadly amused, at mildred's air of superiority about it; it seemed so youthful, so facile. listening to mildred now pictures flashed before her: she and edith lawrence--girls of about fifteen--going over to the woodburys' and eagerly asking, "could we take the baby out, mrs. woodbury?" "now you'll be very, very careful, girls?" mrs. woodbury would say, wrapping mildred all up in soft pink things. "oh, _yes_, mrs. woodbury," they would reply, a little shocked that she could entertain the thought of their not being careful. and then they would start off cooing girlish things about the cunning little darling. this was that baby--in spite of her determination to hold aloof from mildred there was no banishing it; no banishing the apprehension that grew with the girl's talk. for mildred seemed so much a part of the very thing for which she had this easy scorn. something in the way she held the lines made it seem she would not belong anywhere else. she looked so carefully prepared for the very life for which she expressed disdain. she tried to forget the things that were coming back to her--how mildred would gleefully hold up her hands to have her mittens put on when she and edith were about to take her out, and tried too to turn the conversation--breaking out with something about mrs. herman's children. but it became apparent that mildred was not to be put off. everything ruth would call up to hold her off she somehow forced around to an approach for what she wanted to say. and then it came abruptly, as if she were tired of trying to lead up to it. "i've been wanting to see you--ruth," she hesitated over the name, but brought it out bravely, and it occurred to ruth then that mildred had not known how to address her. "when i heard you were here," she added, "i was determined you shouldn't get away without my seeing you." ruth looked at her with a little smile, moved, in spite of herself, by the impetuousness of the girl's tone, by something real that broke through the worldly little manner. "i don't feel as the rest of them do." she flushed and said it hurriedly, a little tremulously; and yet there was something direct and honest in her eyes, as if she were going to say it whether it seemed nice taste or not. it reached ruth, went through her self-protective determination not to be reached. her heart went out to mildred's youth, to this appeal from youth, moved by the freshness and realness beneath that surface artificiality, saddened by this defiance of one who, it seemed, could so little understand how big was the thing she defied, who seemed so much the product of the thing she scorned, so dependent on what she was apparently in the mood to flout. "i don't know that they are to be blamed for their feeling, mildred," she answered quietly. "oh, yes, they are!" hotly contended the girl. "it's because they don't understand. it's because they _can't_ understand!" the reins had fallen loose in her hand; the whip sagged; she drooped--that stiff, chic little manner gone. she turned a timid, trusting face to ruth--a light shining through troubled eyes. "it's love that counts, isn't it,--ruth?" she asked, half humble, half defiant. it swept ruth's heart of everything but sympathy. her hand closed over mildred's. "what is it, dear?" she asked. "just what is it?" mildred's eyes filled. ruth could understand that so well--what sympathy meant to a feeling shut in, a feeling the whole world seemed against. "it's with me--as it was with you," the girl answered very low and simply. "it's--like that." ruth shut her eyes for an instant; they were passing something fragrant; it came to her--an old fragrance--like something out of things past; a robin was singing; she opened her eyes and looked at mildred, saw the sunshine finding gold in the girl's hair. the sadness of it--of youth and suffering, of pain in a world of beauty, that reach of pain into youth, into love, made it hard to speak. "i'm sorry, dear," was all she could say. they rode a little way in silence; ruth did not know how to speak, what to say; and then mildred began to talk, finding relief in saying things long held in. ruth understood that so well. oh, she understood it all so well--the whole tumult of it, the confused thinking, the joy, the passion,--the passion that would sacrifice anything, that would let the whole world go. here it was again. she knew just what it was. "so you can see," mildred was saying, "what you have meant to me." yes, she could see that. they were driving along the crest of the hills back of the town. mildred pointed to it. "that town isn't the whole of the world!" she exclaimed passionately, after speaking of the feeling that was beginning to form there against herself. "what do i care?" she demanded defiantly. "it's not the whole of the world!" ruth looked at it. she could see the lawrence house--it had a high place and was visible from all around; mildred's home was not far from there; her own old home was only a block farther on. she had another one of those flashing pictures from things far back: mrs. woodbury--mildred's mother--standing at the door with a bowl of chicken broth for mrs. holland--ruth's mother--who was ill. "i thought maybe this would taste good," she could hear mrs. woodbury saying. strange how things one had forgotten came back. other things came back as for a moment she continued to look at the town where both she and mildred had been brought up, where their ties were. then she turned back to mildred, to this other girl who, claimed by passionate love, was in the mood to let it all go. "but that's just what it is, mildred," she said. "the trouble is, it _is_ the whole of the world." "it's the whole of the social world," she answered the look of surprise. "it's just the same everywhere. and it's astonishing how united the world is. you give it up in one place--you've about given it up for every place." "then the whole social world's not worth it!" broke from mildred. "it's not worth--enough." ruth found it hard to speak; she did not know what to say. she had a flashing sense of the haphazardness of life, of the power, the flame this found in mildred that the usual experiences would never have found, of how, without it, she would doubtless have developed much like the other girls of her world--how she might develop because of it--how human beings were shaped by chance. she looked at mildred's face--troubled, passionate, a confused defiance, and yet something real there looking through the tumult, something flaming, something that would fight, a something, she secretly knew, more flaming, more fighting, than might ever break to life in mildred again. and then she happened to look down at the girl's feet--the very smart low shoes of dull kid, perfectly fitted, high arched--the silk stockings, the slender ankle. they seemed so definitely feet for the places prepared, for the easier ways, not fitted for going a hard way alone. it made her feel like a mother who would want to keep a child from a way she herself knew as too hard. "but what are you going to put in the place of that social world, mildred?" she gently asked. "there must be something to fill its place. what is that going to be?" "love will fill its place!" came youth's proud, sure answer. ruth was looking straight ahead; the girl's tone had thrilled her--that faith in love, that courage for it. it was so youthful!--so youthfully sure, so triumphant in blindness. youth would dare so much--youth knew so little. she did not say anything; she could not bear to. "love can fill its place!" mildred said again, as if challenging that silence. and as still ruth did not speak she demanded, sharply, "can't it?" ruth turned to her a tender, compassionate face, too full of feeling, of conflict, to speak. slowly, as if she could not bear to do it, she shook her head. mildred looked just dazed for a moment, then so much as if one in whom she had trusted, on whom she had counted for a great deal had failed her that ruth made a little gesture as if to say it was not that, as if to say she was sorry it seemed like that. mildred did not heed it. "but it has with you," she insisted. "it has _not_!" leaped out the low, savage answer that startled the woman from whom it came. "it has not!" she repeated fiercely. her rage was against the feeling that seemed to trick one like that; the way love _got_ one--made one believe that nothing else in the world mattered but just itself. it wasn't fair! it was cruel! that made her savage--savage for telling mildred the other side of it, the side love blinded her too. in that moment it seemed that love was a trap; it took hold of one and persuaded one things were true that weren't true! just then it seemed a horrible thing the way love got one through lovely things, through beauty and tenderness, through the sweetest things--then did as it pleased with the life it had stolen in upon. fiercely she turned the other face, told mildred what love in loneliness meant, what it meant to be shut away from one's own kind, what that hurting of other lives did to one's self, what isolation made of one, what it did to love. things leaped out that she had never faced, had never admitted for true; the girl to whom she talked was frightened and she was frightened herself--at what she told of what she herself had felt, feeling that she had never admitted she had had. she let the light in on things kept in the dark even in her own soul--a cruel light, a light that spared nothing, that seemed to find a savage delight in exposing the things deepest concealed. she would show the other side of it! there was a certain gloating in doing it--getting ahead of a thing that would trick one. and then that spent itself as passion will and she grew quieter and talked in a simple way of what loneliness meant, of what longing for home meant, of what it meant to know one had hurt those who had always been good to one, who loved and trusted. she spoke of her mother--of her father, and then she broke down and cried and mildred listened in silence to those only half-smothered sobs. when ruth was able to stop she looked up, timidly, at mildred. something seemed to have gone out of the girl--something youthful and superior, something radiant and assured. she looked crumpled up. the utter misery in her eyes, about her mouth, made ruth whisper: "i'm sorry, mildred." mildred looked at her with a bitter little laugh and then turned quickly away. ruth had never felt more wretched in her life than when, without mildred having said a word, they turned in the gate leading up to annie's. she wanted to say something to comfort. she cast around for something. "maybe," she began, "that it will come right--anyway." again mildred only laughed in that hard little way. when they were half way up the hill mildred spoke, as if, in miserable uncertainty, thinking things aloud. "mrs. blair has asked me to go to europe with her for the summer," she said, in a voice that seemed to have no spring left in it. "she's chaperoning a couple of girls. i could go with them." "oh, _do_, mildred!" cried ruth. "do that!" it seemed to her wonderfully tender, wonderfully wise, of edith. she was all eagerness to induce mildred to go with edith. but there was no answering enthusiasm. mildred drooped. she did not look at ruth. "i could do that," she said in a lifeless way, as if it didn't matter much what she did. when they said good-by mildred's broken smile made ruth turn hastily away. but she looked back after the girl had driven off, wanting to see if she was sitting up in that sophisticated little way she had. but mildred was no longer sitting that way. she sagged, as if she did not care anything about how she sat. ruth stood looking after her, watching as far as she could see her, longing to see her sit up, to see her hold the whip again in that stiff, chic little fashion. but she did not do it; her horse was going along as if he knew there was no interest in him. ruth could not bear it. if only the whip would go up at just that right little angle! but it did not. she could not see the whip at all--only the girl's drooping back. chapter twenty-six when mildred had passed from sight ruth slowly turned toward the house. she noticed the vegetable wagon there in front of the barn--so annie had come home. she turned away from the kitchen door she had been about to enter; she did not want to talk to annie just then. but when she had passed around to the other side of the house she saw, standing with their backs to her in the little flower garden, annie and a woman she was astonished to recognize as her sister harriett. she made a move toward the little hill that rose behind the house. she would get away! but mr. herman appeared just then at the top of the hill. he saw her; he must see that she had seen the others. so she would have to stay and talk to harriett. it seemed a thing she absolutely could not do. it had come to seem she was being made some kind of sport of, as if the game were to buffet her about between this feeling and that, let her gain a little ground, get to a clearing, then throw her back to new confusion. that day, anyway, she could bear no more of it. it was hard to reply to mr. herman when he called something to her. annie heard their voices and then she had to join her and harriett. "why, ruth!" annie cried in quick solicitude upon seeing ruth's face, "you went too far. how hateful of you," she laughed, as if feeling there was something to laugh off, "to come looking like this just when i have been boasting to your sister about how we've set you up!" "you do look tired, ruth," said harriett compassionately. harriett said she had come for a little visit with ruth, and annie proposed that they go up under the trees at the crest of the hill back of the house. it was where ruth had sat with annie just the day before. as she sat down there now it seemed it was ages ago since she and annie had sat there tying the asparagus into bunches. annie had come up with some buttermilk for them. as she handed ruth hers she gave her shoulder an affectionate little pat, as if, looking at her face, she wanted to tell her to take heart. then she went back to the house, leaving the two sisters alone. they drank their buttermilk, talking of it, of annie's place, of her children. in a languid way ruth was thinking that it was good of harriett to come and see her; had she come the day before, she would have been much pleased. in that worn way, she was pleased now; doubtless it had been hard for harriett to come--so busy, and not well. perhaps her coming meant real defiance. anyway, it was good of her to come. she tried to be nice to harriett, to talk about things as if she liked having her there to talk with. but that final picture of mildred's drooping back was right there before her all the time. as she talked with harriett about the price of butter and eggs--the living to be had in selling them, she was all the while seeing mildred--mildred as she had been when ruth got into the buggy; as she said, "love can take its place!"--as she was when she drove away. she had a sick feeling of having failed; she had failed the very thing in mildred to which she had elected to be faithful in herself. and _why_? what right had one to say that another was not strong enough? how did one _know_? and yet she wanted mildred to go with edith; she believed that she would--now. that blighting sense of failure, of having been unfaithful, could not kill a feeling of relief. did it mean that she was, after all, just like edith? had her venturing, her experience, left her much as she would have been without it? just before meeting mildred she was strong in the feeling of having gained something from the hard way she had gone alone. she was going on! that was what it had shown her--that one was to go on. then she had to listen to mildred--and she was back with the very people she had felt she was going on past--one with those people she had so triumphantly decided were not worth her grieving for them. she had been so sure--so radiantly sure, happy in that sense of having, at last, found herself, of being rid of fears and griefs and incertitudes. then she met mildred. it came to her then--right while she was talking with harriett about what flora copeland was going to do now that the house would be broken up--that it was just that thing which kept the world conservative. it was fear for others. it was that feeling she had when she looked down at mildred's feet. one did not have that feeling when one looked at one's own feet. fear of pain for others was quite unlike fear for one's self. courage for one's self one could gain; in the fires of the heart that courage was forged. when the heart was warm with the thing one wanted to do one said no price in pain could be too great. but courage for others had to be called from the mind. it was another thing. when it was some one else,--one younger, one who did not seem strong--then one distrusted the feeling and saw large the pain. one _knew_ one could bear pain one's self. there was something not to be borne in thinking of another's pain. that was why, even among venturers, few had the courage to speak for venturing. there was something in humankind--it was strongest in womankind--made them, no matter how daring for themselves, cautious for others. and perhaps that, all crusted round with things formal and lifeless, was the living thing at the heart of the world's conservatism. harriett was talking of the monument cyrus thought there should be at the cemetery; ruth listened and replied--seemed only tired, and all the while these thoughts were shaping themselves in her inner confusion and disheartenment. she would rather have stopped thinking of it, but could not. she had been too alive when checked; there was too much emotion in that inner confusion. she wondered if she would ever become sure of anything; if she would ever have, and keep, that courage of confidence which she had thought, for just a few radiant moments, she had. she would like to talk to annie about it, but she had a feeling that she was not fit to talk to annie. annie was not one of those to run back at the first thought of another's pain. that, too, annie could face. better let them in for pain than try to keep them from life, annie would say. she could hear her saying it--saying that even that concern for others was not the noblest thing. fearing would never set the world free, would be annie's word. not to keep people in the safe little places, but to shape a world where there need not be safe little places! while she listened to what harriett said of how much such a monument as cyrus wanted would cost, she could hear annie's sharp-edged little voice making those replies to her own confusion, could hear her talking of a sterner, braver people--hardier souls--who would one day make a world where fear was not the part of kindness. annie would say that it was not the women who would protect other women who would shape the future in which there need not be that tight little protection. she sighed heavily and pushed back her hair with a gesture of great weariness. "poor ruth!" it made harriett murmur, "you haven't really got rested at all, have you?" she pulled herself up and smiled as best she could at her sister, who had spoken to her with real feeling. "i did," she said with a little grimace that carried harriett back a long way, "then i got so rested i got to thinking about things--then i got tired again." she flushed after she had said it, for that was the closest they had come to the things they kept away from. "poor ruth," harriett murmured again. "and i'm afraid," she added with a little laugh, "that now i'm going to make you more tired." "oh, no," said ruth, though she looked at her inquiringly. "because," said harriett, "i've come to talk to you about something, ruth." ruth's face made her say, "i'm sorry, ruth, but i'm afraid it's the only chance. you see you're going away day after tomorrow." ruth only nodded; it seemed if she spoke she would have to cry out what she felt--that in common decency she ought to be let alone now as any worn-out thing should be let alone, that it was not fair--humane--to talk to her now. but of course she could not make that clear to harriett, and with it all she did wonder what it was harriett had to say. so she only looked at her sister as if waiting. harriett looked away from her for an instant before she began to speak: ruth's eyes were so tired, so somber; there was something very appealing about her face as she waited for the new thing that was to be said to her. "i have felt terribly, ruth," harriett finally began, as if forcing herself to do so, "about the position in which we are as a family. i'll not go into what brought it about--or anything like that. i haven't come to talk about things that happened long ago, haven't come with reproaches. i've just come to see if, as a family, we can't do a little better about things as they are now." she paused, but ruth did not speak; she was very still now as she waited. she did not take her eyes from harriett's face. "mother and father are gone, ruth," harriett went on in a low voice, "and only we children are left. it seems as if we ought to do the best we can for each other." her voice quivered and ruth's intense eyes, which did not leave her sister's face, dimmed. she continued to sit there very still, waiting. "i had a feeling," harriett went on, "that father's doing what he did was as a--was as a sign, ruth, that we children should come closer together. as if father couldn't see his way to do it in his lifetime, but did this to leave word to us that we were to do something. i took it that way," she finished simply. ruth's eyes had brimmed over; but still she did not move, did not take her eyes from her sister's face. she was so strange--as if going out to harriett and yet holding herself ready at any moment to crouch back. "and so," harriett pursued, all the while in that low voice, "that is the way i talked to edgar and cyrus. i didn't bring ted into it," she said, more in her natural way, "because he's just a boy, and then--" she paused as if she had got into something that embarrassed her--"well, he and cyrus not feeling kindly toward each other just now i thought i could do better without ted." ruth flushed slightly at the mention of the feeling between her brothers; but still she did not speak, scarcely moved. harriett was silent a moment. "that's one of the reasons," she took it up, "why i am anxious to do something to bring us together. i don't want ted to be feeling this way toward cyrus. and edgar, too, he seems to be very bitter against. it makes him defiant. it isn't good for him. i think ted has a little disposition to be wild," she said in a confidential tone. ruth spoke then. "i hadn't noticed any such disposition," she said simply. "well, he doesn't go to church. it seems to me he doesn't--accept things as he ought to." ruth said nothing to that, only continued to look at her sister, waiting. "so i talked to them," harriett went on. "of course, ruth, there's no use pretending it was easy. you know how cyrus feels; he isn't one to change much, you know." she turned away and her hand fumbled in a little patch of clover. "but we do want to do something, ruth," she came back to it. "we all feel it's terrible this way. so this is what edgar proposed, and cyrus agreed to it, and it seems to me the best thing to do." she stopped again, then said, in a blurred sort of voice, fumbling with the clover and not looking at ruth: "if you will leave the--your--if you will leave the man you are--living with, promising never to see him again,--if you will give that up and come home we will do everything we can to stand by you, go on as best we can as if nothing had happened. we will try to--" she looked up--and did not go on, but flushed uncomfortably at sight of ruth's face--eyes wide with incredulity, with something like horror. "you don't _mean_ that, do you, harriett?" ruth asked in a queer, quiet voice. "but we wanted to do something--" harriett began, and then again halted, halted before the sudden blaze of anger in ruth's eyes. "and you thought _this_--" she broke off with a short laugh and sat there a moment trying to gain control of herself. when she spoke her voice was controlled but full of passion. "i don't think," she said, "that i've ever known of a more monstrous--a more insulting proposal being made by one woman to another!" "insulting?" faltered harriett. ruth did not at once reply but sat there so strangely regarding her sister. "so this is your idea of life, is it, harriett?" she began in the manner of one making a big effort to speak quietly. "this is your idea of marriage, is it? here is the man i have lived with for eleven years. for eleven years we've met hard things together as best we could--worked, borne things together. let me tell you something, harriett. if _that_ doesn't marry people--tell _me_ something. if that doesn't marry people--just tell me, harriett, _what does_?" "but you know you're not married, ruth," harriett replied, falteringly--for ruth's burning eyes never left her sister's face. "you know--really--you're not married. you know he's not divorced, ruth. he's not your husband. he's marion averley's." "you think so?" ruth flung back at her. "you really think so, do you, harriett? after those years together--brought together by love, united by living, by effort, by patience, by courage--i ask you again, harriett,--if the things there have been between stuart williams and me can't make a marriage real--_what can_?" "the law is the law," murmured harriett. "he is married to her. he never was married to you." ruth began hotly to speak, but checked it with a laugh and sat there regarding her sister in silence. when she spoke after that her voice was singularly calm. "i'm glad to know this, harriett; glad to know just what your ideas are--yours and edgar's and cyrus's. you have done something for me, after all. for i've grieved a great deal, harriett, for the things i lost, and you see i won't do that any more. i see now--see what those things are. i see that i don't want them." harriett had colored at that, and her hand was fumbling in the little patch of clover. when she looked up at ruth there were tears in her eyes. "but what could we do, ruth?" she asked, gently, a little reproachfully. "we wanted to do something--what else could we do?" her tone touched ruth. after all, what else--harriett being as she was--could she do? monstrous as the proposal seemed to her, it was harriett's way of trying to make things better. she had come in kindness, and she had not been kindly received. it was in a different voice that ruth began: "harriett, don't you see, when you come to look at it, that i couldn't do this? down in your heart--way down in your heart, harriett--don't you see that i couldn't? don't you see that if i left stuart now to do the best he could by himself, left him, i mean, for this reason--came creeping back myself into a little corner of respectability--the crumbs that fall from the tables of respectability--! you _know_, harriett holland," she flamed, "that if i did that i'd be less a woman, not a better one?" "i--i knew it would be hard," granted harriett, unhappily. "of course--after such a long time together--but you're not married to him, ruth," she said again, wretchedly. "why"--her voice fell almost to a whisper--"you're living in--adultery." "well if i am," retorted ruth--"forgive me for saying it, harriett--that adultery has given me more decent ideas of life than marriage seems to have given you!" her feeling about it grew stronger as the day wore on. that evening she got the woodburys' on the telephone and asked for mildred. she did not know just what she would say, she had no plan, but she wanted to see mildred again. she was told, however, that mildred had gone to chicago on a late afternoon train. at the last minute she had decided to go to europe with mrs. blair, the servant who was speaking said, and had gone over to chicago to see about clothes. ruth hung up the receiver and sat looking into the telephone. then she laughed. so mildred had been "saved." chapter twenty-seven on the afternoon of her last day in freeport ruth took a long tramp with deane. she was going that night; she was all ready for leaving when deane came out and asked if he couldn't take her for a ride in his car. she suggested a walk instead, wanting the tramp before the confinement of travelling. so they cut through the fields back of annie's and came out on a road well known to them of old. they tramped along it a long way, ruth speaking of things she remembered, talking of old drives along that road which had been a favorite with all of their old crowd. they said things as they felt like it, but there was no constraint in their silences. it had always been like that with her and deane. finally they sat down on a knoll a little back from the road, overlooking pastures and fields of blowing green. "i love these little hills," ruth murmured; "so many little hills," she laughed affectionately--"and so green and blowy and fruitful. with us it's a great flat valley--a plain, and most of it dry--barren. you have to do such a lot to make things grow. here things just love to grow. and trees!" she laughed. "but mountains there," suggested deane. "yes, but a long way off from us, and sometimes they seem very stern, deane. i've so many times had the feeling i couldn't get beyond them. sometimes they have seemed like other things i couldn't hope to cross." after a little she said: "these little hills are so gentle; this country so open." deane laughed shortly. "yes, the hills are gentle. the country is open enough!" she laughed too. "it is beautiful country, deane," she said, as if that were the thing mattering just then. there was an attractive bit of pasture just ahead of them: a brook ran through it--a lovely little valley between two of those gentle hills. deane was lying on the grass a little way from her--sprawled out in much his old awkward way, his elbow supporting his head, hat pulled down over his eyes. it was good to be with him this last afternoon. it seemed so much as it used to be; in that moment it was almost as if the time in between had not been. it was strange the way things could fall away sometimes--great stretches of time fall away and seem, for a little while, to leave things as they had been long before. "well, ruth," deane said at last, "so you're going back." "going back, deane," she answered. so much they did not say seemed to flow into that; the whole thing was right there, opened, living, between them. it had always been like that with her and deane. it was not necessary to say things out to him, as it was with everyone else. their thinking, feeling, seemed to come together naturally, of itself; not a matter of direction. she looked at deane stretched out there on the grass--older, different in some ways--today he looked as if something was worrying him--yet with it all so much the deane of old. it kept recurring as strange that, after all there had been in between, they should be together again, and that it could be as it used to be. just as of old, a little thing said could swing them to thinking, feeling, of which perhaps they did not speak, but which they consciously shared. many times through the years there had come times when she wanted nothing so much as to be with deane, wanted to say things to him that, she did not know just why, there would have been no satisfaction in saying to stuart. even things she had experienced with stuart she could, of the two, more easily have talked of with deane. it was to deane she could have talked of the things stuart made her feel. within a certain circle stuart was the man to whom she came closest; somehow, with him, she did not break from that circle. she had always had that feeling of deane's understanding what she felt, even though it was not he who inspired the feeling. that seemed a little absurd to her--to live through things with one man, and have what that living made of her seem to swing her to some one else. thinking of their unique companionship, which time and distance and circumstances had so little affected, she looked at deane as he lay there near her on the grass. she was glad to have this renewal of their old friendship, which had always remained living and dear to her. and now she was going away for another long time. it was possible she would never see him again. it made her wish she could come closer to what were now the big things in his life. "i'm so glad, deane," she said, somewhat timidly, "about you." he pushed back his hat and looked up in inquiry. "so glad you got married, goose!" she laughed. at his laugh for that she looked at him in astonishment, distinctly shocked. he was chewing a long spear of grass. for a moment he did not speak. then, "amy's gone home," he said shortly. ruth could only stare at him, bewildered. he was running his hand over the grass near him. she noticed that it moved nervously. and she remarked the puckered brows that had all along made her think he was worried about something that day--she had thought it must be one of his cases. and there was that compression of the lips that she knew of old in deane when he was hurt. just then his face looked actually old, the face of a man who has taken hard things. "yes, amy's gone home for a little while," he said in a more matter of fact voice, but a voice that had a hard ring. he added: "her mother's not well," and looked up at ruth with that characteristic little screwing up of his face, as if telling her to make what she could of it. "why, that's too bad," she stammered. again he looked up at her in that queer way of mixed feeling, his face showing the marks of pain and yet a touch of teasing there too, mocking her confusion, looking like a man who was suffering and yet a little like a teasing boy. then he abruptly pulled his hat down over his eyes again, as if to shade them from the sun, and lay flat on his back, one heel kicking at the grass. she could not see his eyes, but she saw his mouth; that faint touch of pleasure in teasing which had perversely lurked in pain had gone now; that twist of his compressed lips was pure pain. she was utterly bewildered, and so deeply concerned that she had to get ahead of deane some way, not let him shut himself in with a thing that made his mouth look as if he was bearing physical pain. and then a new thought shot into her concern for him, a thought that seemed too preposterous to entertain, but that would not go away. it did not seem a thing she could speak of; but as she looked at deane, his mouth more natural now, but the suggestion of pain left there, she had a sudden new sense of all that deane had done for her. she couldn't leave things like this, no matter how indelicate she might seem. "deane," she began timidly, "i don't--in any way--for any reason--make things hard for you, do i?" for the moment he did not speak, did not push his hat back so she could see his eyes. then she saw that he was smiling a little; she had a feeling that he was not realizing she could see the smile; it was as if smiling to himself at something that bitterly amused him. it made her feel rather sick; it let that preposterous idea spread all through her. then he sat up and looked quizzically at her. "well, ruth, you don't expect me to deny, do you, that you did make a thing or two rather hard?" he said it with that touch of teasing. "was i so magnanimous," he added dryly, "that i let you lose sight of the fact that i wanted you?" ruth colored and felt baffled; she was sure he knew well enough that was not what she referred to. he looked at her, a little mockingly, a little wistfully, as if daring her to go on. "i wasn't talking about things long ago, deane," she said. "i wondered--" she hesitated, looking at him in appeal, as if asking him to admit he understood what she meant without forcing her to say such a thing. for a minute he let the pain look out of his eyes at her, looked for all the world as if he wanted her to help him. then quickly he seemed to shut himself in. he smiled at her in a way that seemed to say, half mockingly, "i've gone!" he hurt her a little; it was hard to be with deane and feel there was something he was not going to let her help him with. and it made her sick at heart; for surely he knew what she was driving at, driving at and edging away from, and if he could have laughed at her fears wouldn't he have done so? she thought of all deane had done for her, borne for her. it would be bitter indeed if it were really true she was bringing him any new trouble. but how _could_ it be true? it seemed too preposterous; surely she must be entirely on the wrong track, so utterly wrong that he had no idea what it was she had in mind. as they sat there for a moment in silence she was full of that feeling of how much deane had done for her, of a longing to do something for him. gently she said: "i must have made things very hard for you, deane. the town--your friends--your people, because of me you were against them all. that does make things hard--to be apart from the people you are with." she looked at him, her face softened with affectionate regret, with a newly understanding gratitude. "i've not been very good for your life, have i, deane?" she said, more lightly, but her voice touched with wistfulness. he looked at her, as if willing to meet that, as if frankly considering it. "i can't say that you've been very good for my happiness, ruth," he laughed. and then he said simply, with a certain simple manliness, "but i should say, ruth, you have been very good for my life." his face contracted a little, as if with pain. that passed, and he went on in that simple way: "you see you made me think about things. it was because of you--through you--i came to think about things. that's good for our lives, isn't it?" that he said sternly, as if putting down something that had risen in him. "because of you i've questioned things, felt protest. why, ruth," he laughed, "if it hadn't been for you i might have taken things in the slick little way _they_ do,"--he waved a hand off toward the town. "so just see what i owe you!" he said, more lightly, as if leaving the serious things behind. then he began to speak of other things. it left ruth unsatisfied, troubled. and yet it seemed surely a woman would be proud of a man who had been as fine in a thing, as big and true and understanding, as deane had been with her. surely a woman would be proud of a man who had so loyally, at such great cost, been a woman's friend, who, because of friendship, because of fidelity to his own feeling, would stand out that way against others. she tried to think that, for she could not go back to what deane had left behind. and yet she could not forget that she had not met amy. they walked toward home talking quietly about things that happened to come up, more as if they were intimate friends who had constant meetings than as if they had been years apart and were about to part for what would probably be years more. but that consciousness was there underneath; it ruled the silences, made their voices gentler. it was very sweet to ruth, just before again leaving all home things behind, to be walking in the spring twilight with deane along that road they knew when they were boy and girl together. twilight was deepening to evening when they came to the hill from which they could see the town. they stood still looking off at it, speaking of the beauty of the river, of the bridge, of the strangeness of the town lights when there was still that faint light of day. and then they stood still and said nothing, looking off at that town where they had been brought up. it was beautiful from there, bent round a curve in the broad river, built upon hills. she was leaving it now--again leaving it. she had come home, and now she was going away again. and now she knew, in spite of her anger of the day before, in spite of all there had been to hurt her, in spite of all that had been denied her, that she was not leaving it in bitterness. in one sense she had not had much from her days back home; but in a real sense, she had had much. she looked at that town now with a feeling of new affection. she believed she would always have that feeling of affection for it. it stood to her for things gone--dear things gone; for youth's gladness, for the love of father and mother, for many happy things now left behind. but now that she had come back, had gone through those hard days, she was curiously freed from that town. she had this new affection for it in being freed of it. she would always love it because of what it had meant in the past, but love it as one does love a thing past. it seemed she had to come back to it to let it lose its hold on her. it was of the past, and she knew now that there was a future. what that future was to be she did not know, but she would turn from this place of the past with a new sense of the importance of the future. standing there with deane on the hilltop at evening, looking off at that town where they had both been brought up, she got a sense of the significance of the whole thing--the eleven years away, and the three years preceding those years; a sense too of the meaning of those days just past, those recent days at home when there were times of being blinded by the newly seen significance of those years of living. they had been hard days because things had been crowded so close; it had come too fast; currents had met too violently and the long way between cause and effect had been lighted by flashes too blinding. it had been like a great storm in which elements rush together. it had almost swept her down, but she had come through it and this was what she had brought out of it: a sense of life as precious, as worth anything one might have to pay for it, a stirring new sense of the future as adventure. she had been thinking of her life as defined, and now it seemed that the future was there, a beautiful untouched thing, a thing that was left, hers to do what she could with. somehow she had broken through, broken through the things that had closed in around her. a great new thing had happened to her: she was no longer afraid to face things! in those last few days she had been tossed, now this way, now that; it seemed she had rather been made a fool of, but things had got through to her--she was awake, alive, unafraid. something had been liberated in her. she turned to deane, who was looking with a somber steadiness ahead at the town. she touched his arm and he looked at her, amazed at her shining eyes, shining just as they used to when as a girl she was setting out for a good time, for some mischief, excitement. "well, anyway, deane," she said in a voice that seemed to brush everything else aside, "we're alive!" chapter twenty-eight the summer had gone by and ted holland, who had gone west with ruth in may, was back in freeport "breaking up the house." the place was offered for sale; things had to be cleared out in one way or another. what none of the children wanted was being sold to anybody who did happen to want it; what nobody wanted was to be given away to such people as had to take what they could get. and there was a great deal of it not even in the class for giving away; "just truck" ted kept callously calling it to harriett and their cousin flora. he whistled vigorously over some of the "truck,"--a worn dog's collar, an old pair of the queer kind of house shoes his mother wore, a spectacle case he had used to love to hear his father snap shut, dusty, leaky sofa-pillows that had bristled with newness in the "den" which was the delight of his sixteen-year-old heart. he kept saying to cousin flora that there was no end to the junk--old school readers, ruth's party slippers. just burn it all up, he said, in a crisp voice of efficiency; what was it good for, anyhow? certainly it had taught him a lesson. he'd never keep anything. they had been at it for a week--sorting, destroying, disbursing, scattering what a family's life through a generation had assembled, breaking up "the hollands." ted, in his own room that morning, around him the things he was going to put in his trunk for taking back west, admitted to himself that it was gruesome business. things were over; things at home were all over. this pulling to pieces drove that home hard. father and mother were gone and now "their stuff" was being got out of the way. after this there would not even be a place where the things they had used were. but he would be glad when they could get through with it; he was finding that there was something wrenching about things that were left, things that had been used and that now there was no longer any use for. the sight of them stabbed as no mere thinking about things could do. it was hard work throwing away "truck" that something seemed to cling to. it was hard to really _get_ it, he was thinking; a family lived in a place--seemed really a part of that place, an important part, perhaps; then things changed--people died, moved away, and that family simply _wasn't_ any more--and things went on just about the same. whistling, he put some shirts in his trunk, trying to fix his mind on how many new shirts he needed. he was going back west--to live, to work. not right where ruth was, in southwestern colorado, but in the country a little to the north. he and a fellow he had made friends with out there had bought an apple orchard--the money he was to have from his father would go into it and some of ruth's money--she wanted him to invest some of hers with his. it was that had made it possible for him to go in with this fellow. he was glad he could do it. the west had "got" him. he believed he could make things go. and he shouldn't have liked staying on in freeport. too many things were different for him to want to stay there. and too many things hurt. ruth had come to mean too much to him to let him be happy with people who felt as the people there did about her. he heard harriett downstairs and went down to speak to her about the price the stove man offered for the kitchen range. he remembered his mother's delight in that range as new; somehow it made him hate selling it for this pittance. harriett thought, however, that they had better let it go. one couldn't expect to get much for old things, and they didn't want it on their hands. they stayed there awhile in the dining-room, considering the problem of getting out of the way various other things there was no longer any use for. harriett was looking at the bay window. "if the woodburys take the house," she said, "they won't want these shades." "oh, no," replied ted, "they wouldn't be good enough for mildred." the woodburys had been there the night before to look at the house; they thought of buying it and mildred, just recently home from europe with edith blair--they had had a hard time getting home, because of the war--had, according to his own way of putting it, made ted tired. she was so fretful with her father and her ideas of how the place could perhaps be made presentable by being all done over had seemed to ted "pretty airy." he'd rather strangers had the house. he heard that mildred was going about a lot with bob gearing--one of the fellows in town who had money. ted pulled out his watch. "i want to get down and see deane at his noon office hours," he said. harriett turned from the window. "what have you got to see him about?" she asked sharply. "why--just see him," he answered in surprise. "why shouldn't i want to see him? haven't seen him since i got back. he'll want to hear about ruth." harriett seemed about to speak, then looked at the door of the kitchen, where a man was packing dishes. "i don't think i'd go to him for _that_," she said in lowered voice. ted looked at her in bewildered inquiry. "mrs. franklin has left him," she said shortly. she glanced at the kitchen door, then added in a voice that dropped still lower: "and the talk is that it's because of ruth." for a minute ted just stood staring at her. then his face was aflame with angry blood. "the _talk_!" he choked. "so that's the new 'talk'! well--" "s--h," warned harriett, and stepped over and closed the kitchen door. "i'd like to tell some of them what i think of their 'talk,'" he blazed. "oh, i'd like to tell some of these _warts_--" "ted!" she admonished, nodding her head toward the closed door. "what do i care? i'd like to have 'em hear me! i _want_ them to know that i--" he broke off and stood looking at her. "it doesn't seem to worry you much!" he thrust at her. "it did, ted," she said patiently. "i--it did." she looked so distressed, so worn as she said it that it mollified him until she added: "and still, you mustn't be too hard on people. a woman who has put herself in that position--" "there you go! 'put herself' in that position! put herself!" he jeered angrily, "in that position! as if the position was something ruth got into on purpose! and after all these years!--still talking about her 'position.' let me tell you something! i'll tell you the woman that's 'put herself' in the position i'd think would make her hate herself! that's mrs. williams! _she's_ the one that's 'put herself'--" "ted," she broke in sternly, "you must _not_!" but, "you make me _sick_!" he flung back at her and snatched hat and coat from the hall rack and left the house with a violent bang of the front door. he did not go down to deane's office. he stalked ahead, trying to hold down the bitter rage that was almost choking him. at one time when he looked up he saw that he was passing the house deane franklin had built before his marriage and noted that it was closed, all the shades were clear down. flower beds that had been laid out in the spring had been let go. it looked all wrong to see a new place so deserted, so run down. he remembered seeing deane working out in that yard in the spring. he hurried on by. his heart was hot with resentment--real hatred--of the town through which he walked. he loathed the place! he told himself. picking on ruth for _this_--ready to seize on her for anything that put her in bad! he had been with ruth for four months. he knew now just how things were with her. it gave him some idea of what it was she had gone through. it made him hate the town that had no feeling for her. he had walked out from town, not giving any thought to where he was going, just walking because he had to be doing something. he was about to cross a little bridge and stepped to the side of the road to let the vehicle right behind him get ahead. he stood glaring down at the creek and did not look up until he heard the wagon, just as it struck the bridge, stop. then he saw that it was a woman driving the market wagon and recognized her as mrs. herman, who had been so good to ruth. he stepped up eagerly to greet her; his face quickly cleared as he held out his hand and he smiled at her with a sudden boyish warmth that made her face--it was thin, tired--also light with pleasure. he kept shaking her hand; it seemed wonderfully good of her to have come along just then--she was something friendly in a hostile world. he went out eagerly, gratefully, to the something friendly. he had had about all he could stand of the other things, other feelings. he had told ruth that he would be sure to go and see mrs. herman. he got in with her now and they talked of ruth as they jogged through the country which he now noticed was aflame with the red and gold of october. he found himself chatting along about ruth just as if there was not this other thing about her--the thing that made it impossible to speak of her to almost anyone else in the town. it helped a lot to talk of ruth that way just then. he had seemed all clogged up with hatred and resentment, fury at the town made him want to do something to somebody, and pity for ruth made him feel sick in his sense of helplessness. now those ugly things, those choking, blinding things fell away in his talking about ruth to this woman who wanted to hear about her because she cared for her, who wanted to hear the simple little things about her that those other people had no interest in. he found himself chatting along about ruth and stuart--their house, their land, the field of peas into which they turned their sheep, the potatoes grown on their place that summer. he talked of artesian wells and irrigation, of riding western horses and of camping in the mountains. thinking of it afterwards he didn't know when he had talked so much. and of course, as everyone was doing those days, they talked about the war. she was fairly aflame with feeling about it. he rode all the way home with mrs. herman, stayed for lunch and then lingered about the place for an hour or more after that. he felt more like himself than he had at any time since coming home; he could forget a little about that desolate house that was no longer to be his home, and the simple friendly interest of this woman who was ruth's friend helped to heal a very sore place in his heart. but afterwards, back there at home where it was as if he was stripping dead years, what came over him was the feeling that things were not as they had seemed out there with mrs. herman. she was like that, but in being that way she was different from the whole world, at least from practically the whole of the world that he knew. working with old things cast him back to it all. he brooded over it there in the desolate place of things left behind; the resentful feeling toward the town, together with that miserable, helpless feeling of passionate pity for ruth settled down upon him and he could not throw it off. he saw deane that night; he saw him at the club where he went to play a game of pool, because he had to get away from the house for awhile. deane was sitting apart from the various groups, reading a magazine. ted stood in the door of that room looking at him a minute before deane looked up from the page. he saw that his face was thinner; it made him look older; indeed he looked a good deal older than when, just the spring before, ted used to see him working around that place that was all shut up now. and in that moment of scrutiny he saw something more than just looking older. if you didn't know deane you'd think--well, you'd think you didn't want to know him. and he looked as if he didn't care about your knowing him, either; he looked as if he'd thank people to let him alone. then he glanced up and saw ted and it seemed there were a few people he didn't want to have let him alone. but though he brightened on seeing him, looked like himself as he came quickly up to shake hands, he was not like himself in the talk that followed. it was as if he wanted to be, tried to be, but he was constrained in asking about the west, "the folks." he seemed to want to hear, yet he wasn't like himself, though ted could scarcely have defined the difference. he was short in what he said, cut things off sharply, and in little pauses his face would quickly settle to that moroseness. ted told of his own plans and deane was enthusiastic about that. then he fell silent a moment and after that said with intensity: "i wish _i_ was going to pull out from here!" "well, why don't you?" laughed ted, a little diffidently. "haven't got the gumption, i guess," said deane more lightly, and as he smiled gave ted the impression of trying to pull himself out from something. later in the evening a couple of men were talking of someone who was ill. "they have franklin, don't they?" was asked, and the answer came, "not any more. they've switched." walking home, he thought it had been said as if there was more to it, as if there had been previous talk about other people who had "switched." why, surely it couldn't be that because--for some reason or other--his wife had left him people were taking it out on his practice? that seemed not only too unfair but too preposterous. deane was the best doctor in town. what had his private affairs--no matter what the state of them--got to do with him as a physician? surely even _that_ town couldn't be as two-by-four as that! but it troubled him so persistently that next morning, when they were alone together in the attic, he brought himself to broach it to harriett, asking, in the manner of one interested in a thing because of its very absurdity, just what the talk was about ruth and the franklins. harriett went on to give the town's gossip of how deane had gone to indianapolis to see his wife, to try and make it right, but her people were strongly of the feeling that she had been badly treated and it had ended with her going away somewhere with her mother. harriett sighed heavily as she said she feared it was one of those things that would not be made right. "i call it the limit!" cried ted. "the woman must be a fool!" harriett sadly shook her head. "you don't understand women, ted," she said. "and i don't want to--if _that's_ what they're like!" he retorted hotly. "i'm afraid deane didn't--manage very well," sighed harriett. "who wants to manage such a little fool!" snapped ted. "now, ted--" she began, but "you make me _tired_, harriett!" he broke in passionately, and no more was said of it then. they worked in silence for awhile, ted raising a great deal of dust in the way he threw things about, harriett looking through a box of old books and papers, sighing often. harriett sighed a great deal, it seemed to ted, and yet something about harriett made him sorry for her. from across the attic he looked at her, awkwardly sitting on the floor, leaning against an old trunk. she looked tired and he thought with compassion and remorse for the rough way he had spoken to her, of how her baby was only a little more than two months old, that it must be hard for her to be doing the things she was doing that week. harriett had grown stout; she had that settled look of many women in middle life; she looked as if she couldn't change much--in any way. well, ted considered, he guessed harriett couldn't change much; she was just fixed in the way she was and that was all there was to it. but she did not look happy in those things she had settled into; she looked patient. she seemed to think things couldn't be any different. she was turning the pages of an old album she had taken from the box of her mother's things she was sorting. "oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice, bending over the pages. her tone brought ted over to her. "a picture of ruth as a baby," she murmured. he knelt down and looked over her shoulder into the dusty, old-fashioned album at a picture of a baby a year or so old whose face was all screwed up into a delighted laugh, tiny hands raised up and clenched in the intensity of baby excitement, baby abandonment to the joyousness of existence. "she _was_ like that," murmured harriett, a little tremulously. "she was the _crowingest_ baby!" they bent over it in silence for a minute. "seems pretty tickled about things, doesn't she?" said ted with a queer little laugh. harriett sighed heavily, but a moment later a tear had fallen down to one of the baby hands clenched in joyousness; the tear made him forgive the sigh, and when he saw her carefully take the picture from the album and put it in the pocket of her big apron, it was a lot easier, somehow, to go on working with harriett. it was even easy, after a little, to ask her what he wanted to know about deane's practice. it was true, she feared, that the talk had hurt him some. mrs. lawrence had stopped having him. it seemed she had taken a great fancy to amy franklin and felt keenly for her in this. she had made other people feel that deane had not been fair or kind and so there was some feeling against him. "i suppose she can't claim," ted cried hotly, "that it hurts him as a doctor?" "no," harriett began uncertainly, "except that a doctor--of course the personal side of things--" "now, there you _go_, harriett," he interrupted furiously. "you make me _tired_! if it wasn't that you've a sneaking feeling for ruth you'd fall for such a thing yourself!" "there's no use trying to talk to you, ted," said harriett patiently. two days later the house was about dismantled. ted was leaving the next day for the west. he was so sick of the whole thing that it had gone a little easier toward the last, blunted to everything but getting things done. when harriett, her eyes reddened, came downstairs with a _doll_ and wanted to know if he didn't think ruth might like to have it, saying that it was the doll ruth had loved all through her little girl days, and that she had just come upon it where her mother had carefully packed it away, he snatched the doll from her and crammed it into the kitchen stove and poked at it savagely to make it burn faster. then he slammed down the lid and looked ruthlessly up at harriett with, "we've had about enough of this sobbing around over _junk_!" harriett wanted him to come over to her house that last night but he said he'd either go home with one of the fellows or bring one of them home with him. she did not press it, knowing how little her brother and her husband liked each other. he went to the theatre that night with a couple of his friends. he was glad to go, for it was as good a way as he could think of for getting through the evening. they were a little early and he sat there watching the people coming in; it was what would be called a representative audience, the society of the town, the "best people" were there. they were people ted had known all his life; people who used to come to the house, people his own family had been one with; friends of his mother came in, associates of his father, old friends of ruth. that gathering of people represented the things in the town that he and his had been allied with. he watched them, thinking of his own going away, of how it would be an entirely new group of people he would come to know, would become one with, thinking of the hollands, how much they had been a part of it all and how completely they were out of it now. as he saw all these people, such pleasant, good-looking people, people he had known as far back as he could remember, in whose homes he had had good times, people his own people had been associated with always, a feeling of really hating to leave the town, of its being hard to go away, crept up in him. he talked along with the friend next him and watched people taking their seats with a new feeling for them all; now that he was actually leaving them he had a feeling of affection for the people with whom he sat in the theatre that night. he had known them always; they were "mixed up" with such a lot of old things. some people came into one of the boxes during the first act and when the lights went up for the intermission he saw that one of the women was stuart williams' wife. he turned immediately to his friends and began a lively conversation about the play, painfully wondering if the fellows he was with had seen her too, if they were wondering whether he had seen her, whether he was thinking about it. his feeling of gentle regret about leaving the town was struck away. he was glad this was his last night. always something like this! it was forever coming up, making him feel uncomfortable, different, making him wonder whether people were thinking about "it," whether they were wondering whether he was thinking about it. through the years he had grown used to seeing mrs. williams; he had become blunted to it; sometimes he could see her without really being conscious of "it," just because he was used to seeing her. but now that he had just come home, had been with ruth, there was an acute new shock in seeing her. during the first intermission he never looked back after that first glance; but when the house was darkened again it was not at the stage he looked most. from his place in the dress circle across the house he could look over at her, secured by the dim light could covertly watch her. it was hard to keep his eyes from her. she sat well to the front of the box; he could see every move she made, and every little thing about her wretchedly fascinated him. she sat erect, hands loosely clasped in her lap, seemingly absorbed in the play. her shoulders seemed very white above her gauzy black dress; in that light, at least, she was beautiful; her neck was long and slim and her hair was coiled high on her head. he saw a woman bend forward from the rear of the box and speak to her; it brought her face into the light and he saw that it was mrs. blair--edith lawrence, ruth's old chum. he crumpled the program in his hand until his friend looked at him in inquiry; then he smiled a little and carefully smoothed the program out. but when, in the next intermission, he was asked something about how he thought the play was going to turn out, he was at a loss for a suggestion. he had not known what that act was about. and he scarcely knew what the other acts were about. it was all newly strange to him, newly sad. he had a new sense of it, and a new sense of the pity of it, as he sat there that last night watching the people who had been ruth's and stuart's friends; he thought of how they had once been a part of all this; how, if things had gone differently it was the thing they would still be a part of. there was something about seeing edith lawrence there with mrs. williams made him so sorry for ruth that it was hard to keep himself pulled together. and that house, this new sense of things, made him deeply sorry for stuart williams. he knew that he missed all this, terribly missed the things this represented. his constant, off-hand questionings about things--about the growth of the town, whether so and so was making good, who was running this or that, showed how he was missing the things he had turned away from, of which he had once been so promising a part. here tonight, among the things they had left, something made him more sorry for ruth and stuart than he had ever been before. and he kept thinking of the strangeness of things; of how, if there had not been that one thing, so many things would have been different. for their whole family, for the williams' family, yes, for deane franklin, too, it would have been all different if ruth had just fallen in love with some one else. somehow that seemed disloyalty to ruth. he told himself she couldn't help it. he guessed _she_ got it the worst; everything would have been different, easier, for her, certainly, if she, like the other girls of her crowd, had fallen in love with one of the fellows she could have married. then she would be there with edith lawrence tonight; probably they would be in a box together. it was hard, even when the lights were up, to keep his eyes from that box where ruth's old friend sat with mrs. williams. he would seem to be looking the house over, and then for a minute his eyes would rest there and it would be an effort to let go. once he found mrs. williams looking his way; he thought she saw him and was furious at himself for the quick reddening. he could not tell whether she was looking at him or not. she had that cool, composed manner she always had. always when he met her so directly that they had to speak she would seem quite unperturbed, as if he stirred in her no more feeling than any other slight acquaintance would stir. she was perfectly poised; it would not seem that he, what he must suggest, had any power to disturb her. looking across at her in the house darkened for the last act, covertly watching her as she sat there in perfect command of herself, apparently quite without disturbing feeling, he had a rough desire to know what she actually _did_ feel. a light from the stage surprised her face and he saw that it showed it more tired than serene. she looked bored; and she did not look content. seeing her in that disclosing little shaft of light--she had drawn back from it--the thought broke into the boy's mind--what's _she_ getting out of it! he had never really considered it purely in the light of what it must be to her. he thought of her as a hard, revengeful woman, who, because hurt herself, was going to harm to the full measure of her power. he despised the pride, the poise, in which she cloaked what he thought of as her hard, mean spirit; he thought people a pretty poor sort for admiring that pride. but now, as he saw her face when she was not expecting it to be clearly seen, he wondered just what she was actually like, just what she really felt. it would seem that revenge must be appeased by now; or at least that that one form of taking it--not getting a divorce--must have lost its satisfaction. it would not seem a very satisfying thing to fill one's life with. and what else was there! what _was_ she getting out of it! the question gave him a new interest in her. caught in the crowd leaving the theatre he watched her again for a moment, standing among the people who were waiting for motors and carriages. the thin black scarf around her head blew back and edith lawrence adjusted it for her. her car came up and one of the men helped her into it. there was a dispute; it seemed someone was meaning to go with her and she was protesting that it was not necessary. then they were saying goodnight to her and she was going away alone. he watched the car for a moment as it was halted by a carriage, then skirted it and sharply turned the corner. he had intended to take one of his friends home with him, had thought it would be too dismal alone there in the bare place that last night. but now he did not want anyone with him, did not want to have to talk. though when he let himself in the front door he wished he was not alone. it was pretty dismal to be coming into the abandoned house. he had a flashing sense of how absolutely empty the place was--empty of the people who had lived there, empty even of those people's things. there was no one to call out to him. his step made a loud noise on the bare stairs. he went back down stairs for a drink of water; he walked through the living-room, the dining-room, the kitchen. there used to be people there--things doing. not any more. a bare house now--so empty that it was _queer_. he hurried back upstairs. at the head of the stairs he stood still and listened to the stillness from the bedrooms. then he shook himself angrily, stamped on to his own room, loudly banged the door behind him and whistled as he hurriedly got ready for bed. he tried to go right to sleep, but could not get sleepy. he was thinking of the house--of things that had gone on there. he thought of ruth and stuart--of the difference they had made in that house. and he kept thinking of mrs. williams, thinking in this new way of the difference it must have meant to her, must have made in _her_ house. he wondered about the house she had just gone home to, wondered if she got lonely, wondered about the feeling there might be beneath that manner of not seeming to mind. he wondered just what it was made her keep from getting a divorce. and suddenly the strangest thought shot into his mind--had anyone ever _asked_ her to get a divorce! then he laughed; he had to make himself laugh at the preposterousness of his idea. the laugh made such a strange sound in the bare room that he lay there very still for a moment. then loudly he cleared his throat, as if to show that he was not afraid of making another noise. but the house was so strangely still, empty in such a queer way; it was too strange to let him go to sleep, and he lay there thinking of things in a queer way. that preposterous idea kept coming back. maybe nobody ever _had_ asked her to get the divorce; maybe it had just been taken for granted that she would be hard, would make it as hard as she could. he tried to keep away from that thought, something made him want to keep away from it, but he could not banish that notion that there were people who would be as decent as it was assumed they would be. he had noticed that with the fellows. finally he got a little sleepy and he had a childish wish that he were not alone, that it could all be again as it had been long ago when they were all there together--before ruth went away. he slept heavily toward morning and was at last awakened by the persistent ringing of the doorbell. it was a special delivery letter from ruth. she said she hoped it would catch him before he started west. she wanted him to stop in denver and see if he could get one of those "jap" men of all work. she said: "maggie gordon's mother has 'heard' and came and took her home. i turn to the japanese--or chinese, if it's a chinaman you can get to come,--as perhaps having less fear of moral contamination. do the best you can, ted; i need someone badly." he was to leave at five o'clock that afternoon. the people whom he saw thought he was feeling broken up about leaving; he had to hold back all feeling, they thought; it was that made his face so set and queer and his manner so abrupt and grim. he had lunch with harriett. she too thought the breaking up, the going away, had been almost too much for him. she hated to have him go, and yet, for his sake, she would be glad to have it over. at two o'clock he had finished the things he had to do. he had promised to look in on a few of his friends and say good-by. but when he waited on the corner for the car that would take him down town he knew in his heart that he was not going to take that car. he knew, though up to the very last he tried not to know, that he was going to walk along that street a block and a half farther and turn in at the house stuart williams had built. he knew he was not going to leave freeport without doing that. and when he stood there and let the car go by he faced what he had in his heart known he was going to do ever since reading ruth's letter, turned and started toward mrs. williams', walking very fast, as if to get there before he could turn back. he fairly ran up the steps and pushed the bell in great haste--having to get it pushed before he could refuse to push it. chapter twenty-nine when he could not get away, after the maid had let him in and he had given his name and was waiting in the formal little reception room, he was not only more frightened than he had ever been in his life, but frightened in a way he had never known anything about before. he sat far forward on the stiff little french chair, fairly afraid to let his feet press on the rug. he did not look around him; he did not believe he would be able to move when he had to move; he knew he would not be able to speak. he was appalled at the consciousness of what he had done, of where he was. he would joyfully have given anything he had in the world just to be out doors, just not to have been there at all. there was what seemed a long wait and the only way he got through it was by telling himself that mrs. williams would not see him. of course she wouldn't see him! there was a step on the stairs; he told himself that it was the maid, coming to say mrs. williams could not see him. but when he knew there was someone in the doorway he looked up and then, miraculously, he was on his feet and standing there bowing to mrs. williams. he thought she looked startled upon actually seeing him, as if she had not believed it was really he. there was a hesitating moment when she stood in the doorway, a moment of looking a little as if trying to overcome a feeling of being suddenly sick. then she stepped forward and, though pale, had her usual manner of complete self-possession. "you wished to see me?" she asked in an even tone faintly tinged with polite incredulity. "yes," he said, and was so relieved at his voice sounding pretty much all right that he drew a longer breath. she looked hesitatingly at a chair, then sat down; he resumed his seat on the edge of the stiff little chair. she sat there waiting for him to speak; she still had that look of polite incredulity. she sat erect, her hands loosely clasped; she appeared perfectly poised, unperturbed, but when she made a movement for her handkerchief he saw that her hand was shaking. "i know i've got my nerve to come here, mrs. williams," he blurted out. she smiled faintly, and he saw that as she did so her lip twitched. "i'm leaving for the west this afternoon. i'm going out there to live--to work." that he had said quite easily. it was a little more effort to add: "and i wanted to see you before i went." she simply sat there waiting, but there was still that little twitching of her lip. "mrs. williams," he began quietly, "i don't know whether or not you know that i've been with my sister ruth this summer." when she heard that name spoken there was a barely perceptible drawing back, as when something is flicked before one's eyes. then her lips set more firmly. ted looked down and smoothed out the soft hat he was holding, which he had clutched out of shape. then he looked up and said, voice low: "ruth has come to mean a great deal to me, mrs. williams." and still she did not speak, but sat very straight and there were two small red spots now in her pale cheeks. "and so," he murmured, after a moment, "that's why i came to you." "i think," she said in a low, incisive, but unsteady voice, "that i do not quite follow." he looked at her in a very simple, earnest way. "you don't?" he asked. there was a pause and then he said, "i saw you at the theatre last night." "indeed?" she murmured with a faint note of irony. but she did not deflect him from that simple earnestness. "and when i went home i thought about you." he paused and then added, gently, "most all night, i thought about you." and still she only sat there looking at him and as if holding herself very tight. she had tried to smile at that last and the little disdainful smile had stiffened on her lips, making them look pulled out of shape and set that way. "i said to myself," ted went on, "'what's _she_ getting out of it?'" his voice came up on that; he said it rather roughly. her face flamed. "if _this_ is what you have come here to say--" she began in a low angry voice. "if this is what you have intruded into my house for--_you_--!" she made a movement as if about to rise. ted threw out his hand with a little gesture of wanting to explain. "maybe i shouldn't have put it that way. i hope i didn't seem rude. i only meant," he said gently, "that as i watched you you didn't look as though you were happy." "and what if i'm not?" she cried, as if stung by that. "what if i'm not? does that give you any right to come here and tell me so?" he shook his head, as if troubled at again putting things badly. "i really came," he said, in a low earnest voice, "because it seemed to me it must be that you did not understand. it occurred to me that perhaps no one had ever tried to make you understand. i came because it seemed fairer--to everybody." something new leaped into her eyes. "i presume it was suggested to you?" she asked sharply. "no, mrs. williams, it was not suggested to me." as she continued to look at him with suspicion he colored a little and said quietly: "you will have to believe that, because i give you my word that it is true." she met the direct look of his clear hazel eyes and the suspicion died out of her own. but new feeling quickly flamed up. "and hasn't it occurred to you," she asked quiveringly, "that you are rather a--well, to be very mild indeed, rather a presumptuous young man to come to me, to come into my house, with _this_?" there was a big rush of feeling as she choked: "nobody's spoken to me like this in all these years!" "that's just the trouble," said ted quickly, as if they were really getting at it now. "that's just the trouble." "what do you mean?" she asked sharply. "why--just that. nobody has talked to you about it. everybody has been afraid to, and so you've just been let alone with it. things get worse, get all twisted up, get themselves into a tight twist that won't come out when we're shut up with them." his face looked older as he said, "i know that myself." he meditated upon that an instant; then, quickly coming back to her, looked up and added gently: "so it seemed to me that maybe you hadn't had a fair show just because everybody has been afraid of you and let you alone." her two trembling hands were pulling at her handkerchief. her eyes were very bright. "and you aren't afraid of me?" she asked with a little laugh that seemed trying to be mocking but was right on the edge of tears. he shook his head. "that is," he qualified it with a slight smile, "not much--now." then he said, as if dropping what they were talking about and giving her a confidence: "while i was waiting for you i was so scared that i wished i could drop dead." his smile in saying it was so boyish that she too dropped the manner of what they were talking about and faintly smiled back at him. it seemed to help her gain possession of herself and she returned to the other with a crisp, "and so, as i understand it, you thought you'd just drop in and set everything right?" he flushed and looked at her a little reproachfully. then he said, simply, "it seemed worth trying." he took a letter from his pocket. "i got this from my sister this morning. the girl who has been working for her has gone away. her mother came and took her away. she had 'heard.' they're always 'hearing.' this has happened time after time." "now just let me understand it," she began in that faintly mocking way, though her voice was shaking. "you propose that i do something to make the--the servant problem easier for your sister. is that it? i am to do something, you haven't yet said what, to facilitate the domestic arrangements of the woman who is living with my husband. that's it, isn't it?" she asked with seeming concern. he reddened, but her scoffing seemed to give him courage, as if he had something not to be scoffed at and could produce it. "it can be made to sound ridiculous, can't it?" he concurred. "but--" he broke off and his eyes went very serious. "you never knew ruth very well, did you, mrs. williams?" he asked quietly. the flush spread over her face. "we were not intimate friends," was her dry answer, but in that voice not steady. he again colored, but that steady light was not driven from his eyes. "ruth's had a terrible time, mrs. williams," he said in a quiet voice of strong feeling. "and if you had known her very well--knew just what it is ruth is like--it seems to me you would have to feel sorry for her." she seemed about to speak again in that mocking way, but looking at his face--the fine seriousness, the tender concern--she kept silence. "and just what is it you propose that i do?" she asked after a moment, as if trying to appear faintly amused. very seriously he looked up at her. "it would help--even at this late day--if you would get a divorce." she gasped; whether she had been prepared for it or not she was manifestly unprepared for the simple way he said it. for a moment she stared at him. then she laughed. "you are a most amazing young man!" she said quiveringly. as he did not speak, but only looked at her in that simple direct way, she went on, with rising feeling, "you come here, to _me_, into my house, proposing that--in order to make things easier for your sister in living with my husband--i get a divorce!" he did not flinch. "it might do more than make things easier for my sister," he said quietly. "what do you mean?" she demanded sharply. "it might make things easier for you." "and what do you mean by _that_?" she asked in that quick sharp way. "it might make things easier," he said, "just to feel that, even at this late day, you've done the decent thing." she stood up. "do you know, young man, that you've said things to me that are outrageous to have said?" she was trembling so it seemed hard to speak. "i've let you go on just because i was stupified by your presumption--staggered, and rather amused at your childish audacity. but you've gone a little too far! how _dare_ you talk to me like this?" she demanded with passion. he had moved toward the door. he looked at her, then looked away. his control was all broken down now. "i'm sorry to have it end like this," he muttered. she laughed a little, but she was shaken with the sobs she was plainly making a big effort to hold back. "i'm so sorry," he said with such real feeling that the tears brimmed from her eyes. he stood there awkwardly. somehow her house seemed very lonely, comfortless. and now that her composure was broken down, the way she looked made him very sorry for her. "i don't want you to think," he said gently, "that i don't see how bad it has been for you." she tried to laugh. "you don't think your sister was very--fair to me, do you?" she asked chokingly, looking at him in a way more appealing than aggressive. "i suppose not," he said. "no, i suppose not." he stood there considering that. "but i guess," he went on diffidently, "i don't just know myself--but it seems there come times when being fair gets sort of--lost sight of." the tears were running down her face and she was not trying to check them. he stood there another minute and then timidly held out his hand. "good-by, mrs. williams," he said gently. she took his hand with a queer, choking little laugh and held it very tight for a minute, as if to steady herself. his own eyes had dimmed. then he smiled--a smile that seemed to want to go ahead and take any offence or hurt from what he was about to say. "maybe, mrs. williams, that you will come to feel like being fairer to ruth than ruth was to you." his smile widened and he looked very boyish as he finished, "and that would be _one_ way of getting back, you know!" chapter thirty freeport had a revival of interest in mrs. stuart williams that fall. they talked so much of her in the first years that discussion had pretty well spent itself, and latterly it had only been rarely--to a stranger, or when something came up to bring it to them freshly--that they did more than occasionally repeat the expressions which that first feeling had created. there was no new thing to say of their feeling about her. no one had become intimate with her in those years, and that itself somehow kept the picture. she was unique, and fascinated them in the way she was one of them and yet apart. the mystery enveloping her made it mean more than it could have meant through disclosures from her. it kept it more poignant to speculate about a concealed suffering than it could have continued to be through discussing confidences. but even speculation as to what was beneath that unperturbed surface had rather talked itself out, certainly had lost its keen edge of interest with the passing of the years. that fall, however, they began to speak of a change in her. they said first that she did not look well; then they began to talk about her manner being different. she had always kept so calm, and now there were times when she appeared nervous. she had had throughout a certain cold serenity. now she was sometimes irritable, disclosing a fretfulness close under the untroubled surface. she looked older, they said; her brows knit and there were lines about mouth and eyes. she seemed less sure of herself. it made interest in her a fresh thing. they wondered if she were not at last breaking, spoke with a careful show of regret, concern, but whetted anticipations gave eagerness to voices of sympathy. they wondered if ruth holland's having come home in the spring, the feeling of her being in the town, could have been too much of a strain, preying upon the deserted wife and causing her later to break. there were greedy wonderings as to whether she could possibly have seen ruth holland, whether anything had happened that they did not know about. late one december afternoon mrs. williams came home from a church bazaar and curtly telephoned that she would not be back for the evening. she spoke of a headache. and her head did ache. it ached, she bitterly reflected, from being looked at, from knowing they were taking observations for subsequent speculation. she had been in charge of a table at the bazaar; a number of little things had gone wrong and she got out of patience with one of her assistants. other people got irritated upon occasions of that sort--and that was all there was to it. but she was not at liberty to show annoyance. she knew at the time that they were whispering around about it, connecting it with the thing about her that it seemed never really went out of their minds. the sense of that had made her really angry and she had said sharp things she knew she would be sorry for because they would just be turned over as part of the thing that was everlastingly being turned over. she was not free; they were always watching her; even after all these years always thinking that everything had something to do with _that_. mrs. hughes, her housekeeper and cook, had followed her upstairs. at the door of her room she turned impatiently. she had known by the way the woman hung around downstairs that she wanted to say something to her and she had petulantly not given her the chance. she did not want anything said to her. she wanted to be let alone. "well?" she inquired ungraciously. mrs. hughes was a small trim woman who had a look of modestly trying not to be obtrusive about her many virtues. she had now that manner of one who could be depended upon to assume responsibilities a less worthy person would pass by. "i thought perhaps you should know, mrs. williams," she said with faintly rebuking patience, "that lily has gone to bed." "oh, she's really sick then, is she?" asked mrs. williams, unbending a little. "she says so," replied mrs. hughes. the tone caused her to look at the woman in surprise. "well, i presume she is then," she answered sharply. lily was the second girl. two servants were not needed for the actual work as the household consisted only of mrs. williams and an aged aunt who had lived with her since she had been alone, but the house itself did not seem adapted to a one servant menage. there had been two before, and in that, as in other things, she had gone right on in the same way. mrs. hughes had been with her for several years but lily had been there only three or four months. she had been a strange addition to the household; she laughed a good deal and tripped about at her work and sang. but she had not sung so much of late and in the last few days had plainly not been well. "if she's really sick, we'll have to have a doctor for her," mrs. williams said, her hand on the knob she was about to turn. "she says she doesn't want a doctor," answered mrs. hughes, and again her tone made mrs. williams look at her in impatient inquiry. "well, i'll go up after while and see her myself," she said, opening the door of her room. "meanwhile you look after her, please. and oh, mrs. hughes," she called back, "i shan't want any dinner. i had a heavy tea at the bazaar," she added hurriedly, and as if resentful of having to make any explanation. alone, she took off her hat, pushed back her hair as if it oppressed her, then sank into a low, luxurious chair and, eyes closed, pressed her fingers over her temples as if to command quiet within. but after a moment she impatiently got up and went over to her dressing-table and sat looking into the mirror. the thing that had started her afternoon wrong was that a friend of her girlhood, whom she had not seen for about thirteen years, had appeared unexpectedly at her table, startling her and then laughing at her confusion. she had not known that stella cutting was in town; to be confronted that way with some one out of the past had been unnerving, and then she had been furious with herself for not being able more easily to regain composure. people around her had seen; later she saw them looking at her strangely, covertly interested when she spoke in that sharp way to mildred woodbury because she had tossed things about. she had been disturbed, for one thing, at finding mildred woodbury at her table. she was looking in the glass now because stella cutting had been one of her bridesmaids. she was not able to put down a miserable desire to try to see just what changes stella had found. the dissatisfaction in her face deepened with her scrutiny of it. doubtless stella was that very minute talking of how pitifully marion averley had changed; how her color used to be clear and even, features firmly molded, eyes bright. she herself remembered how she had looked the night stella cutting was her bridesmaid. and now her color was muddy and there were crow's feet about her eyes and deep lines from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth. stella cutting looked older herself, very considerably older. but it was a different way of looking older. she had grown stout and her face was too full. but she did not look _pulled_ at like this. as she talked of her children hers was the face of a woman normally, contentedly growing older. the woman sitting before the mirror bitterly turned away now from that reflection of dissatisfaction with emptiness. it was that boy had done it! she thought with a new rise of resentment. she had been able to go along very evenly until he impertinently came into her house and rudely and stupidly broke through the things she had carefully builded up around herself. ever since he had plunged into things even she herself had been careful not to break into, there had been this inner turmoil that was giving her the look of an old woman. if stella cutting had come just a few months earlier she could not have had so much to say about how terribly marion averley had changed. why was she so absurd as to let herself be upset? she angrily asked of herself, beginning to unfasten the dress she was wearing that she might get into something loose and try to relax. a hook caught in some lace and in her vexation at not being able at once to unfasten it she gave it a jerk that tore the lace. she bit her lips and could have cried. those were the things she did these days!--since that boy came and blunderingly broke into guarded places. she sat in a low, deep chair before the open fire that burned in the sitting-room adjoining her bedroom. it was the room that had been her husband's. after he went away she took it for an upstairs sitting-room--a part of her program of unconcern. as she sank down into the gracious chair she told herself that she would rest for that evening, not think about things. but not to think about things was impossible that night. stella cutting had brought old things near and made them newly real: her girlhood, her falling in love with stuart williams, her wedding. those reminiscences caught her and swept her on to other things. she thought of her marriage; thought of things that, ever since that boy came and made her know how insecure she really was in the defences she had put up for herself, it had been a struggle to keep away from. she had not done much thinking--probing--as to why it was her marriage had failed. that was another one of the things her pride shut her out from. when it failed she turned from it, clothed in pride, never naked before the truth. there was something relaxing in just letting down the barriers, barriers which had recently been so shaken that she was fretted with trying to hold them up. she wondered why stella cutting's marriage had succeeded and hers had failed. the old answer that her marriage had failed because her husband was unfaithful to her--answer that used always to leave her newly fortified, did not satisfy tonight. she pushed on through that. there was a curious emotional satisfaction in thus disobeying herself by rushing into the denied places of self-examination. she was stirred by what she was doing. her long holding back from this very thing was part of that same instinct for restraint, what she had been pleased to think of as fastidiousness, that had always held her back in love. it was alien to her to let herself go; she had an instinct that held her away from certain things--from the things themselves and from free thinking about them. what she was doing now charged her with excitement. she was wondering about herself and the man who was still legally her husband. she was thinking of how different they were in the things of love; how he gave and wanted giving, while her instinct had always been to hold herself a little apart. there was something that displeased her in abandonment to feeling. she did not like herself when she fully gave. there had been something in her, some holding back, that passionate love outraged. intense demonstration was indelicate to her; she was that way, she had not been able to help it. she loved in what she thought of as her own fastidious way. passion violated something in her. falling in love had made her happy, but with her love had never been able to sweep down the reserves, and so things which love should have made beautiful had remained for her ugly facts of life that she had an instinct to hold herself away from. what she felt she did not like herself for feeling. and so their marriage had been less union than man[oe]uvering. she supposed she had, to be very blunt, starved stuart's love. for he wanted much love, a full and intense love life. he was passionate and demonstrative. he gave and wanted, perhaps needed, much giving. he did not understand that constant holding back. for him the beauty of love was in the expression of it. she supposed, in this curious self-indulgence of facing things tonight, that it had been he who was normal; she had memories of many times when she had puzzled and disappointed and hurt him. and so when gertrude freemont--an old school friend of hers, a warm-natured southern girl--came to visit her, stuart turned away from things grudging and often chill to gertrude's playfulness and sunniness and warmth. there was a curious shock to her tonight when she found herself actually thinking that perhaps it was not much to be wondered at. he was like that. she had not made him over to be like her. at first he had found gertrude enlivening, and from a flirtation it went to one of those passages of passion between a man and a woman, a thing that flames up and then dies away, in a measure a matter of circumstance. that was the way he tried to explain it to her when, just as gertrude was leaving, she came to know--even in this present abandonment to thinking she went hurriedly past the shock of that terrible sordid night of "finding out." stuart had weakly and appealingly said that he hadn't been able to help it, that he was sorry--that it was all over. but with it their marriage was all over. she told him so then--told him quite calmly, it would seem serenely; went on telling him so through those first days of his unhappiness and persistence. she was always quite unperturbed in telling him so. politely, almost pleasantly, she would tell him that she would never be his wife again. she never was. she had known very certainly from the first that she never would be. tonight she probed into that too--why she had been so sure, why she had never wavered. it was a more inner thing than just jealousy, resentment, hurt, revenge--though all those things were there too. but those were things that might have broken down, and this was not a thing that would break down. it was more particularly temperamental than any of those things. it was that thing in her which had always held her back from giving. she _had_ given--and then her giving had been outraged! even now she burned in the thought of that. he had called out a thing in her that she had all along--just because she was as she was--resented having had called out. and then he had flouted it. even after all those years there was tonight that old prickling of her scalp in thinking of it. the things she might have said--of its being her own friend, in her own house--she did not much dwell upon, even to herself. it was a more inner injury than that. something in her that was curiously against her had been called to life by him--and then he had outraged what she had all along resented his finding in her. to give at all had been so tremendous a thing--then to have it lightly held! it outraged something that was simply outside the sphere of things forgivable. and that outraged thing had its own satisfaction. what he had called to life in her and then, as it seemed, left there unwanted, what he had made in her that was not herself--then left her with, became something else, something that made her life. from the first until now--or at any rate until two months ago when that boy came and forced her to look at herself--the thing in her that had been outraged became something that took the place of love, that was as the other pole of love, something that yielded a satisfaction of its own, a satisfaction intense as the things of love are intense, but cold, ordered, certain. it was the power to hurt; the power to bring pain by simply doing nothing. it was not tempestuously done; it had none of the uncertainty of passionate feeling; it had the satisfaction of power without effort, of disturbing and remaining undisturbed, of hurting and giving no sign. it was the revenge of what was deeply herself for calling her out from herself, for not wanting what was found in her that was not herself. stuart wanted her again; terribly wanted her, more than ever wanted her. he loved and so could be hurt. he needed love and so could be given pain. he thought she would give in; she knew that she would not. there was power in that knowledge. and so she watched him suffer and herself gained new poise. she did not consider how it was a sorry thing to fill her life with. when, that night that was like being struck by lightning, she came to know that the man to whom she had given--_she_--had turned from her to another woman it was as if she was then and there sealed in. she would never let herself leave again. outraged pride blocked every path out from self. she was shut in with her power to inflict pain. that was all she had. and then that boy came and made her look at herself and know that she was poor! that was why stella cutting could be talking of how marion averley had "broken." they were talking about it, of course; about her and ruth holland and her husband. _her_ husband, she thought insistently, but without getting the accustomed satisfaction from the thought. miserably she wondered just what they were saying; she flinched in the thought of their talk about her hurt, her loneliness. and then she felt a little as if she could cry. she had wondered if she had anybody's real pity. that thought of their talking of it opened it to her, drew her to it. she thought of ruth holland, gave up the worn pretense of disinterest and let herself go in thinking of her. the first feeling she had had when she suspected that her husband was drawn to that girl, ruth holland, was one of chagrin, a further hurt to pride. for her power to give pain would be cut off. once she saw the girl's face light as stuart went up to her for a dance. she knew then that the man who had that girl's love could not be hurt in the way she had been hurting. at first she was not so much jealous as strangely desolated. and then as time went on and in those little ways that can make things known to those made acute through unhappiness she came to know that her husband cared for this girl and had her love, anger at having been again stripped, again left there outraged, made her seize upon the only power left, that more sordid, more commonplace kind of power. she could no longer hurt by withholding herself; she could only hurt by standing in the way. rage at the humiliation of being reduced to that fastened her to it with a hold not to be let go. all else was taken from her and she was left with just that. somehow she reduced herself to it; she became of the quality of it. pride, or rather self-valuation, incapacity for self-depreciation, had never let her be honest with herself. as there were barriers shutting the world out from her hurt and humiliation, so too were there barriers shutting herself out. she did not acknowledge pain, loneliness, for that meant admission that she could not have what she would have. she thought of it as withdrawal, dignified withdrawal from one not fit. she had always tried to feel that her only humiliation was in having given to one not worth her--one lesser. but in this reckless and curiously exciting mood of honesty tonight she got some idea of how great the real hurt had been. she knew now that when she came to know--to feel in a way that was knowing--that her husband loved ruth holland she suffered something much more than hurt to pride. it was pride that would not let her look at herself and see how she was hurt. and pride would not let her say one word, make one effort. it was simply not in her to bring herself to _try_ to have love given her. and so she was left with the sordid satisfaction of the hurt she dealt in just being. that became her reason for existence--the ugly reason for her barren existence. she lived alone with it for so long that she came to be of it. her spirit seemed empty of all else. it had kept her from everything; it had kept her from herself. but now tonight she could strangely get to herself, and now she knew that far from ruth holland not mattering her whole being had from the first been steeped in hatred of her. her jealousy had been of a freezing quality; it had even frozen her power to know about herself. when, after one little thing and then another had let her know there was love between her husband and this girl, to go to places where ruth holland was would make her numb--that was the way it was with her. once in going somewhere--a part of that hideous doing things together which she kept up because it was one way of showing she was there, would continue to be there--she and stuart drove past the hollands', and this girl was out in the yard, romping with her dog, tusseling with him like a little girl. she looked up, flushed, tumbled, panting, saw them, tried to straighten her hair, laughed in confusion and retreated. stuart had raised his hat to her, trying to look nothing more than discreetly amused. but a little later after she--his wife--had been looking from the other window as if not at all concerned she turned her head and saw his face in the mirror on the opposite side of the carriage. he had forgotten her; she was taking him unawares. up to that time she had not been sure--at least not sure of its meaning much. but when she saw that tender little smile playing about his mouth she knew it was true that her power to hurt him had reduced itself to being in his way. that she should be reduced to that made her feeling about it as ugly as the thing itself. she did not sleep that night--after seeing ruth holland romping with her dog. she had cried--and was furious that she should cry, that it could make her cry. and furious at herself because of the feeling she had--a strange stir of passion, a wave of that feeling which had seemed to her unlovely even when it was desired and that it was unbearably humiliating to feel unwanted. it was in this girl he wanted those things now; that girl who could let herself go, whom life rioted in, who doubtless could abandon herself to love as she could in romping with her dog. it tortured her to think of the girl's flushed, glowing face--panting there, hair tumbled. she cringed in the thought of how perhaps what she had given was measured by what this girl could give. as time went on she knew that her husband was more happy than he had ever been before--and increasingly unhappy. her torture in the thought of his happiness made her wrest the last drop of satisfaction she could from the knowledge that she could continue the unhappiness. sometimes he would come home and she would know he had been with this girl, know it as if he had shouted it at her--it fairly breathed from him. to feel that happiness near would have maddened her had she not been able to feel that her very being there dealt unhappiness. it was a wretched thing to live with. beauty had not come into her life; it would not come where that was. and then she came to know that they were being cornered. she--knowing--saw misery as well as love in the girl's eyes--a hunted look. her husband grew terribly nervous, irritable, like one trapped. it was hurting his business; it was breaking down his health. not until afterward did she know that there was also a disease breaking down his health. she did not know what difference it might have made had she known that. by that time she had sunk pretty deep into lust for hurting, into hating. she saw that this love was going to wreck his life. his happiness was going to break him. if the world came to know it would be known that her husband did not want her, that he wanted someone else. she smarted under that--and so fortified herself the stronger in an appearance of unconcern. she could better bear exposure of his uncaringness for her than let him suspect that he could hurt her. and they would be hurt! if it became known it would wreck life for them both. the town would know then about ruth holland--that wanton who looked so spiritual! they would know then what the girl they had made so much of really was! she would not any longer have to listen to that talk of ruth holland as so sweet, so fine! and so she waited; sure that it would come, would come without her having given any sign, without her having been moved from her refuge of unconcern--she who had given and not been wanted! that week before edith lawrence's wedding she knew that it was coming, that something was happening. stuart looked like a creature driven into a corner. and he looked sick; he seemed to have lost hold on himself. once as she was passing the door of his room it blew a little open and she saw him sitting on the bed, face buried in his hands. after she passed the door she halted--but went on. she heard him moving around in the night; once she heard him groan. instinctively she had sat up in bed, but had lain down again--remembering, remembering that he was groaning because he did not want her, because she was in the way of the woman he wanted. she saw in those days, that week before edith lawrence's wedding, that he was trying to say something to her and could not, that he was wretched in his fruitless attempts to say it. he would come where she was, sit there white, miserable, dogged, then go away after having said only some trivial thing. once--she was always quite cool, unperturbed, through those attempts of his--he had passionately cried out, "you're pretty superior, aren't you, marion? pretty damned serene!" it was a cry of desperation, a cry from unbearable pain, but she gave no sign. like steel round her heart was that feeling that he was paying now. after that outburst he did not try to talk to her; that was the last night he was at home. he came home at noon next day and said he was going away on a business trip. she heard him packing in his room. she knew--felt sure--that it was something more than a business trip. she felt sure that he was leaving. and then she wanted to go to him and say something, whether reproaches or entreaties she did not know; listened to him moving around in there, wanted to go and say something and could not; could only sit there listening, hearing every smallest sound. she heard him speak a surly word to a servant in the hall. he never spoke that way to the servants. when he shut the front door she knew that he would not open it again. she got to the window and saw him before he passed from sight--carrying his bag, head bent, stooped. he was broken, and he was going away. she knew it. even tonight she could not let herself think much about that afternoon, the portentous emptiness, the strangeness of the house; going into his room to see what he had taken, in there being tied up as with panic, sinking down on his bed and unable to move for a long time. she had forced herself to go to edith lawrence's wedding. and she knew by ruth holland's face that it was true something was happening, knew it by the girl's face as she walked down the aisle after attending her friend at the altar, knew it by her much laughter, by what was not in the laughter. once during the evening she saw edith put her arm around ruth holland and at the girl's face then she knew with certainty, did not need the letter that came from stuart next day. she had the picture of ruth holland now as she was that last night, in that filmy dress of pale yellow that made her look so delicate. she was helped through that evening by the thought that if she was going to be publicly humiliated ruth holland would be publicly disgraced. she would have heard the last about that fine, delicate quality--about sweetness and luminousness! they would know, finally, that she was not those things she looked. and after it happened the fact that they did know it helped her to go on. she went right on, almost as if nothing had happened. she would not let herself go away because then they would say she went away because she could not bear it, because she did not want them to see. she must stay and show them that there was nothing to see. forcing herself to do that so occupied her as to help her with things within. she could not let herself feel for feeling would show on the surface. even before herself she had kept up that manner of unconcern and had come to be influenced by her own front. and so the years went by and her life had been made by that going on in apparent unconcern, and by that inner feeling that she was hurting them by just being in life. it was not a lovely reason for being in life; she had not known what a poor thing it was until that boy came and forced her to look at herself and consider how little she had. she rose and stood looking into the mirror above the fireplace. it seemed to her that she could tell by her face that the desire to do harm had been her reason for living. several hours had gone by while she sat there given over to old things. she wished she had a book, something absorbing, something to take her away from that other thinking that was lying in wait for her--those thoughts about what there was for her to live with in the years still to be lived. the magazine she had picked up could not get any hold on her; that was why, though she had made it clear she did not want to be disturbed, there was relief in her voice as she answered the tap at her door. she frowned a little though at sight of mrs. hughes standing there deferential but visibly excited. she had that look of trying not to intrude her worthiness as she said: "excuse me, mrs. williams, for disturbing you, but there is something i thought you ought to know." in answer to the not very cordial look of inquiry she went on, "it's about lily; she says she won't have a doctor, but--she needs one." there was something in her manner, something excited and yet grim, that mrs. williams did not understand. but then she did not much trouble herself to understand mrs. hughes, she was always appearing to see some hidden significance in things. "i'll go up and see her," she said. after the visit she came down to telephone for her doctor. she saw that the girl was really ill, and she had concluded from her strange manner that she was feverish. lily protested that she wanted to be let alone, that she would be all right in a day or two; but she looked too ill for those protestations to be respected. she telephoned for her own doctor only to learn that he was out of town. upon calling another physician's house she was told that he had the grip and could not go out. she then sat for some minutes in front of the 'phone before she looked up a number in the book and called dr. deane franklin. when she rose after doing that she felt as if her knees were likely to give way. the thought of his coming into her house, coming just when she had been living through old things, was unnerving. but she was really worried about the girl and knew no one else to call whom she could trust. when he came she was grateful to him for his professional manner which seemed to take no account of personal things, to have no personal memory. "i'd like to see you when you come down, doctor," she said as mrs. hughes was taking him to the maid's room on the third floor. she was waiting for him at the door of her upstairs sitting-room. he stepped in and then stood hesitatingly there. he too had a queer grim look, she thought. "and what is the trouble?" she asked. he gave her a strange sideways glance and snapped shut a pocket of the bag he carried. then he said, brusquely: "it's a miscarriage." she felt the blood surging into her face. she had stepped a little back from him. "why--i don't see how that's possible," she faltered. he smiled a little and she had a feeling that he took a satisfaction in saying to her, grimly, "oh, it's possible, all right." she colored anew. she resented his manner and that made her collect herself and ask with dignity what was the best thing to do. "i presume we'd better take her to the hospital," he said in that short way. "she's been--horribly treated. she's going to need attention--and doubtless it would be disagreeable to have her here." that too she suspected him of finding a satisfaction in saying. she made a curt inquiry as to whether the girl would be all right there for the night. he said yes and left saying he would be back in the morning. she escaped mrs. hughes--whom now she understood. she did not go up again to see lily; she could not do that then. she was angry with herself for being unnerved. she told herself that at any other time she would have been able to deal sensibly with such a situation. but coming just when things were all opened up like that--old feeling fresh--and coming from deane franklin! she would be quite impersonal, rational, in the morning. but for a long time she could not go to sleep. something had intruded into her guarded places. and the things of life from which she had withdrawn were here--in her house. it affected her physically, almost made her sick--this proximity of the things she had shut out of her life. it was invasion. and she thought about lily. she tried not to, but could not help wondering about her. she wondered how this had happened--what the girl was feeling. was there someone she loved? she lay there thinking of how, just recently, this girl who lived in her house had been going through those things. it made her know that the things of life were all the time around one. there was something singularly disturbing in the thought. next morning she went up to see lily. she told herself it was only common decency to do that, her responsibility to a person in her house. as she opened the door lily turned her head and looked at her. when she saw who it was her eyes went sullen, defiant. but pain was in them too, and with all the rest something wistful. as she looked at the girl lying there--in trouble, in pain, she could see lily, just a little while before, laughing and singing at her work. something she had not felt in years, that she had felt but little in her whole life, stirred in her heart. "well, lily," she said, uncertainly but not unkindly. the girl's eyes were down, her face turned a little away. but she could see that her chin was quivering. "i'm sorry you are ill," mrs. williams murmured, and then gave a little start at the sound of her own voice. the girl turned her head and stole a look. a moment later there were tears on her lashes. "we'll have to get you well," said mrs. williams in a practical, cheerful voice. and then she abruptly left the room. her heart was beating too fast. mrs. hughes lay in wait for her as she came downstairs. "may i speak to you, mrs. williams?" she asked in a manner at once deferential and firm. "she's to be taken away, isn't she?" she inquired in a hard voice. for a moment mrs. williams did not speak. she looked at the woman before her, all tightened up with outraged virtue. and then she heard herself saying: "no, i think it will be better for lily to remain at home." after she had heard herself say it she had that feeling that her knees were about to give way. for an instant mrs. hughes' lips shut tight. then, "do you know what's the matter with her?" she demanded in that sharp, hard voice. "yes," replied mrs. williams, "i know." "and you're going to keep such a person in your house?" "yes." "then you can't expect _me_ to stay in your house!" flashed the woman who was outraged. "as you like, mrs. hughes," was the answer. mrs. hughes moved a little away, plainly discomfited. "i should be sorry to have you go," mrs. williams continued courteously, "but of course that is for you to decide." "i'm a respectable woman," she muttered. "you can't expect _me_ to wait on a person like that!" "you needn't wait on her, then," was the reply. "until the nurse comes, i will wait on her myself." and again she turned abruptly away. once more her heart was beating too fast. when the doctor came and began about the arrangement he had been able to make at the hospital, she quietly told him that, if it would be as well, she would rather keep lily at home. his startled look made her flush. his manner with her was less brusque as he said good-by. she smiled a little over that last puzzled glance he stole at her. then she went back to lily's room. she straightened her bed for her, telling her that in a little while the nurse would be there to make her really comfortable. she bathed the girl's hot face and hands. she got her a cold drink. as she put her hand behind her head to raise her a little for that, the girl murmured brokenly: "you're so kind!" she went out and sat in an adjoining room, to be within call. and as she sat there a feeling of strange peace stole through her. it was as if she had been set free, as if something that had chained her for years had fallen away. when in her talk with mrs. hughes she became that other woman, the woman on the other side, on compassion's side, something just fell from her. when that poor girl murmured, "you're so kind!" she suddenly knew that she must have something more from life than that satisfaction of harming those who had hurt her. when she washed the girl's face she knew what she could not unknow. she had served. she could not find the old satisfaction in working harm. the soft, warm thing that filled her heart with that cry, "you're so kind!" had killed forever the old cruel satisfaction in being in the way. she felt very quiet in this wonderful new liberation. she began shaping life as something more than a standing in the way of others. it made life seem a different thing just to think of it as something other than that. and suddenly she knew that she did not hate ruth holland any more; that she did not even hate the man who had been her husband. hating had worn itself out; it fell from her, a thing outlived. it was wonderful to have it gone. for a long time she sat there very quiet in the wonder of that peace of knowing that she was free--freed of the long hideous servitude of hating, freed of wanting to harm. it made life new and sweet. she wanted something from life. she must have more of that gentle sweetness that warmed her heart when lily murmured, "you're so kind!" chapter thirty-one ruth holland stood at the window looking out at colorado in january. the wide valley was buried under snow. it was late afternoon and the sun was passing behind the western mountains. from the window where she stood she could not see the western mountains, but the sunset colors had been thrown over to the eastern range, some fifty miles away. when she first came there, five years before, it had seemed strange to find the east lighted at sunset, more luminous than the west. the eastern range was a mighty one. now there was snow down to its feet and there was no warmth in the colors that lighted it. they only seemed to reveal that the mountains were frozen. it would not have seemed possible for red--those mountains had been named sangre de cristo because they went red at sunset--to be so dazzling cold. the lighted snow brought out the contour of the mountains. they were wonderfully beautiful so, but the woman looking out at them was not thinking of them as beautiful. she was thinking of them as monuments of coldness. to her it was as if they had locked that valley in to merciless cold. but it was not the sunset colors that really marked coming night for her. all through that winter something else had marked night, something she tried to keep from looking out at, but which she was not able to hold away from. she was looking at it now, looking off into the adjoining field where the sheep were huddling for the night. they had begun their huddling some time before. with the first dimming of the light, the first wave of new cold that meant coming night, a few of them would get together; others would gather around them, then more and more. now there was the struggle not to be left on the outside. the outer ones were pushing toward the center; they knew by other nights that this night would be frigid, that they could only keep alive by that warmth they could get from one another. yet there were always some that must make that outer rim of the big circle, must be left there to the unbroken cold. she watched them; it had become a terrible thing for her to see, but she could not keep from looking. many of those unprotected sheep had died that bitter winter; others would die before spring came. it was a cruel country, a country of cold. that was their flock of sheep. they had been driven there the summer before from the lambing grounds in the mountains. the day they got there the lambs were exhausted from the long journey. one of them had dropped before the house and died right there beside the field it had come the long way to gain. her efforts to revive it were useless; the little thing was worn out. they were all of them close to worn out. and now they had the winter to fight; night after night she watched them huddling there, the big pitiful mass of them out in the bitter cold. it was the way of the country to leave them so; the only way, the sheep men said, that sheep could be made to pay. they estimated that the loss by freezing was small compared with what would be the cost of shelter for droves that ran into thousands, into tens of thousands. ruth would wake at night and think of them huddled out there, would lie thinking of them as she drew the covers around herself, think of them when the wind drove against the house, and often, as tonight, when it was every instant growing colder, she wondered if what was before them filled them with terror. sometimes she could not keep away and went nearer and looked at them; they were unbearably pitiful to her, their necks wrapped around each other's necks, trying to get from one another the only warmth there was for them, so helpless, so patient, they, play-loving creatures, gentle things, bearing these lives that men might finally use them for clothing and for food. there were times when the pathos of them was a thing she could not bear. they seemed to represent the whole cruelty of life, made real to her the terrible suffering of the world that winter of the war. she watched the sheep until the quick dusk had fallen, and then stood thinking of them huddled over there in the frigid darkness. when she found that her face was wet and realized that she had sobbed aloud she turned from the window to the stove, drew a chair up close to it and put her feet on the fender. it was so bitterly cold that the room was warm only near the stove; over there by the window she had grown chilled. and as the heat enveloped her ankles she thought of the legs of those poor frightened things that had been the last comers and not able to get to the inside of the circle--that living outer rim which was left all exposed to the frigid january night in that high mountain valley. she could feel the cold cutting against their legs, could see their trembling and their vain, frantic efforts to get within the solidly packed mass. she was crying, and she said to herself, her fingers clenched down into her palm, "_stop that! stop that!_" she did not know what might not happen to her if she were unable to stop such thinking as that. to try and force herself away from it she got up and lighted a lamp. she looked about on her desk for a magazine she had put there. she would make herself read something while waiting for stuart. he had had to drive into town. he would be almost frozen when he got back from that two-mile drive. she paused in her search for the magazine and went into the kitchen to make sure that the fire there was going well. then she put some potatoes in to bake; baked potatoes were hot things--they would be good after that drive. the heat from the oven poured out to her, and it swept her again to the thought of the living huddled mass out there in the frigid darkness. the wind beat against the house; it was beating against them. she bit her lip hard and again she said to herself--"_no!_" she made some other preparations for supper. she had those things to do herself now. the chinaman ted had brought home with him in the fall had left in december. he had appeared before her ready for leaving and had calmly said, "cold here, missis. and too all alone. me go where more others are." she had said nothing at all in reply to him, in protest, too held by what he had said--"cold here, and too all alone!" she had stood at the window and watched him going up the road toward town, going where "more others" were. she went back now into their main room; it was both living and dining room these days, for since the extreme cold had fastened on them they had abandoned their two little upstairs bedrooms and taken for sleeping the room which in summer was used as living-room. that could be heated a little by leaving the door open, and it had seemed out of the question to go to bed in those upstairs rooms where the cold had been left untouched. since they had been doing their own work all extra things had had to be cut down; an upstairs fire would mean more work, and it seemed there was already more work than ruth could get done and have time for anything else. she was tired all the time these days; she would think during the day of the good time she was going to have with a book that evening, and then night would find her so tired she could scarcely keep awake, and she would huddle there before the fire, dreading the cold of the night. life had reduced itself to necessities; things had to be ruthlessly rearranged for meeting conditions. she loved her own room to sleep in. she needed it. but she had given that up because it was too cold, because she could not do any more work. there was something that made her cringe in the thought of their sharing a bed, not because of love of being together, but because of the necessity of fighting the cold. and it made crowded quarters downstairs. she began "picking up" the room now. things were piled up on the sewing machine, on the reading table. it seemed impossible to keep them put away. she tried hard to keep the room an attractive place to sit in, but it was in disorder, uninviting, most of the time. often, after doing the kitchen work, she would clean it all up with the idea of making it attractive to sit in, then would be too utterly tired to enjoy it. she lagged in putting things away now; she would stand holding them helplessly, not knowing where to put them; she got sick of it and just threw some of them into a closet, anything to get them out of sight for the time. she knew that was not the way to do, that it would make it harder another time. she felt like crying. it seemed things had got ahead of her, that she was swamped by them, and somehow she did not have the spirit, or the strength, to get a new start, make a new plan. finally she had the room looking a little less slovenly, not so sordid, and was about to sit down with her magazine. but the lamp was flickering, and then she remembered that she had not filled it that day. she picked the lamp up and slowly, drooping, started for the kitchen. she gave the can an angry little tilt and the oil overflowed on the table. she was biting her lips as she went about looking for a cloth to wipe it up. she heard sleigh bells and knew stuart was coming. hastily she washed the oil from her hands, she always hated herself when her hands smelled of kerosene, and began getting things ready for supper. stuart came hurrying and stamping in after putting the horse away, quickly banging the door shut and standing there pounding his feet and rubbing his stiffened hands. "fearfully cold?" she inquired, hurriedly getting out the box of codfish she was going to cream for their supper. "cold!" he scoffed, as if in scorn for the inadequacy of the word. after a minute he came up to the stove. "i was afraid," he said, holding his right hand in his left, "that it had got these fingers." he took off his big bear-skin coat. a package he had taken from the pocket of it he threw over on the kitchen table. "don't throw the bacon there, stuart," hurriedly advised ruth, busy with the cream sauce she was making, "i've just spilled oil there." "heavens!" he said irritably, shoving the bacon farther back. his tone made ruth's hand tremble. "if you think i'm so careless you might fill the lamps yourself," she said tremulously. "who said you were careless?" he muttered. he went in the other room and after a minute called out, as one trying to be pleasant, "what we going to have for supper?" "creamed codfish," she told him. "for a little change!" he said, under his breath. "i don't think that's very kind, stuart," she called back, quiveringly. "it's not so simple a matter to have 'changes' here now." "oh, i know it," he said, wearily. she brought the things in and they began the meal in silence. she had not taken time to lay the table properly. things were not so placed as to make them attractive. stuart tasted a piece of bread and then hastily put it aside, not concealing a grimace of distaste. "what's the matter?" ruth asked sharply. "i don't seem to care much for bread and oil," he said in a voice it was plainly an effort to make light. ruth's eyes filled. she picked up the plate of bread and took it to the kitchen. stuart rose and went after her. "i'll get some more bread, ruth," he said kindly. "guess you're tired tonight, aren't you?" she turned away from him and took a drink of water. then she made a big effort for control and went to the dining-room. she asked some questions about town and they talked in a perfunctory way until supper was over. he had brought papers and a couple of letters from town. ruth was out in the kitchen doing the dishes when she heard a queer exclamation from him. "what is it, stuart?" it made her ask quickly, going to the dining-room door with the cup she was wiping. he gave her a strange look; and then suddenly he laughed. "what _is_ it?" the laugh made her repeat in quick, sharp voice. "well, you'll never guess!" he said. she frowned and stood there waiting. "marion's going to get a divorce." he looked at her as if he did not believe what he said. ruth put her hand out to the casement of the door. "she _is_?" she said dully. he held up a legal looking paper. "official notice," he said. then suddenly he threw the thing over on the table and with a short hard laugh pulled his chair around to the fire. ruth stood a moment looking at it lying there. then she turned and went back to the dishes. when she returned to the living-room the paper still lay there on the table. she had some darning to do and she got out her things and sat down, chair turned to one side, not facing the legal looking document. after a little while stuart, who had been figuring in a memorandum book, yawned and said he guessed he'd go to bed. he shook down the fire, then got up and picked up the paper from the table, folded it and took it over to the big desk in the corner where his business things were. "well, ruth," he remarked, "this would have meant a good deal to us ten or twelve years ago, wouldn't it?" she nodded, her head bent over the sock she was darning. "oh, well," he said, after a pause, "maybe it will help some even yet." she made no answer. "i suppose marion wants to get married," he went on meditatively, after a moment adding bitterly, "her wanting it is the only thing that would ever make her do it." he went down cellar for coal, and after he had filled the stove began undressing before it. when ready for bed he sat there a little before the fire, as if taking in all the heat he could for the night. ruth had finished her darning and was putting the things away. "coming to bed?" he asked of her. "not right away," she said, her voice restrained. "better not try to sit up late, ruth," he said kindly. "you need plenty of sleep. i notice you're often pretty tired at night." she did not reply, putting things in the machine drawer. her back was to him. "well, ruth," he said, in a voice genial but slightly ironic, "we can get married now." she went on doing things and still did not speak. "better late than never," he said pleasantly, yawning. he stood up, ready for going into the bedroom, but still hating to leave the fire, standing there with his back to it. "when shall we get married, ruth?" he went on, in a slightly amused voice. "oh, i don't know, stuart," she replied shortly from the kitchen. "have to plan it out," he said sleepily, yawning once more. then he laughed, as if the idea more and more amused him. after that he murmured, in the voice of one mildly curious about a thing, "i wonder if marion _is_ going to get married?" ruth wanted to take a bath before she went to bed. taking a bath was no easy matter under their circumstances. it was so much work and usually she was so tired that she would sometimes let it go longer than she would have supposed she would ever let bathing go. she was determined not to let it go tonight. she had the water on heating; she went down for the tub, went upstairs into her frigid room for the fresh things to put on in the morning. the room was so cold that there was a sort of horror about it. she went over to the window; the snow made the valley bright. dimly she could see a massed thing--the huddled sheep. with a hard little laugh for the sob that shook her she hurried out of the room. she took her bath before the fire in the living-room. stuart had piled on one chair the clothes that he had taken off and would put on in the morning. she placed on another the things for herself. and suddenly she looked at those two chairs and the thing that she had been trying not to think about--that now they two could be married--seemed to sear her whole soul with mockery. she was rubbing some lotion on her red, chapped hands, hands defaced by work and cold. she had a picture of her hands as they used to be--back there in those years when to have been free to marry stuart would have made life radiant. she sat a long time before the fire, not wanting to go to bed. she particularly wanted to go to bed alone that night. there seemed something shameful in that night sharing a bed as a matter of expediency. stuart was snoring a little. she sat there, her face buried in her hands. the wind was beating against the house. it was beating against the sheep out there, too--it had a clean sweep against that outer rim of living things. she cried for a little while; and then, so utterly tired that it did not matter much, she went in the other room and crept into bed. chapter thirty-two but at last the cold had let go of them. it was april, the snow had gone and the air promised that even to that valley spring would come. ruth, out feeding the chickens, felt that spring nearness. she raised her face gratefully to the breeze. it had seemed almost unbelievable that the wind would ever again bring anything but blighting cold. as she stood there, held by that first feel of spring, an automobile came along, slowed, and stuart went running out of the house to meet it. it was his friend stoddard, a real-estate man there. he had become friends with this man in the last few months. he had had little in friendships with men and this had brightened him amazingly. he had a new interest in business things, new hopes. it had seemed to make him younger, keener. he and mr. stoddard had a plan for going into montana where the latter was interested in a land developing company, and going into business together. stuart was alive with interest in it; it promised new things for him, a new chance. they would live in a town, and it would be business life, which he cared for as he had never come to care for ranching. he was beginning to talk to ruth about moving, of selling off their stock and some of their things. he was eager to make the change. she had gone in the house as the machine stopped, having seen that there were people in the car with mr. stoddard and not feeling presentably dressed. she went upstairs to do the work and as she glanced down from the upper window she saw stuart in laughing conversation with a girl in the automobile. something about it arrested her. he was standing to the far side of the machine so she could see his face. there was something in it she had not seen for a long time--that interest in women, an unmistakable pleasure in talking with an attractive girl. she stood there, a little back from the window, watching them. there was nothing at all wrong about it; nothing to resent, simply a little gay bantering with a girl. it was natural to him; it had been once, it could be again. his laugh came up to her. so he could still laugh like that; she had not heard him for a long time. he turned and started hurriedly for the house, the car waiting for him. he was smiling, his step was buoyant. "ruth," he called up to her, and his voice too had the old buoyancy, "i'm going into town with stoddard. we want to go over some things. he'll bring me back before night." "all right, stuart," she called back pleasantly. she watched the car out of sight. stuart, sitting in the front seat with his friend, had turned and was gayly talking with the women behind. when she first knew him, when she was still a little girl and used to see him around with his own set, he had been like that. she did not want to stay in the house. that house had shut her in all winter. the road stretched invitingly away. about a mile down it there was a creek, willows grew there. perhaps there she would find some real spring. anyway she had an impulse to get out to the moving water. she had seemed locked in, everything had seemed locked in for so long. as she was getting her coat she put into the pocket a letter she had received the day before from deane franklin. after she had sat a little while by the running water she took the letter out to reread, but did not at first open it. she was wishing deane were sitting there with her. she would like to talk to him. this letter was a gloomy one. it seemed that deane too was locked in. soon after ted came back from freeport in the fall she had got it out of him about the franklins. she had sensed at once that there was something about deane he did not want to tell her, and before he left for his own place she had it from him that the franklins had indeed separated, and that the gossip of freeport was that it was because of mrs. franklin's resentment of her. and that was one of the things had seemed to make it possible for the winter somehow to _take_ her; that was the thing had seemed to close the last door to her spirit, the last of those doors that had been thrown wide open when she left annie's home in freeport the spring before. she had tried to write to deane. she felt that she should write to him, but she had a feeling of powerlessness. finally, only a little while before, she had brought herself to do it. she knew it was a poor letter, a halting, constrained thing, but it seemed the best she could do, and so finally, after a great deal of uncertainty, she sent it. his reply made her feel that he realized how it had been, why she had been so long in writing, why the letter had been the stilted thing it was. it gave her a feeling that her friend had not withdrawn from her because of what she had brought down upon him, that that open channel between him and her was there as it had ever been. and though his letter did not make her happy, it loosened something in her to be able to feel that the way between her and deane was not closed. "don't distress yourself, ruth," she now reread, "or have it upon your spirit, where too much has lain heavy all these years. you want to know the truth, and the truth is that amy did resent my feeling about you--about you and your situation--and that put us apart. but you see it was not in us to stay together, or we could not have been thus put apart. love can't do it all, ruth--not for long; i mean love that hasn't roots down in the spirit can't. and where there isn't that spiritual underneath, without a hinterland, love is pretty insecure. "i could have held on to it a while longer, i suppose, by cutting clear loose from the thing really me. and i suppose i would have done it if i could--i did in fact make attempts at it--but that me-ness, i'm afraid, is most infernal strong in my miserable make-up. and somehow the withdrawal of one's self seems a lot to pay for even the happiness of love. there are some of us can't seem able to do it. "so it's not you, ruth; it's that it was like that, and that it came out through the controversy about you. cast from your mind any feeling adding the wrecking of my happiness to your list of crimes. "but, ruth, i'm _not_ happy. i couldn't get along in happiness, and i don't get along without it. it's a paralyzing thing not to have happiness--or to lose it, rather. does it ever seem to you that life is a pretty paralyzing thing? that little by little--a little here and a little there--it _gets_ us? we get harness-broke, you see. seems to have gone that way with most of the people i know. seems to be that way with me. don't let it do it to you! "somehow i don't believe it will. i think that you, ruth, would be a fine little prison-breaker. might stand some show of being one myself if i were anywhere but in this town. there's something about it that has _got_ me, ruth. if it hadn't--i'd be getting out of it now. "but of course i'm a pretty poor sort, not worth making a fight for, or it wouldn't be like this. and--for that matter--what's the difference? lives aren't counting for much these days--men who _are_ the right sort going down by the thousands, by the hundred of thousands, so what--for heaven's sake--does it matter about me? "i wish i could see you! "i'm glad for you about the divorce. i believe the case comes up this april term, so it may be all over by the time you get this letter. pretty late in coming, and i suppose it must seem a good deal of a mockery--getting it now--but maybe it will help some for the future, make you feel more comfortable, and i'm awfully glad. "funny about it, isn't it? i wonder what made her do it! i was called there this winter, maid sick--miscarriage--and mrs. williams puzzled me. didn't turn the girl out, awfully decent to her. i would have supposed she would have been quite the other way. and now this. queer, don't you think? "write to me sometimes, ruth. sometimes write to me what you're thinking about. maybe it will stir me up. write to me to take a brace and get out of this town! if you went for me hard enough, called me all the insulting names you could think of, and told me a living dead man was the most cowardly and most disgusting object cluttering up the earth, you might get a rise out of me. you're the one could do it, if it can be done. "one thing i _do_ know--writing this has made me want like blazes to see you! "deane." * * * * * ruth sat there in the arm of a low willow, her hands resting upon deane's letter, her eyes closed, the faint breath of coming spring upon her face. she was tired and very sad. she was thinking of deane's life, of her own life, of the way one seemed mocked. she wished that deane were there; she could talk to him and she would like to talk. his letter moved something in her, something that had long seemed locked in stirred a little. her feeling about life had seemed a thing frozen within her. now the feeling that there was still this open channel between her and deane was as a thawing, an outlet. she thought of her last talk with deane, of their walk together that day, almost a year before, when he came to see her at annie's, the very day she was starting back west. she had felt anything but locked in that day. there was that triumphant sense of openness to life, the joy of new interest in it, of zest for it. and then she came back west, to stuart, and somehow the radiance went, courage ebbed, it came to seem that life was all fixed, almost as if life, in the real sense, was over. that sense of having failed, having been inadequate to her own feeling, struck her down to a wretched powerlessness. and so routine, hard work, bitter cold, loneliness, that sense of the cruelty of life which the sternness of the country gave--those things had been able to take her; it was because something had gone dead in her. she thought of that spiritual hinterland deane talked about. she thought of her and stuart. she grew very sad in the thinking. she wondered if it was her fault. however it was, it was true they no longer found the live things in one another. she had not been able to communicate to him the feeling with which she came back from annie's. it was a lesser thing for trying to talk of it to him. she did not reach him; she knew that he only thought her a little absurd. after that she did not try to talk to him of what she felt. life lessened; things were as they were; they too were as they were. it came to seem just a matter of following out what had been begun. and then that news of the divorce had come to mock her. but she must do something for deane. deane must not go like that. she had brought pencil and writing tablet with her, thinking that perhaps out of doors, away from the house where she had seemed locked in all winter, she could write to him. she thought of things to say, things that should be said, but she did not seem to have any power to charge them with life. how could the dead rouse the dead? she sat there thinking of her and deane, of how they had always been able to reach one another. and finally she began: "dear deane, "you must find your way back to life." she did not go on. she sat staring at what she had written. she read it over; she said it aloud. it surged in upon her, into shut places. she sat looking at it, frightened at what it was doing. sat looking at it after it was all blurred by tears--looking down at the words she herself had written--"you must find your way back to life." chapter thirty-three ruth was very quiet through the next week. stuart was preoccupied with the plans he was making for going to montana; when he talked with her it was of that, of arrangements to be made for it, and his own absorption apparently kept him from taking note of her being more quiet than usual, or different. it was all working out very well. he had found a renter for the ranch, the prospects for the venture in montana were good. they were to move within a month. and one night in late april when he came home from town he handed ruth a long envelope, with a laughing, "better late than never." then he was soon deep in some papers. ruth was sorting a box of things; there were many things to be gone through preparatory to moving. she had put the paper announcing his divorce aside without comment; but she loitered over what she was doing. she was watching stuart, thinking about him. she was thinking with satisfaction that he looked well. he had thrown off the trouble that had brought about their departure from freeport twelve years before. he was growing rather stout; his fair hair had gone somewhat gray and his face was lined, he had not the look of a young man. but he looked strong, alert. his new hopes had given him vigor, a new buoyancy. she sat there thinking of the years she had lived with him, of the wonder and the happiness she had known through him, of the hard things they had faced together. her voice was gentle as she replied to his inquiry about what day of the month it was. "i think," he said, "that we can get off by the fifteenth, don't you, ruth?" "perhaps." her voice shook a little, but he was following his own thoughts and did not notice. after a little he came and sat across the table from her. "and, ruth, about this getting married business--" he broke off with a laugh. "seems absurd, doesn't it?" she nodded, fumbling with the things in the box, her head bent over them. "well, i was thinking we'd better stop somewhere along the way and attend to it. can't do it here--don't want to there." she lifted her hands from the box and laid them on the table that was between him and her. she looked over at him and said, quietly, in a voice that shook only a little: "i do not want to get married, stuart." he was filling his pipe and stopped abruptly, spilling the tobacco on the table. "what did you say?" he asked in the voice of one sure he must have heard wrong. "i said," she repeated, "that i did not want to get married." he stared at her, his face screwed up. then it relaxed a little. "oh, yes--yes, i know how you feel. it seems so absurd--after all this time--after all there has been. but we must attend to it, ruth. it's right that we should--now that we can. god knows we wanted to bad enough--long ago. and it will make us feel better about going into a new place. we can face people better." he gathered up the tobacco he had spilled and put it in his pipe. for a moment she did not speak. then, "that wasn't what i meant, stuart," she said, falteringly. "well, then, what in the world _do_ you mean?" he asked impatiently. she did not at once say what she meant. her eyes held him, they were so strangely steady. "just why would we be getting married, stuart?" she asked simply. at first he could only stare at her, appeared to be waiting for her to throw light on what she had asked. when she did not do that he moved impatiently, as if resentful of being quizzed this way. "why--why, because we can now. because it's the thing to do. because it will be expected of us," he concluded, with gathering impatience for this unnecessary explanation. a faint smile traced itself about ruth's mouth. it made her face very sad as she said: "i do not seem to be anxious to marry for any of those reasons, stuart." "ruth, what are you driving at?" he demanded, thoroughly vexed at the way she had bewildered him. "this is what i am driving at, stuart," she began, a little more spiritedly. but then she stopped, as if dumb before it. she looked over at him as if hoping her eyes would tell it for her. but as he continued in that look of waiting, impatient bewilderment she sighed and turned a little away. "don't you think, stuart," she asked, her voice low, "that the future is rather too important a thing to be given up to ratifying the past?" he pushed his chair back in impatience that was mounting to anger. "just what do you mean?" he asked, stiffly. she picked up the long envelope lying on the table between them. she held it in her hand a moment without speaking. for as she touched it she had a sense of what it would have meant to have held it in her hand twelve years before, over on the other side of their life together, a new sense of the irony and the pity of not having had it then--and having it now. she laid it down between them. "to me," she said, "this sets me free. "free to choose," she went on, as he only stared at her. there was a moment of looking at him out of eyes so full of feeling that they held back the feeling that had flushed his face. "and my choice," she said, with a strange steadiness, "is that i now go my way alone." he spoke then; but it was only to stammer: "why,--_ruth!_" helplessly he repeated: "_ruth!_" "but you see? you do see?" she cried. "if it had _not_ been so much--so beautiful! just because it _was_ what it was--" she choked and could not go on. he came around and sat down beside her. the seriousness of his face, something she had touched in him, made it finer than it had been in those last years of routine. it was more as it used to be. his voice too seemed out of old days as he said: "ruth, i don't know yet what you mean--why you're saying this?" "i think you do, stuart," she said simply. "or i think you will, if you'll let yourself. it's simply that this--" she touched the envelope on the table before her--"that this finds us over on the other side of marriage. and this is what i mean!" she flamed. "i mean that the marriage between us was too real to go through the mockery this would make possible now!" she turned away because she was close to tears. he sat there in silence. then, "have i done anything, ruth?" he asked in the hesitating way of one at sea. she shook her head without turning back to him. "you apparently have got the impression," he went on, a faint touch of resentment creeping into his voice at having to make the declaration, "that i don't care any more. that--that isn't so," he said awkwardly and with a little rise of resentment. ruth had turned a little more toward him, but was looking down at her hands, working with them as if struggling for better control. "i have no--complaint on that score," she said very low. "things change," he went on, with a more open manner of defence. "the first kind of love doesn't last forever. it doesn't with anyone," he finished, rather sullenly. "i know that, stuart," she said quietly. "i know enough to know that. but i know this as well. i know that sometimes that first kind of love leaves a living thing to live by. i know that it does--sometimes. and i know that with us--it hasn't." as if stung by that he got up and began walking angrily about the room. "you're talking nonsense! why wouldn't we get married, i'd like to know, after all this time together? we _will_ get married--that's all there is to it! a nice spectacle we would make of ourselves if we didn't! have you thought of that?" he demanded. "have you thought of what people would say?" again her lips traced that faint smile that showed the sadness of her face. "there was a time, stuart," she said wearily, "when we were not governed by what people would say." he frowned, but went on more mildly: "you've got the thing all twisted up, ruth. you do that sometimes. you often have a queer way of looking at a thing; not the usual way--a--well, a sort of twisted way." she got up. one hand was at her throat as if feeling some impediment there; the knuckles of her clenched hand were tapping the table. "a queer way of looking at things," she said in quick, sharp voice that was like the tapping of her knuckles. "not the usual way. a--sort of twisted way. perhaps. perhaps that's true. perhaps that was the way i had of looking at things twelve years ago--when i left them all behind and went with you. perhaps that was what made me do it--that queer, twisted way of looking at things! but this much is true, stuart, and this you have got to know is true. i went with you because i was as i was. i'm going my way alone now because i am as i am. and what you don't see is this,--that the thing that made me go with you then is the thing that makes me go my way alone now." for a moment they stood there facing each other, her eyes forcing home what she had said. but she was trembling and suddenly, weakly, she sat down. "well, i simply can't understand it!" he cried petulantly and flung open the door and stood looking out. "look here, ruth," he turned sharply to her after a little, "have you thought of the position this puts _me_ in? have you thought of the position you would put _me_ in?" he contended hotly. "do you know what people would say about me? you ought to know what they'd say! they'd say _i_ was the one!--they'd say _i_ didn't want to do it!" there was a little catch something like a laugh as she replied: "of course. they'll say men don't marry women of that sort, won't they?" "oh, you can't do this, ruth," he went on quickly. "you see, it can't be done. i tell you it wouldn't be right! it just wouldn't be _right_--in any sense. why can't you see that? can't you see that we've got to vindicate the whole thing? that we've got to show them that it _does_ last! that's the vindication for it," he finished stoutly, "that it's the kind of a love that doesn't die! "and i'd like to know where under the sun you'd go!" he demanded hotly, irritated at the slight smile his last words had brought. "what i will do, stuart, after leaving you, is for me to determine, isn't it?" "a nice way to treat me!" he cried, and threw himself down on the couch, elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. "after all these years--after all there has been--that's a _nice_ way--" he choked. she was quick to go over and sit beside him; she leaned a little against him, her hand on his arm, just as she had sat many times when he needed her, when she brought him comfort. the thought of all those times rose in her and brought tears to her eyes that had been burning dry a moment before. she felt the feeling this had whipped to life in him and was moved by it, and by an underlying feeling of the sadness of change. for his expostulations spoke of just that--change. she knew this for the last hurt she could help him through, that she must help him through this hurt brought him by this last thing she could do for him. something about things being like that moved her deeply. she saw it all so clearly, and so sadly. it was not grief this brought him; this was not the frenzy or the anguish in the thought of losing her that there would have been in those other years. it was shock, rather--disturbance, and the forcing home to him that sense of change. he would have gone on without much taking stock, because, as he had said, it was the thing to do. habit, a sense of fitness, rather than deep personal need, would have made him go on. and now it was his sense that it was gone, his resentment against that, his momentary feeling of being left desolate. she looked at his bowed head through tears. gently she laid her hand on it. she thought of him as he stood before the automobile the other day lighting up in the gay talk with that girl. she knew, with a sudden wrench in her heart she knew it, that he would not be long desolate. she understood him too well for that. she knew that, hard as she seemed in that hour, she was doing for stuart in leaving him the greatest thing she could now do for him. a tear fell to her hand in her clear knowing of that. there was deep sadness in knowing that, after all there had been, to leave the way cleared of herself was doing a greater thing than anything else she could do for him. a sob shook her and he raised his face upon which there were tears and clutched her two wrists with his hands. "ruth," he whispered, "it will come back. i feel that this has--has brought it back." the look of old feeling had transformed his face. after barren days it was sweet to her. it tempted her, tempted her to shut her eyes to what she knew and sink into the sweetness of believing herself loving and loved again. perhaps, for a little time, they could do it. to be deeply swayed by this common feeling, to go together in an emotion, was like dear days gone. but it was her very fidelity to those days gone that made her draw just a little away, and, tears running down her face, shake her head. she knew too well, and she had the courage of her knowing. this was something that had seeped up from old feeling; it had no life of its own. what they were sharing now was grief over a dead thing that had been theirs together. that grief, that sharing, left them tender. this was their moment--their moment for leaving it. they must leave it before it lay there between them both dead and unmourned, clogging life for them. she whispered to him: "just because of all it has meant--let's leave it while we can leave it like this!" chapter thirty-four the man who worked for them had gone ahead in the spring wagon with her trunk. she was waiting for ted to hitch the other horse to the buggy and drive her in to the train. she was all ready and stood there looking about the house she was leaving. there were things in that room which they had had since their first years together--that couch, this chair, had come to them in arizona in the days when they loved each other with a passion that made everything else in the world a pale thing before their love. she stood picking out things that they had had when love was flaming strong in them and it seemed they two fought together against the whole world. and as she stood there alone in their place in common that she was about to leave she was made sick by a sense of failure--that desolate sense of failure she had tried all along to beat down. that love had been theirs--and this was what it had come to. that wonder had been--and it ended in the misery of this leavetaking. she turned sharply around, opened the door and stood there in the doorway, her back to the place she was quitting, her pale stern face turned to the mountains--to that eastern range which she was going to cross. she tried to draw something from them, draw strength for the final conflict which she knew she would have with ted while they drove in to town. she looked toward the barn-yard to see if he was most ready, and could not but smile a little at his grim, resolute face as he was checking up the horse. she could see so well that he was going to make the best of his time while driving her in to the train. and it seemed she had nothing left in her for combat; she would be glad to see the train that was to take her away. three days before stuart had gone suddenly to denver. he went with his friend stoddard, regarding some of their arrangements for montana. he had found only at the last minute that he would have to go, had hurriedly driven out from town to get his things and tell her he was going. he had been in the house only a few minutes and was all excitement about the unexpected trip. it was two days after their talk. after their moment of being swept together by the feeling of things gone he had, as if having to get a footing on everyday ground, ended the talk with saying: "i'll tell you, ruth, you need a little change. we'll have to work it out." the next day they were both subdued, more gentle with each other than they had been of late, but they did not refer to the night before. after he had hurriedly kissed her good-by when leaving for denver he had turned back and said, "and don't you worry--about things, ruth. we'll get everything fixed up--and a little change--" he had hurried down to the machine without finishing it. she had gone to the window and watched him disappear. he was sitting erect, alert, talking animatedly with his friend. she watched him as far as she could see him. she knew that she would not see him again. and then she hitched up the horse and drove into town and telephoned ted, who lived about fifty miles to the north. she told him that she was going east and asked him to come down the next day and see her. she had known that ted would not approve, would not understand, but she had not expected him to make the fight he had. it had taken every bit of her will, her force, to meet him. worn now, and under the stress of the taking leave, at once too tired and too emotional, she wished that he would let it rest. but the grim line of his jaw told her that he had no such intention. she felt almost faint as they drove through the gate. she closed her eyes and did not open them for some time. "you see, ruth," ted began gently, as if realizing that she was very worn, "you just don't realize how crazy the whole thing is. it's ridiculous for you to go to new york--alone! you've never been there," he said firmly. "no. that is one reason for going," she answered, rather feebly. "one reason for going!" he cried. "what'll you do when the train pulls in? where'll you _go_?" "i don't know, ted," she said patiently, "just where i will go. and i rather like that--not knowing where i will go. it's all new, you see. nothing is mapped out." "it's a fool thing!" he cried. "don't you know that something will happen to you?" she smiled a little, very wearily. "lots of things have happened to me, ted, and i've come through them somehow." after a moment she added, with more spirit: "there's just one thing might happen to me that i haven't the courage to face." he looked at her inquiringly. "nothing happening," she said, with a little smile. he turned impatiently and slapped the horse with the reins. "you seem to have lost your senses," he said sharply. he drove along in silence for a little. ruth looked at him and his face seemed hard. she thought of how close she and ted had come, how good he had been, how much it had meant. she could not leave him like this. she must make the effort, must gather herself together and try and make ted see. "perhaps, ted," she began tremulously, "you think i have taken leave of my senses because you haven't tried very hard to understand just what it is i feel." she smiled wanly as she added, "you've been so absorbed in your own disapproval, you know." "well, how can i be any other way?" he demanded. "going away like this--for no reason--on a wild goose chase! isn't stuart good to you?" he asked abruptly. "yes, ted," she answered, as if she were tired of saying it, "stuart is good enough to me." "i suppose things aren't--just as they used to be," he went on, a little doggedly. "heavens!--they aren't with anybody! and what will people say?" he broke out with new force. "think of what people in freeport will say, ruth. they'll say the whole thing was a failure, and that it was because you did wrong. they'll say, when the chance finally came, that stuart didn't want to marry you." he colored but brought it out bluntly. "i suppose they will," agreed ruth. "and if they knew the truth--or what i know, though heaven knows i'm balled up enough about what the truth really is!--they'd say it just shows again that you are different, not--something wrong," he finished bitterly. she said nothing for a moment. "and is that what you think, ted?" she asked, choking a little. "i don't understand it, ruth," he said, less aggressively. "i had thought you would be so glad of the chance to marry. i--" he hesitated but did not pursue that. he had never told her of going to see mrs. williams, of the effort he had made for her. "it seemed that now, when your chance came, you ought to show people that you do want to do the right thing. it surprises me a lot, ruth, that you don't feel that way, and--oh! i don't get it at all," he concluded abruptly. tears were very close when, after a little, she answered: "well, ted, maybe when you have less of life left you will understand better what it is i feel. perhaps," she went on in answer to his look inquiry, "when the future has shrunk down to fewer years you'll see it as more important to get from it what you can." they drove for a little time in silence. they had come in sight of the town and she had not won ted; she was going away without his sympathy. and she was going away alone, more alone this time than she had been twelve years before. she laid her hand on his arm, left it there while she was speaking. "ted," she said, "it's like this. this has gone for me. it's all gone. it was wonderful--but it's gone. some people, i know, could go on with the life love had made after love was gone. i am not one of those people--that's all. you speak of there being something discreditable in my going away just when i could marry. to me there would be something discreditable in going on. it would be--" she put her hand over her heart and said it very simply, "it would be unfaithful to something here." she choked a little and he turned away. "but i don't see how you can bear, ruth," he said after a moment, made gentle by her confidence, "to feel that it has--failed. i don't see how you can bear--after all you paid for it--to let it come to nothing." "don't say that, ted!" she cried in a voice that told he had touched the sorest place. "don't say that!" she repeated, a little wildly. "you don't know what you're talking about. _failed?_ a thing that glorified life for years--_failed_?" her voice broke, but it was more steadily she went on: "that's the very reason i'm going to new york--simply that it may _not_ come to nothing. i'm going away from it for that very reason--that it may not come to nothing! that my life may not come to nothing. what i've had--what i've gone through--lives in me, ted. it doesn't come to nothing if i--come to something!" she stopped abruptly with a choking little laugh. ted looked at her wonderingly; but the hardness had gone out of his look. "but what are you going to do, ruth?" he asked gently. "i don't know yet. i've got to find out." "you must see that i can't help but worry about it," he went on. "going so far away--to a place absolutely unknown to you--where i'm afraid it will be so much harder than you think." she did not answer him, looking off to that eastern range she was going to cross, as if the mountains could help her to hold on to her own feeling against the doubts he was trying to throw around her. "you see, ruth," he went on, as if feeling his way, not wanting to hurt her, "what has been may make it hard to go on. you can't tell. you'll never know--never be sure. old things may come up to spoil new ones for you. that's what i'm so afraid of. that's what it seems you aren't seeing. you would be so much--safer--to stay with stuart." she turned to him with a little laugh, her lashes wet. "yes, ted dear, i suppose i would. but i never did seem to stay where i was safest--did i?" "don't worry about me, ted," she said just as they were coming into town. "i'm going to take some of father's money--yes, yes, i know it isn't a great deal, but enough for a little while, till i get my bearings--and i'm going to make things come alive for me again. i'm not through yet, that's all. i could have stayed with life gone dead; it would have been safer, as you say. but you see i'm not through yet, ted--i guess that's the secret of it all. i want more life--more things from life. and i'm going to new york just because it will be so completely new--so completely beginning new--and because it's the center of so many living things. and it's such a wonderful time, ted. it seems to me the war is going to make a new world--a whole new way of looking at things. it's as if a lot of old things, old ideas, had been melted, and were fluid now, and were to be shaped anew. that's the way it seems to me, and that makes me the more eager to get some things from life that i haven't had. i've been shut in with my own experience. if i stayed on here i'd be shut in with my own dead experiences. i want to go on! i can't stop here--that's all. and we have to find our way for going on. we must find our own way, ted, even," she choked, "though what we see as the way may seem a wild goose chase to some one we love. i'll tell you why i'm going to new york," she flashed with sudden defiance. "i'm going because i want to!" she laughed a little and he laughed with her. then she went on more gently: "because i want to. just the thought of it has made life come alive for me--that's reason enough for going to the ends of the earth! i'm going to _live_ again, ted--not just go on with what living has left. i'm going to find some work to do. yes i _can_!" she cried passionately in response to his gesture "i suppose to you it seems just looking out for myself--seems unfaithful to stuart. well, it isn't--that's all i can say, and maybe some day you'll see that it wasn't. it isn't unfaithful to turn from a person you have nothing more to offer, for whom you no longer make life a living thing. it's more faithful to go. you'll see that some time, ted. but be good to stuart," she hastily added. "you stay with him till he can get off. i've made all the arrangements with mrs. baxter for packing up--sending on the things. it would be hard for him to do that, i know. and once away from here--new interests--life all new again--oh, no, ted dear," she laughed a little chokingly, "don't worry about stuart." "i'm not worrying about stuart," he muttered. "i'm worrying about you." she squeezed his arm in affectionate gratitude for the love in the growling words. "don't _worry_ about me, ted," she implored, "be glad with me! i'm alive again! it's so wonderful to be alive again. there's the future--a great, beautiful unknown. it _is_ wonderful, ted," she said with insistence, as if she would banish his fears--and her own. they had a few minutes to wait, and ted ran over to the postoffice to get her mail for her--she was expecting a paper she wanted to read on the train. she tucked what he handed her into her bag and then when she heard the train coming she held on to ted's arm, held it as if she could not bear letting it go. "it's all right," were her last words to him, smiling through tears. * * * * * she had been trying all along to hold her mind from the thought that they would pass through freeport. late the next afternoon, when she knew they were nearing it, she grew restless. it was then she remembered the paper in her bag--she had been in no mood for reading, too charged with her own feeling. she got it out now and found that with the paper was a letter. it was a letter from deane franklin. she held it for a little while without opening it. it seemed so strange to have it just as she was nearing freeport. the letter was dated the week before. it read: "_dear ruth:_ "i'm leaving freeport tonight. i'm going to europe--to volunteer my services as a doctor. parker, whom i knew well at hopkins, is right in the midst of it. he can work me in. and the need for doctors is going to go on for some time, i fancy; it won't end with the war. "i'm happy in this decision, ruth, and i know you'll be glad for me. it was your letter that got me--made me see myself and hate myself, made me know that i had to 'come out of it.' and then this idea came to me, and i wish i could tell you how different everything seemed as soon as i saw some reason for my existence. i'm ashamed of myself for not having seen it this way before. as if this were any time for a man who's had my training to sit around moping! "life is bigger than just ourselves. and isn't it curious how seeing that brings us back to ourselves? "i'll enclose parker's address. you can reach me in care of him. i want to hear from you. "i can hardly wait to get there! "deane." * * * * * she managed to read the letter through with eyes only a little dimmed. but by the time she got to parker's address she could not make it out. "i knew it!" she kept saying to herself triumphantly. deane had been too big not to save himself. absorbed in thoughts of him she did not notice the country through which they were passing. she was startled by a jolt of the train, by the conductor saying, "freeport!" for several minutes the train waited there. she sat motionless through that time, deane franklin's letter clasped tight in her hand. freeport! it claimed her:--what had been, what was behind her; those dead who lived in her, her own past that lived in her. freeport.... it laid strong hold on her. she was held there in what had been. and then a great thing happened. the train jolted again--moved. it was moving--moving on. _she_ was moving--moving on. and she knew then beyond the power of anyone's disapproval to break down that it was right she move on. she had a feeling of the whole flow of her life--and it was still moving--moving on. and because she felt she was moving on that sense of failure slipped from her. in secret she had been fighting that all along. now she knew that love had not failed because love had transpired into life. what she had paid the great price for was not hers to the end. but what it had made of her was hers! love could not fail if it left one richer than it had found one. love had not failed--nothing had failed--and life was wonderful, limitless, a great adventure for which one must have great courage, glad faith. let come what would come!--she was moving on. the end by the california state university east bay libraries. mary broome: a comedy, in four acts, by allan monkhouse boston: john w. luce & company london: sidgwick & jackson, ltd. adam street, adelphi mcmxiii _first impression, june,_ _second impression, january,_ _entered at the library of congress, washington, u.s.a._ _all rights reserved_ "mary broome" was first produced by miss horniman's company at the gaiety theatre, manchester, on october th, , with the following cast:-- sheila ray edyth goodall ada timbrell hilda bruce potter edgar timbrell herbert lomas mary broome irene rooke leonard timbrell milton rosmer mrs. timbrell ada king edward timbrell charles bibby maid doris bateman mr. pendleton cecil brooking mrs. pendleton louise holbrook mrs. greaves hilda davies john broome edward landor mrs. broome muriel pratt the play produced by stanley drewitt characters edward timbrell mrs. timbrell edgar timbrell leonard timbrell ada timbrell sheila ray (_afterwards mrs. edgar timbrell_) mary broome (_afterwards mrs. leonard timbrell_) john broome mrs. broome mr. pendleton mrs. pendleton mrs. greaves a maid act i. [_the drawing-room in a biggish suburban villa--the furniture, &c., are in middling taste. edgar timbrell, an ordinary young man of nearly thirty in neat tweeds is sprawling self-consciously on the sofa. ada and sheila are opening a parcel. they are the ordinary middle-class young women who might develop in all manner of unexpected ways and usually do not._] sheila. come and look, edgar. ada. he's only pretending not to care. sheila. lend me your knife. [_she takes it from him and cuts the string._] i brought this over without opening it just to let you see it too. edgar. for heaven's sake remember who sent them all. sheila. it's all right. ada's keeping a list. edgar. well, get all the fun out of it you can. you won't often have the chance of being married. sheila. [_opening the parcel._] oh! how nice! what do you mean, edgar? i've had lots of chances. edgar. you can't go on having them now, though. ada. let me see, sheila. sheila. no, that's why i want everything to be nice. instead of all those chances i want one delightful reality. a sweet little tea caddy; that's two; the other was bigger. one delightful reality, edgar. you've got to see to that. edgar. oh! i'll make a jolly good husband. sheila. i wasn't thinking of that. i was only thinking of the wedding. one thing at a time. i want to have the prettiest wedding that ever was. something that i can look back to. no hitches and stupidities and uglinesses. ada. some people like indian tea. you could have indian tea in that one. [_enter mary broome, the housemaid. she is a comely young woman in the housemaid's usual afternoon dress and with the housemaid's usual self-possession._] mary. a parcel for you, sir. edgar. thank you. will you put it down--anywhere. ada. another present! no. edgar. only my new silk hat. sheila. hurrah! that's right. [_mary puts the box on a chair and is going out when edgar speaks._] edgar. er--is mr. leonard in, do you know? mary. i think he went upstairs, sir. ada. what do you want with him? sheila. let's see you in the new hat. edgar. it's just a notion i had. i'm afraid of forgetting. i wonder if he's done anything about clothes and things; he's fearfully casual. mary. must i--? do you want me, sir? edgar. no, i think not, thank you. [_she goes out._] sheila. the new hat. the new hat. how jolly! [_she begins to open the box._] ada. you'd better speak to him while you think about it. edgar. he's no good at ceremonial clothes. i believe he's only got a frock coat. sheila. oh! don't let us have a frock coat. i should never forget it. ada. i'll go for him. i'll fetch him. sheila. yes, do, ada. no time like the present. [_ada goes out._] edgar, i wish leonard wasn't coming to the wedding. edgar. but, my dear girl-- sheila. oh! i know. i know. of course he _must_ be best man. it would be all wrong if he wasn't but somehow he's so queer and different and i don't feel safe with him and i don't know what he'll do or say. of course he can be charming. i think he's a flirt. you always know when he's in the room. edgar. of course these artist people are very self-conscious and assertive and-- sheila. but he's not assertive. he's--he's seductive. and he makes fun of things. edgar. no harm in that. sheila. yes, there is. he makes fun of the wrong things. why do you call him an artist, edgar? he's not one. edgar. oh! he's artistic--literary and so on--it's all the same. sheila. but he's a barrister, isn't he? edgar. oh! yes, of sorts. he never had a brief. sheila. then how does he--i mean how does he get an income? why doesn't he go into the business, too? edgar. oh! ho! leonard in the business! no. the old pater prefers to pay him a handsome allowance to keep out. besides, leonard makes about five shillings a month by literature. sheila. how horrid to be quite dependent like that! why do you let him? edgar. bless you! i don't want him in the business. it suits me well enough. hullo! he's coming. [_enter ada and leonard._] [_leonard is rather younger than edgar; a handsome young man with an air of detachment. his manners are rather pleasantly impudent and now disguise some harassment. he is rather carefully dressed in what appears to be a careless way._] leonard. i'm wanted? very much honoured i'm sure. my dear sheila, i kiss your hands. sheila. you may shake one if you like. [_he tries to kiss it and she snatches it away._] leonard. what a pity. sheila. don't be so stupid. leonard. you keep disappointing me. we should have done it very well. ada. don't be absurd, leonard. edgar. he will play the fool. leonard. well, well. now to business. about this wedding. does the best man kiss the bride? sheila. } of course not. those vulgarities are out of } date. } [_together._] edgar. } deuce take it, leonard! leonard. i only want to know. i want to play my part like an english gentleman. kissing in public--except the hand--is an atrocity, but if it has to be done it should be done firmly. no hesitations, no scrimmages. in fact there should always be a rehearsal. very well. no kissing. now about gloves-- edgar. yes, what are you going to wear, leonard? leonard. i shall wear a grey morning coat, trousers of about the same colour but exquisitely striped, white waistcoat, grey hat with narrow black band, an orchid--the best that money can buy--if anyone will lend me the money-- edgar. here, i say-- leonard. i know what you are going to say--that i ought just to dress up to you. sheila. oh! he won't be sensible. i hope you won't go and spoil things. leonard. spoil things? [_he reflects for a moment._] confess that you would like me to go away and telegraph that i can't come to the wedding. sheila. oh! no. but i want everything to be nice. edgar. do the thing properly, leonard. leonard. properly! i want to do things more than properly. i meant to write an ode on the marriage morning. i'm afraid i shan't have time for more than a sonnet. i've made a start. i've got a first line: 'the jocund sun has tinged the mountain tops'-- good word 'jocund'. the difficulty is to get three good rhymes to tops. of course it might be crest--mountain crest--but i don't like it. it's poetical. that's the worst of poetry now-a-days; you mustn't use poetical words. edgar. there's no getting any sense out of you, but look here: sheila and i want you to be decent over this affair. just get the right sort of thing and a new hat, won't you? i'll tell you what to get if you like. leonard. my dear fellow i have the sense of clothes. sheila. he knows well enough, edgar. edgar. come on then. is mother downstairs? ada. i think so. leonard, you might open the window; the room's close. leonard. now, ada, you know it's not my business to open the window. i always leave this kind of thing to experts. ada. well, ring for mary. leonard. oh! no. i'll do it. [_he goes rather hastily to open the window. the others go out. he stands looking out of the window. mary broome enters dubiously. she looks round the room and presently sees him. she advances quickly towards him and he turns round._] leonard. oh! i say! mary. you're packing a bag. what for? you can't be going away? leonard. now you mustn't stop here. anyone may come in. mary. after what i told you, you're going away? you couldn't do that. leonard. and, look here! my mother's talking about having missed a photograph--my photograph. you've never, surely-- mary. yes, i took it. leonard. oh! but that's madness. mary. i thought i had a right to it. leonard. well, get away, that's a good girl. we'll talk about things again. mary. how can you go away? why are you packing your bag? leonard. you've been spying in my room. mary. you know i have to go into your room. leonard. of course. i beg your pardon. yes, i am going away for two days. mary. there were ten shirts laid out. leonard. i'm lying. yes. we can't talk here. who's this? take care. [_as mrs. timbrell enters he continues:_] well, i shall be much obliged if you will. the brown boots--yes. more polish--i've really been quite ashamed of them. well, mother? [_he turns from mary with an air of dismissal. mary moves away but stops as mrs. timbrell occupies the doorway. mrs. timbrell is startled rather than surprised. she holds a small framed photograph in her hand._] mrs. timbrell. [_to leonard._] i've found your photograph. mary. you have no right in my room. mrs. timbrell. [_greatly agitated._] leonard, i can't believe--leonard-- [_she has advanced into the room having closed the door. it opens and mr. timbrell enters gaily with sheila on his arm. he is a rather precise man condescending to geniality, obviously righteous according to his lights and obstinately trustful of them. mrs. timbrell's general attitude to him is a rather tired acquiescence which sometimes stops short of submission. ada and edgar follow closely._] timbrell. let's see the latest, then. where's the sweetly pretty tea-caddy? [_to mrs. timbrell._] have you seen it, my dear? [_his speech peters out as he sees his wife's face and the attitudes of the group of whom leonard alone attempts to maintain an ordinary appearance._] why! what's the matter? leonard. you'd better let mary go, mother. you can't scold her in public like this. besides it was only a trifle. mrs. timbrell. i must know. timbrell. what! what! a scolding? what have you been doing, mary? come, come. never mind. run away. run away. i'll speak up for you, mary. mary. [_to leonard._] must i go? leonard. i suppose so. certainly. mary. will you speak up for me? timbrell. what's this? what's this? [_mary makes for the door, sheila standing aside hastily._] stop a bit. stop a bit. [_there is a pause and timbrell looks at leonard and then at his wife._] what's that in your hand? [_mrs. timbrell hesitates, but as her husband waits she turns the photograph towards him._] leonard's photograph? the one you lost? well, where was it? leonard. i think you might allow mary to go. timbrell. where was it? [_he speaks to his wife but she is silent. he looks at mary._] mary. it was in my room. edgar. [_to ada._] you and sheila had better go. timbrell. [_half turning to edgar._] silence. why was it in your room? [_sheila and ada have moved toward the door. they remain, possessed with a natural and intense curiosity._] mary. i had the right to it if anyone had. timbrell. you took it from his mother's room? mary. [_after a very short pause._] well, i shall be a mother soon. [_timbrell sits down and sinks back in the chair. sheila and ada go out quietly._] mrs. timbrell. [_to mary._] sit down, my dear. [_edgar gives mary a chair. she sits down._] mary. thank you, ma'am. leonard. [_to himself or the world._] beautiful. beautiful. timbrell. [_starting._] what! leonard. i said it was beautiful. timbrell. what's beautiful? leonard. mary and my mother; and you, if you like. the whole thing. timbrell. what does he mean? edgar. is your share in it beautiful, too? leonard. that doesn't matter. i see it all. timbrell. [_to mary._] what are you stopping here for? have you no sense of shame? [_mary stands up._] i don't want to be hard on you. i daresay you're less to blame than he is. i don't know. it's a disagraceful affair. disagraceful. now, be off. be off. please go. mary. but i want to hear what he says. timbrell. yes. so do i. leonard. the devil of it is that i say anything. if you get me into a fix i just want to get out of it. timbrell. that's your character, is it? leonard. from your point of view, sir, i'm afraid i'm a bad lot. timbrell. what good are you to anybody? why were you born? leonard. that's your concern, sir. timbrell. don't bandy words with me. you should be down on your knees asking pardon of this poor girl, of your mother, of your god. what are such things to you? leonard. i'm extremely sorry. of course i've no defence. i should have to go back to some kind of first principles and even then it'd be a bit shaky i daresay. mother, it's horrible for you. i see that. timbrell. but have you nothing to say? do you think this is adequate? what are you going to do? what's your way out? leonard. you have a better head than i have, sir, for these practical matters. timbrell. you are a callous and impudent fellow. [_to mary._] what have you got to say? mary. i can't make out how much he cares. leonard. [_to mary._] i don't know what to say to you. i can't talk to you in public. this is a new aspect of the thing entirely. what's the use of telling you i'm sorry? mary. are you sorry? leonard. well, yes. edgar. is the beauty of the scene waning? leonard. [_to edgar._] you'll want another best man. well, sheila didn't want me. edgar. don't speak of sheila here. leonard. why not? edgar. your own sense of decency might tell you. leonard. [_passionately._] in all my life i never said anything as bad as that. never anything as unkind, as evil, as abominable. edgar. why, what do you mean? leonard. to insult her now! edgar. you're a fine fellow to talk of-- timbrell. silence. this is no time for such bickering. [_to mary._] just leave the room. leonard. don't speak to her like that. timbrell. are you addressing me? leonard. yes. you must treat her well. timbrell. treat her!--what are you to talk of treating her well? besides, i am treating her well. i think she will agree that i have shown the greatest forebearance. a fellow who has an intrigue with a servant and then-- leonard. a servant! timbrell. what is she? leonard. you make these distinctions. timbrell. what does the fellow mean? leonard. you'd hardly believe it but i feel a kind of moral exaltation. [_edgar laughs._] oh! yes, edgar, i know your vast superiority but in this you're despicable through and through--all of you. no, mother was beautifully kind for a moment just now. she asked mary to sit down. [_impetuously._] do you like staying here, mary? why don't you go? mary. i want to hear what you say. leonard. i've wronged you, as the saying is, but i don't wrong you with every instinct, at every hour of the day. after all, i'm the only member of this family that's achieved any kind of human relationship with you. to me you're not a servant. listen to this--listen to shakespeare: [_he declaims._] 'why sweat they under burdens? let their beds be made as soft as yours, and let their palates be season'd with such viands. you will answer, the slaves are ours.' i suppose that practically i'm as bad as any of you. it's just the idea. mary. i don't understand what he's talking about. timbrell. nor anybody else. leonard. mary lives in the kitchen and the attic; mary lives on poorer food than ours when it isn't our leavings; the sheets on mary's bed are coarser than ours-- timbrell. silence, sir! edgar. shameful! mrs. timbrell. what would you have us do? mary. i'm making no complaint, ma'am. mrs. timbrell. not of him? mary. i was as bad as him. leonard. she is not bad. she can't be bad. anyone can see that who looks at her. mary. yes, i've acted bad. i couldn't face--i could never face--[_her voice catches. mrs. timbrell crosses over to her._] mrs. timbrell. come with me. you've been here long enough. leonard. go with my mother, mary. mary. i can't make you out. you talk so fine and yet-- mrs. timbrell. come. mary. [_going, turns and says to leonard._] why were you going away? timbrell. going away? mary. he was packing his things. mrs. timbrell. why, leonard? leonard. what a brute i am. mrs. timbrell. you were going away? leonard. that's the kind of beast i am. timbrell. i don't quite understand this. you were going away? where? why? leonard. where doesn't matter. timbrell. why were you going? leonard. i wanted to get out of it. mrs. timbrell. you didn't know. you didn't understand. leonard. yes, i did. she told me. mrs. timbrell. but, leonard-- timbrell. what! what! you were running away? you knew--you knew everything? leonard. yes, i did. timbrell. shameful! monstrous! leonard. i thought it the most sensible thing to do. i know it looks bad. timbrell. he amazes me. i can't grasp it. what a coward! what an infamous coward! had you no thought at all for this unfortunate girl? you never thought of any kind of reparation, i suppose? reparation! by heaven!--[_he stops for a moment, considering and then goes on but with something working in his mind._] had you no consideration for your mother--for any of us? don't you see--don't you understand? leonard. i think i see a bit clearer than you do. as to mary, i didn't see how i could help her. frankly, i didn't. i knew you'd be as decent to her as anyone could. i've not a penny. i can't earn a penny. i'd have written to my mother to explain. it wouldn't have been pleasant, but less disagreeable for her than this, i think. edgar. how would you go away without a penny? leonard. never mind. yes. you shall know. i meant to take some of mother's housekeeping money. i know where she keeps it. edgar. you'd have stolen it? leonard. i should have written to explain--and to ask for some more. edgar. you're the limit. leonard. you're damned small-minded. don't bother us. [_to his father._] i quite understand your point of view, sir. timbrell. oh! do you? you understand me very thoroughly, don't you? leonard. you see i have far more faith in your practical wisdom than in my own. i'm in a mess. you'll say i ought to stop and face the music. my point is that it does no good. and then there was that infernal wedding of edgar's; i had to get out of that. they didn't want me any how. oh! i know i cut a very poor figure. from your point of view. and i quite understand it, mind you. i'm very much with you now. and when i look at you, mary, i feel rather horrible. mary. i didn't think you'd have run away. leonard. no, that's bad, isn't it? edgar. the fellow's a comedian. mrs. timbrell. come, mary. timbrell. stop. mary, would you marry him? mary. what, sir? timbrell. would you condescend to marry him? would you be such a fool? mary. he wouldn't marry me. timbrell. so much the worse for him, then. [_to leonard._] you've lived here hitherto at my expense. i turn you out. you're old enough to earn a living. go. mrs. timbrell. edward-- timbrell. my mind's made up. there's only one alternative. leonard. and what's that, sir? timbrell. that you do reparation. that you do the honest, manly thing. it hasn't occurred to you, it seems. leonard. you mean?-- timbrell. i can hardly advise her to do it. mary, if you marry him i'll give him £ a year so long as he behaves himself; if he doesn't you shan't suffer. mrs. timbrell. edward. don't be hasty, don't decide too quickly. i'm thinking of you, mary, as well as of him. mary. i knew you'd be kind to me, ma'am. mrs. timbrell. edward, i pray that we may do right. timbrell. come, sir. you had better go down on your knees and woo your bride. mrs. timbrell. oh! edward; don't speak like that. timbrell. he's not worthy of consideration. mrs. timbrell. i was thinking of her. timbrell. [_to leonard._] what's your answer? leonard. mother, will you take mary away and i will talk to my father. timbrell. you will talk now and in mary's presence. leonard. you care nothing about her. it's simply that you're vexed with me. if you were doing it for her i could have some respect for you. timbrell. your answer to my proposal. leonard. what's edgar doing here? surely we can do without him. timbrell. [_to edgar._] stay where you are. leonard. mary, you know it's impossible. mary. yes, mr. leonard. leonard. mary refuses. timbrell. so much the worse for you. leonard. but if she refuses-- timbrell. out you go into the street. mrs. timbrell. that can't be. timbrell. that shall be. leonard. oh! this is all very absurd. we are not being practical at all. mary, i'm sorry. it's no good you and me marrying. now is it? mary. i suppose not, mr. leonard. i don't know what i'm going to do, though. leonard. my father can give you a bit of that £ a year he talks about. and then--oh! of course, i don't know. i should like to act handsomely but what can i do? this talk of marriage--frankly--is a bit of antiquated puritanism. mary, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry. you're a good girl. i'm all to blame. [_he turns to his father who sits grimly silent, then to his mother._] mother, you settle it. mrs. timbrell. i don't know how. leonard. you parents are in a middle stage. once you'd just have been brutal to the girl. i don't mean you, but parents generally. presently we may have more sense. i'm a selfish brute but i've got some sense. but i'm powerless. [_to his father._] haven't you any imagination? it's all very fine to make a scene here and put down your foot and coerce me into your beastly righteousness but think of the years to come. do you see us married? do you see our married life? forgive me, mary. timbrell. you shall make an honest woman of her. leonard. a fine old phrase, that. timbrell. i'm not ashamed of it. leonard. why shouldn't she be a happy mother without fear and without shame? mary, don't make that ridiculous mistake of thinking yourself disgraced. mary. but i am disgraced. leonard. you are not--not in the eyes of any reasonable human being. mary. then the people i know aren't reasonable. leonard. have you a father and mother? mary. yes. leonard. and they would--they are-- mary. they are very respectable. leonard. i see, i see. yes. mrs. timbrell. didn't you tell me you were 'keeping company' with someone? mary. i was walking out, ma'am. i wasn't keeping company. leonard. i'm afraid i don't appreciate the difference. mary. there is a difference. mrs. timbrell. have you seen him lately? mary. yes, ma'am. leonard. [_very quietly._] would he marry you now? [_timbrell starts in his chair, but does not speak. mary gives a gasp that is almost a sob._] i know i'm a brute. would he marry you, mary? mrs. timbrell. no, no, no, no. mary. george truefit's a good man. i wouldn't ask him to marry me now. leonard. but if he cares for you he ought to want to marry you now. mary. you think you understand things but you don't. timbrell. mary, will you marry my son? mary. he'd hate me. timbrell. nonsense, will you marry him? mary. i'd like to marry someone. i've got to face my father. he'll be nasty. leonard. may i point out to you, sir-- timbrell. silence. you will do what you are told. you are not one of us. you never have been. a useless dilettante. here's a chance for you. don't you see that? a chance. if you can't take it, it shall be forced on you. will you marry him mary, or let him go out into the street? mary. if he's like as you say, it's no great catch. mrs. timbrell. mary! leonard. she's right. i'm no great catch. she's the sensible person in this conference. let's end it. let's do something else. timbrell. we'll finish this now. edgar, fetch me the bible--the family bible. you know where it is--in the dining-room. edgar. but--what-- timbrell. [_loudly._] at once. [_edgar goes._] mrs. timbrell. my dear--[_timbrell holds up his hand and she stops._] leonard. the family bible! it's like bringing out an obsolete instrument of torture. i'd forgotten that we had a family bible. timbrell. the names of my father's children and their wives and children are recorded there. leonard. and a very nice old custom, too. timbrell. your ribaldry is ill-timed, sir. leonard. ribaldry! i can't make a remark that suits you unless i'm hypocritical. i think it is a nice custom. mrs. timbrell. edward, let us think over this a little more. let us try to see things more clearly. timbrell. where is edgar? what's he doing? mary. oh! send me away and be done. i don't want to make trouble. timbrell. [_loudly._] edgar! where is edgar? [_voices are heard outside. edgar enters with the bible._] timbrell. what's that? who's there? what have you been doing? edgar. it's ada and--it's ada. leonard. better stop up the keyhole, sir, if you wish these rites to be secret. mrs. timbrell. oh! be quiet, leonard. leonard. i must keep up my spirits somehow, mother. timbrell. [_loudly._] ada! and is sheila there? come in. [_they enter immediately._] leonard. i told you so. ada. what is it, father? what's going to happen? timbrell. put that bible down here. [_pointing to table._] pen and ink. [_edgar brings pen and ink._] ada. father, what are you going to do? timbrell. sheila, i thought your name would be the next to be entered in this book, but another is before you. ada. father, i don't want to be hard on mary, but really--i do think-- sheila. i'm sorry for her but i think i ought to be considered. my wedding's spoilt. leonard. inadequate, inadequate. my dear sheila, you're bringing us down to a lower level than we've reached yet. mary. i won't stay. i thank you for your kindness ma'am. i give you a month's notice, but if i may i'll go now without wages. leonard. just listen to her, sheila. it may do you good. timbrell. listen to this. [_he strikes the bible with his fist._] i swear by this book that unless my son, leonard, marries that woman, mary--what is your name? mary. my name is mary broome. timbrell. mary broome, he leaves this house--to-day--and never again receives support in money or aught else from me. [_this is spoken standing. he sits down heavily. a short pause._] it is now between my son leonard and mary broome. [_he opens the bible at the blank pages before the title page and, putting on his spectacles, looks fixedly and inscrutably at the names inscribed there._] sheila. [_to edgar._] i think you ought to interfere. timbrell. [_without looking up._] if sheila is not satisfied with her sister-in-law she need not marry into this family. sheila. she would be my brother-in-law's wife not my sister-in-law. leonard. you are saved. timbrell. i want to know whether i must write mary broome's name here. edgar. it's after marriage you'd do that--not before. timbrell. this time it's before. leonard. there's a sort of grandeur about a man with a fixed idea. edgar. i know you're an obstinate--a determined man, sir, but i'll ask you for once to consider-- timbrell. silence. edgar. mother-- mrs. timbrell. it's no use. i've never stood up against him. i've let him have his own way all these years. it didn't seem to matter. timbrell. i am the head of this house. [_his implacability daunts them. there are whisperings between ada, sheila and edgar. mrs. timbrell is a little apart quiet and sad. in the grouping mary has come to the front. leonard moves a step or two nearer to her and the others are in a rough ring about them._] leonard. mary. mary. well? leonard. i've done you a frightful wrong. there's no getting away from that. don't let it worry you too much. it wasn't your fault. it wasn't your fault at all. but it's not such a wrong as this--as this would be. may i say that i've been admiring you greatly to-day. i think you're a beautiful creature. good-bye. [_he holds out his hand._] mary. but-- mrs. timbrell. my dear boy-- timbrell. your cunning won't do. you're full of shams and tricks. leonard. i was never more sincere. timbrell. how long do your sincerities last? leonard. i know. i know. it's gusts and moods with me. mary, you'll believe me now. [_he looks at his watch._] at what o'clock does this house cease to be my home? timbrell. the sooner the better. mary. but what are you going to do? leonard. i don't know. i shall sponge on my pals for a time, i suppose. i shall dun my mother. i might get down to ada. edgar, i think you're safe. by-the-bye, sheila, can you lend me half-a-crown? [_he turns suddenly to his father._] do you see the folly of it yet? are you going to budge? what about my mother? is it fair to her? timbrell. you begin to think of your mother too late. leonard. oh! i know i'm as selfish as they're made. you're well out of it, mary. there's no relenting, then? timbrell. none. [_leonard pauses for a moment and then walks towards the door._] mary. stop. [_he stops and looks round._] come here, please. [_he returns to her._] i'll--i'll do as you like. leonard. you mean you'd marry me? mary. if you like. leonard. [_looking intently at her._] i wonder if it's possible. mary. you needn't unless you like. leonard. do you want it? is it for me you'd do it? mary. it'd make me unhappy for you to go away like that. leonard. mary, i think i like you enough to marry you. but you mustn't unless you want to marry me. mary. i want to marry somebody. leonard. oh! thank you. you're beautifully frank. mary. it's only that i don't quite understand you. you were going away. you were packing your-- leonard. i have the honour to ask you to be my wife. mary. yes, i will. timbrell. [_writing._] mary broom. b-r-o-o-m? mary. e, sir. b-r-o-o-m-e. my father told us we must always stick to the e. it's more genteel. timbrell. yes. by-the-bye, what is your father, mary? what's his occupation? mary. he's a cabman, sir. timbrell. quite so. quite so. mary. [_after a short pause._] it's rather late ma'am. shall i bring in tea? mrs. timbrell. you are very good, mary. if you will, please. [_curtain._] act ii. [_the same place. nearly a year later. christmas eve. the room is decorated with evergreens, &c. timbrell and edgar discovered. they are in jackets and black ties, &c._] timbrell. [_surveying edgar._] yes, that's right--black tie--you told sheila to put on some half and half affair? not full evening dress, you know. of course i didn't like to say anything to leonard, but his wife's a sensible girl--in some ways. she'll manage to be--er--neat, you know. bit of an ordeal for her, but i'm sure you and sheila will do all you can to make it--er--pass off pleasantly. edgar. certainly, certainly. [_mrs. timbrell enters. she wears the kind of afternoon gown that some ladies of the middle class wear in the evenings when they have not company. timbrell scrutinises each lady as she enters with more or less approval._] timbrell. [_surveying his wife._] yes, yes. by-the-bye, edgar, you will take mrs. leonard in. i must take in mrs. pendleton of course. pendleton, your mother. let's see? mrs. timbrell. oughtn't you to take in mary? timbrell. what's that? [_ada and sheila enter. they are not in evening dress but in a kind of compromise with which they are not content._] ada. [_to her father._] i hope this will satisfy you. timbrell. [_surveying them._] quite right. very good. [_to his wife._] what were you saying? mrs. timbrell. i thought that perhaps you ought to take mary in. timbrell. mary? why? mrs. timbrell. well, she's the bride, i suppose. of course, sheila had her turn long ago. timbrell. the bride! [_he is staggered but doesn't know what to say._] mrs. timbrell. this little party is really in her honour. timbrell. in her honour. [_he repeats it helplessly._] ada. really, mother, i think this is rather unnecessary. sheila. mrs. pendleton would hardly expect to go after mary. [_enter maidservant._] servant. mr. and mrs. pendleton. [_they enter--salutations, &c. mr. pendleton wears a swallow-tail, black tie, &c. mrs. pendleton, a ponderous compromise. they are a respectable middle-class couple._] timbrell. well, well. how are you, pendleton? mrs. pendleton, draw up to the fire. these young people are not here yet. leonard never took much account of time. it's very good of you to have come. pendleton. very happy indeed, i'm sure. timbrell. you see, mrs. pendleton, we thought--i'm sure you'll understand--christmas eve, you know--and you and pendleton such old friends. of course we might have had just the family but they'll take it as a bit of a compliment to meet you. you know how it is--i needn't explain--they haven't been here yet. you'll quite understand. mrs. pendleton. don't say any more about it, mr. timbrell. i'm sure you're behaving very well and we're very glad--very glad. timbrell. yes, and do you know, i believe the marriage is not going to turn out so badly after all. she'll make a man of him. i was very firm about it. however, we won't go into that now. mrs. timbrell. do you know my daughter-in-law, mrs. pendleton? mrs. pendleton. [_turning to sheila._] oh, yes, i've had the pleasure-- mrs. timbrell. i didn't mean sheila; i meant mary--mrs. leonard. mrs. pendleton. oh! well--know her? i--that is-- mrs. timbrell. she was the best housemaid i ever had. timbrell. well, well, i think it's turning frosty again. what are you paying for coals now, pendleton? [_enter maidservant._] servant. mr. and mrs. leonard timbrell. [_leonard and mary enter. he is in evening dress with a white waistcoat and white tie. mary wears a low dress, not a very elaborate one but quite simple and pretty. the others look at them in some consternation._] timbrell. tut! tut! oh! this is all wrong. mrs. timbrell. [_laughing a little as she goes forward to mary._] well, mary, you are a swell. mary. i didn't want to be like this. [_she turns rather distressfully to her husband who looks round at the company. general, rather stiff greetings._] leonard. we seem to have committed a slight error of judgment. i have, i mean. mary, you have a sound social instinct. i can never tell what these bourgeois people will do. and mind you [_holding out his hand deprecatingly._]--i use the word simply and inoffensively. you understand that, mrs. pendleton. i'm an outsider. edgar. you mean a bounder? leonard. quite good, edgar, if you could only get a pleasant tone into your voice. as you say it it's so bad socially. and how are you, sheila? sheila. i'm quite well, thank you. leonard. chilly, chilly. mother, you've got an awkward job this evening. timbrell. don't be absurd, sir. [_mrs. timbrell and mary retire up the stage and sit down together. ada and sheila also converse together in whispers with mrs. pendleton. the four men are to the front._] pendleton. and what are you doing with yourself now, leonard? leonard. still at the old game, sir; still at the old game. pendleton. indeed! what's that? leonard. well, do you know i had to fill up my census paper the other day and i was rather bothered to describe myself. of course i'm a literary man but that hardly seems to cover the ground. i'm really a kind of sponge but that doesn't rank as a regular trade. timbrell. you'll make nothing of him, pendleton, when he's in this humour. edgar. why can't you talk simply instead of spouting all this rot? leonard. you are always baffled when i tell the truth. edgar. it somehow ceases to be the truth when you tell it. leonard. good. you see how my family is prejudiced against me, mr. pendleton. my virtues are not virtues, my white is black. my only chance is to put myself right by committing a crime. then i should command sympathy, my family would begin to understand me. mr. pendleton, won't you consider these preliminaries over and give me a little assistance? i want something to do. give me a place in your office. pendleton. [_rather alarmed._] but, my dear boy, i'm afraid--i hardly think-- leonard. [_burlesque so slight as to be hardly perceptible to pendleton._] give me a chance, sir. i've a wife and family. pendleton. [_laughing uneasily._] you're clever enough, i believe. timbrell. he wouldn't do for an office boy. leonard. that's perfectly true. most of the business men i have met would do for it very well. edgar. you'd better try the music-hall stage. leonard. now that's quite a helpful suggestion. that's an idea, edgar. humbugs like myself make good actors. timbrell.--you are not serious, sir. leonard. hardly. no. pendleton. i've heard that harry lauder got--how much a week was it--when he--? something astonishing. why, sir, there are very few merchants in the city of london who make as much. leonard. [_reflecting._] the music-halls. mary! [_deep in talk with mrs. timbrell she doesn't hear._] no matter. pendleton. they've something better to talk about. leonard. when i see two women talking like that i always think it must be about the servant question. edgar. i say! what infernally bad taste! timbrell. [_breaking impatiently away._] my dear, isn't dinner ready? leonard. where's the fatted calf? mrs. timbrell. oh! dear! ring the bell, somebody. [_somebody rings the bell._] mrs. pendleton, i'm very remiss but this is a family party, you know. mary was telling me about the baby. mrs. pendleton. you must let me come and see it, my dear. [_to ada._] is it a boy or a girl? ada. it's a--it's a-- [_she looks at sheila._] sheila. } { boy. } [_together._] mrs. timbrell. } { girl. leonard. it's a very remarkable baby. mrs. pendleton. [_to mrs. timbrell._] a boy. how very nice. and what have you called him? mary. leonard. mrs. pendleton. right, my dear. i think the eldest son ought always to be called after his father. leonard. confusing for the historian. [_enter maidservant._] mrs. timbrell. oh! beryl, isn't dinner ready. maid. if you please, ma'am, there's been rather a little accident in the dining-room. mrs. timbrell. } { oh! dear! what's that? } [_together._] ada. } { an accident! maid. well, the soot came down the chimney just now and it's made such a mess. we're just clearing it away but it's a job. we'll have to change the tablecloth. mary. [_who has taken a great interest in this._] that damper wants a bit of coaxing but i expect it's the coals. [_to timbrell, reproachfully._] you've not gone back to those cheap coals again, sir? they do make such a lot of soot. timbrell. well--er-- mrs. timbrell. you would do it, you know. [_to mrs. pendleton._] does your husband come and shew you how to save money in the house? mrs. pendleton. i'd like to see him try. mrs. timbrell. i'm afraid i don't stand up against him. i'm very weak. well, get things straight as soon as you can, beryl. maid. yes, ma'am. it'll be a little time yet. i'm afraid. [_she goes out._] mrs. pendleton. what did you call her? mrs. timbrell. beryl. mrs. pendleton. well, i never. mrs. timbrell. she said that was her name. timbrell. i told you, my dear, that it was quite unsuitable. mrs. timbrell. she seemed to like the name. timbrell. i suggested jane. leonard. ah! you may interfere about coals but not in things that matter like this. of course beryl is abominable but when you know that mother let the poor girl stick to it--why! then it's charming. edgar. well, we've a little time to put in, it seems. mrs. pendleton, you haven't seen the album that sheila and i made up when we were honeymooning. we took a lot and bought some. [_he gets out album and shows photographs. sheila and ada hover about._] timbrell. [_looking at his watch._] very annoying. pendleton. don't you bother. timbrell. [_with an effort at geniality._] well, mary, my girl. it's a shame to keep you waiting. mary. it doesn't matter a bit, sir. timbrell. [_testily._] don't call me sir. mary. no, sir--i mean no, mr. timbrell. leonard. call him daddy. she calls me sir sometimes. i rather like it. it feeds my vanity. what i like about mary is that she has none of that absurd pretence that woman is the equal of man. ada. what nonsense! sheila. he always does talk nonsense. mrs. timbrell. i expect mary keeps you in good order at home. do you mary? is he behaving nicely? mary. i think so sometimes. mrs. timbrell. now what does that mean? mary. i find it so hard to understand him. leonard. she's simple. i'm ironical. i can't get out of the habit. mary. i'm stupid and i can only judge by what he does. leonard. ay, ay. that's the devil. it's explanations i'm good at--not doing things. mary. but i don't understand the explanations. mrs. timbrell. poor mary. mary. did you understand him? mrs. timbrell. he thinks i didn't. but i'm afraid all this will not interest our friends. we don't let mr. pendleton have a word. pendleton. oh! don't mind me, ma'am. i'm all right. leonard. and mrs. pendleton's all right, i'm sure. she's got her eye on us. of course, you know, mrs. pendleton, that mary and i are--well--we're rather on show here. this is a social experiment. now, why not go deeper into it? mary's manners are quite nice. anybody can see that. the housemaid's manners are always better than those of the daughter of the house. now, father, keep quiet. my manners are what they always have been. you see my point is that the question whether we shall behave nicely on pleasant little family occasions isn't interesting. if you are really interested in mary and me let's try to go a little deeper into things. timbrell. perfect rubbish! leonard. it's your weak point, sir. if i haven't pointed it out before i ought to have done--you will meet everything with exclamations and interjections. conversation can't be carried on like that. there must be some reasonable way of looking at me. i may be an extraordinary specimen, but you ought to get used to me. pendleton. never mind, leonard, my boy, i was a bit eccentric myself when i was young. i wanted to go on the stage. leonard. i never wanted to go on the stage. i'm ready if they'll give me harry lauder's salary. pendleton. do you know what my old father did? he gave me a good hiding and i've been all the better for it. leonard. how do you know? pendleton. [_with a shrug that is half exhibition._] well-- leonard. i can hardly blame fathers. they are in an impossible position. they pretend to teach and they ought to learn. timbrell. who makes the position impossible? you and edgar were treated alike--up to a certain point. i never allowed any favouritism; what one got the other got. there was never the slightest difference-- leonard. but why should you treat us alike when we were totally different? timbrell. up to a point, i said. leonard. [_surveying his brother._] and this is the success. i might have been like this if i'd tried. timbrell. i was always ready to take a reasonable and a liberal point of view. leonard. ah! you liberals. it's feeling that you're so jolly liberal that confirms you in your wickedness. timbrell. wickedness! leonard. a rhetorical term of course. timbrell. [_with real dejection._] i do my best but i can't understand your language. you puzzle me, my boy. leonard. don't mind me, sir. i'm a rotter. mrs. timbrell. you want your dinner, leonard. leonard. well, well, little mother. i'd like to know what you think about it all. mrs. timbrell. he's a wild boy, mary. mary. he can be very sensible if he likes. leonard. don't deny me my wildness. don't make me out a sham. mrs. timbrell. wild, wild. leonard. and where does it come from? how do i get it? mr. pendleton, who are the wild people here? pendleton. nay, my boy. i'm not up to your tricks and turns. leonard. i'll tell you. mary and my mother--they're very much alike. timbrell. i think we'll leave this subject. edgar. you won't get him away from himself. leonard. brother, brother, i'll be silent if you've anything worth saying. mary. you shouldn't say i'm like your mother. leonard. but you are. mary. you make me unhappy. leonard. then i shouldn't say it. but you are. mrs. timbrell. i'd be glad to think that i'm like you, mary. mary. it's all unhappy for me. i spoil everything. ada. it isn't your fault. mary. [_to ada._] you want to blame it all on him. that's no use. it isn't all him. sheila. we want to be kind to you. mary. it doesn't matter about me. i'd rather you were down on me and kind to him. this is his family. and i'm not comfortable ma'am and it's partly this dress and i wonder if you would mind if i went home and you'd all get on better together. i spoil everything. mrs. timbrell. you silly girl; you spoil nothing and you're as good as gold and we all like you. ada. you mustn't go, and the dress looks very nice. sheila. very nice, indeed. mrs. timbrell. and you shall have a little shawl over your shoulders if you like. timbrell. all we want is our dinner. mary. i'm sure you're all very kind--but-- leonard. we're getting on fine now. edgar. you see, you've been out of the conversation for about two minutes. leonard. is that it, brother? edgar. what's this trick of calling me brother? leonard. i'm tasting the relationship. there's a certain piquancy in calling you brother. mrs. timbrell. leonard, you won't quarrel with your brother. leonard. no. and yet he's one of the men i could quarrel with. once or twice i've been angry with edgar. i've had the true intoxication of anger. [_to edgar._] do you know it? it's a delirious joy. your brain streams out like a scarlet banner. edgar. you quarrelled over trifles. leonard. yes, they would do. our differences were deep. timbrell. well, pendleton. i hope you're having a pleasant evening. mrs. pendleton. oh! we don't count this little bit of time before dinner. pendleton. i don't like brothers to quarrel, though. i hope you young fellows will make it up before the evening's out. mrs. pendleton. well, you've got two very different sons, mrs. timbrell. pendleton. leave that, maria. leonard. which favours the mother, mrs. pendleton? mrs. pendleton. why, mr. edgar. leonard. no--no. you wouldn't say that, mother. mrs. timbrell. i've not said it. i've never said it. leonard. [_takes his mother by the shoulders._] you've borne two sons little mother. how did you manage to make them so different? by god! you're nearer to me; you're more like me. and like mary; i tell you, you're like mary. a strain of wildness. yes. where does my wildness come from? it comes from you. [_he shakes her gently._] i know you. oh! you're demure. i know you. i wonder what you were before you became a respectable married woman. ah! you cunning little one. you've doubled and turned in your time; you've-- timbrell. stop, stop. edgar. monstrous. pendleton. by jove! this is too much. [_leonard turns to regard them. he and his mother are surrounded by indignant, half-menacing figures._] timbrell. take your hands from her. edgar. turn the blackguard out. timbrell. i can't believe--i can't understand--this fellow is too much for me. pendleton. he's too much for any of us. leonard. [_he looks again at his mother. she is very still and droops a little._] mother! what did i say? have i made a mistake? have i hurt you? i wouldn't do that. [_he allows her to sink into a chair._] mary. how could you say such things? leonard. what did i say? mary. you made her out--no better than me. mrs. pendleton. hush! hush! timbrell. i wouldn't have said it but since she has--you dare to suggest that your mother is no better than your wife? pendleton. now, come, timbrell; that's not the way to put it. mrs. timbrell. mary is good enough for me. timbrell. that isn't the point. don't you yourself resent--didn't you hear what he said? mrs. timbrell. i thought he was a little cruel. leonard. but who cares for you in this family as i do. ada. who cares less? who would treat her so abominably? edgar. my mother is to me an immaculate saint. to you-- leonard. what do i care for immaculate saints? what good are they to me? my mother's a strange woman. she has all kinds of curious reserves and she lives among you quite like one of yourselves. mary. i will say this. he has always spoken beautifully about her. leonard. bravo! mary. stand up for me. timbrell. i don't wish to act hastily--i have tried hard to control myself-- leonard. oh! be natural, sir. be natural. timbrell. go down on your knees, sir, and beg your mother's pardon. leonard. certainly, if she wishes it. mrs. timbrell. i do not wish it. timbrell. do you realise what he said about you? mrs. timbrell. he's very clever. no doubt there's some truth in it. timbrell. some truth? some truth? do you mean to say--i don't understand you. i don't like to ask you what you mean--i-- pendleton. now, timbrell, i think we'd better leave it here. [_to mrs. pendleton._] don't you think so, maria? mrs. pendleton. i should want to carry it a little further in her place. mrs. timbrell. [_having quite recovered._] would anybody like to ask me any questions? pendleton. [_shocked._] questions? mrs. timbrell. about my early life. [_she gives a sad little laugh._] pendleton. questions! my dear madam-- timbrell. this is painful. this is quite impossible. [_to his wife._] i cannot understand you. i suppose you are trying to screen him. mary. he always speaks of his mother beautifully. leonard. and why shouldn't i when i admire her immensely? why can't you people be natural and let me be natural? i say there's a strange, mysterious, incalculable being behind her placid mask and you want to make out i mean something beastly. how have you stood it all these years, mother? and they never seem to have found you out. mrs. timbrell. do you think i've found myself out? leonard. you've found the other people out and that's very much the same thing. i tell you what--you ought to come and live with me and mary. mrs. timbrell. nonsense. leonard. it would be tremendously fine if you did that. after all these years--it would be magnificent. edgar. is this to go on? timbrell. no. i'm exceedingly sorry, pendleton, that you and mrs. pendleton should be in such a scene. [_to leonard._] i'll ask you to leave the house. mary may stay if she pleases. leonard. but i want my dinner. timbrell. you can get your dinner at home. leonard. mary? mary. there's not much. i'll go with you. pendleton. now look here, timbrell-- timbrell. not a word. [_to leonard._] and i've something to say to you before you go. leonard. i'm afraid it's something nasty. timbrell. yes, sir. it's something nasty. i've been making you an allowance at the rate of three hundred a year. it will stop at once. leonard. [_alarmed._] here! you can't do that. timbrell. can't i? i will. leonard. but it wouldn't be cricket. you couldn't possibly do that. how are we to live without it? timbrell. that's your business. leonard. you made me marry mary. it was the condition--the condition was implied-- timbrell. silence! you forget we are not alone. leonard. oh! what's the use of these disguises? they know all about it. let us accept what's past. mrs. pendleton, i needn't make any apologies. all this must be frightfully interesting to you. mr. pendleton, i shall want your help. i put it to you as an honest business man--but you're joking, sir; you're joking. [_leonard has become more serious than he has been._] timbrell. you'll see whether i'm joking. mrs. timbrell. do you intend to punish mary, too? timbrell. i shall allow her--[_considering_] i shall allow her two pounds a week and see that it is paid to her. mrs. timbrell. what you propose is unfair. you can't do it. timbrell. perhaps you would like to go and live with them as he proposes? mrs. timbrell. i've no income. you've never paid my wages. timbrell. wages! mrs. timbrell. yes, there's something in what these suffrage people say. i'm at your mercy i suppose. so is leonard, so is ada. i suppose edgar is getting out of your clutches. timbrell. do you think to gain your point by talk like this? mrs. timbrell. no. this is for my own satisfaction. i'm vexed with you. timbrell. you didn't think that i gave any credence to that boy's abominable suggestions? leonard. please don't talk about that now. there's something more serious to consider. mrs. timbrell. don't talk about it now, either. leonard. i don't see how we can talk about anything else. we must have an income. mr. pendleton, i appeal to you-- pendleton. nay, let him calm down. timbrell. i shall not calm down. i am perfectly calm. the fellow shall suffer. it will do him good. mrs. timbrell. and mary and the child must suffer. mrs. pendleton. ah! now, mr. timbrell--your grandchild. mary. he hasn't seen him. mrs. pendleton. not seen him! ah! mr. timbrell, you're the one that's to blame. timbrell. really, madam, i can't discuss the matter with you. i've said what i mean to do. edgar. it's about time this dinner was ready, isn't it? leonard. and to think that all this bother is through a confounded chimney! we might have been comfortably at table, with incomes secure. what do you think of the governor's proposal, edgar--as a business man? edgar. don't talk to me. leonard. no, brother. timbrell. [_bouncing from the chair on which he had seated himself._] i tell you i will not stand-- [_enter maidservant._] maid. dinner is served. [_those who are seated rise hesitatingly. timbrell glares about him and then offers his arm to mrs. pendleton who accompanies him out of the room. sheila and ada follow. edgar offers his arm to mary, who shakes her head. pendleton offers his arm to mrs. timbrell._] mrs. timbrell. excuse me for a moment. [_she turns to mary and leonard._] what are you going to do? leonard. well, we don't seem to be wanted here. pendleton. better all come. mary. i want to go home. leonard. yes, it's all right for you when you get to your baby. mrs. timbrell. i'll follow you mr. pendleton. pendleton. well, i'll just see what timbrell's up to now. [_he goes out._] mrs. timbrell. i think you had better not stay. mary. no, let us go. leonard. i've made a mess of it, mother. mrs. timbrell. never mind that. leonard. no. that doesn't matter. but i've hurt you. i've shaken you. you look pale and queer now. i've no reverence. i'm selfish. but i can sympathise. do you see that? i understand you better than anyone does, mother. i know you better, i like you more. you don't properly exist without me. did i say some horrible things about you? i really don't know what i meant. it was a kind of inspiration. oh! yes. i know the proper things to say about one's mother. mrs. timbrell. but i'm a mother like the rest. mary. he doesn't understand that. he wants to see all sorts of things in you. mrs. timbrell. we're just mothers, aren't we, mary? mary. that's the best. leonard. yes, mary's a mother. but what of you, poor thing? look at us. look at edgar and me and ada. look at the finished product. what's the good of it? what's the good of being a mother when one's children are grown up? i can understand mary. i've watched her with the baby. there's been something suppressed and killed in you. mary. don't say these things to her. leonard. failure is written on her face. mary. don't, don't. leonard. i'm at my best in saying such things. mary. but they hurt her. you only care for yourself. leonard. she must be hurt. we've let her alone all these years. she ought to have revolted. she ought to be alive now. mrs. timbrell. i remember you all as babies, as children. i've got the past. leonard. was i always your favourite, mother? mrs. timbrell. i won't say that. [_she listens for a moment to a distant sound._] perhaps you'd better go. [_edgar enters._] edgar. aren't you coming, mother? it's most awkward. there'll be an awful row. mrs. timbrell. yes. edgar, is it any use their coming? mr. pendleton was going to see whether-- edgar. i don't think it's the slightest use. he's boiling over. mary. oh! let us go. leonard. come on. but look here. it's no use our going home. edgar, lend us a sovereign. edgar. you'd condescend to borrow from me, then? leonard. my dear fellow you don't seem to understand that i'm magnanimous. [_edgar laughs._] you think that's a joke. you never see my jokes. edgar. i can't stay. leonard. have you any money about you, mother? mrs. timbrell. [_to edgar._] give it to him. leonard. mother will repay you out of the housekeeping. [_edgar fumbles in his pocket._] look here. make it two pounds. mary and i don't often have a treat together. it's a special occasion. we may as well do it handsome for once. what about the savoy and a music-hall, mary? you look the part fine. [_his spirits are obviously rising._] mary. i wonder if i'd not better go home. mrs. timbrell. go and enjoy yourself, my dear. [_edgar hands money to leonard who looks at it._] leonard. well, i'm damned. one pound ten. edgar. quite enough, too. leonard. it's not that i'm thinking of. it's the extraordinary meanness of your character. [_enter ada._] ada. mother, do come. he says i'm to bring you or else the family bible. leonard. the devil! mrs. timbrell. i'll come. [_curtain falls._] act iii. [_rather poor lodgings. mary, neatly but very plainly dressed, is sewing at a child's garment. leonard sprawls on the sofa smoking cheap cigarettes. he is carelessly dressed to the point of slovenliness and a little anxiety begins to shew through his calmness which is generally maintained. it is afternoon. two or three months have elapsed._] leonard. i don't think it's that the old man's mean. he's got on the high horse and doesn't know how to get down. mary. we oughtn't to take the money from your mother. it's very hard for her. leonard. oh! but it only means that she gives them rice pudding instead of gooseberry tart. it'll do them good. i expect the old man sees the difference and pretends he doesn't. and edgar will be furious. mary. if little leonard had a brother and they were like you and your brother--i couldn't bear that. leonard. it's a long way off, old lady. mary. thing's aren't a long way off if you think they might come. leonard. don't worry, now. don't worry. mary. i'm a great deal happier than you. i've got him. leonard. well, haven't i? mary. no, you haven't. not like me. leonard. you don't think i'm such a bad father, do you? mary. i don't know. you're funny with him and i like to see you together but-- leonard. well? mary. you keep spending the money. leonard. but, mary, you don't know how much more i could spend if i had it. mary. and, so clever as you are, you don't make any--i mean don't make much. leonard. you see, in my trade, the better you are the more wretchedly you get paid. mary. you keep telling me that. leonard. and you don't believe it? mary. yes, i do. i think you mean it. i don't think it can be quite true. i think you could get more money if you tried. you're clever enough to write the way they want. leonard. what do you care for most in the world--barring the baby? mary. [_considering._] i don't think there's anything. oh! i beg your pardon. of course there's you. leonard. never mind me. could you believe that i care more about writing my own way than for anything? mary. i suppose it's good to care for something but that seems selfish. leonard. you're beginning to feel a bit of resentment. you don't hate me yet, do you? mary. no, of course not. leonard. i shouldn't blame you. you're a wonderfully even-tempered person. i sometimes wonder whether i'm right about that streak of wildness in you. do you think you could do strange things--what shall i say--wicked things? mary. i've done one wicked thing. leonard. does it trouble you, mary? does it still trouble you? would you alter it? mary. then i shouldn't have little leonard. i can never understand. if i'd known of him--if i'd thought of little leonard--then it couldn't be wrong. but how could i think of him when he wasn't born? it was wicked. it wasn't like me. leonard. you did think of him, mary. no, you didn't think. it's not thought. it was nature--something bigger than you--forcing you--forcing you to bring little leonard into the world. now, take comfort in that, my girl; there is some comfort in it. mary. i can't see what it's got to do with _him._ it's not children i care for; it's him. well, he's here now. i've got him now. leonard. quite right, my dear. mary. but i think he ought to have lubbock's food regularly and we _must_ have a perambulator. leonard. well, this must go. [_taking out his watch._] mary. would you? will you? leonard. [_looking ruefully at the watch._] you'd better take me at my word. my generous moods don't last. mary. shall i take it? [_he is slowly unhooking the watch when there is a knock at the door and mrs. greaves, the landlady, comes in. he puts the watch in his pocket._] mrs. greaves. i should like a word, sir. leonard. a whole history if you like, mrs. greaves. mrs. greaves. sir? leonard. i was only quoting shakespeare, mrs. greaves. mrs. greaves. i know nothing about him, sir. leonard. he's the man that writes the plays. mrs. greaves. there's some people too fond of plays and such things. leonard. now i hope you're not going to attack shakespeare, mrs. greaves. mrs. greaves. i'm attacking nothing, sir, but i should like a word and perhaps it would be more pleasant if mrs.--the lady wasn't here. leonard. why mustn't mrs. the lady be here? mrs. greaves. it's as you like. leonard. fire away. mrs. greaves. i must tell you, perfectly frank, that there's been some talk about you. i know that lady that comes here to see you is your mother and that i don't understand. but i've heard tell of carryings on with a housemaid and it is said as you're not married. i know mothers 'll do a good deal for their sons but i must say-- leonard. who says this? mrs. greaves. it's not only one. there's mr. whales, the milkman, and he does a good round and hears a lot-- leonard. we shall have no more dealings with mr. whales. mrs. greaves. you wouldn't, anyhow, till he got paid. mary. no more milk? mrs. greaves. no, and it's not only milk. leonard. mrs. greaves, this lady is my wife and anyone who says she isn't is telling an abominable lie. i'm surprised that you should listen to such stuff. mrs. greaves. of course i know she's got on a ring and all that but that's what they do and i can't afford to be out of my money; i really can't. i don't want to be hard but my account must be settled. leonard. now first of all, mrs. greaves, you will apologise to my wife. then we'll settle the other matter. mrs. greaves. i'm sure i'm sorry if there's been a mistake. i've no call to make mischief. i'll ask your pardon ma'am very willing, but mr. whales, he said--and he's only saying what others-- leonard. no more of that, now, if you want to have your bill paid. mrs. greaves. you can be made to pay. leonard. and so can you be made to pay. do you know what you've done? mrs. greaves. done? i know i've been done. leonard. good, mrs. greaves--very good--i'm glad you can joke about it. it may be no joke for you. mrs. greaves. what do you mean? leonard. it's slander. they give very heavy damages now for slander. mrs. greaves. i've only mentioned what i've been told. leonard. yes, that's slander. it's sometimes called defamation of character. same thing. mrs. greaves. i'm sure i'd no intention at all of saying anything--i've been very lenient, too. leonard. perhaps you'll give me the name of your solicitor, mrs. greaves. mrs. greaves. what for? i haven't got a solicitor. i don't understand what you want. mary. i think he's joking, mrs. greaves. leonard. [_with mock vexation._] tut! tut! mrs. greaves. [_doubtfully._] i know slander's a nasty law but i can't see as i've said anything. leonard. it's not all a joke, mary. you may tell your whales and people that if i hear another word about it i go straight to a solicitor. mrs. greaves. i'll tell him, sir. leonard. very well. you may go, mrs. greaves. mary. solicitors like to be paid, too. mrs. greaves. [_turning at the door._] and what about my bill, sir? leonard. it shall be attended to. mrs. greaves. i've heard that very often. leonard. it is a bit stale, isn't it? i apologise for the old wheeze. well, you see, there's the perambulator first. mrs. greaves. the what, sir? leonard. the first money we get is for a perambulator--no. the first is for a pint or a peck, or whatever it is, of what's-his-name's food for the baby. second, the perambulator. you're only third, mrs. greaves. rather a bad third, but your turn will come. mary. it's not fair to her. she ought to be paid. leonard. of course she ought. we ought all to be paid. i'm in favour of handsome incomes all round and i hope lloyd george will take it up. but, look here, mrs. greaves, we're all in the same boat. now is there anything _you'd_ like to pawn? i'm treating you as a friend. mary. there's your watch. leonard. there's my watch. my wife suggests my watch. a nuisance to me, of course. as a friend, mrs. greaves, what do you say to that? mrs. greaves. i should be sorry, sir, but i must have my money. leonard. you shall have it with compound interest at per cent. do you know what that means? mrs. greaves. i think so. leonard. it's more than you can get safely elsewhere so it means that the longer we keep you out of your money the more it will be to your advantage. mrs. greaves. i think you're a funny gentleman. leonard. [_to mary._] she's found me out. mary. mrs. greaves, we've got some money coming in a day or two. at least i think so. but i'm anxious about the baby and i must have some for it. i will pay you. i will. mrs. greaves. can you give me a little? mary. yes, you shall have something to-morrow. mrs. greaves. i think i know of an old perambulator. mary. do you? could we borrow it. we'd pay when we could. mrs. greaves. i'll see. mary. thank you, mrs. greaves. mrs. greaves. i don't want to be hard. mary. you've been very kind. mrs. greaves. p'raps there'd be no harm in letting the doctor have a look at the baby. mary. do you think so? do you think he's-- mrs. greaves. he looks a little bit peaked. mary. you know about babies, too, don't you? mrs. greaves. i should do. i've had seven of my own. mary. we'll have the doctor. and thank you, mrs. greaves. mrs. greaves. i've been a bit soft, i know that. [_she goes out._] mary. will you sell your watch, then, or pawn it? leonard. oh! mary. and will you bring the doctor first? leonard. now, is that necessary? mary. and we must have some money for her to-morrow. leonard. you choked her off very well. i can't keep serious enough. mary. she must have it. leonard. where's all this money to come from? mary. there's your watch. i've not many things. some of my clothes could go. i can't lose my wedding-ring. [_she moves towards the door._] leonard. where are you going? mary. i'm going to look at him. leonard. wait a moment. this is getting serious. i'll write to my mother again. i'll ask her to come. it's absurd. he thinks he's teaching me a lesson. i suppose he is. mary, do you remember exactly what he said that day--i mean about the three hundred pounds? the old man's very particular about keeping his word. that sort of people always are. mary. aren't you? leonard. shall i explain to you what a promise is? mary. i know. leonard. ah! yes. it would spoil you to understand these things; and i'm losing all my lightness of touch. i was rather stupid just now with mrs. greaves. i didn't handle it well. mary. you must go to your father and tell him how we are. it's different now i'm frightened about little leonard. i'll go if you don't. i can get milk. i don't want to do it but if i must i will. leonard. milk! mary. you heard her say that mr. whales wouldn't let us have any more. george truefit will let me have some. leonard. george truefit? mary. yes, i shall be ashamed to go to him but i'll do it. leonard. i had forgotten about george truefit. mary. i hadn't. leonard. my rival, the milkman, isn't he? mary. yes, he's a milkman. leonard. there's something rather piquant in this. i wonder whether george truefit would appreciate it. i suppose he wouldn't poison the milk? mary. poison the milk! leonard. no, i _am_ getting a bit heavy-handed. that's stupid. what is he like? what's george like? mary. he's--he's--you know where you've got him. leonard. a fine fellow, is he? mary. you can trust him. leonard. that's something, isn't it? mary. a good deal. leonard. [_sharply._] now, now, now. you're contrasting him with me. you're thinking that i can't be trusted. you mustn't do that. weren't you, now? mary. i was thinking of you both. leonard. you're married to me, mary. mary. i'm not complaining. leonard. do you love me, mary? mary. [_after a short pause._] sometimes i think i do. leonard. do you think i love you? mary. do you? leonard. sometimes _i_ think i do. i'm a bit afraid of you, though? mary. of me? afraid? leonard. i'm afraid of the truth. i'm afraid of the hardness at the back of things. i like ideas and changes and poses and all the rest of it. you make me uneasy. mary. i shall never understand you. leonard. i think you understand me very well. it's only the things i say you don't understand. poor girl. i bewilder you. you're quite right. i'm what you see. you keep thinking you don't understand and that i may be better than that. you're a brave, humble person. by god! there's no one like you. i wish i was different. i wish i was like george truefit. mary. only a little bit like him. yourself, too. leonard. what must i do to be saved? mary. now, you're talking queer again. leonard. what is it you want? i see you watching me anxiously sometimes. i can't make myself into another person but i'd like to please you. what do you want me to do? mary. i suppose it's a lot of little things. leonard. yes, yes. can you tell me some of them? mary. while we're talking here you might have gone for the doctor. leonard. the doctor? mary. you forget him. you often forget all about little leonard. [_rising._] i must go to him. leonard. ah! yes. mrs. greaves said he was peaked. peaked! good word isn't it? shakespeare has it, you know: "shall he dwindle, peak and pine"-- mary. but you don't think he's pining, do you? leonard. no, no. i'm only quoting the poet. mary. why do you say things like that--just to amuse yourself--and you might know they frighten me? that's it. you don't think of other people--except now and then when you seem to get interested. leonard. i'll go for the doctor. mary. yes. thank you. leonard. anything else i can do? mary. would they trust us for lubbock's food? leonard. i'll pawn my watch. mary. wait. we'll see what the doctor says. leonard. well, i won't be five minutes. mary. thank you very much indeed. leonard. no, my dear girl, don't put it like that. [_there is a ring at the front door bell._] anyone for us i wonder. mary. oh! i must tell you. my mother might come. my father will come too, but he couldn't get off now. leonard. of course you've got parents, too, haven't you. mary. don't you ever think of that? leonard. but where have they been all this time? mary. they didn't know where i lived. leonard. they could have got the address from my mother. mary. i wrote and told them i'd gone to canada. i felt i couldn't face them then. leonard. and now? mary. my mother knows a lot about babies. i want to see her. you won't like them, i'm afraid. i think someone's coming in. leonard. oh! i'm sure i shall find them quite amusing. no, i don't mean that. i mean interesting. interesting; that's what i mean when i say amusing. they're coming up. mary. that's my father's voice. leonard. let's see--what does he do? mary. he's a cabman. leonard. heavens! are there such things still! a growler or what? [_the door opens and mrs. greaves ushers in mr. and mrs. broome. he is dingily arrayed but confronts misfortunes with a slightly defiant air. she is a rather sharp, quiet woman, shabbily dressed. she does not display much tenderness to her daughter but regards her with some solicitude. mrs. greaves watches the greetings curiously before retiring._] mary. [_after kisses from father and mother._] this is my husband. [_there is some rather stiff hand shaking._] mary. sit down, mother. leonard. sit down, mr. broome. mary. baby's not very well as i told you, mother, and he's just off for the doctor. [_to leonard._] will you go? leonard. yes, certainly. broome. is he coming back? leonard. good, mr. broome, good. you read my thoughts. broome. what? leonard. i was just wondering whether i was coming back. how soon, i mean. broome. well, it'd only be polite--and you've nothing to do, it seems? you're out of a job too? mary. are you, father? mrs. broome. [_bitterly._] ay, they've chucked him at last. mary. when? mrs. broome. only yesterday. broome. [_with gloomy joviality to leonard._] so there's two on us at a loose end. leonard. [_politely._] yes, we ought to see something of one another, mr. broome. but i'm not exactly out of a job. i've never been in one. broome. oh! a gentleman of means. leonard. without means, mr. broome, without means. broome. then you've got someone to keep you. leonard. no, mr. broome. no. broome. then how are you going to get along? leonard. that's just what's been bothering us. broome. you're a cool customer. leonard. and how do you propose to get along, mr. broome? broome. it's them bloomin' taxis that's done for me. mary. can't you drive one, father? broome. they wouldn't give me a try if i wanted. and i don't want. i wouldn't touch the things. leonard. you've had the bad luck to be attached to a decaying industry. broome. decaying my eye! there's no call for it to decay. leonard. you don't hold with modern notions--progress and things, mr. broome? broome. i don't hold with taxis. they'll find out their mistake. mrs. broome. he will talk like that. broome. and so would you if you'd druv a cab twenty-nine years. mary. but the taxis go faster, father, and you've only got to pay the same. broome. never mind that. why should they injure a established trade? why should they spoil other trades? what's a country without its trades? mrs. broome. that's the way he talks. broome. mark my words. they'll find out their mistake. look what's coming to the breed of horses. look at nosebags. leonard. nosebags? broome. ay. i've been told of a firm as used to turn out a matter of two hundred nosebags a week and now they don't do fifty. mrs. broome. he may get taken on at a mews. broome. mews's days are numbered. leonard. the young generation is knocking at our doors, mr. broome. broome. what? leonard. yours is an interesting type of conservatism. broome. i'm not a conservative. i'm a radical. mrs. broome. you voted tory last time. broome. yes, and what have they done for me? i don't hold with socialism but i may be druv to it. mrs. broome. we came to hear about you, mary? broome. and what's your perfession, sir, if i may ask? leonard. well, it's rather hard to define, mr. broome. what am i, mary? mary. he writes things. broome. what things? leonard. well, shall we say--sketches, critical impressions, verses, even stories. broome. hardly work for a man is it? mary. now--father! leonard. perhaps not. you see, mr. broome, you and i are at the opposite ends. without offence, i hope, i referred to yours as a decaying industry. with me it's the other way. they're not ready for me. broome. it don't pay? leonard. at present it can hardly be said to pay. broome. well, you can lend me a couple of sovereigns, anyhow? mary. } { father! } [_together._] mrs. broome. } { nonsense. leonard. i should be charmed, mr. broome, but i haven't got them. i was just wondering whether i might borrow five pounds from you. broome. right. i just wanted to know how the land lies-- mary. [_to leonard._] won't you go for the doctor now? leonard. yes, i will. [_he takes his hat._] mary. you'll come back with him? leonard. yes, if he can come. good-bye for the present, mrs. broome. [_he goes out airily._] mrs. broome. good-bye, sir. a cheerful young man. now, my dear, perhaps you'll explain. mary. i'm not going to explain much, mother. mrs. broome. then explain a little. mary. i told you most of what i'm going to tell you. mrs. broome. let's have the other bit. broome. what i want to know is--are you married? mary. yes, i am. broome. prove it. mary. my word's good enough. mrs. broome. have you gone to canada? mary. that's different. mrs. broome. one lie's very like another. mary. there's my ring. [_showing it._] mrs. broome. anyone can get a ring. have you got your marriage lines? broome. ay, let's see the marriage lines. mary. i think you ought to take my word. mrs. broome. let's see them. mary. i wouldn't but that i told you that lie about canada. it's the first i've ever told you, mother. mrs. broome. that's what frightens me. broome. where are they? mary. they're in my purse. [_she goes to drawer and brings out the purse._] there's nothing else in it. mrs. broome. they're better than money. mary. here then. [_she gives them the paper which they scrutinise together._] mrs. broome. that's all right, john? broome. ay, that seems all right. [_mrs. broome takes the paper from him and gives it to mary._] mrs. broome. put it away. broome. here, let's have another look at it. mrs. broome. put it away. she's shown it us all right. broome. when was that baby born? mrs. broome. never mind that. broome. how old is it? mrs. broome. what do you call him, mary? mary. leonard, like his father. mrs. broome. is his father kind to you? mary. yes. broome. of course she'd say that. i'll have a talk with that young man. i never thought a daughter of mine-- mrs. broome. now shut up. broome. oh! yes. take his part. never mind me. never mind my feelings. do you mean to say this young toff's got no money, really? mary. he's been brought up not to work and his father won't give him any now. broome. ah! i see--i see. vexed about this was he? and the young chap did the right thing. well--a good-hearted lad, i see. mary. i won't talk about it. i've been miserable not to come to see you, mother, but i couldn't at first, and time went on and i didn't like to. and i didn't know what to do. mrs. broome. never mind that now. [_a ring at the doorbell is heard._] mary. that can't be the doctor yet. mrs. broome. you don't have a many visitors, i s'pose. mary. i don't have any--except sometimes mrs. timbrell. mrs. broome. p'raps it's her. mary. i'd like you to see her. mrs. broome. someone's coming up. mary. i think it must be. mrs. timbrell. [_outside._] i know the way, thank you. [_she enters carrying a little bunch of flowers._] mary. here's my mother and father. mrs. timbrell. oh! how d'ye do. [_she shakes hands._] i don't know why we've never met before. broome. we've never been here before. mrs. timbrell. haven't you? i've not been many times. we must come oftener. [_she smiles embarrassments away._] broome. of course. i see ma'am that you're not like to think as your son and my daughter's a fair match but i tell you-- mrs. broome. now, john. mrs. timbrell. it's a very good match for him. broome. eh? mrs. timbrell. he's lucky to marry such a girl as mary. broome. he's not up to much himself, isn't he? mrs. timbrell. i didn't say that. broome. he seems to be kep' rather short of brass. mrs. timbrell. [_sees the flowers in her hands._] oh! i brought you these, mary. mary. [_takes them._] thank you, ma'am. thank you, mrs. timbrell. broome. [_rather truculantly._] that baby'll get a fat lot o' good out o' them. mrs. timbrell. is the baby ill, mary? mary. i keep fancying he's not so well. his father's gone for the doctor. mrs. timbrell. have you seen him, mrs. broome? mrs. broome. not yet. will you take me, mary? we must be going directly. mary. come on, then. [_looking at the others._] would you like?-- broome. not me. mrs. timbrell. yes, i'd like to see him. broome. i thought, p'raps, you'd just like a word with me ma'am. mrs. timbrell. oh! well--presently, mary, i'll just talk to mr. broome. [_mary and mrs. broome go out._] well, mr. broome and what have you got to say? broome. what 'ave i got to say? mrs. timbrell. you look like a man who has something to say. broome. i've a good deal to say if it's any good saying it. what's it all mean? mrs. timbrell. yes, that's the point. is it any good saying it? that's just what i feel more and more mr. broome. i used to want to say things and now i say to myself. is it any good? i believe we think very much alike about it. broome. but a man has his feelings and so he's got somethin' to say. mrs. timbrell. that's exactly what i think, mr. broome. i want to talk to relieve my feelings, not that i think it will do any good. least said, soonest mended, i suppose. i agree with you. broome. [_flattered._] i've no wish to make myself onpleasant only-- mrs. timbrell. i was sure you hadn't. broome. only--i want to know how your son-- mrs. timbrell. hark! is that somebody coming in? i wonder if he's got the doctor. broome. i'm not one as interferes where there's no call for it but-- mrs. timbrell. anyone can see that mr. broome. broome. but--i mean to say--what i'm sayin' is-- mrs. timbrell. i believe it is the doctor. broome. i'm on'y a poor cabman. you're too clever for me. mrs. timbrell. don't worry your daughter. don't be always asking her to explain things. your wife sees that. broome. i'm her father. i think there's something due to me. mrs. timbrell. that's where we parents make the mistake. broome. well, i can see a bit and i think the young man has acted fair. [_leonard enters._] leonard. your wife's going, mr. broome. mrs. timbrell. what does the doctor say? leonard. he's just looking at the kid--nothing serious, i think. mrs. timbrell. mary's with him, i suppose? [_she goes out slowly._] broome. now, sir, i thought i'd just like to have a word with you. leonard. very natural, very proper mr. broome, i am sure, but you know-- broome. i'm only a cabman but i have my feelin's. i'm a father, sir. leonard. yes, it's a curious sensation, isn't it? broome. sir? leonard. it's big. mr. broome; it's big, undeniably. broome. what's big? leonard. there's something in these primal relations, you know. broome. i dunno what y're talkin' about. leonard. i beg your pardon. broome. it seems you're my son-in-law. leonard. yes, of course. very jolly isn't it? broome. that doesn't mean as i'm goin' to take liberties. i've had a talk with your mother and we come to an agreement that least said soonest mended so don't look for no pryin' from me nor my wife. there's a thing or two i don't understand but i do say this. whatever mistakes you've made you've come out at the finish like a man. leonard. it's very handsome of you to say so, i'm sure but-- broome. i know a man when i see one and there's my hand on it. [_he offers his hand which leonard takes rather hesitatingly._] you've done the fair thing and i honour you for it. leonard. it's very charming of you i'm sure and your commendation is very--very cheering but, really-- broome. i ask no questions but i can see a thing or two. why, sir, it's as plain to me as if i'd been told that your father's cut up rough about this. leonard. you're quite right. broome. he wouldn't have you marry my gel and like an hon'rable young feller in love--in love mindyer--you ups and you sez: i'll marry her so's 'ow. it's as plain as mud-- leonard. it does look like that, doesn't it? broome. it's on'y the other day i was readin' a bit of a novelette in the paper--just to pass the time--and there was a young feller who did just like that and the father says it's a cut off of a shillin. i said there's a bit of human natur' there but i didn't expect to see it in my own family so soon. leonard. you're a reader, mr. broome. broome. i've read a fairish bit, sittin in my keb. sir, let me tell you--the father in that there novelette come round. leonard. that's encouraging, mr. broome. broome. [_listening._] is that your mother coming? give us your hand again. [_he hastily takes leonard's hand and poses as mrs. timbrell, mrs. broome and mary enter. he speaks loudly for mrs. timbrell's benefit._] i accept you, sir, in my family and i honour you for your handsome conduct and hoping the old gentleman will soon come round though, mind you, i ask no questions. leonard. [_retreating._] very good of you. mrs. broome. we're going now. [_farewells. broome is hearty again with leonard, confidential with mrs. timbrell and perfunctory with mary. mrs. broome, subdued and a little anxious, passes before leonard and says:--_] you needn't be afraid that we shall come often. leonard. come as often as you like. mrs. broome. no, we'll give you your chance. broome. what are you talkin' about? [_to mrs. timbrell._] all right. i'll explain how things are to her, ma'am. i'm glad i come to-day. i think i've cleared up things a bit. come along, old lady. [_broome and mrs. broome go._] leonard. you're like me, mary; you're your mother's child. you're not a bit like your father. mrs. timbrell. what had you been telling him? something about your father? leonard. not a word. he seemed to have got it from you. and _is_ the governor coming round? mrs. timbrell. oh! he will come round. leonard. bravo! that's better. we've been deucedly pinched, you know. mrs. timbrell. perhaps it'll do you good. i don't mean you, mary. who's that? [_mrs. greaves enters with a letter which she gives to leonard and retires._] leonard. [_opening the letter._] hullo! this is from cochrane. mrs. timbrell. [_aside to mary._] i brought you this. [_she gives her money._] mary. i can't refuse it now. [_she looks over at leonard gravely._] mary. he never asked about little leonard. leonard. i say--look here. cochrane wants me to go there. just the thing. just what i want. mary. where? leonard. his place down in norfolk. fishing. of course the fishing's not much but he's got some rather good men there. by jove! i see myself talking again. i mean really talking. just the thing. mrs. timbrell. does he ask mary? leonard. mary! well, no. but there's no nonsense of that kind about mary. mary. i've got little leonard. leonard. [_glancing at her._] by-the-bye, what did that chap say about little leonard? mary. he's coming in again. he wasn't very sure. leonard. then you may be sure there's nothing the matter. good. things are looking better. [_to his mother._] do you think the governor would let me have twenty pounds? is he far enough round for that? mrs. timbrell. you'd soon have him back again if you tried. leonard. it's awkward. i must get some things. and i've no fishing rod. i might say i'd lost it on the way down. i must lose a bag, if necessary, and borrow. rather thin, though. did edgar leave his rod at home? could you manage ten pounds? what did you give mary? mrs. timbrell. is there any hope for him, mary? leonard. what? oh! the baby--i keep forgetting about that blessed baby. but he's not ill. i'm sure he's not ill. look here! i must get away. i shall hate you, mary, if you stop me. i want a change, as the doctors say. i want to talk to these chaps. they're men you can talk to. i must go. i must go. i'm a flower turning to the light, i'm a prisoner breaking from his dungeon, i'm a spirit winging upwards. don't stop me. mary. why should i stop you? you want to be there. i want to be here. leonard. ah! yes. and if the child _is_ ill you've got a beautiful time before you. a mother with her child ill is lovely, lovely. i could come home to see it. especially if those fellows get rather dull. cochrane doesn't mention a time. i wonder how long he'll have me. mrs. timbrell. if anyone could change you, mary would, but you don't change. leonard. don't change! i'm always changing. i'm a perfect kaleidoscope. mrs. timbrell. always a kaleidoscope. leonard. [_taking his mother by the shoulders._] you just go and get me some money, will you? tell the old boy i'm a new man, a reformed character. put in a good word for mary. tell him she's done it. then see if you can't get fifty pounds out of him. mrs. timbrell. you'd kill the goose with the golden eggs, before it laid any. mary, we'd better let him go. mary. oh! yes. mrs. timbrell. you must have some money? what's the least you can manage with? leonard. the least? well, i should say the least is the most i can get. mrs. timbrell. [_fingering her rings._] have you started with pawnshops yet? leonard. oh! yes. i'm not afraid of pawnshops. mrs. timbrell. i'm too old to begin. [_she takes off a ring and gives it to him._] take that. mary. no, no. he can't do that. mrs. timbrell. i think he can. leonard. of course i can. i thought you would understand, mary. a mother's sacrifice for her son is one of the most beautiful things--just think what you would do for little leonard. mary. yes, if there's need. leonard. need? there is need. but wouldn't like to deprive her of the pleasure. the pleasure! it's a sacred joy. isn't it mother? mrs. timbrell. you're a humbug. leonard. i suppose i am. but i'm your son all the same. you can't be less than a mother because i've got a bit of humbug about me. i wonder if i should do better to sell it out and out to a jeweller. you don't mind, mother? mrs. timbrell. you couldn't redeem it. you couldn't give it me back. leonard. do you want it back? mrs. timbrell. i thought it might be a sacred joy to give it back to me. leonard. good. very good. you're a damned fine woman, you know. isn't she, mary? i suppose a lot of mothers do the kind of things that she does for their sons but she does them lightly. she can be witty over it. mrs. timbrell. good-bye, mary. i'll come again soon. mary. good-bye. [_mrs. timbrell goes. leonard goes out with her for a moment and returns. he capers up to mary, seizes her waist and waltzes her round. she yields and laughs for a moment, then stiffens and struggles._] mary. hark! there's little leonard. leonard. bother little leonard! [_she breaks away and runs out. he does a pas seul as the curtain falls._] act iv. [_two months later. the timbrell's drawing-room again. afternoon. ada. to her enters sheila in out-door things._] ada. hullo! sheila. sheila. all alone? ada. mother's somewhere about. take your things off. sheila. i don't think i'll stop. ada-- ada. well? sheila. has leonard come home? have you heard from him? ada. he's coming, i think. mother's sent him three telegrams. sheila. what good is it now with the child dead and buried? ada. he's dreadful, isn't he? sheila. i want to do something for that girl. i want to be different to her. i'm frightened, ada. i'm frightened of having a child. ada. what's she got to do with it? sheila. you must have your conscience clear when you're going to have a child. ada. i daresay--only-- sheila. we've not been very nice to her, now, have we? ada. well, how could we be? sheila. yes, we couldn't be expected to receive her with open arms, could we? ada. of course not. sheila. i suppose she is to blame. ada. why, of course she is. she's not as bad as he is, though. sheila. i don't understand things a bit. i don't know right from wrong. only i ought to have been more kind. it's stupid, ada, but i'm afraid of its bringing me bad luck. ada. what's made you so superstitious? sheila. perhaps you'll understand better some day. well, i'm going to ask her to tea. ada. oh! that's all right. sheila. will you come, too? ada. i don't mind. yes. sheila. i think leonard wants whipping. ada. it was rather decent of edgar to go to the funeral. sheila. it was scoring against leonard, too. ada. well, that's not very nice to your husband. sheila. oh! i wish i didn't keep saying things and thinking things against him. he's my child's father; he's not only my husband. ada. who's coming? [_the maid shows in mary who stands near the door for a moment. sheila goes to her rapidly and kisses her. mary is a little startled and discomposed by this._] mary. [_to ada._] is your mother in? ada. [_rather graciously._] how d'y do, mary? [_they shake hands._] yes, she's somewhere about. sit down, won't you? er--won't you take your things off? mary. no, thank you. i can't stay long. ada. here's mother, i think. [_mrs. timbrell enters. she and mary greet one another affectionately._] mrs. timbrell. has he come? mary. he hadn't when i left. he's coming. i got a telegram. mrs. timbrell. what time does he arrive? mary. he should be there now. mrs. timbrell. and you are out? well, perhaps it's a good idea. mary, you mustn't judge him by other people. he's queer and different. mary. what must i judge him by? mrs. timbrell. well, i think you'd better not judge him at all. mary. no. it's too late for that now. i've just come to say good-bye. mrs. timbrell. good-bye? sheila. where are you going? [_timbrell enters._] timbrell. ah! mary. [_they shake hands._] glad to see you. you've had a trying time. where's leonard? home yet? mary. he's coming. timbrell. yes. well, sheila, how are you? yes. i wanted to have a word with you, mary. i've heard from leonard. i've had quite a long letter from him. and a very proper letter in the circumstances. of course he did very wrong. he acknowledges that. undoubtedly he ought to have been there. he does make certain explanations and apologies. he expresses himself to me in a suitable manner. now, mary, i have been talking to mrs. timbrell and we wish you to understand that we are pleased with you. we think that as far as you can--according to your lights--you have made him a good wife. you've had rather a hard time. well, i thought it right that there should be what i may call an ordeal--a period of ordeal. i hope we may consider that over and that things may be made a little easier for you. i think after the letter i have received from leonard that i may say--i think i may say-- mary. he's very good at writing letters. timbrell. yes, yes. mary. when little leonard died he wrote me a beautiful letter. mrs. timbrell. a beautiful letter! mary. it was beautifully expressed. sheila. he's a literary man. timbrell. well, well. that's all over. mrs. timbrell. here's leonard. [_leonard enters and looks around him. then he walks up to mary and stands before her._] leonard. i've come to abase myself, mary. mary. you've been a long time in coming. leonard. you don't want a lot of apologies. you know what i am. mary. no. i don't want any apologies. timbrell. now i think you are wrong there, mary. he ought to make very ample apologies to you. of course he has explained to me the exceptional circumstances of the delay but still-- mrs. timbrell. the circumstances of the delay! you begin to excuse him now! leonard. oh! i know. i've been a brute and there's an end of it. mary. yes, there's an end of it. timbrell. of course, mary, we must all recognise that leonard is quite an eccentric person. i am reluctant to suggest the possibility of--of two--or more--moral standards but allowance must be made for exceptional temperament. leonard. very liberal, sir. very liberal and enlightened. [_turning to mary, again._] there are some things i hate. all that undertaking business. black clothes and dark rooms and nodding plumes. remember that. they're horrible to me. mary. there are things that i hate, too. leonard. if i could have come in time to see the little lad it would have been different. but i like to think of him as alive and happy. i've all sorts of charming memories of him--of him with you, mary. mary. yes. you said so in your letter. leonard. i've thought about you a great deal. mary. i find it hard to believe that. leonard. i'm a curious kind of brute. i'm rotten with egoism. it startles me to come back to you and find you so steady and calm. i'd nearly forgotten what you are like.--i wish you'd denounce me or curse me or something. mary. it's no use doing that now. leonard. and how are we all getting on together? all a happy family? i believe it's you that will unite us yet, mary. timbrell. i've got to talk with you about a few arrangements. and i should like to say before you leonard that your mother and i have come to the conclusion that you owe a great deal to your wife and that her influence is a beneficent one. we are pleased--very much pleased-- leonard. what is it you're thinking about, mary. there's something inscrutable in you. it seems to me that we're just as uncomfortable as ever. mother, let's have a little motherliness or something. i don't know how it is but i want cheering up. i came from the station most penitentially in a growler--an ancient fourwheeler. it made me think of your father, mary. how is that good man? got a job all right? by-the-bye, there's an extraordinary upset at our place. i wanted to ask you about that. a lot of tin trunks with cords round them and things. are we leaving? are we going away? mary. i'm going away. leonard. } { you are! timbrell. } [_together._] { going away! mrs. timbrell. } { mary! mary. i'm going to call for the boxes and things when i leave here. leonard. mary, where are you going? mary. [_looking steadily at him._] to canada. leonard. alone? mary. no. timbrell. what? what's that? mary. [_still looking at leonard._] i'm going with george truefit. leonard. don't do that, mary. don't do that. timbrell. what do you mean? george truefit? leonard. you are leaving me to go with george truefit? mary. yes. leonard. can you do that? can you really do that? mrs. timbrell. don't be hasty, mary. think about this. timbrell. do you mean to say--who is george truefit? mrs. timbrell. he was our milkman. he gave us notice a few weeks ago that he was going out of the business. leonard. in order to elope with mary? did he mention that? timbrell. do you mean that you are leaving your husband and going away with this person? mary. yes. timbrell. i can't believe it. i can't understand it. leonard. mary, i'd like to talk to you about this. mary. i'll hear what you have to say. leonard. not here. not now. i want you alone. mary. it's only reasons i want. you can give those here. leonard. mother, talk to her. mrs. timbrell. you've startled me, mary. it seems very dreadful. mary. i'm sorry ma'am. timbrell. [_to leonard._] confound you, sir, are you going to let your wife go like this? leonard. [_he knows in his heart that mary will not be shaken and his efforts to retain her seem perfunctory._] what do i do? what's the right thing? must i call out truefit? or assassinate him? is there such a person? he sounds to me like a myth or a symbol or something. mary, will you swear that there is a george truefit? mary. i'll swear that. leonard. this is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. mary. i thought it would surprise you. leonard. but mary, you're my wife. mary. yes. that's what i don't like about it. leonard. i did wrong to stay away from you. i acknowledge it. i feel it. i'm going to be good. i'll try. i'm going to be a good husband. i don't want you to go. it was dreadful of me to stay away when the little kiddie died. i'm not like that. i'm not like the things i do. mary. after all, you wrote a beautiful letter. leonard. [_despairingly, to the universe._] she's taking to irony now. sheila. [_she has approached mary rather timidly and stands beside her._] don't go, mary. mary. oh! miss sheila! sheila. i want you to stay. i do. and i'm so sorry about everything. mary. oh! i must. thank you--thank you. i must. sheila. [_to mrs. timbrell._] won't you stop her? mrs. timbrell. i don't know how. timbrell. perhaps i may have a few words with this young woman. i think i am entitled to a few words. now, i don't wish to be harsh with you. far from it. i had formed--i was forming a high opinion of your character--of some phases of it. i was prepared, as i think i have said, to accept you--to have overlooked the deplorable incident which--i will say no more about that. my son has been rather unfeeling, perhaps. i don't defend him. he is anxious to make amends. i must remind you that at a time when--that i insisted on his making reparation. it was an unusual course. i conceived it to be my duty. later i found it necessary in certain painful circumstances to impose what i may call an ordeal. it is over. i am willing to be lenient. i should propose, if your husband remains reasonably--what shall i say?--steady, to make your pecuniary position a much easier one. now, my good girl, i hope we shall have no more of this nonsense. i can overlook a slip--an error due to--an error of--of youth, but not a deliberate infringement of--are you listening to what i say? mary. i beg your pardon, sir. i was thinking it was time i was off. timbrell. oh! this is abominable. mary. it's no good your talking, sir. i've made up my mind. timbrell. and does he--this person--this truefit know the whole of the extraordinary circumstances? mary. i've told him everything. timbrell. where is he? i'll see him. mary. you won't move george truefit. leonard. i should like to see him. i don't mean to talk and argue and all that. and i don't want to break his head. but i should like to have a look at him through a keyhole or something. timbrell. manly talk. leonard. mary, do you like him better than me? mary. it's not the same thing. leonard. it's deuced interesting if one weren't so close to it. as it is i feel rather uncomfortable. unmanly. yes, i suppose so. i suppose things are easy for these manly people. they just go to work with an axe. but how do i know that she isn't right? mary, i'm horribly uncomfortable. i'm unhappy. i seem to be losing something. yes, really losing something. are you quite sure about george truefit? mary. yes, i'm sure about him. leonard. and yourself? do you think you'll never want to come back? to me, you know? timbrell. to you or to fifty others. mrs. timbrell. no--no. leonard. oh! he doesn't understand. timbrell. understand! i understand that this is an abandoned woman. you are well rid of her. i've been mistaken. yes, i made a mistake. she has been treated with some magnanimity. [_snappishly to leonard._] not by you. let her go, then, to her life of infamy. mrs. timbrell. for shame! timbrell. silence! mary. it's no good my talking here but i'd like you to understand ma'am. mrs. timbrell. i do understand. sheila. don't go. leonard. no. don't go. mary. i must go. i can't throw over george truefit. leonard. you are throwing me over. mary. that doesn't matter. that's another thing. leonard. oh! is it? why? mary. it was all wrong from the beginning. i brought it on myself. i'm sorrier for my mother than anyone. she told me there were men like you. i wouldn't have gone if little leonard had lived. not if i'd had to leave him. but now george truefit and i have talked it over and we think we see what's right. it can't be right but it's not so wrong as other things. leonard. mary, do you love george truefit? mary. now, that's what i've said to myself sometimes. and people talk of love and stories are full of it. i can't make out rightly what it is. did you love me when first--they talk about a mother loving. well--little leonard--are they the same? if that's love i don't love george. but i want to be sure of things. i want things to last. i want to feel that i'm faithful and true. it's strange for me to be running away from my husband for that. i'm not one of the kind that does it. it's funny that i'm leaving you because i want to be a proper wife. p'raps i'm all wrong. it's hard for a girl like me, not very clever, to make out things. it's all been very unusual. i may be wrong but i can't help it. mrs. timbrell. you are not wrong, mary. timbrell. this is madness. are you going to justify her now? leonard. ah! you don't understand this, sir. it's a little out of your line. timbrell. i hope it is out of my line, sir. i trust it is. mrs. timbrell. when are you going, mary? mary. we sail to-morrow. leonard. i suppose the magnanimous thing would be for me to see you off. mary. no. i'll say good-bye here. [_to mrs. timbrell._] i'm sorry to leave you ma'am. mrs. timbrell. good luck, mary. mary. there'll be no questions asked there. i shall leave it all behind. i should be ashamed here. i've felt so all the time. why! mrs. greaves thought i wasn't married. and i never felt as if i was, properly. of course it's wrong, but i can't be right now whatever i do. it isn't as if i'd been straight all the time. somehow that does make me feel a bit freer now. if i'm wrong it's the best i can do. timbrell. [_angrily to leonard._] do you mean to tell me that you're going to submit to this? leonard. i don't see that a scrap with george truefit would help much. i've lost mary. that's plain. timbrell. well, well. i've no more to say. leonard. it has been an extraordinarily interesting episode. the most stimulating thing that ever happened to me. i must thank you for that, mary. mrs. timbrell. [_turning suddenly on leonard._] doesn't it hurt you. can you get outside it like that? leonard. oh! yes. it hurts me splendidly. timbrell. your conduct is despicable, sir. the man who allows his wife to leave him is not a man. leonard. [_snappishly._] oh! don't talk rubbish. your wife left you long ago. she never came to you. you've never had a wife. timbrell. i don't understand you. i don't want to understand you. i pray that i may never understand you. leonard. of course you don't want to understand. that's just it. i think sometimes that people like you are just as intelligent as we are but you're timid, you daren't let your thoughts stray, you have secrets from yourselves. well, mother, i shall have to look to you now mary's gone. mrs. timbrell. i can do nothing for you. you've ceased to be a child. leonard. to him--to my father--yes. not to you. mrs. timbrell. yes. you know too much. you can only pretend to be my child. leonard. i'm to be alone, then. mary, i shall be quite alone. mary. i daresay you'll pick up somebody. leonard. you've no sentiment at all. mary. i must go. good-bye, ma'am. [_mary and mrs. timbrell embrace. mary moves toward the door. the others, with the exception of timbrell, follow her, leonard slowly and wistfully. they go out, meeting edgar who stares at them in some astonishment but without greeting and advances to his father._] edgar. what's this? timbrell. [_testily._] what's what? edgar. some sort of family reconciliation? timbrell. just the reverse. edgar. they seemed to be saying good-bye to her. timbrell. she's gone. edgar. gone? timbrell. take care sheila doesn't go. edgar. sheila? timbrell. perhaps she's gone already. edgar. what do you mean? timbrell. i've been listening to the ravings of lunacy and they've affected my brain. i'm getting old. do you ever have any doubt about yourself, edgar? do you ever think you're a fool? edgar. no, i don't think i'm a fool. timbrell. neither am i. edgar. but what is it? what's been going on? [_the curtain falls._] turnbull and spears, printers, edinburgh transcriber's note this transcription is based on scans of a copy made available by the california state university east bay libraries. these images have been posted with the internet archive at: archive.org/details/monkhousemarybroome in general, the grammar and spelling in the source text have not been changed. for example, variant spellings (such as "disagraceful" and "truculantly") and spellings used to suggest an accent (such as "druv" and "perfession") have been retained. a few changes were made for the sake of consistency. the following changes were noted: - p. : what about my mother? is is fair to her?--changed second "is" to "it". - p. : mrs. pendleton. [_turning to sheila._] oh, yes, i've had the pleasure. . .--changed "_sheila_" to all capital letters. - p. : i meant mary--mrs leonard.--inserted a period after "mrs". - p. : mrs. timbrell. [_laughing a little as she goes forward to mary._] well, mary. . .--changed "_mary_" in stage direction to all capital letters. - p. : and i'm not comfortable ma'm and its partly this dress. . .--changed "ma'm" to "ma'am" and "its" to "it's". - p. : timbrell i can't believe--i can't understand. . .--inserted period after "timbrell". - p. : _edgar offers his arm to mary. who shakes her head._--changed the period after "mary" to a comma. - p. : its a special occasion.--changed "its" to "it's". - p. : mrs. graves. he looks a little bit peaked.--changed "mrs. graves" to "mrs. greaves". - p. : i'm afraid of it's bringing me bad luck.--changed "it's" to "its". - p. : [_turning to mary, again._]--changed "_mary_" to all capital letters. - p. : mary yes, i'm sure about him.--added a period after "mary". - p. : leonard. it has been an extraodinarily interesting episode.--changed "extraodinarily" to "extraordinarily". book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) +-------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | |obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ challenge by v. sackville-west [illustration: logo] george h. doran company publishers new york printed in great britain dedication acaba embeo sin tiro, men chuajaÑi; lirenas, berjaras tiri ochi busÑe, changeri, ta armensalle. epilogue a man and a woman leaned idly over the balustrade watching the steady stream of guests that mounted the magnificent staircase. the marble of the balustrade was cool beneath the woman's bare arms, for it was summer, and the man, without interrupting his murmur of comment and anecdote, glanced admiringly at her, and thought that, in spite of her forty years, she, with diamonds in her hair and the great ropes of pearls over her shoulders, need not fear comparison with all the beauty of london assembled at that ball. her beauty and dignity melted pleasantly, for him, into the wealth of the house, the lights, the abundance of flowers, and the distant orchestra. again the idea that this woman, for the asking, would decorate his own house with her presence, and would ornament his own distinguished name, played flatteringly through his mind. he reflected with gratification that it lay within his power to do her this honour. for, a vain man, he never questioned but that the favour would lie entirely on his side. he pointed out to her the famous general on the stairs, escorting his daughter; the new american beauty; the young man recently succeeded to fabulous estates; the indian prince who had turned the heads of half the women in london. skilful, she paid him the compliment of interest and amusement, letting it be understood that he was himself of far greater interest to her than the personages who served as pegs to his wit. as he paused once, she revived the conversation:-- 'there is a man i have never seen before; that tall, dark man. and the handsome woman with him--she must be his wife.' 'why must she be his wife?' he asked, amused. 'because i am sure she is the type of woman he would marry, stately and correct; am i not right?' 'you are quite right; she is his wife. he has been and still is a very successful man; an under-secretary at thirty-five, and in the cabinet before he was forty. many people think that he will be the next viceroy.' at that moment the man on the stairs looked up, and his eyes met those of the woman leaning on the balustrade above. 'what a wonderful face!' she exclaimed, startled, to her companion. 'wonderful--but he looks as though he had learnt all the sorrow of the world.--he looks--what shall i say?--so weary.' 'then he has no business to,' he answered with a smile. 'he has everything man can wish for: power, wealth, and, as you can see, an admirable wife. as usual, however, your perception is unerring: he's the most cynical fellow i ever came across. he believes in nothing--and is incidentally the only real philanthropist i know. his name is perfectly familiar to you. it is davenant.' 'oh,' she said, carried away by her interest, 'is that julian davenant? of course every one has heard of him. stay,' she added, searching in her memory, 'wasn't there some extraordinary story about him as a young man? some crazy adventure he engaged in? i don't remember exactly....' the man at her side began to laugh. 'there was indeed,' he replied; 'do you remember an absurd tiny republic named herakleion, which has since been absorbed by greece?' 'herakleion?' she murmured. 'why, i have been there in a yacht, i believe; a little greek port; but i didn't know it had ever been an independent republic?' 'dear me, yes,' he said, 'it was independent for about a hundred years, and julian davenant as a young man was concerned in some preposterous revolution in those parts; all his money comes, you know, from his vine-growing estates out there. i am a little vague myself as to what actually happened. he was very young at the time, not much more than a boy.' 'how romantic,' said the woman absently, as she watched julian davenant shaking hands with his hostess. 'very romantic, but we all start by being romantic until we have outgrown it, and any way, don't you think we are going, you and i, rather too much out of our way this evening to look for romance?' said the man, leaning confidentially a little nearer. * * * * * * but these two people have nothing to do with the story. part i--julian i on sunday, after the races were over, the diplomatic, indigenous, and cosmopolitan society of herakleion, by virtue of a custom they never sought to dispute, streamed through the turnstiles of the race-course to regain their carriages and to drive for an hour in the ilex avenue consecrated to that purpose outside the suburbs of the town. like the angels on jacob's ladder, the carriages went up one side and down the other, at a slow walk, the procession invariably headed by the barouche of the french legation, containing m. lafarge, chief of the mission, his beard spread fan-like over his frock-coat, but so disposed as to reveal the rosette in his button-hole, peeping with a coy red eye at the passing world; madame lafarge, sitting erect and bowing stiffly from her unassailable position as dictator to social herakleion; and, on the _strapontin_, julie lafarge, repressed, sallow-faced daughter of the emissaries of france. streaming after the barouche came mere humanity, some in victorias, some in open cabs, all going at a walk, and down the centre rode the young men of the place, and down the centre alexander christopoulos, who dared all and to whom all was forgiven, drove his light buggy and american trotter at a rattling pace and in a cloud of dust. the diplomatic carriages were distinguished by the presence of a chasseur on the box, though none so gorgeous as the huge scarlet-coated chasseur of the french legation. it was commonly said that the danish minister and his wife, who were poor, denied themselves food in order to maintain their carriage for the sunday drive. the rich greeks, on the other hand, from generation to generation, inherited the family brake, which was habitually driven by the head of the clan on the box, his wife beside him, and his sons and unmarried daughters sitting two by two, on the six remaining seats behind. there had been a rush of scandal when alexander christopoulos had appeared for the first time alone in his buggy, his seat in the family brake conspicuously empty. there remained, however, his four sisters, the virgins of herakleion, whose ages ranged from thirty-five to forty, and whose batteries were unfailingly directed against the latest arrival. the fifth sister had married a banker in frankfort, and was not often mentioned. there were, besides the brakes of the rich greeks, the wagonettes of the english davenants, who always had english coachmen, and frequently absented themselves from the sunday drive to remind herakleion that, although resident, they were neither diplomatic, indigenous, nor cosmopolitan, but unalterably english. they were too numerous and too influential to be disregarded, but when the name of davenant was mentioned in their absence, a murmur was certain to make itself heard, discreet, unvindictive, but none the less remorseless, 'ah yes, the english levantines.' sunshades were lowered in the ilex avenue, for the shadows of the ancient trees fell cool and heavy across the white dust. through the ilexes, the sea glimmered on a lower level, washing idly on the shore; vainly blue, for herakleion had no eyes for the sea. the sea was always there, always blue, just as mount mylassa was always there, behind the town, monotonous and immovable. the sea was made for the transport of merchandise and to provide man with fish. no one had ever discovered a purpose in mount mylassa. when the french barouche had reached the end of the avenue, it turned gravely in a wide circle and took its place at the head of the descending carriages. when it had reached its starting-point, the entrance to the avenue, it detached itself from the procession and continued on its way towards the town. the procession did not follow it. another turn up and down the avenue remained for the procession, and the laughter became perceptibly brighter, the smiles of greeting more cordial, with the removal of madame lafarge's influence. it was known that the barouche would pass the race-course at its former dignified walk, but that, once out of sight, madame lafarge would say, '_grigora_, vassili!' to the chasseur, that the horses would be urged into a shambling trot and that the ladies in the carriage would open their sunshades to keep off the glare of the sun which beat down from heaven and reverberated from the pavements and the white walls of the houses as they drove through the streets of the deserted town. deserted, for that part of the population which was not within doors strolled in the ilex avenue, looking at the carriages. a few lean dogs slept on door-steps where the shadow of the portico fell sharply dividing the step into a dark and a sunny half. the barouche rolled along the wide quay, where here and there the parapet was broken by a flight of steps descending to the water; passed the casino, white, with palms and cacti growing hideously in the forecourt; rolled across the square _platia_, where a group of men stood lounging within the cool and cavernous passage-way of the club. madame lafarge stopped the barouche. a young man detached himself from the group with a slightly bored and supercilious expression. he was tall beyond the ordinary run of frenchmen; had dark eyes under meeting eyebrows in an ivory face, and an immensely high, flat, white brow, from which the black wavy hair grew straight back, smoothed to the polish of a black greyhound. 'our persian miniature,' the fat american wife of the danish minister, called him, establishing herself as the wit of herakleion, where any one with sufficient presumption could establish him or herself in any chosen rôle. the young man had accepted the title languidly, but had taken care that it should not die forgotten. madame lafarge said to him in a tone which conveyed a command rather than proffered a favour, 'if you like, we can drive you to the legation.' she spoke in a booming voice that burst surprisingly out of the compression of a generously furnished bust. the young man, accepting the offer, seated himself beside julie on the _strapontin_ opposite his chief, who sat silent and majestically bearded. the immense chasseur stood stiffly by the side of the carriage, his eyes gazing unblinkingly across the _platia_, and the tips of his long drooping whiskers obscuring the braid of his scarlet collar. madame lafarge addressed herself to the group of men,-- 'i did not see you at the races?' her graciousness did not conceal the rebuke. she continued,-- 'i shall hope to welcome you presently at the legation.' with a bow worthy of theodora, whom she had once been told that she resembled, she gave the order to drive on. the loaded barouche, with the splendid red figure on the box, rolled away across the dazzling square. the french legation stood back behind a grille in the main street of the town, built of white stucco like the majority of the houses. inside, it was cool and dark, the venetian blinds were drawn, and the lighted candles in the sconces on the walls reflected pleasantly, and with a curious effect of freshening night, in the polished floors. gilt chairs were arranged in circles, and little tables stood about, glitteringly laden with tall tumblers and bottles of coloured sirops. madame lafarge surveyed these things as she had surveyed them every sunday evening since julie could remember. the young man danced attendance in his languid way. 'the chandeliers may be lighted,' her excellency said to the chasseur, who had followed. the three stood watching while the candles sprang into little spears of light under the touch of the taper, madame lafarge contrasting displeasedly the lemon sallowness of her daughter's complexion with the warm magnolia-like pallor of the secretary's face. the contrast caused her to speak sharply,-- 'julie, you had better go now and take off your hat.' when her submissive daughter had gone, she said,-- 'julie is looking ill. the summer does not suit her. but what is to be done? i cannot leave herakleion.' 'obviously,' murmured the secretary, 'herakleion would fall all to pieces. your sunday evenings,' he continued, 'the races ... your picnics....' 'impossible,' she cried with determination. 'one owes a duty to the country one represents, and i have always said that, whereas politics are the affairs of men, the woman's social obligation is no less urgent. it is a great career, armand, and to such a career one must be prepared to sacrifice one's personal convenience.' 'and one's health ... the health of one's children,' he added, looking down at his almond nails. 'if need be,' she replied with a sigh, and, fanning herself, repeated, 'if need be.' the rooms began to fill. a little middle-aged greek, his wrinkled saffron face curiously emphasised by the beautiful whiteness of his hair and moustaches, took his stand near madame lafarge, who in speaking to him looked down on the top of his head over the broad plateau of her bust. 'these cool rooms of yours,' he murmured, as he kissed her hand. 'one cannot believe in the heat of the sun outside.' he made this remark every other sunday. lafarge came up and took the little greek banker by the arm. 'i hear,' he said, 'that there is fresh trouble in the islands.' 'we can leave it to the davenants,' said christopoulos with an unpleasant smile. 'but that is exactly what i have always urged you not to do,' said the french minister, drawing the little greek into a corner. 'you know the proverbial reputation of the english: you do not see them coming, but they insinuate themselves until one day you open your eyes to the fact that they are there. you will be making a very great mistake, my dear friend, if you allow the davenants to settle disputes in the islands. have you forgotten that in the last generation a davenant caused himself to be elected president?' 'considering that they are virtually kings, i do not see that the nominal title of president can make a vast difference.' lafarge sent his eyes round the room and through the doorway into the room beyond; he saw the familiar, daily faces, and returned to the charge. 'you are pleased to be sarcastic, i know. nevertheless allow me to offer you my advice. it is not a question of kingship or presidency. it is a question of a complete break on the part of the islands. they are small, but their strategic value is self-evident. remember italy has her eye upon them.... the davenants are democrats, and have always preached liberty to the islanders. the davenant wealth supports them. can you calmly contemplate the existence of an independent archipelago a few miles from your shore?' a dull red crept under the banker's yellow skin, giving him a suffused appearance. 'you are very emphatic.' 'the occasion surely warrants emphasis.' the rooms were by now quite full. little centres of laughter had formed themselves, and were distinguishable. alexander christopoulos had once boasted that he could, merely by looking round a room and arguing from the juxtaposition of conversationalists, give a fairly accurate _résumé_ of what every one was saying. he also claimed to tell from the expression of the danish excellency whether she was or was not arriving primed with a new epigram. he was now at the side of the danish excellency, fat, fair, and foolish, but good-natured, and having a fund of veritable humanity which was lacking in most of her colleagues. the careful english of alexander reached his father's ears through the babel,-- 'the empress eugénie set the fashion of wearing _décolleté_ in the shape the water in your bath makes round your shoulders....' lafarge went on,-- 'the davenants are sly; they keep apart; they mix with us, but they do not mingle. they are like oil upon water. where is william davenant now, do you know?' 'he is just arriving,' said christopoulos. lafarge saw him then, bowing over his hostess's hand, polite, but with absent eyes that perpetually strayed from the person he was talking to. behind him came a tall, loose-limbed boy, untidy, graceful; he glanced at the various groups, and the women looked at him with interest. a single leap might carry him at any moment out of the room in which his presence seemed so incongruous. the tall mirrors on the walls sent back the reflection of the many candles, and in them the same spectral company came and went that moved and chattered in the rooms. 'at least he is not on the islands,' said christopoulos. 'after all,' said lafarge, with a sudden weariness, 'perhaps i am inclined to exaggerate the importance of the islands. it is difficult to keep a true sense of proportion. herakleion is a little place. one forgets that one is not at the centre of the world.' he could not have tracked his lassitude to its origin, but as his eyes rested again on the free, generous limbs of the davenant boy, he felt a slight revolt against the babble, the coloured sirops, and the artificially lighted rooms from which the sun was so carefully excluded. the yellow skin of little christopoulos gave him the appearance of a plant which has been deprived of light. his snowy hair, too, soft and billowy, looked as though it had been deliberately and consistently bleached. he murmured a gentle protest to the minister's words,-- 'surely not, dear excellency, surely you do not exaggerate the importance of the islands. we could not, as you say, tolerate the existence of an independent archipelago a few miles from our shores. do not allow my sarcasm to lead you into the belief that i underestimate either their importance, or the value, the compliment of your interest in the politics of our country. the friendship of france....' his voice died away into suave nothings. the french minister emerged with an effort from his mood of temporary discontent, endeavouring to recapture the habitual serenity of his life. 'and you will remember my hint about the davenants?' christopoulos looked again at william davenant, who, perfectly courteous but incorrigibly absent-minded, was still listening to madame lafarge. 'it is a scandal,' she was saying, resuming her conversation in the intervals of interruption occasioned by newly-arriving guests, 'a scandal that the museum should remain without a catalogue....' 'i will remember,' said christopoulos. 'i will tell alexander to distract that youth's attention; one davenant the less, you follow me, to give us any trouble.' 'pooh! a schoolboy,' interjected the minister. christopoulos pursed his lips and moved his snowy head portentously up and down. 'a schoolboy, but nevertheless he probably shares the enthusiasms of his age. the islands are sufficiently romantic to appeal to his imagination. remember, his grandfather ruled there for a year.' 'his grandfather? _un farceur!_' said lafarge. christopoulos assented, and the two men, smiling tolerantly, continued to look across at the unconscious boy though their minds were already occupied by other things. madame lafarge, catching sight of them, was annoyed by her husband's aloofness from the social aspect of her weekly reception. it pleased her--in fact, she exacted--that a certain political atmosphere should pervade any gathering in her drawing-rooms, but at the same time she resented a political interview which deprived, at once, her guests of a host and herself of a _cavalier servente_. she accordingly stared at christopoulos while continuing her conversation with william davenant, until the little greek became aware of her gaze, and crossed the room obediently to the unspoken summons. william davenant moved away in relief; he knew his duty to madame lafarge, but performed it wearily and without pleasure. it was now over for a month, he thought, deciding that he would not be expected to attend the three succeeding sundays. he paused beside his son, who had been captured by two of the sisters christopoulos and who, with two russian secretaries, was being forced to join in a round game. the sisters gave little shrieks and peals of laughter; it was their idea of merriment. they sat one on each side of julian davenant, on a small gilt sofa covered with imitation tapestry. near by, listening to the game with a gentle and languorous smile upon his lips, stood the persian minister, who understood very little french, his fine oriental figure buttoned into the traditional frock-coat, and a black lamb's-wool fez upon his head. he was not very popular in herakleion; he did not know enough french to amuse the women, so, as at present, he silently haunted the circles of the younger generation, with mingled humility and dignity. william davenant paused there for a moment, met his son's eyes with a gleam of sympathy, then passed on to pay his monthly duty to influence and fashion. the danish excellency whispered behind her fan to alexander christopoulos as he passed, and the young man screwed in his eyeglass to examine the retreating back of the englishman. the red-coated chasseur came round, gravely offering sandwiches on a tray. 'uneatable,' said alexander christopoulos, taking one and hiding it beneath his chair. the courage of the young man! the insolence! 'julie will see you,' giggled the danish excellency. 'and what if she does?' he retorted. 'you have no respect, no veneration,' she chided him. 'for _maman_ lafarge? _la bonne bourgeoise!_' he exclaimed, but not very loudly. 'alexander!' she said, but her tone said, 'i adore you.' 'one must be something,' the young christopoulos had once told himself; 'i will be insolent and contemptuous; i will impose myself upon herakleion; my surroundings shall accept me with admiration and without protest.' he consequently went to oxford, affected to speak greek with difficulty, interlarded his english with american slang, instituted a polo club, and drove an american trotter. he was entirely successful. unlike many a greater man, he had achieved his ambition. he knew, moreover, that madame lafarge would give him her daughter for the asking. 'shall i make julie sing?' he said suddenly to the danish excellency, searching among the moving groups for the victim of this classic joke of herakleion. 'alexander, you are too cruel,' she murmured. he was flattered; he felt himself an irresistible autocrat and breaker of hearts. he tolerated the danish excellency, as he had often said in the club, because she had no other thought than of him. she, on the other hand, boasted in her fat, good-humoured way to her intimates,-- 'i may be a fool, but no woman is completely a fool who has realised the depths of man's vanity.' julie lafarge, who was always given to understand that one day she would marry the insolent alexander, was too efficiently repressed to be jealous of the danish excellency. under the mischievous influence of her friend, eve davenant, she would occasionally make an attempt to attract the young man; a pitiable, grotesque attempt, prompted by the desire to compel his homage, to hear herself called beautiful--which she was not. so far she did not delude herself that she had succeeded, but she did delude herself that it gave him pleasure to hear her sing. she stood now beside a little table, dispensing sirops in tall tumblers, very sallow in her white muslin, with a locket on a short gold chain hanging between the bones of her neck. her very thin brown arms, which were covered with small black hairs, protruded ungracefully from the short sleeves of her dress. alexander presented himself before her; she had seen him coming in one of the mirrors on the walls. madame lafarge cherished an affection for these mirrors, because thanks to them her drawing-rooms always appeared twice as crowded as they really were. alexander uttered his request in a tone at once beseeching and compelling; she thought him irresistible. nevertheless, she protested: there were too many people present, her singing would interrupt all conversation, her mother would be annoyed. but those standing near by seconded alexander, and madame lafarge herself bore down majestically upon her daughter, so that all protest was at an end. julie stood beside the open piano with her hands loosely folded in a rehearsed and approved attitude while the room disposed itself to listen, and alexander, who was to accompany her, let his fingers roam negligently over the keyboard. chairs were turned to face the piano, people drifted in from the farther drawing-room, young men leaned in the doorways and against the walls. lafarge folded his arms across his chest, freeing his imprisoned beard by an upward movement of his chin, and smiled encouragingly and benignly at his daughter. speech dropped into whispers, whispers into silence. alexander struck a few preliminary chords. julie sang; she sang, quite execrably, romantic german music, and out of the roomful of people only three, herself, her father, and her mother, thought that she sang well. despite this fact she was loudly applauded, congratulated, and pressed for more. julian davenant, taking advantage of the diversion to escape from the sisters christopoulos, slipped away to one of the window recesses where he could partly conceal himself behind the stiff, brocaded curtain. horizontal strings of sunlight barred the venetian blind, and by peeping between its joints he could see the tops of the palms in the legation forecourt, the iron grille which gave on to the main street, and a victoria standing near the grille, in the shade, the horse covered over with a flimsy, dust-coloured sheet, and the driver asleep inside the carriage, a fly-whisk drooping limply in his hand. he could hear the shrill squeaking of the tram as it came round the corner, and the clang of its bell. he knew that the sea lay blue beyond the white town, and that, out in the sea, lay the islands, where the little grapes were spread, drying into currants, in the sun. he returned to the darkened, candle-lit room, where julie lafarge was singing 'im wunderschönen monat mai.' looking across the room to the door which opened on to the landing at the top of the stairs, he saw a little stir of arrival, which was suppressed in order to avoid any interruption to the music. he distinguished the new-comer, a short, broad, middle-aged woman, out of breath after mounting the stairs, curiously draped in soft copper-coloured garments, with gold bangles on her bare arms, and a wreath of gold leaves round her dark head. he knew this woman, a singer. he neither liked nor disliked her, but had always thought of her as possessing a strangely classical quality, all the stranger because of her squat, almost grotesque ugliness; although not a dwarf, her great breadth gave her the appearance of one; but at the same time she was for him the embodiment of the wealth of the country, a kind of demeter of the islands, though he thought of demeter as having corn-coloured hair, like the crops over which she presided, and this woman had blue-black hair, like the purple of the grapes that grew on the islands. he had often heard her sing, and hoped now that she was arriving in her professional capacity, which seemed probable, both from her dress, and from the unlikelihood that she, a singer and a woman of the native people, would enter madame lafarge's house as a guest, renowned though she was, and fêted, in the capitals of europe. he saw lafarge tiptoe out to receive her, saw madame lafarge follow, and noted the faintly patronising manner of the minister's wife in shaking hands with the artist. applause broke out as julie finished her song. the greek singer was brought forward into the room amid a general movement and redistribution of groups. alexander christopoulos relinquished his place at the piano, and joined the davenant boy by the window. he appeared bored and languid. 'it is really painful ... as well listen to a macaw singing,' he said. 'you are not musical, are you, julian? you can scarcely imagine what i endured. have you heard this woman, kato?' julian said that he had. 'quite uneducated,' christopoulos said loftily. 'any woman in the fields sings as well. it was new to paris, and paris raved. you and i, my dear julian, have heard the same thing a hundred times. shall we escape?' 'i must wait for my father,' said julian, who detested his present companion; 'he and i are going to dine with my uncle.' 'so am i,' christopoulos answered, and, leaning over to the english boy, he began to speak in a confidential voice. 'you know, my dear julian, in this society of ours your father is not trusted. but, after all, what is this society? _un tas de rastas._ do you think i shall remain here long? not i. _je me fiche des balcans._ and you? are you going to bury yourself on those islands of yours, growing grapes, ripening olives? what? that satisfied the old generations. what have i to do with a banking house in herakleion, you with a few vineyards near the coast? i shall marry, and spend the rest of my life in paris.' 'you're ambitious to-day,' julian said mildly. 'ambitious! shall i tell you why? yesterday was my twenty-fifth birthday. i've done with herakleion....' 'conquered it, you mean,' said julian, 'squeezed it dry.' the other glanced at him suspiciously. 'are you laughing at me? confound your quiet manner, julian, i believe my family is right to mistrust your family. very well, then: conquered it. believe me, it isn't worth conquering. don't waste your youth on your vineyards, but come with me. let the islands go. they are always in trouble, and the trouble is getting more acute. they are untidy specks on the map. don't you hear the call of paris and the world?' julian, looking at him, and seeing the laughable intrigue, was mercifully saved from replying, for at that moment madame kato began to sing. she sang without accompaniment, songs of the people, in a curiously guttural voice with an occasionally nasal note, songs no different from those sung in the streets or, as christopoulos had said, in the fields, different only in that, to this peasant music, half melancholy, half emotional, its cadence born of physical labour, she brought the genius of a great artist. as she stood there, singing, julian reflected that her song emphasised the something classical, something massive, something monumental, about her, which overshadowed what might have been slightly grotesque in her appearance. she was, indeed, a demeter of the vineyards. she should have stood singing in the sun, not beneath the pale mockery of the candles. 'entirely uneducated,' christopoulos said again, shifting his shoulders as he leaned against the wall. 'that is why paris liked her: as a contrast. she was clever enough to know that. contrasts are always artistically effective.' he went off, pleased, to repeat his facile epigram to the danish excellency. madame lafarge was looking round to see whether the audience had approved of the innovation. the audience was waiting to hear the expression of an opinion which it might safely follow. presently the word, 'uneducated' was on every lip. julian remained at the window, chained there by his natural reserve and shyness; he looked up at the lighted chandeliers, and down at their reflection in the floors; he saw the faces of people turned towards him, and the back of their heads in the mirrors; he saw armand, the french secretary, with the face of a persian prince, offering red sirop to madame kato. he wished to go and speak to her, but his feet would not carry him forward. he felt himself apart from the talk and the easy laughter. presently mlle lafarge, seeing him there alone, came to him with her awkward and rather touching grace as a hostess. 'you know, i suppose,' she said to him, 'that madame kato is a friend of eve's? will you not come and speak to her?' released, he came. the singer was drinking her red sirop by the piano. the persian minister in the black fez was standing near, smiling gently at her with his usual mournful smile. 'you will not remember me, julian davenant,' the boy said in a low, shy voice. he spoke in greek involuntarily, feeling that french would be an outrage in the presence of this so splendidly hellenic woman. armand had moved away, and they stood isolated, caressed by the vague smile of the persian minister. kato set down her glass of red sirop on the top of the piano. she leaned against the piano talking to the english boy, her arms akimbo, as a peasant woman might lean in the doorway of her house gossiping in the cool of the evening, her little eyes keen and eager. the muscles of her arms and of her magnificent neck curved generously beneath her copper draperies, mocking the flimsy substance, and crying out for the labour of the vineyards. her speech was tinged with the faint accent of the islands, soft and slurring. it was more familiar to julian davenant than the harsher greek of the town, for it was the speech of the women who had brought him up as a child, women of the islands, his nurses in his father's big house in the _platia_ of herakleion. it murmured to him now in the rich voice of the singer beneath the chandelier. 'eve; i have not seen her yet. you must tell her that i have returned and that she must come to my concert on wednesday. tell her that i will sing one song for her, but that all the other songs must be for my audience. i have brought back a new repertoire from munich, which will please herakleion better, i hope, than the common music it despises.' she laughed a little. 'it has taken me thirty years to discover that mankind at large despises the art of its own country. only the exotic catches the ear of fashion. but eve has told me that you do not care for music?' 'i like your music,' he said. 'i will tell you why: because you are musically uneducated.' he looked at her; she was smiling. he wondered whether she had overheard a whisper in the humming room. 'i speak without sarcasm,' she added; 'i envy you your early ignorance. in fact, i believe i have uttered a paradox, and that the words education and music are incompatible. music is the emotional art, and where education steps in at the door emotion flies out at the window. we should keep education for literature, painting, architecture, and sculpture. music is the medium to which we turn when these more intellectual mediums fail us.' julian listened with only half his brain. this peasant, this artist, spoke to him with the superficial ease of drawing-rooms; she employed words that matched ill with her appearance and with the accent of her speech. the native songs were right upon her lips, as the names of architecture and sculpture were wrong. he was offended in his sensitiveness. demeter in analysis of the arts! she was watching him. 'ah, my young friend,' she said, 'you do not understand. i spoke to you as the cousin of eve, who is a child, but who always understands. she is purely sentient, emotional.' he protested,-- 'i have always thought of eve as exceptionally sophisticated.' kato said,-- 'you are right. we are both right. eve is childlike in many ways, but she is also wise beyond her years. she will grow, believe me, into a woman of exceptional attraction, and to such women existence is packed with danger. it is one of providence's rare pieces of justice that they should be provided with a natural weapon of self-defence. to a lion his claws,' she said, smiling, 'and to the womanly woman the gift of penetration. tell me, are you fond of eve?' julian was surprised. he replied, naïf again and like a schoolboy,-- 'she's my cousin. i haven't thought much about her. she's only a child. i haven't seen her yet either. i arrived from england this morning.' they were more than ever isolated from the rest of the room. madame lafarge, talking to don rodrigo valdez, the spanish minister, who had a birdlike head above his immensely high white collar, glanced now and then resentfully at the singer, but otherwise the room was indifferent. the sunlight between the cracks of the venetian blinds had grown fainter, and the many candles were coming into their own. a few people had already taken their leave. an excited group of men had gathered round little christopoulos, and the words 'local politics' shrieked from every gesture. 'i shall not be expected to sing again,' said kato with a slight return to her ironical manner. 'will you not come with eve to my concert on wednesday? or, better, will you come to my house on wednesday evening after the concert? i shall be alone, and i should like to talk to you.' 'to me?' broke from him, independently of his will. 'remember,' she said, 'i am from the islands. that is my country, and when my country is in trouble i am not indifferent. you are very young, mr davenant, and you are not very often in herakleion, but your future, when you have done with oxford and with england'--she made a large gesture--'lies in the islands. you will hear a great deal about them; a little of this i should like you to hear from me. will you come?' the patriot beneath the artist! he would come, flattered, important; courted, at his nineteen years, by a singer of european reputation. popularity was to him a new experience. he expanded beneath its warmth. 'i will come to the concert first with eve.' william davenant, in search of his son, and light-hearted in his relief at the end of the monthly duty, was bowing to madame kato, whom he knew both as a singer and as a figure of some importance in the troubled politics of the tiny state. they had, in their lives, spent many an hour in confabulation, when his absent-minded manner left the man, and her acquired polish the woman. he deferred to her as a controlling agent in practical affairs, spoke of her to his brother with admiration. 'a remarkable woman, robert, a true patriot; sexless, i believe, so far as her patriotism lies. malteios, you say? well, i know; but, believe me, she uses him merely as a means to her end. not a sexless means? damn it, one picks up what weapons come to one's hand. she hasn't a thought for him, only for her wretched country. she is a force, i tell you, to be reckoned with. forget her sex! surely that is easy, with a woman who looks like a toad. you make the mistake of ignoring the people when it is with the people that you have to deal. hear them speak about her: she is an inspiration, a local joan of arc. she works for them in paris, in berlin, and in london; she uses her sex, for them and for them alone. all her life is dedicated to them. she gives them her voice, and her genius.' madame kato did not know that he said these things about her behind her back. had she known, she would have been surprised neither at the opinions he expressed nor at the perception which enabled him to express them, for she had seen in him a shrewd, deliberate intellect that spoke little, listened gravely, and settled soberly down at length upon a much tested and corroborated opinion. madame lafarge, and the women to whom he paid his courtly, rather pompous duty in public, thought him dull and heavy, a true englishman. the men mistrusted him in company with his brother robert, silence, in the south, breeding mistrust as does volubility in the north. the rooms were emptier now, and the candles, burning lower, showed long icicles of wax that overflowed on to the glass of the chandeliers. the tall tumblers had been set down, here and there, containing the dregs of the coloured sirops. madame lafarge looked hot and weary, drained of her early sunday energy, and listening absently to the parting compliments of christopoulos. from the other room, however, still came the laughter of the christopoulos sisters, who were winding up their round game. 'come, julian,' said william davenant, after he had spoken and made his farewells to madame kato. together they went down the stairs and out into the forecourt, where the hotter air of the day greeted them after the coolness of the house, though the heat was no longer that of the sun, but the closer, less glaring heat of the atmosphere absorbed during the grilling hours of the afternoon. the splendid chasseur handed them their hats, and they left the legation and walked slowly down the crowded main street of the town. ii the town house of the davenants stood in the _platia_, at right angles to the club. on the death of old mr davenant--'president davenant,' as he was nicknamed--the town and the country properties had been divided between the two inheriting brothers; herakleion said that the brothers had drawn lots for the country house, but in point of fact the matter had been settled by amicable arrangement. william davenant, the elder of the brothers, widowed, with an only son away for three-quarters of the year at school in england, was more conveniently installed in the town, within five minutes reach of the central office, than robert, who, with a wife and a little girl, preferred the distance of his country house and big garden. the two establishments, as time went on, became practically interchangeable. the rue royale--herakleion was so cosmopolitan as to give to its principal thoroughfare a french name--was at this hour crowded with the population that, imprisoned all day behind closed shutters, sought in the evening what freshness it could find in the cobbled streets between the stucco houses. the street life of the town began between five and six, and the davenants, father and son, were jostled as they walked slowly along the pavements, picking their way amongst the small green tables set outside the numerous cafés. at these tables sat the heterogenous elements that composed the summer population of the place, men of every nationality: old gamblers too disreputable for monte carlo; young levantines, natives, drinking absinthe; turks in their red fezzes; a few rakish south americans. the trams screamed discordantly in their iron grooves, and the bells of the cinema tinkled unceasingly. between the tramlines and the kerb dawdled the hired victorias, few empty at this time of day, but crowded with families of levantines, the men in straw hats, the women for the most part in hot black, very stout, and constantly fanning their heavily powdered faces. now and then a chasseur from some diplomatic house passed rapidly in a flaming livery. mr davenant talked to his son as they made their way along. 'how terrible those parties are. i often wish i could dissociate myself altogether from that life, and god knows that i go merely to hear what people are saying. they know it, and of course they will never forgive me. julian, in order to conciliate herakleion, you will have to marry a greek.' 'alexander christopoulos attacked me to-day,' julian said. 'wanted me to go to paris with him and see the world.' he did not note in his own mind that he refrained from saying that madame kato had also, so to speak, attacked him on the dangerous subject of the islands. they turned now, having reached the end of the rue royale, into the _platia_, where the cavernous archway of the club stained the white front of the houses with a mouth of black. the houses of the _platia_ were large, the hereditary residences of the local greek families. the christopoulos house stood next to the club, and next to that was the house of the premier, his excellency platon malteios, and next to that the italian consulate, with the arms of italy on a painted hatchment over the door. the centre of the square was empty, cobbled in an elaborate pattern which gave the effect of a tessellated pavement; on the fourth side of the square were no houses, for here lay the wide quay which stretched right along above the sea from one end of the town to the other. the davenant house faced the sea, and from the balcony of his bedroom on the second floor julian could see the islands, yellow with little white houses on them; in the absolute stillness and limpidity of the air he could count the windows on aphros, the biggest island, and the terraces on the slope of the hills. the first time he had arrived from school in england he had run up to his bedroom, out on to the balcony, to look across the _platia_ with its many gaudily striped sunblinds, at the blue sea and the little yellow stains a few miles out from the shore. at the door of the davenant house stood two horses ready saddled in the charge of the door-keeper, fat aristotle, an islander, who wore the short bolero and pleated fustanelle, like a kilt, of his country. the door-keepers of the other houses had gathered round him, but as mr davenant came up they separated respectfully and melted away to their individual charges. the way lay along the quays and down the now abandoned ilex avenue. the horses' hoofs padded softly in the thick dust. the road gleamed palely beneath the thick shadows of the trees, and the water, seen between the ancient trunks, was almost purple. the sun was gone, and only the last bars of the sunset lingered in the sky. at the tip of the pier of herakleion twinkled already the single light of phosphorescent green that daily, at sunset, shone out, to reflect irregularly in the water. they passed out of the avenue into the open country, the road still skirting the sea on their left, while on their right lay the strip of flat country crowded in between mount mylassa and the sea, carefully cultivated by the labourers of the davenants, where the grapes hung on the festooned branches looped from pole to pole. william davenant observed them critically, thinking to himself, 'a good harvest.' julian davenant, fresh from an english county, saw as with a new eye their beauty and their luxuriance. he rode loosely in the saddle, his long legs dangling, indisputably english, though born in one of the big painted rooms overlooking the _platia_ of herakleion, and reared in the country until the age of ten. he had always heard the vintage discussed since he could remember. he knew that his family for three generations had been the wealthiest in the little state, wealthier than the greek banking-houses, and he knew that no move of the local politics was entirely free from the influence of his relations. his grandfather, indeed, having been refused a concession he wanted from the government, had roused his islands to a declaration of independence under his own presidency--a state of affairs which, preposterous as it was, had profoundly alarmed the motley band that made up the cabinet in herakleion. what had been done once, could be repeated.... granted his concession, julian's grandfather had peaceably laid down the dignity of his new office, but who could say that his sons might not repeat the experiment? these things had been always in the boy's scheme of life. he had not pondered them very deeply. he supposed that one day he would inherit his father's share in the concern, and would become one of the heads of the immense family which had spread like water over various districts of the mediterranean coasts. besides the davenants of herakleion, there were davenants at smyrna, davenants at salonica, davenants at constantinople. colonies of davenants. it was said that the levant numbered about sixty families of davenants. julian was not acquainted with them all. he did not even know in what degree of relationship they stood to him. every time that he passed through london on his way to school, or, now, to oxford, he was expected to visit his great-uncle, sir henry, who lived in an immense house in belgrave square, and had a business room downstairs where julian was interviewed before luncheon. in this room hung framed plans of the various davenant estates, and julian, as he stood waiting for sir henry, would study the plan of herakleion, tracing with his finger the line of the quays, the indent of the _platia_, the green of the race-course, the square which indicated the country house; in a corner of this plan were the islands, drawn each in separate detail. he became absorbed, and did not notice the entrance of sir henry till the old man's hand fell on his shoulder. 'ha! looking at the plan, are you? familiar to you, what? so it is familiar to me, my boy. never been there, you know. yet i know it. i know my way about. know it as though i had seen it.' he didn't really know it, julian thought--he didn't feel the sun hot on his hands, or see the dazzling, flapping sunblinds, or the advertisements written up in greek characters in the streets. sir henry went on with his sermon. 'you don't belong there, boy; don't you ever forget that. you belong here. you're english. bend the riches of that country to your own purpose, that's all right, but don't identify yourself with it. impose yourself. make 'em adopt your methods. that's the strength of english colonisation.' the old man, who was gouty, and leaned his hands on the top of a stick, clapped the back of one hand with the palm of the other and blew out his lips, looking at his great-nephew. 'yes, yes, remember that. impose yourself. on my soul, you're a well-grown boy. what are you? nineteen? great overgrown colt. get your hair cut. foreign ways; don't approve of that. big hands you've got; broad shoulders. loosely put together. hope you're not slack. can you ride?' 'i ride all day out there,' said julian softly, a little bewildered. 'well, well. come to luncheon. keep a head on your shoulders. your grandfather lost his once; very foolish man. wonder he didn't lose it altogether. president indeed! stuff and nonsense. not practical, sir, not practical.' sir henry blew very hard. 'let's have no such rubbish from you, boy. what'll you drink? here, i'll give you the best: herakleion, . best year we ever had. hope you appreciate good wine; you're a wine-merchant, you know.' he cackled loudly at his joke. julian drank the wine that had ripened on the slopes of mount mylassa, or possibly on the islands, and wished that the old man had not so blatantly called him a wine-merchant. he liked sir henry, although after leaving him he always had the sensation of having been buffeted by spasmodic gusts of wind. he was thinking about sir henry now as he rode along, and pitying the old man to whom those swags of fruit meant only a dusty bottle, a red or a blue seal, and a date stamped in gold numerals on a black label. the light was extraordinarily tender, and the air seemed almost tangible with the heavy, honeyed warmth that hung over the road. julian took off his gray felt hat and hung it on the high peak of his saddle. they passed through a little village, which was no more than a score of tumbledown houses sown carelessly on each side of the road; here, as in the rue royale, the peasants sat drinking at round tables outside the café to the harsh music of a gramophone, with applause and noisy laughter. near by, half a dozen men were playing at bowls. when they saw mr davenant, they came forward in a body and laid eager hands on the neck of his horse. he reined up. julian heard the tumult of words: some one had been arrested, it was vassili's brother. vassili, he knew, was the big chasseur at the french legation. he heard his father soothing, promising he would look into the matter; he would, if need be, see the premier on the morrow. a woman flung herself out of the café and clasped julian by the knee. they had taken her lover. would he, julian, who was young, be merciful? would he urge his father's interference? he promised also what was required of him, feeling a strange thrill of emotion and excitement. ten days ago he had been at oxford, and here, to-day, kato had spoken to him as to a grown man, and here in the dusk a sobbing woman was clinging about his knee. this was a place in which anything, fantastic or preposterous, might come to pass. as they rode on, side by side, his father spoke, thinking aloud. an absent-minded man, he gave his confidence solely in this, so to speak, unintentional manner. long periods, extending sometimes over months, during which his mind lay fallow, had as their upshot an outbreak of this audible self-communion. julian had inherited the trait; his mind progressed, not regularly, but by alternate stagnation and a forward bound. 'the mistake that we have made lies in the importation of whole families of islanders to the mainland. the islands have always considered themselves as a thing apart, as, indeed, historically, they always were. a hundred years is not sufficient to make them an intrinsic part of the state of herakleion. i cannot wonder that the authorities here dislike us. we have introduced a discontented population from the islands to spread sedition among the hitherto contented population of the mainland. if we were wise, we should ship the whole lot back to the islands they came from. now, a man is arrested on the islands by the authorities, and what happens? he is the brother of vassili, an islander living in herakleion. vassili spreads the news, it flies up and down the town, and out into the country. it has greeted us out here already. in every café of the town at this moment the islanders are gathered together, muttering; some will get drunk, perhaps, and the municipal police will intervene; from a drunken row the affair will become political; some one will raise the cry of "liberty!", heads will be broken, and to-morrow a score of islanders will be in jail. they will attribute their imprisonment to the general hostility to their nationality, rather than to the insignificant brawl. vassili will come to me in herakleion to-morrow. will i exercise my influence with malteios to get his brother released? i shall go, perhaps, to malteios, who will listen to me suavely, evasively.... it has all happened a hundred times before. i say, we ought to ship the whole lot back to where they came from.' 'i suppose they are really treated with unfairness?' julian said, more speculation than interest in his tone. 'i suppose a great many people would think so. the authorities are certainly severe, but they are constantly provoked. and, you know, your uncle and i make it up to the islanders in a number of private ways. ninety per cent. of the men on the islands are employed by us, and it pays us to keep them devoted to us by more material bonds than mere sentiment; also it alleviates their discontent, and so obviates much friction with herakleion.' 'but of course,' said julian quickly, 'you don't allow malteios to suspect this?' 'my dear boy! what do you suppose? malteios is president of herakleion. of course, we don't mention such things. but he knows it all very well, and winks at it--perforce. our understanding with malteios is entirely satisfactory, entirely. he is on very wholesome terms of friendly respect to us.' julian rarely pronounced himself; he did so now. 'if i were an islander--that is, one of a subject race--i don't think i should be very well content to forgo my liberty in exchange for underhand compensation from an employer whose tactics it suited to conciliate my natural dissatisfaction.' 'what a ridiculous phrase. and what ridiculous sentiments you occasionally give vent to. no, no, the present arrangement is as satisfactory as we can hope to make it, always excepting that one flaw, that we ought not to allow islanders in large numbers to live upon the mainland.' they turned in between the two white lodges of the country house, and rode up the drive between the tall, pungent, untidy trees of eucalyptus. the house, one-storied, low, and covered with wistaria and bougainvillea, glimmered white in the uncertain light. the shutters were flung back and the open windows gaped, oblong and black, at regular intervals on the upper floor. on the ground level, a broad veranda stretched right along the front of the house, and high french windows, opening on to this, yellow with light, gave access to the downstairs rooms. 'holà!' mr davenant called in a loud voice. 'malista, kyrie,' a man's voice answered, and a servant in the white fustanelle of the islands, with black puttees wound round his legs, and red shoes with turned-up toes and enormous rosettes on the tip, came running to hold the horses. 'they have taken vassili's brother, kyrie,' he said as mr davenant gave him the reins. julian was already in the drawing-room, among the chintz-covered sofas, loaded little tables, and ubiquitous gilt chairs. four fat columns, painted to represent lapis-lazuli, divided the room into two halves, and from their corinthian capitals issued flames made of red tinsel and painted gray smoke, which dispersed itself realistically over the ceiling. he stood in the window, absently looking out into the garden across the veranda, where the dinner table was laid for six. pots of oleander and agapanthus stood along the edge of the veranda, between the fat white columns, with gaps between them through which one might pass out into the garden, and beyond them in the garden proper the fruit gleamed on the lemon-trees, and, somewhere, the sea whispered in the dusk. the night was calm and hot with the serenity of established summer weather, the stars big and steady like sequins in the summer sky. the spirit of such serenity does not brood over england, where to-day's pretence of summer will be broken by the fresh laughter of to-morrow's shower. the rose must fall to pieces in the height of its beauty beneath the fingers of sudden and capricious storm. but here the lemons hung, swollen and heavily pendulous, among the metallic green of their leaves, awaiting the accomplished end of their existence, the deepening of their gold, the fuller curve of their ripened luxuriance, with the complacency of certainty; fruit, not for the whim of the elements, but progressing throughout the year steadfastly towards the hand and the basket of the picker. here and there the overburdened stem would snap, and the oblong ball of greenish-gold would fall with a soft and melancholy thud, like a sigh of regret, upon the ground beneath the tree; would roll a little way, and then be still. the little grove stretched in ordered lines and spaces, from the veranda, where the windows of the house threw rectangles of yellow light on to the ground in the blackness, to the bottom of the garden, where the sea washed indolently against the rocks. presently he would see eve, his eyes would meet her mocking eyes, and they would smile at one another out of the depths of their immemorial friendship. she was familiar to him, so familiar that he could not remember the time when, difficult, intractable, exasperating, subtle, incomprehensible, she had not formed part of his life. she was as familiar to him as the house in the _platia_, with its big, empty drawing-room, the walls frescoed with swinging monkeys, broken columns, and a romantic land and seascape; as the talk about the vintage; as the preposterous politics, always changing, yet always, monotonously, nauseatingly, pettishly, the same. she was not part of his life in england, the prosaic life; she was part of his life on the greek seaboard, unreal and fantastic, where the most improbable happenings came along with an air of ingenuousness, romance walking in the garments of every day. after a week in herakleion he could not disentangle the real from the unreal. it was the more baffling because those around him, older and wiser than he, appeared to take the situation for granted and to treat it with a seriousness that sometimes led him, when, forgetful, he was off his guard, to believe that the country was a real country and that its statesmen, platon malteios, gregori stavridis, and the rest, were real statesmen working soberly towards a definite end. that its riots were revolutions; that its factions were political parties; that its discordant, abusive, wrangling chamber was indeed a senate. that its four hundred stout soldiers, who periodically paraded the _platia_ under the command of a general in a uniform designed by a theatrical costumier in buda-pesth, were indeed an army. that the _platia_ itself was a forum. that the society was brilliant; that its liaisons had the dignity of great passions. that his aunt, who talked weightily and contradicted every one, including herself--the only person who ever ventured to do such a thing--was indeed a political figure, an egeria among the men in whose hands lay the direction of affairs. in his more forgetful moments, he was tempted to believe these things, when he saw his father and his uncle robert, both unbending, incisive, hard-headed business men, believing them. as a rule, preserving his nice sense of perspective, he saw them as a setting to eve. he was beginning to adjust himself again to the life which faded with so extraordinary a rapidity as the express or the steamer bore him away, three times a year, to england. it faded always then like a photographic proof when exposed to the light. the political jargon was the first to go--he knew the sequence--'civil war,' 'independent archipelago,' 'overthrow of the cabinet,' 'a threat to the malteios party,' 'intrigues of the stavridists,' the well-known phrases that, through sheer force of reiteration, he accepted without analysis; then, after the political jargon, the familiar figures that he saw almost daily, sharp, his father's chief clerk; aristotle, the door-keeper, his tussore fustanelle hanging magisterially from the rotundity of his portentous figure; madame lafarge, erect, and upholstered like a sofa, driving in her barouche; the young men at the club, languid and insolent and licentious; then, after the familiar figures, the familiar scenes; and lastly eve herself, till he could no longer recall the drowsy tones of her voice, or evoke her eyes, that, though alive with malice and mockery, were yet charged with a mystery to which he could give no name. he was sad when these things began to fade. he clung on to them, because they were dear, but they slipped through his fingers like running water. their evanescence served only to convince him the more of their unreality. then, england, immutable, sagacious, balanced; oxford, venerable and self-confident, turning the young men of the nation as by machinery out of her mould. law-abiding england, where men worked their way upwards, attaining power and honour in the ripeness of years. london, where the houses were of stone. where was herakleion, stucco-built and tawdry, city of perpetually-clanging bells, revolutions, and prime ministers made and unmade in a day? herakleion of the yellow islands, washed by too blue a sea. where? eve had never been to england, nor could he see any place in england for her. she should continue to live as she had always lived, among the vines and the magnolias, attended by a fat old woman who, though english, had spent so many years of her life in herakleion that her english speech was oddly tainted by the southern lisp of the native greek she had never been able to master; old nana, who had lost the familiarity of one tongue without acquiring that of another; the ideal duenna for eve. then with a light step across the veranda a young greek priest came into the room by one of the french windows, blinking and smiling in the light, dressed in a long black soutane and black cap, his red hair rolled up into a knob at the back of his head according to the fashion of his church. he tripped sometimes over his soutane as he walked, muscular and masculine inside that feminine garment, and when he did this he would gather it up impatiently with a hand on which grew a pelt of wiry red hairs. father paul had instituted himself as a kind of private chaplain to the davenants. eve encouraged him because she thought him picturesque. mrs robert davenant found him invaluable as a lieutenant in her campaign of control over the peasants and villagers, over whom she exercised a despotic if benevolent authority. he was therefore free to come and go as he pleased. the population, julian thought, was flowing back into his recovered world. england and oxford were put aside; not forgotten, not indistinct, not faded like herakleion was wont to fade, but merely put aside, laid away like winter garments in summer weather. he was once more in the kingdom of stucco and adventure. eve was coming back to him, with her strange shadowy eyes and red mouth, and her frivolity beneath which lay some force which was not frivolous. there were women who were primarily pretty; women who were primarily motherly; women who, like mrs robert davenant, were primarily efficient, commanding, successful, metallic; women who, like kato, were consumed by a flame of purpose which broke, hot and scorching, from their speech and burned relentlessly in their eyes; women who were primarily vain and trifling; he found he could crowd eve into no such category. he recalled her, spoilt, exquisite, witty, mettlesome, elusive, tantalising; detached from such practical considerations as punctuality, convenience, reliability. a creature that, from the age of three, had exacted homage and protection.... he heard her indolent voice behind him in the room, and turned expectantly for their meeting. iii it was, however, during his first visit to the singer's flat that he felt himself again completely a citizen of herakleion; that he felt himself, in fact, closer than ever before to the beating heart of intrigue and aspiration. kato received him alone, and her immediate comradely grasp of his hand dispelled the shyness which had been induced in him by the concert; her vigorous simplicity caused him to forget the applause and enthusiasm he had that afternoon seen lavished on her as a public figure; he found in her an almost masculine friendliness and keenness of intellect, which loosened his tongue, sharpened his wits, set him on the path of discovery and self-expression. kato watched him with her little bright eyes, nodding her approval with quick grunts; he paced her room, talking. 'does one come, ever, to a clear conception of one's ultimate ambitions? not one's personal ambitions, of course; they don't count.' ('how young he is,' she thought.) 'but to conceive clearly, i mean, exactly what one sets out to create, and what to destroy. if not, one must surely spend the whole of life working in the dark? laying in little bits of mosaic, without once stepping back to examine the whole scheme of the picture.... one instinctively opposes authority. one struggles for freedom. why? why? what's at the bottom of that instinct? why are we, men, born the instinctive enemies of order and civilisation, when order and civilisation are the weapons and the shields we, men, have ourselves instituted for our own protection? it's illogical. 'why do we, every one of us, refute the experience of others, preferring to gain our own? why do we fight against government? why do i want to be independent of my father? or the islands independent of herakleion? or herakleion independent of greece? what's this instinct of wanting to stand alone, to be oneself, isolated, free, individual? why does instinct push us towards individualism, when the great wellbeing of mankind probably lies in solidarity? when the social system in its most elementary form starts with men clubbing together for comfort and greater safety? no sooner have we achieved our solidarity, our hierarchy, our social system, our civilisation, than we want to get away from it. a vicious circle; the wheel revolves, and brings us back to the same point from which we started.' 'yes,' said kato, 'there is certainly an obscure sympathy with the rebel, that lies somewhere dormant in the soul of the most platitudinous advocate of law and order.' she was amused by his generalisations, and was clever enough not to force him back too abruptly to the matter she had in mind. she thought him ludicrously, though rather touchingly, young, both in his ideas and his phraseology; but at the same time she shrewdly discerned the force which was in him and which she meant to use for her own ends. 'you,' she said to him, 'will argue in favour of society, yet you will spend your life, or at any rate your youth, in revolt against it. youth dies, you see, when one ceases to rebel. besides,' she added, scrutinising him, 'the time will very soon come when you cease to argue and begin to act. believe me, one soon discards one's wider examinations, and learns to content oneself with the practical business of the moment. one's own bit of the mosaic, as you said.' he felt wholesomely sobered, but not reproved; he liked kato's penetration, her vivid, intelligent sympathy, and her point of view which was practical without being cynical. 'i have come to one real conclusion,' he said, 'which is, that pain alone is intrinsically evil, and that in the lightening or abolition of pain one is safe in going straight ahead; it is a bit of the mosaic worth doing. so in the islands....' he paused. kato repressed a smile; she was more and more touched and entertained by his youthful, dogmatic statements, which were delivered with a concentration and an ardour that utterly disarmed derision. she was flattered, too, by his unthinking confidence in her; for she knew him by report as morose and uncommunicative, with relapses into rough high spirits and a schoolboy sense of farce. eve had described him as inaccessible.... 'when you go, as you say, straight ahead,' he resumed, frowning, his eyes absent. kato began to dwell, very skilfully, upon the topic of the islands.... certain events which madame kato had then predicted to julian followed with a suddenness, an unexpectedness, that perplexed the mind of the inquirer seeking, not only their origin, but their chronological sequence. they came like a summer storm sweeping briefly, boisterously across the land after the inadequate warning of distant rumbles and the flash of innocuous summer lightning. the thunder had rumbled so often, it might be said that it had rumbled daily, and the lightning had twitched so often in the sky, that men remained surprised and resentful long after the rough little tornado had passed away. they remained staring at one another, scratching their heads under their straw hats, or leaning against the parapet on the quays, exploring the recesses of their teeth with the omnipresent toothpick, and staring across the sea to those islands whence the storm had surely come, as though by this intense, frowning contemplation they would finally provide themselves with enlightenment. groups of men sat outside the cafés, their elbows on the tables, advancing in tones of whispered vehemence their individual positive theories and opinions, beating time to their own rhetoric and driving home each cherished point with the emphatic stab of a long cigar. in the casino itself, with the broken windows gaping jaggedly on to the forecourt, and the red curtains of the atrium hanging in rags from those same windows, men stood pointing in little knots. 'here they stood still,' and 'from here he threw the bomb,' and those who had been present on the day were listened to with a respect they never in their lives had commanded before and never would command again. there was no sector of society in herakleion that did not discuss the matter with avidity; more, with gratitude. brigandage was brigandage, a picturesque but rather _opéra bouffe_ form of crime, but at the same time an excitement was, indubitably, an excitement. the ministers, in their despatches to their home governments, affected to treat the incident as the work of a fortuitous band rather than as an organised expedition with an underlying political significance, nevertheless they fastened upon it as a pretext for their wit in herakleion, where no sardonic and departmental eye would regard them with superior tolerance much as a grown-up person regards the facile amusement of a child. at the diplomatic dinner parties very little else was talked of. at tea parties, women, drifting from house to house, passed on as their own the witticisms they had most recently heard, which became common property until reclaimed from general circulation by the indignant perpetrators. from the drawing-rooms of the french legation, down to village cafés where the gramophone grated unheard and the bowls lay neglected on the bowling alley, one topic reigned supreme. what nobody knew, and what everybody wondered about, was the attitude adopted by the davenants in the privacy of their country house. what spoken or unspoken understanding existed between the inscrutable brothers? what veiled references, or candid judgments, escaped from william davenant's lips as he lay back in his chair after dinner, a glass of wine--wine of his own growing--between his fingers? what indiscretions, that would have fallen so delectably upon the inquisitive ears of herakleion, did he utter, secure in the confederacy of his efficient and vigorous sister-in-law, of the more negligible robert, the untidy and taciturn julian, the indifferent eve? it was as universally taken for granted that the outrage proceeded from the islanders as it was ferociously regretted that the offenders could not, from lack of evidence, be brought to justice. they had, at the moment, no special grievance; only their perennial grievances, of which everybody was tired of hearing. the brother of vassili, a quite unimportant labourer, had been released; m. lafarge had interested himself in his servant's brother, and had made representations to the premier, which malteios had met with his usual urbane courtesy. an hour later the fellow had been seen setting out in a rowing boat for aphros. all, therefore, was for the best. yet within twenty-four hours of this proof of leniency.... the élite were dining on the evening of these unexpected occurrences at the french legation to meet two guests of honour, one a distinguished albanian statesman who could speak no language but his own, and the other an englishman of irregular appearances and disappearances, an enthusiast on all matters connected with the near east. in the countries he visited he was considered an expert who had the ear of the english cabinet and house of commons, but by these institutions he was considered merely a crank and a nuisance. his conversation was after the style of the more economical type of telegram, with all prepositions, most pronouns, and a good many verbs left out; it gained thereby in mystery what it lost in intelligibility, and added greatly to his reputation. he and the albanian had stood apart in confabulation before dinner, the englishman arguing, expounding, striking his open palm with the fingers of the other hand, shooting out his limbs in spasmodic and ungraceful gestures, the albanian unable to put in a word, but appreciatively nodding his head and red fez. madame lafarge sat between them both at dinner, listening to the englishman as though she understood what he was saying to her, which she did not, and occasionally turning to the albanian to whom she smiled and nodded in a friendly and regretful way. whenever she did this he made her a profound bow and drank her health in the sweet champagne. here their intercourse perforce ended. half-way through dinner a note was handed to m. lafarge. he gave an exclamation which silenced all his end of the table, and the englishman's voice was alone left talking in the sudden hush. 'turkey!' he was saying. 'another matter! ah, ghost of abdul hamid!' and then, shaking his head mournfully, 'world-treachery--world-conspiracy....' 'ah, yes,' said madame lafarge, rapt, 'how true that is, how right you are.' she realised that no one else was speaking, and raised her head interrogatively. lafarge said,-- 'something has occurred at the casino, but there is no cause for alarm; nobody has been hurt. i am sending a messenger for further details. this note explicitly says'--he consulted it again--'that no one is injured. a mere question of robbery; an impudent and successful attempt. a bomb has been thrown,'--('_mais ils sont donc tous apaches?_' cried condesa valdez. lafarge went on)--'but they say the damage is all in the atrium, and is confined to broken windows, torn hangings, and mirrors cracked from top to bottom. glass lies plentifully scattered about the floor. but i hope that before very long we may be in possession of a little more news.' he sent the smile of a host round the table, reassuring in the face of anxiety. a little pause, punctuated by a few broken ejaculations, followed upon his announcement. 'how characteristic of herakleion,' cried alexander christopoulos, who had been anxiously searching for something noteworthy and contemptuous to say, 'that even with the help of a bomb we can achieve only a disaster that tinkles.' the danish excellency was heard to say tearfully,-- 'a robbery! a bomb! and practically in broad daylight! what a place, what a place!' 'those islands again, for certain!' madame delahaye exclaimed, with entire absence of tact; her husband, the french military attaché, frowned at her across the table; and the diplomatists all looked down their noses. then the englishman, seeing his opportunity, broke out,-- 'very significant! all of a piece--anarchy--intrigue--no strong hand--free peoples. too many, too many. small nationalities. chips! cut-throats, all. so!'--he drew his fingers with an expressive sibilant sound across his own throat. 'asking for trouble. yugo-slavs--bah! poles--pfui! eastern empire, that's the thing. turks the only people'--the albanian, fortunately innocent of english, was smiling amiably as he stirred his champagne--'great people. armenians, wash-out. quite right too. herakleion, worst of all. not even a chip. only the chip of a chip.' 'and the islands,' said the danish excellency brightly, 'want to be the chip of a chip of a chip.' 'yes, yes,' said madame lafarge, who had been getting a little anxious, trying to provoke a laugh, 'fru thyregod has hit it as usual--_elle a trouvé le mot juste_,' she added, thinking that if she turned the conversation back into french it might check the englishman's truncated eloquence. out in the town, the quay was the centre of interest. a large crowd had collected there, noisy in the immense peace of the evening. far, far out, a speck on the opal sea, could still be distinguished the little boat in which the three men, perpetrators of the outrage, had made good their escape. beyond the little boat, even less distinct, the sea was dotted with tiny craft, the fleet of fishing-boats from the islands. the green light gleamed at the end of the pier. on the quay, the crowd gesticulated, shouted, and pointed, as the water splashed under the ineffectual bullets from the carbines of the police. the chief of police was there, giving orders. the police motor-launch was to be got out immediately. the crowd set up a cheer; they did not know who the offenders were, but they would presently have the satisfaction of seeing them brought back in handcuffs. it was at this point that the entire lafarge dinner-party debouched upon the quay, the women wrapped in their light cloaks, tremulous and excited, the men affecting an amused superiority. they were joined by the chief of police, and by the christopoulos, father and son. it was generally known, though never openly referred to, that the principal interest in the casino was held by them, a fact which explained the saffron-faced little banker's present agitation. 'the authorities must make better dispositions,' he kept saying to madame lafarge. 'with this example before them, half the blackguards of the country-side will be making similar attempts. it is too absurdly easy.' he glared at the chief of police. 'better dispositions,' he muttered, 'better dispositions.' 'this shooting is ridiculous,' alexander said impatiently, 'the boat is at least three miles away. what do they hope to kill? a fish? confound the dusk. how soon will the launch be ready?' 'it will be round to the steps at any moment now,' said the chief of police, and he gave an order in an irritable voice to his men, who had continued to let off their carbines aimlessly and spasmodically. in spite of his assurance, the launch did not appear. the englishman was heard discoursing at length to madame lafarge, who, at regular intervals, fervently agreed with what he had been saying, and the danish excellency whispered and tittered with young christopoulos. social distinctions were sharply marked: the diplomatic party stood away from the casual crowd, and the casual crowd stood away from the rabble. over all the dusk deepened, one or two stars came out, and the little boat was no longer distinguishable from the fishing fleet with its triangular sails. finally, throbbing, fussing, important, the motor-launch came churning to a standstill at the foot of the steps. the chief of police jumped in, alexander followed him, promising that he would come straight to the french legation on his return and tell them exactly what had happened. in the mirrored drawing-rooms, three hours later, he made his recital. the gilt chairs were drawn round in a circle, in the middle of which he stood, aware that the danish excellency was looking at him, enraptured, with her prominent blue eyes. 'of course, in spite of the start they had had, we knew that they stood no chance against a motor-boat, no chance whatsoever. they could not hope to reach aphros before we overtook them. we felt quite confident that it was only a question of minutes. we agreed that the men must have been mad to imagine that they could make good their escape in that way. sterghiou and i sat in the stern, smoking and talking. what distressed us a little was that we could no longer see the boat we were after, but you know how quickly the darkness comes, so we paid very little attention to that. 'presently we came up with the fishing smacks from aphros, and they shouted to us to keep clear of their tackle--impudence. we shut off our engines while we made inquiries from them as to the rowing-boat. rowing-boat? they looked blank. they had seen no rowing-boat--no boat of any sort, other than their own. the word was passed, shouting, from boat to boat of the fleet; no one had seen a rowing-boat. of course they were lying; how could they not be lying? but the extraordinary fact remained'--he made an effective pause--'there was no sign of a rowing-boat anywhere on the sea.' a movement of appreciative incredulity produced itself among his audience. 'not a sign!' alexander repeated luxuriously. 'the sea lay all round us without a ripple, and the fishing smacks, although they were under full sail, barely moved. it was so still that we could see their reflection unbroken in the water. there might have been twenty of them, dotted about--twenty crews of bland liars. we were, i may as well admit it, nonplussed. what can you do when you are surrounded by smiling and petticoated liars, leaning against their masts, and persisting in idiotic blankness to all your questions? denial, denial, was all their stronghold. they had seen nothing. but they must be blind to have seen nothing? they were very sorry, they had seen nothing at all. would the gentlemen look round for themselves, they would soon be satisfied that nothing was in sight. 'as for the idea that the boat had reached aphros in the time at their disposal, it was absolutely out of the question. 'i could see that sterghiou was getting very angry; i said nothing, but i think he was uncomfortable beneath my silent criticism. he and his police could regulate the traffic in the rue royale, but they could not cope with an emergency of this sort. from the very first moment they had been at fault. and they had taken at least twenty minutes to get out the motor-launch. sterghiou hated me, i feel sure, for having accompanied him and seen his discomfiture. 'anyway, he felt he must take some sort of action, so he ordered his men to search all the fishing smacks in turn. we went the round, a short throbbing of the motors, and then silence as we drew alongside and the men went on board. of course, they found nothing. i watched the faces of the islanders during this inspection; they sat on the sides of their boats, busy with their nets, and pretending not to notice the police that moved about, turning everything over in their inefficient way, but i guessed their covert grins, and i swear i caught two of them winking at one another. if i had told this to sterghiou, i believe he would have arrested them on the spot, he was by then in such a state of exasperation, but you can't arrest a man on a wink, especially a wink when darkness has very nearly come. 'and there the matter remains. we had found nothing, and we were obliged to turn round and come back again, leaving that infernally impudent fleet of smacks in possession of the battle-ground. oh, yes, there is no doubt that they got the best of it. because, naturally, we have them to thank.' 'have you a theory, alexander?' some one asked, as they were intended to ask. alexander shrugged. 'it is so obvious. a knife through the bottom of the boat would very quickly send her to the bottom, and a shirt and a fustanelle will very quickly transform a respectable bank-thief into an ordinary islander. who knows that the two ruffians i saw winking were not the very men we were after? a sufficiently ingenious scheme altogether--too ingenious for poor sterghiou.' iv these things came, made their stir, passed, and were forgotten, leaving only a quickened ripple upon the waters of herakleion, of which julian davenant, undergraduate, aged nineteen, bordering upon twenty, was shortly made aware. he had arrived from england with no other thought in his mind than of his riding, hawking, and sailing, but found himself almost immediately netted in a tangle of affairs of which, hitherto, he had known only by the dim though persistent echoes which reached him through the veils of his deliberate indifference. he found now that his indifference was to be disregarded. men clustered round him, shouting, and tearing with irascible hands at his unsubstantial covering. he was no longer permitted to remain a boy. the half-light of adolescence was peopled for him by a procession of figures, fortunately distinct by virtue of their life-long familiarity, figures that urged and upbraided him, some indignant, some plaintive, some reproachful, some vehement, some dissimulating and sly; many vociferous, all insistent; a crowd of human beings each playing his separate hand, each the expounder of his own theory, rooted in his own conviction; a succession of intrigues, men who took him by the arm, and, leading him aside, discoursed to him, a strange medley of names interlarding their discourse with concomitant abuse or praise; men who flattered him; men who sought merely his neutrality, speaking of his years in tones of gentle disparagement. men who, above all, would not leave him alone. who, by their persecution, even those who urged his youth as an argument in favour of his neutrality, demonstrated to him that he had, as a man, entered the arena. for his part, badgered and astonished, he took refuge in a taciturnity which only tantalised his pursuers into a more zealous aggression. his opinions were unknown in the club where the men set upon him from the first moment of his appearance. he would sit with his legs thrown over the arm of a leather arm-chair, loose-limbed and gray-flannelled, his mournful eyes staring out of the nearest window, while greek, diplomat, or foreigner argued at him with gesture and emphasis. they seemed to him, had they but known, surprisingly unreal for all their clamour, pompous and yet insignificant. his father was aware of the attacks delivered on his son, but, saying nothing, allowed the natural and varied system of education to take its course. he saw him standing, grave and immovable, in the surging crowd of philosophies and nationalities, discarding the charlatan by some premature wisdom, and assimilating the rare crumbs of true worldly experience. he himself was ignorant of the thoughts passing in the boy's head. he had forgotten the visionary tumult of nineteen, when the storm of life flows first over the pleasant, easy meadows of youth. himself now a sober man, he had forgotten, so completely that he had ceased to believe in, the facile succession of convictions, the uprooting of beliefs, the fanatical acceptance of newly proffered creeds. he scarcely considered, or he might perhaps not so readily have risked, the possible effect of the queer systems of diverse ideals picked up, unconsciously, and put together from the conversation of the mountebank administrators of that tiny state, the melodramatic champions of the oppressed poor, and the professional cynicism of dago adventurers. if, sometimes, he wondered what julian made of the talk that had become a jargon, he dismissed his uneasiness with a re-affirmation of confidence in his impenetrability. 'broaden his mind,' he would say. 'it won't hurt him. it doesn't go deep. foam breaking upon a rock.' so might sir henry have spoken, to whom the swags of fruit were but the vintage of a particular year, put into a labelled bottle. julian had gone more than once out of a boyish curiosity to hear the wrangle of the parties in the chamber. sitting up in the gallery, and leaning his arms horizontally on the top of the brass railing, he had looked down on the long tables covered with red baize, whereon reposed, startlingly white, a square sheet of paper before the seat of each deputy, and a pencil, carefully sharpened, alongside. he had seen the deputies assemble, correctly frock-coated, punctiliously shaking hands with one another, although they had probably spent the morning in one another's company at the club--the club was the natural meeting-place of the greeks and the diplomats, while the foreigners, a doubtful lot, congregated either in the gambling-rooms or in the _jardin anglais_ of the casino. he had watched them taking their places with a good deal of coughing, throat-clearing, and a certain amount of expectoration. he had seen the premier come in amid a general hushing of voices, and take his seat in the magisterial arm-chair in the centre of the room, behind an enormous ink-pot, pulling up the knees of his trousers and smoothing his beard away from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers as he did so. julian's attention had strayed from the formalities attendant upon the opening of the session, and his eyes had wandered to the pictures hanging on the walls: aristidi patros, the first premier, after the secession from greece, b. , d. , premier of the republic of herakleion from to ; pericli anghelis, general, - ; constantine stavridis, premier from to , and again from to , when he died assassinated. the portraits of the other premiers hung immediately below the gallery where julian could not see them. at the end of the room, above the doors, hung a long and ambitious painting executed in and impregnated with the romanticism of that age, representing the declaration of independence in the _platia_ of herakleion on the th september--kept as an ever memorable and turbulent anniversary-- . the premier, patros, occupied the foreground, declaiming from a scroll of parchment, and portrayed as a frock-coated young man of godlike beauty; behind him stood serried ranks of deputies, and in the left-hand corner a group of peasants, like an operatic chorus, tossed flowers from baskets on to the ground at his feet. the heads of women clustered at the windows of the familiar houses of the _platia_, beneath the fluttering flags with the colours of the new republic, orange and green. julian always thought that a portrait of his grandfather, for twelve months president of the collective archipelago of hagios zacharie, should have been included among the notables. he had tried to listen to the debates which followed upon the formal preliminaries; to the wrangle of opponents; to the clap-trap patriotism which so thinly veiled the desire of personal advancement; to the rodomontade of panaïoannou, commander-in-chief of the army of four hundred men, whose sky-blue uniform and white breeches shone among all the black coats with a resplendency that gratified his histrionic vanity; to the bombastic eloquence which rolled out from the luxuriance of the premier's beard, with a startling and deceptive dignity in the trappings of the ancient and classic tongue. malteios used such long, such high-sounding words, and struck his fist upon the red baize table with such emphatic energy, that it was hard not to believe in the authenticity of his persuasion. julian welcomed most the moments when, after a debate of an hour or more, tempers grew heated, and dignity--that is to say, the pretence of the sobriety of the gathering--was cast aside in childish petulance. 'the fur flew,' said julian, who had enjoyed himself. 'christopoulos called panaïoannou a fire-eater, and panaïoannou called christopoulos a money-grubber. "where would you be without my money?" "where would you be without my army?" "army! can the valiant general inform the chamber how many of his troops collapsed from exhaustion on the _platia_ last independence day, and had to be removed to the hospital?" and so on and so forth. they became so personal that i expected the general at any moment to ask christopoulos how many unmarried daughters he had at home.' malteios himself, president of the little republic, most plausible and empiric of politicians, was not above the discussion of current affairs with the heir of the davenants towards whom, it was suspected, the thoughts of the islanders were already turning. the president was among those who adopted the attitude of total discouragement. the interference of a headstrong and no doubt quixotic schoolboy would be troublesome; might become disastrous. having dined informally with the davenant brothers at their country house, he crossed the drawing-room after dinner, genial, a long cigar protruding from his mouth, to the piano in the corner where eve and julian were turning over some sheets of music. 'may an old man,' he said with his deliberate but nevertheless charming suavity, 'intrude for a moment upon the young?' he sat down, removing his cigar, and discoursed for a little upon the advantages of youth. he led the talk to julian's oxford career, and from there to his future in herakleion. 'a knotty little problem, as you will some day find--not, i hope, for your own sake, until a very remote some day. perhaps not until i and my friend and opponent gregori stavridis are figures of the past,' he said, puffing smoke and smiling at julian; 'then perhaps you will take your place in herakleion and bring your influence to bear upon your very difficult and contrary islands. oh, very difficult, i assure you,' he continued, shaking his head. 'i am a conciliatory man myself, and not unkindly, i think i may say; they would find gregori stavridis a harder taskmaster than i. they are the oldest cause of dispute, your islands, between gregori stavridis and myself. now see,' he went on, expanding, 'they lie like a belt of neutral territory, your discontented, your so terribly and unreasonably discontented islands, between me and stavridis. we may agree upon other points; upon that point we continually differ. he urges upon the senate a policy of severity with which i cannot concur. i wish to compromise, to keep the peace, but he is, alas! perpetually aggressive. he invades the neutral zone, as it were, from the west--periodical forays--and i am obliged to invade it from the east; up till now we have avoided clashing in the centre.' malteios, still smiling, sketched the imaginary lines of his illustration on his knee with the unlighted tip of his cigar. 'i would coax, and he would force, the islanders to content and friendliness.' julian listened, knowing well that malteios and stavridis, opponents from an incorrigible love of opposition for opposition's sake, rather than from any genuine diversity of conviction, had long since seized upon the islands as a convenient pretext. neither leader had any very definite conception of policy beyond the desire, respectively, to remain in, or to get himself into, power. between them the unfortunate islands, pulled like a rat between two terriers, were given ample cause for the discontent of which malteios complained. malteios, it was true, adopted the more clement attitude, but for this clemency, it was commonly said, the influence of anastasia kato was alone responsible. through the loud insistent voices of the men, julian was to remember in after years the low music of that woman's voice, and to see, as in a vignette, the picture of himself in kato's flat among the cushions of her divan, looking again in memory at the photographs and ornaments on the shelf that ran all round the four walls of the room, at the height of the top of a dado. these ornaments appeared to him the apotheosis of cosmopolitanism. there were small, square wooden figures from russia, a few inches high, and brightly coloured; white and gray danish china; little silver images from spain; miniature plants of quartz and jade; battersea snuff-boxes; photographs of an austrian archduke in a white uniform and a leopard-skin, of a mexican in a wide sombrero, mounted on a horse and holding a lasso, of mounet-sully as the blinded oedipus. every available inch of space in the singer's room was crowded with these and similar trophies, and the shelf had been added to take the overflow. oriental embroideries, heavily silvered, were tacked up on the walls, and on them again were plates and brackets, the latter carrying more ornaments; high up in one corner was an ikon, and over the doors hung open-work linen curtains from the bazaars of constantinople. among the many ornaments the massive singer moved freely and spaciously, creating havoc as she moved, so that julian's dominating impression remained one of setting erect again the diminutive objects she had knocked over. she would laugh good-humouredly at herself, and would give him unequalled turkish coffee in little handleless cups, like egg-cups, off a tray of beaten brass set on a small octagonal table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and all the while she would talk to him musically, earnestly, bending forward, and her restless fingers would turn the bangles round and round upon her arms. he could not think kato unreal, though many of the phrases upon her lips were the same as he heard from the men in the club; he could not think her unreal, when her voice broke over the words 'misery' and 'oppression,' and when her eyes burned their conviction into his. he began to believe in the call of the islands, as he listened to the soft, slurring speech of their people in her voice, and discovered, listening to her words with only half his mind, the richness of the grapes in the loose coils of her dark hair, and the fulvous colouring of the islands in the copper draperies she always affected. it seemed to julian that, at whatever time of day he saw her, whether morning, afternoon, or evening, she was always wearing the same dress, but he supposed vaguely that this could not actually be so. like his father, he maintained her as a woman of genuine patriotic ardour, dissociating her from herakleion and its club and casino, and associating her with the islands where injustice and suffering, at least, were true things. he lavished his enthusiasm upon her, and his relations learned to refrain, in his presence, from making the usual obvious comments on her appearance. he looked upon her flat as a sanctuary and a shrine. he fled one day in disgust and disillusionment when the premier appeared with his ingratiating smile in the doorway. julian had known, of course, of the liaison, but was none the less distressed and nauseated when it materialised beneath his eyes. he fled to nurse his soul-sickness in the country, lying on his back at full length under the olive-trees on the lower slopes of mount mylassa, his hands beneath his head, his horse moving near by and snuffing for pasture on the bare terraces. the sea, to-day of the profoundest indigo, sparkled in the sun below, and between the sea and the foot of the mountain, plainly, as in an embossed map, stretched the strip of flat cultivated land where he could distinguish first the dark ilex avenue, then the ribbon of road, then the village, finally the walled plantation which was his uncle's garden, and the roofs of the low house in the centre. the bougainvillea climbing over the walls and roof of his uncle's house made a warm stain of magenta. herakleion was hidden from sight, on the other hand, by the curve of the hill, but the islands were visible opposite, and, caring only for them, he gazed as he had done many times, but now their meaning and purport crystallised in his mind as never before. there was something symbolical in their detachment from the mainland--in their clean remoteness, their isolation; all the difference between the unfettered ideal and the tethered reality. an island land that had slipped the leash of continents, forsworn solidarity, cut adrift from security and prudence! one could readily believe that they made part of the divine, the universal discontent, that rare element, dynamic, life-giving, that here and there was to be met about the world, always fragmentary, yet always full and illuminating, even as the fragments of beauty. this was a day which julian remembered, marked, as it were, with an asterisk in the calendar of his mind, by two notes which he found awaiting him on his return to the house in the _platia_. aristotle handed them to him as he dismounted at the door. the first he opened was from eve. 'i am so angry with you, julian. what have you done to my kato? i found her in tears. she says you were with her when the premier came, and that you vanished without a word. 'i know your _sauts de gazelle_; you are suddenly bored or annoyed, and you run away. very naïf, very charming, very candid, very fawn-like--or is it, hideous suspicion, a pose?' he was surprised and hurt by her taunt. one did not wish to remain, so one went away; it seemed to him very simple. the second note was from kato. 'julian, forgive me,' it ran; 'i did not know he was coming. forgive me. send me a message to say when i shall see you. i did not know he was coming. forgive me.' he read these notes standing in the drawing-room with the palely-frescoed walls. he looked up from reading them, and encountered the grinning faces of the painted monkeys and the perspective of the romantic landscape. the colours were faint, and the rough grain of the plaster showed through in tiny lumps. why should kato apologise to him for the unexpected arrival of her lover? it was not his business. he sat down and wrote her a perfectly polite reply to say that he had nothing to forgive and had no intention of criticising her actions. the sense of unreality was strong within him. it seemed that he could not escape the general determination to involve him, on one side or the other, in the local affairs. besides the men at the club, sharp, the head clerk at the office, spoke to him--'the people look to you, mr julian; better keep clear of the islands if you don't want a crowd of women hanging round kissing your hands--, murmured to him in the hall when he went to dine at the french legation; walters, the _times_ correspondent in herakleion, winked to him with a man to man expression that flattered the boy. 'i know the balkans inside out, mind you; nearly lost my head to the bulgars and my property to the serbs; i've been held to ransom by albanian brigands, and shot at in the streets of athens on december the second; i've had my rooms ransacked by the police, and i could have been a rich man now if i'd accepted half the bribes that i've had offered me. so you can have my advice, if you care to hear it, and that is, hold your tongue till you're sure you know your own mind.' the women, following the lead, chattered to him. he had never known such popularity. it was hard, at times, to preserve his non-committal silence, yet he knew, ignorant and irresolute, that therein lay his only hope of safety. they must not perceive that they had taken him unawares, that he was hopelessly at sea in the mass of names, reminiscences, and prophecies that they showered upon him. they must not suspect that he really knew next to nothing about the situation.... he felt his way cautiously and learnt, and felt his strength growing. in despite of sharp's warning, he went across to the islands, taking with him father paul. eve exclaimed that he took the priest solely from a sense of the suitability of a retinue, and julian, though he denied the charge, did not do so very convincingly. he had certainly never before felt the need of a retinue. he had always spent at least a week of his holidays on aphros, taking his favourite hawk with him, and living either in his father's house in the village, or staying with the peasants. when he returned, he was always uncommunicative as to how he had passed his time. because he felt the stirring of events in the air, and because he knew from signs and hints dropped to him that his coming was awaited with an excited expectancy, he chose to provide himself with the dignity of an attendant. he had, characteristically, breathed no word of his suspicions, but moved coldly self-reliant in the midst of his uncertainties. father paul only thought him more than usually silent as he busied himself with the sail of his little boat and put out to sea from the pier of herakleion. aphros lay ahead, some seven or eight miles--a couple of hours' sailing in a good breeze. his white sails were observed some way off by the villagers, who by chance were already assembled at the weekly market in the village square. they deserted the pens and stalls to cluster round the top of the steps that descended, steep as an upright ladder, and cut in the face of the rock, from the market place straight down to the sea, where the white foam broke round the foot of the cliff. julian saw the coloured crowd from his boat; he distinguished faces as he drew nearer, and made out the flutter of handkerchiefs from the hands of the women. the village hung sheerly over the sea, the face of the white houses flat with the face of the brown rocks, the difference of colour alone betraying where the one began and the other ended, as though some giant carpenter had planed away all inequalities of surface from the eaves down to the washing water. the fleet of fishing-boats, their bare, graceful masts swaying a little from the perpendicular as the boats ranged gently at their moorings with the sigh of the almost imperceptible waves, lay like resting seagulls in the harbour. 'they are waiting to welcome you--feudal, too feudal,' growled father paul, who, though himself the creature and dependent of the davenants, loudly upheld his democratic views for the rest of mankind. 'and why?' muttered julian. 'this has never happened before. i have been away only four months.' three fishermen wearing the white kilted fustanelle and tasselled shoes were already on the jetty with hands outstretched to take his mooring-rope. eager faces looked down from above, and a hum went through the little crowd as julian sprang on to the jetty, the boat rocking as his weight released it--a hum that died slowly, like the note of an organ, fading harmoniously into a complete silence. paul knew suddenly that the moment was significant. he saw julian hesitate, faltering as it were between sea and land, his dark head and broad shoulders framed in an immensity of blue, the cynosure of the crowd above, still silent and intent upon his actions. he hesitated until his hesitation became apparent to all. paul saw that his hands were shut and his face stern. the silence of the crowd was becoming oppressive, when a woman's voice rang out like a bell in the pellucid air,-- 'liberator!' clear, sudden, and resonant, the cry vibrated and hung upon echo, so that the mind followed it, when it was no more heard, round the island coast, where it ran up into the rocky creeks, and entered upon the breeze into the huts of goat-herds on the hill. julian slowly raised his head as at a challenge. he looked up into the furnace of eyes bent upon him, lustrous eyes in the glow of faces tanned to a golden brown, finding in all the same query, the same expectancy, the same breathless and suspended confidence. for a long moment he gazed up, and they gazed down, challenge, acceptance, homage, loyalty, devotion, and covenant passing unspoken between them; then, his hesitation a dead and discarded thing, he moved forward and set his foot firmly upon the lowest step. the silence of the crowd was broken by a single collective murmur. the crowd--which consisted of perhaps not more than fifty souls, men and women--parted at the top as his head and shoulders appeared on the level of the market-place. paul followed, tripping over his soutane on the ladder-like stairs. he saw julian's white shoes climbing, climbing the flight, until the boy stood deliberately upon the market-place. a few goats were penned up for sale between wattled hurdles, bleating for lost dams or kids; a clothes-stall displayed highly-coloured handkerchiefs, boleros for the men, silk sashes, puttees, tasselled caps, and kilted fustanelles; a fruit-stall, lined with bright blue paper, was stacked from floor to ceiling with oranges, figs, bunches of grapes, and scarlet tomatoes. an old woman, under an enormous green umbrella, sat hunched on the back of a tiny gray donkey. julian stood, grave and moody, surveying the people from under lowered brows. they were waiting for him to speak to them, but, as a contrast to the stifled volubility seething in their own breasts, his stillness, unexpected and surprising, impressed them more than any flow of eloquence. he seemed to have forgotten about them, though his eyes dwelt meditatively on their ranks; he seemed remote, preoccupied; faintly disdainful, though tolerant, of the allegiance they had already, mutely, laid at his feet, and were prepared to offer him in terms of emotional expression. he seemed content to take this for granted. he regarded them for a space, then turned to move in the direction of his father's house. the people pressed forward after him, a whispering and rustling bodyguard, disconcerted but conquered and adoring. their numbers had been increased since the news of his landing had run through the town. fishermen, and labourers from olive-grove and vineyard, men whose lives were lived in the sun, their magnificent bare throats and arms glowed like nectarines in the white of the loose shirts they wore. knotted handkerchiefs were about their heads, and many of them wore broad hats of rough straw over the handkerchief. ancestrally more italian than greek, for the original population of the archipelago of hagios zacharie had, centuries before, been swamped by the settlements of colonising genoese, they resembled the peasants of southern italy. the headman of the village walked with them, tsantilas tsigaridis, sailor and fisherman since he could remember, whose skin was drawn tightly over the fine bony structure of his face, and whose crisp white hair escaped in two bunches over his temples from under the red handkerchief he wore; he was dressed, incongruously enough, in a blue english jersey which mrs davenant had given him, and a coffee-coloured fustanelle. behind the crowd, as though he were shepherding them, nico zapantiotis, overseer of the davenant vineyards, walked with a long pole in his hand, a white sheepdog at his heels, and a striped blue and white shirt fluttering round his body, open at the throat, and revealing the swelling depth of his hairy chest. between these two notables pressed the crowd, bronzed and coloured, eyes eager and attentive and full of fire, a gleam of silver ear-rings among the shiny black ringlets. bare feet and heelless shoes shuffled alike over the cobbles. at the end of the narrow street, where the children ran out as in the story of the pied piper to join in the progress, the doorway of the davenant house faced them. it was raised on three steps between two columns. the monastery had been a genoese building, but the greek influence was unmistakable in the columns and the architrave over the portico. julian strode forward as though unconscious of his following. paul became anxious. he hurried alongside. 'you must speak to these people,' he whispered. julian mounted the steps and turned in the dark frame of the doorway. the people had come to a standstill, filling the narrow street. it was now they who looked up to julian, and he who looked down upon them, considering them, still remote and preoccupied, conscious that here and now the seed sown in the club-rooms must bear its fruit, that life, grown impatient of waiting for a summons he did not give, had come to him of its own accord and ordered him to take the choice of peace or war within its folded cloak. if he had hoped to escape again to england with a decision still untaken, that hope was to be deluded. he was being forced and hustled out of his childhood into the responsibilities of a man. he could not plead the nebulousness of his mind; action called to him, loud and insistent. in vain he told himself, with the frown deepening between his brows, and the people who watched him torn with anxiety before that frown--in vain he told himself that the situation was fictitious, theatrical. he could not convince himself of this truth with the fire of the people's gaze directed upon him. he must speak to them; they were silent, expectant, waiting. the words broke from him impelled, as he thought, by his terror of his own helplessness and lack of control, but to his audience they came as a command, a threat, and an invitation. 'what is it you want of me?' he stood on the highest of the three steps, alone, the back of his head pressed against the door, and a hand on each of the flanking columns. the black-robed priest had taken his place below him, to one side, on the ground level. julian felt a sudden resentment against these waiting people, that had driven him to bay, the resentment of panic and isolation, but to them, his attitude betraying nothing, he appeared infallible, dominating, and inaccessible. tsantilas tsigaridis came forward as spokesman, a gold ring hanging in the lobe of one ear, and a heavy silver ring shining dully on the little finger of his brown, knotted hand. 'kyrie,' he said, 'angheliki zapantiotis has hailed you. we are your own people. by the authorities we are persecuted as though we were bulgars, we, their brothers in blood. last week a score of police came in boats from herakleion and raided our houses in search of weapons. our women ran screaming to the vineyards. such weapons as the police could find were but the pistols we carry for ornament on the feast-days of church, and these they removed, for the sake, as we know, not being blind, of the silver on the locks which they will use to their own advantage. by such persecutions we are harried. we may never know when a hand will not descend on one of our number, on a charge of sedition or conspiracy, and he be seen no more. we are not organised for resistance. we are blind beasts, leaderless.' a woman in the crowd began to sob, burying her face in her scarlet apron. a man snarled his approval of the spokesman's words, and spat violently into the gutter. 'and you demand of me?' said julian, again breaking his silence. 'championship? leadership? you cannot say you are unjustly accused of sedition! what report of aphros could i carry to herakleion?' he saw the people meek, submissive, beneath his young censure, and the knowledge of his power surged through him like a current through water. 'kyrie,' said the old sailor, reproved, but with the same inflexible dignity, 'we know that we are at your mercy. but we are your own people. we have been the people of your people for four generations. the authorities have torn even the painting of your grandfather from the walls of our assembly room....' 'small blame to them,' thought julian; 'that shows their good sense.' tsantilas pursued,-- ' ... we are left neither public nor private liberty. we are already half-ruined by the port-dues which are directed against us islanders and us alone.' a crafty look came into his eyes. 'here, kyrie, you should be in sympathy.' julian's moment of panic had passed; he was now conscious only of his complete control. he gave way to the anger prompted by the mercenary trait of the levantine that marred the man's natural and splendid dignity. 'what sympathy i may have,' he said loudly, 'is born of compassion, and not of avaricious interest.' he could not have told what instinct urged him to rebuke these people to whose petition he was decided to yield. he observed that with each fresh reproof they cringed the more. 'compassion, kyrie, and proprietary benevolence,' tsantilas rejoined, recognising his mistake. 'we know that in you we find a disinterested mediator. we pray to god that we may be allowed to live at peace with herakleion. we pray that we may be allowed to place our difficulties and our sorrows in your hands for a peaceful settlement.' julian looked at him, majestic as an arab and more cunning than a jew, and a slightly ironical smile wavered on his lips. 'old brigand,' he thought, 'the last thing he wants is to live at peace with herakleion; he's spoiling for a stand-up fight. men on horses, himself at their head, charging the police down this street, and defending our house like a beleaguered fort; rifles cracking from every window, and the more police corpses the better. may i be there to see it!' his mind flew to eve, whom he had last seen lying in a hammock, drowsy, dressed in white, and breathing the scent of the gardenia she held between her fingers. what part would she, the spoilt, the exquisite, play if there were to be bloodshed on aphros? all this while he was silent, scowling at the multitude, who waited breathless for his next words. 'father will half kill me,' he thought. at that moment tsigaridis, overcome by his anxiety, stretched out his hands towards him, surrendering his dignity in a supreme appeal,-- 'kyrie? i have spoken.' he dropped his hands to his sides, bowed his head, and fell back a pace. julian pressed his shoulders strongly against the door; it was solid enough. the sun, striking on his bare hand, was hot. the faces and necks and arms of the people below him were made of real flesh and blood. the tension, the anxiety in their eyes was genuine. he chased away the unreality. 'you have spoken,' he said, 'and i have accepted.' the woman named angheliki zapantiotis, who had hailed him as liberator, cast herself forward on to the step at his feet, as a stir and a movement, that audibly expressed itself in the shifting of feet and the releasing of contained breaths, ruffled through the crowd. he lifted his hand to enjoin silence, and spoke with his hand raised high above the figure of the woman crouching on the step. he told them that there could now be no going back, that, although the time of waiting might seem to them long and weary, they must have hopeful trust in him. he exacted from them trust, fidelity, and obedience. his voice rang sharply on the word, and his glance circled imperiously, challenging defiance. it encountered none. he told them that he would never give his sanction to violence save as a last resort. he became intoxicated with the unaccustomed wine of oratory. 'an island is our refuge; we are the garrison of a natural fortress, that we can hold against the assault of our enemies from the sea. we will never seek them out, we will be content to wait, restrained and patient, until they move with weapons in their hands against us. let us swear that our only guilt of aggression shall be to preserve our coasts inviolate.' a deep and savage growl answered him as he paused. he was flushed with the spirit of adventure, the prerogative of youth. the force of youth moved so strongly within him that every man present felt himself strangely ready and equipped for the calls of the enterprise. a mysterious alchemy had taken place. they, untutored, unorganised, scarcely knowing what they wanted, much less how to obtain it, had offered him the formless material of their blind and chaotic rebellion, and he, having blown upon it with the fire of his breath, was welding it now to an obedient, tempered weapon in his hands. he had taken control. he might disappear and the curtains of silence close together behind his exit; paul, watching, knew that these people would henceforward wait patiently, and with confidence, for his return. he dropped suddenly from his rhetoric into a lower key. 'in the meantime i lay upon you a charge of discretion. no one in herakleion must get wind of this meeting; father paul and i will be silent, the rest lies with you. until you hear of me again, i desire you to go peaceably about your ordinary occupations.' 'better put that in,' he thought to himself. 'i know nothing, nor do i wish to know,' he continued, shrewdly examining their faces, 'of the part you played in the robbery at the casino. i only know that i will never countenance the repetition of any such attempt; you will have to choose between me and your brigandage.' he suddenly stamped his foot. 'choose now! which is it to be?' 'kyrie, kyrie,' said tsigaridis, 'you are our only hope.' 'lift up your hands,' julian said intolerantly. his eyes searched among the bronzed arms that rose at his command like a forest of lances; he enjoyed forcing obedience upon the crowd and seeing their humiliation. 'very well,' he said then, and the hands sank, 'see to it that you remember your promise. i have no more to say. wait, trust, and hope.' he carried his hand to his forehead and threw it out before him in a gesture of farewell and dismissal. he suspected himself of having acted and spoken in a theatrical manner, but he knew also that through the chaos of his mind an unextinguishable light was dawning. v julian in the candour of his inexperience unquestioningly believed that the story would not reach herakleion. before the week was out, however, he found himself curiously eyed in the streets, and by the end of the week, going to dinner at the french legation, he was struck by the hush that fell as his name was announced in the mirrored drawing-rooms. madame lafarge said to him severely,-- 'jeune homme, vous avez été très indiscret,' but a smile lurked in her eyes beneath her severity. an immense serbian, almost a giant, named grbits, with a flat, mongolian face, loomed ominously over him. 'young man, you have my sympathy. you have disquieted the greeks. you may count at any time upon my friendship.' his fingers were enveloped and crushed in grbits' formidable handshake. the older diplomatists greeted him with an assumption of censure that was not seriously intended to veil their tolerant amusement. 'do you imagine that we have nothing to do,' don rodrigo valdez said to him, 'that you set out to enliven the affairs of herakleion?' fru thyregod, the danish excellency, took him into a corner and tapped him on the arm with her fan with that half flirtatious, half friendly familiarity she adopted towards all men. 'you are a dark horse, my dark boy,' she said meaningly, and, as he pretended ignorance, raising his brows and shaking his head, added, 'i'm much indebted to you as a living proof of my perception. i always told them; i always said, "carl, that boy is an adventurer," and carl said, "nonsense, mabel, your head is full of romance," but i said, "mark my words, carl, that boy will flare up; he's quiet now, but you'll have to reckon with him."' he realised the extent of the gratitude of social herakleion. he had provided a flavour which was emphatically absent from the usual atmosphere of these gatherings. every legation in turn, during both the summer and the winter season, extended its hospitality to its colleagues with complete resignation as to the lack of all possibility of the unforeseen. the rules of diplomatic precedence rigorously demanding a certain grouping, the danish excellency, for example, might sit before her mirror fluffing out her already fluffy fair hair with the complacent if not particularly pleasurable certainty that this evening, at the french legation, she would be escorted in to dinner by the roumanian minister, and that on her other hand would sit the italian counsellor, while to-morrow, at the spanish legation, she would be escorted to dinner by the italian counsellor and would have upon her other hand the roumanian minister--unless, indeed, no other minister's wife but madame lafarge was present, in which case she would be placed on the left hand of don rodrigo valdez. she would have preferred to sit beside julian davenant, but he, of course, would be placed amongst the young men--secretaries, young greeks, and what not--at the end of the table. these young men--'les petits jeunes gens du bout de la table,' as alexander christopoulos, including himself in their number, contemptuously called them--always ate mournfully through their dinner without speaking to one another. they did not enjoy themselves, nor did their host or hostess enjoy having them there, but it was customary to invite them.... fru thyregod knew that she must not exhaust all her subjects of conversation with her two neighbours this evening, but must keep a provision against the morrow; therefore, true to her little science, she refrained from mentioning julian's adventure on aphros to the roumanian, and discoursed on it behind her fan to the italian only. other people seemed to be doing the same. julian heard whispers, and saw glances directed towards him. distinctly, herakleion and its hostesses would be grateful to him. he felt slightly exhilarated. he noticed that no greeks were present, and thought that they had been omitted on his account. he reflected, not without a certain apprehensive pleasure, that if this roomful knew, as it evidently did, the story would not be long in reaching his father. who had betrayed him? not paul, he was sure, nor kato, to whom he had confided the story. (tears had come into her eyes, she had clasped her hands, and she had kissed him, to his surprise, on his forehead.) he was glad on the whole that he had been betrayed. he had come home in a fever of exaltation and enthusiasm which had rendered concealment both damping and irksome. little incidents, of significance to him alone, had punctuated his days by reminders of his incredible, preposterous, and penetrating secret; to-night, for instance, the chasseur in the hall, the big, scarlet-coated chasseur, an islander, had covertly kissed his hand.... his father took an unexpected view. julian had been prepared for anger, in fact he had the countering phrases already in his mind as he mounted the stairs of the house in the _platia_ on returning from the french legation. his father was waiting, a candle in his hand, on the landing. 'i heard you come in. i want to ask you, julian,' he said at once, 'whether the story i have heard in the club to-night is true? that you went to aphros, and entered into heaven knows what absurd covenant with the people?' julian flushed at the reprimanding tone. 'i knew that you would not approve,' he said. 'but one must do something. those miserable, bullied people, denied the right to live....' 'tut,' said his father impatiently. 'have they really taken you in? i thought you had more sense. i have had a good deal of trouble in explaining to malteios that you are only a hot-headed boy, carried away by the excitement of the moment. you see, i am trying to make excuses for you, but i am annoyed, julian, i am annoyed. i thought i could trust you. paul, too. however, you bring your own punishment on your head, for you will have to keep away from herakleion in the immediate future.' 'keep away from herakleion?' cried julian. 'malteios' hints were unmistakable,' his father said dryly. 'i am glad to see you are dismayed. you had better go to bed now, and i will speak to you to-morrow.' mr davenant started to go upstairs, but turned again, and came down the two or three steps, still holding his candle in his hand. 'come,' he said in a tone of remonstrance, 'if you really take the thing seriously, look at it at least for a moment with practical sense. what is the grievance of the islands? that they want to be independent from herakleion. if they must belong to anybody, they say, let them belong to italy rather than to greece or to herakleion. and why? because they speak an italian rather than a greek patois! because a lot of piratical genoese settled in them five hundred years ago! well, what do you propose to do, my dear julian? hand the islands over to italy?' 'they want independence,' julian muttered. 'they aren't even allowed to speak their own language,' he continued, raising his voice. 'you know it is forbidden in the schools. you know that the port-dues in herakleion ruin them--and are intended to ruin them. you know they are oppressed in every petty as well as in every important way. you know that if they were independent they wouldn't trouble herakleion.' 'independent! independent!' said mr davenant, irritable and uneasy. 'still, you haven't told me what you proposed to do. did you mean to create a revolution?' julian hesitated. he did not know. he said boldly,-- 'if need be.' mr davenant snorted. 'upon my word,' he cried sarcastically, 'you have caught the emotional tone of aphros to perfection. i suppose you saw yourself holding panaïoannou at bay? if these are your ideas, i shall certainly support malteios in keeping you away. i am on the best of terms with malteios, and i cannot afford to allow your quixotism to upset the balance. i can obtain almost any concession from malteios,' he added thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes and rubbing his hand across his chin. julian watched his father with distaste and antagonism. 'and that is all you consider?' he said then. 'what else is there to consider?' mr davenant replied. 'i am a practical man, and practical men don't run after chimeras. i hope i'm not more cynical than most. you know very well that at the bottom of my heart i sympathise with the islands. come,' he said, with a sudden assumption of frankness, seeing that he was creating an undesirable rift between himself and his son, 'i will even admit to you, in confidence, that the republic doesn't treat its islands as well as it might. you know, too, that i respect and admire madame kato; she comes from the islands, and has every right to hold the views of an islander. but there's no reason why you should espouse those views, julian. we are foreigners here, representatives of a great family business, and that business, when all's said and done, must always remain our first consideration.' 'yet people here say,' julian argued, still hoping for the best against the cold disillusionment creeping over him, 'that no political move can be made without allowing for your influence and uncle robert's. and my grandfather, after all....' 'ah, your grandfather!' said mr davenant, 'your grandfather was an extremely sagacious man, the real founder of the family tradition, though i wouldn't like malteios to hear me say so. he knew well enough that in the islands he held a lever which gave him, if he chose to use it, absolute control over herakleion. he only used it once, when he wanted something they refused to give him; they held out against him for a year, but ultimately they came to heel. a very sagacious man.... don't run away with the idea that he was inspired by anything other than a most practical grasp--though i don't say it wasn't a bold one--a most practical grasp of the situation. he gave the politicians of herakleion a lesson they haven't yet forgotten. he paused, and, as julian said nothing, added-- 'we keep very quiet, your uncle robert and i, but malteios, and stavridis himself, know that in reality we hold them on a rope. we give them a lot of play, but at any moment we choose, we can haul them in. a very satisfactory arrangement. tacit agreements, to my mind, are always the most satisfactory. and so you see that i can't tolerate your absurd, uneducated interference. why, there's no end to the harm you might do! some day you will thank me.' as julian still said nothing, he looked at his son, who was standing, staring at the floor, a deep frown on his forehead, thunderous, unconvinced. mr davenant, being habitually uncommunicative, felt aggrieved that his explanatory condescension had not been received with a more attentive deference. he also felt uneasy. julian's silences were always disquieting. 'you are very young still,' he said, in a more conciliatory tone, 'and i ought perhaps to blame myself for allowing you to go about so freely in this very unreal and bewildering place. perhaps i ought not to have expected you to keep your head. malteios is quite right: herakleion is no place for a young man. don't think me hard in sending you away. some day you will come back with, i hope, a better understanding.' he rested his hand kindly for a moment on julian's shoulder, then turned away, and the light of his candle died as he passed the bend of the stairs. on the following evening julian, returning from the country-house where he had spent the day, was told that the premier was with mr davenant and would be glad to see him. he had ridden out to the country, regardless of the heat, turning instinctively to eve in his strange and rebellious frame of mind. for some reason which he did not analyse, he identified her with aphros--the aphros of romance and glamour to which he so obstinately clung. to his surprise she listened unresponsive and sulky. 'you are not interested, eve?' then the reason of her unreasonableness broke out. 'you have kept this from me for a whole week, and you confide in me now because you know the story is public property. you expect me to be interested. grand merci!' 'but, eve, i had pledged myself not to tell a soul.' 'did you tell kato?' 'damn your intuition!' he said angrily. she lashed at him then, making him feel guilty, miserable, ridiculous, though as he sat scowling over the sea--they were in their favourite place at the bottom of the garden, where under the pergola of gourds it was cool even at that time of the day--he appeared to her more than usually unmoved and forbidding. after a long pause,-- 'julian, i am sorry.--i don't often apologise.--i said i was sorry.' he looked coldly at her with his mournful eyes, that, green in repose, turned black in anger. 'your vanity makes me ill.' 'you told kato.' 'jealousy!' she began to protest; then, with a sudden change of front,-- 'you know i am jealous. when i am jealous, i lie awake all night. i lose all sense of proportion. it's no joke, my jealousy; it's like an open wound. i put up a stockade round it to protect it. you are not considerate.' 'can you never forget yourself? do you care nothing for the islands? are you so self-centred, so empty-headed? are all women, i wonder, as vain as you?' they sat on the parapet, angry, inimical, with the coloured gourds hanging heavily over their heads. far out to sea the islands lay, so pure and fair and delicate that julian, beholding them, violently rejected the idea that in this possession of such disarming loveliness his grandfather had seen merely a lever for the coercion of recalcitrant politicians. they lay there as innocent and fragile as a lovely woman asleep, veiled by the haze of sunshine as the sleeper's limbs by a garment of lawn. julian gazed till his eyes and his heart swam in the tenderness of passionate and protective ownership. he warmed towards his grandfather, the man whose generous ideals had been so cynically libelled by the succeeding generation. no man deserving the name could be guilty of so repulsive an act of prostitution.... 'they will see me here again,' he exclaimed, striking his fist on the parapet. to the startled question in eve's eyes he vouchsafed an explanation. 'malteios is sending me away. but when his term of office is over, i shall come back. it will be a good opportunity. we will break with herakleion over the change of government. kato will restrain malteios so long as he is in power, i can trust her; but i shall make my break with stavridis.' in his plans for the future he had again forgotten eve. 'you are going away?' 'for a year or perhaps longer,' he said gloomily. her natural instinct of defiant secrecy kept the flood of protest back from her lips. already in her surprisingly definite philosophy of life, self-concealment held a sacred and imperious position. secrecy--and her secrecy, because disguised under a superficial show of expansiveness, was the more fundamental, the more dangerous--secrecy she recognised as being both a shield and a weapon. therefore, already apprehending that existence in a world of men was a fight, a struggle, and a pursuit, she took refuge in her citadel. and, being possessed of a picturesque imagination, she had upon a certain solemn occasion carried a symbolic key to the steps which led down to the sea from the end of the pergola of gourds, and had flung it out as far as she was able into the guardianship of the waters. she remembered this now as she sat on the parapet with julian, and smiled to herself ironically. she looked at him with the eye of an artist, and thought how his limbs, fallen into their natural grace of relaxed muscularity, suggested the sculptural ease of stone far more than the flat surfaces of canvas. sculptural, she thought, was undoubtedly the adjective which thrust itself upon one. in one of her spasmodic outbursts of activity she had modelled him, but, disdainful of her own talents, had left the clay to perish. then she remembered acutely that she would not see him again. 'my mythological julian....' she murmured, smiling. a world of flattery lay in her tone. 'you odd little thing,' he said, 'why the adjective?' she made an expressive gesture with her hands. 'your indifference, your determination--you're so intractable, so contemptuous, so hard--and sometimes so inspired. you're so fatally well suited to the islands. prince of aphros?' she launched at him insinuatingly. she was skilful; he flushed. she was giving him what he had, half unconsciously, sought. 'siren!' he said. 'am i? perhaps, after all, we are both equally well suited to the islands,' she said lightly. and for some reason their conversation dropped. yet it sufficed to send him, stimulated, from her side, full of self-confidence; he had forgotten that she was barely seventeen, a child! and for him the smile of pride in her eyes had been the smile of aphros. in the house, on his way through, he met father paul. 'everything is known,' said the priest, wringing his hand with his usual energy. 'what am i to do? malteios wants me to leave herakleion. shall i refuse? i am glad to have met you,' said julian, 'i was on my way to find you.' 'go, if malteios wants you to go,' the priest replied, 'the time is not ripe yet; but are you determined, in your own mind, to throw in your lot with hagios zacharie? remember, i cautioned you when we were still on aphros: you must be prepared for a complete estrangement from your family. you will be running with the hare, no longer hunting with the hounds. have you considered?' 'i am with the islands.' 'good,' said the priest, making a sign over him. 'go, all the same, if malteios exacts it; you will be the more of a man when you return. malteios' party will surely fall at the next elections. by then we shall be ready, and i will see that you are summoned. god bless you.' 'will you go out to eve in the garden, father? she is under the pergola. go and talk to her.' 'she is unhappy?' asked the priest, with a sharp look. 'a little, i think,' said julian, 'will you go?' 'at once, at once,' said paul, and he went quickly, through the grove of lemon-trees, stumbling over his soutane.... julian returned to herakleion, where he found his father and malteios in the big frescoed drawing-room, standing in an embrasure of the windows. the premier's face as he turned was full of tolerant benignity. 'ah, here is our young friend,' he began paternally. 'what are these stories i hear of you, young man? i have been telling your father that when i was a schoolboy, a _lycéen_--i, too, tried to meddle in politics. take my advice, and keep clear of these things till you are older. there are many things for the young: dancing, poetry, and love. politics to the old and the middle-aged. of course, i know your little escapade was nothing but a joke ... high spirits ... natural mischief....' the interview was galling and humiliating to julian; he disliked the premier's bantering friendliness, through which he was not sufficiently experienced to discern the hidden mistrust, apprehension, and hostility. his father, compelled to a secret and resentful pride in his son, was conscious of these things. but julian, his eyes fixed on the middle button of the premier's frock-coat, sullen and rebellious, tried to shut his ears to the prolonged murmur of urbane derision. he wished to look down upon, to ignore malteios, the unreal man, and this he could not do while he allowed those smooth and skilful words to flow unresisted in their suave cruelty over his soul. he shut his ears, and felt only the hardening of his determination. he would go; he would leave herakleion, only to return with increase of strength in the hour of fulfilment. dismissed, he set out for kato's flat, hatless, in a mood of thunder. his violence was not entirely genuine, but he persuaded himself, for he had lately been with eve, and the plausible influence of herakleion was upon him. he strode down the street, aware that people turned to gaze at him as he went. on the quay, the immense grbits rose suddenly up from the little green table where he sat drinking vermouth outside a café. 'my young friend,' he said, 'they tell me you are leaving herakleion? 'they are wise,' he boomed. 'you would break their toys if you remained. but _i_ remain; shall i watch for you? you will come back? i have hated the greeks well. shall we play a game with them? ha! ha!' his huge laugh reverberated down the quay as julian passed on, looking at the visiting card which the giant had just handed to him:-- srgjÁn grbits. _attaché à la légation de s.m. le roi des serbes, croates, et slovènes._ 'grbits my spy!' he was thinking. 'fantastic, fantastic.' kato's flat was at the top of a four-storied house on the quay. on the ground floor of the house was a cake-shop, and, like every other house along the sea-front, over every window hung a gay, striped sunblind that billowed slightly like a flag in the breeze from the sea. inside the cake-shop a number of levantines, dressed in their hot black, were eating sweet things off the marble counter. julian could never get eve past the cake-shop when they went to kato's together; she would always wander in to eat _choux à la crème_, licking the whipped cream off her fingers with a guilty air until he lent her his handkerchief, her own being invariably lost. julian went into the house by a side-door, up the steep narrow stairs, the walls painted in pompeian red with a slate-coloured dado; past the first floor, where on two frosted glass doors ran the inscription: koninklijke nederlandsche stoomboot-maatschappij; past the second floor, where a brass plate said: th. mavrudis et fils, cie. d'assurance; past the third floor, where old grigoriu, the money-lender, was letting himself in by a latchkey; to the fourth floor, where a woman in the native dress of the islands admitted him to kato's flat. the singer was seated on one of her low, carpet-covered divans, her throat and arms, as usual, bare, the latter covered with innumerable bangles; her knees wide apart and a hand placed resolutely upon each knee; before her stood tsigaridis, the headman of aphros, his powerful body encased in the blue english jersey mrs davenant had given him, and from the compression of which his pleated skirt sprang out so ridiculously. beside kato on the divan lay a basket of ripe figs which he had brought her. their two massive figures disproportionately filled the already overcrowded little room. they regarded julian gravely. 'i am going away,' he said, standing still before their scrutiny, as a pupil before his preceptors. kato bowed her head. they knew. they had discussed whether they should let him go, and had decided that he might be absent from herakleion until the next elections. 'but you will return, kyrie?' tsigaridis spoke respectfully, but with urgent authority, much in the tone a regent might adopt towards a youthful king. 'of course i shall return,' julian answered, and smiled and added, 'you mustn't lose faith, tsantilas.' the fisherman bowed with that dignity he inherited from unnamed but remotely ascending generations; he took his leave of kato and the boy, shutting the door quietly behind him. kato came up to julian, who had turned away and was staring out of the window. from the height of this fourth story one looked down upon the peopled quay below, and saw distinctly the houses upon the distant islands. 'you are sad,' she said. she moved to the piano, which, like herself, was a great deal too big for the room, and which alone of all the pieces of furniture was not loaded with ornaments. julian had often wondered, looking at the large expanse of lid, how kato had so consistently resisted the temptation to put things upon it. the most he had ever seen there was a gilt basket of hydrangeas, tied with a blue ribbon, from which hung the card of the premier. he knew that within twenty-four hours he would be at sea, and that herakleion as he would last have seen it--from the deck of the steamer, white, with many coloured sunblinds, and, behind it, mount mylassa, rising so suddenly, so threateningly, seemingly determined to crowd the man-built town off its narrow strip of coast into the water--herakleion, so pictured, would be but a memory; within a week, he knew, he would be in england. he did not know when he would see herakleion again. therefore he abandoned himself, on this last evening, to aphros, to the memory of eve, and to romance, not naming, not linking the three that took possession of and coloured all the daylight of his youth, but quiescent, sitting on the floor, his knees clasped, and approaching again, this time in spirit, the island where the foam broke round the foot of the rocks and the fleet of little fishing-boats swayed like resting seagulls in the harbour. he scarcely noticed that, all this while, kato was singing. she sang in a very low voice, as though she were singing a lullaby, and, though the words did not reach his consciousness, he knew that the walls of the room had melted into the warm and scented freedom of the terraces on aphros when the vintage was at its height, and when the air, in the evening, was heavy with the smell of the grape. he felt eve's fingers lightly upon his brows. he saw again her shadowy gray eyes, red mouth, and waving hair. he visualised the sparkle that crept into her eyes--strange eyes they were! deep-set, slanting slightly upwards, so ironical sometimes, and sometimes so inexplicably sad--when she was about to launch one of her more caustic and just remarks. how illuminating her remarks could be! they always threw a new light; but she never insisted on their value; on the contrary, she passed carelessly on to something else. but whatever she touched, she lit.... one came to her with the expectation of being stimulated, perhaps a little bewildered, and one was not disappointed. he recalled her so vividly--yet recollection of her could never be really vivid; the construction of her personality was too subtle, too varied; as soon as one had left her one wanted to go back to her, thinking that this time, perhaps, one would succeed better in seizing and imprisoning the secret of her elusiveness. julian caught himself smiling dreamily as he conjured her up. he heard the murmur of her seductive voice,-- 'i love you, julian.' he accepted the words, which he had heard often from her lips, dreamily as part of his last, deliberate evening, so losing himself in his dreams that he almost failed to notice when the music died and the notes of kato's voice slid from the recitative of her peasant songs into conversation with himself. she left the music-stool and came towards him where he sat on the floor. 'julian,' she said, looking down at him, 'your cousin eve, who is full of perception, says you are so primitive that the very furniture is irksome to you and that you dispense with it as far as you can. i know you prefer the ground to a sofa.' he became shy, as he instantly did when the topic of his own personality was introduced. he felt dimly that eve, who remorselessly dragged him from the woods into the glare of sunlight, alone had the privilege. at the same time he recognised her methods of appropriating a characteristic, insignificant in itself, and of building it up, touching it with her own peculiar grace and humour until it became a true and delicate attribute, growing into life thanks to her christening of it; a method truly feminine, exquisitely complimentary, carrying with it an insinuation faintly exciting, and creating a link quite separately personal, an understanding, almost an obligation to prove oneself true to her conception.... 'so you are leaving us?' said kato, 'you are going to live among other standards, other influences, "_dont je ne connais point la puissance sur votre coeur_." how soon will it be before you forget? and how soon before you return? we want you here, julian.' 'for the islands?' he asked. 'for the islands, and may i not say,' said kato, spreading her hands with a musical clinking of all her bangles, 'for ourselves also? how soon will it be before you forget the islands?' she forced herself to ask, and then, relapsing, 'which will fade first in your memory, i wonder--the islands? or kato?' 'i can't separate you in my mind,' he said, faintly ill at ease. 'it is true that we have talked of them by the hour,' she answered, 'have we talked of them so much that they and i are entirely identified? do you pay me the compliment of denying me the mean existence of an ordinary woman?' he thought that by answering in the affirmative he would indeed be paying her the greatest compliment that lay within his power, for he would be raising her to the status of a man and a comrade. he said,-- 'i never believed, before i met you, that a woman could devote herself so whole-heartedly to her patriotism. we have the islands in common between us; and, as you know, the islands mean more than mere islands to me: a great many things to which i could never give a name. and i am glad, yes, so glad, that our friendship has been, in a way, so impersonal--as though i were your disciple, and this flat my secret school, from which you should one day discharge me, saying "go!"' never had he appeared to her so hopelessly inaccessible as now when he laid his admiration, his almost religious idealisation of her at her feet. he went on,-- 'you have been so infinitely good to me; i have come here so often, i have talked so much; i have often felt, when i went away, that you, who were accustomed to clever men, must naturally....' 'why not say,' she interrupted, 'instead of "clever men," "men of my own age? my own generation"?' he looked at her doubtfully, checked. she was standing over him, her hands on her hips, and he noticed the tight circles of fat round her bent wrists, and the dimples in every joint of her stumpy hands. 'but why apologise?' she added, taking pity on his embarrassment, with a smile both forgiving and rueful for the ill she had brought upon herself. 'if you have enjoyed our talks, be assured i have enjoyed them too. for conversations to be as successful as ours have been, the enjoyment cannot possibly be one-sided. i shall miss them when you are gone. you go to england?' after a moment she said,-- 'isn't it strange, when those we know so intimately in one place travel away to another place in which we have never seen them? what do i, kato, know of the houses you will live in in england, or of your english friends? as some poet speaks, in a line i quoted to you just now, of all the influences _dont je ne connais pas la puissance sur votre coeur_! perhaps you will even fall in love. perhaps you will tell this imaginary woman with whom you are to fall in love, about our islands?' 'no woman but you would understand,' he said. 'she would listen for your sake, and for your sake she would pretend interest. does eve listen when you talk about the islands?' 'eve doesn't care about such things. i sometimes think she cares only about herself,' he replied with some impatience. 'you ...' she began again, but, checking herself, she said instead, with a grave irony that was lost upon him, 'you have flattered me greatly to-day, julian. i hope you may always find in me a wise preceptor. but i can only point the way. the accomplishment lies with you. we will work together?' she added, smiling, 'in the realms of the impersonal? a philosophic friendship? a platonic alliance?' when he left her, she was still, gallantly, smiling. part ii--eve i after spending nearly two years in exile, julian was once more upon his way to herakleion. on deck, brooding upon a great coil of rope, his head bare to the winds, absorbed and concentrated, he disregarded all his surroundings in favour of the ever equi-distant horizon. he seemed to be entranced by its promise. he seemed, moreover, to form part of the ship on which he travelled; part of it, crouching as he did always at the prow, as a figurehead forms part; part of the adventure, the winged gallantry, the eager onward spirit indissoluble from the voyage of a ship in the midst of waters from which no land is visible. the loneliness--for there is no loneliness to equal the loneliness of the sea--the strife of the wind, the generosity of the expanse, the pure cleanliness of the nights and days, met and matched his mood. at moments, feeling himself unconquerable, he tasted the full, rare, glory of youth and anticipation. he did not know which he preferred: the days full of sunlight on the wide blue sea, or the nights when the breeze was fresher against his face, and the road more mysterious, under a young moon that lit the ridges of the waves and travelled slowly past, overhead, across the long black lines of cordage and rigging. he knew only that he was happy as he had never been happy in his life. his fellow-passengers had watched him when he joined the ship at brindisi, and a murmur had run amongst them, 'julian davenant--son of those rich davenants of herakleion, you know--great wine-growers--they own a whole archipelago'; some one had disseminated the information even as julian came up the gangway, in faded old gray flannels, hatless, in a rage with his porter, who appeared to be terrified out of all proportion. then, suddenly, he had lost all interest in his luggage, tossed some money to the porter, and, walking for'ard, had thrown himself down on the heap of ropes and stared straight in front of him to sea, straining his eyes forward to where greece might lie. from here he had scarcely stirred. the people who watched him, benevolent and amused, thought him very young. they saw that he relieved the intensity of his vigil with absurd and childlike games that he played by himself, hiding and springing out at the sailors, and laughing immoderately when he had succeeded in startling them--he fraternised with the sailors, though with no one else--or when he saw somebody trip over a ring in the deck. his humour, like his body, seemed to be built on large and simple lines.... in the mornings he ran round and round the decks in rubber-soled shoes. then again he flung himself down and continued with unseeing eyes to stare at the curve of the horizon. not wholly by design, he had remained absent from herakleion for nearly two years. the standards and systems of life on that remote and beautiful seaboard had not faded for him, this time, with their usual astonishing rapidity; he had rather laid them aside carefully and deliberately, classified against the hour when he should take them from their wrappings; he postponed the consideration of the mission which had presented itself to him, and crushed down the recollection of what had been, perhaps, the most intoxicating of all moments--more intoxicating even, because more unexpected, than the insidious flattery of eve--the moment when paul had said to him beneath the fragmentary frescoes of the life of saint benedict, in a surprised voice, forced into admission,-- 'you have the quality of leadership. you have it. you have the secret. the people will fawn to the hand that chastens.' paul, his tutor and preceptor, from whom he had first learnt, so imperceptibly that he scarcely recognised the teaching as a lesson, of the islands and their problems both human and political, paul had spoken these words to him, renouncing the authority of the master, stepping aside to admit the accession of the pupil. from the position of a regent, he had abased himself to that of a prime minister. julian had accepted the acknowledgement with a momentary dizziness. in later moments of doubt, the words had flamed for him, bright with reassurance. and then he had banished them with the rest. that world of romance had been replaced by the world of healthy and prosaic things. the letters he periodically received from eve irritated him because of their reminder of an existence he preferred to regard, for the moment, as in abeyance. 'and so you are gone: _veni, vidi, vici_. you were well started on your career of devastation! you hadn't done badly, all things considered. herakleion has heaved an "ouf!" of relief. you, unimpressionable? _allons donc!_ you, apathetic? you, placid, unemotional, unawakened? _tu te payes ma tête!_ 'ah, the limitless ambition i have for you! 'i want you to rule, conquer, shatter, demolish. 'haul down the simpering gods, the pampered gods, and put yourself in their place. it is in your power. 'why not? you have _le feu sacré_. stagnation is death, death. burn their temples with fire, and trample their altars to dust.' this letter, scrawled in pencil on a sheet of torn foolscap, followed him to england immediately after his departure. then a silence of six months. then he read, written on spacious yellow writing-paper, with the monogram e.d. embossed in a triangle of mother-of-pearl, vivid and extravagant as eve herself-- they are trying to catch me, julian! i come quite near, quite near, and they hold very quiet their hand with the crumbs in it. i see the other hand stealing round to close upon me--then there's a flutter--_un battement d'ailes--l'oiseau s'est de nouveau dérobé!_ they remain gazing after me, with their mouths wide open. they look so silly. and they haven't robbed me of one plume--not a single plume. 'julian! why this mania for capture? this wanting to take from me my most treasured possession--liberty? when i want to give, i'll give freely--largesse with both hands, showers of gold and flowers and precious stones--(don't say i'm not conceited!) but i'll never give my liberty, and i'll never allow it to be forced away from me. i should feel a traitor. i couldn't walk through a forest and hear the wind in the trees. i couldn't listen to music. (ah, julian! this afternoon i steeped myself in music; grieg, elf-like, mischievous, imaginative, romantic, so latin sometimes in spite of his northern blood. you would love grieg, julian. in the fairyland of music, grieg plays gnome to debussy's magician.... then "khovantchina," of all music the most sublime, the most perverse, the most _bariolé_, the most abandoned, and the most desolate.) i could have no comradeship with a free and inspired company. i should have betrayed their secrets, bartered away their mysteries....' he had wondered then whether she were happy. he had visualised her, turbulent, defiant; courting danger and then childishly frightened when danger overtook her; deliciously forthcoming, inventive, enthusiastic, but always at heart withdrawn; she expressed herself truly when she said that the bird fluttered away from the hand that would have closed over it. he knew that she lived constantly, from choice, in a storm of trouble and excitement. yet he read between the lines of her letters a certain dissatisfaction, a straining after something as yet unattained. he knew that her heart was not in what she described as 'my little round of complacent amourettes.' the phrase had awoken him with a smile of amusement to the fact that she was no longer a child. he felt some curiosity to see her again under the altered and advanced conditions of her life, yet, lazy and diffident, he shrank from the storm of adventure and responsibility which he knew would at once assail him. the indolence he felt sprang largely from the certainty that he could, at any moment of his choice, stretch out his hand to gather up again the threads that he had relinquished. he had surveyed herakleion, that other world, from the distance and security of england. he had the conviction that it awaited him, and this conviction bore with it a strangely proprietary sense in which eve was included. he had listened with amusement and tolerance to the accounts of her exploits, his sleepy eyes bent upon his informant with a quiet patience, as a man who listens to a familiar recital. he had dwelt very often upon the possibility of his return to herakleion, but, without a full or even a partial knowledge of his motives, postponed it. yet all the while his life was a service, a dedication. then the letters which he received began to mention the forthcoming elections; a faint stir of excitement pervaded his correspondence; eve, detesting politics, made no reference, but his father's rare notes betrayed an impatient and irritable anxiety; the indications grew, culminating in a darkly allusive letter which, although anonymous, he took to be from grbits, and finally in a document which was a triumph of illiterate dignity, signed by kato, tsigaridis, zapantiotis, and a double column of names that broke like a flight of exotic birds into the mellow enclosure of the cathedral garden where it found him. conscious of his ripened and protracted strength, he took ship for greece. he had sent no word to announce his coming. a sardonic smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he foresaw the satisfaction of taking eve by surprise. a standing joke between them (discovered and created, of course, by her, the inventive) was the invariable unexpectedness of his arrivals. he would find her altered, grown. an unreasoning fury possessed him, a jealous rage, not directed against any human being, but against time itself, that it should lay hands upon eve, his eve, during his absence; taking, as it were, advantage while his back was turned. and though he had often professed to himself a lazy indifference to her devotion to him, julian, he found intolerable the thought that that devotion might have been transferred elsewhere. he rose and strode thunderously down the deck, and one of his fellow-travellers, watching, whistled to himself and thought,-- 'that boy has an ugly temper.' then the voyage became a dream to julian; tiny islands, quite rosy in the sunlight, stained the sea here and there only a few miles distant, and along the green sea the ship drew a white, lacy wake, broad and straight, that ever closed behind her like an obliterated path, leaving the way of retreat trackless and unavailable. one day he realised that the long, mountainous line which he had taken for a cloud-bank, was in point of fact the coast. that evening, a sailor told him, they were due to make herakleion. he grew resentful of the apathy of passengers and crew. the coast-line became more and more distinct. presently they were passing aphros, and only eight miles lay between the ship and the shore. the foam that gave it its name was breaking upon the rocks of the island.... after that a gap occurred in his memory, and the scene slipped suddenly to the big frescoed drawing-room of his father's house in the _platia_, where the peace and anticipation of his voyage were replaced by the gaiety of voices, the blatancy of lights, and the strident energy of three violins and a piano. he had walked up from the pier after the innumerable delays of landing; it was then eleven o'clock at night, and as he crossed the _platia_ and heard the music coming from the lighted and open windows of his father's house, he paused in the shadows, aware of the life that had gone on for over a year without him. 'and why is that surprising? i'm an astounding egotist,' he muttered. he was still in his habitual gray flannels, but he would not go to his room to change. he was standing in the doorway of the drawing-room on the first floor, smiling gently at finding himself still unnoticed, and looking for eve. she was sitting at the far end of the room between two men, and behind her the painted monkeys grimaced on the wall, swinging by hands and tails from the branches of the unconvincing trees. he saw her as seated in the midst of that ethereal and romantic landscape. skirting the walls, he made his way round to her, and in the angle he paused, and observed her. she was unconscious of his presence. young christopoulos bent towards her, and she was smiling into his eyes.... in eighteen months she had perfected her art. julian drew nearer, critically, possessively, and sarcastically observing her still, swift to grasp the essential difference. she, who had been a child when he had left her, was now a woman. the strangeness of her face had come to its own in the fullness of years, and the provocative mystery of her person, that withheld even more than it betrayed, now justified itself likewise. there seemed to be a reason for the red lips and ironical eyes that had been so incongruous, so almost offensive, in the face of the child. an immense fan of orange feathers drooped from her hand. her hair waved turbulently round her brows, and seemed to cast a shadow over her eyes. he stood suddenly before her. for an instant she gazed up at him, her lips parted, her breath arrested. he laughed easily, pleased to have bettered her at her own game of melodrama. he saw that she was really at a loss, clutching at her wits, at her recollection of him, trying desperately to fling a bridge across the gulf of those momentous months. she floundered helplessly in the abrupt renewal of their relations. seeing this, he felt an arrogant exhilaration at the discomfiture which he had produced. she had awoken in him, without a word spoken, the tyrannical spirit of conquest which she induced in all men. then she was saved by the intervention of the room; first by christopoulos shaking julian's hand, then by dancers crowding round with exclamations of welcome and surprise. mr davenant himself was brought, and julian stood confused and smiling, but almost silent, among the volubility of the guests. he was providing a sensation for lives greedy of sensation. he heard madame lafarge, smiling benevolently at him behind her lorgnon, say to don rodrigo valdez,-- '_c'est un original que ce garçon._' they were all there, futile and vociferous. the few new-comers were left painfully out in the cold. they were all there: the fat danish excellency, her yellow hair fuzzing round her pink face; condesa valdez, painted like a courtesan; armand, languid, with his magnolia-like complexion; madame delahaye, enterprising and equivocal; julie lafarge, thin and brown, timidly smiling; panaïoannou in his sky-blue uniform; the four sisters christopoulos, well to the front. these, and all the others. he felt that, at whatever moment during the last eighteen months he had timed his return, he would have found them just the same, complete, none missing, the same words upon their lips. he accepted them now, since he had surrendered to herakleion, but as for their reality as human beings, with the possible exceptions of grbits the giant, crashing his way to julian through people like an elephant pushing through a forest, and of the persian minister, hovering on the outskirts of the group with the gentle smile still playing round his mouth, they might as well have been cut out of cardboard. eve had gone; he could see her nowhere. alexander, presumably, had gone with her. captured at last by the danish excellency, julian had a stream of gossip poured into his ears. he had been in exile for so long, he must be thirsty for news. a new english minister had arrived, but he was said to be unsociable. he had been expected at the races on the previous sunday, but had failed to put in an appearance. armand had had an affair with madame delahaye. at a dinner-party last week, rafaele, the councillor of the italian legation, had not been given his proper place. the russian minister, who was the doyen of the _corps diplomatique_, had promised to look into the matter with the chef du protocole. once etiquette was allowed to become lax.... the season had been very gay. comparatively few political troubles. she disliked political troubles. she--confidentially--preferred personalities. but then she was only a woman, and foolish. she knew that she was foolish. but she had a good heart. she was not clever, like his cousin eve. eve? a note of hostility and reserve crept into her expansiveness. eve was, of course, very charming, though not beautiful. she could not be called beautiful; her mouth was too large and too red. it was almost improper to have so red a mouth; not quite _comme il faut_ in so young a girl. still, she was undeniably successful. men liked to be amused, and eve, when she was not sulky, could be very amusing. her imitations were proverbial in herakleion. imitation was, however, an unkindly form of entertainment. it was perhaps a pity that eve was so _moqueuse_. nothing was sacred to her, not even things which were really beautiful and touching--patriotism, or moonlight, or art--even greek art. it was not that she, mabel thyregod, disapproved of wit; she had even some small reputation for wit herself; no; but she held that there were certain subjects to which the application of wit was unsuitable. love, for instance. love was the most beautiful, the most sacred thing upon earth, yet eve--a child, a chit--had no veneration either for love in the abstract or for its devotees in the flesh. she wasted the love that was offered her. she could have no heart, no temperament. she was perhaps fortunate. she, mabel thyregod, had always suffered from having too warm a temperament. a struggle ensued between them, fru thyregod trying to force the personal note, and julian opposing himself to its intrusion. he liked her too much to respond to her blatant advances. he wondered, with a brotherly interest, whether eve were less crude in her methods. the thought of eve sent him instantly in her pursuit, leaving fru thyregod very much astonished and annoyed in the ball-room. he found eve with a man he did not know sitting in her father's business-room. she was lying back in a chair, listless and absent-minded, while her companion argued with vehemence and exasperation. she exclaimed,-- 'julian again! another surprise appearance! have you been wearing a cap of invisibility?' seeing that her companion remained silent in uncertainty, she murmured an introduction,-- 'do you know my cousin julian? prince ardalion miloradovitch.' the russian bowed with a bad grace, seeing that he must yield his place to julian. when he had gone, unwillingly tactful and full of resentment, she twitted her cousin,-- 'implacable as always, when you want your own way! i notice you have neither outgrown your tyrannical selfishness nor left it behind in england.' 'i have never seen that man before; who is he?' 'a russian. not unattractive. i am engaged to him,' she replied negligently. 'you are going to marry him?' she shrugged. 'perhaps, ultimately. more probably not.' 'and what will he do if you throw him over?' julian asked with a certain curiosity. 'oh, he has a fine _je-m'en-fichisme_; he'll shrug his shoulders, kiss the tips of my fingers, and die gambling,' she answered. when eve said that, julian thought that he saw the whole of miloradovitch, whom he did not know, quite clearly; she had lit him up. they talked then of a great many things, extraneous to themselves, but all the while they observed one another narrowly. she found nothing actually new in him, only an immense development along the old, careless, impersonal lines. in appearance he was as untidy as ever; large, slack-limbed, rough-headed. he, however, found much that was new in her; new, that is, to his more experienced observation, but which, hitherto, in its latent form had slept undiscovered by his boyish eyes. his roaming glance took in the deliberate poise and provocative aloofness of her self-possession, the warm roundness of her throat and arms, the little _mouche_ at the corner of her mouth, her little graceful hands, and white skin that here and there, in the shadows, gleamed faintly gold, as though a veneer of amber had been brushed over the white; the pervading sensuousness that glowed from her like the actual warmth of a slumbering fire. he found himself banishing the thought of miloradovitch.... 'have you changed?' he said abruptly. 'look at me.' she raised her eyes, with the assurance of one well-accustomed to personal remarks; a slow smile crept over her lips. 'well, your verdict?' 'you are older, and your hair is brushed back.' 'is that all?' 'do you expect me to say that you are pretty?' 'oh, no,' she said, snapping her fingers, 'i never expect compliments from you, julian. on the other hand, let me pay you one. your arrival, this evening, has been a triumph. most artistic. let me congratulate you. you know of old that i dislike being taken by surprise.' 'that's why i do it.' 'i know,' she said, with sudden humility, the marvellous organ of her voice sinking surprisingly into the rich luxuriance of its most sombre contralto. he noted with a fresh enjoyment the deep tones that broke like a honeyed caress upon his unaccustomed ear. his imagination bore him away upon a flight of images that left him startled by their emphasis no less than by their fantasy. a cloak of black velvet, he thought to himself, as he continued to gaze unseeingly at her; a dusky voice, a gipsy among voices! the purple ripeness of a plum; the curve of a southern cheek; the heart of red wine. all things seductive and insinuating. it matched her soft indolence, her exquisite subtlety, her slow, ironical smile. 'your delicious vanity,' he said unexpectedly, and, putting out his hand he touched the hanging fold of silver net which was bound by a silver ribbon round one of her slender wrists. ii herakleion. the white town. the sun. the precipitate coast, and mount mylassa soaring into the sky. the distant slope of greece. the low islands lying out in the jewelled sea. the diplomatic round, the calculations of gain, the continuous and plaintive music of the islands, the dream of rescue, the ardent championship of the feebler cause, the strife against wealth and authority. the whole fabric of youth.... these were the things abruptly rediscovered and renewed. the elections were to take place within four days of julian's arrival. father paul, no doubt, could add to the store of information kato had already given him. but father paul was not to be found in the little tavern he kept in the untidy village close to the gates of the davenants' country house. julian reined up before it, reading the familiar name, xenodochion olympos, above the door, and calling out to the men who were playing bowls along the little gravelled bowling alley to know where he might find the priest. they could not tell him, nor could the old islander tsigaridis, who sat near the door, smoking a cigar, and dribbling between his fingers the beads of a bright green rosary. 'the _papá_ is often absent from us,' added tsigaridis, and julian caught the grave inflection of criticism in his tone. the somnolent heat of the september afternoon lay over the squalid dusty village; in the whole length of its street no life stirred; the dogs slept; the pale pink and blue houses were closely shuttered, with an effect of flatness and desertion. against the pink front of the tavern splashed the shadows of a great fig-tree, and upon its threshold, but on one side the tree had been cut back to prevent any shadows from falling across the bowling-alley. julian rode on, enervated by the too intense heat and the glare, and, giving up his horse at his uncle's stables, wandered in the shade under the pergola of gourds at the bottom of the garden. he saw father paul coming towards him across the grass between the lemon-trees; the priest walked slowly, his head bent, his hands clasped behind his back, a spare black figure among the golden fruit. so lean, so lank he appeared, his natural height accentuated by his square black cap; so sallow his bony face in contrast to his stringy red hair. julian likened him to a long note of exclamation. he advanced unaware of julian's presence, walking as though every shuffling step of his flat, broad-toed shoes were an accompaniment to some laborious and completed thought. 'perhaps,' julian reflected, watching him, 'by the time he reaches me he'll have arrived at his decision.' he speculated amusedly as to the priest's difficulties: an insurgent member of the flock? a necessary repair to the church? nothing, nothing outside herakleion. a tiny life! a priest, a man who had forsworn man's birthright. the visible in exchange for the invisible world. a life concentrated and intense; tight-handed, a round little ball of a life. no range, no freedom. village life under a microscope; familiar faces and familiar souls. julian seemed to focus suddenly the rays of the whole world into a spot of light which was the village, and over which the priest's thin face was bent poring with a close, a strained expression of absorption, so that his benevolent purpose became almost a force of evil, prying and inquisitive, and from which the souls under his charge strove to writhe away in vain. to break the image, he called out aloud,-- 'you were very deeply immersed in your thoughts, father?' 'yes, yes,' paul muttered. he took out his handkerchief to pass it over his face, which julian now saw with surprise was touched into high lights by a thin perspiration. 'is anything wrong?' he asked. 'nothing wrong. your father is very generous,' the priest added irrelevantly. julian, still under the spell, inquired as to his father's generosity. 'he has promised me a new iconostase,' said paul, but he spoke from an immense distance, vagueness in his eyes, and with a trained, obedient tongue. 'the old iconostase is in a disgraceful state of dilapidation,' he continued, with a new, uncanny energy; 'when we cleaned out the panels we found them hung with bats at the back, and not only bats, but, do you know, julian, the mice had nested there; the mice are a terrible plague in the church. i am obliged to keep the consecrated bread in a biscuit tin, and i do not like doing that; i like to keep it covered over with a linen cloth; but no, i cannot, all on account of the mice. i have set traps, and i had got a cat, but since she caught her foot in one of the traps she has gone away. i am having great trouble, great trouble with the mice.' 'i know,' said julian, 'i used to have mice in my rooms at oxford.' 'a plague!' cried paul, still fiercely energetic, but utterly remote. 'one would wonder, if one were permitted to wonder, why he saw fit to create mice. i never caught any in my traps; only the cat's foot. and the boy who cleans the church ate the cheese. i have been very unfortunate--very unfortunate with the mice,' he added. would they never succeed in getting away from the topic? the garden was populated with mice, quick little gray objects darting across the path. and paul, who continued to talk vehemently, with strange, abrupt gestures, was not really there at all. 'nearly two years since you have been away,' he was saying. 'i expect you have seen a great deal; forgotten all about paul? how do you find your father? many people have died in the village; that was to be expected. i have been kept busy, funerals and christenings. i like a full life. and then i have the constant preoccupation of the church; the church, yes. i have been terribly concerned about the iconostase. i have blamed myself bitterly for my negligence. that, of course, was all due to the mice. a man was drowned off these rocks last week; a stranger. they say he had been losing in the casino. i have been into herakleion once or twice, since you have been away. but it is too noisy. the trams, and the glare.... it would not seem noisy to you. you no doubt welcome the music of the world. you are young, and life for you contains no problems. but i am very happy; i should not like you to think i was not perfectly happy. your father and your uncle are peculiarly considerate and generous men. your uncle has promised to pay for the installation of the new iconostase and the removal of the old one. i forgot to tell you that. completely perished, some of the panels.... and your aunt, a wonderful woman.' julian listened in amazement. the priest talked like a wound-up and crazy machine, and all the while julian was convinced that he did not know a word he was saying. he had once been grave, earnest, scholarly, even wise.... he kept taking off and putting on his cap, to the wild disordering of his long hair. 'he's gone mad,' julian thought in dismay. julian despaired of struggling out of the quicksands that sucked at their feet. he thought desperately that if the priest would come back, would recall his spirit to take control of his wits, all might be well. the tongue was babbling in an empty body while the spirit journeyed in unknown fields, finding there what excruciating torment? who could tell! for the man was suffering, that was clear; he had been suffering as he walked across the grass, but he had suffered then in controlled silence, spirit and mind close-locked and allied in the taut effort of endurance; now, their alliance shattered by the sound of a human voice, the spirit had fled, sweeping with it the furies of agony, and leaving the mind bereaved, chattering emptily, noisily, in the attempt at concealment. he, julian, was responsible for this revelation of the existence of an unguessed secret. he must repair the damage he had done. 'father!' he said, interrupting, and he took the priest strongly by the wrist. their eyes met. 'father!' julian said again. he held the wrist with the tensest effort of his fingers, and the eyes with the tensest effort of his will. he saw the accentuated cavities of the priest's thin face, and the pinched lines of suffering at the corners of the mouth. paul had been strong, energetic, masculine. now his speech was random, and he quavered as a palsied old man. even his personal cleanliness had, in a measure, deserted him; his soutane was stained, his hair lank and greasy. he confronted julian with a scared and piteous cowardice, compelled, yet seeking escape, then as he slowly steadied himself under julian's grip the succeeding emotions were reflected in his eyes: first shame; then a horrified grasping after his self-respect; finally, most touching of all, confidence and gratitude; and julian, seeing the cycle completed and knowing that paul was again master of himself, released the wrist and asked, in the most casual voice at his command, 'all right?' he had the sensation of having saved some one from falling. paul nodded without speaking. then he began to ask julian as to how he had employed the last eighteen months, and they talked for some time without reference to the unaccountable scene that had passed between them. paul talked with his wonted gentleness and interest, the strangeness of his manner entirely vanished; julian could have believed it a hallucination, but for the single trace left in the priest's disordered hair. red strands hung abjectly down his back. julian found his eyes drawn towards them in a horrible fascination, but, because he knew the scene must be buried unless paul himself chose to revive it, he kept his glance turned away with conscious deliberation. he was relieved when the priest left him. 'gone to do his hair'--the phrase came to his mind as he saw the priest walk briskly away, tripping with the old familiar stumble over his soutane, and saw the long wisps faintly red on the black garment. 'like a woman--exactly!' he uttered in revolt, clenching his hand at man's degradation. 'like a woman, long hair, long skirt; ready to listen to other people's troubles. unnatural existence; unnatural? it's unnatural to the point of viciousness. no wonder the man's mind is unhinged.' he was really troubled about his friend, the more so that loyalty would keep him silent and allow him to ask no questions. he thought, however, that if eve volunteered any remarks about paul it would not be disloyal to listen. the afternoon was hot and still; eve would be indoors. the traditions of his english life still clung to him sufficiently to make him chafe vaguely against the idleness of the days; he resented the concession to the climate. a demoralising place. a place where priests let their hair grow long, and went temporarily mad.... he walked in the patchy shade of the lemon-trees towards the house in a distressed and irascible frame of mind. he longed for action; his mind was never content to dwell long unoccupied. he longed for the strife the elections would bring. the house glared very white, and all the green shutters were closed; behind them, he knew, the windows would be closed too. another contradiction. in england, when one wanted to keep a house cool, one opened the windows wide. he crossed the veranda; the drawing-room was dim and empty. how absurd to paint sham flames on the ceiling in a climate where the last thing one wanted to remember was fire. he called,-- 'eve!' silence answered him. a book lying on the floor by the writing-table showed him that she had been in the room; no one else in that house would read albert samain. he picked it up and read disgustedly,-- '... des roses! des roses encore! je les adore à la souffrance. elles ont la sombre attirance des choses qui donnent la mort.' 'nauseating!' he cried, flinging the book from him. certainly the book was eve's. certainly she had been in the room, for no one else would or could have drawn that mask of a faun on the blotting paper. he looked at it carelessly, then with admiration; what malicious humour she had put into those squinting eyes, that slanting mouth! he turned the blotting paper idly--how like eve to draw on the blotting paper!--and came on other drawings: a demon, a fantastic castle, a half-obliterated sketch of himself. once he found his name, in elaborate architectural lettering, repeated all over the page. then he found a letter of which the three first words: 'eternal, exasperating eve!' and the last sentence, ' ... votre réveil qui doit être charmant dans le désordre fantaisiste de votre chambre,' made him shut the blotter in a scurry of discretion. here were all the vivid traces of her passage, but where was she? loneliness and the lack of occupation oppressed him. he lounged away from the writing-table, out into the wide passage which ran all round the central court. he paused there, his hands in his pockets, and called again,-- 'eve!' 'eve!' the echoing passage answered startlingly. presently another more tangible voice came to him as he stood staring disconsolately through the windows into the court. 'were you calling mith eve, mathter julian? the'th rethting. thall i tell her?' he was pleased to see nana, fat, stayless, slipshod, slovenly, benevolent. he kissed her, and told her she was fatter than ever. 'glad i've come back, nannie?' 'why, yeth, thurely, mathter julian.' nana's demonstrations were always restrained, respectful. she habitually boasted that although life in the easy south might have induced her to relax her severity towards her figure, she had never allowed it to impair her manners. 'can i go up to eve's room, nannie?' 'i thuppoth tho, my dear.' 'nannie, you know, you ought to be an old negress.' 'why, dear lord! me black?' 'yes; you'd be ever so much more suitable.' he ran off to eve's room upstairs, laughing, boyish again after his boredom and irritability. he had been in eve's room many times before, but with his fingers on the door handle he paused. again that strange vexation at her years had seized him. he knocked. inside, the room was very dim; the furniture bulked large in the shadows. scent, dusk, luxury lapped round him like warm water. he had an impression of soft, scattered garments, deep mirrors, chosen books, and many little bottles. suddenly he was appalled by the insolence of his own intrusion--an unbeliever bursting into a shrine. he stood silent by the door. he heard a drowsy voice singing in a murmur an absurd childish rhyme,-- 'il était noir comme un corbeau, ali, ali, ali, alo, macachebono, la roustah, la mougah, la roustah, la mougah, allah! 'il était de bonne famille, sa mère élevait des chameaux, macachebono....' he discerned the bed, the filmy veils of the muslin mosquito curtains, falling apart from a baldaquin. the lazy voice, after a moment of silence, queried,-- 'nana?' it was with an effort that he brought himself to utter,-- 'no; julian.' with an upheaval of sheets he heard her sit upright in bed, and her exclamation,-- 'who said you might come in here?' at that he laughed, quite naturally. 'why not? i was bored. may i come and talk to you?' he came round the corner of the screen and saw her sitting up, her hair tumbled and dark, her face indistinct, her shoulders emerging white from a foam of lace. he sat down on the edge of her bed, the details of the room emerging slowly from the darkness; and she herself becoming more distinct as she watched him, her shadowy eyes half sarcastic, half resentful. 'sybarite!' he said. she only smiled in answer, and put out one hand towards him. it fell listlessly on to the sheets as though she had no energy to hold it up. 'you child,' he said, 'you make me feel coarse and vulgar beside you. here am i, burning for battle, and there you lie, wasting time, wasting youth, half-asleep, luxurious, and quite unrepentant.' 'surely even you must find it too hot for battle?' 'i don't find it too hot to wish that it weren't too hot. you, on the other hand, abandon yourself contentedly; you are pleased that it is too hot for you to do anything but glide voluptuously into a siesta in the middle of the day.' 'you haven't been here long, remember, julian; you're still brisk from england. only wait; herakleion will overcome you.' 'don't!' he cried out startlingly. 'don't say it! it's prophetic. i shall struggle against it; i shall be the stronger.' she only laughed murmurously into her pillows, but he was really stirred; he stood up and walked about the room, launching spasmodic phrases. 'you and herakleion, you are all of a piece.--you shan't drag me down.--not if i am to live here.--i know one loses one's sense of values here. i learnt that when i last went away to england. i've come back on my guard.--i'm determined to remain level-headed.--i refuse to be impressed by fantastic happenings.... 'why do you stop so abruptly?' did her voice mock him? he had stopped, remembering paul. already he had blundered against something he did not understand. an impulse came to him to confide in eve; eve lying there, quietly smiling with unexpressed but unmistakable irony; eve so certain that, sooner or later, herakleion would conquer him. he would confide in her. and then, as he hesitated, he knew suddenly that eve was not trustworthy. he began again walking about the room, betraying by no word that a moment of revelation, important and dramatic, had come and passed on the tick of a clock. yet he knew he had crossed a line over which he could now never retrace his steps. he would never again regard eve in quite the same light. he absorbed the alteration with remarkable rapidity into his conception of her. he supposed that the knowledge of her untrustworthiness had always lain dormant in him waiting for the test which should some day call it out; that was why he was so little impressed by what he had mistaken for new knowledge. 'julian, sit down; how restless you are. and you look so enormous in this room, you frighten me.' he sat down, closer to her than he had sat before, and began playing with her fingers. 'how soft your hand is. it is quite boneless,' he said, crushing it together; 'it's like a little pigeon. so you think herakleion will beat me? i dare say you are right. shall i tell you something? when i was on my way here, from england, i determined that i would allow myself to be beaten. i don't know why i had that moment of revolt just now. because i am quite determined to let myself drift with the current, whether it carry me towards adventures or towards lotus-land.' 'perhaps towards both.' 'isn't that too much to hope?' 'why? they are compatible. c'est le sort de la jeunesse.' 'prophesy adventures for me!' 'my dear julian! i'm far too lazy.' 'lotus-land, then?' 'this room isn't a bad substitute,' she proffered. he wondered then at the exact extent of her meaning. he was accustomed to the amazing emotional scenes she had periodically created between them in childhood--scenes which he never afterwards could rehearse to himself; scenes whose fabric he never could dissect, because it was more fantastic, more unreal, than gossamer; scenes in which storm, anger, and heroics had figured; scenes from which he had emerged worried, shattered, usually with the ardent impress of her lips on his, and brimming with self-reproach. a calm existence was not for her; she would neither understand nor tolerate it. the door opened, and old nana came shuffling in. 'mith eve, pleath, there'th a gentleman downstairth to thee you. here'th hith card.' julian took it. 'eve, it's malteios.' that drowsy voice, indifferent and melodious,-- 'tell him to go away, nana; tell him i am resting.' 'but, dearie, what'll your mother thay?' 'tell him to go away, nana.' 'he'th the prime minithter,' nana began doubtfully. 'eve!' julian said in indignation. 'but, mith eve, you know he came latht week and you forgot he wath coming and you wath out.' 'is that so, eve? is he here by appointment with you to-day?' 'no.' 'i shall go down to him and find out whether you are speaking the truth.' he went downstairs, ignoring eve's voice that called him back. the premier was in the drawing-room, examining the insignificant ornaments on the table. their last meeting had been a memorable one, in the painted room overlooking the _platia_. when their greetings were over, julian said,-- 'i believe you were asking for my cousin, sir?' 'that is so. she promised me,' said the premier, a sly look coming over his face, 'that she would give me tea to-day. shall i have the pleasure of seeing her?' 'what,' thought julian, 'does this old scapegrace politician, who must have his mind and his days full of the coming elections, want with eve? and want so badly that he can perform the feat of coming out here from herakleion in the heat of the afternoon?' aloud he said, grimly because of the lie she had told him,-- 'she will be with you in a few moments, sir.' in eve's dark room, where nana still stood fatly and hopelessly expostulating, and eve pretended to sleep, he spoke roughly,-- 'you lied to me as usual. he is here by appointment. he is waiting. i told him you would not keep him waiting long. you must get up.' 'i shall do nothing of the sort. what right have you to dictate to me?' 'you're making mathter julian croth--and he tho thweet-tempered alwayth,' said nana's warning voice. 'does she usually behave like this, nana?' 'oh, mathter julian, it'th dreadful--and me alwayth thaving her from her mother, too. and loothing all her thingth, too, all the time. i can't keep anything in it'th plathe. only three dayth ago the lotht a diamond ring, but the never cared. the thpanith gentleman thent it to her, and the never thanked him, and then lotht the ring. and the never notithed or cared. and the getth dretheth and dretheth, and won't put them on twith. and flowerth and chocolathes thent her--they all thpoil her tho--and the biteth all the chocolathes in two to thee what'th inthide, and throwth them away and thayth the dothn't like them. that exathperating, the ith.' 'leave her to me, nannie.' 'mith naughtineth,' said nana, as she left the room. they were alone. 'eve, i am really angry. that old man!' she turned luxuriously on to her back, her arms flung wide, and lay looking at him. 'you are very anxious that i should go to him. you are not very jealous of me, are you, julian?' 'why does he come?' he asked curiously. 'you never told me....' 'there are a great many things i never tell you, my dear.' 'it is not my business and i am not interested,' he answered, 'but he has come a long way in the heat to see you, and i dislike your callousness. i insist upon your getting up.' she smiled provokingly. he dropped on his knees near her. 'darling, to please me?' she gave a laugh of sudden disdain. 'fool! i might have obeyed you; now you have thrown away your advantage.' 'have i?' he said, and, slipping his arm beneath her, he lifted her up bodily. 'where shall i put you down?' he asked, standing in the middle of the room and holding her. 'at your dressing-table?' 'why don't you steal me, julian?' she murmured, settling herself more comfortably in his grasp. 'steal you? what on earth do you mean? explain!' he said. 'oh, i don't know; if you don't understand, it doesn't matter,' she replied with some impatience, but beneath her impatience he saw that she was shaken, and, flinging one arm round his neck, she pulled herself up and kissed him on the mouth. he struggled away, displeased, brotherly, and feeling the indecency of that kiss in that darkened room, given by one whose thinly-clad, supple body he had been holding as he might hold a child's. 'you have a genius for making me angry, eve.' he stopped: she had relaxed suddenly, limp and white in his arms; with a long sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed. the warmth of her limbs reached him through the diaphanous garment she wore. he thought he had never before seen such abandonment of expression and attitude; his displeasure deepened, and an uncomplimentary word rose to his lips. 'i don't wonder....' flashed through his mind. he was shocked, as a brother might be at the betrayal of his sister's sexuality. 'eve!' he said sharply. she opened her eyes, met his, and came to herself. 'put me down!' she cried, and as he set her on her feet, she snatched at her spanish shawl and wrapped it round her. 'oh!' she said, an altered being, shamed and outraged, burying her face, 'go now, julian--go, go, go.' he went, shaking his head in perplexity: there were too many things in herakleion he failed to understand. paul, eve, malteios. this afternoon with eve, which should have been natural, had been difficult. moments of illumination were also moments of a profounder obscurity. and why should malteios return to-day, when in the preceding week, according to nana, he had been so casually forgotten? why so patient, so long-suffering, with eve? was it possible that he should be attracted by eve? it seemed to julian, accustomed still to regard her as a child, very improbable. malteios! the premier! and the elections beginning within four days--that he should spare the time! rumour said that the elections would go badly for him; that the stavridists would be returned. a bad look-out for the islands if they were. rumour said that stavridis was neglecting no means, no means whatsoever, by which he might strengthen his cause. he was more unscrupulous, younger, more vigorous, than malteios. the years of dispossession had added to his determination and energy. malteios had seriously prejudiced his popularity by his liaison with kato, a woman, as the people of herakleion never forgot, of the islands, and an avowed champion of their cause. was it possible that eve was mixed up in malteios' political schemes? julian laughed aloud at the idea of eve interesting herself in politics. but perhaps kato herself, for whom eve entertained one of her strongest and most enduring enthusiasms, had taken advantage of their friendship to interest eve in malteios' affairs? anything was possible in that preposterous state. eve, he knew, would mischievously and ignorantly espouse any form of intrigue. if malteios came with any other motive he was an old satyr--nothing more. julian's mind strayed again to the elections. the return of the stavridis party would mean certain disturbances in the islands. disturbances would mean an instant appeal for leadership. he would be reminded of the day he had spent, the only day of his life, he thought, on which he had truly lived, on aphros. tsigaridis would come, grave, insistent, to hold him to his undertakings, a figure of comedy in his absurdly picturesque clothes, but also a figure full of dignity with his unanswerable claim. he would bring forward a species of moral blackmail, to which julian, ripe for adventure and sensitive to his obligations, would surely surrender. after that there would be no drawing back.... 'i have little hope of victory,' said malteios, to whom julian, in search of information, had recourse; and hinted with infinite suavity and euphemism, that the question of election in herakleion depended largely, if not entirely, on the condition and judicious distribution of the party funds. stavridis, it appeared, had controlled larger subscriptions, more trustworthy guarantees. the christopoulos, the largest bankers, were unreliable. alexander had political ambitions. an under-secretaryship.... christopoulos _père_ had subscribed, it was true, to the malteios party, but while his right hand produced the miserable sum from his right pocket, who could tell with what generosity his left hand ladled out the drachmæ into the gaping stavridis coffers? safe in either eventuality. malteios knew his game. the premier enlarged blandly upon the situation, regretful, but without indignation. as a man of the world, he accepted its ways as herakleion knew them. julian noted his gentle shrugs, his unfinished sentences and innuendoes. it occurred to him that the premier's frankness and readiness to enlarge upon political technique were not without motive. buttoned into his high frock-coat, which the climate of herakleion was unable to abolish, he walked softly up and down the parquet floor between the lapis columns, his fingers loosely interlaced behind his back, talking to julian. in another four days he might no longer be premier, might be merely a private individual, unostentatiously working a dozen strands of intrigue. the boy was not to be neglected as a tool. he tried him on what he conceived to be his tenderest point. 'i have not been unfavourable to your islanders during my administration,'--then, thinking the method perhaps a trifle crude, he added, 'i have even exposed myself to the attack of my opponents on that score; they have made capital out of my clemency. had i been a less disinterested man, i should have had greater foresight. i should have sacrificed my sense of justice to the demands of my future.' he gave a deprecatory and melancholy smile. 'do i regret the course i chose? not for an instant. the responsibility of a statesman is not solely towards himself or his adherents. he must set it sternly aside in favour of the poor, ignorant destinies committed to his care. i lay down my office with an unburdened conscience.' he stopped in his walk and stood before julian, who, with his hands thrust in his pockets, had listened to the discourse from the depths of his habitual arm-chair. 'but you, young man, are not in my position. the door i seek is marked exit; the door you seek, entrance. i think i may, without presumption, as an old and finished man, offer you a word of prophecy.' he unlaced his fingers and pointed one of them at julian. 'you may live to be the saviour of an oppressed people, a not unworthy mission. remember that my present opponents, should they come to power, will not sympathise with your efforts, as i myself--who knows?--might have sympathised.' julian, acknowledging the warning, thought he recognised the style of the senate chamber, but failed to recognise the sentiments he had heard expressed by the premier on a former occasion, on this same subject of his interference in the affairs of the islands. he ventured to suggest as much. the premier's smile broadened, his deprecatory manner deepened. 'ah, you were younger then; hot-headed; i did not know how far i could trust you. your intentions, excellent; but your judgment perhaps a little precipitate? since then, you have seen the world; you are a man. you have returned, no doubt, ready to pick up the weapon you tentatively fingered as a boy. you will no longer be blinded by sentiment, you will weigh your actions nicely in the balance. and you will remember the goodwill of platon malteios?' he resumed his soft walk up and down the room. 'within a few weeks you may find yourself in the heart of strife. i see you as a young athlete on the threshold, doubtless as generous as most young men, as ambitious, as eager. discard the divine foolishness of allowing ideas, not facts, to govern your heart. we live in herakleion, not in utopia. we have all shed, little by little, our illusions....' after a sigh, the depth of whose genuineness neither he nor julian could accurately diagnose, he continued, brightening as he returned to the practical,-- 'stavridis--a harsher man than i. he and your islanders would come to grips within a month. i should scarcely deplore it. a question based on the struggle of nationality--for, it cannot be denied, the italian blood of your islanders severs them irremediably from the true greek of herakleion--such questions cry for decisive settlement even at the cost of a little bloodletting. submission or liberty, once and for all. that is preferable to the present irritable shilly-shally.' 'i know the alternative i should choose,' said julian. 'liberty?--the lure of the young,' said malteios, not unkindly. 'i said that i should scarcely deplore such an attempt, for it would fail; herakleion could never tolerate for long the independence of the islands. yes, it would surely fail. but from it good might emerge. a friendlier settlement, a better understanding, a more cheerful submission. believe me,' he added, seeing the cloud of obstinate disagreement upon julian's face, 'never break your heart over the failure. your islands would have learnt the lesson of the inevitable; and the great inevitable is perhaps the least intolerable of all human sorrows. there is, after all, a certain kindliness in the fate which lays the obligation of sheer necessity upon our courage.' for a moment his usual manner had left him; he recalled it with a short laugh. 'perhaps the thought that my long years of office may be nearly at an end betrays me into this undue melancholy,' he said flippantly; 'pay no attention, young man. indeed, whatever i may say, i know that you will cling to your idea of revolt. am i not right?' once more the keen, sly look was in his eyes, and julian knew that only the malteios who desired the rupture of the islands with his own political adversary, remained. he felt, in a way, comforted to be again upon the familiar ground; his conception of the man had been momentarily disarranged. 'your excellency is very shrewd,' he replied, politely and evasively. malteios shrugged and smiled the smile that had such real charm; and as he shrugged and smiled the discussion away into the region of such things dismissed, his glance travelled beyond julian to the door, his mouth curved into a more goatish smile amidst his beard, and his eyes narrowed into two slits till his whole face resembled the mask of the old faun that eve had drawn on the blotting paper. 'mademoiselle!' he murmured, advancing towards eve, who, dressed in white, appeared between the lapis-lazuli columns. iii madame lafarge gave a picnic which preceded the day of the elections, and to julian davenant it seemed that he was entering a cool, dark cavern roofed over with mysterious greenery after riding in the heat across a glaring plain. the transition from the white herakleion to the deep valley, shut in by steep, terraced hills covered with olives, ilexes, and myrtles--a valley profound, haunted, silent, hallowed by pools of black-green shadow--consciousness of the transition stole over him soothingly, as his pony picked its way down the stony path of the hill-side. he had refused to accompany the others. early in the morning he had ridden over the hills, so early that he had watched the sunrise, and had counted, from a summit, the houses on aphros in the glassy limpidity of the grecian dawn. the morning had been pure as the treble notes of a violin, the sea below bright as a pavement of diamonds. the islands lay, clear and low, delicately yellow, rose, and lilac, in the serene immensity of the dazzling waters. they seemed to him to contain every element of enchantment; cleanly of line as cameos, yet intangible as a mirage, rising lovely and gracious as aphrodite from the white flashes of their foam, fairy islands of beauty and illusion in a sea of radiant and eternal youth. a stream ran through the valley, and near the banks of the stream, in front of a clump of ilexes, gleamed the marble columns of a tiny ruined temple. julian turned his pony loose to graze, throwing himself down at full length beside the stream and idly pulling at the orchids and magenta cyclamen which grew in profusion. towards midday his solitude was interrupted. a procession of victorias accompanied by men on horseback began to wind down the steep road into the valley; from afar he watched them coming, conscious of distaste and boredom, then remembering that eve was of the party, and smiling to himself a little in relief. she would come, at first silent, unobtrusive, almost sulky; then little by little the spell of their intimacy would steal over him, and by a word or a glance they would be linked, the whole system of their relationship developing itself anew, a system elaborated by her, as he well knew; built up of personal, whimsical jokes; stimulating, inventive, she had to a supreme extent the gift of creating such a web, subtly, by meaning more than she said and saying less than she meant; giving infinite promise, but ever postponing fulfilment. 'a flirt?' he wondered to himself, lazily watching the string of carriages in one of which she was. but she was more elemental, more dangerous, than a mere flirt. on that account, and because of her wide and penetrative intelligence, he could not relegate her to the common category. yet he thought he might safely make the assertion that no man in herakleion had altogether escaped her attraction. he thought he might apply this generalisation from m. lafarge, or malteios, or don rodrigo valdez, down to the chasseur who picked up her handkerchief. (her handkerchief! ah, yes! she could always be traced, as in a paper-chase, by her scattered possessions--a handkerchief, a glove, a cigarette-case, a gardenia, a purse full of money, a powder-puff--frivolities doubly delightful and doubly irritating in a being so terrifyingly elemental, so unassailably and sarcastically intelligent.) eve, the child he had known unaccountable, passionate, embarrassing, who had written him the precocious letters on every topic in a variety of tongues, imaginative exceedingly, copiously illustrated, bursting occasionally into erratic and illegible verse; eve, with her desperate and excessive passions; eve, grown to womanhood, grown into a firebrand! he had been entertained, but at the same time slightly offended, to find her grown; his conception of her was disarranged; he had felt almost a sense of outrage in seeing her heavy hair piled upon her head; he had looked curiously at the uncovered nape of her neck, the hair brushed upwards and slightly curling, where once it had hung thick and plaited; he had noted with an irritable shame the softness of her throat in the evening dress she had worn when first he had seen her. he banished violently the recollection of her in that brief moment when in his anger he had lifted her out of her bed and had carried her across the room in his arms. he banished it with a shudder and a revulsion, as he might have banished a suggestion of incest. springing to his feet, he went forward to meet the carriages; the shadowed valley was flicked by the bright uniforms of the chasseurs on the boxes and the summer dresses of the women in the victorias; the laughter of the danish excellency already reached his ears above the hum of talk and the sliding hoofs of the horses as they advanced cautiously down the hill, straining back against their harness, and bringing with them at every step a little shower of stones from the rough surface of the road. the younger men, greeks, and secretaries of legations, rode by the side of the carriages. the danish excellency was the first to alight, fat and babbling in a pink muslin dress with innumerable flounces; julian turned aside to hide his smile. madame lafarge descended with her customary weightiness, beaming without benevolence but with a tyrannical proprietorship over all her guests. she graciously accorded her hand to julian. the chasseurs were already busy with wicker baskets. 'the return to nature,' alexander christopoulos whispered to eve. julian observed that eve looked bored and sulky; she detested large assemblies, unless she could hold their entire attention, preferring the more intimate scope of the _tête-à-tête_. amongst the largest gathering she usually contrived to isolate herself and one other, with whom she conversed in whispers. presently, he knew, she would be made to recite, or to tell anecdotes, involving imitation, and this she would perform, at first languidly, but warming with applause, and would end by dancing--he knew her programme! he rarely spoke to her, or she to him, in public. she would appear to ignore him, devoting herself to don rodrigo, or to alexander, or, most probably, to the avowed admirer of some other woman. he had frequently brought his direct and masculine arguments to bear against this practice. she listened without replying, as though she did not understand. fru thyregod was more than usually sprightly. 'now, armand, you lazy fellow, bring me my camera; this day has to be immortalised; i must have pictures of all you beautiful young men for my friends in denmark. fauns in a grecian grave! let me peep whether any of you have cloven feet.' madame lafarge put up her lorgnon, and said to the italian minister in a not very low voice,-- 'i am so fond of dear fru thyregod, but she is terribly vulgar at times.' there was a great deal of laughter over fru thyregod's sally, and some of the young men pretended to hide their feet beneath napkins. 'eve and julie, you must be the nymphs,' the danish excellency went on. eve took no notice; julie looked shy, and the sisters christopoulos angry at not being included. 'now we must all help to unpack; that is half the fun of the picnic,' said madame lafarge, in a business-like tone. under the glare of her lorgnon armand and madame delahaye attacked one basket; they nudged and whispered to one another, and their fingers became entangled under the cover of the paper wrappings. eve strolled away, valdez followed her. the persian minister who had come unobtrusively, after the manner of a humble dog, stood gently smiling in the background. julie lafarge never took her adoring eyes off eve. the immense grbits had drawn julian on one side, and was talking to him, shooting out his jaw and hitting julian on the chest for emphasis. fru thyregod, with many whispers, collected a little group to whom she pointed them out, and photographed them. 'really,' said the danish minister peevishly, to condesa valdez, 'my wife is the most foolish woman i know.' during the picnic every one was very gay, with the exception of julian, who regretted having come, and of miloradovitch, of whom eve was taking no notice at all. madame lafarge was especially pleased with the success of her expedition. she enjoyed the intimacy that existed amongst all her guests, and said as much in an aside to the roumanian minister. 'you know, _chère excellence_, i have known most of these dear friends so long; we have spent happy years together in different capitals; that is the best of diplomacy: _ce qu'il y a de beau dans la carrière c'est qu'on se retrouve toujours_.' 'it is not unlike a large family, one may say,' replied the roumanian. 'how well you phrase it!' exclaimed madame lafarge. 'listen, everybody: his excellency has made a real _mot d'esprit_, he says diplomacy is like a large family.' eve and julian looked up, and their eyes met. 'you are not eating anything, ardalion semeonovitch,' said armand (he had once spent two months in russia) to miloradovitch, holding out a plate of sandwiches. 'no, nor do i want anything,' said miloradovitch rudely, and he got up, and walked away by himself. 'dear me! _ces russes!_ what manners!' said madame lafarge, pretending to be amused; and everybody looked facetiously at eve. 'i remember once, when i was in russia, at the time that stolypin was prime minister,' don rodrigo began, 'there was a serious scandal about one of the empress's ladies-in-waiting and a son of old princess golucheff--you remember old princess golucheff, excellency? she was a bariatinsky, a very handsome woman, and serge radziwill killed himself on her account--he was a pole, one of the kieff radziwills, whose mother was commonly supposed to be _au mieux_ with stolypin (though stolypin was not at all that kind of man; he was _très province_), and most people thought that was the reason why serge occupied such a series of the highest court appointments, in spite of being a pole--the poles were particularly unpopular just then; i even remember that stanislas aveniev, in spite of having a russian mother--she was an orloff, and her jewels were proverbial even in petersburg--they had all been given her by the grand duke boris--stanislas aveniev was obliged to resign his commission in the czar's guard. however, casimir golucheff....' but everybody had forgotten the beginning of his story and only madame lafarge was left politely listening. julian overheard eve reproducing, in an undertone to armand, the style and manner of don rodrigo's conversation. he also became aware that, between her sallies, fru thyregod was bent upon retaining his attention for herself. he was disgusted with all this paraphernalia of social construction, and longed ardently for liberty on aphros. he wondered whether eve were truly satisfied, or whether she played the part merely with the humorous gusto of an artist, caught up in his own game; he wondered to what extent her mystery was due to her life's pretence? later, he found himself drifting apart with the danish excellency; he drifted, that is, beside her, tall, slack of limb, absent of mind, while she tripped with apparent heedlessness, but with actual determination of purpose. as she tripped she chattered. fair and silly, she demanded gallantry of men, and gallantry of a kind--perfunctory, faintly pitying, apologetic--she was accorded. she had enticed julian away, with a certain degree of skill, and was glad. eve had scowled blackly, in the one swift glance she had thrown them. 'your cousin enchants don rodrigo, it is clear,' fru thyregod said with malice as they strolled. julian turned to look back. he saw eve sitting with the spanish minister on the steps of the little temple. in front of the temple, the ruins of the picnic stained the valley with bright frivolity; bits of white paper fluttered, tablecloths remained spread on the ground, and laughter echoed from the groups that still lingered hilariously; the light dresses of the women were gay, and their parasols floated above them like coloured bubbles against the darkness of the ilexes. 'what desecration of the dryads' grove,' said fru thyregod, 'let us put it out of sight,' and she gave a little run forward, and then glanced over her shoulder to see if julian were following her. he came, unsmiling and leisurely. as soon as they were hidden from sight among the olives, she began to talk to him about himself, walking slowly, looking up at him now and then, and prodding meditatively with the tip of her parasol at the stones upon the ground. he was, she said, so free. he had his life before him. and she talked about herself, of the shackles of her sex, the practical difficulties of her life, her poverty, her effort to hide beneath a gay exterior a heart that was not gay. 'carl,' she said, alluding to her husband, 'has indeed charge of the affairs of norway and sweden also in herakleion, but herakleion is so tiny, he is paid as though he were a consul.' julian listened, dissecting the true from the untrue; although he knew her gaiety was no effort, but merely the child of her innate foolishness, he also knew that her poverty was a source of real difficulties to her, and he felt towards her a warm, though a bored and slightly contemptuous, friendliness. he listened to her babble, thinking more of the stream by which they walked, and of the little magenta cyclamen that grew in the shady, marshy places on its banks. fru thyregod was speaking of eve, a topic round which she perpetually hovered in an uncertainty of fascination and resentment. 'do you approve of her very intimate friendship with that singer, madame kato?' 'i am very fond of madame kato myself, fru thyregod.' 'ah, you are a man. but for eve ... a girl.... after all, what is madame kato but a common woman, a woman of the people, and the mistress of malteios into the bargain?' fru thyregod was unwontedly serious. julian had not yet realised to what extent alexander christopoulos had transferred his attentions to eve. 'you know i am an unconventional woman; every one who knows me even a little can see that i am unconventional. but when i see a child, a nice child, like your cousin eve, associated with a person like kato, i think to myself, "mabel, that is unbecoming."' she repeated,-- 'and yet i have been told that i was too unconventional. yes, carl has often reproached me, and my friends too. they say, "mabel, you are too soft-hearted, and you are too unconventional." what do you think?' julian ignored the personal. he said,-- 'i should not describe eve as a "nice child."' 'no? well, perhaps not. she is too ... too....' said fru thyregod, who, not having very many ideas of her own, liked to induce other people into supplying the missing adjective. 'she is too important,' julian said gravely. the adjective in this case was unexpected. the danish excellency could only say,-- 'i think i know what you mean.' julian, perfectly well aware that she did not, and caring nothing whether she did or no, but carelessly willing to illuminate himself further on the subject, pursued,-- 'her frivolity is a mask. her instincts alone are deep; _how_ deep, it frightens me to think. she is an artist, although, she may never produce art. she lives in a world of her own, with its own code of morals and values. the eve that we all know is a sham, the product of her own pride and humour. she is laughing at us all. the eve we know is entertaining, cynical, selfish, unscrupulous. the real eve is ...' he paused, and brought out his words with a satisfied finality, 'a rebel and an idealist.' then, glancing at his bewildered companion, he laughed and said,-- 'don't believe a word i say, fru thyregod: eve is nineteen, bent only upon enjoying her life to the full.' he knew, nevertheless, that he had swept together the loose wash of his thought into a concrete channel; and rejoiced. fru thyregod passed to a safer topic. she liked julian, and understood only one form of excitement. 'you bring with you such a breath of freshness and originality,' she said, sighing, 'into our stale little world.' his newly-found good humour coaxed him into responsiveness. 'no world can surely ever be stale to you, fru thyregod; i always think of you as endowed with perpetual youth and gaiety.' 'ah, julian, you have perfect manners, to pay so charming a compliment to an old woman like me.' she neither thought her world stale or little, nor herself old, but pathos had often proved itself of value. 'everybody knows, fru thyregod, that you are the life and soul of herakleion.' they had wandered into a little wood, and sat down on a fallen tree beside the stream. she began again prodding at the ground with her parasol, keeping her eyes cast down. she was glad to have captured julian, partly for her own sake, and partly because she knew that eve would be annoyed. 'how delightful to escape from all our noisy friends,' she said; 'we shall create quite a scandal; but i am too unconventional to trouble about that. i cannot sympathise with those limited, conventional folk who always consider appearances. i have always said, "one should be natural. life is too short for the conventions." although, i think one should refrain from giving pain. when i was a girl, i was a terrible tomboy.' he listened to her babble of coy platitudes, contrasting her with eve. 'i never lost my spirits,' she went on, in the meditative tone she thought suitable to _tête-à-tête_ conversations--it provoked intimacy, and afforded agreeable relief to her more social manner; a woman, to be charming, must be several-sided; gay in public, but a little wistful philosophy was interesting in private; it indicated sympathy, and betrayed a thinking mind,--'i never lost my spirits, although life has not always been very easy for me; still, with good spirits and perhaps a little courage one can continue to laugh, isn't that the way to take life? and on the whole i have enjoyed mine, and my little adventures too, my little harmless adventures; carl always laughs and says, "you will always have adventures, mabel, so i must make the best of it,"--he says that, though he has been very jealous at times. poor carl,' she said reminiscently, 'perhaps i have made him suffer; who knows?' julian looked at her; he supposed that her existence was made up of such experiments, and knew that the arrival of every new young man in herakleion was to her a source of flurry and endless potentialities which, alas, never fulfilled their promise, but which left her undaunted and optimistic for the next affray. 'why do i always talk about myself to you?' she said, with her little laugh; 'you must blame yourself for being too sympathetic.' he scarcely knew how their conversation progressed; he wondered idly whether eve conducted hers upon the same lines with don rodrigo valdez, or whether she had been claimed by miloradovitch, to whom she said she was engaged. did she care for miloradovitch? he was immensely rich, the owner of jewels and oil-mines, remarkably good-looking; dashing, and a gambler. at diplomatic gatherings he wore a beautiful uniform. julian had seen eve dancing with him; he had seen the russian closely following her out of a room, bending forward to speak to her, and her ironical eyes raised for an instant over the slow movement of her fan. he had seen them disappear together, and the provocative poise of her white shoulders, and the richness of the beautiful uniform, had remained imprinted on his memory. he awoke with dismay to the fact that fru thyregod had taken off her hat. she had a great quantity of soft, yellow hair into which she ran her fingers, lifting its weight as though oppressed. he supposed that the gesture was not so irrelevant to their foregoing conversation, of which he had not noticed a word, as it appeared to be. he was startled to find himself saying in a tone of commiseration,-- 'yes, it must be very heavy.' 'i wish that i could cut it all off,' fru thyregod cried petulantly. 'why, to amuse you, only look....' and to his horror she withdrew a number of pins and allowed her hair to fall in a really beautiful cascade over her shoulders. she smiled at him, parting the strands before her eyes. at that moment eve and miloradovitch came into view, wandering side by side down the path. of the four, miloradovitch alone was amused. julian was full of a shamefaced anger towards fru thyregod, and between the two women an instant enmity sprang into being like a living and visible thing. the russian drew near to fru thyregod with some laughing compliment; she attached herself desperately to him as a refuge from julian. julian and eve remained face to face with one another. 'walk with me a little,' she said, making no attempt to disguise her fury. 'my dear eve,' he said, when they were out of earshot, 'i should scarcely recognise you when you put on that expression.' he spoke frigidly. she was indeed transformed, her features coarsened and unpleasing, her soft delicacy vanished. he could not believe that he had ever thought her rare, exquisite, charming. 'i don't blame you for preferring fru thyregod,' she returned. 'i believe your vanity to be so great that you resent any man speaking to any other woman but yourself,' he said, half persuading himself that he was voicing a genuine conviction. 'very well, if you choose to believe that,' she replied. they walked a little way in angry silence. 'i detest all women,' he added presently. 'including me?' 'beginning with you.' he was reminded of their childhood with its endless disputes, and made an attempt to restore their friendship. 'come, eve, why are we quarrelling? i do not make you jealous scenes about miloradovitch.' 'far from it,' she said harshly. 'why should he want to marry you?' he began, his anger rising again. 'what qualities have you? clever, seductive, and entertaining! but, on the other hand, selfish, jealous, unkind, pernicious, indolent, vain. a bad bargain. if he knew you as well as i.... jealousy! it amounts to madness.' 'i am perhaps not jealous where miloradovitch is concerned,' she said. 'then spare me the compliment of being jealous of me. you wreck affection; you will wreck your life through your jealousy and exorbitance.' 'no doubt,' she replied in a tone of so much sadness that he became remorseful. he contrasted, moreover, her violence, troublesome, inconvenient, as it often was, with the standardised and distasteful little inanities of fru thyregod and her like, and found eve preferable. 'darling, you never defend yourself; it is very disarming.' but she would not accept the olive-branch he offered. 'sentimentality becomes you very badly, julian; keep it for fru thyregod.' 'we have had enough of fru thyregod,' he said, flushing. 'it suits you to say so; i do not forget so easily. really, julian, sometimes i think you very commonplace. from the moment you arrived until to-day, you have never been out of fru thyregod's pocket. like alexander, once. like any stray young man.' 'eve!' he said, in astonishment at the outrageous accusation. 'my little julian, have you washed the lap-dog to-day? carl always says, "mabel, you are fonder of your dogs than of your children--you are really dreadful," but i don't think that's quite fair,' said eve, in so exact an imitation of fru thyregod's voice and manner that julian was forced to smile. she went on,-- 'i expect too much of you. my imagination makes of you something which you are not. i so despise the common herd that i persuade myself that you are above it. i can persuade myself of anything,' she said scathingly, wounding him in the recesses of his most treasured vanity--her good opinion of him; 'i persuade myself that you are a titan amongst men, almost a god, but in reality, if i could see you without prejudice, what are you fit for? to be fru thyregod's lover!' 'you are mad,' he said, for there was no other reply. 'when i am jealous, i am mad,' she flung at him. 'but if you are jealous of me....' he said, appalled. 'supposing you were ever in love, your jealousy would know no bounds. it is a disease. it is the ruin of our friendship.' 'entirely.' 'you are inordinately perverse.' 'inordinately.' 'supposing i were to marry, i should not dare--what an absurd thought--to introduce you to my wife.' a truly terrible expression came into her eyes; they narrowed to little slits, and turned slightly inwards; as though herself aware of it, she bent to pick the little cyclamen. 'are you trying to tell me, julian....' 'you told me you were engaged to miloradovitch.' she stood up, regardless, and he saw the tragic pallor of her face. she tore the cyclamen to pieces beneath her white fingers. 'it is true, then?' she said, her voice dead. he began to laugh. 'you do indeed persuade yourself very easily.' 'julian, you must tell me. you must. is it true?' 'if it were?' 'i should have to kill you--or myself,' she replied with the utmost gravity. 'you are mad,' he said again, in the resigned tone of one who states a perfectly established fact. 'if i am mad, you are unutterably cruel,' she said, twisting her fingers together; 'will you answer me, yes or no? i believe it is true,' she rushed on, immolating herself, 'you have fallen in love with some woman in england, and she, naturally, with you. who is she? you have promised to marry her. you, whom i thought so free and splendid, to load yourself with the inevitable fetters!' 'i should lose caste in your eyes?' he asked, thinking to himself that eve was, when roused, scarcely a civilised being. 'but if you marry miloradovitch you will be submitting to the same fetters you think so degrading.' 'miloradovitch,' she said impatiently, 'miloradovitch will no more ensnare me than have the score of people i have been engaged to since i last saw you. you are still evading your answer.' 'you will never marry?' he dwelt on his discovery. 'nobody that i loved,' she replied without hesitation, 'but, julian, julian, you don't answer my question?' 'would you marry me if i wanted you to?' he asked carelessly. 'not for the world, but why keep me in suspense? only answer me, are you trying to tell me that you have fallen in love? if so, admit it, please, at once, and let me go; don't you see, i am leaving fru thyregod on one side, i ask you in all humility now, julian.' 'for perhaps the fiftieth time since you were thirteen,' he said, smiling. 'have you tormented me long enough?' 'very well: i am in love with the islands, and with nothing and nobody else.' 'then why had fru thyregod her hair down her back? you're lying to me, and i despise you doubly for it,' she reverted, humble no longer, but aggressive. 'fru thyregod again?' he said, bewildered. 'how little i trust you,' she broke out; 'i believe that you deceive me at every turn. kato, too; you spend hours in kato's flat. what do you do there? you write letters to people of whom i have never heard. you dined with the thyregods twice last week. kato sends you notes by hand from herakleion when you are in the country. you use the islands as dust to throw in my eyes, but i am not blinded.' 'i have had enough of this!' he cried. 'you are like everybody else,' she insisted; 'you enjoy mean entanglements, and you cherish the idea of marriage. you want a home, like everybody else. a faithful wife. children. i loathe children,' she said violently. 'you are very different from me. you are tame. i have deluded myself into thinking we were alike. you are tame, respectable. a good citizen. you have all the virtues. i will live to show you how different we are. ten years hence, you will say to your wife, "no, my dear, i really cannot allow you to know that poor eve." and your wife, well trained, submissive, will agree.' he shrugged his shoulders, accustomed to such storms, and knowing that she only sought to goad him into a rage. 'in the meantime, go back to fru thyregod; why trouble to lie to me? and to kato, go back to kato. write to the woman in england, too. i will go to miloradovitch, or to any of the others.' he was betrayed into saying,-- 'the accusation of mean entanglements comes badly from your lips.' in her heart she guessed pretty shrewdly at his real relation towards women: a self-imposed austerity, with violent relapses that had no lasting significance, save to leave him with his contemptuous distaste augmented. his mind was too full of other matters. for kato alone he had a profound esteem. eve answered his last remark,-- 'i will prove to you the little weight of my entanglements, by dismissing miloradovitch to-day; you have only to say the word.' 'you would do that--without remorse?' 'miloradovitch is nothing to me.' 'you are something to him--perhaps everything.' 'cela ne me regarde pas,' she replied. 'would you do as much for me? fru thyregod, for instance? or kato?' interested and curious, he said,-- 'to please you, i should give up kato?' 'you would not?' 'most certainly i should not. why suggest it? kato is your friend as much as mine. are all women's friendships so unstable?' 'be careful, julian: you are on the quicksands.' 'i have had enough of these topics,' he said, 'will you leave them?' 'no; i choose my own topics; you shan't dictate to me.' 'you would sacrifice miloradovitch without a thought, to please me--why should it please me?--but you would not forgo the indulgence of your jealousy! i am not grateful. our senseless quarrels,' he said, 'over which we squander so much anger and emotion.' but he did not stop to question what lay behind their important futility. he passed his hand wearily over his hair, 'i am deluded sometimes into believing in their reality and sanity. you are too difficult. you ... you distort and bewitch, until one expects to wake up from a dream. sometimes i think of you as a woman quite apart from other women, but at other times i think you live merely by and upon fictitious emotion and excitement. must your outlook be always so narrowly personal? kato, thank heaven, is very different. i shall take care to choose my friends amongst men, or amongst women like kato,' he continued, his exasperation rising. 'julian, don't be so angry: it isn't my fault that i hate politics.' he grew still angrier at her illogical short-cut to the reproach which lay, indeed, unexpressed at the back of his mind. 'i never mentioned politics. i know better. no man in his senses would expect politics from any woman so demoralisingly feminine as yourself. besides, that isn't your rôle. your rôle is to be soft, idle; a toy; a siren; the negation of enterprise. work and woman--the terms contradict one another. the woman who works, or who tolerates work, is only half a woman. the most you can hope for,' he said with scorn, 'is to inspire--and even that you do unconsciously, and very often quite against your will. you sap our energy; you sap and you destroy.' she had not often heard him speak with so much bitterness, but she did not know that his opinions in this more crystallised form dated from that slight moment in which he had divined her own untrustworthiness. 'you are very wise. i forget whether you are twenty-two or twenty-three?' 'oh, you may be sarcastic. i only know that i will never have my life wrecked by women. to-morrow the elections take place, and, after that, whatever their result, i belong to the islands.' 'i think i see you with a certain clearness,' she said more gently, 'full of illusions, independence, and young generosities--_nous passons tous par là_.' 'talk english, eve, and be less cynical; if i am twenty-two, as you reminded me, you are nineteen.' 'if you could find a woman who was a help and not a hindrance?' she suggested. 'ah!' he said, 'the blue bird! i am not likely to be taken in; i am too well on my guard.--look!' he added, 'fru thyregod and your russian friend; i leave you to them,' and before eve could voice her indignation he had disappeared into the surrounding woods. iv on the next day, the day of the elections, which was also the anniversary of the declaration of independence, herakleion blossomed suddenly, and from the earliest hour, into a striped and fluttering gaudiness. the sun shone down upon a white town beflagged into an astonishing gaiety. everywhere was whiteness, whiteness, and brilliantly coloured flags. white, green, and orange, dazzling in the sun, vivid in the breeze. and, keyed up to match the intensity of the colour, the band blared brassily, unremittingly, throughout the day from the centre of the _platia_. a parrot-town, glaring and screeching; a monkey-town, gibbering, excited, inconsequent. all the shops, save the sweet-shops, were shut, and the inhabitants flooded into the streets. not only had they decked their houses with flags, they had also decked themselves with ribbons, their women with white dresses, their children with bright bows, their carriages with paper streamers, their horses with sunbonnets. bands of young men, straw-hatted, swept arm-in-arm down the pavements, adding to the din with mouth organs, mirlitons, and tin trumpets. the trams flaunted posters in the colours of the contending parties. immense char-à-bancs, roofed over with brown holland and drawn by teams of mules, their harness hung with bells and red tassels, conveyed the voters to the polling-booths amid the cheers and imprecations of the crowd. herakleion abandoned itself deliriously to political carnival. in the immense, darkened rooms of the houses on the _platia_, the richer greeks idled, concealing their anxiety. it was tacitly considered beneath their dignity to show themselves in public during that day. they could but await the fruition or the failure of their activities during the preceding weeks. heads of households were for the most part morose, absorbed in calculations and regrets. old christopoulos, looking more bleached than usual, wished he had been more generous. that secretaryship for alexander.... in the great sala of his house he paced restlessly up and down, biting his finger nails, and playing on his fingers the tune of the many thousand drachmæ he might profitably have expended. the next election would not take place for five years. at the next election he would be a great deal more lavish. he had made the same resolution at every election during the past thirty years. in the background, respectful of his silence, themselves dwarfed and diminutive in the immense height of the room, little knots of his relatives and friends whispered together, stirring cups of tisane. heads were very close together, glances at old christopoulos very frequent. visitors, isolated or in couples, strolled in unannounced and informally, stayed for a little, strolled away again. a perpetual movement of such circulation rippled through the houses in the _platia_ throughout the day, rumour assiduous in its wake. fru thyregod alone, with her fat, silly laugh, did her best wherever she went to lighten the funereal oppression of the atmosphere. the greeks she visited were not grateful. unlike the populace in the streets, they preferred taking their elections mournfully. by midday the business of voting was over, and in the houses of the _platia_ the greeks sat round their luncheon-tables with the knowledge that the vital question was now decided, though the answer remained as yet unknown, and that in the polling-booths an army of clerks sat feverishly counting, while the crowd outside, neglectful of its meal, swarmed noisily in the hope of news. in the houses of the _platia_, on this one day of the year, the greeks kept open table. each vast dining-room, carefully darkened and indistinguishable in its family likeness from its neighbour in the house on either side, offered its hospitality under the inevitable chandelier. in each, the host greeted the new-comer with the same perfunctory smile. in each, the busy servants came and went, carrying dishes and jugs of orangeade--for levantine hospitality, already heavily strained, boggled at wine--among the bulky and old-fashioned sideboards. all joyousness was absent from these gatherings, and the closed shutters served to exclude, not only the heat, but also the strains of the indefatigable band playing on the _platia_. out in the streets the popular excitement hourly increased, for if the morning had been devoted to politics, the afternoon and evening were to be devoted to the annual feast and holiday of the declaration of independence. the national colours, green and orange, seemed trebled in the town. they hung from every balcony and were reproduced in miniature in every buttonhole. only here and there an islander in his fustanelle walked quickly with sulky and averted eyes, rebelliously innocent of the brilliant cocarde, and far out to sea the rainbow islands shimmered with never a flag to stain the distant whiteness of the houses upon aphros. the houses of the _platia_ excelled all others in the lavishness of their patriotic decorations. the balconies of the club were draped in green and orange, with the arms of herakleion arranged in the centre in electric lights for the evening illumination. the italian consulate drooped its complimentary flag. the house of platon malteios--premier or ex-premier? no one knew--was almost too ostentatiously patriotic. the cathedral, on the opposite side, had its steps carpeted with red and the spaciousness of its porch festooned with the colours. from the central window of the davenant house, opposite the sea, a single listless banner hung in motionless folds. it had, earlier in the day, occasioned a controversy. julian had stood in the centre of the frescoed drawing-room, flushed and constrained. 'father, that flag on our house insults the islands. it can be seen even from aphros!' 'my dear boy, better that it should be seen from aphros than that we should offend herakleion.' 'what will the islanders think?' 'they are accustomed to seeing it there every year.' 'if i had been at home....' 'when this house is yours, julian, you will no doubt do as you please; so long as it is mine, i beg you not to interfere.' mr davenant had spoken in his curtest tones. he had added,-- 'i shall go to the cathedral this afternoon.' the service in the cathedral annually celebrated the independence of herakleion. julian slipped out of the house, meaning to mix with the ill-regulated crowd that began to collect on the _platia_ to watch for the arrival of the notables, but outside the door of the club he was discovered by alexander christopoulos who obliged him to follow him upstairs to the christopoulos drawing-room. 'my father is really too gloomy for me to confront alone,' alexander said, taking julian's arm and urging him along; 'also i have spent the morning in the club, which exasperates him. he likes me to sit at home while he stands looking at me and mournfully shaking his head.' they came into the sala together, where old christopoulos paced up and down in front of the shuttered windows, and a score of other people sat whispering over their cups of tisane. white dresses, dim mirrors, and the dull gilt of furniture gleamed here and there in the shadows of the vast room. 'any news? any news?' the banker asked of the two young men. 'you know quite well, father, that no results are to be declared until seven o'clock this evening.' alexander opened a section of a venetian blind, and as a shaft of sunlight fell startlingly across the floor a blare of music burst equally startlingly upon the silence. 'the _platia_ is crowded already,' said alexander, looking out. the hum of the crowd became audible, mingled with the music; explosions of laughter, and some unexplained applause. the shrill cry of a seller of iced water rang immediately beneath the window. the band in the centre continued to shriek remorselessly an antiquated air of the paris boulevards. 'at what time is the procession due?' asked fru thyregod over julian's shoulder. 'at five o'clock; it should arrive at any moment,' julian said, making room for the danish excellency. 'i adore processions,' cried fru thyregod, clapping her hands, and looking brightly from julian to alexander. alexander whispered to julie lafarge, who had come up,-- 'i am sure fru thyregod has gone from house to house and from legation to legation, and has had a meal at each to-day.' somebody suggested,-- 'let us open the shutters and watch the procession from the balconies.' 'oh, what a good idea!' cried fru thyregod, clapping her hands again and executing a pirouette. down in the _platia_ an indefinite movement was taking place; the band stopped playing for the first time that day, and began shuffling with all its instruments to one side. voices were then heard raised in tones of authority. a cleavage appeared in the crowd, which grew in length and width as though a wedge were being gradually driven into that reluctant confusion of humanity. 'a path for the procession,' said old christopoulos, who, although not pleased at that frivolous flux of his family and guests on to the balconies of his house, had joined them, overcome by his natural curiosity. the path cut in the crowd now ran obliquely across the _platia_ from the end of the rue royale to the steps of the cathedral opposite, and upon it the confetti with which the whole _platia_ was no doubt strewn became visible. the police, with truncheons in their hands, were pressing the people back to widen the route still further. they wore their gala hats, three-cornered, with upright plumes of green and orange nodding as they walked. 'look at sterghiou,' said alexander. the chief of police rode vaingloriously down the route looking from left to right, and saluting with his free hand. the front of his uniform was crossed with broad gold hinges, and plaits of yellow braid disappeared mysteriously into various pockets. one deduced whistles; pencils; perhaps a knife. although he did not wear feathers in his hat, one knew that only the utmost self-restraint had preserved him from them. here the band started again with a march, and sterghiou's horse shied violently and nearly unseated him. 'the troops!' said old christopoulos with emotion. debouching from the rue royale, the army came marching four abreast. as it was composed of only four hundred men, and as it never appeared on any other day of the year, its general panaïoannou always mobilised it in its entirety on the national festival. this entailed the temporary closing of the casino in order to release the croupiers, who were nearly all in the ranks, and led to a yearly dispute between the general and the board of administration. 'there was once a croupier,' said alexander, 'who was admitted to the favour of a certain grand-duchess until the day when, indiscreetly coming into the dressing-room where the lady was arranging and improving her appearance, he said, through sheer force of habit, "madame, les jeux sont faits?" and was dismissed for ever by her reply, "rien ne va plus."' the general himself rode in the midst of his troops, in his sky-blue uniform, to which the fantasy of his buda-pesth costumier had added for the occasion a slung hussar jacket of white cloth. his gray moustache was twisted fiercely upwards, and curved like a scimitar across his face. he rode with his hand on his hip, slowly scanning the windows and balconies of the _platia_, which by now were crowded with people, gravely saluting his friends as he passed. around him marched his bodyguard of six, a captain and five men; the captain carried in one hand a sword, and in the other--nobody knew why--a long frond of palm. the entire army tramped by, hot, stout, beaming, and friendly. at one moment some one threw down a handful of coins from a window, and the ranks were broken in a scramble for the coppers. julian, who was leaning apart in a corner of his balcony, heard a laugh like a growl behind him as the enormous hand of grbits descended on his shoulder. 'remember the lesson, young man: if you are called upon to deal with the soldiers of herakleion, a fistful of silver amongst them will scatter them.' julian thought apprehensively that they must be overheard, but grbits continued in supreme unconsciousness,-- 'look at their army, composed of shop-assistants and croupiers. look at their general--a general in his spare moments, but in the serious business of his life a banker and an intriguer like the rest of them. i doubt whether he has ever seen anything more dead in his life than a dead dog in a gutter. i could pick him up and squash in his head like an egg.' grbits extended his arm and slowly unfolded the fingers of his enormous hand. at the same time he gave his great laugh that was like the laugh of a good-humoured ogre. 'at your service, young man,' he said, displaying the full breadth of his palm to julian, 'whenever you stand in need of it. the stavridists will be returned to-day; lose no time; show them your intentions.' he impelled julian forward to the edge of the balcony and pointed across to the davenant house. 'that flag, young man: see to it that it disappears within the hour after the results of the elections are announced.' the army was forming itself into two phalanxes on either side of the cathedral steps. panaïoannou caracoled up and down shouting his orders, which were taken up and repeated by the busy officers on foot. meanwhile the notables in black coats were arriving in a constant stream that flowed into the cathedral; old christopoulos had already left the house to attend the religious ceremony; the foreign ministers and consuls attended out of compliment to herakleion; madame lafarge had rolled down the route in her barouche with her bearded husband; malteios had crossed the _platia_ from his own house, and stavridis came, accompanied by his wife and daughters. still the band played on, the crowd laughed, cheered, or murmured in derision, and the strident cries of the water-sellers rose from all parts of the _platia_. suddenly the band ceased to play, and in the hush only the hum of the crowd continued audible. the religious procession came walking very slowly from the rue royale, headed by a banner and by a file of young girls, walking two by two, in white dresses, with wreaths of roses on their heads. as they walked they scattered sham roses out of baskets, the gesture reminiscent of the big picture in the senate-room. it was customary for the premier of the republic to walk alone, following these young girls, black and grave in his frock-coat after their virginal white, but on this occasion, as no one knew who the actual premier was, a blank space was left to represent the problematical absentee. following the space came the premier's habitual escort, a posse of police; it should have been a platoon of soldiers, but panaïoannou always refused to consent to such a diminution of his army. 'they say,' grbits remarked to julian in this connection, 'that the general withdraws even the sentries from the frontier to swell his ranks.' 'herakleion is open to invasion,' said julian, smiling. grbits replied sententiously, with the air of one creating a new proverb,-- 'herakleion is open to invasion, but who wants to invade herakleion?' the crowd watched the passage of the procession with the utmost solemnity. not a sound was now heard but the monotonous step of feet. religious awe had hushed political hilarity. archbishop and bishops; archmandrites and _papás_ of the country districts, passed in a mingling of scarlet, purple and black. all the pomp of herakleion had been pressed into service--all the clamorous, pretentious pomp, shouting for recognition, beating on a hollow drum; designed to impress the crowd; and perhaps, also, to impress, beyond the crowd, the silent islands that possessed no army, no clergy, no worldly trappings, but that suffered and struggled uselessly, pitiably, against the tinsel tyrant in vain but indestructible rebellion. * * * * * * as five o'clock drew near, the entire population seemed to be collected in the _platia_. the white streak that had marked the route of the procession had long ago disappeared, and the square was now, seen from above, only a dense and shifting mass of people. in the christopoulos drawing-room, where julian still lingered, talking to grbits and listening to the alternate foolishness, fanaticism, and ferocious good-humour of the giant, the greeks rallied in numbers with only one topic on their lips. old christopoulos was frankly biting his nails and glancing at the clock; alexander but thinly concealed his anxiety under a dribble of his usual banter. the band had ceased playing, and the subtle ear could detect an inflection in the very murmur of the crowd. 'let us go on to the balcony again,' grbits said to julian; 'the results will be announced from the steps of malteios' house.' they went out; some of the greeks followed them, and all pressed behind, near the window openings. 'it is a more than usually decisive day for herakleion,' said old christopoulos, and julian knew that the words were spoken at, although not to, him. he felt that the greeks looked upon him as an intruder, wishing him away so that they might express their opinions freely, but in a spirit of contrariness he remained obstinately. a shout went up suddenly from the crowd: a little man dressed in black, with a top-hat, and a great many white papers in his hand, had appeared in the frame of malteios' front-door. he stood on the steps, coughed nervously, and dropped his papers. 'inefficient little rat of a secretary!' cried alexander in a burst of fury. 'listen!' said grbits. a long pause of silence from the whole _platia_, in which one thin voice quavered, reaching only the front row of the crowd. 'stavridis has it,' grbits said quietly, who had been craning over the edge of the balcony. his eyes twinkled maliciously, delightedly, at julian across the group of mortified greeks. 'an immense majority,' he invented, enjoying himself. julian was already gone. slipping behind old christopoulos, whose saffron face had turned a dirty plum colour, he made his way downstairs and out into the street. a species of riot, in which the police, having failed successfully to intervene, were enthusiastically joining, had broken out in the _platia_. some shouted for stavridis, some for malteios; some railed derisively against the islands. people threw their hats into the air, waved their arms, and kicked up their legs. some of them were vague as to the trend of their own opinions, others extremely determined, but all were agreed about making as much noise as possible. julian passed unchallenged to his father's house. inside the door he found aristotle talking with three islanders. they laid hold of him, urgent though respectful, searching his face with eager eyes. 'it means revolt at last; you will not desert us, kyrie?' he replied,-- 'come with me, and you will see.' they followed him up the stairs, pressing closely after him. on the landing he met eve and kato, coming out of the drawing-room. the singer was flushed, two gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair, and she had thrown open the front of her dress. eve hung on her arm. 'julian!' kato exclaimed, 'you have heard, platon has gone?' in her excitement she inadvertently used malteios' christian name. 'it means,' he replied, 'that stavridis, now in power, will lose no time in bringing against the islands all the iniquitous reforms we know he contemplates. it means that the first step must be taken by us.' his use of the pronoun ranged himself, kato, aristotle, the three islanders, and the invisible islands into an instant confederacy. kato responded to it,-- 'thank god for this.' they waited in complete confidence for his next words. he had shed his aloofness, and all his efficiency of active leadership was to the fore. 'where is my father?' 'he went to the cathedral; he has not come home yet, kyrie.' julian passed into the drawing-room, followed by eve and kato and the four men. outside the open window, fastened to the balcony, flashed the green and orange flag of herakleion. julian took a knife from his pocket, and, cutting the cord that held it, withdrew flag and flag-staff into the room and flung it on to the ground. 'take it away,' he said to the islanders, 'or my father will order it to be replaced. and if he orders another to be hung out in its place,' he added, looking at them with severity, 'remember there is no other flag in the house, and none to be bought in herakleion.' at that moment a servant from the country-house came hurriedly into the room, drew julian unceremoniously aside, and broke into an agitated recital in a low voice. eve heard julian saying,-- 'nicolas sends for me? but he should have given a reason. i cannot come now, i cannot leave herakleion.' and the servant,-- 'kyrie, the major-domo impressed upon me that i must on no account return without you. something has occurred, something serious. what it is i do not know. the carriage is waiting at the back entrance; we could not drive across the _platia_ on account of the crowds.' 'i shall have to go, i suppose,' julian said to eve and kato. 'i will go at once, and will return, if possible, this evening. nicolas would not send without an excellent reason, though he need not have made this mystery. possibly a message from aphros.... in any case, i must go.' 'i will come with you,' eve said unexpectedly. v in almost unbroken silence they drove out to the country-house, in a hired victoria, to the quick, soft trot of the two little lean horses, away from the heart of the noisy town; past the race-course with its empty stands; under the ilex-avenue in a tunnel of cool darkness; along the road, redolent with magnolias in the warmth of the evening; through the village, between the two white lodges; and round the bend of the drive between the bushes of eucalyptus. eve had spoken, but he had said abruptly,-- 'don't talk; i want to think,' and she, after a little gasp of astonished indignation, had relapsed languorous into her corner, her head propped on her hand, and her profile alone visible to her cousin. he saw, in the brief glance that he vouchsafed her, that her red mouth looked more than usually sulky, in fact not unlike the mouth of a child on the point of tears, a very invitation to inquiry, but, more from indifference than deliberate wisdom, he was not disposed to take up the challenge. he too sat silent, his thoughts flying over the day, weighing the consequences of his own action, trying to forecast the future. he was far away from eve, and she knew it. at times he enraged and exasperated her almost beyond control. his indifference was an outrage on her femininity. she knew him to be utterly beyond her influence: taciturn when he chose, ill-tempered when he chose, exuberant when he chose, rampageous, wild; insulting to her at moments; domineering whatever his mood, and regardless of her wishes; yet at the same time unconscious of all these things. alone with her now, he had completely forgotten her presence by his side. her voice broke upon his reflections,-- 'thinking of the islands, julian?' and her words joining like a cogwheel smoothly on to the current of his mind, he answered naturally,-- 'yes,' 'i thought as much. i have something to tell you. you may not be interested. i am no longer engaged to miloradovitch.' 'since when?' 'since yesterday evening. since you left me, and ran away into the woods. i was angry, and vented my anger on him.' 'was that fair?' 'he has you to thank. it has happened before--with others.' roused for a second from his absorption, he impatiently shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back, and looked out over the sea. eve was again silent, brooding and resentful in her corner. presently he turned towards her, and said angrily, reverting to the islands,-- 'you are the vainest and most exorbitant woman i know. you resent one's interest in anything but yourself.' as she did not answer, he added,-- 'how sulky you look; it's very unbecoming.' was no sense of proportion or of responsibility ever to weigh upon her beautiful shoulders? he was irritated, yet he knew that his irritation was half-assumed, and that in his heart he was no more annoyed by her fantasy than by the fantasy of herakleion. they matched each other; their intangibility, their instability, were enough to make a man shake his fists to heaven, yet he was beginning to believe that their colour and romance--for he never dissociated eve and herakleion in his mind--were the dearest treasures of his youth. he turned violently and amazingly upon her. 'eve, i sometimes hate you, damn you; but you are the rainbow of my days.' she smiled, and, enlightened, he perceived with interest, curiosity, and amused resignation, the clearer grouping of the affairs of his youthful years. fantasy to youth! sobriety to middle-age! carried away, he said to her,-- 'eve! i want adventure, eve!' her eyes lit up in instant response, but he could not read her inward thought, that the major part of his adventure should be, not aphros, but herself. he noted, however, her lighted eyes, and leaned over to her. 'you are a born adventurer, eve, also.' she remained silent, but her eyes continued to dwell on him, and to herself she was thinking, always sardonic although the matter was of such perennial, such all-eclipsing importance to her,-- 'a la bonne heure, he realises my existence.' 'what a pity you are not a boy; we could have seen the adventure of the islands through together.' ('the islands always!' she thought ruefully.) 'i should like to cross to aphros to-night,' he murmured, with absent eyes.... ('gone again,' she thought. 'i held him for a moment.') when they reached the house no servants were visible, but in reply to the bell a young servant appeared, scared, white-faced, and, as rapidly disappearing, was replaced by the old major-domo. he burst open the door into the passage, a crowd of words pressing on each other's heels in his mouth; he had expected julian alone; when he saw eve, who was idly turning over the letters that awaited her, he clapped his hand tightly over his lips, and stood, struggling with his speech, balancing himself in his arrested impetus on his toes. 'well, nicolas?' said julian. the major-domo exploded, removing his hand from his mouth,-- 'kyrie! a word alone....' and as abruptly replaced the constraining fingers. julian followed him through the swing door into the servants' quarters, where the torrent broke loose. 'kyrie, a disaster! i have sent men with a stretcher. i remained in the house myself looking for your return. father paul--yes, yes, it is he--drowned--yes, drowned--at the bottom of the garden. come, kyrie, for the love of god. give directions. i am too old a man. god be praised, you have come. only hasten. the men are there already with lanterns.' he was clinging helplessly to julian's wrist, and kept moving his fingers up and down julian's arm, twitching fingers that sought reassurance from firmer muscles, in a distracted way, while his eyes beseechingly explored julian's face. julian, shocked, jarred, incredulous, shook off the feeble fingers in irritation. the thing was an outrage on the excitement of the day. the transition to tragedy was so violent that he wished, in revolt, to disbelieve it. 'you must be mistaken, nicolas!' 'kyrie, i am not mistaken. the body is lying on the shore. you can see it there. i have sent lanterns and a stretcher. i beg of you to come.' he spoke, tugging at julian's sleeve, and as julian remained unaccountably immovable he sank to his knees, clasping his hands and raising imploring eyes. his fustanelle spread its pleats in a circle on the stone floor. his story had suddenly become vivid to julian with the words, 'the body is lying on the shore'; 'drowned,' he had said before, but that had summoned no picture. the body was lying on the shore. the body! paul, brisk, alive, familiar, now a body, merely. the body! had a wave, washing forward, deposited it gently, and retreated without its burden? or had it floated, pale-faced under the stars, till some man, looking by chance down at the sea from the terrace at the foot of the garden, caught that pale, almost phosphorescent gleam rocking on the swell of the water? the old major-domo followed julian's stride between the lemon-trees, obsequious and conciliatory. the windows of the house shone behind them, the house of tragedy, where eve remained as yet uninformed, uninvaded by the solemnity, the reality, of the present. later, she would have to be told that a man's figure had been wrenched from their intimate and daily circle. the situation appeared grotesquely out of keeping with the foregoing day, and with the wide and gentle night. from the paved walk under the pergola of gourds rough steps led down to the sea. julian, pausing, perceived around the yellow squares of the lanterns the indistinct figures of men, and heard their low, disconnected talk breaking intermittently on the continuous wash of the waves. the sea that he loved filled him with a sudden revulsion for the indifference of its unceasing movement after its murder of a man. it should, in decency, have remained quiet, silent; impenetrable, unrepentant, perhaps; inscrutable, but at least silent; its murmur echoed almost as the murmur of a triumph.... he descended the steps. as he came into view, the men's fragmentary talk died away; their dim group fell apart; he passed between them, and stood beside the body of paul. death. he had never seen it. as he saw it now, he thought that he had never beheld anything so incontestably real as its irrevocable stillness. here was finality; here was defeat beyond repair. in the face of this judgment no revolt was possible. only acceptance was possible. the last word in life's argument had been spoken by an adversary for long remote, forgotten; an adversary who had remained ironically dumb before the babble, knowing that in his own time, with one word, he could produce the irrefutable answer. there was something positively satisfying in the faultlessness of the conclusion. he had not thought that death would be like this. not cruel, not ugly, not beautiful, not terrifying--merely unanswerable. he wondered now at the multitude of sensations that had chased successively across his mind or across his vision: the elections, fru thyregod, the jealousy of eve, his incredulity and resentment at the news, his disinclination for action, his indignation against the indifference of the sea; these things were vain when here, at his feet, lay the ultimate solution. paul lay on his back, his arms straight down his sides, and his long, wiry body closely sheathed in the wet soutane. the square toes of his boots stuck up, close together, like the feet of a swathed mummy. his upturned face gleamed white with a tinge of green in the light of the lanterns, and appeared more luminous than they. so neat, so orderly he lay; but his hair, alone disordered, fell in wet red wisps across his neck and along the ground behind his head. at that moment from the direction of herakleion there came a long hiss and a rush of bright gold up into the sky; there was a crackle of small explosions, and fountains of gold showered against the night as the first fireworks went up from the quays. rockets soared, bursting into coloured stars among the real stars, and plumes of golden light spread themselves dazzlingly above the sea. faint sounds of cheering were borne upon the breeze. the men around the body of the priest waited, ignorant and bewildered, relieved that some one had come to take command. their eyes were bent upon julian as he stood looking down; they thought he was praying for the dead. presently he became aware of their expectation, and pronounced with a start,-- 'bind up his hair!' fingers hastened clumsily to deal with the stringy red locks; the limp head was supported, and the hair knotted somehow into a semblance of its accustomed roll. the old major-domo quavered in a guilty voice, as though taking the blame for carelessness,-- 'the hat is lost, kyrie.' julian let his eyes travel over the little group of men, islanders all, with an expression of searching inquiry. 'which of you made this discovery?' it appeared that one of them, going to the edge of the sea in expectation of the fireworks, had noticed, not the darkness of the body, but the pallor of the face, in the water not far out from the rocks. he had waded in and drawn the body ashore. dead paul lay there deaf and indifferent to this account of his own finding. 'no one can explain....' ah, no! and he, who could have explained, was beyond the reach of their curiosity. julian looked at the useless lips, unruffled even by a smile of sarcasm. he had known paul all his life, had learnt from him, travelled with him, eaten with him, chaffed him lightly, but never, save in that one moment when he had gripped the priest by the wrist and had looked with steadying intention into his eyes, had their intimate personalities brushed in passing. julian had no genius for friendship.... he began to see that this death had ended an existence which had run parallel with, but utterly walled off from, his own. in shame the words tore themselves from him,-- 'had he any trouble?' the men slowly, gravely, mournfully shook their heads. they could not tell. the priest had moved amongst them, charitable, even saintly; yes, saintly, and one did not expect confidences of a priest. a priest was a man who received the confidences of other men. julian heard, and, possessed by a strong desire, a necessity, for self-accusation, he said to them in a tone of urgent and impersonal justice, as one who makes a declaration, expecting neither protest nor acquiescence,-- 'i should have inquired into his loneliness.' they were slightly startled, but, in their ignorance, not over-surprised, only wondering why he delayed in giving the order to move the body on to the stretcher and carry it up to the church. farther up the coast, the rockets continued to soar, throwing out bubbles of green and red and orange, fantastically tawdry. julian remained staring at the unresponsive corpse, repeating sorrowfully,-- 'i should have inquired--yes, i should have inquired--into his loneliness.' he spoke with infinite regret, learning a lesson, shedding a particle of his youth. he had taken for granted that other men's lives were as promising, as full of dissimulated eagerness, as his own. he had walked for many hours up and down paul's study, lost in an audible monologue, expounding his theories, tossing his rough head, emphasising, enlarging, making discoveries, intent on his egotism, hewing out his convictions, while the priest sat by the table, leaning his head on his hand, scarcely contributing a word, always listening. during those hours, surely, his private troubles had been forgotten? or had they been present, gnawing, beneath the mask of sympathy? a priest was a man who received the confidences of other men! 'carry him up,' julian said, 'carry him up to the church.' he walked away alone as the dark cortège set itself in movement, his mind strangely accustomed to the fact that paul would no longer frequent their house and that the long black figure would no longer stroll, tall and lean, between the lemon-trees in the garden. the fact was more simple and more easily acceptable than he could have anticipated. it seemed already quite an old-established fact. he remembered with a shock of surprise, and a raising of his eyebrows, that he yet had to communicate it to eve. he knew it so well himself that he thought every one else must know it too. he was immeasurably more distressed by the tardy realisation of his own egotism in regard to paul, than by the fact of paul's death. he walked very slowly, delaying the moment when he must speak to eve. he sickened at the prospect of the numerous inevitable inquiries that would be made to him by both his father and his uncle. he would never hint to them that the priest had had a private trouble. he rejoiced to remember his former loyalty, and to know that eve remained ignorant of that extraordinary, unexplained conversation when paul had talked about the mice. mice in the church! he, julian, must see to the decent covering of the body. and of the face, especially of the face. an immense golden wheel flared out of the darkness; whirled, and died away above the sea. in the dim church the men had set down the stretcher before the iconostase. julian felt his way cautiously amongst the rush-bottomed chairs. the men were standing about the stretcher, their fishing caps in their hands, awed into a whispering mysticism which julian's voice harshly interrupted,-- 'go for a cloth, one of you--the largest cloth you can find.' he had spoken loudly in defiance of the melancholy peace of the church, that received so complacently within its ready precincts the visible remains from which the spirit, troubled and uncompanioned in life, had fled. he had always thought the church complacent, irritatingly remote from pulsating human existence, but never more so than now when it accepted the dead body as by right, firstly within its walls, and lastly within its ground, to decompose and rot, the body of its priest, among the bodies of other once vital and much-enduring men. 'kyrie, we can find only two large cloths, one a dust-sheet, and one a linen cloth to spread over the altar. which are we to use?' 'which is the larger?' 'kyrie, the dust-sheet, but the altar-cloth is of linen edged with lace.' 'use the dust-sheet; dust to dust,' said julian bitterly. shocked and uncomprehending, they obeyed. the black figure now became a white expanse, under which the limbs and features defined themselves as the folds sank into place. 'he is completely covered over?' 'completely, kyrie.' 'the mice cannot run over his face?' 'kyrie, no!' 'then no more can be done until one of you ride into herakleion for the doctor.' he left them, re-entering the garden by the side-gate which paul had himself constructed with his capable, carpenter's hands. there was now no further excuse for delay; he must exchange the darkness for the unwelcome light, and must share out his private knowledge to eve. those men, fisher-folk, simple folk, had not counted as human spectators, but rather as part of the brotherhood of night, nature, and the stars. he waited for eve in the drawing-room, having assured himself that she had been told nothing, and there, presently, he saw her come in, her heavy hair dressed high, a fan and a flower drooping from her hand, and a fringed spanish shawl hanging its straight silk folds from her escaping shoulders. before her indolence, and her slumbrous delicacy, he hesitated. he wildly thought that he would allow the news to wait. tragedy, reality, were at that moment so far removed from her.... she said in delight, coming up to him, and forgetful that they were in the house in obedience to a mysterious and urgent message,-- 'julian, have you seen the fireworks? come out into the garden. we'll watch.' he put his arm through her bare arm,-- 'eve, i must tell you something.' 'fru thyregod?' she cried, and the difficulty of his task became all but insurmountable. 'something serious. something about father paul.' her strange eyes gave him a glance of undefinable suspicion. 'what about him?' 'he has been found, in the water, at the bottom of the garden.' 'in the water?' 'in the sea. drowned.' he told her all the circumstances, doggedly, conscientiously, under the mockery of the tinsel flames that streamed out from the top of the columns, and of the distant lights flashing through the windows, speaking as a man who proclaims in a foreign country a great truth bought by the harsh experience of his soul, to an audience unconversant with his alien tongue. this truth that he had won, in the presence of quiet stars, quieter death, and simple men, was desecrated by its recital to a vain woman in a room where the very architecture was based on falsity. still he persevered, believing that his own intensity of feeling must end in piercing its way to the foundations of her heart. he laid bare even his harassing conviction of his neglected responsibility,-- 'i should have suspected ... i should have suspected....' he looked at eve; she had broken down and was sobbing, paul's name mingled incoherently with her sobs. he did not doubt that she was profoundly shocked, but with a new-found cynicism he ascribed her tears to shock rather than to sorrow. he himself would have been incapable of shedding a single tear. he waited quietly for her to recover herself. 'oh, julian! poor paul! how terrible to die like that, alone, in the sea, at night....' for a moment her eyes were expressive of real horror, and she clasped julian's hand, gazing at him while all the visions of her imagination were alive in her eyes. she seemed to be on the point of adding something further, but continued to cry for a few moments, and then said, greatly sobered, 'you appear to take for granted that he has killed himself?' he considered this. up to the present no doubt whatever had existed in his mind. the possibility of an accident had not occurred to him. the very quality of repose and peace that he had witnessed had offered itself to him as the manifest evidence that the man had sought the only solution for a life grown unendurable. he had acknowledged the man's wisdom, bowing before his recognition of the conclusive infallibility of death as a means of escape. cowardly? so men often said, but circumstances were conceivable--circumstances in the present case unknown, withheld, and therefore not to be violated by so much as a hazarded guess--circumstances were conceivable in which no other course was to be contemplated. he replied with gravity,-- 'i do believe he put an end to his life.' the secret reason would probably never be disclosed; even if it came within sight, julian must now turn his eyes the other way. the secret which he might have, nay, should have, wrenched from his friend's reserve while he still lived, must remain sacred and unprofaned now that he was dead. not only must he guard it from his own knowledge, but from the knowledge of others. with this resolution he perceived that he had already blundered. 'eve, i have been wrong; this thing must be presented as an accident. i have no grounds for believing that he took his life. i must rely on you to support me. in fairness on poor paul.... he told me nothing. a man has a right to his own reticence.' he paused, startled at the truth of his discovery, and cried out, taking his head between his hands,-- 'oh god! the appalling loneliness of us all!' he shook his head despairingly for a long moment with his hands pressed over his temples. dropping his hands with a gesture of discouragement and lassitude, he regarded eve. 'i've found things out to-night, i think i've aged by five years. i know that paul suffered enough to put an end to himself. we can't tell what he suffered from. i never intended to let you think he had suffered. we must never let any one else suspect it. but imagine the stages and degrees of suffering which led him to that state of mind; imagine his hours, his days, and specially his nights. i looked on him as a village priest, limited to his village; i thought his long hair funny; god forgive me, i slightly despised him. you, eve, you thought him ornamental, a picturesque appendage to the house. and all that while, he was moving slowly towards the determination that he must kill himself.... perhaps, probably, he took his decision yesterday, when you and i were at the picnic. when fru thyregod.... for months, perhaps, or for years, he had been living with the secret that was to kill him. he knew, but no one else knew. he shared his knowledge with no one. i think i shall never look at a man again without awe, and reverence, and terror.' he was trembling strongly, discovering his fellows, discovering himself, his glowing eyes never left eve's face. he went on talking rapidly, as though eager to translate all there was to translate into words before the aroused energy deserted him. 'you vain, you delicate, unreal thing, do you understand at all? have you ever seen a dead man? you don't know the meaning of pain. you inflict pain for your amusement. you thing of leisure, you toy! your deepest emotion is your jealousy. you can be jealous even where you cannot love. you make a plaything of men's pain--you woman! you can change your personality twenty times a day. you can't understand a man's slow, coherent progression; he, always the same person, scarred with the wounds of the past. to wound you would be like wounding a wraith.' under the fury of his unexpected outburst, she protested,-- 'julian, why attack me? i've done, i've said, nothing.' 'you listened uncomprehendingly to me, thinking if you thought at all, that by to-morrow i should have forgotten my mood of to-night. you are wrong. i've gone a step forward to-day. i've learnt.... learnt, i mean, to respect men who suffer. learnt the continuity and the coherence of life. days linked to days. for you, an episode is an isolated episode.' he softened. 'no wonder you look bewildered. if you want the truth, i am angry with myself for my blindness towards paul. poor little eve! i only meant half i said.' 'you meant every word; one never speaks the truth so fully as when one speaks it unintentionally.' he smiled, but tolerantly and without malice. 'eve betrays herself by the glibness of the axiom. you know nothing of truth. but i've seen truth to-night. all paul's past life is mystery, shadow, enigma to me, but at the same time there is a central light--blinding, incandescent light--which is the fact that he suffered. suffered so much that, a priest, he preferred the supreme sin to such suffering. suffered so much that, a man, he preferred death to such suffering! all his natural desire for life was conquered. that irresistible instinct, that primal law, that persists even to the moment when darkness and unconsciousness overwhelm us--the fight for life, the battle to retain our birthright--all this was conquered. the instinct to escape from life became stronger than the instinct to preserve it! isn't that profoundly illuminating?' he paused. 'that fact sweeps, for me, like a great searchlight over an abyss of pain. the pain the man must have endured before he arrived at such a reversal of his religion and of his most primitive instinct! his world was, at the end, turned upside down. a terrifying nightmare. he took the only course. you cannot think how final death is--so final, so simple. so simple. there is no more to be said. i had no idea....' he spoke himself with the simplicity he was trying to express. he said again, candidly, evenly, in a voice from which all the emotion had passed,-- 'so simple.' they were silent for a long time. he had forgotten her, and she was wondering whether she dared now recall him to the personal. she had listened, gratified when he attacked her, resentful when he forgot her, bored with his detachment, but wise enough to conceal both her resentment and her boredom. she had worshipped him in his anger, and had admired his good looks in the midst of his fire. she had been infinitely more interested in him than in paul. shocked for a moment by paul's death, aware of the stirrings of pity, she had quickly neglected both for the sake of the living julian. she reviewed a procession of phrases with which she might recall his attention. 'you despise me, julian.' 'no, i only dissociate you. you represent a different sphere. you belong to herakleion. i love you--in your place.' 'you are hurting me.' he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards the fight. she let him have his way, with the disconcerting humility he had sometimes found in her. she bore his inspection mutely, her hands dropping loosely by her sides, fragile before his strength. he found that his thoughts had swept back, away from death, away from paul, to her sweetness and her worthlessness. 'many people care for you--more fools they,' he said. 'you and i, eve, must be allies now. you say i despise you. i shall do so less if i can enlist your loyalty in paul's cause. he has died as the result of an accident. are you to be trusted?' he felt her soft shoulders move in the slightest shrug under the pressure of his hands. 'do you think,' she asked, 'that you will be believed?' 'i shall insist upon being believed. there is no evidence--is there?--to prove me wrong.' as she did not answer, he repeated his question, then released her in suspicion. 'what do you know? tell me!' after a very long pause, he said quietly,-- 'i understand. there are many ways of conveying information. i am very blind about some things. heavens! if i had suspected that truth, either you would not have remained here, or paul would not have remained here. a priest! unheard of.... a priest to add to your collection. first miloradovitch, now paul. moths pinned upon a board. he loved you? oh,' he cried in a passion, 'i see it all: he struggled, you persisted--till you secured him. a joke to you. not a joke now--surely not a joke, even to you--but a triumph. am i right? a triumph! a man, dead for you. a priest. you allowed me to talk, knowing all the while.' 'i am very sorry for paul,' she said absently. he laughed at the pitiably inadequate word. 'have the courage to admit that you are flattered. more flattered than grieved. sorry for paul--yes, toss him that conventional tribute before turning to the luxury of your gratified vanity. that such things can be! surely men and women live in different worlds?' 'but, julian, what could i do?' 'he told you he loved you?' she acquiesced, and he stood frowning at her, his hands buried in his pockets and his head thrust forward, picturing the scenes, which had probably been numerous, between her and the priest, letting his imagination play over the anguish of his friend and eve's indifference. that she had not wholly discouraged him, he was sure. she would not so easily have let him go. julian was certain, as though he had observed their interviews from a hidden corner, that she had amusedly provoked him, watched him with half-closed, ironical eyes, dropped him a judicious word in her honeyed voice, driven him to despair by her disregard, raised him to joy by her capricious friendliness. they had had every opportunity for meeting. eve was strangely secretive. all had been carried on unsuspected. at this point he spoke aloud, almost with admiration,-- 'that you, who are so shallow, should be so deep!' a glimpse of her life had been revealed to him, but what secrets remained yet hidden? the veils were lifting from his simplicity; he contemplated, as it were, a new world--eve's world, ephemerally and clandestinely populated. he contemplated it in fascination, acknowledging that here was an additional, a separate art, insistent for recognition, dominating, imperative, forcing itself impudently upon mankind, exasperating to the straight-minded because it imposed itself, would not be denied, was subtle, pretended so unswervingly to dignity that dignity was accorded it by a credulous humanity--the art which eve practised, so vain, so cruel, so unproductive, the most fantastically prosperous of impostors! she saw the marvel in his eyes, and smiled slightly. 'well, julian?' 'i am wondering,' he cried, 'wondering! trying to pierce to your mind, your peopled memory, your present occupation, your science. what do you know? what have you heard? what have you seen? you, so young.... who are not young. how many secrets like the secret of paul are buried away in your heart? that you will never betray? do you ever look forward to the procession of your life? you, so young. i think you have some extraordinary, instinctive, inherited wisdom, some ready-made heritage, bequeathed to you by generations, that compensates for the deficiencies of your own experience. because you are so young. and so old, that i am afraid.' 'poor julian,' she murmured. a gulf of years lay between them, and she spoke to him as a woman to a boy. he was profoundly shaken, while she remained quiet, gently sarcastic, pitying towards him, who, so vastly stronger than she, became a bewildered child upon her own ground. he had seen death, but she had seen, toyed with, dissected the living heart. she added, 'don't try to understand. forget me and be yourself. you are annoying me.' she had spoken the last words with such impatience, that, torn from his speculations, he asked,-- 'annoying you? why?' after a short hesitation she gave him the truth,-- 'i dislike seeing you at fault.' he passed to a further bewilderment. 'i want you infallible.' rousing herself from the chair where she had been indolently lying, she said in the deepest tones of her contralto voice,-- 'julian, you think me worthless and vain; you condemn me as that without the charity of any further thought. you are right to think me heartless towards those i don't love. you believe that i spend my life in vanity. julian, i only ask to be taken away from my life; i have beliefs, and i have creeds, both of my own making, but i'm like a ship without a rudder. i'm wasting my life in vanity. i'm capable of other things. i'm capable of the deepest good, i know, as well as of the most shallow evil. nobody knows, except perhaps kato a little, how my real life is made up of dreams and illusions that i cherish. people are far more unreal to me than my own imaginings. one of my beliefs is about you. you mustn't ever destroy it. i believe you could do anything.' 'no, no,' he said, astonished. but she insisted, lit by the flame of her conviction. 'yes, anything. i have the profoundest contempt for the herd--to which you don't belong. i have believed in you since i was a child; believed in you, i mean, as something olympian of which i was frightened. i have always known that you would justify my faith.' 'but i am ordinary, normal!' he said, defending himself. he mistrusted her profoundly; wondered what attack she was engineering. experience of her had taught him to be sceptical. 'ah, don't you see, julian, when i am sincere?' she said, her voice breaking. 'i am telling you now one of the secrets of my heart, if you only knew it. the gentle, the amiable, the pleasant--yes, they're my toys. i'm cruel, i suppose. i'm always told so. i don't care; they're worth nothing. it does their little souls good to pass through the mill. but you, my intractable julian....' 'kyrie,' said nicolas, appearing, 'tsantilas tsigaridis, from aphros, asks urgently whether you will receive him?' 'bring him in,' said julian, conscious of relief, for eve's words had begun to trouble him. outside, the fireworks continued to flash like summer lightning. vi tsigaridis came forward into the room, his fishing cap between his fingers, and his white hair standing out in bunches of wiry curls round his face. determination was written in the set gravity of his features, even in the respectful bow with which he came to a halt before julian. interrupted in their conversation, eve had fallen, back, half lying, in her arm-chair, and julian, who had been pacing up and down, stood still with folded arms, a frown cleaving a deep valley between his brows. he spoke to tsigaridis,-- 'you asked for me, tsantilas?' 'i am a messenger, kyrie.' he looked from the young man to the girl, his age haughty towards their youth, his devotion submissive towards the advantage of their birth. he said to julian, using almost the same words as he had used once before,-- 'the people of aphros are the people of your people,' and he bowed again. julian had recovered his self-possession; he no longer felt dazed and bewildered as he had felt before eve. in speaking to tsigaridis he was speaking of things he understood. he knew very well the summons tsigaridis was bringing him, the rude and fine old man, single-sighted as a prophet, direct and unswerving in the cause he had at heart. he imagined, with almost physical vividness, the hand of the fisherman on his shoulder, impelling him forward. 'kyrie,' tsigaridis continued, 'to-day the flag of herakleion flew from the house of your honoured father until you with your own hand threw it down. i was in herakleion, where the news was brought to me, and there is no doubt that by now it is known also on aphros. your action can be interpreted only in one way. i know that to-day'--he crossed himself devoutly--'father paul, who was our friend and yours, has met his death; i break in upon your sorrow; i dared not wait; even death must not delay me. kyrie, i come to bring you back to aphros.' 'i will go to-night,' said julian without hesitation. 'my father and my uncle are in herakleion, and i will start from here before they can stop me. have you a boat?' 'i can procure one,' said tsigaridis, very erect, and looking at julian with shining eyes. 'then i will meet you at the private jetty in two hours' time. we shall be unnoted in the darkness, and the illuminations will be over by then.' 'assuredly,' said the fisherman. 'we go in all secrecy,' julian added. 'tsantilas, listen: can you distribute two orders for me by nightfall? i understand that you have organised a system of communications?' the old man's face relaxed slowly from its stern dignity; it softened into a mixture of slyness and pride and tenderness--the tenderness of a father for his favourite child. almost a smile struggled with his lips. a strange contortion troubled his brows. slowly and portentously, he winked. 'then send word to aphros,' said julian, 'that no boat be allowed to leave the islands, and send word round the mainland recalling every available islander. is it possible? i know that every islander in herakleion to-night is sitting with boon companions in buried haunts, talking, talking, talking. call them together, tsantilas.' 'it will be done, kyrie.' 'and madame kato--she must be informed.' 'kyrie, she sends you a message that she leaves herakleion by to-night's train for athens. when her work is done in athens, she also will return to aphros.' tsigaridis took a step forward and lifted julian's hands to his lips as was his wont. he bowed, and with his patriarchal gravity left the room. julian in a storm of excitement flung himself upon his knees beside eve's chair. 'eve!' he cried. 'oh, the wild adventure! do you understand? it has come at last. paul--i had almost forgotten the islands for him, and now i must forget him for the islands. too much has happened to-day. to-morrow all herakleion will know that the islands have broken away, and that i and every islander are upon aphros. they will come at first with threats; they will send representatives. i shall refuse to retract our declaration. then they will begin to carry out their threats. panaïoannou--think of it!--will organise an attack with boats.' he became sunk in practical thought, from which emerging he said more slowly and carefully, 'they will not dare to bombard the island because they know that italy and greece are watching every move, and with a single man-of-war could blow the whole town of herakleion higher than mount mylassa. kato will watch over us from athens.... they will dare to use no more than reasonable violence. and they will never gain a footing.' eve was leaning forward; she put both hands on his shoulders as he knelt. 'go on talking to me,' she said, 'my darling.' in a low, intense voice, with unseeing eyes, he released all the flood of secret thought that he had, in his life, expressed only to paul and to kato. 'i went once to aphros, more than a year ago; you remember. they asked me then, through tsigaridis, whether i would champion them if they needed championship. i said i would. father was very angry. he is incomprehensibly cynical about the islands, so cynical that i have been tempted to think him merely mercenary, anxious to live at peace with herakleion for the sake of his profits. he is as cynical as malteios, or any stay-in-power politician here. he read me a lecture and called the people a lot of rebellious good-for-nothings. eve, what do i care? one thing is true, one thing is real: those people suffer. everything on earth is empty, except pain. paul suffered, so much that he preferred to die. but a whole people doesn't die. i went away to england, and i put herakleion aside, but at the bottom of my heart i never thought of anything else; i knew i was bound to those people, and i lived, i swear to you, with the sole idea that i should come back, and that this adventure of rescue would happen some day exactly as it is happening now. i thought of kato and of tsigaridis as symbolical, almost mythological beings; my tutelary deities; kato vigorous, and tsigaridis stern. eve, i would rather die than read disappointment in that man's eyes. i never made him many promises, but he must find me better than my word.' he got up and walked once or twice up and down the room, beating his fist against his palm and saying,-- 'whatever good i do in my life, will be done in the islands.' he came back and stood by eve. 'eve, yesterday morning when i rode over the hills i saw the islands lying out in the sea.... i thought of father, cynical and indifferent, and of stavridis, a self-seeker. i wondered whether i should grow into that. i thought that in illusion lay the only loveliness.' 'ah, how i agree!' she said fervently. he dropped on his knees again beside her, and she put her fingers lightly on his hair. 'when tsigaridis came, you were telling me that you believed in me--heaven knows why. for my part, i only believe that one can accomplish when one has faith in a cause, and is blind to one's own fate. and i believe that the only cause worthy of such faith, is the redemption of souls from pain. i set aside all doubt. i will listen to no argument, and i will walk straight towards the object i have chosen. if my faith is an illusion, i will make that illusion into a reality by the sheer force of my faith.' he looked up at eve, whose eyes were strangely intent on him. 'you see,' he said, fingering the fringe of her spanish shawl, 'herakleion is my battleground, and if i am to tilt against windmills it must be in herakleion. i have staked out herakleion for my own, as one stakes out a claim in a gold-mining country. the islands are the whole adventure of youth for me.' 'and what am i?' she murmured to him. he looked at her without appearing to see her; he propped his elbow on her knee, leant his chin in his palm, and went on talking about the islands. 'i know that i am making the thing into a religion, but then i could never live, simply drifting along. aimless.... i don't understand existence on those terms. i am quite prepared to give everything for my idea; father can disinherit me, and i know i am very likely to be killed. i don't care. i may be mistaken; i may be making a blunder, an error of judgment. i don't care. those people are mine. those islands are my faith. i am blind.' 'and you enjoy the adventure,' she said. 'of course, i enjoy the adventure. but there is more in it than that,' he said, shaking his head; 'there is conviction, burnt into me. fanatical. whoever is ready to pay the ultimate price for his belief, has a right to that belief. heaven preserve me,' he cried, showing his fist, 'from growing like father, or malteios, or stavridis. eve, you understand.' she murmured again,-- 'and what am i? what part have i got in this world of yours?' again he did not appear to hear her, but making an effort to get up, he said,-- 'i promised to meet tsantilas, and i must go,' but she pressed her hands on his shoulders and held him down. 'stay a little longer. i want to talk to you.' kneeling there, he saw at last that her mouth was very resolute and her eyes full of a desperate decision. she sat forward in her chair, so close to him that he felt the warmth of her body, and saw that at the base of her throat a little pulse was beating quickly. 'what is it, eve?' 'this,' she said, 'that if i let you go i may never see you again. how much time have you?' he glanced at the heavy clock between the lapis columns. 'an hour and a half.' 'give me half an hour.' 'do you want to stop me from going?' 'could i stop you if i tried?' 'i should never listen to you.' 'julian,' she said, 'i rarely boast, as you know, but i am wondering now how many people in herakleion would abandon their dearest ideals for me? if you think my boast is empty--remember paul.' he paused for a moment, genuinely surprised by the point of view she presented to him. 'but i am different,' he said then, quite simply and with an air of finality. she laughed a low, delighted laugh. 'you have said it: you are different. of course you are different. so different, that you never notice me. people cringe to me--oh, i may say this to you--but you, julian, either you are angry with me or else you forget me.' she looked at the clock, and for the first time a slight loss of self-assurance came over her, surprising and attractive in her, who seemed always to hold every situation in such contemptuous control. 'only half an hour,' she said, 'and i have to say to you all that which i have been at such pains to conceal--hoping all the while that you would force the gates of my concealment, trample on my hypocrisy!' her eyes lost their irony and became troubled; she gazed at him with the distress of a child. he was uneasily conscious of his own embarrassment; he felt the shame of taking unawares the self-reliant in a moment of weakness, the mingled delight and perplexity of the hunter who comes suddenly upon the nymph, bare and gleaming, at the edge of a pool. all instinct of chivalry urged him to retreat until she should have recovered her self-possession. he desired to help her, tender and protective; and again, relentlessly, he would have outraged her reticence, forced her to the uttermost lengths of self-revelation, spared her no abasement, enjoyed her humiliation. simultaneously, he wanted the triumph over her pride, the battle joined with a worthy foe; and the luxury of comforting her new and sudden pathos, as he alone, he knew, could comfort it. she summoned in him, uncivilised and wholly primitive, a passion of tyranny and a passion of possessive protection. he yielded to the former, and continued to look at her in expectation, without speaking. 'help me a little, julian,' she murmured piteously, keeping her eyes bent on her hands, which were lying in her lap. 'look back a little, and remember me. i can remember you so well: coming and going and disregarding me, or furiously angry with me; very often unkind to me; tolerant of me sometimes; negligently, insultingly, certain of me always!' 'we used to say that although we parted for months, we always came together again.' she raised her eyes, grateful to him, as he still knelt on the floor in front of her, but he was not looking at her; he was staring at nothing, straight in front of him. 'julian,' she said, and spoke of their childhood, knowing that her best hope lay in keeping his thoughts distant from the present evening. her distress, which had been genuine, had passed. she had a vital game to play, and was playing it with the full resources of her ability. she swept the chords lightly, swift to strike again that chord which had whispered in response. she bent a little closer to him. 'i have always had this belief in you, of which i told you. you and i both have in us the making of fanatics. we never have led, and never should lead, the tame life of the herd.' she touched him with that, and regained command over his eyes, which this time she held unswervingly. but, having forced him to look at her, she saw a frown gathering on his brows; he sprang to his feet, and made a gesture as if to push her from him. 'you are playing with me; if you saw me lying dead on that rug you would turn from me as indifferently as from paul.' at this moment of her greatest danger, as he stood towering over her, she dropped her face into her hands, and he looked down only upon the nape of her neck and her waving hair. before he could speak she looked up again, her eyes very sorrowful under plaintive brows. 'do i deserve that you should say that to me? i never pretended to be anything but indifferent to those i didn't love. i should have been more hypocritical. you despise me now, so i pay the penalty of my own candour. i have not the pleasant graces of a fru thyregod, julian; not towards you, that is. i wouldn't offer you the insult of an easy philandering. i might make your life a burden; i might even kill you. i know i have often been impossible towards you in the past. i should probably be still more impossible in the future. if i loved you less, i should, no doubt, love you better. you see that i am candid.' he was struck, and reflected: she spoke truly, there was indeed a vein of candour which contradicted and redeemed the petty deceits and untruthfulnesses which so exasperated and offended him. but he would not admit his hesitation. 'i have told you a hundred times that you are cruel and vain and irredeemably worthless.' she answered after a pause, in the deep and wonderful voice which she knew so well how to use,-- 'you are more cruel than i; you hurt me more than i can say.' he resisted his impulse to renounce his words, to pretend that he had chosen them in deliberate malice. as he said nothing, she added,-- 'besides, have i ever shown myself any of those things to you? i haven't been cruel to you; i haven't even been selfish; you have no right to find fault with me.' she had blundered; he flew into a rage. 'your damned feminine reasoning! your damned personal point of view! i can see well enough the fashion in which you treat other men. i don't judge you only by your attitude towards myself.' off her guard, she was really incapable of grasping his argument; she tried to insist, to justify herself, but before his storm of anger she cowered away. 'julian, how you frighten me.' 'you only pretend to be frightened.' 'you are brutal; you mangle every word i say,' she said hopelessly. he had reduced her to silence; he stood over her threateningly, much as a tamer of wild beasts who waits for the next spring of the panther. desperate, her spirit flamed up again, and she cried,-- 'you treat me monstrously; i am a fool to waste my time over you; i am accustomed to quite different treatment.' 'you are spoilt; you are accustomed to flattery--flattery which means less than nothing,' he sneered, stamping upon her attempt at arrogance. 'ah, julian!' she said, suddenly and marvellously melting, and leaning forward she stretched out both hands towards him, so that he was obliged to take them, and she drew him down to his knees once more beside her, and smiled into his eyes, having taken command and being resolved that no crisis of anger should again arise to estrange them, 'i shall never have flattery from you, shall i? my turbulent, impossible julian, whose most meagre compliment i have treasured ever since i can remember! but it is over now, my time of waiting for you'--she still held his hands, and the smile with which she looked at him transfigured all her face. he was convinced; he trembled. he strove against her faintly,-- 'you choose your moment badly; you know that i must leave for aphros.' 'you cannot!' she cried in indignation. as his eyes hardened, she checked herself; she knew that for her own safety she must submit to his will without a struggle. spoilt, irrational as she was, she had never before so dominated her caprice. her wits were all at work, quick slaves to her passion. 'of course you must go,' she said. she played with his fingers, her head bent low, and he was startled by the softness of her touch. 'what idle hands,' he said, looking at them; 'you were vain of them, as a child.' but she did not wish him to dwell upon her vanity. 'julian, have i not been consistent, all my life? are you taking me seriously? do you know that i am betraying all the truth? one hasn't often the luxury of betraying all the truth. i could betray even greater depths of truth, for your sake. are you treating what i tell you with the gravity it deserves? you must not make a toy of my secret. i have no strength of character, julian. i suppose, in its stead, i have been given strength of love. do you want what i offer you? will you take the responsibility of refusing it?' 'is that a threat?' he asked, impressed and moved. she shrugged slightly and raised her eyebrows; he thought he had never so appreciated the wonderful mobility of her face. 'i am nothing without the person i love. you have judged me yourself: worthless--what else?--cruel, vain. all that is true. hitherto i have tried only to make the years pass by. do you want me to return to such an existence?' his natural vigour rebelled against her frailty. 'you are too richly gifted, eve, to abandon yourself to such slackness of life.' 'i told you i had no strength of character,' she said with bitterness, 'what are my gifts, such as they are, to me? you are the thing i want.' 'you could turn your gifts to any account.' 'with you, yes.' 'no, independently of me or any other human being. one stands alone in work. work is impersonal.' 'nothing is impersonal to me,' she replied morosely, 'that's my tragedy.' she flung out her hands. 'julian, i cherish such endless dreams! i loathe my life of petty adventures; i undertake them only in order to forget the ideal which until now has been denied me. i have crushed down the vision of life with you, but always it has remained at the back of my mind, so wide, so open, a life so free and so full of music and beauty, julian! i would work--for you. i would create--for you. i don't want to marry you, julian. i value my freedom above all things. bondage is not for you or me. but i'll come with you anywhere--to aphros if you like.' 'to aphros?' he repeated. 'why not?' she put in, with extraordinary skill,-- 'i belong to the islands no less than you.' privately she thought,-- 'if you knew how little i cared about the islands!' he stared at her, turning her words over in his mind. he was as reckless as she, but conscientiously he suggested,-- 'there may be danger.' 'i am not really a coward, only in the unimportant things. and you said yourself that they could never invade the island,' she added with complete confidence in his statement. he dreamt aloud,-- 'i have only just found her. this is herakleion! she might, who knows? be of use to aphros.' she wondered which consideration weighed most heavily with him. 'you were like my sister,' he said suddenly. she gave a rueful smile, but said nothing. 'no, no!' he cried, springing up. 'this can never be; have you bewitched me? let me go, eve; you have been playing a game with me.' she shook her head very slowly and tears gathered in her eyes. 'then the game is my whole life, julian; put me to any test you choose to prove my sincerity.' she convinced him against his will, and he resented it. 'you have deceived me too often.' 'i have been obliged to deceive you, because i could not tell you the truth.' 'very plausible,' he muttered. she waited, very well acquainted with the vehemence of his moods and reactions. she was rewarded; he said next, with laughter lurking in his eyes,-- 'ever since i can remember, i have quarrelled with you several times a day.' 'but this evening we have no time to waste in quarrelling,' she replied, relieved, and stretching out her hands to him again. as he took them, she added in a low voice, 'you attract me fatally, my refractory julian.' 'we will go to aphros,' he said, 'as friends and colleagues.' 'on any terms you choose to dictate,' she replied with ironical gravity. a flash of clear-sightedness pierced his attempt at self-deception; he saw the danger into which they were deliberately running, he and she, alone amidst fantastic happenings, living in fairyland, both headstrong and impatient creatures, unaccustomed to forgo their whims, much less their passions.... he was obliged to recognise the character of the temple which stood at the end of the path they were treading, and of the deity to whom it was dedicated; he saw the temple with the eyes of his imagination as vividly as his mortal eyes would have seen it: white and lovely amongst cypresses, shadowy within; they would surely enter. eve he certainly could not trust; could he trust himself? his honesty answered no. she observed the outward signs of what was passing in his mind, he started, he glanced at her, a look of horror and vigorous repudiation crossed his face, his eyes dwelt on her, then she saw--for she was quick to read him--by the slight toss of his head that he had banished sagacity. 'come on to the veranda,' she said, tugging at his hand. they stood on the veranda, watching the lights in the distance; the sky dripped with gold; balls of fire exploded into sheaves of golden feathers, into golden fountains and golden rain; golden slashes like the blades of scimitars cut across the curtain of night. eve cried out with delight. fiery snakes rushed across the sky, dying in a shower of sparks. at one moment the whole of the coast-line was lit up by a violet light, which most marvellously gleamed upon the sea. 'fairyland!' cried eve, clapping her hands. she had forgotten aphros. she had forgotten paul. the fireworks were over. tsigaridis pulled strongly and without haste at his oars across a wide sea that glittered now like black diamonds under the risen moon. the water rose and fell beneath the little boat as gently and as regularly as the breathing of a sleeper. in a milky sky, spangled with stars, the immense moon hung flat and motionless, casting a broad path of rough silver up the blackness of the waters, and illuminating a long stretch of little broken clouds that lay above the horizon like the vertebræ of some gigantic crocodile. the light at the tip of the pier showed green, for they saw it still from the side of the land, but as they drew farther out to sea and came on a parallel line with the light, they saw it briefly half green, half ruby; then, as they passed it, looking back they saw only the ruby glow. tsigaridis rowed steadily, silently but for the occasional drip of the water with the lifting of an oar, driving his craft away from the lights of the mainland--the stretch of herakleion along the coast--towards the beckoning lights in the heart of the sea. for ahead of them clustered the little yellow lights of the sheerly-rising village on aphros; isolated lights, three or four only, low down at the level of the harbour, then, after a dark gap representing the face of the cliff, the lights in the houses, irregular, tier above tier. but it was not to these yellow lights that the glance was drawn. high above them all, upon the highest summit of the island, flared a blood-red beacon, a fierce and solitary stain of scarlet, a flame like a flag, like an emblem, full of hope as it leapt towards the sky, full of rebellion as it tore its angry gash across the night. in the moonlight the tiny islands of the group lay darkly outlined in the sea, but the moonlight, placid and benign, was for them without significance: only the beacon, insolently red beneath the pallor of the moon, burned for them with a message that promised to all men strife, to others death, and to the survivors liberty. the form of aphros was no more than a silhouette under the moon, a silhouette that rose, humped and shadowy, bearing upon its crest that flower of flame; dawn might break upon an island of the purest loveliness, colour blown upon it as upon the feathers of a bird, fragile as porcelain, flushed as an orchard in blossom; to-night it lay mysterious, unrevealed, with that single flame as a token of the purpose that burned within its heart. tenderness, loveliness, were absent from the dark shape crowned by so living, so leaping an expression of its soul. here were resolution, anticipation, hope, the perpetual hope of betterment, the undying chimera, the sublime illusion, the lure of adventure to the rebel and the idealist alike. the flame rang out like a bugle call in the night, its glare in the darkness becoming strident indeed as the note of a bugle in the midst of silence. a light breeze brushed the little boat as it drew away from the coast, and tsigaridis with a word of satisfaction shipped his oars and rose, the fragile craft rocking as he moved; eve and julian, watching from the prow, saw a shadow creep along the mast and the triangular shape of a sail tauten itself darkly against the path of the moon. tsigaridis sank back into an indistinguishable block of intenser darkness in the darkness at the bottom of the boat. a few murmured words had passed,-- 'i will take the tiller, tsigaridis.' 'malista, kyrie,' and the silence had fallen again, the boat sailing strongly before the breeze, the beacon high ahead, and the moon brilliant in the sky. eve, not daring to speak, glanced at julian's profile as she sat beside him. he was scowling. had she but known, he was intensely conscious of her nearness, assailed again with that now familiar ghost, the ghost of her as he had once held her angrily in his arms, soft, heavy, defenceless; and his fingers as they closed over the tiller closed as delicately as upon the remembered curves of her body; she had taken off her hat, and the scent of her hair reached him, warm, personal she was close to him, soft, fragrant, silent indeed, but mysteriously alive; the desire to touch her grew, like the desire of thirst; life seemed to envelop him with a strange completeness. still a horror held him back: was it eve, the child to whom he had been brotherly? or eve, the woman? but in spite of his revulsion--for it was not his habit to control his desires--he changed the tiller to the other hand, and his free arm fell round her shoulders; he felt her instant yielding, her movement nearer towards him, her shortened breath, the falling back of her head; he knew that her eyes were shut; his fingers moulded themselves lingeringly round her throat; she slipped still lower within the circle of his arm, and his hand, almost involuntarily, trembled over the softness of her breast. part iii--aphros i in the large class-room of the school-house the dejected group of greek officials sat among the hideous yellow desks and benches of the school-children of aphros. passion and indignation had spent themselves fruitlessly during the preceding evening and night. to do the islanders justice, the greeks had not been treated with incivility. but all demands for an interview with the highest authority were met not only with a polite reply that the highest authority had not yet arrived upon the island, but also a refusal to disclose his name. the greek officials, having been brought from their respective lodgings to the central meeting-point of the school, had been given the run of two class-rooms, one for the men, of whom there were, in all, twenty, and one for the women, of whom there were only six. they were told that they might communicate, but that armed guards would be placed in both rooms. they found most comfort in gathering, the six-and-twenty of them, in the larger class-room, while the guards, in their kilted dresses, sat on chairs, two at each entrance, with suspiciously modern and efficient-looking rifles laid across their knees. a large proportion of the officials were, naturally, those connected with the school. they observed morosely that all notices in the pure greek of herakleion had already been removed, also the large lithographs of malteios and other former presidents, so that the walls of pitch pine--the school buildings were modern, and of wood--were now ornamented only with maps, anatomical diagrams, and some large coloured plates published by some english manufacturing firm for advertisement; there were three children riding a gray donkey, and another child trying on a sun-bonnet before a mirror; but any indication of the relationship of aphros to herakleion there was none. 'it is revolution,' the postmaster said gloomily. the guards would not speak. their natural loquacity was in abeyance before the first fire of their revolutionary ardour. from vine-cultivators they had become soldiers, and the unfamiliarity of the trade filled them with self-awe and importance. outside, the village was surprisingly quiet; there was no shouting, no excitement; footsteps passed rapidly to and fro, but they seemed to be the footsteps of men bent on ordered business; the greeks could not but be impressed and disquieted by the sense of organisation. 'shall we be allowed to go free?' they asked the guards. 'you will know when he comes,' was all the guards would reply. 'who is he?' 'you will know presently.' 'has he still not arrived?' 'he has arrived.' 'we heard nothing; he must have arrived during the night.' to this they received no answer, nor any to their next remark,-- 'why so much mystery? it is, of course, the scatterbrained young englishman.' the guards silently shrugged their shoulders, as much as to say, that any one, even a prisoner, had a right to his own opinion. the school clock pointed to nine when the first noise of agitation began in the street. it soon became clear that a large concourse of people was assembling in the neighbourhood of the school; a slight excitement betrayed itself by some shouting and laughter, but a voice cried 'silence!' and silence was immediately produced. those within the school heard only the whisperings and rustlings of a crowd. they were not extravagantly surprised, knowing the islanders to be an orderly, restrained, and frugal race, their emotions trained into the sole channel of patriotism, which here was making its supreme demand upon their self-devotion. the greeks threw wondering glances at the rifles of the guards. ostensibly school-teachers, post and telegraph clerks, and custom-house officers, they were, of course, in reality the spies of the government of herakleion, and as such should have had knowledge of the presence of such weapons on the island. they reflected that, undesirable as was a prolonged imprisonment in the school-house, at the mercy of a newly-liberated and probably rancorous population, a return to herakleion might prove a no less undesirable fate at the present juncture. outside, some sharp words of command were followed by the click of weapons on the cobblestones; the postmaster looked at the chief customs-house clerk, raised his eyebrows, jerked his head, and made a little noise: 'tcha!' against his teeth, as much as to say, 'the deceitful villains! under our noses!' but at the back of his mind was, 'no further employment, no pension, for any of us.' a burst of cheering followed in the street. the voice cried 'silence!' again, but this time was disregarded. the cheering continued for some minutes, the women's note joining in with the men's deep voices, and isolated words were shouted, all with the maximum of emotion. the greeks tried to look out of the windows, but were prevented by the guards. some one in the street began to speak, when the cheering had died away, but through the closed windows it was impossible to distinguish the words. a moment's hush followed this speaking, and then another voice began, reading impressively--it was obvious, from the unhesitating and measured scansion, that he was reading. sections of his address, or proclamation, whichever it was, were received with deep growls of satisfaction from the crowd. at one moment he was wholly interrupted by repeated shouts of 'viva! viva! viva!' and when he had made an end thunderous shouts of approval shook the wooden building. the greeks were by now very pale; they could not tell whether this proclamation did not contain some reference, some decision, concerning themselves. after the proclamation, another voice spoke, interrupted at every moment by various cries of joy and delight, especially from the women; the crowd seemed alternately rocked with enthusiasm, confidence, fire, and laughter. the laughter was not the laughter of amusement so much as the grim laughter of resolution and fraternity; an extraordinarily fraternal and unanimous spirit seemed to prevail. then silence again, broken by voices in brief confabulation, and then the shifting of the crowd which, to judge from the noise, was pressing back against the school-buildings in order to allow somebody a passage down the street. the door opened, and zapantiotis, appearing, announced,-- 'prisoners, the president.' the word created a sensation among the little herd of hostages, who, for comfort and protection, had instinctively crowded together. they believed themselves miraculously rescued, at least from the spite and vengeance of the islanders, and expected to see either malteios or stavridis, frock-coated and top-hatted, in the doorway. instead, they saw julian davenant, flushed, untidy, bareheaded, and accompanied by two immense islanders carrying rifles. he paused and surveyed the little speechless group, and a faint smile ran over his lips at the sight of the confused faces of his prisoners. they stared at him, readjusting their ideas: in the first instance they had certainly expected julian, then for one flashing moment they had expected the president of herakleion, then they were confronted with julian. a question left the lips of the postmaster,-- 'president of what?' perhaps he was tempted madly to think that neither malteios, nor stavridis, but julian, had been on the foregoing day elected president of herakleion. zapantiotis answered gravely,-- 'of the archipelago of san zacharie.' 'are we all crazy?' cried the postmaster. 'you see, gentlemen,' said julian, speaking for the first time, 'that the folly of my grandfather's day has been revived.' he came forward and seated himself at the schoolmaster's desk, his bodyguard standing a little behind him, one to each side. 'i have come here,' he said, 'to choose amongst you one representative who can carry to herakleion the terms of the proclamation which has just been read in the market-place outside. these terms must be communicated to the present government. zapantiotis, hand the proclamation to these gentlemen.' the outraged greeks came closer together to read the proclamation over each other's shoulder; it set forth that the islands constituting the archipelago of san zacharie, and including the important island of aphros, by the present proclamation, and after long years of oppression, declared themselves a free and independent republic under the presidency of julian henry davenant, pending the formation of a provisional government; that if unmolested they were prepared to live in all peace and neighbourly good-fellowship with the republic of herakleion, but that if molested in any way they were equally prepared to defend their shores and their liberty to the last drop of blood in the last man upon the islands. there was a certain nobleness in the resolute gravity of the wording. julian wore a cryptic smile as he watched the greeks working their way through this document, which was in the italianate greek of the islands. their fingers pointed certain paragraphs out to one another, and little repressed snorts came from them, snorts of scorn and of indignation, and glances were flung at julian lounging indifferently in the schoolmaster's chair. the doors had been closed to exclude the crowd, and of the islanders, only zapantiotis and the guards remained in the room. although it was early, the heat was beginning to make itself felt, and the flies were buzzing over the window-panes. 'if you have finished reading, gentlemen,' said julian presently, 'i shall be glad if you will decide upon a representative, as i have much to attend to; a boat is waiting to take him and these ladies to the shore.' immense relief was manifested by the ladies. 'this thing,' said the head of the school, hitting the proclamation with his closed fingers, 'is madness; i beg you, young man--i know you quite well--to withdraw before it is too late.' 'i can have no argument; i give you five minutes to decide,' julian replied, laying his watch on the desk. his followers had no longer cause to fret against his indecision. seeing him determined, the greeks excitedly conferred; amongst them the idea of self-preservation, rather than of self-immolation, was obviously dominant. herakleion, for all the displeasure of the authorities, was, when it came to the point, preferable to aphros in the hands of the islanders and their eccentric, if not actually bloodthirsty, young leader. the postmaster presented himself as senior member of the group; the schoolmaster as the most erudite, therefore the most fitted to represent his colleagues before the senate; the head clerk of the customs-house urged his claim as having the longest term of official service. the conference degenerated into a wrangle. 'i see, gentlemen, that i must take the decision out of your hands,' julian said at length, breaking in upon them, and appointed the customs-house clerk. but in the market-place, whither the greek representative and the women of the party were instantly hurried, the silent throng of population waited in packed and coloured ranks. the men stood apart, arms folded, handkerchiefs bound about their heads under their wide straw hats--they waited, patient, confident, unassuming. none of them was armed with rifles, although many carried a pistol or a long knife slung at his belt; the customs-house clerk, through all his confusion of mingled terror and relief, noted the fact; if he delivered it at a propitious moment, it might placate an irate senate. no rifles, or, at most, eight in the hands of the guards! order would very shortly be restored in aphros. nevertheless, that sense of organisation, of discipline, of which the greeks had been conscious while listening to the assembling of the crowd through the boards of the school-house, was even more apparent here upon the market-place. these islanders knew their business. a small file of men detached itself as an escort for the representative and the women. julian came from the school at the same moment with his two guards, grim and attentive, behind him. a movement of respect produced itself in the crowd. the customs-house clerk and his companions were not allowed to linger, but were marched away to the steps which led down to the jetty. they carried away with them as their final impression of aphros the memory of the coloured throng and of julian, a few paces in advance, watching their departure. the proclamation, the scene in the school-house, remained as the prelude to the many pictures which populated julian's memory, interchangeably, of that day. he saw himself, speaking rarely, but, as he knew, to much purpose, seated at the head of a table in the village assembly-room, and, down each side of the table, the principal men of the islands, tsigaridis and zapantiotis on his either hand, grave counsellors; he heard their speech, unreproducibly magnificent, because a bodyguard of facts supported every phrase; because, in the background, thronged the years of endurance and the patient, steadfast hope. he heard the terms of the new constitution, and the oath of resolution to which every man subscribed. with a swimming brain, and his eyes fixed upon the hastily-restored portrait of his grandfather, he heard the references to himself as head of the state--a state in which the citizens numbered perhaps five thousand. he heard his own voice, issuing orders whose wisdom was never questioned: no boat to leave the islands, no boats to be admitted to the port, without his express permission, a system of sentries to be instantly instituted and maintained, day and night. as he delivered these orders, men rose in their places, assuming the responsibility, and left the room to execute them without delay. he saw himself later, still accompanied by tsigaridis and zapantiotis, but having rid himself of his two guards, in the interior of the island, on the slopes where the little rough stone walls retained the terraces, and where between the trunks of the olive-trees the sea moved, blue and glittering, below. here the island was dry and stony; mule-paths, rising in wide, low steps, wandered up the slopes and lost themselves over the crest of the hill. a few goats moved restlessly among cactus and bramble-bushes, cropping at the prickly stuff, and now and then raising their heads to bleat for the kids that, more light-hearted because not under the obligation of searching for food amongst the vegetation, leapt after one another, up and down, in a happy chain on their little stiff certain legs from terrace to terrace. an occasional cypress rose in a dark spire against the sky. across the sea, the town of herakleion lay, white, curved, and narrow, with its coloured sunblinds no bigger than butterflies, along the strip of coast that mount mylassa so grudgingly allowed it. the stepped paths being impassable for carts, tsigaridis had collected ten mules with panniers, that followed in a string. julian rode ahead upon another mule; zapantiotis walked, his tall staff in his hand, and his dog at his heels. julian remembered idly admiring the health which enabled this man of sixty-five to climb a constantly-ascending path under a burning sun without showing any signs of exhaustion. as they went, the boy in charge of the mules droned out a mournful native song which julian recognised as having heard upon the lips of kato. the crickets chirped unceasingly, and overhead the seagulls circled uttering their peculiar cry. they had climbed higher, finally leaving behind them the olive-terraces and coming to a stretch of vines, the autumn vine-leaves ranging through every shade of yellow, red, and orange; here, away from the shade of the olives, the sun burned down almost unbearably, and the stones of the rough walls were too hot for the naked hand to touch. here it was that the grapes were spread out, drying into currants--a whole terrace heaped with grapes, over which a party of young men, who sat playing at dice beneath a rough shelter made out of reeds and matting, were mounting guard. julian, knowing nothing of this business, and present only out of interested curiosity, left the command to zapantiotis. a few stone-pines grew at the edge of the terrace; he moved his mule into their shade while he watched. they had reached the summit of the island--no doubt, if he searched far enough, he would come across the ruins of last night's beacon, but he preferred to remember it as a living thing rather than to stumble with his foot against ashes, gray and dead; he shivered a little, in spite of the heat, at the thought of that flame already extinguished--and from the summit he could look down upon both slopes, seeing the island actually as an island, with the sea below upon every side, and he could see the other islands of the group, speckled around, some of them too tiny to be inhabited, but all deserted now, when in the common cause every soul had been summoned by the beacon, the preconcerted signal, to aphros. he imagined the little isolated boats travelling across the moonlit waters during the night, as he himself had travelled; little boats, each under its triangular sail, bearing the owner, his women, his children, and such poor belongings as he could carry, making for the port or the creeks of aphros, relying for shelter upon the fraternal hospitality of the inhabitants. no doubt they, like himself, had travelled with their eyes upon the beacon.... the young men, grinning broadly and displaying a zest they would not have contributed towards the mere routine of their lives, had left their skeleton shelter and had fallen to work upon the heaps of drying grapes with their large, purple-stained, wooden shovels. zapantiotis leant upon his staff beside julian's mule. 'see, kyrie!' he had said. 'it was a crafty thought, was it not? ah, women! only a woman could have thought of such a thing.' 'a woman?' 'anastasia kato,' the overseer had replied, reverent towards the brain that had contrived thus craftily for the cause, but familiar towards the great singer--of whom distinguished european audiences spoke with distant respect--as towards a woman of his own people. he probably, julian had reflected, did not know of her as a singer at all. beneath the grapes rifles were concealed, preserved from the fruit by careful sheets of coarse linen; rifles, gleaming, modern rifles, laid out in rows; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; julian had no means of estimating. he had dismounted and walked over to them; the young men were still shovelling back the fruit, reckless of its plenty, bringing more weapons and still more to light. he had bent down to examine more closely. 'italian,' he had said then, briefly, and had met tsigaridis' eye, had seen the slow, contented smile which spread on the old man's face, and which he had discreetly turned aside to conceal. then julian, with a glimpse of all those months of preparation, had ridden down from the hills, the string of mules following his mule in single file, the shining barrels bristling out of the panniers, and in the market-place he had assisted, from the height of his saddle, at the distribution of the arms. two hundred and fifty, and five hundred rounds of ammunition to each.... he thought of the nights of smuggling represented there, of the catch of fish--the 'quick, shining harvest of the sea'--beneath which lay the deadlier catch that evaded the eyes of the customs-house clerks. he remembered the robbery at the casino, and was illuminated. money had not been lacking. these were not the only pictures he retained of that day; the affairs to which he was expected to attend seemed to be innumerable; he had sat for hours in the village assembly-room, while the islanders came and went, surprisingly capable, but at the same time utterly reliant upon him. throughout the day no sign came from herakleion. julian grew weary, and could barely restrain his thoughts from wandering to eve. he would have gone to her room before leaving the house in the morning, but she had refused to see him. consequently the thought of her had haunted him all day. one of the messages which reached him as he sat in the assembly-room had been from her: would he send a boat to herakleion for nana? he had smiled, and had complied, very much doubting whether the boat would ever be allowed to return. the message had brought him, as it were, a touch from her, a breath of her personality which clung about the room long after. she was near at hand, waiting for him, so familiar, yet so unfamiliar, so undiscovered. he felt that after a year with her much would still remain to be discovered; that there was, in fact, no end to her interest and her mystery. she was of no ordinary calibre, she who could be, turn by turn, a delicious or plaintive child, a woman of ripe seduction, and--in fits and starts--a poet in whose turbulent and undeveloped talent he divined startling possibilities! when she wrote poetry she smothered herself in ink, as he knew; so mingled in her were the fallible and the infallible. he refused to analyse his present relation to her; a sense, not of hypocrisy, but of decency, held him back; he remembered all too vividly the day he had carried her in his arms; his brotherliness had been shocked, offended, but since then the remembrance had persisted and had grown, and now he found himself, with all that brotherliness of years still ingrained in him, full of thoughts and on the brink of an adventure far from brotherly. he tried not to think these thoughts. he honestly considered them degrading, incestuous. but his mood was ripe for adventure; the air was full of adventure; the circumstances were unparalleled; his excitement glowed--he left the assembly-room, walked rapidly up the street, and entered the davenant house, shutting the door behind him. the sounds of the street were shut out, and the water plashed coolly in the open courtyard; two pigeons walked prinking round the flat edge of the marble basin, the male cooing and bowing absurdly, throwing out his white chest, ruffling his tail, and putting down his spindly feet with fussy precision. when julian appeared, they fluttered away to the other side of the court to resume their convention of love-making. evening was falling, warm and suave, and overhead in the still blue sky floated tiny rosy clouds. in the cloisters round the court the frescoes of the life of saint benedict looked palely at julian, they so faded, so washed-out, he so young and so full of strength. their pallor taught him that he had never before felt so young, so reckless, or so vigorous. he was astonished to find eve with the son of zapantiotis, learning from him to play the flute in the long, low room which once had been the refectory and which ran the full length of the cloisters. deeply recessed windows, with heavy iron gratings, looked down over the roofs of the village to the sea. in one of these windows eve leaned against the wall holding the flute to her lips, and young zapantiotis, eager, handsome, showed her how to place her fingers upon the holes. she looked defiantly at julian. 'nico has rescued me,' she said; 'but for him i should have been alone all day. i have taught him to dance.' she pointed to a gramophone upon a table. 'where did that come from?' julian said, determined not to show his anger before the islander. 'from the café,' she replied. 'then nico had better take it back; they will need it.' julian said, threats in his voice, 'and he had better see whether his father cannot find him employment; we have not too many men.' 'you left me the whole day,' she said when nico had gone; 'i am sorry i came with you, julian; i would rather go back to herakleion; even nana has not come. i did not think you would desert me.' he looked at her, his anger vanished, and she was surprised when he answered her gently, even amusedly,-- 'you are always delightfully unexpected and yet characteristic of yourself: i come back, thinking i shall find you alone, perhaps glad to see me, having spent an unoccupied day, but no, i find you with the best-looking scamp of the village, having learnt from him to play the flute, taught him to dance, and borrowed a gramophone from the local café!' he put his hands heavily upon her shoulders with a gesture she knew of old. 'i suppose i love you,' he said roughly, and then seemed indisposed to talk of her any more, but told her his plans and arrangements, to which she did not listen. they remained standing in the narrow window-recess, leaning, opposite to one another, against the thick stone walls of the old genoese building. through the grating they could see the sea, and, in the distance, herakleion. 'it is sufficiently extraordinary,' he remarked, gazing across the bay, 'that herakleion has made no sign. i can only suppose that they will try force as soon as panaïoannou can collect his army, which, as it was fully mobilised no later than yesterday, ought not to take very long.' 'will there be fighting?' she asked, with a first show of interest. 'i hope so,' he replied. 'i should like you to fight,' she said. swaying as he invariably did between his contradictory opinions of her, he found himself inwardly approving her standpoint, that man, in order to be worthy of woman, must fight, or be prepared to fight, and to enjoy the fighting. from one so self-indulgent, so pleasure-loving, so reluctant to face any unpleasantness of life, he might pardonably have expected the less heroic attitude. if she resented his absence all day on the business of preparations for strife, might she not equally have resented the strife that called him from her side? he respected her appreciation of physical courage, and remodelled his estimate to her advantage. to his surprise, the boat he had sent for nana returned from herakleion. it came, indeed, without nana, but bearing in her place a letter from his father:-- 'dear julian,--by the courtesy of m. stavridis--by whose orders this house is closely guarded, and for which i have to thank your folly--i am enabled to send you this letter, conditional on m. stavridis's personal censorship. your messenger has come with your astonishing request that your cousin's nurse may be allowed to return with the boat to aphros. i should have returned with it myself in the place of the nurse, but for m. stavridis's very natural objection to my rejoining you or leaving herakleion. 'i am at present too outraged to make any comment upon your behaviour. i try to convince myself that you must be completely insane. m. stavridis, however, will shortly take drastic steps to restore you to sanity. i trust only that no harm will befall you--for i remember still that you are my son--in the process. in the meantime, i demand of you most urgently, in my own name and that of your uncle and aunt, that you will send back your cousin without delay to herakleion. m. stavridis has had the great kindness to give his consent to this. a little consideration will surely prove to you that in taking her with you to aphros you have been guilty of a crowning piece of folly from every point of view. i know you to be headstrong and unreflecting. try to redeem yourself in this one respect before it is too late. 'i fear that i should merely be wasting my time by attempting to dissuade you from the course you have chosen with regard to the islands. my poor misguided boy, do you not realise that your effort is _bound_ to end in disaster, and will serve but to injure those you most desire to help? 'i warn you, too, most gravely and solemnly, that your obstinacy will entail _very serious consequences_ for yourself. i shall regret the steps i contemplate taking, but i have the interest of our family to consider, and i have your uncle's entire approval. 'i am very deeply indebted to m. stavridis, who, while unable to neglect his duty as the first citizen of herakleion, has given me every proof of his personal friendship and confidence. w. davenant.' julian showed this letter to eve. 'what answer shall you send?' 'this,' he replied, tearing it into pieces. 'you are angry. oh, julian, i love you for being reckless.' 'i see red. he threatens me with disinheriting me. he takes good care to remain in stavridis' good books himself. do you want to go back?' 'no, julian.' 'of course, father is quite right: i am insane, and so are you. but, after all, you will run no danger, and as far compromising you, that is absurd: we have often been alone together before now. besides,' he added brutally, 'you said yourself you belonged to the islands no less than i; you can suffer for them a little if necessary.' 'i make no complaint,' she said with an enigmatic smile. they dined together near the fountain in the courtyard, and overhead the sky grew dark, and the servant brought lighted candles for the table. julian spoke very little; he allowed himself the supreme luxury of being spoilt by a woman who made it her business to please him; observing her critically, appreciatively; acknowledging her art; noting with admiration how the instinct of the born courtesan filled in the gaps in the experience of the child. he was, as yet, more mystified by her than he cared to admit. but he yielded himself to her charm. the intimacy of this meal, their first alone together, enveloped him more and more with the gradual sinking of night, and his observant silence, which had originated with the deliberate desire to test her skill and also to indulge his own masculine enjoyment, insensibly altered into a shield against the emotion which was gaining him. the servant had left them. the water still plashed into the marble basin. the candles on the table burned steadily in the unruffled evening, and under their light gleamed the wine--rough, native wine, red and golden--in the long-necked, transparent bottles, and the bowl of fruit: grapes, a cut melon, and bursting figs, heaped with the lavishness of plenty. the table was a pool of light, but around it the court and cloisters were full of dim, mysterious shadows. opposite julian, eve leaned forward, propping her bare elbows on the table, disdainfully picking at the fruit, and talking. he looked at her smooth, beautiful arms, and little white hands that he had always loved. he knew that he preferred her company to any in the world. her humour, her audacity, the width of her range, the picturesqueness of her phraseology, her endless inventiveness, her subtle undercurrent of the personal, though 'you' or 'i' might be entirely absent from her lips all seemed to him wholly enchanting. she was a sybarite of life, an artist; but the glow and recklessness of her saved her from all taint of intellectual sterility. he knew that his life had been enriched and coloured by her presence in it; that it would, at any moment, have become a poorer, a grayer, a less magical thing through the loss of her. he shut his eyes for a second as he realised that she could be, if he chose, his own possession, she the elusive and unattainable; he might claim the redemption of all her infinite promise; might discover her in the rôle for which she was so obviously created; might violate the sanctuary and tear the veils from the wealth of treasure hitherto denied to all; might exact for himself the first secrets of her unplundered passion. he knew her already as the perfect companion, he divined her as the perfect mistress; he reeled and shrank before the unadmitted thought, then looked across at her where she sat with an open fig half-way to her lips, and knew fantastically that they were alone upon an island of which he was all but king. 'a deserted city,' she was saying, 'a city of portuguese settlers; pink marble palaces upon the edge of the water; almost crowded into the water by the encroaching jungle; monkeys peering through their ruined windows; on the sand, great sleepy tortoises; and, twining in and out of the broken doorways of the palaces, orchids and hibiscus--that is trincomali! would you like the tropics, i wonder, julian? their exuberance, their vulgarity?... one buys little sacks full of precious stones; one puts in one's hand, and lets the sapphires and the rubies and the emeralds run through one's fingers.' their eyes met; and her slight, infrequent confusion overcame her.... 'you aren't listening,' she murmured. 'you were only fifteen when you went to ceylon,' he said, gazing at the blue smoke of his cigarette. 'you used to write to me from there. you had scarlet writing-paper. you were a deplorably affected child.' 'yes,' she said, 'the only natural thing about me was my affectation.' they laughed, closely, intimately. 'it began when you were three,' he said, 'and insisted upon always wearing brown kid gloves; your voice was even deeper then than it is now, and you always called your father robert.' 'you were five; you used to push me into the prickly pear.' 'and you tried to kill me with a dagger; do you remember?' 'oh, yes,' she said quite gravely, 'there was a period when i always carried a dagger.' 'when you came back from ceylon you had a tiger's claw.' 'with which i once cut my initials on your arm.' 'you were very theatrical.' 'you were very stoical.' again they laughed. 'when you went to ceylon,' he said, 'one of the ship's officers fell in love with you; you were very much amused.' 'the only occasion, i think, julian, when i ever boasted to you of such a thing? you must forgive me--il ne faut pas m'en vouloir--remember i was only fifteen.' 'such things amuse you still,' he said jealously. 'c'est possible,' she replied. he insisted,-- 'when did you really become aware of your own heartlessness?' she sparkled with laughter. 'i think it began life as a sense of humour,' she said, 'and degenerated gradually into its present state of spasmodic infamy.' he had smiled, but she saw his face suddenly darken, and he got up abruptly, and stood by the fountain, turning his back on her. 'my god,' she thought to herself in terror, 'he has remembered paul.' she rose also, and went close to him, slipping her hand through his arm, endeavouring to use, perhaps unconsciously, the powerful weapon of her physical nearness. he did not shake away her hand, but he remained unresponsive, lost in contemplation of the water. she hesitated as to whether she should boldly attack the subject--she knew her danger; he would be difficult to acquire, easy to lose, no more tractable than a young colt--then in the stillness of the night she faintly heard the music of the gramophone playing in the village café. 'come into the drawing-room and listen to the music, julian,' she said, pulling at his arm. he came morosely; they exchanged the court with its pool of light for the darkness of the drawing-room; she felt her way, holding his hand, towards a window seat; sat down, and pulled him down beside her; through the rusty iron grating they saw the sea, lit up by the rising moon. 'we can just hear the music,' she whispered. her heart was beating hard and fast: they had been as under a spell, so close were they to one another, but now she was bitterly conscious of having lost him. she knew that he had slipped from the fairyland of aphros back to the world of principles, of morals both conventional and essential. in fairyland, whither she had enticed him, all things were feasible, permissible, even imperative. he had accompanied her, she thought, very willingly, and they had strayed together down enchanted paths, abstaining, it is true, from adventuring into the perilous woods that surrounded them, but hand in hand, nevertheless, their departure from the path potential at any rate, if not imminent. they had been alone; she had been so happy, so triumphant. now he had fled her, back to another world inhabited by all the enemies she would have had him forget: her cruelties, her vanities--her vanities! he could never reconcile her vanities and her splendour; he was incapable of seeing them both at the same time; the one excluded the other, turn and turn about, in his young eyes; her deceptions, her evasions of the truth, the men she had misled, the man, above all, that she had killed and whose death she had accepted with comparative indifference. these things rose in a bristling phalanx against her, and she faced them, small, afraid, and at a loss. for she was bound to admit their existence, and the very vivid, the very crushing, reality of their existence, all-important to her, in julian's eyes; although she herself might be too completely devoid of moral sense, in the ordinary acceptance of the word, to admit any justification for his indignation. she knew with sorrow that they would remain for ever as a threat in the background, and that she would be fortunate indeed if in that background she could succeed in keeping them more or less permanently. her imagination sighed for a potion of forgetfulness. failing that, never for an instant must she neglect her rôle of calypso. she knew that on the slightest impulse to anger on julian's part--and his impulses to anger were, alas, both violent and frequent--all those enemies in their phalanx would instantly rise and range themselves on his side against her. coaxed into abeyance, they would revive with fatal ease. she knew him well in his present mood of gloom. she was afraid, and a desperate anxiety to regain him possessed her. argument, she divined, would be futile. she whispered his name. he turned on her a face of granite. 'why have you changed?' she said helplessly. 'i was so happy, and you are making me so miserable.' 'i have no pity for you,' he said, 'you are too pitiless yourself to deserve any.' 'you break my heart when you speak to me like that.' 'i should like to break it,' he replied, unmoved. she did not answer, but presently he heard her sobbing. full of suspicion, he put out his hand and felt the tears running between her fingers. 'i have made you cry,' he said. 'not for the first time,' she answered. she knew that he was disconcerted, shaken in his harshness, and added,-- 'i know what you think of me sometimes, julian. i have nothing to say in my own defence. perhaps there is only one good thing in me, but that you must promise me never to attack.' 'what is it?' 'you sound very sceptical,' she answered wistfully. 'my love for you; let us leave it at that.' 'i wonder!' he said; and again, 'i wonder!...' she moved a little closer to him, and leaned against him, so that her hair brushed his cheek. awkwardly and absent-mindedly, he put his arms round her; he could feel her heart beating through her thin muslin shirt, and lifting her bare arm in his hand he weighed it pensively; she lay against him, allowing him to do as he pleased; physically he held her nearer, but morally he was far away. humiliating herself, she lay silent, willing to sacrifice the pride of her body if therewith she might purchase his return. but he, awaking with a start from his brooding grievances, put her away from him. if temptation was to overcome him, it must rush him by assault; not thus, sordid and unlit.... he rose, saying,-- 'it is very late; you must go to bed; good-night.' ii panaïoannou attempted a landing before sunrise on the following day. a few stars were still visible, but the moon was paling, low in the heavens, and along the eastern horizon the sky was turning rosy and yellow above the sea. earth, air, and water were alike bathed in purity and loveliness. julian, hastily aroused, remembered the islands as he had seen them from the mainland on the day of madame lafarge's picnic. in such beauty they were lying now, dependent on his defence.... excited beyond measure, he dressed rapidly, and as he dressed he heard the loud clanging of the school bell summoning the men to arms; he heard the village waking, the clatter of banging doors, of wooden soles upon the cobbles, and excited voices. he rushed from his room into the passage, where he met eve. she was very pale, and her hair was streaming round her shoulders. she clung to him. 'oh, julian, what is it? why are they ringing the bells? why are you dressed? where are you going?' he explained, holding her, stroking her hair. 'boats have been sighted, setting out from herakleion; i suppose they think they will take us by surprise. you know, i have told off two men to look after you; you are to go into the little hut which is prepared for you in the very centre of the island. they will never land, and you will be perfectly safe there. i will let you know directly they are driven off. you must let me go, darling.' 'oh, but you? but you?' she cried desperately. 'they won't come near me,' he replied laughing. 'julian, julian,' she said, holding on to his coat as he tried to loosen her fingers, 'julian, i want you to know: you're all my life, i give you myself, on whatever terms you like, for ever if you like, for a week if you like; you can do with me whatever you choose; throw me away when you've done with me; you think me worthless; i care only for you in the world.' he was astonished at the starkness and violence of the passion in her eyes and voice. 'but i am not going into any danger,' he said, trying to soothe her. 'for god's sake, kiss me,' she said, distraught, and seeing that he was impatient to go. 'i'll kiss you to-night,' he answered tempestuously, with a ring of triumph as one who takes a decision. 'no, no: now.' he kissed her hair, burying his face in its thickness. 'this attack is a comedy, not a tragedy,' he called back to her as he ran down the stairs. the sentry who had first sighted the fleet of boats was still standing upon his headland, leaning on his rifle, and straining his eyes over the sea. julian saw him thus silhouetted against the morning sky. day was breaking as julian came up the mule-path, a score of islanders behind him, walking with the soft, characteristic swishing of their white woollen skirts, and the slight rattle of slung rifles. all paused at the headland, which was above a little rocky creek; the green and white water foamed gently below. out to sea the boats were distinctly visible, dotted about the sea, carrying each a load of men; there might be twenty or thirty, with ten or fifteen men in each. 'they must be out of their senses,' tsigaridis growled; 'their only hope would have lain in a surprise attack at night--which by the present moonlight would indeed have proved equally idle--but at present they but expose themselves to our butchery.' 'the men are all at their posts?' julian asked. 'malista, kyrie, malista.' they remained for a little watching the boats as the daylight grew. the colours of the dawn were shifting, stretching, widening, and the water, turning from iron-gray to violet, began along the horizon to reflect the transparency of the sky. the long, low, gray clouds caught upon their edges an orange flush; a sudden bar of gold fell along the line where sky and water met; a drift of tiny clouds turned red like a flight of flamingoes; and the blue began insensibly to spread, pale at first, then deepening as the sun rose out of the melting clouds and flooded over the full expanse of sea. to the left, the coast of the mainland, with mount mylassa soaring, and herakleion at its base, broke the curve until it turned at an angle to run northward. smoke began to rise in steady threads of blue from the houses of herakleion. the red light died away at the tip of the pier. the gulls circled screaming, flashes of white and gray, marbled birds; and beyond the thin line of foam breaking against the island the water was green in the shallows. all round aphros the islanders were lying in pickets behind defences, the naturally rocky and shelving coast affording them the command of every approach. the port, which was the only really suitable landing-place, was secure, dominated as it was by the village; no boat could hope to live for five minutes under concentrated rifle fire from the windows of the houses. the other possible landing-places--the creeks and little beaches--could be held with equal ease by half a dozen men with rifles lying under shelter upon the headlands or on the ledges of the rocks. julian was full of confidence. the danger of shelling he discounted, firstly because herakleion possessed no man-of-war, or, indeed, any craft more formidable than the police motor-launch, and secondly because the authorities in herakleion knew well enough that italy, for reasons of her own, neither wholly idealistic nor disinterested, would never tolerate the complete destruction of aphros. moreover, it would be hopeless to attempt to starve out an island whose population lived almost entirely upon the fish caught round their own shores, the vegetables and fruit grown upon their own hillsides, the milk and cheeses from their own rough-feeding goats, and the occasional but sufficient meat from their own sheep and bullocks. 'kyrie,' said tsigaridis, 'should we not move into shelter?' julian abandoned the headland regretfully. for his own post he had chosen the davenant house in the village. he calculated that panaïoannou, unaware of the existence of a number of rifles on the island, would make his first and principal attempt upon the port, expecting there to encounter a hand to hand fight with a crowd diversely armed with knives, stones, pitchforks, and a few revolvers--a brief, bloody, desperate resistance, whose term could be but a matter of time, after which the village would fall into the hands of the invaders and the rebellion would be at an end. at most, panaïoannou would argue, the fighting would be continued up into the main street of the village, the horizontal street that was its backbone, terminating at one end by the market-place above the port, and at the other by the davenants' house; and ramifications of fighting--a couple of soldiers here and there pursuing a fleeing islander--up the sloping, narrow, stepped streets running between the houses, at right angles from the main street, up the hill. julian sat with his rifle cocked across his knees in one of the window recesses of his own house, and grinned as he anticipated panaïoannou's surprise. he did not want a massacre of the fat, well-meaning soldiers of herakleion--the casino, he reflected, must be closed to-day, much to the annoyance of the gambling dagos; however, they would have excitement enough, of another kind, to console them--he did not want a massacre of the benevolent croupier-soldiers he had seen parading the _platia_ only two days before, but he wanted them taught that aphros was a hornets' nest out of which they had better keep their fingers. he thought it extremely probable that after a first repulse they would refuse to renew the attack. they liked well enough defiling across the _platia_ on independence day, and recognising their friends amongst the admiring crowd, but he doubted whether they would appreciate being shot down in open boats by an enemy they could not even see. in the distance, from the windows of his own house, he heard firing, and from the advancing boats he could see spurts of smoke. he discerned a commotion in one boat; men got up and changed places, and the boat turned round and began to row in the opposite direction. young zapantiotis called to him from another window,-- 'you see them, kyrie? some one has been hit.' julian laughed exultantly. on a table near him lay a crumpled handkerchief of eve's, and a gardenia; he put the flower into his buttonhole. behind all his practical plans and his excitement lay the memory of his few words with her in the passage; under the stress of her emotion she had revealed a depth and vehemence of truth that he hitherto scarcely dared to imagine. to-day would be given to him surely more than his fair share for any mortal man: a fight, and the most desirable of women! he rejoiced in his youth and his leaping blood. yet he continued sorry for the kindly croupier-soldiers. the boats came on, encouraged by the comparative silence on the island. julian was glad it was not the fashion among the young men of herakleion, his friends, to belong to the army. he wondered what grbits was thinking of him. he was probably on the quay, watching through a telescope. or had the expedition been kept a secret from the still sleeping herakleion? surely! for he could distinguish no crowd upon the distant quays across the bay. a shot rang out close at hand, from some window of the village, and in one of the foremost boats he saw a man throw up his hands and fall over backwards. he sickened slightly. this was inevitable, he knew, but he had no lust for killing in this cold-blooded fashion. kneeling on the window-seat he took aim between the bars of the grating, and fired a quantity of shots all round the boat; they splashed harmlessly into the water, but had the effect he desired; the boat turned round in retreat. firing crackled now from all parts of the island. the casualties in the boats increased. in rage and panic the soldiers fired wildly back at the island, especially at the village; bullets ping-ed through the air and rattled on the roofs; occasionally there came a crash of broken glass. once julian heard a cry, and, craning his head to look down the street, he saw an islander lying on his face on the ground between the houses with his arms outstretched, blood running freely from his shoulder and staining his white clothes. 'my people!' julian cried in a passion, and shot deliberately into a boat-load of men. 'god!' he said to himself a moment later, 'i've killed him.' he laid down his rifle with a gesture of horror, and went out into the courtyard where the fountain still played and the pigeons prinked and preened. he opened the door into the street, went down the steps and along the street to where the islander lay groaning, lifted him carefully, and dragged him into the shelter of the house. zapantiotis met him in the court. 'kyrie,' he said, scared and reproachful, 'you should have sent me.' julian left him to look after the wounded man, and returned to the window; the firing had slackened, for the boats were now widely dispersed over the sea, offering only isolated targets at a considerable distance. time had passed rapidly, and the sun had climbed high overhead. he looked at the little dotted boats, bearing their burden of astonishment, death, and pain. was it possible that the attack had finally drawn away? at that thought, he regretted that the fighting had not given an opportunity of a closer, a more personal struggle. an hour passed. he went out into the village, where life was beginning to flow once more into the street and market-place; the villagers came out to look at their broken windows, and their chipped houses; they were all laughing and in high good-humour, pointing proudly to the damage, and laughing like children to see that in the school-house, which faced the sea and in which the remaining greek officials were still imprisoned, nearly all the windows were broken. julian, shaking off the people, men and women, who were trying to kiss his hands or his clothes, appeared briefly in the class-room to reassure the occupants. they were all huddled into a corner, behind a barricade of desks and benches. the one guard who had been left with them had spent his time inventing terrible stories for their distress. the wooden wall opposite the windows was pocked in two or three places by bullets. as julian came out again into the market-place he saw old tsigaridis riding down on his great white mule from the direction of the hills, accompanied by two runners on foot. he waited while the mule picked its way carefully and delicately down the stepped path that led from the other side of the market-place up into the interior of the island. 'they are beaten off, tsantilas.' 'no imprudences,' said the grave old man, and recommended to the people, who came crowding round his mule, to keep within the shelter of their houses. 'but, tsantilas, we have the boats within our sight; they cannot return without our knowledge in ample time to seek shelter.' 'there is one boat for which we cannot account--the motor-boat--it is swift and may yet take us by surprise,' tsigaridis replied pessimistically. he dismounted from his mule, and walked up the street with julian by his side, while the people, crestfallen, dispersed with lagging footsteps to their respective doorways. the motor-launch, it would appear, had been heard in the far distance, 'over there,' said tsigaridis, extending his left arm; the pickets upon the eastern coasts of the island had distinctly heard the echo of its engines--it was, fortunately, old and noisy--but early in the morning the sound had ceased, and since then had not once been renewed. tsigaridis inferred that the launch was lying somewhere in concealment amongst the tiny islands, from where it would emerge, unexpectedly and in an unexpected place, to attack. 'it must carry at least fifty men,' he added. julian revelled in the news. a motor-launch with such a crew would provide worthier game than little cockleshell rowing-boats. panaïoannou himself might be of the party. julian saw the general already as his prisoner. he remembered eve. so long as the launch lay in hiding he could not allow her to return to the village. it was even possible that they might have a small gun on board. he wanted to see her, he ached with the desire to see her, but, an instinctive epicurean, he welcomed the circumstances that forced him to defer their meeting until nightfall.... he wrote her a note on a leaf of his pocket-book, and despatched it to her by one of tsigaridis' runners. the hours of waiting fretted him, and to ease his impatience he started on a tour of the island with tsigaridis. they rode on mules, nose to tail along the winding paths, not climbing up into the interior, but keeping to the lower track that ran above the sea, upon the first flat ledge of the rock, all around the island. in some places the path was so narrow and so close to the edge that julian could, by leaning sideways in his saddle, look straight down the cliff into the water swirling and foaming below. he was familiar with almost every creek, so often had he bathed there as a boy. looking at the foam, he murmured to himself,-- 'aphros....' there were no houses here among the rocks, and no trees, save for an occasional group of pines, whose little cones clustered among the silvery branches, quite black against the sky. here and there, above creeks or the little sandy beaches where a landing for a small boat would have been possible, the picket of islanders had come out from their shelter behind the boulders, and were sitting talking on the rocks, holding their rifles upright between their knees, while a solitary sentinel kept watch at the extremity of the point, his kilted figure white as the circling seagulls or as the foam. a sense of lull and of siesta lay over the afternoon. at every picket julian asked the same question, and at every picket the same answer was returned,-- 'we have heard no engines since earliest morning, kyrie.' round the curve of the island, the first tiny, uninhabited islands came into view. some of them were mere rocks sticking up out of the sea; others, a little larger, grew a few trees, and a boat could have hidden, invisible from aphros, on their farther side. julian looked longingly at the narrow stretches of water which separated them. he even suggested starting to look for the launch. 'it would be madness, kyrie.' above a little bay, where the ground sloped down less abruptly, and where the sand ran gently down under the thin wavelets, they halted with the picket of that particular spot. their mules were led away by a runner. julian enjoyed sitting amongst these men, hearing them talk, and watching them roll cigarette after cigarette with the practised skill of their knotty fingers. through the sharp lines of their professional talk, and the dignity of their pleasant trades--for they were all fishermen, vintagers, or sheep and goat-herds--he smiled to the hidden secret of eve, and fancied that the soft muslin of her garments brushed, as at the passage of a ghost, against the rude woollen garments of the men; that her hands, little and white and idle, fluttered over their hardened hands; that he alone could see her pass amongst their group, smile to him, and vanish down the path. he was drowsy in the drowsy afternoon; he felt that he had fought and had earned his rest, and, moreover, was prepared to rise from his sleep with new strength to fight again. rest between a battle and a battle. strife, sleep, and love; love, sleep, and strife; a worthy plan of life! he slept. when he woke the men still sat around him, talking still of their perennial trades, and without opening his eyes he lay listening to them, and thought that in such a simple world the coming and going of generations was indeed of slight moment, since in the talk of crops and harvests, of the waxing and waning of moons, of the treachery of the sea or the fidelity of the land, the words of the ancestor might slip unchanged as an inheritance to grandson and great-grandson. of such kindred were they with nature, that he in his half-wakefulness barely distinguished the voices of the men from the wash of waves on the shore. he opened his eyes. the sun, which he had seen rising out of the sea in the dawn, after sweeping in its great flaming arc across the sky, had sunk again under the horizon. heavy purple clouds like outpoured wine stained the orange of the west. the colour of the sea was like the flesh of a fig. unmistakably, the throb of an engine woke the echoes between the islands. all eyes met, all voices hushed; tense, they listened. the sound grew; from a continuous purr it changed into separate beats. by mutual consent, and acting under no word of command, the men sought the cover of their boulders, clambering over the rocks, carrying their rifles with them, white, noiseless, and swift. julian found himself with three others in a species of little cave the opening of which commanded the beach; the cave was low, and they were obliged to crouch; one man knelt down at the mouth with his rifle ready to put to his shoulder. julian could smell, in that restricted place, the rough smell of their woollen clothes, and the tang of the goat which clung about one man, who must be a goat-herd. then before their crouching position could begin to weary them, the beat of the engines became insistent, imminent; and the launch shot round the curve, loaded with standing men, and heading directly for the beach. a volley of fire greeted them, but the soldiers were already overboard, waist-deep in water, plunging towards the shore with their rifles held high over their heads, while the crew of the launch violently reversed the engines and drove themselves off the sand by means of long poles, to save the launch from an irrevocable grounding. the attack was well planned, and executed by men who knew intimately the lie of the coast. with loud shouts, they emerged dripping from the water on to the beach. they were at least forty strong; the island picket numbered only a score, but they had the advantage of concealment. a few of the soldiers dropped while yet in the water; others fell forward on to their faces with their legs in the water and their heads and shoulders on dry land; many gained a footing but were shot down a few yards from the edge of the sea; the survivors flung themselves flat behind hummocks of rock and fired in the direction of the defending fire. everything seemed to have taken place within the compass of two or three minutes. julian had himself picked off three of the invaders; his blood was up, and he had lost all the sickening sense of massacre he had felt during the early part of the day. he never knew how the hand to hand fight actually began; he only knew that suddenly he was out of the cave, in the open, without a rifle, but with his revolver in his grasp, backed and surrounded by his own shouting men, and confronted by the soldiers of herakleion, heavily impeded by their wet trousers, but fighting sheerly for their lives, striving to get at him, losing their heads and aiming wildly, throwing aside their rifles and grappling at last bodily with their enemies, struggling not to be driven back into the sea, cursing the islanders, and calling to one another to rally, stumbling over the dead and the wounded. julian scarcely recognised his own voice in the shout of, 'aphros!' he was full of the lust of fighting; he had seen men roll over before the shot of his revolver, and had driven them down before the weight of his fist. he was fighting joyously, striking among the waves of his enemies as a swimmer striking out against a current. all his thought was to kill, and to rid his island of these invaders; already the tide had turned, and that subtle sense of defeat and victory that comes upon the crest of battle was infusing respectively despair and triumph. there was now no doubt in the minds of either the attackers or the defenders in whose favour the attack would end. there remained but three alternatives: surrender, death, or the sea. already many were choosing the first, and those that turned in the hope of regaining the launch were shot down or captured before they reached the water. the prisoners, disarmed, stood aside in a little sulky group under the guard of one islander, watching, resignedly, and with a certain indifference born of their own secession from activity, the swaying clump of men, shouting, swearing, and stumbling, and the feeble efforts of the wounded to drag themselves out of the way of the trampling feet. the sand of the beach was in some places, where blood had been spilt, stamped into a dark mud. a wounded soldier, lying half in and half out of the water, cried out pitiably as the salt water lapped over his wounds. the decision was hastened by the crew of the launch, who, seeing a bare dozen of their companions rapidly overpowered by a superior number of islanders, and having themselves no fancy to be picked off at leisure from the shore, started their engines and made off to sea. at that a cry of dismay went up; retreat, as an alternative, was entirely withdrawn; death an empty and unnecessary display of heroism; surrender remained; they chose it thankfully. iii julian never knew, nor did he stop to inquire, why eve had returned to the village without his sanction. he only knew that as he came up the street, escorted by all the population, singing, pressing around him, taking his hands, throwing flowers and even fruit in his path, holding up their children for him to touch, he saw her standing in the doorway of their house, the lighted courtyard yellow behind her. she stood there on the highest of the three steps, her hands held out towards him. he knew, too, although no word was spoken, that the village recognised them as lovers. he felt again the triumphant completeness of life; a fulfilment, beyond the possibility of that staid world that, somewhere, moved upon its confused, mercenary, mistaken, and restricted way. here, the indignities of hypocrisy were indeed remote. there, men shorn of candour entangled the original impulse of their motives until in a sea of perplexity they abandoned even to the ultimate grace of self-honesty; here, in an island of enchantment, he had fought for his dearest and most constituent beliefs--o honourable privilege! unhindered and rare avowal!--fought, not with secret weapons, but with the manhood of his body; and here, under the eyes of fellow-creatures, their presence no more obtrusive than the presence of the sea or the evening breeze, under their unquestioning eyes he claimed the just reward, the consummation, the right of youth, which in that pharisaical world would have been denied him. eve herself was familiar with his mood. whereas he had noted, marvelled, and rejoiced at the simplicity with which they came together, before that friendly concourse of people, she had stretched out her hands to him with an unthinking gesture of possession. she had kept her counsel during the unpropitious years, with a secrecy beyond the determination of a child; but here, having gained him for her own; having enticed him into the magical country where the standards drew near to her own standards; where she, on the one hand, no less than he upon the other, might fight with the naked weapons of nature for her desires and beliefs--here she walked at home and without surprise in the perfect liberty; that liberty which he accepted with gratitude, but she as a right out of which man elsewhere was cheated. he had always been surprised, on the rare occasions when a hint of her philosophy, a fragment of her creed, had dropped from her lips unawares. from these fragments he had been incapable of reconstructing the whole. he had judged her harshly, too young and too ignorant to query whether the falseness of convention cannot drive those, temperamentally direct and uncontrolled, into the self-defence of a superlative falseness.... he had seen her vanity; he had not seen what he was now, because himself in sympathy, beginning to apprehend, her whole-heartedness that was, in its way, so magnificent. very, very dimly he apprehended; his apprehension, indeed, limited chiefly to the recognition of a certain correlation in her to the vibrant demands alive in him: he asked from her, weakness to fling his strength into relief; submission to entice his tyranny; yet at the same time, passion to match his passion, and mettle to exalt his conquest in his own eyes; she must be nothing less than the whole grace and rarity of life for his pleasure; flattery, in short, at once subtle and blatant, supreme and meticulous, was what he demanded, and what she was, he knew, so instinctively ready to accord. as she put her hand into his, he felt the current of her pride as definitely as though he had seen a glance of understanding pass between her and the women of the village. he looked up at her, smiling. she had contrived for herself a garment out of some strip of dark red silk, which she had wound round her body after the fashion of an indian sari; in the opening of that sombre colour her throat gleamed more than usually white, and above her swathed slenderness her lips were red in the pallor of her face, and her waving hair held glints of burnish as the leaves of autumn. she was not inadequate in her anticipation of his unspoken demands: the exploitation of her sensuous delicacy was all for him--for him! he had expected, perhaps, that after her proud, frank welcome before the people, she would turn to him when they were alone; but he found her manner full of a deliberate indifference. she abstained even from any allusion to her day's anxiety. he was reminded of all their meetings when, after months, she betrayed no pleasure at his return, but rather avoided him, and coldly disregarded his unthinking friendliness. many a time, as a boy, he had been hurt and puzzled by this caprice, which, ever meeting him unprepared, was ever renewed by her. to-night he was neither hurt nor puzzled, but with a grim amusement accepted the pattern she set; he could allow her the luxury of a superficial control. with the harmony between them, they could play the game of pretence. he delighted in her unexpectedness. her reticence stirred him, in its disconcerting contrast with his recollection of her as he had left her that morning. she moved from the court into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room back into the court, and he followed her, impersonal as she herself, battening down all outward sign of his triumph, granting her the grace of that epicurean and ironic chivalry. he knew their quietness was ominous. they moved and spoke like people in the near, unescapable neighbourhood of a wild beast, whose attention they must on no account arouse, whose presence they must not mention, while each intensely aware of the peril, and each alive to the other's knowledge of it. she spoke and laughed, and he, in response to her laughter, smiled gravely; silence fell, and she broke it; she thought that he took pleasure in testing her power of reviving their protective talk; the effort increased in difficulty; he seemed to her strangely and paralysingly sinister. harmony between them! if such harmony existed, it was surely the harmony of hostility. they were enemies that evening, not friends. if an understanding existed, it was, on her part, the understanding that he was mocking her; on his part, the understanding that she, in her fear, must preserve the veneer of self-assurance, and that some fundamental convention--if the term was not too inherently contradictory--demanded his co-operation. he granted it. on other occasions his manner towards her might be rough, violent, uncontrolled; this evening it was of an irreproachable civility. for the first time in her life she felt herself at a disadvantage. she invented pretext after feverish pretext for prolonging their evening. she knew that if she could once bring a forgetful laugh to julian's lips, she would fear him less; but he continued to smile gravely at her sallies, and to watch her with that same unbending intent. in the midst of her phrase she would look up, meet his eyes bent upon her, and forget her words in confusion. once he rose, and stretched his limbs luxuriously against the background of the open roof and the stars; she thought he would speak, but to her relief he sat down again in his place, removed his eyes from her, and fell to the dissection, grain by grain, of a bunch of grapes. she continued to speak; she talked of kato, even of alexander christopoulos; she scarcely knew he was not listening to her until he broke with her name into the heart of her sentence, unaware that he interrupted. he stood up, came round to her chair, and put his hand upon her shoulder; she could not control her trembling. he said briefly, but with all the repressed triumph ringing in his voice, 'eve, come'; and without a word she obeyed, her eyes fastened to his, her breath shortened, deceit fallen from her, nothing but naked honesty remaining. she had lost even her fear of him. in their stark desire for each other they were equals. he put out his hand and extinguished the candles; dimness fell over the court. 'eve,' he said, still in that contained voice, 'you know we are alone in this house.' she acquiesced, 'i know,' not meaning to speak in a whisper, but involuntarily letting the words glide out with her breath. as he paused, she felt his hand convulsive upon her shoulder; her lids lay shut upon her eyes like heavy petals. presently he said wonderingly,-- 'i have not kissed you.' 'no,' she replied, faint, yet marvellously strong. he put his arm round her, and half carried her towards the stairs. 'let me go,' she whispered, for the sake of his contradiction. 'no,' he answered, holding her more closely to him. 'where are you taking me, julian?' he did not reply, but together they began to mount the stairs, she failing and drooping against his arm, her eyes still closed and her lips apart. they reached her room, bare, full of shadows, whitewashed, with the windows open upon the black moonlit sea. 'eve!' he murmured exultantly. 'aphros!...' iv the lyric of their early days of love piped clear and sweet upon the terraces of aphros. their surroundings entered into a joyous conspiracy with their youth. between halcyon sky and sea the island lay radiantly; as it were suspended, unattached, coloured like a rainbow, and magic with the enchantment of its isolation. the very foam which broke around its rocks served to define, by its lacy fringe of white, the compass of the magic circle. to them were granted solitude and beauty beyond all dreams of lovers. they dwelt in the certainty that no intruder could disturb them--save those intruders to be beaten off in frank fight--no visitor from the outside world but those that came on wings, swooping down out of the sky, poising for an instant upon the island, that halting place in the heart of the sea, and flying again with restless cries, sea-birds, the only disturbers of their peace. from the shadow of the olives, or of the stunted pines whose little cones hung like black velvet balls in the transparent tracery of the branches against the sky, they lay idly watching the gulls, and the tiny white clouds by which the blue was almost always flaked. the population of the island melted into a harmony with nature like the trees, the rocks and boulders, or the roving flocks of sheep and herds of goats. eve and julian met with neither curiosity nor surprise; only with acquiescence. daily as they passed down the village street, to wander up the mule-tracks into the interior of aphros, they were greeted by smiles and devotion that were as unquestioning and comfortable as the shade of the trees or the cool splash of the water; and nightly as they remained alone together in their house, dark, roofed over with stars, and silent but for the ripple of the fountain, they could believe that they had been tended by invisible hands in the island over which they reigned in isolated sovereignty. they abandoned themselves to the unbelievable romance. he, indeed, had striven half-heartedly; but she, with all the strength of her nature, had run gratefully, nay, clamantly, forward, exacting the reward of her patience, demanding her due. she rejoiced in the casting aside of shackles which, although she had resolutely ignored them in so far as was possible, had always irked her by their latent presence. at last she might gratify to the full her creed of living for and by the beloved, in a world of beauty where the material was denied admittance. in such a dream, such an ecstasy of solitude, they gained marvellously in one another's eyes. she revealed to julian the full extent of her difference and singularity. for all their nearness in the human sense, he received sometimes with a joyful terror the impression that he was living in the companionship of a changeling, a being strayed by accident from another plane. the small moralities and tendernesses of mankind contained no meaning for her. they were burnt away by the devastating flame of her own ideals. he knew now, irrefutably, that she had lived her life withdrawn from all but external contact with her surroundings. her sensuality, which betrayed itself even in the selection of the arts she loved, had marked her out for human passion. he had observed her instinct to deck herself for his pleasure; he had learnt the fastidious refinement with which she surrounded her body. he had marked her further instinct to turn the conduct of their love into a fine art. she had taught him the value of her reserve, her evasions, and of her sudden recklessness. he never discovered, and, no less epicurean than she, never sought to discover, how far her principles were innate, unconscious, or how far deliberate. they both tacitly esteemed the veil of some slight mystery to soften the harshness of their self-revelation. he dared not invoke the aid of unshrinking honesty to apportion the values between their physical and their mental affinity. what was it, this bond of flesh? so material, yet so imperative, so compelling, as to become almost a spiritual, not a bodily, necessity? so transitory, yet so recurrent? dying down like a flame, to revive again? so unimportant, so grossly commonplace, yet creating so close and tremulous an intimacy? this magic that drew together their hands like fluttering butterflies in the hours of sunlight, and linked them in the abandonment of mastery and surrender in the hours of night? that swept aside the careful training, individual and hereditary, replacing pride by another pride? this unique and mutual secret? this fallacious yet fundamental and dominating bond? this force, hurling them together with such cosmic power that within the circle of frail human entity rushed furiously the tempest of an inexorable law of nature? they had no tenderness for one another. such tenderness as might have crept into the relationship they collaborated in destroying, choosing to dwell in the strong clean air of mountain-tops, shunning the ease of the valleys. violence was never very far out of sight. they loved proudly, with a flame that purged all from their love but the essential, the ideal passion. 'i live with a mænad,' he said, putting out his hand and bathing his fingers in her loosened hair. from the rough shelter of reeds and matting where they idled then among the terraced vineyards, the festoons of the vines and the bright reds and yellows of the splay leaves, brilliant against the sun, framed her consonant grace. the beautiful shadows of lacing vines dappled the ground, and the quick lizards darted upon the rough terrace walls. he said, pursuing his thought,-- 'you have never the wish of other women--permanency? a house with me? never the inkling of such a wish?' 'trammels!' she replied, 'i've always hated possessions.' he considered her at great length, playing with her hair, fitting his fingers into its waving thicknesses, putting his cheek against the softness of her cheek, and laughing. 'my changeling. my nymph,' he said. she lay silent, her arms folded behind her head, and her eyes on him as he continued to utter his disconnected sentences. 'where is the eve of herakleion? the mask you wore! i dwelt only upon your insignificant vanity, and in your pride you made no defence. most secret pride! incredible chastity of mind! inviolate of soul, to all alike. inviolate. most rare restraint! the expansive vulgarity of the crowd! my eve....' he began again,-- 'so rarely, so stainlessly mine. beyond mortal hopes. you allowed all to misjudge you, myself included. you smiled, not even wistfully, lest that betray you, and said nothing. you held yourself withdrawn. you perfected your superficial life. that profound humour.... i could not think you shallow--not all your pretence could disguise your mystery--but, may i be forgiven, i have thought you shallow in all but mischief. i prophesied for you'--he laughed--'a great career as a destroyer of men. a great courtesan. but instead i find you a great lover. _une grande amoureuse._' 'if that is mischievous,' she said, 'my love for you goes beyond mischief; it would stop short of no crime.' he put his face between his hands for a second. 'i believe you; i know it.' 'i understand love in no other way,' she said, sitting up and shaking her hair out of her eyes; 'i am single-hearted. it is selfish love: i would die for you, gladly, without a thought, but i would sacrifice my claim on you to no one and to nothing. it is all-exorbitant. i make enormous demands. i must have you exclusively for myself.' he teased her,-- 'you refuse to marry me.' she was serious. 'freedom, julian! romance! the world before us, to roam at will; fairs to dance at; strange people to consort with, to see the smile in their eyes, and the tolerant "lovers!" forming on their lips. to tweak the nose of propriety, to snatch away the chair on which she would sit down! who in their senses would harness the divine courser to a mail-cart?' she seemed to him lit by an inner radiance, that shone through her eyes and glowed richly in her smile. 'vagabond!' he said. 'is life to be one long carnival?' 'and one long honesty. i'll own you before the world--and court its disapproval. i'll release you--no, i'll leave you--when you tire of me. i wouldn't clip love's golden wings. i wouldn't irk you with promises, blackmail you into perjury, wring from you an oath we both should know was made only to be broken. we'll leave that to middle-age. middle-age--i have been told there is such a thing? sometimes it is fat, sometimes it is wan, surely it is always dreary! it may be wise and successful and contented. sometimes, i'm told, it even loves. we are young. youth!' she said, sinking her voice, 'the winged and the divine.' when he talked to her about the islands, she did not listen, although she dared not check him. he talked, striving to interest her, to fire her enthusiasm. he talked, with his eyes always upon the sea, since some obscure instinct warned him not to keep them bent upon her face; sometimes they were amongst the vines, which in the glow of their september bronze and amber resembled the wine flowing from their fruits, and from here the sea shimmered, crudely and cruelly blue between those flaming leaves, undulating into smooth, nacreous folds; sometimes they were amongst the rocks on the lower levels, on a windier day, when white crests spurted from the waves, and the foam broke with a lacy violence against the island at the edge of the green shallows; and sometimes, after dusk, they climbed to the olive terraces beneath the moon that rose through the trees in a world strangely gray and silver, strangely and contrastingly deprived of colour. he talked, lying on the ground, with his hands pressed close against the soil of aphros. its contact gave him the courage he needed.... he talked doggedly; in the first week with the fire of inspiration, after that with the perseverance of loyalty. these monologues ended always in the same way. he would bring his glance from the sea to her face, would break off his phrase in the middle, and, coming suddenly to her, would cover her hair, her throat, her mouth, with kisses. then she would turn gladly and luxuriously towards him, curving in his arms, and presently the grace of her murmured speech would again bewitch him, until upon her lips he forgot the plea of aphros. there were times when he struggled to escape her, his physical and mental activity rebelling against the subjection in which she held him. he protested that the affairs of the islands claimed him; that herakleion had granted but a month for negotiations; precautions must be taken, and the scheme of government amplified and consolidated. then the angry look came over her face, and all the bitterness of her resentment broke loose. having captured him, much of her precocious wisdom seemed to have abandoned her. 'i have waited for you ten years, yet you want to leave me. do i mean less to you than the islands? i wish the islands were at the bottom of the sea instead of on the top of it.' 'be careful, eve.' 'i resent everything which takes you from me,' she said recklessly. another time she cried, murky with passion,-- 'always these councils with tsigaridis and the rest! always these secret messages passing between you and kato! give me that letter.' he refused, shredding kato's letter and scattering the pieces into the sea. 'what secrets have you with kato, that you must keep from me?' 'they would have no interest for you,' he replied, remembering that she was untrustworthy--that canker in his confidence. the breeze fanned slightly up the creek where they were lying on the sand under the shadow of a pine, and out in the dazzling sea a porpoise leapt, turning its slow black curve in the water. the heat simmered over the rocks. 'we share our love,' he said morosely, 'but no other aspect of life. the islands are nothing to you. an obstacle, not a link.' it was a truth that he rarely confronted. 'you are wrong: a background, a setting for you, which i appreciate.' 'you appreciate the picturesque. i know. you are an artist in appreciation of the suitable stage-setting. but as for the rest....' he made a gesture full of sarcasm and renunciation. 'give me up, julian, and all my shortcomings. i have always told you i had but one virtue. i am the first to admit the insufficiency of its claim. give yourself wholly to your islands. let me go.' she spoke sadly, as though conscious of her own irremediable difference and perversity. 'yet you yourself--what were your words?--said you believed in me; you even wrote to me, i remember still, "conquer, shatter, demolish!" but i must always struggle against you, against your obstructions. what is it you want? liberty and irresponsibility, to an insatiable degree!' 'because i love you insatiably.' 'you are too unreasonable sometimes' ('reason!' she interrupted with scorn, 'what has reason got to do with love?') 'you are unreasonable to grudge me every moment i spend away from you. won't you realise that i am responsible for five thousand lives? you must let me go now; only for an hour. i promise to come back to you in an hour.' 'are you tired of me already?' 'eve....' 'when we were in herakleion, you were always saying you must go to kato; now you are always going to some council; am i never to have you to myself?' 'i will go only for an hour. i _must_ go, eve, my darling.' 'stay with me, julian. i'll kiss you. i'll tell you a story.' she stretched out her hands. he shook his head, laughing, and ran off in the direction of the village. when he returned, she refused to speak to him. but at other times they grew marvellously close, passing hours and days in unbroken union, until the very fact of their two separate personalities became an exasperation. then, silent as two souls tortured, before a furnace, they struggled for the expression that ever eludes; the complete, the satisfying expression that shall lay bare one soul to another soul, but that, ever failing, mockingly preserves the unwanted boon of essential mystery. that dumb frenzy outworn, they attained, nevertheless, to a nearer comradeship, the days, perhaps, of their greatest happiness, when with her reckless fancy she charmed his mind; he thought of her then as a vagrant nymph, straying from land to land, from age to age, decking her spirit with any flower she met growing by the way, chastely concerned with the quest of beauty, strangely childlike always, pure as the fiercest, tallest flame. he could not but bow to that audacity, that elemental purity, of spirit. untainted by worldliness, greed, or malice.... the facts of her life became clearer to him, startling in their consistency. he could not associate her with possessions, or a fixed abode, she who was free and elusive as a swallow, to whom the slightest responsibility was an intolerable and inadmissible yoke from beneath which, without commotion but also without compunction, she slipped. on no material point could she be touched--save her own personal luxury, and that seemed to grow with her, as innocent of effort as the colour on a flower; she kindled only in response to music, poetry, love, or laughter, but then with what a kindling! she flamed, she glowed; she ranged over spacious and fabulous realms; her feet never touched earth, they were sandal-shod and carried her in the clean path of breezes, and towards the sun, exalted and ecstatic, breathing as the common air the rarity of the upper spaces. at such times she seemed a creature blown from legend, deriving from no parentage; single, individual, and lawless. he found that he had come gradually to regard her with a superstitious reverence. he evolved a theory, constructed around her, dim and nebulous, yet persistent; perforce nebulous, since he was dealing with a matter too fine, too subtle, too unexplored, to lend itself to the gross imperfect imprisonment of words. he never spoke of it, even to her, but staring at her sometimes with a reeling head he felt himself transported, by her medium, beyond the matter-of-fact veils that shroud the limit of human vision. he felt illuminated, on the verge of a new truth; as though by stretching out his hand he might touch something no hand of man had ever touched before, something of unimaginable consistency, neither matter nor the negation of matter; as though he might brush the wings of truth, handle the very substance of a thought.... he felt at these times like a man who passes through a genuine psychical experience. yes, it was as definite as that; he had the glimpse of a possible revelation. he returned from his vision--call it what he would, vision would serve as well as any other word--he returned with that sense of benefit by which alone such an excursion--or was it incursion?--could be justified. he brought back a benefit. he had beheld, as in a distant prospect, a novel balance and proportion of certain values. that alone would have left him enriched for ever. practical as he could be, theories and explorations were yet dear to him: he was an inquisitive adventurer of the mind no less than an active adventurer of the world. he sought eagerly for underlying truths. his apparently inactive moods were more accurately his fallow moods. his thought was as an ardent plough, turning and shifting the loam of his mind. yet he would not allow his fancy to outrun his conviction; if fancy at any moment seemed to lead, he checked it until more lumbering conviction could catch up. they must travel ever abreast, whip and reins alike in his control. youth--were the years of youth the intuitive years of perception? were the most radiant moments the moments in which one stepped farthest from the ordered acceptance of the world? moments of danger, moments of inspiration, moments of self-sacrifice, moments of perceiving beauty, moments of love, all the drunken moments! eve moved, he knew, permanently upon that plane. she led an exalted, high-keyed inner life. the normal mood to her was the mood of a sensitive person caught at the highest pitch of sensibility. was she unsuited to the world and to the necessities of the world because she belonged, not here, but to another sphere apprehended by man only in those rare, keen moments that julian called the drunken moments? apprehended by poet or artist--the elect, the aristocracy, the true path-finders among the race of man!--in moments when sobriety left them and they passed beyond? was she to blame for her cruelty, her selfishness, her disregard for truth? was she, not evil, but only alien? to be forgiven all for the sake of the rarer, more distant flame? was the standard of cardinal virtues set by the world the true, the ultimate standard? was it possible that eve made part of a limited brotherhood? was indeed a citizen of some advanced state of such perfection that this world's measures and ideals were left behind and meaningless? meaningless because unnecessary in such a realm of serenity? aphros, then--the liberty of aphros--and aphros meant to him far more than merely aphros--that was surely a lovely and desirable thing, a worthy aim, a high beacon? if eve cared nothing for the liberty of aphros, was it because in _her_ world (he was by now convinced of its existence) there was no longer any necessity to trouble over such aims, liberty being as natural and unmeditated as the air in the nostrils? (not that this would ever turn him from his devotion; at most he could look upon aphros as a stage upon the journey towards that higher aim--the stage to which he and his like, who were nearly of the elect, yet not of them, might aspire. and if the day should ever come when disillusion drove him down; when, far from becoming a citizen of eve's far sphere, he should cease to be a citizen even of aphros and should become a citizen merely of the world, no longer young, no longer blinded by ideals, no longer nearly a poet, but merely a grown, sober man--then he would still keep aphros as a bright memory of what might have been, of the best he had grasped, the possibility which in the days of youth had not seemed too extravagantly unattainable.) but in order to keep his hold upon this world of eve's, which in his inner consciousness he already recognised as the most valuable rift of insight ever vouchsafed to him, it was necessary that he should revolutionise every ancient gospel and reputable creed. the worth of eve was to him an article of faith. his intimacy with her was a privilege infinitely beyond the ordinary privilege of love. whatever she might do, whatever crime she might commit, whatever baseness she might perpetrate, her ultimate worth, the core, the kernel, would remain to him unsullied and inviolate. this he knew blindly, seeing it as the mystic sees god; and knew it the more profoundly that he could have defended it with no argument of reason. what then? the poet, the creator, the woman, the mystic, the man skirting the fringes of death--were they kin with one another and free of some realm unknown, towards which all, consciously or unconsciously, were journeying? where the extremes of passion (he did not mean only the passion of love), of exaltation, of danger, of courage and vision--where all these extremes met--was it there, the great crossways where the moral ended, and the divine began? was it for eve supremely, and to a certain extent for all women and artists--the visionaries, the lovely, the graceful, the irresponsible, the useless!--was it reserved for them to show the beginning of the road? youth! youth and illusion! to love eve and aphros! when those two slipped from him he would return sobered to the path designated by the sign-posts and milestones of man, hoping no more than to keep as a gleam within him the light glowing in the sky above that unattainable but remembered city. he returned to earth; eve was kneading and tormenting a lump of putty, and singing to herself meanwhile; he watched her delicate, able hands, took one of them, and held it up between his eyes and the sun. 'your fingers are transparent, they're like cornelian against the light,' he said. she left her hand within his grasp, and smiled down at him. 'how you play with me, julian,' she said idly. 'you're such a delicious toy.' 'only a toy?' he remembered the intricate, untranslatable thoughts he had been thinking about her five minutes earlier, and began to laugh to himself. 'a great deal more than a toy. once i thought of you only as a child, a helpless, irritating, adorable child, always looking for trouble, and turning to me for help when the trouble came.' 'and then?' 'then you made me think of you as a woman,' he replied gravely. 'you seemed to hesitate a good deal before deciding to think of me as that.' 'yes, i tried to judge our position by ordinary codes; you must have thought me ridiculous.' 'i did, darling.' her mouth twisted drolly as she said it. 'i wonder now how i could have insulted you by applying them to you,' he said with real wonderment; everything seemed so clear and obvious to him now. 'why, how do you think of me now?' 'oh, god knows!' he replied. 'i've called you changeling sometimes, haven't i?' he decided to question her. 'tell me, eve, how do you explain your difference? you outrage every accepted code, you see, and yet one retains one's belief in you. is one simply deluded by your charm? or is there a deeper truth? can you explain?' he had spoken in a bantering tone, but he knew that he was trying an experiment of great import to him. 'i don't think i'm different, julian; i think i feel things strongly, no more.' 'or else you don't feel them at all.' 'what do you mean?' 'well--paul,' he said reluctantly. 'you have never got over that, have you?' 'exactly!' he exclaimed. 'it seems to you extraordinary that i should still remember paul, or that his death should have made any impression upon me. i ought to hate you for your indifference. sometimes i have come very near to hating you. but now--perhaps my mind is getting broader--i blame you for nothing because i believe you are simply not capable of understanding. but evidently you can't explain yourself. i love you!' he said, 'i love you!' he knew that her own inability to explain herself--her unself-consciousness--had done much to strengthen his new theories. the flower does not know why or how it blossoms.... on the day that he told her, with many misgivings, that kato was coming to aphros, she uttered no word of anger, but wept despairingly, at first without speaking, then with short, reiterated sentences that wrung his heart for all their unreason,-- 'we were alone. i was happy as never in my life. i had you utterly. we were alone. alone! alone!' 'we will tell kato the truth,' he soothed her; 'she will leave us alone still.' but it was not in her nature to cling to straws of comfort. for her, the sunshine had been unutterably radiant; and for her it was now proportionately blackened out. 'we were alone,' she repeated, shaking her head with unspeakable mournfulness, the tears running between her fingers. for the first time he spoke to her with a moved, a tender compassion, full of reverence. 'your joy ... your sorrow ... equally overwhelming and tempestuous. how you feel--you tragic child! yesterday you laughed and made yourself a crown of myrtle.' she refused to accompany him when he went to meet kato, who, after a devious journey from athens, was to land at the rear of the island away from the curiosity of herakleion. she remained in the cool house, sunk in idleness, her pen and pencil alike neglected. she thought only of julian, absorbingly, concentratedly. her past life appeared to her, when she thought of it at all, merely as a period in which julian had not loved her, a period of waiting, of expectancy, of anguish sometimes, of incredible reticence supported only by the certainty which had been her faith and her inspiration.... to her surprise, he returned, not only with kato but with grbits. every word and gesture of the giant demonstrated his enormous pleasure. his oddly mongolian face wore a perpetual grin of triumphant truancy. his good-humour was not to be withstood. he wrung eve's hands, inarticulate with delight. kato, her head covered with a spangled veil--julian had never seen her in a hat--stood by, looking on, her hands on her hips, as though grbits were her exhibit. her little eyes sparkled with mischief. 'he is no longer an officer in the serbian army,' she said at last, 'only a free-lance, at julian's disposal. is it not magnificent? he has sent in his resignation. his career is ruined. the military representative of serbia in herakleion!' 'a free-lance,' grbits repeated, beaming down at julian. (it annoyed eve that he should be so much the taller of the two). 'we sent you no word, not to lessen your surprise,' said kato. they stood, all four, in the courtyard by the fountain. 'i told you on the day of the elections that when you needed me i should come,' grbits continued, his grin widening. 'of course, you are a supreme fool, grbits,' said kato to him. 'yes,' he replied, 'thank heaven for it.' 'in athens the sympathy is all with the islands,' said kato. she had taken off her veil, and they could see that she wore the gold wheat-ears in her hair. her arms were, as usual, covered with bangles, nor had she indeed made any concessions to the necessities of travelling, save that on her feet, instead of her habitual square-toed slippers, she wore long, hideous, heelless, elastic-sided boots. eve reflected that she had grown fatter and more stumpy, but she was, as ever, eager, kindly, enthusiastic, vital; they brought with them a breath of confidence and efficiency, those disproportionately assorted travelling companions; julian felt a slight shame that he had neglected the islands for eve; and eve stood by, listening to their respective recitals, to grbits' startling explosions of laughter, and kato's exuberant joy, tempered with wisdom. they both talked at once, voluble and excited; the wheat-ears trembled in kato's hair, grbits' white regular teeth flashed in his broad face, and julian, a little bewildered, turned from one to the other with his unsmiling gravity. 'i mistrust the forbearance of herakleion,' kato said, a great weight of meditated action pressing on behind her words; 'a month's forbearance! in athens innumerable rumours were current: of armed ships purchased from the turks, even of a gun mounted on mylassa--but that i do not believe. they have given you, you say, a month in which to come to your senses. but they are giving themselves also a month in which to prepare their attack,' and she plied him with practical questions that demonstrated her clear familiarity with detail and tactic, while grbits contributed nothing but the cavernous laugh and ejaculations of his own unquestioning optimism. v the second attack on aphros was delivered within a week of their arrival. eve and kato, refusing the retreat in the heart of the island, spent the morning together in the davenant house. in the distance the noise of the fighting alternately increased and waned; now crackling sharply, as it seemed, from all parts of the sea, now dropping into a disquieting silence. at such times eve looked mutely at the singer. kato gave her no comfort, but, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders, expressed only her ignorance. she found that she could speak to julian sympathetically of eve, but not to eve sympathetically of julian. she had made the attempt, but after the pang of its effort, had renounced it. their hostility smouldered dully under the shelter of their former friendship. now, alone in the house, they might indeed have remained for the most time apart in separate rooms, but the common anxiety which linked them drew them together, so that when kato moved eve followed her, unwillingly, querulously; and expressions of affection were even forced from them, of which they instantly repented, and by some phrase of veiled cruelty sought to counteract. no news reached them from outside. every man was at his post, and julian had forbidden all movement about the village. by his orders also the heavy shutters had been closed over the windows of the davenant drawing-room, where eve and kato sat, with the door open on to the courtyard for the sake of light, talking spasmodically, and listening to the sounds of the firing. at the first quick rattle kato had said, 'machine-guns,' and eve had replied, 'yes; the first time--when we were here alone--he told me they had a machine-gun on the police-launch;' then kato said, after a pause of firing, 'this time they have more than one.' eve raised tormented eyes. 'anastasia, he said he would be in shelter.' 'would he remain in shelter for long?' kato replied scornfully. eve said,-- 'he has grbits with him.' kato, crushing down the personal preoccupation, dwelt ardently on the fate of her country. she must abandon to eve the thought of julian, but of the islands at least she might think possessively, diverting to their dear though inanimate claim all the need of passion and protection humanly denied her. from a woman of always intense patriotism, she had become a fanatic. starved in one direction, she had doubled her energy in the other, realising, moreover, the power of that bond between herself and julian. she could have said with thorough truthfulness that her principal cause of resentment against eve was eve's indifference towards the islands--a loftier motive than the more human jealousy. she had noticed julian's reluctance to mention the islands in eve's presence. alone with herself and grbits, he had never ceased to pour forth the flood of his scheme, both practical and utopian, so that kato could not be mistaken as to the direction of his true preoccupations. she had seen the vigour he brought to his governing. she had observed with a delighted grin to grbits that, despite his socialistic theories, julian had in point of fact instituted a complete and very thinly-veiled autocracy in hagios zacharie. she had seen him in the village assembly, when, in spite of his deferential appeals to the superior experience of the older men, he steered blankly past any piece of advice that ran contrary to the course of his own ideas. she knew that, ahead of him, when he should have freed himself finally of herakleion (and that he would free himself he did not for a moment doubt), he kept always the dream of his tiny, ideal state. she revered his faith, his energy, and his youth, as the essence in him most worthy of reverence. and she knew that eve, if she loved these things in him, loved them only in theory, but in practice regarded them with impatient indifference. they stole him away, came between him and her.... kato knew well eve's own ideals. courage she exacted. talents she esteemed. genius, freedom, and beauty she passionately worshipped as her gods upon earth. but she could tolerate nothing material, nor any occupation that removed her or the other from the blind absorption of love. kato sighed. far otherwise would she have cared for julian! she caught sight of herself in a mirror, thick, squat, black, with little sparkling eyes; she glanced at eve, glowing with warmth, sleek and graceful as a little animal, idle and seductive. outside a crash of firing shook the solid house, and bullets rattled upon the roofs of the village. it was intolerable to sit unoccupied, working out bitter speculations, while such activity raged around the island. to know the present peril neither of julian nor of aphros! to wait indefinitely, probably all day, possibly all night! 'anastasia, sing.' kato complied, as much for her own sake as for eve's. she sang some of her own native songs, then, breaking off, she played, and eve drew near to her, lost and transfigured by the music; she clasped and unclasped her hands, beautified by her ecstasy, and kato's harsh thoughts vanished; eve was, after all, a child, an all too loving and passionate child, and not, as kato sometimes thought her, a pernicious force of idleness and waste. wrong-headed, tragically bringing sorrow upon herself in the train of her too intense emotions.... continuing to play, kato observed her, and felt the light eager fingers upon her arm. 'ah, kato, you make me forget. like some drug of forgetfulness that admits me to caves of treasure. underground caves heaped with jewels. caves of the winds; zephyrs that come and go. i'm carried away into oblivion.' 'tell me,' kato said. obedient to the lead of the music, eve wandered into a story,-- 'riding on a winged horse, he swept from east to west; he looked down upon the sea, crossed by the wake of ships, splashed here and there with islands, washing on narrow brown stretches of sand, or dashing against the foot of cliffs--you hear the waves breaking?--and he saw how the moon drew the tides, and how ships came to rest for a little while in harbours, but were homeless and restless and free; he passed over the land, swooping low, and he saw the straight streets of cities, and the gleam of fires, the neat fields and guarded frontiers, the wider plains; he saw the gods throned on ida, wearing the clouds like mantles and like crowns, divinely strong or divinely beautiful; he saw things mean and magnificent; he saw the triumphal procession of a conqueror, with prisoners walking chained to the back of his chariot, and before him white bulls with gilded horns driven to the sacrifice, and children running with garlands of flowers; he saw giants hammering red iron in northern mountains; he saw all the wanderers of the earth; io the tormented, and all gipsies, vagabonds, and wastrels: all jongleurs, poets, and mountebanks; he saw these wandering, but all the staid and solemn people lived in the cities and counted the neat fields, saying, "this shall be mine and this shall be yours." and sometimes, as he passed above a forest, he heard a scurry of startled feet among crisp leaves, and sometimes he heard, which made him sad, the cry of stricken trees beneath the axe.' she broke off, as kato ceased playing. 'they are still firing,' she said. 'things mean and magnificent,' quoted kato slowly. 'why, then, withhold julian from the islands?' she had spoken inadvertently. consciousness of the present had jerked her back from remembrance of the past, when eve had come almost daily to her flat in herakleion, bathing herself in the music, wrapped up in beauty; when their friendship had hovered on the boundaries of the emotional, in spite of--or perhaps because of?--the thirty years that lay between them. 'i heard the voice of my fantastic eve, of whom i once thought,' she added, fixing her eyes on eve, 'as the purest of beings, utterly removed from the sordid and the ugly.' eve suddenly flung herself on her knees beside her. 'ah, kato,' she said, 'you throw me off my guard when you play to me. i'm not always hard and calculating, and your music melts me. it hurts me to be, as i constantly am, on the defensive. i'm too suspicious by nature to be very happy, kato. there are always shadows, and ... and tragedy. please don't judge me too harshly. tell me what you mean by sordid and ugly--what is there sordid or ugly in love?' kato dared much; she replied in a level voice,-- 'jealousy. waste. exorbitance. suspicion. i am sometimes afraid of your turning julian into another of those men who hoped to find their inspiration in a woman, but found only a hindrance.' she nodded sagely at eve, and the gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair. eve darkened at julian's name; she got up and stood by the door looking into the court. kato went on,-- 'you are so much of a woman, eve, that it becomes a responsibility. it is a gift, like genius. and a great gift without a great soul is a curse, because such a gift is too strong to be disregarded. it's a force, a danger. you think i am preaching to you'--eve would never know what the words were costing her--'but i preach only because of my belief in julian--and in you,' she hastened to add, and caught eve's hand; 'don't frown, you child. look at me; i have no illusions and no sensitiveness on the score of my own appearance; look at me hard, and let me speak to you as a sexless creature.' eve was touched in spite of her hostility. she was also shocked and distressed. there was to her, so young herself, so insolently vivid in her sex-pride, something wrong and painful in kato's renouncement of her right. she had a sense of betrayal. 'hush, anastasia,' she whispered. they were both extremely moved, and the constant volleys of firing played upon their nerves and stripped reserve from them. 'you don't realise,' said kato, who had, upon impulse, sacrificed her pride, and beaten down the feminine weakness she branded as unworthy, 'how finely the balance, in love, falters between good and ill. you, eve, are created for love; any one who saw you, even without speaking to you, across a room, could tell you that.' she smiled affectionately; she had, at that moment, risen so far above all personal vanity that she could bring herself to smile affectionately at eve. 'you said, just now, with truth i am sure, that shadows and tragedy were never very far away from you; you're too _rare_ to be philosophical. i wish there were a word to express the antithesis of a philosopher; if i could call you by it, i should have said all that i could wish to say about you, eve. i'm so much afraid of sorrow for you and julian....' 'yes, yes,' said eve, forgetting to be resentful, 'i am afraid, too; it overcomes me sometimes; it's a presentiment.' she looked really haunted, and kato was filled with an immense pity for her. 'you mustn't be weak,' she said gently. 'presentiment is only a high-sounding word for a weak thought.' 'you are so strong and sane, kato; it is easy for you to be--strong and sane.' they broke off, and listened in silence to an outburst of firing and shouts that rose from the village. grbits burst into the room early in the afternoon, his flat sallow face tinged with colour, his clothes torn, and his limbs swinging like the sails of a windmill. in one enormous hand he still brandished a revolver. he was triumphantly out of breath. 'driven off!' he cried. 'they ran up a white flag. not one succeeded in landing. not one.' he panted between every phrase. 'julian--here in a moment. i ran. negotiations now, we hope. sea bobbing with dead.' 'our losses?' said kato sharply. 'few. all under cover,' grbits replied. he sat down, swinging his revolver loosely between his knees, and ran his fingers through his oily black hair, so that it separated into straight wisps across his forehead. he was hugely pleased and good-humoured, and grinned widely upon eve and kato. 'good fighting--though too much at a distance. julian was grazed on the temple--told me to tell you,' he added, with the tardy haste of a child who has forgotten to deliver a message. 'we tied up his head, and it will be nothing of a scratch.--driven off! they have tried and failed. the defence was excellent. they will scarcely try force again. i am sorry i missed the first fight. i could have thrown those little fat soldiers into the sea with one hand, two at a time.' kato rushed up to grbits and kissed him; they were like children in their large, clumsy excitement. julian came in, his head bandaged; his unconcern deserted him as he saw kato hanging over the giant's chair. he laughed out loud. 'a miscellaneous fleet!' he cried. 'coastal steamers, fort tugs, old chirkets from the bosphorus--who was the admiral, i wonder?' 'panaïoannou,' cried grbits, 'his uniform military down one side, and naval down the other.' 'their white flag!' said julian. 'sterghiou's handkerchief!' said grbits. 'coaling steamers, mounting machine-guns,' julian continued. 'stavridis must have imagined that,' said kato. 'play us a triumphal march, anastasia!' said grbits. kato crashed some chords on the piano; they all laughed and sang, but eve, who had taken no part at all, remained in the window-seat staring at the ground and her lips trembling. she heard julian's voice calling her, but she obstinately shook her head. he was lost to her between kato and grbits. she heard them eagerly talking now, all three, of the negotiations likely to follow. she heard the occasional shout with which grbits recalled some incident in the fighting, and julian's response. she felt that her ardent hatred of the islands rose in proportion to their ardent love. 'he cares nothing for me,' she kept repeating to herself, 'he cares for me as a toy, a pastime, nothing more; he forgets me for kato and the islands. the islands hold his true heart. i am the ornament to his life, not life itself. and he is all my life. he forgets me....' pride alone conquered her tears. later, under cover of a white flag, the ex-premier malteios was landed at the port of aphros, and was conducted--since he insisted that his visit was unofficial--to the davenant house. peace and silence reigned. grbits and kato had gone together to look at the wreckage, and eve, having watched their extraordinary progress down the street until they turned into the market-place, was alone in the drawing-room. julian slept heavily, his arms flung wide, on his bed upstairs. zapantiotis, who had expected to find him in the court or in the drawing-room, paused perplexed. he spoke to eve in a low voice. 'no,' she said, 'do not wake mr davenant,' and, raising her voice, she added, 'his excellency can remain with me.' she was alone in the room with malteios, as she had desired. 'but why remain thus, as it were, at bay?' he said pleasantly, observing her attitude, shrunk against the wall, her hand pressed to her heart. 'you and i were friends once, mademoiselle. madame?' he substituted. 'mademoiselle,' she replied levelly. 'ah? other rumours, perhaps--no matter. here upon your island, no doubt, different codes obtain. far be it from me to suggest.... an agreeable room,' he said, looking round, linking his fingers behind his back, and humming a little tune; 'you have a piano, i see; have you played much during your leisure? but, of course, i was forgetting: madame kato is your companion here, is she not? and to her skill a piano is a grateful ornament. ah, i could envy you your evenings, with kato to make your music. paris cries for her; but no, she is upon a revolutionary island in the heart of the Ægean! paris cries the more. her portrait appears in every paper. madame kato, when she emerges, will find her fame carried to its summit. and you, mademoiselle eve, likewise something of a heroine.' 'i am here in the place of my cousin,' eve said, looking across at the ex-premier. he raised his eyebrows, and, in a familiar gesture, smoothed away his beard from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers. 'is that indeed so? a surprising race, you english. very surprising. you assume or bequeath very lightly the mantle of government, do you not? am i to understand that you have permanently replaced your cousin in the--ah!--presidency of hagios zacharie?' 'my cousin is asleep; there is no reason why you should not speak to me in his absence.' 'asleep? but i must see him, mademoiselle.' 'if you will wait until he wakes.' 'hours, possibly!' 'we will send to wake him in an hour's time. can i not entertain you until then?' she suggested, her natural coquetry returning. she left the wall against which she had been leaning, and, coming across to malteios, gave him her fingers with a smile. the ex-premier had always figured picturesquely in her world. 'mademoiselle,' he said, kissing the fingers she gave him, 'you are as delightful as ever, i am assured.' they sat, malteios impatient and ill at ease, unwilling to forego his urbanity, yet tenacious of his purpose. in the midst of the compliments he perfunctorily proffered, he broke out,-- 'children! _ces gosses.... mais il est fou, voyons, votre cousin_. what is he thinking about? he has created a ridiculous disturbance; well, let that pass; we overlook it, but this persistence.... where is it all to end? obstinacy feeds and grows fat upon obstinacy; submission grows daily more impossible, more remote. his pride is at stake. a threat, well and good; let him make his threat; he might then have arrived at some compromise. i, possibly, might myself have acted as mediator between him and my friend and rival, gregori stavridis. in fact, i am here to-day in the hope that my effort will not come too late. but after so much fighting! tempers run high no doubt in the islands, and i can testify that they run high in herakleion. anastasia--probably you know this already--madame kato's flat is wrecked. yes, the mob. we are obliged to keep a cordon of police always before your uncle's house. neither he nor your father and mother dare to show themselves at the windows. it is a truly terrible state of affairs.' he reverted to the deeper cause of his resentment,-- 'i could have mediated, in the early days, so well between your cousin and gregori stavridis. pity, pity, pity!' he said, shaking his head and smiling his benign, regretful smile that to-day was tinged with a barely concealed bitterness, 'a thousand pities, mademoiselle.' he began again, his mind on herakleion,-- 'i have seen your father and mother, also your uncle. they are very angry and impotent. because the people threw stones at their windows and even, i regret to say, fired shots into the house from the _platia_, the windows are all boarded over and they live by artificial light. i have seen them breakfasting by candles. yes. your, father, your mother, and your uncle, breakfasting together in the drawing-room with lighted candles on the table. i entered the house from the back. your father said to me apprehensively, "i am told madame kato's flat was wrecked last night?" and your mother said, "outrageous! she is infatuated, either with those islands or with that boy. she will not care. all her possessions, littering the quays! an outrage." your uncle said to me, "see the boy, malteios! talk to him. we are hopeless." indeed they appeared hopeless, although not resigned, and sat with their hands hanging by their sides instead of eating their eggs; your mother, even, had lost her determination. 'i tried to reassure them, but a rattle of stones on the boarded windows interrupted me. your uncle got up and flung away his napkin. "one cannot breakfast in peace," he said petulantly, as though that constituted his most serious grievance. he went out of the room, but the door had scarcely closed behind him before it reopened and he came back. he was quite altered, very irritable, and all his courteous gravity gone from him. "see the inconvenience," he said to me, jerking his hands, "all the servants have gone with my son, all damned islanders." i found nothing to say.' 'kato may return to herakleion with you?' eve suggested after a pause during which malteios recollected himself, and tried to indicate by shrugs and rueful smiles that he considered the bewilderment of the davenants a deplorable but nevertheless entertaining joke. at the name of kato a change came over his face. 'a fanatic, that woman,' he replied; 'a martyr who will rejoice in her martyrdom. she will never leave aphros while the cause remains.--a heroic woman,' he said, with unexpected reverence. he looked at eve, his manner veering again to the insinuating and the crafty; his worse and his better natures were perpetually betraying themselves. 'would she leave aphros? no! would your cousin leave aphros? no! they have between them the bond of a common cause. i know your cousin. he is young enough to be an idealist. i know madame kato. she is old enough to applaud skilfully. hou!' he spread his hands. 'i have said enough.' eve revealed but little interest, though for the first time during their interview her interest was passionately aroused. malteios watched her, new schemes germinating in his brain; they played against one another, their hands undeclared, a blind, tentative game. this conversation, which had begun as it were accidentally, fortuitously, turned to a grave significance along a road whose end lay hidden far behind the hills of the future. it led, perhaps, nowhere. it led, perhaps.... eve said lightly,-- 'i am outdistanced by kato and my cousin; i don't understand politics, or those impersonal friendships.' 'mademoiselle,' malteios replied, choosing his words and infusing into them an air of confidence, 'i tell you an open secret, but one to which i would never refer save with a sympathetic listener like yourself, when i tell you that for many years a friendship existed between myself and madame kato, political indeed, but not impersonal. madame kato,' he said, drawing his chair a little nearer and lowering his voice, 'is not of the impersonal type.' eve violently rebelled from his nearness; fastidious, she loathed his goatish smile, his beard, his rosy lips, but she continued to smile to him, a man who held, perhaps, one of julian's secrets. she was aware of the necessity of obtaining that secret. of the dishonour towards julian, sleeping away his hurts and his fatigue in the room above, she was blindly unaware. love to her was a battle, not a fellowship. she must know! already her soul, eagerly receptive and bared to the dreaded blow, had adopted the theory of betrayal. in the chaos of her resentments and suspicions, she remembered how kato had spoken to her in the morning, and without further reflection branded that conversation as a blind. she even felt a passing admiration for the other woman's superior cleverness. she, eve, had been completely taken in.... so she must contend, not only against the islands, but against kato also? anguish and terror rushed over her. she scarcely knew what she believed or did not believe, only that her mind was one seething and surging tumult of mistrust and all-devouring jealousy. she was on the point of abandoning her temperamentally indirect methods, of stretching out her hands to malteios, and crying to him for the agonising, the fiercely welcome truth, when he said,-- 'impersonal? do you, mademoiselle, know anything of your sex? ah, charming! disturbing, precious, indispensable, even heroic, tant que vous voudrez, but impersonal, no! man, yes, sometimes. woman, never. never.' he took her hand, patted it, kissed the wrist, and murmured, 'chère enfant, these are not ideas for your pretty head.' she knew from experience that his preoccupation with such theories, if no more sinister motive, would urge him towards a resumption of the subject, and after a pause full of cogitation he continued,-- 'follow my advice, mademoiselle: never give your heart to a man concerned in other affairs. you may love, both of you, but you will strive in opposite directions. your cousin, for example.... and yet,' he mused, 'you are a woman to charm the leisure of a man of action. the toy of a conqueror.' he laughed. 'fortunately, conquerors are rare.' but she knew he hovered round the image of julian. 'believe me, leave such men to such women as kato; they are more truly kin. you--i discover you--are too exorbitant; love would play too absorbing a rôle. you would tolerate no rival, neither a person nor a fact. your eyes smoulder; i am near the truth?' 'one could steal the man from his affairs,' she said almost inaudibly. 'the only hope,' he replied. a long silence fell, and his evil benevolence gained on her; on her aroused sensitiveness his unspoken suggestions fell one by one as definitely as the formulated word. he watched her; she trembled, half compelled by his gaze. at length, under the necessity of breaking the silence, she said,-- 'kato is not such a woman; she would resent no obstacle.' 'wiser,' he added, 'she would identify herself with it.' he began to banter horribly,-- 'ah, child, eve, child made for love, daily bless your cousinship! bless its contemptuous security. smile over the confabulations of kato and your cousin. smile to think that he, she, and the islands are bound in an indissoluble triology. if there be jealousy to suffer, rejoice in that it falls, not to your share, but to mine, who am old and sufficiently philosophical. age and experience harden, you know. else, i could not see anastasia kato pass to another with so negligible a pang. yet the imagination makes its own trouble. a jealous imagination.... very vivid. pictures of anastasia kato in your cousin's arms--ah, crude, crude, i know, but the crudity of the jealous imagination is unequalled. not a detail escapes. that is why i say, bless your cousinship and its security.' he glanced up and met her tortured eyes. 'as i bless my philosophy of the inevitable,' he finished softly, caressing her hand which he had retained all the while. no effort at 'impossible!' escaped her; almost from the first she had blindly adopted his insinuations. she even felt a perverse gratitude towards him, and a certain fellowship. they were allies. her mind was now set solely upon one object. that self-destruction might be involved did not occur to her, nor would she have been deterred thereby. like samson, she had her hands upon the columns.... 'madame kato lives in this house?' asked malteios, as one who has been following a train of thought. she shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were turned slightly inwards, as with the effort of an immense concentration. 'you have power,' he said with admiration. bending towards her, he began to speak in a very low, rapid voice; she sat listening to him, by no word betraying her passionate attention, nodding only from time to time, and keeping her hands very still, linked in her lap. only once she spoke, to ask a question, 'he would leave herakleion?' and malteios replied, 'inevitably; the question of the islands would be for ever closed for him;' then she said, producing the words from afar off, 'he would be free,' and malteios, working in the dark, following only one of the two processes of her thought, reverted to kato; his skill could have been greater in playing upon the instrument, but even so it sufficed, so taut was the stringing of the cords. when he had finished speaking, she asked him another question, 'he could never trace the thing to me?' and he reassured her with a laugh so natural and contemptuous that she, in her ingenuity, was convinced. all the while she had kept her eyes fastened on his face, on his rosy lips moving amongst his beard, that she might lose no detail of his meaning or his instructions, and at one moment he had thought, 'there is something terrible in this child,' but immediately he had crushed the qualm, thinking, 'by this recovery, if indeed it is to be, i am a made man,' and thanking the fate that had cast this unforeseen chance across his path. finally she heard his voice change from its earnest undertone to its customary platitudinous flattery, and turning round she saw that julian had come into the room, his eyes already bent with brooding scorn upon the emissary. vi she was silent that evening, so silent that grbits, the unobservant, commented to kato; but after they had dined, all four, by the fountain in the court, she flung aside her preoccupation, laughed and sang, forced kato to the piano, and danced with reckless inspiration to the accompaniment of kato's songs. julian, leaning against a column, watched her bewildering gaiety. she had galvanised grbits into movement--he who was usually bashful with women, especially with eve, reserving his enthusiasm for julian--and as she passed and re-passed before julian in the grasp of the giant she flung at him provocative glances charged with a special meaning he could not interpret; in the turn of her dance he caught her smile and the flash of her eyes, and smiled in response, but his smile was grave, for his mind ran now upon the crisis with herakleion, and, moreover, he suffered to see eve so held by grbits, her turbulent head below the giant's shoulder, and regretted that her gaiety should not be reserved for him alone. across the court, through the open door of the drawing-room, he could see kato at the piano, full of delight, her broad little fat hands and wrists racing above the keyboard, her short torso swaying to the rhythm, her rich voice humming, and the gold wheat ears shaking in her hair. she called to him, and, drawing a chair close to the piano, he sat beside her, but through the door he continued to stare at eve dancing in the court. kato said as she played, her perception sharpened by the tormented watch she kept on him,-- 'eve celebrates your victory of yesterday,' to which he replied, deceived by the kindly sympathy in her eyes,-- 'eve celebrates her own high spirits and the enjoyment of a new partner; my doings are of the last indifference to her.' kato played louder; she bent towards him,-- 'you love her so much, julian?' he made an unexpected answer,-- 'i believe in her.' kato, a shrewd woman, observed him, thinking,--'he does not; he wants to convince himself.' she said aloud, conscientiously wrenching out the truth as she saw it,-- 'she loves you; she is capable of love such as is granted to few; that is the sublime in her.' he seized upon this, hungrily, missing meanwhile the sublime in the honesty of the singer,-- 'since i am given so much, i should not exact more. the islands.... she gives all to me. i ought not to force the islands upon her.' 'grapes of thistles,' kato said softly. 'you understand,' he murmured with gratitude. 'but why should she hamper me, anastasia? are all women so irrational? what am i to believe?' 'we are not so irrational as we appear,' kato said, 'because our wildest sophistry has always its roots in the truth of instinct.' eve was near them, crying out,-- 'a tarantella, anastasia!' julian sprang up; he caught her by the wrist,-- 'gipsy!' 'come with the gipsy?' she whispered. her scented hair blew near him, and her face was upturned, with its soft, sweet mouth. 'away from aphros?' he said, losing his head. 'all over the world!' he was suddenly swept away by the full force of her wild, irresponsible seduction. 'anywhere you choose, eve.' she triumphed, close to him, and wanton. 'you'd sacrifice aphros to me?' 'anything you asked for,' he said desperately. she laughed, and danced away, stretching out her hands towards him,-- 'join in the saraband, julian?' she was alone in her room. her emotion and excitement were so intense that they drained her of physical strength, leaving her faint and cold; her eyes closed now and then as under the pressure of pain; she yawned, and her breath came shortly between her lips; she sat by the open window, rose to move about the room, sat again, rose again, passed her hand constantly over her forehead, or pressed it against the base of her throat. the room was in darkness; there was no moon, only the stars hung over the black gulf of the sea. she could see the long, low lights of herakleion, and the bright red light of the pier. she could hear distant shouting, and an occasional shot. in the room behind her, her bed was disordered. she wore only her spanish shawl thrown over her long nightgown; her hair hung in its thick plait. sometimes she formed, in a whisper, the single word, 'julian!' she thought of julian. julian's rough head and angry eyes. julian when he said, 'i shall break you,' like a man speaking to a wild young supple tree. (her laugh of derision, and her rejoicing in her secret fear!) julian in his lazy ownership of her beauty. julian when he allowed her to coax him from his moroseness. julian when she was afraid of him and of the storm she had herself aroused: julian passionate.... julian whom she blindly wanted for herself alone. that desire had risen to its climax. the light of no other consideration filtered through into her closely shuttered heart. she had waited for julian, schemed for julian, battled for julian; this was the final battle. she had not foreseen it. she had tolerated and even welcomed the existence of the islands until she began to realise that they took part of julian from her. then she hated them insanely, implacably; including kato, whom julian had called their tutelary deity, in that hatred. had julian possessed a dog, she would have hated that too. the ambitions she had vaguely cherished for him had not survived the test of surrendering a portion of her own inordinate claim. she had joined battle with the islands as with a malignant personality. she was fighting them for the possession of julian as she might have fought a woman she thought more beautiful, more unscrupulous, more appealing than herself, but with very little doubt of ultimate victory. julian would be hers, at last; more completely hers than he had been even in those ideal, uninterrupted days before grbits and kato came, the days when he forgot his obligations, almost his life's dream for her. love all-eclipsing.... she stood at the window, oppressed and tense, but in the soft silken swaying of her loose garments against her limbs she still found a delicately luxurious comfort. julian had been called away, called by the violent hammering on the house-door; it had then been after midnight. two hours had passed since then. no one had come to her, but she had heard the tumult of many voices in the streets, and by leaning far out of the window she could see a great flare burning up from the market-place. she had thought a house might be on fire. she could not look back over her dispositions; they had been completed in a dream, as though under direct dictation. it did not occur to her to be concerned as to their possible miscarriage; she was too ignorant of such matters, too unpractical, to be troubled by any such anxiety. she had carried out malteios' instructions with intense concentration; there her part had ended. the fuse which she had fired was burning.... if julian would return, to put an end to her impatience! (down in the market-place the wooden school-buildings flamed and crackled, redly lighting up the night, and fountains of sparks flew upward against the sky. the lurid market-place was thronged with sullen groups of islanders, under the guard of the soldiers of herakleion. in the centre, on the cobbles, lay the body of tsigaridis, on his back, arms flung open, still, in the enormous pool of blood that crept and stained the edges of his spread white fustanelle. many of the islanders were not fully dressed, but had run out half-naked from their houses, only to be captured and disarmed by the troops; the weapons which had been taken from them lay heaped near the body of tsigaridis, the light of the flames gleaming along the blades of knives and the barrels of rifles, and on the bare bronzed chests of men, and limbs streaked with trickles of bright red blood. they stood proudly, contemptuous of their wounds, arms folded, some with rough bandages about their heads. panaïoannou, leaning both hands on the hilt of his sword, and grinning sardonically beneath his fierce moustaches, surveyed the place from the steps of the assembly-room). eve in her now silent room realised that all sounds of tumult had died away. a shivering came over her, and, impelled by a suddenly understood necessity, she lit the candles on her dressing-table and, as the room sprang into light, began flinging the clothes out of the drawers into a heap in the middle of the floor. they fluttered softly from her hands, falling together in all their diverse loveliness of colour and fragility of texture. she paused to smile to them, friends and allies. she remembered now, with the fidelity of a child over a well-learnt lesson, the final words of malteios, 'a boat ready for you both to-night, secret and without delay,' as earlier in the evening she had remembered his other words, 'midnight, at the creek at the back of the islands ...'; she had acted upon her lesson mechanically, and in its due sequence, conscientious, trustful. she stood amongst her clothes, the long red sari which she had worn on the evening of julian's first triumph drooping from her hand. they foamed about her feet as she stood doubtfully above them, strangely brilliant herself in her spanish shawl. they lay in a pool of rich delicacy upon the floor. they hung over the backs of chairs, and across the tumbled bed. they pleased her; she thought them pretty. stooping, she raised them one by one, and allowed them to drop back on to the heap, aware that she must pack them and must also dress herself. but she liked their butterfly colours and gentle rustle, and, remembering that julian liked them too, smiled to them again. he found her standing there amongst them when after a knock at her door he came slowly into her room. he remained by the door for a long while looking at her in silence. she had made a sudden, happy movement towards him, but inexplicably had stopped, and with the sari still in her hand gazed back at him, waiting for him to speak. he looked above all, mortally tired. she discovered no anger in his face, not even sorrow; only that mortal weariness. she was touched; she to whom those gentler emotions were usually foreign. 'julian?' she said, seized with doubt. 'it is all over,' he began, quite quietly, and he put his hand against his forehead, which was still bandaged, raising his arm with the same lassitude; 'they landed where young zapantiotis was on guard, and he let them through; they were almost at the village before they were discovered. there was very little fighting. they have allowed me to come here. they are waiting for me downstairs. i am to leave.' 'yes,' she said, and looked down at her heap of clothes. he did not speak again, and gradually she realised the implication of his words. 'zapantiotis....' she said. 'yes,' he said, raising his eyes again to her face, 'yes, you see, zapantiotis confessed it all to me when he saw me. he was standing amongst a group of prisoners, in the market-place, but when i came by he broke away from the guards and screamed out to me that he had betrayed us. betrayed us. he said he was tempted, bribed. he said he would cut his own throat. but i told him not to do that.' she began to tremble, wondering how much he knew. he added, in the saddest voice she had ever heard,-- 'zapantiotis, an islander, could not be faithful.' then she was terrified; she did not know what was coming next, what would be the outcome of this quietness. she wanted to go towards him, but she could only remain motionless, holding the sari up to her breast as a means of protection. 'at least,' he said, 'old zapantiotis is dead, and will never know about his son. where can one look for fidelity? tsigaridis is dead too, and grbits. i am ashamed of being alive.' she noticed then that he was disarmed. 'why do you stand over there, julian?' she said timidly. 'i wonder how much you promised zapantiotis?' he said in a speculative voice; and next, stating a fact, 'you were, of course, acting on malteios' suggestion.' 'you know?' she breathed. she was quite sure now that he was going to kill her. 'zapantiotis tried to tell me that too--in a strange jumble of confessions. but they dragged him away before he could say more than your bare name. that was enough for me. so i know, eve.' 'is that all you were going to say?' he raised his arms and let them fall. 'what is there to say?' knowing him very well, she saw that his quietness was dropping from him; she was aware of it perhaps before he was aware of it himself. his eyes were losing their dead apathy, and were travelling round the room; they rested on the heap of clothes, on her own drawing of himself hanging on the wall, on the disordered bed. they flamed suddenly, and he made a step towards her. 'why? why? why?' he cried out with the utmost anguish and vehemence, but stopped himself, and stood with clenched fists. she shrank away. 'all gone--in an hour!' he said, and striding towards her he stood over her, shaken with a tempest of passion. she shrank farther from him, retreating against the wall, but first she stooped and gathered her clothes around her again, pressing her back against the wall and cowering with the clothes as a rampart round her feet. but as yet full realisation was denied her; she knew that he was angry, she thought indeed that he might kill her, but to other thoughts of finality she was, in all innocence, a stranger. he spoke incoherently, saying, 'all gone! all gone!' in accents of blind pain, and once he said, 'i thought you loved me,' putting his hands to his head as though walls were crumbling. he made no further reproach, save to repeat, 'i thought the men were faithful, and that you loved me,' and all the while he trembled with the effort of his self-control, and his twitching hands reached out towards her once or twice, but he forced them back. she thought, 'how angry he is! but he will forget, and i shall make up to him for what he has lost.' so, between them, they remained almost silent, breathing hard, and staring at one another. 'come, put up your clothes quickly,' he said at last, pointing; 'they want us off the island, and if we do not go of our own accord they will tie our hands and feet and carry us to the boat. let us spare ourselves that ludicrous scene. we can marry in athens to-morrow.' 'marry?' she repeated. 'naturally. what else did you suppose? that i should leave you? now? put up your clothes. shall i help you? come!' 'but--marry, julian?' 'clearly: marry,' he replied in a harsh voice, and added, 'let us go. for god's sake, let us go now! i feel stunned, i mustn't begin to think. let us go.' he urged her towards the door. 'but we had nothing to do with marriage,' she whispered. he cried, so loudly and so bitterly that she was startled,-- 'no, we had to do only with love--love and rebellion! and both have failed me. now, instead of love, we must have marriage; and instead of rebellion, law. i shall help on authority, instead of opposing it.' he broke down and buried his face in his hands. 'you no longer love me,' she said slowly, and her eyes narrowed and turned slightly inwards in the way malteios had noticed. 'then the islands....' he pressed both hands against his temples and screamed like one possessed, 'but they were all in all in all! it isn't the thing, it's the soul behind the thing. in robbing me of them you've robbed me of more than them--you've robbed me of all the meaning that lay behind them.' he retained just sufficient self-possession to realise this. 'i knew you were hostile, how could i fail to know it? but i persuaded myself that you were part of aphros, part of all my beliefs, even something beyond all my beliefs. i loved you, so you and they had to be reconciled. i reconciled you in secret. i gave up mentioning the islands to you because it stabbed me to see your indifference. it destroyed the illusion i was cherishing. so i built up fresh, separate illusions about you. i have been living on illusions, now i have nothing left but facts. i owe this to you, to you, to you!' 'you no longer love me,' she said again. she could think of nothing else. she had not listened to his bitter and broken phrases. 'you no longer love me, julian.' 'i was so determined that i would be deceived by no woman, and like every one else i have fallen into the trap. because you were you, i ceased to be on my guard. oh, you never pretended to care for aphros; i grant you that honesty; but i wanted to delude myself and so i was deluded. i told myself marvellous tales of your rarity; i thought you were above even aphros. i am punished for my weakness in bringing you here. why hadn't i the strength to remain solitary? i reproach myself; i had not the right to expose my islands to such a danger. but how could i have known? how could i have known?' 'clearly you no longer love me,' she said for the third time. 'zapantiotis sold his soul for money--was it money you promised him?' he went on. 'so easily--just for a little money! his soul, and all of us, for money. money, father's god; he's a wise man, father, to serve the only remunerative god. was it money you promised zapantiotis?' he shouted at her, seizing her by the arm, 'or was he, perhaps, like paul, in love with you? did you perhaps promise him yourself? how am i to know? there may still be depths in you--you woman--that i know nothing about. did you give yourself to zapantiotis? or is he coming to-night for his reward? did you mean to ship me off to athens, you and your accomplices, while you waited here in this room--_our_ room--for your lover?' 'julian!' she cried--he had forced her on to her knees--'you are saying monstrous things.' 'you drive me to them,' he replied; 'when i think that while the troops were landing you lay in my arms, here, knowing all the while that you had betrayed me--i could believe anything of you. monstrous things! do you know what monstrous things i am thinking? that you shall not belong to zapantiotis, but to me. yes, to me. you destroy love, but desire revives, without love; horrible, but sufficient. that's what i am thinking. i dare say i could kiss you still, and forget. come!' he was beside himself. 'your accusations are so outrageous,' she said, half-fainting, 'your suggestions are obscene, julian; i would rather you killed me at once.' 'then answer me about zapantiotis. how am i to know?' he repeated, already slightly ashamed of his outburst, 'i'm readjusting my ideas. tell me the truth; i scarcely care.' 'believe what you choose,' she replied, although he still held her, terrified, on the ground at his feet, 'i have more pride than you credit me with--too much to answer you.' 'it was money,' he said after a pause, releasing her. she stood up; reaction overcame her, and she wept. 'julian, that you should believe that of me! you cut me to the quick--and i gave myself to you with such pride and gladness' she added almost inaudibly. 'forgive me; i suppose you, also, have your own moral code; i have speculated sufficiently about it, heaven knows, but that means very little to me now,' he said, more quietly, and with even a spark of detached interest and curiosity. but he did not pursue the subject. 'what do you want done with your clothes? we have wasted quite enough time.' 'you want me to come with you?' 'you sound incredulous; why?' 'i know you have ceased to love me. you spoke of marrying me. your love must have been a poor flimsy thing, to topple over as it has toppled! mine is more tenacious, alas. it would not depend on outside happenings.' 'how dare you accuse me?' he said,' you destroy and take from me all that i care for' ('yes,' she interpolated, as much bitterness in her voice as in his own--but all the time they were talking against one another--'you cared for everything but me'), 'then you brand my love for you as a poor flimsy thing. if you have killed it, you have done so by taking away the one thing....' 'that you cared for more than for me,' she completed. 'with which i would have associated you. you yourself made that association impossible. you hated the things i loved. now you've killed those things, and my love for you with them. you've killed everything i cherished and possessed.' 'dead? irretrievably?' she whispered. 'dead.' he saw her widened and swimming eyes, and added, too much stunned for personal malice, yet angry because of the pain he was suffering,-- 'you shall never be jealous of me again. i think i've loved all women, loving you--gone through the whole of love, and now washed my hands of it; i've tested and plumbed your vanity, your hideous egotism'--she was crying like a child, unreservedly, her face hidden against her arm--'your lack of breadth in everything that was not love.' as he spoke, she raised her face and he saw light breaking on her--although it was not, and never would be, precisely the light he desired. it was illumination and horror; agonised horror, incredulous dismay. her eyes were streaming with tears, but they searched him imploringly, despairingly, as in a new voice she said,-- 'i've hurt you, julian ... how i've hurt you! hurt you! i would have died for you. can't i put it right? oh, tell me! will you kill me?' and she put her hand up to her throat, offering it. 'julian, i've hurt you ... my own, my julian. what have i done? what madness made me do it? oh, what is there now for me to do? only tell me; i do beseech you only to tell me. shall i go--to whom?--to malteios? i understand nothing; you must tell me. i wanted you so greedily; you must believe that. anything, anything you want me to do.... it wasn't sufficient, to love you, to want you; i gave you all i had, but it wasn't sufficient. i loved you wrongly, i suppose; but i loved you, i loved you!' he had been angry, but now he was seized with a strange pity; pity of her childish bewilderment: the thing that she had perpetrated was a thing she could not understand. she would never fully understand.... he looked at her as she stood crying, and remembered her other aspects, in the flood-time of her joy, careless, radiant, irresponsible; they had shared hours of illimitable happiness. 'eve! eve!' he cried, and through the wrenching despair of his cry he heard the funeral note, the tear of cleavage like the downfall of a tree. he took her in his arms and made her sit upon the bed; she continued to weep, and he sat beside her, stroking her hair. he used terms of endearment towards her, such as he had never used in the whole course of their passionate union, 'eve, my little eve'; and he kept on repeating, 'my little eve,' and pressing her head against his shoulder. they sat together like two children. presently she looked up, pushing back her hair with a gesture he knew well. 'we both lose the thing we cared most for upon earth, julian: you lose the islands, and i lose you.' she stood up, and gazed out of the window towards herakleion. she stood there for some time without speaking, and a fatal clearness spread over her mind, leaving her quite strong, quite resolute, and coldly armoured against every shaft of hope. 'you want me to marry you,' she said at length. 'you must marry me in athens to-morrow, if possible, and as soon as we are married we can go to england.' 'i utterly refuse,' she said, turning round towards him. he stared at her; she looked frail and tired, and with one small white hand held together the edges of her spanish shawl. she was no longer crying. 'do you suppose,' she went on, 'that not content with having ruined the beginning of your life for you--i realise it now, you see--i shall ruin the rest of it as well? you may believe me or not, i speak the truth like a dying person when i tell you i love you to the point of sin; yes, it's a sin to love as i love you. it's blind, it's criminal. it's my curse, the curse of eve, to love so well that one loves badly. i didn't see. i wanted you too blindly. even now i scarcely understand how you can have ceased to love me.--no, don't speak. i do understand it--in a way; and yet i don't understand it. i don't understand that an idea can be dearer to one than the person one loves.... i don't understand responsibilities; when you've talked about responsibilities i've sometimes felt that i was made of other elements than you.... but you're a man, and i'm a woman; that's the rift. perhaps it's a rift that can never be bridged. never mind that. julian, you must find some more civilised woman than myself; find a woman who will be a friend, not an enemy. love makes me into an enemy, you see. find somebody more tolerant, more unselfish. more maternal. yes, that's it,' she said, illuminated, 'more maternal; i'm only a lover, not a mother. you told me once that i was of the sort that sapped and destroyed. i'll admit that, and let you go. you mustn't waste yourself on me. but, oh, julian,' she said, coming close to him, 'if i give you up--because in giving you up i utterly break myself--grant me one justice: never doubt that i loved you. promise me, julian. i shan't love again. but don't doubt that i loved you; don't argue to yourself, "she broke my illusions, therefore she never loved me," let me make amends for what i did, by sending you away now without me.' 'i was angry; i was lying; i wanted to hurt you as you had hurt me,' he said desperately. 'how can i tell what i have been saying to you? i've been dazed, struck.... it's untrue that i no longer love you. i love you, in spite, in spite.... love can't die in an hour.' 'bless you,' she said, putting her hand for a moment on his head, 'but you can't deceive me. oh,' she hurried on, 'you might deceive yourself; you might persuade yourself that you still loved me and wanted me to go with you; but i know better. i'm not for you. i'm not for your happiness, or for any man's happiness. you've said it yourself: i am different. i let you go because you are strong and useful--oh, yes, useful! so disinterested and strong, all that i am not--too good for me to spoil. you have nothing in common with me. who has? i think i haven't any kindred. i love you! i love you better than myself!' he stood up; he stammered in his terror and earnestness, but she only shook her head. 'no, julian.' 'you're too strong,' he cried, 'you little weak thing; stronger than i.' she smiled; he was unaware of the very small reserve of her strength. 'stronger than you,' she repeated; 'yes.' again he implored her to go with him; he even threatened her, but she continued to shake her head and to say in a faint and tortured voice,-- 'go now, julian; go, my darling; go now, julian.' 'with you, or not at all.' he was at last seriously afraid that she meant what she said, 'without me.' 'eve, we were so happy. remember! only come; we shall be as happy again.' 'you mustn't tempt me; it's cruel,' she said, shivering. 'i'm human.' 'but i love you!' he said. he seized her hands, and tried to drag her towards the door. 'no,' she answered, putting him gently away from her. 'don't tempt me, julian, don't; let me make amends in my own way.' her gentleness and dignity were such that he now felt reproved, and, dimly, that the wrong done was by him towards her, not by her towards him. 'you are too strong--magnificent, and heartbreaking,' he said in despair. 'as strong as a rock,' she replied, looking straight at him and thinking that at any moment she must fall. but still she forced her lips to a smile of finality. 'think better of it,' he was beginning, when they heard a stir of commotion in the court below. 'they are coming for you!' she cried out in sudden panic. 'go; i can't face any one just now....' he opened the door on to the landing. 'kato!' he said, falling back. eve heard the note of fresh anguish in his voice. kato came in; even in that hour of horror they saw that she had merely dragged a quilt round her shoulders, and that her hair was down her back. in this guise her appearance was indescribably grotesque. 'defeated, defeated,' she said in lost tones to julian. she did not see that they had both involuntarily recoiled before her; she was beyond such considerations. 'anastasia,' he said, taking her by the arm and shaking her slightly to recall her from her bemusement, 'here is something more urgent--thank god, you will be my ally--eve must leave aphros with me; tell her so, tell her so; she refuses.' he shook her more violently with the emphasis of his words. 'if he wants you....' kato said, looking at eve, who had retreated into the shadows and stood there, half fainting, supporting herself against the back of a chair. 'if he wants you....' she repeated, in a stupid voice, but her mind was far away. 'you don't understand, anastasia,' eve answered; 'it was i that betrayed him.' again she thought she must fall. 'she is lying!' cried julian. 'no,' said eve. she and kato stared at one another, so preposterously different, yet with currents of truth rushing between them. 'you!' kato said at last, awaking. 'i am sending him away,' said eve, speaking as before to the other woman. 'you!' said kato again. she turned wildly to julian. 'why didn't you trust yourself to me, julian, my beloved?' she cried; 'i wouldn't have treated you so, julian; why didn't you trust yourself to me?' she pointed at eve, silent and brilliant in her coloured shawl; then, her glance falling upon her own person, so sordid, so unkempt, she gave a dreadful cry and looked around as though seeking for escape. the other two both turned their heads away; to look at kato in that moment was more than they could bear. presently they heard her speaking again; her self-abandonment had been brief; she had mastered herself, and was making it a point of honour to speak with calmness. 'julian, the officers have orders that you must leave the island before dawn; if you do not go to them, they will fetch you here. they are waiting below in the courtyard now. eve,'--her face altered,--'eve is right: if she has indeed done as she says, she cannot go with you. she is right; she is more right, probably, than she has ever been in her life before or ever will be again. come, now; i will go with you.' 'stay with eve, if i go,' he said. 'impossible!' replied kato, instantly hardening, and casting upon eve a look of hatred and scorn. 'how cruel you are, anastasia!' said julian, making a movement of pity towards eve. 'take him away, anastasia,' eve murmured, shrinking from him. 'see, she understands me better than you do, and understands herself better too,' said kato, in a tone of cruel triumph; 'if you do not come, julian, i shall send up the officers.' as she spoke she went out of the room, her quilt trailing, and her heel-less slippers clacking on the boards. 'eve, for the last time....' a cry was wrenched from her,-- 'go! if you pity me!' 'i shall come back.' 'oh, no, no!' she replied, 'you'll never come back. one doesn't live through such things twice.' she shook her head like a tortured animal that seeks to escape from pain. he gave an exclamation of despair, and, after one wild gesture towards her, which she weakly repudiated, he followed kato. eve heard their steps upon the stairs, then crossing the courtyard, and the tramp of soldiers; the house-door crashed massively. she stooped very slowly and mechanically, and began to pick up the gay and fragile tissue of her clothes. vii she laid them all in orderly fashion across the bed, smoothing out the folds with a care that was strangely opposed to her usual impatience. then she stood for some time drawing the thin silk of the sari through her fingers and listening for sounds in the house; there were none. the silence impressed her with the fact that she was alone. 'gone!' she thought, but she made no movement. her eyes narrowed and her mouth became contracted with pain. 'julian ...' she murmured, and, finding some slippers, she thrust her bare feet into them with sudden haste and threw the corner of her shawl over her shoulder. she moved now with feverish speed; any one seeing her face would have exclaimed that she was not in conscious possession of her will, but would have shrunk before the force of her determination. she opened the door upon the dark staircase and went rapidly down; the courtyard was lit by a torch the soldiers had left stuck and flaring in a bracket. she had some trouble with the door, tearing her hands and breaking her nails upon the great latch, but she felt nothing, dragged it open, and found herself in the street. at the end of the street she could see the glare from the burning buildings of the market-place, and could hear the shout of military orders. she knew she must take the opposite road; malteios had told her that. 'go by the mule-path over the hill; it will lead you straight to the creek where the boat will be waiting,' he had said. 'the boat for julian and me,' she kept muttering to herself as she speeded up the path stumbling over the shallow steps and bruising her feet upon the cobbles. it was very dark. once or twice as she put out her hand to save herself from falling she encountered only a prickly bush of aloe or gorse, and the pain stung her, causing a momentary relief. 'i mustn't hurry too much,' she said to herself, 'i mustn't arrive at the creek before they have pushed off the boat. i mustn't call out....' she tried to compare her pace with that of julian, kato, and the officers, and ended by sitting down for a few minutes at the highest point of the path, where it had climbed over the shoulder of the island, and was about to curve down upon the other side. from this small height, under the magnificent vault studded with stars, she could hear the sigh of the sea and feel the slight breeze ruffling her hair. 'without julian, without julian--no, never,' she said to herself, and that one thought revolved in her brain. 'i'm alone,' she thought, 'i've always been alone.... i'm an outcast, i don't belong here....' she did not really know what she meant by this, but she repeated it with a blind conviction, and a terrible loneliness overcame her. 'oh, stars!' she said aloud, putting up her hands to them, and again she did not know what she meant, either by the words or the gesture. then she realised that it was dark, and standing up she thought, 'i'm frightened,' but there was no reply to the appeal for julian that followed immediately upon the thought. she clasped her shawl round her, and tried to stare through the night; then she thought 'people on the edge of death have no need to be frightened,' but for all that she continued to look fearfully about her, to listen for sounds, and to wish that julian would come to take care of her. she went down the opposite side of the hill less rapidly than she had come up. she knew she must not overtake julian and his escort. she did not really know why she had chosen to follow them, when any other part of the coast would have been equally suitable for what she had determined to do. but she kept thinking, as though it brought some consolation, 'he passed along this path five--ten--minutes ago; he is there somewhere, not far in front of me.' and she remembered how he had begged her to go with him. ' ... but i couldn't have gone!' she cried, half in apology to the dazzling happiness she had renounced, 'i was a curse to him--to everything i touch. i could never have controlled my jealousy, my exorbitance.... he asked me to go, to be with him always,' she thought, sobbing and hurrying on; and she sobbed his name, like a child, 'julian! julian! julian!' presently the path ceased to lead downhill and became flat, running along the top of the rocky cliff about twenty feet above the sea. she moved more cautiously, knowing that it would bring her to the little creek where the boat was to be waiting; as she moved she blundered constantly against boulders, for the path was winding and in the starlight very difficult to follow. she was still fighting with herself, 'no, i could not go with him; i am not fit.... i don't belong here....' that reiterated cry. 'but without him--no, no, no! this is quite simple. will he think me bad? i hope not; i shall have done what i could....' her complexity had entirely deserted her, and she thought in broad, childish lines. 'poor eve!' she thought suddenly, viewing herself as a separate person, 'she was very young' (in her eyes youth amounted to a moral virtue), 'julian, julian, be a little sorry for her,--i was cursed, i was surely cursed,' she added, and at that moment she found herself just above the creek. the path descended to it in rough steps, and with a beating heart she crept down, helping herself by her hands, until she stood upon the sand, hidden in the shadow of a boulder. the shadows were very black and hunched, like the shadows of great beasts. she listened, the softness of her limbs pressed against the harshness of the rocks. she heard faint voices, and, creeping forward, still keeping in the shadows, she made out the shape of a rowing-boat filled with men about twenty yards from the shore. 'kato has gone with him!' was her first idea, and at that all her jealousy flamed again--the jealousy that, at the bottom of her heart, she knew was groundless, but could not keep in check. anger revived her--'am i to waste myself on him?' she thought, but immediately she remembered the blank that that one word 'never!' could conjure up, and her purpose became fixed again. 'not life without him,' she thought firmly and unchangeably, and moved forward until her feet were covered by the thin waves lapping the sandy edge of the creek. she had thrown off her shoes, standing barefoot on the soft wet sand. here she paused to allow the boat to draw farther away. she knew that she would cry out, however strong her will, and she must guard against all chance of rescue. she waited at the edge of the creek, shivering, and drawing her silk garments about her, and forcing herself to endure the cold horror of the water washing round her ankles. how immense was the night, how immense the sea!--the oars in the boat dipped regularly; by now it was almost undistinguishable in the darkness. 'what must i do?' she thought wildly, knowing the moment had come. 'i must run out as far as i can....' she sent an unuttered cry of 'julian!' after the boat, and plunged forward; the coldness of the water stopped her as it reached her waist, and the long silk folds became entangled around her limbs, but she recovered herself and fought her way forward. instinctively she kept her hands pressed against her mouth and nostrils, and her staring eyes tried to fathom this cruelly deliberate death. then the shelving coast failed her beneath her feet; she had lost the shallows and was taken by the swell and rhythm of the deep. a thought flashed through her brain, 'this is where the water ceases to be green and becomes blue'; then in her terror she lost all self-control and tried to scream; it was incredible that julian, who was so near at hand, should not hear and come to save her; she felt herself tiny and helpless in that great surge of water; even as she tried to scream she was carried forward and under, in spite of her wild terrified battle against the sea, beneath the profound serenity of the night that witnessed and received her expiation. glasgow: w. collins sons and co. ltd.